The guest’s argument is, as is often the case with liberals and progressives, a false choice.

While this strategy was of limited passing interest, what nearly shocked me into a traffic accident was his next supposition: Michelle Bachmann’s presumed vote on the matter (in support of the bonus payments to the bankers) reminded him of the operations of the Politburo from "the dark days of the Soviet Union."  This guest, and the host, both self-avowed staunch progressives (or whatever their flavor of the day happens to be) appeared to be very much in agreement on this characterization — but had they really just labeled the existence of Soviet communism as the dark days?  That struck me as more than a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

Let’s examine the logic.

Either Mr. Guest and Mr. Host believe/agree with this characterization of the Soviet Union as being dark days, or they do not.  If not, then this reveals quite a bit about the true moral character (or complete lack thereof) of these two gentlemen in particular, and probably much the same about liberals and progressives in general.  It would also reveal the underlying truth about their social philosophy.  If, however, they truly believe that the Soviet Union represents "dark days" in the history of civilization, then I would have to ask them just what it is about the lack of personal liberty, government control of businesses and the means of production, and a command and control economy that are prototypical of communist and socialist governments to which they object.  Either way, the logical conclusions to be drawn about progressives, and progressivism, are clear.  Do they not see how the United States is heading in the same direction?  Do they not see how we, as a country, have been accelerating down that same path with the election of Barack Obama as President?  Are they really that blinded by partisan political gaming, or really that enamored with a completely failed and discredited social philosophy?

I contend that today’s liberal and progressives, due to the general dearth of their critical thinking skills, are actually quite blind to the reality around them.  Instead, they are guided by baseless feelings of self-guilt through a world of political correctness which they are building that is 180 degrees out of phase with the realities of the human condition.

These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: ’tis dearness only that gives every thing its value.  Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

FDR is arguably the worst thing to ever happen to our republic (yes, perhaps even worse than Woodrow Wilson) … and it took intervention from the grim reaper to put an end to it, but we DID recover and began righting the ship.  How else could the likes of Ronald Reagan have become President if the war against tyranny and statism had been lost in the 1930’s when things looked as bleak as ever?  The fact that we exist like we do today is testimony to our ability to rise up and retake control of our lives.

Today, the task for tyranny is made more difficult by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that limits the number of terms a President may serve.  It’s made more difficult by the extent and immediacy of mass communication.  Today, we face the same amount of ignorance and opposition as has always been present in this land — even at our founding, the forces working against revolution i.e. the Tory British sympathizers, the ignorant and uneducated, and the indifferent were no more or less than they are today.  History is proof that what is good and right will always prevail in time over evil and tyranny.  Afterall, it was less than 40 years from the expiration of FDR to the inauguration of Reagan and a new dawn in America.

It may be dark and cold now, but by keeping faith we will again soon see a glorious sunrise.

Huh?!

Let’s look at this another way.  Let’s say you decide that you want to do something, and I say, "Be my guest, but I’m not helping you.”  Then, when you’re done, I should be blamed because you did a poor job?

I’m telling you, these people just aren’t firing on all cylinders.

As far as this flawed health insurance reform legislation known as Obamacare goes, it didn’t get even one vote from a member of the Republican Party.  At times, Republicans were literally locked out of the meetings on it.  No special deals were made to attract Republican votes.  This legislation was crafted totally by Democrats solely to attract Democratic votes … and now they don’t want to claim ownership of it and instead want to point any fingers of blame at Republicans?

That’s flawed thinking!

Of course, while you’re out at YouTube, it’s hard not to get distracted by all the “Related videos” so here is another of my favorites:

Hope you enjoyed these!

As a consequence of our experience with this beast, we, as a country, are highly sensitive to anything known to stimulate inflation … perhaps even hypersensitive.  Warnings about our pending doom at the hands of another looming inflationary cycle are becoming more and more common as of late.  More than one commentator, financial analyst, or economist has run the inflationary flag up the pole in recent weeks and months, warning of the consequences of actions taken by the Federal Reserve and President Obama and his economic team.

I’m here to make one simple request: please stop inflation.  Please stop talking about inflation.  Please stop worrying about inflation.

Inflation is not in our future.

Inflation is the result of an economic and monetary condition where there is "too much money chasing too few goods."  Inflation is characterized by rising prices, not on individual goods or services, but in the economy on the whole when money supply growth outpaces real wealth creation (somewhat equivalent to GDP growth).  Looked at in terms of supply and demand, inflation happens when demand for goods and services exceeds money supply.  Inflation happens when there is too much money in circulation.

Possibly the biggest factor in inflation is consumer spending, and, at the risk of stating the obvious, that requires consumers who are spending.  Right now consumers are most decidedly not spending.  There are a variety of factors that have depressed consumer spending, but certainly the tightening of credit and a return to more responsible spending habits are chief among them.  Not only are consumers becoming more responsible while banks and credit card companies do the same, but the average consumer in this country, led by the baby boom generation, is growing older and entering a phase in their lives when they turn more to saving than spending.

Another of the driving forces behind inflation is high employment.  When nearly everyone is working and has money to spend, consumer demand naturally increases.  If productivity fails to keep pace, inflation results.  As long as we’re looking at unemployment north of 7%, consumer spending will remain depressed.

By definition, inflation requires the presence of so-called easy money.  Anyone who has a credit card, has obtained or refinanced a mortgage, or tried to purchase a car lately, knows that of all the things money is, easy is not one of them right now.  Lending rules have tightened even though they are quite probably still too loose to be responsible.  Even with interest rates at low levels (the Prime Rate currently sits at 3.25% where it has remained for over a year now), very little lending is taking place.  Given that raising interest rates is the prime weapon against inflation (as evidenced by former Fed Chairman Paul Volker’s action in the early 1980’s that finally killed the last great inflationary period that many of us recall from the 1970’s), should inflation begin to reappear now, there is plenty of room to raise interest rates and fend it off.

The great fear today is that many of our government’s actions of late would be hugely inflationary in ‘normal’ times, but these have proven not to be normal times.  In spite of what would appear to be the best efforts of the Obama administration and the Fed to do everything in their power that causes inflation and currency devaluation (printing money, massive deficit spending, and obscene debt loads), it remains squarely in the fantasy realm of bad dreams along with other evils such as Sasquatch and Osama bin Laden and occupies the minds of TV and radio pundits, but few others.

The fear of inflation is unfounded.  Given the aging of the baby boom generation, and the shear mountain of wealth that has been destroyed over the past year or so, Obama and his team simply can’t print enough money to keep up.  The absence of inflation today, in spite of all the supposedly inflationary activities and policies, is a testament of the power of the opposing forces already in place and of the misunderstanding of what is going on.

It is normally thought that government deficit spending is inflationary and given that our government is sailing so far into the red, we should be seeing double-digit inflation based on that alone.  Still, we don’t.  Why not?  Because the money the government is using to spend is being taken from the private sector to start with — they’re simply moving money from our pocket to theirs in order to spend it.  There’s no new money being injected into the system.  Some people will counter that it is the sale of treasury bonds that is funding the federal government’s spending, but a large number of those bonds are being purchased by our own Fed and again are not injecting new money into our system.

What about all the money creation that the Fed is doing as a result of low interest rates, etc.?  Those efforts too are being blunted by consumers and businesses who have voluntarily reduced spending and borrowing.  Consequently the velocity of money has slowed to a crawl and removed one of the crucial ingredients in the recipe for inflation.

Lastly, people will point to the rising cost of energy, specifically a barrel of oil, as evidence of inflation’s presence on our door step.  This too is a non-starter.  Probably the biggest component of the price of oil today is geopolitical instability, something that is largely a matter of world wide emotions.  While this is a real issue (at least until the aforementioned Osama bin Laden and his henchmen are eradicated), it is still just one item in our economic picture (albeit a foundational one).  Waning demand as a result of depressed consumer activity and increased pressures to adopt alternatives will keep downward forces on the price of oil for a while.

Inflation requires at least the feeling of a growing economy, if not the real thing.  Given the economic head winds being put in place by the Obama administration and a complicit Congress, it’s difficult to envision a return to euphoria and rampant spending along with easy money in the foreseeable future.

Until the Echo Boom generation ages a bit more and begins to reach its potential for wealth creation and spending, there’s no hope for inflation in our future — it’s much more likely that we’ll see real deflation.

So, can we all just stop talking, and worrying, about inflation now?

For those unfamiliar, Mr. Westergaard, from Denmark, is the cartoonist who drew an image of Islam’s Muhammad as a suicide bomber with a bomb in his turban.  His drawing sparked world wide mayhem and unrest among the radical wing of Islam.

According to the story, Mr. Westergaard was at home on this particular evening and "looking after" his 5-year-old granddaughter.

The assailant broke in by smashing a window with an axe.  Mr. Westergaard’s response was to press an alarm button to summon police and sequester himself in his "panic room."

He did not have time to collect the child from the living room before locking himself into a "panic room," a specially fortified bathroom.  He said the assailant had shouted "swear words, really crude words" and shrieked about "blood" and "revenge," as he smashed the axe in vain against the bathroom door.

"I feared for my grandchild," he told Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that had commissioned the cartoon. "But she did great.  I knew that he wouldn’t do anything to her." He went on: "It was close, really close.  But we did it."

Though he claimed that he feared for his grandchild, he clearly didn’t give her the benefit of protection of his panic room.  Instead he left her completely unprotected and at the mercy of an obvious mad man.  Did he not realize that his attacker might use the girl as a hostage or make threats against her to coerce him out of his powder room? Would she not be more traumatized having to fend for herself? I cannot imagine what she saw and went through.

Perhaps Denmark’s definition of manhood differs from my own, but this guy must surely fail to meet any threshold.

¹ Panic room saved artist Kurt Westergaard from Islamist assassin, Matthew Campbell, The Sunday Times, TimesOnline, January 3, 2010.

While this way of life might be harmless in certain sectors, and even beneficial in some (such as for prisoners inside prisons), it’s downright dangerous in others.  National security is one of those areas.

National security is like a game of chess, but is played by people with guns and bombs and all manner of scary stuff.  The players in this game are serious in their objectives and will use every weapon in their arsenal to achieve them.  And as with chess, the player who simply follows a prescribed set of rules, especially if those rules are known to all the players, will never emerge victorious from battle with a savvy opponent.

Politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats love rules.  Bureaucrats love to follow rules and make rules for others to follow.  Politicians gain favor with voters oftentimes by proposing new rules and bureaucracies to make more rules.  Lawyers love to use rules against their adversaries and in favor of their clients.  By their nature, politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats aren’t particularly good chess players … and they’re even worse at national security.

National security is best handled by spies, quarterbacks, and other shadowy characters operating in a fluid environment, making decisions as they go.  Good quarterbacks do follow a complex decision tree on each play to hopefully arrive at the best option in the moment and the ones that do that consistently will meet with some degree of success.  But great quarterbacks, are able to move beyond that and just make up "stuff" on the run that almost always seems to go right.

Those are the kinds of folks I want running national security.

Rules in the security game are only effective to a point — like a good quarterback, but not a great one.  Security rules are effective at catching stupid terrorists, for example, but to catch, or stop, highly determined and intelligent terrorists and other enemies, you need the dynamic improvisational skills of a Brett Favre, or jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

This point has been made brilliantly and often by my favorite security expert, Bruce Schneier.  He’s a highly regarded security expert who has been writing for years on the subject.  His blog is located at www.schneier.com.  He has described the overt efforts at national security, especially with respect to the mostly impotent TSA screening efforts at airports, as little more than "security theater."  His take on the TSA, as you would expect of a bureaucracy, is that they are rule makers and followers and as such do not provide the type of high quality national security we need against determined, resourceful, and intelligent enemies.  I’m not even sure they would be good at catching stupid terrorists, but I suppose they might get lucky once in a while (though their latest bit of luck seems to be only that the "knickerbomber" they MISSED was himself too incompetent to carry out his mission with much success).

As a society, we must be careful to avoid putting too much emphasis on the rule-following bureaucratic solutions to national security such as airport screenings, mass behavior modifications (through ridiculously onerous rules on airplanes), and other liberty-sapping outright privacy invasions being proposed by the TSA and the US Department of Homeland Security (so nicely led by Janet Incompetano).  Instead, we should be directing as much money and resources as we can toward our quarterbacks, spies, and investigators who are better suited to face our enemies.  We must avoid the temptations to allow politicians and lawyers to lead us astray with good sound bites and feel-good policies and rules, all the while they really serve only to weaken our society.

————

Further reading:

Me and the Christmas Underwear Bomber, Bruce Schneier

The Joke’s on Us, Mark Steyn, National Review Online.

Perhaps my biggest pet peave in life is the blind application of rules.  Rules have replaced thinking.  It seems that more and more people subscribe to the belief that if we just make more rules, or laws, and we espouse zero tolerance policies, that somehow our lives will be enhanced.

Poppycock!

A 17-year-old Eagle Scout in upstate New York has been barred from stepping foot on school grounds for 20 days — for keeping a 2-inch pocketknife locked in a survival kit in his car.

Because Lansingburgh High has a zero tolerance policy about weapons on campus, administrators are not allowed to use any of their own good judgement or apply decent common sense.  By all accounts, the student, Matthew Whalen, is a model student who had hoped to attend West Point.  As part of his scouting philosophy to "be prepared," he also stocks his car with a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal, and the knife which was a gift from his grandfather who is a police chief nearby.

The school administrators and board even appear to admit that their actions are without merit other than to say that theirs was an effort at consistency.  They wanted to be sure that no future violator of the school’s policies could point back to this incident and beg for similar leniency had it been provided.

This story is just part of an ongoing series of published documentation of similar acts of stupidity.  Similarly, Zachary Christie, a 6-year-old Cub Scout in Delaware faced a 45 day sentence in reform school for bringing a camping utensil to school to eat.  The utensil contained a fork, a spoon, and a blunt butter knife, but since it was called a "knife" it was deemed a serious violation … and the first grader was treated like a common criminal.

Perhaps things would have been different if, instead of a fork, a spoon, and a knife, the camping utensil was said to contain a fork, a spoon, and a cheese spreader. Afterall, there are far more dangerous things in schools that could be used as more damaging weapons, such as sharpened pencils and baseball bats. It is tempting to say that we should simply update the definition of "knife" so as to exclude camping utensils, etc. but that is the foolish type of thinking that brings us into court in the first place.

We, as a society, need to quickly step back from this dangerous way of thinking i.e. thinking that we can solve all of our social ills with more rules and laws.  Bureaucracies demonstrate their lack of trust and respect for individuals’ ability to act in dynamic situations.  So while bureaucrats sit in their ivory towers making all the decisions which should guide our lives, we see mounting evidence of the unintended consequences of their ignorance.  No matter how well-intentioned they may be, running a society by committee is a sure way to quickly degrade quality of life.

The cases of young master Matthew Whalen and Zachary Christie are but microcosms of the very type of things we all complain about now with regard to our health care decisions.  We see right now how insurance companies are driving the delivery of our medical services and we rightly complain that doctors don’t have the freedom to do the things we and they think are right, but instead are being forced in certain ways by insurance company guidelines.  Replacing insurance company bureaucracies with our behemoth federal government won’t provide any relief — on the contrary, it’s sure to provide even more grief and aggravation.

Please, let’s reclaim our liberties and return to using common sense to run our lives.

In a NY Times article¹, journalist Steven Erlanger tries to point out what he sees as the failure of capitalism.

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to "irrational exuberance," greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

I do not see today’s economic problems as a result of capitalism, or too much capitalism.  Instead, I think it is more fair to say that our problems today are a result of a lack of conservative discipline in governance and of too much socialism trying to inject regulation into free markets.

However, much of Mr. Erlanger’s article laments the fact that socialists are slowly losing control throughout much of Europe as populations there tire of onerous taxes, unsustainable deficits and public debt, and the lack of progress and growth brought about by the head winds of socialist policy and market regulation.

He cites recent election losses in Germany …

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

… and European Parliament …

Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections.

… and France.

[Voters] also trounced French Socialists in 2007.

Everywhere else you look in Europe, things are bleak for socialists:

Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack.  Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

It seems evident that while Europeans are done with their socialist experiments and ready to throw them on the junk heap of history, many here are eager to repeat those same mistakes.

Will we not learn the lessons that history is teaching us and finally, once and for all, bury socialist philosophies in a cold grave?

¹ Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn., Steven Erlanger, The New York Times, September 28, 2009.