SEE THE HANDWRITNG ON THE WALL.. Why Nigerian economy went into recession..
I still find it funny that most people don't know why Nigeria economy went into recession, they love the incompetent lies of Lai Mohammed about the past government ruining everything. It's also myopic to think that if Jonathan were to still be in power, we would be worse off.
The truth about Nigeria's recession is this; it was caused by the president's unguided rhetoric and uncultured body language.
Firstly, there is nothing we are buying today that we weren't buying 5 years ago, therefore it's not our purchase that put pressure on Naira but withdrawal of funds by foreign investors.
After the election, the president created instability with his unguided statements about how everyone is corrupt and how everyone is going to jail. The instability made foreign investors to liquidate their investment and change their money to dollars. In the process of trying to flee, they were willing to buy dollars at any price, which lead to high exchange dollar rate.
Even though some of them were not ready to run away, but want their money in dollars to save their investments from devaluation, the president gave a bad signal by banning deposit of foreign currency into domiciliary accounts. That was enough for free market believers to see the draconian handwriting on the wall, that was the beginning of dollar rush.
To make matters worse, the president came up with another outrageous policy of rationing dollar to certain sectors and blocking many sectors out. That was the nail in the coffin which facilitated the emergence of free FALL.
In the end, foreign investors took over $80B out of the economy within a short period and everything went down to free fall.
To those who believe it will be worse if Jonathan is still there, you are all wrong. Policy continuity and political stability will not let billions of dollars leave our shores within such tiny time frame. Even though the government might have income shortage, the private sector will weather the storm by their confidence in the market.
The fear of the unknown created by president M. Buhari is responsible for the economic downturn not low oil price. Interest rate in America is currently at 0.5% while it is 12% in Nigeria. JP Morgan Chase will not mind borrowing $50 billion from Feds at 0.5 and put in Nigeria for return of %2000 profit. Citi bank will do the same, likewise US Bank Corp.
Chase gave Buhari warning about the repercussions of his fixing policy before they pulled out, but his illiterate cyber warriors and miss educated e-soldiers said JPMORGAN can go to hell, they no longer believe in economic metrics since their messiah is in charge. Funny enough they are all suffering today because of the stupid policy, but they find relief by blaming it on past administration and Gucci appetite of average Nigerians.
For your information, if your president "kontunu" with his unguided rhetoric, Naira will go down to N1000/1 $. But we thank God, he is not longer talking.

*VERY INTERESTING INFORMATION*
A short time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people.
One response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a Pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows:
"Any Muslim *who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan,* discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. 
He *should not even try to find out whether he has Syphilis, because the Wasserman Test is the discovery of a Jew.*
If a Muslim *suspects that he has Gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, because he will be using the method of a Jew named Neissner.*
"A Muslim *who has heart disease must not use Digitalis, a discovery by  a Jew, Ludwig Traube.*
Should *he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the  Jews, Widal and Weil.*
If a Muslim *has Diabetes, he must not use Insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew.* 
If one *has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.*
Muslims *with convulsions must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of Chloral Hydrate.*
Arabs *must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew.*
Should *a Muslim child get Diphtheria, he must refrain from the “Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.*
"Muslims *should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram.*
They should *continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk.*
"Muslims *must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of Tuberculosis because a Jew,  Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.*
Muslim *doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.*
"In short, *good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain afflicted with Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Heart Disease, Headaches, Typhus, Diabetes, Mental Disorders, Polio Convulsions and Tuberculosis and be proud to obey the Islamic boycott."*
Oh, and by the way, *don't call for a doctor on your cell phone because the cell phone was invented in Israel by a Jewish engineer.*
Meanwhile I ask, *what medical contributions to the world have the Muslims made?"*
The *Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000;* that is
ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION *or 20% of the world's population.* They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
*Literature:*
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
*Peace:*
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
*Economics:*
(zero)
*Physics:*
(zero)
*Medicine:*
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad
*TOTAL: 7 SEVEN*
*The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000;* that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about *0.02% of the world's population.* They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
*Literature:*
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
*Peace:*
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
*Physics:*
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 -Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino
*TOTAL: 129!*
The Jews *are NOT promoting brainwashing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non-Muslims.*
The Jews *don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.*
There is *NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church.*
There is *NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.* 
The Jews *don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.*
Perhaps the world's Muslims *should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.*
Muslims must ask *'what can they do for  humankind'* before *they demand that humankind respects them.*
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it  all:
*If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.*  *If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel."* Benjamin Netanyahu:  General Eisenhower warned us.
It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead. He did this because he said in words to this effect:  *'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'*
Recently, the UK debated whether to *remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.* It is not removed as yet.  *However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.*
It is now more than 65 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, *claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.*
This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people. 
*Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.*
How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center *'NEVER HAPPENED'* because *it offends some Muslim in the United.. States?*

A Few Kind Words about the Most Evil Man in Mankind’s History

by George H. Smith

Smith explains some fundamental features of Immanuel Kant’s moral and political theory.
Since several of my previous essays have been linked to Rand’s moral condemnation of Immanuel Kant (1724-1802), especially her infamous remark that Kant was “the most evil man in mankind’s history” (The Objectivist, Sept. 1971), I thought I would write a conciliatory essay or two about the moral and political theory of this villainous character whose evil supposedly exceeded that of the most murderous dictators in history. (The source of direct quotations from Kant are indicated by initials. See the conclusion of this essay for bibliographic details.) 
My intention is not to defend Kant’s moral theory (I have serious disagreements) but to summarize some of its important features in a sympathetic manner. By this I mean that even though I reject a deontological (duty-centered) approach to ethics, I find Kant’s moral theory at once fascinating and highly suggestive, containing ideas that can be modified and then incorporated into a teleological (goal-directed) approach to ethics.
Kant’s first two major works on moral theory—Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788)—might be described today as treatments of metaethics rather than of moral theory as many people understand that label. They are metaethical in the sense that they are largely devoted to the meanings of moral terms, such as “duty” or “obligation,” an explanation of why we may say that ethical principles are rationally justifiable, and the proper methodology of moral reasoning. If these works offer little in the way of practical maxims, this is because they focus a good deal on Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which is a purely formal principle without any specific material content. The Categorical Imperative per se does not prescribe particular goals that people should or should not pursue. Rather, it mandates that moral maxims and general principles must be universally applicable to every rational being before they can qualify as authentically moral in character. As Kant wrote:

The categorical imperative, which as such only expresses what obligation is, reads: act according to a maxim which can, at the same time, be valid as a universal law.—You must, therefore begin by looking at the subjective principle of your action. But to know whether this principle is also objectively valid, your reason must subject it to the test of conceiving yourself as giving universal law through this principle. If your maxim qualifies for a giving of universal law, then it qualifies as objectively valid.  (DV, p. 14.)
In other words, the Categorical Imperative is a formal principle of universalizability, a fundamental test that normative maxims and principles must first pass before they can qualify as rationally justifiable. (When Kant spoke of a moral law, he was drawing an analogy between the Categorical Imperative and the physical laws of nature. Just as there are no exceptions to the physical laws of nature, so there should be no exceptions to this fundamental law of morality.) Here is how Robert J. Sullivan explained the point of the Categorical Imperative in his excellent book Immanuel Kant’s Moral Theory (Cambridge, 1989, p. 165):

Kant calls this formula the “supreme principle of morality” because it obligates us to recognize and respect the right and obligation of every other person to choose and to act autonomously. Since moral rules have the characteristic of universality, what is morally forbidden to one is forbidden to all, what is morally permissible for one is equally permissible for all, and what is morally obligatory for one is equally obligatory for all. We may not claim to be exempt from obligations to which we hold others, nor may we claims permissions we are unwilling to extend to everyone else.
In “Causality Versus Duty” (reprinted in Philosophy Who Needs It) Ayn Rand launched an all-out assault on the concept of “duty,” calling it “one of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy.” She objected to the common practice of using “duty” and “obligation” interchangeably, explaining what she regarded as significant differences and making some excellent points along the way. It should be understood, however, that Kant did not draw this distinction. For him “duty” and “moral obligation” are synonymous terms, so if the term “duty” jars you while reading Kant, simply substitute “moral obligation” and you will understand his meaning.
I regard “Causality Versus Duty” as an excellent essay overall (philosophically considered), but, predictably, Rand drags in Kant as the premier philosopher of duty and then distorts his ideas.
Now, if one is going to use another philosopher as a target, one should at least make an honest and reasonable effort to depict the ideas of that philosopher accurately. But Rand shows no indication of having done this. According to Rand, for example, “The meaning of the term ‘duty’ is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire, or interest.” The problem with Rand’s definition of “duty” is not simply that it does not apply to Kant’s conception of duty but that it directly contradicts it. Even a cursory reading of Kant’s works on moral theory will reveal the central role that autonomy played in his approach. By “autonomy” Kant meant the self-legislating will of every rational agent; and by this he meant, in effect, that we must judge every moral principle with our own reason and never accept the moral judgments of others, not even God, without rational justification. Rand’s claim that duty, according to Kant, means “obedience to some higher authority” is not only wrong; it is fundamentally antithetical to Kant’s conception of ethics. This is clear in the opening paragraph of what is probably Kant’s best-known essay, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!”—that is the motto of the enlightenment. (WE, p. 41.)
Some of Rand’s statements about Kant are largely accurate, as we see in this passage:

“Duty,” he holds, is the only standard of virtue; but virtue is not its own reward: if a reward is involved, it is no longer virtue. The only motivation, he holds, is devotion to duty for duty’s sake; only an action motivated exclusively by such devotion is a moral action (i.e., performed without any concern for inclination [desire] or self-interest.
Kant believed that moral virtue will make one “worthy of happiness” and thereby foster a sense of what Kant called “self-esteem.” Curiously perhaps, in Galt’s Speech Rand used the same phrase (“worthy of happiness”) in relation to self-esteem. But Rand was correct insofar as Kant denied that these and other possible consequences should constitute the motive of one’s actions. Kant held that we should follow the dictates of duty unconditionally, that is, without regard for the consequences of our actions, whether for ourselves or others.
A major problem with Rand’s treatment of Kant in “Causality Versus Duty” is she harps on his defense of moral duty without ever mentioning the Categorical Imperative, which is the centerpiece of Kant’s moral philosophy. As we have seen, the Categorical Imperative is not some nefarious demand that we obey the dictates of God, society, or government. Rather, it is a purely formal requirement that all moral principles must be universalizable. The Categorical Imperative is a dictate of reason that our moral principles be consistent, in the sense that what is right or wrong for me must also be right or wrong for everyone else in similar circumstances. Kant is often credited with three basic formulations of the Categorical Imperative, but he framed the principle differently in different works, and one Kantian scholar has estimated that we find as many as twenty different formulations in his collected writings. There are many such problems in Kant’s writings, and these have led to somewhat different interpretations of the Categorical Imperative, as we find in hundreds of critical commentaries written about Kant. Although I am familiar with all of Kant’s major writings on ethics, I do not qualify as a Kantian scholar, so I do not feel competent to take a stand on which particular interpretation is correct. But his basic point is clear enough, and it was nothing less than philosophical malpractice for Ayn Rand to jump all over Kant’s defense of duty (or moral obligation) without explaining his Categorical Imperative. Indeed, to my knowledge Rand mentioned the Categorical Imperative only once in her published writings. In For the New Intellectual, she claimed that Kant’s Categorical Imperative “makes itself known by means of a feeling, as a special sense of duty.” This is absolutely false, a claim that Kant protested against explicitly. He insisted that the duty to follow the Categorical Imperative—i.e., our moral obligation to apply moral judgments universally and consistently—is a logical implication of our “practical reason,” not a feeling at all.
I shall go into greater detail about Kant’s Categorical Imperative (especially its political implications) in my next essay, but before drawing this essay to a close I wish to make a few brief observations about Kant’s attitude toward happiness. From reading Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, or some other Objectivist philosophers on Kant, one can easily come away with the notion that Kant was a champion of selflessness, altruism, or perhaps something even worse. This misleading interpretation is based on Kant’s argument that moral actions should not be motivated by a desire for happiness, whether for ourselves or for others. The following passage by Kant is typical:

The maxim of self-love (prudence) merely advises; the law of morality commands. Now there is a great difference between that which are advised to do and that which we are obligated to do.” (CPR, pp. 37-8.)…..A command that everyone should seek to make himself happy would be foolish, for no one commands another to do what he already invariably wishes to do….But to command morality under the name of duty is very reasonable, for its precept will not, for one thing, be willingly obeyed by everyone when it is in conflict with his inclinations. (CPR, 38.)
Kant’s opposition to happiness as a specifically moral motive was based on his rather technical conception of ethics, and on his distinction between moral principles and prudential maxims. He believed that the maxims that will lead to happiness vary so dramatically from person to person that they cannot be universalized and so do not qualify as general moral principles. The actions that will make me happy will not necessarily make you or anyone else happy. For this and other reasons, Kant argued that happiness cannot provide a stable moral motive for actions but must depend on the prudential wisdom of particular moral agents. Egoists like Ayn Rand will obviously object to Kant’s views on this matter, and, in my judgment, there are good reasons for doing so. But it would be a serious error to suppose that Kant was somehow anti-happiness. On the contrary, Kant repeatedly asserted that personal happiness is an essential component of the good life.  According to Kant, reason allows “us to seek our advantage in every way possible to us, and it can even promise, on the testimony of experience, that we shall probably find it in our interest, on the whole, to follow its commands rather than transgress them, especially if we add prudence to our practice of morality.” (DV, p. 13.) “To assure one’s own happiness is a duty (at least indirectly)….”(GMM, p. 64.) But happiness will not serve as a motive or standard of moral value because “men cannot form under the name of ‘happiness’ any determinate and assured conception.”
Nevertheless, the “highest good possible in the world” consists neither of virtue nor happiness alone, but “of the union and harmony of the two.” (TP, p. 64.) Kant made a number of similar statements in various works, as when he wrote that the “pursuit of the moral law” when pursued harmoniously with “the happiness of rational beings” is “the highest good in the world. (CJ, p. 279.)
Kant’s highly individualistic notion of the pursuit of happiness—the very fact that disqualified it as a universalizable moral motive—was a major factor in his defense of a free society in which every person should be able to pursue happiness in his own way, so long as he respects the equal rights of others to do the same. Jean H. Faurot (The Philosopher and the State: From Hooker to Popper, 1971, p. 196) put it this way.

[Kant] thought of society as composed of autonomous, self-possessed individuals, each of whom is endowed with inalienable rights, including the right to pursue happiness in his own way…. There is, according to Kant, only one true natural (inborn) right—the right of freedom.
As Jeffrie G. Murphy explained in Kant: The Philosophy of Right (1970, p. 93):

[Kant’s] ideal moral world is not one in which everyone would have the same purpose. Rather his view is that the ideal moral world would be one in which each man would have the liberty to realize all of his purposes in so far as these principles are compatible with the like liberty for all.
According to Kant, the “first consideration” of a legal system should be to insure that “each person remains at liberty to seek his happiness in any way he thinks best so long as he does not violate …the rights of other fellow subjects.” (TP, p. 78.) And again:

No one can compel me…to be happy after his fashion; instead, every person may seek happiness in the way that seems best to him, if only he does not violate the freedom of others to strive toward such similar ends as are compatible with everyone’s freedom under a possible universal law (i.e., this right of others). (TP, p. 72.)
Kant was resolutely opposed to paternalistic governments. A government that views subjects as a father views his children, as immature beings who are incompetent to decide for themselves what is good or bad for them and dictates instead “how they ought to be happy” is “the worst despotism we can think of.” Paternalism “subverts all the freedom of the subjects, who would have no freedom whatsoever.” (TP, p. 73.) The sovereign who “wants to make people happy in accord with his own concept of happiness…becomes a despot.” (TP, p. 81.)
Needless to say, these and similar remarks scarcely fit the stereotypical Objectivist image of Kant as a villainous character who wished to subvert reason, morality, and the quest for personal happiness. Kant, whatever his errors, made a serious effort to probe the nature of ethics and moral obligation to their foundations, and to justify a theory of ethics by reason alone. A regard for the dignity and moral autonomy of every individual, regardless of his or her station in life, runs deep in the writings of Kant. But more needs to be said about Kant’s political theory, so that shall be the main topic of my next essay.


The following are the sources for the quotations from Kant used in this essay.
CJ: Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith, rev. Nicholas Walker (Oxford University Press, 2007).
CPR: Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).
DV: The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Harper, 1964).
GMM: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated and analyzed by H.J. Paton, in The Moral Law (Hutchinson, 1972).
TP: “On the Proverb: That May be True in Theory, But Is Of No Practical Use,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Hackett, 1983).
WE: “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Hackett, 1983).






Related






Immanuel Kant and the Natural Law Tradition





Immanuel Kant on Our Duty to Obey Government





Immanuel Kant, the Social Contract, and the State























More to Explore






The Lust for Power





Six Reasons Libertarians Should Reject the Non-Aggression Principle





Does More Technology Create Unemployment?






















Powered by

This is part of a series
Part: 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
 11
 12
 13
 



Share
 





George H. Smith

George H. Smith was formerly Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for Humane Studies, a lecturer on American History for Cato Summer Seminars, and Executive Editor of Knowledge Products. Smith's fourth book, The System of Liberty, was recently published by Cambridge University Press.




Explore our growing library of content
Start Exploring ▻



Sign Up to receive updates >
See our full list of newsletters


 Subscribe

Justice, prosperity, responsibility, tolerance, cooperation, and peace.
Libertarianism.org

GOODS IN POLITICS,

POLITICS IN GOOD

African nations that are going through modernization process, must endeavour to develop political systems that would suit their individual circumstances. There was speculations that the instability that have engulfed Africa since the 1950 emanated from the process of adapting political systems from outside without modification to reflect the their culture, level of education, economic and social consideration.

Unless this is done, one can safely predict that the picture of political system in Africa is bound to continue to experience instability.

The African continent is an infant when it comes to politics generally and for good political leadership, someone who has a sound articulative reasoning, someone who is honest and above all has the fear of God and the fear of the people he rules over. This we have not experienced especially in this nation, Nigeria.

Government can be defined as the machinery through which the will of the state is formulated, expressed and realized. It should be an institution of the state and not just an art of governing as our present day politicians have taken it to be. Ignorance has made our leaders to think government to be a body vested with the supreme power of the state affairs and to some is a family affair. Little do they know that a government should be able to earn for itself legitimate support from the people for it to yield tranquillity and stability in a system.

Politics has been transformed to a bloody struggle for power, in which you either win or die. People therefore insist on power by all means and as a result all elections conducted in Nigeria had been replete with accusation of malpractice and rigging of votes.

We have a physical cancer, a huge imperfection and if we do not treat it soon it will yield a catastrophic damage to our society.

VONY cries out to all youths of Nigeria, a colourful destiny is guaranteed if you ignore not politics because if you do, you will be lacking some sense of responsibility.

VONY says if you ignore you will be ruled by evil men, tyrants and selfish people .Politics is a universal phenomenon and it is mearnt for all and government is for you, men of vision, sound minds, someone who believes education is for all  and the key to national development, one who can stand on his words of promise and not yield to greed.

Read more:http//www.myvony.com

Dele Momodu Predicts 2015 Presidential Election Bamidele Olowosagba, 3 months ago Email 6 18 To many Nigerians, both home and abroad, Dele Momodu is known as a Nigerian journalist, publisher, actor, motivational speaker and businessman who owns the renowned Ovation International, a magazine that has given publicity to people in Africa and all over the World. What many people do not know about the 54-year-old publisher born in Ile-Ife, Osun State, western Nigeria on 16 May, 1960, is that he is also a political analyst. To this end, Momodu, who graduated from the University of Ife, (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife) in 1982 with a degree in Yoruba and a Masters degree in English Literature in 1988, writes a weekly article called PENdulum on the back page of Thisday newspaper. Gen. Buhar and President Jonathan. Gen. Buhar and President Jonathan. The articles are praised for highlighting issues in Nigeria, as well as discussing popular topics, current events and famous people. In one of his latest articles, Momodu predicted how votes will be shared between a former Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, and the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan come 2015 presidential elections in Nigeria. According to the Momodu, if Nigerians are asked to elect their president today, Buhari would defeat President Jonathan mercilessly. Below is how Dele Momodu came to this conclusion: Advertisement “Fellow Nigerians, time changes everything indeed. In 2011, I would have said worse things about General Muhammadu Buhari. In truth, I actually wrote Buhari off completely, not without cogent reasons that I considered valid and relevant at that time. The first was that Buhari was too old to lead us. I was biased by the Obama Presidency and the emergence of David Cameron in Britain. I felt Buhari as a former dictator should be totally expunged from the race. I was also brainwashed by the relentless propaganda that he was a religious fundamentalist of the worst kind. If I was good in Fine Arts, I would have painted him in the lurid and monstrous image of Lucifer. That was how bad it was. Trust me, I’m supposed to be one of the most liberal and tolerant human beings but it was just difficult for me to accept Buhari as a Presidential candidate at this time and age. I nearly clashed with my dear friend and brother, Simon Kolawole, after reading an article he had penned on Buhari and practically endorsing him at that time. I was so livid that I did not wait for Simon to get out of church before I started bombarding his lines with frenetic calls. When he eventually got back to me, and in his usual humble manner said “Egbon, I missed your calls, hope all is well?” I responded that all was not well as he had spoilt my appetite and breakfast that morning with his effusive praise of someone I considered a red-faced tyrant. Simon was as cool as cucumber. He was incredibly blunt as he instantly confessed his unrepentant love, admiration and support for Buhari… [​IMG] So far, in all 2015 Opinion polls, Buhari is beating Jonathan mercilessly. Without doubt, Buhari is a modern-day wonder. The story of his life is a stuff of thriller novels. In a country where money fixes most things and people, how did he manage to control the bodies and souls of his fanatical supporters? What is it that makes him such a dual personality that draws so many people to him while others withdraw as if to run away from a victim of Ebola? What can Buhari do or achieve at his age in this modern world where life itself has become computerised? I suffered from this interior monologue for a long time. Some of my fears started evaporating one night in Abuja when I was invited over to meet him at the instance of Prince Lanrewaju Tejuoso, one of his godsons. I was dazed at the ease Prince Lanrewaju was able to get him to meet with me at such short notice. I was impressed that there were no intruders during our heart-to-heart talk. Perhaps, because he had no money to share, the usual parasites crawling all over the corridors of power were not in sight. He spoke calmly but firmly. He had this childlike innocence around him. It was difficult to imagine this man sitting across me could hurt a fly even as a soldier. There were no airs around him or chips on his shoulders. What you saw was what you got; take it or leave it. Many had confessed to similar reaction upon meeting him. We took pictures together without much ado. And I actually found him more charismatic than my jaundiced eyes could have permitted. What I saw was that raw Fulani beauty and handsomeness. I and my aides left the place liking him a bit. Of course the election came as usual and Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan trounced Buhari mercilessly. But most of us got so carried away that we failed to appreciate how well the man had performed against all odds. Here was a man without loads of cash. He didn’t have a preponderance of powerful Governors behind him. He could not mobilise so many billionaires to fund him. He lacked the power of incumbency. He could not secure the much needed coalition with ACN at the time. Many Christians saw him as Satan on earth. Many youths considered him too old. The super-rich saw him as the sword of Damocles dangling over them. All the odds were stacked up against him. Yet this poor man, as I like to describe him, recorded a whopping 12,214,853 votes while President Jonathan scored 22,495,187 votes. Let’s break it down into simple Maths. Jonathan had a good spread scoring 25% or more in 31 States. Buhari managed to score 25% or more in 16 States and yet got a cumulative result of over 12 million votes. A good Mathematician should be able to help us here because I wish to show our President’s handlers that they will pay heavily for complacency if they assume and take it for granted that they can beat Buhari easily like PDP had always done in the past. Let me explain it further. A man who won the mandatory 25% in about half of the States secured by the President still went ahead to poll over half of what the President got. Now this is the trickery part. Let me begin with the most obvious. Buhari had only 37.96% in Adamawa while Jonathan had 56%. The registered voters were 1,816,094 but the voter-turnout was a miserable 49.98%. With the way the country is right now, PDP would require a miracle to win Adamawa with a landslide. If Buhari secures the APC ticket, it is almost certain that he would clean up that State. And in case the voters turn out much bigger, it means that State can wipe off some of the deficits Buhari suffered in 2011. The two leading parties can still jerk up about one million extras which won’t be a bad idea even if PDP still gets 25% or more. Let’s walk across to another interesting State, Bauchi where Buhari recorded 1,315,209 against Jonathan’s 258,404 despite the avuncular presence of PDP Governor, Yisa Yuguda. The registered voters here were 2,523,614 but only 1,610,094 voters chose to vote with nearly 1,000,000 voters hibernating somewhere. I hope you’re patient enough to follow this Maths lesson. Benue would certainly be a major battle ground this time for the candidates because the State has over 1.3 million voters (out of a total registration of 2,390,884) buried somewhere for the strongest candidate to resurrect. Here ethnicity and religion would play critical roles more than ever before. It is presently a virtual PDP State with Jonathan polling 694,776 against Buhari’s 109,680 and ACN (Nuhu Ribadu) 223,007. Benue had always been a State of enlightened voters and it may swing in favour of a serious candidate. Let’s keep moving and find somewhere to land in the troubled spot of Borno State. This is a treasure ground with 2,380,957 out of which more than half of the voters have absconded and vanished into thin air. In 2011, Buhari 909,763 against the President’s humble 207,075 votes. Now this State is under fire but is NOW largely controlled by the new alliance known as APC. Let’s saunter across to Gombe where Buhari scored 459,898 against Jonathan’s 290,347 votes out of a total registration of 1,318,377. All the parties combined recorded 770,019 voters. The implication of this is that if this State decides to be generous, it may dash out about 548,358 votes. We are still moving and scavenging for the votes wherever they are hiding. Let’s say some quick Hello to our Brother, Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, who couldn’t hold Buhari down despite his equally tall physique. Here Buhari polled 663,994 against Jonathan’s 419,252. Total votes cast came to 1,140,766 out of 2,013,974 total registrations. Do not say I told you, this State has some 873,208 unseen registered voters probably perambulating as we write. This journey is still long and arduous. Kaduna is a major war zone for the candidates because of its peculiar characteristics. Buhari’s supremacy was hotly challenged as Jonathan polled 1,190,179 against Buhari’s 1,334,244 votes . Total votes cast were 2,569,963 out of 3,905,387 total registered voters. Now wait for the good news of the kingdom; this beautiful State has 1,335,424 voters that it can conjure whenever needed or ready. If you think Kaduna was super, please, wait for the almighty Kano where no serious candidate can play silly pranks with the energetic and fearless Governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso. In 2011, Buhari massacred Jonathan with 1,624,543 against 440,666. The then Governor and Presidential candidate, Ibrahim Shekarau even scored more than the President with his 526,310 votes. The total votes cast came to 2,673,228 out of 5,027,297. In case your Maths is poor like mine, let’s find a calculator before the brains explode. Kano alone can conveniently and benevolently donate 2,354,069 potential voters out of the skies. We finally arrive in Buhari’s homestead of Katsina where he expectedly polled 1,163,919 against Jonathan’s 428,392. It is either many Katsina people didn’t dig their own son, since prophets hardly get honoured at home, or Buhari just didn’t employ artful dodgers to manipulate the votes in his favour. In all, 1,639,532 voters performed their civic duty out of 3,126,898 registered voters. By fire, by force, Katsina on a good day can still conjure some 1,487,366 votes. Please, permit me to fast forward to the State of the Sokoto Caliphate where a floodgate can still be opened. Strangely, Buhari pulled merely 540,769 shots against Jonathan’s 309,057. A total of 909,808 voters came out of 2,267,509 registered voters. No one is able to explain this anomalous situation to us properly but some 1,357,701 unseen voters may decide to show up in 2015. Please, bear with me, you must be getting tired but we need to do this together because of my over-confident friends in Abuja who must have had F9 in Mathematics like me. Let me now give you the shock treatment and take you straight to the biggest theatres of war. I must warn that this not for the faint-hearted. Welcome to the heartbeat of Nigeria known as Lagos State where Jonathan polled 1,281,688 against Buhari’s 189,983 and Nuhu Ribadu’s 427,203. Wait for this, only 1,945,044 voters turned up out of 6,108,069 voters. In effect, Lagos can, in its true majesty, produce additional 4,163,025 out of its bag of magic. I wish there was space to display all the figures but it won’t be possible. But let me continue with the random sampling. Many of the States won by Jonathan or PDP or both, depending on why you voted in 2011, are not so easily available at this time. Take Oyo for example under the control of APC beyond the next Presidential election may prove too tough to handle. Only 863,544 out of 2,572,140 voters appeared in public but we don’t know the whereabouts of 1,708,596 potential voters. Ogun State is another interesting territory where 543,715 people voted out of 1,941,170 who registered to vote. Meanwhile, the largest turnout of voters was recorded in areas controlled by Jonathan but let’s examine the figures. Abia has used up 1,188,333 out of 1,524,484; Akwa Ibom 1,232,395 out of 1,616,873; Anambra 1,157,239 out of 2,011,746; BAYELSA 506,693 out of 591,870; Cross River 726,341 out of 1,148,486; Delta 1,398,579 out of 2,032,191; Edo 621 out of 1,655,776; Ebonyi 502,890 out of 1,050,534; Ekiti 261,858 out of 764,726; Enugu 814,009 out of 1,303155; Imo 1,409,850 out of 1,687,293; Kwara 414,754 out of 1,152,361; Ondo 486,837 out of 1,616,091; Osun (lost by Jonathan) 512,714 out of 1,293,967; Rivers (the largest State in South South) 1,854,116 out of 2,429,231 and so and so on. This should give you a fair representation of what is at stake in the 2015 election. Politics is not exactly Maths but it is still a game of numbers. Those who think an incumbent President cannot be defeated should wake up from their self-induced coma. The mood of the Nigerian nation is very similar to that which swept Obama into power. Lagos and Kano combined account for 11,135,366 registered voters out of a grand total of 73,528,040. Only 38,199,219 people voted in all the States. There are 35,328,821 floating somewhere. Most of them are comfortably resident in APC States. My free advice to the Jonathan campaigner is simple; stop projecting our President as a sectional leader whose only qualification is where he comes from. Stop raining insults on Northerners and avoid maligning innocent Muslims. The religious card you wish and hope to play will never play out in favour of President Jonathan. You should concentrate on projecting the positive work and his Transformation Agenda. A President is the father of the nation. A lot of damage has been done by portraying him as a victim who’s derided by everyone except his own. The President’s handlers should worry more about how the goodwill of 2011 got frittered away in such a jiffy. Above all, they should urgently search for competent Maths teachers. Believe me, the figures are no longer adding up.” READ MORE: http://www.naij.com/313165-dele-momodu-predicts-2015-presidential-election.html

Wealth and Capital Why Inequality Matters By Bill Gates on October 13, 2014 A 700-page treatise on economics translated from French is not exactly a light summer read—even for someone with an admittedly high geek quotient. But this past July, I felt compelled to read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century after reading several reviews and hearing about it from friends. I’m glad I did. I encourage you to read it too, or at least a good summary, like this one from The Economist. Piketty was nice enough to talk with me about his work on a Skype call last month. As I told him, I agree with his most important conclusions, and I hope his work will draw more smart people into the study of wealth and income inequality—because the more we understand about the causes and cures, the better. I also said I have concerns about some elements of his analysis, which I’ll share below. I very much agree with Piketty that: High levels of inequality are a problem—messing up economic incentives, tilting democracies in favor of powerful interests, and undercutting the ideal that all people are created equal. Capitalism does not self-correct toward greater equality—that is, excess wealth concentration can have a snowball effect if left unchecked. Governments can play a constructive role in offsetting the snowballing tendencies if and when they choose to do so. To be clear, when I say that high levels of inequality are a problem, I don’t want to imply that the world is getting worse. In fact, thanks to the rise of the middle class in countries like China, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Thailand, the world as a whole is actually becoming more egalitarian, and that positive global trend is likely to continue. But extreme inequality should not be ignored—or worse, celebrated as a sign that we have a high-performing economy and healthy society. Yes, some level of inequality is built in to capitalism. As Piketty argues, it is inherent to the system. The question is, what level of inequality is acceptable? And when does inequality start doing more harm than good? That’s something we should have a public discussion about, and it’s great that Piketty helped advance that discussion in such a serious way. However, Piketty’s book has some important flaws that I hope he and other economists will address in the coming years. For all of Piketty’s data on historical trends, he does not give a full picture of how wealth is created and how it decays. At the core of his book is a simple equation: r > g, where r stands for the average rate of return on capital and g stands for the rate of growth of the economy. The idea is that when the returns on capital outpace the returns on labor, over time the wealth gap will widen between people who have a lot of capital and those who rely on their labor. The equation is so central to Piketty’s arguments that he says it represents “the fundamental force for divergence” and “sums up the overall logic of my conclusions.” Other economists have assembled large historical datasets and cast doubt on the value of r > g for understanding whether inequality will widen or narrow. I’m not an expert on that question. What I do know is that Piketty’s r > g doesn’t adequately differentiate among different kinds of capital with different social utility. Imagine three types of wealthy people. One guy is putting his capital into building his business. Then there’s a woman who’s giving most of her wealth to charity. A third person is mostly consuming, spending a lot of money on things like a yacht and plane. While it’s true that the wealth of all three people is contributing to inequality, I would argue that the first two are delivering more value to society than the third. I wish Piketty had made this distinction, because it has important policy implications, which I’ll get to below. More important, I believe Piketty’s r > g analysis doesn’t account for powerful forces that counteract the accumulation of wealth from one generation to the next. I fully agree that we don’t want to live in an aristocratic society in which already-wealthy families get richer simply by sitting on their laurels and collecting what Piketty calls “rentier income”—that is, the returns people earn when they let others use their money, land, or other property. But I don’t think America is anything close to that. Take a look at the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans. About half the people on the list are entrepreneurs whose companies did very well (thanks to hard work as well as a lot of luck). Contrary to Piketty’s rentier hypothesis, I don’t see anyone on the list whose ancestors bought a great parcel of land in 1780 and have been accumulating family wealth by collecting rents ever since. In America, that old money is long gone—through instability, inflation, taxes, philanthropy, and spending. You can see one wealth-decaying dynamic in the history of successful industries. In the early part of the 20th century, Henry Ford and a small number of other entrepreneurs did very well in the automobile industry. They owned a huge amount of the stock of car companies that achieved a scale advantage and massive profitability. These successful entrepreneurs were the outliers. Far more people—including many rentiers who invested their family wealth in the auto industry—saw their investments go bust in the period from 1910 to 1940, when the American auto industry shrank from 224 manufacturers down to 21. So instead of a transfer of wealth toward rentiers and other passive investors, you often get the opposite. I have seen the same phenomenon at work in technology and other fields. Piketty is right that there are forces that can lead to snowballing wealth (including the fact that the children of wealthy people often get access to networks that can help them land internships, jobs, etc.). However, there are also forces that contribute to the decay of wealth, and Capital doesn’t give enough weight to them. I am also disappointed that Piketty focused heavily on data on wealth and income while neglecting consumption altogether. Consumption data represent the goods and services that people buy—including food, clothing, housing, education, and health—and can add a lot of depth to our understanding of how people actually live. Particularly in rich societies, the income lens really doesn’t give you the sense of what needs to be fixed. There are many reasons why income data, in particular, can be misleading. For example, a medical student with no income and lots of student loans would look in the official statistics like she’s in a dire situation but may well have a very high income in the future. Or a more extreme example: Some very wealthy people who are not actively working show up below the poverty line in years when they don’t sell any stock or receive other forms of income. It’s not that we should ignore the wealth and income data. But consumption data may be even more important for understanding human welfare. At a minimum, it shows a different—and generally rosier—picture from the one that Piketty paints. Ideally, I’d like to see studies that draw from wealth, income, and consumption data together. Even if we don’t have a perfect picture today, we certainly know enough about the challenges that we can take action. Piketty’s favorite solution is a progressive annual tax on capital, rather than income. He argues that this kind of tax “will make it possible to avoid an endless inegalitarian spiral while preserving competition and incentives for new instances of primitive accumulation.” I agree that taxation should shift away from taxing labor. It doesn’t make any sense that labor in the United States is taxed so heavily relative to capital. It will make even less sense in the coming years, as robots and other forms of automation come to perform more and more of the skills that human laborers do today. But rather than move to a progressive tax on capital, as Piketty would like, I think we’d be best off with a progressive tax on consumption. Think about the three wealthy people I described earlier: One investing in companies, one in philanthropy, and one in a lavish lifestyle. There’s nothing wrong with the last guy, but I think he should pay more taxes than the others. As Piketty pointed out when we spoke, it's hard to measure consumption (for example, should political donations count?). But then, almost every tax system—including a wealth tax—has similar challenges. Like Piketty, I’m also a big believer in the estate tax. Letting inheritors consume or allocate capital disproportionately simply based on the lottery of birth is not a smart or fair way to allocate resources. As Warren Buffett likes to say, that’s like “choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.” I believe we should maintain the estate tax and invest the proceeds in education and research—the best way to strengthen our country for the future. Philanthropy also can be an important part of the solution set. It’s too bad that Piketty devotes so little space to it. A century and a quarter ago, Andrew Carnegie was a lonely voice encouraging his wealthy peers to give back substantial portions of their wealth. Today, a growing number of very wealthy people are pledging to do just that. Philanthropy done well not only produces direct benefits for society, it also reduces dynastic wealth. Melinda and I are strong believers that dynastic wealth is bad for both society and the children involved. We want our children to make their own way in the world. They’ll have all sorts of advantages, but it will be up to them to create their lives and careers. The debate over wealth and inequality has generated a lot of partisan heat. I don’t have a magic solution for that. But I do know that, even with its flaws, Piketty’s work contributes at least as much light as heat. And now I’m eager to see research that brings more light to this important topic.

Celebrating the Life of Nelson Mandela Posted on December 19, 2013 December 10, 2013: As the OIC International family reflects on the legacy of Nelson Mandela we are comforted by the fact that positive and transformative change can happen, particular in the lives of the most vulnerable. Nelson Mandela’s life is the perfect testimony of servant leadership. We are reminded of a proverb, “the test of a true leader, is at the end of the day, when the battle is won, the people will say, look what we have done.” Mandela’s life is the best representation of the strength of a people’s struggle for dignity, and ownership of their own destiny. As I reflect on my time in Johannesburg, representing survivors of apartheid before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I understood then that my life would be forever focused on the lives of the most vulnerable. President Mandela served as my standard bearer for what was possible and inspires my work today with OIC International. In his own words, President Mandela said, “the ideals we cherish, our fondest dreams and fervent hopes may not be realized in our lifetime. But that is beside the point. The knowledge that in your day you did your duty, and lived up to the expectations of our fellow men is in itself a rewarding experience and magnificent achievement.” Mandela’s decision to maintain his fight despite the great odds created the space for others to act courageously and seek justice and fairness. Our late founder Rev. Leon Sullivan, moved by the struggle for freedom and dignity traveled to South Africa as a member of the board of General Motors, during the height of apartheid and returned to the United States to organize Fortune 500 CEO’s to draft the Global Sullivan Principles of Corporate Social Responsibility. This is just one example of the many the world family continues to share. As we prepare to say goodbye to the physical body of Mandela, we remain empowered by his legacy and his courage and conviction is ever present in the work we do every day. Thank you Madiba, signature Crispian Kirk President and CEO OIC International This entry was posted in Press Room. Bookmark the permalink. ← Mourning the Loss of Mandela Ending Hunger, Promoting Peace: Report from Ghana →

By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited... The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while. Bill Gates Change, Time, Bad As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. Bill Gates Others, Next, Leaders In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn't been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A's without taking a book home. I didn't go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam. Bill Gates

EMPOWER NIGERIA Your Personal Success Creed... BELIEVE IN YOURSELF,believe in those who work with you .Believe in your employer.Believe in your friends. Believe in your family.Believe in your country and believe in GOD. Be PATIENT and TOLERANT with other people who do not believe in these commitments as you do. One thing I believe is that success is as a result of ORGANIZED intelligent effort and it does not depend upon LUCK,it does not depend upon MIRACLES and it does not depend on my FELLOWMEN. YOU will get out of life exactly what you put into it,therefor work to position yourself in the arears for which you have developed a strong desire ,a kin interest and a burning passion. SUCCESS is always the result of conscientious, consistent,efficient ,valuable, ORGANIZED INTELLIGENT EFFORT

Youth development is a process that prepares a young person to meet the challenges of adolescence and adulthood and achieve his or her full potential. Youth development is promoted through activities and experiences that help youth develop social, ethical, emotional, physical, and cognitive competencies. Youth leadership is part of the youth development process and supports the young person in developing: (a) the ability to analyze his or her own strengths and weaknesses, set personal and vocational goals, and have the self-esteem, confidence, motivation, and abilities to carry them out (including the ability to establish support networks in order to fully participate in community life and effect positive social change); and (b) the ability to guide or direct others on a course of action, influence the opinions and behaviors of others, and serve as a role model (Wehmeyer, Agran, & Hughes, 1998). Conditions that promote healthy youth development are supported through programs and activities in schools and communities. Youth development researchers and practitioners emphasize that effective programs and interventions recognize youths’ strengths and seek to promote positive development rather than addressing risks in isolation. Youth who are constructively involved in learning and doing and who are connected to positive adults and peers are less likely to engage in risky or self-defeating behaviors. Providing the conditions for positive youth development is a responsibility shared by families, schools, and communities. The conditions for healthy youth development reside in families, schools, and communities. Families promote healthy youth development when they:

Love is expressed as an action and experienced as a feeling. Yet, love has an essence that resists defining in any single way — it encompasses compassion, determination, tolerance, endurance, support, faith, and much more. If you're in the dark about how to love, this article should give you some food for thought, and perhaps teach you a little bit about how to love yourself, love the world, and love other people just a little bit more. Part 1 of 5: Finding Romantic Love 1 Decide what you want from a loving relationship. What do you want out of a relationship, romantic or otherwise? What do you look for in a person that you love? What do you love in a person? While you don't want to narrow your focus too much, a properly-aligned list of priorities is helpful in knowing what to look for and how to find it. If it works for you, rather than making up a list of wants, make up a list of "deal-breakers." If you absolutely can't abide a drinker, a hyper-religious person, or a daredevil, put it on your deal breaker list and avoid getting tangled in their complicated web. Be judicious. If you’re putting a nice butt before a stable personality, you’re going to have a really tough time in relationships. Same goes for things like valuing friends who get you into the best clubs over friends who’ll hold your hair back while you puke. Put substance above superficials, every time. Real people don’t fit in boxes. Keep in mind qualities that you want a prospective lover to have, but don’t require someone to meet all of them and make sure you’ve got your priorities in order.[1] 2 Have something to offer others. When you go to start a relationship, be it romantic or platonic, you’ll want to be sure that you bring something to that relationship. Having nothing to offer will give you and probably the other person the sense that you are a leech. Work on giving as much as you take, in all your relationships, and you’ll be set for success. A life partner or a lover can help you cope with the problems in your life and will work with you to solve them, but no one is going to make those problems just go away but you. You have to rescue yourself. Be your own knight-in-shining-armor. Expecting someone else to do that for you will only result in putting way too much pressure on them and disappointing yourself in the long run.[2] If you're experimenting with online dating, or other digital forms of communication, you've got to put some work into it. Messaging a hottie with "Hey" isn't bringing anything to the table. Ask questions, put your dazzling sense of humor on display, be naturally curious. Be yourself. 3 Meet lots of people. Unlike in the serendipitous plots of most romantic comedies, we usually don't run into long-term lovers and friends by accident. With the noise and bustle of 21st century life, meeting people takes work. Treat every night out, or every new class, or every new encounter as a possibility and bring your A-game. Be friendly when you meet people, and try to see the best in them. Even if you're at a party you'd rather not be at, make a little goal that you'll make one new friend by the end of the night. Turn your dull party into a fresh opportunity. Make plans with people you're interested in. Rather than exchanging numbers and putting someone in your phone as "Red Shirt Blonde," try to make specific plans before the end of the night. Find common ground with someone and decide that you'll meet up for coffee, or an event sometime later in the week. Make it concrete, rather than vague. 4 Let yourself be vulnerable with others. Unfortunately, loving someone means that they can hurt you. This is normal and okay (and almost inevitable). But if you want to have real love, you need to allow yourself to open with that person. Don’t keep secrets from them, don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t, but instead give them the opportunity to know the real you. Don't put on an act with people you're interested in, or with friends that you're building a relationship with. If you're pretending to be one way, it's not fair to the person who meets you halfway. Be yourself all the time, and you'll be confident that the people you meet are worthy of loving you, because it'll be the real you. 5 Give it time. Don’t force love and don’t try to speed it up. This will only create false feelings which drain you emotionally and leave you feeling empty and unsatisfied. You can’t rush love. But believe that it will come because it most certainly will. You just have to find the right person. Part 2 of 5: Making Relationships Last 1 Commit. If you're in love, prove it by putting effort into the relationship and working hard to make it work. Communicate openly with your partner about your goals for the relationship and where you see it going. If you're only interested in a short-term fling, be honest. If you've got an eye toward serious long-term love, be honest. There's nothing wrong with either kind of love, but you need to make sure that your partner is equally committed to the same version of love that you are. Commit to the person and to the relationship. It’s easy when two people have been together for awhile and you’ve become very trusting to just get very comfortable with each other. Maybe you don’t go out on dates anymore or maybe you don’t dress up nice for each other sometimes. But you should at least do these things occasionally, or eventually someone will feel like they’re no longer worth the effort. 2 Learn lessons and apply them to your relationships. Yes, bad things will happen in your relationships. You’ll say the wrong thing, or they’ll hurt your feelings. It happens. The important part, when anything goes wrong (even if it’s just problems in your life), is to learn your lessons and just keep moving forward. Try to make the most of any negative situation, turning it into something positive by gaining and growing from the experience. [3] If you're in the wrong, apologize and own up to your mistake. Good relationships air out the grievances and clear the air. Bad relationships hide the negativity and let it fester into serious problems. If you're in love, talk about your problems. 3 Work constantly to make yourself and those you love better. A good, loving relationship is one where you constantly challenge each other to be better people. Help the other person to achieve their dreams and goals because you believe they deserve it. Improve yourself and work for your dreams so that you can be the person you feel they deserve. We should be better people because of the relationships that we have, and this is the way to do it. 4 Eliminate jealousy. This is one of the unhealthiest things to have in a relationship, as it can break down trust and respect, and create barriers. For some people, this can be the most challenging part of relationships. Jealousy is a tough thing to break, but you can do it. The most important thing to understand is that jealousy issues almost always come from within, from the jealous person’s own issues, so those need to be worked through first. This is a place where those communication skills come in handy. This is, of course, assuming one person in the relationship is running around blatantly cheating on the other. In which case, they don’t really love the person they’re hurting, now do they? 5 Try to see issues from all sides. We hate to be wrong. Everyone does. But the thing about everyone thinking they’re right is that someone HAS to be wrong. If we disagree on an issue, we’re bound to be wrong on at least part of the issue. You’ll have much stronger relationships if you learn to talk things out with the other person, see their point of view, and find somewhere in the middle where you can meet and agree. 6 Be partners in life. The whole point of going through life with people you love is so that you can tackle life’s challenges together. Work together to find solutions, solve problems, and comfort each other when times get tough. We can’t solve everything on our own, we can’t know everything there is to know...but a whole bunch of people getting together out of love can solve just about any problem. Part 3 of 5: Avoiding Common Relationship Problems 1 Never, ever manipulate someone. Popular culture often tells us, subtly, that we should manipulate our significant other. You’ll find magazine upon magazine about how to get your girlfriend to do this or how to make your husband more that. But the thing is that expecting someone to change, and emotionally or mentally manipulating them into doing it, is one of the worst things you can do for your relationship. By manipulating them, you are creating distrust and resentment, a terrible thing to do to someone you love. 2 Don’t expect perfection. Don’t expect perfection in the person you love or in yourself. This sets incredibly unrealistic expectations. Neither of you will be able to live up to these standards and you both will end up hurt and disappointed. Even if you feel that you only expect perfection for yourself, this will give you the mindset that people can be perfect and you will subconsciously expect the same from the person you’re with. 3 Don’t bring outside problems into your relationships. Life gets stressful sometimes. We have problems and they make us upset, hurt, or angry. There are many, many people who take out these negative emotions on the people they love, often because they feel like they have no other outlet. But you should never do this. Find good ways to deal with your stress, like exercising or doing art. This will keep you from unreasonable outbursts directed at the person you love. 4 Don’t let things stagnate. Much like not putting in effort, you shouldn’t get to a point where your relationships are routine. Getting the same gift (or type of gift) for every holiday and birthday, going to the same place for dinners out, doing the same thing for your anniversary, etc. Your love deserves better and so do you! Keep things interesting by always trying new things and pursuing new experiences together. You can be wild and crazy and try things like rock climbing or you can be more subdued and try learning a new skill together, like playing the piano. 5 Focus on the important things. One major pitfall of relationships is that we tend to get super focused on little things that drive us crazy, rather than seeing the bigger picture, which is often wonderful. Keep your focus on the things that actually matter, and constantly analyze why those things matter to you. You’ll have a much happier relationship if you do. 6 Remember that everyone is equal. It is important to understand, for developing relationships, that no one is better than you and you are not better than anyone else. We are all equal, with equally worthwhile problems, ideas, and beliefs. If anyone ever tries to convince you differently, no matter where they pray and no matter how much you admire them, they aren’t worthy of your love. Part 4 of 5: Loving Your Friends and Family 1 Be a good friend. Whether you’re trying to create and grow love in a platonic or romantic relationship, you need to be a good friend to the person you love. Love is about more than kissing and hugging: it’s about being there when someone needs you and helping them unselfishly. Work to be as good a friend to them as you can be, and let them do the same. Work hard at your relationships. Show up for your friends. If your buddy's having an art opening, or playing a concert, buy a ticket and show up in the front row, even if you're not crazy about the music. Listen when your friend has a problem, and make yourself available emotionally. Try and learn to recognize when it's ok to be friends, and not possible to be more. Many people complain about being stuck in the "friend zone," which is really just a way of saying that you're attracted to someone who isn't attracted to you. Every healthy person needs a variety of healthy relationships, not all of them romantic. Embrace each interpersonal relationship for the unique brand of love it provides. 2 Respect everyone and earn the respect of others. Respect your friends, your family, and your lovers by validating their opinions and experiences. Try to understand them deeply, on a personal level. Ask them questions, have long discussions, and open your heart. Understand that the other person has their own wishes and desires, and rights to privacy and dignity. If you can’t allow this for another person, then you can’t love them. 3 Love people for who they are. Everyone is different. This doesn’t make anyone better or worse than anyone else. If you want to love someone, you need to take them for everything that they are, good and bad. Realize that none of those traits may be permanent and that if you want them to change, you have to help them want that change for themselves. Give them the tools they need to make the change. They aren’t yours to mold into your personal statue of perfection. 4 Find the true beauty in others. Maybe your girlfriend looks like Jennifer Lawrence, but this shouldn’t be the reason you want to be with her. She may be pretty now but she probably won’t be 50 years from now. You won’t be either. When you love someone, you need to find their inner beauty, the thing that makes them unique and wonderful to you. This will make your love and relationship stronger. Relying or basing your love on their great skin or gorgeous hair is probably just going to end in disappointment for everyone. 5 Focus on the positives and embrace the negatives. When you love someone, you should always keep focus on their positive traits. Find the things that you love about them and then give them the tools they need to amplify those traits. Focusing on nitpicky things you dislike about them will only make both of you unhappy in the end. If they’re a good singer, for example, help them to record a song and get it out to people. If you love how tidy they are, try to help them out by taking some of the pressure off and let them know how much you appreciate it when they do clean. There are inevitably things that annoy or frustrate us about the people we have relationships with. You need to learn to love someone not despite these traits but, as much as possible, because of them. Try to loosen up and find the humor in the things they do. This will stress you out less and make your relationships much stronger and stable. 6 Communicate clearly and often. If you want real love to build and grow, you need to keep constant communication. This doesn’t just mean talking about the weather every day; you need to talk about real things that are affecting your lives and your actions. Most importantly, you need to talk about the problems you encounter with each other. Don’t just be the person starting the conversations and handing out criticism, though. You need to create an environment where the other person feels comfortable coming to you with their problems too. 7 Talk through your problems. You will inevitably encounter problems in your relationship. Maybe there was a breach of trust or someone was hurt by something that got said. Whatever the reason for the hurt feelings, whether intentional or not, you need to talk between the two of you and get everything sorted out. Come to understand each other and patch the holes in the relationship before they become too big.[4] Make sure that everybody gets a turn to talk, don’t interrupt, and respect the other person. Just because their opinion is different doesn’t make it wrong. Part 5 of 5: Loving Yourself 1 Love yourself. Before loving anyone else, you have to love yourself. This will help you show that you can experience love, sending a message that you are secure, confident, and worth loving in return. Loving yourself will make you a better lover because you will not be hindered by self-doubt and crises of confidence. If you have problems loving yourself, then work hard to build yourself up. Work on your self confidence by accepting your past and moving forward. You may feel that things you did in the past will make you unlovable, or that you have too many problems to be lovable. Untrue. Accept the things that happened to you, forgive yourself, and move on. 2 Count your blessings. When things get tough, money runs out or someone loses a job, the way to get through these tough times is to focus on the things in your life that are good. Don’t worry about all the things you don’t have, because you will always not have a lot of things. That’s out of your control. But you can enjoy and find love in the things that you do have right now, while you have them. Appreciate this moment. 3 Be selfish sometimes. If you constantly give in your relationships and don’t focus on your own needs every now and again, you will find that you become burnt out. In order to make yourself a better lover, be selfish on occasion and make sure you’re getting what you need to be happy too. 4 Make your own happily ever after. Like the myth of the knight in shining armor, you also need to understand that there are no automatic happy endings. You may find blissful love, but you’ll always come up against challenges together, as you and your lives change. If you want to have your happy ending, you have to work to make it happy every day by supporting each other, working together, and doing the things in life that make you happy. 5 Turn off the rom-coms. Modern movies and romantic stories have us believing that we have to find it: The One. That somehow, despite the chaos of the universe, there is one person who completes us and is perfect for us. The truth of it? There is no "one." No one is perfect. In all relationships there will be sacrifice and annoyance and problems. So really, as long as you aren’t expecting anyone to be perfect, there are lots of The One’s out there for you! 6 Break out of pre-defined roles. Our culture does a pretty good job of convincing us that men and women have to act a certain way or do certain things in a relationship. However, this doesn’t really work out that way in practice. Some men are just naturally good housekeepers and some women are just naturally good at fixing things. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and those don’t conform to gender stereotypes. If you want to have healthy relationships, don’t feel constrained to those boxes: just do what you do best and work together to build a happy life!