Twenty years ago I got rid of all contracts with translation agencies except for two. Beginners used to compile databases of translation companies and use those to generate personalized mail-merge letters offering to work for very little. When IBM and Microsoft released DOS 3.3, the Proprinter 2 and QuietWriter 3, translation shifted from Europe to America, and “very little” was pretty good. Over time, Europeans learned code pages and bought Windows and the market flattened with the entry of pauper labor.
The recessions that followed the Biden/Reagan Crash of 1987 and the Bush Jr Asset-Forfeiture Crash of 2008 wrecked the profitability of most middlemen. Yet translators are mostly stuck in a time machine, relying on pestering spam instead of personalized mailmerges. Every day I get propositions like:
Salutation: Dear “Hey You” Attachment: some dreary CV in Word, which is a vehicle for macro viruses Qualifications: no test passed, no language degree from a real university and no knowledge of math, physics or chemistry
All of these go straight to the trash. Once in a blue moon someone will address me by name, but instead of a link to their website or blog, they attach a dreary PDF. The truth is that anyone with enough language skills and entrepreneurship to be worth asking for help already has his of her own website and writes his or her own bids and NDAs. Translators who want to be taken seriously by law offices, engineering, geology, mining or oil companies, or doctors, manufacturers or what-have-you need websites with taking bilingual CVs, not spam with attachments.
I have boilerplate bids I have used for 20 years, and for a fee make these available to colleagues who will do me proud. Same goes for NDAs. For more on this see A Beginner’s Guide to Handling WIYRdos.(link) Don’t send me “Hey You” spam with Word attachments and no proof of ATA certification or a website. Instead, make your own website and/or blog–and make it attractive.
Mine have served me well for 20 years and freed me from ever again signing lengthy, one-sided “agreements” that never commit to actually paying me–much less doing it on time. Be an entrepreneur, live by your wits and build up clientele by offering satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Pretty soon beginners will be sending you spam with Word attachments begging to be exploited.
Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.
Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)
After the takeover by freelancers in 1980, once successful passage of a translation test became a requirement for the privilege of voting in association elections or running for office, the ATA de facto became the American Translators Association. Suffrage was also offered to translators of extremely rare languages for which no tests were available, on recommendation of two active members. The primary upshot was that actual translators of verified competence were put in charge of making ATA policy after earningthe accreditation of their peers. The disadvantage was that owners of translation agencies could no longer make policy unless they first passed a translation test. Thus began the Golden Age of the American Translators Association, thanks to Ben Teague and Patricia Newman.(link)
Unhorsed translation agency owners made it clear they were discontented, and wanted their unquestioned authority restored. Individuals not competent to pass a written translation test were just as unhappy as people who drop out of college, and for the same reason. These two disgruntled classes were soon exploited by the American Society of Association Executives, which proceeded to retask the bylaws, install its own well-paid Executive to supervise ATA board meetings and make sure that our “elected” officers never receive so much as a penny for their efforts. Regular mail-in ballots used by similar associations were abolished by repeating unsubstantiated assertions, and a “proxy” system was installed so ALL votes are basically handed over to boardmembers. The ASAE also made sure that its own attorneys and soi disant “experts” were consulted on all policy matters. The new order’s big project sought to undermine our translator testing program and burden the ATA with its salaried hirelings. The ASAE itself advertises a staff of 47, not including attorneys–whose particulars are not easy to find.(link)
People unable to pass a simple translation test and too stuck-up to admit the fact, pestered the board members until “peer review” opened a loophole through which passed a flood of people unwilling to sit for a test–including some translation company owners. Agencies were thereby able to regain voting control over the Association as the ASAE tightened its own control over the the board of directors, orchestrating a series of single-candidate “elections.” Members who had earned the right to vote by passing a written test were shocked to discover that it suddenly cost over $350 a year to keep credentials they maintained for $50 during the 1980s. Younger members were pressured to buy tickets to conventions, etc., “or else” lose their credentials through added continuing “education” requirements which, to some of us, were not unlike extortion.
A so-called ASAE expert was paid 55 cents a word to produce an essay recommending that non-members be allowed to take the test. They could then qualify for exploitation by translation companies as certified translators. Almost nobody able to actually translate and vote thought this was a good idea and the motion failed. The extent of decay is such that of ATA members claiming the ability to translate Portuguese, only 1% have passed the tests from and into that language. Wannabees and beginners lacking ability yet inveigled into joining are clearly numerous enough to outvote actual translators who have clearly-demonstrated ability. A board appointed via single-candidate elections and run by a representative of a “Society” that staffs it with multiplying staffers it selects and puts on salary–is anything but a representative democracy.
The ASAE and the translation agencies it represents never let go of the idea of making translation tests serve their own purposes rather than those of translators. Instead of financing their own separate association with an independent testing program, they cling like brood parasites to the existing pool of tested-and-true translators. ASAE/agency plans to debauch the renamed certification testing program into a rubber-stamp handmaid service for agencies backed by an Orwellian managerial corporation is still at the top of a single-minded agenda that does NOT benefit professional translators.
Now they are back. As before, they are selling yet another ill-dissembled attempt to attain that purpose, papered over with insincere assurances and undisclosed “criteria” for packing the membership by adding pliable voters. And no wonder! The current germ lab viral epidemic has crippled the ASAE Executive’s ability to draw income by mandating attendance at conferences. It therefore comes as no surprise that a story was packaged-up with yet another attempt to “restructure” to favor volume and quantity at the expense of ability and quality. If you haven’t seen their pitch paper, write me.
If you believe colleges should hand diplomas to students who flunk exams, then put them on the Board of Regents, you’re what they want. If you believe that discrimination on the grounds of ability is baaad and that a goood rabble in ignorance is what the ASAE and translation companies need to help keep translators in their place, they have found their minion. **
But if you perceive that the ASAE resembles a vampire herding a large mob of potential translators into empowering a minority of middlemen to exert control over the tiny core of actual certified translators that make the association worth having, then reject the puppet board’s latest rewrite of the usual gambit. I will gladly sign a petition to be rid of ASAE control and management and hire and to pay actual tested translators suitable remuneration for their valuable service on the board–once they win a real election with at least two candidates in the running. –J Henry Phillips, thrice-certified Life member, now in my 33rd year with what was, when I joined it, a genuine translators association worth keeping alive.
Footnote ** “All historical changes finally boil down to the replacement of one ruling class by another. All talk about democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, all revolutionary movements, all visions of Utopia, or ‘the classless society’, or ‘the Kingdom of Heaven on earth’, are humbug (not necessarily conscious humbug) covering the ambitions of some new class which is elbowing its way into power. The English Puritans, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, were in each case simply power seekers using the hopes of the masses in order to win a privileged position for themselves. Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to make use of the masses, and the masses would not co-operate if they knew that they were simply serving the purposes of a minority. In each great revolutionary struggle the masses are led on by vague dreams of human brotherhood, and then, when the new ruling class is well established in power, they are thrust back into servitude. This is practically the whole of political history, as Burnham sees it.” —George Orwell, Second Thoughts on James Burnham (link)
Clarity isn’t oversimplification
Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.
Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)
group pressure: the application of direct or indirect influence by minority interest groups for the purpose of securing their own ends. The influence may be political, economic, psychological, or social, etc; the focus of application is ordinarily a governmental body or official, a political party, or a leader of prestige and authority. Dictionary of American Politics, Smith & Zurcher, 1944 p.148 This definition was published before the six death camps planned and built to institute Christian National Socialist altruism and Gleichschaltung in Europe.(link)
Eleven years later, psychologist Solomon Asch proved by reproducible experiment that 3 out of 4 college students will lie for no other reason than because they see a group of others doing the same thing. This experiment is superficially bandied about, but its conclusions–deadly to mystical superstition, totalitarian dictatorships, mercantilist monarchism and entrenched soft machine Kleptocracy–are invariably omitted.
Unanimity in error is why thinkers from Zamyatin(link), through Huxley, through Orwell, through Ayn Rand, through Heinlein, through the 1971 founders of the Libertarian Party have abhorred mystical collectivism. Its myriad mutations all rely on the same falsification of reality and its methods invariably distill base brainwashing from self-deception and collectivized conditioning. Lest anyone contrive to misinterpret: 3 out of 4 students will lie if induced to do so by an apparently unanimous majority.
Yet the minority observation of a single dissenter suffices to undo this contrivedly artificial arrangement. In Zamyatin’s and Ayn Rand’s socialist Russia, Luther’s National Socialist Germany, and the entrenched looter kleptocracy Nixon’s anti-Libertarian Law has molded from what was once the democratic mercantilism of These United States, the trend toward death camps is a common feature. We’ve not gotten there yet thanks mainly to the influence of Libertarian spoiler vote clout over the course of 12 national elections.
Mystical collectivists pressured politicians into adding the Communist Manifesto Income tax and Prohibition Amendment to the Constitution, thereby dislodging and nullifying the Bill of Rights. The drys did this with an average of 1.4% of the vote over the course of 11 campaigns, and the looter collectivists (the two groups overlapped a lot back then), averaging 2.3% of the vote along a decreasing trendline.
Just as these hateful lobbies’ votes were leveraged so that 1.8% changed as much law as simplistic theory expects from 51%, each libertarian vote is worth about 28 votes on average. This explains why even the most predatory States are hurrying to stop shooting youths and minorities over plant leaves. It also explains why superstition and pseudoscience have failed to bring back the bloody coathanger abortions abolished thanks to the 1972 libertarian platform. Remember military conscription to Southeast Asia? Yet many libertarian sympathizers allow paid liars to deceive them into throwing away the equivalent of 27 additional votes everytime they lack the integrity to vote for libertarian principles.
Both pressure groups demanded the initiation of deadly force in violation of rights, and we got what they voted for. They of course recognize the Libertarian Party as the exact opposite of what they want, and to this day spare no effort or expense to infiltrate, corrupt, deflect, pollute and defeat the libertarian party. We should have expected no less. Here is their graphic record of success in helping the fascists and communists alike to depict us as bomb-throwing communist anarchists. This is a variation of the Fisher-Pry analysis, that typically graphs how electricity replaces steam, democracy replaces monarchism, and how honest and ethical politics is was slowly replacing entrenched soft-machine Kleptocracy. Vote globally, donate locally! There are uncorrupted county Libertarian Parties all over America (and Canada).
With friends like the current Libertarian National Committee, who needs enemies?(link)
Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.
Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)
Forgotten man in Opposition to Legalization and Public Awareness–The Drug Czar
William Graham Sumner wrote the original Forgotten Man essay back in 1883, and produced several versions. He explained that whenever altruists A and B get together to decide what C (Citizen) shall be forced at gunpoint to do for D (Destitute). C is the Forgotten Man in the equation, the man coerced into footing the bill.(link) This Citizen was in 1883 the Forgotten Man whose interests and happiness were entirely overlooked and ignored. Franklin Roosevelt tried to recast the scenario with Destitute–the victim of prohibition-induced economic collapse–as the Forgotten Man, but the ploy never did replace Sumner’s original–namely you, dear Reader.
Just recently we’ve had to acknowledge a spate of murders committed by lazy, out-of-shape, union-collectivized policemen. Typically the victims are brown people. Eric Garner was suspected of letting people buy single cigarettes to allay cravings instead of loading up with sealed packs of habit-forming, Polonium-transmitting excise-generating drugs. He was gang-lynched by First Responders™. Philando Castile was murdered in his car with child and ladyfriend because Minesota First Responder™ Jeronimo Yanez imagined he smelled hemp–the stuff upon which the Bill of Rights is printed.
War On Drugs, Anti-Libertarian Law, bombing of children 1971
Atlanta cops woke a man up and shot him in the back. A black policewoman was no-knocked and riddled with bullets in her bed because Louisville politicians signed prohibitionist zealot orders to raid her apartment. The same happened to an elderly couple in Houston on orders no less fraudulent. And just the other day a brave First Responder™ shot an unarmed man in the back seven times for no good reason. Another 1009 people were snuffed out this year, always on orders from Democratic and Republican Party zealots imagining plant leaves to be avatars of Satan. No libertarian Party elected official ever issued such orders.(link)
And shoot you dead in bed, and loot your belongings
Like Newton’s Second Law–the one with the equal but opposite reaction force–persons terrorized by politicians using arbitrary police as hired killers have taken to attacking police no less arbitrarily and just as violently in places like Los Angeles and Phoenix, Maryland, Washington and Oregon prompting a political officeholder to remark:
“Thus far this year, 74 law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty in the United States of America,” he added. “Unfortunately, I don’t hear a lot of people speak to that.”
Well listen up. In 2020 America, entirely controlled by the East German Democratic and God’s Own Prohibitionist soft machines, altruists A and B issue orders for C (Cops) to murder D (Drug suspect), mostly brown and youthful. As inevitably as night follows day, fake news media hold microphones into which red-faced police union goons fume and sputter over the “senseless and cowardly” treatment of maimed and murdered officers–protected, of course from civil and criminal liability by the sort of “qualified immunity” that did not save Christian National Socialists from the gibbet at the Nuremberg trials. Their victims need not even be charged under Reagan-Bush-Biden Civil Asset Forfeiture, and may be shot like dogs with perfect impunity on any fanciful pretext thanks to the Asset Forfeitures Amendment Act of 1986 as amended in 1988.(link)
The usual link to the text of this law–“the” law which caused the Crashes and recessions of 1987 and 2008, and the Flash Crashes of 2010 and 2015–has been interdicted by looters in protest against a competing gang of looters.(link) See for yourself. (link) They call the censorship a “hiatus.” I was expecting this, so here’s a link to the full searchable text of the law with errors in the original preserved.(link)
The big difference today is that the Forgotten Man is no longer C, the angry Citizen or remorseless Cop on the beat. The perpetrators unnamed, unmentioned and unquestioned are the Politician, the Preacher, The Bureaucrat, the Prosecutor and the Judge who in the roles of A and Bgot together to have people murdered as “no-nonsense” examples. They are murdered to please “shall not be questioned” Legislators and Lobbyists whose pseudoscientific votes declare War on plant leaves feared as avatars of Satan. Voters aid and abet this connivance out of fear of social pressure.(link)
Plant leaves are incapable of surrendering, but the War proposition still makes sense to looters granted immunity from even being mentioned in connection with the results of their weaponized acquisitive altruism. Today’s Forgotten Man is the Politician and Bureaucrat of the mixed-economy Political State soft machine. These are the deadly people I vote against; I vote Libertarian.(link)
These hidden persuaders–the Politician, the Preacher, the Prosecutor and the Judge–are never mentioned in the aftermath for the same reason Libertarian Party candidates are never mentioned. You wouldn’t want voters to think too clearly about the deeds their votes ordered done by the better people who know what’s good for the riff-raff.(link)
She’s with Us!
Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)
Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.
German Influenza dispenser from 1918 Brazilian paper
Remember Soviet Afghanistan? During that fight over locally grown opiates, demobilized Soviet and U.S. personnel turned up with an African monkey virus. Outbreaks in the U.S. closely followed the hepatitis outbreaks in cities that in 1969 had banned clean needles. Even the Soviets admitted to some slight contagion. Governments blamed gays in order to not admit their policies caused the epidemic. In Africa the outbreaks fanned outward from former German colonies–dumping grounds for injectable narcotics since 1912, when the China market closed.
The current Communivirus flap has been stirred–like global warming pseudoscience when smacked upside by Ivar Giaever–by a Nobel laureate in his own field, Luc Montagnier. What does he say? Pretty much what the Indian geneticists said before being declared unpersons:(link)
With my colleague, bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus,” explains Luc Montagnier, interviewed by Dr Jean-François Lemoine for the daily podcast at Pourquoi Docteur, adding that others have already explored this avenue: Indian researchers have already tried to publish the results of the analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus, … the HIV virus (AIDS virus), but they were forced to withdraw their findings as the pressure from the mainstream was too great.
Delightful, huh? Remember all this when the Dems and Gee-Oh-Pee wheedle you not to cast your law-changing Libertarian spoiler votes in November.(link)
Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.
The real Coronavirus… government-controlled teevee
Now that the communist dictatorship on mainland China has polluted the planet with yet another plague, people huddled in shelters have time for reading–as opposed to the screechings of kleptocracy teevee. One of the most apropos and entertaining novels for the times is The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.(link) In it you will learn the intimate details of the bubonic plague the Far East exported to Europe and the British Isles back in the good old days before global warming hysteria replaced burning at the stake. The books downloads to any cellphone, tablet or Kindle device without your having to open the door. Due perhaps to this diabolical form of miraculous delivery, the novel lacks the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat of the Vatican, but it could nevertheless save your life. Herbal Antivirals by Stephen Buhner is also practically relevant to the current crisis.(link)
A scientist-publisher I worked for back in 1982 had me ship out boxloads of Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny.(link) Saboteurs stole the heavy boxes of Golem Press books from the postal system, so I had to fill out insurance claim forms for replacement shipments.(link) Cresson Kearny developed his survival skills during war, famine and pestilence in China, and except for blast waves and fallout, many of the survival skills needed to shelter without the added aggravation of starvation, disease or vitamin deficiency are clearly explained with pictures and arrows.
Pat Frank was the pen name of Harry Hart Frank, author of Alas Babylon, a tale of Eisenhower-Nixon-era nuclear war, when cities were the smallest things bombers could reliably target.(link) Yet much of the aftermath is complicated less by fallout than to the very anarchy communist infiltrators assure us is desirable–just not for them. The rebuilding of civilization without hindrance by a central government is the backdrop for this most interesting and topically relevant story.
A mathematician and an engineer joined forces to writeLucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.(link) Here the same natural disaster that has befallen Earth many times in the past returns in the form of a comet impact unleashing all four of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Survival without supermarkets amid cannibalistic collectivism is a test of human ingenuity that rewards preparedness and familiarity with the facts of scientific reality.
Most of these books were written in an age in which altruist collectivism in its communo-fascist variants–complete with known slavery, famine, death camps, institutionalized torture and disappearance and the initiation of deadly force–was considered preferable to the prevailing mercantilist mixed economy by many organizations and individuals. Among these we still see the Union of Concerned “Scientists,” Physicians for Social “Responsibility” and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War through Preemptive Surrender to totalitarianism. These vectors, now joined by real-life versions of the State Science Institute in Atlas Shrugged, remain a stench in the nostrils of humankind.(link)
Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn is a book about these myrmidons of messianic martyrdom who even today still seek to ban electricity and appease the gods of Carbon Tax Collectivism by demanding that “we” grovel at the altar of parasitical Pseudoscience.(link) Most of these books are also available in audiobook format. Last but not least…
Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.
MEMBERSHIP DRIVE-BYs: PLATFORM PLANKS & RESOLUTIONS adopted by infiltrators and useful idiots to drive away voters and supporters.
These abound in political organizations. In Republican documents, lurid reefer madness propaganda and calls to arms for Girl-Bullying Amendment (ver. 8.0) are examples. Among Democrats, shrill misquotations of evasive pseudoscientific Doublespeak and mournful cries for new and higher taxes fill the bill. Both sclerotic looter gerontocracies with only coercion to offer seek to terrify voters by casting “the other” party’s candidate as the incarnation of Satan in cloven hooves. Ah! But this is what enables Libertarian spoiler votes to maneuver those parasites into letting go of their most obnoxious laws!
Either-or Left-And-Right Socialism
To traditional looter kleptocracies, a key to enabling collectivism to keep on coercing is binary either-or framing: communist or fascist, left or right, Trumpista or Antifa! They NEVER publicly acknowledge the law-changing power of outside-party, neither-nor spoiler votes. This they water down by declaring themselves centrists, moderates, or some linear miscegenation of part-Hitlerite part-Stalinist policymakers–at least in America.
Observe that U.S. looters focus on the job-seeking competition as the embodiment of absolute Evil and struggle to evade mention of law-changinglibertarianspoiler votes. But the LP vote share is nevertheless increasing in hockey-stick acceleration! What’s a wilting Kleptocracy to do?
Even looters know that ignoring a problem does not make it go away. To them, a way must again be found to cause the Libertarian Party to make really dumb mistakes–fritter away what money it can raise–and so alienate voters as to make us look bad even compared to The Kleptocracy!There’s a tall order…
The GOP and Dems would be careless indeed not to again infiltrate and sabotage the LP as they did in the 1980s. So how about treacherously poisoning our decision-making process? Here is another of the latest such efforts passed by the Libertarian National Committee:
Whereas, the plurality voting election method is the weakest voting method and a deeply flawed way of electing government representatives and officers; and Whereas, there are many alternatives to plurality elections, many of which have strong advocates promoting their specific benefits, and it is generally accepted by experts and advocates alike that there is no such thing as a perfect voting system, but each of these alternative systems is generally regarded as being superior to plurality elections; and (scolding cant omitted…) Therefore, be it resolved, the Libertarian National Committee is committed to the widespread adoption and implementation of alternative voting methods to replace plurality voting elections.
Normal voting has been the American system for over two centuries. If it’s bad, then why is it that so many people seek to flee here that there is a movement afoot to build a wall to keep them out? The US Constitution stipulates the weakest voting system? By what standard, or compared to where? Generally regarded by whom?
There are exactly six (06) “preferential” collectivized vote countries (the same as the number of communist countries if you include Venezuela): Australia (forced to vote at gunpoint, suffers rolling Blackouts; Only 12% of Australians enjoy being forced to vote in their collectivist system, and 19% consider it unfair), Ireland (finally repealed 35 years of constitutionally coerced reproduction in May 2018–by normal 2/3 vote restoring individual rights for women), New Zealand, (population similar to Alabama’s, with no LP) Northern Ireland (there’s your ideal political State!), Scotland (mystical girl-bullying laws eroding slowly), and Malta (Comstock law birth control bans. A “libertarian” club with an antichoice GOP poster-child).
Of these 6 “superior” countries, only Ireland unequivocally recognizes the individual rights of women.
So if the idea is a Catholic or Mohammedan theocracy, or an anti-industrial revolution, only then does gauntlet-glob voting look better than that in the Constitution of These States. Individual reproductive rights for women are impaired in 5 of these 6 countries. Observe also that there are no swarms of refugees trying to get into these six easily-gulled countries, or the six communist countries. Of people who vote with their feet, 97%prefer elsewhere.
Not so fast!Libertarians are comfortable with 3% of the vote repealing bad laws that once coerced 100%. And we’re no more popular with the Great Brainwashed than the communists were before they put the Income Tax into the Constitution. Perhaps there is some hidden advantage to collectivized gang-votes? Is there an upside for 3rd parties that only the LNC, in its majestic ideality, was able to perceive?
There are none better than theAustralians to defenestrate THAT pipe-dream. Australians clearly state:
3. It promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents.
That anything this dumb can pass in the LNC is evidence of gross mismanagement and self-deception. Ask yourself: Is this likely to rally voters to our candidates? Cause thinking people to join and pay dues? Attract donations from intellectually honest individuals? Not from what I’ve seen lately.
For transparently clear translations! Don’t miss my foreign blog…
Politicians and their accomplices are fond of reciting that “Perfection is the enemy of …” of what? A look at the plug-in variables used to complete the false dichotomy turns up: good, progress, completion, and a host of similar abstract nouns with pleasant connotations. But if we translate the concepts behind the phrase, its meaning turns out to be: “Integrity is the enemy of self-deception.” This is Part One of a two-part exploration.
Libertarian spoiler vote levers (vote % * electoral votes) in LP Battleground states
Farfetched? Here is a typical dictionary definition of perfection, which in politics is a verb, an ongoing process approaching a theoretical limit:
3. The action or process of improving something until it is faultless or as faultless as possible: e.g. Among the keytasks was the perfection of new mechanisms of economic management.
Compare that with an attempted definition of integrity:
3. Internal consistency or lack of corruption in electronic data: [as modifier] : integrity checking.
Integrity checking was the approach to logical cryptographic analysis Alan Turing used to help England crack the Enigma code in the war against National Socialist Germany. Turing’s preoccupation with integrity was belittled by Ludwig Wittgenstein in prewar discussions at Princeton U. Ayn Rand definesintegrity more clearly than dictionaries compiled for the Great Unwashed:
Integrity is loyalty to one’s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one’s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality.
In other words, integrity is ethical or moral perfection. Ask yourself what, then, is the meaning of political perfection as an ongoing process? Now ask yourself: what is the definition of political corruption? The answer that comes to mind is betrayal of one’s convictions and values. You cannot translate campaign bribes paid by disparate artificial persons into platform planks and be consistent. But to use the government’s coercive power to meddle in trade and production and repay those bribes one needs to persuade voters to abandon integrity and betray some of their principles. Hence, perfection/integrity becomes an impediment to betrayal/corruption–but stating it that bluntly is politically incorrect.
The sanction of the victim must be obtained through fear or intimidation. This is why looter politicians paint “opposition” politicians as the very embodiment of impending doom. Their job is to grab at the initiation of force for the gain of their backers. The pundits and pollsters they rent are incapable of working the three-body-problem once third-party spoiler votes are involved. And no wonder! Third-party spoiler votes are investments in perfecting the rule of law and securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and out posterity.
Spoiler votes as agents of change were understood in 2007
Before 1971, small parties were without exception mystical, collectivist and/or nativist looters. Socialist populists of 1892 wanted the Communist Manifesto income tax which had been translated from German in The Red Republican in 1850. Coinciding with these mostly Christian altruists were the Prohibitionists, to whom the deadly threat of government guns would transubstantiate heathen tipplers into rum-hating fanatics all messed up on the Lord. The George Wallace and Tea Party approach meant the racial eugenics of woman-bullying Ku-Klux Christianity. Integrity in those three third-party cases meant pointing government guns at people to rob or brainwash them into submission. Their goal in every case was to dispose of the lives of individuals and the fruits of their labor. To mixed-economy politicians, these “third parties” were full of votes which, like money, could be suckered by flim-flam persuasion. After all, they all wanted practically the same thing. All of that changed in 1971.
To be continued…
Do you ever need Latin American or European Peninsular financial reports or analyses translated?
libertariantranslator 