Obama and Brown Driven Together By Adversity

For what's it worth I apologize for the American behavior. After all we are colonist. We do love England and always look for England to be with Us. 

What you posted wasn't really a question, but a quote from a conservative British politician who would prefer a large depression to running up debt.  Perhaps he believes in the Invisible Hand Fairy, who appears at times like these sprinkling Job Dust over us all.  Last time, you will remember, the Invisible Hand Fairy waited a decade and then appeared, sprinkling enough Job Dust to restore full employment, but disguised as one of the dread Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I noticed you said God Family Self Country, in that order!  As I remember, John McCain's father was on active duty in the Navy when his son was shot down and captured.  The father quite properly did not let his son's captivity influence him as he did his duty.  Wasn't this putting Country above Family?  Also, John while captive heroically refused early release and resisted all attempts of his captors to use him for propaganda purposes.  Wasn't this putting Country above Self?  Doesn't any soldier who risks injury or death put Country above Self and thereby earn our undying gratitude?  I don't understand why you ordered the items the way you did.

Another thing I am unclear about -- you say on your profile  'God Bless America the Way Our Founders Intended It'.  They did not all intend the same thing.  Thomas Jefferson intended for slavery to endure (at least if we look at his actions; his words here and elsewhere were all over the place).  George Washington also owned slaves, but freed them on his death (much to the consternation of his heirs), so we could say he intended for slavery to eventually go away, although he did not know how this would be accomplished.  John Adams did not like slavery period and clearly saw that it contradicted the magnificent rhetoric of our founding that was crafted by Jefferson.  Perhaps unavoidably given the situation they were in, they fudged the issue rather than dealing with it, and we later paid with our bloodiest war, the most horrible in the century between Waterloo and Sarajevo.  So they were not perfect, and we should not take and have not taken their intentions as sacred.  

I think the main thing they missed (besides slavery) was that they were not science fiction fans (since science fiction did not exist yet) and therefore had little idea of the incredible effects technology would have on everything.  The United States and even the world are now smaller travel-timewise than the state of Rhode Island in 1776, and it has been technologically possible for about a decade to run the entire country as a direct democracy.   

What the Founding Fathers intended was to work out in their heads and on paper a design for a government never seen or tried before in human history, implement it, get it up and running, and have it flexible enough to keep running.  To deal with the problems we face, we will have to do the same rather than stubbornly hanging on to every 200-year old structure we have inherited.  If they had approached their heritage with the same intention you approach ours, they would have left us a (limited) monarchy.    They did so very much more, and so must we.  Of course, in doing what they did they were careful to preserve their ancient rights as Englishmen, and there is much we too must preserve.

I like your previous order better, and I am sorry you felt the need to change it.  I imagine it was a wrenching decision for you.  

Many people have been saying that the country is being pushed toward socialism, but I find I do not have a good feel for what they mean by the term, except that it involves the Federal Government and they do not like it.  I find the concept to be too big and loaded with all sorts of meanings to be useful.  Instead, here are some examples of things that might be considered socialistic.

The Post Office.  The fact that the Founding Fathers made this a government function rather than leaving it to private individuals or businesses says to me that they had no objection to government running a business as such.  I dont know enough history to know how postal service was provided in each colony or between the colonies, and why they did not leave it to private entrepreneurs to provide this essential function.  Probably the fact that it was essential provided their reason for effectively taking away the right of private individuals to enter into this line of business.

In the early days of the country, most of the socialism was at the state level.  The best example of this was the Erie Canal, funded by the State of New York.  I suppose it would have had much the same good effect on the state's economy if it had been funded by a syndicate of rich individuals.  The Interstate Highway system was the same sort of thing at the national level.  

The single most radically innovative warship ever built was designed and constructed by government employees in a government shipyard.  Battleships were built by the Government in Brooklyn.  The intimate knowledge and experience gained by the Government in these efforts probably enabled them to identify and control contract padding and profiteering at the private shipyards that were also building warships.  The whole PX system is socialistic; you know better than I the strengths and weaknesses of the arrangement.

Free and compulsory primary and secondary education is another sort of socialism at the state level.  It was forced on Southern States by the Federal Government during Reconstruction.  The Land Grant College system was socialism at the national level -- the Federal Government directing investment capital to certain sectors of the economy instead of letting the market allocate all capital.  Such direction happens a lot these days, and is abused in many ways.  We also have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm supports, medical research funding, basic research funding in areas important to national defense (which is where the Internet started).

So Obama is not moving us toward socialism, but toward more socialism.  There are many socialistic aspects and sectors of our economy.  The biggest sector of the nation that runs on socialistic principles is the Military; our last president tried to move some of its missions to private enterprise (Blackwater, for example).  How did that work out?  

I think we need to analyze each area where we have some socialism and ask how it is working and whether we want to extend, subtract, clean up, transition away from it.  That makes me a pragmatist, the quintessential American philosophy.  

I take the defense of freedom seriously, and see different threats coming at it from many directions -- government, businesses, government-business conspiracies such as agribusiness or Ike's military-industrial complex, willful ignorance, groupthink, terrorists, my own failings, intolerance, and many others.  I want these threats handled pragmatically, and some of these efforts will involve what you call socialism.  We should only move toward socialism when the alternatives are worse; but when they are worse, we should move toward socialism (remember what they did with the Post Office).   This pragmatic flexibility, based on a careful analysis of how things would actually work, is what they intended to do, what they actually did, and what they would have us do.  Unlike our last President, Obama is firmly in this tradition.  The first thing they did with the Constitution was to amend it in basic and important ways; we must have the courage and wisdom to do likewise.  What must be set in stone is not their results or their understanding but rather their method (except that a method, especially theirs, cannot be set in stone, but instead must be again and again brought to life by we who follow in their footsteps).  

Enough rhetoric for now.  Hope to hear your thoughts on some of it.