NOTHING CAN GO WORNG: CONFIDENCE, 'NAM . . . AND BAM

NY Post ^ | July 8, 2009 | George F. Will

[Scanian]

THE death of Robert McNa mara at 93 was less a faint reverberation of a receding era than a reminder that mentalities are the defining attributes of eras, and certain American mentalities recur with, it sometimes seems, metronomic regularity.

McNamara came to Washington from a robust Detroit -- he headed Ford when America's swaggering automobile manufacturers enjoyed 90 percent market share -- to be President John Kennedy's secretary of defense. Seemingly confident that managing the competition of nations could be as orderly as managing competition among the three participants in Detroit's oligopoly, McNamara entered government seven months before the birth of the current president -- who is the owner and (he is serenely sure) fixer of General Motors.

Today, something unsettlingly similar to McNamara's eerie assuredness pervades the Washington in which he died. The spirit is: Have confidence, everybody, because we have, or soon will have, everything -- really everything -- under control.

The apogee of McNamara's professional life, in the first half of the 1960s, coincided, not coincidentally, with the apogee of the belief that behavioralism had finally made possible a science of politics.

[Cap Huff]

What can go worng, will go worng . . . .

:-)

[rlmorel]

I agree with a good deal of what was written in this article, particularly the overweening confidence by liberals that they can grab the controls of the machinery of government, war, race relations or whatever you can think of, and manipulate them to get a desired result.

This is the weakness of liberalism, and is why they are inclined towards utopianism, emotionalism and socialism.

Notice that when Republicans enter office, there is not an attitude of “We are going to completely stop doing things the way our predecessor did them, and we are going to do them our way from now on.” It is usually a very measured approach, letting things go the way they did for a period of time before making changes, and those changes are usually incremental, not radical.

This is because conservatives understand that you do not need to re-invent the wheel. The problem with reinventing wheels, policies or anything else is that you often make the same mistakes the first inventor did, unless you take extra care to see why those mistakes occurred.

Liberals do not have the humility to understand this. It is why liberals are all socialists to a greater or lesser degree and believe in big, centralized government.

I use the analogy of a jumbo jet flying through the sky on auto-pilot, with no flight crew present, and a passenger opens the cockpit door and enters.

Conservatives would enter the cockpit, look around and take stock of the situation. They might look at the fuel gauge, look at the attitude and get a general feel of the situation. They probably wouldn’t touch anything right away, realizing that there are circumstances where doing something for the sake of doing something can be far more harmful. They might decide to put the headphones on, see if they can communicate with anyone, see if they can hear anything, and so on. They would probably try to find someone who could talk them down, and failing that, might try to figure out if there was anyone onboard with piloting experience.

Liberals would enter the cockpit, look around and scream out “Nobody is flying the plane!” They would jump in the pilot seat, grab the control stick and shout “We have to get this plane on the ground or we’re all going to die!” They might dive the plane towards the earth, looking frantically for an airport, making the assumption that of course, you could fly a plane from the sky “just by looking around, there is the airport over there, let’s get to it!” without realizing that is one of the most difficult things even for veteran pilots who might have the advantage of at least being familiar with the area and comfortable with trying to pick up landmarks from the air. They would dive the plane, then suddenly realize they don’t know how to turn the plane, how to apply rudder or lower the flaps and landing gear (probably wouldn’t even realize those were needed) and would simultaneously realize they had no idea how to stabilize the plane in level flight or re-engage the autopilot. The passengers, feeling the gyrations of the aircraft and knowing something was wrong, would begin to panic, and before you know it, there would be a huge flaming hole in the ground.

It is the same thing with a military campaign, an economic crisis, an environmental issue, solving an education or social problem, or just about anything else you can think of.

Liberals see the levers, dials and controls of something powerful and complicated, and instead of figuring out how they work or even if they work, they make the assumption that no matter what, they can control this better than anyone or anything that controlled it before. They don’t even think that sometimes putting your hands on the levers of something powerful is much, much more damaging than keeping your bloody damned hands OFF of them.

If it is a military campaign, they get in their armchairs and begin looking at the maps, targets and forces involved, pick up the phones and begin issuing orders and edicts to generals. You end up with the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Desert One and Mogadishu.

On environmental issues you end up with some kind of foreign species of fish that you brought in from South America to control some other kind of insect or plant issue, and it ends up destroying the native ecosystem, or on a global scale, you destroy the ability to obtain energy for an energy dependent world because you need to save the existence of the Alaskan Spotted Lugwort. They determined through their “science” that DDT made the egg shells of predatory birds thin causing their populations to decrease, and viewing it as a canary in a coal mine, outlawed DDT, thereby condemning tens of millions of people (or over the years, perhaps even hundreds of millions) to misery and death from insect borne diseases such as malaria. Even worse, you end up with liberals trying to deliberately destroy industry and economies, an attempt to plunge the entire western world into a depression, and they base their desire to do this on “Global Warming”. To sum up this particular angle and encapsulate the liberal mindset on all these issues, but most importantly environmental ones, remember this quote from a feminist wall mural I see in Cambridge, MA: “INDICATION OF HARM, NOT PROOF OF HARM IS OUR CALL TO ACTION”. Look well upon that quote...it sums up liberalism in one compact line.

If it is a economic or social issue, they begin to make policy and throw money at it without even considering for a single damned second if what they are doing is really going to produce the expected result. If it doesn’t help or makes things worse, they simply throw more money and legislation at the issue, without bothering to dismantle the agencies or defund what they did before that failed miserably. In this, you end up with Rent Control (a liberal invention which destroys the availability of affordable housing), Social Security (a liberal invention, a Ponzi scheme on a grand scale that gave people the false security they didn’t have to save for themselves) the Great Society, Welfare, School Busing, declining ability of students and failing schools, disintegration of the family and soon, socialism and Third World Squalor.

And folks, this new President, EXACTLY like the late, despised Mr. McNamara, is steeped up to his oversized jug-handled ears in the arrogance and ignorance of Liberalism.

[rlmorel]

"...Some persons fault the president for not having more ambitious plans to somehow prompt and guide Iranians toward regime change. That outcome is sometimes advocated, and its consequences confidently anticipated, by neoconservatives whose certitude about feasibility resembles that which, decades ago, neoconservatism was born to counter..."

This is where I disagree with George Will, whom I sometimes dislike and disagree with, because he falls into this intellectual blathering that is so cloaked in words that you have to read it too many times to understand it.

He would be well advised to remember the concepts in "Elements of Style" so some insignificant Freeper doesn't have to get irritated with him.

As a conservative, MY issue with Barack Obama's handling of the situation in Iran is COMPLETELY illustrated by contrasting his statements on the matter with Reagan's statement on the crackdown on workers in Poland:

Comparison: REAL President to FAKE President

REAL PRESIDENT
Ronald Reagan
Regarding Communist Oppression of Workers Unions
December 17, 1981

All the information that we have confirms that the imposition of martial law in Poland has led to the arrest and confinement, in prisons and detention camps, of thousands of Polish trade union leaders and intellectuals. Factories are being seized by security forces and workers beaten.

These acts make plain there's been a sharp reversal of the movement toward a freer society that has been underway in Poland for the past year and a half. Coercion and violation of human rights on a massive scale have taken the place of negotiation and compromise. All of this is in gross violation of the Helsinki Pact, to which Poland is a signatory.

It would be naive to think this could happen without the full knowledge and the support of the Soviet Union. We're not naive. We view the current situation in Poland in the gravest of terms, particularly the increasing use of force against an unarmed population and violations of the basic civil rights of the Polish people.

Violence invites violence and threatens to plunge Poland into chaos. We call upon all free people to join in urging the Government of Poland to reestablish conditions that will make constructive negotiations and compromise possible.

Certainly, it will be impossible for us to continue trying to help Poland solve its economic problems while martial law is imposed on the people of Poland, thousands are imprisoned, and the legal rights of free trade unions -- previously granted by the government -- are now denied. We've always been ready to do our share to assist Poland in overcoming its economic difficulties, but only if the Polish people are permitted to resolve their own problems free of internal coercion and outside intervention.

Our nation was born in resistance to arbitrary power and has been repeatedly enriched by immigrants from Poland and other great nations of Europe. So we feel a special kinship with the Polish people in their struggle against Soviet opposition to their reforms.

The Polish nation, speaking through Solidarity, has provided one of the brightest, bravest moments of modern history. The people of Poland are giving us an imperishable example of courage and devotion to the values of freedom in the face of relentless opposition. Left to themselves, the Polish people would enjoy a new birth of freedom. But there are those who oppose the idea of freedom, who are intolerant of national independence, and hostile to the European values of democracy and the rule of law

. Two Decembers ago, freedom was lost in Afghanistan; this Christmas, it's at stake in Poland. But the torch of liberty is hot. It warms those who hold it high. It burns those who try to extinguish it.

FAKE PRESIDENT
Barack Obama
Regarding Iranian Protests over Voting Irregularities
June 15, 2009

Obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran. And I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders will be; that we....

...respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football -- or discussions with the United States.

Having said all that, I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television. I think that the democratic process -- free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent -- all those are universal values and need to be respected. And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they're, rightfully, troubled.

My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place. We weren't on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can't state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election.

But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed. And I think it's important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

Now, with respect to the United States and our interactions with Iran, I've always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad's statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy -- diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries -- is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests, specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon; making sure that Iran is not exporting terrorist activity. Those are core interests not just to the United States but I think to a peaceful world in general.

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we'll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we've seen on the television over the last few days.

And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

Most illustrative is the use of the pronoun "I".

The pronoun “I” does not appear once in Reagan’s statement.

The pronoun “I” appears fourteen times in Obama’s statement.

Bottom line is that George Will seems to be missing the point, and the point is not that in emulation of Robert McNamara we should advocate sending troops into Iran and arming the protesters, but as a beacon of freedom in the world and a ostensible leader in that endeavor, we should have expressed open support as Reagan did for the Poles.

Instead, we get this mealy-mouthed, unbelievable crap about not meddling because we don't know what the outcome will be! UNBELIEVABLE!

How far we have fallen in such a short time.

[Scanian]

Actually, I’m glad that Hussein uses “I” so frequently because he speaks for himself when he advocates such mushy, even downright cowardly, foreign policy non-positions. He certainly isn’t speaking for me.

[Ann Archy]

We are going the way of ZIMBABWA!!!!!

[LS]

I just finished writing this section for a new (down the line) book, "A Patriot's History of the Modern World."

McNamara and Johnson, plus staff, were having debates about whether a road without trucks actually on it still constituted a "target." Unreal.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

“INDICATION OF HARM, NOT PROOF OF HARM IS OUR CALL TO ACTION”. Look well upon that quote...it sums up liberalism in one compact line.

If it is a economic or social issue, they begin to make policy and throw money at it without even considering for a single damned second if what they are doing is really going to produce the expected result. If it doesn’t help or makes things worse, they simply throw more money and legislation at the issue, without bothering to dismantle the agencies or defund what they did before that failed miserably. In this, you end up with Rent Control (a liberal invention which destroys the availability of affordable housing), Social Security (a liberal invention, a Ponzi scheme on a grand scale that gave people the false security they didn’t have to save for themselves that the government program was a trustworthy savings/investment vehicle), the Great Society, Welfare, School Busing, declining ability of students and failing schools, disintegration of the family and soon, socialism and Third World Squalor.

And folks, this new President, EXACTLY like the late, despised Mr. McNamara, is steeped up to his oversized jug-handled ears in the arrogance and ignorance of Liberalism.

Arrogance and self-interestedness, more like . . .

[rlmorel]

You are correct there. It is actually all three...

I do believe he is doing it out of an arrogant liberal mindset that he can lay his hands on the controls and make it all work.

I do believe that there is self-interest, as you point out.

But I do believe there is a great deal of ignorance, and when it all comes crashing down, it won’t be his fault. He will be gone, or he will blame it on someone else. But it will suprise him, and it will be due to ignorance.

I think to be able to conduct yourself appropriately both in and out of government, you need to have a grasp of history. That is my opinion. This is an area liberals are shockingly and dangerously deficient at, and it is by design.

To them, there are three problems, as I see it.

First, history is not important, except as a tool when it suits them.

Second, history begins today and now for them.

Third, any history they do embrace is often twisted and deformed. To this day, they think Hiss was not a spy, the Rosenbergs were innocent, and Ronald Reagan was dangerous.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Third, any history they do embrace is often twisted and deformed. To this day, they think Hiss was not a spy, the Rosenbergs were innocent, and Ronald Reagan was dangerous

. . . because to think anything else would be to face the fact that their nostrums aren't new - they only seem new because whoever tried them before died off without a trace.

[rlmorel]

I am still working my way through “The Road to Serfdom” (I am having trouble reading because my eyes are lousy) but what I have read so far is astounding.

Here is this guy, writing this book back in the 1940’s, talking about what the lessons of socialism are and how people continually forget those lessons of history, and...here we are again 65 years later, and every single word he writes is applicable TODAY with absolutely no transposition or word substitution (although I admit, I have to continually transpose “conservative” for “liberal”...)

By the way, I don’t know if I have ever told you how much I enjoy reading your posts on the media...the historical perspective you provide is very illuminating.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Here is this guy, writing this book back in the 1940’s, talking about what the lessons of socialism are and how people continually forget those lessons of history, and...here we are again 65 years later, and every single word he writes is applicable TODAY with absolutely no transposition or word substitution (although I admit, I have to continually transpose “conservative” for “liberal”...)

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.

The worst sufferer in this respect is the word ‘liberty’. It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it has been destroyed, this has been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have planners who promise us a ‘collective freedom’, which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians. ‘Collective freedom’ is not the freedom of the members of society, but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society that which he pleases. This is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1394906/posts?page=23#23

At the start of the Twentieth Century the term "liberal" meant the same in America as it still does in the rest of the world - essentially, what is called "conservatism" in American Newspeak. Of course we "American Conservatives" are not the ones who oppose development and liberty, so in that sense we are not conservative at all. We actually are liberals.

But in America, "liberalism" was given its American Newspeak - essentially inverted - meaning in the 1920s (source: Safire's New Political Dictionary). The fact that the American socialists have acquired a word to exploit is bad enough; the real disaster is that we do not now have a word which truly descriptive of our own political perspective. We only have the smear words which the socialists have assigned to us. And make no mistake, in America "conservative" is inherently a negative connotation just as surely as marketers love to boldly proclaim that the product which they are flogging is NEW!

I have my own Newspeak-English dictionary:

objective :

reliably promoting the interests of Big Journalism. (usage: always applied to journalists who are members in good standing; never applied to anyone but a journalist)

liberal :

see "objective," except that the usage is reversed: (usage: never applied to any working journalist)

progressive :

see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").

moderate:

see "liberal." (usage: same as for "liberal").

centrist :

see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").

conservative :

rejecting the idea that journalism is a higher calling than providing food, shelter, clothing, fuel, and security; adhering to the dictum of Theodore Roosevelt that: "It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena (usage: applies to people who - unlike those labeled liberal/progressive/moderate/centrist, cannot become "objective" by getting a job as a journalist, and probably cannot even get a job as a journalist.)(antonym:"objective")

right-wing :

see, "conservative."

conservative :

opposed to radical change of the sort which promote the idea that assigns authority to "liberals" while leaving the responsibility with those who work to a bottom line and therefore are subject to second guessing.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Earthdweller]

"Even among us we have planners who promise us a ‘collective freedom’, which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians.

[OB1kNOb]

The title reminds me of my favorite old Mad mazagine sign....

THIMK!

[WashingtonSource]

Know-it-alls-will-destroy-us-all bump

[PGalt]

Both of you FReepers are 1000x more enjoyable and rational than reading George F. Will.

(and I’d bet neither of you own a bowtie)

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Thanks for the compliment. But you'd lose the bet on the bow tie; I wear a black one when I sing in the chorus of The Messiah as Christmastime . . .

[rlmorel]

LOL...thank you for the compliment...I DO own one bow tie, but that was to a tux I bought at a consignment store years ago for $35, and...alas...I do not fit into it any more...:)

Will is obviously a smart guy, but he irritates the crap out of me sometimes.

At least he didn’t descend into a baseball metaphor...

[rlmorel]

And by the way...even remotely suggesting I am in the same league as CIC is a high compliment indeed...:)