Mendacious (?) Memorials

I meant yesterday to attend the Memorial Day celebration down in Madison. I didn’t, and the reason I didn’t traces to an early morning dream I had. I woke very early (for me), around 5:30 AM, but turned over and went back to sleep ... and dreamed the dream.

I was standing in a crowd at the War Memorial building, listening to a uniformed grey-beard who had a flag draped over his shoulders orate on the glories of war. The people around me were stony quiet … or I was deaf. I could not hear what the speaker was saying. In fact I heard nothing, but I knew from the way he was waving his arms, his words were of the sort normally referred to as a patriotic harangue. When I awoke from the dream I had the impression that I had shouted out, denouncing the man for a fascist storm trooper, or worse. If I had been in my right senses I would have thought well of myself for having cried out, but I was half asleep and was feeling something akin to fear.

I didn’t attend the ceremony. I won’t say that I stayed away out of anticipation that I might embarrass myself by taking an unpopular and uncalled for stand, but the thought certainly crossed my mind that my reason related to the dream.

Later yesterday milady received an email from a friend of ours who had attended. He reported that the main speaker was a man I knew to be a solid citizen, a veteran, a leader of the local boy scout troop, and a man who had been elected (for one term) as the Commonwealth’s Attorney. Our friend said that the speech had started out as a predictable defense of the Iraq War, but for some strange reason had shifted onto hurricane Katrina.

Let me say a bit more about the speaker, and about that “one term.” He had been defeated in his reelection attempt primarily because he had gone forward with the prosecution of a wealthy citizen’s son for a crime that, many thought, could have been overlooked. The son had been apprehended (allegedly, as they say) selling certain body parts of black bears, a federal and a state crime. This county is hunter friendly and would not have blinked an eye if the “DA” had chosen not to prosecute the case. But he did, knowing full well that he was sealing his defeat in the coming election. You have to respect a man of that sort. You may disagree with him on many political issues, but you do not if you are true to your own convictions hold that sort of man in anything like contempt. You may even be caused to question your own understanding of world events.

Something else happened yesterday, last evening to be exact. Milady enticed me to watch a History Channel rendition of the military aspects of George Washington’s career. I’m something of a Washington admirer (aren’t we all) and felt I was not likely to learn anything new from the TV story. And perhaps I didn’t, nothing of a factual nature anyhow. But as I watched and listened I did experience something of an enlightening nature. I already knew that after his failure in New York, and after the fall of Philadelphia to the Red Coats, strong sentiments were afoot to sack Washington as the Commander in Chief of the Army. His men were starving and freezing to death at Valley Forge, mutinies were fermenting, and the American Revolution had, as Dizzy Dean used to say, two chances for success, “slim and none.”

Washington in fact was probably not a brilliant military leader, but he had one thing going for him that nobly fills in for brilliance: he had character. He somehow held the Army together and miraculously kept his command. “The rest is history.”

Milady and I are staunch critics of the current occupant of the White House. For my part I was never much involved in politics until I became convinced that the guy was serious about invading Iraq. I knew that was a foolish adventure, even if on some counts some people might think it justifiable. I remain of that belief. But last night, while listening to the recounting of Washington’s tribulations, I realized that I can no more predict the future than Washington could have in 1777. Certainly, he could never have known that out of his and his army’s hardships the greatest nation on earth would come into being. And just as certainly, neither I nor the Memorial Day speaker here in Madison, nor the current occupant of the White House can know with anything like certainty what the outcome of this adventure will be. I know for certain that the men and women who have died there – ours and theirs – will not be brought to life by any outcome, good or bad, but the chance certainly exists, perhaps equally slim and none, that something good may come of this. It doesn’t seem possible, but then, it wouldn’t have seemed possible to Washington either.

But that’s not what I set out to say. I’m talking about the man who made the speech yesterday. His name is Braxton S. (“Colt”) Puryear. He’s not a personal friend. I don’t think he and I have ever exchanged a word. But by that one act of his when he was Commonwealths Attorney – going against the grain of popular sentiment – I think I know what sort of man he is. He’s the sort we need more of.

I could wax philosophically here and point out that a man such as Mr. Puryear must by his nature have had to stand forward for what he believes, must have had no choice but to put it out into the air, even if people who disagree with him – people like me – might be tempted to shout him down. Granted, he knew he was in friendly company yesterday, but he wasn’t when he stood firm for what the law demanded, he wasn’t when he chose an unprofitable path.

I conclude that “Colt” Puryear spoke yesterday for what he felt was the right thing. He may have been wrong – I think he was (even though I didn’t hear him) – but men of character are too rare to be cast aside for a difference of opinion. Perhaps one day he and I can sit down together, respecting each other, and find a way to work things out. Maybe it’ll be contagious. Maybe if men and women like Mr. Puryear, who are in possession of Washington’s virtue, can get their heads together in mutual respect, maybe if they make it a habit to speak their piece – and their peace – they can change a small part of the world. It’s possible, but … we shall see.

No Lie, Just Fact

[The following is a slightly revised reprint of a piece that appeared several years ago as the lead article on the "Spinoza Net." I offer it on this Memorial Day as a much belated thank you to my father, a WW I soldier, who taught me to think for myself. The errors in my thinking are, of course, mine, not his. He had his own and on one or two occasions, tearfully confessed them to his favorite son.]

So far as I know my father never read a word out of a book, but he had about him an air that I would later come to call an aura of certainty. It wasn’t that he spouted off like a know-it-all. He just said things that sounded true. Take for example what he told me about higher education: “It’s learning what’s already been discovered, what’s already been written, already invented, so you can start where other people left off and not waste your time doing something that’s already been done.” See what I mean? My father’s pronouncement not only sounded true, but had a gracious little hook in it, one that maybe he put there for his oldest son to grab onto.

I never grabbed the hook, never got the higher education. Instead I went to work as a clerk at the L&N railroad where Dad was an engineer. But remembering his words—his hook—and liking the sound of doing something that hadn’t been done before, I decided to spend a part of my earnings on books, intending (by actually reading them) to educate myself about the state of all human knowing. Dad had forgotten to mention the part about specializing.

I had a plan. I was going to buy every one of the Random House Modern Library editions, read them all, master them all, and then set out to re-invent the world while “standing on the shoulders of [the] giants” Random House had selected for me to read.

My plan almost came to a halt before my first purchase. You see, there was this charming young lady standing in the Mobile [Alabama] Book Store, holding in her delicate little hands a copy of a book that purported to be about The Philosophy of Spinoza. I had never heard of Spinoza, but the name had a romantic sound to it, almost as alluring as the young lady’s ocean-blue eyes.

In violation of my bringing up I said something to the girl that was only superficially true: “I’ve never been able to understand Spinoza.”

The girl looked me over, appeared to be thinking about what I had said, and then, apparently having sized me up, sarcastically observed, “Figures.” She handed me the book and walked out of my life forever.

The book remained. It wasn’t at first Spinoza’s philosophy that drew me to him; I really was having a hard time understanding what he was talking about. What hooked me was the way the man himself lived his life. In the beautifully written introduction to the book, Joseph Ratner described how Spinoza had been sued over an inheritance, won the case, but then, in a gallant gesture, presented the inheritance to the plaintiff. This same man had earlier been offered a sizeable bribe by his religious community if he would recant his “heresy;” when he turned it down they excommunicated him. Later, after his fame had spread, Spinoza refused a prestigious position at the University of Heidelberg for fear that serving under an autocratic regime would inhibit his freedom to express his ideas. After being booted out of the religion he was born into, Spinoza lived the rest of his life in humble circumstances, earning his living as a lens grinder. He died owning the bed he slept in, a table, three chairs, the tools of his trade, and a small library.

But I would not want my admiration for Spinoza the man to mislead you. His ideas had an appeal of their own. (The irony was not lost upon me of the connection between lens grinding and writing philosophy, between seeing and seeing.) The excerpts from Spinoza’s Treatise on Theology and Politics in the book the young lady handed me blew like a freshening wind through my Southern Baptist mind, nurturing its doubts and misgivings. “[I]n interpreting Scripture...accept nothing as authoritative...which we do not perceive very clearly when we examine it in the light of its history.” [The Philosophy of Spinoza, Page 15] To my mother and all my aunts and uncles (but not my father) the words of Scripture were to be regarded as the truth simply because they appeared between the covers of the King James Bible. Spinoza gave my doubts a comfortable place to work themselves out.

In the decades following my encounter in the book store with the beautiful young lady, I struggled to understand Spinoza’s words. His proofs, stripped of their redundancies in Ratner’s abridgement, sometimes left me wondering what I was reading, but like the true believer I had become, I reasoned that all in due time I would see what I was then only seeing, that among the vast accumulation of Spinoza’s knowing of the first and second kinds building in my mind, knowing of the third kind—sub specie aeternitatis—would eventually emerge. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. Like a “little worm in the bloodstream” (and perhaps like the apostle Paul) I know in part only those things I, as a part, can know; and feeling my “partness,” yet seeing the double-edged meaning of being a part of God, I grew in awe of that greater something which I imagine all people, even professing atheists, must acknowledge as the infinitude of Being. Spinoza claimed that, “the more we know of things, the more we know of God.” If that’s true, then to have learned those things I have been privileged to learn has been to worship at the only altar that makes sense to me as a place illumined by the light of God.

[All effects have causes, but some causes are more causative than others, and some effects more lasting.]

A Mendacious Account of a Mouse-changing Moment

If none of this [aimless behavior of an insane Mouse] leads you to question your belief in the sanity of God’s created world, perhaps you ought to step back for a moment and try to see the world, not as it is (whatever that is), but as I saw it, as the poet saw it when he cowered there on the pier as the only character in a story written by the events of his own history. Try to see the world as the coffin that it is, for that’s what the poet saw when he and a hundred others stood one moonless night on the concrete pier, watching your sane world, without a thought in its head, deliver of its blue-white perfect self a blood-red sky bending from the rim of the earth toward the starry zenith. The apparition, too real to be the product of deluded eyes, spread its lunatic glare from edge to edge of the northern sky, filling the air with the promise of certain death. Many of the people on the pier were sorely afraid, some crying, shedding repentant tears and beseeching deliverance from their risen Messiah.

Ignorant of the cause of the coloring sky, the curious poet imagined the swamp lands, and perhaps all the lands north of Mobile were burning. The horizon seemed ablaze, the red glow slowly creeping upward as the inferno swallowed the world. The poet felt no fear, only a morbid satisfaction. This is good, he thought, the end of civilization, a new kind of end, an end to the embarrassment of dying alone.

But a girl, standing apart from the crowd, seemed to feel no fear, a beautiful girl dressed in red, with course dark hair, eyes of deep-ocean darkness, lips tinted by the burning sky. She stood at the edge of the pier nearest the approaching holocaust, a red knit cap pulled loosely over her ears, hair hanging in straight lines from beneath the cap and pushed forward across her shoulders. She was tall for a girl, with delicate hands softly lying on the railing of the concrete pier, hands as gentle as the touch of Aurora’s breath.

“It’s the Northern Lights,” she said, whispering so only he could hear. “They’re seldom seen this far south.”

Their eyes met, and without thinking to do so, he smiled, the accidental smile happening first, the thought that it might serve to make her believe that he knew all along the nature of the blazing sky, distantly second.

“You’re the man at the school aren’t you?” she asked. “I saw you on the porch last week, reading Spinoza.”

His mother worked as the live-in manager of the dormitory and dining room of Fairhope’s famous private school; and, yes, he supposed he was, “the man at the school,” but only looked at the girl in disbelief.

“What do you do there all day? Just read?”

It was summer. All the dormitory rooms were vacant, except the one he occupied.

“Read? Yes. Just read.”

She moved closer and looked north into Aurora’s light. “It came before. Ten years ago. Mrs. Horne told us about it. I’m not so bright; I just remembered her words.”

“Mrs. Horne?”

“She teaches at the school, history and anything else they ask. She knows everything.”

Yes, Mrs. Horne. His mother had spoken of her. A bright woman, three grown children. A Unitarian. His mother distrusted Unitarians.

“Do you go there?” he asked. The words crept out. She was too young, he thought, to be feeling about him what she seemed to be feeling.

She paused for a moment and cocked one eyebrow, as though deciding whether to answer him truthfully.

“Yes,” she said. “This will be my last year.” She lowered her eyes and asked: “Don’t you want to know how I knew you were reading Spinoza?”

When she first mentioned the book, the question crossed his mind but passed through without leaving an impression.

“Yes, how did you know?”

She smiled impishly. “Your mother told me.” Then she turned abruptly and, with no apparent further interest in the Aurora Borealis, walked from the pier, proceeded up the steep hill ascending from the beach, and disappeared.


Perhaps you see nothing unusual about a manifestation of the Aurora Borealis ten miles north of the Gulf of Mexico; nothing unusual about a beautiful girl feeling an instant affection for a relatively plain looking insane man; nothing unusual about a man standing in the darkness of an accidental planet welcoming destruction for himself and all of humankind; nothing strange that the softness of the touch of the girl’s voice suddenly turned the man away from thoughts of eternal silence.

If you thought those things, you’d be right. There’s nothing at all unusual in any of that. This kind of miracle happens somewhere on Earth every minute of every hour of every day. Nothing unusual at all.

The Mendacious Market

An American “John” living abroad (in Sweden) commented to a previous blog listing four failures of the American economy.

(1) Education, where the number of dropouts is too high , and the produced literacy rate is less than in Cuba;

(2) Health care, where costs are out of sight and services inferior;

(3) The homeless population, too large in the richest nation on earth; and

(4) Violence among the population.

In the same comment “John Sweden” observed that the American market environment has become so completely dominated by psychologically persuasive advertising that the consuming public, apparently powerless to resist, has amassed a level of personal debt higher than any recorded in previous times. The Mouse holds to the notion that all causes and effects are connected, so today I would like to open up the discussion to the possibility (indeed, the probability) that the failures John enumerated relate, more-or-less directly, to what has come to be called “consumerism.”

It is simply a fact that money spent for frivolous products cannot be spent for more essential things, like education and medical care. If huge numbers of us choose to buy three-and-a-half baths and a “Florida room” (whatever that is) we might expect some of our society’s more pressing needs to go wanting. The connection between widespread decisions to buy such extravagances clearly relates – at least morally – to the homelessness of others. In an appeal to “reason” we may declare that we cannot see how the funds saved by simplified home-buying can be redeployed to solve the problems of the street people. But by the same sort of rationale, we also cannot see the working of the invisible hand of economic dynamism as it feeds our desire for frippery. A way of living geared to the satisfaction of unconscious desires produces a different set of effects than would a more rational matrix of decisions.

Economic fundamentalists may claim that a more rational array of market decisions would vibrate through the entire system, reducing the public’s overall purchasing power. That is, unless we continue to purchase at high levels, recession will set in and the failures of education, healthcare, and housing would multiply. But it does not follow that decisions to purchase wisely rather than foolishly would lead to anything other than a reshuffling of the products flowing through the economy. Expenditures for education represent national product just as clearly as expenditures for $1400 rotisserie-equipped barbeque grills. It may be that the latter satisfies some sort of genuine need, but it does not follow that funds spent for better education rather than the grill would depress the economy. The fact that we have chosen to spend for the one in lieu of the other can only be regarded as a measure of our personal values. We want automated backscratchers more than we want effective education.

That advertisers have created “a continuous total marketing environment,” as “John Sweden” also suggests, has not only redirected our buying decisions; it has reduced us to a herd of thoughtless consumers. We are so completely immersed in unconscious appeals to our senses we have lost the habit of thinking. We confront life in its immediacy, acting on impulse rather than on considered judgment. We have become the inventions of others, marionettes controlled by invisible strings to sacrifice the good for the wanted.

Another commenter, Miss Robin, in a private communication, said she had just completed Emerson’s Self Reliance and wondered if she had gotten the straight of it in concluding that his ideas were essentially libertarian. Yes, I suppose so, if by “libertarian” we mean a person devoted to liberty, “especially with regard to thought or conduct.” [Webster’s Online Dictionary] Modern libertarians have, however, identified themselves with capitalism, the idea being that capitalism is the only economic system that can be implemented without major restrictions of personal liberty. [See F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom] But given the extent to which the best and brightest capitalists among us have been able to enslave the hearts and minds of the rest of us with hidden persuaders, we are led to agree with Emerson to the extent that with his book, Self Reliance, he meant to charge us individually to use our minds, not as passive actuators of mechanical reaction, but as active instruments by which we judge of the ultimate effects of our actions. Emerson’s contemporary. Henry David Thoreau, from whom I got the word “frippery,” demonstrated that life can be lived more simply than the minions of the market would have us live. His book, Walden, appeals not so much to prudent spending as to the core of our being, that rational kernel of the mind that can be brought to bear on the attainment of our ultimate concerns. If Thoreau exaggerated the extent to which budgetary prudence can be realized, he did so out of an intent to bring our minds into focus on the basics of living. That he has not succeeded, despite hundreds of printings and re-printings of his book, must speak to that mental inertia I spoke of in a previous blog. It is far easier to go with impulse than to expend the energy to think-out the effects of unreasoned action.

The failures “John Sweden” referred to fall back on us “self-reliant” individuals. We find ourselves challenged to think, especially in a democracy, where the people are ultimately responsible for the acts of government. That we have not taken that responsibility seriously – and no other reason – explains illiteracy, healthcare costs, homeless people, and certainly the outrageous levels of violence we are forced to live with in our society. If the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, and Jesus of Nazareth have not taught us to live as responsible people, the fault is not theirs, for they have spoken in relatively clear words. The fault is ours, we who have permitted ourselves to be bamboozled.

Paradoxical Mendacity

[Milady is a trifle under the weather today, so I will take the day off and paste a few witticisms that came my way from a free-thinking friend.]

What You Need To Believe To Be A Republican:

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney and Rumsfeld did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush couldn't find Bin Laden.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle and antagonize our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

A U.S. President lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a President lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals, Arabs, and Hillary Clinton.

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's and Dick Cheney's driving records are none of our business.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

Supporting "Executive Privilege" is imperative for every Republican ever born, who will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity.)

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the'80s is irrelevant.

There's nothing wrong with supporting drunken hunters who shoot their friends and blame them for looking too much like quail.

[Feel free to copy and paste these paradoxical statements to all your friends and enemies.]

Transcending Mendacity

I cannot imagine a better economic system than the one we have. So-called socialist systems may very well achieve more “equality” than ours, but I seriously doubt that any system of central planning and control could ever achieve the productivity levels of capitalism. Individual incentive, coupled with individual rewards will – in my opinion – always outstrip systems without those features.

Still, no system is perfect. Capitalist enterprises sometimes produce products that are fundamentally bad. I have in mind the tobacco industry, sugared cereals, and daytime television (though I confess that the last may be only bad in my opinion). So, in those cases, the more efficient the system that produces them the worse off the people will be.

The spiraling ascent of corporate America presents a different sort of problem. Bad products may eventually be selected out by the market, but the basics of corporate culture cannot change. Consumers are flesh and blood creatures, with minds that are quite capable of seeing the difference between what’s good for them and what’s not. We human beings have built-in gauges measuring joy and sorrow, and those indicators tell us – though we don’t always listen – when we’re on the right or the wrong track. But the right track for a corporation is any track that leads to higher profits. While the law considers corporations to be “persons,” they are persons quite unlike the real thing. Corporations have no conscience other than the one tuned to the bottom line.

The difficulties growing from the moral ambivalence of corporations are compounded by the fact that in America the corporations have amassed more power than any of the flesh and blood persons who live here. I don’t know anyone who has a lobbyist in Washington, or who regularly gets access to the offices and ears of our legislators. But it’s common knowledge that corporate America spends literally millions to influence the passage of laws that enhance their ability to make profits. When we look at that great power, and reflect on the fact that those possessed of it also have no conscience, we are – or at least we ought to be – concerned that our government may be functioning for something other than the general welfare.

But our government does have the power to supply corporate America with a conscience. It’s called regulation. If we elect people who are beholden to all the people, including the "persons" – and not wholeheartedly committed to the corporations – we might expect them to find a middle ground where the needs of the people and the entitlements of the corporations are brought into a just balance.

But that’s also a part of our problem. The great power exercised by the corporations often takes the form of money contributed to the election campaigns of people who are more apt to serve the corporations than the people. I guess that’s where things like this piece of writing come in. Nothing here tells anyone precisely who to vote for or what measures to stand for. But things like this may serve to heighten the awareness of one or two of us to the nature of the problem. And I guess that’s the first step we’ll have to take, if we’re to find a solution.

Outgrowing Mendacity

Several years before that first horse race, when I was in fact a child, the color of the world changed – I mean, of my world. A boy-child did it, name of Julius, a black kid, a perfect sort of person. He lived in one of the shanties behind the hedge at Crawford Park where us white kids were permitted to play, and Julius wasn’t. He played there anyhow, him and the littler kids from over the hedge. They had their unofficial corner, out behind the pecan tree in left field. We had the rest: the pool, the pavilion, the fields – football and baseball, dirt-top basketball….

We seldom mixed at first. We were “good little boys” who knew our place. But of course, in time, maybe because we really were good little boys, but probably because there weren’t enough of “our kind” to make two full teams, the two tribes drifted together. The “black-feet” and the “white-feet,” Julius called us, no meanness intended. Just saying what came to mind. We didn’t take offense, and certainly the other “black-feet” didn’t. They too thought of Julius the way we did, like I said, “a perfect sort of person.”

When I close my eyes, even now, and think of Julius I see him breaking...no! not breaking, calmly walking through the color lines of Crawford Park, walking through, as though colors did not exist in that less than perfect world . . . walking through, running through, over and around with a football under his arm, careful not to bang too hard into the little guys like me or Bullard or Cline, while making sure the big guys were pushed to their limit to keep the score within reason.

I remember him, as I saw him in the summer nights, behind the left field fence at Hartwell Field where the Mobile minor league Bears played their games. Twenty or thirty black kids and white kids – some with gloves, some without – romped around there every game night, like a troop of baboons trying to catch the home run balls the teams knocked over during batting practice. With one of those balls you could get in free to see the game. Julius had no glove, but that didn't stop him from catching more than his share. He caught them barehanded, an amazing feat in itself to us normal kids. But it wasn't the catches that made him perfect, not in our eyes. It was what Julius did with the balls after he caught them. He'd get four or five every night and give away all but one to the kids from the shanties. When us white kids saw Julius giving a part of his booty to the little children, we naturally thought he was the kid our Sunday School teachers told us we should be like even though we knew no self-respecting Mobile Sunday School teacher would have let himself be caught dead telling us we should try to be like a black kid. Still, we wanted to be like Julius. I guess we loved him.

Playing together as we did at Crawford was actually against the law. The black kids weren’t even supposed to be there. And one Sunday we were caught. I guess it didn’t occur to any of us to think we were doing anything wrong, so when the police car pulled up and the cops got out, maybe we thought they just wanted to watch the game. We were playing two-hands-below-the-waist touch football, a game as close to real football as you can get when you don’t have helmets and pads . . . and when you’re not crazy. I must have been 14 or 15 at the time, and the rest of the gang were about the same age, so we were putting on a pretty good show. At least, I thought we were. Maybe the cops did too. They actually stood on the sidelines for about five minutes before they made their move.

There were two of them, one a foot taller than the other, but it was the shorter one who spoke. “Okay you boys. You can’t play together. Now break it up.” Then looking Julius straight in the eye he said. “You get yours together and go back to where you belong.”

Julius was a big kid, at least six feet and filled out. I could see the hurt in his eyes, and I thought he might do or say something he’d later regret. The smaller black kids assembled around Julius, as if for protection. A couple of them – but none of us – mumbled under their breath, their eyes downcast, unhappy, even angry. I thought for a minute one or two of them were going to say something stupid. The cops had billy-clubs hanging at their sides, but to their credit, they left them in their sheaths. I was scared that one of the kids would get his head bashed if he smarted-off.

But that was never going to happen. Julius was there. He placed a hand on the shoulder of the black kid who seemed most agitated, seemed by that simple gesture to take away the building anger. Then in a voice that I still hear as if Julius were here in the room, the perfect boy we all wished to be like spoke words that I would have sworn he had memorized and rehearsed. They came out of his mouth so calmly, and yet with the force of a brave man years older. Without looking at anyone in particular, he spoke to the police, to me, to all of us, white and black, as if we were all of one set of ears . . .

“It was my fault, officer. I’m the oldest, and I knew better. We were having so much fun, I just forgot.”

Julius turned and walked away toward the gate that opened onto the lane where he and the little ones lived. All the black kids followed him. He never looked back, and neither did they.

Five years later, Julius died – of a shrapnel wound we heard, in Korea, as one of the soldiers who glorified Macarthur’s Inchon landing. Only a few casualties, they said. A great success. By then, I had seen a few horse races. But when the news of Julius reached me, I cried. Without shame.

Of Mice and Men . . . and Horses

I saw my first horse race at the New Orleans Fairgrounds, the year they put Money Broker in the Derby to stop Native Dancer from winning it. I was 18, still young enough to be shy about taking a leak in a plain view privy. Over the next seven years I worked my fool head off at wishing and dreaming sawdust into gold. Saying it straight, I lost my ass, every ass I ever owned.

I don't recall that I particularly enjoyed all that losing, but common sense suggests I must have. Otherwise, why stay at it so long?

But that way of saying it amounts to nothing but euphemistic bullshit. I'm talking about seven years of losing, going bust and walking my stupid ass seven miles from the racetrack out in Gentilly all the way to the L&N station. Seven goddamn miles! Broke! Nothing but a folded train ticket to get me home, juke boxes all along Rampart street blaring Hearts of Stone so loud you want to go in and jump through the red and blue lights of the Wurlitzer and kick the shit out of the woman singing, smash her heart of stone into little pieces of gravel, but keeping on walking right on along Rampart Street, down on past the honkytonks and whore houses, walking fast, trying to keep pace with the National Guard boys all spiffed out in their soldier suits and marching six abreast down the middle of the street, heading off for camp, their shiny boots clopping bravely against the pavement, a sergeant with stripes half way down his sleeve belching Hup! Hup! the boys slapping rhythm on their rifle stocks, keeping time, and me, stealing looks, sneakily, as if my mother were watching me do it, me, peeping over my shoulder at the naked whores waving their underwear out the windows like flags to signal the boys up for a goodbye fuck.

I made that death walk hundreds of times, in a dozen places, Baltimore, New York, South Jersey, everywhere. Different streets, maybe no soldiers or whores, but the same flushed pockets, the same hollowness wallowing around inside, searching for and changing places with any warm spot it finds, knowing it won't do any good to swear off, stuck like a puppet, high on the narcotic of rock-bottom depression.

That's what I'm talking about, life and death, and all I've got to say is, "I must have enjoyed it." Bullshit! I almost killed my stupid self! Came within inches too many times to remember how many. I could lie and say a smidgen of hope kept me breathing, but it wasn't hope. I was too scared, too goddamn, puke-faced scared. Like a little kid staring into the snake cage at the zoo, too frightened to speak or to cry out and too fascinated to run away, paralyzed in ecstasy, a "pore little lost kid," set out like a seed in an evil garden, struggling to stay alive like the good organic thing he is, but doomed, right from the first time they opened the gate and let the horses loose, right after they sounded the bell that locked the tote and sealed the dream....

Who will ever figure out how the derelict I was threatening to become transformed into a Mouse noted for his confessions of mendacity? I guess every now and then life throws a hittable curve ball to an unsuspecting, and undeserving struggler. Pity that he holds only the shadiest remembrance of the moment that changed him from a sure out into a – well maybe not into a homerun star, but certainly into a good singles hitter, and a treasure in the clubhouse….

Or so they say.

Mendacious "Bids" and "Asks"

Yesterday I mentioned a "doozie" of a scheme that came up in my mind as I was writing about the irrational stock market. Today, the scheme doesn't seem quite so fabulous as it did yesterday, but I hate to go back on my word, so I'll write it up, even if it does bore me to tears in doing so.

The average investor can hardly take advantage of this market strategy. Only the NASDAQ’s market managers and the big board's specialists have the wherewithal to put the scheme to profitable use, and from what I have seen, they do it whenever the opportunity presents. The scheme works best on the stocks of companies that pay dividends that are comparable to the interest paid on the short bond, say, around 5%. The stocks of many utilities pay such dividends. For the scheme to be actuated, the stock must be selling just below the price at which the dividend will assure that a bottom has been reached. If for instance the dividend is $1.00, the price should be less than $20.00, but not too much less. (Actually, the rational component of the market will not let the price sink too far below that level. The dividend will become more and more attractive as the price goes down.)

So, when the price begins to slide below the stock’s natural level, the market manager or specialist (hereafter, the insiders) will buy the stock for their own account, not meaning to keep it, but to store it up for use later in the session. Say, the price sinks to $19.50. at which level the dividend will now be paying at a rate of 5.1%, slightly more than the market will permit. So the insiders are taking no great risk in purchasing the stock. If the amount of stock the insiders were able to buy at the depressed level was not very much, they will simply sell it off at a higher price and make a pittance for their effort. But when the amount purchased is relatively high, the strategy comes into play.

In today’s high-tech world many thousands of amateur traders – and that many more pros – have access to real-time stock price information. Spreadsheet arrays display the second by second changes in four key quantities: the “bid-price,” the “bid-volume” – how much stock is desired at that price – the “ask-price,” and the “ask-volume” – the amount of stock offered at that price. The difference between the bid and ask is nearly always only a penny or so. If you wish to buy the stock you can do so immediately at the ask-price, or if the gap between the bid and ask is more than one penny, you can offer to buy at a higher bid-price which would still be lower than the ask. If you own the stock and wish to sell, you can do so immediately at the current bid-price, or if there is a gap, offer to sell at a price lower than the current ask. Those investors watching the changes in the bid and ask, and the quantities of stock offered at those prices, make their decisions to buy or sell by punching a few keys. Money changes hands, right then, in instantaneous real time.

A significant element playing in the minds of the online investors are those two volume quantities. If for instance, the “size on the bid” is very high in comparison to the “size on the ask” the investor will be inclined to believe that the price is about to go up. This would especially be the case if there were no gap between the bid and the ask, that is, the ask is exactly one penny higher than the bid. There would be no room for a higher bid, so those investors wishng to buy (as reflected in the huge bid-volume) would have to either wait it out – perhaps forever – or buy at the ask, and given that the ask-volume is in this case very low compared to the bid-volume, the urge would be to buy now rather than wait.

The opposite occurs when the ask-volume is much higher than the bid-volume. The urge to sell now rather than hope for a sale at the ask-price would be working in the investors ‘ minds. And that’s where the insider can couple his innate greed with his acquired knowledge to take advantage of les miserables watching computer screen arrays throughout the free world.

Remember, the insider has already accumulated a large quantity of a high-dividend stock, and he has done so at a price below the stock’s natural level. He may have been accumulating throughout the day, only able to put the strategy into play if the quantity he has been able to buy is sufficiently large. As the price rises toward its natural level, the urge to sell will naturally arise in many of those currently holding the stock. When the insider notices that the price movement has seemingly peaked, and the bid-volume is not so high, he will immediately offer all of his large stock for sale. If prior to that moment the ask-volume has been equally as low as the bid-volume the sudden appearance of a huge amount of stock for sale will encourage those holding at a profit (or at an acceptable loss) to sell at the bid. The price will go down a few notches until the sellers lose sight of the huge “size on the ask,” which may even be cancelled after the price slides a few cents.

So, who is the buyer of the stocks that are sold off? Well, the same insider who prompted the sale by posting the huge volume on the ask. He’s adding to his holdings, not content with a nice gain on the day, but using his cunning to make it a significant gain. As the afternoon wears on, and the price again rises toward its natural level, the insider will work the same strategy as many times as he can, until the volume he has been able to psych out of les miserables is more than he thinks he can sell at a profit when he permits normal (irrational) trading to resume.

Now it may seem that the insider takes the risk that he may not be able to sell all the stock he has accumulated. That’s where the dividend comes in. If he – or his surrogates – are forced by a total market sell-off to hold the stock for a long period of time, he’s still going to earn a dividend at least as high as he would have gotten in the bond market. But keep in mind: the chances of that happening are slim and none, since in a market sell off, the utility stocks paying reliable dividends will remain at or near their natural dividend level.

So, why can’t the average online miserable do this. Three reasons (there may be others): (1) the normal investor must pay brokerage commissions, and even if he’s buying in high quantities, the fees will almost never sink below one penny per stock. This will force the normal investor into larger gaps between his buy and sell prices. (2) The laws of the land require the normal investor to wait three market days before he can use the proceeds of a stock sale to make further purchases. So the investor must be playing with a large bankroll, one that is so large he can make repeated sales and buys throughout the market day. That’s doable, especially for those investors managing huge mutual fund accounts; they, being high volume traders, are probably exempted from the three day waiting period anyhow, but this is cold comfort to les miserables. Finally, (3), the average outsider investor, even if exempt from restrictions on the use of his funds, plays against the insiders, nearly all of whom do not pay brokerage fees; they are brokers in the purest sense of the word.

This is, of course, only one of the many games played by the insiders who control the flow of money in the stock markets. I’m sure they know many more ways to feed their greed that are not available to thee and me. But then, despite all their shenanigans, fortunes have still been made by outsiders. It’s just that their chances are about the same as those of a high stakes gambler, about 1 in 100. Let the insiders manage your money. They may every now and then steal it, but your chances are better that they won’t than that they surely will if you go into the lists against them.

On the other hand, if you just like playing games of chance . . . well, have at it, sport. There’s no chancier game in the world than the one being played on Wall Street.

The Mouse on the Market

Chairman Greenspan coined the phrase "irrational exuberance" to characterize the dot.com bubble that was inflating in the late 90s. So far as I know, the chairman never went so far as to assign the tag, "irrational," to the entire market. He seemed by his remark interested only in curbing the market’s upside excesses, content to let the downside seek its "proper" level without the aid of coaxing from on high ("on high" being his office). But that’s an exaggeration. It’s just that during the better part of Greenspan’s sentence as U. S. Central Banker the market was more exuberant than despairing. Toward the end of his time, when the economic cycle turned – as it always does – the “Fed” stood on its head to change the market’s direction. It had continuously raised interest rates during the “boom;” now it was just as assiduously lowering them. And sure enough, the market turned.

But let me suggest that, based upon observation of the real-world causes that lead the market to move, the Fed could have done nothing -- ever -- and the economy would have moved up and down around a midpoint just as it did anyhow. If they saw things getting irrationally exuberant, or irrationally despairing, instead of raising or lowering interest rates, they should have merely made an appropriate announcement, that either they were thinking about lowering or raising the rate, or some other emotion-packed statement designed to assuage investors’ fears or create them.

Why do I think that would work? Well you take what happened just this last Wednesday morning. The market had been dawdling along for a couple of weeks, trading “range-bound,” as us “professionals” say. The ups and downs were at the mercy of a narrow separation between the number of fearful and hopeful people. Hence, no real trend had taken hold. Ah, but on Wednesday morning, the government bureau in charge of creating hope and fear announced that the core inflation rate was 1/10th of one percent higher than had been predicted, 3/10ths instead of 2/10ths. This outrageously high inflation rate immediately took hold of the hearts and souls of millions of investors throughout the world, causing the fearful to become more fearful, the hopeful to become less hopeful . . . and in the course of the next few hours, the stocks trading on the major U. S. markets lost about $1,000,000,000,000 (a trillion dollars) of their value. (Maybe a shade more or less.)

Question: What caused the sell-off? Answer: A statistic., that is, one number, a “3” instead of a “2.”

Mark Twain once said, “Facts don’t lie, but statistics are more flexible.” But even if that statistic were correct, even if the cost of living went up 1/10 of a percent more than was anticipated, the market’s reaction was all out of proportion to the actual effect the number should have had on the market.

To understand better why such seemingly “irrational” behavior on the part of investors was actually not irrational in particular cases, consider that some of the millions of transactions that brought about the depreciation of market prices may have been rational. Many of those who sold their stocks for dollars, did so in anticipation of buying them back later for a lower price. Those wise enough – or fortunate enough – actually to benefit from the series of barters (stocks for dollars, dollars for stocks) were wholly rational. They knew they were taking a risk – that the market would not continue to slide – but did so because – and here’s the point -- they trusted that the rank and file of the people trading in the market would be led by the irrational shifting of their hopes and fears. They knew the market as a whole was irrational.

Actually, a better word would be neurotic. The American psychologist A. A. Brill defined neurosis as “a mild mental pathology in which the patient experiences more joy or sorrow from a situation than is really in it.” The market – meaning, the millions of people whose hopes and fears control the market – does not and cannot move in real time on the basis of real information relating to the value of the companies whose stocks they are trading. Even though information moves more rapidly today than ever before, it still cannot keep pace in everyone’s mind with the minute-by minute changes in the prices of stocks. The vast majority of stock market trades are not made on the basis of value (as in the worth of the companies); they are made on the basis of price, the information readily and immediately available to the fulltime market trader. True, the traders may possess an underlying knowledge of the value of the companies they trade, but their actions are, more often than not, based on price movements, rather than changes in value . . . and price movements are by-and-large “irrationally neurotic.”

In writing this an awareness presented itself to me that had not, before now, appeared. I’ll save that one for tomorrow. It’s a doozie.

The Mendacious State

Continuing yesterday’s Machiavellian subpoena . . .

The author of The Prince has been criticized on many fronts – primarily by those who have not understood him – but one critique stands Everest-like: the one recognizing Machiavelli as the man responsible for the creation of the modern state. In his foundational book, The Myth of the State, Ernst Cassirer extends Machiavelli’s logic to its ultimate conclusion, and discovers the state as an institution with a life of its own, wholly separate from the nation and its people. The prince was always recognized as a flesh and blood person, whose legitimate function was to assure the survival, not only of the nation, but of himself as well. To achieve those ends, the successful prince “ought to know how to resemble a beast as well as a man.” [The Prince, chapter 12] But Cassirer saw that in the modern world, where nations had come to be ruled ostensibly by democratic principles, the heirs of the prince, charged with the same responsibilities, were expected – at least by the naïve masses – to behave all the time as civilized humans, and never as beasts. In order to be successful on both counts (i.e., to himself and to the nation) the modern "prince" -- the state -- is forced to disguise himself as a good guy. If to protect the nation the “prince” sometimes behaves as a beast, he faces the doubly difficult task of continuing to appear to the people as a moral human.

This task is relatively easier when the nation is involved in an openly declared war. Time-honored custom has acclimated human beings of all nations to the necessity to behave like a beast when the nation’s life is at stake. But when minor skirmishes “along the border” or “in the ghettos” fall short of an all out life-threatening situation, the state finds itself hard-pressed to act as it must while seeming to remain human. To counter this difficulty, the tactics employed to enforce the rule of law have been elevated to the same level of violence as those employed in time of war. Predictably, this promotion leads to unintended incidents such as those that occurred in Waco and Ruby Ridge, and in Philadelphia where the “law” burned to the ground an entire city block in order to “smoke out” a minor malefactor in one apartment. But so long as these events are recognized as “incidents,” and not business as usual, the state is generally held accountable for its actions.

We can thus understand the “war on drugs,” the “war against terrorism,” and perhaps even the “war against ‘godless’ communism.” All words possess emotional counterparts, and “war” is a more powerful emotional stimulant than mere ”law enforcement.” If the perceived needs of the state, as they appear in the minds of those warm-blooded humans who are in charge, dictate bestial behavior in what is actually only a “border dispute,” they call it war and proceed as if the nation’s life were at stake. Machiavelli – no mean observer of human nature – saw that princes, being human, were as likely to act for personal reasons as for the good of the nation. “For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them.” [Discourses on Titus Livius, Book I, chapter 37.] We should not expect the leaders of modern democracies to have changed so remarkably that they should behave differently than did the princes of Machiavelli’s time. We go to “war” when the politics of the moment require it.

We should thus, as I said yesterday, not judge our leaders by their lies (or by their bestial behavior), but rather by our assessment of whether they have acted in accord with the genuine needs of the nation. Only The Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, or what goodness. We can only judge of men's actions by the observable effects they produce as the causes of the state’s behavior. Sometimes that relationship is difficult to see. We are fortunate that in the current situation, the leaders of the American state have caused so much true destruction, against all reasonable judgments, that we know the course we are to take. Now, we need only the will to take it.

Mousiavellian Mendacity

The punditry has snidely accused Karl Rove, the political advisor to the current occupant of the White House, of being a modern Machiavelli. This is generally regarded as a terrible thing to say of a man. Machiavelli did indeed offer some fairly strong advice to those in power. He encouraged Princes to murder their opponents rather than confiscate their property; to be stingy with one's own property and generous with what belongs to others; that it is not virtue that leads to happiness, but the prudent use of virtue and vice; that if you intend to kill someone, do not say, "Give me your gun so that I might kill you" -- just ask for the gun, then use it as you will. Carefully examined in the context of Machiavelli's responsibilities, all of this makes great good sense. You should, for example, kill and not rob, since those who have been robbed, but not those who are dead, can think of revenge.

Mr. Rove must, though, have a different view of his responsibilities than Machiavelli had of his. The current occupant hired Rove to guide him in his relations with the electorate, a more restricted portfolio than possessed by that old Italian. Machiavelli was offering advice on all matters of state, not merely those the Prince would have to exercise in dealing with his subjects.

In that regard, Leo Strauss observes in the introduction to Thoughts on Machiavelli, that if Machiavelli were to be thought of as a patriot, he was "a patriot of a particular kind . . . more concerned with the salvation of his fatherland than with his soul." If we attribute to Mr. Rove and his master a similar commitment, we might better understand how the principles of Christianity can be made consistent with robbing the poor, bombing the innocent, and generally behaving in a manner wholly unChristian. If Rove and his masters have acted properly in conflating those abominations with the survival of the state, then the behavior of the current occupant can easily be understood. Machiavelli might say, the Prince must behave in any manner necessary to assure the survival of the state. If God judges the Prince by his behavior, and not by his aims, then his soul is forfeit.

This makes all together too much sense. The people can hardly behave in a moral fashion if they are continuously beseiged by evil doers. The Prince must, if necessary, act immorally to assure the people the safety they need in order for them to be moral. He must even lie to the people if they are incapable of grasping the imperatives driving him to action. So, we should not judge our leaders by their behavior as such, but only by the effectiveness of their leadership.

If we are fighting wars in places that are unrelated to the survival of the state, then we should hold accountable those who led us into those wars. If our finances are crumbling, and no good reason exists by which the destruction can be justified (or even excused), then those who made the decisions that put the nation into the straits of poverty must be held accountable. If the nation has accumulated more enemies than friends, if we are not feared so much as we are hated, if we have squandered the benevolence heaped upon us after the tragic happenings of 9/11, if in sum our leaders have managed to create dangers where before none existed, then those responsible must be asked to step aside for more qualified leadership.

Of course, the next bunch may not do so well in resolving the difficulties created by the current occupant and his cohorts. The nation is in a very bad way. We are debtors -- the greatest debtors in the history of the world -- and yet we have managed to devalue our currency and thereby the trustworthiness of our bond. We are importers -- again, the greatest in history -- and yet by the same devaluation we have increased the prices of the goods we import, primarily oil. We are working people -- perhaps the most efficient in history -- and yet we have sought to disproportionally tax the worker -- who is, incidentally, also the major customer of the goods we produce. We are a mismanaged lot of good people, served by men whose immoral behavior on our behalf has served only to make us worse off.

Forgive their lies. Those are the stock in trade of all Princes. Try them for their incompetence, and if they are guilty, turn them out and hope for the best from those who replace them. Elect competence.

Words of Mouse Wisdom

Today I will surrender the floor to a superior man. I've added a link to some of the sayings of Warren Buffett. Click on it and be informed and entertained. (I especially liked the entertainment provided by the oil prospector story.) For those of you who have been living in Antarctica for the past 100 years and don't know of Mr. Warren Buffett . . . find out about him, and do so in a hurry.

Enjoy. And learn.

Mouse & Mrs Mouse are Taught By "Our Cat"

Milady does not trust the animal we refer to as “our cat.” She’s convinced that, if the beast were left alone to roam the house while we were away, she would scratch the soft leather of the couch that lends itself to my “potato being.” So, when we are away for a matter of a few hours or so, we restrict “our cat” to the less vulnerable areas of the house. This is not so bad, “cat” tells me in boastfully mewling tones: “Stone walls do not a prison make,” and I wonder how she got access to the very scratchable contents of the poetry shelf. (but am afraid to ask). “It’s not the confinement,” she adds. “It’s that you lock me in with an abundant supply of my most irresistible temptation, food.”

Yes, well, I see. Milady does indeed – perhaps out of a sense of guilt – leave a heaping bowl of very healthy cat food in the cat’s prison, more than “cat” should eat and certainly more than she needs. She’s on diet, you see, one she herself prescribed. She and her personal handler – the local vet – had a discussion last month about the condition of her waistline. Cat came home and instructed us to prepare a menu tuned to her svelte ambitions. (Yes, instructed. Dog’s may have masters, but cats have staff.) “Two quarter cup scoops of Meow Mix per day, and not a penny’s worth more,” she demanded with the firmness of one wholly committed to the better life.

Then she proceeded to lecture us: “That fellow you’re oft times quoting, E. F. I think it is Schumacher. He said it and you are not to forget it. ‘Cat’s are far too clever to be able to survive without wisdom.’ But as Oscar Wilde said, ‘I can resist anything, except a temptation,' so you are to make sure you leave nothing in my path that can lure me from the solitary walks of my regime.”

“Our cat” reads altogether too much. But I’ll give her this much, she may have misquoted Schumacher – he said “men,” not “cats” – but she certainly knows the difference between cleverness and wisdom. I’m sure that if “our cat” wanted to she could find and break into the supply of Meow Mix wherever we put it. She’s that clever. But she’s wise enough that she knows not to, so long as it’s not left right out there in the open, presenting an irresistible temptation. “It’s not power that corrupts, it’s opportunity,” cat concluded. “Leave money right out on the table and even the most sniveling and emaciated politician will grab it.”

This past Saturday, milady and I went to a political party convention, occasioning us to confine “our cat” to her cell. And as I said, milady left more than an ample supply of sustenance for cat’s survival, and sure enough, when we got home, the “sustenance” had all been put to use, in the belly of our burgeoning cat. She stood there on her all-fours staring with accusing eyes at those who had led her into temptation’s path. Milady scolded the cat, I scolded milady, and the world went about its perfect, all too perfect way, cleverly demonstrating the wisdom of that immortal chimpanzee Mark Twain once quoted: “God invented the monkey because he was disappointed in Man.”

Mice as "Selves"

In a comment to the previous blog John explained the pains and pleasures of life as imaginations occurring to an ego, which is also only an imagination. He suggests that these imaginations can be made to disappear “by constant enquiry into” the nature of the ego. Pursued to its roots in reality, the ego itself will cease to exist; only the Self will survive.

Some may recognize the Eastern flavor of these ideas. I see them as an expression of the psychology proposed by Spinoza (who perhaps got them secondhand from Eastern sources). The words we hear our “little voice” speaking, the pictures we see with our mind’s eyes, even the feelings of pain and pleasure we experience – all of consciousness exists as fragmentary and confused representations of something we understand perhaps not at all.

The scientific discipline suggests that as we understand more and more of how the world works we draw closer and closer to what reality really is. We see the fact that automobiles will not run without fuel, and by inceasing our knowledge of machines and fuels we feel we have learned more about how the world works. But actually, we have only learned more about how automobiles and fuels interact to produce motion. If we make similar enquiries into the way our minds work, if we try to explain how the brain converts the “fuel” of the senses into conscious and unconscious thought, we eventually see that we are trying to lift our understanding by its bootstraps. We’re using our minds to understand how minds work.

Obviously, this approach to understanding is bound to wind up in a cul de sac. We finally conclude, as John did, that we cannot prove – by the methods of science that we used to understand automobiles and fuels – that our conscious ideas relate in a mirror-like way to real objects. But we can at least say something. We can assert that our senses and the neurological processes they stimulate relate in some way to our conscious imaginations. We may also acknowledge that, even if all the content of consciousness is imaginary, it is nevertheless real.

But just as we see a difference between automobiles and fuels, we may also see that our consciousness of some things differs from our consciousness of others. We may, for instance, be conscious of hunger in a painful sort of way, and we may also be conscious of pain as an idea quite different from an actual pain. We may transcend the direct experience of pain and pleasure and begin to think about those two fundamental emotions as things in themselves. Thus, when John spoke of the “Self,” he was speaking of a transcendent sense of whatever he actually is. He may not have known of what he was speaking (Mr. Wittgenstein) but he did know that he could not have noticed a difference between the imagination of pain and the consideration of pain unless there were in reality a way to speak with authority of things we do not completely understand. John knows whereof he speaks when he says that the ego is an imagination. I’m sure he would acknowledge that the word “imagination” is also an imagination, but that it’s reality comes into being because of the contrast we notice between the “imaginary” reality of the ego and the transcendent reality of the Self.

Spinoza referred to this way of seeing as knowing sub specie aeternitatis, from the viewpoint of eternity. He assumed that all effects have causes and all effects are caused, and proceeded from there to a deduction of Reality (or God) within which ego and Self can be understood as separate sorts of things. Once we make that distinction, and realize that we, and not things “out there,” were responsible for seeing that difference, then the world and our Selves stand in relation to each other in a completely different way.

In God – in reality – good and evil do not exist. Those qualities emerge out of the human condition. Just as an automobile is only a hunk of junk without fuel, so are human beings only blood and bone without their active minds. Pain and pleasure, the ego, and perhaps even the Self may be imaginations, but they are our imaginations. They are ours to manage, ours to manipulate and control, ours to transcend. We may choose – as many have – to regard ourselves as victims of reality (or other people), but the better road opens to us when we see ourselves as creative creatures making, out of what seems real, our own reality. Pain and pleasure may not go away, but we will know them for what they are . . . just friendly little reminders of what is good for us and what is not. And that, of course, is the ultimate of human goodness.

A Short Mouse Tail, er, Tale

I once knew a man who every Saturday morning made himself a kite, flew it, and then destroyed it. He went through the process almost as if it were a ritual. He started almost always at the same time, built the kite to the same specifications, attached the tail of a certain length, and heisted the kite using the same technique, perching the kite on a fence post -- the same one -- letting out a little slack in the line, then running off as fast as he could to give the kite a sudden launching. The kite always took right off into a perfect flight. After a few minutes, the man reeled in the kite, and completed the ritual. He destroyed only the kite, keeping the string and the tail intact for next Saturday's action.

After witnessing the procedure for several Saturdays I asked the man why he was doing it. He replied without hesitation, "I believe that every day we ought to do something we don't want to do. I hate flying kites."

Well, that was about 50 years ago, and as I have grown older and retired from the money chase, it seems that anything I feel I must do is something I don't want to do. And being a quintessentially lazy man, I have transformed the kite-flying man's watchword into one that suits me much better than his would. Even though I agree that our character can be improved by doing something distasteful everyday, I find it distasteful to do what I am supposed to do. So every day, I give in to the urge to do nothing, fully convinced that I really do not wish to spend my life doing nothing.

Thanks, kite-flying man. I could never have reached this life-saving commitment without your fine example to guide me.

Were Mice Predestined to Provide Food for Cats?

An insane cousin of mine once wrote an essay in which he made the case that God created mice – and other delectable creatures – as a handy means to store nourishment for carnivores. His argument centered upon an analysis of the entire food chain, from minerals and gases, all the way up through human beings, to their final consumer, the “conqueror worm” (Poe’s quaint term for the creature occupying the highest rung on the ladder). It’s simply a fact, you see, that the digestive systems of carnivores cannot directly process the earth’s raw materials. Only plants can do that. The flora consume nutrients from the soil and the air, convert them into products digestible by animals, and thus set in motion the cycle of food processing that has finally come full circle. Earth to earth and dust to dust . . . round and round she goes.

Carried away by his analysis, Harold (my crazy cousin) borrowed money from a stupid banker and went into the mink fur business. He named his enterprise Milady’s Abattoir, a euphemistic way of telling the world he was running a slaughterhouse. Harold’s business plan grew directly from his food chain research. He raised a colony of mice that he fed to a colony of cats that he fed to a herd of mink. After the mink were slaughtered and their fur converted to garments for ladies’ backs, he fed the mink carcasses to the mice . . . round and round she goes. The idea seems so plausible I still don’t understand why the business failed.

Anyhow, cousin Harold, from his cell up in Tuscaloosa, followed his successful essay with a series of articles on the same subject. (The original piece was favorably reviewed by the Baldwin County Daffodil, a now defunct newspaper that never existed over in Loxley.) These “follow-ups” eventually reached the point where it became apparent to Harold that the individual members of the fauna family were designed specifically for a particular carnivore, mice for example, being created at just the proper size so they could easily be devoured by alley catus Americanus.

I won’t bother you with Harold’s complete list of match-ups (lions-gazelles, herons-frogs, etc), but it does seem worth mentioning that Harold viewed omnivorous Man as God’s device for cleaning up the loose ends of the food chain. Harold explained those “loose ends” by claiming that “God may be perfect, but some of his creatures were not.” He had in mind the apparent fact that some cats were not as good as others at catching mice, and that some mice had even been known to band together into vigilante bands to protect themselves from cats, sometimes even making a meal of the cats themselves. Infidel theologians were quick to point out the logical contradiction between a perfect Creator and an imperfect creation, but Harold – in a clever rejoinder – simply dismissed the theologians as further examples of God’s great wisdom. “God gave us theologians so all of us would have someone to look down on.” Harold was not one to swallow an insult.

I was reminded of my cousin’s adventures by something my cat said to me at breakfast this morning. I would tell you what she said, but this is a family blog and her words are – shall we say – unfit for innocent ears (if there be such). Better I should just report that she was pissed off that the supply of mice in the house had dropped off considerably ever since I started calling myself “Mendacious Mouse.” The wee beasties, attracted by “one of their own” writing a blog, became regular visitors to this site. And wouldn’t you know it: they all choked to death on the truth.

A Hero the Mouse Once Saw

Not too many years ago, in a city not so far away, there lived a young man – actually, only a boy, no more than 14 years old – who was profoundly gifted in what some would call, a trivial art. He could hit a baseball. Folks of many different colors in that very southern and unrepentant city used to gather around on weekend afternoons to watch this young fellow take batting practice. His practice field was the school yard of the old Emerson Elementary at the foot of Palmetto Street. It was one of the older schools in the city, naturally segregated, naturally dilapidated, but for all that, still blessed with a yard large enough to hold the drives the youngster sent off his bat. Well. Not actually large enough. The leftfield “fence” – there was no fence – was only about 300 feet from the makeshift home plate. The backs of a row of shanties lay beyond that point, so the unwritten rule was that the boy was not to hit the ball into left field. Two very tall walnut trees stood in centerfield. To give you an idea of this boy’s skills with a bat, by the end of summer those trees would be leafless, their limbs scraped clean by the thousands of balls the boy had driven into them.

He was what sportswriters would have called a “phenom.” The Mouse, only a boy himself, would join those crowds who gathered there to watch the gifted batter prune those walnut trees. I remember sitting on one of a scattering of old wooden Coca Cola boxes, the kind that held 24 bottles, watching the “natural” do his thing. He didn’t seem at all self conscious. He just stood there at home plate, the bat tightly cocked, spring-loaded, as it were, held in a pair of hands that seemed too large for him. He was tall for a 14 year old, nearly six feet, but not fleshed out, nothing on his bones it seemed but wiry muscle.

He had a friend who pitched batting practice for him, a boy about his age that he called Fruitcake. This kid was good, too. Not phenom-good like the slugger, but good enough to pitch the ball exactly where the practice demanded. He could also throw a beautiful round-house curve, one of those great looping pitches that seems headed at your head, but smoothly bends across the plate, knee high, letter high, inside, outside – exactly where he meant it to go. To us mortals, that curve ball looked unhittable, but the boy with the bat in his hands never missed. Swat! Swat! Swat! Every pitch zooming into those trees . . . or so it seems now.

And it may have been. That young boy with the bat in his hand, grew up to be a real ball player. His name was Henry “Hank” Aaron, the greatest homerun hitter of all time. The city was Mobile, Alabama, where now the baseball stadium is named for the phenom, and a main street, too. The city that in those old days would not let Henry Aaron drink from the same water fountain in Kress’s dime store – the words “White” and “Colored” were set in tiles above the two fountains – now honors him as “one of theirs.” Let’s just say, times have changed, and let us hope that people have too. I suspect they have, for times cannot change unless people do.

But forget that. Today is not for social commentary. It’s for bragging. “I saw him when he was a kid!” “I saw him before he was famous!” He was one of me. There were others, too. Mobile is today more famous for its ballplayers than for that Yankee who damned the torpedoes. Willie McCovey played over at Choctaw Park, about a half-mile down on Washington Avenue, where I’m told black and white kids played together even when it was illegal. Billy Williams, the sweet-swinging Chicago Cub, grew up in the county, out near Whistler, I think. The three of them, Aaron, McCovey, Williams . . . they’re all in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. They were great players . . . all three of them, black kids who grew up within a few miles of each other.

Down the road from Emerson School – the other way – was McGill Catholic High School, famous also for its athletes, Vincent Dooley, Hall of Fame football coach, and Frank and Milton Bolling, all of them contemporaries of Aaron’s and the Mouse’s. Frankie made the all-star team in the National league, and Milton was shortstop for the Red Sox, his career cut short by an injury. Frankie and Aaron were at one time teammates on the Milwaukee Braves. Hard to believe. All those great athletes – from one medium size city in Alabama, in the same three year period.

Satchel Paige – another baseball Hall of Famer – probably attended Emerson School, too. He grew up in the neighborhood, but that would have been before Aaron and the Mouse were born, so I can only report Paige’s attendance in those hallowed halls as a rumor, one so good that if it isn’t true, it ought to be.

Aaron’s mother was a house maid. My mother owned and operated a domestic employment agency, and Hank’s mother was one of her steady clients. Those ladies worked to make ends meet, but I do not know how they did it on the $3 or $4 dollars a day they were paid. I suppose they were as diligent in their way as Aaron was in his. Think about it: how many swings of the bat a 14 year old would have to make to wear two trees bare that were always sprouting new leaves. He had to believe in himself. He had to know. But he was so calm, so unpretentiously good . . . .

And that’s how he still is, Aaron the man, calmly walking through life, and along the way, just incidentally, knocking the living daylights out of baseballs as only a phenom could.

The Mouse on "Conservatism" (Final Installment)

Plato – a human, like John Marshall and you and me – struggled to find a universal meaning for the word “justice.” We can learn from his effort. His mouthpiece, Socrates, opined that keeping one’s promises might always be considered a just act, but in less than three pages of dialectic Plato disposed of that easy solution. He had Socrates argue that if a friend entrusts to you his weapon and you give him your word that you will return it when he asks for it, some circumstance may arise in which you would certainly be justified in not keeping your word. If the friend asked for the weapon at a time when he was in hot anger, and you were of the opinion that he would, if given the weapon, commit an act he would later regret, you would certainly be wrong to keep your promise. In other words, we are, each of us, faced with the problem of having to decide what is right and what is wrong. There was in Plato’s time, as now, no escape from the necessity to think.

In proceeding with our thoughts we might wonder – as many have – whether making outright gifts to poor people in the form of welfare is in their best interest. We might wonder whether the Costco idea of paying its employees more than the prevailing wage and of providing benefits its competitors would never dream of paying, was in the company’s best interest, not to mention the inflationary effects the practice would have on the whole economy. We might wonder whether the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh that makes unsecured loans to destitute poor people is serving the best interest of its investors. We may acknowledge a deep and abiding devotion to Christian charity, and yet still wonder if in identifying people as “the poor” we’re not leading the poor to regard themselves as a helpless hoard, unable to sustain itself in this progressive and complicated world. We might, after a brief analysis, realize that Costco, in bidding up the price of labor, has broken no rules, has in fact conformed to orthodox capitalist practice. But Muhammad Yunus, the guiding light of the Grameen bank, broke those rules, demonstrating by his action the meta-rule that ideological rules can be obeyed or broken and success be obtained by either path. He challenged the most fundamental guideline of good banking and in doing so made positive inroads into poverty in one of the poorest nations on earth. We might wonder about thousands of real and vital issues that confront us as a people, and in doing so, might also wonder – in what some might call a meta-wondering – whether we are doing the right thing when we try to cram every answer we come up with into an existing ideological frame. And we might realize – after centuries of struggle – that the real road to serfdom lies on the path we follow when we obey without questioning them the endlessly repeated slogans and rhetorical persuasions of philosopher-kings.

We cannot, for example, truly eliminate poverty unless by an almost impossible leap of the spirit we overcome the mental inertia created by the Biblical prophesy that “the poor will be with you always.” In the U. S., where the problem of poverty is essentially benign, Clinton thought he had taken a giant step toward a solution with the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, but critics quickly claimed his efforts had only succeeded in denying needed assistance to the poor. Yunus (as a trained economist and a human just like the rest of us) must have found it doubly difficult to believe that poor people might repay their loans just because they said they would.

I am not trying to make an inspirational talk here. I’m simply illustrating just how truly difficult is the road away from the serfdom of accepted belief. Those entrepreneurs and politicians went against a deeply cut grain. Clinton’s party – especially its progressive wing – has consistently favored direct assistance to the poor with no strings attached; Clinton attached strings. Bankers – mine and yours – have always demanded either firm collateral or co-signers with the means to pay if the borrower doesn’t; heaven knows what led Yunus to think he could get away with lending money to “deadbeats,” but he did it and has apparently made a success of the practice.[1] And I wonder what stream of consciousness led Costco’s managers to overcome the fear that must have surrounded their decisions: “What in the world will we say to the board of directors if this strategy fails?”

And their strategy may fail. Everyone, corporate CEOs, home-owning entrepreneurs, even those who “go with the flow” – especially politicians – must deal with the inevitability of the unexpected. Those hired as our political leaders, better equipped to deal with change than those who hired them, can seek to minimize occurrences of outright rebellion by keeping on hand a good supply of flags and anthems they can use to calm the passions of the masses when change pinches them where it hurts. They may coax a friendly legislature into throwing a barely gnawed bone to corporate wolves when their bottom line has been turned pinkish by the down cycle of an economy that seems to obey no master. A particularly bold leader may even kick a few foreign asses to kindle the odd minor skirmish, the costs of which may add fuel to the economy’s flickering fire. Or, in a more sheepish moment, he may simply turn on the charm, never flinching in eye or smirk when “all about him are losing their heads and blaming it on him.”

These options, and as many more as clever men may conceive, may or may not work on any particular occasion to relieve the tensions of a plan gone wrong. The success of a given horse in a given race, like the goodness of a particular idea, is determined after the starting gate opens. Stamina and speed, like sound economic theories, are measures of probable success, not assurances. The world does not obey theories or systems. It obeys the forces of the moment. It is, thus, only a vaguely predictable place.

The neoconservative-fascists of modern times have grossly miscalculated in believing that their great scheme for the enrichment of an investor class will produce its planned effects. The world – especially its economy – moves by the rational action of thousands upon millions of loosely related forces. Some of those actions work and others fail, while still others dawdle along trying to make ends meet. Clinton’s welfare reform is a dawdler. Costco’s employment experiment may survive, its chances somewhat more intuitively appealing than Yunus’ banking policy. But any plan – whether socialist, fascist, or pseudo-capitalist – that seeks to control the fundamentals of the economy by broad and sweeping governmental controls is certain to result in painful disaster.
Unfortunately, we are at present undergoing a fascist experiment that may in its madness succeed in destroying the once great hopes the American ideal presented to the world. The liberties of speech and religion are being abused by people who know exactly what they wish to make of the world. It is to our great misfortune that the monster they hope to create will destroy all that was true and beautiful in the ideas promulgated by Madison, Jefferson, Washington, and the other founding fathers. The modern puppeteers think they have found the philosopher’s stone, a magical potion called “massive capital formation” that they believe will do what Hayek, Smith, and von Mises said could not be done. They seek to replace the rational trials and errors of a complex human society with the snake oil of crack-pot economics. Tobacco taxes, Social Security, welfare reforms, not even NAFTA/CAFTA – none of these in their individuality, or when taken as a whole, comprises a “central plan,” but rather represent small parts of that conglomerate of rational causes and effects that Hayek referred to as the dispersed knowledge of humankind. Some of those ideas are bound to fail, and some of their failures will trace to economic and/or moral contradictions. Some of them will succeed because they are backed by the force of arms, others because they have found a sweet spot in the human soul. They are, nonetheless, ideas conceived by someone and believed by many to be aspects of the good.

By way of getting a better understanding of the method humans ought to apply to their governmental decisions, look briefly at Medicare. Anyone who would say of that program that it is not of the socialist tint would be wrong. The services and products offered by physicians, hospitals, and pharmacies are indeed resources and any arbitrary law that seeks to control or guide their usage is by nature socialist. But we must finally admit that Medicare is less an economic concern (aside from its dollars and cents cost) than a political concern. Does it serve the general welfare to assure the good health of the older population? Is Medicare something worth doing, both for the good of the elderly and of society in general? The increased costs that will be brought about as a result of removing medical care for the elderly from the free market must also be figured into the equation, as must the inevitable temptation that will arise to put price controls on the products. It cannot be argued that the program is bad simply because it is socialist. It must be considered on the basis of a comparison of its cost and manageability against its value to the general welfare.

The same goes for NAFTA/CAFTA. It may very well be that those programs are good for the general welfare. The NAFTA/CAFTA provisions that are, in my opinion, downright wrong, would perhaps have been written out of them if the programs had been openly and honestly presented to the public mind.

These questions could be debated until time stops, but if we are to remain human beings, guiding our choices by the rational use of reason, we must eventually come to closure. In deciding, we should be guided both by the principles of good economic theory and by our interpretation of what the words “general welfare” mean. To do otherwise would be to shy away from the hard problems, and to take the path of least resistance, the one that marches us lock-step where our ideology takes us.

Ideas are, after all, paramount in the government of human society. We, as individuals, must think, and to think that we can escape the necessity to do so is to think ourselves into a totalitarian regime. The fascists are achieving their goals by the power of their wealth, not by the power of their ideas. They perhaps know this, since they have been reluctant to openly declare their purposes, preferring to hide behind the lies and distortions of NAFTA/CAFTA-like plans. They are good at doing what they do, and that is – perhaps – all the worse for their victims.

Let me explain that “perhaps.” It could be the case that the verbal acrobatics and rhetorical lies of our political masters are all that stand between us and perpetual rebellion. We are after all, absolutely and existentially free, bound in our behavior by nothing other than our impressions, ideas, and passions – causes and effects. If we cannot, as individuals, consciously and widely apply the Spinoza/Lonergan method to the conduct of our lives, perhaps the comforting lies of our philosopher-kings are necessary. So long as they do it well, their lying may at least maintain order long enough for the American people to wake up without having to undergo the pain and suffering of another revolution.

To me, it seems reasonable to expect that we will find a way to accept our obligation to think and, with it, our commitment to the truth. It seems to me, in fact, impossible that any web of deception woven by mortals can forever keep its hold on the inquisitive human mind. The “some of the people” who are fooled “all of the time” is still an indeterminate number. It may change in size, and if my intuitions are correct, the changes will all be in the direction of smaller. People will not forever be sucked in by “conservative” spinning of Hayek’s thoughts. We will eventually come to see that a duck is indeed something that looks and quacks like a duck, and that fascists are exactly those who seek to monopolize the total power of government – guns and all – for their own designs, general welfare bedamned.

[1] According to Ode magazine (July/August 2005 issue) the Grameen Bank made a profit of US$5.6 million in 2004…which by another exercise of “insane” behavior, it donated to a worthy cause.

The Mouse on "Conservatism" (Part VI)

As a more or less aside here (but one that goes right to the point of, “why government?”), take a look at the history of taxes levied on tobacco. One might argue with a high likelihood of success that this nation’s economy, in its beginning, rested upon “Tobo,” the tobacco trade. In pre-revolutionary America tobacco was the money crop of choice and competed with cotton and molasses for top place as a revenue-producing export. For the 170 years of the nation’s history, we would have been foolish to levy taxes restricting the tobacco trade, and we certainly did not. So, why was that policy changed? Why do we now have laws that operate precisely for the purpose of restricting the sale of tobacco? The answer’s obvious: because we know something now we didn’t know then. We have learned that a high correlation exists between the smoking habit and early death. If we had known in pre-revolutionary times what we know now, we would certainly not have made tobacco fundamental to our economic survival…or at least, we shouldn’t have. (But tobacco companies still sell their poison in countries where the laws do not yet reflect what we know.) Tobacco is a killer. To do nothing about it would make as much sense as letting Osama bin Laden and his cohorts run free. Many times more people die every year from the effects of tobacco poisoning than died in the twin towers, and both death tolls were (and remain) the result of purposeful acts.

The libertarian may counter with an appeal to individualism, claiming that any governmental concern for its citizens leads to a “welfare state.” The ensuing debate would hinge – as it ought – upon the definition of government’s obligation to its citizens. Should the government spend tax monies to determine what is good and bad for the people? Should the government attempt to learn about things like global warming and enact laws as indicated by the knowledge gained? Or should it leave all such matters to the free actions of individuals? These questions go to the heart of what the United States Constitution means when it speaks of the “general welfare” as one of the things the Congress shall be authorized to spend tax monies to obtain. A serious person might ask, and should ask, what is the constitutional meaning of the word “welfare”? My dictionary gives these definitions:

welfare n. 1. the good fortune, health, happiness, prosperity, etc., of a person, group, or organization; well-being.

2. financial or other assistance given to those in poverty or need; public relief.

But dictionary definitions cannot settle the matter. As we saw earlier, so simple a word as “happiness” can be understood in many different ways, so when we define “welfare” as the dictionary does, we merely substitute one anomalous meaning for another.

This then is the crux of the matter that Hayek’s ghost lamented when it spoke woefully of those who criticize the human mind: only a judicious exercise of the mind can resolve matters of this sort. We cannot expect to have “welfare” explained to us in a cook book fashion; the word is mentioned only twice in the Constitution – in the Preamble and in Article I, Section 8. In both cases it is preceded by the qualifier, “general.” Anyone faced with determining the usefulness (and constitutionality) of any law, any tax, or any regulation enacted by Congress under Article 1, Section 8 will have to ask whether the general welfare is served, and not the welfare of a mere individual or a group so small as to fall outside the constitution’s meaning.

It is in that context that we must ask whether any economic theory has been so perfectly demonstrated that its principles can be applied without having to ask whether, in particular cases, they serve the general welfare. We may accept – as I certainly do – that capitalist theory is superior to socialist theory, but this is not to say that cases will not arise in which quasi-socialist ideas (like excise taxes on tobacco and zoning laws) are useful. That we have to decide issues of that sort, with no firm guidelines for action, is one of the reasons we find government such a difficult thing to do well. While the “government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men” [John Marshall: Marbury v Madison], it is nevertheless men (like Marshall) who are charged with administering our laws and in deciding the generality of their welfare. There is no escape from the necessity to think.

The Mouse On "Conservatism" (Part V)

To achieve that end we must first correct the thinking that has led the true libertarians to believe that government is evil. They at least will not have to be convinced of the goodness – and usefulness – of liberty.

Pure libertarian thought can be disposed of rather quickly by considering the distribution of only one available resource, opium. If we are to permit individuals absolute freedom of choice, then we must presume that the distribution and marketing of opium is to be carried out without restriction. Due to the addictive properties of the opium product, once a person becomes a customer he will remain one. To the entrepreneurial mind, the market in opium would thus seem the finest conceivable, for it can only grow. True, as the market increases and the available supply of poppy becomes stressed, the price of opium may rise beyond the reach of the average non-customer. Not to worry. The invisible hand of economic equilibrium will automatically see to it that we convert arable land currently producing food to the growth of poppies. In this conversion the pains of technological unemployment will be minimized since the labor force currently employed in harvesting and processing food can easily be converted to the narcotics business. Nor must we fret that the effects of opium upon the mind – and thus upon the ability of workers to work – may greatly endanger the supply of labor. The human mind, “God’s greatest invention,” will invent “soma-normalizing” drugs which render the worker capable of performing his duties while leaving his opium-induced raptures untouched. The spin-off market in these “productivity enhancing” drugs will produce wealth beyond the wildest imaginings of those oil-mongering entrepreneurs of modern times who consider themselves fortunate if they’re able to create a windfall every decade or so by the stirring of minor wars in minor nations. As for the unintended consequences of widespread opium addiction, that people will begin to die at a much earlier age, “Fear not,” the slick commercials will argue, “for unto you is given this day a new way of living that will make life truly worth living. Better one year of bliss than ten of boredom.” And who says the consequences were “unintended”? “See how cleverly we have solved the population problem, the Social Security shortfall, and traffic congestion. Opium is the opiate of the people.”

A more rational libertarian may argue that laws barring the opium trade can be passed, but the true believing libertarian, placing human freedom above all other concerns, will insist that any inhibition of individual desire (beyond that necessary for national defense and the recruitment of judges), so long as it harms no one other than the individual, is by definition wrong. They will argue that those people foolish enough to fall for Madison Avenue’s pimping of narcotics will deserve what they get. “If people wish to sacrifice years of their lives for momentary enjoyment, who are you to tell them they can’t do it?” Well, let us for the moment accept the premises of that rejoinder and presume that (1) opium will indeed shorten its user’s life and (2) that the users know that it will. The decision to use opium sounds, under those conditions, as rational as, say, the decision to forego wearing a raincoat in the rain. One may well decide that “a little rain ain’t gonna hurt me, and that damn raincoat is too hot,” trading a minor inconvenience (wet clothes) for a moment of satisfaction (relief from the heat). But then, one could always change one’s mind about the raincoat, especially if the consequences of the choice become a bit more uncomfortable than anticipated. But when a person chooses opium addiction he makes a choice that will be difficult to reverse. It is a choice only a trifle less permanent than that other crank-libertarian platform plank, the “right” to commit suicide. Opium addiction and suicide limit the most widely exercised “right” possessed by human beings, the “right” to be wrong. Unless a particular wrong choice condemns us eternally to remain wrong, we may feel free to take the risk of being wrong as often as we wish. Suicide and opium addiction both strike me as non-reversible choices. To pass laws against them is thus, not too much different from placing warning labels on cigarette packages. Any fool who chooses to violate those warnings – and those laws – will indeed “deserve what he gets.” But it seems reasonable to me that when governments pass laws against the opium trade and suicide, when they apply warning labels and impose excise taxes on the sale of poison, they perform legitimate functions. One wonders how many people would know that tobacco kills if it had been left to Phillip Morris to inform them.

[To be continued]

The Mouse on "Conservatism" (Part IV)

If Hayek were alive today, and still in command of his reason, maybe he could demonstrate to these modern corporatists the errors of their ways. But I honestly doubt that he would succeed. Any group so perverse as to call itself and apparently to believe itself Christian, while doing everything possible to rob the poor and to enrich the wealthy, is probably beyond redemption, even by Hayek’s beautifully reasoned arguments. Rest in peace, Friedrich. You meant well, just as Jesus did. It’s not your fault nor his, that selfish men have picked and chosen from your words to implement the opposite of the ideals you cherished. The fault is theirs.

“But I would nevertheless try to reform them,” the spirit of Hayek murmurs from its grave. “I would remind them of the legitimate functions of government, remind them that nations are made of people and their dreams, not flags and oaths. Hitler had those symbols by the carload. I would remind them of my own existence as only a man, no different at the base from those whose ideas I found untenable. I would remind them that all of us were about the business of doing our best to discover and to live by those precepts we found most supportable by reason.” [Long pause, and then, fearfully…] “Is it true what you have said, that some people have taken to criticizing the human mind itself? Oh, Lord, I pray you are wrong.”

And so do I, Friedrich, so do I, but I fear that I am not. Today, we find among us a strange coalition of religious fundamentalists (posing as Christians) and lock-step corporate shills (posing as libertarians) denigrating the human mind as a source of happiness. The fundamentalists have asked us to suspend reason when we commit our lives to that which is the ground of our ultimate goodness, while the fascists demand that we march in mindless opposition to any use of the powers of government to restrict the desires of the corporations, a demand that, if obeyed, would remove all barriers from the onslaught of the so-called “conservatives.”[1] The “Christian right” (which a wag has correctly pointed out is neither “Christian” nor “right”) does not seem to realize that a rational world cannot be built upon an irrational foundation, that if we cannot get our minds around a notion of God that makes sense to us, we will never find a way to clearly and distinctly relate our everyday actions to any God. The TV evangelists and popes of the world seem to believe we can live with “mystery” at the deepest levels of our ultimate concern. It does not excuse their actions that they take that position only because they cannot make sense of the God of their choosing, but must be content with “the mysteries of the faith.” And it is certainly not to justify those who have chosen to accept groundless notions as their religion, for they have, for the most part, believed with passive minds. But my purpose here is not to disabuse the shepherds and their flocks of their spiritual vacuum. I wish only to point out a road by which the American people, and any other people, can retrieve their government from those who have co-opted it as an instrument of personal ambition, for serfdom is the certain destiny of those who have accepted the notion that government is by definition evil. They have given over their “evil” government into the hands of pirates.

[1] As we speak, the government is firmly in the hands of the corporations and their political hired hands. But so long as we remain a democracy, hope remains. Honest and noble Republicans need to take back their party.

[To be continued]

The Mouse on "Conservatism" (Part III)

I do not wish to give the impression that the long range effects of NAFTA/CAFTA are “bad” from every perspective. If the proponents of those measures were as idealistic as Friedrich Hayek about the goodness of open market capitalism, and as honest as him in seeking the benevolences of free trade, they would have informed the American people straight out that, even though NAFTA/CAFTA would cost many American jobs, in the long run the world will benefit. If rationally applied capitalist ideas do in fact work as well as Hayek said they would – and I believe they do – and if that form of capitalism were adopted by all the world’s nations, the supplies of goods coming into the market would increase so significantly that the worldwide shortages of life’s necessities would soon be satisfied.

But the corporations who purchased NAFTA/CAFTA from our Congress were not seeking to export rational capitalism. Neither the plight of workers nor the health of the planet were their concern. Performing their magic tricks, just as every dogmatic laissez faire capitalist ought to, they were working to increase the earnings of their companies. If the American people had to be distracted by sleight-of-hand tricksters in order for their objectives to be met, no problem. With the wool firmly in place over the public’s credulous eyes, even pollutions of the earth can be justified. In the long run polluted air and water will provide opportunities for other capitalists to mount profitable cleanup enterprises, and the world's GNP will be higher.

I found laughable the Democrats’ pleas for “a level playing field” during the most recent presidential campaign. They wanted Mexico to enact environmental and fair labor laws similar to those in America. The candidates making those pleas were either ignorant of NAFTA’s true purpose or were merely shedding crocodile tears. The NAFTA/CAFTA laws were enacted precisely to create a tilted playing field.

NAFTA‘s chapter 11, which gives corporations supremacy over American, Mexican, and Canadian laws and courts, clearly indicates that those who crafted those provisions did not have America’s best interest at heart. Chapter 11 was (probably) designed to prevent the three governments – primarily Mexico – from nationalizing capital investments, but the law has, so far, never been used for that purpose.[1] Instead, using NAFTA’s chapter 11 power, foreign companies have entered into litigation against American, Mexican, and Canadian taxpayers, seeking relief from the laws of those nations that inhibit their earnings. (They also seek compensation for the losses those laws have caused them.) The litigants are not suing in a formal American court or any other nation’s court. They are pleading their cases to a special tribunal created by NAFTA in which foreign companies can sue you and me for damages. A company called Methanex, for example, incorporated in Canada, is suing us, claiming that California’s laws prevent the sale of the company’s gasoline additive.[2] They want close to a billion dollars of our money. [Note, not just Californians’ money, but yours and mine, and that includes Californians. The state of California actually has no standing in the NAFTA tribunal, so it has to depend on the Federals to plead its case – and ours.] The fact that California enacted its pollution laws to counter a problem peculiar to California would appear to be irrelevant to the company bringing suit. Their eye is on their bottom line, not on California’s smog. United Parcel Service (UPS, “Brown”), another NAFTA litigant, is suing the Canadian government in the same tribunal, claiming that Canada’s postal service, by delivering packages, is unfairly competing with its service.[3] They want $160 million of Canadian taxpayers’ money.

CAFTA is worse. NAFTA elevated only foreign companies to the same level as sovereign nations. (Actually above them, since the NAFTA/CAFTA tribunal’s rulings supercede and render inoperative the laws of sovereign nations.) CAFTA will broaden that privilege, permitting the foreign subsidiaries of American companies to sue you and me in that same tribunal. Note well, that the NAFTA/CAFTA tribunal is not engaged in the adjudication of American law, or the law of any nation, ruling only upon the appearance that some law of ours (or some other sovereign nation’s) prevents or inhibits corporate profits.[4]

NAFTA/CAFTA, and similar broad-reaching economic measures, enacted by governments to benefit private economic ventures, violate the most fundamental principle of Hayek’s rule of law. They in fact closely resemble the fascist “laws” adopted before the Second World War by Germany and Italy. Those two Axis nations implemented a form of socialism, called corporatism, in which the state enters into partnership with the corporations to assure their partners’ profits. Hayek was writing against precisely those sorts of measures, laws designed to benefit specific economic entities. Coupled with the neoconomics briefly summarized [in an earlier blog], the NAFTA/CAFTA coup clearly demonstrates the intentions of corporate America and its political agents in the Congress. They wish to own the world and are willing to sacrifice America’s sovereignty to reach their goal.

I do not, however, wish to suggest that no one in America other than the stockholders of America’s multinational corporations benefited from NAFTA. The almost two million American jobs lost because of NAFTA added a large supply of unemployed people to the workforce, effectively lowering (or constraining) the cost of American labor. Companies in the burger-flipping business thus benefited from the increased supply of cheapened labor. I’m sure you understand why this “benefit” was not advertised by those lobbying for NAFTA.

Those same pimps, in defending the esoteric means by which the corporatists have sold their ideas try to put projects like NAFTA/CAFTA on the same footing as Medicare and Social Security, claiming the so-called “trade agreements” are just government programs aimed at promoting the general welfare. They argue that Americans must work in order to raise capital for their own enterprises, and corporate America supplies a large number of jobs. “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” But NAFTA/CAFTA led to a loss of two-million higher paying manufacturing jobs, with no hope that those jobs will ever be recovered.

In making their case, the defenders of NAFTA/CAFTA will no doubt avoid speaking of those parts of the programs – like NAFTA’s chapter 11 – that by no means relate to the good of the American people. The NAFTA/CAFTA pimps may also avoid discussion of NAFTA’s real good. I spoke of the benefits that might accrue to the poor people of the world if liberal democratic capitalism were broadly adopted. But unlike the other programs I’ve named, even if those benefits were realizable – which is doubtful – NAFTA/CAFTA’s real goodness can only be appreciated from an international perspective.

The damage done by NAFTA/CAFTA goes far deeper than thievery. The nation has, since its founding, been suspicious of government. On the political front, nothing has happened since Vietnam to do anything but deepen that historical distrust. As the saying goes, we need further deceits about as much as we need “a hole in the head.” A few straight shooters, not ashamed of their ideas, would be welcome. If American corporations need cheap labor markets to survive, then why don’t they just say so, and forget this shadowy game of deceit they are playing with the American people.

[1] Some observers believe the provisions of NAFTA’s chapter 11 have been abused by companies who saw a loophole in the law. If that were the case, the loophole could have been closed in CAFTA. It wasn’t. It was made wider.

[2] The details of this proceeding read like a James Bond spy novel, with Methanex accusing the officers of its American competitor, Archer-Daniels-Midland Inc, and California Governor Davis of actions (to put it in the words of the tribunal) “likely to offend any self-respecting person.” [Added note 5/4/06. ADM stock has doubled since this was written. The additive, MBTE, has been declared illegal and ethanol, supplied by ADM, substituted.]

[3] United Parcel Service is, to Canada, a foreign company.

[4] Additional information may be found at www.epi.org and www.tradewatch.org.

[To be continued]

The Mouse on "Conservatism" (Part II)

But then, modern conservatives are not in the truest sense seeking to implement Hayek’s ideas. Having confused “economic activity” with any act of a central government, they find themselves enrolled in what appears to be a suicide club. They object to, and actively seek to defeat, measures designed to promote human health (Medicare), safety (the Pure Food and Drug Act), the health of the planet (the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts), and similar devices that are “economic” primarily because they have to be paid for.

But as I have said – and my tongue was no deeper in my cheek then as now – no one should blame these suicidal people (or any others) for seeking what they regard as their own best interest. That their measures may harm other people (and themselves) should be of no concern to us, since we all tend to do similar things, sometimes with equally suicidal results. But even as we ironically approve their destructive behavior, we should still hold them pejoratively accountable. They have, with increasing frequency, covertly used the power of government and abused the rule of law to satisfy their personal ambitions.
By way of setting up a contrast, consider that when the representatives of elderly people without health insurance sought to have the government institute a program to assist them, no one could (or should) have been in doubt about the objectives and main beneficiaries of the program. The way they went about seeking government assistance was open and above board. If there were cost problems with what they were asking – and by now it should be obvious that there were – the debate could have been (and was to a great degree) centered upon those problems.

But when corporate America, facing difficulties of its own, sought government’s assistance – by way of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – the debate was almost entirely deceptive. NAFTA’s sponsors claimed that the act would benefit American workers by creating more new jobs. They did not make it clear that those jobs would materialize only after the living standard of the Mexican people was raised to a level where they could afford American products. But the deception went deeper than a mere error of omission. To suggest that American jobs would be gained as a result of NAFTA was a lie, since even if the Mexican living standard were raised (in four decades or so) most of the market thus created would be satisfied by foreign and Mexican competitors of American companies. In the four-decades of the meanwhile, Americans would lose their jobs, and probably lose them permanently to cheaper labor.

In the famous NAFTA television debate between Al Gore and Ross Perot, when Perot suggested that the job losses in America would create a “giant sucking sound,” Gore’s response was (1) to repeat the lie (that jobs would be gained) and (2) to engage in a character assassination of Mr. Perot. I do not recall that Gore or any other of NAFTA’s proponents acknowledged the time frame in which the putative Mexican market would materialize, and they certainly never admitted the probability that, in the long run, foreign workers would benefit more than American workers from the improved Mexican economy.But then, none of that really mattered. The true objective of NAFTA (and now the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA) had nothing to do with long term benefits for American workers or anyone else’s workers. NAFTA (and CAFTA even more so) provides American corporations a way around the environmental and fair labor laws they must obey if they do business in America. The international corporations could foresee that those laws were not going to go away, so they engineered a side-step around them. The cheap labor of the Mexican and Central American nations – to which health insurance and other benefits do not have to be paid – could more easily be exploited than the more informed and more strongly supported American workforce. I cannot offer an estimate of the damage that will be done to the world’s atmosphere and water supplies by the actions of the NAFTA/CAFTA beneficiaries; that’s for water and air quality experts to assess. I can say that the ethical considerations involved in deceiving the American public are evidence enough to conclude that Smith’s invisible hand is sometimes attached to the arms of self-serving prestidigitators. If the impetus behind NAFTA/CAFTA were actually the promotion of free market theory, why not concentrate on opening up the markets between us and places like Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and Italy, instead of only those places where cheap labor and weak environmental laws exist? And why load NAFTA/CAFTA with caveats protecting those aspects of the American economy where the Mexicans and Central Americans can already compete, like in the sugar market?

[To be continued]

The Mouse on "Conservatism" (Part I)

[The next several blogs will be from chapter 11 of my book "The Several Roads to Serfdom," which purports to be a critique of F. A. Hayek's libertarian masterpiece, "The Road to Serfdom." I have left the footnotes in. They will appear as end notes to each installment.]

Hayek’s masterpiece: In chapter six of The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek explains the difference between economies that operate under the rule of law and those that operate by the whim of government. “Under the first the government confines itself to fixing rules determining the conditions under which the available resources may be used, leaving to the individuals the decision for what ends they are to be used. Under the second the government directs the use of the means of production to particular ends.” [Page 81.] One can see from the tone and scope of these keynote sentences that Hayek has focused upon the law as it relates to economic matters. The title of the chapter, “Planning and the Rule of Law,” leaves no doubt that Hayek has set out to contrast the way capitalist and socialist economies understand and use the law. Briefly put, capitalist governments make laws designed to maximize the free use of resources by individuals, whereas socialist governments reserve to themselves the power to restructure and redirect the use of resources as they see fit.

History has rendered that particular distinction practically obsolete. As Hayek acknowledged in the introduction to the 1976 edition of his book, and as Francis Fukuyama confirmed in The End of History and the Last Man, “hot” socialist economies are almost extinct. Even the so-called communist nations, the People’s Republic of China, for example, while continuing their dictatorial ways, run their economies by means more capitalist than socialist. Those nations cannot, of course, be said to operate under the rule of law as Hayek understood it. The Chinese government, for example, still reserves the right to change the law to suit the momentary perceptions of its dictatorial rulers rather than to enforce the ideals of their quasi-capitalist economies. The local family enterprises that were the first to go into business in modern China, were able to do so because the government found it beneficial to make a law permitting the businesses to open. The Chinese dictators could just as easily pass a law forbidding for-profit enterprises and, thereby, revert to pure socialist practices. That it does not – or has not done so – speaks either to their good economic sense or to a visceral fear of uprising.

It has not eluded notice, however, that western, free-world governments have gradually taken on some of the trappings of socialism. The Medicare and Social Security laws in the United States are clearly not capitalist in nature, since by law they dictate the flow of certain economic resources. The U. S. government has also enacted laws of a quasi-socialist type to control (or benefit) certain areas of free enterprise. They have, for example, interfered with the tobacco business by methods that fly in the face of rule of law Hayek envisioned as the staple of free capitalist societies. The excise tax on tobacco aims primarily to encourage people to stop killing themselves by smoking it. As noble as that objective may seem, the government has handled the “tobacco problem” in a self-contradicting manner. It has taxed smokers while leaving the tobacco farmer’s product relatively untaxed (in fact subsidized), leading at least this observer to believe that, in its treatment of tobacco farmers, the government has implemented one of the most fraudulent forms of economic fascism, that which favors a small body of producers with no possible benefit to anyone other than the recipients of the largesse.

Medicare, Social Security, and levies like the tobacco tax are a few of the tools of what has come to be called “social engineering.”[1] Such laws aim to produce effects the government believes will benefit the people. Social engineering laws, like all others, whether socialist or capitalist, are burdened with two separately identifiable – but closely related – bodies of cost:

(1) economic costs in dollars and cents, and

(2) ideological costs, like those perceived as the ill-effects of the tobacco tax.

One or the other of the two costs lie at the heart of the disagreements that inevitably crop up when social engineering programs become subjects of debate. Legislators typically frame their economic analysis by weighing costs against benefits. But since the benefits derived from social programs do not lend themselves easily to dollars and cents evaluation, ideological issues arise even in that process. Imagine the difficulties involved in trying to put a dollar value on human life, or on good health.

Assessment of the second cost item involves benefits of the unmeasurable sort to an even greater degree. Capitalism and socialism, and similar ideologies, have no value apart from the benefits they provide to the sustenance and enjoyment of life.

Social engineering laws – and in fact, all laws – could be said to be plans. They certainly result from a governmental attempt to implement a “planned” solution to a perceived problem. Sometimes the plans work and sometimes they don’t, but in all cases, plans that seek to marshal the government’s power to limit or control people’s activities arouse objections. When raised by libertarian ideologues, the objections usually take the form of questioning the right of the government to do anything that might be interpreted as an interference with the people’s rights and liberties. Those of the opposite persuasion tend to think the government is obliged to do whatever is necessary to achieve social equality. Consequently, nations that permit free expression generally find themselves engaged in a continuous debate over what is good planning and what is not.

Hayek anticipated – or saw with his own eyes – the turmoil that arises from disagreements of that sort. To help us resolve the difficulty, he identified objectionable planning as “a central direction of all economic activity according to a single plan, laying down how the resources of society should be ‘consciously directed’ to serve particular ends in a definite way.” [Page 40, italics mine.] While this definition seems to make crystal clear at least one side of the argument, it still leaves loopholes in pure laissez faire theory that Hayek’s purported disciples have had difficulty accepting. If planning is bad only when “all economic activity” is controlled, the modern conservatives, with few socialist governments to criticize, have been deprived of most of their ammunition, which of course, hasn’t stopped them from criticizing any action of government which they find repugnant to their own beliefs.

[1] Paul Johnson, in his book Modern Times, claims, by curvilinear reasoning, that over 100 million people were killed in the 20th century as “unintended consequences” of social engineering projects. He’s contending, for example, that Germany’s socialist economic policies led directly, though not by intention, to the Holocaust. I contend that Hitler’s political tactics, fueled by ancient prejudices derived from the Christian gospels, led intentionally to the Holocaust. I do not aim to account for all of Johnson’s 100 million dead. I’ll just say it straight: Johnson’s claim is phony, a blatant example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical error.

The Mouse Reads a Book

A 2005 book by Daniel Altman [Neoconomy] describes what he believes to be the overall strategy of our current central economic planners. They seek to eliminate income taxes on all forms of potential investment – no more income taxes on interest, dividends, inheritances, capital gains, and corporate profits. In the long run this strategy will lead (certainly) to the amassing of huge sums of capital, which in turn will lead (supposedly) to a greatly expanded industrial base.

Altman suggests that by “long run” these planners mean something on the order of a decade or so. People in the Mouse’s world know, however, that long term economic plans become less likely to succeed as the length of the term increases. Some horrible event like an unwanted war may upset the trends, or the holders of all that capital may choose to invest it in cheap labor markets overseas. The most likely scenario suggests that the great capital accumulations will be invested where the cheapest labor and most unsatisfied demand can be found. Thus, the working classes in the already industrialized nations, forced to compete with labor in third-world countries, will take home lower real wages than they do now. The plan may or may not benefit the nation that made the changes to its tax structure.

But two things are sure. If the Congress actually implements the plan, those among us who derive their income from investments will live free of all income taxes, while (if the size of government remains relatively the same) taxes on income earned by labor will increase. And here’s another certainty. Even if the great masses of capital do not produce the intended result, even if the plan completely fails, those whose taxes were reduced to zero will have become fabulously wealthy. At the same time, those who earn their living by the sweat of their brow will benefit only if the plan does work. That is, labor takes all the risk, capital none. I think the great libertarian, F. A. Hayek, will turn over in his grave when news of this reaches him.

Altman did not mention that this scheme was given a trial run in Chile during the reign of Augusto Pinochet. At the request of the dictator, the alleged economist Milton Friedman dispatched a swarm of his trainees to Chile. They convinced Chile’s dictator that so-called supply-side economics would produce great wealth. The plan was implemented in the mid-70s, pretty much as Altman described it in his book. By 1990 Chile was in deep recession, with wages down almost 20% and the numbers of people living in poverty up 100% from pre-Friedman levels. The plan did, however, work exactly as planned – the wealthy people of Chile got wealthier. Pinochet finally sent Friedman’s pack packing back to Chicago and reverted to the economic tactics of Salvador Allende, the legally elected socialist Pinochet had assassinated in the 1973 coup. Illustrative of how the world now seems to work, the Friedmanites and their cronies in the U.S. State Department branded that colossal failure of supply side economics, “The Miracle of Chile.”

But neoconomy may not be an evil scheme. It may be that it just looks like one. It could turn out that our current planners really have their hearts in the right place, and the fact that they are all wealthy men has nothing to do with the nature of the plan they’ve concocted. But how can we know this? Any means by which the facts could be communicated to us flow through channels controlled by the “suspects.” If these devils are really Devils, the poor working stiffs may be eight months gone before they begin to show.

But there’s always the possibility that Altman has it wrong. There may be no such plan. It does seem strange that trained economists would radically change the system that during the previous six decades produced the greatest accumulation of real wealth in the history of the world. Yeah...it must be that Altman’s got it wrong. Nobody’s that stupid.