I’ll be on this afternoon from 2-3:30 PM PDT, to discuss the book in the context of current events with Russia, commercial crew and congress.
Category Archives: History
Normandy’s Aftermath
An historic leader from The Economist, four days after the successful invasion (after it had finally become clear that it was a success):
…when all the thanks are made and all the contributions measured, there still remain the final artificers of victory, the men who, in the King’s words “man the ships, storm the beaches and fill the skies.” Although the first advances have been secured with surprisingly little loss of life, the hardest fighting lies ahead. In the weeks to come, thousands of men will lay down their lives or suffer disablement, will endure pain and hardship and strain, will throw everything they have into the balance of victory without particularly asking why or counting the cost. For them at the moment there is not very much that the people who stay behind can do. They can keep vigil, as the King has asked. They can face anxiety steadfastly. They can accept the losses when they come; but the real effort of gratitude will only be needed later on, when the men come home. They will not have been given victory, they will have toiled and sweated for it, all the way from Alamein to Bizerta, from Sicily to Rome, in the jungles of Burma, on the landing beaches in France. They have been the active agents of every military success. It is their courage and initiative and adaptability and common sense that have completed the historic reversal of the last four years. It will not be enough for their elders to give them “food, work and homes”—the essentials of a decent post-war society. They must be allowed their place in that society, they must be given scope and opportunity and responsibility to run it themselves.
Fortunately, they were.
Dutch Courage
Mark Steyn remembers Reagan, ten years after his death. And he died almost two decades to the day after his moving and historic speech at Normandy.
[Update a while later]
Here’s the speech, for those who haven’t seen it.
Leonardo Da Vinci
He wrote himself a pretty awesome CV.
Grant And Lee
“These guys needed cell phones.”
All summer we’ll see the sequicentennials of that bloody summer of 1864, as Grant marched down toward Richmond, after (unlike his predecessors) not retreating after the bloody battle at The Wilderness, as Sherman was in turn moving down into the deep south. The two campaigns ended up saving Lincoln’s presidency in the fall election.
Cold Harbor was one of the bloodiest, complete with the beginnings of trench warfare that was ultimately a presage to the first world war. The European observers, used to Napoleonic tactics, were appalled at the butchery of rapid-fire weaponry, a technological advance (if one can call it back) to which took decades for tactics to adapt. The only major change in the half century afterward of carnage, really, was the tank.
Safety Is Not The Highest Priority In Human Spaceflight
I’ve started an on-line petition. I hope that the astronaut office will weigh in.
[Update a while later]
Due to some unhappiness about having to deal with Facebook (and a politically problematic petition site), I’ve set up a new one at the web site for the book. So please sign over there, and pass the word.
The Vice Presidency
Is it time to abolish it?
It would, of course, require an amendment.
Technocracy
Always ends up being idiocracy:
…the elites had to wait for the man of their dreams.
When they found him, he was a rare breed: a genuine African American (his father was Kenyan) who thought and talked like the academics on both sides of his family, a product of the faculty lounge who dabbled in urban/race politics, a man who could speak to both ends of the liberals’ up-and-down coalition, and a would-be transformer of our public life whose quiet voice and low-key demeanor conveyed “moderation” in all that he spoke and did. Best of all, he was the person whom the two branches of the liberal kingdom—the academics and journalists—wanted to be, a man who shared their sensibilities and their views of the good and the beautiful. This was the chance of a lifetime to shape the world to their measure. He and they were the ones they were waiting for, and with him, they longed for transcendent achievements. But in the event they were undone by the three things Siegel had pegged as their signature weaknesses: They had too much belief in the brilliance of experts, they were completely dismissive of public opinion, and they had a contempt for the great middle class.
…Obama had reassured them again and again that if they liked their plans and their doctors, they would be able to keep them, but this proved inaccurate. For the first time in American history the cost of a massive social program would be concentrated on a small slice of the populace that was not rich, and in some instances, could not afford it. Those costs came in many different dimensions: Parents found they could not take sick children to the same hospitals they had used before. People with complex chronic conditions found that the teams of doctors who had worked together to treat them had been broken up. For the people who had been insured through the individual market the elites had little compassion. Cancer patients who took their complaints to the press (and to the Republicans) were “fact checked” and then viciously attacked by the Democrats, among them Harry Reid, who called them all liars. “We have to pass the bill, so that you can find out what’s in it,” Nancy Pelosi infamously said. People had finally found out and they were furious.
In February 2010, in the midst of the row over Obamacare’s passage, 80 highly credentialed experts in health care, graduates of and teachers in the best schools in the country, sent an open letter to the president and the leaders of Congress insisting the bill be passed. The Affordable Care Act, they maintained, would “cover more than 30 million people who would otherwise have gone uninsured. . . . Provide financial help to make coverage for millions of working families. . . . Strengthen competition and oversight of private insurance. . . . Provide unprecedented protection for Americans living with chronic illness and disabilities. . . . Make significant investments in community health centers, prevention, and wellness. . . . Increase financial support to states to finance expanded Medicaid insurance coverage, eliminate the Medicare prescription drug donut hole . . . provide a platform to improve the quality of the health care system . . . [and] reduce the federal budget deficit over the next ten years and beyond.”
They were not alone. “Historians will see this health care bill as a masterfully crafted piece of legislation,” wrote Jonathan Chait in the magazine Herbert Croly cofounded. “The new law untangles the dysfunctionalities of the individual insurance market while fulfilling the political imperative of leaving the employer-provided system in place. . . . They put into place numerous reforms to force efficiency into a wasteful system. They found hundreds of billions of dollars in payment offsets, a monumental task in itself. And they will bring economic and financial security to tens of millions of Americans who would otherwise risk seeing their lives torn apart.”
It did none of these things. It did not fix the dysfunctions of the individual market; it destroyed it. It did not save money; it squandered billions. It did not bring peace and security to tens of millions of people; it took it away from them. The best and the brightest had made their predictions. They were wrong.
Hayek wrote a book or two about this sort of thing.
On Memorial Day
Roger Simon says “Blame me for everything.”
I think he’s being a little too hard on himself. As he says, he was young.
The first (and last) year I was eligible for the draft, I had a high number. If I’d gotten a notice, I’d have likely joined the Air Force, though my vision would have prevented me from being a pilot.
What To Do About The VA Scandal
I wrote in passing yesterday that if President Obama or the people of this country had any self-respect, he’d resign over the scandal of the Veterans Affairs hospitals, which needlessly sentenced an unknown number of American veterans to death through their combination of managerial incompetence, medical malpractice, and monstrously cruel indifference to their clients. Other heads of government have resigned for less. President Obama presented himself to the public as an authority in the field of health-care management and as an executive who not only would insist upon but also would in fact achieve the highest standards in transparent, honest, competent government. He has failed, comprehensively. An honest man acknowledges his failures.
We know from years of experience now that the president is the very antithesis of an honest man. And in his own self delusion, he considers himself indispensable.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The failure of socialized medicine:
Many have wondered about Barack Obama’s prolonged silence concerning the disastrous situation at the Veterans Administration hospitals and then his odd detached demeanor (well, maybe not that odd for him) when he finally did discuss it at a press conference.
The answer is simple. His lifetime dream of a free public (single payer) healthcare system for all just disintegrated in front of him. Forget the wildly ambitious and pervasive “Affordable Care Act,” the government couldn’t even handle the health of our wounded servicemen, acknowledged for years to be by far the group most deserving of medical attention in our country. With veterans dying while waiting lists are falsified, it’s hard to see government healthcare as anything but incompetent, disgraceful and quite possibly criminal.
Government has failed utterly. Does anyone have any doubt that Halliburton or even the dreaded Koch brothers could have better handled the health of our wounded warriors? Probably almost any business would have. There at least would have been some accountability. (It’s interesting to see the quaint Bernie Sanders, the one self-described socialist in the Congress, as opposed to the closeted ones, being the most outspoken defender of VA malfeasance and urging us not to “rush to judgement” on a three page bill.)
But it’s not just healthcare, although it’s certainly prominent, important and symbolic. The Obama administration has been the best advertisement for libertarianism across the board in recent memory.
Well, we’ll see what happens this fall.