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Thoughts for ROTC cadets

I retired from the Army on November 1st, 2015. I may write about that process sometime, but all-in-all it was not too traumatic.

I decided to go back to college in order to use up my GI Bill and have an excuse to not get a real job right away. I'm attending the University of Arizona, majoring in Political Science, and trying desperately to get a liberal to make a logical argument.

I see ROTC cadets all over the place. One thing you can say for U of A is that, so far, it seems to be very supportive of the military, ROTC, and free speech. I watched a goofy "street preacher" set up on the grass on campus and draw a crowd by insulting gays and telling women not to be "whores". The students gathered around in a good sized crowd and they shouted back and forth at each other, mostly with good humor and tolerance. Real tolerance, where you let the other guy speak and then respond, not the kind of tolerance you get at some colleges where you shout down people with whom you disagree.

A few years ago my son got his first motorcycle. I wrote a blog post on what advice I might give to a new motorcyclist. (That post is HERE.) I've been thinking about what advice I might give to an ROTC cadet. I think I have some experience that might be helpful.

I served on active duty for 28 years, and I held every enlisted rank from Private to Master Sergeant. I've got four deployments to the middle east, I've served overseas in five countries, and briefly stopped over in many more. I've led Soldiers as a Team Leader, Squad Leader (in Iraq), Platoon Sergeant (in Afghanistan), First Sergeant (also Afghanistan), and as a Battalion Command Sergeant Major, albeit in an interim status. I've also had three MOS's over the years, from support to combat arms and back, on active duty and in the Reserves.

Of course I can't tell a cadet how to be an officer, I'm sure there are very qualified officer instructors who can teach you that. I also know cadets have Senior NCOs around them to provide the enlisted perspective and teach leadership. But I also know that you can't learn everything from one person. You can't base your leadership style or approach on the example of one officer or NCO, there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to leadership. You need to observe many people, many approaches and situations and see how others handle themselves. Take what works for yourself and leave what doesn't.

Leadership is what it's all about, what it all boils down to. The technical aspects of your job, that's another story for another time. And frankly, the military doesn't need to train you for four years to go be a logistics officer or administrator. Hell, even a civilian can fire weapons and (some) can shoulder a ruck like an Infantryman. Where you come in, and where good NCOs come in, is when it stops being fun and becomes hard. Week three of a shitty rotation at the National Training Center, when everyone is tired and pissed off. Month six in Afghanistan, when people you know have died. Or when you are standing in front of a troop who just said, "Fuck you."

You have to have thought these situations through. I've been in all these situations and I can tell you that I handled some of them well, and some not so well. The key is to learn to control your emotions. You can't let yourself get spun up and react in an overly emotional way in the moment. There are exceptions, of course. No one expects (or wants) their leader to be a robot, but troops expect strength, they expect calm leadership in crisis. You can cry, you can get angry, you can yell, but you have to know when. That's the trick, and it can take a long time to learn.

When that Soldier says "fuck you" (yeah, it happens, not often but there it is) you have to be able to reign in that desire to punch him in the throat, you always lose when you lose your cool. What should you do? There are a lot of ways to handle a given situation, I'm a strong believer that there are many right ways to do almost anything. The smart thing to do is a lot of role playing with a good mentor/instructor, and hopefully you are doing this as part of your ROTC training.

There is so much...
I could talk about: The Fine Line Between Hardcore and Stupid. How to tell the difference between good NCOs and bad ones. The importance of fitness. How to earn respect. Or why you should pay attention to Resiliency training. (I was a "volun-told" Master Resiliency trainer, and they won me over despite my reluctance.) 
I may make this a series, come to think of it.

However I think there is one main bit of advice I'd give to a cadet: Embrace being a newbie. Use your time as a butter bar Lieutenant to get the most training, mentoring and experience you can. I mean embrace the whole thing, don't try to fool anyone into thinking you know what you are doing. You don't. We all know that, and we hate it when a kid with 14 minutes in service tries to play like he knows what he's doing.

The worst mistake you can make is pretending you know things you don't. First, you aren't fooling your troops. We know, believe me. And we are making fun of you for it. You want to gain a Sergeant's respect? Ask him to teach you something. It's what Sergeants do, and it shows you know your own weaknesses and are willing to learn.

Your first couple of years in the service is when you are allowed to make mistakes, try things out, fall on your face a few times. Don't be afraid to fail, don't be embarrassed to be a butter bar, own it. Ask senior people questions. Listen to the old guy's stories, and learn from them. Ask a PFC to teach you how to operate a piece of equipment. Treat him like the expert he is.

I'm sure you are coming out of ROTC well trained, but you have very little real experience. If you are smart, you will spend your whole career learning, asking questions and never assume you know everything. But your first couple of years are your best opportunity to address this. When you can say, "I'm a Lieutenant, teach me!" And we will. All the best Lieutenants I knew had this attitude.
That's what we respect.

Good luck!

Wow, that last post...

Is looking pretty good in hindsight. 

Iraq and leadership

Some quick, initial thoughts on the coming fall of Iraq to Sunni insurgents or terrorists or whatever. Especially as it relates to President Obama's actions or in-actions.

First off, many veterans of Iraq are understandably upset that what we sacrificed so much (and so many) for, is being lost back to what is essentially a terrorist group. My unit lost a Soldier while we were deployed, to an accident. However I don't have the same visceral anger over Iraq falling that many do. Maybe because I never really felt a connection to Iraq, but only to my fellow Soldiers. We serve our country and we went there to free the Iraqi people, but when it comes down to it, we fight for each other.

The current situation didn't have to happen. We could have left a residual force in Iraq, which I believe would have helped keep the peace we fought so hard to finally achieve. Obviously there was still violence when we left, but when it comes to Iraq you have to think in relative terms. President Obama decided not to leave a force. I think it's important to look at that decision.

Should we have left a military force in Iraq? It depends, in my opinion, on whether you can look at the problem objectively or not. How much distance can you get from the situation? Up close, the answer is easy: Hell no! I know I personally didn't want to go back and I didn't want any of my Soldiers to go back. (But for a completely different reason than you might think. I'll get to that.) The American people were against leaving any Soldiers in Iraq.

So the President did what the people wanted. He got everyone out of Iraq. And I think the President understands his mandate from the people when it comes to Afghanistan and other places where some have been calling for U.S. military intervention. Egypt, Syria, Nigeria, Ukraine. But Obama knows us, we don't want to get involved, and we certainly don't want to send Americans to fight and die for abstract ideals and people who show little appreciation for our sacrifices.

I don't blame Obama for making these decisions. However...

Is what the people want always what they should get? Is that leadership? Looked at from some distance, the proverbial 30,000 foot view, what is the objectively "right thing" to do?

The people who fought there, and their families, often seem to understand much better than the rest of t he American people what is really at stake. We used to say "we are fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them at home". Which is a way of expressing the idea that if we pull back behind our borders and disengage with the rest of the world, eventually the world is going to come knocking anyway.

And of course, it's not just our safety and security at stake. America really is the "essential nation". No other nation can do what we can do. We have provided peace and security to most of the world for the past 70 years. The wonderful quasi-socialist states of Europe which we are told we should emulate, have only been possible because they sub-contracted their security needs out to the United States. We, and the rest of the developed world, built the modern economy and culture we enjoy in large part based on the free flowing oil from the middle east. And it only flowed freely because of the strength of the United States.

The question then is: what will the world look like when the American people decide we are no longer interested in keeping the world's peace? I think we are seeing that play out already. Russia is getting aggressive and the middle east is falling into chaos. Terrorists kidnap little girls and know that nobody is coming for them.

So this is a leadership issue. In the Army leadership training we talk about choosing the "hard right over the easy wrong". Very often your Soldiers pressure you to let them out of the dirty, tedious work, like weapon cleaning after a long field problem or cleaning the trash out of the vehicles after a long convoy. As a leader you often have to be the bad guy.

Good leaders know that not all of their decisions will be popular. Really good leaders figure out how to "bring the troops along" with them. Make them see the long term benefit of doing the hard thing. This is how you develop future leaders, by the way. The President is not a good leader. He is doing what the people want, but in my opinion, he's not doing what is best for us.

The "hard right" would have been leaving some troops in Iraq. The "easy wrong" was getting out. The easy wrong is apparently our default mode going forward. This will result in more suffering for vulnerable people around the world in the short term, and a more dangerous world in the long term. Who else is going to step into the void we create when we step back from the world? The United Nations? No.

All that said, I'm glad the President is not sending us out to police the world any more. How can I say that after I just said the world will be more dangerous if we pull back? Easy. I don't want another generation of Soldiers sent out to do the hard, dirty (and deadly) work that needs to be done in some foreign land, only to be told when they come home that their efforts were a waste.

I had that experience in 2004 coming back from Iraq and I don't want to see it happen again. Individual people have great respect and appreciation for their military, and I appreciate that. But as a country we don't have the stomach to lead any longer. So I'd rather the world descend into chaos (Sorry world!) than send kids off to war as heroes and welcome them back as victims.

Raising Awareness

What is bothering me a lot right now is this "hashtag diplomacy" as it's being called. The First Lady and a bunch of celebrities are tweeting selfies holding signs that say "#bringbackourgirls". The idea apparently being to let the terrorists of Boko Haram, who kidnapped 300 Nigerian girls, know that we want the terrorists to give the girls back.

This is after we've seen some State Department officials using their personal twitter feeds to make comments about Putin and the situation in Ukraine, among other things.

They think Putin and the terrorists in Nigeria are going to care because... well, that's not entirely clear. But it's understandable with this particular crowd (liberals) because they equate raising awareness with doing something. When liberals say, "It's the least I could do!" they mean that literally.

And it's actually gotten worse over the years. It used to be that you would run a 5K race where a part of the entry fee goes to cancer research. Then at least something goes to the researchers. If you post a selfie on twitter or instagram, no assistance goes to anyone. When you ran the 5K you got a t-shirt so everyone would know you did it, (which is really the point, right?) With twitter you get the narcissism without the effort or expense. It's a win/win!

But that's not really what bothers me about the current situation. It's the logical disconnect, the lack of awareness of cause and effect. I've written about this before, how liberals can't quite seem to connect the dots between their various positions.


'We don't want to be the world's policeman! How dare we insist our culture is superior to another culture! Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an Islamaphobe who shouldn't be allowed to speak!"

How do liberals square these positions with the #bringbackourgirls twitter campaign?

If we are not the world's policeman, no one else is going to be either. So who exactly do they think is going to step up to bring these girls back? The UN?

SOMEONE should do SOMETHING! Yeah, well, "someone" has been the U.S. military since about 1945. And no one looks eager to tag in. "Something" in this case is going to be force of some kind. No one is taking our warnings and strongly worded statements any more seriously than they ever took them from the UN.

I guess the most irritating thing about liberals at the moment is the sudden interest in what happens to little girls in the Islamic world. None of this is new. You should see how they treat them in Afghanistan, and don't ask what the little boys go through. Or maybe do ask.

But really liberals? You are just waking up to the serious mistreatment of women and children under Islam?

Maybe you should stop shouting down every guest speaker who tries to come to your college to talk about something uncomfortable. You might learn something about the world.

I suppose I should just be happy that liberals are starting to notice what goes on in parts of the world that people in private jets don't usually visit. For example, hollywood is currently boycotting a Beverly Hills hotel because the middle eastern country that owns it (!) adopted Sharia law.

Not because of how women are treated under Sharia, mind you. But over treatment of gays. Which is also not new. Iran executes gays. Just saying. Look it up. Been going on for a long time.

Anyway, back to the cause and effect I mentioned earlier. We decided with the election of Obama that we didn't want to participate in solving the world's problems anymore. He ran on that, and we elected him.

It pisses me of to see the very people who wanted the U.S. to play a smaller role in the world wringing their hands now and wishing someone would do something. The reason is a little complex, but stay with me.

There are two ways of going about "doing something". We can wait until something bad happens, like 300 little girls get kidnapped, and then try to go in and save them. The problems with this scenario are many. Like the girls are suffering from the first hour, and without bases nearby, or any previous arrangements with whatever third-world shithole country they happen to be in, the rescue would be a long time in coming. Also that most of the countries in which this might happen won't let us conduct military operations there, and just sending in some drones without permission would be a violation of international law.

The other way involves spreading democracy and trying to help these people into the current century where we don't mutilate the genitals of little girls or rape little boys as a matter of course. This is a long process that requires staying engaged with the world and, sometimes, getting dirty with the bad guys to let them know what is and isn't acceptable behavior.

This seems to me to be the better choice, but we decided we don't want to do that, didn't we liberals? So it's time to make some hard choices, isn't it?

No, lol, not really! I know how this will work for liberals. Before the glow of "raising awareness" by tweeting your hashtag selfie has faded, some evil right-winger will try to cut funding for free birth-control pills and before you can tweet "#firstworldproblems", those little girls will be forgotten.

Syria, not just no...

Hell no.

How many times do we have to go down this road before we learn the lesson? Understand me, the lesson I'm talking about is not that "war is not the answer", or that we can't "impose our will" on another country. Sometimes war IS the answer, and there is no doubt we have the capability to impose our will on anyone we want, with the exception of maybe China. Maybe.

The lesson I'm talking about is two-fold.
1. America lacks the will to win.
2. The "world community" is a bunch of ungrateful bitches and doesn't deserve our help.

Let me start with 2.

Fuck you motherfuckers. That's all I have to say to the "world."

We've been fighting and dying on behalf of Europe and Asia since WWII. What has that gotten us? In Europe, a bunch of ungrateful bastards who have 5-week vacations and free health care, which they can't really afford, but have been able to get away with because they haven't had to provide for their own security for 70 years. So FYMF. We should do what they all say they want us to do and stop meddling around in their business.

We have been fighting and dying on behalf of Muslims around the world since at least the '91 Gulf War, and what has that gotten us? A bunch of ungrateful bastards who seem to want to kill us more the more we help them. So FYMF. We should do what they all say they want us to do and stop meddling around in their business.

Let me clarify something. No one else can do what we can do. No one else has the capability we have. If we disengage from the world, it will become a much more dangerous place. I don't want to see this happen. I joined the Army 25 years ago because I believed, and still believe, we are the good guys and we keep the world safe.

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

George Orwell 

Early in my career I went to West Germany (when it was still West and East Germany), and the Soviet Union was still our enemy. Wish I had kept my SMLM card for a memento. http://www.3ad.com/pio/memorabilia/soviet.mission.htm

Did the Europeans love us and shower us with gratitude for keeping them safe at great expense to our country and personal sacrifice to ourselves? 

FUUUCK NO! They protested outside the main bases, and sometimes outside our little kaserne. So FYMF.

Same thing happened in Korea, protests all the time. FYMF.

Interestingly, the Israelis I met during the Gulf War were awesome. Once the war ended, and we were allowed off base, we were heroes to those folks. They loved us, I never bought a single beer. (Not that we were strictly speaking "allowed" to drink, but it was a different time...)

Now the individual Muslims that I met in Iraq in '91, and in early 2003, were also very grateful and happy we were there. Same with the Kuwati people. We all know how it turned out in Iraq, and as grateful as the Kuwaitis were for us saving their country in '91, I don't see them sticking up for us much now. I suppose I should be grateful they let us keep bases there.

I didn't deploy to Somalia, Kosovo or Bosnia, but those were also missions to save Muslim people. I'm sure I'm missing some examples. 

And of course the end result of 20 years of saving Muslim lives? 9/11 and Benghazi. FYMF.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for all these people to bow down and kiss our collective ass. But how about not attacking us? Or being so fucking smug, Europe. 

You know what though? It's not even them that I'm most upset with. It's us. 

This brings us to 1.

We will never win another overseas war that requires more than a few weeks of combat or any kind of real fighting. We have no heart, and we have no stomach for it. The American character has changed. (Not for the better.)

If anyone attacked us here at home we would wipe them out, no doubt. But I can't imagine a circumstance where we commit troops to an overseas war and go all 12 rounds. We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq in about the 10th round. (Afghanistan was a pure waste of time and lives, let's not even talk about that.)

And that's were we are on the Syria debate. The right thing to do is go in there and punish Assad, and by punish I mean drop a bomb directly on him. Let the chips fall where they may after that. And we would have to deal with the fallout, but that is what we should do.

But we won't. We no longer have the stomach to do what needs to be done. We don't believe that the world is a dangerous, violent place. Assad kills 100k people and we "tsk" and flip the channel. We kill ten villagers by mistake while trying to stop a terrorist who has killed thousands and we are monsters!

This debate reminds me of 2002. When I left for Iraq in April 2003, I was fired up. We had the support of Congress, the people were with us, we were the Good Guys going forth to slay the dragon! Everyone agreed we were doing the right thing.

When I came back in May 2004, (coincidentally an election year), we were the stupid victims of Bush, fighting a mistake war based on a supposed lie.

 “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” Said the same guy who had voted to send us to that war. 

It was like a punch in the gut. Fuck all y'all, congress. 

So that's it. Between politics and our weak stomachs, we should never enter any conflict anywhere but our own shores. I hope we stay out of Syria because I don't want any other Soldiers to go off to war thinking they are going off to fight a righteous battle, only to come home and be told how stupid they were to believe in anything, most especially America.

Why does anyone need an AR-15? I'll tell you.

So I laid out my view in Part 1 that guns = freedom.

Now I'd like to answer the question: "Why does a civilian need an AR-15 or a 30-round magazine?"

First we have to agree that individual citizens have the right to defend themselves. If you are of the mind-set that no civilian needs any gun at all then there is no point talking about the AR-15 is there?

You may believe that a gun in the house makes one less safe. There are studies that support this idea. I don't think they are persuasive though, because they include uses of the gun for suicide and domestic violence.

Suicide is a symptom of mental illness, in my opinion, and guns don't cause it. Domestic violence is a criminal act. It seems odd to blame the gun ahead of time for mental illness and criminal behavior. A gun is a force multiplier, and I freely admit, it works both ways. A gun can make a suicide attempt more likely to succeed and an act of domestic violence more deadly, but it's not causing either of these by itself.

Antibiotics are good medicine, but when used incorrectly can make infections stronger and more deadly. Guns are similar and the key phrase is: "when used incorrectly."

It just seems odd to argue that "in homes where a gun is used, it is more likely to be used against the owner..." because to me, when a gun is used it represents the failure of an entire system of defense. We each set up our defenses, whether we choose to include guns or not. We pick what we hope is a safe neighborhood (if we can afford to), we lock our doors with deadbolts, we keep a light on out front and in the back, maybe we put in an alarm system, etc... All this is done to protect ourselves and our families. Some people choose to include a gun in this system of defense as a last resort.

These studies also fail to take into account the many uses of guns for defense where no shot is fired. This is the vast majority of cases and if these numbers are included, you see that most guns never even get fired in the home.

If it comes down to using the gun, all those other systems have failed and your gun is your last line of defense. Chances are it's all going to come out badly. That's the reality of violent crime. I personally would like to keep fighting until the end, no matter the outcome, rather than just lay down and take whatever is coming just because the criminal got past my locked door.

To argue that domestic violence and suicide should be included in the discussion about whether guns make more or less safe ignores the fact that the perpetrator of these acts of violence has been invited in past all our defenses, knows exactly where we keep our guns and, in the case of suicide, we are not fighting against them. I would argue that this is another discussion entirely.

In any case, if you believe owning any gun is wrong or unjustified, stop reading now. If you believe that a shotgun or handgun is reasonable for self-defense, but an AR-15 is a military weapon that no civilian needs, keep reading.

What are your choices for self-defense weapons? It pretty much comes down to rifle, pistol or shotgun. I'm not going to go deeply into the characteristics and ballistics of each. Let's say you are a small-framed woman, or an older man who has lost some strength over the years, what is the best choice for you?

Any one of the options can be a good choice, but let me make the case for the AR-15. A shotgun can be overwhelming for a small or weaker person. It kicks and has a limited capacity - try not to miss! Contrary to popular myth, you can't just wave it in the general direction of your target and pull the trigger and hit it. You still need to aim.

A pistol must be aimed and controlled and, in the calibers that will stop a bad guy, can also be overwhelming for smaller or weaker folks. A pistol requires the user to practice regularly. If you are not going to practice, you are not going to be able to use it effectively when the time comes.

The AR-15 eliminates some of these problems. It fires a high-velocity .22 caliber round. Yeah, that's right, this scary military assault rifle fires a little tiny bullet, more precisely it's a .223. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read this. (And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you shouldn't be making passionate arguments against it, should you? Lol.)

Why does the military use such a small round? Studies done after WWII and Korea showed that most bullets fired in combat miss. Whether due to fear and adrenaline making troops aim shaky, or just trying to hit moving targets, the majority of the bullets fired just miss.

Most troops back then carried heavy rifles that fired a .30 caliber round or even a .45. These bullets are also relatively heavy and so a guy couldn't carry all that many of them. The powers that be decided that the common Soldier should carry more bullets, and a rifle that could fire more of them between reloading. So they had to go with a smaller caliber. Soldiers still argue about the wisdom of this move.

What I'm talking about here is the evolution of firearms (or Arms, if you like.) In the Revolutionary War the musket calibers were .62 and .45 and .69, so we have seen bullets get smaller and smaller.

So the AR-15 has evolved as a compromise between weight, stopping power and the ability to fire many rounds between reloading. It's a pretty good compromise and so it makes a good offensive and defensive weapon. The technology involved is not significantly different than any other semi-automatic rifle, but the packaging is unique to it's purpose.

In any case, because it is such a small caliber, the AR-15 has very little "kick" when fired. I remember one of my drill sergeants in basic training demonstrating this on the range by putting the butt of an M-16 (the real assault rifle version of the AR-15) against his, um, groin, and pulling the trigger several times. This was done to show the recruits that the rifle wouldn't hurt them when they fired it.

Imagine trying to do that with a 12 gauge shotgun. This is a distinct advantage when teaching someone to shoot, especially if that person is small or weakened by age or illness. It is also an advantage when using the weapon in an actual defensive situation. Little recoil means it's easier to keep the weapon on target between shots.

Another huge advantage for home defense is that you have a 30-round magazine. Most criminals use pistols, that's a fact. (Why they are trying to ban a class of rifles when pistols are used in most crime boggles my mind.) So the criminal usually has between 8 and 18 rounds, if you have 30 available without reloading, you have the advantage.

And you need all the help you can get, right? I mean the criminals know when they are going to strike, what they are planning to do, and they already have their weapons out and ready when they strike. (Even if that weapon isn't a gun, they are ready to go when they break into your house.) You, on the other hand, are not expecting to have to defend yourself, you are probably asleep. Everything you do is a reaction after the attack has begun. You need every advantage you can get.

A couple other points, you fire the AR-15 with both hands which means it's easier to aim. You can mount a flashlight on it which gives you another advantage over the bad guy breaking into your house. It's scary looking, so it's less likely you will have to fire it. And the fact is, once you learn to use it, you don't really have to practice as much with it as you do with a pistol. Of course, you SHOULD practice regularly, by all means. But because it is so simple to operate and it is really "point and shoot," and because you have 30 rounds, practice is less necessary.

Of course there are many considerations in choosing a self-defense weapon that I haven't talked about. Things to think about like do you share walls with neighbors or children and need to worry about your defensive bullets penetrating and hitting innocent bystanders. I believe that in many cases the right answer is not owning any guns at all. Not everyone should have guns in their house.

My point is that there are rational and compelling reasons for civilians to own an AR-15 with 30-round magazines. The AR-15 is not inherently offensive or defensive in nature. A person has to determine which role the weapon is going to play.

The key element in any use of a gun is always, always, always the person.

Guns, guns, guns

In the wake of recent mass shootings there are a lot of people talking about guns. The murder of children in Newtown has exposed our raw emotions and anti-gun people are a lot more honest about their goals and their fears right now. People talk about repealing the 2nd Amendment, confiscating guns and other pretty drastic measures.

I agree with the anti-gun crowd in one respect: if there were no guns, there would be fewer deaths by murder. But that's like saying if there were fewer cars there would be less death in accidents. Cars are necessary, we have to do our best to make them as safe as possible, and make our use of them as safe as possible. It's exactly the same with guns.

I want to address a few aspects of this argument. Part one is the idea that there is no good reason for citizens to own guns and that the 2nd Amendment should be repealed or that it wasn't intended to guarantee an individual right to arms. Part two will be the idea that anyone with a gun is dangerous. I also want to talk about the AR-15 specifically.

I don't love guns. I was brought up around guns and we used them for hunting. I never developed a love for hunting and I don't pursue it as an adult. But it was a great education in gun ownership and is a great way to get a sense for what people had to do to survive before meat was readily available under cellophane in the grocery store.

What I learned about guns was that they are just a tool. There is no magic in a gun and there is no evil either. It's just a means to an end. Twenty-five years in the Army and I still feel the same way. I don't go to the range for entertainment, I go for work. Even firing my civilian guns is practice rather than fun.

Not to say I don't enjoy it, I do. But it's more the satisfaction from accomplishing something rather than an adrenaline rush or amusement park type fun. To each their own though. Many people shoot for fun and I see nothing wrong with that. Some people bungee jump, some go to wine tastings, some go to the range.

I also see the gun, especially the semi-auto, as amazing engineering. It's as fascinating to me as a mechanical watch, which I've posted about in the past.

All of that being said, again, I don't love my guns, but I wouldn't want to be without them. I don't love the hammer in my toolbox either, but I wouldn't want to be without it either.

I strongly believe that the gun has done more good in the world than bad. I'm not going to list a bunch of examples, although I think I could. But go back to before guns and I wouldn't have wanted to live in that world. In that world serfdom and slavery were common. The strongest made the rules and the weak had no say. The common man was concerned with day-to-day survival. He worked the fields or a trade and counted on the benevolence of his rulers to guarantee his safety and property rights.

Justice was at the whim of the rulers, if they were just and fair then good. If not, well too bad. Maybe you get together with your neighbors and take your pitchforks and axes and maybe a sword or two and go demand justice. Of course you are going to lose because the rulers have trained soldiers whose only job in life has been to learn how to use the sword or lance or whatever the weapon of the era happens to be. Angry farmers or merchants don't really stand a chance against trained soldiers when the weapons demand years of training to become skilled at using.

This was the situation for roughly 5000 years of history. From the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks to the Romans to the Byzantine Empire and the rulers of China and Japan, right through to the Kings of Europe. Might makes right. A ruler or government who could afford to keep an army of well-fed, trained and disciplined men, and could equip them with quality weapons of the day could run roughshod over the people and the people, unless they could turn the army to their side, could do little about it. Hollywood makes movies about the very few exeptions to this rule, "Braveheart" is a good example. And remember how he ended up.

The gun changed this equation. You don't need to spend years of training to learn to use it. You don't have an advantage if you are well-fed and stronger than the next person. Often a cheap one works as well as the state-of-the-art one.

There is no better example of what I'm talking about than the American Revolution. We felt we were not getting justice from our rulers. So we declared our independence and we had to fight for it. Without the gun our rebel forefathers would have stood little chance against the British Army. But we had guns and we won our freedom.

To imagine that the men who wrote the Bill of Rights were not keenly aware of the role of the gun in the winning of our freedom is ludicrous. People argue that they only meant militia members should keep guns, but at the time of the Revolution, the militia was everyone. So go ahead and stick to that point, I guess, but it's saying the same thing: everyone should be armed.

The more important point, to me, is that guns = freedom. This equation has not changed in the last few hundred years. Where the people are not armed, they live in fear and have no freedom. Ask the villagers in Uganda, whose children are stolen and forced to become slave soldiers in Kony's army, if they would like to have a gun in each house.

It doesn't matter how far we've evolved, how civilized we've become or how much we trust our current government. I have no paranoid fantasy about the U.S. government coming for me in the night. I do not fear the government because we have a strong constitution that guarantees my individual rights. These rights work together to guarantee my freedom, none of them is more important than another.

It's wonderful that England, Australia and Canada banned guns. Go there if you want to live in that culture. They are participating in an experiment, in my opinion. It will probably be fine in my lifetime, and even my kid's lifetimes. But remember, within living memory a European country enslaved and murdered millions of it's own people, various Asian countries have done the same thing, with North Korea still under brutal dictatorship. And, of course, don't forget the Kony thing. We haven't evolved so much.

Governments change, circumstances change, we don't know what the world will be like in 100 years any more than we could have predicted the internet back in 1910. Come what may, Americans will be free, not because the government guarantees it, but because we, the people, guarantee it.

Protecting the individual right to keep and bear arms has nothing to do with "gun culture" or paranoia, it's not about hunting or self-defense either. It's simply our heritage, it's American culture. It's what makes America what it is: a free country.

I'll write Part two when I get a chance.

Maybe the world did end.

President Ronald Reagan said:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

The truth of these words is becoming more and more apparent. I think he was off a little bit though, it appears to be taking three generations to destroy. We should all find any member of the "Greatest Generation" and ask their forgiveness for what we have done with their gifts. They sacrificed and struggled and handed us a legacy of freedom and prosperity that no people had ever seen in the history of the world. And in my lifetime we've managed to not only roll back the freedom they fought for, but change our national character in such a way that I can't see us now being able to do what they did. 

Can you see our politicians approving a D-day type invasion? Can you imagine the 20-year-old hipster making your latte at the coffee shop charging a beach? The less-than one percent of Americans who currently serve wouldn't be enough to carry that load, as strong as they are. 

No, over our three generations, the Baby Boomers, Gen X and the Millennials, our national character has changed, and not for the better.  

The Boomers started off wonderfully. This generation of Americans were born into a world of mass communication and relative prosperity. (This was when the concept of "adolescence" was created. Previous generations had no time for teenage rebellion, if they wanted to eat.) They did not have to struggle simply to survive, they had the ability to look around and see the injustice around them and demand changes. 

The Boomers deserve praise for the Civil Rights movement and more equality between the sexes. And for paying attention to the problems of poverty and drug abuse. Not every program was successful, but they were trying. I think our current problems begin with the Boomers though. I think they learned early on that the Government (big G) could change the laws and solve problems and they got stuck in that mind-set, that any problem we have can be fixed with a Government program or a change to a law.

The Boomers latched on to the idea that life can be made fair. Why should we allow anyone to suffer? We who are so rich, should be able to take care of those in need. This is a noble thought, and the root of all evil too. Life can't be made fair, as long as people have free will and the ability to make their own choices. Ah, well, there's the problem then...

I'm not going to go into why life can't be made fair. If you don't see it, you are a Utopian and can't be helped by me on my little blog. Go and study some philosophy, read up on human nature, and most especially, world history. 

Back to our generational problem then. The Boomers decided that Government is the answer. (Whatever the problem may be.) What we have to eliminate are the poor choices made by the ignorant masses. Cars killing people? Mandate seat belts. Drugs a problem? War on drugs. Welfare. Food stamps. OSHA. ATF. On and on until the Government is so entwined in our lives that you literally can't dig a hole in your yard in most places without involving the Government. 

This isn't to say Government has no role. Reasonable regulation and a limited safety net for those who can't take care of themselves, plus the traditional enforcement of property rights and national defense are proper roles for the government. But "reasonable" and "limited" went out the window a long time ago. 

We have a Department of Education that grows and grows, but the results for the kids get worse as the spending gets higher. 

Here's where the next generation comes in. You'd think my generation would look at the results and put the brakes on. But no. We grew up in near total peace and wanting for almost nothing. The result was a generation of slackers. We didn't pay attention because we didn't have to. Really up to this point everything was going pretty well anyway. There were enough Greatest Generation types around to put the brakes on for us. My generation just opted out. We didn't protest anything at school, we didn't get involved in any causes. 

What changed? The Greatest Generation is mostly gone from politics. The Boomers are running the show now. That reality check is gone. And the Millennials are just too young, inexperienced and are too indoctrinated by a willing media and Hollywood to know what they are throwing away.

I suggest everyone pause for a moment and mark this time in your memory. One day I believe my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will ask me what it was like to be free, and why we threw it away. This is the time I think we will look to as the real beginning of the end. When we voted for lives dominated by Government and when we began voting away our fundamental rights. 

My answer to them will be that we came to believe that we could eliminate suffering, misfortune, poverty, addiction, bullying, theft, murder and evil with the right set of laws. That we could mandate good choices and eliminate inequality if the Government was just given enough power. 

That our national character changed. That we started as a nation of individuals with the ability to make choices and knowing that we have to live with the consequences of those choices. That we became sheep willing to limit ourselves to a Government approved menu of choices in the hope that the possibility of failure or suffering will have been eliminated. 

That we decided Americans can no longer be trusted with the same rights and freedoms that our founders guaranteed us in the Constitution. 

This is the year we choose our new path. Maybe the world did end in 2012, not with destruction but with cries from the people be be "protected".

Just an observation on current politics

I wish liberals would be more consistent. I realize that conservatives aren't always consistent either, but at the very least most conservatives have a baseline of core beliefs. Liberals are slippery. They don't seem to have a baseline, or adhere to basic principles that guide them.

For example, a Republican President is responsible for gas prices, economic ups and downs, oil spills, hurricanes and scandals in the military. A Democrat President is subject to the whims of congress and almost everything is out of his control and therefore, he can't be held responsible for anything that happens while he is in office.

A conservative sees these viewpoints as contradictory, a liberal will argue both of these points in the same breath. I suppose it's easier to feel like you are winning your point when you can change your baseline assumptions that way.

Liberals seem to think that, even though the current administration was unable to influence the economy in any meaningful way, that more of the same policies will somehow work in the future. Although I'm sure we won't be able to hold them accountable for those policies if they fail again.

So what is the basic assumption? Are the President's policies pointless because they are always overtaken by circumstances beyond his control? Or are they vitally important because they determine the course of our country? The answer appears to be: sometimes the former and sometimes the latter. Depending on who the President is and what point you are trying to make.

I think the real answer is that it depends on the President. A strong leader takes circumstances into account and moves his agenda forward as much as he can, a weak leader is overwhelmed by circumstances.

But as far as baseline assumptions go, I think a core conservative belief is that the government has a limited ability to make everyone's life fair and wonderful. A President really is not responsible for gas prices or the direction of the economy as a whole. He can move the country and the economy in a basic direction though. And it matters what policies he endorses because people who make decisions look to him for leadership. (There's that word again.)

Contrast this with the liberal belief that the government can eliminate inequality if they can just make enough smart laws and regulations. I find it so odd that believe so adamantly in the power of the government to make people's lives better can't seem to take responsibility when that power makes people's lives worse.

So, to me, the difference in core beliefs is this: conservatives believe in only the amount of government necessary to ensure health and safety, enforcement of property rights and fundamental laws and a basic safety net for those who truly can't take care of themselves. Liberals believe that the government can "fine tune" laws and regulations to the degree that they can eliminate, for lack of a better word, unhappiness.

I'd like to see the Republicans start an ad campaign where they interview business people who are effected by all these little regulations. Like the hardware store that can't keep coffee and doughnuts out for their customers because of a regulation that says they have to have a full kitchen. Or someone who is holding off on hiring because of the tax or healthcare laws. Just show the effects of all the government interference.

New bike!

So a month ago I bought a new bike. A Yamaha Super Tenere. It's a 1200cc "Adventure" bike. It gets that fun title because it's designed to go off road occasionally. It's a big bike, and it's heavy so it's not meant to do the job of a dirt bike, or even an enduro bike. It's purpose is to just be ready for anything!
I used to ride from our house in a suburb of Denver out into the mountains and the fun then came from taking the curves fairly quickly, leaning over and hanging off the bike. I still think that's fun, actually! But I've also had a fair few close calls with disaster, which dulled my taste for speed a bit. My goals for riding have changed a bit as well. I want to get a little farther out there, take some longer rides and see more country. I decided to go with a different style of bike from the "cafe racer" that I usually prefer.

I thought that I would like to be able to take some of the dirt roads that I always passed by in the mountains in the past. I also wanted to be able to ride 500 miles in a day if that's what it took to get where I wanted to go.

So, the Tenere.
So today I decided to go for a ride. Just a normal Saturday afternoon ride to someplace where I could get a cup of coffee and home again. My wife had to work so she took off on her Buell and I took off on the Tenere.

My destination was Mt. Charleston, a 7000+ foot high mountain about 45 minutes outside of Las Vegas. We had reconed this mountain with the dogs in the truck last week so I knew I could get coffee at the restaurant at the end of the road there. That's a good enough reason for a ride any day.

The road up to the mountain can be done as a loop: out highway 95 to the turn off for Mt. Charleston, around the loop and back to highway 95 a bit farther out of town. I decided to do the loop "backwards" and start at the far end and loop back around to the closer end to town.

Now I've had this bike for all of three and a half weeks. I haven't really been anywhere or done anything on it yet. I've been trying to get through the break in miles, and of course we packed up and moved from Arizona up here to Vegas during this time. And all the dirt riding I've done was about 100 meters down a gravel road. I will hit 1000 miles before I make my first payment though, and that makes me happy, lol.

This ride was just a perfect illustration of what I bought this bike for: to be a jack-of-all-trades. I hauled ass down the highway at 80 mph in relaxed comfort, I took off down a dirt road on a whim and scoped out some beautiful backcountry, and I leaned it over in some (admittedly mild) mountain curves. All on the same bike, on the same day. It just blows my mind that a single bike can be this versatile.

So I haven't ridden a dirt bike since I was 12. And I wasn't ever really good at it, even though I remember starting at about age 8. I remember crashing a lot. So I've been a little hesitant about getting out there and trying this big, heavy bike on gravel roads. I wanted to make sure I had some of the basic tools and gear. I got a tire plug kit and an electric air compressor. I wired up the bike with a fused plug for the compressor. I put a few basic tools together too.

I left my leather jacket at home and got one of those textile jackets with lots of pockets like all the good adventure riders wear. Plus jeans and cowboy boots and I'm ready! lol. My Ariat boots actually worked really well, although they lack any traction at all (or protection.) They supported my whole foot on the pegs, no flex. I bought a pair of Gaerne Pro Tech boots, but they are too big, so they stayed at home. I should get some overpants, but I probably won't. Maybe I'll throw my Afghanistan knee pads in my bag for future rides.  But I had a lot of pockets!

My bike is similarly unprotected. Bone stock. At some point I will invest in a skid plate and some crash bars to protect the sides of the bike when (not if) I drop it in the gravel.

I wasn't really planning on going down the dirt road, but it seemed so perfect. The sign said there was a campground four miles that way. So I decided, why not? I figured it would be a pretty well taken care of dirt road. It pretty much was.



I learned a lot of little lessons on this ride. I stopped after about 5 minutes to let air out of my tires, take my ear plugs out and shut off the music I was listening to on my helmet speakers. Lesson one was that I couldn't hear what was going on with my bike with the music and ear plugs. I kind of felt like I was sliding once or twice, but I couldn't hear it. Same with spinning my rear tire.

I let 10 lbs of air out of each tire, so I was at 24 psi front and 28 psi rear. I really felt a difference after that. I thought about going further down but I need to research that to see how far is safe to go. These are not knobby dirt tires either. They are basically street tires with deeper grooves.

Next lesson: keep saying relax, relax, relax, relax... Over and over. I'm definitely not used to my bike bucking and jumping under me, it's going to take a while to rewire my brain to accept that these things are normal and acceptable.

So I'm relaxed and going with the flow, and then DEATH GRIP OH MY GOD,  relax, relax, relax, DEATH GRIP OH SH*T, relax, relax, relax...

Pretty much like that the whole time. Also, before I turned off onto the dirt road I was getting kind of chilly and thinking about putting on my jacket liner (with even more pockets!) A few minutes on the gravel and I was sweating like a pig. Mind you, my max speed by this point was about 20 mph.

But I had a huge grin on my face the whole time.



Next lesson was pretty much the same as on the street: when in doubt - throttle up! It took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea that when you think you're going to blow a curve you lean more and give it some gas. So when I got in trouble today and I thought I was going to lose control in the gravel, I just gave it some gas and straightened myself out. I didn't think about it, I just did it by force of habit. Got through three parts where I thought I was going to lose it in loose gravel.

I learned that uphill is more fun than downhill. Or at least, less scary. I really need to work on slowing down and stopping on downhills. I'd prefer not to stop at all going downhill, but there were other vehicles coming up. So I played around with my back brake only and found that lacking on steeper slopes. I've always made it a point to avoid using my front brake on dirt and gravel, but I don't see that as an option. I'm going to need some pointers on this technique from someone with more experience.

This uphill section was scarier than it looks in this picture.



You need to plan your moves carefully when you are thinking of stopping. At first it didn't occur to me that the ground is uneven when you are off the pavement. I stopped once where the ground was lower where my feet were than where both my tires were, lol. And then I put myself in a position where I had to try to go backwards uphill. Not cool.



I think the most important lesson I learned today was the value of balance. As long as I felt balanced I never felt out of control or in over my head. I kept slow and steady and crept through most of the road cautiously. I'm sure I would drive a more experienced rider crazy going so slow, lol. But I don't care. The single best biker saying IMO is: "Ride your own ride."

Finally, I made it.



After I rode back out I stopped to air my tires back up with my handy air compressor. Then I rode up and got my coffee. It was horrible. And awesome of course, like all coffee in the middle of the ride.

I can tell this is going to be a lot of fun.

You want to start riding a motorcycle?

So my son wants to get a motorcycle. He's a grown man, a Marine combat vet as a matter of fact. He can do whatever he wants, and even if he were still a teenager and needed permission, I'd say yes. I love motorcycles.

He's been talking about getting a bike since before he left for his recent deployment to Afghanistan, his second. So this has me thinking about what advice I got before I started riding and what advice I should give him as a new rider. There are a million important things to say, of course, but how much can a person absorb? What are the important things to say? Books have been written about this, but I'm thinking about boiling it down to a few important things that can be passed on in conversation without making his eyes glaze over.

I learned to ride a dirt bike, really an enduro, at about 8 or 9 years old. Maybe younger, I don't really remember. I think it was an 80cc Honda. We also had a 90cc Yamaha, if I recall correctly. Those are some of my best childhood memories. I rode a Kawasaki KZ440 street bike as a teenager.

Unfortunately bikes weren't in the cards for my kids. Being a military family, moving around all the time, living in urban settings most of the time and being broke all of the time precluded dirt bikes. I regret that, but you can't go back and change things. I got back into bikes almost 10 years ago now. And now Aaron has caught it.

So what is the single most important thing I should try to get across to him?
Ride your own ride.
You are invisible to cage drivers.
Wear a helmet.
Don't drink and ride.
Beware of cars turning left.
Speed kills.

How about some of the lesser tips and tricks?
Your shadow points at danger.
Wet pavement paint and manhole covers are slippery.
Stay out of the center of the lane at intersections. (That's where leaked oil is concentrated.)
Never ride in a cage's blind spot.
If you have to slow down suddenly, flash your brake lights at the traffic behind you, if you can.

There are a million things I want to tell him. Basically I just want him to be safe. But I know that's not how it works. Life itself is not safe. And riding a motorcycle can't be made safe. Every time we ride out into traffic we are vulnerable, and it isn't even close to a fair fight.

But it's worth it. I've never done anything that's come close to making me feel as relaxed and peaceful and excited and alive (all at the same time), as riding.

Besides, if you've ever climbed up on a chair to change a light bulb, you've taken your life in your hands. I mean, that task could have killed you, if you had fallen off the ladder. In fact, most head injuries that kill motorcyclists are equivalent to a six-foot fall.

That stat right there, from the Hurt Report (google it), is enough to make me always wear a helmet when I ride. I mean, I can accept that if I crash on the highway at 80 MPH I'm probably going to die. There's really no amount of gear that will save me. If the fall and slide down the road don't kill me, I'll probably get run over by a truck or hit a wall. That's the risk and I accept it.

But if I'm rolling down a side street at 35 and I crash, I am confident that if I'm wearing a proper helmet I can survive that crash. I've seen it and I've known many people who have done it. I also know that I can hit a patch of sand in a parking lot and crash and hit my head pretty hard (I know this from firsthand experience.) I know if I die from a stupid little parking lot crash at 15 mph because I'm not wearing a helmet, I'm going to be PISSED!

That low-speed crash is also a risk, and it's an easy risk to mitigate by wearing a helmet. Not to mention it's also a much more likely scenario than the high-speed highway crash, simply because we spend so much more time at low speeds in parking lots and side streets than we do on the highway.

All the rest of the advice is important. I'd say "ride your own ride," is near the top, especially for a new rider because it's so easy to get caught up in riding with other people and end up going too fast for your experience level.

"Speed kills" is another important one. Most people who crash on bikes are going too fast for conditions. And it's too easy to not notice how fast you are really going. Many of the cases of a car turning in front of a bike or a car changing lanes into a bike, I believe, are due to the driver underestimating how fast the bike was going.

And of course, if you drink and ride you are just an idiot and you're not reading about being safe on a bike anyway.

I'm going to go with "wear a helmet." That's my top, number one piece of advice for my son and anyone riding a motorcycle. Mainly because, even if you follow all the other advice, and you never do anything wrong ever - someone else can still crash into you.

BTW, I'm completely against helmet laws for adults. People should have the right to make up their own minds when it comes to how much risk they find acceptable in their lives. But, if you ask me, I'm going to recommend that you should choose to wear a helmet because it makes sense.

End capitalism?

Serious people think we should end capitalism. Here is a link to an article by Naomi Klein. It's long but worth reading.
http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate

That article is interesting not only for her call to replace capitalism with "collective planning," suppressing growth and nationalizing corporations, (for starters); but also for her admission that global warming/climate change is the perfect hammer with which to beats us into agreement. That is, she openly states that, yes, the left is using climate change fear-mongering to push their political agenda. And they are right to do so, she says, because the leftist agenda is the only way to avoid eminent destruction of the world! The best part is where she describes "cultural cognition."

She writes:
This refers to the process by which all of us—regardless of political leanings—filter new information in ways designed to protect our “preferred vision of the good society.” ... In other words, it is always easier to deny reality than to watch your worldview get shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate deniers today.

I agree with the social scientist Klein is referencing here, but I find it odd that at no point does she consider that maybe it could apply to her. Instead she insists that global warming is proof positive that liberal ideology is and always has been the one true way. How amazing that every liberal political theory and/or idea perfectly solves every problem facing the world at the moment.

Many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters openly call for ending capitalism as well. Apparently also personal property rights and the rule of law.

I'm just a joe, of course, so what do I know? But this is my blog so I'm going to make a case for capitalism. I think people like Klein and the OWS crowd are taking a very short view of history, and misreading that too.

There are two things people like Klein and the OWS crowd just don't seem to understand:

1. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's better than any alternative

and B. We enjoy our current quality of life because of capitalism.

First, Klein's liberal solutions to the world's problems might actually work, for a short time and if you don't mind giving up our entire way of life. If you are of the mind-set that American culture is bad, you might not mind. I'm betting that a few weeks without indoor plumbing and on-demand electricity changes your outlook. Trust me on this, I've done it. Hell, a few days without cell service would change most liberal's worldview.

But look at #6 on Klein's list: Taxing the Rich and Filthy

Most of all, however, we need to go after the profits of the corporations most responsible for getting us into this mess. The top five oil companies made $900 billion in profits in the past decade; ExxonMobil alone can clear $10 billion in profits in a single quarter

This is probably true, but how long would it be true? How long will these corporations be wealthy after they are nationalized? Where do you go for money after you've destroyed the profitable corporations? There is a reason all of us evil conservatives "fondle" our copies of Atlas Shrugged (fondle is Klein's word, super classy!)

Here again is proof that liberalism contradicts itself. They want to use the wealth of the top five oil companies to fund all their policy priorities, yet their priorities would destroy the profits of those companies. Look at Klein's six points. Steps 3, 4 and 5 would render 6 moot in a very short time, which would make it impossible to fund steps 1 and 2.

From the article some of Klein's goals:

One of the key areas in which this collective action must take place is big-ticket investments designed to reduce our emissions on a mass scale. That means subways, streetcars and light-rail systems that are not only everywhere but affordable to everyone; energy-efficient affordable housing along those transit lines; smart electrical grids carrying renewable energy; and a massive research effort to ensure that we are using the best methods possible.

How far along the path to these "big ticket investments" do we get before the money runs out? And who is going to pay for the upkeep if the big money-making corporations are nationalized?

Haters of capitalism must lack a fundamental understanding of how we got where we are. Again, I'm no economist. But I can't trust any of them anyway, because no matter what your political outlook is, you can find an economist who agrees with you. Not to mention that since the 70's, which is my frame of reference, no economist has predicted with any certainty what was going to happen with our economy. They are guessing, granted they are making educated guesses, but like the climate, the larger the scale of the system the less accurate even the educated guesses become.

So back to my point. Competition leads to progress. Capitalism is competition. How do people not understand that the car they drive, the cell phone they use, the websites they shop at, the clothes they wear, the TV they watch, etc... are all the result of capitalism? If you destroy the profit motive, what drives innovation?

Are we so satisfied with the world the way it is that we are willing to call it done? This is the pinnacle of human progress? Pick a product, anything you can think of will work. The laptop I'm typing on for example. Is this the best that can be done? Or can it be improved upon? I'd like a solid-state drive and a backlit keyboard. These exist, Apple features them in the MacBook Air. They've actually been around for a few years, but at a pretty high price. Actually I'd say too high. So what does a poor 99 percenter do? Wait.

But why? What's going to happen if I wait? Capitalism is going to happen. If the marketplace deems the solid-state hard drive and backlit keyboard to be good ideas, they will sell. If they sell, other evil corporations will see it and copy it. That will drive prices down to the point where I can afford it. Not only that but if another company makes a small tweak that improves the product, that too will be copied and in turn improved upon. (This is so basic, I feel a little angry at even having to type it out.)

One might ask, who is going to buy that initial overpriced product to begin with? Well, that's where the 1% comes in, lol. Liberals may decry the income disparity in America, but the rich are the early adopters of all the technology that we take for granted. Who bought the first cell phones? Rich yuppies. Who else could afford them? Now who has a cell phone? Everyone, even little kids. That doesn't happen in any other economic system.

I think a good argument can be made that we all benefit from having a large group of high-income earners. Not just for their ability to afford to buy new Harleys and Audis that they don't use and later sell to us for huge discounts either! But also for their example. Not everyone can or will move from poor or middle-class to rich, but some can, and some will. And they inspire and encourage all of us. And in the meantime, they raise our standard of living.

Are we ready to end this? We're ready to destroy the profit motive and punish success? Because some people get rich and some don't? That's going to happen in any economic model. Life can't be made fair, no matter how badly we want it to be.

We have to choose if we want to enjoy the many benefits of capitalism and deal with the few negative consequences, or suffer equally under (insert any alternative here.)

I can't take any person or group seriously that seeks to replace capitalism with some other economic model.

In support of my last post...

This from Mark Steyn:

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/london-311857-want-book.html

This is going to sound crazy, but...

I'm going to start putting together my survival kits for the upcoming meltdown of society.

There, I said it. Now I'm officially a crazy conspiracy theorist. Except I don't think there's a big conspiracy out there to bring the country down or anything like that. I just think that we are headed to a meltdown.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the direction in which our country is headed. If you look back a couple of posts I wrote about taxes and fairness and posted a chart outlining who pays the bulk of taxes. My argument is that the rich pay enough taxes and that we should flatten and simplify taxes so that more people pay some taxes. To me that's fair. There is a good article by Charles Krauthammer: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274375/system-works-charles-krauthammer#

He argues that our system is working and that the upcoming election in 2012 will determine what direction we will take in the future. The choice (as I see it) is between increased government, which creates increased dependency, and less government, encouraging personal responsibility. These are the stakes in the 2012 election, and this is the source of my new-found desire to be ready for a societal meltdown.

The outcome I'm hoping for, obviously, is a narrow Republican victory. Enough to turn the tide of entitlement spending and put us on a rational economic path, but not enough to make them think they can ram any social craziness through.

I hope that the majority of people see what I see. That Democrat class warfare and dependency politics are paths to slavery and permanent poverty. I fear that people only see freedom from consequences to their decisions and freedom from responsibility for their own welfare. Our president is out there telling people right now that they shouldn't have to pay for their medical insurance and that the rich don't pay their fair share. It's hard to compete with that when the opposite message is that you should work and pay your own way. Which is more appealing?

If the choice is defined as either work to pay your own way, or get a free ride at the expense of the anonymous "rich," there really isn't much hope for the Republicans. Especially when you consider that half the country already doesn't contribute much, if anything at all. The Democrats need only to get their base and that dependent majority to the polls and they win.

This brings us back to the upcoming meltdown. I'm not concerned about an immediate upheaval if my preferred side loses, I'm looking a few years down the road and what I see coming worries me. If the Democrats win they will take this, rightly, as a mandate to continue spending and creating entitlements for their constituents. We will get the single-payer health care system, environmental regulation, expanded "free" education, increased direct welfare, etc... The whole liberal pie.

Paid for with ever increasing taxes.

To a certain point.

Until there is no more "other people's money" with which to pay for everything. But by this point people will have grown so used to having things handed to them that they will not take well to being told they may have to do without. We are more-or-less there already.

Now I believe what I've described is exactly what we have seen played out in the streets of Greece this summer and in Great Britain this past week. In England the cuts haven't gone into effect yet and the people are rioting. They haven't even had to do without yet, it's the idea of austerity that they are rioting over.

The way I see it, these European rioters are doing kind of a half-ass job of it. When Americans get a good riot going, we don't mess around with rocks and bottles. We have Glocks and MAC-10s.

We will have a mass of un- or under-employed, idle people used to receiving everything they need to live from Uncle Sugar, faced with the prospect of having to do with less than they are told they "deserve" and used to blaming their problems on this anonymous group called the "rich." The rich, of course, defined as anyone who has nicer things than you do, and what you deserve is whatever you want.

It will won't be long before this mob decides to go out and take what they "deserve" from the "rich."

I plan to be ready.

What is "fair" when it comes to taxes and entitlements?

Define "fair." What does it mean to be fair when it comes to taxing people and helping those in need?

Is it fair to make a person go hungry or do without medical care? Is it fair to take half of a person's income away from them?

Our country is wealthy. Our poor are rich by the standards of most of the world. We should be willing and able to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. And in fact, we do. Our system is imperfect and people who need help don't get that help in some cases, maybe many cases. But in a country this large you are not going to make it perfect, no matter how much money you throw at the system.

So given that we have a social safety net in place for food, shelter and medical care, I think the question becomes: how far do we want to go with it? We must decide what we feel is right and moral and meet that standard.

So to look at the question: Is it fair to make a person go hungry or do without medical care? Absolutely not. But how about this question: Is it fair to ALLOW a person to go hungry or ALLOW a person to do without medical care? Is there any circumstance in which we would tell someone "Too bad, you made poor choices, deal with it."?

I think that's a fair question. And maybe the answer should be "no." My answer would be "hell yes." But I'm an evil conservative. However, I don't have a problem with people who disagree with me, and, in fact, if it were possible I would love to live in a world where we could take care of everyone regardless of their choices.

So let's look at the other question: Is it fair to take half a person's income away from them? No? How about 40%? We do that now. What if that person is very rich? We are talking a lot now about making millionaires pay "a little more," and "pitch in." The reality is that they are footing almost the entire bill already. It's a pretty easy Google search to find who pays what:




And from Wikipedia: "According to the IRS, the top 1% of income earners for 2008 paid 38% of income tax revenue, while earning 20% of the income reported. The top 5% of income earners paid 59% of the total income tax revenue, while earning 35% of the income reported. The top 10% paid 70%, earning 46% and the top 25% paid 86%, earning 67%. The top 50% paid 97%, earning 87% and leaving the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes collected and earning 13% of the income reported. The Tax Foundation stated that for 2007, the top 1% of earners paid more than the bottom 95% combined.^"

I am far from a millionaire, but I don't understand the anger directed towards them. Unless they got rich by doing something illegal, why this desire to take their money away?

It doesn't directly benefit me to argue against higher taxes on the wealthy. And I'm not arguing to eliminate progressive tax rates (although I'd love to see a real debate on a "flat tax.") I don't have a fundamental problem with the very poor not paying any taxes. However, when almost half the country bears no part of the burden of paying taxes we have a real problem.

What I'm saying is we take enough money from the people now, including the millionaires. Freeze it where it's at for now. Don't raise or lower any taxes until we make some fundamental decisions about the direction we are going. We need to make some real choices in this country. Big government welfare state or free-market, choices-have-consequences state.

Contrary to the way most liberals portray the choice, the latter does not mean social Darwinism. No rational conservative talks about eliminating safety nets, regardless of the scare tactics of the left. In fact conservative proposals seek to save Medicare and Social Security, not eliminate them. If you are not seeing this, you should broaden your media sources, you are being mislead.

The point I started out trying to make is that "fairness" is the wrong debate when it comes to the direction we want to take our country. It's simply an illusion, an impossible state that has never existed and never will. Pursuing it is like chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a waste of time and effort.

Let's decide what is necessary to take care of only those who can't take care of themselves and the few other things only the government can do and fund at that level. Period. That is big and expensive enough. Trying to alter reality to make everyone live the same life should be left to the philosophers.

The birther issue isn't about race

The birther issue is no more about race than was the hatred of George W. Bush. It's pretty obvious in our culture that for many people disagreement is deeply personal. We can't seem to have a conversation involving choices without making the person with an opposing view into a demon.

The percentage of people who think Obama was not born in the U.S. is actually lower than the percentage of people who think W. knew about the 9/11 attack ahead of time (the truthers.) All this tells us is that there are a lot of people out there who are willing to believe the worst about someone with whom they disagree.

I think the bottom line for both the truthers and the birthers, is that there are a lot of people out there who, for whatever reason, choose not to think too deeply about issues. They don't do the research, they don't read widely, they just know they don't like that guy. He's wrong, he's a bad guy. Why? Well, he knew about 9/11 before it happened and didn't do anything about it because he wanted us to get into a war, blah, blah, blah. Or he wasn't born here, so he shouldn't even BE president, yada, yada, yada.

And that's as far as they choose to think about it. Dancing with the stars is on, after all.

It's more interesting to think about why we now need an explanation for the harsh words about Obama, but we never seemed to need to look at the "reason" for the hatred for George W. Bush. I don't recall many mainstream media discussions on the Sunday morning talk shows or on the editorial pages of the newspapers of the roots of the anger and opposition to Bush.

Back then, dissent was expected, encouraged and celebrated. Now it's racism. I don't understand why there has to be a "root" cause for disagreement with Obama?

Is there really anyone out there who still doesn't believe most of the media is biased? Come on, reporters and columnists, if you agree with a politician, defend the ideas. Don't demonize the people who disagree with you.

I'm looking at you right now, liberals. Do you really believe that EVERYONE who wants to reform Medicare wants grandma to be thrown in the snow? Is that a rational concept? That half of the people in the country are just mean-hearted, evil people?

I don't know how we make progress like this.

Loved this commentary

By Victor Davis Hanson, one of my favorite writers.

From the national debt to Libya, the political class is asleep at the wheel.

Barack Obama just gave a belated but stern warning about escalating debt — a few weeks after he presented a 2011 budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit, the largest shortfall in American history. Congressional Republicans are now crowing about reducing Obama’s red ink by forcing some $38 billion in cuts. Such supposed slashing means America would borrow just $1,562 billion this year rather than the scheduled full $1,600 billion.

The administration expects that someone will have enough money to float us $4 billion to $5 billion a day in loans — either foreigners such as the Chinese, whom we are accustomed to lecturing about their illiberal habits, or our own wealthy, whom President Obama so often chides and threatens with higher taxes. Meanwhile, shrill critics of Congress’s modest cuts claim that the elderly, poor, sick, and helpless will be cast adrift if their government dares to trim its massive borrowing by less than 3 percent — or just about 1 percent of this year’s projected $3.7 trillion budget.

Obama borrowed more in the month of February alone ($223 billion) than did the spendthrift George W. Bush during the entire 2007 budgetary year ($163 billion). Obama recently asserted that not authorizing a lofty new national-debt ceiling would be partisan recklessness. He should know. In 2006, then-senator Barack Obama voted not to raise the debt ceiling and railed against out-of-control government spending under the Bush administration. But then, the annual deficit was one-fifth of what it is today. Apparently President Obama lives in an alternative universe from the one Senator Obama used to inhabit.

Gas is heading toward $4 a gallon nationwide — and might reach $5 by Labor Day. The world price for a barrel of oil is well over $100 — and climbing. In response, Obama praised Brazil for developing a vast new offshore oilfield and promised that the United States would readily buy the oil it produces.

The Obama administration has made it clear, however, that such messy drilling is for others. So, much of Alaska, the American West, and our coastal waters will remain off limits. The logic is that Americans can borrow to buy oil from foreign nations that are willing to drill in their fragile tundra, offshore seas, and natural preserves. Apparently the White House has not much concern about where we are going to get the cash, or how other nations are going to recover oil offshore more cleanly than we would.

Instead of a detailed plan for developing more sources of natural gas, oil, and coal, including tar sands and oil shale, we still hear infantile chants about “wind, solar, and millions of new green jobs.” But solar panels and windmills will not be up to fueling the nation’s 250 million passenger cars and trucks any time soon.

The president announced that he would support the Libyan rebels. He pointed to United Nations and Arab League authorizations to establish a no-fly zone and stop Qaddafi from killing his opponents. Helping the rebels win means using force to remove Qaddafi. Yet regime change is a mission that we insist is not our goal and would not be authorized by the international bodies to which we subordinate ourselves.

In truth, the Obama administration intervened without knowing who or what the Libyan rebels were, apparently on the theory that they were close to winning and seemed a far better option than Qaddafi. The first premise proved wrong; the second could be true but is still subject to debate. So we took a breather and quit military operations, hoping the Libyan mess would just go away, in the same way that dictators voluntarily stepped down in Egypt and Tunisia.

The U.S. government is no longer supposed to use hurtful vocabulary like “War on Terror,” “Islamic terrorism,” or “jihadist.” But some unnamed groups are still apparently trying to kill us. Otherwise, why would the White House keep the demonized Guantanamo Bay facility open? And for what purpose, and against whom, are we still employing the once-hated military tribunals, renditions, and preventive detention?

Fantasy apparently seems preferable to reality. In our new dream world, borrowed money need not be paid back. Cars may run on nasty gas, but only if it is produced in faraway places. Mean dictators should flee when told to leave. And radical Muslims are not really trying to kill us.

Like children, we turn on any spoilsport parent who nags us to stop borrowing, cut entitlements and government spending, start drilling and building power plants, get real about dictators in the Middle East, and keep vigilant against radical Islamic terrorists.

So we will keep dreaming until creditors, oil exporters, enemies, or terrorists wake us up.

Interesting...

The following is an editorial from the Wall Street Journal.

The debate over Paul Ryan's Medicare reform ideas has largely been healthy, even amid the liberal distortions. But why has there been so little scrutiny of President Obama's new Medicare proposal? Anyone worrying about more individual choice and responsibility in health care might be interested to learn that the alternative is turning every one of these decisions over to a 15-member central committee.

It sounds absurd, but there the President was last week, gravely conceding Mr. Ryan's analysis of Medicare's balance sheet and then claiming that the solution is to give a lot more political power to an unelected board to control health costs. Democrats believe this board will play doctor and actuary and allocate health resources better than markets, so allow us to fill in some of the details of this government-planned future.

The Independent Payment Advisory Board was created in the ObamaCare statute, and the President will appoint its experts in 2012 to six-year terms. From then on, look out. Democrats cut $468 billion in Medicare spending by screwing down its price controls and gutting the private insurance options of Medicare Advantage, while also boosting taxes by about $89 billion. This money could have strung along the status quo for a few more years, but Democrats diverted it instead to their new middle-class entitlement, which is like eating all the food left in the life raft.

Starting in 2014, the board is charged with holding Medicare spending to certain limits, which at first is a measure of inflation. After 2018, the threshold is the nominal per capita growth of the economy plus one percentage point. Last week Mr. Obama said he wants to lower that to GDP plus half a percentage point.

Mr. Ryan has been lambasted for linking his "premium support" Medicare subsidies to inflation, not the rate of health cost growth. But if that's as unrealistic as the liberal wise men claim, then Mr. Obama's goals are even more so. Medicare grew 2.1 percentage points faster between 1985 and 2009 than Mr. Obama's new GDP target. At least Mr. Ryan is proposing a workable model for bringing costs down over time by changing incentives.

Mr. Obama, by contrast, is relying on the so far unidentified technocratic reforms of 15 so far unidentified geniuses who are supposed to give up medical practice or academic research for the privilege of a government salary. Since the board is not allowed by law to restrict treatments, ask seniors to pay more, or raise taxes or the retirement age, it can mean only one thing: arbitrarily paying less for the services seniors receive, via fiat pricing.

Post-ObamaCare, Medicare's administered fee schedule is set eventually to dip below Medicaid payments in many states, which are themselves already far lower than the rates of private insurers that reflect the true costs of health care. Medicare itself says these cuts will cause 15% of U.S. hospitals to become unprofitable in the next decade. Mr. Obama wants Americans to believe that his planners will wring out even more spending through the power of positive technocratic thinking.

Under last year's law, the board submits its recommendations to Congress on an up-or-down vote and they go into effect automatically unless Congress adopts an equivalent plan. Its decisions aren't subject to judicial or administrative review. Now Mr. Obama wants to give the board the additional power of automatic sequester to enforce its dictates, meaning that it would have the legal authority to prevent Congress from appropriating tax dollars. In other words, Congress would be stripped of any real legislative role in favor of an unaccountable body of experts.

The honest-to-Peter Orszag liberal theory here is that, among ObamaCare's well-meaning if speculative pilot programs, someone will find a way to deliver better health care at a lower cost. Then the board will decide "what works" and apply it through regulation to all of American medicine. But small-scale initiatives usually succeed because of local health-care conditions and rarely succeed when mass-scaled. Anyhow, decades of government faith in omniscient miracle workers has left Medicare in its present shambles.

As a practical matter, the more likely outcome is the political rationing of care for the elderly, as now occurs in Britain, or else the board will drive prices so low that many doctors and hospitals drop out of Medicare. Either alternative would create the kind of two-tier system dividing the poor and affluent that Democrats claim is Mr. Ryan's mortal sin.

Messrs. Ryan and Obama agree that Medicare spending must decline, and significantly. The difference is that Mr. Ryan would let seniors decide which private Medicare-financed insurance policies to buy based on their own needs, while Mr. Obama wants Americans to accept the commands of 15 political appointees who will never stand for election.