Kim Reber is a mother of three daughters and is a levy supporter. Reber lives within two miles of the school district and has to transport her children to school each day.
She said the success of the levy is critical for convenience reasons and for the success of her children’s education.
“A lot of things that kids need to develop and to grow are being taken away gradually and kind of falling apart. Lakota is known for being excellent and without funding, they cannot maintain that excellence,” Reber said.
She said the stakes are so high for her family, she’s even considered moving if the levy doesn’t pass.
“When I came here, I came here because of the schools. I’m not seeing that the schools can maintain their excellence given the lack of support from the residents,” said Reber.
Some residents say they will never support a Lakota school tax hike because they don’t think enough money is going directly to the students.
Graeme George, an 80-year-old Liberty Township resident, is a staunch opponent of school tax levies.
“We can’t influence the cost and benefits and make improvements because the unions are too much in control. We can’t work with the teachers and the school board and the public because the unions come in,” he said.
George is a member of the anti-levy group, No Lakota, which says it has plans to actively campaign for the levy’s failure once more.
Bob Hutsenpillar, a Lakota district resident and No Lakota member, said he will also vote against the levy because of “wasteful spending” towards teacher salaries.
“What they are asking for to give to students is a very small percentage of the levy,” Hutsenpillar said.
But Willms said taxpayer contributions to teaching salaries are essential for the successful operation of any school.
“We have 900-plus teachers. You have to understand what schools do. They have teachers who teach kids. It’s a service industry, so of course a bulk of your budget would have to go towards your employee,” she said.
The actual article from Taylor Mirfendereski can be seen at the link below complete with pictures:
The Lakota Levy is supported by the kind of people who do not want to take responsibility for their own children—but rather want Hillary Clinton’s “We Are Lakota” type of message insinuating that we are all in this together—the raising of children. The presumption that children are the only aspect of a community is dangerous, and will lead to short lived prosperity when those children grow up and move away never to return because taxes prevent them from moving back to Lakota to raise their own families. The levy supporters at Lakota are again short-sighted, selfish, and lack fiscal understanding. They are happy to parade around with signs on a Saturday afternoon pulling on people’s heart strings hoping to win votes by exploiting their own children so to take the responsibility away from their own parenting, instead of asking the hard question of……………why.
The lowest part of the whole ordeal is seeing parents stick their children out in public carrying signs such as can be seen in Mirfendereski’s article. The parents should be ashamed of themselves. I can’t imagine telling a child they are required to stand with a pro tax sign to cover for the lack of effort by the parents who are hoping to save the cost of transporting their children to school, or even the extra cost of private instruction, with a collective tax increase. If parents really want their children to have a good education, why aren’t they willing to pay for it? Why do they expect the other property owners of Lakota to care for their children? We are not Lakota. They are, and they simply want a hand out for something that is their unmanaged problem to cover an effort they are too lazy, or cheap to handle themselves.
Chances are dear reader you fall on the latter half of this upcoming statement as opposed to the former, that often there are those who are on the cutting edge, who fearlessly face down the impossible with a mentality that is obscure to all others, and there are those who wish to sit down with such people and share in the wealth of fiscal opportunity they have created with sheer uniqueness. People who believe in consensus building and shared ideas are those trained in the false ways of egalitarianism. Most every education system in the world teaches this forged method of human achievement because it masks a grim reality—that it is the very few who have the courage to face down the unknown, the perilous opportunities of uncharted waters, but the many wish to take credit for the voyage once safety is realized and strategy is achieved.
I have sat through many dozens of human endeavor where I solitarily cut through the dangers of a task only to have a parade of parasites join me at the finish line wanting to pop corks and celebrate in a victory with the chant of “teamwork.” I laugh inwardly at such people knowing that at any moment I could repeat the task over and over again forever—but they could not, and they know it. They hope that I don’t know it, or that nobody else discovers it, but they do—and it terrifies them. So they promote the social activity that was taught to them during their educations—egalitarianism.
Egalitarianism (from Frenchégal, meaning “equal”)—or, rarely, equalitarianism[1][2]—is a trend of thought that favors equality for particular categories of, or for all, living entities. Egalitarian doctrines maintain that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or social status, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[3] The Cultural theory of risk holds egalitarianism as defined by (1) a negative attitude towards rules and principles, and (2) a positive attitude towards group decision-making, with fatalism termed as its opposite.[4] According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the term has two distinct definitions in modern English.[5] It is defined either as a political doctrine that all people should be treated as equals and have the same political, economic, social, and civil rights[6] or as a social philosophy advocating the removal of economic inequalities among people or the decentralisation of power. Some sources define egalitarianism as the point of view that equality reflects the natural state of humanity.[7][8][9]
One argument is that liberalism provides democracy with the experience of civic reformism. Without it, democracy loses any tie—─argumentative or practical—─to a coherent design of public policy endeavoring to provide the resources for the realization of democratic citizenship. For instance, some argue that modern representative democracy is a realization of political egalitarianism, while in reality, most political power still resides in the hands of a ruling class, rather than in the hands of the people.[13]
Egalitarianism allows a room full of businessmen to believe that they deserve a seat at the table when it is only one or two at the table who gave them all something to talk about. Without the initiative of the self-motivated, nothing happens. In politics, board meetings and town hall gatherings allow democracy to claim the rewards of the very few who created the options discussed such as whether or not a new store could be built into a community, or how to spend the tax money taken from property owners. The money and business opportunities were created by the very few, but is spent and consumed by the many who wish to see themselves as equal contributors to the process through egalitarianism. But they are not equal, they are simply parasites—they depend on the actions of others to sustain themselves.
In the case of today’s egalitarian trend, for over two hundred years Europe’s altruist, collectivist intellectuals claimed to be the voice of the people—the champions of the downtrodden, the disinherited masses. They advocated unlimited majority rule—rule by consensus. But their error was that they failed to pay heed to those who created their opportunities. Without those types—the creators–the “champions of the people” would have nothing to discuss or distribute to the masses. Capitalism and its moral—metaphysical bases had to be destroyed by the egalitarians so that the evidence of this parasitic enterprise indulged in by the could be realized. The concept of justice had to be destroyed so that value judgments could not be distributed to those who were ripped off—the creators of virtually everything—the forward thinking individualist whose mind and effort molded the world from their sheer imaginations.
In the end, it was Payton Manning who won the game for Denver and the loss of Ray Lewis sealed it for Baltimore. Everyone else playing the game were egalitarians. The Broncos “team” simply rode the coattails of Payton Manning. Without him, they would only be “average.”
Every time I encounter these egalitarians it sickens me to my very core. I offset my disgust by withdrawing from them for long periods of time, and I always return to the act of creation not for them, but for me. I create because I enjoy it. But the process of the egalitarians never ceases to disgust me in the way that maggots on a rotting corpse might sicken the stomach. Egalitarians are simply vile to the creative process, and they bring nothing to the table. Consensus building exercises do not work, it has never worked, and it will never work under any conditions. There are always only two types, there are people with ideas, then there are people who seek to loot portions of other people’s ideas to fill voids in their own lives. Value is not created through equalitarianism. It is simply another form of wealth redistribution, the value of those who create given to those who do not by democracy.
Many pundits and social commentators seem baffled as to why some Republicans share with Democrats a desire for war in Syria while others share in common a desire to stay out of such an action. It is mysterious to them that a supposed anti-war, pro peace politician like Barack Obama would support a war effort of any kind, while political “extremists” such as Sarah Palin does not. The reason is not because one political party represents elephants while the other represents donkeys, but because they are both social progressives as the others are not, or are trying to distance themselves from such political parasites.
Progressives believe in global unity, and individual sacrifice for the greater good as defined by them. They wish to think of the world as a giant global village and they are the chieftains. If some terrible thing happens in Syria, then it is the job of the “international community” to do something about it once the United Nations is made aware of an evil. In the case of Syria the crimes against the Syrian people has been known for a long time, but it was only once the United Nations inspectors supposedly saw footage, and were granted into the country to inspect conditions for themselves that progressive politicians decided that the time for action was now, rather than at any other point in time, past or future.
Progressives are not attempting to do justice to the poor people killed under a tyrannical regime. They are simply attempting to preserve the authority of The United Nations as a world police force. The war drums in Syria by otherwise antiwar politicians are the obvious result of these progressive types. If it was ever wondered what politicians are progressive and which actually hold the type of beliefs established under their respective political parties it has never been more obvious, or hypocritical as to whom are progressives than those who support the Syrian War.
Progressives are vile, despicable people who are destructive intellectual collectivists. What they are fighting for is not justice in Syria for the benefit of free people. They simply fight to preserve the reputation of the United Nations. In the context of the global community, it is the United States that is known as the official police force in that global community—and other countries who have elected to stay out of Syrian engagement wish to see the police do their job on behalf of the United Nations, while maintaining their own disengagement from conflict due simply to the financial cost.
It is not such a mystery once this basic fact is known, who is what and why they believe the things they do. Progressives want war because it further advances their desire for global rule under a gigantic social village where the values of The United States are erased so that the values of lower quality countries can be elevated. Eventually all progressives hope the values of all people will be equal under the leadership of the village chieftains, the progressives. Under those terms, things are not so mysterious. Progressives are not for American preservation, they are about advancement of United Nations influence, and the war in Syria allowing them to achieve two of their goals, to destroy the reputation of America as an independent sovereign nation, and strengthen the influence of The United Nations as a global police force. But the war is not about preserving American independence, or fighting for freedom across the world. That is the distinct and sorrowful difference. The supporters of the Syrian War are united in their goal of progressive politics and that makes them dangerous to every American who supports the Constitution of The United States of America. Progressives desire to use the resources of America to destroy it while moving all the countries of the world toward a global village ruled by a Constitution not yet written, by a society of people the progressives hope to mold from their own cloth. It is not the Founding Fathers of America that these people hope to emulate. They hope to become their own type of “Founding Father” in a society not yet known built on political views of the dangerous progressive, and their wholesale desire to destroy individuality at all cost.
For those who need to be reminded, Justin Binik-Thomas is an author, one of the founders of the Cincinnati Tea Party, and was at the heart of the IRS scandal personally targeted because of his conservative beliefs. He is also a fan of my novel Tail of the Dragon and is a recent conqueror of that treacherous road in the mountains of the North Carolina/Tennessee, which is evident by the picture on his web site: http://www.binikthomas.com. He is a frequent guest on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News broadcast and does several radio spots a year with my friends Matt Clark and Doc Thompson. He is also a personal friend of mine. So it gives me great pleasure to announce that Justin is running for the Deer Park School Board.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Committee to Elect Binik-Thomas Contact
Justin Binik-Thomas
Candidate for Deer Park School Board
Binik-Thomas Responds to Deer Park School Levy Request
Deer Park, OH, September 4, 2013– The budget shortfall remains one of the largest district concerns. I have had the opportunity to review the coffee session materials and the five-year budget with senior district leadership. I have come to the conclusion that the levy is premature.
As a taxpayer, I expect budget lines that do not impact services or people should be reduced or removed prior to a request for new funds. The five-year budget includes quite a few areas where this has not yet occurred. Among these are a postal meter, awards, and a line labeled “other.”
The coffee session materials provided attendees with a false choice of ‘tax me a bit more now’ or ‘tax me a lot more later.’ Predictably, the attendees selected the lower tax number. District mailers tout this “choice.”
The proposed levy will tax us forever in order to plug a potential four-year gap.
Next Steps
Regardless of the outcome of this levy, we need to engage in long-term revenue planning to ensure we can cover unfunded mandates, educational needs, and emergencies without continually asking for taxpayer bailouts or levies.
We have two success stories in town to use as a model: my alma maters, Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati. Each has provided ways to grow funding, using many under-$20 donors, to achieve their goals.
We can further mitigate this risk by limiting our dependence on taxpayer (federal) funds.
Justin is married to Casey and the proud father of two preschool children (aged 1 and 3). He is a nine-year resident of Deer Park and graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University (MS) and the University of Cincinnati (AA, BS). In addition to working as a contract manager in the medical research industry, he specializes in media relations as owner/consultant of Conservative Media Group.
In his free time, he volunteers as a chaplain at his synagogue and leads the Sunshine Committee. Justin has taught at religious school (grades 2, 3, and 7), currently teaches a social media course annually at a local university, and is responsible for training new employees at both businesses.
Even though I personally think public education is a complete waste of time, and am not the politician type as I don’t play well with others, I admire when local people who are very passionate about reform get involved in politics. I would say to Justin that he is wasting his time with the Deer Park School Board; however, he wouldn’t be if all the school board members were like him. It is entirely possible that public education would not be such a wreck as it is today if people like Justin were school board members in every district in America.
Unfortunately most school board members are big spenders who are in love with the government statist version of public education—filled with progressive politics and antagonistic toward American tradition. That’s why they often run and win while conservatives build businesses, make money and throw money at progressives like a fisherman trying to escape blood thirsty piranhas by pouring blood in the water to take them off the scent. Justin Binik-Thomas is not one of those types. He is a star in his own right, an accomplished person who could care less whether or not he has a powerful nameplate on his desk in charge of millions of dollars. If voters of Deer Park had to pick anyone in a ballot box during their entire lifetimes, it is unlikely they would run across a candidate as pure as Justin Binik-Thomas who simply wants to do the right thing for the right reasons at the absolute right time.
Vote for Justin Binik-Thomas for Deer Park School Board!
After several years of levy fights in the Lakota school district I have heard the pro tax crowd call me personally every name known to the human mind in anger that I don’t yield to their social impositions. In response to their diatribes I have come up with a lot of names of my own to call them, such as “levy addicts,” “Lakota Zombies,” “Latté sipping prostitutes,” and “Levy Cheerleaders.” This last one reflects well most of the inner sanctum of school levy supports who treat the school superintendent as though she were a rock star for a musical group. Many of these levy “cheerleaders” seem to have replaced their youthful days when they attended rock concerts and tossed their undergarments at a stage advertising themselves for backstage adventures, to becoming enema plugs for Superintendent Mantia at Lakota. Their rambunctious social display of levy support is rather sickening and deserves that type of criticism. It is what came to my mind upon their booth set up at Lakota football games advertising their levy scheme like nighttime employees of K-Street working a hustle.
I am so grateful that the Lakota School District has finalized their plans for the levy funds. It has been eight years since the last levy passed. Lakota has experienced extremely harsh cuts over the past two years. In fact, it is now operating on $20 million less than it just three years ago.
They just shared that our per pupil spending is less than it was in 2005, when the last levy passed. While I want them to be fiscally responsible, I also don’t want it to go so far that it is compromising the great education we have been providing during the 20 years I have lived here.
Because of a change in how schools are measured, we will not be given an assessment by the state o Ohio this year. We will not know exactly how these cuts have impacted Lakota’s performance. We do know that some testing scores have gone down the reduction of class offerings at the high school and participation in sports throughout the district is significantly down.
So – we are starting to feel the negative impact from cuts we have experienced over the last two years. I know that Lakota has spent the last two years reaching out to the community to find out what it wants in a school district. After the board of education presentations, I feel they responded to this input and are meeting the needs of our students and also provide services that the community has identified as the most essential for student success. It is time to support this levy to secure solid futures for our Lakota students.
Pam Perrino
Liberty Twp,
That to me was a reasonable levy cheerleading argument that deserves an answer, which I provided to the paper. Even though Perrino in the past has been quite divisive in her participation of tax increase campaigns at the school, she brings up a lot of issues that need clarification. So here is my response to Perrino’s letter which appeared in the paper.
Say No to the Lakota Levy
The assumption that there is a time to support a Lakota levy based on the years since one last passed is a poor measure of fiscal management. Levy supporters at Lakota are starting their levy promotion efforts for the November election with the very weak argument that the best reason for a tax increase is that there hasn’t been one since 2005. The postulation is that time is the measure of levy necessity, not market conditions. Only a functioning monopoly could make such a claim.
Lakota does not need a levy; it is going through an approximate ten-year period of declining enrollment which will necessitate workforce reductions at Lakota do to the much smaller classroom sizes that will be needed. The $20 million the school has had to cut over the last couple of years is due to this declining enrollment and is part of the painful process of fiscal management which should be expected.
The best way to keep costs down at Lakota is to keep money out of their hands with “NO” votes, and force the school to reduce their work force in conjunction with the declining enrollment which is a natural part of a mature community. Under the pro levy argument they are saying that every couple of years forever Lakota will expect a tax increase no matter what the market conditions dictate. The proposed tax increase in spite of claims for improved security and technology upgrades are simply going to cover payroll increases for raises issued under an upcoming 2014 labor contract. Only an organization that is functioning as an antitrust would have the audacity to make such a claim which is all the reason that school levies should be defeated at Lakota for at least the next decade.
But to the levy cheerleaders, none of those facts matter. They propose an infinite amount of tax impositions upon the community with the short-sighted intention of perpetual approval. What they don’t understand is that when costs go up, businesses, and residents sell off their properties, and they move. Lakota as a district in Butler County has benefited from having relatively low taxes, particularly with sales taxes, and this is the real reason for the spawn of real-estate growth. It has little to do with Lakota schools. Many parents would love to send their children to Lakota schools, but few can afford to live in the district which is the byproduct of being a successful community. The natural impact on the school from that success is that there will be declining enrollment. And that fact alone is enough to put out the fire that the levy cheerleaders are trying to advance by blowing on the flames of consumption for higher taxes.
The worldwide total box office take for Disney’s The Lone Ranger was $239,131,00 which is respectable. It was hardly the box office flop that the entertainment industry has attempted to project it to be. I felt that The Lone Ranger deserved a bit of defense because it was a hack of a good movie. I heavily promoted it, I loved the film, and I am sure that when it hits the home theater market, it will do excessively well. Disney spent the enormous sum of $215 million on the production of the modern western plus many tens of millions on advertising hoping the picture would bring in a billion dollars as a summertime blockbuster. But the money wasn’t there. By the time the summer box office market hit the Fourth of July, movie goers had already spent their money on superhero pictures like Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel. Money was still spent on children’s films like Monster’s U and Disney’s Planes, but for the most part, movie audiences had run out of money leaving many studio films to fail at the box office. But when it came to The Lone Ranger, there was a hatred from the entertainment community that caused them to even turn against Johnny Depp, which I found fascinating, and I know exactly why. A good portion of the why is seen in a totally unrelated Blaze Television piece that Glenn Beck did about his experiences on a real western ranch. The entertainment community in Hollywood’s Wilshire Blvd and Broadway in New York has grown to despise the “flyover states” and Glenn Beck is part of that New York culture which is where he made his fame and fortune. But wisely, he has moved away in search for truth and discovered the America that the rest of us already know about, and he is touched by the results.
The Lone Ranger as a Disney film was about these good ol’ fashioned attributes of self-reliance and rugged individualism. The movie will be looked back upon as a success as it will become a fan favorite in the years to come once it gets away from the entertainment machine that is rooted in progressive political causes. The Lone Ranger was in fact too good for the modern film community. They did not want it to do well because they didn’t want to have to compete against it with future remakes and copy-cat attempts by other studios. Modern progressives do not want to revisit the era of the American western. They do not want western values to exist in American culture for many of the reasons Glenn Beck uttered in his short video clip above.
The movie business is changing dramatically, and industry insiders know it will not be to their advantage. They resent Disney as a family film studio and the amount of money they generate. Disney thankfully holds the rights to Marvel Comics, Pixar, their own slate of family programming and now the massive franchise of Star Wars which I’m going to state emphatically is set to change the world with “western values.” Star Wars is a modern western. George Lucas made Star Wars in the spirit of the old Saturday morning serials that made The Lone Ranger so popular and there is little that the world can do at this point to stop the explosion of Star Wars that is about to burst upon the world. Movie studios attempting fixed progressive social messages can see that Disney is positioned to get the “family friendly” message out to the flyover states for the next 20 years while they collapse under the weight of competition.
That competition is driven by union labor. The cost to make movies is too high because labor demands are too ridiculously over-rated and most studios cannot make films that will garner over $500 million in worldwide market sales which is what it takes to cover modern production costs. So many studios will drown within the next decade because they will have to produce more comedies, more chick flicks, and more small pictures that are not so effects driven, because during the summer of 2013, many of them took a bath that they drowned in. The impact of 2013 won’t be seen until 2015. In that year, Disney will become the most dominant film studio in entertainment as the rest of the entertainment establishment reels. Other studios will have to file for bankruptcy. They will not be able to compete.
Disney has their own internal marketing machine, their own amusement park revenue, and they own ABC, ESPN and many other media outlets, so they can afford to have the rest of the industry turn their back on them, which they did when The Lone Ranger was released. Critics went after the film more for the power that Disney had, than because the film was bad. The industry wanted to see Disney fail because they know what’s coming, and they resent the filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer openly naming himself a conservative while he was promoting The Lone Ranger. That is where the real hatred for The Lone Ranger filmmakers and the film itself stemmed from. Disney is not making movies for the Los Angeles and New York markets, but for the other 48 states that are the “flyovers.”
When Star Wars hits the release phase, Lucasfilm under the protection of Disney is going to produce the most intense schedule of family programming ever seen in the motion picture, and television industry. I have read just about every Star Wars novel, and I can report that there is so much wealth in that story line that literature has never seen anything like it. When that material becomes television shows, cartoons on the Disney Channel, more novels, more movies, more video games, entertainment will be changed forever. And Star Wars is not a progressive production—it is traditional in the way that The Lone Ranger was a western set in the desert during a historical past; Star Wars is a western set in the distant past in deep space.
When it is wondered what the Huffington Post and Glenn Beck have in common, it is Star Wars. The Huffington Post covers every move of the Star Wars production with keen interest and if anybody has read any books by Glenn Beck Star Wars references are common, especially in his novel The Overton Window. When Star Wars hits theaters in the winter of 2015 after Avengers Two dominates the summer box office the world will change in entertainment. A new bar will be set, and many studios will collapse under the pressure. They know this instinctively and they took out their frustration on The Lone Ranger.
In the end, The Lone Ranger will get the last laugh. It will not be a financial loss for the Disney studio as it will easily cover its marketing budget with home sales on Blu Ray. But more than that, The Lone Ranger is one of the many influences of Star Wars. The values of The Lone Ranger are the values of Jaina Solo who will be the star of the next Star Wars film. She will go down in history as the strongest female protagonist in any movie at any point in time, and Disney will be the studio that can take credit for it. Disney will not need the New York and Los Angeles media in their court. They will have the “fly over states” and a very hungry international market that is poised to consume the intensely “western” values of Star Wars which will eclipse everything else produced by all other studios. In the end, The Lone Ranger produced by the Disney Company will ride off into the sunset knowing the part it played in the creation. Critics attacked The Lone Ranger not because it was a bad movie, but because of the values it articulated. But even their parade of insults did not prevent the film from doing respectable business. For Disney however, the best is yet to come, and for those who were afraid of The Lone Ranger, wait till the impact of the new generation of Star Wars hits a youth that is so hungry for heroes that they can think of little else. The emotional void left by our modern progressive society will fill quickly with values that were born in the American western.
And no group of progressives, Fabian socialists, or open communists will be able to stop it this time……………………………………….
The western is back. But this time the horse will be replaced by space ships, the gun and the whip by the lightsaber of Jaina Solo.
A major escalation of degeneracy by the modern statist regimes using meritocracy to propel mediocrity into every modern profession is a fairly recent trend inspired by the 1972 book A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls who was a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Rawls argued in that popular statist book that a new theory of social justice demands that humans counteract the injustice of nature by instituting a corrupt and unthinkable concept upon mankind, equality at the expense of quality. Rawls believed that nature should be rebelled against depriving those favored by nature of the right to rewards they produce, and grant to the incompetent a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce or imagine on their own. In other words John Rawls believed that justice should be redistributed into society to alter nature itself bringing different standards of justice based on social need, not individual desire. Under this thinking if a dirt bag raped a woman, or broke into a home and stole all the money of the occupants, the scales of justice would be altered for the man if he was a member of the poor, or minority because nature did not give him the proper tools to be equal to those he robbed, or raped. Under Rawls theory, the individual crimes are secondary to the greater good of social equality, so under his “Theory of Justice” the criminal is a useful tool of fighting against nature the tendency to make some people better than others.
A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1972 and revised in both 1975 (for the translated editions) and 1999. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society) by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social contract. The resultant theory is known as “Justice as Fairness“, from which Rawls derives his two principles of justice: the liberty principle and the difference principle.
In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality. Central to this effort is an account of the circumstances of justice, inspired by David Hume, and a fair choice situation for parties facing such circumstances, similar to some ofImmanuel Kant‘s views. Principles of justice are sought to guide the conduct of the parties. These parties are recognized to face moderate scarcity, and they are neither naturally altruistic nor purely egoistic. They have ends which they seek to advance, but prefer to advance them through cooperation with others on mutually acceptable terms. Rawls offers a model of a fair choice situation (the original position with its veil of ignorance) within which parties would hypothetically choose mutually acceptable principles of justice. Under such constraints, Rawls believes that parties would find his favoured principles of justice to be especially attractive, winning out over varied alternatives, including utilitarian and right-libertarian accounts.
Rawls belongs to the social contract tradition. However, Rawls’ social contract takes a different view from that of previous thinkers. Specifically, Rawls develops what he claims are principles of justice through the use of an artificial device he calls the Original position in which everyone decides principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. This “veil” is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves so they cannot tailor principles to their advantage.
“no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.”
According to Rawls, ignorance of these details about oneself will lead to principles that are fair to all. If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls claims that those in the Original Position would all adopt a max -min strategy which would maximize the prospects of the least well-off.
They are the principles that rational and free persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamentals of the terms of their association [Rawls, p 11]
Rawls claims that the parties in the original position would adopt two such principles, which would then govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages across society. The difference principle permits inequalities in the distribution of goods only if those inequalities benefit the worst-off members of society. Rawls believes that this principle would be a rational choice for the representatives in the original position for the following reason: Each member of society has an equal claim on their society’s goods. Natural attributes should not affect this claim, so the basic right of any individual, before further considerations are taken into account, must be to an equal share in material wealth. What, then, could justify unequal distribution? Rawls argues that inequality is acceptable only if it is to the advantage of those who are worst-off.
The agreement that stems from the original position is both hypothetical and ahistorical. It is hypothetical in the sense that the principles to be derived are what the parties would, under certain legitimating conditions, agree to, not what they have agreed to. Rawls seeks to use an argument that the principles of justice are what would be agreed upon if people were in the hypothetical situation of the original position and that those principles have moral weight as a result of that. It is ahistorical in the sense that it is not supposed that the agreement has ever been, or indeed could ever have been, derived in the real world outside of carefully limited experimental exercises.
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First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.[1]
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The basic liberties of citizens are, the political liberty to vote and run for office, freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience, freedom of personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest. However, he says:
liberties not on the list, for example, the right to own certain kinds of property (e.g. means of production) and freedom of contract as understood by the doctrine of laissez-faire are not basic; and so they are not protected by the priority of the first principle.[2]
The first principle may not be violated, even for the sake of the second principle, above an unspecified but low-level of economic development. However, because various basic liberties may conflict, it may be necessary to trade them off against each other for the sake of obtaining the largest possible system of rights. There is thus some uncertainty as to exactly what is mandated by the principle, and it is possible that a plurality of sets of liberties satisfy its requirements.
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (Rawls, 1971, p.302; revised edition, p. 47):
(a) they are to be of the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle (the difference principle).
(b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
Rawls’ claim in (a) is that departures from equality of a list of what he calls primary goods—”things which a rational man wants whatever else he wants” [Rawls, 1971, pg. 92]—are justified only to the extent that they improve the lot of those who are worst-off under that distribution in comparison with the previous, equal, distribution. His position is at least in some sense egalitarian, with a provision that equality is not to be achieved by worsening the position of the least advantaged.[clarification needed] An important consequence here, however, is that inequalities can actually be just on Rawls’ view, as long as they are to the benefit of the least well off. His argument for this position rests heavily on the claim that morally arbitrary factors (for example, the family one is born into) shouldn’t determine one’s life chances or opportunities. Rawls is also keying on an intuition that a person does not morally deserve their inborn talents; thus that one is not entitled to all the benefits they could possibly receive from them; hence, at least one of the criteria which could provide an alternative to equality in assessing the justice of distributions is eliminated.
The stipulation in (b) is lexically prior to that in (a). Fair equality of opportunity requires not merely that offices and positions are distributed on the basis of merit, but that all have reasonable opportunity to acquire the skills on the basis of which merit is assessed. It may be thought that this stipulation, and even the first principle of justice, may require greater equality than the difference principle, because large social and economic inequalities, even when they are to the advantage of the worst-off, will tend seriously to undermine the value of the political liberties and any measures towards fair equality of opportunity.
When it is wondered why there doesn’t seem to be any justice in the world of modern America, and why the court system seems to be failing, look to A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Under the accepted terms of Rawls’ work, if a member of society daily injects themselves with heroin, pimps out stolen women into prostitution to pay for his drug habit, runs a theft ring and is a general menace to society, the social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle. Meaning, all the good people of society who have made quality decisions in their life, worked hard, treated others with fairness are to pour some of their hard work into the degenerate so that social justice can look favorably upon the entire human race regardless of individual value. Isn’t it clear now why studying philosophy should be more important in your daily life dear reader?
Every courtroom in America with miles of case-law supporting them created by too many money-grubbing, parasitic lawyers have taken the work of John Rawls and made it mainstream thinking. It is why criminals believe they have rights to the merit of the good, and why they are not motivated to change their behavior because John Rawls new theories of justice instruct them that nature has given them an unfair advantage in life, and it is up to the intelligentsia of meritocracy to determine winners and losers in society arrogantly suppressing nature behind the rule of the academic class.
Until A Theory of Justice is rejected by the American population and the case-law built upon its failed philosophy is scrubbed completely, justice will be elusive in modern society. Criminals will continue to believe that they are “owed” something by somebody, and innocent victims will continue to search for justice among judges who sit upon their ivory towers and defend Rawls because through the meritocracy of the Harvard University elite, there is a power they dare not challenge. It is largely because of Rawls that the Second Amendment is being eroded away, that the NDAA Act was voted upon, that the TSA, the NSA, and every other government organization works against the vast amount of American population with violations against their personal liberty. Because under A Theory of Justice the rights of individual citizens is secondary to the rights of the under-privileged, the lazy, and the corrupt because nature selected them to be less, and it is the obligation of mankind to help them become better by giving them a free pass to continued behavior of a social menace. Sometimes it only takes a few generations to wreck a civilization and in the case of American justice it only took a few years from 1972 to destroy the logic of our legal system. The blame rests on the shoulders of John Rawls and his Harvard University meritocracy agenda driven psychosis of reshaping the world against the desires of nature to create a world molded by the morally bankrupt in a perpetual draining of wealth not just monetarily, but ethically till there is nothing left but a distant memory of a once great culture. America was a land built by rules yet was destroyed by A Theory of Justice, written in 1972, a college professor functioning from a failed philosophy that was never corrected in time to save civilization.
The greatest failure, and largest misconception practiced by the human race in regard to politics is the old anti concept of a meritocracy. When America put to practice many years of contemplation by the realm of philosophy, political science, and human psychology it was an experiment which quickly failed as Europeans wanting to become a part of this new ideal of personal freedom came to the shores of the growing United States to experience it. Like many modern immigrants all well intentioned, yet bringing with them half-baked, mixed up, chaos in regard to political belief, those early Europeans settled the New England region with the garbage of their minds to be mixed in with the philosophy which started the American Revolution. With them, and growing in importance over time through America’s education system where the essential importance of a meritocracy in human culture has been taught with the intention to level the playing field with a kind a wealth redistribution not of money, but of perceived personal power equating the man of ability with political rulers. In essence the purpose of instructing society on the merits of a meritocracy was to associate the power of creative achievement with political power. A good example of this would be to say the work of Steven Spielberg is equal to the work of Barack Obama. Both have a college degree. Both have won approval in the court of public opinion. Both support democratic politics so in the world of meritocracy Barack Obama believes that he is equal to Steven Spielberg as opposed to someone who has not yet achieved those levels, such as a local school board member who may have a college degree, but has not yet moved up the political food chain of meritocracy yet. They are still “lowly” local politicians not yet finding themselves on the cover of a popular magazine which are the gate keepers of modern meritocracy.
Meritocracy (merit, from Latinmereō: “earn” + -cracy, from Ancient Greekκράτος, kratos: “strength, power”) is a political philosophy that holds power should be vested inindividuals according to merit.[1] Advancement in such a system is based on perceived intellectual talent measured through examination and/or demonstrated achievement in the field where it is implemented.
The “most common definition of meritocracy conceptualizes merit in terms of tested competency and ability, and most likely, as measured by IQ or standardized achievement tests.”[2] In government or other administration systems, meritocracy, in an administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration (such as business administration) wherein appointments and responsibilities are assigned to individuals based upon their “merits”, namely intelligence, credentials, and education, determined through evaluations or examinations.[3]
Supporters of meritocracies do not necessarily agree on the nature of “merit”, however, they do tend to agree that “merit” itself should be a primary consideration during evaluation.
In a more general sense, meritocracy can refer to any form of government based on achievement. Like “utilitarian” and “pragmatic“, the word “meritocratic” has also developed a broader definition, and may be used to refer to any government run by “a ruling or influential class of educated or able people.” [4]
This is in contrast to the term originally coined by Michael Young in 1958, who critically defined it as a system where “merit is equated with intelligence-plus-effort, its possessors are identified at an early age and selected for appropriate intensive education, and there is an obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications.” [5]
Meritocracy in its wider sense, may be any general act of judgment upon the basis of various demonstrated merits; such acts frequently are described in sociology and psychology. Thus, the merits may extend beyond intelligence and education to any mental or physical talent or to work ethic.
In rhetoric, the demonstration of one’s merit regarding mastery of a particular subject is an essential task most directly related to the Aristotelian term Ethos. The equivalent Aristotelian conception of meritocracy is based upon aristocratic or oligarchical structures, rather than in the context of the modern state.[6][7]
To be put simply a meritocracy allows Barack Obama to believe he is equal to Steven Spielberg in value because the conditions of social merit generally agreed upon have been satisfied. Spielberg is a spectacular example of a man of ability. He’s made several motion pictures that have touched the hearts and molded American culture with art. He launched the career of Opera, as well as most of the major stars in Hollywood. Yet by the rules of a meritocracy because Barack Obama won the popularity contest of an American presidency, the creative achievements of a Steven Spielberg are equated with the political power of a Barack Obama. It does not matter to a meritocracy if the President obtains his position through lies and manipulation. All he has to do is obtain it, because once holding office, the merit of the position has perceived power.
A meritocracy has allowed scum bags, looters, social parasites, con artists, and power hungry liars to obtain power over vast portions of society by this insanely stupid belief—that by obtaining an office, or a name plate on a desk, automatically merit is created and importance to official titles respected. This has led human society away from the needed achievements to obtain real value, but has led them to brown-nosing, cheating, and rigging elections to obtain the benefits of a meritocracy. It is because of a meritocracy that so much money is spent on American elections, especially presidential elections—because the belief is that merit is up for purchase if a political candidate can raise more money than his opponent, buy more adds, and purchase from the voting public the merit of office.
Barack Obama is not as good of a person as Steven Spielberg—not in productive enterprise. One man lied his way into a job to work on movie sets at Universal Studios then went on to shape the movie business to what it is today, the other lied his way into colleges, political circles, and eventually the presidency. Both men lied to get where they wanted to go, but one was productive, the other was simply a social parasite. But under a meritocracy both have equal value under their celebrity status and it does not matter to the world how they arrived at their stations. The American media considers meritocracy of celebrity as their criteria and supports the ritual benefits in their publications which is accepted by the American public at face value.
The sin of a meritocracy is that it allows the unproductive to equate themselves with the productive. It is the primary driver why personalities of moral deficiency seek political office when they realize they will become nothing in life under their own power of creative force. So to gain power over others, and celebrity, they enter politics to win under any means necessary so they can enjoy the benefits of a meritocracy once they obtain an office. They assume upon the creation of a nameplate which sits upon their desks that they are now members of the intellectual elite—and they falsely believe they are among the most creative individuals on the planet. But they would be wrong.
Their meritocracy does not give them the ability to make movies like Steven Spielberg, or behold the genius of a Bill Gates, or become a 10 time demolition derby champion at a local fair ground. The elected politician is just another failed concept created under the terms of a European meritocracy that has no place within the rules of personal freedom and value of capitalism. The believer of a meritocracy hopes to hide their personal worthlessness behind the veil of perception so that it will never be known to the public at large the real lack of worth a political office holder actually possesses. The only value the politician actually obtains under a meritocracy is the wealth redistribution of merit from people who actually have it, to those who are empty to create a public perception of worth they would otherwise never obtain but through elected office.
A few years ago I had to work a second job because of a tax bill that came in the mail from the IRS. The reason the IRS is such a terrifying organization is that if you get in the cross-hairs of them it will cost either in defense or compliance. In my case it was compliance. I had worked hard the previous year and some of the work wasn’t easily calculated and the IRS disputed that I owed them more. Defending my amount would have cost more to take to court so I had to pay, and they knew that was my only real option. So I elected to work a second job to pay my bill rather than rob the money from our family’s normal income. Every morning at 4 AM I got up and rode a bicycle from Mason to Lebanon to report for work at 5 AM at my primary employer. At 3 PM I got off that job and rushed up the road to the Kings Island exit to work at a popular fast food establishment there by 4 PM. My job was to work as the grill cook, and within a few short months I became known as the fastest grill man from Michigan to Florida and my exploits drew the attention of corporate headquarters. Fast food executives paid personal visits to me to figure out how I was able to work so fast. I worked every night the dinner rush and left at 8 PM to ride my bicycle home arriving around 9 PM. Finally after a long hard day I’d go to bed to begin the day again the next morning. In addition to that schedule I worked at the fast-food restaurant on Saturday nights as well covering the lunch and dinner rush from 10 AM to 7 PM as Kings Island provided a lot of business.
It took me two years to pay off my tax debt in this fashion but I eventually did without it sucking the money from our primary income. My wife did not work and I did not want her to. She was homeschooling our children for a bit of time during this period and she needed to be free to care for them. Even when they did attend Mason public schools, my wife drove them every day so that they wouldn’t have to ride the school bus with all the vile filth that goes on during bus rides. So my wife working simply wasn’t an option. During the day she also was a teacher’s assistant in my daughters classrooms until the relationship with the school went south when we would not allow our 4th grade children to attend a sex education class that consisted of teaching them how to put condoms on a fake penis. We declined and from that point the administrators put an “X” on my wife’s back, so we pulled our children out of the school for their own protection, and proper instruction. Meanwhile, I rode my bike to my jobs and kept the money coming in. My exploits during this period of time were described in my novel, The Symposium of Justice.
I explained to them that I could read what a person would order by way of food by the look on their faces when they stepped into the dining room. I had their food already cooking before they stepped up to place their order. And on the drive thru I would watch the cars pull into the lot headed for the speaker and determine what they were going to order based on the way the driver looked, how many people were in the car, the condition of the car, and various other factors. By the time the sandwich maker called the order I had the meat prepared and perfectly cooked ready to hit their prep. The ability was physical of course. I have always been very fast at everything I do. But in this case it was more psychological than physical. This left the corporate executives baffled as to how they could train other stores to have grill cooks who did the same thing.
They offered me a .50 cent raise for my efforts which I gladly accepted bring my total to $7.50 in 1997 money. It wasn’t much then and it isn’t much now, but it was I thought a fair wage for the work I was doing. My rule against the customers was that I knew that some government workers came to Kings Island often and I didn’t want to speak to them. They had put me in the position of having to work a second job and be away from my family, so I didn’t want to be nice to them, or even acknowledge their existence. I could always tell those types upon site, so I worked it out so that all I’d have to do was prepare the food, I would not have to give the people who put me in that situation the privilege of serving them directly.
I of course became the restaurant psychologist and the young people often confided in me their problems seeking my help, which I gave them. The managers often had wrecked lives due to all the crazy hours they worked so I helped them too; by solving many of their personal problems. But my rule about dealing with the customers was firm. On one such occasion a pretentious Mason school teacher who weighed in at least three hundred pounds came to the front register while the 16-year-old girl manning that station was using the restroom. The teacher demanded service and I was the closest one to her. I instructed her to sit tight until someone came to take her order but she ignored me and continued anyway. Needless to say her order fell on deaf ears. I continued doing my work ignoring her. When the girl came back, the Mason teacher was standing their refusing to repeat herself expecting me to tell the girl what the order was, which of course I didn’t provide. Rather than repeat her order to the cashier the teacher complained about me to corporate headquarters thinking she would get me fired for disrespecting her. She called from the dining room making a huge fuss in front of the other customers and demanding our own management to remove me from the line. The lead manager told her that we were in the middle of lunch rush and that they couldn’t afford to remove me from the line. The teacher proclaimed that nobody was “irreplaceable!” Corporate took my side on the issue and the frustrated teacher took her business elsewhere. She was back a week later, but this time didn’t look at me. She simply placed her order and I had her meat ready for her. I knew exactly what she was going to order, and it was a lot of food.
With all that said, the recent union attempt to inject themselves into the fast food restaurant business is a vile attempt at communism. Fast food workers are not worth $15 an hour. I was the best of my kind, and I wouldn’t have thought of asking such a fee for a job that was worth more to me for its flexibility than the wage I earned. I enjoyed being able to come in and dominate a position so that I could dictate my terms based purely on performance. While it’s true I could have made more money quicker if I were willing to “compromise” the fact was that I wasn’t, and fast food gave me the opportunity to work such a job, get the government off my back, while not having to lower myself to people like that 300 pound Mason teacher. People who knew me then felt sorry for me, because I rode my bicycle to work every day, worked long hard hours, and had to wear a fast food uniform well into adulthood even though I was making good money and showing great talent at my regular job. My wife and I could have just used the public school like a baby sitting service like everyone else did, she could have worked, we could have had two cars and life could have been easier if we just played along. But we chose to do only what we had to in order to appease our government obligations. Making a lot of extra money would have just been consumed in further taxes and was not a smart strategic choice. Fast food gave me the perfect opportunity to dig out of that tax liability without making it worse, and without lowering myself to making plea deals with the IRS, or using expensive lawyers to just feed the monster even more. And it also allowed me to take care of the problem so that my wife was always around my little girls, shielding them from the evils of the world that were being placed upon them by a statist government gone mad wanting to teach them to put on a condom in the fourth grade. Little girls who had both parents working late staying in an empty house from the time they get home from school till their parents arrive between 5 and 6 PM have lots of opportunities to get into trouble with boys in their neighborhoods, but since my wife was always home, my girls didn’t have that problem. They didn’t need to learn how to put on a condom when that was furthest thing on their minds than anything at the time.
The protests from restaurant workers demanding a “living wage” for their work in fast food are not worth more than $7 to $8 dollars an hour, I don’t care who they are. Fast food work is entry-level work designed to fill the social needs for cheap food on the go. Nobody should work in fast food as a career choice unless they want to go into management. There is no such thing as a “living wage.” But there is such a thing as “value,” and restaurant workers are only worth so much. The fast food restaurants of America have one obligation, to provide a good quality product cheaply. If I could have taught corporate headquarters my skills at working a grill, I would have. Unfortunately for them, I cannot be duplicated, and no machine can do what I could do—not even the perverted imbeciles who work at the NSA and supposedly have supercomputers that cross-reference everything we do in our lives. They can’t calculate human behavior as well as I can. Even so, the work I did was not worth more than $8 dollars an hour and I would never have considered asking for more. I used the job to clear my tax debt and a little bit more, and then saved up money to move out of Mason and back to my childhood home of Liberty Twp. I stayed on at the fast-food restaurant working to make extra money for some time after so to get out in front of our financial condition. $8 dollars an hour becomes quite a lot of money when you don’t drive a car and your wife is at home teaching your children. The household expenses go down rapidly when you are not part of the system. And a good bit of savings can be generated while working fast food.
A “living wage” as the communist labor unions advocate is attempting to do the same thing they’ve done to the teaching profession and virtually every endeavor that they are a part of. They set artificially high values for their labor that is built purely on monopoly power. In fast-food, they know they cannot obtain that monopoly unless they get all the workers in that industry to buy in to their scheme. Fortunately for America, that plan will fail. If twenty fast food workers decide to strike from a local McDonald’s, there are always people like me who will step in and take the money that is left in the void, and can do four jobs all by myself. It would make me happy to do it just to keep prices low on the hamburgers we buy. There is no shame in it, but only advantage, for what I’m talking about are the benefits of capitalism—a concept that labor unions do not understand, and despise with every cell in their bodies.
The Overmanwarrior 