A Comment on the Philosophy of Maintaining an Optimal State

Winston Churchill notably remarked that democracy is an ineffective form of government yet in comparison to everything else it's the best there is. (paraphrase). The U.S. Government of the past 20 years exemplifies that. It went from a post cold war peace dividend to vast public debt, high unemployment and the record warmest year on record by 2012. The U.S. Government spent more lives and as former V.P. Dick Cheney liked to say, treasure, in fighting a box cutter armed crew of hijacker-crashers than it did during the final phase of the cold war.

Original sin is an implicit element of human behavior. I read Faulkner's brilliant book 'As I Lay Dying' recently. It has a marvelously true description by the departed of her sexual liaison following the drive of sin with her husband following his own impetus of sin. The rest of the book has about the best language of rural America from the 1910s that one might find in literature. The work has existential truisms throughout it and recounts a chapter in the lives of the economically unspoilt. Contemporary America does not exist in such a state of innocence nor of economic simplicity.

Modern America is driven more by drives actualized through special interests. The democracy is a concatenation of special interests with little regard for history lessons. If armed neutrality is a good policy, if reducing the defense department budget by 25% to keep a ready reserved force able to combat in a hypothetical real warm rather than a military police action, if having a 50,000 man special ops corps for world intervention short term action like the foreign legion of yore, the cost of a military reduced in budget yet increased in efficiency without 4 star restaurants in the field could help balance the federal budget and eliminate the public debt. Economic pragmatism though is akin to the course of navigating minimal mass violence internationally, which requires good judgment. Walk softly and carry a big stick.

Sorer Kierkeguarrd was for armed neutrality I seem to recall. Injudicious use of military forces is costly socially and internationally. Yet precipitate withdrawal to accomplish a hypothetical state of non-violence often achieves the opposite effect. The middle course between extremes is useful in policy decisions foreign and domestic, yet any course that is wrong in sailing is as navigators might agree, wrong.

Disarming the citizens of the United States through over-aggressive gun control endangers the careful balances and social history that continued America as a free society while most of the rest of the world was enthralled, serfs, in chains or subjects of aristocrats. The armed history of Americans let them meet the threats of the redcoats as well as confederates though of course, some brave units such as those of New York walked into battle in 1865 en mass with smooth bore weapons to be slaughtered as the faithful had done for decades under government supervision. The histories of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany showed that disarmed citizens are sheep for the slaughter.

If a Christian interested in politics has as a goal the perpetuation of the best state of affairs politically possible with the lowest number of casualties and the highest degree of freedom he must be aware that he is not structuring the City of God. He is instead intervening in the City of Sin. There are pragmatic social structures operating in the City of Sin that require a different balance and use of force than for those ecclesiastical concerns modeled more or less correctly on Christian and Pauline principles, if such churches exist.

The 2001 Afghanistan intervention and the 2014-scheduled withdrawal is another case in point. U.S. failure to remain involved in Afghanistan after the end of the cold war let a festering civil war develop with a Taliban rising to dominate and allow Al Qaeda to attack the U.S.A.  The 2001 intervention was perhaps more than required, and fairly well unthought out. Treasure and lives were dumped-mostly Afghan lives and fewer Americans and international forces. If the conflict could have been directed through less expensive means that would have been better.

The administration has mentioned that it might completely withdraw U.S. forces after 2014. Before that perhaps, repeat of history, the U.S.A. should send a political economy surveyor to Afghanistan to stake out geographic-political units that could survive hostile internal forces if the worst case Vietnamization scenarios unfold as the Taliban is not claiming will happen. With former Northern Alliance forces willing to defend themselves with some U.S. support it is reasonable to develop a Plan B with the experience of Vietnamization as a model vaguely. A partitioned Afghan state could exist if the remainder wants to break off, and would probably be on better terms than the Israel-Palestinian people are.

Political pragmatism used in seeking optimal social scenarios of full employment, low entropy economics with liberty and justice for all is a temporal goal in a sinful world where few are really interested in political philosophy or even the well being of society. Most are perhaps necessarily concerned with helping themselves, and many are encouraged to charge the public expenses to the existential debit card that only that only the abstract wealth machine need make a payment on now and then with a glance at the massive public debt out of curiosity rarely.

When mass social actions go wrong one gets things like world war two with 40 million dead, or the 13th century bubonic plagues, Rwanda, Kampuchea and so forth. When society goes wrong the posturing public in the media and of various institutions just rolls on, and then none know how to fix it, they just let it play through until reaching the embers.