View554 January 19 - 25, 2009 (original) (raw)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
I didn't get up in time for the inaugural yesterday, but I read Obama's inaugural address this morning. I'll have more to say another time, but I am astonished that no one else seems to have picked up on that I thought was a remarkable line:
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.
It appears that Obama has legitimized the Viet Nam War. Since nothing goes into an inaugural address by accident, putting Keh Sanh in the same list with Concord, Gettysburg, and Normandy can have no other purpose. He has my respect for that.
The rest of the speech was not particularly remarkable for these times; it does seem to portend a great reliance on government, but there is also tribute to individuals and their efforts.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control � and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart � not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
There's little to quarrel with in this paragraph, so long as one puts emphasis on the word "willing". Indeed I have been saying something of the sort for years: the nation must allow everyone an honorable way to contribute to the society and have some pride and dignity in that contribution. That is not the same as saying that everyone ought to be made to feel "entitled" to a share of someone else's work. Enslaving the productive to the entitled is not a route to any kind of good at all. One can hope that Obama understood this when composing that speech.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it. [Emphasis added.]
I am not at all sure what to make of this. One could write whole essays on this paragraph. Precisely how an American tsx collector is morally obligated to collect money from an American auto worker to be passed along to those who suffer in Haiti is not clear to me. One may have a religious obligation to be charitable; but we have explicitly rejected religions as motivation for national policy. (Whether we ought to reject religious motivations is a subject for another discussion; but certainly the party now in power has done so.) Where, then, did we get an obligation to the suffering masses in Burma, Tibet, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Bangla Desh? If one wants to argue that this is a requirement for a realistic foreign policy, one needs to be careful: it's easy to make that sound like a policy of paying Danegeld. Investment in the Navy would I think protect us better than bribes. The Marshall Plan had a purpose, and it wasn't really charity towards the suffering victims of Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay.
And it's time for our morning walk. Happy New Year. And rejoice in this: for the 43rd time in our history we have had a transfer of power without civil war.
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From Advisor and Chaos Manor Reviews Managing Editor Brian Bilbrey ; A WARNING
Regarding seagate firmware updates: DON'T.
See this link. Seagate firmware bricks drives - bricks ALL the attached drives that the firmware applies to in the system, at once. Yay, Seagate. Should be reflashable for repair, but wow...
http://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/message?board.id=
ata_drives&thread.id=5625&view=by_date_ascending&page=1-- Brian Bilbrey
"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And, for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'." -- Bob Newhart
Take heed.
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Can Socialism Work?
Dr. Pournelle,
I am trying to fight my depression regarding the coming anointing of Barrack Obama. Since he carries a lot of our fate for the next 4 (8, 12??) years I have to wish him well, too. But, do you or the readers of your site know of areas where liberalism/socialism have actually worked? I would think that if the liberal agenda really worked well then there should not be a poor person in the Santa Clara Valley, or Boston/Cambridge, or for that matter in the area of Bellaire and Malibu. So, unless other areas are exporting their poor into these areas, I am wondering what track record Mr. Obama is running on? Please enlighten me.
Douglas
First, despair is a sin; one must never forget that.
As to places where socialism and liberalism work, one needs to define what it means for a regime to "work". Sweden is very liberal to the point of socialism, and it's quite a pleasant place to live. How long that will continue is not known to me, but one of my oldest friends is a retired medical colonel from the Swedish army. When I visited Sweden I had a very pleasant time and every single one of the people I met was polite, nearly all spoke English, and all without regard to their social class seemed happy. There was a water festival going on in Stockholm and everyone seemed to be having a great time. I saw few beggars. There were street musicians hoping for donations, but that's not the same thing. The police were polite.
Whether that can last, and how much of it is due to the nature of the Swedish people and the Swedish culture is a matter for lots of discussion, of course. I am told that as the older generation brought up under the Protestant Ethic and accustomed to working without complaining dies off things change and are changing, but I don't follow the news very closely. Denmark is said to have the happiest population on Earth. The Netherlands is the most densely populated nation in the world (or was back in the 80's when I wrote about such things), certainly has a decidedly liberal government, and seems pleasant enough although there are growing problems.
Whether this kind of liberalism is exportable can be debated, and whether or not this sort of government can thrive in a very large and diverse nation -- or federation of states, or however you want to describe the American polity -- is very much a subject of debate.
As to whether liberal democracy can eliminate all poverty and raise the entire population of the United States to middle class status, and do that by government action and government fiat, probably not. Most socialist states don't work, and end up with people competing for civil service positions as the only assured way to have a career. India used to be that way and seems to be dismantling some of its socialist tendencies.
As an aside: Sweden has universal manhood conscription; I was told that the main penalty for not serving one's time in the army was that you could never get a civil service position, and employers were allowed to discriminate against you in hiring practices. This is an interesting way to deal with bureaucracies.
The main argument against socialism (other than indignation over taking from the productive to subsidize the unproductive) is that it destroys the incentive to work and work hard, or to take entrepreneurial risks. Schumpeter discusses this in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, and I urge all those interested in these matters to read his book.
Burke said that for a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovely. I think few disagree: the question is, how to bring that about. And of course what we mean by lovely. No one thinks Detroit is lovely just now.
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One note: several commentators said yesterday that this is the 44th peaceful transfer of power in these United States (Obama being the 44th President). Oddly enough, I didn't think that through, and when I remarked on the subject I said 43rd peaceful transfer; I don't count Lincoln's accession as peaceful, given that it triggered Secession and the the Civil War.
Bob Thompson reminds me that unless one counts the accession of George Washington and the beginning of the Constitution as itself a peaceful transfer of power, this the 43rd transfer, meaning the 42nd peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution. That's still quite a record, particularly since World War II, when the President of the United States became arguably the most powerful person on Earth.
And now it's time to go work on Mamelukes.
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