Nothing Replaces Persistence

More reality-mugging ... some excellent discussions of understandings that used to be considered essential to American identity:

• "Creativity Is The Enemy" - This interactive graphic accompanying a WSJ article is a picture of "Ten Bullets" that nicely capture some of the structure and discipline required in any work group. I don't necessarily agree with every detail, but this is required reading for any young person.  And, the "Ten Bullets" video isn't bad, either.  Welcome to the real world.
• "Why Do Some People Learn Faster?" - new study showing that academic accomplishment is increased by praising effort and inhibited by praising ability.  More evidence of the pervasive and deep damage caused by the narcissistic self-esteem movement that gained widespread acceptance in the 60's.  And, more evidence of the fraying of the progressive paradigm.  For more, see Freud , John Dewey, the birth of modern progressivism, and the shift from Christian skepticism about fallen humanity to secular optimism about human perfectability.
•  "Can Everyone Be Smart At Everything?" - Identity as a learning disability ... somehow I don't think this will diminish our culture of narcissism, identity politics, self-esteem, and other navel-gazing tendencies to worship the "god within."
• Re-engineered by Google - an intriguing anecdote by a father and employer who is taken aback by the pervasive channeling of Google by his daughter and employees.

Did Govt Cause the 2008 Bubble-Crash?

Interesting article on the recent mortgage debacle in Investors Business Daily. 

Bottom line: In 1994 the Clinton administration told lenders that they would aggressively pursue them as engaging in discrimination if they rejected minority loan applications in greater proportion than whites.  As a result, lenders abandoned traditional risk assessment and management processes.  And, Freddie & Fannie provided de facto government backing for the tsunami of bad loans that ensued.

Unfortunately, the lenders did not have the integrity to stand up to this pressure.  Instead, they lied to the borrowers by telling them they were qualified to buy something they couldn't afford, and they lied to the markets by telling them the loans were solid.

And, the sudden deluge of govt-backed money caused a bubble in the housing market that left even many credit-worthy borrowers under water in the wake of its bursting.

And the Obama administration is growing even more aggressive in pursuing this policy ... but I'm not sure the markets will get fooled again.

Govt as God - Updates

There's a lot of frustration out there about the demise of Government as God.  A few articles that caught my eye recently:

•  Qaddafi as God - this NYT article is a good summary of his rule.  Although the following quote is characteristically arrogant, I can't help but wonder how many people in our government feel basically the same way about it:
  "I am a glory that Libya cannot forgo and the Libyan people cannot forgo, nor the Arab nation, nor the Islamic nation, nor Africa, nor Latin America, nor all the nations that desire freedom and human dignity and resist tyranny!" Colonel Qaddafi shouted in February.  "Muammar Qaddafi is history, resistance, liberty, glory, revolution!"
• Once Upon A Time In America - I don't always agree with Peggy Noonan, but she has a sharp eye and a sharp pen.  Her critique of Narrative-focused politics in this column is especially sharp ... though I would have liked it better if she had tied Narrative to Identity.  Regardless, this "reality-mugging" quote is dead on, even for folks like me who are perhaps overly sensitive to the limits of pragmatism:
  "Here's the problem: There is no story.  At the end of the day, there is only reality.  Things work or they don't.  When they work, people notice, and say it."
• Scorn for Vote Grows - an interesting NYT article on the growing disillusionment with Government as God around the world. I keep looking for an emerging awareness that the only solution is decentralized & deformalized power & responsibility ... not seeing it yet.
• Robert Gates Speech - a typical analysis expressing frustration that highly centralized and pervasive power has become polarized and divisive.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this sort of thing ... it's much closer to history repeating itself than to history rhyming ... this aspect of power is fundamental and unchanging.  If you want to localize divisiveness and gridlock, then you have to localize/decentralize power.

Cannibals, Dominionism, and Mt. Carmel

Those who uphold traditional Christian truth claims and values are increasingly seen as dangerous if not downright evil by the secular mainstream culture. 

The threat: Christians are impeding the imposition of a secular theocracy.

A recent New Yorker article on Michele Bachmann is an interesting example.  In it, the author asserts that Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey ("Total Truth")  promote Dominionism (the belief that only Christians should control civil government and should conduct it in accordance with Biblical law).

This is a version of the common charge that anyone who expresses a religious belief into the public square is imposing a theocracy.  The comparison is secular ("good") vs. religious ("bad").  Conflating Christianity (which invented the separation of church and state) with, say Islam (which dictates the unity of church and state), is trivially absurd, but that's the charge.  Nancy Pearcey has two thoughtful replies (here and here) that are well worth reading.

It reminds me of the way early Christians were accused of being cannibals because they celebrated Christ's death & resurrection by taking the Lord's Supper.

Our reputation isn't quite that bad yet, but there's a growing aggressiveness in secular progressives: fundamentalist atheists like Dawkins attack anyone who doesn't toe the Darwinist line, militants among the gender-confused call those who refuse to celebrate their confusion "hateful" and "homophobic",  and anyone who defends private property rights is selfish, uncaring, a plutocrat, and certainly no follower of Jesus. 

Is 20th century progressivism shifting from derision to violence in its pursuit of  those they think are impeding the project?  As it continues to crack up after 40+ years of concentrated effort by the best and brightest and an incomprehensible expenditure of federal dollars and power, the growing desperation of these attacks reminds me of the prophets of Baal cutting themselves on Mount Carmel to wake up their god. 

Miscellaneous Geopolitics

Here are some recent articles I thought were interesting.

• Geopolitics of the US - a nice diagram showing some of the natural resource advantages the US has.  Stratfor tends to under-emphasize the effect of worldview in their historical analyses, but they're still worth reading if you're interested in this sort of thing
• Clausewitz and World War IV - this Armed Forces Journal article is a nice summary of why there's been so much emphasis recently on social science in the defense domain. The assertion is that WWI was the Chemist's War (key knowledge was chemical engineering), WWII was the Physicist's War (radar, atomic bomb), WWIII (Cold War) was the Information Researcher's War (intelligence knowledge was key), and WWIV will be the Social Scientist's War.  Reminds me of the old cliche about scientists getting to the top of the mountain and finding the theologians there ... only the Gospel will remove the threat of Islam.  I just don't think a stable synthesis of modernism & Islam is possible; I hope I'm wrong.

Current Situation - Pros & Cons

I don't think we'll see much of a swing back toward traditional American values in the near future, so I don't think that Government's increasing involvement in every aspect of daily life will slow much.  However, this article from American Thinker is not a bad summary of why things are unlikely to get better.  Here's my short list of the key positive & negative drivers:

Positives

• Discredited/abandoned Judeo-Christian framework still has significant influence & intertia
• Economy is relatively free
• Property rights remain relatively secure (though this could drop quickly)
• Demographics are better than rest of developed world (more young people)
• Social & physical capital/resources remain the envy of the rest of the world

Negatives

• Rapidly aging population (public & private retirement promises will be modified)
• Degenerating social capital - the 60's embrace of radical individualism & egalitarianism has virtually destroyed large swaths of local informal social ecosystems that used to encourage individuals to build and maintain a healthy identity & role within those ecosystems (family, church, community).
• Degenerating knowledge capital - the effect that social capital loss has had on education is understood best by teachers in the classroom.  However, the increasing power of public sector unions and increased government funding & regulation of education have also contributed to a growing divide between the educational "haves" (eg, those in (some) AP/IB programs) & "have nots" (eg, those who are just cranked through the school to get money from the state).
• Degenerating knowledge/social capital - the loss of any sense of telos/purpose beyond "survival of the fittest/happiest" & of any truth beyond "whatever works" has meant that our "wisdom literature" is seen as irrelevant at best.  At the core of Western social capital is the Bible, and, in the USA, the Declaration/Constitution.  All are increasingly seen as fundamentally discredited.
• Increasing gap between "haves" & "have nots" - degenerating social/knowledge capital is widening the gap between those who maintain/create social/knowledge capital and those who undermine/destroy it.  Regardless of the cause, this kind of disparity tends to be destabilizing at some point.
• Increasing economic & social control by government at all levels
• A worldwide level of private & public debt that is too large to be fully repaid.  And this does not include promises (eg, pensions, social security) that are not debt but are seen as inviolable.  It's inevitable that the unwinding of this debt will create significant dislocations over at least a decade.

The Jig is Dead, Long Live the Jig

Ok, so the metaphor is badly mixed ... but there are two phrases that keep occurring to me these days with regard to the Western socio-political economy:

• "The jig is up", and
• "The King is dead, long live the King"

So, I've mixed them together as an expression of where we are:

• The jig is indeed up.  Over a hundred years of Secular Progressivism, built on a foundation of Marx, Freud, and Darwin, has established Government as God.  After fits and starts in the early 1900's that were interrupted by the Great Depression and a couple of World Wars, the 60's marked a dramatic and radical shift.  "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is the first commandment of such a Government, which under the current U.S. administration has merely acted on what had become a settled understanding in the 1960's ... namely that Government has a monopoly on being the  Protector, Provider, and Controller of every public and private organization, and of every individual.
• This Progressive triumph, however, has generated severe social and economic cracks across the West.  The riots in the UK are the most recent indicator.  A UK rabbi named Jonathon Sacks wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece ("Reversing the Decay of London Undone") last week that sums up the situation well.  Here's one excerpt; entire article highly recommended:
  "He quotes a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, tasked with finding out what gave the West its dominance. He said: At first we thought it was your guns. Then we thought it was your political system, democracy. Then we said it was your economic system, capitalism. But for the last 20 years, we have known that it was your religion."
• The economic cracks, which are largely the result of the social cracks, are just as ugly.  One of the better reports in this area is by the well-known venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and is entitled "USA Inc. - Where We Are, How We Got Here, What May Be Next".  These folks are looking strictly at the numbers, and are probably inclined toward the secular progressive end of the political spectrum.  But, the facts speak for themselves.  The jig is up.
• Although Government as God may be in its death throes, there is no clear god to replace it.  So, we may just muddle along with a diminished god, an increasing gap between those with social and economic capital (the two cannot be separated in the long run) and those without it, and increasing chaos among those without it.  My suspicion is that we'll eventually choose one of two paths: 
• A government that abandons all pretense of being God, and settles for pragmatic oppression of everyone it sees as threatening public order.  This is what government looks like in most times and places, but it would be a new experience for the United States, and would require abandoning any pretense of a rule of law under the Constitution.
• A critical mass of Americans return to a pervasive and bold assertion of the truth claims of the Bible, grounded first and foremost in the good news of the cross of Jesus Christ.  As a result, the third Great Revival breaks out in the U.S., and the political, cultural, and social regime of Progressive Secularism comes to an end after 100+ years.

I guess you can tell that I'm a bit on the pessimistic end of the spectrum ... even though the jig is up, it seems likely to carry on in a muddled and muted form.