Here is a link where you can read the Dave Grossman article, “On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs”, in its entirety. Let’s hope more people choose to be sheepdogs!
Survival: The Mind-set
Reading Gladius Maximus’ excellent essay, “Gimme A Knife”, brought to the fore some thoughts on this subject of survival. Since getting hooked on my Kindle a few years back, I frequently download obscure free books on a range of topics(mostly history, but some literature and the occasional odd title that catches my fancy), in addition to the many I buy. To save you the inconvenience, I’ll add this off-topic comment: don’t download free public domain books from Barnes and Noble. The formatting is awful and each one starts with a message from Google, stating each book has been carefully scanned to preserve it. How each page ends up with many words containing symbols in lieu of letters, I know not, but save yourself the aggravation of reading this mess. Amazon’s public domain books far surpass Barnes and Noble’s.
Now, back to the topic, a few months ago, I read my amazon.com freebie, Willa Cather’s, My Antonia (available free here or here). This novel exemplifies the “put one’s hand to the plough” mentality that separates those who persevere and thrive and those who prefer to wallow in misery. The young male main character, Jim Burden, narrates the story of moving to early 20th century Nebraska to live with his grandparents, who were early homesteaders. Jim becomes fascinated with neighboring homesteaders, the Shimerdas, a family of Bohemian immigrants. Throughout the story, Jack’s grandmother exemplifies the indomitable American spirit and she’s a testament to planning not just to survive, but to live as comfortably as possible in an unforgiving environment. The Shimerdas, city-dwellers in their home country, fail to take responsibility for their own survival, necessitating good neighbors to prevent their demise. In one scene the grandmother packs a hamper to take to the Shimerdas, she offers this line:
‘Now, Jake,’ grandmother was saying, ‘if you can find that old rooster that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we’ll take him along. There’s no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn’t have got hens from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I reckon she was confused and didn’t know where to begin. I’ve come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, no matter what you don’t have.”
Despite the Shimerdas family’s hardships and suffering caused by their parents lack of survival skills, Antonia Shimerda and her siblings (thanks to neighbors and others in their rural Nebraska community), get on the path toward successfully homesteading and thriving in America.
I’ve noticed this dichotomy in how various regions of the country respond to natural disasters too. In the heartland, entire towns were swept away by flooding, yet you saw neighbors helping neighbors and I recall one reporter interviewing a young man, who was helping build a sandbag barricade. This young man, nonchalantly told the reporter that his family’s home had already been washed away one town upriver, so there was nothing they could do about that. He told the reporter they decided to come and try and help their neighbors save their homes. Yet, when natural disasters strike urban areas, the scene quickly turns into political posturing about the federal response, looting concerns, and a general spectacle of people who don’t seem well equipped to survive. To be clear this isn’t a racist comment, I’ve observed this in Long Island, New Orleans, LA, and other urban areas and I think the difference is in the sense of community that still flickers in rural America, that no longer burns in urban areas.
During Hurricane Katrina, GEN Russell Honore became one of the most prominent faces of Katrina. After Hurricane Katrina he wrote a book, aptly titled, “Survival: How A Culture Of Preparedness Can Save You And Your Family From Disasters” (here). I bought the book, thinking my husband might want to read it, because he worked for GEN Honore, earlier in their careers and my husband came home almost daily with stories (many very amusing).
When I read the first few pages, I decided to read the whole book. His book offers up many excellent remedies for improving our state and federal response to disasters, but the main take away he pushes to the forefront is that you are the main driver of you and your own family’s survival. He describes his rural upbringing working on his father’s farm and later working for pay for a neighboring dairy farmer , Grover Chustz. He describes Chustz as lacking formal education, but being highly creative, innovative and most of all striving to make sure everything on his farm was done well. Honore describes how Chustz taught him a fundamental lesson that carried him through a highly successful military career. Chustz pulled out a single wooden match and had Honore break it. Next, he pulled out two matches, put them together and had him break them, which proved harder to do. Then he pulled out four matches and Honore couldn’t break them. He explained to Honore that’s the power of a team. I believe that’s the challenge we face in America – rebuilding the power of the team. With the rise of the Tea party movement, the phrase, “Take Back America” took flight, but perhaps we ought to readjust that to rebuilding the American team.
Reality TV garbage, like Doomsday Preppers and the fixation on extreme survival skills, like Bear Grylls, marginalize the seriousness of learning practical steps to take to be prepared. In fact, stockpiling and building a fortress probably won’t increase your odds of survival anyway. The surest way to survive lies in building that team, where individual strengths and skills can lead to innovation, creative-brainstorming and more ideas on how to tackle our problems, even in the most dire situation. If you are stranded by rising water, calling Washington won’t help you, but calling your neighbors, who can pool resources sure might.
In a previous post, I mentioned federalism as the key to revitalizing America, in hopes of pulling back on some of the federal encroachment on states’ rights. And the vital building blocks to stronger states lies in rebuilding our sense of community. This isn’t about celebrity-driven national movements or the Glenn Beck type extravaganzas. It’s about concerned citizens within communities sharing concerns, ideas, pooling resources and taking charge of their own survival. Considering the fractured nature of not only American communities, but more importantly American families, this team-building effort can’t be done overnight. In fact, it could take years, but without it, we will keep making those 3 am calls to Washington and realize, no one is at home.
Filed under American Character, American History, Food for Thought
Another Tribute To The Life Of Judge Robert Bork
Andrew McCarthy, who writes for National Review and PJ Media penned a very nice tribute to the late Judge Robert Bork (here). He lists some of Bork’s writings and I just downloaded Bork’s “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline from amazon.com (here), which I’ll start reading tomorrow. I could have been reading Antonin Scalia’s new book, “Reading Law”, but my one son called my other son to discuss whether Mom (me) would like this book. The other son told him that he didn’t think so, because it’s detailed, technical stuff about law. I told both sons, that I get it, “you don’t think I can understand the nuances of law.” Both rushed to assure me that wasn’t the case and the son who was thinking of giving me that book, sheepishly admitted he bought the book for himself and he’s started reading it. So, while I’m waiting to borrow my almost Christmas present, I can enjoy “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”.
Filed under Uncategorized
Thoughts on the Arab Spring
Yes, I know it’s Christmas and I’ve already got my Christmas dinner started, so between dashes back to the kitchen to keep dinner moving along I’m going to jot down a few thoughts on why just about everyone in punditry, left, right and in between, gets it wrong on the Arab Spring. The first mistake many people make is what I’ll call cultural relativism, a natural off-shoot of our moral relativism, where we try to replace moral absolutes (i.e. right or wrong) with some ever-shifting sliding scale of excuse-making and finger-pointing of causes.. Once we muddy the water on defining behavior as right or wrong, we quickly get sucked down by underwater currents , akin to swimming in water-filled old quarry holes that abounded where I grew up in rural PA. As years of this muddled thinking spread by that contagion, I’ll refer to as the loons of academia, well, now many people hesitate to take a moral stance on just about any behavior, or they try to rationalize away individual responsibility for bad behavior. That same type of brainwashing on evaluating cultures spread like kudzu took root here in the American South, leading to our present strategic failures. If we start with all cultures are of equal merit and no culture has a superior value system, to better the life of its citizenry, then we end up quickly drowning in this swimming hole of cultural relativism. If we survive, we end up flailing about looking for some sound underpinnings to our understanding of what is going on in the world, what the likely outcomes of unfolding events will be and what these events mean to American interests.
The petals of optimism about the Arab Spring faded quickly, spreading seeds of discontent, disillusion and disconnected reasoning blowing across the strategic plain. Americans like everything fast, not just their cars and food, no, we like fast solutions, even when dealing with conflicts and cultures, dating back two millennia. I’ve read so much about the Arab Spring written by supposed experts on the Middle East, yet sadly most of these pages would serve a more useful purpose lining the bottom of a birdcage to catch the droppings. I’m quickly going to run through a few common fallacies that weave an uneven magic carpet of Arab pipe-dreams. My Christmas ham is happily baking so lets start with Islam (okay, I apologize that wasn’t culturally sensitive). Islam does not mean peace, it means submission to the will of God and obedience to his law. So, in Islam, God’s law is defined by the prophet, Mohammad and every aspect of Islamic culture is defined by this. The concept of separation of church and state falls as an anathema to Islamic teachings. Holding “democratic” elections does not a free, democratic, pluralistic society make. Cultures still steeped in tribal forms can’t jump the arc of historical enlightenment and instantaneously fall at the end, finding Jeffersonian democratic pots of gold. . And a last point is Islam lends itself more easily to autocratic forms of government, because the overwhelming consensus in these countries is that they want sharia law, which sets the stage for a theocracy (hint, that can never be a free, pluralistic society). Even the Puritans who fled persecution in England initially set-up a theocratic form of government and while lots of historians tend to miss this fact, cherry-picking only American themes they like (like how they tried communal living and it failed – strike one against communism in America) , the truth is they weren’t a pluralistic, welcoming group initially. There’s an excellent five-volume set of “The Life of George Washington” written by John Marshall and Volume 1 deals with a very detailed history of America’s founding from the very beginning (long before Washington’s birth). Marshall explains how other Protestants were run out of some Puritan towns, because they didn’t allow free exercise of religion, except for their own. This changed over time, but Catholics faced persecution in other colonies, as did various Protestant sects. So, our religious tolerance wasn’t at the high-water mark at America’s founding. The Marshall series is available for free at amazon.com (here) or volume 1 is at gutenberg.org (here).
So, then we reach the conundrum of why do some countries make successful democratic breakthroughs and others don’t and why are there so few successful democratic breakthroughs. There’s no exact recipe for democratic success, but having the basic mix of vital ingredients (free enterprise, democratic institutions within the society, property rights to list a few) helps increase the odds for success. The Mid-East, except for Israel, has none of the ingredients on hand. Trying to wing it with rhetorical substitutions and pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking won’t produce the desired results. I kept noticing this entrenched belief system when that clamor arose about the Palestinians and all the Jimmy Carteresque blather about holding elections, which led not to joyous democracy, instead it led to the posthaste election of Hamas. Even western-style image makeovers can’t turn a sow’s ear (like Arafat) into a silk purse and we end up with the same old dictators and tyrants. Here’s the best analysis of why the road to free, pluralistic, democratic governance has more potholes and road construction signs than highways in PA. It’s a book (sorry the kindle version isn’t free and the formatting is lacking) titled, “America’s Inadvertent Empire” by the late GEN William Odom and Robert Dujarric. GEN Odom’s wisdom will be sadly missed and I greatly admired him, in fact, I long for generals of his stature (alas, we’ve sunk to the GEN Casey/Petraeus/ Clapper politico types) . As a starting point in getting back on rational strategic terrain, this book maps out an excellent route toward understanding the landmarks to look for along the difficult road toward democracy. These are a few of my thoughts on what’s wrong with our American foreign policy in the Arab world. I’m not an expert on much of anything except needlework and homemaking, so I welcome opinions and comments. Time for Christmas dinner. Merry Christmas everyone!
Filed under Foreign Policy
Merry Christmas!
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the LORD” (Luke 2:11).
Filed under Uncategorized
Suggested Reading
Just think about how much better off we would have been advising our young officers to download a free copy (here) of “The Story of the Malakand Field Force” written by Winston Churchill rather than trying to feed them slop about “winning the hearts and minds” and handing them copies of the fabricated tripe in “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson, which GEN Petraeus was so fond of passing out. Just a thought.
Filed under Foreign Policy
“Disposable People”?
I often read news from foreign news sites and considering our Cold War focus on the USSR, I’ve got a particular fascination with Russia. Yes, the Cold warrior mentality lives on in some of us. We were living in West Germany when the Soviet menace collapsed. For those in the US military that meant training to defend the Fulda Gap.
For the best ever depiction of what that war might have looked like, nothing tops Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” (my all-time favorite Clancy novel, bar none).
So, despite the entire defensive posture changing for western Europe, the same old geopolitical points of friction remain. Geography doesn’t change, nor do deep-seated cultural perceptions. Too many geography deficient morons and clowns without a clue about history, within the highest levels of our government, provide little more in the way of meaningful analysis than potted plants.
I came across this opinion piece (here) in Pravda. Sadly, this is the sort of ridiculous drivel that our kids often hear from their college professors. While courses for cultural studies abound in American colleges, courses on military history have been almost completely killed off by the leftist loons who control academia. Thus we get intelligent people spouting drivel, like “Islam means peace”, to try and rationalize away the expanding threat of Islamism. And this educational void on teaching military history and insisting that you can’t understand other cultures (or our own) or have a clue how the world operates, if you don’t understand military history needs to be addressed.
We shouldn’t have people working within the State Department (to include Madame Secretary) or Pentagon, who are completely uneducated on the history of war. Oh, no, that phrase “history of war” brought to mind one of my favorite military historians, John Keegan, who passed away recently.
Okay, back to the subject at hand. We have to understand not only what our allies think of us, but it behooves us to learn as much about our adversaries as possible too. The piece contains this pearl of wisdom, “The capitalist system sees people as a disposable commodity, to be thrown out if not productive or useful in some way.” It felt almost like I was in a time warp back to the 8os.
Filed under Foreign Policy
Watching Elephants Dance….
Well, we’ve just witnessed another GOP spectacle of ineptitude with the Plan B collapse. It’s way past time for the GOP to have a “come to Jesus” moment and figure out what the heck the party stands for. It’s like watching elephants doing the hokey-pokey, while the Obama spinmeisters perform complex media waltzes. Last week I came across this short piece (here) on why conservatives are worried that there’s no way to stop Obama. It hit me as probably the closest to the truth take on President Obama. As this writer suggests, the Obama fundamental transformation doesn’t include any concern about the “fiscal cliff” or safeguarding America’s future. This past election has left me feeling very discouraged about our great country, because I truly believed the vast majority of Americans cared about the direction our government has taken in the past four years. A young man at work, who just graduated from high school told me this election was his his first time voting. He voted for Romney and he seemed perplexed why Romney hadn’t won and his take was , “I guess most people want free stuff.” I’m afraid he’s right, except all these people wanting “free” stuff seem totally oblivious that other people have to work hard to provide all this “free” stuff. Watching the deliberate escalation of class warfare leads me to believe that Obama truly intends to alienate conservatives and attempt to take down The Constitution and replace it with his regulatory tyranny. And he’ll do it with smiley face populist appeals and duping people into believing it’s because he cares. Lord, protect us from utopian do-gooders!
So, what stands in President Obama’s way? Not much, really!!! I’m already sick to death of Republican pundits offering up all these watered down values that they think will attract particular demographics of the electorate, where they think the GOP needs to pick up voters. What the GOP needs to do is define the party around clear-cut values and fundamental constitutional principles. If it becomes some progressive-light party, then I want no part of it. Our politically correct culture brainwashes people into believing that not offending a single person and appealing to everyone (branding above principles) lights the path toward GOP ballot success. I always told my kids that whenever they join any group in life, “you are joining them, they aren’t joining you”. By constantly chipping away at core beliefs and foundational principles, many great private organizations crumble into dim shadows of their original group. Purpose before polls has got to be the GOP mantra. Every parent uses the home truth rhetorical question, “if your friends jump off a cliff, are you going to jump too?”, yet at every turn the media throws out a poll number as if that denotes whether a stance has merit. It’s way past time for the American values reeducation tract to begin. So what if only 49% or 25% or even 5% of the public agrees with us! Stop falling for that mainstream media trap and feint right with core principles over polls! If we believe in the principles behind our policies, that should motivate our party’s leaders to knuckle down and sell our ideas. Most important changes in American culture were met with public distrust or disapproval at the beginning, so being on the wrong side of the polling curve shouldn’t be a reason to fold up our tent and hike over to set up camp with our ideological foes. After we’re clear on what we stand for, then it’s time to move on to explaining our purpose in ways that appeal to various demographics.
Enough of weepy John Boehner and the man for all sides of political issues, John McCain. And is there any Republican that isn’t sick to death of Lindsey Graham’s grandstanding and hypocrisy. Oh, yes Lindsey and John, you pushed for military intervention in Libya and Syria, then when it blows up in our face in Benghazi, you turn tail and attack the President’s policy failures…. I’ll hold my specific comments about foreign policy disasters and muddled military thinking for another day, but it’s clear that no one in Washington seems to understand long range strategic planning or even has a clue what America’s long range strategic interests are. I see a bunch of knee-jerk reactionary claptrap and flimsy psycho-babble disguised as strategy (thank-you General Petraeus and your COINista nonsense). I long for some inspirational leaders in our country – people who can get us to quit wallowing in despair and move purposefully toward rebuilding America’s greatness. Yes, I admit it, I’ve been wallowing and it’s time to regroup and not get sucked into all these noxious remedies that amount to little more than purging our core principles for political expediency. It’s way too easy to tune out and throw our hands up in despair, but I’m reading De Tocqueville again to inspire me;) We need to take heart that America’s greatness lies not in the yahoos in Washington, but in “We the people”! Federalism must be our starting point to revitalize our great country.
Filed under Politics
Time For A Classic Christmas Story
I love the short-stories of American writer, William Sydney Porter, who wrote under the pen name O. Henry. In my teens, I used most of my babysitting earnings to buy books, thus commencing a lifelong obsession with books. I still have my copy of “Tales of O. Henry” I bought decades ago and the very first story in the book, “The Gift of the Magi”, is the one that I urge you to read. Take a break from the dismal news, prop up your feet, and read a few of his wonderful short-stories. You can find it for free (here).
Filed under Food for Thought
Thank-You President Obama
Well, with the US economy on the edge of the fiscal cliff, the US credit-rating in decline and unfathomable wasteful spending by this President, who would think that all it takes is a few words (here) from the President to energize an industry (here) and (here). At least one industry is entering the new year with record profits.
Filed under Uncategorized
