Modesty: A Forgotten Virtue?

Having started to read Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, I became impressed with Washington’s modesty.  On two occasions, he was appointed to a position of supreme command.  Both before Virginia’s House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he told these bodies that he was unequal to the task.  For me, what was even more surprising was that Flexner commented that this response was not calculated to increase the Continental Congress’s confidence in Washington.

When I read this very modern response to Washington’s humility, the degree to which the virtue of modesty must be defunct struck me.  We are so spineless these days!  We desire so many reassurances!  Why should Washington exude confidence to the Continental Congress?  The Revolution is a desperate enterprise!  It would rather have smacked of insanity for Washington to declare that the Red Coats would be whipped in short order!

The Battle of Long Island was a crushing defeat for the Continentals early in the Revolution.

Yet, today, we care so much for the appearance of things.  We choose people who make us feel most comfortable rather than the people who would do the job best.  If George Washington were up against Obama for election today, he would lose.  We would say, “He seems kind of cold and aloof.  He doesn’t outright and say that he’s the best man.  He doesn’t make me feel comfortable.  Look at Obama!  He has a plan!  He’s well spoken!  Hope and change, man!”  Yet, if Obama’s administration is renown for anything in history, it will be infamy.

Our society has become more pagan.  We look at David and Goliath and expect the giant to win.  We root for the superman–the man who looks superior–instead of the underdog.  The man of bluster and soothing words is superior to the man whose words and deeds are one.  Do we not know that this is why Athens fell?  Because people preferred to listen to Aeschines tell Athens that Philip of Macedon held no designs of imperialism instead of Demosthenes’ enumeration of the evidence for Philip’s duplicity and ambition for empire.  I have recently read a biography of R. E. Lee which praises its subject thus: “Lee was not word; Lee was deed.”  The man of deeds does not need to adorn himself with words: his actions speak for the man.  In short, the man of deeds wraps himself in modesty and silence.  The man without deeds needs to ostentate himself.

North Korea: all men must now wear Kim Jong Un’s hairstyle?

It’s amazing what dictators will make their subjects do!

Public Secrets

Bah! You call that a “haircut?”

When you’re the boy god-king of the world’s largest prison camp masquerading as a nation, you can get away with weird, petty stuff like this:

If you are a man in North Korea, we sincerely hope you have a round face. It’s the shape that will work with your new haircut.

That new haircut is reportedly called the “Dear Leader Kim Jong Un,” modeled after—you guessed it—North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s impenetrable block of black hair atop his chubby cheeks. The style reportedly became a state-mandated guideline about two weeks ago, though experts familiar with the country have said there’s no evidence a new hairstyle rule has gone into effect.

According to the article, this isn’t something new for North Korea: Kim’s father, the late, demented Kim Jong Il, launched a state campaign against long hair on the grounds that it sucked…

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Future Soon Present

I recently watched the movie, Man of Steel, which is a reproduction of the Superman origin story. It was well done, it was Superman both in his prime as well as an explanation of his birth and home world.  There is a decent development of Clark on Earth as well, which is touching and important.

Clark’s development on Earth is punctuated by events that show his overarching desire to do good. And while he is sometimes scared, his earth father’s discipline is a key point throughout the movie. Even the righteous must wait for the right time, to have control even when you believe it is your destiny and purpose to do a task; you still have to be aware and must be cognoscent of the world around you and its realities. I see this as the old lesson of American style stoicism, not a realpolitik but a down to earth realism that guides moral judgements and actions–more on that later.

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Every father wants his son to become a great man, a man of exceptional talent and capable of great feats. Wise men do not wish for their sons to be discovered too quickly, having their childhood and moral development stolen from them before they are actually men fully grown. Even with this Earth father’s protection, Clark still has a drive to do what he is meant to do. He wants to help and protect the people and the society he loves. He cannot do this fully until he knows who he is, where he comes from, and why he was placed in this position. Our Superman does find these answers, and there is a complete change in him, he has purpose combined with his super-natural strength, and now he has come fully into his own.

The same lesson can be applied to any situation, but I chose to use it as a chastisement of a political natural. I would direct these views towards my fellow Americans on the Right and ask them, “Do you know what you stand for? Do you know why we must fight, and who or what we are fighting for?” These are the most important questions, and they shape the debate on what will the future will hold; today’s questions and beliefs will cast shadows far into the future, for we are coming upon a decisive point in our history.

Unfortunately for the citizens of Earth, the process that transforms Clark into Superman also attracts General Zod, the last remaining leader of the race of beings which Superman originates. In contrast to Superman, Zod has never questioned his purpose, he has only one, and he carries it out with resolve. He is to protect the future of his kind, that was always his purpose and he has honed his abilities  all of his life. He is genetically and environmentally conditioned to fight for and protect the future of his people. Nothing else matters for General Zod, it is his purpose for being. And here we have two beings who come from the same stock but are of completely different natures. In the simplest terms, one is of the old brand, and one the new; one understands choice with purpose, the other understands only purpose.

Now here I am going to stretch the analogy a little bit. Lets look at another situation where we have the nation in a transitional period. The Right and the Conservative and Republican factions of the country are in somewhat of an identity crisis. I will make the connection that among the Right there are many who understands purpose, although degraded in some places such as the political arena, and there are some who fully embrace choice. This in a political sense is healthy and proper; the debate will, I believe, create a new focus for the Conservative side or even a new party to overtake the GOP. But when we depart from simply the political arena we find that there are other trends.

Many Americans fear for the future of their country and values. And this was not helped when the Federal government published a paper that noted Right wing extremist groups with recent Iraq and Afghan veterans as a threat to national security; this only achieved the confirmation for many that the government was doing and intended to target them in their private lives. This was showed the drastic disconnect between the writers, probably East Coast DCites, and the policy culture of the Federal Government compared to the many millions of concerned citizens. It boils down to this, the “Armed Extremist Radicals” of America plan to defend themselves and their country against oppressors government or otherwise, but they still see light and a chance to live peaceably. And veterans no better than most the importance of a society run by laws and not gangs and clans armed with IEDs and AKs. Most Service members, present and past, have a sense of duty that will not tolerate aiding societal discord at home, from any source. And so the likelihood of the Leftist fears are unfounded. That will remain the case as long as the Right believes there is half a chance for controlled legislative government. If a new political force can come to fruition and defend traditional American vales and defeat the enemies of Progressivism and Subjective Multiculturalism then no fear can be justified.  But, just as General Zod lost his purpose, if oppression and the abolition of the American values continues to the point to which the Right sees no peaceful recourse, then the Right will in great numbers resort to the force of arms.

For many, the future feared will soon be present.

 

 

 

Social Duty

As citizens of a nation we have a responsibility to do our utmost to preserve the best qualities and characteristics that advance our culture and society. It is also our duty to discourage and dissuade those characteristics that are detrimental to our culture and society. Our duty is to those who came before us, who not being perfect themselves, still pursued the best ends and gave the fruits of their labor to the generations that followed, so that we might continue the work. They entrusted us with the continuation of our nation’s great struggle; to provide a place and a system of institutions that better guarantee, more than any other place or time, the individual his chance to reach his full potential.

This duty goes further than our own lives, as it did for previous generations, it extends to the farthest reaches of our imaginations. Everything we dream of today, everything we pursue today, every new technology and every new tool created will forever affect the generations that follow. We must pursue those characteristics, those inventions, those institutions that will secure our hopes and aspirations for the future. We must dream great dreams knowing that we may not reach them ourselves, but that one day, because we dreamed and worked toward a goal our children and grandchildren will achieve even what we could not. The life span of every freedom we defend today is only so long as the will of free people sacrificing to preserve those freedoms. When the will of the people fades, so to does freedom fade. Yet it does not fade only for that generation or that people, it blurs and shadows for generations to come!

Therefore it is our responsibility, it is our duty, to teach and train our children and our children’s children to love freedom! To love freedom fiercely! To that end they must be taught to understand those institutions that foster freedom and empower it; that feed initiative and entrepreneurship, that guard enterprise and the transfer of wealth contractually with little meddling from outside forces. Our children must be taught to love and understand what makes a free society, and what drives individuals to create and transform for the empowerment of the individual and the advancement of society.

This is a self-disciplined freedom, this is a freedom of consequences. No more can we shun unforeseen consequences in defense of innocence. The greatest defense of innocence is the hard truth of consequences proven through history. We as a people have forgotten to learn from the past, relying on individual experiences only and shunning that collective wisdom of the ages. More good would be done in this world today by reading the old testament to our children and not ignoring the lessons taught those thousands of years ago. Further still, with such a cultural foundation laid our children could go on to read any number of classical books or myths and derive from those stories and histories truths and facts about humanity that would serve them for their entire lives.

We are all responsible for the future state of our society. When we allow obvious unnatural and ridiculous practices to take the place of the natural and orderly we invite doom upon our dreams. When children are raised in a society with no concept of the natural order, what can we expect of those children but to be confused  and frustrated with their world. It is well known we are not a perfect society; we are reminded of that fact by both progressives in our country and from every other country around the world, but simply because we are not perfect or not completely correct everyday should not paralyze us from making the correct decisions when we do know we are in the right. Decisions are hard things to make sometimes, I know because I have dealt with the futures of children, grown men, Soldiers, as well as my own. A decision made today often reverberates throughout the rest of a life time. We must look to the unintended consequences, the second and third order of effects, and make hard decisions today that will guide and bring forth positive outcomes tomorrow; not for ourselves but for the generations to come after.

What that requires is for our people and nation to stop making decisions based on emotional appeal. We use statistics for everything except where it most counts, and it is a heartless man who suggests such a position on public media. It is time to fight these idiotic positions of emotional appeal, and call out the unnatural for what it is. Nothing and no one says we have to discriminate against peoples’ choices, but we should not defend them and enshrine them. We must embrace self-disciplined freedom, and allow those who choose to use their liberty poorly to fail and be corrected by circumstance and the natural order. We must stop promising everything to everyone, and tell the truth: You must work hard to survive and thrive! Safety nets only work properly when the participants don’t all fall in at once.

The final note will be this, self-discipline is not something that generally comes out of every new individual born on this earth, but it is born our of the collective knowledge and wisdom of societies. We cannot expect children to learn the proper character traits if they are never taught them. This requires society to pay into the development of their youth; not with dollar amounts, but with experiences, teams, clubs, teachers, concerts, religious organizations and anything else that brings generations together to share and shape a society together. It is our duty to do so, and to do so well.

Golden State Janus Face on Government Spying

District of Calamity

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Sweden, Spending Restraint, and the Benefits of Obeying Fiscal Policy’s Golden Rule

International Liberty

When I first started working on fiscal policy in the 1980s, I never thought I would consider Sweden any sort of role model.

It was the quintessential cradle-to-grave welfare state, much loved on the left as an example for America to follow.

But Sweden suffered a severe economic shock in the early 1990s and policy makers were forced to rethink big government.

They’ve since implemented some positive reforms in the area of fiscal policy, along with other changes to liberalize the economy.

I even, much to my surprise, wrote a column in 2012 stating that it’s “Time to Follow Sweden’s Lead on Fiscal Policy.”

More specifically, I’m impressed that Swedish leaders have imposed some genuine fiscal restraint.

Here’s a chart, based on IMF data, showing that the country enjoyed a nine-year period where the burden of government spending grew by an average of 1.9 percent…

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Bit by bit, Obama repeals #Obamacare, so Republicans don’t have to

Simply amazing. And the Democrats still say that Obamacare is a great law when they do things like this.

Public Secrets

“Train wreck”

It’s long been known that the individual mandate is the foundation of the Affordable Care Act. Without the requirement for healthy young people to buy more insurance than they need or pay a penaltytax protection money, there would never be enough revenue coming into the system to pay for the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. And amidst all the waivers (1) and delays for unions and businesses claiming hardship under the new law, the one thing they’ve refused to rescind was the individual mandate, itself.

Until last week, when it was done in secret:

ObamaCare’s implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

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