27 December 2011 –

Bumper Sticker Of The Day – If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

I like the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

How one reads this amendment is as powerful a descriptor of one’s culture and politics as any twenty-seven words in the American lexicon. One’s reading of this amendment says more about one’s view of the role of all levels of government in our lives than even the rights ensconced in the First Amendment. If I want to know about someone’s view of him or herself in the scheme of governance, authority, and personal responsibilities, I ask how that person reads the Second Amendment.

Perhaps, I grew up watching too many cowboy westerns. I know that my career in the management of violence and every history book I have ever read have reinforced my contention that when the bad guys ride into town to rob the bank or free their henchman from jail, they face only two kinds of townspeople: those who wring their hands, hide, and leave their peace and security in the hands of the outgunned sheriff; and, me. Can you guess how I read the Second Amendment?

As a challenge to the educated liberals who torture the phrases of any legal statement to admit to uncommitted sins, I include the following rendition of what the Second Amendment means. It is written by Robert A. Levy and William Mellor, authors of the book, The Dirty Dozen, How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, published in paperback by the Cato Institute in 2009, pages 113-114.

“Correctly interpreted, the main clause of the Second Amendment (“the right

of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”) defines and

secures the right. The subordinate clause (“A well regulated Militia, being

necessary to the security of a free State”) helps explain why we have the right.

Thus, membership in a well-regulated militia is a sufficient but not necessary

condition to the exercise of our right to keep and bear arms. Imagine if the

Second Amendment said, “A well-educated Electorate, being necessary to

self-governance in a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books,

shall not be infringed.” Surely, no one would suggest that only registered voters

(that is, members of the electorate) would have the right to read. Yet that is

precisely the effect if the Second Amendment is interpreted to apply to members

of a militia….

“Second Amendment protections were not intended for the state but for each

individual against the state—a deterrent to government tyranny. “

Thank you Messrs. Levy and Mellor. You contend rightly that individuals in the United States have the right to bear arms—to own weapons for the protection of free individuals in a free state. But, now I ask, what is free? I refer to Lee Congdon’s book, “Baseball and Memory, Winning, Losing, and the Remembrance of Things Past.” St. Augustine’s Press, 2011, pages 116-117. In this book, Mr. Congdon makes a brilliant point about how the loss of an historical, collective memory has been horrible for our country, and that a collective memory of baseball, particularly the baseball of the 1950s, bound us together as few other things ever could. I agree completely with Mr. Congdon—even though he was cursed by being a Cubs fan and I was blessed by being a Red Sox fan. I have often made the point that life imitates baseball and not the other way around. But, I am moving off today’s point. Mister Congdon eloquently reinforces his thesis in a way that applies strongly to how I think the Founders defined freedom and how we should define it today.

“Those of us who came of age in the 1950s did not invariably turn our thoughts

to the permanent things, but our lives did not revolve around the world of politics

and social protest. We did not look to the federal government to cure our every

ill or to protect us from our own folly. We wanted to be free—this is, morally

responsible—beings….

“Remembering the fifties is not an exercise in nostalgia; it is effort to take stock

of what America once was and what it has now become. It is an opportunity to

stop a moment to reflect upon what has been gained and what has been lost. One

of our greatest losses is of historical memory itself. Without that memory a nation

can never achieve self-knowledge.”

I am convinced the Founders wanted us to be free, morally responsible beings, able and willing to defend ourselves when the outlaw gang come to shoot up the town. Have we deliberately forgotten that? Yes. I think we abandon critical historical continuity because it is hard to be free. It is easier to be ruled than to be morally responsible.

I end with Samuel Adams’s words. I don’t expect to convince any townspeople to come out of hiding , but I do expect to stir real men and women’s blood.

“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, ‘What

should be the reward of such sacrifices?” Bid us and our posterity bow the

knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the

avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our

blood and hunt us from the face of the earth?

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the

animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels

or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains

sit lightly upon you, and my posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”

23 December 2011 –

Bumper Sticker of the Day – Regime change and nation building start at home.

The latest in a long line of politically-motivated, government tiffs ended today as the President and Senate succeeded in convincing the House to agree to a bill extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits for two months. The President then exhorted Congress to keep working to extend the cuts through 2012, quickly hopped on Air Force One, and hightailed it to Hawaii for his fourth vacation there since 2008. Congress skeedaddled as well. The giant whoosh everybody heard in Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland were the limos delivering their passengers to National and Dulles airports in time to get home for Christmas. Some people would say that everything is all right with the world now.

But it ain’t all right with the world. In fact, this latest windy Washington harrumphing does NOT deflect the hurricane that will rip through that town if our Congressional leaders do not immediately restructure our national debt and its causes. Today, our national debt is greater than our nation’s gross domestic product. Our government owes more than our society makes every year, with the GDP growth lagging well behind debt growth. I wouldn’t lend money to anybody with that kind of personal debt and undisciplined, irresponsible behavior. What is painfully criminal about our lawmakers and president’s latest fiddling while our fiscal house burns is that cutting payroll taxes actually deepens the abyss the Social Security Trust Fund—trust?—finds itself in. Extending unemployment benefits simply throws more tax purchased bread to the masses, who then use it to supply their own circuses of holiday football games on widescreen TVs and violent video games on their hand held players. And, the bill’s changes to Medicare do nothing to close the other gaping money maw that threatens the fiscal foundation of our country? In fact, the 27.4 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors is not reform, it is making it harder for people to find doctors who will take Medicare patients. Thanks, guys, for the help. It hurts when you don't do your job. It hurts even more when you do.

I guess we shouldn’t expect much from a Senate who hasn’t passed a budget in three years. Three years! Grown adults who act like selfish teenagers have spent the equivalent of their entire high school careers using dad’s credit card to purchase everything, with no guidelines or budgets to restrain wild urges. Of course, the democrat Senate doesn’t like the republican House’s latest budget bills. But, what about when Democrats controlled both houses in 2009/10? Did the Senate fulfill then its constitutionally required duties to pass a budget? Nope! I guess it is easier to spend like a spoiled teenager with high verbal skills than it is to act like a disciplined body of conscientious lawmakers.

We are heading for disaster. This is not hyperbole. We are destroying our nation’s finances. We are heading for disaster. Where are our leaders? The self-styled, pampered emperor is heading for a vacation in Hawaii, and the others are wherever limp, toothless, wimp solons go when they no longer are needed at court. I hope the place is as dark, cold, and lifeless as the Senate is when they are there.

18 December 2011 –

Kim Jong-Il died this morning. Or yesterday. Or last week. The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, North Korea, is such a closed country, that he could have been a hologram for the last six months and nobody, even most North Koreans, would have been the wiser. The dear leader succeeded the great leader, his father Kim Il-Sung, and will be succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-Un. I wonder what heraldic moniker the young despot will assume—provided he lives long enough to decide on one. The world looks on as the great game of Northeast Asia requires a strategic adjustment by all the players.

I have been to the Republic of Korea, South Korea, so many times, I have lost count. Exercises TEAM SPIRIT and ULCHI FOCUS LENS multiple times. At least five Pre-H-Hour Scenario planning conferences. Assorted conferences, other exercises, and a three hundred sixty-six day, seven hour and fourteen minute unaccompanied tour; it was a leap year, and I had to serve an extra day. I also remember standing on the beach of a South Korean controlled island about twelve miles off the coast of North Korea. I was looking through binoculars at North Korean artillery positions well within range of hitting me. The airplane that was going to pick me up had to land on the beach at low tide and then take off within five minutes or risk being a target for the artillery. It was real.

I have watched South Korea transform from poverty and military dictatorship to widespread WI-FI and a functioning democracy. Thank you, US Forces Korea, particularly the U.S. 2^nd Infantry Division—Second to None—the USAF 51^st Wing and the 8^th Fighter Wing—Wolf Pack—and the US Seventh Fleet. You have kept the North out of the South and the South out of the North for nearly six decades. In many minds, the 1950-53 war was an unnecessary war. But, what exists now south of the 38^th parallel on that peninsula was worth your sacrifice over the years. The Republic of Korea is well within US compelling strategic interests to defend.

I also have watched North Korea scream ridiculously dangerous dogma, belch missiles and nukes, and starve. I have watched a people live a modern version of the deconstruction of normal society that followed such events as the Great Plague. The same powers who have vital interests in maintaining the status quo on the peninsula are the same powers who will largely determine how long North Korea will last as an entity and if there will be violence on the peninsula in the near future.

Strategically, North Korea is a buffer between Democratic South Korea and Chinese Manchuria. Its importance as a buffer has not diminished since MacArthur’s forces pushed all the way to the border of China on the Yalu River in the fall and winter of 1950. Mao Ze Dong then decided that it was strategically important enough to divert his focus from invading Taiwan/Formosa to keeping Americans and others off his borders. In one of the greatest intelligence failures in history, UN and US force commanders did not predict or then see the Chinese divisions pour across the Yalu, changing the war into a vicious stalemate that lasted another three years. Nothing has changed strategically for China since then. China wants it border with North Korea to be closed to refugees and far from any foreign forces. North Korea is a buffer zone that still is a strategic imperative to Communist China.

In 1992, I played in an executive table-top exercise where a war erupted on the Korean peninsula. Allied forces were pushed back some, then we counterattacked with a massive offensive air campaign and an offensive of allied ground forces through the main invasion corridors into North Korea. Everything followed the predicted computer plans. What made the exercise fun was my decision, as my team lead, to stop offensive air operations 30 miles north of the capital of Pyongyang and to consolidate all ground forces on an east-west line crossing the peninsula at the same point. This was accompanied by a message to the Chinese that we would not go any further north. We proposed to treat the rest of North Korea as a demilitarized buffer zone, which would be administered by Allied governments and the Chinese government. My intent was to allow the Chinese to maintain the strategically important buffer zone in a way that did not force them to enter the war. The iron, gold, and other mineral deposits in the rugged mountains between the Pyongyang-Wonsan Line and the northern border could still be exploited, but didn’t have to be fought over. Russia also would have its buffer zone in the far northeast as well as close access to mineral deposit exploitation. In exchange for the use of Japanese bases for the throughput of logistics and as bases for our aircraft, Japan would not have to compete economically or diplomatically with a burgeoning Korea that would have otherwise controlled all the peninsula. All the strategically important reasons to keep Korea divided would be met, and the threat of North Korea would be eliminated. I liked the solution. I still like a similar solution today.

China, Japan, Russia, and the Republic of Korea’s strategic interests still have to be met in this episode of leadership change in North Korea. Every country mentioned still has its own reasons for keeping North Korea alive—just barely alive (If North Korea were the neighborhood horse, its neighbors would be arrested for animal abuse). But, donated food, fuel, and medicine and diplomatic niceties to prop up the regime are cheap compared to the costs of five powerful countries each pursuing its own interests if North Korea were to implode in the near future. Later on, I wouldn’t care if the latest Kim died a horrible death at the hands of his people or his generals as long as we didn’t return to the mistakes of the last Korean War and have to fight it out again. Does such a cold carving up of the corpse of North Korea reflect the will of the Korean People? Not yet, I suppose. Satisfying them will have to be a future adjustment in this Great Game.