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Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com.

The theme for today is Back to Colonial Economics.

For thinking people, this means that American Economic Enterprise is no longer either American or Enterprise.

Like so many of our American ideas, liberal economics were born elsewhere and transported tumultuously to our shores. Following the World Wars of the 20th century, the United States emerged as the dominant world economic power.

By the beginning of the 21st century, American business had asserted itself as the world’s “Generative Innovator.” Driven by its Research and Development or “R&D”, American capitalism became the most creative and productive, entrepreneurial-led, capitalistic economy in the history of civilization. All other nations “ran in her draft.”

Then instead of “capitalizing” upon her pre-potent Human and Information Capital assets, American business “capitulated” to Multi-Nationals who compete in the marketplace on the terms of their “M & Ms—Monopolies and Manipulations.”

Internally, American businesses dropped the “R” in the R&D because it was expensive rather than profitable. They dedicated investments only to development that translated directly into short-term profitability for stock-holders.

Gone is the potency of Bell Labs and the Watson and Xerox centers as sources of generativity for innovative “positioning” in the marketplace.

Simultaneously, American businesses adopted Information Technologies, or “IT” as their driving industry. The resultant intellectual retreat to the “Go – No Go” reasoning of the “binary function” has had the disastrous economic consequences of numbing once-generative American brains while simultaneously stimulating Third World brains to participate in designing binary branching systems. America was no longer the generative leader! The world was, indeed, “flat!”

Perhaps most precipitous, America adopted Multi-National Corporations as her market leaders. They were indeed the children of her Free Enterprise System. But they undermined her destiny with “Command-and-Control” market strategies. To be sure, they turned the binary branching systems upside-down as they recreated Free Enterprise in a “Chain-of-Command” society.

Today, America is a “Colonial Economy” once again. As “parasitic host” to Multi-National Corporations, our home-grown Free Enterprise System is being taxed heavily, our entrepreneurs are being emasculated, and our citizens are having their jobs hijacked—along with our technologies.

Once again, the presidential candidates who would save us are from a different age—The Industrial Age:

• Republicans from “The Old Capitalist School of Finance” who endorse the Multi-National’s way of doing business (think “The Last Dinner of the Dinosaurs”).
• Democrats from “The Labor School of Jobs and Dues” who oppose Free Trade, period! (think “Jobs for Nephews”).

Again, we approached the peak of the mountain to get a “peek” at continuously-changing, entrepreneurially-driven, free enterprise economics. And we retreated to the security of Colonial Control Economics.

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People, that we are host to many parasites that no longer serve our Freedom Functions. Think about it!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”

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Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com.

The theme for today is Back to Totalitarian Rule.

For thinking people, this means that we must stop thinking.

A pending bill before Congress is H.R. 1908. Sponsored by the Multi-Nationals and their lackeys, this bill is dedicated to rendering the American innovators and entrepreneurs impotent. Among other things, H.R. 1908 requires that all patent applications be made public on the Internet for anyone to view 18 months after they are filed and over a year before they are even considered. Moreover, H.R. 1908 creates a new review process allowing for challenges to patents that have already been granted (“First to Invent” is being replaced by “First to File” and “Most to Spend”).

Once again, America was a recipient of the contributions of English philosophers with regard to democratic and representative governance. For the first time in the history of civilization, We the People were positioned as policy-makers in her grand U.S. Constitution. We saw the opportunities to design our own destinies. And we abandoned them here at the start of the 21st century!

The first thing our current governance did was by-pass the people as policy-makers. Not only did they accelerate the degree of our retardation in education, they undermined our enlightenment as participants and contributors with disinformation—commonly known as “spin.” We the People were an “inconvenience” to the profitability mission of Multinationals in economics. Even our president has rejected our representatives, ruling exclusively by “presidential decree.”

The second thing our governance did was to endorse “the Multi-National Giants” as our economic leaders. This meant designing our policies, including wars, to foster the most profitable earnings in the history of business. Dismissing We the People was simply following the dictates of “The Golden Rule: He who has the gold, Rules!”

By-passing the balance of power, our governance created a “Chain-of-Command” society made in the image of the corporate and military sectors. We the People were placed at the bottom of the pyramid, greatest in number and least in power, with our representatives as “Masters of Stasis” rather than “Agents of Change.”

Today, America is an “Authoritarian State” bordering on Totalitarianism (the difference being selected vs. universal edicts). Now our government is mobilizing to produce legislation that supports and reinforces the “Industrial-Military Complex” that President Eisenhower warned us about. Once this support is in place, there will be nothing to defuse a Totalitarian State.

Once again, the presidential hopefuls are primitive “leftovers” from “The Last Great War.” We have a choice between “Scylla and Charybdis:”

• Republicans to the right of Hitler who are quite comfortable with all authority—in any form (think “Uniforms”).
• Democrats to the left of Chamberlain who are comfortable with the multicultural diversity of all forms of authority (think “Uninformed”).

Truth be known, both the extreme left and right are Totalitarian (which do you prefer, “Tyranny of the Strong” or “Tyranny of the Weak?”)

Once again, we saw that the peak of the mountain was within our reach: electronically-driven, town meeting-style, participative governance with educated and enlightened citizens as policy-makers making decisions concerning their own destinies. And we retreated!

How and why we retreated is more a story of “fear of the unknown” than attraction to the known—our loathsome destinies!

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People, freedom is thinking! Think about it!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”

(Listen to the audio of this blog.)

Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com.

The theme for today is The Coming Totalitarian Takeover.

For thinking people, this means We the People are being taken over by Totalitarianism.

At the end of the 20th century, the American Freedom Functions were “peaking:”

• Collaborative Cultural Relating,
• Free Enterprise Economics,
• Democratic Participative Governance.

We the People were collaborating and participating in governance and economics.

Then We the People stopped. Unlike our peasant ancestors, we doubted that we could ever transform ourselves from “real” to “ideal.” We reversed our directions:

• Competitive and Dependent Cultural Relating,
• Command-and-Control Economics,
• Authoritarian and Totalitarian Governance.

These were the first signs of totalitarianism—a reversal of the things that gave us “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

President Eisenhower warned us of forming “The Military-Industrial Complex” as the precondition for the “totalitarian takeover.” We are now witnessing the third party to this complex: Government as facilitator and reinforcer of Totalitarian Multi-National Corporations; Government as political empowerer and reinforcer of the bureaucratic hierarchies of the Military.

We are now witnessing “the unrestrained internal axis of evil to all of our freedoms”:

The Government-Reinforced Industrial-Military Complex.

The future is indeed “GRIM!”

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People are the constitutional policy-makers and we must begin to act and face “The GRIM Complex.” Think about it!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”

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Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com from our series “Case Study Venezuela.”

The theme for today is The Price of Freedom.

For thinking people, this means “Eternal Vigilance!”

It is an old Hispanic proverb that says that parents whose children precede them in death live lives of hell here on Earth. Having reached the threshold of our maturity at precisely the same time as Venezuela’s in becoming South America’s first free democracy, we mourn Venezuela’s fall into the oblivion of totalitarianism.

How fragile the freedom!

How fleeting its time!

How profound its fall!

Nowhere is this more true than in the fallen Venezuelan people.

• They did not relate collaboratively across classes.
• They did not initiate entrepreneurially in free enterprise.
• They did not engage participatively in democratic government.

In short, they did not pay “The Price of Freedom”—the “eternal vigilance” that it demands. Now it is gone. Perhaps not forever!

It is not our purpose to define a democratic revolution that was stolen from Venezuela by its current dictator, in an election “blessed” by a former U.S. President, Carter, and the OAS, and condemned as fraudulent by scientists from M.I.T. and Harvard. It is not simply the intimidation and fraud before, during and after the referendum that destroyed Venezuelan freedoms. It is the lack of the “eternal vigilance” to protect the freedoms that Jefferson cautioned. Now the Venezuelan people must suffer the consequences:

• This precious democracy, the first in Latin America and not yet 50 years old, is being transformed into a totalitarian state under the harsh repression of an “elected” dictator.
• The leading economy in Latin America where workers earnings have been cut in half, the most precipitous decline of Per Capita GDP in recorded economic history.
• The class relations that were exemplary among all Latin countries have been “incendiarized” into class struggle and violence.

So where did a Free People go wrong? How did they allow themselves to become “inmates in jails” of their own making?

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People cannot relax our vigilance. Think about it!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”

(Listen to the audio of this blog.)

Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com from our continuing series on “Case Study Venezuela.”

The theme for today is Cultural Relating.

For thinking people, this means continuous class conflict for the totalitarians.

The fundamental principles of freedom are labeled The Freedom Functions:

• Cultural Relating,
• Economic Enterprise,
• Participative Governance.

We will compare the operations of Freedom and Totalitarianism in Venezuela on these functions.

For Venezuela, the issue of relating is the issue of relating across classes rather than cultures. Basically, the Free Cultural Relating Mission was to empower class mobility:

• To enable the underclass to become members of the working class;
• To enable the working class to become members of the middle class;
• To enable the middle class to become members of an upper class that invests in economic projects benefiting the other classes.

This Freedom Mission was to produce people who were independent, yet disposed to contribute collaboratively to the welfare of all.

While progressing in her short 50-year life, Venezuela failed to fulfill her mission “in time:”

• Too many members of the underclass were left behind in the barrios as poor and helpless members of the Informal Labor Market.
• Perhaps more important, while the middle class was growing, Venezuela had not accelerated systematic ways of transforming more of the working class into middle class.
• Most critical, no progress was made in “bridging the gap” between the middle and upper classes, thus leaving a few to dominate the investment class.

To sum, while Venezuela’s intentions were to produce independent people disposed to collaborative efforts, she succeeded mostly in producing largely dependent people who were adaptive to authority. This made Venezuelans very vulnerable to takeover by Totalitarians.

Whereas the Freedom Functions emphasize relating between classes and among cultures, the Totalitarian Protocol emphasized directly the opposite: fomenting continuous class struggle and even violence. Basically, the Totalitarian Mission of Venezuela was to create a new privileged class comprised of leaders of the Protocol and members of the Proletariat.

• To intimidate the investment class to leave because it, alone, possessed the resources to resist a complete “takeover” by the state.
• To demote or eliminate the middle class in order to reduce its strategic balance of power in influencing the nation’s direction.
• To promote the working and underclasses to take over the positions previously held by the middle class.

In short, whereas the Freedom Mission was to produce independent and collaborative people, the Totalitarian Mission was to produce dependent and adaptive people. They are beginning to succeed, especially with the underclass “Bolivarians” whom they pay, promote and arm.

The Totalitarians are succeeding because Free Venezuelans did not accelerate the goals of their Class Relating mission. Too many uneducated and unskilled people were “left behind,” to be “harvested” by the Totalitarians. These hapless people would gladly exchange the dictator’s promise of security and stability for the surrender of freedom! They had no “soulful stake” in freedom.

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People, this means relating to everyone. Think about it!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”

(Listen to the audio of this blog.)

Thanks for signing on. I’m Bob Carkhuff, and this is Freedomblog.com from our continuing series on “Case Study Venezuela.”

The theme for today is Economic Enterprise.

For thinking people, this means state control of the economy for totalitarians.

The second Freedom Function is Economic Enterprise. Basically, the Free Enterprise Mission was to empower the economy through private ownership:

• To motivate the people to the acquisition, development and protection of private property;
• To motivate the people to the privatization of the economy, including especially the nation’s natural resources;
• To empower the people to become entrepreneurial initiators in leading the Free Enterprise Economy.

This Freedom Mission was for the private sector to own, operate and profit from the means of production while “spreading the wealth” in a “flow-down” economy.

Again, while Venezuela was progressing, she failed to accomplish her mission in time:

• Too much of her wealth in oil was focused in the hands of the state with few of the directors disposed to sharing the benefits with the general population.
• While the middle class was increasingly affluent, the process of building wealth in the middle class was far too slow.
• Most disastrously, the working class accepted an unchanging peasant fate while the underclass was left to fend on its own.

Perhaps her greatest failure was Venezuela’s inability to accomplish her mission of producing an entrepreneurial class that would lead and generate Free Enterprise Economics.

To sum, Venezuela in the late 1990s was a product of “too little, too late.” Her citizens simply did not have the attitude of urgency in empowering people that is prerequisite to true freedom. In a sense, Venezuelans accepted their “European” fates: survival for the lower classes; comfort for the middle class; luxury for the upper class.

Whereas the Freedom Functions emphasized the Free Enterprise Economy, the Totalitarian Protocol emphasized directly the opposite: to destroy the private sector economy and build a state-controlled economy. Basically, the Totalitarian Mission of Venezuela was to destroy private ownership of anything:

• To tear down the centerpiece of freedom, private ownership;
• To control the sources of production and the benefits derived therefrom;
• To undermine the development of individualism and true entrepreneurship because this, like all other initiatives, threatens state control.

In short, whereas the Freedom Mission was to produce entrepreneurial initiatives that would drive the Free Enterprise Economy, the Totalitarian Protocol was to “communize” the economy: undermining private ownership; emphasizing state ownership; destroying individualism and entrepreneurism.

Once again, the Totalitarians are succeeding because Freedom-Loving Peoples did not accelerate the goals of the Free Enterprise mission. Because they did not fully share the wealth that they helped to produce, the dependent-adaptive people of Venezuela willingly accept the redistribution of asset-derived wealth (oil) as a market mechanism.

Signing off for Freedomblog, this is Bob Carkhuff.

Remember, We the People must motivate people to the free enterprise mission. Think about it!

We invite your comments. Send to Bob at Freedomblog.com.

“May the road rise to meet you,
And the wind be at your back.”