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My Belated List of Things for Which I Am Thankful

Recently by William L. Anderson: A Nation of Bureaucrats

While recently attending a Thanksgiving Day church service, I listened to people speak about those things for which they gave thanks, such as the availability of "first responders," such as police officers. There was the usual being thankful for "America" and "religious freedom" and the like. Therefore, I believe I need to put together that list of things that make me break out into a chorus of thanksgiving.

I am:

Thankful for those brave police officers in Fullerton who beat an obviously dangerous homeless man to death, and I especially am thankful for the police union that represents the brave officers that were charged with second-degree murder in that beating. The union went after members of the elected city council of Fullerton who had the audacity to criticize those brave officers who only were acting selflessly as they ganged up on the dangerous homeless man (who was mentally ill). I especially want to praise the union for making false charges about two council members because it is very important for police officers and their unions to have free speech when they are spreading lies about others. Unless the police are able to kill whom they please and intimidate everyone else, we won’t be safe, and if you don’t believe me, you are ungrateful and should receive a visit from these same public servants.
Thankful for those brave police officers and governments at all levels that take property through asset forfeiture, because without that property that is taken without any evidence whatsoever that the owners were using it to commit crimes then might be used by selfish individuals instead of serving our gallant "first responders." If people’s lives are ruined in the process, all the better, because everyone needs to obey the rules, even if they don’t know what the rules are, and even if governments break all those rules. We can’t be safe unless governments are lawless; you can ask the police and the politicians who support them.
Thankful for those brave and honorable prosecutors such as Michael Nifong, who will lie in order to convict innocent people. Everyone knows that if you are charged with a crime by the state that you are guilty, and the very act of declaring one’s self to be "innocent" is in itself an act of proclaiming guilt. I’m especially thankful for those brave and honorable prosecutors in Mississippi who employed forensic frauds such as Steven Hayne and Michael West so that they could give false testimony and convince juries to wrongly convict innocent people. It is important that we have lots of people in jail because Corrections Corporation of America needs to be profitable so that it can buy off more politicians and build more prisons.
Thankful for Great Men of the Cloth such as Jim Wallis of Sojourners, who never stops talking about the poor , and then helps to convince politicians such as President Barack Obama to pursue policies that will ensure that we have lots of poor people in this country. Wallis needs to have the poor in order to feel good about himself, as he calls for government help for those same poor. Indeed, it is important that the government do things like make it more difficult to produce electricity, jack up fuel prices, and stifle entrepreneurs because everyone knows that low energy costs and the availability of goods and jobs to produce them would then help make poor people better off, which then would result in Wallis’s unemployment or force him to get a real job.
Thankful for Great Men of Wealth like George Soros and Warren Buffett who call for even more state control over the economy in order to look as though they are "public-spirited" citizens willing to pay higher taxes and the like. Soros, while helping to bankroll politicians and "think tanks" like the Center for American Progress that denigrate and condemn gold and praise the blizzard of paper money, has been buying lots of gold himself. After the financial crisis began in 2008, Buffett purchased millions of dollars of assets in troubled financial firms such as Goldman-Sachs and then openly (and successfully) lobbied for federal bailout money for those same firms. I’m especially thankful that both men have been praised for their "public spiritedness" and supposed willingness to sacrifice their wealth for the "good of the country," even though their actions actually make them wealthier and help destroy economic opportunities for other entrepreneurs. That also is good for America because President Obama and soon-to-be-Senator Elizabeth Warren already have said that entrepreneurs are parasites and that only government can create jobs and wealth.
Thankful for our brave and fearless Commander-in-Chief who had the good sense to outsource torture instead of having CIA agents directly torture people, since everyone knows that Americans don’t do that sort of thing. I’m also thankful for President Obama’s courage in ordering assassinations of 16-year-old boys, and bravely having American drones launch missiles in order to break up weddings and other such events in Pakistan because everyone knows that the very purpose of the wedding was for the couple to produce offspring that then would engage in "terrorism" against the USA many years down the road. It is very important that President Obama not be held accountable for these policies because anyone who tries to do that is doing so only because he or she is a racist.
Thankful for all of the Republican voters who rejected Ron Paul during the presidential primary because everyone knows that Dr. Paul wants all of us to be strung out on drugs and starve to death, since Dr. Paul doesn’t believe that the government should do everything for us, including provide us with food that the government claims is good. Dr. Paul also is against the USA invading and bombing lots of countries, which means he also is against the kind of economic stimulus that invading and bombing and killing provides.
Especially thankful for those millions of Americans who blindly support policies and politicians that impoverish us, destroy economic opportunities, wage war against innocents, create a police state, take away our liberty, and generally brutalize the innocent, since everyone knows that what we really need is a strong government that can tell us what to do.

November 24, 2012

William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him mail], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He also is a consultant with American Economic Services. Visit his blog.

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