Amazing

For a lifelong Democrat (recently) turned Libertarian, my discovery of Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. has been a revelation. Judging by his name, he may have actually been here at Plymouth Rock guiding the Mayflower into port. I have never seen a "Holman" or even a "Jr." writing for the Times.

You never hear stuff like this outside of the Journal. Really amazing- makes perfect sense. I always wondered why there were hardly any foreign pickups in the US.

For more than 40 years, a 25% tariff has kept out foreign-built pickup trucks even as a studied loophole was created in fuel-economy regulations to let the Big Three develop a lucrative, protected niche in the "passenger truck" business. [read: SUV]

This became the long-running unwritten deal. This was Washington's real auto policy.

For three decades, the Big Three were able to survive precisely because they skimped on quality and features in the money-losing sedans they were required under Congress's fuel economy rules to build in high-cost UAW factories. In return, Washington compensated them with the hothouse, politically protected opportunity to profit from pickups and SUVs.

Doesn't sound much like what you hear incessantly from your Congressman, about how Detroit's problems are all due to management "incompetence" in deciding to build "gas guzzling" SUVs, does it?

Kinda makes your head spin if you're a lefty, assuming this makes any sense to you.

National Security

I'd like to comment about the argument that releasing the CIA torture memos has made the US less secure and more vulnerable to enemy attacks.

This argument, though partially correct, is specious.

The truth is everything we do in this country makes us more vulnerable to attacks. Openness and transparency are the hallmarks of our democracy. Yes, we could close all of our borders, we could tap all of our phones (ahem), we could monitor our citizens' motions, we could dictate what goes on television or what books are published. All of these things would make us more secure. But they would also make us less American.

We have chosen, as a people, to assume the risk that comes with an open society. We have understood that, as in trade, the more open we are, the safer we are. The more transparent our government, the better it is for our government. The more information we have available, the more free we are to make sound choices.

In situations where information is controlled, it is not believed. And that leads to confusion, uncertainty, and a degradation of society. Tyrannical regimes deal with this uncertainty by cracking down even more until the state is completely strangled (see: North Korea as the best contemporary example. Saddam's Iraq would have been another.). We have chosen to live openly and therefore accept responsibility - and seek retribution - when and if that openness leads to abuse.

But to say that these memos are any more dangerous, say, than having a postal service that doesn't x-ray every package it receives is preposterous. Freedom's security comes in more freedom, not less. The conservative trade-experts should understand this. Protectionism is not just a blight of economic policy. If we really trust in a free and open society, it must be purged from political policy as well.

One World

For those of you that have had a conversation about politics with me during the last year or so, you'll know that I believe that youth suffrage is *the* silver bullet to most of our political problems. If you haven't had that conversation with me - and let me persuade you for half an hour or so - you will probably dismiss this idea out of hand. I'm in the process of penning a thorough defense of my position on the subject that I hope will spark a hearty debate and eventually will change some minds. But that is for another day.

Today while I was imagining such a debate, I played through my mind the following opposing argument:

You say that children in America are affected by US policies yet have no right to change them. Well this is the case with all peoples on earth. The rest of the world had an enormous amount at stake during the previous election, and yet they were required to sit by as mere spectators, not even permitted to make financial contributions. Should the rest of the world vote in US elections? (NB- this is not the only argument I make for youth suffrage. It is one of many and a minor one at that.)

There are two answers to this question- one legal and one philosophical.

The legal one is that the US affects the rest of the world because of its geopolitical position, not because of any inherent national distinction (American exceptionalism aside). If, in, say, 80 years or so, the US represented the same geopolitical force as France or Britain does today, then there would be no legitimate reason to have input on domestic elections from the world body. The world, under those circumstances, would no longer be so affected by US domestic decisions. But our youth still would, therefore the argument that one leads naturally from the other is incorrect.

However, it does lead us to an interesting alternate narrative which I quite prefer. And that is answer number two. Assuming youth voting was a fait accompli, and we had spread enfranchisement as far as we could on our own shores, we could begin to pay heed to other countries' sensible desire to have a say in US politics which, admittedly, affects them quite directly.

This assumes two things - that the US recovers completely from the economic downturn and that the US maintains its role as superpower and world economic juggernaut. If these two conditions persist, then the rest of the world will consider themselves to have an interest in US political outcomes for a very long time to come.

So I would say, then, let's do business. What would these countries give in exchange for their votes?

My own feeling is that if they would be willing to abide by our laws, then they should be considered for a sort of adjunct statehood.

It would have to be considered one nation at a time and would have to happen very slowly so as not to dilute the character and nature of our country by adding in too many foreign cultures all at once. But it wouldn't be so hard to imagine Canada or Britain being annexed by the US in exchange for some representation in congress and a say in who is elected president.

My feeling is that the EU is an experiment that will largely lead nowhere and that the countries of that continent will likely be served by putting their allegiances elsewhere- particularly as their own peculiar national identities dissolve in the process of globalization.

Becoming a state in our union would indeed be a way to preserve independence and to influence international law.


Once the English-speaking countries and perhaps Mexico were enfranchised, France, India, and other democracies could join as well. Eventually a "reform"-based incentive structure could be developed for the rest of the world as well, encouraging them to form open, representative governments.

One could easily, then, envision a time when the world had but one country, the democratic system of the United States having reached across the globe and sown democratic process where once there was only warfare.

This would be an impressive achievement in global unity to say the least. In fact, it is what is already happening, though nation-states still hold nominal sway. We are growing, through trade, a global culture that has less to do with lines on a map than by cultural and commercial intercourse. To place those nations states under the systemic umbrella of the world's oldest and most successful democracy would seem a just and sensible way to orchestrate their disparate wills.


Since I don't expect youth suffrage to come to pass for at least half a century, this idea might be quite far off, even in consideration- although there is no explicit need for youth suffrage to predate this sort of internationalism. But a century or so out would seem like a good prediction- long enough for the world's developing economies to have a strong enough position of their own and so would have something to contribute to the US as a new state.


I like this idea a lot. It can give us something to look to over the hump of the financial crisis. At the moment it appears that some sort of loose global federation will become the basis of the international system, the US being so horribly weakened by the 9/11 response and George W. Bush. But a resurgence in US power is not at all out of the question if we play our cards right in the coming years. No other country has the might, will, or global respect to take America's place, and truly no country would really want the responsibility. Countries whose identities are based on tribal/genetic nationalism do not have the same mandate as those which are based on a "mission," as it were, to form a new world. And there is only one of those on earth. But to form a new world requires cooperation from the whole world. Perhaps it is time to begin to think outside our own borders to see what that new world might look like.

A Propose

This cat seems to have it pretty clearly. 25. I'm impressed.

Gay Marriage

"My God. . .Gays and Lesbians want to get married. Haven't those people suffered enough?"
-Homer Simpson



It's truly a new era when I start getting my news from facebook.

In recent days I have seen posts saying GO IOWA and TAKE THAT, CALIFORNIA. Then today there was YAY VERMONT. Not being much of a sports fan, I assumed that these were references to some tournament I was missing, and so I mostly ignored them. But it didn't take long to corroborate with the New York Times about what was actually going on.

Firstly I would like to send my congratulations to all people in all places who demand equality under the law. This is certainly a moment I know will be celebrated by many of my friends and by millions of people - sadly mostly in silence - throughout the world.


But the politico in me is still perturbed. There is almost a guarantee that under the Obama administration the rights of all peoples will be affirmed in America. So the victory of the gay marriage movement on a grand scale is almost assured. But the joys of every victory are followed shortly by the uncertainty of what to do once victory has been achieved. The morning after can be as much a time of depression as of exaltation.

The gay movement in particular has defined itself largely in opposition to the norm. When it becomes normal (at least legally) how will it define itself then? I have no doubt this question will be answered in time, and I, as much as anybody, will be curious to see what mainstream homosexuality will look like in America. It will no doubt be as colorful as the rainbow.



But my most cynical side says that gay marriage has already served its purpose. It has already cemented devastation into the country's fabric that can not be easily undone. I am referring here, not to any dastardly act by any homosexual, but to the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004.

I have written elsewhere vis a vis the Evolution/Creationism debate, that these culture war issues are largely red herrings. They are conjured up in the laboratories of political strategists with an eye towards the cold calculus of demographics.

Since the homosexuals and the scientists tend to concentrate themselves in the so-called Blue States and in predictably blue, urban areas in other states, their votes have very little impact in presidential politics. What gets people out to vote is the stirring of their (usually baser) emotions. Anger, indignation, and fear will tend to get people to pull that lever for your guy.

Gay Marriage as an issue seemed to rouse the indignation amongst gays and the indignation amongst religious folk in equal measure. But unlike the gays, the religious folk were concentrated in swing states and swing counties. This meant that if you got the religious people angry enough, they could turn a blue district red. If you got the gays angry enough, well, nothing would happen. They were already in the blue areas anyway.

The same thing was true for the evolutionary scientists. Cambridge, Manhattan, Chicago, the Bay Area and university towns throughout the country were going to vote predictably blue. So to rile them up about a non-issue like creationism made no difference. But to rile up voters in swing areas could make all the difference - and it did.

One has to ask- where did these "issues" come from? Who decided to start talking about them? Why were we not debating vehicle size with the same fervor? Perhaps it's because people drive big vehicles in every district. What about coke vs. pepsi or some other divisive issue?

The reason is demographics. These issues were "discovered" by Karl Rove & co. for their hot-button appeal in the areas where it counted the most. And his calculations proved correct. We must remind ourselves that Rove made his fortune in direct advertising - junk mail - so he was a master at demographic breakdown. And he used it to devastating effect during his electoral reign. And more impressively, he did it right under everyone's noses under the guise of "moral" or "cultural" issues.



There is actually a sane argument about gay marriage that goes largely unspoken. It is one that everyone can agree on, but since it is not useful to anyone politically, it is largely ignored.

It goes something like this: All marriages should be civil unions. Period. Marriage is a religious affair and should be left to the religious institutions to perform, monitor, etc. Leave the government out of it.

This is an idea that would have huge popularity on the right, where much of the anti-gay-marriage backers vote. Why should government be involved at all? It is intrusive and constrictive of people's liberties. This is classic right wing, anti-government boilerplate.

America used to have such a policy, in fact, but somewhere along the line, government thought it useful to "incentivize" marriage, and so it gave married people special privileges. This same noble idea underpinned the incentivization of home ownership which has led us into the financial nightmare we find ourselves in today.

Getting government out of people's private lives is a solution both the far right religious nuts and the far left gay crowd can agree on.

Politically speaking, the homosexual left would have actually benefited from this arrangement, as it would have left many one-issue conservative voters at home on election day. Or perhaps it would have put gays and conservatives on the same side of an issue, thus forcing politicians to draw their political lines differently.


Ignoring political bait is a practice for the politically savvy. The political novices (as the gay movement appears to still be) seizes on the opportunity to spout out about injustice. And morally they are right to. But politically they would do well to ask themselves, why are we being asked to do this in the first place? And is there a trap being set for us?

In this case the answer is to win a presidential election and yes. But the gay movement missed this and went after a social victory at the expense of a political one.

My fear is that the morning after party might come to recognize this. Once the battle is won and the emotions subside, it might begin to dawn on the community - what did we wind up gaining by this? And what has it cost us in terms of the "four more years" we'll be clawing our way out of for the next 20?

That remains to be seen.

But on its face, and as a matter of social justice I am glad the gays have gotten their marriages. I leave it to them to decide where to go from here and if the victory was ultimately worth the cost.

Nowhere

The appeal of socialism is that it is a kind of Utopia, where everyone gets along, and everyone is guaranteed a certain minimum of, say, comfort, security, or wealth. But like any Utopia, it only works when you leave something out. That something could be greed, it could be sex, it could be fossil fuels, it could be work.

The US Utopia worked pretty well early on because we left out labor, delegating that to a permanent underclass. The British and Europeans did a similar thing with their colonies. So while the Brits themselves were fairly comfortable, secure, and wealthy, those luxuries were built on the backs of those who were "left out."

In most of the Christian world, "greed" and therefore finance were left out of their Utopian visions and their high regard for themselves. They therefore required others - mostly Jews - to do their dirty work for them so they could maintain the benefits of borrowed money without the personal indignity of lending it.

Monks also live extraordinarily harmonious lives. They have everything you and I have except. . .wait a minute. . .oh yes! Sex! You leave that "one thing" out and everything else works smoothly. Fortunately, you have no shortage of inferiors to condescend to when you're in this exalted state. A permanent underclass of breeders allows you to maintain your enlightened condition while the population replenishes without you.

Some Utopian communes would like to exist without violence, some without fossil fuels. But violence remains the force that protects these hippies from having their land seized by enterprising Vikings, Turks, or even Poles who have none of the same distaste for violence. So a permanent underclass of soldiers must exist - somewhere out of sight of the "pure."

And as for fossil fuels, I always wondered if the hippies knew how their copies of Chomsky got onto their book shelves in the first place. Did these books grow on locally produced trees? Did the fall out of the sky? How would one know how to form a commune without reading the great ideas that inspired communes in the first place? Well these booksellers were reliant on a permanent underclass of truckers, motels, gas station attendants, and fast food chains to get those books from the printers to their shelves. And the energy for these operations was - fossil fuels. So the hippies were in collusion with Exxon-Mobile, only in ways that were hidden from plain sight.

So my anti-Utopianism comes from a sense of deep ecology. That the systems we live in are Whole, not fragmented. To leave something - anything - out is to engage in willful blindness to our own needs, even if they are locked in our own shadows. People have lived in communes successfully for millenia - they were called tribes. But at some point, the "one missing thing" came home to roost, and that was usually experienced as a war, or in the 20th century, as genocide.

Ecological systems which are inherently whole desire to remain so and do not take kindly to human meddling in an attempt to "perfect" them. Therefore, the missing part will always seek reintegration with the rest. This can be as innocuous as needing to do something for yourself, as in the ante-bellum US. It could be a nagging horniness in the case of the monk, or simply a need to get somewhere in the case of the hippie. It turns out, then, that these "bad" things that must be gotten rid of are actually pretty useful, even if our local cultural values tell us that they are "evil."

Money lending, is of course, evil in the Christianist worldview. But it sure is helpful if you want to buy a house, start a business, or send your kids to college. Sex is also considered evil by many, but it is certainly an effective means for replacing and growing the population- to say nothing of achieving the joy and enlightenment that monks seek through abstinence (odd, really). Fossil fuels, as polluting and hazardous as they are, are nonetheless the best way we have on hand to power the bus that took you out of your hick town and brought you to Humbolt County. Not such a bad thing, really.

The paradox is that if we want to "improve" these things that are "bad" - i.e. make sex about more than lust, make finance more about development than loan sharking, make driving more about freedom than about pollution - we need to engage these missing pieces, not reject them. We need to be less Utopian and more imperfect - or rather acknowledge openly the pre-existing imperfections that were there anyway.

In this way, the monk can learn tantra and satisfy his cravings for God and Flesh at the same time. The hippie can learn about distribution systems and lobbying that have been so effective in transporting gasoline (but not bio diesel) around the world. The Christian can learn about thrift and investment so that he won't have to get a loan to send his kid to college, but can pay outright. And the US slave owner can learn how to get his own hands dirty and realize the pleasures of working the soil and helping things grow. But none of this is possible in the socialist Utopia. Too many things are left out.

And this realization is where the Capitalist conversion usually happens for people. For Smith it was "greed" that was the great taboo to be overcome - the one missing piece in the Christianist world view from which he emerged.

But really there are so many others. Eating horse meat, for example, in France. "Underage" sex in the Levant (or in France). Polygamy in Utah. All manner of artistic expressions in every culture. Intergenerational mores - rejection of the old, of the young, or the ill. Whatever the case, capitalism and economics show us that the integration of the "one missing thing" enriches us all (both monetarily and culturally), and so the courage to face our own personal/collective shadows becomes imperative for our own fulfillment.

This puts us well on the way to our vision of the New Man, the Man unencumbered by cultural, religious, or traditional biases and arbitrary dogmas. Facing one's blinds spots - either internally or externally - brings us closer to the vision that we are All One race - transcending the peculiarities and temporalities of specific cultures and tribes. This is the true Utopia - the one we are living in right now with all of our fellow brothers on earth - the one which surrounds us at all times and yet which we do not rightly see.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is said to have pronounced that "the Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon this earth, but men do not see it." The same could be said for the brotherhood of man, so earnestly sought by civilizations throughout history. By seeing into our own blind spots - our own missing pieces - we can begin to see in our brother - in our enemies as well - our truer selves, our truer community, our truer collective.* And in that moment, Utopia will cease to be "nowhere" but will be right here - and everywhere.



*The connection to Jesus's other injunction to remove the log from your own eye should be obvious. Looking at what one is blocking in one's own sight is the key to recognizing one's neighbor's perfection. That we are all living in perfection right now is simply a matter of perceiving it.

By turning our "speck-eyed" neighbor into that one missing thing, that scapegoat, we persist in keeping our own selves in darkness. Therefore the communities which strive so fervently to remain in the light by expelling the "evil" only bind themselves deeper and deeper in the darkness they are struggling to emerge from.

This also is a clue to Jesus's meekness and unwillingness to fight evil. Turning the other cheek is the ultimate expression of this. Defusing rejection through acceptance is the only cure for our troubles. And finally, Jesus must have asked himself, what attitude did I hold to bring down such hatred from my brother? For surely he and I are of one flesh and the violence perpetrated "against me" by my own self must be also of my own doing. Why then would I resist my own self? How else am I to know me, then? This is the deep ecology of the religious - that I and my brother are one - that we are parts of one ecological system from which neither can be truly extracted.

Mutually Assured Penury

So this is interesting- both from a political perspective and (if you'll excuse me) an energetic perspective.

Now I don't think this is really going to happen, but with people all up and about it about the continued preeminence of the dollar in a time of crisis, it is worth considering the implication of some of the proposals being floated.

Most non-US citizens are concerned that the country that was so flagrantly irresponsible as to get us into this financial mess is still the country whose currency is the reserve that props up the world's economies. That just makes everyone go all itchy.

Particularly China. While many Americans have quietly worried that one day the Chinese would call in the chips that they have been lending us - or worse, switch to the Euro as their reserve currency, it seems pretty clear that nothing like this could really happen. The EU is still a fragile enterprise (and in my opinion still mostly a pipe dream that hasn't woken up yet), and no sound nation would bank on its decade old currency for the long run. China simply has no other serious options other than the dollar. We've got them by the short and curlies - and they us.

While this is hardly a sturdy foundation for the US Culture of Debt, it nonetheless has held for some time and will likely continue to in the future.

But let's fancifully look at what would happen if China got their "dream wish" to develop a universal currency to replace the dollar. Such a concoction would relieve them of their half of the foolishness-equation in not letting their currency float and getting too deeply in bed with the dollar. (Krugman writes convincingly about this in today's Times.

I agree with Krugman that this would be a bad idea. But given America's weak hand at the moment and given the rest of the world's (read: Europe's) desire to plague the planet with policies that have kept them in stagnation for half a century, it seems that a global socialist outcry might actually catch the ears of some of the key players on the world scene.

Like I said, this would be a disaster. I have written elsewhere that socialist policies work great in culturally/racially/religiously homogeneous societies. Where everyone in the culture is brainwashed by the culture into believing the same things, one can create a system of laws and norms that satisfy the people of that culture - while leaving the taboos to the designated scapegoats just outside of the culture, historically the Jews and now more and more the Muslims.

The humanistic beauty of Capitalism is that it generally makes for a culture without scapegoats. Because the shadow side of the culture is openly acknowledged (greed is good) and not forced onto a minority (future-scapegoat) population through banning of finance and profit-making, for instance, Capitalism embraces the outsider rather than flaying him. This inclusiveness goes hand in hand with Capitalism's apparent "lack of culture" because the norms of the culture are always subject to change. It is therefore more unstable, but less entrenched and prone to scapegoating than the European models.

This is why Socialism works in Germany, Italy, and Britain - but why the European Union will almost certainly fail. The disparate cultures (and how disparate they are) have too many cultural norms out of common for an "ueber"-socialism to umbrella them all. It simply will not work. Socialism only works locally.

So to attempt to spread a socialist agenda across the entire globe would be sheer folly. Who would establish the "universal" norm set? Sarkozy? Brown? Hu?

The only way to fairly and accurately establish a norm set is through popular electoral participation in legislation and the democratic process. It is slow, unwieldy, and always changing, but it is the most accurate reflection of the will of all the peoples affected by the laws.

If America is the microcosm for the planet, and I believe it is, then for the planet to function together cohesively, it would have to adopt the American style of conflict resolution, rather than the top-down socialist model of various cultural authorities (and/or experts).

This will be a hard pill for the world to swallow, and I don't think it is really ready. Part of what makes America so flexible in this way is its own racial heterogeneity and, more important, its racial interbreeding. Put simply, the world's nations are too racially homogeneous to function peacefully with each other. There are likely tens of thousands of Americans walking around with French, German, Italian, and English blood coursing through the same body. Such people do more good for world peace than any United Nations special agency. They are - individually - diluting the cultural norms that divide the world from itself and are therefore readying the world for the coming age of global unity.

That interracial breeding is a peculiarly American value should not be surprising. And it is why our system is so much more effective for us than it would be for, say, the Swedes. We have less difficulty with cultural upheaval because most of us experience it in our own bodies every day. This is not the case in the rest of the world, so they will tend to cower towards social cohesion rather than the individualistic integration required for global participatory democracy - a direction I believe we are all headed in whether we like it or not.

Ironically to history, this American exceptionalist model is based on a kind of reverse-eugenics. That racial "impurity" is the secret to success and the cause to be emulated rather than racial homogeneity a la Nazism and so many other 'master-race' cultures. This is a philosophy I am comfortable with, both morally and practically, that the superior man will be the one with more strains running through him rather than fewer.

Which brings us back to global interdependence.

The one thing I would find intriguing about a world currency now would be this: that there would be no back-up. Right now, the only hope left for the world economy is for the Asians (and to a lesser extent the Europeans) to start spending. Stop hoarding and let it loose, just like the Americans have. This is one of the only changes that could open the taps again for the global economy.

So what is saving us now, in my judgment, is that we have a few different currencies to play with- we have a couple of ways out.

Imagining into the future, for a moment, that there was only one global currency, were it to fail, there would be no hope, no way out - utter global disaster.

The one saving grace, then, of a global currency would be that it would force us - force us - to obey sound money policies- because there would be no one left on earth to bail us out. Right now, somewhere deep down, those people that borrowed and lent us into this mess understood that the Chinese were there to back us up. The world would not end when things went south.

But if there were but one currency, then that would simply not be tolerable. We would police our own selves with the vigor and discipline befitting a mature economy, and we would not - could not - let ourselves falter. The result of failure would be mutually assured penury. Just as the cold war focused out minds on achieving a mature peace with Russia - the alternative being too much to imagine - a unique global currency would focus our minds on fiscal discipline and mature us as a nation and as a planet.

This would indeed be a worthy - if scary - ride.


But in a way it makes sense. And here I engage the "energetic."

The mutually assured destruction of the atomic age has changed the locus of our survival instinct from physical to financial. Physical, military wars are almost inconceivable between the great powers at this time. It would mean the end of all life on the planet, and we understand that. So from an evolutionary perspective, we have forced ourselves "up" a notch from the physical to the emotional-financial.

This is quite an achievement.

Energetically speaking (and here I know I have lost the Harvard crowd) we have moved from the first to the second chakra as a way of relating to one another. We have made peace with our collective physicality over the last half century. A global currency would force us to make peace with our collective emotionality as reflected through Dollars - or whatever it would be called - as opposed to bodies/corpses.

This would be an extraordinary leap - and one made rather quickly on the heels of the last one that began in the 1940s. That maturing process took about 60 years to gel, with mutually assured destruction being the disciplinarian of our baser instincts to war and murder. How long would it take for a global financial currency to achieve the same effect through mutually assured penury?

I don't know.

Would we have the equivalencies of Cuban Millie Crises, in which the currency threatens to default, and we have to "bring ourselves back from the edge" by having sounder financial regulation? That would be truly amusing, but I see it as a distinct possibility.

We would be growing financially, taking care of ourselves through self-interest, capitalistic principles, rather than command and control regulation which is utterly toothless and ineffective. If the Madhoffs and the Lehman Brothers understood that their actions would cause global bankruptcy and would be treated as a sort of treason, then they would likely act more diligently. Certainly their customers would.

Rogue bankers would be treated - both by the government and by their colleagues - as rogue arms dealers, with the dangers being effectively parallel in the new situation. It would be a time of collective ripening that the world has only seen before during the cold war. And what a marvel it would be.

Cheating a little by looking at energetic systems, we could imagine the next steps would follow within a century or less. "3rd chakra" intellectual maturity would be reached, perhaps through some sort of globalized language.

And eventually a 4th chakra heart maturity would emerge, by which point the human race would be largely unrecognizable from what it was before then. This would be a world I would (likely) want to belong to, a prize well earned through the toil and sweat of a long, 6000 year adolescence.

Universal, global love. It's almost hard to conceive of, and yet it remains a distinct possibility if we are able to survive the tests of the lower planes of exchange an competition - physical, emotional, and intellectual.

This sort of thinking is worth basking in for a moment. It seems almost juvenile to think that way, and yet the process by which it would be arrived at would be nothing if not cynical and rigorous. It would be the delightful fusion of left and right - leftist ideals achieved by rightist means. Universal love and harmony achieved through global military, financial, and intellectual competition, all sealed in the alembic by the discipline of mutually assured destruction, penury, and. . .retardation?

It all remains to be seen. But if somehow we must suffer under European constraints of global socialism and global currency, at least we Americans can look to this even more distant horizon for the inspiration to carry us through the hard times. Certainly the socialist mood is in the ascent right now, and I don't know that America will have the power to overcome it. But if the Euros and the Chinese get their currency, they might be unpleasantly surprised that there will be no one left to scapegoat when their socialist systems fail.

The enemy (as it has always been) will be themselves - and perhaps this is the wake up they require. Too much culture brings stagnation and disavowal of one's own flaws and blind spots. Americans have been learning this for years through our own internal turmoils. Europe has not. Their great wars in the 20th century were really only the beginning. Maybe it will turn out to be their century after all- to thrash about amongst themselves until they get it right. For Americans it would be tedious and boring, no doubt. But perhaps it would give us some time to get our own houses in order so that we can be ready to pick up the pieces.

Culture of Life

(this was originally posted on my culture blog, but it bears repeating here)

American Democracy.

So we have created an ingenious system in which power is pitted against power for the benefit of the masses. This deconcentrates power from the centralized monarch and therefore (ostensibly) removes the corruption that has been the mother's milk of tyranny for centuries. Marvelous, truly marvelous.

But in a closed system - and the human psyche remains a closed system until we decide to "open" it - the energy for tyranny has to go somewhere. The founders remind us that tyranny does not only lie without - in the monarch - but more insidiously within, in the desire for servitude and the certainty a powerful Patriarch provides. In many instances they urge constant vigilance against one's own inner laziness and cowardice that would sacrifice Freedom for Surety. But even by the presidency of Quincy Adams and Jackson, it must have been clear to them that the virtue they sought in their countrymen's hearts had waned. By Johnson, it would be all but extinguished.

Vigilance is an uphill battle, and whenever we turn it too far outside of ourselves, we leave our minds and hearts vulnerable to the infestation of sloth. Yes, we are vigilant against our government (some of us still), but what, again, of that inner slave/tyrant? Where does he go?

I spoke of the human psyche as a closed system. By that I mean that all of the biological elements remain in force regardless of our efforts to squelch or suppress them. Therefore, the mammalian desire to be led by an alpha-species leader does not disappear just because we form an ingenious system of government. It simply must find another avenue to express itself - only, since we have suppressed it, the avenue to submission will not be the obvious one, but will rather sneak up as if from behind us.

That which we tame, that which we control, does not simply disappear, it rather morphs into shapes that we do not recognize. This is the true danger of "repression." Not that it is amoral to suppress biological needs (the liberal perspective) but simply that it is ineffective and dangerous. Better the Devil you know than the Devil that walks around disguised as your buddy.

And for every suppressed impulse, we 'create' a buddy who is in fact a hidden devil.

So what, I ask again, has become of that basic human urge to follow? Where has our inner serf turned for enslavement? Who is our latter-day Devil disguised as friend?

Well, the mammalian impulse that creates the alpha-leader is, quite simply, the fear of death. We pack-animals fear the invasion of neighboring packs and so look to the biggest and the strongest to protect us. We gladly give up our women and our best food for the dominating strength the alpha has proven, as it is our best hope against annihilation by our enemies.

So protection from death is our primary concern, and it is hard wired in people as it is in animals. But where are those enemies today? Who are the alpha-males we have given our food and our women (and our money which may buy both) over to?

Well it is obviously the doctor class.

We have created an entire caste of high-tech warriors to defend us not from the Scots or the Turks, but from an even more insidious foe- an invisible one! The swarming herds of unseen microbes lurking behind every lamp post, the rogue germ just waiting to attack us from any corner - these, these are the new terrorists, and they are everywhere!

Orwell, Huxley, and Gilliam postulated a constant state of warfare against political terrorists as a fabrication to maintain centralized control of the people. The constant threat of terror and sabotage by socialists, communists, and Jews have held potentates in place for centuries. But having de-potentated out princes through adversarial democracy, we leave a vacuum to be filled for those who wish to manipulate power to control us.

It used to be that any time a prince would need some extra funds to pay for his extravagances, he would gin up some conflict with the neighboring country and send his armies over there, effectively, to loot. This would not be the stated purpose of the war, of course. That would always be the mammalian watchword of "national security," or "keeping us safe." But it was rather understood by the princely caste that this is how you made money- a kind of back and forth of conquest.

Well the Medical class does the same thing for us moderns. New terrorists are discovered every day. Avian flu, human papilloma, ovarian cysts - all of these mysterious killers threaten to destroy you and your loved ones. But no need to fear! The magic pill, injection, or "procedure" has just been discovered to fend off these impending disasters. Just thank heaven for the new warriors with their scalpels at the ready.

Now I am not saying necessarily that it is the doctors who are conjuring up this ruse to keep you in fear and to take your money. Just as the patriotic, well-intentioned solider is the unconscious agent of a deceptive tyrant, the modern doctor - usually earnest in his desire to help - is the stooge of a larger industry who controls him. The modern doctor has no time to do rigorous research of the drugs he peddles, the procedures he endorses, or the equipment he prescribes. Just as the soldier is too busy doing push-ups to study geo-politics, the doctor simply has too much to do to really check if what his masters are telling him is true. He simply goes along with it.

As futile as the Hippocratic oath may be, it must be stated that the executives - to say nothing of the shareholders - of giant pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment companies do not take it. They are under no obligation to serve the interests of the patient. In fact, they are explicitly in business to serve the financial interests of the shareholders. This is business, and it's a good one- even better than looting the neighboring kingdom.

The human desire for protection - like the human desire for sex - will never disappear. By denying people access to their sexual feelings, a massive underground industry of pornography and prostitution is created- wholly disproportionate to actual need. By denying people access to their desire for monarchical daddying, an enormous medical-industrial complex emerges, most of it entirely unnecessary. Both are huge earners, as they exploit a never-ending sea of desire for sex and safety. You will never make a bad bet on either.


Is there a solution to this problem? Some may not conceive it to be a problem at all. After all, yes the doctors are controlling our lives, but still, aren't they at least keeping us safe?

I highly dispute this. First of all, I don't believe in germs. I know that makes me a philistine to some, but I am generally unimpressed with the idea that the human system is so weak that it must live in an entirely sterile environment. I do believe, however, that through vaccination, massive ingestion of chemicals, and lack of exposure to challenging environments that the human system can become this weak.

That our medications make us sicker is something we would rather not think about. Nobody studies it, since the people who have money to do the studies are the people hawking the drugs- so why would they question their own monopoly on truth?

The answer to the problem is the same answer that we have found to deal with overweening government, and that is self-rule. In much of rural America, gun-ownership is still seen as the antidote to too much government. As nuts as you may think these people are, they have decided to take alpha-male protection - once the monopoly of the state - back into their own hands. They have accepted responsibility for their physical safety, and therefore enjoy the freedom of living unencumbered by princes and potentates. I salute them.

Well the same thing can be done for health. It is simply a matter of taking responsibility for it and therefore enjoying the freedom that good health has to offer. For me, nutritional healing has been the most effective way to accomplish this. There are simple, relatively inexpensive and permanent ways to undo the harm caused by a toxic society and establish a pattern of health that will not only extend your life quantitatively but will increase the qualitative enjoyment of the life you are living today. This is the promise of natural medicine, and it has fulfilled that promise since time immemorial.

The germ theory of Pasteur - which he retracted on his death bed as a hoax - leads to endless struggle and endless fear. The ecological approach, which balances the body's natural ecosystem with its environment makes any kind of microbial "attack" a moot point. A healthy body will not be hospitable to "invaders." In fact the alkalinity model has it that microbes are actually generated within our own tissues as a response to acidic environments in our system. An acidic condition is naturally produced in the body when the body dies and is ready to decompose. That is the signal for the fungus and bacteria to start breaking us down. When we produce these toxic conditions while still alive (through toxic chemicals and cooked food), we send mixed signals to our environment- it is time to break down, and yet we are not dead yet, so we must fight off the "pathogens." It's like the US drug war in which we are funding both sides of the battle with our own resources. It is an enormous waste of energy and will make us twice as sick with half the energy.

Nutritional healing solves this problem by eliminating the circumstances that create the "disease" and therefore eliminating also the wasted energy we spend in fighting the disease. It is a holistic, win-win solution for the body. The subjective experience of alkalizing in this way is that one wonders what one was fighting with one's whole life. Everything just seems so much easier.


But perhaps this is too simple for our culture. We believe in progress and so we must continue the fight to advance medicine - indefinitely.


But before we get there, medical "advancement" will kill this country as surely as the lust and greed of a prince will destroy his own kingdom. They will both bleed the state of money until it is dry.

Universal health care, having the stated purpose of protecting us, will seal us all in our graves. The medical industry is profit-driven, not health driven. And the sole arbiters of what makes us healthy will be the medical industry itself. Describing this as the fox guarding the chicken coop is the understatement of the new century.

Once they are given full power to control, diagnose, and prescribe to all of us, their power over the country will be complete, and they can start sucking the wealth out of us - with our own willing consent - until we are bled dry, the industry having turned itself into the very leeches they have disowned as quackery.

What new forms of quackery await us? Only the imaginations of the Medical Industry will tell. But understand this: that as long as Americans are unwilling to die - or to be born - naturally they will keep wanting more- more props in old age, more promises of longevity, more easement from suffering, more, and more, and more, and more. Our desire for immortality will be insatiable so long as we fail to live fulfilling lives with the days we are already given. And so the research into new gizmos and new pills will be literally endless.

Will health care costs ever stop rising? No. Because who on earth would want to stop cancer research, AIDS research, Alzheimer's research? We're just "one breakthrough away" from a new discovery that could add years of life to someone with Parkinson's. How can we stop now? And we won't. So like a hopeless gambler, plugging away for that next big win, we will spend every last penny of our grandchildren's money to stay alive just a little bit longer and with a little bit less distress, forgetting what our own grandparents taught us- that the house always wins.

It has often been observed that the great civilizations of history have been brought down by the overextension of their military in foreign lands to preserve their empire. They rack up endless debt as they turn all of their attention outwards to preserve the territories they have conquered - or fear will conquer them. That the US defense industry parallels the medical industry pretty closely is the topic of another post. Suffice it to make the observation that both industries serve the purpose of protecting us from "invaders," and both industries are immune from democratic review and oversight. In both industries we "trust the experts," and any movement to defund them is viewed by the majority as suicidal insanity. Thus their profits continue unrestrained.

I would simply make the point here that Americans' endless fight against foreign enemies is not limited to the Middle East and Central Asia. The medical class is bankrupting us through the invisible warfare it is waging every day against the invisible world of "germs." Maintaining our "empire of health" against these invaders will produce every bit as disastrous results as the Roman conquests of the Barbarians. The microbes are indeed already at the gate.

If Americans could ever say "Enough. I'm healthy enough," we might be able to stop the ship from sinking. But the medical people make us so unhealthy from birth- through unnecessary interventions, vaccinations, and food additives, that we never really "get here" in the first place. The American work ethic undermines our enjoyment of the life we have, and the chemical-foods we eat numb us to our real life experience. Death, then, is an endless terror in this supposed "culture of life," and so like our mammalian predecessors, we will fight it off at all costs. And for us, unfortunately, it will truly be at all costs. "Think health care is expensive now?" wrote George Will last year. "Just wait till it's free."

Indeed.