The Price of Democracy

For many of us, democracy is seen as an unalloyed good, the only conceivable form of government. However, history tells us that all forms of government have their day, until they are swept away when their characteristic excesses become unbearable.

Ross Douthat reminds us that democracy and nationalism are a particularly potent combination:

More important, though, this is a familiar story for the modern world as a whole — a case of what National Review’s John Derbyshire calls “modernity versus diversity.” For all the bright talk about multicultural mosaics, the age of globalization has also been an age of unprecedented religious and racial sorting — sometimes by choice, more often at gunpoint. Indeed, the causes of democracy and international peace have often been intimately tied to ethnic cleansing: both have gained ground not in spite of mass migrations and mass murders, but because of them.

It is easy to forget that German people lived everywhere in Eastern Europe until Stalin sent them all packing. Once they were all gone, there wasn't as much to fight about anymore.

Volkdeutsche

London Riots Spread to Bern

Harold Fish

AZ Central has a good article on the aftermath of Harold Fish's shooting of Grant Kuenzli.

He had gone through training to ready himself for such a scenario. But Fish was not prepared for what was to follow.

He was put on trial and found guilty of murder. He was imprisoned. He faced the possibility of a civil trial from Kuenzli's family. He still finds himself in deep debt to pay his attorneys, who were able to get an appellate court to toss his conviction in 2009.

"What nobody teaches is what happens when you use that firearm," Fish said, speaking from his Glendale home. "They focus on you surviving the incident."

...

Fish's conviction was tossed out by the Arizona Court of Appeals, which ruled that the jury wasn't told enough about Kuenzli's violent past or the aggressive nature of the dogs and didn't get proper instructions about what constitutes an attack.

Fish was released from prison in July 2009. Prosecutors said they would not prosecute him again.

Upon his release, Kuenzli's sister, Linda Almeter, told The Republic that she didn't want Fish free and that he never took responsibility for his act. "My brother can never reclaim his life," she said.

Fish has his freedom, but he can't recoup the dollars he spent fighting the case. He took out a second mortgage on his house. Relatives did the same with theirs, including his retired father. Fish estimates he spent about $700,000 on legal fees. He expects he'll die before all of it is paid back.

Shooting someone is very expensive.

Tom Clancy Dead or Alive Review

by Tom Clancy with Grant Blackwood
$28.95; 950 pages

Tom Clancy had reportedly given up novel writing with The Teeth of the Tiger, but clearly he has decided to return to the field with Dead or Alive. This novel picks up where The Teeth of the Tiger left off, with Jack Ryan Jr. taking the field to pursue an Osama bin Laden analog named the Emir.

Clancy made his name writing technologically descriptive espionage novels, and this work continues that body of work. What has changed is the emphasis has gradually shifted from technological geekery to politics. This process started at least with Executive Orders in 1996, when Clancy attempted to answer the question, "what do we need in a President?"

The change has happened quite naturally. As the Cold War drew to a close, the political questions that had been frozen by the Seventy Years War with the Soviet Union began to need answers. Since Clancy's books originally specialized in the end of the Cold War, that transition weighed heavily on the minds of his characters, and thus by proxy his own.

Dead or Alive feels like an attempt to answer the questions posed by 9-11 and the subsequent War on Terror: What measures are necessary to protect the American people? How should we structure the organizations at the pointy end of the spear? What constraints must they operate under? The novels since at least Rainbow Six have been Clancy's answer.

John Reilly said of Executive Orders:

The fact is that Executive Orders really is not a techno-shot-’em-up at all. It is a novel of ideas. Some of them are naive ideas. Some of them are bad ideas. Many of them are commonplaces. Nevertheless, Executive Orders does ask questions that ought to be part of the political landscape in the United States but are not. Someone as variously well-informed as Tom Clancy would no doubt be offended if he were told that his writings were examples of the popular mind at work. However, it might be just to say that this book is a fair sample of the educated but non-elite mind of America. It is neither ignorant nor unperceptive, and it is reaching conclusions quite different from those enunciated by people who claim to speak for it.

This really holds true for Dead or Alive as well. I can easily imagine hearing John Clark's voice from my friends and acquaintances who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, or from their fathers who served in Vietnam. These men [and yes, they are pretty much all men] regard waterboarding as torture, but wouldn't shed too many tears over its use on a sufficiently bad man. This part of the electorate correctly perceives that we have enemies, and is puzzled by a studied indifference to smite them as efficiently as possible.

If there is a great flaw in this book, it lies in giving our enemies too much credit. Maybe this is a holdover from the Soviets. The USSR really was a mortal enemy of the United States, and they were a worthy opponent. Al Qaeda and their ilk aspire that status, but they don't really seem capable of doing the kinds of things they do in Dead or Alive. At the very least they haven't yet.

From a dramatic point of view, the terrorists need to be competent to serve as a foil for Clark and Ryan Jr. This allows the technological superiority of the Americans to be brought to bear. In practice, our enemies are not so effective, yet we cannot make the world safe for democracy despite our military might. The reasons are too prosaic to make for good novels however. No one really wants to read a story about how the Northwest Provinces of Pakistan are doomed to be a tribal society riven by conflict until the end of time.

The pivotal character of John Clark makes for a fascinating comparison with John Christian Falkenberg. I have been reading a great deal of military fiction and non-fiction of late, and the question "what makes a good soldier" has been on my mind. Both characters are intended to serve as exemplars, but they reveal clearly different ideals. John Clark comes off rather poorly, but the contest is weighted towards Falkenberg. Clark is a grunt, while Falkenberg is a leader of men and an astute political operator. Yet I can't help but see them as challengers for the hearts of men.

Ultimately, Clark lacks the military virtues. This seems a strange thing to say, but it matters very much when we consider the question of just war. Clark is very good at what he does, and also very good at keeping secrets that are not newsworthy, and these are seen as the preeminent military virtues today. Yet Clark leaves me cold in a way that Falkenberg does not. In the past I was suitably impressed, but I am no longer. John Christian Falkenberg is the kind of man who leads other men to achieve the impossible, and when given great power, hands it back with alacrity. John Clark shoots straight and kills 10 bad men before dinner, and then goes home and has a beer.

Efficiency is not really the mark of a good soldier. It is vitally important, but there is something more that distinguishes a hero from a killer. Maybe Clark is just too far down the chain of command to effectively engage the why rather than the what, but he seems an unworthy holder of power. Clark would indubitably reply that such things are above his pay grade, and he is right. Maybe he just seems unsupervised. Falkenberg would find a good use for a man such as Clark, but he would damn well know what he was up to. Clark has a nominal obedience, but he observes more of the letter of his orders than the spirit. A real soldier is meek. Clark seems rather proud.

Another key comparison of note is the role of military romanticism. Clark has no time for such things, since he operates in the shadows. Falkenberg uses the uniform and the flag in order to control his men. Yet I think that for all that, that scrap of cloth helps to distinguish a soldier from an assassin. The skirl of pipes and cadence of a march make of soldiering something special, and help to humanize the hard men who are good at it. Clark is missing all that, and it shows.

Tom Clancy has accurately noted that at least a portion of America idolizes John Clark, but where is the John Christian Falkenberg to lead him?

My other book reviews

Meekness

Since I have been reading the Prince lately, I have been very interested in matters political and the virtues of the soldier. But meekness, I never would have thought that to be one of them. Yet here is the best explanation of meekness I have yet seen:

Here’s the tough part in making sense of it: In your brain when you hear the word “meek”, do you just swap in “weak” and think it means the same thing?  And maybe something about “shy as a mouse”, since mice are small and the word “mouse” starts with “m”?

[And maybe you add in something about being a peasant or something, because you think "humble" = "poor".  Doesn't work.  St. Thomas More was meek.  Wealthy, opinionated, but ultimately meek.]

What it really means is “mild of temper” (that’s not me) “long-suffering” (more not) and “patient under injuries” (nope, not that either).  And then we think of the Amish, who are famously meek.  So we think, oh, okay, meek = pacifist?  Maybe sometimes.  But a really good soldier is massively meek.  How else do you hold up under confusing orders, dangerous conditions, constant hardship, and just do what is asked no matter the personal cost?  That’s meek.

Colonel John Christian Falkenberg. Massively meek.

A cheap stunt

The Arizona Daily Sun reports this morning that NYC's Mayor Bloomberg attempted to embarrass Arizona by hiring private investigators to buy guns at Arizona gun shows while insinuating that they would not pass the background check. 

I find this unfortunate. Under federal law, person-to-person sales do not require background checks, although you are free not to sell a gun to someone you don't think should have it. Something else that is obscured is that background checks cost money, and thus affect the ability of these individuals to make money.  Of course, if it does become required, then the cost will just be factored in. It is unclear from the article whether any of the private parties at the gun show did actually refuse to sell a gun to the PIs. They took video of the ones that did sell them a gun. I haven't seen it, but I have to wonder whether these were just the sellers of below average intelligence?

It is also unfortunate that so many people insist on exercising their rights to the detriment of common sense. Just because you are legally allowed to sell to anyone with an Arizona ID doesn't mean you should. One of the reasons that private deals do not require background checks is that you cannot make 'private' deals and simultaneously make a living from doing so. This implicitly limits the number of guns sold in this fashion. That is why the BATF keeps an eye on gun shows, as noted in the article. Failing to get a federal license to be a gun dealer deprives the government of tax revenue, and we know how much the government dislikes that. 

Another thing that goes unsaid is that a network of dealers that assist in private gun transactions already exists. Websites like Gunsamerica and Gunbroker allow one to sell one's guns on the internet. In order to facilitate the sale, the gun must be shipped to a Federal Firearms License holder who resides near the buyer, who is allowed to ship guns through the mail and performs the background check. These businesses could easily supplant gun shows if the laws were changed. Economic self-preservation would seem to call for restraint.

Tax Rates

Since it is tax season, it is instructive to look at historical tax rates in the US. DarwinCatholic made a quick and dirty inflation-adjustment to the base tax tables from 1955 and compares them to 2010. There is clearly a lot more to be said on this subject, the details probably matter. However, when it comes down to it, the nominal tax rate is far less now than it was 55 years ago.

This reminds me of something that John Reilly is often saying. There really is no more room to cut the tax rates in the US. The working classes pay very little, if any federal income tax. That was already done in the Reagan administration. Really what we need to to tax more and spend the same. Moderate levels of taxation do seem to work pretty well. Tino at Super-Economy looks at the relative state of the Swedish economy over the last sixty years versus the overall tax burden, and there does seem to be a sweet spot in the middle for the best economic performance.

A stand-up guy

CNN reports on Oscar Vazquez, an ASU grad who was an illegal immigrant. He was brought here by his parents when he was 12, and then grew up in Arizona. He distinguished himself in robotics, got married, and had a child. But, he knows that mechanical engineering jobs will require legal authorization to work, so he returned to Mexico and applied for a visa.

Unfortunately, for choosing to do the right thing, now he has to deal with the immigration bureaucracy. 

The Vazquezes thought the process would be smooth. He applied for a waiver of his "excludability" based on extreme hardship to his family.

His initial application was rejected.

The U.S. government wanted to see more documents of the family's finances as well as evidence of the psychological impact of Vazquez's absence on the family, to prove hardship.

"Do they want to see me living in a box with my baby for it to be enough for them to let my husband come back home?" Karla asked.

"Do they want to see me lose my job and then my child to protective services because I can't provide for her? What more do they need?"

I work with a number of people who have immigrated to the US, and the story is always the same. Delays, obscure rules, and for those who married a US citizen, the dreaded marriage interviews. Our government workers are of course just following procedures, but I would rather see Oscar's choice rewarded with an easier path. This kind of thing should be encouraged.

Arizona's Immigration Woes

In the recent unpleasantness about SB 1070, a great many nasty things have been said about Arizona and Arizonans. However, the information at hand indicates that of those Americans who have heard of SB 1070, a majority favor it, and even of those who haven't, a plurality favor it. I found this information on Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com, along with some excellent commentary. 

What I suspect further polling will reveal is that a significant element of public support derives from a general empathy and encouragement Americans want to express toward Arizonans for doing something--anything--in the face of Washington's continued foot-dragging. This is essentially the point--or, rather, one of the points--the highly-controversial Arizona anti-immigration icon Sheriff Joe Arpaio made this week: If nothing else, Arizona's actions now force Washington's hands. But that does not necessarily mean Americans favor rounding up and/or profiling people for deportation, or that they are xenophobic racists. Instead, some of them surely are tired of and frustrated by inaction on the national level, of more talk than action--and they approve of the fact that Arizona this week sent a shot across Washington's bow, which it undoubtedly did.

Silver used to write for the DailyKos, so you can rest assured that he is not a raving right-wing lunatic like us Arizonans.

I also read this morning that the Arizona Legislature modified the law by passing an amended version of SB 1070, removing the provision that allowed law enforcement officers to take into account race, ethnicity, or national origin. This is a prudent move, since such a thing is not compatible with existing law.

The Reversal of the Great Risk Shift

John Reilly has an excellent post up about the recent federal health care bill.

The enactment of the new federal health-insurance system this week marks the beginning of the reversal of the Great Risk Shift that has characterized American society since the late 1970s. There is now reason to hope that American society can return to something like its historical condition, in which it was possible to change jobs and geographical location without taking your life into your hands. Wages may again be able to rise, since all new money that becomes available for personnel costs will not automatically be eaten by insurance-premium increases. More generally, the subtle loss of morale generated by a system that, for the first time in American history, made a physical necessity problematical will begin to abate, with a consequent rise in personal initiative and national cohesion.

Like Reilly, I too am sanguine about the effects of the passage of this bill, and I see it as an ultimately positive development. This may seem a little strange, because by political temperament, I ought to be bitterly opposed to this enterprise. However, John Reilly was instrumental in convincing me otherwise. He is one of the most reasonable men I know, and he exemplifies the virtue of hope, which makes for a critical difference in perspective.

Reilly has been making the argument that a reform of the health care system in the United States will be a liberation. His reasons for saying so are fundamentally conservative, which annoys pretty much everyone involved, but I believe he is on to something. He has been arguing that the current system limits our free market system by tying people to their jobs which offer good benefits, and making businesses bear the brunt of funding health care, when our foreign competitors do not need to do so. He also insists that health care is not a right, and cannot be. It is rather a matter of public order and entirely practical. Rights-talk is far too absolute to be productive.

One of the chief difficulties with the American system is its opacity. The quality of the health care is really quite good, and it is a vicious calumny to say that the uninsured have no health care in America, rather, they get all their care at the Emergency Department, which is both expensive and inefficient. The rub here is that the people who don't have insurance often wouldn't go to the doctor until they are really sick anyhow, so there is only marginal improvement to be made here. From my time working in the local hospital, I know that the truly poor often simply don't pay their medical bills, which means the service is subsidized by those of us who do pay. It would be better if we did this up front, instead of persisting in sending overdue notices to people with no means or intent to pay anything.

The pricing is the really bizarre thing. If you look at a bill for any medical service, you see a ridiculous value that is invariably cut by half or more if you have insurance, but it is nearly impossible to find out what this value is beforehand. The actual cost of medicine in the US is practically a trade secret. Billing codes are actually copyrighted by the American Medical Association, and guarded fiercely. The Magistra needed hand surgery recently, which was covered well by my excellent insurance, but we actually were unable to find out beforehand how much it would cost.

No business can run this way. Not only can you not determine the cost beforehand, the matter can take 3-6 months to be paid in full. Costs would go down in American health care if only the accounts receivable were smaller! One of the best experiences I ever had was when I went to the ED and forgot my insurance card. When I got the bill I forwarded it to my insurance company, and then I paid the negotiated price directly and got reimbursed. I carry a large savings balance, so this kind of thing is easy for me, but if this is the best to offer the system needs work.

Since I work in the medical device industry, I know that the prices that the manufacturer ultimately sells for in different countries are not all that different. The US is the single biggest medical market in the world [followed closely by Japan], but medical devices still make plenty of profit in the various and sundry health care systems in the rest of the world. I have to laugh when the claim is made that switching to some kind of national health care system in the US will inevitably stifle creativity and innovation. It is certainly possible, depending on how stupid the system is, but all medical device manufacturers compete globally, with a majority of our customers being in allegedly stifling systems already.

The pharmaceutical companies may be in a different boat. I've been of the conclusion that Big Pharma is in trouble for a while now. Actual innovation there is slim, most recent drugs seem to have worse side effects than the things they treat, and R&D costs are ridiculous for new drugs. Don't mistake me, R&D on a medical device can easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but I think the results are actually better, and you don't have to worry about generics stealing your market once the patent runs out.

There is a lot of room for cost-improvement in the American health care system, but the really interesting thing is that this political development will not result in creeping socialism, but rather presages the return of a more traditional society. The Age of Autonomy, and both right- and left-libertarianism is ending.