Shut It Down

AM (an American combat aviator with an inquiring mind):  Gentlemen, our nation is asleep and in the throes of a nightmare.  We’re becoming mentally and emotionally paralyzed from the constant droning about the recovering economy, distractions from phony scandals, and obstruction from Republicans.  I say:  shut it down!

Old Gadfly:  Shut down what?

AM:  Shut down the nightmare.

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  How?

AM:  Shut down the Obamacare fiasco or the federal government.  We are rapidly approaching September 30, the deadline for a continuing resolution to fund the federal government.  The dilemma is that Republicans want to defund Obamacare while essentially funding other programs.  Obama has threatened to veto such a bill. A veto would then “shut down” the government. Such a result would be blamed on Republicans.

Old Gadfly:  Why would Republicans get blamed if Obama has an opportunity to compromise—something he keeps badgering Republicans to do?  Besides, Obamacare is still very unpopular with the public—premiums have already increased and will continue to rise significantly, Obama is granting waivers and subsidies for special interest or “privileged” groups in violation of the law, and he has delayed implementing provisions of the law, in violation of the law (among a list of many other issues with Obamacare).  It can’t always be “my way or the highway.”

AM:  All good points, Gadfly.  However, Obama and Democrats have proven to be disingenuous in this matter.  What is ironic is that Obama and the Democrat caucus in both houses of Congress deserve the credit (or blame) for creating such a monster.  Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for Obamacare.  Now, with all of his broken promises, implementation problems, and burdens placed upon the American public, Obama and Democrats absurdly expect Republicans to keep feeding this monster.

IM:  Perhaps Obamacare and its adverse impact on employment and the growing entitlement class is part of a more sinister plan?

Old Gadfly:  How so, IM?

IM:  It’s called the Cloward-Piven strategy.  Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, both sociologists and political activists, published their strategy in a May 1966 article in The Nation.  The article was entitled, “The Weight of the Poor:  A Strategy to End Poverty.”  The idea was to overload the public welfare system to cause a financial crisis and then to blame it on capitalism.  This manufactured set of circumstances would then allow the political elite in power to substitute the failed capitalist system with socialism in the form of a new welfare system that guaranteed annual income, ultimately ending poverty.  A good indication as to how this has been happening over time is captured in the following chart, using federal budget data that compares the percentage of the federal budget that has been allocated to defense versus human resource programs (entitlement programs).  Notice the steep incline after the article was published.

Old Gadfly:  To understand these developments, it is important to grasp the ideological basis that underwrites them.  The progressive or modern liberal concept called poverty has been an enduring justification for social justice in the form of redistribution of wealth, and is closely aligned with Karl Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism.  Leon Trotsky admired Marx’s approach as a “scientific classification of human societies in the development of their productive forces and the structure of the relations of ownership, which constitute the anatomy of society.”  Dialectical materialism presumes human advancement through epochal crises as history marches forward.

AM: Obama keeps emphasizing crises; and, “Forward” was Obama’s slogan in the last campaign. 

IM:  Absolutely.  And, I would suggest that Obama’s claim to being the most transparent Administration in history refers to his vision, not his actions.  His vision is to transform America from a liberal democracy founded as a Constitutional Republic into a socialistic nation governed by a very powerful central government. 

Old Gadfly:  Obama sees an opportunity to bring into reality Woodrow Wilson’s early attempts to do the same thing.  Wilson completely subscribed to Marx’s dialectical materialism and published his own theory called historicism.  Wilson’s ideology fueled a strong progressive agenda to create a large, central government to promote social justice.  There is a wealth of evidence to track these developments.  For example, Ronald Pestritto has brilliantly analyzed and evaluated Wilson’s progressive efforts in Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism.  

I think the spiritual emptiness of dialectical materialism may have spawned the existentialism movement that started in the late 19th- and early 20th-century and permeated Western Europe.  In other words, dialectical materialism did not inspire nor feed spiritual needs—that is, a person’s sense of personal value, such as the need for belongingness, self-esteem, and self-actualization argued by Abraham Maslow.

AM:  These are heavy thoughts, Gadfly.  Yet, I can see why it is urgent to check the current cultural flow that seems to reflect a growing population hypnotized by a “free lunch from Obama” dream.

IM:  For the common American citizen, trying to understand what is going on in our nation may explain why the national mood is becoming more melancholic.

Old Gadfly:  Now that we have discussed some of the public reaction to the direction our nation is headed, let’s get back to the merits of shutting down the government.

IM:  I would start with the notion that we have allowed our federal government to incrementally get larger and larger, and thus more costly over time.  For example, in our last discussion we looked at a chart that compared the cost of government in relation to the Gross Domestic Product.  What the chart does not reveal is the actual cost of the federal government.  I did some analysis and discovered the cost per person in constant dollars was about $600 in 1933.  Today, the cost is about $12,000 per person.  This comparison says we have allowed the cost of government to increase 20 times greater than in 1933.  Why is the cost of government so expensive today?  Do we now have 20 times more programs and services?

AM:  I’ll be blunt:  the federal government has become a self-licking ice cream cone.  Unions have reinforced this notion.  We know that one kind of market failure is called monopoly.  Unions are a form of monopoly.  Yet, of all the working sectors, the highest concentration of union membership is in government.  The following chart is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Further, if we follow the money trail on “stimulus” spending, we would find a significant amount went to unionized sectors.  Detroit’s bankruptcy is a classic example of the unsustainability of a self-licking ice cream cone.  And, those who promote such absurdity expect the federal government to bail them out.  Are we fools?  Where does the federal government get the money for bailouts?  They take it from us in the form of taxes.  They play and we pay.  How stupid are we?

IM:  Why stop at defunding Obamacare?

Old Gadfly:  You have a point.  Instead of being dissed by the cavalier suggestion of phony scandals, perhaps Republicans should delay funding to organizations associated with the obstruction of justice.

AM:  I think what I am hearing is that until the Department of Justice provides documentation on Fast and Furious, the Department of State provides documentation on the Benghazi incident, and the Internal Revenue Service provides documentation on how certain groups were targeted, these organizations would not get funded.  Perhaps members within those organizations would become more forthcoming as whistleblowers.  There is a reason our Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of the purse.

Old Gadfly:  There is an important concept underwriting our discussion:  justice.  What we are witnessing is anything but justice in the current Administration.  The same government that would fine Hobby Lobby $1.3 million per day for not complying with the contraception and abortifacients  provision of Obamacare placed Lois Lerner on administrative leave for months with full pay and benefits while the Administration obstructs Congress’s Constitutional duty for oversight of the IRS and other executive branch departments and agencies.  Imagine this:  if an employee is not happy with Hobby Lobby’s hiring arrangements, he or she is free to find a different employer.  Yet, we do not have the freedom to refuse to pay taxes to an organization that violates our trust by abusing its authority.

IM:  I agree with AM:  shut it down.  We have 50 states that can take back the authority prescribed for them in the ninth and tenth amendments to our Constitution.

AM:  If politicians, Republican and Democrat, refuse to muster the courage to lead at this point in our history, then it is a matter of time when the federal government will experience a far worse fate than a simple shut down—it will implode.

IM:  Besides courage we also need judgment.  Is there no judgment within the Administration?

AM:  I remember, during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama was accused of having “no experience.”  This observation did not intimidate Obama—he agreed. But, more importantly Obama boasted, he had superior judgment that more than substituted for his lack of experience. 

Old Gadfly:  Obama speaks and acts like a true intellectual without an ounce of wisdom.  Thomas Sowell brilliantly explains that there is a major difference between intellectual and intelligent.  Here is an excerpt from his book, Intellectuals and Society:

 The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges.

            Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect.

            Wisdom is the rarest quality of all—the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding.  Wisdom is the fulfillment of the ancient admonition, “With all your getting, get understanding.”  Wisdom requires self-discipline and an understanding of the realities of the world, including the limitations of one’s own experience and of reason itself.  The opposite of high intellect is dullness or slowness, but the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which is far more dangerous.[1]

IM:  May I suggest that the combination of dull Copernican drones following Obama’s foolishness is not new?  The distinctions described by Sowell existed more than two thousand years ago.  They have been documented in such historical texts as Proverbs in the Bible.  As we have discussed in previous conversations, Proverbs 26:11 comes to mind.

Old Gadfly:  If our national leaders have lost the capacity for the wisdom that might overcome the foolishness that has put our nation on such thin ice, then we may find ourselves seeking some solace in the book that follows Proverbs.

AM:  I’m not ready for Ecclesiastes.  To our elected officials, I say:  grow a spine and shut it down—if not Obamacare, then the federal government!

Old Gadfly:  The deadline is six weeks away.  How do we get the word out?

IM:  We need faith in the resilience of Americans to deal with any chaos from a government shutdown.  We must also muster our own courage to tell our family, friends, neighbors, elected officials, and anyone else we encounter between now and decision-time in September to “shut it down.”

Old Gadfly:  Let’s get started.  

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[1] Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, (New York NY:  Basic Books, 2011), p. 4.

Club Mentality

           Old Gadfly:  IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind), I have a hunch what you intended by your message to me about club mentality.  I anticipate the analysis relates to current events.  Tell me more.

            IM:  Let me frame my position with the banner:  “Scrushy-in the club; and Paterno-out of the club.”  I learned about Richard Scrushy through one of your ethics case study texts.

AM (an American seasoned aviator with an inquiring mind):  Who’s Scrushy?

IM:  Scrushy founded HealthSouth, a very large chain of hospitals and rehabilitation centers.  From 1987 through 1997, stock prices increased by 31% each year, going from $1 per share to $31 by 1998.[1]  To make a long story short, Scrushy created a corporate culture that led to “cooking the books” in their reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission (i.e., the SEC).  Scrushy and 15 other executives were the first to be indicted by the federal government for violating provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  The 15 other executives were found guilty of a variety of violations.  Scrushy was acquitted of all 36 felony charges. 

AM:  What accounted for the difference in convictions?

IM:  Two major reasons.  First, despite every other co-defendant claiming to take their direction from Scrushy, Scrushy claimed he had no knowledge that questionable accounting practices were taking place.

AM:  Sounds like a familiar defense given some of the scandals currently playing out in Washington DC today.

IM:  The second reason is that Scrushy went out of his way to engender his public personality with the people who would populate the jury for his trial.  Here is how Gadfly’s case study text described it:

Mr. Scrushy joined a church in his hometown just prior to the trial and made substantial contributions.  The pastors of the church attended the Scrushy trial each day.  Leslie Scrushy, Mr. Scrushy’s second wife, attended the church regularly and often spoke in tongues from the pulpit.  Mr. Scrushy’s son had a daily television show on one of the local television stations that Mr. Scrushy owned.  He provided daily coverage of the trial, complete with interviews of the pastors and others attending the trial.  The show enjoyed very high ratings.[2] 

Old Gadfly:  IM, if I correctly interpret what you are saying, public popularity influenced the jury to accept Scrushy’s ignorance claim.

IM:  Yes.  However, Scrushy was later found guilty of political bribery in a civil case and held liable by a judge for nearly $2.9 billion.  So, in the end there was some justice, but it does not correct the complicit behavior of the jury in the criminal trial.  As we have discussed in previous discussions, emotions trump reason.  In Scrushy’s case, the evidence that would shape reason could not compete with the likeability of Scrushy.

AM:  Now, we see similar dynamics playing out on a national level.

Old Gadfly:  OK, I see your argument for the “Scrushy in club” part of the banner.  Despite the news cycles about Benghazi, the IRS, and the DOJ secret subpoenas for phone records, Obama still sports a 53% approval rating.  How about the Paterno out of the club analogy?

            IM:  Coach Joe Paterno left this world in infamy.

            AM:  Let me just say, before you go further, that I watched the Joe Paterno public execution with great pain and disappointment.  I will always remember a Reader’s Digest article I read about Paterno while waiting for some car maintenance.  According to the article, Paterno was being aggressively recruited to be a head coach for a variety of National Football League teams with potential salaries that were orders of magnitude greater than what he earned at Penn State.  He consulted the wisest person he had ever known, his wife, about what he should do.  She reminded him of their values, how much Joe loved coaching, not just about the sport of football, but about being good citizens, living their lives with purpose grounded in traditional virtues.  Coach Paterno was not motivated by pay.  He was committed to bringing the best out of his players.

 

            IM:  I agree, but the NCAA leadership, and others such as politicians and the media, chose to punish Paterno and those who followed him because he did not do enough regarding assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s criminal behavior.  Former FBI director, Louis Freeh was paid $6.5 million to investigate the Sandusky scandal.  The report did more than wound a living legend.  According to news sources: 

Ten days after the Freeh report was released, Penn State removed Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium. The next day, the NCAA hit Penn State and Paterno with an unprecedented string of penalties relating to the scandal: a university fine of $60 million, the vacation of 112 victories from 1998-2011, a four-year postseason ban, scholarship losses and other sanctions. The NCAA acknowledged using the Freeh report to mete out penalties instead of doing its own investigation.[3]

 

Old Gadfly:  Did Paterno do anything illegal or violate University policy?

            IM:  No.  When told about Sandusky’s alleged behaviors, Paterno followed University reporting policy and notified the appropriate authority within the University’s administrative structure.

            AM:  Yet, Paterno was demonized for not going above and beyond University protocol as if to suggest he was fully aware of the egregiousness of Sandusky’s behavior, thus condoning it by not doing more.

            IM:  Yes, and now, because of Freeh’s rushed, yet generously rewarded report, the nearly five decades of legacy leadership and mentorship by Joe Paterno has been erased by the removal of many visible symbols and achievements.

Old Gadfly:  If your logic is correct, then NCAA leadership imposed punishments upon many who had no connection to Sandusky’s actions, like the players who were part of the 112 vacated wins, scholarship opportunities for those who had already been recruited into Penn State’s program, and countless others. d Gadfly:  If your logic is correct, then ore.

e assistant coach'ersity protocol as if to suggest he was f AM:  This is what progressive social justice is all about.  It’s a win-lose proposition.  In this case, there had to be clear winners and losers.  Because Sandusky was a football coach, this impugned anything related to football at Penn State.  The NCAA executioners happen to be university presidents, none of whom ever coached let alone run an athletic program within a university.  University presidents are political administrators.  They get hired to build networks for political and financial influence.  They are like executive directors for nonprofits, hired for the main purpose of keeping the organization handsomely resourced.  Yet, without the millions, perhaps billions of revenue Paterno generated with his successful football teams, many programs, including women sports programs, would not have been funded.  It will be interesting to see all the unintended consequences stemming from the NCAA’s ruling.

            Old Gadfly:  Who were the winners?

            AM:  The politically correct moralists who consider college football a mere manifestation of capitalism.

            Old Gadfly:  Do you think football, because it is a contact sport, also poses some kind of threat?

            AM:  Of course, because the sport requires men with chests.

IM:  Wait a minute.  Is your argument in relation to C.S. Lewis’ observation about “men without chests” in The Abolition of Man?

AM:  Yes.  Those who play or have an interest in following college football refuse to be “conditioned” by the “conditioners,” who think we all should hold hands and sing Kumbaya while the conditioners ensure equality when providing for our personal needs.

Old Gadfly:  I’m pleased to see your arguments supported by seminal works.

AM:  While it was not the easiest book to read, I see why you wanted me to read John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.[4]  Based on what we have discussed, proponents for social justice believe in Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” concept, where individuals step behind the veil (pardon my aviator candidness), where they step behind the veil and engage in mutual mental masturbation, emerging from behind the veil enlightened as to how to tell other people how to live their lives—ultimately picking winners and losers, rewarding sycophants and punishing dissenters.[5]

Old Gadfly:  So, we have two analogies—Scrushy and Paterno—to demonstrate how people are classified as in the club or outside the club.  Based on the analysis, it looks like Obama and his team are still in the club for all three scandals.  If people feel like Obama is giving them what they need or want, then why would they care if he lies or misleads through manufactured narratives?

IM:  So far, it looks like Obama is following the Scrushy model.

AM:  Eventually, Scrushy was voted out of the club with a conviction based on indisputable evidence.  Here is the evidence under Obama’s watch: four Americans killed due to terrorism at Benghazi at the peak of the Presidential campaign; hundreds of dissenting voices were silenced by the IRS during the last Presidential campaign; and journalists and editors have now been warned by the DOJ that their sources can be identified and prosecuted. 

Old Gadfly:  Do you remember the Pentagon Papers scandal?

AM:  Absolutely.  Daniel Ellsberg leaked 43 volumes of top secret material to The New York Times.  Among a thorough treatment by the media of the Papers, here is an excerpt from the front page of the Times years later:  “[the Pentagon Papers] demonstrated, among other things, that the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance."[6]

 IM:  As I recall, the Justice Department secured a federal court injunction to force the Times to cease any further publication of Pentagon Papers material.  The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled on June 30, 1971 in a 6-3 decision that the federal government failed to meet the burden of proof for its actions.  In his opinion, Justice Black argued:  “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.  And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

AM:  Ironically, the Pentagon Papers was a Defense Department Study of a period before Nixon.  The study indicted the Johnson administration.  But, a combination of events and the effort to enlighten the American public left Nixon holding the bag.  How many times did you hear people lament about “Nixon’s War”?  Nixon had nothing to do with the lies and deception captured in the Pentagon Papers.  But he certainly inherited the security issues that followed Ellsberg’s leaks and their violation of security laws and regulations.  Johnson escaped any infamy associated with his own practices of lies and deception.

Old Gadfly:  Do you see any of these dynamics currently playing out under this Administration?

AM:  Absolutely!  As we discussed in our last conversation, this Administration has mastered Sun Tzu’s concept of tactical dispositions.  This Administration’s most serious threat is any American political ideology that is not progressive.  This is why disagreement is not part of its lexicon.  This Administration has pure, unadulterated contempt for views right of center, especially for those who hold and express them.  This is why members of the Administration have no reservation in accusing Republicans of manufacturing scandals, conspiracy theories, fishing expeditions, and so forth. 

The AP and IRS scandals are mere smoke screens for the most egregious activities that have flowed from this Administration.  Yet, the AP and IRS resonate more with the American public.  The Administration wants these two scandals to percolate for as long as possible, which will make Benghazi look more and more fictional over time and the “speed bump” Obama wants it to be in his rearview mirror.  Obvious questions have not been asked:  Why was the Ambassador in Benghazi in the first place?  The facility in Benghazi is not a consulate or diplomatic facility.  Remember the large caches of weapons that went missing during the Qaddafi regime change?  Check out the port facility at Benghazi below.

 

            Old Gadfly:  What are you insinuating?

            AM:  Do you remember Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal?   The U.S. was covertly selling arms to Iran and then providing the funds from those sales to anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, known as Contras.  The activities were in direct violation of the Boland Amendment.  So, was the U.S. involved in transferring any of these weapons caches to other parties in the region?  Further, how did the jihadist terrorist groups know about the facility?  Did they know the Ambassador would be there?  Or, were they merely focused on the opportunity to take on more resources?    

Old Gadfly:  Very interesting AM.  I wish we had more time to chase this rabbit down its hole, but a similar analysis might be argued with Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine in which he aggressively pursues a journalistic prosecution of the Bush Administration.[7]  I was amazed at all the classified information Suskind included in his book, yet disappointed in how he distorted the picture by not aligning his evidence with the broader historical and geopolitical context.  This could have been deliberate or just the result of too much time behind his club’s veil of ignorance.

IM:  Given the media’s gentle treatment of the three current scandals, it appears there may be an unholy alliance between a progressive media and a progressive government.

AM:  Jefferson must have anticipated the possibility of these types of developments when he included the following passage in the Declaration of Independence: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

IM:  I must admit: if our conversation is being recorded, then we will probably be audited.

AM:  I’m tempted to stop paying taxes because California Democratic Congressman Becerra assured me during the IRS hearing hosted by the House Ways and Means Committee that paying taxes is a voluntary effort (Becerra’s segment starts at 1:27:56 in the C-Span video).  All my life I thought it was mandatory.  Perhaps my fears of the IRS involvement in implementing Obamacare are unfounded.

Old Gadfly:  Perhaps we just need to demonstrate a club mentality to avoid any scrutiny?

AM:  That’s called going along to get along, a common affliction for Copernican drones.  Ellsberg was no drone.  Nor is James Rosen of Fox News.  Let’s see how the club mentality plays out in his case.

Old Gadfly:  Good analysis and reflection, IM and AM.           

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[1] Helyar, J.  (2002, July 7).  Insatiable King Richard. Fortune, pp. 76, 82.

[2] Jennings, M. M.  (2012).  Case 4.6, HealthSouth:  The Scrushy way.  In M. Jennings (Ed.), Business ethics:  Case studies and selected readings (7^th ed., pp. 183-192), Mason, OH:  South-Western Cengage Learning.

[3] Joe Paterno family releases report.  (2013, February 13).  ESPN.com.  Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8930657/joe-paterno-family-report-calls-freeh-report-sandusky-scandal-total-failure 

[4] Rawls, J.  (1999).  A Theory of Justice.  Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

[5] Ibid, pp. 118-123.

[6] Apple, R. W.  (1996, June 23).  Pentagon papers.  The New York Times.  See also, Lewis, A.  (1996, June 7).  Abroad at home; “Bare the secrets.”  The New York Times.  Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/07/opinion/abroad-at-home-bare-the-secrets.html?ref=pentagonpapers   

[7] Suskind, R.  (2006).  The one percent doctrine:  Deep inside America’s pursuit of its enemies since 9/11.  New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster.

Cogito Ergo Sum ("I Think, Therefore I Am," Descartes)

What is the rationale for this blog?  The blog presents reflective and analytical articles by Old Gadfly about a world that is becoming increasingly absurd and ripe for catastrophic unintended consequences. 

We inherited libraries and artifacts of great wisdom and methods for scientific inquiry.  We enjoy the conveniences stemming from technology.  Yet, we seem to be losing a collective capacity to reason--to think clearly, to discern the finer qualities of distinction among differences. 

In his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek warned against the pathologies of political correctness, we currently witness and experience, in his chapter, “The End of Truth.”  Hayek observed that in societies sliding toward, or completely overcome by, totalitarianism, it is not sufficient for citizens to acknowledge (i.e., to tolerate without affirmation or advocacy) values prescribed by the political elite; to the contrary, members of society are expected to spontaneously and emotionally react to anything that challenges or threatens those values.  Have you ever encountered a situation when another person gets angry about something you said?  It happens a lot nowadays.

I realize that many potential readers may be incapable of comprehending the reflection and analysis in these blog entries.  Most of these people are what I call Copernican drones, and some are the product of a public school educational system that spends more time prescribing what to think instead of how to think.   These Copernican drones lack the functional capacity to pollinate the world with enduring ideas based on their own creative thinking or critical analysis.  Nicolaus Copernicus only published one book in his lifetime—On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres--and it sparked a scientific revolution.  In the introduction to his book, there is a discussion about Copernicus’s reluctance to officially publish his analysis and theory of the solar system.  He knew that it would receive harsh criticism--not from the few who would take the time to digest his work first hand, but from the “drones among bees” who claim to be experts but only repeat what other drones such as themselves have written in newspapers and magazines (in other words, sound bites such as those we hear on the nightly news, or read in newspapers or magazines like the modern era’s Newsweek). 

Even our academics seem to be losing a capacity for lucidity and depth of reasoning.  Am I incorrect in assuming that academia should be that one sector in our society where knowledge is advanced through reasoning (i.e., spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language) that takes place in the neocortex of our brains?  Yet, this “neocortex” function of academia is subordinate to a political orientation that derives from what Paul MacLean (in his book, The Triune Brain in Evolution) calls the “paleomammalian complex” portion of our brains where the functions of long-term memory, emotion, and motivation take place.  By the way, this is where political framing originates and resonates.  Frankly, today’s hubristic scholarship is devolving to mere flotsam, drifting on the surface of an immense ocean of potential knowledge.  To cite just one example, read the work of George Lakoff, whose publications represent mostly old wine in new bottles.  The wine in Lakoff’s case is normative—it prescribes a world the way he (and those who subscribe to the same politically correct values) thinks it should be.  Lakoff even claims, in his book Thinking Points:  A Guide for Progressive Framing, that it is the frame that matters—if facts fit, great; if not, then the facts do not matter.  Scholars such as this do not discover the truth; they create it.  You’ll read more about this type of emotionally-grounded thinking in future blog entries.

The blog approaches topics from a gadfly perspective.  Socrates was known by two metaphors:  a gadfly and a midwife.  As a gadfly, Socrates challenged many “truths” of the day that were based on assumptions about reality.  Many assumptions can be myth or fact—true or false.  In today’s political narratives, the frame is more important than actual fact.  This may explain why a prominent national politician can feel safe in encouraging the voting public “to pass it [Obamacare] so you can know what’s in it.” 

Socrates also saw his role as an educator to be similar to the role of a midwife--one who facilitates the birth of grand and noble ideas (that can pollinate the world).  Notice, Socrates did not teach others what to think.  He shaped their ability to think for themselves. 

The blog’s primary objective is to challenge many of today’s narratives, advanced by the political elite (mostly politicians, journalists, and artists from Hollywood who believe life should imitate art).  If, in the process of presenting the reflections and analysis, readers find alternative ways of seeing things through a less distorted lens than the prevailing narrative, then this will be a nice objective as well.  New understandings can liberate us from the chains of our illusions, described so eloquently in the cave allegory in Plato’s The Republic.  Unfortunately, too many of our citizens are complacently content to remain chained to illusions  because they may be reinforced by normative delusions of reality.  This observation includes those who are afraid to test assumptions.  We know who they are.  Some reveal this form of bondage when they say: “let’s agree to disagree.”

Most of the reflection and analysis contained in this blog are based on material in a manuscript (currently being written) entitled, Reflections on the Contest in America.  This blog was created to connect with minds that have the capacity to reason before November 2012.  We live in a perilous time.  If a majority of the self-determining citizens of America do not stem the current drift of our Nation, we will discover the real consequences of our failure as cautioned by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and documented by Hannah Arendt in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism.   

Most of the reflections and analysis in future entries to this blog will be presented in the form of a conversation.  Meet our conversationalists:  IM (a fictitious inquiring mind) and Old Gadfly (me).  Old Gadfly encourages your inputs to the conversation.