Right now we're in the middle of the Republican National Convention. Several of my favorite political blogs seem to be doing little but reportnig, analyzing and opining on the various speeches. I expect when the DNC rolls around, the same will be true for the more left-leaning blogs and sites.
I find the whole phenomenon tedious and pointless. They are politicians. Saying stuff people like to hear is what they do. Talk is cheap. We all know that, don't we?
Talk. Is. Cheap.
We are so far beyond the point of talk it's not funny. We're piling on mountains of debt, increasing the size and reach of the federal government at an alarming rate, we're gutting Constitutional restrictions on government power. Both sides of the aisle are equally complicit.
So shut up, OK? I've been listening to politicians say appealing things most of my life.
Talk. Is. Cheap.
Shut up and do something.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Math of Obama's Amnesty
I've already pointed out that the Obama administration is frankly encouraging illegals to game Obama's amnesty by doing no verification whatsoever. But what if the administration tried to make a good-faith effort to verify applicants' eligibility?
The applicant comes in, say with a high school transcript, showing that he is of the proper age, has been here long enough and attended high school in the U.S. The processor has to make a phone call or fax request to the high school verifying that the transcript is authentic.
Assume that each application takes only 5 minutes to conclusively verify the supporting documentation. Latest estimates are about 1.7 million illegals taking advantage of the amnesty and rising.
At five minutes each, that's 17,708 8-hour man days of verification, with no lunch or coffee breaks or inefficiencies, just processing through verifications at an average rate of 5 minutes per verification.
That's 73.75 man years of labor (at 48 40-hour weeks per year). Of course, the federal government can throw a few hundred people at this task and get it done in less than a year, but will it? Also, 5 minutes per verification is comically generous. I've tried to check around for a job applicant's references and had it take hours, end to end, with references not answering, not returning calls, requests for clarification, etc. Someone doing nothing else can get started on other verifications while waiting for calls/faxes on earlier ones, but at some point, it becomes ghastly to manage:
"You're calling back about who? Jose' Garcia? Um, do you have the case number I left you? No? Crap. El Paso school district? Um, I have 490 Jose' Garcias who said they went to high school in El Paso. What? You've had 680 Jose' Garcia's in the past 20 years? Geez. Let's just call him verified. Which one? All of them."
The applicant comes in, say with a high school transcript, showing that he is of the proper age, has been here long enough and attended high school in the U.S. The processor has to make a phone call or fax request to the high school verifying that the transcript is authentic.
Assume that each application takes only 5 minutes to conclusively verify the supporting documentation. Latest estimates are about 1.7 million illegals taking advantage of the amnesty and rising.
At five minutes each, that's 17,708 8-hour man days of verification, with no lunch or coffee breaks or inefficiencies, just processing through verifications at an average rate of 5 minutes per verification.
That's 73.75 man years of labor (at 48 40-hour weeks per year). Of course, the federal government can throw a few hundred people at this task and get it done in less than a year, but will it? Also, 5 minutes per verification is comically generous. I've tried to check around for a job applicant's references and had it take hours, end to end, with references not answering, not returning calls, requests for clarification, etc. Someone doing nothing else can get started on other verifications while waiting for calls/faxes on earlier ones, but at some point, it becomes ghastly to manage:
"You're calling back about who? Jose' Garcia? Um, do you have the case number I left you? No? Crap. El Paso school district? Um, I have 490 Jose' Garcias who said they went to high school in El Paso. What? You've had 680 Jose' Garcia's in the past 20 years? Geez. Let's just call him verified. Which one? All of them."
Shot A Coyote Yesterday
Two of my four dogs were outside and I heard them barking with extra enthusiasm, so I looked out the window to see what they were barking at.
She was a beautiful female coyote, on the hillock in the pasture beyond the yard, probably no more than 20-30 yards from the woven wire fence. She seemed fascinated by the dogs and was mostly just sitting sunning herself, occasionally making little dashing dances in the dogs' direction as if she wanted to play.
It was really a shame to have to shoot her, just because I appreciate the good that predators can do in the wild, and she seemed very full of life and joy. But, by being so comfortable in broad daylight so close to the house, so close to two agitated dogs, she was demonstrating that she considered the territory her own and had no fear of the dogs.
I have horses, cattle, goats, dogs and cats. Cats are a popular prey for coyotes as are goat kids and calves. If she'll venture right under two very large dogs' noses for the fun of it, she'll do it to kill one of my cats, goats or calves.
I can coexist with the coyotes, but they have to maintain proper fear and respect of human areas. In 20 years on the ranch, I've been fortunate that they've always stayed respectfully shy of the dogs. The woven wire around the yard is new this year, though. For many years, there was no fence at all, and then after that just two strands of barbed wire. I think the coyotes figured that wouldn't stop the dogs if they decided to take after them. But they're smart, and I think they realize that the woven wire is a more formidable barrier. I couldn't reward her learning.
It was a fair shot -- a bit over 100 yards with a scoped .22 magnum, rested on the windowsill. It went higher than I wanted and severed her spine instead of hitting her heart, but at least she didn't run off bleeding. I finished her off with a shot to the head.
It was interesting. The cattle had been staying away from her, but when she was down, they all came over and gathered round her, either curiosity seekers or giving her a respectful send-off, maybe.
This is the wrong time of year for coyote pelts, I'm told. Apparently they're only worth anything in the winter, when they have their winter coats.
She was a beautiful female coyote, on the hillock in the pasture beyond the yard, probably no more than 20-30 yards from the woven wire fence. She seemed fascinated by the dogs and was mostly just sitting sunning herself, occasionally making little dashing dances in the dogs' direction as if she wanted to play.
It was really a shame to have to shoot her, just because I appreciate the good that predators can do in the wild, and she seemed very full of life and joy. But, by being so comfortable in broad daylight so close to the house, so close to two agitated dogs, she was demonstrating that she considered the territory her own and had no fear of the dogs.
I have horses, cattle, goats, dogs and cats. Cats are a popular prey for coyotes as are goat kids and calves. If she'll venture right under two very large dogs' noses for the fun of it, she'll do it to kill one of my cats, goats or calves.
I can coexist with the coyotes, but they have to maintain proper fear and respect of human areas. In 20 years on the ranch, I've been fortunate that they've always stayed respectfully shy of the dogs. The woven wire around the yard is new this year, though. For many years, there was no fence at all, and then after that just two strands of barbed wire. I think the coyotes figured that wouldn't stop the dogs if they decided to take after them. But they're smart, and I think they realize that the woven wire is a more formidable barrier. I couldn't reward her learning.
It was a fair shot -- a bit over 100 yards with a scoped .22 magnum, rested on the windowsill. It went higher than I wanted and severed her spine instead of hitting her heart, but at least she didn't run off bleeding. I finished her off with a shot to the head.
It was interesting. The cattle had been staying away from her, but when she was down, they all came over and gathered round her, either curiosity seekers or giving her a respectful send-off, maybe.
This is the wrong time of year for coyote pelts, I'm told. Apparently they're only worth anything in the winter, when they have their winter coats.
Is Being Anti-Government A Mental Disorder?
Outcry after military veteran detained for anti-government Facebook posts
On the one hand, it is certainly necessary to have a way to detain seriously mentally ill people. On the other hand, these statutes are ripe for abuse. In my state, for example, a magistrate's order isn't even required (although I'm not sure that affords meaningful protection), any law enforcement officer, social worker, or mental health professional can order the detention, if they believe the person is a danger to themselves or others.
No probable cause is required, no evidence of imminent action, and as the above paragraphs indicate, the person is not being "arrested" or "charged" with a "crime" -- although to the person in question, it's a distinction without a difference, because the person is being hauled off against his will and held without bail or charges.
The person's final disposition depends on a hearing that typically takes about a week to occur. In the meantime, the person has been wrenched from his life, his job under incredibly stigmatizing conditions. The person is held in a psychiatric institution where every move is monitored and noted, and any "abnormal" behavior is recorded. If the person is angry, depressed and uncooperative about being held against his will, by coincidence these are also symptoms of many common mental disorders with which the psychiatrists are perfectly eager to label him. If he maintains that he is mentally healthy, a note goes into the record that says he has "poor self-awareness." Even teenagers are routinely given anti-depressants and anti-psychotics like Prozac that are known to increase suicidal thoughts and feelings. And, what do you know? Suicidal thoughts and feelings are grounds for involuntary incarceration. If he refuses to take these involuntarily-prescribed meds, he is "resistant to treatment."
Though the law technically allows patients to refuse any particular treatment, you have to keep in mind that the person's freedom is not dependent on any objective evidential standard, but entirely on the subjective evaluations of the psychiatrists. Refuse to cooperate with the psychiatrists, and you don't get good evaluations. So, any freedom the patient technically possesses is illusory.
At the hearing, the determination of whether the person is a danger to himself or others is entirely based on the psychiatrist's evaluations. There is no jury of his peers. There is no criminal charge. The person need not have every committed an illegal act in his life. Yet, at stake is the person's entire autonomy as a person. If involuntarily committed, the person loses his freedom, is deeply publicly stigmatized -- locked out of many career options (health care, law enforcement, any career requiring sensitive clearances, and many more). He gives up substantial civil rights (rights to freedom of movement, freedom to keep and bear arms, right to be secure in his person and property, because he may be subject to drug tests and/or other medical and psychiatric tests against his will.) Of course, they will say none of this is against the patient's will. He always has the choice to refuse to cooperate with the treatment plan -- and remain incarcerated in some hell-hole of a mental institution the rest of his life.
Yes, the treatment plan. The involuntarily committed patient is now subject to a "treatment plan." This plan is a gargantuan stick to wield against the patient. He can be released or re-incarcerated at any time without his consent. His own thoughts are not his own, because relentless therapy is used to get him to think the way his case workers and psychiatrists think he should think about whatever they want. Anything that displeases them is, subjectively, an indication of failure to cooperate with the treatment plan. Judgment of the progress and success of the treatment plan is measured by the same mental health bureaucracy that put him there in the first place and who supervise his treatment plan. Yes, in theory, there are "independent" psychiatric evaluations, but these are almost always carried out by other psychiatrists who are deeply embedded in the system and share the same training, philosophies of treatment, and faith in the system as the patient's caseworkers, and the magistrates themselves, not being mental health "experts" defer to the judgments of the psychiatrists.
In effect, the patient will be judged healthy when, and only when, he has pleased your case worker and psychiatrist to their satisfaction. His own decisions about his person are virtually meaningless, because with the involuntarily commitment, he has ceased to be, in the eyes of the law and society, a competent person capable of making his own decisions. Again, this may be a person who up until whatever unfortunate incident precipitated the chain of events, led a productive life and has never done nor been accused of anything criminal, ever.
The system is ultimately dehumanizing and incestuous -- the mental health facilities, the social workers, the psychiatrists, all have no incentive to deem people mentally healthy. They make money off mentally ill people. Furthermore, there are few consequences for erring on the side of mental illness. They are not held personally or financially accountable for destroying the life of a mentally healthy person and holding him against his will for years. But if they release a mentally ill person, and that person does something wrong, then the public and the press are only too eager to second-guess them, "How could you have let this person roam the streets? Wasn't it obvious?"
It's a terrifying nightmare of a system. People get swallowed up by it. Bright, normal people who were maybe having a bad day or month can get swallowed up by it and ground up, and they aren't cured until they have been badgered and brainwashed into being, and believing they are mentally ill; because of course, once you have been involuntarily committed, you are, by definition mentally ill and your continued protests to the contrary are just symptoms of your mental illness. They can't cure you until they've convinced you you're sick. Hey, but it's all for your own good, the lost years, the broken dreams. What? You're depressed about all that? Depression is a mental illness, friend.
These laws fall under civil law, not criminal law, and are this handled by the civil courts. The laws are often very arcane, and implemented in very counter-intuitive means -- any lawyer who doesn't actually specialize in this type of case law is quickly out of his depth. Your family attorney is likely to be of no use. The lawyers who are familiar with the law and how it is implemented in your state are the ones who do this almost exclusively, and they are part of the informal "system" -- they're probably on a first-name basis with the psychiatrist, magistrate, prosecutor and social worker on the case. Your own lawyer may not be your friend in this instance, especially if court-appointed (and he might as well be, because the expert lawyer you'd hire privately is just another guy in the pool that you'd get assigned as a court-appointed lawyer). If you press the lawyer, you can probably get the lawyer to admit that acting "in your best interests" means that if he thinks you're crazy, he's not going to fight your involuntary commission. And because he's golf buddies with the psychiatrist, who's he going to trust, you and your family, or the "expert?"
It's funny that the lawyers are so deeply wrapped up in the system that they can't even see the bigger picture. In the case of my family member, I asked the lawyer on the date of his hearing, if my relative were involuntarily committed, when and under what circumstances could all of his civil rights be restored? The lawyer looked at me as if I had a third eye in the middle of my forehead. "This isn't a civil rights matter," he said. "It's a mental health matter." Hmm. You lose your physical freedom, your right to keep and bear arms, and most of your fourth amendment rights, and it's not a civil rights matter? Really?
So, remember when they come to lock you up and take away your guns because you're "dangerous," because you were ranting against the government, it's not a civil rights matter. They're from the government and they just want to help you.
Raub's supporters characterized the detention as an arrest, complaining he was handcuffed and whisked away in a police cruiser without being served a warrant or read his rights. But authorities say it wasn't an arrest because Raub doesn't face criminal charges.A while back a relative of mine -- a very sane, normal relative -- was detained under my state's equivalent of this statute. Most states have a very similar statute.
Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state's emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.
He said Raub was handcuffed because he resisted officers' attempts to take him into custody.
On the one hand, it is certainly necessary to have a way to detain seriously mentally ill people. On the other hand, these statutes are ripe for abuse. In my state, for example, a magistrate's order isn't even required (although I'm not sure that affords meaningful protection), any law enforcement officer, social worker, or mental health professional can order the detention, if they believe the person is a danger to themselves or others.
No probable cause is required, no evidence of imminent action, and as the above paragraphs indicate, the person is not being "arrested" or "charged" with a "crime" -- although to the person in question, it's a distinction without a difference, because the person is being hauled off against his will and held without bail or charges.
The person's final disposition depends on a hearing that typically takes about a week to occur. In the meantime, the person has been wrenched from his life, his job under incredibly stigmatizing conditions. The person is held in a psychiatric institution where every move is monitored and noted, and any "abnormal" behavior is recorded. If the person is angry, depressed and uncooperative about being held against his will, by coincidence these are also symptoms of many common mental disorders with which the psychiatrists are perfectly eager to label him. If he maintains that he is mentally healthy, a note goes into the record that says he has "poor self-awareness." Even teenagers are routinely given anti-depressants and anti-psychotics like Prozac that are known to increase suicidal thoughts and feelings. And, what do you know? Suicidal thoughts and feelings are grounds for involuntary incarceration. If he refuses to take these involuntarily-prescribed meds, he is "resistant to treatment."
Though the law technically allows patients to refuse any particular treatment, you have to keep in mind that the person's freedom is not dependent on any objective evidential standard, but entirely on the subjective evaluations of the psychiatrists. Refuse to cooperate with the psychiatrists, and you don't get good evaluations. So, any freedom the patient technically possesses is illusory.
At the hearing, the determination of whether the person is a danger to himself or others is entirely based on the psychiatrist's evaluations. There is no jury of his peers. There is no criminal charge. The person need not have every committed an illegal act in his life. Yet, at stake is the person's entire autonomy as a person. If involuntarily committed, the person loses his freedom, is deeply publicly stigmatized -- locked out of many career options (health care, law enforcement, any career requiring sensitive clearances, and many more). He gives up substantial civil rights (rights to freedom of movement, freedom to keep and bear arms, right to be secure in his person and property, because he may be subject to drug tests and/or other medical and psychiatric tests against his will.) Of course, they will say none of this is against the patient's will. He always has the choice to refuse to cooperate with the treatment plan -- and remain incarcerated in some hell-hole of a mental institution the rest of his life.
Yes, the treatment plan. The involuntarily committed patient is now subject to a "treatment plan." This plan is a gargantuan stick to wield against the patient. He can be released or re-incarcerated at any time without his consent. His own thoughts are not his own, because relentless therapy is used to get him to think the way his case workers and psychiatrists think he should think about whatever they want. Anything that displeases them is, subjectively, an indication of failure to cooperate with the treatment plan. Judgment of the progress and success of the treatment plan is measured by the same mental health bureaucracy that put him there in the first place and who supervise his treatment plan. Yes, in theory, there are "independent" psychiatric evaluations, but these are almost always carried out by other psychiatrists who are deeply embedded in the system and share the same training, philosophies of treatment, and faith in the system as the patient's caseworkers, and the magistrates themselves, not being mental health "experts" defer to the judgments of the psychiatrists.
In effect, the patient will be judged healthy when, and only when, he has pleased your case worker and psychiatrist to their satisfaction. His own decisions about his person are virtually meaningless, because with the involuntarily commitment, he has ceased to be, in the eyes of the law and society, a competent person capable of making his own decisions. Again, this may be a person who up until whatever unfortunate incident precipitated the chain of events, led a productive life and has never done nor been accused of anything criminal, ever.
The system is ultimately dehumanizing and incestuous -- the mental health facilities, the social workers, the psychiatrists, all have no incentive to deem people mentally healthy. They make money off mentally ill people. Furthermore, there are few consequences for erring on the side of mental illness. They are not held personally or financially accountable for destroying the life of a mentally healthy person and holding him against his will for years. But if they release a mentally ill person, and that person does something wrong, then the public and the press are only too eager to second-guess them, "How could you have let this person roam the streets? Wasn't it obvious?"
It's a terrifying nightmare of a system. People get swallowed up by it. Bright, normal people who were maybe having a bad day or month can get swallowed up by it and ground up, and they aren't cured until they have been badgered and brainwashed into being, and believing they are mentally ill; because of course, once you have been involuntarily committed, you are, by definition mentally ill and your continued protests to the contrary are just symptoms of your mental illness. They can't cure you until they've convinced you you're sick. Hey, but it's all for your own good, the lost years, the broken dreams. What? You're depressed about all that? Depression is a mental illness, friend.
These laws fall under civil law, not criminal law, and are this handled by the civil courts. The laws are often very arcane, and implemented in very counter-intuitive means -- any lawyer who doesn't actually specialize in this type of case law is quickly out of his depth. Your family attorney is likely to be of no use. The lawyers who are familiar with the law and how it is implemented in your state are the ones who do this almost exclusively, and they are part of the informal "system" -- they're probably on a first-name basis with the psychiatrist, magistrate, prosecutor and social worker on the case. Your own lawyer may not be your friend in this instance, especially if court-appointed (and he might as well be, because the expert lawyer you'd hire privately is just another guy in the pool that you'd get assigned as a court-appointed lawyer). If you press the lawyer, you can probably get the lawyer to admit that acting "in your best interests" means that if he thinks you're crazy, he's not going to fight your involuntary commission. And because he's golf buddies with the psychiatrist, who's he going to trust, you and your family, or the "expert?"
It's funny that the lawyers are so deeply wrapped up in the system that they can't even see the bigger picture. In the case of my family member, I asked the lawyer on the date of his hearing, if my relative were involuntarily committed, when and under what circumstances could all of his civil rights be restored? The lawyer looked at me as if I had a third eye in the middle of my forehead. "This isn't a civil rights matter," he said. "It's a mental health matter." Hmm. You lose your physical freedom, your right to keep and bear arms, and most of your fourth amendment rights, and it's not a civil rights matter? Really?
So, remember when they come to lock you up and take away your guns because you're "dangerous," because you were ranting against the government, it's not a civil rights matter. They're from the government and they just want to help you.
Monday, August 20, 2012
The Greatest Political Sleight-of-Hand Trick Ever
I was reading a comment on The Other McCain today:
All those young people, rioting against civil rights abuses, an "unjust" foreign war, the draft, "speaking truth to power," fighting "the man," etc. were rioting at a time when Democrats had controlled all three branches of the federal government for the entire decade (up to Nixon's inauguration in Jan. 1969 -- pretty late in the game by any fair measure). U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was entirely a product of the policies of Kennedy and Johnson. The Democrats had for many decades -- a century, really -- been the party of the Klan and southern racists and segregationists. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, while bi-partisan, was more strongly-supported by Republicans than Democrats.
And yet ... nearly all those protestors somehow turned into Democrats, and Nixon, who ended the war and brought an end to domestic civil rights unrest, who was a vigorous proponent of most of the progressive policies these young idealists (to use a very charitable description) supported, became the bogey man. Yes, the quote above mentions antipathy for LBJ, but for some reason, decades later, the name LBJ does not, like Nixon, fire up hate in the hearts of most of the generation who protested in the 60s. Perhaps because, while he was responsible for Vietnam, he was also responsible for the even more destructive Great Society, which is, along with the New Deal, part of the foundation of modern liberalism/progressivism.
It just boggles the mind.
To this day it's not uncommon to hear someone lionize John F. Kennedy as nearly a saint in one breath and then condemn Vietnam in the most vehement of terms in the next. As if the two are unconnected.
It would be as if all the membership of Code Pink and MoveOn and everyone else against the Iraq War had, in the same breath they were condemning Bush-Cheney and the "War for Oil," joined the Republican party en mass.
That moment in history never ceases to fascinate me.
All those young people, rioting against civil rights abuses, an "unjust" foreign war, the draft, "speaking truth to power," fighting "the man," etc. were rioting at a time when Democrats had controlled all three branches of the federal government for the entire decade (up to Nixon's inauguration in Jan. 1969 -- pretty late in the game by any fair measure). U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was entirely a product of the policies of Kennedy and Johnson. The Democrats had for many decades -- a century, really -- been the party of the Klan and southern racists and segregationists. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, while bi-partisan, was more strongly-supported by Republicans than Democrats.
And yet ... nearly all those protestors somehow turned into Democrats, and Nixon, who ended the war and brought an end to domestic civil rights unrest, who was a vigorous proponent of most of the progressive policies these young idealists (to use a very charitable description) supported, became the bogey man. Yes, the quote above mentions antipathy for LBJ, but for some reason, decades later, the name LBJ does not, like Nixon, fire up hate in the hearts of most of the generation who protested in the 60s. Perhaps because, while he was responsible for Vietnam, he was also responsible for the even more destructive Great Society, which is, along with the New Deal, part of the foundation of modern liberalism/progressivism.
It just boggles the mind.
To this day it's not uncommon to hear someone lionize John F. Kennedy as nearly a saint in one breath and then condemn Vietnam in the most vehement of terms in the next. As if the two are unconnected.
It would be as if all the membership of Code Pink and MoveOn and everyone else against the Iraq War had, in the same breath they were condemning Bush-Cheney and the "War for Oil," joined the Republican party en mass.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Brother's Keeper
Read these two articles:
Dreams From My Father, Calls From My Brother
Dreams From My Father, Calls From My Brother
Story that reveals something of Mitt Romney's character
Now, tell me, who would you trust? For anything?Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The Frustration Of Trying to Discuss Anything Controversial On The Internet
I had an interesting exchange on a usually-non-political blog I frequent. Going to paste snippets, but not link to or identify the blog, because I really don't think they'd welcome a bunch of incoming political commentary (Hee, hee! I'm pretending people read and are influenced by my blog! I love playing make-believe!).
I was the initial offender, going on what I hoped was a pretty inoffensive political tangent, in response to another post:
I don't see how any honest reading of my words can be interpreted that way. It's almost a banality to say that governments are responsible for much of the world's misery. I don't even see how that's controversial. Most of the world does not currently enjoy our form of Constitutional representative republic. Most of the world, even today, suffers under tyranny, oppression and corruption. Caused by their governments.
He's creating an argument by imputing to me beliefs I don't even hold. How can you have a discussion when someone does that to you? It's communicating in bad faith.
It strikes me as supremely naive to respond to a statement that "governments are responsible for much of the world's misery" with a sarcastic "Oh, yeah, right, government never did anything good for anyone!" I imagine this kind of response can only come from someone who lives in a well-governed country.
To me, it smacks of hubris. When you look at the disparities between well-governed nations and poorly-governed nations, between free nations and tyrannies, you have to ask yourself why. Why do we in the U.S. (or Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Iceland, pick your free western nation) have a generally orderly, prosperous society, while people in Somalia and Sudan are hacking their neighbors apart with machetes?
Anything less than a very complex answer risks doing an offense to people in either location. If you believe in the essential equality of man, if you believe that Somalians are not in some way essentially inferior to Swedes or Aussies, then the one conclusion you cannot draw is "It can't happen here." If you took a Swedish baby and raised him by Sudanese in the heart of contested territory, do you believe he would grow up fighting along side the people he grew up with? And if you raise a baby from the Sudan by Swiss in the heart of Zurich, do you believe he'd grow up as intelligent and civilized as any of his neighbors?
If you believe so, then whatever a man can be driven to in the Sudan, he can be driven to in Delaware, if things in Delaware were allowed to degenerate enough. What I am saying here is not that the U.S. is in incipient danger of collapse, but that the impulses that drive us all are the same. The corrupt, murderous warlords in the Sudan are not a different species of people than accountants in Baltimore.
The tendency toward greed, corruption, envy, tribal and familial allegience, they're all right here in the U.S. suburbs. We hold them at bay with our culture, our upbringing, the institutions of civil society. But civil society can be weakened. It can succumb to baser impulses if bad people get the reins of power.
But freedom can also be undone by higher aspirations, when an ideal is deemed so important that any means is acceptable to achieve it. That's the barbarism of the educated. The Marxists of the 20th century had the best of intentions -- the ideals of Marxism are admirable, if wrong-headed -- but time after time, in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, they committed horrors in the name of those ideals and created nightmare states, some of which persist to this day as blights on the face of the world. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Guevera, Pol Pot, these were not stupid or uneducated men. They were brilliant, idealistic leaders who believed so fiercely in their collectivist ideology that they were willing to commit countless horrors against the individual.
We keep the same thing from happening in western nations only so long as we recognize that the state is the servant of the citizen, not his master, that the individual is supreme over the state, not vice versa, that the state exists to protect individuals, to allow them to pursue their own interests, and that individuals should not be squelched in the pursuit of the state's interests.
* An alert reader pointed out that this is one of the apocryphal quotations that apparently cannot be reliably traced back to George Washington.
I was the initial offender, going on what I hoped was a pretty inoffensive political tangent, in response to another post:
It wasn't that long before someone made the following comment in reply.
I work for a large private company, but with government in some very sensitive capacities, and my experience has taught me to not be too trusting of government in any of its flavors.
At the risk of getting too political, private people who just want to go about their lives are responsible for only very tiny pieces of the world’s misery. To create truly horrific pain and suffering takes a government, and some people who want to “make things better” that are willing to use it.
In the immortal words of noted political philosopher Malcolm Reynolds:
“So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this — they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people … better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.”
And another philosopher from the same school, River Tam:
“People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.”
Damn that was a great movie.
Yeah, I was just thinking earlier today of the miseries inflicted by the big mean boogerheads of government with those clean water acts, and prohibitions on child labor, and limiting the number of rat droppings in my ice cream, and putting roads in the way of anywhere I am to anywhere I want to go, and keeping inspirational pioneers from creating stuff like useful airplanes or microchips or the Internet by going off and funding it themselves, and requiring cars that don’t roll over when you take a turn at more than 15 miles per hour, and making kids learn to read, and prosecuting fraudulent merchants. Not one single bit of this in any way makes the lives of one single person better and yet government goes after it day after day, year after year, as though it were at all possible for people to make society a little less savage.I replied in turn:
Chill. I didn’t say there were no benefits to government, or that we were better in a state of anarchy. You’re reading a lot into what I said that’s simply not there.I hope that's taken as a civil response, but, damn, comments like that person's reply really get to me. Not because he's wrong -- I agree with him that government is an invaluable institution that can be a powerful force for good. What really ticks me off is how he takes what I said and completely twists it around to make it seem as if I was saying all government is terrible and does nothing good for anyone.George Washington* Cloudbuster said, quoting vague sources, “Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.” Also, like fire, that doesn’t mean government isn’t necessary and useful. I was simply pointing out that, like fire, government must be treated with extreme caution.
The world isn’t full of black and whites. It’s not “government is great” or “government is terrible.” Not all governments are equal. We are blessed with an exceptionally good one in the U.S., for all its faults. But governments are made up of people, with all their typical flaws. You have to be ever vigilant. No government is immune from abuse and degeneration.
I can’t speak in specifics about my job, but as I type this, I am aware of some very, very disturbing things being done by our own government, usually with the best of intentions (and this isn’t a liberal/conservative thing. This is just a “this is how governments do business” thing). That was what I meant about people wanting to “make things better.” In real life, almost nobody thinks they are the villain. But it’s really not too many steps from “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet” to the horrors of the Stalinist purges or the Great Leap Forward. A lot of well-intentioned people did a lot of terrible things. It’s human nature. The only way to make sure “it can’t happen here” is to keep, every day, making sure it’s not happening here.
I don't see how any honest reading of my words can be interpreted that way. It's almost a banality to say that governments are responsible for much of the world's misery. I don't even see how that's controversial. Most of the world does not currently enjoy our form of Constitutional representative republic. Most of the world, even today, suffers under tyranny, oppression and corruption. Caused by their governments.
He's creating an argument by imputing to me beliefs I don't even hold. How can you have a discussion when someone does that to you? It's communicating in bad faith.
It strikes me as supremely naive to respond to a statement that "governments are responsible for much of the world's misery" with a sarcastic "Oh, yeah, right, government never did anything good for anyone!" I imagine this kind of response can only come from someone who lives in a well-governed country.
To me, it smacks of hubris. When you look at the disparities between well-governed nations and poorly-governed nations, between free nations and tyrannies, you have to ask yourself why. Why do we in the U.S. (or Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Iceland, pick your free western nation) have a generally orderly, prosperous society, while people in Somalia and Sudan are hacking their neighbors apart with machetes?
Anything less than a very complex answer risks doing an offense to people in either location. If you believe in the essential equality of man, if you believe that Somalians are not in some way essentially inferior to Swedes or Aussies, then the one conclusion you cannot draw is "It can't happen here." If you took a Swedish baby and raised him by Sudanese in the heart of contested territory, do you believe he would grow up fighting along side the people he grew up with? And if you raise a baby from the Sudan by Swiss in the heart of Zurich, do you believe he'd grow up as intelligent and civilized as any of his neighbors?
If you believe so, then whatever a man can be driven to in the Sudan, he can be driven to in Delaware, if things in Delaware were allowed to degenerate enough. What I am saying here is not that the U.S. is in incipient danger of collapse, but that the impulses that drive us all are the same. The corrupt, murderous warlords in the Sudan are not a different species of people than accountants in Baltimore.
The tendency toward greed, corruption, envy, tribal and familial allegience, they're all right here in the U.S. suburbs. We hold them at bay with our culture, our upbringing, the institutions of civil society. But civil society can be weakened. It can succumb to baser impulses if bad people get the reins of power.
But freedom can also be undone by higher aspirations, when an ideal is deemed so important that any means is acceptable to achieve it. That's the barbarism of the educated. The Marxists of the 20th century had the best of intentions -- the ideals of Marxism are admirable, if wrong-headed -- but time after time, in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, they committed horrors in the name of those ideals and created nightmare states, some of which persist to this day as blights on the face of the world. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Guevera, Pol Pot, these were not stupid or uneducated men. They were brilliant, idealistic leaders who believed so fiercely in their collectivist ideology that they were willing to commit countless horrors against the individual.
We keep the same thing from happening in western nations only so long as we recognize that the state is the servant of the citizen, not his master, that the individual is supreme over the state, not vice versa, that the state exists to protect individuals, to allow them to pursue their own interests, and that individuals should not be squelched in the pursuit of the state's interests.
* An alert reader pointed out that this is one of the apocryphal quotations that apparently cannot be reliably traced back to George Washington.
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