At a talk on Pakistan I recently attended, after one member of the audience asked the speaker whether Islamic terrorism could be banished by dealing with the “root causes of violence”, i.e. poverty and disenfranchisment, the speaker paused thoughtfully and replied that it was not necessarily the case. For example, he said, the perpetrators of many of the most notorious terrorist attacks were well-educated (often Western educated) and prosperous individuals. They were doctors and engineers, not impoverished graduates of madrassas who were (he added parenthetically) more poorly represented in terrorist leadership than one would think. In 2005, the Hoover Institute challenged the conventional wisdom that prosperity automatically brought freedom in a Bruce Bueno de Mesquita article entitled “Development and Democracy”.
To understand how authoritarian regimes manage this trick, it helps to understand the concept of strategic coordination … Threading this needle is difficult but not, as it turns out, impossible. Gradually, through trial and error, oppressive regimes have discovered how to suppress opposition activity without totally undermining economic growth by carefully rationing a particular subset of public goods—goods that are critical to political coordination but less important for economic cooperation. By restricting these goods, autocrats have insulated themselves from the political liberalization that economic growth promotes.
By trimming their attacks around the public’s core pocketbook, autocrats have found a way to pare away the freedoms while keeping the public in the earning/consumption mode. The article continues:
Examples of this strategy abound, including these cases during the past three years. China has periodically blocked access to Google’s English-language news service and recently forced Microsoft to block words such as freedom and democracy on the Microsoft software used by bloggers. Those moves were only the latest in a long line of Chinese restrictions on Internet-related activity, running the gamut from creating a special Internet police unit to limiting the number of Internet gateways into China. In Russia, meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin has placed all national television networks under strict government control. In October 2003, he engineered the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of his most prominent critics; a highly visible prosecution followed.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez pushed through a new law in December 2004 allowing him to ban news reports of violent protests or of government crackdowns and to suspend the broadcasting licenses of media outlets that violate any of a long list of broadly phrased regulations. And in Vietnam, the government has imposed strict controls on religious organizations and branded the leaders of unauthorized religious groups (including Roman Catholics, Mennonites, and some Buddhists) as subversives.
Each of these cases has involved the restriction of what might be called coordination goods—that is, those public goods that critically affect the ability of political opponents to coordinate but that have relatively little impact on economic growth. Coordination goods are distinct from more-general public goods—transportation, health care, primary education, and national defense—which, when restricted, have a substantial impact on both public opinion and economic growth.
The recent Federal Government economic interventions, as exemplified in TARP and the Chrysler bankruptcy, have highlighted the question of how far you can choke the goose without keeping it from laying the Golden Egg. It turns out that at the margins freedom in the West has a surprisingly low price, in part I think because its citizens think they can never lose all of it. But maybe it isn’t a given either, any more than the idea that more freedom always comes with a bigger paycheck.
Sandy Birdler Arrested at LAX
“Root causes” are a sham. They don’t exist. You can’t sprinkle a country with poverty and disenfranchisement and heat to 400 degees to get terrorism. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t.
There are terrorists in Ireland. There are terrorists in Spain. Are these countries poor?
Violence is caused by leaders who convince people to fight. There are always reasons. Tim McVeigh found them here. There may be more people willing to listen if conditions are bad, maybe, but bad conditions by themselves don’t seem to cause violence. Africa isn’t overflowing with international terrorism.
People decide to fight, then justify it with “root causes.” The desire to fight comes first. That’s the root cause.
So, if you make fighting harder, or impossible, the “root cause” goes away. Most insurgencies end not with better conditions, but with control of violence. When Pakistan was peaceful, it wasn’t because people were less poor. It was because the state still functioned enough to control violence. Now it can’t.
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W,
I am really looking forward to this thread. You have chosen a tremendously timely topic with an abundance of real world examples that have had sufficient time to reach a fair degree of maturity. The USA of course is in a political pyroclastic phase but the cast is in place and the initial direction set. Should be one heck of a discussion.
I believe at first blush the question will be reduced to at what price can you buy off the US populations freedoms?
You only get a populace that defends it’s freedoms when everyone benefits from doing so.
The revolution (it’s not really revolutionary, the Babylonians and Egyptians had this formula) among Liberals was to make suppression of the ordinary people profitable to the “priestly caste” … the biggest twist being that which advantages women, the natural biggest demographic slice in democracies.
If you look at PC for example, women are it’s enforcers because it gives them power and takes it away from their rivals (ordinary men). Chavez and China are the more brutalist spoils systems part of repression, but in the West the main enforcers of limiting freedom and imposing what Steyn calls the “soft police state” are women.
To take one example, look at the anti-gun movement (dominated and led by women) and the pro-gun movement (mostly rural White Males).
The United States up through the 1960′s had most people closely tied to each other’s freedom through opportunity. The Great Society revolution allowed in particular Women, mostly White Women, to make spectacular economic and social advances through suppressing the freedoms of White Men. This was possible by demographic changes (few women marry, most marriages are temporary) and the rise of the coastal, urbanized, Yuppie elite.
In poorer, less developed places like Venezuela or Cuba or China, brutal thugs use patronage to construct a Mafia-like enforcement mechanism. In the West, it’s naked appeals to Women and SWPL Yuppies that make their positions better by making their cultural and economic enemies poorer.
The latter is more effective since the direct patronage requirements are less. Chavez will fall, for example, to be replaced by another guy just like him, if he can’t pay his thugs. China will break apart if they cannot maintain patronage payments to their goons and provincial leaders. In the West, the enforcement is self-sustaining.
I think the key is figuring out how to drive people’s cultural expectations.
The people of China have never known much freedom and if you keep them from knowing of more then you can control what they expect.
A woman walking home alone at night probably feels much safer if her city has strict gun control; that the reality is the exact reverse and that she would be better off with a Glock rather than a whistle in her purse never occurs to her.
No citizen in the U.S. was clamoring for GPS; industry experts and Congressmen were saying such a system was useless, but almost as soon as it became available private citizens and special interest groups were screaming because they did not have access to the full accuracy of the military equipment.
In this same manner, the insidious thing about the Obama creeping socialism is that it strangles the baby in the crib. It is not so much that people come to expect handouts from the government as it is that they come to expect being kept down as a cultural norm.
Aldous Huxley, from an updated forward (1945-1952-ish) to “Brave New World” (interestingly about the same time “1984″ was written) (sorry, kind of long but no link available):
“Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment, and mass deportation, is not mererly inhumane, …it is demonstrably inefficient, and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers…
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth…By simply not mentioning certain subjects…totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more efficiently. …
The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored enquiries into …”the problem of happiness” – in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude. Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence;…”
lc @ 7: Great quote! I like the singling out of newspapers and schoolteachers, which are now the first line of defense of Leftthink in the West.
I’ve always thought (without proof) that the reason the West developed its liberal (small l) doctrines of freedom and free enterprise during the Enlightenment was because of the rise of the Middle Class. The West created a class of wealthy merchants without direct ties to the nobility that eventually developed more power than the nobility. Wealth, and the protection and nurturing of wealth, trumped Governance. So the progression toward freer and wealthier societies, IMHO, is not created by democracy, as is popularly supposed; but rather wealth – broadly based wealth, not vast wealth in few hands (e.g., Saudi Arabia) – is a prerequisite for democracy. A critical plurality of the populace must have as its primary motivation the creation & preservation of wealth in order for liberal (small l again) democracy to thrive. This theory makes me cautiously optimistic about the fate of coutries like India and, to a lesser extent, China, though both have enormous problems to overcome, mostly with respect to their stupendous populations. But I’m horribly pessimistic about Russia, Africa, and the Middle East. And America, too.
The quickest way to destroy democracy, conversely, is to destroy (or overwhelm) this class of wealth-creators. Oddly enough (!), that’s exactly the policy that Obama and his crew of thugs is promoting. If America is forced to stay Obama’s course, he’ll convert America from a wealthy liberal democracy into a gray, blasted third-world wasteland. It doesn’t even matter whether the political mechanisms for freedom remain in place or not; the activation energy to encourage freedom by encouraging greater wealth just won’t exist. Of course, he trumpets all this “progress” as the way forward to a brighter future. I still haven’t decided yet whether he’s incompetent or evil, or possibly both.
8. ForFood:
I’m thinking he’s both.
His fiscal policy of “stickin it to the man” has never worked. In fact, it’s been a disaster every time it’s been tried. That’s stupidity personified (include Geitner, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd, et al).
His lack on compassion for anybody, including his family, qualifies him as evil. I challange anybody to show me an example of Obama helping anybody but himself.
Habu writes: “I believe at first blush the question will be reduced to at what price can you buy off the US populations freedoms?”
That’s a good way to put it.
The mainstream press (and I’ll include academia in this category) sells itself for sinecures, and the attending prestige of the position. Obama must keep the mainstream press and academia as his supporters.
The left sells itself for power, having very little besides power to further its aims. Most Christianity is now of the left and post-Christian, having decided that, along the lines of liberation theology, the state has the most efficient means to accomplish the mandates of Christian charity, even if the charity involves uncharitableness to some (e.g., the costs to third world incurred via cap and trade that will result in suppression of economic exchange and growth, or the costs of illegal immigration on domestic job markets). So a large part of the left and center left is in the bag, quite willingly.
The rich sell themselves, most prominently in the financial markets, to big incomes and bonuses. Being also post-Christian, they generate meaning via social justice political action, thus securing profits and fulfillment. Include in this group the children of the rich, who live in an environment of privilege.
What the heck, throw in Whiskey’s analysis of gender politics. That’s another big block, whether defined in his terms or more politically correct ones.
So that still leaves a very big middle, which is experiencing a squeeze and diminishing prospects. Much of this middle group has family, home, and work to worry about, not to mention neighbors and relatives who are in the other categories of people, above. There’s not much time to resist in any significant way. Tea parties are significant, but families don’t like much to demonstrate on street corners. The big middle perhaps still identifies with archaic icons of virtue such as Atticus Finch and George Bailey, of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.”
lc quotes Huxley: “Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence . . .” The big middle loves traditional values but also increasingly loves security, and so health security will have much appeal, as in Europe. In Denmark the ideal social characteristic is “cozy.”
I recall the Gary Larson cartoon of the dinosaur convention: “The climate is cooling, the mammals are reproducing, and we have brains the size of walnuts.”
There’s always scarcity and paring around pocketbooks. That’s why economics is the ‘dismal science.’ But a simple test to apply regarding a government’s intention is to ask whether it is aiming to expand freedom, in the complex sense of, say, Catholic social doctrine: concern for the poor and the defenseless, respect for workers, a living wage, support for families, and attention to creation of an ever-widening circle of prosperity. And there is no ever-widening circle of prosperity without the fire of invention and free enterprise.
Just as before, America will come to a crossroads. I fear it will be bloody. But at its core it will revolve around the dismantling of the constitution. The very one military members are sworn to protect and defend? So which side will our military stand on I ask you? The left should take note of how efficiently we deal with enemy combatants elsewhere before pushing our buttons at home. I sincerely hope we regain our sanity before it goes that far. I too have liberal friends and family- just like confederates had yankee cousins. God, I hope my worst fears do not come true.
I believe at first blush the question will be reduced to at what price can you buy off the US populations freedoms?
In the US, the general rule has been you can’t buy off people’s freedoms. But if you sucessfully demonize some particular group, you can get people to willingly trample the demonized group’s rights. Get that ball rolling and then it’s just a matter of lining up enough demonized groups and turning the screws. Sooner or later everyone is part of some unfavored group. Or, we’re all hatemongers now.
Alinksy figured this out. Maybe it’s time to demonize him. And his followers.
I’m not convinced that we have massive amounts of people in this country who are willing to give up their freedom for security.
Many who support Obama and what he is doing don’t understand the hole he’s digging for all of us. They follow current events on a very “executive summary” type of level, if they follow them at all. Since the executive summary is favorably produced by the media, they have a favorable or at least cautiously optimistic approach to the current administration. Let’s give them a chance, is their thinking.
They won’t equate something like what is happening to the Auto companies bondholders with any particular loss of freedom – they think of it as fatcats who wrongly profited by financial shenanigans, and who are now getting something they deserve.
For the last 30 years or so whoever is in power has been castigated unmercifully by the outs. Think of the Bush is Hitler meme. To the average, apolitical citizen, the current complaints about Obama are more of the same white noise they’ve been hearing for years. Think of the boy who cried wolf.
They haven’t chosen security over freedom, because they don’t realize they need to make this choice. It’s always a balancing act between the two, but many think you can have as much of both as you want. Just like many think that rewards should be plentiful, and risk non-existent. Our entire educational and governmental establishment have been pushing this idea for years, so it’s no wonder so many subscribe to it.
The popularity of the Obama administration, such as it is, can be linked to the Governments ability to simultaneously provide total security with total freedom, and rewards without the messy risk factor. This can’t be done indefinately, and I think Obamas actions are actually bringing the day of reckoning closer. We’ll see how popular the approach of the Obama administration is once this becomes apparent.
Many in this country don’t know much about politics or current affairs, but I think most of them have a basic common sense and once something becomes clear to them they will deal with it in an appropriate way.
The problem for those, like myself, on the other side of the Obama divide, is that at present there is no credible alternative to the DEMS. The GOP is hopeless, yet I see people even on the BC board here acting like if only the GOP got back in power, we would be able to save the situation. It’s gonna take something other than that.
If the country does descend into this pit, it’ll be because the opposition is so fractured and mired in failed assumptions that it could provide nothing worth consideration.
Revolutions do not come from the poor and disenfranchised. They always have educated leadership. The poor is ginned up to provide mob violence.
The poor and downtrodden are often that way because they do not have will to fight and succeed. They will join mobs because they are helped by the mob emotion to fight and destroy. That doesn’t take much thinking.
Sabotage takes more intelligence and ability. That is why the better killers are educated, they can think their way out of problems. They can plan the operation themselves.
The middle class wants to protect its ability to create wealth and the large middle class in America will have to realize their wealth creation ability is being threatened before they will react. The people that attend the tea parties are just those people who generally work and create wealth on the small size. Not the leaders of corporate America that generate wealth on the large size who figure they can buy the legislature and use government to favor themselves in the classic oligarchy fashion.
Obama had made several large errors. The stimulus bill and subsequent actions against Chrysler and the hedge funds have angered two disparate and large classes of wealth producers. The Tea Parties are an uprising on the small business class and workers in corporate America. Also those Tea Parties are the same class that is buying guns and ammo at an accelerating rate.
The oligarchs have to become aware that Obama is targeting private property and capitalism by demonizing the bondholders and stealing away their contractual rights to secure property via bankruptcy. If most have not figured it out, they will soon. Those people are not dumb and this blatant attack has to wake them up. They realize that surrendering to Obama will not be in their best interest by the example of the Tarp banks enslavement.
The lawyer class by DOJ stumbling move that they can be criminally liable for opinions also know that danger is there.
So we have the financial world and corporate America realizing that Obama is at war with them. The lawyers are also under attack and the middle class is being squeezed.
None of these classes are uneducated despite what the elite media believes. Most middle class is very well educate, even if they don’t want to pay attention to other than their business and family. But they are aware now and are taking stock of what they need to protect them.
I would be very wary of the fact that 3.5 million weapons were sold in the last 3 months of 2008. That is enough to arm the Chinese army. The reasons people bought does not matter but it means that the means to violently resist is out there and ammo is hard to come by. American is innovative and reloading is old skills and can be relearned quickly.
The blue color or trade workers have a lot of skills that can be used and we American do not have the mentality to sit down and be raped. The elite in the cities may be pacifist but the pacifist rarely stays that way once violence happens.
The suppression of American depends on soft power and Obama has moved too fast and pissed off too many powerful sections of society. He is only as strong as he is supported and that will change very soon.
Tea party people are going to attend local city meetings and pressure their state and federal representative. Lawyers will start to file suits. Corporate America will pressure their lobbyists and the more willing federal house representative and Senators. Security suits will start to proliferate. We still have laws and they have been ignored not eliminated. The judiciary is still in place.
Political power will start to shift since politicians want to be reelected. The change in party of Specter is part of that. He betrayed his party and voted for a stimulus bill that just pissed people off. He will end as a politician. He is just the first and not the last. Dodd will go and Barney Frank is in danger and all the new Blue Dogs are getting worried.
I doubt that this will get to be a shooting war but the threat of that will be more obvious. The DHSS report recognized that, but it backfired.
Very large mistakes in Obama strategy to subvert the capitalism of America.
I think private property is essential to the vitality of a well functioning democracy. We all want economic security, but when security eliminates all risk the connection between action and consequences is broken, or distorted. That connection is an important link to the “real” world, which is fundamental to how and what we learn, and to how we ultimately act. Take that away and our understanding of the “real” world, where consequences and responsibility have no meaning, is severely distorted, and easily manipulated.
Just like another pet peeve of mine, the destruction of language (distortion of meaning); a favorite, Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (Newspeak being an extreme extrapolation)….meaning no longer has any meaning and we cannot think “wrong thoughts”. We can’t think, period. “We have always been at war with Oceania…”
This recession is restoring the link between action and consquences. People are feeling protective of their money and resent Obama flagrant spending of their future and their chldren and their children childrens futures spending our money.
The only solution is to rescind this spending bills, that nneds to be done soon. Otherwise the US will go into default in a decade or so.
My fear is that the US Treasury will go into defult because Obama does not understand basic economics. Money is totally abstract to him.
RAH #17 “This recession…”
You might call it “an inconvenient truth”.
“A New Foundation”, from what I see so far, is chilling in its implications. The goal has not really been clearly enunciated, only reasonably and glibly painted as “just” and “fair”….this cannot go on for long.
@15 RAH,
You mention the 3.5 million guns purchased since November, add that to the 80 million (or so) guns already in the country. These are largely owned by people of a decidedly more conservative nature. I’m pretty sure that there are far more firearms per capita in central Ohio than in Upper Manhattan.
More importantly, there are far more people that know how to use firearms outside the Land of the Lotus-Eaters than there are inside it. Another interesting feature is the simply staggering amount of ammo that has been purchased, even during the Clinton gun-banning years ammo didn’t ever become this hard to find.
Our Leftist cities have spawned a class of people that look to the government for everything, including permission to enjoy their Constitutional Rights. Perhaps living in a city where everything comes from somebody somewhere else conditions people to accept this sort of thing. Fifty years of Great Society teat-sucking hasn’t helped much either. A sort of learned helplessness has taken over in Blueland.
Fortunately the area occupied by Blueland is tiny compared to Redland (or Jesusland as some of the Libs like to call it). A glance at the map shows the islands of Blue insanity standing in a sea of Red productivity. Sadly, there are enough votes in Blueland to win control of the government and the occupants of Blueland would gladly surrender their rights to the all-powerful, and ever so generous, government to get their daily dose of cable TV and free food. All at the expense of the Redlanders, of course.
The real question is this; When the Golden Goose realises that the Bluelanders aren’t happy just stealing the Golden Egg what will happen next? To me it looks like a “Three Conjectures” sort of situation but all of the outcomes are in the “Bad” to “Clearly Disasterous” category.
Islam as it’s taught and practised is the root cause of all Islamic terrorism, it’s written and condone in the Muslims holy book by their supernatural all powerful and blood thirsty god.
Huxley: “Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence . . .” The big middle loves traditional values but also increasingly loves security, and so health security will have much appeal, as in Europe. In Denmark the ideal social characteristic is “cozy.” (thanks Mark)
There is an condition that exists in the US that has never before had the dimensions it has in todays word but plays a HUGE role in the positioning the middle class, the great big middle class, into their “cozy” contentment. Drug useage.
Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the uS today. NOTHING COMES CLOSE. But to top that there is still a multi billion dollar market for ganga imports. The “Drug War” has been going on since the Nixon administration and has been a huge failure.
Cocaine, the bain of our our exisitence to read the press is imported into the US in every imagineable way from being cast as vases to slipping by our SOSUS in rudimentary submarines.
Follow these up with meth, Rx drug abuse and it becomes impossible to point a finger at the importers and say it’s their fault. If GM had the kind of demand illegal drugs do in this country we wouldn’t be discussing their collaspe. The demand is here and “”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Our demands are simply being filled by entrepreneurs.
I would easily bet that everyone on this site knows a drug taker or drug user. It’s the middle class price we gladly pay to remain numb to the knowledge of our government encroachments and to escape the crushing burdens of modern life. We have a drug culture that superseded our vigilance against our loss of rights.
Give the great bulging middle their big screen TV’s and a bag of reefer, some blow and they’d live in a yurt. Americans trust their drug dealers more than their government ……. it helps them remain cozy.
On Violence:
In a broad sense, it seems pretty universal that people will fight (and even die for) anything they are sufficiently emotionally invested in (a process which I believe operates on an instinctive level (fuller explanation at link for the interested BC’ers of Greater Houston-I love you guys, man!), so poverty and disenfranchisement are just a tiny portion of the full story.
Propaganda is a powerful tool because it allows people to identify emotionally with ideas that have crept in (through repetition) below the level of critical thinking, thus obviating the need to teach critical thinking at all and therefore minimizing the short-term internal danger to the propagandists if they are pulling something at odds with their high-flown rhetoric.
The instinctive framing I used above suggests that in a very general sense the more clearly an ideological tenet has been internally articulated and the more deeply held it is, however it got there, the more existentially it will be defended. The capacity for violence is therefore inherent in the manner in which our intelligence and instincts interact.
Of course reality exerts its own relentless pressure, even though emotions and instincts will fight (must fight!) tenaciously to preserve the ideological essence of accepted beliefs about the world. Those beliefs may well be twisted all out shape as the weight of reality accumulates, even to the point that they become hysterically self-destructive, but this tends to happen only if the ability to adapt to what is really out there (critical thinking) has been removed from a central place in the ideology.
Oops.
But if ideologically driven violence is in our nature, so too is the ability to guide it to some extent, by societally shaping the ideology to which it attaches so that it conforms to reality as closely as possible. Since not all future events are deterministic and since human beings don’t walk around with unlimited processing power between their ears, the ability to adapt is an essential component for the long-term success of any ideology.
Ultimately what is probably needed in order to sustain a complex free society in the face of this human susceptibility to erroneous ideology is the pervasive indoctrination of critical thinking skills. This means wresting educational control away from the “placate the emotions” crowd, which means going up against their instincts, so the initial attempts at critical thinking indoctrination will probably have to be subversive…
It’s never easy, is it?
Piercello
While RAH makes much sense in his prediction of a financial and corporate backlash against the ever-intrusive State, I think that’s a bit down the road. Troubled companies, as well as those companies which just want a return on their investments in lobbyists, have shown an uncomfortable willingness to put themselves in Obama’s hands. And honestly, how can we blame them? Boards of directors don’t care about long term growth or separation of private sector and state; they just want their bonuses, and their thinking is necessarily short term.
Right now the trend is to a type of corporate-gov’t symbiotic relationship. The Dems promise taxpayer $$$ and taxpayer absorption of losses, in return for state control and obedience. Really, this kind of thing, once it gets started, is tough to stop. The Democratic voting base has finally understood returning Dems to office means more public entitlements. The spigots of largess have been knocked open, and who the hell knows how we’ll ever get them closed.
buckets; They won’t be closed but they will run dry, that is when the trouble will start.
Heck, every revolution I can think of, including the US, was “top down”.
“The problem for those, like myself, on the other side of the Obama divide, is that at present there is no credible alternative to the DEMS. The GOP is hopeless, yet I see people even on the BC board here acting like if only the GOP got back in power, we would be able to save the situation. It’s gonna take something other than that.
If the country does descend into this pit, it’ll be because the opposition is so fractured and mired in failed assumptions that it could provide nothing worth consideration.”
Word. The Repubs had their shot and blew it spectacularly. “Deficits don’t matter” indeed. The dems have apparently doubled down (or quadrupled down) on this idea and others that have never worked. There is nobody I’ve seen in the Repub block that can be believed on fiscal matters.
I still have hope. But I’ve begun to stockpile ammo and long-term storage food and other supplies. You know, just in case. Because there is absolutely nothing I can do outside of attending the odd tea party to tip the scales in a direction I’d like us to go. There are no undiscredited leaders left pushing the country that way. Guess I’m just along for the ride.
Will they ever really run dry?
I’m not an economist, but the Federal Government has owed money in the trillions for decades. Ever since I was a kid and wondered how the government could go so far in debt without it being a problem, I have always heard from economists that there ain’t nothing wrong with a little national debt.
While there are certainly economic disasters that await us if the Dems keep printing money for their friends, what would make them stop? The Dems have the answer to any economic problem already, and I really don’t see the spending ever returning to “normal” levels. Economic crisis? Spend more money and raise taxes. Great Depression II? Spend more money, raise taxes, and give the middle class a tax refund.
When, in the entire history of this country, has there been a true sustained decrease in spending, the national debt, and the growth of the government? Never. Ever.
#20 Barry 0351 – Well said. Terrorism can indeed be stopped by removing its root causes. A kilometre-wide, glowing glass-lined hole suddenly appearing in Saudi Arabia would be a good start.
P.S. Reagan was an aberration
One way to think about this issue is as a battle between economics and identity.
Identity is who we are; economics is what we have. It is extremely rare for people to kill for money, and even when they do it is because they want to money to support a lifestyle, that is to maintain their identity. But people kill for their identity all the time, whether it is because they are a jihadi or a Marine. (Obviously, not all killing is wrong.)
Identity is the most powerful organizing force on the planet. All major human organizations, be they religious, commercial, political, military, or other, rely on the estabilshment and maintenance of identity for their success. The corporate world has figured this out, which is why “corporate culture” has become such an important tool for leading organizations.
What has empowered the President is that he has been able to weave all of the various strands of leftists into a single movement, and mobilized them to elect him to office. This is a remarkable achievement, given the widely disparate philosophies that underlie these strands.
But because he has relied on charisma, his movement will be difficult to sustain. He must find a way to routinize that charisma. Max Weber, the father of sociology, once described the cycle of the charisma:
At any point in the cycle, there can be a failure. For instance, success doesn’t necessarily lead to growth, and change doesn’t necessarily lead to success. However, if the movement makes it far enough, it will have to routinize. And charisma is a famously difficult characteristic to routinize.
(As an aside, this is one reason why political dynasties emerge; followers bestow the charisma of the founder on his children, a process Weber referred to as lineage succession.)
The internet provides an unprecedent means of transforming the President’s charisma into an identity. This is, at its core, what MoveOn.org and Daily Kos are about: creating an identity – the progressive – that can motivate his followers to act on his agenda of change. This is a powerful movement and taps into the feelings and emotions of its (generally) young audience.
Where the President will have a problem, however, will be on Phase 4: change that creates success. This is where he will run up against the economic constraint; it is almost certain that his dramatic expansion of the size, scope, and cost of government will fail. We know this because history has demonstrated this to us repeatedly.
The question is: when this happens, will we regain the unified identity we once shared, an identity that is rooted in small “l” liberalism (limited government, private property, individual freedom, entrepreneurship, rule of law, etc.) and the US Constitution? Will we once again become “American”?
I believe the American identity still has legs. [Insert Carrie Prejean joke of your choice here.] I also believe that to restore this identity will be the work of our generation. It begins with education, but education is not enough; it will require a change in behavior, in habits, in culture. And this change will only occur when our security is threatened, whether that threat is economic or military.
As Weber showed, however, an opportunity or crisis will always emerge. And when it does, we should not let it go to waste.
L3
@24 Anton
They’re already running dry. Treasury auctions are slowing because China is stroking its beard wondering if it really wants to keep feeding the beast. It could decide at any moment to decline to buy more worthless debt from us. I actually sort of judge them for not cutting us off sooner, in the way I might judge a bartender for giving a guy his 14th drink.
I figure things would have a few months at most after that point before the real effects start to hit every man, woman and child in the country. I’ve been trying to figure out what this would mean in a rubber-hits-the-road kind of way. What would the real effects in daily life be just from China folding its lender tent?
Want a loan? Nope. Have a job now? Almost even odds you won’t within a year of China shutting off the spigot. And if it’s a public sector job, you might not get paid for a few months. Somebody rob your house? Tough. What little police protection we can afford will be too busy solving the murders to worry about theft. Waiting for your welfare check? Good luck. More likely you’ll get an IOU, or just cut from the dole. Need gas for your car? If you’re an optimist you can check to see whether the station has any at the moment. You’re a lawyer? Unless you’re politically connected, you won’t have much to do. Can’t pay the mortgage? Tough. Look at the bright side, the same police that can’t investigate your robbery also don’t have time to be evicting people from foreclosed homes. You’ve got time on your side there, especially if you’ve got a gun. In the Brave New World, might will make right. You provide foster care (like me)? Don’t hold your breath waiting for the monthly reimbursement checks. Prepare to either support your foster kids out of your own pockets (our own pre-chosen course in such an event), send them back to abusive and/or dysfunctional families or turn them out on the street to fend for themselves. Have $100 in your pocket? Great, you can afford a Big Mac, and with a coupon you might get fries with that, after the government switches to straight printing of money without bothering with the formality of treasury auctions.
I don’t think most people, even financiers and economists, have thought through even the short-to-medium term ramifications of the fiscal problems staring us in the face right now. I’ve only just begun to do it myself in the last 6 months or so, and I’m scared shitless.
“When, in the entire history of this country, has there been a true sustained decrease in spending, the national debt, and the growth of the government? Never. Ever.”
Not quite. I seem to recall that Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt in full.
But it’s been a while.
“P.S. Reagan was an aberration”
Reagan ran huge deficits, also.
Buckets #23. As evidence I saw this morning that many of the TARP buyers have withdrawn the applications. The comment was” not surprising that banks refuse to lend but refuse to take money is strange”.
So the banks know from the thuggish threats given to the hedge fund Chrysler bondholders that those threats are real and better not get involved and bought by Obama crew. All those hedge fund mangers and their attorneys that were threatened have been calling all their friends. If their one thing the wealthy know how to do is to protect their money. If getting in bed with Obama means they will loose control of their money, then they will wiggle out despite the cost to the economy.
So yes, I do think he too quickly shove the lobster in the hot water and the lobster is crawling out.
Overreach by an inexperienced and incompetent Marxist administration that showed their hand too fast. The considerable number of Tea Parties protesters of 700,000 and the subsequent local political activism at city and county councils, Calling their representatives and they will be a substantial number of these protesters that will stay as activists. All of these people are upset about spending beyond our means and it has grabbed many fiscal conservatives whether Democrat, Independent or Republican. That is a large group and will get larger. There is snowball effect when people get upset. Others have noted that many coworkers are asking about how and what to get as guns. These are people who have been comfortable for decades and now fear social unrest and want to get prepared. The momentum is there and Obama’s people are tune deaf.
What will be the item that starts the roll back? I do not know. I guarantee that the Democrats in Washington will be the last to see the change in public attitude.
The groundswell is there. We are living in dangerous times. Most of our natural allies are questioning our reliability and rightfully so. Israel sees how Obama condones America’s enemies and treats its friends so they will have little to lose by attacking Iran.
Our enemies are probing. A major error and Obama will get swept out one way or another.
Americans will tolerate a lot of abuse but when we snap, we snap back hard. That is truer against foreigners than us but it is part of our national character.
That is one of the problems with gauging American will. The will of our politician are often driven by the public passions. I doubt the Japanese and Germans really thought the US was a major threat. But once we decided to fight, we sacrificed a lot to win. The one thing Americans do very well is winning.
L3 writes: “I believe the American identity still has legs. [Insert Carrie Prejean joke of your choice here.] I also believe that to restore this identity will be the work of our generation.”
OK, L3, you asked for it, via the postmoderism language generator:
“Sexual identity is elitist,” says Bataille; however, according to Wilson[9] , it is not so much sexual identity that is elitist, but rather the absurdity of sexual identity. Long[10] suggests that we have to choose between the neodialectic paradigm of narrative and postconstructivist socialism. Therefore, Lacan suggests the use of pretextual capitalist theory to challenge class divisions.
“Sexual identity is fundamentally used in the service of capitalism,” says Debord. The subject is contextualised into a form that includes language as a paradox. However, the primary theme of the works of Stone is the difference between society and sexual identity.”
Give up yet, running dog of the capitalists? And you thought waterboarding was bad?
Mark that is just BS . Junk talk is just junk talk.
Sexual identity is primary. It is the weak thinkers who have problem with that.
The oligarchs have to become aware that Obama is targeting private property and capitalism by demonizing the bondholders and stealing away their contractual rights to secure property via bankruptcy. If most have not figured it out, they will soon. Those people are not dumb and this blatant attack has to wake them up. They realize that surrendering to Obama will not be in their best interest by the example of the Tarp banks enslavement.
Corporatism is based on a partnership in rent-seeking between the government and corporations, but Obama has shown he’s an untrustworthy partner. Gay rights activists are figuring this out and every other faction of his coalition will too, given enough time. Obama is, after all, the guy who threw his dying grandmother (who raised him in lieu of his hippy-dippy mother) under the bus. Honestly, he showed who he was in the campaign, anyone who is surprised by him now is a damn fool.
L3’s assessment is correct, but I think Obama is going to have a hard time sustaining his coalition long enough to ram (or is that Rahm) through his changes. Probably the best bet he has is a sense of outsized pride among his followers (who identify themselves as smarter than us troglodytes who voted against him). It’s going to be hard for large segments of his coalition to admit they were damn fools. So perhaps I shouldn’t go around making it harder by calling them damn fools.
Even though they are.
Although I have concerns about the Obama Administration, as do most here I imagine, I am not worried about the long term prospects of the United States. The technologies of coordination only grow stronger in the USA each year. This blog is such a tool, and so is Twitter, the Internet generally, SMS-swarms, etc. As long as the US Government does not try to control these tools as China’s does than there is hope we can rally around liberalism and freedom for all, not just the politically well-connected and empowered.
RAH,
Of course the post-modernist language is just junk. I literally cut and pasted the junk from The Postmodernism Generator.
On the other hand, this is the kind of language currently employed in higher education to, as they say, interrogate and deconstruct common sense, common meanings, and traditional identities. Much of the work of higher education (consult the course listings of almost any major university department of comparative literature or gender studies) is to relativize language, and identity.
All of this depends, of course, on what the meaning of “is” is.
Here’s one of Obama’s main union allies forcing the state of California to restore a minor budget cut that cost the union’s membership a few bucks a week in pay.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-health-cuts8-2009may08,0,4592200.story
The idea is that Obama threatened to withhold almost $7 billion of Federal stimulus money to California unless the state restored $74 million in budget cuts to union members.
This will only end with the election of a new House of Representatives in 2010.
@31. Agoraphobic Plumber
Your thoughts and mine are running on closely parrallel tracks.
It looks like many others have had the same dark forebodings in the quiet of the night. Guns sales skyrocket, ammo sales at rates that have simply never been seen before, dry-goods and canned food sales are way up. A friend of mine who is an organic farmer has had no end of enquiries for non-hybrid seeds. It makes the Y2K bug run-up look like a frolic.
My main hope is that it is just as unfounded.
RE:33. Reagan ran huge deficits yes, but as a function of GDP they were actually growing smaller. It is all a matter of proportion; if I lose $20,000.00 it is a disaster, Bill Gates would hardly notice.
Anton @41
“Reagan ran huge deficits yes, but as a function of GDP they were actually growing smaller.”
Yeah, I can appreciate that…but even the most conservative of conservatives these days seems to think we need to run deficits. Why? Why is it absolute poison and insanity to think that we could run modest SURPLUSES sometimes? First for about 20,000 consecutive years to pay off our national debt, and then once in awhile to just sock a little away for a rainy day, you know? I’m obviously no economist, but I guess I’m just not smart enough to understand why it’s so damned bad just to save some money to have a little just in case. I do it in my own life, and thankfully I can report that neither I nor any member of my household has dropped dead because of it.
Survivalists should try to head off the possible conflagration at the pass. We need to put pressure to reverse Obama’s course. Our politicians do respond to pressure. It just has to strong pressure. Visits to the Representatives local offices, letters, phone calls. I do not want to see the US destroy itself. Fight with lawsuits and economically.
@42. Agoraphobic Plumber,
No doubt about that.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that the govt should run on a cash basis except in time of declared war. In fact a Constitutional Amendment that requires 5% of total intake being set aside for such purposes would be to my liking as well as a flat tax no higher than 12-15%.
We all have to live within our means, why not them.
Of course, we elected these bums, so maybe it’s on us to stop them. Vote the bums (all of them) out!
43 RAH; I’m with you there, I have been near “conflagrations” and they are not pretty. Any sort of serious upheaval will leave horrific scars, even if there isn’t any burning or shooting. Detroit never recovered from the riots in the sixties, I would rather the nation didn’t follow the same path. On the other hand I am well prepared to ride out rough times.
from Dawn.com as linked by Roggio, “The president (Zardari) said that Afghanistan and Pakistan realised they needed to improve their cooperation in the fight against the extremists and were willing to enhance their efforts to defeat them.
‘There’s a realisation in the world that it’s a regional problem, a worldwide problem. It is not an Afghan or a Tora Bora problem. It is not a problem secluded in the mountains of Pakhtoonkhwa,’ said Mr Zardari. ‘This realisation brings strength to the fight.’
Responding to another question, Mr Zardari said Pakistan looked forward to building a better relationship with India after elections in that country. ‘If American friends can help us in doing so, they are welcome to.’
Supporting President Zardari’s position on the issue of better cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mr Karzai said that during the tripartite talks in Washington, the two countries had taken important steps to improve their coordination.”
This at a dinner with VP Biden. Does it signal real change in US Administration strategy or just a linguistic nod to President Bush. Is this Democracy in action or survival? For the paki’s it may be democracy a la Lincoln, who had to wait for the population to catch up to his thinking on many things. For Karzai it may be a little of both or more likely it is just the price of doing business. For VP Biden and President Obama? As there is no indication they are interested in prosperity it seems likely they would give the nod to democracy, but somehow I do not think the motive lies there either.
“The United States up through the 1960’s had most people closely tied to each other’s freedom through opportunity. The Great Society revolution allowed in particular Women, mostly White Women, to make spectacular economic and social advances through suppressing the freedoms of White Men. This was possible by demographic changes (few women marry, most marriages are temporary) and the rise of the coastal, urbanized, Yuppie elite.
In poorer, less developed places like Venezuela or Cuba or China, brutal thugs use patronage to construct a Mafia-like enforcement mechanism. In the West, it’s naked appeals to Women and SWPL Yuppies that make their positions better by making their cultural and economic enemies poorer. ”
So. How long do you think it will be before Males – especially white males – realize that Islamic Fundamentalism, its acceptance and its propagation; is the answer to all males ongoing battle against “feminist supremacists”? And it would have the added advantage of rendering the supremacists silent, Islam being a foreign religion other then Judeo-Christianity, and the supremacists being so PC and all that.
AP @ 31.
Ive been worried about that for a while. Problem is that If the ChiComs stop buying our paper and we get really sicker economically, who are they going to sell all their output to? The arabs? I read where the Head Red told GWB he had to find 25000 jobs a day to keep the masses occupied.
China’s allegedly short about 25% of the girls they need to keep the boys happy. Whiskey’s rants aside, girls are very important. What happens when all that testosterone starts sloshing around in an overcrowded, bored and hungry population?
Can they mount a military adventure? If they did it would be a helluva show to make a dent in the numbers. Where would they go? NK? Why? nothing there. North? I dont think Putin is a good choice unless it is a population control effort. South? Maybe. East? Nothing there ‘cept mountains and desert. ChiComs dont have a navy to speak of and it takes decades to build a good one, so the far abroad is unlikely. His problem – - not mine (and glad of it).
Where’s all this going? Nowhere good.
I feel like Im getting nibbled to death by a flock of Black Swans.
Herb, China is thinking of going after India. Why I don’t know but they have been planning quite a long time. I can try to look up the details but I recall the curious situation that the Chinese had duplicated perfectly a section of India and this was found on Google Earth.
China is nibbling around India’s edges and certainly China’s excess males could be bled off in a war against India. Plus there are plenty of Indian girls as loot.
As to Pakistan they are focused on the now late realized danger of the Taliban and the old threat of India. Why else did the terrorist group strike Bombay but to get war or problems between India and Pakistan?
@47 Herb
“I feel like Im getting nibbled to death by a flock of Black Swans.”
Heh. More like you’ve found a whole bunch of swan nests with lots of black feathers, but no birds around. You know they’re out there, you’ve seen the evidence. You know they live here. You’ve seen a swan up close and know they’re nasty animals to have to fight barehanded and you have no gun. The sun’s going down and you know they’ll all be back by dark and they’re going to find you in their nests. And you’ve got a broken leg, no cell phone and you’ve already broken the walking stick you have with you to fight off the alligators.
@48 RAH
“Herb, China is thinking of going after India.”
Whoa. That would be a time to keep our heads down and focus on our own problems. Not make so much as a peep. Just let them fight it out. I absolutely guarantee that no good can come of it for either side or anybody that sticks their nose in. With luck, Putin will join the party. After that, the boards would be pretty much clear and we’d be relatively safe downsizing our military by about 3/4 for quite awhile. That would be good, because we’d likely have a sudden need to man the decon equipment and figure out how to grow a hell of a lot of food in a world with significantly less sunlight than there is right now.
The Chinese are presently occupied with the new frontier of Africa. I suspect we will see some colonialism from them in Africa presently. Also they have no love for the Islamists and have a problem with them in their own country as well. As for 25 thousand new jobs per day. Well they do have a pretty optimistic dam building schedule to feed. And we know the attrition rate of such massive building projects. I do not think that they will see a positive outcome to going into India on a military expedition. And the Chinese do not do negative outcomes monetarily or otherwise.
Jim
@48 RAH – the problem with the India/China border is that there aren’t plenty of Indian girls available as loot, India having been just as vigorous about infant sex selection as has China.
Isn’t it wonderful that the two nations with this problem share a border with one another, as both struggle with their transition to first-world status and poor rural populations angry at their wealthier compatriots in the cities? Either population’s effort to raid neighoring nations for wives, economically or otherwise, gets to bump up against the other’s matching effort as well as resistance from the locals.
L3 @ 30
“I believe the American identity still has legs…I also believe that to restore this identity will be the work of our generation. It begins with education, but education is not enough; it will require a change in behavior, in habits, in culture.”
Especially “It begins with education, but education is not enough; it will require a change in behavior, in habits, in culture.” Very insightful. We truly must start even further back than education. Education can damage standards of behavior, habits and culture. But it cannot form them. Nor can any government. It takes something far deeper, with far more authority.
We consider the Constitution our foundation. Yet it is only a secondary foundation, laid upon another, primary foundation. The Founders warned us that the new U.S. government and its Constitution would not work, except with “a religious and moral people.” Called “the Presbyterian Rebellion” by the Brits, the Revolution was based on the mores, behavior and beliefs of a population long saturated with a mostly Protestant Christianity. It was designed for a people with the “standards of behavior, habits and culture” of that deeply embedded Christianity.
We have lost enough of that kind of Christianity, slowly and steadily, that there is no longer enough of the population with the kind of morality needed to sustain this Republic. There is no other substitute for such morals, whether in culture, human relations, finance or governance. We will be truly lost unless we can restore it.
Education is absolutely crucial. But even more than education, restoring Christianity in the population is where we need to labor and struggle.
Oh well, no Indian girls for Chinese men. Well you can always steal the married ones that are available.
The Chinese colonize an area is the main system for conquering that area and pushing out the other race. That is what is happening in Tibet and Nepal, I believe. The Chinese have control of parts of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. They are creating colonial enclaves in Africa also with their own stores and police.
The crash any local market with cheap goods and the take control of the markets. The buy raw material contracts with the heads of states. The protect their own people from Africa unrest.
China is the next great colonial power and they have no guilt. It is all business.
(Thinking about the consequences of China’s and India’s male-to-female population trends)
Back about 1989, I was browsing in a bookstore near University of Cincinnati, and came across an article in a Fer-Pete’s-Sake Madrid Newspaper about a study in New Delhi revealing that the great majority of fetuses (foeti???) identified as female by amniocentesis were being aborted by their parents. In some regions, the percentage approached 100 percent.
The article mentioned that Indian society has a legacy of many centuries obliging the family of a bride to provide a substantial dowry to the new husband. This has been known to impoverish some families with several female children, and the practice of husbands murdering the new bride for the dowry has been a widespread problem.
Over the next twenty years I sought for some mention of this phenomenon in U.S. alleged news organizations. Never found a word about it.
Well, finally, after about 2003 or so I was able to find online some obscure feminist references to the Indian practice of selective abortion of females…
Well, it seriously conflicts with the narrative of the Left, especially the so-called femenists. The Feminists can’t argue that abortion is merely the excision of undifferentiated tissue but at the same time say that selecting females for abortion is morally distinct from any other abortion. Either all the unborn deserve protection from abortion or none of them do.
Well, come to think of it, internal contradiction of arguments has never stopped Leftists before…
GerryP,
Excellent post.
Knowing what is right is different than doing what is right. The importance of this aspect of the human condition is largely misunderestimated.
John Henry Newman put it well:
Let’s say I’m walking along the sidewalk and a guy in front of me drops a $20 bill. He is oblivious to what just happened, and continues his stroll. I have a choice: I can pocket the Jackson, or I can run ahead and return it to him.
Now, I know the right thing to do is to return the money. But why do it? Why do the right thing? Why be moral? At the end of the day, there is no answer to this question that does not appeal to a higher power. For the Founders, and for 200 years, this higher power was God, the Judeo-Christian God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But in the past 50 years, we have followed Nietzsche’s lead in killing God and replacing him with the Übermensch. The result is an explosion of narcissistic behavior, supplanting traditional norms of discretion, good manners, and the Golden Rule with exhibitionism, crude profanity, and the Rule of Gold.
I believe there is still hope. There are tens of millions of Americans who have not succumbed to the allurements of post-modernism. They work hard, raise families, attend church, and give back to the community. And, contrary to the fears of the fever-swamp left, they do not wish to impose their values on others; rather, they simply wish to avoid having others’ values imposed on them.
The good news is that these folks are breeding faster than the post-modernists, so it comes down to demography. That is why there is hope.
The fundamental demographic question of China is, “Will they get rich before they become old?”
The fundamental demographic question of America is “Will we get manners before we become poor?”
The race is on. And I think we will win.
Cheers,
L3
An interesting anecdote from today:
I have a friend who is a conservative, and is a big supporter of the arts. He likes to hang out with the avant-garde bohemian types, and yesterday he attended some arts event.
The artists were, for the first time in his experience, openly upset with the President. The reason: his cap on the deductibility of charitable donations. Almost all of them rely on grants from philanthropic organizations to pay their rent. And they couldn’t understand why in the world he would target philanthropy, and thereby hurt them financially.
My friend took the opportunity to make the point that President Obama thinks wealth should be redistributed, and the rich should pay more taxes. The charitable deduction limit is a clean and easy way to increase taxes, so why were they surprised?
Their response was interesting: while they understood that he was going to “soak the rich,” they weren’t rich so they couldn’t believe it would hurt them.
My friend simply responded: why would you believe that?
Useful idiots, now useless. Let the disillusionment begin…
L3
Thanks for your kind words, L3. I wish I could state it as well as you.
But I would caution against waiting for the offspring of present Christians to provide the needed numbers. Been there, done that. In the 1950s, the Greatest Generation watched as the huge generation of kids they had produced happily proceeded through Sunday School and church. It looked good, so they risked the future of their churches on their own “biological increase.” They also stopped the disagreeable work of proselytizing.
It didn’t work. These kids became the 1960s Hippies, then the Boomers. They ditched most of the morals of their parents and left their churches. Some came back, but not near enough. And the Mainline Protestant denominations have been in long decline ever since. Which has only added to our problem.
So no, sorry, it still takes proselytizing. Which no one likes or wants to do. Or to be the target of.
Yet there is no other way. (Though, believe me, many wish there were!) We can’t make the mistake – again – of depending on our own “biological increase” to provide the sizeable swing to Christianity needed to rescue this culture.
But look at the good side of proselytizing. Our Judeo/Christian heritage is often spoken of. And the major part of it, perhaps, is contained in the Old Testament. The Jews kept it alive and transmitted it, with remarkable accuracy, down to the present time. Yet they didn’t do much to spread it. Why? For the most part, Jews don’t proselytize. Christians do, though. (Sometimes!) So Christians spread, not only the message of Jesus, but bound up with it, much of the Jewish heritage too. Christian proselytizing is how the Judeo/Christian heritage got spread around the world.
So proselytizing, excruciating work that it is, is necessary and absolutely the key. Of course no one likes proselytizers. That is why it is so hard! But it has to be done, if only because we need it, simply for national survival.
L3 @ 56
You wrote “I believe there is still hope. There are tens of millions of Americans who have not succumbed to the allurements of post-modernism. They work hard, raise families, attend church, and give back to the community.”
There is a problem here too, though Steyn and Longman have pinned their hopes on this group to provide enough kids to keep the U.S. population from shrinking, like that of Europe. They are having more kids than others.
But so far as Christianity is concerned, this group is finding that many of its kids leave Christianity (According to Barna and others.) And that gets back to the education their kids get in government schools, which is often very corrosive of Christian belief. Which is why many of these parents – like some commenting here – sacrifice to educate their kids in Christian schools or at home.
So we are back to your field of education. Actually, I have been somewhat concerned about the business plan of KIPP, simply because at least some of its funding comes from the government. I have run three non-profits, and have learned that government funding can be suddenly lost, for a variety of reasons not necessarily related to performance. Or that to keep it, totally unacceptable new restrictions can be imposed, sometimes overnight. A friend closed down his non-profit and its work with gangs for just that reason.
If only for that reason alone, I hope you would be open to the possibility of someday planting and building Christian schools. They not only offer excellent education and provide scholarships for many poor young people as well, they also avoid the destruction of Christian faith often met in public schools. A two-fer.
Education is the key but that includes a lot more than what the Drone at the front of your ordinary classroom is coughing up from the State approved curriculum. The curriculum is heavy on Critical Thinking, which is considered a skill, and light on facts. Good education should start with a consideration of goals. Otherwise it becomes the equivalent of the Search for Peace in the Middle East, all Process and no Results. The unions and progressives, who hate anything that implies accountability, always ridicule any talk of standards as as a directive to “teach to the test.” As a bare minimum that is an improvement on spending 175 days without covering the content on a reasonably objective test.
My idea of replacing the last year of High School with 6 months of universal common military training would place everyone in an environment where real skills and facts are taught. In addition I would mandate that the current Economics and Civics (the later in NY is referred to as Participation in Government or PIG) classes be replaced. For Econ I would start with the excellent materials produced by Junior Achievement and then sponsor every student for the NASD series 7 exams. That would at least give them a feeling for how capital markets work. The Civics would be covered best during the subsequent military based training.
I have taught at both the most dangerous school in NYC and the second best. The present system does not work. We can do better.
“The present system does not work. We can do better.”
Decades ago, my high school class concluded after long debate that the last two adult humans left on earth would still be arguing about how to bring up Junior.
But we can do better. We must do better. In the grey of a winter pre-dawn in a former Soviet Republic, I have watched gangs of teenage males jog down snowy streets — on their way to school, backpacks stuffed with books — on a Saturday morning!
We must do better. Or we shall pay the price.
Interesting article from the Weekly Standard on those educating the educators. For an idea of what’s in the article, the title is “Why Can’t A Girl Have a Penis?”
http://tiny.cc/YDq9Q
A potpourri of thoughts on above comments ….
1. Not to scare the kiddies, but they are not going to be launched into a world of unchallenged American supremacy. They are going to be competing economically against a billion or so Indians, Chinese, and other youngsters who have been raised to do one thing, and one thing above all else — SUCCEED. (“I drink your milkshake!” … anyone?) Much as it may seem unfair that the brave new global economic world will be some version of “American tots” vs. “Asian bots,” that’s what it comes down to … taking the stakes seriously. And the stakes are not merely how the individual does, but how that individual’s progeny does, and ultimately how the nation does.
Funny enough, some of the current immigrants to the U.S. and virtually all of the past-gen immigrants had this sense of great urgency — that it was going to take a lot of bare-knuckles, back-breaking work, and a rigorous no-nonsense education, to launch their kids into the dog-eat-dog American system. But they believed in the system. Instead of wanting to dumb-down the competitive standards, they wanted to elevate their kids to where they could compete and flourish.
Is America serious about education, really? Do people grasp the connection between this generation’s curriculum content and work ethic, and the United States’ productive & economic health 20 or 30 years from now?
2. LOTM @ 60 – I happened to be in grad school when the “critical thinking” fash hit the English Dept at my university. They replaced “English 101″ with “Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum” and “English 102″ with what amounted to a lit version of critical thinking. The approach had its pros and cons. The gist was to make that freshman-level English class more relevant to the non-English majors (the vast majority of students).
But the biggest indicator of what a kid got out of the course, IMO, was the teacher he/she happened to draw … and most of the teachers were us grad students. Some of us were pretty good. Some of us were furchtbar. I still remember the incident where a parent lodged a formal complaint when their freshman came home reporting that they had been learning the Freudian interpretation of “Ode to a Nightingale” in their English class (the phallic “i,” blah blah blah), just because one of our more odious grad students (a double major in philosophy & English) had taken it upon himself to lay bare the truth about the crypto-fascist Western culture to his 18-year-old charges.
“Critical thinking,” like much else in the academy, can be interpreted in any number of ways depending on the semantics. “Thinking that is critical of America and the West” is frequently how it is interpreted, unfortunately.
But at its plainest, just teaching kids to compare and contrast various pieces of information from multiple sources, and to think critically about those sources and their motives (including who funded the study), is enough of a battle. This is the information age, after all. Young people are awash in an ocean of it. But where do they learn discernment? How to filter out the noise, take in what is potentially useful, separate the accurate from the inaccurate, and, finally, to synthesize the accurate into a personal judgment (oh that word!) … THAT is the kind of critical thinking our kids need desperately to learn how to do.
But you are right that, without a worldview that holds that there are such things as “facts” to begin with, and without an education system that teaches facts, there is no foundation for the higher level skills of critical thinking.
3. On proselytizing … anyone who has hung around Christian (esp. evangelical) churches long enough will have heard the sayings, “You are the only Bible most people will ever read” and “More is caught than taught.” The emphasis of evangelizing is put on LIVING the gospel, not just talking it.
I have a personal observation to add, which is, that problems seem to frequently arise when Christians “relate by evangelizing, rather than evangelize by relating.” Not like I’m a paragon of anything myself. But one can’t exactly blame an unbeliever for being suspicious of his Christian neighbor’s motives if his experience of Christians has been that he’s more or less viewed by them as a potential notch on the belt.
4. I find myself thinking often about that John Adams quotation: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
I take a couple of lessons from this.
First, that the Constitution deliberately asserted individual liberties and proscribed government behavior … rather than attempting to proscribe individual behavior (or, God forbid, asserting government liberties). Why frame the Constitution this way? Well, a couple reasons. (1) You recognize your task as a drafter/framer of the Constitution is the limited one of articulating a vision of government, not humanity. IE you are trying to formulate a just government, not a perfected human being. (2) You do not attempt to lay out a plan for the perfection of humanity in the US Constitution for one or all of the following reasons: (a) there are enough strenuous quarrels amongst the conventioneers already, and if you want to get home before the turn of the century you need to stick to the limited task, (b) you believe man is a sinner and therefore imperfectable in this world anyway, and any attempt to create a perfected society is a fool’s (or tyrant’s) errand, and (c) the degree to which humans *can* be “improved” is not the task of a national government, but of other institutions such as church, family, and civic organizations.
Second … was Adams giving us a warning? If America as a nation is no longer “under God,” will the Constitution then be inadequate as a governing document?
Have we reached that point?
WRT the Chinese and education. In graduate school classes in the Civil School at GT we would have a row of five people who sat at the front of the class and took unreadable notes. What English they had was heavily accented. Never asked a question. After an exam the grades were posted. Typically there would be five grades clustered around 96 and the rest below 75. Care to guess where these people were from?
This wont be competition. Id just as soon play NCAA football at 60.
L3, Gerry, Bogie: The hope of America is in the red counties. But the key is education. Dewey was the first leader in Gramisci’s March, which continues. What is taught has a collectivist bias which is hard to resist. The environmentalism is fundamentally pagan and a challenge to Christianity. History has no content except the evil of the west.
NoChildLeftBehind was top down social engineering and a primary example of the Iron Law of Unintended Consequences. Reportedly a good 25% of the school year is dedicated to test prep, so the time available for teaching is reduced.
The only way out is out.
Superb thread all.
Mark @35,
Woof!
Cheers,
L3
GerryP,
You make many excellent points. I guess the only thing I’d add is this: we are called to bear witness. One way to do that is to proselytize, but it’s not the only way. To be sure we need salespeople; but we also need folks in operations, finance, marketing, human resources, supply chain management, R&D, etc.
After all, God gave us many kinds of saints…
Cheers,
L3
Well, L3, LotM, Kinauchdrach, lc, bogie wheel, Herb – What an amazing group gathered here! Tremendous comments! Makes me want to actually do something about our kid’s education. Throw a party, maybe. What kind of party? Let’s see. Um. Maybe a Revolut, uh, no, oh, maybe a Rebelli, eh, no, maybe a, what, a “Renewal” party? Hmmm, dull. We need a movement! Movements need slogans. Excitement.
Maybe “Hands Off Our Kids!” That would come out “HOOK.” (as in “Hook ‘em, Horns! Just the Texan coming out in me, probably.) Or maybe “Take Back Our Kids!” That would come out “TBOK.” Or maybe T-BOK. As in T-BOK parties? (Tea-BOK parties?) Clearly, this needs more than just one person thinking.
Ideas?
What is certain is that if we go on this way, losing more of our kids intellectually, ideologically and morally every year, as the data shows year after year, we are cooked. Nothing else is going to work. We need a screeching halt in “education as usual” and a movement out of government schools. (Except for great Charter Schools like L3’s. For however long the government lets them do that.) That means government schools might die? Well, that’s really up to them, isn’t it?
Trying to take back the government schools? Just remember the history of that failed movement for the last 30 years. First we tried reasoning with them, using facts and logic. Sad. Then we tried taking over their text book selection, getting on the state boards, etc. Then we tried getting elected to the PTO and/or school boards. Outside funding and state-wide, sometimes nation-wide funding would be brought in to defeat us. Whatever we gained politically could be lost the very next election. It trapped us on a see-saw, back and forth. Bad for the kids, and a loser for us. Fighting the teacher unions? That hasn’t worked very well, has it? No need to repeat any of that.
No, we have to have a separate, privately owned and run, “shadow” school system. Otherwise, it could always be taken away from us.
Fortunately, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel. All kinds of great curricula and models out there already. After all, a school is basically just a teacher and one or more students. I think that most churches could manage to have, or host, a church-based school. The church buildings are empty most of the week, after all. Training, or maybe re-training, teachers might be a problem. We need our own teacher schools, soon. And we would need to raise support for at least partial scholarships for poor kids. Educating the poor is more crucial than we ever knew! And if the kids were exposed to a traditional religious outlook, so much the better. Heaven knows, they are being exposed to non-traditional religious outlooks at school already.
Once we get half or more of all kids into such schooling, look out! The country would undergo a huge change in 20 years, even less. If we don’t – well, we all see where that is heading. It’s our choice. More of the same? Or “Just say No”?
We just need to decide “We’re taking back our kids!” They can’t stop us.
GerryP,
I hope you would be open to the possibility of someday planting and building Christian schools. They not only offer excellent education and provide scholarships for many poor young people as well, they also avoid the destruction of Christian faith often met in public schools.
I am open, and have done (and continue to do) work in this area. The economic challenge is huge, however.
Here’s the thing: it costs $6,000-$10,000 per student per year to provide a really good education. Today, there are about 13 million children who live in households below the poverty line. This adds up to $78-130 billion dollars per year – let’s call it $100 billion.
This problem cannot be solved by philanthropy. The entire corpus of the Gates Foundation is about $35 billion; if you add in Warren Buffett’s commitment, this might be $70 billion. This is enough to pay for 8 months of schooling, and only for kids below the poverty line.
This means we have to find a way to work through the public funding system if we want to reach large numbers of these kids. No doubt, this makes the situation very tricky, but IMHO we would make great progress if we had a system that
a) instills an ethic of hard work and discipline,
b) provides them with basic literacy, numeracy, and a knowledge of history, and
c) is, at least, not hostile to religion.
KIPP is not perfect, but it is a big improvement over the current system. And the theory of change at work here is that giving poor parents options will help improve all public schools. The consumer is more likely to get what they want in a marketplace – producers who don’t respond to consumer preferences end up shrinking (e.g. Detroit) and having market share taken by producers who do (e.g. Toyota).
This doesn’t mean that the districts will “go out of business.” But it does mean that they need to be restructured. It’s like Federal Express; the Post Office didn’t provide overnight delivery before FedEx. But having proven it could be done, FedEx pushed the Post Office to provide this service. The Post Office didn’t go away, but it had to change to compete. Almost everyone ended up being better off (except for the PO bureaucrats who were obstacles to change).
I abhor monopolies of all kinds. They stand in the way of progress, and they impoverish their customers, their employees, and their suppliers. I really believe that poor parents want their kids to get a great education. But we must break the monopoly to allow them to achieve that desire.
Cheers,
L3
L3, absolutely right. All kinds of workers, talents, zeal and initiative needed. You bet! It takes all kinds. Always has. Including home-schoolers, private schoolers, those just now looking for alternatives. We just need to get started, and get together. Both at once. Now. We can do this!.
Sorry, L3.
Didn’t see your #68 before posting my #69, which was related to your #66. A bit tricky, posting in a logical response-reply sequence. Can’t stay right now, but will respond to your #70 shortly. Right now, have to wash hair and get ready for big multiple-birthday-Mother’s-Day-celebration family gathering.
Your #68 was great, both provoking and correcting. Very timely and helpful. No substitute for competition, is there? Or for experience either. Your experience is just tremendous. Thanks for continuing to share it.
Back soon. Gerry
L3 -
First of all, hats off to you, which I didn’t get to say in the other thread. Having no kids myself, I’m not forced to pay close attention to primary & secondary education (I teach one university class per semester as an adjunct), but I know enough people who do have kids that I hear a lot of the war stories. My best friends in California home school their girls. My best friend here in Pittsburgh spent two decades teaching in the community college trenches. Giving a youngster a truly quality education is a monumental task requiring long-term commitment. Digging one’s hands in at the institutional level as you have takes an abundance both grace and guts.
Funny how things intersect. It wasn’t two months ago that I read the review of Jay Mathews book on KIPP over at City-Journal, and referred the article to a colleague of mine whose sharp and spunky college-aged daughter wants to go into teaching, and esp. to serve underprivileged kids, but knows enough even at 20 to know that the inner city public school model is broke but bad, esp. here in Pittsburgh. Making her aware of the KIPP model, I thought, just might rekindle some of that youthful idealism & show her in practical terms that there is room for optimism.
So thanks for what you, and all your fellow “running dog” (!) edu-buddies, do.
I suspect that using the force of Govt to raise the necessary funds to pay for education may well be a necessary evil, since too many people do have the walking around sense to figure that Flannel cant do anything if he cant read or add. (witness the recent crops of graduates from anywhere). The first step in the improvement of teh schools is to break the grip of the teacher’s unions on the schools. Its strong and deep. I remember that in the 1960′s there were two political parties in Alabama: Democrats and the Ala Education Assoc. Now there are three.
Once thats done, vouchers can be instituted. They are the only way I can see that L III’s point about cost can be addressed. It is an income transfer system, but arguably can be a real govt investment. Georgia has a voucher law on the books but its never been authorized. If it does come up, the reason for its original passage, resistance to integration, will probably doom it.
But back to Wretchard’s original post:
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez pushed through a new law in December 2004 allowing him to ban news reports of violent protests or of government crackdowns and to suspend the broadcasting licenses of media outlets that violate any of a long list of broadly phrased regulations.
Chavez = amateur
TOTUS doesn’t have to ban anything as long as the worshipful media stay in genuflect mode. For those who attempt to get up off their kneeds … why, it’s a “community advisory board” for you, chum.
L3 @ 68:
Thanks much for this layout of the money problem. Always comes back to money, doesn’t it? My favorite Board member used to say, whenever someone came up with some great, new idea, “What I want to know is 2 things. Who’s going to do it? And who’s going to pay for it?” That is the key question here too.
There are actually many ways to find funding. The great pool of money out there is always in the population as a whole. Some moves from them to the Government through taxes, filters through the bureaucracy, then out to outfits like KIPP. But first it came from the population at large. Bill Gate’s and Warren Buffet’s money also came from the purchases of that great population. They kept some of it as profits, then gave some to charity.
But we have access to that same population. There is a lot more money out there. It just has to be raised more locally, or from special audiences. More retail, less wholesale.
I got funding that way for years. After starting and running 3 successful charities, starting from zero each time, I finally put my know-how into a book, free online at http:slash slash tinyurl dot com slash genjth. The chapter headings show where things are.
There are 2 basic knowledge groups in this book. One is how to help homeless people and poor people climb out of their situations. We had a 65-75% success rate with that, year after year.
The other is how to start and run a charity to do the same kinds of things, including schools, including how to raise the funds.
Only about 10% of our funding came from grants, both government and foundations, though we tried hard for more. For the rest, we tried to avoid cutting into the funding bases of other charities by developing our own new donors, who were not already giving. For the most part, that is what happened. We developed many, many ways to do that. (See the book.)
In fact, one of the things an outfit like KIPP might do is to start a spin-off that raises funds like that with perhaps a somewhat different educational style. It would allow some different kinds of experimentation. It would also already be in place if other funding became problematic.
BTW, KIPP’s “Work Hard. Be Nice” standard really hit home with me. We learned early that our poor or homeless clients needed something more than job training or a shot at a good job – which most of them messed up if they started cold. First they needed what we came to call “work habits.” The first level of work habits we taught them was:
1. Show up.
2. Be on time.
3. Do what you are told.
4. Don’t be rude.
5. Dress appropriately.
While this may seem obvious to middle class people, it seemed pointless to them. Once they got this, though, they usually made it through job training, and avoided getting fired from every job. Then they worked their way up through the first level, “employed” to the second level, “adequate employee” to “valued employee.” (Chapter 14, “Work Habits.”)
Anyone interested in starting a school or other charity might find some help there.
Best wishes, Gerry.
NoChildLeftBehind was top down social engineering and a primary example of the Iron Law of Unintended Consequences. Clearly not all of it was a failure. Test scores are rising although any number of scenarios can claim credit for that occurrence. One of which may be improved understanding of the concepts and how to apply them.
Reportedly a good 25% of the school year is dedicated to test prep, so the time available for teaching is reduced.
You mean a good 25% of the school year is dedicated to teaching material that the kids are required to know. How does this reduce teaching time?
Some of the tests are good, some of the tests are not so good, but while the kids have improved their scores, the teachers and districts have been less than up front about how they got to being able to demonstrate learning. Some teach children they cannot learn so would be better off to quit. Some teach children that it is acceptable to lie in order to get into a “better school” by what ever the definition of Better is deemed.
Funny that sort of stuff is not exhibited in the private academy or charter school even in high school when the test scores matter.
GerryP,
Great post. I tried the tinyurl but it couldn’t redirect so I got their error page. Can you repost a link? I’d love to see what you’ve written.
And kudos on the good work. Your observations WRT poor and homeless clients are spot-on. I especially like the first-level work habits. As you no doubt know, these are very different than the prevailing culture; another example of where education is not a substitute for culture.
Cheers,
L3
GerryP, the url didn’t work for me either. I’d also love to see your online book.
I can’t get the link to work either. Try http://www.upandout.us. If this link doesn’t get moderated out.
Actually I think teaching to the test may actually get some facts taught. Now what knowledge the test requires was left to the states. Many schools fussed and that was because they had mainstreamed so many children that were unable to learn. Which brings to mind how much was the teachable students shortchanged because of the emphasis on the mentally deficient or disabled children.
So the program needed to be tweaked to eliminate the requirement of special need kids to take the test. Maybe the need a few tests like England. Test for college prep students, test for trade school students and test for retarded students. Or test for the bright kids that are for the AP types. Test for the average kids, minimum standards tests. Test for functional kids like the retarded.
A few comments back we indicated the need for better education. Basically conservatives lost because the kids are indoctrinated in the public schools. If more conservatives taught rather than the liberals and started to try to control the public schools a lot of the stupid policies could be revoked like zero tolerance.
Many people withdrew their children and started to teach themselves. This was from the more Christian families that were upset at the indoctrination that they felt promoted bad values. The home school movement is a good idea. But do to the societal and economic change that required women to work; there are fewer parents able to sacrifice a wage in order to teach their children.
If more conservatives taught rather than the liberals and started to try to control the public schools a lot of the stupid policies could be revoked like zero tolerance.
Someone above posted about the problem with education schools, and this is a not insigificant factor in why more conservatives aren’t in the teaching field. Education schools can be pretty hostile environments if you aren’t liberal. Ditto most university liberal arts departments.
I specifically did not go into a Ph.D. English program after my M.A. because at that time, even though I was politically center-left, the trends were all postmodernism and obfuscating academy babble that had nothing to do with teaching the plain meaning of texts or the joy of the traditional Western canon. I did not want to be forced to adapt to that environment and mentality for the sake a career, so I left academia altogether.
I now teach film and screenwriting as an adjunct at my alma mater. The pay is pretty exploitative compared to what tenured profs make, BUT, I consider myself lucky in that I can teach the way I always wanted to teach (basic meanings & classic filmmakers like Capra, Wilder & Ford) & did not have to become one of the Borg to do it.
Thanks, GerryP, the new link works.
WRT fighting back, this whole education angle may be for naught if Congress ratifies the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child treaty, which Obama supports. In recognition of this threat, the parental rights amendment bill, house joint res. 42, begins, in section 1 with: “The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.”
More info here: http://parentalrights.org
Bogie Wheel (Re: Your #80)
Depending on your location, I could recommend the Cinema-TV Program in the Comm School of a University in VA. Student works from this program have garnered some 200 awards around the country (one is up for an Oscar right now) and graduates are taken seriously in the industry. The school is faith-based. A friend teaching there tells me the atmosphere is open and diverse, especially compared with state universities. Not the close-order-drill mentality the MSM attributes to such schools. The program is growing, attracting more students, so new faculty will be needed.
Karen Yvonne @81
Even if Congress should ratify the UN’s “Rights of the Child” treaty, I doubt they can enforce it. For most of us, their ability to enforce such a treaty stops where our children or grandchildren begin. Hands off! They will not dare. Not once they see how the public reacts.
RAH @ 79
You wrote “The home school movement is a good idea. But do to the societal and economic change that required women to work; there are fewer parents able to sacrifice a wage in order to teach their children.”
I have heard of a few married couples so determined to home-school, even though both had to work, that they found ways to home-school anyhow.
Some taught their children after the adults came home from work at night. (In home schooling, what would be a whole day’s instruction in public school can often be accomplished in a couple of hours of home school teaching by parents.) I do not know what they did about care of their children during the day. But I have heard of even working single parents who home-schooled their children at night!
Others formed their own “tag-team”, working in different shifts. That way there was always one parent at home with the children at all times. I knew one such tag-team couple who were nurses, and another who were cab drivers, driving the same cab on different shifts. While neither of these particular couples home schooled that I know of, they were well positioned to do so without losing a paycheck in the process.
I deeply admire and am amazed by such astonishing parents.
I believe L3′s notion of anti-American identity politics comes closest to nailing America’s decline.
The left has indoctrinated over the past 5 decades legions of Americans who identify themselves instinctively as fashionably against the ideals of American Exceptionalism, the Judeo-Christian ethic, free markets, many of our Constitutional protections and classical liberalism.
Our educational system first indoctrinated them, but the media, the entertainment and fashion industries, many of our religious institutions, and most of our Nanny State government have reinforced these amoral, marxist values at virtually every turn. As a result, many of our populace cannot see themselves as anything but of the left. They consider themselves intellectual but have little knowledge of American History and what the Constitution really stands for. They are not Patriots.
I’m afraid Obama’s assault on property rights will contribute little in turning around the minds of our elite. Many of today’s wealthy do not see themselves as Capitalists. Many are lawyers, Corporate infighters, or the elite managers of private or public institutions. They do not see themselves as entrepreneurs, and do not see the connection between their wealth and the viability of the free market.
I think the most effective course is to directly attack the fashionability of the left’s identity. Make being left unfashionable. Ridicule them. Insult them, Deride them. Confront repeatedly the left’s incongruities. Only then will we regain power for our Constitutional form of government.