Somali Pirates

I am sure this must be in the planning stage, but we've all heard of "bait cars" used to catch car thieves, right? What we need now are a few "bait boats" (if the fishing industry will loan the term), modeled along the lines of the WW 1 British Q Ships. Disguised as innocent, vulnerable merchantmen, they would lure a German U-boat within range, then drop the gunwales and blast the sub out of the water with previously concealed deck guns.

While the British had to deploy over 350 of them, the Somali pirates' field of operation is sufficiently limited that it seems like a half dozen or so would do the job -- both in actual destruction and as deterrence. They could pose as private yachts, merchant ships, or whatever would best attract these roaches. I'm guessing that a sufficient number of them could be converted from existing vessels and manned with Navy Seals and Marines (a few in drag lounging on deck just for effect) for the cost of one sortie of a navy carrier group. We could even name them after the guys who took care of the North African pirates in 1801 -- Stephen Decatur, Presley O'Bannon, William Bainbridge, Edward Preble. If I was still in the Marines, I'd volunteer.

Hey Boomers! Don't Let The Door Hit You

History will not be kind to the Baby Boomers, notwithstanding the constant self-congratulation, self-absorbtion, self-aggrandizement, and self-examination, and self-promotion, and general navel gazing currently in the news. In fact, with the Baby Boomers, it was always about self, always about them, always about what a special generation they were, what a big effect they had on the country, yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm dealing with broad generalities here, and primarily with the Boomers who went to college, which they did in unprecedented numbers. I know it will come as a shock to many Boomers, but the world will still exist after they have passed from the scene, though it may take a while to cleanse the culture of their corrosive residue. As a Boomer myself (born in 1947) I wrote most of the following about 10 years ago, long before this blog was a glimmer, but it remains true:

The Yuppies of today are a subset of the Baby Boomers of yesterday, the most self-important, spoiled generation in the last 2000 years of Western Civilization. It's always been interesting to me how this came about:

The parents of the Baby Boomers were the ones whose youth was shaped by privations of the Great Depression, who learned to be happy with little and who then came of age only to be thrown into a war for the very survival of the Free World. As an aside, apart from the Pearl Harbor attack, it didn't hurt the war effort that many men of military age had few job prospects and had been used to living at a level of modesty that did not contrast that greatly with military life.

When World War II ended, those young adults were perfectly happy to be able to buy an 1100 sf 3 bedroom 1 bath house, with one car in the 1-car garage in the newly sprawling suburbs. At least it had indoor plumbing, hot water, and no one was shooting at you. From that rather modest perspective, the future appeared to be unlimited, and these young couples, many of whom had put off marriage and children until after the War, were now determined to give their children the childhood they never had.

Enter the bucolic 1950's. We now know that our parents were worried about nuclear annihilation, polio, and other bad stuff of which they kept us blissfully unaware. And yes, racism was systemic and "a woman's place was in the home", but those things only appear bad in hindsight: it had always been that way prior to that. As children, tho, we had few worries. And like children from time immemorial, we also had no perspective.

Us future Yuppies were, in a word, spoiled thru the good intentions of our parents. When we became college-age and went, we were not about to have our cushy life disrupted by having to fight a war! We found all sorts of rationale to avoid military service, including simply going to college. Like all youth throughout history, lacking any life experience, we were idealistic and simply didn't understand, if we were nice to the Communist countries, why they wouldn't be nice to us. After all, this had usually worked well in our kindergarten sandbox. The Liberals of today still haven't figured that out, by the way.

So, full of ourselves, we demonstrated, disrupted our tiny corner of the world, and reveled in the self-importance generated by the fact that anyone noticed. We thought we had all the answers to solve all the world's problems created by our parents' generation, not understanding that, compared to what they had been handed, they had given us paradise, and sacrificed mightily to do it. As Socrates famously said, we "didn't know enough to know how much we didn't know".

So the Viet Nam War ended and we gnashed our teeth over the number killed (less than 1/10th of what our parents had endured from a smaller population base) and abused the returning Vets as "baby killers". And along came the '70's -- "do your own thing" and "if it feels good, do it", wife-swapping, promiscuous sex, women's lib, etc. In fact, many college-educated women put off having kids because they were told they could "have it all" -- the laws of physiology that had applied for the last, say, 100,000 years, would be repealed for them because they were so special.

So the self-indulgent '70's gave way to the self-indulgent '80's (AIDS kinda brought the whole free love thing back to earth, along with the discovery that, at some point, you had to actually earn the lifestyle your parents had provided). And in the '80's the Boomers attained an age where they began to be in charge of things and it was money, money, money.

Toward the end of the 80's an amazing thing happened: the biological clocks which the Lady Boomers figured they could medically alter, began going off. All those Yuppies who had delayed having kids in the interest of acquiring all those toys, fancy house, car, etc, were finally confronted with immutable reality. So you had a bunch 40-something parents of newborns with Baby On Board signs in the rear windows of their SUV's -- Hell hath no fury like a middle-aged Yuppie mother who feels that her incredibly precious little issue is threatened by another car that came within 20 feet of hers. I'm sure the Baby On Board signs prevented the rest of us from ramming the SUV as we would otherwise, no doubt, have done. And, of course, the little issues were incredibly precious, not just as babies have been since Day One, but because this generation had put off having them in the interest of self-aggrandizement, and they were now at an age where the well was about dry.

Wasn't it amazing how many of these progeny were either "gifted" or, if not, had some trendy diagnosis that prevented it? No kid could just "act up" or be disruptive. No, he was the victim of some disorder that absolved him and his parents of any responsibility. And just to make sure everyone's self-esteem was intact, everyone was a winner in sports or other competitions, and often no score was kept, just to make sure no one saw what a charade it was. Pardon me, but what world works that way?

And damn! When the Boomers began reaching middle age, the physical signs were showing up. Surely wrinkles, hearing loss, weight gain, arthritis, male [ahem] virility, and other age-related maladies wouldn't dare afflict this special generation. So now we've got botox on demand, breast implants, Viagra, nano hearing aids, and nearly unaffordable health care costs as we slide inexorably into our dotage.

Meanwhile, the Boomers (nee Hippies, Yuppies, and Buppies) were reaching an age where they were beginning to be in charge of things. The whole "live for today", "if it feels good, do it", "moral relativism" (there were no absolutes since this was judgemental), babies born out of wedlock (after all, having spent normal child-bearing years on self-fulfillment, at 40 there just wasn't time for the annoyance of finding a husband), was now working its way into the corporate world and into government and the culture. Since the Boomers had always had a cushy life by the standards of any period you want to choose since the whole Garden of Eden thing with the snake and the apple, any hardship was inconceivable. Gotta be able to continue to acquire everything you want, whether you can pay for it or not.

Sometime in the 1980's this began to threaten the institutions that had made the US the envy of the world and, in fact, the sacrifices made by their parents that had laid the groundwork for all this self-absorption. The Boomers had now attained an average age where they had some collective cultural influence, and the moral relativism and me-ism of the '60's and '70's in which they had been steeped now began to become mainstream. Such once-unthinkable notions as legalizing drugs, excusing every child's misbehavior via some diagnosis, an extreme aversion to war and a general unfamiliarity with things military (we all avoided the draft), fertility drugs to avoid the consequences of waiting too long to have kids, abortion on demand if we changed our mind, no-fault divorce if we changed our mind, a college education for everyone, global warming caused by human activity (since we were so important and unique and influential, we must be causing it, right?) were insidiously working their way into societal acceptance.

From an historical perspective, the rise of the Religious Right was largely a reaction by those boomers who actually realized what a threat to the country the views and policies of their still-clueless peers presented. The realization that the moral relativism, moral laxity, and increasing efforts to stamp any vestige of religion out of public life were either becoming mainstream or were being snuck in the back door via the courts (all it takes is one brain-damaged, whacked out former acid-dropping hippie judge), caused an embrace by many of the institutions that represented the values that the country had always held, and which had done much to make it great. They found a lot of support for these values in Christianity, which should be no surprise.

No one studies history, so the (absolutely clueless) Lefties didn't understand that the system which had given them the greatest country in the history of mankind, and which they inherited (warts and all), was heavily dependent upon Judeo-Christian morality, which had been so ubiquitous from the founding thru the 1950's that its existence was just assumed. These clueless creatures would have been aghast if transported to any time prior to 1950 or so, at what to them would have been the institutionalism of (generally Christian) religion. Presidents regularly publicly prayed, Congress began each session with a decidedly Christian prayer, FDR announced the D-Day invasion with a prayer over the radio ("Dear God, our sons, the pride of our nation . . . "), and the Founders' writings were replete with references to a Christian god. Say what you will, it was this largely Protestant ethical framework which provided the (to borrow a few modern terms) platform and operating system on which the country functioned. Absent a study of history which, among other things, demonstrates the inter-relationship of societal values to the functioning of the country, these self-focused innocents figured they could make their lives even easier by rationalizing whatever behavior gave them instant gratification while, at least while they lasted, enjoying the benefits of a life so many had sacrificed so much to provide.

The notion that the Republican Party has "changed" or "lost its way" is held only by those unfamiliar with its history from the Civil War onward. A Republican of 1880 would feel much more at home in the Republican Party of today than in any other. It is the country that has shifted to the left with the rise and influence of the Baby Boomers. But that comparative perspective is only gained from a study of history which, as has been pointed out, no one studies. This, by the way, is how a shallow demogogue like the current President can get elected.

I have covered this elsewhere, but the mainstream media has been a major player in all this. Especially television news or news-lite shows hire their on-air "talent" for how they look and sound on air. This process tends to favor younger people who, by and large, are better looking than us wrinkley old fogies. Younger people don't, on average, know as much as older people (stop the e-mails -- I said "on average"), if for no reason other than older folks have had more time to learn and more life experience. This is the primary reason younger people tend to be more liberal in general -- they simply haven't had the time or focus to know enough to realize that all that idealistic liberal clap-trap doesn't hold water in the real world. And heaven knows journalism schools don't impart to their graduates any general knowledge. I seriously doubt that the average TV reporter could tell you who the third President of the United States was or who was the primary author of the Constitution. Does this mean that good-looking people aren't as smart as us ugly ones? Of course not, but if such frivolous criteria as looks and voice are given precedence over more substantive ones like, oh I don't know, knowing something, the resulting hirees are going to skew that way. It has always amazed me that, when a reporter needs an expert on some historical subject, say World War 2, more often than not they will interview someone like Tom Hanks, who's been in a couple of movies about it. All it does is demonstrate that the reporters don't even know who to ask, let alone know anything themselves.

It is also telling that those TV commentators most versed on history are conservatives. I'm thinking particularly of people like Michael Medved and Glenn Beck. They are at a disadvantage in trying to convert lefties mostly because lefties' views are not based upon any knowledge of history, which they generally confess to finding boring. Does anyone think that Joy Behar or Rachael Maddow could hold an historical knowledge candle to Medved or Beck? Having a little historical knowledge myself, I can assure you that they cannot. If I could hear one liberal commentator (or newsreader) demonstrate the least depth of historical knowledge, I'd have more respect for their views.

Anyway, enough on that -- their ignorance of the subjects they report on is on display every night from 5-7 pm.

So, as I began, the sooner the Baby Boomers pass from the scene, the better for the country. The bill for their excesses, in both coin and culture, will be on the books for at least the next generation.

OK, now I'm worked up again about illegal aliens, so I gotta get that off my chest .

A Cordell Hull Moment

I suppose I'm one of few people watching the House hearings concerning the recent Toyota acceleration issues. Clearly there are some agendas in play here, especially those of congressmen from the upper Midwest, who would love to see some Toyota sales transferred to one of the US [not so] Big 3; not to mention the guy from Kentucky, who said Toyota employs something like 128,000 people in his state, and didn't have a bad thing to say about them.

The utter lack of automobile or production knowledge among many of the questioners was on display for all to see. We can only be thankful that Barbara Boxer wasn't on the Committee. One of the dumber questions asked was why Toyota had 2 separate designs for their accelerator. Apart from the obvious hindsight behind such a question (Toyota, of course, was supposed to know that the current hubbub about accelerator pedal design would occur), if this Congressman had ever run a factory he would know that, when confronted with a choice between shutting the factory down for months for lack of one of 20,000 parts in the car because a supplier can't deliver, and accepting a part of minor deviation from the current one from another supplier and keeping everything running, the choice is obvious. I'll bet every auto manufacturer has a large number of such cases.

As a former middle management person in a large Japanese-owned company, as well as having studied Japanese military history, I am fascinated by the interplay in these hearings. First of all, it is important to understand that no American has any real power in a Japanese-owned company. Call it jingoism, call it tribal loyalty, the Japanese sense of national superiority, or whatever, Americans are hired primarily to help the appearance of things (more on that later), so that it doesn't look like the Japanese are just shipping this stuff over here without considering the American viewpoint. The important decisions are always made in Japan. When I was with JVC, they used to arrive via the Telex machine, and we would all crowd around it when it began chattering, like piglets around the sow at dinner time, for our marching orders.

One effect of this is that strong upper American management cannot generally be found at a Japanese-owned company. Strong people don't want to be hired as figureheads with little actual power, while the shots are called in Tokyo, and the Japanese don't want people who will speak up or dispute what they, in their wisdom have decided. So it was no surprise to me to watch this guy Lentz (billed as having a sales and marketing background), with the grand title of Chief Operating Officer of Toyota USA (wasn't it interesting that Mr Inaba, fresh off the boat, had the same title?), squirm and babble when being grilled by the Committee. This guy has no real power (which the Committee probably didn't understand), and probably couldn't get a similar job with one of the US Big 3.

The grilling of Akio Toyoda (no relation to Admiral Soemu, who took over command of the Imperial Navy upon Yamamoto's death, tho it would have been delicious) and Inaba
was rivetting to me (and probably only to me). I missed American Idol for this. I've actually missed every airing of American Idol, but that's another story. The grandstanding by Congressmen Dingel and Stupak (anyone want to guess which state they represent?) was embarassing. Dingel, in particular, was just dumb -- reading these guys, in overall charge of the company, questions about details and exact dates of defects and recalls, each beginning with "Now, Mr Lentz . . .", following by some insanely detailed question. When they couldn't instantly come up with the answers, he wanted it "in the record". I'm talking about stuff like what model, color Toyota had a sticky accelerator in 2003, or the exact number of cars that might have a defect. I'm surprised he didn't ask for the VIN numbers. Even if, by some miracle, these guys had had one of the answers, he wasn't interested. He simply wished to create the impression that they didn't know what was going on.

But the answers given by the Japanese were also fascinating. Whenever a difficult question was asked (like "do you intend to reimburse families who lost loved ones for their medical and burial expenses" (!)), they simply didn't answer the question, instead spewing out platitudes about "making every effort to produce safe cars". You could just envision Japanese ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu sitting in front of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, not realizing that the Pearl Harbor attack had taken place and that Hull knew it. The ensuing blast from Hull was one of history's more memorable moments.

The Congresswoman (Maloney?) from New York who asked that question clearly hadn't thought this one through: are we going to go down the road where automakers must price into their products the cost of every potential harmful occurence involving one of their cars? How about counseling for the deceased's children? Hot coffee spilled on the crotch due, no doubt, to a poorly designed window?

In any event, these two Japanese executives rose thru a system and culture where bad news is not given to superiors until absolutely unavoidable. This was true during World War II, where those in charge of the Army and Navy, who were suffering defeat after defeat from June, 1942 on, made plans and strategy as tho they were winning. Any commanding officer who lost a battle was expected to commit seppuku, thus costing Japan many good commanders fighting an unwinnable war, and depriving the survivors of the lessons of that defeat. It was only after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with Tokyo burned to the ground, that the Emperor came out with his famous "the war has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage" -- huh?

There seems to be a cultural desire to avoid strife and stress, including dealing with bad news. Everyone must agree (or appear to), before any decision can be made. This "consensus" style of management is stultifying to innovation and problem-solving, but it provides a more important benefit to the Japanese: the appearance that everyone is united and pulling in the same direction. The actual direction isn't as important as the appearance of unity. And if the decision turns out to be not a good one, it doesn't fall on one person.

Which brings me to appearance. As I discussed at some length in my article "The Other Reasons Japan Lost the War", the appearance of things trumps almost any other consideration to the Japanese. Everyone must appear to be doing his utmost. This is why Japanese corporate-types work such ridiculous hours. Very little gets done, but the appearance is one of dedication and hard work. I remember at JVC that any employee who went home before 8 or 9 pm was frowned upon. We'd sit in the warehouse and shoot the breeze or play with numbers or something to make it look like we were working -- there was deathly fear that "Japan" would call and there would be no one there to answer the phone. Of course, these Japanese engineers (and they were all engineers) were single, over here on a 2-year assignment, and had absolutely no life outside the company. At the time, I chalked it up to their "dedication", but it runs deeper.

Over-emphasis on the appearance of things can be deadly. It was one of the prime factors behind the Banzai Charge -- everyone knew it was futile, but that didn't matter; to the onlooker, everyone had given his all. The officer leading it, waving his Samurai sword so everyone would know who he was, was sure to be among the first to die. And it was worth risking death to remove the Emperor's portrait from any capital ship that was about to sink. So the answers given by the executives were the predictable and meaningless "we're going to try our hardest to make our cars safe". This probably means that they'll stay at the office smoking and drinking coffee until 1 am instead of midnight.

But, taking 2 steps back, what are we really talking about here? How many actual incidents have there been versus the number of Toyotas on the road? At what point is an occasional defect acceptable? It appears never. So here we are again, engaged in the futile pursuit of perfection. Cars today are more reliable that at any time since their invention . . . which is a good thing, since they're now nearly impossible to work on. But it doesn't matter: one apparent case of "unintended acceleration" becomes "Breaking News" all across the country -- doesn't matter that it's later proven that the driver accidentally stepped on the gas rather than the brake, or whatever. Doesn't matter that it's only the 3rd one in 10 years out of hundreds of thousands of Toyotas on the road. Each of us can envision ourselves behind that wheel at 125 mph fiddling with the floor mats, shifting into reverse, dragging our foot. It would be refreshing if someone in these hearings actually ran the numbers and showed what an infintessimally small percentage of Toyotas has actually had a problem. Our expectations are unreasonably high and, as usual, the media, with their context-free, breathless reporting, is largely responsible. Again, it's ratings that matter, and sensationalism gets ratings. Who cares about the facts?

But back to the hearings: this kind of myopic government meddling with automakers is second only to the short-sightedness of the unions, in damaging the auto industry. Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson (or even Alexander Hamilton, Mr Big Government among the Founders) chairing hearings on deaths in grist mills? There are simply risks we run by being alive and, at some point, it is counter-productive to try to drive them lower.

Some People Just Shouldn't Vote

The Founding Fathers had yet another thing right. In the early days of the Republic, and until just before the Civil War, only people who owned land could vote. So could only men, but since few women owned property, this was not generally an issue.

The rationale behind this was that an informed voter was better than the alternative, and landowners had a better chance of being informed than those who didn't. The only practical way to find those people was thru property ownership rolls; obviously, the administration of any kind of written test had too many holes in it, and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. The other idea was that the have-nots would tend to vote themselves goodies "from the public trough" at the expense of the haves. This had one of my heroes and primary author of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton's, fingerprints all over it. Obviously a far from air-tight, perfect system, but one headed in the right direction. Hamilton and the Federalists had a lot of this stuff figured out in the late 18th Century that, for lack of historical understanding, we're still wasting time on today.

Any student of American history will see how far we have strayed from that original philosophy. One need only look at the last presidential election to see how far, but let's get into this a little deeper:

An Informed Voter:

If I needed heart surgery, I'd go to a cardiac specialist, not to my accountant. If I wanted my car's engine re-built, I'd go to an auto mechanic, not to a cardiac specialist. Does anyone want to make a counter-argument? No? Then I assume you will similarly agree that a voter informed on the issues of the day and, better yet, how they fit into the historical context, is a more desirable voter than one who votes for such a vacuous, purposely vague, ill-defined platform as "Hope and Change". It follows that the more informed the electorate, the better the likely result.

There are a lot of areas of knowledge that help one be a more informed voter, but I can't think of a single one more generally valuable than an understanding of American history: what has been tried and worked or not in the past and in what context, and how we got where we are today. I know it's a lot easier to choose a candidate based upon how he/she looks, speaks, panders, etc, but when someone said "freedom is not free", taking the time to learn about the issues before voting, or even studying American history so that some historical background can be applied to the decision, is on the Bill of Sale. My accountant might quote me a lower price for that triple by-pass, but am I going to use him for it?

Freedom is no different than anything else: if you're not willing to pay the price for it, sooner or later someone is going to come along and re-possess it. If you don't know anything about the issues, and therefore also don't know how they fit into the continuum of history, you will not be sufficiently deeply rooted to avoid being swept along by such shallow appeal Hope and Change. In my opinion, this explains the results of the most recent presidential election. Only with an historical understanding of how the current state of affairs compares to previous ones, does one have the perspective to resist the temptation to "improve" upon it. While Hope may have positive undertones, Change goes both ways.

It also explains irrational attribution of the good and bad that occurs. Barack Obama is no more responsible for the current economic climate than was George W Bush for creating it, or than man is for causing Global Warming. They are blamed or credited simply because the average voter isn't interested enough to learn what the real causes are -- it's easier just to blame or credit the President and go back to watching The View or the utterly uninformed person called Joy Behar.

And speaking of being uninformed, the internet and talk shows are, in my humble opinion, primarily responsible for the strident political tone in the country today. As I am fond of saying, the internet makes too much information too easily available to too many people lacking sufficient knowledge to understand it. An internet surfer insufficiently grounded in the subject he is "Googling" is ripe for being converted to a point of view without merit. All the current fuss about man causing Global Warming is a good example: there is almost no scientific (or common sense) merit to it. Used to be that one had to spend time and effort to learn about a subject -- hours upon hours of reading, etc, versus someone bereft of knowledge Googling a few key words on the subject of which he is otherwise ignorant, and clicking on a website of uncertain credibility.

And talk shows. Among the worst are two quasi-conservative guys in LA called John and Ken. The ratio between the stridency and volume of their delivery and their
knowledge of most of the subjects they rant about is not a favorable one. In fact, they regularly demonstrate that they have almost no general knowledge. Joy Behar
gives no sign of knowing anything about anything, and Rachel Maddow is not far behind, Rhodes Scholar or not. If these people would indicate that their condemnations of, oh I don't know, anything George W Bush ever did, were based on anything but the shallowest, immediate knee jerk reactions, I'd have more respect for them. Their condemnation of the war in Iraq apparently stemmed from nothing so much as their visceral, fact free hatred of Bush II. Even guys who are generally correct in their views like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved (certainly one of the best) have gaping holes in their knowledge, the most obvious to me being any sense of the military or military history as it bears on current events. They (and most talk show hosts) clearly grew up in a time when serving in the military simply wasn't cool.

A little historical knowledge would help one see that there is a lot of hindsight at
work in assigning blame: no one complained about the boom times when they were booming, just as no one faulted the Maginot Line when the French were spending their national treasure to build it. Only in light of later developments were both faulted for containing the roots of disaster.

Speaking of the economy, it has always struck me as ironic that the Left, big believers in Darwin, evolution, Survival of the Fittest, and all that, somehow don't transfer that logic to economics. Hello, but isn't free market capitalism essentially economic Darwinism? So them Lefties believe that man is the ultimate product of Darwinian evolution, presumably unhindered by regulation of a higher power (which most Lefties don't believe in anyway), but can the economic free market be allowed to work? Noooooo -- gotta meddle so that everyone feels good and evolutionary dead ends, such as social welfare programs, are propped up at the expense of the viable ones.

As an aside, one of the distressing promises Obama made was to "even out" the economic "boom and bust" cycles. Hello? In a free market economy (or what remains of it) boom and bust is an intrinsic part, and the method by which an economy shakes out the dead wood. Even Adam Smith recognized this in the 18th Century. By
continually kicking the economic can (full of inconvenient problems that no politician wants to deal with on his watch) down the road, the can eventually becomes unkickable. One has only to look to the [former] Soviet Union to see how well trying to manage every aspect of the economy so that there are no booms or busts works -- it's all bust all the time. It is distressing that Obama either a) believes this is possible, or b) thinks his supporters are dumb enough to believe it is. It is also distressing that he appears to have been right about b).

I wonder how many Obama voters from the last election now wish they had had enough knowledge to understand a little more about the impossibility of the promises upon which they based their vote. After all, their disillusion has been all over the news lately.

Goodies From the Public Trough:

Remember how you were always badgering your parents for an increase in your allowance? Anything thereby gained had no downside (unless you had to take on additional chores as compensation, in which case your parents were very good, notwithstanding what you thought at the time). The well-intentioned social programs that began during the Great Depression, have led us well away from the Founders' intent that only those with a stake in the system should vote, and they would be horrified to a man (there were no women) at where we now find ourselves in that regard. Your allowance was kind of a social program writ small.

Despite periodic attempts at reform, we have now burdened ourselves with an enormous social welfare system, either in the form of welfare payments to those who manage not to work, those who have been irresponsible enough to have more children than they can support, or in the form of tax subsidies (credits or write-offs) to give a break to those whom a "compassionate government" thinks need them. To adopt the old metaphor, these people are essentially riding in the wagon that the rest of us are pulling, and there are more and more of them riding. I know this is a broad generalization (see my article elsewhere on the unappreciated virtues of generalizations) but, in general, it's true. And this doesn't even address the corruption, mismanagement, and gaming of the system that is endemic in it.

Thomas Jefferson's admonition that "that government which governs least governs best" was not just an advocacy of small government per se, as is generally assumed. It was also a recognition that a) government is the least efficient way to do most things, and only those things clearly inimical to being done by private enterprise (public roads, national defense, etc) should be assumed by government, and b) once a society goes down the path of relying upon the government for more than the barest essentials as above, the growth of government is progressively hard to control and impossible to reverse. Its tentacles become insidiously entwined in everything via a process in which each increase in government involvement is seen as eminently logic and necessary to solve the immediate issue, the longer-term consequences shoved aside in the interest of the immediate.

This really accelerated with the programs of FDR: in the midst of the Great Depression, who could argue with government programs to create jobs, save banks, regulate the financial markets, create infrastructure, etc? The precedent thus set in the dark days of the 1930's made later creation of such as Medicare, AFDC, expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into instruments of social manipulation, and an endless list of problems alienated to government for solution, with the inevitable incremental increases in governmental control of all facets of society, relatively easy. We are now paying the price for all that well-intentioned government meddling, which I have discussed elsewhere and won't reiterate.

A Voting Test:

A qualification test for voting has a lot of merit, it seems to me. The demagogues will immediate raise the specter of discrimination via poll taxes, literacy tests, etc, so we must get past that. It just seems to me that demonstration of some basic understanding of American history and governmental institutions would raise the level of voters, and therefore raise the quality of the result. More voters would be equipped to examine the substance of a candidate's qualifications, see thru his pandering, and shoving such frivolous attributes as appearance and speaking ability way down the list. After all, absent an understanding of some of the complex issues, nearly irrelevant considerations such as the above have priority.

I would like to suggest the following simple, 10 question test:

1) From what country did the original 13 colonies gain their independence?
2) Name the 3 branches of the US Government
3) Explain the Dred Scott decision
4) Name the Vice President of the United States
5) During what decade did the American Civil War take place?
6) How many US Senators are there?
7) What is meant by a "line item veto"?
8) Who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence?
9) Who was Adam Smith and for what treatise is he famous?
10) What WW II American General was in command of all Allied forces in Europe post D-day?

Now, I know you think I stole these from Jay Leno's Jaywalking segments. They are, indeed, painfully elementary. Is knowledge of any or all answers important, per se? Probably not, but knowing, say, 7 out of 10 at least demonstrates that you're paying attention and have a pulse. If we could get the electorate to at least this level of understanding and knowledge, we'd have a better chance of avoiding the kind of result we had in the last Presidential election.

If you think the questions are too difficult, and would rather be asked to name Oprah Winfrey's ex-husband (or was it boyfriend?), you should not be voting, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that the majority of people who voted for the current President could not answer most of them, but can probably name the drug re-hab clinic treating Lindsay Lohan.

Major Damage

OK, be forewarned: I am going to delve into some really politically incorrect stuff here, so if you're not up to truth and logic, stop now.

The Army "Major" who shot up Ft Hood has been all over the news this past week, as he should be. I assume most people understand that not all military officers are created equal. This guy was a psychiatrist who clearly went into the miltary to get his education paid for by you and me. The only way the military can attract medical professionals (and I know I'm stretching to put a psychiatrist in that category) is to offer them officer commissions. I have it on reliable authority that they go in as Captains, then automatically make Major within a few years, unless they first kill a bunch of people in a shooting rampage. This is a whole lot faster than your typical 2nd Lieutenant infantry line officer, who might be in 15 years before he makes Major, and who is doing the stuff the military is supposed to do: "killing people and breaking things" as Colin Powell famously said. You wouldn't want one of these medical wonders commanding a company, battalion, or brigade in combat.

And that's just the Army. In the Marines, we used to say that a Marine Captain was the equivalent of an Army General, but let's not go there right now.

I understand that the military is desperate for doctors, etc. Maybe that's why Obama is pushing this ill-advised health care proposal: if (God forbid) it were to somehow pass, doctors would be heading for the exits in droves, and the military would have an instant (and probably cheap) supply. But desperate or not, I guess this guy was pretty out front with his Moslem ideas, what with handing out Islamic propaganda and all; and weren't those security camera images of him prancing around the 7-11 in his white terrorist-like outfit lovely? Maybe he thought it was the 9-11. I assume this wasn't Halloween.

If you read my stuff regularly, you know that hindsight is anathema to me, but hello? I know we wasted a bunch of money educating this ungrateful idiot, and I know we probably really need psychiatrists in Iraq because (apparently) this generation of soldiers is less-able to deal with battlefield stress than were previous ones, but this guy was pretty close to a Trojan Horse, was he not? Guy is a Major of [choose one: a) Palestinian b) Jordanian extraction] in the US Army, is actively proselytizing for Islam, has apprarently been very vocal in his opposition to the war (which he has, also apparently, been very focused on avoiding serving in), including "counseling" returning soldiers on why the war is wrong, has consistently gotten sub-par performation evaluations, and is frolicking about in his Islam outfit (which I guess were his civvies) -- I mean, what could go wrong? This guy was clearly only interested in knowing how to take off and fly, and not how to land. He was a walking, talking IED. And the poor baby was complaining about being harrassed!

And now we're going to be treated to the spectacle of his "vigorous defense" apparently based upon post traumatic stress disorder. As has been pointed out by those paying attention, this joker managed to manipulate things so that he never saw combat, so how does he suffer from PTSD? Sounds like we have a new disorder: pre-combat stress disorder -- the very idea that he might see combat caused him to flip out. Wouldn't that be a fine precedent to set.

One problem we have created for ourselves is bribing people to go into the military for the wrong reasons; ie, to get an education, which applies in this case. I guaran-damn-tee you (that's how the Drill Instructors used to talk in the Marines -- makes me sound tough, huh) that the notion that they might end up in combat is buried in the fine print, while the "College Education" is in 72 pt type. I mean, remember those recruiting ads for the Army -- "be all you can be", which stressed self-actualization? I don't recall it being pointed out that one of the things you can be is dead.

It's like everything else since the 1960's: if we can't get something we want by legitimate means, we mortgage the future to buy it; in this case enticing soldiers to join with a pitch that is likely to get them to join for the wrong reasons, thus causing problems both with them and with recruiting later. I would submit that if there aren't enough volunteers to serve in the military for the right reasons
(you know, that "love of country" stuff), then we ought to just let the chips fall where they do and let people see the consequences of it. Screw it. It's exactly like the causes of the current economic mess: we paper over the shortcuts we took to get what we want, and forget about them until Gene Wilder emerges crying "It's Alive, ALLLIIIIIIVE!!".

Now, I understand that we apparently have thousands of Moslems serving in the US military, but here's the question: are we sufficiently desperate to make the recruiting goals that we are willing to risk the damage that a few of these types of guys can do? How many more of them, with fewer red flags than this guy, are out there right now? Remember the Moslem US soldier in Kuwait a few years ago who tossed a grenade into the officers' tent? There have been a number of other incidents, the details of which I don't have on hand at the moment, all with one common theme: they were committed by Moslems against the war. Toyota is now going to have its kimono sued off because one Toyota (masquerading as a Lexus so the Japanese could compete with the Germans), out of millions sold, managed to get the floor mat wedged under the accelerator, causing the car to hit what, for the occupants, was terminal velocity. It's not at all even clear that it was Toyota's fault, but it's going to cost them a fortune to defend. And the US military apparently can't do anything after repeated evidence of a problem?

Which brings me to the WW 2 Japanese Internment Camps: as anyone who has studied it knows, these camps were set up because, in the months leading up to 12/7/41, US cryptanalysts (for you Obama voters, these are code breakers, not ghouls who examine crypts) had broken the Japanese JN-25 (naval) and Purple (diplomatic) codes sufficiently to be pretty certain that the Japanese had been setting up cells on the West Coast to sabotage the high concentration of defense plants there. What? You didn't hear this from the media? The media who knows about as much about the military and military history as I do about brain surgery? My father was one of these guys (translator/code breaker), and I know whereof I speak . . . which I do elsewhere on this Blog.

In the bleak days of early 1942, when everything was going the Axis' way (you will recall that Rommel was still running all over North Africa, Manstein, Paulus, von Bock and the boys still looked pretty invincible in Russia, and Tojo, Yamamoto, and Nagumo were having their way with the ABDA Command in SE Asia -- I mean, nothing was going right for the Allies), and when Japan had just done the "impossible" by attacking Pearl Harbor, the niceities of individual consideration of the loyalties of individual Americans of Japanese descent (some of whom had been recruited for the above-mentioned sabotage rings) were subordinated to the goal of national survival, given the damage that even a few successful attacks could do. Italians and Germans were locked up on the East Coast too, but that's never discussed.

How much damage to military morale and recruiting do you think a few more such incidents will do? Don't you think that many soldiers and Marines are already looking askance at the Moslems in their midst? Maybe Mohammad, next to you in the foxhole, plans to shoot you next time you're alone together. How does that work for "unit cohesion"?

Now obviously we're not going to raid every mosque at prayer time (which seems to be about 5 times a day -- I mean, does anyone work? No wonder the standard of living in Arab countries is so low) and ship them off to Tule Lake; but it is a fact that there was not single known incident of Japanese-American sabotage during the War. It would have been difficult to convince US military intelligence of that in January 1942: the evidence was sufficiently compelling that it simply was not worth running the risk of what a few incidents could do to the defense effort. As with George Bush and Iraq, the correct pre-emptive action was taken based upon the preponderance of evidence and the clear penalty of being wrong, and both have paid the price with those who just don't understand this stuff.

What we are doing now, in the name of political correctness, is essentially appeasement -- can't be too firm or mean with the Moslems or we'll make them mad -- replace Moslem with Hitler and what late 1930's British Prime Minister does that
sound like? How much evidence, how many more actual events, do we need this time?

If Obama is willing to destroy the security and living standard of Americans for the dubious goal of universal health care, is the defense of the country not worth disrupting the lives of a comparative few?

A Few Thoughts on Afghanistan

It appears that we are at a crossroads of sorts in Afghanistan: do we commit more troops as the Obama-appointed commanding General McCrystal requests, or do we fold our tent and "advance to the rear" as we used to say in the Marines.

Once again, we are suffering from an excess of public opinion based upon a deficit of information. The information the public has about this war comes overwhelmingly thru the media who, as I have said many times, is wholly unequipped to report it. I, for one, would have a lot more faith in the information coming from Afghanistan/Iraq if it were coming from someone with even the slightest military background or knowledge; but, as far as I know, there is still not a single reporter over there who has seen the inside of a military uniform. I get into the reasons for this elsewhere on this Blog, but why does it matter?

Well, context, for one. I won't reiterate the list of problems caused by reporters reporting on subjects with which they are wholly unacquainted, or express once again my amazement that the entire US media could not find one single, solitary reporter with any military knowledge to report on what is (hello?) largely a military matter, when they seem to be able to find doctors to report on Swine Flu, money guys to report on the credit crisis, show-biz types to report on the crucial events going on in Tinseltown, exploding breast implants, etc. On the verge of violating my pledge not to reiterate it, I'll stop now.

But context: over this past weekend there were a couple of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of, I believe, 14 Americans. This was reported as "the worst one-day casualty rate in over 4 years". In the narrow sense, I don't doubt that. On last night's news there were the predictable interviews conducted by militarily vacuous reporters. One I happened to see was with John Kerry, who was asked if Americans would continue to support the war with "these kinds of casualties" (or something like that). You'd have thought this was Tarawa. The reason, of course, that the media grades this war "on the curve" is that they have absolutely no perspective on how these casualties compare to prior wars. Can we just take a couple of steps back here?

The casualty rate in Afghanistan/Iraq is among the lowest in US history, and certainly the lowest for length and number of troops involved. While every war is different and the Taliban aren't exactly dug in on Monte (Al Akbar) Cassino or Sugarloaf, the casualties in this war have been very low by any historical standard, especially if one amortizes them over the length of it. That would probably be somewhat unfair, since this is a relatively low intensity conflict, probably most analogous to Viet Nam. OK fine: American deaths in Viet Nam were just shy of 60,000. Are we up to 5000 yet in this war, which has been going on longer than Viet Nam, and which is being fought by a volunteer military? If we get to the stage where the public is unwilling to accept casualties among those who volunteered to go in defense of the country, we won't have one.

And can we revisit for just a moment how we became involved in Afghanistan/Iraq (with overwhelming bi-partisan support)? Have that many Americans forgotten 9/11/01? Remember those planes? Remember who planned those attacks and where they were based? Right -- Al Qaeda, sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan. I know, I know -- it was all planned and carried out by Bush -- this is a problem with mass communications today: the internet gives voice to nutcases whose rants would not previously have gotten past the padding in their cells, and those not generally paying attention are easily swayed.

So we went in for the right reasons: to clean out Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and destroy Afghanistan as a viable base from which to plan future attacks. From that point of view, it seems to have worked. If there have been any other attacks, please let me know cuz I missed them.

Of course the long-term solution is to get the Afghan Army and economy up to speed, to where such activities are no longer so easy or attractive. Is there anyone out there who doesn't think that's been going on? OK, Nancy Pelosi probably doesn't, but the things Nancy Pelosi doesn't understand could fill a book. There are countless government-sponsored and private efforts throughout the country aimed at providing the younger generation an educational alternative to IED101. And countless schools set up to educate Afghan women for the first time, construction of infrastructure that we take for granted or are unaware of because the media simply doesn't report it, etc, etc.

I am as regretful as anyone over every single American death, but such efforts are the only viable way I can see to turn that country around. It will all be for naught if the US military closes shop and the country reverts to tribal warfare and return of Taliban rule. As I said, this war is most similar to Viet Nam among those the US has fought since its inception, and another similarity is that the media, through inept (or downright hostile) reporting, has largely turned the country against it. During the recent Presidential election, was it not the Obama supporters who were attacking Bush for not having paid enough attention to Afghanistan? Ah, but now that their Boy is in the White House and they're face-to-face with the reality of what commitment to Afghanistan means (more troops), those same air-heads are now calling for US withdrawal from it!

McCrystal is not the first general in history to request more troops. The most famous US example was George B McClellan who, once he had whipped the Army of the Potomac into shape following 2nd Bull Run, could not bring himself to use it, and was constantly badgering Lincoln for more troops. Lincoln finally fired him for inaction and eventually settled upon U S Grant, who was the opposite of McClellan in nearly every respect. Every American officer studies this as an example of the limits of Executive patience.

But the desire for more troops is only natural: if the impending battle/operation ends unsuccessfully, it is not the President or Congress who is going receive primary blame -- it's the commanding general on the spot. Ask Lucas at Anzio, Fredendall at Kasserine Pass, Burnside at Fredericksburg, or even Villeneuve at Trafalgar. It is the rare case where fewer troops are better than more and, at the very least, in the event of defeat, the general can point to his pre-battle request for reinforcements. The exception, of course, is the US Marines, with too many examples of battles won with obsolete equipment and against overwhelming odds to cite here, the best known being General Vandegrift and the boys at Guadalcanal. I was a lousy Marine, but am proud to have been one, nonetheless.

In any case, is not the Commanding General in the field best equipped to estimate his need for troops? The Commanding General that the current Commander in Chief Himself appointed? Hello? So it seems to me that this must be a choice between sending 40K more troops as McCrystal has requested, or pulling out. Surely even Obama wouldn't do anything as dumb as leaving an inadequate force there to serve as nothing so much as a target for RPG's and AK-47's.

One obvious problem we have is that Obama was elected by promising the clueless Left what He had to to get their votes. Now that many of those promises are proving unworkable (gee, what a surprise), those same voters are demonstrating continued cluelessness in not understanding why He hasn't kept them and why the nirvana Obama promised them has not materialized. He cannot afford to lose their support, and so is caught between alienating them further, and doing what is clearly in the interest of the country.

What message is Obama's current dithering sending to the enemy, if not that the US is nearing the end of it's willingness to continue, and they must hold out just a little longer for victory before moving back into the cave to plan new attacks? Unlike some other historians, I like FDR's declaration of "unconditional surrender" terms to the Axis at Casablanca, and his sticking with it, literally to the death.

I'm afraid we are still paying the price for having left Viet Nam without achieving a clear victory. Our enemies (foreign and domestic) know that, given enough perseverance, they can outlast the American public's will to continue; our friends always have that question in the back of their minds -- "should I ally with the US, and what happens when the US pulls out and I am left here with the enemy"; and those who are simply too clueless to understand that there is a price for freedom know that if they put up enough of a ruckus, they can defeat the interests of their own country. I'm sure Jane Fonda is on her way to a cave right now. Once she's arrived, can we just bulldoze the entrance?

Styrofoam Columns Set in Sand

or Why Obama is a One-Term President



Barack Obama was elected largely in reaction to the perceived inadequacies of George W Bush; in other words, He speaks well and gives people the Pablum that goes down easily: world peace, the rosy assumption that the rest of the world "is just like us", be nice to our enemies and they'll be nice in return (such as closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, unilateral disarmament, and disarming the Patriot Act), big government programs so no one has to worry about anything, government management of the country via appointed "Czars", curbing the perceived excesses of corporate management, an approach to appointments where affirmative action trumps ability -- in short, all things that most 6th graders would reflexively agree were good ideas. This is why 6th graders don't vote, but it pretty well describes the Obama voter -- the wide-eyed innocent who can't or hasn't thought through the long-term consequences of what Obama is pushing, with little understanding of how the world works or has worked in the past, or the arrogance to think that He can make it work for the first time in human history.

Obama cannot be re-elected without these people. When He finds (as He is now finding) that the fine-sounding pap He fed them to get elected runs afoul of the real world, and He cannot avoid going back on His campaign promises, these simple creatures will feel betrayed and will turn on Him, as many are now doing. I mean, didn't He say we'd be out of Iraq within some ridiculously short period of time only someone unfamiliar with reality would buy? And damn! Closing the Guantanamo prison has consequences that appear to have been too arcane for the Obama voter. And is it true that His government health insurance scheme won't go into effect until He has left office, thus letting Him lay at the door of His successor the inevitable chaos that will ensue?



As a side note, I love the use of Medicare as an example of how government health insurance has worked. Medicare is the single biggest reason health care costs are so high now. Do we punch another hole in the bottom of the boat to let out the water coming in thru the first one?


Those who had their eyes open during the campaign, who realized He was simply promising what he had to to obtain the votes of those who had no idea what was going on (and probably shouldn't be allowed to vote), will never vote for Him. As the next election draws nearer, Obama will be torn between doing what is clearly the right thing for the country, and saying and doing what will, once again, obtain the votes of those who still don't get it. If He chooses the latter, the disasterous consequences will, by then, be all too apparent. And for his starry -eyed worshippers, enough of those will have become alienated by His unfulfilled promises that he will lose.



There is precedent for this throughout US history: Thomas Jefferson was elected largely because John Adams was perceived as too tough on foreign policy, having almost brought the country to war with France in 1798. As Secretary of State under Adams, Jefferson has opposed any build-up of the navy as provocative and wasteful. In those days, the size of a nation's navy was indicative of it's foreign policy. Just so any Obama voters reading this will understand, building up the Air Force was not really an option at this point. So when the Tripolitan Pirates began attacking US merchant shipping in the Mediterranean (as you recall, the US had voluntarily given up the protection of the Royal Navy), and the pirates wouldn't be nice to us just because we were nice to them, the only effective response was naval (Commodore Bainbridge, Presley O'Bannon, and Stephen Decatur were sent "To the Shores of Tripoli" -- isn't there a song in there somewhere?). Little remembered is that the terms of release of the American seamen still required the payment of $60,000 each to the Dey of Algiers.



The Jefferson Administration had an isolationist undertone to it, and was certainly domestically focused (Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, etc). The weakness of the Jeffersonian Navy encouraged the impressment of American sailors by the navies of England and France during the first decade of the 19th Century, which led directly to the election of James Madison and American involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, known here as the War of 1812. In Jefferson's defense, the idea at the time was that if England declared war, the US could actually build a navy before the Royal one arrived. To disprove that, see White House burning at right.



But the underlying point is that the foreign policy weakness of the Jefferson navy led directly to US involvement in the War of 1812.



There are other examples of the downside of a weak President, or at least one who, to get elected, caters to the naivete of those with little understanding of how the world works. Remember Jimmy Carter? A very smart guy, but certainly the weakest US President in the 20th Century. The latter half of the 19th Century had some weak Presidents too, but small government was the norm then and the effects were masked.



Carter's approach to foreign policy was based upon the false premise that our enemies operated on the same paradigm that we do, and would honor the agreements we made with them. Also assumed was that if we are just nice to them, they will be nice to us -- hold hands in a circle, pass a joint around, sing a few stanzas of Kumbaya, and everything will be fine. Go ahead and give them what they want, because they've agreed to do what we asked. This is seen as nothing but weakness and stupidity by our enemies who, once they have what they want on this round, have no intention of honoring their end of the agreement, and this perceived weakness got us the Iran Hostage Crisis and Russian invasion of Afghanistan.



Clinton had some Carter in him, as demonstrated by the stupid "Framework Agreement" with North Korea and the equally dumb Kyoto Protocol, which was made even dumber by the implicit and, to be kind, highly dubious assumption that man is causing global warming (see Global Warming Thru the Ages on this Blog).



So Obama is a one term President because being a good speaker only gets you to first base. It's kind of like a Ponzi Scheme, so much in the news lately: it's all great in the beginning, but eventually the cumulative weight of the deceit upon which it is built, causes the whole thing to come crashing down.