William Blake: Visions From The Heart

To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour

                                William Blake

                                from Auguries of Innocence (1803)
                                               

On November 28, 1757, the British artist and writer, William Blake, was born in London. Even after several decades of studying his life and work he continues to make me dream and, for that reason, he remains my favorite anarchist. 

In his own time he was so eccentric his neighbors and friends thought he was a madman. As an engraver and illustrator he was caught between the decline of the guilds and the rise of industrialization. It was a time when men saw the value of their labors swept away from the cottage and into the factory under the watchful eye of the manager. For workers, the loss of autonomy, the shift in control and production, and the helplessness in the face of change led to a revolt against the Age of Reason and a rage against technologies it spawned. Blake was in the forefront of that movement but it would take almost two centuries before he would be recognized as both one whose vision, imagination and sensitivity were unmatched in the age of Romanticism and a truly unique influence in the history of the Western world.

There is one certainty about Blake's work and that is its complexity. He is by far one of the most interesting visionaries to come out of the West and its traditions. I hope you will take time to examine him and his extraordinary contributions to our experience. To explore his work appropriately is beyond the intent of this blog and capability of its author. For readers who want to learn more about Blake, to me there's no finer work available than Jacob Bronowski's A Man Without A Mask, published in 1944, and it's expanded version, William Blake and the Age of Revolution, published in 1972.

William Blake             Thomas Phillips, English, 1807

I have learned much from Blake the artist and philosopher in an effort to find a healthy balance between intellect and emotion. It's been a beautiful, productive, and fascinating journey. These works have been a part of that experience:

In the following illustration, The Ancient of Days, Blake depicts his character, Urizen, [You rising] as reason shaping the world and its experience. This engraving is also interpreted as God the Father - and often God the Son - as divining existence. It is a prime example of the complex and often confounding world of Blake's imagination.

The Ancient of Days                                   William Blake, 1793

In the following engraving Blake depicts Isaac Newton [and the Age of Reason] at the bottom of the sea shaping - the dividers, once more - the world of humankind on the earth. Newton, as a symbol of the Age of Reason and its invention and industrialization, has turned his back on the organic beauty of God's natural world.

Newton                                                    William Blake, 1795

Here, the Angel of Peace descends forcibly out of heaven illustrating God's reason -the dividers - brought into the world in the form of his Son to reconcile Nature (the recline female nude) and a redeemed humanity.

The Descent of Peace                          William Blake, ca. 1815

One of Blake's most familiar pieces is his preface to Milton: A Poem in Two Books. The preface says much about Blake's philosophy opposing the Age of Reason as mbodied in Greek and Roman thought and the dangers a reliance on intellect can bring to a world based equally on emotion. Furthermore, the preface is a perfect illustration of Blake's religious mysticism as well as his veneration of Milton.

The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible; but when the New Age is at leisure to pronounce, all will be set right, and those grand works of the more ancient, and consciously and professedly Inspired men will hold their proper rank, and the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration, Shakspeare and Milton were curb'd by the general malady and infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword. Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the camp, the Court, and the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and prolong corporeal war. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertising boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ and His Apostles that there is a class of men whose whole delight is in destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever, in Jesus our Lord.

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic mills.

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets. Numbers xi, ch. 26



Readers may be more familiar with Blake's poem through this medium:

As this tribute comes to a close, I'd like to reference one of Blake's poems that virtually all children read before the end of their middle schools years a half century ago. It's remarkably simple in form yet its questions brim with imagination and wonder. I so hope that The Tyger is still read and heard by young students so they can remember its message over their varied lifetimes.

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies,

Burnt the fire in thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp.

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger, Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake                              John Linnell, English, 1863

He who binds himself to a joy

Doth the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity's sunrise

                                William Blake

                                from Eternity, 1803



Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
wikipedia.com
Blake portrait, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Newton, Tate Gallery, London, U.K.blakearchive.org/Blake

Text:
wikipedia.com, Blake entry
blakearchive.org/Blake
bartleby.com/235/284.html
Jacob Bronowski, A Man Without A Mask, Seeker and Warburg, London, 1944

As Shoppers Rush Home With Their Treasures

On this Black Friday 2022 I thought it would be interesting to focus on the broader outcomes of shpping rather than the phalanxes of shoppers invading store aisles across America.  Although our free market economy isn't as free these days it still provides us opportunities of choice among an almost overwhelming variety of products. And every time we make a choice it leads to some far-reaching consequences in addition to our personal satisfaction.

Sam Walton's 5&10. The next step was Discount City and the world.

Three quarters of a million people now live in the three counties from Fayetteville north to the state line in the northwest corner of Arkansas. This is Walmart country. It is the holy land of free enterprise where Sam Walton opened his first Walmart Discount City in 1962. Over those few decades as Walmart grew into the "world's third largest public corporation," the company transformed the plateau prairie into a prosperous landscape. The change came quickly once the company that visited its suppliers said, "No more!" From that day forward those salesmen who wanted their products on Walmart shelves had to visit Bentonville for an audience with the buyers. It is no wonder today that almost 100 business aircraft fly out of the area's two general aviation airports, Rogers Muni-Carter Field and Bentonville Muni-Thaden Field. It is no wonder that more than thirty airlines provide 260 scheduled weekday arrivals and departures out of Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport.

As one would expect, the Walmart holy land is a classic example of the money generation model in action. The retail reach of thousands of stores and services far exceeds the area's three-county grasp. Granted, it isn't like shopping at Waterside in Naples but it's damn close if you don't need the palms and bromeliads. There's no beach either, but an abundance of nearby lakes provides plenty of broad and deep water in addition to 3,000 miles of shoreline.This is but one element of the quiet and relaxation to be found after a thirty minute drive east or west of US71 and the money model madness.

A few years ago I made these observations on Walmart Country. It is a nice compromise watching day by day as fall colors invade a large grove of trees across the fence. For me it's new trees and new birds, but the old barn, with its missing boards and battered tin roof, recalls the long history here. It is a diverse history as well, quite fitting of a place where the Ozark and Boston Mountains spill into the prairie grasslands of the Great Plains and the llano winds of Texas whisper from a mere few hours away.

I supposes for many this will always be flyover country. After all, hardly a minute passes in the day when you can't see eight or ten contrails from the commercial jets flying between Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, L.A., and beyond. Still, the Cessnas, Dessaults, Bombardiers, Beechcrafts, and occasional Gulfstreams on approach and departure here tell another story. It may not be for everyone. but here in the Arkansas holy land, life is very, very good.

Although Alice Walton, daughter of Sam and Helen Walton, no longer lives in Northwest Arkansas, she has retained a life-long interest in the region. As the 19th richest person, and second richest woman in the world, she has devoted much of her good fortune - $59 billion - and that of the Walton Family Foundation to enriching life in the Bentonville-Fayetteville corridor and beyond. 

There's no better example of their benevolence than the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art  in Bentonville. Opened in 2011, the facility is a 200,000 s.f. complex of several galleries and other spaces surrounding a lake at the bottom of a forested ravine. It is itself a work of art - designed by architect, Moshe Safdie, and engineer, Buro Happold - with a cost estimate exceeding $50,000,000. There is no admission fee to view the permanent collection.

George Washington                                     Gilbert Stuart, 1797

The family endowed the museum with an $800,000,000 gift to sustain operations, maintenance, and museum acquisitions in perpetuity. This circumstance makes Crystal Bridges an immediate leader among American museums and positions it for a great future as a seed for art and community in the Southern Plains and Mississippi Valley.

Kindred Spirits                                           Asher Durand, 1849

What makes Crystal Bridges different is its mission: to welcome all to celebrate the American spirit in a setting that unites the power of art with the beauty of landscape. We explore the unfolding story of America by actively collecting, exhibiting, interpreting, and preserving outstanding works that illuminate our heritage and artistic possibilities.

Currently, the museum has 400 works on exhibit tracing the American experience from the heroic portraiture of the 18th century to today's constructions, assemblages, and kinetic art. 

The Lantern Bearers                          Maxfield Parrish, 1908

Wandering the galleries of this extraordinary building is a pleasing instructive journey and one most people would never expect in a smaller metropolitan area. The caveat here is the place's identity as the sixth fastest growing area in the country, thanks in part to it being the home of Walmart, Tyson Foods, J.B Hunt Transportation Services and 2,000 offices of companies supporting those industries.

Sound Suit                                         Nick Cave, 2010

Today Alice Walton's vision is at the heart of an art and education network "exploring the unfolding story of America" for a million residents and millions of visitors. We should thank Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation for their foresight, generosity, and desire to share their good fortune. Perhaps their example will both encourage others to make good use of the fertile, entrepreneurial environment this nation affords its super achievers and find joy in sharing the fruits of their circumstance.

It will be interesting to see how the sons and daughters of Helen and Sam Walton continue to use their wealth that currently exceeds $100 million. The family and its foundation have a history of sharing it quietly and somewhat modestly. When Helen died in 2007 she gave her entire share - over $16 billion - to a variety of charities in a multi-year disbursement. Alice, as a 73 year-old, childless divorcee who loves art, horses, and the University of Arkansas, could be positioned to do some spectacular things in the near future. Time will tell.

There's one thing for certain. You may not be able to fund a museum but in the long run that treasure you bought today could be of far more benefit than you ever imagined.

Sources

Photos, Illustrations, and Text:

Wikipedia.com, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Labor Day Weekend 2013

Not So Old Tybee Ranger                                        ca. 1950   

Labor Day comes Monday, but I figured addressing the theme today would make sense as most of us will be enjoying the day with family and away from the Internet. My most memorable Labor Days occurred in the '50s and '60s when I attended the big day-long picnic sponsored by the paper mill that employed my home town. Four to five thousand people attended those picnics and enjoyed carnival rides, swimming, softball, field events, airplane rides, and a playground filled with wonderfully dangerous equipment that could never be built today. It all ended with movies under the stars at the drive-in theater next door.

Although many of the kids I played with those days ended up working at the mill, I imagine a number of them went on to college and enjoyed the mobility, greater incomes and opportunities it afforded. In the long run the college graduates made the right decision. Today, the mill employs only a quarter of the workforce it had during its post World War II heyday. The picnic is a shadow, too, and now held at a mediocre site.  Although the good union wages remain, the jobs are few, and the quality of life is wanting in a region now into its sixth decade of decline.

In my life, I've always made it a point to family, friends, and colleagues that all work is honorable. Every employee, from minimum wage to executive salary, contributes to achieving organizational success. A the same time, I've always agreed that money cannot buy happiness., but I also believe it can help us acquire misery to enjoy. Having owned a sailboat, albeit a small one, I know plenty about misery and enjoyment.  Still, that college diploma largely determines where one falls on the earnings scale and, at least in this country, the happiness index. Our persistent economic downturn may be changing that earnings and happiness index.  For one, opportunities to develop competencies beyond the campus have never been greater. Furthermore, we're learning some hard economic lessons that may likely restore the money habits of our grandparents and great-grand parents. Regardless, I think the American Dream has a good future in store. There will be bumps in the road to full employment but they simply make the good times more enjoyable.  It is widely known that mountains cannot stand without valleys. 

Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.

Detroit: Chevy Vega Management Meets Liberal Welfare Statism

A week ago I wrote a Facebook post about the effect of "liberal welfare statism" on young Americans. It raised an eyebrow or two with a liberal reader who chose to place blame far more on the erosion of the corporation as a national economic engine and its willingness to place profits over jobs. Granted, corporate capitalism is about profit, but it is profit built on moral obligation.

With Detroit's bankruptcy on my mind, I've been hitting the "liberal welfare statism" component heavily, but my liberal friend's comments on corporate responsibility did set me to thinking.  And on second thought, my 1971 - and last - personal experience with General/Government Motors and its Chevrolet Vega had little to do with liberal thinking or welfare:

[I] had quite an affair with the Chevy brand into young adulthood, including a '57 Chevy Bel Air and a '68 Camaro. It came to an end when I bought a '71 Chevy Vega, arguably in the bottom three pieces of junk ever produced by the American auto industry. Under that modest design and spiffy concept rested an engineering and performance nightmare wrapped in paper-thin sheet metal. The engine warped into an oil burner in a matter of weeks. The dealership was embarrassed and spent thousands to make things right while the corporate suits at General Motors wrote nice letters. As months turned into a year, then two years, there was no end to breakdowns, recalls, and repairs.

*   *   * 

[I] will never own another General/Government Motors product. Ever.

Strong opinion there about the corporate suits. Not so much about the rank and file on the line. Today, Steven Hayward's Power Line post highlights some significant comments by George Will on the role of corporate leadership in Detroit's decline. Some valuable links there as well.

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems therefore, we should be thankful that learning never stops.

                                                                                                       Reuters photo/Rebecca Cook

Detroit: The Intellectual, Moral, and Fiscal Rot Finally Won

United Artists Theater, Detroit               Photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

Readers know that Detroit is a continuing topic here at OTR. Time has been precious lately with few observations on my part, so I'm deferring to Scott Johnson's link-filled post on Power Line to address the city's bankruptcy.

I never saw Detroit as a prosperous city, only as a cold, tarnished, crumbling, seemingly uninhabited place in 2003. On the other hand, I knew many of her siblings, including Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and more, long before they became part of the Rust Belt.  Some of those cities did well over the past generation by adopting fiscal realism and reinvention instead of persisting with the collectivist liberalism that consumed Detroit.

There's a lesson here screaming to be learned. We can only hope our current crop of "leaders" listen.

The Job - Is It Time To View Work As A Human Right?

Engraving encouraging industry                                                      English, 1749

When a man sat at his loom in 17th century England, he wasn't too worried about having a job and a life, meager as they may have been, because he owned his craft and the labor of his hands. Move forward a hundred years and the weaver's life was, as with the political revolutions of that age, a world turned upside down. His worth was no longer in the cloth he made but in the labor of his hands. His pay no longer came directly from the buyer but from the merchant who bought his labor.

For the worker the Industrial Revolution brought both hardship and liberation in the wave of romanticism that swept across the early 19th century West.  By the end of that century the new freedom and sense of selfhood had redefined citizenship and statehood. The United States, a constitutional republic, was identified more as a democracy.  Our weaver's descendants more often than not found themselves on our teeming shore and organized into the earliest labor unions. Those unions would have their greatest national influence  in the first half of the 20th century.

Today, as unions continue their slow decline, the battleground has shifted from the conditions and benefits derived from the work to the work itself. There's no question a discussion about the current economy will end in a discussion about jobs and the origin of jobs. Work has never been a human right, but has the time arrived philosophically to think in those terms?  After all we've come a long way from Marx and Engels. Walter Russell Mead explores this question in his blog at The American Interest.

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Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.

Pigford: Good Intention To Gigantic Fraud

A black farmer in the rural south  USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service

When Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism expressed concern about the class-action settlement called Pigford, he was ridiculed by the usual media suspects. That was last year. A few days ago, The New York Times verified that Breitbart had every right to be outraged at what has become an extraordinary fraud on taxpayers brought to us by our elected officials and their appointees in Washington. I won't belabor readers with my take on this one. All I ask is that my liberal readers read the NYT article before declaring Pigford just another target of unhinged conservatives. If liberals can't handle the news from their flagship source, here is a shorter version of the story from the editors of National Review Online.

If we keep spending money - taxpayer or Chinese loan - like this the country will not survive.

As The Blue Model Of Government Fades, What Will Take Its Place?

Columbus Crossing the Atlantic                                              N.C. Wyeth, 1927

The old adage, the more things change the more they remain the same, finds serious reinforcement in a Walter Russell Mead article posted yesterday at The American Interest. Mead is a traditional liberal schooled in English, history, and American foreign policy. In that respect he is an "old school Democrat" with  strong beliefs in our Constitution as well as an understanding and respect for the traditions that have guided the nation and its foreign policy over two centuries. He understands that our government structure may change, but the principles that have made it exceptional will remain strong:

The state will transform but it will not disappear. We may change the way the educational system works, but the goal of the changes will be to ensure more and better universal education. We may change the policies aimed at helping low income people move up the ladder of life, but American society does not want to write off the poor. We may liberalize drug laws and look for alternatives to imprisonment for non-violent offenders, but we won’t abandon the effort to protect the public from unsafe or impure drugs and we won’t turn law and order over to the private sector. We may look for ways to reduce the bureaucratic delays when it comes to permitting processes, but we will not abandon the effort to impose safety and environmental standards. The state will go high tech, its processes will accelerate, bureaucracies will become flatter and more open, but it won’t wither away.

Full Fathom Five: 5.0 Liberalism and the Future of the State  is a short lesson in the traditions that have shaped our national character. It is a hopeful and satisfying approach to the question of change, an ever-present challenge and opportunity that Mead sees as new beginnings without end:

The old America I grew up in and the new America growing up around me now are very different places. Some of the changes are for the better and others are for the worse. Yet somehow the America in which my grandfather was born in 1897 is connected to the country my youngest great-nephew (born in 2012) will come to know. The lasting values that were the best things about the America of 1897, or of 1776 for that matter, will still matter in 2097 and beyond. They will be embodied in different institutions and will deal with more complex realities than we knew in earlier times, but the spirit of ordered liberty that has brought the American experiment so far, so fast, will, if we get things right, still be at the core of American life—and we will still, I suspect, be quarreling about how to organize and limit government in ways that the founding fathers would recognize.

OTR thinks readers will enjoy this uplifting commentary from someone well-grounded in the American story and equipped with exceptional writing skills, two elements we find sorely lacking among our political elite today.

On that note...it is always a good day when this blogger can link politics, history, economics, literature and music into a coherent post.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.

Walmart As Capitalism 101

Sam Walton's 5&10. The next step was Discount City and the world.

Three quarters of a million people now live in the three counties from Fayetteville north to the state line in the northwest corner of Arkansas. This is Walmart country. It is the holy land of free enterprise where Sam Walton opened his first Walmart Discount City in 1962. Over those few decades as Walmart grew into the "world's third largest public corporation," the company transformed the plateau prairie into a prosperous landscape. The change came quickly once the company that visited its suppliers said, "No more!"  From that day forward those salesmen who wanted their products on Walmart shelves had to visit Bentonville for an audience with the buyers.  It is no wonder today that almost 100 business aircraft fly out of the area's two general aviation airports, Rogers Muni-Carter Field and Bentonville Muni-Thaden Field.  It is no wonder that more than thirty airlines identify with the 260 scheduled weekday arrivals and departures out of Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport.

As one would expect, the Walmart holy land is a classic example of the money generation model in action. The retail reach of thousands of stores and services far exceeds the area's three-county grasp. Granted, it isn't like shopping at Waterside in Naples, but it's damn close if you don't need the palms and bromeliads. There's no beach either, but an abundance of nearby lakes provides plenty of broad and deep water in addition to 3,000 miles of shoreline.This is but one element of the quiet and relaxation to be found after a thirty minute drive east or west of US71 and the money model madness.

It is a nice compromise watching day by day as fall colors invade a large grove of trees across the fence.  For OTR it's new trees and new birds, but the old barn, with its missing boards and battered tin roof, recalls the long history here.  It is a diverse history as well, quite fitting of a place where the Ozark and Boston Mountains spill into the prairie grasslands of the Great Plains and the llano winds of Texas whisper from a mere few hours away.

OTR supposes that for  many this will always be flyover country. After all, hardly a minute passes in the day when you can't see eight or ten contrails from the commercial jets flying between Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, L.A., and beyond.  Still, the Cessnas, Dessaults, Bombardiers, Beechcrafts, and occasional Gulfstreams on approach and departure here tell another story. It may not be for everyone. but here in the Arkansas holy land, life is very, very good.

High Earners Will Migrate To Avoid New Taxes On Wealth

It is a mixed bag, but top U.S. earners will leave a location to avoid a new "wealth tax" if they have the freedom to do so. Research tells us that retirees and others who receive the bulk of their earnings from investments have no problem escaping. As expected, business owners and high-earners who are still on the job don't have as much flexibility. The bottom line indicates that such taxes are statistically insignificant as motivators for relocating. Perhaps the search for real meaning with this issue rests with finding the tipping point at which those business owners would indeed move. There are reports that southern California's tax policy may be driving businesses out, but taxation is only one of many variables at work there.

Regardless, yesterday's socialist victory in the presidential election in France should come with a warning to our Blue State tax-and-spenders. The victor, Francois Hollande, intends to impose a 75% tax on "annual incomes over one million euros ($1.3 million)." Well before his election, French inquiries about London homes priced above one million pounds increased  as much as 30% while those from other European nations declined more than 15%. Because France taxes its citizens on a worldwide basis, these inquiries likely came from those willing to renounce their citizenship. Even pride has its limits.

This issue bears watching here as mobility is a significant American characteristic already compromised by a long, painful and seemingly endless recession.


 

Central Planning

We in the U.S. will be suffering a long time from the unrealized expectations of universal homeownership brought to us by Freddie, Fannie, statists like Barney Frank, and the private sector porkers in the banking and real estate industries.  It is a mere shadow of things to come from an executive unschooled in the history of the failure of state-controlled or centralized planning. Here is an example of what a controlled economy can produce in terms of both infrastructure and potential social instability. The Chinese government is building scores of these empty cities in an attempt to grow its annual gross domestic product by 8%. The policy has fueled speculation to the point that only the wealthiest citizens can afford to live in them. But who would live in a city without an economy or even the smallest hint of community? Chinese leaders are about to learn the hard way that their "build it and they will come" policy comes without a guarantee.

Here is another link discussing the pop in China's property bubble.

It is interesting how history is there for the taking, how it is indeed cyclical, and how it is repeatedly ignored.

H/T Instapundit
Photo: Ghost city in China

Waiting For The Rabbit

Tomorrow night our "hope and change" president speaks about his new plan to address joblessness and the economy, two points that have plagued his administration from its outset thirty-two months ago. OTR doesn't hold much hope for anything new in this upcoming proposal because Obama and his policymakers have an extraordinarily narrow ideologically driven view of how a big and small economy works. This is an administration driven by the academy and well-versed in the command and control of centralized government theory. Their plan will "craft a vision" for recovery based on spending more money borrowed from China, increased taxation on the perceived greed of "the wealthy," and "targeted infrastructure investment for clean energy." This translates into debt, class warfare, and subsidized green industry.

Americans are in general are a practical, pragmatic and smart people.  They've heard debt, class warfare and subsidized green industry for thirty-two months and it's beginning to wear even on the unicorn wing of the Democratic Party. This phenomenon among Americans isn't new as history does indeed repeat itself. Back in 1976, the electorate placed James Earl Carter in the White House in response to the political dark ages brought upon us by the Nixon years. Carter's entry was a clean sweep, wrapped in optimism and its own visionary thinking, including new departments for education and energy. Carter, like Obama, governed an America hobbled by stagflation and expensive energy. His administration was characterized by its inexperience and by the "hands on" attitude of its leader. Late in his term and stymied by a lack of options to address a drifting economy and crushing energy shortage, Carter's frustration emerged in his famous "crisis of confidence" speech where he placed much of the blame on ordinary Americans and their lifestyles. To a large degree Carter was right, but Americans took umbrage at his remarks and used this speech as well as a series of crises in 1980 to vote him out of office.

There's one more part to this story. It involves Carter's encounter with a swamp rabbit a few months before his "crisis" speech. That incident involved a terrified rabbit's attempt to escape the hounds by seeking refuge in the president's rowboat. It was a small lake and a small boat, and the President wasn't about to share it with a frenzied Sylvilagus aquaticus. Who would? Nevertheless, the story emerged of Carter splashing the water with his paddle and forcing the hapless bunny into the hinterland. Though there were no photographs until well into the next decade, the vision of a harried president thrashing at a killer rabbit were fixed in time and place.

OTR sees many parallels--how can one not!-- in the Carter and Obama presidencies. Tomorrow's speech may well be another one unless this president can redirect his policies toward hope and change based in practical and pragmatic capitalism. Otherwise it's going to sound like all the rhetoric we've heard these last and long thirty-two months. And the patience among Americans is already thin. Should Obama bring us more of the same, he simply will be waiting for the rabbit.

Obama's $535,000,000 Green Flash

This is another bad day for those who pay federal taxes.

Fifteen months ago, Obama used Solyndra, a solar technology company near San Francisco, as a shining example of green job creation. Below is the video of that speech. The first four minutes is Obama as conversationalist. The real speech begins at 4:00.



This company was so "successful" it received a $535,000,000 guaranteed loan from the Department of Energy. Today, Solyndra announced it is filing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laying off 1100 employees . OTR's little Sharp Elsi-Mate EL-240 Solar Calculator-on his desk for twenty years-tells him that Solyndra burned through that loan at the rate of around $116,000 a day. There are so many things wrong with this scenario at so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. OTR will leave it at two:

1. Unrealistic expectations
2. Striking incompetence

Barack Obama likely knows very little about Solyndra. He may have the vision, but he's relying on the green energy gurus in his administration to make the tactical decisions. In this case, they made some very poor choices and made him look mighty foolish in the process. And this is just one of many stumbles at the starting gate for next year's re-election campaign. Not good if you're a "hope and change" fan.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has the story here.

UPDATE: An Oklahoma billionaire and major fundraiser for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign is the principal owner of Solyndra. Anybody smell something?

Fiat Lux: "Saving" Chrysler For America

So, to recap, the Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is only worth $5 billion.

Oh, and Obama plans to make this "success" a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign.

You can't make up this stuff. It is an object lesson in what is happening to your children's future at the hands of a severely misguided government. OTR is only too happy to shed light on the darkness.

H/T Powerline

Fiction As Dystopian Reality In Detroit

Although OTR never reads fiction and fantasy on a regular basis, he has made a big dent in the best of both genres over the years. This has occurred in part because he has a strong belief that science fiction in particular--fantasy to a far lesser extent--has a curious habit of approaching fact. Daniel J. Mitchell has more to say about this regarding Ayn Rand's fictitious Atlas Shrugged and the dystopia known as Detroit.

OTR needs to read that book. So do a few folks in Washington.

H/T Instapundit
Photo: United Artists Theater, Detroit, from Yves Marchand and Romaine Meffre's 2010 publication, The Ruins of Detroit.

"We Are Witnessing The Total Failure Of Academic Keynesian Economics"

Glenn Reynolds has posted a link to Michael Walsh's New York Post article on the Obama administration's abysmal economic policies and unbending faith in Keynesian economics. Keynesian theories were suspect from their very beginning in the late 1930s. The results of industrial nationalization, the consolidation of government control, and increasing government spending-all Keynesian concepts-did not create sustainable economies in Europe over the last fifty years. In the United State from 1981-89, Ronald Reagan's economic policies essentially drove a stake through the heart of Keynesian theory, but it remains alive in the mind of Barack Obama a generation later.

This is a brief and notable appraisal of our current situation. Obama's response in filling vacancies in his economic leadership will quickly tell us if he has learned anything over the past thirty months.

Obamanomics, Ein Volk And The Twilight Of Mass Affluence

OTR has never been one to specialize, not since he realized he didn't want to spend the rest of his life researching 18th century frontier settlement in the Great Valley of Anywhere. Instead, he devoted his career to making broad linkages in time and space across a wonder-filled organism he called the American Experience. Of course there was theme and focus in his work, but there was also plenty of opportunity to examine the "big pictures" that make our national experiment so interesting.

Every once in a while, the Internet makes for some fascinating linkages that grab OTR's attention. The prelude to today's discovery occurred yesterday while reading Andrew Klavan's Diarist column-unfortunately not available online as a freebie- in the latest issue of City Journal. His article describes the sudden realization that the study of popular or mass culture can be a very defensible discipline for explaining who we were, are, and may become as Americans.

Forward to today and a blog post by Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds and you have all the ingredients for building an exciting information web out of Barack Obama, Madison Avenue ad execs, Depression "porn," sheet metal and leather "Aviation Collection" furniture, James Lileks's "Retromatical Diversions," Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927), and Dr. Joseph Goebbels, that most effective Minister of Propaganda for the short-lived Nazi Empire.

Here is your link to the Reynolds blog. OTR's only instruction is to take your time, visit all the links and browse the comments. Readers will find some very perceptive-verging on prescient- archives, a catalog one could browse for hours, some of the best humor on the Internet, and several reasons why OTR never wrote a dissertation on frontier land speculation in 1790.

Footnote: When you are a culture lumper as opposed to a splitter, it pays to have plenty of time for diversions like the one I recommend above. It is like exploring new cave passages, returning to the surface and describing your discoveries only to be asked how much of the cave is unexplored. Nothing is ever as simple as it looks. I hope you enjoy the journey.

The Cloward-Piven "Crisis Strategy" Is Very Real

OTR has offered his readers many opportunities to learn about this strategy over the last two years. One of its authors, Frances Fox Piven, has called for its use in 2011 to overload welfare systems across the nation, create a fiscal crisis, and force the national government to support a "federally guaranteed national income." OTR thinks it is fair to call Piven an experienced academic community organizer who is delighted at having a fellow organizer in the Oval Office. Readers already know that the Obama administration, according to now Chicago mayor-in-waiting, Rahm Emanuel, is not one to let a crisis go to waste. Piven knows this may be her last, best hope to put the strategy to effective use and undermine our capitalist economy.

For the back story as well as potential impacts on you and your family, check out this Stanley Kurtz link at The Corner. Be sure to read the Ron Radosh link for the story about Piven's call to action in the latest issue of The Nation.

It is hard for OTR to understand how some who have benefited so much from the American experience could hold so much hate for this country.

Bertoldt Brecht, Mixed Social-Profit Models, And Repossessed Goats

Economics remains a "soft" science, but it is firming up nicely with improvements in data collection and processing. And there could be some astounding outcomes for economics in our future. For example, some thinkers like Edward O. Wilson see economics as the gate way to a unification of knowledge or what he calls consilience. Obviously, we will not see any formula for unity next week, but there are aspects of this line of thinking that affect us today. One of them involves the search for a golden mean between "doing good" and "doing well" in the world of finance. That is, how to provide financial services to a full spectrum of the world population while, at the same time, keeping the bank afloat. You may think this has no effect on your life, but you're sorely wrong. The "generosity" of housing bankers Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac to both customers and employees is the reason the value of your house dropped by a third in the last few years.

In the developing world, something called microfinance also struggles with doing good and doing well. For international banking, microfinance has raised a number of questions involving compatibility and worth. Do small loans to high risk borrowers in India improve society? Is this a world-wide subprime disaster in the making? Is it all a self-deception that gives the Manhattan investment banker a warm feeling as he views the city below from his penthouse balcony?

Read more about it here in a post at The Volokh Conspiracy.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

The Democrat Plantation

Moonbattery 's Van Helsing posted a fine history lesson--first-rate links too--on the American welfare state, an entity that could easily be called the Democrat plantation. It begins with an ominous warning delivered by Franklin Roosevelt, the welfare state founding father, about the destructive potential of sustained dependence on government aid. The story snakes through the presidencies of Johnson, Carter and Obama, and ends with the nation teetering on the abyss where fewer and fewer taxpayers support almost half the electorate. Stepping back from that edge and a descent into a slave rebellion on the part of the producers may be difficult, but it is essential if we want to sustain the republic as we know it.