The 100 Years War

Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are,
Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.

--Wm. Shakespeare, Troilus & Cressida

John McCain has recently tied success in his presidential bid to the success of the surge in Iraq. It took him about two milliseconds for him to realize his mistake, and he attempted to take it back. But whether he takes it back or no, it is likely to be at least partially true. Success in the surge may not be enough to carry him to the White House, but failure in Iraq is likely to defeat him all by itself; as one of Cheney's strongest allies in this war, McCain's fortunes are tied to Iraq, and he has said that he is willing for the United States to stay 100 years if that is what it takes to “win” (whatever “win” means in a place like Iraq.)

Right now, the War Party is in somewhat of an “I-told-you-so” mood over the “success” of the surge. The grounds for this claim of success is that there are fewer bodies bleeding on the ground. This cannot be denied. But the reasons for it are not good reasons, and began before the surge. Long before the surge, the Sunnis found friends against the American-backed government (or for what passes for government in Iraq) among Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda gave them arms against the government or rather against the Shiites, which is largely the same thing. But shortly before the surge, they found better friends with better arms: The Americans. Just as once we backed the Taliban against a foreign-backed government in Afghanistan, so now we are backing “The Awakening” against another foreign-backed government in Iraq. The difference is that this time, we are the foreigners backing the government. For all the stupidity of the Soviets in Afghanistan, they were never quite stupid enough to back their own assassins. Our government, such as it is, is fond of blaming Al Qaeda for arming the Sunnis and Iran for arming the Shiites. We have driven them both out of business by arming Sunni and Shia against each other, leaving little room (or need) for the competition. And it is not look before we will unite them in the only cause that can unite them: driving out the Americans, along with their puppet government in the Green Zone. As for the puppet government itself, it really doesn't care; its only care is to loot the American aid as long as the money lasts, and then make their way out of that God-forsaken country.

On such a cause, John McCain has staked his cause, and wants the rest of us to stake him to the presidency, even if it means a hundred-years war. Senator McCain would do well to pick up the latest issue of Rolling Stone and read Nir Rosen's account of The Myth of the Surge . Rosen is qualified to write this because he actually speaks Arabic; that is to say, he can actually do what the American commanders cannot do: listen directly to the people. Some quotes from his article:

"We are essentially supporting a quasi-feudal devolution of authority to armed enclaves, which exist at the expense of central government authority," says Chas Freeman, who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "Those we are arming and training are arming and training themselves not to facilitate our objectives but to pursue their own objectives vis-a-vis other Iraqis. It means that the sectarian and ethnic conflicts that are now suppressed are likely to burst out with even greater ferocity in the future."

“Osama [an Awakening commander] himself makes no secret of his hatred for the Shiite government and its security forces. As we walk by a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi National Police, which is comprised almost entirely of Shiites, Osama looks at the uniformed officers in disgust. "I want to kill them," he tells me, "but the Americans make us work together."

“Most Shiites I speak with believe that the same Sunnis who have been slaughtering Shiites throughout Iraq are now being empowered and legitimized by the Americans as members of the ISVs. On one raid with U.S. troops, I see children chasing after the soldiers, asking them for candy. But when they learn I speak Arabic, they tell me how much they like the Mahdi Army and Muqtada al-Sadr. "The Americans are donkeys," one boy says. "When they are here we say, 'I love you,' but when they leave we say, 'Fuck you.'"

“Gottlieb had recently conducted an inventory of the weapons assigned to the 172 INP — short for 1st Battalion, 7th Brigade, 2nd Division. There were 550 weapons missing, including pistols, rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "Guys take weapons when they go AWOL," he says. The police were also reporting fake engagements and then transferring to Shiite militias the ammunition they had supposedly fired. "It was funny how they always expended 400 rounds of ammunition," Gottlieb says.”

“With American forces now arming both sides in the civil war, the violence in Iraq has once again started to escalate. In January, some 100 members of the new Sunni militias — whom the Americans have now taken to calling "the Sons of Iraq" — were assassinated in Baghdad and other urban areas. In one attack, a teenage bomber blew himself up at a meeting of Awakening leaders in Anbar Province, killing several members of the group. Most of the attacks came from Al Qaeda and other Sunni factions, some of whom are fighting for positions of power in the new militias.”

The saddest comment comes from Captain Arkan Hashim Ali, a member of the Iraqi National Police:

"Before the war, it was just one party," Arkan tells me. "Now we have 100,000 parties. I have Sunni officer friends, but nobody lets them get back into service. First they take money, then they ask if you are Sunni or Shiite. If you are Shiite, good." He dreams of returning to the days when the Iraqi army served the entire country. "In Saddam's time, nobody knew what is Sunni and what is Shiite," he says. The Bush administration based its strategy in Iraq on the mistaken notion that, under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled the Shiite majority. In fact, Iraq had no history of serious sectarian violence or civil war between the two groups until the Americans invaded. Most Iraqis viewed themselves as Iraqis first, with their religious sects having only personal importance. Intermarriage was widespread, and many Iraqi tribes included both Sunnis and Shiites. Under Saddam, both the ruling Baath Party and the Iraqi army were majority Shiite."

"Arkan knows that the U.S. "surge" has succeeded only in exacerbating the tension among Iraq's warring parties and bickering politicians. The Iraqi government is still nonexistent outside the Green Zone. While U.S.-built walls have sealed off neighborhoods in Baghdad, Shiite militias are battling one another in the south over oil and control of the lucrative pilgrimage industry. Anbar Province is in the hands of Sunni militias who battle each other, and the north is the scene of a nascent civil war between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.”

Personally, I have a great deal of respect for Senator McCain, but in all honesty I must say that he scares me. Like too many veterans of my generation, he wants to re-fight the Vietnam War; he is convinced that we lost that war through a failure of will and resolve. We lost it because of Jane Fonda, or the New York Times, or the liberals, or whatever. But in fact, the American public stayed with their government and displayed remarkable patience. The war lasted from 1959 to 1975 and cost 55,000 American lives, not to mention uncounted Vietnamese lives and vast amounts of treasure. We even imposed an income-tax surcharge on ourselves to pay for the war (can you imagine either Cheney or McCain doing that?) It was not a failure of will, but a failure of arms. And arms will always fail in such a war, where the population does not support us. But we had great support among the Vietnamese compared to the support that we now have among Sunni and Shiite alike. In such circumstances, there is no way to win. And frankly, no real reason to “win.” When we have “won,” what precisely is it that will have gained? Stopping Al Qaeda? That is an organization we created in Afghanistan and the Iraqis really want no part in it; they were just temporary allies against the Americans. A Democracy in the Middle East? And that will get us what exactly? Securing our oil supplies? Both sides in the civil war want nothing more than to sell us oil. We can get out of Iraq precisely the same thing we would have gotten out of a “victory” in Vietnam: nothing.

1959-1975 is only 16 years, not quite McCain's 100-year war. But the Middle East is a larger place and a tougher problem. And it is not really our problem. Those concerned will have to work things out for themselves; the American were not appointed by God to be either their judge or their rulers. Those who would have us rule in the East do well to tell us that it will be a 100-years war. Oh well. Five years down already; only 95 to go.

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Casualties of War

By the official count, 3,972 of our troops have been killed in Iraq and another 483 in Afghanistan. More than 29,000 have been wounded (more than 1,800 in Afghanistan). But even these grim numbers may not tell us the full human cost of the war. We are using the same troops over and over again because we have an army that was simply not prepared for such a protracted struggle. It is not uncommon for a soldier to serve three, four, or even five tours. These soldiers have been in combat for a longer period of time than any soldier in World War II. It should not be surprising if such repeated duty took a heavy mental and psychological toll on our troops. I say “it should not be surprising,” but the Bush Administration seems very surprised indeed. The VA doesn't even have statistics on suicides among the returning vets; they can only tell you about those killed while on active duty.

CBS News did it own survey of 45 states, and the results are grim. In 2005, for example, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 each and every week, in just one year. Veterans in these 45 states commit suicide at twice the rate of other Americans (18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.) But one group in particular stands out: those veterans aged 20 to 24 who have served in the so-called “war on terror.” They commit suicide at a rate of between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000, as compared to 8.3 per 100,000. But once again, even this understates the problem, since for every soldier who commits suicide, there is likely to be some number who deal with their Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in other ways. And finally, since we use a high number of reserves, many of the casualties are among older men, which leaves a larger proportion of widows and orphans than in most wars.

Everybody likes to say that they support the war; few actually do. I recall my own service in Vietnam. In the popular myth, the public turned against both the war and the soldiers who fought it, but I had no experience like that. Rather, I was not only welcomed home, but the VA system and the VA benefits were excellent. But then the whole country was actually involved in the war. Every mother's son carried a draft card and could be called at any moment. Further, we were asked to actually pay for the war with a surcharge on our income taxes. Further, the news was relatively uncontrolled, and the war was broadcast into homes on a nightly basis, in a way that simply is not permitted today. This war, on the other hand, is an abstraction to most of us; we do not have any personal contact with it. It is largely a political issue, for those interested in politics, and for only a very few a personal issue. It is fought by a “professional army” while the rest of the country absents itself. Even the name, “The War on Terror,” is more of a marketing device than a real description. And we are not even asked to pay for it; rather, we have placed the burden for fighting it on the young (and the unlucky reserves) and debt for it on our children and grandchildren. We are asked to “support” this war, but not to inconvenience ourselves in any way over it.

All of this serves as introduction to the film, In the Valley of Elah, which was released this week on DVD. The movie is loosely based on a true story, that of Specialist Richard Davis, who after returning from Iraq was killed by his own comrades after a night on the town. He was stabbed 33 times and his body burned. The army did not even open an inquiry into his case until 60 days after he was reported AWOL, and even that took badgers from Davis's father, a retired career Military Policeman who went to Fort Benning to investigate his son's disappearance for himself.

In the fictionalized account, Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield, a retired military policeman whose son has just returned from Iraq. He gets a call from the Army that his son is AWOL and asking him to call the army if his son shows up. Instead, Deerfield drives two days to his son's base in New Mexico to investigate for himself. Deerfield is a strict military man; you can take Hank out of the army, but you can't take the army out of Hank. Even when staying in a cheap motel, he makes his own bed each morning with tight military corners. Yet from both the army and the local police, he gets only indifference; no one is much interested in the missing veteran. And when his body turns up, burned and in pieces, there is a jurisdictional dispute between the civilian and military police.

Deerfield finally gets some help from Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), a single mom and an outsider in the police squad room. The story proceeds as a murder mystery, but while the story is compelling enough by itself, it mostly serves as a framework to examine the meaning of war and its aftermath. Hank thinks he knows what this means, having been through it himself in Vietnam. When early in the investigation, Sanders wants to treat the murdered man's comrades as suspects, Hank tells her that she is wasting her time; men who have shared the dangers of combat together do not turn on each other in murder. Military comradeship is the fixed point in Hank's life, and the idea that it could have devoured his son is such a gruesome way is incomprehensible to him. Is seems that the institutions he has trusted all of his life have turned on him. Hank is connected to his son by only some grainy JPEGs taken in Iraq on his cell phone. It is in slowly deciphering the meaning of these images that the truth of Mike's war comes out.

Susan Serandon plays Hank's wife, Joan. It is practically a cameo role in this film, but in a short space she gives a glimpse of the ocean of grief of a military wife who has lost her son not to battle, but to battle's terrible aftermath. The tension between the old soldier and the grieving mother is palpable. Tommy Lee Jones gives an understated performance, very similar to the one he gave in No Country for Old Men.

This film is moving and entertaining on its own terms, but it is clear that the director wants to direct us towards the whole issue of the American public's relationship to this war. In Vietnam, there were likely any number of people who let their dislike of the war spill over into dislike of those who fought it. Or so I am told; I never actually met any. But in this war, everybody “supports our troops” with yellow ribbons and political rhetoric, but won't accept being inconvenienced in any way. We will not pay for it, and we will not pay for the “care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” The returning troops meet with official indifference to wounds that cannot be seen, but are certainly present. Occasionally, public outrage will force a little reform, such as that at the Walter Reed Hospital. And for the visible wounds, the authorities do their best. But when we send so many of our children so many times to the gates of hell, we must expect that they will have some difficulties when they return. And we cannot be indifferent to that.

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Déjà Vu in the Balkans

“The Balkans,” wrote Hector Hugh Monro (known to literature by his pen name, “Saki”) “produce more history than they can consume locally.” It was shortly after Saki wrote these words that the Balkans produced a lot of history indeed, history that they needed the rest of the world to help them consume. For in 1914, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, Serbia, this initiating World War I. Even today, nobody is sure why the death of one man should have led to the death of millions, the complete re-arrangement of the map of Europe, and the rise of the Soviet State in Russia. Nevertheless, the Balkans seem to have that kind of effect on history, and they have been having that kind of effect on the world ever since a minor Macedonian king by the name of Philip used his Balkan base as a platform by which to conquer ancient Greece. His son, Alexander, would conquer everything between Greece and India.

The Last Crusade ended in Macedonia with the victory of the Turks over the Christian Alliance at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. From there, and for the next three centuries, the Turks advanced into Europe, only being stopped at the very gates of Vienna in 1683. The long Turkish occupation left the Balkans divided religiously and ethnically. Serbia gained its independence from a weakened Turkish Empire in 1804, and after World War I, the Turks lost what little remained of her Balkan territories. But they left behind a fractious land, divided between Muslims, Catholics, and Greek Orthodox.

After the demise of Communist rule in what was then called “Yugoslavia,” the Balkans blew themselves apart in a long civil war. It was a war characterized by “ethnic cleansing” and atrocities on both sides. For reasons unclear to this author, Bill Clinton and NATO decided to intervene on the side of the ethnic Albanians and bombed Serbia into submission in an illegal and undeclared war. The war did not end the suffering of the peoples of the Balkans, as the Muslim “ethnic cleansing” and persecution of Christians continued in Kosovo, and continued as the American an NATO “peace-keeping” force looked on without doing anything; 2,000 Serbs have been killed and dozens of villages and Churches burned and looted. Since the end of the war, the United States has treated Serbia as occupied territory, and has been angling to set up a Muslim state in Kosovo. A few days ago, just that happened, and the breakaway state of Kosovo was immediately recognized by the United States and various European governments.

Bill Clinton could get away with his war because Serbia's chief international backer, Russia, was in disarray and too weak to do much about it. Today, however, the situation is reversed. It is the American Army that is stretched to the breaking point and the American Treasury that is empty, while the Russians are awash in petro-dollars, their army is strong, and Putin is spoiling for a fight to demonstrate the newly-resurgent power of Russia; he dreams of the “glory days” of empire (both Tsarist and Soviet) when Russian was (or imagined herself to be) a super-power. He is not likely to let his allies, the Serbs, go down as they did last time. Nor are the Serbs likely to acquiesce in the loss of Kosovo. They consider the area intrinsic to their nation and their history. It was in Kosovo, on the Field of Crows, that the Serbs lost their independence to the Turkish Muslim empire in 1389. That sounds like a long time ago, but it is part and parcel of their history, and they will not peacefully give it up. Moreover, they believe, and not without reason, that their fellow Serbs are being persecuted in their own lands.

Who is “right” in this conflict? Well, that is not for me to say. This is a question the people of that area must work out for themselves. I have not been appointed to be their judge. The issue is not worth a single American life nor a single American dollar. Nor is it worth a super-power conflict. We have already been through that in this area, and the results were not good. The Serbs and their close neighbors and allies, who have real and abiding interests in this dispute must work it out as best they can.

The mobs in Belgrade blame the Americans for the current situation. They are not far wrong. The best way to insure that Balkans do not, once again, export their excess history is to stay out of fights that do not concern us. The easy victory from the bombing of Belgrade is not likely to be repeated this time, so long as the Russians are willing to back their allies. This looks depressingly like the situation in 1914. Would a war break out over this issue? I do not know, but it is not worth the risk of finding out. Nor do we have standing in the area; the Serbs do not want us their, and we have not the authority to judge between them and their neighbors. The best way to avoid such a terrible déjà vu is to simply refuse to play the game.

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Subprime Shenanigans

Finally, an explanation of subprime mortgages that we can all understand!

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TITAN, “PEAK OIL” AND OUR ENERGY FUTURE

A strange report dated February 15th from the European Space Agency, posted by the American neo-conservative news website WorldNetDaily, tells of a massive discovery on one of Saturn’s moons. The deep space probe Cassini, through it’s radar sensors, has discovered massive lakes of methane and ethane on the surface of Titan. Though only one-fifth of the surface has been mapped, what they have found is astonishing.

Dozens of lakes on the moon’s surface contain more hydrocarbons than all of Earth’s reserves of crude oil and natural gas. As the ESA report tells us, just one of these methane lakes has as much energy as all of Earth’s natural gas reserves. Scientists believe that the methane is coming from deep within the moon’s magma layers, erupting from active volcanoes. This was so reported in a NASA press release over 2 ½ years ago.

How is this related to the arguments against the “Peak Oil” theory? And how does this play into a nation’s energy policy conforming to Distributist Thought?

“Peak Oil” theory, in part, holds that oil and natural gas are “biotic” in nature. That is, that they are created by the remains of prehistoric forests and dinosaur remains. The rival theory says that oil and natural gas are “abiotic”, created by vast geological forces of heat and pressure underneath the Earth’s crust.

This discovery by the Cassini probe bolsters the “abiotic” theory of oil’s origin. The lakes of methane are not “biotic” in origin. Since this is so, it is only logical to conclude that Earth’s oil and gas reserves are the same. That is, they are inorganic in nature, dwelling within the Earth’s depths. Hence the world is NOT running out of oil or natural gas. Just last November, Brazil announced it discovered a huge offshore oil field that could yield as much as eight billion barrels of crude oil.

“Peak Oil” theory has been the spur of many scientists and others to create and promote alternatives to oil, coal and natural gas energy. News such as this from both the ESA and Brazil will - unfortunately - not change the minds of those deeply committed to this discredited theory. However, the urgent need to break away from total dependence on an oil/gas/coal energy basis must be encouraged. It should, at the bare minimum, so as to diversify and decentralize the means of energy production to as many as possible.

In Distributist Thought, the means of production and distribution are to be owned and operated by as many as is physically and economically possible. Applied to this facet of a nation’s energy policy, this means there should be many small and mid-sized oil companies competing, especially if they are worker-owned and worker-managed. There would not be the massive private oil giants like ExxonMobil, Gulf or Chevron, or their state-owned counterparts like Mexico’s Pemex, Venezuela’s Citgo or Russia’s Gazprom or Lukoil.

Further, with big government micromanagement off the backs of these small companies, they would have the drive and incentive to create better ways of cheaply extracting oil without harming the environment. They could, if possible, even build mini- and micro-refineries to increase the gasoline and heating oil supply, doing so without compromising safety and nature’s needs. In America alone, her refinery capacity is aging and needs repair and improvement quickly.

These companies, of course, would still compete against other firms promoting local solar and wind power, hydro and geothermal energy, and even alternative power generation discovered by great men like Dr. Nikola Tesla. Conversely, the oil giants would be encouraged to break up into smaller, independent units. And the government, through legislation, would get out of the oil business itself if it is in it already.

Putting all one’s energy “eggs” into one basket, or a few like oil, coal and natural gas, will not guarantee a country’s power grid stability. Only a national policy that protects and promotes local, diversified and decentralized electrical production can insure a safe, clean and stable energy future. Combined with efforts to promote and improve energy conversation, such a policy would be fully in step with Distributist Thought.

Let us all do our part, however small, to see such a policy come to light.

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Ron Paul: Selling His Birthright

He was never expected to win. That is not the problem. He was expected to articulate a vision of free men and free markets that would at least have some influence on American politics. It was to be an exercise in public education rather than political power; its purpose was (or should have been) to increase the sentiment for liberty. This is important because politics begins in public sentiment for certain perceived common goods, and requires an education in practical reason on the best methods and policies for reaching those goods. From that standpoint, a campaign like Ron Paul's could have been very valuable, in much the same way that the populist campaigns of “Fighting Bob” La Follette was a success; although the candidate lost, the campaign won in that his major causes became part and parcel of American politics. Ron Paul is not likely to have that kind of success, neither for himself nor for his cause.

It is not that other candidates do not use the rhetoric of liberty. Mitt Romney, for example, claimed to be a champion of the “free market,” and then proposed giving the automakers $20 billion. McCain opposed the Cheney/Bush “tax cuts,” and then insists on making them permanent. (I put “tax cuts” in quotes because there were no such cuts; there was a tax shift. Borrowing is taxing as well, but merely a tax you shift to the next generation.) And Huckabee wants to slap us all with a 30% sales tax and massive tax increases at the state and local level. And all of them—except Ron Paul—actively support an illegal and pointless war. They all use the rhetoric of constitutional liberty, but in reality they all support the torture state, the imperial presidency, the bankrupt government, and foreign adventures. A Ron Paul campaign that at least broke into double digits would have served as a warning to political leaders of both the right and the left that there remains in this country a significant sentiment for freedom and constitutional government.

Alas, I think the Ron Paul campaign has been counter-productive. It could be argued from his poor results that such sentiments are confined to a fringe group and need not be taken seriously in political calculations. He has demonstrated that you can ignore the reality of freedom so long as you pay homage to the rhetoric. Paul himself was never able to get beyond that rhetoric to articulate a coherent vision and practical policies. Indeed, clicking on the “issues” button on his own website gives only the most superficial discussion of the issues. Comparing all the candidates' web sites, Paul has, if anything, the most superficial discussions. Had Paul been consistently able to break even into the 10-15% range, he might have had a great influence on American politics; he might have established himself as the leader of a group that the Republican Party could not afford to ignore. As it is, he only demonstrated their impotence.

It is not that he did not have the money to do the job. Indeed, he has been successful in fundraising. But he has been less successful in finding useful ways to spend the money. He was no better than Romney or Giuliani at using his political funding wisely. And he turned out to be both a poor campaigner and poor debater. Well, there is not much he can do about his naturally whiny voice, but at least he was willing to defend the Constitution against all comers. Or so I thought. But in his latest ad, he is using all that money he raised not to defend the Constitution, but to attack one of its bedrock principles; he is as willing to abandon the Constitution for political advantage as is any of his rivals, Republican or Democrat. The principle that Ron Paul is now attacking is that of birthright citizenship. (see the ad here.)

Of course the ad plays to the immigration issue, and does so in the standard fear-mongering terms that might be expected from nearly any other campaign; he does not use the opportunity to articulate a “libertarian” view, but a purely nationalistic and even xenophobic one. Nevertheless, that is an issue that can be argued either way, and I do not here argue it one way or the other. His particular view is not where the problem comes in. Rather, the problem is that in the course of this ad, he calls for an end to a bedrock constitutional principle, that of “Birthright citizenship.” This has been a part of American tradition since the founding and part of the Constitution since the 14^th amendment. Ending it would require repeal of at least part of the 14^th amendment. This is a strange “defense” of the Constitution. Even that's okay; after all, the Constitution is not holy writ and has a mechanism for change. But should this principle be abandoned? Can it be overturned without great harm to our understanding of citizenship and the role of government?

Birthright makes citizenship an “act of God,” as it were. Repealing the 14^th amendment would make the granting of citizenship purely an act of some government department or other. We would all become, in effect, “naturalized” citizens, whose membership in the body politic was in the gift of the bureaucracy. At a time of the torture state and the imperial presidency, in a time when the government seeks the power to declare some citizens “enemy combatants” (whatever that means) and to strip them of all rights before bringing them to trial, this is a dangerous idea. And whatever one thinks of this idea, one cannot really call it a “libertarian” idea. Indeed, making citizenship a gift of government seems to me to be the opposite of libertarianism, because what the bureaucracy gives, the bureaucracy may take away.

I am not a libertarian, for reasons I have laid out before (see Why I am not a Libertarian.) Nevertheless, I wish the libertarians well, and I believe a Distributist state would resemble the libertarian ideal more than it would resemble anything else. Further, I believe that libertarianism is impossible without well-distributed property. So I had good reasons for wishing Ron Paul well. I am truly saddened to see him sell out his principles for a few votes. As it is, he is not likely to get those votes; he sold his birthright and didn't even get what Esau got: a mess of porridge. It is, I think, a sad ending to a promising campaign.

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Does Capitalism Work?

Most people will respond by saying, “What an absurd question! Look around you, dummy; of course it works!” And even the most strident critics of capitalism, the distributist, the socialist, the libertarian, is likely to concede that it works. Their critiques are likely to begin, “Yes, but...it could be more 'moral' (or work better, or whatever).” However, I assert that there is a critic whose challenge cannot be successfully answered by the capitalist. This is not the Christian, or the socialist, or even the Marxist challenger. It is a critic that even the most committed capitalist cannot get around. That critic is the capitalist himself. By purely capitalist standards, capitalism does not work and never has.

What, precisely, does a capitalist mean when he says that capitalism works? Simply this: that the capitalist system can provide a relatively stable and prosperous economic order without a lot of government interference in the market. Now, the Marxist critic might point out that the “prosperity” excludes a large number of people, and the Georgist or the Distributist might point out that capitalism depends, contrary to its own theory, on a certain monopolization of land and the other means of production, but the capitalist is likely to reject these critiques. But he cannot fail to notice, if he is intellectually honest, that capitalism has never been a stable economic order without the heavy involvement of the government. We can date the era of massive government intervention in the market from about World War II, with such “Keynesian” practice becoming established government policy in the early 50's. Yet when we look at the economy from 1853 to 1953, we find that it was in recession fully 40% of the time. Hardly a stable order. Further, since 1953, it has been in recession only 15% of the time. Consider the following chart of economic activity in the period 1900-2006 (thanks to John Watkins for generating this chart):

This chart may be difficult to read in such a small format (if you click on the chart, you will get a better view of it). Nevertheless, its message can be gleaned easily enough from its major features. The gray bands represent periods of recession. The red line represents the change in business activity from one quarter to the next. A few things are evident: there is a lot more gray on the left side of the chart than on the right side; the red line (read on the right-hand scale) is far more erratic on the left side of the chart; the blue line (read on the right-hand scale) has a much lower slope on the left side. What the chart shows is that capitalism was extremely unstable in the “pure” capitalist era, that is was prone to near-constant recession, and that it exhibited anemic growth by post-World War II standards.

What is most curious about the capitalist critic of capitalism is that one never meets him. Rather, one notices a curious disconnect between the theory and the practice, a disconnect which doesn't seem to bother practitioners of capitalism. For example, I listen to the business news quite regularly, and I constantly hear statements in the following form: “The government ought to ('lower the interest rate,' 'raise the interest rate' 'expand (or contract) credit,) so that the free market can do its work.”The people who make these statements never seem to realize the disconnect between the first half of their sentences and the second. Or another example: Republican presidential candidates regularly tout the free market, and then propose to give $20 billion to Detroit to save the auto industry, or propose expensive responses to the recession, or the health care crises, or whatever. Or one of my favorite examples comes from Charles Krauthammer, the libertarian columnist. In a column excoriating auto mileage standards, he states that the best way to address the problem is with government controlled prices for gasoline. Now, when a promenent libertarian calls for government price-controls, you know that real capitalism is dead.

Capitalists like to think of themselves as realists. But my minimum requirement for a realist is that he occasionally looks at the real world. I have no objection to those who spend all their time contemplating their ideological navels, but to quality as a realist, one ought to glance up, even if only now and then, at the real world. When the capitalist does this, he will find that nobody really believes in capitalism anymore, or at least no practitioner of capitalism does; they all want government hand-outs, protections, subsidies, and favorable treatment. And maybe that is the right thing to do. But it surely isn't the capitalist thing to do.

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Coulter Backs Clinton!

Really!

No, I mean really. IF John McCain wins the Republican nomination (and that is more than possible) Ann Coulter will "vote for Hillary," "campaign for Hillary" as the most conservative candidate. See it here.

Of course, Coulter's endorsement could be a stake in the heart of the Clinton campaign; Obama certainly must be chuckling.

Maybe we're all chuckling.

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There Will Be Bland

I don't get it.

I just don't get it.

The New York Times calls it “epic” and “mesmerizing.” Rolling Stone calls it a “beautiful beast of a movie.” The Chicago Tribune calls it a “majestic crackpot of a film” (I think that's a compliment.) The acclaim is almost universal. And it is clear that the Motion Picture Academy is going to shower this film with little statuettes. There are but a few dissenting voices, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, and me. While others were “mesmerized,” I found myself looking at my watch several times during the course of the 158 minutes of There Will Be Blood. The movie is loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel, Oil!. Now, I have not personally read Sinclair's works, but I am sure that they cannot be as bad, a plot-less, as heavy-handed as this movie about one Daniel Planview (played by Daniel-Day Lewis).

We first meet Plainview as a struggling silver prospector, a human grub buried in the earth picking for bits of ore. 158 minutes later, we see him grubbing alone in his mansion, in much the same poses. Between the mine and the mansion, not much happens. Or at least, not much in the way of plot or character development. That is, we don't know much more about Plainview at the end then we knew at the beginning. That is to say, he is a greedy, driven bastard at the beginning, and is pretty much the same at the end. But we never know why, we never get any insight into him, save some hints about his business methods, which may, perhaps come in handy if you are ever trying to get poor people to sign over their mineral rights; other than that, I didn't learn much from the film, and I learned almost nothing about Daniel Planview, who seems to be on camera about 90% of the time. That's a lot of time to spend with a perfect stranger.

We do meet Daniel's “son,” a boy he adopted so that he could present himself as a “family man” when fleecing the locals, and whom he abandons when convenient. We also meet Eli Sunday, a hypocritical preacher who, like the oilman, is in it for the money. Nor surprisingly, we don't learn much about Eli either. And we meet a man who claims to be Plainview's half-brother, whose stories are as close as the movie comes to revealing something about Plainview himself, but that turns out to be both not much and not very interesting. Plainview kills the man, and serves him right, for adding 20 more boring minutes to this already boring film. Now, I like a good depiction of greedy business men and phony preachers as much as the next man, but I would like to learn a little bit about them, other then the mere facts of their oil leases and phony miracles. In truth, The Simpsons have a more nuanced depiction of Monty Burns and Ned Flanders then this movie gives us of Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday.

This role is not Daniel-Day Lewis's best; there is simply not enough character development for him to exercise his talents. The film has some virtues: there are vast scenic vistas (mostly bleak landscapes) and the odd oil well explosion. Other than that, the movie is bland; the scenery is in Technicolor, but the characters are in monochrome.

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DEVVY KIDD ON THE BUSH STIMULUS PLAN

In the past, the Review published the columns of Devvy Kidd, hard-hitting writer and Constitutionalist. Though she is - alas - not a Distributist, she does believe in many of the things we support in this blog.

Here she writes another great missive on why the current "economic stimulus package" being sent through the American Congress will not be all it is promised to be. The link to her current column is here.

She points out also how it will not really help those now living in one of the "tent cities" starting to pop up now in this country. She visited one near Ontario, California, and it makes for sad reading. She believes it could be the herald of things to come in the near future for Americans.

Let this spur us on to teach those we know about Distributism, especially those running for local office during this election cycle. The insights of Belloc, Chesterton and their legitimate successors can only benefit our communities and America as a whole if put into practice NOW.

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