Saturday, August 27, 2011

J Edgar's Revenge and Our Puritan Roots

Sometimes the cause and effect lines are unexpected but understandable: China's one child policy creates border raiding in Viet Nam by Chinese farmers searching for marriageable women, subsidized housing creates a tremendous bubble and crash in the mortgage market, wage and price controls create shortages. Often the assumed cause and effect doesn't work: We subsidize lithium ion battery technology, we subsidize ethanol, we invest in education. Nothing. So what happens when we screen FBI candidates for social missteps and immorality like drug and alcohol history?

Mormons. We get Mormons.

Mormons are a subset in the country who have reliable social and personal histories and who can pass a lie detector test to prove it. They also travel in their ministry and are multilingual. As a result, the FBI and CIA are full of them, so much so that there are conspiracy websites popping up with Mormon Domination themes.

Wait until a Mormon runs for president.

Fascinating that a lax culture that wants security recruits its antithesis.

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