“Could a different vision yield different results? And can this country avoid the reality of providing a good environment for our world-wide companies?
The U.S. Constitution provides the executive branch and its president considerable discretion and power. Happily our president cannot run amok ... even when his name is LBJ or Richard Nixon. We are not governed by tyrants, just some who would like to be tyrants; because our Constitution works, they can’t get away with it.
But by executive order — which affect all sorts of procedures and regulations the federal government deals with every day — and by appointment of people who share his view of hinges to the catbird seats in federal departments and agencies, a president has discretionary power. Using these tools, he easily can influence the direction of the ship of state by more than just a degree or two.
Add to this the presidential ownership of the "bully pulpit" of the White House, with dozens of tame media members at his beck and call, a president who understands publicity – no just rhetoric – can leverage his structural governmental advantages even more. Mr. Obama is not the best at this – he doesn’t hold a candle to Mr. Reagan or Mr. Clinton – but he is getting better at using the pulpit.
But that doesn’t mean he is without influence. Consider the performance of the economy; Mr. Obama came to power amid one of the worst recessions since WWII. It had been triggered by the greed of the humongous banks and their stupid management of the mortgage securities initially, but since then has been compounded by the Obama administration’s vision of what government is and what government should do to get the country back on a growth track.
Consider what has happened on the Obama watch: First, he worked with Democratic Congress and passed an expensive health-care bill the country actually did not want, pinning the substantial cost on business. (A wedge under the wheel of the business wagon, something to overcome). Second, he increased regulation of almost every Federal department by a factor of several times. (Another wedge under the wheel ...) Third, he has made it clear that he wanted to spend much more money on soft cost activity, such as welfare, job training, etc., etc. To do this, he advocated increasing taxes, preferably on the investor class and on corporations – exactly the people who create jobs! (Certainly another wedge under the wheel ...)
And there have been many more actions, all pointing to a larger and more intrusive federal government ... which has left the private side of the economy worrying and anxious about the future. Who wants to expand when the government makes it clear it wants to tax them more, and to regulate them even more? What has resulted from this administration and its vision for the future? A very slow and tepid recovery from the recession, the slowest in a half-century.
There is no enthusiasm for the future of the U.S. Trillions of dollars are being held by businesses, delaying investment (and job creation), sitting on the sidelines, waiting for better news from Washington, but getting none. Needed revisions to tax law to help get the economy moving are stuck on high center in Congress; the president has intensified partisanship in Congress at every opportunity – instead of working around it, finding compromises that would move legislation forward on a bi-partisan basis.
We still are suffering from high un-employment (openly admitted to be over 6 percent, which means probably about 10 percent). We still have a very tepid growth rate (maybe 2.4 percent this year).
The only good news from Washington this year has been the fact the federal budget deficit is only 75 percent of what it was before the sequester ax fell on the feds last year – because Congress could not get its act together and fix the galloping budget deficit – a deficit that had been running at a rate over 4 percent of GDP!
Washington could do better for the country ... but Washington’s leadership doesn’t have the right vision. Is this just partisan ranting from a conservative Republican?
Before you conclude it is, consider the Pfizer story. This huge worldwide pharmaceutical company, headquartered in New York, which made $22 billions last year, has announced U.S. corporate income taxes are too high at 35 percent. They baldly told the country ‘the U.S. corporate income tax rate MUST be reduced to a level charged in other parts of the developed world (about 25 percent) ... or they will move their headquarters, together with its lush, well-paying jobs, from New York to Great Britain. They believe they must be able to compete with Euro-based drug companies on a level playing field, particularly in respect to taxes – or they cannot serve their stockholders well.
If Pfizer moves Europe – and is successful – there will be a huge exit of American companies following them to locations abroad. These companies are truly world-wide companies, and can operate anywhere.
In short, in spite of what the Obama guys think, the world does not operate in the way they think it does. Companies will not tolerate being taxed higher here than there. We cannot overcharge our dynamic companies, our high-tech companies, our best and brightest, higher income taxes, nor higher personal taxes!!
Pfizer has called the bluff of this administration – and of the national Democratic party. In effect the company has told the country and its leadership: Keep us competitive or we will move to other shores. Give us an environment in which we can thrive.
This president needs to correct the course of our ship of state – and do it soon. If he does not, then we need to throw him and his party out of power.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
The Great War ... A Century Ago
In January 1914, the most prosperous and progressive European states — Great Britain, naval hegemon of the world and leader of a world-wide Commonwealth; the German nation, newly united and prosperous, thanks to her growing industrial power; France, elegant, sophisticated, beyond her 19th century mis-adventures; Italy, also newly united and struggling to catch up with the other major powers; Austria-Hungary, central Europe’s surviving monarchy from the Renaissance; and many other smaller states as well — would choose sides and go to war. Collectively, they made a series of colossal diplomatic miscalculations and unintentionally fell into a cataclysmic and world-changing conflict that neither side could either prevent or, in fact, win. No one expected such a war to have a chance of beginning in Europe! It was literally a mind-numbing event.
Americans called it "The World War" through the first part of the 20th century, reflecting the vast scope of the action: naval engagements in both great oceans and battles in Europe, Asia and Africa, with dozens of nations involved, including even the Empire of Japan. Later, Americans would refer to it as "World War I," since it led to a second great conflict to determine the hegemony of the European continent.
The special irony of the two 20th century world wars in Europe was the result: After 1945, Europe was no longer the center of world power and influence. In 1914, no leaders in Europe could see this outcome; if they could have, they would have solved the initiating event in Serbia very readily. But, by 1946, the hegemonies of Europe were not European. Rather, an entirely new order to world affairs resulted. Initially, power was divided between the eastern Euro-Asian superpower of the USSR and the great hegemony of the West, the United States. And then, by playing our hand skillfully through the Cold War, the U.S. emerged as the world’s single super-power, literally bankrupting the Communist regime in Russia in the 1980s.
But Great Britain and her Commonwealth partners still call it ‘The Great War.’ It has left an indelible mark on other Europeans as well. The British-Commonwealth death toll reached 1.2 million men, the greatest death-toll of any of her many wars; most of them were lost in the muddy morass of the Western Front where the great armies of France and Great Britain faced the Central Powers of Germany and Austria. German casualties were in the millions; France literally lost 10 percent of her total population; it was a "great war!"
The armies fought to a vicious military draw in the West, behind massive trench fortifications, bristling artillery batteries and machine-gun emplacements. This was truly industrialized war; these fortifications defied the offensive efforts such as the British attack launched on the Somme River sector in July 1916, when the Commonwealth forces lost an estimated 60,000 men on the very first day of that battle. The Germans had an equal disaster at Verdun, where French and German combined casualties exceeded 2 million men. The blatant idiocy of infantry on foot sent charging into massed machine guns across the "no man’s land" between the lines was apparent to anyone, one might think.
But the Allied generals, both French and British, would launch many more equally idiotic attacks in the two years that followed, and they were joined by the German generals sending their troops charging in the other direction into Allied defenses. Eventually, the British tried to use mechanized tanks to break the German lines but were stymied by their poor mechanical performance; the Germans would develop poison gas tactics and then storm trooper tactics that used stealthy night attacks to bypass strong points and hit supply and support troops behind the front; all these efforts had only limited success.
Ultimately, neither side could break the strategic impasse. This reality was finally admitted by both sides, having fought to an agonizing impasse, all the original nations being bankrupt and close to political collapse, even starvation – and an armistice was signed in November 1918.
The two sides had fired 1.4 billion artillery shells at each other, literally churning the landscape into a impossible and impassable mish-mash of earth, barbwire, great holes and fractured body parts of the soldiers that died by the millions through the four-year stand-off. Tens of thousands died on a daily basis when attacking, yet barely gained any territory at all, much less a telling military advantage. Never was war more futile than the Western Front from 1915 to 1918.
The battles in the East – between the Central Powers of Austria and Germany and the Russian monarchy – were more fluid, yet equally indecisive. Finally the Bolsheviks seized power within Russia, ending the thousand-year monarchy; the Communists sued for peace independently of Russia’s Allies in order to consolidate their political gains and build a Communist state.
This Great War serves as the marker event between the progressive and optimistic 19th century, a period of growth of economic prosperity and liberalizing governments in Europe, when people believed that humanism could bring a wonderful New Era to the world. But human effort had failed spectacularly! A grim deterministic materialism took over peoples’ expectations. After the Great War, people no longer expected things to get better automatically.
Rather, they desperately hoped they would get no worse. But things did get much worse: The disastrous diplomatic settlement of the war, which attempted to end German ability to wage a future war instead created an environment that spawned the twisted, evil regime of Adolph Hitler and his Nazis in Germany. Hitler’s action brought an even more disastrous war, taking upward of 60 million military and civilian casualties between 1939 and 1945, including production-line murder of minorities in German-controlled territories.
The Economist magazine recently marked this "Great War," which began a century ago, with these words: “The events scheduled ... may perhaps end a 100-year haunting ... (of European sensibilities). Until recently, old men still lived, whose eyes, milky with cataracts, had seen the battlefields of the Great War and whose quavering voices could still describe them ... The Great War came to signify lives wasted to no purpose; in that, it has no rival. This was the war after which there were meant to be no more wars; each subsequent war, therefore, was a betrayal of those who had died in it, a sign that the world had not, after all, honored their sacrifice. After 2014, when the world fulsomely tries to make it up to them, the uniformed ghosts may begin to be gently shaken off.
“One hundred years may ... be long enough to mourn.”
I certainly hope so ... but the lesson to be learned is this: Wars can be so easily started; wars will exact terrible tolls as they grind on; wars are difficult to end, and there is even greater difficulty in their lasting resolution; and that history is full of cycles of warfare, where one follows another. If the world could only learn such lessons, then in one small way, the immense sacrifices of The Great War might be justified.
Americans called it "The World War" through the first part of the 20th century, reflecting the vast scope of the action: naval engagements in both great oceans and battles in Europe, Asia and Africa, with dozens of nations involved, including even the Empire of Japan. Later, Americans would refer to it as "World War I," since it led to a second great conflict to determine the hegemony of the European continent.
The special irony of the two 20th century world wars in Europe was the result: After 1945, Europe was no longer the center of world power and influence. In 1914, no leaders in Europe could see this outcome; if they could have, they would have solved the initiating event in Serbia very readily. But, by 1946, the hegemonies of Europe were not European. Rather, an entirely new order to world affairs resulted. Initially, power was divided between the eastern Euro-Asian superpower of the USSR and the great hegemony of the West, the United States. And then, by playing our hand skillfully through the Cold War, the U.S. emerged as the world’s single super-power, literally bankrupting the Communist regime in Russia in the 1980s.
But Great Britain and her Commonwealth partners still call it ‘The Great War.’ It has left an indelible mark on other Europeans as well. The British-Commonwealth death toll reached 1.2 million men, the greatest death-toll of any of her many wars; most of them were lost in the muddy morass of the Western Front where the great armies of France and Great Britain faced the Central Powers of Germany and Austria. German casualties were in the millions; France literally lost 10 percent of her total population; it was a "great war!"
The armies fought to a vicious military draw in the West, behind massive trench fortifications, bristling artillery batteries and machine-gun emplacements. This was truly industrialized war; these fortifications defied the offensive efforts such as the British attack launched on the Somme River sector in July 1916, when the Commonwealth forces lost an estimated 60,000 men on the very first day of that battle. The Germans had an equal disaster at Verdun, where French and German combined casualties exceeded 2 million men. The blatant idiocy of infantry on foot sent charging into massed machine guns across the "no man’s land" between the lines was apparent to anyone, one might think.
But the Allied generals, both French and British, would launch many more equally idiotic attacks in the two years that followed, and they were joined by the German generals sending their troops charging in the other direction into Allied defenses. Eventually, the British tried to use mechanized tanks to break the German lines but were stymied by their poor mechanical performance; the Germans would develop poison gas tactics and then storm trooper tactics that used stealthy night attacks to bypass strong points and hit supply and support troops behind the front; all these efforts had only limited success.
Ultimately, neither side could break the strategic impasse. This reality was finally admitted by both sides, having fought to an agonizing impasse, all the original nations being bankrupt and close to political collapse, even starvation – and an armistice was signed in November 1918.
The two sides had fired 1.4 billion artillery shells at each other, literally churning the landscape into a impossible and impassable mish-mash of earth, barbwire, great holes and fractured body parts of the soldiers that died by the millions through the four-year stand-off. Tens of thousands died on a daily basis when attacking, yet barely gained any territory at all, much less a telling military advantage. Never was war more futile than the Western Front from 1915 to 1918.
The battles in the East – between the Central Powers of Austria and Germany and the Russian monarchy – were more fluid, yet equally indecisive. Finally the Bolsheviks seized power within Russia, ending the thousand-year monarchy; the Communists sued for peace independently of Russia’s Allies in order to consolidate their political gains and build a Communist state.
This Great War serves as the marker event between the progressive and optimistic 19th century, a period of growth of economic prosperity and liberalizing governments in Europe, when people believed that humanism could bring a wonderful New Era to the world. But human effort had failed spectacularly! A grim deterministic materialism took over peoples’ expectations. After the Great War, people no longer expected things to get better automatically.
Rather, they desperately hoped they would get no worse. But things did get much worse: The disastrous diplomatic settlement of the war, which attempted to end German ability to wage a future war instead created an environment that spawned the twisted, evil regime of Adolph Hitler and his Nazis in Germany. Hitler’s action brought an even more disastrous war, taking upward of 60 million military and civilian casualties between 1939 and 1945, including production-line murder of minorities in German-controlled territories.
The Economist magazine recently marked this "Great War," which began a century ago, with these words: “The events scheduled ... may perhaps end a 100-year haunting ... (of European sensibilities). Until recently, old men still lived, whose eyes, milky with cataracts, had seen the battlefields of the Great War and whose quavering voices could still describe them ... The Great War came to signify lives wasted to no purpose; in that, it has no rival. This was the war after which there were meant to be no more wars; each subsequent war, therefore, was a betrayal of those who had died in it, a sign that the world had not, after all, honored their sacrifice. After 2014, when the world fulsomely tries to make it up to them, the uniformed ghosts may begin to be gently shaken off.
“One hundred years may ... be long enough to mourn.”
I certainly hope so ... but the lesson to be learned is this: Wars can be so easily started; wars will exact terrible tolls as they grind on; wars are difficult to end, and there is even greater difficulty in their lasting resolution; and that history is full of cycles of warfare, where one follows another. If the world could only learn such lessons, then in one small way, the immense sacrifices of The Great War might be justified.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Demoralization??
It’s time to tell the truth: I have been writing and blogging less because I am so thoroughly disgusted with, even demoralized by, our political process and the people and the people who are operating it. Both parties are controlled by their fringes. We have no functioning Center, in short.
I like to poke fun at the obvious errors our politicians and their governmental minions make, which after all are numerous. I usually look for human nature "at work," and it is not hard to find. But, current trends are ominous, it seems to me.
Lately the whole process is faulty. We have a president who is delivering the opposite of what he promised in his soaring and eloquent rhetoric. Example: Obamacare. Dozens, if not hundreds of broken promises. Greater red-tape than promised. Greater expense than promised. Probably greater restriction to parameters of care actually delivered than promised. Massive misrepresentation by the advocates.
We will look back on market-driven health care with yearning, I imagine.
And this president promised he would "heal" the alienation among our elected representatives by reaching across the aisle with new, sustained – and by implication, fair and equitable – offers to the "other party." Remember all that Founder-ish rhetoric? Buy the trouble with rhetoric is that it is ephemeral. It becomes reality only in the hands of a leader with true integrity.
This guy can’t even spell "integrity!" Did we smell the rat in his rhetorical pottage?
Nope, the majority of voters swallowed it down whole. But look at what we got: Obama’s idea of compromise with the "other party" is to "line 'em up and march 'em" to his tune, usually to cliff’s edge – and then push ‘em over. He expects them to commit political suicide; he does not compromise. And the Republicans won’t march! Why would they? His mandates are narrow, and every knowledgeable politician inside the Beltway knows how thin they are. He does not have the political base to make demands.
But why are we surprised that he thinks he does?
This is the professor who never went to the Faculty Lounge and hung around with the guys and drank coffee; that should have told us he doesn’t mix well or listen well. This is the state senator who usually voted "present," who perhaps belonged to some committees but never attend meetings, and who NEVER chaired a committee or introduced any legislation of consequence. Never did he author a piece of Illinois state law while serving the voters of his district!!
In short, he’s no politician. He doesn’t know what the word truly means, in spite of his sparkling Harvard college and law degrees.
This is a man who is a walking, talking charismatic doll: He is wound up, walks and talks, but does nothing of consequence except push the agenda of the Democratic left – but can’t even do that with any finesse. In short, he is a quarterback who can’t run or pass! (If you doubt this statement, check the work and results of LBJ, for instance; he could run AND pass.)
Other than Obamacare – when the Democratic leadership of Congress all but literally whipped their membership – he can get nothing through Congress. But he can and is using appointive power and executive orders heavily to generate changes in our Republic.
So I have virtually NO respect for leadership in the executive branch. And that is demoralizing to me. I have great respect for Harry Truman; I even can find things that LBJ did that I think were good solutions! And while Bill Clinton is a man of reprehensible morals to me, he WAS a skillful politician.
But not this guy.
Congressionally, we are in a classic "do-nothing" mode – in spite of the hordes of problems at the gates of our city! Both sides of the aisle are so ideologically polarized that there is no longer any "center" – and neither side can prevail. Nor will the voters trust either party with a sufficient degree of political power that they CAN prevail by themselves (smart voters!)
Anyone who knows history or actually does politics at the state or community level will tell you the work is done in the Center of the spectrum. And it is done more by listening than talking; more by creative thinking than ideological ranting; more by working to solve the problem presented than by quoting party lines and talking points.
That is the basic pre-supposition of our political process: There has to be a Center.
The Center is where ideas from both sides are presented, argued, modified, molded and shaped, and ultimately a piece of work is presented to the body at large which incorporates that best of BOTH sides – and actually solves the problems faced. The ideological fringes – both Left and Right – are left out of the process, which is WHY the problems get solved!
Again, our history is full of such episodes. But not in this Congress! And that is a tragedy for the American Republic.
I like to poke fun at the obvious errors our politicians and their governmental minions make, which after all are numerous. I usually look for human nature "at work," and it is not hard to find. But, current trends are ominous, it seems to me.
Lately the whole process is faulty. We have a president who is delivering the opposite of what he promised in his soaring and eloquent rhetoric. Example: Obamacare. Dozens, if not hundreds of broken promises. Greater red-tape than promised. Greater expense than promised. Probably greater restriction to parameters of care actually delivered than promised. Massive misrepresentation by the advocates.
We will look back on market-driven health care with yearning, I imagine.
And this president promised he would "heal" the alienation among our elected representatives by reaching across the aisle with new, sustained – and by implication, fair and equitable – offers to the "other party." Remember all that Founder-ish rhetoric? Buy the trouble with rhetoric is that it is ephemeral. It becomes reality only in the hands of a leader with true integrity.
This guy can’t even spell "integrity!" Did we smell the rat in his rhetorical pottage?
Nope, the majority of voters swallowed it down whole. But look at what we got: Obama’s idea of compromise with the "other party" is to "line 'em up and march 'em" to his tune, usually to cliff’s edge – and then push ‘em over. He expects them to commit political suicide; he does not compromise. And the Republicans won’t march! Why would they? His mandates are narrow, and every knowledgeable politician inside the Beltway knows how thin they are. He does not have the political base to make demands.
But why are we surprised that he thinks he does?
This is the professor who never went to the Faculty Lounge and hung around with the guys and drank coffee; that should have told us he doesn’t mix well or listen well. This is the state senator who usually voted "present," who perhaps belonged to some committees but never attend meetings, and who NEVER chaired a committee or introduced any legislation of consequence. Never did he author a piece of Illinois state law while serving the voters of his district!!
In short, he’s no politician. He doesn’t know what the word truly means, in spite of his sparkling Harvard college and law degrees.
This is a man who is a walking, talking charismatic doll: He is wound up, walks and talks, but does nothing of consequence except push the agenda of the Democratic left – but can’t even do that with any finesse. In short, he is a quarterback who can’t run or pass! (If you doubt this statement, check the work and results of LBJ, for instance; he could run AND pass.)
Other than Obamacare – when the Democratic leadership of Congress all but literally whipped their membership – he can get nothing through Congress. But he can and is using appointive power and executive orders heavily to generate changes in our Republic.
So I have virtually NO respect for leadership in the executive branch. And that is demoralizing to me. I have great respect for Harry Truman; I even can find things that LBJ did that I think were good solutions! And while Bill Clinton is a man of reprehensible morals to me, he WAS a skillful politician.
But not this guy.
Congressionally, we are in a classic "do-nothing" mode – in spite of the hordes of problems at the gates of our city! Both sides of the aisle are so ideologically polarized that there is no longer any "center" – and neither side can prevail. Nor will the voters trust either party with a sufficient degree of political power that they CAN prevail by themselves (smart voters!)
Anyone who knows history or actually does politics at the state or community level will tell you the work is done in the Center of the spectrum. And it is done more by listening than talking; more by creative thinking than ideological ranting; more by working to solve the problem presented than by quoting party lines and talking points.
That is the basic pre-supposition of our political process: There has to be a Center.
The Center is where ideas from both sides are presented, argued, modified, molded and shaped, and ultimately a piece of work is presented to the body at large which incorporates that best of BOTH sides – and actually solves the problems faced. The ideological fringes – both Left and Right – are left out of the process, which is WHY the problems get solved!
Again, our history is full of such episodes. But not in this Congress! And that is a tragedy for the American Republic.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again
Those of you who have read my columns over the last 15 years in the Daily Legal News and the News & Eagle blogs know that I am a student of history. Happily there are lots of thoughtful and insightful historians through the centuries, from the Greek Herodotus to our present day.
One of the best historians of Western Civilization’s Classical period was Edward Gibbon, author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Gibbon was writing in the 18th century but is still frequently studied three centuries later. His research and narratives have stood the test of many generations.
The Greek city-states invented the modern political concepts of republics, democracies, tyrannies, etc., especially the city-state of Athens. They introduced us t o the ideas of liberty and freedom of civic service to our cities and nation, and experienced all the variations of self-rule, despotic rule and imperial domination. None of the basic meanings of any of these things has changed over the last 25 to 26 centuries!
Gibbons spent a great deal of energy studying the Greeks, as one would hope that any politically-ambitious person would today – thus perhaps avoiding making the same mistakes that the Greeks endured and recorded for us.
Listen to him for a minute on the topic of the Greek city-states:
“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all – security, comfort and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted NOT to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free – and was never free again.”
The Athenians had developed a unique and substantially self-ruling form of government for their dynamic city that worked pretty well, but then abandoned it because it required some self-discipline along with the freedom of action and thought that their government allowed them to enjoy.
The lesson that Gibbon highlights, that history teaches, is: freedom and responsibility are different – but always linked together. One requires the other for its very existence in our lives.
The Apostle Paul – a profound student of human nature – thought along similar lines when he wrote to his disciple Timothy to explain why people act the way they do, even when it is apparent it will end badly! “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wonder away to myths.”
In short they chase after whomever is making promises that have "sex appeal" or promise easy – though absurd – solutions.
We currently have one of these myth-tellers in the White House, it seems to me, but I continue to hope that the brains under the "itching ears" of the American electorate will conclude, "fool me once, its your fault. But fool me twice, and its mine."
Our electorate needs to toss the socialistic junk that Mr. Obama advocates out on its ear, or we – like the ancient Greeks – will trade our freedom and our study Republic for a miserable mess of his socialist pottage!
One of the best historians of Western Civilization’s Classical period was Edward Gibbon, author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Gibbon was writing in the 18th century but is still frequently studied three centuries later. His research and narratives have stood the test of many generations.
The Greek city-states invented the modern political concepts of republics, democracies, tyrannies, etc., especially the city-state of Athens. They introduced us t o the ideas of liberty and freedom of civic service to our cities and nation, and experienced all the variations of self-rule, despotic rule and imperial domination. None of the basic meanings of any of these things has changed over the last 25 to 26 centuries!
Gibbons spent a great deal of energy studying the Greeks, as one would hope that any politically-ambitious person would today – thus perhaps avoiding making the same mistakes that the Greeks endured and recorded for us.
Listen to him for a minute on the topic of the Greek city-states:
“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all – security, comfort and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted NOT to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free – and was never free again.”
The Athenians had developed a unique and substantially self-ruling form of government for their dynamic city that worked pretty well, but then abandoned it because it required some self-discipline along with the freedom of action and thought that their government allowed them to enjoy.
The lesson that Gibbon highlights, that history teaches, is: freedom and responsibility are different – but always linked together. One requires the other for its very existence in our lives.
The Apostle Paul – a profound student of human nature – thought along similar lines when he wrote to his disciple Timothy to explain why people act the way they do, even when it is apparent it will end badly! “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wonder away to myths.”
In short they chase after whomever is making promises that have "sex appeal" or promise easy – though absurd – solutions.
We currently have one of these myth-tellers in the White House, it seems to me, but I continue to hope that the brains under the "itching ears" of the American electorate will conclude, "fool me once, its your fault. But fool me twice, and its mine."
Our electorate needs to toss the socialistic junk that Mr. Obama advocates out on its ear, or we – like the ancient Greeks – will trade our freedom and our study Republic for a miserable mess of his socialist pottage!
Friday, November 15, 2013
Some Odds and Ends ...
We are having a beautiful fall season; we recently took a lunch and spent an afternoon driving country roads to Great Salt Plains, enjoying the green wheat fields and lush pastures. The countryside is in so much better shape now than it has been the last two years of drought.
Salt Plains actually has water in it, which is very good news. There were thousands of ducks on the lake, fishing and resting on their migration south. We also saw avocets, dowitchers and sandpipers. There were a few white pelicans below the dam in the weirs – though most of them seemed to be in the far western reaches of the lake, barely visible with field glasses from Cottonwood Point.
But the biggest pleasure was on our walk along the Eagle Trail in the Reserve, which goes north and south along the Sand Creek bay area; we could hear them "talking" away first, then begin to see small bunches of Sandhill cranes, one of our favorite birds, feeding and resting in the shallow water close to shore. Since we had our dogs with us – and they were curious about the sound, poking their noses through the bushes – the cranes took flight right over our heads! We must have seen three or four hundred, flying up and around, landing back in the water behind our path of travel. It is always a thrill to see them, especially when they are close to us.
It was disappointing the Refuge has not filled their ponds at this point, so the auto trail does not have any concentration of birds; they are all out on the lake, and therefore difficult to see. Perhaps this is because of the drought, but since the information and exhibit building was closed when we were there, I have no guidance from the rangers.
Still, a beautiful day to be out in the country. We also saw a large number of red-tailed hawks on the country roads. I am guessing they are in-migrants from the northern reaches of the Great Plains, coming to warmer Oklahoma for the winter, as they do each winter.
•••••••
Politics: It simply stinks these days. Our Congress is so dysfunctional it pains me to even talk about them.
"A plague on the houses of both parties!" as the time-honored curse goes.
I am ready to see one or more new parties created, ones that are not dominated by their radical fringes but clearly focused on the desires, beliefs and hopes on their majority of their memberships in the center. The radical edges of our societies have never built our country; that takes balanced and constructive thinking and action. But we have – by default – turned the process of governing the country to the Left and the Right radical elements.
The best solution seems to be that right-thinking and constructive people should abandon the traditional parties to them, and move on to new and center-oriented political groups.
I know I am ready to do so.
The guys in power right now – on both the Left and the Right – will pull the temple down on top of us if we continue to tolerate and empower them. They have proved their incompetence and lack of vision over and over.
•••••••
I love living in Oklahoma, especially right now. Once again, we run contra-trend to the country as a whole economically, and things are good! We have jobs galore in Oklahoma; anybody that wants to work can certainly find a job – a refreshing difference from the Coasts, that’s for sure! The revival in our oil and gas sector over the last decade is amazing and offers great advantages to our state and our people.
Our energy-producing companies have dumb-founded their critics once again – the peak-oil harum-scarum lobby of ecologists and leftists – by using new knowledge and new techniques, to seek, find and produce oil and gas. We have truly amazing reserves of natural gas developed in the last few years, and we are producing more and more oil month by month. It is truly a boon for the country as a whole, giving us more latitude economically and militarily than we have had in decades.
Now all we need is a national administration that appreciates the creativity of the oil and gas industry – and can use the leverage that energy-independence provides to good and constructive advantage for our country and the world. Properly employed, U.S. energy sufficiency can make a big difference in our foreign policy (among other things).
Unfortunately the Obama bunch simply doesn’t get it and continues to dissipate our influence abroad. Another good reason for political change!
Salt Plains actually has water in it, which is very good news. There were thousands of ducks on the lake, fishing and resting on their migration south. We also saw avocets, dowitchers and sandpipers. There were a few white pelicans below the dam in the weirs – though most of them seemed to be in the far western reaches of the lake, barely visible with field glasses from Cottonwood Point.
But the biggest pleasure was on our walk along the Eagle Trail in the Reserve, which goes north and south along the Sand Creek bay area; we could hear them "talking" away first, then begin to see small bunches of Sandhill cranes, one of our favorite birds, feeding and resting in the shallow water close to shore. Since we had our dogs with us – and they were curious about the sound, poking their noses through the bushes – the cranes took flight right over our heads! We must have seen three or four hundred, flying up and around, landing back in the water behind our path of travel. It is always a thrill to see them, especially when they are close to us.
It was disappointing the Refuge has not filled their ponds at this point, so the auto trail does not have any concentration of birds; they are all out on the lake, and therefore difficult to see. Perhaps this is because of the drought, but since the information and exhibit building was closed when we were there, I have no guidance from the rangers.
Still, a beautiful day to be out in the country. We also saw a large number of red-tailed hawks on the country roads. I am guessing they are in-migrants from the northern reaches of the Great Plains, coming to warmer Oklahoma for the winter, as they do each winter.
•••••••
Politics: It simply stinks these days. Our Congress is so dysfunctional it pains me to even talk about them.
"A plague on the houses of both parties!" as the time-honored curse goes.
I am ready to see one or more new parties created, ones that are not dominated by their radical fringes but clearly focused on the desires, beliefs and hopes on their majority of their memberships in the center. The radical edges of our societies have never built our country; that takes balanced and constructive thinking and action. But we have – by default – turned the process of governing the country to the Left and the Right radical elements.
The best solution seems to be that right-thinking and constructive people should abandon the traditional parties to them, and move on to new and center-oriented political groups.
I know I am ready to do so.
The guys in power right now – on both the Left and the Right – will pull the temple down on top of us if we continue to tolerate and empower them. They have proved their incompetence and lack of vision over and over.
•••••••
I love living in Oklahoma, especially right now. Once again, we run contra-trend to the country as a whole economically, and things are good! We have jobs galore in Oklahoma; anybody that wants to work can certainly find a job – a refreshing difference from the Coasts, that’s for sure! The revival in our oil and gas sector over the last decade is amazing and offers great advantages to our state and our people.
Our energy-producing companies have dumb-founded their critics once again – the peak-oil harum-scarum lobby of ecologists and leftists – by using new knowledge and new techniques, to seek, find and produce oil and gas. We have truly amazing reserves of natural gas developed in the last few years, and we are producing more and more oil month by month. It is truly a boon for the country as a whole, giving us more latitude economically and militarily than we have had in decades.
Now all we need is a national administration that appreciates the creativity of the oil and gas industry – and can use the leverage that energy-independence provides to good and constructive advantage for our country and the world. Properly employed, U.S. energy sufficiency can make a big difference in our foreign policy (among other things).
Unfortunately the Obama bunch simply doesn’t get it and continues to dissipate our influence abroad. Another good reason for political change!
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
American dream is fading. And that’s a damned shame.
The ‘Social Contract’ is a Fraud
So said a headline I recently read – and that idea resonated with me.
The concept of a "social contract" is one of the bedrock ideas of modern political science. Supposedly we the governed have consented to create a Limited Government that is supposed to serve us; fine theory, of course. We wrote a document – the Constitution – some 225 years ago that balanced the branches of government, working together to strictly limit the powers of the Federal government. But the workings of history and the layers of law, administration and bureaucracy have all worked to erode the fine-tuned balance of powers our Founders of these United States envisioned.
Government has grown to be over-bearing and increasingly oppressive on our country. And life in this country increasingly demonstrates the result: moribund economy, heavy unemployment, little business investment for the future, misguided Executive branch, dithering Congress, capricious courts.
The American dream is faltering and fading. And that’s a damned shame.
The reality of government in the 21st century is that it is off the tracks, serving less and oppressing more; it methodically grasps for more of the income pie every year; it presumes that government at the Federal level can solve problems that government at lesser levels cannot (when the reality is that power consolidated and focused at the Federal level can IMPOSE solutions on all more easily than by selling a course of action to many smaller governmental units); it institutes programs supposed to solve certain stated problems which then fail to do so, but achieve other aims deemed desirable by the ruling elite, so they are kept in place indefinitely and without any review.
It has created a group of political careerists that reaches for and achieve power, through election or through "civil service" structures – but never releases it, for its fundamental imperative is to stay in office and therefore in power. So they live from election to election, gathering influence and resources to achieve re-election rather than doing the people’s business. They grow rich in Office by voting themselves salaries and benefits far beyond what people on the "outside" can
earn or qualify for – a sure sign of imbalance between public and private zones of life.
Perhaps worst of all, they do a lousy job of what they do! Good problem-solving requires searching for all the facts, eliminating the spurious ones, thus understanding the true nature of the difficulty, then deciding which level of government is most likely to truly be able to solve the problem, finally developing a political consensus across the spectrum to support and institute a
solution – and then, and only then, actually doing something about when appropriate. It is a complex, intricate process requiring great skill; one can think of those who have done it in our history: Washington, Jefferson, Webster, Lincoln, TR Roosevelt, etc. And we can list many more who tried and failed, including almost all the current holders of federal office!
It has to be said that this sort of effort is much too big a risk for our current batch of careerists; they don’t want to do all this hard work! Rather, they want to pontificate while dressed up for 30 seconds of national TV exposure on issue after issue – then kick the can down the road a ways for someone else to deal with the real problems. So Medicare, Social Security, pension liabilities, fiscal responsibility, and, yes, even, a true federal budget, wait for solutions – while we totter toward the dangerous edge of the precipice.
In short, government no longer "serves." It dominates, manipulates and, at worst, oppresses – and does so irresponsibly. And the American Dream falters and fades.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
The Insolvent Phantom Democracy
"All Together, Let’s Like Ike" declares the editorial in the bi-monthly AARP bulletin.
In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t like AARP. Perhaps it is because of their blatant efforts on behalf of their very nominal members, lobbying for increased benefits of all sorts without offering any real means of paying for them. After all, anyone older than 55 or so can belong for a few dollars a year. But like most of their millions of members, we have found affiliation useful when we travel, since members enjoy cheaper motel and hotel rates, etc., so we maintain membership. You could say we serve practicality rather than principle, I suppose!
So I greet the Bulletin in the mailbox with skepticism.
But: the current issue is an exception. Editor Jim Toedtman has an appreciation of the statesmanship and vision of President Dwight D. Eisenhower – and points out that our generation suffers badly by comparison.
Here’s a sample of Mr. Toedtman’s comments:
“… Eisenhower ... found a way to persuade the public and Democrats in Congress that military excesses must be capped and that the nation’s civil rights, education and transportation needed urgent attention.”
So Ike began the civil rights march that would mature under LBJ; Ike built the interstate highway system, and found a fair and equitable way to finance its construction as it was built over the next 25 years or so (no massive debt). And he pushed the needs of education across the nation forward on the national agenda as well.
But there’s more, Toedtman tells us: “In his nationally televised farewell address, he shared his vision: "As we peer into society’s future, we … must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.’”
Wow! I didn’t remember Ike being that concise and well-spoken! In fact, I remember him splitting infinitives, throwing in parenthetical statements, and generally muddling about in his speeches. (I also remember one of his biographers putting forward the idea that Ike was much more intelligent than he ever let on, that his muddling way of speaking was in fact the camouflage of a very sly fox. Perhaps so …)
But we need to remember these words:
“We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the INSOLVENT PHANTOM of tomorrow.”
That thought should be engraved in bronze and placed in every prominent spot in the White House and the halls of Congress! Our current leadership is scandalous in this respect: They never face the issues squarely; they find borrowing politically expedient; they are miserable leaders with no vision! They will be chastised, even scourged, by the generation of Americans to come! Perhaps they will – like the English of old – dig up and scatter the bones of the current Congress!
For they ARE eating the nation’s seed corn!
In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t like AARP. Perhaps it is because of their blatant efforts on behalf of their very nominal members, lobbying for increased benefits of all sorts without offering any real means of paying for them. After all, anyone older than 55 or so can belong for a few dollars a year. But like most of their millions of members, we have found affiliation useful when we travel, since members enjoy cheaper motel and hotel rates, etc., so we maintain membership. You could say we serve practicality rather than principle, I suppose!
So I greet the Bulletin in the mailbox with skepticism.
But: the current issue is an exception. Editor Jim Toedtman has an appreciation of the statesmanship and vision of President Dwight D. Eisenhower – and points out that our generation suffers badly by comparison.
Here’s a sample of Mr. Toedtman’s comments:
“… Eisenhower ... found a way to persuade the public and Democrats in Congress that military excesses must be capped and that the nation’s civil rights, education and transportation needed urgent attention.”
So Ike began the civil rights march that would mature under LBJ; Ike built the interstate highway system, and found a fair and equitable way to finance its construction as it was built over the next 25 years or so (no massive debt). And he pushed the needs of education across the nation forward on the national agenda as well.
But there’s more, Toedtman tells us: “In his nationally televised farewell address, he shared his vision: "As we peer into society’s future, we … must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.’”
Wow! I didn’t remember Ike being that concise and well-spoken! In fact, I remember him splitting infinitives, throwing in parenthetical statements, and generally muddling about in his speeches. (I also remember one of his biographers putting forward the idea that Ike was much more intelligent than he ever let on, that his muddling way of speaking was in fact the camouflage of a very sly fox. Perhaps so …)
But we need to remember these words:
“We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the INSOLVENT PHANTOM of tomorrow.”
That thought should be engraved in bronze and placed in every prominent spot in the White House and the halls of Congress! Our current leadership is scandalous in this respect: They never face the issues squarely; they find borrowing politically expedient; they are miserable leaders with no vision! They will be chastised, even scourged, by the generation of Americans to come! Perhaps they will – like the English of old – dig up and scatter the bones of the current Congress!
For they ARE eating the nation’s seed corn!
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