An American Economic Miracle. Well, it’s possible, and we all know it.

View 793 Wednesday, October 09, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

I am recovering from whatever I got in San Diego, and trying to get some work done. I continue to be amazed by the mess in Washington. Congress is down to 11% approval level. The Mayor of DC attempted to tell Senate Majority Leader Reid that DC has money but Congress won’t let them spend it, but he got no satisfactory answer. The President talks about negotiation, but it still sounds as if his model for negotiation is MacArthur on the deck of the USS Missouri in the Tokyo harbor.

The government shut down is a farce. It’s hard on the civil servants caught in the middle of it all, but it’s not a disaster. A default on the public debt would be. The President apparently will not even discuss spending cuts to reduce the deficit and is saying that he will put the nation over a cliff before he will stop the inexorable growth of government. I don’t know who he talks to, but apparently he believes he is winning. Winning! But continued rises in the deficit is a sure path to an eventual default; at the moment the nation has to take a heavy dose of salts to recover, but it can be done. We could live on a budget 1% lower next year than it was this year, and continue to cut back like that as the economy grows; but it doesn’t look as if that will happen.

Despair is a sin. The nation is not doomed == the people remain, we are not in ruins (other than in some inner cities) as Germany was in 1945. We still have our resources. All that is needed to get out of this mess is energy and determination. We even know this. The German Economic Miracle is as nothing compared to the American Economic Miracle that happened in World War II, and the second American Economic Miracle after the war that made the blue collar workers middle class and changed the old notions of class limitations. They are now changing back but that need not happen. Economic freedom, energy, and determination will still do the job.

Of course that would end the rule of the bureaucrats and we have yet to see anything like that. President Obama threatens international financial disaster if we do not continue to pay the Bunny Inspectors and give them raises. So it goes.

Soldier’s Load

The article is comment enough.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20131009.aspx#startofcomments

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

Heavy Infantry has been the decisive arm for most of history, and the tension between heavier armor and lightening the load to increase mobility is the stuff of military historical analysis.  The reforms of Gustavus Adolfus changed the nature of combat.  The analysis and debate will continue forever.  This is an excellent summary of what’s going on today.  Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Why would the government want to take care of you?

Jerry:

Some of your correspondents and a couple of my friends think it would be good for the government to take control of their medical care. As my elderly retired friend (a medical doctor and an admitted spendthrift who saved nothing for his retirement) put it, "I just want to rest and let the government take care of me."

I asked him, "What makes you think the government will want to take care of you?"

When government controls your medical care, it follows from the Iron Law that your medical care will be no more than a tool for implementing the government’s social and political agendas, whatever those may under the fashions of the day.

Every day you can read articles about how government medicine works in other countries. For example, we read this week about a mother in China who was six months pregnant when she was taken from her home at night to a hospital where her unborn baby was killed. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/4/china-family-planners-drag-mom-forced-abortion/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2443753/Mother-dragged-home-middle-night-forced-abort-baby-SIX-months-pregnancy-China.html

Also this week we read that a doctor in The Netherlands was happy to kill a 70-year-old woman because she was blind. http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/360668/euthanasia-blind-netherlands-wesley-j-smith http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2448611/Blind-Dutch-woman-euthanised-loss-sight.html

Your readers who expect themselves to be under the care of a physician at some time before death, may be interested in Dr. John Patrick’s lectures on medical ethics. Dr. Patrick is founder and president of Augustine College in Ottawa, Canada. http://www.augustinecollege.org/

Dr. Patrick considers what might happen as our society reverts to ancient pagan practices where doctors are employed not only as healers but also as killers. In such a society, when going to the doctor one must always wonder: Has someone else paid more for my death than I am able to pay for my life?

Good starting points are Dr. Patrick’s talks on Hippocrates and his oath at: http://www.cmf.org.uk/media/?context=entity&id=301 http://www.cmf.org.uk/media/?context=entity&id=302

Dr. Patrick has traced the inevitable logic that has led from contraception to occasional abortions to millions of abortions to coerced abortions to euthanasia. Dr. Patrick describes this sequence in several lectures. Your readers might find his reasoning interesting and useful as they try to deal with medicine’s new modes of thought. See for instance:

"The Domino Effect of Legalizing Abortion" http://blip.tv/lcc-videonet/the-domino-effect-of-legalizing-abortion-dr-john-patrick-md-2745200

"How Did We Get to Here? How Abortion Became Acceptable Parts One and Two"

These are the first two videos at

http://www.lutheranchurch-canada.ca/videonet.php?s=lectures_lovelife2009

"Pursuing Justice and Community – Hope for the unborn"

http://www.cmf.org.uk/media/?context=entity&id=300

As ObamaCare takes hold and our doctors work not for us but for the government bureaucracy, we all will be wondering: Why would the government want to treat me? What’s in it for them?

Best regards,

–Harry M.

You have of course asked the proper question, and one which few ask. Of course there is a good feeling reward for taking care of someone else, particularly if you are paid to do it and it is done with other people’s money, but sometimes there are other motives.  Pournelle’s Iron Law applies here as always. Doctors who care do not generally become administrators.

Obama’s feds

Here is a link I received today. I don’t know if it is accurate or not.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/armed-park-cops-locked-up-yellowstone-tourists-during-shutdown/

Cheers,

Peter

I don’t know whether or not it is true either.  Not many years ago I could have laughed and said it was certainly an exaggeration, but now, I can’t dismiss such stories out of hand.