Minor Thoughts from me to you

Psycologist Robert Epstein doesn't like adolescence.

Psychologist Robert Epstein argues in a provocative book, "The Case Against Adolescence," that teens are far more competent than we assume, and most of their problems stem from restrictions placed on them.

The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.

The factory system doesn't work in the modern world, because two years after graduation, whatever you learned is out of date. We need education spread over a lifetime, not jammed into the early years"”except for such basics as reading, writing, and perhaps citizenship. Past puberty, education needs to be combined in interesting and creative ways with work. The factory school system no longer makes sense.

Imagine what it would feel like--or think back to what it felt like--when your body and mind are telling you you're an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you're a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed, with their distress carrying over into their families and contributing to our high divorce rate. It's hard to keep a marriage together when there is constant conflict with teens.

We have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other "children." In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence. But we not only created this stage of life: We declared it inevitable. In 1904, American psychologist G. Stanley Hall said it was programmed by evolution. He was wrong.

He has me convinced. My own experiences reflect this. My parents homeschooled me. By my early teen years, I was ready to get out of the house and start doing more. A mutual friend taught me about relational databases, then offered me a job working for his web startup company. I remember being totally astonished that I had to get permission from City Hall (literally), in order to work at age 15. (Actually, I couldn't work at age 15. I had to wait until I was officially 15½.)

Even at such a young age that policy angered me -- I wanted to work, I wanted to do more, and my parents were supportive of that. The state, however, assumed that I was incompetent and that my parents were exploitative. Thankfully, the waiver was easy to obtain. But it shouldn't even be necessary any longer. Factories no longer thrive on grunt labor. American factories require workers with lots of skill and expertise. Our economy is fundamentally different than it was in 1900. Repealing the overly restrictive child-labor laws would not lead to an increase in child labor -- except in those situations where young adults are hungry for a chance to work.

Ironically, because minors have only limited property rights, they don't have complete control over what they have bought. Think how bizarre that is. If you, as an adult, spend money and bring home a toy, it's your toy and no one can take it away from you. But with a 14-year-old, it's not really his or her toy. Young people can't own things, can't sign contracts, and they can't do anything meaningful without parental permission"”permission that can be withdrawn at any time. They can't marry, can't have sex, can't legally drink. The list goes on. They are restricted and infantilized to an extraordinary extent.

I was also frustrated, as a teenager, by the banking restrictions. I learned to manage my money at a young age. I'm fairly certain that my parents opened my first account when I was 13. Again, I was surprised to find that I wasn't allowed to have my own bank account (my parents were co-signers on the account) or credit card until age 18. I was reasonably mature, I was capable of handling my finances, and I didn't understand why the State insisted on treating me as a child.

If my daughter matures as quickly as my wife and I did, I intend to do everything I possibly can to help her skirt these ridiculous laws and regulations. I'll help her open a bank account, I'll help her get work permits, I'll probably even put her on my credit account -- there's no sense in treating her like a child if she acts like an adult.

The Club for Growth exists to "promote public policies that promote economic growth primarily through legislative involvement, issue advocacy, research, training and educational activity." They influence politics through the Club for Growth PAC. "The primary tactic of the separate Club for Growth PAC is to provide financial support from Club members to viable pro-growth candidates to Congress, particularly in Republican primaries."

Last year, they supported Tim Walberg against a tax-happy Republican incumbent. That support paid off last weekend, when Walberg -- a freshman congressman -- urged newly elected Blue Dog Democrats to support the Bush tax cuts.

Democrats in Congress are discounting advancements made possible by the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts passed by Congress and are trying to slap U.S. taxpayers with a $400 billion tax increase that will slow our economy's current progress.

If Democrats follow through on their budget promises, the American people will face the following:

• A $500 per child tax increase.
• A 55 percent Death Tax.
• A 13 percent tax increase for many small businesses.
• A 33 percent tax increase on capital gains.
• A 164 percent tax increase on dividends.

I believe Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in Congress must join together to ensure the American economy is not crippled by a massive tax increase. I recently introduced the Tax Increase Prevention Act, legislation that would make permanent tax relief passed in 2001 and 2003.

My bill simply takes away all the sunset provisions of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief packages that passed Congress and provides American families and job-creators the certainty to plan for the future.

If my bill becomes law, the American people will see none of the tax increases Democrats are proposing on things like marriage, childbirth, adoption, earning money, saving money, paying college loans and dying.

Well played, sir.

The entire surge strategy -- to date -- has been a series of preparatory moves. General Petraeus and his staff have been busy positioning all of the pieces on the chessboard. Sure, they've made some changes in the way they patrol Baghad. But most of their plan has remained hidden, unseen, and dormant.

No longer. Yesterday, the plan went into effect. Now we see the strategy that General Petraeus has been waiting to implement. Now we see America's foremost counter-insurgency strategist make his move. Hang on -- this will get interesting.

Be Not Afraid:

Thoughts flow on the eve of a great battle. By the time these words are released, we will be in combat. Few ears have heard even rumors of this battle, and fewer still are the eyes that will see its full scope. Even now -- the battle has already begun for some -- practically no news about it is flowing home. I've known of the secret plans for about a month, but have remained silent.

This campaign is actually a series of carefully orchestrated battalion and brigade sized battles. Collectively, it is probably the largest battle since "major hostilities" ended more than four years ago. Even the media here on the ground do not seem to have sensed its scale.

...

Today Al Qaeda (AQ) is strong, but their welcome is tenuous in some regions as many Iraqis grow weary enough of the violence that trails them to forcibly evict AQ from some areas they'd begun to feel at home in. Meanwhile, our military, having adapted from eager fire-starting to more measured firefighting, after coming in so ham-fisted early on, has found agility in the new face of this war. Not lost on the locals was the fact that the Coalition wasn't alone in failing to keep the faith of its promises to Iraqis.

Whereas we failed with the restoration of services and government, AQ has raped too many women and boys in Anbar Province, and cut-off too many heads everywhere else for anyone here to believe their claims of moral superiority. And they don't even try to get the power going or keep the markets open or build schools, playgrounds and clinics for the children. In addition to destroying all of these resources, and murdering the Iraqis who work at or patronize them, AQ attacks people in mosques and churches, too. Thus, to those listening into the wind, an otherwise imperceptible tang in the atmosphere signals the time for change is at hand.

But now the AQ cancer is spreading into Diyala Province, straight along the Diyala River into Baghdad and other places. "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (AQM) apparently now a subgroup of ISI (the Islamic State of Iraq), has staked Baquba as the capital of their Caliphate. Whatever the nom de jour of their nom de guerre, Baquba has been claimed for their capital. I was in Diyala again this year, where there is a serious state of Civil War, making Baquba an unpopular destination for writers or reporters. (A writer was killed in the area about a month ago, in fact.) News coming from the city and surrounds most often would say things like, "near Baghdad," or "Northeast of Baghdad," and so many people have never even heard of Baquba.

Well, if you read the New York Times this morning, you heard about Baquba as our military strikes insurgents' base east of Baghdad.

The American military began a major attack against Sunni insurgent positions here in the capital of Diyala Province overnight, part of a larger operation aimed at blunting the persistent car and suicide bombings that have terrorized Iraqis and thwarted political reconciliation.

The assault by more than 2,000 American troops is unusual in its scope and ambition, representing a more aggressive strategy of attacking several insurgent strongholds simultaneously to tamp down violence throughout the country.

The fighting is expected to be hard. In recent months, Diyala has emerged as a center of the Sunni Arab insurgency as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other groups have made it their deadliest base of operations, supplanting Anbar Province. Violence in Anbar dropped after Sunni Arab tribes joined forces with the Americans to drive out Qaeda fighters.

If you want to know what's going down in Iraq and why it marks the biggest moment of the last four years, read both articles.

Maybe Dan Rather's a better newsman than everyone gave him credit for; his supposedly rude comments about "dumbing... down and tarting up" the news are starting to look prescient.

"Can A Bikini Model Be Made Into An Instant Anchor?" the New York Post asks in a recent news story, and almost in unison, a chorus of (baritone) voices answers: "Why, yes! Yes, she can be!"

A television station in Tyler, Texas has offered itself as the filming site for a new FOX reality show, in which we are to witness the transformation of a bikini model (Lauren Jones) into a TV news anchorwoman. Media watchdog groups, your average bunch of feminists, and the news industry at large are as predictably nonplussed as they were when CNN tried to sell anchor Paula Zahn as "a little bit sexy."

The rest of us are of course too busy wondering why a marketing move like this is only the basis for a reality show as opposed to, say, an across-the-board status quo in broadcast journalism. I mean, let's face it here: whilst there is doubtlessly much highly-involved, clever investigative work going on behind the scenes every night at six o' clock (or whenever), the actual job of "news-anchoring" is nothing but typical stage performance. If you can read a teleprompter while comfortably looking like you're not reading a teleprompter, well, guess what, you're as qualified to anchor a major newscast as you're ever going to be - which means the only factors that can possibly differentiate you from your competition is your personality and level of physical attractiveness. Such factors are, coincidentally, what we've always hired models, actors, and actresses for.

And if I may speak on behalf of those brave men and women graduating from college with a degree in Theater, they could sure use the work.

The good money's on FOX's critics already knowing this, of course; the thought of Lauren Jones taking to the newsroom isn't just insulting to them, but downright scary, because they know that unless Miss Jones takes a dive and pretends sitting behind the newsroom desk is more technical than it looks (a likely prospect), their nightly hour of fame is in serious danger of being outsourced to people who look better than they do in tight clothes. Oh, they'll still be reporters, sure - they'll just be largely relegated to working from behind the scenes and out in the field. They no wanna.

Like so much of today's journalistic output, this news story is primarily driven by reporters' egos.

The Wisconsin State Journal published a few local reactions to the Wisconsin's ongoing budget debates. One reaction caught my eye.

Christa Decker of Madison said she depends on Medicaid programs for everything from her wheelchair to doctor's visits to long-term care. Decker, 51, who has both physical and cognitive disabilities, said that cuts to those services would have a direct impact on her life.

"You cannot cut out part of my life. This is too important to me," Decker said.

I'd like to pick on Ms. Decker just a little bit, on my way to illustrating a point. Ms. Decker is supported by money that comes from every taxpayer in Wisconsin and taxpayers from around the nation. Ms. Decker's life is sustained by the work of everyone around her. She's making a fairly common blanket statement: "If you cut taxes, you'll cut the money I depend on and throw my life into chaos."

That is a legitimate worry. Many people have come to depend on the money and services they receive from local, state, and federal governments. But there is another worry too, one that's expressed far less often. "What is the real cost of giving all of this money away?" Let me give you an example, straight out of my own budget. First, here's a breakdown of where our income goes.

Mortgage

25.84%

Taxes

21.42%

Tithe

10.37%

Student Loans

8.65%

Groceries

3.17%

Gasoline

3.04%

The remaining 30% goes into a large variety of small expenses and savings. Notice that $1 out of every $5 dollars we earn, goes straight into taxes. $0.20 out of every $1.00. $21 out of every $100. Gone. Straight off the top. That's a significant fraction of our income. We're a young married couple, just 2 years out of college. There are a lot of things we could be spending that money on. Here's a short list.

• Paying down student loans
• Paying down our mortgage
• Replacing the old roof on our house
• Replacing the ancient windows in our house
• Finishing our basement to increase the living space in our house
• Saving for a new laptop, to replace my wife's rapidly aging one
• Saving for a new car, so we won't have to take out a car loan next time around
• Saving for retirement
• Saving for our children's college education
• Saving to visit my parents, in Papua New Guinea

As you can see, paying down loans and increasing savings is a large part of our financial goals. We'd love to be free of our debt. There are times that it seems almost achievable. For instance, if we weren't paying taxes the past three months we could have either paid of 68% of one of our student loans or 20% of our home equity loan. And that's just in a three month period.

That's the cost of those "free" government services that so many people enjoy. Ms. Decker's life is financed by my family's increased debt and decreased savings. Oddly enough, those are the costs that are most likely to make me need a government handout later in life. Ironic, isn't it?

I don't know where the dividing line between necessary and unnecessary taxes is. And I don't have a plan for weaning the public off of the dole. I'm still thinking about that. But just remember that government services aren't free. And that the money I'm spending on taxes is money that I'm not spending on goods and services -- money that could be used to create jobs and wealth.

Senator Lieberman on Iraq. A few excerpts.

The officials I met in Baghdad said that 90% of suicide bombings in Iraq today are the work of non-Iraqi, al Qaeda terrorists.

[Our commanders in Baghdad] point out that the crux of al Qaeda's strategy is to spark Iraqi civil war.

Al Qaeda is launching spectacular terrorist bombings in Iraq, such as the despicable attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra this week, to try to provoke sectarian violence. Its obvious aim is to use Sunni-Shia bloodshed to collapse the Iraqi government and create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, radicalizing the region and providing a base from which to launch terrorist attacks against the West.

Facts on the ground also compel us to recognize that Iran is doing everything in its power to drive us out of Iraq, including providing substantive support, training and sophisticated explosive devices to insurgents who are murdering American soldiers.

One Arab leader told me during my trip that he is extremely concerned about Tehran's nuclear ambitions, but that he doubted America's staying power in the region and our political will to protect his country from Iranian retaliation over the long term. Abandoning Iraq now would substantiate precisely these gathering fears across the Middle East that the U.S. is becoming an unreliable ally.

Anbar was one of al Qaeda's major strongholds in Iraq and the region where the majority of American casualties were occurring.

When I returned to Anbar on this trip, however, the security environment had undergone a dramatic reversal. Attacks on U.S. troops there have dropped from an average of 30 to 35 a day a few months ago to less than one a day now. ... One of Ramadi's leading sheikhs told me: "A rifle pointed at an American soldier is a rifle pointed at an Iraqi."

In Anbar, for example, the U.S. military has been essential to the formation and survival of the tribal alliance against al Qaeda, simultaneously holding together an otherwise fractious group of Sunni Arab leaders through deft diplomacy, while establishing a political bridge between them and the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. "This is a continuous effort," Col. Charlton said. "We meet with the sheikhs every single day and at every single level."

In Baghdad, U.S. forces have cut in half the number of Iraqi deaths from sectarian violence since the surge began in February. They have also been making critical improvements in governance, basic services and commercial activity at the grassroots level.

The question now is, do we consolidate and build on the successes that the new strategy has achieved, keeping al Qaeda on the run, or do we abandon them?

Several weeks ago, Pastor John Piper preached a message entitled The Triumph of the Gospel in the New Heavens and the New Earth. I started listening to it yesterday. One portion in particular really caught my attention. I'm guilty of not taking sin anywhere near as seriously as it should be taken. This message really gives me something to think about.

The Unendurable Sight of Suffering

So the big picture in outline form: God created the universe out of nothing; it was all very good the way he made it; it had no flaws, no suffering, no pain, no death, no evil; then Adam and Eve did something in their hearts that was so horrifyingly evil -- so unspeakably wicked, preferring the fruit of a tree to fellowship with God -- that God not only sentenced them to death (Genesis 2:17), but also subjected the entire creation to what Paul called "futility" and "bondage to corruption" (Romans 8:21-22).

In other words, whereas once there was no suffering or pain or death, now every human dies, every human suffers, animals suffer, rivers overflow their banks suddenly and sweep villages away, avalanches bury skiers, volcanoes destroy whole cities, a tsunami kills 250,000 people in one night, storms sink Philippine ferries with 800 people on board, AIDS and malaria and cancer and heart disease kill millions of people old and young, a monster tornado takes out an entire Midwestern town, droughts and famines bring millions to the brink -- or over the brink -- of starvation. Freak accidents happen, and the son of a friend falls into a grain elevator and dies. Another loses an eye. And a baby is born with no face. If we could see one ten-thousandth of the suffering of the world at any given moment, we would we would collapse under the horror of it all. Only God can endure that sight and carry on.

The Horror of Sin Pictured in Creation's Futility

Why did God subject the natural order to such futility because of the sin of human beings? The natural order did not sin. Humans sinned. But Paul said, "The creation was subjected to futility." The creation was put in "bondage to corruption." Why? God said, "Cursed be the ground because of you" (Genesis 3:17). But why? Why are there natural disasters in creation in response to moral failures in man? Why not just simple death for all the guilty offspring of Adam? Why this bloody kaleidoscope of horrific suffering century after century? Why so many children with heart-wrenching disabilities?

My answer is that God put the natural world under a curse so that the physical horrors we see around us in diseases and calamities would become vivid pictures of how horrible sin is. In other words, natural evil is a signpost pointing to the unspeakable horror of moral evil.

God disordered the natural world because of the disorder of the moral and spiritual world -- that is, because of sin. In our present fallen condition, with our hearts so blinded to the exceeding wickedness of sin, we cannot see or feel how repugnant sin is. Hardly anyone in the world feels the abhorrent evil that our sin is. Almost no one is incensed or nauseated at the way they belittle the glory of God. But let their bodies be touched with pain, and God is called to give an account of himself. We are not upset at the way we injure his glory, but let him injury our little pinky finger and all our moral outrage is aroused. Which shows how self-exalting and God-dethroning we are.

The Trumpet Blast of Physical Pain

Physical pain is God's blast with a physical trumpet to tell us that something is dreadfully wrong morally and spiritually. Diseases and deformities are Satan's pride. But in God's overruling providence, they are God's portraits of what sin is like in the spiritual realm. That is true even though some of the most godly people bear those deformities. Calamities are God's previews of what sin deserves and will one day receive in judgment a thousand times worse. They are warnings.

O that we could all see and feel how repugnant, how offensive, how abominable it is to prefer anything to our Maker, to ignore him and distrust him and demean him and give him less attention in our hearts than we do the carpet on our living room floor. We must see this, or we will not turn to Christ for salvation from sin, and we will not want heaven for any reason but relief. And to want heaven for relief is to be excluded.

Wake Up! Sin Is Like This!

Therefore God, mercifully, shouts to us in our sicknesses and pain and calamities: Wake up! Sin is like this! Sin leads to things like this. (See Revelation 9:20; 16:9, 11.) Preferring television to fellowship with God is like this. Desiring relief in heaven, but not desiring the Redeemer, is like this. The natural world is shot through with horrors that aim to wake us from the dream world of thinking that demeaning God is no big deal. It is a horrifically big deal.

I preached this truth at Bethlehem on the fourth anniversary of Nine-Eleven, knowing that there were people in our church dealing with terrible suffering. Two or three weeks later, I was in a pre-service prayer meeting with our folks, and one of the young mothers of a severely disabled child prayed, "Dear Lord, help me to feel the horror of sin the way I feel the horror of my son's disability."

Wealth is created every day. Wealth is created when someone creates something new and fulfills a need that other people didn't even realize was unfulfilled. Wealth is created when someone figures out how to produce an existing product faster or cheaper than it can currently be produced. Individuals innovate for several main reasons: to fulfill a need of their own, to save money, or to fulfill a need revealed by others.

Fulfilling these needs can often make an innovator very rich. Liberals come along and tax it all away for the greater good of society -- but that's another blog post.

Robert Jordan is a recent Wisconsin success story.

Robert Jordan's 20-year career as a long-distance trucker involved a lot more than hauling cheese.

After buying his own truck in 1993, he used the cab as a mobile laboratory to experiment with energy-saving ideas that would cut expenses and put more money in his pocket.

Now those experiments are paying off. Jordan, 51, of Juneau, has patented a battery system to run a truck's electronic equipment so idling isn't necessary. He's started a business called Idle Free Systems and negotiated agreements with Mack Trucks and Chiquita Brands to use his system.

With three employees, Jordan moved this month into manufacturing space in Watertown. He said he hopes to sell about 200 units this year at $6,000 each, which would mean first-year revenue of $1.2 million.

You may think that shoe innovation has gone about as far as it can go. You may think that shoes are the most stable, dependable market available. You'd be wrong. Mark Klein discovered a completely untapped shoe market.

In late July, Mr. Klein's company, Skins Footwear, intends to break the shoe in two, giving it an outer part, including the sole and upper, which he calls a "skin," and a removable inner part, which he calls the "bone."

"The bone is the constant fit and feel," he says. "Then there's this blank canvas for you to express yourself with the skins.""

The idea is that a shopper will buy a bone, for about $60, and several skins, which will range from $125 to $300. People will shift from one skin to the next, depending on what they're doing, much the way they can with other kinds of apparel.

Mr. Klein, who is 33, says he thinks that his patented skin-and-bones concept will eliminate the problem people have with shoes that look good but don't fit correctly, since the bone should guarantee the same fit for any skin in that size. He also says frequent travelers will appreciate the chance to pack only the foldable, lightweight skins, instead of full pairs of shoes.

Sounds good to me. The suggested price points are a little high right now, but if they come down a bit I'd certainly be willing to buy a bone and some skins.

Speaking of shoes, check out Masai Barefoot Technology created by Swiss engineer Karl Müller.

In the early 1990s, Swiss engineer Karl Müller realized that both shoes and backache are unknown to the Masai tribesmen - and that there is a causal connection between these two facts. By walking barefoot on the natural, soft, uneven ground of their East African homeland, the Masai activate also those muscles that atrophy when on walks on hard, even surfaces wearing conventional shoes.

During a visit to Korea he made the startling discovery that walking barefoot over paddy fields alleviated his back pain. Back in Switzerland, Müller began to develop a footwear technology that would make the natural instability of soft ground such as Korean paddy fields or the East African savannah accessible also to those, who have to walk on hard surfaces. In 1996, after years spent on research and development, Masai Barefoot Technology was mature enough to be launched on the market. MBTs are now available in over twenty countries, and approximately one million pairs of this revolutionary footwear technology are sold every year.

Speaking of Africa, the next story caught my eye because it mentioned the ideological division between those that want to help Africa through trade and those that want to help Africa through aid. (I wrote about African aid and trade just a few days ago.) As I read through the story, however, I discovered a great story of risk and innovation.

In 1997, Mr. Conteh recalled in an interview, he heard Laurent D. Kabila, then the country's president, deliver a speech in which he called upon his countrymen to rebuild Congo's infrastructure after the 30-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. Mr. Conteh, who had no experience in telecommunications, said he was inspired. He decided to build the nation's first GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) digital network.

Mr. Conteh said he went, cap in hand, to the minister of communications to ask for the country's first GSM license. In January 1998 he got it "” but he first had to pay the government a license fee of $100,000. Over the years, and with little explanation, he said, the government, which is often terribly short of money, increased the license fee, first to $400,000, then $2 million.

Throughout the early days of his company, Mr. Conteh faced challenges unknown to Western businesses. Once, after equipment providers declined to send engineers to Congo during a dangerous time in the country's unending civil strife, he encouraged the citizens of Kinshasa, the capital, to collect scrap metal and weld them into a cellphone tower.

By the middle of 2006, Vodacom Congo had more than 1.5 million subscribers, according to Vodacom's annual report. Today, Mr. Conteh says, the company he founded has more than three million subscribers who have spent, on average, around $50 for a handset and who prepay about $2 for every five minutes of talk time. He says a recent offer for his shares valued Vodacom Congo at more than $1.5 billion. (He refused to name the interested party.)

Mr. Conteh is building a telecommunications network where none existed before. With 600 employees and 5,000 contractors, Vodacom Congo is one of his country's biggest employers. If he realizes his ambition to create a stock market and offer shares in his company, he will have created new wealth.

Wow. That's impressive. All four of these stories are impressive. All four of these stories are also great examples of how wealth is really created. Be wary of those who would promise wealth through redistribution. True wealth comes from innovation, not redistribution. Rather than focusing on shifting around existing wealth, we should be focusing on creating new wealth. These four men vividly demonstrated how it works.

This is a followup to my previous post on Iraq and political resolve. In the last few days, Gaza has exploded into open civil war, with Hamas and Fatah busy wiping each other out. In light of that, do you really think that leaving Iraq will decrease the violence there?

Wonder what Iraq would look like if we left to morrow? Take a look at Gaza today. Then imagine a situation a thousand times worse.

We need to stop making politically correct excuses. Arab civilization is in collapse. Extremes dominate, either through dictatorship or anarchy. Thanks to their dysfunctional values and antique social structures, Arab states can't govern themselves decently.

We gave them a chance in Iraq. Israel "gave back" the Gaza Strip to let the Palestinians build a model state. Arabs seized those opportunities to butcher each other.

...

Meanwhile, back home, the get-out-now crowd pretends that, if only we pull out our troops, Iraqis will magically settle their internal grievances (presumably, the way the Palestinians have).

...

We're stuck in Iraq, and it sucks. But were we to leave in haste, far more blood than oil would flow in the Persian Gulf. The disaster in Gaza's just a rehearsal for the Arab-suicide drama awaiting its opening night in Iraq.

This is why we have to stay involved in the Middle East. It's about more than just "stabilizing" Iraq. It's about imposing a new culture in the region. A culture that values life more than death. A civilized culture. Call me a cultural chauvinist, if you must. But I firmly believe that our culture is far superior to their culture. Now that we've destablized their country, the least we can do is to hang around long enough to teach them a better way to live.

How, well the Cato Institute's Project for Middle Eastern Liberty is a good place to start. While that takes root, we can certainly provide some security for those Iraqi's that want to learn.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted to being a jerk.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is "incompetent."

Asked if Reid considered [Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq] competent, Reid responded, "Not as far as I'm concerned."

Reid has worked as a politician for the vast majority of his life. What, exactly, gives him grounds to determine whether or not a soldier is competent? He has zero military experience or background. He has no basis to judge competency. But he shoots off his mouth anyway.

By the way, great way to build moral there, Senator. Tell the troops that you believe their commander is incompetent -- that'll encourage them as they go out on patrol.

Michael Yon is a photographer, blogger -- and former special operations member of the U.S. Army. I trust his judgment about General Petraeus infinitely more than I trust Senator Reid's. Michael Yon has a tremendous respect for General Petraeus.

Petraeus' Values Message

One of the reasons I trust General Petraeus is he just comes right out and says what needs to be said. The letter which he sent to our forces serving in Iraq (posted below) is a case in point. The letter is more important than it might appear on first glance.

We are making progress but the odds are still against us. We cannot take chances or play fast and loose with our own values. In addition to something immoral occurring, it could be the final straw for this war. All it would take is a weak leader behaving immorally, or a tired leader not recognizing the stress level of his soldiers and reacting accordingly, and we might have the proverbial straw that breaks this camel's back.

This letter from General Petraeus deserves the widest possible dissemination. It should be published widely, and posted on every headquarters wall, and read aloud by every troop in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can pummel al Qaeda and other terrorists mercilessly and grind them into the dirt, but we cannot afford to turn local populations against us while we do it.

Has Senator Reid written a PhD dissertation on counter-insurgency warfare? Heck, has he even read General Petraeus' dissertation on counter-insurgency warfare?

I've been reading General David Petraeus' Ph.D. dissertation between missions. The title page looks like this:

THE AMERICAN MILITARY AND THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era

David Howell Petraeus

A DISSERTATION

PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY

OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE

BY THE

WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

October 1987

In his dissertation, General Petraeus (Ph.D.) writes:

The Importance of Perceptions

Perceptions of reality, more so than objective reality, are crucial to the decisions of statesmen. What policy-makers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters"”more than what actually occurred. . . .

Here's a view of General Petraeus' surge strategy, from the ground.

If I might insert a personal opinion, I think Petraeus' plan has a serious chance of working despite heavy odds. In fact, within my first three days with 1-4, talking with Iraqi families and police, there were strong indicators that for this little neighborhood, local people and Iraqi police are definitely encouraged. This doesn't extend to the terrorists, however, and 1-4 Cav has been under fire.

Senator Reid, I'm giving you all due respect when I say, "Please, shut up!" You voted to confirm General Petraeus as commander in Iraq. You and all of your Democrat collegues. If he's incompetent, the only verdict that leaves for you is willful idiot.

Thanks for filling the role.

From the New York Times:

It's a seemingly simple solution to a nationwide problem: if people do not have health insurance, just require that they buy it.

Yes. It is seemingly simple. That's why most of the Democrat candidates for President, one of the Republicans (Romney), and an ever-growing list of states are considering the idea. It's so simple -- if people don't have something that you want them to have, just force them to buy it. The power of government is a wonderful thing.

Of course, there are a few downsides.

But [Massachusetts] is discovering that making health insurance mandatory is easier said than done. It has spent the past year dealing with questions about how much basic coverage people need, and how much they can be expected to pay. (The poorest residents receive free or subsidized coverage.)

Step 1: Require everyone to buy an expensive, all-inclusive healthcare plan. Step 2: Give government handouts to everyone who can't afford to buy the expensive, all-inclusive plan. People of all income levels will be using services that they don't directly pay for. Worse, many people will be using services that they don't even indirectly pay for. This sounds like a fantastic way to keep prices down.

Who are all of these uninsured anyway? And why don't they want health insurance?

Almost half of the roughly 400,000 uninsured people in Massachusetts are single males, and many young men think "health insurance is for sissies," Mr. Kingsdale said. Because young males are generally healthy, adding them to the pool of insured would most likely reduce the average cost of coverage over all, given that this particular group is not liable to need expensive treatment.

That sounds like an implicit tax on young males. They're being forced to buy insurance just as a way of getting more money into the pool. That money can then be used to be for treatments for all of the chronically ill and elderly in the pool. Why would any young man want to be part of such a scheme?

A low-premium, high-deductible health plan (combined with a Health Savings Account) would be a far better option for these men. Instead of blowing all of their money on premiums, they could be saving it up for the next 10-20 years. When they do need medical care, they could pay for it out of their savings, rather than out of a common pool that other people are forced to pay into.

Indeed, the problem with healthcare isn't that too few people have it. The problem is that the people who do have healthcare are completely insulated from the actual cost of their care. How much did your last checkup cost? Do you have any idea? How about your last prescription? Other than the copay, do you have any idea how much it cost? Was it the most cost-effective prescription possible or would a different drug have been just as effective with a cheaper price tag? Almost no one knows the answers to the questions.

Healthcare costs are widely variable. And more expensive doesn't always mean better.

In a Pennsylvania government survey of the state's 60 hospitals that perform heart bypass surgery, the best-paid hospital received nearly $100,000, on average, for the operation while the least-paid got less than $20,000. At both, patients had comparable lengths of stay and death rates.

Still, the Pennsylvania findings support a growing national consensus that as consumers, insurers and employers pay more for care, they are not necessarily getting better care. Expensive medicine may, in fact, be poor medicine.

"For most consumers, the fact that there is no connection between quality and cost is one of the dirty secrets of medicine," said Peter V. Lee, the chief executive of the Pacific Business Group on Health, a California group of employers that provide health care coverage for workers.

It's not just that there's no connection between quality and cost -- there's no connection between anything and cost. A monthly premium disappears into a black hole. At some point in the future, healthcare services may or may not come floating back through the black hole. No one understands how or why different services are covered by their plan or what the relation is between the cost of their plan and the services delivered by that plan. All they can see is that each year the amount of money thrown into the black hole gets a little bit bigger.

Is it any wonder that people are dissatisfied with American healthcare? Worse yet, none of the reform proposals on the table address this fundamental disconnect. Rather than improving transparency, most of their reform plans simply aim to get more people to throw money into the black hole. That's not thinking different on healthcare, that's just following the same broken formula over and over again. Insanity.

The best way to lower prices, increase transparency, improve quality, and deliver higher quality services for lower prices is to make consumers directly responsible for paying for healthcare. Third party payor setups will never be able to deliver a great service at a low price. As long as the person paying for care and the person receiving care are different, true satisfaction will never be achieved.

Wisconsin's finances are in worse shape than I thought.

According to Wisconsin's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, the state ended the most recent fiscal year with a $2.15 billion deficit. Unlike state budgets that do not account for all future commitments, thus masking our true financial condition, the CAFR prepared by the state controller's office must follow generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) from the nation's Governmental Accounting Standards Board and recognize these obligations.

This explains why state budget officials said the 2006 general fund balance was $49.6 million, while the controller put the deficit at $2.15 billion. Last year, Wisconsin was one of only three states with a GAAP deficit and, relative to population, it had the largest deficit in the nation.

Wisconsin has a population of around 5.5 million people. That works out to a deficit of around $400 per person.

It gets worse.

The state controller reported a second figure regarding the state's net assets that also merits attention. Accounting lingo can be confusing; but, in household terms, net assets are simply savings and investments, plus the value of cars, housing, and other property, less any loan debt.

According to the controller, the state's unrestricted net assets for governmental purposes were -$8.23 billion. According to the CAFR, "a positive balance in unrestricted net assets would represent the amount available to be used to meet a government's ongoing obligations to citizens and creditors." Wisconsin cannot now do that without selling roads, buildings, parks, and campuses.

Maybe we should show some restaint in our spending. I'm wondering if the legislators in Madison have considered that? Nah, that'd actually be demonstrating some responsibility -- can't have that in politics.

I've been following the stories of red light cameras for a couple of years now. I read Matt Labash's 2002 five-part series for the Weekly Standard. I've read Glenn Reynold's 2006 article for Popular Mechanics. I've followed Glenn's links about the subject on Instapundit.com. You may have heard of the concept.

Local cities install cameras at busy or dangerous intersections. The cameras automatically snap pictures of anyone running a red light and police send out citations by the thousands. The idea is to decrease accidents by giving motorists a reason to stop on yellow. The reality is a bit murkier.

Reynold's article and Labash's series give a good run down on the tactics used to make these devices more popular: claiming that it's all about safety, claiming that the public is wildly enthusiastic about the devices, and claiming that the devices cut accidents. Then the articles go on to decisively debunk those claims.

Reynolds:

Others worry about safety. Red-light cameras are supposed to make us safer by discouraging people from running red lights. The trouble is that they work too well. Numerous studies have found that when these cameras are put in place, rear-end collisions increase dramatically. Drivers who once might have stretched the light a bit now slam on their brakes for fear of getting a ticket, with predictable results. A study of red-light cameras in Washington, D.C., by The Washington Post found that despite producing more than 500,000 tickets (and generating over $32 million in revenues), red-light cameras didn't reduce injuries or collisions. In fact, the number of accidents increased at the camera-equipped intersections.

Likewise, red-light cameras in Portland, Ore., produced a 140 percent increase in rear-end collisions at monitored intersections, and a study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council found that although red-light cameras decreased collisions resulting from people running traffic lights, they significantly increased accidents overall.

But if the emphasis is on safety -- rather than on revenue -- there are better ways of dealing with the problem. A recent study done by the University of Central Florida for the Florida Department of Transportation found that improving intersection markings in a driving simulator reduced red-light running by 74 percent without increasing the number of rear-end collisions. Likewise, a Texas Transportation Institute study found that lengthening yellow-light times cut down dramatically on red-light running. It also found that most traffic-camera violations occurred within the first second after the light turned red (the average was just one-half second after the light change), while most T-bone collisions occurred 5 or more seconds after the light change. If there's a problem, cameras aren't really addressing it.

Labash:

Across the United States and Canada -- where two provincial elections have swung for politicians promising to scrap local photo radar programs -- citizens have made it clear why the supposedly beloved technology is installed inside bullet-proof casings. In Anchorage, photo radar operators were pelted with water balloons before cameras were finally banned. In Denver, police thought somebody fired on their photo radar van, though the projectile turned out just to be a rock. Elsewhere, camera units have been smeared with lubricant, pulled out of the ground with tow chains, and rammed by automobiles. In Paradise Valley, Arizona, where the city council once contemplated shooting motorists with photo radar cameras concealed in cactuses, one civic-minded citizen decided to shoot back, emptying 30 rounds of bullets into two photo radar units.

This is the information I'm used to hearing. (For lots more on the increases in accidents, the benefits of longer yellows, and the safety myth read the full Labash series.) That's why I was so intrigued by the recent article in Madison's progressive newspaper, the Capital Times. It pulled out every one of the standard lines.

It's all about deterrence.

The red light camera program works because of deterrent theory, McLay said. People weigh the likelihood of getting caught before they make the decision to violate the law. In a heavily populated urban environment there are too few squad cars policing too many vehicles, he said. It is not possible to have police cars at every intersection looking for red light runners.

It's not about money, it's about safety.

McLay said if police were to implement a program locally they would use the proceeds to operate the system. There would be a firewall between the revenues generated and the Police Department budget, he said.

"We don't want the money, we just want to do something effective to reduce the number of crashes due to people running red lights in the city."

It's supported by Madison residents.

Ald. Robbie Webber, who represents the Regent Street area, said she also gets a lot of e-mails and calls from people who think the city should be using cameras to catch red light runners.

"There is a lot of support for this because people are tired of being afraid on the road," she said.

Tell you what. Let's try increasing the yellows first, and see what that does to the accident statistics. Also, let's the local cities volunteer to send the money from fines to be put into a state pool. If the cities will agree to those two stipulations, I'll keep an open mind on the proposal. Until then, it's just another Madison scheme to shake down residents for more cash.

No. Numbers 23:19 reads: "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" There.

But LORD knows, He (!) is referred to as such in the Bible - every reference to Him is in the masculine tense (at least in the Hebrew and Greek; some languages don't have a gender-specific third-person pronoun), and there's no escaping that there has to be a reason for this.

If you're a liberal critic of Scripture, that reason is obvious: a culture of patriarchal tyranny. Men principally wrote the Bible, hence the Good Book is skewed in their favor. Of course if the Bible is so corrupted by masculine intent, its message is logically irredeemably compromised; say that men skewed it and you can say Christians skewed it; say men skewed it and you can say Jews skewed it. The authority of the Word ceases to have any meaning.

No matter how conservative any other critic, though, saying God is literally a man is a non-starter, since physically-speaking He repeatedly proves Himself to be nothing of the sort; for crying out loud, He's a bush at one point.

So God, whatever you choose to make of Him (!), cannot have chosen to be referred to in the masculine because that's an accurate description of His totality; therefore He must have chosen masculine expression because He wishes to be related to as a masculine creature, i.e. as a Father and King, rather than as Mother and Queen. Which makes sense, since we've already had explained to us by Paul that the marital model (and indeed, the life model) is meant to resemble God's relationship with His church. Why on Earth would God be identified with the church in that equation instead of the Christ? It would screw up the symbolism completely.

To summarize, perhaps God did not make men like they are because He is a he, but chose to be known as a he because He made men and women like they are. Perhaps God is called a "He" because He wants us to understand where He directly fits in the symbolism of life (and He designed it right, didn't He? Consider that women adore their fathers and are "Daddy's girls", while men attempt to be like their father. To be a "Momma's Boy" is understood to be unnatural and stunting).

In which case, all this cawing is basically the equivalent of a row about who gets to play the main character in a staged play. Sometimes the actors who play the main character get puffed with too much pride, and sometimes the rest of the actors allow themselves to be touchy and/or bitter; both foolishly judge how important they are to the director by where the director has placed them.

The fairly evident comeback to all this is: "What about all the feminine roles that God plays? How He nurtures us? How we are fed by Him?" Indeed, Jesus at one point compares himself to a hen who wants to take all her chicklets under her wing. My reply is simply that no symbol is all-encompassing ("Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." "What if the chocolates get smashed? How's that like Life? Or what if they melt? What if...?" "Um, lighten up.").

And there's really no more reply that can be made, I think, come that point. Just as there is no Jew or Greek in the Christ, there is no man or woman. Of course we're of equal value.

I'm discussing this today, incidentally, because apparently the number of females on this planet who believe I don't respect the young lady in my life at all has apparently grown to include my best friend, who believes I am a total misogynist [she actually writes 'masochist' in the letter by accident, ironically probably a more accurate description] based on comments I made over Christmas Break. My comment was that I believe God is a man - not that I believe that literally, but I went ahead and deadpanned it. Also I joked to her that talking to my suitee's father would have been a lot easier in the old days: "I have land and cattle. What do you want for her?" (and as a minor aside, a Kenyan City Councilman recently tried this very tactic on our own President Clinton, only to be disappointed; he offered forty goats and twenty cows in exchange for Chelsea's hand.)

These comments were not, to say the least, taken well.

Which leads us to another Minor Thoughts lesson for today: watch your mouth, because not everybody has your sense of humor.

In other news, the world's first caffeinated soap has now hit the market. It's called Shower Shock, and it retails for $5.95. Thank you.

Recently, Congress has been going nuts over ethanol production. Government money has been thrown at every imaginable ethanol-related project.

If the current tax credits, grants and loan guarantees are extended, the package would cost taxpayers an additional $140 billion over the next 15 years. New proposals under consideration in Congress could raise the tab to $205 billion.

The biggest single item would be an extension of an existing 51-cent-a-gallon ethanol tax credit, scheduled to expire in 2010. It would cost the federal government an extra $131 billion through 2022 under a fuel mandate that recently cleared by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. (It would cost $18.36 billion in 2022 alone.)

Besides the ethanol tax credit, other current incentives include a $1-a-gallon biodiesel tax credit, a subsidy for service stations that install E85 pumps, spending by the Agriculture Department on energy programs, and various other Energy Department grants and loan guarantees.

Some lawmakers want to provide aid for ethanol infrastructure since ethanol is too corrosive to be transported through existing gasoline pipelines. ... Another bill would establish a Strategic Ethanol Reserve for years when corn harvests were reduced by droughts. ... a House Agriculture subcommittee approved a proposed new energy provision that would provide $2 billion in loan guarantees for new biomass plants and $1.5 billion for research into cellulosic ethanol technologies.

The only problem -- nobody's quite sure how to pay for any of this. Especially as Democrat presidential candidates are proposing billions in new healthcare and education spending. All of those billion have to come from somewhere, but Democrats have been pledging to keep the budget balanced. Obviously, those are code words for "hike taxes on the rich to pay for our new toys", but even tax hikes on the rich only go so far. After all, how many separate billion dollar toys can repealing the tax cuts for people who earn $200,000+ really pay for?

As always, the best quote is saved for the end of the article.

Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., who chairs the House Agriculture subcommittee dealing with energy, contended that "we need a Manhattan Project ... we need to be less dependent on energy."

Less dependent on energy? As in, the entire nation should start using less energy? How? Ban air conditioning? Ban driving? Mandate thermostat limits in the winter? Take away our iPods, cellphones, laptops, and digital cameras?

I'm afraid Representative Holden is a bit nuts. As are all of these energy subsidies. Knock it off. When an innovator finally comes up with a better, cheaper way to produce energy, the world will stampede to his doorstep. Until then, quit throwing tax money at the problem. None of you idiots in Congress know how to produce energy any more efficiently, so stop using my money to pretend like you're making good investments.

You're worse than a trust-fund teenager taking Daddy's stock portfolio for a test drive. Knock it off already.

UPDATE: Not only that, but the rush to invest in ethanol could lead to a food shortage down the road:

A recent study conducted by the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University (which receives funding from grocery manufacturers and livestock producers) reported that U.S. ethanol production could consume more than half of U.S. corn, wheat and coarse grains by 2012, driving up food prices and causing shortages. The study estimates that booming ethanol production has already raised U.S. food prices by $47 per person annually. In Mexico, protests have already erupted over the high price of corn tortillas, a staple food in the local diet.

Planting more corn is one solution, but that means planting less of other crops that are also widely used in foods, such as soybeans and wheat. Tilling fallow land could create more growing space for corn, but might lead to soil erosion and impacts on wildlife habitats.

According to a December 2006 study by the International Food Policy Research Institute, producing enough ethanol to fuel all of the world's vehicles would require five times more corn than is planted today and 15 times as much sugar cane.

So. Ethanol investment isn't just a waste of taxpayer dollars. It could also have some very detrimental effects on agricultural production, land management, and food prices. Quit distorting the market and have the patience to let a level playing field reveal the next energy technology. Please.

In an interview with Spiegel Online, Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati made an impassioned plea for first world nations to stop sending aid to third world nations.

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

He explains why rich nations shouldn't be the ones helping poor nations -- and what happens to the corn when rich nations ship it over.

Shikwati: ... and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.

SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn't do anything, the people would starve.

Shikwati: I don't think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa. It would force us to improve our own infrastructure, while making national borders -- drawn by the Europeans by the way -- more permeable. It would also force us to establish laws favoring market economy.

The Cato Institute recently hosted an event about this very point. Pan-African Free Trade Agreement: Helping Africa through Free Trade. (If you visit the event's page, you can watch it, listen to it, or read a full transcription of it.)

African tariffs are some of the highest in the world.

While OECD countries cut tariffs from an average of 23.7 percent to just 3.9% in the 20 years from 1983, Sub-Saharan Africa only cut its tariffs from 22.1% to 17.7%.

And astonishingly, many African countries impose tariffs on the import of medicines, and even Tanzanian-made anti-malaria bednets.

These are, effectively, killer tariffs.

While the world as a whole cut tariffs by 84 percent between 1983 and 2003, Africa only reduced theirs by 20%.

For most Africans, it is harder to trade with those across African borders than with distant Europeans and Americans.

In 1997, the World Bank found that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa imposed an average tariff of 34% on agricultural products from other African nations, and 21% on other products.

The results are clear.

Only 10% of African trade is with other African nations.

The first world isn't doing the third world any favors with our generous aid packages and handouts. We're preventing the Africans from taking the tough -- but responsible -- steps to improve their own welfare. It's time to stop coddling the contintent and start expecting it to walk on its own.

Senator Bill Frist wrote about his ONE Vote '08 campaign over at Captain's Quarters this morning. He wants Presidential candidates to publically commit to increasing aid to Africa. While it sounds like a noble goal, I'm afraid that it would only enable the African nations to continue electing corrupt politicians and continue to duck responsibility for their own welfare.

Let's listen to James Shikwati and make our own tough decision. Just stop. Please.

If you'd as recently as yesterday pitched me a story told through diary entries about love between two citizens of a collectivist government set in the distant future - a future in which the very word "I" is no longer remembered - I would have naturally assumed you were talking about Ayn Rand's Anthem, a novella she published in 1938.

As it turns out, the premise and general thrust of the book was undoubtedly pulled from another novel, written and published in Soviet Russia fully six years before Ayn Rand herself would immigrate from the USSR to America: We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

I discovered this by accident; I was flipping through my mother's copy of a book entitled 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, skimming the chronologically-listed entries, when I stumbled upon We's description:

"We is a prototypical dystopian novel... The novel consists of a series of diary entries by D-503, a mathematician and a thoroughly orthodox citizen of the authoritarian, futuristic state to which he belongs. The diary sets out as a celebration of state doctrine, which dictates that happiness, order, and beauty can be found only in unfreedom, in the cast-iron tenets of mathematical logic and of absolute power. As the diary and novel continue, D-503 comes under the subversive influence of a beautiful dissident... He finds himself drawn towards... the anarchism of a private love. He no longer identifies with 'we'..."

The writer of the entry declares it "not a straightforward denunciation of communism, but a moving, blackly comic examination of the contradictions between freedom and happiness that state socialism produces."

The parallels to Anthem are obvious and too close to be coincidence, especially considering the two respective authors hail from the same country. And I'm not, as it turns out, the only one who's noticed; [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella) lists the similarities and differences between the two.

The question is of course begged, then, as to whether those similarities listed constitute a case of plagiarism. Ms. Rand being my favorite modern author for the last decade, I'm certainly biased, but my general understanding of creativity leads me to answer in the negative. Beginning from the same premise as an already-published work, even knowingly, is not plagiarism if a story proceeds to explore different possibilities allowed for by that base. This, even Wikipedia agrees Rand does.

Really, Rand couldn't help but do so; We _is a story about Collectivism gone as far as it can possibly go, but its conclusions as to where "as far as it can possibly go" is don't mesh with Rand's own beliefs. _We involves a society's evolution to the point of colonizing new planets; Rand cannot imagine that a collectivist state would ultimately result in anything but a new age of barbarism, so the collectivists of her Anthem are, many centuries after their ancestors built skyscrapers, technologically capable of manufacturing only candles. We is a comedy; Anthem is clearly frustrated, even enraged. We declares communism to be reasonable but ultimately monstrous; Anthem objects that there is anything reasonable in communism. Finally, We results in the protagonist's "reeducation", which is to say his demise; Anthem results in his triumph.

This last detail should not be overlooked as simply an arbitrary difference in plot. Involving any other two writers, it very well could be taken as such, but an important principle of Rand's Objectivist philosophy is the impotency of evil. The triumph of the hero in her books is a statement regarding the nature of the universe, which she believed "benevolent" (the only exclusion being her character Kira in We The Living, who's controversial death still makes Rand's followers uncomfortable).

Both books are anti-collectivist and involve several sci-fi propositions, but each proclaims a very different worldview - justification a-plenty for two separate stories.

Or even more, maybe, because I learned one more surprising fact from Wikipedia today when I looked up the book; _Anthem _entered the public domain in 1966, after Ms. Rand failed to renew its copyright.

Anybody have a good idea for an Anthem-based story?

I'm going to start at the beginning. Merchants price a good based on several factors: the raw materials in the product, the difficulty of obtaining the product, the supply of the good locally versus the number of other merchants selling the good versus the consumer good demand for the good, and any relevant taxes. Taxes are the only truly arbitrary part of the price. It is also the only part of the price that is a constant for all merchants.

Well, all merchants that follow the law. Any merchant that is willing to break the law can sell a product for less than the competition is charging. If the difference between the untaxed price and the taxed price is great enough, merchants and buyers will form a "black market" to buy and sell products free from all government interference.

How does this tie into cigarettes and terrorism? As you may have noticed, many states have begun to impose punishing cigarette taxes. Rates vary from $3 in New York City ($1.50 in New York state) to a mere $0.07 per pack in South Carolina. 21 states charge $1.00 or more -- per pack -- in cigarette taxes. These high taxes provide a large incentive for buyers and sellers to skirt the law and buy cheaper "duty-free" cigarettes.

Organized crime has been quick to notice this and provide a ready source of smuggled cigarettes. In a post at the Belmont Club yesterday, Wretchard connects the dots between cigarette taxes and terrorism.

Why are cigarettes such an attractive commodity for organized crime groups? First, the difference between the duty-free and duty-paid prices are substantial, thereby allowing smugglers to make profits at relatively low street prices. Second, they are very easy to handle and transport. For example, a container load of cigarettes carries a potential tax value of $1.2 million, almost all of which is potential profit for the smuggler. Third, cigarette smuggling requires a willing market and a good local distribution network, which have already been established by drug-trafficking organizations.

...

In Colombia, cigarette smuggling is directly related to money laundering schemes through the so-called "black market peso exchange." During the exchange, drug-dealers convert U.S. dollars into clean pesos, while cigarette smugglers buy U.S. dollars in order to purchase international goods. The U.S. Treasury Department calls this system "the most dangerous and damaging form of money laundering ever encountered"

...

Tobacco smuggling is a ruthlessly efficient and highly organized trade which involves some of Britain's most vicious criminal gangs, as well as the Eastern European crime groups and the Italian Mafia. British police estimate that Italian organized criminal groups account for 15% of the illegal trade, while Eastern European gangs are responsible for 10% of the smuggled cigarettes in Great Britain. The ferocity of the competition is likely to contribute to violent confrontations as the gangs compete for control.

Wretchard notes that Interpol was establishing a link between terrorists and smugglers before the attack on the World Trade Center.

Structural links between political terrorism and traditional criminal activity, such as drugs trafficking, armed robbery or extortion have come increasingly to the attention of law enforcement authorities, security agencies and political decision makers. There is a fairly accepted view in the international community that in recent years, direct state sponsorship has declined, therefore terrorists increasingly have to resort to other means of financing, including criminal activities, in order to raise funds. These activities have traditionally been drug trafficking, extortion/collection of "revolutionary taxes", armed robbery, and kidnappings.

Maybe it's time that we struck a blow against terrorism. Let's end the "War on Drugs" and drastically cut cigarette taxes. By taking a lot of the profit out of smuggling we can dramatically cut funding to terrorist organizations.

It would certainly be an innovative approach.

Yesterday, the Guardian took a moment to point out that 3,500 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war started. Today, I'd like to point out another number: 29,000. That's the number of U.S. soldiers that died between June 6 and August 25, 1944 in the Battle of Normandy. Otherwise known as D-Day. That's more than 8x as many soldiers, killed in one battle, in a nation that had less than half the population that America now has.

The importance of the Iraq war shouldn't revolve around the number of soldiers killed. Our sense of winning and losing shouldn't be determined by a simple head count. Our verdict on the war should depend on our enemy and our goals. Our enemy is Al-Qaeda in Iraq and a host of other terrorist organizations. Our goal is to stay long enough and provide enough security to enable the Iraqi people to establish a free, democratic state. I believe that our enemy is hideous and our goal is worthy.

It's no use arguing about whether or not we should or shouldn't have gone into Iraq. It's done. That conversation is over. We're there now and we can't change that. The question now is: do we stay long enough to clean up our mess? Do we stay to finish what we started? Or do we pull out now and leave the Iraqi people to be slaughtered in mass, by terrorists. The terrorists will not stop killing just because we leave. If we pull out, the violence will only get worse. If we pull out now, the Iraqi people will lose any chance that they have at peace and prosperity.

The odds are against us and the situation is grim. But I do not believe that a simple body count is sufficient enough argument to dictate our actions. Pulling out now, after the historically small losses that we've received, is not worthy of our heritage. I believe that we must stay and do everything that we can to enable the Iraqi people to succeed where only one other Middle Eastern country has succeeded. Let's give peace and democracy a chance -- let's protect the Iraqi people and support the mission that our troops have volunteered for.

A few days ago, I wrote about government regulators preventing progress. You may be interested in another example.

My mother was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. By itself this fact is not particularly exciting. But, when I was younger, I learned about the burning Cuyahoga River. Once I realized what had happened, I never lost an opportunity to tease my mother about her hometown.

Recently, I learned the rest of the story. It turns out that excessive government regulation bears a large amount of the blame for the fire.

Incomes were rising and concern about industrial wastes was mounting. Pollutants were corroding sewage treatment systems and impeding their operation. In another part of the state, the Ohio River Sanitation Commission, representing the eight states that border the Ohio River (which runs along Ohio's southern border), developed innovations to reduce pollution. The municipalities and the industries along the Ohio began to invest in pollution control technology.

Unfortunately, this progress soon ended. The evolving common law and regional compacts hit a snag in 1951 when the state of Ohio created the Ohio Water Pollution Control Board. The authorizing law sounded good to the citizens of Ohio. It stated that it is "unlawful" to pollute any Ohio waters. However, the law continues: ". . . except in such cases where the water pollution control board has issued a valid and unexpired permit."(3)

The board issued or denied permits depending on whether the discharger was located on an already-degraded river classified as "industrial use" or on trout streams classified as "recreational use." Trout streams were preserved; dischargers were allowed to pollute industrial streams. The growing tendency of the courts to insist on protecting private rights against harm from pollution was replaced by a public decision-making body that allowed pollution where it thought it was appropriate.

Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes, who helped draw attention to the Cuyahoga fire, criticized the state for letting industries pollute. "We have no jurisdiction over what is dumped in there. . . . The state gives [industry] a license to pollute," the Cleveland Plain Dealer quoted him as saying (June 24, 1969). Stokes was not far off the mark.

...

In sum, the Cuyahoga fire, which burns on in people's memory as a symbol of industrial indifference, should also be viewed as a symbol of the weaknesses of public regulation.

It's worth reading the whole thing, if only to see what I left out.

Regulation will always be "captured" by those who have a vested interest in the regulations. Rather than strictly controlling an industry, the regulatory agency will soon be controlled by the industry. This is what is happening (has happened) to the FDA and this is what contributed to the Cuyahoga River fire.

Whatever you do, don't put your faith in a regulatory agency. It will only let you down.