a long way from Pittsburgh

In the days after Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked and crashed four commercial jetliners on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without warrants, on American citizens and foreign nationals within the United States. His action represented the biggest shift in U.S. intelligence gathering in American history. But the true architect of that secret program, code-named Stellarwind, was a former Air Force intelligence officer who’d been picked to run the NSA two years earlier: General Michael Vincent Hayden. What a long way from Pittsburgh, where Hayden was born in 1945. His youth was western Pennsylvania through and through: Dad was a welder, and the family lived for Sundays, when they would attend mass and Steelers games. In college at Duquesne University, Hayden even worked at the Steelers’ summer training camp to help pay his tuition. He studied history, joined ROTC and started active duty in the Air Force in 1969.

A registered Independent with no political background, Hayden came up through the ranks of Air Force intelligence, and in 1999 President Bill Clinton selected him to run that secretive organization nicknamed No Such Agency. When Hayden arrived, he found the NSA struggling to keep up with the technological tide. Two years later, 9/11 jolted him into unprecedented action, and he implemented rapid, transformational measures. Hayden’s Stellarwind program circumvented the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and even went beyond the authority of the Patriot Act passed by Congress.

After The New York Times exposed the operation in 2005, Hayden still moved forward—but another, more damaging exposure lay ahead. Bush made him principal deputy director of National Intelligence and then promoted him to director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006. Hayden’s new position as top spy coincided with another CIA hire: Edward Snowden. The then 23-year-old computer tech later went to work for two NSA contractors, and in 2013 Snowden released confidential information on the spy program established by Hayden. The resulting firestorm implicated both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Today, General Michael Vincent Hayden is recovering from a stroke which came out of nowhere.  It happened on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving 2018.

CNN National Security Analyst Michael Hayden, a retired four-star US Air Force general, formerly headed the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. His daughter-in-law, Jessica Powley Hayden, helped him to focus his thoughts and put them on paper. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own; view more opinion at CNN.

The issue of The Economist about CONSERVATISM

Charles Krauthammer said he thought worst mistake conservatives made was abandoning the academy.  Worldly Philosophers taught that economists who never leave the academy never loose "their stupidities of youth."

Myron Lynn Good (possibly quoting Winston Churchill) said, If you aren't a liberal when you are young, you have no heart; if you aren't a conservative when you are old, you have no head.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. (See Jay W. Forrester paper.)

Your Only Halley’s
75 years; once in a lifetime

The timescale for the helix.  Technology allows living conditions to improve.

Dr. Brown, my father-in-law, blamed the French for Secular Humanism.

The US Army has lots of liaison officers - an Army person with whom to communicate.

p.9 says "Like classical liberalism, conservatism is a child of the Enlightment."

My political leanings draw upon my my family background, my exeriences, my teachings, and my readings.  A couple of Halley's removed from the US Civil War.

My experinces include reviewing drafts of https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Can-Happen-Christ-Science/dp/1481168126/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376295353&sr=1-1

When I checked (just now) you could be the first to review this book.

Dr. Brown and I had "the system view" in common.

Last night I tried to relocate the 4th line from the bottom of p. 9 and did not.  On the line it say, "For classical liberals, like this newspaper,".  3 lines below, begins "Both reject the Utopian impulse to find a government solution for every wrong. Both resist state planning and high taxes."

We left the DC Area in 1997 in part because I believed Newt Gingrich would be Speaker of the House after we got rid of Slick Willy in the next Presidential election.  At the time, I couldn't stand the sound of Newt's voice.

Newt is very good thinking government solutions which require less money from the taxpayers.  That means Big Brother can be involved in more of your life.

On p. 10, "Conservatism tempers liberal zeal;..."  My major professor at Wisconsin and Charles Krauthammer say age tempers liberal zeal.

p.17 last complete para left column: "Why I am not a conservative", Friedrich Hayek - I agree with all of the Hayek I understand.

top of middle column:  the nicely turned phrase of Roger Scruton, a British conservative writer, "as a hesitation within liberalism" over the French Revoution.

I had a deficit in my understanding of the French.  The first course [Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida] by Lawrence Cahoone addressed that need.  No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life by Robert C. Solomon
filled that need.

Middle column next para: "Much of what is best in later was built on Burke's response: his scepticism about radical change and his belief, human nature being what it is, the passions of the people must be checked by authority and good judgment. Liberals - including Hayek - often felt that new order would spring into being spontaneously from new freedoms.

I guess the Bushs are liberals.

later in the column:

(1797) by Joseph de Maistre

RH column:  it reads like the work of an 18th-century Rush Limbaugh.

Bottom of column:  It did not need ideological commitments to small government or balanced budgets.

I guess "it" is conservatism.  Maybe that is when I became a liberal.

JFK was a Roman Catholic.  So is Donald J. Trump.

I think a nobel prize went to The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
Gosta Esping-Andersen (1990)
in Cambridge: Polity Press, pg. 9-54

The USA wins with Italy on family and religion.

p. 18 left column

"resentment against 'elites'--notably, in Europe,those in Brussels -- and 'others' ....In France the ...

Middle column:

"France's Gaullists, ...,have been torn apart by a new liberal party, ...

In 1977, France did not participate in NATO's Military Council.  The WWII de Gaul was President/Premier.

Mid-column:

One thing all these movements share a devotion to pride

I have negative feelings for the emotion pride.  A fellow last Sunday he was proud of our church.  I would be likely to say, "I'm thankful for our church."

Terry Oswalt and I chose Neil de Grasse Tyson as our favorite Great Courses professor.  I remember we were taken aback by his pride in the first lecture we heard.

"Conservatives have respect for a universal human nature;"    See my October 2010 blog about human nature.

Indicators that I am a liberal:

I like Hayek.
I don't like Burke.
I don't like pride.
I learned that "human nature" leads you to do the Christian thing early.
It took me a long time to recognize "that the road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions" although the evidence is obvious.

Dear Progressive from Chicago

You mentioned that you taught music in Chicago for several years.  I thought if God couldn't teach the foolishness of Progressive ways in Chicago I had no hope in SW MO.

Several things have caused me to rethink my World View.  I think it is most concisely stated as “The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

I consider the justification for this worldview to follow naturally from two scientific/technical papers.

 The first is an article which appeared in the December 13, 1968, issue of Science Magazine by Garrett Hardin.  This article was a part of a movement creating Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The second is an article which appeared in MIT’s Technology Review “The Counter-intuitive Behavior of Social Systems” by Jay W. Forrester the founder of Systems Dynamics at MIT.

The first paper is known to everybody.  I was shocked to learn the limited availability of the second.  I saw it in MIT’s Technology Review.  The citation for the article is

Jay W. Forrester, "Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems", 
Technology Review, Vol. 73, No. 3, Jan. 1971, pp. 52-68.

Professor Forrester had a long and distinguished career at MIT.  In 1956, Forrester moved to the MIT Sloan School of Management where he is currently Germeshausen Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer. In 1961, he wrote about the expanding effects down the supply chains due to fluctuations in demand, thenceforth known as the "Forrester effect" or Bull whip effect.   In 1982, he received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award.  In 1995, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his perfecting of core memory technology into a practical computer memory device; for fundamental contributions to early computer systems design and development. In 2006, he was inducted into the Operational Research Hall of Fame.

Forrester is the founder of system dynamics which deals with the simulation of interactions between objects in dynamic systems. Industrial Dynamics was the first book Forrester wrote using system dynamics to analyze industrial business cycles. Several years later, interactions with former Boston Mayor John F. Collins led Forrester to write Urban Dynamics, which sparked an ongoing debate on the feasibility of modeling broader social problems.

The urban dynamics model attracted the attention of urban planners around the world, eventually leading Forrester to meet a founder of the Club of Rome. He later met with the Club of Rome to discuss issues surrounding global sustainability; the book World Dynamics followed. World  Dynamics took on modeling the complex interactions of the world economy, population and ecology, which understandably met with much misunderstanding (see also Donella Meadows  and Limits to Growth).

 Forrester has written several books, articles and papers. Books, a selection:

·         1961. Industrial dynamics. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications.

·         1968. Principles of Systems, 2nd ed. Pegasus Communications.

·         1969. Urban Dynamics. Pegasus Communications.

·         1971. World Dynamics. Wright-Allen Press.

·         1975. Collected Papers of Jay W. Forrester. Pegasus Communications.

Articles and papers, a selection:

·         1958. "Industrial Dynamics--A Major Breakthrough for Decision Makers.", in: Harvard Business Review, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 37–66.

·         1968, Market Growth as Influenced by Capital Investment.

·         1971, Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems. Also available online.

·         1989, System Dynamics and the Lessons of 35 Years.

·         1991, The Beginning of System Dynamics.

·         1992, System Dynamics and Learner-Centered-Learning in Kindergarten through 12th Grade Education.

·         1994, Learning through Systems Dynamics as preparation for the 21st Century.

·         1996, System Dynamics and K–12 Teachers.

·         1998, Designing the Future.

·         1999, System Dynamics: the Foundation Under Systems Thinking.

A fellow graduate student at Wisconsin, Gerald O. Barney, went on to work for the Center for Naval Analyses and took a sabbatical at MIT.  The good Chinese leader learned about the methodology. Democratic Capitalists believe in Free Markets.

Both groups know of the counter-intuitive behavior of social systems