Southern Bread Blog

Ever heard of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Neither had I. But it caught my attention since it involves a lady from my state of Alabama. Lilly Ledbetter was employed by Goodyear Tire Co. and apparently discovered years later that she had been paid less than the male executives that worked there. She therefore brought a lawsuit and won at the lower levels. A higher level court threw the case out though because the statute of limitations had passed. They basically said she should have brought the lawsuit during the time the discrimination was occuring. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that Congress just passed would basically rewrite the statute of limitations rules for sexual discrimination lawsuits to be anytime within 180 days of your most recent paycheck.

Of course, the first thing that pops into your head is that this is just a siren song to trial lawyers to come feast at the lawsuit table. That will definitely happen, but the more likely scenario is pointed out by Sam Dealey on his US News blog:

The Heritage Foundation has a great writeup on their site about the implications of this bill, but here is one that stood out:

How many times have we seen this from liberals. It happens over and over and over. They make an emotional appeal that pulls at the heartstrings of the public – nobody wants unequal pay for equal work based on gender – and the “fix” they come up with ends up having the exact opposite effect and doing more harm. We see this with minimum wage, the Community Reinvestment Act, affirmative action, and on and on. If a company decides to have a policy of underpaying equally productive employees based on something like gender, they will pay the price for it. It might make people feel better to have some sort of instant gratification in the media with the signing of a bill, but that company would have been harmed by losing productive workers in the long run, when those women quit and go to work for a competitor. The free market punishes the people who make bad business decisions. Laws like this punish entire groups of people that may somehow resemble bad decision makers, and end up screwing over lots of good people in the process.

Austrians like to talk about the folly of fractional-reserve banking and the Federal Reserve. But, if you aren’t familiar with the term, you might not understand what they mean. It all starts with money, and what money actually is. Money is a medium of exchange. Money can also be a commodity if it’s something like Gold or Silver. Paper money(fiat money), is only an exchange medium though. It has no inherent value in itself. It’s just paper. Taking Gold for example, though, you can see that it has obvious inherent value, and it can also be exchanged for goods at a market price. Given these understandings of money, you can see that there is three potential schemes for banking.

Hopefully, you can see the issue with number three here. Fractional-reserve banks are always going to be at risk of collapse from a “bank run” because they simultaneously lend from their reserves, which at any time is only a fraction of the total money they should have on hand to cover redemption from depositors. The Federal Reserve system is seen as a fix to this, since it allows banks to call in loans from the Fed to cover them in case of this scenario of being overdrawn. This earns the Fed the nickname of “lender of last resort.” In order to make this thing work without massive amounts of inflation from non-discretionary lending by banks, the Fed is supposed to keep a certain amount of money in reserve by requiring a reserve ratio of all it’s member banks. In 2006 this ratio was allowed to drop to zero.

Obviously a fractional-reserve system is fully dependant on government to back it up in case of problems, and thus is always open to political influence on reserve policy. Deposit banks are worthless in a paper money economy since nobody would pay someone a fee to keep their paper for them. Full-reserve banks provide accounts like CD’s that require a time-contract and pay you interest for fulfilling the deposit contract. Many austrians prefer a return to Gold currency, or at least a Gold standard. This wold lessen the need for interest bearing deposits since Gold is itself a commodity that gains value on it’s own, as opposed to paper money.

I’ve heard lots of talk lately about moving beyond the “stale” abortion debate, and finding “common ground” on the issue. And it seems that some people on the Christian side are growing tired of the abortion debate. I admit, it does take it’s toll. Anytime something becomes labeled as the so and so debate, it’s destined for this type of lethargy. In this vein it would seem that people are going out of their way to find the elusive common ground on abortion. I already gave you Walter Block’s attempt at this a few weeks back. But, Christians are evidently getting in on the act as well. I would caution believers out there, though, that the mythical common ground is just that. A myth. Let me explain.

Take the this article as an example. It appeared a few weeks ago in the Dallas Morning News. It starts out like this:

This is a complete and total fabrication. Barack Obama has been crystal clear from day one about his intentions on the abortion issue. He explained it quite succinctly in his speech at Planned Parenthood during the campaign:

Tell me how in the world Obama’s position during the campaign could possibly be construed as a “passion for moving the nation beyond it’s weary cultural debates”. Unless, that is, by “moving beyond” you mean that he will pound abortion on demand down our throats and silence the debate altogether. He may in fact do that. But the notion that there is common ground to be had is absurd. Here is the so-called compromise position the Dallas Morning News outlines:

Rosa Delauro is one of the candidates that is being supported by Planned Parenthood’s PAC. It’s pretty obvious reading the outline of the bill that this bill is mostly for one purpose. To drum up business and funding for Planned Parenthood. They would be the benificiary of “grants to local agencies”, “contraceptive education” and “Medicaid to finance more family-planning services.” The supposed pro-life part of the bill removes pregnancy from the list of pre-existing conditions insurers won’t cover. Since when did a person intending to have an abortion decide not to because they could go out and get a $900 a month insurance policy for 9 months? I think the abortion is cheaper than the $9000 insurance bill. The tax credits to adopting families is a joke too. People are lined up out the door to adopt already. How would that do anything?

No common ground on abortion exists because it’s logically not possible. Either killing unborn babies is wrong or it’s not. To quote Greg Koukl, “If it’s ok then no justification is necessary. If it’s wrong then no justification is adequate.” That pretty much sums it up. These types of compromise bills always skew majorly toward the pro-choice side. This one is no different. Giving millions more of our tax dollars to line Planned Parenthood’s pockets, and in return we get some arcane tax credits is a complete scam job.

So we saw the Libertarian-Republican views of Ronaldus Magnus in his first inaugural speech yesterday. So, what happened four years later in 1984? He was again elected in an absolute landslide. Folks, he won 49 states and got 525 electoral votes out of 538. After the deep recession of 1982 ended, the country had twenty-five straight months of economic growth and cut the unemployment rate in half, thanks to his policies of giving control of people’s lives and money back to the people. His second inaugural address was a look back on how things had turned around, and a promise to do even more to reduce the size and intrusion of government in our lives. Again, here are the hilights:

I heard some people saying yesterday that parts of Obama’s inauguration speech sounded Reagan-esque. I thought so too. But Obama stopped way too short and veered into socialism, where as Reagan explored the full depth of his Libertarian-Republican convictions. Here are some of the hilights from his first address:

My God, where is Reagan when we need him.

I promised my buddy I’d use this title so here you go. He’s right you know. In my mind, this inauguration marks the consummation of our country’s solid move to secularism. With everyone from non-theist leftists to ambiguous christian-types celebrating the breakup of the “religious right”, the fact is that they have elected perhaps our first purely secular president. Sure, Obama went to Rev. Wright’s church and all that. But Liberation Theology has always been light on the “theology” and heavy on the politics. As it is being reported, one of his first orders may be to rescind Bush’s executive order stopping U.S. tax dollars from funding international abortion agencies. That’s an act of political expedience to mollify his base at the expense of Christian duty. Obama is not a Christian. He’s a pragmatist.

At it’s heart, pragmatism sees those things that are not true options as tantamount to being epistimologically untrue, if not metaphysically so. This explains why many of the Obama supporters on the Christian side are of the post-abortion debate crowd. They believe there will never be any real movement on the abortion issue, so it’s ceased to be a moral debate of right and wrong. They want to move on to issues that are “real”, and can be actually acted upon. This is pragmatism’s influence on our culture through and through. It’s a totally secular view that looks only at the now, with no regard to cultural movement over time. Simply getting tired of seemingly endless debates will not get you anywhere. Cultural movement takes long periods of time and investment – sometimes with no apparent change taking place. Reverting to a “let’s just move on” approach is not the answer.

A brief glimpse at history will show that the political structure we have today was born in the late 60’s and 70’s. The freedom riders in the segregated South and the Bill Ayer’s types that opposed Vietnam had to get real jobs in the 70’s, and found a willing home in the university. We’ve thus had 40 years of institutionalized liberalism in the academy. That 40 years of incubation has finally given birth to this president and congress. But the original ideas weren’t born out of pragmaticism. They were totally ideological and “radical”. It took time, and a top down institutionally unrelenting approach to move our culture to this point. But it’s no time to despair.

I see a similar counter-culture popping up on the right these days. Few people are aware of the state of the science and philosophy establishment at the moment. So much progress has been made by brilliant theist thinkers in these two areas over the last couple of decades (I’ll do a post on the evidences of this in the future). Some of the most brilliant philosophical and scientific minds in the world are now theists. This type of resurgence of theism in the university will set the stage for bringing our culture back. But, not if we cede all the ground to the extreme left during the process, in the name of “common ground”. That will just prolong it. I love liberty, and I love Christ. I look forward to a day when those two things will re-emerge in our country. I’m in for the long haul.

So, yesterday I posted about how, looking at history, you could conclude that Obama was very Lincoln-like in his policy and his politics. I was intrigued, then, by a link on Drudge Report today about how Lincoln might not have been thrilled with an Obama presidency. I read the article by Leonard Pitts and while it started off good, he ended up in a massive contradiction that ruined the whole premise of the article. I was left wondering how in the world a Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist could miss this. Here’s what I’m talking about:

This is a good recounting of the historical fact of Lincoln’s “emancipation”. It didn’t free a single slave, and Pitts is right to point that out. But, he then goes on to praise him for his obsession with the “Union”, and that’s where his logic gets all backwards:

Do you see what I mean? He says that nothing mattered more to Lincoln than preserving the Union, because he believed in government “of, by and for the people.” How in God’s name can you have a government “of” and “by” the people when those people don’t want to be governed by you anymore? Preserving the Union was only an issue precisely because those in the Southern states no longer consented to participating in governing, or being governed by, the Union. What Lincoln preserved wasn’t government of the people. No, he created government over the people. Therefore, I must once again pull out Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence:

Less than one hundred years later, Lincoln might as well have been lighting Pacific Railroad cigars with a rolled up Declaration of Independence.

To date, the media has been all over itself trying to make grandiose comparisons of Obama with the likes of Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Oddly enough, I think the last one is the least plausible and Lincoln probably the most. He might be like F.D.R. from the standpoint of massive government spending, but he definitely wouldn’t have Roosevelt’s stomach for war. No modern Liberal could countenance pulling the trigger on an operation like D-Day that cost thousands of American lives. No, Obama is Lincolnesque I think. Rush Limbaugh went on a rant the other day denouncing the media for comparing Obama to Lincoln. But, if you know Lincoln’s history, you can see lots of correlations between the two.

Not only are the little things so similar – like the fact that they were both lawyers from Chicago. They also have very similar views on most every political front. Obama is very much a mercantilist. If you don’t believe me, I submit the trillion dollar infrastructure stimulus package as exhibit A. In Lincoln’s day the Republicans called it “internal improvements”, and it was the cornerstone of their party. He championed the building of bridges, roads, railroads, canals, etc. by government or by corporate subsidy at every opportunity. The Republican party’s massive internal improvement projects nearly bankrupted the state of Illinois and it looks like Obama is going to bankrupt the whole country with this massive spending package.

Both men were and are also master politicians, and master orators. Lincoln said if he could save the union without freeing a single slave he would do that, and endorsed slave-owner’s rights at every opportunity. Yet he’s still know as the great emancipator. Likewise, it’s going around now that Obama is going to issue an executive order to close Guantanamo bay, but not really close it. He’s also indicating he’ll hang on to those warrantless wiretap programs. Yet he’s being praised for bringing “change” to the White House and being the anti-Bush. You don’t just luck into suspensions of disbelief on that scale. No, it takes a skill of oration and an even greater skill at pulling political strings.

Lincoln had written two autobiographies, the same as Obama. I’m not sure what drives someone to write two biographies of themselves unless they are obsessed with their own life. That seems to be the case with both men. Obama has indicated his glowing support for the Freedom of Choice Act to remove all restrictions on abortion. Lincoln likewise supported the Fugitive Slave Act that forced non-slave states to return caught slaves to their owners. Obama has also been mentioned in connection with tons of pay for play schemes, even before taking office. Lincoln, likewise made pay for play an artform. According to Thomas Di Lorenzo, their is a sign in Lincoln’s neighbor’s historic home saying how the neighbor was the sole supplier of tin cups to the Union Army. How do you think he landed that contract? Sounds a bit like Tony Rezko being Obama’s neighbor to me.

The biggest problem of all I see though, is the utter commitment to dominant central government they both share. Lincoln destroyed this country in order to grab power away from the people and place it firmly in Washington. Walter Williams sums it up nicely with a Stephen Douglas quote:

I see that same commitment in Obama. Government, government, government. It’s plainly obvious that Obama’s main goal is to impose brute centralized government on us – starting with the Treasury and the Fed. He’s going to take this country far to the left, and make everyone swoon in the process. Just like Lincoln had media members thrown in jail or shutout at his whim, Obama has shown a penchant for the same attitude. The media has to play by his rules or there’s the door. I could easily see Obama waging war on the South if there was a modern secession movement. I don’t think he’d bat an eye at it. So, don’t scoff when someone makes the comparison. Just know that they don’t mean it in the truthful way that we know.

This has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. There is a site called MoreCowbell.dj that will let you upload an MP3 and add cowbell to it. It’ll let you add a little Cristopher Walken to it also making comments like “When I put my pants on, I make gold records.” Brilliant! I’d sure like to know what goes into doing that on the backend. Seems like it would take some kind of automated track merging or some such.

When I named this site, I had a future vision for it to be a blog from the perspective of the uniquely American South experience. I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time, but I think I know it better now. I say the American South is unique mostly because it’s history encompasses a set of experiences that the rest of the country does not have. Unlike many Northern states, the South didn’t merely talk about secession for decades on end, we actually did it. We also went through the total destruction of our economy and infrastructure at the hands of our countrymen.

What followed next was Reconstruction, which basically raped our culture of it’s identity. Robert E. Lee said that if he had known what was in store for the South during reconstruction, he would never have surrendered at Appomattox. This period in our history has been glossed over and watered down, but it changed the South forever afterwards. It was brutal, and what’s more, it was less than 150 years ago. Most of us are only three generations removed from those events. All these things make the Southern mind and experience a unique one, and valuable.

I hope to focus in the future on things from a Southern, Christian perspective as much as I can. American history is a gold mine of information, and we need to learn from our past. So many of our modern day problems are just variations of the same things our country has faced for it’s entire, short lifespan. Hopefully I’ll be able to fulfill that role with Southern Bread. I’ll still write about current events and ocassionally about other off-topics that interest me, but the new focus will be on the relation of American and Southern history, and how it relates to today’s cultural issues.