The St. Croix Review speaks for middle America, and brings you essays from patriotic Americans.
The filibuster is a blocking tool used by the minority party to stop an especially partisan bill from become law. A filibuster prevents a bare majority from steamrolling the fewer party. To break a filibuster a few of the opposing party have to agree to vote with the majority party before the law proceeds to passing. In this way the majority and the minority have to work together to pass laws.
Filibustering techniques have been part of our history for over 200 years, and not just in the Senate: 150 years ago the filibuster was used in the House of Representatives.
Without some check on majority power it is easy to imagine wild swings in governance as power shifts from one party to the other, so that after some decades the original system would be completely forgotten and the substance of American government would be left to the whims of powerful demagogues. We Americans have always thought of ourselves as nation of laws, not of men.
There are many safeguards, or checks and balances, embedded in our wondrous system of government. The Founders feared demagogues who are good at whipping up the passions of the people. Demagogues play on people's fears, greed, and ambitions. Demagogues can confuse people through arguments for "righteous" justice, for example, convincing people that they have a right to the fruits of other people's labor.
Conservatives believe that the governmental redistribution of income at its present state of operation in America kills the spirit of independence and self-reliance that Americans should have. Demagogic arguments are a continuing danger to a healthy culture, at present leading Americans to an unhealthy dependence on government.
The writers of the Constitution designed our system to be hard to change. The system was meant to protect itself from ambitious would-be tyrants who lure people into giving up their liberties in exchange for unworthy promises. It is supposed to be hard to pass laws, to create a constitutional amendment, or to change the system itself.
A system of check and balances will create frustration and friction as various powers vie with each other. The larger party lashes out at the minorities' obstructions, and the smaller party stands up for minority rights. Politicians of either party always adopt their opponents' hysterical rhetoric when the majority and minority switch places and the shoe is on the other foot. This has gone on for centuries. The Constitution makes hypocrites of American politicians - this should be a source of humor.
An informed American should understand that when there are angry arguments and loud complaints in Congress, and nothing seems to be getting done, the American form of government is working as it should. We should also understand that when there is a compelling and just need for government to act, then members of both parties do combine to see that it is done.
The Senate Democrats took extraordinary steps in November to end the filibuster of the president's nominations of federal judges and executive appointments. First Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had to change the rules of the Senate in the middle of a congressional term - a rare occurrence. By long-standing tradition, a supermajority of votes is needed to change the rules of the Senate. But in a naked grasp of power contrary to the American spirit of government Harry Reid changed the rules by a simple majority vote, 52 for and 48 against - 3 Democrats voted with Republicans against the rules change.
Henceforth the president needs only a bare majority of 51 Senate votes for his judicial nominations and executive appointments to pass (before it took 60 votes for passage). From now on the president does not need any support from the opposing party to enact his will - this is a serious diminution of checks and balances. The road seems to be clear for the president to staff the judiciary and his cabinet of federal agencies with extreme partisans. The spirit of compromise seems to have been vanquished from the process of appointing critically important officers of state.
In addition, having established the precedent of changing Senate rules in the middle of a congressional term by a simple majority vote, from now on there are no fixed traditions that can't be dispensed with overnight. The road seems to be clear for the Senate to be governed in an extremely partisan fashion and for minority rights to be trampled.
Republicans are vowing revenge. Republicans are promising to escalate the partisan battle. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said:
The silver lining is that there will come a day when the roles are reversed. When that happens, our side will likely nominate and confirm lower court and Supreme Court nominees with 51 votes regardless of whether the Democrats actually buy into this fanciful notion that they can demolish the filibuster on lower court nominees and still preserve it for the Supreme Court.
Should we dispense with the drawn-out furor surrounding a Supreme Court nomination like those attending Robert Bork's and Clarence Thomas'? Should one party steamroll the other without a lengthy months-long spectacle? Supreme Court nominations are increasingly bitter flashpoints in which partisan differences are emblazoned in public consciousness.
But a rancorous nomination serves an important public purpose: it prevents the successful placement of a truly extreme nominee. Potential justices should not escape intense scrutiny by the American public - an important check on executive power.
The partisan rancor attending the placement of a Supreme Court Justice may be unpleasant, but Supreme Court Justices hold supremely important positions: there should be a thorough examination of them by the American people. Getting the right people on the Supreme Court is worth a little rancor.
If one party stoops to especially low, gutter, politics in the conduct of its business, it is the duty of the other party to expose it with vigor. Politics is not a place for timorous people.
Hope is not lost. I trust in the continuing genius of our Constitution. The filibuster was not written into the Constitution. It was a method that arose spontaneously in harmony with the spirit of American government. I believe the minority party will discover other methods to frustrate the ambitions of the majority, and the protection of minority rights will survive in new forms arising spontaneously.
As long as we remain awake to the importance of our precious liberties, so long will vigorous politicians come forth to defend minority rights. Harry Reid hasn't the power to put an end to minority rights, because minority rights are an inherited American freedom, and an inbred American instinct. *
We would like to thank the following people for their generous support of this journal (from 9/26/2013 to 11/23/2013): George E. Andrews, Joseph R. Beck, Charles Benscheidt, Ronald G. Benson, Gary K. Bressler, Mary & Fred Budworth, Thomas M. Burt, William C. Campion, Tommy D. Clark, William D. Collingwood, Garry W. Croudis, John D'Aloia, Peter R. DeMarco, Jeanne L. Dipaola, John H. Downs, Thomas Drake, Paul Warren Dynis, Francisco A. Figueroa, Joseph C. Firey, Reuben M. Freitas, William W. Frett, James R. Gaines, Gary D. Gillespie, Franz R. Gosset, Hollis J. Griffin, Elizabeth R. Harrigan, James E. Hartman, David L. & Mary L. Hauser, Bernhard Heersink, Daniel V. Hickey, Gregory A. Hight, Arthur H. Ivey, Burleigh Jacobs, Marilyn P. Jaeger, Charles W. Johnson, Louise Hinrichsen Jones, Edgar Jordan, Frank G. Kenski, Robert E. Kersey, Edward B. Kiolbasa, Thomas F. Kordonowy, Alan H. Lee, Rema MacDonald, Cary M. Maguire, George F. Manley, Robert P. Miller, King Odell, Thomas L. Olson, Gary Phillips, Linda R. Puzzio, Jack J. Quinn, David P. Renkert, Philip E. Rosine, John A. Schulte, Harry Richard Schumache, Alvan I. Shane, Thomas E. Snee, Robert E. Stacy, Philip Stark, Carl G. Stevenson, Norman Stewart, Frank T. Street, Michael S. Swisher, Terry C. Tarbell, Kenneth R. Thelen, Paul B. Thompson, Kevin Turner, Frank Villani, Alan Rufus Waters, Donald E. Westling, Robert F. Williams, W. Raymond Worman.
The following is a summary of the October/November 2013 issue of the St. Croix Review:
Barry MacDonald, in "Washington D. C. - Their Town," reveals that Washington politics is an insider's game: politicians, consultants, lobbyists, and media personalities are in it for themselves.
Mark Hendrickson, in "Technology May Spur 10+ Career Changes for Today's Youth: Are We Ready?" asks whether humans can adapt to the pace of change when knowledge doubles every two years; in "Smarter Government Might Be President Obama's Most Vacuous Banality Yet," he explains why the embedded incentives of bureaucracies must produce poor results; in "Ben Bernanke: 'The Greatest Central Banker in U.S. History'?" he shows the fallacies and follies of the Fed's actions; in "Your Nosebleed Student Loan Debt Pays the Tuition of the Classmate Next to You," he reveals that lawmakers and colleges have decided to subsidize worthless courses by forcing students with economically advantageous degrees to pay more.
Herbert London, in "Listen to Lincoln," cites surprising aspects of Lincoln's character that embody the noble qualities of the historical American spirit; in "Raising the Flag at Ground Zero," he writes about left-wing officials, in charge of the museum on the site of the collapsed Twin Towers, who are embarrassed by the display of American patriotism; in "The Radical Agenda for America," he lays out the left-wing plan for transformation; in "Decline, Decline, Decline," he lists markers of the turning of American culture.
Allan Brownfeld, in "Washington Is Dysfunctional - But Our Permanent Political Class Is Alive, Well, and Thriving," shows how both parties are working behind the scenes to share power, fame, and money, while taking as much as they can from taxpayers; in "When Government Lies to the People, the Fabric of Representative Democracy Itself Is the Victim," he reports on a pattern of deceit by intelligence officials (even under oath) who refuse to disclose the extent of surveillance programs on U.S. citizens; in "Detroit's Bankruptcy Should Focus Attention on Unfunded Public Pensions Nationwide," he shows who is to blame for Detroit's mess - there will be many more examples of Detroit-style bankruptcy; in "Conviction of Major Hasan in Ft. Hood Killings Raises Many Questions - Most Important, Why the Americans He Murdered Are Not Considered Victims of Terrorism," he reveals military/government incompetence and dishonesty.
Paul Kengor, in "Liberals Embrace Fatherless (and Motherless) Families," writes that in their zeal for gay marriage liberals have excluded either fathers or mothers; in "Bill Clark's Divine Plan - Ronald Reagan's Top Hand Has Died," he memorializes a great man few Americans know; in "In Memoriam: An FBI Life," he tells the story of another great American few Americans know.
Thomas Martin, in "If Aristotle's Kid Had an iPod," writes about the upbringing of children in learning virtue, friendship, and happiness.
Francis P. DeStefano, in "Declaration of Independence," provides insight and context to one of our Founding documents.
In "A Divided Culture," Robert Wichterman considers what holds us together and pulls us apart.
In "Americans at Work: Diesel Engineer," Fred Marcus explains how mechanical engineers operate, how much their efforts cost the company, and the miracles they accomplish: 96 percent of the soot produced by diesel engines has been eliminated since 1996!
Jigs Gardner, in "Letters from a Conservative Farmer - The Nature of Nature," lays his finger on the truth that Adam and Eve had to learn after Paradise vanished.
Jigs Gardner, in "Writers for Conservatives, 47 - The Historical Spy Novels of Alan Furst," describes writing that perfectly captures material details, and the way people thought, felt, and behaved before and during W.W. II.
Jigs Gardner is an Associate Editor of the St. Croix Review. Jigs Gardner writes on literature from the Adirondacks, where he may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
When I was a child I was a Nature lover, much more so than my fellows, who went to the movies on Saturday afternoons while I prowled the vacant lots ("woods" to me) in our neighborhood, looking for birds' nests and tadpoles and sassafras, those things that I thought of as Nature. Then when I was 14, we moved to a farmhouse in the New Jersey countryside, and while my view did not essentially change, it began to stretch, if I may put it that way, and all because of the contours of the land, which shaped the experience and my perception of it. To the north and west where the land was relatively flat, the agricultural regime was dominated by big farms, acre after acre of potatoes or corn, with large dairy operations, while south and east were Pine Barrens, a vast wilderness of scrub oak and pine growing on thin, sandy soil. In between, the topography was varied, marked by abrupt hills, streams meandering through ravines to sink into swamps and boggy meadows, and the rougher tracts were thickly wooded. The area had been farmed since the early 1700s in a way called general or mixed farming, where a bit of everything goes on, depending on markets and opportunities. The man I worked for, for instance, milked 30 Jerseys, sold piglets and broiler chickens and eggs, grew tomatoes for a cannery, as well as hay and corn and oats for his cattle, raised hybrid corn for a seed company and produced all his meat and vegetables. The whole area was intensely rural and a bit out of date, even then.
The domestic architecture and the layout around the houses told a story. In our neighborhood every one dated from the 18th century and looked it: handsomely proportioned, weathered, sometimes a little worn and shabby, with a lilac bush or clump of golden glow or hollyhocks by the door, crooked apple trees on one side, hen house and chicken yard not far from the kitchen door, chopping block nearby where the chicken for Sunday dinner had its head cut off, sheds here and there, a big old barn out back surrounded by a dusty barnyard with a rail fence next to a hard-bitten pasture.
The big kitchen was the heart of the house, functional to that life in ways unimaginable today. The chicken killed and plucked in the yard was eviscerated in the kitchen sink; the steers and pigs slaughtered and hung in the barn were often butchered on the kitchen table (as I can testify); butter was churned there, and cheese was pressed; year after year the produce of the garden was processed and preserved there; there hung braided onions and bunches of mint. I saw then that life in those places was lived much closer to the ground than in the city where I had lived; there were fewer buffers between people and Nature or, as I had come to think of it, the natural world. I began to sense that it was more than things, that it might be some sort of system that held all the things together: the old horse standing in the pasture, the pasture itself, maybe even the dirt in the yard.
Fifteen years later, when we moved to northern Vermont to live for two years in a farmhouse without electricity or running water, where we began, quite unconsciously, our self-reliant life, the buffers were negligible. And for some time it was unsettling, something we didn't understand until an acquaintance from our past stopped by on his way to somewhere. It was spring and he got stuck in a mud hole in the road. I had had much experience digging cars out, and I worked at it until dusk, but he was well and truly stuck, and it was decided he'd go out to call a tow truck in the morning. Luckily, the road was hardly used. After supper, he wanted to get his suitcase from the car and we walked out with him in the gloaming. On our side of the hill there were no houses, and although the view encompassed miles, there was not a light to be seen. It would be an exaggeration to say he was terrified, but he was certainly upset, exclaiming again and again at the overwhelming darkness, touching the car, almost caressing it as his one solid link to what he thought of as civilization. After he left, after he was towed away, we laughed, smug in our superiority: we weren't afraid of the dark, we didn't need a car to make us feel at home in the universe - until we remembered that at one time, and not very long ago, we had been oppressed by the sense of the natural world pressing upon us, by the absence of mitigating things between that massive presence and our feeble selves. The difference was that now we were used to it, we were conscious of it, we thought we had come to terms with it.
Our life during those two years was elemental. I, who had lived on my father's bounty through college and then earned wages at various jobs, had placed myself, at the age of 29 with a wife and four small children, in a situation that forced me to support everyone entirely by my own efforts with no outside help or even encouragement - and three hundred dollars in savings. Aside from gardening, I knew next to nothing. And since I had been a "Perfessor," my muscles were undeveloped. Oh, the stories I could tell! How, having neither the strength nor the skill nor the knowledge to notch a tree correctly, I cut it all around like a beaver with my axe, insuring that it might fall any which way at any time, so nearly every one lodged in standing trees. Then I would climb up it to chop away at the snagged limbs until it fell. That I was not killed nor even scratched astounds me to this day. I am proud of what I learned, proud that it made a man of me, but in a way it was too easy, the starkness of its terms made it too simple: Learn to milk a cow. Learn to use an axe. Learn how to hone a scythe. Learn how to build a sled to haul water. I was struggling with Nature, no question about that, but I saw it as discrete acts. I did not understand what the struggle meant, I did not see its breadth. After seven more years of farming and teaching in Vermont, we had to move to Cape Breton to learn that.
Why? Because we were no longer leading a distracting, haphazard life, renting a field here or there, tethering cows on the lawn, mowing hay in someone's backyard, running a school and a farm together. Now we actually owned 100 acres that we had to transform into an economically viable enterprise. Any farmer knows what that means: nothing can be neglected, nothing can be left to Nature; every square rod that has been won from the wild must be manured and fertilized and limed and plowed and planted and mown and manured again; every fence, every structure must be built and rebuilt and repaired again and again; every animal must be nurtured and protected from the ferocious weather on an island in the North Atlantic. Nature is not things, it is not discrete acts, it is the entire natural world (including ourselves) and the laws that govern it.
All systems in the world, if unattended, tend steadily towards a state of disorder and disorganization. Entropy: The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
We were creating a system and then we would be maintaining it, or in the words of the quotation, attending it, which is another way of saying struggling with Nature. Because that is what life, in its everyday mundane expression, is about; struggling to build and maintain structures that we hope to pass on to our successors, who will in turn take up the struggle.
We are all, everyone of us, in the grip of entropy; working a farm solely with horses and muscle power, a farm starkly in the midst of the wilds, made the lesson of entropy daily knowledge. That is the deepest meaning of Nature, but we do not think about it much, if at all - it is only a brooding presence behind our daily life, a sense of realism. I began this essay by describing a rural life I knew 60 years ago that was lived close to the ground, as it were, a kind of life I admired because it was conducive to honesty about life. It was not so easy then, not as easy as it is for urban sophisticates today, to think the Second Law has lapsed, that Nature is benign. But we all have a great capacity for self-delusion. Think about that beguiling word "natural": one of my dictionaries lists a dozen meanings, but we usually think of the first one: "Present in or produced by nature; not artificial or man-made," combined with the fifth meaning: "Free from affectation or artificiality; spontaneous," and wishfully we conceive of it as a Good Thing. That's the appeal of "organic" farming, supposedly all natural, when it is in fact as artificial as all farming has always been since the first man began cultivation with a sharp stick.
I knew an "organic" farmer who, instead of fencing in his chickens, let them roam at will. He thought it was so natural, that if he were nice to Nature, Nature would be nice in return. Unfortunately, the chickens, not being men, had no illusions, and they destroyed his garden.
The lesson was admirably expressed about 2,500 years ago by those realists, the Hebrew prophets: The lion does not lie down with the lamb, not on this side of the Jordan, anyway. *
I am a mechanical engineer. I received my Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1993. Thereupon, I began full-time employment with Detroit Diesel in the diesel engine business. Two years later, I resigned Detroit Diesel and joined another company's engine division and continue to be employed there to this day.
Engineering is a creative occupation in which engineers design useful things that people are willing to pay money for. In a very real sense, engineers design the things that make the world go around. My career in engine engineering has involved mostly the design of engines or the application of engines into vehicles. I had roles in manufacturing and purchasing.
During the past two decades, the vast majority of the activity in which I have been involved has been related to meeting exhaust emissions regulations. My work has involved making the necessary changes to the internal parts of the engine (e.g., pistons, valves, cylinder heads, and so on) to make them compatible with the performance changes that were made to the engine in order to meet emissions regulations or other requirements. This type of work can be reduced to three basic areas: design, testing/experimentation, and problem solving.
As an example, for a number of years I did work on the valvetrain portion of the engine. This part of the engine is responsible for allowing air and fuel into, and exhaust out of, the engine. Valvetrain components are sensitive to the pressures and temperatures inside of the engine and are made of highly precise and relatively expensive materials. Emissions regulations and performance requirements (e.g., more power, better fuel efficiency) generally cause the temperatures and pressures inside the engine to go ever higher and higher. This presents the challenge to the engineer of improving the capability of the internal components while still making them affordable.
The process works as follows. The customer or government regulating body (e.g., EPA) establishes criteria that the engine must meet in order to be sold for a particular application, say a bulldozer. Performance engineers will tune the engine in a test cell until the engine meets the new criteria. This often requires extensive changes to the fuel system, air system and other systems on the engine. It is then the job of the engine component engineers to make certain that the rest of the engine will work under the new operating conditions. Essentially, a new component is designed, tested, and refined until it meets all of the requirements of the customer and the business. My role in engine engineering has been to repeat this process for successive changes in requirements.
In a typical scenario there will be dozens of engineers working in an office environment on just one part of an engine or machine. These engineers, myself included, spend most of their time at their desks in front of a computer. Their fundamental task is engineering design work using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software or simulation and analysis software. These tools are used to develop and evaluate a design in its initial stages. This early stage of design may last months or years depending upon the complexity of the activity. The engineers will also spend a good deal of time managing their projects and interacting with other engineers and support groups in person or via telephone, email and other electronic means.
Again, this example pertains to just one part of an engine or machine. Taken as a whole, there are literally thousands of engineers, generally in groups of dozens or hundreds in a particular location, across the corporation (and the globe). All of these engineers will be working toward the same basic goal. That is, redesigning an engine or machine to meet emissions criteria, or other criteria associated with a particular product development program. To get a sense for the annual labor cost associated with this type of activity, let's use a simple example. Let's assume that there are a total of five thousand engineers working on an emissions program and that the average cost of an individual's wages and benefits is $100,000 annually. Just these labor costs alone would equate to half-a-billion dollars annually. The actual total cost of this activity is greater than this and peaked at around two billion dollars per year during a recent emissions update program.
A particularly aggressive set of requirements over the past two decades or so have been those that have been imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Beginning in the late 1980s, EPA set about to "reconcile the diesel engine with the environment." Regardless of your political views on the issue, from the outset it was clear that the intention of the EPA was to make the "dirty diesel engine" extinct. From that time until now, there have been successive and ever-tightening levels of regulation placed upon diesel engines and powered machines every 3-5 years. From 1996 until 2014, regulated exhaust constituents such as particulate matter ("soot") and oxides of nitrogen will have been reduced by 96 percent. That is, at the end of 18 years of regulation-driven changes, the total emissions level (of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen) will be at just 4 percent of their previous levels. It has been shown that for some exhaust constituents, the air coming out of the exhaust pipe is actually cleaner than the air going into the engine.
So, here we have a 96 percent reduction in diesel emissions balanced against a cost of at least the billions of dollars, for just one company. The total cost would multiply many fold across the entire industry. The stated benefit to society has been measurable and significant reduction of diesel engine emissions in the air we breathe. Exactly how much this affects the health of people and the planet is a question best left to those who specialize in such things. I have provided the reader with an idea of the challenge and cost of achieving such regulatory goals. *
Francis P. DeStefano is a retired financial advisor in Fairfield, Connecticut, who now writes and lectures on history and art.
Every July 4 we celebrate Independence Day, the anniversary of the promulgation of our famed Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Most of us have heard the famous opening lines of the document:
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
However, few have ever read the entire Declaration and even fewer have any understanding of the nature of the actual grievances that led the colonists to sever their ties with England and seek independence. Most readers don't get past the following words.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Even though King George III of England was one of the nicest, most benevolent rulers that England ever had, the colonists portrayed him as a tyrannical despot. No one was a more determined supporter of representative government than this young King, who though descended from German ancestors prided himself on being an Englishman.
The real conflict between England and her American colonies was not between Monarchy and Democracy but between the rights of the British people represented as they were by their own Parliament, and the rights of the American colonists represented as they were by their own colonial assemblies. In this conflict no one was a greater supporter of the rights and authority of the British Parliament than the King.
For the most part the Declaration of Independence does not complain about violations of individual human rights but concentrates on what it claims has been a systematic attempt on the part of the government in England to violate the rights and privileges of colonial representative assemblies.
The Founding Fathers believed that these assemblies that represented the leading citizens and property owners in the various colonies were the sole bulwark against monarchical tyranny on the one hand, and democratic anarchy on the other. They claimed that the King and his colonial governors have repeatedly refused to put into operation laws passed by these assemblies.
* He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
* He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his assent should be obtained;
* He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature. . . .
* He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
In some cases the English government has even gone so far as to dissolve some of these representative assemblies and leave particular colonies without any form of self-government. The legal system, military defense, and tax collection have been taken out of the hands of the colonial representatives.
* He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions of the rights of the people.
* He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected. . . .
* He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
* He has made the judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
* He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
* He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
* He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.
In the end the Declaration claimed that it came down to a contest between their own local representative assemblies and a faraway legislature that did not represent them. Because they had come to deny the authority of the British Parliament, they never used the word Parliament in the document but the following words are unmistakable.
* He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.
These acts included the following;
* For quartering large bodies of troops among us:
* For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment.
* For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
* For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
* For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
* For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.
There are elements in the Declaration that might seem offensive to modern ears. Jefferson and others in America opposed the efforts of a reforming British government to permit religious toleration of the large Catholic population in newly conquered Canada. For them Catholicism went hand-in-hand with despotism.
* For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example . . . for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.
The Declaration also complained about attempts on the part of the British government to prevent colonization of Indian territory. Indeed, it claimed that England was encouraging the Indians.
* And has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
Nevertheless, the leaders assembled in Congress insisted on their rights as Englishmen to govern themselves. They wanted government to be as close to home as possible. They would make their own laws, vote their own taxes when necessary, and be responsible for their own legal and military systems. They did not want to be governed by a faraway government that had little concern for their interests or welfare.
It was true that the Founders were men of property and status. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Franklin were not common men. Democracy would come later. For the present they wanted to protect their right to self-government. The British Parliament had declared itself "invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever." To resist, they were prepared to risk everything.
* And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. *
Thomas Martin is the O.K. Bouwsma Chair in Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Along with his fellow colleagues who are dedicated to the study of the Great Books, he teaches the works of Plato, Aristotle, G.K. Chesterton, Dostoyevsky, and Solzhenitsyn, to mention a few.
If Aristotle's Kid Had an iPod, Conor Gallagher, St. Benedict Press, Charlotte, NC, 2012.
Every parent who is interested in bringing up his children ought to read If Aristotle's Kid Had an iPod, by Conor Gallagher. Every child is longing to be fully human. In fact, as a fallen creature, he is by nature longing, along with every other human being, to be happy. The only way he can do this is by becoming his truer self. Conor Gallagher will assist you in cultivating your child's better self by using the ancient wisdom of Aristotle.
You no doubt are asking how a pagan philosopher who lived centuries ago - twenty-three to be exact - could possibly be of use to modern man? What with all the psychological advancement in child growth and development, healthier diets, vitamins, understanding a plethora of childhood disorders, learning disabilities, including attention deficient disorder and disasters, etc.
Modern educators have turned their backs on the idea that your child has a soul, that his happiness depends on using right reason to govern his passions and be virtuous. Instead, they are fixated on studying your child's neuro-psycho-socio-biological self so they can assess, appease and please his physical needs. This has filtered into the colleges of education, who readily respond to the latest social experts' findings, backed by scientific studies, on how to integrate your child into the global economy.
The public schools have dropped moral education, which would involve teaching your sons and daughters to be ladies and gentleman, for such things as " diversity awareness." The prevailing philosophy is the relativistic doctrine that whatever a person values is valuable because he values it. From this your child is learning that everyone is entitled to his opinions, to tolerate and celebrate each other's differences, and even their queerness - we are all odd in some form or fashion - to become part of the great human mosaic which rests on the philosophy of " live and let live."
So, while your child has access to more information, music, and videos stored on his iPod, iPad or iPhone, he has little sense of who he is or what he is meant to do with his life. The modern child's mind can have access to all information but lack the formation necessary to become a complete human being.
Conor Gallagher's book is a fast-paced guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which the latter wrote as a manual of conduct to instruct his own son Nicomachus, and even your child, on how to reach his full potential by being a virtuous human being guided by reason.
The book is divided into three parts, which are essential to your child's character formation: Virtue, Friendship, and Happiness.
Being virtuous consists of having moral habits that are formed through learning manners and how to make the right choices by choosing the good for its own sake. In this section, you will learn that virtue is the mean between the two extremes of excess and deficiency. Courage, for example, lies between cowardice and rashness; temperance lies between insensibility and self-indulgence; and generosity lies between greediness and wastefulness. It is important to call virtue and vice by their proper names.
The three types of friendship illustrated in part two are Useful Friendships, Pleasure Friendships, and True Friendships, which Gallagher instructively explains as Utilitarians in the Sandbox, Epicureans in the Sandbox, and Aristotle's Kid in the Sandbox. True friendship is about the good of the Other and it takes your child beyond himself. The final friendship, the Ultimate friendship, is as a child of God, for whom we are made.
Happiness is understood in the third section as the right ordering of the pleasures. As Aristotle notes, " The pleasure proper to a worthy activity is good and the pleasure proper to an unworthy activity is bad." It is important that your child learn that there are good and bad pleasures as he was made to enjoy life. But, as Gallagher notes, " [Y]ou must distinguish between raw, carnal, short-lived pleasure, and a deeper, long-lasting pleasure."
In his Metaphysics, Aristotle referred to humans as "zoon logon echon" or "animals with a rational principle." Man has a soul, and he is endowed with the principle of reason, which is his governing principle. While we can be moved by emotion, instinct, feelings of pain and pleasure, these are not governing principles.
Conor Gallagher quotes some of the most important words in history, words that are self-evident to rational creatures:
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
In other words, the mind is meant to come to a point. Moving from the general to the specific, the point of every person's life is to see the face of God.
Here we are reminded of G. K. Chesterton, who, when asked, "What is meant by the Fall?" answered with complete sincerity,
That whatever I am, I am not myself. This is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more natural to us than ourselves.
Your child is nuts. There, that got your attention, but that is natural at this point in his life. Aristotle compares human growth and development to that of an acorn that has the potential to develop into an oak three. Your child has been planted in your home; he is cute, cuddly, and curious. In order for your kid to reach his potential, you have to train him as a gardener trains the vines in his vineyard, by pruning, fertilizing, and wiring him up so he can climb, reach maturity, and bear fruit.
In order to teach their children to be better than fallen beings, to become truer selves, parents have to habituate their children in virtue. They can start with the verbal habits of using "Please," "Thank you," and "Yes sir," while making eye contact; the physical habits of standing up straight, sitting like a lady, tucking in shirttails; and, the moral habits of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance.
Your child learns by imitation, which begins in the family and extends to modeling his actions on the moral characters of heroes and saints.
Of course, every parent will want to purchase a copy of Nicomachean Ethics to read for the pursuit of happiness. To wet your whistle, here is some wisdom from the tenth book,
[W]e should try to become immortal as far as that is possible and do our utmost to live in accordance with what is highest in us. For though this is a small portion of our nature, it far surpasses everything else in power and value. One might ever regard it as each man's true self, since it is the controlling and better part. It would be strange if a man chose not to live his own life but someone else's.
Or as Conor Gallagher rightly notes in his conclusion:
If your kid seeks the path of virtue, he will be filled with peace. If he seeks true friendships, he will find more joy in giving than in receiving. And ultimately, if he is virtuous and possesses a true friend, your kid will gain true happiness, a happiness far beyond any notion of pleasure or amusement that the modern world offers. *
This Town, Two Parties and a Funeral - plus plenty of valet parking! - in America's Gilded Capital, by Mark Leibovich. Penguin Groups, ISBN 978-0-399-16130-8, pp. 387, $22.45 hardbound.
Mark Leibovich is an insider, a "member of the club." The title of the book, This Town, is an oft-used phrase among insiders, expressing "belonging, knowingness, and self-mocking civic disdain."
He has been working in Washington for sixteen years, for the Washington Post and now for The New York Times. Though he is not making lobbyist or T.V. money, he has made a good life for his wife and family, choosing to work "in the murk." He has lots of Washington friends and "also some real ones." He describes the many personalities of Washington, often with affection, sometimes mockingly, but always oh-so-accurately.
This Town is not only an insider's view of how Washington works, it is also a collection of revealing profiles. If you have been paying attention to cable news for the last fifteen years, most of the personalities he describes will be familiar. Mark loves his job and feels privileged to see "the momentous and ridiculous up close." (I couldn't find anything momentous in the book.)
There was the late Richard Holbrook, the tall and imposing Clinton-era diplomat. Richard was the sort of person at cocktail parties who looks over the heads of people he is "stuck talking to," scanning the room for important people.
Richard had come to hard times during the Obama administration. He was not getting invited to key meetings. Mark describes an incident when he accosted an aide to David Axelrod at a urinal: "Eric, I am very disappointed in you." Eric had not prompted David to usher Richard into President Obama's presence - Holbrook had a habit of pressuring people at urinals.
Mark writes that outsiders are clueless about the consuming insularity of Washington D.C.:
No matter how disappointed people are in their capital, even the most tuned-in consumers have no idea what the modern cinematic version of This Town really looks like. They might know the boilerplate about "people who have been in Washington too long," how the city is not bipartisan enough and filled with too many creatures of the Beltway. But that misses the running existential contradictions of D.C., a place where "authenticity and fantasy are close companions,". . . It misses that the city, far from being hopelessly divided, is in fact hopelessly interconnected. It misses the degree to which New Media have democratized the political conversation while accentuating Washington's insular, myopic, and self-loving tendencies. It misses, most of all, a full examination of how Washington may not serve the country well, but has in fact worked splendidly for Washington itself - a city of beautifully busy people constantly writing the story of their own lives.
And:
This town imposes on its actors a reflex toward devious and opportunistic behavior, and also a tendency to care more about public relations than any other aspect of their professional lives - maybe even personal lives.
And:
. . . it's a massive, self-sustaining entity that sucks people in, nurtures addiction to its spoils, and imposes a peculiar psychology on big fish and minnows alike. It can turn complex, gifted, and often damaged, individuals into hollowed-out Kabuki players acting in the maintenance of their fragile brands.
A "brand" is a measurement of style, influence, and prominence in the pecking order. A person's brand involves personality, public political affiliation, and, of course, power. A brand is a self-created, marketable commodity that can be parleyed into regular appearances on T.V., book deals, a spot on the speaker's circuits. A successful brand is key to wealth and fame.
Mark knows the "big fish and the minnows."
There is Marshall Wittmann - "career vagabond," "ideological contortionist," and
"political pontificator." According to Marshall "There is no sweeter word in Washington than your own name," and it's all about having a shtick and role, and honing them in a way that creates a brand.
Marshall is a Jew who grew up in Waco, Texas. He worked for Cesar Chavez, the labor activist, in the1970s; for Linda Chavez, Republican Senate candidate (1980s); for Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition (1990s); for Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council (2000s). He was the top aide to the Independent Senator Joe Lieberman.
He was a Trotskyite, then a Zionist, then a Reaganite. He was the only Jew to be the chief lobbyist for the Christian Coalition. After Senator Leiberman retired he became the top spokesperson for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
There is Kurt Bardella, a 27-year-old Asian-American aid to Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA). Kurt displays "frantic vulnerability." He is a "jittery wreck, working long into the night." Kurt says of himself:
I'm never that far away from blowing myself up completely. . . . It's all part and parcel of my inferiority complex. I struggle with things. But generally I'm pretty good at channeling this in a way that serves Darrell Issa.
The Washington ethos is in Kurt's words:
You can tell that there were certain people that everyone kind of gravitated to. They walked in, and people just knew who they were. I remember thinking, "I wonder what it would be like to be one of those people. The cool kids."
He told Mark
. . . There is that place to get in Washington that everybody is striving for. . . . Once you get to that place, that inside place, you kind of just know it. . . . It's exciting. . . . But you're never sure if that feeling is going to last, or if other people are seeing you as someone on the inside. It puts you on edge, constantly. All you know is, once you've experienced being on the inside, you don't want to lose that feeling.
The divides in Washington are not between the economic haves and have-nots, but are between those inside and those who are not; and the feeling of inclusion is subjective and fluid.
Mark writes of Kurt:
I was really more interested in Kurt, an emblematic super-staffer who was making Washington work for him and trying to move up in The Club. He was a kind of will-to-power orphan who was feverishly devising his persona on the fly. I loved the sheer unabashedness, even jubilance, of Kurt's networking and ladder climbing and determination to make it in The Club.
Meg Greenfield, veteran editorial page editor of the Washington Post, made a sharp observation about Washington in her memoir:
Loners may be able to sell themselves electorally at home, but they cannot win in Washington, no matter how bad or good they are. Winning here means winning people over - sometimes by argument, sometimes by craft, sometimes by obsequiousness and favors, sometimes by pressure, and sometimes by a chest-thumping, ape-type show of strength that makes it seem prudent to get with the ape's program.
Mark writes that partisan divisions are largely an illusion. The journalists, Democrats, Republicans, super-lawyers, super-lobbyists, super-staffers
. . . run together like the black-tie dinners or the caricature drawings of notable Washingtonians on the wall at the Palm on Nineteenth Street. [The Palm is a steak restaurant.]
Mark was at a party (everyone yearns for an invite to the best parties) where he encountered high-profile members of the club. The Mardi-Gras themed party was in honor of the birthday of Betsy Fischer, the executive producer of NBC's "Meet the Press," the Sunday morning talk show.
Everyone was congratulating each other on "a recent story, book deal, job, show, speech, or haircut." Greta Van Susteren of Fox News was chatting with David Axelrod next to a "tower of cupcakes." In the basement a "bipartisan conga line was coursing through the room to a loud hip-hop song" - the conga line is an apt metaphor for The Club, the inner-ring rising above the economic doldrums outside Washington.
The people at the party included John Meacham, Pulitzer-prize winning author, David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell of NBC news, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve (married to Andrea Mitchell), Hilary Rosen of CNN and spokesperson for the Obama presidential campaign, Jack Quinn, the fix-it lawyer of Bill Clinton's administration, Terry McAuliffe, super-fundraiser for the Clinton administration and former chairman of the Democrat Party, and Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican Party.
Ed and Terry are "outstanding friends." They "forged a green room marriage" (the green room is place where people wait before appearing on a political talk show). Ed and Terry would tangle on air, each slinging their respective talking points as chairmen of the opposing parties.
After leaving their positions they became partners on the paid speaker's circuit: "top dog" Democrat and Republican putting on a show ($50,000 a pop), disagreeing without being disagreeable. "I love Terry," says Ed, "and I hate myself for it."
Ed Gillespie and Jack Quinn are also "dear" friends and former business partners. They both share working-class, Irish Catholic backgrounds: Jack in New York and Ed in New Jersey. Ed began his career in the capital as a parking lot attendant.
They are both "pugnacious but generally respectful on camera, congenial and knowing off-camera." They formed a partnership: Quinn Gillespie & Associates, believed to be one of the first bipartisan "one-stop-shopping firms" lobbying successful members of both parties.
Mark asked Jack what appealed to him about Ed when they first started bonding in green rooms. Jack said "Ed got the Joke." Mark asks:
What was the joke? Who was it on? Did it refer to the conceit that much of the Washington economy - lobbying, political consulting, and cable news - is predicated on the perpetuation of conflict, not the resolution of problems? Did "the joke" refer to the fact that all of the shouting partisanship that we see on television is just winking performance art? And in reality, off-air, everyone in Washington is joined in a multilateral conga line of potential business partners? What was "the joke?"
Quinn said:
Ed and I both appreciate that everyone involved in the world in which we operate is a patriot.
The joke is on us, the outsiders.
Almost every major corporation, union, or trade association hires lobbyists, or an army of lobbyists. They pay handsome retainers "often in the neighborhood of $50,000 a month" - sometimes just to keep a powerful lobbyist from working for the other side.
Lobbyists are Washington's "middleman economy," connecting clients with government officials. Often lobbyists disguise themselves with misleading titles in "strategic communications" or "strategic public affairs." The Atlantic magazine reported that in 1974, three percent of retiring members become lobbyists. Now 50 percent of Senators and 42 percent of Congressmen become lobbyists. Also "tens of thousands" of congressional staff move into lobbying jobs.
Why should former Congressmen or Senators leave when they can "monetize" their Washington contacts? A former Senator can:
. . . use his specialized knowledge and access to call on old colleagues, friends, and fund-raisers to advance his clients' interests in bending a law or provision to their favor. He knows not only whom to call but also the phone number and who hired the staffer and precisely what to say to make things "happen."
. . . corporations have figured out that despite the exorbitant costs of hiring lobbyists, the ability to shape or tweak or kill even the tiniest legislative loophole can be worth tens of millions of dollars.
There are dozens of examples in This Town of enterprising politicians.
John Breaux, a former Democrat Congressman and Senator, remarked that his vote could not be bought but "could be rented." He was called a "cheap whore." John retorted that he was "not cheap!" After leaving the Senate John started his own lobbying firm just down the road from the White House.
Senator Trent Lott was the Republican Majority Leader. His response to Senator Tom Coburn's reform bill was "there would be plenty of time for 'good government' after Election Day."
Mark asked retired Senator Lott why he stayed in Washington. Trent said that's "where all the problems are" and he could "make a difference," and also, that "Washington is where the money is. . . . That's generally what keeps people here."
Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan was "quick to get all contemptuously righteous about people on the Hill cashing in their public service." After retiring he joined Arent Fox. Former Senators aren't allowed to lobby for two years, so Byron doesn't, but he "oversees a staff of lobbyists."
The example of Dick Gephardt, former Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives, is "egregious even by D.C.'s standards." Dick, a Teamster's son, represented a working-class district in Missouri for twenty-eight years. He was a champion of organized labor. He would appear in Teamsters' halls in a union windbreaker booming "I'm fighting for yoouuu." AFL-CIO head John Sweeney called him "a real friend of working people and a powerful voice for working families on issue after issue."
Upon retirement Dick joined the Washington office of DLA Piper, and then started his own lobbying outfit, Gephardt Government Affairs. His corporate clients included Goldman Sachs, Boeing Company, Visa Inc., and Spirit AeroSystems, where he directed a "tough anti-union campaign."
While a Congressman, Dick supported a House resolution condemning the Armenian genocide of 1915. While a lobbyist working for the Turkish government (being paid $70,000 a month) he opposed the resolution condemning the Armenian genocide of 1915, according to the Washington Post.
Mark sees Republican Haley Barbour as a "throwback" to when politicians weren't afraid to tell dirty jokes, to brag about smoking cigars, and to talk about their "drinking buddies." Haley is
. . . a perfect specimen of a fat-cat Republican that liberal Hollywood screenwriters would concoct to conjure the perfect specimen of a fat-cat Republican (southern, cigar-smoking, rich, fat. . . . )
Haley was the chairman of the Republican Party, political director of the Reagan White House, "legendary" tobacco lobbyist, and Governor of Mississippi. Haley is a Washington favorite. Columnist Michael Kinsley believes many veteran reporters yearn for Haley to run for President. Kinsley wrote that Haley
. . . plays on the social insecurity among journalists. . . . [He] doesn't literally wink as he spins, but he manages to send the message: This is all a big game - a big wonderful game - and you have the privilege of playing it with me.
Even journalists become lobbyists, as did the "once eminent financial reporter" Jeffrey Birnbaum. Jeffrey covered the lobbying sector for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He co-wrote the book Showdown at Gucci Gulch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists, and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform. Jeffrey left journalism to lobby for Barbour, Griffith & Rogers.
Mark writes:
People move within The Club all the time, especially in these lucrative Washington days in which the so-called revolving door has been so lavishly greased. Journalists become People on TV or go into public relations or lobbying; politicians and staffers become lobbyists or consultants or commentators; lobbyists (like Haley) run for office or go back into the government to "refresh their credentials," or earning power, before taking their rightful place back in the retainer class.
. . . Lobbyists joke about the big-game "purists" whom they can lure to their side. They speak of the naive but powerful suckers who have left money on the table by staying in their lower-paying journalism or elected or government staff jobs.
. . . K Street people often boast of the purists on the Hill, in the White House, and increasingly in the journalism ranks whom they have corrupted or deflowered. Or "co-opted," as the former Senate-Majority-Leader-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott vowed to do with the incoming group of Tea Party-propelled House members a few months later. [Ed] Rogers hailed Birnbaum to me as "one of the highest-ranking people ever to switch teams."
. . . The overriding message . . . is that everyone, ultimately, is playing for the same team.
Jack Abramoff was a Republican lobbyist convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges; he spent forty-three months in federal prison. In his memoir Jack wrote that the best way for lobbyists to manipulate lawmakers is to suggest casually that the legislators join the lobbying firm after their public service. Jack Wrote:
Now, the moment I said that we owned them. And what does that mean? Every request from our office, every request of our clients, everything that we want, they're gonna do. And not only that, they're gonna think of things we can't think of to do.
So, people who believe in good government are presented with a predicament. Whom can we trust? Do the Washingtonians we admire believe the things they profess? Are they sincere now? Will they be co-opted later? Are they frauds from start, just biding their time until they cash in?
Considering the insider's game that Washington politics is, with its ever-shifting alliances, where civic ideals are cover stories, how can we place faith in anyone who works there? Any modest organization without bribe money lacks influence.
The partisan gridlock so often lamented is an illusion. The business of Washington politics is not gridlocked - it's burgeoning, just like the national debt.
Intelligent, observant, caring and involved Americans, on both sides of the political spectrum, are bamboozled. We misunderstand when we focus only on ideology, because the hearts of the Washington players aren't invested in ideology - ideology is a tool. The hearts of the players are in self-advancement and in the preservation of the system of self-advancement.
Americans on the left should see that the many programs designed to uplift the poor have worked precisely as designed: the redistributors of money are uplifted; the poor remain poor. Americans believing in limited government should see that many establishment-type Republicans aren't interested in smaller government.
Who is genuinely anti-establishment? Look for those who are demonized by consultants and politicians from both parties, and by most of the media: Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Sarah Palin come to mind.
The first step in solving a problem is to see it. Mark Leibovich has exposed the players of Washington, D.C. The solution is to restore the checks and balances we had at the founding, and to shrink the power of Washington. The national debt will break the current system. We have to remember our heritage. *
The following is a summary of the August/September 2013 issue of the St. Croix Review:
In "Co-opting Saul Alinsky," Barry MacDonald writes about the exploits of James O'Keefe and his team as they secretly record liberal power brokers caught in the act of shameful and embarrassing conduct.
Mark Hendrickson, "In My Native City of Detroit, Atlas Has at Long Last Shrugged," he points out the corrupt conduct that bankrupted a once rich city; in "Big Brother Is Increasingly Watching You," he shows how government secrecy has been growing, and privacy had been declining: in "With Gulliver Asleep, the Lilliputians Are Almost Done Smothering the U.S. Economy," he points at the crushing federal burdens on the economy; in "The View from Londonistan," he relates his up close experience of Islamist hostility to Western values in England, and points to English history for the solution.
Herbert London, in "President Obama and Trayvon Martin," counters President Obama's inflammatory rhetoric with crime statics on black criminality; in "The Lack of Seriousness," he looks for persistence and determination in culture and politics; in "The Supreme Court and Voter Registration Law," he questions the reasoning of Justice Antonin Scalia; in "Equality and the Court," he considers the Supreme Court's recent decisions on affirmative action and gay marriage and sees diminished reliance on fundamental belief.
Allan Brownfeld, in "The Death of Trayvon Martin Has Unleashed a Wave of Demagoguery That Must Be Answered," notes many sensible comments in response to the trail of George Zimmerman; in "Freedom, Security, and Outsourcing Intelligence: Confronting Many Unanswered Questions," he doubts whether we can trust the government with its new surveillance powers, and he notes that a vast number of intelligence analysts work for private companies, and these analysts are poorly supervised.
Paul Kengor, in "Clinton's Progress: Bill and Hillary Clinton Embrace Gay Marriage," notes how "Progressives" embody an ideology of no fixed principles; in "The Progressive Income Tax Turns 100," he provides a history of the progressive's passion for the redistribution of income; in "Remembering Herb Romerstein - Death of a Cold Warrior and National Treasure," he recalls the life of an "unafraid, cheerful, colorful," anti-communist warrior.
Jigs Gardner, in "Speed the Plow," writes about the best time to harvest hay, tough cattle and good-milking cattle, very grudging soil, and the stultifying influence of the attitude: "It was good enough for my father and grandfather, so I guess it's good enough for me!"
Jigs Gardner in "Hemingway and Kipling Redux," takes a deep look at these two great writers.
In "Survey of Conservative Magazines: A Bright Light," Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin write about an essay by George Weigel, "Reality and Public Policy," that nails down the reasons why so much of our politics is in denial.
In "The Illiberal Fruits of Corruption," Joseph S. Fulda writes on case law about police corruption and corrupt governance.
In "Americans at Work: Diesel Engineer," Fred Marcus explains how mechanical engineers operate, how much their efforts cost the company, and the miracles they accomplish: 96 percent of the soot produced by diesel engines has been eliminated since 1996!
Jigs Gardner reviews Eco-terrorism: Green Power, Black Death, by Paul Driessen, and Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa, by Robert Paarlberg.
Eco-terrorism: Green Power, Black Death, by Paul Driessen. Merril Press, P.O. Box 1682, Belleville, WA 98009 $15.00.
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa, by Robert Paarlberg,Harvard University Press.
I think Paul Driessen must be an idealist because he seems to expect people to do what they claim they are doing, that is, to live up to their proclaimed ideals. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, he has chosen to examine the international actions of the Green movement, and there, amid much gaseous verbiage, he has discovered Green pressure groups laboring mightily, under the disguise of "corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and the precautionary principle" to prevent development in the poor nations of the world. It is a shocking story, made all the more appalling by the way Mr. Driessen frames it in the pompous phraseology of high-minded environmental protection. He shows how the eco-imperialists try to prevent use of any energy sources other than solar or wind, how they use pseudo-science to prevent the use of genetically modified seed, or even the importation of grain produced by genetically modified plants. Food for the starving? Nosiree. And then there's the ban on DDT and the consequent death of millions from malaria. And so it goes, as Greens put pressure on U.S. corporations to make their policies congruent with Green objectives, which means continuing poverty in the poor countries of Africa, because Greens don't want them to develop as we did, which they regard with horror. This book is an excellent account of how zealous Green ideologues have created a number of supposedly high-minded institutions to exert power over the national and international actions of much of the corporate world. An eye-opener for conservatives.
Mr. Paarlberg's book, concerned with the same issues as Mr. Driessen's book, is much more closely focused on African rural poverty, and he is very specific about the agencies (like the World Bank) and policies involved in this depressing story. If you want to learn the exact dimensions of the problem, this book is invaluable.
Unfortunately, the author's understanding of why rich countries push such disastrous policies on poor countries is wholly inadequate and confusing. His reasoning: Rachel Carson was right - we were destroying the environment, and thanks to Silent Spring, Americans were alerted to the danger and the Green movement flourished. Among the results were growing skepticism about scientific research, especially in agriculture, and an aversion to the modern farming that makes our abundant and inexpensive food possible. Mr. Paarlberg, perhaps because he grew up in a rural community among relatives who were farmers, is more than ordinarily sensitive to the attitudes and ideas surrounding farming, so he is able to articulate the complex feelings involved when an urbanized public (especially one that has recently moved to the country) contemplates modern farming. These people are believers in the Beautiful Simple Country Life. They are convinced, for instance, that locally produced food, preferably "organic," is better than the products of sophisticated modern agriculture. Paarlberg's clinching argument is that our agriculture is so productive that we do not need genetically modified crops, which is why we oppose them and why we supposedly oppose their use in Africa.
No close observer of the countryside over the last 50 years, no close observer of what I call the Country Fakes, those urbanites who began moving to the countryside in the 1960s, would fault Mr. Paarlberg's observations, but his conclusions, as well as his premises, are mistaken. Rachel Carson was wrong, and the Green movement spawned in her name, is a disaster. Mr. Driessen is right to say that Green eco-imperialists want to withhold modern agricultural development from Africa because they believe such development is bad (if not evil), and they do not want Africa to develop as we did. They are quite content with the impoverishment of Africa (which they see as noble and enriching), and they want to impoverish us, too. This book is an excellent survey of what's going on (or not going on) in Africa; to understand why, read Paul Driessen's book.
I am a mechanical engineer. I received my Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1993. Thereupon, I began full-time employment with Detroit Diesel in the diesel engine business. Two years later, I resigned Detroit Diesel and joined another company's engine division and continue to be employed there to this day.
Engineering is a creative occupation in which engineers design useful things that people are willing to pay money for. In a very real sense, engineers design the things that make the world go around. My career in engine engineering has involved mostly the design of engines or the application of engines into vehicles. I had roles in manufacturing and purchasing.
During the past two decades, the vast majority of the activity in which I have been involved has been related to meeting exhaust emissions regulations. My work has involved making the necessary changes to the internal parts of the engine (e.g., pistons, valves, cylinder heads, and so on) to make them compatible with the performance changes that were made to the engine in order to meet emissions regulations or other requirements. This type of work can be reduced to three basic areas: design, testing/experimentation, and problem solving.
As an example, for a number of years I did work on the valvetrain portion of the engine. This part of the engine is responsible for allowing air and fuel into, and exhaust out of, the engine. Valvetrain components are sensitive to the pressures and temperatures inside of the engine and are made of highly precise and relatively expensive materials. Emissions regulations and performance requirements (e.g., more power, better fuel efficiency) generally cause the temperatures and pressures inside the engine to go ever higher and higher. This presents the challenge to the engineer of improving the capability of the internal components while still making them affordable.
The process works as follows. The customer or government regulating body (e.g., EPA) establishes criteria that the engine must meet in order to be sold for a particular application, say a bulldozer. Performance engineers will tune the engine in a test cell until the engine meets the new criteria. This often requires extensive changes to the fuel system, air system and other systems on the engine. It is then the job of the engine component engineers to make certain that the rest of the engine will work under the new operating conditions. Essentially, a new component is designed, tested, and refined until it meets all of the requirements of the customer and the business. My role in engine engineering has been to repeat this process for successive changes in requirements.
In a typical scenario there will be dozens of engineers working in an office environment on just one part of an engine or machine. These engineers, myself included, spend most of their time at their desks in front of a computer. Their fundamental task is engineering design work using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software or simulation and analysis software. These tools are used to develop and evaluate a design in its initial stages. This early stage of design may last months or years depending upon the complexity of the activity. The engineers will also spend a good deal of time managing their projects and interacting with other engineers and support groups in person or via telephone, email and other electronic means.
Again, this example pertains to just one part of an engine or machine. Taken as a whole, there are literally thousands of engineers, generally in groups of dozens or hundreds in a particular location, across the corporation (and the globe). All of these engineers will be working toward the same basic goal. That is, redesigning an engine or machine to meet emissions criteria, or other criteria associated with a particular product development program. To get a sense for the annual labor cost associated with this type of activity, let's use a simple example. Let's assume that there are a total of five thousand engineers working on an emissions program and that the average cost of an individual's wages and benefits is $100,000 annually. Just these labor costs alone would equate to half-a-billion dollars annually. The actual total cost of this activity is greater than this and peaked at around two billion dollars per year during a recent emissions update program.
A particularly aggressive set of requirements over the past two decades or so have been those that have been imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Beginning in the late 1980s, EPA set about to "reconcile the diesel engine with the environment." Regardless of your political views on the issue, from the outset it was clear that the intention of the EPA was to make the "dirty diesel engine" extinct. From that time until now, there have been successive and ever-tightening levels of regulation placed upon diesel engines and powered machines every 3-5 years. From 1996 until 2014, regulated exhaust constituents such as particulate matter ("soot") and oxides of nitrogen will have been reduced by 96 percent. That is, at the end of 18 years of regulation-driven changes, the total emissions level (of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen) will be at just 4 percent of their previous levels. It has been shown that for some exhaust constituents, the air coming out of the exhaust pipe is actually cleaner than the air going into the engine.
So, here we have a 96 percent reduction in diesel emissions balanced against a cost of at least the billions of dollars, for just one company. The total cost would multiply many fold across the entire industry. The stated benefit to society has been measurable and significant reduction of diesel engine emissions in the air we breathe. Exactly how much this affects the health of people and the planet is a question best left to those who specialize in such things. I have provided the reader with an idea of the challenge and cost of achieving such regulatory goals. *