Karl Marx Meant Well......

He just didn't know his human race very well.

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Got into a debate with an economist the other day over Marxism vs. Communism. He took a swipe at Ronald Reagan for not understanding that Marxism and Communism are two different things (according to economists). No matter that Marx wrote the Communist Manifest (and yes, Engels helped, but he gave all the credit for the ideas to Marx).  Apparently the pure Marxist ideology is that the ideal worker's paradise should be a virtually leaderless society where the collective makes all the decisions and no strong leader exists.  That is actually an idea a died-in-the-wool capitalist could get behind actually. 

Karl Marx's great difficulty was that he looked to create a heaven on Earth. It was an admirable dream, but it does not work here on this planet. Marx's utopia requires a couple of things that Marx never accepted as necessary.  Marx later got involved with communism because he hoped to work out his worker's paradise in the real world and had, I believed, figured out that some system of authority was essential to make it work, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

The truth is, the ideals behind collectivism only work if all the people in the collective are good and altruistic people. There is no such group of people. The progressive movement still believes there is despite abundant evidence to the contrary. 

I'm pro capitalist because it seems the most effective way to create a healthy economy in a world where  the baseline is greed and self-interest.  We live in a sinful world, let's face it. With capitalism, if you over-extend and get piggish, you fail unless some government decides you're too big to fail and protects your depredations upon the system by bailing you out with tax dollars.

Our problem here is that we are trying to blend two system - one that believes that, if you meet a baseline of needs, people will be basically good and another that believes people are basically bad.  As a Christian, for instance, I believe the latter. I also believe that our experiences here and with the help of God, a goodly number of us will one day achieve that altruistic goodness that Marx mistakenly thought he could bring out in people by sharing the wealth around.

What Marx did not understand was that  free will is a wonderful, but double-edged sword. The communists hoped to somehow control free will and negate its effects. At first they tried through providing everybody's baseline needs as equitably as possible.  When that didn't work, they created the KGB and attempted to create altruism through fear and the gulags - Communisms own brand of hell.

It is tempting to intellectuals to believe that smart leaders can somehow create a centrally planned society where everyone is content if not truly happy.  Even Einstein, as smart as he was, wondered why we couldn't manage it.

The problem is in man's nature.  He does have free will (despite BF Skinner's assurances to the contrary).  He is born with two contrary natures.  The new born child knows how to love without reservation - he loves himself.  Sadly, many children never get far beyond that. It is the work of a lifetime to become a selfless person - the kind of people you absolutely must have in order to maintain Marx's leaderless collective. 

To base a political and economic system on the hope that  somehow you can somehow create rules or provide sufficient bread and circuses to cause people to spontaneously become self-less is an exercise in wishful thinking.

Marx had an admirable goal. It's just not achievable without two things.

1. People who want to be good above all things.
2. An all-knowing, all-caring leader to manage the details.

#1 is, I think, what will occur at the  Second Coming.
#2 I believe, requires the existence of God.

If neither of those elements are in place; if God does not exist, if people people who want to be good are not separated from those who choose to be bad, then we're well and truly hopeless because we're trying to make up flocks of sheep that include hungry wolves as members. Inevitably, this takes a terrible toll on the poor sheep as last century's experiment in Marxist sheep herding clearly demonstrates.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King

Where's a Statesman When We Need One?



The Greatest Statesman of My Lifetime - Bar None

 One of my favorite weblogs, "The Art of Manliness", just ran a piece called "The Four Qualities of a True Statesman."  Brett & Kay McKay, the authors, certainly picked a subject that would get a lot of comments. Predictably the Paulestinians came out in force and I'm thrilled they're getting so many hits off those guys. They've really kicked the ad revenue of small political blogs like mine into high gear. All you have to do to get a spike is to mention Ron Paul and step back and let the comments roll in.

I agree with Brett's analysis as to what a statesman is. It's not hard to spot a statesman. The top 4 American statesmen who made president in the 1800s are carved on Mt. Rushmore. I think you could add Daniel Webster and Henry Clay to that list whether you like their politics or not. Of all of them, I think Washington was the father and model of true American statesmanship. Lincoln had the toughest job, Jefferson the greatest impact on personal freedom and Teddy Roosevelt was the man on foreign policy - him and his "big stick".

In the 20th century, I’d pick FDR, Eisenhower and Reagan – and possibly Harry Truman. Reagan always befuddled "real" politicians because Reagan actually believed all that stuff he was saying and "the people" believed him when he said it. I believe the others I mentioned had that ability as well, with differing degrees of success at carrying public opinion along with them. Truman, who was no career politician, believed the buck stopped with him and that is very statesmanlike and all kind of manly.

In the 21st century we’ve had a shortage of statesmen so far. I’ll give you Ron Paul as statesmanlike, but no more. He’s as principled in what he believes ought to be done as George W. Bush was on the war on terrorism. GW was wrong on some issues as is Ron Paul. Both have fatal flaws in that they fall short in the consensus building department. I don’t think the 21st century has yet seen its first great statesman yet. The closest to a principled politician I’ve seen so far is Sarah Palin. That woman really believes what she says, though I’m not sure we’re ready to hear it from a woman quite yet, despite our efforts to change our culture in that regard. Sadly, we’re not ready for an American Margaret Thatcher. I do hope one will take the stage at some point. It would be nice to add an American iron lady to that list of iron men.

I do believe that statesmen are no accident. I believe, when we need a statesman, God will raise one up.

• “The greatest want of the world is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.”  - E.G. White

Oddly enough, it was a woman who wrote that. but then who better to recognize a real man when she sees one?

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Goldwater -- A "Lesson" Mislearned

The Republican Party has been plagued for almost 50 years by the "lesson" they learned in Barry Goldwater's defeat. 

What They "Learned: 
Republican strategerists (as Rush Limbaugh calls them), learned a powerful lesson from the Goldwater debacle of 1964.  Since Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry in the election, just one year after the assassination of the charismatic John Kennedy, Republicans came to believe that "extremist" candidates were a bad idea. They decided that the trick to winning an election was, to attract moderates, the vast so-called silent majority.  Surely that must be what they did wrong when they ran Barry Goldwater.

What They Missed:
In 1964, the nation was polarized. Democrats were playing with social engineering. Republicans were reacting strongly to what they saw as creeping communism. The nation had been stunned by the murder of a popular young president. The Republicans could have run Jesus and still would have lost that election.  The sides were clearly defined. The lines clearly drawn. The election came down to which way the moderates would swing. With the Kennedy assassination, the middle mass of the voting public swung powerfully to the Democrats.  To draw any conclusions about how to win (or lose) presidential elections from the 1964 election is a mistake. The only thing you can say for sure is that the party in power should have its current president assassinated just before the election if you want to win for sure. Look how fast Lyndon Johnson fell from grace once the impact of his policies began to be felt out in the real world.

What Else They Missed:
The Goldwater campaign had one bright spot. It launched the political career of arguably the most influential Republican of the the past century. Ronald Reagan's famous "Last Stand on Earth" speech was the high point of the 1964 convention. It kind of annoyed Goldwater because up beside Ronald Reagan, Barry looked kind of lame. Listen to this brilliant speech again. Consider it a political recharge:

Conclusion:

This speech is the lesson they SHOULD have learned.  God bless Ronald Reagan.

Tom King

Onward Christian Soldiers!

How does a Christian relate to war and military service.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

My good friends who like Ron Paul's foreign policy approach are a stubborn lot.  They keep sending me articles and weblinks, Youtube videos and links to documents in an effort to convince me to accept the apparent core doctrines that they hold. The main ones I've heard are

1. "George W. Bush was evil"
2. "We ought to withdraw all troops back home. No one would dare attacks us here because there's too much water separating us from them. Besides we're too big to attack."
3. "If we leave the world alone, they will love us again and everything will be hunky dory." 

Oh, you mean like detente'?  I don't remember that working out so well for us back in the 70s.

I carefully read the latest piece by a former Air Force pilot turned priest out of respect for my friend. It supports, of course, the idea that we ought to have a military, but just not use it and that Christians should probably not participate in the military at all. 

I was doing okay until he blithely cited some revisionist history about World War II and our use of nuclear weapons.  He stated flatly that Japan wanted to surrender, but would just wouldn't accept it.  He ignores the account of Japanese Army officers' attempts to kidnap the emperor to prevent him from announcing the surrender on the radio. This was after two nuclear strikes on the homeland. I have read accounts by Japanese officers and historians much closer to the action that make it clear that a last ditch, hedgerow by hedgerow fight for the homeland was, not only planned, but embraced by soldiers and civilians alike. It seems pretty obvious to me that the specter of dying uselessly in a nuclear blast, unable to take an enemy with you, completely unmanned the Samuri in the officer corps sufficiently to convince them to accept the ignominy of surrender.

 

The thing that colored the writer's opinion most, I believe, was his military experience.  The war in which he served was Vietnam - a US foreign policy disaster if ever there was one. Eisenhower warned us of the power and dangers presented by what he called the military-industrial complex in his final speech as president. He was right. Vietnam little more than a corporate war run by war profiteers and supported by both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It was about field testing new equipment and experimenting with "limited warfare" as a form of diplomacy by other means. Our soldiers were mistreated, hamstrung and placed in an impossible situation where most still managed to serve with honor despite the horrific conditions into which they were thrust.

 

Limited warfare is always a bad idea. War is a blunt instrument that should only be used in extreme circumstances. It is almost never used effectively by the U.S. because we are so damned ambivalent about it's use.

Were we to use total war selectively and with a clearly conceived policy behind it, we would be a far more effective "global force for good" (as the new Navy recruiting commercials put it). Orson Scott Card's fictional "Ender" novels outline what such a strategy might look like. His books are read at West Point by soldiers studying policy issues related to warfare. Card's hero, Andrew Wiggin reacts to any attack with sudden and overwhelming force and insures his attacker can do him no more harm.  The policy implications are something I could get behind. I
Extrapolated to the world stage, the policy would go something like this:

 

1. Leave your neighbors in peace. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
2. If attacked, respond instantly and with overwhelming force instantly. Go after the instigators of the attack and remove them. Do not stop till they are no longer able to wage war against you.
3. Help clean up the damage caused by the war. Help those caught in the middle to rebuild their lives.

The writer* of the piece I read, incorrectly credits President Reagan with almost starting a nuclear war. Reagan did no such thing! He built our own military to a high state of readiness. It was the Soviet Union's leaders, seeking to preserve their own power and position that were pondering starting a nuclear war. They did not because they knew we would fall on them like a ton of bricks if they did. There was no way for them to win, so they did not fight. We came far closer to war when our nation was engaging in detente'. We looked vulnerable and the Soviets assumed they would eventually find a way to take us down.
 
Reagan wasn't always able to consistently follow his own policy. Political expediency forced him to focus on those he considered our most dangerous enemies and compromise with the diplomats and Democrats in other cases.  That intense focus on the mission at hand, he successfully eliminated an entire class of very dangerous nuclear weapons and made a "first strike" attack by either side almost impossible.

 

It is a shame that diplomat types went back to the same old confused military strategy after he left office.

 

The Hebrew language in the Old Testament's Ten Commandments probably reads less like "Thou shalt not kill" and more like, "Thou shalt preserve life". Others have suggested "Thou shalt not murder." Whatever it says, the Old Testament often suggests killing as a political solution for a nation state when it is under attack. God, Himself, wiped out whole cities. Based on my knowledge of God's character, I suspect such drastic action was done in the interest of preserving life. There was a time in recent history when a nuke on top of Hitler's mountain hideaway would have saved a lot of lives. 

The Jews did a lot of killing at God's instruction.  Sounds terrible, but remember that many of the pagan cultures of the time were slaughtering tens of thousands of innocents on pagan altars and in innumerable raids on their neighbors and wars of conquest. Israel became known for cleaning out the corrupt and evil inhabitants of the land as they settled Canaan. That's why there was a huge mixed multitude. Many of those inhabitants, like Rahab and her family, recognized that things would be better without the corrupt kings, sleazy priests and evil gods and joined the Hebrew nation and joined up with Israel.

  

Ecclesiastes suggests there is a "time to kill and a time to heal". It is difficult for a Christian to decide which time that is. It is why many Christians adopt a noncombatant role in conflict. Some Christians do, however, feel called to participate in defending our country. That's why so many join up in the aftermath of events like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. We feel the call to protect our nation. Since we are not the president or congress, we have to rely on God to guide those men in their decision-making and do our best to serve as best our conscience dictates.

  

I know a lot of folk would like hard and fast, black and white rules that apply all the time and in all circumstances. God gives us 10 basic ones. Jesus whittled them down to two. Then God surrounded those nice black and white principles with hundreds of pages of interpretation, necessitating that a Christian spend his entire life on his knees with that book and in prayer trying to figure out how to apply what he has learned in the real world.

  

I don't know all the answers. I know from experience how to deal with thugs and bullies. I know from experience that being the one who stands in the breach and deals with those thugs and bullies can very easily turn you into one yourself if you're not careful.

 

Two presidents, I think, made an attempt to move our military policy in the right direction. They were both dragged down by politicians and pundits and never able to fully implement the kind of effective military policy that might have brought us peace. Ronald Reagan understood peace through strength and reminded the Russians that "trust but verify" was their own old adage. He defeated a real enemy and almost made them our friends if later politicians hadn't messed it up. We should have shared what we learned during our SDI program with the Russians as Reagan promised. I think we'd be better friends now. Instead, political backbiting killed SDI and left us with only the marginally effective Patriot missile system when we needed it in the Gulf War. 

 

The other president who got it, was George W. Bush. His dad didn't. When Sadaam overran Kuwait, Bush did exactly the right thing. He gathered a coalition and took back Kuwait and gave it back to its people. His mistake was not striking back with overwhelming force and eliminating Sadaam Hussein. Had we done so, there would have been relatively little further bloodshed. The Iraqi Army was defeated and unwilling to fight any further. They knew they were in the wrong and I believe that we could have taken Iraq, set up a new government and been out of there before the end of the century.

  

Instead, we reinforced a lunatic's belief that he, personally, was invulnerable. We abandoned those who revolted against Sadaam and left them to slaughter. We encouraged fanatic jihadists and made ourselves a target instead of a trusted friend. We absolutely missed an opportunity.

  

George W. knew we had to take out Sadaam and the Taliban in order to prevent a wholesale jihad against the U.S. spurred on by the successful attacks on 9/11. It was messy and not as effective as it could have been had we finished the job the first time around.

 

George W. and Donald Rumsfeld attempted to lead the military to a new "leaner, meaner" design structure which emphasized special ops troops (highly trained nation builders) over massed armor and huge formations. They tried to skip a generation of weapons and go straight to weapons that were faster, cheaper and more deadly.

 

Again, the congress, the political generals at the Pentagon (David Hackworth's "perfume princes") and the military-industrial complex launched a campaign to discredit that whole idea, continued to waste money on big ticket projects and to move massive formations around the battlefields like so many chess pieces.

  

We had an opportunity and we missed it because the powers that be in congress were addicted to a big, expensive, awkward military that spent tons of money in their districts for big defense contracts. Rumsfeld and Bush took the blame in what was, in essence, a blizzard of a snow job by big defense contractors and the stooges they support in the Congress. We could do better, but, so long as the military is run by self-serving "perfume princes" instead of warriors in service of the people, boys will die needlessly in half-cocked, ineffective fights all over the world.

 

Why do we put up with Somali pirates, for instance? A few Seal teams riding on a few ships so that the pirates didn't know where they were, could obliterate any attacking force. How long would it take for word to get around that if you wanted to spin the old "wheel o' luck" and attack a ship in the Gulf of Aden, there was no chance you would leave the scene alive?

 

Remember what Reagan did after the attack on our servicemen in Germany by the Libyans? He bombed Ghaddafi's flippin' house. Remember what happened when a couple of Libyan fighter planes decided to play chicken with US Navy Tomcats and popped off some shots at them? The Libyan Air Force was suddenly missing some planes. Remember how quiet Ghaddafi got after that? Remember how anxious he became to restore good relations with the US when our tanks rolled into Baghdad?

 

We should not play around with evil men. Removing evil people can be "destabilizing", but if done consistently, evil men become much more well behaved after only a few examples.

 

Americans, however, and Christians in particular, have no stomach for this kind of warfare. We're peaceful people and we live in hope that we can rap the knuckles of bad boys and reform them It never has worked well with bullies in our public schools it doesn't work with international bullies.

 

I saw this played out on the playground once. Eight grade thugs were making the lives of the smaller kids in the junior high school miserable. A very large young man, Charlie, who wasn't part of the "in":group anyway, was sympathetic with the oppressed kids. The got sick of it and next time it happened, he placed himself between the kids and their tormentor and politely asked them to stop. One of the bully boys laughed and took a poke at our hero. When the dust settled, he was stretched out on the ground with two black eyes, some assorted bruises and a total disinterest in persecuting his fellow many any further. Charlie took three licks from the principle for fighting. When he walked back out onto the playground, the smaller kids were his devoted followers. The bullies slunk quietly away. Word got around that Charlie would take licks if he had to in order to defend his friends and that getting a beating from Charlie was very painful. Charlie's "foreign policy" led to a very peaceful school year for everyone.

  

Maybe, that's a simplistic solution, but I do think it would work.

 

Sadly, I don't think a Pax Americana is possible in this world. Too many bullies and too few brave men and women. Thank God, Jesus is coming to rescue His own.

 

Incidentally, from my reading of Scripture, what happens to the bullies when He comes back will not be an exercise in detente'.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Tom King

 

*Making War: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.

Is Sarah Palin a "Mere" Cheerleader

One of my Facebook sparring partners recently dissed Sarah Palin as a mere cheerleader and unfit to be president. I immediately jumped back to the early 80's in my mind, remembering the incessant criticism of our president by both the left and the "intellectual" right.  Ronald Reagan was also criticized as a "mere" cheerleader if you'll remember.  They said he was an "empty suit", unfit for the intellectual challenges of being president.  My buddy, Dennis had the same criticism of Palin. He wants somebody "smart" to be president.

Well, you know what, I think we could use a cheerleader in the oval office.  How long has it been since we had someone in there who believes in the basis goodness of the American people AND believes in getting the government out of their way is the road to prosperity. I am sick to death of all the so-called "smart" people up in Washington, diddling with the economy, the health care system and our liberties in a futile attempt to plan all our lives out for us.

Even, notorious smart person, Albert Einstein, whom I respect as a scientist, fell victim to the misguided belief that many "smart" people do-- that somehow, smart people should be able to figure out how to run all our lives for us so as to eliminate poverty, want and disease.  He like other smart people over-estimated the capacity of human intelligence to manage something so blindingly complex as an economy, a culture or a vast collection of humans, each with free will and their own self-interest.  No small group of people have the collective brains to manage it.  That's why I believe that the government which governs best, is that which governs least.  

It doesn't take a towering intellect to lead. It takes courage, determination, humility and the willingness to lead from the front by example. We've had too many "smart" people try to micro-manage government. Carter did it. Johnson thought he could do it. Obama is doing it. Clinton, thank goodness, was too busy skirt-chasing to micro-manage and let the Republican congress open up the economy so that individual Americans could get it charged up and going again.

God deliver us from "smart" people. They think entirely too much of their own ability to do all the decision making. I say this as one of the so-called "smart" people (if you go by IQ testing I'm a flippin' genius). I understand as well as anyone that Intellect (with a capital "I") is not everything.  There's a lot more to leadership than book smarts. It took years of study, personal errors in leadership and a careful observance of outstanding leaders like Ronald Reagan, Patton, Eisenhower, Lincoln and Grant for me to learn how best to lead. I learned that great leaders first point the way and then get out of the way so the people can get on with the job. Great leaders delegate. Great leaders don't second guess. They don't micro-manage. They give the broad overview of the plan, then trust their generals, captains, lieutenants and especially their sergeants and privates to carry out those plans.

Obama's great sin is an entirely too great an admiration for his own intellect and a distrust for the collective intelligence of the American people. He trusts himself first, his advisors second and the American people dead last. That's a recipe for poor leadership and a discouraged, disorganized country. Under his "leadership" the American business community is reduced to sitting around on its collective butt, waiting to see what's the next "brilliant" idea that's going to come out of Washington and screw things up further.  Instead of getting up and going forward and making things happen, the very folks who could kick start the economy are keeping low, watching the economic weather. Passivity on the part of the business community will not save our economy, but that is exactly the behavior this administration is encouraging with its incessant micro-managing.

So Palin's lack of intellectual credentials bothers me not at all. Sometimes all we need is a cheerleader. Remember Reagan's "City on a Hill" speech. What was that, if not, cheerleading, but it was an effective technique for rallying the troops and dragging us away from the depression that Jimmy Carter and the Democrats were brewing. As a cheerleader Reagan was brilliant and oh, how the intellectuals whined that he delegated too much authority, that he didn't know "what was really going on". Remember the blistering criticism he took and how the American people paid no attention to it.

When he walked out of the summit in Iceland, the smart people railed that Reagan's "stupid" rejection of cool diplomacy had doomed the world to nuclear annihilation. The next year the Russians came back and the result was the first treaty that actually got missiles pointed at somebody else.

Reagan was called stupid for deploying Pershing missiles in Europe. Next thing you know both the Russians and us were scrapping ICBMs right and left.

The smart people excoriated Reagan for saying "Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!" out loud and in front of Germans no less. They said it would destabilize Russia and set back relations with the Soviet Union for years. Within just a few years the wall was torn down and the Soviet Union was no more.

Please, I implore the voters of America. If some pundit tells you such and such a candidate is the "smartest" man or woman in America......RUN!

Go straight to the voting booth and vote for his or her opponent!

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King
(c) 2010