I know I’ve been quoting a lot of Niebuhr lately, but I just can’t get over how much meat is packed into the pages of “The Irony of American History.”

I just finished the book and sat in quiet awe reflecting the final two paragraphs.  Niebuhr is speaking of the enemy of communism, but the enemy of radical Islam could just as easily be inserted.

There is, in short, even in a conflict with a foe with whom we have little in common the possibility and necessity of living in a dimension of meaning in which the urgencies of the struggle are subordinated to a sense of awe before the vastness of the historical drama in which we are jointly involved; to a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us for the resolution of its perplexities; to a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy’s demonry and our vanities; and to a sense of gratitude for the divine mercies which are promised to those who humble themselves.

Strangely enough, none of the insights derived from this faith are finally contradictory to our purpose and duty of preserving our civilization.  They are, in fact, prerequisites for saving it.  For if we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster.  The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.

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Many heated political and philosophical debates, often overheard amongst the noise, music and smoke of the local pub or coffee shop have at their core an unnamed or unrecognized root conflict between the ideals of “individualism” and “collectivism.”

Simply put, should man pursue his self-interests or those of the community?  Liberals tend to assume that “enlightened” individuals find no difference between the two.  Many would argue that it is in your best interest to pursue goals of a wider community.

Conservatives and libertarians tend to fall more on the side of pursuing individual ambition with the idea being that should everyone in society pursue their own self-interest it will magically combine to produce a collective harmony…a rising tide of wealth spring forth.

In, “The Irony of American History” Reinhold Niebuhr explores this question in some depth noting the tension and angst of attempting the dangerous, but delightful work of being an individual in a community.   He says,

The concept of “the value and dignity of the individual” of which our modern culture has made so much is finally meaningful only in a religious dimension.  It is constantly threatened by the same culture which wants to guarantee it.  It is threatened whenever it is assumed that individual desires, hopes and ideals can be fitted with frictionless harmony into the collective purposes of man.  The individual is not discrete.  He cannot find his fulfillment outside of the community; but he also cannot find fulfillment completely within society.  In so far as he finds fulfillment within society he must abate his individual ambitions.  He must “die to self” if he would truly live. In so far as he finds fulfillment beyond every historic community he lives his life in painful tension with even the best community, sometimes achieving standards of conduct with a resolute, “we must obey God rather than man.”  Sometimes he is involved vicariously in the guilt of the community he would fain live a life of innocency.  He will possibly man a bombing plane and suffer the conscience pricks of the damned that the community might survive.

Popularity: 2% [?]

From Andrew Bacevich’s introduction to “The Irony of American History“, by pastor, teacher, theologian and author Reinhold Niebuhr which I started reading yesterday.  Niebuhr writes the following concerning preventive war,

“The idea of preventive war sometimes tempts minds, whose primary preoccupation is the military defense of a nation and who thinks it might be prudent to pick the most propitious moment for the start of what they regard as inevitable hostilities.  But the rest of us must resist such ideas with every moral resource.”

“Nothing in history is inevitable including the probable.  So long as war has not broken out, we still have the possibility of avoiding it.  Those who think that there is little difference between a cold and a hot war are either knaves or fools.”

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As I’m reading my second Boyd biography, “The Mind or War: John Boyd and American Security” by Grant T. Hammond (my first was this),  I’m trying to absorb more of the things that made him an innovator and a leader.  It’s obvious that he was incredibly intelligent, motivated and creative, but there seemed to be an underlying outlook on life and his career that carried him through the times when things got rough, but one that also put him at odds with the status quo.

This section of the book singles out a large portion of his unique perspective on life, one that made him quite a controversial figure in the halls of the Pentagon:

Along the way, he set out to implement his personal credo — philosophic and strategic — in everything he did, every job he held, and every decision he could influence.  Simply stated, it was more important to do what was right than to be promoted…On active duty, Boyd delighted in finding the very best officers the Air Force had (Air Force Academy graduates, promoted below the zone two or three times and thus several years ahead of their contemporaries) and challenging them.  They were the epitome of company men, team players who wouldn’t rock the boat and who wanted desperately to become Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

One such example was Jim Burton, then a lieutenant colonel recommended to Boyd by a colleague because he was bright…Burton would go on to occupy a critical post in Test and Evaluation and to blow the whistle on rigged tests in the Army’s procurement of the new Bradley Fighting Vehicle.  He recalls the Boyd “To Be or To Do” speech as follows:

“Jim, you are at a point in your life where you have to make a choice about what kind of person you are going to be.  There are two career paths in front of you, and you have to choose which path you will follow.  One path leads to promotions, titles, and positions of distinction.  To achieve success down that path, you have to conduct yourself a certain way.  You must go along with the system and show that you are a better team player than your competitors.  The other path leads to doing things that are truly significant for the Air Force, but the rewards will quite often be a kick in the stomach because you may have to cross swords with the party line on occasion.  You can’t go down both paths, you have to choose.  So, do you want to be a man of distinction or do you want to do things that really influence the shape of the Air Force?  To be or to do, that is the question.”

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Many know C.S. Lewis for his Chronicles of Narnia series or Mere Christianity, but few realize how much he discussed things like freedom and democracy.

From his book, Present Concerns, Lewis wrote an essay concerning equality. The following is a segment from that essay that I came across via The Beacon blog:

A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

This introduces a view of equality rather different from that in which we have been trained. I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent, I don’t think the old authority in kings, priests, husbands, or fathers, and the old obedience in subjects, laymen, wives, and sons, was in itself a degrading or evil thing at all. I think it was intrinsically as good and beautiful as the nakedness of Adam and Eve. It was rightly taken away because men became bad and abused it. . . .

But medicine is not good. There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. And that is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values: offers food to some need which we have starved.

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked.

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The following is an e-mail written recently by my friend’s dad, a university professor and respected author.  He is not a liberal, in fact he is quite conservative.  After discussing the following with him over pumpkin carving and wine the other night, it became apparent that he wrote this as a response to some of the ridiculous e-mail forwards he had been receiving as of late from his conservative bretheren. 

He, like many of us, has been the recipient of numerous emotionally-charged forwards blasting President Obama, librerals, environmentalists and various other groups perceived by some on the right to be the primary cause of all ills infecting our country.  You know the kind of e-mail, the ones that equate Obama with Hitler, scream of the impending moral destruction of our country at the hands of the left and warn that we’ll all turn into socialists/aetheists/communists at the stroke of midnight if we don’t forward the message to 10 people in the next hour.

It’s not that rigorous debate over issues should be stifled in any way, however, as a country we’ve begun to lose the ability to argue in a logical, civilized manner.  If you can’t at least imagine that those in disagreement with you 1) may have a reasonable position 2) are not the scum of the earth, than your voice in the discussion will soon become no more than a clanging gong with no value other than increased volume and noise.

I share the following e-mail simply because I believe in its underlying message.  We don’t have to all agree with each other, nor should we, but peddling half-truths and fear-based hype as something resembling reason is not what the country needs and something we should strive to do better than.

The following is fairly long, but well worth the read.  Print it off, take it with you and read it on the subway, airplane or by the fire as you enjoy a good glass of wine.

On rumored proposals to “tax the wealthy out of prosperity.”

I’ve been mulling over this quote ever since you sent it and would agree that taking something from the “haves” is a poor incentive to generate additional resources for rich or poor. However, it also strikes me that Mr. Rogers is speaking to something of a straw man argument here in the sense that for years our federal taxes hardly go to support the lazy poor relative to other government priorities–which are not by any stretch of the imagination set by low income people.

You know the federal budget better than me, but for twenty years or more the three major ticket items have been defense, social security, and Medicare, which together represent at least 60% of all monies spent. Other sizable chunks go to interest on our every growing national debt, veterans’ and federal employee benefits, etc. As far as I can tell, Medicaid and safety net programs for low income kids, foster care, food stamps, and supplements for the elderly make up at most 18%. If these groups are what Mr. Rogers means by those “receiving without working,” then I’m not sure what he wants a civilized country to do with our mentally retarded, aged, and dispossessed minors. I have seen first-hand in several countries in Eastern Europe and Asia what happens to individuals in these groups when public officials turn a blind eye to their needs and cannot fathom that happening in any nation that considers itself civilized.

Philosophers and politicians throughout the last century have variously and eloquently verbalized the ethic of a civilization’s moral value determined by how it treats its most unfortunate, but it seems to me this is also a fundamental spiritual value. Our Sunday School lesson this week was about the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and I confess that my mind drifted for a time to the matter of whether such responsibilities should be matters of personal or collective public responsibility. I concluded that to the man in the ditch, whom I take to be the focus of the story, it didn’t really matter as long as he got some help. You have probably heard me tell stories about my mother’s mother, our dear Grandma Peterson, whom we all thought somewhat strange as children. I don’t think she ever passed a hitchhiker that she didn’t insist be given a ride, and she regularly packed lunches for them whenever traveling to the city. Our family tales of her peculiar ways are legion, but she was never preachy about her various private ministries; it was simply a matter of cheerfully following our Lord’s example in spite of sorrowful circumstances. I can’t say how cheerfully she paid her taxes, but if it meant helping those in need I have little doubt it would have ranked at the top of most public priorities.

The thrust of Rogers’ argument seems to be that that taxing rich people at a rate higher than others is unfair. I think I probably agree with this, but fair doesn’t mean equal in all kinds of settings from school to business. Whatever lobbyists the poor and elderly can afford to press for their needs likely get drowned out by those of the well-heeled; thus all kinds of special interest tax breaks and benefits exist ranging from large commodity price supports to federal guarantees of excessive cost overruns by defense contractors. Of the remaining federal budget categories–scientific and medical research, international commitments, and the like, I don’t see any of that directly benefiting those who don’t work for one reason or another. We probably could have gilded the door knobs of every poor person in America for what the Iraq diversion is costing and we still haven’t accomplished the original mission in Afghanistan.

The alternative to taxes, of course, it to continue to spending mindlessly and increase the national debt as has been happening for years under both Republicans and Democrats. I realize there are all kinds of valid emendations and interpretations in matters this large, but these broad strokes occur to me.

On the matter of Obama directly addressing students in school.

You are absolutely right that “federal involvement in education is extra-Constitutional” as it has been essentially a matter for state and local governance since the inception of the Republic. However, by no stretch of the imagination  does Obama’s interest in sending a message to American students about topics related to personal responsibility approach a totalitarian effort akin to pre-war Germany. To argue otherwise seems to me to be a highly misguided interpretation of history and government policy. In the first place, our federal executive branch has no authority to compel any teacher in the country to watch or listen to anything. In American public schools, that is explicitly the final authority of a district school board of locally elected citizens. Of course most lay board members can’t be expected to know everything that might be studied by teachers and students in the course of a school year, so virtually every district has adopted board policies that outline for principals and teachers what they are authorized to view, read, discuss, etc. Even state “mandated” curriculum, like the recent HIV/AIDS education guidelines, cannot be unilaterally forced upon a local district; a school board can only be encouraged to adopt it. (To be sure, there are federal requirements attached to what we call compensatory programs like special education, but these are programs funded by the federal government which is a relatively small though important portion of any district’s total budget.)

Students at the secondary level far and wide have for years routinely watched excerpts from the presidential State of the Union addresses and related political discussions, though such audiences are not primarily students of course. If Obama’s intentions imply that he thinks all K-12 kids are “his children” as you assert, of course this would be blasphemous as you point out, and I confess that you may be more well-informed regarding his intentions than me. I had several reasons to hope John McCain would have been elected, but we all know that didn’t happen. However, the few references I’ve seen to the theme of his intended remarks relates to affirming for young people values like personal responsibility. I tend to be suspicious of most politicians so perhaps there are more sinister motives, and if this presentation takes place I guess we can analyze his remarks. However, there’s scarcely a school district in any American city that isn’t at its wit’s end trying to figure out what to do about problems like the high school drop-out rate. (The few times I’ve heard or read Obama on issues in education his remarks have tended to be in this direction.)

The national drop-out rate is presently around 33%, which means there must be lots of places in this country where it is far above that. The impact of legions of young people whose employment prospects are significantly diminished because they never finished school is an impending national disaster for reasons that also relate to other matters than just earning a living wage (like what they do when they don’t earn a wage, but that’s another story). If the president or anybody else can get even 1% of urban youth to reconsider dropping out by a twenty minute pep-talk, frankly I’m all for it, though I’m not getting my hopes up.

Whatever this upcoming address represents, it is difficult for me to reconcile any association with the Ziemer book and its context. Germany’s National Socialist agenda was rooted in militaristic racism. Hitler’s chief interest in economics was in finding ways to nationalize the war machine industry so he could annihilate Europe’s democracies and non-Aryan peoples. We know now from recent historical scholarship that he was seriously eyeing a second crusade against the United States once his plans for continental domination were to be accomplished. From my limited perch, if I see anything in the policies of the new administration, on the international front it is to be more focused, i.e., limited, in foreign obligations, and to promote greater diversity in the domestic realm.

The hands-down single greatest effort to increase state and federal authority in the public schools against local control took place ironically during the Reagan administration. He had campaigned against Carter for months with recurrent accusations that American public schools were falling behind the rest of the world, and used “The Nation at Risk” report to fuel a major effort to raise standardized test scores especially in mathematics and science. The array of “accountability” terms and acronyms in public education like No Child Left Behind (Inside?)–a well-intentioned bipartisan effort, EALR, and WASL, are direct descendants of this initiative. The story of the origin of this report and the nature of its statistical comparisons has an extensive and controversial history, but anybody who wandered around a typical American high school in the 1980s and a college-prep one in Japan or Germany could tell you that ours weren’t up to snuff. Of course American public schools have a statutory obligation to accept every child from every home—and those who don’t even have homes, rather unlike those in many European and Asian nations where students are tracked from their early teens. So when I was in Cashmere or St. John-Endicott, we routinely worked with kids whose parents had tattoos up to their neckline and whose home methinks promoted rather different values than my folks did back on the farm.

This takes us back to possible motives for the president’s upcoming remarks. Responsibility means dealing with the prospect of all these millions of future drop-outs and marginally educated citizens in this country whose home life does not especially promote their moral well-being. (NB: The two factors most influencing student academic success have nothing to do with school: 1. availability of an enriched and supportive reading environment at home, and 2. restricted access to television and electronic media.) We can ignore these kids to our peril, which many people do until their house gets robbed or next welfare budget is published, or we can hope the private schools will accept them–but the vast majority don’t (nor would most charters though I wish Washington State would permit them), or we can kick them in the rear verbally (in the case of my own I was open to other more physical means) and tell them that even if they don’t have the best home life, and the unemployment rate is 10%, and we’re fighting two wars, and on and on, they still need to buck up, work hard, and start living responsibly, because nobody else is going to do it for them.

If he says just this much to them, Obama will have my gratitude. But where he and I part ways is the apparent implicit understanding that if people don’t live responsibly, Uncle Sam will bail them out, as we have now done to the extent of many trillions of dollars for all those who needed federal stimulus monies to salvage bad investments or upside-down home mortgages. But I am also aware that for years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, by far the lion’s share of the federal budget goes to a bloated defense department (even when the Secretary of Defense pleads to cut certain programs), interest on the ever increasing national debt, entitlement programs like Medicare to the elderly, etc.

As a percentage of the entire budget, the amount that goes to social welfare programs is relatively modest, and less than virtually all democratic nations of Europe and Asia. Obama had an opportunity when he took office after the economy went south under Bush to affirm the time-honored (and I believe biblical) values of thrift, self-reliance, and hard work. Instead, he told people to go out and spend money to invigorate the economy, get a new car, buy furniture with tax rebates, etc., etc. Bush and Cheney also spent mindlessly but many of their chief beneficiaries were in the military-industrial and extra-military complex (e.g., Halliburton, Blackwater). If I wanted to give myself a headache I could probably do a little research and find out how much was spent this direction during the last administration; but I may not be able to comprehend the more disturbing value in loss of life of our valiant American soldiers or Iraqi civilians, though I read the latter is conservatively estimated to be 40,000 and many sources cite something closer to 100,000.

At some point when we have spent and shot ourselves into oblivion, both Democrats and Republicans might dust off a copy of E. F. Schumacher’s book from a generation ago, “Small is Beautiful”, or occasionally read an essay by Wendell Berry like “What are People For?”. They’ll find out we have no divine obligation to be the world’s policeman, to dam up every river for our inexhaustible appetite for energy, or to bankroll a military-intelligence-industrial complex that five-star general, supreme WWII commander, and president Dwight Eisenhower presciently warned us about. (If anything, I think a case could be made that we have an obligation not to do these things, but that would be another essay.) I say this as a proud Vietnam-era veteran and the father of an Air Force Academy graduate soon headed to Iraq where a nephew is presently serving. But my children have also heard that there is no pride in policies that spend more in two weeks on military adventurism abroad than the annual national budget for dispossessed or underprivileged children at home. You probably know that one of my sisters is a school nurse and a while back I asked for unrelated reasons about changes in the WIC program that provides nutrition and medical services to at-risk children and their mothers. She told me it had been discontinued for more than a year. I’m all for saving a buck, but it was enough to make your blood boil when not long afterward I read how a number of congressmen were strongly lobbying on behalf of a series of multi-zillion dollar defense projects Secretary of Defense Gates told both Bush and Obama were not needed.

I fear my response here may have exceeded what was invited or anticipated, friend, so thanks for your indulgence.

On the matter of global warming.

I am not a scientist but I can see. I have also been sent several email attachments lately questioning a recent National Academy of Sciences report that global warming has been taking place for some decades. This is in spite of general historic trends of temperature oscillations lasting several centuries that should have the earth presently in a cooling mode. Although a consensus of the professional scientific community has endorsed reports coming from the NAS and similar international organizations, the credentials of those who represent dissenting viewpoints seems impressive enough to elicit my confession that I can only offer a layman’s commentary on the matter, but one that has attempted to somewhat keep abreast of the issues by reading conflicting viewpoints in such venues as The National Review (conservative), Atlantic and The Economist (centrist), and Harper’s (liberal). (I also like reading Scientific American but come away from most issues feeling like I understood about 10% of what was written.)

While my limitations in understanding the matter of global warming are manifold, I can offer that our family was blessed by the presence of a scientist of some note whose work had special relevance to this topic. Willis M. Johns, my mom’s brother, served for many years as chief geologist for the Montana Bureau of Mines, professor of economic geology at Montana Tech, and surveyor for the US Geological Survey’s Northern Rockies district. Uncle Willis was also very conservative in his politics and generally suspicious of most things emanating from Washington, DC. But Willis knew intimately the Northern Rockies from living in the field for weeks on end in order to conduct USGS mapping and explorations for various mining interests.

Through Willis I was introduced to the grandeur of Glacier National Park in the 1960s and traveled through it one summer when he lived in nearby Kalispel. I remember marveling at the high peaks draped in the enormous gray-white formations for which the place is known, and journeyed through the park again via its famed Highway to the Sun in the early 1980s. I last visited Glacier two weeks ago with my 85-year-old mother with whom, incidentally, I had been on that first trip there nearly five decades ago. Our first impression upon approaching the park last month was the stunned response to each other, “So where are all the glaciers?” Of course there are still a number of glaciers girding the higher peaks and numerous snowfields, but even to amateur climatologist eyes like ours, it was clear that something significant had changed the landscape since our previous visits.

In the absence of Willis, who passed away in 1989, I made inquiry locally among other relatives who had long lived in the area and learned that it is common knowledge there that at the present melt rate, “Glacier” Park is no longer expected to have any by 2030. Of the 150 glaciers large enough to be named in the nineteenth century, only 26 exist today which explains why the summer landscape looks so different from what I observed those many years ago. The chief cause is not attributed to the lack of annual snowfall, but to a rise in daily minimum temperature that has accelerated in the last fifty years. But the most peculiar observation for me was the evidence from ice core studies reported there that the pattern of fluctuations in glacier advance and recession over millennia has been reversed for over a century. The terrestrial climate of cold and warm trends over time that continues to be the subject of so much research seems to be related to variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun.

That the evidence should suggest the planet be in a cooling trend now when temperatures are actually increasing leaves one to theorize about what variable or variables have been introduced since the 1800s to cause this change. I’m entirely open to other hypotheses regarding factors that may have interrupted the general cycle over the past century and a half. But it strikes me as eminently reasonable that nothing has been proposed that can even slightly compare to the effects of hundreds of billions of greenhouse gases and related emissions/pollutants introduced into the environment as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The benefits to humanity, of course, have been rather substantial, and I greatly enjoy traveling by car and air and using all manner of oil-based products and by-products. But to deny this has had a detrimental impact on the environment that will only get worse without forthright intervention from the lowest (household) to the highest (international) levels seems akin to infantile “me-ism”, a term used by Georgie Ann Geyer has used to characterize the attitude about life being all about self.

Many of the recent emails I have received on climate change fall into two categories: The first continue to question whether or not global warming is actually taking place. To these authors I honestly suggest a trip to someplace like northwest Montana or an examination of glacier ice core reports from there or most any other high mountain range in the world. I gather the Inuit people probably know ice better than most scientists or politicians so gleaning their perspectives might also be more useful than that of someone representing special interests in our nation’s capital. But another body of rhetoric related to this topic involves the matter of cause, and dismisses the notion that global warming is related in any significant way to mankind’s effect on the environment. What folks in this camp do see is a sophisticated ploy by a coalition of environmentalists and Third World plaintiffs seeking financial remuneration through groups like the UN for damages from industrialized countries. The implication, of course, is since humanity is not responsible for global warming; we are not accountable for its consequences, or for moderating its effects through cap and trades or other proposed interventions.

I’m not sure exactly what, if anything, I might owe the citizens of the Maldives Islands, Bangladesh, or anywhere else threatened with rising sea levels because I have and am using fossil fuels as my ancestors have since the 1800s. But it seems to me that ignoring the obvious, or at least forthrightly addressing valid differences of opinion,  is irresponsible citizenship, and arrogantly risks the wellbeing of the next generation and God’s creation for which we are to be stewards.

I suppose many people who knew Uncle Willis would have said he was not an especially religious person. He didn’t often attend church and believed the earth and solar system to have been formed through natural processes over billions of years. But I came to understand that he did not believe faith, reason, and observation to offer irreconcilable conclusions about the nature of spiritual or biological life. Rather, like John Wesley, he thought these ways of knowing all attested to the same unified truth. Willis’s far ranging interests led him to investigate truth about many different subjects, and following his retirement our uncle devoted considerable attention to biblical archaeology. He traveled to the Middle East to investigate recent discoveries of Hittite culture that he thought shed light on Old Testament history he more fully sought to understand. I’m grateful for what his honesty taught me about rocks and glaciers, truth and responsibility.

Richard Scheuerman

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My new post at Art of Manliness is up, here’s a sneak peak, read full post here:

Thinking about men I admired, it dawned on me that most had a quiet contempt towards any excess of material possessions. Their expertise and confidence were displayed by the fact that they did not require much to live successfully. They could just as easily get along for a week in the woods with nothing but a knife as they could living in a posh suburban neighborhood with all its amenities. Possessions had no control over the trajectory of their lives. They were not gadget junkies, seeking their fix from the latest Best Buy sale.  They were in control of the things they owned, not the other way around.  Real manliness meant freedom from the bondage of material goods.

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During the three months my family and I spent in Altus, OK this spring, while I completed my initial C-17 training, we attended a book fair one Saturday afternoon at the local library.  As I walked into the room full of books, my attention immediately shifted to a pile of old, tattered hardcovers in the back corner.  Old books have always fascinated me.  Not that old always means better, but maybe in a world of quick gimmicks and one-hit wonders, something that has stood the test of time can offer us something we don’t normally find, wisdom.

So, you can imagine my delight when my friend, Chris Yengo, pointed out to me a copy of an tattered, blue book, straight from the 50′s entitled, “The Air Force Officer’s Guide.”  To most this might not be such a great find, but I am, in fact, an Air Force officer and was sure that there would be a few pearls of wisdom to be found in this book; this collection of lessons written in an age when it wasn’t offensive to be direct and virtue was something to be honored rather than sold in a cute children’s book.

For the next several weeks I want to present to you, taken straight from the book, some wonderful traits and traditions of Air Force officership.  Like many classics, they are universal and can easily be transferred from the life of an officer to yours, wherever you are and whatever you happen to do.  Tonight we look at conscience straight from page 325:

Conscience. A quality invariably present in fine Air Force officers is the driving force of conscience. No man other than yourself can say with assurance how hard you tried to do your job. Success is no criterion here. Many an officer has accomplished the task assigned in an excellent manner, drawing praise from his superiors and subordinates alike, but finding the taste of praise bitter because he knew he could have done better.

Conscience will not let well enough alone, it insists on the best. It is good that this is so, since none may ever know by just what minute increment of effort the tide of battle is swayed. One is reminded of an Air Force officer in Korea who, being responsible for the maintenance of aircraft in his unit, had turned out for a critical day’s operation , 90 percent of his assigned aircraft in commission for combat. No other Air Force unit in Korea had as high an in-commission status that day. Yet the officer inquestion was obviously disconsolate.Standing in the cold mud of Korea with great rings of weariness under hus eyes from inhuman working hours this officer said: “A little forethought and I could have turned them all out.”

Thus spoke the driving force of conscience, the burning dissatisfaction with any result but the best. Shakespeare noted that “conscience doth make cowards of us all.” In some respects this is true, but if an officer learns that he is answerable to his conscience, and so acts as to be able to confront it without fear, conscience will make superior officers of most and heroes of some.

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt

A longtime favorite quote of mine that mentions failure.  More on failure to come…

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One finds himself organizing and reorganizing his life many times as his first child’s birth approaches. There is a constant assessment of the “known-knowns, known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns,” as Donald Rumsfeld would explain it. One of the fields in constant flux over the past few months has been finances, specifically how much a new baby will cost, how much we should buy beforehand and finally how much should be spent on certain items. My wife and I have had many great debates on these issues and found at the end of it all a philosophy of money and spending that both of us have come to agree on (for the most part). The philosophy hinges on the difference between “first costs” and “life-cycle costs.”

A good example of this difference is found in Thomas Stanley’s book, “The Millionaire Mind.” He gives the example of deciding whether to pay a professional plumber $150 to come install a new water heater or buy the supplies and install it yourself. Ask this question to a group of people and chances are you would get a good spilt between the DIY crowd and the “pay the professional” crowd.

Stanley writes, “Milliionaires and those who are likely to become wealthy someday are not ‘first-cost’ sensitive; they are life-cycle-cost sensitive. ‘First cost’ refers to the dollar cost savings if you install the water heater instead of using a skilled plumber. You may have saved $150 in the process, but the figure is very deceptive. You see, the plumber’s quote included a high-efficiency water heater. You shopped and found a low-priced (first cost) water heater with the same gallon capacity as the high-efficiency one, but over the projected life of the heaters, the plumber’s will save you more than the $150 in terms of operating costs. Also, the plumber’s is estimated to last longer and heat water faster. Over the life of the heater you would install, there is no warranty on the installation. You could easily install it incorrectly and burn out the system…”

He goes on, “The other issue relates to trade-offs. You cannot install a water heater and at the same time carry out assignments that are part of your work. Of course the plumber still charges more per hour than you charge for an hour of your time, so you could save by doing it yourself. But you are not thinking of life-cycle differences…If you decide to install the water heater yourself, you have to shop for a unit, which takes time and energy. You could be using this time and energy to enhance your professional skills or study investments….Then you have to study water-heater installation techniques and acquire the proper tools. Whether you rent tools or buy them, it still takes time and money. Finally, how many other hot-water heaters will you be installing during the remainder of your working life? I bet you’ll never want to install another one once you’ve stuffered through the first campain to save $150….After all this, ask yourself about the actual dollars you really saved. In terms of a life-cyle cost-benefit analysis, select option number two: Call the plumber!”

How does this relate to a baby you might ask? When deciding on what to spend money on and what to skimp on I have this philosophy of life-cycle costs in the back of my mind. Unless, this first baby scars us severely, Marelize and I plan on having a few children. So, when we look at the various cribs, car seats, or strollers (the must haves) we think more in terms of life-cyle costs (buying quality products that have good warranties and will last through several years and children) rather than being sensitive to “first cost” and trying to save through buying only the cheapest products. The baby industry is tricky though because the standards of safety and quality for products are high, owing to society’s generally positive view of babies and the incredibly strict expectations and requirements of zealous parents. So, it’s hard to find large variance in the quality of the industry’s products. The practice of the life-cycle cost philosophy in this arena then becomes much more complex leading to choice anxiety for many parents. It seems the best a parent can do is pick off the outliers (aka Bugaboo strollers for $800…ridiculous) and find something in the middle.

Now, this entire philosophy hangs on two big assumptions: 1) you have the money to pay the up-front costs associated with “quality” 2) the extra money spent on an item or service actually equates to better quality or a longer service life. There is a large risk of looking and feeling like a fool when you spend top dollar for an item only to find that the quality is equal or even less superior to an item of lesser cost. As I go through this baby process I’m sure I will experience this feeling once or twice and will be sure to share it with all of you.

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