This Week I Learned...

         In an effort to help me get a fix on some of the things I read over the week, I'm going to start writing up a few quick thoughts to summarize what I've gone over. Hopefully some of you will find it interesting and might see something that slipped by you over a busy week. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and probably mentioning some things that slipped by me. Enjoy!

          By now everyone is aware that Russia is reasserting itself, and attempting to regain the clout that they once held. But Russia’s plans go a lot farther than simply stirring the pot in the middle east and upending the pot in Ukraine.  No one, for the foreseeable future,  is going to challenge the U.S. for the role of World Superpower. It is a role that, for the moment, everyone is content to leave to the U.S. What some nations, notably Russia and China, do want is to be Regional Superpowers.

                Russia has been taking several steps to strengthen its position, beyond locking up a strategically vital harbor in the Crimea. Perhaps the most interesting step is the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU),  which is based on and is designed to compete with the EU. Set to come on line January 1, 2015, the EEU currently consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Belarus.

 Also set to join is Kyrgyzstan, a small nation that sits between China and Kazakhstan, though its government is less than excited about the prospect. The sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine have hit the surrounding nations hard, and Kyrgyzstan is also facing a sever energy crisis, forcing the nation into accepting Russia's overtures.

                Russia has also been reaching out to North Korea. Choe Ryong-hae, reportedly the number two man in North Korea, wrapped up a series of meetings with Russian leaders this week. Russia is looking to run a gas pipeline and a power line though the North and into South Korea. Besides giving Russia another market for its energy, this would add to the list of countries who depend, to some extent, on Russia for their power. Much of the EU is heavily dependent on Russia for oil and gas, and this provides Putin a valuable asset in diplomatic disagreements. North Korea is trying to lessen its heavy dependence on China, and Russia appears happy to oblige.

                Russia was one of the few nations to come out of World War II with not only the military machine and diplomatic clout to be a Superpower, but also the appetite to fight for it. After the collapse of the USSR, the clout and machine disappeared, but the appetite did not. As I said above, no one really wants to be The Superpower, but as growing nations continue to modernize and grow, so will their desire to become dominate voices in their regions.

Leadership Thoughts from 'Draft Day'

I went into 'Draft Day' hoping for something akin to 'Moneyball' and was not disappointed. Kevin Costner plays the GM of Cleveland Browns who is pressed by his owner into making a costly trade for the #1 overall pick in the Draft. Everyone agrees that a particular Quarterback is far and away the best in the draft, however Costner was set on a Middle Linebacker with a devastating pass rush, and his Coach was set on a running back with deep roots in Cleveland who would take the pressure off the good quarterback already in Cleveland. On top of all this, Costner learns the day before that the girl he has been seeing secretly, who is also the analyst in charge of the salary cap for Cleveland, is pregnant. So, here's the few thoughts.

1. Leaders take responsibility. When he announces to the team that they have the #1 overall pick, Costner acknowledges that they have not scouted the QB as well as they should have. "That's my fault, that's on me. But we're going to get it done now." He settles the issue and moves to address it. Similarly, he pulls aside his cap analyst and apologizes for not having the right reaction to her pregnancy. "I'm sorry I didn't get all excited and start talking about what color we were going to paint the baby room. I didn't respond the way you needed me to and I was wrong". He doesn't try to pin the blame on her, or explain it away. He acknowledges his failures, and then moves to correct them.
2. Leaders are not door mats. While he is quick to accept blame for his own failures, he does not give everyone else a free pass. When Cleveland's current QB trashes his office, frustrated by the apparent snub of being replaced, Costner does not apologize or try to be understanding, but puts him in his place. On Draft Day, the GM's responsibility is to acquire the best players for the team, not mentor and manage current members. When Costner finds his scouts looking at pictures of the QB in the Draft with his girlfriends instead of doing research he does not apologize for the culture he has created or for not providing oversight. "I am working very hard to not loose my shit on all of your right now, and you are making it extremely difficult." Leaders carry much of the responsibility, but they should not try to carry the responsibility born by their subordinates.
3. Good leaders know when to push their subordinates and when to let them work. Cleveland's owner can be debated, but I believe he made two decisions that helped Costner succeed. First, he impressed on him the importance of making a 'splash' in the draft, and then toward the end of the film, he shuts up when Costner tells him "give me five minutes and then if you don't like what I've done you can fire me." Sometimes the boss has to be the fire that gets his people moving. Without his involvement, Costner would have drafted the MLB at the 7th pick, instead of getting two great 1st round players. The owner never anticipated what Costner would do, but he provided the impetuous for Costner to be great. 
4. Good leaders know how to gauge intangibles. A lot of people said that Costner 'went with his gut' when decided not to draft the top QB. But he didn't. He found ways to gauge the things few other people looked at. 
1. He evaluated response to failure. By watching how the QB reacted to getting sacked, he saw someone without guts, who got rattled easily when things broke down and someone who focused on not getting hit over executing the plan.
2. He evaluated honesty. By looking at how the QB responded to the 100 dollar bill test and how the answered tough questions, he saw someone more concerned with appearances than dealing with reality.
3. He evaluated people skills. By looking at how the QB worked with his team mates, Costner saw someone who had red flags among the people who knew him best. 

If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. Leadership is, in part, a study of people, which is what 'Draft Day' ultimately comes down to; How does someone near the top of an organization work with, motivate, and evaluate members and potential members of the organization. Know your people, and you will be a good leader. 

Intentions and Decisions

During the sermon yesterday, the pastor made the statement that  'Intentions do not shape outcomes, your decisions do". The world is full of people with good intentions. Christians are known for their good intentions, but they are not known for their good decisions. 

Great leaders, people who truly make an impact make the right decisions at the right time. 

It is easy to have good intentions, but we lay the groundwork for our impact in the little decisions we make alone. More often than not, greatness is achieved not by making one or two large, far-reaching decisions that have great impact, but rather by thousands of small decisions that alone seem insignificant, but when strung together have great impact. 

As I am trying to get into better shape, I can intend to be better, I can even decide on the morning of my running test that I will be faster, but it will do me little good. I am made better by consistently deciding not to sleep in, by deciding to put in the extra work out, by deciding to do an extra five minutes, I can get a little better. By consistently making the right decisions we can act on our intentions to achieve our goals. 

Intentions are important, but they must be followed by disciplined decision making. So take a few minutes and think about what your goals are and what decisions you are making to achieve them. You have made the first step, now follow through.

"Left of the Boom"

"Left of the Boom" is a phrase that General McCrystal used recently in the 'Boots Off the Ground' panel discussed in my last post. I would like to discuss it as it applies to leadership. As an example I will use Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia in 1941, as an example. General McCrystal used it in the context of our response to IEDs when they were first used in Iraq. Initially the response to the threat posed by IEDs was to deploy armored vehicles and secure the area after one was detonated. This allowed us to evacuate casualties and potentially kill or capture any insurgents who might have stayed to create an ambush. However, this did not solve the real problem, IEDs were still killing soldiers, contractors, and civilians, slowing or stopping our convoys, and creating chaos in general.
The solution, General McCrystal said, was to "get ahead of the boom", stop the IEDs before they were detonated. Thus they instituted regular patrols, sniper teams conducting over watch, and other measures that prevented the IEDs from being deployed in the first place.
This is a large and important part of a leader's job. Great leaders must be able to look forward and identify incoming problems and stop them before they happen. This happens at two levels. First, executive leaders are positioned to see the big picture and make substantial changes thereto. In our example, Operation Barbarossa, the freezing cold of the Russian winter represents the 'boom'. German high command knew about the cold, but believed they could make ti to Moscow and defeat the Russian military before the cold effected them too much. Not only did they fail to set realistic goals, they had no contingency plans for if those goals failed. When those two are combined they are fatal. Getting left of the boom for them would have meant either, a) equipping their men and equipment to operate in the cold or b) developing a plan to fall back to prepared positions if the Russian forces remained unbeaten by a certain point.
However, while executive level leaders have the ability to influence the big picture, they often overlook details, or occasionally miss the big picture entirely., which is where mid to lower level leaders come in. It is their responsibility to make the big picture as described by the executive leader happen as best they can ad pass up bits of information or warnings when appropriate. Thus, while mid level leaders must have a general understanding of the big picture, their focus must be on the areas under their control. Lower levels of an organization are often tempted to waste time and energy complaining about the ineptitude of their commanders. While such complaints may often be valid, and valuable in their place, they are often unproductive. The German infantry officer who sent a few messages up the chain and then proceeded to train his men to deal with cold weather would ultimately have more impact than the officer who spent most of his energy complaining to or about higher.
So, take time to get above the crush and grind of now, the things immediately important. A little time each week looking ahead will go a long way to getting left of the boom for you and yours. Even if you are not at the top, getting you and your people out of trouble, even if it isn't as neat and tidy as if higher had done it, will still make a difference, which is what being a leader is all about.


image from The Guardian at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/06/operation-barbarossa-russia-second-world-war

Wiley's "Boots Off the Ground"

With our struggling economy, shrinking national budget, and political gridlock, America has to decide how to effectively use the money and military she has to effect the policy goals she is trying to achieve. Covert Operations apparently promise cheap solutions to big international problem. But are they cheap in the long run and can we depend on their devastating success to continue for the foreseeable future?

Wiley Lecture Series recently hosted 'Boots Off The Ground: A 21st Century American Military', which looked at the role covert operations have and perhaps should fill. Retired Army General Montgomery Meig moderated the discussion between Ambassador Ryan Crocker who served in several countries in the Middle East, Mr. David Sanger a journalist who has focused on our confrontations with rogue states, and General Stan McCrystal, who oversaw U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan and led led JSOC for several years.

Before we can talk about how military forces accomplish their mission, we have to understand what is at the base of their mission. Military force is an arm of political policy. Military action always seeks to achieve a political aim, whether it is the destruction of Nazi aggression or the securing of national interests abroad. Use of Covert Ops should be seen not merely in how it helps us defeat hostile militaries, but in how they help us achieve our national policies at home and abroad.

At the center of the discussion was the benefits and costs of using cover operations in place of conventional forces. There were three specific types of covert operations discussed.

• Drones: They have proven themselves reliable and effective on a wide range of missions. However, in several instances they can cause collateral damage in civilian casualties, which may turn out to make them counterproductive in the long run.
• Cyber Warefare: Bloodless, high tech, and apparently clean, everyone thinks they are very cool. it has a very high potential to be turned back around on us. In 2010 the program Olympic Games malfunctioned and America's cutting edge offensive cyber weapon was broadcast all over the world for everyone to look at and pick apart. Also, leaks in the cyber age dwarf leaks in the Cold War era where files had to be photocopied one page at a time. Now someone can carry out on a flash drive or post on the internet millions of files full of sensitive information. 
• Special Forces. Very effective and precise, America boasts the best overall Special Forces in the world. However, a contributing factor in their success has been a technological gap between them and their targets that is rapidly shrinking. In addition, special forces are primarily useful to remove negative forces opposing our national strategy. They have limited usefulness in nation building or projecting positive influence that our policies may call for. 

America wants to project its influence around the world. While many are opposed to us swinging around the world police bludgeon, there are always areas we are expected to deal with, whether it is facilitating peace talks and general stability in the Middle East or South America, or Nuclear Proliferation treaties, convention foces deployed and with the willingness to be deployed are vital. Iraq could not have been stabilized and rebuilt without the surge of 2007 which put large numbers of conventional troops on the ground. 

Also, we have not yet faced an opponent with similar Covert capabilities. The targets we have hit so successfully are not too dissimilar from our own structures of command and control. What will happen to an american command and control post when a  North Korean or Chinese Spec Ops team knocks out the power? How will we prevent that from happening, and how are we going to develop contingencies for when it does? In 1960 we believed that air to air combat would be decided with high tech missiles and thus a gun was not necessary. The F-4E was modified with a 20mm gun not long after earlier designs first saw combat. we cannot rely on new high tech equipment to the detriment of conventional equipment. 

A modern military must balance conventional with covert forces in the same way the F-4 had to balance its armament. Not only will our technological edge shrink, but everyone is trying to figure out how to beat the army we have. We cannot sit content with the fact that we have gotten ahead of the curve with covert ops. We must continue to look for the next curve and figure out how to win the next conflict before it is fought and we learn the rules have changed while we rested on our superiority. 

We will always need a conventional force that is capable of conducting operations like the Surge which put boots on the ground and enforce order. Covert Operations are devastating as supporting arms of broader policy and strategy, but they need other supports to create that devastating effect. 

Civil Forfeiture & Personal Responsibility

John Adams is famously supposed to have said that the American legal system was fit only for a religious and moral people, wholly inadequate for any other society. I don't have a source for that, but whether he said it or not, it is a valid point. In this article by Sarah Stillman, Stillman discusses the use and abuse of Civil Forfeiture in modern law enforcement.
       "The basic principle behind asset forfeiture is appealing. It enables authorities to confiscate cash or property obtained through illicit means, and, in many states, funnel the proceeds directly into the fight against crime...In general, you needn't be found guilty to have your assets claimed by law enforcement; in some states, suspicion on a par with “probable cause” is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime, or even be accused of one. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture amounts to a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence."

The practice began with the prosecution of pirates and smugglers, where it was easier to prosecute the ship you had instead of the captain who was somewhere on the ocean thousands of miles away.  The practice was used later to help fund anti-drug operations, then expanded further with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act in 1984 which allowed a large percentage of the confiscated funds to be returned to local law enforcement by the federal government. This helps get funds out of the hands of drug cartels which are currently lopping heads off on the U.S.-Mexico border, and into the hands of underfunded law enforcement agencies. 
The problem arises with incidents like those recorded in Stillman's article, when local police use the law to fleece law abiding citizens. Officers will target rental and out of state vehicles, stop them for minor or made up offences like speeding or driving too close to the white line. Once stopped, they offer the driver two options, be charged incarcerated and charged, or sign over their valuables to the city. In one instance two parents were told their child would be taken away and placed in a foster home if they did not sign over their cash. I encourage you to take the time to read the article, it lays out a very interesting view of our law enforcement that it is our responsibility to hold accountable. 

This is the reason that a government of limited powers operated by virtuous citizens is a good idea. What we have in Civil Forfeiture is a piece of legislation, like many passed by our government, that has great potential to do good. Many of us would agree that confiscating drug money and funding local law enforcement with that money isn't a bad idea. However, the law's potential to be abused is just as great if not greater. Few of us would agree that innocent people being harassed in this manner is a good thing. 
The knee jerk reaction that many of us have is that there needs to be a new law, a new oversight committee,  some government action that will solve the problem. But all the laws in the world will not stop humans from behaving like humans. The IRS has oversight committees, the NSA has oversight committees, and every citizen sits on the presidential oversight committee. Yet in the last few months we have discovered that the IRS has been discriminating in a horrific manner based on organization's political leanings, the NSA has been performing unprecedented surveillance on our own citizens,  and Benghazi continues to be at best a grisly monument to the stupidity of our government or at worst an act of treason. 
We have long looked to the government as the solution to our problems, and are now discovering like the ancient Greeks that the ruler's power to do good is equal to its power to do evil.  

Humanities in Crisis

About a week ago, Martin Cothran  linked to this article by David Brooks on the subject of why the liberal arts are such a joke in education.  Brooks writes “the humanities are not only being bulldozed by an unforgiving job market. They are committing suicide because many humanists have lost faith in their own enterprise.” What is the reason for this? According to Brooks “Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in this uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender. Liberal arts professors grew more moralistic when talking about politics but more tentative about private morality because they didn't want to offend anybody.”

I had the opportunity to see this first hand in my time at A&M, especially in my class on Literary Theory. Truth, in the class, was debunked and talked about as an unreal or irrelevant thing, and the focus was on how writers were influenced and how their works could be twisted to mean anything we wanted, thus proving an author had no control over his work. This was the subject of an essay I wrote for the class which I may post here at some point in the near future. Several people at The Imaginative Conservative have written replies to Brooks article which are very interesting, especially that of Louis A. Markos where he brings in a very enlightening quote from C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters.

However, while everyone points at the problem quite clearly, I think that most of them are missing the root of the problem. As Charles Clough says often, it all comes back to origins.

If evolution is true, if humans evolved from monkeys, then the humanities are a complete waste of time.

If mankind is evolving through history, which is the primary point of today’s scientism and atheistic revolution in the meaning of morality, then what Aristotle said thousands of years ago is monumentally irrelevant. What is driving much of the debate around abortions, gay marriage, euthanasia, social security, gun control, political philosophy, is the belief that mankind is advancing along a rising slope that begins with slime, rises through apes, rises through us today and beyond.

The problem with the humanities is that they deal with people, events, and philosophies all resting on that line between us and the apes, not between us and what we must become. They are, in effect, below us.

The humanities only make sense if we are created by a rational God who has revealed himself and his truth to mankind through the ages. Only if mankind is created in the image of God do the ancient philosophers have anything meaningful to offer besides a look at un-evolved man which should be taken quickly and mockingly.

Don't Stop, Don't Drop.

A friend of a friend of mine recently published this article on her blog, looking back at her experiences running cross country. There are a couple of things that jumped out at me in reading this especially in the context of me training my replacement for next year and the passing on of the Guidon which will take place this weekend. There is an exclusiveness that is a healthy part of an organization's structure and promotes higher performance, and that exclusiveness and performance must be matched with humility and a servant's heart.
For those of you who are not in the Corps, the Guidon is the unit flag which represents the standards, the history, and the goals of the unit, not unlike the Eagle of the Roman Legions. The guidon bearer is chosen each year in a process know as Guidon Candidacy, a two-three week period in which freshmen carry mock guidons during increased physical training and take part in a variety of leadership development and stress evaluation exercises. When I was a fish, the most daunting part of Guidon training was the high port runs, in which we carried our flags over our heads for 2-4 mile runs. As we fell out for our first high port run, the current Guidon bearer formed us up and said "I have one piece of advice for you when it comes to high porting, don't stop, and don't drop."
That piece of advice has gotten me a long way over the last few years. Don't stop trying, working, or giving and don't drop your standards, your morals, or yourself.
In the article, the author talks about the atmosphere that her cross country coach created, in part by talking about what made them different from the rest of the school. We do this a lot in the Corps, and it is apart of creating excellence in whatever organization we are apart of. This exclusiveness, this concept of us being separate and somehow better than them fosters a healthy pride in the organization and a drive to live up to the high standards that form our identity as separate from theirs. In the Corps, one of the forms this takes is attendance at Silver Taps and Echo Taps, where we remember and pay homage to the memory of Aggies and Cadets who have passed away. We pride ourselves on attending these events in mass because these ceremonies separate us from those who are not Aggies, those who are not Cadets.
This all by itself creates merely pride and snobbery. But there is a difference between the pride of a Marine and the pride of, say, a career politician. The second believe he has risen above the rest, is wiser and better than everyone else and is thus entitled to whatever its politicians are entitled to. The first, in contrast, knows that he has been trained beyond what most others have, knows that he is stronger and tougher than most others, but he knows also that that all the training and preparation has taken place so that he can serve others.
The author of the article talks a lot about helping others and focusing on what we can do for them. My junior year in the Corps one of my jobs was to conduct physical training tests for several units. The final event of the test was a mile and half timed run. At nearly every single test, the leaders of the outfit would come sailing in well under the time limit, wait for a few seconds to catch their breath, turn around and run back onto the track, reappearing a few minutes later running in with the slower fish who struggled to meet the time limit. They did not stand at the finish line beating their chests or bragging about their speed, they quietly used their gifts to motivate and encourage others.

That is why we must push ourselves, why we must work to develop ourselves and those around us, so that we may give back to others.
"Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working withhis hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth." Ephesians 4:28



Note: After my sophomore year, highporting was banned in the Corps and cadets are no longer allowed to conduct highport runs.

Do. Your. Job.

As my time in the Corps of Cadets is coming to an end, I have had the opportunity to look back at some of the lessons I have learned over the last four years. I've learned a lot about leadership and followership, mostly by making mistakes. The biggest lesson I've learned is as difficult to execute as it is simple to understand.

Do your job.

It seems simple, but I and others have wasted vast amounts of time and energy doing anything but. In the Corps, as in just about any organization, there is always something going wrong, something to worry, argue, complain, or debate about. There are always people who could be doing their job better, and there are always things that need to be done better. On the other side, there are always personal goals that we all have, either to do community service, grow in our relationship with God, or develop friendships with those around us. The problem that arises is when we neglect to fulfill our responsibilities and chase instead after other things, whether relationships or personal pleasures.

Too often we worry about the people who are not taking care of their responsibilities, and spend valuable time and energy complaining or gossiping about people who are not doing their job, time and energy that could be better spent completing our assigned tasks and leading those around us. Very often, if you perform your job well, you can cover for the mistakes or failures of others and you can set a good example for your subordinates and peers, which will in turn elevate their performance. People who do their job well consistently for long periods of time can build amazing amounts of influence and credibility. It does not happen overnight, but if day in and day out you show up and give 100% of your effort to do your job and then to help others, you will be able to have a positive impact beyond what you imagine.

I've often heard my dad talk about those Christians who are "so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good", and in the Corps I've seen people like this a lot. The Christians who had the most impact for Christ were not the ones who went to all the bible studies, were at church every Sunday  or made every christian retreat, but the ones who did their jobs well. I don't mean to belittle these things, they are very healthy and important for good christian growth. However, I have seen time and again young Christians come back from a bible study or retreat all excited and trying to minister to their roommate or buddies, only to get the cold shoulder. They wonder why their buddies don't respond more positively, and the answer is that while they were off 'getting into the word' and 'fellow-shipping with their brothers and sisters in Christ' their buddies were cleaning up the mess they left behind, scrambling to rewrite the training schedule that was left unfinished or unapproved, or giving the briefing that the christian skipped out on. Bible studies are important, no less than Church, retreats, mission trips, and all the rest, but if we are going to be good witness for Christ, we have to begin by taking care of our responsibilities to others.

It is easy at the end of the day to look at what you did and give yourself a pat on the back for being better than everyone else. You worked hard and they didn't. But remember a few things.
First, everyone has their own struggles and hardships. When you are picking up slack for someone else, remember that people have been picking up your slack since before you were born. Even aside from what our parents do for us, everyone has bad days, problems, and weaknesses. While today you are covering for someone else, someday you will need someone to cover for you.
Second, its not about you. At the end of the day what matters is if freshmen learned the drill movements, if the shipment got out the door, if the reports got filed, if the job got done. When we learn to be humble and handle our own load, we might have the opportunity to help someone else and achieve things bigger than ourselves.

Why We Need Health Care (Part II)

In the last post I attempted to define at a very fundamental level why liberals believe that the wealthy are to blame for the plight of poor people in America. I realize now that I made a basic mistake and did not define the terms I was using. When I speak of poor, I mean people who have difficulty paying for or maintaining many of the luxuries that are common place in America and when I speak of the wealthy, I mean those who make or have accumulated more than the average American family.

In this post I will look at why liberals look to the government as the solution of the problem. We identified their assumption that the reason for an excess of wealth in one area is a lack of it in another. They believe that there is a finite amount of wealth, which means those who have more than average have stolen it from those who have less.

Having determined that there is theft going on, (from one income bracket to another) the liberal then looks to see who or what has the power to remedy the situation. The most obvious candidate is government, it has the power to compel people to do its bidding, and the wealthy will not surrender the amount of income required of him willingly.

 Thus, the liberal sees government as the best force with the right to equalize the wealth of a nation, because the nation is not capable of doing it itself. When big business steals from the poor or otherwise takes advantage of them, the poor have no one to turn to except government. Thus the government become the ultimate charity, collecting from the wealthy to care for the poor. The collections take the form of taxes, and the government uses those taxes to pay for doctors, food stamps, medication, etc. In this way, the wealthy CEO of Walmart pays a portion of his earnings back into the system, allowing it to be used to help and provide for people in the lower income brackets he makes his money off of.

This is why people like Marx or Hitler look to some form of populist government and force to achieve what they see as social justice. Because people with wealth have been shaped by the capitalistic culture that surrounds them, they are motivated by greed and self interest and thus are more concerned about themselves than the community and must be forced to share and take care of the community.

Government becomes the ultimate parent, making sure the children share and get along while also providing just what every child needs.

Why We Need Health Care (Part I)

In the hopes of contributing something to the debate over the direction our country should take in regards to Health Care and welfare programs in general I will be taking a few posts to attempt to discuss the assumptions and reasoning that underlie the belief in welfare in general. 
We begin with a basic problem, there is a vast disparity in wealth among Americans. While some have golden toilets, others have difficulty paying for their plumbing from month to month. While some charter private jets to fly from city to city, others cannot afford a car to drive to work. A portion of our society cannot afford the basics of life in modern America. This raises two questions.

1. Why are people deprived or lacking in basic necessities and comforts?
2. How do we go about fixing the problem.

The first question is perhaps most important but is often overlooked so we can talk about fixing the problem. Before we can determine a solution to the problem we first need to identify the cause. This points us toward one of the bottom level beliefs of liberalism that is so fundamental that it is rarely brought to the surface.

Man is basically good and is shaped by his environment. Thus when educated he can be enlightened and improved, but if left in poverty or surrounded by corruption then he will be almost unable to avoid damaging influence they will exert. 

Thus, an individual in poverty must be rescued from that state. He is nearly  powerless to remove himself from his environment because the environment itself is what shapes and motivates him. Thus, his existence in poverty cannot be his own fault. 

If it is not his own fault, then we must look around for what is creating the environment that is keeping people in poverty. The liberal usually falls back on the great socialist thinkers, the foremost of whom was Karl Marx,   and identifies Capitalism as the culprit. Capitalism is, fundamentally built on gaining wealth for oneself. The vast amounts of money that corporations and companies make must come from somewhere, and often that money comes from the private sector. For  example, take Wal-Mart. The company has built itself around selling base level goods at base level prices, and the majority of their income comes from low income people (like me!) who are unable or unwilling to pay more at other stores. Thus, when Walmart makes a billion dollars, that is a billion dollars that came from lower income families who cannot pay for medical or dental bills, for a car, or for insurance. And, to make it worse, when the CEO receives a 100,000 dollar bonus, that is a hundred thousand dollars in his bank account that came from people who make less than that in four years.

Thus, the culprit seems obvious, there is a lack of money in one area (the low income bracket), an abundance of wealth in another area (the CEO's bank account) and a clear path as to how the money got from one place to the other. The CEO is caught red handed.

Now that we know who caused the problem, we'll look at how to fix it next. 

Health Care

I've been talking to a lot of people about the Supreme Court's Health Care ruling and thinking carefully in an effort to keep my foot out of my mouth in this post. There are a couple of things that I think might help people in thinking about this issue that have flown under the radar.

1. Whoever has the gold, makes the rules. We laugh about it, but it is true, the people who pay for something decide how to handle it, and since FDR's New Deal we have relied more and more on the government to take care of our social issues. When the government is responsible for all those things and we demand that the government pay for our education, our doctors, our medicine, and our house, and sometimes our food, then we should not be surprised when they tell us that we have to buy health insurance. I don't think they should make us buy health insurance, but I also don't think the government should pay for everything else either.
2. The Supreme Court is not meant to bite the bullet and clean up the mess that our representatives make. We can rail on Chief Justice Roberts all we want but it was the representatives we elected who did not stop the Health Care bill, and that is what we pay them to do. The Supreme Court is already a highly politicized institution, anyone who watched the confirmation hearings for Justices Roberts, Alito, or Kagan remember how nasty they were. A lot of that was based around their opinions on Roe v. Wade, which supercharged the court and has become a litmus test for appointments on both sides. Also, it might help to remember the court packing plan of FDR. The Supreme Court blocked much of what FDR proposed, and in response,  the president planned to rearrange much of the Judicial branch to remove the opposition to his proposals and announced it to the nation in one of his fireside chats. This was avoided when several Justices retired or switched positions on the Supreme Court and thus made it unnecessary, but the threat was very real, and it is possible that Chief Justice Roberts was afraid of beginning a war with the executive or legislative branches that could severely hurt the Court and the nation. 
3. If you don't like what congress is doing, then do your job. It is our duty as citizens to make informed decisions on election day. Election day is coming up, get informed. its that simple. 

The main point I'm trying to make here is that what happens in the hallowed halls of our government is a direct reflection of the society that puts people there. There will always be people willing to tell us what to do if we let them, and if we demand that they be our parents, they will eventually treat us like children. Personal responsibility, diligence, and loyalty to those around us will go a lot farther toward fixing our country than voting for libertarian candidates. A representative democracy places most of the power with the people on the assumption that they will hold onto it and use it responsibly, and as long as the people do then the system works less poorly than any other. Once the people give up responsibility, the government has to exercise it for them, and we start on the long road to oligarchy or anarchy.
A friend of mine, William Schwennson wrote an excellent article on the recent EU summit and the Supreme Court ruling. He has read the 193 page Supreme Court opinion and has some good insights into what it means. You can find it here.
On a final note, please keep the family of Lt. Col. Roy Lin Tisdale in your prayers. He left a wife and several children including a young son. However bad things seem to be going for us, it helps to remember "At least we aren't being shot at".
Semper Fi.

Learning

I was looking through some of my posts below, and besides the long period of time that has passed since I wrote anything, I noticed something else. I focused a lot on politics, some of which was important, some of which wasn't. Some of what I wrote I still agree with, some of it I wish I could erase, such as the Perry article.
When I went into my freshman year of College, I thought a lot of things that appear silly now. I have learned a lot from the last few years, and one of them is that the government will not fix our problems. It matters very little whether Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, or President Obama is in the White House, and it matters less who controls congress. What matters is us.
For those of us who are Christians, we are called to live out the commands of Christ, to let his light shine through us. We will produce far deeper and more lasting good on this world if we simply shine the light of God onto the people around us. If we consistently love one another as Christ loved us we will have an impact that the social conservatives have only imagined.
Look at a few of the big social issues the Church is concerned with: abortion, marriage, and welfare. If every christian young man lived responsibly, kept his word, honored the women around him as Paul commanded, and was generous to help the people he knew, those three issues would shrink overnight. The Church needs to clean its own house before it can send people out to clean up the culture.
I am far from perfect, as my buddies in the Corps can tell you, and I have failed many times to uphold the commands of Christ in everyday life. When we are faced with failure in our immediate lives, it is easier to blame the fall of society on Congress or on the courts, as I well know. As Christ said, we must remove the log from our own eye before we can remove the spec from our brother's.

Iranian Mess

This week Wiley Lecture Series, a student organization in the Texas A&M Memorial Student Center, hosted its symposium entitled 'Iranian Hazard' with Dr. Paul Barretto, a consultant on international nuclear projects (his corner on NSSPI can be found here), and Richard Stoll, Professor of Political Science at Rice University. The problem with Iran, as they pointed out, is that America and Iran have had bad relations for many years, since we helped over throw a democratically elected government and instituted a more friendly dictator in his place. Now, their nuclear program is continuing to ramp up as they continue to acquire nuclear technology that is military specific and has no use outside of nuclear weapons and they increase the number of nuclear facilities they admit to be building.

A lot of people suggest a simple preemptive strike composed of numerous precision air strikes to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, but Iran has so far not crossed the red line of actually beginning to assemble a nuke, though they continue to work close to the line. A plethora of air strikes is not the simple easy solution that it might appear. First, it would require numerous, simultaneous strikes throughout Iran which could stretch our operational capabilities in the region. Second, We do not have the Intel we need to make the kind of precision strikes necessary. Iran's facilities are spread all over the nation and we do not even know exactly where many of them are. Third, our bunker buster bombs are beginning to be obsoleted by the bunker building capabilities of established nations and there is a considerable chance that even a direct hit on an Iranian nuclear bunker could fail to completely destroy it. Fourth, and most importantly, it is a temporary solution.We and the Israelis have knocked out nuclear facilities before, and though they delay development of the nuclear program, they do not take it off the table.

If we want to keep Iran from developing nukes, we need to remove their motivation to do so, which would make an interesting discussion in defining.

Something that surprised me Wednesday evening was the lack of power that the president of Iran holds. Iran is ruled by a smorgasbord of high elder councils, religious boards, clerics, etc., with the president being somewhere south of tenth on the political power rankings of Iran. Iran's military is also made up of two different pieces, the regular army, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the fanatics of the military. The military threat is not necessarily that Ahmadinejad will send Iranian forces in, but rather that one of the radical elements in one of the councils or a cleric will provide the little push the Revolutionary Guard needs to start some kind of conflict. Then, whatever the Iranian people think of their government, they will be very anti U.S., worse even than Iraq was.
As is usually the case, the situation is a lot more complicated than it would appear at first glance and will take time and energy to solve, and more than a little sacrifice on everyone's part.

Politics: Ready, Set...Lie

So the Presidential Campaigns are revving up and getting in full swing and I saw this article on Perry on Fox's website. In the article Perry is accused and criticized for: Violent remarks toward Bernanke, working for Al Gore and not being honest about it, and wanting to lead a Texas secession.

1. The Bernanke Comments

In the Article:" Exhibit A. On the same day he filed his candidacy papers, Perry was captured on camera suggesting Texans might want to rough up Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke if he tries to tackle the economic slump by printing more money.

"If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas," Perry said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost ... treasonous in my opinion." "

In Reality: Fair enough, Perry probably shouldn't have said it, but keep in mind that democrats have been vilifying tea-party republicans (who proposed Cut-Cap-and-Balance, the ONLY plan proposed by congress that S&P admitted would have prevented the downgrade, and also the ONLY plan the president and democratic leaders refused to discuss) as 'terrorists' and 'hostage takers'. So fair enough, Perry should refrain from suggesting physical violence, but nothing out of the ordinary.

2. Working for Al Gore's Campaign

In the Article:"Already, he was questioned Monday about his post as Al Gore's Texas campaign chairman during Gore's unsuccessful 1988 bid for president. Perry claimed these were the days before Gore was "Mr. Global Warming," but Politico.com noted that Gore was talking about global warming before his 1988 bid. "

In Reality: Read the above. 'Perry claimed these were the days before Gore was "Mr. Global Warming"'. So what if Gore mentioned Global Warming a few times. He didn't go off the deep end until after Bush beat him in the 2000 elections. Perry is right, Politico.com is being stupid.

3. Secession

In the Article: "Gibbs questioned how the governor who famously suggested a Texas secession from the U.S. is now seeking to lead the entire nation.

"Just two years ago, the governor of Texas openly talked about leading Texas out of the United States of America -- and now this campaign has caused him to profess his love for the United States. I think it's a remarkable turnaround," Gibbs said."

In Reality: To be fair to Fox, most of this comes from Gibbs, though they failed to contradict the blatant lie Gibbs told. Perry never said he would lead Texas in Secession. What he said was that if England continued ignoring what the colonies want then there might be problems...sorry, got mixed up there. He said that if Washington 'continues to thumb their noses at the american people, who knows what may come of it.' Thumbing noses may refer to pushing the healthcare bill through in secret sessions, confiscating copies of the proposed bill from voters wanting to speak with their congress men, denying voters access to their congressmen, lying about what was in the bill, etc, all of which was being done by the political establishment in Washington when Perry made the above remarks. If Perry was in any way wrong, then we might as well throw out the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Gibbs is wrong in that Perry didn't talk about leading any kind of Secession (he indicated that if anything happened it would be ordinary people fed up with Washington, not politicians), and that it wasn't Texas Seceding, it was American citizens from every state.

My point basically is not that Perry is perfect, he's not. He is, in my opinion, the best man for the job right now, and the next year is going to see a lot of people making volcanic mountains out of collapsing mole hills. The collapse of any kind of journalistic code of honor means that Americans need to develop discernment in their reading and the diligence necessary to actually do research on who they are voting for. The only thing that kills Democracies faster than a nonvoter is an uneducated and selfish voter.

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.