Some guys go on vacation and have guest bloggers. My guest blogger is me from the distant past:
So much is going on.Everyone should keep journals. These times are astonishing in their speed and change. Obama looks like a blowout. I spoke to a very conservative woman last weekend who hates Obama and she said she hoped the election would be decisive. No more of these bitter, hard fought contest with courts and challenges and outrage. I think it is a wise view. Nixon was beaten by Kennedy by gross fraud in Chicago and never considered fighting the results because of the pain it would cause the country. I think the same now. But this is going to be destructive. Obama is coming to power with a groundswell of uncertainty of the value of freedom, uncertainty that we can run our own lives and should be stuck with the results. It is a depressing view--hardly new and shopworn with failure throughout history--but seems popular enough to carry the day and decade. It is even accepted by the capitalist who fears a real social collapse without it. But it will be hard. A class of bureaucrat/managers will develop to guide the world and there will be no place to hide from their benevolence. Production will certainly decline for the more homogeneous mean and, lurking in the background, will be that gnawing threat that there are limits to growth, that innovation may not be forthcoming under such a benighted and preoccupied system and that serious sacrifices must be made by some, likely the very individuals who should step forward. And in the face of such problems flies the overt failure of the government leaders to exhibit any competence at all in this crisis. "No one knows what to do" will echo in our minds for years. How can we possibly look to the government system--however changed--when the leaders of the new system are the same pilots that caused the initial wreck? Well, there are no guillotines, no firing squads, no racks. And we are resilient. Even in an economic revolution run by half baked politicians avowing discredited theories, hard work always survives--if it doesn't win.
So much is going on.Everyone should keep journals. These times are astonishing in their speed and change. Obama looks like a blowout. I spoke to a very conservative woman last weekend who hates Obama and she said she hoped the election would be decisive. No more of these bitter, hard fought contest with courts and challenges and outrage. I think it is a wise view. Nixon was beaten by Kennedy by gross fraud in Chicago and never considered fighting the results because of the pain it would cause the country. I think the same now. But this is going to be destructive. Obama is coming to power with a groundswell of uncertainty of the value of freedom, uncertainty that we can run our own lives and should be stuck with the results. It is a depressing view--hardly new and shopworn with failure throughout history--but seems popular enough to carry the day and decade. It is even accepted by the capitalist who fears a real social collapse without it. But it will be hard. A class of bureaucrat/managers will develop to guide the world and there will be no place to hide from their benevolence. Production will certainly decline for the more homogeneous mean and, lurking in the background, will be that gnawing threat that there are limits to growth, that innovation may not be forthcoming under such a benighted and preoccupied system and that serious sacrifices must be made by some, likely the very individuals who should step forward. And in the face of such problems flies the overt failure of the government leaders to exhibit any competence at all in this crisis. "No one knows what to do" will echo in our minds for years. How can we possibly look to the government system--however changed--when the leaders of the new system are the same pilots that caused the initial wreck? Well, there are no guillotines, no firing squads, no racks. And we are resilient. Even in an economic revolution run by half baked politicians avowing discredited theories, hard work always survives--if it doesn't win.
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