the all-seeing eye dog blog

Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye...

2006-06-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

Goodbye my blogosphere friends. The All-Seeing Eye Dog is going into indefinite retirement. Don't worry: this is not an admission of defeat by any stretch. I'm not giving up on telling the truth, as I see it. I just won't be doing it via this medium anymore until the current administration is held fully accountable for its crimes. Until then, good luck and Godspeed.

Where Red Tape Really Comes From

2005-03-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

That pernicious, sticky substance known as red tape: According to some, there’s almost no collective human failure that can’t be blamed on its meddlesome ubiquity. When disaster strikes a third-world country and international humanitarian efforts fall short, you can be sure a think-tank report faulting “red tape” for the failures can’t be far behind.

And in many quarters it almost goes without saying that whenever the economy starts to tank, the real culprit isn’t rampant fraud, industry collusion, or the increasing prevalence of business practices that violate fundamental principles of a competitive marketplace (that’s too obvious and simple-minded to be the problem, a chorus of ivy league economists and capitol hill policy experts can be heard to intone in an eerily mellifluous castrato voce): It’s all that damn red tape.

And who’s to blame for releasing into the world this nasty, freedom-hating weed that creeps in like kudzu to choke the life out of everything that decent Americans hold good and sacred?

Conventional wisdom holds the culprit to be Big Government, in all its malignant forms. Big Government, so one version of the story goes, is full of bureaucrats who, for lack of work of their own to do, spend their days scheming up new ways to stifle the potentially limitless innovation and economic growth that only large corporations with their perpetually shifting conceptions of fiscal and personal responsibility can provide.

Oh yeah: and red tape also helps Big Government bureaucrats in their ceaseless efforts to soak the rich.

“Just let us work,” the beleaguered captains of industry can almost be heard to opine from under the crushing weight of all that red tape, unintentionally paraphrasing Carl Sandburg.

It’s a nice theory for how red tape accumulates and why, but as the title of this article suggests, I’d like to suggest an alternative view. But first, let’s step back and talk a little more about just what we mean by “red tape.”

In its typical usages, “red tape” seems to refer generally to almost any formal body of rules and penalties. So, to the extent that a government is by definition a body that imposes rules restricting personal freedom (never mind that said rules may in a certain sense also protect personal freedom), all forms of government are de facto made of the stuff. We might usefully speculate at this point that the term “red tape” is meant to conjure up images of government authority run amok, ala the excesses of communism—“red” tape perhaps being the communist’s favorite material for binding and torturing hapless capitalists.

Red tape can take many forms, from the paperwork a would-be entrepreneur has to file at the local courthouse to the surprise health inspections that commercial kitchens and meat factories periodically undergo. But what we really mean when we talk about red tape seems to be something even more fundamental.

The quaint picture we looked at earlier—in which red tape is largely a product of the arbitrary exercise of government regulatory power—begins to look like a view through a fish-eye lens when we consider the following: Red tape also occurs spontaneously in the private sector and in the world at large, without Big Government intrusions of any kind.

Consider recent developments in the on-line world. Security on the web has become such a concern that many on-line retailers have been forced to implement absurd, even bizarre, customer registration and logon processes to achieve only a modicum of security for the conduct of on-line business. Because legislation regarding Internet commerce has been slow in coming, much of the red tape on the Internet came about not as a result of government intrusion but as a result of simple necessity. On-line retailers have been forced to create their own red tape in order to guard their customers against privacy intrusion and identity theft.

And as anyone who’s held a job for any length of time knows, medium to large companies--privately-held and publicly-traded alike--seldom have trouble generating copious amounts of red tape freely on their own, to meet various personnel and financial management needs (especially after a company has reached that point late in its life-cycle when “middle-management spread” starts creeping in).

Indeed, once we start looking, it seems we can find evidence of naturally occurring red tape just about everywhere: Aren’t all the commandments in the Bible (all those shalts and shalt-nots) really just a kind of red tape? What about the myriad rules and penalties found in professional sports like football and basketball? I don’t mean the rules that govern the business of professional sports but the rules and penalties imposed by the games themselves? What Big Government bureaucrat created all those rules?

How do we reconcile such seemingly spontaneous outcroppings of red tape with the conventional theories in the absence of Big Government’s unwieldy regulatory influence?

I’d like to propose the controversial notion that red tape is not imposed by Big Government at all, but that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon, prone to thrive in any environment wherein there is a substantial likelihood of fraud, egregious uses of power, or simple human error.

Red tape is what the human race, in its more reflective moments, uses to try to regulate and perfect its own conduct. If history has taught us anything, it’s that there will always be some people who will lie, cheat, and steal if left to their own devices. In fact, a certain percentage of the population seems to have a unique talent for lying (see my parting thoughts below for more on this topic). Unfortunately, there’s nothing to prevent this segment of the population from being entrusted with leadership roles; therefore, we’ve adopted various strategies over time for curbing abuses of power (at all levels of society).

Put simply, red tape is just a general term for the various rules and penalties we impose on ourselves to keep ourselves honest. Keeping meticulous records, requiring each other to fill out reams of paperwork, etc., such activities are ultimately geared toward ensuring that everybody plays fair. So it stands to reason that the less honest we are as a society, the more red tape we’ll have to wade through in our daily lives.

It’s often noted that the Nazis were an intensely bureaucratic lot, keeping highly detailed records even of atrocities that many of us would have left undocumented out of a sense of moral shame. In fact, pretty much anywhere we find strong authoritarian governments, we also find an excess of red tape. This is probably why we’ve come to take for granted the existence of a causal link between Big Government and red tape, but perhaps the real reason that so many of history’s authoritarian regimes have tended toward excesses of bureaucracy is that such regimes also tend to be shot through with corruption. Evil regimes, presumably, are the creations of evil people. And evil people, presumably, know a thing or two about humanity’s innate capacity for evil, and are therefore more likely to be hyper-vigilant, red tape wielding bureaucrats in order to maintain their hold on power.

Of course, that’s not to say that red tape isn’t also sometimes abused as an instrument of governmental power. The FCC has become notorious in recent years for threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of broadcasters whose political views (as expressed through program content) are deemed controversial. Regulatory abuses can easily occur as a result of poorly designed regulatory mechanisms and/or political corruption. Red tape (in the form of the Jim Crow laws enacted in the post-slavery South, for example) has even been used to curtail the social and political power of specific groups of American citizens.

Even so, I propose that the biggest producer of red tape in the world is not Big Government at all (although Big Government’s authority can go a long way in facilitating its promulgation). Red tape is actually a product of human moral weakness, as society as a whole attempts to manage its weaknesses. It’s a simple formula: The more dishonest we are in our daily lives, the less we trust each other. The less we trust each other, the more we’re forced to play the 'Cover Your Ass' game, in which we spend more and more of our time documenting our financial activities and personal histories in order to reduce the likelihood that we’ll cheat or be cheated.

So to conclude, the horrifying secret of red tape is just this: Red tape, my friends, is made of people.

Parting Thoughts
Do leaders make better liars? And if natural leaders are also natural liars, is it reasonable to impeach a sitting President for perjury (ala Clinton)? Or should we have applauded the strength of his leadership? Maybe what we really need is a little more sanity in our lives. Or, in taking comfort in sanity, would we just be deluding ourselves to forestall the inevitable descent into madness?

The 'Conspiracy Theory' Conspiracy

2005-02-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

On the web and just about anywhere else one cares to look these days, there’s an awful lot of loose talk about paranoia, about people 'seeing conspiracies everywhere,' and the like, and all of it just keeps bringing my mind back to one nagging question: In theory, is it possible for someone to hold a paranoid belief that coincidentally happens to be true? Or should 'truth' even factor into it when we evaluate someone’s beliefs as 'reasonable' or 'paranoid'?

Let me put the question another way with a hypothetical case: Suppose there’s this guy who believes that God is personally out to get him. For the sake of argument, let’s say the guy is right, and God actually is out to get him (never mind all the perfectly reasonable but irrelevant arguments we might get into about whether God even exists, and/or whether He would have better things to do with His time than waging personal vendettas against His creations, etc.).

Now, suppose the paranoid guy is pretty sure he’s got good reasons for his suspicions about God, but as imaginary observers, we’re in a better position to evaluate the guy’s reasons objectively, and we find them lacking in many respects. Some of his reasons are valid (God really did arrange it so the guy’s high school sweetheart would leave the prom with his best friend), but others are completely invalid (it’s purely a coincidence that it always rains when he leaves his umbrella home). In any event, his conclusion—that God is out to get him—can’t be derived inexorably from the reasons he cites, and yet, we know independently that his conclusion is correct.

Now, in the scenario I’m suggesting, is it fair to regard the guy’s belief that God is out to get him as paranoid or not? How we choose to answer this question reveals a lot about the implicit connections we make between perception and reality, as well as how we evaluate the reasonableness of others’ beliefs.

Suppose we decide to say that this guy’s belief does qualify as paranoid (even though it coincidentally happens to be accurate) on the grounds that any belief that casts God as engaging in personal vendettas is inherently paranoid (not to mention potentially blasphemous). In other words, suppose we say one would have to be paranoid to believe such a thing were possible even if it turned out to be true, because on its surface the belief is so glaringly improbable that no reasonable person would consider it.

If we follow the line of reasoning proposed above, we implicitly assume that the veracity of a claim or belief has no bearing on its reasonableness. What, then, should we use instead as our criteria for determining if a belief is reasonable or not? The temptation is to say we can evaluate a belief as reasonable or not based on the soundness of the reasoning that supports it (which is, after all, literally what we mean when we say a belief is ‘reasonable’). The problem with this approach, however, is that in most cases there isn’t a necessary relationship between a particular conclusion and the reasons that support it. We could easily imagine more than one valid argument for a particular conclusion, and there are no hard and fast standards for evaluating the relative rigor of competing arguments (nor any objective methods for determining the soundness of an argument’s premises). Without going too far afield into a discussion of all the epistemological questions involved, determining that a particular argument is invalid doesn’t necessarily invalidate the argument’s conclusion, if the same conclusion could potentially be reached by other means.

In describing the methods of theoretical science, Einstein once offered an analogy that might be instructive here: Imagine the universe is like a pocket watch, and the theorist has been tasked with describing in detail the inner workings of that pocket watch based only on observations of the hands and face of the watch (that is, without being allowed to remove the back cover of the watch to observe the inner workings directly). Obviously, there are many different ways to configure and assemble the mechanical components of a watch to achieve results consistent with observation of the watch-face. To some extent, all beliefs and arguments operate according to the same principles. Whatever reasons we might supply for our beliefs, the likely underlying reason we hold onto any particular belief is because we consider it useful for some purpose (in the case of theoretical science, we hold onto beliefs that are useful for making predictions and we reject beliefs that are not; in the case of religious faith, we hold onto beliefs that provide us spiritual comfort and reject those that do not).

Which brings me back to a modified version of my original question: Is it possible that certain beliefs, true or not, are inherently unhealthy because they can only be reached via unhealthy processes of reasoning? It’s hard to imagine anyone explicitly arguing for this position, and yet, it’s a position we seem to routinely assume in our day-to-day discussions—for example, when we dismiss a disagreeable comment with a glib sentiment like ‘you’d have to be crazy to believe that’ or ‘that’s just too absurd on the face of it.’ The implication is that some ideas are too dangerous or pointless even to consider, which comes uncomfortably close to the logic of totalitarianism.

An even more disturbing aspect of all the recent anti-‘conspiracy theory’ talk is that its effect has been to marginalize and/or politicize the very concept of a conspiracy. The term ‘conspiracy theory’ is now commonly used to dismiss any theory deemed as implausibly sinister or over-elaborate. Diluting the meaning of the term ‘conspiracy’ in this way is extremely dangerous, because it deprives us of meaningful terminology for describing a very real phenomenon: Remember, despite all the comforting suggestions to the contrary, criminal conspiracies actually do happen. That’s why we have laws against conspiracy. There’s nothing de facto ‘paranoid’ about entertaining the possibility of a conspiracy. The term ‘conspiracy’ signifies nothing more sinister or implausible than the possibility that multiple people were involved in the commission of a crime or unethical act.

Consider the following example from a NY Times article about recent revelations regarding Enron’s manipulation of energy supplies during the so-called “California Energy Crisis” (which just happened to coincide with Bush’s appeal to the public to support his administration’s controversial and extremely industry-friendly energy policies):

‘Company officials had long denied that they illegally shut down plants to create artificial shortages. In March 2001—two months after the recording showed how the Nevada plant was shut down—Mr. Lay called any claims of market manipulation "conspiracy theories."’

The NY Times’ article from which this quote derives discusses the discovery of yet another audio recording confirming that, indeed, Enron employees did engage in a conspiracy to manipulate energy prices (see original article here for details: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04energy.html).

At the time, the fact that President Bush and Vice President Cheney both had close ties to Ken Lay and Enron, combined with the timing of the California energy shortages (and the fact that Bush and his ideological comrades make no secret of their irrational contempt for California, which they derisively call the “left-coast”), led many critics of the Bush administration to allege that the administration was actively conspiring with the energy industry to manufacture a crisis to bolster up the case for its new energy policies. Now that substantial parts of these claims are being borne out, it’s likely only a matter of time before further information emerges to implicate the Bush administration directly in the Enron conspiracy (and it’s a good bet that the smoking gun will be found somewhere among the confidential energy policy papers that Cheney still refuses to grant public access to).

So far, there’s been a lot of resistance to accusations that the Bush administration may have played some role in the Enron conspiracy. And here again is where it becomes important to think seriously about how we evaluate the reasonableness of our beliefs. Is it inherently paranoid to think that a sitting President of the United States could be involved in criminal conspiracy? Obviously, it’s not, since there’s ample historical precedent for such beliefs. History, however, doesn’t provide many previous examples of the situation America finds itself in today, in which a sitting President who may be involved in serious criminal activity has managed to concentrate enough power in the office of the Presidency to become all but unassailable.

Which leads me to a final thought: Maybe the reason we’re so quick to accept the casual dismissal of ‘conspiracy theories’ isn’t because we regard all these theories as unreasonable at all. Maybe our willingness to dismiss legitimate questions concerning the conduct of our leaders is motivated by a deep psychological need to be able to trust our authority figures in light of the profound cultural anxiety left in the after-math of the 9/11 attacks.

Maybe accepting the possibility that our leaders could be capable of the wholesale opportunism and moral bankruptcy some have suggested would cause far too much damage to our national psyche, and we’re better off living under the comforting illusion that our leaders couldn’t possibly sink to such depths of deceit and greed.

Or maybe, like responsible adults, we could try facing up to the less convenient realities of democratic citizenship, and recommit ourselves to the difficult but vital responsibilities of carefully examining our political beliefs based on all available information, and working together to arrive at solutions to the real problems confronting our nation, instead of looking at politics as a high-stakes sporting event or an opportunity to present ourselves as morally superior to others.

For now, the choice may still be ours to make; but if we wait much longer, the choice could be out of our hands completely.

Essential Links

2005-02-03T14:27:00.000-08:00

The following are links to recent news items that seem to have mostly escaped notice with all the media-fanfare surrounding the Iraq elections. (There seems to be an awful lot of self-congratulating going around in certain circles for having pulled off an "election" in which the "voters" never even knew the names of the candidates they were voting for. But then I'm probably just being a perfectionist; and to be fair, it's awfully easy to sit on the sidelines and call something a sham when it probably is)...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/national/26seizure.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58298-2005Feb2.html
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1431

Liberals vs. Conservatives

2005-01-29T16:34:00.000-08:00

There’s so much bad information floating around these days that it can be hard to know what’s what. We live in confusing times, especially where politics are concerned. There are a lot of special interests with extreme political views out there, and there are also a lot of political opportunists out there trying to hop aboard the seemingly unstoppable gravy train of George W. Bush’s self-proclaimed right-wing revolution, jostling over which newly-created Homeland Security fiefdom they get to claim for themselves.

So I wanted to take a little time out from waging the culture wars for a brief, rational discussion of the etymology of the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative.’ This is one of those things people are always getting wrong when they talk politics, creating a lot of unnecessary hostility and confusion in the process, and I think it’s time we all finally got on the same page.

Now, I’m about to do one of those intellectually lazy things hack-writers often do and consult a dictionary for definitions of these words. But don’t worry: I happen to have a very good dictionary: A red, leatherette volume I got as a high school graduation gift from a friend’s mother, who was a teacher. It’s called the ‘Webster New World Dictionary,’ third college edition, and it defines all the swear words too, so you know it’s good.

Anyway, for the term ‘liberal,’ this excellent dictionary of mine offers the following meanings (and remember, when a dictionary offers more than one meaning for a word, that’s not to say that it means all of those things every time it’s used; it just means the word can mean one thing in a particular context, and another thing in a different one; this might sound like a minor point, but it’s actually critical to a proper understanding of what causes so much of the confusion):

1. Giving freely; generous.
2. Large or plentiful; ample; abundant.
3. Not restricted to the literal meaning; not strict.
4. Tolerant of views differing from one’s own; broad-minded; specifically, not orthodox.
5. Favoring reform or progress, as in religion, education, etc; specifically, favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual; progressive.
6. Excessively free or indecorous in behavior; licentious.

And for ‘conservative,’ my magnificent specimen of a dictionary offers the following:

1. Tending to preserve established traditions or institutions and to resist or oppose any changes in these.
2. Moderate; cautious; safe.

With so many potentially different meanings, depending on context, it’s no wonder there’s so much confusion about the term ‘liberal.’ But then, even the relatively simple term ‘conservative’ is frequently misused. Why is that?

These days, it’s not uncommon to hear self-styled ‘conservative commentators’ (radio talk show hosts and their milieu) bemoaning how ‘the liberals believe this’ and ‘the liberals believe that,’ and so on. Over time, most of us have come to take it for granted that the word ‘liberal’ is really just code for Democrats (in particular, Democrats with communist leanings), and indeed, this is increasingly how the word is used in the partisan political discourse of the day.

But in reality, the term ‘liberal’ has only very recently—and somewhat dishonestly—been applied as a term of approbation for a particular political party or ideology. For you see, in the real world (as opposed to the world of political spin doctors and media pundits), the term ‘liberal,’ like the term ‘conservative,’ can apply with equal legitimacy to either Republicans or Democrats. Properly understood in its political context, the term ‘liberal’ means something like ‘inclined towards sweeping systematic change’—a liberal, in other words, is any kind of reformer.

Republicans and Democrats alike can be liberals. And Republicans and Democrats alike can be conservatives. This has always been well understood until recently, when an epidemic of partisan fever seems to have swept through America, leaving behind a dark cloud of semantic confusion. Defining the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ in non-party specific terms is not historical revisionism or some other form of rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Every dictionary ever printed defines them in this way. Don’t believe me? Go look them up for yourself (if you want to be absolutely certain there’s no ‘liberal’ chicanery at work, use a dictionary published prior to the social upheavals of the 1960s).

It is categorically inaccurate to equate the Republican Party with conservatism and the Democratic Party with liberalism; pundits and commentators who continue to do so are either stubbornly refusing to use these words properly out of spite or are intentionally distorting their meanings to further their own personal agendas.

Need more evidence? Consider the fact that American Conservative magazine—literally the magazine that helped begin the American conservative movement—endorsed John Kerry, a democrat, in the 2004 presidential election.

For obvious reasons, liberals—that is, people who want to reform the system—can exert a destabilizing influence on society. It’s usually a safe bet that a liberal agenda (an agenda that focuses on changing the system) is a riskier proposition than a conservative one because we know what kind of system we’ve got now, but we don’t always know what kind of system we might end up with if we let someone go monkeying around with things. This, in spite of what some more dogmatic liberals might argue, is perfectly sound thinking.

This is why it’s seldom considered a good idea to have a liberal in the White House during historical periods characterized by war, social unrest or economic insecurity. The last thing a nation confronting external threats or other serious challenges needs is a leader who wants to enact sweeping changes to the system itself for the benefit of small groups of citizens with special needs (although in times of relative peace and prosperity, the merits of liberal policies are a matter for legitimate debate).

The problem with America’s current political situation is this: While President Bush portrays himself as a conservative, he is clearly a liberal—a Republican liberal, yes, but a liberal all the same.

History will remember George W. Bush as a radically pro-business Republican reformer who aggressively pursued the expansion of the scope and powers of the executive branch of America’s federal government even well before the 9/11 attacks.

Since coming to power, the Bush administration has done nothing but seek to weaken existing national regulatory policies in the service of entrenched interests in the defense, energy and pharmaceutical industries. Ironically, many of the measures the Bush administration has dismantled were originally put in place by actual conservatives (Nixon’s Clean Air Act and Reagan’s Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile Ban, to name a couple).

Such a reform-oriented agenda solidly positions President Bush as a liberal Republican, just as Bill Clinton was in many respects a conservative Democrat (although arguably Clinton qualifies as 'liberal' in the sense of definition #6, above, but that doesn't have anything to do with his political sensibilities).

Maybe we should all make an effort to be more careful in how we use these and other common terms of discussion in the future. If we are, we may be able to avoid a lot of unnecessary confusion, and we may find that the red states, blue states, and all states in between actually have a lot more in common than is often said to be the case (despite the media's endless speculative stories about the red state/blue state divide).

Still Need More Proof of his Greatness?

2005-01-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

For even more evidence of how masterfully the Great Leader leads, see the link below: http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/content/issue19/features/votingfacts.php

You see, unlike mortal men, Great Leaders seize opportunities without hesitation--they take what they want, rather than playing by the "rules" of others. Rules are for bleeding-hearts and whiners; great men have no need for rules, having evolved beyond the need for them in pursuing the purity of their vision.

When the founding fathers spoke of America as a land of "Laws, not of Men" they were referring to the laws of the Great Leader, who is not a man at all, but an earthly representative of God, The Heavenly Leader, Himself.

Anyone who questions the purity of the Great Leader's vision is an atheist, a terrorist or an enemy combatant.

The Great Leader Takes What's Rightfully His

2005-01-27T06:55:00.000-08:00

Further proof of The Great Leader's sheer GREATNESS... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/national/26seizure.html (BTW, this is NOT a permalink, so get it while it's good...) Basically, this looks like part of The Great Leader 's energy policy--acquiring new economical sources of petroleum from places like Pennsylvania and the arctic wildlife refuge to reduce our national dependence on imports from the middle east. Remember those rolling blackouts in California caused by the energy shortages? Right before Enron collapsed because of corruption completely unrelated to the Great Leader? It's obvious we need to get more power from somewhere. I vote we take Canada's next.

The Great Leader (Or: Why I Stand with George “Dubbya” Bush)

2005-01-20T08:38:00.000-08:00

At this crucial time in American history, with Bush’s inauguration recently concluded, I would like to take an opportunity to sound off on a few of the reasons I personally stand behind America’s visionary leader and commander-in-chief, President George “Dubbya” Bush. And since it just isn’t practical to enumerate all the myriad reasons for this eminently logical choice (there being far too many!), I’ve decided to distill the bases for my loyalty to Bush down to a few key points—key points that make the case so well by themselves that they require none of the long-winded qualifications or belabored analytical tortures so common among the nattering nabobs of negativity that comprise the liberal elite.

In order of relative importance, the following are my five primary reasons for supporting George “Dubbya” Bush, despite the flurry of unwarranted controversy that has swirled around his Presidency from the outset.

Bush’s Leadership “Style” Is Steadfast and Unwavering. It’s a point too often glossed over by those who don’t recognize real leadership when they see it: Bush cannot be swayed from a chosen course of action, under any circumstances. Even when new information emerges, he acts as though nothing’s changed. This sort of unflinching resolve is an essential trait that all truly great leaders in history share. Consider Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Adolph Hitler, and Kim Jong-IL. When confronted with new realities that don’t conform to their preconceptions, Great Leaders ignore them. (Recent examples of Bush’s iron resolve include: Discounting the failure to find WMDs in Iraq as irrelevant; insisting that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to a theoretical war declared on an abstraction, no matter how many real-world casualties are incurred; refusing to concede that massive tax cuts for the wealthy are a lousy way to fund a campaign of perpetual warfare.) This is what strong, visionary men do: They charge brashly forward to wherever it is their fleeting whims lead them, and they take the world along with them. That’s why they’re called “leaders”—because they lead. It stands to reason, then, that the strongest leaders are those who can lead their followers in the most seemingly irrational directions. If people are willing to follow you over the edge of a cliff in complete defiance of reason, then you must be a strong leader, right? Wouldn’t you have to be? Well, that’s exactly the kind of leader “Dubbya” is. His iron-will should be an inspiration to us all. The shrieking critics of the Bush administration will no doubt point out that, in fact, Bush has wavered—if not made a complete about-face—on a wide range of national policy issues, from universal healthcare to American intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations. But these objections miss the point: It’s not Bush’s actions as a leader that matter, nor even the consequences of his actions. It’s the style of his leadership. Through it all, the style of Bush’s leadership has been unwavering: He remains blustering and confident—even defiant—in the face of his many critics. And why shouldn’t he? God sent him to do this job.

Bush Doesn’t Tolerate Disloyalty. It has been widely touted in the press that Bush doesn’t cotton to people disagreeing with him publicly (nor perhaps even privately, according to some). Well, why should he? He’s the leader, is he not? Leaders who tolerate dissension within their ranks are destined for ignominy. Great Leaders, on the other hand, insist on absolute obedience and unquestioning loyalty. As a result of Bush’s insistence on fealty, there’s been a lot of staff turnover during his first term as President. From the EPA to the CIA, major staffing changes have proven inevitable as Bush stridently pursues his visionary agenda for America. But it’s a telling point that, despite all the controversy surrounding their departures, not one of the administration’s departing personnel has gone on the record to speak out critically of the President or his policies after the fact. Why? Because they know they’ll suffer even graver consequences if they do (a dearth of future employment opportunities, say, or getting their relatives outed as CIA operatives). Bush understands the value of instilling fear in one’s underlings and of teaching them respect for their betters. That’s one of the marks of a Great Leader.

Bush Sets Clear Goals for America’s Future. Unlike his opponent (who’s name I won’t even mention), Bush understands the importance of pursuing clear, unambiguous objectives in American foreign and domestic policy. Time after time, he has described America’s new role in the world in unequivocal and ideologically stark terms: America must fight Evil wherever in the world it’s found. What mission statement could be clearer than that? We all know what Evil is, right? It’s the Enemy, and the Enemy hates our Freedom. And we all know where to find the Enemy, don’t we? Of course we do: Everywhere. Meanwhile, Bush’s adversaries don’t even come close to formulating such a clear agenda for America’s future. They ramble on endlessly about petty little details, splitting hairs over such irrelevant details as whether or not Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, when we all know such questions miss the point. THEY did it. All of them did. We’ve got to teach them all a lesson. What would we do without a leader who can so clearly articulate the threat posed by the nameless, faceless menace who awaits us on the plains of Armageddon?

Bush Lies. Recent anthropological research has demonstrated that the natural leaders among us commonly tend to be those individuals who can best lie with a straight face. Study after study has borne out this simple fact: The better a liar the individual is, the more likely we are to entrust him or her with a leadership role. If natural leaders tend to be better liars, then it couldn’t be any clearer that Bush is a natural leader. His skillful manipulations and distortions are just further evidence of the divine providence of his leadership. What Bush recognizes that so many lesser statesmen fail to grasp is this: If we truly hope to give the Enemy a real fight, we must play by the Enemy’s rules. The struggle to defend American freedom is too vital to allow quibbling over minor ethical concerns (like international standards of justice or American civil liberties). The President of the United States can’t be fettered by the meddlesome machinations of international governing and regulatory bodies, much less those pinkos from the NAACP and ACLU. Occasionally, even the leader of the free world has to hide a few bodies from the Red Cross. Such is the degree of authority and autonomy we routinely grant to even the paltriest of tin-penny dictators. As the leader of the free world, isn’t Bush entitled to take just as many liberties with the truth as the Enemy he opposes? How else are we supposed to win this war! The Enemy doesn’t hesitate to lie when it suits his darker purposes. If we demand complete honesty from America’s leaders, we put them at a dangerous disadvantage. Critics might respond: Yes, but what does lying about his National Guard service or accusing a highly-decorated war hero of having come by his combat medals dishonestly have to do with protecting the public from the Enemy? It’s simple. Sometimes the public needs to be misinformed, because we can’t always handle the truth. It is in our best interests to ensure that Bush has the authority he needs to lead America in whatever direction he sees fit at the time. Great Leaders don’t hesitate to help us stay comfortably deluded if it’s in our best interests, and George “Dubbya” Bush, more than any previous figure in American politics, embraces this profoundest of leadership principles: To lie is to lead.

Bush Truly Understands Freedom of Speech. As we all know, Freedom knows no bounds. Moreover, to speak of Freedom is to speak of that which constitutes the most sacred covenant between America and its fearsome, vengeful God. We all know that Freedom of Speech is a constitutionally protected right, but unfortunately, too few of us truly understand the nature of this right we so often take for granted. As few men besides Bush have the penetrating insight to comprehend, Freedom of Speech is not about the freedom to say whatever you please. It’s about the freedom to speak at length about the virtues of Freedom. In Freedom-hating parts of the world, such speech is strictly prohibited. In Taliban controlled Afghanistan, for example, innocent women and children’s tongues were routinely cut from their mouths for the mere offense of speaking the name of Freedom. This is why we cannot tolerate unpatriotic speech or other forms of subversive expression (like homosexuality and hip-hop culture). Malicious or careless speech that undermines support for America in the trying times ahead cannot fail but threaten our cherished Freedom of Speech—or to put it another way, to jeopardize our very freedom to speak of Freedom!—and then what could possibly remain of that white-hot spark of Liberty from whence the wildfire of American Democracy originally sprung forth? As Abraham Lincoln so eloquently intoned in the closing lines of the Gettysburg Address: “Gentlemen, freedom is not free. Amen.”