Outliving this Day and Coming Safe Home

My recent post “Gaffes and Jackasses” appears to have prompted a record number of hits from readers. Apparently the subject – criticism of Mitt Romney’s take on Arab-Muslim culture as a major, if not primary, cause of the Palestinians’ distress – is of great interest. It should be.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is reputed to have said “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” My study of history teaches me that Moynihan’s “conservative truth” is probably more attune with reality. For example, the state of European society remained pretty much the same for the millennium plus from the end of the Roman Empire until the culture evolved with the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. These movements preceding and caused the political change. The Enlightenment in particular was the cultural force behind the successful American Revolution, and the less successful, but still sea-changing, French Revolution. Many other examples can be had, most somewhat more complex and nuanced to be expounded in a short blog.

Richard Landes followed up with a rather cogent essay from which I quote:

“In making his brief case, Mr. Romney cited two books: “Guns, Germs and Steel,” by geographer Jared Diamond, and “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” by economist David Landes (my father). As in other fields of social “science,” economists argue about whether development derives from cultural advantages or from natural ones such as resistance to disease and access to primary resources. Prof. Diamond, whose book focuses on societies’ natural advantages, last week wrote an op-ed in the New York Times emphasizing both culture and nature and trying to draw Prof. Landes in with him.

“But Israel (which neither book examined) and the Arab world (which only the Landes book examined) illustrate the primacy of culture as both necessary and sufficient for economic development. Israel, a country with no natural resources, an economic backwater even in the Ottoman Empire, rose to the top of the developed world in a century on culture alone. The Arab nations, on the other hand, illustrate the necessity of a certain kind of culture: Even those with vast petrodollars still have among the least productive economies in the world.

“But there are cultures whose favored mode is not voluntary but coerced and zero-sum relations, where the principle of “rule or be ruled” dominates political and economic life. The elites in such cultures hold hard work in contempt, and they distrust intellectual openness and uncontrolled innovation as subversive. They emphasize rote learning and unquestioning respect for those in authority. Protection rackets rather than law enforcement assure the public order and bleed the economy. Public criticism brings sharp retaliation. Powerful actors acquire wealth by taking, rather than making.

“Few cultures on the planet better illustrate the latter traits than the Arab world, a fact outlined in painful detail by a 2002 United Nations report written by Arab intellectuals. As “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” points out, Arab culture intensifies these problems with its attitude of hyper-jealousy and misogyny toward women, which turns out entitled sons and cloistered daughters.

“Even the huge influx of petrodollars did not change the basic contours of Arab economies: Rather than fueling economic development that benefited all, it bloated corrupt and opaque elites. Oil-rich countries like Libya and Iraq have social structures akin to those of oil-bereft Egypt and Syria. Change may occur, but it is hindered by an authoritarian culture that fears it. Such societies impoverish the masses, while elites thrive on their debasement.”

The entire essay can be found here.

Still, the most distressing aspect of the debate is that so many supposedly learned persons equate culture and race, or ethnicity.   The benefits of identity politics to some factions aside, there is an intuitive reason for this notion. The historical isolation of peoples tended to cause human physical traits to evolve somewhat differently, mostly in response to environment. Cultures developed in the same way. But humans are human and share in excess of 99% common genes. Culture is behavior based on a value system, and behavior is not genetic, at least within the same species. In other words, humans can learn, and change their behavior when a superior culture – a value system – is presented to them. The American culture is not based on race or ethnicity. This nation’s culture has been formed, maybe not as a melting pot, as has been said, but perhaps by emulsification, or synthesis. No wonder why things get a little testy and tense from time to time.

Commentator Michael Kinsley (somewhat left of center – see, I give the devil his due) tells us that a”gaffe”is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.

From various news sources, including the Associated Press and London newspapers:

Mitt Romney outraged Palestinians on Monday, telling Jewish donors that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians.

Romney’s latest “trouble” (?) stemmed from a speech he gave to Jewish donors in which he suggested that their culture was part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians.

“As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,” the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who ate breakfast at the luxurious King David Hotel.

“It is a racist statement and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation,” said Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

A few observations:

Romney is dead right about “culture making all the difference.” Culture is a system of values. It is not art, music, and literature, although those are products of culture, and have a way of accurately reflecting it. Simply put, culture is an attitude about how to live.  Romney could not have picked a better example than Jewish culture. For centuries — nay, nearly two millennia — Jews were oppressed in their Diaspora. Yet they maintained their values system and survived, and in some cases even thrived, despite constant oppression and occasional pogroms. When the bonds of oppression were removed by broader cultures that valued individual liberty, the Jewish culture enabled its adherents to explode with creativity, industry, and individual success far out of proportion to their numbers. The help that Jews received from government was mostly to be left alone – so they could realize their potential. The Muslim-Arab culture, on the other hand, may have once had great potential, but became submerged in a miasma of superstition and suspicion. Whatever the Middle East may have once been, by the time the Jews arrived in the late 19th and 20th Centuries — as legal immigrants –that part of the world was a wasteland. The Israelis made it a garden. Much of the work they did was done before they had a government of their own  As Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post points out the Palestinians are “a would-be nation with culture of repression, a culture of corruption and a culture of terrorism — a place where a majority say suicide bombing is fine, Osama bin Laden was great, corruption is rampant, free speech is non-existent, and voters cast their ballots for a terrorist government in Gaza.” I might add that another part of their culture is that they regard women as only slightly better than their dogs and camels.

Palestinian leaders — echoed by left wingers here — call Romney’s observation “racism”? Well why not? Today in our society, an accusation of racism is only slightly less worse than one of pedophilia.   Utter crap. I don’t usually indulge in scatological language, but it is necessary here. Racism is judging a person solely by his genetic immutable physical characteristics, not his behavior or value systems. One can be born into a culture, but one can also reject it, and should, particularly if it is pathological. Cultures stand on their merits to be judged and accepted or shunned and rejected. A person’s “race” does not dictate what values he accepts or rejects. As Ayn Rand once observed “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” It means, “in practice that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the character and actions of a collective of ancestors.”  Racism is nothing more or less than tribalism, befitting only savages.

As far as offending those Palestinian leaders. I don’t think it’s possible for the United States to get on their good side — and why should we?

Bill the Bard famously included a humorous interlude in the midst of his tragedies as a method to relieve the built up tension.  The gravedigger scene in Hamlet or the porter scene in Macbeth are some examples. Many contemporary dramatic films and plays contain similar scenes, as does real life.  Residing in a vintage house in an old neighborhood occasionally presents one, as here.

Last evening while Martha retired a bit early, I went into the next room to read for a bit.  At some point, I dozed off only to be awakened around 1:00 a.m. by what sounded to a minor cat altercation. Since our two felines occasionally have issues with one another, I thought nothing of it and pick up my Nook to finish reading a chapter.  A minute or two later, I looked up to see Martha standing over me.  “There’s a raccoon under the bed,” she reported in a calm, measured voice, “and I’m not sure how to proceed.”  (This is a woman who thinks nothing of picking up a snake from the middle of a road so it won’t get run over, in case you’re wondering.)  I replied with something like “I’m not sure either,” but, curious wen into the bedroom and saw this:

Yet another opportunity for Point-counterpoint.

“Is America Crazy? Ten Reasons it Might Be” – Posted by John Cassidy

Another New Yorker contributor John Cassidy offered ten tenets that he believes many Americans hold that demonstrates national craziness. He seems to ask whether this country is a ten million square mile booby hatch. As Mr. Cassidy is a recent immigrant who is now a citizen, one might question his sanity for wanting to join us, as he seems to express a left of center view. Perhaps he can be converted.
　
Mr. Cassidy writes: “Some of these statements may be true. But truth or falsehood isn’t the point here: it is whether or not certain beliefs are amenable to reason. I don’t think these are, which is what puts them in the category of irrationality, flakiness, nonsense, nuttiness, absurdity, craziness….”

The tenets he claims that a substantial number of Americans hold fast to are stated rather broadly, in many cases, overly so. Most in question form would be objectionable if put to a witness in court as compound questions, or assuming facts not in evidence – the “when did you stop beating your wife” question. Pollsters working for a candidate or on behalf of an issue frequently use this technique to drum up evidence of support. Nevertheless, I will quote exactly how Mr. Cassidy posited them and respond.

1. Gun laws and gun deaths are unconnected.
Obviously, if one is shot with a gun and dies, the death is connected to the gun. The relationship of the law and the shooter’s act may be impossible to connect. The law not only would seek to control the availability of guns, but also when their use would be permissible or not. Also, homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths have different dynamics. Furthermore, while it is true that other countries that have restricted private ownership have much lower numbers and rates of gun homicides, there are some – Czech Republic and Switzerland come to mind – that are nearly as permissive as the most permissive of the United States, yet have a low rate. Part, if not all, of the answer lies in the U.S. having the most diverse population in the world. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations in one place goes a long way to explain.

2. Private enterprise is good; public enterprise is bad.
This is a pretty broad statement, but it would depend on what the “public enterprise” is and at what level of government it functions. The functions of defense, law enforcement, and a coercive system for settling disputes among persons should in most cases be a government monopoly, depending again on the level of government. Common rights-of-way, whether land, water, or air, should be generally be supervised, and regulated. They to some degree should planned, developed, and maintained at common expense; the is, taxes paid to government. Production of goods and services should be left to the private sector because government involvement historically has been inefficient and politicized and involves the coercive power of the state to selectively benefit those who wheedle their way in to the halls of power.

3. God created America and gave it a special purpose.
There are many different concepts of God, all of which are, and should be, constitutionally protected. Many different people believe theirs is the Promised Land. Beyond that, my comments would not be useful.

4. Our health-care system is the best there is.
In most ways, the actual product is the best. Patients from other countries come he for treatment, especially for heard to treat diseases and trauma. Judging it based on life expectancy, the most common measure used by the advocates of reform, is flawed because of our huge and diverse population. The most frequent criticism that has resulted in the recent turmoil is not the actual product quality, but the methods of finance and delivery. At lot depends on whether one believes that everyone, regardless of the ability to pay, should have the same level and quality of medical services. Despite the moralizing by the proponents of government takeover of medical care services, that is not an absolute. Our financing, through employer provided “insurance” that is tax deductible when individuals cannot have the same tax benefit is flawed. That, along with coverage for routine visits to physicians or minor complaints or examination, which distorts the market rate for such services, is the real root of the problem.

5. The Founding Fathers were saintly figures who established liberty and democracy for everyone.
Depends on one’s definition of “saintly.” Their goal was to establish a functioning system of governance commensurate with a maximum amount of individual liberty. Nearly all of them recognized that a democracy can be as tyrannical as a monarchy, and could easily deteriorate into mob rule. It did in France about the time the Constitution was being implemented. The Founders idea of a democratic republic was somewhat analogous to that of a constitutional, or limited, monarchy. The ultimate authority is limited. In a democratic republic that authority is that of the people, but they would be governed by certain fundamental principles. The most important of these is that the individual is sovereign in most of his activities; the majority is retrained from violating that sovereignty by a system of check and balances. The Federalist No 10 is instructive on this point. The culture of the time did not hold women the equal of men in public affairs, and, while the institution of slavery was becoming suspect, it was still not generally regarded as morally repugnant, and it was, in the view of many, a necessity for an economy where the primary source of wealth was land producing cash crops. The Founders did put in place the structure that fostered a free market economy that permitted innovation and inquiry that produced the industrial revolution that in turn would eventually change the culture.

6. America is the greatest country in the world.
Rather subjective, but if you don’t think so, maybe you should look around for someplace else to go. But, maybe not in all cases. Recall the cry of immigrant American Carl Schurz, Senator and Secretary of the Interior: “My country right or wrong. If right, to keep right; if wrong, to set right. But always my country.”

7. Tax rates are too high.
Perhaps. More importantly, too many tax breaks are used as a means of social engineering and favoring pet projects. A huge number of people do not actually pay any income tax. They have no skin in the game. It is true that consumption taxes are imposed on everyone who buys non-exempt goods and services.

8. America is a peace-loving nation: the reason it gets involved in so many wars is that foreigners keep attacking us.
Generally true. Particularly when “attacking” might be said to take different forms. The War of 1812, intervention in World War I, and perhaps Vietnam and Iraq were ill advised. The flaw in the latter two arguably was the manner in which they were prosecuted.

9. Cheap energy, gasoline especially, is our birthright.
No, nothing is a birthright. All sources of energy should be tapped, and considered. The marketplace will sort out the ones that are the most efficient. The fact that the United States has exploited energy resources more than other countries is a result of better technology and innovation. Pollution is a negative externality of energy production that is akin to trespass. Reasonable restraint and abatement measures are legitimate government functions.

10. Everybody else wishes they were American.
Probably not, but there are a lot trying to immigrate. So many that it causes a lot of concern, even across the political spectrum.

Craziness? I am not sure anyone would hold to all of these tenets as he stated them. But I invite further comment.

Adam Gopnik, a regular contributor to the New Yorker, posted a defense of President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” speech and sentiment to that magazine’s blog. It was brought to my attention by a reader and correspondent who frequently provides grist for my mill. After reading it, I opined that it was rather shallow. Challenged to justify that sentiment, I offer the following:

Barack, Mitt, and Adam Smith — Posted by Adam Gopnik
 link to the post here

“From the meaning of what “is” is to the meaning of “that”—American political discourse can sometimes move in depressing monotony around its little circles. Where former President Clinton’s defense of his famous sentence on his deposition turned on the problem of the past tense, President Obama’s so-called “un-American” words depend on his using “that” as a kind of pronoun, with the question being the antecedent to which this “that” referred, if that, uh, makes any sense. Anyway, his precise words are worth reviewing:
‘Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something—there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.’

“What President Obama was saying was perfectly clear: the “that” in his statement refers to the bridges and roads and “this unbelievable American system.” He wasn’t, despite what one may have heard from Mitt Romney, saying that you didn’t build your own business. He was saying that your neighbors and ancestors helped. We drive on roads built for each by all.”

Well, it is hardly perfectly clear. Rules of grammatical construction at best make it clear that he was referring to “business” not anything else. The ‘nearest referent’ rule would dictate ‘that’ refers to business, which is the nearest and, in the absence of inflection of speech, the antecedent of ‘that’ as used here. I watched the video to see if the tone of voice or inflection would show otherwise. It doesn’t. Moreover, the sentiment expressed is consistent with the contemporary left-wing – ‘progressive’ if you must – agenda.

“What is strange about this bizarre adventure in amplified untruth, apart from its simple mendacity, is that what the President was saying was not some late arriving, New Deal-style codicil to the theory of free markets; it’s what the theory of free markets is. It’s the premise at the very heart of all free-market theory as Adam Smith—the guy whose profile is on every libertarian tie—conceived it. As I had occasion to write in a long piece on Smith’s thought a year or so ago, the notion of Adam Smith as an apostle of laissez-faire who would have recoiled in horror, or even narrowed his eyes in suspicion, at the idea that a healthy state precedes and oversees a truly free market is not merely a caricature of his actual thought—it is in many ways the direct reverse of what he said and argued for length and with great lucidity.”

What’s really bizarre is this guy’s wordiness. Is he getting paid by the word, a la Charles Dickens? A more terse sentence might be “Not only is this a lie; it is not a recent, leftist idea, but is really what Adam Smith meant.” There: 20, rather than 67, words in a concise sentence that doesn’t have to be parsed. But, hey, left-wingers love euphemisms, and long, verbose sentences are the most euphemistic of all. As for lucidity, Smith’s work was exceptionally methodical, but many, many parts of it would be a great substitute for Ambien.

As for substance, Smith ever used the term “laissez-faire” and like many such appellations, one can put whatever spin they want on it to make their point. The meaning our leftists put on it is that akin to Russian (or Sicilian, for that matter) business practices, which are decidedly not capitalism – or any free-market species. Furthermore, to say that modern libertarian-leaning economic thinkers regard Adam Smith’s work as some kind of Holy Writ is far from the truth and patently ridiculous. Smith was the one of the first economists to describe the free-market, but his ideas have been built upon and refined over the years. F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman are two of the more recent purveyors of the free-market.

“Smith’s work comes in two volumes, his ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ and his ‘Wealth of Nations.’ In both, his primary concern is not to free mankind from the hold of government but to free the market from the undue influence of a handful of hereditary plutocrats (nothing personal, Mitt) who seek to escape the rules of the market, control their own costs, and set their own prices, contributing only as much to the public weal as they feel like. It’s a radical, not a conservative doctrine (which is why Dr. Johnson distrusted him so much). Smith was for a government that intervened regularly and actively on behalf of consumers and against the natural tendency of ‘producers’—i.e., very wealthy people, whether aristocratic landowners or manufacturers or, perhaps, financial-leverage experts—to band together for their own benefit. The laissez-faire economy, truly ‘left alone,’ becomes a conspiracy of producers against consumers, of sellers against buyers, and makes the submissive state hostage to special interests. As Smith wrote, ‘The interest of the dealers’—i.e., manufactures and merchants—‘in any particular branch of trade or manufacture, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public.’”

Just mentioning his cheap shot in its proper characterization is comment enough. Aside from that, this paragraph is utter nonsense. For one thing the “hereditary plutocrats” (another term Smith never used) in the 18^th Century were the landed aristocrats – the nobility – who had a legal status superior to all but the monarch. Their wealth was legally protected from divestment. More importantly; they were the government, that is, the state (although in France, Louis XIV made it clear that he was the state. Another thing, doesn’t this guy understand that the government in the 18^th Century almost everywhere except in the former British North American colonies was the aristocracy. His out of context quote from the Wealth of Nations distorts the point Smith was making. The way that a “the laissez-faire economy, truly ‘left alone,’ becomes a conspiracy . . .” is when state power is a used to foster the special interests. The passage in which Smith’s quote was contained was an argument against ill-considered regulation of commerce. Smith recognized that those of a particular interest would have a better knowledge of that interest and would seek to regulate so as to restrict their competition. Nowadays, it’s called regulatory capture. Who squawked the loudest when the airlines were deregulated? The airlines (except for Southwest). Obamacare is capture of the government by the insurance industry – anyone surprised by that wasn’t paying attention.

“Smith, as I wrote, does not think that ‘government is the problem’; he thinks problems arise when the rich are able to make the government take their side. A healthy sovereign state is what serves the public against the producers. (He was all for high wages, by the way, on the now old-fashioned grounds that the actual wealth of a society can be discerned not by how much its top class has—you can find rich topsters in Ur or ancient Egypt—but by the dissemination of wealth to the many. ‘The high price of labor,’ he wrote, ‘is the essence of public opulence.’)”

More gibberish. I suppose a “healthy sovereign state” could exist if we could find Plato’s Philosopher King. The closest humans have ever come might have been George Washington, or possibly Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, but they both gave up their power before being corrupted by it. What is the “public”? The producers are essential to any society. Without the producers there are no consumers because there is nothing to consume. Consumers must be producers, too. Otherwise, except for the small number of outliers who are mentally or physically impaired, they are either looters or moochers. He is correct that Smith was in favor of high wages – commensurate with the value they purchase, that is. Henry Ford understood that 100 years ago, and so have many other entrepreneurs. The United States has been generally freer in economic terms than any other country, and it is exceptionally wealthy across the board. It is true that there are only a small number of fabulously wealthy – but no one starves in this country – a country where even poor people are fat. For all practical purposes, there is greater economic equality here than ever before.

It isn’t just that a free market can survive regulation; it’s that the free market is the product of regulation, regulation designed to protect the public from the kind of arrangement that, let’s say, allows people with undue influence on the government to have a lower tax rate than people who don’t. This makes Smith, as I wrote, a firm believer in public goods: his state has an obligation to build roads and schools, establish an army, build bridges and highways, and do all the other things necessary for a sane polity in which the market can function naturally. Everyone should pay for them, and the rich should always pay more than others. “The rich should contribute to the public expense not only in proportion to their revenue,” Smith writes, “but something more than in that proportion.” (He also thought, Mitt, that taxes should be paid with joy, as a contribution to the well-being of all.)

This “paid with joy” is rather ridiculous. Can you imagine looking forward to April 15 with the same anticipation as Christmas? I’m sure there are those who are totally indifferent to having to pay taxes because it is hardly a flea bite to them, and anyway, they have paid accountants to figure and pay without any bother. But joy? Come on. The “regulation” that facilitates a free market is the rule of law that prevents one taking another’s property by physical force and enforcing contracts freely made. Gangsters, whether they are termed “robber barons” or mafiosi, can only succeed where they can get a way with forcing a “your money or your life” deal, or employ theft by stealth or lying and cheating. That is what government is designed to protect.

“And this—that—all goes deeper than questions of efficiency, to questions of what we can only call the common emotional tone that lets prosperity happen. As Emma Rothschild writes in “Economic Sentiments,” her matchless 2001 study of Smith’s thought, it depends on what might be called niceness: Smith’s “faith … is in the mildness and thoughtfulness of most individual men and women. He is induced thereby to believe that they will usually not pursue their interests in grossly oppressive ways, and that they will usually wish to live in a society in which other people are not grossly oppressed or deprived.” Even if more money can be made by the producer by enclosing the land the peasant’s animals grazed on or by hiring child labor—or by looting someone’s pension funds—a decent concern for the opinions of mankind will stop the wise producer from doing these things, because he will know that they will break the bonds of common sympathy, the sense that we’re all in this together, on which the producer’s—or the equity manager’s—well-being ultimately depends.”

Haven’t read Ms. Rothschild’s work, so I cannot comment on it, except to say Gopnik’s gushing indicates it is probably of like mind. He citation of it is an exercise in confirmation bias. This appeal ad misericordiam with examples of the enclosure of the “land the peasant’s animals grazed on” and employment of “child labor” are also non sequiturs. As is the “looting of pension funds” attempt at updating. Enclosing land used by peasants to keep them from grazing animals might have been an act of feudal barons protected by the king’s henchmen, i.e., the government and for really practical reasons, probably did not often occur. Interestingly, we had a reverse situation in our history. Parts of the Western United States in the late 19^th Century, saw e had range wars between cattlemen who opposed the fencing of land by farmers – “homesteaders” who had obtained the land by purchase from the federal government under the Homestead Act. The United States had in turn purchased the land from France, or obtained it by the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War. (These conflicts were the background of many western movies including the classics Shane and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.) The cattle interests sought to prevent enclosure of the farmers’ private property by fence-cutting and even worse violence. In a number of cases, the U.S. Army took the side of the cattle barons. These conflicts were mostly settled by admission of new states whose legal systems recognized and enforced private property rights, including the right to fence in your land. The prospect of child labor tugs at heartstrings as a result of the images of Dickensian sweat-shops. Certainly states should prohibit the employment of children in some industries and occupations. But what about family farms, or other family businesses? The family farm really has gone the way of the horse and buggy as an economically significant institution, but they still exist. Many family businesses, mostly those of immigrants, have created considerable wealth from the efforts of all family members. As for looting of pension funds, no one should have any problem of vigorous prosecution of thieves and swindlers, a basic function of government. Unfortunately, we are never going to be able to prevent such crimes before the fact by draconian and idiotic regulations any more than were are going to similarly stop street crime. The ingenuity and inventive capacity of humans will always find outliers who can trick the system and get away with it, at least for awhile. The “decent concern for the opinions of mankind” will indeed restrain producers most from doing wrong, but not because of common bonds, but because producers want to sell their products. Rational people will not buy shoddy and overpriced goods. The fact that a good number of persons do not always act rationally cannot be helped. I say “always” because most eventually get the picture.

“It’s always easy, Smith knew, to provoke a cycle of exploitation, rage, and revolution; that’s what most of history has been. What’s hard is to replace it with one of “mildness”—of public decency, progressive reform, and shared prosperity. You couldn’t have a free market unless you had all the institutions of trust in place that only a sovereign state can guarantee. (If you want to know what capitalism looks like without those institutions, think of words like “Russia,” “oligarchs,” and “kleptocracy.”) Everything we mean by a free market depends on a functioning, sympathetic state—a state rooted not in selfish individualism but in a social sympathy so broadly articulated and institutionalized that every man is confident that he can make an honest deal with his fellow man.”
Again, this guy must be paid by the word. Instead of his verbose final sentence of the above paragraph, how about “For a free market to exist, we must have a government that will restrain and punish lying, cheating, stealing in the marketplace, and itself be restrained from doing the same.”

I understand why left-wing ideology eschews individualism . I don’t understand why anyone, especially an American who is steeped in the Nation’s history (it’s probably too much to ask for in this days and age for most to know any history) would be so dismissive of the concept. Collectivism has brought us tribalism, racism, feudalism, socialism (National and otherwise), communism, and other odious isms. Individualism brought us the Renaissance and Enlightenment; Newton and Einstein; Bacon and Benjamin Franklin; and, yes, Adam Smith.

I recall the words (which I actually, in-person, heard) of liberal Democrat Senator, former Vice-president, and one-time Presidential hopeful Hubert Humphrey where he said that “The more the government can do for you; the more it can do to you.” Or, said another way, The government that can give you all you want, can take from you all you have.

There is no capitalism where oligarchs and kleptocrats reign. That is gangster government, the antithesis of capitalism. It is hardly free, and it is oppressive in the extreme. Mao Tse-tung was correct when he said that all political power, that is, government, comes from the barrel of a gun. In our system, there are many niceties between a transgression and the gun, but the gun is ultimately there. The Russian mafia simply dispenses with what they might term the intermediary nonsense. Actually, Vladimir Putin is more frequently using regulatory schemes as a subterfuge to oppose those who might threaten his power. Who would have thought that the EPA and OSHA could be role models for the Russians?

“So the view that the President was articulating the other day in the “that” speech wasn’t even a mild and “acceptable” form of social democratic reproach; it was the root foundational view of the free market as its greatest apostle imagined it. So don’t apologize, Mr. President, and don’t explain. Say it again! What you were articulating were the principles on which the free market, and with it this republic, is built. And that … is … that.”
Utter nonsense, and a blatant ipse dixit. Or, in English, “this is what Smith meant because I say it is what he meant” – sometimes these foreign phrases actually save words. I previously read the entire official White House transcript to be certain the “you didn’t build that” quote was not taken out of context. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t an articulation of free market principles. It is a consistent articulation of leftist ideology along with “spread the wealth” – hey, he warned us ahead of time. Reminds me of another politician. Oh, I can hear the howls already for that observation.

The free market has actually existed from prehistoric, primitive times, on some level, everyplace. It even existed in Soviet Russia, Mao’s China, and Castro’s Cuba, albeit only at the village or neighborhood level. If it were to have got beyond that, it would have been squelched, or at least taken over by the state – and ruined. A free market has always needed a mechanism to keep the murderers, looters, moochers, liars, cheaters, and thieves at bay. That is what the Enlightenment writers like Locke, Hobbes, and Jefferson articulated so well. Some organized societies have been better at that function than others. Because the ultimate arbiter of social and economic mores here on Earth is Mao’s gun, it. It must be used only in response to its first use, and must be in the hands of everybody.

Sanette Tanaka writes in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“At Augustana College, they call it “the short goodbye.”
“It’s when administrators at the small private college in Rock Island, Ill., give parents 15 minutes to say goodbye to their children. Then, students are told to report to the gym for freshman orientation, while parents are basically told to shove off.

“‘Parents go meet with advisers in small groups to compose themselves, and then they need to go home,'” says Evelyn Campbell, dean and vice president of student services at Augustana.
Faced with what a Syracuse University administrator calls “the most over-involved generation of all time,” colleges across the country are increasingly focusing on parents who are struggling with the transition from high school to college. Colleges are holding special orientation seminars for parents, appointing administrators to handle outreach with parents and providing emailed newsletters and specific parent portal websites, among other services.

“One of the toughest parts, administrators say, is educating parents how to stay involved without coming across as overbearing, or worse, a hovering ‘helicopter parent.'”

Goodness, gracious! Have parents really become this obsessive?

Wonder if any of these parents actually use helicopters?  Read on here.

In the wake of the Aurora mass homicide, there is understandable grief. Like all terrible occurrences, there are questions why it happened.   For better or worse, I do not believe there is an answer.

Of course, in this country and elsewhere, murders occur every day. A good number of victims are innocent people, children among them, who were minding their own business. These murders are committed for malicious reasons, during the perpetration of other crimes, and for no discernible reasons by persons described as insane or deranged. Mass killings by lone persons are usually the product of derangement, and because they happen at once, they grab our attention. Many more persons in this country are killing in car wrecks than by perpetrators using firearms or other hand weapons. Given the incidence of road rage these days, there is no doubt that a good number of fatal car wrecks are the result of the use of vehicles as a weapons. Deaths on the roadways are so commonplace that they rarely are reported outside of the immediate geographical area. But the mass murder is different in that respect and always results in a lot of collective hand-wringing.

After the Virginia Tech massacre several years ago, someone wrote that the truth is that there is nothing to be done, because a minuscule sub-set of human beings are insane and discovering who they are before the fact is near impossible. There is not much to add to that assessment.

There have been attempts on the left to re-start the gun control debate and calls to enact stringent gun control laws. That will not happen. In two divisive issues in this country where individual liberties come into stark juxtaposition with life and death, the public policy has come down on the side of individual liberty: gun control and abortion. We have decided that the Constitution recognizes that individuals have the right to possess the means of protection their persons and property, even if it means that some madman will occasionally misuse it and people will be killed. Similarly, we have decided that a woman has the right to individually make the decision, for whatever reason of her own, to abort a fetus, which is a potential or actual, depending on one’s view, human being. Neither public policy will change, unless we become a very different nation.

The fact is that none of us gets out of this world alive. What happens afterward is a matter of faith, conjecture, or pure speculation that we all have to come up with ourselves and may be one of the few places where one idea is as good as another. While many act as if God (nature, fate, or the Higgs boson) will make an exception in their case, that exception has not so far been proven to have happened, and is not a good bet. When it happens the most lucid statement that can be made is that is the time to go. Whether the grim reaper’s agent is a an evil person or madman with a gun, one’s own hand, disease or physical deterioration hardly matters to the persons concerned, as much as those who temporarily survive them might grieve.

“It’s no good. You’re a person and I’m a people.”  Jerry Lewis in Cinderfella (1960 film)

Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren takes Mitt Romney to task over a statement he alleged made that “corporations are people.” Ms. Warren’s complains that “People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They love and they cry and they dance. They live and they die.” She wants Mitt to “learn the difference.”

Actually, she’s partially right. Most corporations don’t die natural deaths, but they all can be killed.

Well, Jack and Suzy Welch have published an interesting rebuttal to Ms. Warren’s diatribe demonstrating the corporations are indeed people, and that what she really means that those of us who do business, and I mean employees, employers, and contractors are not really “people” but some kinds of monsters or inhuman villains. I, for example, have been the owner of corporations for my own business and professional purposes, and invest in many public held corporations. I didn’t need the droids to rebuild me as Darth Vader did.

I have no doubt that Ms. Warren knows better – she is a lawyer and a law professor – about corporations. She is merely pandering to the left’s “useful idiots.” (Yes, the right has idiots too, but they don’t want to confiscate my property – their main concern are social issues that don’t much matter in the grand scheme of things.) I am also confident that those who read my posts have at least a pretty good idea of what corporations are and how the function in our economy. There are a surfeit of woefully ignorant folks out there, however. So I believe it is appropriate to articulate the issue.

Humans have conducted business from the earliest times as individual proprietors and together as partners. It doesn’t matter how large or small the enterprise is. There are a number of sole proprietors in the United States who have over $100 million in revenues, but nowadays that is an exception. The primary disadvantage of doing business as a proprietor or in a partnership is that the business owners have unlimited liability for both tort and contact debts. Because most humans are risk adverse, this tends to discourage investments in start-ups and stifles growth.

With the improvements in navigation technology in the 15^th Century and the demand for commodities that could only be produced in far off places, many opportunities for expanded commerce and consequent acquisition of wealth appeared. Trouble was, such a voyage was also risky. Bad weather, tropical disease, and piracy could cause a venturer to lose everything in one expedition. Furthermore, outfitting an expedition to sail from, say, England, to the Orient, was expensive. Few merchants had sufficient funds to invest in such a voyage. A group might be willing to invest enough money if the return for the risk was great enough. If they joined in the venture to share profits they became partners under the law, and they would be individually liable for each others’ debts. Many were not willing to take such exposure without direct control. Thus, a facility was needed where individuals would become owners of the enterprise and stand to share profits commensurate with their interest but risk only what they invested, and no more. In order to accomplish this, the state would create, or charter, an entity to be the nominal owner of the business. The joint-stock company, or corporation, was born.

Over the subsequent half-millennium, commerce and industry grew to what would have been a unbelievable size. Commercial and industrial development fed on each other. Once the principle of individual liberty – a symbiotic product – was established where men could inquire freely and say publicly that 2 plus 2 equals 4 without being burned at the stake, science and technology flourished and opened up new vistas for enterprise. This continues to this very day.

Without corporations, our economy as we know it today could not have been possible, and it would disappear tomorrow if the legal status of corporations was abolished.

But are corporations people? Of course they are. The corporate form is a legal fiction, and has no practical existence apart from the individuals who invest in and own it. Every business corporation is ultimately owned by real live human beings. They participate in the profits made, and yes, the risk incurred, by enterprise. Corporations can have one owner, like me; or can be owned by millions, either directly, or through retirement or other investment accounts, also like me and many, many others. Publicly held corporations are an aggregate opportunity for everybody to participate in productive enterprise.

Corporations are also a vehicle for individuals who want to be entrepreneurs but minimize their risk of losing everything by failure, which can, and does happen. It is true that no lenders and few vendors will give start-up businesses credit, corporations or not, without individual guarantees, but there is some shield from other contract and tort liability. Accidents and force majeures will occur.

 And so, to answer Ms. Warren, corporations do have hearts, kids, and get jobs. They do get sick, love, cry, and dance. If she were to descend from her ivory tower in academia and look at the real world perhaps she would understand that.

In the meantime, I am grateful for her giving me the impetus to write this. I also thank her for reminding me to share some of my wealth, such as it is. I will share some of my corporate investment profits with Warren’s opponent Senator Scott Brown, with the fervent hope that it will help him convince a sufficient number of the good people in Massachusetts to keep both of them where they belong.

In Roanoke, Virginia last Friday, President Obama explained during a campaign event that anyone who was successful owed a debt to society.

Here is part of the text of his remarks from the White House transcript www.whitehouse.gov:

“[L]ook, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Oh, really? You didn’t build your business? Someone else did? Pray tell, who was that? The tooth fairy, perhaps. These words are nothing less than an insult to every risk-taking visionary in America. Of course, the President was no doubt speaking to a friendly crowd most of whom are probably waiting with bated breath to be told what goodies the current regime will dole out to them. He can get away with it perhaps because those building businesses are inner-directed folks who couldn’t care less about the opinions of drones who don’t have the gumption of a turnip.

Perhaps they should.

I may be taking this far too personally because I have been self-employed in businesses and profession for the past 35 years, and have siblings and friends who have done likewise. Speaking only for myself, I don’t believe I was “so smart” though I take exception to the notion that many more than a few worked harder, longer, and more persistently than me, or other self-employed business people. Persistence and willingness to put off the enjoyment of the carnal fruits of enterprise are the key, not smarts or talents. Though such abilities can certainly can help in particular endeavors, they are more often than not squandered. Tortoises live longer than hares for a reason.

Much of the reward of entrepreneurship comes from doing it, not necessarily the economic or financial benefits. The latter quite often are a long time coming. When they do, our President and his ilk want to take it away. I am not bashing the impecunious, most of them want the chance to better themselves. Far too many are unwilling to pay the price.

Further analysis of the President’s words is appropriate. Did somebody along the line give every entrepreneur some help? Well, most businesses have employees — sometimes referred to as “the help” though that term seems to have become somewhat of a pejorative. Thus, business creates jobs (nowadays, seemingly an end in itself), and they pay those employees. Employing someone means taking on numerous responsibilities and potential liabilities. Employees have to be paid, regardless of how poorly they perform or how incompetent they turn out to be – and before the business owner gets paid! Some ventures attract investors, which is “help” I suppose, but those investors are expecting a return, and wouldn’t invest unless there was a good chance of one. As for bank loans, does anyone really think they are gratuitous?

What about the great teacher? Well, again I can speak only for myself, but the teachers, apart from those in elementary and high school, that helped me the most really did so by at least seemingly trying to do the opposite. I speak of the numerous faculty members of Screw U; real world denizens.

What about the vagaries of chance? Well, to use the card game metaphor, we are all dealt a hand.  Playing it is what counts. Even the great guy that teaches you how to fish probably won’t buy you bait and tackle from then on, and certainly won’t make you get off your duff and go to the lake.

Yes, I am grateful to God, fate, or just random luck (depending on your belief system) that I was born and raised in this “unbelievable American system” that was founded 236 years ago. The system that was grounded in individual liberty, not collective entitlement. Our government was instituted to protect individuals, and particularly their property, from predators, foreign and domestic, to enforce contracts, and to foster free trade. When government exceeds these functions, it begins to become oppressive and tends to stifle entrepreneurship. The limits of those functions can be debated all day long, but it is safe to say that they have been exceeded by a good bit. Suffice it to say that the prosperity that facilitates the ability for those functions to exist at all is individual liberty and the free market capitalism it fosters.

Back in the late ‘60s when I was finishing up school, I mentioned to a local store owner that I would like to start a business someday. He said to me that when he started, he would have told me to “go for it” but no more. Too much paperwork; too many regulations to keep up with, he told me. He didn’t know the half of it.

Why, then, would anyone be an entrepreneur?  I suppose the short answer might be to become rich. Well, there are many who do not become wealthy, but they are nonetheless happy. There is always that chance. Nevertheless many persons are discouraged from even trying to start-up an enterprise, as well as they might be since statistics show that most start-ups fail within the first three years. Many persons are content with their lot, and have neither the gumption or the inclination to take the risk. Also, there are many competent and highly trained persons who took the trouble to acquire skills in demand who would rather be employees rather then put up with the headaches and land mines of self-employment. Stanford University historian and archaeologist Ian Morris believes that the story of civilizations is the story of lazy, greedy, and scared people. If American exceptionalism means anything, it means there are fewer of those folks here then elsewhere.

The real explanation almost has to be that the spirit of entrepreneurship is so great in many of those who have it that the more minefields and roadblocks that are put in their way, the more they enjoy navigating to overcome the obstacles. Given that reality, I don’t see Atlas shrugging for awhile. In some ways, it’s really too much fun playing the game. Cheers!

What exactly is the problem? Is it “politics” – which admittedly covers a lot of territory? Are national security secrets somehow implicated? Why has it taken nearly three years to bring Nidal Malik Hasan to trial for the 13 charges of murder and 32 charges of attempted murder at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009? It took a year to have the Article 32 proceeding that formally recommended charges. It took nearly that long for the general court martial to be convened and the trial date of March 2012 to be set. That trial date was continued to August 20.

Not being a fan of grand conspiracy, I tend to believe it is a combination of bureaucratic inefficiency and perhaps timidity, Hasan’s health as a result of being rendered permanently a paraplegic by police gunshots at the time of the incident, and of course, delays sought by defense lawyers (and I, of course, accept that they are doing their job). The fact that Eric Holder’s justice department declined to charge Hasan with terrorism could suggest a political angle, but perhaps the involvement of Justice might only have delayed the trial further. As far as national security goes, is it possible to get useful information from Hasan? What can he have had? If any of the bad guys killed by drones were targeted as a result of information received from him, it might have been worth the wait. But I doubt that.

Whatever Hasan’s defense might be, it would almost have to be some sort of diminished capacity: insanity, for example. After all, there is no question that he did the deed, or the circumstances of his acts. Dozens of people, saw him shoot and shoot at the victims. The gun he used was immediately recovered. He was shot and disabled by two police officer, one of whom Hasan seriously wounded. This is not a whodunit that depends upon analysis of circumstantial evidence or testimony from witnesses whose credibility, or ability to observe an isolated act in dim light, can reasonably be questioned. There is no claim or evidence of self defense.

One can argue that all of the legal wrangling and folderol is really beside the point. Hasan received a punishment many would consider worse than death at the scene. The court martial he might finally face on August 20 is authorized to consider a death penalty. He’ll probably be so sentenced, but, even though I support the death penalty for certain crimes and criminals, I am not sure he should be. For believing Christians, he could still be forgiven, even for his heinous crimes on earth if he accepts Jesus as his saviour and/or repents (depending on which version of Christianity is accepted) before he dies. If his professed Muslim beliefs are right, he’ll go to heaven as a reward for dispatching so many of the infidel. For those who believe physical death ends everything, the death penalty means he will be put out of his misery sooner than later. On the other hand, for those who wish Nidal to suffer, and I tend to be among them, spending the rest of his life as a paraplegic in a military prison, surely fills that bill.

As a practical person, though, I believe it is too bad the police officers who shot Hasan didn’t kill him on the spot, or the emergency medical care he received had been less efficient. That ongoing medical care is costly, and I understand that Hasan still receives his paycheck from the Army every month. Of course, the expenses of the court martial, including the defense costs are doubtless in the millions of dollars. Is spending all of the resources that represents worth it?