Connecting Dots

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, we have previously discussed evidence that public sentiment is being engineered (see here and here); but, do you suspect any actual propaganda taking place?

AM (an American combat aviator with an inquiring mind):  Yes, and there is a clear indication of psychological operations (or psyops) as well.

Old Gadfly:  Let’s address propaganda first.  We’ll discuss psyops another day.  What is propaganda?

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  Dictionary.com defines propaganda as: “1. Information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.  2.  The deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.  3. The particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.” 

Old Gadfly:  The definitions seem clear enough.  Do you have examples?

AM:  How about the President this week claiming Republicans are fabricating “phony scandals”?  How about Eric Holder accusing Republicans of being racist?

Old Gadfly:  By scandals are you referring to Benghazi and the IRS, among others?

AM:  Yes.

Old Gadfly:  But only Fox News is reporting on them.  And, my good progressive acquaintances keep reminding me, don’t watch Fox News—they lie.

IM:  So, you don’t watch Fox News?

Old Gadfly:  Of course I do, because I triangulate what I read and hear.  And I will tell you that based on my “triangulation” from multiple sources, the lack of coverage by other networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and print media (The New York Times and Washington Post) is a clear case of propaganda—because the black out or censorship is deliberate and designed to propagate particular doctrines or principles of the progressive movement.

AM:  Do you think this black out is being orchestrated by the White House?

Old Gadfly:  Not necessarily, but I am certain that President Obama and his inner circle are advancing similar methods that occurred during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Administration.  If Time magazine editors accurately reflect left-wing sentiment, then there is a lot of support for advancing similar methods (see the cover for the November 24, 2008 issue here).  In 2007, Michael Socolow authored a compelling article about propaganda in America.  While merely acknowledging the blatant propaganda practices in the Woodrow Wilson Administration, Socolow specifically analyzed propaganda practices during the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, 1939-1944.[1]  Socolow discovered that FDR actually pushed for a domestic radio propaganda program but did not need one because commercial broadcast journalism effectively performed that function.  Socolow’s research also discovered the regulatory activism role played by the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.  Sound familiar?  There was a recent attempt to place “observers” in news rooms across the nation.

IM:  Hmmm . . . 1939-1944 . . . didn’t Orson Welles demonstrate the power of radio broadcasting with his “War of the Worlds” stunt in 1938?

Old Gadfly:  Yes, it generated panic among the listening public, forcing CBS and Welles to apologize; but, it also demonstrated to CBS and other political advocates the power of the radio to mobilize the public.  Orson Welles dramatized the War of the Worlds science fiction novel by H. G. Wells.  Many people only know Wells for his science fiction.  Yet, he was a frequent guest of FDR’s White House[2] and vocal advocate for liberal fascism.  Jonah Goldberg observed that Wells had spent 30 years, since the beginning of the Progressive Era, working on the idea of “liberal fascism.”[3]  Wells’ progressive ideology in the form of liberal fascism is heavily documented.[4]

AM:  I noticed Orson Welles’ association with CBS (see the logo in the picture above).  There are some interesting dots to connect here.

·         The Socolow article includes a photograph with the following caption:  “CBS News commentator Elmer Davis (L) confers with CBS News Director Paul White, December 1941.  In 1942 Davis would be named to head the Office of War Information, America’s propaganda agency.”

 

·         On November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated, a CBS reporter by the name of Dan Rather heard a rumor that Dallas school children cheered the news.  While the local CBS news affiliate refused to run the story, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT TRUE, Rather found another CBS venue to report the story anyway.[5]  Sound familiar?  Remember Rather’s report on George W. Bush based on fabricated documents?  Rather’s stubbornness to this day reflects Lakoff’s “frame” arguments—it is the frame that matters; if facts fit, great; if not, then the facts are irrelevant.

·         More recently Sharyl Attkison (see also here, here, and here) and Lara Logan (see also here) were exiled from CBS, ostensibly for their aggressive reporting about issue under the Obama Administration.  While Logan acknowledges she did not sufficiently vet an individual interviewed for a 15-minute segment about Benghazi on 60 Minutes, this portion of the report was less than 3 minutes long.  There was nothing inaccurate or dubious about the remaining 12-minute exposé on Benghazi.  I watched the original broadcast and was somewhat amazed, at the time, that CBS allowed it to be published.  Ironically, just today I tried to locate the original Benghazi exposé by Logan and, while there are thousands of “botched” and “apology” pieces, I could not find a single file of the original broadcast.  CBS, like the IRS, seems to be very competent at destroying evidence.  I had saved a link to the broadcast on YouTube.  Click on the link and see what has happened to the "evidence."  Too bad. The majority of the factual reporting was a casualty of political pressure (political correctness or propaganda).  Yet, here is another link that had no apparent "copyright" issue.  I suppose the best way to put a bag over Logan, and her interest in “watchdog journalism, was to bring her back.

·         More recently, there seems to be little interest among the commercial propaganda arm to look at potentially negative issues with the Obama Administration.  For example, there is little interest in the IRS’s Lois Lerner pleading the Fifth and the deliberate destruction of emails (evidence).  And regarding Benghazi, there is little interest in the recent revelation that Ben Rhodes, a member of Obama’s national security team, sent an email to Susan Rice directing her to blame the video on the Benghazi attack.  Ben Rhodes is the brother of David Rhodes, President of CBS.

IM:  There definitely appears to be a pattern among the dots.

AM:  After the demise of Hitler and National Socialism, Germans claimed they did not know what was happening.  Spencer Tracey, in the movie “The Nuremburg Judgment,” was shocked to hear Germans say, “I did not know.”  In one scene, a household servant claimed to know nothing of atrocities taking place under National Socialism and felt compelled to defend Hitler when she said he did do some good things for Germans—“he got the autobahn.”  Thus, there may be some redeeming rationale for Obama’s interest in “infrastructure investment.”

Old Gadfly:  If the media continues its blackout tactic as a shield for Obama’s transformation of America, time will tell whether Americans will remorsefully claim, “I did not know.”  In our next conversation, let’s talk about political psyops.

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[1] Michael J. Socolow, “‘News Is a Weapon’:  Domestic Radio Propaganda and Broadcast Journalism in America, 1939-1944, American Journalism, Volume 24, Number 3 (Summer 2007), pp. 109-131.

[2] Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, (New York, NY:  Broadway Books, 2007), p. 135.

[3] Ibid, p. 134.

[4] Philip Coupland, “H. G. Wells’s ‘Liberal Fascism,’” Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 35, Number 4 (2000), pp. 541-558.

[5] Goldberg, op cit., p. 202.

What Difference Will It Make?

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  Gentlemen, with the current news cycle buzz about Syria, I ask, “What difference will it make?”

AM (an American combat aviator with an inquiring mind):  That’s a clever play on Hillary’s surrender to mendacity with her statement, “What difference does it make?”

Old Gadfly:  You both are thinking on a high plane.  The segue between (a) Hillary’s stand that accountability is irrelevant in the Benghazi incident and (b) Obama’s “decision” to apply military action in Syria is an important measure of the apparent recklessness of this Administration.  IM’s question is important:  What difference will US military action in Syria make?

 

IM:  Context is essential for understanding what is at stake.  Remember, the most recent issue dealt with funding the federal government.  That issue reaches a climax on September 30—exactly three weeks after Congress reconvenes.  With all the debate about Congressional authorization to attack Syria, there may be little time to debate a continuing resolution, let alone address the looming monster that threatens our domestic economy—Obamacare.  In our conversation on August 17, we strongly advocated not funding Obamacare and allowing a shutdown of the government, if Obama vetoed such an approach.

Old Gadfly:  Good point, IM.  It will be very difficult for America to help in other parts of the world if we lose our own economic security. 

IM:  Let’s look at the broader context.  Despite over 100,000 civilian casualties, and the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordon, not to mention those who have traveled further north into Europe, since Obama’s red line was declared over a year ago in August 2012, he now “decides” for military action and “decides” to seek Congressional authorization for the military action he has already “decided” to carry out.  Sounds pretty “decisive” to me.

AM:  Despite the glib rhetoric, Obama’s posturing is nothing but pure political theater to draw attention away from other unresolved issues here in America.  Besides Obamacare and Benghazi, we still have not resolved the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the Department of Justice harassment of journalists and news organizations, and other issues that are being slow-rolled by the “most transparent Administration” in the history of America.

Old Gadfly:  Yet, Obama frames an attack on Syria as a moral imperative because chemical weapons were used in violation of international norms.  This sounds logical, does it not?

AM:  Not surprisingly, Obama gets a pass on his own violations of international norms by “deciding” to allow a battlefield execution of bin Laden and “deciding” to assassinate American citizens with drones and without due process.  These actions have little to do with justice.  They are actions on behalf of an individual who is demonstrating the corruptness of near absolute power.

IM:  Obama is also surrounded by loyal lieutenants.  To generate public sentiment in support of Obama’s “decision” to strike Syria, Robert Gibbs amazingly advanced a false narrative that went unchallenged this morning on Meet the Press.  He celebrated Obama’s “decision” on Syria in comparison to Bush’s decision to use military force in Iraq.  According to Gibbs, Obama’s decision was “deliberate” and supported by “rationale,” unlike Bush’s, which by implication was not deliberate and lacked rationale.  Gibbs also claimed that, unlike Bush, Obama is seeking a “united front” and “strength in a broad collation.”

AM:  Let’s examine more closely Gibbs’ unchallenged assertions.  First, Bush’s decision was very deliberate and clearly justified by rationale.  While there is some debate whether Hussein gassed Kurds during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, he did possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and he used them.  Yet, Bush is criticized for using WMD as a justification for the use of military force.  Second, Kerry presented a case for military action in Syria based only on WMD.  Sound familiar?  In Syria, Assad is accused of killing 1,400 people with WMD.  While there is evidence of WMD, it is still unclear who was responsible for its actual use.  Which case is more compelling?  I’ll tell you which one:  the one advanced by the club to which one is a member.    

IM:  Gadfly, didn’t you spend some time in the Middle East?

Old Gadfly:  In late December 1990, I deployed to Saudi Arabia as a senior officer in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and later to Turkey in support of Operation Provide Comfort (saving Kurdish refugees in the northern Iraqi mountains, pushed there by Hussein’s military forces).  During the flight to Saudi, I read a book by Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf.  The authors, one from The New York Times and the other a professor at Harvard, presented a heavily documented account of Hussein’s efforts to produce WMD, to brutalize the Iraqi people, and to establish hegemony in the Middle East.  Later, when running the Air Force Operations Center at the Pentagon in the mid-1990s, I daily watched and reported Hussein’s defiant actions, heavily constrained by expensive no fly zones in the north and the south—this expensive effort lasted for over a decade with no end in sight.

IM:  So, it appears that you have first-hand impressions of the threat Hussein posed.

Old Gadfly:  While WMD is the threat that appeared to resonate in the public narrative leading up to our use of military force in 2003, the threat of alleged WMD represented only one of 12 justifications (or rationale) for the use of force in a bipartisan Congressional  Joint Resolution that was approved before any commitment of military forces.  The Joint Resolution is known as Public Law 107-243, “Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution of 2002.”  In the House, 215 Republicans and 81 Democrats voted in favor of while six Republicans and 126 Democrats (including Congresswoman Pelosi) voted against the legislation.  In the Senate, 48 Republicans and 29 Democrats (including Senator Reid) voted in favor of while one Republican and 22 Democrats voted against the legislation.  In other words, the resolution passed by a significant majority of bipartisan votes. Thus, after being armed with a bipartisan Joint Resolution of Congress to use military force in Iraq, Bush acted to remove a tyrant who was far more brutal than Libya’s Gaddafi, an action done without Congressional authorization.

AM:  Further, the momentum for ousting Hussein was far from a George W. Bush initiative.  Here is a March 2, 2000 speech by Senator John Kerry, documented in the Congressional Record:

Mr. President, I want to call to the attention of my colleagues an issue that is not being raised in the otherwise informative presidential primary campaigns. It is not a theoretical issue, nor is it an issue concerning budgetary decisions.

Rather, it is an issue which sends American pilots on combat missions almost daily. It is an issue which throughout the last decade has cost the lives of hundreds of American and thousands of soldiers and civilians of other nationalities. It is an issue which threatens the peace and security of some of our closest allies, and which, if not solved, could threaten the United States with weapons of mass destruction. It is an issue which starves and holds captive twenty-two million people in conditions of unparalleled terror of their government. It is an issue which we have failed to deal with decisively, and that failure calls into question our dedication to the freedom we prize so highly for ourselves.

The issue is the continuing rule of Saddam Hussein. Nine years after the United States led a coalition to eject Iraqi forces and liberate Kuwait, Saddam continues to brutalize his people, threaten his neighbors, and develop weapons of mass destruction--earlier versions of which he used on neighboring states, on Israel, and on his own people. The good news is that sanctions have weakened his military, and his political support base has shrunk to his immediate family. All of mountainous northern Iraq and large swathes of southern Iraq are free of his control. Nonetheless, he continues to rule the central part of the country and, as Jim Hoagland pointed out in today's Washington Post, Saddam is likely to outlast yet another American President. (p. S1150)

Old Gadfly:  Thank you, AM.  As I recall, Kerry was not an isolated advocate for regime change.  Many elected officials, Democrat and Republican, were concerned about Hussein’s hegemonic intentions and WMD efforts.  So, G. W. Bush “inherited” momentum to accomplish regime change in Iraq.

AM:  Yes, even under the Clinton Administration, there was a Joint Resolution of Congress to carry out regime change in Iraq.  Public Law 105-338, known as the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998,” was signed into law by President Clinton on October 31, 1998.  The legislation was a bipartisan effort with 360 (202 Republicans, 157 Democrats) in favor of and 38 (nine Republicans, 29 Democrats) against in the House of Representatives; the Senate provided unanimous consent. 

AM:  And when Bush “decided” to attack Hussein, did he “go it alone”?

Old Gadfly:  No.  Under Bush’s leadership, 25 other nations joined the effort to oust Hussein.  Obama, on the other hand, is willing to “go it alone.”  So far, the United Nations and no other country (with the possible exception of France) have expressed a willingness to be part of a coalition.  Also, unlike the minority 42% who support military action in Syria, Gallup indicated a 70% approval rating for Bush’s decision to attack Hussein.  Incidentally, following the 9/11 attack, Bush also had approval ratings at 90%. 

IM:  As the Iraq war drug on, however, Bush found himself fighting a two-front war:  on one side were the jihadist insurgents; and on the home front was the American political opposition.  While Bush deliberately commenced actions based on solid rationale and bipartisan Congressional support, strong public support, and a broad coalition, public sentiment was masterfully reengineered between 2003 and 2006 by progressive factions (politicians, media, academia, and Hollywood) for political objectives.  This accounted for the major sea change in both houses of Congress during the 2006 elections.  During this period, Copernican drones were so powerfully trained how to think that today most Americans still blame Bush for today’s economic woes, despite strong empirical evidence to the contrary:  recall our conversations on August 16, 2012 and August 27, 2012. 

Old Gadfly:  And, unlike the politically expedient execution of bin Laden, Saddam Hussein was eventually captured, arrested, and tried in a court of law, consisting of his citizen-peers. 

IM:  I think Washington’s current cohort of politicians seem especially cautious about the notion of regime change.  This is why Obama claims an attack will be limited and does not involve regime change.

Old Gadfly:  Then, what can be gained by military action in Syria?

AM:  What I understand is that air and cruise missile attacks would focus on Syria’s military forces, such as aircraft, air defense, logistics, and so forth in an attempt to level the playing field between the Syrian military and the rebels.

Old Gadfly:  So, more killing would take place, with equal casualties on both sides?

IM:  I suppose that is inevitable.

Old Gadfly:  Then what?  What eventual outcome might Obama expect?

AM:  The cynic in me suspects this is a necessary and sufficient distraction to get progressives through the 2014 election cycle.

Old Gadfly:  What about Syria and the Middle East?  What are the potential unintended consequences of military action?

AM:  Remember, it only took one bullet from a Serb radical to precipitate the First World War, and arguably America’s aviation gas, steel, and iron embargo against Japan led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Regarding outcomes of military action in Syria, here are some possibilities from my perspective:

·         Russia and Iran become more aggressively involved with the possibility of escalating proxy wars;

·         Other Arab nations are bound by regional proximity to align themselves with ideological similarities (i.e., Islamist ideology); but this gets complicated because,

o   while Saudi Arabia might support US action in Syria, it is because Saudis are Sunnis and Iranians are Shiites;

o   the Hezbollah faction in Syria and Lebanon has ties to Iran;

o   it also appears the rebel forces in Syria are predominantly jihadists, to include al Qaeda members, who also are Sunnis

o   If Hamas gets involved, their roots are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood

·         Israel is a potentially stabilizing force for regional governments, given the reality it will defend itself with nuclear weapons if necessary;

·         Israel is a potentially destabilizing force for jihadists wanting further instability in the region;

·         Middle East oil will become a critical strategic lever--there will be a huge price for access with major ripple effects in the international economy

·         Second, third, and fourth order effects will represent the cascading failures and impact of a regional and then an international system that rapidly moves from its relative equilibrium to chaos.

Old Gadfly:  Most of those outcomes are not constructive.  What would you recommend?

AM:  Unilateral military action is ludicrous at this point in time for two major reasons.  First, there is no direct and compelling national vital interest in Syria.  Second, the conditions are not right.  This situation requires adult leadership and the coup d’oeil that comes only from solid, relevant experience and training.  Community organizing is a quantum leap from the high stakes of geopolitics.  Obama’s focus has always been to centralize political power, not to use political power for a greater good.  Obamacare is a classic example.  Boasted as a banner achievement, Obamacare is nothing more than a very costly means for centralizing power.  

IM:  I find it ironic that the face Obama is parading around DC and the Sunday talk shows to drum up support for military action is his Secretary of State.  Where is the Secretary of Defense? 

AM:  Once a decision was made to commit military forces in Iraq, Rumsfeld, as the Secretary of Defense, was the face parading around DC and the talk shows.  Rumsfeld was also successfully targeted, frozen, personalized, and polarized as a component of reengineering public sentiment (see our past discussion on Saul Alinksy’s Rule number 13).  I think the picture of Kerry advocating military action is characteristic of an incompetent and amateurish Administration.  An entire year has passed when more diplomatic efforts on the part of Kerry’s predecessor would have better prepared the United States to deal with current circumstances.  Of course, such diplomatic efforts would have been a logical extension of a reasoned foreign policy vision on behalf of the President and Commander-in-Chief.  Unfortunately, Obama has no foreign policy vision.  Elliott Abrams provided support for such a claim with his brilliant analysis of Obama’s foreign policy in Commentary Magazine.

IM:  There seemed little interest in achieving accountability after Benghazi, a visible foreign policy failure.  Hillary eulogized the four dead Americans with:  what difference does it make?  A year later with over 100,000 Syrian casualties and over a million refugees, it’s now time to make a difference?

Old Gadfly:  Even though there is no clearly defined outcome for US military action in Syria, unless things change, such action will make a political difference—it will keep Americans distracted from numerous scandals that remain unsettled under this Administration.

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.