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Name: Mike Silverman
Location: Milford, MA
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THE CASE AGAINST MODERATES

Posted by Mike Silverman on Sunday, May 24, 2009 8:20:53 PM
Hello.  I'm not sure if anyone reads my posts here anymore, but I felt that I needed to comment regarding recent statements made by Colin Powell about the Republican party and specifically that he feels it needs to "moderate" , to move to the middle ground and not be so strident in holding a particular point of view. I disagree with Powell. And here is my reasoning. In a basic sense, in accordance with societal admonitions, we are told, "if you must drink, then drink in moderation." Smoke in moderation.  Eat in moderation. And so on. In schools, churches and at home from the time we are children we are instructed to resolve our conflicts, make peace with our enemies, seek a compromise.  In many circumstances, all of this advice can serve a person very well. Today we face a world of economic uncertainty, and hostile governments with dangerous weapons. We live in a world where it seems to make sense that finding a way to compromise, to find a middle ground between light and darkness, where we can help each other economically and ease tensions by reaching out with friendship to those who mistrust us, is a common good. No one wants to fight a war every day. No one wants to wrestle with principles and ethics and personal values that sit outside of the accepted normal vistas of familes , friends, and nations. In this I'm reminded of a gentleman I used to work with. His name is Bob.  A very mellow, easy going, likeable guy. A Grateful Dead fan, among other music. We got along quite well for about 1 month. We talked about all sorts of things, from music to politics, to science. And then, one day..., he asked me if i'd like to try some "mushrooms". I remember staring blankly at him for a long moment, and something welled up inside me as I looked at him. At first I wasn't sure what the feeling was. Later I realized it was shock, and a sudden deep mistrust. I told him I wasn't interested, that I didn't prefer to ingest things that warped my perception of reality and caused addiction. But, Bob..., being the nice guy that he is, tried in his own way to convince me of how wrong I was, in his opinion. Every day he would try to pursuade me as to the "health" benefits of both body and mind of ingesting these "magic mushrooms"" of his.  He actually brought me in case studies done in other countries in an attempt to prove that his fungus was not addictive. It began to be a bit of a struggle to convince him that I simply had no interest in it. I tried in every way that I could think of to gently but firmly rebuke his offers. But I began to realize that this simply was not going to work. This issue was something he was so passionate about , that he could not let go of it.  This was not a case for conflict resolution 101. He held a very specific, unwavering point of view.  As did I, to the exact opposite of his. There was no middle ground to be achieved. There was no moderate view that we could both aspire to. This was not a bi-partisan matter. He was a partisan for his view, and I for mine.  Now, the only reason I bring this up is to point out that moderation, making peace, conflict resolution... does not work in every case.  In the real world, there are times when personal values clash, and do so without a means of reaching a middle ground. The clash of values can be important, as means of defining the argument for and against something. Going back to what I said at the start of this, we are raised with certain values pertaining to moderation. But we must not lose the line between moderation of activity we choose to do as individuals or within friendships and familes, and the personal ethics and values that form our individual perceptions of the world and the moral fabric of our souls. Within politics today we hear quite often from the "voice" of those who insist that moderation and middle ground is vital to great leadership. This is a case of carrying the lessons taught to us as children for survival in a basic sense, to find common ground with your friends, your family, don't overeat, or over-exert yourself, and taking it to the extreme and improbable command to compromise one's personal values and principles so as avoid the appearance of being hard and unreasonable. In other words, taking moderate views of anything that forces you to diminish and withdraw from your closely held and passionte principles is as being asked to barter your soul for the sake of avoiding an argument. This is not the lesson from childhood. Such a thing is a perverion of that lesson. Those who engage in this level of compromise have pared their individuality down to the form of a mime being pushed left and right according to the whims of others. To take a solid and principled stand based on the formative experiences of your life is the essence of leadership.  And the remaining argument from childhood goes as thus, "always be open-minded". Open-minded is such an abused phrase today.  Again it's vital to differentiate between what "open-minded" means in the informal vista of one's personal life, as opposed to the circumstance one would face in the role of a leader. Is the lesson from childhood of being "open-minded" that one must never maintain a solid value or principle that is worth fighting for? No. The admonition against failing to be "open-minded" is meant as a tool to use for the purpose of cooperation, to look beyond superficial things and welcome participation from those who have something constructive to contribute. But lest we confuse "cooperation" with "moderation" , let's look at it this way.  Imagine you are an engineer designing a suspension bridge over san fransico bay. You bring your sound scientific principles of design and construction to bear in the plans for the bridge. Another bridge engineer opts to use a different design, one that has sweeping lines and grand curves, but a weakness and flaw in the basic design that will cause problems for the bridge in the future. Being "open-minded" you review the design of the other engineer and after careful consideration conclude that it's far too dangerous. Since people's lives are at stake, you insist that the bridge be built with the normal standard sound principles you have learned. The other engineer refuses to give up his own plan for the bridge.  Rather than construct a problematic bridge that looks good but has flaws in its substance, you step away from the project and refuse to be part of it. It is a reasonable decision to refuse to participate in construction that you know is flawed and dangerous. Thus, it's important for those in a leadership position not to give in to the cries and shouts and demands for being moderate and open-minded if in any way such a thing requires you to abandon the principles and values that have carefully shaped and guided your intellect and ethics.
 
- Mike Silverman

 

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DUST IN THE WIND....,

Posted by Mike Silverman on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 10:38:48 AM
  The role of the Securities And Exchange Commission is fair and reasonable as far as it goes, but for our government to extend its hand any further is highly dangerous to the stability and security of our nation. The problem with it stems from over reliance on government to take care of the problems that are in fact the problems of private investors and company directors. The government has already spent all of our money. It's gone. It is now paying for its budget on borrowed money and it makes no sense to put such a fiscally irresponsible institution as the federal government in charge of deciding the course of action of any part of our private financial industry . Government will make decisions about business dealings and operations based on a political model, when it should be a business model. We've been led off on the wrong foot to begin with. We have to change the way we have been conditioned to think. In a capitalist society, which is a society grounded in freedom for the individual, there is no such thing as a business that is too big to fail. That is simply a basic economic fact of capital driven markets. But societaly, we have been conditioned by liberal progressives as economic pundits and news media "experts" to believe that we are doomed if a company like AIG fails. Any time that we look to government to take care of problems that arise from personally irresponsible behavior, whether that behavior is from the top executives at a company who have made bad business decisions, or individuals who have bitten off more than they can chew with personal financial decisions, we abdicate responsibility for ourselves. When we don't look within to find the problems and fix it, but look to an overbearing external power to sweep in and take control forcing changes that we have not vetted, making decisions about how much prosperity we are allowed, and revoking our right to serve our own best interests, we have given up our right to self determination. We have thrown away the freedom that was God given, in favor of having our destinies controlled by strings from a faceless body of government. In most states, the age of eighteen is the age at which a child is no longer legally considered a minor. Our governments have basically said.., "you have been alive for eighteen years, it's time you take responsibility for your behavior and not make it your parent's duty.". But, here we are with the likes of President Obama and Barney Frank declaring that we are not responsible for the problems we encounter when we buy a home we can't afford, when businesses we invest in fail to profit, or just plain fail, when major industries loose market share and thousands get laid off, when some people become fiscally wealthy and others don't, none of that is the fault of the people who are at the downside of those issues and the resulting consequences, we are merely victims of a faceless evil demon with great red horns whose name is Greed. The fraternity of socialists in our federal government are slapping the money out of your hands that you earned and taking it away from you, telling you that you don't know what's good for you so "we who sit in government" will give you what you need and you will become our mindless foster child for the rest of your life. At that point, life , liberty, and the pursuit of happiness becomes dust in the wind. You have to look in the mirror and decide whether you are the master of your own fate, or whether your master sits on a committee in congress, or even a chair in the White House.
 
- Mike Silverman
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STILL THE CHILDREN CRY....,

Posted by Mike Silverman on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 10:17:37 AM
  As a nation we've been psychologically neutered. We have given psycho-chiatrists along with willing culprits in the liberal children's interests and congressmen, the status of GOD and have not challenged them when they say that children are so all important that we can not punish them, nor reprimand them, nor actually give them failing grades or losing scores when they fail in academia or competition, nor deny them any sexual exploration they choose to engage in but instead foster it by helping them with condoms. We have been convinced that children are little ceramic angels on a shelf that we need to tend carefully, not jostle in any way, and treat like priceless objects of art that can do no wrong. We have been liberalized. It's one of the 100% wins for liberalism. We can't dare speak out against anyone proposing higher spending and taxes when it's labeled as "for the children". The liberals have really bamboozled the masses on this one.  This is liberalism at it's most deadly, at it's darkest. When liberalism attacks the foundation of normal , natural learning at the elementary level, and implants in the minds of children that they are deities who rule, rather than ignorant children who must learn, it sets them up for absolute destruction. Liberals may think it builds thier self esteem ( though I don't think they really believe that... I think there's another agenda behind this...), but it does precisely the opposite. It will send children into confusion, despair and morbidity as they grow up when they finally confront the fact that thier every whim is not going to be carried out... when they finally realize that they are very, very fallible creatures. Those are the sheltered coddled kids who suddenly will realize that the world is far more unfair than they were led to believe and fall into a morbid form of self pity. In an almost ingenious way, however, it sets up liberal ideologues to hold power over the resulting adults who can not fend for themselves because they never learned how. This is an age of cultural decay and the rot is thick in some places. By tiny steps and little nudges that don’t upset the apple cart, we have been inching toward a society that will welcome a socialized form of government as way of life. Life is complicated, often filled with more failures than successes, stresses and emotional strains, joys and tragedies. But that’s life. If we allow our financial failures to be mitigated by tax money, our personal failings to be blamed on others or on society, and our moral vestment in the ethic of working for what we need and for what we want… to be superseded by an attitude of entitlement …, then we are not engaged in life. Such a scenario places us in a plastic bubble controlled by a faceless societal leviathan known as our Federal Government who will take the role of surrogate parent from prenatal to postmortem. This should be relegated to the vistas of science fiction and fantasy, not a part of our real world.

 - Mike Silverman,

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