Quote of the Day

Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

Nevertheless he is wrong.

—G.K. Chesterton (hat tip: Sydney Carton, commenting at Ace of Spades. Also notice the YouTube video that got the whole discussion started.)

(Is everyone else getting as bored with this QotD thing as me?

Sheesh, you work a real job for a change, and your brain just shuts off. On the bright side, next year I go back to school for my PhD…)

Quote of the Day

The relative, diminishing hardships of everyday existence, together with more extensive academic instruction, has laid a foundation of knowledge for most people that is less tested by experience and affirmed more by internal feelings and passions. More people may be better educated these days, but they are also more insulated and more naive.

—Richard Reay, letter to the Wall Street Journal, published 6 August 2003.

Quote of the Day

Everyone prefers to believe rather than to judge. One never judges but always believes regarding the things which are vital. Error transmitted from hand to hand always turns us to and fro and throws us down headlong, and we perish through following examples taken from others. We shall be cured if we were but to secede from the crowd. As it is, however, the people, the defender of its own evil, stands firm against reason.

—Seneca, cited by Leo Strauss in his Thoughts on Machiavelli, pg. 126

(My apologies for not posting recently. This page was flagged as a possible spam-blog by Blogger, and I was prevented from posting for over a week until the issue was resolved. But, I'm back now…)

A Step Towards Decentralized Logistics

Longtime readers of this blog may remember that I am interested in the concept of a decentralized, flexible military that follows the model proposed by Arquilla and Ronfeldt in their work, Swarming and the Future of Conflict. Briefly put, they propose that the current hierarchical structure of the military be replaced with one where troops are organized in autonomous units of about 200 men, which would then coordinate their actions laterally with each other. In this way, they would gain flexibility and speed, compared to the present system in which information must be passed up a long hierarchy, and then orders are passed back down. Often this process can take days, during which time the information becomes stale. Col. Thomas Hammes reiterates the problems with the military's current structure in his book, The Sling and the Stone, and also advocates a more flexible, decentralized military.

There are several practical problems that must be solved before a decentralized national military is possible (completely aside from the furious opposition to such a system from the entrenched military bureaucracy). One of the largest problems is developing a system of logistics that can complement autonomous action by many small units.

The category of "logistics" encompasses several related but distinct problems. First is making the process of peacetime procurement decentralized. Second is ensuring replenishment and resupply to autonomous units during a deployment, especially during a combat situation. Third is managing the demands of autonomous units on scarce shared resources, such as close air support or satellite overwatch. (Not being a soldier, I cannot say whether there are additional problems within the broad logistical heading.)

I would like to propose a solution to the first problem, peacetime procurement. Under the present system, procurement is largely accomplished on the national level: the Pentagon requests funding for specific needs from Congress, which is sometimes granted, and then signs gigantic procurement contracts with various suppliers. The Pentagon then distributes the equipment internally to the troops who are slated to receive it. Troops have very little say in the equipment they are issued, and in many cases are actually forbidden from buying equipment on their own. The ongoing saga of Dragon Skin body armor is a case in point; confirmed to be better quality than the Army's Interceptor vests, it has nevertheless not yet been approved for military procurement. Soldiers have even been ordered not to buy it on their own.

The problems with the procurement process have been dramatized in the last week by Daniel Henniger's WSJ column on the deployment of the Snake Eater fingerprinting system. Soldiers, private contractors, a nonprofit, and a blogger cooperated outside of official channels to produce a device in a single month, that the military had failed to create in over three years.

Meanwhile, the centralized procurement process is incredibly opaque, and renowned for its wastefulness and episodes of corruption. In part this is due to its sheer size; even while audits routinely point out examples of waste or fraud, the system is simply too big to reform easily.

There is a way to dramatically improve the peacetime procurement process, and render it more transparent and flexible at the same time, by decentralizing it. The trick is to do so without losing the real economies of scale that can be achieved with large purchases.

My inspiration for this is the concept of a "group-buy," in which a seller and many buyers coordinate the purchase of a single type of good, allowing the seller to offer each buyer a lower price than he could offer on an individual basis. (There are many, many group-buys being organized over the internet at any given time; here is an academic paper on modeling the group-buy process.)

Assume the existence of battalion-sized autonomous units of the type discussed by Arquilla and Ronfeldt, although this is not strictly necessary. Rather than Congress allocating funds to the Pentagon, which would then purchase and distribute equipment, I propose that each battalion have its own allocation of funding, set according to the type of unit. (A tank battalion is more expensive to run than an infantry battalion, for example.) The unit could then spend the money on any purchases it felt were necessary, from any supplier, civilian or defense-related. Most equipment would still need to be standardized, but the timing of purchases could be according to the unit's needs.

Defense suppliers would offer group-buy windows in which units would subscribe; if fifty battalions were to purchase body armor at the same time, the unit cost would be less than if a single unit were to make a purchase. But participation would be on an as-needed basis, not as dictated by Pentagon bureaucrats.

The Pentagon would still have an independent budget, for example to conduct R&D. But if there is a development project out of favor with the brass, yet eagerly anticipated by military units, they could decide to fund the project with a portion of their logistical budgets. If an entire division of troops were to chip in for a development project, it could proceed even in the face of bureaucratic or Congressional skepticism.

This system could have many benefits. First, it is much easier to audit a single battalion and enforce accountability than it is for the entire Pentagon. This would reduce corruption. Second, unit would be unlikely to buy equipment that is shown to be substandard. For example, a distributed procurement system would have adopted the Dragon Skin vest by now instead of the Interceptor. Third, units could rapidly adjust to changing mission requirements and purchase the necessary gear.

Another benefit is that incentives could be built into the money allocations. A bonus could be paid out if the unit has a high percentage of soldiers with excellent marksmanship skills, or who have completed Ranger training, or who have college degrees, or who learn critical languages. Not only would this encourage the units to continually improve themselves, it would allocate more resources to those units who are demonstrably more valuable.

I have not yet considered how such a system could work in battle conditions, where free-flowing resupply is often critical. But this is a good first step to revamping the military procurement system.

Opportunities in Doing One Thing Well

The angst continues to build over the ballooning cost of medical care in the United States. Thanks to a toxic combination of perverse legal incentives, crippling legal restrictions, and inefficient use of medical resources, health care costs have been consistently growing 2% faster than inflation for decades. (It is noteworthy that both health care and education—the other sector where prices have been rising, not falling, as time goes by—are heavily influenced by government interventions.) Aside from the inherent problems caused by rising costs, the health care issue has generated calls for the government to expand its intervention yet again.

Before we embark down that dreary road, trodden by the soles of so many others whose present misery we are apparently so keen to share, it is worth noting circumstances where medical care has gotten much cheaper and has improved in quality.

In C. K. Prahalad's book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, he lays out steps necessary for companies to effectively build a market among those who earn less than $2 a day. One of these is that companies must find "quantum jumps in price performance," reducing prices for a product not by half but by 30-100 times! He cites several examples; one of these is an Indian medical services company called Aravind Eye Care.

Aravind Eye Care specializes in a single procedure: cataract operations with inter-ocular lens. This surgery typically costs $2500 to $3000 in the United States or Europe. But Aravind charges between $50 and $300 depending on complications—when it charges at all; 40% of its patients receive their surgeries free. Yet their average cost per patient is less than $25, allowing them to make a healthy profit.

How can they get the cost of a $3000 procedure down so low? To do it, the founder of Aravind, Dr. Venkataswamy, standardized every step of the process and strove for consistency and efficiency. Their hospital facilities are designed specifically for eye care, and located in central areas, including the main hospital in Madurai; patients are screened in their villages and then transported in via an efficient system of buses. Each doctor is supported by two teams of technicians who have been trained only to do eye care; in this way, a doctor can go through 50 surgeries per day. Because they are so carefully trained and because every aspect of the procedure is systematized, "Aravind boasts of an outcome rate that is among the best in the world."

Nothing about this system is fundamentally shocking—or it should not be, at any rate. The inspiration for it was McDonald's, which can take a group of low-skilled employees and turn out hamburgers and french fries of uniform quality for very little cost, simply because the process has been so deeply understood and optimized.

Hospitals, on the other hand, have traditionally tried to do everything. For good reason; in most of human history, people could hardly have had the luxury of specializing, not when there might be a single hospital within days of travel. Even when specialists arose, they were turned to when the traditional medical system came up short. Specialists in the United States are premium assets, and command premium prices because of it. The very idea that a specialist should be cheaper than a traditional hospital is a non-sequitor.

Yet now that travel is so easy and cheap, the reasons underpinning this system have largely vanished. Indeed, Aravind has an agreement with the British National Health Service: Britons needing eye surgery can fly to India, be put up in a hotel for a few days, go to Aravind, and fly back, all for much less money than it would take to have the surgery done domestically.

It seems to me that this sort of deep specialization should be possible for more procedures than eye surgeries. For example, one of the most common surgeries is performed on the knee, especially for those 85 and older. One imagines that this surgery will only become more common as the population ages. As it stands now, that surgery is very expensive; but what if someone were to analyze each step of the procedure, develop a streamlined process, and reduce the cost to, say, 10% of the current level? What if this procedure were carried out in a bare handful of facilities—perhaps five in the United States, placed so that you need travel only an hour by plane to get to them? And what if by having so few facilities, you could extract every efficiency and improvement possible to make the process easier, safer, and cheaper?

Now imagine if such a fundamental change in the status quo were achieved in nearly all of the most expensive procedures in medicine. Would we still have a looming problem with the cost of health care? I doubt it.

Can it be done? If they could do it in India, they can do it here. What is needed is a doctor or group of doctors with entrepreneurial drive and vision to take the first step. Perhaps Dr. Venkataswamy can give a seminar to get the process started.

Quote of the Day

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Quote of the Day

Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.

—Judge Janice Rodgers Brown, speaking at the University of Chicago on 20 April 2000.

The Failure of the Diplomatic Mentality

Revolutions rarely compromise; compromises are made only to further the strategic design. Negotiation, then, is undertaken for the dual purpose of gaining time to buttress a position (military, political, social, economic) and to wear down, frustrate and harass the opponent. Few, if any, essential concessions are to be expected from the revolutionary side, whose only aim is to create conditions that will preserve the unity of the strategic line and guarantee the development of a "victorious situation."

—Mao Tse-Tung Samuel Griffith, in his inroduction to Mao Tse-Tung's On Guerrilla Warfare, cited in Col. Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone.

European-style diplomacy (which is largely the model for American diplomacy) is premised on two sides coming to a mutually tolerable agreement, involving gains and concessions, in order to avoid a larger conflict. Such an agreement is then expected to constrain the behavor of both sides going forward. A necessary precondition for such a system is that both sides must be operating in good faith; each side believes that it has achieved the most beneficial likely outcome, and therefore has an interest in protecting the stability of the agreement.

What has been overlooked is that a diplomatic agreement only has value when there are significant incentives for all parties to keep it. In Europe, the incentives had become implicit and overwhelming (i.e., breaking agreements would lead to economic consequences in an interdependent system, and sometimes war). Therefore it became possible for diplomats to neglect actively thinking about the consequences of bad faith, and to begin to ascribe an intrinsic, quasi-mystical power to the diplomatic agreement itself. That an agreement is signed (goes the unexamined, subconscious premise) guarantees that it will be followed.

The naiveté of such a premise comes to the fore when we must deal with a class of people who treat negotiations not as a way to avoid conflict, but as another tool in that conflict. The long history of diplomacy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian war is an example of excellence: the Palestine Liberation Organization ostensibly agreed to end warfare against Israel and Jews around the world, but in practice this amounted to little more than mouthing empty platitudes of peace and toleration at black-tie functions. In exchange for this wrenching concession, the new Palestinian Authority was given administrative control over several million people, billions of dollars in international aid, large stores of weapons along with the training to use them—and most important of all, international legitimacy that served as a powerful shield against Israeli action. The PLO proceeded to use these gifts to mount a second Intifada, as well as turning a blind eye to the efforts of other terrorist groups such as Hamas and Jihad Islami.

The same class of behavior is on display with Iran. Iran's stated goal is the development of nuclear capability. In non-diplomatic settings, the Iranian government has openly alluded to its aim of a nuclear bomb. In pursuit of this goal, Iran has broken nearly a dozen separate agreements that the European powers painstakingly negotiated over a period of several years. These agreements have been very useful to Iran, even as they were being flouted: they often came with financial inducements, they served to keep the Western powers divided and bickering among themselves over the proper course to take—and most importantly, they bought time, lots of time.

To the serious observer whose brains have not been addled by the diplomatic fantasies so adored by most Western governments, it becomes obvious early on when an oppposing party is negotiating in bad faith. The most important early warning is when the aggressive party achieves tangible gains through negotiation, in exchange for concessions that are entirely symbolic or else of minimal importance. This pattern has been confirmed in the farcical negotiations between Israel and the PLO, between Columbia and FARC, between Pakistan and the Taliban forces of Waziristan, and (at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law) the Munich 1938 agreement with Hitler.

So then why do the assorted diplomats of the world continue to make the same errors over and over again? I have argued before that a major flaw in the structure of our government is that diplomats have a single responsibility (i.e. diplomacy) and the military has a single responsibility (i.e. warfighting) that is not called upon until the diplomats throw in the towel. We need to take an integrated view towards interactions with other governments, so that out actions are not divided into discrete categories but fall along the same continuum.

I am not necessarily advocating open war with Iran. There are easier ways to accomplish our goals. For one thing, there are indications that the Mossad has begun assassinating key Iranian scientists in their nuclear program. I find these reports entirely believable, given that Israel assassinated several ex-Nazi scientists working on Egypt's ballistic missile program in the early 1960's. And it is far more difficult to replace a scientist than it is to replace physical infrastructure. Given that, and given the recent isolation of Iran by America and our allies, it is entirely possible that the Khomeinist government of Iran could fall before they achieve nuclear capability. (There is still the issue of their continuing support for terror operations in Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.)

But the larger point is that we need to look at our diplomatic activities with a jaundiced eye. Why on Earth should we engage in negotiations with a power operating in bad faith, if the only party that will benefit is our adversary?

*******************

UPDATE 4:31 PM: With impeccable timing, Wretchard has posted a news item from the Phillipines about a delegation of negotiators sent to talk to the Moro National Liberation Front, a supposed "peace partner," who were promptly taken hostage by a supposed "breakaway faction." Perhaps in the same sense that Black September was a "breakaway faction" of Fatah, i.e. an organizational fiction meant to provide plausible deniability.

Quote of the Day

The rich, the owners of the already operating plants, have no particular class interest in the maintenance of free competition. They are opposed to confiscation and expropriation of their fortunes, but their vested interests are rather in favor of measures preventing newcomers from challenging their position. Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and whose ingenuity will make the life of coming generations more agreeable. They want the way left open to further economic improvements. They are the spokesmen of material progress.

—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pg. 83 (Fox & Wilkes paperback edition)

The Need for Skepticism in the Cabinet

One of the things I've been up to in my long absence from blogging has been studying up on game theory and issues of persuasion and decisionmaking, for one of my side projects. One of the tidbits I gleaned from this study is that academics agree that it is, indeed, very hard to go against a group consensus. You must fight against social penalties for perceived disloyalty, as well as the internalized doubt in your own beliefs: perhaps all these other people know something you don't? Otherwise, why would they hold a view that you see as obviously wrong?

Interestingly, when a dissenter has even a single ally, no matter how many are arrayed against him, it becomes much easier to sustain his position. The second factor noted above, that the lone dissenter tends to question his own conclusions, is mitigated by the presence of an ally who shares those conclusions. And the ally provides valuable social feedback that helps make up for the more general disapproval.

These points were going through my mind as I read Angelo M. Codevilla's review of Bob Woodward's latest book, State of Denial, in the most recent issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Woodward describes the petty politicking in the Bush Cabinet between competing centers of power, which the President was unwilling or unable to quash. Because (says Woodward) the President fostered an atmosphere in which good news was the order of the day, and in which bad news would spoil the mood, officials would often withhold bad news and try to solve the problems on their own, or else pass them off as someone else's responsibility. Most important for Cabinet officials in an environment without strong central management was to consolidate their own authority at the expense of others. Secretary Rumsfeld (says Woodward) was famous for this, fighting to preserve the autonomy of the Defense Department and avoiding collaboration with the State Department, even as observers and front-line soldiers decried the absence of State personnel.

I do not know whether Woodward's account is accurate. It would certainly explain the seemingly disjointed conduct of a government whose arms frequently work at cross-purposes in this war. And the larger phenomena of groupthink coloring decisionmaking, officials withholding crucial data from decisionmakers for fear of a bad reception, and feuding bureaucrats impeding the prosecution of policy are certainly not new in American government. Indeed, the classic case of groupthink has for a long time been the deliberations leading up to the Bay of Pigs operation under JFK.

I do not believe any president actually wants to foster such an environment in his cabinet. But as it stands, it is hard not to. Each member of the Cabinet has a tremendous amount of power over his department; no president would willingly entrust that power to someone with which he disagrees. This will lead to a certain intellectual homogeneity. Meanwhile, each member of the Cabinet is individually constrained by the imperatives of the department he represents. His information is filtered through that apparatus, and his policies are often identified with the policies of the entrenched establishment within that department. This will lead to cabinet members defending their own fiefdoms even against the greater national interest.

These two institutional factors together make a toxic brew.

Eliot Cohen, in his excellent book Supreme Command, concludes that perhaps the most crucial task of a good leader is to challenge the orthodoxies of his underlings and force people to respond more rapidly to the real world. (Ironically, Cohen's book achieved some prominence because it was on President Bush's reading list; it seems the President was not able to sufficiently profit from it.) This sort of challenge and interrogation is very difficult to do when a president must deal with groupthink in his cabinet, restricted information, and bureacratic backstabbing. What can be done?

There is a useful position in the parliamentary governments of some foreign nations (Israel is one such), called the Minister Without Portfolio. This minister has equal rank with other ministers who actually run branches of the government, yet has no executive authority (or responsibility) himself. This releases him from many institutional pressures, and allows him to speak more or less freely. Meanwhile, since the minister has no actual authority except as an official gadfly, prime ministers have more latitude in choosing ministers that they might not see eye-to-eye with.

The relative performance of parliamentary democracies is not the issue here; they are subject to their own pathologies. But the concept of a cabinet-level appointee without executive authority is ripe with possibility. It would help counteract the abovementioned corrosive factors of the Cabinet dynamic, allowing for a more healthy level of discourse and cooperation--especially if there were two Secretaries Without Portfolio, so that they could support each other if necessary. It should also be their responsibility and privilege to keep an eye on the inner workings of the various departments, to make sure that their internal politics are not allowed to damage American policy without notice.

Whatever the remedy, it is clear that the present structure of our decisionmaking bodies is badly flawed. They are frozen in a 1950's model of corporate structure, full of hierarchies and one-directional information flows, when the rest of America has moved on to more fluid, collaborative structures. But that is a larger discussion. We must fix one problem at a time, and fixing the Cabinet isn't a bad place to start.

Quote of the Day

It always turns out that the party that is not your ally calls for your neutrality, while your ally asks that you declare yourself with action. In order to avoid immediate peril, an irresolute prince most often embraces neutrality and most often comes to grief…. And let no state suppose that it can choose sides with complete safety. Indeed, it had better recognize that it will always have to choose between risks, for that is the order of things. We never flee one peril without falling into another. Prudence lies in knowing how to distinguish between degrees of danger and choosing the least danger as the best.

—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince Ch. 21 (trans. Daniel Donno)

Get It in Writing

Looking over the details of the New School case as reported in this news article, one point in particular stands out:

According to New School Director Sue Miller-Hurst, she went to the county initially. “When we looked at this site in 2004, we sent a school architect to the county for a conditional use permit and he was told we did not need one because we were a public school. When we wanted to change a classroom, the owner’s contractor went to the county for a building permit and was again told, ‘You are a state school; we have no jurisdiction to issue you a permit.’ When I went to Supervisor Horn regarding a piece of land that had been pre-approved by the Division of State Architects for a school site, he said, ‘You are a public school. Stop asking and go forward.’ I asked him to put it in a letter and he said, ‘That would be asking. You are a public school and you do not have to ask.’ Then they show up in force the second day of school with no notice or warning and shut our kids out of their classroom [for alleged lack of permits]. At some point we have a reliance issue. We should be able to rely on the answers we are given from the county."

Governments, and large organizations generally, run on documentation. It is their lifeblood. When a government official gives an assurance regarding the application (or lack of same) of government regulations that he is unwilling to put into writing, the wise man will immediately become suspicious.

This case has all the elements in it that have collectively made for tyrannical government in the modern sense: the capricious application of inexplicable regulations, the diffusion of responsibility across a faceless bureaucracy, the decision that the parties involved are guilty until proven innocent (after spending a great deal of their own money), the total lack of regard for the real-world consequences of regulatory mandates. Plus, it surely cannot be an accident that the target in this case is a charter school, i.e. a novel institution that is free from much of the government's raft of regulations.

How did it happen that the power to make law is most in evidence not in the various legislatures, but rather in the faceless regulatory bodies? We have no easy recourse; we have no way to punish those who overreach. The regulators have no incentive to regulate well, only to regulate heavily; they are America's greatest bastion of corruption and graft, simply because of their untrammeled power and protection from consequences. (Not to accuse the principles in this case of corruption; there has so far been no evidence of same. But the point still stands.)

I will give the final word here to the recently-deceased champion for freedom, Dr. Milton Friedman:

Given our monstrous, overgrown government structure, any three letters chosen at random would probably designate an agency or part of a department that could be profitably abolished.

Quote of the Day

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

—George Washington

A Democratic Congress

[Apologies for not posting much lately. Since Nov. 1, I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month, which has utterly monopolized my capacity for stringing sentences together. However, I would be remiss if I did not say something about the most recent election.]

Well, the Democrats have control. Let's see what they do with it.

That was my overriding reaction to the election results, by early Wednesday. I am not sure yet whether I should consider the results to be a good or bad thing. I have said many times that it is harmful for the country to have one political party that is corrupt and incompetent, and another that is corrupt and insane. Well, now that the Democrats are faced with the responsibility for setting policy again, it is my profound hope that they give up their insanities and actually do a decent job of it.

One worry is that the committee appointments do not look promising. In particular, if Rep. Jane Harmon is passed over for the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee for being insufficiently partisan, in favor of Alcee Hastings (a former judge impeached for accepting bribes), it cannot say good things for the state of Democratic governance. Nor will it say much about the Democratic commitment to taming the "culture of corruption" that they so lamented, especially if Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson remains in office even after he was found accepting bribes.

I do not expect to enjoy the Democratic policy preferences during the next two years on the domestic front. But I can accept that, if they finally get serious about the wider conflict with Islamist tyranny in its many hostile forms. Lieberman's victory over Lamont may cool the ardor of the leadership to vacate the field of battle; but it is troubling that many news reports have Democratic leaders taking counsel with George McGovern of all people.

I only hope that we do not abandon the Iraqis to anarchy and tyranny, like we did the South Vietnamese. Recall that the SVA had already repelled a full conventional invasion by the North, with the help of American air cover and resupply only. But then the Democratic Congress cut all funding for the South; before long, the South fell, and Cambodia after it. That cannot happen again. Before, the blood of millions flowed thanks to our war-weariness; if we make the same mistake now, who can say how many innocents will die? Far more than the number of soldiers who might die to prevent such a fate, in any event.

The Democrats have two years to show what they can be trusted to do with power. I hope, for all of our sakes, that they treat that power with the care and seriousness that the times demand. The danger did not begin with Iraq; it will not end with Iraq. I fear that the wider struggle will continue for a generation at least, and we cannot dare to mix policy with fantasy.

The Democrats have control. Let's see what they do with it.

An Attack on Charter Schools

[Note: I originally had a post up dealing with an attempt by a government bureaucrat to make trouble for a charter school. People involved in the case have asked me to pull the post for the time being; I have archived the original and will hopefully add more details later.]

[UPDATE 11/18: It's later. The original post follows; here is a link to a news article covering the case.]

On Friday, I received an email from a relative which was so disturbing that I ask for, and received, permission to reprint most of it here:

The New School is being targeted like no other charter school in the state's history, according to the school's attorneys. These attorneys have represented at least 2/3 of the charter schools in CA, so they have a good idea of the level of harassment we are getting.

I have lots of details, but suffice it to say, that there is a man in the DPLU (Dept of Planning & Land Use) in San Diego County that absolutely refuses to let the school "be" anywhere. We're trying to find a new location, and he has shut down all directions starting with "our current location is suddenly not compliant with zoning" to "being treated like a private school for purposes of finding a new location." The law is on our side in every area. We are compliant with the zoning, and we are a public school, so we are supposed to be able to pick any site we want and move there. When presented with all of the law behind us, his response is, "I don't care." We apparently need his permission to move forward, but for some reason, he won't let us...maybe, simply, because he can! He's trying to drain us of our funds by requiring all sorts of legal briefs, etc. We think that this is his plan to end the school...to drain our money.

The parents met last night and learned all of these wonderful things. We are trying to form some sort of political action to fix this. We all want to fight. This school has outstanding standardized test scores. The director thinks that this idiot, Jeff Murphy, might be bluffing because if we took him to court, he'd surely lose because the law is on our side…. We will be going to the press soon, getting on some talk radio shows, and trying to be picked up by "big" newspapers, etc.

But we have limited time here—our director was given a Compromise by the DPLU that is supposed to be signed by Monday if we are going to sign it at all. It allows us to stay where we are until the end of the year as long as we then dissolve. She (director) isn't going to sign it, and we are expecting to be locked out of the facility on Tuesday. If that happens, we will file an injunction that will at least let us exist until it's all sorted out. As a charter school, we don't have to meet there, and have resolved to be on permanent field trips until it's settled. We'd rather not have to do that, of course.

The official in question is subordinate to Supervisor Bill Horn, who has acknowledged that Murphy has exceeded his legal authority, but refuses to stop him.

There are at least three issues here. First, obviously, is that a government official is waging a vendetta against a legal charter school, without any justification or legal standing. I would like to ask my readers to help spread the word about this gross abuse of power, and help fight back. Bill Horn needs to hear from people, and the DPLU needs to be swamped with calls and emails. This is about more than a single school; the charter school in question is one of the most successful schools in the state of California, in a relatively affluent area—i.e. full of parents who can be expected to seek out educational opportunities beyond the traditional public school. This makes the New School dangerous to the established educational bureaucracy. If government officials can shut it down without any opposition, the entire school choice movement could be set back years.

Second is the broader issue: here we have a government bureaucrat who is acting in ways which are universally acknowledged to be illegal; yet he can still wield the power of government machinery in order to coerce his victims to submit. And the burden is on his victims to prove that what he is doing is illegal! (On their own nickel, of course.) I find it disturbing that none of Murphy's subordinates (the ones who actually will carry out his dictat) are able to judge the legality of his behavior, and refuse to take part in it. I find it even more disturbing that Murphy's boss, Supervisor Horn, can admit that his subordinate is acting illegally, yet still refuse to curb him without consequence.

If this were the military, Murphy and Horn would both be facing courts-martial (assuming, of course, that Murphy's actions are indeed illegal); consider that the officers in charge of Abu Ghraib were punished for the infractions of soldiers many steps below them in the chain of command. The larger point is that you have an obligation to control the behavior of your subordinates. Horn seems to be abrogating that obligation.

Third, this episode displays the ease with which zoning regulations can be exploited for malicious ends by government officials. There is a proposition on the California ballot that could mitigate this problem, Prop. 90; it would allow property-owners who are penalized by changes in zoning, building codes, etc. to sue for damages. Please vote for this proposition; it is without a doubt the most important piece of legislation on the ballot.

Atheism's Best Defense of Rights

Over at Smallest Minority, Kevin Baker has posted a monumental effort at defining a "right," and explicating why it and the United States are so important, from the atheist perspective. (Kevin was kind enough to quote from my earlier piece, The Enervated Man of the West, as part of his presentation.) Ultimately he must fall back on Ayn Rand's "one fundamental right," the right to your own life, from which all other fundamental rights flow.

Yet, strictly speaking, this is not a "right." Nothing has granted your life protected status. By speaking of a "right to your own life," Rand, and Kevin in his piece, simply acknowledge that if you do not defend your own life absolutely, you will inevitably be destroyed. It is a philosophical reflection of reality:

The "state of nature" is the ultimate objective reality. In it, people will do whatever is necessary to survive, or they don't survive. In point of fact, throughout history - even today - people have not only defended their lives, liberty and property, they have taken life, liberty, and property from others not of their society. And they have done so secure in the knowledge that their philosophy tells them that it's the right thing to do.

Kevin argues that such an outlook clashes with the basic principle underlying Western civilization, that of God-given rights. And though a devout atheist himself, he concludes that the advance of atheism is to blame for the crumbling of our cultural strength:

It is my contention that the loss of faith in Western civilization is the direct result of two things: the secularization of Western civilization, and a corresponding realization that there are no absolute, positive, unquestionable, fundamental, ultimate rights. Or, more specifically, the cognitive dissonance resulting from the refusal to accept this as objective fact.

Western civilization is based on the concept of God-given individual rights, but reality refutes their existence. War cannot exist if such a philosophy is true, yet war exists. People die. Their liberty is stripped from them. Their property is stolen or destroyed. No one is punished for the violation of these rights. If a society abandons religion (as much of Western civilization has done) then we cannot count on God to punish the violators, and they get away with their crimes against us, (See: Josef Mengele, Slobodan Milosevic, and most probably Saddam Hussein) yet we've been breastfed on the idea that our rights are absolute, positive, unquestionable, fundamental, and ultimate - not to mention, self-evident.

This is the danger of atheism. Even Ayn Rand's "one fundamental right" when expressed in a social setting is merely a collective decision of enlightened self-interest. There is nothing about human life, in the abstract, that is worth defending when its destruction does not affect you.

This is why I have tended to avoid talking about "rights." Instead, I talk about the "sanctity of life," which has nothing to do with whether a murderer is punished for his crime or not. Nor does it have to do with human reason. Rather, it is an inherent state of existence, springing forth from our status as Divine creations. Only this axiom—that we are created, and given intrinsic significance, by God—can serve as a philosophical basis for defending life in the abstract. Kevin acknowledges this, which is why he believes that an intrinsic right to life does not truly exist.

Kevin believes that the need to wage war directly contradicts the idea of a "God-given right to life." He further believes that this contradiction must ultimately lead to a fatal cognitive dissonance that will bring down cultures based on such an idea. In saying this, Kevin does not consider how a worldview built on sanctity differs from one built on natural rights.

Kevin states: We have the right to kill others because our own lives are of value. Yet taken to its extreme, this formulation simply means that you can ultimately do whatever you need to to defend your own life, including killing the innocent. (This point is made explicitly above.) Meanwhile, in Judaism you are allowed to set aside nearly all parts of the law to save life. But there are clearly defined circumstances in which you are categorically ordered to lay down your life. You must allow yourself to die rather than commit idolatry, a capital sexual transgression such as adultery, or murder. These acts are considered so profane that you may never, under any circumstances, defile yourself with them.

However, you can, and sometimes must, kill someone who seeks to commit murder himself.

What is the difference? I believe that the act of profanity in which the would-be murderer has immersed himself nullifies his sanctity, for that instant.

More to the point, there is no contradiction between the sanctity of life and killing another to defend that sanctity. Admittedly, I have not studied enough to say whether this is the rationale used by Jewish law; but it shows, I think, that while a "rights"-based society might be built on a contradiction, as Kevin suggests, this does not mean that belief in God cannot generate a consistent worldview that allows war in defense of life.

Which brings us to the upshot. Without belief in God, you are left with self-interest, in its crude or enlightened forms. With belief in God, you can have the basis for a true defense of life as a principle.

Perhaps Kevin might be interested in a modified form of Pascal's wager. The stakes here are not eternal damnation, whatever that means; they are the philosophical integrity of our society, here on Earth.

There's Reality, and There's Political Reality

Last week I attended an industry conference in Atlanta, at which the headline speaker was former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan was interviewed on the front stage by a CNN finance anchor, Ali Someone-or-Other (not being in the habit of watching CNN, I did not know him at all). The contrast throughout was striking: while the interviewer kept digging for the incendiary soundbite, Mr. Greenspan consistently replied with deep, reasoned analysis that displayed a level of historical perspective too often lacking today. For example, when asked a question about the housing boom and emerging slump, Mr. Greenspan began his answer by outlining the economic effects of the fall of the Soviet Union. And as he made clear in his answer, one cannot try to understand the current interest-rate environment without going back at least that far.

Ali asked if oil speculation posed a threat to the economy. Greenspan replied that the speculators were doing a great service, by building up large inventories of crude oil that would otherwise not have been available to mitigate shortages. Ali asked if hedge funds were dangerous and needed to be tightly regulated. Greenspan instead spoke highly of hedge funds, calling them "the pollinating bees of Wall Street" and crediting them with turning inefficient economic niches into efficient commodities. And on and on it went.

Noteworthy was the exchange on Social Security. When asked about the problem with Social Security, Mr. Greenspan replied that there was no real problem with Social Security: we know how much money there is, we know how many people there will be, and we know how much the shortfall is. He said, "I'm a Republican, but I could sit down in a room with Bob Rubin [i.e. Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary under President Clinton] and we could solve the problem in fifteen minutes. And the first ten minutes would be spent reminiscing over old times."

The problem was not one of numbers, he said, but of the lack of political will. (Neither party really wants to ask Americans to tighten their belts, which is what the situation demands: either more taxes, smaller payouts, or a radical restructuring that would cause great trauma in some form or another.) The real problem was not with Social Security, but with Medicare: "We have made promises we don't know if we can keep." Not only because of the ballooning expense of medical care—we don't know if there will be enough hospitals, doctors, or nurses to provide the necessary services. And the government is only halfheartedly trying to figure out exactly what it has promised, even as it piles on more promises on top of the ones already made.

The most serious problem Mr. Greenspan pointed out was the catastrophic failure of our schools. He noted that at 4th grade, our students score near the top of the world in academic achievement; but by the time they reach high school, American students rank near the bottom of developed nations. This is the cause of our shortage of doctors and scientists; it is also the cause of the stagnation of low-skill wages, as students who by rights should have been prepared for technical careers must settle for low-skilled work instead, glutting the labor market.

Yet very little is done to actually improve our schools. Teachers' unions fight tooth and nail against the expansion of charter schools, or any substantive reform of the school bureaucracy, and instead loudly moan for more money. This despite the worst-performing school district, in Washington D.C., also being the most lavishly funded. The problem is not one of money; it is of institutions. And Democratic politicians especially are too deeply indebted to the teachers' unions to dare cross them.

(One notable exception is the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa. I'm not sure if I agree with a city takeover of the school district in the abstract, but it will surely do a great deal of good in the concrete. And I particularly enjoyed the panicked howling from the teachers' unions.)

Something is very wrong with our politics when the most damaging and obvious problems are never addressed, while relatively minor problems are built up into bogeymen. A part of this is from the "gotcha" mindset typified by the CNN interviewer, who was more interested in creating controversy than in reasoned analysis. (To be fair to him, he was quite a skilled interviewer. But still a narcissistic lightweight.) Our politics is less about improving the country than it is about scoring points off of the other guy. Witness the hyperventilating over Rep. Foley's famous emails, a subject which (while sordid and reflecting very poorly on his character) has nothing at all to do with government policy.

Yesterday on a local radio program, Larry Mantle's "Airtalk," Kevin O'Leary proposed a new political institution to help remedy this malady. Borrowing from the Athenian system of democratic assemblies, O'Leary proposed that each Congressional district should select by lottery 100 citizens, who would participate in a citizens' assembly for two years if they accept the appointment. There would thus be 43,500 such average-joe assemblymen, who would debate the issues of the day away from the backbiting of Washington. Read his website for a summary; I have a few issues with the idea, which I brought up in a phone call to the show, but it has a great deal of potential to get the government focused on doing its job again. (You can listen to the segment, as of right now, by going here, scrolling down to Tuesday, October 24th, and clicking on the "Saving Democracy" audio.)

At any rate, we as citizens need to muster the will to break out of the petty morasses of the moment and consider the difficult questions that matter most. The laws of economics cannot be ignored by the political class forever.

************

On another note, Michael Barone writes about a private interview he and seven other columnists had with President Bush earlier today. The hour-long audio of the interview is posted, and makes for fascinating listening. The President began his remarks sounding stilted and uncomfortable, but loosened up considerably as the interview wore on. If you have any interest at all in the thoughts of the most powerful man on Earth, take a listen. This is not the fabled Texas cowboy by any means. (Much as he would like to be sometimes; listen especially to his comments about Syria!)

Redeeming Our Politics

Excerpts from a post about politics by Roger L. Simon and from a few commenters:

It's blood sport performed by truly uninteresting performers—basketball without Kobe, Shaq or Jordan. People like Reid, Hastert, Pelosi are complete mediocrities who should be at much lower levels in our society. Something is fundamentally wrong on both sides of the aisle if they are the upper leadership of our Congress…

[Carl Spackler:] Life gets more complex every year. But not by accident. In my case of building private homes, I can remember when a permit was a twenty minute exercise. Now, six months to a year is normal. Same in manufacturing or even in running a middle school. So, more intellectual power is sucked up in doing the same thing. Only it seems as if the cost continues to increase and quality declines.

And who do you think gets paid the most? Take wood frame house building. It’s really very simple. Is it the framer working in the summer sun, up high on the rafters or in the winter winds and snow lifting walls up? Nope. The plumber, the electrician or the mason with the skin on his hands crevassed and like sand paper? All of whom work without sick days, paid vacations, pensions? Nope. The highest paid are the paper shufflers. The lawyers, the inspectors, the ‘environmental consultants’. So why would people do real, literally constructive work?

[ahem:] Everyone's missing the part played by yellow journalism. Many honorable people are dissuaded from participating in government because they don't want to be combed over by the idiot media.

How dearly would I love for a politician to turn around and ask Diane Sawyer about her sex life for a change. If the media dimwits had to answer the insulting questions they ask daily, they might back off…

[geekWithA.45:] If you remember reading documents and other root materials from the time of the Founding, such as the Federalist papers, you'll note that on many, many occassions they talked about how the system would bring forth the best and brightest minds, men of sterling character and integrity.

You could say that this is one of the Republic's dependencies.

You'll also note that they make repeated references to the dependency on an educated, informed electorate.

It's pretty hard to argue that these dependencies are being met.

God help the Republic.

At present, winning election to public office requires an incredible assortment of skills. One must curry favor with the party machine; one must build (or at least fund) a powerful get-out-the-vote organization. One must be reasonably photogenic; one must know the right people. One must know how to stroke the egos of news reporters to ensure favorable coverage. One must carefully balance the interests of the various segments of your electorate, to ensure that all-important 51% "Yes." And one must either have a spotless record, or else pay off the right people to ensure their silence.

Most of all, one must have a lot of money, or else one or several wealthy backers. (Since McCain-Feingold, the wealthy actually have more influence on politics than before, by design. It is the middle class and the upper-middle class who were effectively shut out of politics by that ill-made law.) You could fund a campaign with thousands of small donations, of course; but to win national office, you need a war chest of millions, sometimes tens of millions. Try getting that from your friends and family.

What you do not need is any skill in statecraft, law, or economics. True, you must be expert in the rules and procedures, the minutia of getting things done, and you have to perform well enough that your constituents are not actively disgusted with you; but the simplest way to do that is to avoid taking strong positions on anything. When power is apportioned through an elaborate popularity contest, there is no reason to suppose that your elected officials will be true statesmen.

[Section9:] Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

So what can we do? How can we spectators to this glorified mud wrestling match rescue our government from its own mediocrity?

One can imagine all sorts of necessary or desirable changes in electoral procedure; but they will have limited effect so long as we continue to act as though our leaders must come from an electoral caste, a self-styled aristocracy. It galls me every time I see a national politician run unopposed, simply because nobody—nobody!—in that district wants the hardship of running. It galls me when practically everyone thinks of voting as a choice between two evils, and then does nothing to help remedy that detestible state.

"How many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but you have to get him to show up."

Our government will continue slogging its way through mediocrity, unless talented people from all walks of life run for office. Not because they desire power, not because they want to run their fellow citizens' lives, but precisely because they want neither. Those with a keen understanding of government's operation, history, or human nature should see it a civic duty to interrupt their real lives for a time, and dedicate their service to the good of the nation. A burden, even. Yet one that must be carried, unless we want to let our laws be written by the Hasterts and the Pelosis of the world.

Almost all of them will lose. Running will represent a huge investment of time, money, and emotional strain that candidates will never get back. But their mere presence in the ring will change the dynamic of our politics, just a bit—will force our elected officials to talk about ideas as often as about their skill at securing pork, about the real world as often as the high-school-lunchroom politicking of Washington.

And a few of these talented statesmen might win.

Update

North Korea's been conducting purported nuclear tests and threatening war, the budget deficit has shrunk to 1.9% of GDP (well below the 40-year average of 2.3%), Jimmy Carter has opened his fetid mouth in public again, the price of oil has dropped like a rock, and Pope Benedict continues to state uncomfortable truths about modern Islamism.

So why haven't I been posting?

There are several reasons for my inactivity; a chief one is that I've been pushing to finish the revision of my undergrad thesis, on which I have now worked off and on for nearly two years. The previous draft was a complete mess, as was obvious when I picked it up again after a few months. The draft that is presently taking shape (my last, God-willing) is much stronger, and also incorporates more literature from the field.

I should have it finished in short order, at which point I plan to upload it to the Net. Until then, I commend you to the blogs on my sidebar.

Quote of the Day

Officials of the [Iranian] regime have admitted that most Iranian clerics have always taken a wary view of Khomeinism. It is important to realize that the religious references which Khomeini used to justify his rule were literally the same as those invoked a century earlier by an eminent ayatollah who was arguing for the legitimacy of parliamentarianism and popular sovereignty on Islamic grounds.

—Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, Terror, Islam, and Democracy, published in the Journal of Democracy, Spring 2002