A Disaster About to Unfold

The next six to nine months will bring much news from the arc of nations stretching from the Caucasus to the Baltic States.

War is brewing in the Caucasus. Russia is moving troops into Georgia's break-away province, still legally part of Georgia. These are called "peacekeepers", however they are warmakers. Azerbajian just anounced a 53% increase in defense spending. The only target of that will be Armenia.

Debt levels in Eastern Europe from Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic to Poland, Latvia, Lithuania are at critically high, societal shattering proportions. Far higher even than in the US and Britain (where they are catastrophically high) This debt is linked to banks in Greece, Italy and Switzerland that have driven investment in East Europe. I say "societal shattering" for a reason. Enormous unrest is about to explode in these regions. Outside "peacekeepers" might be needed.

We can now see why Russia suspended its adherence to the CFE Treaty which banned armored forces from operating in Western Russia. The headquarters of those divisions, as Putin already announced, are moving into Western Russia. The forces themselves will soon follow.

More soon, John.

The Frustation of Intellectual Life

One of the conundrums of having read quite a bit is that almost everything in my head, every idea, is unoriginal. I heard or read it somewhere else from some other person who probably got it from someone else as well. That is exactly why group-think and group psychology develop. It is easier to think about what others have thought and to think that way than it is to synthesize others' ideas into your own. This is why, for most, reading is so much more pleasant than writing. The opening of the gift is so much grander than figuring out what use you have for it.

I saw Daniel Pipes and William F. Buckley on CSPAN 3 the othwe night from a speech in 2001. Pipes said that every Social Scientist....historian or whatever, secretly or openly wishes to be a natural scientist. They wish to examine things coldly without morality, but social sciences must, in my opinion, incorporate morality.

John.

An Emperor You'd Want to Have a Beer With

Gibbon referring to the Roman Emperor Gallienus (r. 260-268)

"he was master of several curious but useless sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skillful gardener, an excellent cook, and a most contemptible prince."

Conservatism in Crisis

One debate among Conservatives who saw this economic crisis coming over the last 2 years(there were not many, but a few) or so has been whether the crisis would lead to, in general, more support for Conservative economic policies, whatever shambles they are left in after W Bush, or less support.
The answer appears to be more and more obvious that the slow train wreck of economic disaster that is unfolding is being blamed on "Bush's Conservative economic policies." Conservatives are going over the cliff because they have never fully detached themselves from Bush like they did from his father. After that detachment they won the Congress in a landslide in 1994. In this decade they made the opposite decision and hitched to an ineffectual, incompetent failure who was not even a Conservative anyway. Its quite inexplicable.

The horrible truth however, is that in general it is conservative economic policies, in the traditional sense, that are needed to get us out of the crisis, not Bush's policies. Purging debt through spending cuts, finding alternatives to the income tax and decentralizing banking are what is needed. This will not avoid the disaster, that is already happening. But they are the only way to perhaps avert a collapse of the entire economy.

I say that with the knowledge that the problems we are experiencing now will accelerate the demographic crisis that is approaching and the mix will collapse the economy. Therefore, if the current crisis is prolonged through bad policies, we could be facing an economic meltdown as the horrible problems of the present meet the calamitous problems of the near future.

Any way you look at it, Conservatism is in crisis, and for any thoughtful Liberals that is also a crisis because a healthy Conservative movement is needed to keep in check the radical Left.

John.

Hart Crane

Mine is a world foregone though not yet ended,-
An imagined garden grey with sundered boughs
And broken branches, wistful and unmended,
And mist that is more constant than all vows.

The Fallacy of Historical Determinism

We know that history moves in a certain direction, thus guiding humanity's actions down certain paths. We know that we live in the great age of democracy in which every nation, more or less, is being moved toward trade liberalization and individual liberty. We know that technology is one of the great driving forces toward this end.

We know all these things therefore they are false. The moment when we know that history is moving in a certain direction is when we lose the impetus to take direct, individual action to continue events moving in that direction. Therefore, history will begin to move in a contradictory direction to what we thought. There are always others in the world who disagree with us, who are pushing or pulling in the opposite direction. The moment that we believe history is moving in our direction we are lulled into inaction in the mistaken belief that action is no longer necessary to achieve the desired result. Humans will never choose to act if they believe they can gain the same result while remaining inactive. Those who disagree with us will then begin to move history in their direction. Ultimately, they too will become paralyzed by their own ideology and if we keep fighting events will turn in our favor again.

One who says he wants to change the world often forgets that the world might want to have a say in that. There are others in other parts of the world saying they want to change it and they are referring to us. Do we not want a say in the matter, in the question of whether and in what direction??

Historical forces are conceived and created by individuals. "Democracy", "Socialism", "Capitalism", all of these were sets of ideas that began in the minds of individuals. It is when these individuals begin to believe they have discovered the direction history is moving that they stop wanting to move it themselves and stagnation and decadence set in.

John.

Cuban government allows cell phone ownership

Does anyone find it ironic that a country that does not allow freedom of speech "grants' Cubans the right to own a cell phone?? Or is it just me?? Its probably just me.

It is telling about Americans when the most you hear out of us is the materialistic argument that Cubans cannot afford cell-phones so the "right" is meaningless. The cell-phones are meaningless without the freedom to say what one wants on them. Is it any surprise that we have forgotten that in this country given the arguments about the Patriot Act and the like??

We have forgotten that the root of our freedoms and our Constitution is not "Capitalism" but political liberty, not greed but virtue. Capitalism, some form of it, is often a consequence of political liberty, not the vice-versa.

I believe some of our economic problems are also caused by this moral and ethical lapse into economic hedonism.

John.