Monthly Archives: February 2012

I blame you … and me

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VotingOne of the common themes I see in politics is frustration with our representatives in Washington. They are perceived to be partially if not fully responsible for the woes of our nation. Personally, I don’t find fault with them. I blame me and and I blame you.

In the United States we live in what is called a Representative Republic. This basically means that the voters elect representatives who make the decisions. Now, we are slowly becoming a democracy but I’ll save my opinion on that development for a future post.

One argument here is that if we don’t like what our representatives are doing in Washington, in our State, or in our home town, then we have a simple remedy. Vote for someone who makes better decisions.

However, this is not my main argument. In a representative Republic the politicians are representative of the voters. So, if we don’t like the politicians then our problem is with ourselves. What has happened to the United States? Or has anything happened? Have we always be selfish, bickering, and out to gratify our immediate needs regardless of future consequences?

I think the evidence suggests that there was a time when Americans cared about something besides themselves. Certainly the Founding Fathers were trying to build a nation that would change the world, not just their circumstances with England.

I realize there are many wonderful people in this country but the we must look to our politicians because they are a reflection of who we are. Our votes, our values, our desires. That’s what we see in Washington, us. I see men and women who desire election more than governance, whose decisions are based on what will grant them immediate gratification (election victory, donor money) and no stomach for painful solutions. Why do I see this? Because this is us. We vote for them, we, apparently, want them.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m still an Objectivist of the Ayn Rand school. People need to do what is in their self-interest. But, it is in our self-interest to have a strong country.

Your next question is, and should be, so Tom, complain away but what do you offer as a solution? Stop telling me what’s wrong and start telling me how to fix it.

Here it is. Teach people to think critically.

Write blogs on how to make good decisions. Think everything through so as to be a shining example for your friends and your family. Listen to the political pundits and then research their words. Read articles, come to an informed, critical decision. If the majority of people can do this, and it’s not easy, then we will elect politicians who do the same thing. Then, well, anything is possible.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist

Clint Eastwood – Advertising – Politics

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Clint EastwoodLike many people in this country, I watched the Super Bowl this Sunday. Great game. What I want to discuss today is the Clint Eastwood commercial.

To get in the mood you might want to listen to this or this.

First a little background about Mr. Eastwood. His politics are a mix of ideas that appears largely Libertarian and he has supported both Republicans, John McCain, and Democrats over the years.

When the commercial started I thought to myself, “Oh no, a stupid political ad that tries to pull all the notions of patriotism into support of one politician or another.” As the commercial went on … and on … I began to realize this was more of a heartfelt appeal to put our differences aside and do what is in the best interest of the country. From what I know about Mr. Eastwood; if he says he meant that, then I believe him. I was inclined to believe it before Mr. Eastwood was forced to issue explanations.

Parse that, Mr. Eastwood was forced to issue an explanations because he sent out a message of hope trying to bring the United States together. Forced to issue an explanation! Does that tell you something is wrong with our political process?

Now, I do realize at its heart the commercial was an advertisement for Chrysler and, because it has us all talking, it certainly did its job. But, let’s leave that aside and talk about the political thinking, rather than critical thinking, that seems to drive this country today.

One political pundit, who is now dead to me, was “personally offended” by the commercial. Personally offended by an appeal to come together and make the country better? Personally offended by something that had nothing to do with this person. I’m personally offended when my mother tells me I come across as a know-it-all (she might be right). I’m personally offended when I’m compared to Miles Raymond in Sideways (there might just be some truth to that). I’m not personally offended when someone criticizes Ron Paul. I might disagree with the criticsm but I’m not personally offended. It’s not about me and I don’t have such a colossal ego that I think everything is about me (just most things).

This was a commercial about getting together, working together, overcoming adversity, making your community, the country, the world, a better place. Mr. Eastwood, I salute you, sir.

The voters today, and I’m going to talk about the blame the voters have in this problem tomorrow, seem largely to judge the merit of an idea based on the “D” or “R” in front of the name of the person making the proposal. Is that you? Do you not bother to think about the issue once you hear who is talking? Do you vote for the party and not the person? Do you let other people tell you who to vote for and against?

Are you one of those people who finds it easier to vote by party affiliation rather than spend time critically examining the candidates?

If so, I have one suggestion:

Stop voting. You’re hurting this great country.

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist

Non-interference versus Isolationism

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non-interference

Much of the criticism I hear about my Libertarian politics concerns the idea of non-interference and often it is because there is confusion between that concept and isolationism.

What Ron Paul and other Libertarians like myself are talking about is non-interference. This dates back to George Washington in his Farewell Address when he suggests avoiding foreign entanglements. The United States long avoided such alliances.

What does Non-Interference Mean

It’s a broad definition and it means different things to different people. Largely non-interference means not having alliances with foreign nations. Not interfering in their internal politics, and not going to war on foreign soil. It is important to consider that times have changed as far as the ability of a nation to extend their force. When Washington was president the United States was physically isolated from Europe and its bickering. It was difficult for European powers to extend their influence into the American region. This has changed with the advent  of intercontinental ballistic missiles and connected economies.

What non-interference does not mean, in my opinion, is that we should stay completely out of the affairs of the world. This is isolationism and in the modern world is a dangerous policy. Newt Gingrich is correct when he talks about the dangers of an air burst nuclear weapon and the modern communication grid. We cannot isolate ourselves from the world because the world has the ability to touch us both militarily and economically. We must engage the powers of the world but that doesn’t mean we need to police them or dictate to them.

History

If we look back on American history I think our worst moments came from meddling in the affairs of foreign nation, in regime change policies, in propping up totalitarian regimes that supported us, at least in words if not deeds.

There are Libertarians who support a stricter version of non-interference that borders on isolationism. They might well quibble with some of my characterizations here. I don’t think the United States should disengage completely from countries like Pakistan. Such policies in regard to Cuba are a mistake. I think we should always attempt to talk with other nations, supply them with help if they ask for it, but we should minimize our attempts to influence their policy decisions.

It is in our interest if Pakistan helps hunt down people trying to hurt the United States but I don’t think we should be trying to purchase that cooperation with what amounts to bribery. If Pakistan wants to cooperate we should engage with them but cautiously. George Washington warned us to be wary not only of our international enemies but of our allies as well and with good reason. They are interested, rightly so, in what is best for their nation.

Conclusions

The waters of international politics are rife with danger and caution is a good ally. Engage but don’t interfere. A fine line.

Tom Liberman

Super Bowl … Saturday?!

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Super Bowl 2012

It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I’m going to use the occasion to examine the question of moving the game day to Saturday. This is an idea I’ve been a proponent of for quite some time and when talking about it with friends I always complained that the NFL was foolish not to adopt it.

For many years I stood by this argument without bothering to further examine why the Super Bowl remained on a Sunday. This demonstrated a fallacy called Ought-Is or Wishful Thinking. Simply put it is the idea that we want something to be true so we therefore believe it is true without critical analysis. The Ought-Is is a pretty common reason why we fail to fully examine situations and make mistakes.

So, let’s put on our Critical Thinking caps and get to work!

The benefits of a Saturday game are fairly self-evident. Parties could occur on Saturday night instead of Sunday night. Bars, hotels, and other venues would get a boost in revenue because the revelry could go on all evening. The game itself would air in the evening rather than late afternoon. People could stay up late without having to go to work the next morning.

Our critical thinking skills come into play to determine why the game, with all these tangible benefits, hasn’t been moved. One of the important aspects of critical thinking is determining who stands to gain and who stands to lose by a particular proposition. In this case the thing I chose to ignore was the idea of who loses with a Saturday game. Can you think of the answer? Take a moment.

Two parties lose by moving the game to Saturday, the NFL and the host city. The process by which the NFL determines the host city does not involve, to my knowledge, a direct cash payment. However, the host city is generally chosen by their “ability to host”. Well, let’s parse that phrase. What the NFL means by “ability to host” is really how much money can they extract from people who come to see the game.

While the NFL benefits from direct ticket sales and certainly from advertising I would imagine that the events surrounding the Super Bowl, including specially built venues to entertain the visitors in around the host city, provide a hefty boost to that income. Most of these special events take place on Saturday with a continuation onto game day. This revenue would certainly decrease with only half a day on Saturday to run before the game.

Likewise, the host city gets more hotel revenue and more tourist revenue by having the game on Sunday. Tourists arrive either late on Friday or early on Saturday and spend the rest of their time spending money. If the game were played on Saturday this would eliminate a full day of tourist revenue. Now, certainly many tourists would stay through Sunday in any case but the loss of revenue would certainly be significant.

Ok, now we’ve uncovered the reason for the game staying on Sunday, can we come up with a solution to the problem? The only real solution that I can think of is to have some sort of national holiday on the Friday before the Super Bowl (if the game is on Saturday) or the Monday after (if the game remains on Sunday). The NFL has proposed such solutions but it seems unlikely that the government will get involved and even if they do, some companies would ignore the holiday and this might curtail some of the revenue generation.

So, for all our critical thinking we don’t have an easy solution. That’s the way of it sometimes but at least I have some peace of mind as to why the game continues to be played on a Sunday.

I would suggest that we all try to use our critical thinking skills when faced with a seemingly absurd situation. Oftentimes you will find that Wishful Thinking has blinded you to the reality of a dilemma.

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist

Rise of Islam

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I’m of the opinion that one of the largest blunders in United States history was the handling of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. I’m looking at with thirty plus years of hindsight but it’s clear that the moment was a key point in the history of the world.

Before the revolution Iran was ruled by the Shah of Iran. The Shah was in many ways not that bad of a man in that he was largely secular and helped women’s rights but he nationalized the oil industry and suppressed dissent ruthlessly. He was viewed as a puppet for the west who wanted oil.

The Shah’s reputation is actually undergoing a revival in Iran but this is largely because of the oppressive nature of the regime that took power. I talk about all of this merely as background for my main argument.

The Iranian Revolution was the first signal of modern Islamic power, fueled by oil money, that is largely responsible for much of the war and horror we see in the world today. While the Ayatollah and his revolutionary cohorts did promulgate a theocratic state they were largely a popular uprising of the people. Certainly the communist Soviet Union provided agitation but, by and large, it was a revolt of the people.

The revolutionaries took American hostages and we’ve had an adversarial relationship with them ever since. Iran has used its money and religious fervor to influence the rise of Islamic states and terrorism all over the world. What would have happened if President Carter had pushed back from an initial knee-jerk reaction to the revolution?

What if we had told the Iranian leaders: You were right. We shouldn’t have meddled in your country’s affairs. Welcome to the world of nations. We don’t like the idea of a theocracy but we’re willing to work with you.

Would the world be better today? I think so. Perhaps Iran wouldn’t have become so radicalized and other Arabic nations would have looked to us a guiding light rather than an enemy to be destroyed.

It’s all speculation of course. There are so many other variables involved and what happened, happened.

But, I think it is an object lesson of sorts. When situations like this arise in the future, how should we as a nation handle them?

One of the leading causes for the Iranian hatred of the U.S. that continues to this day was our meddling in their affairs after World War II. This leads me to the Libertarian idea of non-interventionism. I’ll talk more about that and how it is different than isolationism tomorrow.

As always, Like, Tweet, Stumble, and otherwise share my ideas if you think they are worthwhile.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist

Mob Mentality … Individually

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There was a recent story about mob craziness that caught my eye and I want to talk about how that same crowd psychology effects individuals when communicating on the internet.

Sigmund Freud said, people who are in a crowd act differently towards people from those who are thinking individually.

I think it’s safe to say that what he means is that people will do things, bad things, that they would not do if dealing with others on a one-on-one basis. It’s fairly self-evident that this is true and I’m not going to devote time in this post to why it happens. What I would like to look at is how the internet engenders mob mentality even when we are sitting alone at a computer.

I don’t know how many of you read the comment section at the bottom of a story but it’s an ugly world. Every voice of reason is sandwiched by layers of vileness. A lot of times these comments come from the same individual who has multiple accounts but the effect is generally the same. A group of people say something vile, often with little or no merit, and it is amplified many times, so much so that other, more rational people, begin to give the ideas credence.

More than once people I know, decent, intelligent people, have repeated something they heard from friends or read in a comment section that was patently false. You can see my previous post about our obligation to correct those sorts of mistakes but that’s not my point here today.

The internet allows us the glory of exploring so many thoughts, so many ideas. There are many voices out there with new, and generally awful, ideas. Just because most of the ideas are bad doesn’t mean there aren’t good things available.

The voices of insanity are drowning out the reasonable. This is dangerous to our society. Good thinkers become discouraged and go into a little corner not to be heard from again.

My point here today is that you can blunt the mob!

Use your Critical Thinking cap when you read a story and even more so when you peruse the comments below. Sign up so that you can comment. Reply with rational arguments. Promulgate reasonable ideas. We can change this country by changing the way people think. Make the internet a force of good. Join in! One comment a day, that’s all I ask.

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist

Censorship by Country

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The recent trend towards selective censorship on Twitter and Blogging is an interesting phenomenon that has many people quite upset. I don’t think it’s such a simple thing to parse but I’ll give it try today.

I don’t want to talk about the various pieces of legislation moving through the United States Congress but instead the self-imposed censorship that internet providers are putting in place because various countries are trying to suppress freedom of speech.

It’s an interesting problem because the internet spans national borders and there is obviously no way to conform to everyone’s laws. There are oppressive regimes out there that find free speech to be dangerous. Let’s face facts, free speech is dangerous. You just have to listen to a virulent racist, religious fundamentalist, or misogynist to understand that there are people out there with ideas that are violent and terrible.

You can probably guess that I’m all for freedom of speech. I think that it is important to understand all ideas, even the awful ones, so that you can come to an informed decision. But, as a Libertarian, I also respect the laws of a nation. If China or Iran or Syria doesn’t want to allow it citizens to blog their thoughts then who is the one to change that? Me? Bing? Google? Twitter?

In these cases I try to take the long view. I think trying to impose your will upon another person rarely works. I was against the U.S. led invasion of Iraq from the beginning for this very reason. I think one of the biggest mistakes the U.S. ever made was to not support the Iranian Revolution. I’ll talk about that in a future post but the point here is that trying to force something down someone’s throat rarely succeeds.

So, if the various internet entities tell China, Syrian, Iran, and any other nation; We don’t care about your laws. We’ll just pipe in internet. That just radicalizes those wayward countries.

I think a western style, representative Republic is the best form of government yet devised. One main reason so much of the world has turned to this style of government since the industrial revolution is the shining EXAMPLE of the United States. We fail when we try to impose our values on other nations. Then we succumb to the dangers of Imperialism, Totalitarianism and alienate those who most desperately look to us for hope.

So, I say let nations make their own laws because it will anger their citizens enough to force change. I cannot change you, you cannot change me. We must wait for Syria and Iran and China and the rest of those countries find the power within to  join the rest of world. Maybe then people can stop killing each other and we can get to the business of greatness.

Tell me what you think in the comments.

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist

NFL Pro Bowl – Effort

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The NFL Pro Bowl was a sorry affair according to all who saw it. The idea I want to explore today is exactly what sort of effort was required from the players to make it an entertaining event and how this sort of obligation effects our own lives.

Let’s look at some of the reasons the players would choose not to play hard.

  1. Professional Football is a particularly violent sport and injuries are common.
  2. The game has no effect on the standings of the teams.
  3. Football is a team sport and the players are unfamiliar with one another and have had little time to practice.

I think we can all see the power of the first argument and the fact that players don’t want to risk career ending injuries in a game of this nature. The baseball All Star game fell prey to this same malaise, so much so that a new rule was created to enliven the game. The NHL All Star game has long been a showcase for offense with defense taking a back seat and the normal fierce body checking all but eliminated.  The NBA All Star game is such that pregame events are more exciting than the game itself.

The other two arguments resonate with me as well and I do see good reason to, at least, play a bit more easily and let the offensive stars showcase their talent.

Now let’s see what motivations the players have to play hard football.

  1. It’s entertaining for the fans.
  2. Professional pride in doing their job.

The first argument is a tough one to nail down because not all fans are entertained by the same thing. Some fans love a defensive struggle while others like an high scoring, high flying game. It’s fair to say that most fans came away from this year’s Pro Bowl feeling dissatisfied.

I think it is also accurate that interest in the various All Star game has declined, probably because of the exposure the players get on multiple media outlets. Twenty years ago All Star games were a chance for people to see the stars of other teams for the first time. Now, we can see them pretty much as often as we desire.

Professional pride is an interesting argument as well. I’m all about professional pride but when the outcome of my efforts make no difference, or very little difference, it does become hard to put forward maximum effort. I think the world would be a better place if we all gave it our best but it is unrealistic to expect people to work their hardest under every circumstance.

I suppose, in conclusion, the lesson to be learned is that when the value of an event is reduced it is only natural to expect  people to put forward less effort and there are probably few artificial ways around this fact. We can try to assign value to something but people generally see through such subterfuge.

If you want people to put forward their best effort then there has to be good reason for them to want to do so. This goes for business projects, school, sport, and most aspects of life.

So get out there and give people good reason to shine and you might be surprised by the result.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist