Commentation by Caleb

Here is some more political science talking by Caleb.

People have been whining about taxes for as long as I can remember. Income taxes are unconstitutional, blah, blah, blah. Who cares, if rich people, as an organized group, didn’t want to pay taxes they wouldn't, and the government would crumble. Yes, everyone wishes they could keep just a little more money, and who can blame the rich for cringing every time that money that they with good conscience gave the government in order to maintain an ordered society is handed to a chronic ne'er-do-well, or public menace. For clinching fists at the thought of feeding, clothing, entertaining, providing state of the art medical care, educational training to the dregs of society because they chose to BE the destabilizing force that they pay the government to hold at bay?

Some of you may be aware that I have at various times voiced my support for a more Roman system of citizenship in which the right to vote is granted through military service, or wealth, although in the early days wealth was not a free pass. Many of you will now complain that that is not democratic, but lets face it. YOU DO NOT LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY. That's just a utopian pipe dream. This is a republic, and in a republic we have the right to reject the right to vote to any who do not qualify. We rejected slaves as property, minors as mentally and socially deficient, foreigners for obvious reasons, and for a long time anyone who couldn't read. (How could they fill out the ballot?)

Don't like that? Well let's see if you like this. Rome in addition to being a Democratic Republic in its most successful days was a Patrician Oligarchy. In other words, all of the poor, the week, the huddled masses could walk up to a rich man and beg for financial or material aid. (Not the government until Rome took a downward turn.) This rich man had the right to snub you, or grant you your fondest wishes. If you got snubbed you went to the next rich guy. These rich men kept hordes of commoners fed, clothed and sheltered in return for; you guessed it, a constituency. The richer, the kinder, the gentler the man was, the greater his constituency. This likely wouldn't get him elected, his constituency couldn't vote, but I did make him an effective force in business, the arts, and culture in general. Is there a difference here?

There wasn't in the early days of the United States. At the turn of the century a seat on the senate was a bought position. That's how the robber barons got there, although later when the dissolving of their life’s dreams left them plenty of time for more humanitarian pursuits.

The difference now is that the government has made this an inhuman function of society in which the hopes and dreams of the masses fall through the cracks of massive bureaucracy. He/She whom destroys our future no longer has to look us in the face to do so.

Talking with Caleb later, he clarified that his key point was that the wealthy and powerful have always had to support the systems within which they live. That is the nature of society. In America, we may have diffused the power a bit more through society by giving everyone the vote, but it is still the wealthy and the powerful who we vote for.

Caleb Responds to H. L. Mencken

Caleb has some comments on the Mencken Quote presented yesterday. Enjoy.

If we use education to reduce all citizenry to controllable norms and other governments use ignorance to keep the people from learning enough to know that maybe life could be better, and other governments use religion as a method of enforcing a whimsical detachment in their people then maybe people are just easily controlled, unoriginal, slobs for whom detached malcontent is the norm, and the governments no matter how much they plot and connive to keep people under their boot are nearly assuming an unoriginal, outdated, worldview that profits them nothing. Are then all social programs similarly useless ways of placating the already sedentary, and uncaring masses?

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Got some commentary by Caleb on a new article by George Monbiot, all the way from Merrie Olde England. Although merry is hardly a good word to describe Mr. Manbiot. He's not very happy, as the title of his new article reflects. "It will all End in Disaster."

He states " . . . it seems to me that the American and British governments have dragged us into a mess from which we might not emerge for many years. They have unlocked the spirit of war, and it could be unwilling to return to its casket until it has traversed the world." He is particularly pessimistic about what a postwar Iraq might look like.

Caleb responds by saying, "Monbiot suggests that brute force is the only way to keep the country together and that the US military will likely have to resort to measures similar to Saddams to preserve the nation.

Who says that we have to preserve Iraq? It would not be any more difficult to create 3 or 4 smaller countries based not upon western convenience but upon the will of their inhabitants. This would do two things. Fix the problems that occur in enforcing artificial boundaries set up after we broke up the middle east, and give places for mistrusted, and persecuted minorities from neighboring countries to settle in relative peace."

Caleb's idea is interesting, but one does wonder what sort of nations would emerge from the rubble, and if those nations would be willing to settle peacefully. There is also the problem of the Kurds. We've already largely promised Turkey not to create a Kurdish homeland--as it would inspire the Kurds in Turkey to rebel against the Government there. But it is an interesting rejection of colonialism.

America the Whatever You Need it to be to Make your Point

Article today at Commondreams by James Carroll, entitled America the Destroyer. Catchy title. Anyway in he speculates on what a "shock and awe" campaign against the United States would look like. "If Washington were the target of a ''shock and awe'' campaign, the US Capitol would now be rubble, along with that entire parade of becolumned federal buildings astride seven blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House a smoldering ruin (like Camp David -- and the Bush ranch house in Crawford, Texas). The Pentagon a fetid sinkhole, in-rushing waters of the adjacent Potomac River having snuffed the burning abyss. The vice president's residence at the head of Embassy Row in ruins. Bolling Air Force Base and Andrews Air Force Base on the Maryland side of the Potomac aflame. Fort Myers and the Navy Annex on the ridge of Arlington, Fort McNair in Southwest Washington and the Marine Barracks in Southeast, the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, and Walter Reed Hospital in far Northwest -- all on fire. CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., a smoking scar on the landscape."

Occasional commentator Caleb also read this article and had this comment.

"I was reading James Carroll's comments today at Common Dreams titled 'America the Destroyer'. He paints a vivid picture of the destruction of our nation's Capital in a shock and awe campaign designed to decapitate America's infrastructure, and then He asks a question.

This question is a singularly foolish one.

It is intended to villainize us for doing the same to Iraq by comparing our perfectly justified actions, as demonstrated by the changed minds of our overly optimistic human shields, with the destruction of one of the most humanitarian minded, generous, and moral governments in the world. The model of representative government to the world is being compared to a cruel tyrant who who is grooming replacements far more dastardly than even he himself, and ensuring their succession by pruning his infrastructure of competent and/or sane leadership. Iraq's government has already been decapitated. We need simply remove the virulent branches, and graft fruitful boughs onto the strong roots of the Middle East's most ancient and productive culture."

Caleb's point is well taken, although he perhaps oversells his point when he describes the United States as one of the most generous nations in the world. Certainly I hope that his optimism regarding the middle east will prove correct.

A Well Oiled Machine

Another comment by that commentator of commentators, Caleb.

How many of you play video games? Starcraft anyone? How many of you have played a game or two online? How many of you have been trounced by a cocky little 8 year old who held you under the boot of his massive but inferior zerg forces while he cackled evilly? If you have you should have learned this important lesson. Extremely powerful troops, even well trained troops do not win wars. Generals do. Now we have men weaned on the suffering death of past massive conflicts to guide us. To make sure that every American life is met with maximum yield, and that our sacrifice will not be, militarily, in vain. What happens when You get to be general by pointing lasers at people on training fields during frequent exercises, and dropping virtual bombs from high tech simulators? Do we want the 10 year old video tyrant of today to be running our armed forces tomorrow without the benefit of witnessing the terror of war first hand?

A military is like a car in Alabama. You leave it up on blocks too long and it falls apart. We must have experienced officers. It is our duty as Americans to stomp petty countries beneath our boot in order to preserve our military might, and necessary discipline.

Well, maybe I should tone that down a bit. This is why we police the world. This is why we still have the power to help those in need. In short, we have to fight someone. why not an evil dictator. Would you rather we invaded Canada. I know a few Canadians who would.

I'm not sure that giving our future Generals a taste of warfare is a good reason to invade Iraq, but I do see the logic in it. It goes along with the logic that each generation must experience war in order to hate it.

On the other hand, they do make everybody read "All Quiet on the Western Front" in high school.

A New Guest Commentator

Here are some comments from Caleb, a new commentator here at Make me a Commentator!!! joining the illustrious Brandy. Caleb says he wrote this because he was bored, but I think it's pretty good.

The problem with this whole war is that we are going about it the wrong way. That, in my opinion, is the problem with much of US foreign policy.

When referring to us policy there are two conservative points of view. 1). The US is the morally superior power and it is our duty to ensure the rights and privileges of humanity world wide, and 2). We matter more than anyone else, so who cares what they think. Of course, neither of these views is held unilaterally or exclusively by any significant segment of society. They are primarily mixed and matched with other ideologies and even with each other, but they are both correct and reasonable.

If we did not believe ourselves to be morally superior then we might as well admit to ourselves that we are a group of proud, ignorant, bottom feeders who are advancing a pointless conflict for the good of no-one not even ourselves. We should all turn tail and hide under the wings of terror as the proper and respectable alternative to our own misguided interests.

\And of course we matter more than anyone else. We're us. As ridiculous as that argument sounds who better to look after our own needs than we ourselves? I'm certain that I know my own best interests better than I know yours. Therefore, while I feel confident in propounding my own self interests I do not feel qualified to comment on the self interests of the peoples of the world, nor liberals, for we all know that liberals are a breed apart from the morally, intellectually, and in all other ways that matter superior conservatives.

And here it comes. A bit of dribbling from the fountain if intellectual reserve I call myself. What we get when we combine the two opposing views of conservative foreign politics is this. We can't police the world as much as we'd like to, not because we couldn't overthrow the world's minor powers one by one, but because it’s not effective. We tried it. It didn't work. Perhaps our meddling has gotten better in the past perhaps it hasn't. Maybe we graduated from assassination of troublesome leaders to nation building, but it hasn't worked yet. I don't put much stock in our recent efforts. We'll see. The following is a compromise:

Instead of assassinating leaders willy nilly, or replacing entire governments and expecting them to remain stable for any significant period of time why don't we just tell them they are going to die if they continue their actions. We don't need to threaten a war that the sneaky little vermin will be able to hide behind, killing thousands of young soldiers in their stead. Just one little bullet is all it takes. Dictators have never feared the lives of their subordinates, and they have never feared war so long as they could sit in their snug homes or, if it got to dangerous a dank little hole in the ground. And yet every one of them fears for his own life. Go figure.

Why wouldn't the world hate us just as much for assassinating leaders as pouring war forth upon the world in a reckless and self satisfying manor? They will, but then who cares what they think. I'm sure we can find a hired gun or two in the mountains of Montana.

One little quibble, Conservatives may be morally and intellectually superior to Liberals, but Liberals rock harder. What do you think? If you have any comments or responses to Calebs Comments, send them to me, and I might post them.