Deconstructing the Rhetoric

It’s difficult to stomach the daily news cycle when news pundits and commentators butcher the English language like a German would Wiener schnitzel.

In the world of our supposedly bias-free press, words lose their meaning, and as even a cursory knowledge of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (a la Wikipedia) would predict, logical analysis cannot therefore exist.

What is a “toxic” asset? It’s not, as the word “toxic” connotes, a poisonous contagion that if left on the balance sheets of banks will spring to life and destroy our cities and families. No, it is simply bad debt. Banks messed up by “securitizing” a bunch of bad mortgages, forced upon them by the seemingly egalitarian Community Reinvestment Act – a product not of infamous “Wall Street greed,” but the United States Congress. The solution is flexibility in contract law and re-negotiation of mortgage rate, along with the standard foreclosure process; there are no shortcuts. Socializing bad loan losses through TARP appears to me flagrantly unconstitutional as well as ineffective.

What of “responsibility?” Responsibility roughly translates to self-reliance when it comes to American civics. President Obama and his sycophantic press, advocates of big government, define responsibility as compliance to government/bureaucratic edict. Twisted, but true.

And how about “Rights?” Well, we’ve got some in the first 10 amendments, but nowhere do I see anything about education or healthcare. Americans have conceived rights as God-given; used to anyway. Now we are told we have a right to education, a right to healthcare, a right to a “livable” wage (likely defined by Barney Frank). No government can provide these things without severely infringing on the liberty and property of others. In other words, our new “rights” demand tyranny.

A gigantic spending bill being rammed through Congress that would line the pockets of Democratic constituents goes under of header of economic “stimulus.” No, taking taxpayer money, particularly money of those who are not yet born, and redistributing it to friends of the Democratic party is not stimulus. It is legal theft being sold by a 24/7 propaganda machine and benefiting from the economic ignorance of the population – the ignorance a product of another failed government program, public education. Above all, such a bill is morally reprehensible.

And, “Action!” “Action” for President Obama means passing this spending bill now rather than later. Correspondingly, any other plan is “partisan.”