A Republic, A Tyranny

As I have mentioned before, the root problem with the debates going on in Congress focus around how much the federal government will control the nation. The question that is being ignored is who will run the federal government.

In the Republic, Plato sets out what he thinks would be a perfect state and in so doing sets forth two propositions which are wonderful on the surface, but flawed underneath. The first is the foundation of the Republic's boundaries upon the people's need for beef, which pays no heed to the people's need for bacon; and the second is the running of the nation by a council of all powerful wise men, which pays no heed to the propensity of wise men to have particular area of foolishness.

The need for bacon being beyond argument, I will here deal with propensity of wise men to have particular areas of foolishness and further more the inability for a council of such men to run a country. Wise men, or rather those called wise men by the world, have the same difficulty in managing the details of a nation that general has in managing the details of a battle, both are esconsed so high above the fray over seeing the big picture that they have lost touch with what is really happening in each of the individual conflicts that put together make up the battle. The general has his plans and the wise man his theories, but neither has anything to do with particulars.

It is also important to note that a government such as Plato imagined it, an all powerful one filled with wise men, has another devastating draw back. Such governments tend to slowly be less filled with wise men without becoming less powerful, so that in the end they are all powerful governments filled with fools or madmen. Power does not corrupt so much as it produces stress, though the difference between the two for men with the moral framework of our current politicians is slight indeed. Plato makes an attempt at creating a system to perpetuate the rule of the wise, but he has nothing to perpetuate their wisdom. His solution, education, has just as much power to blind as it does to illuminate. Look at the rulers of Nazi Germany, most of the men who formed Hitler's government were geniuses with college degrees. And I don't think there are many who can claim to have the power to manipulate or shape not just a crowd but an entire nation as Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

Our current government no longer exists to 'promote the General Welfare'. Instead it exists to support itself, the first step in the direction of tyranny. I do not suspect the current members of our government to be working toward a dictatorship, I do not think that even most of them want a dictatorship. They are however moving in that direction by diverting portions of the government away from the public and toward itself. Vast amounts of money are spent each year from the national budget on keeping the present people in power. Whether this is creating programs that people want (but shouldn't have), jobs that could be done better in the private sector (or shouldn't be done at all), or government funds going to criminal organizations (like Planned Parenthood) it is in line with Plato's theoretical Republic, which is in itself a tyranny. The current politicians, having written exceptions for themselves into almost every law they pass and massive benefits for themselves into special laws for themselves, are content to play Plato's wise men on our nation, directing everything as they see fit, and making a rather colossal mess of the whole thing.

Our government was not set up to opporate like Plato's Republic, but instead was supposed to be a limited government run by good people. Now most of the good people are gone, replaced by greedy theorists, and the 'limited' part of our government is being reduced in every way possible.

Default, Aaaahh! Not.

Default is not the main problem confronting our nation at the present moment, as the usual suspects are screaming. The real danger facing us is that our credit rating may be downgraded from Triple A status. Default will occur if we fail to:

- either reduce the amount of money we have to pay every day to keep the government running,

- or increase the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow.

Our credit rating will be downgraded if the rest of the world gets the idea that we never really intend to pay it all off, i.e. by borrowing from China to pay the U.K., then borrowing from Germany to pay off China, then borrowing from the U.K. to pay off Germany, ad infinitum. We could avoid a Default and still have our credit rating downgraded, which would have a massive impact on our economy, slowing down any recovery further and possibly sending us backwards.

If the U.S.'s credit rating is downgraded, interest rates will increase drastically, which would hurt just about every single area of the American economy.

The only way to avoid this is to seriously cut our spending now. Anything else will damage the economy. Raising taxes will continue to constrict business and cut away at our manufacturing base, which is already weak enough as it is. Raising the debt limit will signal that we do not really intend to ever pay it off.

Joker One

I just finished reading Joker One by Donovan Campbell, a recounting of Campbell's time as a platoon leader in command of a platoon of Marines stationed in Ramadi Iraq. The book tells briefly how Campbell joined the Marines through OCS in college, his initial struggle to take command of his platoon, Joker One, and get it ready for deployment, but the bulk of the book is spent recounting the day to day struggle for the Marines as they took over from the Army in Ramadi and fought off attack after attack by insurgents.

The biggest thing that I took away from the book was an incredible respect for our men and women in uniform. Even as they grew frustrated at the insurgents, Campbell's men refused to shoot at terrorists who surrounded themselves with children while firing AK rounds at the base. In contrast, one of Campbell's men was mortally wounded when a RPG round blew off his legs while he and other Marines remained in the open to provide medical care for a crowd of thirty children who had been hit by an earlier RPG.

I highly encourage the book, though if you are squeamish you might want to skip several pages, since Campbell does not edit out the injuries his men suffered. Campbell wrestles with issues from how to lead his men into situations he knows are incredibly dangerous to how to deal with a populace that allows terrorists to stockpile weapons in their houses. All in all, I highly recommend the book.

Government: The Problem For All Our Solutions.

I know a lot of people are wondering why the federal government cannot get the debt problem taken care of, and I thought I would take a few minutes to hopefully shine some light on a few of the problems.

• Neither House Democrats nor President Obama have presented a plan. They have critiqued various parts of the Republican plan, but have not presented a plan themselves.
• The spending cuts that Democrats in Congress, and President Obama, are willing to allow are far in the future, while the tax increases they are demanding take effect far sooner. Also, in the past when democrats have made deals with Republicans such as "one dollar in tax increases for three dollars in spending cuts", the tax increases have taken place and congress never actually gets around to making the cuts. This is what happened to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
• Republicans think that the way out of the recession is to allow more money to stay in the private sector, increasing business capital to allow more job creation. Democrats on the other hand think that the economy can be jump started by the government spending large amounts of borrowed money in incentives and programs.
• Republicans worry that if we simply raise the debt ceiling, then U.S. debt will be downgraded in value as people loose faith that it will ever be repaid. Everyone will be paid by money borrowed from somebody else until eventually nobody else will lend, leaving the last group of lenders will not get paid, and nobody wants to be the second to last group that doesn't get paid.

People like to talk about government being necessary to get us out of this mess, but may I point out that government got us into this mess by forcing/encouraging companies and banks to loan money into the housing market that could not be repaid. It wasn't corporate America that made a deal with the devil, it was the Federal Government trying to create a perfect world that made this mess.

That is what is at the base of the current difficulty. Is government the solution to the problems that plague our society, or is it, as many of the founding fathers said, a necessary evil?

Hunting

I read an article yesterday either in TIME or WORLD that discussed some people's obsession with watching the death of animals they are about to eat. As someone who has done a lot of hunting and trapping, I thought now might not be a bad time to explain to those of who do not hunt or trap why we do what we do and what our mindset is. I cannot speak for everyone, and I recognize that every hunter is different.

Hunters can be broadly divided into four groups; The adrenaline junkies you see on TV who shoot an animal with big antlers from a few miles away, the hunters you rarely see who are simply trying to put meat on the table, those who are doing pest control on wildly over populated areas, and those who hunt to stay in touch with nature.

Many of the hunters on television are nothing like the majority of hunters, but there seem to be more of them every year. Such hunters are after notoriety and adrenaline highs. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a great hunter or relishing the flood of adrenaline from a hunt, I and many others are disgusted by the hunters who leave it at that. There little to be proud of in shooting a deer from thee hundred yards away while it was eating on what is for all intents and purposes a bait patch, and then taking the antlers only, leaving everything else to rot and be eaten by buzzards. People with this mindset occasionally move beyond the bounds of law and become poachers, using floodlights, silenced rifles, and night vision to kill trophy bucks on other people's land and then sell the antlers for hard cash.

Many hunter on the other hand are simply trying to put meat on their table. Deer meat is far more healthy than beef, and one deer can provide several meals for an average family. During the great depression deer became a valuable source of food in rural areas, where men would kill thirty or forty deer to feed their families.

Most people today do not 'need' to kill wild animals to put food in their table, yet hunting remains a popular activity. Fathers taking their sons deer hunting is a common practice in Texas, and its not because we have a wild fascination with killing things, but because we want to be responsible stewards of our world. I hunt in order to help keep the deer population at the point the land can reasonably support it, to provide food for my family, and because the hunt is one of the greatest experiences a man can participate in.

It is widely propagated that hunting damages the populations of deer especially. This is quite simply a myth. Last year I spent a few days on my grandfather's ranch in Texas and killed four deer in three days. I was shooting a scoped high power rifle from a four wheeled vehicle at deer that we saw while we drove back and forth doing chores for his cattle. The area is over run with deer, due in part to the vast ranches surrounding the area that do not allow hunting. Already the deer population is beginning to reach over population and running out of food, and the current drought is not going to help at all. The result will be a large number of deer dying from starvation and disease because the population has not been kept in check by responsible hunting. When I was with my grandfather, he asked that I always aim for the oldest doe, thus removing two or three fawns from next years population with each shot. That is responsible hunting, what many hunters engage in from year to year, trying to properly manage the land they have been given stewardship of.

A Proposal For The Resolution Of The Debt Problem And The Increase Of Efficiency In The American Government

The following is a proposal written up by one of my smaller friends who occasionally does time as an obstruction for me to bounce ideas off of.

As election season approaches and the debt crisis escalates I would like to propose a solution to our economic problems and to our government’s inefficiency. In a word: Monarchy.

Every two years billions of dollars are dumped into the election industry, an industry which produces a million annoying ads, vast amounts of paper signage, a few hundred politicians, and not much else. A pure monarchy would do away with this mess and help the nation in three ways. First, it will free up those billions of dollars to do something useful and build the economy, which can then be taxed more to increase government revenues. Second, Monarchy will free up hundreds of educated men and women now serving in public offices for the work force, which will further grow the economy, which will further increase revenues. Thirdly, it will remove the annoying campaign adds, which will result in calmer people in the work place, which will be conducive to better business decisions which will help grow the economy, which will increase revenues still more to the point that we can pay off the debt, pay people to do nothing, and still have a space program so we don’t have to ride to our space station at the Russian’s convenience. A further note on Space, Monarchies like big things, which would give the monarch the added incentive of encouraging NASA to make bigger and better Shuttles instead of telling them to work on some multicultural time killing investigation. Such a move would reemploy a number of people, which would further grow the economy, further increasing revenue.

The running of the nation by a monarchy would also cut down on the amount of money given away by people seeking reelection, which would increase the amount of money in the treasury, possibly raising it as high as not-completely-in-debt.

A Monarchy would also solve many of our foreign policy problems. With a monarch for life, there will be no more switching back and forth every four years in our policies. Also, with military power concentrated in one person military problems will be dealt with quickly and efficiently, a few bombs, a group of Marines, and problems like the one in Libya could be changed from a small nation bloodbath to a small nation mess-which-may-also-be-a-bloodbath-but-will-receive-less-press-because-there-are-fewer-big-caliber-explosions-mess.

Also, because a Monarch will rule for life, he will be more likely to be careful with his nation’s treasure since he has to make it last a lifetime, not just four to six years.

To conclude, let me put my argument into a logical syllogism for the effect of greater clarity.

We need a more efficient government than a Democratic Republic

Monarchy is a more efficient government than a Democratic Republic.

Therefore we need Monarchy.

Logic makes it so simple!

-Mark Auralius Tudorius

Novelty Cannot Replace Quality

In my continuing quest to create a story that a few people might enjoy, I have spent not a little time reading books on how to write a book. Many of them have provided me with helpful insights, a few in particular have harped incessantly on the necessity of ‘surprising the reader’ and ‘being new’. So far this is all well and good, I enjoy being surprised by a clever plot twist, or a new type of character, but when the aforementioned books assert that without such, the book will not be read, I fear I must respectfully disagree.

A good work of art attracts attention either by its novelty or its quality. Novelty is easier to create than quality and has thus become, for many, the Holy Grail of art. So artists, writers, directors, etc. spend their time trying to outdo each other in novelty, usually by being ore and more grotesque, until grotesqueness ceases itself to be either novel or grotesque. Art today is a business, if you book, movie, or paintings don’t bring in money, then few people are interested in it, and when something becomes a business product, people try to find the way to produce something for as little as possible to sell it for as much as possible. An artist’s currency is time; novelty is quick and fast when compared to quality. Thus, quality has suffered. Novelty is just that, something new, and so when something ceases to be novel (when you’ve seen or read it), the essence of what made you enjoy the work of art is gone, then it has no pull on you. Novelty may create best sellers, but it cannot create classics by itself.

Well told stories, well made characters, however, do not grow old at nearly the same rate (Reading your favorite story, and nothing else for weeks on end will make you sick of it no matter how charming or fulfilling). Quality stories, quality characters are able to entertain for years on end, they have staying power. Part of what brought this to my mind was the number of movies that are remakes of stories and characters we already know: Iron Man (film adaptation of a comic series), Thor (film adaptation of a comic series) , Green Lantern (film adaptation of a comic series), The Green Hornet (film adaptation of a comic series), The A Team (Film adaptation of a TV Series), True Grit (Remake of a film adaptation of a book), The Eagle (Film adaptation of a book), I Am Number Four (Film adaption of a book). These films have done very well, and you cannot really argue that they succeeded because they pushed the envelope or were in some way vastly different from anything we had ever seen. In fact we already knew what most of them were going to be about.

A pursuit of novelty has contributed largely to the waste paper lining the Fantasy, Horror, and Sci-Fi sections at Barnes and Noble; it creates works that are fun to read once or twice but have no lasting value. Quality can overcome a lack of novelty and create a work that is fun to read and does not rely strictly on your desire to find out what happens next. A great work of course, includes both novelty and quality, but novelty must be servant, it makes a poor master.