How to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (hint: keep raising taxes)

We can’t afford the free lunch promises made by our wonderful politicians on our behalf beginning with FDR and his New Deal.  One way or the other we will default.  We are broke.

Social security might have been a wonderful enlightened idea when it was implemented by a bipartisan majority in Congress back in the day, same with medicare/medicade.  Unfortunately, however, we put these programs on the country’s credit cards and the bill is coming due.  Total unfunded liabilities for social security and medicare are in the tens of trillions of dollars  the last number i saw was $20 trillion for social security and $40 trillion unfunded for medicare. Well, but, who cares about unfunded liabilities when bond markets will let us fund our utopian scheme at historic low interest rates?

We should all care because some day the market will wake up and realize it funded a ponzi scheme in the form of  social welfare democracy and won't lend another nickel. 

Everyone loves entitlement and safety net schemes when we implement them.  The schemes always start modestly.  But they also always grow ineluctably and predictably.  When we first planned our entitlement "house"  back in the 1940s it looked modest and affordable.  But, when no one was looking the house and the mortgage for the house just got bigger and bigger and bigger.    The same goes for the shiny new military industrial complex we built in the 1940s and 50s.

Every great civilization in the history of the world has eventually collapsed and disappeared (Sumerian, Greece, Rome, etc), In modern history we have seen the rise and inevitable fall of all global great powers (China, Spain, England, Dutch, etc).  It is America’s turn.   There are many theories for the rise and fall of civilization as well as for the rise and fall of global great powers. 

I have just read a book arguing that the underlying determining factor in all of these cycles is the state’s success and then failure at managing fiscal affairs.  State obligations always, inevitably outrun the state’s ability to fund these obligations via taxation. 

I am not saying the state is evil or unnecessary or that taxes should be abolished.  Society can’t function without a state.  no great civilization grew up without a “state” structure funded by an efficient tax system.  But, the state is a doulbe edged sword.  Just like a standing army is a double edged sword for society.  All great civilizations failed because revenue requirements for the “state” to maintain its operations outstripped society’s ability to fund these operations.  Many times the crunch is caused by military expansion.  But is equally common for the crunch to come frompublic welfare schemes.  Welfare or warfare.  or both.  One way or the other, it always comes down to these two state functions that often grow like twin cancers and eventually destroy the host.  Sometimes it is one or the other.      

We have already hit this tipping point as evidenced by the tens of trillion of dollars we have in unfunded entitlement obligations.   There only a few ways to solve our funding crisis and all of them require solutions that will inevitably lead to a self reinforcing cycle of social conflict, a slowing economy and increasingly stressed public finances.    We can default on the obligations by raising retirement ages or cutting benefits, means testing, etc.  These adjustment can only go so far in a democracy.  Eventually no government can manage a big enough default to fix public finances without at the same time causing social instability/chaos.  The other answer is higher taxes.  And here politicians have as many options as stars in the sky.  They’ll try them all and some will succeed.  But taxing also necessarily hits a point of diminishing returns.  This is the insight behind the Laffer curve.  Progressives dismiss the Laffer curve.  If you go through history, however, what you see is that successful tax schemes throughout history went from about 10% to 30%.  When taxes got up to the 30% range, people got pissed and problems cropped up. 

That is why the ultimate and inevitable tax politicians eventually turn to is inflation. inflation is the silent, insidious tax that is hard to blame on the government.  it causes distortions in markets that are easily blamed on the market itself.    before modern central banking made money printing possible, the old inflation tax was implemented by debasing the currency.  the Roman Empire started to weaken when emperors after Cesar Augustus began debasing the coinage of the realm in order to pay for the warfare/welfare state.  The great debasement occurred over about 70 years.  we have just gone through a similar cycle thanks to the Federal Reserve established in 1913.  One dollar in 1913 is worth less than 6 cents today.  No society can survive without sound money.  You will rarely hear liberals progressives talk about sound money; if they do talk about sound money will only be to assert (=dismiss out of hand with a condescending tone and/or gesture) that sound money is impossible in a modern democratic society.  They usually throw in something about the Gold standard caused the Great Depression and also something like “and you can’t eat gold can you?”  as if that ends the silly discussion. 

If progressives are right about modern democracy being impossible with sound money, then modern democracy is impossible.      Our modern society requires sound money more now than ever.  If "democracy" can’t function with sound money, then democracy is wrong.  not sound money.   

our founding fathers designed a system that tried to solve the problems inherent in direct democracy.  they builit a system of limited republican government, inlcuidng separation of powers, states rights and a focus on individual liberty protections.  to call that a democracy is misleading. 

Sound money does what nothing else can do.  it provides the only practical check to state over-spending.  Over-spending is inevitable law within any political system.  We know from this by studying history.  Progressive ideology assumes that the future will somehow be different from the past.  Yes, the future will be different.  But this different future can’t be planned by humans.  After all, the future is uncertain.  Right?  progressives claim that conservatives are nutty.  The truth is both sides are fundamentally wrong.

Higher taxes won’t fill the massive liabilities politicians have promised to ourselves.  It seems like such a simple answer just to raise the retirement age or to reduce benefits.  Or to design a

public system that will get rid of waste and thus deliver the same quality service at an “affordable” price to society.  The last idea is the premise behind Obamacare.  This is a utopian dream couched in digestible lies and distortions thanks to clever politicians and willing media agents.  
Eventually, utopian promises of win/win welfare or entitlement schemes provided by the government always prove illusory.  Always.  If the state could really do anything better than private individuals, then the state should do everything.  If healthcare is too important to trust to the greedy private sector.  Then why not food and clothing as well?  in fact, just about every major sector of the US economy is already heavly influenced, subsidized and regulated --  if not completely dominated -- by the state. in many sectors we have private enterprises that remain in private ownership.  that is the capitalism part of our system that remains.  But, there is no such thing as a free market.   we don't have anything close to free exchange of goods and services in housing, education, food, drugs, healthcare … you name it … they are all heavily  regulated, subsidized, influenced if not totally hijacked by the state.   education.  check.  banking. Check.  infrastructure. Check.  housing. Check.  food /arga-business. Check.  healthcare.  Check.  telecom.  Check.  We blame the market for “failing” when in fact we have systematically demolished the market.  The point is we shouldn’t have designed and promised a system that we could predict so easily would turn into massive unfunded liabilities to the tune of tens of trillions worth of benefits pledged to retirees.   
Some people warn of the coming crisis of “Ageism” I think is called  … the conflict between the funding needs of retirement safety net and our ability to fund with productive age households.  This conflict or crisis is not necessary or natural.  It is purely man-made.  By creating open ended entitlement programs for retirees like we’ve done, we have artificially and inevitably pitted the old versus the young.  We already have a class conflict for precisely the same reason.  These conflicts are man made all thanks to well intended government intervention. 

Resolving unfunded liabilities we have promised to retirees will be our downfall, one way or the other.  just like all bad habits, entitlement programs are easy to start but hard to end. 

here is article that inspire this blog post:

\Updated November 23, 2012, 6:11 p.m. ET

Jenkins: None Dare Call It Default

A nicer term for what's about to sock the middle class is 'entitlement reform.'

·        By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

To call Greece First World may be a stretch, but Greece has defaulted once already, and it is only a matter of time until Greece defaults again. Welcome to default-o-rama, the next chapter in the First World's struggle for fiscal sustainability.

Japan is piling up debt in the manner of a nation beyond hope. France, Belgium, Spain and Italy are defaults waiting to happen unless Europe can somehow generate the kind of growth that has eluded it for decades.

America's fiscal cliff is an artificial crisis. We have no trouble borrowing in the short term. But at some point the market will demand evidence that long-term balance is being restored. President Obama said in his first post-election press conference that he doesn't want any proposals that "sock it to the middle class." He knows better. A long-term socking is exactly what's coming to the middle class, which must pay for the benefits it consumes.

A few years ago, when the economy was humming, a common estimate held that federal taxes would have to rise 50% immediately to fully fund entitlement programs. Today, a 50% tax increase would be needed just to meet the government's current spending, never mind its future obligations.

One way or another, then, entitlements will be cut. Don't call it default. The correct term is entitlement reform.

You saw this day coming and saved for your own retirement. Don't call it default when Washington inevitably confiscates some of your savings, say, by raising taxes on dividends and capital gains. Taxpayers accept the risk of future tax hikes that may make the decision to save seem foolish in retrospect.

According to economists Robert Novy-Marx and Josh Rauh, state and local taxes would have to increase by $1,385 per household immediately to make good the pension promises to state and local workers, including firefighters and cops. That's not going to happen given all the other demands on taxpayers. Default, in this case, is the proper word for cities and states using bankruptcy to repudiate their pension obligations.

Prominent voices ask why the Treasury shouldn't just cancel the government bonds the Federal Reserve has been buying. It's money one part of the government owes the other. Dispensed with, of course, would be the idea that the Fed, in buying these bonds in the first place, was engaged in monetary policy. The Fed was printing money so Washington could spend it.

Now let it be said that inflation isn't fundamentally a solution to the entitlement problem, but the Federal Reserve is being led by increments to accommodate inflationary financing of future deficits. Don't call it default. Inflation is a risk savers are deemed to have accepted by putting their faith in the U.S. dollar.

Here's what you weren't told about Medicare during the presidential debates. Under the Paul Ryan plan, the affluent would pay more. Under the Obama plan, the affluent would flee Medicare to escape the waiting lists, shortages and deteriorating quality as Washington economizes by ratcheting down reimbursements to doctors and hospitals. Don't call either default. You don't have a legally enforceable right to the free care you imagined you were promised.

"Don't worry" was President Obama's implicit message during the campaign: If cutting subsidies for Big Bird is unthinkable, a joke, how much more so cutting benefits for middle-class voters?

Don't go running to a judge when this doesn't pan out. The courts do not overrule changes in government policy just because citizens find their promised free lunch isn't forthcoming. Nor will it be fruitful to appeal to politicians' sense of "fairness." Politicians can be relied on to do what will get them re-elected. And, believe it or not, that is the good news.

If politicians weren't eager to be re-elected, the trust necessary to be an investor would vanish altogether. While there is no escaping our challenges, there is a path in which the economy grows strongly and we don't savage each other, and there is the other path. For years the trustees of Social Security and Medicare were accused of exaggerating the programs' deficits by envisioning that America's long-run growth would become more like Europe's. Now who doesn't fret that America's growth is becoming permanently slower like Europe's?

Which brings us to President Obama. He knows cuts are necessary but seeks to position Democrats politically as the defender of all spending. Notice that, with ObamaCare, he is deliberately creating a constituency of the young to set against the old in future fights over the allocation of federal health care dollars.

Meanwhile, saving the dynamism of the U.S. economy, while still affording an entitlement state, naturally falls to the other party in a two-party system

Dear John: Why the Progressive World View is Self Defeating

It took the Roman empire about 300 years to debase the greek drachma enough such that society imploded into the Dark Ages. 

You  can follow all of the ups and downs of the history of the Roman empire and you can identify hundreds of proximate causes for the unraveling of society including political intrigue and infighting in policy making elites, constant war, economic malaise, famine, loss of classic virtues in society … etc.  sound familiar?  But, the underlying cause for the implosion of society, is the same underlying cause we are seeing play out today.  central bank money printing. 

All of the other hypotheses about what leads to the collapse of civilization are proximate – superficial – coincident – correlated causes that hide the fundamentally underlying cause.  which is that politicians inevitably attempt to gain power through debasing the currency.  politicians always debase a currency  because the easiest way to tax citizens is via the inflation tax.  Since 1913 the dollar has devalued 96% thanks to inflation.  We are like frogs in the boiling pot.  Before we can jump out, the water is boiling (i.e. inflation has sown its fatal distortions) and we’re dead. 

governments always grow ever larger due to intervention policies – war or welfare -- which seem to be necessary in times of external and internal shocks/ crisis, but remain in place (due to the ratchet effect) well after the crisis is past).  for example tax measures implemented during a war are often kept in perpeturity.  other interventionist policies developed during times of crisis, such as economic central planning measure, are seldom unwound or onlyl unwound grudgingly … and thus, the cycle of crisis and intervention paves the way to the road to Serfdom. 

John, you have created a world view such that bad news can always be blamed on some exogenous problem.    You are already saying you assume the US is in decline so that when Obama’s policies prove counter productive, you can claim that Obama did the best he could given all of the factors outside his control, including a hostile GOP.

Take a closer look at your model and you will see that it is self contradictory.  In order for Obama to get the freedom he needs to implement his policies, we’d need to get rid of the GOP or move to a single party political system.  if we do this however, this leads --by definition-- to a government that has absolute power.  This is what we are seeing in China.   China has what appears to be an enlightened one party system which seems to be working great over the past 30 years, but will implode dramatically unless the political system is turned into a multiparty system based on rule of law.

We can say this because we have the benefit of Lord Acton's first law of politics: 

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely

This is an ironclad law of human politics and social organization.  It is one of the two key laws that you can’t just assume away.  the other natural law of politics and social policy is the law of unintended consequences (L.o.U.C.), which prevents well intended policy from delivering social goals promised by policy makers.  The very act of aiming for social outcomes triggers a cascade of unintended consequences that not only prevent the goal from being reached, but also makes the system more fragile and vulnerable to systemic collapse.  Policy makers can change the rules of the game, but they can’t deliver certain outcomes, such as equality, social justice, level playing field, stable growth, etc without undermining the very achievement of those very goals.  Attempting to reduce volatility from markets for example will necessarily sow the seeds for systemic risk.  Markets can only be durable when they are allowed to be volatile! 

In order to implement your perfect world with your laundry list of enlightened reforms (e.g. implementation of tort reform, entitlement reform, health care reform, etc) , you need a system unemcumbered by two party grid lock.   but in so doing you get a problem where power becomes unchecked power and thus is vulnerable to the law of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

A system organized around free markets and limited government facilitates a system in which people can agree to disagree.  The system channels human failings and different view points into behavior that promotes overall social welfare.  your system requires a docile public or at least 51% of the public to be "brainwashed" to agree to a certain set of "objective" outcomes you wish the government to seek.  You need philosopher kings who are perfectly reasonable and rational and not influenced by ideology or opinions or imagination.  These philosopher kings are by definition "unreal" because they possess qualities not entailed in humans. Such a world ruled by such philosopher kings is therefore utterly fanciful, impractical, impossible. 

In my system with a limited government and free trade, humans can be what they are:  human.   The rationality of the market is “ecological rationality” … which means it is rationality that emerges out of regular human exchange and thus is beyond what Vernon Smith calls "constructionist rationality" or the design rationality of mere individuals or experts.  ecological rationality goes beyond the rationality -- and capability-- of human brains or computers…  it is a "rationality" that is emergent and that evolves out of the interactions of only partially rational individuals who are flawed as all humans are.  the results of ecological rationality are better than humans or policy makers can do via constructionist rationality implemented through a central government policy making authority. 

If we notice what seem to be "irrationalities" in social outcomes (sometimes called market failures), it is impossible to fix these outcomes with policy designed via constructivist rationality.

The best we can do is to try to fix the institutions or the rules of the economic/market/social system that apply to everyone. 

We should not have different rules for different sets of individuals, because such systems open the way for arbitrary human intervention and rent seeking opportunities for govt.  a second reason for what appears to be an irrational outcome for society is that a previous well intended intervention aimed at delivering some desired macro outcome instead caused distortions thanks to the law of unintended consequences. 

The third reason we may see what we think is an irrational outcome is that we misinterpret the outcome as irrational when in fact it is perfectly rational.  Consider an asset boom and bust event in an eocnmoy that causes a large bankruptcy leading to large lay offs and social disruption.  The boom is caused by irrational exhuberence and thus we may think of it as irrational and thus as a case of market failure requiring a solution.  But the boom-bust cycle may be a natural cycle just like happens in nature, which helps promote sustainability of an eco system over a long time.  Without the boom-bust cycles, the system may accumulate systemic failure risk. 

 We do not live in a world that is the best of all possible worlds.  We don’t have to be resigned to our current system as it is constituted.  But we also can’t fix the outcomes to the outcomes WE prefer because we cannot circumbent the law of unintended consequences or the law of absolute power corrupting absolutely.  Social systems can’t be engineered like machines because they are not “man-made” in the sense we think of a physical technology.  Social systems are emergent natural systems that emerge according to discovered rules (not man made invented rules or regulations) that MUST accord with natural laws.  Society is natural after all.  it is invisible but real.  It is not artificial.  If you think of the economy as man-made, you’ll always end up with the wrong assumption about why things happen and what the solution might be.

Is our Conventional View of Abe Really Honest?

I have no doubt Daniel Day Lewis did a wonderful job bringing Lincoln to life and that the movie is a triumph of cinematic skill and story telling thanks to Steven Spielberg as argued by my father in law (aka tony blog) in the email i've copied below.  I have not seen the movie yet, and I am eager to see it thanks to Tony blog's positive review.   But…  But.  But. 

The historical portrayal of Abe Lincoln in this movie is consistent with the history of the War written by the winning side, i.e. the North.  To the winner goes the spoils.  That is true of most narratives we consider to be “history.”  history is not some objective or true account of what happened.  It is a story usually told by the winning side following a definitive War.  The losing side in war never gets to tell the definitive narrative of the time.    This has been true since the Greeks invented history.

Harold Holtzer ia one of the so called “gate keepers” of the North’s narrative of the cause, consequence and meaning of the Civil War – all centered on Lincoln’s great passion to remove slavery from the American landscape.  Holtzer is like a modern day priest from the early church who was given absolute power to interpret an authoritative reading of the Bible.  We have experts to tell us what exactly happened in history and to tell us how to think about the world including by scientists/experts in every field of human analysis; economists tell us how to think about public policy, climate scientists tell us what to think about global warming, and historians tell us how to think about the implications of past events.   

The problem with our age of experts is that there is no such thing as an objective reading of history or of science.  Every reading of history is enormously impacted by the assumptions and goals of the so called expert doing the history.  and the same goes for science.

I am reading a history of taxation from the birth of civilization in Sumer to modern America.  The author offers a fascinating hypothesis.  he suggests that history can be viewed as a series of incidents related to public TAX policy.  Of course the Revolutionary War was very much about “taxation without representation.”  Other great events throughout history can also be viewed through the “taxation” lens, including the Civil War.  Having said that, the author of this book points out that there is no more controversial and emotional claim that he makes in his book challenging the received wisdom of our common understanding that the civil war is a war about slavery.  People don’t want this story challenged.   It goes to the heart of “our” common understanding of the deep moral beginnings of America.  Abe Lincoln is one of the most beloved figures in our common history.

However, Charles Adams points out that the history of Civil War can also be told using “taxation” as a fundamental back drop.  In fact, Adams found articles written by contemporary Northern writers of the time writing in pre eminent journals published in the North hypothesizing that the Civil war was fundamentally about taxes, not slavery.  The story outlined in one of these journal articles argued that Lincoln’s first priority in disallowing the South’s secession plans was to protect Federal tax revenues which came mostly from export tariffs from the Southern states!  The north contributed very little to public revenues, which meant if the South seceded, it would leave the North’s federal government just about broke.  Lincoln could not let the South secede under such conditions – and he succeeded.  But, the north could not let the story of the Civil War be told using the tax story as the back drop.  That would seem unseemly.  Instead the North focused on Lincoln’s later rationalization for the war, i.e. to end slavery.  Conventional wisdom is allowed to safely rationalize the tragic human element required for the North to successfully prevent the South’s secession plans.  In other words, Lincolns great goal to end slavery in America is still used as justification for the death of over 600,000 soldiers on both sides of the war.  This is more fatalities than all the other wars combined in US history, including 400,000 in WWII and 100,000 in WWI. 

Lincoln didn’t only successfully wage the Civil War, he also laid the foundation for the justification of the interventionist Federal Government that we have today, which is justified via the basic rationalization that if the ends are sufficiently important, then any means are justified.

The historical myth of Abe Lincoln promoted by Northern academic elites portraying honest Abe as the great leader, liberator and emancipator sowed the seeds for – and still provides continued justification for the “modern interventionist state ideology” we take for granted in America today that holds the following proposition:  that our society needs a powerful executive office and a powerful president and that the end goal of public policy is justified by the means, as long as the ends are sufficiently important, such as in promoting social justice or the material safety of American citizens. 

the greater the meaning of the policy goal, the greater the latitude we give for the achievement of the goal no matter what the unavoidably negative implications are for individual liberty.   George Bush used an ends justifies the means argument to promote the logic for waging “pre-emptive” war in Iraq.  He turned the logic of defensive war upside down.  In our new Islamic terror world with WMD Bush argued – and I bought this argument myself at the time – that in order to defend our homeland, we needed to root out terror before it had a chance to hit us again. 

We forget sometimes when we tell the story of Lincoln that there were 625,000 casualties in the Civil War.  Or if we remember these facts, we use it as part of the justification for our view of Lincoln as a great leader.  We see the human toll as a necessary sacrifice for a larger goal facilitated by a great leader.  We sanctify Lincoln because he pursued a worthy goal and achieved it despite the wrenching human casualties – and thanks to what is viewed as great human strength dealing with the wrenching agonizing he must have lived with in conduction the war.   The story of the Civil War is written by the north.  Thus, the story we assume is “the truth” today, is written in a way to glorify Lincoln’s leadership in pursuing moral ends no matter the means.  We still do talk about the bloody outcome of the Civil War, but the human tragedy of the war is set against Lincoln’s great moral commitment to ending slavery. 

Lincoln may have thought very deeply about the cause to end slavery, but Lincoln originally came to think of the War as unavoidable NOT based on its implications for the future of slavery in America.  He initially pursued the Civil War because letting the South leave the union would have devastated the ability of the Federal government in Washington CD to raise sufficient tax revenue even to conduct basic operations.  The only tax going into Federal coffers leading up to the Civil War was the tariff … and the south’s booming cotton and agriculture trade produced just about all of the tax revenue for the federal government at the time.  Only later, did Lincoln justify the Civil War as a war to end slavery.  And by the way, it is also true that Alexander Hamilton supported a stronger central government compared to Articles of confederation – because the Articles created competition amongst the states for the lowest tariff.  A central government charged with setting tariffs could raise the tariff with impunity, which is one of the very first acts by the new congress under the US constitution!!!  the tariff was made a uniform 8% or something on that order versus 1 to 3% that prevailed under the Articles of confederation.

Libertarians view Able Lincoln as the father of the modern American welfare / warfare state.  both major parties consistently argue that the ends justify the means for Federal government mobilization of special interests, the Dems favor funding the welfare complex and the GOP favors funding the military industrial complex.   Both parties favor funding for special interest subsidies including: to housing sector, Wall Street, big banking, public education, infrastructure, big pharma, big agriculture, big health care, big insurance,….

– all funded by the central bank money machine, which allows the government to implement an inflation tax rather than direct taxes. 

The myth promoted by Northern academic elites of the historic Lincoln makes us nostalgic for a powerful leader who can meet the crisis of OUR own times with leadership, commitment and bold decision making.  However, we need the opposite.  The boldness we need from our public leaders is the awareness and articulation that the model of the interventionist state Lincoln created via the Civil War is not the model we want to secure our future.  Bold in the context of the challenges which currently face now as a culture and country means undoing Lincoln’s big government interventionist legacy. 

Ps… Lincoln’s Civil War mobilization economy sowed the seeds for the late 1800’s Gilded Age and the Robber Barons who learned how to build crony capitalist ties with the Federal government to win sweet heart land deals to develop the American railroad infrastructure.  Government created the Robber Barons, not the so called “free market.”  The crony capitalism that rose up out of the Lincoln Civil War mobilization / central planning model not only sowed seeds for the Robber Baron era, but also set the stage for the crony capitalism model that has continued to evolve through American history such that when we fight to save the “free market” today, there is very very little to save.  Just like in the Gilded Age when Robber Barons earned massive fortunes thanks to government subsidies, we have analogous booms and busts, all directly caused by market distortions related to special interest subsidies and easy money, thoughout our history including in the 2000’s boom and post 2008-9 bust.  The answer each time has been to blame the market and to deploy increasingly sophisticated government intervention – no matter whether we are talking about the Patriot Act of Dodd-Frank.  Which are in fact new avenues for special interests to socialize risk and privatize profits in special interests. 

Subj: 11-25-12 NYP Finally, an honest Abe By? HAROLD HOLZER

Dear Readers:

We bring this to you because the article is very effective and correct.

It is written by an authority on Abraham Lincoln, Harold Holzer. It really reviews the new movie, "Lincoln" that was directed by Steven Spielberg. The lead actor is Daniel Day-Lewis who did an extraordinarily fabulous job in portraying Lincoln, his voice, walk, passion etc. It focused upon the passing of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, forever derailing slavery.

He did this during the lame duck session of his first term and prior to succeeding to his second term. He felt it had to be accomplished and if the war ended too soon, slavery would return if there as not a constitutional amendment.

It's a fascinating movie and quite possibly, the best movie I've seen.

We recommend the movie and this review. It's extraordinarily effective, appropriate, accurate, historically precedent and a must.

We bring this to you knowing many will have seen the movie .. but if not, go.

Tony Blog

Finally, an honest Abe

By  HAROLD HOLZER

Last Updated: 11:00 PM, November 24, 2012

Posted: 10:57 PM, November 24, 2012

Director Steven Spielberg, whom I introduced last week at Gettysburg at ceremonies marking the 149th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speech, said he was deeply humbled to be delivering an address on that history-making spot.

Spielberg kept his remarks simple — like Lincoln before him. After seven years of work on his new film “Lincoln,” Spielberg feels almost as if the 16th president is “one of my oldest and dearest friends,” he said.

He made it clear that his own greatest contribution to history would come through images, not words; through the magical, not-always-realistic art of film, not the sometimes unbearable truth of history.

But compared to the historians and scholars in attendance, he admitted an advantage in making Lincoln eternal.

“I’m luckier than nearly all of you, in one sense,” he said. “I have Daniel Day-Lewis’ phone number in my speed dial.”

If many of us, sadly, get the bulk of our American history from television and film, Spielberg’s address book at least provides a silver lining. For Daniel Day-Lewis gives the definitive portrayal of our time, perhaps ever, of Honest Abe.

For people like me, who have spent their lives studying Abraham Lincoln, the film is chilling — as if he’s really come to life.

Day-Lewis does it by avoiding the traps most Lincoln actors fall into, the stoic, “Hall of Presidents”-esque stereotype that probably most Americans imagine.

There are no moving pictures of Lincoln, no recordings of his voice. But after his death, everyone was Lincoln’s best friend, and there are descriptions of everything from his accent to his gait.

The most important thing is the voice. Far from having a stentorian, Gregory Peck-like bass, Lincoln’s was a high, piercing tenor. Those who attended his speeches even described it as shrill and unpleasant for the first 10 minutes, until he got warmed up (or his endless stories managed to cow them into submission).

As an eyewitness said when Lincoln took the stage at New York’s Cooper Union in 1860: “There was nothing impressive or imposing about him . . . His clothes hung awkwardly on his gaunt and giant frame; his face was of a dark pallor, without the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle. His deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious.”

Lincoln was so unsure of his voice — and whether it would carry to the far reaches of Cooper Union — that he asked an old Illinois acquaintance to plant himself in the back row of the cavernous Great Hall and raise his hat on a cane if he couldn’t hear. He never had to do so.

“When he spoke,” noted contemporary Joseph H. Choate, “he was transformed before us. His eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly as by electric flash. For an hour and more he held his audience in the hollow of his hand.”

Lincoln’s accent fluctuated between rural Kentucky and Indiana; some describe him as pronouncing “chair” as “cheer,” others as “char.” These accents don’t really exist anymore in America, but we can approximate them from recordings from the early part of the 20th century. Day-Lewis decided on the “char.”

Like any good politician, Lincoln would crank that accent up or down depending on the audience. The educated lawyer could speak the King’s English, then, like Bill Clinton, signal to rural voters that he was one of them with his drawl and folksy charm.

When he would speak, witnesses say Lincoln’s gestures at first seemed disjointed from his words. He was all limbs, awkward in his movements. We all know Lincoln was tall, but it’s not always conveyed just how unusual he was for his time. He was 6-foot-4, at a time when the average height of a man was 5-foot-6; the Amar’e Stoudemire of presidents.

Lincoln joked about his feet that he “had a hard time getting blood down there.” He’s described as stomping, shambling along, so it’s both amusing and thrilling to see Day-Lewis doing the same, walking, as Lincoln was described, “where his leg comes down all at once.”

Lincoln holds such a profound place in American history that every group wishes to claim him, everyone wants to interpret them as their own. But he did not have clinical depression, he wasn’t gay and, despite that odd gait, he didn’t have Marfan syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that elongates the body.

I know this because one of the symptoms of Marfan’s is that you lose power in your hands, but Lincoln was strong and eager to show off. Anytime he saw an ax, anywhere, he’d always want to show people a “frontier trick.” He’d hold the ax by the handle, just between his thumb and forefinger and hold it straight out, parallel to the ground, perfectly still, before dropping it to the ground. It was the 19th century political equivalent of Vladimir Putin posing shirtless with a gun.

If “Lincoln” has one flaw, it’s that we don’t really get to see this folkiness. Though he does get to tell a dirty joke.

But that’s a minor quibble. Over 2 1/2 hours, Day-Lewis does show us his melancholy, his political craftiness, his oratorical powers and his passion.

It’s that passion that also provides an important corrective to the modern study of Lincoln. It’s fashionable to suggest that the president was indifferent to the injustice of slavery, that he pushed for emancipation purely for military purposes.

That’s not true. As “Lincoln” shows, he cared deeply about race and slavery, and felt the Thirteenth Amendment was absolutely necessary from a moral standpoint.

In 1865, the Civil War was drawing to a close, but Lincoln worried that if the Union won too quickly, slavery would continue. The Emancipation Proclamation had freed the slaves, but some might interpret that as a temporary measure during war, and there were no constitutional protections for African-Americans.

The negotiations took place during a lame-duck session, and the drama has many parallels to today. Instead of the fiscal cliff, they faced the racial cliff. And for anyone who thinks that politics are dirtier work today, the backroom deals Lincoln made should dispel notions of a “simpler time.” He offered judgeships, promised to undo railroad regulations in New Jersey — anything he could do to get a vote. Honest Abe was cutting corners.

“Lincoln” doesn’t approach this with lapel-gripping remove, but with foot-stomping, face-slapping and fist-pounding — just as the real Lincoln did. It’s a president that’s fighting to bend a reluctant Congress to his will, a human Lincoln that isn’t always pretty though his cause is right.

The movie ends with Lincoln enshrined with honors as a liberator and then transformed into a martyr after his assassination. But it’s good to remember that while he lived, he was hugely controversial. Even his last great speech, the second inaugural, which Spielberg has recreated with a great sweeping set piece, with Day-Lewis really shouting out the words the way Lincoln would have done to reach the vast throngs on the US Capitol Plaza — even that great speech was not universally admired at the time.

It ended, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Faced with these words, a Democratic newspaper from Chicago thought it “slip-shod” and “puerile.”

Few great people are appreciated in their time. And it’s good to remember that, no matter how right the decisions seem now, they were hard-fought then.

“I wanted — impossibly — to bring Lincoln back from his sleep of one-and-a-half centuries,” Steven Spielberg said at Gettysburg, “even if only for two-and-one-half hours, and even if only in a cinematic dream.”

And most important, just the right number on his speed dial.

Harold Holzer is one of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln. His new book is “Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America,” a companion book for young readers to the Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln,” published this month by Newmarket Press for It! Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Dear John: Is Science the best (or only) claim to Truth?

Dear John: Is Science the best (or only) claim to Truth?

(Is Science with a political agenda and/or time table really Science?)

When you have a minute, please re-read the article I copied below arguing that climate science should be considered “post-normal science.”

The way I see it, modern progressives have hi-jacked science for their own political ends.  Thus, as I’ve argued before, progressive elites (politicians, pundits, money elites, hollywood and journalists) have turned science into a ideology or a religion.

It is no coincidence that Al Gore is often described in the press with religious imagery, such as when he is called "the high priest" of the climate change movement.  It is also no coincidence that Gore has leveraged this "exhaulted" position to accumulate vast wealth, just like “the church” did when it was one church, the catholic church and just as all formal religion still does today (to lesser or greater degrees.). 

which brings me back to the quote I highlighted the other day from the article you emailed me ( see http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/20/republicans-and-the-trouble-with-science/ ) arguing that conservatives will someday come around and embrace science in general and maybe even climate science in particular when it suits their political purpose. 

The insinuation that conservatives are ignorant because they don't believe in climate change alarmism is incredibly myopic and deeply hypocritical (albeit unwittingly).

Consider this quote from the "Republicans and their Trouble with Science article":  

“Everyone, liberals included, is primed to trust evidence based on whether it confirms our pre-existing beliefs.”

This quote applies to everyone, liberals and conservatives.  If the author of the article had a clue, he would not use this quote as proof that progressives are right to trust science while the GOP keeps its head in the sand for political purposes. 

What this quote does is quite ironic to the authors purpose.  What the quote means is that scientists THEMSELVES are just as vulnerable to conceptual bias as anyone else in any other human activity no matter whether they are liberals or conservatives or libertarians or whatever.  We ALL have pre-conceived notions about how the world works and we use and apply this “world view”  to make sense of what we observe.   Often times what “we” consider as “the truth” is biased by our pre-existing beliefs!!!   

Again, this is true no matter if we are talking about scientists or climate scientists or about anyone in any other career. 

You liked the conclusion of the article because it suited your world view.  What the author misses is that the he also has a pair of “blinders” or “rose colored glasses” of the sort he claims conservatives have. 

“EVERYONE, liberals included, is primed to trust evidence based on whether or not it confirms our pre-existing beliefs.”    

in other words Everyone wears a pair of custom made rose colored (or purple or cynical or blue or conservative or progressive) glasses.

This inherent bias we all carry around made it possible for a dominant conventional wisdom to carry the day for about 400 years of human history leading up to the Renaissance, the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, all of which paved the way to our modern world. 

The dominant conventional wisdom in the Western world from 1100 to 1500 AD is called Aristotelian Scholasticism.  Copernicus, Bacon and Newton made scientific discoveries that demolished the old Scholasticm's monopoly on “the truth.” 

it is important to note, however, that one of the fundamental assumptions that science used to demolish Scholastic conventional wisdom was the idea that the new "modern" science must begin in radical uncertainty. Nothing is to be taken for granted.  Start with a fresh white piece of paper.  throw out ALL received wisdom and truth.  it was assumed the new science would never make the same mistake as Scholasticism:  that is it would never claim to be to be a claim to absolute or inviolable truth. 

modern science was supposed to remain fallible and subject to revision.  science was not supposed to prove pre-determined conclusions.

This beginning was meant as an on going organizing principle for modern science itself, not just for the beginning of modern science as it threw off the shackles of a discredited conventional wisdom.  A foundation principle of modern science held that any "truth" discovered cannot be considered absolute or inviolable -- instead "we" must always consider science to be a fallible enterpries always subject to revision. 

Over the centuries, modern science has come full circle by trying to escape these earlier assumptions it was founded upon, including the assumptiont that science is a fallible and contingent discipline of rational human thought – it was never to be about the discovery of absolute truths.  Discoveries were supposed to be considered true only until a better “truth” was discovered in the future.  There was no such thing as “absolute truth” or consensus truth in science.  Such thinking and assumptions turn “science” into a faith based discipline rather than a purely scientific discipline. 

Ironically pure science is never about finding or proving some absolute truth.   Pure science is (like I’ve said) fallible, contingent and open-ended, constantly changing and open to revision. 

Liberals and progressive believe that “modern climate science” (and other sciences such as behavioral science or economics) gives them a moral authority to claim that their blinders are objective and correct -- while at the same time demonstrating that conservative blinders are ignorant and politically biased. 

Science does not have any claim to absolute truth or to the “best truth” compared to any other way humans attempt to understand the world, including philosophy, religion, art, literature, etc.  No domain has a monopoly on truth.  Religion is one of many ways for humans to help them understand the deep mysteries of the world we live in.  When religion pursued the hubristic goal of claiming to be “the absolute truth," it set itself up for self destruction.  Early modern science provided unimpeachable empirical evidence that religion could not be a claim to absolute truth about the age of the earth, etc. 

How ironic is it that modern science is following in the path of fundamentalist religion in claiming also for itself the role of finding and determining “absolute truth” or at least the “best” truth.  Science is conventional viewed nowadays as the first truth among all other claims to truth.

This is downright silly and ignorant based on what we know from science itself!!!  science over the last 100 years has proven over and over again that there is no such thing as absolute truth in science.  Quantum physics for example is beyond objective human claims to “truth.”  The quantum realm is literally unvisualizable.  We’ve made up an entire new language to describe the quantum world that is based on our real world observations, but in fact has no direct link to these real world observations.  Quantum physics is literally a world that bumps up against a hard and fast metaphysical dead end! In other words the quantum world is mysterious in ways we will never be able to understand or control or predict with precision. 

All domains of human learning – science, religion, literature, art, philosophy, etc -- are equal to the extent they provide equally valid attempts to understand a world we live in that is fundamentally unknowable or predictable or controllable.  It is not just the quantum world that proves the world is fundamentally mysterious.  Complexity science is a relatively new endeavor that proves our day to day world is full of fundamental mystery too.  Complexity science offers a powerful insight about complex natural systems, such as the earths biosphere or the human economy.  that is these systems are beyond the human capability of accurate modeling and thus beyond prediction and thus beyond the direct human control.   

The idea that science is the king of all human endeavors is a dangerous myth.  Of course science has proven that a fundamentalist reading of the Bible is silly, but science has not proven that religion is useless or harmful or erroneous.  Nor has science proven it is the last word on our understanding of the world.   

My argument is partly circular because I also have a bias of course that I use to build the world view I am outlining here.  The advantage of my world view however is that I am not claiming that any truth is better than another.  I have no idea if my world view is “the” best.  but I do know that progressive's assumption that science is the ultimate arbiter of truth is completely an utterly bogus.  I am certain of that.  This is a “fact” ironically proven by dozens of scientific discoveries – and philosophical advances -- of the last 100+ years and counting.    

Post-normal science is another way to say science has become an ideology supporting a political agenda.  Science is being used by progressives as a bludgeon to “prove” its political agenda. 

It is the same way church leaders used the churches claim to "absolute truth" in the middle ages as a way to consolidate power and thus to maximize rent seeking opportunities in society.  We all have blinders on:  LIBERALS or Conservatives or artists, libertarians, buddhists, Muslims, construction workers, teamsters, airline pilots, professors, climatologists, generals, politicians, bankers.  

The best we can do is to keep an open mind and to focus on adapting to change rather than trying to eliminate change or uncertaintly.  Doing so will enable us to avoid the sort of hubris -- and historic human tragedy -- entailed in assuming we have a claim to absolute truth in any human endeavor.   

power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

  

From: Sam Baker
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 3:01 PM
To: Sam Baker
Subject:  Is climate science ‘post-normal science’?

Is climate science ‘post-normal science’?

this article provides (compelling) evidence for argument that climate science has been hi jacked -- and infected -- by politics and thus should be considered post-normal science. (or in other words so-called “climate science” no longer deserves to be called “science” because it follows new rules linked to the political / policy calendar.  question:  is science with an agenda really science??).

Monday, August 6, 2012

Economics, Energy and the Environment

Is climate science ‘post-normal science’?

Kenneth P. Green | August 3, 2012, 4:07 pm

Over at Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog, there’s a great post up today by Steven Mosher comparing normal science (the hunt for the Higgs Boson) with post-normal climate science.

Mosher points out that in normal science, scientists can acknowledge uncertainty, they’re not under any particular deadline, values aren’t a factor, and other than the usual need to get published and funded, there’s not a lot at stake in any given experiment or research paper. Mosher offers up the recent Higgs Boson findings as an example of normal science.

The difference between Kuhnian normal science, or the behavior of those doing science under normal conditions, and post normal science is best illustrated by example. We can use the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson as an example. Facts were uncertain–they always are to a degree; no values were in conflict; the stakes were not high; and, immediate action was not required. What we see in that situation is those doing science acting as we expect them to, according to our vague ideal of science. Because facts are uncertain, they listen to various conflicting theories. They try to put those theories to a test. They face a shared uncertainty and in good faith accept the questions and doubts of others interested in the same field. Their participation in politics is limited to asking for money. Because values are not in conflict no theorist takes the time to investigate his opponent’s views on evolution or smoking or taxation. Because the field of personal values is never in play, personal attacks are minimized. Personal pride may be at stake, but values rarely are. The stakes for humanity in the discovery of the Higgs are low: at least no one argues that our future depends upon the outcome. No scientist straps himself to the collider and demands that it be shut down. And finally, immediate action is not required; under no theory is the settling of the uncertainty so important as to rush the result.

I think he could have equally used the “faster than light neutrino” thing from last year as well. In both situations, you had scientists behaving in a wonderfully open, honest, humble way, inviting others to please, please, test their findings. Heck, in the case of the CERN situation, as I recall, the scientists who released the findings were in doubt about them, and were practically apologizing for asking the rest of the world to figure out what was wrong with their research protocols. When the faster-than-light neutrinos were found not to move faster-than-light, the scientists who first proposed the idea didn’t call the ones who disproved it “fast-neutrino-deniers.”

This is not the case in climate science, Mosher observes:

Because values are in conflict the behavior of those doing science changes. In normal science no one would care if Higgs was a Christian or an atheist. No one would care if he voted liberal or conservative; but because two different value systems are in conflict in climate science, the behavior of those doing science changes. They investigate each other. They question motives. They form tribes. And because the stakes are high the behavior of those doing science changes as well. They protest; they take money from lobby groups on both sides and worst of all they perform horrendous raps on YouTube. In short, they become human; while those around them canonize them or demonize them and their findings become iconized or branded as hoaxes.

This brings us to the last aspect of a PNS [Post-Normal Science] situation: immediate action is required. This perhaps is the most contentious aspect of PNS, in fact I would argue it is the defining characteristic. In all PNS situations it is almost always the case the one side sees the need for action, given the truth of their theory, while the doubters must of necessity see no need for immediate action. They must see no need for immediate action because their values are at risk and because the stakes are high.

I think Mosher hits this one on the head:

One of the clearest signs that you are in PNS is the change in behavior around deadlines. Normal science has no deadline. In normal science, the puzzle is solved when it is solved. In normal science there may be a deadline to shut down the collider for maintenance. Nobody rushes the report to keep the collider running longer than it should. And if a good result is found, the schedules can be changed to accommodate the science. Broadly speaking, science drives the schedule; the schedule doesn’t drive the science.

Mosher illustrates the differences between normal science and post-normal science with reference to things like the climategate emails, which show considerable emphasis on a shared belief that the stakes are high, action needs to be taken immediately, and science must follow the political time-table of climate negotiations and United Nations publications, rather than following its own schedule. Well worth reading the whole thing.