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Doug Smith: TANSTAAFL – “There is no ‘free lunch'”

7 Jan

What lie behind us and what lies before us is overshadowed by ‘what lies within us’

doug smith

TANSTAAFL….

So the other day, among my other junk mail, I got a check. Now we are all looking for that million dollar check in the mail, and I’ll bet the creamer in my next cup of coffee many of you out there have gotten this same check.

It was a sign and spend check, free money, for $15,000. Free money. So easy. Just sign it, and spend it, and take care of Christmas. Except of course, it was not free at all. It was a loan, initiated if I were foolish enough to sign that check, and the usurious rate of 29% interest. The bills would be coming in about now.

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Now it got me to pondering whether the old adage is right. “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. “ (TANSTAAFL) Robert Heinlein immortalized the saying as the national motto of a group of independent minded stubborn cusses on the moon, who had a nasty habit of paying their debts, and working for what they got. (And distrusting government, but that is, perhaps, another article.)

Where did the notion of a free lunch come from? Actually beer halls and bars used to use the “free lunch” as a hook to bring patrons into their bar. Of course, that lunch was not free at all, or you’d be paying 3 cents instead of a nickel for that beer. Or those 4 beers. The mark up on the nickel beers they sold you, in return for a free lunch, was such that they could give you all the sandwiches you cared to eat as long as you were buying their beer and still make money off of you.

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For some, there is that deep seated “beat the system” urge to get something for free. Those who have gambled in Vegas can tell you that the house always wins, if you keep playing. The free lunch bars always win. And the free lunch politicians always win. TANSTAAFL. You pay more for the beer than your lunch is worth, you may win $100 bucks on blackjack, then lose it back on roulette, and politicians who pay you off with your money get elected, then, to your dismay, pay their promised free lunch to you by making you pay more taxes on your food. Even the free part. Wow, that doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?

Of course, if you keep the basic principle in mind, then it is fair. For then you will never fall for the long con that promises something for nothing. TANSTAAFL. Nothing in this world is free. If someone is offering you something for free, hold on to your wallet: he is picking your pocket.

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Governors are wavering toward the promise of free money in the form of subsidies for ACA approved policies which are so overpriced no one can afford them. If they play ball with the Fed, they get the money, and their constituents can afford the Unaffordable Affordable Care Act policies. For a while. Except, guess what? The government has no money, and produces no goods or services. So, where does it get the money to give to the states to give to the people to pay for an overpriced, unaffordable, and unwanted insurance policy? Here’s a hint: you are about to get your W-2 in the mail. That s right campers, you pay for the largess of the overly generous politicians. You pay in higher taxes. Have fun come April 15. You pay in reduced buying power of your dollar as the government prints money by the Trillions. Money that doesn’t exist. Money that devalues your dollar every day. If you or I did it, it would be counterfeiting, and a federal crime, punishable by a huge fine and 25 years in prison. Enemies have used counterfeiting as a weapon to devalue and undermine the economy of countries with whom they are at war. But as the government and the Fed does it, you simply get the bill.

Haven’t seen that bill come in the mail? Run to the grocery store and try to buy a piece of beef. Wonder why you are paying half again what you were 6 years ago? That is your bill for all the freebies the government is handing out.

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We see it in our schools as well. The School Building Authority offers millions to local school boards to build new buildings, but no one cent to maintain existing buildings. Not surprisingly, School Boards react like a good drug addict, selling moms false teeth and wedding ring to qualify for that 16 million dollar freebie. Except, of course, remember our rule about freebies? Who pays for them? TANSTAFL.

I was unsurprised recently to read of a local county school board preparing to build a new building. They were going to purchase a new piece of land for it at a cost of $300,000. Since the property was owned by one of the board members, she graciously recused herself from voting on whether or not to buy it. Conflict of interest, you say? Well perhaps it was. That never occurred to me. I’m sure no school board politicians would personally benefit from the millions of public largess intended for the good of the voters, and the children of their county. Oh wait, remember our rule? Where do freebies come from? And who do they ultimately benefit?

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TANSTAAFL. It’s a good word. Remember it. And remember the fellow who insists he wants to give you or your neighbor’s freebies has already planned how he is going to pick your pocket to do it.

But there just ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

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DOUG SMITH: The Pacifist, Part 2: The Fighting Quakers

31 Dec

Right to fight or fight for right?

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Note from the editor:  This is the second in a series of columns by author and historian, Doug Smith, where he contrasts varying views on pacifism and the potential historical impact.

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There is a High School in Philadelphia whose mascot is “The Fighting Quakers.”  That makes me smile, just as any good oxymoron.  I’m not picking on Quakers, nor is this about the history of real “fighting Quakers”, but it helps to illustrate where the rubber meets the road in radical pacifism.

Last time I began to look at militant pacifist Albert Einstein.  Einstein held the belief of pacifism.  But he was also burdened with knowledge.  He understood, better than most in the 1930s, the incredible force available in atomic power and weapons.  Yet why did he, an avowed pacifist, embark on a course that ended with the dawn of the atomic age?

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There is actually a long history for his thought process. In colonial days in America, supplying guns to Indian tribes was a controversial method of war.  Guns increased their danger to the colonists. So, depending on whether you were a British General wanting to enlist their help, or a Colonial Governor wanting to ensure the safety of citizens or settlers, giving them advanced weapons might be a good or bad thing.

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In the run up to WW2, America supplied poorer or less advanced nations with weapons (and other material for fighting or surviving) to oppose the advance of the totalitarian NAZI regime. Likewise, in response to Japanese aggression and atrocities in China and Burma, the US held back from supplying oil to fuel their war machine and economy.

This raises the question of why one would choose to make it easier or harder for another people to wage war.  Why, indeed?  Nations, and individuals, ultimately act from a sense of their own best interest.  Moral considerations may or may not apply, but we do not choose to starve when we may eat, shiver when we may be warm, or suffer when we may be in comfort, as a matter of normal daily living. An individual, or a group, may make choices that cause them to be hungry, cold, and uncomfortable for a time, for adequate cause. But this is not the choice they would make for their lifetime, given the chance to have the better way.  So too, our choices about other peoples or nations are rooted in self-interest.

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The world has a long and sordid history of bandits and megalomaniacs who want to impose their rule on the world, and reap the benefits and resources of those they subjugate.  From the Khans, to the Caliphs, to Napoleon, to Hitler, our history is strewn with hundreds of millions of violent deaths, and countless millions more living in the misery born of the mad dreams of these men.

Einstein had to make his moral struggles within the context of the somewhat pathological pacifist movement in England of the post WW1 era.  The popular notion was that WW1 was totally unjustified, and that English involvement was as well, and that, by extension, all war was always unjustified.  As Rebecca West noted in Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, “The Idea of Self-Preservation Was as jealously guarded from the Young as the Facts of Sex Had Been in Earlier Ages”.  A transcript from the trial of a British conscientious objector, being questioned by a military officer, before the battle of the Somme is enlightening.

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“If I hit you, would you not hit me back?” he asked.

“No,” Bert replied.

‘Then suppose the Germans got here, and those dear to you were in danger, would you stand by and see them ripped to pieces and not raise a sword in opposition?’

Bert: “I would certainly not strike them down. No man is justified in taking life.”

“But,” the official went on, “if you could save 500 poor women and children by fighting, would you not help them?”

Bert: “I would do my best to save life, but not by taking life.”

“So you would run away?” demanded his adversary, believing he had trapped Bert into an admission of cowardice.

“Certainly,”

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Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?  That is militant pacifism.  Even if faced with the situation of knowing women and children were about to be brutalized and killed, this hardcore pacifist would not lift a sword, raise a gun, or even (in his case, peel a potato that might be fed to a soldier.)

Now, in this context, Einstein looked at the atrocities of the Nazis, the brutal aggression, and pictured them with atomic weapons.   He had a choice to make.

Do I peel this potato, or not?

Who contributes more to peace and prosperity, then?

The radical pacifist refuses to peel a potato for a soldier, stands by and prays for peace as Germans slaughter 10s of millions, but will not sully his conscience by shooting one German soldier to save 500 Jewish children.

The soldier grips his gun, swallows his fear, and says no.  Not on my watch. Not past me. Not while I can breathe and fight you. I will not let you do this.

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Consider this.  What would the world look like if everyone outside of Germany and Japan had been like the pacifist in 1939? Now, what would it look like if everyone was like the soldier?

What is the result of partial steps, like cutting off the oil to Japan? And what does it mean to accept being hungry, cold, and uncomfortable, and putting your life between aggressors and the innocent?

Einstein chose to peel that potato. Many others chose a soldier’s lot.  Many died, and yes, many killed, to prevent Hitler’s vision of the world, backed up by long range missiles and atomic weapons.

The pacifist who can truly say, and mean, I will stand by and not kill you, even though it means you kill  my wife and children is not going to survive. His instincts are such that he and his kind will die out in a generation.  His thinking and actions have a form of morality, but lack the substance.

That they survive at all is a debt they owe to the soldier.

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The American soldier, sailor, airman, and marine has done more to further the cause of peace than all the pacifists ever whelped.

War has been the norm in all but 230 of the past 3500 years of civilization.  Those who are prepared to do violence to preserve their home and family, and equally prepared to let men live at peace, if they so choose, are to me, much more on the moral high ground than the pacifist who will let an innocent die or suffer to avoid violence.

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DOUG SMITH: MORALITY AND THE PACIFIST

26 Dec

Which perspective will history favor?

From the FSP moderator:  This is the first of a series of columns in which author and historian, Doug Smith, offers contrast between varying positions of an age-old question of morality: “Turn the other cheek” or “an eye for an eye”?

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Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, but Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

Hilaire Belloc

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I am fascinated with the question of how pacifists come to the decision never to fight.   I struggle to overcome my own fight of flight instinct.  When I am challenged, or threatened, those impulses make me want to seek safety by running, or by hurting the threat before it can hurt me.  Oh, who am I kidding? I just want to hurt them before they can hurt me.  With time and maturity, I learned to check those impulses with a soft response.  On other occasions, they led me to charge into a fight I had little chance of winning.

I admit to being in conflict when I was a Cold War sailor on a Nuclear Attack Submarine.

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If we carried out our primary mission, many sailors would die at once in a radioactive cloud of steam.   I empathized with those Russian sailors who faced the same risks as we did.  They knew, as we did, how the weapons deployed against us could either vaporize us, or, in a near miss, crack our hulls and send us plunging to the dark, cold bottom of the ocean, dying somewhere along the way down.  It was impossible to truly wish that death on another Submarine sailor, even our enemy.

We all hoped it might never happen to either of us.

On the other hand, I am certain that if the orders came, they were mere minutes from them sending nuclear death toward our cities or our fleets, or even us.  There would be no hesitation.  On the contrary, we would run in our skivvies and socks to battle stations.   We would be manning phones while pulling on our shirts, plotting targets while we tied our shoes, preparing weapons, and updating position data as we zipped our trousers.  We would launch quickly as we had a firing solution, hopefully before they could do the same to us, or to New York, or Washington, or our own home towns.

We had nothing in particular against those young Russian boys a few miles from us. None of us were particularly anxious for a war, nor were any, well most of us, homicidal.  But our job was to kill them, and kill them we would.

Now this brings me to Albert Einstein.  An avowed pacifist, he once said

“I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.”

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Yet his name is right there in any history of the atomic bomb along with Robert Oppenheimer. Einstein, as much as anyone, formed the Cold War battlefields into which we sailed.  Einstein’s involvement was not simply theoretical, although his theories did lead, by inevitable progression to the mushroom clouds over Trinity and Japan.

He also used his influence as a renowned scientist to write a series of letters to FDR, urging him to launch the Manhattan Project and develop atomic weapons.  An odd undertaking for a pacifist, is it not?  So what made the difference for Al?  Hitler absorbed Austria and began a war of acquisition in Europe.  There was abundant evidence of the brutality and cruelty of the Nazis, as well as indications his scientists doing research in Deuterium that could lead to their development of an atomic bomb.

“My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”

Albert Einstein

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(Einstein lied, people died! There were no WMD s in Germany. )

Maybe Einstein was in love with the idea of pacifism, until his own ox was gored.  Then he abandoned it all in a magnificent fashion.  He is hardly the first pacifist to discover in a bloody lip, or family, or country, that perhaps there ARE things worth fighting, and killing, and dying for.  Or that while dying for one’s country may be fine and noble, killing for one’s country is harder, more bitter in the mouth, yet more necessary when facing truly evil men.

He just happens to be the one whose revelation ushered in the Atomic Age.

So, when was he wrong? When he was a pacifist and would fight for peace?

And when was he right? When he was the intellectual and moral force behind the light of 10,000 suns bursting over the New Mexico desert?

An excellent question.  Stay tuned.

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke

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Doug Smith: Bos Johnson leaves a legacy of integrity, honesty

7 Dec

FSP moderator:  While this column has a local flavor, historian Doug Smith takes us on a journey to a time when honesty and integrity were virtuous parts of journalism.  I think you’ll enjoy this piece and the photo gallery.

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Dec. 07, 2014 @ 12:01 AM

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I remember television. I was born in 1955, the first generation growing up with television, Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Cartoon. I grew up with fuzzy, black-and-white images, the test pattern, “This just in” and “Film at 11.” They really did develop “film” for the 11 o’clock news. And, they had Bos Johnson.

When Bos started on WSAZ, I was a kid, bored by the news, but not by Mr. Cartoon. I grew up watching Jule Huffman. But Bos meant the news and I didn’t care. I ate ice cream while Dad watched, and I heard that familiar voice say, “This is Bos Johnson, from Huntington. Good night.”

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When I was 8, one story touched me. I watched, stunned, as we heard our President was dead; as a little boy tried to be brave while his daddy’s body passed; as millions said a tearful goodbye. And again, that familiar voice,

“This is Bos Johnson, from Huntington. Good night.”

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Then there were reports from Da Nang, Saigon, and Hanoi. Boys little older than me were going to fight in mud and heat, halfway round the world in Vietnam. They were coming back hurt, broken, or not at all. Dad was glued to the reports on the war. I remember asking “Are we really in a war?” but I can’t remember Dad’s answer. But I realized that soon I would be old enough to go off with them. And I started to watch the news with him. Amid all this, I heard that familiar voice:

“This is Bos Johnson, from Huntington. Good night. ”

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There came that awful day for all of Huntington, when the plane crashed, killing our Marshall football team, our friends and our innocence. A wound opened in all of us. At the end of that day, for once, that familiar voice failed him.

That night, Bos could not say the words. It was OK, Bos; we didn’t have words either. The broadcast day just ended.

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In my senior year Watergate was the news. Our familiar voice asked the first question in the last press conference for Richard Nixon: “Mr. President, will you resign?” A week later President Nixon did just that. Soon afterward, I joined the Navy and left Huntington. I heard, for nearly the last time, “This is Bos Johnson, from Huntington. Good night.”

Two years later, while I was half a world away, Bos Johnson retired from WSAZ.

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I came home again and was glad to see Bos, along with his wife Dottie, briskly debating the issues of the day in a different format. A more weathered Bos, but still that same familiar voice that narrated so much of my life was there one more time.

And now, sadly, he is gone.

For decades of honest reporting, the integrity you brought to a new industry, and setting the bar for quality reporting in our small corner of Almost Heaven, thank you.

So, from all of us here in the Huntington viewing area, back to you, Bos Johnson, reporting from Heaven, good night.

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Doug Smith joined the Navy in Huntington, WV, and served aboard the Nuclear Fast Attack Submarine USS Gato, SSN 615,
and as an Instructor at the Naval Submarine School in Groton, Connecticut, where he achieved the rank of Chief Petty Officer.
He also served as a tour guide and docent at the Submarine Force Library and Museum.  He is an avid student of history, and writes on subjects touching military and political history of the United States.

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DOUG SMITH: LYING – A CULTURAL PHENOMENA

2 Dec

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Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me

Friedrich Neitzche

Lying doesn’t matter. It’s ok, especially if you are telling a lie in order to further something you believe. Even if what you believe is also a lie. Any of us can say anything we want, and it never matters. There are no consequences for being an untruthful person. That is the lesson of modern America.

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In 1988, a 15 year old girl in New York created a story about being raped, assaulted, and smeared with feces by a gang of white men. A civil rights huckster named Al Sharpton accused a police officer who had recently committed suicide and a prosecutor named Steven Pagones. When asked what proof he had, Sharpton huffed “I have Tawana Brawley’s words.”

The NY Attorney General had a security guard from the lawyers “advising” Brawley who testified before the grand jury that they all knew from the start she was lying. As it turns out, none of them had anything but a sensational story, with racial overtones, which brought them a lot of attention. Tawana Brawley made up the story to cover being out late with her boyfriend.

Steven Pagones sued for defamation of character, and was awarded 85,000, which Sharpton did not pay. It was paid for him by Johnny Cochran and other supporters.

Brawley is a nurse in Florida.   She was ordered to pay 450,000 in damages, but refused until 2013 when a judge ordered her wages garnished. 26 years after the fact she has paid less than 4, 000 dollars

Today, Sharpton is worth millions. (Even counting the 1.2 mill in back taxes he refuses to pay. Someone call Lois Lerner. ) He gets paid 6 figures by MSNBC. He has been to the White House 85 times. Not bad for a boy Pentecostal preacher from Brooklyn. Guess the Gospel was not paying him so well. Hate, it seems, sells better.

Dorian Johnson began the mythical story “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” Given the way of things. It will be in history books in 20 years. The problem of course, is that it never happened.

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Reports proved  that Brown was not shot in the back, did not have his hands up, and had been shot at close range on one hand (consistent with Wilson’s story about a struggle for his gun in the patrol car). He also had enough THC in his body to cause hallucinations.

Johnson has not been charged in the robbery, or for his false reports.

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Bill Clinton’s now infamous “I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Miss Lewinsky” is the stuff of legend.  Impeached, but not convicted, he is still the Grand Old Man of the Democrats.

Barack Obama: Keep your plan and 6 years of lies, and his consequences?  The Democrats lost both Houses of Congress, but not him.  The GOP withheld funding, then caved. He is very unpopular, which no longer matters.

Brawley, Sharpton, Clinton, Obama, Johnson, all liars; all without consequence, apparently better off for the lie than without it.

Lesson for our culture: Lie.

Truth doesn’t matter. Truth and integrity are outdated social mores.

“That I know longer believe you, has shaken me.”  And it has shaken our society, not for the better.

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DOUG SMITH: THE ODOR OF MENDACITY

19 Nov

An Obama consistency: An odiferous approach to governing.

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There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity …You can smell it. It smells like death,”

Big Daddy, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Not surprisingly, to anyone who has not been in a coma since 2008, Barack Obama lied about immigration reform.

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Candidate Obama in 2008 promised to “put comprehensive immigration reform back on the nation’s agenda during my first year in office.”

Then in March 2009, President Obama said it was “a serious concern, but not an urgent one.”

In June, “I want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now.”

By August, his words had changed to:

“And what we’ve said is in the fall when we come back, we’re going to complete health care reform. We still have to act on energy legislation that has passed the House … We still have financial regulatory reform that has to get done … That’s a pretty big stack of bills.”

In March 2011, President Obama said “the nation’s laws are clear enough that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform to my appropriate role as president.”

Now, it seems, he is about to act, albeit illegally, when he could have done so legally – and not “now” in 2009, but “five years from now” in 2014.

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One wonders, why now? He could have done it with a Democrat majority in both Houses from 2009 to 2010. Could it be that he also knew that to do so would cost him so much political capital that the Affordable Care Act, which cost so much, would have failed? Was he worried about 2010? No, as he told the Dems, who lost in a landslide, no worries, you’ve got me now!

He may have been worried about 2012. Because it seems likely this would have made him a one term President.

Whatever his reasons then, he clearly lied to the supporters.

So why now?

Well, now his feelings are hurt because he has been roundly rejected by the American public. He is in a mood to punish the voters for not liking him. He is in a mood to pick a fight with the GOP.

He is a Leftist, so it is all about how he feels, never what he does. Bill Clinton can feel your pain, and that is supposed to be enough. He never worked as hard in his life as he did on this. The fact that he was talking about a failure did not matter, he FELT right. And so back to Barack. He is hurt and angry, and his feelings dictate his actions. He also feels, (never reasons), that, since the voters can no longer punish Him (sorry Mary Landrieu), the GOP options to fight back are:

  1. Talk angrily
  2. Sue him
  3. Cut funding
  4. Impeach him

Now, he doesn’t care how angrily they talk. They don’t like him. He doesn’t like anyone But HIM, and doesn’t care what they may say. Let them talk.

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Sue him. ( Hahahahaha) That is funny. He has been sued. He has had federal judges issue orders, which he has roundly ignored. What is a lawsuit? If you are going to violate the Constitution, why would you worry what a court says? Even if courts rule against him, it will likely take until he is out of office, or nearly so, for SCOTUS to give the final ruling on the question anyway.

Cut funding? Yes. A legitimate, and intended tool of Congress to force compliance or negotiation with a President. But, history shows him that if they don’t give him everything he wants, in the Trillions, he can balk and let the government shut down, and they will get the blame for it. Of course, should it happen after January, he won’t have Harry Reid to shield him. He will have to veto a budget that defunds his actions, or defunds the ACA, and let the government shut down. But so what? He doesn’t care. He still thinks the press will blame the GOP. He wants what he wants, and to him, that is a law. He is betting they won’t have the stomach for the fight.

Impeach him? He is willing to bet the store, or more properly, the country, that the political will does not exist to impeach him. He is convinced that as egregious as his actions may be, and as much harm as they may cause, the bar for impeaching the first black President is impossibly high. In any event, he is convinced that the GOP will not have the stomach for it in the next 2 years.

He may be right. But he should not be. The legitimate roles of the Congress to check an overreaching Executive should always be on the table. Remember Civics class? Checks and balances. The balance was in November. He has gone too far, and his policies are rejected. The country wants him to moderate his actions. But he will not, if the will to check him does not exist.

Barack Obama is governing like a petulant child. In November, the voters said, loudly, let’s have the adults take charge again.

Here’s hoping they do.

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Perfection: The enemy of us all

10 Nov

To my loyal readers:

Introducing the newest regular contributor to FSP, Doug Smith!

What can I say about Doug Smith…Doug is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent people I know.  I appreciate his service to our country in the Navy and his commitment to our nation as a patriotic citizen.  He’s a superb writer who often delves into “tongue in cheek” analysis of government and possesses what has become an “archaic” view of conservative responsibility to our nation.  I appreciate him as a writer, musician and friend. Please welcome Doug to the FSP army!

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About the author:

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Doug Smith was born in Huntington, WV during the Eisenhower administration.  Ike was singularly unaffected by the event. It did begin a series of adventure for Doug, however. 

 While he considers Huntington his hometown, and West Virginia his home state, he has traveled and lived in a number of places.  By the time he began school, he had lived in Huntington, Portsmouth, Va, Santa Anna, Ca.

  Nor did formal schooling stop that tendency to travel.   After beginning school in Huntington, his family moved enough so that by the time he graduated high school 12 years later, he had attended 7 schools.  

 During  school , Doug worked as a short order cook, curb boy, soda jerk, bus boy, and pearl diver.  He was a quintessential Band Geek, musician, and music lover.  Sizing up his prospects in the middle of the recession of 73-75, and being 18 feeling invincible, he opted for a stable, quiet, sedate endeavor.

 He joined the Navy. 

 During 2 years of training in electronics, he embarked on several great adventures.  He married, began a family which grew to 4 children, ( and ultimately 5 grandchildren) , and joined the crew of a Nuclear Fast Attack Submarine.  

 He served 9 years in the Submarine force, as an Electronics Technician on a boat, an Instructor at the Naval Submarine School in New London, achieving the rate of Chief Petty Officer. 

 Doug has been in over 30 US states, 10 foreign countries, 2 continents, 2 hemispheres, 2 Oceans, 3 Seas, the Panama Canal, the Straights of Magellan, the Gulf of Mexico, and in his travels has logged over 1.5 million miles. 

 He also, much to his chagrin, voted for Jimmy Carter. 4 years, of malaise later, as part of a military who sat seething through the debacle of the US Embassy hostages in Iran, and Carter s impotence as a Commander in Chief, he heard a speech given by the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan.  He became, first, one of the Reagan Democrats, who crossed over to help put him in office, then later, as he saw the strength and confidence growing in the country, a dedicated conservative.  

 Since returning to West Virginia from the Navy, he has worked as a Vocational Teacher, in the mining industry, and in electronics and computers. 

 He is an amateur musician, artist, and writer. Which of course means that no one pays him to do any of these things.  While he will accept donations, he is subject to tax, just like everyone else.  This, of course, serves to strengthen his conservatism. Meanwhile, his amateur status seems to be safe, since donations are pouring in as quickly as a politician admitting a mistake. 

 He reads, writes, and comments on conservative principles, mental health issues,  and issues affecting the health and strength of the USA, believing that these principles provide the best path to leave a stronger and better country for his children and grandchildren. 

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Perfection.

The word is alluring.  Who doesn’t love a perfect game; a perfect sunset; a perfect day?  Who doesn’t dread a “perfect storm”?  We also feel a bit inadequate because we never seem to quite achieve personal perfection.

In politics, the desire for perfection has created two unintended, but insidious traps.

I like to think of them as the “If only” trap, and the “all or nothing “trap.

Let’s take a look first at the If only trap.

From Plato’s Republic, through the French Revolution, to the 20th century string of failed Socialist states, have fallen into this particular trap.  These utopians buy into the fantasy that they can overcome human nature and create a paradise in which everyone does the good thing and the right thing all the time, and everyone is content.

If only, everyone would give to the best of their ability, and be satisfied with getting what they need (by our definition) it would be Utopia. The trap they fail to see in their thinking is

“How great things would be if not for those pesky people.”

But societies are invariably made of people, not angels. They act in their own interest, more often than not.  Their “better angels” are subject to their own whims and failings.

And so, when everyone working in a factory gets the same pay, few will work harder or faster than the worst worker. Industry and ambition are not rewarded, so everything tends to the mediocre at best, and more often than not, failure.  While the urge to compassion may lead people to help the poor, we see all too often that state sponsored, and forced, “compassion, lead to paying to reward irresponsible behaviors.   Time and again we get more of what we pay for more of.   We pay people not to work.  We pay alcoholics because they can’t keep a job due to their drinking.  We pay to support people who start families which they have no ability to support.  Utopians are then surprised that for all our money spent, we get more people not working, caught in alcoholism, and having children they are unable to support.  Common sense folks who work and live among other people are not surprised. Economists are not surprised.

When these principles fail in Russia, they try them in France. When they fail there, our own Utopians try it here. When it fails under Wilson, they reason, Wilson was not our guy. FDR will make it work.  When he does not, LBJ says, I ll do it right.  After 17 Trillion of Great Society spending, with no reduction in the numbers living in poverty, there are still Utopians who argue

“If only we had spent more, if only WE had been in charge, it would have worked. “

If only is a form of insanity. It denies the realities, and tries to govern based on what “we ought to do”, and not what we actually do. And it fails, disastrously every time.

If only people would not react like that. But time and again, they do.

The other trap, which I see conservatives fall into, is the “all or nothing “trap.

This one says, well, if I can’t eat cake, I’ll just eat mud. This is the trap that says if my party does not go far enough to pull us out of the ditch, then I might as well let the guy who drove into the ditch keep driving.  This is the argument of the child who will cut his nose off to spite his face if he can’t get his way. ( I raised one of those!)  It is based on emotion, not reason.  If I want a Congress to cut taxes by 10 percent, and they only cut them 5 %, then I might as well vote for the guy who is going to raise taxes by 20%.   How’s that again?

We saw this play out in 2012. Dissatisfied with Mitt Romney, 4 million GOP voters who voted for John McCain in 2008  sat out the election.  Barack Obama went on to win re election by fewer votes than he did in 08, and by fewer than those 4 million.  Had they voted, Romney would be President today.  Now, would he have been as good a President as some of the others in the 2012 GOP field? Perhaps not. Would he have been better than the continued failures of Barack Obama? You bet!

Conservatives who fall into the All or Nothing trap, will nominate the most conservative candidate possible, even if he cannot be elected.  They will only vote if the nominee is the most conservative possible candidate.

The result of this form of insanity is that conservatives get the worst possible outcome, e.g. a radical Barack Obama, instead of a “better than a sharp stick in the eye” Mitt Romney.

William F Buckley put forth the Buckley rule. ““Nominate the most conservative candidate who is electable.”  Mr. Buckley s rule made a lot of sense.

Let’s wish for the perfect, hope for the best, but always work to get the better.  Perhaps we can move out of the politically insane traps that have brought us to the chaos all around us in 2014.

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