George Handlery about the week that was. Looking for weak foes. Europe dares to defy China. The Tower of Garbage and ecological awareness. Violent movements do not spare their own. Not only the lack of regulations alone but also bad regulations have caused the crisis. The crisis will be gone but Obama will stay. Is it dirty campaigning to mention “the record”?
 
1. It seems that we must admit to the growing scarcity of good citizenship. We like to declare our uncompromising resistance to whatever seems unlikely to do much harm if confronted. In this shadow boxing, it is to our liking if the concerns we raise are caused by forces that deliver no damaging counter punch once tackled. In such cases, regardless of our innate ineffectiveness, we can claim that we went to bat for virtue. Accordingly, foes are wanted who cannot break bones and who can be opposed without being endangered by their response. This is what makes to some the Dalai Lama appear more dangerous than his persecutors. By the same mechanism, Jihadists, crazies with nukes and systems emphasizing aggression are ignored or qualified as representing far-fetched and imaginary issues.
 
2. Glad to be partially wrong. A welcome occurrence indicating a counter trend took place. “Europe” dared to award the Sakharov Prize to a Chinese “dissident”. The pressure of threats exerted by Peking to refrain from giving the recognition to Mr. Hu has been massive. Kudos.
 
3. Freedom is a burden. It obligates to stand up such things as the Jihadists, the financial crisis, inassimilable immigration. How does one avoid the confrontation right now in favor of a later date? Go out and vote for BO.
 
4. The harder the going gets the more attractive the thesis becomes that 9/11 was US-made. This case below is illustrative of the disease. An acquaintance – no he is not a moron and his background should have immunized him against such foolishness – has expressed appreciation for the theory. When quizzed about this in writing he responded. He did so trying to moderate his position to the point were it becomes unassailable. So he stated about 9/11 that “it is an unproven idea but it is imaginable”. This is what this writer would say about the Easter Bunny at a gathering of biologists. On a scale of the escapist attraction of the cult of irrationality, the position and its justification would score an A- (For an A+ he would have had to say that the proof the allegation is that it is imaginable.) My insinuation is that we suffer from a cult of the absurd and bizarre that tends to flow over into the realm of policymaking. The matching case comes from the City Council of Zurich. The gem is the product of a member who used to Chair the Green Party. She seriously proposed to erect a tower in the middle of a town noted for its orderliness and cleanliness. Here you might ask, “What is wrong with that?” Just you wait. The good woman proposed that the tower be build out of refuse. Such a structure would be educational. It will remind people of the problems of pollution. In case, you were made unsure: she is against pollution.
 
5. Che Guevara, the favorite adornment of the sweatshirts of the underinfomed was not a man of contradictions. His fans are. For one thing, they honor the Commandante who has gained notoriety because of his violent career. Meanwhile they themselves claim to reject force –at least when stipulated in the defense of Western values. Che called revolutionary terror a useful instrument to destroy whatever blocked his preferred transformation of reality into a better world. In practice, this targets everybody whose views and values might prove in the course of time to represent limits on the system dedicated to improve mankind. Here we encounter one of the most stubbornly resisted lessons of the recent past. It is  that institutionalized and morally embedded terror is not selective. Nor is it likely to diminish once the initial battle of the cause is won. This being so, those who might have approved of system-embedded violence, assuming that the “enemy” must always be someone else, are likely to become its eventual victims.
 
6. The analysis of the abuses of economic freedom that caused the dislocation of the markets is needed while a new framework for restraints is defined. In doing so two things will be important. For one, the new rules should not be merely regulations that would have mitigated the current calamity. The measures imposed should be designed to prevent the next crisis. Second, in acting one will need to remember that the crash was not been caused by the unadulterated market but by its abusers who exploited bad regulations.
 
7. Part of the high price to be paid for the financial crisis is yet invisible. Already loud voices can be heard that demand more regulation to respond to the troubles caused by the “failure of the market”. What we really need are better regulations. After all it was the bad regulations – among them political inputs that distorted the lending policies of the American credit market – that share the responsibility for the crisis. It has been government intervention intending to redistribute that created the sub-prime loans.
 
8. Besides the irresponsibility and blindness of some bankers, the financial crisis’ roots reach into socialist-welfare soil. It started with an American idea. It was that all of us should be enabled to own the home we could not afford. Under government inspiration this led to masses of unqualified buyers and ultimately to higher house-prices. The reaction to what seemed to be an endless upward valuation of dwellings. That brought more lenders – this time without government nudging – into the market. Their short-term experience suggested that prizes would always rise. Consequently, bad loans seemed nearly impossible and the collaterals could be turned into liquid cash without the risk of losing. The rest has become economic history.
 
9. We always had government involvement in the economy. Whatever their justification, taxes are such an intervention as tax laws favor and discourage and therefore they become impulses. Pure capitalism has existed no more than did pure communism – albeit Cambodia and North Korea come close to the model. Therefore, the only question regarding politics’ involvement is “how much intervention” there is and “what kind of regulations” are imposed.
 
10. The economic downturn, especially the impression of it, can un-elect McCain. In a few months the crisis will be over but the deserving voter will be stuck with Obama.
 
11. McCain is blamed by for conducting a “vicious campaign”. Yet all he did was to connect Obama to his record. Therefore the charge of “baseness” says more about Obama’s past and suspected secret contemporary agenda than about McCain’s moral deficiency.
 
12. The Democrats claim that the GOP’s Vice Presidential candidate is too young and untried to be qualified for the Presidency. For the sake of the argument, let us allow this assessment to stay on the table. If we do so we are inevitably led to a related subject. In terms of what we have been told, the GOP ticket is sub-optimal because the VP is inexperienced. Applying the same standard on the Democratic ticket, we find that the measuring rod and the subject match. Only in this case it is the Presidential candidate that is under-qualified. Therefore, if the argument is pursued, the conclusion is embedded in this question: What is worse, an unqualified VP and a qualified President or an unqualified President supported by a qualified Veep?
 
13. The Iraq government persists on pressuring Washington to commit to withdraw its forces by a set date. For the rest of the stay the immunity of US troops from Iraq’s justice system is also questioned by Baghdad. (Surprising since soldiers are under the command of their sovereign government. It prejudices operations if, acting on orders, the trooper is exposed to the laws of another state.) Meanwhile Muqtada can fill streets protesting even this envisaged limited role. (October 18). One participant waved a sign preferring “death” to “submission”. Seeing this, one feels nudged to think aloud about yielding to what the Iraqi’s wish. Doing so might be bloody in its consequences but that corresponds to the will of the affected. That action is a speedy withdrawal – in itself desired from the outset by everybody in the US. The result will be subjugation by whoever the locals prefer to have in charge. The measure is also guaranteed to bring much “death” with total “submission”.