Understanding the unconstrained vision in the 20th century

This is a follow-up to a couple previous posts I wrote, called “We are suffering under the ignorance of our national heritage”, and “The liberal/conservative divide explained”. Next to the show where Beck introduced Sarah Palin to the world (before McCain picked her as his VP candidate), the following show, from 1/29/2010, is the best one I’ve seen him do.

He’s talked for a while about the origins of socialist, fascist, and communist thought, mostly its European origins and its effects in Europe, though he’s talked some about the effects of progressive thought in the U.S., from what I’ve seen. Like I’ve said before, I don’t watch his show much. He’s usually too hysterical for me. This episode was an exception. It really gets into what the original progressives were thinking, and how they influenced our entire society to separate us from the founding philosophy of the United States, and the understanding of why the original ideas were good. (h/t to The 912 Diary):

The reason behind this is that the Progressives saw the Constitution and the founding ideas as as their enemy. They were ignorant of why these ideas were (and are still) good. Their world view is understandable by listening to what Thomas Sowell has had to say about the unconstrained vision, which believes that special elites need to be put into leadership so that they can work their will to bring about a better society. Their conceit was the belief that there are such “perfect” people who are so refined and educated that they do not have the flaws that the rest of us have. They thought they could improve upon the Founders by moving away from the idea that there’s a wise tension between the “wisdom of crowds” and an accomplished elite whom we elect to represent us that respects the sovereign rights of all Americans, and moving towards the idea that the people need to be led by philosopher kings who contain all the wisdom necessary to do what is right. The struggle between the constrained and the unconstrained vision has been around since the dawn of Western civilization, 2,500 years ago.

We can see the difference between those who believe in the constrained vs. the unconstrained vision by their attitudes. There are gradations of these attitudes among people. One should not take these as cookie cutter templates. I’m presenting “purist” definitions here to provide contrast.

Those who believe in the constrained vision of humanity approach the ideas of governance from a philosophical, principled standpoint. They are interested in the give and take of ideas, and encourage vigorous and robust debate. They believe in the fallibility of human beings, and so are wary of the idea that any one person has the one right answer, though they are confident that there are many wrong answers. The challenge is to try to tease out which are the good ideas, and to filter out the bad ones. They believe that power in government must be checked by competing forces, and that competition has its benefits in other arenas. They see society as a collection of systems, with a keen understanding of human nature. Their debates center around a comparison of systems, and which better serve the greater good.

Those who believe in the constrained vision believe in a literary and scientific education to empower individuals to understand and reason about their world, and their society.

Those who believe in the unconstrained vision approach the ideas of governance from a moral and symptomatic standpoint. They see some problem or other in the moment, and in response attempt to address it with a grand solution. They see it as the job of those who govern to manage everything and to a some extent, everyone, for the benefit of those whom they deem are oppressed. The leaders demand something in return, to maintain their power–”I scratch your back, and you scratch mine”–and so they set up systems of patronage, even with the oppressed.

They do not care for debate. Authorities whom they deem to be cultured, intelligent, educated, moral, and know how to wield power are to be respected, without question. They do not see any “wisdom of crowds”, which are just “the seething ignorant mob” to them. These “mobs” cannot have grievances that they have determined for themselves, because they are not intelligent enough to have any. It’s assumed that the leadership will be able to determine which groups of people are aggrieved, and that they will act appropriately to address them.

Any group that is to be respected must have a leader or group of leaders that is deemed respectable by the aforementioned criteria, or else they are illegitimate. If you are not a member of the aforementioned oppressed, and you are not considered a legitimate leader of a group that can help the oppressed and maintain the leadership’s power, you must abide whatever the leadership deems is appropriate to do. If you resist, you are made a pariah.

Those who believe in the unconstrained vision also believe in education, one that is cultured and literary. Critical thought is encouraged, but there is a heavy emphasis on approaching subjects in a symptomatic way. In all but the best schools, deep understanding of subjects is not encouraged. Instead there is an emphasis on analysis and case-based skills.

The Founders used a constrained vision of humanity in designing our government in the Constitution. They were men of the Enlightenment. They designed the government to address human nature as it has been, as it is, and will be for a very, very long time. The Progressives have always been deluded, as the socialists of all stripes have been, in believing that humans can be perfected. Our flaws can be rectified and eliminated. The Founders believed that our flaws can only be mitigated. That’s the difference. In other words, our flaws are innate and unchangeable, but systems can be put in place and used in order to improve our lot, to bring out and encourage the positive aspects of our nature, and put a damper on and frustrate the extremely negative aspects of it, so as to create a society that is as harmonious as humanly possible. That’s a limited statement. The Founders never envisioned America as a utopia, and did not believe that was possible. What they went for was a “as good as it gets” society. The Founders formed it based on a learned view of history, of past regimes, and worked carefully to construct a system of government that promoted freedom, but did not allow anarchy and the concentration of power. They tried to learn from past mistakes. They went for a “happy medium”.

Secondly, they understood that the project of building our society and government was not complete when they first created it, and that future generations would need to change the structure of our government to create a “more perfect union”. Thankfully we did. The most significant accomplishments have been freeing the slaves, which the Founders could not reconcile and deliberately left to a future generation to resolve, giving women property rights and the vote, and promoting equal rights for all citizens, no matter who they are or where they came from. We should rightfully celebrate those changes. I think they have created a more perfect union. Where we “went off the road” was with the idea that the Constitution is an interpretive document in all respects, that we need not try to understand the original intent of its articles and amendments–what was in the heads of those who wrote them, and that they mean whatever we want it to mean. That way leads to a gradual erosion of our rights, and our freedom. We become a nation of flawed humans ruling to try to correct the actions of flawed humans; not a nation of law, but a nation of will, which will ultimately lead to a tyrannical government if we remain ignorant of our legal heritage.

Edit 2/10/2010: I found out about this ad after the Super Bowl. We could be looking forward to this if we’re not careful.

It really would behoove us to reject the Progressive philosophy of governance, because it has been shown to be a failure many times over. They never seem to learn. Because of their cultural influence, we have forgotten, and so we haven’t learned either. That can always be corrected, but we as individuals have to undertake our own education. Unfortunately our schools, for the most part, are not going to help us with that.

Lifting the veil of the Left

I found this video of David Horowitz and Pat Caddell talking about the “insides” of the Democratic Party, and how it’s been taken over by neo-Marxists and crooks. This was at an event held in late November 2009, called “Restoration Weekend”, so you’ll see some references to what was going on in Washington then.

What I found impressive about it is how explicitly they explained the general pattern we’ve seen of Democrats “saying one thing and doing another”. It isn’t just the same old thing where “politicians lie”. There’s a specific strategy behind it with an end game, and it’s not just to get around the “greedy capitalist Republicans” so that help can be delivered to those who need it. It’s to gain and maintain power for these neo-Marxists by making the citizenry dependent on them. The big lie of the Left is that they are doing these things to help the downtrodden. No, they are doing these things to help themselves, all the while saying, “It’s all for you.” The more dependent the citizenry is on Democratic governance, the longer they can have jobs and stay in power. That’s the idea, anyway. According to Horowitz, (I heard this from him in an interview) the neo-Marxists don’t give a damn whether their programs are sustainable. They don’t even think about that.

Now, I am sure that there are many, many Democrats who have been supporting Democratic proposals in the last year out of a selfless love for the downtrodden. I hate to break it to you, but you’re being used. Simply saying that is not going to be satisfactory to many. I only hope that some of you become aware of what you have been involved in at some point (these will be people with long memories and critical minds), and realize what I am saying here. Just hold the thought for a while. You don’t have to accept it as true right now.

What Horowitz and Caddell have made explicit is an idea that Jonah Goldberg laid out at this same event (at a different talk), which is that the powerful far left wing of the Democratic Party has been trying for the past year to turn the U.S. into a client state, which means that every American would be a client of the government for many of our important needs, such as health care. What’s interesting is that they have so far not been able to pull this off, even though they had a super-majority. The far left is powerful in the Democratic Party, but there are also enough centrists in the party to moderate what happens. The Republicans have largely been powerless up until this past Thursday. What’s ironic is that the Democrats helped elect these centrists so that the far left could rise to leadership. They wouldn’t have gotten where they are without them. They’ve tried as hard as they could to shove their crap through the legislative process, but they haven’t been able to do more damage than they’ve already done with the “stimulus” bills they’ve passed, and their outrageous yearly budgets. That’s a consolation, and I wish I could say things were better than this. As things stand now we’re headed for “stagflation”, a lethargic economy that will not produce that many jobs, and rising interest rates and inflation, which will make everyone poorer. Plenty of change, without hope.

Yep. The “zeros” have turned out to be almost a repeat of the 1960s and 70s, just without the social revolution, and the amazing technological innovation and exploration. Maybe that’s yet to come.

In case anyone’s interested, Horowitz referred to discoverthenetworks.org.

Tea time

I’ve been observing the Tea Party movement since last year. In recent years I’ve found it difficult to be involved in political activism. My life is occupied with other responsibilities and pursuits. However, I’ve felt an affinity with the concerns of the Tea Partiers, and have been supportive of them “from afar”. I, too, am worried about the runaway spending of the federal government. I am also bothered by the government seeming to not be concerned with solving real problems. Instead the goal of every proposal has been to satisfy certain constituencies, as if that’s good enough.

I watched some TV coverage of the first day of the Tea Party convention in Nashville, TN. It gave me this feeling of deja vu. I was a supporter and member of United We Stand America (UWSA) beginning in 1992. Ross Perot was its figurehead and lead supporter. The history of it seemed to begin with a “throw the bums out” grassroots movement that began in 1989, or thereabouts. It was just in its nascent stages then. People were inspired by a Larry King Live interview with Perot in February 1992, and a grassroots “draft Perot for President” campaign began (I think it was called the Perot Petition Committee). He advocated higher taxes and cuts in spending in order to bring down the federal debt, which at the time was “only” $4 trillion. President Obama’s budget for next year almost equals that amount! Oh how far we’ve come! Anyway, back then we thought $4 trillion was an immense amount, too big to fathom. Perot advocated entitlements reform, to decrease their growth. He had read the projections of fiscal economists, which said that in the far off future there would only be two people working for every person retired, and that this would be unsustainable. We’re still on a collision course with that future.

He wanted to lower discretionary spending, and decrease the debt dramatically, because he foresaw the kind of events we’ve seen over the last 10 years. He wanted a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, with some caveats that would allow deficit spending only for specific circumstances, like war, or national emergencies (the latter has problems, though, because literally anything can be classified in law as an “emergency”). He used to talk about how there would be wars in the future, and that carrying a large debt load into that situation would mean trouble, because the government is forced into deficit spending in every war. Well, that’s the situation we’re in now.

At the time of Perot’s run in 1992, the Cold War had just ended. Conventional wisdom held that it was “the end of history”, and we could enjoy a “peace dividend” (never mind the Gulf War of 1991). Unfortunately our society decided to go for that myopic message (despite the World Trade Center bombing in 1993). So much for “the end of history”. Nevertheless, beginning in the mid-1990s, with a Democratic president and a Republican congress, the government was able to run budget surpluses and decrease the federal debt. Pressure from Perot voters, with our advocacy for reducing the federal debt, helped make that happen.

I listened to Tea Partiers talk to the media yesterday, and call in to C-SPAN. They sounded a lot like the Perot supporters I used to hear from, just in their general tone. The main thing that seems to drive the Tea Partiers, like the UWSA supporters of yesterday, is that they are alarmed at what the two major parties are doing in government, and above all else they want to stop it. Like the Tea Partiers, UWSA supporters were ridiculed for not supporting anything in specific, though Perot did outline some agenda areas he’d like to see addressed (part of which I’ve described above). Most UWSA members agreed with his agenda, for a time (though there was a major split in the movement over Perot’s opposition to the free trade agreements, NAFTA and later GATT). It seems like the politics are different, though. From what I’ve been hearing, the main hope of the Tea Partiers is to bring the Republican Party back to a conservative agenda. UWSA was not focused on one party in this way. We used to say that there was no difference between the two parties. There’s also more of a focus on constitutional, limited government among the Tea Partiers, one that spends less and taxes less. UWSA did not emphasize the Constitution, and was in favor of higher taxes, and cuts in spending, with the goal of reducing the federal debt.

The goal of the Tea Partiers is to make the political system come to them. UWSA had the same goal.

There’s a lot of speculation about what the Tea Partiers stand for, and whether they will form a third party. From where I sit, I think it’s good for the Tea Party movement to lack definition, to allow the people who are participating to be a part of an association like this, but one where they can have their own individual voices, even though there will be a temptation to say, “Let’s create an official organization with official representatives. Let’s define ourselves.” If the Tea Party movement goes that direction, I see it falling apart. We went through that with UWSA. Beginning in 1993 we started getting “directives” from the UWSA headquarters in Dallas, TX for government policy issues to work on. It was framed as a way to promote a united message. After all, we were calling ourselves “United We Stand”. The problem was the membership was never asked about the details. I thought this was fine, since I supported these goals anyway, but other members resented it. This, along with other public advocacy activities that Perot subsequently undertook led to a schism within UWSA. I think an advantage that the Tea Party movement has had is it began in a leaderless way. People have come together around some principles, rather than in support of an individual who people believe embodies those principles.

Given actions that the government took subsequently, starting in 1993, we felt like we weren’t having a big enough influence. So in 1995/96, the Reform Party was formed. We were going to run political candidates. We actually had a contest for the presidential nomination between Ross Perot and former Colorado governor Richard Lamm. There was a lot of controversy about that. There were complaints about a corrupt nomination process. People who had been with the movement for a long time wondered whether Lamm was loyal to the party or whether he was a Democratic stalking horse. In any case Perot was picked as the nominee, and he did worse than the time before, getting 8% of the popular vote. The big difference was Perot was not included in the presidential debates, as he was in 1992. He got a big boost out of those then.

Forming the party was probably the worst thing we did. Maybe I lack perspective, since I was more deeply involved with the Reform Party than with UWSA. There was constant infighting amongst ourselves, mainly because a political party is just a vehicle, and it must be this way legally. We, the Perot supporters, naively thought that since we had founded the party we could control the platform, and be careful enough to select candidates who represented what we wanted implemented in our government. It turned out there was more opportunity to control the agenda we wanted to promote with UWSA than there was with the party. Once the party was founded, any candidate, no matter their agenda–even if it was diametrically opposed to what we set out to do, could come in with his/her supporters and just take the party over. I eventually woke up to this fact, and saw some of the wisdom in this structure for parties, but there were many other “old timers” who resisted this to the bitter end.

A persistent problem we had from 1992 onward was we knew what we wanted to do, but we were ignorant and naive about what political structure would best advance that agenda. We tried UWSA, which was a 501(c)(3) educational organization, but we ran into problems when we wanted to endorse candidates for office. It was illegal for a 501(c)(3) organization to do that. Later we wanted to push forward a particular agenda, rather like an interest group, but we wanted to run candidates for office, to exert power. So the next “form” we took was as a political party, which is not designed for agenda advocacy. It’s basically a structure for coalition building, but according to the rules it’s not allowed to dictate what the coalition represents. The coalition that gathers the most power within the party at any given time gets to do that. You don’t own it just because you created it. You have to politically organize large numbers of supporters for the agenda you support, and you have to do that consistently, not just when you’re excited about a cause, like the Tea Partiers are now, or around elections, if you want the party to maintain a direction and purpose that you support. To do that, you need to be a consistent presence in the media, and you need supportive organizations. To do all this you need lots of money. And of course everyone who joins in with you has to understand and support the rationale for your cause. It’s a lot of work!

The other thing that was poisonous to the Reform Party effort, particularly after the 1996 presidential race, is that Perot had earned enough votes for the party to qualify for FEC money for the next presidential race in 2000. This was one of the goals, but it created monsters out of otherwise nice, decent people. I can’t remember the amount. It might’ve been $8 million. This started a gold rush for opportunists to come in and compete for power positions within the party. We started breaking up into factions. It was becoming a chaotic mess. We spent a significant amount of our time fighting each other rather than focusing on what we all came together to do originally, which was to reform government fiscal policy. It all basically ended in 2000, when Pat Buchanan ran for the party’s presidential nomination, along with someone who used to run for president regularly in the Natural Law Party. The party split in two at the national level, and had thereby mortally wounded itself. I saw people I had once trusted do the most despicable things. The corruption that was occurring was so obvious it was like witnessing Tammany Hall in the 20th century, though with no government power. It actually made the corruption in the two major parties look civilized by comparison. I thought, “You know what? It’s a good thing that not too many of our people have been elected to public office. They’d be worse than the people who are there now!” I did not think this of Buchanan, who I thought ran a good campaign for the nomination, putting in the sweat equity required to get it. Despite all of the chaos within the party, Buchanan was legally recognized as the Reform Party nominee by the FEC, and his campaign was given the $8 million in FEC money, but he limped over the finish line with 0% of the popular vote. The split in the party was one of the most heart-wrenching things I had experienced in my whole life.

As I think back on it now, I wonder why we didn’t organize ourselves as an interest group, or perhaps split between that and a 501(c)(3), with some choosing political advocacy, and some choosing to just educate. Given what we wanted to do this would’ve made so much more sense. Of course, we didn’t think of forming an interest group because we were AGAINST political interest groups! We used to complain about them constantly. We said we wanted to get beyond interest group politics, but legally it would’ve allowed us to do what we really wanted.

I’m telling this story so that Tea Partiers in particular can read it and learn from our mistakes, both in terms of organizing an association, and forming a third party. I would say to them, that beyond the conventional concerns about splitting the presidential vote down the road, they should approach the idea of forming a third party with extreme caution. From my experience, forming the party was the death knell of the reform movement. It became a huge distraction after 1996, and in the end it exhausted us. It was the best thing that could’ve happened to the powers that be in the Democratic and Republican parties, because we became so distracted with our own “inside baseball” political infighting that it removed our influence from the national stage.

In case anyone is interested, it turns out that Ross Perot has not turned away from focusing on fiscal issues. He set up a web site in 2008 called PerotCharts.com, where he talks about the current fiscal situation, and future projections.

The real record on deficits

Dick Morris wrote an interesting article yesterday on what’s really been happening with the deficit situation. President Obama and the Democrats have been distorting the record to make their own profligate spending look moderate. First, they excused the $1.4 trillion deficit we accrued last year by saying that Obama put the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq “on budget” where Bush had put them “off budget”, but the truth was the war budget was a minority proportion of the deficit. The rest of it was $300 billion of the $787 billion “stimulus” bill, and entitlement programs. In Obama’s recent State of the Union speech he said that he inherited a huge deficit that was just a little smaller than the deficit we had last year, and a bad economy. “Bush made me do it,” is his refrain. Such a leader.

Morris lays out the truth about Bush’s deficit from 2008. It was not $1.3 trillion as Obama claims. It was more like $800 billion, which is still huge by pre-Obama standards. Democrats and Republicans used to complain if deficits were $400 billion or more.

The reason Morris makes his claim is that Obama, in blaming Bush, is including the $700 billion the Bush Administration allocated for TARP. Now, TARP, if you’ll remember, was supposed to be used to prop up our major financial institutions, to save them from collapse. It was money on loan to them. They were supposed to pay it back with interest. Most of this money has been paid back by now, with interest. So why is the Obama Administration counting this money as part of the deficit? First of all, as Morris points out, Obama has an easy excuse. According to budget rules, any loans have to be counted as grants–expenditures in the budget. So officially TARP was counted as part of the deficit for 2008. Any repayment would be counted as a credit in a future budget. If we look at this situation realistically though, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to count a loan as an expenditure if the money was going to be paid back, and be credited towards the public debt. If we’re concerned about the debt, it’s net effect would be to count against the debt in the long term, not increase it, or at the very least be deficit neutral. In that case, this interpretation makes more sense than to make it sound equivalent to an expenditure which will never be repaid. Of course, being a lawyer, Obama has to make his case look as good as possible, and officially he has the facts on his side. He’s just hiding the effect of what he is saying.

There’s a silver lining in the accounting of TARP for Obama. Sen. Judd Gregg complained bitterly yesterday that the Obama Administration wants to use the repaid TARP funds as a credit source for small businesses. Gregg pointed out that there was a provision in the TARP legislation, which he put in, which said that the monies that were to be paid back must be used to pay down the public debt. If the government did that, Gregg said, it would reduce the national debt by $300 billion next year. But no. Obama wants to reuse $30 billion of it, and he’s confident that the Democrats will change the law to allow it. In effect, Obama wants to make it so that this money is not counted as a credit in the budget. Not that small businesses wouldn’t repay their loans, but come on. Look where this is going. Once that money is repaid through their new program, they’ll just find some other use for it. Obama wants the government to become a bank. He is covering for this by once again blaming Bush, making him look like a liberal spender, not unlike himself. The reality is that Obama’s deficit was not merely $100 billion more than Bush’s. He nearly doubled Bush’s 2008 deficit in 2009! This is yet another distraction.

One of Glenn Beck’s best

I rarely watch or listen to Glenn Beck. He’s too out in left field for me most of the time, but occasionally he does something I find interesting and informative. He skewered Joe Kline of Time Magazine a few days ago over his criticism of Americans’ dislike of the 2009 $787 billion “stimulus” package. Aside from the first couple minutes, where he bashed old-time progressives (unfortunately I found this to be rather incoherent. I got the part about the Treaty of Versailles, but I couldn’t understand why he brought it up), Beck does an excellent job satirizing the arrogance of progressive elites. Check it out.

The virulence of hatred, and its uses

I just watched this excellent PBS show on anti-semitism. It gives a historical sweep, showing that the violent prejudice that we see against jewish people in the Middle East today came historically from European attitudes about Jews, and that though it’s easy to get distracted by the complaints that Islamic radicals spout on about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the real problem is the oppression of Islamic peoples by despotic rulers.

The sense I get from this is that some Muslims place Israel in their minds as a proxy for the oppression that they feel in their own lives, wherever they are. The show focused particular attention on a document called The Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion, which has been shown to be a forgery based on several theatrical plays. Yet one gets the impression from this show that it carries legitimacy in much of the Islamic world. I don’t entirely blame them for being convinced by it. I read “The Protocols” once many years ago, and with the exception of the slurs that were used, it seemed convincing, mainly because it referred to behaviors on the part of certain officials in modern society that matched what I heard on the news sometimes. But then I learned a bit about the document’s history, and gave it no credence.

I am not excusing the policy decisions of Israel. I’m not trying to say that Israel is always right. However I am saying that some Muslims exaggerate the power that Israel has over their lives, and/or the magnitude of the injustices they commit. In the Middle East, governments, or radical imams that are allowed on television, focus the attentions of their people on the Israeli-Palestinian situation so that they don’t direct their anger and frustration at their own government. Israel became the scapegoat that groups of Jews used to be. It has served as a useful distraction that the leaders of many Middle Eastern countries have used to protect their power.

The show doesn’t talk about it, but this “setup” has created a fertile environment for terrorist groups. Since Middle Eastern leaders have allowed Israel (and the U.S.) to be blamed for the injustices in their world, jihadist leaders have been able to come along and convert that anger into action.

This was one reason the invasion of Iraq was important. The hope was that one of the benefits would be a thriving democracy in the midst of the Middle East, which would stand as an example, and focus people’s attention back on their own governments. The gamble was that people would say, “They have democracy, and they are doing well. We don’t have democracy, and we are not. Let’s change our situation so that we can have what they have.” It would seem that Iraq has been having that effect. We can see it in the democratic movement that sprouted in Lebanon several years ago, which last I checked did not succeed (though I hope I’m wrong about that). We can see it in the unrest in Iran today. It was a gamble, and from my analysis of history, it was one in which we grossly underestimated the odds of success. Thankfully we have managed some amount of success in Iraq, but we cannot declare victory there yet.

Haiti: A disaster and a distraction

If you’ve been watching any news you’ve seen the wall-to-wall coverage of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, and the humanitarian disaster this has caused. I feel sympathetic to their plight. However, Pat_S over at tammybruce.com has pointed to a disaster in the making that is currently being ignored by our news organs: the fact that Iran is continuing its progress towards a nuclear weapon, and that the Obama Administration’s efforts to stop their progress is failing (continuing President Bush’s failure to do the same). This is something we should be concerned about as well. When Iran gains a nuclear weapon (and it looks like it’s a matter of when, not if) it will change the balance of power in the world, not unlike what happened when the Chinese and the Soviets gained the bomb in the 1950s. We’re looking at a new worldwide conflict arising.

I fear that people are under the mistaken impression that the Iranian leadership, the people who actually run Iran’s government, care about our nuclear deterrent capability. From listening to people who know the Middle East, I’m not so sure. They will be in a position to threaten India, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, not to mention Israel. This has severe implications. Prepare for oil prices to go through the roof. But hey, it will help the Obama Admin. promote wind power and solar, so that’s okay, right? It will promote a new national wartime unity in our country not unlike what FDR enjoyed in WW II. Repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, and we can run that movie all over again. Won’t that be great?

Israel is a huge “ground zero” flashpoint in this scenario. Military analysts have long predicted that if Israel is attacked like this, it will be World War III. Like the Nazis in Germany, Iran might be punchy enough and self-destructive enough to start it with reckless abandon. They could become one giant suicide bomber, destroying themselves and taking the peoples of many other nations down with them.

We also seem to be foolish enough to believe that once they have nuclear capability that we will be out of reach of that weaponry. Au contraire! They may not get a fission bomb over here. Their missile technology can’t make the trip, and making suitcase nukes takes sophisticated engineering. It’s not sufficient to have rudimentary nuclear weapons technology to make one. However dirty bombs delivered by terrorists are not out of the question.

9/11/2001, and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were just the first act. More is yet to come, unfortunately.

Robert Samuelson on what’s happening with health care

This is a good article by Robert J. Sameulson, called “Health-care nation”, on the current situation with health care, and what’s being proposed for it. I think he is half right about the solution, lowering health care spending. I think the more important part of the solution is lowering costs. There are a variety of things that could be done to help with that, and so far I haven’t seen any of them proposed. One of them is tort reform.

The striking thing is that the federal government has not exercised its constitutional interstate commerce regulatory powers in this issue. Instead it has allowed states to set up “fiefdoms” of health care, both in insurance and in medical facilities, which naturally drive up costs. So far as I know the federal government has not allowed these kinds of anti-competitive practices for any other product or service. It should break down the barriers the states have erected, which it has the legal authority to do.

Obama makes a decision on Afghanistan

Well I’m glad this day has come. Obama announced on Wednesday that he’s sending 30,000 soldiers to back up the forces we have in Afghanistan. I learned yesterday on the O’Reilly Factor that in addition we’re sending in 20,000 Marines, making the total deployment 50,000. And from what I heard in Obama’s speech it sounds like he understands the reasons for this decision, which is gratifying. Stanley McChrystal expressed confidence that he has been given the forces he needs to do the job. So I’m happy to hear that. I’ve heard a little about McChrystal’s resume, and he sounds like someone who is capable of handling this situation. He has studied, and is experienced in counter-insurgency strategy. The only caution I’d give to Obama is to avoid the temptation to micromanage the war. Keep your eyes on the big picture, and “don’t sweat the small stuff”. If he can do that then there’s a good chance we can achieve our goals.

I am cautiously optimistic that we will succeed in Afghanistan, if only because we’ve been tying our hands behind our backs on some things. We’ve revealed our methods of interrogation. The rules of engagement have been changed so that if there are civilians in the vicinity of the enemy we will not attack, and we’re not allowed to enter a town until we have notified the town that we are coming (which will also alert the enemy of our movements). This worries me. This is the one aspect that, I hate to say, sounds like Vietnam. In that conflict the UN had to be notified of any troop movements. The communist North Vietnamese had moles in the UN who would relay this information to them, and they’d know just what we were going to do. I heard the story of one officer who decided to break the rules and make a sneak attack. He won the battle, but was dishonorably discharged for failing to make the proper notification before making his move. It’s stuff like that that’s going to lower morale, and possibly make the war unwinnable. You can’t win a war if you’re disabling yourself to the point that you give the enemy crucial advantages.

I wanted to address a couple things in the speech. The first thing that jumped out at me was Obama claimed that there had been numerous requests for additional forces in Afghanistan, which were denied. This was surprising, since I don’t recall even the media ferreting out such requests. I would think with all of the rancor of opposing forces against the Bush Administration that somebody would’ve leaked that back when it happened. I didn’t hear a peep about this. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came out with a statement yesterday saying that he never received such a request during his years in that post (he was replaced in 2006). I believe the Obama Administration corrected the President’s statement yesterday, saying that there was one request made a year ago for additional forces, just at the end of Bush’s term, which had not yet been fulfilled.

Obama came back to the subject of closing Guantanamo Bay. I’ve written previously about my opposition to that idea. He brought up the issue of “torture” as well. I’m not going to go into another harangue about that, because I’ve already talked about why this is a false charge.

Overall I’m satisfied with Obama’s decision, and I support the fact that he’s not going to run away from this fight, at least for now. I am still skeptical about his commitment. He has a lot of opposition within his party. I understand, but I still wonder if he’s willing to stand alone on this, or at least team up with the Republicans to keep it going until the battle is won. I’ve been nothing but critical of Obama in most of my posts, but I give him praise for this. Thank you for hanging in there, Mr. President.

We are suffering under the ignorance of our national heritage

There was an excellent discussion about the concept of wealth redistribution at the Federalist Society on November 12, which was broadcast on C-SPAN. I really liked listening to Richard Epstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago. He put forward the perspective of Natural Law, which was the philosophy used by the Founding Fathers in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. What I particularly enjoyed was that he put forward the idea that the principles of working systems are pretty timeless. They may need slight modification from time to time, but the basic principles will most often remain the same. The principles of Natural Law are also timeless, because they address issues of human nature.

I also enjoyed the fact that he pointed out the ignorance of Jed Rubenfeld of Yale Law School, and that of Andrew Stern, who is the head of SEIU, when it comes to understanding how systems work. I appreciated the fact that Rubenfeld and Stern were there, because they were exemplars of the perspectives that dominate today, and I think such ignorance needs to be exposed and challenged.

Prof. Rubenfeld took a relativistic stance on all of the subjects discussed, and seemed to have trouble answering a question about the concept of rights.

Profs. Epstein and Rubenfeld spoke about wealth redistribution, but mostly from a legal standpoint. Mr. Stern argued from the standpoint of economic distribution, and he spoke from the perspective of what I’d call “an educated worker”. He said that unions were supposed to take wages out of competition so that workers could compete based on productivity and quality. That’s news to me. Everything I’ve heard about what actually happens with unions is that they stifle creativity (thereby reducing productivity), and reduce incentives for striving for quality since they tend to demand the imposition of wage scales, and restrictions on workforce flexibility (for example, making it difficult to reassign people based on abilities, or lay off bad workers). To me, the only positive impact that labor unions had historically was in incentivizing government and industry to improve workplace safety so that serious injuries and deaths were reduced.

Steve Forbes was also at this panel, and he made the constructive argument (I thought) that if you look at every significant downturn in the 20th century it was caused by the policy actions of some government entity. This is no less true of this last downturn.

What disappointed me about Stern’s arguments (and this was not unexpected) is that he ignored Forbes’s and Epstein’s arguments, I think because he couldn’t understand them. The old maxim has never failed me: If someone doesn’t understand something, they don’t think it’s important. All he understood was the historical narrative from a worker’s point of view. It’s just a guess, but I think he dismissed them because he thought of them as privileged, unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy.

I got turned off by Rubenfeld’s and Stern’s arguments, because neither of them could understand what Epstein was talking about, apparently, but they acted like he was the “impractical” one, stuck in his ivory tower. What Epstein kept pointing out was that their approaches just screw up people’s lives. They don’t solve anything. He laid out a consistent pattern through history, that the economy does badly when political progressives obtain power. Whereas Rubenfeld and Stern said, “We tried it your way (in the 1920s) and it didn’t work,” never questioning why the Great Depression happened. Stern dismissed any role by the Federal Reserve (historically it did have a role, and it’s admitted it). They blamed it all on laissez-faire economics.

Capitalism gets turned into a “whipping boy” when the economy goes into a downturn, and this reveals our collective ignorance about how systems work. We like capitalism when the economy is doing well. We hate it, and blame it, when the economy tanks. I know from my own experience that an understanding of economics is most advantageous when the economy is doing badly. It’s a good antidote to the feeling that nothing’s working, because in fact it is. There’s just a lot more friction in trying to get work or obtain credit. It also gives one an understanding that we should be cautious about tampering with our economic system. I mean that in the most generic sense. I’m not saying that our society’s economic regulatory structure should never be altered. I am saying that we should be careful about what regulations are imposed on it.

This panel discussion was an excellent presentation of contrasts in philosophy and conceptual understanding.