Revolution of the Stripling Capitalists

Children are much more apt to learn and internalize things they are taught. Just imagine what the next generation will do based on the truth that we will teach them.

I am a stay-at-home mom with three children. Already I have applied the principles that Rick talks about in teaching them and I have seen a WORLD of difference at home.

Personal liberty requires private property Nothing belongs to the whole family. A toy either belongs to an individual child (or if it was a gift intended for all of them) it belongs to me and I decide to share with who and when. We do not force anyone to share. Sharing is completely optional.

What I’ve observed: There is a LOT less fighting over toys. Property rights are established and protected. With this security in personal property the children are much more eager to share their toys because they know they’re going to get it back and sharing promotes getting shared with (exchange creates wealth). The toys are getting much better taken care of now that individual children have also accepted stewardship over their toys (agency implies stewardship).

When we go over to another child’s house and their mothers force them to share their toys (Force Destroys Freedom and Prosperity and in the case of both parents Collective Action Has No Unique Moral Authority) there is a lot of resentment and the child isn’t that anxious for their “friends” to come play again.

Get what you incentivize I used this one just last night. Somebody did something inappropriate and we brought everyone in to look at the evidence. I told them, either you can confess and get 1 punishment or nobody tells me and everybody gets 2 punishments. The guilty party confessed and was happy about not getting two punishments.

What I learned today

I learned that I need a cell phone.

I got a flat tire today going down the freeway with my two year old son and 3 week old baby girl. With no way to call for help I started walking down the freeway with my son and the baby in the front pack to the next call box.

I didn't get very far.

Everybody who went by me called for help. Two CalTrans guys came by, one tow truck, one police officer and two good Samaritans.

I also learned that a complete stranger will give you their cell phone trusting you to return it.

The newest Cookie in the Jar

She's here! Elle (officially Elizabeth Jane) was born after 11 hours of labor, one royally screwed up epidural (TY would really appriciate the story on that one) and TWO pushes. Our princess tipped the scales at 9 pounds 15.2 ounces and was 22 inches long. I don't know how to have small babies I guess.

She came out looking like a bull dog (i.e. all scrunched up and not very cute) but she's fluffed up since then and looks beautiful with her curly blond hair ....Michael is already polishing the shotgun.

Relevance of The Naked Communist in 2005

The American people will recoil in horror at programs clearly labeled with the red banner of Communism. Unfortunately, most US citizens are ignorant of the communist agenda, fearing it only by reputation without recognizing that it has already infiltrated nearly every aspect of our lives. Earl Browder, former head of the US Communist Party stated, “America is getting socialism on the installment plan through programs of the welfare state. Americans may not be willing to vote for a program under the name of ‘socialism,’ but put it under another party label -- whether liberal, Republican or Democrat -- and they're by and large in favor of the idea...” (1). Communism (International Revolutionary Socialism), Fascism (Corporate Socialism), Naziism (National Socialism) and Democratic Socialism are all forms of the same system. The communist agenda, according to Cleon Skousen’s The Naked Communist, is outlined in a list of 45 goals. Rather than dissecting every point and its relevance today, let’s focus instead on the two pillars that our Founders and Marx agreed to be the most fundamental. The first pillar is Christianity. John Adams proclaimed, “The general principles, upon which the Fathers achieved independence, were…the general principles of Christianity” (2). The second pillar is the right to property. “The Founders said we should especially concentrate on the preservation of [the right to property] because all other rights are related to it” (3). Contrast this with Marx’s objective in life to “overthrow God and destroy capitalism” (4). God is central to Christianity; and Capitalism is the facilitator of private property. These two pillars of American prosperity and virtue could never be easily overthrown, but conspiring men wrapped in the robes of American law have been chipping away at them for nearly a century. James Madison warned, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations…This danger ought to be wisely guarded against” (5).

The American socialist movement began to make inroads in the hearts and minds of the people at the turn of the last century. People began to openly discuss ideas that Adam Smith and his capitalistic free market economy were outdated. The year 1913 saw embodiment of those ideas in the formation of the Federal Reserve and passage of the Sixteenth Amendment establishing the income tax, which according to Thomas DiLorenzo declared that “all earned income is the property of the state, and the state will decide how much income working Americans may keep for themselves by determining the rates of taxation” (6). As outlined by economist Milton Friedman the Great Contraction, or Great Depression, was a direct result of the inept application of monetary policy by the newly formed Federal Reserve. In response to this self-induced crisis the President, with full support of the suffering nation, assumed power and authority not granted him by the Constitution. FDR’s “New Deal” disregarded Constitutional protection of private property “by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land” (7). FDR’s ideas of land redistribution and the Federal Reserve’s involvement in the nation’s economy provided the stage for morphing the 5^th Amendment from protection of property rights to model Communism’s design for the “abolition of private property” with arbitrary governmental redistribution of property on the basis of potential tax revenue as evidenced by the 2005 ruling of the Supreme Court in KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON. Ironically, less than two months after this Supreme Court decision, Justice Stephen Breyer found his vacation home in the crosshairs of his own ruling and lamented, “[N]ot all our decisions are right, to tell you the truth”(8).

Men possess the right to LIFE, LIBERTY and PROPERTY as endowed by God, which are “equally sacred from arbitrary interference. …The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave” (9). Marx attested that “the only God of man is man himself.” In the mind of a Marxist atheist it is not possible to encroach upon God given rights for they are imaginary. The problem comes when imperfect human nature tries to administrate a benevolent distribution of equal things rather than equal rights.

Our Founders intended separation of Church and State to protect religious freedom and prevent government endorsement of a particular church. However, that has mutated into a Marxist type movement to completely banish God from Government. In 1942 the Supreme Court found religious instruction in public schools a violation of the establishment clause. This was the first of many Church/State Supreme Court rulings which have since eliminated prayer in public school, the posting of the Ten Commandments, censorship based on religious morality, teaching of creationism or intelligent design in schools and even nativity scenes. More recently Michael Newdow pushed to remove the words “UNDER GOD” from the pledge of allegiance but lost his Supreme Court case on a technicality. Other parents are pursuing a new case. In November of 2005, Newdow began action to remove “IN GOD WE TRUST” from US currency. Eventually, technicalities will not be able to protect American recognition of God. Without God and old-fashioned moral values, we are witness to such things as legalized abortion, homosexual marriages, profanity and obscenity operating under the guise of “free speech”. Marxism has essentially taken perversity and called it diversity.

Awareness is something that Americans now lack as the soft and enticing strands of the socialist agenda are quietly woven into a noose around the neck of America’s freedom. The socialist trend that rose at the turn of the last century has now ballooned out of proportion to create a lumbering monstrosity with an insatiable appetite. God is being unceremoniously escorted from American soil and with Him the rights He has bestowed. Property now belongs to the State since they are the ones who decide how land is developed and disposed of. Mounting government oversight is stifling America’s capitalistic free market. The fruits of our labor will continue to be confiscated in greater amounts to support more “necessary” government programs that serve to enslave not only the people they are supposed to benefit by creating a state of dependency but also the people who have been deprived of their own means. When the government can no longer borrow against the future and the producing Capitalists are overwhelmed with taxes to support the Socialist “needs”, America will either have to use force to increase production, becoming a true Communist nation or abandon the self destructive and morally corrupt socialism we drifted into. Abraham Lincoln said “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide” (10). Wake up America! We will have to decide.

1) http://www.acidink.org/200509archive001.asp

2) John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28th, 1813, from Quincy. The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, edited by Lester J. Cappon,
1988, the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, pp. 338-340

3) The 5000 year leap, W. Cleon Skousen. pg 167

4) The Naked Communist, W. Cleon Skousen pg 37

5) James Madison. Elliot, Debates in the State Conventions, 3:87

6) http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo74.html

7) First Inaugural Speech, March 4, 1933 Franklin D Roosevelt

8) http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45711

9) Justice George Sutherland. Principle or Expedient? Annual Address to the New York State Bar Association, 21 January 1921, p 18.)

10) The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum,of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109.

Smoke in the kitchen

Ethan wanted one of my homemade rolls and asked if he could get one. I told him that was OK and so he went to the kitchen to get one and decided to heat it up. Unbeknownst to me he put it in the microwave and pushed a bunch of numbers and then the start button. Anyway...he calls me from downstairs and says that his bread is too hot and he wants me to fix the microwave

uh...oh...

"Turn it off, Ethan."

"No...YOU do it!"

So, I come down and the whole downstairs is filled with smoke and smoke is POURING out of the still running microwave (with 3 minutes still left). I turned the microwave off and quickly started opening all the windows and put the boys on the front porch for some air.

I don't think the roll actually caught on fire, but it certainly smoked the house up pretty good. Anyway...I've had a fan on and all the windows open for nearly an hour and a half and the kitchen still smells like smoke.

Fortunately Michael laughed when Ethan called to tell him what happened.

San Diego

The wedding down in San Diego was supposed to be with ten people coming from our family. Mom was going to rent a fifteen-passenger van to haul everyone down. After everything was said and done only Ethan and I went with Mom and Dad. We listened to the book “Hunt for Red October” on the way down and back.

Mom and I went to the San Diego Temple early Saturday morning after I nursed Ethan. It was incredible!!! I mean, I thought it was beautiful on the outside…but the inside is overwhelmingly gorgeous! The two spires on the Temple are filled with panes of lightly colored glass that fills the Temple with natural light.

Leading up to the endowment rooms is a soft white winding staircase with large solid wood banisters that hangs suspended between floors. From the staircase you can look right up into the first spire. The endowment rooms are relatively small compared to Oakland. It felt kind of like a large living room.

The Celestial room is under the second spire, which fills the room with light from all sides. What was unique about the San Diego Celestial room is that is has two stories. There is a staircase there that leads up to the fourth floor where there is a balcony that looks down into the main portion of the Celestial room. There are crystal chandlers that look like a great bouquet of a thousand tiny ice cycles. There is a door from the second story of the Celestial room that leads to the main part of the fourth floor where all the sealing rooms are.

Each sealing room has one wall made entirely of the Temple windows which fills each room with light. In the antechamber of the sealing rooms there is a garden. No kidding! A honest-to-goodness garden that sits in encased in glass that serves as a sort of skylight. Looking into the garden and up toward the Celestial room you can see the angel Moroni up close. It was absolutely amazing!

After the Temple all four of us went to the world famous San Diego Zoo. It is world famous because you can’t tell that you’re in a zoo. If you look out over the whole place, you’d think you were in the middle of the jungle. You don’t have to wear a hat or sunglasses because you’re in the shade from all the trees most of the time. We saw a momma hippo nursing her baby and a family of Gorillas. We saw young giraffes grooming one another. After a while Ethan screamed about being in the stroller because he couldn’t see everything. That and I think he was exhausted.

THEN we went to the wedding. It was in a huge Protestant church with stained glass windows and large window that revealed a grassy hill and an olive tree at the front of the church. I think that it was ironic that the church should have windows similar to those of the Temple. The Temple, however, was immensely more beautiful, full of light and especially full of love and peace.

The wedding was short and sweet. It was beautiful, for a civil marriage. The bride and groom were living together from what I gathered, but… whatever. My policy is, “Why have a big expensive wedding if you’ve already had the honeymoon?” Ethan screamed before it got started, so I went to the back of the church and stifled his screams so that the bride wouldn’t have a baby crying on her wedding video. He hadn’t had a nap all day and was just exhausted.

The reception was on the naval base, which had the most incredible view of the ocean. Daddy even pointed out that we could see Mexico. WOW! They had great food and fun music. I even danced with Ethan for a few songs. He was SO tired by the end of the night he fell asleep in a sitting position while mom was holding him and eating dinner. Ya, lets drag the baby around till he collapses from exhaustion.

Highlights from the reception? Well, the bride shoved cake in the groom’s face, the groom took the garter off with his teeth and the teenie-boppers that were the bride’s girl scout troop drilled me on why I was there when I went out to the lobby to nurse Ethan. I hated that age!

Overall San Diego was a BLAST! I'd love to live there on a permanent basis.