RealClearPolitics – Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Dr. Sowell is IMO one of the most enlightened men of our times.  I never miss his “random thoughts” articles because I always find myself  forced to give more thought to an issue I had skimmed over or rethinking a position in light of his observations.  This is a good thing!  BB

By Thomas Sowell

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems— of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

Many of the things the government does that may seem stupid are not stupid at all, from the standpoint of the elected officials or bureaucrats who do these things.

The current economic downturn that has cost millions of people their jobs began with successive administrations of both parties pushing banks and other lenders to make mortgage loans to people whose incomes, credit history and inability or unwillingness to make a substantial down payment on a house made them bad risks.

Was that stupid? Not at all. The money that was being put at risk was not the politicians’ money, and in most cases was not even the government’s money. Moreover, the jobs that are being lost by the millions are not the politicians’ jobs— and jobs in the government’s bureaucracies are increasing.

Read more excellent articles at JWR (Emphasis mine.  —Al – Grumpy Old Man)

“From indictment to trial, the civilian case against the 9/11 terrorists will be a years-long seminar, enabling al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies to learn much of what we know and, more important, the methods and sources by which we come to know it. But that is not the half of it. By moving the case to civilian court, the president and his attorney general have laid the groundwork for an unprecedented surrender of our national-defense secrets directly to our most committed enemies.” –columnist Andrew McCarthy

“In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.” –economist Thomas Sowell

“After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the [Danish] cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this last week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a ‘tragedy’ but a national scandal, already fading from view.” –columnist Mark Steyn

“President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow of information. It’s the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face, Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce opposition, he said, made him ‘a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.’ How do you say ‘You lie!’ in Mandarin?” –columnist Michelle Malkin

“In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership. Unfortunately, it matters little whether there is a Democratically or Republican-controlled Congress and White House; the march toward greater government control continues. It just happens at a quicker pace with Democrats in charge.” –economist Walter E. Williams

Did you know that the libertarian Cato Institute has a podcast? I like listening to it, even though I am not a libertarian on many issues. But I like their views on economics, government and liberty. I think that they are right on issues like school choice, consumer-driven health care, and global warming skepticism. In the episode of their podcast below, they interviewed Protestant theologian and philosopher Jay W. Richards on the relationship between Christianity and economics.

The MP3 file is here. (10 minutes)

The guy who does these podcasts is named Caleb Brown. Now, with a name like “Caleb”, I always thought that he must be some sort of Christian. Well, it turns out that he is a Quaker. And this is a shock, because Quakers are actually pretty socialistic on economic issues. But it turns out that Caleb is as concerned as I am that Christians are not more inclined towards capitalism. The fit between Christianity and capitalism is much more natural than with secular socialism.

Further study

To learn more about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, check out this post (the second half is on capitalism).

Excerpt:

To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture entitled “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards, delivered at the Heritage Foundation think tank, and televised by C-SPAN2.

[...]If you can’t see the Richards video, here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. Also, why not check out this series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics? (a PDF outline is here)

And you can listen to Ron Nash’s course on Christianity and economics.

The best resource I know of is this course from Dr. Ronald Nash. (H/T Apologetics 315)

Advanced Worldview Analysis
by Dr. Ronald Nash (24 Lectures) – RSS / iTunes

Here are the individual topics:

• Lesson 1 – Introduction Play Now
• Lesson 2 – Liberalism and Conservatism Play Now
• Lesson 3 – Political Positions Play Now
• Lesson 4 – Statism and Anti-statism Play Now
• Lesson 5 – Evaluation of Statism and Anti-statism Play Now
• Lesson 6 – Justice Play Now
• Lesson 7 – Capitalism and Socialism Play Now
• Lesson 8 – Interventionism Play Now
• Lesson 9 – Defense of Capitalism Play Now
• Lesson 10 – Economics Play Now
• Lesson 11 – Marxism Play Now
• Lesson 12 – Real Accounting Fraud Play Now
• Lesson 13 – Socialism and Capitalism Play Now
• Lesson 14 – Money and Wealth Play Now
• Lesson 15 – Poverty Play Now
• Lesson 16 – Liberation Theology Play Now
• Lesson 17 – The Religious Left Play Now
• Lesson 18 – Representatives of the Evangelical Left Play Now
• Lesson 19 – Inflation of Rights Play Now
• Lesson 20 – Legal Positivism Play Now
• Lesson 21 – Environmentalism Overview Play Now
• Lesson 22 – Types of Pollution Play Now
• Lesson 23 – Problems with Public Education Play Now
• Lesson 24 – A Possible Solution Play Now

This course is most wonderful thing in the world.

And if you like it, you may also like those debates with James Crossley, Richard Bauckham, Michael Bird and William Lane Craig on the historical Jesus. I have been listening to those debates non-stop and I really enjoy listening to both sides. I think it is really interesting hearing James Crossley explain his historical concerns about orthodox Christianity.

• Richard Bauckham defends the divinity of Jesus against Crossley
• Richard Bauckham defends the reliability of the gospels against Crossley
• Crossley debated against William Lane Craig before on the resurrection
• Crossley against Michael Bird on the origins of Christianity, (part 1, part 2)

I want to start out this morning by introducing you to a tongue-in-cheek syndrome called Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. Meditation teacher Warren Lee Cohen talks about this, in his book Raising the Soul. “This is how AAADD manifests itself: I decide to wash my car. As I start towards the garage, I notice that there is mail on the hall table. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the trash can under the table, and notice that the trash can is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the trash first. But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go to my desk where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking. I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to move the can of Coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. I notice the Coke is getting warm and decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head towards the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye. They need to be watered. I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning. I decide I’d better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we want to watch TV, we’ll be looking for the remote, but nobody will remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers. As I pour water on the flowers, some of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day,” concludes Warren Lee Cohen, “the car isn’t washed, the bills aren’t paid, the trash hasn’t been taken out, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, there is still only one check in my checkbook, I can’t find the remote, I can’t find my glasses, and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys. Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I’m really tired, but now it’s time to check my email.”

Can you relate? It’s Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. Busy all day long, but nothing really gets done, because it’s hard to maintain undivided attention on the task at hand. Hard to focus on just one thing at a time and not allow ourselves to be distracted by additional problems that inevitably pop up along the way.

And if it’s this way with the things in our outer world, how is it with the inner world of our thoughts?

The careful, deliberate, reasoned search for truth is a cornerstone of our free faith. Says the father of Unitarianism in America, William Ellery Channing, “Without … inward spiritual freedom outward liberty is of little worth. What [does it matter] that I am crushed by no foreign yoke if, through ignorance and vice, through selfishness and fear, I want the command of my own mind? The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breast. The man who wants force of principle and purpose is a slave, however free the air he breathes. The mind, after all, is our only possession, or, in other words, we possess all through its energy and enlargement.” That’s what the father of Unitarianism says. A capacity to be principled and purposeful in our thinking is simply basic to our way of faith. Without it, as we sail on OUR passenger ship, we’re lost. We can’t reliably read the signs of the times, nor discover what to do next. As Channing says, we fall prey to “a narrow, dark, confused intellect, which sees everything as through a mist, gives to everything the color of its own feelings, confines itself to what coincides with its wishes, contents itself with superficial views, and thus perpetually falls into errors….” This is not free faith. This is not who we are.

This morning, we tend to our most intimate relationship: the one we have with our thoughts. What are some of the tyrants that can establish themselves in us and muddle our thinking? And how might we develop our thinking so that it can be clearer? Today’s sermon is the second installment of the “Planting Seeds of Soul” series, so remember what I said last month about “wax on/wax off.” We’re going to learn our second “wax on/wax off” exercise today, to raise Unitarian Universalist soul in this place. That’s the goal.

But first: tyrants. One that comes immediately to mind is fallacious reasoning, or patterns of thinking that are bad according to logical standards but nevertheless make an impression on people who don’t know any better. Here’s an example of what I mean. I opened my Atlanta Journal-Constitution from yesterday and read that Georgia Congressman Nathan Deal “wants the president to prove he is an American citizen.” The article clarifies: “In June 2008, Obama’s campaign office released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate … that shows he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug, 4, 1961. Government officials in Hawaii have verified that the document is official. Yet Deal and others say they still have doubts.”

In any introductory level logic class, you’d learn that this is an textbook example of an ad hominem fallacy in formation, which tries to discredit a person’s policies and viewpoints not by presenting genuine evidence against them but by attacking the person, rendering his or her character so disgusting that no matter how good the policies are, no matter how penetrating the viewpoint, no one’s paying attention, no one’s listening. This is what the Birther movement hopes for, as it continues to nurture doubts about Obama’s citizenship status even in the face of an official birth certificate….

It’s just been one ad hominem attack after another. Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, joking about the similarity of Barack Obama’s name to that of the terrorist Osama bin Laden—and using the machinery of his organization to spread the joke around until it becomes no joke. Tea Party participants, carrying signs that feature Obama’s face with a Hitler mustache. A Thomas Sowell article, where he says, “Recent videos of American children in school singing songs of praise for Barack Obama were a little much, especially for those of us old enough to remember pictures of children singing the praises of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao.” Do you see the steady building pattern of character assassination here? And too many Americans are completely persuaded by it, too many Americans vulnerable. The tyrant of fallacious reasoning, securing a place in our minds, and we don’t know any better. Not as a Democrat, but as an American, does this concern me, for how can I think about what President Obama is trying to do when psychological strings are being pulled and I can’t think straight? It’s horrible for democracy.

It’s definitely been horrible for reasoned debate about health care reform. Ad hominem fallacies one after another, together with others kind of fallacies. How about this one. I spotted it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just a few days ago: “Opponents Rally Against Health Care Bill”: 35 year-old David Seward, saying, “I think health care is expensive, but I like it and I’m scared to death of the government running it … I’m worried about the bureaucracy of the federal government getting involved.” This is what he says, and besides his completely ignoring the fact that government-run Medicare is a great success, do you see the underlying false dichotomy? It’s either big government or small government, and no other alternatives are possible…. Yet the issue is not so much big government vs. small government as the right amount of government really needed to solve the problem, to cut through the greed and the waste of the third-party payer medical-industrial complex. Big government vs. small government doesn’t tell the whole truth about how to solve this problem.

I could go on and on—all the kinds of fallacious thinking that have muddied up the debate around health care reform. Rep. Candace Miller from Michigan, commenting on yesterday’s passage of the health care bill in the House, saying, “We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, `this is making me sick,’” adding that Democrats are intent on passing “a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding” bill. Sounds like a classic slippery-slope argument to me, one that says that if government takes action to reform the health care system, if it sets a public option side-by-side with multiple private options and enables some REAL competition to take place, then all of a sudden, down the slippery-slope slide we go, and all sorts of horrible, fateful consequences are sure to follow. A classic appeal to fear. I don’t care what political party you belong to. I don’t care which president is in the White House. To me, manipulative language—Republican or Democratic—doesn’t help to create a great country. “Civil institutions,” said William Ellery Channing, “are to be estimated by the free and pure minds to which they give birth.” But our institutions are not being civil, and our minds must struggle against great odds to be free and pure. What would Channing say, if he could see what we see today?

This leads us to a second inner tyrant to become aware of. Besides the tyrant of fallacious reasoning, there is the tyrant of hyperconnectedness in our interactive, digital world. Here, we become experts in skimming and scanning as we flit from Facebook to text message to email to video game—and this can leave our ability to bring a full attention to one thing at a time severely underdeveloped. It can make us unfit to think great thoughts.

Marilee Sprenger talks about this in her wonderful article entitled “Focusing the Digital Brain.” “Let’s look,” she says, “at what happens in the brain of Emily, an average teenager, as she thinks she is focusing on a homework assignment. Emily sits in front of her laptop. Her iPod is playing music by Coldplay. She has three windows open on her computer screen: her Web browser through America Online, MSN Messenger for sending instant messages and e-mail, and her word processing program. Her homework is to write about five causes of the U.S. Civil War.

As Emily is putting her heading on her paper, her cell phone rings. She quickly picks up her phone and a picture of her friend Ivy appears on the screen. ‘Hi Ivy, what’s up?’

‘You’re not going to believe who texted me,’ Ivy says. Emily squeals as she hears the name of someone Ivy is interested in dating. Just then Emily’s computer flashes, ‘You’ve got mail!’ The executive part of her brain drops the conversation with Ivy as she reads a new e-mail from another classmate asking for the homework assignment. Emily answers the e-mail as Ivy rambles on, but she realizes she should get back to work. ‘I’ll text you later, Ivy. I have to get some work done.’

Emily shifts her attention back to the word processing screen. Let’s see, where was I? Her brain must let the snippets of social conversation drop out of her working memory. Attending to the assignment causes Emily’s brain to retrieve long-term memories of her readings and lectures on the Civil War. As she begins to think about the differences between the North and the South before the Civil War, her mind drifts to picturing Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.

Refocusing takes several seconds as she remembers what Mr. Montgomery told them in class about slavery. Emily types ‘causes of the Civil War’ into Google. Immediately, 12,900,000 hits come up. She clicks on the first link, realizes it doesn’t have any information she is looking for, and tries the next Web site.

Immersed in her search, she is startled by a jangle from her Blackberry. Emily sees Jackson’s text message ‘What r u doing?’ Jackson is Emily’s new love interest, so her brain floods with pleasurable chemicals as she types her reply—these chemicals make it hard to return to homework.

So it goes among the net generation. Multitasking? Not many tasks are getting done.”

Now, I quote Marilee Sprenger at length not to pick on the net generation—after all, I openly confess that I myself have a serious case of Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. In fact, whatever generation we happen to be in—whatever degree of proficiency is ours in up-to-date communication technologies—it seems that the general tenor of the times is rush and gush. Continuous partial attention. How are we going to do the deeply spiritual work of thinking clearly when we have a limited capacity for patience to follow a chain of thoughts from beginning to end—to resist interruption—to focus on one thing and allow it to unfold its secrets?

“[H]onesty of mind,” says William Ellery Channing, “bears an exact proportion to the patience, steadiness, and resolution with which we inquire.” And that’s exactly what we turn to now. Developing this patience, this steadiness, this resolution. How?

Our wax-on/wax off spiritual exercise for this month—for those of you who choose to practice it with me—is “about learning how to cultivate interest in even the most mundane object and by maintaining your undivided attention on it to increase your ability to focus on anything. This is a step in learning how to give your attention freely and completely, whatever and whenever you should choose.” (Warren Lee Cohen).

Four steps:

Step one: Choose a simple, human-made object—an object manufactured rather than one found in nature, like a cup, or a pencil, a pin, a pair of chopsticks. Warren Lee Cohen, the source of this and all the other exercises, says that the less interesting your object appears at first, the more powerful the effects of deliberately focusing on it.

Also be clear on how many objects you’ll focus on over the course of the upcoming month, and for how long each session will be. I’d recommend one object per week, for around 5 to 10 minutes, at the same time every day. Make the decision, and lay out your plan clearly in your journal. Warren Lee Cohen tells the story of a man who spent 20 years contemplating the same pair of wooden chopsticks. Each and every day, he was able to find something new and interesting to think about; and clearly, it wasn’t the chopsticks that were changing—it was him, the quality of attention he was bringing to them. If he can contemplate the same pair of chopsticks for 20 years, surely we can contemplate the same object for a week, at 10 minutes a pop….

That’s step one. Step two is when you’re actually ready to do the exercise. Situate yourself in a comfortable place, and prepare yourself for the exercise by relaxing your body, calming your mind, just like an athlete stretching before a workout, or a musician tuning up an instrument.

Step three is to place before your mind this object that you have chosen to contemplate. This object that, initially, appears boring: A cup, a pencil, a pin. Train your thinking exclusively on this object in a clear and factual way. Focus on one fact and then link it to the next—in step by step fashion, follow your thinking as you deepen your understanding and interest in this simple, ordinary, human-made thing.

For example, say you choose to focus on a pencil. (Thoreau would like that—he was a pencil maker, you know…) You might start by describe how the pencil appears and of what materials it’s made. Then you might go on to describe how these materials were processed to get them into this form—to think through all the stages of manufacture. Then you might go on to consider how the object is used. Then you might think about who invented it, and how its invention is connected with the invention of other similar things. And so on—inquire with patience, steadiness, and resolution….

Notice that in this approach, you just jump right in. But there are alternative approaches to keep in mind. Do the one that works best for you. One alternative is to do a little research about your object first, before you start thinking about it. Another alternative is to do no research in advance but to develop questions naturally through the course of your own thought processes and then, when the time feels right, seek out answers through research. Enriched by that, return to the object and keep on thinking about it, keep on going deeper.

Finally, there’s step four. When your five or ten minutes is done, review the general direction of your thinking. What was the initial fact that grabbed your attention? Where did you go from there?

And this is the exercise. Do it along with the “review of the day” that I introduced last month. “Even if you cannot slow down the pace of your life,” says Warren Lee Cohen, “you can create regular moments of slowness or concentration each day. These can then become seeds, essential reminders of the qualities you would like to cultivate more in life.” That’s right. We’re planting seeds of soul. They look small—focusing on a boring-looking object for 10 minutes seems small—but if we do the exercises faithfully, the results will be big. Will strengthen our minds against manipulation. Will counteract Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder and counterbalance the continuous partial attention of the digital brain. “The mind, after all, is our only possession,” says William Ellery Channing; “we possess all through its energy and enlargement.” So let us energize and enlarge it. Make Channing proud!

The Democrats are talking a lot of about their plan to reduce the costs of health care. And they think that the way to do that is by having government take a bigger role in health care provision. Well, Thomas Sowell doesn’t like the idea that the government can reduce health care costs by using govenrment, and he’s written a four part series on it.

Here’s a quote from the first part about how Democrats attack the suppliers of health care products and services:

Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of goods and services are the costs of producing them.

If highly paid chief executives of insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies agreed to work free of charge, it would make very little difference in the cost of insurance or medications. If doctors’ incomes were cut in half, that would not lower the cost of producing doctors through years of expensive training in medical schools and hospitals, nor the overhead costs of running doctors’ offices.

What it would do is reduce the number of very able people who are willing to take on the high costs of a medical education when the return on that investment is greatly reduced and the aggravations of dealing with government bureaucrats are added to the burdens of the work.

Britain has had a government-run medical system for more than half a century and it has to import doctors, including some from Third World countries where the medical training may not be the best.

And a quote from the second part about how reducing costs means rationing:

There is no question that you can reduce the payments for medical care by having either a lower quantity or a lower quality of medical care. That has already been done in countries with government-run medical systems.

In the United States, the government has already reduced payments for patients on Medicare and Medicaid, with the result that some doctors no longer accept new patients with Medicare or Medicaid. That has not reduced the cost of medical care. It has reduced the availability of medical care, just as buying a pint of milk reduces the payment below what a quart of milk would cost.

Letting old people die instead of saving their lives will undoubtedly reduce medical payments considerably. But old people have that option already— and seldom choose to exercise it, despite clever people who talk about a “duty to die.”

A government-run system will take that decision out of the hands of the elderly or their families, and thereby “bring down the cost of medical care.” A stranger’s death is much easier to take, especially if you are a bureaucrat making that decision in Washington.

[...]You can even save money by cutting down on medications to relieve pain, as is already being done in Britain’s government-run medical system.

You can save money by not having as many high-tech medical devices like CAT scans or MRIs, and not using the latest medications. Countries with government-run medical systems have less of all these things than the United States has.But reducing these things is not “bringing down the cost of medical care.” It is simply refusing to pay those costs— and taking the consequences.

And a quote from the third part talks about free markets versus government price controls:

If you think the government can lower medical costs by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse,” as some Washington politicians claim, the logical question is: Why haven’t they done that already?

Over the years, scandal after scandal has shown waste, fraud and abuse to be rampant in Medicare and Medicaid. Why would anyone imagine that a new government medical program will do what existing government medical programs have clearly failed to do?

If we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs now, how can we afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs, in addition to a new federal bureaucracy to administer a government-run medical system?

And a quote from the fourth part talks about equality versus liberty in health care:

What about insurance companies denying reimbursements for treatments? Does anyone imagine that a government bureaucracy will not do that?

Moreover, the worst that an insurance company can do is refuse to pay for medication or treatment. In some countries with government-run medical systems, the government can prevent you from spending your own money to get the medication or treatment that their bureaucracy has denied you. Your choice is to leave the country or smuggle in what you need.

However appalling such a situation may be, it is perfectly consistent with elites wanting to control your life. As far as those elites are concerned, it would not be “social justice” to allow some people to get medical care that others are denied, just because some people “happen to have money.”

But very few people just “happen to have money.” Most people have earned money by producing something that other people wanted. But getting what you want by what you have earned, rather than by what elites will deign to allow you to have, is completely incompatible with the vision of an elite-controlled world, which they call “social justice” or other politically attractive phrases.

What’s frustrating to me is how quickly people think of growing government as the solution to their problems. They don’t want to deal with paying for health care themselves. But what the government does to solve the high prices is fix prices and regulate the producers of health care, like doctors and medical device manufacturers. They make the supply smaller. But when the cost apparently goes down, people are signaled to use more health care. That makes the demand larger. And this is why there is a shortage of health care in countries that have health care provisioning highly regulated by the government.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.—Thomas Sowell

In response to our current government or The Daily Switch for their long absence?

Things have been crazy and we’ve been away for far too long. The Daily Switch has an official stance on the matter: We apologize. This does not mean that we will be able to keep up the near heroic pace our readers had previously become accustomed to. We will, however, do better.

Let’s kick things off with some essential reading…

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110309.php3

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110409.php3

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110509.php3

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110609.php3

If you don’t know Sowell, you’ve got no soul, or so the saying goes now that I’ve said it.

Also, our friends over at TruPolitics have been going strong and even experienced a political victory in a local election. Congratulations Matt!

http://trupolitics.net/2009/10/16/freedom-bureaucracy-and-healthcare/

Guest author Edward Mahee has added a great tone to TruPolitics.

A nice summation of Obama’s actual successes…

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzYzZTY2ZmM1MjFmNGU3MjhmZmIxZjJmOTNiYjU0ZDg=

Victor Davis Hanson has become for me as essential a read as anything out there. He doesn’t mince words nor seemingly miss a thing.

Anyway, that should keep you busy for a few minutes. Thanks for your patience and continued interest. ‘Til next time…

“Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem: What everyone wants adds up to more than there is. Market economies deal with this problem by confronting individuals with the costs of producing what they want, and letting those individuals make their own trade-offs when presented with prices that convey those costs. That leads to self-rationing, in the light of each individual’s own circumstances and preferences.

Politics deals with the same problem by making promises that cannot be kept, or which can be kept only by creating other problems that cannot be acknowledged when the promises are made.”

~ Thomas Sowell

It’s a good thing Sowell wasn’t part of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation”.  He might have single-handedly lost us World War II.

In this gloomy NRO piece, Professor Debbie Downer more or less declares that Americans have no hope of getting health care costs under control, so why bother trying?  The “free market” must be served.

So just suck it up and die already!

Torgny Jansson has made two very good comments on my posts ‘Dismantling America‘ and ‘Capitalism: A Love Story.’
(Torgny’s website: Esoteric Astrology )

I therefore decided to bring them front and center, to make them a part of the main post on my blog.

Torgny said regarding “Dismantling America”:

This tactic reminds me of the strategy developed by Lee Atwater. What matters is to win, ‘the end justifies the means.’ What is true does not matter, it is about destroying your political opponent. Ethics is not important, only winning. The aim is not to serve the nation, it is to destroy the character of the political opponent. It is by spreading the message of fear and hate, and by negative campaigning also make the followers of the political opponent lose faith. This tactic may win the election, but what kind of society will it create? A society of fear, mistrust and where truth does not matter.

In the end of his life Atwater apologized for what he had done, but it was a little bit too late. Shortly before his death he wrote; ‘I was wrong to follow the meanness of Conservatism. I should have been trying to help people instead of take advantage of them. I don’t hate anyone anymore.’

As Torgny pointed out, in a February 1991 article for Life Magazine, Lee Atwater wrote:

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The ’80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.

And regarding ‘Capitalism: A Love Story,’ Torgny wrote:

I think that the idea of a small government that will not interfere with the world of business is an illusion. If the decisions are no longer made by the people who are choosen by democratic elections, who will then make the important decisions? We will instead have a strong government run by big business, with secret meetings and who owns and controls media.

‘The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group,’ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Torgny’s two comments are at the essence of those two blog posts.

From Thomas Sowell:

Many years ago, at a certain academic institution, there was an experimental program that the faculty had to vote on as to whether or not it should be made permanent.

I rose at the faculty meeting to say that I knew practically nothing about whether the program was good or bad, and that the information that had been supplied to us was too vague for us to have any basis for voting, one way or the other. My suggestion was that we get more concrete information before having a vote.

The director of that program rose immediately and responded indignantly and sarcastically to what I had just said — and the faculty gave him a standing ovation.

After the faculty meeting was over, I told a colleague that I was stunned and baffled by the faculty’s fierce response to my simply saying that we needed more information before voting.

“Tom, you don’t understand,” he said. “Those people need to believe in that man. They have invested so much hope and trust in him that they cannot let you stir up any doubts.”

Years later, and hundreds of miles away, I learned that my worst misgivings about that program did not begin to approach the reality, which included organized criminal activity.

The memory of that long-ago episode has come back more than once while observing both the actions of the Obama administration and the fierce reactions of its supporters to any questioning or criticism.

Almost never do these reactions include factual or logical arguments against the administration’s critics. Instead, there is indignation, accusations of bad faith and even charges of racism.

Here too, it seems as if so many people have invested so much hope and trust in Barack Obama that it is intolerable that anyone should come along and stir up any doubts that could threaten their house of cards.

Source

I found a great new freedom-loving, conservative site this week and I’m all a-tither…

The Patriot Post – The Voice of Constitutional Conservatism [as the 1812 Overture plays in the background] is marvelous.  I’m thrilled because this site is completely tether-free (meaning it’s supported only by  the voluntary financial support of American Patriots and not by any govt. sources!!!). 

America’s most widely read Internet-based publication, The Patriot Post, is a highly acclaimed journal advocating individual liberty, the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and the promotion of free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values.

The Patriot Post is crafted by a national editorial team headed by Mark Alexander and serves as a hard-hitting rebuttal to contemporary political, social and mainstream media protagonists on the Left. The Patriot is written for those who seek a brief, informative and entertaining analysis of the week’s most significant news, policy and opinion. Its comprehensive synopsis of reliable information is drawn from reputable media, research and advocacy organizations. Each edition of this highly acclaimed e-journal published in three parts each week: Monday’s Brief, Wednesday’s Chronicle and Friday’s Digest, which features Alexander’s weekly column.

Learn more about them here.

The Three Envelopes

By Charles Krauthammer · Friday, October 30, 2009

WASHINGTON — Old Soviet joke: Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev. “Niki, I’m dying. Don’t have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble.” A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: “Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe.” A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: “Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe.” Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: “Prepare three envelopes.” In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn’t blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad — everything but swine flu.

• Read More

Dismantling America

By Thomas Sowell · Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent? Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers– that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish? Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments? Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom.

• Read More

I hope you enjoy this new resource as much as I do.  Three cheers and kudos for Mark Alexander and The Patriot Post editorial team!!!

Policy

• The Heritage Foundation
• The Cato Institute
• Hoover Institution
• National Rifle Association
• Ludwig von Mises Institute
• National Center for Policy Analysis

 

The fact is, as Americans, we not only enjoy the rights affirmed by our Constitution, we have obligations to understand the mechanics of that affirmation in order to sustain it for our generation and those to come.

No matter what our calling, our occupation or our passion, we have a debt and duty as citizens to both learn about and support our Constitution, and we are obliged to do so above and before all other pursuits, for without constitutional Rule of Law, there are no other pursuits.

~ Mark Alexander, The Rights and Obligations of Liberty

 

http://wp.me/pzfHB-gG

If you haven’t had the chance to read this two-part column yet, I’m linking them here.  Thomas Sowell is an economist, author, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, and one of the leading conservative thinkers in America today. 

Dismantling America Part 1

Dismantling America Part 2

Thomas Sowell has an excellent read on RealClearPolitics. Take a peek here and then answer the question: 

“Does this sound like America?” for yourself.

A response to Thomas Sowell’s Dismantling America posted on Townhall.com.

It is indeed troubling when ostensibly intelligent and well-educated people, like Thomas Sowell, from all appearances, do not seem to research the subjects of which they discuss or write. Is it that they don’t know how to read or don’t understand what they read? Of course, they know how to read and they do understand, and to say they don’t is ridiculous. They, in their writing and conversation, will read into, imply, obfuscate, mislead, misinform, or deviously use hot-button language that incites their audience because they want vulnerable Americans to get on the same page as they regarding the issues.

The issues in Sowell’s latest article have been long ago hashed out contentions. The article by Republican congressman Paul Broun of Georgia that Thomas Sowell has focused on was published almost a year ago, back in November 2008. President Obama had just been elected. For some reason people just won’t let go of these arguments even though they have all been resolved to the satisfaction of most reasonably minded people.

Sowell’s czar argument can be easily researched. It took me about a second to find the information for which I was looking. A very excellent answer to his argument and insinuations can be found at factcheck.org. I am not going to address Sowell’s talk radio, death panel, or school children remarks because their falsity can be easily be determined with a simple Google search.

A list of so-called czars and number of czars compared with other administrations can be found here: List of U.S. executive branch czars.

Sowell’s statement that President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries is also being very disingenuous, and I believe Mr. Sowell knows it. Again, another very excellent explanation can be found at factcheck.org,

Sowell uses Fox News as a source, as in this statement, Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration’s enemies list. Sowell’s credibility sinks into the abyss when he used Fox News, such as the  programs of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly, as a source to critique Obama.

Sowell states, Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year– each bill more than a thousand pages long– too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed.

I believe Mr. Sowell is talking about healthcare reform and the stimulus bill when he remarks about two bills rammed through congress in his post. Mr. Sowell, as well as others, always use interesting language when they take potshots at President Obama, such as Sowell’s use of the word ram in the last quote. President Obama was not ramming (meaning to force) anything. Just because someone wants, appeals, or request something does not mean the intention is to achieve it by force. Any administrator is going to ask for or set due dates for projects, reports, or studies. It is axiomatic for a good manager to do that with his subordinates.

President Obama simply was citing his expectations that the House and Senate would have their versions of healthcare reform by the August break, so the bills can be unified in the fall. It’s only reasonable to expect that if a bill was to be passed this year that it would be necessary to do that.

As far as the stimulus bill is concerned, Thomas Sowell, in another article, claims the stimulus was rushed through Congress in two days. He claims the Obama administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days — after which it sat on the president’s desk for three days, while he was away on vacation. Politifact.com says this is false.

Today, my friend Paula forwarded me an article with so much common sense that it is profound in a world that often favors style over substance.  But first, about the author.

Thomas Sowell is a brilliant economist and social commentator.  He has taught at Rutgers, Howard, Cornell, Brandeis, UCLA, Amherst and Stanford Universities.  Dr. Sowell has often been quoted as an expert in free-market economics and has shown a willingness to buck conventional wisdom, often at the expense of his own stature within the “Left-Halls” of academia.

In the article below, Dr. Sowell makes the persuasive argument as to why when government attempts to equalize all things to all people, everyone suffers.  His logic is too good for further comment.  It’s too bad that great Americans like Dr. Sowell are not the ones making the economic decisions required to correct the imbalances in our economy.

Basketball Has Treated Me Unfairly; By:  Thomas Sowell

Sometimes, when I hear about “disparities” and “inequities,” I think of a disparity that applied directly to me – the disparity in basketball ability between myself and Michael Jordan.  When I was in school, I was so awful in basketball that the class coach wouldn’t even let me try out for softball, at which I was actually pretty good.

I was more than forty years old before I ever got the ball through the basket.  It wasn’t during a game.  The basket was in my brother’s backyard and I was just shooting – unopposed – from practically right under the basket.  The only pressure on me was that my little nephew was watching.  After making that one basket, I never took a basketball in my hands again. I retired at my peak.

Think about it: Michael Jordan made millions of dollars because of having a talent that was totally denied to me.  Through no fault of my own, I had to spend years studying economics, in order to make a living.  Economics is not nearly as much fun as basketball and doesn’t pay nearly as much money either.  We are talking inequity big time.

Most discussions of “disparities” and “inequities” are a prelude to coming up with some “solution” that the government can impose, winning politicians some votes in the process.  How could the disparity between Michael Jordan and me be solved?

We could change the rules of basketball, in order to try to equalize the outcomes.  Michael Jordan could be required to make all his two-point shots from beyond the three-point line, with five players opposing him and no one on his side.  A three-point shot could require him to stand under the basket on the opposite side of the court and shoot from there.

Meanwhile, I could make two-point shots from a spot half the distance from the foul line to the basket, and of course without any other players on the court to distract me.  Any shots I might make from back at the foul line would count as three-pointers.

Even under these conditions, you would be better off betting your money on Michael Jordan.  But, conceivably at least, we might change the rules some more to make the results come out less lopsided, in order to create “social justice.”

The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward.  If the government were to spend some of its stimulus money trying to raise my basketball ability level to that of Michael Jordan, it would be an even bigger waste of money than most of the other things that Washington does.  So the only way to try to equalize that has any chance at all would be to try to bring Michael Jordan down to my level, whether by drastic rule changes or by making him play with one hand tied behind his back, or whatever.

The problem with this approach, as with many other attempts at equalization, is that it undermines the very activity involved.  Basketball would be a much less interesting game if it was played under rules designed to produce equality of outcomes.  Attendance would fall off to the point where neither Michael Jordan nor anyone else could make a living playing the game.

The same principle applies elsewhere.  If you are going to try to equalize the chances of women getting jobs as firefighters, for example, then you are going to have to lower the physical requirements of height, weight and upper body strength.  That means that you are going to have more firefighters who are not capable of carrying an unconscious person out of a burning building.  If you are going to have these lower physical requirements be the same for both women and men, that means that you are not only going to have women who are not capable of carrying someone out of a burning building, you are also going to have men who are likewise incapable of carrying someone to safety.

Most activities do not exist for the sake of equality . They exist to serve their own purposes – and those purposes are undermined, sometimes fatally, when equality becomes the goal.

Nor would a politician encouraging me to feel resentful toward Michael Jordan do any good.  If I had such resentments, they would do me more harm than they would do Michael Jordan.  They would make me feel bad – and could make me miss seeing some great basketball.