Thursday, January 26, 2012

Mirror image.

Given a society of freely choosing individuals, the market is that which exists as a consequence . . . .

In a word, the free market is individual desire speaking in exchange terms … When the desires of people are depraved, a free market will accommodate the depravity. And it will accommodate excellence with equal alacrity. It is "servant alike to good … and evil.”

It is because the free market serves evil as well as good that many people think they can rid society of evil by slaying this faithful, amoral servant. This is comparable to… breaking the mirror so that we won’t have to see the reflection of what we really are.

The market is but a response to — a mirror of — our desires.

Instead of cursing evil, stay out of the market for it; the evil will cease to the extent we cease patronizing it. . . .

To slay this faithful, amoral servant [with government coercions] is to blindfold, deceive, and hoodwink ourselves…denying the market is to erase the best point of reference man can have.

Let Freedom Reign, By Leonard Read, quoted in Amoral markets versus immoral coercion. By Gary Galles, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1/25/12.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

The Big Game

[What with all the foofaurauw in circulation about the upcoming SuperBowl "rematch" between the Patriots and the Giants, and the rule changes made concerning overtime play, I thought I might toss in a bit of whimsy.]

---

"And here they come, for an unbelievable fifth overtime period in this unprecedented clash of NFL superpowers." The announcer shook his head wonderingly. "Never before have two teams in this contest been so perfectly, evenly matched. Do you think the rules committee will reconsider the overtime rules after this game, Troy?"

The color analyst grinned lopsidedly. "It's possible, Joe. We've seen the equivalent of two SuperBowls already today, and we're no nearer a conclusion than we were after the initial coin flip. No one expected anything like this. No one could have predicted it. But after exchanging field goals on their respective first possessions in the first overtime, the defenses on both sides have taken complete command of the game."

"They look pretty tired, don't they?"

The color analyst smirked. "Wouldn't you be, after playing two complete games against the best team in the league? Excuse me: against the other best team in the league! What I've been wondering is what the coaches had to say to the referee that delayed the start of this period for seventeen minutes."

"Well, whatever it was, the teams are back on the field, the Patriots have lined up for the kickoff, and we're about to resume this incredible contest!"

***

Five overtimes weren't to be the only unprecedented feature of SuperBowl XLVI.

With twenty seconds remaining in the period, the referee halted the game clock and summoned the two head coaches to the fifty yard line. Coincidentally, that was where the ball was placed. It had been returned there upon the opening kickoff, in a strangely peaceable play. Since then, the two sides had alternated four-knee possessions without a break.

"Gentlemen," the referee rumbled, "don't you think you're being a little obvious?"

The head coach of the Giants nodded. "That was our intention, Ref." He glanced at the Patriots' head coach, who shrugged and added his own nod.

"Exactly how long," the referee said, "am I supposed to let this go on?"

"That," the Patriots' coach said, "is entirely up to you."

"The league will have your ears for trophies. Both of your ears."

The Patriots' coach's face turned dark. Before he could expostulate, the Giants' coach held up a placating hand.

"Ref," he said in his lowest register, "we've got young men out there who've played a hundred twenty minutes of football --"

"A hundred thirty-five."

The Giants' coach shook his head. "A hundred twenty minutes, of the highest caliber ever seen. Each side has had to carry four players off the field on stretchers. These boys are risking their lives, their livelihoods, and their futures in the league -- and for what? To see who'll make the first fatigue-induced fatal mistake? To see who'll be first to die on an NFL field, before live TV cameras?" He shook his head again. "Not gonna happen to any of my boys, Ref."

"Or mine," growled the Patriots' coach.

The referee stood dumbfounded. "So neither of you wants the Lombardi trophy?"

"Not that badly," the Giants' coach said.

They stood there in silence for a long moment. At last the referee said, "Give me a minute to see what I can work out." He turned toward the stands, turned on his mike, said "Officials' time out. Booth review," and walked off the field.

***

"Amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable." The commentator threw up his hands, nearly hitting the color analyst in the face. "I've run out of adjectives."

"It had to happen eventually, Joe," the color analyst said. "The whole thrust of league arrangements has been to promote parity. Ever more even competition among ever more teams. This is just the logical result."

"So who's the champion, then?" The commentator waved at the field below them, where the teams and their coaches were exchanging handshakes, backslaps, and words of praise.

The color analyst regarded the tableau, thought for a moment about the epic contest they'd witnessed and the way it had ended, and smiled. The head coaches had walked off the field arm in arm, with not a glance from either at the Lombardi trophy conspicuous on its display pedestal on the sideline.

"I'd say, both of them."

Monday, January 23, 2012

Romney slobbers over regulation.

Two years ago Romney told The Hill that Republicans “like modern, up-to-date dynamic regulation that is regularly revised, streamlined, modernized and effective.”

“Modern” = unmoored from the Constitution.

“Up-to-date” = modern.

“Dynamic” = frequently changed per bureaucratic whim.

“Regularly revised” = dynamic.

“Streamlined” = easy to administer.

“Modernized” = up to date.

“Effective” = generates revenue; diminishes liberty.

The mental sloppiness of this aside, Mr. Romney may have a good understanding of what it is that “Republicans”—at least the eviscerated, bloodless, spiritless ones of the present age—like but, if so, they are far removed from people who are capable of living life without efficient and dynamic regulation of every aspect of their lives.

Free people don’t like regulation and have every reason to fear it. They don’t want clear, concise regs that are easy to administer and to understand.  They don’t want regulations, period, and they shouldn’t give their support to someone who fawns over the very mechanism of contemporary state control.

The Case Against Mitt Romney. By Steve Baldwin, Steve Deace, 1/19/12

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Freedom: The Near-Term Prospects

Newt Gingrich's massive plurality in the South Carolina presidential primary has conservative-minded voters aroused to a pitch they haven't enjoyed since the earliest TEA Party rallies and Town Hall kerfuffles. One reason is its unclear implications. Another is the obvious approbation expressed by South Carolina voters for a candidate demonstrably unafraid of the Big Bad Main Stream Media. Yet a third is that Gingrich has been singing the Constitutional / classical-liberal tune on-key, in better voice than any other candidate than Ron Paul.

Let's imagine for a moment that Gingrich succeeds in gaining the Republican nomination and goes on to wrest the presidency from Barack Hussein Obama. Leaving aside the convulsions those events would induce in every media organ and left-liberal salon in America, what could we then expect from the Gingrich Administration and its supporters in Congress, particularly concerning freedom?

***

Freedom is a beautiful word. It's been one of your Curmudgeon's favorites for many years. But there's this about freedom: some folks don't interpret it the way others do.

The classical definition of liberty -- freedom in the political context -- is the absence of politically legitimized coercion or constraint from the decisions and actions of the individual citizen. That's "freedom from," which does not imply any right to any particular thing. It was the sense in which the word was used by the Founding Fathers. It's the foundation of the philosophy of individualism, and of all corresponding notions of properly limited government. John Edward Emmerich Dalberg, better known to us of today as Lord Acton, expressed that conviction most succinctly:

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Contrast that simple, clear statement of a fundamental principle of social organization with Franklin D. Roosevelt's "four freedoms:"

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

Which of FDR's "freedoms" can be harmonized with Actonian liberty -- political freedom?

• The first is an immediate implication of political freedom, provided the rights of property owners are respected; the freedom to speak must not include the power to command a soapbox from others, nor to compel an audience to listen.
• The second is also clearly consistent with a wider political liberty, again providing that one's "religion" does not exhort one to invade the rights of others (cf. Islam).
• The third fails badly. There is no way a government can guarantee "freedom from want" to even one individual, let alone an entire nation, without seizing the power to invade and redistribute the rightful property of others.
• The fourth is a fantasy. Fear is an emotion, not an objective fact. No power in this universe can guarantee against fear, for the reasons a man can be made to fear are buried within his psyche and cannot be eradicated by external means. Indeed, of all the things men have come to fear over the course of human existence, one of the most common is government itself.

But the political convictions of the great majority of contemporary Americans tend more toward Roosevelt's airy-fairy formulation than toward the Actonian / Jeffersonian conceptions upon which the United States was founded. The American political class finds that much to its taste and benefit, for it rationalizes activist, expansionist government, ever on the lookout for more power with which to pursue the elusive goals of "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear."

An old saying among libertarians runs: "No matter who you vote for, the government gets elected." The great Mark Steyn comments on this point brilliantly in his recent blockbuster After America:

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists -- sometimes hardcore Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily "compassionate" statists, sometimes patrician noblesse oblige statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war western democracies is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: the people can elect "conservatives," as from time to time the Germans and British have done, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence ha'penny would agree to go and take the chill off the toilet seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects were ready to stroll in and assume their rightful place. Republicans have gotten good at keeping the seat warm.

But that's not the root of the problem. A great many Americans in this year of Our Lord 2012 sincerely believe that among the legitimate functions of government is to provide:

• Food to the hungry;
• Clothing to the naked;
• Shelter to the homeless;
• Cheap credit to struggling businesses;
• Tariff protection to "critical industries;"
• Big honkin' grants to various foundations;
• Use of government's coercive powers to approved special-interest groups;
• Easy access to the "American Dream" to persons who haven't the ability or willpower to earn it for themselves;

...and so on. And if these "functions" are antithetical to the God-given rights of each man to his life, his liberty, and his justly acquired property, what of it?

Call them what you will: "moderates," "pragmatists," "New Deal liberals," "technocrats," et cetera ad nauseam infinitam, the politicians most successful at gaining ever higher office and ever wider powers have made a specialty of conciliating voters who hold those convictions. With good reason: those voters constitute at least a third, and more probably half, of those who go to the polls at every election. The aspirant to high office cannot afford to have them vote against him.

Without their support, Newt Gingrich will not ascend to the presidency, nor will any conservative-minded candidate for a seat in either house of Congress.

***

The fate of freedom after November 2012, should the election end the Obamunist reign, will depend on two factors:

• Whether those elected to replace the Obamunists sincerely believe in freedom as the highest political end, or at least as an unacceptably disrespected consideration;
• Whether the voters who elected them are solidly behind them.

The prospects, unfortunately, are poor. No candidate who comes out squarely in favor of ending the Entitlement State will rise to power. No candidate who states openly that subsidies and subventions for various industries and corporations are inherently anti-Constitutional will be allowed into Congress. No candidate who castigates the environmental movement as opposed to human progress and security will be elected. The special-interest dynamic is still in play, and as powerful as it's ever been -- and it's tolerated, at least passively, by the voters who matter most.

Expect that a Gingrich Administration would be hemmed in as closely as any other Republican administration and Congressional caucus by those factors. Expect further that the majority of those we elect will consider the status quo ante acceptable, with a few tweaks around the perimeter. Expect finally that the country will acquiesce to that arrangement, no matter how many of us had hoped and yearned for a better outcome.

What will you say or do in that case, Gentle Reader?

Saturday, January 21, 2012

100 Years Ago Today Part 2

In the first post upon this topic, your Curmudgeon examined Belloc's foundation for his concept of the servile state. We proceed thence to Belloc's conception of what constitutes individual slavery:

A man binds himself to work for life and his children after him so far as the law may permit him to bind them in a particular society, but that not for a bare subsistence, but for so large a wage that he will be wealthy in a few years, and his posterity, when the contract is completed, wealthier still. Does the state in enforcing such a contract make the fortunate employee a slave? No. For it is in the essence of slavery that subsistence or little more should be guaranteed to the slave. Slavery exists in order that the free should benefit by its existence, and connotes a condition in which the men subjected to it may demand secure existence, but little more.

Here your Curmudgeon must take exception. Yes, it is indisputable that in a society that embeds the institution of slavery, if the free failed to benefit by it, they would not tolerate it. But a benefit adequate to secure the tolerance of the free need not be the maximum benefit possible under the laws of Nature. There are other values than monetary profit, and the law of diminishing marginal value applies to the relations among them. Were it otherwise, we would never see a captain of industry league with forces overtly determined to limit the profits possible to him; consider environmentalism as a test case.

Nevertheless, Belloc has a point. The free must benefit from the enslavement of others for slavery to persist. More, the benefit must exceed other considerations that would militate against slavery (e.g., conscience qualms, technological advance, or the desire for others' approval). Therefore, a very slender benefit is unlikely to serve; it must be substantial, or otherwise differentiated from conditions that obtain outside the zone where slavery is tolerated, to keep the institution alive.

The phrase ringing in your Curmudgeon's thoughts is "peculiar institution."

***

The antebellum South was the last bastion of slavery in what we now term the "Western World." That makes it possible for America-bashers to distort the history of slavery, a worldwide institution that had also been tolerated in Britain until 1833, into a unique stain on the American conscience. The facts speak otherwise, though this is not the place for an extensive exploration of them.

Slavery in the Southern, pre-Civil War United States was indeed a peculiar institution. Economically, it would have struck an objective analyst as insane. The emergence of machines that would hugely out-produce any plantation slave ought to have brought the institution of slavery to its end...if economic concerns were the item of greatest importance. To be blunt about it, they were not.

Slavery in the pre-war South was far more important to the South as a component in its regional culture than as a source of economic benefit to slaveholders. The best demonstration of this is the well-recorded willingness of the great majority of Southerners to defend slavery, even though only a small minority of Southerners were slaveholders.

The quality of the arguments presented in defense of slavery is of no moment. There is no argument strong enough to overcome the natural right of every human being to his freedom. The significance of the argument was and is that antebellum Southerners regarded slaveholding as "a Southern thing," a component of the South's distinct regional culture. The "rights" of the few dozen black slaveholders were as much a part of that culture -- and as fiercely defended -- as those of white slaveholders.

Historian Clarence Carson considers the core of the matter to be sectionalism: the view of Southerners that the South was sui generis. Southerners held that the criticisms of non-Southerners, who were therefore outside Southern culture and Southern norms, were inherently invalid and irrelevant, and that the South had every right to maintain its uniqueness. This accords with the historical record far better than any economic thesis. It also meshes well with the persistence of slavery entirely without economic benefits in non-Western lands, of which the Arabian states are the best examples.

***

Belloc's approach to the servile state is entirely economic. Therefore, we must expect that in some of the analysis he presents, there will be generalizations that fail to apply to "classical" slavery," as your Curmudgeon has delineated above. However, he is on target in his core consideration: For slavery to persist and be tolerated, whether legally, socially, or otherwise, free men must feel that they benefit by it.

More anon.

Friday, January 20, 2012

L’Affaire Gingrich

Apparently, Newt Gingrich scored heavily when CNN 's John King attempted to embroil him about ex-wife Marianne's claims of Gingrich's sexual adventurism. The attack was expected; indeed, if King hadn't made it, he'd probably have been in hot water with his employers. But equally to be expected was Gingrich's immediate and fearless riposte, which has indeed played well with Republican-minded voters.

Still, questions remain about Gingrich, who's on his third wife and has admitted to some shameful behavior in the past. Character counts; indeed, it might outweigh any and every policy position a man holds. Nor should Gingrich's recent conversion to Catholicism be held to make his past completely irrelevant. The matter is worthy of some discussion, especially given the possibility of unfavorable reactions from "religious conservatives."

There are several sorts of "religious conservatives." In some sense, I'm one -- at least, I admire marital fidelity and deplore adultery -- but I find that I can't dismiss Gingrich for his past sins of the flesh. They came before his conversion; he says he has repented of them. I believe him, and apparently so does his wife Callista. On the basis of Christ's instruction that we love the sinner even while condemning the sin, I consider him acceptable, tentatively, at least.

Will harder-edged religious conservatives react differently? It's possible; there are many among us to whom censoriousness is natural and forgiveness is alien. America still has its fire-and-brimstone absolutists, who consider sins of the flesh unforgivable and regard those tainted by them as irremediably damned. They vote, too. But whether their reaction would doom a Gingrich candidacy is unclear, especially given the great numbers of Americans who regard open repentance as an unusual and admirable thing in a public figure.

One of the most important aspects of the 2000 presidential campaign was then-Governor George W. Bush's past record as an alcoholic. He admitted to it, said he had repented of it, and had been dry and sober for some decades. The media, of course, refused to let the matter rest there, even attempting to use the young Dubya's troubles with the bottle to besmirch his service in the Texas Air National Guard. America's voters saw things differently.

(An aside: Imagine, only for the sake of an interesting speculation, that Mitt Romney had at some time committed adultery and that it were found out just about now. Can you even conceive of Romney publicly admitting his fault and asking forgiveness?)

To my mind, the real story here is about the media's immediate and gleeful embrace of this tawdry tale coming from a former wife. Have they no skepticism remaining to them? Beyond that, where's the evenhandedness? Was Bill Clinton subjected to this sort of grilling? Weren't his various accusers dismissed as fortune hunters by the media -- until Paula Jones scored against him in a court of law?

Gennifer Flowers had an affair with Clinton of which there was hard evidence -- dismissed by the media. Juanita Broaddrick made an extremely credible accusation of rape against Clinton -- dismissed by the media. Newsweek had a tape of Monica Lewinsky discussing her liaisons with Clinton -- and sat on it for an unknown time, until the story finally broke in the Drudge Report. When the media finally engaged the Lewinsky affair, it was to castigate Linda Tripp for bringing it to light!

Actually, it's not all that new. If the media admires a public figure, it will censor itself about his peccadilloes. Franklin D. Roosevelt's many affairs were protected from public scrutiny, as were those of John F. Kennedy. But the media will leap savagely onto any Republican accused of such sins, whether the accusations are substantiated or not. This obvious partisanry is a large part of the reasons why attentive Americans have been tuning out media political commentary for some time now.

When there are several Republican contenders for the GOP's presidential nod, media partisanry expresses itself in the attempt to damage the most formidable candidates, leaving the most defeasible one to face the Democrats' choice. That was their orientation in 2008, which gave us the ludicrous McCain candidacy. It was also the way of things in 1996, when just about any Republican except noted illeist and "tax collector for the welfare state" Robert Dole could have beaten Bill Clinton. Of course there were other factors involved, but the media's complicity is too clearly embedded in the historical record to be denied. It's most certainly the case now; the media is desperate to see Romney as the nominee, to weaken ObamaCare and the bailouts as strokes against Barack Hussein Obama.

The nomination campaign still has a long course to run. At this point, for his fearlessness before a sustained media assault from several quarters, Newt Gingrich has moved to the front of the pack of contenders. Until now, he hasn't been my first choice -- I've been wary of his flightiness ever since he rose to prominence in the House of Representatives -- but of the candidates that remain, he's looking better and better to me all the time.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Capitalism And The Military

As little as your Curmudgeon likes the term capitalism -- it was coined by Karl Marx, you know -- it's the standard way of referring to an economic order in which the means of production are privately owned and economic transactions are largely free of government interference. It has no necessary connection to corporate forms, or corporate prevalence. As Thomas Sowell put it, capitalism is what happens when free people tend to their own needs and desires as they see fit.

Governments are hostile to capitalism.

Feel free to argue the point, but you'll be wrong, and contradicted by the entirety of human history, at that. There isn't one single instance of a government refraining from the sort of meddling and coercion that transforms a capitalist order into something far less desirable: typically, either a crony-corporatist system, or a welfare state. Even in the earliest years of the United States, government action at both the state and federal levels acted to restrict, deflect, and otherwise hobble free economic intercourse. No other nation has done better.

The great irony here is that governments like and need coercive power. Coercion is the sole method of governments; they know no other. But the rulers of a nation don't normally sally forth personally to bash in the heads of their adversaries. They hire it done -- and that takes great gouting quantities of what capitalism produces better than any other economic scheme: money. So in hobbling a capitalist order, the State essentially guarantees that it will have a smaller pool of resources upon which to draw when it comes time to pay its armed hirelings.

Consider the late, unlamented Soviet Union as a case in point. That supposed superpower proved at the last to be a hollow shell. Its military, as large and ferocious as it was on paper, was ill-equipped, ill-maintained, and generally unready in every measurable sense. Its greatly feared ICBM batteries were estimated to have at best a reliable-readiness factor of 25%. Its air force and armored divisions were constantly cannibalizing one system to shore up another. Their anemic socialist economy deprived them of funds enough for replacement systems, replacement parts, adequate maintenance, or anything else essential to military power.

Similar conditions now prevail in the states of the European Union. Those nations have "invested" so heavily in dirigisme and welfarism that their economies are at a standstill. They have virtually no combat power at all. A single division of United States Marines could probably conquer the Old World in its entirety. (Not that we would want the place; it's overrun with socialists, Muslims, and other assorted irritants.)

At this time, the armed forces of the United States are in a recovery period. The engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan have wearied our men at arms and have used up large fractions of their fighting tools. To return our military to full fighting trim, and thus retain our global military preeminence, it will be necessary to spend a lot of money.

The Obama Administration has already announced an exactly opposite policy.

From one angle, that was to be expected. Obamunism is explicitly opposed to American military dominance. We're supposed to apologize to the rest of the world for being the big kid on the block, keeping the sea lanes open and safe, doing what we can to punish the excesses of other powers, and so forth. Besides, military men don't typically vote Democrat, and certainly won't vote for a preening socialist who seeks to arrogate the credit for whatever they achieve.

But from another angle, Obama's policy appears self-limiting, even self-negating. A powerful military is the silent participant in every diplomatic negotiation. Governments understand nothing but force; they will yield to nothing else. Without the ability to threaten, credibly, to use military force, dealings with nations whose interests are opposed to ours are unlikely to go our way.

This was the case even during the Cold War years, when America and the Soviets faced off over the status of various protectorates and proxies. During those administrations when the Soviets could be persuaded that America would use force, if necessary, to get what it wanted, we prevailed far more often than not; during milquetoast interregna such as the Carter years, matters were quite different.

If our military is permitted to dwindle, such that its ability to "reach out and punch someone" becomes substantially less credible, other governments will take notice. Changes to regional and global arrangements, transnational institutions, alliances, and balances of power will follow. Would-be aggressors who'd been deterred by the previous fearsomeness of our military will move toward action. These developments will not be to America's benefit.

Given the beating the American economy has taken these past four years, returning the military to peak readiness and performance would put an unprecedented strain on federal finances. It would be necessary to shunt funds from various entitlement programs to military applications -- "from butter to guns." A Democrat administration, committed to the politics of special-interest coalition-building, will always find this distasteful. The Obama Administration, which is fully aware of the trends swelling against it, must find it all but unthinkable. But by its many measures designed to prevent an economic recovery and enlist ever more Americans as dependents of federal largesse, it has confined itself most straitly.

The one thing the great majority of Americans agree on, with regard to the federal government, is the desirability of absolute global military preeminence. That, too, will weigh against the Obamunists come November, no matter how loudly they preen about the deficit-reduction effects of their proposed cuts to the defense budget.

Our soldiers must be paid, housed, fed, and trained.
They must be adequately transported and equipped.
Their tools must be maintained, even as we develop new and better tools for them.
Not to be neglected: They must not be exhausted in futile efforts, from which American interests do not prosper, or non-military exercises, properly left to private parties.

The Obamunists aren't terribly bright, but they're bright enough to grasp those things. They've cornered themselves with their assault on capitalism, leaving them not even enough federal revenue to meet entitlement obligations without printing money. They certainly don't have enough to restore the American military to its proper condition. So they have to argue for its diminution as a matter of fiscal discipline. That might be the strongest of all indicators of their downfall to come.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Calling Mr. 9mm.

Once society becomes more complex than a modest tribe or small town, once its affairs extend beyond the immediate visual horizon of the citizens, they become clueless. Most don't have the brains, and almost none the time or interest, to monitor sprawling bureaucracies and distant wars.

Grifters and the Tweedledee Men will soon drive our ship onto the rocks at which point the immediate visual horizon will become like a landscape in a Steven King novel (From a Buick 8) in which delicate matters like social justice, structural racism, and the Paperwork Reduction Act will diminish in importance and Mr. 9mm, with whom so many horizon-challenged citizens are well acquainted indeed, will teach many valuable lessons.

No viable force or visible trend of the present hour appears to be capable of preventing the shipwreck. Like Mr. Italian Cruise Ship Capitano, our guys are steering hard to port to get us to the rocks. A nation that tolerates and sustains a press that got all hot and bothered over Herman Cain's alleged dalliances or hideous patriarchal utterances when racial, cultural, fiscal and constitutional catastrophe threaten deserves nothing less than the rocks.

More candidates. By Fred Reed, Fred on Everything, 1/17/12.

The Death Wish?

The anger across the heartland of America over the nation’s social and economic decline is palpable; so much so that the current occupant of the White House could probably be defeated in November by a ham sandwich. Unless of course the teleprompter jesus decides to follow Mr Santorum’s plan of borrowing or printing additional cash in order to finance another war, this time with Iran. In spite of this, the Republican party tends to select its nominee on the basis of a queue driven by “seniority” and a motto of “me too, only more efficiently”. With the nation hurtling toward a brick wall of debt at warp speed the Republican establishment hopes to seize the controls in order to reduce the velocity to mach 2. 

Republicans sure have short memories. It was just four years ago that they went to the polls in the primaries and elected the most “moderate” and “electable” candidate they could find in the hope that they had a man who was palatable to the general population. Their reward for their unprincipled pragmatism was an ass-kicking in the general election that few Americans will ever forget. John McCain and Sarah Palin certainly won’t forget it.[snip]

In other words, if the more “electable” moderate got his ass kicked four years ago, how badly is the second-place moderate going to do this time around?

All fall down.

Thus, we also approach the dreaded inflection point for the credit default swaps. Nobody believes that this Mount Everest of jive bond “insurance” can actually pay out, since the first instance of any attempt will bankrupt everybody.

What Gives. By James Howard Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation, 1/16/12.