59 Comments

1. Minerva:

Is there a Cromwell on the horizon?

Mar 24, 2009 - 9:30 am 2. Tina Trent:

There is no need to build prisons near universities: the universities are already opened to convicts. In Massachusetts, the well-funded “Changing Lives Through Literature” program brings admittedly hardened felons to college campuses to participated in a book club in lieu of incarceration. Program advocates scolded me on my website when I thoughtlessly referred to their program as rehabilitation: apparently it is now considered insensitive to so much as suggest that convicts need rehabilitation. Instead, they must be seen as simply sharing a “magical” experience of literature. Enhancing convicts’ self-esteem is the official program objective.

The only study of CLCT outcomes appearing on their website is utterly risible but widely promoted — twice recently in the New York Times. This academic study contain some unintentionally telling nuggets. For example, the AVERAGE number of prior convictions for the men admitted to CLCT was (at the time of the study) 18.4 per person. 18.4 prior convictions before being sent to a college campus to read books with professors and judges instead of serving time for the next crime: this is not a typo.

Assuming a bell curve, that does mean that few program participants have more than 32 convictions. There’s a relief.

Mar 24, 2009 - 9:46 am 3. DougWright:

At first, this seemed the perfect time and place to repeat Pogo’s quote: “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

However, now also seems the time to ask: “Why us, Oh Lord, why us?” The answer might be interesting if it wouldn’t also well known that we deserve it, collectivity.

Lastly, I do hope that events, plagues, or calamities don’t overtake us all and prevent publication of your last two points.

Mar 24, 2009 - 10:11 am 4. J.E. Dyer:

Of course, professor, you KNOW readers are going to edit your three examples here. But I like them, a lot.

Conservatives have indeed been complicit in deficit spending. This is not because they have lowered taxes, which in fact always increases revenue. (That was the intention of the Reagan tax cuts, BTW: increase revenues through unleashing economic productivity, not “starve the beast.” The latter was never the argument.)

It’s because under Bush II, Congressional conservatives were complicit in spending way worse than drunken sailors. Reagan at least tried to rein in the spending of his Democratic Congresses.

Republicans had a long moment — Jan 2001-Jan 2007 — in which to demonstrate what they would do with both of the elected branches of government. In terms of fiscal responsbility, they blew it, big time.

We all know the joke about the guy who asks a woman to sleep with him for $1 million, and when she agrees, keeps lowering the payoff until she finally says, “What do you think I am?” “Look,” says the guy, “we know what you are. We’re just haggling over the price.”

The Republicans in this joke are like the gal who tries to make a big, sanctimonious virtue of charging LESS for her services, and calling the other gals bad names for their high prices.

And yes, I know, Republicans who do this aren’t real “conservatives.” Conservatism is actually pretty radical, when you come down to it. Almost everyone will compromise and agree to just a little deficit here and a little there. Standing against that on principle — with other people’s money — is the rarest of things.

Mar 24, 2009 - 11:02 am 5. Dustin:

Professor, I too am baffled by the push to assign an external cause for every negative action. I thought being a political science major in my mid 30’s would put me at greater risk for a stroke, but, oddly enough, it’s the intro to sociology class I’m in right now that has me practicing breathing exercises. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a satirical paper describing the sociological phenomenon of the existence of sociologists to ease my frustration.

Mar 24, 2009 - 1:29 pm 6. Ron Kean:

Dear Professor,

Well, I hope you don’t make the girls cry again like on the 3/20 post.

Reagan OK’d the pork because he wanted to build defense. And he beat the USSR.

W. OK’d the pork for a similar reason. He went to Iraq thinking Saddam was a threat to our security. And he rid the world of that maniac (not to mention the Taliban camps).

One of the few things we know about our current president is his mentors. Frank Marshall, Wm. Ayres, and Sol Alinsky. All three supported the destruction of the social order.

His pastor and wife have said many derogatory things about the USA.

It’s logical to think that our current president OK’s pork to bring the system down.

Mar 24, 2009 - 3:54 pm 7. David Thomson:

“…and it has left us baffled about the old role of big money and big government.”

It really should not surprise anyone in the least. John Kenneth Galbraith long argued for corporatism. It is actually the ho-hum attitude of the many who attended the “best” universities. These individuals strongly believe that they and their buddies employed in the public and private sectors should together run the country. This mindset dominated the Progressive movement. Few business leaders are truly libertarian. They are often far more inclined to take fewer risks and surrender their independence to powerful politicians and bureaucrats. If nothing else, a “benevolent” government will most assuredly destroy their smaller competitors. Left–wing politicians, after all, instinctively prefer to deal with a small group of large corporate leaders than countless small business entities.

Mar 24, 2009 - 7:02 pm 8. Jeffrey Payne:

Dr. Hanson,
Insightful, as always. You’ve caused a few thoughts to spark in my cranium:
To your 1st point: our lack of sobriety is not fiscal. The drug that is producing the current intoxication is: control. Government is the drug paraphernalia. Our politicians are well & truly hooked. We do not need new policies; we need an intervention.
To your 2nd point: Wall Street caters to the hooked-on-control politicians in the same way that a drug dealer caters to the needs of his customers. He does it not out of ideological need, nor vindictiveness. When gov’t is powerful, gov’t is where the money is. They therefore provide what the money wants.
To your 3rd point: The phantom of therapeutic interpretation allows those involved in points 1 & 2 to pretend that what they’re doing is not destructive exploitation. Just as the alcoholic needs his booze, the politicians need their gov’t programs & the financiers need gov’t favoritism. They’re just victims, you see?
So the users, sellers & explainers form a vicious circle.
Best Regards,

Mar 24, 2009 - 7:22 pm 9. elvis:

Tmaybe we should just watch that movie again….. Clint wasn’t whinin’, and we are. I love your writing…. but maybe we should stop whinin’… Time to look it in the eye and walk away, ………… or grab it by the THROAT.

Mar 24, 2009 - 8:12 pm 10. WillDoMathForFood:

The best socialists in the world are capitalists who run dying industries. It’s a reflection of the slow death by asphyxiation of American business by American government: over-regulated, union-friendly, diversity-conscious, eagerly Green, overpriced, unable to (legally) hire anyone for wages that keep them profitable, and grossly uncompetitive. You’re right, Dr. H, that we don’t have capitalism anymore. It’s being rapidly priced out of the world market, and these are the death throes of Denial.

Mar 24, 2009 - 10:09 pm 11. FT:

Remorse at conservative betrayal?
Old farmer, I was just 21 when I listened to Reagan promise that “taxes should hurt” and that he would never sign a state income tax with-holding law. He also railed against the draft as involuntary servitude before those 20 something draft age kids in the college auditorium in 1966 California.
But when Big Jesse and your Democrats twisted his arm, he caved. Just like those milk toast Republicans of the time, the Andersons and Nixons.
Compromise, my friend. That’s all Republicans know. Cave and compromise.
So here we are.

And YOU of all people, a died in the wool, born in the blood, old time progressive, dare to bring up Republican short-comings?
That’s what your party has wrought though moralistic guilt aimed at the righteous self-interest of capitalist individualism.
So now we should give you sympathy, as you watch the encroachment of city taxes and permits, as the immigrants trash your vineyard, as your mountain retreat WILL be threatened by environmental confiscation like so many others?

What you progressives never thought was that the cobra would twist and bite you in the ass.

So, like my favorite movie hero John McLean would say: “Welcome to the party, pal.”

Mar 24, 2009 - 10:35 pm 12. steve macdonald:

I can’t wait to see the other two. Limiting the ugly to three points will be extremely difficult and finding the good will be even more challenging.
What amazes me is the sheer velocity of incompetence, deception, dishonesty and destruction we are seeing. I do not recall a period during my 59 years that even comes close to what we are seeing daily – tax cheats heading up the IRS and managing tax law creation in Congress, not bothering to nominate 18 key positions in treasury during a financial meltdown, mind blowing proposed deficits under the guise of invest and save, missed translations in basic Russian, Congress approving legislation permitting AIG bonuses one week and the congressional & administration principles hounding the company for what they authorized the next, trillion dollar stimulus plans that don’t stimulate, the Chinese calling for an alternative currency as they are losing faith in our dollar, lectures on fiscal responsability from the French, haltting the lifting of executive ban on gas and oil exploration on the promise of alternatives somewhere down the road – while promising independence from foreign oil, violating international law on our treaty obligations with Mexico and initiating a job killing trade war, omnibus spending bills with over double the inflation rate spent on discretionary items and 8,000 earmarks in an era of new fiscal responsibility, lobbyists common in an administration promising to reject them, DVDs as an insulting gift to the political head of state of our most important ally – which do not work, zero transparency on any of the financial fixes in an era of promised transparency, huge bills passed without being read, federal funding for killing embryos while calling opposing viewpoints/moral stances a false choice, international aid for abortions with total disregard to the millions at home who view the practice as murder,a billion dollar aid package to a terrorist organization in Gaza…………I could go on for an hour and continue to rattle off examples without missing a beat.
It appears to me that our political leadership have become a herd of lemmings mindlessly running hell bent for election over a cliff at light speed because speed is of the essence and reason need not apply.
I only hope that there is a major “adjustment” in the 2010 elections and that there are pieces able to put back together in the aftermath. The deppression that has increasingly become evident in your writings is well founded in current events.
Even the spectacular implosions of Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and many others took some time to get going. We seem to be trying to get there at record speed as if this was a goal worth achieving.

Mar 25, 2009 - 3:28 am 13. Pajamas Media » The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Part 1:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Mar 25, 2009 - 4:03 am 14. Jack Marcotte:

Essential vdh

In America,we are looking at debris and fall out from a single source. Unidentified.

We are counting the debris as good, bad, ugly or any other apt, at the time, description.

How can this debris such as a BHO,Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Pat Leahy,
Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi and on and on be accounted for.

What are the holes in reason and rationality did they climb up or drop out of.

What ugly orifice gave them passage and the light of day along with their diatribes of spewed words ? Not a rational idea among them or between them. Trading in all the bad traits in humanity. Spewing spittle.

What big bang explains their existance and the sinking American outpost of Western Culture.

A high water mark, sinking in a sea of incompetence and irresponsibility.

We, Americans are watching, seeming mesmerized in passivity, the death of individual responsibilities based on rationality, reason and work.

Even now, watching the death of America. American Soldiers are fighting and dying to give others freedoms that are being taken away from Americans on American Soil.

The death of the most powerful ideas in the world that built Western Culture falling before a Barney Frank, an idiot.

Are we all idiots?

vdh–that is a question to answer.

Mar 25, 2009 - 4:59 am 15. Paul from Hamburg:

“But do we appreciate the psychological, ethical implication of a voter waking up each morning, satisfied that his government is running a surplus? Even with good incomes and some cash in the bank, do we feel better that we have $5,000 on our Visa cards or $O?”

I don’t like the idea of a large deficit, but I equally dislike the idea of a government surplus. The analogy to a Visa balance is flawed. A government surplus is not equivalent to a $0 credit card balance. A government surplus means that the government collected more tax revenue than they need. The appropriate analogy would ask how we would feel if Visa overcharged us and then refused to give the extra money back.

Mar 25, 2009 - 6:12 am 16. Pops in Vienna:

Ahhh Doc, I love hearing your ruminations about our ruination.

I really wonder how much longer this can continue before it all caves in? I mean, after all, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed despite all the central planning, clever elites and the secret police.

How on earth did things get to point where we had to sell America to the Chinese in order to continue our profligate life styles for a few more years?

How on earth did one of the most educated societies on the planet end up being so stupid?

How on earth, in a country where so many people still go to church, did we lose our moral values?

This is a very sad funeral. This is a death that came way before its time.

Mar 25, 2009 - 6:25 am 17. LynnS:

Part I: The end of fiscal sobriety.

I think the short period of the country coming together after 9-11 was just that…a short period. Just long enough for the Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate to get all their ducks in a row in deciding what they could get from President Bush in exchange for supporting the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan.

He (President Bush) apparently right or wrong felt it was important enough to give them want they wanted and they gleefully proceeded to bankrupt the country.

Wall Street. It was strange but one day I thought…Every time lay-offs, downsizing, restructuring etc. are announced stocks go up, every time oil, gas, food, clothing, shelter prices go up, stocks go up. Hold it. Ordinary citizens investing in the stock market are profiting from layoffs, and a higher cost of living. We’re working our hind quarters off so that some schmuck can buy five houses, thousand dollar shower curtains, and throw his wife a roman orgy of debauchery while our road to retirement gets longer and longer.

Would somebody explain what the hell is worth fighting for in this country? Never mind. Off topic.

Mar 25, 2009 - 6:25 am 18. ~Paules:

Americans no longer have a vested interest in liberty. Nor do many enjoy the fruits of honest labor. Too much has been freely given rather than earned. Such conditions produce a condition of societal decadence. Entitlement becomes the norm without any obligation on the part of a citizen.

The Greatest Generation sweated, fought, and bled for liberty. A vested interest bought with personal sacrifice made them patriots. The same generation accumulated its wealth one dollar at a time. They knew the value of money because it was hard to come by.

The contrast between then and now, I think, reveals much. That which is not earned is never valued. We tend sometimes to over-intellectualize when a simple truth will do.

Mar 25, 2009 - 6:41 am 19. Bruce M.:

I always read your work with one hand on a bottle of liquor to salve the inevitable despair and rage that I,oddly, look forward too. Somebody in the mental health field, in which I have been employed for the last thirty years, said that telling people that the reality that they see is not happening drives them crazy. You eloquently (always) confirm what I experience. It’s tragic, isn’t it. It needs to be said.

Mar 25, 2009 - 7:36 am 20. Michael M.:

How about the liberal professors rehabilitating those poor, misunderstood, Gitmo detainees who where driven to extremism by President Bush’s heavy handedness.

Mar 25, 2009 - 7:40 am 21. geoffgo:

Steve@12

What amazes me is the sheer velocity of incompetence, deception, dishonesty and destruction we are seeing.

Can’t argue. It’s less amazing if you don’t preface the list with incompetence; expected of them and not unavoidable by us. If one substitutes the opposite of incompetence it might read thus:

“What amazes me is the sheer velocity of and competence in their deception, dishonesty and destruction we are seeing.”

Which begs the question: If what’s happened to individual freedom and US over the last 2 months is the work of incompetents, dumkofs, clowns, idiots, naredowells, fools and misguided stupidity, then what does it get like when they fr*ckin experts? Need to apply “fool” to the proper assignees, here.

Mar 25, 2009 - 8:40 am 22. Marc Malone:

Conservative politicians only remain conservative when they have a strong conservative leader to take the political heat for them. Otherwise, they, too, play the pay-for-play game. It’s how they get re-elected, they think. They’ve bought into the system.

Of course, a better way would be to simply be competent and responsible, but they simply lack the courage, being politicians. It reminds me of the phrase, “Courage is a virtue, so therefore, demons have none.” Substitute politicians for demons, and you understand the problem.

Basically, Pub pols crow, “We’re less corrupt than the other guys!” Sadly, they’re right. As soon as there is a viable, conservative third-party, which will really abandon anyone who doesn’t toe the line, I’m jumping ship.

Mar 25, 2009 - 8:43 am 23. TheMightyMonarch:

“The Greatest Generation sweated, fought, and bled for liberty.”

This is also the generation that allowed the socialist FDR to take power and put us on this road. This is the generation that, in the desperation of the Great Depression, allowed our leaders to buy off votes through make-work projects and the Ponzi scheme of Social Security. The same people that allowed themselves to become dependents of government by sending the bill to their children and grandchildren.

And out of that generation came the Baby Boomers, already accustomed to an activist government, allowed people like LBJ to hijack even more wealth into yet another Ponzi scheme, this time called Medicare. The “War on Poverty” was allowed to be waged, taking the social responsibility away from individuals and placed in the hands of bureaucrats seeking to solidify their dependent voter base.

And now we come to my generation, the kids of the Baby Boomers. Through the relentless propaganda of a media corrupted by Marxism and the distractions of a consumer/debt society, we now have a misplaced trust in the government to address the necessities of life. We even expect this despite our ability to pay for it. Just like in “1984″, we’ve come to love Big Brother. It is people like us that allowed a woefully underqualified rabble-rouser to hold the highest office in the country, because he gives a good speech and speaks in soothing platitudes.

So what will happen to my children? The $11 trillion in debt along with the $50 trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities can’t possibly be passed on much longer. In all likelihood they will be paying into a bleeding Social Security fund that they cannot hope to ever benefit from and will also destroy their own ability to save. They will be unhealthier because national health care can only control costs through rationing. They cannot hope to be prosperous because wealth has been defined as evil and ill-gotten by nature, and therefore must be confiscated.

Part of me hopes the whole system collapses; this country needs to be shown the futility of relying on government rather than themselves. I can’t see that shift in thought happening unless people are forced to deal with it.

Mar 25, 2009 - 8:52 am 24. donttreadonme:

MightyMonarch,
You have tapped into generational theory. Per Strauss & Howes’ (unrelated to Dewey, Cheatham & Howe) Fourth Turning, your children (and mine) will be a new “artist” archetype gen, very practical, thrifty, with an inherent predisposition to compromise. Raised during times of economic hard times and/or civil strife, they tend not to be extremists. Reagan was the last “Artist” president. It seems crazy now that the very polarizing Boomer gen are in charge, but Reagan worked ably with a Democrat congress (led by “artists” like Tip). He got his tax cuts, they got to keep the Dept of Educ, etc. This kind of compromise is impossible when the “hero” gen (Boomers) are in charge. For them, its all or nothing – think total war, economic extremism, etc. When the “nomad” gen takes over next decade, as is always the case when nomads take over from “heroes”, the stalls will be shoveled, and the cleanup begun in earnest.

Mar 25, 2009 - 10:04 am 25. MarkD:

There is another explanation for the Wall Streeter’s tithe to the left. They were tired of being maligned by the ignorant, and in their own ignorance, tried to buy the left off.

You can’t deal with the devil. The real irony in all this is that once the capitalists are defeated, the fellow travellers are next.

Well, it all ends when there is nothing left to steal.

Mar 25, 2009 - 10:12 am 26. steve macdonald:

geoffgo
You are right except that the incompetence in kind of germain when talking about a group that proposes to take over the national health care, energy, finance and most of automotive industries (so far), as well as set executive pay and revolutionize education by pouring massive money into a failed model. When one looks at the almost universal incompetence on everything touched so far, it is hard not to wonder just how bad and at what speed we can truly screw up everything.
case in point, last night Obama said that “critics” were saying there was no plan for toxic assets and yesterday his Sec Treas delivered one -as if to say ha ha we were right! never mind that it was promised Feb.10 for Feb 11 and not delivered until March 23. I won’t even go into his much touted economic team charged with overseeing recovery that has yet to even meet – in contravention to the law set by his democratic congress.
Perhaps prof. Hanson can develop a word that fits the current level of proffesionalism being demonstrated – incompetence prefixed by pick your adjective is woefully inadequate.

Mar 25, 2009 - 10:39 am 27. geoffgo:

Steve,

Consciously malicious behavior (cf, evil) deserves no smidgen of forgiveness, just because it’s incompetently undertaken or imposed. That defines compromise.

Mar 25, 2009 - 12:15 pm 28. Tonya:

You have something “Good” to come? If you can find the good in it all, I will happily read it and maybe I will feel better.

Maybe the good will be that the President has a nice looking face on television, that is the only good thing I can think of. I do not think pretty faces, or witty lingo, will be enough good for any of us.

You named some mean old Democrats, and devils advocates or as close to it as I know, and then you go and mention George Soros in your article and scare me again. Unless I am completely wrong, he is the bad, the ugly and scary.

I stay so aggravated over the last few weeks, because I keep seeing the money being given away to big Corporate Banks, and I think the 1.85 trillion is bad business just like the Ponzi Schemes. If our current administrations spending money to make the money scheme fails, what then? I do not have a lot of faith in any of it.

I cannot wait to see some good, but I do not want to see the ugly, because it may scare the daylights out of me. Don’t say Boo to loud to me today, because I watched the President last night and I’m already frightened.

Mar 25, 2009 - 1:00 pm 29. Robert Winkler Burke:

When a demagogue politician speaks, the under-educated listen and believe, not as VDH and like-minded brothers and sisters of the foundation of this country… who by hard effort can detect an enslaver of men.

When a demagogue broadcast preacher speaks, his sheep don’t learn to detect a demagogue politician. Thus Wright was right for Obama, but neither good for our country’s true founding principles.

When a demagogue media person hears a demagogue preacher or politician speak, they hear a brother or sister in soul and agenda.

Today the demagogues run broadcast Christianity at our nation’s peril. Today the demagogues run the media at our nation’s peril. Today the demagogues run the politics at our nations peril.

Have I forgotten anything? Yes, of course! The demagogues in education and entertainment run their unattractive worlds.

How can power of demagogues, and the economic might of demagogues and the virtual slave-master status of demagogues be taken away… politely… or in a civil fashion… from these creatures antithetical to our Founding Fathers?

Most people think that anybody who thinks like our good professor VDH is… creepy, and anybody who walks, talks and enslaves us like a demagogue is… god-like in virtue and all excellencies.

How do we get back to civil virtue when the blind can’t see their own enslavement and those gifted with sight-of-virture are marginalized?

Mar 25, 2009 - 2:37 pm 30. Marc Malone:

#29 Burke – Nice post.

Mar 25, 2009 - 2:58 pm 31. ChipD:

Interesting post indeed.
I found response #6 fascinating- that the GOP deficits were somehow OK because they were for a good cause, such as fighting war.

Radly Balko, a libertarian, has a very good piece where he made the case that the conservative movement painted itself into a corner when it adopted a strong defense as one of its basic principles.

This is because war and defense are inherently big-government ideas; national defense is wildly expense, and peacetime defense absolutely demands strong, centralized government control over the economy and state.

Have you ever noticed that the same crowd that screams whenever the idea of registering guns is raised, but aquiesces meekly whenever the government asks to read their email, browse their bank accounts, throw suspects into prison on the President’s whim, and so on?

Conservatives have this strange schizophrenia, that there are two kinds of government- Good Government such as the military, police, and CIA; and Bad governemtn like the EPA, EEOC, and the various welfare agencies. And so they constantly enlarge the former, while railing against the latter, never noticing that the two work hand in glove. If the governemtn has the power to disregard the 4th Amendment, why not the 2nd?

Mar 25, 2009 - 4:03 pm 32. Dhuka:

As usual a good post by VDH.

Did you know that one way easily to get into Yale Drama School is to be
a convicted felon with a BA degree?

Mar 25, 2009 - 4:14 pm 33. Dhuka:

Without a BA degree!!!!

Mar 25, 2009 - 4:15 pm 34. Bill:

“How do we get back to civil virtue when the blind can’t see their own enslavement and those gifted with sight-of-virture are marginalized?”

This is the bottom line question. Who is going to save us from ourselves?

Mar 25, 2009 - 4:37 pm 35. Delia:

I have a sneaking suspicion the ‘GOOD’ part is going to be the hardest part to come up with for you, kind Sir Hanson, but I look forward to a bit of bolstering in that regards.

The UGLY? That’s gonna be too easy [except for the trying to refrain from the obvious parts].

Mar 25, 2009 - 5:21 pm 36. Ron Kean:

31. ChipD

Hi. I’m #6.

I don’t agree with libertarians.

I do agree that government should have maximum control for the protection of its citizens from foreign powers.

I believe, unlike communists, dictators, and radical Muslims, our presidents can’t throw people in jail on a whim.

I also believe that our presidents,especially our previous one, George Walker Bush, had the oversight of congressional leaders and permission from the judiciary to listen to conversations between people in America and their friends in Pakistan.

It’s because of this faith that I give my name here just like our dear professor. What’s yours?

Mar 25, 2009 - 6:50 pm 37. WR Jonas:

DR. Hanson is crying out here. Looking for something that we will never find again . What we are all looking for if we ever truly had it.
The truth.
Who believes any thing they are told by the press or the government or those in high places? Don’t we all realize we are being sold down the river by liars , scoundrels and con men ? Of course we do but we know that no amount of outrage or passion or dedication will bring the truth back again.It was here for awhile but it is no longer with us.
The truth has gone and we strain to find some echo or trace of where it once was. We know we need solutions but the people in charge are not interested, they are concocting more schemes for tomorrow, more crimes.
The truth will come again and few are ready for it . The truth is not something , it is somebody. It is Jesus Christ .
Hear what I say. He will come and when he does the world as we know it will change instantly. The first thing you will ask when you see his coming will be ,”am I going to survive?’
I am not ashamed to proclaim him as my Lord for he will ask us ,” who do you believe in?”Are you ready ?

Mar 25, 2009 - 7:31 pm 38. westerncanadian:

Margaret Thatcher used to say that socialism works well until it runs out of other people’s money. That is how this current episode of Monty Python will end. Just like a Roadrunner cartoon, we will look down and realize we are standing on thin air just before we plunge to earth. The good thing is that after the fall, a newly sensible society might appear. The really bad thing is that the plunge to earth will happen on the day that the US defaults on its debt.

Mar 25, 2009 - 8:00 pm 39. Delia:

38. westerncanadian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK3eP9rh4So

Whatta woman!

Mar 25, 2009 - 8:34 pm 40. Gaffe Prices:

#6,

Reagan had programs for spending on defence, Tip O’neill had pork because he was Speaker of the H.R. for a Democrat majority in congress. Its OK, because what Reagan and O’neill did was something called compromise. Its how things got done once upon a time.

If either the president or the Speaker had his way, neither of the others agenda would have been a top priority, if at all.

Compromise was also once called East/West logrolling at one time in history books too.

Mar 25, 2009 - 9:11 pm 41. Gaffe Prices:

#36

Ditto. I took this same subject up with ChirpD over at PajamasMediaBlog site -Roger’s Rules- on Roger Kimball’s post ” “Enemy Combatants”, David Hume and Islamophobia” at #’s 6 &7.

Mar 25, 2009 - 9:29 pm 42. Robohobo:

“How odd that the World Series or the Super bowl is a far more honest arbiter of excellence than the current academic and intellectual industries.”

Just barely. Steroids.

Mar 25, 2009 - 10:34 pm 43. Pete:

ChipD (#31): You raise a very good point. You wrote, “Conservatives have this strange schizophrenia, that there are two kinds of government- Good Government such as the military, police, and CIA; and Bad governemtn like the EPA, EEOC, and the various welfare agencies.”

You are indeed correct, many conservatives have a blind spot in their appraisal of big government because they excuse its excesses in anything to do with national defense, security, and the military.

Some thoughts:

1. We would do well to heed Eisenhower’s warnings about the “military-industrial complex,” which is far larger and more powerful than our Founders most likely intended. We spend more on national defense than the top five runnersup combined. Consider that a moment. Why so much? In part it is a holdover from the Cold War when we took on global commitments to defend our spehere of interest, including Japan, W. Europe, and many other critical areas. Even now, twenty years on, we still defend vast areas of the world, from nations to sea routes, that could be defended as well and more cheaply with the cooperation of others. S. Korea is a modern nation, fully capable of defending itself. Why are our troops there? We simply cannot afford to protect what we now attempt to protect. Choices must be made. Remember your Frederick the Great, “He who defends everything defends nothing.”

2. Defending others on our dime has created a kind of defense welfare cycle of dependency, in which Europe has grown prosperous (some would even say fat) and lazy under the defense unbrella provided by Uncle Sam. Forcing other nations to spend their own money on defense will not only save us money, it will stiffen their spines, and also make them better allies. The alternative is to charge nations under our defense unbrella a fee, much like a municipal fire department charges residents for fire protection services.

3. Arguing in the other direction for a moment, conservatives are at least partly justified in allowing big government in the realm of defense and the armed forces, but not being happy about it elsewhere. Why? Because the constitution specifically grants the central (federal) government power to conduct a national defense. Indeed it is one of the primary duties of the national government to do so.

4. Per #3 above, most constitutional scholars agree that the executive branch has accumulated too much power to make war w/o Congressional approval. President Truman used an executive order to take us to war in Korea, a gambit that has been used increasingly since then. The pendullum needs to swing back the other way, IMO.

Mar 25, 2009 - 10:39 pm 44. Pete:

Continuing in the vein of #38:

Regarding socialism and capitalism, Winston Churchill once said, “Capitalism results in the unequal sharing of blessings, socialism in the equal sharing of miseries” or words to that effect. I very much fear we are – under Obama – about to out that aphorism to the test these coming years.

Mar 25, 2009 - 10:42 pm 45. a Duoist:

Dr. Hanson:

Aren’t we–the West–in the beginning of the 21C likely in the uncharted territory of unprecedented wealth? Hasn’t our very success at eradicating killing diseases made us weaker as a species? Our prosperity assures a social net for the most unproductive. Marx never even considered that capitalism would evolve to become the modern welfare state, where proletarians never revolt against their monthly food stamps or housing vouchers.

Hasn’t every clear thinker over the past two hundred years warned about democracy’s tendency of electing politicians who reward special interests in exchange for votes? Isn’t our recent status as the most obese people on the planet a perfect explanation for what is occurring in our culture? Hasn’t our unprecedented wealth meant we’ve substituted ‘helplessness’ for ‘happiness’ as the “highest good”?

Haven’t we peaked, as a people? Corporations no longer fight for margins; they now simply fight for market share. Cosmetic surgery is no longer for the disfigured; it is now the equivalent of changing the color of a lipstick. There is no longer a viable small-government political party; the public trough is bi-partisan.

Isn’t everything as it is because of our unprecedented prosperity? No people in history have reached such a general wealth; aren’t our weaknesses–the bad–reflective of our inability to self-manage our bounty? Didn’t we have the unique culture to create a great wealth, but now lack the cultural values to maintain it?

Great post.

Mar 26, 2009 - 2:43 am 46. JED:

“Reform” may be the most powerful operant strategy. There are plenty of laws and regulations on the books which are useless unless they are enforced. The crimes, scams, pork, drug addictions, unhealthy citizens, political corruptions, kick backs, and all of the varieties of abuse of power costs ‘we the people’. In turn we are compensated with more promises that are followed by more scandals.
Layering on a new system of government and economy without reforming the old by enforcing the existing rules and structures is like building a house on sand.

Mar 26, 2009 - 8:57 am 47. geoffgo:

Pete@43

Re: national defense, security, and the military – it’s all national defense.
The Founders were well aware of the threats that might accrue nationally and internationally; we’ve decided over the last 200 years to take no heed of and to gradulally abrogate the protections written into their credo.

Any perusal of Thomas Paine’s work must alert and remind one to the risk we face today. The Left has so confused the dialogue that the three things “you shouldn’t talk about in good company are sex, religion and politics.”

Seems like no better time than now, to abolish that convention. Like folks, in our current predicament there is nothing else worth talking about, in any conversation, anywhere! Focus the debate, and learn whose company you’ll need to keep.

What usually happens when we completely disregard the sound advice and ignore the direst warnings from our wisest, most learned elders? When they were the inventors of personal freedom, at great cost? And, always in the spirit of compromise? Twenty-twenty hindsight says you end up nothing. Zero.

If we didn’t as a nation, for a myriad of rationales, compromise, then even I could cut the military budget by maybe 90%, more in the out years. First, I’d make it the overarching goal of US to Inflict Democracy, by every means, from now on.

Policy 1: If you threaten US, it’s always, without exception, going to be the very last act your country and its people will ever perpetrate. NO exceptions.
Policy 2: You have five years to become a democracy. Start today. Cheating will not be tolerated.

Of course our lack of resolve is the real issue, not that we’ve enabled a military-industrial complex, which unnecessarily sucks up huge treasure by doing it the “compassionate” way, and allowing both Political Parties to take a vig per bullet.
Much like GWB’s “you’re either with US, or against us.” Be friends or be dead. No nuance necessary. US has neither the time, money nor the disposition to further tolerate terrorist behavior. Parents worldwide, discipline your children, it’s good practice on your way to becoming a free person.

Compromise with necessity naturally leads to our needing to secure the Homeland with a ever-huger National Security Force, with its own growing infrastructure and budget; instead of directing our now much smaller military, or national guard, or their drones to solve the problem. We are right on course to fund our own brownshirts, our own multilingual kapo-korps.

And we acquiese to this pork-filled system, while not building a bigger, better, more impenetrable border fense. The pols are stringing “Do Not Cross” yellow tape, like this no go zone is a crimescene investigation, before, prepatory to the crime happening. Instead of building an increasing impregnable, evermore hi-tech barrier, to last for a LONG TIME, easily maintained and upgraded shield? That would be a solution, so that’s not what we’re doing?

Resolve and clarity would dictate minefields – first 20 yds – indelible paint, second 20 yds – temporary stun – PERMANENT bodily harm from there. With big signs in Spanish and Arabic.

And, of course that would limit, no stop, the flow of illegals, of all sorts and character, thereby facilitating our current Border Patrol to cope with that rare soul who makes it across, only to be immediately deported; and allow the NatGuard to deal with those who would use force to gain entry. And, this approach would cost maybe 10% of what it’s going to cost to pretend US has borders(?).

All the proposed spending on education, healthcare and green energy (which dwarfs the defense budget) will be absolutely irrelevant if 20+ million Mexicans flood across the border, all claiming asylum from a narco-terrorism inspired “overseas contingency” employing tens of thousands of “man-made disasters.” I suppose we’ll have to call this an overborder contingency, after the first 2-3 million get across.

I’m listenig to FOX report on this looming threat as I type. Now, we have a new Janet in charge, and she’s got a “contingency” plan for controlling the likely surge. One like the earlier Janet Reno’s plan for Waco?
Or, more like CSI?

Might be prudent to DEMAND of your elected representatives today, that we’d like US borders secured, right now, AND before they spend one dollar on anything else. 100% control is not just the objective, it’s a mandate. No compromise. No excuses. It’s not about Party Politics; it’s about US surviving.

Ergo, any declaration by any politician, to the contrary, is direct evidence of their malevolent motives and willingness to see US fail. Be heard, or be kulaks.

Mar 26, 2009 - 8:59 am 48. geoffgo:

a Duoist@45

Our prosperity assures a social net for the most unproductive. No, the Government mandates that, at gunpoint. Otherwise US, the most charitable, clever, productive population ever, would solve the problem through charity and other means.

Ah!…the moral beachhead. Or the cornerstone, depending whose side you take. So since the beginning of time, when the moochers and the looters first floated that “trial political balloon” that they had some legitimate claim on your and my productivity, and then continually enacted the means to take more of it, til now when they assert they own all of it, depending on who you are, what was that all about?

Fairness. It’s the means of determining the average, and shackling down the overs to advance the unders to gain votes; as if the productive class owed them. It’s depraved.

And, all the while capitalism has transformed mankind, and is still trying. Launching us toward the stars – maybe. Note: this economic miracle works only in a democracy, wherein property rights apply. 200 years. Starvation is now rare on earth, rather than de riguer. Civilization-ending diseases eradicated. And barring natural disasters, always the result of government! – with some being more inclined/determined to solve the problem than others. And, those gov’ts who aren’t are evil. See numerous African disasters, live on TV.

Capitalism hasn’t failed at all; it’s been stymied by law, and by force, and by the compromise of property rights. Propitiation to theft. Governments by nature feel and are in fact empowered by if in for your $1, then in for all of your dollars. And, they exploit your tax to inexorably improve their efficiency and effectiveness in the taking.

Can anyone doubt, politics and cultural differences aside (swept perhaps), that US unleashed could not solve the basics of existence for any African country, in under 10 years? Done as if we meant to fix it? Of course, heads may have to roll absent agreement to the peaceful infliction of democracy and capitalism. Innoculate with Freedom. It’s contageous.

Give me a break a Douist. The current world condition is not the fault of the productive; but of their enslavement. Your misplaced guilt is leaking out, all over Prof. Hanson’s comment box. And, it’s bad for morale.

Mar 26, 2009 - 10:31 am 49. geoffgo:

JED@46

To add some more pithyness to your reform strategy. last year Congress passed 60,000 laws, hundreds of thousands of edicts, millions of policy setting dictates, etc. that either allow them to steal, or make you guilty of something. Ignorance of the law, of course being no excuse…for you.

Mar 26, 2009 - 10:42 am 50. seansarto:

Caligula?

Mar 26, 2009 - 2:35 pm 51. seansarto:

Kids who wouldn’t know how to pee in the woods….but know how to hustle an’ “A” out of college.

Mar 26, 2009 - 2:43 pm 52. seansarto:

Pete#43& 44
Good points, I been looking at that Korea dynamic fer a while also. The “libertytowns” dependency becomes damnin’…Your Truman parallels seemed apparent to me also. In reading into it, it appeared to me that Truman was elected on his “Wil Rogers” cartoony “Aw Shucks” demeanor by the Chicago racketeer bosses basically to continue the assuage policy towards the Okie elements who were home from the war..an’ still outta land.

Mar 26, 2009 - 3:05 pm 53. JED:

Geoffgo @ 49

That is a scarey number of social experiments per minute. If we crunched the number of violations into a counter for the entire US population, it would probably out spin the national debt like a cheetah to a snail. At to think that western society grew from a mere ten commandments plus common sense and a keen sense of competition.
The latest poster boy is Bernie Madoff. He went 20 years under the SEC by offering something for nothing. Enron and Global X-ing were not that long ago. Crime in America is a well known endeavor and it costs us. Insane volumes of rule making is the sport of petty tyrants.
If the cops are corrupt or selectively enforcing the laws, then the laws and government have lost their foundation.
How did the executive branch extend itself into a position of the supreme leader of the legislative branch?

Mar 26, 2009 - 5:03 pm 54. 98ZJUSMC:

—Somewhere some lazy selfish academic dreamed up multiculturalism and is still smiling, “Now I can do whatever I want—drop the hurt in giving F’s, skip out on tutoring the rather difficult to tutor, stop insisting on acrimonious standards at tenure hearings—as long as I mouth these platitudes.” The faculty has become bloated Soviet-era apparatchiks on the May-Day grandstands, saluting the passing missiles, mouthing “comrade” and the “revolution” before lumbering off to the dachas on the Black Sea. Trace the evolution of our therapeutic notions of criminology, of government, of child-raising even, and it inevitably leads you back to the university.—

and there it is…….

Mar 26, 2009 - 5:12 pm 55. Ron Kean:

47. Geoffgo

You want to imitate vaguely the way Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York. Set boundaries and punish offenders. Simple.

But the mine fields would be too messy. Limbs everywhere, man, woman, child screaming. “Momma! Papa! It hurts mui malo!” Even thought it would stop illegal immigration cold in one month.

Israel showed that a fence works. That’s the best way.

Mar 26, 2009 - 6:10 pm 56. njcommuter:

The paradox of Wall Street behavior is summed up in one phrase: Devil take the hindmost. The notions of responsibility and stewardship have gone. Jack Bogle at Vanguard has written extensively, and he even has strong disagreements with the way Vanguard has been run recently. I haven’t read everything he’s written, but I can recommend his first book (Bogle on Mutual Funds) and his last (Enough).

Mar 28, 2009 - 12:50 pm 57. Michael Lonie:

#47 Geoffgo,
Bravo, you propose to make war on the entire rest of the world. Very libertarian of you indeed. The problem with libertarians (and Paleoconservatives) talking about international and defense affairs is that they generally don’t know their fundamentum from a fossa about those subjects. Your post is an excellent example of that sort of thing.

Let us take an example of your strategy at work. On 9/11 an act of war was perpetrated against the USA. By whom? Not by a nation-state, which the US could hold to account and subject to your threat of it being the last thing that nation ever did by nuking it. We were attacked by a transnational group of terrorists. Some of them were holed up in Afghanistan. We could threaten to nuke Afghanistan forward into the Chalcolithic Age from its previous cultural level, but Al-Qaida and the Islmaist movement that spawned it are much bigger than Afghanistan. And it’s pretty plain we would have little idea of which caves to nuke in order to get the right men.

Bush decided to strike at the underlying “root causes” of the jihadist enterprise, and did so quite effectively in Iraq. He sought to pit our big idea, liberty and prosperity in the modern World, against their big idea: a 7th Century style Caliphate in which Muslims would swagger around lording it over the wretched Dhimmis, and take the wealth and power the West possesses away from the USA. It belongs to them, because they’re Muslims dontcherknow. Allah said so. The lefties like Obama attacked the Iraq Campaign because they never had the wit to understand what is going on or how to fight it. Looking at the fuss over Gitmo they still don’t.

But it takes money and resources to fight a modern war. If you don’t fight the enemy wins by default. In the modern world if you let the enemy win by default you generally don’t get peace, you get tyranny that eliminates all freedom. So, rather than being a threat to freedom, defense spending is its support. Do you think we’d have any liberty if we had lost to the Nazis or Communists, by not exerting ourselves and spending immense resources to oppose them?

Basically your propsal is that, in order to reduce our budget deficit and keep our defense expenditures at a minimum, the USA commit genocide any time somebody seriously challenges us. I can’t go along wiht that.

Mar 28, 2009 - 6:35 pm 58. Vinny:

Are racial equality rules infiltrating the sports world you ask? See the “Rooney Rule” in the NFL.

Apr 1, 2009 - 8:45 am 59. RobG:

First Time visitor just surfing by; Sorry Professor but the pessimistic diatribes make me want to puke. If I only had a bullet, I shoot my self.

On second thought, Let’s all line up in single file, DMV style and I’ll point the gun at my heart and take as many miserable souls behind me as fate or destiny will allow.

Please tell me there is more to this site than a bunch of whiners, postulating on why this country is in the decline it is. Look in the F-ing mirror and tell me how you think you are not the reason.

If our country falls, We will go down in history as the cowardice generation who spent their lives on sites like this never engaging the tyranny of our day in face to face confrontation. Get the F up and let’s go to Washington DC and let the Fascist in power know we are through with the BS! 62 million disagreed with the “change”. Is that not enough? What are you waiting for? A train to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Krakow?

Oh too naive, I can feel it oozing from your highly intellectual mealy yellow spines. Can’t , Won’t, Never; we’re too civilized!

THIS IS THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER- “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing” — Sir Edmund Burke

Grows some balls and let’s get on with the battle before us.

RG

Apr 28, 2009 - 9:26 pm

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