Conservative Values

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Since our founding, a society constituted of the market and a government capable of enforcing the rule of law has done more to lift up the human condition from poverty than any other system in the history of the world.  The United States is exceptional.  Among capitalistic democracies, the United States exemplifies the liberal version.  The social democratic regime is found in the Nordic countries and the conservative regimes are found in Catholic countries.

John Maynard Keynes died in 1946.  He said that in the long term we are all dead.  He was brilliant.  His book suggested fiscal tools for managing the economy and categories of analysis that influenced economic policy and analysis for decades.

Frederick August von Hayek (1899 – 1992) became a professor at the London School of Economics in 1931 and a leading critic of Keynes.  Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan recognized the importance of coordinating function of the market.  Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom (1944) while living in Cambridge.  He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974.

Good conservative values means supporting the United States version of democratic capitalism before Obama.

Incomplete Late Breaking News

CNN could have really helped its brand by saying, "We regret that our initial report, which was accurate in specific content, was stated in such a way that some misunderstood it, and we are sorry that we did not make clear immediately that Dr. Carson was not suspending his campaign."

http://www.onenewsnow.com/perspectives/michael-brown/2016/02/05/cnns-hypocrisy-exposed

The first Amendment does not make journalists arbitrators of the truth.  I am addicted to the old real CNN.

In many situations, particularly legal shows, people swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If any organization should know that the early reports prove later to be wrong, it is CNN.

CNN is not without sin.

Late Breaking News

Truth is not relative.

A belief is true if it matches the way the world is.  If two people disagree, it can’t be that both are right—that what each believes is “true for them.”  Academics currently say, “To prevail in a debate, an opinion must be informed by the relevant facts and based on sound reasoning.”

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-big-questions-of-philosophy.html

The Master Speaks

The government of the United States was developed under the idea that nobody knew how to make a government, or how to govern.

The result is to invent a system to govern when you don't know how. And the way to arrange it is to permit a system, like we have, wherein new ideas can be developed and tried out and thrown away.

The writers of the Constitution knew of the value of doubt. In the age that they lived, for instance, science had already developed far enough to show the possibilities and potentialities that are the result of having uncertainty, the value of having the openness of possibility.

The fact that you are not sure means that it is possible that there is another way some day. That openness of possibility is an opportunity. Doubt and discussion are essential to progress. 

The United States government, in that respect, is new, it's modern, and it is scientific.

It is all messed up, too. Senators sell their votes for a dam in their state and discussions get all excited and lobbying replaces the minority's chance to represent itself, and so forth.

The government of the United States is not very good, but it, with the possible exception the government of England, is the greatest government on the earth today, is the most satisfactory, the most modern, but not very good.

--Richard P. Feynman in The Meaning of it All  [A single paragraph in the master's book.]

Who is Alive because the French President Attended the Soccer Game

It is apparent from CNN coverage of the November 13, 2015, events in Paris that

1. there was no security checking at the concert
2. there was at the stadium.

Commentators observed that the terrorists "had done their homework", e.g., had gone through dry runs to check out the security practices.

Given this, the perpetrators had checked out the stadium and found it to be a "soft" target.

Someone challenged a bomber.  That person or persons saved more than one (the President's) life.

That person was almost certainly a casualty.

 

Deterrence Worked

The strategic nuclear people claim that Deterrence Worked.  In this arena, some believed that perception was more important than reality.

The GAO recently gave TSA a failing grade on security at airports.

The last thing we need is a scientific study to determine the probability of finding (or missing) items in our airport scans.

A new device might find something new.

When I was doing my thesis research at Argonne National Laboratory, the word going around the team was there was a mathematics professor at the University of Illinois, who after learning that the probability of a bomb being in someone's luggage was 1 in a million always put a bomb in his luggage so that the probability that there would be another bomb on his plane would be 1 in 10**12.

People have very strange beliefs about probability.

All you people who never plan to fly, talk up how porous our security system is.

I Remember When

Questions at a Presidential News Conference were short.