30 March 2013 –

This weekend many Christians celebrate Easter.  In the Western churches, we celebrate it according to the Gregorian calendar’s reckoning of the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.  This formula was established by the First Council of Nicea in 325.  This year, Easter falls on 31 March in the West.  The Gregorian calendar was named after Pope Gregory XIII who, in 1582, launched the reform of the centuries-old Julian calendar to accommodate for and adjust to the fact that a day is simply not twenty-four hours long, and that a year is not exactly 365 days long and, therefore, there should should not be a leap year every couple of hundred years.   Most Orthodox Christians continue to celebrate Easter based on the old Julian calendar, which was abandoned over the centuries by all countries for all reasons than religious ones.  The last country to switch to the Gregorian calendar for secular life was Greece in 1926.  During the 21^st century, the Julian calendar’s Spring Equinox is thirteen days after that of the Gregorian calendar.  Therefore, this year, with a long gap between the Julian Spring Equinox and then next full moon, Christians in the East will celebrate The Resurrection of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on 5 May. 

 If that is more than you want to know about Easter and its date on the calendar, then you don’t need to continue.  Such differences, however, compel me to reflect on how we humans differ in our understanding and treatment of truth.  These differences hie back to fundamental disagreements among peoples and faiths about the nature of God and the purpose of life.  They also represent faithful peoples’ desire to pull the core of their beliefs through the ages to the present.  But, time nearly always strips out the elemental passion from established religions often to leave a hollow surface of distrust and disdain.  Those_____ (fill in the blank with religious devotees you don’t like) are in the dark because they_____ (fill in the blank with your explanation du jour and go on to something more fun to talk about).  It is an evil, shallow game we Christians have always played.  Yet, despite our constant corruption, the single most important topic of this life remains our attempt to understand and accept the mission of Jesus Christ and of how paid for our sins, laid down His life, rose again from the dead, and lives today as our Advocate with the Father.

Easter is the holiday on the Christian calendar that glorifies the very essence of faith in Jesus Christ.  We as Christians and disciples of Jesus should prepare for it with much more solemnity than we do.  All should stop everything in their lives.  All should bow.  All should confess.  All should beg for forgiveness.  The simple poetry of Charles H. Gabriel’s song captures best the awesome significance of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. 

 “I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me, confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me.

I tremble to know that for me He was crucified, that for me, a sinner, He suffered, He bled and died.

Oh, it is wonderful that He should care for me, enough to die for me!

Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

I marvel to think that He would descend from His throne divine, to rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine. 

That He should extend His great love unto such as I, sufficient to own, to redeem, and to justify.

Oh, it is wonderful that He should care for me, enough to die for me!

Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

I think of His hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt!  Such mercy, such love and devotion can I forget?

No, no, I will praise and adore at the mercy seat, until at the glorified throne I kneel at His feet.

Oh, it is wonderful that He should care for me, enough to die for me!

Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

This song voices the concepts of truth, of which we can understand only the rudiments: love, grace, redemption, justification, mercy.  They echo a message from before this Earth.  They whisper a purpose for mortality through a shadowy veil that protects us from the glare of eternal justice.  It is good that we don’t understand much.  It is good that we must act in faith that His grace is sufficient to forgive us if we but repent of our sins and obey Him.  It is good that we must act in faith that His resurrection allows all of us to be resurrected.  It is good that we can’t comprehend our lives very well.  If we did understand, alas, we would be damned.  Because man’s history of treating with disdain and contempt the limited truths we do understand about this world tells me that we would treat these most sacred truths in the same, murderous way.  But, until that great getting’ up mornin’, we shall be lovingly protected in our ignorance, no matter the earthly calendar we use to celebrate Easter.  

28 March 2013 -

I read yesterday that an instructor at Florida Atlantic University recently held a despicable exercise in his class, ostensibly to teach the complexities of the 1^st Amendment’s guarantee of our freedom of speech.  The students were instructed to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper, put it on the floor, and then stomp on it (It bothers me to even describe it).  A Latter-day Saint student refused to do so, citing religious reasons, and the school is in an uproar about it.  So are many of the media’s nattering pundits on both sides of the travesty’s surface issues.  The facile, albeit accurate, conservative tack is to say that this is just another example of academia’s disdain for and hostility toward Christianity.  A predictable liberal response was voiced by Fox contributor Juan Williams when he said that the exercise was “to promote critical thinking and draw attention to the sensitivity surrounding symbols in religion and politics. The best colleges encourage their students to question authority and challenge institutions – be it government, in business or in matters of religious faith. That is the best way to teach young people to avoid politically correct thinking.” 

I would approach the deeper, constitutional issue in the following manner.  Let me get this straight, Mr. Williams.  You imply that this University in Florida is one of the best colleges and that one of its class exercises is to encourage students, including Christian students, to deliberately commit public sacrilege in order to “question authority and challenge institutions...”’ as a “best way to teach young people to avoid politically correct thinking.”  Best way?  What does a twenty-year-old student learn from such a vile act?  Well, he certainly does not learn respect for others’ cherished beliefs, a necessary element for the peaceful exercise of the 1^st Amendment in a diverse society.  She certainly does not learn how to question analytically and then to express a reasoned, constrained argument against “politically correct thinking,” which is a necessary skill in order to use the 1^st Amendment to find common ground among beliefs and practices and to help a diverse society be stable and peaceful.  Just as important, the student will not get close to understanding the sustaining relationship between the exercise of freedom of speech in a civil society and the exercise of old-fashioned, but now vanishing societal virtues such as propriety, respect, constraint, politeness, or reverence, just to name a few.  In other words, the twenty-year-olds in this class are being bludgeoned into displaying the opposite of what are the 1^st Amendment’s true strengths and importance in a free society.  And, the instructor is doing this just to impress on young minds how sensitive some people can be about cherished beliefs?  And to think that parents pay for their kids to assault freedoms and their concomitant responsibilities in this manner.  

25 March 2013 –

 I read an interesting article this weekend on a Latter-day Saint website.  It related an incident in a Mormon man’s life where he learned that helping one’s fellow man often requires far more than just what the church organization can provide.  On behalf of a poor, unsophisticated, but faithful church member of his ward,  this church member not only had to guide the man through the process of getting church assistance, but also “went the extra mile” to raise skilled, volunteer work teams and extra money  to rebuild the man’s house to save it from being condemned and razed.  It was an inspiring account of how we can make a difference in the lives of others.    

Several points in this Saint’s account of his activities made me think about our individual, our society’s and our government’s task to help the poor and needy in our communities?  First, he stressed that his and his family’s offerings to his Church are substantial:  10% tithing of their income, additional monthly offerings to Church to help the needy in their ward and, literally, world-wide;  volunteer time through the Church’s Home and Visiting Teaching Programs to emotionally and spiritually support families assigned to them by the Church, etc.  He then said that such a significant commitment through the Church structure to help others in his community had started to become an impediment to his desire to help those in need.  Finally, he said that the personal task of one child of God helping another child of God blesses the giver and the recipient with bonds of love, commitment, and obligation to righteous action that nothing else can provide.  This man’s account of his actions was enlightening as to how we all can help our brothers and sisters in this life and as to what works and what doesn’t above the personal level of charity.  It affirmed several things that I have long believed.    

First:  We Americans are a generous lot.  History shows clearly that individual citizens, religious and other organizations, and for-profit companies donate money and time to better their communities, help feed the poor, educate the disadvantaged, and protect the weak.  It is clear that such charitable effort is part of our national culture and would continue to be the highest in the world, no matter if the tax laws continued to favor such donations or not.  The potential for such charity to resolve some of our society’s most nagging problems is far greater than current government thinking allows it to be. 

Second:  In fact, it is my opinion that such charity by the giver and the concomitant personal accountability in return by the recipient, rendered and received on the lowest and most personal level of organized effort, is the best way for America to reduce poverty, increase personal strength, and build vital cohesion in our communities, regions, and the nation as a whole.  The more we give up our individual and cultural obligations to distant organizations like the federal government, the more we want to distance ourselves from community problems by demanding that others do our work for us.  This separation of the individual from the society applies to those who give monies so that others may eat, and equally, to those who receive aid.   The givers, like the Saint in his story, quickly expect an organization to solve the problem, because, after all, that is what they “pay” the organization to do.  This corrupts the giver’s heart.  The recipients quickly mistake the charity for entitlements that are “paid” to them with nothing expected in return.  This corrupts the recipient’s heart.  This applies far more to federal government than it does to state government than it does to county or city government than it does to local private organizations such as churches and benevolent organizations.  The farther the organization that receives and dispenses the funds is from the heart of the giver and the recipient, the more corrupt the process becomes. 

Third:  Churches and benevolent organizations indeed play rely on peoples’ benevolent natures in order to get funds to operate and to fulfill their stated missions.  A faithful Latter-day Saint is spiritually “coerced” into paying tithing, fast offerings, and into devoting time to helping his neighbor.  If he doesn’t do these things, his standing in the church and, according to his belief system, his standing in the eternal heavens may be threatened.  Simply put, if a Latter-day Saint wants to be a member in good standing in the LDS Church and enjoy all the spiritual blessings that derive from such membership, he pays for the privilege. However, the government cannot offer similar satisfaction, especially when it comes to its collection of taxes and their use for anything other than limited government tasks that citizens cannot do for  themselves.  Feeding, inoculating, housing, and educating the poor are actions that are charitable in nature and have never lent themselves well to large government oversight and execution.  Knowing that, citizens cannot opt out of such corrupting charitable endeavors, even if they think that the methods and manner by which the government dispenses such charity is destructive to all concerned and, thereby, a waste of tax money.  Try not paying taxes and you will quickly see what “coercion” the federal government will apply to ensure that you participate in their corrupt processes.  The poverty programs that have cost trillions—$4,000,000,000,000?—of tax dollars since the “War on Poverty” was declared in the 1960s have failed to create a society without poverty; but, they have created a society that increasingly looks to the government to deal with problems that should be addressed at the local level. 

Fourth:  The cohesion that private and church organizations build among the local citizenry when they and their members dispense charity has never been approached by any federal programs, no matter how politicians have tried to sell their entitlement programs.  All the government has really delivered has been the dissolution of local society in favor of big government dictation of what is good, bad, worth entitling, and acceptable. 

Federal entitlement programs don’t work, except to get politicians votes—votes from good-hearted people who would naively give money to the government to help the poor and votes from those who would rather be entitled to aid than be beholden to their neighbors for the aid.  There certainly seem to be a lot of those voters out there.  

23 March 2013 –

Huzzah!  The Senate finally passed a budget bill for the first time in four years.  Bah!  The bill does not attempt to balance the budget at all.  Its creators do claim, however, that it will reduce the deficit through nearly $1,000,000,000,000 (remember the zeros?) in additional tax increases in the next decade.  These increases are in addition to the nearly $600,000,000,000 in higher taxes already imposed in January on high income earners.  The budget does cut some spending, $875,000,000,000 in defense cuts, some federal health care programs, and in other less contentious areas.  But, federal spending will continue at record levels and continue to be well above the already record levels of tax revenues.  Our  problem ain’t with revenues; it’s with spending.      

The Senate bill looks nothing like the House bill, which was written by House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan (R-WI).  His bill would claim $5,000,000,000,000 in deficit reduction and no new taxes.  These reductions would mostly come by repealing Obamacare, imposing major cuts on future Medicaid recipients, food stamps, other entitlement programs, and would change the Medicare health program for future seniors into a voucher-like system.  Representative Ryan claims his budget will be balanced within those ten years.  

The two houses are far apart, and the next little while will be dramatic.  However, any grand bargain between them, however poorly it may serve the already taxed and spent citizenry, may finally put the onus on the President to sign a budget or come up with a legitimate one of his own to throw into the mix.  His last attempt at governing in the form of a budget was rejected by the Senate 97-0.  It didn’t even pass the lax test of a Democratic-controlled Senate.  With a budget on his desk, maybe for the first time in his over four years in office, the President will have to govern instead of simply campaign.     

Before the bargaining and horse-trading starts in Congress, I must stress again that our federal debt is already at crisis levels.  Increased taxes will do little to reduce the cause of the budget deficit, which adds every year to the debt:  out-of-control spending.  Tax and spend politicians have the unmitigated gall to declare in their budget bill that $1,600,000,000,000 in tax increases over the next ten years, added to the record federal tax revenues already being collected from only 53% of the population, still will not be enough to balance a budget grossly bloated by entitlement and income redistribution programs.  Their bread and circuses will bankrupt this empire.  The next big act in this circus will be this summer when Congress votes again to raise the federal debt limit.  How does $18,000,000,000,000 sound?  $20,000,000,000,000? Those are good, round numbers to work with, right?  Sheeesh!  But, it will have to be done, or we default and become Greece or Cyprus.  Quite a tightrope we are walking on in this circus.    

22 March 2013 –

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a budget bill for FY 2013 along party lines, 221 to 207.  It calls for balancing the budget by repealing Obamacare and by other hard, but sensible budget cuts.  This is the third budget the Republican-controlled House has passed and sent to the Senate since Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 elections.  The Senate, controlled by the Democrats since the 2006 elections, hasn’t passed a budget since 2009, the first year President Obama joined them at the wheel of the spending machine.  House 3 – Senate 0.  The Senate’s refusal to pass a budget throughout two Congresses says to me that the Senate leadership doesn’t care if it mocks its constitutional obligations.  With no budget to constrain them, our politicians have continued to spend money like drunken sailors on shore leave on a payday Friday night.  Unlike the sailors, it is our money, not theirs, and we suffer the hangover.  It is actually easier to spend money with limited accountability under stop-gap measures called continuing resolutions, which have been passed for a couple of years now.  In fact, the latest continuing resolution that just came out of the Senate, and approved by the House, will allow the government to continue to operate until the new budget takes effect on 1 October 2013.  But, with no budgetary constraints between now and then, another $1,000,000,000,000 will flow out of our pockets and into someone else’s debit column.  No wonder the debt has grown $6,000,000,000,000 in the last five years.  No one in the Senate, let alone the Administration, has done one thing to effectively stop spending other peoples’ money. 

Six trillion is, as you can see, is a six followed by twelve zeros.  We have grown accustomed to seeing large numbers expressed in a shortened form, as if the shortened form will not alarm us as much: $1k; $1m; $1b; and now, $1t.  Large numbers are incomprehensible to the human mind except by comparison to other things, to known spatial or time references, for example.  Such a large number as $6t ,aka $6,000,000,000,000, begins to have meaning only when you compare it to distances in space.  If you were to lay 6,000,000,000,000 one-dollar bills end to end they would stretch 574,100 miles with $3,135.34 in change.  I can comprehend the $3,135.34 in change; that is what our yearly municipal utility district taxes are for our house in Houston—ouch!.  But the 574,100 miles of dollar bills would stretch to the moon and back and then almost four times around the earth to tie it all up.   That is how much the federal debt has increased since the Senate refused to pass the budgets the House has sent it and, thereby, has allowed the Obama administration to act with no constraints at all.  Add that to the $10,000,000,000,000 of debt that previously wastrel Congresses and Presidents have accrued, and you have dollars stretching, well, more times to the moon and back than any one man ever has boldly gone before.   Beam me up, Scotty.  The Klingons are destroying the planet.   

Why this exercise in hand-calculator adeptness?  To show that unless our political leaders recognize the debt crisis as the single biggest threat to the United States of America’s sovereignty, our dominant role in the world, and all the security and advantages that come with it, will soon evaporate.  Our children being born now will no longer live in the most powerful country on Earth by the time they are adults.  "These are the times that try men's souls", means as much now as when Thomas Paine wrote The American Crisis in 1776.  Like all staggering empires of the past, we have laid the path for our own destruction, with trillions of dollar bills borrowed and wasted.  We need to stop spending and start reducing what we owe.  How?  Our leaders need to recognize and then champion the fact that government entitlements and giveaways neither create wealth nor buttress our national character against hard times, or against the wiles of our enemies.  Instead, they soften our will and corrupt our character, as leaders, as citizens, and as a nation.  They always have; they always will.  Therefore, the House budget bill, which calls for balancing the budget with spending cuts over the next ten years, is the only option extant that has a hope of keeping the nation strong and in control of its own destiny.    

19 March 2013 –

Odds ‘N Ends

Bill Maher is the comedian host of HBO’s “Real Time”.  His liberal screed against the conservative right has played well on cable TV, but, just this week he also has shown that when the fiscal hammer of liberalism hits him personally, he can speak with a surprisingly conservative tone.  In a discussion with Rachel Maddow about the current fiscal crisis, ad tedium, Mr. Maher countered Ms. Maddow’s attack on Republicans and conservatives with the following:

“Here in California – I just wanted to say – liberals, you could actually lose me.  It’s outrageous what we’re paying – over 50 percent.  I’m willing to pay my share, but yeah, I mean, it’s ridiculous.”  

Mr. Maher.  You are willing to pay YOUR fair share of taxes?  Is that the fair share YOU decide is enough or the fair share President Obama decides is never really enough for rich people to pay?  I think you just answered that question.  Welcome to individual accountability, personal responsibility, and limited government as the model for society.  Maybe there is a fiscal conservative in you after all.  Maybe you will now see why property rights were among the primary rights that the Constitution was written to defend.  After these principles sink in, maybe you will see that a fiscal conservative knows that a profligate welfare/entitlement/nanny state erodes the moral fiber of the nation.  Moral rights and wrongs are as much a part of fiscal conservatism as they are a part of social conservatism.  You may soon find that moral and fiscal conservatism cannot be separated, no matter how many politicians and panderers try to tease them apart for their own purposes. 

Is it too soon to welcome you to the righteous fight, Mr. Maher?  Indeed, you could lose your show on HBO and have to move to Fox News if you continue to make such outbursts as you did the other day.  Can you be as funny as a conservative as you can be ridiculous as a liberal?   

____

It looks like most Americans actually don’t want all the harsh gun control bills that liberal politicians are trying to pass through the Senate.  Senator Feinstein (D-CA) said that her controversial assault weapons ban will not be a part of a Democratic gun control bill in the Senate next month.  Her Democratic leaders felt that her desire to ban 157 different models of weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines would cause the overall bill to be defeated.   Her bill will have to be a separate bill. 

Apparently, there are Democratic senators up for reelection in 2014 in states where the Second Amendment is considered important.  These senators would lose the election if they were asked to vote for such a restrictive bill as the one Senator Feinstein proposed.  It is obvious from all polls and voting trends that most Americans do not want severe restrictions on their right to own firearms.  Even Senate Majority Leader, Senator Reid sees that.  Too bad Senator Reid doesn’t understand why people feel that way, even in his home state of Nevada. 

There is one good, unintended consequence of sequestration.  Local community services and programs that used to be funded by the federal government are now the funding responsibility of the local governments.  I endorse putting as many responsibilities for society on the lowest level of government as possible; and, this tightening of the federal purse strings is forcing local governments to face the serious questions of what they want to pay for, what they must pay for, and what they can do without.  Should property taxes go up so that previously federal-funded health and social services can continue?  On what popular services should local government now impose fees in order to keep them going?  Which programs are critical and which ones are not?  Many community leaders are struggling with these questions.  Gee whiz, that sounds like what local government should be doing anyway.  Federally imposed and funded programs destroy the cohesion and local accountability of communities.  Such money makes leaders lazy and not responsible for the well-being of their citizenry.  As painful as the sequestration of funds may be in the short-term, it can only be good to put local decision-making back in the hands of local citizens.  

18 March 2013 –

Despite what Speaker Boehner and President Obama have said to the contrary in the last several days, we are indeed in a fiscal crisis right now, today, at this very minute.  Why?  Because Congress, particularly the Senate, has yet to fulfill its constitutional duty and pass a real budget this year.  In fact, the Senate has failed to do so for the last four years.  In simple words, the United States has not had any restraints on its spending since President Obama was inaugurated in 2009.  If you tried to do this in a business, you would be bankrupt in four years.  Indeed, we are almost bankrupt now. 

Is this a new phenomenon, this profligate spending?  No, it is not.  But, President Obama has excelled at it far beyond his predecessor—and President Bush’s administration was no piker when it came to spending money it didn’t have.   Some would say that it was because of two ill-advised wars that Bush’s deficit spending soared.  That is part of it, but the wars also have been a part of President Obama’s reason for his record deficits as well.  Regardless of our ill-conceived and executed military adventurism in the last twelve years, the main reason for the ballooning deficits is the constant increase in entitlement spending.  Cutting military spending will do little to stop the trends in entitlement spending. 

How serious is the current federal debt?  How much do we really owe?   What is the trend?  The debt on 30 September 2012 stood at $16,066,241,707,385.  That is 16 trillion and change.  By the way, the change, $66.2 billion, is more than the entire debt was in 1941 at the start of World War Two.  The federal debt has grown every year since 1950 except for a slight dip in 1951.  That is sixty one out of the last sixty-two years we have spent more than we have collected in taxes.  The last three generations of Americans have encouraged their government officials to be fiscally irresponsible to a point that there are few people alive today who were working when we last executed a balanced budget.  It seems that most people alive today have never learned how to spend less than they take in.  Now, we are in the critical situation where the $16.1 trillion debt is more than the entire country makes in a year.  This is the first time this has ever happened in the history of the United States.  No wonder the country’s credit rating was lowered in the last two years.  We are Greece on steroids.

The trend in our profligacy warrants special mention.  The total debt has spiraled out of control in the last few years, but the trend has been building for some time.  In 1946, the federal deficit stood at $269.4 billion.  Fifteen years later, in 1960, the deficit was at $286.3 billion.  That was an increase of 6.3%, only about .4% each year.  Then through the sixties and seventies, with the Great Society programs becoming a normal part of American life, the deficit increased 216% in just twenty years, over 10% a year, to $907.7 billion dollars.  From 1980 to 1992, a Republican Golden Age as described by some, but with Congress still controlled by Democrats, the debt increased to $4.06 trillion.  Trillion dollars!  That is over $4,00,000,000,000.  A four followed by twelve zeros.  That was an increase of 347% in twelve years.  From 1992 to 2000, under a Democratic President and a Republican Congress in the last few years of the administration, the debt grew to $5.674 trillion dollars, a much smaller increase of 46% and $1.6 trillion.  The Compassionate Conservatism of President Bush was, in my opinion, just another name for government spending on things that corrupt America.   By 2008, the public debt exceeded $10 trillion dollars, a 77% increase during the Bush administration.  As profligate as these earlier administrations and Congresses have been, the current government has shown everybody how to really spend other peoples’ money.  In just four years, government has spent another $6 trillion dollars it doesn't have.  That is $6,000,000,000,000 more than the government collected in taxes, including income taxes that were collected from only about half of Americans.  That is an increase of 60%, or 15% a year added to an already enormous debt.     How serious would that be if it were an American family who made $50,000 a year, spent $58,000 a year, and already had $51,000 in credit card debt?  What would a court-ordered financial counselor tell that family to do to prevent bankruptcy?  I am sure that the counselor would cut up the family’s credit cards and tell the family to learn how to pay as they go. 

Federal Debt Increases Since 1950

1950 – 1960 –      6% increase;  .4% a year

1960 – 1980 – 216% increase; 11% a year

1980 – 1992 – 347% increase; 29% a year

1992 – 2000 –   46% increase;    6% a year

2000 – 2008 –   77% increase;  10% a year

2008 – 2012 –   60% increase;  15% a year

This is not a revenue problem.  In 2011, the U.S. government collected at least $2.8 trillion in income and other taxes, more than ever before in history.  The problem is spending.  For all our lives, we have spent, we are spending, and there is no sign that either the Senate or the President wants to do anything but spend beyond our means.   That is the fact we must come to grips with.   

16 March 2013 –

Odds ‘n Ends

1.    Senator Rob Portman, (R-OH), a major force in Republican politics for the last twenty years and, as a Representative, a proponent of the passage of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, has just publicly reversed his stand on homosexual marriage.  He still contends that the states should determine marriage laws within their borders, and he also encourages the federal government to make the tax codes neutral as far as marriage goes, not giving exemptions for married couples.

      Senator Portman prefaced his announcement by saying that his son, 21, told him a while ago that he was gay.  Senator Portman said that his son’s lifestyle had a major effect on his change of position.  OK, let me get this right…right may be right and wrong may be wrong in issues facing a responsible and honest public official, right?  Well, I guess that depends on if the wrong or the right reveals itself within the walls of the official’s own home.  Senator Portman just said that what has been wrong far away is right now that is close to him, I guess.

2.    Hostess is going to sell the rights to produce Devil Dogs, a soft chocolate cake with white crème filler, to the makers of Little Debbie cakes.  Wonderful!  Twinkies and Devil Dogs live on!  I snarfed down my last Twinkie about ten years ago, and I cannot remember the last time I bit a Devil Dog.  But, the free market bets that there is still a demand for these products; therefore, someone will continue to satisfy that demand.  Life finds a way despite the short-sighted labor unions that destroyed the Golden Goose of Hostess who made the golden Twinkies that kept the union members’ families fed.  But, we can rise from the self-immolated ashes of our battles and push onward!  I love this country!   

      Hmm, it’s a couple of hours before my next meal, and I am hungry...I got it!  Let’s combine this Devil Dog action with the recent court ruling that Hizonner The Mayor of New York could not ban the sale of soft drinks larger than 16 oz.; the judge rightfully called such a policy dictum “capricious.”  Let’s organize marches throughout the United States with people gorging themselves from a box of eight Devil Dogs in one hand and from a non-biodegradable, Styrofoam cup of 64 oz. of Dr. Pepper in the other.  No problem with the consequences; Obamacare will be there to heal our clogged-up, rotund bodies.  Let’s rejoice in the free market’s ability to find ways to sell what we insist on buying.  Then, let’s snub our collective noses at the elite nanny-state who would force us to be responsible.  Finally, let’s exploit that same nanny-state to pay for our excesses.  I love this country!

14 March 2013 - 

I spent my Air Force career playing on most levels of the intelligence game.  For example, as a younger officer, my analysis would tie a nation’s oil import, refining, storage, and distribution capability to its ability to sustain combat operations.  I enjoyed the work because I built prioritized target lists of such systems:  what to bomb during a war.  Then, on the operational level of military analysis I would reprioritize all such tactical analysis in order to build operational-level air campaign plans:  what to bomb, when to bomb, then reassess, and then do it again.  I saw that operational plans support strategic military objectives that, in turn, support national objectives.  We then would train our forces according to these tactical and operational level plans so that, when called upon, we could accomplish our portion of the strategic plan.  In simple terms:  We could then bomb our enemies back to the Stone Age.  Ah, heat, blast, and frag, the essence of the universe!  I love the smell of napalm in the morning.  It’s the smell of…victory!  Ahem…focus….back to the issues at hand.  On those lower levels of analytic effort, the enemy was known.  Planning principles and combat truisms worked more often than they did not.  Life was clear. 

As I moved from tactical to strategic analysis, my purpose did not change:  Protect and defend U.S. interests at home and abroad.  But, as a newly elevated tactical thinker that still meant to kill the bad guys as violently as possible and leave their rotting carcasses in the desert sun for the...ahem…ok, ok, I’ll stop.  I was wrong in this thinking.  On the strategic level of intelligence analysis and decision-making, military force is only one of a nation’s instruments of national power, and it is never decisive on its own in a conflict.  More important, commitment of any instrument of national power without a clear strategy for achieving vital national objectives is doomed to failure. 

I also learned that decision-makers on the strategic level often use military force a bit too quickly as their instrument of choice in a crisis.  Then, when well-trained, lethal force is committed, leaders fall into the trap of seeing initial tactical successes as the sign of ultimate success in the widening conflict.  Or, they think that when an initial military force is stymied, the response should be to commit more military force rather than to review a possibly ill-conceived strategy.  Think of the tragic gradualism strategy of VietNam.  An expensive and frustrating corollary to that erroneous thinking is when leaders are so impressed by the success of military forces in combat that they commit them to other strategic objectives that military forces are not equipped or trained to do.  Think of nation-building in VietNam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Simply put, in a crisis, many decision-makers focus on how to execute operations—they focus on doing something—on the tactical and operational level.  They may even mistake the excitement of heat, blast, and frag for legitimate strategic thinking.    

Instead, decision-makers should coldly and clearly decide if what is happening constitutes a legitimate threat to the United States or to its critical interests in the world.  If the situation does not threaten vital U.S. interests, then it isn’t a crisis and nothing should be done.  However, if analysis says that vital U.S. interests are threatened, then leaders should coldly and clearly determine which instruments of national power should be used and how they should be used to protect our interests.  In other words, leaders should create a legitimate strategy to achieve legitimate objectives and have the courage to defend their decision.  Then, the tactical and operational levels of the execution of a plan, long our nation’s undisputed strengths, will pretty much take care of themselves.  Compelling interests and a legitimate strategy are everything.

I posit that we often are outplayed on the multi-dimensional chess boards of the world because vital and compelling national interests are clouded by our leaders’ political, personal, and cultural interests, which often have more to do with transient desires than with protecting the U.S. or ensuring its strength in the world.  They fail to understand that the tactical level is an often violent, but simple chess game between two players.  The strategic level is a chess game between two obvious opponents, but the pieces on both sides are often moved by intervening alliances, historical groupings of nations and peoples, and even by domestic political opponents.  Such a complex game requires that a leader move cautiously, without adventurism, and only with clear, vital objectives as a guide.  

13 March 2013 –

Tom,

Good to hear from you, even if your message consisted of only two words and descriptive punctuation.  We have not been torrid in our exchange of e-mails in the last several months.  But, I have chosen to blame you completely for the lack of contact.  It is much easier to blame you than to accept responsibility for my own actions and to rise up and do the right thing.  My rationalization allows me to live in my fantasy bubble, quite like so many in our nation who vote and act as if we can afford big government forever.  

That is the biggest thing I took away from this article that you forwarded to me.  Sweden is a great example of how to don “the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy”, retain a AAA credit rating, reduce the government debt load, and be a place where schools thrive and people want to try new things.  How can the Swedes do this?  The author says, “It begins with choice and competition.”  Well, duh!  But, these guiding principles can only be implemented after the country realizes that “they have reached the limits of big government,” and that they “can’t afford it.”  Gone are the days in Sweden when the large corporations in the country could “generate enough money to support the state.”  The easy-money fantasy bubble broke about twenty years ago in Sweden, and the Swedes responded with demands for transparent, more limited government.  We Americans don’t have that consensus yet. 

After our fiscal profligacy beats us into submission and we scream for help—any help—choice and competition will probably shine as primary principles of economic soundness.  You know, competition, the thing that gets people up in the morning and out to work, even if the knee hurts or the television calls our name?  An especially important change the author mentions as a factor in the Swedish government’s new-found fiscal integrity is the implementation of a sound pension system that replaces a defined-benefit system with a defined-contribution one, the latter making adjustments for longer life expectancy (Think of the difference between a fixed government pension system that constantly rises in payouts due to government largesse to get votes versus a system of 401(k) pensions that must be managed to ensure payouts until one dies).   The author also mentioned a universal system of school vouchers that encourages academic excellence and a system of health care that seems to encourage private health providers’ participation rather than to stifle it.  Things are going well in Sweden, it seems. 

I must disagree with the author’s contention that these examples of Sweden’s changes in fiscal policy are “highly innovative solutions that reject the tired orthodoxies of left and right.”  Indeed, Sweden’s use of school vouchers to fund both public and private schools is a current “tired orthodoxy” of the right—one that President Obama and most teachers’ unions reject out of hand.   Also a “tired orthodoxy” of the right is the use of private pension plans to replace Social Security and fixed pensions.  I remember President Nixon’s administration recommending such a plan in the late 1960s and early 70s, with sound examples of how it would provide old-age security and keep the Social Security system sound.  A Democratic Congress wouldn’t even consider it.  These examples of how to turnaround a government’s fiscal problems are tried and true, conservative, right-wing, policies.  The author should have called a Swedish meatball a Swedish meatball and have been done with it. 

Finally, the author fleetingly suggested that the cultural homogeneity in Sweden makes it easier to implement fiscal changes.  This is important for the Americans because Sweden is so much different than the United States, except for parts of Minnesota and eastern Nor’ Dakota, yah sir, you betcha!  The author, without parsing out the divisive and fiscally unsound effects that derive from the fact that “Sweden is finding it particularly hard to integrate its large population of refugees.”  Oh my.  Does the author really want to say, but is fearful of doing so, that culturally diverse peoples increasingly living in a previously homogeneous society will make it more difficult for politicians to implement sea changes in government policies and actions?  I hear that loudly and clearly in his silence.    Sweden is a sovereign country long-based on a people who look, act, speak, eat, and worship similarly.  That has been a strength.  Now that homogeneity may be diminishing, Sweden’s potentially decreasing ability to adjust fiscally can have future ramifications on the country’s sovereignty and underlying concept of itself. 

Are there lessons here for the United States?  Answering that question is worth a book.  Quickly said:  We are not a nation based on a common ancestry, but on the common ideas of our Founders.  Stray from those ideas, from the “tired orthodoxies” that so many today want to misstate or ignore, and we do so at our peril.  Group rights, hyphenated-Americans, and carefully cultured ignorance of the responsibilities that accompany and secure Americans’ unalienable rights and liberties paralyze, divide, and bankrupt the nation.  Ours is a self-destructive course of action.    

The following article was written by Adrian Woolridge, Management Editor of the Economist magazine. 

THIRTY YEARS AGO Margaret Thatcher turned Britain into the world’s leading centre of “thinking the unthinkable”. Today that distinction has passed to Sweden. The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The think-tanks are brimful of new ideas. The erstwhile champion of the “third way” is now pursuing a far more interesting brand of politics.

Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983, to 57%, and scrapped a mare’s nest of taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. This year it is cutting the corporate-tax rate from 26.3% to 22%.

Sweden has also donned the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy with its pledge to produce a fiscal surplus over the economic cycle. Its public debt fell from 70% of GDP in 1993 to 37% in 2010, and its budget moved from an 11% deficit to a surplus of 0.3% over the same period. This allowed a country with a small, open economy to recover quickly from the financial storm of 2007-08. Sweden has also put its pension system on a sound foundation, replacing a defined-benefit system with a defined-contribution one and making automatic adjustments for longer life expectancy.

Most daringly, it has introduced a universal system of school vouchers and invited private schools to compete with public ones. Private companies also vie with each other to provide state-funded health services and care for the elderly. Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who lives in America, hopes that Sweden is pioneering “a new conservative model”; Brian Palmer, an American anthropologist who lives in Sweden, worries that it is turning into “the United States of Swedeamerica”.

There can be no doubt that Sweden’s quiet revolution has brought about a dramatic change in its economic performance. The two decades from 1970 were a period of decline: the country was demoted from being the world’s fourth-richest in 1970 to 14th-richest in 1993, when the average Swede was poorer than the average Briton or Italian. The two decades from 1990 were a period of recovery: GDP growth between 1993 and 2010 averaged 2.7% a year and productivity 2.1% a year, compared with 1.9% and 1% respectively for the main 15 EU countries.

For most of the 20th century Sweden prided itself on offering what Marquis Childs called, in his 1936 book of that title, a “Middle Way” between capitalism and socialism. Global companies such as Volvo and Ericsson generated wealth while enlightened bureaucrats built the Folkhemmet or “People’s Home”. As the decades rolled by, the middle way veered left. The government kept growing: public spending as a share of GDP nearly doubled from 1960 to 1980 and peaked at 67% in 1993. Taxes kept rising. The Social Democrats (who ruled Sweden for 44 uninterrupted years from 1932 to 1976 and for 21 out of the 24 years from 1982 to 2006) kept squeezing business. “The era of neo-capitalism is drawing to an end,” said Olof Palme, the party’s leader, in 1974. “It is some kind of socialism that is the key to the future.”

The other Nordic countries have been moving in the same direction, if more slowly. Denmark has one of the most liberal labour markets in Europe. It also allows parents to send children to private schools at public expense and make up the difference in cost with their own money. Finland is harnessing the skills of venture capitalists and angel investors to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Oil-rich Norway is a partial exception to this pattern, but even there the government is preparing for its post-oil future.

This is not to say that the Nordics are shredding their old model. They continue to pride themselves on the generosity of their welfare states. About 30% of their labour force works in the public sector, twice the average in the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation, a rich-country think-tank. They continue to believe in combining open economies with public investment in human capital. But the new Nordic model begins with the individual rather than the state. It begins with fiscal responsibility rather than pump-priming: all four Nordic countries have AAA ratings and debt loads significantly below the euro-zone average. It begins with choice and competition rather than paternalism and planning. The economic-freedom index of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank, shows Sweden and Finland catching up with the United States (see chart). The leftward lurch has been reversed: rather than extending the state into the market, the Nordics are extending the market into the state.

Why are the Nordic countries doing this? The obvious answer is that they have reached the limits of big government. “The welfare state we have is excellent in most ways,” says Gunnar Viby Mogensen, a Danish historian. “We only have this little problem. We can’t afford it.” The economic storms that shook all the Nordic countries in the early 1990s provided a foretaste of what would happen if they failed to get their affairs in order.

There are two less obvious reasons. The old Nordic model depended on the ability of a cadre of big companies to generate enough money to support the state, but these companies are being slimmed by global competition. The old model also depended on people’s willingness to accept direction from above, but Nordic populations are becoming more demanding.

Small is powerful

The Nordic countries have a collective population of only 26m. Finland is the only one of them that is a member of both the European Union and the euro area. Sweden is in the EU but outside the euro and has a freely floating currency. Denmark, too, is in the EU and outside the euro area but pegs its currency to the euro. Norway has remained outside the EU.

But there are compelling reasons for paying attention to these small countries on the edge of Europe. The first is that they have reached the future first. They are grappling with problems that other countries too will have to deal with in due course, such as what to do when you reach the limits of big government and how to organise society when almost all women work. And the Nordics are coming up with highly innovative solutions that reject the tired orthodoxies of left and right.

The second reason to pay attention is that the new Nordic model is proving strikingly successful. The Nordics dominate indices of competitiveness as well as of well-being. Their high scores in both types of league table mark a big change since the 1980s when welfare took precedence over competitiveness.

Explore our interactive guide to Europe's troubled economies

The Nordics do particularly well in two areas where competitiveness and welfare can reinforce each other most powerfully: innovation and social inclusion. BCG, as the Boston Consulting Group calls itself, gives all of them high scores on its e-intensity index, which measures the internet’s impact on business and society. Booz & Company, another consultancy, points out that big companies often test-market new products on Nordic consumers because of their willingness to try new things. The Nordic countries led the world in introducing the mobile network in the 1980s and the GSM standard in the 1990s. Today they are ahead in the transition to both e-government and the cashless economy. Locals boast that they pay their taxes by SMS. This correspondent gave up changing sterling into local currencies because everything from taxi rides to cups of coffee can be paid for by card.

The Nordics also have a strong record of drawing on the talents of their entire populations, with the possible exception of their immigrants. They have the world’s highest rates of social mobility: in a comparison of social mobility in eight advanced countries by Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Stephen Machin, of the London School of Economics, they occupied the first four places. America and Britain came last. The Nordics also have exceptionally high rates of female labour-force participation: in Denmark not far off as many women go out to work (72%) as men (79%).

Flies in the ointment

This special report will examine the way the Nordic governments are updating their version of capitalism to deal with a more difficult world. It will note that in doing so they have unleashed a huge amount of creativity and become world leaders in reform. Nordic entrepreneurs are feeling their oats in a way not seen since the early 20th century. Nordic writers and artists—and indeed Nordic chefs and game designers—are enjoying a creative renaissance.

The report will also add caveats. The growing diversity of Nordic societies is generating social tensions, most horrifically in Norway, where Anders Breivik killed 77 people in a racially motivated attack in 2011, but also on a more mundane level every day. Sweden is finding it particularly hard to integrate its large population of refugees.

The Nordic model is still a work in progress. The three forces that have obliged the Nordic countries to revamp it—limited resources, rampant globalisation and growing diversity—are gathering momentum. The Nordics will have to continue to upgrade their model, but they will also have to fight to retain what makes it distinctive. Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock, of the World Bank, have coined the term “getting to Denmark” to describe successful modernisation. This report will suggest that the trick is not just to get to Denmark; it is to stay there.

The final caveat is about learning from the Nordic example, which other countries are rightly trying to do. Britain, for example, is introducing Swedish-style “free schools”. But transferring such lessons is fraught with problems. The Nordics’ success depends on their long tradition of good government, which emphasises not only honesty and transparency but also consensus and compromise. Learning from Denmark may be as difficult as staying there.

From the print edition: Special report

7 March 2013 –

In an article yesterday on Newsmax.com, Todd Beamon commented on a new book by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush entitled “Immigration Wars.”  The book states Governor Bush’s newly refined position on comprehensive immigration reform (More on that tomorrow after I finish reading the book).  I want that book, I told myself during the night!  This morning, I bought the book.  No big deal, heh?  Yeah, it is.  A really big deal. 

I joined the 21^st century a while ago when I was given a Kindle as a present.  I treated the device as I would treat a gift of bright yellow socks and put it safely away.  Why?  Because I love the heft and the commitment to real books.  To have books is to be well-read.  To be well-read is to approach wisdom.  To be wise is to…well, someday, maybe.  Anyway, with boxes of books in our attic, and bookshelves awaiting their careful arrangment according to my own version of the Dewey Decimal System, I can show my worth as a human being.  Thankfully, because the gift was lovingly and wisely given, I finally pulled out the Kindle and turned it on.  Words appeared; laying it aside became difficult.  I got used to the format, then I embraced the electronically-displayed words as I had done for so many years the creaking of new bindings and the rustle of turning the pages as the traditional sounds of knowledge.  What a magnificent advancement of the human condition!  Then, after I temporarily misplaced the Kindle in a rental car far from home, we HAD to replace it.  We bought a Kindle Fire.  To my wonder, Amazon actually downloaded the books to my Kindle Fire that I had ordered and read on the Kindle.  Hallelujah!  It was as if pagan marauders had burned my library  and then Heaven had restored it intact to my temple of learning.   I could still read and reference! 

Back to this morning.  After rereading the article, I got up from my laptop, walked down to the swimming pool, and turned on my Kindle Fire.  My hotel room here in Kinshasa has a cable connection to the internet—a shaky connection on a good day—but the pool and restaurant area has wi-fi!  I sat in the shade of a cabana, where I knew I had a chance to get the signal—even more shaky than the cable connection—and downloaded the book. It took four attempts to get the wi-fi signal and about eight minutes to download the book.  But, four degrees south of the equator, in central Africa, in one of the most dysfunctional cities on earth, behind protective walls and armed guards, I bought a book.  What is just as remarkable, we will pay the credit card bill from our home in the United States.  To quote a goddess: “I love livin’ now!” 

I often think what my life would have been as a grade-schooler if I had had such a capability.  Mrs. Robinson, my third-grade teacher, would not have had to put my desk right in front of hers in order to control me with the rap of a yardstick.  Mrs. Holt, my fifth-grade teacher, would not have had to put my desk in the coat room with a pile of assignments on it in order to keep peace in her classroom.  All they would have had to do was let me read my Kindle Fire all day long.    A pox on the video games, texting, and twitters that stultify our youth in the Information Age.  I would have had an entire library in my pocket!  So many books; so little time. 

For those of you who know the story:  Laman and Lemuel were probably illiterate.  Nephi could read. 

6 March 2013 -

These small plastics bags of cold water are sold everywhere on the streets of the cities in the Congo.  The water is clean and costs about eleven cents.  For most people in Kinshasa, this is the only drinking water they have access to.  Different companies produce these water bags, and you see young men everywhere carrying a large bag of them on their heads.  It is probably a good way to stay cool in the tropical sun.  This particular company is clever in its marketing; President Obama’s face is quite popular here in the Congo.  It appears on backpacks and tee-shirts everywhere.  The President’s policies are no better explained here than they are in the U.S., however.  A Congolese’s muddied view of what President Obama actually does is understandable, given the limited education of most of the people on the streets of Kinshasa.  Detroit or Chicago is another story, I am sure.  All that said, you now have a drink of cold water coming from the Maison Blanche—White House—with Obama’s name and picture on it.  Try as I might, I cannot come up with a clever remark comparing this product to anything praising or criticizing the President.  For me, that is something I find pretty hard to swallow. 

4 March 2013 –

Alaska:  Where men are men and women win the Iditarod.  The first Saturday in March, two days ago, started the 41^st annual Iditarod ten-day, 1,049 mile dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome.   Forget the Tour de France, the Boston Marathon, or any competition where skinny men wear skin-tight spandex.  This is a real man’s race that real women win with regularity.  If you win, like Susan Butcher did several times, you finish the race in eight to ten days.   If you finish last, as John Schultz did in 1973 with a time of 32 days, 15 hours, nine minutes and one second, you get the Red Lantern award for your perseverance.  The race ain’t over until everybody is off the trail.  If you can’t find solid metaphors for real life in this race, you aren’t looking.  Dogs, sleds, snow, ice, wind, night, storms, solitude, mountains, bad food, collapsing muscles, and grit.  Ain’t nothun’ like it.  I am glad I am dry and warm.     

Foreign Policy:  The art of failing to protect U.S. interests by being nice to people who don’t care a hoot about you, hate you, or only want your money.    Or, it is the art of offending your enemies so that they stay enemies and offending your friends until they too become your enemies. 

Why is it so difficult to have an effective foreign policy, no matter the political party in charge?  I think it is because we, as Americans, have an almost genetic propensity to try to “get things done right” in the world for “the betterment of mankind”, to make the world “safe for democracy”, to “end world hunger”, to “stop the dying”, ad gloria mundi.  As a friend succinctly phrased it, “Our hearts, prosperity, religious teachings, and arrogance compel engagement in lost causes.”  That indeed seems to be the case.  Such outside efforts usually are lost causes because rarely do the individual and collective desires of good people, when projected through our government elite to be implemented on a large scale outside the borders of the United States, succeed.  Too many bad people in too many places doing too many bad things.  Nonetheless, our hearts continually tell us that with just a little more of the wealth and blood of our nation we can righteously tell our neighbors how to make things better.  Do we do this?  Yes, all the time.  Do we succeed?  Rarely.

I recently wrote and taught a class on senior military leadership traits in a counterinsurgency environment to colonels and generals in the Congolese military.  We talked about the importance of common beliefs, common languages, common cultures, and individual and societal loyalties and traditions in the building of a stable nation.  These things create a sense of sovereignty and cohesion—a people.  We talked about how differing loyalties and cultures compete in a society and often lead to dissolution, insurgencies, and strife—many times with the interference of outside nations.  We focused on what attributes a senior military leader needs in order to “win the hearts and minds of the people” and, thereby, to take the fire out of an insurgency. 

When talking about outside support against an insurgency, I would often warn that a nation’s leaders must beware of outsiders who come into their country saying that they have come to help.  I emphasized that for a country to be successful in its foreign policy, it should always act only in its self-interest.  If an outsider’s self-interest coincides with the host country’s interests, as expressed by its leaders, then things can be done together.  But, the moment the outsider errs from the common path, it is time to kick him out—if the host country leader still can, that is.    I also stressed that the corollary to this last principle is especially applicable to an intervening country.   An outside nation’s (that means the U.S.’s)  decision to intervene in another nation’s business, should not be expanded or contracted by a host nation’s, or its corrupt leaders’, plaints for more help, U.S. public desire or media hype to help, or the U.S. leader’s personal desire to “do something” more as a leader.  If U.S. action, however large or small it may be, does not directly support vital, U.S. strategic interests, then we should coldly, clearly, and resolutely not do it.   

When challenged by the Congolese officers as to why I was in their country, I told them two things:  because I was paid to do so; and, more importantly for them, because I was looking for a Congolese George Washington.  I had already explained to them how the British colonies rallied around Washington’s leadership in the formation of our country.  I said I was looking for a Congolese George Washington around whom they could rally and become Congolese instead of remaining loyal only to a specific tribe or region in this vast country.  I clearly reiterated that it was in the vital, strategic interests of the United States for the Democratic Republic of the Congo to coalesce into a truly sovereign entity, with stable societal and governmental institutions and a strong rule of law.  I was there only to effect the strategic interests of the United States—and, of course, to get paid.  The officers, hard-bitten survivors of horrendous civil and tribal wars, accepted that answer, and the course went well. 

I know from years of experience throughout the world that a country’s lasting strength, success, and thrift come from its acting only when its vital interests are threatened or when there is a clear opportunity to advance its interests at little to no cost in lives, money, or prestige.  When the latter bet, a risky one at best, begins to sour, pulling out quickly is the only time-proven remedy for such a mistake in judgment.  Doubling down or finding new reasons to stay engaged are adventurism, almost always with tragic results.  The U.S. presidents in the last sixty years whose arrogance has compelled them to engage in enticing, but, alas, lost causes have come from both political parties.  These men and their advisors usually have big hearts, are prosperous, and have high public morals.  But, those qualities and their arrogance always seem to “compel engagement in lost causes.”  I would rather have a cold, mean, pagan who cares only about the United States running our foreign policy than these guys.  It is what the job has always required.   Ask any soldier, or his widow. 

2 March 2013 –

I am in the homestretch of this latest work period in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  I have thirty-three days left and then back home to the United States.  I am sure that this will be my last time in the Congo.  Too far away.  Too many problems.  After being in eighty countries, living in ten, and watching carefully our activities in so many more, I am convinced that the DRC has the most complex set of problems on earth.  More than anywhere the United States has engaged with significant money, military, and meals in my lifetime.  Should we engage here in a significant way to try to make this place “safe for democracy”?  Absolutely not.

In fact, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is not a sovereign nation.  It is not a coalescence of similar groups of peoples who seek unity and a set of common principles upon which to build a working, modern nation.  It is the festering residue of stultifying colonialism forced upon disparate and competing peoples, with none of the accompanying, modernizing effects that may have come from imposed-from-the-outside rule.  Its borders do not represent any cultural divides between cohesive nations; those types of borders still wait to be set with the time-honored use of force.  The history of most all developed nations on earth show that this has been the way that lasting borders have been formed.  Most importantly, the internal ethnic, cultural, and linguistic borders also are ignored, to the peril of all who live here.  The DRC is essentially a land-locked region, one-third the size of the continental United States, with too many competing peoples, languages, and cultures to attain stability.  The leavening effect that could derive from a functioning road, railway and airway system, which would move goods, services, and ideas from one region to another, is nonexistent.  There is more paved roadway in any medium-sized city in the United States than there is in the entire DRC.  Sadly, there is little evidence that a sense of being “Congolese” can be created in this or the next generation--if indeed a DRC in its present form is something that should be striven for (I arranged the entire paragraph just to use the correct participle of that word).  

It is we outsiders, on our safe perches from afar, who demand that the Congo’s present borders be honored as legitimate when nothing legitimate was used to create them in the first place.  These lines on maps do not represent natural and self-determined boundaries among peoples; that process is still working itself out, despite our efforts to stop it.  I contend that we outsiders actually impede eventual peace and stability when we ignore cultural and natural internal borders as we impose outside pressure to “stop the killing.”  It is like the world’s elite are a third-grade teacher who tires of the constant fighting in a corner of her class—a class that was formed by teachers and the administration and not by the students.   The teacher coerces Johnny and Jimmy to get along in class "for their own good", but she is exasperated when Jimmy and Johnny still fight every day at recess.  

What can outside governments do directly in the Congo?  Very little of lasting worth.  What should they do directly?  Very little.   What does “very little” mean in a place like the Congo?  Outside governments should listen carefully, watch clearly, assess coldly, and then offer to help only those leaders and peoples who show concrete commitment and progress toward creating the internal cohesion necessary to a functioning society.  Our efforts would be effective only if they were an add-on to what was already happening.  That would be the only way we would further the U.S.’s strategic interest in central Africa. 

In the meantime, can outside governments do something to stop the killing?  No they can’t stop the killing and then realistically expect anything significant to coalesce in terms of viable, accepted borders.  Jimmy and Johnny will fight until they decide not to.  That said, what will happen to a place like the Congo?  Since the DRC is an imposed artifice to begin with, its peoples must determine their fate and decide if the artifice is worth keeping.  If that means six or seven new, immediately more cohesive countries arise from the conflict, then so be it.  If that means a George Washington rises up and leads everyone to become “Congolese” and toward stability and prosperity, then so be it.  Either way, it is neither our fight, nor our classroom.  

More tomorrow on the imperatives of realistic foreign policy.