FDR on Racism

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

FDR on racism.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

Yes, that’s right. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the beloved hero president of progressives is a known racist. The quote in the meme above was actually made by Donald Trump on August 14, 2017, not by FDR.

Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II, FDR ordered 120,000 Japanese Americans to be incarcerated in internment camps. That is 120,000 Americans that FDR imprisoned based solely on the color of their skin.  That’s as bad as racism can get, and far, far worse than anything that President Trump has ever done that has caused him to be called a racist.

From the Wikipedia page on the internment of Japanese Americans:

The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans. Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with “one drop of Japanese blood” were placed in internment camps.

This was done by Executive Order 9066, signed by FDR on February 19, 1942. The Order was not suspended until December of 1944, when the Japanese prisoners were released almost three years later.

FDR could not have made the statement quoted in the meme, because clearly he did not believe that we all live under the same law, no matter the color of our skin. So given that FDR was a known racist, should we tear down the statue of him shown in the meme, located at the FDR Memorial in Washington DC? Should we tear the whole memorial down?

The post FDR on Racism appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes – FDR on Racism

Taxes are Moral and Just Because of the Social Contract

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

Taxes are moral and just – because you voluntarily agreed to the social contract.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

 

The Refutation

Many progressives, leftists, and even those on the right will often bring up the “social contract” argument, claiming that you have in fact consented to taxes, by just existing and continuing to reside on your own property. Taxes are just the beginning of what the social contract requires – it also requires conscription into the military if drafted, giving up control of your body from limited access to regulated substances, and all sort of other inane laws and regulations that you must comply with from this so-called agreement. Supporters claim that a “social contract” exists that you have consented to merely by being born and remaining “in this country”, thus consenting to the state committing all sorts of atrocities against you.

Of course, that denies the obvious fact that states are everywhere and it is not really possible to escape by moving to another “country”. Nonetheless, the social contract argument is often made as some sort of final triumph to legitimize the awful actions of the state. Tom Woods does a great job refuting this argument here. Tom Woods’ argument is quite compelling – why should I have to leave to escape the “social contract”? The state is the aggressor and threatening the use of violence against me, so why don’t they leave?  The onus is on them to make a case for having a better claim to my property and my body than I do!

Upon hearing such a sound refutation of the social contract argument, such as that offered by Tom Woods, believers in the social contract will then declare that you really don’t have a right to your private property and body if the state needs it. They must take this stance to defend the social contract, because if you have the best claim to your property and your body, then you can simply reject the social contract by stating so explicitly – I do not consent! In order for the social contract to be valid, the aggressor, i.e the state, has to pretend to have a better claim than you do to your body and your property, so that they can conduct their campaigns of theft, warfare, military conscription and other atrocities. They must declare that the state actually owns your body and your property to accomplish this. When someone seizes your property by force it is theft, and when someone claims to be able to control your body it is slavery, regardless of whether it is done by an individual or a group of individuals called the state that has granted themselves special privileges.

The post Taxes are Moral and Just Because of the Social Contract appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes

Democratic Socialism and the Use of Force

 

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

Democratic Socialism is the Most Moral Way to Organize Society.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

There are only 2 ways to organize society: one based on the use of force and coercion, and one that is based on freedom and voluntary interactions and exchange. A society organized on the basis of the use of force and coercion is immoral and makes all citizens slaves. Just because the use of force is voted for by a majority does not make it right or moral.

In a free society, any sub-group of people are welcome to voluntarily practice socialism. In that respect, there is nothing wrong with socialism, so long as the participants voluntarily engage in it.

The only time that socialism is a problem is when it is instituted in a society by force and coercion. Under those circumstances, the participants are involuntarily conscripted by force to participate. How could any moral human being advocate for such a system? Unfortunately, the state propaganda runs deep, so few have been exposed to these truths.

The great irony is that for all of the preaching of tolerance by the left/liberal/socialists, under a socialized state, the participants cannot be allowed to practice freedom (i.e. free exchange, voluntary association, voluntary interactions). But in a free society, people are welcome to voluntarily band together and practice socialism. So who is really intolerant?

The post Democratic Socialism and the Use of Force appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes

Neil Degrasse Tyson Says Science is True

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.

– Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

Neil is usually great, but he should know better than to make such statements. Scientific “proof” is patently absurd and any scientist should be embarrassed to make such a statement. Here is the quotation in full context:

Once science has been established, once a scientific truth emerges from a consensus of experiments and observations, it is the way of the world,” Tyson told Colbert. “What I’m saying is, when different experiments give you the same result, it is no longer subject to your opinion. That’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.

Claiming science is “true” is disingenuous because science cannot prove something to be true. That is not how science works. Scientists form theories, which can only be proven false. When a particular theory stands up to the test of many experiments and observations, it becomes generally accepted as the best theory, but that still does not make it true. Newton’s law of gravity stood as a generally accepted theory for hundreds of years from 1687 to 1915, when Einstein’s theory of general relativity better explained observations. That is how science works. Theories are formulated and accepted as the best explanation until they are proven false. Skepticism and challenging the validity of old theories when new data becomes available are the very foundations of science.

A much more accurate statement would have been to say: Science is an iterative process that attempts to remove opinion from the dialog by developing and accepting theories that best explain observation and experiment.

Science is constantly seeking the truth, but it can not, by definition, prove anything to be true. Those who have an opinion that a theory is false have the burden of providing observation or experiment to falsify a theory, and the scientific method then demands that a better theory be developed that explains the new observations.

Why Statements Like This Are Dangerous

Statements like this by Neil Degrasse Tyson highlight the danger of when science is mixed with politics and used for propaganda. When someone tells you that science has proven something to be true, you should be very concerned about that person’s motivations. Because real scientists are skeptical by definition, real scientists who know that science can not prove something to be “true” should be very skeptical of the motivations of someone claiming otherwise. What is their motivation in spreading such a claim? What do they have to gain from it? Are there certain theories that are on shaky ground that they personally benefit from that they do not want skeptics and the scientific process to investigate further?

I have not investigated such concerns around Neil Degrasse Tyson, but I think when someone like him makes such a statement, these are reasonable questions to ask. Real journalists who understand what science really is should be asking these questions and reporting on them. The fact that you don’t see that kind of journalism today should make you skeptical of journalism. Now that’s science!

 

The post Neil Degrasse Tyson Says Science is True appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes

Value Should Not Be Set By Wealthy Capitalists

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

Value should not be set by wealthy capitalists – because value is the sum of the labor that went into creating something.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

This meme describes the labor theory of value, which was developed by Karl Marx and others. The labor theory of value has been solidly refuted and abandoned by economists for over 100 years. It has been appropriately replaced with the subjective theory of value developed by Carl Menger and others.

A very simple refutation of the labor theory of value is mud pies.  That’s right – pies made from mud. A baker could spend his labor making pies from mud, but the pies would have no value, despite all the labor that went into them, because no one wants to eat mud pies. Value is not determined from the labor that went into creating something. Value is subjective and determined by how much satisfaction the product brings to its creator or others. Here is a very good description of the mud pie fallacy.

The first part of the meme is actually correct – value should not be set by wealthy capitalists. Value should be set through voluntary market transactions. In such a system, value is determined by what consumers are willing to pay for something, and business owners must meet the satisfactions of consumers or go out of business. In capitalism, the consumer is king.

It is not surprising that many people believe that value is set by wealthy capitalists. They see this happen all the time in our modern economy. But it is a misnomer that our current economic system is free market capitalism. Our current system is a crony capitalism with heavy government regulation and control of the economy. Under such a system, coercion between the government and wealthy business owners enables the distortion of market prices to the benefit of wealthy business owners. This is not capitalism, and people who engage in such practices are not capitalists – they give capitalists a bad name.

The post Value Should Not Be Set By Wealthy Capitalists appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes

Our Demands for America

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

Our Demands for America…

  1. That all citizens respect the union of the United States.
  2. A meaningful livelihood and living wage for all citizens.
  3. A division of profits of all corporate industries.
  4. A strengthening of social security.
  5. The preservation of a healthy middle class.
  6. Higher education that is freely available to all.
  7. Legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation.
  8. That the government carries out these demands.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

These exact same concepts can be found in the 1920 Nazi’s National Socialist Program 25 Point Plan.  Here are the original points from the Nazi Plan, with the original numbering:

1. We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany.
7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens.
14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation.
20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education.
23. We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press.
25. For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich.

Although the wording was changed slightly in the meme to be relevant to 21st century America, the underlying principles are identical. These are populous principles that you will often hear repeated in America. The Nazi’s used propaganda like this to convince the populous that a powerful, centralized Nazi state was needed to deliver all of these promises. Of course, that same powerful state was also used to carry out Hitler’s awful visions and terrorize the world. How very unfortunate that the German people were fooled by propaganda and promises such as this, while Hitler built up the German military industrial complex. Perhaps that is why Hitler once said, “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”

Unfortunately, we see the same story playing out today in America. American leaders like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren will make populous promises to the masses. Meanwhile, the atrocities committed by the U.S. Government are swept under the rug and largely ignored by the American public. The parallels between the propaganda and atrocities of 1920s Nazi controlled Germany and the current state of affairs in America should be very concerning – at least to anyone that thinks.

The post Our Demands for America appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes

Donald Trump and Defining Yourself

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

Donald Trump and Defining Yourself: How arrogant….. The world would be a lot better off it people defined themselves in terms of their own standards.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

Donald Trump did not say this, but Hillary Clinton did.  Here is the full text of the quote:

I think the world would be a lot better off if more people were to define themselves in terms of their own standards and values and not what other people said or thought about them.

What is great about this quote is that it sounds exactly like something that Donald Trump would say. When one thinks it was spoken by Trump, it sounds very egotistical – to hell with what the rest of the world thinks of me, I am going to define myself based on my own standards and rules, not based on how society or the “community” judges me. This is exactly the kind of conclusion that a leftist would make of such a statement by Trump.

Only in this case, he didn’t say it – Hillary Clinton did. If we can get past who said it and judge the statement on its merits, it is probably pretty good advice. Funny how all those Hillary supporters on the left would probably see this quote under a picture of Trump and think it is a vile and evil statement. It just goes to show how suggestible and biased most people are.

The post Donald Trump and Defining Yourself appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes

The Pope – Wealth Cannot Be Created

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

The Pope – Wealth Cannot Be Created: There’s a finite amount of resources on this earth. Therefore, wealth cannot be created – only transferred from the prosperous to those in need.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

Pope Benedict did not say this. Although it sounds like something he would say. You might hear this kind of thing naively repeated in leftist circles who don’t understand basic economics.

The statement itself is a non sequitur – the conclusion does not follow from the initial statement. Yes, a finite amount of resource exist on the earth, but no, that does not mean that wealth cannot be created. The most obvious refutation of this is the simple observation that there are not an equal number of cars, TVs, air conditioners, smart phones, computers and washing machines as there were 100 years ago, right? Clearly, wealth is created.

10,000 years ago, all humans lived a subsistence lifestyle in absolute squalor. Today we live with abundance and wealth that could never have been imagined 10,000 years ago. Yet the earth’s resources have not drastically changed in the last 10,000 years. From the first human who created a dwelling, to the invention of the wheel, to the invention of agriculture, all the way to the industrial revolution and the information age, humans have been inventing things – mixing our labor with the finite resources of the earth and creating wealth.

Wealth is not a zero sum game, where one person must fall behind in order for another to get ahead. Wealth creation is a win-win where both the inventor and the buyer of the invention benefit from its creation and sale. The best way to spread the wealth created from this process is not to “transfer it” by force, which will only serve to destroy the wealth creation process. A system of free exchange and private property is the best way to spread this wealth. This requires the inventor to voluntarily trade his invention with willing market participants who will also benefit from the wealth created by the invention.

The post The Pope – Wealth Cannot Be Created appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes

Betsy DeVos and Grizzly Bears

The Refuted Meme:

Link to this page and this meme will be the key image.

Betsy DeVos and Grizzly Bears: Trump’s Education Secretary just said we need guns in school because…Grizzly Bears.

The Trojan Horse Meme

Download and share this one for the Trojan Horse:

The Refutation

This one deserves a solid refutation because it is so ridiculous. DeVos was making a larger point most mainstream media sources promoting the narrative in this meme conveniently skimmed over. Here is the full story.

Shortly after the Betsy DeVos confirmation hearings, mainstream media outlets were reporting on this exchange between DeVos and Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who represents Sandy Hook, the site of the 2012 school shooting, asked DeVos if she believes guns have “any place in and around schools.”
“I think that is best left to locales and states to decide,” she said.
After Murphy pushed DeVos about why she can’t say definitively whether they belong, DeVos brought up a story Sen. Mike Enzi told earlier about a school in Wyoming that has fences around it to protect against grizzly bears.
“I will refer back to Sen. Enzi and the school he is talking about in Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine there is probably a gun in a school to protect from potential grizzlies,” she said.
The comment drew some laughs in the room.

What is so backwards about this exchange, the laughter, the meme and the ridiculing of DeVos that has ensued since is that buried in all of this noise and diversion, DeVos is actually making a point that most American’s can agree with: that the American government has concentrated too much power and influence in Washington to the benefit to the elites and the 1% as they use their influence to constantly tilt the scales in their favor. This is a message that resonates with both the left and the right.

You would think that someone like DeVos standing up and saying that decisions that effect local communities, like educational policies, should be made locally and not in Washington would be applauded. But if such a message got out into the wild, it could be very dangerous….for the elites. Thank goodness for them that they control the mainstream media through just 6 corporate conglomerates and they can ridicule DeVos and smear the message with “Oh no, Grizzly bears!” before the American people realize the validity of the what DeVos was saying. Obviously it worked, and now many Americans are doing the bidding for the elites by sharing this meme and unknowingly advocating for the very centralized control that allows the elites to tilt the scales in their favor. Ironic, isn’t it?

The post Betsy DeVos and Grizzly Bears appeared first on Trojan Horse Memes.

Source: Trojan Horse Memes