Category Archives: Social Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

American Exceptionalism

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Are we losing it along with our trust in government?

Enough breaches of trust — and I haven’t even started to hit all the scandals out there, by a long shot — and ordinary people will start to assume that the whole system is corrupt. And if that happens, people will quit following the law because they think it’s the right thing to do, and only do so to the extent they’re afraid of getting caught. Plenty of countries operate on that principle. They’re just not as nice to live in as countries where the law has moral stature. When government officials breach trust, they push us closer to that sort of third world condition. Which is why, when they’re found doing so, they should be punished severely.

It’s also why we should try electing, and employing, people with strong moral compasses of their own; government officials who will follow the law because they think it’s the right thing to do, rather than simply to the extent they’re afraid of getting caught.

Good luck with that. Bill Clinton showed that people don’t give a damn, or at least didn’t. Maybe they’ll start to figure out why integrity and probity are important in public officials, but I’m not hopeful. I think that the results of the New York City races (particularly the Spitzer outcome) will be somewhat revealing, at least for that electorate.

Education, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Public School Is Child Abuse

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Example 3,456,753:

“At one thirty in the morning on a Saturday, I was awoken to a bomb sound going off,” Janczewski said, choking back emotion. “I went to the window to find my garage was on fire and engulfed in flames, my camper and the side of my house…If I wouldn’t have woken up, we could’ve all died.”

“Whoever’s done this has no remorse,” he told the Ogemaw County Herald earlier. “They have no soul.”

The family also had the letters “YWP” and “ITY” spray painted on the side of their house, which Janczewski thinks mean “you will pay” and “I told you.”

But why on earth would they be attacked for speaking out in defense of their son, Beck asked? He also added to the audience: “Do you want somebody who says 15-30 years for raping a child, an 8th grader, is a little harsh? Do you want them teaching your child?”

The whole system needs to be torn up by the roots.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

The Middle East

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Bambi meets Godzilla:

President Obama has had a rude awakening in the Middle East. The region he thought existed was an illusion built on American progressive assumptions about the way the world works. In the dream Middle East, democracy at least of a sort was just around the corner. Moderate Islamists would engage with the democratic process, and the experience would lead them to ever more moderate behavior. If America got itself on the “right side of history,” and supported this hopeful development, both America’s values and its interests would be served. Our relationships with the peoples of the Middle East would improve as they saw Washington supporting the emergence of democracy in the region, and Al Qaeda and the other violent groups would lose influence as moderate Islamist parties guided their countries to prosperity and democracy.

This vision, sadly, has turned out to be a mirage, and Washington is discovering that fact only after the administration followed the deceptive illusion out into the deep desert. The vultures are circling now as American policy crawls forlornly over the dunes; with both the New York Times and the Washington Post running “what went wrong” obituaries for the President’s efforts in Egypt, not even the MSM can avoid the harsh truth that President Obama’s Middle East policies have collapsed into an ugly and incoherent mess.

I wonder if Mead, usually a very measured man, realizes the irony that many of the president’s opponents have impolitely (but not inaccurately) nicknamed him “Bambi.”

And then there’s this, strongly related:

What is the common denominator of his failed foreign policy initiatives (reset with Russia, a new, kinder, gentler Middle East, supposed breakthroughs with China, outreach to Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela) and his domestic catastrophes (Obamacare, deficits, huge debts, or chronic unemployment)? In a nutshell, he does not seem to know much about human nature, whether in the concrete or abstract sense. Obama either never held a menial job or ran a business. In lieu of education in the school of hard knocks, he read the wrong, if any, seminal texts at all.

That’s the fundamental problem with Marxists and leftists in general, all the way back to Rousseau. They either completely misunderstand human nature (“the noble savage”) or they completely deny its existence (“the New Soviet Man”).

Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Mike Griffin: The Spoiled Generation

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Asked by Jeff Greason why we as a society stopped pushing the technologies we needed to be pre-eminent in civil and military space, the former administrator blamed it on “My Generation,” the Baby Boomers. He prefaced the statement with the caveat that he had thought long and hard about it, and didn’t have a good answer, and that it was only his opinion, and that it might be wrong. Obviously many of us are exceptions (and he obviously thinks himself one) but that was the only answer that he could come up with.

In response to a question from Greg Sullivan, he noted that when we feel threatened (e.g., being attacked with IEDs) we throw the acquisition book out the window to solve the problem. Clearly, we don’t currently feel threatened enough to do that with space technology development and acquisition.

[Update a while later]

Jeff’s answer: We don’t want game-changing technologies, because they upset the Russians, and arms-control regimes. They don’t like game changers, because they like and are comfortable with the game. Reagan administration was rare exception. Not surprised that we do not attain that which we do not want.

In commercial market, the market will drive things. If Brilliant Pebbles had gone forward, we’d have much cheaper launch today. If there was a market, we’d have satisfied it by now. If assured market, he could go to the bank and get the money for reusable vehicle.

Demand is key. Airmail-like things would help (already starting this with COTS). Could buy payloads and capability, rather than resources. Isn’t as concerned about tech development for launch vehicles, except things that allow SSTO. But it’s important to learn how to integrate two-stage stage system, and that would be productive area.

Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Who Won The Cold War?

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Thoughts from Sarah Hoyt:

Few people have read The Black Book of Communism – which should be taught in our schools, in every grade, in grade-appropriate chunks – but our highs chools boast Howard Zin’s People’s History which is the Soviet view of America; Young Hegelians clubs and hipsters decked in Che Guevara.

The “Well educated” are in fact indoctrinated, taught communist propaganda and syllogisms until they’re UNABLE to think. We now have an administration composed of people like this, who are unable to connect to reality. They might be our first Marxist administration, but they suffer from third generation blight, not having come to their opinions from their own mind, but having been browbeaten into them. They are the good kids, trapped in an illusion from which they can’t break out.

But the d*mned ineradicable fact about communism and its cousin “state capitalism” and the hellish hybrid they’re trying out here is that it doesn’t work. IT NEVER WORKS. It doesn’t work even when instituted by very bright psychopaths. It works even less when instituted by people so indoctrinated they can’t SEE reality.

And it will crash here – hard or soft, with a bang or a whimper. It will crash and it might drag the rest of the world with us into the endless night.

Perhaps liberty will re-arise amidst the wreckage, but I hope we don’t have to get that far.