Musings on Scipio Africanus and B. H. Liddell Hart

Scipio Africanus, the Roman consul and general who saved the Republic by defeating the supposedly unbeatable Carthaginian, Hannibal, and winning the Second Punic War, is an historical figure whose greatness has been unjustifiably ignored. In 1926, the military historian B. H. Liddell Hart set out to rectify this, and published Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon.

This book was recommended to me in the comments of a previous post and at just over half way done, I can already heartily second the recommendation. It's a thrilling, insightful story of a true hero and military genius, and Liddell Hart draws on a near contemporary of Scipio, the Greek historian Polybius, who was able to interview Scipio's close confidant and direct subordinate, Gaius Laelius, as well as gain access to the Scipio family archives. That events over 2,200 years ago could have such a detailed, objective account is simply amazing (in addition to the work of the Roman, Livy, who Hart references and appreciates but doesn't trust as much, out of concern that Livy was propagandizing the glory of Rome).

Now, on to a few unrelated musings on Liddell Hart's work.

Musing 1: You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. (Inconceivable!)
It wasn't until just last night, half way through the book, that I solved a puzzle that had bothered me until that point, having to do with Hart's use of the word moral. Hart, in describing Scipio, mentions repeatedly that not only was he a military genius, but in the modern terms, he could read people. In other words, he could very effectively rally his troops, and lead them, not with cruelty or overly authoritarian means, but by understanding their motivations and guiding them, and he called this a moral quality. He also describes Scipio as wanting to "strike not at their flesh, but at the moral Achilles heel" of the enemy, and that a delay after the capture of one city "allowed the moral effect" of the city's capture "to sink into the minds" of the enemy.

What the heck does he mean by "moral"? Finally, the particular construction of a sentence gave me the clue I needed. I unfortunately can't find it, but it was essentially like this: "Scipio was able to raise up the moral of the troops to fight even harder." So Hart often, but not always, means morale! Sometimes he means "taking moral actions," sometimes he means esprit de corps, and sometimes a strange mix of the two. This will help as I finish the book.

Musing 2: A Good Historian Is Not Immune From Mistakes Or Sour Grapes
Just because Liddell Hart has written an excellent history of Scipio Africanus does not mean that he, himself, is immune from some significant mistakes in other areas of history. The biggest one that jumped out at me occurred on page 72. Here, Hart describes what happened in Spain after Scipio initially expelled the Carthaginians. Scipio then fell ill and there were rumors of his death. Some of his troops took this as a cue to revolt, and two of the Romans' major Spanish allies, the tribes led by Mandonius and Andobales, also revolted. Here is what Hart wrote about this episode.

Mandonius and Andobales, dissatisfied because after the expulsion of the Carthaginians the Romans had not obligingly walked out and left them in possession, raised the standard of revolt, and began harassing the territory of the tribes faithful to the Roman alliance. As so often in history, the disappearance of the oppressor was the signal for dependencies to find the presence of their protector irksome. Mandonius and Andobales were but the forerunners of the American colonists and the modern Egyptians. There is no bond so irksome as that of gratitude. [bold added]

The context for this sentiment is that B. H. Liddell Hart was British. I can only assume that in comparing the revolt of barbaric tribes of Spanish warriors and the American Revolution, he seems to think that the colonists should have shut up and paid their taxes as "war debt" for the French and Indian War. In other words, the principled American fight for unabridged liberty was unjustified, and they should have been grateful to the crown, showed due deference, and kept quiet.

This, Mr. Liddell Hart, is clearly a case of sour grapes. It's also horribly, drastically wrong, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict. This seemingly offhand comment, added to a few others, makes me think that Hart's evaluation of Scipio, though generally good, may be skewed to be overly negative. I think I'll have to look up the original writings of Polybius and Livy.

Hart also wrote a book on William Tecumseh Sherman, and his view of America as expressed above makes me wonder how he would treat a polarizing hero like Sherman. Has anyone read it? John Lewis made a reference to it in his excellent TOS article, William Tecumseh Sherman and the Moral Impetus for Victory, so I'm curious how Hart viewed the man.

OK, that's it for my random musings on Scipio and his historian. If you've made it this far, hopefully you've learned something, or at least been prompted to look into some of these historical works. After finishing this book, I intend to dig back into "Miracle at Philadelphia," and hope to post more interesting quotations from it.

Don't Blow Out Your Knee In Canada

Source: Fraser Institute via Mark Perry at Carpe Diem.

The abstract of the report says:

When comparing Canada’s single-payer health insurance system with the pluralistic system in the United States, many people mistakenly assume that Canadians enjoy universal coverage while receiving the same quality and quantity of medical goods and services as Americans, but at lower costs. The reality is that, on average, Americans spend more of their incomes on health care, but get faster access to more and better medical resources in return for the money spent.

In truth, the Canadian health insurance system is not cheap at all: it is actually among the most expensive in the world. Recent statistics show that only three other comparable countries (United States, Iceland, and Switzerland) spend more of their national income on health care than Canada. More importantly, Canadians do not get good value for money from their health system. There are many hidden costs in Canadian health care that are ignored by advocates of single-payer systems. [bold added]

All of this information won't be a surprise to readers of this blog, but the chart Perry included immediately reminded me of my Canadian neighbor and his experience with the two health care systems. Quoting my earlier post, on our discussion about life in Canada versus life here:

“And do you know what’s the most expensive of all?” E. asked? “Free universal health care.”

I laughed and said, “Yup, it’s free, but you can’t get any care, right? Unless you drive across the border for your MRI.”

“Funny you should mention that,” he said. “I injured my knee two years ago and the pain kept bothering me. I saw my doctor [in Canada] and he gave me pain meds and a prescription to get an MRI, as he assumed it was a ligament injury. But he said it was a six month wait, and that in reality, they would just keep pushing my appointment back because I didn’t have a life-threatening problem. So I just didn’t get any treatment at all.

Then I moved here, and a few weeks ago I went to the chiropractor. While I was there I mentioned that my knee was also bothering me. The doctor said that he’d write me a prescription for an MRI, and when I went to the desk for the referral, the receptionist said that there was an MRI clinic about 5 minutes away and they might have an opening for me. I asked when, and she said, ‘Tonight or tomorrow.’ I couldn’t believe it. The next day I went to the clinic, got the MRI, and found out it was a slight tear to the ACL and damage to the meniscus. I have laparoscopic surgery scheduled next month.” [bold added]

Our Generation's Smoot-Hawley

I'm shocked to find a speech by a Republican with which I can find nothing to disagree. In fact, this speech given on the House floor last Friday by California Rep. Tom McClintock, after the passage of the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade bill, is insightful, well constructed, and makes a comparison to the history of the Great Depression I hadn't heard before.

McClintock first discusses California's climate change legislation of 2007 and how it drastically deepened the state's financial woes, and then compares cap-and-trade to the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff that sent the country into the Great Depression. It also doesn't hurt that he casually rips apart the claims of global warming alarmists used as a reason to support the bill. This is a very good speech, especially so in comparison to the dumbed-down discourse of our modern politicians.

Tom McClintock, June 26, 2009 8:31 PM - US House of Representatives:

I had a strange sense of Deja Vu as I watched the self-congratulatory rhetoric on the house floor tonight, and I feel compelled to offer this warning from the Left Coast.

Three years ago, I stood on the floor of the California Senate and watched a similar celebration over a similar bill, AB 32. And I have spend the last three years watching as that law has dangerously deepened California’s recession. It uses a different mechanism than Cap and Trade, but the objective is the same: to force a dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Up until that bill took effect, California’s unemployment numbers tracked very closely with the national unemployment rate. But then in January of 2007, California’s unemployment rate began a steady upward divergence from the national jobless figures. Today, California’s unemployment rate is more than two points above the national rate, and at its highest point since 1941.

What is it that happened in January of 2007? AB 32 took effect and began shutting down entire segments of California’s economy. Let me give you one example from my district. The City of Truckee, California was about to sign a long-term power contract to get its electricity from a new, EPA-approved coal-fired electricity plant in Utah. AB 32 and companion legislation caused them to abandon that contract. The replacement power they acquired literally doubled their electricity costs.

So when economists warn that we can expect electricity prices to double under the cap and trade bill, I can tell you from bitter experience that in my district, that’s not a future prediction, that is an historical fact.

Gov. Schwarzenegger assured us that AB 32 would mean an explosion of new, green jobs -- exactly the same promises we’re hearing from cap and trade supporters. In California, exactly the opposite has happened. We have lost so many jobs that the UCSB economic forecast is now using the D-word – Depression – to discuss California’s job market.

M. Speaker, the Cap and Trade bill proposes what amounts to endlessly increasing taxes on any enterprises that produce carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gas emissions. We need to understand what that means. It has profound implications for agriculture, construction, cargo and passenger transportation, energy production, baking and brewing – all of which produce enormous quantities this innocuous and ubiquitous compound. In fact, every human being produces 2.2 pounds of carbon dioxide every day – just by breathing.

So applying a tax to the economy designed to radically constrict carbon dioxide emissions means radically constricting the economy.

And this brings us to the fine point of it.

When you discuss the folly of the Hoover Administration – how it turned the recession of 1929 into the depression of the 1930’s, the first thing that economists point to is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that imposed new taxes on over 20,000 imported products.

Waxman-Markey is our generation’s Smoot-Hawley. In fact, it’s worse because it imposes new taxes on an infinitely larger number of domestic products on a scale that utterly dwarfs Smoot-Hawley.

Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that the planet’s climate is constantly changing and that long term global warming has been going on since the last ice age.

Let’s ignore the fact that within recorded history we know of periods when the earth’s climate has been much warmer than it is today and others when it has been much cooler.

Let’s ignore the thousands of climate scientists and meteorologists who have concluded that human-produced greenhouse gases are a negligible factor in global warming or climate change.

Ignore all of that and still we are left with one lousy sense of timing. In the most serious recession since the Great Depression – why would members of this house want to repeat the same mistakes that produced that Great Depression? Watching how California has just wrecked its economy and destroyed its finances, why would they want to do the same thing to our nation?

M. Speaker, this is deadly serious stuff. It transcends ideology and politics. This House has just made the biggest economic mistake since the days of Herbert Hoover.

If this measure becomes law, two things are certain. First, our planet will continue to warm and cool as it has been doing for billions of years. Second, Congress will have delivered a staggering blow to our nation’s economy at precisely that moment when that economy was the most vulnerable.

You can watch the speech here, and see transcripts of his other speeches here.

[HT: IBD]

Saxby v. Sunstein

"Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) has blocked President Obama’s candidate for regulation czar, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, because Sunstein has argued that animals should have the right to sue humans in court."

Chambliss is holding up Sunstein's nomination after hearing from agricultural lobbyists, and perhaps because he actually disagrees with Sunstein's ideas. This is all well and good, because the whole animal rights idea is as crazy and wrong as Chambliss asserts. But it completely misses the more fundamental reason why Sunstein is not fit for any post in which he has any political power.

His stance in support of animal rights and against gun rights -- the two most commonly cited issues from the conservative side -- are superficial in light of Sunstein's core positions. They are but an outward indicator of his fundamental view of individuals and their relation to the state. In his voluminous writings, we see a man who views individuals as wards of the state, as "tools" and "resources" to be nudged around in service to the good of society.

In essence, Sunstein sees no inalienable right to life, liberty, or property, and no way for jurisprudence to uphold them objectively because there are also no objective truths. Anyone who claims there are is an extremist, and he has advocated actively for such views to be restricted by law. That he has backtracked from that outward position is irrelevant. Instead of openly supporting such ideas, he has taken to surreptitious and indirect attacks on "group polarization" and "extreme views," always stopping short of voicing a "final solution" but leaving the logical conclusion unavoidably obvious.

While I applaud Chambliss for blocking the nomination -- at least for now, because he said he wants to talk to him before lifting his blockade, as "He has not had the opportunity to look me in the eye," whatever good that will do -- because he has not done so in any principled fashion and has picked one of the least substantial and wackier of Sunstein's positions (and thus likely easier to be casually brushed aside as "academic rambling") Chambliss' stand will very likely end in compromise (i.e. failure).

Such is the inevitable outcome of Republicans' inability to understand or stand for individual rights. Unless and until they do, they will continue to fail.

Central Planners

Alex Epstein has posted an excellent article at Voices for Reason, called Fix It Again, Barack, in which he blasts the Obama administration for the fiasco of the Chrysler/Fiat deal. The main thrust of his argument is summed up in the last paragraph:

...we should look to the far-reaching, destructive effects of government intervention... that undermines productive behavior and rewards unproductive behavior. The solution, for the auto industry and others, is simple: remove the toxic presence of government “planning” and leave the industry free to produce and profit. [bold added, links dropped]

But the reason for my post is something Epstein wrote in his very first sentence of the piece, and it's something that deserves to be examined more closely. He wrote:

One way in which the central planners of the Obama administration easily acquire and exercise the power to dictate how a 300-million-person economy should run is by portraying entire industries as stupid, short-sighted, and in need of “adult supervision.” [bold added]

I think he's used this terminology before, but it really jumped out at me this time because of how powerful and concise the phrase "central planners" is in reference to what Obama is doing.

This one simple phrase has a major significance in its obvious reference to the Soviet and Chinese communist dictatorships and their failed economic policies. With a delightful economy of words, and because of its subtlety and unambiguous implications (because of the near universal understanding of the historic failure of central planning), the use of the phrase clearly identifies the activities of the administration as tragically similar, without taking it too far and weakening the argument. If he called Barack and his administration communist or some other name, it would harm his credibility by seeming to go too far.

Referring to this administration as "The Central Planners" is something that I hope will catch on. I certainly plan on using it in conversation and writing, and I think you should too.

Congress Should Emulate Australia On Cap And Trade

Australia is in the midst of a vote on a massive cap and trade plan to reduce carbon emissions. Australia, the home of some of the more virulent global warming propaganda around, is one of the last places where I would expect to hear of a backlash against the alarmists in the name of science.

But according to a couple of articles I've read this week, that very backlash is happening. Rob Tracinski asked on Wednesday, Could Australia Blow Apart the Great Global Warming Scare? He and co-author Tom Minchin from Australia detailed the fight that is currently raging in Australia's Sentate as they debate a cap and trade bill. One man in particular, Senator Steve Fielding, is a swing vote, and he decided to come to America to learn more before he cast his vote. He attended the Heartland Institute's conference on climate change at which Yaron Brook spoke. And then Fielding met with an Obama administration official to get his view. Tracinski writes:

Fielding went to the US to assess the American evidence for global warming at close quarters. As Melbourne's Age reported on June 4:

Senator Fielding said he was impressed by some of the data presented at the [US Heartland Institute's] climate change skeptics' conference: namely that, although carbon emissions had increased in the last 10 years, global temperature had not.

He said scientists at the conference had advanced other explanations, such as the relationship between solar activity and solar energy hitting the Earth to explain climate change.

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian's disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science. [bold added]

Kimberly Strassel writes about the same issue in today's Wall St. Journal, and just as Tracinski did, brings up Australian scientist Ian Plimer and his new book, Heaven and Earth.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

This is all good news, and our own Congress and press would do well to follow in Australia's footsteps. Nancy Pelosi is set to try and ram the Waxman-Markey bill through the House today, and she'll probably succeed. Hopefully enough Senators will show the same intellectual curiosity that Australia's Fielding did, and defeat their version of the bill. Doubtful, I know.

UPDATE: Helpful commenter, Richard, pointed me to an EPA coverup that is just coming to light. Prior to the issuance of EPA's "Endangerment Finding" on carbon dioxide, an EPA expert wrote a detailed report stating why it shouldn't be issued. Alan Carlin's report was "disappeared" and he was taken off any teams dealing with climate change.

Read an interview with him here, some of the background and information from an anonymous EPA employee here, and the blog post linked in the comments here. The last contains actual emails written by EPA officials saying that including Carlin's comments would have "a very negative impact on this office."

Robert Reich: Intellectual Pygmy

Living up to his physical stature -- scrawny and 4' 10", making me immediately think of Ellsworth Toohey -- Robert Reich continues to prove what a dissembling, rotten, leftist, intellectual pygmy he is. [Note that I chose "pygmy" and not "midget" purposefully -- he is an intellectually tiny savage.]

In nearly 1,350 rambling words, Reich shills again for socialized medicine in the WSJ today, telling us "Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan." I dare you to read the whole thing. If you understandably don't want to, I'll sum it up for you:

1. He asks plaintively why "reform" has stalled in Congress
2. Cites dubious poll numbers claiming Americans just LOVE the idea of socialized medicine and would be happy to pay more taxes to subsidize care for others
   
3. Lies about the destructive impact of a "public option" on what remains of the health care market
4. Misrepresents or dismisses without evidence the claims of critics of Obamacare
   
5. Yada, yada, yada
6. And ends saying, "Enough talk. [Obama] should come out swinging for the public option."

Reich supposedly has some cache in economics circles, but (and probably because) he's a hardcore Keynesian. All of his arguments call for more government intervention, more restrictions on the free market, and a complete dismissal of individual rights. He never comes right out and claims that people have a "right to health care" but he doesn't have to. It practically oozes from every slimy sentence.

If you feel a little nauseous after reading Reich's progressive pablum, I prescribe a proper defense of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine.

Vermont Meddlers vs. Guite: Update

Since I first wrote last year about the plight of Michel Guite -- a man in Vermont who wants to move a small cemetery on his property, with the blessing of the only known distant relative -- I have noticed a fairly consistent amount of search traffic coming to the blog as people obviously are still curious about the story. When I wrote about it just under a year ago, Guite had been taken to court and he won -- despite the petty and snarling statements of the judge. Now it turns out that there is a new development, and his plans are being blocked by the Vermont District 3 Environmental Commission, who is stupidly applying an environmental statute to deny his permit just because they feel like it, which is how the EPA and all other jack-booted environmental thugs operate.

I learned of this because last night, someone coyly named "Anonymous" made two new comments on my July 2008 post. He (assuming it's a 'he') said he is waiting for my reply "with baited breath," so I thought I'd compose a new post to address his comments. Anon said:

The other side of the coin.

I am writing on behalf of all of those who have been active in protesting Mr. Guite's plans to disinter the Aldrich-Kendall Cemetery in Hartland, Vermont.

I am not against landowner rights at all....

Interesting start. He's been protesting what Guite does with his own private property, and yet claims to not be against "landowner rights" at all. Let's deal in fundamentals here, and call them property rights, shall we?

The rest of what he writes is but a long, drawn out invective against the very property rights he claims to have nothing against, as well as sniping personal attacks against Guite himself. He makes snide remarks about well-paid lawyers finding loopholes, obviously meaning that being wealthy enough to pay lawyers is bad, and that any attempt to avoid onerous and burdensome government legislation is to be frowned upon. Anon appeals to authority, saying that many newspapers -- champions of individual rights that they are -- are reporting Guite's obviously terrible exploits "truthfully... to a fault," whatever that means. Anon even tries to show that Guite isn't a real American because he was born in Canada, and states that "as an American, I am feeling very used."

Finally, in his second comment, Anon aims his criticism at Guite's attempt to circumvent Act 250, and then calls on the private property rights he spent a few hundred words contradicting to say, in reference to his actions to get the cemetery moved, "Also, he has removed private property from those families that he has no permission to have removed."

So, are property rights inviolable or not? And didn't Guite get the blessing from the ancestor of the family in question? Well, yes, he did, but Anon then claims that Guite bought her off.

Finally, Anon, after having edified us all, asks whether I "don't find a little of this just a bit unpalatable." Well, yes sir, I do.

I find your entire meddling stance, your view that your opinions matter when a man wants to dispose of his property as he sees fit, and your incessant and unsubstantiated claims of legal knowledge unpalatable. You have shown yourself to be a small-minded pest, reveling in the use of government force against someone you don't like, whether it's because he's richer than you, or because he's Canadian, or because you don't like his smile.

As I said at the beginning, we're dealing in fundamentals here, and zoning laws, Act 250, the wishes of the community, and your own myopic and irrelevant opinions all fall flat in the face of the inviolable individual rights of life, liberty and property. Your needs and wants do not constitute a claim on the life or property of Michel Guite or anyone else. It matters not if he is the most moral man in the world, or a degenerate philanderer.

This undoubtedly will fall on deaf ears with you, Anon, and you'll cling to the supposed illegality of violating this or that Vermont law. But because a law was passed and is being enforced does not, by necessity, make it right. Remember... fundamentals. The Founding Fathers -- men from the same era as the purported war vet buried in the cemetery -- would have understood this implicitly, immediately.

The opponents, most more articulate than our fair commenter, follow in the mold of the judge who ruled on the initial court case, who said, "Perhaps, it is time for the Vermont Legislature to consider protecting the sanctity of old cemeteries because of the strong community sentiment expressed so eloquently by so many Vermonters who continue to have that strong sense of community, faith, and tradition."

The man (mentioned above) buried in the cemetery is Noah Aldrich, who whether or not he served in the war, was alive in the early years of our nation, and this is what I had to say about him and the Vermeddlers' appeal to community and tradition:

Yes, they have a strong sense of tradition. Unfortunately, it's the wrong one. They instead should refer to ideas from the time of Noah Aldrich and the War of 1812 that they have apparently abandoned; they would then be able to see that property rights trump all their whining about "lust" and "greed" and "heartfelt opposition." In fact, I'd bet that if Aldrich were able to speak up on the matter (and if he were a good old obstinate and no nonsense Yankee) he'd say "Leave the man alone! It's his land; let him do with it as he sees fit."

Instead, we're left with meddling gnats who believe that their wants, emotions and "strong community sentiment" are a necessary claim on the property of others.

See, Anon? None of your muddled information and confused argumentation has changed my tune. If the man owns the land, the man owns the land. That's all there is to it. Now mind your damn business.

A Blind, Indifferent Juggernaut

As Independence Day approaches, and talk of the Boston Tea Party event and OCON heats up, I've been particularly enjoying the fact that I'm reading Ed Cline's Sparrowhawk again. If you ever need motivation and inspiration to step back and truly appreciate the meaning of July 4th, Sparrowhawk is the place you should go. I just started Book Six: War, and the foreword to this volume struck me as particularly timely.

The engine of tyranny is a blind, indifferent juggernaut, insensible to reason, justice and equity, and so necessarily inimical to them. It matters not the good intentions of the hand that launches it into the affairs of men. Once started, it moves almost of its own volition, corrupting, consuming and destroying everything in its path. It is a fundamentally nihilistic phenomenon. Its power is both centripetal and centrifugal, on one hand drawing its potency from that which it can corrupt; on the other, crushing or flinging aside the incorruptible.

The juggernaut of Parliamentary supremacy collided with the American colonies' incorruptible sense of liberty, which could be neither crushed nor flung aside. The result was a spectacular explosion: the American Revolution. That explosion was neither necessary nor foreordained. The colonies could have submitted to that supremacy, and existed for a time in a haze of semi-legality, occasional concession, and dependent prosperity. But British-Americans valued their liberty and were willing to claim it whole, come what may. Therefore, the clash between them and the legislative authority of Parliament could be postponed but never resolved. The colonials would not allow their claim to unabridged liberty to be corrupted. In the course of that political transfiguration, they became Americans.

We are seeing the war engine of tyranny chewing up what is left of our liberties on a daily basis now. Doug Reich just called it a "clumsy but swift campaign" straight out of Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Whereas the juggernaut of tyranny ran up against "the American colonies' incorruptible sense of liberty" two hundred and thirty years ago, it is now finding a relatively compliant and subservient American populace. The Tea Parties offer a spark of the fire that once raged in the colonies, but the question remains whether it is too little, too late, or too isolated in a swampland of irrationality to ignite an "incorruptible sense of liberty" in the minds of Americans today. Are there enough true Americans left, namely, those who understand and value unabridged liberty? (This is, and always will be, the fundamental definition of "American.")

Billy Beck has this to say about what is left of the American sense of life:

The spirit of this place that was not born of the slave's obesience [sic] will require this government to bare its fangs. I still believe that. The ways in which and the singular souls from which Americans select their values are not yet so beaten to any alien molds so well that they will peaceably stand for the conformations that this government will eventually require and demand -- not "ask".

The colonials refused to submit, and the Parliamentary juggernaut bared its fangs. Anyone who thinks our government wouldn't do the same is evading reality and the lessons of history. Such is the nature of any government that rules, because if you have rulers, you have people being ruled, and that means by force.

Beck goes on to say that things will likely have to get much worse before the breaking point is reached. I agree. But the "conformations that this government will eventually require and demand" don't seem that far off anymore. The campaign being waged against liberty is both very clumsy and shockingly swift -- the frightening prospect of a juggernaut traveling at 100 mph.

When thinking about the world I'll be leaving for my children, I used to think that they would be long gone and their great-great-grandchildren would be living their lives before this country might be unrecognizable as a bastion of liberty (at least more so than it is now), and that there was still plenty of time to reverse that course. Events of the past year have me reevaluating that assessment.

I haven't given up on the possibility of a rebirth of reason and a just government in my or my children's lifetimes, and will continue to strive for it and support others who do the same. Working to realize my values has benefits even when the odds seem poor. Perhaps one of the few bright spots in recognizing the nature of tyranny, and how it is at work today, is that history shows it can be stopped.


---------
Update: (06/23/09) Revised closing paragraph.

Rule of Law Takes a Back Seat

This video from WSJ.com is a month old now, but the discussion still applies to everything the Obama administration is doing now. The commentators discuss how the administration is strong-arming California to sweep away bipartisan legislation for state budget cuts in favor of a union. To this, Dan Henninger said "they are trampling the idea of federalism." Then they discuss how the administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress are ignoring Article 1 of the Constitution and bankruptcy law precedent by placing the UAW's claims above those of Chrysler's preferred creditors. Henninger said, paraphrasing, that the Obama administration considers the rule of law just one issue on the table equal to social justice and the public good, that it often has to take a back seat to those considerations, and that they consider this a "legitimate theory of operating the government." Shaking his head, he said that if the courts uphold these actions, "then we're living under a new system." Indeed.

My one gripe is that, though one of them did mention property rights, they didn't take the next necessary step and discuss how the administration's actions constitute a fundamental violation of individual rights and that the "new system" we'll soon be living under is full-blown fascism. As Ayn Rand said, "Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal."

The Aristocracy of Unproductive Zombies

In an in-depth piece on WSJ.com today, writers Bob Davis and Jon Hilsenrath report that Federal Intervention Pits 'Gets' vs. 'Get-Nots' (subscription required). Speaking to a factory worker who stopped into a sporting goods store for a gun case, they informed him that, because of the government bailout money given to Cabela's for its store-issued credit card operations,

The U.S. government helped finance the transaction. Earlier this year, it recharged the credit-card operations of the Nebraska-based retailer of hunting and camping gear with nearly $400 million of federal financing.

Mr. Davis was surprised to hear about the government's helping hand, and hardly pleased. "Anything the federal government, or any government, sticks its nose in fails or makes things worse," he said as he made his way across the parking lot with his son.

This is a common sentiment in large swaths of America. It's difficult to discern if the authors agree, but luckily they make few evaluative comments and instead focus on the disturbing facts:

True or not, what's undeniable is that the federal government has burrowed its way deep into the quotidian workings of American capitalism.

Since the onset of the financial crisis nine months ago, the government has

• become the nation's biggest mortgage lender,
• guaranteed nearly $3 trillion in money-market mutual-fund assets,
• commandeered and restructured two car companies,
• taken equity stakes in nearly 600 banks,
• lent more than $300 billion to blue-chip companies,
• supported the life-insurance industry and
• become a credit source for buyers of cars, tractors and even weapons for hunting.

[converted to a list for emphasis]

When laid out like that, it's truly flabbergasting. What is the effect of this unprecedented interference in the economy on the nature of American business? If you have read Atlas Shrugged, you'll likely be able to answer quickly: the Aristocracy of Pull.

The massive intervention has shifted the way companies do business in a host of ways -- not all of them intended by the government. Increasingly, companies big and small are competing on the basis of their ability to tap government money. A divide is opening between gets and get-nots. ...

Government spending as a share of the economy has climbed to levels not seen since World War II. The geyser of money has turned Washington into an essential destination for more and more businesses. Spending on lobbying is up, as are luxury hotel bookings in the capital. [bold added]

Government intervention has wide-ranging impacts on markets, and on firms that seek and obtain bailouts, those that fail at that task, and with firms who actively avoid government cash. Some even use their defiance and independence as a marketing tool.

Victor Stabio, chief executive of Hallador Petroleum Co., a Colorado coal and oil producer, recently got mail from UMB Financial, a bank in Kansas City, Mo., that advertised it hadn't taken a penny from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Mr. Stabio says he was impressed. He moved $8 million of Hallador's money to UMB. "I didn't like the whole TARP program to start with," he says. [bold added]

But when even admirable companies like BB&T feel compelled to take bailout money because money given to competitors puts them at a disadvantage, what happens to the less admirable, less well run companies who seek bailouts?

Some economists and business leaders worry the intervention will result in rules that hamstring the way some businesses operate, and that it will sustain unproductive zombie firms and burden the next generation with debt or inflation. [bold added]

Were the authors thinking of GM when they wrote about "unproductive zombie firms?" That was certainly the first thing to come to my mind. GM and Chrysler were the beneficiaries of lots of government help, while Ford was not because Ford was in a stronger position. It's not hard to predict that the market-distorting impacts of this government takeover of one of the major players in the auto market will have long-term negative effects on their slightly healthier, and non-bailed out competitors. This whole mess could easily destroy the entire market for American-made cars, leaving only a government-run monopoly, inefficiently producing substandard cars that no one wants.

Competitive advantage is no longer obtained by making the best product at the lowest cost, or in having the best marketing or distribution strategy. Advantage is gained by having the most pull, by being the one to be declared "too big to fail." Witness the perversion of the nature of competition in the following example:

The prospect of dipping into buckets of federal money has ignited competitive scrambles in lots of industries. In the farm-equipment sector, Deere & Co.'s purchase of a thrift years ago qualified it in December for a government guarantee on $2 billion of its debt, through a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. program to help banks access debt markets.

But the FDIC didn't cover competitors such as Caterpillar Inc. or smaller equipment providers. So the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, a trade group, lobbied the Fed to expand the TALF program to sales of farm equipment and other machinery. The association's president, Kenneth Bentsen, a former Democratic congressman from Texas, met with the Fed's general counsel and followed up with phone calls and letters. The Fed eventually expanded TALF to cover Deere, Caterpillar and other equipment makers. [bold added]

Welcome to the new face of the American competitive spirit, one fawning and obsequious, pleading for privilege. Mr. Rockefeller, meet your replacement: Wesley Mouch, Washington Man.

The other edge of this double-edged sword is increased regulation. Because of the popular, and seemingly impossible to kill, incorrect notion that it was a lack of government regulation that led to the economic crisis -- when in fact it was the exact opposite -- the Obama administration will be calling for new regulation that they swear will not "hamstring the way ... businesses operate."

One of the most important pieces of the federal intervention is the rewriting of financial regulations, which the administration expects to propose this week. Under the plan, firms deemed "systemically important" would be regulated more heavily than other firms, to limit the chance they fail and threaten the broader economy.

Government backing could help banks, hedge funds, private-equity firms and others considered too-big-to-fail firms to gain an advantage by being able to borrow at rates below their smaller competitors. But there's a catch. The government could demand these big firms hold more capital or limit their dependence on debt, discouraging them from gambling with taxpayer backing. That would limit both their risk-taking and their potential profits. [bold added]

"Systematically important"? Is this a newspeakian euphemism for "too big to fail," but with an implied stick (regulation) instead of a carrot (bailouts)? As we have seen from this administration, it is all too eager to use its new found power impose its will on private business. Just ask the ex-CEO of GM, or see the new "executive pay czar."

As the acceleration of the aristocracy of pull (which has sadly been around for some time) fast becomes the aristocracy of unproductive zombies, while the government continues to prop up the GMs of the world, one wonders how bad it will have to get before people wake up to the fact that government interference in markets is the problem. What will it take for Americans to understand that we need a Separation of Economy and State as badly as we do one of church and state?

Too Big to Fail... 244 Years Ago

While enjoying the cool evening on my patio yesterday, re-reading the Sparrowhawk series, I came upon a passage in Book Four: Empire that really jumped out at me.

As Hugh Kenrick -- one of the series' two main heroes -- and Patrick Henry prepared to attack the Stamp Act in the Virginia House of Burgesses in May of 1765, they first debated a proposed bill for a "loan office." This was a scheme for the wealthiest and most in debt plantation owners to erase some of their debts to the Crown and British creditors. One of the supporters of the shady bill, Edmund Pendleton, stood up and defended it to the House:

"…The depressing circumstances of this colony -- the present low price of tobacco, the recent ban on our ability to issue money, the nullification of so many patents on land west of the Blue Ridge -- all these factors, and others, have obliged so many persons here of substantial property to enter into great debts, which, if their payments were severely demanded, would ruin those men and their families and all who depend on them, and their ruin would certainly harbinge the ruin of men of lesser and other circumstances throughout this colony. A loan office, supervised by men of the strictest virtue, would enable those more substantial persons to pay their necessary debts with greater ease, and help to put this colony on a firmer and unassailable footing." [bold added]

Sound familiar? Here are the arguments for TARP, AIG, GM, you name it, just 244 years ago. The plantation owners were "too big to fail" and so they wanted government to bail them out.

I was prepared to write a long post about this, and then I found that Ed Cline, author of Sparrowhawk and blogger at The Rule of Reason, wrote it better than I could in December of last year. Go check it out!

The President's Delusional History Lesson

President Obama's speech in Cairo contained a little history lesson... one that may surprise those who actually know their history. He said:

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam... that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. ...

Islam? Islam carried the light of learning through centuries? The same "religion of peace" that violently persecuted those thinkers in the years prior to 1000AD who tried to adopt and teach Aristotelian philosophy? It was Islam, not a few Arabs drawing upon Greek philosophy, that is responsible for birthing the Enlightenment?

I strongly recommend that you head over to The Charlotte Capitalist blog and read an excellent and detailed historical account, drawn from multiple sources, that rips apart the President's despicable distortion of history. I'm sure his words played well with his target audience, stroking their fragile egos as they try to evade the fact that the only intellectual progress their culture made in all of history was due to ancient Greek philosophy. But he performs a grave disservice, and as The Charlotte Capitalist said, "It is a disgrace because it attacks not only the true tool of human progress (reason), but it attacks the philosophical and historical roots of the country of which he is president."

So You Think Socialized Medicine Works?

Paul Hsieh has posted a graph that depicts the stark realities of the differences between the generally free-ish health care market of the U.S. and the countries with flat-out socialized medicine.

As bad as it is here with Medicare and a looming attempt to kill off private insurance, this graph shows that if you have diabetes or breast cancer, the U.S. is still the place to live. (for now... insert ominous minor chord here)
The MRI stats also corroborate what my Canadian neighbor had to say on the topic.