Part 2 Interview with Thomas Sowell
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=43680
[M]uch, IF NOT MOST, of the economic advancement of blacks occurred in the twenty years PRIOR to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Uncommon Knowledge Interview with Thomas Sowell (Part 2)
05/24/2011
Part 2 Interview with Thomas Sowell
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=43680
Part 2 Interview with Thomas Sowell
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=43680
Uncommon Knowledge Interview with Thomas Sowell (Part One)
5/23/11
Part 1 interview with Thomas Sowell
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=43653
Part 1 interview with Thomas Sowell
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=43653
Peter Robinson: Cui bono, who benefits from [rent control]? Thomas Sowell: Politicians most of all…. Because they get the reputation of being for the poor and the downtrodden and …. They are preventing the evil landlords from raising the rent… so they gain by that. Both the landlords and the tenants lose.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The 'Redevelopment' Hoax
by Thomas Sowell
Why are so many people who are opposed to development nevertheless in favor of "redevelopment"?
The short answer is that development involves decisions made in the market by large numbers of people in the general population, in their own personal interests, while redevelopment involves taking decisions out of the hands of the population at large and putting the power to make those decisions in the hands of elites.
Developers who build housing to sell to the public are the focus of many denunciations by elites in places like coastal California. But developers would not even exist if there were not vastly larger numbers of people ready to buy or rent what they build.
All these people who make the developers' work economically viable vanish into thin air in political rhetoric that is focused on the developer and his "greed."
The people who are against development dare not come right out and say in plain English that they want other people's desires squashed by the government, so that the desires of the small, self-congratulatory elites can prevail, while housing prices skyrocket because of the restricting on building.
If development is considered to be so bad, why is redevelopment considered to be good, by many of the same people?
Redevelopment imposes the supposedly superior wisdom and virtue of an elite on the rest of us. That is its ideological appeal to self-congratulatory elites.
Its political appeal is more mundane. By bulldozing low-income neighborhoods and replacing them with upscale malls and condos, local political leaders get more tax money into their coffers, offering more opportunities for them to do things that enhance their chances of being reelected.
A politically successful redevelopment project enables those who promoted it to show "before and after" photos of the neighborhood that has been bulldozed and replaced by shiny new buildings, tree-lined vistas and clearly upscale new housing. This is easily portrayed as a welcome new addition to the community, both aesthetically and economically.
In reality, what redevelopment does is transfer wealth from one place to another place, with no net addition to the wealth of the country as a whole. But it increases tax revenues in the local jurisdiction, which is what local politicians care about.
When money that would have been spent and taxed elsewhere is transferred into a particular jurisdiction, that is no net increase in tax revenues, or of jobs, in the country, however.
Why are so many people who are opposed to development nevertheless in favor of "redevelopment"?
The short answer is that development involves decisions made in the market by large numbers of people in the general population, in their own personal interests, while redevelopment involves taking decisions out of the hands of the population at large and putting the power to make those decisions in the hands of elites.
Developers who build housing to sell to the public are the focus of many denunciations by elites in places like coastal California. But developers would not even exist if there were not vastly larger numbers of people ready to buy or rent what they build.
All these people who make the developers' work economically viable vanish into thin air in political rhetoric that is focused on the developer and his "greed."
The people who are against development dare not come right out and say in plain English that they want other people's desires squashed by the government, so that the desires of the small, self-congratulatory elites can prevail, while housing prices skyrocket because of the restricting on building.
If development is considered to be so bad, why is redevelopment considered to be good, by many of the same people?
Redevelopment imposes the supposedly superior wisdom and virtue of an elite on the rest of us. That is its ideological appeal to self-congratulatory elites.
Its political appeal is more mundane. By bulldozing low-income neighborhoods and replacing them with upscale malls and condos, local political leaders get more tax money into their coffers, offering more opportunities for them to do things that enhance their chances of being reelected.
A politically successful redevelopment project enables those who promoted it to show "before and after" photos of the neighborhood that has been bulldozed and replaced by shiny new buildings, tree-lined vistas and clearly upscale new housing. This is easily portrayed as a welcome new addition to the community, both aesthetically and economically.
In reality, what redevelopment does is transfer wealth from one place to another place, with no net addition to the wealth of the country as a whole. But it increases tax revenues in the local jurisdiction, which is what local politicians care about.
When money that would have been spent and taxed elsewhere is transferred into a particular jurisdiction, that is no net increase in tax revenues, or of jobs, in the country, however.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Political Judges
by Thomas Sowell
Results of the recent elections showed that growing numbers of Americans are fed up with "public servants" who act as if they are public masters. This went beyond the usual objections to particular policies. It was the fact that policies were crammed down our throats, whether we liked them or not. In fact, laws were passed so fast that nobody had time to read them.
Whether these policies were good, bad or indifferent, the way they were imposed represented a more fundamental threat to the very principles of a self-governing people established by the Constitution of the United States.
Arrogant politicians who do this are dismantling the Constitution piecemeal-- which is to say, they are dismantling America.
The voters struck back, as they had to, if we are to keep the freedoms that define this country. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution, by getting rid of those who circumvent it or disregard it.
The same thing applies to judges. The runaway arrogance that politicians get when they have huge majorities in Congress is a more or less common arrogance among federal judges with lifetime tenure or state judges who are seldom defeated in elections to confirm their appointments to the bench.
It was a surprise to many-- and a shock to media liberals-- when three judges on Iowa's Supreme Court were voted off that court in the same recent elections in which a lot of politicians were also sent packing.
These judges had taken it upon themselves to rule that the voters of Iowa did not have the right to block attempts to change the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples. Here again, the particular issue-- so-called "gay marriage"-- was not as fundamental as the question of depriving the voting public of their right to decide what kinds of laws they want to live under.
That is ultimately a question of deciding what kind of country this is to be-- one ruled by "we the people" or one where the notions of an arrogant elite are to be imposed, whether the people agree or not.
Those who believe in gay marriage are free to vote for it. But, when they lose that vote, it is not the role of judges to nullify the vote and legislate from the bench. Judges who become politicians in robes often lie like politicians as well, claiming that they are just applying the Constitution, when they are in fact exercising powers that the Constitution never gave them.
If they are going to act like politicians, then they should be voted out like politicians.
Media liberals, who like what liberal judges do, spring to their defense. The media spin is that judges were voted off the bench because of "unpopular" decisions and that this threatens judicial "independence."
Results of the recent elections showed that growing numbers of Americans are fed up with "public servants" who act as if they are public masters. This went beyond the usual objections to particular policies. It was the fact that policies were crammed down our throats, whether we liked them or not. In fact, laws were passed so fast that nobody had time to read them.
Whether these policies were good, bad or indifferent, the way they were imposed represented a more fundamental threat to the very principles of a self-governing people established by the Constitution of the United States.
Arrogant politicians who do this are dismantling the Constitution piecemeal-- which is to say, they are dismantling America.
The voters struck back, as they had to, if we are to keep the freedoms that define this country. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution, by getting rid of those who circumvent it or disregard it.
The same thing applies to judges. The runaway arrogance that politicians get when they have huge majorities in Congress is a more or less common arrogance among federal judges with lifetime tenure or state judges who are seldom defeated in elections to confirm their appointments to the bench.
It was a surprise to many-- and a shock to media liberals-- when three judges on Iowa's Supreme Court were voted off that court in the same recent elections in which a lot of politicians were also sent packing.
These judges had taken it upon themselves to rule that the voters of Iowa did not have the right to block attempts to change the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples. Here again, the particular issue-- so-called "gay marriage"-- was not as fundamental as the question of depriving the voting public of their right to decide what kinds of laws they want to live under.
That is ultimately a question of deciding what kind of country this is to be-- one ruled by "we the people" or one where the notions of an arrogant elite are to be imposed, whether the people agree or not.
Those who believe in gay marriage are free to vote for it. But, when they lose that vote, it is not the role of judges to nullify the vote and legislate from the bench. Judges who become politicians in robes often lie like politicians as well, claiming that they are just applying the Constitution, when they are in fact exercising powers that the Constitution never gave them.
If they are going to act like politicians, then they should be voted out like politicians.
Media liberals, who like what liberal judges do, spring to their defense. The media spin is that judges were voted off the bench because of "unpopular" decisions and that this threatens judicial "independence."
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The "Gridlock" Bogeyman
by Thomas Sowell
Whenever the party that controls the White House does not also control Capitol Hill, political pundits worry that there will be "gridlock" in Washington, so that the government cannot solve the nation's problems.
Almost never is that fear based on what actually happens when there is divided government, compared to what happens when one party has a monopoly of both legislative and executive branches.
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, instead of its usual deficits, there was divided government. That was when the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, and Bill Clinton was in the White House. The media called it "the Clinton surplus."
By the same token, some of the worst laws ever passed were passed when one party had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, as well as being led by their own President of the United States. ObamaCare is a product of the kind of arrogance that so much power breeds.
It was the same story back in the famous "first hundred days" of the New Deal in 1933. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 clamped down on the American economy the kind of pervasive government control seldom seen outside of totalitarian countries.
It was the ObamaCare of its time, but covering industries right down to local dry cleaners. One man was sent to jail for charging less than the government-specified price for pressing a suit of clothes. This typified the mindset of the New Deal.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court eventually declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. But, before that happened, the N.I.R.A. probably did more to prevent the economy from recovering from the Great Depression than any other law or policy. Even liberal icon John Maynard Keynes said at the time that the N.I.R.A. "probably impedes recovery."
You cannot tell what effect a law or policy will have by what politicians call it, whether they label it a "recovery" program or a "stimulus" program.
Those who fear gridlock in Washington today implicitly assume that government actions are needed to "solve" the economy's "problems." That assumption has been so pervasive over the past 80 years that many people fail to realize that the republic existed for nearly twice that long before the federal government intervened to get the economy out of a recession or depression.
During all that time, no depression ever lasted even half as long as the Great Depression of the 1930s, when first President Hoover and then President Roosevelt intervened.
For most of the history of this country, there was no Federal Reserve System, which was established in 1914 to prevent bank failures and the bad effects of large expansions or contractions of the supply of money and credit. But bank failures in the 1930s exceeded anything ever seen before the Fed was established. So did the contraction of money and credit during the Great Depression.
The seductive notion that some Big Daddy in Washington can solve our problems for us-- whether healing the sick, preventing poverty or "growing the economy"-- is encouraged by politicians for obvious reasons, and the media echo the idea.
Both in Washington and in the media, there is virtually zero interest in comparing what actually happens when the federal government intervenes in the economy and when it does not.
More than a century and a half of ignoring downturns in the economy never produced a depression as deep or as long as the 1930s depression, with its many federal interventions, first under Herbert Hoover and then under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The unemployment rate was 6.3 percent when the first big intervention took place, during the Hoover administration. It later peaked at 25 percent, but its fluctuations were always in double digits throughout the 1930s, as FDR tried one thing after another. As late as the spring of 1939, nearly a decade after the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment hit 20 percent again.
It is not a matter of faith that a market economy can recover on its own. It is a matter of faith that politicians speed recovery. But there is no way that Barack Obama is going to stop intervening in the economy unless he gets stopped. Only gridlock can do that.
_______
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
Whenever the party that controls the White House does not also control Capitol Hill, political pundits worry that there will be "gridlock" in Washington, so that the government cannot solve the nation's problems.
Almost never is that fear based on what actually happens when there is divided government, compared to what happens when one party has a monopoly of both legislative and executive branches.
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, instead of its usual deficits, there was divided government. That was when the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, and Bill Clinton was in the White House. The media called it "the Clinton surplus."
By the same token, some of the worst laws ever passed were passed when one party had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, as well as being led by their own President of the United States. ObamaCare is a product of the kind of arrogance that so much power breeds.
It was the same story back in the famous "first hundred days" of the New Deal in 1933. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 clamped down on the American economy the kind of pervasive government control seldom seen outside of totalitarian countries.
It was the ObamaCare of its time, but covering industries right down to local dry cleaners. One man was sent to jail for charging less than the government-specified price for pressing a suit of clothes. This typified the mindset of the New Deal.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court eventually declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. But, before that happened, the N.I.R.A. probably did more to prevent the economy from recovering from the Great Depression than any other law or policy. Even liberal icon John Maynard Keynes said at the time that the N.I.R.A. "probably impedes recovery."
You cannot tell what effect a law or policy will have by what politicians call it, whether they label it a "recovery" program or a "stimulus" program.
Those who fear gridlock in Washington today implicitly assume that government actions are needed to "solve" the economy's "problems." That assumption has been so pervasive over the past 80 years that many people fail to realize that the republic existed for nearly twice that long before the federal government intervened to get the economy out of a recession or depression.
During all that time, no depression ever lasted even half as long as the Great Depression of the 1930s, when first President Hoover and then President Roosevelt intervened.
For most of the history of this country, there was no Federal Reserve System, which was established in 1914 to prevent bank failures and the bad effects of large expansions or contractions of the supply of money and credit. But bank failures in the 1930s exceeded anything ever seen before the Fed was established. So did the contraction of money and credit during the Great Depression.
The seductive notion that some Big Daddy in Washington can solve our problems for us-- whether healing the sick, preventing poverty or "growing the economy"-- is encouraged by politicians for obvious reasons, and the media echo the idea.
Both in Washington and in the media, there is virtually zero interest in comparing what actually happens when the federal government intervenes in the economy and when it does not.
More than a century and a half of ignoring downturns in the economy never produced a depression as deep or as long as the 1930s depression, with its many federal interventions, first under Herbert Hoover and then under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The unemployment rate was 6.3 percent when the first big intervention took place, during the Hoover administration. It later peaked at 25 percent, but its fluctuations were always in double digits throughout the 1930s, as FDR tried one thing after another. As late as the spring of 1939, nearly a decade after the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment hit 20 percent again.
It is not a matter of faith that a market economy can recover on its own. It is a matter of faith that politicians speed recovery. But there is no way that Barack Obama is going to stop intervening in the economy unless he gets stopped. Only gridlock can do that.
_______
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Signs of the Times
by Thomas Sowell
If you could spend vast amounts of other people's money just by saying a few magic words, wouldn't you be tempted to do it? Barack Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money just by using the magic words "stimulus" and "jobs."
It doesn't matter politically that the stimulus is not actually stimulating and that the unemployment rate remains up near double-digit levels, despite all the spending and all the rhetoric about jobs. And of course nothing negative will ever matter to those who are part of the Obama cult, including many in the media.
But, for the rest of us, there is a lot to think about in the economic disaster that we are in.
Not only has all the runaway spending and rapid escalation of the deficit to record levels failed to make any real headway in reducing unemployment, all this money pumped into the economy has also failed to produce inflation. The latter is a good thing in itself but its implications are sobering.
How can you pour trillions of dollars into the economy and not even see the price level go up significantly? Economists have long known that it is not just the amount of money, but also the speed with which it circulates, that affects the price level.
Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that the velocity of circulation of money in the American economy has plummeted to its lowest level in half a century. Money that people don't spend does not cause inflation. It also does not stimulate the economy.
The current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek has a feature article about businesses that are just holding on to huge sums of money. They say, for example, that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer is holding on to $26 billion. If so, there should not be any great mystery as to why they don't invest it.
With the Obama administration being on an anti-business kick, boasting of putting their foot on some business' neck, and the president talking about putting his foot on another part of the anatomy, with Congress coming up with more and more red tape, more mandates and more heavy-handed interventions in businesses, would you risk $26 billion that you might not even be able to get back, much less make any money on the deal?
Pfizer is not unique. Banks have cut back on lending, despite all the billions of dollars that were dumped into them in the name of "stimulus." Consumers have also cut back on spending.
For the first time, more gold is being bought as an investment to be held as a hedge against a currently non-existent inflation than is being bought by the makers of jewelry. There may not be any inflation now, but eventually that money is going to start moving, and so will the price level.
Despite a big decline in the amount of gold used to make jewelry, the demand for gold as an investment has risen so steeply as to more than make up for the reduced demand for gold jewelry, and has in fact pushed the price of gold to record high levels.
What does all this say? That people don't know what to expect next from this administration, which seldom lets a month go by without some new anti-business laws, policies or rhetoric.
When you hire somebody in this environment, you know what you have agreed to pay them and what additional costs there may be for their health insurance or other benefits. But you have no way of knowing what additional costs the politicians in Washington are going to impose, when they are constantly coming up with new bright ideas for imposing more mandates on business.
One of the little noticed signs of what is going on has been the increase in the employment of temporary workers. Businesses have been increasingly meeting their need for labor by hiring temporary workers and working their existing employees overtime, instead of hiring new people.
Why? Because temporary workers usually don't get health insurance or other benefits, and working existing employees overtime doesn't add to the cost of their benefits.
There is no free lunch-- and the biggest price of all is paid by people who are unemployed because politicians cannot leave the economy alone to recover, as the American economy has repeatedly recovered faster when left alone than when politicians decided that they have to "do something."
---------------
Thomas Sowell's Biography
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
TOWNHALL DAILY: Sign up today and receive Thomas Sowell and Townhall.com's daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.
©Creators Syndicate
If you could spend vast amounts of other people's money just by saying a few magic words, wouldn't you be tempted to do it? Barack Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money just by using the magic words "stimulus" and "jobs."
It doesn't matter politically that the stimulus is not actually stimulating and that the unemployment rate remains up near double-digit levels, despite all the spending and all the rhetoric about jobs. And of course nothing negative will ever matter to those who are part of the Obama cult, including many in the media.
But, for the rest of us, there is a lot to think about in the economic disaster that we are in.
Not only has all the runaway spending and rapid escalation of the deficit to record levels failed to make any real headway in reducing unemployment, all this money pumped into the economy has also failed to produce inflation. The latter is a good thing in itself but its implications are sobering.
How can you pour trillions of dollars into the economy and not even see the price level go up significantly? Economists have long known that it is not just the amount of money, but also the speed with which it circulates, that affects the price level.
Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that the velocity of circulation of money in the American economy has plummeted to its lowest level in half a century. Money that people don't spend does not cause inflation. It also does not stimulate the economy.
The current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek has a feature article about businesses that are just holding on to huge sums of money. They say, for example, that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer is holding on to $26 billion. If so, there should not be any great mystery as to why they don't invest it.
With the Obama administration being on an anti-business kick, boasting of putting their foot on some business' neck, and the president talking about putting his foot on another part of the anatomy, with Congress coming up with more and more red tape, more mandates and more heavy-handed interventions in businesses, would you risk $26 billion that you might not even be able to get back, much less make any money on the deal?
Pfizer is not unique. Banks have cut back on lending, despite all the billions of dollars that were dumped into them in the name of "stimulus." Consumers have also cut back on spending.
For the first time, more gold is being bought as an investment to be held as a hedge against a currently non-existent inflation than is being bought by the makers of jewelry. There may not be any inflation now, but eventually that money is going to start moving, and so will the price level.
Despite a big decline in the amount of gold used to make jewelry, the demand for gold as an investment has risen so steeply as to more than make up for the reduced demand for gold jewelry, and has in fact pushed the price of gold to record high levels.
What does all this say? That people don't know what to expect next from this administration, which seldom lets a month go by without some new anti-business laws, policies or rhetoric.
When you hire somebody in this environment, you know what you have agreed to pay them and what additional costs there may be for their health insurance or other benefits. But you have no way of knowing what additional costs the politicians in Washington are going to impose, when they are constantly coming up with new bright ideas for imposing more mandates on business.
One of the little noticed signs of what is going on has been the increase in the employment of temporary workers. Businesses have been increasingly meeting their need for labor by hiring temporary workers and working their existing employees overtime, instead of hiring new people.
Why? Because temporary workers usually don't get health insurance or other benefits, and working existing employees overtime doesn't add to the cost of their benefits.
There is no free lunch-- and the biggest price of all is paid by people who are unemployed because politicians cannot leave the economy alone to recover, as the American economy has repeatedly recovered faster when left alone than when politicians decided that they have to "do something."
---------------
Thomas Sowell's Biography
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
TOWNHALL DAILY: Sign up today and receive Thomas Sowell and Townhall.com's daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.
©Creators Syndicate
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A Sad Day (General Stanley McChrystal's Resignation)
by Thomas Sowell
The flap about General Stanley McChrystal's "resignation" was nobody's finest hour. But there are some painful lessons in all this that go beyond any of the individuals involved-- the general, the president or any of the officials at the Pentagon or the State Department.
What is far more important than all these individuals put together are the lives of the tens of thousands of Americans fighting in Afghanistan. What is even more important is the national security of this country.
It is certainly not politic for a general or his staff to express their contempt for civilian authorities publicly. But what is far more important-- from the standpoint of national security-- is whether what those authorities have done deserves contempt.
My hope is that General McChrystal will write a book about his experiences in Afghanistan-- and in Washington. The public needs to know what is really going on, and they are not likely to get that information from politicians.
This is, after all, an administration that waited for months last year before acting on General McChrystal's urgent request for 40,000 more troops, which he warned would be necessary to prevent the failure of the mission in Afghanistan. He got 30,000 eventually-- and a public statement by President Obama about when he wants to start withdrawing American troops from that country.
In no previous period of history has an American president announced a timetable for pulling out troops. They may have had a timetable in mind, but none of these presidents was irresponsible enough to tell the world-- including our enemies-- when our troops would be leaving.
Such information encourages our enemies, who know that they need only wait us out before they can take over, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere. At the same time, it undermines our allies, who know that relying on the United States is dangerous in the long run, and that they had better make the best deal they can get with our enemies.
But the worst aspect of the national security policy of this administration is its clear intention to do nothing that has any realistic chance of stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. This may be the most grossly irresponsible policy in all of history, because it can leave this generation-- and future generations-- of Americans at the mercy of terrorists who have no mercy and who cannot be deterred, as the Soviet Union was deterred.
All the current political theater about "international sanctions" is unlikely to make the slightest difference to Iran. Nor is the administration itself likely to expect it to. What then is its purpose? To fool the American people into thinking that they are doing something serious when all that they are doing is putting on a charade by lining up countries to agree to actions that they all know will not have any real effect.
There is another aspect to General McChrystal's "resignation."
Everyone seems to be agreed that Stanley McChrystal has been a soldier's soldier-- someone who knows what to do on a battlefield and is not afraid to put himself in danger to do it.
Do we need more generals like this or do we need political generals who know how to cultivate Washington politicians, in order to advance their own careers?
Some people see a parallel between McChrystal's "resignation" and President Harry Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur. No two situations are ever exactly the same, but some of the parallels are striking.
MacArthur was proud not only of his military victories but also of the fact that he won those victories with lower casualty rates among his troops than other generals had. But General MacArthur too was not always discreet in what he said, and also had reasons to have contempt for politicians, going all the way back to FDR, who cut the army's budget in the 1930s, while Nazi Germany and imperial Japan were building up huge military machines that would kill many an American before it was all over.
If we are creating an environment where only political generals can survive, what will that mean for America's ability to win military victories without massive casualty rates? Or to win military victories at all?
_______
Thomas Sowell's Biography
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
©Creators Syndicate
The flap about General Stanley McChrystal's "resignation" was nobody's finest hour. But there are some painful lessons in all this that go beyond any of the individuals involved-- the general, the president or any of the officials at the Pentagon or the State Department.
What is far more important than all these individuals put together are the lives of the tens of thousands of Americans fighting in Afghanistan. What is even more important is the national security of this country.
It is certainly not politic for a general or his staff to express their contempt for civilian authorities publicly. But what is far more important-- from the standpoint of national security-- is whether what those authorities have done deserves contempt.
My hope is that General McChrystal will write a book about his experiences in Afghanistan-- and in Washington. The public needs to know what is really going on, and they are not likely to get that information from politicians.
This is, after all, an administration that waited for months last year before acting on General McChrystal's urgent request for 40,000 more troops, which he warned would be necessary to prevent the failure of the mission in Afghanistan. He got 30,000 eventually-- and a public statement by President Obama about when he wants to start withdrawing American troops from that country.
In no previous period of history has an American president announced a timetable for pulling out troops. They may have had a timetable in mind, but none of these presidents was irresponsible enough to tell the world-- including our enemies-- when our troops would be leaving.
Such information encourages our enemies, who know that they need only wait us out before they can take over, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere. At the same time, it undermines our allies, who know that relying on the United States is dangerous in the long run, and that they had better make the best deal they can get with our enemies.
But the worst aspect of the national security policy of this administration is its clear intention to do nothing that has any realistic chance of stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. This may be the most grossly irresponsible policy in all of history, because it can leave this generation-- and future generations-- of Americans at the mercy of terrorists who have no mercy and who cannot be deterred, as the Soviet Union was deterred.
All the current political theater about "international sanctions" is unlikely to make the slightest difference to Iran. Nor is the administration itself likely to expect it to. What then is its purpose? To fool the American people into thinking that they are doing something serious when all that they are doing is putting on a charade by lining up countries to agree to actions that they all know will not have any real effect.
There is another aspect to General McChrystal's "resignation."
Everyone seems to be agreed that Stanley McChrystal has been a soldier's soldier-- someone who knows what to do on a battlefield and is not afraid to put himself in danger to do it.
Do we need more generals like this or do we need political generals who know how to cultivate Washington politicians, in order to advance their own careers?
Some people see a parallel between McChrystal's "resignation" and President Harry Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur. No two situations are ever exactly the same, but some of the parallels are striking.
MacArthur was proud not only of his military victories but also of the fact that he won those victories with lower casualty rates among his troops than other generals had. But General MacArthur too was not always discreet in what he said, and also had reasons to have contempt for politicians, going all the way back to FDR, who cut the army's budget in the 1930s, while Nazi Germany and imperial Japan were building up huge military machines that would kill many an American before it was all over.
If we are creating an environment where only political generals can survive, what will that mean for America's ability to win military victories without massive casualty rates? Or to win military victories at all?
_______
Thomas Sowell's Biography
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
©Creators Syndicate
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Degeneration of Democracy
by Thomas Sowell
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in Constitutional government. And, without Constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a "crisis"-- which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to expand the government's power.
That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's restrictions on the printing of money.
At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the German people." That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people-- indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.
Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power-- versus the rule of law and the preservation of freedom-- are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in Constitutional government. And, without Constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a "crisis"-- which, as the president's chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to expand the government's power.
That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's restrictions on the printing of money.
At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the German people." That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people-- indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars" controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.
Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power-- versus the rule of law and the preservation of freedom-- are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Character of Nations
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In an age that values cleverness over wisdom, it is not surprising that many superficial but clever books get more attention than a wise book like "The Character of Nations" by Angelo Codevilla, even though the latter has far more serious implications for the changing character of our own nation.
The real point is to show what kinds of behaviors produce what kinds of consequences — in the economy, in the family, in the government and in other aspects of human life. Nor do the repercussions stop there. Government policies are not only affected by the culture of the country but can in turn have a major impact on that culture, for good or ill.
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