I must confess to readers that I am about to break my own self-imposed (albeit temporary) ‘rule’ not to blog current affairs. The reason is simple enough.
The Plop! section in Social Science Files is dedicated to “tracking Type 8 extinction and Type 9 stagnancy”. I swore off filing a record of the outrages and craziness until I began to write about contemporary societies. But as the 2016 Nobel Prize Winner Bob Dylan wrote exactly 60 years ago, in 1964, The Times They Are A-Changin'. It seems just possible we could be at a turning point. The mere possibility compels me to ‘file it’.
If The West is about to move off its self-destruction ‘extinction’ path (curtailment of free speech, deep statism, welfarism, unsolved crime, uncontrolled migration, green extremism, person-obsessed identity politics, and military weakness) and could be on the cusp of re-embracing the wave of Schumpeterian creative destruction then I wish to feel free to surf the daily deluge and track the process by riding the best waves.
Where better to start than with a reluctant Laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
The Times They Are A-Changin' — Song by Bob Dylan 1964
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
Today’s news
To get a feel for an incipient rising wave of creative destruction there is no better place to start than today’s WSJ on why Woke Generals will be tightening their seatbelts.
Extract:
In fact, in the old days, let's just go back to Rumsfeld's days, when I served under Rumsfeld, there were blank letters of resignation for all general officers that they had signed, and the only thing the secretary had to do was put a date stamp on it to make it effective. Those jobs are not for life. In fact, those jobs, once you hit three star, are not permanent in the sense that those are temporary ranks and you can only retire in higher ranks if Congress approves. So no, I think any civilian leader in the Pentagon who has a deep knowledge of the different branches and where the services are going would be able to pick out leaders who have not lived up to the standards that we should expect them to live up to. I'm not singling out anyone in the Navy, but I look at what I see in the Navy publications, and Officer after Officer is relieved because of lack of confidence in the ability to command. It is scandalous that we're seeing 4, 5, 6, 7 examples of this every month. That's a crisis in command, and no one is being held accountable except some lieutenant commander or commander, whereas the stars on the admiral's shoulders seem to get off scot-free. Those are the kinds of things that we have to look at, and particularly when it comes to the changing national security environment, are our general officers intellectually agile enough to meet the needs of this part of the 21st century?
Full transcript of WSJ Opinion: Free Expression here.
This man worked with Rumsfeld who, had he added “what we do not like to know” to his famous insight, may have deserved a Nobel prize for social science if not literature:
As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.
See also:
Germany’s Government Gets Mugged by Climate-Change Reality
By Joseph C. Sternberg Nov. 14, 2024
What’s collapsing here—aside from a German coalition—is the political method of net zero. That method, devised by activists and evangelized by political, business and media converts, was to shift the issue out of the political realm and into an otherworldly space where stopping climate change became a religious mission for moral redemption. But governments deliver budgets, not salvation. And when it comes to budgets, politics always wins.
My thanks to the Wall Street Journal, and conservative Condorito
Dr Michael G. Heller
