Unconditional love

There’s a growing dysfunction in this country of America, and it really troubles me.   There is a segment of the American population that really doesn’t like America, feels an entitlement to some benefits from society, but little of no obligation to society.

When questioned about their lack of apparent affection for or adhesion to their Nation, the response I’ve gotten is that they really wish the best for America, and that relentlessly criticizing America is the best way for America to grow to fulfill its promise.

I don’t buy it, at all.

The bonds of family members are the closest and strongest.  Then there are the bonds to community, and to one’s Nation.  Each of these bonds is founded upon unconditional love.  None of these bonds can survive on conditional, judgmental, withholding and manipulative love.

Yet that is exactly the kind of relationship I see these, well, for lack of a better word, “Progressives”, engaged in.

In a family, community, or nation, there will always be situations where one wishes for a different behavior on the part of others.  Situations where advice will be offered, in the safe context of the relationship, not broadcast at the highest volume, with an invitation for those outside the family, community, or nation jump in and offer their own criticisms of the family, community, or nation.

Unconditional love does not mean blind acceptance of destructive or self-destructive behavior.  Here is the crux of the matter: healthy adults know that unconditional love is mandatory for creating the safe and secure environment in which advice can be offered and accepted and progress achieved.  Healthy adults know that savagely conditional and manipulative love only drives everyone to extend and go completely defensive.

I hope I’ve explained myself in a way that makes sense to you.  I have no illusions that America is perfect, it is not.  We have many things to do better on, so ask yourself: how do we create the environment that will draw people toward out of their corners and toward solutions?  Through relentless and implacable criticism?  Or with unconditional love, our greatest concern, and a commitment to help heal?

This Nation is in desperate need of a whole bunch of unconditional love.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

How Big Media leads to Big Government

We live in an age of Big Media and it’s only going to get more so.  Our news is dominated by Big TV, Big Radio (check out XM/Sirius, nationwide radio!), and Big Internet.  To get Big, media needs a big audience, and while the biggest audience of all is “the entire world”, the next biggest would be the US national audience.  So that’s the business logic that leads to Big Media.  What are the effects?

Precisely, Big Media has the glitter, the glamour, the sizzle, more attractive people and voices, better production values.  In our age, in which entertainment has replaced education, the result is sad but predictable: Big Media trumps local media.  So the national message overruns the local message.  People know about what they hear about, so the national events, and actors, submerge local events and actors.

The danger in all this is that it draws those who do care away from what matters (state & local) and toward what is, by design and intent, (the federal) supposed to have minimal impact on the individual citizen.  The problem here is that the federal government cannot solve local, or even state problems.  So Big Media is serving up a knuckleball, a floating, basketball-sized target that looks totally hitable, but that takes a dive for the dirt once we start our swing.  We can petition the federal government for solutions to the problems we see, but the federal government will frustrate and disappoint every time.

At this point in history, it’s almost pointless to encourage consumption of local media.  It’s hopeless to discourage consumption of Big Media.  Local media has been on an accelerating downward curve for decades.  Today, in many communities, and especially in many of the most troubled communities, it’s almost impossible to find legitimate, active, compelling local media.  So with Big Media having crushed and dominated local media, national issues overwhelm local issues, and the frustration with government continues to build as the federal government continues its inevitable descent toward utter ineffectualness.

If you have local media, you should treasure it and support it.  There is good local media, and one of the very best is the Anderson Valley Advertiser.  If you have local media worth supporting, and if you let me know, I’ll mention them here.  This blog isn’t Big Media, yet, but in local affairs, every voice counts.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

An ideological ally

In my so-far-Quixotic tilting-at-windmills campaign to dispel notions that Keynesian deficit-stimulus spending can help our economy, I welcome allies.  All the better when the potential ally is more knowledgeable than I am.  Because truthfully, my own arguments against deficit-stimulus spending in the present situation is based on some rough ideas and a strong feeling.

As a person whose professional background involved navigation and naval architecture, I have great respect for mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.  When I see economists scribble equations, it makes my skin crawl.  I thought it was because this pseudo-scientific approach to economics was guilty of masquerading; as I’ve said, “Astrology imitating astronomy”.

And it just felt all wrong, writing equations to describe human behavior.

So imagine my delighted surprise when I found this article, where Mr. Knox provides a brilliant and insightful explanation of what’s really wrong with Keynesian manipulation by the government and central banks.  If you are a Keynesian borrow-and-spender, this article will require extraordinary efforts to ignore.  If you’re just an ordinary person who’s baffled by what’s going on with the US and world economy, please, do yourself a favor and give Mr. Knox’s article a read.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

A little forgiveness

Might just go a long way.  It’s hard to forgive when there’s someone just waiting to sling poop, so it might behoove us all to put that stuff on a momentary hold.  I found this a worthwhile read.  I don’t know if I’m strong enough to grant that much forgiveness, but I’m considering it.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Dear 99%ers

Who are the “99%ers”?  They claim to be members of and representative for what they see as the overwhelming majority of Americans who are getting a rotten deal from the plutocrats of finance.  This is a brief a note to you self-proclaimed “99%ers”.  To give away the punch line, you aren’t 99%ers.  You aren’t even 33%ers (*).  But to preserve the poetry of the verbal image, that’s what I’m going to call you, and how I’m going to explain the real situation.

The top 2/3rds (67%ers) of America live in the most prosperous, equitable, livable, and just nation on Earth.  The 67%ers and their communities are doing just fine.  The 67%ers care deeply about the welfare of all Americans, and they don’t just talk about it, or go to the streets.  The 67%ers are doing the work of providing health care, and teaching, and paying the taxes, and taking care of their less fortunate family members, and serving their communities and their nation.

The challenge is how to get the bottom 1/3rd (33%ers) to rejoin the rest of America in patterns and behaviors of prosperity.  This is, of course, a matter of providing assistance.  That should not conceal the fact that the real work lies in getting these less prosperous Americans to embrace the social structures, behaviors, and attitudes of prosperity, and to reject those associated with poverty.

Germany has faced many of these same challenges, and they still struggle with this issue.  The German unemployment rate just recently got back down to the pre-unification unemployment level.  When East Germany ceased to exist, the prosperous West was left to absorb the 1/5th of Germans who had grown up under a state-managed social and economic system.  Under their Soviet-style system, citizens of the East, in just two generations, had ended up living in an entirely different, poverty-ridden, hopeless, socioeconomic universe from their prosperous and hopeful fellow Germans in the West.

In America a set of significantly different, yet somewhat related, causes have caused the bottom 1/3rd of America to break off from the top 2/3rds and drift away into poverty and failure.  We need to figure out how to mend this rift, and the answer is surely not more of what created the rift.  Government can play a supporting role in healing our own, domestic, East/West schism.  Ultimately, the answer will lie in the family, the community, the churches, the schools, the civic organizations, and the cultural groups who need help and those who have help to offer.

So, 33%ers, what’s it going to be?  Do you want a fish, or do you want to learn how to fish?  The the 67%ers aren’t going to fix this for you, although they sure do stand ready to lend a hand.

And a final piece of advice to the 33%ers: if you think that someone is “holding you down”, you’re missing the point.  Prosperity is not a zero-sum game.  Wealth is created so there can be more for the entire system … it’s not necessary for Bob to have less so that Joe can have more.  But prosperity most certainly is a competition.  Those who perform better achieve more.

There is no advantage to anyone in business to “holding down” anyone else, that’s simply missing the point.  Missing the point is Okay, but if a person misses the point, and clings to their mistake, then their attitude and life will be guided by a mistaken belief.  You can guess what that leads to.

(*)  The reality, predictably less poetic than the literary version, is that 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, around 16%.  For reference: the poverty rate in the EU is … 1 in 6.

Gday all, and may God continue to bless America!

A funny thing

Every economy is based on confidence.  Without confidence, even the most fundamentally sound economy can sputter, falter, and fail.  With confidence, a broken economy can repair itself.  No economy can function without confidence and optimism.

So I wonder why both sides of the political spectrum are so energetically “talking down” the economy.  I guess I’m not really wondering, the answer is self-evident.  Both ends of the political spectrum seem to think they can more quickly and surely gain their objectives by crashing the economy.

Liberals appear to think that if things get bad enough, protesters take to the streets, the masses will starve, and the federal government will be forced to massive intervention, granting free unlimited health care to every person in America, a social safety net of broad dimensions, and a dramatic increase in government authority to determine outcomes and regulate behaviors.

Conservatives seem to think that if things get bad enough, it will force the federal government with withdraw, shrink, shrivel, and possibly force a “trust the Captain” moment, where Big Business and Big Finance get a green light to save the situation.

In the meantime, the middle class struggles, which in historical terms is actually nothing but a return to normalcy.  It just feels so darned rotten to have so many pundits talking down the economy when there are so many who are trying so hard for prosperity.  We desperately need a fresh perspective and  new solutions, yet those who dominate the public conversation are only capable to repeating their mantra du jour at higher and higher volume levels.

For pundits and activists, it’s a war of words.  For ordinary Americans, it’s a struggle with reality.  Reality seems to be winning.

It would be nice if those pursuing a political agenda to consider how their pursuit may be hurting the vast bulk of Americans in the middle.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!