The Price of Liberty is Vigilance

Price of Liberty Has Moved

2005-09-29T04:06:00.000-05:00

The Price of Liberty has moved to www.priceofliberty.net.

Come on over and see the new and improved Price of Liberty. It’s cleaner, easier to read and feature rich so click on through. All the content on this site complete with comments has been moved to the new location so resent your links to www.priceofliberty.net. The old Blogspot POL will remain so long as Blogspot sees fit.

Ciao

Libertas

New Improved POL Coming Soon

2005-09-27T16:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the lack of new posts at POL but I have been busy working on a new project. Price of Liberty will soon be moving to a new location. I have been using Wordpress to create a new and improved blog. It will be a cleaner format, with less scroll, (I know, the current scroll length is maddening, I can’t even find the end to my own essays). It will be feature rich, better organized, easier to read, easier to manage, and will include comprehensive links to other political blogs from various points of view. For all you Founding Father fans, there will be a Patriots section dedicated to biographies, portraits and links related to these great minds. There will be a Libros section with book reviews, recommended readings and a bookstore where you will be able to purchase recommended titles. There will also be a Friends of Liberty section dedicated to regular guests and commentators at POL. (Yes, this means you Cernig and Xristi.) Please be patient as this may take a few more days to complete. The existing site will remain at its current location with a link to the new and improved Price of Liberty.

Until then, for the next few days head over to these Friends of Liberty Newshog or to Gadflying

Thank you for you patience. I hope to make it well worth the wait.

Ciao

Libertas

Over "There"

2005-09-24T17:14:00.000-05:00

The following is taken from a discussion that developed in the comments to “Should Liberty or Empire Be Sought?” Some folks thought it merited its own post, so I have obliged to present it here. It has also been graciously cross posted by Cernig at Newshog.

The War Between the States and Reconstruction traumatized this society and tragically a culture that prided itself on hospitality grew ever more xenophobic. Texas is a collection of paradoxes as is any place so vast in scale. I am from San Antonio, a place that is about as culturally distinct from Beaumont as one can imagine. In San Antone we have for almost 300 years lived in a bicultural society and so are somewhat less prone to fear of the “other.”

Growing up in a predominately Hispanic town with an Italian last name has provided me with some unique insights into the bicultural experience. My name is the same in Spanish as Italian and hence I am generally presumed Hispanic until proven otherwise. This has led to some interesting situations. When Hispanics decry discrimination, this is for me not an academic thing since anything bad that happens to them is almost as likely to also happen to me. I have been turned down for jobs, yelled at by rude bill collectors, denied credit and housing all because of mistaken ethnic identity. So I am particularly sensitive about how the least powerful among us are treated, since that usually includes me.

But as a businessman, I also saw that the knife cuts two ways. I once offered to build a free website for the local Chicano cultural arts center. When they heard that a person with a last name ending in an “O” from a company called Tristero was offering to build their site, they were enthusiastic and called a board meeting for the presentation. When a longhaired blond with blue eyes marched into that room the silence was deafening. What was disappointing was they immediately lost interest in the project and this was one of the shorter meetings of my career.

San Antonio is no Utopia, but it is one of the most successfully integrated cities in the country. Almost no one from San Antonio presumes that a Hispanic is an alien. In fact a San Antonio Hispanic is likely to be 4th, 5th or 6th generation and to be more “from around here” than the multitudes of white carpetbaggers living in the suburbs. Hence, the relatively peculiar San Antonio phenomenon of Anglo natives who consider the suburban Anglo “snowbirds” to be more of the interloper than the urban Hispanic “illegal.”

We have a thriving Hispanic middleclass and a St. Mary’s Law School that has been producing Hispanic lawyers for generations. We even have a Hispanic old money political class that underlies the power base. The University of Texas at San Antonio has a Hispanic president, in this context ironically named Dr. Romo. Perhaps nowhere else in the country is Hispanic upward mobility so viably a reality.

Almost everyone in San Antonio, regardless of ethnicity or class, has Hispanic friends and neighbors. Consequently militant Chicanismo has been less attractive here.

If all this discussion of Hispanicity seems a digression let me explain. In San Antonio if you go to the emergency room your doctor is likely as not to be Hispanic. If you are arrested, the prosecutor is likely as not to be Hispanic. If you go to a public park it will be filled with Hispanic children and families enjoying the day. I love this about my hometown and it is only when I leave that I truly appreciate how unique San Antonio is.

A few years ago I designed and built a trade show booth for a software firm. I had to accompany it to San Diego to set it up. I spent a week in that beautiful city by the sea. But while there I noticed something quite disturbing. After a while I realized something was missing. Then it hit me, “where are all the Hispanics?” I had been downtown for a week and there were none in sight. No Hispanic businessmen in suits. No Hispanic secretaries filling the restaurants at lunch, even the busboys were all Anglo. I went to Balboa Park and not a single Hispanic family for days. Plenty of very pretty young white men though, playing Frisbee and cruising for company. I thought perhaps that explained the absence of families. I was wrong.

After a few days this really began to bother me. I could see Mexico from there but could not find the Hispanics. Eventually we had to pack up and I went in search of bubble wrap. Even though this was a port city there was none for sale anywhere near the ocean. I made several calls, finally found an address and headed out. I drove for perhaps fifteen or twenty miles due east through neighborhood after neighborhood where the most inexpensive home went for about $500,000. Then I came to The Wall. A wall about 15 ft high bounded “civilization.” On the other side, a freeway that was as an effective a natural barrier as a mountain range and more effective than the Rio Grande. Over “there” was the Barrio. I drove into it for a few miles and it was like a whole other country. A Third World country. Not an Anglo face in sight. Nor a middleclass face either.

I reached my intended destination where I encountered a Hispanic elderly gentleman who was visibly shocked to see my pale face in his hood. He seemed to presume I was a government official of some sort there to give him a hard time. I explained that I was just a working-class schmuck in search of bubble wrap and he was visibly relieved. But he was still confused and more than a little concerned with my safety, he thought I might be lost. I told him I was not lost but “apparently gringos do not use bubble wrap in San Diego.” He laughed and asked me where I was from. When I said San Antonio, he said “oh, that explains it.” I said, “Explains what?’ He said, “Why you were not reluctant to come to the barrio.” I told him that I had spent perhaps a third of my life in barrios and had long ago learned that Hispanics don’t have cooties. “In fact if I get more than about twenty miles from a good taco I feel an irresistible urge to turn around and go home.” He laughed and told me to be careful because not everyone would immediately understand that I was from Texas and not simply a gringo. He said folks around there don’t think too highly of gringos. I told him I was beginning to understand why they felt that way.

I returned to the convention center where union construction crews were tearing down the displays. Again I noticed the dearth of brown faces. This was beginning to piss me off. In Texas when there is sweating to be done there are generally plenty of Hispanics around. But apparently not among union workers in San Diego. When I returned to San Antonio I called up my old maestro. He was a stonemason in the San Antonio barrio that had trained me to fabricate marble and granite. Paul Flores and I went out and got a couple of much needed tacos.

This was an epiphanous experience for me. I had always wondered why California Chicanos were so pissed. Now I understood why. In San Antonio there is no Wall. Our barrio has an infinitely permeable membrane that is perhaps twenty miles wide. If one drives north far enough you eventually have trouble finding that taco, but there is a huge zone of geographic integration. In San Antonio only the carpetbaggers of the suburbs consider the Hispanic an “other.” Heck, most of us have more than one in the woodpile and most Hispanics have a daughter or a niece married to a gringo. So I was shocked to find out that on the Left coast racism and segregation were so endemic. In California, segregation is created by managing property values and building walls and freeways. But it is as effective as the most egregious de jur form ever practiced in the South. In some ways, because this discrimination is cloaked in class, it is even more pernicious since this facilitates denial of the horrible racist truth.

Since I returned to San Antonio from that adventure, I have focused my attention on “otherness” and how cultures react at their borders. I have looked for the synthesis that emerges and the hybrid personalities it creates. Sadly for California, it seems the hybrid is more common in Texas. I have come to believe that South Texas is the cultural laboratory that prefigures the emerging demographic reality of the rest of the nation.

Every time I hear Lou Dobbs or some other gringo crying, “The Mexicans are coming! The Mexicans are coming!” I am simultaneously amused and offended. In San Antone they are not just coming, they are here and always have been. When I hear the paranoid complain they are “being invaded,” all I can think is, “It serves them right.” After all, most of the new immigrants are moving to places with names like Tejas, Nuevo Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California. Which makes one wonder, “Who invaded whom?” The Border is a fiction and it always has been. To all those scared Anglo-centrist out there, all I have to say is, “Get over it! Once you’ve tasted picante salsa you’ll never miss ketchup again.”

Ironically, It has been my studies of “otherness” that have brought me back around to my Southern roots on my mama’s side. I began to realize that what this country has been doing to minorities and to other nations; it has also been doing to my Southern brethren. I have been slightly surprised to discover how the methodologies used to study the exclusion of “other” groups also apply to the Southerner.

Because Southerners have been as guilty as any of exclusion, people are loath to admit that Southerners themselves have also been systematically excluded in American society. This puts Southerners in the paradoxical position of being both the poster children for exclusion and simultaneously its victims. This dichotomy is not easily appreciated either in or out of the South. Hence one finds that the apologist for Southern culture is equated with being an apologist for exclusion. In my case nothing could be further from the truth. It is my revulsion at exclusion that has brought me to the position of being a Southern apologist.

Growing up as an original Latino of a different stripe, with Southern roots, in a bicultural city in the borderlands has given me a somewhat unique perspective on this phenomenon. I have forever had a foot in at least two worlds, sometimes more. I have never felt truly a member of any single group. I am an initiate in several but not exclusively a member of any. I have always felt at least a little excluded wherever I am. Hence I am obsessed by the mechanisms by which we both exclude and include one another, whether those mechanisms be class, race, ethnicity, religion, language or geography. I am fascinated by the interplay of these phenomena and the complex cultural calculus in which we are all prone to engage. I am also fascinated by how inclusion in one group is determined by exclusion from another. If one is an initiate of mutually exclusive groups one tends to be suspected by both of disloyalty. It is as if we were more often judged by our choice of enemies than of friends. Regrettably, and more than a little paradoxically, it seems that the fewer enemies one has, the fewer friends one is likely to accrue. So it goes with “otherness.”

It is difficult to discuss such tender issues without offending someone. Even here I have “otherized” snowbirds, gringos, carpetbaggers, suburbanites and Californians. Yet at least two of those groups include me. If you are a member of such a group, it is not my intention to exclude you either, but it is difficult to discuss borders without leaving someone on the “other” side. It is my belief that the seeker for the Truth will find it between the lines in that zone of mystery and synthesis where the hybrid blossoms toward the Light.

Patrick Henry: Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?

2005-09-22T06:47:00.000-05:00

The following is an expurgated version of a speech given by Patrick Henry on June 5, 1788, in the Virginia Convention, called to ratify the Constitution of the United States. It is prophetically entitled:

Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?

A complete version of this brilliant and impassioned oration is available at Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought? and I sincerely encourage you to read it in its uninterrupted entirety. Most of it appears below along with some of my meager thoughts and observations in light of 200 years of hindsight. What is most impressive about these Founding Fathers, and Patrick Henry in particular, was their outstanding foresight. After reading Henry’s own words, I am sure you will agree.

THIS, sir, is the language of democracy--that a majority of the community have a right to alter government when found to be oppressive. But how different is the geni of your new Constitution from this! How different from the sentiments of freemen that a contemptible minority can prevent the good of the majority!

Patrick Henry was a populist democrat as was not pleased by the republican character of the proposed constitution. The word "minority" here should in no way be understood in the contemporary connotative context of that word. The minorities of which Henry is speaking are made clear in the following passage…

If, sir, amendments are left to the twentieth, or tenth part of the people of America, your liberty is gone for ever...there is a great deal of bribery practised in the House of Commons of England...But, sir, the tenth part of that body can not continue oppressions on the rest of the people...It will be easily contrived to procure the opposition of the one-tenth of the people to any alteration, however judicious

Patrick was concerned with small cabals of crooked politicians inhibiting the will of the People. He felt the Constitution was too rigid and that the process of its amendment too inflexible. He viewed the process as a virtually insurmountable hurdle. History has shown that it was, while difficult. not so insurmountable as Henry imagined. I wonder what he would have made of the Volstead Act and its subsequent repeal.

Oh, sir! we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?

At the time of Henry’s writing there were no such examples. There remain precious few. Most Marxist revolutions were funded and manipulated by a superpower. Even the ANC in South Africa was sponsored by the USSR for its own reasons. India perhaps is the closest example as they brought an end to the British Raj, but even that soon devolved into internecine warfare. Most revolutions end up replacing one form of tyranny with another. Witness the tragic history of Mexico. It is, as Patrick Henry feared, generally cabals of corrupt politicians combined with foreign interference that subvert such attempts at Liberty.

You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors can not assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

If Patrick felt this strongly about the Riot Act, just imagine what he would have had to say about the Patriot Act. He would have been livid. He would also have been within his rights to sue for defamation of character for such an egregious misuse of the term Patriot.

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment? … What resistance could be made? The attempt would be madness...Your militia is given up to Congress, also, in another part of this plan; they will therefore act as they think proper; all power will be in their own possession. You can not force them to receive their punishment: of what service would militia be to you, when, most probably, you will not have a single musket in the State? For, as arms are to be provided by Congress, they may or may not furnish them.

It would not take a clairvoyant to imagine what Patrick Henry would have thought of the current US Defense budget. Nor what he would have had to say about events like Waco. Your first clue might be the title he chose for this piece “Should Empire or Liberty Be Sought?” Given the inequity of the respective armories of Northern and Southern states at the outbreak of the war between them, along with his observation of the madness of resistance, Patrick would be the one who appears oracular.

An opinion has gone forth, we find, that we are contemptible people; the time has been when we were thought otherwise. Under the same despised government we commanded the respect of all Europe; wherefore are we now reckoned otherwise?

In the context of the events of our era; this is a striking statement regardless of how one interprets it.

The American spirit has fled from hence: it has gone to regions where it has never been expected; it has gone to the people of France in search of a splendid government, a strong, energetic government. Shall we imitate the example of those nations who have gone from a simple to a splendid government? Are those nations more worthy of our imitation? What can make an adequate satisfaction to them for the loss they have suffered in attaining such a government--for the loss of their liberty?

Here Henry is referring to the events surrounding the French Revolution, which replaced a totalitarian autocracy with a totalitarian bureaucracy. When America was an experiment for the amusement of Rousseau’s aristocratic readers, the 18th century limousine liberals, it was cute and popular. When the ideas returned to France it was not so cute. The idea of Liberty may have been the proposed goal of the French Revolution, its real agenda however, was to feast on the rich while plutocrats contrived to regiment all aspects of the lives of its “citizens.” This was not what Patrick Henry had in mind for the United States and he thought forgoing Liberty was too high a price to pay to impress a bunch of French fanatics.

Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things. When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different; Liberty, sir, was then the primary object.

I don’t believe the Neo-Conservatives would be very big fans of Patrick on this score. Their defense industrial complex cronies would not permit it. I am always struck by the irony of these dissemblers insisting they are strict originalists when the Founding Fathers, who had such difficulty in reaching a consensus while crafting the constitution, would have been in unanimous accord on a motion to have the Neo-Cons tarred and feathered.

“What profiteth a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?” Patrick Henry believed the same logic applied to nations. For Patrick, Liberty was the soul of America and the ambition for empire would inevitably undermine the foundations of the Liberty he so cherished. He was as correct about this as he was about so many other things. We do not need the power to conquer the world, only enough to keep it from conquering us. Any nation with a formidable standing army will inevitably find an excuse to use it. The very economics of militaries dictate a “use it or lose it” military policy. Otherwise why pay for it? Herein lies the true motivation for wars. There is money to be made in waging them. For more on this, consider the observations of another historic American Patriot, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler's War Is A Racketl

Great Britain made liberty the foundation of everything. That country is become a great, mighty, and splendid nation; not because their government is strong and energetic, but, sir, because liberty is its direct end and foundation.

It seems the American imperialists of Henry’s day were, like the Neo-Cons of ours, also prone to put the cart before the horse. Greatness is not born of strength but strength from greatness. For Henry the degree to which a society affords the greatest amount of Liberty to the greatest number of its citizens is the only true measure of its greatness. Impressive military might is transitory and epicenters of its brand of power forever shifting. Liberty is the only unshakable foundation for the enduring greatness of a people. So long as a nation’s People remain Free, that nation will be great, regardless of what the French may think.

But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire. If you make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects of one great consolidated empire of America, your government will not have sufficient energy to keep them together.

Well they didn’t have sufficient political energy, but as Henry anticipated military might and coercive force would be inevitably, and ruthlessly, used in lieu of the democratic consent of the governed.

But, sir, "we are not feared by foreigners; we do not make nations tremble." Would this constitute happiness or secure liberty? I trust, sir, our political hemisphere will ever direct their operations to the security of those objects.

Here I think Henry was referring, at least in part, to European snobbery at anything or anyone from the savage New World. On that score Americans still get no respect. To some extent, deservedly so. But as to being feared by foreigners and making nations tremble, that is another matter. Most Europeans today report that they fear the unilateral application of American military might more than any other threat on the planet. Henry’s opponents would probably be as pleased as the Neo-Cons about this. For such folks, if one cannot be respected and admired, fear will do. Unfortunately for Americans, that fear of the tyranny of an imperialist regime now also extends to its own citizens. So it always goes with empires, as Patrick Henry so faithfully and articulately tried to warn us.

Go to every other member of society; you will find the same tranquil ease and content; you will find no alarms or disturbances. Why, then, tell us of danger, to terrify us into an adoption of this new form of government? And yet who knows the dangers that this new system may produce? They are out of sight of the common people; they can not foresee latent consequences. I dread the operation of it on the middling and lower classes of people; it is for them I fear the adoption of this system.

Again Henry’s words seem to have a prophetic quality. The fear of terrorism in our time has been cynically used by those would accrue the benefits of consolidated power without regard to the dangers it will produce. Again the dangers this consolidation produces are beyond the vision and comprehension of the common people and it will ultimately be the middling and lower classes who will bear the brunt of the negative effects of the corresponding losses of Liberty. Patrick Henry was right to fear such things and contemporary Americans would be wise to voice a little more of their trepidation at Executive usurpations and abrogations of our inherent Liberty.

When I thus profess myself an advocate for the liberty of the people, I shall be told I am a designing man, that I am to be a great man, that I am to be a demagog;

Speaking as an observer of the American political discourse of the last 40 years, I can only say when it comes to demagogy and designing machinations, Patrick Henry was a rank amateur. When it comes to visionary oratory in the defense of Liberty, however, Henry remains unequalled.

Will the great rights of the people be secured by this government? Suppose it should prove oppressive, how can it be altered? Our Bill of Rights declares that "a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal."

Well Patrick, it did prove to be oppressive and our leaders have selectively applied the Bill of Rights as it suits their purposes. I also doubt that the Bush administration, or any other for that matter, would approve of a move to abolish it, though in its current iteration it might be conducive to the public weal to do so. I suspect that any such effort, even by duly elected legislatures, would be met with one of those standing armies about which you had such foresight.

The voice of tradition, I trust, will inform posterity of our struggles for freedom. If our descendants be worthy the name of Americans they will preserve and hand down to their latest posterity the transactions of the present times; and tho I confess my exclamations are not worthy the hearing, they will see that I have done my utmost to preserve their liberty.

The voice of tradition is not so respected as it once was, but the name Patrick Henry’s is still synonymous with the passionate defense of Liberty. Any absence of Liberty in the American common weal is not due to an inadequate defense on his part. Indeed what Liberty remains is in no small measure due to Patrick Henry’s cherished legacy among those remaining few who love Liberty as much as did this heroic character, who demanded it with that legendary ultimatum, “Give me Liberty or give me death!”

…for I never will give up the power of direct taxation but for a scourge… Nay, sir, there is another alternative to which I would consent… let it depend upon our own pleasure to pay our money in the most easy manner for our people… I would give the best security for a punctual compliance with requisitions; but I beseech gentlemen, at all hazards, not to give up this unlimited power of taxation.

Henry was extremely reluctant to grant the power of direct taxation to the Federal Legislature. He thought that they could requisition a sum from the states to fund the operation of the Federal Government. But he believed that the mechanism for the raising of those funds should be left to the respective state legislatures who he felt best knew how to justly tax their citizens. He believed that the vast differences in the sizes, economies and cultures of the individual states made a one size fits all taxation system unwieldy, unjust and inherently undemocratic. Though this idea may seem anachronistic in the modern era, this has more to do with what we have been conditioned and coerced to accept. I am not at all certain that Patrick Henry was wrong on this point. But then I am reluctant to dispute Liberty’s most ardent advocate.

…I hope will convince the most skeptical man that I am a lover of the American Union… but, sir, the dissolution of the Union is most abhorrent to my mind …The first thing I have at heart is American liberty; the second thing is American union.

You just have to love a man who has his priorities in order. We know where Lincoln’s priorities lay, contrary to propaganda it was not on freeing the slaves, but on adding to their numbers the rest of the citizens of that less perfect ”Union.” Despite the popular myth, Lincoln did not end the deplorable institution of slavery. He just made it a biracial phenomenon with slightly loosened chains. A “kinder, gentler,” slightly more racially equitable form of chattel, if you will. Maybe Bush is more like the Great Emancipator than he is given credit for.

The honorable gentleman has told us that these powers given to Congress are accompanied by a judiciary which will correct all. On examination you will find this very judiciary oppressively constructed, your jury trial destroyed, and the judges dependent on Congress.

Don’t let all those episodes of Law and Order fool you. The vast majority of convictions are not obtained from juries but from coercive plea bargains. Mandatory minimums, three strikes laws, sentencing guidelines, and redundant laws are all ways Congress has usurped Judicial authority. Once again Patrick Henry saw the handwriting on the wall. Once again he was ignored to disastrous effect.

This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints toward monarchy, and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American? Your president may easily become king.

I’ll wager GW has an army of Justice Department lawyers going over this portion of the Constitution around the clock. This is probably the only line in Patrick’s oratory that caught GW’s feeble attention.

Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed to what may be a small minority; and a very small minority may continue for ever unchangeably this government, altho horridly defective.

While Henry was probably referring to the difficulty of amending the Constitution, I don’t think Patrick Henry would have been a big fan of the filibuster, especially when it is applied to the confirmation of judges. Not that he would have been an any bigger fan of the current spate of judicial appointees from either party.

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

Adams also warned against constructing a government on the presumptions that men would be honorable who occupied its offices. Remember his ardent disputation of Pope. But Adams would probably have disagreed with Henry on the lack of adequate checks and balances in the Constitution. For all Adam’s brilliant reasoning, I think history is on the side of Henry’s passion here. Adams seemed to have had a fatalistic optimism that a government so constructed would inevitably produce virtue in its people, who would in turn have the wisdom to select their wisest and most noble among them to lead. Unfortunately, what Adams envisioned was so soon perverted after its inception that we may never know if he was right.

Both Adam’s and Henry had a great faith in the collective wisdom of the American people. But neither had a very high opinion of the state of man as an individual. They cherished the Liberty of the individual but thought men would forever be prone to succumb to the temptation of power and to abuse it. Henry thought that no society could be counted on to produce nobility on cue and so extra precautions should be taken to prevent systemic weakness that he felt would inevitably be exploited by tyrants. Adam’s was only slightly less cynical. Perhaps if Adams had heeded Henry’s warnings we might now have a better sense of whether Adams was right about what kind of society would have actually been facilitated by such a government as he proposed.

If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute! The army is in his hands, and if he be a man of address, it will be attached to him, and it will be the subject of long meditation with him to seize the first auspicious moment to accomplish his design, and, sir, will the American spirit solely relieve you when this happens…But, sir, where is the existing force to punish him? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition? Away with your president! we shall have a king: the army will salute him monarch; your militia will leave you, and assist in making him king, and fight against you: and what have you to oppose this force? What will then become of you and your rights? Will not absolute despotism ensue?

Patrick Henry did not approve of a Presidential commander in chief. He saw this as inherently dangerous and thought it amounted to asking for trouble. Henry saw it as the temptation no ambitious man could resist. He also remained unpersuaded that what was then being called the “American Spirit” would be a prophylaxis against all evil. It seems that many of the Founding Fathers shared the belief that there was something unique that beat in the hearts of every American that would make them inherently intolerant of any government that would try to establish its dominance by force rather than common consent. This ethnocentric arrogance proved to be in error as Patrick Henry’s skepticism turned out to be well founded.

We have not as yet had a man in that office who would have us refer to him as King. But several have chosen the term Tzar for their subordinates, so you have to wonder what they think that makes them? Emperor perhaps? But they would never be so bold as to claim it out loud. There is no king so powerful as one who has convinced his people to call him by another name. Don’t be surprised if in your lifetime some “President” announces, “due to a state of national emergency, elections will be indefinitely postponed.” The “legal” framework is already in place for this. On that day the “American Spirit” will be too busy grabbing its ankles to resist, and all will know Patrick Henry for the oracle he was. They will lament the fact that they had not heeded him sooner.

John Adams: Thoughts On Government

2005-09-21T00:12:00.000-05:00

The following are excerpts and commentary on John Adams “Thoughts on Government” Apr. 1776 Papers 4:86-93. A complete rendition of this work is available at http://www.constitution.org/jadams/thoughts.htm

I heartily encourage you to read it in its entirety. It was a little long so I have presented some of what I believe to be its more important points and have offered them here with my feeble observations. Do not let my musings deter you from considering Adam’s thoughts for yourself and drawing your own conclusions. It is a healthy exercise and there is not a single American who would not be well served by it.

“…as the divine science of politics is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government, which are generally institutions that last for many generations, there can be no employment more agreeable to a benevolent mind than a research after the best.”

How many today would describe politics as “a divine science of social happiness?” Not to put too cynical a point on it, but a more accurate description of contemporary politics might read, “there can be no employment more self-serving to the malevolent mind than the research after what is best for the few."

“Pope flattered tyrants too much when he said, "For forms of government let fools contest,That which is best administered is best."

Nothing can be more fallacious than this. But poets read history to collect flowers, not fruits; they attend to fanciful images, not the effects of social institutions. Nothing is more certain, from the history of nations and nature of man, than that some forms of government are better fitted for being well administered than others.”

From this I derive two things: 1st that process matters more than intentions. If we circumvent it in pursuit of our immediate interests, it will set precedents that will come back to bite us in unexpected places. 2nd that Hollywood is probably not the best place to look for political advice. Artists are all about personality and will tend to prioritize it over substance.

“From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.”

The key here is “the greatest number in the greatest degree,” not solely the wealthy, the powerful or any other group. Nor should we settle for the lowest common denominator of happiness but rather should expect the “greatest degree.” But herein lies the rub McDuff, happiness is not the pursuit of unbridled hedonistic consumption but rather…

"All sober inquirers after truth… have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.”

Perhaps it is because of distasteful notions like this that these old fellers have so fallen out of favor.

“If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?”

Since happiness lies in virtue, and the business of government is to provide an environment conducive to happiness, then according to Adams the role of government is to promote virtue.

“Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.”

I think on this point Adams would be appalled by how much fear eventually became the foundation of the government he so tenderly crafted and bitterly disappointed in how easily most Americans have acquiesced to it.

“Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed, the former is but a part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.”

From this I derive that George Walker Bush and other politicians should be less reluctant to make their mea culpa, and more concerned with actual virtue rather than pharisaical piety.

“The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people. The noblest principles and most generous affections in our nature, then, have the fairest chance to support the noblest and most generous models of government.”

Greed, ambition, fear and partisan prejudice are not “the most generous affections in our nature.” But they are the engines that drive our current model of government, hence its ignobility.

“A man must be indifferent to the sneers of modern English men, to mention in their company the names of Sidney, Harrington, Locke, Milton, Nedham, Neville, Burnet, and Hoadly. No small fortitude is necessary to confess that one has read them. The wretched condition of this country, however, for ten or fifteen years past, has frequently reminded me of their principles and reasonings. They will convince any candid mind, that there is no good government but what is republican.”

Plus en change plus ce le mem chose. It still requires “no small fortitude to confess one has read” these men in the contemporary American academies and halls of power. Perhaps it is the shortage of candid minds among those that tend to congregate in such places.

“the very definition of a republic is "an empire of laws, and not of men." That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or, in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of republics.”

"An empire of laws not of men”…What would Adams thought of political dynasties today? His son also followed him into office and the country had a bumpy ride. Don’t get me wrong, I’d gladly swap George Walker for John Quincy, but I can’t help but wonder about this country’s tendency to brand loyalty. What was considered exceptional early in the Republic has become accepted and even expected. Dynasties like the Roosevelt’s, the Gore’s, the Kennedy’s, the Kerry’s, the Sanunu’s, the Walker/Bush’s now seem to be the keys to access to political power. They all attend the same schools on legacy entrance and most join the same “Skull and Bones” regardless of familial party affiliation. I am not convinced that such dynasties have over the last century in fact “contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws,” nor have they necessarily delivered us “the best of republics.”

“Of republics there is an inexhaustible variety, because the possible combinations of the powers of society are capable of innumerable variations.”

Perhaps we should all remember this in Iraq.

“…it is impossible that the whole should assemble to make laws. The first necessary step, then, is to depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and good.”

That sounds great. Now, will someone please tell the “most wise and good” to start running for office. For Heaven’s sake someone tell these evil ambitious fools who keep running to shut up and go home!

“The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed, in constituting this representative assembly.”

No, John. “The principle difficulty lies…” in getting the most wise and the good to run for office. Even if they did, they would as likely be pilloried by a partisan mob as be elected to govern. Oh crap, I'm sounding like Pope. Nevermind.

“It should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.”

In its current iteration…it isn’t and it doesn’t.

“Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections. Such regulations, however, may be better made in times of greater tranquillity than the present; and they will spring up themselves naturally, when all the powers of government come to be in the hands of the people's friends. At present, it will be safest to proceed in all established modes, to which the people have been familiarized by habit.”

Well John we are still waiting for the government to "come to be in the hands of the people’s friends." As far as electoral regulations springing up naturally...well lets just say that both cynical gerrymandering and recent events in Florida and Ohio seem to indicate that such things are more likely to be of a more malevolent synthetic origin.

“A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments.”

Well, John was sure right on this score. Can you say Patriotic Act? Yeah I know, the irony is as galling as it is striking.

“A single assembly is apt to grow ambitious, and after a time will not hesitate to vote itself perpetual.”

This sure turned out like he thought. Only perpetuality is handled by campaign finance and 98% incumbency. In some ways this is even more insidious because it is less transparent and leaves the electorate with the illusion of choice.

“A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and despatch.”

The Legislature would do well to remember this on occasion and be less inclined to use foreign policy to serve partisan agendas. Conversely the Executives would do good to seek a little more advice and consent and then maybe they would not so often find their Legislature making liars of them.

“Because a single assembly, possessed of all the powers of government, would make arbitrary laws for their own interest, execute all laws arbitrarily for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own favor.”

This certainly proved to be the case.

“But shall the whole power of legislation rest in one assembly? … these two powers will oppose and encroach upon each other, until the contest shall end in war, and the whole power, legislative and executive, be usurped by the strongest. The judicial power, in such case, could not mediate, or hold the balance between the two contending powers, because the legislative would undermine it. And this shows the necessity, too, of giving the executive power a negative upon the legislative, otherwise this will be continually encroaching upon that.”

Adams was justifiably skeptical of the integrity and judgment of Legislatures that are prone to hasty judgments in the heat of partisan political passion. He thought there should be both a Senatorial and an Executive veto on their excesses. This is why it is so important who we elect for our Executive. We might want to raise our standards a bit before casting that ballot in the primaries. Maybe we should concern ourselves less with electability and more with competent culpability.

"To avoid these dangers, let a distinct assembly be constituted, as a mediator between the two extreme branches of the legislature, that which represents the people, and that which is vested with the executive power.

Let the representative assembly then …should have a free and independent exercise of its judgment, and consequently a negative voice in the legislature. These two bodies, thus constituted, and made integral parts of the legislature, let them unite, and by joint ballot choose a governor… If he is annually elective, as he ought to be, he will always have so much reverence and affection for the people, their representatives and counsellors, that, although you give him an independent exercise of his judgment, he will seldom use it in opposition to the two houses, except in cases the public utility of which would be conspicuous; and some such cases would happen."

I think Adams has good intentions here but was over optimistic about how independent and effective the Senate would be. He also underestimated the role political parties would come to play in equally polarizing and politicizing both assemblies. The fact that we currently have what amounts to a governmentally mandated two party system essentially nullifies the mitigating effects of a bicameral legislature. I’m sure old Jimmy Madison is rolling in his grave. I doubt Adams is sleeping any more soundly.

“And these and all other elections, especially of representatives and counsellors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, "where annual elections end, there slavery begins."

These great men, in this respect, should be, once a year,

"Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,They rise, they break, and to that sea return."
This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.”

I second this observation…"where annual elections end, there slavery begins." I would be content if we could just get these little “bubbles” to return to the sea. I have long since given up on their learning moderation, humility and patience. But John sure had that “ravenous beast of prey” thing correct. These little “bubbles” are insatiable.

“A rotation of all offices, as well as of representatives and counsellors, has many advocates, and is contended for with many plausible arguments. It would be attended, no doubt, with many advantages; and if the society has a sufficient number of suitable characters to supply the great number of vacancies which would be made by such a rotation, I can see no objection to it.”

My only objection to this proposal John, is that while there is no shortage of “characters” who will ambitiously seek such posts, there tends to be a perpetual scarcity of men of Character and expertise to fill them. Oh John, where are you when we need you?

"The governor should have the command of the militia and of all your armies. The power of pardons should be with the governor and council."

We can have militias and other armies? Wow, did anyone clue Lincoln into this? Governors can pardon? Let me guess, nobody told GW about it.

“All officers should have commissions, under the hand of the governor and seal of the colony.”

Cool, does this mean I can be an admiral in the Texas Navy? On second thought I’d probably just end up a swabby on the TXSS Minnow. But imagine if Texas had its own aircraft carrier…I bet it would be bigger than yours.

“The judges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.”

I think on this point there is no dissent among the People, but among the Senate, well that is another matter all together.

“To these ends, they should hold estates for life in their offices; or, in other words, their commissions should be during good behavior…”

I would be more than willing to grant the Judiciary their tenure if…

“For misbehavior, the grand inquest of the colony, the house of representatives, should impeach them”

…a little more often.

“A militia law, requiring all men, or with very few exceptions besides cases of conscience, to be provided with arms and ammunition, to be trained at certain seasons; and requiring counties, towns, or other small districts, to be provided with public stocks of ammunition and entrenching utensils, and with some settled plans for transporting provisions after the militia, when marched to defend their country against sudden invasions…”

I think most Americans would be more amenable to a military draft if they were stationed in their home states and if they could count on their President to only deploy them “to defend their country against sudden invasions…”

“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”

Amen to this John! If only we had started when you first suggested it. If only we hadn’t quit once we started. If only we had lawmakers of “a humane and generous mind.” If only we had listened to you and your colleagues about so many things…sigh.

“The very mention of sumptuary laws will excite a smile. Whether our countrymen have wisdom and virtue enough to submit to them, I know not; but the happiness of the people might be greatly promoted by them, and a revenue saved sufficient to carry on this war forever. Frugality is a great revenue, besides curing us of vanities, levities, and fopperies, which are real antidotes to all great, manly, and warlike virtues.”

Sumptuary Laws are luxury taxes and they are an excellent idea. They are a great means of raising revenue and they really cramp the style of those latte drinking limo types, which if nothing else provides some small satisfaction to the rest of us. I once asked an enlightened wealthy art collector how he felt about luxury taxes, his response surprised me, because he favored them. I protested that the luxury taxes would diminish the demand for yachts and all the working class shlubs who build those ships would be out of work. His response was telling, “Folks who buy yachts don’t care about the price of the boat let alone the cost of the taxes. If you have to ask how much…you can’t afford it.” I guess the rich really are different.

“But must not all commissions run in the name of a king? No. Why may they not as well run thus, "The colony of to A. B. greeting," and be tested by the governor?

Why may not writs, instead of running in the name of the king, run thus, "The colony of to the sheriff," &c., and be tested by the chief justice?

Why may not indictments conclude, "against the peace of the colony of and the dignity of the same?"

What makes Federal laws so sacred? Why are not state laws sufficient for the prosecution of most crimes? The current redundant system amounts to double jeopardy. If the state can’t convict the Feds will. This gives Government two bites at the same apple and puts an undue burden on the defense. But we get all these redundant laws, mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines because politicians like to look tough on crime. Since felons can’t vote, legislators create such laws at no political risk to themselves. Because most people don’t anticipate ever being arrested and charged for something they have not done, they don’t mind when their civil rights are preemptively violated. Americans have been cheering for revenge instead of weeping for their loss of Liberty. These dead guys were right about one thing…we get the government we deserve.

“A constitution founded on these principles introduces know ledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal. You will find among them some elegance, perhaps, but more solidity; a little pleasure, but a great deal of business; some politeness, but more civility. If you compare such a country with the regions of domination, whether monarchical or aristocratical, you will fancy yourself in Arcadia or Elysium.”

“…inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general.” These virtues are in critically short supply in Washington and since our leaders no longer have them or follow Constitutional principles our people are now less “sober, industrious, and frugal.”

As for “If you compare such a country with the regions of domination, whether monarchical or aristocratical"...Well I am not sure if Adams would even recognize what he and his companions wrought as it has become more “aristocratical” and its Executive ever more “monarchical.”

Regarding: “you will fancy yourself in Arcadia or Elysium.” Perhaps the Ancients put this one best when they said “Et in Arcadia Ego.” You’re gonna have to look that one up for yourselves folks.

“…a continental constitution should be formed, it should be a congress, containing a fair and adequate representation of the colonies, and its authority should sacredly be confined to these cases, namely, war, trade, disputes between colony and colony, the post office, and the unappropriated lands of the crown, as they used to be called.”

That’s it. Operative phrase here is “confined to these cases.”

“These colonies, under such forms of government, and in such a union, would be unconquerable by all the monarchies of Europe.”

So far so good.

You and I, my dear friend, have been sent into life at a time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live. How few of the human race have ever enjoyed an opportunity of making an election of government, more than of air, soil, or climate, for themselves or their children! When, before the present epocha, had three millions of people full power and a fair opportunity to form and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can contrive?

Adams and his colleagues were acutely aware of the gravity of the task they set themselves. They could hardly believe the opportunity that they had and were conscientiously attendant to their effect on posterity. Oh what we would give to have such minds among us today! I’d give you 50 Senators a couple hundred Congressmen and a President for the likes of one John Adams.

"For myself, I must beg you to keep my name out of sight; for this feeble attempt, if it should be known to be mine, would oblige me to apply to myself those lines of the immortal John Milton, in one of his sonnets:--

"I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs."

Apparently good ideas have always been dangerous and people have generaly been willing to disregard them due to prejudice against the messenger. I’m certainly no John Adams, but I think I’ll stick with my nome de plume.

James Madison: Parties

2005-09-18T23:46:00.000-05:00

National Gazette, January 23, 1792

In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort. 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expence of another. 5. By making one party a check on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism.

In all political societies, different interests and parties arise out of the nature of things, and the great art of politicians lies in making them checks and balances to each other. Let us then increase these natural distinctions by favoring an inequality of property; and let us add to them artificial distinctions, by establishing kings, and nobles, and plebeians. We shall then have the more checks to oppose to each other: we shall then have the more scales and the more weights to perfect and maintain the equilibrium. This is as little the voice of reason, as it is that of republicanism.

From the expediency, in politics, of making natural parties, mutual checks on each other, to infer the propriety of creating artificial parties, in order to form them into mutual checks, is not less absurd than it would be in ethics, to say, that new vices ought to be promoted, where they would counteract each other, because this use may be made of existing vices.

----------------------------------------------------------

Though their ideas continue to have merit and their voices still ring with the peal of Liberty, sometimes the writing of these dead gentlemen is a little archaic to the modern ear. Occasionally one needs to know a little of the specific historical context surrounding these men to appreciate their priorities. At the risk of gilding the lily, I offer some brief observations and context to James Madison's remarks.

"The great object should be to combat the evil"

Parties, though unavoidable, are inherently evil and must be combatted.

"By establishing a political equality among all."

Anyone think we're there yet?

"By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort."

Wow! Did I hear that right folks? Have the Neo-Conservative strict constructionist originalists seen this? I don't think they're gonna like it. It also seems Madison' s sage advice has been completely ignored for the last 200 years. I wonder what John Roberts and his buddies at the Federalist Society would make of this.

One should not necessarily conclude that Madison was envisioning a graduated income tax. What he did imagine was that folks like Railroad companies would demand land for 12 miles on each side of thousands of miles of the RR tracks. He imagined speculators would profit at the expense of investors. He imagined no-bid government contracts to politically connected industrialists. He imagined the predatory practices of Morgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, ADM, Microsoft, and Walmart. He imagined large businesses demanding property tax abatements. He imagined FCC commissioners who would tell us media consolidation is a good thing. Madison would have viewed all these things with disdain and seen them as contributing to the perpetual existence of political parties and thus part of the problem. Madison was less concerned with wealth redistribution than preventing its unjust accumulation in the first place.

The graduated income tax amounts to little more than requiring thieves to return a small fraction of their loot to a third party who would redistribute 75% of it to their friends and cronies and return 25% to the original victims of its theft. Being as they are thieves, getting the loot back from them is going to be a lot trickier than preventing them from taking it in the first place. Since the politicians have a self-interest in redistributing that lucre to their cronies, they have no interest in preventing its illegitimate accumulation to begin with. Madison would probably have viewed an income tax as being as absurd as monarchistic checks and balances and would have likely seen it as a potential violation of what he calls "the rights of property."

"By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expense of another."

OK this one gores everybody's ox, from those seeking special dispensations for industry, to those in the criminal justice system (yeah, like class doesn't matter there, suuure...), to legislators with seniority, to advocates of affirmative action.

"By making one party a check on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor their views accommodated."

We may complain about the constipation of divided government, but it is the job of any party out of power to as best it can frustrate the party in power regardless of the merit of their prospective platforms. Apparently this Madisonianism came through loud and clear. But I don't think we've been trying hard enough on the existence of parties being "prevented" part, maybe just a tad more effort should be expended in that arena.

"the great art of politicians lies in making them checks and balances to each other."

It seems modern politicians are getting their clues from modern artists instead of these old dead guys.

"Let us then increase these natural distinctions by favoring an inequality of property; and let us add to them artificial distinctions, by establishing kings, and nobles, and plebeians. We shall then have the more checks to oppose to each other: we shall then have the more scales and the more weights to perfect and maintain the equilibrium."

OK here he is making a modest proposal...that's satire folks. You can tell because the next line is...

"This is as little the voice of reason, as it is that of republicanism."

You see reason and republicanism=good...unreasonable and monarchy=bad.

"From the expediency, in politics, of making natural parties, mutual checks on each other, to infer the propriety of creating artificial parties, in order to form them into mutual checks, is not less absurd than it would be in ethics, to say, that new vices ought to be promoted, where they would counteract each other, because this use may be made of existing vices."

Ok this one needs a little background. In those days there were folks talking about making certain parties official and writing them into the Constitution. Madison thinks this is absurd. It would be like saying, "since we cannot prevent adultery, the government should establish houses of prostitution and manage them as a government monopoly." To Madison, Political Parties are an unavoidable evil of dubious necessity to be fought diligently over time in pursuit of their ultimate obsolescence. To anybody who thinks that's the course we're on I just have one thing to say, "stay away from the brown acid." I just wish we could get the current inhabitants of Government to do the same thing.

Benjamin Franklin On the Federal Constitution

2005-09-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

Speaking before the Convention in Philadelphia, 1787

I CONFESS that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present; but, sir, I am not sure I shall never approve of it, for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment of others. Most men, indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, tho many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a little dispute with her sister said: "But I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right."

In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other. I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?

It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our counsels are confounded like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us, in returning to our constituents, were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects and great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign nations, as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength and efficiency of any government, in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of that government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its governors. I hope, therefore, for our own sakes, as a part of the people, and for the sake of our posterity, that we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it well administered.

On the whole, sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would, with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

PC Glossary

2005-09-16T20:16:00.000-05:00

Wingnut

Someone whose cultural prejudices blind them to incompetent governance when it’s done by their party.

Moonbat

Someone whose cultural prejudices blind them to incompetent governance when it’s done by their party.
synonym: Kneejerk Liberal

Moderate

A cultural agnostic who panders to as wide a group as possible in order to further the agendas of their corporate masters.

Limousine Liberal

A closet Moderate who talks a good line of bullshit.

Rockefeller Republican

See Moderate.

Latte Sipper

See Moderate.

Rexal Conservative

Etymology: Drugstore Cowboy
Definition: See Limousine Liberal.
Synonym: Compassionate Conservative
Example: GW Bush

We’ve All Been Served

2005-09-15T18:50:00.000-05:00

When I was coming up in the 60’s and 70’s, Conservatives were out of power and had been for 30+ years. There were many such folks with honor and intellect then. It was Conservatives who were the out of the box thinkers in those days. They were frustrated that their voices were censored from academic and political debate. Then came Reagan and the Big Lie.

With Ronnie, Conservatives came out of the closet and for the first time in a long time “felt” reaffirmed. They hoped the size of Federal government would decrease. They hoped deficit spending would be curtailed. They hoped interest rates would drop. They hoped Big Gubment would get off the back of small business. They hoped that the Feds would start to take their cues from average working and middle-class Americans instead of the elites from the Inteligencia. They distrusted Federal law enforcement and things like Homeland Security, suspension of habeas corpus, national ID cards, DNA databases, wire tapping religious facilities, tolerating torture and nation building were anathemas to Conservatives who saw all these things as the tools of Leftist totalitarian regimes.

Conservatives had watched as for a century Big Business had funded all the Left oriented Think Tanks through the foundations of folks like the Fords and Rockefellers. They knew Big Business did not play fair and was the natural enemy of the small businessman. This belief contributed to Conservative distrust of Big Gubment since they believed it would always be subservient to the interests of Big Business and would inevitably put internationalist corporate agendas ahead of the national welfare.

Boy did they get served. Conservatives in America have been the victims of one of the most horrendous bait and switches in history. They asked for a more Libertarian form of free-market Capitalism and were delivered totalitarian oligarchical Fascism. They demanded a return to populist democracy and were given a militarist aristocracy instead.

The only thing comparable to the fraud perpetrated on Conservatives is the one that has been perpetrated on Progressives for the last 70 years. Progressives saw the Federal government as their first line of defense against the abuses of corporate greed. They saw figures like FDR, JFK and LBJ as the advocates for the weak. They viewed the role of the Federal government to be to level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots.

Progressives demanded racial and gender equality and an end to discrimination in employment, housing and access to the ballot. They saw poverty as the product of ignorance and demanded equal access to education for all. They sought the free expression of ideas in the academic and cultural spheres and an end to blacklisting, loyalty oaths and litmus tests for orthodoxy. They sought vocational training and a living wage. They demanded collective bargaining for Labor to offset the corporate collusion of employers. They requested healthcare for the poor and aid to “families” with dependent children. They championed decisions like Maranda and fought for civil liberties and to mitigate the effects of class in the criminal justice system. They argued for a more humane foreign policy and to curtail the abuses of American corporate exploitation abroad. They lobbied for an end to ethnic and racial quotas in immigration policy and demanded that all immigrants be treated equally regardless of their country of origin.

Boy did they get faced. They too have been playing three-card monte with their leaders. They asked for a more compassionate fair-market form of Capitalism and equal opportunity and were delivered corrupt crony Socialism and a culture of fatalistic dependency and a society in which one third of the inhabitants are perpetually separate and unequal. They too demanded a more populist democracy and instead were dealt an aristocracy of the bourgeoisie Initeligencia who experimented on the poor and minorities for decades as if these groups were their personal lab rats.

Folks, we have all been served. The stated goals of ideological Conservatives are not necessarily at odds with those of ideological Progressives. These goals are not inherently mutually exclusive. Why have we been at each other’s throats for all these years? We have so demonized each other that long ago we stopped listening to one another. We have been played like a bunch of chumps and the whole time been blaming each other.

How did this happen? The Culture War, that’s how. It is Americas Achilles heel and if we don’t wake up and find another path to resolve these issues we are all going to awaken one morning and find ourselves living in a corporate federal totalitarian state with our population divided into two classes of rodent. Those that are the gerbils on their spinning wheels going nowhere and the rest a bunch of white mice being forever tortured for the amusement and curiosity of a bunch of academic elites in lab coats. On that morning, where one stands on flag burning and gay marriage will seem trivial indeed.

A word to the wise for Progressives:
Distrust those who would feel your pain but don’t experience it themselves.

To Conservatives:
Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing—The rich resent and despise the middle-class, they are not your ally.

Here is how the bait and switch works folks: First they get you to look at the little birdie over there, then they make the switch over here. Then they look at you with a big toothy grin and say “What?” The Culture War is the little birdie. While we’ve all been looking out the window at the mockingbird, the foxes we hired to guard the coop have just made off with all the chickens. Bad news is folks, there ain’t enough meat on that little mocking bird to feed a single one of us, let alone all of us. Did you ever try to fry up a mockingbird egg? It ain’t much of a meal.

We have all been the willing victims of propaganda as the message makers have framed the debate in their own interests. We routinely fall for the politics of symbols over substance. We ask our politicians to pander to our own prejudices and put our parochial contemporary interests over the good of the whole. We are cynically content to allow our leaders to pervert the integrity of the process if it serves our immediate interests. The deplorable truth is that when it comes to issues like abortion both sides are prone to judicial activism and extraconstitutionality if it is in the service of their victim of choice, be that victim a teenager with an unwanted pregnancy or her fetus.

We no longer demand that our officials adhere to the Constitution in their dispensation of Justice. We simply require them to list their priority of victims and compare it to our own. They don’t have to actually succeed at mitigating the suffering of our preferred group, so long as they give lip service to the fact that that group is actually distressed. We want our government to ban and sanction everything that offends or scares us. We are willing to grant it unlimited power and enthusiastically forgo hard won civil liberties in return for undeliverable promises of absolute security. So it goes with the politics of symbols.

When Conservatives and Progressives allow themselves to get beyond their petty chauvinisms and see past the parochial politics of symbol to the Constitutional politics of substance, then America may actually see the reemergence of democratic populism; and with it corresponding improvements in social justice and the extension of personal Liberty and responsibility to all. We might also be unified enough at that point to drive some of those foxes from the hen house and there just might be a little more chicken to go around.

Business is Poor

2005-09-12T09:12:00.000-05:00

Calvin Coolidge's notorious quote, “The business of America is business.” Is probably among the most licentiously misapplied quotations in history. As xristim so astutely pointed out, it has come to have the understood, though often unstated, corollary “and the business of business is greed.” While there are certainly a plethora of examples to substantiate this corollary, my experience has been that this is to give businessmen in America too much credit. It is my thesis the primary occupation of the American businessman is not amoral self-enrichment. The ugly truth is far worse. In fact the principle business of business is simply jerking off.

I put myself through college working in a variety of retail, service sector and food industry jobs. I was usually quickly promoted to a low-level management position. I worked for various sole proprietorships and witnessed a disturbing pattern. The employees were usually shiftless, dishonest and late for work. Turnover was unnecessarily high and wages were insufficient to attract talented industrious help. There were usually two principles heading the company. One would put in 60hour weeks and another would squander all the money. Between incompetence on the low end and malfeasance on the high end, it was usually more than the industrious principle and I could do to sustain the business. Either the business would be sold off to some unsuspecting optimist or it would shut its doors.

After college I spent a decade working on and off in the nonprofit world. Here I found intelligent, highly educated, diligent, hardworking employees that were paid 15%-25% of what their private sector counterparts were paid for the same skills and expertise. In the nonprofit world it was managerial malfeasance associated with issues of class that was solely to blame for failures. A typical budget for a traveling museum exhibit would look something like this: Opening Gala Party $500,000, Exhibit installation $30,000, Marketing $5,000, Educational curriculum and training for the 25,000 students that would attend $0.00. There would be 75 people on a bloated Board of Trustees all of whom had a broken arm whenever it was time to reach for their wallets. These fractures would however miraculously heal every time there were Gala tickets to be grabbed up. Budget shortfalls were always met with staff positions being eliminated and cuts to health insurance for the already grossly underpaid employees. Fiduciary responsibility was an unknown concept to Board Members and to even say the word “fiduciary” out loud at a board meeting was heresy and could, and did, get one fired. You guessed it, I said it and they did it.

When I saw the gross mismanagement and self-serving petty political agendas of the millionaires on Boards of Trustees I was appalled and thought surely they do not manage their own companies and personal affairs this way or they would all be broke. Little did I know?

In 1994 My wife and I went off to form our own businesses, an Internet café called the Coffee gallery and an Internet consulting and web development firm called Tristero, Inc. The Coffee Gallery was the 3rd Internet Café in the world and featured all the accoutrements including music, poetry readings and an eclectic crowd. Its website also featured a VRML virtual model of the coffee house and live events were simulcast with other coffee houses in London and San Francisco. People came from as far away as Germany and Australia to have a cup of joe. All in late 1994-early 1995, way before such things were cool.

We signed an unusual lease agreement with our landlord. He would be given 10% of the net profits of the Coffee Gallery in return for which he would be obligated to turn his building into a draw. The building was an old warehouse downtown near the RR tracks. It was his personal studio and art space. He also leased out studio space to other artists. There were several thousand square feet of art gallery space just waiting to be exploited. His responsibility was to see that there were always exhibits in the art gallery and that they were well promoted so there would be a steady stream of traffic to the Coffee Gallery.

One exhibit was produced and it was attended on its opening night and then the art gallery was closed and nobody was on duty to let people in to see the exhibit for the next month. The exhibit came down and for six more months nothing was on view. There was one more exhibition in the art gallery organized by a group who leased it. Much like before, it was a one-night event of wine sipping cheese heads followed by months of darkness. I offered to take over the management of the art gallery and production and manning of exhibits. But the landlord took offense, as this was an infringement of his turf. I explained that if he was unwilling to do his job someone was going to have to do it, or there would be no net profit from the Coffee Gallery and he would see no income from this venture. He spent the next year sullen and drunk living off his old money trust fund as the art gallery went fallow and my business went into the crapper because of his breach of contract. He got nothing for the use of his space and I was out over $100,000 in expenses related to finish out and two years of operation of the Coffee Gallery.

After this I focused all my attentions on Trstero,Inc. and worked with businesses of all sizes and shapes from just about every industry one can imagine. Basically we worked with various Chambers of Commerce, small businesses, medium sized companies and large corporations. Each had its own curious foibles and challenges.

First we went to the Chambers of Commerce
We offered to put all their content online for free. All we asked in return was membership in the Chamber and a link from the front page of their sites crediting Tristero with their design. Sounded fair to us, tens of thousands of dollars in services for a $200 membership. Their reluctance to accept this offer was astounding to me. Usually they hemmed and hawed for weeks and then finally agreed. Getting their content out them was worse than pulling teeth. We heard things like “if we put up our membership lists online then no one will want to pay to join. The main reason businesses join is to get a copy of our list of members.” This little piece of circular reasoning was shocking from people who were supposed to be business leaders. I thought people joined Chambers to network, attend seminars to improve their skills, and to find new clients and customers. Apparently all they really want is a Rolodex. Who knew? I thought members would like it if they were mentioned in an online directory and this might be a way of marketing their businesses and in so doing adding value to membership. It might even be good to make seminar content available electronically.

But lo, theses are secret organizations whose members greet each other with a wink and a nod. Later it was made clear that the lack of enthusiasm of the decision makers at the Chambers was because there was no angle in it for them personally. My no cash offer meant no kickbacks, no subcontracted business to their ad agency or their printing company. There was nothing in it for the Chamber officers personally. And here I thought they had a “fiduciary” responsibility to not use their positions as officers for their personal gain, so I had neglected to offer them bribes. Oops, my mistake. I eventually built 7 Chamber websites but the Greater Chamber went out of town to lucratively contract a firm that had never written a line of html. Now that just ain’t kosher and it ain’t good business either.

Many small businesses are more willing to entertain a new idea like Internet.
So in the early days most of our clients were small. They seemed eager to use the economies of Internet marketing and transactions to boost their business. I thought small businesses would all know that they had a 90% mortality rate so would be especially careful to attend to business. But no…small businesses fail because they are suicidal. Who knew? We would have five or six 3 hour meetings with a client over whether or not to sign a $2,000 contract. They would want a website but no email. They would want a website but provide no content about their business. If you offered to write some for them, everything about their business became proprietary and secret. They would stand you up for meetings and write you hot checks for services. They would not return phone calls and would change their addresses without notifying their web teams. They jumped off cliffs one after another like lemmings. Every moment spent dealing with them presented the inordinate risk that you were utterly wasting your time as flagrantly as they wasted theirs.

Then there was the medium sized company.
Typically these companies were in more traditional industries like iron works or building supplies. They were either growing or declining businesses with several million in capitalization. Their officers were usually doing the work of three individuals and were in over their heads. They were managing growth or increasing debt and were forever putting out fires that their clients and subcontractors seemed to be setting like armies of arsonists. Clients were forever changing the terms on them and subcontractors were more busy making excuses than fulfilling obligations. Such medium sized businessmen were understandably very suspicious of anyone or anything new as they had enough on their plates already. The problem in dealing with them was their inability to commit to anything new. They wanted to deal with you, they were willing to deal with you, they were waiting to deal with you, but they were just too damn busy. While this was understandable, it was also counterproductive. We were offering to provide them with the systems and tools required to get a handle on the chaos that was making their lives hell and they couldn’t stop long enough to receive the aid they so badly needed. Half these companies never made the transition and went under. The other half struggled for the next few years and belatedly came to the Internet after wasting more time and resources, when the solutions they needed had become more expensive to obtain and no longer presented the competitive edge they would have a decade earlier. The lost productivity never appeared on their balance sheets but the stress appeared on their EKG’s.

Then there were the draconian predators, the large corporations.
I knew that these clients could be both lucrative and dangerous so I hired an MBA with some gray in the temples, who had been an IBM employee for twenty + years selling large scale proprietary systems to big boys. This was not so good an idea as it had at first seemed.

I hooked a large grocery chain and they wanted us to build their website. They had wanted us to get right to work and had started sending copy and ideas. But we had no contract. So I consulted a lawyer and wrote an ironclad service contract. They hesitated to sign, stalled, sent it to in-house lawyers, outside firms were consulted and much consternation was given to this document. Meanwhile they kept sending content and demanding work. I found it curious that they spent thousands of dollars analyzing a document that it had only taken my lawyer and I a couple hours to prepare. After a month working with only a verbal agreement with their representative and no receipt of payment, I became concerned. I sent my MBA over to see the contract was signed or we would not continue. He returned to my office with a signed contract. I asked him if it was identical to the original we had authored and he assured me it was.

For the next 90 days we continued to work our entire staff around the clock on the grocery project. We sent invoices that went ignored. But every day there was a new priority with new deadlines for web. We produced multiple versions with multiple esthetics that were routinely approved, deployed, then disapproved then shelved for new priorities. The folks on the grocery chain end did not have a clue about the Internet. They did not want to have online coupons, or online ordering, or delivery, or anything that might be useful to their customers. Nor did they want a stiff corporate site. The entire project lacked focus and direction from their end and they refused to accept consulting.

Eventually we were 90 days and $90,000 into the project and my company was having trouble making payroll. I insisted the grocery chain pay something immediately to which they responded that they were contractually not obligated to make a demand payment. I was shocked, they were three months behind and this was in no way their concern? I had written a 30 day clause into the contract so I insisted on payment. Then to my amazement my MBA informed that he had in fact made one minor change to the contract. He had negotiated out the 30 day clause and there was no contractual stipulation on when the grocery chain must pay. I could not believe my ears. He said they could pay whenever they felt like it and we might actually have to sue if we wished to be paid at all. At this point I made some remark equating his MBA to Charmin and stormed out of the room.

I contacted the legal, accounting and marketing departments of the chain and informed each of them of our cash flow dilemma and that it was being exacerbated by their lack of payment for almost $100,000 worth of work. Their response was uniform, not their problem. I explained how since they had not actually paid for any of our design work, programming, networking and consulting services, they did not in fact as yet own the results, nor did they have physical custody of them. I explained how if I did not receive at least a partial prompt payment, visitors to their www.namelessgrocery.com site would read the following message: “This site temporarily removed due to lack of payment by nameless grocery chain.” This got their attention.

Within twenty-four hours I received three checks totaling roughly $60,000 but that in no discernable way correlated to any combination of the invoices we had sent. The next day we got a notice canceling the contract. One week later we were sued for over billing. The company asserted that they should not be billed for multiple drafts of multiple designs they requested because ultimately they only used one design and should not have had to pay the development costs of projects they commissioned but never deployed. Got to love it. You change your mind twenty times about what color you want the house painter to paint the house. He paints it twenty times but you only want to pay for one paint job. Even though it was you who had selected each of the other 19 colors.

My lawyer explained that the grocery chain’s $400/hr lawyers would drive up the costs of litigation until relatively quickly it exceeded the disputed amount. He also said that the judges were all well acquainted with the grocery chain’s law firm and were not likely to find against them regardless of facts. He explained that though the grocery chain did indeed owe me another $30,000 dollars, that I should settle with them for a judgment against myself before they bankrupted my company with litigation. I began to suspect two things, I was screwed and I had a crappy lawyer. I proved to be right on both counts.

Just as I was beginning to feel persecuted, I conferred with several of my colleagues in the local advertising community. Much to my surprise I found out that said grocery chain had screwed everyone in town and that they never paid their bills until they were sued and even then, their suppliers and contractors rarely got relief. Apparently the only firms that could afford to do business with this chain were those big enough to have multimillion-dollar legal war chests to protect their interests. This grocery chain’s de facto accounts payable policy was “don’t pay and wait to be sued.” This chain is a multibillion-dollar firm and this is its modus operandi.

Incidentally, this company ultimately discarded the website, and in quick succession contracted one small developer after another and, like a black widow, drove each out of business in turn ultimately discarding all the work they had contracted from multiple companies over a two year period. After all this mayhem and not inconsiderable wasted time, money and effort on their parts, they still have a crappy, useless site.

Then there were the phone companies.
In 1994–95 everybody wanted to get into the Internet business but nobody knew what it was. Including the phone companies. For almost two years MCI ran ad campaigns hawking Broadband Internet. Every convention in the country had a multimillion-dollar MCI booth. But if you walked up to the person manning that both and said “I want a T-1 line, I need it by next week, how much will it cost?” Doe in the headlights every time. “What’s a T-1? We can’t do that. I don’t know when. I don’t know how much.” As MCI stock was going through the roof from anticipated Internet revenues, they had no product and no clue. They were literally selling air. At this time I was cordial with representatives of all the large providers, Sprint was building infrastructure as fast as Wall St would pay for it, but like MCI their sales reps did not have a clue what bandwidth was used for, who used it, why or any of the inherent basic economics of their product. To be fair, few people did. Even the original phone company, SWB didn’t figure out DSL until lately. But these guys were spending billions and did not get it. In those days I knew several small providers who could get you a dedicated T-1 for a few hundred dollars/month. The big boys wanted between $2500-$5000 for the same product. I mean literally the same product, the same juice over the same networks.

I asked a Sprint rep how he managed to sell his product at 5-10X the going rate. He said, “Its easy, first you tell the client it is too cheep to be trusted.”
I said, “But it’s the same lines and the very same switches, the products are literally identical.”
He said “Yeah, but the client doesn’t know that.”
I said “How can’t they? It all comes through one set of lines.”
He said, “They don’t know what they’re buying anymore than we know what we’re selling.”
I said, “$5000 a month adds up fast, at some point you would want to know what you’re getting.”
His response was telling, “You just don’t get sales. You take them to a tiddy bar, get them drunk, buy them three lap dances and they sign. It’s as simple as that. Quite frankly I don’t care what they use the bandwidth for and neither do they. I just cash my commission check and call another client.”
I naively asked, “Who are these clients whose representatives make decisions on how to spend their companies’ big bucks while drunk and aroused in a strip club?”
He said, “Everyone, oil companies, bankers, car dealers, hotel chains, hell even the City.”

And so went the Internet Orgy. And you wonder where your pension fund went in 2001? Well that’s what happened to it. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

Then there were the Advertising Agencies.
If you ask an ad agency executive if his firm offers a particular service or has a special expertise the answer is always “yes.” So it was with Web. Nobody at their agency had ever written a line of html or ever designed a jpeg for downloadability, but overnight they were self-proclaimed experts on things in which they had no experience. Fortunately for them, neither did their clients.

Early on Agencies went looking to subcontract talent and sample the field. Everybody now knows that if you ask two geeks for a single technical solution you will get at least three answers none of which addresses your original problem but all of which require you to completely retool and reconfigure your network. This was maddening for Ad Agency executives but well trodden ground for professional Web developers. So they came to us. We helped them develop products for their clients. I just wish I could say they added value to the projects or that their clients got the product they needed rather than the one they were told to ask for.

We sat at countless meetings with CEO’s, COO’s, lawyers, accountants, MIS directors, PR executives, VP’s of marketing, VP’s of Sales and more clueless stuffed shirts than you could imagine. What were all these high priced expert talent most concerned with? Functionality, market demographics, branding, community outreach, cross platform promotion, interoperability, user friendliness, legacy compliance, site organization, maintenance, sustainability, copy write, liability, quality control, user tracking, data security, cost, demonstrable return on investment? Nope. None of these things usually made the radar or held a nanosecond of attention of anyone in the room. Each and everyone, regardless of background or job title, fancied themselves an expert Art Director. The fact they couldn’t match a tie to a blue suit was no obstacle for these would be interior decorators. Not a single one knew that the three primary colors were red, blue and yellow but each and every one wanted to spend the entire three hours discussing the finer shades of color and ideating about their favorite esthetic. (Usually I would just reach over to the monitor and adjust the brightness or hue and they were satiated.) The fact that we were not building the site for them but for their clientele seemed invariably lost on everyone at every board table at which I sat.

The Ad agents pandered despicably to their clients always telling them what they wanted to hear rather than what agents were ostensibly being paid to tell them. Invariably projects were drawn out over time, needlessly costly and inevitably looked as if they had been designed by a pandering committee. The sites were mediocre and expensive but the clients were thrilled at the monuments we had created for their executive egos. Their customers and stockholders however, were severely shortchanged.

Then there were the politics of Web and the dynamics of power.
Once upon a time the Web was the exclusive domain of longhaired geeks in basements who lived on pizza and Diet Coke. They did not issue IPO’s or drive Ferrari’s. I know children, it is hard to imagine but so it was in the olden days. For a long time geeks kept the Internet to themselves, and in an unprecedented form of technological abiogenesis, most of what was discussed on the Internet was how to build the Internet itself. Yes children, geeks talked about geeking even more than they watched porn. Fire was new then and mostly it was used to start further fires.

Then along came longhaired fellers like me. We were friends with geeks and saw the revolutionary nature of what they were creating. We coined terms we now rue having ever uttered like “paradigm shift, democratization of information, and flattened hierarchies.” We foresaw all the clichés that were so abused and which we now all take for granted as if these things were self-evident. The Internet was our acid, our oracle, we were the new Illuminate and we were so naive.

We went to our geek friends and said “Have you told your bosses of your miraculous inventions?” To which they responded, “No we are afraid to lest our bosses disapprove and take away our expensive toys.” To which we replied, “Surely your bosses will see the wonder of what you have created and this will make you more valuable to them, not less.” So the geeks went to their bosses and were thrown out by Philistines who could not see the future as it stared them in the face. So the longhaired friends of geeks, who like Aaron were slightly more verbal and a little less binary, went to these bosses and said, “let us show you the future that ye may profit.” These bosses, like Pharaoh, looked slightly amused, patiently but inattentively listened, and then condescendingly announced that we “were hallucinating and that such things would never happen. Even if they did it would be decades, would cost millions and millions of dollars and require armies of lawyers and politicians. Besides how could longhairs, who associate with geeks of all people, know more than the smartest guys in the room?”

And so it went for a couple of years. But during that period some of the longhairs got frustrated with the bosses and struck out on their own ventures and took the geeks with them. Some issued IPO’s and got rich. Most did not. But the presence of the new longhaired rich began to draw the attention of the Philistines. Suddenly everyone at the company wanted to talk to the geek in the basement. They were not sure why, but they suspected he might make them rich or at least influential within their firms. For two years nobody wanted to be seen with longhairs and the geeks, but overnight these same executives were trying to collect them like pet rocks. In such a feeding frenzy anything with a new ponytail and a website could pass for Illuminate among the cowan. Anything that smelled bad and lived on pizza and Diet Coke was suddenly a computer engineer. This made personnel retention very challenging for small longhaired firms as every time they sent a geek out to a client’s office, he was offered a job at twice what small longhaired companies could pay. What many a geek learned the hard way was that bigger did not mean more job security, as they were laid often almost as fast as they were hired.

During the frenzy, executives of all flavors became avaricious cannibals as they competed for dominance of Web. PR fought Sales. Marketing fought MIS. COO’s fought lawyers and accountants argued for outsourcing. The battles were bloody and generally horrendously destructive with collateral damage lying in all directions. They were all like the seven blind men and an elephant. To some it was a magazine, for others a brochure, for others an intranet, to others an order taking and fulfillment system, to some it was a cash cow to others still the eternal negative cash flow debacle. The problem for all these blind men and women was that nobody could definitively say what the Internet was not. So they each fought to make the Internet in their own image, and in so doing refused to play nicely with their colleagues.

The truth was of course the Internet was all of these things simultaneously and no one person could control every aspect of it. But for years no one in authority realized this. The Internet and the Web were not just going to be the responsibility of this department or that. Rather the Internet was going to be everybody’s responsibility and it was going to be the tool they would use to fulfill their new duty. Geeks knew this. Longhairs had repeatedly, vociferously (with multimedia three dimensional graphics presentations even,) told the suits this from the beginning, but did they listen? No, they proceeded through a decade of unfettered spending, internecine warfare and profligate speculation. They created a multi trillion-dollar bubble of hot air and projected productivity increases that year after year never seemed to materialize. Finally it all came crashing down. Who got blamed? The longhairs. Who got fired? The geeks. The fake ponytails are now all cut. The geeks all now work out of India. The suits leverage their stock and take the credit and the profits of the Information Age, as if it had always existed and they had always comprehended its implications.

Trillions were wasted and lost. Lives and pension funds were devastated. Fortunes were made and stolen. And the suits looted the leavings. Forget the fact that if it were not for their venality, vanity, myopia, stupidity, snobbery and petty malice, the trillions could have been real. The productivity could have actually materialized a decade earlier. Pension funds could have been built on healthy, viable assets rather than insider deals and fraud. This country could have by now had lower middleclass taxes and been facing budget surpluses rather than deficits. There could have been decreasing unemployment and real improvements in standards of living. There could have been increased savings and reduced consumer debt. But no…

Because you see, the principle business of business in America is not business at all, its not even mere greed. The principle occupation of the American businessman is indeed simply jerking off.

What’s In A Word

2005-09-07T17:42:00.000-05:00

I am generally fascinated by how words accrue connotative meaning over time. Sometimes this connotative meaning can eclipse the actual denotative meaning of a word. When this happens the word is no longer useful in its denotative context. Sometimes a word acquires a secondary connotative meaning the origin of which has itself become obsolete. In such instances a word may have two mutually exclusive connotative meanings that seem logically incompatible but the combination of which, through common usage, utterly obliterates a word’s denotative application in the linguistic zeitgeist. For all you folks that have just gone to sleep at the mere thought of grammar, consider the following:

The word “Gay.” This word used to have a denotative meaning that made it a synonym of words like happy, cheer, and glee. But through its use in a subcultural context, it became a euphemism for homosexual. The subcultural application spread to a wider cultural milieu. Through common usage the connotative, colloquial meaning came to supplant the literal, denotative meaning of the word “gay.” If you hear someone say “that fellow is gay” in the contemporary context nobody thinks this guy is simply cheerful. The subcultural connotative meaning has become the denotative meaning of this word through an entirely organic and irrational process that has nothing to do with the folks who write dictionaries or how little old ladies teach grammar.

Interestingly, the evolution of connotation did not end with the popular acceptance of the new denotative meaning. In Generation Y youth culture the word experiences common usage. But its general connotative meaning is pejorative. If a 20 something says, “that’s so gay” what they mean is it is “uncool,” “stupid” or “undesirable.” This phenomenon is all the more curious since this is the least homophobic generation ever. The vast majority of young people who use the word “gay” as a colloquial pejorative have homosexual friends who they accept without question. For these young people there is no stigma associated with homosexual behavior but there is a vestigial stigma attached to the word “gay.” There is probably not a young English speaking person on the planet that has a clue about its original denotative meaning or that its original connotation was exclusively positive. Consequently there is now not a chance in Hell that you will be understood if you use the word “gay” in say a sentence like “This beautiful Spring morning makes me feel gay.”

All this can be very confusing and lead to misunderstandings. Language is a dynamic phenomenon but if there is no general agreement on the denotative meaning of words then language collapses. I always find it a little tragic, if unavoidable, when a perfectly good word becomes in someway contaminated by arbitrary connotations.

This week I felt this little twinge of sadness when I realized that another perfectly good word had bitten the dust. That word was “refugee.” I was surprised to find out that people as diverse as Jesse Jackson and George W. Bush considered the word to be pejorative. I had never considered it to be such, when did this happen? I thought a “refugee” was simply someone seeking “refuge.” How is that pejorative? Is that some how an inaccurate description of the people fleeing New Orleans? I was confused. So I did a little research.

The etymology of the word goes back to the Latin “refugium.” A “refugium” is a climatically stable area: an area whose climate remains habitable. Sounds good so far.

So I looked up “refuge” and found:

1 : shelter or protection from danger or distress
2 : a place that provides shelter or protection
3 : something to which one has recourse in difficulty

Still sounds good to me, what’s the problem?

Then I remembered that Jesse and George had said the people who were fleeing Katrina were not “refugees” because they were American citizens. I thought this was a curious and unwarranted distinction to make. I am a citizen and I have sought “refuge” from a storm. Most husbands in America consider their garages to be their “refugium.” How on Earth does being an American disqualify one from “refugee” status?

So I looked up “refugee”

Etymology: French réfugié, past participle of (se) réfugier to take refuge, from Latin refugium
: one that flees; especially : a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution

The operative words here are “especially,” “foreign” and “power.” I thought it was curious how in going from “refugium” to “refuge” to “refugee” the word had picked up some fascinating political baggage. I though this may be unique to this dictionary so I consulted several others and much to my surprise found the same phenomenon. Words like “country” and “persecution” were common but references to weather, climate or natural disasters were virtually non-existent. While wars are all too common, weather is much more common so the word “refugee” taking on this seemingly inherent political connotation seemed odd to me.

But upon further consideration I began to realize there might be a perverse logic at play. The word did not have these political connotations in its original Latin and French iterations. It was in English in the 19th and 20th centuries that “refugee” came to be perceived through the dynamics of relative power.

Throughout most of history, natural calamities were equally unpredictable and equally devastating to all peoples. Whether you lived in the mountains, on a coastline, near a volcano or a river drainage you were at risk. The size of your army or the wealth of your treasury offered little protection from the unrelenting forces of nature. As the entombed of Herculaneum can attest, Vesuvius is no respecter of persons. Sure, wealthier states could build earthworks and the like to mitigate these forces, but as often as not, history demonstrates the failures of these expensive and elaborate systems. In such circumstances all people in virtually anyplace were pretty much equally likely to be “refugees.”

But in the modern era, far more devastating than natural disasters have been those created willfully by men. We were appalled at the loss of life caused by the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean; but this tragedy paled in comparison to the horror of Pol Pot, who was himself a piker compared to Mao, who was only emulating Stalin who rationalized his behavior as Hitler’s rival. Indeed most of Americans are descendents of one or another wave of “refugees” fleeing some tyrant be that George III, Robespierre, Kaiser Wilhelm or Fidel Castro. Despite our ancestry, Americans see themselves as immune to being in need of “refuge.” America is that Shining City on a Hill that is by definition “refuge” itself. We have been insolated from the greatest calamities of our times by our wealth and power. These are the source of our sense of entitlement to security.

In the post WWII period, Americans saw “refugees” as powerless, impoverished “other” people in countries we called Third World. They appeared weak, ignorant, poor and uncivilized. In no way did they seem to resemble “us.” They were either pathetic victims impotent to change their circumstances or were revolutionary bloodthirsty savages to be feared and kept at bay by any means. The “refugee” was the savage “other”. Be they noble or ignoble they were savages nonetheless. We were the civilized and the powerful. Hence to the American imagination the very idea of an American “refugee,” or the more contemporary euphemism, “the internally displaced person,” is an oxymoron. But the problem with this self-conception of American identity is that it has never been true. Ask the nearest European; they will tell you to your face that it is the New World societies, Hispanic and Anglo alike that are the uncivilized savage “others.” Ask the Chinese and they will tell you it is the Europeans. So it always goes with “otherness.”

But “otherness” does not stop at national boundaries nor is it simply a function of your immigration status. There is within the United States itself an entire Third World nation living amongst “us.” Yet they are “us.” This portion of “us” is not descended from people who were deliberately heading for a Shining City on a Hill. They were like the contemporary “refugees” of Darfur, driven from their homes into slavery and imported to the United States as chattel. They live amongst “us” but have never truly been given "refuge." As the world looked on in horror at the events that unfolded in New Orleans, we could see their tragic pathetic faces as they once again sought “refuge” and for a week it was denied them. This is the unfortunate story of America’s own internally displaced, disaffected, disenfranchised, disappointed, disillusioned…are you detecting the pattern here? When we “dis” these people we disrespect “ourselves.”

Before you Yankee Liberals go getting all smugly self-righteous you should realize the tragic scene that played out in the capitol of Southern culture was not simply the result of a handful of greedy, malevolent Southern crackers once again keeping the Black man down. You too bear much of the responsibility for the tragedy that unfolded. Why were there countless billions of dollars available for Boston’s Big Dig and none available for New Orleans flood control? Why is it permissible to condescend about Southern ignorance, poverty and racism and for over a century do nothing about it? You are as guilty of racism as any Southerner. Yet you are satisfied to smugly bitch if it occurs in the South but are simultaneously content to do nothing that would change the agar in which it grows, namely poverty and ignorance.

Why does the North whine about its decaying, aging infrastructure when the South has yet to get its first crack at development? Reconstruction? Hell, we are still waiting for Construction Round 1 throughout most of the South. From the inception of the country, capital has disproportionately condensed in the North. Ask yourselves, why the port of New Orleans, through which the majority of energy you use for all that Northern industry enters this country, has virtually no industry of its own? Why is the city at the mouth of the Mississippi, by which 75% of this country’s exports are disseminated to the world, one of America’s poorest populations? Somebody is making a lot of money here somewhere and it ain’t the people of New Orleans. Yankees have been content to pull money and resources from Southern economies and exploit their injustices for profit without reinvesting a dime for as long as anyone Black or White in the South can remember. To the industrialized, financially capitalized North, the entire population of the Southern portion of the United States represents one large, exploitable, repugnant “other.” It is your willingness to persist in these policies for generations that has contributed to Southern Blacks once again becoming collateral damage to your failed, self-righteous, self-enriching, self-serving agendas.

I’ll wager that if the poorest sections of Chicago were to suddenly burst into flame there would be inadequate response time by firemen, there would be inadequate resources available to fight the fires and that poor urban Blacks would be disproportionately its victims. The Southerner has no monopoly on “otherizing” African Americans. Yankees love to remember Selma but tend to ignore the fact that it was Boston that burned and Los Angeles that rioted. Racism is a sin shared by an entire nation. So long as the South remains the whipping boy for race in America, the rest of the nation will remain in denial about the beam in its own eye and the root causes of racial inequality in America will remain unadressed.

The reason we are reluctant to call those who flee a flooded New Orleans “refugees” is because as a nation we are in denial. “Refuge” is indeed what they seek, but so do millions of people throughout this country. If we are to live up to that ideal of a Shining City on a Hill, we must provide them with the “refuge” to which they are morally entitled. Or we could just shut the Hell up about all this “Liberty and Justice for All” propaganda. As long as Northerners treat Southerners like their prison bitch and make them the perpetual “other,” then when a Southerner of any race flees for whatever reason they will be “refugees” with all the political connotations of that word. So long as a huge portion of our society is cooped up in neglected urban ghettos consigned to lives of brutal poverty, violence and ignorance, many African Americans will feel like aliens in their own country.

As long as the status quo remains, I will continue to refer to any Southerners, and to American Blacks throughout this land, as “refugees” whenever they find themselves in flight. What is more, I will give them that “refuge” without stigmatizing them in any way because they are entitled to no less as Americans of any color. If you see me in flight, hungry, exhausted and wet I hope you will let me in and offer succor. If you do this I promise to be grateful, no matter what you choose to call me.

Parade of Heroes

2005-09-05T22:52:00.000-05:00

Fortunately our business at POL is not only assigning blame. It is also giving credit where credit is due. As more information comes to light it is apparent that a lot of credit needs to be conferred. There are many people who have not been giving press conferences this past week because they have been too busy behaving above and beyond the call of duty. In honor of the following people The Price of Liberty issues a proud command to its readers:

Ten-hut. Eyes right. Pre-sent arms.

Salute to the United States Coast Guard

For its heroic efforts in saving over 9500 lives. Few people realize the dangers they faced. Helicopters do not like to be flown continuously. They require touchy maintenance and without it they tend to glide like rocks. This week I watched courageous crews fly the rotors off these helicopters; some teams performing over a hundred missions a day. They were also flying in chaotic traffic with everyone in the air improvising flight plans. They performed their duty with extraordinary deftness and skill. All of America is proud of their heroic efforts and the whole world is impressed with their excellent performance of their duty even when under fire.

Salute to Volunteers who rushed to the scene with boats

For your initiative, resourcefulness, tenacity and courage. Hundreds of civilians made their way to the scene and rescued countless lives. Unlike the Coast Guard this was not your duty but was supererogatory behavior on your parts and for that you deserve special commendation. No one was there to track and record your exploits but you know who you are, as do the people that you saved. Your nation is grateful and we laud your exemplary sense of civitas.

Salute to the New Orleans Police officers who stayed to defend their city

For incredibly heroic efforts under heavy fire and extreme duress. Your courage is all the more pronounced given the dereliction of duty of so many of your peers who deserted their posts. The officers who stayed were left with no reinforcements and made noble efforts to protect their citizenry under unimaginable stress. For a sense of what these brave souls endured consider the following quote by Chief Eddie Compass New Orleans Police:

September 5, 2005
Wolf Blitzer, CNN (The Situation Room)

“We were the first boats in the water for the life saving efforts. Then when the fire department started to put out fires they started firing upon the fire trucks. So we had to dispatch our officers to go those locations and protect those firemen. I was in a blackhawk helicopter that was supplied to me by Sheriff Harry Lee spotting for the search and rescue, when my SWAT team was fired upon. I had to leave that mission to go and spot for snipers. We had to use so much of our manpower to fight this criminal element instead of using it to save human lives. I don’t know what kind of individual would shoot at someone who’s trying to save them.I had officers in boats who were being shot at who were pulling people out of the water. Captain Timmy Bayar saved thousands of lives in a boat. Pulling people out of the water. This is police officers, ladies and gentlemen, using their own boats doing these type of things.

This is the real story. This is the story of what went on out there on that front line. We was sleeping on the streets.I had the same underwear on for five days. There were no restroom facilities. There were no way for us to get medical attention. I have an officer Gary Flaggert has an infection in his leg that I don’t know what’s going to be the results of that -- because he’s wading around in that nasty water. I had two of my officers commit suicide because they worrying about their families.

The human sacrifice that this police department made is unprecedented in the annals of our country. And I really think America really needs to know that instead of trying to find a few cowards who walked away, they need to really look at all the heroic acts that was done in this city.”

We salute the nobility of these heroic men and women but would like to see those who deserted from cowardice return to run a gauntlet of their courageous peers. Although undoubtedly said heroes would rather just turn their backs on the craven as the ignoble had done to their brethren in their hour of need. Perhaps Chief Compass has it right; we should consign our cowards to oblivion and focus our attention on lauding our heroes. Salute Chief Compass.

Salute to the Physicians and Staff of Charity Hospital

For exemplary performance of your Hippocratic oaths under unprecedented duress. These brave men and women continuously fought to save lives in unimaginably deplorable conditions as their lives were being constantly threatened and their calls for assistance went ignored for five days. For a sense of what these courageous people experienced consider the following plea they issued:

“Charity Hospital: Gunmen inside threatening doctors
12:19 pm
Name: Mark Simpson
Home: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Email: simpsonvos@yahoo.com

Subject: My Hurricane Story -- Charity Hospital--Gunmen inside threatening doctors

Story: My coworker's brother is one of seven doctors who have been left behind at Charity Hospital. His name is Vinroot, I'm sorry, I don't know the first name. He is in a panic--the doctors have barricaded themselves on the seventh floor because armed gunmen are outside threatening them and demanding access to the roof so they can be rescued first. He is desperate. Someone needs to help these people NOW!”

These physicians and nurses treated their patients without electricity, functioning plumbing, fresh water, a functioning morgue or any of the necessities of a hospital. Cadavers were piled in stairwells. They hand bagged ventilator patients around the clock. Day after day their appeals went unanswered but they remained at their posts and performed their duty with dignity, compassion, resourcefulness, skill and supererogatory courage. We commend their commitment to their mission of mercy in an environment in which that commodity was in short supply.

Salute to Auryn24, a nurse with a little bit of attitude

For courage, competence, compassion, diligence and perseverance in attendance to duty. Auryn and her colleagues at Methodist Hospital were not evacuated until Friday. They experienced similar horrors to those at Charity hospital but they too endured and saved lives under extraordinary duress. Consider this account from here journal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/auryn24/299034.html :

“Thursday, the staff was given some hope about going home. We were told that UHS (the company that owns Methodist Hospital) was going to be using their personal helicopters to rescue us, however, they could NOT take the visitors (the visitors were not of their concern). That would mean, we would have to sneak out and not let the patient's visitors see. 100+ staff SNEAK OUT?? That would cause a riot. I cried and cried and knew it would never work.

I was right. Thursday night, we started to ship out some of the staff families that had small children with them. The visitors (which mind you, ELECTED TO STAY) found out about it, and started a screaming match and throwing things. I was sitting in the middle of the hall with my coworkers (who were in more need of sleep that me) watching all of this, listening, trying to protect my coworkers. The dialysis nurses came running down the hall and LOCKED themselves into the dialysis room. They made sure to tell me that if things got too bad, we could come and lock ourselves in too. I got a flashlight shined in my face and I could hear the visitors (the SAME VISITORS I GAVE MY PORTION OF WATER TO INSTEAD OF DRINKING IT MYSELF) say "there are those nurses. If we see them leave, I will stab them."…

Larry Graham, our COO of our hospital, came down and tried to calm everyone down. One visitor pulled his arm back to hit Larry, and the police restrained him. There were screams and cries from the visitors. Cries that I could understand. "I haven't seen my husband since he was rescued. I don't know where he is. You are keeping me from finding him." "I want to see my kids." Etc... One family member (a wife of a patient that needed to get airlifted off) didn't want him to go without her (that was the price to pay...patients first, then families). I told her under marshal law, he HAD TO GO BECAUSE HE WAS A PATIENT AND HE WAS UNDER OUR CARE. He tried to stay, gave excuses, etc. The wife finally said, "go. just go. if they want to TORTURE US and HURT US, let them."

Oh My God. I just sacrificed SEVEN days for these patients. Did my best to care for patients. Sacrificed sleep, food, water, MY personal food, toileting, etc for this woman and her husband. Now I'm TORTURING HER?”

Salute to Auryn and her courageous coworkers. But special commendation goes to her hospital’s COO and CNO for reporting for duty as well. In times of crisis Hospital executives are usually comfortably secure away from danger, but these execs performed their duties and stood shoulder to shoulder with their staff. Salute.

Salute to Arnold Scott

For extraordinary initiative, resourcefulness, compassion and exemplary courage. Arnold Scott is a nurse from the 9th ward who could not afford to evacuate because he had just paid his tuition. When his poor neighborhood began to flood, he went door-to-door gathering elderly, paraplegics and infirmed and getting them to higher ground. He then took responsibility for their care throughout the crisis. He was operating independently on his own initiative and without support of any kind. He waded into vacant houses searching for medicine and provisions for those for whom he had assumed personal responsibility. Thanks to his courageous and resourceful efforts they all survived to eventually be rescued on Sunday a full week after the nightmare began. To Arnold Scott: the 9th ward thanks you for your compassion. Your nation salutes you for supererogatory performance. If you need tuition for medical school contact POL and we will put you in touch with a sponsor. Our nation could use more doctors of your moral caliber.

Salute to a nameless young man in a yellow dew rag

For courage, initiative, compassion, patience, resourcefulness and supererogatory attendance to duty. You found a boat and rowed 18 children from the projects to safety. You then scavenged them provisions and kept them together and safe throughout the crisis despite having no knowledge of the whereabouts of their mothers. We do not know your name but we salute your heroism. Their mothers will undoubtedly be eternally grateful. Your nation appreciates your extraordinary assumption of responsibility for a young man in your position.

Salute to Deamonte Love

For courage, resourcefulness, leadership, and faithful commitment to those in his charge. Consider his story as reported by the La Times:

“In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader...

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love...

Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans...

At 3 p.m. Sunday, DSS workers said goodbye to seven children who now had names: Deamonte Love; Darynael Love; Zoria Love and her brother Tyreek. The girl who cried "Gabby!" was Gabrielle Janae Alexander. The girl they called Peanut was Degahney Carter. And the boy whom they called G was actually Lee — Leewood Moore Jr.”

Salute to Pat Coveney for driving these children to safety in Baton Rouge. Salute to the National Center for Missing Children who are using their resources to reunite families. Salute the people at Angel Flight who reunited these children with their family that had been evacuated to San Antonio. Salute to a courageous mother who made the heart wrenching decision to place her children on a chopper to give them a fighting chance at survival. Her little man proved himself quite the noble, though diminutive, warrior and his attention to his duty reflects well on the home in which he was reared. Last but not least, Salute to Xristim for bringing this incredible story to our attention.

Salute to Harry Connick, Jr.

For courage, compassion, faithfulness, moral leadership and civic virtue. You remained with your fellow citizens throughout the crisis. You were their ardent advocate in their suffering. You were a calm, compassionate, reasoned voice for your community and represented it with dignity and grace when these virtues were in short supply. You went in with boats and assisted with rescue efforts, saving the life of at least one elderly gentlemen by carrying him to safety and then literally giving him the shirt off your back. Your community looked to you for inspiration to civitas and found it in abundance. Salute to you Harry Jr., your papa should be proud.

Salute to Wynton Marsalis

For faithfulness, moral leadership and civic virtue. You represent a consistent archetype of these virtues and have once again reported for duty to your community. For immediately organizing a relief concert to bring your fellow musicians together to remind America that Jazz “is the object identification of democracy.” For demonstrating that New Orleans is indeed America’s cultural soul as much as New York is its financial heart. For not only demanding justice for your community with rhetoric but also demonstrating leadership with your actions.

Salute to Anderson Cooper

For insightful reporting, for courage and tenacity, for trying to help as well as report, for getting out information that would help first responders know where to go, for trying to help reunite loved ones, for your righteous indignation at the tardiness of response. Your sincere concern for the people your were covering was clearly visible to your viewers. You were part of the solution rather than a mere self-serving voyeur like so many of your colleagues were this week. For a nation that has grown understandably cynical of its media (regrettably, including your network) you provided a shining example of journalistic integrity and human compassion and empathy that these day is all too rare in your profession.

Salute to Lt. General Russel Honore

For filling the much needed leadership vacuum. You have assumed your duty with vigor and exuded the confidence required of a true leader. You have not been reluctant to point fingers in the most productive way, by giving orders. It is not your duty to criticize the chain of command but rather to clean up their mess. You are walking this tightrope with grace and dignity and the nation is finally confident that somebody qualified is in charge. You General Honore are the man of the hour. You have charged into the beach and the entire country is palpably relieved. While you have had to do your share of press conferences, your country is grateful to finally hear someone at a microphone whose is not afraid to lean in and say “bullshit.” Our prayers and hopes are with you and the people of New Orleans. We support your noble mission.

Salute to the Cities of Houston, San Antonio, Baton Rouge, Atlanta and others

For generosity, charity, compassion, hospitality and willingness to immediately come to the aid of your brethren in their hour of need. You have your own poor and huddled masses yet you unhesitatingly opened your domes, airfields, and other facilities to house and feed those fleeing their devastated city. You are opening your homes and hearts to the displaced bringing them succor and comfort when they need it most. You are providing the adults with employment and their children with education. You have taken on this burden with cheerful giving hearts and no concern for the costs. Your nation salutes your kindness and will hopefully be willing to assist you as you care for those in your charge.

Salute to the people of India

For generosity and technical support. Despite widespread poverty in your own land, the nation of India has made a $5,000,000 donation to the Red Cross. But that is not all. You have also sent a large consignment of medicines for treating water born diseases in which you have great expertise. Consider the following report at Bruce Sterling’s blog:

“Washington. Sept. 4: If all goes well, an Illyushin-76 Indian military transport plane loaded with large water purification systems both for households and communities and critical medical supplies will take off in a day or two from an airfield in India for the southern US which is reeling from a killer hurricane which hit the area a few days ago. The Illyushin, which will bring its own naval boats and dinghies for a self-sustaining and self-supporting‚ relief operation in the US, will also carry a medical team from the Indian Army Medical Corps. The team will include a surgeon, an anaesthetist, doctors, nurses and paramedics who have had first-hand experience in handling the effects of natural disasters.”

The people of the United States are grateful for your solidarity in our time of need. You will undoubtedly experience the good karma you deserve for your beneficence. I know Indians have mixed feelings about Rudyard Kipling, but I hope you will excuse my recollection his famous poem:

“You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”

Salute to the people of Kuwait

For extraordinary generosity, solidarity and demonstrable gratitude rather than merely the all too common lip service. The parliament of the Emirate of Kuwait has unanimously voted to provide $500,000,000 to the relief effort. I don’t care who you are, that’s a lot of money that will do a lot of good for a lot of people. The people of the United States are grateful for your magnanimous donation and it is now patently clear to anyone who may have doubted that we were right to come to your aid. We are proud to have been of assistance in restoring the sovereignty of such a faithful ally. You also provide us with hope that generosity does not in fact go unrewarded.

Salute to the Internet Community

For immediately going into relief mode and contributing to the rescue and reuniting of countless people. Without the guidance of FEMA you took it upon yourselves to set up discussion boards to relay distress calls. You provided connectivity and communication for those who had none. You went right to work finding homes for evacuees and coordinating volunteers. You reflexively went after the incompetent leadership and held their feet to the fire days before the rest of the media had even snapped to the fact that this human tragedy had a human cause. You immediately and spontaneously took it upon yourselves to raise money. Special commendation is in order for the folks at www.somethingawful.com for raising tens of thousands of dollars for the Red Cross only to have it all swiped by Paypal. Though they have agreed to reimburse your donors, the Paypal folks should be ashamed of their counterproductive, self-serving, bureaucratic interference. Despite such snafus, Internet donations to relief will undoubtedly ultimately be in the multimillions of dollars. You have demonstrated that the Internet community is not simply a bunch of pornographers, but is the true vox populi. Salute to you all.

Salute to all the Volunteers who have rushed to help

Throughout this land, and indeed the entire world, health services personnel, engineers, law enforcement professionals, social workers, caterers, construction crews, rescue teams and support of all kinds have responded to the call to come and render aid. A country is not its government. A country is its people and what a talented and caring people you are. Salute to you all.

Salute to all who donate their hard earned money

The phones are ringing off the hook at the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and other worthy organizations as Americans burn up the phone lines and overwhelm servers reaching for their wallets in millions of individual efforts to give until it hurts. Salute to all you generous people who make personal sacrifices to mitigate the suffering of others. The citizens of the Gulf Coast region thank you and your nation is so proud of you. But remember this is a battle in which victory goes to those who remain committed for the long haul. The dramatic images we currently see coming into our living rooms will soon fade away but burning needs will remain for months and years to come. Do not let out of sight become out of mind. Do not succumb to disaster fatigue. Stay the course. Not GW’s course, but the right one, the one your carry in your generous hearts.

Salute to all the heroes too numerous to mention here

The people who belong in this parade of heroes are legion. Remember this and laud them every chance you get. If you admire these heroes do something to join in their parade. Volunteer at a shelter, give blood or money. Do something to earn the right to march with these generous, courageous souls and come to the aid of your fellow citizens. There but for the grace of God go you. The rouges gallery of this national calamity is miniscule compared the scale of its army of heroes. It is our country for and by our people. Never forget this. You have the authority and the power to do the right thing. Don’t count on your government or the other guy to do your duty. If you don’t rise to the occasion, no one will.

The Burghers of Calais

2005-09-04T16:51:00.000-05:00

"In 1884 Rodin submitted a maquette for a competition in Calais, France to erect a monument in honor of a local hero, Eustache de Saint-Pierre. This hero was part of a dramatic event that occured in Calais in 1347, during the Hundred Years War. Six leading citizens of Calais volunteered themselves as hostages to the English king Edward III in exchange for his lifting an eleven-month siege on their city. Eustache de Saint-Pierre was the first of six brave citizens to surrender. Rodin was greatly moved by the power of the story and offered to depict all six men for a modest sum. He began by studying the history surrounding the event as well as other artistic depictions of the burghers."--The Metrpolitan Museum of Art

As I have watched our leaders congratulate themselves day after day on a job well done, I am struck by the contrast between their self-aggrandizement and the heroic self-sacrifice of the burghers of Calais. Rodin’s sculpture conveys the pathos of these tragic souls who put the welfare of their citizens above their own safety. Almost 700 years later we still commemorate their surrender and are moved by their civic loyalty.

We cast statues to our heroes so that we will never forget to cherish their memories. Sculptures like these do not simply honor the dead; they are reminders to the living to provide incentive to behave honorably.

But it is not only our heroes that deserve to be remembered. We also commemorate our villains. We are exhorted to never forget the Holocaust, and indeed we should not lest its horrors be repeated. Nor should we forget the atrocity of the Rape of New Orleans whose citizens were starving, drowning and being ravaged as their burghers fiddled like Nero in a burning Rome. If we fail to remember their abhorrent behavior in the face of the suffering of their citizens it too will inevitably occur again.

It is for this reason that I call for the commission of a sculpture to commemorate the cowardice and negligence of our leaders who evidently feel no shame as they tell their people that no one is to blame for the horrendous loss of life this week in New Orleans. We should never forget these self-satisfied, lying, negligent bastards lest future leaders follow their atrocious example. We should cast their shame in bronze so governors will eternally remember it and so they will forever be exhorted to never let it happen again lest they too be so memorialized.

We should cast life size figures of George W. Bush, Michael Chertoff, Michael Brown and Kathleen Blanco all with their heads hung in eternal shame as an object lesson for all to remember as long as there is a city at the mouth of the Mississippi. This is not a rant. I am deathly serious. If you like me, are committed to the proposition that we should never forget the rape of our beloved New Orleans, let me know. If I get a large enough response to this idea I will move forward on it and begin to try and raise funds to see that this sculpture is built and placed prominently for future generations to see and never ever forget the consequences of the malfeasance of our leaders.

God rest the souls of the dead. God bless and protect those who survived. But may eternal damnation come to those unrepentant leaders whose hubris and neglect brought this tragedy to so many. May they burn forever in perdition. May their names and sallowed faces live forever in infamy.

FEMA Business

2005-09-03T11:48:00.000-05:00

According to the pendejo twins Chertoff and Brown (remember those names and spit when you say them) the reason response was delayed was because the first responder infrastructure, electricity, communications, transportation, hospitals etc. were all taken out by the storm thus hampering efforts on every front. This certainly increased the challenge by an order of magnitude. The other thing FEMA keeps asserting is "these were two distinct disasters" the concurrence of which was unforeseeable. According to FEMA these disasters were Katrina and the flooding.

But this argument only has merit if one is willing to grant that it was rational to presume that infrastructure would be available in the first place. If one is planning to respond in the event of a bomb going off or the misuse of an airplane, then one could rationally presume that the area affected would be a reasonably small zone and not necessarily affect all essential infrastructures. But if one is planning for a category 5 hurricane to hit Louisiana then one could hardly imagine circumstances being any different than the ones actually faced by first responders in New Orleans. If before this disaster you had told anyone in New Orleans that in the event of a category 4 or better, the levees would still hold, the response from the locals would have been one gigantic eye roll. Tell them this now and you are likely to be punched in the nose. Even the Corps of Engineers said the flood control system would not sustain above a category 3. The flooding of New Orleans in the event of a serious hurricane was not only foreseeable; it was foreseen by everybody familiar with the situation. There in lies the rub McDuff. You prepared for a terrorist attack. I understand that 9/11 caught you with your pants down but then so did Katrina. At least Katrina gave you several days advanced warning. I guess you folks are just perpetually pantless.

But how often has America experienced a catastrophic terrorist attack on its own soil? Now ask yourselves, ”How often has a major hurricane hit the Gulf Coast?” What if a storm surge the size of the one that hit Biloxi Mississippi had instead hit Miami Florida? One day it will, and if you folks show up 5 days late with your dirty bomb tool kits you are going to once again look like a bunch of incompetent jackasses.

There were indeed two distinct disasters that befell New Orleans, but they were not Katrina and flooding. They were failure to fund and build adequate flood control mechanisms and FEMA’s failure to prepare for the inevitable. It was this concurrence of government failures that brought disaster to New Orleans. Had it not been for governmental neglect, Katrina would have simply blown out some windows, knocked down some trees and torn up some tarpaper in the Big Easy. In fact immediately after Katrina had passed, the general feeling in New Orleans was that they had ducked a bullet. Little did they know that what their government had in store for them amounted to a double tap to the head.

Here’s a clue for all you people tasked with emergency planning who seem to be so priority challenged:

The likelihood of a disaster being a particular type of event occurs in this descending order

1st hurricanes
2nd flooding
3rd tornados
4th industrial accidents
5th earthquakes
6th terrorist attack.

Interestingly, one’s advanced warning time also occurs in the same descending order. If you focus your attentions on how to prepare for the most likely eventuality in a challenged infrastructural environment, this will give you a substantial edge when you have to face a catastrophe with most of your infrastructure still in place. See how that works folks?

Now finish cleaning up your mess in New Orleans. When you have completed your mission there, go back to your drawing boards and come up with some workable response plans. The next time we have a catastrophe deploy the right plan. Bring the appropriate tool kit and leave your excuses at home. Because quite frankly folks, we are all getting more than a little tired of seeing your scrawny naked behinds.

As for the pendejo brothers, somebody get these fecofiles off the tube. Hand them a toothbrush and a dixie cup and tell them to go clean up the Superdome.

Business Is Good

2005-09-02T20:56:00.000-05:00

Consider the difference in tone between these two quotes:

"No more god damn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to the city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count. Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too dog gone late. Now get off your asses and let's do something! Let's fix the biggest god damned crisis in the history of this country."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin interview with WWI Radio.

And…

“The results in New Orleans are unacceptable…. Our jobs as people in positions of responsibility is not to be satisfied until the job is done as good as it can possibly be done. And uh, that’s what I was referring to… um, I’m certainly not denigrating the efforts of anybody, but the results can be better in New Orleans. And I intend to work with the folks to make it better.”

President George Bush to CNN

One can hardly turn on the television and not see some pusillanimous government official either from FEMA, Homeland Security, DOD, Congress or even the President telling us not to indulge in the blame game. Well I am not a member of government. Mine is not the business of government. I am a citizen blogger. My business is blame, and business is very good indeed.

Like the vast majority of Americans I share Mayor Nagin’s rage. The devastation of New Orleans was not caused by some act of God called Katrina. It was for a second time in New Orleans history brought on via the criminal neglect by the Federal Government of the United States of America.

Note to my equivocating President:

If as you say Mr. President, the results are truly “unacceptable,” then by definition the people you tasked with the responsibility for the rescue of New Orleans fucked up. There is only winning and losing in battle Mr. President, and that stench coming from a smoldering New Orleans ain’t the smell of victory.

“Our job…is not be satisfied until the job is done as good as it can be?” Give me one gigantic break please Mr. President. The events that have unfolded this week demonstrate unfathomable incompetence. We are not talking about the difference between Magna and Suma Cum Laude here Mr. President. A “C” average may have been an acceptable performance for a legacy at Yale, but you are President of the United States now and your performance this week is an unqualified “F.” The Hydrodynamic Theory of Civilization postulates that the purpose of government is to provide flood control and security. On both counts you failed miserably. That’s it. You flunked. Do not pass GO. Do not matriculate to Harvard. In the words of The Donald, “Your Fired!”

When CIA Director Tenent gave you bad intelligence on WMD you pinned a medal on him. If you pin medals on the SOB’s responsible for the Rape of New Orleans rest assured Mr. President, Americans Left and Right will come into the streets in their millions to burn you and those negligent bastards in effigy.

You don’t get any brownie points from me for simply keeping your willie in your pants during your tenure in the Oval Office. I have no partisan beef with you Mr. President, but the events in New Orleans demonstrate that your shakeup of our emergency services has been worse than futile it has been counterproductive. You have centralized authority, abrogated our liberties, created a top-heavy totalitarian bureaucracy and put us all at increased risk from dangers made by man and nature alike. You should be impeached for breach of your oath of office. Your subordinates at Homeland Security and FEMA should be stripped of immunity and class action sued by their victims. Michael Chertoff and Michael Brown should then be tried for thousands of cases of negligent homicide. If these two equivocating bastards had an ounce of honor between them they would have both fallen on their swords by now. Since they cannot be counted on to do the right thing it is incumbent on you Mr. President to put them to the sword. I know you are notoriously loyal to your staff Mr. President but these two individuals need to be keelhauled and fed to the fishes.

But President Bush is not solely to blame…

To Governor Blanco of Louisiana:

Your indecisiveness, incompetence and weakness were on display this week to the entire world. You failed in your mission to protect your citizens. Your lack of leadership and decisive direction directly contributed to the mayhem that resulted. You should be held personally liable for your deplorable failures.

When lawlessness broke out you should have mustered all police forces to New Orleans immediately regardless of risks to their safety. They are cops. It is not only their jobs it is their duty. When you hesitated, you failed to do yours. As soon as the levees failed you should have declared martial law. Your failure to do so restricted the rules of engagement and cost hundreds if not thousands of lives. These lives rest on your conscience Governor Blanco. You should have mustered all the New Orleans police and let them know that anyone who deserted their post would be summarily arrested and their pensions and benefits immediately cancelled. If the police union representative had objected to this you should have had him arrested on the spot.

When after forty-eight hours the Federal Government had not managed to produce troops in the streets of New Orleans you should have had your Chief of the Louisiana Highway Patrol arrest all the chief officers of HS and FEMA that were on the scene. You should have then called the Whitehouse and told the President that you would release his people from custody when 40,000 troops appeared in the streets of New Orleans with food, water and ammunition. If he objected, you should have informed him that if he did not accede to your demands that you intended to have the LHP arrest him the moment Air Force One touched down in Louisiana. You should have let him know that you were going to call a press conference in an hour and inform the people of your intentions. Had you taken this course of action, you can bet your ass there would have been troops in New Orleans by sunup even if they would have had to halo jump in from the stratosphere.

You failed to make provision for evacuation of the poor and infirmed despite having issued evacuation orders. Why were all those busses we see on Friday hauling out the dead and dying not there hauling out the living on Sunday night? This was an inexcusable oversight for a Democrat Governor. Shame on you Madame Blanco. Shame!

You continuously misinformed your citizens with ridiculously erroneous information. “The water is not contaminated.” Oh really Governor? “There are 40,00 troops on the way.” In the fullness of time Governor, or as Mayor Nagin said, when “its too dog gone late?” Is looting a good thing or a bad thing Governor? Because from your remarks, it was not clear how you felt about this until Thursday when you finally lost your temper.

But you could have mitigated the drownings Governor Blanco if you had made provisions for high water rescue. Everyone knew New Orleans would eventually flood for some reason. You could have prepositioned inexpensive flat bottom boats throughout the city. You could have organized block captains to stay behind and rescue folks in their vicinity. You may not have been able to get the Feds to pay for rerouting the Mississippi but you could have taken responsible and economically viable precautions.

Where were you Governor Blanco when the physicians at Charity Hospital were being held at gunpoint by terrorists as their calls for relief had gone ignored for days? You managed to evacuate LSU hospital across the street on Tuesday but Charity remained up to their waists in cadavers until Friday morning. Could this perhaps have been because that one hospital was called Charity and the other was not? The racial and class implications of the catastrophe of your mismanagement are transparent to the entire world. I cannot presume to speak for all the poor and suffering from New Orleans but I will advocate for those refugees from your incompetence that have come to Texas. You’re fired Governor Blanco! You too should be impeached for your detestable failure to uphold your oath of office and be held civilly and criminally accountable for your gross derelictions of duty.

There is more to being a governor than having press conferences and mood swings. Shame on you Governor Blanco. Shame! Your citizens will cast no bronze statues in your honor, since you clearly have none. But don’t be surprised if you to see yourself in effigy.

To Mayor Nagin of New Orleans:

I share your rage and frustration. But there is more to being a Mayor than sharing your citizens’ pain. Rhetoric is not enough. Effective, not simply well meaning, leadership is required in times of crisis. You too bear responsibility for the mayhem that unfolded in your city. What provisions had you made to evacuate the poor and the elderly before the flood? What provisions had you made for high-water rescue on a foreseeably large scale? Where were you when your Governor was reluctant to declare martial law? Where were you Mayor Nagin when your police force was defecting and deserting?

You were indeed a vocal advocate for the suffering of your people but there is more to leadership than advocacy. You must succeed in preventing that suffering as much as possible. Sympathy is not enough Mayor. You certainly have more of my sympathy than the other executives responsible for the tragedy that has befallen your city. But ultimately you failed to prevent that calamity or mitigate it in any meaningful way. You may not deserve to be impeached Mayor Nagin, but you should show your constituency the respect they deserve and have the dignity to decline to run for office again.

To the Congress of the United States:

A pox on both your Houses! When pork is being handed out you all feed like pigs at the trough. But when it comes time to spend money on necessary infrastructure like wetlands restoration or to fund civil engineering of the Mississippi you all suddenly become deficit hawks. Who are you kidding? You only care about spending money on projects that enrich your largest campaign donors. I guess there just wasn’t enough graft in wetlands restoration or flood control to make it worth your while.

Senators and Representatives of both parties were more than willing to gut funding to the Army Corps of Engineers year after year. This year you decided that the invisible occasional threat from terrorism was more palpable than the persistent threat of the combined forces of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River. Now don’t y’all feel stupid. Get a clue fellas. Have a sense of proportionality. The Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi will be a persistent threat to life and property for millennia to come long after the last jihadist has been swept off the planet. Come on have you seen New Orleans? If a terrorist manages to wreak that much havoc, I for one, will be genuinely impressed. Appalled and furious, but impressed non-the-less.

You allowed the Executive branch to basically gut and then remake FEMA and other emergency contingencies in their own centralized authoritarian image. How did that work out for you fellas? Like the results? I certainly hope not, because your constituencies sure as Hell don’t. There’s more to being a Senator or Congressman than raising campaign funds and rubberstamping voluminous legislation. You might even try reading some of the crap you pass before you vote on it. The next time someone tells you your job involves oversight maybe you will actually perform your duty instead of merely reporting for it. But a gambler wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

To House Speaker Dennis Hastert:

So you don’t think we should spend Federal money to rebuild New Orleans, huh? Since you didn’t want to spend money to prevent this disaster at least you are consistent. No money ever for New Orleans. But I’ve got a better idea. How about we rebuild New Orleans and in a memorial park in the center of town we place a bronze statue of you as a water feature in the public urinal? I am sure this will provide a better incentive to pass water than all the diuretics on the planet, although it might provide a risk of further flooding.

Well, to all you shortsighted, self-interested, self-promoting greedy negligent bastards:

Take a good hard look at New Orleans. It was formerly one of America’s four unique cities. Now it is America’s most unique city and it is all your fault. I hope you are satisfied.

New Orleans Resembles Baghdad

2005-08-31T11:03:00.000-05:00

We all offer our condolences to the victims of Katrina. They will be in our thoughts and prayers for months and years to come. We commend the heroic rescue efforts of the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the Navy and other first responders. We know the people of the Gulf Coast are suffering and in shock, but they should as much as possible, rest assured that all of America will come to their aid and their homes and livelihoods will be rebuilt.

There have been many accounts of victims helping other victims. People who have lost everything and are unaware of the fate of their own loved ones have been tirelessly working to save others. People desperately in need of rescue themselves are forgoing their own safety as they insist that their neighbors with elderly and children be retrieved first. One young man rowed a boat filled with eighteen children from the projects to safety. He has been looking after these children for days under horrific conditions with no idea of the whereabouts of their mothers. God bless this conscientious young man. A crown surely awaits him in Paradise. There are undoubtedly many more cases of such individual heroism that will never be reported. It is in times of crisis that ordinary decent people of all ethnicities, religions and classes rise to the challenge to do extraordinarily noble things. We salute the countless noble acts that are currently being performed throughout the area devastated by Katrina. The people who behave righteously in times of crisis will experience good karma, God's blessings, the gratitude of their neighbors and the admiration of all Americans.

Unfortunately, this is not the whole story. Times of crisis are also viewed as an opportunity to behave deplorably by bad people and shamefully by some ordinary people. Gangs of youths have been commandeering houses on high ground forcing owners out at gunpoint. Marauding teenage boys are raping girls who have sought refuge at the Convention Center as police stand impotently by. Arsonists are setting fires. Others have announced that the Big Easy now belongs to them. Some have actually fired on rescue helicopters. A national guardsman has been shot as has a New Orleans police officer. Snipers have fired on hospital evacuation teams. Rescuers have had to reluctantly stand down and wait for armed backup. Evacuation convoys have been suspended due to security concerns. There are reports of armed lawlessness by refugees in Baton Rouge as that community's poulation has doubled in size over the last couple of days. As I watch the plethora of looters raiding pharmacies, jewelry stores, pawn shops and Walmarts running out with loot rather than survival supplies, I am reminded of Rumsfeld’s notorious remark when the inhabitants of Baghdad behaved thusly, “Free people are free to make choices and to do the wrong thing.” Poverty and desperation may provide impetus to evil but they are no excuse for larceny. The perpetrators of these crimes shame themselves and the city of New Orleans, no mean feat for a community notorious for its tolerance of vice. The people who behave ignobly during a disaster earn bad karma, displease their Creator, earn the enmity of their neighbors and the universal revulsion of the American people.

Long after most Americans have forgotten the dramatic pictures of helicopter rescues, they will remember the images of wanton criminality etched into their brains from the miles of footage showing New Orleans character at its worst. This has the effect of undermining American sympathy for those who, for whatever reasons, ignored evacuation orders. It also demonstrates the degree to which an entire class of the inhabitants of New Orleans, and as I suspect in other communities as well, no longer consider themselves citizens of a free society at all. Citizens do not behave badly, peasants do. The criminal class of New Orleans do not see themselves as in any way obligated to their neighbors. They view them as prey and the authorities as merely a rival power base.

The scale of the looting and general lawlessness should be a wake up call to all Americans everywhere that we have a serious problem in the United States. The existence of a perpetual urban underclass represents a disenfranchisement of an enormous group in this country. Many in this class no longer even pretend to have a stake in this system. They don’t vote, they don’t pay taxes, they don’t own property so they don’t respect it, they ignore the laws and exist in a condition of perpetual opportunistic anarchy. They live this way on a daily basis; it is just more visible during times of crisis. The truth is that for millions of American inhabitants, crisis is a perpetual state of existence. They have no faith that the democratic process will offer them opportunities to legitimately prosper, so they choose to make the most of their illegitimate opportunities. They do not see themselves as citizens of the United States with rights and with them concomitant obligations. Many in the urban underclass see themselves as America’s victims entitled to whatever loot they can get where ever and when ever they can get it. This situation is of course a complex phenomenon stemming from polyvalent failures in our society. But it is becoming evident that if people do not have access to the benefits of American citizenship they will have little incentive to behave as responsible citizens.

The widespread looting in New Orleans should give the American people an incentive to provide the historically disenfranchised with true enfranchisement, not subsistance maintenance and hush money. The perpetual urban underclass needs to be eradicated, not just placated with politically correct rhetoric. The perpetual urban underclass should be eliminated, not glamorized, romanticized and subsidized. This means providing every citizen with bona fide educational opportunities, not mere warehousing of delinquents. High standards of educational achievement and discipline in the urban schools should be mandated for all students. Citizens throughout the community should be eager to pay for it. Most of the victims of the New Orleans public schools are probably unaware that when martial law is declared in their city this means that looters can be legally shot on sight. It would be a shame for some punk to lose his life because of an inadequate appreciation of the consequences of his implied social contract. The equivocators and failure apologists of the NEA and educational establishment should be rounded up and dropped into the flooded New Orleans to have to live with the consequences of their malevolent incompetence. As should politicians and social policy makers who fail to provide real vocational training for real jobs, not just service sector indentured servitude. Adequate security needs to be provided in impoverished neighborhoods whatever the economic cost. If it means putting a beat cop on every corner 24 hours/day, so be it. Spend the money.

The insurance costs from looters, the incarceration costs of producing generation after generation of urban anarchists, the maintenance costs of subsidized perpetual poverty, the lost productivity of undereducated, under-trained, underemployed millions of Americans is certainly greater than the cost of teaching folks literacy and a skill and requiring them to work. Sadly we have come to take inner city poverty, ignorance and crime as a given. We have grown to accept it. But it is un-American to accept a perpetual class of propertyless peasants. It also presents a real threat to our democracy. Peasants cannot be counted on to behave as citizens. They represent the Roman mob to be appeased with bread and circuses and manipulated by ambitious demagogues. No democracy can long endure if it tolerates an ever-increasing disenfranchised peasant class.

But it is not enough to blame the peasants of Louisiana for the disorganized horror show currently unfolding in New Orleans. Walmart's welcome though paltry $1,000,000 donation make's one realize how wide the blame actually goes. Come on folks, who are they kidding? Walmart has pumped a million dollars a minute out of New Orleans for twenty years. There is a difference between charity and public relations. Walmart executives might not be able to distinguish between them but the people of a ravaged New Orleans undoubtedly can. While I do not condone looting the local Walmart, I understand it.

The responsibility is not limited to corporate miserliness. The negligence of the governments Federal, State and Local is manifest in this current tragedy. That two days after the levee broke the Army Corps of Engineers is still at the drawing table looking for a solution is inexcusable. The Corps has known for decades that their much vaunted dike and levee system has been a fool’s errand. They have known right along that the levees would eventually break. Yet they have not run models and drills on how to repair these predictable breaches. The Corps should have already practiced using various techniques for emergency repairs. They should have already had prepositioned materials in place and have been able to repair these breaks within hours rather than days. Prefab concrete barriers, caissons and floating heavy lift equipment should have been ready to go at a moment’s notice. But no, they have decided to fiddle while New Orleans floods.

It is also interesting that the much-lauded FEMA has no effective provisions in place for the mandatory evacuation of a city the size of New Orleans. It seems odd that despite decades of talk about the Big One hitting the Big Easy that FEMA is having to improvise a scheme for evacuating hospitals, maintaining law and order, and providing transportation and housing for a mere 20% of New Orleans’ population. It also seems odd that these demigods of central planning have to resort to calling on civilians to bring their personal boats to the region to assists in high water rescue. Flat bottom boats are cheap and easily prepositioned. Just how did the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana plan to rescue the inevitable victims of its inevitable deluge? The answer is of course, "they didn’t." Their plan was to tell everybody to leave and then cross their fingers. The poor souls who stayed behind have just begun to realize this and, to say the least, they are understandably not amused.

Surely the law enforcement community could have foreseen the likelihood of looting, but yet they seem to have almost no provisions in place to halt looting and maintain order during a flood, the most likely circumstance under which they would face it. There were a finite number of firearms vendors in New Orleans. These should have been the first places secured by authorities as order began to decay. What is truly appalling are reports that over 60% of the New Orleans Police Force have abandoned their posts and fled the city. This is an unimaginable dereliction of duty. We salute the few courageous souls who remained to face night after night of hostile fire and futile calls for officers needing assistance. All of America would understand if the brave cops who attended to their duty were to save their last bullets for their former colleagues whose inexcusable cowardice lead them to desert their brethren in their hour of need. But perhaps a collegial bullet is too noble a fate for such craven vermin. A more appropriate punishment would be to drag these deserters back to the New Orleans Convention Center to be perpetually pilloried as party favors for the civilians they abandoned to the thugs.

The conditions at the Superdome are atrocious and people are dying from neglect. This is not due to flooding and roof damage, but to inadequate preparation for sanitation, health, mortuary contingency and transitional evacuation. There is inadquate crowd control and information management and apparently no one in charge. To continue to bring tens of thousands of civilians to this already over-tasked facility seems to be gross negligence and a formula for further disaster. Fortunately planners in Texas seem to have been more prescient than their Louisiana counterparts. The Astrodome will indeed be an improvement for those who manage to make it there, as will facilities in San Antonio and Dallas.

But it is not merely the failures to provide adequate disaster management that are the problem. It is also a failure of disaster prevention. Decades of loss of wetlands are not just a touchy feely Green problem. The loss of coastal wetlands is why New Orleans is currently under water. If the wetlands had still been in place they would have mitigated the effect of Katrina on Lake Ponchartrain and relieved stress on the levees. Both Democrat and Republican reluctance to spend the necessary political and capital resources to address wetland restoration along the Gulf Coast is largely to blame for the current tragedy. Maybe the next time the Governor of Louisiana invites the President of the United States to take a helicopter ride, he’ll accept the offer.

Also ostentatious is the deafening silence coming from what is euphemistically referred to as the “international community” in response to an American disaster. There are of course the shrill jihadists predictably celebrating American tragedy as Divine retribution. Such voices have their own Divine retribution coming and much to their chagrin, it won’t be 75 virgins or a bowl of raisins. King Abdala of Saudi Arabia has announced his country's intention to increase the supply of crude to alieviate potential shortages. While this is certainly good macroeconomic policy, I'm not sure that a producer increasing supply to match increased demand constitutes charity or necessarily deserves gratitude. But where are the Doctors Without Borders when poor Southern whites and blacks experience catastrophe? I guess there is in fact one border they will not cross to render aid. Americans appreciate German “vows” of assistance but where are the German cadaver dogs? The Queen’s condolences were characteristically polite but where is the British financial aid to rebuild the Gulf Coast? I’ll wager the phone at the Red Cross isn’t exactly ringing off the hook with incoming long-distance calls from France. (Ironic, aint it?) Of course as a former colony, Americans should not be surprised by the lack of European generosity. Indeed “European compassion and generosity” are in fact oxymorons, as all its former colonial victims can attest. Nor should Americans be surprised if Islamic countries view our tragedy through the combined filters of religious enmity of the masses and the self-interested politics of the oil elites. In fairness, the Dutch have offered to send civil engineers and the Chinese have offered high water rescue crews. But the Bush administration has inexplicably declined their help. Given the extraordinary expertise these countries have in this area, the neo-Cons' aversion to multilateralism seems evidently more a matter of dogma than reason. If the Germans offer vehicles or the French volunteer catering, I suggest the Bushies accept.

I am struck by how much the rescue of New Orleans resembles the occupation of Baghdad. Inadequate planning and logistics, unrealistic presumptions about human behavior, lack of adequate security and personnel, over centralization of authority, plenty of equivocating talk, hand wringing and perpetual calls for patience are common to both situations. Not to mention a propensity for European voyeurism and tongue clicking in lieu of constructive input. It also appears that the news media seem to manage to extemporaneously get their cameras into positions where officials cannot manage to plan to establish their authority. Neither the “liberation” of Baghdad nor the “rescue” of New Orleans provides one with much confidence in the competence our leadership class, or in the alleged beneficence of the international community, let alone in the ostensible nobility of the savage peasant.

Ahem…Jihad Watch, Your Freudian Racist Slip is Showing

2005-08-28T03:43:00.000-05:00

(This piece was originally written for the fine folks at Unpaid Punditry Corps. I have posted some of their comments here as well)

In an August 19th post at Jihad Watch entitled “…that psychic land …in which facts are the product of wishes.” Robert Spencer offers an armchair Freudian analysis of the entire world with particular attention given to the world’s one billion Moslems. That any one with the auspicious name of “Spencer” has taken it upon himself to perform an analysis of all Moslems is itself enough to give one pause. But to psychoanalyze the entire world? This is a feat of such sophomoric extravagance as to make old Sigmund sit up and spin in his grave and then fall back desolate that he died before having ever encountered so gargantuan an ego in his own lifetime. This would have been more than enough for a man of lesser ambition but unsatisfied with mere unrivaled hubris, Robert Spencer then sees fit to wax Romantically poetic as he exhorts us to stop pussy footing around and follow GW on to the Final Crusade. His commenting red-breasted acolytes (in particular the aptly named BigSleep) cheer him on seemingly oblivious that GW is no Lionhearted Templar, but rather a mere lowly legacy Bonesman. But for Robert Spencer and his Romantic warriors this seems close enough.

I too carry no brief for Dr Freud and certainly none for Woodrow Wilson. But sometimes as dangerous as “wishful thinking” is a “little bit of Knowledge,” whether of Psychology, History or Religion. A combined ignorance of all three can be a lethal combination in the hands of a fool. Islam is by no means a monolith. Nor does it lack diversity and self-awareness. Islam’s civilization did not rise to intellectual greatness, nor did its empire decline into decadence because of a perpetual, cultural supremacy of prudish, irrational, militant, xenophobic, fundamentalism within Islam itself. Rather Islam both rose and fell because of its propensity for enlightenment and a tolerance that lead to a material prosperity which in turn ultimately supplanted Islamic core values with avarice and ambition. These then tragically lead to dissolution and decay and a corresponding loss of the prestige and power of the moral force of Islam.

This is not unlike the phenomenon of the United States itself. Only it took Islam 500 years to forget the lessons of the Greeks and Romans while it has taken us 500 years to relearn them. A second opportunity we would not have had if not for the preservation of Hellenistic culture by Islamic scholars. Nonetheless, we have squandered that wisdom mostly over the course of a couple of generations as we have thrown out the baby in favor of Marxist, Social Darwinist and Multiculturalist bathwater. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is at this moment in history that America finds itself at odds with the Islamic world. People are inclined to turn to religion for unification and a sense of identity when their secular societies fail to provide them with legitimate incentives for solidarity. Idle hands, be they Atheist, Christian, Moslem or Hindu are a Devil’s workshop, and his shop is running overtime in failed Islamic states as well as in the bowels of the Pentagon.

Even non-fundamentalists and Westernized, assimilated Moslems question America’s foreign policy in the Middle East, as do countless millions of non-Moslems. They are less than enthusiastic about America’s euphemistically named Global War on Terror because they are not confident that many Americans can tell the difference between a war on a tactic and a Crusade on a religion. As blogs like Jihad Watch prove, Moslem concern is not motivated by reactionary fundamentalism but is a rational response to America’s overreaction to 9/11. That’s right, I said overreaction, because that’s what it is! We have shredded the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, alienated allies, used up all the goodwill and political capital we had on 9/12, spent ourselves silly and simultaneously invaded two Islamic nations. Some may feel all this is justified but most feel that at least some portion has been excessive.

Moslems the world over are appalled by terrorists and do not want guilt by association with atrocities. But neither are they going to be enthusiastic proponents of unrestrained war on all Moslems who choose to resist injustice anywhere in the world. Consider the typical Pro-Life advocate. They too are genuinely appalled by abortion clinic bombings and the assassination of doctors. They sincerely value the sanctity of human life. But never-the-less tomorrow morning when they get up, they are going to focus all their energy on stopping abortions, not on stopping abortion clinic bombings. So it is with the vast majority of the world’s 1,000,000,000 Moslems. This does not make them somehow criminal accomplices or terrorist sympathizers. Nor does it necessarily mean they have a distorted sense of priorities. It means that much like the 100 million Pro-Lifers in this country, their sympathy lies with the weak. Their sympathies do not make Moslems anymore unpatriotic than the Pro-life advocate who prioritizes the loss of 65,000 American fetuses a year over the loss of half a dozen American doctors.

The problems within Islamic society are not so much the products of Islam but of failed, mostly secular, invariable corrupt, anti-democratic regimes almost all of which are propped up by Western interests within colonially delineated borders. After the Cold War a violent reaction was inevitable. Since Islam was the only functioning aspect of civil society left standing in these countries, it by default became the medium for change. Had these postcolonial societies been Calvinist, by now you would be looking at Presbyterian jihad and a general eagerness in the secular West to paint all Christian fundamentalists with the broad brush of terror, as recent NORAL ad campaigns reveal. Since bombs garner more press than moderate discourse, invariably it has been the flaming Islamic rhetoric that has garnered all the coverage on both Al Jazeera and on FOX.

To dismiss the existence of the Islamic ego, to project a dominant super ego onto an entire group or to deny their complexity as if they were all id driven bombers desperate for their first lay, is not only junk psychology it is racist clap trap and should be denounced as such.

I too abhor the “wishful thinking,” the persistent euphemism and “political correctness,” so I will call Robert Spencer what he is, a sophomoric, jingoistic, wannabe crusader and a victim of his own colossally inflated ego, or perhaps of just bad genes, as the case may in “fact “be. I do not know Spence well enough to definitively judge his self-proclaimed “mental integrity,” but one might reasonably wonder about anyone who feels the need to assert their own sanity. Regardless, I suspect in this instance “a cigar is indeed just a cigar.”

America's Not Evil. Covetousness Is.

2005-08-20T00:59:00.000-05:00

In his post entitled Hitler-Churchill Axis, Eric from Classical Values laments the tendency of America haters to equate America with all evil everywhere at every time. He's right to be offended by their sanctimonious disingenuousness. He is however wrong to dismiss all criticism of America as if the United States were the apotheosis of Divine justice on Earth.

America is not the root of all evil, covetousness is. Carthaginian covetousness of Roman shipping, Roman covetousness of looted Carthaginian wealth, NAZI covetousness of everybody’s everything, Communist covetousness of middle class property and last but not least American corporate covetousness of limitless profits to be gained from exploiting other nations’ cheap labor, natural resources and lack of representative government.

Liberals are as prone to covetousness as the most avaricious corporate capitalist; they just prefer to use the authority of the state to coerce the taxpayer into funding their agendas rather than exploiting the wage earner at their place of labor. Now that Liberals are out of power, they covet that too.

America is not an inherently benign force in the universe. It is a human endeavor and as such is fundamentally flawed. It is intellectually dishonest to make the United States a whipping boy for all historic injustice, neither is it sufficient to absolve it of sin by pronouncing its relative virtue compared to Hitler or Stalin.

If the Liberals are hypocritical to judge America by an unattainable absolute standard and everyone else by permissive relativism, then what are absolutist Conservatives when they dismiss American culpability with relativistic arguments?

America haters are indeed infuriating with their knee-jerk chauvinism, but so are jingoistic nationalists who deflect all criticism by citing the historic atrocities of other misguided ideologs, who incidentally were prone to using the same ends justifies the means types of rhetoric.

Draw Your Own Conclusions

2005-08-18T03:13:00.000-05:00

Global War on Terrorism Medal (Expeditionary)

Criteria
a. Authorized to be awarded to soldiers who deploy abroad for service in the Global War on Terrorism Operations on or after 11 September 2001 to a date to be determined. Initial award is limited to soldiers deployed abroad in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom in the following Department of Defense designated specific geographic areas of eligibility (AOE): Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bulgaria (Bourgas), Crete, Cyprus, Diego Garcia, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Romania (Constanta), Saudia Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey (East of 35 degrees east latitude), Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen, that portion of the Arabian Sea north of 10 degrees north latitude and west of 68 degrees longitude, Bab El Mandeb, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Aqaba, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Suez, that portion of the Mediterranean Sea east of 28 degrees east longitude, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Strait of Hormuz and Suez Canal.

b. To be eligible for the award, a soldier must be assigned, attached or mobilized to a unit participating in designated operations for 30 consecutive days or for 60 nonconsecutive days in the AOE, or meet one of the following criteria: 1) Be engaged in actual combat against the enemy and under circumstances involving grave danger of death or serious bodily injury from enemy action, regardless, of time in the AOE. 2) While participating in the designated operation, regardless of time, is killed or wounded/injured requiring medical evacuation from the AOE. 3) Soldiers participating as a regularly assigned air crew member flying sorties into, out of, within, or over the AOE in direct support of Operations Enduring Freedom and/or Iraqi Freedom. Each day that one or more sorties are flown in accordance with the criteria shall count as one day towards the 30 consecutive or 60 nonconsecutive day requirement.

c. The medal may be awarded posthumously to any soldier who lost his/her life while, or as a direct result of, participating in Global War on Terrorism Operations, without regard to length of such service, if otherwise eligible.

d. Only one award of the GWOTEM may be authorized for any individual. A message will be transmitted at a later date by the Military Awards Branch to address battle stars/service stars.

Background:
a. On 20 September 2002, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, requested the Institute provide suggested designs. This was accomplished and the design was selected on 7 January 2003. Executive Order 13289, dated 12 March 2003, signed by President Bush, established this medal.

b. In order of precedence, the GWOTEM will be worn before the GWOTSM and both shall directly follow the Kosovo Campaign Medal (KCM) (i.e., KCM, GWOTEM, GWOTSM, KDSM, etc.).

c. Soldiers may receive both the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal (GWOTEM) and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal (GWOTSM) if they meet the requirements of both awards; however, the same period of service establishing eligibility for one cannot be used to justify service eligibility for the other.

d. Order of precedence and wear policy for service medals awarded to Army personnel is contained in Army Regulation (AR) 670-1. Policy for awards, approving authority and supply of medals is contained in AR 600-8-22. The policy for display of campaign streamers on guidons/flags and supply of streamers is contained in Chapter 9, 840-10.

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What I found interesting were the missing countries. Algeria, Bangladesh, Chechnya, India, Indonesia, Libya, Malaya, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Tunisia are amongst the most striking from a certain perspective.

Others include Albania, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, and the Ukraine.

Dare anyone say it? Malta.

Noticeably absent from the list is the notorious Axis of Evil member North Korea.

The Japanese initially sent noncombatant troops to Iraq but apparently the Global War on Terror does not include the Land of the Rising Sun.

Evidently Latin America gets a pass in the Global War on Terror if not a reprieve from terrorism itself.

It also seems that’s France’s colonial sphere of influence is still a sanctum sanctorum undefiled by American sovereignty but defended by American blood.

Curiously, if a US National Guardsman is killed by a terrorist attack in an American airport they seem to be ineligible

I personally cannot comprehend a global war on a tactic, so I’m not sure who should be awarded such a medal. It is not self evident how some countries managed to get on this list while others managed stay off. It is also unclear who are the American allies with whom we supposedly share this threat. It is equally unclear who exactly presents the threat simply by reading any such list so over-broadly or as the case may be, under-broadly defined. Basically it seems it doesn’t matter so much why or how well a solder did their duty, they get this medal so long as it was dangerous and it was in one of the countries on GW’s arbitrarily assembled shit list. To those awarded this medal I’m prepared to salute your attendance to duty, but I wish the nature of that duty was a little more clear.

On Grieving Mother in Crawford

2005-08-17T21:49:00.000-05:00

To all the families of the fallen in all wars I offer my sincerest condolences. To those who have lost love ones in the US military I convey my gratitude for their sacrifice, for a sacrifice is given freely in propitiation. In the case of the Iraq War it is given freely in propitiation for the sins of others. This is the noblest type of sacrifice of all.

But to share in that gratitude one must have indeed made a sacrifice, not merely suffered a loss. This woman’s son freely gave his life and to him I am eternally grateful. But for his mother I feel not sympathy and gratitude, but rather pity and shame. She has not made a sacrifice, for she did not freely give her son. To her mind, he was taken against her will to be squandered in an unjust cause. She is of course entitled to feel this way.

But she has not settled for feeling this way. Nor has she settled for conveying her feelings to the President in person. He did in fact meet with her but apparently left her unsatisfied. Now she seeks satisfaction and with it celebrity. She has moved from grieving for her son to exploiting him. In doing so she shames his memory. She also disqualifies herself from eligibility for American gratitude, if not our sympathy.

She seeks our collective attention and to change American foreign policy in exchange for the loss of her son. While a gift freely given may be worth an infinite amount of eternal gratitude an exchange is not. In an exchange at some point the debt is actually paid. I think the President and the American people are about paid up with this mother.

As for her courageous son who volunteered to serve and in so doing lost his precious life, we will all be eternally in his debt and our gratitude for his sacrifice will know no bounds. In the service of that gratitude we will tolerate the excesses of his mother until she wearies or those in MoveOn.Org live up to their name. Until then, his mother will mourn his loss in her way and his comrades in the 1st Battalion 82nd Field Artillery Regiment of the First Cavalry will mourn in theirs.

Specialist Sheehan was born on Memorial Day. He died on Palm Sunday. He reenlisted as a mechanic after his four-year hitch was up. He volunteered to go on a rescue mission. His commanding officer informed him that he did not have to go, to which he purportedly responded, “Where my Chief goes, I go.” He was awarded the Bronze Star for his valor. God rest Army Specialist Casey Sheehan’s courageous soul.

Democrats: Preachers Not Listeners

2005-08-16T05:49:00.000-05:00

In his recent posting at Unpaid Punditry Corps entitled Democratic Politburo Makes A Decree—No Primaries, goose3five decries the return to boss style politics proposed by Democratic king makers Schumer and Rendell. He is also skeptical of their strategy of being more flexible about tolerating dissenting cultural voices within the party. He’s right to be skeptical of current Democrat leadership and its modus operandi. He is however less right about what would constitute a more successful strategy for Democrat electoral success.

When one has had incumbency for almost forty years, abused its privilege, and then lost that incumbency, one is likely to be subject to reprisals. In such circumstances winning becomes the only thing relevant. Once out of power it doesn’t matter what you promise your constituents, you can deliver them nothing. Hence all you can offer them is feeble efforts to frustrate but not inhibit the opposition and risk appearing to be mere rejectionists rather than effective progressive reformers.

Whether Democrats demand rigid ideological adherence of their candidates or simply party boss determined electability, either way they risk a credibility problem. Either they are intolerant of intellectual diversity or they are undemocratic. Both positions are unenviable and untenable.

Democrats must decide whether they are a party unified by issues of Class or by the politics of Identity. Their rigid ideological adherence to the later has gained them a hard-core minority of loyalist among minority communities. But it has failed to capture the imagination of the vast majority of these same groups and has been unsuccessful in overcoming their historic voter apathy. Conversely, it has alienated working and middle class voters of all ethnicities who do not understand the Democratic Party’s enthusiasm for the Culture War with the Religious Right while simultaneously selling the working and middle classes down the Capitalist River.

Interestingly, the Democrat solution seems to be a one party system with two faces. Since they long ago sold out their working and middle class base, apparently the Democrat leadership believes it is time to start selling off various ideological assets to gain some of that elusive electability. In doing this Democrats risk becoming a party that stands for nothing. Terms like Republican and Democrat will in turn become words with a distinction but without a difference. This strategy in not likely to overcome minority voter apathy nor is it likely to reconstitute the party’s working and middle class base. Carl Rove must be giggling with Machiavellian glee.

If the Democrat Party wants to become a serious challenger to Republicans it should not necessarily abdicate its ideology but it should declare a truce in the Culture War and instead once again heat up the Class War. The vast majority of Americans do not care whether or not there is prayer in schools, flag burning is prohibited, whether teenagers should have access to partial birth abortions without parental consent, whether fetal stem cells have potential, whether or not the pledge of allegiance has God in it, whether the ten commandments is displayed on public property, whether homosexuals can marry or about any of the plethora of issues with which Democrats are so willing to alienate working and middle class voters.

Democrats scream bloody murder when those on the Religious Right try to use governmental authority to ram their values down the choking throats of the American people. But for forty years Democrats on the Cultural Left have been doing the very same thing. They are now experiencing the inevitable backlash to their persistent over reach. The Cultural Left’s ideological dogmatism has even begun to alienate a younger generation of minorities as is evidenced by the emergence in the popular culture of figures like Chris Rock, Dave Chappell and Carlos Mencia. Between its corporate backing and its ideological extremism the Democrat Party has become an anachronistic cartoon whose hypocrisy has become obvious to everybody but it seems its leaders.

Most people in the working and middle class are not ideologs when it comes to cultural issues. They believe that abortion should be legal, safe, rare and limited to early in pregnancy. They see it as a necessary evil not an inherent good. Most Americans believe that racism is immoral and stupid, but they have come to doubt the justice and effectiveness of affirmative action as a means of eradicating it. They oppose a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning but simultaneously consider people who choose to burn it to be ass holes not heroes. They think homosexuals should be tolerated but gays getting married and adopting children makes many of them squeamish. They oppose the establishment of a state religion but are not offended by the presence of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse. They are Cultural Moderates but Economic Leftists.

The voters are concerned with more mundane things like job security, falling real wages, usuriously high interest credit card debt and their inability to make ends meet. These same voters are not optimistic about their prospects for attaining relief in any of these areas. They are even more concerned with the increasing likelihood that their children will not attain prosperity and security either. Regardless of creed or color, at the working and middle class dinner table it is not perceived threats to affirmative action, the persistence of homophobia or the existence of the cresh scene in the park at Christmas that gets their blood boiling. It is, however, downsizing, outsourcing, consolidation, deregulation, globalization, market corrections, accounting irregularities, bankruptcy reform or any one of the host of other euphemisms politicians use to describe falling standards of living for the majority of the electorate that agitates the average American citizen. It is these voters that represent that vast untapped pool of potential Democratic loyalists.

Working and middle class voters see politicians of both parties in bed with their corporate masters and they sense it is the voters that are getting screwed. Their senses are of course correct. Most Americans have enough common sense to realize that it is not necessarily the role of the Federal government to manage everybody’s personal views on race, gender, sexual morality and religion. While it would be nice if we would all just love one another and obey the Golden Rule, it is unlikely that we will all miraculously come to do so simply by Federal caveat or by virtue of the next Supreme Court decision. What the average voter does expect of their government is that it will represent their interests when they conflict with those of moneyed elites. They expect their government to guarantee that there is a level playing field between Labor and Capital, not just between suppliers and consumers.

Deaniacs appeasing the Cultural Left while Democrat Moderates court the Economic Right might be a Democratic fundraiser’s wet dream, but ultimately it is a formula for the demise of the Democrat Party. As are top down electability standards determined in smoke filled rooms by party bosses like Schumer and Rendell. After all, is not a primary the ultimate test of a potential candidate’s electability? When Democrats start setting their priorities by listening to their constituents instead of pandering, condescending and preaching to them, then their flocks will return to the fold. Until then they will remain a party of disgruntled secular urbanites bitterly pining for their return to power.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

2005-08-03T00:28:00.000-05:00

In her recent piece entitled Freedom—The Cold, Hard Facts, Nancy Levant alerts us to the plans in place to abrogate all Constitutional government in times of “emergency” or “national crisis.” I highly recommend you acquaint yourself with the emergency powers that have been drawn up over the last couple of administrations. Various Executive Orders in combination with the now permanent Patriot Acts essentially make provisions for indefinite and absolute Federal Executive authority over the lives, Liberty and property of every American citizen.

The extent and details of these provisions are enough to scare a sleeping dog off a meat wagon. But one does not have to be an alarmist, paranoid conspiracy theorist, or be Pollyannaish about the dangers presented by terrorists to question the necessity or the motives of all this recent heavy-handed combination of totalitarian legislation and usurpation by Executive caveat. Indeed if one reads the various Executive Orders and acts it is immediately clear that it is the very authors of these edicts that are paranoid, if not utterly insane.

The infrastructure is now in place so that solely by Executive subjective decree the entire Constitution is automatically shredded. This includes detailed provisions for arresting anyone who reports the news, confiscating any and all private property, arresting and disappearing without trial anyone who has broken any law ever, this includes provisions for mass forced relocations of whole regions under pain of death, this means provisions for mass medical experimentation on reluctant populaces against their will, this means nationalization of all regional authority, this means absolute unquestioned dictatorial powers for the President of the United States to be exercised solely at his personal discretion.

Have you seen the folks they run for President these days? Both Kerry and Bush may have been “graduates” of Yale but between them neither one managed to earn a single “A” while there. Don’t tell me about Clinton’s Rhode’s scholarship either. He’s personally responsible for half of the aforementioned paranoid Executive Orders. If Hell comes to breakfast in this country, whether by act of God or of terrorists, I for one don’t want one inbred monkey sitting in a bunker in Washington DC to be solely responsible for an absolutist reign as King of the World.

What is truly disturbing about the combined effect of all these acts and orders is the first presumptions that underlie them. We faced hundreds of thousands of KGB agents and tens of thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at us for generations and never found it necessary to make provisions for shredding the Constitution. Why does the threat of terrorism automatically justify these draconian provisions? Why are they now necessary? Would they even work? Would we want them to if they did?

Having a Constitutional Representative Federal government does not guarantee us against national calamities caused by God or man. What it does do is provide us with the guidelines for how to cope in such circumstances. The Founding Fathers had just come through such a time of national crisis when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They were well acquainted with the abuses of government during such periods. They all knew that while anarchy was terrible, totalitarianism in reaction to it was far worse. Hence they made provisions for insuring individual Liberties, the right to keep and bear arms and the right to refuse to quarter troops. The Founding Fathers believed that Federal legitimacy was derived from, for, and by the People themselves. God in turn granted the People their personal Liberty and autonomy, not the whim of the Executive branch of any government. They knew that emergencies come and go but the totalitarianism that comes in their wake is stubbornly persistent. This is why they enshrined in our founding documents their intent that the Executive never has the power to abrogate from the People rights that are inherently theirs, especially in times of crisis. After all, the right to keep and bear arms has little relevance until a time of crisis. The right not to quarter troops means nothing unless someone with troops wants you to quarter them. Whose troops do you think the Founding Fathers were referring to? The right to Freedom of speech has little meaning unless someone is willing to kill you to shut you up.

Times of emergency are when we most need the Constitution and its protections. There is no threat conceivable to this nation that would be worse than the loss of the Liberties so enshrined. If a national disaster struck whether a super volcano, epidemic, or terrorism Americans would survive. The question is what kind of world would the survivors be facing? In the event of such disasters, just how would my loss of Free speech make my life better? If I had just lost my family how would losing my home and property help? In the case of civil unrest, just how does my loss of the rights to possess a firearm or band with my neighbors for protection increase my personal security? In the event of authoritarian government during an emergency, just how does my inability to find out about current events from more than one source improve my ability to cope with disaster? The answer is of course, “it doesn’t.” None of these provisions help the victims of tragedy at all. From which one might reasonably conclude they are not intended to.

The emergency powers sought by Executives are more than unconstitutional they are counterproductive as well. The current “plan” for this country in times of emergency amounts to little more than this:

“In case of a kick in the groin, break glass, shred Constitution, shoot self in head, crisis over.”

In the likelihood of a real national crisis, centralization of command and authority is probably the last thing you want. When facing the threat of thousands of incoming ICBM’s, strategic planners did not opt for centralization but rather for distribution of command and resources. How many geeks currently surfing the Internet for porn realize that it was created for just this purpose? It is distributed systems that are self-healing. It is centralized systems that experience cascading failures. All this centralization of authority and power during a crisis would make things far worse regardless of the motives of the authoritarians themselves. If a super volcano goes off at Yellowstone, this would indeed be a disaster for the citizens of Wyoming and Colorado, but turning Florida into a military dictatorship will do nothing to help the poor Coloradoans. It will however grossly interfere with Floridians ability to independently offer them aid.

Consider the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Before the second building had even fallen, Americans from as far away as Oklahoma and Texas were loading up excavation equipment, cadaver dogs and setting up relief accounts in banks all without the coordination of FEMA. Did this lead to some logistical snafus? Of course it did, but then dropping a couple of the tallest buildings in the world without a permit tends to do that. What has been far more uncoordinated and even less efficient than the organic response to 9/11 has been the Federal one. The families have been inadequately and belatedly compensated while pork has emerged as the primary calorie source for Congress. The 9/11 Commission met in Washington DC to investigate the attacks and predictably concluded that nobody in Washington was in any way at fault and that the solution was yet more Washington. Ain’t it funny how this is always the case? The nation is fundamentally as insecure as before the attacks only now we are involved in two foreign wars, we detain people without trial and torture them while the whole world has in 48 short months gone from feeling sorry for us to hating us. Just how has turning to the Federal government in this time of emergency been a good thing?

The only upside I can see is that at least we now all know to "in case of emergency put our heads between our legs and kiss our collective asses goodbye, because if the terrorists don’t get us the Federal government will.”

Why are the members of the executive Branch so intent on preserving and expanding its powers in all circumstances? This country could survive indefinitely with a weak Executive. It is when it cannot convene a Legislature that it has a real problem. The Executive branch is not alone entitled to survival. It has no legitimacy whatsoever outside that derived from the People’s representatives. If we cannot convene a Congress we sure as Hell do not want some omnipotent potentate in command. Legitimate government is by the People themselves. If they cannot, for whatever reason, manage to convene a Legislature then no edict from Washington will have any legitimacy at all. The Federal government should at that point be suspended until an elected Legislature can convene. In the interim period, all Federal authority should revert to the States. Those that can still manage to convene their legislatures will still have legitimate government, those that cannot, will not. Municipal authorities would take over in regions that could not convene their legislature until such time as they could be re-instituted. This would have the effect of leaving various places with various legitimate governments and no one left under the iron boot of tyranny. After the crisis, States could hold elections for a new Federal Legislature that could then govern with legitimate authority.

There is nothing sacred about the United States Presidency. As often as not the occupants of the office are underachieving frat boys whose daddies got them into Yale. They are not the descendents of solar deity. They are not gods on Earth. They have no inherit legitimate right to rule anybody. They serve at the pleasure of the People for the pleasure of those same people, not the other way around. Geez, you give these guys a few nuclear bombs and they think it makes them a god. Gods create things ex nihilo, guys with nuclear bombs destroy them. Big Difference. America itself could survive an indefinite period without a President at all. It could not however survive for even the shortest period of time a President who, like some god king, believes that he alone is fit to rule. No matter their identity they will inevitably do it badly. In all of history only two mortal men who could have been king have declined the opportunity, and they were born 2000 years apart. The odds that America would produce another Washington in only 200 years are not ones that a betting person would take.

Times of crisis present nations with real challenges. It is during these times that national identity and character are forged. Do we really want our crisis mode identity to be an omnipotent president and his Gestapoesque Homeland Security Chief? I think not. Like all people in all places at all times, periodically Americans will be subjected to disasters. Unlike other people in other places at other times, Americans have a Divine tool to apply in such circumstances. That tool is God given Liberty. In the tenth portrait down at the right-hand side of this page you will see Patrick Henry. I cannot speak for all of America, but l concur with that great Patriot, “As for me, give me Liberty or give me death."

Screw Nation Building. Just Stop Destroying Them.

2005-07-31T22:31:00.000-05:00

It is not so much nation building that I advocate but rather an end to the wanton destruction of nations not our own.

I think the USA has made a grave error by aligning its foreign policy so closely with that of Great Britain. The British have their own colonial political baggage and their own moral and economic debts to their former colonies. We have focused our foreign interests in the former British colonies of Palestine, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Afghasistan, and Pakistan among others. We have then overtly coordinated our policies with the historic oppressor of the conquered. This gives us guilt by association with the historic exploitation and abuse by imperialists and causes the indigenous to perceive our interest through the filter of their own colonial experiences.

Until after WWII, most of the Underdeveloped World did not hold the USA culturally or politically responsible for their suffering. Indeed they saw the USA as a source of hope for their own independence and self-determination. What changed their view so dramatically in such a short period?

The answer is Anglo-American cultural supremetism/racism in conjunction with Anglo-American banking and corporate capitalist interests. In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries if an English capitalist saw something he wanted in your country, he lobbied Parliament for British Red Coats to help him come and take it. The British banking and industrial interests would come to your country, steal your mineral wealth, oppress, exploit, and condescend to your people and if you didn’t like it, a British soldier would come to your village and burn it down. Traditionally this would continue until they had mined away all your wealth or robbing you became more trouble than it was economically worth. They would then leave your land in shambles and undermine your success in order to prove that their reign had been justified because you clearly could not govern yourselves. But the British deliberately sabotaged their former possessions. They redrew the maps to guarantee ethnic strife and civil unrest for generations to come, partially out of spite and partially in the hopes that they would eventually be asked to return and restore order. The British rationalization was you were better off for having been exploited than if you had been left alone.

Your life might indeed have been abominable without the Brits, but then that would have been the fault of your leadership and that of your immediate neighbors. The Brits now tell their former colonies that they no longer occupy them so they are not responsible for the problems in their former possessions. But the problems that currently exist are mostly of British making or at least of British exacerbation.

While the history of American imperialism bares little cosmetic resemblance to British imperialism, in some ways it is more pernicious. Americans have generally understood their justification for expansionism in the context of Manifest Destiny. Most Americans were more than willing to rape an Indian or mug a Mexican in the service of continental imperialism, but were more reluctant to establish colonies overseas.

Teddy Roosevelt’s fascination with naval power changed all that. Americans sought colonies in the Pacific. In Hawaii we had legitimate relations with an internationally recognized indigenous government. This government was more than willing to ally itself with American foreign policy and military interests. But they were not willing to have their land and their people exploited as one giant corporate plantation for the exclusive profit of American giant agro-conglomerates. These forces, including Dole and Knox, lobbied for American military invasion and martial law as part of a cynical land grab for American corporate interests. Much like the British Parliament, the American Congress obliged. Needless to say, the Hawaiians are still understandably pissed.

Teddy’s “splendid little war” with Spain garnered us Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The battle of Manila Bay lasted a single day and successfully routed the Spanish. But war in the Philippines lasted for years as we proceeded to subjugate the very people we had just “liberated.” Great for arms dealers like Mr. Colt, not so good for the Philippinos. When the Japanese invaded, MacArthur bugged out abandoning his men and the Philippino people to their inexorable fate. What good is it to be ruled by an imperialist power if they won’t even defend you from other imperialists? As for Puerto Rico, what good is it to pay no income tax if you have no income?

It was in the post WWII period, under the cloak of the Cold War, that American imperialism took on its less transparent and hence more pernicious nature. American corporate policy makers knew that a war weary nation would not tolerate perpetual foreign wars of conquest for corporate profit. But the so-called military industrial complex had become addicted to gigantic profits and enormous military spending. The problem was how to keep making the profits without the political hassles of deploying mass armies. The solution was of course a Cold War. This offered the opportunity for plenty of spending and profits without the political challenges of millions of American casualties. The Cold War also offered excellent cover for opaque foreign policies in the former colonialized territories.

The specter of Communism in Chile and Argentina allowed American policy makers to justify supporting corrupt right-wing military juntas that tormented their people at least as bad as the Communists. But more importantly, these right-wing forces were willing to pimp out their people and their minerals to American corporate exploitation and for their own personal enrichment. Their countries were left without a civil society, with the traumas of internecine warfare, with gigantic national debts, with considerably less mineral wealth than they once had and a very bad feeling about Americans and Capitalism. Is it any wonder why?

Our policies in Central America were not derived from a sincere concern for the best interest of their people. We were more than willing to turn a blind eye to right-wing death squads, drug running and Contra committed atrocities while decrying the abuses of the Sandanistas and exaggerating the threat they posed to the United States. Whose interest did American policy really serve? Much like in Hawaii a century before it was American corporate agro-giants, in this instance Coca Cola and the United Fruit Company.

Similar policies were deployed throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa for over fifty years. But in the modern era we have learned that you don’t need to declare war and have mass mobilizations of troops to create and maintain colonies. You simply find a corruptible native, feed his insatiable desire for armaments and he will colonize his own people for you. You can exploit his minerals and population and outsource the military overhead, while simultaneously retaining all the profits of armament manufacture. Since you never raised your flag abroad, you maintain plausible deniability. Since you need not send mass numbers of draftees, the American people are content to not ask too many questions about where their bananas and oil come from or why they are so cheap and taxes are so high.

Since it is not the Stars and Stripes flying over most of these former colonial capitols, most Americans cannot understand the hostility their populations feel toward America. But while our flag may not fly in these places our brands do. Everywhere they look the Third World citizen sees Dupont, Dole, Exxon, Coca Cola, McDonalds, the United Fruit Company, Chase Manhattan, CNN, Time Warner and Microsoft. Everyday they watch as these foreign businessmen go unmolested by their governments while reaping huge profits on the backs of cheap labor and from non-renewable resources. Everyday these same people are surrounded by their own interminable poverty and the bleak prospects for Justice offered by their American armed and financed tyrannical regimes. Understandably they blame us.

They may very well have still had to suffer in poverty and tyranny if we had never come there to exploit them, but at least they would not to have had to watch Americans grow fat and decadent at their expense. What they do not realize is the degree to which the average American citizen is ignorant of the nature and cause of their suffering. I am not sure whether this makes things better or perhaps worse. At least the British screwed you on purpose. What good is American Democracy if its electorate is oblivious to the consequences of its actions?

In essence there are two Americas: The Romantic ideal of Liberty and Justice for all, and the reality of a cynical corporate totalitarianism with bread and circuses for the masses. The Social Darwinistic Corporate Capitalists have continued to sell the American people the image of the American ideal. In the Underdeveloped World these same corporate interests no longer even see the necessity to maintain the pretense of Justice and Liberty. Hence Americans think America is one thing and the rest of the world thinks it is something very different.

Until ordinary American citizens wake up and wrest control of their civil society from their corporate feudal lords they will continue to gain guilt by association with the sins of commission of their masters, as well as by virtue of their own sins of omission. Most Americans have no clue how their daily standard of living is subsidized by the egregious suffering of others. As long as they can have their cappuccinos and sport utility vehicles all is right with the world. Well, all is not right with the world and though they may not be able to create Peace and Justice in their own lands, they can destroy it in ours. If not jihadists, someone else will emerge to lash out at the source of their torment.

Americans cannot rectify all the injustices of history but they can end the continued perpetration of that injustice if they were only willing to forgo the collective corporate greed of this country’s stockholders. If Americans just stopped bringing gasoline to the fire of post-colonial chaos we could save a fortune in taxes and military spending. We could stop provoking anger around the world and stop going bankrupt creating Fortress America. Other nation’s populations would not blame us for their problems. They might even be able to resolve some on their own if only we would get our thumbs off the scales of Justice abroad. We might even have considerably more Liberty and Justice for all at home as well.

The solution is a Fair and Just trade policy. If a nation’s leadership cannot provide its people with an equivalent quality of life, standard of living and social justice to the United States we should not trade with it. If a country wants access to American markets and capital it should have to provide Justice to its own people. If a country is endeavoring to accomplish this but suffers from poverty and a lack of capital, then American firms should pay equivalent wages they would have paid in the US. They should also obey equivalent environmental and occupational safety regulations. As importantly, when removing non-renewable resources from a foreign nation they should not get a discount, but rather should pay a premium for access to another nations non-renewables. All of this would rapidly grow the standard of living in these places, decrease the rate of ecological devastation and assist in their development of civil society, not to mention stem unemployement in America. If another First World nation is willing to exploit its fellow nations we should boycott and sanction it as well. Those that choose quick profits over Just trade will suffer the wages of their sins and terrorists will bomb their subways while ours remain unmolested.

All of this would cost the US taxpayer nothing. It would however be a swift kick in the nuts to mismanaged corporations. They would have to conceive business models in which they add value and achieve economies of scale without the subsidy of exploited foreign labor and the theft of foreign resources. Bankers would have to lend money to businesses rather than foreign governments and in so doing learn to mitigate and absorb their risks rather than passing all risk on to the third world peasant or when they can’t pay, the American taxpayer. This would inevitably lead to greater corporate accountability, increased ingenuity and genuine competition. Corporations and financiers who could not manage this transition would justifiably go bankrupt. Wall Street would learn that it cannot rely on the Pentagon to create its profits and Americans, tourists and businessman alike, would be far more welcome when they traveled abroad.

America need not bankrupt its citizens through heavy taxation to forgive the debts of foreign nations. As often as not, it was not the nations themselves that exploited this debt, but rather it was American corporations. It is not the third world governments or the American taxpayer that owes these international bankers. It is the corporations themselves. Let them work it out amongst themselves, but also let them know that neither the colonialized peasant nor the American taxpayer is going to pay that bill. Maybe the next time they will think twice before they lend money to a synthetic military junta to exploit and terrorize its population.

It is not touchy feely foreign aid or sovereignty impinging IMF style exploitative nation building I am calling for. It is simply and end to the profligate destruction of nations in the service of Wall Street’s short-term greed. I suspect most nations will over time be more than willing to build themselves if only they are allowed the opportunity. America may not owe the Underdeveloped World Utopia but we at least owe it a clean slate. If we do this the former victims of imperialism will be more than willing to forgive our historic transgressions, though probably not to forget them.

Madrassas Are Here to Stay

2005-07-30T02:48:00.000-05:00

Musharraf has recently announced his intent to expel all non-Pakistanis and dual passport holders from the madrassas. While some have lauded this as a positive gesture it is little more than a fig leaf to offer Pakistan prophylaxis from Western anger over Pakistan itself being a key source of militant Jihadist ideology.

Reports of the links between Pakistan and the recent subway bombings in London have put Musharraf on the defensive. Hence his recent absurd assertions that Al Qaeda has been exterminated in western Pakistan. This has all the ring of truth of James K. Polk announcing that there were no Apaches in west Texas. Musharref’s problem is one much like American presidents have faced, despite the War of Independence, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, the Louisiana Purchase, and various wars with Mexico there were still Apaches in them there hills.

The Pakistani government may have gained territory from India through wars, but it has never established sovereignty over its western tribal peoples. Their identity is connected to clan loyalties governed under an anarchic interpretation of Sharia. Without the Islamic law there would be no law at all. These people have lived for millennia at the crossroads of empires and they know that all of these forces serve their own imperial interests and not those of the local tribes. The Poshtoons of the mountains have existed in these margins for centuries living by exploiting the opportunities for smuggling. Like most smuggling hill peoples they are xenophobic and have little value for statist law and order. Like such people everywhere they live by their own code. In this instance Sharia.

The madrassas function to provide the only formal education available in this society. Frequently it is the only opportunity for literacy that any of its students will ever have. The students learn to read Arabic and read almost exclusively medieval Islamic commentaries while committing the entire Koran to memory. The problem is not that there is necessarily anything wrong with memorizing the Koran and reading Islamic commentaries. The problem is that is all they learn. Such schools are not about intellectual discovery but rather indoctrination. Individuals are not taught to reason and to question but to regurgitate dogma and adhere to strictly delimited epistemologies. For these people Truth is not discovered and tested empirically, but rather is revealed in a distant past. Knowledge is not gained over time, but rather is lost. You might conceive of this as all of humanity existing in perpetual intellectual and spiritual entropy since the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

The madrassa system cannot be reformed into a modern liberal arts education. This would contravene its very purpose for existing and require it to reject its most cherished and fundamental epistemological assumptions. When the teachers and students of these madrassas look at the West they do not see Christianity, Freedom and prosperity. Instead they see decadence, hypocrisy and unrestrained hedonistic materialism. They see Western thought as little more than a long-winded rationalization of the whore of Babylon.

The problem of course is that they are more right than wrong about the state of Western civilization. This is not to say that if left to their own devices that they would usher in a Utopia of enlightened righteousness, their Taliban reign in Afghanistan was proof enough of that. But they have no confidence that our actions will live up to our rhetoric. Even if they did, they would not accept the premises of the rhetoric itself. They certainly are not going to give any idea credence that comes from the mouths of infidels.

The forces of American militarism did not ultimately defeat the Apaches of the west, although many an Apache village was burned and many a regiment of blue-coated cavalry lost their lives in box canyons. Ultimately it was when the Apaches could no longer make their livelihoods off the land, no longer continue their nomadic way of life and immigrants settled in their ancestral homelands that they were assimilated into other indigenous populations and into the greater society at large.

To say the problem in western Afghanistan is the madrassas is like saying the problem with the Indians was their medicine men. People said this then as well, they were equally misguided. The problem is there is no economic, political or epistemological place in the modern world for indigenous nomadic hill peoples that are governed by clan structures. People who will not acknowledge the supremacy of secular terrestrial authority will not acquiesce to a rule of law based on ideas they despise because it presents a threat to their very souls.

As long as the western hill peoples of Pakistan continue to identify themselves more with clan loyalties and Sharia rather than Pakistani national identity and civil authority, the madrassas will continue to serve a purpose and they will continue to exist. As long as these regions remain under the de facto control of warlords, settlers from the more densely populated eastern portion of the county will not emigrate there. As long as this remains the staus quo, cultural, political and economic isolation will bring ever-increasing levels of violence from disenfranchised young men in western Pakistan in particular as well as others with similar frustrations and no other intellectual response.

Musharref’s current approach seems to be to cynically use the West’s fear of terrorism to gain access to yet more American armaments. He then uses them to in effect wage war on his own people, thus understandably gaining more of their enmity than loyalty. He has no authority over the madrassa system and the effect of his edict has about as much influence as the emancipation proclamation had in the Confederacy, that is to say none. The madrassa system he felt essential to leave in place because even a military dictator is reluctant to condemn the entire western portion of his nation to no schools of any kind.

The problem facing Musharraf is from his vantage point it seems he has no good choices. He can wage genocide on the western peoples and solve the sovereignty problem once and for all. He could wage limited warfare on Al Quaeda and Taliban forces in the provinces and look like a crusading dog and an American lackey. He could relinquish military control to civilian authority, enfranchise the provincials and risk an Islamicist militarist government that would very likely bring a rain of hell down on all his own people from the combined forces of India, China, Russia, Israel, Europe and the USA. Or, he can continue to play all ends against the middle, prolong the status quo and have the perpetual Pakistani problem of government, namely succession. My bet, he chooses the latter.

The constructive alternative would be massive economic and political development in western Pakistan for at least three generations. This would require tremendous economic sacrifice from more urban Pakistanis for a prolonged period. It would include incentives for eastern Pakistanis to move to the west. It would include mandatory education and child labor laws in the west. It would mean building enough rural schools to reach the entire population. Most significantly to Musharraf, it would mean drastic cuts in military spending and an end to fanning the flames of anti-Indian paranoia. It would mean doing all this so quickly that the growing pains would be severe for all parties concerned. These growing pains would put political and economic strains on the most elastic of systems, let alone Pakistan’s military dictatorship. It is a shame that Pakistani military leadership has so squandered its potentially useful tenure. Instead of solving Pakistan’s internal problems it has focused its energies on mostly fabricated foreign threats. It has failed to build a viable civil society and simultaneously failed to use its authoritarian power constructively. But then, authoritarians rarely do.

Essentially the dilemma for the new world order is that you cannot hold nations accountable that are not really nations at all. Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria Afghanistan and Pakistan among many others are not really nations so much as remnants of colonialist territories. There are literally dozens of such “nations” that need to go through a successful post-colonialist transition. We cannot invade them all. We will go bankrupt trying to fund all this development through taxation of Western economies. Neither can we continue to deal with their corrupt leaderships in order for Western corporations to exploit these people’s natural resources, and consider this what is euphemistically called Real Politick. The interests of Western societies as a whole lie in the successful transition of these post-colonialist societies. It is not enough to exploit them for profit and play them off one another in an antiquated Balance of Power style approach.

We must engage them and empower them to exploit their own resources for the profit and prosperity of their own people not necessarily our own short-term economic interests. We must not always be the condescending messengers, rather we should encourage new voices of indigeny and let them conceive and bring the message of modernity. We must above all be patient. Worldwide Injustice did not evolve overnight. Imperialism did not rise or fall overnight either. Neither did it invent Injustice.

The Cold War offered the developed world a fifty year buffer period to ignore the problems that were inevitably to plague a post-colonial order. Now we must face this challenge squarely. The lesson of 9/11 is the former colonial territories are no longer content to be ignored and exploited. Overreaction to the transition of post-colonialist societies could do more harm than good. If we see current events as a modern phenomenon apart from the legacy of colonialism we will misunderstand its root causes and administer therapies based on erroneous diagnosis. You do not defeat ignorance with violence. You do not defeat injustice with more injustice. You certainly don’t bring people around to your way of thinking by bombing them into oblivion and occupying their lands with your armies.

Western governments have a long track record of destroying your flawed country and promising to rebuild it better than before. Their success rate at the former is far better than their delivery of the latter. If Islamic societies in former colonialist territories are skeptical of Bush and Blaire’s promises in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine it is not without good reason. Until we actually deliver on rebuilding what we have destroyed by centuries of war and neglect we are not likely to have credibility in these lands. They will strike out with frustration and anger and all the totalitarianism that Big Brother can imagine will not successfully secure us from their wrath.

It is not enough to realize that madrassas exist to serve a purpose. Western policy makers and post-colonialist governments must actually deliver on promises of a more Moral and Just alternative or the madrassas will remain and continue to provide gasoline to the fire of post-colonialist chaos.

Fox and NBC or Pravda and TAS?

2005-07-22T21:17:00.000-05:00

Before you conclude,”Here we go again, another Lefty railing against FOX,” know that I, like others, believe that there is undeniably a general Liberal cultural bias to news and that FOX is indeed a market response to that fact. That being said, this afternoon I saw something there that I found profoundly disturbing.

On Special Report with Brit Hume we were introduced to a gentleman named Viet Dihn. We were told in the set up that the Patriot Act is controversial and that the House has just voted to make it permanent. Then with a curious combination of introduction and disclaimer, read in that fine print hasty dialog style we have become accustomed to in pharmaceutical ads, the viewer was told that Mr. Dihn is a former Justice Department official and an “author” of the so called Patriot Act and that he serves on the Board of Directors of FOX News’ parent company NEWSCORP. Predictably Viet then proceeded to assure viewers that the Patriot Act is a benign necessity. As evidence of this he cited that of over 2000 complaints of abuse of the act that had been reported to the Justice Department, the Attorney General had found none to be valid and no instances of abuse.

There are so many things wrong here I hardly know where to begin. First of all, what is a Justice Department Official doing “authoring” legislation of any kind? We elect hundreds of Legislators to do this job and the pay them the big bucks to see it gets done. To our overpaid legislators: the next time a Justice Department official brings you “pre-authored” legislation, scan it for typos and then tear it up. We pay you to write the laws, not appointed Executive branch hacks seeking unlimited Executive authority.

Second, Mr.Dihn’s assurances that there have been no abuses because the Justice Department says so, begs credulity. This is as if I received 2000 complaints that I was an SOB, announced that I had read them all and assured everyone that I had objectively concluded that all 2000 were mistaken and that I was indeed St. Francis of Assisi. This does not constitute evidence of a lack of abuse, but rather an appalling lack of independent oversight. The NAZI’s assured their citizens that the Gestapo had conducted its own internal investigations and found no patterns of abuse of detainees either. This is not to equate the ideology of the employees of the Justice Department with that of the NAZI’s, but merely to observe that their tactics and oversight procedures bare similarities. Do we really want an infrastructure of totalitarianism permanently installed in place to be utilized at the discretion of the personal ideologies of bureaucrats at some later date?

Third, what is a former Justice Department official doing on the Board of NEWSCORP anyway? As a government employee wasn’t his department responsible for policing the activities of such corporations? Apparently it is not only the Defense Department that has a revolving door with corporate America. How many other ex Justice/State/Defense/Treasury/ FCC/SEC/
IRS/ FBI/CIA employees currently sit on the board of directors at NEWSCORP, or other major “news” outlets for that matter? Wouldn’t we all like to know? But much like the Justice Department, they are self-policing organizations that assure us of their integrity. How about some investigative reporting on who sits on the corporate boards of major media organizations and how this affects how they report the news?

Fourth, what is a news organization doing going up the corporate food chain for a story? I thought reporters were supposed to go out into the world at large for information in their reports not upstairs to the boardroom. When your board members become your sources you are way too close the story and have far too many conflicted interests for your accounting of events to be taken at face value. Surely the producers and editors at FOX must be aware of this, yet they seem to have placed their bets with P. T. Barnum and concluded that “no one ever looses money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

Fifth, I’m more multiculturalist and vehemently anti-racist than the next guy, but didn’t the South Vietnamese lose their war on terror and suffer the imposition of an oppressive totalitarian regime? Couldn’t our Justice Department find someone from a culture with a better track record on this subject? In fairness to Mr.Dihn, his heritage may have nothing to do with his misguided opinions, but it certainly isn’t providing him with any self-evident cultural advantage.

In the interest of Fairness and Balance, FOX is not the only network to make my bullshit detection radar. Some of you may have heard of Condi’s ruff and tumble adventures in Sudan. Apparently the Sudanese were not used to freedom of the press and ruffed up several reporters and diplomats at a news conference. Among the reporters in the brawl were Andrea Mitchell of NBC, who asked an impertinent question regarding why the Sudanese military were still helping the Janjaweed to commit genocide. Her microphone was ripped out of her recorder and she was hustled out as a scuffle ensued.

I salute Andrea Mitchell for asking the tough question in this instance and have followed her reports over the years. But ironically, in a USATODAY.com - Rice gets apology for incident in Sudan accounting of the story I read a startling tidbit. Apparently Andrea Mitchell is the wife of Allan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve. All these years I have been listening to her diplomatic reports and I did not know that. Maybe I’m an uninformed idiot and perhaps this is common knowledge among the nepotistic chattering class, but I’ll bet most Americans were not aware of it either, and probably still aren’t. I'll also wager the Sudanese sure as hell didn't know it. I hope they weren't counting on that new IMF loan comming through, because I suspect their credit rating has recently taken a percipitous nosedive.

Not to leave out CNN, but how many people realize that CNN’s Anderson Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and the grandson of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt and Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan? It makes me wonder about the true identity of the other generic faces that present us the news. How many reporters are the spouses or family members of people who make government and corporate policy? How about some investigative journalism about the conflicted, or at least vested, interests of the reporters themselves?

Whether the Justice Department, or the wives of international bankers bring you the news, you have to question its independence and its objectivity. The new Bush appointee to the Supreme Court, John Roberts, formally represented FOX News in a winning case. Certainly this does not disincline their producers to treat him favorably. Fox News is ironically one of the most out of the closet of our major media outlets. You may not like the closet from which they came, but you generally know where they’re coming from more transparently than most.

This is why we should all be so concerned about the consolidation of media. We should also be concerned about transparency in media. It is not only the media that is consolidating in these conglomerates. It is medias, finance, industry and government coalescing into an abominable witches brew of disinformation, censorship and propaganda. Representative government cannot long endure without the presence of an independent, objective, and transparent Fourth Estate.

War is a Racket

2005-07-16T02:49:00.000-05:00

I am struck by the ubiquity of historical precedent for current events. Whether you look to the Roman Empire or the Crusades, the War to End All Wars or the one after that, to Vietnam or Dessert Storm for antecedents, they are there. In hindsight history itself seems inevitable, but in reality it never was. Individuals make purposeful and fateful choices that have consequences.

Nations are inevitably led to war under false pretences
so has it ever been. In all lands in all ages,
Patriots march off to die for church and country.
But always has it been that wars are made by Patricidal souls
for wholly meaner reasons.

For those who say it is unpatriotic to question one’s nation’s motive when it goes to war, I offer for your consideration this antique dissertation from Smedley Darlington Butler:

Smedley Darlington Butler
Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]
Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
Educated Haverford School
Married Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914,
and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
Distinguished service medal, 1919
Retired Oct. 1, 1931
On leave of absence to act as director of Department of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932
Lecturer - 1930's
Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
For more information about Major General Smedley Butler, contact the United States Marine Corps.

Chapter One

War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.

CHAPTER TWO

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!

Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.

There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.

Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.

Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.

Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.

A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.

Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.

For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.

International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.

American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.

Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.

And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.

But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.

Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.

There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.

Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!

Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.

There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.

There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.

One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.

Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.

The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.

It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.

Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.

Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life. There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.

Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.

CHAPTER THREE

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.

Napoleon once said, "All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them."

So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed.
But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

WELL, it's a racket, all right.

A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!

Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.

Why shouldn't they?

They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!

Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.

Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.

Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.

A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

CHAPTER FIVE

TO HELL WITH WAR!

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.

Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? Money.

An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:

"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.

If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't. So..."

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."

Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.

And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?

The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.

The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.

There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.

The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.

Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too. But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers.

So...I say,TO HELL WITH WAR!

Smedley's text originally published at http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

AMEN Smedley!

Bush is Not a Conservative of Any Kind

2005-07-11T22:33:00.000-05:00

Liberals love Big Government and hate Big Business. Contrary to popular belief, Conservatives hate both Big Government and Big Business. But Bush, like Clinton before him, loves Big Government and Big Business. So what does this make him? Well at the very least, it makes him an Anti-Conservative.

Conventional wisdom holds that Liberals like to spend money on Butter and Conservatives like to spend it on Guns. This is a mistaken myth that has entered the political pop-cultural zeitgeist. Liberals just like spending money for any reason. Conservatives just hate to spend money, period. This is why Conservatives periodically tried to strangle government revenue streams either through taxes or deficit spending. Conservatives know that no matter how much money a government takes in, it will invariably all be spent. In fact even a failure to bring in money through tax revenues doesn’t necessarily inhibit the profligate politicians. If they haven’t got the money, they just borrow it. Hence Conservative ideas like balanced budget amendments. Conventional wisdom also holds that Republicans are by definition Conservatives. The events of the last two administrations show that this is demonstrably a canard.

Don’t let Bush’s Culture War rhetoric fool you. This is just a meatless bone he occasionally throws out to the Religious Right to ensure that their anger is channeled at his political opposition. Bush tells his Southern base that he ostensibly believes abortion is murder, but what is he actually going to do to substantively reduce or eliminate abortions in America? Squat, that’s what. The President has relatively little authority to do anything, even if he were so inclined. It would take a Constitutional amendment on the definition of “Life” to overturn the Supreme Court’s Roe vs, Wade decision. No Bush appointed nominee to the Court who might consider overturning Roe would ever make it out of committee. Arlen Specter and the Democrats will see to that, and Bush knows it.

On other Social Conservative issues Bush’s position is much the same. Flag Burning would take a constitutional amendment as well. Prayer in Public School is the same thing. Gay marriage? You guessed it; a Constitutional amendment would be required. It is a very difficult thing to get the Constitution amended. First, most Americans like the Constitution just the way it is and are reluctant to tamper with it for any reason, regardless of how they may feel about judicial activism. Second, it would require 36 States to ratify these amendments to their own constitutions and this ain’t gonna happen, and Bush knows it. Bush knows that even though he will ultimately fail the Religious Right on every front, there will be no political consequences for him. For the low self-esteemers on the Religious Right, lip service is as good as tangible results.

In his rhetoric he decries the pernicious effect of Big Government, but Bush's actions demonstrate he really feels differently. He pushed forward a Prescription Drug Bill that vastly increased the size of government, did relatively little to reduce the cost of prescription drugs but guaranteed gargantuan future profits to a protected Pharmaceutical industry.

Bush and his pawns at the FCC have forced media consolidation down the throats of the American people despite unprecedented mass popular opposition Liberal and Conservative alike. Simultaneously he pushed forward legislation that allows the Federal government to read all our electronic correspondence and to listen to our telephonic communications without the necessity of a warrant. This is the most pernicious kind of Big Government.

Bush’s national Education agenda is yet more Big Government. National standards and testing have sent shockwaves through the system but produced relatively little in positive results. It has however demonstrated that teachers and school administrators are as willing to cheat as their under-performing charges. This is just another feel-good, unfunded, Federal government mandate. Doesn’t sound very Conservative to me.

States Rights and Law and Order are supposedly Conservative issues, but what is Bush’s record in these arenas? As Americans reel from the scandals on Wall Street, Bush’s SEC has done everything in its power to frustrate the efforts of Eliot Spitzer, the New York state Attorney General, to arrest the perpetrators of fraud and insist on an end to the corruption that had become the status quo. Medical marijuana, contrary to Bush propaganda, was a States Rights issue not a Law and Order issue. Bush’s position was to criminalize cancer patients and stomp on State authority simultaneously. Using Federal authority to protect the livelihoods of white-collar criminals while criminalizing the desperation of cancer patients just ain’t kosher, and it ain’t Conservative either.

Conservatives have traditionally opposed deficit spending and favored balanced budgets. Bush has run up the largest deficits in history as legislators have passed one pork ridden Homeland Security bill after another. 9/11 has become an infinitely elastic excuse for profligate spending as never before. Bush and his cronies have been more than willing to mortgage the future in order to get their draconian security agenda through the Congress. Going broke to finance the creation of a police state sounds more like Leninism than Conservatism.

Denouncing America’s dependence on foreign oil was initially a Conservative mantra born of their ideological disinclination to foreign entanglements. Bush’s Energy Plan does almost nothing to reduce America’s foreign dependency problem. It does however provide unprecedented Federal subsidies to the oil industry. From a bunch of ex-oil men this is to be expected. More disturbingly, Bush’s plan to renuclearize the production of electricity portends yet more Federal intrusion. There is not a single community in this country that wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. But despite the objections of their Municipal and State governments, they are going to get them anyway. The South Texas Nuclear Project took ten+ years to build and eventually came in at a cost of $6,000,000,000, more than three times its original projected cost. Who was the contractor? You guessed it, Kellogg Brown and Root. Curiously, Bush’s rationalization for a return to nuclear power is ”the French do it, why not us?” Conservatives ostensibly favor the private sector over the public, but does anyone want to bet that the vast cost of all these nuclear construction projects ultimately comes out of the taxpayer’s pockets? The profits will undoubtedly go into corporate coffers. This is not Conservatism. This is yet another Big Government program designed to redistribute wealth, in this instance from the taxpayer to the obscenely wealthy.

The conventional wisdom would suggest that Conservatives are more nationalistic, or if you prefer jingoistic, than their Liberal counterparts. Hence you are more likely to find a Conservative who values the “Made in America” label on a product. But Bush’s trade policy has given us a retail environment in which a “Made in America” label is more rare than a spotted owl. I don’t know too many Conservatives who think that American financial institutions should be profiting from financing the rise of Communist China. Neither am I acquainted with many Conservatives who are as blasé about the Chinese military build up as are the so-called Neo-Cons. Nor do I know any Conservatives who think we should turn a blind eye to China’s deplorable human rights record. But Bush seems more than willing to do so if it means larger profits for his corporate clients.

When it comes to Immigration, legal or otherwise, Conservatives have historically favored tight controls. They have also vehemently opposed the imposition of national identity cards. Conservatives may be Supply Siders, but they have generally favored restricting the supply of foreign Labor. Bush’s policies have been to maintain the porous border status quo. He has proposed national identity cards for migrant workers, but a betting man would wager that the funding will never materialize for this endeavor. He might also bet that when all is said and done, between Bush’s War on Terror and malicious neglect of the border, it will be American citizens who end up with national identity cards. They will also ultimately be contending with millions of the undocumented workers putting downward pressure on everybody’s wages. Millions of undocumented alien laborers living amongst us in a society in which a Federal agent can walk up to any citizen and demand, “show me your papers,” doesn’t sound like a Conservative Utopia to me. It does however sound like a distopic morph between Hitler’s and Schroeder’s Germanies. Lest anyone forget, the NAZI’s weren’t Conservatives, they were anti-vivisectionist revolutionary Socialists. Sound like any Conservatives you know?

On foreign policy Conservatives tend to be more isolationist. This means they oppose foreign wars that do not serve our narrowly defined national interest. They are also traditionally unenthusiastic about taking on the responsibilities and expenses of so called “Nation Building.” Indeed Bush’s rhetoric as a candidate does not line up with his actions as an executive on this issue. He has invaded not one, but two countries, and endeavored to ineptly “build” two nations simultaneously. Bush campaigned vigorously for an extraordinary expansion of NATO in effect annexing the countries of the Warsaw Pact. How many American citizens realize than if Latvia is invaded the United States will be in an immediate State of War? This would not be one of Bush’s metaphorical “Wars,” but rather a real war with real armies between real nations where tens of thousands of casualties are sustained in a single battle. The Bush administration has even signed on, at least to the point of lip service, to rebuild the continent of Africa and wage yet another metaphorical global “War,” in this instance on AIDS. This is hardly a Conservative approach. Invading countries over the objection of the French does not make one a Conservative. Keeping your troops and treasure at home does.

Deficit Hawk Conservatives must be appalled by Bush’s spending policies. Conventional foreign policy Conservatives should be flabbergasted by Bush making not one but two incalculable blunders. Libertarian Conservatives are infuriated by Bush’s willingness to shred the Constitution in his War on Terror. Fair Trade Conservatives are incredulous at Bush’s willingness to export the last American job. States Rights Conservatives clearly shudder every time the Bush Justice Department announces yet another appeal to the Supreme Court asserting of the supremacy of Federal Authority. That Bush and his cohort are referred to as Neo Cons is a euphemism of Orwellian proportions. They are not Conservatives of any kind at all. They are internationalist imperialists bent on American corporate global economic and military hegemony.

Ironically, this leaves only the Cultural Left and the Religious Right believing that Bush is actually a Conservative. Bush knows that rhetoric is cheap in the Culture War and he will not actually be held accountable to follow through with any of his promises to his misguided religious loyalists. Unfortunately, they are satisfied with pandering to their fears and are not likely to waver in their loyalty, despite Bush’s inability to actually overturn the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960’s.

Bush’s policies on the Economy, Education, Energy, Foreign Relations, Law and Order, Trade, Immigration, States Rights, Property Rights, Human Rights or in any other area, are not Conservative of any flavor whether Paleo, Traditional or Neo. The Neo Cons are Internationalist Oligarchical Totalitarian Fascists plain and simple. The “Con” in Neo Con refers to the one they have perpetrated on the American people, Liberal and Conservative alike. All the hypocritical lip service to a Culture of Life and Traditional Values is just a diversionary tactic deployed by the Neo-Totalitarians to conceal their true agenda. Unfortunately many on the Cultural Left have been as willing to accept Bush’s claims of Conservatism as have the Religious Right. They are equally mistaken.

Why War?

2005-07-08T02:14:00.000-05:00

In a previous post I noted that as Americans we do not know why we fought the Vietnam War. Some objected to this generalization. Of course I did not mean to imply that there was some how a shortage of opinions on the subject. Rather I meant there isn’t a prevailing singular national myth. For example: If you ask an average American why we fought World War II, those that even have a clue, will tend to answer something to the effect, “The NAZI’s were an evil force invading all of Europe and killing all its Jews.” If you ask, “What about the Japanese?” The answer is likely to be, “oh yeah, they bombed Pearl Harbor.” You will invariably get these answers regardless of the political persuasion of the person you ask. The reality of history is of course far more complex than these unsophisticated narratives. But for most Americans no such simplistic explanation comes immediately to mind when asked about why Americans fought and died in Vietnam.

If you ask a Vet or a Conservative you will probably hear something about creeping global Communism and a policy of containment. You might hear about NVA and VC atrocities that rival any perpetrated by the Japanese in Nanking. You will hear how the Liberal media and Hippie Pinkos cost us the war.

You won’t however hear about French Colonialism and Yalta. You won’t hear that by the end of American involvement both Cambodia and North Vietnam were Communist countries and were at war with each other. You won’t hear that it was never a professed policy of the United States to end Communism in a unified Vietnam. You won’t hear that we were willing to bomb North Vietnam into oblivion but we were not willing to invade it. You won’t hear about Vietnamese nationalism and historic xenophobia. You won’t hear that before there was a single US State Department employee that actually spoke the Vietnamese language there were already tens of thousands of US troops on the ground. It is all the missing elements from the Conservative narrative that has inhibited its acceptance by a broader spectrum of the collective American imagination.

Conversely if you ask an ex-Hippie or a Liberal you will hear about the corruption of the Military Industrial Complex. How we sent our boys to die in order for Corporations to profiteer. You will hear about “illegal” invasions of Cambodia and Laos. You will hear about McCarthyism and witch-hunts. You will hear about peasants of a worker’s paradise who laid down their lives in countless numbers for the dignity of self-determination. You will hear about the courage of deserters and the wisdom of Noam Chomsky.

You will not however hear about 30,000,000 souls snuffed out by Stalin, the 50,000,000+ by Mao, or 2,000,000 by Pol Pot. Nor will you hear of the flaming necklaces of the ANC in South Africa, of the massacres of French civilians in Algeria let alone the 1,000,000+ killed by Ho Chi Min himself in his beloved Vietnam. You will not hear that North Vietnam had itself invaded Cambodia and Laos and was perpetrating genocide against the Mung people. You will not hear that the US State Department and Intelligence Services were in fact rife with KGB plants or that our universities were indeed hot beds of Marxists denying the horrors of Stalin. It is what is missing from the Liberal narrative as well that has equally inhibited its universal acceptance in the American zeitgeist. Deep down inside most Americans know that the Communists were indeed the bad guys, even if their elites felt differently.

It is the persistent presence of these two competing incomplete narratives that makes a universally accepted meaning of the Vietnam War so illusive. This is what I meant when I said, “Americans don’t know why we fought in Vietnam.” There is no single prevailing succinct narrative that anyone on the street can be reliably counted on to recount with universal consistency. The reason that Vietnam is still such a gaping wound in the American zeitgeist is because we have no myth into which it can be neatly codified. As we saw in the last Presidential election, a lack of a definitive context for the Vietnam War colors our contemporary politics. More disturbingly, it clouds our judgment of the War in Iraq. We desperately want to understand the Iraq War, but somehow like Vietnam, its perceived meaning is dependent on whom you ask.

If you ask a Conservative why we invaded Iraq you will hear about a global War on Terrorism or Weapons of Mass Destruction. You might hear of the horrors of Saddam’s tyranny and his wholesale murder of Iraq’s Kurdish and Marsh Arab population. You will hear of his intent to supply jihadists with chemical weapons. You will hear he was a threat to his neighbors in Iran, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. You will hear how we must fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.

Interestingly you are not likely to ever hear anyone mention the word “Oil.” You will not hear how Bush Sr. armed Saddam and helped prop up his regime. You will not hear how even after Iraq’s defeat by the Iranians we supported the Bathists. You will not hear how those alleged WMD’s were provided to Saddam by the Russian, French, German, British and American governments. You will not hear that despite the threat he posed to his neighbors, they all opposed the Coalition Forces’ invasion of Iraq. You won’t hear that most of the attackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. You won’t hear that Halliburton stockholders are blatantly profiteering as never before in the history of American warfare. It is what is missing from the Conservative narrative that is undermining popular support for Bush’s invasion of Babylon.

If you ask a Liberal you will be struck by a sense of deja vu. They will once again decry the excesses of the Military Industrial Complex. You will hear how the Americans have invaded Iraq to steal their oil. You will hear about the “illegality” of the invasion. You will hear how the Iraqis were better off under Saddam. You will hear that Saddam never possessed weapons of mass destruction. You will hear of the incompetence of American Intelligence Services. You will hear of an American policy of torture in its prisons. Finally you will inevitably hear the tired canard that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” (This was of course bullshit when the first jackass uttered this statement and it remains such no matter how many fools insist on repeating it.)

You will not however hear that all of the Intelligence services of the world were so certain that Saddam possessed WMDs because the very same people who were sent to ferret out the WMD's had provided them to him in the first place. (I don’t know where they went but I’m pretty sure they were there at some point.) You will not hear that Saddam was gradually dismantling Bathism and was moving toward clan alliances that were bringing him into common cause with the jihadists. You will not hear that Saddam deposited $50,000,000 in Chirac’s personal bank account. You will not hear how the sanctions regime could have been maintained to prevent the war without causing yet further hardships to Iraq’s civilian population. You won’t hear how Saddam and the corrupt officials at the United Nations had made a mockery of the Oil for Food Program. You will not hear about Saddam’s countless violations of numerous UN resolutions. You won’t hear how the Europeans’ internal politics and the crisis of their Left in the face of the fall of Communism played into their fierce opposition to American leadership. You won’t hear how European anti-Arab racism is to blame for much of the alienation felt by their own Islamic populations and how this European disenfranchisement contributed to the disillusionment of the young Moslems that joined the Hamburg cell. You will not hear how fearless Halliburton employees daily risk their lives hauling food and provisions around Iraq in support of our troops in the field. Likewise it is what is missing from the Liberal narrative of the Iraq War that keeps so many in the United States reluctantly supporting the polices of Bush and Blair.

Once again America has gone to war without providing its people or the world with a clear, concise and plausible explanation. Once again those who vehemently oppose the conflict are as oblivious to the reality of the circumstances surrounding it as those who advocate its prosecution. Once again America lacks a consistent universal narrative. Once again there is plenty enough blame to go around to Conservatives and Liberals alike.

It is incumbent upon the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of England to provide such a narrative. To date their attempts to do so have been feeble and unpersuasive. But conversely, for those who so sanctimoniously oppose the invasion of Iraq, it is incumbent on them to offer a reasonable alternative. If not war what? The absence of war is not peace. Often it is slavery and a tolerance of perpetual injustice. How many tens of thousands of Kurds and Marsh Arabs were going to have to die before the European Left was going to get off their collective asses? For a clue to the answer one might ask the citizens of Rwanda and Sudan. Sometimes when one does not know what to do it is better to do nothing. But other times when people are dying in mass numbers and a threat looms on the horizon, it is better to do something, even if it is wrong.

A national myth need not necessarily be true to gain acceptance. Consider the conventional wisdom that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. What ultimately emerges as the American myth of the Iraq War will principally be determined by its outcome. Paradoxically the success of that outcome may ultimately be determined by our leaders' ability to successfully project a unified myth in order to inspire their soldiers to victory. Without such a vision, success in Iraq is far from inevitable. Without that success, a unified myth is not likely to ever materialize and the ghosts of this conflict, like Vietnam before it, will undoubtedly haunt us for generations to come.

London is Burning

2005-07-07T17:39:00.000-05:00

The “Secret Group of al-Qaeda’s Jihad in Europe'’ claimed the attack in a website posting

The claims, picked up by BBC Monitoring, claimed that the strikes were revenge for British military “massacres” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.”

Fat fucking chance of that! Speaking as one from the “colonies,” I, like millions of others around the world, will testify that the British may get bored with the process of kicking your ass, but Great Britain never, ever, ever quakes “with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.” If this ever happens it will be a cold day in Hell indeed.

Joseph Goebbles tried to sell this kind of crap to the German people sixty years ago. Anybody here ever met a retired Luftwaffe pilot? No? That’s because they all died trying to bomb the British civilian populace into submission. What was worse for the Germans was that their efforts were not only a military and political blunder but were in fact terribly counterproductive. If anyone doubts this, I suggest they consult the citizens of Dresden, Germany.

Young Islamicists punks may think they are suffering massacres now in Iraq and Afghanistan, but as the northern cities of Germany can attest, they ain’t seen nothing yet. First of all the British efforts in Iraq are about the furthest thing from massacres that can be imagined. Most of their forces are in the south of the country and are walking around without helmets or flackjackets. Not exactly the uniform of units in the massacre business. As far as Afghanistan goes, the British forces are curently operating in portions of that country that are so sparsely populated that they would have difficulty finding enough of the enemy in one place to even conduct a massacre, if they were so inclined.

When the British people find out that massacres are actually being performed in their names in the far flung regions of the world, they generally become squeemish and pressure their government to withdraw their forces. But when you bring the battle to their homeland, watch the fuck out! They will bring you massive death from above on a scale so grand that the term “massacre” fails to do it justice. They will use any and all means necessary to do you like a Hamburg hooker, and they will do it with impunity.

The Nazi’s did more damage and caused a greater loss of life in London every day for a year than the terrorists did in this misguided attack. It did them no good. The Brits fought the fires, tended their wounded, and slept in their Underground like babies everynight. What is more, they patiently planned their revenge. When they finally had the opportunity to get their vengence it was terrible indeed. Sixty years after the fire bombing of the open city of Dresden, the stench of the barbequed flesh of over 500,000 of its former inhabitants still lingers in the air.

A word of advice to mujahidin everywhere: If you want to persuade Aglo-American imperialist forces to leave your land, shame them into retreat. This tactic has historically worked very well for the Americans, Kenyans, Indians, Rhodesians, Philipinos, and the Vietnamese among many others. But do not, repeat do not bring the battle to their imperialist homelands! If you do they will ruthlessly hunt down you and your kin. Don’t let the stiiff upper lips and all the hand wringing fool you, they will come to where you live, kill you, eat you and shit you over your own hearth like a bunch of Aztec warriors. These most civilized of people will perpetrate a barbarity on you that will make your ancestors shudder in Hell.

Admiral Yamamoto was once asked to develop a strategey to attack the Anglo-American empire. He produced the plan but recommended against its implimentation. The events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved the sagacity of his councel. You can shame the gods but do not wake the cracken.

Nostalgia: The Silent Killer

2005-07-06T15:47:00.000-05:00

Cernig at Newshog recently posted his dissent to an observation by Christopher Hitchens. As characterized by Cernig:

Here he is, blethering (Scots word: babbling utter crap) for Slate about recent prominent and tragic accidental shootings of journalists by US friendly-fire in Iraq:

"But the truly sobering reflection is that crimes and blunders of this kind are committed, in effect, by popular demand. It is emphasized every day that Americans do not want to read about dead soldiers. So it is arranged that, as far as possible, they will read (or perhaps not bother to read) about dead civilians instead. This is the price that a "body-bag" mentality exacts."

Cernig has good cause to assail old Chrisopher if for no other reason than Chris is himself notorious for throwing the devastating rhetorical punch in anger. Hitchen’s Logic may be faulty, but one might grant him some slack on this issue since a lifetime of Fabianism is bound to leave one with some permanent damage.

Despite his causality conflation, he does have a point, even if its derivation is more poetic than profound. Americans do not want to talk about American casualties. The specter of national shame over Vietnam is the source of this reluctance. That shame involved blaming Vietnam Veterans for somehow both causing and losing an unpopular war.

As Americans we still do not know why that war was fought or why it was lost. But we do know that the way we treated our Veterans of that conflict was shameful and deplorable. The myths of the Vietnam War still cloud our judgment. Among these are that the Media lost us the war. Another is that American public won’t tolerate high military casualties rates. Yet another is that you can measure the success of a counter insurgency campaign by body counts.

These long shadows cast by Vietnam stretch all the way to modern Baghdad. If we don’t talk about American casualties because we don’t want to undermine troop morale or poplar support for the war effort, we are in effect fighting the last war. When, conversely, reporters focus on civilian casualties it leaves the impression that civilians are the primary targets of American forces. From the cloistered point of view of a hunkered down Baghdad reporter this must on occasion actually seem the case. The current crop of reporters in the field either came to maturity during the Cold War or are desperately seeking to emulate the generation that produced a Cultural Revolution. Whether on the left at CNN or the right at Fox, the current conflict is seen through the prism of Vietnam.

This is no coincidence. There are indeed some important similarities. Once again we are involved in a foreign war and most American’s do not know why. Once again we are suspicious of our leadership’s competency in its prosecution. Once again bell-bottoms, emaciated waifs and stringy hair are fashionable. Nostalgia hangs heavily in the air.

But this is not Vietnam. The enemy is not global totalitarian Communism. We are not fighting a limited war whose goal is to create two Iraqs. Ironically it was the first Gulf War, Dessert Storm, that most resembled Vietnam. Only in that engagement we ostensibly achieved victory. But we left a tyrant in power in his northern capital only to have to come back and deal with him later. Unless we realize that the current conflict is not the Vietnam War we are doomed to misperceive the reality that faces us.

American troops are indeed xenophobic and ill mannered, but then this is a result of our dilapidated secondary educational system more than a lack of military discipline. Hell most of them couldn’t find their own state capitals on a map just 12 months ago, let alone Falujah. To acknowledge this is not to codemn the troops but meerly to reognize that Americans, civilian and military alike, tend to behave badly abroad. But the American military leadership has become overly casualty adverse because they too are haunted by the demons of Southeast Asia. A soldier’s duty is to risk death in the protection of civilian life, not to take civilian life in preemptive protection of military personnel. The checkpoint policies are a huge part of the problem. There are no consistent checkpoint protocols. The soldiers are under prepared for this duty. Indeed most of the checkpoints are ineffective from a tactical military perspective and are counterproductive from a strategic or political point of view. The US military should realize that alienating the local populace does more for the insurgency than the checkpoints do to inhibit it.

The President should realize that he is likely to have a Nixon administration on his hands if he doesn’t figure out a way to explain the justification for this war to the American people. War on Terror and Spreading Democracy is just not going to cut it with the voters. He has no credibility on either of these issues. Regardless of the facts, nobody believes there was a meaningful relationship between Sadam and Al Quaeda. Bush’s closest friends in the region are all dictators and monarchs. Whether they admit it or not, almost everybody in the Middle East and in the United States really believes that the invasion is all about oil. Disturbingly, many in the region actually believe that Bush’s real intention is to invade all Islamic countries and to convert their populations to Fundamentalist Christianity by force of arms. Now in America we know this is ridiculous, but in the Middle East and Southwest Asia this idea has real currency and is widely gaining traction. Bush’s failure to articulate a plausible necessity for his invasion has created a vacuum that is now being filled with caca at least as pernicious as that he has offered as a rationalization.

I don’t pretend to know how the War in Iraq will turn out, but I am certain of one thing, nobody in America wants it to be another Vietnam. This time neither the Media nor the populace intends to blame the problems of the war on the boys and girls sent to fight it. Unfortunately every time a problem emerges with checkpoint killings of civilians or torture at prisons, it is the White House that blames the troops. Every time you hear the expression, “It’s just a few bad apples…” that’s what they are doing. It is not bad apples, it is bad policies and bad leadership that’s to blame for our failures in Iraq.

If the Iraq War becomes a quagmire it won’t be the fault of the Media or of apples of any kind. It certainly won’t be the fault of Chris Hitchens. It may however be blamed on the ghosts of nostalgia Romantic and Gothic alike.

On the Border

2005-07-01T01:38:00.000-05:00

It is fashionable to feign a desire to finally address the “border” because of a fear of terrorism. This is generally disingenuous. I am always struck by the number of Yankees who claim to not be able to tell the difference between a Mexican and an Arab. This may be a challenge north of the Red River, but in Texas we can still make this distinction without much difficulty. What it really reflects is the fact the Mexicans have finally reached the land of the Yankees and now there is suddenly a problem at the border. We all know that Mexicans have been coming en mass for over 50 years but it is interesting to note this did not become a national crisis until Yankees had to begin to contend with the fallout caused by illegal immigration.

Like most complex problems dealing with race, ethnicity, labor and social justice, illegal Mexican immigration has its roots in the events of history. The Southwestern portion of the United States was acquired through a trumped up war designed to provoke a conflict in order to essentially steal what was Mexican territory. Here I am not referring to the events at the Alamo and San Jacinto, but rather to the so-called Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Followed by the aptly named Mexican Punitive Expedition of 1915 with old Black Jack Pershing. Ironically the rationalization for the Mexican Punitive Expidition was to protect Texas landowners along the border from banditry. (In light of current events in Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, this is ironic in the extreme.) This border was enforced on the Mexican government and their people by military might alone and had no basis in justice or “legality” at the time. But it was so far away from the vast majority of both the Mexican and the "American" people that they did not give it much thought for a hundred years. The Gringos were more than willing to take Mexican land, but now they’ve discovered that with the land comes its people, who can prove to be both an asset and a liability. Perhaps the lesson is to be careful what you ask for and even more careful what you steal.

For these historical reasons the Mexican government has never been very enthusiastic about policing a border they do not really acknowledge as legitimate. That Americans refer to people who cross this border heading north as “illegal,” to the Mexican mind ads insult to injury. When Americans wave the bloody shirts of “law and order” as well as “national sovereignty” to the Mexicans this smacks of the hypocrisy that incites them to call us "Gringos." But there are other reasons to expect that there will be little support coming from Mexican official channels to help address the border crisis.

There are really two Mexicos geographically. There is the South, where political and economic power has historically been located since the time of the Aztecs. Then there is the unruly North, the bad lands. Historically this northern area of Mexico has alternately been ignored and mercilessly exploited by political forces from the South. When Southern Mexican forces came to the region it was invariably to loot and wage genocidal purges against the inhabitants Indio and Mestizo alike. Hence the people in the Northern region have little love for the authority of the Southern government. Indeed most revolutions in Mexico start in the North, where irregular militias repeatedly defeat Mexican Federal forces and go down into Southern Mexico only to be subverted by its pernicious politics. Thus they lose through corruption all they have gained over and over through the loss of their precious blood. Unfortunately these various Northern militias have not respected the border either and have historically crossed it to raid the Patrons, north as well as south, of the Rio Grande. For this reason Texans and Americans have generally had little sympathy for these revolutionary forces and American politics has tended to favor the more corrupt exploitative agendas of the Mexico City interests.

The Southern Mexicans have always viewed the Northern inhabitants as subhuman and expendable. Much the way Yankees in the United States have viewed their Southern brethren. For this reason Mexican Federal authority is not likely to ever be culturally accepted by the Northern population as legitimate. Think of those mostly silent Southern whites, who during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60’s, morally favored racial integration but vehemently opposed its Federal imposition more than a hundred years after our Civil War. Such individuals will tolerate evil rather than submit to the will of their perceived oppressors. Conversely, the Northern Mexicans do not acknowledge the validity of the border with the United States and are unaccustomed to what we might call the “rule of law.” Traditionally, the Norteños have either been ruled by Federale tyrants on horseback or by bandidos masquerading as Zapatistas. Today these forces are manifest as drug cartels, but the song remains the same. Don’t think the Mexican Federal forces currently headed to the border areas are going to bring what we would consider Justice or the “rule of law.” Neither should one naively believe that they will be welcomed by the cooperative locals. They won’t, no matter how much the locals would like an end to the murder and mayhem of the cartels. The people of the Northern frontier are essentially a people without a country. But as they see it, they are not a people without a Land. That Land includes the Northern portion of Mexico and the Southwestern portion of the United States. They call this Land Atzlan. It is to them distinct from both Mexico and the United States.

Until the citizens of the United States understand this cultural and historic phenomenon, there will be no resolution to the “border.” In light of history, It might have been better if the United States had never annexed half of Northern Mexico. On the other hand, it might have been better for all of Mexico and the United States if all of Northern Mexico had been annexed instead of dividing Atzlan between two nations. In the current model, neither Mexico nor the United States is ultimately viewed by many of the inhabitants of Atzlan as their legitimate sovereign.

The current vogue for once again paying attention to immigration has little to do with its ostensible “illegality” or “national security.” It has much more to do with the economic and ethnic consequences that are created by the vast numbers of Mexicans headed north. If we were facing 3000 illegals coming per year, nobody would give a tinker’s damn. That it is 300,000 makes it an economic issue that even Yankees must now finally stand up and acknowledge. Unfortunately treating it as an economic, security and political issue alone will inevitably fail to address the cultural and historic roots of the problem. Without dealing with this more nuanced and complex phenomenon we are surely to engage in policies that, no matter how well intentioned, will have unintended consequences and perhaps cause more harm than good.

For example, using the military to “close” the border. Borders are a fiction created by men and none has ever proved inviolate. Boundaries are created by God. These include mountains, oceans, rivers and desserts. Historically these have always been more effective than man made militarized borders. One of the most formidable boundaries on the face of the Earth is the Sonoran dessert. I know this because I have personally trudged across it on foot, horseback and motorcycle. The dessert itself is more effective than all the troops in the US military at providing a disincentive to cross. Tens of thousands have died trying to cross it, yet still they come. How many hundreds of thousands would you have to shoot before they got the message to stay home? Militarizing the border in an effective way would involve walls and mine fields like those recently built in the West Bank of Palestine. This is a very telegenic image. Wait till the footage comes in of little wetback bodies blown to bits with the obligatory shredded teddy bear in the frame. Now imagine this image repeated a hundred times and each instance broadcast 24 hours/day on cable TV worldwide. I suspect this might be counterproductive to the United States' propaganda efforts to convince the world it is not a nation of callous baby killers. Right now the Mexican border problem is nobody’s business but Mexico’s and the United States’. If we militarize the Mexican border you can bet that overnight the whole world will make it its business to denounce the United States in every global venue that presents itself.

Worse than irritating the French, militarization of the border will force all of Latin America into the Chinese sphere of influence. This is a very disturbing prospect given China’s impending ascendancy. China would offer free trade and military assistance to all of Latin America and would undermine U. S. hegemony in this region putting an end to the Monroe Doctrine once and for all, all this without firing a shot. Remember the Chinese come to Latin America with their own imperial agendas but without two centuries of political baggage.

But suppose we decided we did not care what the rest of the world thought. Mexicans would still come across. Fewer to be sure, but thousands would still make it. Only now mixed among the poor seeking employment and opportunity, would be indigenous Mexican terrorists who would infiltrate to perpetrate violent acts in protest of the militarization and the killing of unarmed Mexican citizens. The infrastructure for these militant movements already exists in the form of organized criminal gangs. The Mexican government would have little if any political incentive to stop these terrorists. More likely they would cynically take advantage of them much as we see with the PLO in Palestine. The Mexican Federal Government would periodically invade the North with Federales and wage genocide for its own reasons, as they historically have, but would not do serious damage to the terrorists’ forces. This would create even more refugees from the Federales. These people would head north preferring to take their chances with the American military.

All of these events would lead to a racial paranoia throughout the United States. People who are not from the Southwest would start to view all Hispanics in the United States as potential terrorists or sympathizers. Hate crimes would start to proliferate and this would radicalize the American Hispanic population thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of an internal fifth column. If you think your Civil Liberties have been jepordized under the guise of fighting foreign Islamic terrorism, just imagine the totalitarian inclinations of your Federal government when faced with a genuine internal threat from millions of its populace. This could ultimately lead to another Civil War. I’m pretty sure that under such circumstances I would end up fighting for the separatists and would reluctantly have to side with the Atzlan forces against the forces of both American and Mexican Federal totalitarianisms.

Regarding requiring Mexican Citizens who plan to emmigrate north to get a biometric identity from American consulates in Mexico: This is probably a good idea, but would take a phenomenal amount of resources that the U. S. government would be reluctant to sufficiently provide. The backlog in the consulates would likely be years and the incentive to try and make it without going through this process would still be in place. Wait for years to get your card from the consulate or just head for the border now and take your chances. Still, this course of action is probably better than the status quo.

Even if you did manage to significantly reduce the “illegality” of immigration, you would still face astronomical numbers. This would leave you with the social, ethnic and economic consequences. These, combined with the real data that would then be available regarding the true numbers of Mexican immigrants, would send shockwaves through the political fabric of the United States. As long as we continue to outsource jobs overseas combined with importing roughly a million laborers per year, we are going to encounter the notorious Iron Law of Wages. The impact of the immigrant workforce will put downward pressure on wages along with affording rising productivity to the capitalists. Good for stockholders, not so good for labor. However, the Iron Law is a two edged sword. When people say “I can’t get an American to take this job,” or the President of Mexico says “even Blacks won’t take an illegal's job,” what they really mean is “you are not paying enough money to get the desired amount of productivity from your workforce.” For these people the solution is to take advantage of the fact that a neighboring workforce is even more impoverished than yours and thus even more exploitable. This is an unfair end run around of the second side of the Iron Law of Wages.

Regarding the burden to the social services and healthcare system: The reason the illegal immigrant is a burden to these systems is because you pay him $20 to mow your yard instead of $60. A man cannot work for less than it takes him to feed and clothe his family and be expected to not make up the difference somewhere. Either he sells drugs or sends his children to the emergency room. He has no choice. If we paid a living wage we would not need the social service systems to subsidize the exploitation of the worker by his employer. Employers might make different choices. You might decide to mow your own lawn for $60 or you might decide xerascaping was a more low maintenance and thus more cost effective approach. If we actually paid what it cost to produce our vegetables we might spend more of our money on food and less on gas for sport utility vehicles. Instead we exploit what amounts to slave labor but turn a blind eye because the slave is an alien and the broccoli is so cheap. If it costs us a fortune in taxes, it is no less than we deserve. You can either pay a worker to feed his family or pay the government to do it. The illegal work force has until now offered us the illusion of a third option. It is just that, an illusion.

Make no mistake; the term “Slavery” is no hyperbole here. When a man is deprived of his labor without sufficient recompense to provide sustenance to his family, when he cannot appeal to the legal system because he is disenfranchised from voting, and when he cannot freely immigrate without fear of arrest he is by definition a slave plain and simple. The contemporary corporate industrial and agricultural interests make much the same arguments today regarding the necessity of an immigrant workforce as their Pro-Slavery counterparts did more than a century and a half ago. Speaking as a Southerner who has lived with the legacy of the oppression that resulted due to the loss of the Civil War, as well as from the horrors of slavery itself, I can testify to the fact that was some very expensive cotton indeed. We have been paying for it for generations and the legacy of that oppression will undoubtedly continue to be paid for many generations to come.

Regarding an end to amnesty and sending all illegals currently in the United States home to Mexico: This sounds fair in a legal sense but is utterly unworkable in a practical one. It would cost the Federal government tens of billions of dollars to go door to door rounding up illegals. Amongst them would inevitably be hundreds if not thousands of Hispanic American citizens who would inadvertently be deported and forever lost in a legal limbo. Not to mention the political implications of the specter of Federal agents going door to door in American businesses and barrios looking for the undocumented and rounding them up to be sent to gulags. You didn’t think that millions of undocumented Mexicans would just be dropped off at the border did you? We do that now and it doesn’t work. They would inevitably need to be “housed and processed” in what would euphemistically be referred to as “detention/relocation centers.” A peak at the Palestinian camps in Gaza and Jordan might provide insight into the reality of such places. Their existence combined with border militarization would provide a fertile breeding ground for militant Mexican resistance for decades to come.

For those illegals that have already entered the United States, declaring amnesty is probably counterproductive but so is rounding them all up. It is a lot like closing the barn door after the cows got out. Finding them is like looking for ten thousand needles in ten million haystacks. It is technically possible to do, but would be a highly inefficient process and probably not cost effective let alone politically viable.

The most significant thing that can practically be done to mitigate the effects of illegal migration is to start paying a living wage in the United States. If we did this more American citizens of all ethnicities would come off the unemployment roles. Those that are currently under-employed would move up the socioeconomic ladder and the burden on public services, and with it taxation, would be reduced from all sides. We would all recalibrate how we consume goods and services if we had to pay their true cost at the point of purchase rather than to the Feds on May 15th. This would have the effect of rationalizing the economy, reducing taxation and government dependency. For those who say it would be inflationary and create unemployment, I cite the figures for productivity and unemployment following each minimum wage increase since the first minimum wage was created. Within two years of each increase in the minimum wage, unemployment decreased and productivity increased, as did consumption, but overall inflation rates remained unaffected or went down. The only exceptions to this were in years when, for unrelated reasons, the price of oil rose precipitously in the same year. A living wage would also diminish the demand for illegal workers. If their labor cost as much as any other workers’, employers would generally choose the documented over the undocumented. There would be no employment for those who came illegally and hence they would either go back to Mexico or not come at all. No house-to-house searches would be necessary.

Regarding the criminality along the border: This could be significantly mitigated by rationalizing the drug policy of the United States. If marijuana was made legal and the possession of cocaine was decriminalized, the profit motive for smugglers and drug cartels would evaporate overnight. Crack heads could get their fix from government clinics where they could either be treated for addiction or maintained, which ever they chose. This would dry up repeat customers for drug dealers and put and end to the incentive for recruiting new users. There would simply be no profit in it. Criminals would seek other livelihoods and otherwise law-abiding people wouldn’t be drawn into organized crime. After a few years there would be fewer new users brought on-line and older addicts would either clean up or die off. For those who complain of the economic costs of such a policy, I point to the current budget for what is euphemistically called a War on Drugs. I’m certain a truce would be far more economical to the taxpayer. Fat chance getting this agenda past the Religious Right, but don’t count on those on the Left, who know the Truth of the situation, to standup and call for what they know to be Just. The Left lacks the political courage of their own purported convictions. As for the Neo-Cons, they and their intelligence operatives are in bed with the drug cartels and view them as their personal Third World punks. Who do you think armed the Mujadin in the first place? The Neo-Cons will make only cosmetic efforts to interdict a trade in which they are themselves so deeply ensconced. They will however use the so-called War on Drugs to justify any and all abrogations of Civil Liberties in this country and as an excuse to create what will undoubtedly amount to a totalitarian regime.

Rationalization of American drug policy would also have the impact of reducing the smuggling of aliens by the Coyotes. This was a marginal business until the profits available from running drugs entered the picture. The dramatic rise in mass migration from Mexico coincides almost exactly with the rise of the drug cartels on the Mexican border. These issues are intricately related and progress on either front will impact the other.

The dilemma of Atzlan was not born on 9/11, nor did it begin with NAFTA, despite what Lou Dobbs will tell you. It has taken centuries to create the status quo and there will be no panacean solution offered by Washington D.C., Mexico City or by globalist capitalist interests. They are the very forces that created the current problem and have no interest whatsoever in its resolution.

The real dilemma North America is facing is a demographic one. In the 70’s and 80’s there was a baby boom in Mexico and we are currently feeling its results. As Mexicans gradually achieve greater access to education and wealth they will inevitably reduce their birth rate. The signs of this are already beginning to emerge. For the next 30-50 years we will continue to see immigration from Mexico but it will over that period gradually be leveling off and then ultimately declining. With that decline in population growth will come a decrease in the incentives for northward immigration. Increasing wealth and education has lead to equivalent declines in the growth rates of the populations of both India and China, against all dire predictions to the contrary just twenty years ago. So it will be with Mexico.

Until then, the United States is going to experience some rather drastic, though not catastrophic, cultural and ethnic demographic changes. The population is going to “Brown” significantly and Anglos are going to increase the rate at which they integrate and intermarry with the recent immigrant population. Conversely, the Mestizo experience is going to “Lighten” substantially. It will become less Indio-centric and the political idea of Atzlan will diminish as its demographic reality emerges. As this new Anglo-Mestizo demographic rises, the traditional Cultural Left vs Religious Right political divisions will cease to reflect the new reality.

This Hispanization of North America is going to make some unlikely allies in the political arena. We already saw 40% of American Hispanics voting for Bush in the last election. The problem for the Left is they have misunderstood the Latino mind and have mistakenly presumed that Chicanos were just a lighter shade of Black. They are wrong about this, as well as many other things, including what is best for African Americans. The traditional Left have erroneously brought their Black/White paradigms to the border debate and they are woefully inadequate to explain the Mestizaje experience. Conversely the Religious Right has seen itself as the preservers of “White” Protestant ethics and have ignored or shunned their Latino Catholic brethren. This has been tragic since they share so very much in common with the newcomers compared to the interests of urban Yankee secular materialists. Nevertheless, I predict that it will be White Protestants in the South and West who will first begin to realize that Latinos are to be integrated into the cultural framework of America. They will be less likely to confuse African Americans with Latinos than their Yankee cohort, since Southerners and Westerners are more intimate with both of these populations than the class segregated urbanites of the Blue States.

To my mind these events are inevitable unless the United States overreacts to Mexican immigration. If this happens the current high social and economic costs will pale in comparison to the ethnic hatred and civil unrest that might be unleashed. Remember that Jews, Christians and Moslems lived together in relative harmony in Palestine so long as nobody really knew exactly whose land it was. It is only when Crusades were launched to “liberate” the Holy land that pogroms were unleashed throughout Europe and Christians, Moslems and Jews died by their legions in the Promised Land. Such is the case today.

Let us not try to fight a two front war with Islamo-Fascism on one hand and Atzlan Separatists on the other. If we treat our own workers justly and respect the Civil Liberties of our own citizens we need not face this conflict. If we however choose to exploit the whole world at home and abroad we will inevitably suffer the fate of all the empires that have preceded our own. Such regimes invariably collapse when the populations at their border feel that their interests are no longer represented by their respective Centers of Power. It is in these border regions that insurrections are born and it is unfortunately these border populations that invariably bare the brunt of the suffering that inevitably ensues. While these revolutionary forces rarely bring Prosperity and Justice, they usually succeed in undermining the Power of the Center and in so doing setting their societies back for yet another generation. Let us not let racism and a tolerance of slavery once again handicap our descendants for centuries to come.

Eminent Domain Decision Portends a Return to Serfdom

2005-06-28T01:29:00.000-05:00

Serfdom is no hyperbole here. The notion that all land belongs to the King is an ancient one. His motivation was to ostensibly parcel out the land to those of his subjects who would make it most profitable and hence be able to pay him higher taxes. In actual practice kings parceled land out to political allies and delinquent cousins and then proceeded to hound their poorer subjects for ever higher taxes. This is the exact same model the Supreme Court has just delivered us. This was the system in place in Europe for over 1000 years. It is perhaps significant that these centuries are generally referred to as the Dark Ages for a reason. It took only one generation to destroy the Roman Republic that had existed for over 700 years. It took almost two millennia to emerge from the imperial hell that replaced it.

It is not sufficient that big box corporate retailers can already drive up the price of commercial Real estate and with it property tax rates that annihilate any business model other than their own. Forget the fact they get most of their taxes abated and their local competitors inevitably don't. But now if you have managed to make a success out of your business despite their predatory and collusionary practices, if they covet your location they can now requisition it from the government with promises of higher local tax revenue. Forget the fact the purpose of private property is not to provide public revenue, but is rather to guarantee the self-determination of the property owner. Apparently the current Court doesn't believe in private property any more than it does in personal liberty or self-determination.

Given the Court's recent decision on the states developing their own regulatory policies regarding the medicinal applications of canabinoids, even the so-called conservatives on the bench like Scalia are willing to sacrifice state's rights when confronted with political correctness. Interestingly it was Justice Thomas who had the most reasoned approach on this question, but then he has never been a slave to political correctness of any kind.

Evidently in contemporary America, regardless of party, social-Darwinism has become the defacto state ideology. What is more disturbing is that the Goliaths are not satisfied with merely outweighing their Davidian competition, they now feel the necessity to bribe the reff. With the most recent decision from the Federal bench, the Nine elders have announced to our corporate masters that they are ready to open the greedy hands of government and begin assisting the Oligarchs openly in their monopolistic schemes.

Here is a plausible scenario under the new regime. You own a coffee house that makes you about $50,000 per year free and clear. You own the building so you feel relatively secure that you won't be sold out by a landlord. You like your business, it's not only your livelihood but your lifestyle. Perhaps you even live upstairs. Starbucks comes to town and covets your location. They approach the city fathers and announce they intend to open twenty coffee houses at one time in your burg. They intend to create 300 minimum wage jobs and develop the properties with $750,000 worth of improvements each that will bring up local property values encourage development. In return for all this investment they want a 20 year 50% tax abatement and your location. Forget the fact that you own it and pay 100% of your assessed tax rate every year. The city fathers are looking at the big picture in which the good of the many invariably outweighs the good of the one. Forget the fact that Justice is never so simple as this erroneous piece of calculus. Now imagine that campaign season is coming around just about the time this issue comes before the City Council. You can bet Starbucks corporate representatives will be contributing heavily this season and you will be outbid on both the campaign finance and the economies of scale fronts. Now imagine that Starbucks finds out too late that in South Texas there is not the same demand for a cup of hot coffee in a region where temperatures reach 100 degrees 100 days a year. They decide their new stores are not sufficiently profitable and they close 2/3 of them less than a couple of years after they opened. When the time for their tax abatement ends they close down a few more. In the end you are left without the promised jobs, without the tax revenue, without your livelihood and only one place in town to get a tasteless cup of corporate Joe. Your old coffee shop didn't have to compete with the stock market to justify its existence. All it had to do was please its customers and remain in the black and it would be there a long time, paying taxes, providing stable employment and a sense of community not to mention a better cup of coffee.

Maybe the apologists for globalism can find a silver lining in the recent ruling. Perhaps The People's Republic of China can just get the Federal government to eminent domain UNICAL. All they would have to do is promise not to fire all its existing American employees and they could save billions of dollars on a corporate take over.

We have been sold down the river by our unelected Federal Judicial masters but we can still hold our local city governments accountable. Encourage your civic leaders to amend charters to guarantee private property rights from corporate predation. Any fool knows that twenty new coffee houses or a couple of new big box retailers is not the same thing as a public transit project or a new flood control drainage tunnel and don't let anyone tell you differently. It is a lot easier to dump City Hall on Election day than to fight it year round. Let them know that confiscation for private profit will not be tolerated by the citizenry regardless of what judges may say. Judges may make rulings, but it is our elected officials that make the rules. Make sure they understand that you intend to be governed by consent, not ruled by corporate tyranny.

Social Conservatives: It’s Their Own Damn Fault

2005-05-28T15:20:00.000-05:00

Social Conservatives are wrong if they think they will ultimately prevail in the mammon driven halls of power. I’ve read the Book and that’s not the plot line. For over forty years, Social Conservatives have wailed as one by one fundamental tenants of their moral belief system have lost consensus in the market place of ideas. Their response has been to isolate themselves from society as they abandoned their role as “salt and light.” The humanities and sciences proceeded without their input and they predictably are infuriated with the results. But who is to blame?

To Social Conservatives it’s the Liberal media, academic elites and the Federal government. Their response has been to leverage their money and votes at the Federal government to attempt to undo what they see as the erosion of America’s moral fiber. They would now enforce their morals on others through Federal authority rather than through the power of moral persuasion and example.

A look at Social Conservatives’ approach to stem cell research provides insights into their misdirected, hypocritical and hence doomed strategy. They focus their energy on banning federal subsides to stem cell research, instead of the real cause of the problem. The principle source of controversial stem cells is from rich, mostly Protestant, white women who feel entitled to motherhood for a sense of personal completion and out a proprietary desire to “have” children. Adoption is available to such women, but this would not fulfill their ‘psychological” need. Hence they pay tens of thousands of dollars to commit what amounts to dozens of abortions per couple. Meanwhile the Social Conservatives focus their attention on diminishing the options for poor minority women’s access to subsidized abortions. The hypocrisy and sanctimony is rife. What such people really don’t like isn’t killing the unborn, its poor minority sluts. Besides barren women are a sympathetic group and it seems impolite to persecute them. The fetuses produced by women seeking invitro are almost inevitably doomed which ironically makes these women in a sense anti-mothers; which, to me at least, seems somehow more tragic than being barren. Without this dreadful ego driven phenomenon masquerading as a women’s rights issue there would be much less controversy over stem cell research. When was the last time you saw a bunch of angry protesters outside an upscale OB/GYN offering invitro services to rich white women? Even the most promiscuous poor minority woman seeking an abortion is responsible for only a fraction of the death caused by one bourgeois white woman looking to acquire one child at the cost of a dozen others. Some hide behind the rationalization that their intent was to create life, but this holds little water given the catostrophic results to the rest of their unborn children. How many homeless people's lives would those who advocate such logic be willing to sacrifice to gain a kidney and prolong a life?

Focusing attention on judging the impoverished and restricting Federal-funding fails to address the reasons women choose abortion and to eliminate the source of controversial stem cells. The educational, financial and health needs of poor women could be addressed by other means and their demand for abortion would diminish and the abortion rate would drop precipitously without hate-filled protesters or self-righteous law makers. If they were provided the help they need, these women would prove themselves morally superior to the bourgeoisie who would from vanity choose to destroy countless lives to produce or save one, either through invitro fertilization or through Alzheimer’s patients consuming fetuses in a macabre effort to mitigate their own suffering through what amounts to an act of cannibalism. Given our current system of paying for health care, does anyone really think these tainted stem cells will be apportioned by egalitarian means?

The real problem for Social Conservatives is they failed to notice when they lost the Academy through their own neglect. How many Phd’s in philosophy, literature, art history, anthropology, paleontology, genetics, psychology, sociology, biology etc. were earned by ostensibly Christian Social Conservatives in the last forty years? Almost none. Contrary to what they would have you believe, this was not due, at least for the first twenty years, to discrimination by some Liberal cabal. It was abdication plain and simple. Instead they pursued law degrees and MBA’s, confident capitalism and Christianity were somehow intrinsically hyphenated. Predictably, you cannot be a servant of two masters and they currently associate with the forces of mammon out of habit as much as conviction. Since they have pulled out of the intellectual debate, they would bypass this essential phase of the process and enforce their now ill-considered views through the authority of the State. Their rhetoric is untested and shrill and even when they’re right, they sound self-righteous and wrong.

When Social Conservatives fail to avail themselves of the academic dialogue and seek instead to dictate through power, they alienate potential converts and suffer guilt by association with that power. They also discredit the potential merit of their ideas. They present dogma and opinion rather than evidence and argument, and then condemn all who would dissent as the advocates of evil. The Republican Party and the American people will invariably abandon them and in so doing throw the baby out with the bath water. When this happens, Social Conservatives will have no one to blame but themselves.

The Rise of Archie and Danielle: A Fascist Fairytale

2005-05-17T15:30:00.000-05:00

Image that instead of a family farm, Archie and Danielle inherited a billion dollars. Imagine they took some of that money and bought a 500,000-acre farm. They were then immediately one of the largest grain producers in the area.

Archie and Danielle then realized that they could raise the price of grain if they could just get their neighbors to stop growing it. They politely asked their neighbors to stop growing grain. Since their neighbors had mouths to feed, they declined to let their land go fallow.

They noticed that some of their neighbors were cash poor and not very good farmers. So Archie and Danielle went to these less productive neighbors and offered them 75 cents on the dollar for their family farms. Most of these less productive neighbors jumped at the deal and moved to the city. Those who did not would come to regret it.

Archie and Danielle were very good farmers so they made this formally unproductive land fertile once more. Now there was more grain than ever so Archie and Danielle stored this new source in their silos. They eventually had so much stored grain they ran out of silos. So they began to sell it on the market. With this new supply on the market the price fell.

Now this reduced their profit margin overall, but because of their vast economy of scale, and because they inherited a billion dollars, Archie and Danielle could sustain the decrease in income. Their neighbors on the 2000-acre farms did not have these economies and access to capital so their farms began to struggle.

Archie and Danielle again approached their struggling neighbors and offered to buy them out. This time however, farming land produced less revenue with lower grain prices and there were more farms for sale than before. Archie and Danielle offered their neighbors 50 cents on the dollar for their land. Many of their neighbors took a look at all those silos on the Archie and Danielle farm and began to wonder when the next time the price of grain was going to precipitously drop. Jack wanted to hold out for a fair market value for his father’s farm but his wife Jenny warned him that he should get out of this risky business. Many of Jack and Jenny’s neighbors decided to sell. But these people did not get enough for their property to move to the city. Most of these displaced people bought small homes near the Archie and Danielle place and went to work as employees on the big farm. Jack and Jenny decided to hold out, but Jack would come to learn to listen to his wife.

Since their holdings had now grown to 1,000,000-acres, Archie and Danielle now had more productive farmland then they knew what to do with. So they decided to just let their new purchases go fallow. Now while this land was no longer productive, it did take some of the grain off the market and so prices once again began to rise. Archie and Danielle’s margins once again rose and their cash flow was better than ever, despite the liability of owning all that new land. With the higher grain prices, Jack turned to Jenny and said, “I told you we shouldn’t sell Dad’s farm.” Jenny politely agreed but she began saving rather than spending the new income.

After a while Archie and Danielle began to wonder how much more they could get for grain if they took even more off the market. So they let 15% more of their land go fallow and built more silos. With less land under cultivation, they needed less labor so Archie and Danielle laid off some of the former family farmers in their employ. Many of these unemployed lost their small houses and became an added burden to public services. Eventually the price of grain doubled and then tripled and Archie and Danielle could hardly believe their good fortune. Jack began to ask Jenny for some of that money to buy back the land Dad’s brother had sold off next to Dad’s farm. Jenny reluctantly obliged, but this season, land was profitable and there were very few sellers, so Jack had to pay full price for the neighboring land. Regardless, he still felt good that he had recreated his grandfather’s original 4000-acre farm.

But now the cost of bread had risen by 300% in a relatively short period and people began to complain. They started to boycott bread for a while and the price began to drop a little. But people could not go without bread forever so gradually they returned to the baker. They did, however, begin to call their Legislatures and march on the Capitol to complain. Now politicians are afraid of angry bread eaters, so they held a hearing and discovered that Archie and Danielle were responsible for the increase in the price of bread. There was just one problem for the politicians. Archie and Danielle had been pumping tons of the surplus cash they had been making from the new higher bread prices into the politicians' campaigns. Now Archie and Danielle are open-minded people so they gave copiously to both Republicans and Democrats alike, but a little bit more to Republicans. The politicians were caught on the horns of a dilemma.

The bread eaters wanted the Congress to make the farmers plant all their land and bring down the price of bread. Archie and Danielle protested that their land was private property and that it was not economically viable to plant all the land and that if they did, this would disproportionately hurt their smaller neighbors like Jack and Jenny. Now the politicians knew that Jack and Jenny were far more sympathetic characters than Archie and Danielle, so their interest was peaked. At this point Archie and Danielle proposed a compromise that would get the politicians off the hook. They suggested that they would be willing to plant 50% more land on the condition that the government would pay Archie and Danielle, and Jack and Jenny, a subsidy to not grow on 25% of their land. To the politicians this seemed the perfect solution. They could sell their bread-eating constituents on the idea of a subsidy for Jack and Jenny and get the price of bread down by 50%. But since the price had originally tripled, it was still higher than before Archie and Danielle decided to buy their first farm.

Jack turned to Jenny and said, “Can you believe it? The government is going to pay us to not grow grain and the prices are now going to stabilize. Isn’t it great?” This didn’t make much sense to Jenny, but she was glad that there would be more stability in their future.

Archie and Danielle were now being paid by the government to not grow grain on 250,000 acres and their check from the taxpayer was gigantic. Meanwhile, Jack and Jenny were getting paid to let 500 acres go fallow so their check was not so large. After a while the Congress had a hard time coming up with the money to keep writing those fat checks to Archie and Danielle year after year.

So eventually the politicians had to raise taxes. But Archie and Danielle were good friends with the politicians so they persuaded them not to tax any of their capital. What is more, they persuaded the politicians to let them set up Foundations and Trust Funds to shelter their income. As tax money is fungible, the politicians were confident that their constituents would not really understand what had just taken place. They were right.
Jack and Jenny noticed their tax bill going up. Because they did not have a big enough subsidy check or high enough grain prices to make a fortune, they could not afford the instruments to shelter their income. So while their revenue had been relatively stable, their net income decreased due to higher taxation. They sucked in their belts a little and continued to make a go of the farm, but Jenny was once again beginning to get concerned.

Archie and Danielle were good farmers because they plowed money into research. But with the advent in genetic technologies that research had begun to get expensive, so they began to look for alternate sources of funding. Then they remembered their friends back in the Congress and at the Department of Agriculture and they applied for millions of dollars in government grants and they were awarded them.

They then took one of their Foundations and funded a Think Tank to produce policy papers which predictably encouraged government policy makers that giving more money to agro-research was an essential thing to do for the health of the nation’s food supply. Since very few voters were offended by the idea of agricultural research, there are very few Think Tanks funded to create papers to contradict those produced on behalf of the Archie and Danielle Agricultural Foundation.

Predictably, the politicians’ staffs read the papers provided by Archie and Danielle’s Think Tank and Archie and Danielle and their Foundation continued to give to politicians’ campaign funds. The legislature voted for increased funding and the Archie and Danielle Research Department got fat checks from the government each year.

After a while the Congress again had difficulty raising the money to continue to send those fat checks to Archie and Danielle. Because Archie and Danielle were so close to the legislature, their hands off tax deal still stood. The politicians raised Jack and Jenny’s taxes, but left Archie and Danielle’s shelters and new research subsidies in place.

Now that research began to pay off and Archie and Danielle got more productive harvests than ever in their existing fields. This temporarily lowered the price of grain putting further pressure on Jack and Jenny. Jenny began to get seriously worried. Jack assured her that he had been reading some of Archie and Danielle’s old research results and he thought he could increase Dad’s farm’s productivity as well. Jenny was skeptical but she acquiesced once again.

Jack’s efforts achieved the desired results. But unfortunately for Jack and Jenny, all their other 2000 - 4000-acre farming neighbors did the same thing and this, combined with the increased productivity on the Archie and Danielle mega-farm, had the effect of lowering the price of grain once again. Despite his increased yields, Jack and Jenny’s income dropped again. Jenny pointed out that they could no longer afford to keep the land they recently acquired. They would have to once again sell off a piece of the Granddad’s old farm. Jack was bitterly disappointed, but he did what he had to do. The only problem was that most of his small neighbors were in the same predicament. This time when Archie and Danielle were looking for more land they were offering only 25 cents on the dollar for the land for which Jack and Jenny had recently paid full price. Jack and Jenny took the hit and tried to make a go of Dad’s old holdings.

Archie and Danielle realized that the price of grain had not gone up in a while so they conceived a scheme that would once again inflate the price. They decided to export some of their grain abroad. But there was just one problem. Their foreign customer did not have the cash to pay for their grain. Then Archie and Danielle remembered their friends back in the legislature. The Archie and Danielle funded Think Tanks began crafting policy papers that argued that guaranteeing the loans of their foreign customer is good for Jack and Jenny and good for national security. The politicians agreed and they guaranteed the loans.

Now, customers buying on credit bought a lot more grain than people who paid cash, especially when their credit line was underwritten by a foreign power that could do little short of global destruction to ensure the payment of the notes. So predictably, the notes were defaulted on, and predictably they were renewed and new loans were regularly issued despite a continued lack of repayment by the foreign grain “buyer.” Under these circumstances Archie and Danielle managed to raise the price of grain and increase their holdings to over 2 million acres with subsidies coming in for 500,000 acres, the size of their original holdings. They had so much money they didn’t know what to do, so they decided to diversify. They were tired of having to listen to the bakers whine every time the price of grain went up, so Archie and Danielle began to buy bakeries.

Now, Archie and Danielle were truly gifted when it came to economies of scale, so events in the bakery industry began to resemble those in agriculture. Archie and Danielle’s mega-farm began to sell grain to its bakeries at a discount and the price of bread began to drop. This created buying opportunities in the bakery business for Archie and Danielle. They began to build mega-bakeries that employed hundreds of workers.

Archie and Danielle then went to communities all over the country and offered to create 500 new jobs in their areas. No local politician wanted to run for re-election as the person that turned down 500 new jobs in his burg. This was all the more true now that there are so many ex-farmers in the local workforce. Archie and Danielle guarantee the local burgesses that they could deliver the jobs with one little provision, a 20-year property tax abatement. Archie and Danielle pointed out that the village wasn’t getting anything at all right then and the new bakery would at least provide jobs. The Council concluded that no jobs and no tax revenue was worse than 500 new jobs and the corresponding sales tax revenues they would generate. After all, Archie and Danielle could put their bakery anywhere so they had a pretty good negotiating position from which to start.

Jack and Jenny had experienced a slight increase in their income due to the Archie and Daniel exports taking downward price pressures off the local grain market. But, due to the new school the county had to build for the children of the workers who moved to town to work in the bakery, the county has just reassessed their property value and raised it as well as their tax rate. Once again, Jenny was nervous. Jack assured her that the new jobs would be good for the community and he was confident somehow its benefits would trickle down to them.

As Archie and Danielle began to survey their agricultural and bakery empire, they noticed that their fastest growing and largest expense was now labor. They had persuaded the government, federal and local, to subsidize their various endeavors, but they realized that they couldn’t really go to their friends in the Legislature and ask the government to pay their workers’ wages. But Archie and Danielle were two astute observers of the circumstances going on around them, and they perceived an opportunity.

The indigenous workforce was not thrilled about being a wage laborer for Archie and Danielle on land they once owned. These workers would have liked to have been able to at least maintain the illusion of the opportunity to prosper, rather than fatalistically settling for subsistence. Hence as their taxes increased, they expected their incomes to keep pace and this was a nuisance for their employers, namely Archie and Danielle.

Archie and Danielle noticed that foreigners were coming across the border into the country illegally in search of work. These foreigners were generally hardworking good people who were fleeing desperate poverty, so any wage looked good to them. For Archie and Danielle the problems were two fold. First, these workers were technically illegal to hire. Second, there were not enough of them to replace their entire work force of ex-family farmers who did not come from such deprived backgrounds. They realized that the key to the solution to their problem lay in the term “illegal.” They remembered that their friends back in the Legislature could help them with matters like that.

Archie and Danielle’s Foundation began writing checks to their Think Tanks and voila -- the policy papers appeared on queue. The Legislature made border enforcement a low funding priority. Since the same governmental department oversaw the policing of the employment of illegal workers like those that Archie and Danielle would like to hire, the dynamic duo felt relatively sure that they could replace their more demanding workers with impunity. The occasional modest fines would be more than offset by tremendous economy in labor costs.

Jack and Jenny were horrified by their friends’ job losses at the Archie and Danielle mega-farm and bakeries. But they took some consolation in the fact that they still worked on Dad’s farm. Then Jack and Jenny got a call from the local taxman. He informed them that the arrival of the new immigrants required more schools and community services. Since the recent layoffs had decreased the tax roles, Jake and Jenny were going to once again have Dad’s farm reassessed and the tax rate raised as well. Jenny was aghast at how her burgesses could raise taxes when the local economy was doing so poorly. The council told her that they felt her pain, but since they could not tax the bakery, they had no alternative.

Meanwhile the ex-family farmers laid off by Archie and Danielle, could not find local employment, so those that could moved to the city. They were ill suited for city life and large numbers of them failed to prosper. They began to put strains on city services in their new locale much as the immigrants had done back in the country. The city’s Council was in much the same position as the rural one. So they went to their industrial working and middle class and raised their taxes with much the same explanation as the one Jenny received from her burgesses.

The new tax rates, combined with the fact that although bread was cheaper to make than ever, the price would occasionally rise 10% and then fall back 5% for no apparent reason, began to put serious strains on Jack and Jenny once more. What puzzled them was since they were not getting any more money for grain and the price of labor was lower the ever at Archie and Danielle’s bakeries, why was the price of bread going up? Is was not rising all at once like when Archie and Danielle first got into the farming business, so it did not create a solidarity of bread-eaters to march on the legislature. But it was going up nonetheless. The answer was obvious, Archie and Danielle owned most of the bakeries and they could set the price of bread surreptitiously without attracting undue attention from the Legislature. Archie and Danielle are nothing if not flexible, they had learned the virtue of patience.

After a few more years Archie and Danielle became billionaires several times over and they began to look for other opportunities besides farming and bakeries. They realized they were spending a fortune on farm equipment, delivery trucks, mixers and bakery ovens. So they applied their now tried and true formula to the manufacturing industry. The Foundations wrote the checks, the Think Tanks wrote papers and the Legislatures wrote laws. Working and middle-class taxes were raised once again, and Archie and Danielle continued to prosper beyond their wildest dreams. Unfortunately, it was not beyond their wildest ambitions.

They applied their same methodology to industry after industry until they had vertically integrated one supply chain after another. In a few short years their wealth grew to ostentatious proportions. This began to become a problem. People had begun to notice the rising prices as Archie and Danielle overtook industry after industry. Ordinary citizens had begun to protest the ever-increasing burden of taxes. The underemployed in the city and the landless in the country began to realize the amount of money that was going from the Federal and Local government coffers into the hands of the Archie and Danielle conglomerates. They began to decry the injustice of this and demanded their share of the public till.

Archie and Danielle had learned that the mere illusion of the opportunity could be a powerful incentive to both workers and local governments before, so they concluded perhaps more smoke and mirrors were required in this situation.

When Archie and Danielle inherited that first billion dollars all those years ago, they met a group of friends who had also inherited fortunes. These friends had remained with them for life and had been pursuing much the same business strategies as had Archie and Danielle. Predictably, they had achieved similar results. They now had a common problem with Archie and Danielle, namely the restless masses. Together Archie and Danielle and their handful of friends conceived a three-pronged strategy.

First they would have their respective Foundations write copious checks to their various Think Tanks to provide data on why there is a burning need to increase government spending for the growing underclass. They would publicly take credit for funding these studies so they appeared to be concerned for the underprivileged. This also, to some extent, reduced the popular stigma of their enormous wealth.

Second, the various Foundation funded Think Tanks proposed a new tax to be called an Inheritance Tax to pay for the added spending. Now this really was two for the price of none. The underclass was mollified because of promises of coming public relief. In addition, everybody now knew that Archie and Danielle and their friends used their inherited first billion dollars to gradually come to dominate the economy. So the public presumed that Inheritance Tax meant Archie and Danielle and their associates would be parting with large portions of the amassed stockpiles. It seemed obvious that finally the public coffers would see a return of some of the billions that had for years headed in one direction only. Jack turned to Jenny and said, “Finally, someone is going to put the breaks on Archie and Danielle.” Jenny wasn’t so sure. As usual Jenny was right.

Archie and Danielle had incorporated their vast business holdings many years earlier. Jack and Jenny even bought a dozen shares early on and they quadrupled in value from ten dollars a share to forty dollars a share leaving Jack and Jenny with a whopping $400 profit. As corporately held assets, Archie and Danielle’s operations were not subject to inheritance tax. Their liquid assets, as always, continued to be sheltered and their scions would inherit more money than Archie and Daniel could have imagined when they started out in life with their measly first billion dollars. So if Archie and Danielle weren’t going to pay to provide the revenue for the promised added programs, who would? By now I’ll wager the reader has detected a pattern in this fairy tale.

The third prong of the Archie and Danielle and Associates strategy was to launch a massive public relations campaign that conflated the concepts of “producer and retailer competition” with the illusion of “consumer choice” in the minds of the public. This had the effect of making Archie and Danielle’s predominant role in the economy look more opaque. Archie and Danielle began to come up with dozens of slightly different recipes for making bread and producing distinctly differently branded packages. Archie and Danielle’s friends did the same things with their products and before long the consumers had the impression that there were once again an innumerable host of bakers. Archie and Danielle then proceeded to break up their mega-farm into smaller parcels and give them different names. Their friends did the same and now once again, it appeared as if there were thousands of small farmers on the land. When some astute observers actually perceived the shell game, the Think Tanks once again cranked into action and reports were produced demonstrating that there was more of something called “consumer choice” than ever before. They pointed out that there were over a thousand independent bakers left in the country. Never mind the fact that there used to be 20,000, or that Archie and Danielle and their half dozen friends now shared 80% of the market in bread, leaving only the last ever-dwindling twenty percent to be divided up among the other 994 bakers for as long as they could survive.

Jack liked all his increased choices in the market. Jenny had noticed that, for the time being, the rise in the price of bread seemed to have slowed down. But Jenny was beginning to grow concerned about Jack’s father’s health. He was getting very old and she was worried about what they would do when he was gone. Jack presumed he would inherit the farm he had worked on all his life and that somehow they would continue to make do. Jenny was not so sure.

Jack’s father finally passed away and Jack and Jenny received a call from the taxman. He told them that after years of rising evaluations, their 2000 acres was now worth $I,000,000. They were shocked to hear they were technically millionaires. But the taxman went on to tell them that put Jack and Jenny in the top 5% bracket and they now owed $500,000 dollars in Inheritance Tax to be paid immediately. This was just what Jenny feared most. They protested that they did not have that kind of cash, but the taxman insisted that they sell their farm to raise it. Upon hearing this news Jack became depressed that he was going to be the one to finally lose the family farm. He was just glad his father was no longer alive to see it.

Jack and Jenny tearfully put their farm up for sale, but they were not alone in this dilemma. By now many of their neighbors with small farms were beginning to experience the results of the supposedly egalitarian Inheritance Tax law. Their tragedy was compounded by the fact that Archie and Danielle were now less interested in acquiring land than they once were, now that there were so many assets of all kinds to buy. They came to Jack and Jenny’s auction but despite the fact that they had been neighbors for years, Archie and Danielle offered Jack and Jenny only 10 cents on the dollar for the family farm. No one offered more, so Jack and Jenny were forced to accept.

The taxman explained to them that they still owed $400,000 but they protested that they could not pay. He suggested they declare bankruptcy. They had no choice. Jack and Jenny moved into a trailer park near one of Archie and Danielle’s bakeries and Jack went to work for Archie and Danielle as a delivery driver. They still could not make ends meet, so Jenny went down and applied for some of that government assistance the Inheritance Tax was supposed to provide. She was informed that since her husband was employed she was only eligible for a few dollars a month. When she inquired as to why it was so little, she was told that since farmers like her and Jack were unable to pay their full tax burden, the program was only partially funded. Jenny suspected that real explanation lay elsewhere.

Once again Archie and Danielle began to survey their vast holdings. Once again they discovered room for added efficiencies. This time they noticed that many of their customers were declaring bankruptcy and this was beginning to impinge on their collections rates. Now this amounted to less than 1/10 of 1% of their projected annual revenues. But by now Archie and Danielle’s annual revenue was around 100 billion dollars. 1/10 of that constituted $100,000,000 and that’s serious money, so they decided to take action. The Foundations started writing checks. The Think Tanks produced reports and the Legislature once again listened to Archie and Danielle. After all, those deadbeats should be made to pay their bills and with the $100,000,000 Archie and Danielle could create more jobs, sustain low retail prices, and provide more funds for research and development to produce yet better products. Now, any politician knows that a choice between job creation and deadbeats is a no brainer.

Jack and Jenny watched as one by one their neighbors fell on the same fate as had befallen the pair a few years earlier. Only their neighbors were forced to go to work for Archie and Danielle as indentured servants on their farms and in their bakeries. They felt sorry for their friends but there was little they could do to help and they were thankful that at least they still had their freedom.

Archie and Danielle were pleased with the results of their most recent strategy, so they chose to replicate it for yet further efficiencies. They noticed that the indentured servants were not as reliable as the low-paid almost free immigrant labor. This lead to mistakes in manufacture and the occasional ergot-enhanced batches of bread. The defective products and bad food caused Archie and Danielle to experience periodic sticker shock when they got sued. Now these lawsuits only made up 1/10 of 1% of their annual revenue. But Archie and Danielle’s annual revenue had by now grown to 200 billion dollars per year. 1/10 of 1% of that figure amounted to $200,000,000 and that’s serious money, I don’t care who you are. So they proceeded to take action. This time the Think Tanks required less funding as much of their work from the last project was applicable to this one, all the same arguments applied. Why should an unlucky schmuck become a lucky schmuck just for winning the lawsuit lottery? Those $200,000,000 could be put to better use to create jobs, stabilize prices etc. that would bring benefits to a wider group of people. Once again the Legislature obliged and caps were put on lawsuits. The caps were so low however and the costs of winning a suit against Archie and Danielle were so high, that few people decided to sue. Archie and Danielle had virtually no incentive to try to avoid producing defective products or dangerous food. So they laid off the illegal immigrants and let more of the work be turned over to their ever-increasing collection of indentured servants. The illegals moved to the city where services were already stretched beyond capacity and where the tax base had precipitously declined. There were no services left for them, and trouble began to brew.

Meanwhile, Jack was injured in a work related accident caused by the defective manufacture of the delivery van. There was no point in suing since there was no lawyer willing to take the case on speculation; as they knew there was little chance of winning against Archie and Danielle’s fleet of lawyers on retainer. Jack could no longer work, so for a while Archie and Danielle offered Jack and Jenny credit at the company bake shop. For a few months Jack and Jenny virtually lived on bread alone. They had a few tomato plants and some beans growing around the trailer so they managed to eek out a subsistence existence. Eventually Archie and Danielle called in Jack and Jenny’s debt at the company bakeshop. The impoverished couple were unable to pay, so Jenny went to work as an indentured servant for Archie and Danielle as her neighbors had done before. She figured that it would not last that long since it was only a few months worth of bread. She presumed that in a few months she would be back with Jack in the trailer.

Once again Archie and Danielle surveyed their domain with an eye for new efficiencies. This time they noticed that some of their indentured servants were beginning to work off the monetary value of their debts. Soon Archie and Danielle realized that they needed a way to keep this work force in place or they would have to start rehiring some of the more expensive illegal workers they had laid off. The added cost to their bottom line would amount to 1/10 0f 1% of their revenues. By now Archie and Danielle’s annual revenues amounted to 500 billion dollars. 1/10 of 1% of that figure is $500,000,000 and that’s a lot of money even to a politician. The Foundations wrote checks, the Think Tanks wrote policy and the Legislature listened. By now the politicians had come to completely rely on the Think Tanks for their information and most of the politicians could no longer remember things having ever been done differently. The new argument was as ingenious as those of past years. Archie and Danielle’s agents demonstrated that many of the indentured servants died before they paid their debts in full. Others’ productivity was lower than anticipated so they were fulfilling their term of service before the real value of their debts could be recouped. The Think Tanks proposed that high rates of interest be added to the debts to provide longer durations of servitude to make up for the overestimated productivity of the indentured. They suggested that 100% interest per anum should suffice. Now, faced with defending the interests of under producing deadbeat indentured servants and creating $500,000,000 worth of new jobs, price stability and newer better products, the politicians went with the obvious choice.

Some of the Legislators were beginning to wonder why no matter how many breaks they gave Archie and Danielle, the unemployment rate seemed to remain constant or rise slightly. This was because Archie and Danielle were not in fact creating new jobs with the added revenues. Instead they were using the money to buy up their remaining small and medium sized competition in virtually every sector of the economy. These consolidations produced yet further layoffs. Any politician that wondered too much about this out loud, found his opponent out spending him 10:1 in the next election, and his own political career was history.

Back at the bakery, Jenny was coming to the end of what she believed to be her indenture and she was looking forward to returning to the trailer with Jack. But one day Archie and Danielle came up to her and announced that she now owed interest service on not only the debt she incurred while in the trailer but on the cost of her bunk and the expense the company had incurred continuing to feed Jack and Jenny bread and water. She was appalled at what she heard, but had long ago ceased to be amazed at the audacity of Archie and Danielle. She asked what would happen if she refused to continue after she had fulfilled her original commitment. She was told in no uncertain terms that they would see that there was nowhere in town that would hire her and they would cut her and Jack off from the company store. Finally Archie and Danielle would turn Jenny into the authorities for prosecution of violation of the amended bankruptcy law.

Jack’s health had not fared so good after the loss of the farm. The accident had only accelerated his decline and Jenny was afraid that soon she wood be alone. She decided to talk it over with Jack, but he was little help. He could not understand how he, a substantial landowner and competent hard working farmer had come to be eating bread and water while his wife worked as an indentured servant. Jack thought his was the formula for success in a free market capitalist democratic system where the small businessman or farmer could prosper. What had gone so horribly wrong? Jenny explained to him that it had not been a free market system since Archie and Danielle came to town. They had step by step undermined the tax base, competition, quality, civil rights, and the democratic process itself. The rule of law was now little more than a fig leaf for the rule of Archie and Danielle and their half dozen friends. When Jenny finally laid it all out for him, it broke Jack’s heart.

Jack ultimately realized that the promise of prosperity became an illusion the day Archie and Danielle appeared. He came to believe his whole life had been futile and that now there was no hope for the future. He believed he was little more than a burden to Jenny. Jack was just one more source of debt to allow Archie and Danielle to keep Jenny in perpetual servitude. One day while Jenny was at the bakery Jack threw himself off the third tier of the bunkhouse. When Jenny returned after her 14-hour shift, she could not find Jack. Panicked, she grabbed each person she came upon and asked if they had seen her husband. Some had not. Some had, but were not sure it had been Jack that had jumped to his death, as this was a relatively common occurrence in this place. Others knew what had happened but did not have the heart to tell her. All night she worried and cried not knowing the whereabouts of her husband. The next day in the middle of her shift she saw Archie and Danielle, she asked them tearfully if they knew of the fate of Jack. Archie felt somewhat awkward at being put on the spot and he said to her, “Hasn’t anyone told you yet, I sent a memo. Jack jumped to his death while you were here yesterday. Now get back to work.”

Jenny was surprised at her own response. She was not shocked by the news, she had feared as much. Rather she was seething with fury. She had only retribution on her mind for how she was going to make Archie and Danielle pay for what they had done to her and her husband. The pair had no idea of the depth of her rage. If they had, they would not had cared, since they had long ago come to see her as less than a person. She was merely an unreliable fungible commodity. She decided right there that if it was money they worshipped, that is how she would get her revenge on Archie and Danielle.

She began to sabotage machinery around the bakery and she occasionally contaminated the dough to spoil the large batches the mega-bakery produced. But she could not do this often enough without getting caught to make a difference that Archie and Danielle could feel. So she began to enlist the aid of her fellow perpetually indentured servants. Much to her surprise they were not only willing, but were enthusiastic. Jenny began to develop an underground network at several bakeries and together they began to seriously affect Archie and Danielle’s bottom line. Needless to say, this did not go unnoticed by Archie and Daniel and, as usual, the dynamic duo swung into action.

By now Archie Jr. had grown up and gone into politics himself. He realized that it was by politics that the continued growth of his family wealth would be insured. Since there was no longer competition and all the workers were now indentured debtors for life, actually managing a business efficiently was no longer vital to the continued acquisition of wealth. Now the key was solely in the Legislature, and that is where Archie, Jr. headed. He put the Foundations and the Think Tanks to work to come up with a set of policies to eliminate his family’s losses from sabotage. They proposed that the sabotage represented a National Security threat so anyone guilty of suspicious behavior or of questionable associations should be rounded up by the government and detained without charge. Now when Legislatures are asked to choose between coming down on the side of saboteurs or National Security, well this is a no brainer as well. They passed the law and proceed in vast round ups of the servant class, but the sabotage continued unabated. In some areas it even increased.

Archie senior and Danielle were unimpressed with Jr.’s results so they began to look elsewhere for a solution. They looked across another ocean and saw a land where laborers could be made to work for a bowl of rice and a cup of water per day. Now the workers did not live as long on such meager rations, but there seemed to be an endless supply to replace those that died from exhaustion and starvation. What’s more, rice is cheaper to produce than bread because it requires no baking. Archie and Danielle approached the foreign government about opening factories and bakeries in their country. The rulers of that land liked the sound of new investment so they entertained Archie and Danielle. The couple once again assured the government employment for its populace on two conditions. They wanted to pay no taxes and they wanted to be able to summarily execute their workers if they were suspected of sabotage. Since the foreign leaders took a very dim view of sabotage themselves, as they had rather extensive experience in that arena, they too acquiesced to the demands of Archie and Danielle.

Archie and Danielle began to buy farms and factories of all kinds in the new land. They began to close factories and bakeries in the homeland but they retained control of the land. Now jobs were exceedingly scarce even for the indentured and almost anyone was willing to give up their liberty for a crust of bread and a little security. But the Archie and Danielle organization no longer needed servants in this country. This country was tapped out and they had a whole new continent to conquer. They threw Jenny out in her old age to fend for herself, but with no land to farm, no funded government programs to avail herself of, like Jack before her, Jenny’s health began to fail. Since food was no longer grown is the homeland and since Archie and Danielle would not relinquish their title to the vast lands they now possessed, food became scarce and only the young and the strong, or the cunning and the mean, could find enough to survive. Eventually Jenny succumbed to her inevitable fate.

That is the tale of how freeborn-citizen-family-farmers came to die miserable deaths as slaves at the hands of the Fascist state created by the ingenuity of Archie and Danielle. May the new contenants they attempt to devour fare better than Jack and Jenny’s did.

A Non-Hegelian Paradigm Shift Is Needed

2005-05-17T14:40:00.000-05:00

I checked out the Industrial Areas Foundation website. Most of what they propose sounds noble and I am inclined to support their stated goals. The site is a little superficial and opaque for my taste. I also suspect their non-partisan claim is, to say the least, overstated. Come on, COPS nonpartisan? It will be a cold day in Hell when that organization supports a conservative Republican of any stripe against a liberal Democrat, regardless of their respective qualifications.

Here in lies the rub, I suspect, for IDF. They seem to be an interfaith arm of the traditional Left. I am old enough to remember the fiasco of 30 years of the virtually uncontested rule of the Left, at least on domestic issues. Their lack of imagination and integrity as well as slavish, if closeted devotion to Marx, was a disaster. It was their very ineptness that caused the public reaction against their methods that led to what is euphemistically called the “Reagan Revolution.” This too was a “bait and switch” as Americans were promised a more Libertarian Free Market but delivered a more Totalitarian Oligarchical Fascism. In the process Social Justice became discredited by association with its advocates, and Social Darwinism was ironically masked in Evangelical Christian rhetoric in much the same fashion as Marxism had been cloaked in the rhetoric of Social Justice.

As the French say, “plus on change, plus se le mem chose.” I would be more interested in a bona fide paradigm shift. Today, much like in the Italy of the 1920’s and 30’s, the forces of Fascism and Marxism compete for our loyalties while both giving lip service to Hayek. In either scenario, our souls end up with Darwin and Nietzsche. Regardless of who wins, we lose. I reject both the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Dictatorship of the Oligarchs. I also reject the Undermench’s deification of the Self and Chuckey’s unnatural selection of the Fittest. I am less concerned with what we should do to make the world a better place and more concerned about what we should stop doing that makes it worse.

I favor the distribution of Liberty, and with it Power, to the smallest social units possible. I am comfortable with chaos and inherently distrustful of centralized organization and authority. The best politics may not be local, but the most Just invariably are. If we are individually accountable for our own actions, personal and social, then if there is evil in our world, it is our own fault and suffering its consequences is only Just. It is when we are ruled by “would be” Philosopher Kings from centralized bases of power that injustice prevails, regardless of the relative competence of our monarchs. Unfortunately but predictably, our dictators are rarely competent, whether they purport to serve the Prols or the Aristos. It is for this reason that I have historically declined to cast my ballot for either the acolytes of Karl or Benito.

For the time being, I will probably have to content myself tilting these respective windmills. Until a bona fide non-Hegelian paradigm shift presents itself, I will continue to assume the unwelcome duty of uncloaking wolves in sheep’s clothing.

How the Unthinkable Becomes Thinkable

2005-04-30T22:17:00.000-05:00

Flashback forty years. The year is 1965. A man comes up to you and says he has the ability to see the future. You are skeptical but curious so you hear him out.

You might have asked, “How will Politics look in America in 2005”
The prophet would have opined, “You might not recognize your government.”

Law will ban the public display of the Ten Commandments.

Conservatives will support the execution of children and the mentally impaired.

There will be over 3,000,000 people incarcerated in America and a liberal Democratic governor will pride herself on having a higher number of prison beds per capita in her state than the Peoples Republic of China.

Prisons will be privatized and run for profit while prisoners are used to process your personal banking information for companies that see the economic advantage of slave labor.

Many Conservative Christians will think homoerotic torture of Moslems is justifiable.

America will be the sole remaining superpower but we will still be demanding the increase of defense spending until we spend more on defense every year while at peace, than was spent in World War II to throw two superpowers off of three continents simultaneously.

America will have its troops permanently deployed in over 100 countries.

The Secretary of Defense will become CEO of one of the nations largest defense contractors, and then nominate himself for Vice-President of the United States.

A man who cannot even pronounce “nuclear” will have his finger on the button while simultaneously advocating a doctrine of first strike with nuclear weapons.

The president of the United States will look into the eyes of the former head of the KGB who is now the President of Russia announce that, “this is a man that can be trusted.”

The greatest abrogation of civil liberties in 230 years will be called The Patriot Act and it will pass a bitterly divided partisan legislature virtually unanimously.

The FBI will routinely check library records to determine if your reading habits make you a threat to national security.

Your house may be searched without the obtaining of a warrant or your knowledge.

Your phone may be tapped because you are six degrees of Kevin Bacon removed from someone who has caught the government’s interest.

There will be hundreds of people held in prison without warrant, habeas corpus, the right to counsel, or the knowledge of their families, let alone the knowledge of the public.

Biometric identification will become routine for cashing a check or getting on an airplane.

Joining a Civil Liberties organization will get you on a list of government subversives.

In order to save Social Security it will have to be destroyed.

A Clean Air Act will be passed that actually increases the allowable levels of industrial pollution.

You will no longer be able to drink water from the tap, but will instead buy it in little plastic bottles for a dollar a piece.

Laws will be passed prohibiting the spanking of children, but despite this child abuse will reach epidemic proportions.

Tougher sentences will be handed down for child molesters combined with chemical castration and the public notification of the residences of sexual predators, yet 10% of children will still be victims of sexual abuse.

You would have responded with horror exclaiming, “That sounds like Maoist China not the land of the free and the home of the brave. Enough about Politics, what will be the Economic condition of America in such a totalitarian system?”

The oracle might have offered the following description of the Economic fate of the United States in 2005:

5% of the population will own 95% of the wealth.

1% of the population will own 80% of the wealth.

Athletes will make more money than bank presidents, doctors, lawyers, or engineers.

One company will own 60% of the country’s radio stations.

Two companies will own 90% of the Newspapers in America.

90% of cities will have only one newspaper.

The minimum wage adjusted for inflation will decline by 75%

The company that made the Patton tanks will be owned by the company that made the Panzer tanks.

CEO’s will make $20,000,000/year despite their corporations never paying a dividend.

300,000 illegal immigrant per year will enter the United States and the President’s attitude will be “so what?” Anybody that has a problem with this will be branded a racist.

The United States will maintain a gulag in Cuba where they will detain people without trial or the protections of the Geneva Convention.

Most people will think that our government conspired to kill a President and not care.

The company that manufactured the Japanese Zero will be 50% owned by the company that made the model T.

General Motors' products will no longer even be competetive with Toyotas', Nissans' and Hondas'.

Corporations will import thousands of Engineers from India while simultaneously laying off tens of thousands of Americans with the same qualifications.

There won’t be a single factory making televisions in the United states while the country imports 40% of its TV’s from the allegedly Communist People’s Republic of China.

The median price of a house in America will be over $200,000.

Gasoline will be over $2.00/gallon, but women will still prefer driving four door pick up trucks to station wagons.

Conservatives will proclaim that 14 trillion dollar deficits don’t matter so long as they are run up by Republicans.

The federal government will pay the worlds largest AgroGiant $6,000,000,000 in subsidies in a single year to grow nothing, while at the same time fining them $2,000,000,000 during the same year for price fixing corn syrup.

Women will account for a majority of students on college campuses, they will make up almost 50% of the workforce and achieve virtual pay parody with men in the workplace, yet there will be a booming demand for breast augmentation.

There will be a rash of young men in $60 sneakers willing to murder for a pair of $200 sneakers.

Retirement packages for employees will essentially be eliminated and older workers will be laid off for cost savings.

Between the effects of illegal immigration and outsourcing Unions will be irrelevant.

Job security will become a thing of the past as all business risk is shifted to labor.

Corporations will get giant tax breaks to create more jobs, but will instead use the revenue to buy up their competition and lay off redundant workers.

Due to a majority of women coming into the workplace combined with fact then men did not come home to replace them, most children will be reared by strangers rather than their parents.

To this you would have responded, “That sounds likes Fascism, such a system would collapse under the weight of its own corruption. There must be some economic improvements in the future.”

To which he might have replied, “Well, sort of.”

Everyone over the age of twelve and under the age of fifty will know how to use a computer, but they will only use them to play games.

Almost everyone will be able to afford at least one television and most households will have at least two, but nobody reads and families no longer talk.

There will be 200 channels of crap to choose from on television, but still nothing to watch.

Every middle class family will be able to own the media production resources that were previously only the prerogative of a television network, but they will use them to make amateur porn.

The Internet will bring all the information in the world into your living room, although fewer people than ever will be curious enough to read it.

Homeownership will be higher than ever, but neighborhoods will be replaced by indistinguishable subdivisions where nobody knows their neighbors.

There will be more 18-lane freeways than ever, but they will always be clogged with traffic.

There will be more restaurants than ever, although they will all be national chains that serve tasteless artery clogging fare.

You will be able to find everything you want in a single store, but you will no longer be able to compete as a sole proprietor

Most families will have at least two cars, but they will cost $25,000 a piece and you won’t be able fix them yourself.

Interest rates will be lower than ever, but family debt will reach astronomical proportions and bankruptcies will become commonplace.

The stock market will reach record highs, although accounting will be bogus.

Disappointed with his prognostications thus far, you might have wondered about the state of the Educational system.

The soothsayer might have characterized Academe thusly:

In educational achievement America will be ranked 17th behind Poland and Latvia.

The pledge of allegiance in schools will be controversial.

Self-directed Bible study for high school students will be controversial but homosexual student clubs will not.

The principle problems faced by school administrators will be spree shootings on campus, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, belligerent parents, and litigation.

The Hispanic private school educated son of a brain surgeon will be viewed as underprivileged for the purpose of entering college, while the Anglo public school educated son of a coal miner will be viewed as privileged in the same context.

It will be widely taught at university that the Greeks stole their philosophy from the Egyptians, who were incidentally black.

Every university in the country will start a Gender Studies program but not a single one will hire a heterosexual male to teach a course in the program.

A heterosexual white male graduating from an Arts program at university will be rarer than a black woman in a hood at a Klan rally.

The average price of attaining a bachelor’s degree from a private university will be well over $100,000.

The average student matriculating with a bachelor’s degree from a state university will graduate over $40,000 in debt at 22 years of age.

To which you would have inquired, “surely there must have been some progress in the pursuit of knowledge.”

The Auger would have responded, “That depends on which side of the campus you are on.”

Science and technology have made tremendous strides, but the Classical canon has been deleted from the curriculum due to its patriarchic Euro-centric focus and lack of perceived relevance.

In light of contemporary concerns you might have inquired about the advancement of minorities.

The medium might have projected the following regarding the plight of African Americans in 2005:

The majority of black children will be born out of wedlock

The number one cause of death for black men will be murder.

Despite the Voter’s Rights Act one third of black men will be legally disenfranchised of their suffrage and the NAACP won’t care.

To which your reaction would have been, “Surely we must have made some progress on the Racial Equality front?”

The visionary would reply, “After a fashion there’s been some progress.”

More minorities will register to vote then ever, but they will all vote the same.

A black man can become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Secretary of State, but not President, even though everyone prefers him to the other candidates.

A black woman can become a Congresswoman from California, but not the Democratic nominee for President, even though the actual nominee cannot maintain a coherent train of thought.

Thanks to Affirmative Action more minorities than ever get into college, but due to society’s neglect of inner city schools, most of them don’t graduate.

You might have decried that lamentable remnants of Racism, but then asserted,“surely our values would see us through such crises.”

But then the astrologer described the Sexual Morality of America at the turn of the millennium:

More middle-class white girls will become pregnant out of wedlock than the current percentage of poor black girls in the same position.

Drag queens will march in the streets with police protection and the mayor leading the parade.

Homosexuals will demand the right to marry and adopt children, and opposition to this will be viewed by a majority of the population as bigotry.

Pornography will become a multi billion-dollar industry and be available in everybody’s living room by simply turning on the television.

The most popular songs on the radio will be songs that refer to women as bitches and whores, and girls will like it.

Adolescent girls will believe that if they only engage in oral and anal sex this makes them virgins.

Condoms will be distributed to school children as part of sex education, but discouraging anal intercourse among same sex partners will branded as Hate Speech.

There will be a national organization of pedophiles called National Association of Man Boy Love and Catholic priests will be lining up to join.

Having a lethal sexually transmitted disease will make you a member of a protected class.

The most powerful Information dissemination tool in human history will be created and it will be principally used to provide stimulus for masturbation.

Women will achieve sexual liberation and become as promiscuous as men, but 25% of them will report that they are victims of sexual assault.

One in four people at college will have a sexually transmitted disease.

Unmarried men will have more sexual access to unmarried women than ever before and simultaneously the use of date rape drugs will become more prevalent than ever

More than half of marriages will end in divorce.

More than half of children will be raised in single-parent families.

Half of all fathers will have children they rarely see.

Despite the presence of women in the workforce, more children will be raised in poverty.

Due to advancements in pharmaceutical treatments for erectile dysfunction, men in their sixties will be having more intercourse than ever before. Due to the Internet, more men in their twenties will be forgoing intercourse in favor of masturbation than before the sexual liberation of women.

Due to artificial insemination, it will become common for lesbian couples to bear children without the hassles of men.

Unmaried homosexuals will sue each other for alimony.

The term “glory hole” will come to refer to blowing something other than glass.

The term “gay” will come to refer to a bitter lonely old man.

Rock Hudson prefers boys.

You would have been appalled to discover that the United States had become Gomorrah. But maybe our value for the Sanctity of Life will have remained. Unfortunately the time traveler would have disabused you of so naive a notion. Medical Ethics will be reduced to utilitarianism.

Abortion will be not only legal but ubiquitous, with more than 60,000 pregnancies terminated per year in this country alone. Opposition to abortion will be equated with misogyny.

Infanticide will be a widely accepted practice.

Babies for rich women will be made in test tubes while 75% of the fetuses are thrown away.

Fetuses will be become a biomedical commodity sold for the purpose of healing chronic diseases of the elderly.

To oppose euthanasia of the severely handicapped will be viewed as cruel.

People who oppose vivisection and the eating of meat will demand euthanasia and abortion on demand.

The sale of human organs will become a black market revenue stream.

More than 40% of the population will suffer from some sort of chemical dependency.

Some women will be paid serrugates to bare other womens' children.

A category called transgender will emerge and a surgical procedure called sex reassignment will be widely prescribed by physicians as a therapy for a mental disorder.

Eugenicists will decide there are two many brown people in the world and will engage in mass sterilization programs throughout the under developed countries. This will be viewed as humanitarian activity.

The son of the head of Planned Parenthood will become the richest man in the world.

Your 13 year old daughter will not be able do attend a school field trip to the Buttercrust Bakery without a signed parental consent form, but she will be able to get an abortion without your knowledge. If you have a problem with this then you will be considered a misogynist.

To which you would have responded, “This sounds like NAZI Germany. Who is the Surgeon General, Dr. Frankenstein? Surely there must be some positive advances in the medical field”

To which our seer would have responded,

Medicine will achieve miraculous cures, but you won’t be able to afford health insurance.

In desperation you wonder how this could have happened to such a religious nation. The Apollonian reveals that Religion no longer sways the hearts of man, as he now does whatever is right in his own eyes.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will stand up on Easter and denounce the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the Virgin birth, the Resurrection, the concept of Hell, and the inerrancy of scripture while simultaneously advocating the ordination of lesbian bishops.

60% of young Catholic seminarians will be self-avowed homosexuals, and the Church will not view this as a problem because they’re not supposed to have sex anyway.

Organized religion will be reviled but something called "spirituality" wil be reveared.

Jimmy Swagert will make miilions of dollars and then confess his adultery after reading about it in the paper.

He will be followed by others as bad.

There will be something called The Christian Broadcast Network that broadcasts banal theological pablum to white trash. It will be the only place on 200+ channels where religion will ever appear.

Chritian Contempoary music will sound like a less competent version secular music.

A Christian artist will be someone who paints a field of bluebonnets and then puts Matt. 5:18 at the bottom.

Evengelical Christians will come to believe that the secularists were right about them. Intellectualism will indeed become antithetical to their faith. So they will abandon critical thinking entirely. Instead relying on sentimentality and obsessive prudery as a means of coping with a decadent majority culture.

The founder of the largest television news network will charaterize Christianity as "a religion for losers."

Fundamentalism will become intimately associated with party of Goldwater, Nixon and Rockefeller.

Some Christian fundamentalists will avidly pray for war in Israel in order to accelerate the Rapture.

Some Jewish fundamentalists will avidly pray for war in Israel to accelerate the arival of the Messiah.

Some Islamic fundamentalists will be willing to blow themselves up in icecream parlors in order to meet 75 virgins.

Being a reformed Jew will mean you will probably marry a gentile.

Most people will no longer believe in God, but instead believe in the Divine potential of Man.

Euro-arabia will become a quasi-ethnic-religous-social-geographic construct that will facilitate Islam's reconquest of Europe through mutual antisemitism.

Houses of worship will be infiltrated by government agents to determine if doctrine taught there meets approved government standards.

Incredulous you wonder, “How did this happen to Western Civilization?”

The Athenian answers, “one step at a time.”
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Jack and Jenny’s Is Not the Only Fairytale

2005-04-19T00:35:00.000-05:00

Dave at DeadCantRant recently published an intersting Socialist Fairy tale I suggest everyone check out. In response to Dave's post here is another fairytale that for some may seem a little Grimm.

Socialism is indeed a bait and switch driven by covetousness rather than a drive for social justice. But the fairytail is that the the principal way wealth is redistributed by the state in this country is from the wealthy to the poor. In fact, the truth is far more perniscious. .

The real direction of wealth redistribution is from Jack and Jenny ie. the middle-class, to the incredibly wealthy. The Federal government spends fortunes on insidier contracts to conglomerates like the Carlyles Group that never go out to bid . It spends billions and billions every year paying subsidies to companies like Archer Daniels Midland to not grow corn. Simmultaneusly through inheritance taxes, that are not paid by those with incredible liquid wealth that is more effectively sheltered, the government drives family farmers out of business who must sell off their family land at firesale prices to the aformetioned ADM. The agro-giant then collects yet more subsidies for not growing on the newly aquired land. That ADM buys Jack and Jenny’s farm with money these family farmers just paid the government as they look for a new livelihood, just ads insult to injury. The Federal government provides yet more billions for large infrastructure projects like power plants and highways to companies like Brown and Roote and H. B. Zachery who have virtual monopolies on the services they offer. Much is made of the fact that the upper 5% pay over 90% of the taxes colected nationally, but little is made of their foundations, trust funds, tax shelters and off-shore accounts that they use to avoid paying the bulk of what they actually owe.

Locally, the City government intends to pay inflated prices to land speculators to discourage development over the aquifer. They recently signed a contract to pay an individual consultant more than $30,000 per month to help the City fix its already overbudget IT infrastructure. They paid construction contractors $179,000,000 to build a basketball areana for the not so middle-class Mr. Holt and named for the oligarchical SBC. A few years earlier they spent $160,000,000 for a “dome for no reason” other than the lucrative oportunity it offered its builders. They now propose to pay millions to upgrade it and millions more to national league soccer for the privilege of occaisionally having someone in the dome besides maintenance personel.

The problem is one whose name neither of the major political parties dare speak. There is a word for a system in which government subsidized privately held monopolies and oligopolies are regulated and contracted by the state. Invariably, in such a system there is always a revolving door between the management of these companies and the government that enables and oversees them. With that revolving door comes conflicts of interest, waste of resources and with them an inevitable distrust of government and corporations. What is the technical economic term for that status quo system which none dare speak? Fascism.

Until socialist leaning Democrats and lassez faire capitalist leaning Republicans are both willing to acknowledge that they have promised their constituencies one thing and delivered another, the status quo will remain.

If Jack and Jenny had owned billions of loaves of bread made from government subsidized wheat, grown on tax abated land purcahased at firesale prices, harvested by workers whose wages were depressed by governmentally tolerated illegal immigration, baked in an oven purchased with a government grant, and distributed in a delivery van fueled by war subsidized gasoline, while their neighbors had been regulated and taxed out of business; and if all this took place while Jack and Jenny had been sheltering their incredible liquid wealth in trusts and off-shore accounts, they might have felt they could spare a few biscuits.