Cowardice in Battle: Can We Trust Our Allies?

http://www.theboldpursuit.com/tbp-journal/2014/10/28/cowardice-in-battle-can-we-trust-our-allies.html

When Japan attacked the United States in World War II, they knew that the U.S.would eventually have an overwhelming superiority in material terms, yet they were confident of victory. Why? The Japanese leaders pointed out that the Japanese had the warrior spirit, and would prevail in battle, while the Americans, they thought, would run and hide, and meet certain defeat, well before American industry could come to the rescue.

Of course, the Japanese could not have been more mistaken. Even when outgunned and outnumbered, the Americans proved to be every bit as brave and dedicated as their Japanese enemies. The tradition of American valor in combat has continued unbroken from 1776 until today.

Not everyone has the warrior spirit. In recent weeks, we have seen the Iraqi army wilt in the face of brutal attacks by the terrorist army known as ISIS. Reports coming out of Afghanistan presage a similar outcome there. As American and British troops withdraw, there seems little doubt that the Afghan army will soon run and hide from the Taliban terrorists. Indeed, in large measure, they are already doing so, according to American soldiers on the scene.

All the while, Kurdish resistance to ISIS is so fierce that even Kurdish women are fighting in the front lines.

Why? Why are some groups of people courageous in battle, while others cower in fear at the first sound of gunfire?

Two factors come immediately to mind. When I was in the armed forces, I always knew that if I were wounded, even grievously, I would receive medical care for the rest of my life. (I was unaware that the Veterans Administration was infested with corruption.) If I were killed, my wife and child would receive compensation and assistance from the government.

The second factor was (and is) that I am convinced that the United States, with all its flaws, is a good and just nation. When we win, things are always better, both for us and for our defeated enemies, than if we lose. The principles of the Constitution are, and this should not be a statement taken lightly, worth dying for.

The Iraqi army collapsed under fire in part because its Sunni Moslem soldiers knew that they would get no support from their Shia Moslem government. If wounded or killed, they and their families would be abandoned, without so much as a 'thank you.'

In Afghanistan, the second factor seems to predominate. Afghanistan is not a unified nation, but an assortment of competing tribes that distrust each other, often for good reason. Its constitution is not considered, by its people, worth dying for. As a consequence, many Afghan soldiers (with some commendable exceptions), cower, hide and run, at the first sound of gunfire.

There was a time when I feared that Americans were losing the basic character of courage. While in the armed forces, I noticed that quite a few of the new recruits were of such poor quality that they were more of a burden than a blessing to the mission. On the other hand, I noticed that those who were good soldiers were more than merely good, they excelled. In other words, Americans could no longer be graded on a smooth scale from worst to medium to best. The medium was gone. Only the lowest rung of the ladder, and the highest, remain. I feel intense pride for our present day heroes.

I estimate now that about half the American youth are utterly unqualified for military duty, many for physical reasons such as obesity or drug use, but also, because so many of them are ideologically warped. Many of them actually sympathize with our enemies.

Someone recently stated, borrowing from the last lines of our national anthem, that we are the 'land of the free,' precisely because we are 'the home of the brave.'

Courage is not bravado. It does not boast, taunt, or persecute a defeated enemy. Instead, courage is the end product of faith, commitment and selflessness.

Courage cannot be taught, but only developed through a lifetime of tradition and context.

The next time we pick an ally, let’s apply some common sense.
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Socialism: the World's most Intractable Addiction.

http://www.theboldpursuit.com/tbp-journal/2014/9/8/socialism-the-worlds-most-intractable-addiction.html

Socialism as an economic and political system is inexplicably addictive.  Socialism addresses the scourge of poverty by saying simply, give money to the poor people. It addresses the problem of high prices by commanding sellers to lower their prices.  And when all the socialist remedies only dig the hole deeper, the last ditch resorts include raising taxes, confiscating wealth from those who produce it, and entrenching a class of voters who will never make the short-term sacrifices that are necessary for their long-term benefit.

Socialism has even more appeal when it is contrasted to our present economic system, the one we mistakenly call capitalism, but which is more properly referred to as “crony capitalism.”  A better term for that system might be, feudalism.  In any case, the present system as practiced is a twisted perversion of the free market system.  Compared to it, socialism starts to look good to those who are stuck on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

While socialism’s initial appeal might be understandable, what is not excusable is the persistent failure to recognize that socialism is not the easy way out of economic injustice, but is rather a fatal dependency on remedies that do not work.  Compared to truly free markets, socialism is a disaster.  Would that there were a truly free market to prove this.  Free markets have, alas, all but become extinct, and what now passes for capitalism is in reality a close cousin of socialism, even in the United States.

Is there a remedy?

It is no longer possible to simply do away with the century (and more) of clutter that has destroyed free markets, and to replace that clutter with the few basic principles that allow anyone— literally anyone— to have free and unfettered access to the marketplace.  Those principles include truly representative government, anti-trust laws, anti-fraud laws, and property rights.

The entrenched social powers are so firmly in control of our economic system that— and this is quite literal— a child can no longer start and operate a sidewalk lemonade stand in the US. In order to do so, the child would have to hire a consultant to navigate the government regulations, the legal hurdles, and competition from lemonade producers who can crush any hint of competition. 

In other words, to sell ten cents worth of lemonade, a ten-year-old child would have to have about ten thousand dollars in startup financing.  Think of it as the 10-10-10 rule. 

The problem extends upward from there, to many thousands of good business ideas that are never given a chance to succeed.

This inability to create new businesses without large investments up front would have, according to the founder of hardware giant Home Depot, prevented his corporation from ever having gained a foothold in the marketplace.

Make no mistake, large corporations, although many of them benefited from free markets when they were first begun, now oppose the very idea.  Partnering with big government, big corporations lobby for ever more oppressive regulation of business, knowing that that will stifle competition.

In doing so, they have persuaded millions of welfare recipients to settle for a life of indolence and hopelessness that is poisoning our society from within.

The real tragedy of this is that there are places in the world where there is a remedy. Argentina is a prime example.  When a social and economic system is in the early stage of collapse, the prospect for reform rises dramatically, as people become desperate to find a solution to their problems.  This brief window of opportunity has opened in Argentina.

Unfortunately, the window is all too often closed by those who instead of free markets, impose the harsh hand of raw power.  Sadly, this seems to be happening in Argentina and elsewhere.  Instead of more freedom, people tend to seek less of it, in the form of dictatorships.

The outlook is bleak.  Nation after nation, addicted to spending, taxation and overregulation is killing the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg.  Revolutions are inevitable.  Social collapse will follow, as will wars and rumors of war.

Still, even this outlook is not entirely bleak. There was a revolution in 1776 that, centuries later, still points the way to justice and prosperity.

We need a reset button.
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Parody: Obama’s Speech on Foreign Crises

http://www.theboldpursuit.com/tbp-journal/2014/7/19/obamas-speech-on-foreign-crises-parody.html

Hey dudes:

What a mess, huh? I mean some days I just don’t want to watch the news. Every time I do, I find out stuff that just messes with my mind. Like the IRS and stuff.

But you know, playing the part of president isn’t easy. I was told it would be, but it’s not as easy as I expected. Some of those golf courses are brutal.

Anyway, as many of you might know, since you are reporters, the world has a lot of crises going on. Some of them are serious. Like, for example, what’s with the Washington Redskins? Why don’t they just change their name, like I did mine—whoops, pretend I didn’t say that.

Then there’s this stuff going on in the Middle East, whatever, you know? I turn on the TV and there’s all this violence and killing and murder. Those people have no sense of respect for life. Oh wait, that’s the violence in Chicago and an abortion clinic. Forget I said that.

Why are all these Americans upset at having thousands of kids being brought into the US? It’s not like they’re being sent into my daughter’s school or nothing. Hey, they’re escaping violence in their homeland, gangs and murders and—darn it, somebody change that channel from Chicago news, already, I keep mixing things up.

We have serious crises to face, very serious. Why just the other day, Sarah Palin was accusing me of stuff. We can’t have that! She accused me of being pompous and arrogant. I’m too good to have anybody say that kind of stuff about me.

And then there’s global warming. You people have just got to turn off your electricity, stop driving cars, and stuff like that. I’ve been working very hard to stop global warming, and I’m succeeding. Pretty soon, none of you will be able to afford cars, heating and air conditioning, except me and my friends.

We have to get our priorities straight... Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend the gays.

Finally, let me say this. A lot of my critics, you know, those evil people who hate me—they have accused me of not being tough enough on Iran, Russia, and Elbonia. I assure you, that from now on, I am going to get very tough with them. In fact, I am recruiting an army, an entire army, mind you, of speech writers, who are even now in the process of writing some of the toughest speeches I have ever seen. They are using words—tough words, like, “unacceptable” and “I’ll get to the bottom of this” and stuff like that there.

When people hear those speeches, they are going to say, wow, that guy is really tough. And while they will be saying that about Vladimir Putin and not me, they will still be tough speeches. Not tough enough to offend the gays, but still, very tough.
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How Does One Person Take Power Over a Nation?

http://www.theboldpursuit.com/tbp-journal/2014/7/22/how-does-one-person-take-power-over-a-nation.html

As a young boy, I watched in wonderment on a military base, a single officer giving the command to stand at attention, and dozens of soldiers stood at attention. He gave the order to “left face,” and those dozens of soldiers faced left. He told them, “forward march,” and forward they marched.

I wondered why the soldiers did as they were told. I wondered how it was that this one officer could command them. Why was he the one in charge, and not one of the other men? Of course, my thoughts were not so precisely worded, but the questions have never left me. Indeed, over the years, the questions have only grown larger.

Years later, as I studied history, I wondered how it was possible that millions of Germans were commanded by one man named Hitler. He ordered countless numbers of his followers to their deaths, and they obeyed.

Likewise, a man named Stalin sent millions of Russians to their deaths, and they obeyed. On smaller scales, the question is raised again and again and again, as dictators rise in various places around the world, snapping orders that are instantly obeyed. Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and Vladimir Putin of Russia are only a few examples.

How do they do it?

I thought that the case of Adolph Hitler would be instructive, so I looked more deeply into it. Here was a person who, early in life, was as close to being the personification of a nobody as one can get. He tried and failed to get into art school. In World War I, he was an undistinguished army corporal.

Yet, in later years, he would snap orders to generals, even ordering their deaths if they disobeyed.  An assassination attempt failed because the would-be assassins made their plan too complicated, using a briefcase bomb instead of a simple pistol.

It turns out that Hitler did not really propel himself to power. The infrastructure of future tyranny was already in place for him, as it were, awaiting him. Devious men surrounded Hitler, accomplices in treachery. Chance seems to have played a major role. In short, a complex weave of events occurred. At any moment, those events might have taken a different turn, and had they, history would not even have recorded Hitler’s name.

My theory is that human society, and human psychology, is predisposed toward accepting tyranny.

We see this as far back as the days of the Old Testament, when the Jews decided to do away with their divinely ordained system of governance, and chose instead to be more like the ungodly nations that surrounded them. They clamored for a king, and they got one. Their first king, Saul, the bad king, was replaced by David the good king, and then by Solomon, another good king, but after Solomon’s death, rule by evil took over, and Israel was brought to ruin.

Had the Jews foreseen the inevitable result of their choice, they would likely have put up with their divinely appointed judges, as corrupt as those judges were.

It is because we are predisposed toward tyranny that tyrants rule.

The great exception in history has been the United States. Having suffered under a tyranny that was by no means as horrible as rule by men such as Ivan the Terrible, the Founders cobbled together an independent government that not only threw off the tyrant, but also, they hoped, would prevent any future tyrants from seizing power.

The Founders understood power. They understood how it is gained, and they understood how it is abused. They understood that the would-be tyrant must first be surrounded by lackeys, by men in the shadows, by opportunists hoping for favors. They understood the complex weave of events that must occur, and they devised a method whereby those events could never conspire to bring to absolute power any one individual.

For many decades, that system prevailed. Then it eroded. Gradually, year by year, the strengths which had under-girded our imperfect society began to weaken. Slowly, the safeguards against tyranny unraveled.

Today, we have in power that single individual that the Founders abhorred in principle. We have a man who came from seemingly nowhere, a man with no previous accomplishments, a man who refuses to divulge his college records – a man who has never so much as run a lemonade stand. He has never signed a paycheck, and indeed, never earned one from private enterprise.

Yet this man orders generals about, firing them at his whim. He presides over failure after failure, and he survives scandal after scandal. He flouts the law, violating the separation of powers, arbitrarily dismissing laws he does not like, and using illegal means to punish his political opponents.

Yet, despite all this, or maybe because of all this, Barack Obama snaps orders, and millions of people comply.

Why?

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Iraqi Apocalypse

http://www.theboldpursuit.com/tbp-journal/2014/6/14/iraqi-apocalypse.html

Iraq was a war in which we either should never have become involved, or alternatively, a war in which we should have invaded and subjugated the country in the exact fashion that our harshest critics decry as the brutality of oil imperialism.

Both choices were bad ones, but we chose a policy even worse than those two.

By taking the middle road, we are getting run over from both sides. We pretended that we could bring our democratic values to a region that has no basis for them, and then left, hoping that “democracy would take root,” without our continued, intrusive involvement.

That pretense was not only unrealistic, its results are worse brutality than that for which our accusers would have us pilloried.

The rationale for invading Iraq was twofold. First, it was about oil. It had to be. Oil is the lifeblood of our economy. Our society will collapse without it.

Second, it was about safety from terrorism. Saddam Hussein was actively sponsoring suicide bombing in Israel, and had already used chemical warfare against Iran. There was little information from inside Iraq to comfort us concerning weapons of mass destruction, the infamous WMD that were never found, but the possibility of which could not have been shrugged off by any sane person, especially when Hussein was pretending to have them.

Our entire involvement in Iraq cannot neatly be summed up, but there is one battle that comes close to characterizing all our mistakes. It was the battle for Fallujah, which was in fact, two battles.

Fallujah was taken and occupied by radical terrorists who converted it into a giant bomb factory, and who were killing any civilians who were even suspected of insufficient cooperation with the occupiers or their Islamist creed.

The first time Americans invaded Fallujah, we did so with insufficient forces and were driven back in defeat – at the cost of American lives. The second time, politics were put aside, and the invasion was accomplished with brutal force, with the aim of total subjugation of the city. It worked. An army of terrorists was killed or captured and the civilian population celebrated the defeat of their terrorist tormentors.

War is ugly, and the battle for Fallujah, despite our best efforts, was ugly also – nearly a hundred Americans were killed in the second battle alone – but at least the objective was worthy, and it had been accomplished.

After all that, it is unthinkable that the terrorists would regain control of Fallujah, but they have. They are now well on their way to seizing all of Iraq, and indeed, all of its neighboring nations, to include Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The unthinkable is happening.

This leaves us with choices that are all unacceptable, and with consequences that are now unavoidable.

We could re-invade Iraq, start over from scratch and "re-defeat" the terrorists, losing more American lives and squandering more American treasure at a time when we are already bankrupt.

We could give the Kurds in northern Iraq recognition as an independent nation and recruit them to resist the terrorists, thus infuriating our Turkish allies in NATO, an ally already undependable anyway.

We could stand aside and watch as Iran continues to send more of its own Islamist troops into Iraq to defeat its Sunni enemies.

We could warn the Iraqis to evacuate their captured cities, and then incinerate those cities, if necessary, by small nuclear weapons, thus preventing the terrorists from using those facilities against us.

None of these scenarios are acceptable, except for arming the Kurds, and indeed, none of them would be as helpful as we would hope.

The consequences of doing nothing is also unacceptable. To do nothing, is to allow a base of operations from which international terrorism will be exported worldwide. This terrorism will be unrelentingly aggressive and murderous. It will be on a larger scale than we ever imagined possible and funded by billions of petro-dollars, armed with the most potent weapons mankind possesses, including actual WMD and radioactive “dirty bombs” that leave entire cities permanently uninhabitable.

It will be manned by literally hundreds of thousand of fanatical, suicidal fighters. It will be led by extremists who insist on nothing less than worldwide Islamic dictatorship, a subjugation of people in its most violent and cruel form.

Ironically, the strongest, and only acceptable counter-measure we have is the one which Barack Obama seems utterly insistent on blocking: the development of oil reserves in North America, particularly involving the Keystone pipe-line.

Had the U.S. resolved 10 years ago to become energy independent, we would already have achieved that goal.

 Now, we will need another 10 years, but we must act with all deliberate speed to get there.

Oil will not be the panacea. It will not by itself solve the problem we face. It will, however, give us at least a fighting chance, the only chance we will have, to survive the horrors of unbridled terrorism which – make no mistake about this – are going to rain down death and destruction on our homeland.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in World War III. This is not hyperbole. We are facing a terrorist apocalypse. The cost to us will be horrific. Our choices are stark – total victory, or total defeat.
There is no longer any middle road. The sooner we understand this fact, the more likely we are to survive what lies ahead.
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Government Has No Rights, but only Powers

http://www.theboldpursuit.com/tbp-journal/2014/5/13/government-has-no-rights-but-only-powers.html

Here are a few radical statements that will shock many people on the left. I know from personal experience that many liberals are appalled by the principles spelled out in the next paragraph. I refuse to be held liable for any apoplexy liberals may experience by reading it.

The government has no rights, but only powers. Those powers are not the property of the government, but of the people. We the people loan power to the government, and we can revoke those powers any time at our sole discretion, without permission from the government. The Bill of Rights is intended to protect the people from the government, not to protect government from the people. The government has no right to privacy. It has no right to conceal its misdeeds, but indeed, it has an affirmative duty to reveal all of its activities to the citizenry. Rights belong only to the people. Those rights are granted to us, not by the government, but only by our Creator. Those in government are not our rulers, but our servants.

Such ideas are anathema to socialists, but they are solidly embedded in the foundations of the Constitution.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution includes the provision that no person “. . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. . .”

This is good and proper. This law restricts government power, and prevents its unjust use against the people. As with so many laws, however, it has been perverted. The rights conferred by the Bill of Rights are conferred not upon the government, but upon individuals, and especially in the context of protecting individuals from the government, not the other way around.

Instead of protecting our rights, the Fifth Amendment, one of the enumerations in the Bill of Rights, is now being used by government as yet another tool to suppress our rights.

Here is an example.

Lois Lerner is the IRS administrator who publicly proclaimed her Fifth Amendment right not to testify before Congress, because such testimony might tend to incriminate her— but Lerner is not entitled to conceal her official crimes as an agent of the government. Quite to the contrary, she has an affirmative duty to reveal them in full. Her refusal to do so is a complete reversal of the intent of the Fifth Amendment.

Had Lerner shoplifted from a department store, her Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify would be completely legitimate, because such a crime would, one presumes, not have been part of her official duties in the Internal Revenue Service. Had she shoplifted, she would have been acting as a private citizen, not as an agent of the government.

However, when Lerner used her power as a government agent to deprive American citizens of their First Amendment rights, she was indeed acting as an agent of the government. In doing so, she forfeited any claim to the Fifth Amendment right against testimony, because the government does not have a right to conceal its criminal action.

Recently, the Internal Revenue Service gave bonuses, at taxpayer expense, to employees of the IRS who failed to pay their own taxes.

Some of them had even been disciplined for misconduct. How could this happen? How could miscreants and tax cheats who work for the IRS get bonuses?

Part of the answer lies in their employment contract. IRS employees are protected by a contract which forbids the government from using an employee’s misconduct as a basis for withholding bonuses. Let’s repeat that. An IRS employee’s misconduct cannot be used against him in determining whether he gets a performance bonus.

This contract was negotiated between the unions, representing the bureaucrats, and the American people, who were represented in those negotiations by— by whom? Who in hell thought he was representing the American people when he agreed that employee misconduct cannot be a basis for denying a bonus payment? Do you believe that that government negotiator had the slightest concern whatsoever for your interests as a taxpayer? Think about that the next time the government takes your money to pay an IRS auditor who himself has not paid his taxes.

Such contracts are fraudulent and collusive. Clearly, the government employees union spends political campaign money to reward government negotiators who betray the trust of the people. Such contracts are therefore illegal, and any fair and just court would invalidate those contracts without delay.

Lois Lerner and the IRS are only the tip of the iceberg of corruption that has thoroughly saturated the government. Recently and infamously, it has been discovered that certain administrators in the Veterans Administration, in order to make themselves eligible for performance bonuses, delayed life-saving care for their patients, resulting in the deaths of several dozen or more of the veterans they were paid to protect.

I am outraged not only at the despicable actions of the administrators who, in effect, murdered our veterans for money— I am outraged by the excuses made for those who supposedly oversee the VA.

The question is being asked, did they know that this abuse was going on? That is the wrong (insert curse word here) question. It matters not one whit whether they knew. The correct question is, should they have known?

Were they doing their job of oversight? What, precisely, were they doing to seek out, discover, and/or prevent such abuses? My guess is that they were doing nothing. How else could people in the VA dare to have risked being caught with blood on their hands?

In an environment where Lois Lerner tramples the Constitution and gets a pension, what fear does any government employee have of being caught? Why don’t these people respect the law? Why don’t they fear being punished for murder?

No doubt, they too, have a contract.
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Equality is Unfair

http://www.theboldpursuit.com/tbp-journal/2014/6/30/equality-is-unfair.html

Some years ago, there was a panel discussion on television about equality. I am speaking from imperfect memory, but I do remember the main points. Specifically, some women were complaining that women are treated unfairly. The other women on the panel cited college admissions as favoring women, and the military draft as favoring women, and after a few other examples, they asked how women are treated unfairly.

The liberal women had a ready answer. ‘Why just yesterday,’ one of them said, ‘I was shopping for clothes, and I picked out a nice turtle-neck sweater. Then I happened to notice that the same, identical sweater was in the menswear department for a price that was twenty percent less. I asked a clerk what was the difference between the sweaters in the men’s department, and the sweaters in the women’s wear section. The answer was that all the sweaters arrive in bulk, and are arbitrarily distributed between the two departments, and that is where the pricing is done.’

‘Well,’ continued the liberal woman, ‘I think that this is unfair, and is just another example of how women are discriminated against. Why should women have to pay more for the same, identical item?’

It was the conservative women who now had the ready, although unrehearsed answer: ‘First, stores charge more for women’s wear because women will pay it. Nobody forces them to buy anything in the store. Men won’t overpay for their clothing, because they do not place as high a value on fashion as women.’ Second, and this is the show stopper: ‘What prevents women from buying their unisex clothing from the men’s department?’

The look on the liberal women’s faces was a poorly concealed “duh” of red-faced embarrassment. (Footnote: Red-faced is not to be confused with the now forbidden name of a football team. However, if I have offended anyone, well, grow up already.)

Warning. Please turn off your “sarcometer” before reading further. I will not be responsible if sarcasm-overload burns up your sarcometer. Very well, let’s proceed.

It seems to never have occurred to the liberals on the panel that some problems can be resolved with individual actions. In the liberal mindset, it seems that every unfairness in life should be remedied with a government program, a new federal agency, higher taxes, more regulation and less individual freedom. Why, after all, if individuals were allowed to solve their own problems, then there would be a decreased need for government, no need to raise taxes, and—and—and well, why the planet would explode. Anyone can see that.

As I said, this took place years ago, and since I can rarely find my car keys on the first try, I am sure that I may remember some of the details wrong, but the key still starts the car, if you get my drift.
I’m not done. I wish the panelists had asked more questions, but since they did not, I wish to pose them to our more liberal readers. (I warned you to turn off those sarcometers. This is your last chance.)

Why are department stores allowed to have separate departments for men’s clothing and women’s wear? Is this not segregation? Does this policy not make some unfair assumptions about men and women? Does it not discourage cross dressing? Cross dressing is a fundamental right you know. George Washington actually wore a wig, and frilly cuffs on his shirtsleeves. That proves it.

The next question is related to the foregoing: Who should make the decision as to where department stores place their men’s clothing and their women’s attire? That such a vital decision should be left to the whim of cold-blooded corporations is a travesty. Their flimsy excuse is unacceptable, which is ‘this is the way customers want it.’ Who do the customers think they are, the government? Where in the Constitution is it specifically permitted for customers to make their own choices? The word, “customer,” does not even appear in the Constitution. Nor should it.

Fortunately, the liberal left is making inroads to defeat this unfairness. Same-sex marriage is now legal. In at least one state, men can use the women’s dressing rooms, restroom and even showers, in public accommodations (except in mosques, of course). Oh, and by the way, this paragraph is not sarcastic.

I wish it were.
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