Conservatives on Fire has Evolved!

Yes, the blog, Conservatives on Fire, has evolved  and will henceforth be known as Asylum Watch; a name that reflects a change in content from the past. The URL, however, will not change. I will use a sticky to keep this post at the top of the page for a while so followers aren’t confused.

You, my dear and loyal followers, deserve an explanation. Please continue reading.

Originally this  blog, which was started on September 20, 2010, was dedicated to the American conservative movement’s efforts to lead the country back to its founders ideals and operated under the name Conservatives on Fire with the tag line: Defending Conservative Ideas for America.  After the devastating results of the 2012 elections, many conservative bloggers went silent and others began posting less frequently. This humble defender of American conservatism, however, continued to write posts encouraging conservatives to not give up hope. I even wrote a six part series on how we could take America back one bit at a time. By January 2013, I began to question my resolve. After two weeks of introspection, I came to the conclusion that I had ignored thousands of years of human history. I had been living in a state of delusion. I was in love with idea. The beautiful idea of America our founders gave to us. I did not want to believe that such a beautiful idea could be lost.  As I reflected on the history of  mankind, I realized that the people with power will always act to increase their power. And, those whose power is to govern are no different; not in America or anywhere in the world.

Those that the American voters empowered to govern have work to break the bonds of the enumerated powers since the days of John Adams. Over the years, our political elite have written tens of thousands of laws and hundreds of thousands of regulations. many if not most of those laws and regulations are beyond the enumerated powers in our beloved constitution and those empowered to govern in America will continue to write more and more laws and more and more regulations. They have created a Leviathan that can not be uncreated.

Am I suggesting that we lovers of our God-given rights of Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness give up our resistance to the continued erosion of rights? Of course not! Quite the contrary. I am suggesting that we accept the reality of what is. The United States of America will never be able to go back to a small federal government with limited powers. In my opinion, we keep intensifying our resistance knowing we can not turn back the clock of time, but can only try to slow it down and preserve as much liberty  as we can for as long s we can. The United States of America is going to be around for a long time. Our constitution is torn and tattered, but it is still there and it still has relevance, although not the relevance it once had. The United State is still the premier military power in the world. Although our position as the number one economic power in the world will continue to decline while the economic power of other countries increase, it will still be formidable. This decline in economic power will have the effect of reducing our influence in the world, however.

Although I will continue to write in support of our ongoing resistance to the erosion of our freedoms, I intend to write more about what those with the power are doing, wherever in the world they are doing it because, it will affect us sooner or later. And so, I needed to change the name of this blog to reflect the content readers will find here. The name I came up with is Asylum Watch because it’s a crazy world out there. In short, I want to expand the conversation that we conservatives (freedom lovers) are having beyond the left/right struggle of American politics to include other threats to our way of life that are being perpetrated by those with power both inside of and outside of our own borders. What follows, except for the closing statements to this post is pretty much what I think the “About page” of Asylum Watch will look like, although I will probably tinker with the About page for a while longer. It expresses my view of the world and who runs it. I have held this view of the world for a long time. However, I was under the illusion that America and Americans were different. I was under the illusion that we could defeat those who shape the world to their liking. I now realize we can not. No one ever has; not even with revolutions. You, my dear readers and friends, will have to judge if I am seeing the world clearly or not.

The world, as I see it, is an asylum and the people running it are insane. It has always been so.  Since humans have lived together in social groups, there have been only  two types of people: the players and the payers. The players are the few that have all the power. Today, people have different names for the players; such as, The Powers That Be (TPTB) or the Political Elites and the Banking Elites. Their power comes from their wealth and/or the means to enforce their wishes with brute force, if necessary. In modern times, however, the players have been able to control the payer through guile, whereby the majority of the payers support keeping the players in power. Although insane, the players are very clever.  The payers are, with few exceptions, an ignorant and easy prey and , in some cases, just as insane as the players. I will have more to say about the exceptions in a moment.

To my way of thinking. the players fall into several groups:

1. Bankers who own the central banks and, therefore, control the monetary systems.
2. Governments and the political elites who run them. Inside some governments are other players that are continuous, where as, politicians come and go. These would the military apparatus, the intelligence organizations, and the national security organizations. With very few exceptions, all governments are socialist in nature. They are either totally socialist or partially socialist, including the United States.
3. The mega rich and the mega corporations that have climbed in bed with the governments.
4. In recent times, some non-government organizations formed through treaties among nations are behaving as players. The United Nations is the most glaring example and, since the Balkan conflicts, NATO have been behaving as a player too.
5. Some would argue that the Muslim oil exporting nations of the Middle East and North Africa are an independent player. I would argue that they have been but a thorn in the side of the real players. Having said that, there are huge oil and more importantly natural gas in a block of Muslim nations that runs from the southern border of Russia all the way to the Middle East and North Africa. If all those nations ever resolve their differences and became a unified  block, they would definitely be a major independent player.

To understand the payers, let’s use the United States as an example. This will hold true for all developed countries. It is a bit different for undeveloped countries.

The payers, as I see things, are made up of two primary groups.

1. The first group is the non-productive class. They live primarily off of the government’s safety net. So far, they are tolerated by the players, in this case the political elites, because they are useful for their votes. The political class pretends to fawn on the non-productives, but it is guile pure and simple and it works to keep the political elites in power so that they can maintain the illusion that the government works for the people. Because the non-productive class is so gullible, one could argue that they are insane.
2. The second group is the productive class sans the mega corporations that are in bed with the political elites. The productive class includes all the middle class and a good share of those we call rich. The players need the productive class because they are the source of wealth creation the players want rob or at least control. I see the productive class as having three sub sets.

• A large part of the productive class are supportive of the political class, This subset includes what we would call left-wing activist. The are true believers in socialism. The radical environmentalists are in this subset, as well. These people are not ignorant. They should know better. Therefore, I also classify them , as being insane.
• Another large subset of the productive class (they do work and pay taxes) that support the political elite are what we call followers or sheep. They are not necessarily insane. They are mostly ignorant or just apathetic.
• The third subset of the productive class are the only ones to resist the political class. This is the exception I mentioned earlier. We are that exception. We who cherish what America was ment to be. We call ourselves conservatives or libertarians. We are not a monolithic group. We have our differences. But, the one thing we all agree on is the  words Thomas Jefferson put into our Declaration of Independence: “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. To my knowledge, no other country has a founding document that recognizes man’s natural or God-given rights. Most people on this planet have never been made aware of their God-given rights. For that reason, America has the largest concentration of freedom loving people.

So, Asylum Watch is where we try to figure out what the world’s powerful players are doing and how what they are doing could affect our lives. Much of what they do is done in the shadows , so often times , the best we can do is identify the dots and connect the best we can. And so, it is important that we keep open minds and understand what we think we know today may change tomorrow. At Asylum Watch, readers are encouraged to challenge the authors opinions and interpretations and offer alternative views. I ask only that the conversation be kept civil.

In summary, this humble observer of Conservatives on Fire have evolved, sort of speak. I sincerely hope you , who have supported Conservatives on Fire and added so brilliantly to the conversation, will find it worth your while to do the same with Asylum Watch. I will do my best to provide use information that you will find interesting and useful as you try to make the best lives you can for you and your families in this insane world. In fact, that really is what we have been doing all along, isn’t it? Carving out rich and rewarding live for ourselves in spite of the insane power players, is how we give them the finger. I like that! That is the positive way to think about it.

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?