Time will tell how smart Sarah Palin is. Her position on the Republican ticket last fall was very polarizing. Core Republicans were apologists for her credentials and style, arguing that she was an experienced leader ready for the national stage. Others saw her as an inexperienced, unpolished, unprepared governor of a small state ready to be a national stooge. 

I like what her selection said about the GOP—that it was willing to take a risk and look to an up and coming generation for new leadership.  Many others within the GOP felt the same way. She was fresh and exciting. Her arrival was the best possible outcome for a blind date set up by a friend with historically bad taste. She was witty, attractive and engaging. But is she marriage material? 

For those who were and might still be enamored with Ms. Palin, it’s time to study this objectively. There’s no need to defend the indefensible just to prove that you were right last fall. The election is over; it’s time to reflect on Sarah Palin thoughtfully and honestly as you look to the future. 

Unless Ms. Palin fades quietly into the background (not likely), she has two choices: she can pursue the presidency or she can capitalize on her political celebrity.  If she chooses the former, I’m afraid she’s going to discover that she is the Republican equivalent of Greg Brady’s “Johnny Bravo.” 

Greg and his five siblings were auditioning for a talent show. As good as the ensemble was (gag me), talent agent Tami Rogers spotted Greg and singled him out for a promising solo career as Johnny Bravo, complete with a groovy, bullfighter/disco chic uniform.  Greg decided to postpone college and leave his family behind only to discover that the record label was “sweetening” his songs and that, ultimately, he had been chosen because he fit the suit. Greg’s vanity and self-importance allowed him to believe he was more than he really was. 

Sarah Palin had one shining moment–her VP acceptance speech (any doubts that the speech was “sweetened” by a team of Republican linguists and word smiths?). Otherwise, I think it’s accurate to say that Senator McCain selected her because she “fit the suit.”  She was a woman to run against Obama’s blackness; she was outdoorsy, Christian, and neo-conservative.  On a ticket quickly losing relevance, she was the perfect choice—the right woman at the right time. 

Since that speech, Ms. Palin has had multiple opportunities to get smart on the issues and to develop strong positions on how government can help America move forward. Yet time after time she disappoints.  We heard during the campaign that she often wasn’t well educated on the issues, choosing, rather, to wing-it.  

Honestly, I could live with that, IF (and it’s a big IF) she explicitly stated that her approach to leadership is to rely on strong core convictions and values that provide a specific vision for America and that she surrounds herself with experts who provide her a broad range of non-partisan advice from which she chooses solutions, programs, and initiatives which support her convictions and values.  She might well say something like, “As Governor of Alaska it hasn’t been my job to deal with and understand foreign policy in the Middle East; but let me tell you about the things I believe in that will guide my administration’s actions in that region. I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe that people worldwide have a God given right to certain liberties. It is not important that other governments pursue and apply democracy the same way we do in America. What is important is that individuals are able to determine their nation’s form of government for themselves and to have certain human rights afforded to them. America’s role is facilitating the promulgation of liberty and self-determination.” 

In this case she is saying 1) I don’t know; 2) It’s ok that I don’t know—it’s not my job to know; but 3) if given a chance here’s what I believe. It’s not just an answer it’s an entirely new leadership style. It’s not important that she HAS the solution or that she can create one in isolation. What is important is that when given options she is WILLING and ABLE to make hard decisions that are consistent with core principles. This could have been her way-ahead—play to her strengths.  

Instead, she has bumbled and fumbled her way through virtually every personal appearance since Minneapolis.  She hasn’t expressed well-defined core principles. She hasn’t been honest about her approach to governance and she hasn’t gotten smart on the issues. 

We need to also face the facts about her situation—as a losing vice-presidential candidate the odds are against her. In recent memory, only Bob Dole and Walter Mondale have gone on win their party’s next nomination and they were both running against strong incumbent President’s (Clinton and Reagan, respectively).
 

If Sarah Palin were to win the GOP nomination in 2012 that would tell me something entirely different about the GOP and not at all flattering. Her nomination would be the last chapter of the book on modern republicanism that began with Reagan’s 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater. It would be a tombstone for the GOP as we know it; an epitaph. While I believe those things are necessary, I don’t think Republicans need to wait eight years to reinvent themselves. Let the loss in 2008 be the end and Sarah Palin’s nomination was just the last gasp effort for survival; a fitting climax to the end of an era. 

Ms. Palin’s other option, as laid out by daughter Bristol Palin’s former fiancé, is to make money. At this, I think Ms. Palin could be wildly successful. She could become a professional fundraiser, speaker, talk radio host or Fox News talking head. The support she already has likely would afford her access and sway in a variety of fields for which she’d be well compensated. It would be both humble (quietly acknowledging her inability to become president) and self-serving. 

I have no problem with people benefiting from their experiences. Turning one opportunity into a fortune is the American way.  I don’t begrudge Daniel Radcliff his multi-millions just because he looked like Harry Potter and happened to be 11 years old at the right time in pop-culture history. 

This is the Madonna School of Marketing: be outrageous and be visible. It’s a well-worn path and it plays to her strengths. But it would require accurate self-assessment even to her discredit.  

Ms. Palin’s my age. With any luck at all she spent her afternoons as a child plopped in front of the TV taking in the folksy lessons of The Brady Bunch, now prepared to make a better decision than Greg.

Craig Wilson had a piece in the July 8 USA Today addressing Skype and video phones. He was relishing the days when a phone call didn’t require any primping or preening and when one’s whereabouts could remain a secret (”No, honey, I’m still at the office.”)

Notwithstanding those concerns, I think there’s going to be a wonderful place for Skype and the cell phone: your car.

I know what you’re thinking, “Cell phones are enough of a distraction. Why make them more so?” Because video is LESS distracting.

Why is it that I can sit in my car and carry on a perfectly normal conversation with my passenger without degrading my driving performance? Why am I more dangerous talking on a phone, even if it’s a speaker phone or a Bluetooth? Where does the increased distraction come from?

I believe it’s visualization. When there is a passenger next to me, I use my peripheral vision to take in non-verbal feedback–the tilt of the head, the smile, the nods of agreement. I also have the person to whom I’m talking in context–I know where they are and what they’re doing.

When I speak on the phone, I have to engage my imagination on a limited basis to create a “mental” picture of the person to whom I’m speaking. I have to make mental calculations about a person’s reactions. I have to LISTEN more intently. In fact, just keeping track of WHO it is I have on the phone requires a small part of my brain to engage to constantly retain their identity.

Think about it the next time you’re driving and talking on the phone. You’ll find yourself 5 miles down the road wondering how you got there, because the part of your mind that should be dedicated to taking in your environment on the road has actually been engaged in “picturing” the person on the line.

This is where Skype comes in.

I have a Garmin GPS stuck to my windshield. Imagine, now, that this same GPS hardware had a small video camera and had the ability to access the internet via a 3G network like an iPhone. If I could access Skype in my car I could see the person to whom I’m talking–I would no longer need to engage my brain to create an artificial picture of that person, I could use my peripheral vision. I would be creating a scenario much more analogous to having a passenger than having a phone conversation.

Given the way our brains operate and process information, I don’t think the day is too far off when manufacturers discover that this is actually a LESS distracting way to carry on a conversation and then begin to develop portable GPSs or factory-installed navigation screens that have this capability. Throw in the new advances in voice-activated dialing like we’re seeing on the latest iPhones and we may have finally found a way to make cell phones and cars complimentary rather than antagonistic.

Anyone want to start a company with me?

“Today we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life. –John F. Kennedy

Newsflash: There’s a recession on.

You’ve heard? Really? That’s odd. I haven’t read about it anywhere—that’s why I felt compelled to write this article.

Oh, THAT recession? No, no. Of course I’ve heard about the economic recession. I was talking about America’s democratic recession.

Slowly, but surely, we are losing our liberties in this country and the saddest part is not that they are being taken from us but that we’re giving them away. Americans are being duped into believing all is well when, in fact, we’re slowly poisoning ourselves.

Most of us are hard on smokers. They have the audacity to sue the tobacco companies when everyone—and I mean everyone– knows smoking will kill you. It’s not that smoking “may” kill you. It’s that smoking “will” kill you. (Unless you cheat lung cancer by serendipitously falling victim to death by misadventure or an unfortunate encounter with gravity.)

My judgmental attitude knows one limitation: if someone started smoking in the 1940s or 1950s and heard the radio ads in which doctors said smoking was ok, then perhaps their habit started under false pretenses and I’m able to muster a modicum of sympathy.

Click here for an example.

We’re being told the same garbage today by our politicians–Democrats and Republicans alike—about how to address America’s troubles. “Four out of five federal legislators say Washington has all the answers to your problems.”
There should be a warning on the sleeve of every Congressman’s suit: WARNING: MAY CAUSE THE DEMISE OF THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE.

Like the more publicized economic recession, our democratic recession is happening because we have taken a detrimental and prolonged hiatus from making sufficient investments in maintaining our liberty.

Over the last few decades Americans began to spend more than they saved. We took economic growth for granted and placed our trust in ever increasing stock and real estate values creating artificial economic security based on risky collateral.

Likewise, we have taken America’s freedoms for granted. We have allowed our liberties to be slowly usurped by a federal government that arrogantly believes it can solve America’s woes and sees precious little evidence in the behavior of its citizens to believe that the people can solve their own problems.

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint has recently written a book called SAVING FREEDOM in which he writes, “Many Americans want out of this abusive marriage with the federal government. And they are willing to fight and sacrifice to end their dependence on empty political promises.” Oh that I believed that. Most Americans will tell you that they want smaller government, but heaven forbid government shrinks THEIR programs.

If we were genuinely outraged and felt truly threatened, as we are and do with regards to the American economy, we would evaluate the preponderance of liberty in lives (or lack thereof) the way we have scrutinized our budgets. Many Americans have looked at their finances and been shocked to see $80 a month spent at Starbucks, $120 a month for lunches, $150 a month in foodstuffs yet uneaten in the pantry. Americans have weeded the chaff from our expenditures and discovered fiscal discipline. Our covetous nature got the best of prudent fiscal policy and today we are doing what must be done to save our homes and retirement funds and college savings accounts.

It has taken an enormously painful recession to rock us from or fiscal torpor and force introspection. What will an equally painful democratic recession look like? What events will have to transpire before we feel that our freedoms are as threatened as we feel our finances are today? Where is the tipping point in public perception?

Ronald Reagan, in his speech endorsing Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Presidential campaign, said that “….this is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives better for us than we can plan them ourselves.”

America’s problem is that it’s easier to work around the impediments the federal government puts in our way. Changing the system is unbelievably difficult, nay impossible, for the single citizen. It is far easier to simply make small, incremental adjustments to our own lives and habits in order to accomplish what we want to accomplish in spite of governmental intrusion.

But for the frog in the frying pan the water is nearly boiling. Incrementally, the American experiment in government by the people and for the people is being slowly eroded.

I don’t believe there is a single Congressman, Senator or Executive Branch employee who is actively pursuing the demise of this country. They are first stuck in a position in which their self interest is achieved by giving the people what they want; and second they are left with few alternatives, save to expand the federal government, because there is scant evidence that the people will do for themselves.

The American belief in small government doesn’t presuppose that there isn’t work to be done; rather it presupposes that the work that needs doing shouldn’t be done by the federal government. Where are the citizens stepping forward to tell Washington, “We don’t need your help, we can do it ourselves?” Instead we look for one new government program after another to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.

We blame the government for its socialist trends, but we elected our representatives. How many of these politicians are in serious jeopardy of not being re-elected? Re-election rewards their behavior. We keep saying “no” but our actions in the voting booth don’t substantiate that message.

We are giving back the liberties our forefathers fought to provide and maintain. Will it take a significant and blatant attack on American Democracy to allow us to see clearly the weakening of our Constitution?

We will not see clearly until a leader emerges who MAKES us see. Culture change requires a change from leadership. Without leaders who are willing to demonstrate self-sacrifice and who can champion a return to America’s core values I doubt we will be able to make the sacrifices necessary to preserve America’s heritage.

I’m not one who believes that Ronald Reagan did no wrong and was the embodiment of conservatism. I believe that he, like so many others, ran exciting, liberating campaigns espousing all that is good about America but who capitulated to the pragmatic concerns of the office and relinquished the authority that elected him in the first place (see George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign as well).

However, Reagan provided a neat summary (albeit in 1964) of where we are today. “Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.”

I haven’t really looked this morning but I assume others are already saying what I’ve been ruminating since I heard about the Steve McNair shooting. So let me say it now—I don’t think this is going to end well for McNair’s reputation.

After the news broke yesterday, ESPN radio was filled with people commenting on what a great guy McNair was.  Steve’s brother, Fred, commented, “It’s still kind of hard to believe. He was the greatest person in the world. He gave back to the community. He loved kids and he wanted to be a role model to kids.”

All of which may be true. But I’ve become so jaded and cynical on celebrity deaths there’s simply no way for me to look at the facts as they’ve been presented so far and not conclude McNair was having an affair with the 20 year old Sahel Kazemi.

Here’s what we’ve been told so far: McNair and Kazemi knew each other from a restaurant the quarterback and his family frequented.  There is a 2007 Cadillac Escalade registered to Kazemi AND McNair. Witnesses say McNair arrived at a condominium he owns between 1:30 and 2:00 am Saturday. They say Kazemi was already at the condo.

Those facts alone would put most marriages in serious jeopardy.

Hey, maybe Steve and Shahel were planning the church bazaar. There are as many acceptable scenarios as there are illicit scenarios.

McNair, though, was discovered with multiple gunshot wounds, one to head. Kazemi had been shot once.

Multiple gunshot wounds sounds like a crime of passion to me. If you’re stealing a DVD player and the family penny jar, you don’t inflict multiple gunshot wounds—you fire once or twice and flee.

Eddie George, the former Tennessee Titans running back, played with McNair and spoke on ESPN radio yesterday.  He was filled with praise for McNair and the way he lived his life. I simply felt bad for Eddie. I wondered how he will feel if the foreshadowed circumstances come to fruition.

Am I bad person to think like this? In the middle of one family’s tragedy all I can do is imagine the consequences of purely hypothetical and tawdry events.

Adding to my self-loathing was my contempt for those who called, emailed and texted the ESPN radio host.  Fans poured out the grief: “We’ll never forget Steve.” “This is such a sad loss for America.”  “I’m devastated.”

Really? This is a guy who played football. If he hadn’t been a professional athlete we never would have heard of him. America’s fascination with playing the role of the drama queen is well documented. “How will we go on without Michael Jackson?” (Woe is me.)  You’ll buy someone else’s music.

ESPN’s radio host at least had the most relevant reason to grieve—a 36 old man was shot to death. That is too young to die. Indeed it is. But I’m sorry, 36 year old black men are shot in this country by the dozen and there’s little outrage. The feigned grief over McNair’s soon-to-come-to-light Shakespearean ending is hypocritical–unless you want to use him as a public face for a national tragedy.

McNair’s death IS sad. But it’s not EXTRA sad because he was famous. WE are EXTRA sad because we apparently place more value on the life of the famous Steve McNair than on Laquinn Tucker, a 37-year-old black man, who was shot several times and died June 5.; or Steve Moore, a 39-year-old black man who was stabbed in the chest and died June 2; or  Perry Wilson, a 36-year-old black man who was shot and died June 20.

The sad part is that, if my cynical, jaded prediction is correct, McNair’s actions will have brought about an extreme over-reaction from someone. He will have been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. He will have fooled his family and friends. These are all very sad events.

I feel bad that I think like this, but honestly I don’t know how any relatively well-informed American could conclude otherwise, Truly, I hope I’m wrong. But aren’t we ALL sitting around today waiting for the other shoe to drop?

But let’s not make more of his death than it really is.  One man. One sad story. One death. Let’s hide our hypocrisy and keep our self-indulgent grief to ourselves.

Particularly since gas prices hovered near $4.00 per gallon last summer it has been true that ENERGY ISSUES have been making for strange bedfellows. Traditionally the purview of the left, in the last few years there has been a greater outcry within the Defense community about the deleterious effects of America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Fuel convoys are the leading target of IEDs and snipers. Half of US deaths have occurred protecting convoys.

Reflecting the military’s understanding of the national security implications, in the last few years we’ve seen the Defense Science Board Task Force Report on DOD Energy Strategy, two Center for Naval Analysis reports—National Security and Threat of Climate Change  and Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security – and the 2008 Joint Operating Environment Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force.

These documents make the case in no uncertain terms that the use of fossil fuels (particularly oil from antagonistic foreign states) and our national electrical infrastructure are issue of critical national security. From the latter CNA report:

• US dependence on oil weakens international leverage, undermines foreign policy objectives, and entangles America with unstable or hostile regimes.
• Inefficient use and overreliance on oil burdens the military, undermines combat effectiveness, and exacts a huge price tag—in dollars and lives.
• US dependence on fossil fuels undermines economic stability, which is critical to national security.
• A fragile domestic electricity grid makes our domestic military installations, and their critical infrastructure, unnecessarily vulnerable to incident, whether deliberate or accidental.

Yesterday the US House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey Climate Change legislation. There is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over this development. The debate is not indicative of bad science. The debate is indicative of bad politics.

I haven’t got the first clue whether or not increasing global temperatures are caused by human activity. Global temperatures are getting warmer. There’s little debate on that. Rather, the debate centers on the cause and even within the scientific community there seems to be significant variance in opinion on this matter. There are many people with lots of letters after their names that can’t come to any consensus. For me to weigh in on the science of the issue would be preposterous in the extreme (I might as well start telling you that child-birth is painless because it didn’t hurt ME). Yet, Americans around the country are doing just that—flaunting their ignorance by parroting only the scientists they choose to believe without any real understanding of the science. Their opinions have more to do with the radio station they listen to and less to do with an understanding of the issues.

Those very same dynamics are at work in our Congress. Georgia Republican Paul Broun said that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” The debate on this legislation has become a referendum on the science of climate change and not about the broader issue of changing America’s energy paradigm. Our problems with electricity and fuel can be discussed in terms of terrorism, homeland security, the economy, jobs, national defense, foreign policy, American exceptionalism, innovation, family values, immigration, and national security. These are all bedrocks of the Republican platform. And I never mentioned the weather.

The debate on the science behind Waxman-Markey dumbs down any discussion on America’s future. Because America’s security and economic future is dependent on the changes we make to our understanding and use of electricity and fuel.

Republicans have long been seen as the Party of the US military yet Republican politicians still eschew the ideological consensus that is forming within the Pentagon—that change (nay, progress) must come in America’s energy appetite.

If the Republicans would put on their “big-boy panties” for a minute the buffoonery on the House floor might have been replaced with a vibrant, educated, paradigm-shifting discussion on why every American citizen needs to bear some of the burden in changing the way we power our lives. Democrats could have talked about the weather. Republicans could have talked about our sons and daughters dying on the fields of battle to ensure the supply of fuel for America’s SUVs with the yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbon on the rear window.

There are some who don’t believe Waxman-Markey goes far enough. No one believes the bill is perfect; it’s not even close. If anyone unhappy with the bill is waiting for something perfect, forget it. For the Congress to create, in its first attempt, a bill that was effective and without fault would take a miracle of biblical proportions. This will simply be step one. Lessons will be learned and future amendments and legislation will address Waxman-Markey’s shortcomings. Progress will be incremental. But it does represent progress in changing the way Americans view fuel and electricity.

I support Waxman-Markey. Not because I believe in the human contribution to climate change, but because I believe that making adjustments to the way Americans view and use energy is the common thread in keeping America the greatest nation on earth for the next century.

What is it that’s all the talk in the world of American finance these days? I’ll give you a few seconds….what have you been hearing a lot of? What are you and your family talking about? 

Let me give you a clue:  Is it that you’ve got to spend, spend, spend to help the economy recover?  Nope, and now you’ve got it, don’t you? 

All the talk is about saving. CNN reported on June 28 that consumer saving is now up to an average of $42/week per household, the highest savings rate since 1994.  The June 20, 2009, issue of US News and World Report featured an article by Kimberly Palmer entitled Frugal Forever. 

Apparently, it’s only the US consumer that’s in on the action, though. Our federal government is going on a shopping spree the likes of which we haven’t seen since President Reagan oversaw the largest increase in government spending (as a portion of GDP) in American history.  But Reagan bought STUFF.  President Obama and his sorely out-of-touch cohorts in Congress are a decade behind the times when it comes to spending habits—spending like they’re preparing to be on Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous and their buying entire INDUSTRIES. 

Michael Lind, the director of the New America Foundation’s Economic Growth Program, wrote in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy that “….the post-crisis financial sector will be downsized and more heavily regulated, nationally and internationally…..We can also comfortably wager that government subsidies will rule the day….State capitalism with American characteristics may emerge from the de facto nationalization of the US automobile industry and perhaps other sectors that need to be rescued as the wave of deleveraging works its way through the economy….Millions of [formerly] affluent people are realizing that they will depend more, not less, on public pensions like social security…” 

That doesn’t sound like any “New America” I want to be a part of and its not the kind of New America US citizens are looking to create. Now, more than ever, the US needs truly authentic conservative leadership. Not the kind of Republican leadership that has been mis-identified with conservatism for decades. This kind of conservatism leads to article headlines like those found on FoxNews: FRUGAL AMERICANS HURT ECONOMIC RECOVERY. That kind of Republican, “Oh dear, look how big business is suffering,” conservatism bears little resemblance to the conservatism that is based on the idea of CONSERVING.

 
It’s hard to believe that true conservatives would want to CONSERVE their money, I know. But there it is—I said it. They’d also like to conserve the American ideals of a free market economy, not a federal government engorged and nauseated on the unchewed consumption of spoiled American industry that should have remained on the buffet table in the first place. 

Most Americans say the want “smaller government” but only so much as the programs important to the person being asked are not the ones to be downsized.  But today Americans are appropriately curbing their appetite for fiscal consumption. Americans are learning the difference between “want” and “need.”  

Yet our national leaders are still assuming that the things we “wanted” six months ago are the things we “need” today. Why is it that while consumers have the wherewithal to do the things we must do, our representatives don’t share our fortitude? 

The Republican Party clearly needs re-branding. What we’re getting now from Washington is exactly what we should have expected from a Democratic President and Congress.  But I still don’t see any real signs that a significant conflagration will rage across the old Republican Party, laying waste to the dead and rotten ideas that have come to choke the forest of politics and make room for new ideological sprouts.  Where is conservatism pollinating in the first place? To whom should we look for someone brave enough to tell America “No” at a time when we desperately need it? 

I have no answers (they’re certainly not in South Carolina) but I know the wellspring from which the right answers will come: true conservatism. Individuals who understand what has made America great. Individuals with the courage to do the right thing even when it’s unpopular. Individuals who are willing to be progressive in their pursuit of new ways to make the America work for Americans. 

The Republican Party lost in November. It lost because it became like the Democrats and couldn’t do what they do as well as they do it.  Republicans make for inferior Democrats and that’s the lesson of this election. Stop trying to beat the Democrats are their game. The Democrats are reacting to problems that are already a year or more old. They are not being progressive and proactive. They are being reactive. 

I’ve always found it interesting that conservatism seeks to conserve that which liberalism brought about. Our founding fathers threw off their government, chucked organized religion and staged a revolution—not many things more liberal than that. Yet it was their action in pursuit of grand ideas that birthed the world’s greatest experiment in self-governance: an experiment that is jeopardized by ideological stagnation. 

Americans need conservatism now more than ever.

A few days ago I wrote about the potential that the world would be war-torn in 50 years as the spread of distributed power generation from renewable sources will make possible internet access and the spread of democratic ideals.

Today in Iran we see foreshadowing of that prediction. Perhaps Iran is an isolated event. I don’t think so, though. I believe it is simply one of the first countries that will see violence and revolution come about from the spark of information.

America has seldom created a democracy other than her own.  Through the Cold War we simply tried to be, at the very least, a better alternative to the USSR. We tried to spread democracy in an attempt to win swing-nations to our side of the conflict but only to deny Soviet access to those same nations.

Our nation building attempts since then have too often focused on efforts to prop up a demokracy (like krab, with a ‘K’) after a violent overthrow of a rogue government. These attempts have failed to produce lasting change in the regions. Of course the United States CAN topple virtually any government and under the protection of US military might insert a pseudo-democratic government and insist on democratic processes. However, the life span of these initiatives is only as long as the attention span of the American citizen. For when Americans insist our troops come home and the new government must stand on its own, it is doomed.

The one thing a revolution must have to survive—to create lasting change—is bloodshed on the part of the people.  Without that, what will prevent old-timers and hard-liners from taking back their government for themselves? They will know that they are only taking from the people something that was GIVEN to them and which they lived without for decades prior.  However, when people fight, bleed and die for regime change, then that must give pause to anyone who wishes to topple a new government. If the people have fought and died for this government to exist, then malcontents must assume they will do so again. And if the people have been victorious once, they can be victorious again.

Iran is equipped today with all they need to bring about a change in their government—information and ideas. Iran is a fairly advanced society in many sectors. Internet access is prevalent and technology is accessible and understood. No longer can State-run TV and newspapers control what people see and hear.  As the Al-Fasarh family in Iran sees what the Jones family has in US they can come to understand what their government’s policies are denying them. Understanding the idea and benefits of “liberty” is only a click away.

Our own revolution wasn’t a power grab; it was the result of ideas born in the minds of a small group of great men who had a notion about liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Today twitter, iPhones, and social networking websites are connecting the disenfranchised with the ammunition they need to mobilize. The very economic success that countries desire today will also be their death knell. For when the people have money they will buy technology and that technology will spread democratic ideals faster and more effectively than the US military ever could. It will create an invested population that mobilizes to confront those who deny them liberty. They will invest their blood in their own freedom. THIS will bring about lasting change.

The tools of effective nation building, the real instruments of power are ideas. America need only facilitate access to electricity and information in order to see the spread of the American principles of liberty, justice and human dignity. Today more than ever, the “keyboard is mightier than the sword.”

I like ideas: the bigger the better. I’m a dreamer and the future fascinates me. So I was intrinsically drawn to the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly whose cover announced THE IDEA ISSUE: HOW TO FIX THE WORLD. The article coincides with my reading of The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today, edited by 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace. 50 Years from Today collects thoughts from 60 of the world’s greatest minds about what the world will look like in 2058. It’s a fascinating collection, though most of the ideas seem either self-indulgent or benign.

There are a few ideas in 50 Years that really stretch me, though: bioengineering the human genome “and including all the knowledge up through a great college education directly in the child.” (George F. Smoot). “The technological ability to read other people’s minds” (E. Fuller Torrey). The ability to “print” products with “an inexpensive tabletop molecular nanofactory” (Ray Kurzweil). Or, the most outrageous, the ability to communicate by thinking (Kim Dae-jung).

So with the ideas of Atlantic Monthly’s contributors and Mike Wallace’s collection in my head, let me share with you my radical vision of the world in 2058.

Have you got a window? Open it. Look outside. This is the world in 2058. Much as the man in 1958 might feel if he looked out his window and saw our world, that is how we will feel in 2058. Sure, our world is snazzed up a bit from 1958–the ‘58 Chevy has been replaced by the Prius and in 50 years, the Prius will be replaced with a ChryFiat Quest. Whatever.
It’s fun and sexy to imagine that all our technological dreams will come true. But neither science nor policy is sufficient to facilitate such a rapid transformation. And face it, our perspective is skewed. Across time I can think of only one 50 year period in which the world changed so dramatically that it might render a time traveler completely flummoxed and that is the period spanning the start of the 20th century.

One of my favorite questions when I hosted a talk radio show centered on this story. Life in 1893 was virtually unchanged from the dawn of man. While the industrial revolution was just getting started its effects were not yet far reaching. Most of the world was still engaged in subsistence living–people burned candles to see and fires to cook. They rode horses to work and to do errands. If you had told someone in 1893 that in just 75 years we’d put a man on the moon, he’d have thought you insane. None of the infrastructure for such a journey existed. No flight, essentially no cars, no electricity, home appliances, computers. He’d have asked you, “How are you going to build a ladder that big?” So my question became, “What would I have to tell you would happen in 2084 that would make you just as incredulous?”

Our perspective is out of wack. We expect that the world will continue to adapt in that manner. I simply don’t see it. The period of transformation of the last 100 years is an aberration. It’s like a makeover for a homely girl–an incredible metamorphosis into something new and wonderful, but she can’t do another makeover every month and realize similar gains. The law of diminishing returns prohibits it.

If I have one prediction it is this: I optimistically believe the world will be filled with war and strife.

“Optimistic,” Drex?

Indeed.

Our Revolutionary War was a conflict born of ideas. A hundred men or so–radical, liberal, progressive thinkers–had a notion of liberty in action. They fed off each other and these ideas took hold. The War of Independence was a war to birth those ideas into reality. It wasn’t a war for power or personal gain. Knowledge not greed was the seed of strife.

Today, we see the spread of distributed power generation. Renewable sources like solar and wind power are popping up all over the world. A small solar panel and a laptop bring all the ideas of the world to any village on the planet. Villagers can access virtually any bit of information. That information will power new service industries which will equip villages with money, but more importantly it will show them what the Jones’s have. This will be nation-building in 2058. We will literally empower a village and let knowledge do its work. As these ideas take hold and global citizens, too long on the outside of democratic processes and capitalistic opportunities, will go to war to get what’s theirs.

It will be a sign of American success when the suppressed rise up and fight for their own liberty. That is the only sustainable liberty in the first place. It is what the US should seek in its efforts to spread democracy. Not to MAKE democracies by force but to make possible democracies by knowledge. The success of our efforts will be made manifest as revolutions ripple across Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Ray Kurzweil also postulated that life expectancy in 2058 will increase by a year every year. So with any luck at all I’ll still be around in 2058 to have this article thrown in my face when the world is fully at peace for the first time in its history. Of course, if Kim Dae-jung is right, you can call me a moron without ever opening your mouth.

Listening to talk radio today or watching your favorite TV talking head you might be inclined to believe that the demise of America is at hand and is the fault of that “other” political party. Honestly, as much as I don’t like what either political party is doing, I don’t believe that America’s demise will be because of the “other” party or those who adhere to its principles.  

I am conservative. The Republicans may have never become the party of true conservatism but they are a tad closer than the Democrats. The Republicans at least speak the language.  But Democrats aren’t what’s wrong with America. I can deal with Democrats. At least they’re engaged in the process and have something they believe in.  As much as I might disagree with his or her values, I can engage in a dialog with anyone who is informed and participatory. 

No, the real villain is the uninvolved, uninformed American who drove to work on Nov 4, of last fall and said, “Mmm? There’s an awful long line at library. Must be a new Harry Potter book just come out.”

But it’s more than involvement that makes this country strong. It’s ambition.  I had the good fortune to see a fair part of the world on Uncle Sam’s dime and one generalization remains with me. Americans know ambition. Ambition is what makes us the greatest nation on earth. We WANT to be the best (the fact that we have the resources to be the best is an article for another day). 

I went car shopping Friday afternoon. The salesman was a young man, let’s call him Nassir (that’ll make his parents happy because that’s his name). Nassir is from Afghanistan by way of Germany and Holland (let’s call it Holland since The Netherlands takes longer to type). I asked him about his time in Europe. He was effusive in his praise of the people and his education; but that begat the question, “Why, my friend, venture westward to our fair colonies?”  

His answer was, “I have ambition.”  

I couldn’t have said it better myself. 

People around the world want to come to America to satisfy their ambition.  Ambition remains the driver behind our immigration issues. 

What we don’t do as well is “contentment.”  Let’s give credit where credit is due: the Europeans seem to do contentment better.  For Pete’s sake, Spain built their entire daily schedule around a nap. THAT’S a contented people. 

I remember watching the 2004 Summer Olympics from Athens. Each night, long past midnight, the Greeks were out with friends, socializing and enjoying the festivities. A reporter asked if this was just because of the Olympics and the revelers said, alas, “No. We do this all the time.”  Our savvy journalist, doing as she was taught, had a follow up question: “Don’t you have jobs to get to in the morning.” Their response was “We’ll get there when we get there.” 

These are not the responses of a driven-people.  But it does seem like a nice way to go through life. 

That’s the American dilemma. We’re the best because it important to us to succeed and achieve, but it comes at a cost.

And so I wonder about a new trend in American business.  Business Week recently had an article titled A SANER WORKPLACE (June 1, 2009). The article is an excerpt from a new book, Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success.  From the book we find that: 

         -Half of American workers want fewer hours

         -Half of us would change our schedules

         -More than half would trade money for a day off

         -Three quarters of us want flexible work options. 

The book goes on. 

“More and more workers of both sexes are willing to scale back career goals, according to Families and Work Institute data. “Reduced aspirations do not mean employees are not talented or good at what they do,” explains Lois Backon, a vice-president at the Institute. “Most do want to feel engaged by their jobs. But in focus groups they also say things like ‘I need to make these choices because my family is a priority’ or ‘I need to make these choices to make my life work.” 

As it turns out these trends are good for the bottom line. But are they good for America? I have serious concerns that the trends brought to light in this book are an impediment to maintaining American Exceptionalism. Therapists and social anthropologists are likely to tell us that a laissez-faire corporate culture is good for our shareholders, our health and our overall sense of well-being. 

I have no doubt we would probably be happier people. But would we better off?

In the end it may not be those misguided souls from the “other” party that are the catalyst for a decline in American Exceptionalism. It may be folks who take to heart Jefferson’s “pursuit of Happiness.”

Can I take a few minutes of your time and run something by you? I’m having dilemma and I need some honest answers only you can provide. 

Have you gotten smarter in the last 18 months? Have you been boning up on the provincial conflicts in Kandahar? Do you understand the context of Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wesa’s call for increased negotiations with the Taliban? 

Let me explain my problem: I support President Obama’s decision to send more troops (or shall we say, his “Troop surge?”) to Afghanistan.  It’s the right decision to combat the Taliban’s increased violence in the region and Pakistani unrest.  And it would appear that I am in the majority which is new for me because when I supported President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq, I was so NOT in the majority. I just can’t figure out how the public has come to decide that THIS troop surge is copacetic and the previous troop surge was an impeachable offense. 

I have yet to see or hear any negative commentary about our Commander in Chief’s decision to double (that’s right America—double) the troop presence in Afghanistan. (To be fair, Cindy Sheehan is against it. But Cindy Sheehan thinks the surging troop membership at Girl Scout 6770 in Toad Suck, Arkansas, is a military conspiracy too.)  A local tribal elder in Afghanistan, Nani Kako, says more Westerners mean more targets for militants, which inevitably will lead to more civilian casualties.  Apparently, President Obama and American citizens aren’t buying it and we’re pressing ahead with our plans to send 17,000 more soldiers to the region. 

Although, Kako’s comments sound an awful lot like what Time Magazine wrote in December of 2006, “In Anbar province, where the presence of American troops on the streets of places like Ramadi actually prompts violence rather than heading it off.”

 Of this we can be sure: there’s no way the media is guilty of partisan politics just to support the policies of the new President. There’s no double standard. No free pass. No 100 day growing period. Just honest, factual reporting.  Right? 

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth,” Malcolm X said. “Because they control the minds of the masses.” 

The Democratic Party has a suite on the Lido Deck of the SS Speciousness, as well: nary a word of dissent from the party of change. “This strategy recognizes a point that I have emphasized for years,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said. “And one that I shared with the president following my visit last month to Afghanistan, which is that we must have a regional approach to countering terrorism.” 

 So long as that regional approach is championed by Obama and not Bush, Nanc? 

In a letter dated January 5, 2007, to President Bush she had written, “A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.”  

My how this party has changed indeed. 

President Obama’s statement announcing the troop increase went so far as to cast blame for Afghanistan’s unrest on his predecessor: “This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,” Obama said. 

Or maybe the Democrats have just been smart enough to learn from the success of the previous surge strategy, also overseen by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and General David Petraeus, even if they’re unwilling to say as much.

I’ll be honest, and I hope this isn’t hurtful, but I don’t really think you’re that much smarter. I think those of you were smart on these issues two years ago are still smart today. And those of you who didn’t know diddly a few years back, still don’t know diddly. I don’t for one second believe that Americans today have a fuller understanding of the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan and, as such, are now supportive of the President’s efforts to combat terrorism and the Taliban in an effort to defend America and the interests of liberty worldwide.  

No; I think this is simply one of the most egregious examples of media bias and fickle American politics I can remember in my lifetime.  Those of you who were aghast at the audacity of President Bush to send more troops to the Middle East and who are now sitting idly by ought to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask yourself why that is. 

The answer is the real problem with the American political process.