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Lives lived in the abstract

by Mojambo ( 141 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, Education at February 7th, 2011 - 4:30 pm

I had a talk with someone the other day and we both believe that 1) college is definitely not for every one , and 2) it is far more useful to learn a good trade. College should be to educate the mind, to teach one to embrace reason and rationality. A class full of psychology, philosophy or sociology majors frankly will be hard put to find work in those fields – however a class of trained electricians or plumbers should do just fine. As for home ownership – not everyone is cut out to own property and the almost elitist version of those who rent their apartments (32% of American householders are renters – not owners) needs to change. If anything the current financial crisis and the subprime disaster should have taught us is “Cash is King”and that money in the bank is more valuable then fluctuating investments. In the old days owning a house was a source of pride in ownership, a place to live, and a place to raise ones family, somewhere along the line it became just another financial investment. Just like the way we stopped being a nation of manufacturers and producers and transitioned into a service economy, we have lost our way. I am tired of going to the store and all the shirts I want to purchase are labeled Made in Bangladesh.

by Victor Davis Hanson

The 2008 financial crash originated with a housing bubble.

Not long ago, the cheap-money policies of the Federal Reserve, the infusion of trillions of dollars in new foreign investment, and the misguided policies of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae all conspired to extend to millions of Americans lots of easy cash for inflated houses that they could hardly afford.

Owning a house was seen as a “right” rather than the just rewards of household sacrifice, delayed gratification and budgetary discipline.

Builders, lenders, realtors and bureaucrats all got in on the easy-money Ponzi scheme — until a few noticed that the emperor had no clothes and that rather pedestrian homes were hardly worth what unqualified purchasers had paid for them.

Financial hysteria followed when shaky borrowers began to miss exorbitant mortgage payments, walked away, and lenders panicked. The subsequent meltdown is history.

There is a similar pension bubble rising as well. There is perhaps as much as $6 trillion owed in retirement pledges to Americans, $500 billion in California alone. That tab under present conditions simply cannot be met.

For the last 30 years, politicians outbid each other to offer more lavish retirement packages to union members and public employees — more eager for their votes than for ensuring the payment of what they had promised. Receiving a generous retirement package was considered a right rather than an investment predicated on past savings coupled with modest interest and dividends.

There may already be an immediate $1 trillion shortfall in meeting what is owed current retirees. Pensioners on the receiving end are becoming more numerous, older and more affluent, while the younger workers on the paying end are becoming less numerous and poorer.

At some point, a city, a state or perhaps the Social Security system itself is going to announce there is no more money. Then, if there is not another financial crisis and Wall Street meltdown, the fantasy will end with workers paying higher contributions, retiring later and receiving less.

Then there is the higher-education bubble, as collective student debt nears $1 trillion with no guarantee that it will be paid back. Lots of poor college students and their strapped parents are floating huge government-subsidized student loans to pay for ever more costly bachelor’s degrees that no longer ensure that the recipients are either well educated, will find a job upon graduation or, if employed, will be better-paid than the vocationally trained.

Going to college has somehow become seen as a national right rather than a privilege predicated on superior academic achievement, financial sacrifice and continued academic discipline.

[…]

In other words, we are living the good life in the abstract that we have not quite earned in the concrete.

America is a naturally rich country. Unlike Russia, China, Egypt or Greece, it is stable, transparent, tolerant and free of civil strife. The result is that we are not doomed to see these bubbles expand and burst with the attendant social unrest. We need only return to our old American creed that wealth is created only with hard work and delayed gratification.

In other words, America must get back to producing real, rather than imaginary, riches and ignore pleasing rhetoric that masks unpleasant reality — the faster the better.

Read the rest: Bubbles Galore In Lives Lived in the Abstract

Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Economy, Education | 141 Comments »

The annus horribilis of 1979 returns

by Mojambo ( 175 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Egypt, Iran, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Politics, Progressives at February 3rd, 2011 - 11:30 am

The parallels between 1979 and 2011 are striking on both the domestic/economic side and on the foreign policy side. In both cases, a would be messiah is in the White House and foreign tyrants like sharks in the water – smell blood (weakness, confusion and vacillation). The economy is tanking, pessimism reigns, and we are being told that America’s best days are behind her. Sadly there is no Ronald Reagan on the horizon.

by Victor Davis Hanson

Obama’s deer-in-the-headlights, finger-to-the-wind, “I can’t believe this is happening to me” initial reaction to the Mubarak implosion has eerie precedents. After the debacle in Vietnam, Watergate, the Nixon resignation, and the Ford WIN buttons, voters were willing to bet on the smiling but unknown hope-and-change reformer from Plains, Georgia. Jimmy Carter’s campaign and his early presidential speeches on resetting foreign policy sounded uplifting. They were certainly a rebuke to the supposedly dark Nixon-Kissinger realpolitik and cloak-and-dagger intrigue. Indeed, Carter’s election marked a return to Wilsonian idealism that predicated American support for other nations on shared commitment to human rights and U.N. values. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance exuded probity and almost seemed to suggest at every stop, “I am not Henry Kissinger.”

Carter’s new America was to entertain no more mindless, reductionist inordinate fear of Communism. Nor would we continue to be a cynical arms merchant to our allies and profit from the tools of death. Anti-Communist, anti-fundamentalist strongman modernizers like the Shah were suddenly antithetical to American values. In contrast, his radical Islamist enemies were little more than curious and confused intermediaries whose appreciated opposition to dictators would soon be eclipsed by serious European-like socialist reformers.

While Carter’s America occasionally worried about the Communist consolidation in Vietnam or Central America, these rather violent sorts certainly had legitimate grievances given our prior support for anti-Communist authoritarians. In fact, the new United States worried far more about our own epauletted SOBs in Africa and Latin America than about the less-well-groomed AK-47-toting liberationists.

Then 1979 came around, and the unfortunate wages of a well-meaning Carterism became all too apparent after only the first two years of its implementation. The world of our Cold War allies proved not to be one of Manichean evil and good, but was revealed as complex and consisting of shades of both.

It was perhaps good to press our friends in Argentina, Central America, South Korea, and Iran to reform, but to what degree, to be consistent, were we then to pressure the Soviet Union, the autocratic Arab oil-producing world, or Communist China — all of which had far more blood on their hands than did the Shah or the South Korean anti-Communists — to likewise move toward elections and free speech?

Worse still, the more Carter spoke about human rights, the more he seemed, in hypocritical fashion, to court the Soviet Union for an arms-control agreement, the Arab world for a peace settlement and steady oil sales, and China for economic liberalization through formal diplomatic recognition. It almost seemed to the cynical diplomatic world that if a nation were hostile to the United States, powerful or strategically important — and even with a horrific record on human rights — the Carter administration would romance it as zealously as it would snub friendly countries that were less powerful and had authoritarian, rather than genocidal, tendencies. The past killing of a few thousand in allied countries warranted far more anguish than the killing of several million in enemy ones.

In short, hypocrisy and sanctimonious bullying soon replaced the promised unbending principle and moral courage. Carter seemed to be harder on our friends than on our rivals and enemies, especially odd since an aggressive war was more likely to come from North Korea than from South Korea, from the radical Arab world than from Iran or Israel, from the Soviet Union’s proxies than from our own, and from China rather than from Taiwan.

[…]

The ongoing Iranian nuclear program, the impending fall of Mubarak, the sudden rashness of North Korea, the regional muscle-flexing of Russia and China, the worries of Japan and Western Europe, the emerging new Marxist, anti-American, and anti-democratic axis in Latin America, the implosion of Mexico — again, fairly or not, these will be interpreted as the wages of haughty American pontificating, coupled with impressions of stasis and indecision. That once again oil and food prices are skyrocketing, as the dollar weakens, deficits soar, and unemployment stays high, as in 1979, does not help to convey an image of American stability and power.

For now, we dread the emergence of ElBaradei in the role of Banisadr, assuring us that there is no threat from a new Egyptian Khomeini, and post facto blaming us for our past support of a “stable” strongman. What is missing from this self-described humane administration — in its clumsy and public calibration of the varying cliques vying for power in Cairo — was an early and consistent explanation of why the United States supports those who embrace constitutional government.

There is one consolation in that the progressive Western Europeans, the United Nations, and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee sometimes appreciate American indecision and self-confession. As a result, this time around our sermonizer-in-chief was given the Nobel Peace Prize without lobbying for it — and during, rather than after, his presidency.

Read the rest: Obama’s 1979

Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Barack Obama, Egypt, Iran, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Politics, Progressives | 175 Comments »

How our “new civility” will guarantee Obama’s reelection

by Mojambo ( 178 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Hate Speech, Politics at January 21st, 2011 - 2:00 pm

Funny how I do not seem to recall any calls for “civility” from 2001 – 08 when George W. Bush (a nice gentleman) was in charge. Instead we were bombarded by constant references and analogies to Nazi Germany not only thrown at Bush but at Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, and Republicans in general by the likes of Dick Durbin, Keith Olbermann, and various vapid Hollywood stars. By toning down our legitimate criticisms of the Obama government we are succumbing to our fears and will give him a free pass on those things which need to be brought out.

by Victor Davis Hanson

An evil psychopath, Jared Lee Loughner — a man with no discernible ideology or political affiliation, and declared by those who know him to be both unhinged and unacquainted with contemporary media — shot a U.S. congresswoman, murdered a federal judge, and killed five other innocent people, while wounding several more.

Almost immediately, prominent liberal journalists and several politicians in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures directly attributed Loughner’s rampage to the “climate of hate” in general and to the Tea Party, Fox News, Sarah Palin, conservatives in general, or the Republican party in particular.

[…]

In some ways, the most embarrassing demagoguery came from the secretary of state. While in Abu Dhabi, Mrs. Clinton — in a rather shameful sort of moral equivalence — apparently intended to impress her hosts and score political points at the same time. So without any evidence, she labeled Loughner an “extremist,” in a general call to quell political violence both in and outside the United States.

What was the evidence for the charge that Loughner was a product of the political fringe, or that his rampage was a logical extension of right-wing politics? The scene of the crime was Arizona, which had been the object of liberal vituperation, failed economic boycotts, and political censure because of its efforts to enforce federal immigration laws that the Obama administration was not enforcing. The suspect was a lone white male. And there was a vague memory that such ideological scavenging amid tragedy had worked well in the Timothy McVeigh case. I think that was about it.

So in less than 72 hours the legion of liberal pundits, bloggers, and newspaper editors that had rushed to demagogue the issue was reduced to embarrassed silence. Loughner was clearly unhinged and had no political affiliation. Many who had called conservatives out had themselves a long record of using inflammatory metaphors and similes. President Obama — unlike his sloganeering after the Skip Gates mess or the Major Hasan murdering — uncharacteristically kept quiet, processed public opinion, and than gave a fine speech, disavowing charges of a political connection to the tragedy. In Orwellian fashion, the New York Times now praised the new bipartisan civility without citing its own uncivil efforts a few hours earlier to politicize the shooting.

End of story? Hardly. Consider the present landscape and its logic.

We are all supposed to deny any connection between the Taxi Driver copy-cat Loughner and politics. But we are also supposed to use this occasion to insist on a new age of civility in which we all strive to curb the inflammatory speech that did not prompt Loughner at all.

Are we appalled by the repugnant efforts of an ideologue like Paul Krugman to capitalize on the killing of innocent people, while we nonetheless de facto accept his thesis that politics, as in right-wing politics, motivated Loughner, and thus must tone down? And once incivility is accepted as Loughner’s catalyst, who, after all, is going to protest a return to “civility”?

Why the weird disconnect?

After the November 2010 liberal meltdown, the progressive community privately accepts a number of realities. 1) The American people believe that never-let-a-serious-crisis-go-to-waste massive deficit spending made a bottoming-out recession far worse, and they want a stop to the leftist agenda of Obamacare, takeovers, more borrowing, and larger government.

2) The right-wing response (Fox News, talk radio, the Internet, the Murdoch empire, etc.) to the old left-wing media monopolies of the eastern and western coastal daily newspapers, the three television networks, NPR, PBS, and the weekly news magazines is no longer a “response,” but is in many ways far more effective in influencing and channeling public opinion.

[…]

In other words, the calls for a general toning down of rhetoric translate far more into a toning down of both an effective media opposition and a rising political obstruction to the Obama agenda. “Can’t we all get along?” in essence means, “Can’t we all just keep quiet and keep going on with the big-government, agreed-on politics of the last fifty years?”

Will that work? No.

[…]

That Obama is a postracial mellifluent Chicago politician does not mean that he is not a Chicago politician. That he blasts the “fat cats,” the “stupidly” acting police, and the limb-lopping surgeons, or that his attorney general calls the American people “cowards,” is typical, not aberrant. For 2012, President Obama will have raised $1 billion in cash. He knows from 2008 (“cling to guns or religion,” “typical white person,” “gun to a knife fight”) that his own emotionalism and polarization both earn him cash and create the “them” against “us” (minorities, youth, gays, women) binaries that might draw attention away from an agenda that a majority simply does not want. Obama has always used polarizing politics, coupled with calls for bipartisanship, to great effect, and he surely — as we just saw again in October 2010 (“punish,” “backseat,” “enemies”) — cannot stop now.

Second, the country is center-right. A Watergate, a Perot candidacy, an insurgency in Iraq, or fear of a 1929-style meltdown can on occasion elect a Democratic president, usually one with a southern accent that suggests latent conservatism. In other words, crises, costly wars, and scandal are the necessary roads to power for contemporary liberalism. Hysterical speech in accentuating the climate of collapse pays dividends.

The Bush–Hitler/Brownshirt invective used by the likes of Robert Byrd, Al Gore, and John Glenn, or the Howard Dean “I hate Republicans and everything they stand for,” is rarely directly rejected by the liberal community since it really does pound away in insidious fashion in associating sensible conservative ideas with diabolical ogres who mouth them. Are we all to be in a sort of national Jimmy Carter mode, in which toothy smiles, a preacher’s voice, and biblical references sugarcoat incendiary talk (cf. the benevolent Carter’s description of Dick Cheney as a “militant,” the elder Bush as “effeminate,” Israel as an “apartheid” nation, George W. Bush as the “worst” president)?

Indeed, hours after President Obama’s calls for a new landscape of civility, Rep. Steven Cohen (D., Tenn.) was comparing Republican opponents of the health-care legislation to Nazis from the House floor, while Slate published a screed by Emily Bazelon on “Why I Loathe My Connecticut Senator,” with serial expressions of how she “loathed” and “despised” Sen. Joe Lieberman.

[…]

So I predict that 18 months from now the president himself will still be calling for a new civility in the manner of his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention — and will once again adopt the sorts of over-the-top metaphors, similes, allusions, and rough-stuff politics that got him elected senator in 2004 and president in 2008, and pushed his health-care legislation through in 2009. If anything, the language of division will be shriller even than in 2010, as the administration grasps that loaded language, coupled with calls for an end to rancor, must now do what a record of unpopular governance cannot.

Read it all here: Civility for thee

Tags: Jared Loughner, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Barack Obama, Hate Speech, Politics | 178 Comments »

Our idiot savants

by Mojambo ( 103 Comments › )
Filed under Climate, Science at January 6th, 2011 - 4:30 pm

“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
— George Orwell

Funny to contemplate that the people who screwed up Wall Street were all graduates from Ivy League (as well as the Wharton School of Business and Stanford University) MBA programs. The so called experts 25 years ago assured us that there would be an outbreak of AIDS in the heterosexual community (never happened) and that straight people would be dying terrible deaths by the hundreds of thousands. Now pseudo scientists (including a crank Earth Science teacher who is in exile from the BVoA ) are proclaiming that “billions will die” due to AGW.

The definition of “idiot savant” – a person who is mentally or intellectually challenged in general but who displays remarkable aptitude in some limited field (usually involving memory). Reminds me of several people at a blog we all love.

by Victor Davis Hanson

In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous “really wise guys” made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts to “prove” the most amazing “thinkery” that belied common sense.

We are living in a new age of sophism — but without a modern equivalent of Socrates to remind the public just how silly our highly credentialed and privileged new rhetoricians can often sound.

Take California, which is struggling with a near-record wet and snowy winter. Flooding spreads in the lowlands; snow piles up in the Sierras.

In February 2009, Nobel Laureate and Energy Secretary Steven Chu pontificated without evidence that California farms would dry up and blow away, inasmuch as 90 percent of the annual Sierra snowpack would disappear. Yet long-term studies of the central Sierra snowpack show average snow levels unchanged over the last 90 years. Many California farms are drying up — but from government’s, not nature’s, irrigation cutoffs.

England is freezing and snowy. But that’s odd, since global warming experts assured that the end of English snow was on the horizon. Australia is now flooding — despite predictions that its impending new droughts meant it could not sustain its present population. The New York Times just published an op-ed assuring the public that the current record cold and snow are proof of global warming. In theory, they could be, but one wonders: what, then, would record winter heat and drought prove?

In response to these unexpected symptoms of blizzards and deluges, climate physicians offer changing diagnoses. “Global change” has superseded “global warming.” After these radically cold winters, the next replacement appears to be “climate chaos.” Yet if next December is neither too hot nor too cold, expect to hear about the doldrum dangers of “climate calm.”

In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an addition $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly either returned to academia or Wall Street.

There is also a new generation of young, sophistic bloggers who offer their wisdom from the New York-Washington corridor. They are usually graduates of America’s elite colleges and navigate in an upscale urban landscape. One, the Washington Post’s 26-year-old Ezra Klein, recently scoffed to his readers that a bothersome U.S. Constitution was “100 years old” and had “no binding power on anything.”

One constant here is equating wisdom with a certificate of graduation from a prestigious school. If, in the fashion of the sophist Protagoras, one writes that record cold proves record heat, or that record borrowing and printing money will create jobs and sustained economic growth, or that a 223-year-old Constitution is 100 years old and largely irrelevant, then credibility can be claimed only in the title or the credentials — but not the logic — of the writer.

America is huge and diverse, but the world of our credentialed experts is quite small, warped and monotonous — circumscribed largely by the prestigious university and an office in the incestuous Washington-New York corridor. There are plenty of prizes, honors and degrees among our policy setters and experts, but very little experience in running a business in Oklahoma, raising a large family in Kansas, or working on an assembly line in Michigan, a military base in Texas, a boat in Alaska or a ranch in Idaho.

In classical sophistic fashion, rhetoric is never far from personal profit. Multimillionaire Al Gore convinced the governments of the Western world that they were facing a global-warming Armageddon, then hired out his services to address the hysteria that he helped create.

How many climate Cassandras have well-funded research positions predicated on grants and subsidies that depend on convincing the pubic and government of impending disasters that they then can be hired to monitor and address? Are there no green antitrust laws? In contrast, how many of our climate theorists run irrigated farms and energy-intensive businesses at the mercy of new regulations that emanate from distant theorizing?

[…]

Read the rest here: The New Sophists

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Tags: Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Climate, Science | 103 Comments »