Month: July 2019

Myers-Briggs for Traditionalists

Family, Reason, Society & Culture

I’m not a fan (understatement) of pop-psych, but of all the tests and profiles that various employers put me through during my career, one stands out as actually practical and useful: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®. I have consistently found it to be uncannily accurate in explaining and predicting human behavior, particularly interpersonal behavior. In our families, the MBTI® can promote understanding, enhance communication, and fuel patience and forgiveness that we might not otherwise be able to muster.

Based on the work of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, the MBTI was created by Katharine Cook Briggs (1875-1968) and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers (1897-1979). In this article I’ll barely scratch the surface of the behavioral model, so apologies to the psychologists and psychiatrists among my readers who would justifiably quibble with my treatment and usage. But here goes.

The MBTI groups people into personality “types” based on four behaviors or dimensions:

a.            How we get our energy
b.            How we gather information
c.             How we make decisions
d.            How we order our lives

Within each of these four behavioral dimensions there is a range or continuum which describes our “preference”.

The first behavioral dimension is: How we get our energy. The continuum ranges from what Jung called Extraversion at one end of the spectrum to Introversion at the other, the so-called ‘E-I Preference‘. Note that the first is spelled Extraversion, not extroversion. It’s not about how we behave outwardly, i.e. whether we’re socially extroverted or introverted. It’s more about how we respond to others and whether interpersonal engagement energizes or depletes us.

At a party, for example, the individuals with the E preference gain energy by being around others. As the night wears on, they seem to get perkier and perkier (with or without alcohol) while those who are natural I’s become more and more exhausted.

It’s probably a good idea to emphasize here that no-one is either always Extraverted, nor Introverted and this is true vis-à-vis the other three dimensions as well. Whether a person is a so-called “E” or a so-called “I” is relative. E or I is a preference and we can be both. It’s just that we’re born, as the theory goes, with a natural tendency or “preference” one way or the other. Fold your arms. You have a natural preference for which arm goes over the top. Now fold them the other way. You can DO it, but you clearly prefer and have a preference to do it the other way right? That’s what we mean when speaking of preference in behavior.

The second behavioral dimension describes How we soak up information. The preference continuum here extends from Sensor to Intuitive. I like to explain this dimension by telling the story of the two people sitting side by side in a plane approaching their destination airport. The plane is in thick clouds and the plane is bump, jumping up and down in the turbulence. The two people have their eyes glued on the window, but all they can see is grey. Suddenly, they burst out of the clouds and the airport is plainly visible below. The Intuitive says, “Ah, we’re there.” The Sensor replies, “Not until we’re on the ground we’re not!”

For the Sensor sees precisely ‘what is’ while the intuitive sees ‘what could be’. Where we fit on this preference continuum has a major impact on how we take in information. The ‘S’ and the ‘N’ individuals as they’re called, can be presented with the exact same set of facts or sensory input and interpret them 180 degrees apart! Not surprisingly, 70% of men are S’s while 70% of women are N’s. (Hence the term ‘women’s intuition’!)

The third behavioral dimension is How we make decisions. The preference continuum here is Thinking at one end and Feeling at the other. In recent years we’re heard a lot about “Emotional Intelligence”. In a way I believe that concept gives support to the argument that decisions don’t have to be made in our left brains all the time. They can also be made in the gut, and they’re just as valid. But ‘T’s are all about laying out the evidence, analyzing it, coming to an incisive and informed decision. ‘F’s are about unconsciously mulling things over viscerally and making their decisions based on how they ‘feel’ about them. Needless to say, most scientists are T’s, and the majority of men are T’s, while the majority of women are F’s.

The final behavioral dimension is How we order our lives. The preferences range from Judgers on one end and Perceivers at the other. Judgers are ordered. They make lists. If they accomplish a task that they didn’t put on the list, they’ll write it on the list after the fact and cross it out! Perceivers prefer to ‘go with the flow’, and are spontaneous and accepting of whatever comes at them. This preference, in my opinion, causes people who are strongly opposite to make each other crazy!

With four behavioral dimensions and two end points on the preference continuum each there are 16 possible combinations of Dimensions and Preferences and we tend to, upon testing with the MBTI, fall into one of the 16. So, in one corner of the matrix for example we have an ESTJ person: the Extraverted Sensor Thinker Judger. At an opposite corner we might have the INFP, the Introverted Intuitive Feeler Perceiver.

Going back to the party. The ESTJ or ENTJ commands attention, some would say ‘holding court’. He or she has an opinion on everything and anything and will tell you about it. When offered a tray of cocktails they might first select the martini, then in a split second put it down and instead take a gin and tonic. They will of course take a cocktail napkin and hold it under the drink as they bring it to their lips. The INFP, meanwhile, is politely smiling as someone bends their ear. They nod, they listen actively and intently. When the cocktail tray comes by they ask the waiter to describe the contents of each drink. They put their fist to their chin and take quite a few seconds to mull over what they want. Once they make up their mind, however, they take the drink and will not change it two seconds later like the ESTJ did.

By the way, the ESTJ is attracted (opposites attract right?) to the INFP because they display the qualities the ESTJ does not. The opposite is of course true of the INFP, who admires and values the ‘strength of character’ of the ESTJ.

For fun, I’ll stipulate that the ESTJ is a guy and the INFP is a gal. They get married because they are, in fact, opposites attracted to one another. However, fast forward a few years and it’s inevitable, in my experience, that that opposite-ness causes tremendous conflict. That’s not to suggest that they shouldn’t have gotten married. It’s almost inevitable, however, that they really have to work at their relationship.

Meanwhile, two ESTJ’s get married. They constantly bang heads and argue and fight, but they go to separate corners and unwaveringly come back at it until they come to some sort of truce, compromise or shared understanding. Two INFP’s get married and they’ll sit silently in a room together and simply enjoy and be completely satisfied in one another’s company. Eventually, they’ll fall off a cliff holding hands but won’t argue while doing so. And they’ll end up on their feet anyway!

One of the things I like about the MBTI is that it doesn’t make judgments good or bad, positive or negative about these preferences. In fact, the seminal work on the model is called “Gifts Differing”, suggesting that each of the 16 personality types has gifts or talents, and there is no right or wrong among them. They’re just, well, different.

Here’s an example of how an understanding of “Type” can be useful. The ESTJ and the INFP are sipping the last of their wine at the end of dinner on a Sunday evening in August. The ESTJ husband says, “Hey Hon, how about we go skiing as a family next February.” The INFP wife, after a pause, says, “That’s not a bad idea.” The husband takes that answer as a thumbs up and a month later he’s got a whole family ski trip planned out. Along the way, he’s checked in with his wife, “What do you think of this condo, or that kids instruction package?” He repeatedly gets an answer similar to the first, “That’s not a bad idea.”

The family takes the vacation, has a great time and ten years later in family counseling the wife brings up this episode, emphatic that she never wanted to go on that trip! Struggling to remember the details, the husband says, “Hey, I checked with you at the outset and every step of the way in planning that trip! Why didn’t you speak up?” The wife replies, “Because you never gave me any time to think about it!”

Had the ESTJ husband understood Type, he would have realized that asking what seemed like a straightforward question of his INFP wife was not straightforward at all to her. Rather, the INFP needed to process the question: take in the idea and internally explore it (the “N” in her), then mull it over at the gut level (the “F” in her), and finally take time to consider the whole concept and come to a complete and clear decision (the “P” in her). By the time she’d done that, the ESTJ husband was miles down the planning road!

The patience required of polar opposite husband and wife to reach a mutually satisfying compromise decision is huge, emotionally draining and if that kind of difference in approaching life is tested many times a day, one will understand why opposites attract but inevitably have to work so hard to have a good relationship!

I could go on and on sharing anecdote after anecdote of how the very opposite personality types deal with one another within families, in the workplace, among friends, among strangers, in public, in private…how an understanding of the personality type of someone with whom we’re dealing could help us achieve whatever goal we have with that interaction, or how it is that when one is under stress one tends to behave as if they are the exact opposite of who they are when not under stress.

Instead, I urge you to read Gifts Differing, and if you’re still working or thinking about your career, the book named “Do What You Are“.  I’ve also provided below a cheat sheet (credit to Jake Beech) that pithily summarizes the 16 MBTI types.

HAVE FUN WITH THIS!

By Jake Beech – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30859659

The Forgotten Majority

America, Economy, History, Society & Culture

The Left assiduously and furiously manufactures, celebrates and loudly publicizes victimhood. This gives them a pretense to extort money they can use as currency to gather power, influence and advance their agenda. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans keep their heads down and continue to do their jobs and their best for their families, their friends, their community, their country, and themselves.  

In her exhaustively and incisively researched seminal work, “The Forgotten Man” (Harper Collins, New York, 2007) Amity Shlaes argues conclusively that the Great Depression was man-made and completely avoidable. She borrowed the term “Forgotten Man” from  William Graham Sumner’s use of the term in his 1883 speech of the same name. The Left has always equated the Forgotten Man with those who stood in the bread lines during the Depression. However, Sumner and Shlaes used the term to denote the regular guy who had to pay for all the promises that politicians, both before, during and after Roosevelt made to garner power and control.

I submit that today, the Silent Majority is the Forgotten Man, comprised of similar salt-of-the-earth people who have had to pay for all the promises made by Roosevelt’s intellectual progeny, including today’s Leftists.

It used to be just the snail darter. Remember them? It’s tiny a fish that bleeding-heart enviro-fascists manufactured victimhood for in 1973 to halt completion of a dam in California. The controversy went all the way to the Supreme Court. Long story short, the dam was built, the snail darters relocated all at a cost no doubt of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions to taxpayers. It, however, lined the pockets of the Defenders of the Snail Darters Brigade (I made that up but I can’t help but wonder if money could have been made on a tee-shirt run with that emblazoned on it!) and Leftists were left (.sic) to feel good about how they’d saved a species. As a side note, the environmental shamans themselves assert that 150 species A DAY (!) become extinct. But the snail darter became the cause célèbre du jour and the money, when followed, led right into the wallets of the enviro-fascists, their cohorts and allies.

Today, pick whatever Leftist drivel you wish, on whatever topic you wish: border protection, religion, free speech, 2nd amendment, abortion, gender confusion, climate change, taxation, law and order, national defense, public education, etc. etc. The economic price, the damage to our society and culture, the frightening impact on our children and grandchildren of what the Left has concocted and viciously squeal…the burden will be carried by the hardworking Forgotten Majority who always pay the price, just as they did during the Depression.

When the Left professes to worry about some minority victim being offended, or potentially offended (think Colin Kaepernick and Betsy Ross Nike sneakers) and seek to punish the offenders; when they rewrite history and seek to “fundamentally transform” our nation according to their warped ideology (think the painting over of the George Washington school mural in San Francisco), let’s not forget the majority, The FORGOTTEN Majority.

Traditional Values, Traditionalists and Traditionalism

America, Government, History, Morality, Politics, Reason, Religion, Society & Culture

Attributed to the American author Samuel R. Delany is the phrase “Words mean things.” Hijacking words and phrases is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the demagogue. And the twisting of usage and meaning into pretzels has always been a favorite device of politicians and pundits. With this in mind, I thought I should explain what I mean when I refer in my writing to Traditional Values, Traditionalists and Traditionalism.

Look up Traditionalism and you’ll receive a panoply of descriptions and definitions. One of the first articles that comes up from a search is: “a school of thought promulgated by a group of 20th and 21st century thinkers who believe in the existence of perennial wisdom, or perennial philosophy, primordial and universal truths which form the source for, and are shared by, all the major world religions.” Look further and one goes through the looking glass and into a rabbit warren of definitions in the context of societal norms, religion, philosophy, economics, culture, etc.

In 1964 Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward famously described obscenity (or rather, what it is not) as follows:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964)

Borrowing on that phrase, I will suggest that Traditionalism may be defined in a variety of ways, but in the end, Traditionalists know it when they see it.

However, a shortcut to how I define Traditionalism is: that body of ideals, values and mores that we were raised on by the Greatest Generation.

Speaking of the Greatest Generation, one of the definitions of Traditionalists refers to those who were born between 1900 and 1945. I believe it is precisely because of their espousal of Traditional Values that they were Great!

We Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 on the other hand, are split into two camps: a) those of us who listened to what our Greatest Generation parents taught us, who were grateful for the peace and prosperity they bequeathed to us and who have tried to live our lives by their example and rules; and, b) the prodigals, the “Me” generation of the sexual revolution who grew up to be the radicals of the 70’s and the yuppies of the 80’s, a few of whom have come home to Traditionalism and the balance of whom have become today’s Leftists.

So what do I mean by Traditional Values? Often the term is conflated with “Family Values.” They are similar, but Traditionalism goes beyond Family Values. To me, Traditional Values include support for:

  • individual freedom to live as we wish within the basic constraints of Judeo-Christian principles;
  • the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights as they were intended for then and all future generations;
  • fundamental patriotism, including honoring our Flag, national symbols, anthems and emblems;
  • a strong military and national defense and protection of our sovereignty;
  • the right of self-defense and to keep, bear and utilize arms to ensure that right;
  • obeying the Law and supporting those who serve in law enforcement;
  • marriage defined as between one man and one woman (including acceptance of the biological fact that men and women are different!);
  • support for nuclear families consisting of a father and mother and their children;
  • freedom of worship and expression;
  • the Golden Rule;
  • support for and defense of free-market capitalism;
  • equal opportunity, not equal outcomes; and,
  • separation of powers within a limited, and republican government.

Traditional Values also include opposition to: 

  • social engineering and bad (many wouldsay EVIL) social, economic and political ideologies such as socialism and communism;
  • crony capitalism;
  • ‘free love’ and promiscuity;
  • abortion on demand and in lieu of contraception;
  • gender confusion;
  • LGBTQ militancy;
  • fascism masquerading as liberal or progressive free expression;
  • violent protest; and,
  • collectivism, globalism, cultural marxism and so-called “progressivism”.

The Greatest Generation didn’t have to think about or debate these principles – they lived them. They were part of the fabric of their society.

Today, these principles are under constant assault.

I used to teach a lesson in Sunday School using a glass of water and a dropper full of black ink. The water represented our souls. In the context of this article, it represents the reservoir of societal values. The black drops of ink I slowly added to the water represent, for purposes of this article, Progressive/Leftist ideas, norms, habits, values. Add one drop to the water and nothing seems to happen. As successively more drops are added, however, the water starts to turn grey, then greyer, murky, and finally black.

The metaphor aptly describes what’s happening to our country.

I hope and pray I’m joined by the Silent Majority of our Boomer generation and budding Traditionalists of succeeding generations in fighting for a return to the Traditional principles that made us the greatest nation on earth and in the history of the world.

Do the National Debt and Deficits Matter?

America, Economy, Finance and Investments, Government

The headline screams, “National Debt Reaches $22 Trillion!” Another warns, “The Deficit is Expected to Reach $1 Trillion in 2019”. The problem with this shrill alarmism is the deceptiveness of these statements. They are of course intended to shock us. To attach sanity to these numbers, we need to set aside our common understanding of the terms ‘Debt’ and ‘Deficit’ from Accounting 101. They simply don’t apply in the same way to the Federal Government as they do to business, or to us mortals for that matter!

Economists and Accountants attach a variety of labels to financial statements. So, for example, a “Balance Sheet” is also known as a “Statement of Financial Condition”.  An “Income Statement” is also called a “Statement of Operations”. Economics and Accounting are really boring, so forgive their practitioners for occasionally making up new terms just to keep things spicy.

For purposes of this article, I’m going to use Lemonade Stand accounting labels. With that, the two most fundamental equations are:

                Assets – Liabilities equals Equity, referring to the Balance Sheet; and,

                Income – Expense = Profit, referring to the Income Statement. (And if Expense is greater than Income, Profit becomes ‘Loss’ or, ‘Deficit’).

We all know pretty much what Assets are. Liabilities, on the other hand, are technically “claims on assets” but set that technicality aside for the moment. We often use the term DEBT interchangeably with Liabilities, so another way of writing the equation is: Assets – Debt equals Equity.

Another way of saying Equity is “Net Worth”. Very simply, if we add up all our Assets: bank accounts, the cash value of our life insurance, our cars (not the leased ones but the ones we own), our house and everything in it – that’s our total Assets. If we subtract what we owe on our mortgages, our car loans, our credit cards, and any other debt we may have, from our total Assets, the number we’re left with is our Net Worth. Another way of looking at it is: if we sold everything and turned all our assets into cash and used that cash to pay off our debt, the cash we have left over is our Net Worth.

Analogously, our salary or the top line of our paychecks is Income, while taxes, our mortgage or rent, our car payments, what we spend to live, represent Expense. What’s left over isn’t Profit, per se, but it represents cash we can spend on other things, so in a way that’s “profit”.

As an aside, what politicians have been adept at over the years is getting us to think of our “Income” as our net paycheck, i.e. the amount that goes into our bank account each payday. We rarely think about our Gross Income…we always think about our Net Income. When the government takes our money in the form of income tax, we don’t feel it because it’s withheld from our paychecks. If we actually received our full paychecks and had to immediately fork over the taxes we’d sure feel it a lot more wouldn’t we?

And let’s not forget the government taxes on goods and services!

Q. Do you know how much per gallon of gas is TAX???
A: As much as $.58 in North Carolina! Think about how much money that is!

If we add up income tax PLUS all the excise and other taxes and fees we pay government on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis, and received our Gross Income and had to fork over all that tax in dollar bills instead of just ignoring them as we are wont to do, we’d likely get indigestion at least, or more likely, throw up.

These are easy concepts to understand when we’re talking about lemonade stands and our personal budgeting. The confusion (often deliberate) arises when these same terms are applied to the Federal Government. Some terms are analogous, but many aren’t.

Politicians and pundits speak of the government all the time as if it were a business, and it is not! The National Debt that everyone frets over, for example, is not the same as business debt. And since the government doesn’t have an “employer” (yes, we’re supposed to be its employer, but it doesn’t really work that way does it?), Income for the government is the Taxes they extract from us.

Expense for the government, on the other hand, is everything from roughly $67 Billion for 200 F-22 fighters to $3.1 Billion on vacation pay for federal employees placed on administrative leave (really!), oh, and studies on what bugs do around lightbulbs, and subsidies to put solar panels on breweries so beer can be “greener”, etc. (really!)  

The National Debt isn’t like our debt. Take our car loan and consumer debt. We owe money to a bank or credit card company. Who does the Federal Government owe money to? Well, yes, the Japanese and Chinese have loaned us a lot, each about $1 Trillion, but guess who the government owes the most to? US!

What is so often ignored when the alarms are sounded is the other side of the Balance Sheet! When talking heads shriek about the Debt and Deficits, you never hear anything about the Assets on the other side of the “Balance Sheet” do you? What comprises the Assets of the Federal Government? Well, yes, it owns land, and it owns equipment and it owns lots of financial securities and other monetary assets, but who has claim on those assets (remember the technical definition of Liabilities, above)? WE DO!

The reality is, the Assets of the United States of America DWARF its debts. And the vast majority of our assets don’t appear on the Balance Sheet! That’s because the Assets include the unmeasured value of things like our natural resources, the innovation of our people, our work ethic, our FREEDOM!

It’s the Assets on the other side of the equation from the National Debt, and it’s the income, and income potential of our national Income Statement that render the Debt and Deficits far more benign than the alarmists want you to believe.

Do they matter? Of course they do. The Debt CAN affect borrowing costs, but look at the past ten years and it’s evident that rising debt doesn’t necessarily mean rising interest rates. And some will argue that the National Debt “crowds out” business and consumer borrowers. That too, is a fallacious argument. Business and consumer debt have never been higher. And the Deficit is good for chicken-little headlines depending on your political point of view, and no doubt that affects sentiment, and sentiment affects spending and investment behavior. So yes, they matter.

But the ability of the U.S. Treasury to borrow money against the (my guess) QUADRILLIONS of dollars of Assets we have means deficits are just an arithmetic exercise. If we had to spend money to dig California out of the ocean if the really Big One were to hit, for example, could the Treasury print more money, and would it still be valuable? Of course it would, because what matters is not the arithmetic, but that we have the ability to pay it back, and we and the rest of the world (everyone but those who profit from whining about it) know it. Hell, we could always sell Alaska to the Russians, the Chinese or the Canadians and retire our National Debt in a heartbeat! (Don’t worry citizens of Wasilla, we’re not going to do that.)

I’ve vastly simplified the intricacies of our country’s finances here, of course, but what I’m advocating is to take what the alarmists on both sides of the political aisle say with a grain of salt. Rest assured that we are, and so long as we are free, will remain, the greatest and most financially sound nation on Earth. We aren’t in any danger of going bankrupt any time soon.

For a really substantive, plain-language read on why the National Debt and Deficits matter less than everyone thinks, I commend to you three articles written by people far smarter than I:

  • University of Georgia economics professor William D. Lastrapes’ article entitled “Why the $22 trillion national debt doesn’t matter – here’s what you should worry about instead” here;
  • John Tamny’s article in Forbes’ magazine entitled, “Ignore The Endless Talk Of Doom, Budget Deficits Really Don’t Matter” here; and,
  • Neil Irwin’s New York Times (!) article entitled “How America Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Deficits and Debt”, here.

At least browse through them. You’ll sleep better.

New to GrumpsReport

Quips & Quotes

Today we introduce a new feature which you’ll find in the sidebar, labeled “Quips and Quotes“. We are frequently struck by the words of those who either inspire us or ‘say it’ better than we could. So we’ll reproduce them here, tagged with links to the original and credit given as due. A running archive will also be maintained on the Quips & Quotes page accessible from the Menu Bar.

We hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we do!

The United Church of Earth

Reason, Religion, Society & Culture

Environmentalism, or what we used to call Conservation in saner days, has become, for all intents and purposes, a religion. There is little difference between the fire and brimstone sermons of fundamentalist preachers and what’s emerging from the mouths of the spokesmen of today’s increasingly popular faith: The Green Movement. I hasten to insist that I’m not denigrating religion. I’m merely pointing out that we need to call and treat worship of the environment and Mother Earth what it is, and push back on the nonsense that it’s science.

As with most subjects, the First Law of Experts (which see) applies here. I don’t need to produce a list of all the PhD’s and world-renowned “authorities” who can cite irrefutable, documented, empirical evidence that climate change is man-made and that we are going to use up Mother Earth’s resources within ten years (that goal post, by the way, has been moved at least five times in just MY lifetime!), and that we must immediately ban the use of all fossil fuels, stop eating meat so we can destroy our flatulent cow population, etc.

Could we all check the hysteria for a minute and remember what we were taught in 6th grade science about the scientific method and photosynthesis?

Two of the principles underlying the scientific method are reproducibility and repeatability – a hypothesis or theory doesn’t even become a tendency, much less a law, unless the theory can be tested in a controlled setting. Know any environmentalists who’ve been able to prove any of their “settled science” using the scientific method? Of course not. What they’ve done is “interpret data”. But not only is the data crap, a lot of it has been falsified or just been made up. Again, I won’t enumerate all the environmental data scams that have been foisted upon us.

As for “carbon footprints” and all the nonsense about reducing CO2 emissions. Remember what our 6th grade science teacher taught us happens to plants at night? Oh yes…in photosynthesis they TAKE IN carbon dioxide and produce OXYGEN…kind of important for life on Earth. Oh, and “Greenhouse Gas”? Guess what is far and away the most prevalent one. Water Vapor! Sigh…and that ain’t man made.

True believers can ignore the scientific method of course and forget 6th grade science because they absolutely, fundamentally BELIEVE what their environmentalist, Earth-worshipping prophets and pastors have taught them. They can feel it in their bones. They’ve seen it on Insta-gram; they’ve heard it from Al Roker who has given his testimony of having “witnessed it first-hand”, and they have had it confirmed by the most authoritative source of all, Twitter!

Not just the First Law of Experts but also the law that “He who has the loudest megaphone wins in the court of public opinion,” also applies. One of the huge downsides of the Internet and the age of Social Media has been the placing of 1,000 watt amplifiers in the hands of so many fringe lunatics. With the right catch phrases and the most outrageous attention grabbers, United Church of Earth congregants have fanned out to proselytize and saturate the airwaves.

And so as we must with so many insidious movements today, let’s follow the money. Oh wait, it’s darn near impossible to do that! Many investigative journalists and truth-seeking organizations have tried. What we get as a result of their painstaking effort is a spiderweb on top of a patchwork of money and influence connections that all reveal the same m.o.: power hungry politicians and megalomaniacal globalists bent on control receiving “just a sliver” of the money flying around, much of it extorted or extracted from businesses or the public from influence-peddling (think the Clinton Foundation). They’ve succeeded in making even Mother Earth a victim, and if you’ll just text $10 to them, they’ll fight those nasty corporations and people on the Right who are exploiting her! 

I urge everyone to take 3 minutes to read the Heritage Foundation commentary that puts it far better than I can. It can be found here.

The Green Movement, Climate Change, Environmentalism…whatever you call it… listen to its sermons, read its writings, contemplate and ponder what its acolytes are testifying at your own risk, and use your own judgment as to whether you’ll put money in its Church donation tray on Sunday, or give it to, say, The Gary Sinise Foundation. I’ll go with Gary Sinise. 

The Ten-Meter Platform

Society & Culture, Uncategorized, Values

If our goal is X, we need to aim for X+Y. If we fall short, we may still get close to X. This principle is just another way of saying we must lengthen our strides as we climb back up the slippery slope. 

Many years ago I helped run a summer Scout camp in the Catskill Mountains. A few days before camp started the camp counselors, who were drawn from the older, higher ranking and more accomplished Scouts, arrived for several days of training. One of days always consisted of a team building/bonding activity. And one year we were fortunate and privileged to be able to arrange to take the counselors to West Point (The U.S. Military Academy) where the boys received scuba and riflery instruction. The counselors also had some free time to use the pool, including the diving platform and boards.

It was very interesting to see how some of the boys went straight to the top of the 10-meter platform. The more courageous (or reckless) ones didn’t hesitate to run right off the edge. Others were hesitant, and some had to steel their nerves as they looked down from way up there.

Many, if not most of the boys scurried to the other jump levels: a 5-meter platform, a 3-meter diving board and a 1-meter diving board. Not surprisingly, the boys who started at the bottom eventually worked their way up the heights, from unhesitatingly bouncing off the 1-meter board, to more hesitant jumps off the 3-meter, to very hesitant jumps off the 5-meter platform. Some of this group, when they reached the top of the 10-meter platform, simply but understandably chickened out and climbed back down. Others overcame their fear and took the plunge, emerging afterwards from the depths of the pool spluttering but victorious.

But what was notable was how the boys who had started with the 10-meter platform easily and unhesitatingly jumped or dived off the successively lower boards. Even those who hesitated at the top of the 10-meter platform behaved as if the 5, 3 and 1 were just no big deal.

What we adults observed and concluded was that the boys who initially set their sights at the most challenging and difficult goal, once achieved, found attainment of the less ambitious goals easy by comparison. Those who worked their way up from the bottom had a much tougher time of it.

The Left are very skilled at employing this principle. They know very well that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all, government-run healthcare system is a bridge too far, but if such a system represents the 10-meter platform, having for years set their sights on this their highest goal, look how readily they were able to achieve the intermediary goal represented by Obamacare. Similarly, the decibel level and sheer outrageousness of the Left’s rhetoric on so many other issues, amplified by the media megaphone, now make Bernie Sanders appear the moderate!

Today the Left is touting the Green New Deal. It is audacious beyond reason, no, beyond sanity, but they know that if they fall short, they will nevertheless hit intermediate targets that, figuratively, will ‘move the ball forward.’

Examples of their success are all around us. Look what’s happened to education, to law, to morality, to art, to just about every aspect of society. The setting of X+Y goals together with a relentless, ends-justify-the-means attitude has indeed fundamentally transformed our country.

We Traditionalists need to do the same. But once again, it’s difficult for us to adopt the same tactics as the Left. We’re too busy working hard, caring for our families, running Scout camps or coaching soccer teams, attending church functions, volunteering in our communities… to coalesce like the Leftist mob and “protest” and “resist”. But the thousand cuts we’re receiving are turning into a hemorrhage, and it takes an organized, determined force to stem the bleeding and heal.

We need 10-meter platforms of our own, and need to overcome our fear and be just as determined as the Left. We must change the meaning of “progressive” to what it should be, not how the Left is defining it. We’ve got to stop and reverse this ‘fundamental transformation’ before it really is too late.

We must speak up. We must speak out. We need to gather with others who feel as we do and become “community organizers” ourselves. Except our “community” is comprised of those who are extremely uncomfortable at organizing in this way. But it may be the only way we can lay the groundwork for a better path for our children and grandchildren than the one the Left has us on now.

Being Friendly Matters

Society & Culture, Values

I used to be cheerful and friendly with everyone I encountered, not just my friends and family. But now I find it far more difficult, especially being friendly to those with whom I vehemently disagree.

It’s hard to be friendly to hypocrites who are constantly virtue signaling. They drive hybrid cars and only drink organic, humanely grown free range coffee or fully rain forest alliance certified tea (this is a real label I saw on a box recently!) from their local barista. They gather in klatches in their yoga pants with oversized sunglasses griping about what they’re having to pay for their childrens’ tutors and piano teachers while squeezing lemons over their avocado toast.

It’s hard to be friendly if you’re an old white guy, thus automatically the beneficiary of white male entitlement and by extension, immediately viewed with suspicion as the enemy. In the bastions of the politically correct you’re the product of white privilege and therefore what you have wasn’t earned but confiscated from minorities and various victims. Oh, and did I mention you’re also a racist, by definition?

It’s hard to be friendly when everything you believe in and stand for is constantly trashed and all the drivel spilling forth from people’s mouths is accepted by so many around you with understanding nods and agreement.

It’s hard to be friendly when so much of what Hollywood produces celebrates aberrant, uncivilized or downright evil behavior, behavior which viewers slow and gawk at like the accident by the side of the road but can’t help themselves, and then wonder why their children’s language is what we used to call that of a drunken sailor!

It’s hard to be friendly when you hear Leftist sound bites and talking points repeated continuously, no matter how outrageous the lies and deceit. From an educated but typical Leftist neighbor in our community I recently heard repeated the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “concentration camps” label given to the southern border detention centers. As much as I would have liked to pleasantly smile and gently try to explain how ridiculous that charge is, I stifled my revulsion and maintained a blank expression. I regret not speaking up.   

But that’s the problem. Traditionalists care about being friendly. The Left doesn’t care what labels they apply to others with whom they disagree, how condescending, how insolent, how rude, how impolite, how uncivil, how discourteous or disrespectful. They don’t care about being kind at all. They revel in being rebellious – they actually think it’s cool (!) and even those who don’t overtly engage in unkind behavior are complicit by their silence and tacit acceptance of such behavior.

On the other hand, yesterday I saw a segment on Fox News remembering Tony Snow, the former journalist and White House Spokesman for President George W. Bush who died from cancer eleven years ago at the too young age of 53. He was quoted as saying something that immediately resonated. I quickly tried to look up the quote but while I found lots of great things Tony said, I couldn’t find the exact words I had just heard, so I’ll paraphrase them as closely as I recall.

“You don’t have to donate a million bucks to change the world. A smile and kind word will do just fine.”

Once again someone said it far better than I ever could.

In the face of withering Leftist fire, it’s hard to be friendly, but “a smile and kind word will do just fine”.

Thank you Tony!

Helping Others Matters

Morality, Society & Culture, Values

It used to be so straightforward. The Scout Slogan is “Do a good turn daily.” And many a Boy Scout has lived up to that slogan, not just when the whole troop was engaged in a community project, but In individual acts of kindness and service.

In today’s self-absorbed society, however, we’re told we should help others because it benefits us! Research “helping others” and you’ll get an array of articles citing the psychological, physical, spiritual and career-enhancing benefits of undertaking what should be a fundamental human activity.

Ayn Rand devotees will recognize this immediately. Objectivists argue that helping others is motivated by selfishness – that the positive feelings and benefits one derives from doing so are and should be the driving force behind acts of compassion or support for our fellow human beings.

Those with religious beliefs will, however, be motivated by the teachings of their canon. I know of no religion that doesn’t preach some form of the Golden Rule, even those the doctrines of which involve destroying anyone who doesn’t believe as they do!

A business associate of mine had the privileged responsibility of heading a centi-million-dollar foundation that was charged with improving health around the world. Explaining what it was the foundation did in that regard, my colleague pointed out, “Do you know how hard it is to give away money?” He went on to describe how difficult it was to identify legitimate opportunities to put the foundation’s money to work doing real good. He recounted story after story of how seemingly valid situations to fund potential health-improving initiatives in third world countries exposed corruption that delegitimized the opportunities. Not all, but way too much of the money would have lined the pockets of politicians, intermediaries and administrators.

We as a society face the same problem as my foundation chairman friend, both as organizations as well as individuals. It’s often difficult to assess whether the cause we wish to support is legitimate. That’s why we have websites and companies that undertake that assessment for us, promising to score philanthropies and causes objectively, while skimming just a wee bit off the top for their service.

As we walk down the streets of our major cities and are accosted by panhandlers it’s hard to know who are truly needy and who have the ability to work and care for themselves but choose not to. As we listen to pitch after pitch on television and on our phone answering machines asking for “just X$ per month”, it’s hard to know for sure how much is really going to the cause and how much is paying for the supporting bureaucracy.

In short, doing good and serving others today has been institutionalized. An array of honest and legitimate on one hand and dishonest and illegitimate organizations on the other have made helping others into an industry. Think about what “I gave at the office” means. It means we’ve abrogated responsibility for doing good to others to organizational intermediaries, or worse, to politicians and officials who with our tax dollars dole out money in return for support and votes.

I recall getting off a commuter train one day among a hoard of people racing to move along the platform and up the stairs to the exit. Suddenly there was a commotion ahead of me. Someone had, heaven forbid, failed to keep up the pace! In fact, uncharacteristically for this time of day, a mother with a stroller, clearly not a commuter, was struggling to fold it while hoisting her toddler into her arms, swing her bag over her shoulder and preparing to climb the stairs. Scowls and under-breath “take the elevator ______” accompanied the rush of people navigating around her.

As I got closer to the scene, having decided to offer my help, a suit-cladded businessman had already stopped to assist the mom and her child. By the time I got to the spot where the human flow had been stalled they were on their way up the stairs.

As it happens, I knew the businessman who stopped to help. He was the multi-millionaire chief executive of an insurance company, but you wouldn’t know that from his outward appearance or countenance. But I knew that the “good turn” he had just done was typical of him, and as I passed by him at the top of the stairs I caught his eye and smiled, saying, “I thought that was you!” and to myself said, “You beat me to it.”

A simple act of kindness. Service to another that cost absolutely nothing, where no recompense was needed or wanted. An example of helping another person not for the benefit it provided the good samaritan but simply because it was the right thing to do.

What would the world be like if everyone sought to help one another as a default state? Each and every day we are presented with multiple opportunities to help others, often in small ways.

May we strive to recognize those opportunities and live up to the Scout slogan.

Helping others matters.

What We Teach Our Children Matters

Family, Morality, Society & Culture, Values

Stand by while I put on my ballistic vest. This topic is a lightning rod and even many Traditionalists won’t like what I’m going to say here. But I’m old and on this subject, grumpy, so I’m going to call it like I see it.

I’ll begin with an anecdote. Some years ago I was attending a church picnic held at a park not far from our home. Families of all shapes and sizes came with their picnic accoutrements and the food, music, games and fun were typical of raucous church picnics.

As my family and I drove toward the area of the park where the picnic was being held, I slowed the car to a crawl as kids and pets were running all over the place. Off in the distance I could clearly see a boy, about 11 or 12, riding his bike straight towards us on this roadway/quasi pathway. I could see even 30 to 40 yards away that the boy wasn’t paying attention to what was in front him but looking from side to side.

So I stopped the car altogether, but on he came, straight for the hood of my car. I thought of beeping the horn but now he was within 20 yards and I didn’t want to startle him. “Surely he’ll look up and see where he’s going,” was what went through my mind, but he never looked up until the very last 5 yards whereupon he slammed on his brakes. It was too late.

He was barely moving, thank goodness, when he crashed head on into the front of my car and fell off the bike. I immediately jumped out to make sure he was alright. He was, but the front wheel of his bike was slightly bent, not enough to prevent it from turning, but enough to make riding the bike wobbly. So my wife and I changed places, she now behind the wheel, and I started walking with the boy, whose family I knew well, towards where they were set up in the park.

As I approached the family with my arm around the boy his father approached us, took one look at the bike, dropped to his knee and put his hands on his son’s shoulders asking if he was hurt. “No,” replied the boy who had gone sullen. Then the Dad asked, looking at me, “what happened?”.

I could see the little guy was fearful that he was going to get into trouble and so I chose my words carefully, explaining not how reckless he was, but rather how he was slowing to pull to the side of the road when it appeared his hand slipped off the brake and he couldn’t stop and ran into the front of my car.

How unprepared I was for the father’s reaction. It would be a huge understatement to say that he overreacted. He practically threatened to sue me for reckless endangerment of his son! Meanwhile, the look on the boy’s face was a combination of astonishment, bewilderment, embarrassment, and humiliation not at what happened, but for how his father was behaving!

I said little to nothing, and began walking over to where I could see my wife had parked our car and had started to take our picnic paraphernalia out. I had to hide my shock and disbelief of how obnoxious and affrontive my neighbor and church acquaintance had been.

And then I thought to myself, “What did that father say to his son after I left? And, what did the whole episode teach him?

Another example. I’m walking through the grocery store one day and a mother is desperately trying to reason with her pre-adolescent son. He is demanding she buy him candy from the shelf predictably placed at the checkout counter. The child is quite literally yelling at his mother saying the most appalling things while mom looks furtively around her obviously worried about what people are thinking.

Practicing tortured restraint, mom says to her son: “Alright, I’ll get you the candy just this once, but you must not speak to mommy that way.” The boy doesn’t even wait for his mother to pay for the candy, and she doesn’t intervene when he tears the wrapper off, throwing it on the floor and begins to chomp down.

What have these parents both taught their children? I’ll let you, the reader, answer this yourself. In both cases, however, I’ll venture a guess that you’ll agree the parents taught them something wrong.

But this is what has happened to discipline in the new millennium. My parents would have hauled me out to the car if I behaved like that in the store, pulled down my pants in front of the whole world, and given me a couple of good swats on the behind. In fact, I’m sure something like this DID happen to me when I was young, but truthfully, I don’t even remember the incidents. Why? Because it only took a few times for me to learn that there are right and wrong ways to behave.

Today, my own kids face situations like those above with their own children, but they are TERRIFIED of meting out ANY discipline, except for time-outs and toy confiscation, even in the confines of their own home! Because if word got to a teacher or school administrator of a spanking, they’d be at risk of “child protective services” showing up at their door. We’ve all heard horror stories of government intrusion in the parenting/child-rearing process.

While the current limp-wristed approach to parenting may work in some cases, I firmly believe the swift swat on the butt I received was far more effective in teaching me right and wrong, and much more lasting.

And right and wrong is what children need to be taught. Unfortunately, in the current environment of moral relativism and permissiveness, the impact of families where these are not taught has a devastating effect on the community at large. Just look at Antifa or, almost as bad, various skinhead groups for examples. Do you think their parents taught them to behave that way, or was it the absence of parental guidance and moral teaching that created them?

We thought OUR generation was spoiled and undisciplined? Just look at the next two after us!

What we teach our children, and our grandchildren, matters!

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