Monthly Archives: December 2013

Mail 802 Tuesday, December 10, 2013

We haven’t had the plague of locusts yet, but there have been a number of distractions here. I hope most have ended, and we can catch up a bit on mail. Today I will try to reduce the pile of unpublished comments on the evolution discussion.  I’ll try to continue this tomorrow.

Do we understand evolution?

Note that this is not a discussion of whether or not evolution takes place. That seems quite certain. The question is whether we understand the mechanisms.

A lot of this discussion came about from comment on Fred’s observations, particularly

http://fredoneverything.net/BotFly.shtml

And http://fredoneverything.net/LastDarwin.shtml

Fred concludes that if you think you understand this complex subject you must have been smoking Drano. He does not assert that he understands it. I come from a somewhat different tradition: I was brought up to believe in evolution but I was basically taught by wolves and my own reading habits until I encountered the Christian Brothers in high school. I had always been taught to “believe in evolution” and that was not contradicted by the Brothers who pointed out that church doctrine accommodated the notion of creation through primitive forms. But since that time the biology world has become much more complex, and the theories that account for evolution have become more so; and I find myself in agreement with Fred, you have to be smoking Drano to believe the current theories. Which isn’t a “disproof” of evolution because some kind of evolution has in fact taken place; but whether it was all be blind chance is another story. Sir Fred Hoyle was also an influence on my thinking although is notion of the Designer would not be acceptable to those who reject Darwin on religious grounds.

Mostly I don’t smoke Drano.

“About thirty years ago I wrote an essay on evolution and origins using the analogy of a watch: you can take all the components of a watch, but them in a bag, and shake them forever and they probability that they will fall into place is still remains vanishingly small with relation to the age of the universe. You can make the probability a bit larger by adding multiple copies of some of the components, but a bit larger still leaves you a vanishing probability. If you find a watch in the woods, that’s pretty overwhelming evidence for the existence of a watchmaker. Now what do you look for if you find a watchmaker?”

———————

But suppose there are rules that cause the different components to fall together in a particular pattern under the right conditions? The different components of the watch are not amino acids which bond together by themselves is placed in proximity. Magnetize the watch components and make their shape such that they fit together properly in some cases and they might form a ‘peptide watch’. What it takes to make these form a DNA strand isn’t known, thus the probability if this happening can’t be calculated. We know there is a factor of randomness to this, but what is unknown is how much is chaotic and how much is statistical.

You mix hydrogen and Chlorine together, you know what happens. Both elements do not just mix around and form random compounds, there is a strong statistical probability Hydrogen Chloride forms when light is added.

With organic chemistry the formation of compounds is less statistically certain, side reactions happen. Sometimes compounds form that catalyze other reactions. I suggest the beginnings of life are much the same.

This controversy can be easily resolved. All we need to do is define the conditions where life has formed, set that up and wait a few billion years. Stick around and when it completes I will let you know….

The problem here is that your rules have to apply all the time. If you know where you are trying to go, then it’s not so hard to get to the right place even with a random walk; it’s when you have no idea where you are going yet you get somewhere interesting that things need explanations. It is just not reasonable to suppose that a cloud of hydrogen gas will some day dance Swan Lake and build San Francisco.

Evolution

Here is a link to a pretty good on-line UW lecture dealing with some recent findings in what I guess you could call mathematical genetics:

Making Genetic Networks Operate Robustly: Unintelligent Non-design Suffices, by Professor Garrett Odell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsbKzFdW2bM

I understand the assertion. I do not see the proof.

Jerry

Me, I’m not so sure that mutations really are random, given the cellular mechanisms not only for redundancy and self-repair, but also for accommodating any alteration by making other alterations in response. The laws of chemistry might matter more than the struggle for existence.

Shapiro: New findings about the genetic conservation of protein structure and function across very broad taxonomic boundaries, the mosaic structure of genomes and genetic loci, and the molecular mechanisms of genetic change all point to a view of evolution as involving the rearrangement of basic genetic motifs. A more detailed examination of how living cells restructure their genomes reveals a wide variety of sophisticated biochemical systems responsive to elaborate regulatory networks. In some cases, we know that cells are able to accomplish extensive genome reorganization within one or a few cell generations. The emergence of bacterial antibiotic resistance is a contemporary example of evolutionary change; molecular analysis of this phenomenon has shown that it occurs by the addition and rearrangement of resistance determinants and genetic mobility systems rather than by gradual modification of pre-existing cellular genomes.

http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.1992.Gentica.NatGenEngInEvo.pdf

There’s an attachment of a slide presentation by Shapiro that touches some of these points. Feel free to slide over the more technical items, as I did.

Mike

A link to Shapiro that isn’t quite so complex is http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2013.Rethinking_the_%28Im%29Possible_in_Evolution.html

Evolution

I have this vague uneasy thought regarding evolution.

That where we actually exist is the result of someone’s science fair project. Like an ant farm. Or an aquarium. You know, the kind where various objects are added to make it more interesting. One that has been long forgotten and banished to an attic storage room.

I believe I have developed this idea from a short story I read a half century ago.

Sci-Fi writers can be so disturbing sometimes.

tonyb

Asimov wrote one such story. Of course that means you have found a watchmaker: but what brought the watchmaker about?

Richard Dawkins on the evolution of the eye

Hi Jerry,

Mr. Dawkins, who is a renowned evolutionary biologist and a member of the Royal Society as well as the most famous apologist for atheism, has a detailed explanation for how the eye may have evolved here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E

I find it plausible.

Thanks for your books and all your columns, I’ve enjoyed them all.

Regards,

Julian Treadwell

He certainly does find it plausible. I fear I do not. Every step must lead to something fit enough to survive until the next step and some of those steps must make the new creature more fit.. I do not see how they do. If you know what you want, it’s fairly easy to describe a path that gets you there.

Evolution: "of Man" vs. "of Microbes"?

I wonder whether the Biology Teachers have their priorities right?

Is it not at least arguably more important, that kids learn about the evolution of antibiotic-resistant microbes than that they learn about the evolution of humans from apes?

The development of antibiotic resistance is easy to demonstrate in the laboratory and has potentially catastrophic implications for the health of billions of people, and not just in Third World hell-holes. You want a horror story that *we’re*all*living*right*now*? Try _The Forgotten

Plague: How the Battle Against Tuberculosis Was Won – And Lost_.

It affects individual liberty: Must we return to the days of involuntary detention in quarantine of infected people? Must we withhold treatment from patients who refuse to, or are unable to, complete their courses of antibiotic treatment — thereby turning themselves into breeding-grounds for resistant strains? Or are we Doomed, by our devotion to individual liberty, to slide on down the slippery slope to the End of the Age of Antibiotics and the Dawn of the Second Age of Sanatoria?

It affects property rights: Should we, by Law, restrict the dispensing of new antibiotics, developed at tremendous cost, to preserve their effectiveness? What would that do to manufacturers’ willingness to invest in developing such drugs?

Am I just blind and deaf, that I never see or hear this discussed?

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Aren’t we already headed there? I agree that practical evolution seems not well understood, although animal husbandry has understood for a thousand generations. Somehow it isn’t happening now.

Two Quick Points On Evolution

Why do you continue to use the straw man of "Darwinian" evolution? Do you also talk about astronomy as Ptolemaic or physics as Copernican? Also, why do you insist that evolution must lead to an improvement? What about cave dwelling species that have evolved to not have eyes (or functional eyes). Is this an improvement, or simply an adaption to environment?

I hate to say it, Jerry, since I love your writing, but your understanding of evolution is juvenile at best. And your continued use of logical fallacy betrays your inability to overcome simple cognitive dissonance.

Brian Walsh

I would appreciate enlightenment. I tend to concentrate on Darwinian evolution because that is what I taught in the schools. If there is a high priesthood with better understanding some of us await being informed. The new mechanism must account for the observed complexities.

Good Enough

Reproduction of the Good Enough

I may have been thinking of your oft-used Good Enough when I was discussing evolution with someone several years ago.

What occurred to me was that "Survival of the Fittest" was an unfortunate phrase to have captured peoples’ fancy. Instead, I have started using "Reproduction of the Good Enough." The idea that multiple variations can exist within a population until some external change happens with culls part of the population. To me, that explains much of what appears confusing at first glance.

A canonical modern example is DDT resistance. Where the resistance varied across a population, but it really didn’t matter. Then, DDT was introduced and it became paramount.

I think that metaphorically similar variations in light sensitive cells probably happened many times within populations. Within the extent environment, the differences were essentially "ornamental." Trivial. Then, some new predator showed up. Or, some new competitor for a resource. Or, a volcano erupted and the dust blocked much of the sunlight for several generations. Or, part of the population was isolated, which now produced different pressures on the different groups. And then, the differences in light cell patches allowed a portion of the population to survive and reproduce while some or most of the rest reproduced much less, or not at all. Ebbs and flows. Feast is followed by famine. Tranquility by adversity. Rinse and repeat.

That’s how species can end up with an eyeball, even though that was never a goal. Different light sensing mechanisms were tried within a forgiving environment. All were Good Enough to reproduce. Until some of them were no longer Good Enough. A subset passes on their then-winning trait.

That also explains how the progression of a species can start from one "peak" to travel through a "valley" to get to another "peak." Within the environment that existed when the trait variation sprang up, it just didn’t matter. Then things changed. The members of the population still living within the valley, and maybe most or all of the individuals living with the older genetic peak trait, are culled. Only those at the new peak can continue to reproduce.

And what’s left can look like it could have been goal driven. Even though it wasn’t.

Drake Christensen

I have always found that the most convincing of the arguments: they need not lead to fittest, but must at least be good enough for survival so that mutated individuals will reproduce and carry the next step along until the next mutation, which also must be good enough – but eventually a step must lead to “more fit”. I find the leap of faith less arduous than that of the “every step must be more fit”, but as the complexities of life continue to be discovered I do not find it sufficient.

Evolution discussion continues:

Entropy and Life

Jerry,

One of your correspondents posited that life should not be because of entropy. If life represents increasing complexity and entropy tears down complexity, how can life spontaneously come into existence? The answer is quite simple — one can not measure the entropy of a system without considering the entire system. Take a freezer for a simple example. If one looks only inside the freezer and watches the temperature drop and sees the water freeze, one would start wondering how such an anti-entropic activity could take place. After all, everything in the freezer is becoming more organized as its temperature drops. The key is realizing that an enormous amount of work is being done on the content of the freezer to generate that order. Measure the heat output of the entire freezer and one would find that more heat was created by the freezer than was removed from the inside of the unit. Overall, entropy was increased dramatically, even though locally entropy was reversed.

Living creatures consume enormous amounts of energy from the environment, creating far more disorder in the system as a whole than the order it produces. In fact, life is one of the best and most efficient entropy generating systems in existence. Given enough of a usable entropy gradient (environments with low entropy) life can expand until that gradient is eliminated, using up the gradient and an ever faster rate. Then everything dies and the created order decays into chaos and entropy still increases.

Life on Earth is possible because the energy of the sun is very low entropy compared to the space around it. This provides a very high entropic gradient for life to utilize. There will come a point in the future where nowhere in the universe will have enough of an entropic gradient for life to use. At that time, life in the universe, the entire universe, will no longer be possible.

Kevin L Keegan

Well of course entropy decreases in local systems. The question is how those local systems are created.

Biodiversity

Jerry,

Evolution theory readily explains biodiversity. Living organisms survive best by eating things that other living organisms don’t eat. So the earliest drive in competition for resources would have been toward unused resources. Beat the competition by not competing. We can see it now all across the ecosystems of the world. Hunting at night reduces competition from other predators and allows tapping of nocturnal foragers who evolved that habit because of daylight predation. The evolution of flight happened over and over again (insects, reptiles, mammals) because it allows escape from predation and access to resources not available to walking, crawling, burrowing, or swimming organisms. Tolerance of otherwise toxic plants, animals, and insects grants access to a resource no other organism can use. The list goes on and on.

It is too easy to think about evolution strictly as a head-to-head competition. This indeed does happen a lot and evolution theory has largely been taught on that basis. But evolution is not really about competition, but more about a drive towards accessible resources. Plants do it by happenstance — a lucky quirk in a gene complex allows progeny to survive in soil the parental stock found unsuitable. Animals do it by experimentation — I’m hungry and I can’t get what I normally eat; can I eat this? Those that can, survive and reproduce; those that can’t perish. It is, for most organisms, not a conscious choice, just desperation.

It is also important to remember that evolution is a process without direction. The environment effectively tests mutant genes for their effectiveness at conferring survival. Those that confer survival become more prevalent in a population. Those that don’t tend to become scarce. But there is no drive towards any particular mutation. For example, the brains of the ancestor stock for the modern house cat has a brain that is 30% larger than that of the modern house cat. Wild cats need more brain power to survive, but it is metabolically expensive, reducing the number of off-spring that can be produced. The modern house cat occasionally needs to catch a mouse, but mostly relies on its human companions to bring it food. It needs to buy their affections by being cute and playful — kitten-like — for its entire life, so a large brain is just a wasteful expense. The pressures of surviving with humans favored house cats with less brain and more kitten making capacity. The modern house cat is a ‘simpler’ organism than its predecessor stock.

Kevin L Keegan

But the point is that it produces results that do not look as if they were accomplished without direction. You can get here from there, but some of the steps appear impossible if you did not know where you were going.

Hi Jerry,

I read with interest your posting on "Asking Questions about Darwin" (https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=16304). You used

an example of evolution involving a bag of watch parts and the probability that shaking said bag would result in a fully functional

watch. Or rather, the improbability of such a result without the involvement of an "Intelligent Designer".

I must say, were evolution as complex as you make it out to be, then the most parsimonious answer would be that an intelligent

designer was probably involved. However, your analogy is… incorrect…

While you could use a "bag of stuff" as an analogy to describe evolution, the contents of said bag would have to be a lot different

than watch parts, although a timekeeping device could reasonably be the outcome of this process.

Please allow me to repeat that. We could indeed get a functional watch out of a bag of parts through a stochastic process… But it

requires lots of bags, and a process that sieves the successes of one bag into the next bag.

To bring the analogy in line with what is actually going on in evolution, you would have to start with something simple like the

attached image of a child’s toy. Place that in a bag. Shake it around long enough and some of the shapes will make it through to the

inside of the sphere. Most will not…

This is the "test", as it were, and it is no more complex than that. The steps are small, and the evaluation process is unambiguous.

Nature shakes the bag, the parts change slightly, and we see what survives. Lather, rinse, repeat…

From such humble beginnings, endless levels of complexity can come about as long as it receives energy inputs from the sun.

..Ch:W..

and a process that sieves the successes of one bag into the next bag.

Which is in fact the point I was trying to make. If you know what you are trying to get, then you can select among random steps; but if each of your steps must itself be beneficial to the species, the ‘survival of the fittest’ is not likely to produce anything.

I suspect that it would take a lot of random clouds of gas to become San Francisco or the Ballet Russ de Monte Carlo

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

"If you know what you are trying to get, then you can select among random steps;"

Nature is a harsh mistress and only has one selection criteria – death. That which finds a way to cheat death a little bit better than another, will propagate more than the other.

"but if each of your steps must itself be beneficial to the species, the ‘survival of the fittest’ is not likely to produce anything."

I am not sure what you mean by that. If you ratchet one success over death after another, what do you think will result after billions of years? Mutations never stop, hence innovations against nature’s harsh hand never end. Eventually some sort of form will come of that. It will not look like San Francisco, but it might look a lot like a quadrapedal body plan (for land dwellers), or perhaps a sleek fin and a set of very sharp teeth.

For what it is worth, I had the same skepticism the first time I opened up the back of a TV. Such a bundle of wires and components could hardly make sense to anyone. Then over time I understood that, indeed, no one need understand the whole thing. What makes sense are small systems that are combined to make something more complex.

And so it goes with nature, such as when the mitochondria, existing only as a bacterium in one of nature’s many niches, finds benefit by combining with a primitive cell in another of nature’s niches. Suddenly oxygen metabolism and ATP generation allows new possibilities.

Of course, in saying this, we conveniently ignore the trillions and trillions of useless mutations and failed combinations that were ablated away by nature, much as we do not see the years of effort that Yo-Yo Ma put in prior to a tear inducing rendition of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1.

And it appears as if you and I are very much in agreement about San Francisco and the Ballet Russ de Monte Carlo. Evolution could never produce those things. They are obviously the work of an intelligent designer.

I appreciate the opportunity to engage with you. Your mind is interesting.

..Ch:W..

With faith all things are possible,

A Change of Pace:

Don’t watch this until tomorrow:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/28/exploding_whale_video/

Ed

Unsung DEAD WHALE EXPLODER hero, who gave the early internet a purpose, passes away

Jerry

Don’t watch the video until after your Thanksgiving meal.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/05/exploding_whale_man_dies/

Ed

I remember hearing it on the radio as it happened…

: Trivium and Quadrivium

I find it interesting that you covered the Seven Classical Liberal Arts and Sciences i.e. the Trivium and Quadrivium.  Someone that you may know published this essay under the pseudonym Jester-Inquisitor.  I am certain you and certain of your readers will find this interesting.  Also, I hear a revised and expanded version is in the works…

<.>

The Trivium is — in the correct order — grammar, logic, and rhetoric. As an aside, Freemasonry and the Catholic Church teach this order in an improper sequence. Grammar forms the building blocks of language and allows expression of facts. Logic allows the ability to make relationships among the blocks or facts. Rhetoric allows attempts to inform, persuade, or entertain using grammar and logic for effect. Critical thinking and effective communication are among the many rewards achieved through undertaking study of the trivium; moreover, one proficient in the trivium does not need instruction from others e.g. teacher, professor to learn. One can — through his mental faculties — learn without aid and without an institution.

The Quadrivium is mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy. Just as language is a human construct, so is the number. We introduce ourselves to the mental construct that we call a number through mathematics. Geometry allows us to perceive the number in space — as further explained in the degree work. Music allows us to get a sense of the number in time. Astronomy is where we apply the number in space-time. The quadrivium was — in old times — taught in college or university. Since then we’ve come to offer other programs. Through the quadrivium one can attain a better understanding of both the universe and one’s place within it.

One way to develop the Quadrivium further is to explain how one understands one’s place in the universe. In Freemasonry, we learn about the Pythagorean Theorem or the 47th Proposition of Euclid – 5, 3, 4. Five represents the five senses or empiricism — the Buddhists recognize six senses, three represents the Trivium, and four represents the Quadrivium. The sixth sense is the mind, which makes sense of the senses; else, we would experience the universe as a series of random "boom, bang, boom".

Reality is an ineffable, interdependent and interdeterminant process that exists in more dimensions than we are able to perceive with our six senses. The bible alludes to this by describing the ineffable name of God, but — really — everything is ineffable as Korzybski pointed out in Science and Sanity and Manhood of Humanity through the discipline of General Semantics. The computer screen that you are reading this post on is an ineffable object; we bind that object to the words, sounds, etc. of "computer screen". When I use those words — in auditory or visual form — they create a semantic reaction in your nervous system and call a sensation and related associations from your linguistic index. In this way, we can communicate and this important.

When we get into the Quadrivium, we further index reality. Reality is a wiggle and we use language and the Quadrivium to create a grid on that wiggle; it works in the same way that latitude and longitude work on a map. Some examples follow: with mathematics we can use numbers; so I can tell you how many cows I want in exchange for how many pigs and we can have a rudimentary economy. Mathematics is important when exchanging monies or currencies. With geometry, we can agree to meet at a certain point in the forest and if we cannot make that agreement we cannot meet. Geometric operations like intersection and resection help immensely with land navigation and are still used today in competent armed forces. Music gives one a sense of timing; it is possible to use music to gauge distances where other forms of measurement are not possible — shaman use this technique to walk from one rock to a certain area. Music is a pattern, essentially, and it is the pattern of the moon that allowed life to occur on Earth in the first place. Without the moon, there would be no rhythm to the seas for the first organisms to manifest. Through astronomy we can predict the movements of heavenly bodies and their affects on our existence here. We can understand seasons, we can understand when objects might strike the Earth causing mass extinctions, and we can better understand how the Earth became what we see today. We can also begin to unlock the secrets of the universe.

</>

http://goo.gl/QniNYH

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

experience modifies genes

hi Jerry,

This article about passing an aversion to smell onto offspring shows some of the first evidence that evolution is not completely random.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25156510

Jeff Marshall

Jerry

Geneticists have known about Lamarckian inheritance for quite some time, only they don’t call it that. The call it epigenetics.

It appears that various parts of your genome can be methylated. This is the one mechanism I have seen cited. Of course, there may be more.

As for the mice – well, good luck to them. I hope they can avoid the cat.

Ed

Jeff Marshall offered a link to this article

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25156510

suggesting that evolution is not completely random. I remain unconvinced. From the article:

“They showed a section of DNA responsible for sensitivity to the cherry blossom scent was made more active in the mice’s sperm.”

While interesting and important, this does not exonerate Lamarck, and certainly not Lysenko. Please note that no changes have been introduced into the genetic code – no new information and not even an alteration of existing information. This is an example of an environmental factor triggering the expression of an existing gene, an event which should surprise no one. A similar phenomenon was observed in a population of bees a few years ago and greeted with much the same fanfare.

Lamarck’s principle ideas were rejected by the scientific community over a century ago, yet their seductive appeal is so powerful, it seems, that biologists slip into their embrace time and time again. An article appearing in a peer-reviewed journal many years ago described what happened to a population of Darwin’s finches on one of the Galapagos islands when it experienced several years of drought. The preferred food source for these birds – certain seeds – dwindled, and they were forced to feed on a secondary plant whose seeds were tougher and harder to reach. Those birds with longer, narrower beaks found it easier to reach these seeds and as a result, they survived and reproduced in greater numbers than those with the “standard” beak. No surprises here. Natural selection at work, doing what it does best.

The paper’s authors, though, speculated that if the drought persisted for many years, or decades, that eventually a new species of finch would emerge that was better adapted for survival in that new climate, even to the point of being unable or unwilling to mate with unaltered or unaffected finches. This is undiluted nonsense. There is not a shred of evidence, nor even a plausible theory, showing how environmental factors can force a specific, adaptive change in the genetic makeup of an organism. The birds’ beaks – long and short – were well within the natural variability for the species.

Lamarckism, it seems, is the Holy Grail of biology, offering a quick and easy fix to their pet theory, toning up the flabby science that permeates evolution. It certainly induces smart, well-educated professionals to abandon the scientific rigor that is a sine qua non in the other disciplines.

Richard White

Austin, Texas

But isn’t genetic splicing a form of intelligently driven Lamarckism? Lysenko thought he could force evolution through Lamarckian heredity.

‘The mismatch between the anatomical and genetic evidence surprised the scientists, who are now rethinking human evolution over the past few hundred thousand years.’

<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?_r=0>

————-

Roland Dobbins

This is a partisan presentation, and presents a growing view of events. I do not share this theory. I do believe that there is a strong Republican faction that would rather be in office as minority and will compromise with anything.

Hello Jerry,

I have been saying for years that the Obamunists are not incompetent; they are frighteningly competent—and evil to the core. You have been cautioning that we should not ascribe to evil that which is adequately explained by stupidity and incompetence.

Here is a piece by a guy (that I know nothing about other than what appears here) who is clearly in my camp—which of course proves nothing. Just another voice (from my perspective) crying in the wilderness:

Bob Ludwick

Why Obamacare is a Fantastic Success By Wayne Allyn Root

There are 2 major political parties in America. I’m a member of the naïve, stupid, and cowardly one. I’m a Republican. How stupid is the GOP? They still don’t get it. I told them 5 years ago, 2 books ago, a national bestseller ago ("The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide"), and in hundreds of articles and commentaries, that Obamacare was never meant to help America, or heal the sick, or lower healthcare costs, or lower the debt, or expand the economy.

The GOP needs to stop calling Obamacare a "train wreck." That means it’s a mistake, or accident. That means it’s a gigantic flop, or failure. It’s NOT. This is a brilliant, cynical, and purposeful attempt to damage the U.S. economy, kill jobs, and bring down capitalism. It’s not a failure, it’sObama’s grand success. It’s not a "train wreck," Obamacare is a suicide attack. He wants to hurt us, to bring us to our knees, to capitulate- so we agree under duress to accept big government.

Obama’s hero and mentor was Saul Alinsky- a radical Marxist intent on destroying capitalism. Alinksky’s stated advice was to call the other guy "a terrorist" to hide your own intensions. To scream that the other guy is "ruining America," while you are the one actually plotting the destruction of America. To claim again and again…in every sentence of every speech…that you are "saving the middle class," while you are busy wiping out the middle class.

The GOP is so stupid they can’t see it. There are no mistakes here. This is a planned purposeful attack. The tell-tale sign isn’t the disastrous start to Obamacare. Or the devastating effect the new taxes are having on the economy. Or the death of full-time jobs. Or the overwhelming debt. Or the dramatic increases in health insurance rates. Or the 70% of doctors now thinking of retiring- bringing on a healthcare crisis of unimaginable proportions. Forget all that.

The real sign that this is a purposeful attack upon capitalism is how many Obama administration members and Democratic Congressmen are openly calling Tea Party Republicans and anyone who wants to stop Obamacare "terrorists." There’s the clue. Even the clueless GOP should be able to see that. They are calling the reasonable people…the patriots…the people who believe in the Constitution…the people who believe exactly what the Founding Fathers believed…the people who want to take power away from corrupt politicians who have put America $17 trillion in debt…terrorists?

That’s because they are Saul Alinsky-ing the GOP. The people trying to purposely hurt America, capitalism and the middle class…are calling the patriots by a terrible name to fool, and confuse, and distract the public.

Obamacare is a raving, rollicking, fantastic success. Stop calling it a failure. Here is what it was created to do. It is succeeding on all counts.

#1) Obamacare was intended to bring about the Marxist dream- redistribution of wealth. Rich people, small business owners, and the middle class are being robbed, so that the money can be redistributed to poor people (who vote Democrat). Think about it. If you’re rich or middle class, you now have to pay for your own healthcare costs (at much higher rates) AND 40 million other people’s costs too (through massive tax increases). So you’re stuck paying for both bills. You are left broke.

#2) Obamacare was intended to wipe out the middle class and make them dependent on government. Think about it. Even Obama’s IRS predicts that health insurance for a typical American family by 2016 will be $20,000 per year. But how would middle class Americans pay that bill and have anything left for food or housing or living? People that make $40K, or $50K, or $60K can’t possibly hope to spend $20K on health insurance without becoming homeless. Bingo. That’s how you make middle class people dependent on government. That’s how you make everyone addicted to government checks.

#3) As a bonus, Obamacare is intended to kill every decent paying job in the economy, creating only crummy, crappy part-time jobs. Why? Just to make sure the middle class is trapped, with no way out. Just to make sure no one has the $20,000 per year to pay for health insurance, thereby guaranteeing they become wards of the state.

#4) Obamacare is intended to bankrupt small business, and therefore starve donations to the GOP. Think about it. Do you know a small business owner? I know hundreds of them. Their rates are being doubled, tripled and quadrupled by Obamacare. Guess who writes 75% of the checks to Republican candidates and conservative causes? Small business. Even if a small business owner manages to survive, he or she certainly can’t write a big check to the GOP anymore. Money is the "mother’s milk" of politics. Without donations, a political party ceases to exist. Bingo. That’s the point of Obamacare. Obama is bankrupting his political opposition and drying up donations to the GOP.

#5) Obamacare is intended to make the IRS all-powerful. It adds thousands of new IRS agents. It puts the IRS in charge of overseeing 15% of the U.S. economy. The IRS has the right because of Obamacare to snoop into every aspect of your life, to go into your bank accounts, to fine you, to frighten you, to intimidate you. And Obama and his socialist cabal have access to your deepest medical secrets. By law your doctor has to ask your sexual history. That information is now in the hands of Obama and the IRS to blackmail GOP candidates into either not running, or supporting bigger government, or leaking the info and ruining your campaign. Or have you forgotten the IRS harassed, intimidated and persecuted critics ofObama and conservative groups? Now Obama hands the IRS even more power. Big Brother rules our lives.

#6) Obamacare is intended to unionize 15 million healthcare workers. That produces $15 billion in new union dues. That money goes to fund Democratic candidates and socialist causes- thereby guaranteeing Obama’s friends never lose another election, and Obama’s policies keep ruining capitalism and bankrupting business owners long after he’s out of office.

Message to the GOP: This isn’t a game. This isn’t tidily-winks. This is a serious, purposeful attempt to highjack America and destroy capitalism. This isn’t a train wreck. It’s purposeful suicide. It’s not failing; it’s working exactly according to plan. Obama knows what he’s doing. Stopapologizing and start fighting.

Oh and one more thing…Conservatives aren’t "terrorists." We are patriots and saviors. We represent the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. We are the heroes and good guys. Unless you get all this through your thick skulls, America is lost…forever

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.