ABOUT THIS BLOG
Let’s Sort Some Things Out is my attempt to expose and dispel flawed assumptions, false factual claims, faulty logic, and destructive values commentators use to advance harmful ideas concerning culture or public policy. Unless a commentator reveals otherwise, I assume that the commentator is proceeding in good faith (most likely in error because of indoctrination into a faulty or malevolent ideology). My impression is that all too often, people believe falsehoods and take firm stances on extremely complicated issues based on a combination of too few facts, lack of logic, and counterproductive values. When they propose a solution, they too rarely consider what Thomas Sowell says is the quintessential question concerning any policy, “At what cost?” I hope this blog expands people’s (including my own) perspectives and brings more clarity to thinking about culture and public policy.
Claims in this blog will be made with humility. I understand that I may be missing relevant facts and essential considerations or making logical errors. I welcome others pointing those out. Only fools believe they can possess all essential facts concerning any cultural or public policy issue, their values, goals, findings, and conclusions are flawless, unbiased, and indisputable, or their policy prescriptions would necessarily achieve the intended consequences without creating more significant negative consequences. For such arrogance to be justified, one would need to be omniscient, super-intelligent (intelligent far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds), and “super-wise” (to coin a term). Far from being omniscient or super-wise, no one can possess perfect and complete knowledge about the facts he has identified or know he has identified all the significant facts relevant to a policy. Worse, one cannot rule out the possibility that the sum of all relevant but insignificant facts affecting a policy will overwhelm the identified facts. In light of the above, anything other than humility about one’s policy prescriptions is foolish and irresponsible.
However, one should not despair over the above reality. Despite those universal and timeless realities, humans have progressed. Proof of that can be found in my blog post Greed, in which I describe why few, if any, people today would trade places with John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in modern history (at least as of 2017 when I wrote the post).
Likewise, more progress is possible when good policies are adopted. “Good policies” have positive effects that exceed their negative effects. Thankfully, history is replete with examples of both good and bad policies. Policymakers can learn from and hopefully wisely apply the lessons of the past.
Societies, however, should also attempt to improve on good policies of the past. Unfortunately, history reveals that most attempts to improve on good policies fail, i.e., they do more harm than good. The blog contains many examples of that phenomenon.
Disaster almost always follows when policy changes are made on a grand scale (e.g., Lenin’s, Mao’s, and Hugo Chávez’s “Great Leaps Forward”). Disaster can be avoided with multiple and modest policy experiments. Multiple because the more experiments, the greater the likelihood that a net positive policy will be found. Modest because the odds are the experiment will fail, and small failures are not disasters. Successes on a modest scale provide proof of concept for use in multiple places. Through this process, leaders everywhere can take advantage of all net positive discoveries made anywhere in the world — and set about improving on them.
This blog launched soon after President Obama had fulfilled much of his campaign promise to “fundamentally transform America.” While Trump appeared to be better than the Democrat alternative in 2016, Trump’s victory was probably more about how bad his opponent was rather than how good Trump was. [That America’s political system offered the voters two terribly flawed candidates indicates that there is much room for improvement in America’s nominating processes. Yet, here, too, caution is advised in such consequential matters.] The stakes were high that America was on a course to have another go at socialism, a failed idea that fails every time it is tried, often in disastrous or monstrous ways. Many of the posts in this blog touch on that subject, and more are to come. It was and remains my hope that I do my part to avoid that and other calamitous policies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I grew up in a very liberal family that was very politically active. My mother had a political science degree and a master’s degree in Liberal Studies. She was a civil employee for the Air Force her entire career, and most of my dad’s career was working for the State of Oklahoma as an attorney general and the Oil & Gas Legal Counsel for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. They were caring and good people. I suspect that is true of most rank-and-file government employees. I suppose the opposite of the top levels of the administrative state, a.k.a. the Deep State. My family’s interest in politics was heightened by my cousin’s grandfather being a Democrat Oklahoma Senator. As a young boy, I rode in my dad’s station wagon, on top of which he mounted a loudspeaker that he drove around town urging people to vote for Democrats. When I was older, I rode in the back seat of my dad’s plane as he flew the state’s Democrat attorney general around the state during his campaigns. I earned a political science degree from OU and a law degree from OU’s College of Law. I don’t recall meeting anyone back then who was more liberal than I was. After a few years as a lawyer for corporations, I discovered that there was little resemblance between reality and what I learned about the malfeasance of corporations and the benevolence of government. In short, I realized that I had been bamboozled. Over the last forty years, my primary hobby has been unlearning what my family, education, and the news taught me about government, business, economics, taxation, human nature, and politics work, and how and why I had been so bamboozled. Though my understanding of what policies work and don’t work has changed dramatically, I believe that the government’s job is to adopt policies that enable ordinary citizens to have a decent standard of living if they are honest and apply themselves to the task of taking advantage of the opportunities made available to them.
I earned a degree in Political Science because public policy was (and remains) my primary passion. I was a deeply committed leftist in high school and was further indoctrinated to leftist ideals in college and law school. Obtaining a law degree instead of another degree to make a living was an effort to learn the mechanics of law and how the law might be used to improve the lives of poor and middle-income people.
While experiencing the realities of life and practicing law in a corporate setting for a few years, the belief systems into which I had been indoctrinated were constantly mugged by how things worked and what the public policy issues were (as opposed to what I had been taught). That is when I really started digging deeper into the issues, economics, and history. Through it all, my primary passion to improve the lives of poor and middle-income people has been a constant. The goal of my blog is not to save poor and middle-income people. They can be saved only by doing what they can do for themselves and those around them, thereby gaining both earned dignity, self-sufficiency, and the satisfaction of helping others. This blog aims to disclose the many ideas and policies that impede poor and middle-income people from improving their lives so that society can rid itself of those ideas and policies.
I’m a mostly retired corporate lawyer who was admitted to the bar in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Colorado, and Texas. I’m also the former head of two technology companies, the founder of two non-profit organizations, a blogger, a husband married to my beautiful wife since 1973, a father of two, and a grandfather of five. I’ve been a significant contributor to several non-profit organizations, including Free To Choose Network, Prager U, and Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Mercatus Center. PBS documentaries I’ve funded and advised on include “Walter Williams: Suffer No Fools,” and “Power to the People” If you are curious about my career, see my career experience on LinkedIn.
Concerning my posts about “The Events of Jan 6”: While Trump deserves a defense for many, if not most, of the MSM’s narratives about Trump’s actions or inactions on Jan 6, my purpose here is not to defend Trump. I believe Trump did several crucial things for the country in his first term that no one else would or could have done as well as he did, e.g., waking millions of Americans to the reality that the MSM “news” is mostly fake. Nevertheless, I’m not a Trump fan. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and made many noticeable donations to conservative candidates over the years but not a dime for Trump. I considered checking his box on my 2020 ballot to be a vote against Biden and not for Trump. I will consider my vote for Trump in 2024 to be a vote against the vilification and persecution of Trump by leftists and a vote against leftist totalitarianism. Those posts are about the Disinformers’ misdeeds relating to Jan 6.
HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BLOG
Each blog post addresses a specific topic. However, each topic deals with a piece of what I believe to be a coherent philosophy that, if adopted, would result in the greater flourishing of humans of all income or wealth categories everywhere in the world, especially for poor and middle-income people.
I will reveal another piece of this philosophy with each post. While each post will hopefully be interesting and stand on its own, you will gain the most from this blog if you understand each piece in the context of the whole. Consequently, I urge you to start with the first post, “Wealth,” and proceed from there. Enjoy!