Afghanistan: the real war

This time the liberal community and the left-of-center press have it wrong. President Obama must not only fight the war in Afghanistan, he must win it.

Given the facts on the ground the choice is not even a hard one to make. If we do not destroy the efforts of the Taliban to resume control of that unfortunate country, not only will the al Queda regain a safe haven in which to plot outrage against the west, it and the Taliban itself will be in position to conduct guerrilla warfare against the nation of Pakistan. If that insurrection were successful, as it well might be, the radical, the insane wing of the Muslim religion would be in a position to make the "mushroom cloud" a reality.

Recall that our previous president was led into war against the nation of Iraq by two vital pieces of false information. One, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and, two, that he was in cahoots with al Queda. On the basis of that false information, the U.S. Congress and the American people supported the president's invasion. That the real motive behind the action may have been economic (read, "oil") is irrelevant. We went to war in Iraq because we had been misled, either intentionally or by mistake, to believe that Hussein presented a genuine threat to the world.

In Afghanistan, the same threats are real. There's nothing false about the Taliban's alliance with al Queda and nothing false about Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons. In my opinion, there's also nothing false about the outcome of the struggle that will ensue if we make a foolish decision and abandon Afghanistan. The Taliban, much better financed than even the legitimate government, will again come to power. Unlike the so-called moralistic regime currently in power, the Taliban has no qualms about conducting business in opium derivatives. And al Queda certainly will not be shy about using the funds thus generated to finance major operations against us and Pakistan. The Taliban is already waging indecisive battle against the Pakistani government. With better financing and a safe haven in Afghanistan from which to operate, the outcome of that struggle is, from a western standpoint, predictably bleak. Remember, Pakistan was a loyal supporter of the previous Taliban government of Afghanistan. The Pakistani sympathies that were beind that alliance have not gone away.

Outright pacifism is the only argument against increased levels of commitment in Afghanistan. But if there ever has existed a just reason for war, this one is it. Our involvement in Afghanistan resembles nothing more than a police action aimed at destroying a Mafia-like organization that threatens to take over a legitimate country. As I said, the choice is not difficult. We must win or sentence the future of the west to perpetual warfare against an opponent that welcomes death. That will be a harder war to win if we permit the Taliban to once more roll into power.

True, the decision has been made more difficult than it should be by the president's liberal base. But who's to blame them? The thinking wing of the American public has been led into a mild case of paranoia by the quackery of the previous administration. The fact that the right-wing of the Congress seems to be supporting the position I'm taking leads thinking people to wonder if we're not being led down another primrose path. We were fed so many lies and subjected to such a high level of clever propaganda, one can hardly blame us for being wary.

But this time the fears generated by the war mongers of 2002-3 have a genuine basis in truth. We cannot permit the illusions of the past to overshadow the realities of the present. We must do whatever it takes to destroy the Taliban as a political force, and with them, al Queda as a focal point for terrorism.

Belling the Cat

Archibald MacLeish observes in his play J.B. that “If God is God, he is not good. If God is good, he is not God.” MacLeish intended by this challenge to conventional theology to lay the question of evil at the feet of a supposedly omnipotent and benevolent God. These discombobulating words from the play lose some of their mystery when MacLeish’s different uses of the word “God” unfold. He made “God” refer at one time to that without which nothing can be or be conceived, and at another to a name God goes by (in some people’s minds). Substitute a popular name of God into MacLeish’s sentences and you’ll see his meaning more clearly. “If God is Jehovah, he is not good. If God is good, he is not Jehovah.” No reading of the Old Testament can make Jehovah out to be good. Just ask any Canaanite or Philistine. The God MacLeish had in mind was the literarily appealing God who, to settle a bet, permitted Satan to inflict all manner of harm on the good man Job. But Job was only a character in an old folk tale, so as interesting as he is, we should not take literally the story told about him (although there’s much to be learned from the huge body of work analyzing the tale).

Theologians have cleverly adapted to the reality of evil by inventing and invoking free-will as a way to absolve God of the sins committed by human beings. The story goes that God, who gave us the power freely to choose goodness, cannot be guilty of our transgressions. That sleight of mind will not, however, free God (if he is Jehovah) of the evil nature he displayed toward the Canaanites and the other tribes who, in different Old Testament stories, he murdered as a favor to the Hebrews. That God, if he is in fact God, is by no stretch of the imagination good (not even if you happen to be a Hebrew).

Lost Bees

Warm weather brings the bees. I mean, into my house. They come through or down one of the chimneys, and wind up dead on the floor in the room where I watch the TV. I usually just sweep their bodies out, not thinking too much about it, but the happenings of yesterday changed that. I now think about the bees . . . and other misplaced persons.

Yes, the bees have become persons to me. The transformation from insect to human happened to the bees when one of the wanderers happened to light on my pants leg. The bee was so tired (I thought) of banging its head against the window trying to get out it could hardly crawl. That was my standard explanation for why the bees died. The theory worked for me, but there had always been a flaw in it. I almost never saw a bee flying in the TV room. I only saw them on the floor, either dead or nearly so. I had no good explanation for that anomaly. Maybe once or twice over the years the thought crossed my mind that the bees had flown around in the chimney, and had worn themselves out in that prison before falling.

But then came the bee on my pants leg.

I walked out onto the porch, and using a small slip of paper, brushed the bee off. Lethargic as ever it landed on the porch floor, hardly able even to crawl. But it did crawl a little. What got my attention at first was the direction the bee took in its struggle. It headed straight for the outdoors, in this case, a small plot of garden where a few nondescript flowers grew. Being a romantic of sorts, I imagined that the bee was somehow magically drawn toward its natural home, choosing to die there rather than on the boards of an unnatural building.

But then came a miracle. The bee had limply crawled no more than a foot when suddenly it took off, flying as hard and as fast as ever, out into the open air. This was the same bee that a minute before had found itself unable to fly, letting itself be "walked" out of the house while clinging to my pants leg . . . the same bee, near to death in one moment, flying in the next as if nothing had happened to it.

I went back into the house and gathered three more bees onto the slip of paper, corralling them with my fingers. They offered little resistance, behavior you might expect from an organism teetering on the edge of death. I carried them onto the porch. They made no effort to escape. They were too near death.

I watched these three more carefully than I had the first. They too crawled toward the free air, and the flowers . . . and they too, took off like rockets, resurrected, I mused, by the clean air of their natural home.

I went back in and searched around under the furniture for more bees. I found four, but these seemed irretrievably dead, their little bodies curled lifelessly into themselves.

I rolled them onto the paper, taking care not to harm them any more than they had already been harmed. They did not move. Too far gone, I thought. Dead.

It was still daylight so I made a mental note of the place on the porch where I deposited the dead dead bees, deciding to leave them overnight. I checked them this morning. Perhaps it was the wind that took them away. I'll never know. I just know they were gone.

Last evening, when the first bee "incident" occurred, I had been watching the HBO movie, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." And when I walked inside from watching the three bees fly away, I found myself humming the haunting theme song from the movie "Exodus." The coincidences did not elude the romantic mind of the Mendacious Mouse.

As Brief as a Mouse Can be

Every week Calvin Trilling serves up a slice of doggerel in The Nation pulp magazine. Usually his fare is blatantly forgettable, but this week's deserves repetition (if not memorization). I paraphrase the punch line:

A lame duck cannot fly
But it can defecate.

I add a comment: this particular duck may not always have been lame, but it has always been quite capable of shitting on the American people (one-fifth of whom still seem to enjoy being shat upon).

The Economic Cycle

Why does the economy fluctuate so widely, regularly moving from boom to bust, almost as if some higher power were in control? Economists, and a few crackpots, have long pondered that question, one of the latter even suggesting that it had something to do with sun spots. But correlation does not necessarily mean cause.

In my opinion, one economist, Ludwig von Mises, founder of the Austrian school of economic thought, got it right. In his book Human Action he pointed out (the generally accepted fact) that boom times come about as an effect of increasing investment in entrepreneurial enterprise. As the boom strengthens the capital base increases, that is, more and more money becomes available for investment. But -- and the “but” is critical -- the number of viable and worthwhile enterprises does not and cannot keep pace. There are only so many good ideas for new profit-making ventures. As the quality of new ventures decreases, the capital deployed in them becomes more and more at risk, until, finally, as the fledgling enterprises begin to fail, the incurred losses shrink the capital base, and the cyclic downturn begins.

The last two great burst bubbles in the American economy perfectly illustrate von Mises’ point. The dot.com and housing bubbles both burst because the number of potentially successful ventures in those two areas dried up. The dot.com bubble sucked up hundreds of billions of loose capital, with risk increasing as the number of new businesses increased. The real estate market produced trillions, not just billions, of risky investments, with the riskiest of the risky being leveraged by the formation of derivative pseudo-assets, securitized bonds and credit default swaps. In retrospect, the derivatives generated by the housing bubble look like stop-gap measures designed to delay the collapse of the dizzy house of cards that had been built on risky mortgages. In any case, both bubbles demonstrated von Mises’ explanation of the economic cycle; as a market grows, the chance for survival of new ventures lessens. (Classicists would refer this to "the law of dimishing returns.")

Von Mises’ theory applies to more than bubbles and to more than the weakening of the capital base. It is also illustrated by the emergence of entirely new products lines, some of which ought properly be recognized as frippery, Thoreau’s word for the bevy of unnecessary merchandise with which we surround ourselves. It’s not that we do not obtain personal value from expensive toys, all-occasions greeting cards, and similar niceties, but from an economic point of view, they constitute consumer products that will be speedily sacrificed when the economic curve bends downward. Looked at as an aggregate, the real value of frippery decreases as the size of the market for frippery increases. New niceties enter the market as more and more money appears in the pockets of the consuming public, and (generally speaking) the real value of each new product moves further from the baseline of necessity.

What happens next is relatively obvious. As the capital market for new ventures dries up, and as the weak sisters that came into being near the peak of the curve begin to fail, a snowball begins to form and to roll downhill. Von Mises thought that the capital goods market (goods used to make other goods) would be the first to suffer, and for very intelligible reasons he was right. And because the information available to the buying public is not nearly so good as the information available to businesses, the market for frippery would perhaps be the last to feel the effects of the bust. When the pain finally reaches the flesh and blood of ordinary humans, it’s already too late. The economic cycle is already over the hump and well on its way to the bottom.

John Maynard Keynes, writing during the worst of the Great Depression, suggested that history had reached the point where it was no longer a certainty that the “elevator” would hit bottom and subsequently begin to rise. I’m not sure he was right. I may be making a post hoc argument (like attributing the economic cycle to sun spots) but it seems to me that the economy had always risen after a bust, only getting stuck during the 30s when the government took a Keynesian hand in providing a boost to the market. Unemployment was 25% in 1932 and was still 19% in 1939. Roosevelt/Keynes (with a dollop of Marx) had not solved the problem, had perhaps made it worse. FDR’s claim that we have nothing to fear but fear may have been right, but a strong case can be made that fear is not lessened but increased when the only new jobs being opened are in government financed make-work projects. Our new president ought to think long and hard before he makes mistakes similar to those our government made in the 30s.

Ayn Rand and Spinoza

I’ve intended for quite a while to write a blog explaining my understanding of the writings of Ms Ayn Rand. I read all her work several decades ago, named my daughter Dagny Ayn (after her and the heroine of Atlas Shrugged), and remain an admirer. At first, five decades ago, I was more than a mere admirer; I was a true believer who saw in her work an unvarnished picture of the way the world really is. Over the years my view has matured, and the following represents my mature thoughts.

Those Libertarians who read her work as if it presented a philosophical system in the classical sense have missed her point entirely (and maybe she did too, as some of her essays seem to indicate). At the core of her work is the notion that the quality of the world (as defined by humans) lies nowhere but in the quality of its people. She and I and Spinoza regard this as an axiom that does not need proof.

The world (as seen by human beings) is determined to be what it is by the unchanging laws of nature. But the face the world shows us is forever changing. The human brain, considered as an objective "thing," also operates in accord with unchanging laws. But our species -- no more than the collection of all rivers -- is not a homogeneous assemblage of like-minded things. Although the body parts -- including the brains -- of every human work in accord with unchanging laws, the values taken by the neural structure of each one of us is determined individually by our experience in the world.

Compare this to a computer's memory. As they come off the assembly line, all the memory chips look exactly alike, and as parts of the whole mechanism they all operate in accord with the same physical principles. But as the computers begin to be used, their individuality becomes manifest. The same memory location in computers of the same design will no longer be identical, They will be encoded with electrical impulses representing words and other symbols that will vary from machine to machine. So also do the memory functions of human brains contain (in a so far undecipherable code) different symbols, and some of those symbols, when brought into play in human behavior, function as human values, the actual determinants of the way we shall behave in reaction to the world.

Ms Rand was writing about those memories we refer to as values.

Before getting further into her "people" we must acknowledge and understand the difference between egoism and egotism. All of us, according to Spinoza and Ayn Rand, are egoists. Spinoza expressed our egoism by the Latin word conatus, by which he referred to the propensity of all things to perpetuate themselves in being. Note, all things, not just human beings. The very nature of the smallest atom and the largest star (and everthing in between) acts in such a way that the object will remain what it is until it is acted upon by a more powerful object. Human "objects," unlike most others, are aware of their desire to perpetuate themselves in being, so unlike those that are unaware, humans take actions that they perceive to be in the direction of their preservation. That is the nature of us all, and that is what Ms. Rand (and Spinoza) meant by the word "egoist."

An egotist, on the contrary, is an egoist who has a limited view of what it takes to survive in the world as a functional being (i.e., what it takes to be happy). He sees himself as a more or less isolated creature whose ego. along with all its values, whether good, bad, or evil, must be preserved. The egotist is an unenlightened egoist.

All the main characters in Ms. Rand's major books were intentionally written as caricatures of various qualities that occur in human beings, some of which are good, some bad, some downright evil. Some of those characters have been seen as representatives of the "Supreme Egoist," and in my opinion, some of them were. But the supreme egoist was not, as some imagine, neither John Galt (in Atlas Shrugged) nor Howard Roark (in The Fountainhead). The Supreme Egoist is a person who is equally capable of being a leader and of being led. He is just as physically alone in the world as are all of us, but he has spiritually bridged the gap between himself and others and has managed to view the world and all that's in it as an integrated whole, a One, a naturally adapted organism.

The principal characters in Ms Rand's books do not represent ideal versions of humanity, but rather ideal representations of specific human qualities. The best (but not only) example of this sort of being appears as the riveter, a minor character in "The Fountainhead." He comes as close to perfection as can be imagined. He's great at his work (delivering 8 hours of devoted work for 8 hours pay), loyal to his friends, and not overly consumed with himself. When we observe the riveter pitching a rivet with complete awareness of the importance of what he's doing, we may have difficulty seeing his action as an expression of his commitment to excellence. And even when we analytically resolve his perfection, seeing it as an expression of, say, his "upbringing" or his "morals" we miss the point. The characteristics Ms Rand gave him express everything he is (or better, has become). He is an effect of all that appears in his "driving" device, his very human brain.

And this is the element of her philosophy that Ms Rand left unexplored (and which I suspect she was incapable of exploring in herself). It remains much easier for her readers to fall into the traps of Objectivism, much easier to wind up believing that human qualities can be observed, much in the same way we observe the qualities of, say, a good poem. Just as the poem seems to be an object that can be objectively assessed, but that is a deception. Its authentic quality lies in the fact that it is an artifact of a human mind. As such it cannot be separated from the human being who created it, and he or she is a product of his or her whole experience in the world. (Note this well, since it follows that as more and more human beings become more adequately adapted to the authentic whole, the easier it will be for the rest also to adapt -- i.e., to find enlightenment.)

Literary deconstructionists go a step further in understanding the objects of their study, but they still, with all their cleverness, are unable to get their minds around the process that generated the work. The ideas the poet expresses in his work may be objectively studied and placed alongside similar ideas spoken of by other poets, but each poet's mind remains unique. As academics we may place this or that poet in a taxonomy of so-called cultural categories, but however much we may feel we understand the man by an observation of his work (and the similar work of others), we are still blind to the interacting content of the mind.

Now, when we look at the human world and see it as something akin to a work of art, we are apt to take the same sort of easy path, thinking that by making superficial judgments of the quality and character of the players we can understand the thing itself -- the uniquiness of all thinking and interacting things. But the human world is an effect of "human action" and human actions are effects of the undecipherable array of causes we euphemistically refer to as the human brain. Even if by some inspired leap of our science we are able to comprehend the workings of a generic brain, we will still not understand any particular brain, much less the multiplicity of brains that abide in the six-billion of us.

And that is why literature such as that produced by Ms Rand serves a useful (although limited) function. In her characters she has depicted the constituent parts of the non-objective world. As such, they can be viewed as models of how the ideal human should behave. But if for instance, we observe the quality of "productiveness" and think of it as a quality we ought to emulate, and make the mistake of thinking that productiveness is the end-all of human virtue, we will be mistaken. In the famous John Galt radio address Ms Rand identifies many other qualities besides productiveness. To emulate each of these, as if it were an isolated model, is a virtual impossibility. When correctly considered, they appear as undifferentiated aspects of the human spirit, as inseparable elements of the integrated whole that is reflected in the being-ness of the individual human brain. We act out of the whole, not out of the part . . . and the whole cannot be objectified as anything other than a poorly defined taxonomy that represents but does not define the human mind.

The human condition comes about as a pseudo-parallel, interactive effect of variously "configured" human minds. As such it is essentially incomprehensible. We make sense of it -- to the extent that we can -- by giving names to objectively observable categories of human action. We use the names Ms Rand and many others have given to our virtues and our sins. And when we do it right, we base our collective management (our governments) on the virtues while eshewing the sins. But the government that functions best is the one that recognizes the existential nature of the people being governed, all of which are essentially different.

Consequently, the basic principle incorporated in the most perfect government acknowledges and protects the fundamental freedom of all its subjects to remain, to the greatest extent possible, what they are. The differences among us cannot all be accommodated in the man-made laws of the land, so it is incumbent on the leadership to instantiate and "act out" those ideals that most conform to the taxonomy of values that perpetuate the nation and its inhabitants in their being. Identifying and expressing those ideals is the job of the "riveters" among us who are most capable of communicating the beneficence of the nation's ideals. As individuals, we each ought to lead ourselves and be led by our frail grasp of the goodnesses reflected in the qualities Ms Rand has laid out. In that sense, her work deals with ethics.

In Ms Rand's books and in reality, the individual is paramount, not only to him- or herself, but to the functional whole which is the world we make. The true believers who have made Ms Rand into an icon to be worshiped have made the same mistake she apparently made in her own life. They have let their egotism lead the egoism. The result is a caricature of what a human being actually is.

Are we Truly Free

I mean by this, "Are we free to loosen the restraints imposed by our liberty?" If this sounds like double talk, scroll down and reread my blog on the difference between freedom and liberty. (A brief refresher: The former is what we are naturally born with, the latter what we have left after we bargain away some of our freedom.) Every law imposed by every government limits the freedom of the governed. Thus, every government, whether democratic or despotic, modifies the state of affairs that would exist if there were no government.

However, only in (small "d") democratic governments can the state of affairs created by the acts of government be said to have been negotiated by the interaction of the people and their government. Even in a republic, where the people delegate their law-making power to legislators and executives, the people are ultimately "in charge," since they can remove from power those they have put in power.

But in this country the process of removing elected officials from office is doggedly slow, two years being the shortest period that must elapse before a "hired hand" can legally be fired. Given the speed at which the modern world changes, much discomfort may ensue before the guilty parties are deprived of their power.

The Founders were well aware of this weaknesses they were building into the new constitution, but to be honest, they were more concerned with the intelligence of the people (who were ultimately to be in charge) than they were with the qualifications of the elected officials. Aside from setting certain age and (in some cases) citizenship requirements, they were of the opinion that even if the legislators and executives were somewhat less than perfect, their shortcomings would still offer a better alternative than entrusting the government directly to the people.

A much longer article than I intend to write would be needed to outline the various arguments offered pro and con by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The terms "federalist" and "anti-federalist" came out of that debate, with the federalists favoring the strong central government that finally won the day. The anti-federalists, led by George Mason and Patrick Henry, were concerned that the Constitution, as drafted, was silent on the matter of civil rights. Madison, the pro forma leader of the federalists, was finally persuaded (by a Baptist minister) of the need for a Bill of Rights, and in his capacity as a member of the first House of Representatives, led the fight to draft and ratify the first ten constitutional amendments.

Taken as a whole, the amended Constitution can be understood to establish a relationship between the people and their elected representatives. I will henceforth refer to the latter as "the government," but bear in mind, the government remains an elite group of people. The government thus exists as flesh and blood, whereas the laws enacted by the government exist as a set of ideas. It is in the light of that difference that I have asked the question that appears as the title of this piece: "Are we truly free?"

That is, given that the ideas embodied in our laws have been finely woven into the very fabric of our nation and its culture, can we actually change our minds about them? Do we still have enough residual freedom to undo in our minds some of the most fundamental ideas that bind us as a people?

These questions have come to the fore in the current government's struggle with the financial crisis. When the government, empowered by due process of law, decided to purchase stock in several large banks, the people (actually, the press and certain campaigning politicians) accused the government of socialism, using that word in a way that implied that socialism was somehow not legal in this country. And indeed, pure socialism, in which the government is the de facto and de jure owner of all property is directly forbidden by the Fifth Amendment: ". . . nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." While it is conceivable that the government could purchase on the open market a controlling interest in the nation's large corporations, the price paid being by definition a "just compensation," I do not imagine that such an arrangement would last unless the people were convinced that the government's actions were "good." Believing otherwise, the people could, by denying their trade, bankrupt the "socialized" businesses. Nevertheless, it does not appear on the surface that the government is legally restrained from purchasing stock in private corporations.

The question of whether they should or not gets to the heart of the question. An aversion to socialism exists de facto in the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the American people. But if that aversion were mitigated by circumstances such as arose in the Great Depression and as loom in the current situation, if in fact the people were to come to believe that true socialism (as opposed to regulated capitalism) were desirable, could the will of the people override the will of the government?

The phrase "the will of the people" begs for an explanation. Obviously, if all the people were of the same opinion regarding a move to a socialist economy, the question would be settled. The question remains arguable in view of the fact that the people almost certainly would not be of the same will. We would expect that those whose property would be taken by "just compensation" might be averse to the deal. But of more and of vital importance are the questions that would certainly arise in the minds of those who would disagree with the move on intellectual grounds, who, having no horse in the race, would nevertheless regard socialism as a bad idea.

This difference gets to the heart of the conflict the Founders dealt with (and reluctantly compromised on) in 1787. A majority of the people may desire what a minority may regard as economic suicide. The opposite might also be the case, the majority favoring the status quo, the minority favoring change.

As intellectually appealing as this disagreement may seem, the question would not be resolved by anything resembling intelligent discussion. It would be settled politically. The opposing cases might very well be presented to the people by intelligent commentators, say, George Will for the capitalist system, a resurrected Walter Lippman arguing for socialism. But unless the Founders were wrong about the sanity of the people, even if the cases were widely and fairly publicized, the masses would not be swayed by the logic of the arguments but rather by emotional appeals to their uninformed self interest.

Foremost among the forces that passes itself off as "self interest" is the desire of the people to continue along the path set for them by their inherited culture. Thinking is hard. Going along is easy.

These truisms do not hold when the pain being inflicted by the "way we were" becomes intense. Joseph Conrad observed that "No fear can stand up to hunger." He was referring to the inbred fear of cannibalism, but he might as well have (and may have in fact) meant the fear of breaking away from all inherited beliefs.

But neither pain of radical change nor the pleasures of "togetherness" qualifies as an intellectual argument. They both represent emotional appeals. Unfortunately, in the mind they share the same mental space as logical arguments. Hormones and neurons are two inter-related residents in the same cranium. Out of the cerebral admixture of thought and emotion come the ideas that determine action.

At least one of the Founders (Madison) viewed the mind in this Spinozistic way, and perhaps it was this view that led him to his Platonic distrust of the people. I do not know whether Madison or any of the Founders knew of the paradox they had designed into the Constitution, where the people elect clever men whose highest claim to cleverness lies in their ability to convince people of their cleverness. If we argue that their cleverness lies in their ability to reason with the people, then that implies that the people are reason-able. But if the people are reason-able, then they would not need to surrender their freedom to a "wiser" elite.

I personally believe that socialism is a bad idea, and that regulated capitalism is the best of the bad choices available to us. But if you were to ask me to defend my belief in a way that would have a chance of being accepted by "the people," I would find myself writing emotional appeals and couching them in high-sounding words like the ones you have just read. (My conscience dictated that last sentence.) I would be a politician.

There is an answer to the question I asked, but I am under no illusion that the answer would appeal to everyone. The answer is simply this: "Yes, we are truly free." And in our freedom lies the uncomfortable fact that we have created the mess we now find so painful. If we seek to exonerate ourselves personally from the ill effects of our economic miseries, then let us at least confess to having not thought too well before we delegated our freedom to men who were not quite up to the job we hired them to perform.

It works better, however, if we forget that argument and take personal responsibility. To act otherwise is to admit that we are a member of that ignorant "confederacy of dunces" the Founders took us to be. Better to admit to a mistake than to pretend that we are powerless to act.