Monthly Archives: October 2016

by Barry Kelly | October 17, 2016 · 7:44 am

The Professor – What is Freedom?

The Professor was going over his file of past lectures and editorials to get ready for his next honors class. He felt that he had to get the class thinking in more basic terms. The hubris dominating this political campaign was driving out the discussions on basic issues that are critical to the survival of democracy, much the same way “Gresham’s Law” states that “bad” currency of questionable value will drive ‘good’ currency out of circulation. Certainly old and alleged sexual charges and published purloined emails have dominated this campaign, he thought.

If citizens do not know what freedom is, how can they protect it or even know if they have lost it? Freedom is the existence of individual choices. Without individual choices, there is no freedom. Those who have lived seven or eight decades have seen, sometimes up close and personal, societies in which the basic choices Americans exercise every day were unheard of or imagined. Current Russia and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and some South American nations have tried various far-left ideologies. In every one of them, individual choices vanished.

North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, probably the best political organizer of the 20th century, had the North Vietnamese people organized into to a cascading staircase of political, economic, and social organizations. Everyone belonged to a peer organization with each peer group sending a delegate to the next higher group. There was no real individual choice.

Progressives and communists hate what capitalism and the free market stand for. They do not believe the forces of the free market are real and think greed is the only driving force of capitalism. Progressives will not believe the infinite number of choices made by a free people in a free competitive economy will result only in chaos. Instead, a small group of progressives can make decisions that will produce a vastly more efficient economy and much fairer distribution of wealth.

When you think about freedom, think about if the right of making choices is being taken from you and your family. Don’t be taken in by the words. They don’t mean anything. Look for the signs of freedom being eroded. Do government spokespeople tell the truth, or is their intent to mislead the people? Are there attempts to label dissenters as dangers to be silenced?

A few examples: The Clinton/Obama Administration’s desire to label people who do not believe manmade carbons cause climate change as “climate deniers.” The Administration is reported to have asked the Department of Justice to see if citizens who disagree with the cause of climate variations could be prosecuted. The Benghazi talking points, the benefits of the Iran deal, the claims for Obamacare, the misleading unemployment numbers, and the optimistic reports of the demise of ISIS are other examples of a government that is devoted to managing reports to the citizens.

The very essence of progressivism is to control choice because the political left believes it is chaos when people are free to choose their life’s occupation, their education, reading material, TV programs, news, religion, ways of raising children (including the choice to have children or not), health care, and the people who govern them. The current struggle in America between conservatives and liberals (the far-left liberals are progressives who now control the Democratic Party) is not over some obscure political difference. It is over who makes life’s choices, you or a progressive elite.

The Professor’s op-ed on the Middle East and the U.S.

In between honors classes one day, the Professor thought, “I just can’t stand it any longer. No one is telling the people the truth about the Middle East. Does the Obama Administration and the Clinton campaign think we are too dumb? Trump’s instincts are good, but he needs to bone up on the area. The Russians are not in the Middle East to fight ISIS and Putin is not about to make any deals that do not further his plan to hold a naval base on the Mediterranean and to be a major on the ground player in the oil patch. I just have to write an op-ed piece.”

He pulled his keyboard toward him, looked out over the bay, and began to write.

First, there are a couple of truths about our strategic past in the Middle East. Forget the lines and names drawn on maps of the Middle East. Think of the area divided between the Sunni Muslims and the Shia Muslims with the nation of Israel maintaining a stronghold in the midst of the struggle for dominance by the Shia and Sunnis. The Iranians are the leaders of the Shias and the Saudis, Arabs of the Gulf States and Egypt leading the Sunni opposition.

ISIS, al-Qaeda and their splinter groups are Sunni. The Obama-Clinton group has thrown American support to the Iranians, who want to use their new power to dominate the Middle East. President Obama always intended to follow the Shia/Iranian lead. That is why the abrupt pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq as soon as Obama came to power. The Iranians wanted the U.S. forces out of Iraq so that the Iraqi Shia could assume full control over the Iraqi military and economy and oust Sunnis from the military and government. (Remember, the Iraqi led Sunni government under Saddam Hussein fought a very bloody war against the Iranians.)

The Iraqi Shia government is now firmly allied with Iran. This is a government in name only. Iranians control all major moves in their drive to control a Shia empire of what is now Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. ISIS with all the terrible atrocities they have committed represented Sunni opposition to Iranian strategic goals. When they are destroyed, the strongest power on the ground will be Iran. When Mosel falls, it will be with the heavy involvement of Iranian weapons and ground forces. The Turks will stay within their territory and the only other viable fighting force, the Kurds, will be isolated with dreams of their own homeland shattered. With all of the talk from Washington about arming the Kurds, we never did. The Iranians and the Turks do not want the Kurds to be armed with modern weapons. All the arms we said were being sent to the Kurds went through the Baghdad Shia government that never sent them onward. The Obama Administration, of course, knew the Kurds would never receive the weapons. There is literally nothing the Iranians want that the Obama/Clinton group will not do their best to supply. Just look at the recent deal Obama made with Iran on their nuclear weapons program. While not called a treaty, that was what this deal is. Why take that route? Simply a way to avoid the need for Congressional ratification. We, the people, and Congress still have not seen all the pieces of this executive action.

On the Russian side, Putin is a modern day czar of Russia. His goal is to re-establish as much of the old Soviet Empire as possible. The weakness of the Obama presidency has given him a grand opening. For many centuries, Russian czars dreamed and planned to acquire a warm-water port for their navy. Without firing a shot or endangering Russian soldiers, he has acquired Tartus in Syria as a Russian warm-water port. That is now a fact. The fleet is there and weapons to defend it are in place. Putin will do what he must to support Assad. He is not in Syria to fight ISIS. Aleppo is the only evidence anyone should need. ISIS was not there but Syrian anti-Assad forces were. The city is now rubble as a result of Russian historic lack of concern for collateral deaths when their critical national interests are involved. Since Iran is the local protector and supporter of Assad and Syria, Putin will make any deal necessary with Iran to protect his naval base at Tartus and his new role in Middle Eastern oil. Obama’s plan for Iranian hegemony in the Middle East is on solid ground with both U.S. and Russia supporting Iran and the Shia Muslims.

The Professor and Political Realities

“Before I give you a short lecture on what I call ‘political realities,’ here is your assignment for our next class. Now that you are divided into two groups, each supporting either the conservative side or liberal side, each group must prepare a ten-minute speech and a TV ad. The group’s representative will deliver the speech. Visual aids are allowed, but it is the effectiveness of the message that counts.

“We have political parties because people want, or believe they want, something different from what they have now, while others want to defend and develop the existing way of governing. When you view politics for this perspective, you can identify basic issues and beliefs. I haven’t found many people to agree with my analysis, but I believe it to be accurate. You, of course, may disagree, but you must be able to defend your group’s position.

“I believe the drive toward centralization of nearly everything is rooted in the DNA of civilization. The motive of this need to seek centralization would probably be a good thing, if the process had some limit. But it does not. It continues until centralization reaches the breaking point where constant centralization creates an unmanageable entity. The need to have or, at least, to believe the process has created a controllable management structure where a small group of elites can create a better life for all by reaching the point where management is responsible to the will of the people sounds like a very desirable outcome.

“Unfortunately, it is not. The Department of Homeland Security is a good example. After the terrorist attack on 9/11, in a laudable intent to secure future safety by improving management accountability and effectiveness, several organizations that were already too big for effective management were combined. However, I think only the priests of centralization believe the head of DHS can or is improving security. The more likely result is that most of his time and energy are expended in trying to find out what is going on in his empire and how to satisfy the requirements of the president and Congress. Nevertheless, now that one person is in charge, the pushers of centralization believe improvements in security will routinely occur even with the almost weekly examples of bumbling by the managers of airport security. From the time of unwritten history, the Roman Empire’s rise and fall, to the present day, the process of centralization continues, modified only by the undeniable failure of a society, civilization, or a national government. This process can be found behind the constant failure of socialist nations.

“Behind the scenes battle the ‘founders and the guardians.’ This theme is easier to explain because it can be observed in both the public and private sector. The keywords are founders and guardians. Organizations in the beginning of their histories can point to the people who were the founders. With maturation, nearly all organizations slowly, but inexorably, move into the control of the guardians. These well-meaning, good people use the power of process to protect and perpetuate the organization they inherited. Process expertise does not involve the understanding or the furtherance of the founder’s mission, it is solely concerned with the way the mission is accomplished. You have all seen them. They are the enablers of the units who focus on personnel management, accounting, logistics, communications, and finance. Good people all and their skills are needed and respected.

But they should not supplant the line mission leaders. The downside is the effect of their process requirements on the effectiveness and direction of the line mission of the unit. Seldom can a person with process skills actually lead people engaged in the primary mission of the organization they serve. Yet this process affects all organizations, private and public.

My third theme is the most important. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, our founders, the separations of powers, and the blood and sweat of our ancestors all combine to make America a very special place. All of these elements rest on the ‘rule of law.’ When an administration like President Obama’s disregards the rule of law, they are trashing the very core of America’s existence.

The rule of law doesn’t provide total equality for all people. Slogans spouting sound bytes such as “a fair shot for everyone,” “equal opportunity for all,” and “everyone deserves a fair share” are the false promises that permeate socialist speeches. The rule of law does, however, provide equal protection under the law from the arbitrary excesses of government and the protection of life and property by the government. This protection must be provided equally to all citizens, all the time, regardless of wealth, economic stature, race, religion, or political position. Justice must be blind in its application to all. When it is not, our society will begin to unravel, for the rule of law is what holds our nation together. It is what finally triumphed over evils like slavery, racial and religious discrimination, and inequality of opportunity to be all you can be. This is unique to America. It did not arrive here with our waves of immigrants. Instead, it is what brought them to take the risks of moving to a new land.

“Ponder these three themes. Use them or develop your own. But you must be able to identify what is behind the sound bytes of our political parties. Class is over. See you all next week.”