Smack!!

Ron Paul has his issues, too, Cross.

I’m sorry but his foreign policy and analysis of the world is criminally naive.

Do I think our aid dollars should be propping up dictatorships any more than keeping a bunch of out-of-the-way Cold War era bases with no necessary function?  Of course not!  A lot of our allies should step up and take care of their own shit for a change.  We SHOULDN’T back dictators unless the alternatives are far worse.  (Ugly but that’s politics and we have to look after OUR interests regardless of what the Extreme Left believes.)  We have to reduce our military commitments and deal with some serious domestic infrastructure and budget issues, too.  It’s not a matter of when anymore.  We have to deal with the domestic situations NOW or we will be done in as a country.

However, we’re never going to get rid of all the welfare programs and bureaucracy in one day.  It would be a disaster to rip everything apart in one day let alone one presidential term.  We have to proceed cautiously because it’s harder to bring useful things back into existence than it is to tear them down.

One thing that does have to be done is getting rid of redundant departments.  There’s no reason to have 3 or more agencies which basically do the same things unless they each cover areas that don’t overlap much.  We can get rid of Homeland Security because there were other existing agencies before that one that were supposed to take care of domestic security.  On the other hand, there’s still a need to maintain separate naval and land-based air forces because the operational requirements of the armed forces are so different from each other.  (IE, you can’t force a land-based machine to work on a carrier because the naval environment is far harsher and adaptations of land- to sea-based aircraft have rarely worked out well in the end.  Watch the debacle of the F-35 JSF program continue to explode because the people who designed that system were pure political wonks and not a single combat-experienced, degreed aerospace engineer amongst the decision-making hierarchy!)

There is a part of me that believes — and I believe this because of life experience — that pure libertarians and greens will never work as heads of government.  Most just don’t have the basic deal-making skills and understanding of the existing bureaucracy.  Hard-line ideologues have problems building coalitions and getting anything constructive done.  I’m sorry but our system is supposed to keep things in check so that NOBODY becomes a dictator. 

It’s debatable how well that works sometimes because unfortunately human beings get caught up in cults of personality and a lot of stupid things happen with that mentality.  As bad as things are with Obama, this problem has been even worse in Third World countries like India and Argentina.  Even the Kennedys have nothing on the Ghandis and Perons in the rest of the world…  Unless the descendants of these regimes degenerate into total pervs and megalomaniacs that even the MSMS can’t completely cover — that’s what ultimately cost Ted Kennedy his presidential ambitions and brought down his nephews –, there’s a tendency for people to re-elect familiar names… and in a sense give them a blessing to do as they will with governmental power because too many people believe that those born from dynasties are better human beings and worthier to wield power!

Societies still get caught up with where elites get their degrees from and how many and what kind of letters follow behind people’s names.  More of us should be asking questions about the sensibility of candidates’ beliefs and whether their ideas are practical and benefit our societies.

That doesn’t happen, though.  We still elect people too often on public speaking ability and looks!  It’s the same shit since grade school.