Investing with the Sorcerer's Apprentice

A survey on the motives for wealth building would be interesting. Some might have dynastic dreams, aggressive plans of purchases and control, but most motives would likely be defensive. Most people likely save money to protect themselves from the danger of economic instability that is created by the very people who proclaim they want to stabilize our lives.

So our crisis du jour is instigated by loose money originally aimed at stabilizing our community through broadened home ownership. The looser rules were watched over by various agencies to prevent abuse and to make sure all was stable. The economic leaders approved of the use of derivatives that emerged to hedge both sides of these purchases because these instruments broadened the economic base and stabilized the economy. When the regulatory system failed, debts went unpaid and the economy began to contract, the economy was flooded with money at low rates to stabilize the economy. The economic advisers were certainly not going to allow illiquidity to occur--as occurred in the Great Depression, the result of economic tightening initiated early in the Great Depression to stabilize the economy. The Powers-That-Be feel that looser money will stabilize the economy, as they did in the beginning of this cycle.

One must admire their confidence. They are like Xerxes whipping the waters of the Bosporus, angry and righteous, certain they are in control and dismissive of anyone who sees them as the sorcerer's apprentices.

Meanwhile the desperate citizens watch in awe, store food and buy guns and gold as they await the next self-inflicted crisis.

Snookie 3

If we agree that one purpose of taxation is to guide money into investment areas of national importance to "win the future" and if we agree that picking these areas of national importance requires a degree of expertise that is uncommon in the national community, then some people should not be taxed--or at least be taxed less--but should be allowed free rein their own money for the betterment of the nation and others should be taxed but their money should go to experts.

Now what about the other, rarely spoken, purpose of taxation: Income redistribution? What is its purpose and how does it play into our plans to "win the future?" If it is reasonable to tax on a sliding scale of productivity, is it reasonable to distribute taxes in the same way? Certainly we should be careful about the industries we subsidize to "win the future"; should we be similarly careful about the citizens and behaviors we subsidize as well?

So,redefining The Snookie Question:

Why it is assumed that "Investment" is a reasonable activity of the federal government?

If it is a reasonable activity of the federal government, is there any evidence the government does it well under the current structure? When Lyndon Johnson declared his "War on Heart Disease" it took cancer research years to recover as money was diverted from all research streams to cardiac disease. Bush ruled out any research into stem cell science with its inevitable ripple effects. Conversion of corn into ethanol as a substitute for petroleum has been a disaster environmentally, economically, agriculturally and intellectually.

If it is reasonable to take money from investors for the purpose of substituting government investing, should the investment efforts of all citizens be equally supplanted?

If it is more productive and efficient for the culture to leave investments in the hands of some citizens and not others, can the same be said for those citizens receiving federal subsidy, that some seemingly qualified citizens should be bypassed in favor of others?

The Snookie Question 2

So what are the answers to The Snookie Question?

First, the "investments" the country makes to "win the future" should not be in the hands of Snookie, or a community organizer or someone morally opposed to the internal combustion engine. Investing to "win the future" should be managed by flint-eyed professionals and one of the responsibilities of the government should be to find them. This should be difficult because successful professional money managers are rarely more than random, a fact that must emphasize how difficult charting a course to "win the future" would be for Snookie or any other amateur.

Second, we must recognize that taxpayers, like life, are diversified. Some are astute and can be relied on more than others to "win the future." Taxing a productive investor might "lose the future". One would expect that Snookie might be less likely to invest her entertainment earnings well. Consequently taking money from Steve Jobs or Apple and giving it to a government appointee to invest to "win the future" would be less reasonable than taking Snookie's money. We may not be certain that the government appointee would invest better than Snookie but we can be certain that Steve Jobs would do better than either. Consequently, to "win the future," it may not be worthwhile to take Snookie's money but it certainly is a bad idea to take Steve Jobs'. If the purpose of taxation is to "win the future" it is madness to tax indiscriminately or on the foolish graduated scale of income earned, it is much more reasonable to tax on the basis of how productive taking and redistributing that money would be. Taking money from Snookie is much more reasonable than taking it from a true and proven producer.

Third, after our investments to "win the future", what individuals should get Snookie's money? The tendency of government policy is to subsidize people who have "lost the present". Are they the same people? Is there no distinction among them? Is a man born blind to be counted the same as an otherwise healthy unemployed addict? As time progresses and living standards decline, these questions will no longer be made by bureaucrats.

The Snookie Question

Taxation is one of those notions that has survived the divine right of kings that we don't challenge much. Yes, it contains the power to destroy. Yes, free men recognize that private property is a barrier against tyranny and taxes erode that barrier. Yes, it is unlikely that a government will distribute taxes in a community better than those who are taxed would. Yes there is an astonishing graft factor that would not be tolerated anywhere else. Yes, the manipulation of taxes by both the taxed and the recipients of taxes has grown from a household industry to a gigantic lobbying monolith. Yes, taxes--their avoidance and their capture--has become a giant distortion in the economy.

But bridges must be built, roads paved, mail delivered, armies paid...fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. While it is true that almost all the functions of government can be performed by a private effort without tax money, we seem to bump along without any deep challenge to a system that everyone sees as wasteful, inefficient, corrupt, arbitrary and often downright criminal. As the cliche states, taxes, like death, is part of our nature. We have allowed them to persist like an appendix, unchallenged, or like a galero or an atef crown, a residual of an earlier time.

We need a fresh look at this question.

It is likely the distribution process of taxes will change; less and less of government work will be done "in house." That handoff of money, so coveted by the government middleman and the avaricious recipient, is likely to decrease as the "inflation tax" and the inefficiencies of government force the rulers to divest themselves of many "projects" and put them in private hands, just as local government has. What will remain will be those wealth transfers the government uses to buy civility and support and what the government calls "investments" to "win the future." As the living standard declines from inflation and the dollar devaluation, as people are damaged more and more by inflation's impact on buying power and bracket creep, people will want a better understanding of where their money is going and why. And the inevitable question will arise: The Snookie Question.

At the base of all taxation debates--graft, inefficiency, compliance costs--lurks The Snookie Question: The indiscriminate taking and the indiscriminate distribution of someone else's money. Some are taxed more, some receive more. The justification has matured from those days of kings and princes; now the money is confiscated not because it is the king's but because the payer owes his success to someone else--presumably society, in some inexpressible way--and the recipient--again not the king--is now a business the government wants to support or the poor or the unfortunate who must receive some payment as compensation for the payers success and his lack of success. The Snookie Question asks: "Are all tax payers the same and all tax recipients the same?" Clearly they are not. Bill Gates will certainly make better decisions on where to put money that will benefit the nation than will Snookie. So should they be taxed the same? There is no evidence the government is a good investor so, while Snookie and the government are expected not to do well with money and Bill Gates is, should we take Bill Gates' money and give it to the government--or, worse, to one of Snookie's desperate friends?

Clearly there is a scale of people who can help the nation with their money and those who probably will not, those who should keep their money and those whose loss of money probably won't hurt the economy. And there is just as likely those whose receiving money will help the economy and those who will not.

Redistribution of income is not the point, it is the productive redistribution of income. Identifying the proper and productive formula sounds like a rare, reasonable task for government.

Drill, Baby, Drill as Therapy

While the left dithers over the energy problems facing the country, the right is quite firm in its opinion: Drill, Baby, Drill. The left says, strangely, that there is not enough oil to make a difference; the United States has about 2% of the world's oil reserves. More strangely, the left doesn't offer the convincing and clinching argument: There is not enough refining capacity in this country to accept new production. With usage down this year, presumably a reaction to rising costs, refining is at 85% capacity. If the maximum capacity is around 93%, refiners at full throttle would refine what we produce; they could not refine more. Consequently drilling, Baby, for more oil would not improve America's energy position at all. New production would have to be sent offshore for refining.

This speaks to the basic failure of the nation's energy policy. It takes almost as long to build a refinery as it does to build a nuclear plant. We as a nation have never approached our energy problems with any seriousness. The reason no one points to our lack of refining capacity is that it points to our lack of planning and the politicians do not want that as a part of the discussion. The Department of Energy was created by President Carter for the expressed purpose of making the country independent of hostile oil producers. Its original budget was 1.6 billion dollars. At the time we produced over half of the energy we used. The Department of Energy now has a budget of 80 billion dollars and we produce one third of our energy. Should we give them more money? Should we give them any money?


There is a ghost in this energy problem, the ghost of a suggestion that the government has a plan. The hint that things are evolving under control. The hope that the pieces are falling into place. This perception is partly a function of the government's speaking of future breakthroughs as if they were achieved now, in the present.These solutions might come but they are not here yet. Oil is going to be an important product for this country to use for the foreseeable future. Should the breakthroughs in storage and transportation come, there will still be a crucial transition period where we will need petroleum. Wind, solar and bio fuels make up 2% of our total energy use; this is not a step forward or a hint of things to come. This is insignificant in every possible way. More, it is a testimony to the inept and smug leadership that so burdens this country.

Any drilling we do now will just provide a hole in the sand to stick our head.

The Girl with the Blue Velvet Tattoo

I saw the Swedish film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo recently. It was clearer and more focused than the book but, distilled, was a bit less enjoyable. I was reminded of the old David Lynch film, Blue Velvet.

Blue Velvet was well cast and well done but a painful film nonetheless. It is a story about sadism, masochism, gratuitous brutality and the people who enjoy that. Worse, inherent in the story is the belief that this kind of behavior is intertwined with the American culture and stains everyone in it. A story with that viewpoint is demanding on the audience; the audience must be at least open-minded enough to accept the generality as a possibility. Most mysteries and action stories treat such criminals and perverts as criminals and perverts, a subset of the culture; such stories rarely proclaim the criminals as an integral part of the culture and the pathology as a general characteristic unless, like The Godfather, the lens is very narrow. After all, not all Germans in the Second World War were Nazis and not every frenchman is a wine snob. Unless the accusation is close to the truth the filmmaker asks the audience to be a bigot and assume the worst of the people it describes. Blue Velvet did that and so does Dragon Tattoo.

In Dragon Tattoo Sweden is awash in misogynism, bigotry and cruelty. The good guy is like as pacifist in a Viking war camp. The other good guys are too old to be dangerous. The bad guys are sometimes too horrible to watch. But, like The Godfather, as the atmosphere and culture are consistently brutal, the behavior is somehow consistent and believable. Blue Velvet failed to sell the consistency and consequently the brutality seemed without context and pornographic.

There is a moment in Dragon Tattoo where Lisa Salander revenges herself on her abuser by raping him. It is said that the movie audience response to this scene is usually cheers.

On second thought, maybe Lynch was right.

Striking a Note But Not a Chord

The release of the movie "Atlas Shrugged" might be a cynical pitch for a current political sweet spot but nonetheless again raises the interesting and unanswered question in the current political debate: What are the mutual responsibilities between the producer and the general public? In the story, John Galt, an industrialist, organizes a "producer strike", a strike by the only special group in history that has never struck. Ayn Rand, the author, is an individualist and believes the sanctity of the individual and his achievements, refined down and purified. His efforts and achievements are his only reward and his alone; derivative benefits for the nonproducers are their good fortune but nothing more. Politicians, businessmen who collude with politicians and the passive but assuming public are the real evil in the world because they take, modify and regulate what they do not and can not create for their own benefit. And their reward is grudging: As is said to the successful industrialist Hank Rearden in the novel, "You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements."

This is a harsh philosophy and Rand is nothing if not consistent. She makes no excuses and lived this belief in her personal life. (She was an atheist, thought openly that theists were fools, hated national aggression and once told a woman she was going to seduce her husband--before she did.) While there are some intense devotees to the Rand philosophy--and the books sell well--it seems the philosophy strikes a note in peoples' minds but not a chord; the notion is too isolated and too spare in a society that seems so convoluted and intertwined. But it does strike a note.

Obama's attack on "the rich" in this country is a case in point. Why is this obvious--albeit heavy-handed--populist and demagogic appeal to envy not more successful? How can it be so debated? One reason is likely those studies that show that Americans, alone as a group in the world, do not resent gaps between themselves and others because they believe in the possibility that, with work and sacrifice, they--or their children--might well become those "others." Another reason might be cynicism. The capitalist' motives are more clear to the average guy, the politician's are not. And the producer has a history in this country of success. Indeed a big problem in America might be how to manage the success of capitalism, not its failures.

Indeed, the present problems in America are not the failures of capitalism, they are the failures of government.

Walk a Mile in Charlie Manson's Shoes

There may be a human right to free speech but there is no right to be listen to.

Apparently some news agency felt it reasonable to interview Charles Manson, learn his political opinions and publish them. This abuse of the public space can not be dismissed by simply saying "If you don't want to hear what he has to say then don't listen." Interviewing a bedwetting, fire-starting, animal torturing homicidal maniac for his opinion on anything is simply insane. But underlying this abuse is a philosophy: The philosophy of non judgment.

It is everywhere. It allows a school principal to avoid the decision of whether or not to suspend a nine year old with a water pistol, it allows a judge not to judge using mandatory sentencing, it confounds a people trying to assess a threat or a deviation by demanding respect for all cultures regardless of its seriousness or pathology, it prevents a sensible people from dismissing anything. So Manson speaks, genital mutilation has a historical and cultural value, a pyramid of Aztec hearts is an architectural marvel.

One has more and more respect for the plight of the modern artist who has been robbed of art's historical right to teach; when nothing is true, every thing must be taken as it is, isolated, and without context or judgment.

Saras Sarasvathy 2

How is it possible that The United States, home of the most self conscious entrepreneurial culture in the history of the world, could have only forty masters programs and six PhD programs devoted to the study of entrepreneurs? Business schools teach the management of corporate business--going businesses--but how are those businesses started?

Saras Sarasvathy works within the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business where her courses on entrepreneurial business are part of the overall business curriculum. But her descriptions of business starters sound like a species quite separate from corporate business types.

She compares entrepreneurs to "Iron Chefs"; they make success out of what ingredients they are given while the corporate man prefers the planned menu. Entrepreneurs have an aversion to research, "the careful forecast being the enemy of the fortuitous surprise." Small information is limiting to their expansive and optimistic minds. They prefer the doable, the achievable. They plan to build on that success. She calls the corporate mind "hunter gatherer", focused on competition and what ground can be gained from them. The entrepreneur is building a new land, the corporate man is rearranging the boundaries of existing geography.

This doesn't sound as if the entrepreneur is a subset of business education, he sounds like a different breed. He also sounds really important. http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/04/read-your-own-stats.html

It sounds as if he needs his own educational stomping ground.

Saras Saravasvathy

Saras Sarasvathy is a rare sort; she studies entrepreneurs and how they think. One would guess this is a common field in this country but it is surprisingly rare. There are fewer than 50 masters programs (fewer than 40 if you exclude the Phoenix degrees) and 6 PhD programs in the United States. So few centers of study for such an important topic. One would think in America there would be a Cabinet position on entrepreneurs.

Sarasvathy was on a radio program recently (http://taeradio.com/) and she was impressive. She can call on research and large case studies where she has examined the nature of the successful entrepreneur and some of her conclusions are surprising. For example, contrary to common entrepreneurial belief, successful entrepreneurs are not fearless, they risk only what they calculatingly feel they can lose; they never go "all in" because they want to be able to play again should they fail. Enthusiasm for the project among employees regardless of company position is crucial to success; similarly, never hire a job description. Some of the best hires are people who want to do a great job for the project in the position they were hired for, not people who are hired hoping they will advance out of the position. And employee stake in the project is a must.

And her observations are broader than business and insightful. When pressed about the freedom that creation of a business engenders without a direct reference to Rand she observed freedom is not license, it is the unfettered right to choose your own constraints. When the questioner missed her intent, she pressed him.

Maybe she could be the first Secretary of Entrepreneurs.

Square Man in Round Nature

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences. -Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)

The Bolivian government will soon introduce a motion at the United Nations regarding the Rights of Mother Earth. This motion is an extension of a domestic Bolivian law entitled "The Rights of Mother Nature" which guarantees The Earth life, water, clean air and the like. The initiator is President Morales, said to be the first South American President from an indigenous background whose culture history apparently includes the worship of "Packamama", the female embodiment of the earth. Mr. Morales, in 2008, introduced to the U.N. "10 commandments to save the planet;" Number 1 was "End Capitalism".

This is a good example of a problem sweeping the globe: A reasonable insight followed closely by a childish solution. The problem is no better exemplified that the problem facing the American farmer. Without doubt, farms inhabitated and worked by the people who own them out produce all other farms under all other systems. More--and this is crucial--the farms are better cared for and can be passed intact on within the family as working farms over time. Communal farms, farms made corporate, state farms all can mobilize workers and produce larger volumes with less efficiency--but those farms deteriorate and cannot be relied upon in the future. Erosion, water loss, short term chemical treatments all are factors in the decline but the essence seems to be the worker does not own the land, does not feel an attachment and responsibility to it, perhaps has no family inheritance plan for it. The negative--and it is a large negative--is that these farms have limits in efficiency. If one applies the capitalistic notion that bigger production is better, at some point the farm will outgrow the farmer's ability to manage it well and it will decline.

So Henry Ford applied to the farm may not work. More, it may be poison to that land over time.

For some reason this problem is seen by a one-size-fits-all community that either capitalism does not work or, because capitalism works the inefficiencies of gigantic corporate farms must be wrong; that thinking is like saying Newtonian physics doesn't work because it does not explain quantum theory or that quantum is wrong because Newton is right. What it really means is that the world is bigger than our ham-handed rules and more subtle.

Free markets (and freedom) are wonderful concepts based upon our understanding of human nature; these notions predict the success of the family farm but say nothing about the farm's impact on the water table. Our responsibility as thinking adults is to develop theories that will respect both human nature and the nature it lives in.

Taxing Snookie, Giving the Money to Rangel

An evaluation of the concept of forcible redistribution of wealth would consider at least some of these topics:

First, the nature of the enforcer. Clearly the leader who has no plan should be shunned. This would include those whose vision is little more than an optimistic hope, people whose motive is mainly the hate of those who are successful, the peculiar anarchists, anyone who includes murder as a legitimate tool to reach their goals. This exclusion leads to the assumption that the leader should have a public plan--not just a personal good will--that lays out the aims, direction and endpoint of the intervention.

Second, every thinker in the last three centuries has connected personal freedom and the sanctity of private property. Even Marx felt there was an intimate connection between property and freedom, he just thought the freedom was an unhealthy right of man as he thought freedom of religion was unhealthy. (He thought man should have freedom from both.) If the government is going to take property from owners, this question of freedom must be answered first.

Third, what about the Laffer Curve? It states that as confiscation of earnings rise, the amount the government takes rises to a plateau, then declines. This implies there is an intimate connection between the ability to keep one's earnings and how much work one is willing to do. If Laffer is correct, the expropriation of property from the public discourages work and causes a decline in government returns. This question must be answered as it assumes a decline in national wealth.

Fourth, should property be taken from everyone? Taxing the rich is a peculiar slogan as it implies a general equality. But there are vast differences. No one would suggest putting everyone weighing over 200 pounds on a diet because a six foot three inch man weighing 200 pounds may be lean while a five foot two woman quite in need of calorie reduction. Similarly one would look with suspicion on shifting money from a successful company like Apple to a bureaucratic relative of a senator because one could easily assume that Apple would put it to better use. One probably does not feel the same about a man with a criminal record who wins the lottery; it is unlikely that he would do as good a job with his money as Apple. So there is either an insincerity here--the government wants all the money regardless of the competence of its source--or some distinction must be made about who is taxed and what is to be achieved.

Fifth, there should be some requirements on the people who manage the money taken from the public. The Ponzi schemes the government has created and run over the last years probably should disqualify anyone with a governmental history. Who would you feel more confident in, Pelosi or Peter Lynch, Charlie Rangel or Warren Buffett? There should be some criteria, some qualifications.

Sixth, there have been many attempts to control incomes and guide economies by nations. Some in the Pacific Basin have worked. But many have not and have ended badly. Some criteria must be developed to analyze and judge the results during the project with the option of changing course if necessary.

There are countless problems with the state controlling the lives of its citizens. Property ownership has been a proven bulwark against tyranny. And government has been shown to be quite incompetent in many of the fields they have magnanimously entered. But these six points seem to be a worthwhile practical starting point on the question.

Targeting Redistribution

Bristol Palin earned more than a quarter million dollars in 2010 as an ambassador for/against/regarding unwed pregnancies. Here is a message for all Americans: Competence, effort and intelligence are nice but unnecessary complements to connections, publicity and personal failure but anyone, anyone, can succeed in this country. And this culture makes it possible for you to achieve not by overcoming your failures and stupidity but because of them.

Obama recently spoke on the possibility of the dreaded government shutdown and worried aloud that damage would be done because government investment in "innovation, infrastructure and education" would be curtailed and we would not be able to "win the future". As these people continue to repeat this mantra it would be reasonable, I suppose, to start giving them the benefit of the doubt and believe them. Let us assume these central government people really believe they can direct the money of hard working people and companies better than those people and companies can themselves. With the ungentle hand of government guiding our investments and innovations, we can "win the future".

When you think about this, taking money from Steve Jobs and his company and giving it to a professional street organizer probably doesn't make much economic sense. But the idea may not be without some merit. I have an idea where this notion can be used to prove itself and the nation will experience a significant advance: Get rid of Bristol Palin, Snookie Whatever, Paris Hilton and most of the other headliners on Huffington Entertainment; remove them from public view and eliminate their ability to make money. I absolutely guarantee that the $250,000 Bristol made last year could be better spent elsewhere. Double for Snookie. The Kardashian family made over $25 million dollars last year; that could probably cure cancer. Let's not target "The Rich", let's target "The Profoundly Stupid Rich." Cartoons for adults would be another fertile field. Ditto anyone who makes money on combat in cages or any "extreme sports". Lawyers who advertise on TV in the early afternoon would be next. Then authors of diet books.

Everything has limits and redistribution probably does too. But this would be a nice and productive place to start as we work towards the middle.

Proud Cut Nation

Proud cut: A horseman's term meaning the persistence of stallion behavior after gelding, often blamed on incomplete removal of testicular tissue but more likely simply a result of stallion-learned behavior, although sexually inept.

This term came up recently during a big band dance where the singer did an excellent imitation of Sinatra right down to the edgy, dangerous-young-man tone and mannerisms--although this singer was elderly. This ersatz of youth was reminiscent of this country's current pronouncements and bravado which, transvestite-like, is so vividly reminiscent of another, stronger entity, so vividly reminiscent of a proud and growing culture invigorated by its tension of high ideals.

Farmers are now subsidized. So are social action groups. The unions meet at country clubs. The government has become its own social class with its own self perpetuating pressure group. The military does social work. The academics have become trivial. They all battle with ancient standards that no one quite remembers, all bloodless and self-absorbed, snorting impotent former stallions.

Non-Profit Capitalism

A dinner several years hosted several students from a newly created environmental science program at a local university, one of the first such programs in the nation. A student, in response to a question probing the range of the program, answered that the potential was huge and spilled from the science of global warming to its international implication. "Suppose," she offered, "that the Chinese decide to attack global warming unilaterally and launch rockets to seed the stratosphere with reflectors to reflect sunlight away from the globe. That would be an international incident and the government would need our advice." She smiled and everyone laughed.

Last year a cabinet representative suggested that exact scenario in an interview. No one laughed.

Majors in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender degrees are offered by Wesleyan, U. Chicago, Brown, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, York University (Sexuality Studies, 2009), University of Toronto, Miami University (Ohio, 2010) The University of Glamorgan in the UK offers a degree in Astrobiology, which is the search for life beyond earth.

A search on Intelligent Design, Creationism revealed no university degrees available as yet.

In this time of turmoil, nothing could be more satisfying than the creation and establishment of a broad field of respectable research, especially if this area is a part of your own credo. There is a way of doing this, cheaply and with a viral-like expansiveness: Endow a university chair in the field you wish to create. Your notion, no matter how partisan or crazy, will be instantly shielded from criticism by the aegis of academic freedom. Anyone who dismisses your notion will be seen as an anti intellectual at best, a philistine at worst.

You and your family can open subsidiary businesses that might do appropriate--nonprofit--research and sell tee shirts.

At last the university, no longer aloof, is joined with the culture, its economics and its business people!

Refining War

I am not uncomfortable with the idea of warfare, as long as someone else is doing the fighting. When I am doing the fighting I want very sharp and clear aims of the conflict . And one other thing: It is mandatory that a culture going to war suffer the same risks as its fighting men and holds nothing back. If bombing the supply lines that wind along another country's borders will protect me and mine, my society has no right to deprive me of that protection; if it will not bomb the neighboring country's supply lines for fear of entangling the society in a greater conflict, do not send a soldier to fight there. War is not reserved for the soldier unlucky enough to be there. War is total, whether one side believes it or not. Believing war can be done with a velvet glove completely misunderstands its very nature and anyone who espouses that notion should be immediately disqualified from directing it. The battlefield stopped being a stage in the Theater of Honor with the invention of the repeating weapon. War is not "diplomacy by other means", it is a last, horrible resort.

That said, there has been a gradually increasing notion spreading in the United States that war can be sanitized, that combat can be refined and limited. America has been seduced by "limited action", "police action", "armed intervention" and, more recently, the comic "kinetic military action". It is as if the boundary between war and peace has a "semi-militarized zone" that separates them and allows for savage if half-hearted confrontations that one side or the other does not take quite as seriously. The West has allowed itself to live and kill in a grey zone between war and peace with U.N. supported "action" where one combatant is not really a national entity so that the death and destruction is qualified with an asterisk or a smiley face. Combat is entered to tip balances--Bosnia is bombed from 30,000 feet so the pilots don't get their hands dirty or Libya is bombed because at least one of the combatants is a tyrant.

Nowhere is this dangerous, scalable foolishness more apparent than the terrorist war. Estimates of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States has become commonplace in the popular press. This may all be commercial nonsense but, if it is not, no leader responsible for the nation's well-being should consider limits on the pursuit and destruction of such a threat.

If The Heroes of Beslan taught us anything, it is that hard, armed men will do anything in a conflict and at no time will they consider etiquette.