What is ideology?

The concept "ideology" has itself been the subject of considerable debate among social scientists. The very term has been confused by a plethora of definitions and made disreputable through its association with fascism and communism, compelling one writer to suggest that it be discarded altogether, in favor of "belief systems." I still prefer the simpler term "ideology," but in this work I shall not use it in the recent sense which implies dogma, a rigid, doctrinaire, black and white understanding of the world, but, rather, as the system of beliefs, values, fears, prejudices, reflexes, and commitments-in sum, the social consciousness- of a social group, be it a class, a party, or a section. Genovese uses the term more or less interchangeably with "world view," which also has a certain value (although it hardly conveys the full meaning of the German Weltanschauung), because an important aspect of ideology involves the way in which a group perceives itself and its values in relation to the society as a whole. when I speak of the Republican ideology, therefore, I am dealing with the party's perception of what American society, both North and South, was like in the 1850s, and its view of what the nation's future ought to be.

Eric Foner in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. (highly recommended)

Photos: Little Round Top

Was roaming around the battlefield at Gettysburg a few weeks ago and took some pictures. The first is Houck's Ridge and Devils Den from Little Round Top. The second, is Little Round Top from Houck's Ridge.

"I can only hope a change in our thinking will result"

The competition of ideas, interpretations and perceptions continues and this is how it is done. Driven by self-motivation; people are inspired by their worldview to spread their worldview. This is where the narrative battle is being fought.

Oliver Stone is making his most ambitious stab at American history yet.

The controversial director is creating a 10-part documentary series for Showtime titled "Secret History of America."

Narrated by Stone, the series promises to focus on events that "at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years," according to Showtime.

Subjects will include President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to "the fierce struggle between war and peace in America's national security complex."

The project includes "newly discovered facts and accounts" from the Kennedy administration, the Vietnam War and the great changes in America's role in the world since the fall of Communism in the 1980s "through this epic 10-hour series, which I feel is the deepest contribution I could ever make in film to my children and the next generation, I can only hope a change in our thinking will result," Stone said in a statement.

Waller's Political Warfare class and new book

I would love to take Michael Waller's political warfare class. Maybe next year.

There's still time to sign up for my graduate course, Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future. Taught on Thursday nights at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, the course is the only one of its kind. It's designed for intelligence officers, military officers and diplomats, but (almost) anyone is welcome to sign up. My Foreign Propaganda class is over-subscribed.

Students will study the ancients: Kautilya of India, Sun Tzu of China, Aristotle and Thucydides of Athens, Virgil of Rome, as well as the ancient Hebrews and Persians and even Attila the Hun. Then we go over the political warfare of the Crusades, medieval and Renaissance Europe (especially Niccolo Machiavelli, who likewise studied the ancients), and six hours of intensive lectures on the political warfare of the American Revolution.

American warfighters will benefit from mastery of Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin's political warfare strategies and tactics; we've helped incorporate them into operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Finally, we study more modern political warriors, including the culturally subversive Antonio Gramsci and - this year, for the first time - community organizer Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals.

Here's the webpage for this political warfare class.

Waller also has a new book coming out:

My new compilation of American Revolutionary War propaganda and political warfare is now available. Founding Political Warfare Documents of the United States is a 367-page compendium of some of the best examples of American and British propaganda and political warfare: leaflets, pamphlets, declarations, speeches, letters, essays, articles, official documents, cartoons, and satire.

Authors include Samuel Adams (of course), James Otis, John Hancock, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, the Sons of Liberty, the Continental Congress; and the British Parliament, General Thomas Gage, the dreaded Parliament, and King George III.

Don't be a dumb Ash

I respect Timothy Garton Ash, but this is just pure ignorance, in fact you have to go out of your way to be this ignorant of America:

The integration of immigrants in the United States is easier, because there is no social welfare state there.

Let's see, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, War on Poverty, etc, etc. Yup, "no social welfare state there." Sheesh.

And then there's this:

This is because the middle class in the United States has experienced the brutality and injustice of the unbridled Anglo-Saxon free market economy firsthand -- in the healthcare system, for example.

What on earth is he talking about? First, there is nothing "unbridled" about America's market economy. "Brutality and injustice"? This is pure unbridled propaganda. I expect more from Garton Ash than the mindless regurgitation of slogans that have no basis in fact.

Know your adversary; learn from your adversary

E-book from Project Gutenberg:
The History of the Fabian Society by Edward R. Pease

From google books:
The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance by Rolf Wiggershaus

The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research by Martin Jay

Greenpeace lies about global warming? I'm shocked, shocked...

"That we as a pressure group have to emotionalize issues and we are not ashamed of emotionalizing issues"



Via Big Hollywood

Dropping the "un-American" card

Pelosi/Hoyer: Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.

Really?

“Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?’” I asked.

“Yes,” the speaker [Pelosi] replied, without hesitation.

Expect to see the Fairness Doctrine or some other effort to constrict the 1st Amendment begin to slither around the halls of Congress in the near future, especially if the "progressives" don't get what they want on health care.

We need to learn from our adversaries

A few years ago I proposed an approach to waging a war of ideas:

In [one strategy] the enemy attempts to use the target country’s media as a vehicle to sap the people’s and political leaders’ will to fight...[or] attack a school or a courthouse in order to show that the government can’t defend itself...In [another strategy] the enemy actually becomes the media and the political leadership...the enemy seeks to become the country's media, university and grade school teachers, writers, artists, etc. They become the purveyors of culture.
...
things become much more complicated if they actually become the judges, intelligence officers, diplomats, policy makers etc. I don’t really think there is a major role for the state in this kind of intellectual war, but rather think that ideas have to be fought with ideas, and that the people who want to defend their country from this kind of attack need to develop their own...tactics independent of the state.

There is no better exemplar of this kind of strategy than the Frankfurt School (Via ChicagoBoyz):



So how do you defeat this kind of an adversary? What kind of strategy, ideas and organization can be successful in this kind of competition?

Bailyn on Booknotes

From Bernard Bailyn on Booknotes with Brian Lamb:

LAMB: I mean it just rang like today when there was a leak of a document coming out. How much of that went on back in those days?


BAILYN: Well, there was a lot and that enters into this Franklin story a great deal. That was, he took with him to Europe when he went in 1776 an early draft of the Articles of Confederation. It was not what was finally accepted and there are significant differences.

But he was so eager to promote the constitutional forms that had been worked out in America that he took it and had it published, as he did many other documents from the states, had it published and translated and it was in that form actually that it reached an English audience through the translation of this draft form that went into French first.

It was typical. I have a good deal of this in the book. It's typical of the kinds of complexities in the dissemination of American documents during that period.


LAMB: You also write about the Constitution circulating around Europe being translated back in those days.


BAILYN: Yes.


LAMB: How much of that went on and why did it go on?


BAILYN: A great deal. There was a great interest in this and it enters into the thinking of people working through reform movements all over Europe. The book begins with an argument about American provincialism.

The first chapter tries to explain something we don't often think about that at the beginning of the revolution these people were provincials. No one knew of their importance. We think of them now as Mount Rushmore, I mean these vast figures.

They weren't vast figures and their provincialism, their removal from the center of the heart of cultured Western Europe was part of the power that they could develop in thinking through new ideas.

The last chapter, which kind of wraps this up in a way, the last chapter shows the way in which these provincial ideas become cosmopolitan and circulate through so much, not only of England where it would naturally circulate, but France as well into Switzerland, into Latin America and the way these ideas played out in complex ways all throughout the Atlantic world.

And, it seems to me that one of the big stories in this is the way in which these provincial efforts then succeed locally and then radiate out into the whole of the Atlantic world.
...
BAILYN: Yes. Well, what Madison is saying is that they paid attention to the great names and the great thoughts of the past. The historical documents they were familiar with and the great names like Montesquieu, but as he explains, and that paragraph is exactly to the point, they did not revere them to the point where they dominated their thinking and that they - the fact that they were able to break free from these dominating ideas was one of the keys to their success and Madison was keenly aware of that.


LAMB: What's original about the work that they did?


BAILYN: As I enumerated in there, there are a whole series of basic ideas about public life which were considered at the time to be illogical, for example that you could divide sovereignty. Well, nobody believed you could divide sovereignty but we do between the states and the nation, and no one believed that that was possible at the time and they showed in ways, Madison especially, the way in which this could operate successfully.

Nobody believed that a free republican state could exist on a large scale. It would just fall to pieces because there were no controls over it if people were simply governing themselves. Again, they showed the way in which this was not so, that you could - it could operate successfully over a large expanse. And so, there are a number of these key issues that they're discussing which are original.

Irregular Warfare in the Civil War

The always excellent Civil War Books and Authors blog has a long review of a book on irregular warfare during the Civil War:

Over the past few decades, our understanding of Civil War irregular warfare has been greatly enhanced by a number of excellent local and regional studies published in essay and book length format. However, until now, no scholar has attempted a broad scope examination of the subject on a national scale. The difficulties are legion. Definitions are murky, and individual motivations numerous as the stars and often confined to local conditions not easily explained or understood. At the time, neither side could agree on the legal state of a range of behaviors, and, consequently, the proper disposition of captured persons variously labeled as, among other terms, recruiting officers, raiders, bushwhackers, partisan rangers, jayhawkers, and guerrillas. At various times, both sides (with misgivings) actively promoted their use while at the same time seeking to deny the enemy the same privilege. One of the best known scholars attempting to make sense of this complex and messy subject is University of Arkansas professor Daniel E. Sutherland. His new book, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War is the first modern study that examines irregular warfare spanning the continent, and how it shaped the character and conduct of the Civil War, the unintended consequences of which hastened Confederate defeat.

Another book added to the ever growing wish list.

Read the whole thing.

Reason TV: On the Rise of the Microbrew Movement

Beer: An American Revolution

Paragliding in Afghanistan

Big State, Small State

There is an opinion essay in the Washington Post on the topic of states with small populations and equal representation in the Senate. California has the largest population at 36.7 million people and Wyoming the smallest at 532,668 and yet they both have 2 senators. This is a legitimate issue that comes up now and again, and at some point will have to be addressed. But it's coming up now because apparently senators from small states are proving to be obstacles to Obama's agenda. No solutions are provided of course, but the underlying point is that small states should not have the power they do as a result of the current representational scheme. I agree, but I have three propositions to offer:

First, big states should be broken up into smaller states. People always point out the disproportionate representation of the small states in the Senate without ever acknowledging that the big states are too big. California should be broken up into three states, Texas maybe four, New York two, Florida two and so on. If some states can be too small, other states can be too big. If we are going to start rearranging representation in the Senate then lets go all the way. If we want equality in representation then we have to push the outliers towards the middle, whether small or big.

The piece also drops in a little something that I don't think the author really thought through:

And then there's the Senate's age-old distortion of distributive politics, in which goodies are doled out on anything but a per-capita basis. California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey are among the 10 states that get the least back per tax dollar sent to Washington; Alaska, the Dakotas and West Virginia are among those that get the most.

Let's apply that to individuals and private organizations: those who pay more in taxes should get more representation and influence. If it's right for states it's right for everybody, right? This means that rich people and corporations (the evil duo) should have more representation than middle class and poor citizens. Do you really want to go there?

The other thing that is missing here is competence. Yes, California with 36.7 million people is the most populous state, but so what? California is a disaster. Californians have completely misgoverned their state. Why on earth should we give them MORE influence at the federal level? Maybe representation should be based on demonstrated competence at governing regardless of population. That would at least give states an incentive to govern well. Their disastrous incompetence at governing should result in less influence not more.

The Coin Toss

One of the biggest mistakes people make is not understanding the nature of the game they are playing; thinking they are playing by one set of rules when in fact real game is being played by an entirely different set of rules.

Leftists very commonly assert that that non-leftists have to offer a fully fleshed-out alternative to the status quo before they can offer criticisms of the current faddish idea of the Left. When you try to explain to them that the validity of an idea has nothing to do with the validity of any competing ideas, they stare at you blankly.

This is correct and I agree with it, but it is beside the point. The Left is not playing by the rules of logic. They are not engaged in an academic debate over ideas, they are engaged in political competition, a competition for power and influence and they are willing to use whatever means of persuasion will work regardless of whether they are logically valid. It doesn't matter whether you like this or not, you have to adapt to your adversary's tactics and strategies. You can't defeat the Left with logic, you can only defeat the Left with perpetual activism and organization and by using whatever rhetorical tactics will work. If you don't have the will to do that, then get used to losing.

Yes it is true that you can examine the validity of a statement, assertion, argument etc without being obligated to offer an alternative. But again this isn't a classroom, this is political competition and policymaking and so yes it is necessary to have an alternative when you criticize a policy. Policymakers want solutions to problems. If you want to successfully compete then you will develop policy options along with your criticism.

This reminds me of one of my favorite Bill Cosby bits:

Good Music: Franz Ferdinand and The Last Shadow Puppets

Franz Ferdinand: No you girls



The Last Shadow Puppets: Meeting Place

Australia's National Security Strategy

Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030

Australia's most basic strategic interest remains the defence of Australia against direct armed attack. This
includes armed attacks by other states and by non-state actors with the capacity to employ strategic capabilities,
including weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This most basic strategic interest abides irrespective of the
perceived intentions of others, and is a function of our geography and levels of current and future capability in
the region around us. Before we attend to anything else, we must secure this strategic interest.

Our next most important strategic interest is the security,stability and cohesion of our immediate neighbourhood,
which we share with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, New Zealand and the South Pacific island
states. While we have a wide range of diplomatic, economic, cultural and other links with those countries, from
a strategic point of view, what matters most is that they are not a source of threat to Australia, and that no
major military power, that could challenge our control of the air and sea approaches to Australia, has access to
bases in our neighbourhood from which to project force against us.

Beyond our immediate neighbourhood, Australia has an enduring strategic interest in the stability of the wider
Asia-Pacific region, which stretches from North Asia to the Eastern Indian Ocean. In particular, we have a deep
stake in the security of Southeast Asia. Strategically, our neighbours in Southeast Asia sit astride our northern
approaches, through which hostile forces would have to operate in order to sustainably project force against
Australia. A stable and cohesive Southeast Asia will mitigate any such threat and is in our strategic interests.
More broadly, we have a deep stake in the maintenance of an Asia-Pacific regional security environment that
is conducive to the peaceful resolution of problems between regional countries and can absorb the rise in
strategic and military power of emerging major players.

Beyond our region, Australia cannot be secure in an insecure world. We have a strategic interest in preserving
an international order that restrains aggression by states against each other, and can effectively manage other
risks and threats, such as the proliferation of WMD, terrorism, state fragility and failure, intra-state conflict, and
the security impacts of climate change and resource scarcity.

Other recent national security strategies from the Anglosphere:

The National Security Strategy of the UK

Securing an Open Society: Canada's National Security Policy

A couple of links...

Here is a video of Anne Marie Slaughter (DOS Director of Policy Planning) speaking at the Navy War College's Current Strategy Forum.

And thanks to google books here's an interesting chapter: Alexander Hamilton and the Grand Strategy of the American Social Compact by Karl Walling.

Update

Well it's been a while since I've been around, but I've been busy trying to start a new career which is finally, after a lot of hard work and what seems like endless waiting, moving in the right direction. My internship has turned into a job doing freelance work at a tv station. The station has treated me very well and has been willing to teach and allow me to try my hand at things even though I'm new. So I've been getting a lot of good experience in a variety of different areas. I've done audio and cameras for studio and field productions among other things. Last week on the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg I worked on a video crew recording tours of the battlefield (I carried the tripod) following the paths of different units as they fought their part of the battle. I have a much greater understanding of the battle than before. One of my ancestors fought in the 27th Indiana and was wounded at Gettysburg and I got to stand where his unit fought and hear their story. That's a very powerful experience.

I've also been going through a transition of ideas. For a few years now I've argued that we need to update classical liberal ideas for the 21st century but it has been in the last 8-9 months that I have started to really work towards that goal. I made a conscious decision last year to change the way I think. The generally libertarian worldview that I had been operating with for several years no longer worked for me and my commitment to "updating classical liberal ideas for the 21st century" eventually led me to a point where I realized that I needed a different way of thinking. And so I began a little at a time to force myself to think differently and eventually I had a kind of breakthrough, a point where some new possibilities opened up. It's still very general and there is historical precedent for it. It's funny how entire genres of thinking just drop out of our awareness even though they were prominent in their time. I'm thinking that I might start a new blog, completely separate from this one to explore some of these ideas. I need a new hobby and that might be a worthwhile thing to do.

Some grand strategy links

Here are a few interesting grand strategy links via Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog:

What is grand strategy and why do we need it? by Peter Feaver

Ten books that are essential reading for anyone interested in grand strategy by William Inboden

What Is Grand Strategy? by John Lewis Gaddis

Yale University offers a Program in Grand Strategy. Here is the spring 2008 Studies in Grand Strategy syllabus which has a great reading list.

Duke University has also started up a Program in American Grand Strategy

"Born as a commercial republic"

One of the main arguments of this blog has been that the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship should be the content of a campaign of ideas to champion classical liberal ideals. I have also argued that entrepreneurship should be the means by which the ideas are disseminated. Meaning that entrepreneurial ventures (for-profit and non-profit) should be created to wage a campaign of ideas using the symbolism and narrative of the entrepreneur to transmit the vision and values of America, the liberal commercial republic. This is a campaign of ideas that takes place at the cultural level, that inspires people to act and create in ways that make us more resilient, more able to creatively respond to adversity. Now read the following excerpt from a recent column by David Brooks through the framework of the above.

In short, the United States will never be Europe. It was born as a commercial republic. It’s addicted to the pace of commercial enterprise. After periodic pauses, the country inevitably returns to its elemental nature.

The U.S. is in one of those pauses today. It has been odd, over the past six months, not to have the gospel of success as part of the normal background music of life. You go about your day, taking in the news and the new movies, books and songs, and only gradually do you become aware that there is an absence. There are no aspirational stories of rags-to-riches success floating around. There are no new how-to-get-rich enthusiasms. There are few magazine covers breathlessly telling readers that some new possibility — biotechnology, nanotechnology — is about to change everything. That part of American culture that stokes ambition and encourages risk has gone silent.

We are now in an astonishingly noncommercial moment. Risk is out of favor. The financial world is abashed. Enterprise is suspended. The public culture is dominated by one downbeat story after another as members of the educated class explore and enjoy the humiliation of the capitalist vulgarians.

Washington is temporarily at the center of the nation’s economic gravity and a noncommercial administration holds sway. This is an administration that has many lawyers and academics but almost no businesspeople in it, let alone self-made entrepreneurs. The president speaks passionately about education and health care reform, but he is strangely aloof from the banking crisis and displays no passion when speaking about commercial drive and success.

But if there is one thing we can be sure of, this pause will not last. The cultural DNA of the past 400 years will not be erased. The pendulum will swing hard. The gospel of success will recapture the imagination.

Somewhere right now there’s probably a smart publisher searching for the most unabashed, ambitious, pro-wealth, pro-success manuscript she can find, and in about three months she’ll pile it up in the nation’s bookstores. Somewhere there’s probably a TV producer thinking of hiring Jim Cramer to do a show to tell story after story of unapologetic business success. Somewhere there’s a politician finding a way to ride the commercial renaissance that is bound to come, ready to explain how government can sometimes nurture entrepreneurial greatness and sometimes should get out of the way.

Lincoln as Commander in Chief

Historian James McPherson has a new book out that looks like it would be a good read for people who are interested in grand strategy and strategic thinking and is now at the top of my wish list: Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. Here's an essay on this topic by McPherson in the Smithsonian Magazine:

When he called state militia into federal service on April 15, 1861—following the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter—Lincoln therefore faced a steep learning curve as commander in chief. He was a quick study, however; his experience as a largely self-taught lawyer with a keen analytical mind who had mastered Euclidean geometry for mental exercise enabled him to learn quickly on the job. He read and absorbed works on military history and strategy; he observed the successes and failures of his own and the enemy's military commanders and drew apt conclusions; he made mistakes and learned from them; he applied his large quotient of common sense to slice through the obfuscations and excuses of military subordinates. By 1862 his grasp of strategy and operations was firm enough almost to justify the overstated but not entirely wrong conclusion of historian T. Harry Williams: "Lincoln stands out as a great war president, probably the greatest in our history, and a great natural strategist, a better one than any of his generals."

No outrage zone

I'm more than a little burned out on outrage and feeling betrayed right now. I'm just not interested. So when Republicans point out how liberal Obama is, I just kind of shrug my shoulders and think "the Republicans should have governed better":

The stock market has been tanking steadily since his election, but public approval for President Barack Obama remains high. And this despite the fact that his carefully composed centrist stance during the campaign has been replaced by an economic policy that is at least as strongly liberal as FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society, if not more so.
Why don’t Americans feel more betrayed, or at least more wary?

How can you expect me to be outraged at the Democrats when this is how Republicans governed when they recently controlled Congress and the White House:

George W. Bush rode into Washington almost eight years ago astride the horse of smaller government. He will leave it this winter having overseen the biggest federal budget expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt seven decades ago.
Not since World War II, when the nation mobilized to fight a global war against fascism and recover from the Great Depression, has government spending played as large a role in the economy as it does today.
...
Mr. Bush already is the first president in history to implement budgets that crossed the $2 trillion a year and $3 trillion a year marks.
...
Federal spending grew from $1.9 trillion in 2000 to what will be at least $3.4 trillion in 2009.
Economists say the best way to measure the size of the federal government is to look at spending as a percentage of the total economy, or gross domestic product. And by that measure, Mr. Bush has increased spending more dramatically than any president since FDR, whose spending on the New Deal and World War II will likely never be matched. During his 12 years, government ballooned from 8 percent of the economy to 41.9 percent.
...
By that measure, federal budget numbers show spending under the Bush administration rose from 18.4 percent of GDP to 22.5 percent - a 4.1-point increase - and could end up even higher.
The only presidents to approach that level of growth were President Carter, who grew spending as a percentage of GDP by 1.5 points, and President Ford, who grew it by 1 point. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton all decreased spending relative to the overall economy.

Given this track record it is hard to take Republican criticism of Obama seriously. Not that there aren't legitimate criticisms to be made, but Republicans have no credibility to make them. As a result...

Large swaths of the electorate have stopped paying attention to Republicans, he [Sen. McConnell] said.

Wash. Post

And rightfully so. Republicans need to rebuild their credibility with the public if they want the public to take them seriously. If we have learned anything over the past 15 years or so it's that it is a very bad idea for either party to control both Congress and the White House. And so I would like to see the Republicans win Congress in 10. But the Republicans are in an awkward situation. The Republicans need to persuade people that they will govern better than the Democrats, but the memory of how they governed last time around is fresh and is not going to be flushed down the memory hole. If Republicans try to say that they learned their lesson and they are getting back to their true principles, this will rightfully be dismissed as the cynical maneuver of a party that is willing to say anything to get back into power.

Whatever opposition strategy they come up with this is probably not the way to go. If you want credit for the successes then you have to also accept responsibility for the failures:

Conservatives and Republicans aren't synonymous, he [David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union] said. Conservatism didn't lose the election; Republicans lost it, he said: "If this were a gathering of Republicans, they would be down and have every right to be down. They were repudiated."

Wash. Post

I've seen variations on this theme since November. Conservatives and Republicans aren't the same thing; it was Republicans who governed badly not Conservatives therefore Conservatives bear no responsibility. If this is true (and there is some truth to this) then what conclusion can we draw? What this means is that Conservatives aren't in charge of the Republican Party. So, if after 50 years Conservatives can't achieve hegemony within the Republican Party, why would anyone believe that they can achieve hegemony within society as a whole? Apparently, the Conservative Movement, rather than being the dominant ideological force, is nothing more than an ideological faction within the Republican Party that has no power to control how that party governs. The Conservative achievements have proven to be superficial and easily overturned. The politics of the next few elections cycles will be interesting to watch. The Conservative moment is over but the Republican party should be able to harness the energy of opposition and ride it to electoral success. What we are seeing from the Democrats though is the last gasp of 20th century industrial age managerial liberalism. When I look at the Democrats I see "New Deal re-enactors". Over time we'll see that approach proven to be inadequate to our circumstances. This is a really good time for the development of ideas. Don't try to salvage the old ideas in their age of decline. Rather develop the new ideas that will govern the next 50 years. And don't dissipate your energy being outraged and feeling betrayed, rather channel your energy into something creative. I don't want to spend the next 4 years in a state of perpetual outrage.

CNBC: Fount of Wisdom

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

And so it goes...

Well the school that I attended last year and where I worked up until last week has shut down and filed for bankruptcy. This doesn't surprise me, I had a hunch months ago that this was a very real possibility. Aside from the personal impact on me (I'm outta of a job, they still owe me for my last 2 weeks, and I'm supposed to get a variety of lifetime benefits including studio and equipment use, continuing ed and others) this is a lesson in business. Here was a successful family-run business that endured for 42 years, surviving economic crises in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s. And then a couple of years ago they were bought by an international financial corporation and in 2 1/2 years was run into the ground and is now bankrupt. Terrible management, bad customer service, didn't treat employees well. A lot of the things you read in articles and books about business seem like cliches and common sense, but then you see a situation like this and you realize that sometimes there is wisdom in the cliches. There really is no substitute for good customer service and being passionate about your product. This business was bought and managed to be a "plantation" investment, as something to be exploited rather than a business to be grown and developed in cooperation with its customers. I learned a lot about audio and video editing, camera operations, master control ops, and audio performance all of which I plan to put to use in a variety of ways, particularly in my own business aspirations. I also made back my entire tuition by working there, and most of the time I was paid to run the equipment, which means that I was getting paid to practice and improve skills. So that's that. And on we go...

Some books I would like to buy, cont'd

If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War: An Analysis of World War II Naval Strategy

Adams uses Mahan's ideas to discuss the great Pacific sea battles of World War II and to consider how well they withstood the test of actual combat. Re-examining the conduct of war in the Pacific from a single analytic viewpoint leads to some surprising conclusions about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, the Battle of the Coral Sea, the recapture of the Philippines, and the submarine war.

Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer

When he died in 1877, Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the Vanderbilt dynasty, was wealthier than the U.S. Treasury. But he had nearly lost his fortune in 1856, when William Walker, a young Nashville genius, set out to conquer Central America and, in the process, take away Vanderbilt’s most profitable shipping business. To win back his empire, Vanderbilt had to win a bloody war involving seven countries.
Tycoon’s War tells the story of an epic imperialist duel—a violent battle of capitalist versus idealist, money versus ambition—and a monumental clash of egos that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans.

The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846-1848

Few historical figures are as inextricably linked as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. But less than two decades before they faced each other as enemies at Appomattox, they had been brothers--both West Point graduates, both wearing blue, and both fighting in the same cadre in the Mexican War. They were not alone: Sherman, Davis, Jackson-nearly all of the Civil War's greatest soldiers had been forged in the heat of Vera Cruz and Monterrey.
The Mexican War has faded from our national memory, but it was a struggle of enormous significance: the first U.S. war waged on foreign soil; and it nearly doubled our nation. At this fascinating juncture of American history, a group of young men came together to fight as friends, only years later to fight as enemies. This is their story.

Lincoln and His Admirals

Written by prize-winning historian Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals unveils an aspect of Lincoln's presidency unexamined by historians until now, revealing how he managed the men who ran the naval side of the Civil War, and how the activities of the Union Navy ultimately affected the course of history.
Beginning with a gripping account of the attempt to re-supply Fort Sumter--a comedy of errors that shows all too clearly the fledgling president's inexperience--Symonds traces Lincoln's steady growth as a wartime commander-in-chief. Absent a Secretary of Defense, he would eventually become de facto commander of joint operations along the coast and on the rivers. That involved dealing with the men who ran the Navy: the loyal but often cranky Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, the quiet and reliable David G. Farragut, the flamboyant and unpredictable Charles Wilkes, the ambitious ordnance expert John Dahlgren, the well-connected Samuel Phillips Lee, and the self-promoting and gregarious David Dixon Porter. Lincoln was remarkably patient; he often postponed critical decisions until the momentum of events made the consequences of those decisions evident. But Symonds also shows that Lincoln could act decisively. Disappointed by the lethargy of his senior naval officers on the scene, he stepped in and personally directed an amphibious assault on the Virginia coast, a successful operation that led to the capture of Norfolk. The man who knew "little about ships" had transformed himself into one of the greatest naval strategists of his age

Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940

In a comprehensive study of four decades of military policy, Brian McAllister Linn offers the first detailed history of the U.S. Army in Hawaii and the Philippines between 1902 and 1940. Most accounts focus on the months preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. By examining the years prior to the outbreak of war, Linn provides a new perspective on the complex evolution of events in the Pacific. Exhaustively researched, Guardians of Empire traces the development of U.S. defense policy in the region, concentrating on strategy, tactics, internal security, relations with local communities, and military technology. Linn challenges earlier studies which argue that army officers either ignored or denigrated the Japanese threat and remained unprepared for war. He demonstrates instead that from 1907 onward military commanders in both Washington and the Pacific were vividly aware of the danger, that they developed a series of plans to avert it, and that they in fact identified—even if they could not solve—many of the problems that would become tragically apparent on 7 December 1941.

Today's Quote: The Great Prize

From God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World

The Anglo-Americans have sought to build a global trading system based increasingly on liberal democratic capitalism; their enemies have resisted and tried to build walls that would protect their societies from the disruptive effects of Anglo-Saxon ideas and practices.
...
The Anglospheric grand strategy has not always been conscious. To some degree it is embedded in the assumptions, habits, and institutions of the English-speaking powers.
...
By doing what came naturally, by following the logic of their geography, culture, and society, the British and then the Americans happened on a way of managing their affairs in the world that provided for a flexible and durable form of global power suited to their circumstances while committing them to a less difficult set of tasks and conflicts than other leading powers have faced.
...
The modern version of sea power was invented by the Dutch. The system of global trade, investment, and military power that the Dutch built in the seventeenth century was the envy and the wonder of the world at the time, and many basic features were adopted by the British and the Americans in subsequent years. That Dutch system was like version 1.0 of the operating software on which much of the world still runs. At the turn of the eighteenth century the British introduced version 2.0; there were several incremental upgrades along the way until the Americans introduced version 3.0 after the Second World War.
...
A new kind of society and a new kind of power had appeared in the world. An open, dynamic, and capitalist society generated innovations in finance, technology, marketing, and communications. Those innovations offered the open society enormous advantages in world trade. The wealth gained in this way provided the basis for military power that could withstand the largest and mightiest rival empires of the day. This basic formula of an open society, world trade, and world power was the power secret of the sea kings and the major driving force in the history of the last four hundred years.
...
For the Anglo-Americans, the great prize has been and remains the construction of a global system that meets their economic and security needs.
...
In Anglo-American strategic thought, there is one world composed of many theaters. The theaters are linked by the sea, and whoever controls the sea can choose the architecture that shapes the world. The primary ambition of Anglo-Saxon power is not dominance in a particular theater; it is to dominate the structure that shapes the conditions within which the actors in each of the world's theaters live...the end is to control the system that binds them all together.

A discussion on the future of the WTO

There's an interesting discussion about the WTO at the University of Chicago Law School Faculty blog. My interest in the liberal international trade order has been fired by the works of Barnett, Ikenberry and Slaughter, and Meade's God and Gold which have set me thinking about things in ways that are new to me, and that's very exciting. There is also an intertwining of themes here: the competition of ideas, entrepreneurial liberalism, the role of America in the world, ruleset resets, etc. The liberal international order is supported by a set of ideas and attitudes and so maintaining, perpetuating, and improving that order requires an ongoing campaign championing those ideas and attitudes:

That brings us to the role of ideas, including perspectives of WTO legitimacy as a forum for liberalization, which has not been addressed in posts so far. It is no coincidence that the GATT was signed after WWII following the Great Depression, and that the Uruguay Round was concluded and the WTO created following the Berlin Wall's collapse and the discrediting of socialism. Yet we are now seeing shifts in domestic opinion that will be less favorable to trade liberalization.  Trade negotiations for further liberalization thus do not bode well in the near term. In other words, the economic crisis is not just about political priorities shifting away from trade; it is also about shifting perceptions regarding the benefit of open markets. This loss of faith in liberal markets will affect the constellation of domestic pressures on government negotiators.

Market power matters in affecting WTO negotiation outcomes, as we have all shown in our work. But so does the mobilization of domestic interests and ideas about trade liberalism. Thus, in my view, while the WTO as a negotiating forum is indeed deadlocked, it is not dead in the sense that it is forever gone. We just need to be realistic about what it can accomplish in these times. Acting as a useful shield against protectionism is not insignificant.

Via Dan Drezner

"Improvisation and initiative"

It's all about the transitions. What kind of political ideology is optimal for transition periods that require people to create new institutions and cultural practices? Our task is to innovate modes of thinking that will match the challenges of our time; to develop attitudes that will foster an enthusiasm for imaginative institution building.

The shift that is happening right now is that the people who insist on keeping the world as it was are going to get more and more frustrated until they lose their jobs. People who want to invent a whole new set of rules, a new paradigm, can’t believe their good fortune and how lucky they are that the people in the industry aren’t noticing an opportunity...

We not only face the challenge of crafting appropriate policies, but we also have to recognize that the organizational models that we have inherited were designed to develop and implement policies in different circumstances.

They're used to working in "networks of networks" with lots of individual responsibility. This is very encouraging. But State remains an extremely hierarchical, process-oriented organization that still more closely resembles GM in the 1950s than, say, Google today. This is stifling to the kinds of improvisation and initiative that we increasingly need and that, on the military side, COIN demands of even junior officers. So how do we change this?

How do we groom people for the kind of "improvisation and initiative that we increasingly need"?

Finally some good news...

This past year has really sucked as I've been trying to get my foot in the door in a new career without success, until now. It's not much, but I got an internship for a few months at a cable tv channel that provides public affairs programming. I'll be doing master control operations. I'm very happy and motivated and eager to get in there and just be a sponge: to work my ass off and learn as much as I can. A few years ago I started a business, but the sales were disappointing and I was not happy with the quality of my product. As my savings ran out I had a decision to make and I decided to go back to school to improve my skills so that I could make a better product and also to prepare myself for a parallel career in media. Ideally I'd like to work at someplace like VOA while I continue working on my business. I also want to pursue a master's degree once I get a little bit more stability. So we'll see, hopefully this is the first step...

Foreign Policy Entrepreneurship

Our era is one in which individuals are being empowered in ways that would not have been possible in the past. This is the whole rationale behind the Strategic Citizen idea and my interest in entrepreneurship. I have argued for "public diplomacy entrepreneurship" and it makes perfect sense that Tom Barnett would argue for "foreign policy entrepreneurship":

And it’s just a wonderful way of connecting, and it fits my sort of super-empowered argument in the book which is you know, in effect, everybody should have a foreign policy in America. You shouldn’t wait on the government to do these things for you. If you have a strong feeling about making some part of the world better, there are way to directly connect to it, feel empowered by it, and put your money against very specific things that you can track.

Quotes: Images, Symbols, Myth

From Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism by Mircea Eliade

Images by their very nature are multivalent. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts...It is therefore the image as such, as a whole bundle of meanings, that is true, and not any one of its meanings, nor one alone of its many frames of reference. To translate an image into concrete terminology by restricting it to any one of its frames of reference is to do worse than mutilate it--it is to annihilate, to annul it as an instrument of cognition.

From Philosophies of India by Heinrich Zimmer:

Indian philosophy insists that the sphere of logical thought is far exceeded by that of the mind's possible experiences of reality. To express and communicate knowledge gained in moments of grammar-transcending insight metaphors must be used, similes and allegories. These are then not mere embellishments, dispensable accessories, but the very vehicles of the meaning, which could not be rendered, and could never have been attained, through the logical formulae of normal verbal thought. Significant images can comprehend and make manifest with clarity and pictorial consistency the paradoxical character of the reality known to the sage: a translogical reality, which expressed in the abstract language of normal thought, would seem inconsistent, self-contradictory, or even absolutely meaningless. Indian philosophy, therefore, frankly avails itself of the symbols and images of myth, and is not finally at variance with the patterns and sense of mythological belief.

The Greek critical philosophers before Socrates, the pre-Socratic thinkers and the Sophists, practically destroyed their native mythological tradition. Their new approach to the solution of the enigmas of the universe and of man's nature and destiny conformed to the logic of the rising natural sciences--mathematics, physics and, astronomy. Under their powerful influence the older mythological symbols degenerated into mere elegant and amusing themes for novels, little better than society gossip about the complicated love-affairs and quarrels of the celestial upper class. Contrariwise in India, however: there mythology never ceased to support and facilitate the expression of philosophic thought.

From Images of Enlightenment: Tibetan Art in Practice by Jonathan Landaw and Andy Weber:

To understand how these images are used in the Vajrayana to transmit spiritual insights, we must consider the centrally important meditational method known as visualization.

Visualization is the process of becoming intimately acquainted with positive and beneficial states of consciousness as they are envisioned in our mind's eye in the form of enlightened beings and other images. Each visualized image functions as an archetype, evoking responses at a very subtle level of our being and thereby aiding in the delicate work of inner transformation. For example, by generating an image of Avalokiteshvara, the meditational deity symbolizing enlightened compassion, and then focusing creatively upon it with unwavering single-pointed concentration, we stimulate the growth of our own compassion. We automatically create a peaceful inner environment into which the dissatisfied, self-centered thoughts of anger and resentment cannot easily intrude. The more we practice such visualization--and the related disciplines, or yogas, that train our body, speech and mind in the appropriate manner--the more profound their effect. Eventually our mind can take on the aspect of its object to such an extent that we transcend our ordinary limited sense of self-identification and actually become Avalokiteshvara: compassion itself, or whatever enlightened quality we have been concentrating upon.
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The underlying premise of all Vajrayana thought and practice is that the essential nature of each being's mind is pure and clear and that the main task along the spiritual path is to discover and identify with this essential purity, or buddha-nature. Visualization and other related practices involving the images of meditational deities assist this process of discovery and identification because these images directly communicate the experience of those who have already realized this essential purity to those who have not yet done so.

Some books I would like to buy...

Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force--The NYPD

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

Sky As Frontier: Adventure, Aviation, And Empire

How Football Explains America

The Comanche Empire

Social Movements, 1768-2004

Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement

Prepare for the worst: Terror and meme war in the 21st century

As a the war of ideas rages pitting competing visions of civilization each using all means available to achieve primacy; memes clash in a brutal contest for supremacy with the fate of Western civilization hanging in the balance, we finally get a glimpse of the most dangerous combatant of all. A conspiracy dedicated to the propagation of the most terrifying of all memes has emerged into the light with evidence of its infiltration into the corridors of power. Will all that is good and true survive the devious machinations of this persistent threat?:

An ABBA tribute band says the Kremlin whisked it away to perform a private concert for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Rod Stephen, the founder of British-based group Bjorn Again, says the four-member band traveled 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Moscow for the Jan. 22 gig on the shores of Lake Valdai.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov denies Putin attended any such concert.
Stephen says Putin danced to ABBA hits such as "Dancing Queen" and "Waterloo," accompanied by an unidentified woman and six men in tuxedos.
Stephen told The Associated Press Friday that Putin was heard yelling out "bravo, bravo," and particularly enjoyed renditions of "Mamma Mia" and "Super Trouper."

The Fabian Way

I needed something to read and grabbed The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America off a stack of books and opened it randomly and read the following passage.

The Fabians, a society of intellectuals, founded their organization in 1884. Their ranks included Sidney and Beatrice Webb, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Their aim was to replace the "scramble for private gain" with "collective welfare," and their chosen technique was "permeation." They did not believe in overthrowing society, like the Marxists. They did not particularly care about winning elections, like the Labor Party they also helped found. Indeed, they tried not to tie themselves to one particular party. They hoped that socialism would come about gradually but relentlessly--by clothing collectivism in the garb of common sense and by extending government controls over one institution after another.

For the Fabians, the important thing was to change the climate of opinion so that whoever got into Parliament was marching to their tune. "Nothing in England is done without consent of a small intellectual yet practical class in London, not 2,00 in number," Sidney Webb once observed. The society's primary aim was to influence that class, but it also made a point of shaping the minds of less important people. The Fabian pamphlet was one of their hallmarks; they established periodicals like the New Statesman, set the agenda on numerous parliamentary committees and founded the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The Fabians also helped to establish the idea that socialism was an exciting way of life, not just a political creed. They founded a network of "groups" -- the women's group, the arts group, groups for education, biology and local government. One of the most successful of these was the "nursery," composed of bohemian young men and women who took that notorious roue H.G. Wells as their role model...
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In some ways, the Fabians were a peculiarly British phenomena. In others, Fabianism was a template for something that was much more universal. Across Europe groups of intellectuals helped to establish the idea that socialism was the wave of the future, and groups of activists helped to define socialism not just as a body of ideas but also as a community. The result of all these efforts was the "socialist movement": an ideology that was also a fraternity; a set of beliefs that could organize people's lives from the cradle to the grave; a faith that could exert a relentless pressure on moderates and extract a terrible revenge on traitors.

"The Fabians also helped to establish the idea that socialism was an exciting way of life, not just a political creed."

This is an idea that I have been trying to find a way to articulate. To paraphrase the above sentence: We need to establish that the American Experiment is an exciting way of life, not just a country. We need to establish that a classical liberalism updated for the 21st century is an exciting way of life, not just a political creed. Our vision of the free society needs to be something that can appeal to people in a way that captures their imagination, makes them feel that are participating in something special, motivates them to seek out ways to creatively express what they are feeling and thinking and experiencing. That is what will successfully disseminate the ideas and the vision; it is what will generate support for community building and institution building. (This opens the door for Seth Godin's idea of Tribes which is an excellent book and will be the subject of another post)

"Yeah dad, this guy’s a hero"

Here's a great story:

On Aug. 3, 2003, while traveling the dangerous roads of Afghanistan, a cameraman working for Fox News risked his life to save a U.S. Marine from a vehicle engulfed in flames.

While embedded with 2nd Platoon, Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, cameraman Chris Jackson’s vehicle hit 50 pounds of homemade explosives. The Humvee occupants escaped the flaming vehicle, all but the vehicle commander, Sgt. Courtney Rauch.

The blast severely injured Rauch and knocked him unconscious. Jackson, despite having received shrapnel wounds himself, rushed back to the vehicle, pulled Rauch out and carried him to safety. “Without Chris’ quick thinking and heroic act, I would have lost my life that day,” Rauch said. “Chris forgot about being a reporter that day and became one of our bothers and acted as one of us. Chris went above and beyond his duty.”

Jackson, who now works for CNN/Turner Broadcasting, was presented the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award, the second highest award given to civilians by the Navy, for his actions. Jackson received the award during a stop in Iraq en route to India. An audience of appreciative Marines was on hand during the ceremony.

Marine Maj. Gen. Paul Lefebvre, deputy commanding general, Multi-National Corps – Iraq, has a son in the very same company with which Jackson was traveling. Lefebvre, who presented the award on behalf of the Navy, asked his son if all the wonderful things being said about Jackson were true. “I asked him ‘is this the real thing’ and he said ‘yeah dad, this guy’s a hero’,” Lefebvre said. “This was not an everyday action. It came from somewhere deep inside and shows such a level of courage and commitment.”

When told in front of the crowd of digital cameras why he was invited to Al Faw Palace, Jackson blushed. “It goes to show that Marines have a good sense of humor,” he said. “I was told I was coming here for a briefing.”

Jackson, who has been out with service members in combat zones since 2001, said he didn’t think twice about risking his own life to save someone else’s. “I wasn’t thinking. I saw there was trouble and I didn’t even think about grabbing a camera and filming it,” Jackson said. “I just did what anyone else would do if someone was in trouble.”

"The need for liberal international order has never been greater"

Timothy Garton Ash:

For close to 500 years, modernity has come from the west. The historian Theodore von Laue called this The World Revolution of Westernisation. In 20th-century Europe, liberal democracy faced two powerful versions of modernity that were western but illiberal: fascism and communism. Part of these systems' appeal was precisely that they were modern. ("I have seen the future and it works," said one enthusiast, returning from Moscow.) Liberal democracy finally saw them both off, though not without a world war, a cold war, and a lot of help from the US.
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It's also not the smartest idea to identify this vision of a concert of democracies too emphatically with the west, as in the former French prime minister Edouard Balladur's proposal for what he calls a Western Union. Historically, both modernity and liberalism have come from the west. But the future of freedom now depends on the possibility of new versions of modernity evolving - whether in India, China or the Muslim world, which are distinctly non-western yet also recognisably liberal, in the core sense of cherishing individual freedom.

Part of waging a campaign of ideas is fostering and embracing the emergence of non-Western versions of liberal modernity and creating an international order that any country can join. We need to be clear about what we are for (liberal modernity) and develop a strategic vision based upon this that can inform our persuasion operations. Anti-liberal adversaries will rise up from time to time and they will need to be dealt with, but we shouldn't allow them to distract us from pursuing the long term strategic vision. Real success in the campaign of ideas will come when the key champions of liberal modernity are countries like India, Brazil, and even Iraq.

"Who writes America's script?"

It should be easy to wage a campaign to champion the idea of America, after all, American cultural products are voluntarily embraced all over the world and millions of people seek to immigrate to America and become Americans. And yet watching the Republican performance in the war of ideas over the past eight years has been like watching a no-talent American Idol contestant destroy a great song. But that era is now over and it is time to move on. Time to write a new script and put on a new show in the great cultural theatre that is America.

America and American life are the world's most reliable theater: America performs, and the world looks on.

The world, reliably, looks at America, for there is always something eye-catching in progress. The world, equally reliably, looks to America, for this country takes social and political steps that others are too timorous to take. And the world looks up to America, for there is more that is good and just here than in any other society.
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The American culture of individualism (first tagged as such by Tocqueville) allows for countless private explorations of boundaries that other societies do not conduct in quite the same volume, or even allow at all. These boundaries are not merely physical; they are intellectual, judicial (although not always judicious), philanthropic, educational, spiritual or even comedic. And Americans are as adept at exploring the boundaries of antagonism as they are those of tolerance. Ultimately, as Simon Schama has written, "The big American story is the war of toleration against conformity; the war of a faith that commands obedience against a faith that promises liberty." I think we can tell which side has won those wars in America. The results are reversed in virtually every other society in the world.

The creed of American exceptionalism is distinctive because it is tied closely to the creed of American individualism. There are other societies or people that are adamant believers in their own exceptionalism: The Chinese have their conceit of the Middle Kingdom; the Jews hold that they are Chosen; Hindu Brahmins believe that they alone are born from the head of God; and the Britons have believed that they rule the waves, and that they never, never, never shall be slaves (and what is that if not exceptionalism?). But only the American brand of exceptionalism is not tribal; it allows Outsiders to become Insiders.

Driving through Gettysburg on a winter night

I had the commute from hell tonight. I left work at 5 and got home at 8:30. There was a huge accident on I-70 between Frederick and Hagerstown (northwest of DC) and they shut down the interstate. Fortunately I heard about it on the radio and so took an alternate route (40) only to find it bumper to bumper from Braddock Mountain to South Mountain. So I had to take the alternate alternate route and drove north up to Gettysburg and then west on 30. It was the first time I had been through Gettysburg at night in the snow and it was very nice: the old buildings, the street lights, the trees, the monuments and cannon covered in snow. Too bad I didn't have time to stop at the Dobbin House for a reuben. It would have been a good night to go for a walk around town or out on the battlefield where you can stand there in the silence of a snowy night listening to flakes of snow fall to the ground.

What the war of ideas is about

I was browsing through some emails from last year and came across the following which I had originally written to Cannoneer. At the time I used the term "individualism" but could easily have used other terms such as "democratic republican", "liberal modernity", "liberal democratic capitalism", "entrepreneurial liberalism", etc.

We are definitely in need of a big picture vision of
what we are trying to do. Too much of our (by our I
mean both gov't and private) thinking about
communications ops is focused on what we are against,
whereas I believe our main focus should be on what we
are for and we will be stronger for doing so. The
individualism that is at the heart of the American
Experiment is a radical social philosophy that has and
will continue to inspire opposition from collectivists
of every stripe, but in the long run it is the only
philosophy which is compatible with modernity. Which
is why we constantly need to be shoring up our
understanding of individualism. We can never take it
for granted that people will "get" it or that it will
be automatically perpetuated from one generation to
the next. We also have to be wary of falling back on
the words of the past which were fresh and creative in
their era but become cliches as time passes. The
radical Islamists are a very dangerous but ultimately
a passing threat. The only chance they have of
defeating us is by striking repeated blows at our
political will and hoping we collapse from our own
internal weaknesses. Of course after several decades
of the left's delegitimization campaign we are weaker
than we should be, but that is because there has not
been a truly viable campaign to champion
individualism. And that I believe is our task. I've
said in the past that we need to update the
individualist ideology for the 21st century. And what
I mean by that is that each era uses words, slogans,
symbols and imagery that resonate with the spirit of
its time and are designed to inspire people of that
time and so we need to be doing the same for our time.
Basically what I envision is a
social-political-cultural movement that is championing
a 21st century individualism. In my raw, uncensored
opinion, this is what the war of ideas is about and
this is what is required to fight it. This is why I've
become more interested in political movements and
activism: a sustainable, long-term victory in the war
of ideas is about running a campaign championing
individualism domestically and to various
international audiences. As Gap states modernize they
will become more individualistic and they will need
the ideological and institutional means to understand
and adapt to the changes as the older collectivist
social-political environment melts away.

Book: Winning the Peace

I've become interested in learning more about the liberal international order that was established after World War 2. I'd like to find a book that studies the institution building of that era but so far I have not been able to find one. If you have some recommendations please drop them in the comments. This week I picked up another book on the Marshall Plan:

Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America's Coming of Age as a Superpower

Understanding that era will help us get the proper perspective on the kind of grand institution building that will be necessary as the global order continues to change in the 21st century.

Video: Meade on God and Gold

Conversations with History with Walter Russell Meade discussing Meade's book God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World. It's about an hour long and definitely worth watching the whole hour. This is a very good introduction to the book.

A Generational Warfare Miscellany

The New Year has brought forth a variety of interesting posts on generational warfare theory:

Adam Elkus at Rethinking Security:

The Crisis of 4GW

More Thoughts on 4GW

Sam Liles at Selil Blog:

A unified generational warfare theorem: Introduction to basic argument and concepts

Generation warfare a cohesive explanatory model

Gathering dimensions of conflict into a unified model

Younghusband at Coming Anarchy:

Towards a general xGW framework

Dan at tdaxp:

Redefining 5GW, again

Call for chapters: “5GW: The Fifth Generation of War?”

Cannoneer's School of the Counterpropagandist

Cannoneer has posted in one convenient place his School of the Counterpropagandist series. Check it out and save it for future reference; it will give you a lot to think about.

Book acquisitions

Thanks to the thoughtful present of a bookstore gift card, I picked up the following books today:

God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World by Walter Russell Mead

The Most Noble Adventure: The Marshall Plan and How America Helped Rebuild Europe by Greg Behrman

The Last Days of the Renaissance and the March to Modernity by Theodore Rabb

IDF Spokesperson's Unit

Israel has set up a YouTube channel as part of an effort to get their story out and do a better job on the information warfare part of their campaign than they did in 06. So we'll see how it works out. Anti-Israel propaganda activities are so vast that it just may not be possible for Israel's own efforts at shaping perceptions and influencing the narrative to be effective. But at least they are adapting.

Via Silicon Alley Insider

Decentralized Campaigning

This sounds like a fantastic idea:

You don't need a multi-milion dollar campaign to be able to make and distribute an effective ad to a target audience.  You can do it yourself.  You don't even need the permission of the campaign or a central seller to do it.  You can run your own campaign, becoming a part of what Pete Snyder called an "army of spokespeople". 
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Decentralized campaigning would provide a whip mechanism against this unresponsive Republican political structure.   The Right has been sinking millions of dollars into Battleships (e.g., Freedom's Watch), when we ought to be building pirate ships and guerilla fighters to conduct information activism at the grassroots level. 

All the FBI's men

George Friedman's essay on Deep Throat at Stratfor is a must read that looks at the journalism narrative now that we know who Deep Throat was (also read comments by Belmont Club and Cannoneer). This is a perfect example of how a narrative can arise and influence our interpretation of history and inspire people to act. Woodward/Bernstein became the archetype of the modern journalist. The noble investigative journalists pursuing the truth and bringing down a corrupt president. How many people became journalists to live out their "All The President's Men" fantasy? How many times have we heard journalists lecture us on how important they are because they are holding public officials accountable and speaking truth to power? Journalists have used Watergate as a justification for publishing leaks, including classified information while keeping sources secret from the public. Knowing that Mark Felt was Deep Throat reveals the Woodward and Bernstein legend to be a lie. Contrary to what we have believed for several decades, this was a story about how Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee knowingly participated in a black ops mission to bring down a president. Woodward and Bernstein owe their fame and careers to the fact they they were chosen by the secret policeman to play a role in his operation. For decades they protected his identity not as some noble act to protect a vulnerable whistle blower from those with power. Rather it turns out that it was Mark Felt who had and abused power. When is some journalist going to confront Woodward and Bernstein and demand answers about their knowing participation in such an operation? Be sure to read Friedman's essay in full. Here's an excerpt:

And now we come to the major point. For Felt to have been able to guide and control the young reporters’ investigation, he needed to know a great deal of what the White House had done, going back quite far. He could not possibly have known all this simply through his personal investigations. His knowledge covered too many people, too many operations, and too much money in too many places simply to have been the product of one of his side hobbies. The only way Felt could have the knowledge he did was if the FBI had been systematically spying on the White House, on the Committee to Re-elect the President and on all of the other elements involved in Watergate. Felt was not simply feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein; he was using the intelligence product emanating from a section of the FBI to shape The Washington Post’s coverage.
Instead of passing what he knew to professional prosecutors at the Justice Department — or if he did not trust them, to the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing — Felt chose to leak the information to The Washington Post. He bet, or knew, that Post editor Ben Bradlee would allow Woodward and Bernstein to play the role Felt had selected for them. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee all knew who Deep Throat was. They worked with the operational head of the FBI to destroy Nixon, and then protected Felt and the FBI until Felt came forward.
...
This was enormously important news. The Washington Post decided not to report it. The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, and a news organization that knew perfectly well that it was being used against the president. Protecting Deep Throat concealed not only an individual, but also the story of the FBI’s role in destroying Nixon.
...
Until Felt came forward in 2005, not only were these things unknown, but The Washington Post was protecting them. Admittedly, the Post was in a difficult position. Without Felt’s help, it would not have gotten the story. But the terms Felt set required that a huge piece of the story not be told. The Washington Post created a morality play about an out-of-control government brought to heel by two young, enterprising journalists and a courageous newspaper. That simply wasn’t what happened. Instead, it was about the FBI using The Washington Post to leak information to destroy the president, and The Washington Post willingly serving as the conduit for that information while withholding an essential dimension of the story by concealing Deep Throat’s identity.
Journalists have celebrated the Post’s role in bringing down the president for a generation. Even after the revelation of Deep Throat’s identity in 2005, there was no serious soul-searching on the omission from the historical record.

The diffusion of Santa Claus

TigerHawk posts a couple of Santa Claus photos, one a sand sculpture from India and the other an ice sculpture from China, that offer a lot to think about about regarding the spread of ideas, symbols, and narratives. TigerHawk concludes:

that Santa Claus is the most commercially significant and internationally appealing non-religious legend in the history of the world.

This is a good example of the kind of voluntary cultural diffusion that Claudio Veliz describes in The New World of the Gothic Fox, which has several chapters looking at how the Hellenistic, British and American cultures were unique in the prolific generation of cultural products, practices, traits, images and symbols that appealed not only to members of their own culture but proved to be very attractive to people of other cultures and thus were disseminated through voluntary adoption. The legend of Santa Claus is so appealing that it inspires people to produce these sand and ice sculptures which are themselves appealing to the imagination so that they serve as a vehicle for the further diffusion of the image and legend of Santa Claus. We need to apply this to our public diplomacy/strategic communication efforts as well as private-sector narrative-diffusion projects.

"Is this a crisis or an opportunity"

Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Tim Draper :



The AlwaysOn summary:
Draper's message is that we must never forget that entrepreneurs are great heroes. They create new jobs, they build value from nothing, they make our lives better, and they rebuild the economy.
...
He reminds us that for every financial downturn, from the Vienna stock exchange crash in 1873 through the Great Depression of the 30s, the Cold War of the 50s, and the dotcom collapse of the early 2000, great entrepreneurs have embraced change and driven innovation and the economy to new successes.

This time is no different, he says, and asks a pivotal question: "Is this a crisis or an opportunity." While some people panic and spread fear and worry (and perhaps those are the people who have been writing our headlines recently), others say "let's not waste this crisis."

One thing has not changed, innovation is relentless and continues unabated. It is growing exponentially and globally. The innovations and changes that occur in the next 10 to 15 years will change our lives as much as all the innovation that's happened in the last 50 to 100 years.

"The information war, fought through images and language, is over narrative"

A three-part series from the World Politics Review:

Sri Lanka's Information War, Part 1

Sri Lanka's Information War, Part 2

Sri Lanka's Information War, Part 3

"Stories are a technology, not a high technology, but a biological technology, for remembering cause-and-effect relationships. Our brains are sponges for stories, and it's very hard to undo a well-told story."

Scrooged

Well I got scrooged this Christmas. A couple of weeks ago I was only paid half of what I was owed. I was expecting that to be rectified on this week's paycheck only to receive it on Christmas Eve and find that not only was I not paid the balance of what I was owed from the last pay period, but that they again paid me about half of what I had coming from the current period. I don't know whether this is the result of incompetence or design. This is the worst-managed business I've ever worked for.

A couple of scenario planning papers

Dare to Dream: Visions for Tomorrow by Peter Schwartz of the Global Business Network

As a genre, science fiction has always stepped up to this challenge. from Jules Verne
and Frank Herbert to Star Trek and The Lord of The Rings, science fiction literature,
television and film have informed, influenced and inspired generations with dreams of
bright and exciting futures. today, SCI FI Channel hopes to build upon this legacy of
science fiction with our “Visions for tomorrow” campaign. through “Visions,” our aim
is to champion an optimistic outlook of the future, empowering individuals to meet the
challenges ahead and inspiring unique solutions to global dilemmas and challenges.

To achieve these objectives, SCI FI assembled an advisory board of 19 of the world’s
most relevant visionaries and innovators in business, government, science, technology,
design, journalism, film, television, and future studies.

For this report, SCI FI has called upon each advisory board member to share his or
her unique perspective on the future: hopes, fears, dreams, and uncertainties. this
report, created by advisory board member Peter Schwartz, Chairman, Global Business
Network, draws upon their distinct and visionary reflections and captures the common
themes, beginning with one scenario of how these themes may play out in a positive
future...

Dave Howe
President
SCI FI Channel

Plotting Your Scenarios by Jay Olgivy and Peter Schwartz

This essay offers an approach to developing alternative scenarios with engrossing plots. Part One describes two different methods for answering a fundamental challenge: how to whittle the virtually infinite number of possible futures that could be described down to a finitely manageable three or four plots that will shed the most light on a specific organization’s future. Part Two then addresses the inverse question: Once you have determined the skeletal premises of just three or four scenarios, how do you put flesh on the skeletons? How do you elaborate the basic logics of skeletal scenarios into compelling stories? If Part One is about whittling an infinite number of possible futures down to a finite number of skeletal scenarios, Part Two is then about beefing up those skeletal outlines to discover the insights managers need. Part Three then adds 10 tips based on our 20 years of experience developing and using scenarios.

Borders on the art of persuasion

Max Borders has an ongoing series of posts on the art of persuasion at Next Right:

No. 1: Emotional Wedges

No. 2: Metaphors & Models

No. 3: Value Typology

No. 4: Image, Symbol, & Icon

No. 5: visual Data are Powerful & Ambiguous

Kauffman to fund pro-innovation legal scholarship

Updating classical liberalism for the 21st century so that we can develop an entrepreneurial liberalism will have to include practical thinking about how to institutionalize our ideas. It's not enough to have a lot of theory that never gets applied. We need to build a legal and political framework that can support and foster entrepreneurship and innovation. The Kauffman Foundation is taking the initiative to build that kind of legal framework:

Kauffman Foundation Invests $10 Million to Cultivate Innovation-Friendly Law, Policy and Legal Scholarship

Continued economic growth spurred by innovation is essential to improve living standards. Growth, in turn, does not just happen—it must be supported by legal institutions and policies that reward entrepreneurial risk-taking and innovation.

Toward this end, the Kauffman Foundation has launched a $10 million, five-year program to support research by leading legal and economic scholars on how best to shape the U.S. legal system so that it promotes innovation and growth. The program builds on several decades of "law and economics" scholarship.  

"We want our nation's top legal scholars to devote their talents, experience and energy to furthering our understanding of how the legal system can best foster innovation and growth, both to aid policymakers and judges, and to help educate the next generation of lawyers," said Robert E. Litan, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation.

Via Marginal Revolution

Entrepreneurial Inclinations

Modern liberal democracies are complex adaptive systems. As such social, economic, political, cultural change is an ongoing phenomena. From time to time there are "perfect storms" of change in which there is a great deal of disruption as societies go through massive phase transitions. As individual agents how we respond to these changes is important. Our attitudes, interpretations, ideologies, and actions all determine the nature of our response to the transition period and its outcome. There is a right way and a wrong way to respond to these periods. Stephen DeAngelis offers a good example of the right way:

One of the reasons I started Enterra Solutions was because I could see that potentially profitable companies were becoming "hopelessly unadapted" because they were trying to solve information age challenges using industrial age solutions. As the pace of globalization speeds up, such companies find themselves with an increasingly unmanageable complexity gap.

I like this. I like the ability to recognize the transformation that is taking place and then the motivation and imagination to create an entrepreneurial venture to contribute to that transformation. As Anne-Marie Slaughter says "You really have to embrace the complexity."

I really enjoy reading Jeff Jarvis because he is someone who has embraced the complexity and is whole-heartedly engaged in the kind of creative thinking that our time requires (and that drives some people nuts, which I find highly entertaining). He teaches a class in entrepreneurial journalism which fosters in the students the kind of creative and entrepreneurial thinking that is necessary to imagine and build the next generation of journalistic institutions.

I love teaching this class. The students’ ideas change, sometimes radically, as the course goes on and as they learn more about business and challenge themselves (as guests and fellow students do) - they act like good entrepreneurs. They understand the importance of learning the business, not something I learned in J-school. They look at the world in new ways and see new opportunities.
...
In the spring, I’m going to teach a truncated version of the course at the Sorbonne with Eric Scherer of the AFP. Dan Gillmor also teaches journalistic entrepreneurship at Arizona as does Rich Gordon at Northwestern. The more, the better. Journalism is not going to preserve itself into the next era; it must innovate its growth. That’s what this course really teaches - not just business and journalism but invention and change.

You have to have the right attitude: an optimistic attitude that sees in the change opportunities to be creatively explored; the right interpretation: clearly seeing that this is indeed an era of transformation that requires innovative ways of thinking; the right ideology: ideologies are not permanent and unchanging, they are products of their time and need to change when the times change; and the right action: attempting to resist change is the road to failure, becoming entrepreneurial and inventing the new era's institutions and practices is the road to success.
There is no better example of being "hopelessly unadapted" than the US auto industry and the political class's response. Tom Friedman:

...America's bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

Of course it will be our politics that will be the last to change with the "there's nothing wrong with our ideology" conservatives and the progressives with their orgasmic enthusiasm for a new New Deal leading the parade of the "hopelessly unadapted". That's why we need to get cracking and start following the path of DeAngelis and Jarvis in politics (and every field of endeavor).

"Innovation Economics"

Will innovation economics provide the theoretical foundation for a 21st century entrepreneurial liberalism?

While the U.S. economy has been transformed by the forces of technology, globalization, and entrepreneurship, the doctrines guiding economic policymakers have not kept pace and continue to be informed by 20th century conceptualizations, models and theories. Without an economic theory and doctrine that matches the new realities, it will be harder for policymakers to take the steps that will most effectively foster growth.

Fortunately within the last decade a new theory and narrative of economic growth grounded in innovation has emerged. Known by a range of terms – “new institutional economics,” “new growth economics,” “evolutionary economics,” “neo-Schumpertarian economics,” or just plain “innovation economics”: – collectively, this new economics reformulates the traditional economic growth model so that knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation and are now positioned at the center, rather than seen as forces that operate independently.

* * *
This new doctrine of "innovation economics" reformulates the traditional model of economic growth so that knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation are positioned at the center of the model, rather than seen as independent forces that are largely unaffected by policy.

Innovation economics is based on two fundamental tenets. First, innovation economists believe that what drives growth is not capital accumulation, as neo-classicists claim, but innovation. They argue that the major changes in the U.S. economy of the last 15 years have occurred not because the economy accumulated more capital to invest in even bigger steel mills or car factories, but because of innovation: the creation and adoption of new products, services, and business models. The economy developed and deployed a wide array of new technologies, particularly information technologies. Although capital was needed for these technologies, capital was not the driver. And it’s clear from the current financial crises, in which capital was chasing bad deals, that capital was not a commodity in short supply. Thus, the primary goal of economic policy should be to spur higher productivity and greater innovation.

Second, markets relying on price signals alone will always be less effective than smart public-private partnerships in spurring higher productivity and greater innovation. That’s because innovation and productivity growth take place in the context of institutions. In turn it is the "social technologies" of institutions, culture, norms, laws, and networks that are so central to growth. Innovation economists view innovation as an evolutionary process, where organizations act on imperfect information and where what economists call "market failures" are in fact actually the norm. But these are precisely the sorts of social systems that are so difficult for conventional economics to model or study.

As a result, innovation economics holds that the critical issue of the proper role of the state and market should not be understood, as it is currently by policymakers and others in Washington, as the state versus the market. Rather, as Beinhocker suggests, the issue should be seen as "how to combine states and markets to create an effective evolutionary system." And this is largely an empirical and practical problem–to which neo-classical economics, with its focus on prices and mathematical models, is particularly unsuited.

Over 70 years ago, as policymakers struggled to escape the grasp of outmoded economic doctrines that hindered them from effectively responding to the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes famously stated, "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." Today, the challenge is for Washington’s practical men (and women) to stop being slaves of defunct economists–including Keynes–and start being followers of the kind of innovation economics that Beinhocker, Heller, and others so compellingly articulate.

"We’ll be lucky to wind up with a cameo in the national narrative"

It's good to see Mark Steyn making the same point I was trying to make in the previous post:

That’s the problem, and pulling the lever for a guy with an R after his name every other November isn’t going to fix it. If the default mode of a society’s institutions is liberal, electing GOP legislators eventually accomplishes little more than letting a Republican driver take a turn steering the liberal bus. If Hollywood’s liberal, if the newspapers are liberal, if the pop stars are liberal, if the grade schools are liberal, if the very language is liberal to the point where all the nice words have been co-opted as a painless liberal sedative, a Republican legislature isn’t going to be a shining city on a hill so much as one of those atolls in the Maldives being incrementally swallowed by Al Gore’s rising sea levels.

However the election had gone, conservatism’s fractious precriminations – David Frum vs Tony Blankley, Mark Levin vs Peggy Noonan – would be set to continue. But the lesson of the last grim year is that it’s not merely about candidates or policy or electoral strategy. We have to get back in the game in all the arenas we’ve ceded to liberalism – from kindergarten to blockbuster movies. Otherwise, as in Daniel Craig’s improvised casting call, we’ll be lucky to wind up with a cameo in the national narrative.

I think Steyn is spot on here. Where I differ is that I don't believe that conservatism is capable of successfully changing this situation. The conservative movement has had 50 years to achieve this and they didn't do it. That's more than enough time to determine the viability of a political movement. And so it's time to move on and devote our energies and resources to creating a movement that will be more likely to be successful. If we don't want to end up with a "cameo in the national narrative" then we have to write our own script and produce our own movie.

Governance, rulesets, and 21st century politics

Since this year's election loss there has been a lot of thinking by Republicans about why they lost and what they can do to correct their situation. Most of this thinking has been focused on retooling and updated campaign strategy and techniques. But this is not where Republicans have a problem. Republicans have not had a problem over the past 28 years winning elections and winning the White House and Congress. The problem has been with governance, that once they win elections they don't govern as conservatives. People can point their fingers at the Republican establishment, and corrupt, cynical, and hypocritical politicians, and not without cause. But it misses something very important which is that given the current organization of government it is just not possible to govern as a conservative or a libertarian. And here's why: Let's say the Libertarian Party actually got one of its candidates into the White House. Would he be able to govern as a libertarian? No. Presidents don't have the power to eliminate departments and reduce budgets he can't just go in an do anything he wants to do. A libertarian sitting the Oval Office would still have to find people to run the National Endowment for the Arts, HHS, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Labor and so on. His administration would have to formulate policy for running these organizations. He would be a libertarian running a New Deal/Great Society government.

It comes down to this: Ideological Hegemony --> Rulesets --> Governance. Let's go backwards with that. You can't govern as a conservative (or libertarian or whatever) because government operates by the New Deal/Great Society rulesets; and you can't change the rulesets unless you achieve ideological hegemony. A political movement that organizes itself around winning elections may indeed win elections but fail to actually govern in a way compatible with its ideology. Therefore, a political movement that wants to govern according to its ideology should develop its strategy towards achieving ideological hegemony rather than winning elections. Achieve ideological hegemony then you can initiate a ruleset reset and then governance will be aligned with your ideas regardless of whether the individual or party in office is an adherent of those ideas.

In the half century prior to the New Deal there was an open competition among a variety of ideas over what the rulesets would be for an industrializing America. That competition came to an end in the 1930s. An industrial age managerial liberalism achieved hegemony and instituted rulesets that would govern America for the next seven decades. In the 1950s conservatism emerged as an insurgent political movement that would temper many of the excesses and flaws of the New Deal/Great Society liberalism, but would never achieve ideological hegemony or initiate a ruleset reset. In the past 28 years Americans have shown that they prefer their New Deal/Great Society rulesets governed with a conservative sensibility, but they have no interest in replacing them with conservative rulesets.

So where does that put us now? As we transition out of the industrial age, the New Deal/Great Society liberalism vs. conservatism competition becomes irrelevant. After all what's the point of fighting over industrial age rulesets when we are transitioning into an information-service-entrepreneurial age? The period we are entering will be akin to that prior to the New Deal, it will be an open competition to determine which rulesets will govern the new era. In participating in that competition we need to focus our efforts toward winning ideological hegemony rather than winning elections. There will still be liberals and conservatives clinging to their industrial age ideologies and competition, but they will be like those in the Pentagon who are still trapped in the Cold War paradigm and don't get that the situation we are in is completely different.

We don't know what the new rulesets will be or what ideology will be invented to make sense of 21st century realities. The types of mental skills that we need are rooted around an eagerness and enthusiasm for open-ended imagining. A tolerance for uncertainty. A willingness to walk away from the conventional wisdom and seek out new ways of thinking and interpreting. We need to embrace the improvisational spirit of the jazz musician, the frontiersman, the entrepreneur. We also need to stop fighting the old fights and channel our energies and resources into the new competitions that really matter. The results of those competitions will determine how government and society will be organized over the next century.

"More Americans own their own companies than belong to trade unions"

An entrepreneurial age requires an Entrepreneurial Deal:

The New Deal was introduced into a world of giant organisations—of big businesses and big trade unions that were capable of striking deals with big government. But today’s economy is much more fluid. America’s most successful companies are entrepreneurial outfits like Apple and Google, which thrive on flexibility; even giant companies such as General Electric are breaking themselves up into entrepreneurial divisions. More Americans own their own companies (15%) than belong to trade unions (12%).

via The Economist

So what will be the long-term political implications of this economic transformation? How do we need to reform our government so that it can function appropriately in the new age? How do we persuade people that their long-held beliefs are outdated and irrelevant to our current realities?

Obama's Grand Strategy

So how will a President Obama approach grand strategy? It's too soon to say, of course, but we might be able to get a glimpse of what is to come. The Small Wars Journal links to a story about Obama tapping several people from the Center for a New American Security to serve on his transition team. In the summer I was googling around looking for interesting papers on grand strategy. Many of the papers and articles I found were by several center-left thinkers who I suspect are going to have an influence on Obama's grand strategy (Michele Flournoy, Shawn Brimley, Anne-Marie Slaughter, John Ikenberry) Below are links to those posts with excerpts from various papers. Several of the papers were part of CNAS's Solarium Project and are no longer available online [UPDATE:Available online (PDF) here], but they have been collected into a book which you can buy at Amazon: Finding Our Way: Debating American Grand Strategy At the bottom are direct links to three papers on grand strategy (pdf). Hopefully these posts and papers will give some insight into what we can expect from an Obama national security strategy:

On Michele Flournoy and the Solarium Project

Grand Strategy as Liberal Order Building

Four Basic Options for Grand Strategy

Key Tenets of American Grand Strategy

An Interesting Grand Strategy Discussion...

You have to embrace the complexity

American power did not destabilize world order; it helped create it

Three papers:

Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy

Forging a World of Liberty Under Law: US National Security Strategy in the 21st Century

An Agenda for Liberal International Renewal

Finding Our Way: Debating American Grand Strategy

"Building the next economy and a new republic"

Richard Florida offers his take on our era of transformation and what it will take to build a new system for a 21st century America.

Today is much more like the mid-19th century and the time of Lincoln - the rise of a wholly new economic system and the large-scale class divides it produced. It is very difficult to even imagine the broad infrastructure or system architecture required to propel this emergent system of idea-driven, creative capitalism.

One thing is for certain: The old era will have to give way before the new era can take shape. The rise of industrial capitalism required a revolution in agricultural productivity and the mass shrinkage of farm-based employment. Remember Herbert Hoover’s mantra - “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Food had to become cheap to free up consumption and demand for cars and industrial products. The revolution in agriculture freed up capital and labor that could be redeployed in then expanding industrial economy.  The rise of single-family home ownership and the auto-oriented suburb then closed the consumption circuit of Fordism.

Building the next economy and a new republic will require a similarly fundamental transformation of the core sectors of Fordism. This is more than creating new technology and building a new green infrastructure. We will need to massively shrink the cost for consumption of houses and cars.

The new system will be unable to emerge if people are spending the overwhelming amount of their incomes on housing (mortgages plus maintenance, utilities, taxes) and auto-expenses. To do so, we will need to make the housing system much more flexible, massively increase the productivity and efficiency of housing production (I’ll be writing more on this soon), and enable people to become far less dependent on cars. Only this kind of massive shift in the underlying architecture of society will free up sufficient income and demand for the next new things and enable us to begin to build the new infrastructure which can set innovation and economic growth on a new trajectory. Who in the Obama administration is even thinking along these lines?

The clock of history is always ticking. Eventually, the place or places that can set in motion this shift will accure first-mover advantages similar to those that the U.S. gained in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Can this happen in the U.S.? Can Obama help catalyze this broad shift, or are we still too early in the historical process? What about entrenched U.S. interests - the insitutional rigidities the late Mancur Olson wrote about - can they be overcome and recast? Washington remains locked in a conversation which entails propping up the Fordist economy - a housing finance bailout, an auto bailout, a homewner bailout - when instead what is needed is to free up capital from these sectors and massively redeploy it into others. And if not the U.S., where and when might this happen? How long will it take?

Higher Ed-preneurship

All of our institutions are being challenged today by changing circumstances and will need to creatively adapt or die out. GM is the archetypal industrial age institution and it is failing because for whatever reasons its management and unions will not adapt to the new environent. Our system of higher education is in the same boat. We take the way colleges are organized and the way higher education is delivered for granted, but it is a recent development of the past 50-60 years. We need to think creatively about what it means to be educated in our time and how to train people for economic success. This is really a great opportunity for creative thinking. It may seem disrupting to some people, but these times only come now and again and we should be grateful that we live in an era that offers us the opportunity to invent the next era's institutions.

Like so many of our great industries and social sectors, higher education has grown huge, bureaucratic, and in many cases bloated (think 24-hour coffee shops in dorms). The ongoing trends of globalization, technology, and innovation continue to pressure societies and economies and America’s world leading system of higher education is going to have to respond just like other great institutions. There will not be enough ‘bailout’ money for everyone getting in line.

The campus as a vibrant market has always been one of the reasons that campus entrepreneurs exist. As our system of higher education undergoes these massive transformations, entrepreneurs of all sorts will push the change with new models, services, and firms. The best will reap incredible rewards.

"Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess"

I'm glad to see this being said, although it is not in itself remarkable, in fact it should be a no brainer. But what is remarkable is where it is posted: HuffPo. Getting Democrats to recognize that while an active government may be appropriate in some circumstances, it will be the entrepreneurs who create the way out of the current situation, and so it is essential to have policies implemented to foster entrepreneurship--and to avoid policies that stifle entrepreneurship. Mark Cuban:

Its great to see President-elect Obama aggressively taking on the economy prior to his taking office. Unfortunately, the economic advisory team that he has put together looks more like a semester's worth of great guest speakers for an MBA class than an economic advisory team that can truly help him.
There are a lot of great minds on the list:
Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, who served as Clinton's top economic adviser; former Fed Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson; Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons; former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson and Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy.

Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Roel Campos, an ex-SEC commissioner, and Warren Buffett are also on the advisory board.

Notice anything missing?
Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he "doesn't do start ups". Which means there isn't a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows what it's like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate.That's a huge problem.
If we are going to solve our current economic problems, our president needs to get first hand information on the impact his proposed policies will have on real Joe the Plumbers. People who are 1-person companies living job to job, hoping they get paid on time. We need to know what the impact of his policies will be on the individually owned Chrysler Dealership in Iowa. The bodega in Manhattan. The mobile phone software startup out of Carnegie Mellon. The event planner in Dallas. The barbershop in L.A. The restaurant in Boston.
Entrepreneurs that start and run small businesses will be the propellant in this economy. PE Obama needs to have the counsel of those who will take the real risk inherent in creating companies and jobs. Those who put their money and lives on the line with their business.
...
PE Obama, I'm always available to help, but my recommendation would be to randomly go through the new incorporation filings and ask for volunteers to give feedback. Ask the people who are actually starting new businesses what they need.
Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. Talk to them.

"It's a state of mind, and they don't get it"

Innovations in technology, organizational models, and logistics will at some point inevitably be applied to government, changing how government is organized, how it operates and its role within society. The big government that we got in the 20th century was the inevitable result of the application of the innovations in technology, organizational models and logistics of industrialization. This was going to happen regardless of the outcome of the ideological competition that was taking place between the Civil War and WW2. The ideological competition determined the specific form the application of these innovations would take and the rulesets that would govern them, not whether they would be applied. Today we are again in an era where a variety of innovations have been emerging that will inevitably be applied to government:

Mayor Newsom was first the raise the issue of governing in this new era. He said that the Internet and social networks, create "a connection that is more useful." But, "most politicians are not there yet. It's a state of mind, and they don't get it. It's not about old or young, it's a new kind of politics."

But the panel seemed very hopeful that a citizenry connected over the Internet could help the government function. Newsom said, "Government can't solve our problems exclusively." The panel discussed using the Web for not just fund raising but to encourage citizen involvement in thorny issues, such as health care reform.

The ideological competition is about the larger vision that guides the application of the innovations, about the various conceptions of society, government, and the citizen that are in play. Updating classical liberal ideas for the 21st century means understanding the variety of changes that are taking place and crafting a vision and conceptual framework that can appeal to people in our time, embody our aspirations, guide the application of these innovations, and inform practical governance. This is the role that the New Deal/Great Society liberalism has been playing for decades. The conservative movement was never able to replace that version of liberalism, rather it served as an opposition movement that was successful in implementing various reforms. But time has moved on and both those ideologies are outdated relics of another era: most politicians are not there yet. It's a state of mind, and they don't get it.

A Few Good Books

The General's War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor

I read this book in the summer and could not put it down. A great account of the higher level decision-making in the Gulf War. Two things stood out for me while reading this: the extent to which the ghost of Vietnam influenced decisions and the chaotic nature of the planning.

The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created by William Bernstein

I read this a few years ago. This book is an excellent exploration of a subject that I'm very much interested in: the transition from the pre-modern world to modernity and the development of mass prosperity.

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America by George Nash

I'm working my way through this book now and it is excellent. Anyone interested in politics and American history needs to read this book.

The Cattle Towns: A Social History of the Kansas Cattle Trading Centers Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City and Caldwell, 1867-1885 by Robert Dykstra

What fascinates me here is that these classic Wild West towns were entrepreneurial ventures. With cattle being brought up from Texas and the railroads moving west, the town builders were trying to find profitable locations to bring the two together and foster commerce.

Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War by Eric Foner

An excellent account of the different factions that formed the Republican Party in the 1850s and the ideas that motivated them. I'm particularly intrigued by the Free Labor ideology which seems to be an 1850s version of an entrepreneurial liberalism. Unfortunately only one chapter is devoted to it. I would like to find a more extensive study of the Free Labor ideology.

Starting a business, changing the world

One of the key tactics in the effort to disseminate ideas is to associate your ideas with something that people find appealing or that happens to be in vogue at the moment. Social entrepreneurship has been coming into vogue over the past several years. The idea of creating a for-profit enterprise for the purpose of solving a problem or meeting a need in society is catching on as a legitimate career path. This is exactly the kind of thing that proponents of market/civil society solutions to social problems should be getting into and championing. And yet whenever I read an article on social entrepreneurship it invariably is being pursued from a leftish perspective. Where are the classical liberals? Probably wasting time discussing the minutia of the economic theory of how the market can solve problems instead of actually creating the businesses that will solve these problems in the real world. Social entrepreneurship combines entrepreneurship with activism and is the perfect vehicle for championing the ideals of an entrepreneurial liberalism.

"I think many in my generation have lived their entire adult lives with a feeling of helplessness to change the world around them," says David R. Anderson, 25, founder of San Francisco-based Green Options Media, a network of sustainability blogs, and Renewzle, a lead-generation service for clean-energy installers. "The decreasing barriers to starting a business, especially online, have opened up a new world of social change, while at the same time providing an escape from the drudgery of a boring, corporate or otherwise ineffectual job."
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Lara Galinsky, vice president of strategy at Echoing Green, a seed funding organization for social entrepreneurs, points to the prevalence of social entrepreneurship programs at colleges (Each of the top 10 business schools in the U.S. has at least one faculty member teaching the subject.) media attention, and philanthropic business leaders like Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar.
"Because of their tremendous wealth and exciting philanthropic strategies, they've helped social entrepreneurship take the fast road," Galinsky says.
"The concept has gotten traction because of the popularity and knowledge about entrepreneurship in general, coupled with a growing interest among young people and others to make a real difference in the world," says Elizabeth Gatewood, Ph.D., director of the Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "People are more globally focused, have a growing concern about the environment and sustainability, and realize that there is more to life and finding satisfaction than just making money."
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Echoing Green has provided seed grants and technical support to more than 450 social entrepreneurs over the past 20 years. Most of the organizations have been nonprofits, but "this year, we've definitely seen a surge of just straight for-profit, socially focused companies," Galinsky says. "That's a really interesting trend." She says that four of the 20 grants provided in 2008 will go to for-profits.
Galinsky says for-profit social entrepreneurs choose that structure because it makes the most sense for the business--not because they're trying to get rich.
"It's because it's a better model to realize their social mission. I would be hard-pressed to think they were doing it with the motivation of having high infusions of cash for themselves," Galinsky says.
They look at the laws where they're doing business, or if they're better positioned to receive investment dollars rather than philanthropic donations.
Anderson sees the for-profit model of social entrepreneurship as a mainstreaming effort--making "doing good" an everyday reality.
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"I like to say it's a movement. It's not like this is a typical company or brand," Lewis says. "Everybody feels invested. We have retailers who feel like it's their product. Distributors feel like it's their product. Everyone takes ownership in it all the way down to the consumer, which is what I think makes it work."
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"Making money is a necessity that often seems to get lost in companies with socially responsible missions, and I'd be lying if I said striking the balance between making money and creating a values-driven company culture was easy," Anderson says. "But it's not a zero-sum game. Just love what you do, don't be evil and focus on creating the conditions to carry out your company's mission in a sustainable manner. The rest will fall into place."

"If you have fire in the belly, you go to the U.S."

"The American entrepreneur has a passion for the market,” says Keith Blakely, founder and CEO of Nanodynamics, a pioneer in the revolutionary field of nanotechnology. While European fundamental research can sometimes be superior, American innovation is usually first to market. In the American vision, an idea is good only when the market buys it. Again, it’s a democratic view of the purpose of innovation. This explains the unique relationship in the United States between universities and business. In Western Europe, professors and entrepreneurs seldom talk to one another; in fact, to do so is often regarded as a breach of etiquette. In America, Nanodynamics uses university equipment, consults university professors, and shares its discoveries with universities.

Beyond the democratic principle, another engine is at work within these companies, one that existed on a much smaller scale in the early nineteenth century: what Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter dubbed “creative destruction” in 1942. Schumpeter meant that the new constantly replaces the old and that the market reallocates resources accordingly. Nanodynamics has offices in a former Ford plant in Buffalo, in the heart of the Rust Belt: low-skill jobs have been replaced with high-skill, better-paying ones. In Yorktown Heights, IBM survived several waves of creative destruction and now prospers by following Schumpeter’s principle internally: the company has sold its personal-computer division to a Chinese firm and now focuses on customer service and developing sophisticated systems.

Finally, there is American cultural diversity (which was not a factor in Jacksonian or Tocquevillian America). Wherever you come from, if you have fire in the belly, you go to the U.S., says Ajay Royyuru, who left India and eventually became manager of IBM’s computational biology center. Does Suvankar Sengupta of Nanodynamics feel nostalgic about Bengal? “As a land of opportunities,” he says, “the U.S. remains unchallenged, while you are never criticized for taking risks. Moreover, when you are good at what you do, nobody in America asks you where you come from.”

“A German company is ahead of us in the market,” admits Caine Finnerty, the Nanodynamics fuel-cell expert and a former Englishman. “But we’ll eventually take over while we tackle the subject from all cultural angles with our cosmopolitan team.”

As Milton Friedman loved to say: only in America.

There are people with fire in the belly all over the world, in every country, culture, race, ethnicity and religion but whose culture and country may not value and encourage the drive and energy of the entrepreneur and innovator. America is a country founded and built by and for people with fire in the belly so it is not a surprise that the US is a destination for those whose entrepreneurial spirit cannot be fully actualized in their countries of origin. Our challenge is to craft a concept of what it means to be an American and a vision of the American Experiment that is upgraded for our 21st century realities that can inspire these immigrants who have the fire in the belly and their children and get them to buy in to this vision and identify with it. Conservatism is incapable of doing this. What we need is a fire in the belly ideology, an entrepreneurial liberalism to counter the collectivist left. If we do this then it will provide the cultural and political context within which the entrepreneurialism expressed in the quoted paragraphs above can thrive in a complex, adaptive, self-organizing society.

Entrepreneurial Connections

One thing leads to another...
Purpleslog links to the kind of article that I really love reading.

"If you have a good product that you can produce, or that someone else can produce within the appropriate margins, you have access to a worldwide network for promoting it," Welytok said.

Welytok is pounding on that message with what she says are more than 100 clients of the Milwaukee law firm she started in 2005, Absolute Technology Law Group LLC. She's also hammering out her message at monthly meetings of three inventors and entrepreneurs clubs that meet in Mequon, West Bend and downtown Milwaukee.

Welytok has been facilitating the Mequon and West Bend groups for two years. She formed the Milwaukee group last month with some prodding from David Linz, southeast regional director for the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Network.
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Since returning to work, she's started her law firm and the three inventors groups, and she's written two more books.

The books cover a range of topics, with titles such as "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade Secrets and Licensing." She says she has another book scheduled to come out in February, which she is writing with Louis Foreman, creator of the PBS invention series called "Everyday Edisons."

"Jill should be the celebration of this town. She understands innovation, entrepreneurship and how moms and pops can take their dreams and convert them into real businesses or markets...

"If you get this groundswell of grass-roots entrepreneurial activity, you're going to get some winners."
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Whipple organized Wisconsin's first inventors and entrepreneurs club in Juneau County in 2001 to create a "contagious" entrepreneurial environment where people could investigate ideas with group support.

The kind of meta-entrepreneurship Welytok is engaged in can also be adapted to serve a role in our post-war operations as Tom Barnett points out in a recent column:

The only exit strategy is jobs.

Soldiers and aid workers don't know anything about entrepreneurship and can't possibly build a national economy - only businesspeople can. The most crucial handoff is to the private sector, not the United Nations.

Creating private sector enterprises to foster "contagious entrepreneurial environments" can be a significant component in our counterinsurgency and post-war planning, as well as in shrinking the gap more generally, especially where the local community already has an entrepreneurial culture as in Najaf:

The boom also is strengthening ties between the Supreme Council — al-Sadr's main rival — and Najaf's merchant class, which takes pride in the city's famous entrepreneurial spirit.

It is that spirit, say residents, that has cost al-Sadr support here back in 2004 when his militiamen controlled Najaf, driving visitors away and forcing most businesses to shutter down.

Identifying communities with this kind of entrepreneurial spirit should be part of our human terrain research and we should already have a plan in place for dealing with them when we find them.

It is also something that should be part of our strategic communications operations by both government and private actors. In another post PurpleSlog looks at the glamour of the jihadi and how that contributes to attracting recruits. In addition to an effort to de-glamourize the jihadi, we need to offer an alternative. One of the advantages that we have is that there are long-standing commercial cultures throughout the Middle East. Therefore we should be able to champion the entrepreneur as the hero in the story of the liberalization (economic and otherwise) of the Middle East. The entrepreneur serves as a bridge from the pre-modern commercial culture to the modern commercial republic.

This includes Europe as well. The Europeans have long been prejudiced against economic liberalism. I think it is essential that we should wage a campaign in Europe (customized to the different countries of course) to further an entrepreneurial liberal economic order and the entrepreneur offers the best symbolic vehicle to do this. But we are going to have to overcome some very weird European prejudices:

Europe could use more people like Ehssan Dariani. The 26-year-old entrepreneur runs a hot Internet start-up called studiVZ—Europe's fastest-growing social network for university students. Since setting up in a cheap Berlin loft only last fall, he's already hired 25 people. Yet when Dariani looks back at his high-school days, a decade ago in the west German city of Kassel, he remembers his teachers warning against exactly what he's doing. "They taught us the market economy was a dangerous wilderness full of risk and bankruptcy," Dariani says. "We never learned how prices affect supply and demand, only about evil managers and unjust wages." If he'd listened to his teachers, he'd be among the vast majority of German students who dream of becoming civil servants or fitting into the comfortable hierarchy of a traditional corporation. Instead he set out and created some desperately needed jobs.

Ask any European what he learned at school about how the economy works, and you'll likely hear a similar story. A recent study of German high-school textbooks by the Institute for the German Economy, in Cologne, found entrepreneurs—instead of getting credit for creating jobs—taking the blame for everything from unemployment to alcoholism to Internet fraud and cell-phone addiction. Some high-school social-studies textbooks teach globalization as an unmitigated catastrophe; students are advised to consult the radical anti-globalization protest group Attac for further information. In France, books approved by the Education Ministry promote statist policies and voodoo economics. "Economic growth imposes a way of life that fosters stress, nervous depression, circulatory disease and even cancer," reports "20th-Century History," a popular high-school text published by Hatier. Another suggests Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were dangerous free-market extremists whose reforms plunged their countries into chaos and despair.

Such blatant disinformation sheds new light on the debate over why it is that Europeans lag so far behind Americans in rates of entrepreneurship and job creation. It also helps explain widespread resistance among Europeans to accepting even the smallest reforms of their highly regulated economies. But recently there appears to be a small but growing backlash against the popular vilification of capitalism. Unthinkable only a decade ago, business associations, think tanks and a whole slew of capitalist and libertarian activists, many only in their 20s and 30s, are leading a tiny but noisy counterattack. Their common goal: making sure the next generation of Europeans is less in tune with Karl Marx and more with Adam Smith.

Fighting windmills? Maybe not. In Germany, the Banking Association is helping change attitudes by supplying instructional materials explaining markets to more than 20,000 teachers. "A few years ago the Education Ministry would have kicked us out," says the association's Wilhelm Bürklin. One participating social-studies teacher, Christel Stoldt at Winkelmann High School in the town of Stendal, reports rising interest among students about how the market economy works. "I have to overcome a lot of prejudice against companies and entrepreneurs," she says. In France, the Centre de l'Entreprise has sent several hundred teachers on internships to companies. Director Jean-Pierre Boisivon says they often return astonished that the corporate world isn't the Darwinian struggle between bosses and workers they'd been taught it was. Junior Achievement, a U.S. organization promoting student entrepreneurship, now has three dozen European chapters and plans to reach 5 million students by 2010. JA Europe chief Caroline Jenner says that 30 percent of the kids who participate in its programs later start their own companies, compared with just 7 percent in the general population. "How else are we going to get jobs for 19 million unemployed Europeans if we don't teach kids that entrepreneurship is OK?" she asks.

You don't win this competition of ideas with a lot of theory, rather you win it by appealing to people's aspirations, imagination, and visions of what they can be. The entrepreneur is the hero of the modern liberal democratic order.

An Army of Boyds

There was an interesting discussion recently on John Boyd at the Small Wars Journal. A few comments on Boyd's role within the defense bureaucracy caught my eye and got me thinking that what we need is an Army of Boyds in every department and agency, every branch of government, federal, state and local, in the universities, at GM, indeed throughout our entire society:

Mark of Zenpundit:

On a serious note, the highest value that I see in Boyd's work was modeling the ethic of being a continuously learning, adaptive, thinking, competitor in a dynamic environment. Something that was very much against the cultural, organizational, grain of the U.S. military at the time, not to mention society at large.
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Much of Boyd's work is modeling a process of dynamic synthesis, of continual learning and adapting competitively and reaching to fields further and further away from "pure" military concerns in order to generate new insights.

Another commenter said:

I respect Boyd because he took on the system from the inside...His genius lay in his ability to be a governmental guerrilla, an insider insurrectionary, a bureaucratic insurgent...

The kind of role that Boyd played within the DOD is played in our economy by entrepreneurs. By creating new competitors, products, services, techniques etc. entrepreneurs are constantly challenging existing businesses to remain competitive and to be learning institutions. Like Boyd, entrepreneurs are "modeling the ethic of being a continuously learning, adaptive, thinking, competitor in a dynamic environment." This is one of the many reasons that I think that advocating entrepreneurship is so important for our society: by celebrating entrepreneurs and championing entrepreneurship we are reinforcing values, attitudes, and behaviors that are necessary for our society to remain innovative and adaptive.

We also need a political movement that can play the Boydian role more generally throughout our society. That is, a political movement whose vision of a 21st century America is "modeling the ethic of being a continuously learning, adaptive, thinking, competitor in a dynamic environment". This would be a dynamist alternative to the collectivist left's stasist vision. What would that kind of a movement look like? What would its symbols and imagery be? What kinds of stories would it tell? What would be its vision of the American Experiment?