Month: August 2021

A Parable of Sheep and Wolves

Sheep are of two kinds. There are those (dumb sheep) who wish for peace but are unwilling to do what it takes to attain and maintain it. And there are those (smart sheep) who understand what follows.

Wolves are of two kinds. There are those (dumb wolves) who don’t care about peace, and whose natural inclination is to dominate and savage others; sheep are their natural prey. There are those (smart wolves) who understand that they can lead better lives if they cooperate with sheep.

Smart sheep understand that they can keep dumb wolves at bay if they retain the services of smart wolves. This is possible because, as peaceable creatures, sheep are good at cooperating for their mutual benefit and therefore enriching themselves. Smart sheep are discerning enough to hire smart wolves who understand that what harms the sheep harms them (through loss of lucrative employment). Thus a bargain may be struck that keeps the bad wolves at bay, while the smart sheep and their smart wolf hirelings enjoy the fruits of mutually beneficial cooperation.

There are, however, a lot of dumb sheep who don’t understand that their peace and prosperity depends on (a) keeping bad wolves at bay and (b) hiring smart wolves for that purpose. Some dumb sheep, despite the hard lessons of experience, cannot believe that there are bad wolves, or that the bad wolves will harm them. Other dumb sheep, despite the lessons of history, cannot bring themselves to hire smart wolves because they are wolves. (Those dumb sheep are the kind who believe that a drawing of a gun is somehow an act of violence, that a man can bear children, etc., etc.).

When dumb sheep dominate, all sheep suffer. When smart sheep dominate, dumb sheep call them “nazis” for hiring wolves and keeping the peace.

He Said What?

From National Review:

“At a Pentagon briefing Wednesday [August 18], when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was asked about the U.S. military’s capability to get its citizens out of Afghanistan, his answer was jaw-dropping: “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people. You have to watch Austin deliver this line to grasp its full air of defeatism about a place where our military has moved about with some impunity for two decades….

The best Austin could offer was a promise to try, at least for a while: “We’re gonna get everyone that we can possibly evacuate evacuated, and I’ll do that as long as we possibly can, until the clock runs out, or we run out of capability. . . . I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul.”

Of course he has the capability. He has the whole frigging military might of the U.S. to call upon. If he can’t call upon it, it’s because he doesn’t want to or because his “commander-in-chief” won’t let him.

If it’s the former, he should be keelhauled. If it’s the latter, he (and every general and flag officer) should resign in protest. And Biden should be impeached, convicted, drawn, and quartered.

This is right up there with the worst foreign policy/defense failures that I’ve witnessed in my lifetime of 80 years, which is saying a lot because there have been plenty of them. It may not be on the scale of the surrenders in Korea and Vietnam, but — beyond the abandonment of Americans (and Afghans who aided the U.S.) — the debacle in Afghanistan gives aid and comfort to every enemy and potential enemy of the U.S. And it does so at a crucial moment, when those enemies are building their own forces while ours are shrinking — though not as fast as the cojones of U.S. “leaders”.

The Way Ahead?

Afghanistan is the latest is a string of American military failures since World War II: Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq I (Saddam could have been removed but wasn’t), Somalia, 9/11 (a failure in itself), Iraq II, and Afghanistan. (Have I missed any?)

Why the failures? A combination of impetuousness and lack of resolve. Both go with the U.S. system of governance, which (except for World War II) results in frequent shifts of direction and is unduly beholden to “popular” (i.e., media-driven) opinion.

This will not change. It will only get worse. Unless there arises an immediate, existential threat (as in 1941). It must be a threat that is clearly dangerous enough to stiffen the resolve of U.S. (and Western) leaders and to overcome the anti-war, anti-defense bias of the media. But, even then, a sudden burst of resolve by U.S. (and Western) leaders may not be enough. Given technological advances since 1941, an enemy could probably cripple the West (e.g., see EMP) before U.S. and NATO forces and countermeasures can be mobilized.

In sum, monolithic regimes (e.g., China) can play the long game. The West cannot because of its “democratic” politics. Even a Churchill, if one were to arise, probably couldn’t salvage “democracy”.

But by the time that China (or an alliance of convenience led by China) is ready to bring the West to its knees, an outright attack of some kind won’t be necessary. The cultural and political rot will have burrowed so deeply into the the West’s psyche that World War III will be a walkover. A sniveling, hand-wringing affair presaged by Biden’s performance in withdrawing from Afghanistan and blaming others for his own failure.

And it won’t be a walkover for the West.

The Coronavirus: A Case Study in the Destructiveness of Government Action?

There is a long list of things that government does to make life worse for people, even in nominally free countries. Leading that list is the strongly negative economic effect of government spending and regulation.

But government, by and large, gets a pass because it is assumed to be acting in the best interest of the citizenry, and with the consent of the citizenry. That assumption is wrong because government acts in its own interest — or, rather, in the interests of its principal actors and agents. (There’s a massive literature about this, called public-choice economics.)

Even when politician and bureaucrats believe that they are serving the interests of the citizenry, they must do so by penalizing many for the benefit of some. The benefits bestowed on favored citizens (and, increasingly, non-citizens) are paid for not only by the disfavored but also by many of favored. (There’s no such thing as a free lunch.)

In fact, politicians and bureaucrats advance those interests which are congruent with their own. And they do so in order to retain power, which is arguably their overarching interest.

To seem to be effective, and thus to retain power, it is the instinct of most politicians (and bureaucrats) to do something. And doing something, as noted above, can have worse consequences than doing nothing and letting free people strive together in the service of their own interests.

Which brings me to the coronavirus, or the string of coronaviruses that has developed through mutation and survival of the fittest (i.e., strains that are increasingly resistant to vaccines). It has been assumed that the citizenry would be best served through governmental edicts such as mask-wearing, social distancing, lockdowns, and, ultimately, involuntary vaccinations.

But there is an alternative hypothesis: Such measures have merely delayed the inevitable and made it worse by creating the conditions for the evolution of more contagious and perhaps deadlier strains of the coronavirus. Under that hypothesis, if the first stage of the coronavirus had been allowed to run rampant, herd immunity would have been achieved. The most vulnerable among us would have died or suffered at length before recovering (and then, perhaps, only partially). But that would have happened in any case.

Widespread exposure to the disease would have meant the natural immunization of most of the populace through exposure to the coronavirus and the development of antibodies through that exposure — which, for most of the populace, isn’t lethal or debilitating.

Natural immunization (and thus herd immunity) didn’t happen because of mask-wearing, social distancing, lockdowns, and forced vaccinations (governmentally encouraged, even if nominally private). And so, the coronavirus is becoming deadlier instead of dying out on its own.

In the end, millions of people will have suffered and died needlessly because politicians and bureaucrats couldn’t (and can’t) resist the urge to do something — and because they have the power to make something happen.

Related reading: Brian McGlinchey, “Lockdowns, Masks and The Illusion of Government Control Over Covid“, Stark Realities, August 13, 2021