"HOW MUCH," AND, "WHO PAYS," ARE DIFFRENT QUESTIONS

In '03, I lost my job and insurance. I had a wife and 3 kids, and took an 87% pay cut. Cobra was out of the question. Our church and friends helped tremendously, and we learned how to live on far less than we thought possible. I can relate to this woman. But... Obamacare did nothing, whatsoever to reduce the cost of anything. All it did was change who pays for it. "Affordable Health Care Act" my butt. Anything is affordable if you use your neighbor's credit card to pay for it. Obamacare is not the answer; it is an icon of the problem: government interference in the economy. There are ways to reduce the cost. One huge one is striking down the laws that force the compartmentalization of insurance. Under the pretense of making sure we don’t get ripped off by insurance companies, the government has made rules that are intrusive and pointless, and add billions of dollars to the cost of insurance. Those costs are passed on to us. These oppressive regulations make it impossible to start up new insurance companies (pronounced “Competition”) without the backing (pronoun- ced “Control”) of government-approved financial institutions. These rules (not laws, because most of them come from appointed bureaucrats, rather than from elected bureaucrats) also strangle creativity and initiative, and require that all insurance companies be pretty much the same. The laws and rules governing malpractice suits and insurance are worse than insane, and contribute nothing to health care. Congress (pronounced “lawyers”) has adamantly refused to even LOOK at this issue. Did you know that if an obstetrician delivers a baby, he is exposed to malpractice suit until that baby is 21 years old? Given that malpractice insurance costs many thousands of dollars per year, the doctor can never retire. His income may stop, but the premiums never do, and unless he has been either incredibly artful at investing his savings or a damned crook who got paid by the government for care he never delivered, he will be penniless long before that last baby lowers the gun held to his head. These laws and rules do not guarantee quality health care; they are pure burden, and the only people who profit from them are the lawyers. Yet do we see government legal care? Psssh! Yeah, right. And I ain’t even gonna go into the cost of tests, labwork, and procedures that are done strictly as CYA’s by doctors who are willing to spend a few thousand of someone else’s dollars to make sure they can say in court, “I did everything possible.” Again, this goes right back to the rules, laws, and lawyers (pronounced “Government.”) Graft is a huge money vacuum. Crooked doctors and crooked government employees skim billions by defrauding the system. This is made possible by the existence of the system, in the first place. There is no way to take all that money from the people who earned it and give it to people who didn’t earn it and expect the latter to only do good with it. Think about it. You have crooks who work for an organization that is devoted to theft, coercion, and bribery, and these crooks hire people to administer your health care. Do you think they are going to look for “sainthood” on the resumes of applicants? The entire edifice is putrid with graft from the very top, and yet some folks have the explicit expectation that if we just give it a little more money and a little more power, it will suddenly be transformed into an honest, caring, benevolent entity that will cuddle and nurture us from cradle to grave. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw years ago, in which a fellow in a lab coat – presumably a scientist of some sort – is standing proudly by a chalk board. On the chalkboard is a complex web of equations and vectors that move from left to right. At the far right side is a circle in which are the words, “At this point, a miracle occurs.” Another scientist is looking at it and says, “I think we might have a problem right here.” My physician told me a few years ago that, on average, it takes him 6 months to get paid by the insurance companies. When he submits a group of claims, it is ignored. When he inquires about it, the companies say they never got it. He resubmits it by registered mail, the cost of which is mandated by the government, and they sit on it for a month or so, then pay half of it. When he inquires about the other half, they say they paid the claims they received, so the others must have been lost in the mail. He submits them again – by registered mail – and again the companies sit on them for a few months, and finally pay. If a doctor is less persistent or meticulous, he will never get paid. And does anyone think doctors have figured out that if they are going to pay the wages of the staff who take care of all this pointless, unnecessary BS, they must increase their fees? Or take more patients in less time? Shouldn’t this behavior by insurance companies open the door for competition? It would if the government allowed doors. Health care is made more expensive by things that appear to have nothing to do with it. OSHA’s insane rules add billions to the cost of manufacturing in the US – including the cost of manufacturing medical equipment. The ICC’s insane rules for truckers add billions to the cost of delivering that equipment. The FDA’s insane rules add billions (and years) to the cost of developing new drugs. Everything we do, or buy, or use, or give away is regulated by the government. The cost of living is literally that: the cost of breathing and moving around, and every breath, every blink, every bowel movement is affected by laws and rules that make it more expensive. It is a perfect example of the butterfly effect gone mad. Obamacare addresses none of the cost issues. Not a damned one. It does, however, establish a gigantic bureaucracy (pronounced “money pit”) that will be in charge of taking our money, keeping 98% of it for themselves, and using the rest to pay the outrageously expensive medical bills of everyone. Some of it will come back to us, for which we are to bow and genuflect in gratitude to The Savior, Obama. An enormous chunk of it, however, will go to illegal aliens and others who hate us and rail against the last sherds of freedom and capitalism that have made it possible for us to have money for the government to steal and give to them. Knowing that some of us will be resentful, the government will spend billions on drones and spy cameras to keep an eye on us. These billions will be partly paid for with money taken from us – money that might have gone to paying our own medical bills - and partly by printing money, which will devalue the pittance they have left us. And before anyone howls about government regulation guaranteeing the safety of our health care, remember that more people die each year from medical accidents than are shot by criminals. So what about corruption and dishonesty in the private sector? Do doctors and businessmen and bankers go bad? Duuh. But there is an enormous difference! Would you rather tangle with Doctor Tom down the street, or the entire friggin’ United States Government? These clowns don’t have, or shouldn’t have, the protection of the government. If one of them gets stupid, we ought to be on him like the white on rice. Put the stinkin’ lawyers to work. However, the greatest single deterrent to corruption in the private sector would be to eliminate the government’s ability to pour its ill-gotten gains into that corruption. I am absolutely not advocating anarchy in the health care industry. I am simply saying that an open market in which the quality of the product, the service with which it is delivered, and the integrity of the administration will be more responsive than the government. If you don’t like one provider, you can shop for another with some hope of finding that one glorious rebel who has the crazy idea that providing a quality product, at a reasonable price, and treating people right is the key to success. Don’t leave that choice to people who don’t give a cup of boiled spit about your wellbeing. As we say in the west, cowboy – or cowgirl - up. Rebsarge

SOUVENIR OF A MAN

I spent a year on the island of Okinawa, in the South China Sea, in the late ‘60’s. Having been fascinated by WWII in the Pacific, I spent a lot of time exploring the island, looking for signs of the battle. The fight for the southern 1/3 of the island was a hideous, savage slugging match that killed nearly 100,000 people. The fight for the northern 2/3 of it was more of a guerrilla action – fought by squads and platoons in ambushes and surprise attacks. The terrain in the north is very rough and beautiful.

One day, a couple of pards and I rented a car and went touristing up north. The battlefield maps I had were of minimal use on the modern landscape, but offered at least a starting point. On this day, we drove up a pretty decent dirt road that wound and twisted over gnarled, white coral hogbacks and down into jungle-choked ravines that hadn’t seen the sun since before The Flood. At one point, the road went up a flat-bottomed ravine with steep ridges on either side. It ran straight for about 300 yards to the foot of a cliff, where it turned sharply to the left.

I knew this place! A platoon of Marines had been ambushed here by Japanese on that cliff and in the caves in its face. The Japanese had been driven off or killed by a Marine Sherman tank. The Japanese held ground that was 50 feet above the Marines, who were penned in the bowling alley-like ravine. It had been a heck of a scrap until the tank turned the tide.

We parked and walked along the road toward the cliff, looking for artifacts. We found a few bullet jackets, and Red found a piece of a mandible. I wanted to get to the top of the cliff, and into those caves! There were three of them, blank, skull-eyes in the white coral face. From the road, we could see the divots taken from the coral by the tank’s main gun, and the thought of what might be in those caves gave me palpitations! (My friends were there mostly to enjoy my foolishness.)

It took an hour to hike around to the top of the bluff, where we found some shell fragments and more bullet jackets. I rappelled over the edge and into the first cave. The cave closed sharply to a crack that I couldn’t crawl through. I shined my flashlight in it, but could see only the coral walls. I backed out and swing on my rope to the second cave. It was a little bigger, and I found a half-dozen .50 caliber bullets in it, smashed and twisted from impact with the rocks. Any man in that cave would have been in a veritable blender with those things bouncing around. I swung to the third cave.

As I stepped into the cave mouth, I realized that there were no spider webs across it, as there had been with the others. This one was much larger – high enough for me to stand erect. The floor was very smooth, and dropped gently down for about 10 feet. There were no bullets or shell fragments in the cave – not even the sherds of blasted coral that had covered the floors of the others. At the rear of this entry hall, the cave made a right turn. My flashlight led the way down and around the bend, where I stopped, frozen, almost unable to breathe.

Before me was a small room, about eight feet square, with a six-foot ceiling. The walls to my left and right were coral, but the back wall was of clay. Carved from the clay was a bench seat, big enough for one man to sit on with a few inches to spare. On that bench, near left end – where a right-handed man might have placed it – was a teacup. It was a very plain little cup – elegantly curved, exquisitely finished and glazed, with a deep blue geometric figure on one side. It sat in perfect, tranquil repose, like a perfect stone in a perfect Japanese sand garden. Perfect.

I stared at it for I don’t know how long, then slowly crossed the room, carefully examining where I would place each foot; some of these caves were still mined, and men had died in them recently. In the clay and dirt of the floor I saw footprints – prints of the split-toed boots so many Japanese soldiers wore. Immediately in front of the bench were footprints facing away, where he had placed his feet as he sat, and there, in the compliant surface of the bench, was the print of a man’s trousers. In awe, I looked from the floor to the bench and back, and again, and noticed the print of the buttplate of an Arisaka rifle – the standard Japanese infantry rifle. This man had sat here in the dark with his rifle at his left knee, his teacup in his right hand, and… what? Did he have a cup of tea? What was he thinking of?

In too many such places have I found myself in the company of too many men and women who chose not to be seen for me to think that only we mortals walk about, and in that place I felt him, and knew he was there as surely as I knew my friends were above me. He was gentle, but very strong and quick. He did not mind my being there, but had I not been so humbly awed and respectful, it would have been different, and I would not have enjoyed my stay.

After perhaps 10 minutes or more I stepped closer to the bench and knelt. I thought for an instant about sitting on it, but the very thought was shocking, and I could not have taken his place. I found my hand reaching for the teacup, almost against my will, and picking it up. He stirred, but did not object. I took the towel from my pack, wrapped the cup in it, and placed it ever so gently back in my pack. Still kneeling before him, I traced the print of his rifle butt, then of his boots, then lay my hand flat where he had sat. Had I possessed the spiritual acumen to pray in those days, I’d have offered up my soul in one. But I didn’t, so after another minute or two I stood, turned, careful to not make twisting prints in the floor, and slipped out of his room.

To my astonishment, the sun still shone at the mouth of the cave. There was one more revelation before me.

I called to my friends that I would rappel to the bottom of the cliff and look around there. When I was down, they cast off the rope and started their hike to the road. Eyes cast down, I carefully toed aside the creeping vines that covered the bottom of the ditch. I found shell fragments and bullets aplenty, but nothing remarkable. I looked up at the cliff to orient myself on the caves, and saw that I was directly in front of the third. I looked down and there, almost between my feet, was a very smooth, round object of about a four-inch radius. About two inches of it protruded from the earth. It was one of the most prized battlefield artifacts – a Japanese helmet!

It was badly rusted, but not as much as one might think, given the rainy climate. I used a knife to carefully move the dirt away from the helmet until I could see the rolled hem on the bottom edge, then pushed my fingers down along the surface and curled my fingertips carefully around the edge, and lifted. The paper-thin steel creaked and popped as the stress of its own weight bent and bowed it. Up it came, out of its crypt. Crypt? I thought. Odd choice of words.

And then I looked into his eyes.

There was no name on any of this, and no way I could know his name, but it was him, I know it as surely as I sit here. His skull. It was stuck to the helmet, and came out with it, and when I tipped the helmet in lifting it, he looked up at me. Straight in my eyes. I didn’t scream or flinch or drop his head. I just sat, frozen again, and stared. It must have been a half-hour later that I heard my friends big-footing and chatting on the road.

With tears streaming down my face, I turned his helmet down and slipped it as gently as I could back into the place whence it had come. I scraped the soil back around it and gently tamped it in place. Then I lay my hand on his helmet for a moment and the only thing I could think to say was, “I’m sorry. Thank you for teaching me. You have earned this ground. I leave it to you.” I stood, saluted, and walked away.

As my friends came up to me and asked if I’d found anything, I felt a strong urge to return the cup to his cave, but I fought it off. I will always wish I’d done it.

That night, after I’d shown the cup to the guys in my barracks, one of them stole it, and I never saw it again.

APPLES AND MANZANOS - DIFFERENCES WHAT AIN'T

From my oldest and dearest friend, on the false dichotomy of communism vs. fascism:

"...there has never been a pure capitalist country. Current evidence suggests that because of human nature, unfettered capitalism doesn't seem to work much better than communism (Atlas Shrugged talked about the problems with communism). We still need some form of government to keep the capitalist honest. Furthermore, the human race still hasn't dealt with the problem of religions that want to use some form of force to limit human freedom."


It is certainly true that there has never been a “pure capitalist country,” but the closer we’ve come to that ideal, the better off we’ve been. The poor in America have almost always been better off than the middle class in much of the world. Whereas, as nations have come closer to “pure commun-social-fasc-nazi-Rousseau-progressiv-ism,” the worse off they’ve become. There’s an old joke that, “The Constitution may not be perfect, but it’s better than whatever we’re using now.” Change “The Constitution.” to “capitalism,” and it fits the present issue perfectly.

Unfortunately, the media, academia, and the government (yes, before you say it, Bush was not spotless in this!) have so distorted the meaning of capitalism that I’d be amazed if one out of 10,000 Americans can give you a legitimate, non-contradictory definition.

Rand’s point was that we have been given a false dichotomy – a choice between apples and manzanos – and sold a despicable bill of goods that they are different – and that they are the only choices we have! How many times, Old Friend, have you and I gone around about the idea that we must choose between the tyranny of the Democrats and the tyranny of the Republicans? Or that one must either love Obama and hate Bush, or love Bush and hate Obama?

At this point, our Titanic of State is down 20 degrees by the head and half our boilers are flooded. This is not the time to be inventing an iceberg-detecting radar. Fortunately, we don’t have to invent a new form of government right now. We have one that works a hell of a lot better than what we are using. It may or may not be perfect; as you pointed out, we’ve never tried it in its pure form. We do, however, have considerable empirical evidence of its superiority over statism.

As for “…the problem of religions that want to use some form of force to limit human freedom,” we actually have dealt with that problem. It’s called a democratic republic, based on a written constitution, that is inviolable but amendable, and a heavily armed and informed population. Perhaps, “informed population” should be in bold uppercase at the head of the list.

Tyranny is tyranny. It doesn’t make a flippin’ bit of difference if the tyrant is Baptist or whatever the hell Obama is. Yes, some people do manipulate and pervert religious principles to justify infringing on the agency of others. But I’ve noticed a potfull of people who infringe on the agency of others, and don’t care a damn about justifying it by any means, at all! It’s sort of like the moral difference between the Confederacy and the Union.

The Confederates talked about the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and what they considered the original intent of the Constitution. They talked about freedom and rights and equality before the law. All of their high-sounding rhetoric was, of course, in hopeless – or insane – conflict with the practice of human slavery. The rest of the world saw it, and shook their heads in disbelief. Had the South been allowed to secede and try to make it in the world on its own, at some point that contradiction would have had to be addressed. They would have had absolutely no choice but to come down on the side of their noble principles, or on the side of their Peculiar Institution. Given the moral and economic pressure from the rest of the world, and the South’s near-obsession with the opinions of European governments, I think they’d have stuck to their principles and ended slavery. Of course, we’ll never know, because…

The North – or at least the Lincoln government and those who supported it – had thrown all of those high-sounding principles out. To hell with all that noble namby-pamby. We are here to bring all Americans under the iron heel of the Washington government – black, white, brown, male, and female. They weren’t the least bit concerned with ending racial slavery except as a means to the end of enslaving everybody.

I see a strong parallel in our situation today. On the one hand, we have people who profess to follow the teachings of a book that [ended up] saying slavery was wrong, that people had the right to make up their own minds, but not the right to escape the consequences of their actions. Some of these people range from squirrelly to flat out stupid, and scare me as much as or more than they scare you. But at least they have some connection to proper principles.

On the other hand, we have amoral pragmatists who wouldn’t know a moral principle if it bit ‘em on the leg. They are after the pure, raw power over their fellow man. It is, to quote Rand again, “Naked, smirking evil.”

For myself, I see an enormous difference between a Newt Gingrich saying he’s against forcibly taking money from people who are against abortions, then giving it to people who are for abortions, and Barack Obama saying he’s going to forcibly take money from whomever he damned well pleases and give to whomever he damned well pleases. Given the choices we have before us now, I choose to support someone who is at least aware of the existence of agency and moral principles. Of course, I’m going to watch ‘em like a hawk, and keep my gun hand clear.


Rebsarge

OF IDIOTS, TATERS, AND EVIL

(Clear Disclosure. We’ll be using an acronym because “kind, omniscient, benevolent, omnipotent, just, and good government” is a bit windy. We’ll use kobojagg, instead.)

The legitimate transfer of wealth requires a transfer of goods or services. If you start the career of a nail when it leaves the foundry, you will see that every time it changes hands, someone makes money on it. If that isn’t impressive enough, you can follow its career before the foundry, and look at the iron ore, nickel, coke natural gas, and all the millions of commodities that went into making that silly little nail.

The Keynesians have never understood this. They do not believe that anything has any value other than what people arbitrarily place on it – what they are willing to pay for it. It is certainly true that in a statist economy with fiat currency, like most of the world has today, the value of money is entirely subjective. In their scheme, you could throw our little nail in the trash, and just have people giving each other money.

(The phrase, “Supply-side economics” is a tip of the hat to the Keynesian’s blind spot on the necessity of goods and services in an economy. It is so foreign to them that we have fallen into their linguistic trap of using “supply-side” to describe the alternative to… whatever the hell they advocate - “government-side,” or, “dictator-side,” or maybe just, “off side” economics. Like “trickle-down,” the phrase has become a pejorative used to describe principles that actually allow humans to survive. Operationally, both supply-side and trickle-down are aspects of a free, capitalist economy.)

In a Keynesian system, the government prints the money, and because it is a kobojagg, it assigns to the money a value that will allow everyone in the economy to survive. The kobojagg gives the money to its first-level bureaucrats. They keep what they need and give what’s left to the second-level bureaucrats. This process continues down the steam, with each person who handles the money keeping only what he needs.

The money goes back up the chain through taxation. Everyone has kept only what they need, but then the kobojagg says, “No, you don’t actually need quite that much,” and takes some of it back. When the kobojagg has collected taxes from everyone in the economy, the process starts over; they give the money to the first-level bureaucrats, and it trickles down from there. Note that the last guy in the chain is getting some pretty watery soup, and he’s not going to be happy about having to give some it back. So he raises a stink about it, and the government, being a kobojagg, says, “Okay. Here’s a progressive tax schedule, so that you don’t have to give as much back as the guys upstream from you.”

Now the guy on the bottom is happy, or at least, less unhappy. But the guys at the top are now thinking, “I’m going to have give back more than I used to, so I’m going to cook the books a little bit, and claim that I need more in order to cover the higher taxes.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to play that game. So at every level, everyone who handles the money keeps a little more than before, and by the time the bucket gets to the last guy, it’s down to seeds and stems again. (Yes, I survived 1968.) Since more and more of the money is skimmed off, the government says, “Well, okay. We’ll just print some more.”

Now, even in a Keynesian world, folks have to eat, and not everyone can look really good naked, so we need to look at the production of stuff for folks to eat and wear. Let’s start with a tater. A farmer has some good ground, so he plants taters. He has to eat until the taters can be marketed, but that’s okay because the kobojagg will give him money. After all, it’s just paper, right? Paper to which we stupid, non-degreed commoners are foolish enough to ascribe value.

So the taters come up, and Mr. Farmer takes them to town. He got a dollar a pound for last year’s crop, but this year, Mrs. Farmer has blessed him with another baby. His acreage hasn’t increased, so in order to feed the little varmint, he’s going to have to charge a buck and a dime a pound. Everybody at the market pitches a fit, but because Mr. Farmer pushes the plow without benefit of livestock, and has muscles in places where most people don’t even have places, they give in and pay him.

Guess what happens now? The people in the village, though full of taters, raise a stink to the kobojagg, demanding more money be passed down. The kobojagg now has a choice. It can print more money, or it can send out enough men to whip Mr. Farmer into lowering his prices. It’s a lose-lose situation, because even if they get the evil, one-percenter Farmer to lower his prices, he’s now going to demand more from the kobojagg in order to feed the fruit of his loins. (That's the first time I've used that term in an essay. It may not happen again.)

Has this process gotten incredibly long-winded and cumbersome? What is it going to look like when you add to the taters every, single thing that is produced in the economy, and add to Mr. Farmer every other citizen? And, sure as the world, some sorry sucker near the top of the stream is going to go bad and actually take all the money he WANTS, and what’s that going to do? And if that isn’t mind-boggling enough, let’s throw in a war, or a terrible hurricane season.

The bottom line is that John Maynard Keynes was an idiot, but not necessarily an evil man. All he did was have a stupid idea. However, everyone who presently subscribes to his stupid idea is evil because they have 80 years or so of proof that it really is a stupid idea. People who do stupid things once are just human. People who do them a second time are fools. People who point guns at others and force them to do stupid things are evil. This last group is very heavily represented in the American government, with no regard to party affiliation.

PS – as an afterthought, I should mention that the only way to get otherwise intelligent, moral people to go along with this kind of stupidity is if the kobojagg has a monopoly on gun ownership.

CORNBREAD AND RED BEANS - FIT FOR GODS AND HILLBILLIES

When I was about 12 or 13, we very nearly went bankrupt. I didn’t know it at the time because Mom and Dad didn’t share that kind of stuff with a kid who couldn’t do anything about it, anyway. This was in the early 60’s, when bankruptcy was a shameful thing, and the folks were under tremendous strain. There was about 5 years when we ate a lot of beans! Now, we’d always eaten a fair amount of beans, so I didn’t consider it much of a change, and most certainly not a sacrifice! Mom’s red beans were the stuff of legend, and her cornbread was the stuff of mythology! (We always called pinto beans “red” beans. I didn’t know until I was well into my 20’s that most folks use the color adjective to refer to kidney beans.)

Like most kids, I guess – most boys, at least – I never thought about how to cook red beans and cornbread. We’d have beans for dinner three or four of times a week, and cornbread with them about half the time. On Sunday, our great treat was hamburger beans! I’ve no idea how Mom fixed it. It was hamburger meat mixed with the red beans. She wasn’t much into chile then, so they weren’t spicy, but they were oh! So tasty! It is my dream to figure out how she made that dish.

Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve messed around with making beans, and have found a number of things that don’t work very well. The last pot I made was outstanding, though, and I’ve been thinking about making another pot, if for no other reason than economy. Even eating cheap stuff at the cafeteria or local restaurants can run into money, but a few cents worth of red beans and salt pork will feed me for a week or more. Another reason for my interest in cooking is that I’m newly single, and there is a strong temptation to get lazy with my diet. I’ve never been a good cook, but my increasing waist size testifies that I haven’t been a total failure, either!

So, it was serendipitous that I picked up my cookbook while looking for something else, and out fell some papers. On one of them, written in Mom’s own hand, was her recipe for cornbread! Nostalgia crashed over me, and the memory of taking a bite of that wonderful stuff, covered with red beans and sopping in their juice, and wallering it around in my mouth transported me to a whole ‘nother time and place. .” I went right out and bought a cast iron skillet!

(For you Yankees, “waller” is the transitive form of the verb, “wallow,” and refers to rolling or wobbling something around. In this case, one would waller a mouthful of cornbread and red beans around with ones’ tongue in order to saturate all the sensory elements of the mouth with the flavors and textures. Other uses of the word include the way bearings can wear to the point that they cannot support the shaft that runs through them; they are then said to be, “wallered out.” And perhaps, given the climate of political correctness that infests our national dialogue today, I may be forgiven for using the half-word, “Yankees)

Here is Mom’s recipe for cornbread, verbatim.

Cornbread ??

1 heaping cup cornmeal
1 egg
1 cup milk – about
1 teaspoon baking powder – about
1½ teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons bacon grease

Mix dry ingredients. Add egg and enough milk so batter is smooth and easy to pour but not runny. Stir just enough to mix. Have grease very hot and add to ab***** [illegible] stir in good. Pour mix into very hot skillet and bake at 500 degrees about 20 minutes.

****************

So assuming I was supposed to add the very hot grease to the mixed ingredients, it went very well. I ended up with a little less than 3 tablespoons of bacon grease, but went with what I had. The mixture was pretty runny, so I added a little more cornmeal. My oven may be a little hotter than hers, so it was very fully done. About another minute and it would have been burnt. It came out about ½ inch thick, rather than the inch or more I remember her cornbread being, and it was a little dry. But, oh, my! The taste was familiar, like the face of a dear old friend that has been changed by the passage of years, but will always be familiar. It soaked up the bean juice in fine form, and I had a wonderful dinner!

Next time, which won’t be far off, I will double the recipe, use four tablespoons of bacon grease and a little less than one cup of milk per unit of meal. This may not be on the same level as “Julie and Julia,” but I bet I don’t starve!

THE VALUE OF COURAGE

There has been much talk about not politicizing veterans today, and that is as it should be. So I’m going to challenge some paradigms. A Yankee soldier was asked why he was burying the remains of a Confederate who had died along a mountain trail in New Mexico. He shrugged and said, “They’re all some mother’s sons.”

I have met veterans of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and of the North Vietnamese army. (I’ve probably met a few more-or-less reconstructed VC, too, but they don’t put that information on their name tags!) I have found them all to be good men. Some will express bitterness or cynicism after a few beers, but that’s certainly no indictment. They answered their countries’ calls, and did their best. I don’t know what horrors they may have seen or even participated in, and I don’t feel a need to know.

Whatever flag they followed, there was a picture of a girl somewhere in their kits, and neither the shade of her skin nor the shape of her eyes made a spittin’ bit of difference. They shared with their American enemies a willingness to do the unspeakable, should be required of them. They put their necks on the blocks. That the axe didn’t fall on them is not the least bit relevant to the value of that quality. If we honor courage – as we should – does it matter if the courage were cloaked in feldegrau, or that awful mustardy-yellow instead of khaki or forest green? I think it does not.

There’s little enough of that quality in evidence today - and though the United States is more than richly blessed with so much of it - I do not believe the human tribe can afford to belittle or ignore that which has blessed other nations.

In fact, there is an old Sioux proverb that says, “The greatness of a man may be seen in the greatness of his enemies.” If our soldiers are brave, and their victories great, we can not say that those they strove against were low, or mean, or trivial.

If you know someone who served his or her nation, let them know you value their commitment and courage, and that you are pleased to call them countrymen.

(As I finished this, it dawned on me that I forget that the internet is an international forum, and that my American hubris may not be all that palatable to some. I will not apologize or ask pardon, but say that the story of your lands is up to you to tell, and when you tell it, I will listen. The story of my own land is so far beyond my capacity to tell that I would be foolish, indeed to tackle yours, too.)

WHEN A DEFINITION IS MORE MIRROR THAN WINDOW

All my life, I’ve heard people say, “Life [or the world] isn’t fair.” It’s generally preceded or followed by some variation on, “Quit whining.” The fairness of life or the world has always puzzled me; why isn’t it fair? Or is it fair? And what in blazes does “fair” mean, anyway. With the recent (high summer of 2011) crusade against Wall Street, capitalism, private property, and wealth of any sort save that which is distributed by the government, “fair” has become a battle cry. All the protesters want, they say, is fairness – a fair shake – a fair share.
The most common answer to their battle cry has been the old bromide that life isn’t fair, so quit whining and go back to class. Still, no one that I have heard has addressed the definition of fair, its operative principles, its moral relevance, or even the possibility that it doesn’t exist.

Reckon that leaves it up to me.

Let’s start with some dictionary definitions. I will focus on definitions of the word that relate to the subject of life’s fairness. I will not address other usage, such as a county fair, a fair wind, fair game, fair ball, fair hair, etc..

First, Dictionary.com:
1. free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair decision; a fair judge.
2. legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules: a fair
fight.

Now from Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary:
6 . a : marked by impartiality and honesty: free from self-interest, prejudice, or
favoritism fair person to do business with> b (1) : conforming with the
established rules : allowed (2) : consonant with merit or importance : due
fair share>

…and the Macmillan online dictionary, which seems to think that using a word in a sentence constitutes a definition:
1. If a situation is fair, everyone is treated equally and in a reasonable way.
2. Reasonable and morally right.


Finally, the Oxford English Dictionary online:
1. …in accordance with the rules or standards; legitimate…
A. Just or appropriate under the circumstances.
B. As an adverb - without cheating or trying to achieve unjust advantage


Look at this crap! No wonder American kids don’t know fair from a road apple. Every one of these dictionaries has some subjective slant or assumption of moral judgment. There are two cardinal rules of definition: (1) You can’t use a word to define itself; that is the fallacy of tautology. It is not epistemologically valid to say, “Fair is just. And what is just? Just is fair. And what is fair…?” It goes on and on, but never says anything. Just like most professors. (2) You can’t use high-level abstractions to define other high-level abstractions. Consider this example using algebra. The statement, X = Y may be true, but if you expect anyone to be able to use your equation, you have to make it known that Y = 4A + 5C + D. In the original statement, both X and Y are abstractions, so saying they are equal is meaningless unless Y is defined in detail. Look at how all of these dictionaries used these two fallacies with abandon.

DICTIONARY.COM
Item 1 from Dictionary.com uses two huge abstractions, “dishonesty” and, “injustice” to define another abstraction. To use this definition, one would have to look up those words, too. I didn’t do that, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t defined as,“fair.” Item 2 from this dictionary uses another very high-level abstraction, “legitimately.” In the debate between the Occupy Wall Street crowd and a businessman, I bet both would consider themselves “legitimate,” but would have grossly different definitions of the word.

The last clause in the Dictionary.com definition is not too bad: “proper under the rules.” “Proper” in this sense clearly means “according to” the rules, and the concept of “rules” is pretty concrete. Rules are set beforehand, hopefully written, and, though they may vary per the situation, for any situation, it is possible to know them with certainty.


MERRIAM-WEBSTER
The Merriam-Webster definition wasn’t too awful until I got to that “…free from self-interest,” phrase. This is a classic progressive/statist equivocation. To cut this short, if one is in any sport or endeavor, is it not in the “self-interest” of all for the rules to be enforced uniformly, or impartially, to use their own word? The idea that self-interest precludes honesty, fairness, or justice is a despicable false dichotomy. It is used to justify such monstrosities as vast government bureaucracies staffed by automatons who have no interest or stake in any decision, and are thereby incapable of making rational, useful decisions. It is a hopelessly contradictory, and as such, false. Maybe even evil.

Part B of the M-W definition is actually pretty clear-cut: “conforming with the established rules; allowed.” It says, explicitly, that the rules are established antecedently, and implicitly that all parties at least have access to them.

Part 2 of that definition is absolutely stunning! It says, “consonant with merit or performance; due.” This is the only reference in these four dictionaries to the concept of “earning” something, or that something earned by a person is “due” that person. They almost slipped this one past me! I didn’t catch it until I’d read over the definition several times, and then it stopped me cold. “Merit” is a bit of an abstraction, and some may argue whether merit is inborn or intrinsic, or is related to volition and action, but used in conjunction with “performance,” it implies the latter; some performance may have more merit that other performance. Stunning! This will come up again!


MACMILLAN
The Macmillan definition is contemptible and utterly worthless – nay, destructive – destructive because it may lead some poor student into thinking he is actually better-informed or –educated after having read it. First, using a word in a sentence is not a definition. Second, “…everyone is treated equally,” contains an explicit acceptance of equalitarianism, which flies squarely in the face of Merriam-Webster’s “merit or performance.” Not all people will perform equally, so does being “…treated equally,” mean they all get the same result, regardless of performance, or does it mean that they are all judged by the same standard, and those who come up short… well…come up short? And “reasonable?” Give me a break! How many definitions of that word can you find on any given street corner?
Their second definition, “Reasonable and morally right,” is just as bad, if not worse. These are two of the greatest, most hotly-debated abstractions in the realm of human politics! They could as well have said, “Whatever Wiley E. Coyote likes.” It is difficult for me to suppress my loathing and contempt for the oatmeal-minded, professional idiot who penned this preposterous excuse for a definition.


OXFORD DICTIONARY
Oh, how I have loved my Oxford Universal Dictionary of the English Language! All umpteen pounds of it! Published in 1957, it has been my standard of value for meaning and usage since I bought it at a yard sale for 50 cents.

The first part of their definition makes the same assertion as part B of Merriam-Webster’s entry: that rules may exist, and what is in accordance with them is “fair.” It also uses one of the greatest bugaboos in all liberaldom: “standards!” Rules are not the same as standards; both words refer to concretes, which makes them very solid for using in a definition. Then Oxford let me down; they threw in “legitimate.” Dang it! “Legitimate” is as great an abstraction as “reasonable,” or “morally right.”

The second part of the Oxford dictionary falls apart. “Just or appropriate” are debatable under any circumstances, and as such are not admissible evidence in the court of definition. It is interesting that Oxford implies that what is fair under one set of circumstances may not be under another, but they didn’t develop this crucial aspect of fairness. A shame.

Finally, their definition of fair as an adverb is not bad except for the reference to “unjust.” What is “unjust” Well, it’s not “fair.” And so on and on around the spinney until the woozle bites us on the butt!

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
There may be decent dictionaries online, but I haven’t found one. If a 5th grader were to try to make sense out of the OWS howling about fairness, and went to these online sources, the poor kid would be so screwed up it would take a year on an island with a stack of Pogo comics to straighten him out.

It is my intention to examine as many different components of fairness as possible and come up with a usable, reality based, rational definition that does not include floating abstractions or tautology, and does not beg questions, but is concise and comprehensible.

It may take me down the rabbit hole, around the spinney, and where no man has gone before, but I’m gonna give it a shot.
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As often as language is a product of its culture, so the reverse is also true. Words determine the organization of concepts in our minds, and the relationships between those concepts. If words were tinker toys, how many different connections could you make?

A word like “fair” has been used so much, for so many different things, that one might be tempted to shake one’s head and say, “It ain’t worth the trouble.” But I take a different cut at it; because the word has been used so much, it must be either very important or very handy, and either way it’s worth some time.

Very often, “fair” seems to be closely associated with justice, as either a synonym or a simile. Justice is a pretty broad abstraction, too, but has been much better treated in print than has fair. A distillation of several definitions of justice centers on one of two things: a law being fulfilled, or someone getting what he deserved. If someone breaks a law and is punished, that’s justice; he screwed up and got what he deserved. But emotionally, the two ideas are vastly different.

For one thing, the law and justice are not the same, and are rapidly diverging, though there are still occasions when we would say a punishment is fair because it suits the crime. More and more often, we find ourselves thinking that justice is done when a law is flaunted, or punishment deflected. For example, if someone were arrested for violating a bad law, but those who did the arresting came out on the short end, we’d say justice was done. In this case, fair and the dictates of the law are opposed.

Emotionally, we often associate fair more with mercy than with justice. If justice is someone getting what he deserved – good or bad, and in the context of life, in general, rather than the law – then mercy is someone not getting what he deserved. In Albuquerque a month or so ago, a Mexican illegal alien risked his own safety to rescue a little girl from the hands of a molester. He was publicly praised and commended and pretty much pardoned for everything, and I think the vast majority of folks thought that was fair, and even just – though certainly not by the letter of the law.

At this point, scratching my head as I ponder the contradictions I’ve just written, it strikes me to back off and fire on this from a different angle. A strict, linguistically and epistemologically sound definition of fair shouldn’t be all that difficult to write. It’s the emotional connotations and loading of the word that get messy. In fact, the word has so much emotion attached to it that it may be impossible for many to read such a definition without throwing something at me.

How about this: “Fair – adjective – in accordance or compliance with the standards and/or the rules that apply to a situation at a given time, and in a given place.”

This acknowledges that standards – ie, what we think is right – and rules – ie, what someone has written down – are not necessarily the same. The reference to “… a situation…” acknowledges that the facts make a difference in what is fair. The reference to “… a given time, and in a given place,” acknowledges that standards of right and wrong change over time, and that different cultural groups will have different standards. What is fair in one century, or in one country, may not be fair at any other time or place.

The essence of this definition is that no matter what you are talking about, you can find some nut, somewhere, who thinks it’s fair. Does this invalidate the definition? No, it does not. In order for someone to think something is fair, it would have to be “…in accordance or compliance…” with that person’s standards. The fact that standards vary matters not a whit. “Fair” is what complies with our standards for that situation. If you understand a person’s standards, you can know what they will think is fair. Conversely, if you look at what they think is fair, you can pretty well see their standards.

Consider any adjective – let’s take “blue.” Skeptics and agnostics love to ask, “How do you know that the color you call blue is the same as the color I call blue?” They love to pretend this makes a rat’s hiney’s worth of difference to intelligent people, and will drop this polemic turd in the conversational punchbowl at the first opportunity.

The fact is that I DON’T know the color I call blue is the same one you call blue. That doesn’t mean that the color isn’t real, nor that my senses – or yours – are invalid. The fact of the matter is that the object we are looking at is a real object. It exists, and has the very specific and real surface characteristic as to reflect light of the frequency that we both call blue.. That’s all that matters. It’s real. Our senses are real. When I say blue, you know what I mean, and whether we are both experiencing the same sensory response doesn’t make a flippin’ bit of difference.

The same is true of definitions of subjective concepts like fair. The definition must include the fact of subjectivity. That doesn’t invalidate the definition; it makes it real.
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“Fair – adjective – in accordance or compliance with the standards and/or the rules that apply to a situation at a given time, and in a given place.”

A definition must avoid tautology, or using a word to define itself. Synonyms are fine, but they are not definitions because they, in turn, must be defined. A definition must not use unfounded or ungrounded abstractions because, like tautologies, they must be defined before they may be useful. When defining a concept as broad as “fair,” that is used in such radically different ways, a definition must be broad enough to include all genuses (or genera), and specific enough to differentiate the concept from all others. The dictionaries I quoted went wrong because they didn’t understand these basic principles.

The definition I have tendered of “fair” posits that no matter how the word is used, it indicates compliance or adherence with some standard or rule. The standard can be anything, and in the case of fair, is quite likely to be! But this is a fact: whoever uses the word is saying that the subject complies with his standards, whatever they may be. My definition also allows for the fact that a thing may be considered fair at one time, or in one place, but not in another, again without pinning it to any one standard.

Standards will vary, but that fair refers to them is not the least bit subjective or situational. Whenever I hear a politician say, “I will do what is fair [or right],” I start looking for the door. Look around. No matter which side of this sorry rodeo you are on, it is plain that folks’ definitions of fair vary hysterically!

The fact that standards are subjective does not in any way invalidate the definition of fair, nor delegitimize the use of the word. In a delicious bit of irony, it tells us more about the speaker than about the subject. If someone says stoning little girls for looking at little boys is fair, we learn nothing whatsoever about stoning. But we learn much about the speaker – whether we agree with him or not! It is interesting to me, geek that I am, how a word properly defined and understood is more useful in understanding the person using it than for understanding the subject.

When people talk about the rich, “…paying their fair share,” one must ask, “According to what standard?” How much is fair in this case? Bill Gates certainly qualifies as rich. He got his money by developing and managing an organization that provides products that have changed the course of the human race for the rest of ever. Did Bill earn that wealth of his? I say he did. He earned it in ways that those who disparage him are incapable of grasping. So if fair has to do with getting what you’ve earned, who is qualified to say Bill earned so much, but no more? The instant someone says, “Fair share,” they are saying that a fair share can be defined, that someone can define it, and that they are the ones to do it. I hear someone whining, “Wellll, they didn’t say THEY were the ones to do it.” Give me a friggin’ break! Do you think they’re gonna let Bill decide?

I am not comfortable walking unarmed among such people.

Anytime you hear someone say that such and so is “only fair,” understand that they have not defined the fairness of whatever it is. They have shown you, as if on a giant billboard, what they hold dear, what their ethics are, and what they would do to you if they had a chance.

There are other such words. “Radical” is one. When anyone condemns you for being “radical,” what he’s really saying is that he doesn’t agree with your position, but darned if he can figure out why, so he’s just going to attack you. Think about it. Has anyone every said, “You are 100% right, you radical SOB?”

Another is, “Narrow-minded.” The same rule applies to this as to radical. We should all strive to frequently hear such words thrown at us by those who are intellectually incapable of holding us a light. (From one of my mom’s Panhandle expressions. It means they aren’t fit to hold the lantern that illuminates your work.)

Use the rules of definition to analyze what people say. It may not tell you much about the subject of which they speak, but it can tell you volumes about them, and ultimately, that’s probably more valuable.