| Monday
April 12, 2004 I am way behind on taxes and
paying bills, and a spring cold has laid me out. I did an essay
on republic, empire, and the Iraqi situation
Saturday, and it follows one I did
Friday. There is a good discussion of C
and programming in today's mail, and there was a lot of good mail
Saturday. More later.
For information on next week's Space Access Society
meeting, see mail.
On Iraq: one suspects that as time goes on, the 500 or so
people who have some actual influence in Iraq will conclude that it may be
best to have a single leader, but NOT THIS ONE, and al-Sadr's support will
begin to melt.
While there is some sentiment for an Islamic Republic among
some elements, it doesn't appear to be a majority. Iraq is a comparatively
well educated country, with many western cultural patterns running rather
deep but imposed across a clan and tribe system.
The way out for the US is to bring in a decentralized
government -- a Council of 500 -- and allow them to work out the blood
prices to be paid for the Iraqi AND Coalition casualties. So long as this is
under serious discussion the requirement for blood vengeance doesn't apply
and in fact is forbidden.
One wonders if the sheiks of Fallujah ever read:
http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/comment/surafend.htm
=======================
Last week in
Note 1 to one of my essays, I apologized to
the Clintons for taking them to task over Travelgate; and I have been duly
castigated by many who point out that they didn't just fire the civil
servants in the travel office, they abused power and accused these people
falsely of crimes in order to get their slots for their friends and
relatives.
In fact, I knew this, although it was not foremost in my
thoughts when I wrote that. And in that sense it was an evil deed. Yet, had
we not had the pretense of non-partisan civil service; if we had the old
fashioned spoils system, this wouldn't have happened because there would
have been no need.
One of the differences in the two parties is that the
Republicans always have problems filling many of the offices that are
political, because most competent people would rather do something other
than work for the government, particularly in a job that by definition is
temporary and won't last past the next election. This was the major fault of
the spoils system: it's hard to find competent people to fill some jobs, so
the notion of a non-partisan civil service that merely carries out the
policies of the elected officials, and does so efficiently, is extremely
tempting.
And sometimes it works. There are bureaus that are known for
their competence and which do stay out of politics. This is less so now than
in the past when the Hatch Act forbidding civil servants so much as to
donate to a political race, much less take open sides even on "their own
time", was strictly enforced. The notion of the Hatch Act was to shield the
civil service from pressures; but of course doing that "deprived them of
political rights" -- something they presumably knew would happen when they
competed for the jobs in the first place.
So: let me assure all of you, I do know that this is not a
simple issue. One the one hand, if you can't fire civil servants and roll
out bureaucrats you can't make any real changes in the way government works.
Of course as a conservative I do not want frequent changes in the way
government works. On the other hand, I am not dedicated to the proposition
that government ought to expand without limit, and I do very much believe
that electi0ns ought to mean something, at least sometimes; that sometimes
there really does need to be some clean sweeping.
I am not insane enough to think I know how to solve this
problem once and for all.
I do think, in principle, that the less important the
government becomes to people's lives, and the smaller the bite that it takes
from the general income, the less serious such matters are; that the best
"solution" to the problems I pose here are to cut way back on what we expect
the Federal Government to do, then on what we expect from State government,
and lay as many of those burdens on cities and counties as possible:
whereupon many people will say to heck with it and strip those functions
from any government and go back to doing them through associations and
private acts, as de Tocqueville described. But that's probably dreaming.
And yet, I can remember a time when the local mayor was far
more important in our lives than the President, and when the federal
government had little to no impact or contact on the lives of the people of Capleville, Tennessee, who did in fact govern themselves, and rather well,
as I recall. And in those times there weren't any "slots" to covet.
So: for those worried about my sanity, no, I haven't
forgotten that the Clintons were rather brutal in the Travelgate issue, the
more because the stakes were so low and the spoils so petty; and I don't
forgive them their methods. But I will repeat that they had a point even so.
We have tried to put things beyond politics, and often have simply managed
to get them beyond the reach of elected officials to make any change.
I have always remembered a phrase in The Road to Serfdom
about the German people becoming disgusted with the burdens of the Weimar
Republic which didn't seem to be able to change anything no matter what, and
turning to the National Socialists who did at least look to be able to do
something, to make things change. (The lesson of course is to be careful
what you wish for.)
SO: I do find it odd that I have had more comment about the
footnote, which was a mere note, than about
the essay to which it was appended.
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