Not-a-Lemming : class

Why Liberals Fail

FutbolGuru — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:35:00 GMT

Let it never be said that the FutbolGuru is one-sided. Lemmings are one sided which is why they run off cliffs. Or rather, why it is so easy to get them to run off cliffs. What if one of those lemmings in White Wilderness had simply stopped to smell the cameras? Not only would it have been spared the plunge, it wound probably have become a pet of the director and lived to a ripe old age. Not bad for a lemming.

Conservatives fail. But I never said they always fail. And I didn’t disparage their ideas. Conservatives are the idea people for the very reason that they are not the best leaders – because they are highly rational. Which is not to say that there aren’t conservatives who aren’t fantastic leaders, too. Ronald Reagan for instance. Agree or disagree with his politics it can’t be denied that he inspired the masses and got himself elected twice with more than a few Democrat votes. Take a rational thinker and endow him with leadership capability and you have the makings of greatness. It’s like in engineering, a guy who not only understands theory and design, but who also knows how to program the chips, is an indispensable rarity.

Liberals fail, too. And fail spectacularly. But the reasons they fail are wholly different than why conservatives fail. However, like conservatives, who fail because of their strength in one area, liberals, too, fail because of their strength.

I’m reminded of the Alamo, and who knows how many other hopeless battles stretched across the sands of time. The men in the Alamo were besieged by Santa Anna and his Mexican army. They knew they were outgunned, outmanned, outmaneuvered and could not win this fight. It is likely that Santa Anna would have let them leave without harm if they had given up the garrison and laid down their weapons. But Jim Bowie and William Travis knew that the Texas Revolution was on the line and it was important to stall Santa Anna as long as possible. They tried to get reinforcements but knew it was a long shot. Yet they repeatedly told the garrison that reinforcements were on the way. The commanders hoped reinforcements were on the way, but they didn’t know this. In fact, they probably doubted it. So, did they lie to their men? It may have been because the men believed the reinforcements were on the way that they were able to hold out so long. In the end, of course, they all died, but it gave the Texians time to regroup for the rest of the war. The leaders did what they had to do under the circumstances. They inspired their men to hold out and helped win the war, but they paid a heavy toll.

Liberals are like that. And sometimes it is a necessary trait. When a group is under tough times the truth is not always the best thing to tell them. Outright lies aren’t any better, but an expression of hope, even if it is a distant or almost fabricated hope, can inspire people to lengths they could not otherwise go. Liberals are good at this. They have a vision of the future in which everyone is equal, happy, educated, fulfilled, obeying the rules, basically utopia. And it would be really nice if we could achieve this. Unfortunately, its not real and never will be. Keeping a garrison fighting under terrible, hopeless conditions by inflating hope over despair is one thing. But running an army that way on a day-to-day basis will soon lead to disaster. At some point you have to deal with truth.

One of the things Ronald Reagan did well was give Americans back their sense of pride. We’d just lost our first war, an ugly conflict that divided the nation. Nixon had resigned in disgrace only a few years before. Carter had driven the country into the mud through inexperience and naïveté. Iran was mocking us with hostages. The economy was in the tank. Interest rates were soaring. Inflation was up. Being an American sucked. When Reagan took office he knew our biggest problem was our self image. So what did he do? He ramped up tension against the Soviets. He wasn’t a warmonger but he definitely parlayed the Cold War into a tit-for-tat game of chicken that he knew we couldn’t lose. It was risky and had to be carefully managed or it could explode into a shooting war. But it worked and gave Americans something to rally around. A few years later the Soviets folded and we reaped the rewards, the most important of which was a much improved self-image. It was great leadership even though much of it was based on stereotypes and nationalism. And with lower taxes and decreased government regulation to go along with a sense of national pride, Reagan set up the economic boom of the ‘90s.

Clinton on the other hand played to peoples’ sense of class distinction. Class warfare has never been hotter, or worked better, in U.S. politics. President Clinton was a great leader. Perhaps the greatest of our generation. And by leader, I mean his ability to galvanize people behind him. Whether you love him or hate him it can’t be denied that for those susceptible to it, he had an almost Rasputinesque charm. People LOVED President Clinton because basically, he lied to them. He told them whatever his focus-group polling decided they needed to hear at the moment. No matter what decision needed to be made, he would lick his finger and stick it into the wind. While this can work well when a group is under duress, such as during a siege, we weren’t under duress at the time. So what resulted was an entire population that claimed permanent victim status. By the end of his tenure everyone was pointing their finger at everyone else and no one wanted to work together. Predictably, the economy went into the toilet. The recession at the beginning of the Bush presidency had nothing to do with George II, and everything to do with an epidemic of paranoid greed inspired by President Clinton’s class warfare. There is a time for government to conceal the truth, and perhaps even to lie, but it should be saved for emergencies, not become standard operating procedure.

What will President Obama do? Does anyone doubt that he took office and found the economy to be much worse than he’d been told. Was he shocked? Should he be rational and tell us the truth? Do we want to know the truth? Or does it make more sense to play on hope? For the short term, I say he’s doing the right thing. People need hope. People work harder with hope. They can face more difficulties and be less argumentative when they have hope. Giving hundreds of billions to the wealthy probably sucked more hope from the average American than ten nine-elevens would have. Imagine having to overcome a debacle of that magnitude. But a time is coming when the truth must come into the light. And then we’ll need ideas. Debt will come due and bills will have to be paid and the lying must stop. Liberals have shown great difficulty transitioning from generating hope to producing practical solutions. Will Barak Obama be a great leader or just another liberal failure? I have high hopes if only because it best having low hopes.

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

Protection At Any Cost

FutbolGuru — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 03:04:00 GMT

We forget things. We forget because we are people, and people are lemmings. For a moment, recall the basis for my analysis – the myth of the lemming. Lemmings DO NOT rush into the sea and commit mass suicide. Lemmings can, however, be frightened, especially by those who seek to benefit from their panicky mob behavior, whether they be unscrupulous film makers or former chairmen of major financial institutions. That is the lemming, those who fall prey to the machinations of others and join the crowd in running whatever direction without first checking where that direction leads. Lemmings, little, furry morons.

One of the things I seek to do on Not-A-Lemming is state the obvious. I do it because nobody else seems to want to. I do it because it is so often the obvious that is overlooked. Sort of like asking the furry, little hoard, "Why is everybody running this way when there's a cliff over there?" And that is the case today.

Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars. Also written $750,000,000,000. At my engineer’s salary I’d have to work for eight million years to make that much money. Actually 8.3 million years. (Or 8.3 million engineers could work for a year.) I’m going to keep harping on the $750,000,000,000 and writing it as $750,000,000,000, and not $750billion, or even 750 Gigabucks, because we should never forget that fourteen percent of our GNP was handed over to banks by a republican president backed by a democrat congress. Both parties are equally culpable in selling the middle class.

So why did they do it? No oversight. No accountability. That is enough money to give every person in New York City, all 8.7 million of them, my yearly salary, earned with 17 years of experience and a Masters Degree in stuff that’s just frankly, damn hard. Why? As always, history holds the answer.

I work hard for the living I bring home – which doesn’t go far on a family of five. Eighty hours a week, forty-nine weeks a year. I get three weeks of vacation but no sick leave. My 401K is a joke; it stank before the stock market tanked. I’ve got a few thousand dollars in the bank. And I do mean, a few. Realistically I’m looking at a second mortgage to get my kids through college and retirement isn’t really an option. I don’t really like my job. I tried for a Ph.D., didn’t have the cash to finish it, and wound up doing this. In a nutshell, my version of the American dream is kind of disappointing. If it weren’t for my utterly fantastic wife and exemplary kids it would completely suck. After my nine-hour day I write just about every evening working on novels I hope to someday publish, but it’s a long shot and I know it. I can’t even get anyone in New York to reply to my query letters. But my story isn’t unique. I’m a law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working American. The backbone of our nation. I am Atlas. Something to be proud of. I’m not complaining. I’m connecting. With you. Because your American dream is pretty sweaty, too.

Now imagine a different life. Basically enough money to not worry about money. What you would do with it is your business. A lot of people buy cars, boats, fancy homes, etc. And it can be a trap. I’ve seen more than a few sucked in and ground up. Success can definitely be a trap. But it doesn’t have to be. Just imagine that life where you don’t wake up in the middle of the night worrying about how you’re going to put your kids through college. Or how you’re going to fix the roof you know is leaking in that downpour. A life where you’re not anxious about retiring someday, before you’re too old to use it. A life where you can live in the way of your choosing whether it be working a job you love, doing art, contributing to society. Or just sitting around wasting time at a beach on Manihi. (Look it up on Google Earth.) To each his own.

This isn’t reality for most of us. But it is for some. People who can, do. And history has shown that those who live this privileged life immediately begin to feel it is their right, and will do anything to protect it. Anything. Lie, kill, steal, even commit genocide if necessary. No affluent culture has escaped this doom; an entitlement class, just as dependent as the welfare poor, who will go to any length to not worry, to not work, to live their life of ease. Am I stating the obvious? That’s what I do. That’s all I do. Those of means will do anything to protect their privileged life. Never forget that.

$750,000,000,000. Why? How did our leadership come to the conclusion that it should be simply handed over without any strings attached? Maybe we should look at who these leaders are. Senators and representatives have a pretty sweet deal. Reps make $145,000 a year, senators make $165,200 a year. With expenses. And a staff. And an office. And influence for life. That adds up to far more than $145,000 a year. And they don’t really have to work. They don’t even have to show up. And many of them started out wealthy. And they get elected with money. Money elects people. Not votes, not speeches, not even good looks or great legs. Just ask Mr. Obama who raised more than ever before. As the global financial system teetered on the brink – or so the lemmings thought – they sensed that their gravy train was in jeopardy. The wealthy are heavily invested. They lose enough money and they might not be able to take a European vacation next year, much less contribute to the party of their choice. The answer, take 14% of the US Gross National Product and use it to shore up their financial base. Works every time.

And don’t forget, one reason the stock market has tanked is because investors, aka, those with money, are pulling it out. The middle class has shrugged and left it in. They have no choice. They know their only chance is for the market to go back up. And it will. But the wealthy, who can pull their money, have, and it’s driving the market down, down, down. And then they went to congress with their hands out. And congress made sure they didn’t go away empty handed. Congress was in essence, giving the money to themselves.

So I guess understanding why congress would just hand over 8.3 million years of my salary is pretty simple. They were protecting their privileged life. And they didn’t even have to kill anyone to do it. I guess we should thank them.

NEXT: I'm Not One Of Those

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/Community/blogs/not-a-lemming