Richter Magnitude 10

Now that they’ve experienced the equivalent of a 10 on the political Richter scale, will the leadership of the Delaware GOP get the message? Today and the months and years ahead afford the current leaders of the Republican party an opportunity to survey the rubble remaining after their Castle was demolished. The question is whether or not they will seek to cooperate in rebuilding and reforming a party that must include the conservative wing so long ignored, or at the very most, cynically utilized to consolidate their power base. Or will they retreat to underground bunkers where they snipe away? Will they prefer a Gotterdammerung rather than accommodation?

In any case, “Moderate” Republican leaders must deal with the enormity of the ground shaking victories of two renegade candidates they neither endorsed nor supported. Both the picks of the Republican convention lost, despite the spending rivers of money and the mounting vicious attacks against fellow Republicans. Both candidates won without any support from their party—nada, zero, zilch.

The ruling class lost and lost big. They may not regain their standing any time soon—if ever.

Some modest predictions: I don’t think there will be any reaching across the aisle by Republican “moderates,” not, at least, any time soon. I also don’t think they will begin to rebuild by reconsidering their contempt for and denigration of the Tea Party movement that was instrumental in the O’Donnell victory. I fully expect the “moderates” of the Delaware GOP to pull a Karl Rove attitude from now until after the election. That is because I think that aside from a nod to fiscal responsibility, they are far more temperamentally and ideologically aligned with Democrats than they are with conservatives.

The above leads to another observation concerning the unseemly crowing of Democrats over a victory not yet won.

Do Democrats suppose there are no disaffected Democrats in Delaware who will vote for O’Donnell and Urquhart because they also are fed up with the radical leftist turn their party has taken? Do they really think there are no Democrats who are horrified by the runaway debt, the expansion of federal power, and the anti-business stance of the Democratic party--just to name a few concerns? Do they suppose the party ranks will present and hold a solid, impenetrable phalanx any more than Delaware Republicans have presented a unified front?

Do they suppose all Democrat party members are so loyal they’ll stick with a party that leans toward a socialist agenda, stands against parental choice for the education of their children, generally scoffs at religious values, scorns pro-life beliefs, and undermines small business—all the while continuing to raise taxes?
Perhaps most tellingly, do they suppose Democrats don’t see the depressing reality of the US and Delaware economy?

If so, they have missed the titanic fissure in both parties. They have missed the resurgence of a conservatism that transcends party affiliation. They have ignored the disgust of Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike with the ruling elite who have not listened to or felt, much less responded to the tremors under their feet.

In fact, I believe we are about to see a political reconfiguration that shakes both parties to the foundations, a reconfiguration that combines fiscal and social conservatism. It started with tremors of dissatisfaction and then swelled to the size of an earthquake--angry repudiation of the current state of affairs.

But we’ve seen nothing yet in comparison with what’s to come.

More political earthquakes on the scale of Richter Magnitude 10 are on their way.

Dreams

At the time Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I have a Dream” Speech on the steps of Lincoln Memorial, few would have guessed the speech would eventually find its way into the text books of American high school students as an example of one of the most inspiring speeches ever given.
Most Americans know the substance of the speech, which was a plea for all Americans to be judged by their character and not by the color of their skins. And most Americans have forgiven and forgotten King’s own character flaws, whether they were those of serial adultery or suspected plagiarism. He is forgiven because he had a dream so transcendent and powerful its soaring message rose above his character flaws.

It is most often so. Tolstoy and Ghandi, two men King drew upon for inspiration, were also deeply flawed. Tolstoy, best known for his interpretation of a gentle, communal and deeply pacifist Christianity, was often abusively cruel to his long-suffering wife. Ghandi, whose principles of peaceful non-violence have been widely imitated—most notably by MLK--had strange personal practices such as drinking urine and testing his vows of celibacy by sleeping with young women.

Yet both had dreams that inspired millions.

Good dreamers are most often mere men and women with feet of clay. They are usually acutely aware of their shortcomings, their weaknesses and frailties. That is why they want each human being to have the opportunity to transcend their sins and weaknesses, to dream of being better, to take the opportunities to pick themselves up and to try, try again.

Good dreamers dream with you. They want you to have freedom to achieve your own dreams, your own God-given potential, regardless of your skin color, class or gender. Those who dream with you want you and your children to be enabled by freedom. They want the burdens of state taken off your back, the overweening plethora of laws, rules and regulations whittled down.

But dark dreamers say, “I have a dream for you.” They want their perfect dreams for a utopian society to prevail over you and everyone else. Dark dreamers, most often those who think of themselves as perfect people, have templates for humanity, molds into which every human being is to be poured. Dark dreamers think their template is perfect for you--but not so much for them. Most often the dark dreams come in the guise of absolute equality, a strict egalitarianism which has its roots in fantastic unreality, is animated solely by power and ambition and achieved by force of the state.

Today the differences between good and bad dreams have never been so clear. As usual, the visions are divided into “Right” and “Left.” As the famous political philosopher Erik von Kuelnelt-Leddihn wrote, the Left is and always has been the “Great Menace…[The Left believes] in a state insured, government-prescribed, and—to make matters worse—socially endorsed collectivism [in which]our liberty, our Western personality, our spiritual growth, our true happiness is at stake."

Kuelnelt-Leddihn continues:

"All the great dynamic isms of the last two hundred years have been mass movements attacking—even as they mouthed the word ‘freedom’—the liberty, the independence of the person. This was done programmatically in the name of all sorts of high-and even low-sounding ideals: nationality, race better living standards, social justice, security, ideological conviction, restoration of ancient rights-- a happier world for all. But in reality, the driving motor of these movements was always the mad ambition of intellectuals—oratorically or, at least, literarily gifted—and the successful mobilization of the masses filled with envy and a thirst for revenge.” [Add to that list an anti-religious bias and a desire for uniformity, a ‘paradise’ in which everyone is the same. Parentheses mine.]

The Right, on the other hand, stands against statist power and for personal freedom. The Right is committed not to change for change’s sake, but to what is eternally true and valid, seeking either to “restore or the reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete…The ‘Man of the Right’ does not have a time-bound mind, but a sovereign mind. [He] stands for liberty, a free, unprejudiced form of thinking a readiness to preserve traditional values” as well as for a commitment to the sanctity of human life, as each life is unique and irreplaceable.

Dreams of the Right are dreamt by and held to by imperfect people who believe in transcendent values that hold for all societies in all times and places, values which create maximum individual freedom.

In sum, the dream of the Right is measured not by the person, but by its Truth.

In view of the upcoming elections, what does the above mean? It means you have a choice to vote for those who uphold the good dream or to ally yourself with those who uphold a dark dream; with those who will dream with you or with those who have a dream for you.

Realize that those who dream good dreams will be, like Martin Luther King, Jr., flawed human beings just like you.

But do what you must.

Choose your dream.

Farewell, Delaware--and Every Other State in the USA

Bill McCollum is the attorney general of Florida who is getting flak for proposing an immigration law for Floridians.

He has set forth a very well reasoned case against the overreach of the Obama administration, pointing out the administration's immigration policy displays a "blatant disregard for separation of powers and federalism [and has resulted in] trampling both the constitutional authority of Congress and the sovereign rights of the states."

Well, yes.

The principles of federalism as envisioned and enacted by the founders of our country are the stuff of genius and have been widely imitated. The European Union, for example, owes its ideas of federation to American political thought.

As McCollum and others point out, at the heart of American federalism is the concept of separation of powers. That separation allows spheres of authority, congress having wide authority in domestic affairs and the president having great authority in foreign affairs.

In his handling of immigration policy, particularly in the case of Arizona, the president has deliberately blurred the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs in order to expand executive power. He did so by claiming his power over foreign affairs grants him power over "any attempt by Arizona to enforce federal immigration law...The administration's effort to strip Arizona of its rights under federal law reflects the view that presidential power over foreign affairs trumps congressional authority over domestic politcy."

But it is not just congress that is being rendered increasingly irrelevant under the Obama administration's power grab.

States also are in danger of being totally subsumed under executive power, their governmental sovereignty trashed and their ability to protect their citizens with their own police powers vitiated. In brief, the Obama administration, by denying Arizona its "law enforcement prerogatives, based on vague assertions of presidential foreign policy interests," has gutted the state autonomy gauranteed within the framework of federalism checked by balance of powers.

McCollum adds: "By that logic, there is no exercise of state prerogatives that the president cannot override all by himself." [Italics mine.]

Well, yes, again. That sentence deserves memorization, for it is the very definition of executive tyanny.

McCollum concludes: "President Obama's actions are unlike anything the American people have seen before. Indeed, they are in an entirely different category than the actions of previous presidents, which were undertaken largely in wartime...[President Obama] is disregarding a clear set of statutory requirements contained in federal immigration law, and he is greatly expanding presidential power--all without tacklong a genuine national security threat...[He] is eroding the separation of powers, evading checks and balances, and destroying federalism. These actions are hostile to the core of our Constitution...

"This president seems committed to running a government of men that rules without regard for the law. A government of laws is what the Constitution requires, and what the American people demand."

In light of the above, what stance should Delaware's candidates for office take? Certainly each and all must stand up to the ever encroaching power of the executive branch and stand for state sovereignty as defined by the constitution. Each and all must stand up for the unique rights of states to defend their citizens. If states continue to lose their right to defend their own citizens, they will be completely subsumed by the federal government. Further,as concerns candidates and fellow citizens alike each and all must stand up for the ability of states to be the breeding ground for unique innovation in diverse fields of endeavor, including economic innovation.

And therein lies the rub for tiny Delaware. If Delaware does not stand up to be counted, just what will be its fate? Its' not hard to guess. Delaware's unique position as corporate headquarters for the nation will be increasingly challenged by an out of control executive branch determined to be sovereign over all economic as well as immigration and other matters.

Right now, as in the past, Delaware has been the initiator of corporate law and has studiously avoided conflict with the federal government, seeking to strike a delicate balance between state and federal authority.

But without a strong, truly federal government, it will, like other states, simply become an administrative appendage attached to an all devouring executive/administrative body. Its unique status will disappear along with its economic base and its stellar position in the corporate world.

Wag the Dog

Costing only 15 million dollars--mere peanuts in Hollywood and congressional circles--and taking a mere 29 days to shoot, Barry Levinson's 1997 Wag the Dog, an acidic political satire, may well have pertinence for the upcoming elections.

In the original story, two weeks before re-election, the president is accused of molesting an underage girl in the Oval Office. The spin doctors, including a Hollywood producer, leap into action, fearing the charges, if made public, will competely sabotage the president's chances for another four years in the White House.

The specialist in damage control suggests creating a campaign centered around a fake war in Albania, and assembles a team of media experts who put out a steady stream of denials of non-existent emergencies. The experts rely on the assumption the American public doesn't know or even care about Albania. But they believe the public will rally to the side of the President and re-elect him. The ploy works.

The manufacture of false crises in order to hide real ones and to win elections seems to be an old and even a rather respected tactic of some administrations, including this one.

The point being that voters should be aware this administration's apparent serenity in the face of what appears to be a gathering political tsunami this November may well be based on backup plans to manufacture a crisis. After all, who can forget Rahm Emmanuel's trenchant advice not to let a perfectly good crisis go to waste? Who cares if the crisis is manufactured or not? A crisis is a crisis.

Not that we have not had enough real crises, mind you; some of which, like the Gulf oil spill, appear to have gone down a black hole as straight faced administration spokesmen assure us 75% of the oil has magically disappeared undersea and seafood sniffers assure the public the taint of oil is nowhere to be found. No olfactory nerves are disturbed by the aroma of oil. No, sir. Eat your flounder dinner in unperturbed equanimity.

But what might a Wag the Dog crisis look like?

Well, it would probably be one that calls all Americans to patriotic solidarity, with an emphasis on getting behind the President and helping him retain a solid Democrat majority which will enable him to deal with the crisis. He will need all the power of congress behind him. Of course, emergency measures will require suspension of certain rights and privileges Americans customarily enjoy, for after all, a dire crisis requires draconian measures.

Could Americans expect a big emergency about two weeks before the November elections? It certainly is not out of the question.

Maybe a nice little attack?

Guilt by Naming

Alexander Solzhenitsen described the Soviet gulag as a "human meat grinder" that processed Stalin's enemies, real or imagined. Most of Stalin's victims found out about their categorization as enemies of the state only when there was a knock at the door very late at night accompanied by announcement of arrest.

One never knew when he or she would be hauled off to torture and enslavement. It was not necessary actually to have commited a crime in order to be arrested and sent to Siberia. All that was required was that one was named an enemy of the state. The accusing finger could be an anonymous tip-off by a disgruntled neighbor. Once the "enemy" was named a "wrecker," "vermin," "enemy of the people," his fate was sealed and he was condemned without trial or proof by a tribunal for "hooliganism" or some other such loose term.

It was a characteristic of the intellectual, moral and spiritual bankruptcy of communist philosophy and the Soviet regime that vague, catchall phrases were enough to categorize, condemn and sentence innocent people.

In our own country, how sad it has been to see once legitimate and specific terms become catchall phrases for targeting whole groups of people. How tragic to see mere naming condemn innocent people, making them automatically guilt by verbal decree.

It is particularly tragic that the term "racism" has become in our own time, a catchall phrase that has come to be void of the specific meaning it once possessed; sad--and unjust--beyond belief to see the term "racist" applied to whole groups of people who merely espouse conservative political views. The recent attempts to paint the burgeoning Tea Party movement as "racist" are attempts to condemn by naming; to throw guilt over millions of innocent people in blanket condemnation.

Those of us who lived through the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's will ever forget the harsh reality of racist apartheid and the heroic struggle that led to desgregation of America's institutions. Few fail to applaud the gains for minorities, especially for American blacks.

Those gains are jeopardized when the term "racism" becomes so broad that it is in danger of becoming a generic term meaning "anyone whose ideas I oppose." Those gains are also jeopardized when "racism" is seen as inherent and therefore inerradicable, as a sort of genetic determinism applicable only to whites or Asians. Those gains are further jeopardized when real hooligans are protected by the color of their skins.

Civil rights leaders should never forget the words of one of their foremost representatives, Dr. Martin Luther King, who preached we all should be judged by the content of our character rather than by the color of our skin.

It's well for all of us to recall and to heed his wise words and to reject the despoilation and misuse of a term that, should it continue to lose its specific meaning, could jeopardize the equal rights of all US citizens.

To Dad on Memorial Day

In the right drawer of my desk there is a picture of my dad in a US Army uniform. He’s about 30 years old in the picture and he is looking straight at the camera with a clear, steady, unflinching gaze. He reminds me of my youngest son. The same steady gaze, the same full lips; and, as Nathan humorously reminds me, the same hair pattern. "Thanks Grandad," Nathan smiles ruefully, rubbing his balding head.

The year the picture of Dad was taken was 1944, the year of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last chance to push back the Allies and to obtain a negotiated peace. Americans sustained seventy-five thousand casualties.

The Germans fared worse.

Innocently enough, my dad had kept ahead of the draft because of the number of children he had. But at last even my folks’ dedication to the Genesis mandate to replenish the earth was not enough to keep the Army at bay.

But Dad wasn’t drafted as an Army regular. In fact, he wasn’t drafted at all. He was tapped as a civilian advisor. Plucked from his job at All American Engineering, he was to head to England to coach Royal Air Force and American pilots on how to employ an invention he had helped develop. It was designed to pick up soldiers stranded behind enemy lines.


Dad had wanted a way to serve his country, and he was determined to go, despite leaving his pregnant wife and four kids behind. He knew, Mom was later to tell me, that he might not come back, but his love for his country drove him on. My father, a man of few words, would not often speak about his stay in London. But for the rest of his life, the sound of warning sirens would make him turn white.

As fate would have it, the plane that was to bear him East to England burst into flames on the runway at Newfoundland. Everyone got out safely, slightly singed but none the worse except for some smoke inhalation. But the plane burned up along with all its contents, including Dad’s uniform, which was that of an Army Captain. Back to New York for another flight and another uniform; then off to England, this time safely.

Once in England, Dad faced the last gasp effort of the German Wehrmacht to destroy London. Germany’s silent and deadly V-2 rockets smashed into the city day after day and night after night. In some ways, he was later to say, the V-2 rockets were worse than the bombs of the initial blitz, because of the silence; the dreadful silence. You could be standing in the street and hear absolutely nothing, know nothing, suspect nothing until you felt the earth shudder and saw plumes of dirt and rubble rise and fall like reversed waterfalls in the dank, dusty air.

In spite of the fear, the risk of death and not knowing when the war would ever end, Dad never forgot to write a daily letter to Mom. They were always brief and to the point, Mom remembers. Dad was a man of few words; and, as he was later to tell Mom, he didn’t want to worry her. He would tell her he loved her. He would tell her he believed he would return to her and us kids. Then he would sign the letter, "Forever yours, Frank."

And he was forever Mom's faithful and true love. His fellow soldiers attempts to get Dad some romance on the side fell flat. You're in England, three thousand miles away, they would say. "I love Dottie," he would say. My thrice married Aunt Ruth would later say, "Frank is the only man I know who actually would stay faithful to his wife."

Dad returned within four months when the war suddenly ended. He did not come home a hero like his kid brother Joe, who as a dashing pilot, became an Ace. We have a picture of handsome Joe in his leather bomber jacket and rakishly dashing cap, smiling at the camera. Thankfully, Joe came home, too. My grandmother wept tears of joy.

But while he never considered himself a hero, Dad’s invention did save the lives of downed airmen and stranded soldiers. But Dad, being a quiet man, never even mentioned that.

This weekend, I’ve thought Uncle Joe's and Dad's older brother Jack, who wanted to serve but was too advanced in years at age 38 to go. I’ve thought about my brother-in-law Leonard Bird, shot down in his jet at age twenty-five in Vietnam, leaving behind a grieving bride married all of six weeks. I’ve thought about my cousin Ruth Stonesifer’s son, downed in his helicopter in Afghanistan, his blue eyes closed forever.

I’ve thought of the rows and rows of crosses and stars at cemeteries here and abroad.

But most of all, I have been thinking of my quiet, self-effacing and humble Dad. He loved his country. He served her with the skills he had. And he helped saved a few good men.

Thank you, Dad.
　
　
　

Bureaucracy

Surely one of the finest essays ever written about the deadening effects of bureaucracy was written one hundred and fifty years ago by an Englishman by the name of Richard Simmons.

The entire essay is uncannily pertinent to the American dilemma today. With a few changes to make it entirely contemporaneous, it is applicable word for word to the increasing power of bureaucracy over the lives of Americans.

Some pertinent quotes:

"The men of a bureaucracy...set [themselves] up as critics and guides of life, and therefore [see themselves] fit to direct the life of the nation."

"A bureaucracy is not fulfilled till we add the pedantic element of a pretence to direct our life, to know what is best for us, to measure out our labor, to superintend our studies, to prescribe our opinions, to make itself answerable for us, to put us to bed, tuck us up, put on our nightcap, and administer our gruel."

"The bureaucracy of lawyers is the universal pattern of all...The civil law takes the entire man under its tutelage, and sets itself up as the mundane providence...Never was this exhibited more clearly than in the Convention of French pettifoggers, where Robespierre declared, "We will have an order of things where all base and cruel passions are chained up, and all beneficial and generous passions aroused, by the laws; and where St, Just pretended to change, by a violent dose of legislation, the morals and manners of a nation, and to reform the human heart." (Italics mine.)

"Suffice it to say, that the great characteristic of true bureaucracy is the intimate conviction of its conductors that the provisions made by them adequately cover the whole area of human life and thought, or at least the most important parts of it; therefore that all other provision are superfluous, and, if contrary to their ideas, noxious, and as such, to be done away with as soon as possible, so as to leave a clear field for the regenerating action of their beneficent influence. Hence the intolerant, monopolizing, intrusive character of all true bureaucracy..."

"But as the state increases, and most in the classes that require to be administered, administration must increase likewise; the number of employees must wax greater and greater, they must be organized, and with their organisation the classification of the people whose affairs they have to administer must keep pace."

Simpson has wise and powerful insights into the shortcomings of a universal, government controlled educational system; the dangers posed to a democracy by bureaucratic control, and the solution to bloated bureaucracies; one of which is namely, to keep it small.

But there is much else to glean from his amazingly prescient essay, linked here:

http://www.panarchy.org/simpson/bureaucracy.html

Brilliant; absolutely brilliant!