The Defining Challenge of our Age!

Why Inequality Matters - NYTimes.com:

Both BO and Paul Krugman are convinced that Income Inequality is the "Defining Challenge of our Age". I'm not going to go look for links to quote today, but I bet that pretty much the exact same thing has been uttered over "Global Warming", "Racism", "Gun Violence" and maybe even "Intolerance" .. as "Challenge of the Age".

It is the age of "crisis" for sure, but still it is interesting to see that "hunger", "refugees", "epidemic" or "war" were not on that list. There are a lot worse lists of challenge that could be easily had.

Note also that "inequality" has replaced "poverty". In a world where most of the poor have smartphones, cars, cable, big screen TVs, video games, etc, and are bothered by obesity rather than hunger, it was time for re-branding. So much as "Global Warming" was re-branded to "Climate Change" as things began to cool (see first snow in Mideast in 112 years), "poverty" was due for an " upgrade" ... as in "Poverty 2.0, Income Inequality".

One thing REALLY nice about "inequality" is that it will still work out when ALL the "bottom quintile" have 2K Sq ft living space, two baths, a health-club membership, free medical, dental, a yearly vacation to a warmer climate (needed due to "Climate Change"), free education, two late model cars, guaranteed retirement income, and a minimum of $100K in investments ... and so on.

Why? Because as long as Paul Krugman and BO are around making what they make, with the lifestyle they have,  there will STILL be "inequality"!  What is more, even if all the "poor" all have their very own "Inequality Force One", there will STILL be "inequality".

The sad part however is that LONG before we are faced with that "crisis", the actions that BO and Krugman applaud will return us to where food, clothing, shelter and any prospects for a life other than  total despair again become the issue of the day. At that point, they MAY realize that people and nations have MUCH more pressing problems than taking money from one persons pocket and putting it in anothers, which is 80% of what our current "government" ( Federal Mafia?) does. Zero remains zero, as long as there is economic progress, economic inequality gets "worse".

Uninterestingly to anyone that has a basic understanding of reality, the more "redistribution" that as been done, the worse the "inequality" has gotten! But this never was about helping anyone, it was and is about acquiring more power for the ruling Democrat Party

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Penalizing Marriage Again

Decoding the Obamacare 'marriage penalty' - Nov. 7, 2013:

The particulars of this column are just a tiny example. State control and redistribution ALWAYS has to penalize marriage! It has been  known for thousands of years that marriage is the best way for men and women to live their lives and raise families. If you are a Christian, you know this because God said it. If you are an atheist, you could learn it through observation of income, both physical and mental health, wealth creation, etc.

Marriage is an adaptive positive behavior, so under the laws of liberalism/statism/collectivism it MUST be penalized in order to achieve "equality". Since marriage is a net benefit, in order to "equalize" the married with the unmarried, you MUST penalize the married. That is the essence of "redistribution" -- penalize successful / adaptive behavior, reward behavior that is not successful.

When a liberal/statist/collectivist sees "success" they immediately think "redistribute" ... which is implemented as penalize, tax, prohibit, regulate, etc. It is a knee-jerk non-negotiable reaction. The effect of redistribution is like spreading out a fire ... the fire goes out. Redistribution is PRECISELY penalizing success! Whatever behaviors are successful MUST be penalized in order to achieve equality of result! How else would you do it?

Why do they think this way? Because they have a vision of the world as perfect, but it requires the removal of most all the behaviors that have proved adaptive to build the western civilization we see today. Religion, truth, morality, self-control, liberty ... all must go. To attempt to thwart their actions is evil in their eyes because it denies their perfect world -- heaven on earth.

At their core they believe in a way even stronger than an Arab flying a plane into the WTC that man is good and that left to his "natural state", each short human life can be "heaven on earth", and there is NOTHING else of worth than that short life of sensual enjoyment! While the specifics of their view of this utopia are very foggy, they KNOW that it is good, and they KNOW that it requires the removal of all of the things that can be tied back to God / religion / existing civilization /tradition/ etc.

This dichotomy is as old as Adam. Is there a "better way" outside of the law and gospel given in the Bible?  Liberals believe that there certainly is, and so things like marriage have to be penalized, re-defined, weakened and finally destroyed so that all may be finally "equal". We will not reach their state of perfection until all are "equal" in our corporeal  existence.

I too believe there is an ultimate state in the physical world of equality -- death. Death of people, death of nations, death of civilizations and eventual death of the entire physical universe. I however believe there is an ultimate spiritual reality that is greater.

Mat 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." 



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The Illusion of No Limits

There's no actual debt ceiling right now | The Daily Caller:

There is no debt limit between now and February. BO can borrow and send money to his cronies with abandon.

The idea of "no limits" is a fundamental difference in human thinking. The conservative / constrained / "tragic" vision / world view is that man dies, man is limited and not perfectible, "progress" often isn't, and "new and improved" often isn't.

The liberal / unconstrained / utopian vision / world view is that man is infinitely perfectible. All problems, even death will be solved as time moves on through infinite "progress".

If you read this blog regularly, you are very likely "constrained". All Christians are constrained, because they believe that man is fallen and needs a savior as well as that God's laws are eternal so are "curbs" to mans greed, sloth, lust, covetousness, hubris, etc

 I cover the EXCELLENT book "A Conflict of Visions" on this subject by Sowell here.

It is also covered in significant scientific detail in "The Righteous Mind".

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Yellow Cake, Meaningless Facts, Stained Glass

The WikiLeaks Vindication of George W. Bush - Larry Elder - Page 1:

This article goes through a topic that I've covered before with some new data. Saddam either had WMD, or everyone thought he did. This article says that Yellowcake was acquired and was there -- to which the left will say one of two things; 1). It's a lie 2). It doesn't matter, because it isn't severe enough to go to war (with hindsight).

To which Elder tries to say "But you SAID that talking about Yellowcake WAS the "lie" ... and we had a special prosecutor and everything based on the "proof" that was a lie!"

To which the left replies "Consistency is NOT an issue ... WINNING is the issue and we already WON! BO is in power, we spy on you at will, we target you when we want to for audits or other government harassment! W is long discredited as "Bush lied, people died", the America you fought for is history, SHUT the F UP!!!!

They are "right" in the sense that "might is right". Note how unpopular "speaking truth to power" is now! The rule of law has been destroyed, our poor bankrupt children have been brainwashed to servitude and each day we realize new revelations of how we now live in a new "changed" nation, no longer America. BOville.

We have been running down this road for a century now. First slowly ... "Progressive" became "liberal" because "progressive" was tied to "Socialists" and "National Socialism" didn't turn out very well. Fascism was identified as "right" (as in "libertarian fascists") ... so the people no longer knew the difference between political left and right (statism vs extreme liberty or 'anarchy").

The "New Deal" was the "Raw Deal" for what was America. FICA was a massive assault on future generations by the current -- a time bomb that only now is becoming somewhat visible.  The various government progroms  converted the once great engine of growth into a geriatric nation with hardening arteries and gout. We live today in that sad shadow.

WMD in Iraq is just one more in a long tired litany of these topics. The Alger Hiss / McCarthy smear was a big one -- Watergate was really the left just finally getting around to punishing Nixon for being right. The release of KGB papers after the end of the USSR proved that Hiss WAS a spy and Chambers was right -- but no matter, for 90%+ of Americans, the left still won.

The whole myth of the USSR was a huge left scam. Even in the early '80s I listened to NPR breathlessly describe their "free health care", their "full employment", their "state education" ... to listen to our own Public Media, one would have thought that the USSR was heaven on earth. In the early '80s, Reagan was a MADMAN for ever suggesting that the USSR had ANY potential of ending. By the end of the '80s, the lefty message was that it had been obvious for a long time the USSR was in real trouble, and the foolish Reagan likely slowed their demise with his bellicose posturing.

It **IS** true that the winners write history -- and the left has been writing and re-writing our history for nearly 100 years.

Such is the looking glass world we live in. Acid rain, DDT, impending global starvation, the ozone hole, Japan taking over the world economy and the planet being "out of oil" in the late '70s, an impending global ice age in the early '70s, are all examples of massive "total truths" that one was once a fool to not be in agreement with. What it takes many years to learn is that from the perspective of those that purveyed and believed in those "truths", "deniers" are STILL fools, or at least "weird scary odd ducks".

When your mother asked "If all your friends jumped over a cliff, would you just follow along?", it was a trick question! The right answer is that if it was "the whole school", then YES!!! You are a social animal, and since we have thrown religion and the constitution into "the ash heap of history", a current "smart person" WILL follow the crowd -- and if tomorrow it turns out that the crowd was "wrong", that view will be completely forgotten as if it never happens. It is part of what makes it VERY uncomfortable for members in good standing of the Dominant Party (Democrat / liberal) to even TALK to someone that might bring up heresy ... The Dominant Party Message has replaced both God, the Constitution, and "foolish reality".

It looks pretty obvious from both economic and climate data that two current liberal myths that are not going to survive reality are Progressive Economics and  Global Warming, **BUT** as in the elements above, one needs to realize that DOES NOT mean that "facts, the truth, common sense, reality, etc" are going to "win".

I'm no longer certain that there exists any level of reality breaking through on these people -- we could easily be down to a few thousand people in hemp clothes shivering and starving in a cave somewhere with the onset of the next ice age, blathering away about "Global Warming", "Overpopulation", and "excessive consumption".

It seems that the best we can do is have a nicer cave somewhere with some reactors, hydroponics, connection to the sea for ice fishing and maybe some cloned woolly mammoths on the surface for steaks!  Going to have to have a REALLY good library, computer systems, AND a very nice chapel with a lot of stained glass.

We will have a lot of history to write and re-write.

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Progressives on Hypocrisy

Forward Progressives — Paul Ryan: The Ultimate Hypocrite:

Ran into this nice little screed on Paul Ryan that is a pretty good example of the "alternate universe" that "progressives" live in. To be "Progressive" or "liberal" is to have a keen sense of "hypocrisy" in others, but no mirror at all.

For a "progressive", the W deficits were horrible, but BO's are fine. Any use of military power under W was worthy of a protest, where under BO any military use, even without congressional approval is fine. Gitmo was a constant source of animus under W, now it is fine. Killing even Americans with drones? No problem with BO in the WH, under W? Killing ANYONE was "chilling" ... even terrorists deserved "constitutional rights", now not even Americans do if BO decides against it.

Now, let it be said that ANYONE with ANY standards is in fact a hypocrite -- or else your standards are so low as to not be worthy of being called "standards". ALL sin -- in many and various ways, so the only true non-hypocrites are guys like Slick Willie that never claimed to have any standards and did an excellent job of proving it!

The big difference here is that Ryan nor any Republican I know of ever said NO government!! Smaller than it is now, yes ... but maybe 15-20% of GDP vs the 25% it is today. Dealing with government is more like dieting than quitting smoking or drinking. Unless someone starts talking ZERO government or railing against having public schools, or benefits for children whose parents have died it is ridiculous to bring them into the discussion.

FICA **IS** a Ponzi scheme -- it just hasn't crashed yet. If we don't fix it, there will be no money for ANY. What Ryan wants to do is means test it to keep it helping those that truly need it and to characterize his approach otherwise is either stupid or disingenuous.

On budgets, spending and deficits, it is a discussion of degree. It is certainly hypocrisy to have railed against W deficits that were less than half BOs smallest to date at WORST, and in some cases 10% of BOs, and now be completely unconcerned and in fact cheering for larger deficits as is the case with Paul Krugman. Being OK with deficits that are smaller but concerned with those that are larger seems quite reasonable in may contexts -- two beers vs 12 for example makes a difference.

Do I believe that Ryan, W, and many Republicans were in the wrong to do medicare part D? Yes, I thought it was a fools errand at then and still do. I believe that their much smaller, but still excessive government spending was wrong. The problem is that government is often a "lesser of two evils" problem, ESPECIALLY if you are a conservative. The only folks that are going to be elected and be at all effective are POLITICIANS, so one is always hiring the equivalent of the fox to guard the henhouse!

To be a Christian means that I need to recognize that **I** am the "ultimate pile of garbage" ... but reading columns like this does provide the temptation to believe that some folks are worse! ;-)

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Stop Stealing Dreams

Take the 20 min and watch this, it is critical to our future as a nation.

I agree with most of what he says, but it is much worse than he thinks. For all his brilliance, Seth seems to have an anti-industrialist bias. It is true that "industrialists" like compliant workers and consumers, but it is even MORE true that growing and potentially oppressive governments love them even more.

They want compliant and predictable voters so it seems like a "Democracy". What is more, the unions that support them want predictable and non-competitive jobs that they can sleepwalk through to a lucrative retirement, and are willing to provide millions in campaign contributions and vocal support to keep that gravy train running.

YES! We must get out of the 19th century in education, but we are not going to do it with the vested interests of teachers and government UNION employees + the existing university elite calling the shots!

Harvard and Yale will definitely agree that losing their status as "elite" is a VERY bad thing!!

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Stay Married, Avoid Poverty

Two Classes in America, Divided by ‘I Do’ - NYTimes.com

For anyone that supplements their media diet with just a tiny bit of off-MSM seasoning, it is no news at all that a very significant amount of the "rising inequality" is due to the damage that sagging morals and government stepping into the roll of "daddy" (provider) has decimated the lower and lower middle classes.

They say 40% here -- I'd say it is much higher than that because the societal crackup came in the 60's ... we have had a couple generations of pagans in some cases -- and it shows.

But maybe if the NYTs prints it, more people will start to believe the obvious.

Finish HS, get married and stay married, raise a family -- IN THAT ORDER! Those are the biggest keys to you and your children not living poverty!!

"Fairness" Demystified

The 'Fairness' Fraud - Page 1

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.
No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?

Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever larger amounts of a nation's resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians' hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst. 

BO and even most of the Democrats are smart people. Don't they know this?? Don't they "care" about real results?? If their polices keep just adding to the deficit while the economy sputters along with gas and other prices rising, why would they keep yammering about "fairness"??

However, raising tax rates on "the rich" pays off politically, even if the government loses revenues when the rich put their money into tax shelters.

High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders of the rich. Meanwhile, the same politicians can win donations from the rich by creating tax loopholes that can keep the rich from actually paying those higher tax rates -- or perhaps any taxes at all.

and there you have it. The payoff is purely political. Nobody beyond those seeking political power is "helped", but in their world, that is really all that is important. "Fairness" is a political device, and it's only purpose is to get people "in the fairness industry" elected. Note that the fairness industry along with "the environment industry", "the race industry", "the gay industry", "the illegal immigrant industry", "the labor industry", "the regulation industry", etc have been BOOMING since '06 and especially since '08.

 It is too bad that all those "industries" don't pay off with anything other than some government jobs and federal spending -- rather than the evil "oil industry", or "technology industry", or "manufacturing industry", which tend to produce products that people want to buy at a profit, along with the jobs and wealth ...and yes, taxes!

What is the main product of the "fairness industry" beyond "Democrats in office"??

High deficits and sluggish over regulated business. At least BO has create one kind of a "boom"!!

Buffett Secretary Meme, The Shallows

Warren Buffett: Shut up, he explained | Power Line:

I've written enough about this, my point here is just to point out one reason why we have so much division in the US today, we have just seen the creation of a new Meme -- "Buffet's Secretary".

The left / MSM listeners / Democrats etc will see it as some version of the following depending on their memory, friends, degree of paying attention, etc:

"Buffett's secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does".

"Buffett's secretary pays more taxes than he does"

If someone that has dug into a bit more tries to have a reasoned discussion on the topic, they will respond with something like:

"Well, I don't see why he would lie about it".

"You must listen to Fox News too much!"

"It was all over, I didn't hear anything about the stuff you are saying ..."

or basically, as the title of the linked article says,  "Shut Up".

This has now entered the mind of the American voting public as a bunch of interlinked "factoids" have, most of which have only emotional and often very close to 100% incorrect content of any sort.

Some examples:

• "Bush lied" -- forget "about what"? In the known definition of "lying" he didn't lie about WMD, yellowcake, Valerie Plame, or anything else commonly attributed ... but the meme has stuck. He may have been wrong about WMD (even that is questionable).
• "Death Panels" -- the true origin is long lost. This started on the right, probably in the Tea Party, now it is just "a complete fabrication" from the left, and "a hyperbolic euphemism for healthcare rationing" from the right.
• "Tea Party" --  there really isn't much of an organization. It could be people opposed to runaway government of most sorts -- spending and BOcare in particular, but in general it is "bad, stupid, racist" from the left, "mostly good, maybe a little carried away conservative" from the right.
• "The 1%" -- From the left, a symbol of Wall Street, Corporations, The Koch Bros (or wealthy devil of the day) ... all manner of financial evil, greed, malfeasance and corruption. THE ENEMY in the 2012 campaign of Class Warfare. From the right, the level of income that they would like to achieve someday.

One could go on forever, but the bottom line is that in this time of massive info overload, our information delivery systems have actually been reduced to delivering "only the tag cloud" with next to no content behind them -- but more importantly, essentially 180 degree different content depending on your "political tribe". Is it any wonder that nothing even approaching discussion or debate happens anymore??

Like most things, there is a whole book "The Shallows" http://www.theshallowsbook.com/nicholascarr/Nicholas_Carrs_The_Shallows.html that covers this general phenomenon as it relates to the Internet.

No time for true content, depth, nuance, honest emotion, thought, context ... just a raw emotional "meme/tag", then silence.

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Dilbert Summary of Revolution

Occupy Dilbert | Power Line:

Pretty much covers it!!

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B ZERO POINT ZERO!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/president-zero

B Zero.Zero ... The Blutarski President (Animal House).

ZERO jobs created in August!!!

Three years ago "The One" was being hailed around the world and speaking in front of faux Grecian pillars to his adoring zombies. Now our nation sits stagnant, bankrupt and waiting for yet another teleprompter read from the former "One" oops, off by 1! ... now ZERO!

A worthy though depressing read. The Government doesn't create jobs, it destroys them. Unions don't create jobs, they destroy them. Handing out money to the poor, the unemployed, even the middle class neither creates wealth or jobs, it destroys both ... along with the drive to succeed.

One doesn't have to be "hard hearted" to say that all forms of assistance need to stop at some point for all but the most gravely needy -- the bird must leave the nest, the child the home, the student eventually graduate, and thus the unemployed eventually work -- even if at a lower wage. 

Our nation must get to work making something that can be sold at a profit and investing part of that profit as well as part of our time in "delayed gratification" so that the future is brighter than the past. It makes not one whit of difference how low the wages at the competing nations are -- they are what they are. Playing the hand one is dealt is the only way to keep playing, and at the game of survival, the choice is keep playing or DIE! 

Policies that incent that happening -- the best approximation possible of

zero taxes on investment, zero taxes on employing people, low and flat taxes on income, minimal Federal government doing little more than defense and interstate commerce, minimal FEDERAL government regulation of all kinds. Government needs to be in the business of ENABLING  business, invention and GROWTH -- not burdening it!

It really is simple, and BO is simply a failure.

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Ishmael, By Daniel Quinn

Another of the many attempts to come up with some sort of new mythology that replaces thousands of years of western spiritual and philosophical life with a pagan pseudo-religious view of the universe and mans place in it.

In this story a man answers an ad in a newspaper by a "teacher" looking for a "student" that has a desire to "change the world". It turns out the teacher is a telepathic gorilla named "Ishmael", and the "lesson" is that "Mother Culture" (Western Culture) was created by "the takers" and is a planet and life destroying disaster. 

The world is divided into two; those that divide the world in two, and those who don't (little joke). "Leavers" ... essentially "hunter gatherers" and all the other animal species on the planet, and "Takers", farmers and the entire culture that was created because of people living in a fixed place, raising surplus crops so time could be spent on thought and technology.

Some of the random thoughts from the book:

• The planet is being "destroyed", but maybe the end result will just be that man will be destroyed. The point is "we have no choice" -- getting rid of these "takers" is an emergency!
• There ARE some sort of "rules" ... the book postulates "gods" that set them up. The pinnacle of "success" according to these "rules" is held out as the American Indian. 
• Leavers / Hunter Gathers good ... Takers / Farmers bad ... and of course the "mark of Cain" is the "maggot colored white man". 
• Man has no "original sin", it is the "taker culture" that is responsible for all ill. Yet another version of the "Noble Savage" myth.
• "We all live in a prison" -- returning to some version of "leaver culture" will repair all ills. Our "culture" creates the "fish not knowing about being wet" problem  (I suspect a little time spent in the woods with a loincloth eating grubs might make the "leaver culture" slightly less desirable) 
• Naturally, the distribution of wealth and power in "the prison" is unjust in the extreme ... and again, the problem is those nasty white males. 

That covers most of the main points.

What amazes me about books like this is how completely common they are and how much their basic world views are IDENTICAL ( here is a Thom Hartman ... anything by him is about the same). The view is essentially:

1. Some version of a "Nobel Savage" myth ... "return to nature and all is good". 
2. No need for God -- either this is all there is, or the next life is cool with whatever you do here ... maybe unless you like work hard and create things or something evil like that. 
3. Everything is currently screwed up, but it is "the fault" of "western culture, white men, corporations, money, technology or ... "something"". It can be "fixed" by throwing away pretty much all of current culture, taking off our clothes and having some sort of back to nature free love thing. 
4. "Somehow" ... if we just tear down what is, things will get really really good -- "trust us". 

BO actually summarized it pretty well -- "Hope and Change" don't ya know!

What is clear to me is that man has a "Christ shaped hole", and once Christ is rejected he is prone to believe in just about anything -- however it always ends up having a "shape" that pretty much looks like Lucifer for some reason -- maybe in an ape suit, maybe a cute lass with some minimal fern trim, or maybe just looking like a snake peddling an apple.

The road to Hell has never been hard to find!

BO Relativism

RealClearPolitics - Hovering on High: Obama Surveys the World

The essence of fascism is the equivalence of all on a moral and very earthly plane, so that the brilliant leader of day -- Hitler 70 years ago in Germany, BO here today can make their Olympian pronouncements as the nearest thing in a godless world to holy writ.

Not that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see. Traveling the world, he brings the gospel of understanding and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny uplands of comity and understanding. He shall guide you.

The sheep are prepared, be it a foreign policy of bowing scraping profuse apology, buying the car companies to force Americans to buy the cars that BO and the climate Nazis approve of, or providing us with a health care system as as soulless as the post office, the fascists are on the march.

Well, yes. On the one hand, there certainly is some American university where the women's softball team has received insufficient Title IX funds -- while, on the other hand, Saudi women showing ankle are beaten in the street, Afghan school girls have acid thrown in their faces, and Iranian women are publicly stoned to death for adultery. (Gays, as well -- but then again we have Prop 8.) We all have our shortcomings, our national foibles. Who's to judge? 

That's the problem with Obama's transcultural evenhandedness. It gives the veneer of professorial sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course there are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn't mean that these rights and wrongs are of equal weight.

The sheep become so used to the dialectic of "on one hand this and the other ...", while the supposed comparisons are more like "in one universe thus, and in some other, not related universe ...". It seems that with media support, the level of critical thought for many is nil.

Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

Actually, distorting history is far worse than that. Along with the constant false equivalence rhetoric it prepares the weak minded for the removal of the "other side" as "too dangerous". Some 88 year old crackpot shoots someone in the holocaust museum, a lone gunman shoots a late term abortionist ... Rush Limbaugh says something controversial -- how long can we "put up with this dangerous hate"?? The preparation for the complete destruction of any opposition to BO is now being sown in earnest.

The Lack of Knowledge Depression

Our Epistemological Depression — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

I'm starting to love that word even more. Epistemology, the study of knowledge and of the limits on man's ability to know.

In many cases, even more importantly, our willingness to jump to anything that SEEMS like knowledge because it "sounds good enough". We don't really like to think about complex things much, even less if the answers turned out are grey to maybe negative, vs nice quick judgments that seem to show our enemies to be wrong, evil and deserving of punishment while showing those that we like, and above all, ourselves to be brilliant and morally above reproach!!

So with our current financial situation, the congress, the president and the MSM grind away about "greed, rich folks and the failures of Wall Street" -- and how in hind sight, it is all so "obvious".

These factors have received a good deal of attention. But they are not the whole story, and certainly not the most original part of the predicament. What seems most novel is the role of opacity and pseudo-objectivity. This may be our first epistemologically-driven depression. (Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and limits of knowledge, with how we know what we think we know.) 

That is, a large role was played by the failure of the private and corporate actors to understand what they were doing. Most heads of ailing or deceased financial institutions did not comprehend the degree of risk and exposure entailed by the dealings of their underlings—and many investors, including municipalities and pension funds, bought financial instruments without understanding the risks involved. 

We should keep this in mind when we chastise government agencies such as the SEC for failing to monitor what was going on. If the leading executives of financial firms failed to understand what was taking place, how could we expect government regulators to do so? The financial system created a fog so thick that even its captains could not navigate it.

The article goes into a quite a bit of detail about how the financial firms were thinking and operating and that when it all went down, all the "features" that were supposedly there to "keep them safe" -- diversification, hedging, fancy mathematical models and "insurance" all turned against them and aided in the fall.

Confidence cannot just be conjured out of air. Nor can it be created with injections of capital or fiscal stimulus. It will be rebuilt to the extent that financial institutions take actions that lead us to believe that they know what they are doing. And they are more likely to know what they are doing if they are smaller, less diversified, and less engaged with financial instruments that are too clever by half. 

Some recent policies seem likely to exacerbate the problems I’ve outlined. Take the Treasury’s encouragement of institutional consolidation through amalgamation. Bank of America was encouraged to take over Merrill Lynch; and JPMorgan Chase took over Bear Stearns, and then bought the assets of Washington Mutual. Whatever the purported advantages of these takeovers, the creation of ever larger and more diversified companies makes it more likely that these firms will be plagued by the epistemological problems noted above. The Treasury has created more firms that can’t really be understood (or whose riskiness can’t be assessed)—not by their managers, not by government regulators, and not by investors. 

To speak of a crisis of financial epistemology may sound abstract, but it has had very concrete and disastrous consequences. Understanding this underrated aspect of our current crisis is a prerequisite for getting us out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into.

I think that McCain was more right than we know when he discussed the "recession" in early '08 as being more mental than anything. In the late '90s, the MSM was VERY worried that impeaching Slick Willie would "hurt the economy". Somehow, when it came to casting the Bush administration as completely corrupt, incompetent and to talk about the economy as "depressed", before anything severe had even happened, there was suddenly no "confidence issue".

As in a lot of things, confidence is a lot easier to destroy than it is to build -- like economies, countries, investment accounts, relationships, careers -- and so much more. It can take decades for the things to be built (or longer), but usually, it is possible to destroy much if not all of what was built in a very short period of time. Look at how successful the Democrats have been! They only took over congress in '06, and the WH and filibuster proof congress in '09, and already we have the worst economic numbers in at least 25 years and the largest deficits by all measures in the history of the world!

Ten Conservative Principles

Link to the full text

There is more detail around each one and it is worth following the link to read it all. How important it is to read such things in the current world!

First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.

Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire.

Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time.

Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity.

Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems.

Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability. Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created.

Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.

Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.

Ninth, the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. Politically speaking, power is the ability to do as one likes, regardless of the wills of one’s fellows.

Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world.

Best to just ponder with no extra comment from this quarter -- if you have extra time, go read the rest.

Dark Knight

The Dark Knight, reviewed. - By Dana Stevens - Slate Magazine

I found this little gem in this review of this summer's blockbuster:

The long, intricately braided story that follows will include vast wiretapping networks, suicide-bomb threats, and moral clashes over torture and prisoners' rights. In short, Chris Nolan does more nuanced thinking about the war on terror than we've seen from the Bush administration in seven years. And despite a falsely heroic closing speech from Gary Oldman's character, police Lt. Jim Gordon, the movie seems to arrive at much the same conclusion about Batman as Americans have about Bush: Thanks to this guy, we're well and thoroughly screwed.

Is the Bush administration supposed to "expose their identity" as the Joker wants Batman to do? Isn't the message of the film that there are really really evil people out there in the world, and in order to deal with them SOMEONE has to walk extremely close to the edge of evil but not fall over it? In the movie, DA Dent clearly fell over--bigtime, and I thought a bit much and a bit easily, but Batman is "still out there, still protecting"-at an extremely high cost to himself. Lost love, lost family, extreme life danger, lost friends, maybe even a lost Lucius Fox.

How HAS the Bush administration kept the US safe from attacks since 9-11? Part of it is certainly going on offense, but is that all of it? Unlike the Clinton administration that liked to crow about any little thing they did to maybe thwart terror, the Bush administration has been remarkably quiet. In intelligence, quiet is good, in politics, it is suicide, but Bush seems to have been very willing to pay that price.

While the Clinton motives were always crystal clear -- money, sex, power, adulation, the Bush motives are a lot less clear. One doesn't see a bunch of harried worries about "his legacy". The MSM is of course sure that they KNOW that legacy will be "worst president ever", but folks tend to forget that what follows is also important. Clinton presided over times that APPEARED to be quiet, but in retrospect were a period when the greatest post communist threat was building. Bush started dealing with that threat, and for some reason, if keeping the country safe is something people like, with very good results.

How well will BO do on that front? I think that result will have some bearing on how Bush is actually judged by history.

Oh, the Dark Knight is worth seeing. Very dark, but well acted, good effects.

Imagine

Michelle Malkin: Obamanation, NRO

I was looking for another post by Michelle on BO gaffes and ran into this. Apparently from over a year ago. I always love Democrats who claim that the lives of soldiers that died in the service of their country were "wasted". On one hand, I do admire their honesty, because that is what most of them believe. I think John Lennon had the liberal view pretty close with "Imagine":

Imagine there's no Heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today


Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace


You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one


Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world


You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

It fits in so many ways. Here we have a guy that was worth at least 100's of millions of dollars with homes around the world singing about "no possessions". Beyond that, someone who thought that if there were "no countries" there would be nothing to "kill or die for" gets killed by someone basically just because he was famous. There would seem to be a message in there somewhere and it is doubtful that John understood it.

No God, No Country, No Possessions. Just the self lost in a meaningless cosmos. Given that, what would "wasted" be? Dying for something other than personal pleasure?

Here are the words of Marine Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, who died in a 2005
firefight in Ramadi:

“Obviously if you are reading this then I have
died in Iraq . . . I don’t regret going, everybody dies but few get to
do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why
we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so that
they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or
vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is
why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.”

John Lennon, BO, or 90%+ of Democrats can have nothing but contempt for such words and when they are honest believe that Jeffrey Starr "wasted his life".

Imagine

Liberal Facism, Jonah Goldberg

This is one of those books that I'm sure not many liberals will read, but for the few that actually care about America, they really ought to. The biggest point is that "Fascism", while it is probably the least well defined commonly used political term, is a lot more like "religion" or "desire for unity" than anything associated with a specific political party. The desire to "all be part of a national family, all be taken care of, all agree on nearly everything, feel safe, feel that we have a common purpose, feel that we are working for a cause" ... all those "nice human emotions" are what is subverted by Fascism. It doesn't HAVE to be evil, but it is always extremely dangerous because it destroys individual liberty and public skepticism.

The left in this country stole the term "liberal" in the 30's. Prior to the 30's, a "liberal" was like a "libertarian"--small government, low taxes, individual liberty. When the term "socialist" became unpopular because of association with the USSR, Germany and Italy, they decided to take over the term "liberal" and did so successfully.

What is less known and more insidious is that "Nazi" stands for "National Socialist Party". It doesn't take a lot of thought to realize that a revolutionary, totalitarian, anti-traditional, socialist, anti-Christian and dictatorial state isn't "conservative, libertarian or right wing" in any way. It is LEFT WING, and in fact prior to the holocaust discovery, the much of the left wing in this country revered both Hitler and Mussolini and vice-versa. Much of what both Hitler and Mussolini did was modeled on the Woodrow Wilson government in the US. Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and FDR were all "progressives", which is close to "fascists". They were men of "collective action vs individual liberty".

Part of the confusion here is that the media and the left simply juxtaposes "facist, right wing, nazi, racist, militarist, evil, Republican, etc" in one tidy package and uses it for name calling, one of their favorite pastimes in lieu of rational discussion. Mussolini was certainly a totalitarian fascist-he created the term "totalitarian" to mean "the government takes care or your TOTAL life", but Mussolini was not anti-semitic or racist in other ways. Hitler was a fascist and he WAS racist. Franco was fascist and NOT racist. Racism is just another human problem, like flatulence, a fascist may have a problem with it, he may not. Same thing with Nationalism--Castro is very nationalist, but he would call himself a communist, as would most Americans.

Prior to the problems between Hitler and Stalin, there wasn't a lot of animosity between communism and fascism. Both were very much "workers parties", communism was just generally international, while fascism was generally nationalistic. The lefties of the world all correctly saw communism and fascism as pretty much the same thing -- heavier and heavier state control, less individual liberty, more collectivism, more central planning. When WWII happened, there was a rift between the USSR and Germany, so it tended to be couched in ideological terms. A lot of the book is spent on quotes and discussions from Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and others showing that they were part of one big happy movement -- until they decided that a bad thing had happened in Germany, and they didn't want to be part of that. So, they picked the obvious scapegoat, "the right", even though there is nothing about "the right" that would lead one to think that "National Socialism" would be found there.

The book is 405 pages long, and the history of progressivism -> liberalism in this country and socialism, communism and fascism world wide is covered in a good deal of detail. The main point is NOT to say that "liberals are Nazis", although the cute little cover with the smiley face with Hitler mustache is certainly going to make liberals think that. Goldberg makes it clear in the book that fascist does NOT equal Nazi -- Fascist is pretty much "why can't we just get beyond politics, find a 3rd way, and let the smart experts do what needs to be done so we can we healthy wealthy and wise". That isn't evil, it is just dangerous ... because if you believe that can actually happen, you are already not thinking very straight, and if you think that the attempt at it isn't going to have a horrible cost in individual liberty, then you have been a grass munching sheep for way too long already.

I could quote and quote, but I'll leave with this one:

In America, a conservative is one who protects and defends what are considered liberal (old style) institutions in Europe but largely conservative ones in America: private property, free speech, free markets, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and the rights of communities to determine for themselves how they will live within these guidelines. This is why conservatism, classical liberalism, libertarianism and Whiggism are different flags for the only truly radical political revolution in a thousand years. The American founding stands within this tradition, and modern conservatives seek to advance and defend it.

Consilience

https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X

I've been reading more books than I've been Blogging on. I just finished "Consilience" by Edward O. Wilson. A previous author of two Pulitzer prize winning books; "On Human Nature", and "The Ants". The term "consilience" refers to the "unity of knowledge", how discoveries in one field can be critical to others. One can view the physical world as a layered architecture where physics is the "base", with chemistry and biology on top, followed by all the social sciences, politics, the arts, religion, etc.

Wilson has the vision that it COULD all be linked together so that we would truly understand our universe. He strongly laments the "post modernist" view that "all points of view are equally valid" - not surprising for a scientist. He seems much more willing to entertain the potential for divinity than many scientists, even though for himself, he is a materialist. He DOES seem to realize at least part of the horror of a universe where there is no transcendence, but he sees the risks of transcendence as too high -- mostly on the environmental front. He sums up the materialist vs transcendent views as "The uncomfortable truth is the the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure".

That is an interesting statement in that I would question whether any human will acquire a "full measure" of EITHER of those areas separately either. However, to come to a conclusion of what that which completely transcends the physical can do, seems a bit presumptuous. Man is so quick to set limits on what it is that God can do, it is good God has us around to lock those limits in on infinite power since we are so "intelligent" (just ask us). While we seem good at providing limits for the infinite, it is strange that we seem less inclined to limit ourselves.

He makes a good comment on the state of knowledge and information in the world; "We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it and make important choices wisely". I think he is right on that at some level, and he also points out in the book how important it is to place the information into context with other knowledge, and even make it into a "story". He does seem to have some real insight into human nature.

He waits until the very end of the book to get into environmental doom and gloom. He sees us as rushing headlong to destruction of the planet, and has decided that "somehow" man needs to "morally" pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and see vast control on development and technology as "the only moral thing to do".

A neat trick for a strict materialist to come up with, apparently a new form of human brain will somehow "evolve" and suddenly operate with this "environmental moral imperative" in the next few decades? It seems unlikely to me that randomness should have bequeathed us with this function, and in a materialist universe we are just going to have to wait around for a few million years of "survival of the fittest" and hope that the right kind of "morals" for environmentalism randomly fall out the back end of the random process. 

If such doesn't happen, that must mean that "the right kind of morals" just didn't randomly arise at "the right time" and the great roulette wheel of randomness will just keep spinning along without us. Small loss in a cold godless universe!

It is nice to see that even strict materialists have "hope" -- I'm thinking that he may want to invest more in lottery tickets with his faith in the great god of the dice. It seems so strange that a random process would generate a brain that questions the outcome of the random process (the existing state of the world), yet somehow believes that one of the outputs of that random process (us) is somehow responsible -- and soon to be "morally mandated" to "fix it".

Release Your Anger, And Joy

The events of the past week, along with of all things a couple of little books of wise quotations picked up at the CAR WASH of all places (that is where I got the Franklin quote) have coalesced in my feeble mind. The book "Be Positive" by Wally Amos (The guy that created Famous Amos cookies, among other things) contains this worthy page:

Keep Moving Toward Your Goals: Confucius said. "It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop" Truer works were never spoken. You succeed by not stopping. You are guaranteed to lose if you quit. You never know what will happen if you just keep going. So go as slow or as fast as you need to go, but whatever you do, please do not stop.

Interesting that Wally Amos is black, and most of a  James W. Loewen  talk last Tuesday at "Rochester Reads" was on the horrors of racism in this country and how hamstrung blacks are because of it. No doubt there is a lot of truth in that ... as well as there is in the case of physically and mentally disabled people, people abused as children, those that have less innate motivation --  the list is infinite. To be human is very much about limitation; but being a victim of our limitations will have a completely different outcome than seeing those limits as learning opportunities.

Liberalism is different though. As I watch and listen to the new powers in Washington, I'm often transported to the scene in Star Wars VI, "Return of the Jedi" where Luke is fighting with Darth in the presence of the the Emperor, who tells him to "release his anger" in order to defeat Darth. Since there is no transcendence in the liberal universe, the human condition has to be lofted to deity, which of course it completely lacks the capacity to fulfill. The intellect and reason are as "good as it gets" as the "highest functions", but the emotions are too omnipresent to be ignored. To carry on the Science Fiction motif, Spock might say; "one does not worship logic".

The Democrats spent the whole week on "Give up, it is taking too long, there is no hope, it is like Vietnam ...". "Victory" to the left is when the forces of good give up and the communists, terrorists or just plain criminals win. Even the act of someone "giving up", especially if it is the US is a "win". When anger, hatred, lust, and especially hopelessness can gain, all is right with the liberal universe; no god is in heaven, life (and especially sacrifice) is meaningless, and prospects for hope are dimmed. Hail, Lord Beelzebub, your constituency has had a "positive week".

Harry Reid even released his anger so well that he said that "Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake ever". It would be interesting to know his criteria, I'm thinking that the 57,690 US killed in Vietnam might have a couple of words on that ... US involvement in WWI, Spanish-American, some of the actions in Mexico, Philippines...oh , I don't know, it seems "unlikely" even if Reid and the Democrats manage to make it as big a defeat as they can.

In Sunday School today we discussed Philippians, which is a wonderful set of verses to keep the current events in the right perspective.

4:4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: [and] again I say, Rejoice.

4:5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord [is] at hand.

4:6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

4:7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things [are] honest, whatsoever things [are] just, whatsoever things [are] pure, whatsoever things [are] lovely, whatsoever things [are] of good report; if [there be] any virtue, and if [there be] any praise, think on these things.

This week we enter the season of Lent. While those of faith believe that the ultimate victory has been won, we still live in a time where souls have the freedom to choose whom they serve. Adversity is a good reason to be thankful for the plan and the patience the of the author of hope.