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by Free Market Duck

GOP and Liberal Disconnected Thought Globs (DTGs) dominate 2008 presidential debates
(Feb 06, 2008)
(Updated 02-14-2008)

Disconnected Thought Globs are to conceptual thinking what sight reading is to phonetic reading: a disaster.

Boise, ID – In sight reading, one does not learn phonetics.  Rather, one simply guesses at the pronunciation of the new word and eventually begins to memorize how to say it, spell it, and what it means.  In phonetic reading, one learns 20-30 sounds and applies them to each new word.  Thus, in phonetic reading, one only has to learn a minimal number of word sounds and can then easily pronounce and spell and then categorize the definition of millions of words in one’s vocabulary.

   In sight reading, every new word of the millions of words one tries to include into one’s vocabulary is a mystery in pronunciation, spelling, and thus derivative meaning (i.e., from Latin or Greek, etc., which gives a clue to the definition). 

   Now suppose you applied the same techniques in learning new ideas, new concepts.  Let’s say you do not learn to start with a definition or premise and just jumped right into a perception or concept of what somebody hinted or told you that a certain term or idea meant, without any connection to any other terms or concepts.  (Welcome to public education.)  This is the equivalent of sight reading and is called trying to think with Disconnected Thought Globs (DTGs).

   Attempting to communicate ideas by Disconnected Thought Globs is commonly called “spin” by the news media.  In this method you have to re-think, or try to think, about the validity of every DTG, spin, or concept you encounter and how to interpret what it means in The Big Picture.  Since you have not categorized any concepts in some type of foundational buildup or any other relationship, every new idea is up for grabs vis a vis what it means, conceptually.  Nor are you then able to extrapolate new ideas.

   If, instead, you learned to reason by establishing basic foundations, definitions of terms, and precise meanings, then you would find out that you could easily categorize concepts into meaningful groups.  You would also discover that some ideas rest upon other ideas.  Better yet, when you run into a new idea, you could easily check if it falls into one of your categories of concepts to see if it is true or false or what it means.

   For example, if you understand that tariffs against shoes are bad for both the nation exporting shoes and the nation importing shoes because you understand the basic laws of economics, then it is not a mystery to you whether tariffs on steel or bubble gum or Toyotas are good or bad for either nation.  You already know that the basic laws of economics apply to ALL goods and services, and thus you can quickly discern whether some politician is trying to trick the public when he/she proposes tariffs on any goods or services.

   In contrast, those who learned to think like sight readers, that is as Disconnected Thought Globs, are in Thinking Process Hell as they have to decide in a vacuum or re-think from scratch whether a tariff on steel is good or bad, even after having decided yesterday that a tariff on shoes is bad.  They do not relate the concept of tariffs to the laws in basic economics, and, more often than not, disdain the entire concept of human action in economics.  They do not know the difference between free market economics or socialist “pretend” economics.  So, they often make bad objective decisions because they see the world as one big mystery with no relationship between any concepts whatsoever.  They think in terms of Disconnected Thought Globs and wouldn’t know the difference between gold and paper money.

   And that is what we are facing in the socio-political-economic process going on in today’s Presidential Debates:  a glaring morass of unintelligible GOP and Democratic Disconnected Thought Globs (DTGs) dominating our 2008 Presidential debates and speeches.

   For example, listen to the DTGs of the Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

   Both Democratic candidates promise the voters that, if elected, they will ensure that all Americans will be covered by their Disconnected Thought Glob called:  universal health care.

   The idea of universal health care, however, presumes that everybody has a “right to receive” an economic commodity called health care, enforced by the government, from America’s health care professionals.  But the concept of “rights to receive” implies a dominant-subordinate relationship between two groups of people:  the doctors and the rest of America.  This is a condition of economic involuntary servitude, or slavery.

   The idea of “rights to receive” means if I have a “right to receive” from you, then your rights must, by definition, be subordinate to my “rights to receive,” otherwise it’s not a “right.”  Which means you have no rights at all.  But this is America.  And so, if you claim everybody has the same “rights to receive” any commodity from everybody else, then you have created a logical contradiction of Reciprocal Rip Off Rights, e.g., a conundrum in which everybody has the “right to receive” from everybody else, a logical contradiction.

   This logical contradiction can never be implemented in reality.  It is, in fact, a non sequitur or an oxymoron such as “dry water.”  Further, any attempt to implement “universal health care” as a one-sided exchange – i.e., forced or “managed” government service from the doctors and nurses to everybody else (who, by the way are busy exchanging cars, TVs, and groceries to the doctors to complete the market exchange) -- is simply a form of economic involuntary servitude of the doctors to the rest of society.

   “Universal health care” is a violation of freedom of voluntary exchange by the doctors and nurses of America, and thus a violation of one of their basic inherent rights: private property rights to their own minds, bodies, commodities, and services.  In short, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s Disconnected Thought Glob of “universal health care” is an infringement upon the concept of freedom of trade as well as individual property rights.

   Has anybody noticed the conceptual irony of America’s first African-American candidate for the U.S. presidency putting forth the Disconnected Thought Glob of involuntary servitude, or slavery, in the form of “rights to receive” “universal health care” as one of the basic planks in his socialist Democratic platform?  “Rights to receive” is a socialist sophism disproved centuries ago and yet is a DTG dredged up and regurgitated by both Democratic presidential candidates for 2008.

   Once again, the Disconnected Thought Glob of “universal health care” is simply a violation of private property rights and freedom to trade, pure and simple.

   The only “rights” that truly exist are “rights to voluntarily give or exchange,” not to “receive.”  That’s why our Founding Fathers so eloquently wrote the U.S. Constitution as a prohibiting document, not a granting document.  The Constitution does not give you the “right to take or receive” from others.  The Constitution prohibits infringements upon everybody’s inherent “rights to voluntarily give or exchange,” not grant cookies stolen from others via the government.

   Nor are the Disconnected Thought Globs of the leading GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain any different than the Disconnected Thought Globs of the Democrats.

   First, Senator McCain redefines the concept of “amnesty” from the standard dictionary concept of “forgiveness” to a new term called “payoff.”  He also changes the definition of “illegal” to “legal.”  According to McCain, if Illegal immigrants pay the U.S. government $3,000, then their action is not “amnesty,” it’s called “a pathway to citizenship.”  In other words, McCain’s Disconnected Thought Glob is:  illegal entry plus an illegal payoff morphs into a legal act.

   The problem with this type of DTG is that it redefines fundamental concepts of law to justify the exact opposite:  a reward for breaking the law.  If we applied this same Disconnected Thought Glob to other unlawful acts in America, we should allow bank robbers to pay $3,000 to the banks they robbed and award the crooks a trophy.  We should allow murderers to pay $5,000 to the victim’s family and then throw a party for the killer.  How about allowing rapists to pay $2,000 to the rape victim and then send the rapist on a World Cruise to the Caribbean?

   On the War in Iraq, Sen. McCain puts forth another Disconnected Thought Glob as he shouts from the roof tops:  Yahoo, the “Surge” is working, the “Surge” is working.  Then, he proclaims, the way to keep America strong in his Global War of Terrorism is to INCREASE U.S. military intervention into even more nations throughout the world.

   But what is the conceptual ‘disconnect’ here?  Without referencing any concepts regarding the morality or economic or military efficacy of increasing U.S. military intervention throughout the world, McCain simply assumes that (1) past U.S. actions of nation building have not CAUSED discontent throughout the world, especially in the Middle East, (2) America can somehow continue to pay over $1 trillion per year for military adventures while we enter into the worst Depression in our history, caused, in part, by previous military adventures, and (3) the best possible method to defend America is to stretch U.S. troops across 1,000 military outposts across the globe.  This is sheer insanity.  Even a kid playing checkers knows better military tactics than this.

   McCain’s Disconnected Thought Glob regarding the use of America’s military rests upon erroneous thinking in many areas, the main area being economics.  From where, exactly, does McCain think he can obtain the money to pay for his huge military expansion beyond our borders?  Money does not grow on trees.  Hyperinflation by the Federal Reserve cannot continue without severe economic consequences to the U.S. market.  McCain never states where the money will come from for his military escapades because that would require a long series of thought processes involving categories of logically-connected economic concepts that Sen. John McCain is not aware of.

   In the realm of cognitive conceptual thinking, McCain, like the Democratic presidential candidates, is a sight reader, not a phonetics reader.  His Disconnected Thought Globs do not rest upon the conceptual foundations of free market economics and, therefore, he cannot logically support his fantasies of foreign military expansionism.  While the Democrats will drag America into National Socialism with their DTGs of “universal health care” and other Welfare State baloney, John McCain will drag America into National Socialism with his Disconnected Thought Globs of illegal amnesty and foreign military escapades, running the real risk of a nuclear WW III.

   The so-called George Bush military “Surge” in Iraq that McCain says is “working,” has been revealed in the WSJ and other national publications as simply a series of stepped up monetary bribes and pay-offs of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Iraqi tribal warlords to temporarily hold off on their shooting at U.S. military personnel.  As soon as the bribes to the warlords stop, the shooting will re-commence.  McCain does not understand that President Bush’s fake “Surge” was staged and paid for with U.S. taxpayer payoffs to Iraqi tribal warlords.

   In addition, McCain also is unaware of the U.S. - Saudi OPEC monopoly petro dollar deal in which the Saudis promise to only accept payment for oil in Dollars from all buyers, Americans and Europeans alike, and in return the U.S. has promised to protect the Saudis with our U.S. military – which is exactly why we are in Iraq and the Middle East in the first place.  Not only does McCain not understand basic economics, international central banking, or the role of the Federal Reserve in the War in Iraq, this is a terrible mis-use of our American military forces in an un-declared war.  Only the U.S. Congress has the right to declare war, not President Bush and not the U.N.

    It is worth noting here that Senator John McCain’s 5-year imprisonment in a North Vietnamese prison camp appears to have forged his Disconnected Thought Globs into some sort of personal military vendetta which has morphed into a “I’m not going to let this (his previous life in prison) happen to America” Syndrome.  It may well be that ex-prisoner John McCain can’t get over the fact of his previous military incarceration, a type of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome – and understandably so.  But this does not place him in a good position to be America’s future Commander-in-Chief of our entire military.  One would rather have a calm, rationally-thinking, objective approach to the handling of America’s international relationships from somebody who is not still suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from a 5-year prison stint at the Hanoi Hilton.

   A more rational approach to foreign policy and domestic economics would come from GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, who has U.S. Air Force military experience, who is a medical doctor, and is a conceptual guru in Austrian Free Market Economics.  In fact, Rep. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who correctly thinks in terms of step by step logical concepts instead of Disconnected Thought Globs.

   It’s not so much what one thinks as how one thinks that really counts.  One can always add new information (the what) but only if one knows how to incorporate it.  If you reason by first defining your premises, then logically build concepts upon precursor concepts, and then categorize those concepts, you can easily interpret and integrate new ideas into your view of objective reality.  If, however, you think in Disconnected Thought Globs, then you are sinking in the quicksand of Thinking Process Hell and a 500 ton locomotive will soon run you down as you sit there and pretend the train is simply a little purple flower.

   Wake up people.  There is no such thing as a “free lunch” or “universal health care” or “rights to receive” or “stimulating the economy” by injecting trillions of pieces of Pulp Fiction, our non-backed U.S. Dollar.

   Philosophy matters.  How you logically reason, or not, matters.  Check your premises because Disconnected Thought Globs are to conceptual thinking what sight reading is to phonetic reading:  a disaster. Both GOP and Liberal Disconnected Thought Globs are dominating today’s 2008 presidential debates and speeches. -- FM Duck

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