Moderates United

In assessing all of our Federal Departments, with an eye to eliminating them, it is worth asking at least two questions. The obvious one is: what is this Dept. designed to accomplish, and is it accomplishing it? The less obvious one is: in what ways can this Dept. be abused for financial gain?

Take the Dept. of Energy. It is guaranteeing loans for companies who apparently did not have good enough products to get private guarantees. In large numbers, companies like Solyndra are going bankrupt, and in so doing sucking money out of the pockets of the rest of us.

Yet, simply because the COMPANY goes bankrupt does not mean that dozens of people running the thing don’t walk away with fortunes. If you as CEO make, say, $500,000 a year for five years, you can put together a nice little nest egg, can’t you?

And this doesn’t even factor in actual fraud, such as misappropriation of funds, where you say on the balance sheet that something went for “research”, and it actually went to pay off your mansion in Malibu. This is of course against the law, but sufficiently clever people can and do get away with it.

Moreover, EVERY bureaucracy has an inbuilt financial benefit for all its members: by virtue of the fact the thing exists, everyone there draws a nice paycheck as long as the thing exists; a paycheck, and a beautiful benefit package, to be paid for by our children.

Government agencies continue for the simple reason that they benefit everyone in them, regardless of whether they accomplish anything or not.

It is, of course, for this reason that they unionize. This allows them to make sure that the people–the Democrats–who continue to vote them money and continued existence, stay in power. Quite literally, the Democrats vote themselves campaign contributions every time they expand a government agency.

We need to be clear that being a Democrat has enormous financial advantages. There is no contradiction at all when, say, a John Kerry docks his yacht in another state to avoid taxes. His intention all along has been to pursue his OWN self interest, and he, like all Democrats, merely uses the rhetoric of class warfare to keep enjoying all the perks of office.

All of these things are made possible ONLY by the idea that government makes life better. It does not, not beyond the most modest aspects of police, fire, EMS, highways, national defense and the like.

Plainly, the dose makes the medicine or the poison. Without saying there should be no government–there would have been no point creating a Constitution if the goal were zero government, as the less practical Libertarians often call for–it is abundantly clear that our Federal government, and most State governments are far, far, far too large and powerful.

This is not a heavy post. I just wanted to point out that in a functional cultural order, signified by the operation of the yes/no system, there must logically be a counter-point to conceptions of the ideal. If we can imagine the angelic, why not the demonic? One direction is desired and the other prohibited and feared.

We see some academics want to eradicate this yes/no operator. For example, some anthropologists want to find in the yes/no operator the genesis of human conflict. So what do they do? They REJECT it. I am assuming here you are clever enough to note my point.

Most people are not very clever, and this applies perhaps with more than ordinary force in those hallowed halls where real things never happen, and actions flow from ideas unseen by the generators of those ideas.

What needs to be remembered is that there was never an Eden without any rules. Adam and Eve had rules. The pygmies of Africa have rules. Groups of people living in the most remote, inhospitable areas of the jungle and tundra lived by rules–live by rules. These rules certainly can be mutable and perhaps negotiable, depending on the time and place, but the need for social structures and expections–responsibilities–is not negotiable.

Clearly, they can be avoided, and this is the point of social ostracism and exile. We have, now, within our social order many, many exiles, who cannot be incorporated as they exist now back into a sustainable world. We must, and indeed seem to be, reject that non-culture, that anti-culture (not counter culture, as they have not offered an alternative), that is defecating on our streets and protesting the work of others that makes it so easy for them to survive on long hanging fruit.

I parked my car in frozen mud today, and walked across it in my boots. Although very messy yesterday, it felt interesting under my feet. There are tiretracks everywhere, and they make the surface uneven.

Later, walking back out, the mud had thawed, and now had a different texture. Like a little child, I played with this feeling in my shoes. The ground feels different in different shoes. The ground itself changes in texture and contour.

In modern life, what do we do regularly that is uneven or even jagged? All of our floors and walls are smooth. Our homes are smooth. Our parking lots and cars are smooth. Where do we get to experience the random? If we rarely or never venture outside carefully defined boundaries, then not often enough.

Our bodies and minds are clearly linked, and I wonder if a part–perhaps a small part–of the so-called disease of modernity links to deficits in kinesthetic experiences?

Just wondering out loud, perhaps stupidly, as always.

This is one of my favorite Hank Williams songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzY2Qcu5i2A&ob=av2e

Listen to it, and note that the music is not sad at all. The LYRICS are sad.

This is a two channel communication. On one channel you have happiness and on the other sadness. Our conscious minds process the sadness, but temper it unconsciously with rhythm.

The task in sadness is to continue. The music does this. This song has always felt cathartic to me. Really, it makes me happy. I don’t know why, and this is especially true when I am already feeling down.

I think it has to do with the pattern interrupt implied by the dichotomy between the music and the words.

It seems to me that the principle benefit of travel is creating a space in which you can reimagine yourself. Surrounded by a thousand habits, it is hard to feel new feelings.

Today, I was following a straight, habitual path somewhere, and decided to turn off and go somewhere I have not been before. For about 20 seconds I felt this feeling like the entirety of my being was malleable. It was like I dropped all the weight of expectations and worries and responsibilities that I carry around and which in large measure define me. I was truly and completely open to something new. It was a pleasurable and qualitatively different sort of experience.

It seems to me that we define our rough attributes early on, with the broad outlines in place by age 13 or so. But what if it were possible–and it IS possible–to fundamentally open ourselves up to experiencing life in a different way? In that space, I did not care for my family, my job, my bills, or all the things I have to accomplish on a weekly basis. It was all gone. I was free.

As I see it, it is not good for people who do actually have responsibilities to drop them, but it IS good to be able to invoke a state in which that feeling is attained, when appropriate. In classic Hindu society, men will build homes, procreate and raise children, then at a certain age, if they want, they can go live in the forest with their wives. Later, if they so desire, they can forego their names and wander as itinerant beggars called Sanyassin. This is an interesting idea.

The feeling is incommunicable, but I would like to feel it again.

This would not post at the article site, so I cut and pasted it here.

I have spent a lot of time debating leftists. Plain rhetorical patterns emerge, which happen over and over and over. With regard to this topic, a very common tactic is what we might call the “fact dogpile”. They aggregate large numbers of claims which are all individually demonstrably untrue, but which act to create the appearance of accumulated “evidence”. Unwary minds say “where there’s smoke there must be a fire”, and those who are trying to debate them are left with the unpleasant and time consuming task of refuting EVERY claim. If one goes unanswered, they claim victory overall.

This is, of course, a propagandistic trick, but while no credible mind could accuse left wingers of having credible minds, no one can deny that they are talented at ignoring the obvious, and at pushing the dubious and wrong.

Chakra, pronounced like Chuck the name, plus ru from “run”, means wheel. Cakras, as discuses, were also used as weapons, in my understanding.

For my own purposes, I deconstruct human social systems as consisting in endless little wheels, connecting to other wheels. Unlike cogs, though, these circulations are approximate, not mechanical. They are informed by the principles in the social systems being examined.

An idea, when it goes “out there”, influences the flow of activity, of thought, of motion. Ideas are very powerful. Look at all the hells Marx has enabled. Look at what the genius of our Founding Fathers has enabled.

To this notion I would juxtapose the notion of social “structures”, which subtract from the real world all motion, which is to say all reality and all humanity.

The paradigmatic example is that of class structure. What can one say about a class structure, as in the United States, in which the classes are fully permeable, and both elevation and demotion regular realities? You cannot say the inequality is “structural”, since with effort everything is possible.

Incompetence in thinking is the rule, not the exception, and most likely and common among those whose lives are supposedly dedicated to doing it well.

We get to see, through modern writers, various ways of dealing with the sensitivity of memory to circumstance and propriety. For me, I from time to time am able to pull far enough away from my own dysfunctions to get a higher level perspective.

It seems to me it is true, as depth psychologists argue, that some foundational processes in our psyches endure through sundry external life permutations. We grow in some ways, and remain exactly the same in other, more subtle ways.

Does it not seem at times it would be a species of wealth to merely repeat what came before? To have an identified and clearly articulated set of values, traditions, habits, and ways of thinking that simply exist, as it were, OUT THERE, and never need to be revisited? To feel unwilling to adapt because it is UNNECESSARY, crass, and even WRONG?

Oh, is much of the world not already in this state? Is this not a terse definition of the underpinnings of Islamic extremism? Extreme, because their acts are not contained in the Koran, and seem rather to be locally individuated elements of what I have called Nechaeveism? To be expressions of the death of circumstance, and the elevation of the eternal through pernicious acts of horror?

I cannot call the so-called Humanities useless in principle. What I can call them is useless in PRACTICE.

I pulled from my shelf today a book I have never read, but carried with me somehow wherever I have gone: Walter Mehring’s “Algier oder Die 13 Oasenwunder Westnordwest-viertelwest”. This is a Dadaist text, one with scribblings from George Grosz on the cover.

What it symbolizes for me is a different way of living, of acting, of being. Greeks, for their part, are under the thrall of not so very different fantasies. Can we not approach our modern society from a standpoint of consilience, of wondering how something much better, much more HUMAN, however we define the term, cannot emerge?

This is the faith of those who are bankrupting the EU, in my view. They are irresponsible, plainly. They spend too much. But at root their hope is that something much better, some respite, is possible.

How do we reconcile the magical with the possible? It does not do to exile the magical, but we cannot live there in this world either.

For me, I walk the line, that between hysteria and emotionlessness; between abject conformity and insanity; between hope for the future and pragmatic planning; between passion and intellect; between Jewishness and that modern illness that rejects all that smacks of eternal law.

Where, indeed, is the middle? Should we even pursue the middle? In the battle between extremism and the status quo, surely the middle still includes change of some sort?

What do you do when none of the boxes offered you fit? You must create your own, and remain unnoticed, or convince others that yours is a way forward.

Few mumblings of a man who feels both old and unformed. Do with them what you will.

I don’t repost things often–I don’t think I ever have, actually–but this does make some sense: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47570

The issue is one of trust. If we can trust Romney to undo Obamacare, then I will vote for him. At the same time, this is just a small part of our problems. Obamacare is simply going to make things much worse. They are, however, already unacceptably bad.

What is needed is cutting the Federal government roughly by a third, and either privatizing or pushing out to the States both Social Security and Medicare. Further, we need at a minimum to audit the Federal Reserve, and the IMF/World Bank. Both get our money. In the real world, any institution that gets your money gets the rights to look at your books.

So now, apparently, we have to go through the cycle of the media pushing Newt Gingrich​. This is going to be fantastic.

In addition to having an affair in the middle of Clinton’s impeachment; apologizing to Jesse Jackson​ on behalf of J.C. Watts — one of two black Republicans then in Congress –- for having criticized “poverty pimps,” and then inviting Jackson to a State of the Union address; cutting a global warming commercial with Nancy Pelosi​; supporting George Soros​’ candidate Dede Scozzafava in a congressional special election; appearing in public with the Rev. Al Sharpton​ to promote nonspecific education reform; and calling Paul Ryan​’s plan to save Social Security “right-wing social engineering,” we found out this week that Gingrich was a recipient of Freddie Mac political money.

(Even I will admit, however, that Newt was great when he was chairman of GOPAC back in the ’90s with Gay Gaines at the helm.)

Although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the institutions most responsible for the nation’s current financial crisis — were almost entirely Democratic cash cows, they managed to dirty up enough Republicans to make it seem like bipartisan corruption.

Democrats sucked hundreds of millions of dollars out of these institutions: Franklin Raines​, $90 million; Jamie Gorelick​, $26.4 million; Jim Johnson, $20 million.

By contrast, Republicans came cheap. For the amazingly good price of only $300,000 apiece, Fannie and Freddie bought the good will of former Reps. Vin Weber​, R-Minn., Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., and Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.* Former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, R-N.Y., was even cheaper at $240,000.

[*Correction: After Gingrich admitted last week to receiving $300,000 from Freddie, we found out this week that it was actually closer to $1.6 million.]

So now conservatives shy away from denouncing these crooked organizations for fear of running into Vin Weber at a cocktail party.

Sorry, guys — on the plus side, you’re millionaires, but on the downside, you’ve earned the contempt of your fellow man.

The mainstream media keep pushing alternatives to Mitt Romney​ not only because they are terrified of running against him, but also because they want to keep Republicans fighting, allowing Democrats to get a four-month jump on us.

Meanwhile, everyone knows the nominee is going to be Romney.

That’s not so bad if you think the most important issues in this election are defeating Obama and repealing Obamacare.

There may be better ways to stop Obamacare than Romney, but, unfortunately, they’re not available right now. (And, by the way, where were you conservative purists when Republicans were nominating Waterboarding-Is-Torture-Jerry-Falwell-Is-an-Agent-of-Intolerance-My-Good-Friend-Teddy-Kennedy-Amnesty-for-Illegals John McCain​-Feingold for president?)

Among Romney’s positives is the fact that he has a demonstrated ability to trick liberals into voting for him. He was elected governor of Massachusetts — one of the most liberal states in the union — by appealing to Democrats, independents and suburban women.

He came close to stopping the greatest calamity to befall this nation since Pearl Harbor by nearly beating Teddy Kennedy in a Senate race. (That is when he said a lot of the things about which he’s since “changed his mind.”) If he had won, we’d be carving his image on Mount Rushmore​.

He is not part of the Washington establishment, so he won’t be caught taking money from Freddie Mac or cutting commercials with Nancy Pelosi.

Also, Romney will be the first Republican presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan​ who can talk. Liberals are going to have to dust off their playbook from 30 years ago to figure out how to run against a Republican who isn’t a tongue-tied marble-mouth.

As we’ve known for years, his negatives are: Romneycare and Mormonism.

We look forward with cheery anticipation to an explosion of news stories on some of the stranger aspects of Mormonism. The articles have already been written, but they’re not scheduled for release until the day Romney wraps up the nomination.

Inasmuch as the Democrats’ only argument for the big-eared beanpole who’s nearly wrecked the country is that you must be a racist if you oppose Obama, one assumes a lot of attention will be lavished on the Mormon Church’s historical position on blacks. Church founder Joseph Smith​ said blacks had the curse of Cain on them and banned blacks from the priesthood, a directive that was not revoked until 1978.

There’s no evidence that this was a policy fiercely pushed by Mitt Romney. To the contrary, when his father, George Romney, was governor of Michigan, he was the most pro-civil rights elected official in the entire country, far ahead of any Democrat.

No one is worried Romney will double-cross us on repealing Obamacare. We worry that Romneycare will make it harder for him to get elected.

But, again, Romney is the articulate Republican. He’s already explained how mandating health insurance in one particular wealthy, liberal Northeastern state is different from inflicting it on the entire country. Our Constitution establishes a federalist system that allows experimentation with different ideas in the individual states.

As governor, Romney didn’t have the ability to change federal laws requiring hospital emergency rooms to treat every illegal alien, drug dealer and vagrant who walked in the door, then sending the bill to taxpayers. (Although David Axelrod, Michelle Obama​, Eric Whitaker​ and Valerie Jarrett​ did figure out a way to throw poor blacks out of the University of Chicago Medical Center.)

The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, supported Romneycare at the time. The biggest warning sign should have been that Gingrich supported it, too.

Most important, Romney has said — forcefully and repeatedly — that his first day in office he will issue a 50-state waiver from Obamacare and will then seek a formal repeal.

Romney is not going to get to the White House and announce, “The first thing I’m going to do is implement that fantastic national health care plan signed by my pal, Barack!”

Unlike all other major legislation in the nation’s history, Obamacare was narrowly passed along partisan lines by an aberrationally large one-party majority in Congress. (Thanks, McCain supporters!) Not one single Republican in Congress voted for it, not even John McCain.

Obamacare is going to be repealed — provided only that a Republican wins the next presidential election.

If a Republican does not win, however, it will never be repealed. Recall that, in order to boast about the amazing revenue savings under Obamacare, Democrats had to configure the bill so that the taxes to pay for it start right away, but the goodies don’t kick in until 2014.

Once people are thrown off their insurance plans and are forced to depend on the government for “free” health care, Obamacare is here to stay. (And Newt Gingrich will be calling plans to tinker with it “right-wing social engineering.”)

Instead of sitting on our thumbs, wishing Ronald Reagan were around, or chasing the latest mechanical rabbit flashed by the media, conservatives ought to start rallying around Romney as the only Republican who has a shot at beating Obama. We’ll attack him when he’s president.

It’s fun to be a purist, but let’s put that on hold until Obama and his abominable health care plan are gone, please.

I still like Rick Perry the best. He strikes me as honest. He was an Eagle Scout who grew up on a small farm where scouting and church was all there was. This sort of UNcosmopolitan upbringing does not foster the sort of confidence in public speaking that, say, being a CEO does, but it DOES foster a tendency towards common sense and instinctual honesty. If we consider that in practical decision making, you have more than 1 minute to decide, and are allowed to consult with people you have chosen to advise you, then momentary glitches in what is after all a performance, and not anything actual substantial, can be overlooked.

Perry wants to substantially downsize the government, and I believe him. He wants to figure out what the Fed is up to, and I believe him. He will give our troops what they need to succeed. He will keep taxes low.

Border security is in my view not even remotely as important an issue as reducing, dramatically, the size of the Federal government. We borrow $125 billion a month. We borrow $125 billion a month.

I would be fine with Cain as well, and would like to see the leftist hypocrites explain his successful nomination.

Rightly or wrongly, I do not trust Gingrich or Romney. I may be wrong. This would be a great thing, especially if one of them gets the nomination.

I like Michelle Bachman, but I don’t think she can win a general election. She would be a good VP candidate, though.

Ron Paul, always the last, it seems: as I have said often, I am willing to risk what I see as his unrealistic idealism in foreign policy in exchange for his willingness to tackle the Fed directly.

It is a valid question, in any event: do we really need to be globocop? We are unappreciated most everywhere we go, and not under any conceivable threat of direct attack, at least by conventional armies, and if we are clear that there will be draconian consequences to any support for terrorist attacks on our soil, I think we might be able to stop patrolling the world, keep our men and women home more, and still live in peace.

To be clear: there is no equivalent to Nazi Germany out there, which is the counter-isolationist example so often invoked. The Muslims are stupid. They don’t create anything, and by and large just want to live in their world free from history and time. If they are not saber-rattling–which would be stupid given our profound military superiority–then we can just leave them alone. Even if they are making noise, if it is not credible, we should ignore it.

Iran might be able to develop a nuke, but if we share with them in advance the strike package that will be awaiting them–10 megatons on Tehran, 10 on Isfahan, and a dozen cruise missiles in places of our choosing, including their oil refining and production areas–if they attack ANYONE with nukes, then that should be enough to dampen their ardor. We have, in any event, no really good military options. The bases are deep underground, and I doubt we can assume we have them all.

You do always have to paradigm shift with Paul, since he is not like anyone else. He is consistently in the top four, but even Bachman gets more attention than him.

His only hope is leftwing support. It will be interesting to see if it emerges. There are no rules against switching parties for primaries.

Thus, my three, in order: Perry, Cain, Paul. I may change my mind, but that’s how I see it.

I will add, actually, that all the criticism of Romney is plainly being reserved for a time following his successful nomination. The media, which can and should be viewed as an integral element of Obama’s election team, plainly wants Romney. The Republican establishment wants Romney.

But can any serious mind doubt that they have their own strike package ready for Romney? They attack everyone BUT Romney, creating the illusion that he at least is not tainted by scandal, where everyone else is.

But can you doubt that the tenets of Mormonism will not come out into the public space, with the seemingly serious minds out there questioning, for example, the role of men versus women in that polygamous religion? Or the underwear that they wear?

And who knows what else foul smelling, even if inaccurate, stuff they have dredged up or created? Some business deal where somebody did something dishonest; Romneycare, self evidently; some associate who did something illegal. This is the coin of the realm for people who cannot think because they have abandoned their desire for personal autonomy and thus the NEED for political freedom.

No matter who the Republicans nominate, strong attacks will be waiting for them, and in a spirit of collusion that makes direct State control of the media unnecessary, they can expect nearly universal negative press, outside of the internet, and Fox.

So much misery is caused by perceptual inability, itself caused by fear, sloth, and arrogance. May we one day rise above it.