Why is the country in a state of disarray? Why do our systems not work? In The World is Stupid-You Can't Fix It! author Claude Roessiger examines the major issues plaguing the United States today and proposes solutions to some of the ills.
From the origins of man's society to windmills and boorish manners, Roessiger discusses a wide range of public policy issues-social democracy; drug, alcohol, and sexual policies; education; economics; technology; government spending; and government size. His inquiry ranges far, cuts incisively, and gives no quarter. In The World is Stupid-You Can't Fix It! he delves into a range of questions:
- Does the populace understand that a major portion of public spending is waste? Is anyone truly incensed?
- Was the Spirit of '76 no more than a fl ash in the pan?
- Can men preserve liberty?
- Was man made for liberty?
Roessiger admits that the questions are difficult to ask and the answers even more difficult to discern. But they are important to discuss because for free people to remain free, they must be capable of rational argumentation and dialogue.
The World is Stupid—You Can't Fix It!
But Could Something Be Done?By Claude RoessigeriUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Claude Roessiger
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-7667-2Chapter One
A Tale Told by an Idiot
If we squint our eyes and peer back to an ancient plain beneath an ancient sun, if we imagine our ancestors thereupon, massed and brutish and fearful, if we see these inchoate men through the hot dust lifted by their tramping feet, it is difficult not to also see the one before them, leading them—their leader. And therein is the tale.
Who is this leader we seem so to need and far too often to revere? This hero of epics, this victor in war, this giver of law, this tyrant, this murderer? And what is the stuff of those who follow—the followers, the people, the mass, the dumb herd? Is this ancient story not a curious and painful tale?
If we are saved, if we are to be saved, if man is somehow more than a brutish beast of no account led by a handful of alpha creatures, we can find optimism only in a divine spark. Let us hope for it and pray for it. Without it, the denouement is too awful to contemplate. I speak practically, not religiously.
The inspiration—for such it was, sudden and complete—for this book arose in a single moment when thoughts accumulated over a lifetime coalesced. A window opened upon a broad field whereupon all of the elements stood ordered and interconnected. Do not mistake me: I refer not to a vision, or anything like it. No! Rather, a puzzle whose disjointed pieces have long been left on the table unassembled, and to which the solution is of a sudden seen. Call it a moment of insight, the eureka moment that is now increasingly understood as a very real phenomenon.
What were the pieces of this puzzle? Many. But at the core was always the existence of a masterpiece, a keystone, and that broadly speaking the essence of it was liberty and man, perhaps—not necessarily religiously—the soul of man. The question was and is "Can man be man without liberty?" We tilt toward philosophy with such a query, but we will not enter upon philosophy's province even if our pursuit leads to philosophical considerations. The questions we shall pose do not have easy, ready answers. We must think deeply. Do other pieces to the puzzle exist? Oh, sure. Can man be free? Does man want to be free? Does it matter?
We have learned that somehow the progression of Western thought led man from the dark cavern of the ancient world, where a man was no more than a beast of modest value, undifferentiated from the mass of men, to the modern world, where enlightenment made each man precious in his own right ... and a beast of modest value, undifferentiated from the mass of men. What changed? What did not?
We will leave the epistemological questions to the great thinkers; it was probably in the nature of things that their questions would lead to answers that are in fact only further queries, the unknown leading to the unknowable. Instead we will consider how the world may be stupid, and why we cannot fix it. This would seem a pessimistic thesis. In a way, it is. But it is more than that. To have any hope of curing a disease, one must first understand its nature. No matter how awful the ill, it must be examined, palpated, smelled, and—yes—sometimes contracted before we can hope to conquer it. It's a journey we shall take together.
We will begin with the nature of society's organization, which is after all in the nature of man. We have all learned at some time one of those platitudes that glide by us as we gaze numbly out of a classroom window, that man is a social animal. Well, he is, isn't he? With the exception of a few hermits—inevitably the butt of jokes that betray our suspicion of solitude—we gather in societies. It may be that we have some need for each other's company, to view the social animal through one lens, or it may be that we gather for protection, as a school of fish, to view it through another lens. Which is true? It matters, even if our common-sense experience suggests to us that it's some of both.
Various theories explain the origin of government. The political theorist Mancur Olson elaborated the theory of the "stationary bandit." It runs this way: Man as a solitary creature found himself vulnerable. He banded into groups. One among the group was brighter, swifter, stronger, better looking, or what have you, and became the group leader. Capable leaders were more successful than less capable ones, and groups led by capable leaders became tribes. At the time man was a hunter- gatherer, so the tribe that hunted and gathered more successfully became larger. Those who did a bad job were sent to extinction without passing Go. Those who managed to survive joined a more successful tribe. Success, then as now, was defined by the accretion of goods: food, shelter, utilitarian things, pretty things, women. This led to plunder. In fact, in Mancur Olson's words, the successful hunting group became "roving bandits." And they were ordinarily led by a stronger leader, a roving bandit himself. As the basic necessities became reasonably assured for the group, and as some sort of division of labor and good organization liberated some time for mischievous pursuits, the roving bandit's eye fell increasingly upon trinkets and nubile creatures, suggesting the need for a place to keep the newfound booty. Ah! A tent, a hut, a house, a manor, a castle, a walled town, and—presto—the roving bandit parked the horse and became a stationary bandit.
It doesn't take a bridge of much account to understand that the stationary band it is what we call government. The instincts of government are those of a thief and a tyrant, and a man who wants to be free is left to defend himself against—let's be clear, historically this means to kill—the stationary bandit. Not so easy. The stationary bandit has an elaborate security apparatus designed to protect him against exactly this eventuality, but another fact remains: his slaves prefer to be slaves. Shocking? Let us continue, for herein is the essence of our inquiry: if the world is stupid and it cannot be fixed, it's because the component parts somehow aren't right. The component parts are human beings. An even cursory study of history supports this view, however antithetical it seems to us: man has spent most of his existence on this planet as a slave, a subject, a serf, a brutish beast led by a small number of strong leaders, sometimes led unwillingly but far more tragically and frequently led willingly. The times—indeed they are hardly even moments but only instants—of enlightenment and grace are few, so few that one can count them upon a single hand, whereas those of oppression and darkness require the gathered hands of us all to fairly count them ... and even then one will want for fingers. Oppression and darkness are the natural state of man.
In the Western world, we are or think of ourselves as, terrible evidence to the contrary aside, children of the Enlightenment. Well, not so fast. In what someone called the terrible twentieth century, more men killed other men than in any other century in history. Enlightenment? There was a distinction between us and previous incarnations of humanity, it's true: some of us were horrified. In classical times no one gave mass slaughter any particular thought; our ancient brethren were more realistic than we and considered it the way of the world, the spoil of the victor, the right of the...
