Quote of the Day
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
Seneca
Belated Revision of My Hayek-Related Commentary
Great writing is an art difficult to explain. One of my best friends, Bruce, a PhD office mate back at UH, once asked me about the process; he's an accountant, and accountants are very detailed-oriented: how do you come up with a storyline? He can't do it. But it's just comes natural to me.
I'll give a short, quick example. I was on a semester Catholic Newman retreat back at UH. All the retreat participants were split into groups. My PhD accounting friend Tim's roommate Matt was in my group. (Matt, a chem-e major, later earned his doctorate in math and took a teaching job at a Missouri state branch school.) We were tasked with coming up with a skit, and there was only short time to come up with something. If you've ever been in a group assigned a creative task, you know how difficult that can be. I think professional comedians do it all the time, In real life, you often encounter analysis paralysis. So I just "flashed" on an idea in a split second: I decided to initially frame a scene set in a schoolyard where this guy was getting into trouble--again. So I'm the teacher, and I respond to the misbehavior in a very judgmental way (yeah, I know what you readers are thinking--that's not such a stretch...): "Oh, Kevin is just a bad seed; he'll never amount to anything in life." Scene shifts to the future. I have an audience with the new archbishop. I genuflect, kiss the bishop's ring and, looking up, beg for Archbishop O'Keefe's forgiveness, having given up on him as a boy. (The Irish surname got the comic relief I was hoping for, because the guy playing the archbishop was Latino.) The other retreat attendees LOVED our skit, and I had my own Sally Field moment ("You like me...you really like me")
As a writer you often don't that kind of feedback. There are some days I've published a brilliant commentary and get hardly any reaction. (I still think it's brilliant; you can go mad if you start obsessing about how that video of a dog barking in rhythm to a rap song got 15M pageviews, and your analysis got 20.) For some reason, my Valentine's Day post has quickly become my most popular post ever (to the best of my knowledge--I've only had the statistics for 2 to 3 months). I'm glad people seem to like (or hate) it. If you're a new reader, check it out.
Mathematicians (remember, I have two math degrees) are famous for having Eureka moments (e.g., Archimedes' sudden realization about how to measure the volume of irregularly-sized objects when he was laying in a bath one day); maybe you're trying to prove a theorem, and you aren't even consciously thinking about it and all of a sudden you figure it out. Songwriters during their sleep will sometimes come up with a key melody or verse, wake up and write it down. (I know because I've done it, too.)
It's difficult to explain how inspiration grips the writer's imagination. I haven't worked on my novel in a while, which started out as a short story. But it's almost as if the story writes itself and you're watching a movie of it in your mind.
Let me briefly explained how the commentary in question came about. When I looked for the Bill O'Reilly video to embed from a FoxNews webpage, I saw a video clip in passing on Ron Paul's quote about fascism and some viewer had posted a comment like "no wonder the Occupy Wall Street people like this guy". Mark Perry of Carpe Diem had referenced Boudreaux's response to O'Reilly's rant. I then wanted to explain the name of Boudreaux's blog, which led me to think of the Ron Paul video, and then the inevitable misunderstanding of what Paul is referring to as fascism.
This discussion had been nagging at me for some time--if you go back over the last few posts, I made reference to Obama being a snake oil salesman, a used car salesman, etc. I made mention of how Obama's meticulously controls his reactions and mentioned it was manipulative behavior. He is using his likability to sell his policies. These aren't meant to be "judgmental"--they are my honest takes, and what bewilders me is why other people don't seem to pick up on it. I've seen Obama's game too many times; remember in the 2008 campaign? Earlier that year he had supported a DC gun ban; then the Supreme Court affirms the Second Amendment, and Obama says that he had really been in favor of gun rights all the time (because pro-gun forces are a politically potent voter block). And then he took the Bush tax cuts and basically put a class warfare spin on it. So Romney has a corporate tax plan in play--and, surprise, surprise, Obama after 3 years in the White House and in an election year, suddenly gets corporate tax cut fever. Only he brings up we can't afford oil company take breaks (just like we can't afford to continue 35% tax brackets for the upper 1% but have to go 39.6%)
It's all very predictable. It looks like he wants to co-opt Romney's agenda (and also try to use RomneyCare to nullify Romney's arguments against ObamaCare.) Obama then wants to argue to voters that he's the incumbent, he's the known quantity.
DiLorenzo's argument in part reflects how progressives (or dare we say "fascists") try to disguise their real intent (look at how much trouble Obama got into in 2008 by telling Joe the Plumber it's good to spread some wealth around, drives this discussion). Obama also has this recurring bit where he tries to preempt criticism by explicitly denying exactly what he then goes on to say. Or take, for instance, the Democrats' argument for ObamaCare focusing on the uninsured. Why? The real issue is with household bankruptcies, not the uninsured, say, being denied life-saving healthcare. They knew the GOP would settle for catastrophic health care; they needed a pretext for controlling all of healthcare.
You remember the Big Lie: they tacitly assert that the reason people don't carry health care insurance on their own is because they can't afford it (it's not that the people are self-insuring, don't want to pay the middleman and will pick up expenses as they incur. After all, that would be the logical conclusion.) Democrats are like clueless convenience store owners whom don't understand why some customers pay their bill with green paper: what's that? Everybody uses credit cards; I've never seen this green paper before. After all, paying your hospital bill without an insurance card? What's with that? Everyone knows you need a middleman... Nobody carries around that heavy green paper anymore... (But Ben Bernanke promises to make more available next Tuesday...)
The government, which can't balance its own checkbook, does happen to know how to make the health care system run more efficiently. We Democrats know that we have the answer: pay fixed prices for services. Doesn't the rest of the economy run on fixed prices? We know how to cut costs: we'll simply lower our prices we'll pay for services every year--it's not like doctors are like federal workers whom deserve annual and step increases each year without productivity gains. Wait a minute... Providers as federal workers... Hmmmm. Besides, everyone knows the government has the right to regulate business. You can't practice without a license and notice that smallprint in your license application?
Everyone knows we have to control existing insured in order to fund the remaining uninsured deadbeats. What do you mean, healthy young people are dropping insurance because they're tired of subsidizing people paying a premium not covering their own costs? Get away from me, you, you, you REPUBLICAN!
Meryl Streep Wins Best Actress for 'The Iron Lady':
Thumbs UP!
Okay, I know English Conservatives are going to think I'm crazy for giving this my approval. True, I haven't seen the movie and I know that reportedly Thatcher acquaintances are not happy with the portrayal. But Ms. Streep, whose own politics are pedestrian progressive, is probably the most gifted actress I've ever seen, and I don't hold an actress responsible for the quality of a script. In the US, we have a saying that any publicity is good publicity; it's not very often that a political leader has a major Hollywood film behind her.
(Of course, Karzai is shopping his own script around. Besides, he knows these Hollywood types: he'll bring lots of nose candy with him...)
Margaret Thatcher inherited an inflation-bound system and had the political courage to engage in monetarist policies which broke the back of inflation, by originally accepting very high interest rates; the United States did the same thing under Fed Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, in the late stages of the Carter Administration and early stages of the Reagan Administration. She privatized nationalized companies/industries, cut taxes and balanced budgets. All of these things required a great deal of political courage and backbone, with her popularity at times dipping to the 20-odd approval ratings. I am very impressed with what she did, from the basis of my own principles.
I'm not sure I've seen an American President in my lifetime whom faced and dealt with a comparable set of challenges: I do think they certainly had moments: e.g., LBJ taking over after the assassination of President Kennedy; the attempted assassination of President Reagan; George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; Reagan's decision to accept payroll tax hikes in the last serious attempt to shore up social security; Gerald Ford's ascent into office after Nixon's resignation. I do have admiration for Speaker Boehner's very difficult challenge trying to negotiate with a spendthrift Senate and President, unwilling to make any budget cuts while dealing with members of his own party with unrealistic expectations under the circumstances.
I know from personal experience the kind of courage and integrity it takes to do the right thing, even at tremendous personal cost: I have lost friends, jobs, even careers. If someone asked me right now who is the one most influential, accomplished woman during my lifetime, it's not even close: Margaret Thatcher. (Perhaps the late Mother Teresa in a different context.) Maybe one day we'll have an American version of a Margaret Thatcher. I'm not holding my breath.
Afghanistan, Obama and the Koran Burning Kerfuffle:
Santorum is WRONG
It's no accident that I haven't been commenting that much about foreign affairs. Let me just briefly say: Muslim sensitivities about the physical handling of the Koran are well-known (you would think every American GI knows about this, after experiences in Gitmo and elsewhere). Second, and this goes to Mr. Santorum, whom says Obama was wrong for apologizing for an accident, President Obama was RIGHT. (It's not often I say that.) It happened on his watch; you have to take responsibility for your men as Commander in Chief. If I step on a young lady's foot while dancing, it's not as if I intended to do it. I would apologize unconditionally. It's the right thing to do.
Hearing that GI's mock Afghans as a guest in their country? I'm sorry--professional soldiers should know better. The GI's represented the United States of America, and their behavior should reflect the best of our country. If you do need to vent, you do it when you're alone or with just your buddies, not in the presence of Afghans.
Does that mean I think the murders of GI's are justified? Of course not. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims' families.
Isn't it time we leave Afghanistan? I don't want to prop up the corrupt Karzai regime; our presence constitutes moral hazard: it's time for the Afghans to stand on their own; we've been there over a decade already.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Paul McCartney & Wings, "Hi, Hi, Hi"
