Merrill Gee

Addendum to Paul

2012-01-19T10:38:00.001-08:00

Addendum to Paul

In the interest of total disclosure, I have to add this caveat to the story of Paul. A few years ago Jill Hunter’s daughter moved in up the block from us where she lived for about a year while her husband completed medical school. The result was that we got to see Jill at church every now and then. Just before her daughter moved I got Jill’s address and wrote up the story about her and Paul, thinking that she would love it. In fact, I could actually picture the family—her children and grandchildren--gathered around the fireplace on Christmas eve and one (or several) of them saying—after they had read the Christmas story—“Mom, please read us the story about you and that boy that you chased with the hatchet.
Well, a couple of weeks after I mailed her the story, I ran into Jill (now Jill Tingey) at the BYU Creamery. “Did you get my the story I mailed you?” I asked expectantly.
“I did,” she said in a very frosty tone of voice, “and I don’t mind telling you, I didn’t like it.”
“Oh,” I said in a disappointed tone of voice as the vision of her family gathered around the Christmas tree listening to my story went up the chimney with the rest of the smoke.
“It certainly didn’t paint a very flattering picture of me,” she continued. For one thing, I’m sure that I never in my life chased anyone with a hatchet.”
I was about to protest. I was about to point out that I distinctly remember the wicker basket by the door with the neatly stacked pile of wood with the hatchet lying on top. I was about to point out that she could ask anyone, she could even ask my wife, if I would ever in a thousand years remember such a thing if it was not deeply impressed on my mind. And it was deeply impressed on my mind by the memory of her stooping down and picking up the hatchet before she charged out the door with it.
As I say, I was about to mention all this, but I remembered that you only argue with a woman if you are running against her in a political contest and even then, only very very carefully, so I refrained.
I mention all this by way of admitting that the above story has not gone entirely unchallenged, especially the detail of the hatchet, and, of course, without that detail, the story is hardly worth telling.
I also added this note because I suspect that many, when I tell the story of my roommate, Craig Johnson, will suspect that I made the part relating to Jill Hunter up, or, at least, telescoped the time. But I did neither. I am much more certain of those events even than I am of the part in the previous story about the hatchet, and, I am quick to add, I’m pretty certain about the hatchet. And, finally, it not only happened, but it happened exactly one week later.

Great Lovers I have known--IV--Paul

2012-01-17T14:36:00.000-08:00

Great Lovers--IV--Paul

While we were together in the army, Craig Johnson and I had agreed that we would room together when I got out. Since he got out a year before I did, he had already found a place to live. On my return, he warned me that of the two roommates who were going to share our apartment, one, Paul----, was rather different. Of course, having been at school already 4 ½ years, I was used to “different” roommates so that didn’t bother me at all.
I actually met Paul the day before school when we were both walking to our new apartment from campus. He informed me that, although he realized that the apartment was small for four fellows, that he would need to install a rather large safe in the apartment. I immediately protested. To say that the apartment was small was an understatement. We were paying only $25 a month, but we were getting no more than we were paying for. Our bedroom consisted of the two sets of bunk beds and exactly enough space for one person—one rather thin person--to walk between them. At one end on the room were two sets of dresser drawers, at the other a small closet. The living room consisted of a small table, a couch and two chairs. The kitchen was so small that only two of us could sit at the small table at the same time. The bathroom was situated in the unfurnished half of the basement which the landlord used as a storage room.
“Maybe you could put your safe in the landlord’s storage room amongst the old boxes and shelves of bottled raspberries and peaches,” I suggested, trying to be helpful.
“Too dangerous,” he responded. “I need the safe to store my gold and anybody could go into the storage part of the basement and steal.”
“Your gold?” I asked incredulously. “What are you doing with gold at school? If you have that much gold, why don’t you leave it in the bank at home, or even here?”
“I need to have immediate access to it. That’s what I do. I buy and sell gold.”
It turned out that he was convinced that he would soon be a millionaire selling gold. It turned out that Paul was so sure that he would soon be rich that he had registered for only one class—ballroom dance, so he, along with Craig could be on the ballroom dance team. But in order to do that he had to be a full-time student, so he had paid full tuition and registered for 16 hours of audit credit. I soon learned that our new roommate was definitely different than the average student. It soon became apparent that our soon-to-be-a-millionaire roommate was exceedingly tight with his money, so much so that he was always last to pay his share of the bills and complained the loudest at having to pay them at all. But it was in his dating that he was the most different and to understand it, I must digress for a moment..
Before I was drafted I had dated (very briefly) Jill Hunter. I was much enamored of Jill, but so were many others and it was very difficult to get a date with her. When I returned, she was still unmarried so I resumed my courtship—or, more accurately, attempts at courtship--where I had left off, and with even less success than I had before going into the army. This discouraged me but I did not give up. The one thing I could always do with Jill was to go over to her apartment on Sunday afternoons. There, along with all the other would-be suitors and her roommates’ boyfriends, we would sing songs, chit chat and usually, one of the girls would bring cookies for treats.
But, of course, being almost 30 years old and still not married, I felt that it was incumbent on me to date, at least once, and preferably twice on every week-end. Craig felt the same way. So early in the week we would begin stewing, moaning, and asking ourselves and anyone who would listen, “who can I ask out this week-end?” I was a little puzzled why Craig would ask that, as I will explain in the next segment dealing more with him, but basically, it was because he was on the ballroom dance team and there were, therefore, plenty of girls he could ask out. In fact, on most week-ends he had at least one date with a girl who had asked him out.
When, however, I would ask Paul who he planned to ask out, he would simply reply, very flippantly, “I never think about it until the night I want to go out.”
“But,” I protested, “you can’t do that. All the sharp girls will already have been asked out by then.”
“I simply tell them to break their dates and usually they do,” he responded, with what seemed to me was a bit of overconfidence—even a bit of—and maybe more than a bit of ego. But after a few weeks, I discovered he wasn’t kidding. He really would call a girl up, usually less than an hour before the intended date and say something like, “Hi, Babe. Tonight is your lucky night. I need a date to the movies, so naturally I thought of you.” If he got a response like, “Who is this?’, he, in turn, would respond with, “You’re kidding, of course, but just to humor you I’ll tell you that this is Paul.” After the obligatory, “Oh hi, Paul. I’d love to go but I can’t. I already have a date.” He would say, “Cancel it. This may be your last chance to go out with me.”
Of course, I had always heard that there were those types of lovers—or, more accurately, daters—out there, but I assumed they were pretty much confined to the movies or TV shows. The fact that there might be a real person out there that actually talked and acted like that had never occurred to me. And I would have assumed that this was all merely the same sort of braggadocio that assured us that within the year he would be a millionaire except for two facts. First was the fact that on at least some occasions this approach actually worked, albeit, not always, and I don’t think, from what I observed, even most of the time, but occasionally, it did. The other, and more critical, convincer, for me at least, that Paul actually did work some sort of charm over women, was the fact that Patty Duke seemed not only to like him, but to be crazy about him. Patty was in our home-evening group and was easily the cutest and most vivacious girl in the group. What was more to the point, for me at least, was that she was a junior, and, therefore, I felt, a dating possibility. But, she exhibited little interest in me, and a great deal of interest in Paul, so I decided that there must be something more than mere braggadocio to his self-affirmed charm. (Parenthetically, I must say, that well into the semester, I asked Craig why he did not ask Patty out. “I am not in the habit of asking 16 year old girls out,” he responded. “Sixteen!” I exclaimed, “how could she be sixteen? She’s a junior.” ((It turns out that by the time I asked she had actually just turned 17)). He explained that she had graduated from a private school in Canada and had started college at an unusually early age.)
At any rate, I was beginning to think that there was more to Paul’s ability to attract women than I could readily see.
Well into the semester I had just asked Jill Hunter out for the umpteenth time and been turned down and was, therefore, obviously in the dumps. Paul said, “I don’t understand it. Why do you keep asking that girl out the same way. You need to change your approach. Treat her like I treat the girls I ask out. Don’t ask her several days before the date. Call her up an hour before you want to go out with her and just tell her you’re coming over to take her to the movies.”
“That wouldn’t work,” I responded, “she would already have a date by then.”
“So what?”, he said forcefully, “Tell her to cancel it and that you’ll be over to take her out.”

“That may work for the girls you date,” I said, implying that his dates were somehow “easy”, “but it wouldn’t work with Jill.”
“My eye!” he exclaimed. “I’ll bet I could get a date with her any day of the week at a moment’s notice.
“I don’t think so,” I said skeptically.
“I tell you what,” he added helpfully, “when you’ve pretty much given up on that girl, I’ll go over with you on you Sunday afternoon visits, meet her, and within an hour or less, I’ll have her licking my boots. That will give you an opportunity to see how it’s done with the next girl you’s like to date.”
Well, of course, at first I rather declined to be involved with that kind of an experiment, but after a few weeks of being turned down and listening to Paul’s subsequent tauntings, I threw in the towel.
“Alright,” I said, “why don’t you go over with me this coming Sunday night?”
“Now you’re sure you won’t be bitter or angry when she falls at my feet and begs me to take her out?”
“No,” I assured him. “I’ve finally given up with her. Besides, I really would like to see you in action. Maybe I could pick up a few pointers.”
So it was agreed that on the following Sunday I would take Paul with me to the weekly sing-along at Jill Hunter’s house. It wasn’t really her house in the sense that it was where her family lived, but she and about four other girls were renting a rather nice house on 5th East between 4th and 5th North.
After we knocked, Jill answered the door. “Oh Merrill,” she said enthusiastically, “We’re so glad you came. We always like it when you come over. And who is this that you’ve brought with you?”
“This is Paul, my roommate,” I said as we stepped into her front room.
“Why on earth did you bring him?” she asked almost disdainfully. I was shocked. In all the years I had known Jill she had never said anything negative about anyone and to make such an unkind remark was absolutely baffling. It was also very embarrassing because it seemed almost like I had warned her that Paul had boasted that she would be licking his boots after just a few minutes of contact. But I had not said a word to her about him, or even told her that I was bringing a roommate. I had brought other friends before and she had always been the very soul of kindness and even enthusiasm that I was bringing a friend over. It was most puzzling.
After a few minutes we gathered around the piano, as we usually did, with Jill playing and the rest of us singing. After a few bars Jill stopped playing, turned around a said to Paul, “You sound terrible, sing softer—much softer—or preferably not at all.” Again, I was floored. It was so completely out of her character, or at least, as I had always known it. After singing for a few minutes, Jill left the piano playing to a roommate and disappeared into the kitchen. After a few minutes she came out carrying a plate of cookies. She handed them around and offered me some and Paul reached over to take one.
“You can’t have any, “ she said pulling the plate away from him.
“Why not? You gave them to everyone else, “ he demanded to know.
“You don’t deserve any, “ she responded cruelly and walked out of the room with her plate.
“I think we better go, “ I said. “I really don’t understand it,” I continued, “She’s never been like this with anyone before.”
“I agree we should go,” he said, “but this girl is weird.”
“I think we better go,” I said when she came back into the room.
“Already?” she said in a surprised voice. “You just got here. But know that you are welcome any time, but don’t bring him with you next time,” she added pointing to Paul.
“That does it, “Paul exclaimed as he planted himself directly in front of her. “Since I got here a few minutes ago you’ve been nothing but rude and mean to me and I demand to know why!”
“You know very well why,” she said putting her hands on her hips and looking defiantly at him.
“That’s crazy. I have never seen you before in my life. If you think I’ve ever done anything to warrant the kind of behavior you’ve exhibited toward me, you’ve got me confused with someone else.”
“You and I were together at Ron Smith’s party last night.”
“I was at Ron Smith’s party but I don’t remember seeing you there. I’m sure I didn’t speak to you, much less do anything to justify the kind of behavior I’ve been subjected to here today.”
Jill grabbed her hair, which was long, flowing almost to her waist, and bunched it up on her head. “ I was wearing my short-hair wig so I looked at little different,” she started to explain but before she had even got that far, Paul was pointing at her excitedly.
“You, You! You!” he gurgled excitedly and then without saying anything else, he made a mad dash for the door, threw it open and ran out without bothering to close it behind him. In the same instant, Jill was after him, pausing only to pick up the hatchet laying on top of the wood stack at the door. She raised the hatchet over her head and ran after Paul like an Indian on the war-path pursuing someone with the intent to scalp him,
The front porch was a three-quarters waist-high enclosed that required a fast left turn in order to go down about 5 steps onto the sidewalk. Paul didn’t make the turn. He simple leaped over the porch railing and ran into the night. Jill, unable, or unwilling, to leap the railing ran around the side, descended the steps and chased him into the night.
The rest of us, Jill’s roommates, the other boyfriends, and I remained in the house looking through the open door dumbfounded. Shortly, Jill came back.
“He got away,” she announced with obvious disappointment. “Merrill, where on earth did you pick him up anyway?”
“He’s my roommate,” I repeated from the introduction.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Well don’t ever bring him back here again.”
“But, I don’t understand,” I said, more baffled than ever. “Whatever could he have done to cause you to act that way toward him?”
“Last night we were at a party together. He kept coming up to me and saying things like, ‘Hi tots, why don’t we hang out together’. When I told him, very politely, that I didn’t care to he kept saying things like, ‘you know you’re dying to get to know me better’. I told him to please leave me alone, but he kept bothering me. Soon he was trying repeatedly to put his arm around me and when I pushed him away he simply refused to give up but kept trying to put his arm around me so I decided that the only way to get rid of him was to bite him. So I did. He is a first class jerk. I don’t ever want to see him again.”
“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “I had no idea.”
She assured me that she still liked me and that I was welcome to come over anytime and I took off. About a block or so away from her house, I saw someone lurking behind a tree in front of me. I was a little nervous but I decided to proceed bravely forward. As I got close to the tree I heard a loud whisper, “Merrill, is that you?” It was Paul so I relaxed.
“What happened at that party?” I asked.
“Oh Merrill, you are well rid of that girl,” he said vehemently. “She is a witch if ever there was one. I was at a party last night. I was doing absolutely nothing, just minding my own business, when out of the blue, she comes up to me and for no reason whatever, she bites me!”
“That is strange,” I acknowledged, refraining from repeating her side of the story.
“Strange? That girl is a witch if ever there was one.”
We continued our walk home in silence, with me with some effort suppressing the desire to remind him of his boast that she would be licking his boots.

Great Lovers I have known--III--Tom Allen--2

2010-10-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

Great Lovers--III--Tom Allen--2
After Christmas vacation Tom actually wrote Beverly a few times but he simply was not much of a writer and I assumed that the whole affair had more of less died a natural death. Of course, under normal circumstances, Tom could have used leave time to visit Beverly in Provo, but Tom’s circumstances were not normal. Apparently, he had somehow agreed that he would trade in his leave time for cash to pay off creditors, so effectively, at least, according to him, he had no leave time.
Somehow, and I don’t really remember how, I learned about something they have in the army called "Religious Retreat". This is a program whereby, if your chaplain approves, you can take up to three days off to attend a religious function of some kind. I was getting a little homesick for BYU, so I proposed to Tom that we apply for Religious Retreat" to attend General Conference. He was excited about it, since apparently his leave restriction did not apply to "Religious Retreat." Accordingly, I applied and the chaplain, who was glad to get rid of us, granted our request.
When I told Tom that our request had been granted, he became really excited. I was amazed. He didn’t seem the type to get all that excited about General Conference and since he had never been to BYU, he couldn’t be that excited about going there either. After a bit it became clear that the real reason for his excitement was that he saw it as an opportunity to date--i.e. wine and dine--Beverly for three whole days.
He wrote her immediately saying that he would be there and hoped that she would reserve the evenings for him. She wrote back responding that she would be happy to see him and that she would indeed reserve the evenings for him. Tom was ecstatic.
An integral part of his plan was to present her with the new, and greatly improved, i.e. much lighter, Tom. He had become convinced that one reason that her enthusiasm for their dating had seemed to diminish a bit toward the end of the Christmas vacation had been his bulk. He was, admittedly, a little hefty. The result was that he determined to lose as much weight as he possibly could in the six weeks or so of preparation for our trip.
He had read a book, or pamphlet describing what he called, "The Grapefruit Diet". The idea behind this diet was that, unlike other food, grapefruit did not add to the calories you took into your body, it somehow subtracted from them. In other words, if you ate enough grapefruit, the grapefruit would actually begin to melt fat away from your body. So when I would eat with Tom, usually the evening meals in the mess hall. He would have mostly grapefruit, in fact, fairly often nothing but grapefruit. Tom was able to do this because he had for some time cultivated a friendship with the cooks--formerly, so he could get extra helpings. But now that paid off in getting extra grapefruit--quite a lot of extra grapefruit. Grapefruit was always an option--not a very popular one, from my observations, for breakfast at the mess hall, but my guess is that after Tom began his grapefruit diet that the cooks had to triple or even quadruple their orders of grapefruit. It speaks well for Tom that they were willing to do it.
Of course, it wasn’t just grapefruit dieting. Tom was so sure that the new sleek, suave Tom would so enamor Beverly (in just three days) that provision needed to be made for a more permanent relationship and that would require money. That base was also to be covered--as always, with my help, i.e. me furnishing the capital. Tom’s scheme this time was to become a middleman for glass figurines made by the glass blowers of Juarez. Tom was sure that when the various shops in Provo saw some of these they would jump at the chance to market them and we would make a fortune. Since this seemed like a scheme with somewhat more possibility than Tom’s usual offering, I agreed to advance him $50 to buy samples in Juarez.
Finally, the big day came. We were off to Provo carrying a little luggage and a box of glass figurines. Tom was always telling me all the things he planned to do with Beverly (on the $50 I advanced him for that purpose--also to be repaid out of the profits from the glassware business). I pointed out to him that he needed to spend at least some time promoting his glassware scheme, to which he assured me that that was right at the top of his list of priorities.
I had a great time. I watched the conference sessions in the Wilkinson Center and spent the what free time that left me visiting old friends--especially girl friends, and getting applications for my master’s degree which I planned to begin work on in June when I got out of the army. I saw little of Tom. The one or two times I did run into him, he assured me that the glassware scheme was going great. All the merchants he had talked to were, he claimed, enormously excited about selling this stuff. In addition, things were going great with his courtship of Beverly.
On Sunday, after the final session of conference we headed back. The whole way back, Tom could talk of nothing but Beverly and how well everything had gone. He was busy figuring out what I, as the best man, should wear at the wedding. Where we should have the reception--at her home in Las Cruces or on the base. He was working out the details of the honeymoon and planning to check out married housing on the base. Fortunately, I was spared the details of his whole future happiness with Beverly by the fact that, having had almost no sleep in the previous three days, he fell asleep for the rest of the trip.
The next day at dinner it was back to the grapefruit regimen--apparently, Tom wanted to present Beverly when she came home in a month, with an even sleeker Tom than his already sleek self. Two days later, however, I was surprised to see Tom come to the table with two large steaks (something that only someone who had greatly ingratiated himself with the cooks could get away with), a large, separate plate of mashed potatoes and two deserts.
"What’s this?" I asked. "You temporarily abandoning the grapefruit diet?"
Rather than reply, he merely handed me a sheet of beautiful stationery containing a very neat hand-written note in purple ink.
The note was dated Sunday night and said: "Dear Tom, It is clear from the attention you have paid me the last three days that you are much more serious about our relationship that I am. I am sorry but I can only think of you as a good friend, so when I come home, I think it best that we not date, but that we can still see each other at Church and Church activities and be good friends. Your good friend, Beverly."
"Looks like we came on a little strong," I commented with a laugh handing him back the letter.
"You laugh," he muttered. "You can’t even imagine how hard getting this letter has been on me."
"Having gone through it several times, " I commented trying to be consoling, "I can tell you this--its a lot easier getting this kind of thing as a letter rather than going though it face to face."
"Well, you won’t think it quite so funny when you find out that I’m going to have to ask you for $50."
"$50!", I exclaimed. "What on earth for?"
"For the chocolates," he explained.
"The chocolates? I don’t understand," I protested and then it hit me. "OH no!" I exclaimed.
Our Elder’s quorum, as a fund raiser, was selling cheap boxes of chocolates for $3 each. I had agreed to sell 3 boxes, which I had taken to work and promptly sold to people at work. Tom, thinking of himself, as always, as the supersalesman, had agreed to sell 16 boxes of the chocolates.
"Don’t tell me you ate all those choclates!" I cried. "In one night?"
"I was depressed", he explained. "When I got that letter I decided that I am going to eat and eat until I get so fat that I can’t move. Then I am going up to Beverly and say, ‘See what you’ve done to me.’ She’ll feel terrible--but not as terrible as I feel."
"Yes, I’m sure that will certainly make her sorry that she dropped you all right. Very smart move. Besides," I added, "if you are so fat you can’t move, how are you going to go up to her?--in a wheel chair?"
"I haven’t worked out all the details," he went on whining. "All I know is that I will be so fat that she will be sorry she ever did this to me."
Well, when I left the Army in June, Tom could still move, but he did gain most of, if not all of, the weight he lost on his grapefruit diet. We more or less quit going to Las Cruces and he quickly consoled his great loss by dating girls in El Paso--as usual, at my expense.

Great Lovers I have Known--III--Tom Allen--I

2010-08-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

After I graduated I was promptly drafted with the purpose of fighting in Viet Nam. After basic training I was sent to White Sands Missile Range to learn how to do COBOL on army computers. The idea was that after a couple of months of training I would be sent to Viet Nam and the soldier who trained me actually was sent to Viet Nam, but I, and the soldier sent after me, for me to train, never were sent there. Then they quit sending soldiers. Although we were still in Viet Nam, the force was being reduced and it was clear that we would soon withdraw our troops altogether.
So I spent my two years in the Army at White Sands. When I first arrived, there were six of us single LDS enlisted men. Most of them had been to Viet Nam and were sent to White Sands to finish out their enlistment. Within a couple of months, there were only three of us left--Craig Johnson, about whom I will write later, Tom Allen and myself. After a year, Craig was discharged and returned to BYU, leaving Tom and me to fend for ourselves.
The nearest towns of any size to White Sands are Las Cruces , New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. We would go to both to attend social functions, but Tom favored El Paso, I favored Las Cruces. That is, Tom favored El Paso until he met Beverly. We were supposed to attend Church in Las Cruces, which we generally did, but the first year I was there, Tom always wanted to leave church quickly and get to some social event in El Paso. How Tom missed Beverly all that first year is still a mystery to me, after all, she was in our ward. But anyway, he did. It may have had to do with Craig, who also favored El Paso. Craig had gone on his mission to Mexico, so he really enjoyed socializing with the Hispanic people in El Paso. At any rate, Craig left in the middle of the summer and it was in August that Tom first asked Beverly out. She accepted and Tom was smitten. He took her out as often as he could, seeing as how he had no car and was, therefore, dependent on me for transportation. Tom’s lack of a car was a result of his lack of any money, which I will explain forthwith.
Tom had been a very successful salesman, and had, he claimed, been the proud recipient of an income in excess of 6 figures, which in those days was a considerable sum, somewhat akin to a quarter of a million dollars per annum today. But as so often happens with salesmen, or at least has so often happened with the few successful salesmen I have personally known, they have two problems. The first is the assumption that they will always earn what they earn at their peak. The second is that even if they could in some miraculous manner earn that much, they can always spend more--usually a great deal more. Both of these problems afflicted Tom in spades, to the point that he got so deep in the hole that he finally decided that the only solution--or, at least, the only somewhat honorable solution— was to volunteer for the draft, which he did. He had avoided being drafted outright by being overweight, but faced with the possibility of forfeiting on his debts--some of which were to people who, again, he claimed, were the type of characters who, when presented with a bankruptcy decree, would ignore it and attempt collection using brass knuckles, he knuckled down himself and brought his weight within acceptable limits. The result was that Tom’s creditors were forced to accept what payment they could get, and Tom was forced to give up his entire paycheck except for about $25 a month, to pay off debts.
At any rate, Tom began dating Beverly as much as he possibly could using my car and my money. Since I was rather chintzy with both, Tom only got off two or three dates before Beverly was off to BYU. After she was gone life settled more or less back into the old routine with Tom pressing to go to El Paso as often as I would agree to go.
During Christmas break, however, Tom really hit his stride. For one thing, he had a little more money. He was still, of course, restricted to his $25 a month allowance from the army, but he was always thinking up schemes to make extra money. Some of these actually paid off in a very minor way. He always claimed that they would pay off in a major way if I would simply break loose with the capital to make them major money makers, which I generally refused to do. My favorite scheme--possibly my favorite, because I saw through to the problems and refused to donate so much as a dollar to it--was his "great kool-aid bonanza". He came to me one day greatly excited, telling me he had the perfect scheme to make a small fortune. If I would loan him $50 I would double my money in a matter of days. When I demanded to know how this was going to happen, he was reluctant to tell me (as he generally was) claiming that it was such a fool-proof scheme that I would want to do it by myself, thus cutting him--who had thought the whole thing up--completely out. To this I replied that, not being much into money-making schemes, he need not worry about me. In this instance, he finally agreed to tell me the scheme, since it was clear that no money--at least, no money from me, would be forthcoming unless he did. It turns out, he explained, that the PX had decided to put their sugarless kool-aid--normally 10¢ a package--on sale for only 2¢ a package! If we--or, more accurately, he, using my money--bought up $50 worth, he was sure he could sell the stuff in a few days for 8¢per package, thus being able to double my $50 and still have $50 left over for himself.
"And who," I asked, "do you propose to sell all this kool-aid to?"
"Are you kidding?" he demanded in an incredulous tone of voice. "People will be scarfing this up all over the place. They will be getting normally 10¢ packages of kool-aid for only 8¢. People will be buying all we will sell them and pleading for us to sell them more."
"Well, all I want to know is, who are these people?’
"For starters, the guys in the barracks."
"The guys in the barracks!" I said with a laugh. "The guys in the barracks shop at the same PX you shop at. I doubt very much that they will be jumping at the chance to buy kool-aid at 8¢ a package when they can buy it at the same price you paid for it."
"Well, I can always sell it to the people we know at church, both in Las Cruces and El Paso."
"The people in church!" I laughed hollowly again. "I take it you are going to pass a note up and down the aisles saying something like, ‘Would you like to buy a package of normally-10¢-sugar-free-kool aid for a mere 8¢?’ That should go over in a big way."
"Listen," Tom said impatiently, "how I sell it is not your concern. All you need to do is give me the $50 and then collect the extra $50 in a couple of days."
"I’m sorry, Tom," I said trying to sound sincerely sorry, "But there is a good reason why the PX has put the stuff on sale. I don’t know what it is, but my guess is that you will be able to buy kool aid at 4¢ or 5¢ a package anywhere. They probably made way too much of the stuff and are giving the PX the first shot of getting rid of the surplus." Of course, it turned out I was dead wrong. In a couple of days you could not buy sugarless kool aid--not legally, at least--at any price. The government had banned cyclamates, the principle ingredient in the stuff--and required kool aid to withdraw it from the market. The PX had gotten a few days warning and tried to unload their supply.
But the important point was that I had saved my $50. I was not always so lucky. Nevertheless, sometimes Tom’s schemes would actually pay off--as I said--in a minor way and he would have a few extra bucks to spend.
Well, during the college Christmas break, while Beverly was home, he made the most of those few extra bucks and anything and everything he could get out of me. The result was that he was dating Beverly several times a week.
Beverly’s father, who during the summer had assumed that, since Beverly would soon be safely away at BYU, the whole thing would die a natural death, became concerned. I knew he was concerned because he called me into his office. He was the chief chemist at White Sands, or, at least, if not the chief, very close to it. He had a large spacious office--which my boss did not have (he shared it with two others)--a private secretary, and several workers down the hall.
Before the holidays were over he called me twice into his office to talk to him. The first time he explained that he and his brother had always loved chemistry. They had played with chemistry kits all the time they were growing up. All the time he was explaining about his childhood, I was asking myself, first, why he had called me over, and second, what I was going to say to my boss, who I was sure would ask me why the head chemist had asked me to come to his office. I wasn’t sure he would believe me when I told him that he had called me over to explain what a great time he had had as a boy playing with his chemistry sets.
Of course, it soon came out what the real purpose was. It became clearer when he explained that, although, both he and his brother had loved chemistry from their earliest days, only he had actually gotten a degree. His brother had taken lots of chemistry classes in college but had never actually gotten a degree. The result was that his brother, who according to Beverly’s dad, was always inventing new and important chemicals for the small companies he worked for, it didn’t do him a lot of good because as soon as he invented these marvelous new chemicals, his small company would use the new chemical as a leverage to sell out to a big company who would promptly lay off the brother. Thus, although a chemistry genius, because he had never gotten a degree, he was mostly out-of-work and broke. Beverly’s father, on the other hand, because he had a degree, was chief chemist at a major army installation and was securely earning a good income. Mostly so I would have something to explain to my boss, I asked him what the chief chemist at White Sands actually did.
"I always have a goal," he responded, "and I’m working toward it constantly."
I decided from that rather evasive answer that his goal was pretty much the same as my boss’s goal, which was pretty much the same goal as most of the upper level people at White Sands and that was to always have something in mind so you could look busy in case a general happened to walk through your department. Beverly’s father actually called me over two more times while I was there and it was clear that he was not going to waste any effort on the goal of looking busy on a mere Spec 4.
"Do you see what I’m driving at?" he asked after explaining about always having a goal.
"You feel that it is important to graduate from college." I said after a pause. I was still thinking about what I was going to tell my boss and thinking that the idea that the chief chemist called me over to tell me about the importance of college graduation was not much more believable than that he called me over to tell me what fun he had as a boy with his chemistry set.
"Precisely!" he exclaimed hitting his fist on his desk for emphasis.
"That is very helpful," I said, "and nice to know and all that, but, actually, I’ve graduated from college."
"I know that. But your friend, Tom, hasn’t. How much college do you think he has?"
I responded that I really didn’t know but I doubted that it was very much.
"Well, I do know. I had a friend look it up in his personnel file. Exactly zero, that’s how much. That’s why I called you over here. I want you to somehow put the kibosh on his dating of my daughter. I also learned that he is so deeply in debt that he hardly gets any money to spend. I don’t know where he is getting the money to date her at all."
Of course, I was not about to supply that bit of information. I simply told him that the holidays were almost over, and, I felt, that the romance would probably die a natural death which I really did feel, knowing that Tom was unlikely to carry on a courtship by correspondence.
This proved to be the case. After Beverly returned to BYU, Tom wrote her once, or possibly twice, and then life seemed to return to normal. But, as it turned out, the flame was turned down, but it was by no means extinguished, as I was about to learn.

Great Lovers I have known--II-Gary Jensen

2010-05-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Great Lovers I have Known--II--Gary Jensen
Unlike most of my roommates, Gary Jensen was strikingly handsome--so much so, in fact, that frequently when girls first met him, their mouths would simply drop open in wonder, or admiration, or longing, or something like that. However, after they had actually talked with Gary for a couple of minutes, their mouths closed right back up--and usually pretty quickly, at that. Gary was a psychology major, and we all pretty much agreed that he chose that major so he could, hopefully, figure out why he was so different. But it didn’t seem to help much, or at least, in so far as we could observe. Of course, we all agreed that a great deal of the problem was that he was so good looking. He was not only good looking but he was tall and had a beautiful head of blond hair to boot. You can’t possibly have all those advantages and expect to be completely normal--and he wasn’t.
Of course, I will admit that sometimes Gary would show sense that somehow surprised you. Like the time, for example, that one of the roommates came home with a deck of cards--which he claimed to have picked up off the street--with normal face cards on one side and pictures of half-naked girls on the other. Gary took one look at one card and muttered with disgust. "You get mixed up with that stuff and you will lose your taste for real girls. My advice is stick with the real." Now he couldn’t have picked that up in psychology class.
He had no trouble at all getting dates and normally had no trouble getting a second or even a third date with a girl, but at that point they would start to balk. Admittedly, he did have girls who would gladly have dated him longer, but they were a bit strange themselves and he soon dropped them.
His troubles in dating greatly increased during the second semester he lived with us. He had started taking karate lessons. Pretty soon he began banging his fist--and sometimes, even a foot, into the walls and the doors. The idea, apparently, was to swing against the wall with the hand, or foot, going at incredible speeds and then, at the last fraction of a second, pull back so that he actually hit the wall with only a feather touch. Well, at first he wasn’t too good at it and he slammed into the walls and the doors pretty hard, although, I will say, he never actually went through them, which is more than I can say for Dan Tonks, about whom I will tell later. But after awhile, he got so he could go at the wall so fast that you were sure he was going to put his fist through the plasterboard, but pulled back at the last instant so he hardly touched the wall. The problem was that having pretty well mastered this trick, he could not resist trying it out on real people, including his dates. He, of course, tried it out on us, his roommates, first and I can assure you that after the first experience we kept ourselves at a considerable distance from him. It is a bit (and maybe even more than a bit) disconcerting to see a fist flying at you at a rate of at least 90 mile per hour and be sure that your sojourn on earth is over and then have the fist actually come to a halt at the point of your nose with only a slight flick. As I said, however, having once experienced it, none of us wanted to experience a repeat performance--afraid, no doubt, that Gary might become suddenly distracted as his fist careened toward our nose.
Being unable to practice on his roommates, Gary was naturally always looking around for other possibilities and who more possible than his dates? Having been on a couple of double dates with Gary and seen him in action, I was surprised that he never seemed to learn that having a fist fly at you at an incredible rate of speed is not a pleasant experience. The first time he would do it with a date, he would do it as a complete surprise and I can say that I have seldom seen anyone look so terrified. But I think Gary actually expected after he had proved that he could stop his fist just in time to deliver only a slight touch that the date would say something like, "Gee, that was neat! How did you do that?"
What they actually said on the occasions when I was present was, "Don’t you ever, ever, do that again."
But, of course, that never discouraged Gary. He seemed somehow certain that if he almost punched them in the face, or on the ear, but didn’t quite, that they would come to realize what a remarkable thing he had done. The result was, that while earlier, he could always get a second date--and usually a third or even a fourth--with a girl, he now almost never got even the second. I tried to tell him that I thought it had something to do with the repeated karate chops, but he only laughed. He was sure that if he delved deep enough into his psychology books, he would come to understand it all.
Well, Gary graduated and having done so and, consequently having joined the working class, i. e. those with money, he got himself a better apartment, but we continued to see him. The reason was that his boss had hired him to teach karate. The shop in which he did his stuff was just down from Knight-Mangum hall. At that time there was a sort of a strip mall of little stores where now there is the Campus Plaza parking lot and a service station. Of course, normally when we left the campus, we would go home down 4th east, but occasionally, when we wanted to see Gary, we would go down 6th and stop in at his karate studio. Most of the time it was no problem because there was almost never anyone there. His boss, believing that with a karate studio so close to campus he would get all kinds of business, was disappointed to learn that most students had neither the money or the time to invest in karate lessons. So after a few months, Gary announced that his boss was closing shop and that he, Gary, was moving to Salt Lake in search of better opportunities.
Well, I didn’t see Gary for several months and then one day I ran into him on campus. He was with Wayne Peterson, who had lived the previous year in our apartment complex, but not in our apartment. It turns out that the two of them had opened an electronics store and were doing extremely well. A couple of months later Gary Mathews and I were together on campus and we ran into Gary Jensen again. We asked him how dating was going and he announced that shortly after he and Wayne had launched their store, he had married a girl he had met in the singles ward.
I suspect taking pity on us--me for my "lean and hungry" look, and Gary who always managed to look hungry without being lean--he invited us to dinner at his place in Salt Lake, so we could meet his wife. Eagerly, we accepted.
Accordingly, about a week later we found ourselves at Gary Jensen’s home just off Redwood Road north of North Temple. It was a charming little home set in a large lot with very big trees both in his yard and the neighbors. Most surprising was the fact that his wife was not only very attractive, but remarkably charming. She had a personality that can best be described as infectiously merry. She had a delightful little laugh that she must have known was pleasing because she did it often. It was also clear that she was very much in love with and very proud of having married Gary.
I told Gary that I very much his admired his situation. He had a beautiful and delightful wife, and a very nice home. He responded with. "Well, of course, I agree about my wife, but as soon as I can afford it, we’re moving."
"But why?" I asked surprised. This is a nice home and the yard is delightful. It’s like living in a forest in the middle of the city."
"It’s the neighbors. They’re weird. The other day Sue (Gary’s wife) was in the backyard sun-bathing and my neighbor to the north climbed up into a tree to ogle her. He fell out of the tree and broke his arm. Serves him right the old coot."
Gary’s wife, who had been in the kitchen until the last comment protested, "I’m sure that that nice Mr. Smith was not ogling me. He was just up in his tree trimming the branches."
"You don’t use binoculars to trim branches," Gary retorted quickly and with some vehemence.
She laughed that delightful little laugh of hers and said softly, "I had forgotten about the binoculars."
At any rate I tell all this just in case you happen to be a little strange and have gotten a degree in psychology and it has not helped. There is still hope. All you have to do is get your black belt in karate, open a karate studio that fails, and then open up an electronics store and all will come out for the best in the long run, even if in fact, especially if, the psychology degree doesn’t do the trick.

Great Lovers I Have Known-1--Gary Mathews--2

2010-03-08T11:12:00.000-08:00

Great Lovers I Have Known I--Gary Mathews II
Gary and I continued dating every weekend for some time until Gary fell hopelessly in love with our neighbor, Janet Bush. Of course, by the expression, "hopelessly in love" we generally mean "googly-eyed" or "puppy-dog-fawning", but Gary was never any of those things with Janet Bush. What it meant to be hopelessly in love with Janet Bush meant that you were in love and it was hopeless. For Gary to have sent her a large piece of butcher paper with a sentiment like "Roses are red violets are blue no matter what happens, I’m crazy for you", would have delighted her immensely. She would have roared for hours and put it on display in her living room, but it is doubtful that she would ever have gone out with him again.
It is fascinating to me that Gary, who always seemed eager to do his duty and get married as quickly as possible, should ever have started dating Janet in the first place. Not that she wasn’t a nice girl and very attractive, but she was also sort of ‘aloof". I came, in my own experience with her to refer to her as ‘the refrigerator", although I hear she has married and I doubt that her husband refers to her as "the refrigerator". She had graduated and was managing a finance company. She was, therefore, a professional woman and she looked and acted the part. For example, she had absolutely perfect posture when she stood (when she sat, at least, when she sat at home she had the posture of a raggedy-ann doll). She was very proud of her work, which often led her into being an absolute Scrooge, when her clients fell behind in their loans. On the other hand, she was very proud of being able to help people who could not get loans from the bank.
She would talk with pride of her helping the Arbizus, for example. I had known Ray Arbizu on my mission. He was the lead tenor for the Opera Company in Boon when I was assigned to work there. He and his wife were an interesting couple. Ray, who was, in appearance at least, a typical lead tenor, i.e. short and very stout, claimed to have been engaged to the absolutely most beautiful girl in the world. She (according to him) had all the curves of Jane Russell and the long blond hair and husky feminine charm of Marilyn Monroe. Anyway, he was engaged to this paragon of feminine beauty and within a few weeks of marrying her, when he decided to take a break from Opera singing and go for a weeks vacation back to the reservation (he was an American Indian). While he was there doing whatever Indians on vacation do on the reservation--I suspect, in his case, singing so everyone else can do the tribal rain dance--at any rate, while he was there he met and fell in love, apparently almost instantly, with a rather plain looking Indian girl and within a couple of days, they were married. It all happened so fast, that he didn’t have time to inform his fiancee that he had tied the knot with someone else. The result was that when he got off the plane in California to return to work, that his fiancee ran up to him and wrapped her voluptuous self around him in an only-to-be-seen-in-Hollywood embrace. When she finally came up for air, he pointed to his wife and introduced her as such leaving the now former fiancee wishing she had not been quite so ardent in her greeting. At any rate, the happy couple proceeded to have a tribe of little Indians that were as wild as anything seen in the movies. The Opera company had provided them with a very large (for Germany at the time) apartment but with hardly any furniture, which was a good thing, because whenever I was there, at least, the kids were all over what furniture there was. Ray had gotten a job teaching opera singing at BYU, but had been unable to get a loan for a house at the bank, so Janet had obligingly provided the ready for that purpose. Because she knew that I knew them she always informed me that they were right up to date on their loans, this being in contrast to her typical story about how she was having to chase after a delinquent client with a few tomahawks of her own.
But I digress, the point was that during his senior year, Gary pursued Janet with all the ardor that his lack of resources and her decided lack of ardor would allow. The latter was, or course, very frustrating for Gary. Probably as frustrating, or even more, was the fact that he perceived (he was always rather perceptive in this way) that I was becoming convinced that since Janet was dragging her feet, it was no doubt due to the fact that she really liked me! Dating Janet Bush may very well have put off Gary’s marriage by a good two years. I can speak thus rather confidently, because dating Janet Bush probably put mine back by at least four.
At the end of his senior year Gary was hired to teach school on a very remote island somewhere off the coast of Alaska--an island inhabited by a few Eskimoes and, during the school year for two years, Gary. The salary for performing this service was one that an MBA graduate would drool over, at least, he would until he found out that everything had to be flown in by hydroplane and that a quart of milk cost about as much as Gary had made in a week spreading butcher paper over banquet tables for BYU food service. He had hoped to save a lot of money but it became pretty clear that unless started shooting his own food (not likely, although he had read innumerable novels in which the hero shot, skinned, and cooked buffalo, they were all a little short on detailed explanation of how-to-actually-do-it) , he was going to have to live on bread and water--and moldy bread, at that.
Well, he actually did save up some money so he returned the next summer and we resumed life where we had left off the previous summer. When he had left he had told me that he expected that I would begin "beating around the bush", meaning, of course, that I would start dating Janet Bush as soon as he left. Which I did. But by the time Gary came back for the summer I had figured out that Janet Bush didn’t like me any better, in fact, probably not as much as Gary so I had given up temporarily. So Gary began dating Janet again, but fairly quickly gave up there himself. He took a couple of classes, but fairly easy ones so he had time to read, which he did with a vengeance. Almost every other day he went off to the city library and came back with 6 to 10 western novels. I suspect that during the course of that summer Gary read (or re-read) every western novel ever written up to that time. I figured out that he was able to read 10 novels in two days because all he had to do was read enough to get the names of the main characters, the location, and whether the plot was plot A, plot B, or plot C. Having read only a couple of Zane Grey westerns myself, I’m not sure whether the plots extend beyond C. The three I read never got beyond A. Of course, western novels are big on the description of the scenery, but I suspect that Gary only had to find out the local and from previous readings, he already knew where all the mountains, rivers, stage coach routes and trees, passes, and big rocks behind which outlaws could hide to rob the stage, so he could skip all that. Of course, we dated on most weekends, but it seemed to me a rather desultory thing, at best, on his part. Toward the end of the summer, I found out why.
It turns out that Gary was smitten, almost from the start of the summer and with increasing intensity with a girl he home-taught named Sharon. Of course, since he home taught her he could not date her, but rather than the traditional once-a-month visit, he dreamed up every excuse imaginable to perform home-teaching duties. Toward the end of the summer he confessed his amour to me and I hit the ceiling. This was, I told him, Janet Bush all over again only worse. Sharon was a prim and proper Easterner, from, as I remember it, of all places, Boston or someplace close to it. She was as different as Gary as Boston is from Tooele, which I pointed out to him. To this he protested that after all, he too was an easterner, having come from Washington D.C. To this I responded that I was convinced that the reason he liked western novels is that the all the gunfire and knives flying through the air in those novels reminded him of home.
Well, at the end of the summer, he returned to Alaska, and Sharon returned to Boston, but before that happened, Gary confessed to Sharon having strong feelings for her--something that, no doubt, came as no big surprise considering the fact that he had been hanging around all summer on the flimmsiest of possible excuses. But he said that he would have dated her had he not been her home teacher. She responded that she liked him too and hoped that he would keep in touch. Well, the bottom line to that story is that he started writing, she responded, then he started calling, so much so that he didn’t make any money that year due to phone calls. What he could possibly have written or said, I have no idea. He must have quoted Longfellow or Tennyson or, possibly, Jane Austen, which certainly would have been a stretch. He obviously had the good sense to avoid quoting Zane Grey or Max Brand, because after a couple of months they got engaged. A few months later they were married.
For my part, I was convinced the marriage would not last a month--they were just too different, but somehow it did. Years later, I was at one of his children’s wedding receptions. I have never known anyone so thoroughly happy with his marriage or the family that resulted from it--the sign in my opinion of a truly Great Lover.

Great Lovers I Have Known-1--Gary Mathews-1

2010-02-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

Having last year in February told the story of my own romance, I have decided to begin telling the stories of some of my roommates. I had hoped to finish the effort in February, but it appears I will have to extend it well into March, or even April.
I begin with my dear, dear roommate and very good friend, Gary Mathews.
Great Lovers I Have Known--Gary Mathews
Gary Mathews was my roommate for about four years, although the last two were only in the summer months. He was not what I would characterize as the "great lover type" which was probably better represented by the other Gary in our apartment, Gary Jensen. Gary M. was rather short and chubby and a little rough around the edges--speaking about his manner rather than his appearance, In appearance, Gary had no edges
Gary was always very much for doing his religious duty and since, for a returned Mormon missionary almost your most important duty is to get married, Gary was all for doing it and the sooner the better. If he had had a crystal ball that had told him how long it was going to take, I suspect he would have been very discouraged indeed. But those of us who did not get married until we were 35 are in no position to talk about either crystal balls or discouragement.
But, of course, all of us in our apartment were conscientious about doing our duty and were, therefore, pretty diligent daters--all except Robert Patterson. I throw that in just to point out that Gary must have had several dates and much dating experience before the first great love of his life. But I don’t really remember much about Gary’s early dates (for that matter I don’t even remember much about my own from that period). What I do remember is how hard we worked to get Robert Patterson out on a date. We felt that it was absolutely terrible that Robert was not only not doing his religious duty, i. e. getting married--none of us were doing that--but not even moving in that direction by dating. We all would encourage him in every way we could, by, for example, telling him about what a wonderful time we had on our latest date, which, of course, was generally an exaggeration if not an outright lie, but, naturally, when you are encouraging a person to do his religious duty, you are naturally allowed a great deal of leeway, religiously speaking. I mention all this because we were finally able, using a great deal of persuasion, an even greater deal of force, a bit of fib telling and a great bit of chicanery to get Robert to go out on a date with the girl next door, who, we felt, was just his type.
I mention all this about Robert because it was almost the end of the year before we got him to go on that date--actually, I think he finally went on two or three--all with the girl next door. Anyway, we all went home to work for the summer and what should we get from Robert toward the end of the summer but a wedding invitation! Naturally, we all went to his reception and lo! And behold! Wonder of wonders, the girl he married was very cute and very charming, which we all agreed was terribly, terribly unfair especially considering how little effort he put into the whole "struggle to find just the right person" thing. But the other thing we all agreed on was that it almost certainly never would have happened had we not essentially forced him to date the girl next door. I mention all this because, if anything, Robert was even rougher around the edges than Gary M. with, physically speaking, even fewer edges. For example, when we all went to the opening social at church, the Bishop came up and asked Robert his name, he said, "Robert Patterson." To which the Bishop good naturedly asked, "Do your friends call you Bob?" To which Robert replied very gruffly, "Some people do, but they aren’t my friends."
But I digress. The point of all that was that Gary went out on several dates before he started dating A_____. I don’t really remember her name, but I do remember that it began with A and I’m pretty sure it was April, but if her parents had wanted to name her by characteristic they would have named her Anxious--as in "Eager to get married". By the time Gary started dating April, he and I had become good friends, so naturally, I wanted the best for him, and, in my view, at least, April was anything but the best. She was cute enough, but she had just graduated from high school, was not interested in going to college, and saw life (again in my opinion) after high school as a Sadie Hawkins race in which she was determined to grab the slowest runner who could take care of her for the rest of her life. When it came to running away from cute, young girls, Gary was (at that time, at least) about the slowest runner around.
Gary would be in absolute ecstasy when he described their latest date. For my part, I don’t remember the dates so much as the notes they wrote to each other. Gary was working a job at the time that allowed him unlimited access to butcher paper, which he used for his own notes and provided to April to use for hers. So all over our room were these large notes with messages that can best be described as mushy. I think Gary got his from the Western novels he was always reading--after all, those cowboys, after they finished chasing cattle rustlers and running from Indians, would have to think of something to say while they sat on the front porch with the boss’s adoring daughter. I think Gary figured that since it always worked for his western heroes, it should certainly work for him--but I would have been dubious, if I had been him. One went, Roses are red violets are blue, I love you lots and I hope you love me too." Another read, "How do I love you? Let me count the ways" (admittedly, not a bad line. He must have gotten that one from one of the better writers--Zane Grey or Max Brand, but it went down hill from there), "I love you from your head to your toes and in lots of other ways too."
But if his notes to her were bad, hers to him were even worse. The one I remember went something like, "When I am with you I shake all over and come unglued." (Which, of course, one hopes is not the same thing as coming unstitched.)
At any rate, it was pretty clear that Gary thought his duty--at least so far as getting married was concerned--was all but done. What he would have known if he had read Shakespeare instead of Zane Grey (which I know, because I had to read him in the 10th grade) was that the course of true love never runs smooth and (I’m not one hundred per cent sure this is Shakespeare--I was in the 10th grade a long time ago) you should never count your chickens before they are hitched. The fly in the wedding cake, so to speak, in Gary’s case was that he didn’t have any money--or at least, not very much. A trip to the jewelry store showed him that if he could have bought an engagement ring at all, the biggest thing about it would be the microscope required to see the diamond in it. This discouraged him a great deal and resulted in the use of a great deal less butcher paper, especially on April’s part, who, as soon as Gary mentioned that they might have to wait for awhile before they happy day, began to notice that her glue was beginning to hold. Finally, she did Gary the biggest favor (in my opinion) she could have done for him. She hopped onto the back of an old boy friend’s motorcycle and together they ran off to Las Vegas. Gary learned that for someone like April, a large piece of butcher paper--even butcher paper covered with lines from a horse lover like Zane Grey--will not hold up to a Harley Davidson.
Poor Gary was disconsolate and for months and was even worse than Robert Patterson about doing his duty. But time, about fifty Wester novels, and a little pushing to remind him about his duty, and he was--to all appearances at least--pretty much his old self.

Remembering Dad--Part 2

2010-01-26T10:49:00.000-08:00

Some months after my 8th birthday, we were obviously more prosperous because we moved from out first home on 8th to a new home on 18th. We were moving up in the world, both economically and geographically. The home on 18th was designed not only to be a symbol of increasing prosperity, but also of Dad’s partnership with George Hargraves. That was symbolized by the fact that we lived almost next door (one house in-between, whether they were unable to get adjoining lots or whether being side by side all day and all night too was too much, I was never able to find out) in houses that had exactly the same exterior and the same floor plans. When I say exactly the same exterior, I mean the same shape, they were different colors on part of the house.
The house on 18th was a fun one because it was at the edge of town. When we first moved there, there were no other houses between us and the hills behind us. On two sides we had open fields. It was also fun to help Mom and Dad with the landscaping, mostly because after a hard evening’s work Dad would take us to the root beer stand where we could get a mug of cold root beer for a nickel. The two look-alike houses, did not look-alike long, however. As soon as the landscaping was done, Dad began tinkering on the house--a process that did not end until we finally moved. One of the first changes was the conversion of the garage into a bedroom. Of course, after that we had a wall with a window, where Dad’s partner had a garage door, so the two houses ceased to look alike except that for a couple of years Dad left the driveway in place and would, in fact park one of the cars in the driveway. The driveway was very steep and came to an abrupt demise after Mom lost control of her car when backing out of the driveway and hit Dad’s car. A few days later we came home to find that what had been driveway was now just an extension of the lawn.
Part of the reason that the driveway suffered so quick a demise was the fact that when Dad filed a claim with the insurance company, they refused to pay the claim. When Dad demanded to know the reason for the refusal, the agent simply said, "We won’t pay it because we know that you won’t sue your wife." It seems to me that Dad, being a lawyer--and by all accounts, a good one--could have made mincemeat of that argument, but Dad who was always eager to fight for other people’s rights, seemed strangely reluctant to fight for his own. He accepted the refusal with good grace and simply switched insurance companies--making him one of the few community leaders who was not insured with Farmer’s (they had a regional office in Pocatello). When ever anyone would ask him how he would dare to insure with another company, he would simply tell the story of their refusal to pay a claim based on the fact that "we know you won’t sue your wife". I suspect that in the long run, it cost the company more in lost business than paying the claim would have done.
As Dad’s business picked up, I think he got tired of tinkering with a house that was essentially George Hargrave’s (his partner) dream house and wanted to build one of his own. That finally happened when he built the house south of town--and it really was a dream house. But even more than the house, was the property on which it was built. We had 2½ acres of beautiful forest land--in fact, a national forest actually began just a block or so behind the property. We had a warm-water creek running through the property beginning with the source spring, which was also on our land.
We lived on the hill next to "Snob Hill" where many of the wealthiest people in Pocatello lived, and I suspect, that Dad wondered why more people were not eager to live on our hill. After all, to get to Snob Hill you turned up from the golf course and turned left at the top of the hill. If you turned right, you went down a dirt road and arrived at our new home. The most probable reason that we didn’t have any new neighbors (there were two families living there long before we moved in) was that right at the turn-off there was a chicken farm. Dad, who had very bad hay-fever, and consequently, could hardly smell anything, did not notice when he bought our property that whenever the wind blew west (which, in Pocatello, it almost always did), we got the smell of the chicken farm. Fortunately for us, occasionally the wind would blow east, so that the rich, and influential, folks on snob hill used that influence to force the chicken farm people to buy some sort of anti-smell device. But every now and then--usually about once a month--the device would break down. Mom would call out and Loni and I would frantically run around the house, closing all the windows and doors, while Dad sat blissfully out on the front veranda looking out over the golf course across the street and the Portneuff valley beyond, no doubt wondering why no one else had bought property on our hill to get this magnificent view for themselves. Had he thought about it, he may have realized that the reason was somewhat connected to the fact that his own family was carefully closeted inside the house burning scented candles.
We moved South of town when I had just started at Poky High. A few years later I was elected Student Body President and early in the year, I was expected to attend the Homecoming Dance. Since many of my friends had told me that they were getting a new suit for the occasion, I somehow felt that, being the important person that I had become, I ought to be wearing a new suit myself.
I can still remember everything about the conversation in which I asked Dad if he could buy me a new suit. I expected that to ask was a mere formality and that he would simply say, "You bet, we’re so proud of you being student body president and all. Anything else you need?"
I chose the time when we were sitting in the car together. Dad had driven me in for seminary and he was then going to work. Just before I got out of the car, I made my request.
To my surprise, Dad did not respond immediately, Instead, to my amazement I saw tears forming in his eyes. This amazed me because Dad was not emotionally expressive--not at all. In fact the only times I could remember Dad getting emotional at all was the two times he got angry enough to spank me. The first time occured when we were living in Germany and I was about 5. Dad had asked me to do something which I didn’t want to do so I got mad at him and hit him in the face and busted his glasses. The thing I remember most about the spanking that followed was that, considering the provocation, it was remarkably mild, and that Dad was remarkably controlled. The other time occured when we were living on 18th and I was about 11. This time Mom had asked me to do something which made me mad and I had given her a mild swipe. Dad, who saw me hit Mom, was standing at the other end of our living room. The room was divided into two sections by a couch that stretched 3/4 of the space across the room. Dad came straight for me, jumped over the couch, laid me across his knee and spanked me. I don’t remember anything of that spanking because I was in such a state of shock at seeing my dad, who was not an athletic type at all--quite the contrary, jump over the couch.
But now he was silently weeping. "I’m sorry son," he finally said. "But I can’t get you a suit. Since I signed the right-to-work petition, I’ve barely made enough to pay my office help and rent. Our family has been living on savings for a year."
"Oh, that’s alright," I quickly responded. "I really don’t need a new suit." Which, of course, was true, I really didn’t. Looking back on it, I’m surprised I even asked. I have never been much of a "clothes horse". But even more surprising, and more troubling, was that Dad could have been struggling for so long and that I was completely oblivious to it.
Although I didn’t get my new suit right then, I certainly got it--with interest. I left for college the next year and all through my college and military career, everytime Dad would come to town and see me, or when I would go home, I knew that times were better for Dad, because almost invariably he would say, "Son, you look like you could do with a new suit." And unless I could prevent it by pointing out that he had just gotten me a new suit a couple of months previously, I would get a new suit.
The suit I remember best came at the end of my college career. "Son," he had said at graduation, or shortly after, "since you’ll be looking for work now, what you need is a new suit." By this time Dad was working as a Federal Judge so, I suspect, that since he was covered up by black robes all day, the suits he wore tended to be a bit on the flashy side, but nothing he ever wore or bought for himself could ever match, in flashiness at least, the suit he bought me. It was creme-colored with rust-colored stripes (or vice-versa) and must have been made of material that included iron filings. I remember going to the interview that eventually landed me a job. The company was about half a mile from closest bus stop and the roads to the plant had only dirt sidewalks. While walking there a car drove by splashing me with mud that covered my pants from the bottom to well above the knee. Since it was winter, I simply used snow to rub off the mud. After undergoing a process like that a normal suit would have looked like you had pulled it out of a trash pile--that suit looked almost as good as when I wore it out of the store. I have always felt that the suit had a good deal to do with my being hired. The man who hired me was not LDS and did not like BYU, but I suspect, that he took one look at my suit and thought, "This kid only went to BYU because his parents forced him to."
It took me several months to find work after graduation. It was the midst of a recession in which engineering was particularly hard hit. I got dozens of interviews, and many companies said that they were interested in me, but they had a hiring freeze (or were laying off) but that they expected to be hiring again in a few months. But, of course, in the meantime I had to get by. I was living in an attic of a house in Salt Lake, and, although, the rent was low, so were my finances. Finally, I realized that I could not hold on any longer. I had exactly enough (or so I thought--mistakenly, it turned out) to pay my rent, but no money for food or transportation. I cried almost every night wondering what to do. Should I bite the bullet and confess my poverty to my parents hoping they would offer to take me back in until I could find work? Should I simply start living in the street (rather unpleasant in Salt Lake in December)? It was while I was thus at my wits end that I got a call from Dad. He was flying from Virginia--where he was living at the time--to California but had a short layover in Salt Lake. Could I meet him at the airport for a couple of minutes? I agreed. I was wondering if I should lay out my problems to him. But when he came it was obvious there was no time. "I’m sorry son," he explained as he came off the plane. "I only have a minute to catch my next plane." I walked hurredly with him to the a near-by gate where he checked in. We had less than a minute or two before he had to board. As he boarded he handed me an envelope. "Your mother wanted you to have this," he said as he walked through the boarding gate. I waved good-bye and then opened the envelope. In it was a check for $300. I had never really understood his problems, but he always understood mine.

Remembering Dad--1

2009-11-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

I guess I always took it for granted that Dad always had plenty of money and could give me anything I wanted but didn’t because he felt that it would not be good for me, so he was inclined to be chintzy, supposedly for my own good. Mom, on the other hand, would always give me anything I wanted--if she could, but most of the time she couldn’t because she was as dependent upon Dad as I was and it seemed to me that he was rather chintzy with her as well. I assumed it was probably because Dad recognized Mom’s weakness toward me and had to hold back on both of us "for my own good". As I say, I felt that way until the Christmas just before I turned eight.
The first Christmases I remember were as a very young boy when we were living in Germany. I don’t remember much about them, but I do remember that I thought they were absolutely wonderful. We always got a few little toys and our wooden shoes were filled with candy--mostly hard tack, but because we didn’t get very much candy in Germany, it was a real treat. Later, after we had returned to the US I came to resent the amount of hard tack candy in my Christmas stocking, feeling that it took up room that would be much better served with jelly and chocolate candies--a feeling that I shared--rather pointedly--in a letter to Santa--a feeling he must not have sympathized with because the amount of hard tack was not diminished. Nor did he dispense with the orange--a suggestion I also made pointing out that we had plenty of oranges in the kitchen.
I always felt that if our situation could be described, it would be described as one of "plenty". I suspect that part of the reason for that feeling was that although, in a sense, we were part of the occupying US forces, we were not military, and, therefore, lived among the German people. Our situation, compared with theirs, was one of great fortune.
Many years later, Dad told me what happened when we came back to the US. Dad had always been a civil servant, and, I suspect, planned on always being one. After he graduated from George Washington U. with a law degree, he was hired as the head of Social Security for the state of Arizona. But at the meeting with the senior senator from Arizona in which his appointment was announced, the Senator looked over his resume. "How can anyone from Idaho be over Social Security in Arizona?" he bellowed. "He is far and away the best qualified candidate," the Federal Social Security administrator assured him. "I don’t care about that", the Senator roared. "I don’t care if the guy over Social Security is blind, can’t read, can’t write, and has to use an X for his signature, all I care about is that he be from Arizona!"
So Dad’s appointment was rescinded and he was made the director of Social Security for Southern Idaho with offices in Pocatello instead. It turns out, that was probably a good thing, because Loni and I were born there and it seems that the only place Mom could ever have any children was in Pocatello. But Dad was ambitious and eager to get ahead. The chance came when the position for assistant Federal Attorney (or whatever they call the District Attorney for a State) became vacant. He applied and got the job, so we moved to Boise. We hadn’t lived in Boise very long when Dad got the chance to work with the war crime trials in Germany and he jumped at the chance.
I think the two years we spent in Germany were among the happiest of parent’s married life. They got to travel. Mom got to buy some really nice figurines and other beautiful things that were always so important to her and Dad really enjoyed his work. Of course, there were concerns as well, especially during the Berlin Airlift, when it looked like we might go to war with Russia and out family was in the place most likely to be first attacked. It was, in fact, the tension created by the Berlin Airlift that created the problem for Dad that resulted in his not being a permanent civil servant. If we were involved in a war with Russia, obviously, we wanted the wholehearted support of the German people. Amongst those people, Dad’s activity--the war crime trials--was very unpopular. They were halted and Dad came home.
When he went back to Washington to apply for a field position, he was told that because of his involvement with the war crimes trials--now a politically incorrect activity to have gotten oneself tied up with--they didn’t feel that they could send him "out into the field". Dad told me that his old boss at Social Security told him, "We certainly owe you something, but it will have to be here in Washington."
Dad told me many years later that after he heard that he went out and traveled around Washington. He said he looked at the people and the businesses and other things that were going on and said to himself, "I can’t do this. I can’t raise a family in this kind of environment." So he cut ties with the government and "hung out his shingle" in his hometown, Pocatello.
But it was pretty tough sledding in the first few years. Most of the time Dad was working. We hardly ever saw him. When he did come home for dinner, it was in, out, and back to the office. I can remember several occasions when Mom would hand me a little paper bag and say, "Take this to your Dad. It is his dinner. He is studying in the law library at the courthouse." (The courthouse was only a couple of blocks from our house.) Every year in those first years back from Germany Dad would call together shortly before Christmas and say something like, "I don’t want you to expect much from Christmas because we simply don’t have much money this year." Of course, that never bothered Loni or me (or, at least, it never bothered me) because all we ever got from Mom and Dad for Christmas was clothes. All the good stuff came from Santa Claus. I didn’t care that much what I wore, so even if Dad couldn’t afford to buy us anything, it was fine with me. I knew for one thing that if we ever ran out of clothes (which didn’t seem likely) that our Grandparents would come to the rescue before we had to go school naked.
All that changed shortly before the Christmas of my eighth year. Dad, as usual, called us together and said that we should not expect much for Christmas that year. I was a little uneasy because I had asked for a bicycle--something I knew to be quite expensive. So the next day I said to Mom, "Tell Dad not to worry about Christmas. Santa will take care of it for us."
Mom paused for a minute or two and then said rather deliberately (and I wish I could remember her exact words) something like, "I’m afraid that when people are poor, Santa doesn’t give them very much because he doesn’t want poor children to be spoiled and become dissatisfied with their parents." This was rather a shock to me, to say the least, but I more or less gave up on the whole idea of a bike.
Christmas came and I got my bicycle and several other things, smaller toys candy, and, of course, clothes. There was a hitch--a very bad hitch. The bicycle was an "American Flyer". I had seen it in a catalogue, so I knew that Santa Claus had not given it to me--it was Dad.
The next day I asked Mom, "What happens if someone can’t afford something and they tell the man at the store that they will pay for it later, but they really don’t have the money to pay for it?"
"Why they send the police to take the thing back and sometimes they put the person in jail." Mom sounded to me that she was as worried as I was about Christmas.
For the next few days, indeed, until I had to go back to school, I would sit by the front window. Every time a police car went by, I was sure he was coming to take back my bike and would demand to know where Dad was, so he could arrest him. After a while, of course, I ceased to worry and when spring came, I simply enjoyed the bike. Indeed, I think it was one of two Christmas presents I received that I remember with real fondness.
Years later I asked Dad why he always called us in and gave us the "don’t-expect-much-for-Christmas" lecture and then always bought so much to insure that we had a wonderful
Christmas. "You know," he replied with obvious pleasure as he reflected back. "That was the most amazing thing. When I called you in and told your mother and you kids not to expect much, I was in real earnest. I was almost desperate. But every year in those first few years when we were struggling, clients would come in just before Christmas--in a few cases, clients I had sent so many bills to that I never really expected them to pay me at all, and they would pay their entire bill. Generally, they would say something like,’I’m sorry this has taken so long, but I want to clear this out before the end of the year’. So we always had a nice Christmas. It’s a miracle really, or at least, I always thought it was."
Some people deserve miracles--Dad was one.

Personal Economics

2009-08-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

With this essay I bring my series on economics to a close. This essay and the previous two require extensive work, but I decided that I need to get it over with and move on. Next month I plan to do reviews.
Personal Economics--Conclusion
Ever since Adam Smith showed that, because of the benefits we all derive from the division of labor, every real advance in economics has shown us how we can better live together in peace. Peace is the reward for correct living. When men are at peace they serve each other in ways they cannot even conceive. People on the other side of the world make it possible for me to enjoy blessings that help me meet my needs, but they do it without knowing me or without me knowing them. People all over the world help each other by helping themselves when they live by the six simple rules outlined in the previous essays.
Following those simple rules helps us to avoid the pitfalls that create disharmony, contention, and finally, conflict, which, in extreme cases results in violence and war. The first pitfall is the use of force to make others adopt our ends. The second, even more destructive, is the use of force to make others serve our ends. The subjective theory of value, Rule IV, applies not only to things but even more so to ends. I cannot judge< or place a value for you, on your ends. When I do, I almost always am tempted to use force for one of the purposes above, i.e. to get you to adopt mine or to use you to serve my ends.
What real economics attempts to do is first have people clarify their ends, i.e. decide what it is that you really want. Having clarified your ends, examine the means to achieve those ends. There is no purpose in attempting to examine and evaluate other peoples ends, but there is purpose in examining and evaluating the means they use to achieve those ends.
When we examine the means people use to achieve the ends they declare in light of the 6 rules outlined in the previous essays, we find that the means frequently lead to very different ends. In the eyes of the Austrians, this is the best way to determine if means are "good" or "bad"--"moral" or "immoral". In every action we should ask ourselves, what is the end I wish to achieve and will this action--the means--achieve that end?

Personal Economics--Rule VI

2009-08-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

Personal Economics--Rule VI
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rules of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
Ephesians
Rule VI says basically, "Know your enemy and keep your guard up." This rule stems from the work of Ludwig von Mises and Frederick Hayek, but Hayek shared the Nobel Prize for his work in explicating it. In economics it is simply the explanation of what is called the business cycle or boom-bust cycle. Karl Marx had explained it simply as an inherent feature of capitalism. Others had tried to explain it in a more detailed manner, but had failed. For example Stanley Jevons had attempted an explanation that correlated the boom-bust cycle with sunspots. At first glance, this sounds even more mysterious than the Marx it-is-just-an-inexplicable-part-of-capitalism theory. But Jevons theory attempted to make it more rationalistic, because it would tie the boom-bust cycle to a crop productivity cycle.
What von Mises and Hayek did was to show that the boom-bust cycle in the economy was tied to credit expansion. Banks increase their profits by making more loans and, hence, the temptation is to cut back on their reserves and loan more of their available capital. Of course, if a single bank does this and becomes over-extended, they quickly get into trouble. The problem is self-correcting. The problem only becomes a national one when there is a government controlled central bank, such as the Federal Reserve. Most countries have these. They are able to extend the money supply, i.e. allow all the member banks to expand their credit, thus lowering the interest rate. Unfortunately, this creates an artificial boom. It sends false signals to entrepreneurs who are eager to launch new enterprises, but are restrained from doing so for all but the most promising enterprises by the shortage of available investment capital. When, however, the money supply is expanded, i.e. inflated, the illusion is created that there is plenty of capital for investment in enterprises that earlier seemed unpromising. Unfortunately, all that has been expanded is credit. In an uncorrupt society, capital is available only as people save--hence, leaving vital resources, e.g. capital goods, available entrepreneurs. Thrift is a virtue not only because it allows individuals and families to prepare against a rainy day, but because it permits investment in new tools, equipment and plants and, thereby, increases the value of the labor of the people who have better equipment and tools to work with. Hence, the virtue of thrift increases prosperity.
Credit expansion, i.e. inflating the money supply gives the illusion that society is ‘better off’, i.e. more virtuous, without actually being so. Entrepreneurs feel that there is more capital available but the amount of capital goods remains the same. This becomes clear when it is apparent that many entrepreneurs have invested in enterprises that cannot be sustained. They lay off workers, some even go bankrupt and the economy is said to be in the bust part of its cycle.
If, for example, I, and thousands of others, decide to put off buying a new car, and put the money saved in the bank, then there is not only money available to loan, but there is additional steel so if an entrepreneur decides to build a new factory, the necessary steel is available. If, however, I, and thousands of others, go ahead and buy the new car, and the so-called capital is available only because the money supply has been inflated, there is no additional steel available for the building of the factory and before it can be built, the price of steel rises to the point that the new factory enterprise is clearly not going to be profitable and is abandoned.
The bottom line is that the desire to have "something for nothing", to succeed without effort, to have all the good of virtuous living without any actual virtue, has put pressure on the government to expand the money supply and, hence, create a boom. This undermines the work of entrepreneurs who become bitter because they have been misled, and misinformed. They feel betrayed and turn to political entrepreneurship. People become convinced that only political action is effective and that the only way to succeed is to use the force of law. In economics, credit expansion is analogous to sin--enticing at first, but leaves disaster in its wake.
On a personal level it is a reminder that if life is getting easier, you better be awfully careful that you are not entering an artificial boom made possible by an enemy creating an illusion. Hence, it is always a good idea to "know your enemy and what he is up to."

Personal Economics--Rule V.

2009-08-07T14:22:00.001-07:00

Personal Economics--Rule V
Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.
Matthew
Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets.
Numbers
Rule V says simply that it is the entrepreneurial component of our exchanges that improves our lives, increases our choices, hence, our freedom, and advances civilization. Of course, in the ordinary exchanges that we make every day, it is hard to recognize an entrepreneurial component at all. An entrepreneurial component occurs when something has changed, when things are no longer as they have been and that change results in an opportunity for us to serve in a way that requires us to foresee future events and that will help people in ways they have not been previously helped--as we say, "to do something different."
The most successful entrepreneurs are envied because they reap what are called profits. Real profit is a very poorly understood concept. In a sense, if I plant a seed and reap twenty, forty, or even sixty times what I planted even after subtracting the cost of fertilizers, water and other inputs we refer to that as profit, but it becomes entrepreneurial profit only if it is serving a need that has come about as a result of a change. If, for example, I realize that people need bread so I purchase an existing farm and begin growing wheat, I am not in the strictest Austrian sense an entrepreneur. If thousands of others have done likewise and there is, consequently, a large surplus of wheat so that I and the other thousands cannot even break even on our venture, and in that extremity, I use my wheat for something entirely different, or market it in a new way, or in some other way use my wheat to bring something to consumers that they want but is new to them, then I become an entrepreneur.
It is important to recognize the difference between technical components of exchange and entrepreneurial components. George Washington Carver, for example, discovered many new products that could be made with peanuts, because so many people were growing peanuts that the situation was for them like the one outlined above for wheat farmers. What he did was provide technical input. If he, or anyone else, actually made and marketed any of those new products and consequently, gained more resources in the making and marketing than were used in the growing of the peanuts, he became an entrepreneur..
It is important to recognize that it is the entrepreneurial component of every exchange that enriches our lives and advances civilization. But it is also true that because entrepreneurs are envied and because so many people are eager to live without having to actually serve that entrepreneurs are almost always--and particularly in corrupt cultures--vilified. In our country where kings are looked down on, extremely successful entrepreneurs are referred to pejoratively as "kings". Hence, Andrew Carnegie was the "steel king", Hershey the "chocolate king". Our history books refer to these men as being powerful and often, devious and underhanded, and other characteristics we associate with kings. But it is important, indeed, it is critical to remember that kings, like Henry VIII and Louis XIV, were powerful because they ruled. An entrepreneurial king is powerful only to the extent that he serves. The day that consumers feel that Nestle’s chocolate it cheaper or better (or both) than Hershey’s, is the day that Hershey becomes the "former chocolate king".
All too often we confuse technical ability and expertise with entrepreneurship. Two examples, that I like to use to illustrate the difference are Thomas Edison and Gilbert and Sullivan.
Thomas Edison is often criticized as having borrowed other’s ideas, purchased their patents and then taken credit for the invention himself. For example, Joseph Swann’s English patent on the electric light bulb preceded Edison’s and numerous other inventors had patents relating to the electric light bulb, some of which Edison purchased, but the fact remains that without Edison we would not have had a working electric light bulb in people’s homes anywhere near as soon as we did, and possibly not ever. Edison and his team got all the financing and made all the auxiliary inventions and equipment necessary to make the electric light bulb available to the ordinary consumer.
My personal favorite is Gilbert and Sullivan. I very much enjoy their operettas, particularly, "Pirates", "Gondoliers", and "Patience". But the fact of the matter is that we would not have had those many operettas were it not for the entrepreneur who worked so hard to get the two to work together, Richard D’Oily Carte. Indeed, the real end of the relationship (with the "Gondoliers") came largely because Carte abandoned his role as entrepreneur and took sides with Sullivan. Recognizing his mistake, he tried to heal the breech, and the two did, in fact, collaborate on two more operettas, but so half-heartedly that they are never performed except by companies determined to claim to have done them all. Like all entrepreneurs, Carte took risks. For example, he was the first person in England to install electric lighting in a theater. Like most, he also had his failures. For example, he built a theater that was to be used exclusively for English operas. The first one (by Sullivan) ran for 160 consecutive performances--probably a world record for consecutive performances for an opera, but their was no second "English opera" so Carte had to sell his theater to a vaudeville company.
Rule V says simply that we should strive to increase the entrepreneur component of all our interactions. Real entrepreneurs are essential to the free society. The essential ingredients in entrepreneurial activity are courage and foresight--two qualitites almost totally missing in government planners, bureaucrats, politicians, and, alas, in most, corporate managers.

Personal Economics--Rule IV

2009-07-20T11:46:00.000-07:00

Personal Economics--Rule IV
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....."
Declaration of Independence
"Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons."
Acts
Rule IV in personal economics was originally formulated by Carl Menger--an Austrian. It says simply that the value of anything can be determined only in exchange and the only people who make that determination are those who are parties to the exchange. There is no such thing as a value in use--a concept that grew out of the idea that value can be objectively determined. Likewise, the moment an exchange is made, the value of the exchanged items becomes a fact of history, but not of economics--a reality known to almost anyone who has ever purchased a new automobile and then soon decides he would like to sell it.
This rule, based on the subjective theory of value, is the basis for peaceful relations between people and peoples. Some people believe that the idea of the division of labor is sufficient to guarantee peace. This results in a sort of "enlightened self-interest", but unfortunately, this is seldom enough to guarantee peace for the simple reason that when we are stressed, we tend to feel that our interests are more important than others. It is only in the constant reminder, through every means possible, religious, moral, political, and economic, that every other man or woman is as important as we are, that we can hope to achieve lasting peace. The political statement of that fact is in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. The economic statement of that fact, and the necessary adjunct to the political statement is rule IV i.e. the subjective theory of value.
We see the violation of this rule on every hand. A common example is the price of gasoline. As soon as the price rises, there is a hue and cry for politicians to use the force of law to bring the price down. Rule IV says, however, that no one can determine what the price of gasoline should be except those who are exchanging something to obtain it. The obvious remedy if a person feels that the price is too high is not buy any. The usual response to this suggestion is, "I have no choice. I need gasoline to run my car and I need the car to go to work." This is, of course, false. A person always has alternatives in a free society. By calling for the use of force, a person is simply saying that he wishes everything to stay the same and is, therefore, willing, even eager, to use force to adjust things to suit himself.
Of course, if the price is high because the government is subsidizing it or regulating it or in some other way using the force of law to maintain it, the complaint is legitimate, but the means are not. It hardly justifies using force on your side because force is being used on the other. Rule IV still applies, however, making an attempt to get the subsidies, regulations, etc, removed is, naturally, a legitimate effort. When Ronald Reagan announced that he would remove all regulations from the price of gasoline, his critics countered that the price would quickly rise dramatically to #3 a gallon. The price at the time was just under $2 a gallon. They were right. The price quickly rose, but then steadily declined until it got down to almost $1 a gallon. Reagan was simply applying Rule IV to gasoline. Nobody knows what it "should" cost except those who are buying and/or selling it. Once the transaction, i.e. the sale, is completed, the price, while of interest, is not an economic fact, it is a historical fact, interesting, but not determining.
I well remember going into the gas station where I usually buy gas a few weeks after Reagan made his announcement. The manager told his clerk in a very discouraged tone of voice, "I’ve got to go out and lower the prices again." Before Reagan made his announcement and for a few weeks after, the price was always raised in the middle of the night just as the station was closing, but now it was being lowered in the middle of the day so everyone could see that the station owner was trying to remain competitive. The station closest to my house went out of business at this time. I guess the owner felt that at that low a price, he simply could not compete. His last act upon closing the station for the last time was list the price of gasoline on the big markee as being $5.99 per gallon. That is undoubtedly what he wished he could charge and possibly felt that it would take that price to stay in business, but he knew that he would get no takers, so he went quietly into the night--no longer a gas station owner.
Rule IV is most controversial when it is applied to labor. People selling their services tend to feel that they are better than others. When they buy services, e. g. hire someone to mow their lawn, they typically do it in the way they would buy anything else, i.e. they offer to pay a certain amount in exchange for the service. But when they are selling their services they are eager to use the force of law on their side and burden the cost of their labor with all kinds of benefits and extensions and provisions making it difficult to be laid off or fired. They then comment, "You shouldn’t be able to buy a man’s work like you would buy a sack of potatoes." What the person is saying, of course, is that in his mind he is better than others and deserves to be treated better.
Politicians, political activists, lobbyists, lawyers, have been eager to use this conceit to get laws passed and become advocates for the "working man". The result, of course, is that labor is enormously burdened and unemployment is common.
Of course, Rule IV actually extends to all values, not just exchangeable goods, because in a civilized society we are always exchanging--ideas, thoughts, information, theories as well as tangible goods. Rule IV says that we can only judge another person’s values in such exchanges. His opinion, his ideas, his lifestyle, is equal to everyone else’s until he must bring them somehow into the marketplace for exchange. Then his value, and his values, can be objectively determined, but only by those who are party to the exchange.

Personal Economics--Prelude to Austrian Rules--II

2009-07-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Personal Economics--Prelude to Austrian Rules--II
"I have shewed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."
Acts
Most economists today are collectivist in outlook, as are most ordinary people, unfortunately. When we think about economics we do it in terms of collectives e.g. the rich, the poor, the employers, the working man, the middle class, etc. We measure national wealth, not as Adam Smith did, by looking to see how well off the individual worker is, but in terms of Gross National Product, or the unemployment rate, or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
But the Austrians, starting with Carl Menger, returned the study of economics to its roots by making the study of economics the study of individuals and their actions in the marketplace. Everything boils down to the individual exchange. Indeed, "the economy" can be defined as the framework--physical, cultural, social, legal, moral--in which exchanges are made. A "good economy" is simply one in which exchanges are unhampered. A "bad economy" is one in which exchanges are regulated, controlled, or uncertain in their results. The worst economy is one in which the legal or moral or cultural climate is so unfavorable to exchanges that they become difficult, almost impossible, as for example, when criminals are in charge and stealing or fraud are prevalent, or when corrupt politicians control government so that the medium of exchange is being rendered increasingly worthless by the government pilfering we now call inflation.
Let us look at simple exchange from an Austrian perspective and see what we can learn from it before we get into the rules of personal economics that result from Austrian perspectives.
Suppose my wife sends me to the grocery store with instructions to buy five items. Convinced that I can easily remember so short a list I take off without bothering to put pencil to paper. I arrive at the store, go over the list in my mind, and realize that I have forgotten two items. I try various memory tricks, such as going up and down the isles mentally and recalling my wife’s actions as she was dictating the list, but nothing works. Two items have escaped me. I decide that rather than go all the way back home, I will simply use the pay phone outside the store to call my wife, I discover, however, to my chagrin, that it only takes change and that I have only bills. I, therefore, stop a fellow as he is coming out of the store and ask him if he can give me coins in exchange for a dollar bill. He very obligingly reaches into his pocket and announces that he can.
At this point we pause and examine this exchange about to take place. The first insight of Austrian economics is that exchanges are very much a function of time, place and circumstance, such as outlined above. This is indicated, in the example above, by the fact that as the fellow reaches into his pocket to see if he has enough coins, I may look into his shopping cart and the sight of what he has purchased may jog my memory so that I say, "Never mind, seeing the butter and eggs in you shopping cart reminded me that that is what I needed to buy. I don’t need the coins to make a call any more. Thanks anyway." The circumstances have changed and no exchange takes place. I could also look at my watch and realize that I have wasted so much time trying to remember what I was supposed to buy that I no longer have time to shop before I must be at an apointment and, therefore, I call off the exchange. The point is that every exchange is a function of time, place, and circumstances which no central authority can possibly foresee.
More important, however, is the actual exchange itself. If the exchange does in fact take place, an onlooker e.g. the banker, the beaurocrat at the mint, the politician regulating various exchanges, would say that the exchange was an exchange of equal values, i.e. four quarters for a dollar bill. Indeed, collectivists say that all exchanges are ideally exchanges of equal value.
For the Austrian, however, exhanges of equal value never take place. This is a crucial point. An exchange always involves some effort and some thought. If, therefore, I thought I would be exactly as well off after the exchange as before, why would I even bother to make it? The answer, of course, is that I wouldn’t. Of course, even the banker, the bureaucrat, the politician, would probably acknowledge that because of my circumstances, my need for coins, I really was better off after the exchange, but what of the other fellow? He didn’t come out of the store hoping to relieve himself of his coins. If he really wanted fewer coins, he could have used them in making his purchases in the store. In what way can he be said to have been better off for making the exhange?
In answering that question, we get at the wonder of the free market. Austrian economists, like Adam Smith before them, realized that there is a factor— a vital factor--in the market that transcends the material exchange. This factor, depending on the outlook of the observer, is labeled as moral, as spiritual, as psychic. But it is critically important. When exhanges are controlled, hampered, undermined, and freedom of exchange is violated in any way, men become increasingly materialistic. As exchanges become freer, men become less materialistic. Art, music, culture, religion and innumerable other non-materialistic aspects of life--what we sometimes refer to as "civilization" become increasingly important in our exchanges. The fellow who gave up his quarters came off better because his was a spiritual or psychic gain.
This is, in fact, the power of the free market. Both parties in an exchange feel like they were the winner in that exchange. Anytime we make a free exchange we can be confident that we gave more than we got. At the same time we got more than we gave. That is why free markets are so peaceful. Everyone who uses it feels he is a winner. In every exchange we feel that we have made not only a gain in some material item but we have gained a friend. Looking at the marvel of free and willing exchange, Austrian economist said that even so materialistic (or even "grubby", in common political terms today) as profit is really a psychic or spiritual phenomenon.

Personal Economics--Prelude to Austrian Rules-I

2009-07-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Personal Economics--Prelude to Austrian Rules
"..nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires."
Macaulay
The first three rules come from "Classical Economics"--the first two from Adam Smith and the third from Jean-Baptiste Say. Unfortunately, Adam Smith made a mistake that took economics off course for many years. The mistake is called the labor theory of value. Adam Smith loved the individual person so much and was so convinced of his natural system of liberty and in the ultimate harmony of interests amongst people--all of which conflict with the labor theory of value, that he was not really dogmatic about it. In his first book and even in much of the Wealth of Nations, he either ignores it or flat out contradicts it. It remained for a disciple--David Ricardo--who extended Smith’s economics but was frequently in conflict with his basic philosophy--to nail down the labor theory of value and make it a pillar of classical economics.
Marx made the labor theory of value the foundation for his own economics, with the tragic results that have plagued modern history, but the majority of 19th century economists, who were not particularly excited about Marxist ideas struggled, while still attempting to hold onto the labor theory of value. The question is, what caused Adam Smith to make his mistake in the first place? There is a wonderful essay by the French economist, Frederick Bastiat that I think explains it better than anyone. He said that the problem stems from the fact that in the 18th and early 19th centuries, intellectuals were enamored of the classical Greek and Roman cultures. Much of this stemmed from the fact that everyone aspiring to a university degree was required to learn Greek and Latin. In the time of John Milton this made sense, especially Latin, because it was used as the language of communication for all of Europe. Milton wrote anything he wanted read outside of England in Latin. Newton wrote his great treatise in Latin so that people outside of England could read it. But by the time of Adam Smith, Latin no longer served that purpose. Almost all valuable treatises were published either in English French or German and usually made available in translation. The real motivation for the learning of Latin and Greek was, in Macaulay’s words, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome". Intellectuals envied these two cultures because they were able to control so much of the world. Unfortunately, as Bastiat points out, it was a control based on violence. I believe, that Adam Smith’s mistakes and indeed the mistakes in economic and political thought of many intellectuals, including Hugh Nibley at my own university, can be traced to this admiration of these two ancient cultures. Adam Smith, I believe, felt that that same control could be obtained in a more peaceful way, if a person could somehow figure out what everything was really worth; hence, the labor theory of value.
This stranglehold on economics was finally solved, as so many problems are in human history, independently and almost simultaneously by three men--Stanley Jevons in English, Leon Walrus in French, and Carl Menger in German. The solution was called the marginal theory of value and had enormous appeal because it has a very mathematical ring to it.. But of the three, only Carl Menger carried the marginal theory of value to its logical conclusion. Because Menger was actually Austrian as were his early disciples, the insights developed from his initial insight have come to be known as Austrian economics. In the next installment I will attempt to explore the Austrian return to Adam Smith’s principal insight, i.e. that wealth, even the wealth of nations did not depend upon the work of the nobles and aristocrats, but rather on the work of the ordinary citizen. All of their incredible understanding of economics begins with the actions of individuals. So in the next section we will explore a simple transaction and see what we can learn from it and then explore the three rules growing out of Austrian economics.

Personal Economics--Rule III

2009-07-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness.
Matthew
It is the aim of good governments to stimulate production, of bad governments to encourage consumption.
Jean-Baptiste Say
Rule III used to be known as the law of markets. It says basically that production proceeds consumption, or, in other words, that we pay for what we consume from what we--or someone else--has produced. In our day, it has been renamed "Say’s Law" because the basis of Keynesian economics is essentially a denial of the validity of this law, so, in essence, Keynes rechristened it as "Say’s Opinion." Keynes, in referring to it often quoted James Mill’s attempt at an abbreviation--"supply creates its own demand." This seems to imply that anything that is produced will be sold, which, of course, is clearly not true, at least, not true if we mean by being sold "covering at least the cost of production". But the basic rule is, that production must proceed consumption and we pay for our consumption out of something that someone has produced. For Say, the critical problem is production. For Keynes it is consumption. Indeed, when listening to modern Keynesian economists, you get the feeling that they feel that production is automatic--it takes care of itself. Of course, this isn’t true and even the most die-hard Keynes disciple has to acknowledge that at some point things must be produced; hence part of the reason that modern economics is so laden with mathematics. Economists are busy calculating, using ever increasing sophisticated tools, just exactly when we need to begin to worry about production.
The effect of the denial of Say’s Law in our day is devastating and we see it all around us in a hundred different ways. At the slightest hint of a recession the headline scream, "Consumer confidence is down." Like Elvis Presley, we’ll have a "Blue Christmas" if the retail sales figures early in December indicate that people are spending less than they did the previous year. To get out of, or even to prevent, a downturn in the economy, politicians call for measures to "jump-start the economy" or to "prime the pump". They pass out stimulation money. They start government make-work projects. Anything and everything to "get money moving in the economy". Congressmen fight endlessly to keep defense plants open even if they are building archaic weapons. Military bases and installations that serve almost no useful function e.g. Fort Douglas in my own town, are somehow argued to be vital, if not to the defense of the nation, at least, to its economic welfare.
But most devastating is the effect on individuals, for two reasons. First, they lose the wealth that would have been created if all this spending had been done on productive enterprises, but even more destructive is the idea that we are serving a useful purpose just by consuming and spending.
My own favorite statement of Say’s Law on a personal level came in a graduation speech at my daughter, Natasha’s, graduation from Skyline High School. Lyn Davidson, a member of the Granite School board who had spoken at the two previous graduations I attended because older sons were graduating, admitted that he had run out of things to say on such occasions so he had asked his 90 year old mother what he could say. She responded, "You tell those young people what I told you when you graduated from high school."
"Mom," Mr Davidson complained, "that was a long time ago. I really don’t remember what you told me then. Could you remind me?"
"Well," the mother replied, "if you don’t remember that then tell them what I told you when you graduated from college."
"Mom," he protested, "that was almost as long ago. I really don’t remember."
"What I told you when you graduated from high school, " she said with great emphasis, "is what I told you when you turned 18, what I told you when you turned 21, and what I told you when you graduated from college. It isn’t turning a certain age, or getting a diploma or a degree, or a certificate or a license that makes you an adult. You don’t become an adult until you start producing more than you consume."
On that basis many Americans never become adults. Unfortunately, we don’t even expect it any more. It was with something like this in mind that our forefathers thought it was essential, even if they were famous and making most of their income from political activity, to be able to claim as a profession something in the free market. Daniel Webster, for example, was one of America’s most successful lawyers and a leader in the US Senate, but he always claimed to be a farmer. The same is true of his associates Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun.
Many Americans are eager to get on welfare roles in manner possible, partially, because they see themselves as performing a service by being consumers. Years ago when I was working as a volunteer employment specialist, a neighbor came to me asking me to help him apply for a job that had been listed. "That job is a government subsidized job that can only be given to someone who is handicapped," I informed him.
"I am handicapped." he responded.
"I’m sorry to hear that. I wasn’t aware of it. What’s your handicap?"
He responded so seriously that I didn’t dare laugh, but it took all my self-control not to. "I can’t spell", he said almost in tears. "You can’t imagine what a handicap that’s been to me."
That is an extreme example, but I am always amazed to see how eagerly people of my acquaintance claim handicapped status. I think it happens largely because it excuses them from the rigors of productive work and, after all, they are told repeatedly that what we really need in this country in this Keynesian age, is consumers. They qualify.
Rule III is, therefore, "I pay for what I consume with what I--or someone else--produces. The corollary is that except in very special circumstances if it is someone else, you never really grow up.

Personal Economics--Rule II

2009-07-09T11:15:00.001-07:00

Personal Economics--Rule II
"The race is run by one and one and never by two and two."
Kipling
"What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom."
Adam Smith
The second rule stems from Adam Smith’s overall writing and is implied in the quote above. The rule is "whatever is right, true, correct, or moral for one person does not change if I add a person or a group of persons." This is the rule that divides economists. Most economists, when acting as economists and not as politicians or political yea-sayers will acknowledge rule I, i.e. judge others who you wish to deal with by their works and not in some other way, but rule II divides economists who are collectivists e. g. Keynesians, Marxists, etc from individuals e.g. Austrians and monetarist. It was a shock to me as a freshman when I read in the introduction to my Econ 101 text (Samuelson 5th ed.) That actions which are right and proper for individuals would be disastrous for the nation. Among the examples are the so-called "paradox of thrift", i. e. being frugal is a good thing for the individual, but collectivists believe it is diastrous for the nation as a whole. Because that belief is tied in with rule III to be discussed in the next essay I will chose an example directly from Adam Smith’s work.
Supposing that I work for a hardware store and my neighbor works for a grocery store. I approach my neighbor and say, "I have been checking the store receipts and I discover that I spent over 2000 dollars in your grocery store last year but you only spent about 200 dollars in my hardware store. This is an unforgiveable imbalance of trade. Unless you start spending more in my hardware store, I’m going to have the sheriff start confiscating your stuff to even out the difference so that the trade between us can be more balanced." If I actually went to my neighbor and said that, my neighbor would not be the only person who thought I was nuts.
We do not even carry on in that way about trade between cities. If the mayor of Provo called up the mayor of Salt Lake City and complained that the residents of Salt Lake only spent ten thousand dollars in Provo while the residents of Provo spent more than ten times that amount in Salt Lake and this is a wrong that I am going to call on the govenor to correct by increased taxation on the residents of Salt Lake. When we get to the state level we begin to see actions that approach this, and at the national level, of course, it becomes rampant with tariffs, import restrictions, and numerous other laws and regulations to address the "imbalance of trade".
In a hundred, probably a thousand, ways, we feel that an action that would appear wrong, even represhensible in some cases, as an individual is perfectly ok if we are part of a group that says the action is right. For another example, if I think I deserve a raise so I refuse to work until I get it, I would probably be severly reprimanded if I beat up or maimed anyone who showed up at my work to replace me, but if a union does that it is ok.
Because of this attitude we have replaced our sense of absolute morality with a statistical sense of morality. We recognize the immorality of an individual robbing another because he is convinced that the person he robs "is better off than I am". But we think nothing of forcing everyone who earns $40,000 a year to help out those who earn $20,000 or less. We begin to decide in some sort of statistic who is rich and who is poor and those statistics are used to decide who should be forced to help whom.
On a personal level the rule simply reauires that we ask outself when acting as part of a group, "would I do this if I were acting alone?" If the answer is "no", you can be pretty sure that what you are doing is wrong

Personal Economics--Rule I

2009-07-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

"‘Ye heve read, ye have heard, ye have thought,’ he said, ‘and the tale has yet to run:
"By the love of the body that once ye had, give answer--what ha’ ye done?’"
Kipling

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker that we expect our dinner, but from the regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages."
Adam Smith

The first rule of personal economics is derived from the work of Adam Smith. It is a rule of classical economics and is imbedded in much of his writings including the famous quote above. It is important to remember again that Adam Smith was a professor of Moral Philosophy. He believed that what was right was also, in the long run, at least, also what was smart. He is saying here that in the ordinary transactions of life, we do not judge men by their intentions or their thoughts or their hopes or anything else. We judge men the way God judges us--by their works. He does not say that we should do this, he says that in a free and reasonable society that is how we do judge them. When was the last time you were standing in line at the grocery store and the man in front of you held up a loaf of bread and said to the clerk, "If you can prove to me that the man who grew the wheat that went into this bread, the man who milled the wheat, the man who baked the flour, the man who packaged the bread and the man who delivered it to your store were all good Presbyterians, I will buy this loaf of bread."? We would probably think a man who said that was crazy. In the most peaceful interactions we have with others, that is how we do judge them. The reason for this is that most reasonable men in a free society recognize that it is simple justice to be judged by their works. This is the first rule of personal economics--"Judge others the way God judges you, by their works".
Unfortunately, while few of us wish to be judged personally by our works. We wish to be judged by our intentions or our nationality or our ancestry or in some other way that gives us an advantage over others. Politicians frequently play on this desire and try to get us to judge others in almost any way other than their works.
A favorite example of mine stems from a series of ads done by the comedian, Bob Hope, when I was a teen-ager. Because he frequently entertained American troops, he was known as a kind of super-patriot, so the American Ladies Garment Union hired him to do a series of ads for them. The gist of the ads was that when buying a garment i.e. a shirt, a dress, a tie, a pair of slacks, etc., you should not judge the person, or his garment, by his works, i.e. the quality or price of garment. That should be a secondary consideration. Before everything else, you should "look for the union label". If you do that, you can be sure that the person making your garment did not make it in their garage or basement. Union officials usually refer to people who make things in such places as "working in a sweat shop". You can also know that the person making the garment was a genuine American, or, at least, was working in America. You could have the comfort of knowing that the person making your garment was not living in Asia or South America or Europe or some other place where foreigners live. Finally, you could know that your garment--and this is probably most important of all--was not made by a man.
In Adam Smith’s day, feudalism was disappearing, but one aspect of it remained--what was called Mercantilism. The Mercantilists were very suspicious of foreigners. They should not be traded with. By sending goods to a country they were very sneakily trying to get gold out of the country. They were creating an "inbalance of trade" and trying to destroy a country’s wealth, i.e. its gold reserves. Adam Smith was simply saying we should judge the man across the river, or channel, or mountain range who happens to speak a different language, the way we judge the man next door or the man who runs the local bakery--by his works.
Rule I simply says that we don’t judge a man by his attitude, his nationality, his religion, his outlook, we judge him by his works.

Personal econ--natural law--Adam Smith

2009-06-12T14:24:00.001-07:00

Personal economics--Natural law--Adam Smith
Newton convinced us forever that the interactions between particles are governed by natural law. The man most responsible for convincing intellectuals, at least, that there is a possibility that interactions between individuals is also governed by natural law is Adam Smith. Of course, scripture has always told us that interactions between people is governed by law, but many do not believe in scripture; therefore, Adam Smith’s contribution is mighty.
Adam Smith was a professor of moral philosophy in Scotland. Effectively that meant that his job was to teach young men, many, if not most, of whom were planning for careers in the ministry, that living by the Christian moral code is not only the good thing to do, but also that it is also the smart thing to do. He wrote a book outlining his ideas on the subject that was an enormous "hit" with the intellectuals of Europe. People rather liked books on morality and ethics in those days.
His book made such a big impression that an English noble decided that he, Adam Smith, was the best man he could hire to take his son and his ward on what was then called "The grand tour" of Europe. So Adam Smith went all over Europe with his young students in tow. And everywhere they went, they met with intellectuals who were eager to meet the author of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". For his part, Adam Smith became convinced that there were good people in every country and, therefore, the precepts of Christian morality should be applied across national boundaries. Of course, he knew that if he wrote a book expressing this idea in the same way that it was expressed in his first book, that it would be so much waste paper. So he decided, I believe, to write a book rather like Newton’s, that is, one relying heavily on data and mathematical analysis.
In doing this, Adam Smith effectively founded the social science of economics. Most economists essentially follow his method, that is, they collect data and analyze it using logic and mathematics, and from that analysis draw conclusions. But while most economists follow his methods, most also disagree radically with his conclusions, something we will explore in coming blogs.
His achievement was remarkable. He showed that gold and wealth are not synonymous. He demonstrated that a free economy is not a "zero sum" society, i. e. one man’s gain is not another man’s expense. He made clear that "getting along" is a major key to wealth, because it allows each man to do what he does best and, depend on others to do likewise. This is in fact a major key to wealth. The other key is that thrift and saving allow men to get better and better tools; hence, increasing their productivity and ultimately, their material well-being.
He concluded from all this that men’s long term interests are in harmony. He believed in a system of natural liberty for all men and that such a system would greatly multiply their wealth. Finally, he believed that ordinary individuals could be trusted to manage their own affairs as long as they did not infringe on the rights of others.
The first famous person to use Adam Smith’s methods and quote his work, but who disagreed radically with his conclusions, was Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton believed strongly that ordinary men are incapable of being trusted with their own affairs and hence, must be directed, even controlled, by their superiors.
I believe that Adam Smith’s insights and those who followed him with similar beliefs can be very helpful to us as individuals to understand and even to live by the natural law. We will explore some of the ways in future blogs.

Personal econ--Natural law, Newton

2009-06-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

Personal Econ--Natural Law, Newton
Isaac Newton gave us modern science. He took the work of his forerunners, Galileo and Kepler, stripped them of their sarcasm and mysticism, respectively, added his own remarkable insight, and gave us the book that launched modern science. At the end of his book, he adds a postscript in which he explains his motivation. There were problems with the theory of vortices--the theory with which Des Carte had attempted to explain the universe. The problems, Newton claimed, stemmed more from Des Carte’s philosophy than from his science or his mathematics. He failed to recognize that God is a governor and, as such is interested in the affairs of those over whom he has governance.
The French, predictably, did not care for Newton’s explanation. After all, the French and the English did not get along. Rather than admit that their objections were political, they attempted, as is so often the case, to show that Newton’s work was unscientific. Newton, they claimed had the universe held together by a "perpetual miracle". The "miracle" was the "action at a distant" force, gravity. We no longer consider "action at a distance" miraculous, because, it is necessary to our understanding of science. Einstein was able, in a way, to eliminate the Newtonian miracle, but his efforts to do so with the similar miracle of Gauss, Faraday, and Maxwell was not so successful.
In my history of science class, our teacher referred to Des Cartes theory, admittedly, somewhat derisively as "the whirlpool theory". It is my conviction that when we attempt to eliminate God as a governor, we wind up with a lot of "whirlpool-like" theories, i. e. theories that sound plausible enough but when applied the results are most unsatisfactory. This is particularly true in the field of economics.
It was, in my opinion, Adam Smith’s belief that interpersonal relationships between men was subject to law, what we call natural law, in the same way that the relationship of physical matter is subject to law. In writing "the Wealth of Nations" , he attempted to explicate some of those laws.

Personal Economics--Natural Law--I

2009-06-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

Personal Economics--Natural Law
I have decided that for the next little while, I will explore the uses of economics in our personal lives, beginning with a discussion of natural law.
My boss often says that he hates stupid people. When exploring his meaning I have discovered that what he really means is that he is annoyed when people who do things that are important to him differently than he would do them. This leads to an intriguing question, "Is there always one right way to do things?" More important, "Is there a best way to behave?" The answer to both questions touches, I believe, on the question of natural law.
Of course, most men believe in natural law governing physical phenomena, that is, they acknowledge the absolute "law governing thing", but as soon as we seek out the "law governing man" there is a wide spread divergence.
Our fore-fathers believed that in the Scripture they had found the rule book of life, i. e. the natural laws governing conduct were laid out. For the most part those rules are rather strict and have never been particularly popular. As Jesus said, the way is strait and only a few bother to travel it. Those who choose self-indulgence, can usually find an excuse in the fact that many of those who profess belief do not follow the rules themselves. Or they may choose to be disbelievers. With the exceptions outlined later, disbelief itself is a form of self-indulgence, since it allows the disbeliever to pick and choose his rules, since there is no way that rules of human conduct can be derived from those governing physical phenomena.
It is a personal conviction that all understanding of real law, helps us as individuals to overcome the temptation to self-indulgence. So I will be exploring the ideas of how an understanding of economics can help us in that way. But I begin, in the next installment by looking first at a natural law philosopher who, I believe, was an important inspiration to the father of economics, Adam Smith, namely Isaac Newton.

My Church Basketball Career

2009-05-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I wrote this as a speech and offered to give it in church "if they were really desperate" and needed a long speech. No one has ever been that desperate.
My Church Basketball Career
My initial Church basketball career was very short.
As a young man growing up in the Church, I was blessed to be a part of a very active youth program. Our leaders were dedicated and saw to it that we had many opportunities to participate in all kinds of activities. I was the student body president of our high school, and so was active at school, but far and away my fondest memories are of the many activities at Church. Music, drama, speech, writing, and, or course, sports, were all on a busy agenda. Although very active in every thing else, I didn’t participate in the sports program, mostly because I had, as a young boy never developed the skills necessary for the games.
Sensing, perhaps, that I may have felt left out, the ward athletic director approached me at the beginning of basketball season one year and told me that if I would come out to the games and suit up that he would see to it that I got to play. Excited, I reported for the next game. True to his word, he put me in for about 10 minutes at the end of the game. Even more excited, I reported again for the next game. Apparently, too much was riding on the game for him to risk even a few minutes of my caliber of play, so I sat out the entire game. Much less excited, I reported again for the next game, with the same result as the previous game. Too proud to risk the same result one more time, I quit coming.
Do I resent what happened? In hind sight, at least, not at all. I made no real effort to become a more effective basketball player. I never went to practices, nor did I attempt to improve my skills on my own. In a sense, I was really hoping for the reward of recognition with little or no effort and I realized, even at the time, the small humiliation involved in the experience was a good thing. For one thing, it taught me that if I wanted to receive recognition, I needed to merit it. I also decided that sports was not an area into which I was willing to put my efforts, and I concluded that my basketball career, brief as it was, was over.
Years--a mission, a college education, and a stint in the army--later found me in a Singles Ward in the Avenues area of Salt Lake City. I was sitting peacefully in Priesthood meeting, contemplating the wonders of eternal bliss, when a counselor (I was the other) in the Elder’s Quorum Presidency, Mark Anderson, announced that he was passing around a sign-up sheet for basketball. He said it with a grin, because in the two years I had been in that ward, no one had ever signed up for any sport. We were not a very athletically inclined group. But, of course, at the beginning of every season, we would dutifully pass around a sign-up sheet, because--well, I’m not sure why we did it--I suspect that we sort of somehow, someway, felt we were supposed to.
We were well into our lesson that day, detailing I’m sure, some duty incumbent upon us to achieve the aforementioned eternal bliss--most likely, home teaching--a rather frequent topic in that particular ward, since each of us who were active had between 15 and 20 people assigned to us to visit--as I said, were well into the lesson, when all of sudden from the back of the room heard--without his having been called on or anything--a roar sounding something like,"hey, what is this! Nobody has signed up for the basketball team."
Mark quickly jumped to his feet and explained, "We’ve never had a team. We’re simply no interested in sports."
The man responsible for the disturbance also jumped to his feet. I recognized him as a new-comer to the ward, so new, in fact, the he didn’t even have a home teaching beat--which, in that ward meant that he had probably come for the first time the week before. He waved the blank basketball list--wildly, I thought--and threatened, "If we don’t have a basketball team, I’m going to stop coming to this ward."
My own thoughts at that moment were, as I remember them, "although it would be nice to have had you stay and help with the home teaching, it is obvious that we are incompatible, so I can only hope, in all charity, that you can find some other place to contemplate eternal bliss. Depart in peace."
Just as I was thinking these most charitable thoughts, I was handed a note saying, "There will be an emergency meeting of the Elder’s Quorum Presidency immediately after church."
I suspected, as I walked into the little room where we held our presidency meetings, that this was not one of those meetings where I would be asked for counsel, and I was right. The president, Joe Harris, was very to the point. We needed this brother in our ward, he declared in no uncertain terms, and if it required a basketball team to keep him there, then we were going to have a basketball team. "How can we have a basketball team?’ I demanded to know. "Nobody want to play basketball."
"We are going to have a basketball team," President Harris continued unflinchingly, "because everyone in this room has just received an official Church calling from his Elder’s Quorum President to be on the ward basketball team. Here’s the schedule."
And so we had a basketball team and I can look back on a Church basketball career that lasted one entire season. Of course, I was not planning on it lasting one entire season. Unlike my first time, I never went to the game excited--not the first game, not the last, not any in--between. But, unlike the first time, I got to play in every game--every minute of every game. It turns out that of the four of us forced--that is "called"--to play, myself, Mark, Joe and Doug Anderson, I was the tallest at under 6', which proved to be a bit of a handicap since, it turns out that in basketball, having tall players is an advantage. Of course, I personally do not think that the height disadvantage would have hurt us all that much if any of us could have dribbled or shot the ball. To make matters worse, it turns out that the other wards in our stake took basketball very very seriously. Most of the other ward teams had players who had recently played on the varsity teams for BYU or the UofU. None of the teams other than ours had any players that I ever met who had not at least been first string high school players. So, as you might suspect, we did not fare well, score wise, at least. The only person who really had developed the basic basketball skills was the newcomer--whose name I forget. I forget his name because after the first very sound defeat, we never saw him again. I’m not sure he moved, but I am sure he moved on.
Then why did we continue playing? Because--as so often happens in this lone and dreary world where weeds grow everywhere and bliss never lingers eternally--someone else moved into our ward who wanted to play ball. At our second game Glenn Fenn showed up. Glenn, at 6' 4", took over my place at center, and I took over the spot of the newcomer--who, as mentioned, had ceased to come. Glenn was a really good ball player and to this day I admire his sportsmanship. He seemed happy just to be playing, even though it meant playing on a team that counted it a victory if they lost by only 40 points.
And for all the fun I make of that experience, it really was a very unpleasant one for me. I really don’t know how Glenn felt, or for that matter how Mark or Doug or even Joe felt. For my part, losing never bothered me, not for a minute. After all, I was there because I was told to be. What really bothered me, what bothers me still, was the violence. Of course, the hurts and the bruises have long since healed. Fortunately, they were never very serious, even at the time, but they were deeply resented.
The problem was that, with all our disadvantages, we had one very important advantage--we were, all of us, in excellent physical condition. For my part, I swam a mile almost every day; the others on the team either did that or ran for several miles. Our opponents were, for the most part, in poor physical condition, at least in the sense, that they were out of shape.
The result was that our games, which I can at this distance view philosophically, took on an interesting but unpleasant patter. Always it became quickly apparent in a game that we were not here dealing with a real contest. Usually, within minutes, we were as many as twenty points behind. In the early part of the game, our opponents were courteous to a fault. If there was a hit or other physical violation, they generally apologized. But as the game wore on things changed. For one thing, the difference in the score began to narrow. This occurred initially because the opposing team relaxed after they had a very comfortable margin, but as they became tired, we began to get points simply because we had more stamina (and also, because we did, after all, have one player who could actually play).
It was usually at this point that the game became, in my opinion, violent. I, or one of my teammates, would run down the court with the ball. One of the opponents would come behind, and , unable to block the ball fairly, would simply strike, or shove, or even kick the man with the ball. Of course, the first few times this happened, the offender was punished with a foul, but then the thing occurred which I found, and still find, most offensive of all.
The official in our games was chosen from the young men, usually a volunteer who had just completed a game in the junior team games which preceded our own. Early in the game his decisions were treated with respect, but as the game wore on and the players became tired, they were not. In the latter part of the game, as a team member found himself being called for a foul, he would often yell, sometimes even swear at, and on a few occasions, even threaten, the official. After that happened, the young man would essentially retreat from the game. He would stay on the floor, but it was fairly clear to everyone that they were free to do as they chose.
By the end of the game, frequently I felt like I had been beaten up. Fortunately, the one thing the official always retained the courage to do was to blow the final whistle. As we would change our clothes in the dressing room after the game, I can remember feeling deep resentment toward many of those who, in my opinion, at least, had been so brutal.. I’m sorry to say that on more than one occasion, my resentment got the best of me. On a member of the opposing team attempted an apology, "I guess things got a little rough out there and I got carried away," he said. I’m afraid that my own resentment boiled over at that point. I’m sure he expected me to say, "that’s O.K., its only a game" or some such. What I actually said was "They did, and you did." He walked away obviously a little miffed.
Their lack of discipline on the court, I am sorry to say, led to a lack of discipline on my part at stake meetings, where I would encounter these brethren in their official Church capacities, and occasionally as these men were called on to speak or otherwise give instructions, I would find myself asking, "How can you speak of love and compassion now and yet be so brutal on the basketball court?"
This was, of course, years ago and I had all but forgotten about it until recently when, in bishopric meeting, it was reported that a member of the High Council had gotten into a very nasty fight during a basketball game. Apparently, such fighting is common, but the Stake President was a little disappointed that a member of the High Council would be involved.
I have asked myself, why men act in a manner so obviously contrary to all that they profess and admonish. As I expressed this question to some of my fellows they have simply responded, "You, being not interested in sports, do not understand." That is probably true. My Bishop told me about being deliberately hit with a baseball bat during a fight after a Church baseball game. He laughed about it and said, "That’s just the way it is in sports. People sometimes get carried away." While I probably don’t understand everything about it, I do understand enough to know that to all a game to become violent in even the slightest degree, to lose one’s self control, is wrong.
I sometimes regret not having been involved with sports, because the discipline of sports is, I recognize, extremely important. We are often told that next to religion it is the most important discipline, particularly in the life of youth. But there is a vast difference in the two as disciplines. The apostle Paul outlined the difference best, I believe, in his comment in Corinthians, about those who participate in athletics, "they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible." (Icor. 9:25) The only real reason for participating in athletics at all, in my opinion, is to develop the discipline of living by rules when the competition is terribly, terribly intense, but the stakes are very very low. The crown is, as Paul said, "corruptible". In his day it was a laurel wreath which would last for a few weeks. It is probably with this in mind that he made his famous comment, "Bodily exercise profiteth little" (I Tim. 4:8) He certainly did not mean that we should "let our bodies go", so to speak, because in the Corinthians passage, he tells us that he feels that his very salvation dpends upon keeping his body in subjection.
In religion, in almost complete contrast to sports, the stakes are very very, almost infinitely, high, but there is little if any intensity of competition or urgency. Those who can exercise discipline when there is great intensity but almost nothing at stake--or at least, nothing of any value, are better prepared, we are told, to exercise discipline when there is something of value at stake but the intensity of feeling is lower.
But of the competition in my basketball games, it could be said, not only was there little at stake, there was absolutely nothing at stake, not even a game. All that could be said to be at stake at all was a little momentary glory, a vain imagination. I have decided the real problem was that those men had ceased to be what they saw themselves as being and they were unwilling to pay the price to really become what they wanted to be, so they simply made up the difference by taking a shortcut. As so often happens in the world, that shortcut involved violence and the breaking of the rules. It was excused with the feeling that "this is only a game and, therefore, this time doesn’t count.
The testimony of scripture is that ever conscious moment counts. Eternity hangs on every moment. If we are willing to take shortcut, to compromise values, when only a bit of vainglory is at stake, what will we do when we perceive our livelihood, our basic needs, our standing in the community, our respectability are at stake? I suspect that we will find ourselves more and more saying, "this time doesn’t count." We will make exceptions for not only "only a game" but the vacation, a trip, a time of stress, "I’m out of work", "he made me mad", until the exceptions encompass life.
When the imagination runs too far away from the reality, we say a man has gone insane--he thinks he is something that he does not even closely resemble. Fortunately, this is rare. Less rare is the case in which the vain imagination, nurtured while neglecting the subjection of the body, leads to actions that a labeled immoral or irresponsible--a sort of temporary insanity. But most often those kinds of actions begin with actions that we simply label as "inappropriate" or even "inadequate". Many of the actions on the sports fields fall into this category.
My basketball career, I feel confident, is completely closed, but as I contemplate it I can’t help but feel that what I learned--the subjugation of the body and the "casting down of vain imaginations" are as important now as then. I feel that therein lies the key to peace--in life and even on the basketball court.

How I Became Student Body President of Pocatello High

2009-03-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

When I was a sophomore at Pocatello (hereafter referred to as "Poky") High School, the student body president was Stan Spicer. Stan was that rare athlete who was not only good at athletics and, hence, popular, but also genuinely humble and, hence, even more popular. At the time the president of the United States was Dwight Eisenhower--a popular war hero. I mention this because in a way their positions were analogous, i. e. both were popular heros who proved to be well-liked and admired as politicians. If Stan Spicer was the Dwight Eisenhower of Poky High, then his vice president, Steve Pugmire, was the Richard Nixon--not only because he was the vice president, but because, like Nixon, he was a thoroughgoing politician. His whole extra-curricular focus was school politics, and he planned, as one would expect, to become one in real life after first getting a law degree.
Steve succeeded Stan as student body president, and his vice-president, Raymond Scheele, was cut out of the same mold as himself. He had, like Steve, been very active in school politics from the time he entered high school, and probably even at his junior high, and he planned to make a career out of politics. It was also assumed that he would succeed Steve as student body president. Indeed, it looked like we were in for a long run of career politicians as presidents.
The day that it was announced that nominating petitions for student body officers were due in a couple of days, I was walking from a class in the main building to one in the gym building when Nancy Robinson came up to me and said, "See this?’ She showed me a sheet of paper attached to a clip board. "This", she announced, not waiting for my response, probably realizing that since I had become to vain to wear my glasses, that there was no way I could see what it was anyway, "is a petition to run you for student body president. Several of us are out getting people to sign these petitions." I really don’t remember what I said. I’m sure it was something very profound, very wise, and, above all, very humble. Actually, what I probably said was, "you’re kidding, of course." But whatever I said, she assured me that I was being placed on several petitions to be the next student body president.
At this point, I think I should try to explain why anyone would even think of putting me up for student body president. Of course, whenever I would mention, as when I was in college I did on many occasions, that I had been student body president of Pocatello High School, everyone to whom I mentioned it assumed that what had happened was that the five or six members of the senior class gathered in a circle and someone passed out straws and the person with the longest straws became student body president, the person with the next longest became senior class president and so on until it got down to the person with shortest straw who became school mascot. But actually, it wasn’t like that at all. At that time there was, as I think I pointed out in a previous article, only one high school in Pocatello which was the second largest city in the state of Idaho. Now, although Boise was bigger, it had more than one high school, so we sere the largest in the entire state of Idaho. Now, of course, it being Idaho that was still no great shakes, but still we had too many people to decide school officers with a simple straw pull, at least two or three times too many. What I am saying is that you had to do something to distinguish yourself before you could expect to be chosen, or even be chosen by your friends, to be student body president. I did two things.
Well, actually, the first and most important thing I did, I didn’t do at all, my parents did. Of course, I am certainly not the first person, nor, I suspect, will I be the last, to ride into an important public office because of something his/her parents did. What my parents did was have my sister just one year after me, so she was a sophomore when I was a junior. She was in her own right, popular, and that helped, of course, but the thing that really put it over was that she was very outgoing. It used to bother me at times that she was so outgoing, because I sometimes thought it was a bit embarrassing, but, trust me, if you are thinking of running for a school office, or even if your friends are thinking of running you for that office, having a very outgoing sister just a year younger than you is an enormous asset. But even that would not have done the trick were it not for the fact that early in my junior year, dad had purchased a book entitled "Braude’s Book of Humor. Now it would be very helpful to this whole story if I could say that it was my idea, but since my sister is still around to set the record straight, I’m going to say that I’m not sure whose idea it was, but one of us got the idea to try out as joint MC’s for the school traveling assembly.
Now the person who chose the MC or MC’s for the traveling assembly was the choir teacher, Mr. Gabbard, which you might have thought would give me an advantage seeing as how I was in the choir. Unfortunately, I was a bass who every time the basses had to sing a note above middle C, which was quite often, I could only make it by going into falsetto and whenever I did that Mr. Gabbard would give me a stern look and rather often would add his lecture about singing from the midsection. "A bass who has to sing high should never strain his vocal cords, he should sing from his midsection. By the time choir is over every bass should be sweating because he has had to work his midsection so hard." Well, I never could figure the midsection thing out so I continued to get dirty looks.
The other problem was that the people trying out for MC were more popular than we were and many had had experience in that sort of thing. Nevertheless, Loni was undaunted and so we worked up a routine using jokes from Braude’s book and a few that I threw in from some old Archie and Jughead comic books, admittedly, pretty corny.
Well, at tryouts, I was as nervous as a cat. First, the Anderson twins--two very popular identical twin boys, got up and told a joke, that I thought was pretty funny and I couldn’t help but notice, so did Mr. Gabbard. The joke depended on the fact that they were identical in appearance. After telling the joke, they simply said that if they were chosen they would tell some more just like that, only even funnier.
After the Andersons, Fred Wynn tried out, but he didn’t even bother to have a joke, depending, I think on popularity and the fact that he had been in some plays. I can’t remember who else tried out, but we were last.
Admittedly, we were the best prepared--in two ways. First, we actually had a routine, and second, Loni had gotten several of her friends to come as a sort of cheering squad. It was the cheering squad that did the trick. After every joke they simply roared. Some of the jokes were so corny that they didn’t know when to roar, but they roared anyway--usually when we were only half-way through the joke. But you would have thought that we were the funniest thing to come along since Will Rogers, in fact, if an executive of CBS had been there, I suspect that he would have canceled Jack Benny’s contract and turned his show over to us.
The result was that we got the job. The further result was that I got what in advanced political circles is known as "exposure", which is very helpful; indeed, almost necessary if you want to run for an important political office.
But I would hate for anyone to think that I depended on the result entirely on my parents and sister. My own contribution, and, I believer, looking back, that it was substantial, came about because somewhere toward the end of my sophomore year I noticed the truth, first enunciated by Dorothy Parker, that girls seldom make passes at boys who were glasses. If the glasses are thick, which mine were, you can replace the "seldom" with "never", so I simply stopped wearing my glasses. This created another problem, however. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but I did have a few and those few became somewhat miffed when I passed them in the hall without so much as an acknowledgment that I knew them. This, of course, occurred because I couldn’t see them. To remedy this situation I simply started waving and saying "hi" to everyone in the hall. At first I thought I would be considered a nut because I was waving at people I didn’t even know, but I soon learned that most high school students are as socially insecure as I was and they didn’t mind at all being waved at, even by a stranger. So I became known as someone who was extremely friendly. Now if you want to be popular, especially with the "in" crowd, this is no asset, but if you want to run for an office, it is.
Now the result of all of this was that, of the five or six candidates in the primary, Ray Scheele and I made the finals. Of course, you are probably thinking, having made the finals, I was faced with having to give a campaign speech. Actually, by this time in my life, I was pretty comfortable doing public speaking. The real problem was that it is sort of expected in a campaign speech that you will make promises about what you will do. My quandary was, not having the foggiest notion of what the student body president, or anyone else in student government for that matter, was supposed to do, I had not a clue as to what I should, or could, reasonably promise to do. I solved this rather sticky dilemma by again referring to Braude’s book, selecting four or five of what I considered his best jokes that Loni and I had not already used in our MC routine, and using that as my speech, concluding with the promise that I would do my best to do whatever I did do. I was very careful to leave out any reference to intellectuality or making any promises about doing my best to be intelligent, which I had learned from previous experience, is more or less like promising to bring the spinach to the party--it simply doesn’t put you at the top of list, which, of course, if you are running for an office is where you want to be.
Well, as you might expect, Ray Scheele gave a wonderful talk outlining all of the things that he planned to do and I, well I described my talk above. I was very impressed with Ray’s talk and as I remember, I voted for him myself and almost everyone in my class did likewise. However, I won the election, the reason being that Loni got almost everyone in her class, in spite of my talk, to vote for me, and the seniors, who probably should not have been allowed to vote at all, also voted for me, probably reasoning that they appreciated my jokes, and since they wouldn’t be around to appreciate Ray’s program decided to vote for something they could appreciate.
Ray was elected Senior Class President in the class elections in the fall. As might be expected I did not make a very good student body president. Fortunately, the discontent over my poor performance did not spill over into actual physical violence. It may have, however, at the class graduation banquet where I was to give a speech. I do not think the thing would have come to actual bodily harm, but I think that a few of the more malcontents were preparing themselves with over-ripe tomatoes and rotten eggs, but, as luck would have it, the morning of the banquet I was thrown from a horse which left me with such a severe limp that even the malcontents felt sorry for me. However, on the occasion of the 10 year reunion, I no longer had access to horses, and I suspected that even if I had, the years of anticipation of some kind of reprisal, might make even getting thrown again from a horse of little avail. So even though I was in town, I decided to let prudence be the better part of valor, and skip the reunion. After all, Pocatello High had some pretty big bruisers when I went there.
I really don’t remember why I missed the twenty year reunion. By that time I was finally married, but just, so I may have been thinking that, although I hoped Shauna (my wife) didn’t marry me only because I had been student body president, I probably decided that just in case, it might be better to let the thing go by rather than have her find out I had muffed it. I did, however, fully intend to be at the 30 year reunion, but it turns out our family had a reunion at the same time, and by that time I had, not only a wife, but several children, all of whom, including the wife, voted for the family, as opposed to the class, reunion.
But at the 40th reunion, I was there. Ray Scheele was there also and when he saw me, he came up and we embraced. After all those years, all was forgiven, but he did say, "How come you never come to the reunions?" He then just laughed.
When I think back on the experience, I sometimes feel that it was a good thing I was elected after all. At the end of the year, Mrs. Rice, who was the student government advisor told me that I had been one of her very favorite student body presidents. Besides being the advisor to student government, she also taught government classes, and like most who do, she was a liberal who believed as most of them do, in the adage, "That government governs best that governs most." But interestingly enough, where student government was concerned, she outdid even Thomas Jefferson, believing essentially that. "student government governs best that governs not at all". Which explains why I was such a favorite. Had Ray Scheele, on the other hand been elected, who knows what might have happened. Ray went on to get his doctorate and teach political science at Ball State University, and like most political science professors, he was caste very much in the "governs most" mode, but, unlike Mrs. Rice, he carried it over to student government, in fact, you could say he was--as concerns student government--in the "governs most, and then some" camp. I like to rationalize my own experience by reflecting on Calvin Coolidge--one of my favorite presidents--and his most famous saying, "The business of America’s student governments is nobody’s business."

My First Campaign

2009-03-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

The First Campaign
I was just getting used to the switch from attending Jr. high (at Franklin Junior High) to attending High School (at the time about which I write everyone in Pocatello attended high school at Pocatello High School, the school board at that time not giving anyone much choice), when they announced that nominations for Sophomore class officers would have to be turned in the next day. I didn’t think that the announcement much concerned me since I was about the shyest kid in the class and had done nothing in the way of athletics or, for that matter, in anything else to distinguish myself. In my second or third class, however, my friend, Clark Bartley, came up to me and announced that he had turned in my name to run for the representative from the class to serve in the school Senate. "Why on earth did you do that?", I asked wondering whether to be piqued or flattered. "I don’t know anything about school politics and there is no way I could get elected."
"What this school needs," Clark explained, "is more intellectuals in student government. Now I have a plan that will get you elected. All you have to do is get past the primary and I will write a speech for you that will knock the socks off the kids in the class. After you give your campaign speech, they will never vote for anyone but an intellectual again."
"Speech," I protested, "you mean I have to give a speech? Forget it!"
"Well, of course, if you get past the primary, you have to give a speech. I’m counting on that to get you elected."
"Well," I said (and I said it very emphatically), "you can forget the whole thing. I am not giving any speech. I hate it when I have to speak in Sunday School, and I wouldn’t do it then if Mom or Loni (my sister) didn’t write them out for me. I just read them, but I am not going to get up in front of the entire Sophomore class and make a fool of myself reading a speech."
"Well, if you feel that way about it," Clark reassured me, "I’ll give your campaign speech for you. Since I’m your campaign manager anyway, I’m sure they won’t mind. Most of the time the actual campaign speeches are given by the campaign managers. They actually write all the speeches but sometimes the candidate gives one or two in the course of the campaign when he has had time to memorize the speech the campaign manager has written for him, but we don’t have time for than. I’ll give the speech."
"Are you sure that is going to be OK?" I demanded skeptically.
"Oh sure. In junior high things are different, but in high school most of the speeches are given by campaign managers, just like in the real world."
Reluctantly, I agreed to go along with this arrangement, mostly, I think because I was pretty sure I would never get past the primary. I mean, besides Clark and a few other close friends, nobody even knew who I was.
At this point I think I should explain how Clark came to think of me as an intellectual in the first place. Of course, there were the glasses, but they didn’t impress Clark. What actually happened was a few months earlier I had accompanied him to the college where he took his private tutoring lessons in calculus from a professor known as "Captain Brown". I sat outside Captain Brown’s office and read while Clark took his lesson. After the lesson Clark and the Captain came out and the Captain (he was retired military) asked Clark to introduce his friend. "Oh, this is my friend< Merrill." Then he added, "He’s none to bright--especially in math."
"Well math isn’t’ everything. What are you reading, Merrill?"
I proudly displayed my book, "The Three Musketeers", I replied. I say proudly, because normally I would have been reading the Hardy Boys, but I felt since I would be at the University I should have something at a little higher literary level
"That’s one of my favorite books!" Captain Brown exclaimed (I later found out that he had donated a large collection of Alexandre Dumas novels to the University library). "Your friend is as intelligent in literature as you are in math, Clark, and I’m not sure I would put one above the other." With this compliment I moved up considerably on the intellectual scale--at least in Clark’s eyes.
Two days later, at the beginning of home room, which for me was PE, the principal announced that Sophomores would be voting for class officers during home room and that our teachers would be writing the names of the candidates on the board and we were to make our choices on our own paper and turn in the "ballots". The teachers were to tally the results and turn them into the office. My PE class, which consisted of about 70 or 80 boys, was team taught by Wally Kelly and Ernie Sheurman. Mr. Sheurman had been the star of the local semi-pro baseball team a few years earlier, but had retired to teaching. I had actually seen him hit a home run during the one game to which my father had taken me as a boy. He was quiet, but firm and a wonderful teacher. Mr. Kelly, on the other hand, was very outspoken, and usually took charge of the class until we got into the actual activities. We called him "General No-Toes" because as a soldier in the Korean war the toes on one foot had become frostbitten and had to be amputated. On hearing the announcement of the election, he merely muttered, "Oh H---"(which was a no-no back then, but a no-no that he committed fairly often), "Mr. Sheurman will take care of that when he gets back from the equipment room."
Mr. Sheurman, probably oblivious to his newly delegated responsibility, went on with class as normal until toward the end of the period a boy walked up to him and said, "They sent me from the office to get your election results. You are the only class that hasn’t turned them in."
"Wally," he muttered, "I thought you were going to take care of that."
"Oh D---"(another no-no), "I completely forgot. I’ll do it now." He read off the list of candidates for class president. "Any of those guys in this class?" No one raised their hands. "Anyone know any of them?" A couple of boys named a friend. "Alright," the General barked, "who wants this kid’s friend for class president?’ Several hands went up. He quickly counted them. "I’ll assume that the rest of you want the other guy’s friend for class president." He went through the other officers in similar manner. It became clear that we actually only had the choice between the two candidates (usually of about 5 or six) that were known to someone in our class. Finally he came to the contest for senator. He read the list and as before barked out, "Any of those guys in this class"" Hesitantly, I raised my hand. "Oh good, finally a candidate in our class. What’s your name." I told him. "Anyone in this class who doesn’t want his fellow classmate, Merrill Gee, for class senator?" he asked with a note of defiance. No one raised their hand. "Glad to see your spirit of class loyalty." Having thus given us our opportunity to participate in democracy in action, the General dismissed the class.
At the first of the next period the winners in the primary were announced and I was relieved that I was not among their number. However, at the end of the second period the loudspeaker again came on. "Some of the results came in late. The late results did not alter the line-up of candidates in any of the races except for class senator. Merrill Gee will be added to the list of candidates for class senator. We will simply add his name and there will be an extra candidate in that race in the final election." The people, exercising there freedom to vote as they chose, had spoken. I was to be a candidate after all.
Needless to say I was very nervous. The whole "campaign manager bit" sounded a bit fishy to me, but Clark assured me that it would be OK. All I would need to do would be to stand by the podium while he delivered his speech, which, he felt, would make William Jennings Bryan’s fabled Cross of Gold speech sound hollow. After that speech, Clark assured me, my election was a sure thing and with an intellectual senator the school would finally be in good hands and the rousing success of our school year would be assured.
I was still nervous. I went home a stood in front of the mirror trying to look as intellectual as possible. I had to admit that without the glasses there was absolutely no hope. Fortunately, my father, always one with a sharp eye for a bargain, had purchased the glasses with the cheapest frames and I had to admit, even though I hated the glasses myself, that they definitely looked like a pair of glasses that Socrates or Aristotle would have worn if they had been around to wear them.
Two days later I stood along with all the other candidates off stage preparing for our respective entrances. I was somewhat less nervous than the others, because, of course, Clark was there to give my speech for me, but I was still pretty nervous wondering if I could look as intellectual as the situation required. Mr. Gooch, the school counselor, always cheerful and encouraging, read off the list of candidates and had each hold up his hand when his name was called. Having completed the list he turned to Clark, "And who, pray tell, are you?"
"Oh, I’m Merrill’s campaign manager. I’m going to give his speech."
"Campaign manager? Whoever heard of a campaign manager in a school election? No one is going to give someone else’s speech."
"But he’s not prepared. That’s not fair."
"That’s true," I agreed vehemently, "I’m not and it will be terrible if I have to speak."
"Nonsense," Mr. Gooch said, trying to be stern and yet encouraging, but obviously amused, "you’ll do just fine. Now I don’t want to hear any more about someone else giving someone else’s speech and that’s final!" With that Clark sat down on the floor obviously dejected.
When it was my turn to speak I stepped out, shaking. "If I’m elected," I promised in a tremulous tone of voice, "I will do my very best to do my best." With that I realized that I had said all I had to say--and then some, but remembering Clark, I added, "What this school needs is more intellectuals in student government. There is a definite lack of the intellectual element in our student legislature. If I am elected, therefore, I promise I will try to be as intelligent as possible. Thank you." With that I bowed and dashed off-stage. I hardly dared look at Clark.
"See, just as I said, your friend did a great job, " Mr. Gooch said to Clark as we all headed back to class.
Anyone reading this sketch, will hardly be surprised to hear that, as is so often the case in American political life, the intellectual candidate in that election went down to a crushing defeat.

Going to Pocatello High School I--the great speech

2009-03-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

For the next couple of blog entries I am going to return to the spirit of some of my earlier blogs about growing up in Pocatello and tell about some of my high school experiences.

THE GREAT SPEECH
I was always rather shy, something did not bother me much until I reached 9th grade. It was then that I noticed that girls were not much attracted to shy guys--or at least, so it seemed to me. My father was a lawyer and seemed not shy at all. I determined that it must have been the fact that he was a good public speaker that got him over any shyness he may have had, so I determined to become a good public speaker. Hence, I began to volunteer to give talks in Church, took a speech class in high school, and entered a couple of speech contests. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I rated myself as a pretty good public speaker.
Like all sophomores at Poky High, I was required to take a biology class. There were two biology teachers--Mr. Whitmore, who was considered a biology fanatic, and Mr. Glendiman, who was considered, when he was considered at all, a pushover. Fortunately, not being much interested in biology anyway, I drew Mr. Glendiman. Mr. Glendiman was an elderly man, large of stature, but very leisurely of habit, and very--even extremely— short of sight. He had glasses whose lenses resembled the proverbial coke-bottle bottoms more than any others I have ever seen. His easy-going nature and his near-sighedness resulted in his being taken advantage of most terribly, I thought. He would take the role at the beginning of the class, but shortly thereafter many of the students would reseat themselves toward the back of the room and then when he had his back turned writing on the board, simply leave class. Later, if he called on someone who had left, a friend would call out, "He got sick" or " she had to go to the office", or, more often than not there would be no response at all. I doubt that it was as bad in his other classes as it was in mine, but since ours was the last class of the day, there was an irresistable temptation for many in the class to get away from school early. Mr. Glendiman knew, of course, what was going on more than most of the class members gave him credit for, but I think he felt that he was about to retire and it was not worth making a great fuss about if some class members decided to sneak out. Of course, if he called on them and they didn’t respond, then they simply lost class participation credit.
Mr. Glendiman decided that the best way to cover our section on conservation would be to assign class members to give a five minute verbal presentation on any aspect of the subject they chose and hope that the class members would choose enough diverse topics that we would get a good over-view of the subject. He gave us an entire week to prepare our presentations, but the whole thing totally slipped my mind until I was sitting in geometry class--the class I had before my biology class. At first I was in a state of shock, bordering on panic, but shortly a calming wave of rationilization swept over me. "I’m a really experienced public speaker," I assured myself. "I’ll just wing it. I will simply wax eloquent on the tragedy of the disappearing buffalo and explain how a good conservation program would have prevented the tragedy." With my speech thus adequaltely prepared I allowed my mind to return to the complexities of geometry.
As I actually entered Mr. Glendiman’s class I became a bit nervous about my presentation and was, therefore, relieved to discover that he intended to spend the first part of the period finishing a previous unit. After he had taken role--there were, as usual, many students absent, but no non-responses, since friends of the truants responded "here". I delayed the speeches as much as I dared by asking several questions, but finally, about half=way through the class period, Mr. Glendiman said, "I think that we’ve covered that unit enough. Now let’s begin with your speeches."
It actually looked like I might be given a reprieve, because the very first girl he called on actually had a speech prepared. It was a sort of capsule history of Yellowstone Park. It was short of the required five minutes, but it obviously had been prepared in advance because she read it verbatim. He then called on several others, who either responded with "Not prepared" or failed to respond altogether. I became very nervous as he was getting very close to my name. Just before me, however, was Ralph Harper. Ralph was, next to myself, the most diligent student in the class, which, in that class, meant that he was prepared about half the time. I expected, therefore, that he would be prepared, but I was in for a surprise--not only was he prepared, but he was prepared like a law student facing his first real jury. He had charts, pictures, graphs, and a speech so well rehearsed that it sounded like he was entering a contest. Suddenly, my planned harangue on the disappearing buffalo palled into insignificance and I prayed fervently that I might be given a day’s grace in which to prepare.
To my relief, he skipped over my name. Obviously, I was to be the grand finale, but since there was only about five minutes left in the class, I felt a surge of gratitude and relief. Surely, even in that class there would be at least one other person prepared.
No such luck. Mr. Glendiman read through the entire rest of the role with no takers. He layed down the role and said, "Well, that’s it. We’ll now hear from Merrill. We know he’s prepared."
Trying to look as confident as possible, I walked to the front of the room and launched into my speech. "We all know how terribly important conservation is," I began. "A tragic example of the lack of an adequate conservation program can be seen in the buffalo, which, due to lack of conservation, is almost extinct."
With a shock, I realized that I had just delivered the prepared part of my speech. The rest went something like this. "We used to have buffalo everywhere in this country--especially on the plains, but even in the mountains and other places too, but what happened? People starting killing buffalo right and left. They should have known that they needed a conservation program to save the buffalo, but they didn’t and now we hardly have any buffalo."
I paused as if to let this terrible truth sink in. What I was actually doing was hoping for some kind of inspiration. It came in the form of a book title I had seen my grandfather reading. "Most of you have heard of Zane Grey’s book--or possibly you saw the movie, "The Thundering Herd". Why did that herd thunder? Because there were thousands--probably millions of buffalo thundering and thundering." Of course, I had neither read the book or seen the movie--if there was a movie--so I had no idea if the thundering herd refered to horses, cattle, or even goats, but I hoped that it was refering to buffalo or that everyone in the class--especially, Mr. Glendiman, didn’t know either. "And," I continued with an increasing tone of desperation in my voice, "why did we need all those buffalo? I’ll tell you why. People depended on them for food and clothes. A hungry Indian would put his ear to the ground and hear the millions of buffalo thundering thundering toward him and he knew he would have food and a new buffalo robe and buffalo skin for his tepee and he would smile. But now what does he do? Because we had no conservation program, he cries. When was the last time you saw a tepee made from buffalo skins? And why? Because just at the time when we needed a conservation program we didn’t have one." I paused again, mostly because my voice was getting as high pitched as the top of the buffalo-skin tepee.
I was about to throw in the towel when I suddenly got a flash of inspiration. "Not only the buffalo, but the passenger pigeon and some kind of wild duck. Buffalo, passenger pigeons and special kinds of wild duck were common in this country. You saw them everywhere--on every prairie, on every mountainside, almost in every town and even on the streets. And what do we have now? Not a buffalo, not even a passenger pigeon or a wild duck in sight.There were plenty of them to enjoy and everyone loved having them around, but they’re all gone now. And why? We just didn’t have the conservation program we needed in time to save the passenger pigeon, the wild duck and, above all, the buffalo."
At that point the bell rang and never was a sound so welcome. "I’m afraid you’ll have to stop," Mr. Glendiman interjected. Then hastily added, "The three who gave their presentations get "A"’s the rest of you fail the assignment. Class dismissed."
I dived for my desk, grabbed my books and bee-lined as fast as I could out of the class and out the front door. I headed for the most secluded spot I could find--behind the gym building, hoping that no one would see me. I sat down to pein away the time until the bus came, wondering how I was ever going to face my classmates again. I was sitting there brooding, when a familiar voice sounded behind me. "Say that was a pretty good speech." I turned to see that Ralph Harper had followed me to my spot of seclusion.
"It didn’t sound too bad?" I asked hoping that it might not have been as bad as I thought.
"Didn’t sound bad at all." He reassured me. He paused for a moment to let his assurance sink in, then he added, "And you sure were right about one thing."
"Oh yeah? What was that," I asked hopefully.
He raised his hand to his forehead as though he were a hunter scanning the horizon, "Not a buffalo in sight." With that he laughed and ran off leaving me all the more to wonder how I was ever going to face my classmates again.

Romance--Epilogue

2009-02-13T11:51:00.000-08:00

Epilogue.
It was my parents 40th wedding anniversary party. They had moved to Salt Lake just a month or so before. In fact, shortly after we moved into our house, Dad had parked his motor home in our driveway and lived there until Mom could sell their house in California.
I remember the party so vividly because it was the first one I had really enjoyed in years. Always before, I had felt like ‘odd man out" as I would look at my siblings with their spouses and children, but now I had my own wife--the most beautiful of the lot and I felt a feeling of sweet contentment.
Many years later, I was working for a fellow with a wonderful collection of Mormon books. Among them I found a history of the Ensign Stake. I looked through it and there I was shocked to see the name of the current (at the time of publication of the history) of the 5th ward, Carl Okleberry, with a picture of his family. I began to weep silently as I gazed at the picture--a handsome young man with a beautiful wife and 5 angelic looking boys. I felt almost as if his loss of life had given me the courage to get my own. As a I looked at the picture and remembered how much of a push it had been for me to ask Shauna to marry me, I muttered silently, "Thank you, Carl Okleberry."

Romance--X Our Wedding Night

2009-02-13T11:33:00.000-08:00

X. Our wedding night; in which I explain why I have never written a best-selling book.
Every now and then someone will suggest that I should write a book. This, I feel is an excellent suggestion. I’m sure I would be very good at it, having gotten an "A" in penmanship in Mrs. Rowe’s 3rd grade class. But there is a real snag. If I were to go all the trouble of writing a book, I would, of course, want it to be a bestseller. The problem is that the bestsellers are always about--well, to be perfectly blunt, after all, we are living in the up-to-date age--well they are about, well, to be perfectly candid, they are about the thing that almost rhymes with the 6th letter in the numbering system--you know, the one between 5 and 7. I have no doubt that I could write a very interesting, very informative and most helpful book on that subject, except for one small problem. I know almost nothing about it. The reason for this woeful lack of information is what I am about to relate--and it is a very sad story indeed.
I was sitting in Priesthood meeting--as I always did on Sunday morning since being ordained a Deacon, but at the time about which I write I was a Priest, i.e. considerably advanced in age and in outlook from the time I first began sitting in Priesthood meeting on Sunday morning. I was thinking about such uplifting topics as what my mother would likely be serving for lunch, when our Bishop, Bishop Chester Dorsey, (we Priests, because we felt we were close to him and could be more informal when we talked with him called him by his first name--"Bishop", except my friend Richard, of course, who called him "Dad"), after first dismissing the Deacons--and you will be able to figure out why he dismissed the Deacons when I tell you the topic, which I will do about 3 pages from now--announced that the Teachers and Priests would have a special guest speaker, Dr. Lloyd Call.
We all knew of Dr. Call, of course, and admired--or more correctly, envied him, the reason being that he was married to Beverly Call. Although, she seemed a bit too old for us personally to have married her (she was probably 9 or 10 years our senior but at Priest’s age that is like a couple of generations removed), we all hoped to marry someone like her. Beverly was the Pocatello equivalent of Jeannette MacDonald, that is, she was very attractive and could sing, although, unlike Jeanette, who went in more for Hammerstein and Herbert, Beverly was more into Verdi and Wagner. In Pocatello, at least it seemed to me, that most ladies who could sing Wagner, tended to look like, well, like Wagner.
At any rate, we all respected Dr. Call. We could visualize him coming home after a hard day’s work of separating innocent children from their tonsils and saying, "Honey, I’m really tired. I need something to pick me up." To which Mrs. Call would reply, "Sure thing, dear, I know just the thing. I’ll sing you an aria from Madame Butterfly."
"No, no." We could hear him protesting. "I’m not up to Madame Butterfly tonight." To which she would respond, "I have it!" She would then don a grass skirt and sing Annette Funicello’s latest hit, "Pineapple Princess" (in, of course, her best Wagnerian style--a sort of Class with Grass). (As an aside, I just wanted to point out that I thought of that, i.e. "Class with Grass" all by myself which proves that if I did write a book it would be loaded with all kinds of clever tid bits like that one).
But as I mentioned, we all admired Dr. Call and were, therefore, impressed that Bishop Dorsey could get him to speak, since he wasn’t in our ward, or for that matter, even in our Stake. (As another aside, this may come as a surprise, but back in those days Pocatello actually had more than one Stake--in fact, it had several--a condition that I doubt exits today, because we were constantly being admonished to leave the world behind us, which most people in Pocatello interpreted to mean that as soon as you possibly could somehow manage it, you should move north to Idaho Falls or Rexburg or south to Logan or Provo.)
Bishop Dorsey then announced that Dr. Call would be speaking to us on the subject of "the birds and the bees". The announcement of that subject brought both relief and excitement to me.
It brought relief because all too often medical doctors--even speaking in Church--tend to wax professional. Of course, if they confine this professional carrying on to the sniping of tonsils, it didn’t much bother me; since having been separated from mine at an early age, I didn’t take the talk personally. But all too often they would get carried away and start talking in a most unseemly manner about kidneys, livers, hearts, and worst of all, blood. As soon as any discussion began drifting in that direction I could prevent a most horrible attack of nausea by only two methods. The preferred method was to stick my fingers firmly in my ears and lay my head on my desk. If that was too embarrassing, I would concentrate with all my might on the most pleasant thing I could think of--usually our family’s most recent trip to Yellowstone Park. I would revisit every geyser and hot pool (I loved them) mentally and then count the bears we had seen. Usually, by the time I had done that, the danger was past.
I was excited about the topic, "the birds and the bees" because I felt I pretty much knew all about it, the topic having been covered very thoroughly by my 9th grade Seminary teacher, Richard Clark, in his lesson on Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. I can still remember how eloquent he was as he told about how wonderful Joseph had acted when Potiphar’s wife had grabbed his shirt (or whatever it was they wore in Egypt back then and no doubt still do today). His voice still rings when I remember his stirring "he got him OUT!" (He really hit the "out" hard). Of course, he used this story to make it clear about the whole "birds and bees" thing. First, if we were ever working for an attractive, rich lady and she started to pull on our shirts, we were to "get us out". Which, of course, we promised to do. But he went far beyond that. Realizing, I suspect, that the number of attractive, rich lady employers (especially attractive, rich lady employers with the shirt-pulling tendency) in Pocatello was severely limited, he made it quite clear that if we were alone with any girls and she started to pull on our shirts, or even if we started to feel like pulling on our own shirts, we were to "get us out" and quickly. Well, of course, I can’t tell everything he said, but I can say that I felt very well grounded in the whole "birds and bees" thing, as I mentioned above.
But the reason I was excited to hear Dr. Call talk about the subject, was the thought that maybe he would bring something up that Br. Clark had left out of his lecture. Although he was no longer my teacher, I saw him frequently hanging around the seminary building, and I thought that if I did get some new insights, I could pass them on to him. While his lecture was very powerfully convincing, these seminary lectures can always do with a bit of sprucing up. Well, for example, Br. Clark never did make it really clear whether it was Joseph or Mrs. Potiphar who was the bird or the bee, so I was never quite clear who was which, in fact, I’m still not too clear on that point.
So anyway, I was sitting back listening attentively to Dr. Call, when it suddenly became painfully apparent to me that Bishop Dorsey had not been sufficiently explicit when he was drawing up the contract about the subject. Dr. Call was not talking about the birds and the bees at all. He was talking about the red corpuscles and the white corpuscles. Desperately, I began trying to focus on our last Yellowstone trip, but it was too late. I was not even to the entrance gate at West Yellowstone, when I felt myself falling.
The next thing I remember was the feeling that all the fire engines and police sirens in Idaho were sounding in my ears. I felt that my head would split. Then the noise died away suddenly and I felt such a feeling of peace that I have never experienced before or since. Through the welcome quiet, I heard "Merrill, Merrill, are you OK?"
It turned out I had fainted. The Bishop took me into a classroom where Sister Comstock was preparing her Teacher Development lesson.
"Please keep an eye on Merrill. He just fainted", he requested of her, and handing me a glass of water, he returned to Dr. Call’s lecture, leaving Sister Comstock to eye me nervously.
At any rate, that is how I missed out on learning all about the birds and the bees and hence, how I came to lack the necessary information to write a really juicy bestseller.
However, I mention all this because the extreme importance of having heard that lecture struck me forcibly as Shauna and I finally arrived at the Little America motel where I had made reservations. Here I was going with a beautiful young girl into a motel room and one or the other, probably both, were bound to begin taking off his/her shirt. And yet, it suddenly dawned on me that Br. Clark’s advice to "get thee out" didn’t seem entirely adequate--or even appropriate and I found myself wishing desperately that I hadn’t fainted at that crucial moment in Dr. Call’s lecture. Of course, it was as much his fault as mine--maybe even more--for letting his professional habits ran away with him and getting sidetracked by corpuscles. But, naturally, at that time assessing blame was the least of my problems.
You, the patient reader are doubtlessly asking yourself, "Faced with this terrible crisis, what did you do?"
The answer is, fortunately, I married Shauna. She has her master’s degree in Child Development. Those people know all about that "birds-and-the-bees" stuff, so she knew just what to do; actually, she knows just what to do most of the time anyway. The proof of that is the fact that exactly 9 months and 1 day later we had our first child. Of course, I suspect that the 1 day is somehow significant, and I’m sure that Shauna, with her master’s degree in Child Development could explain it all to you if you ever asked. I never have.
But I will say this--and I say it with some conviction--if you happen, for whatever reason, (hopefully not due to fainting) to miss Dr. Call’s (or whoever the officially designated "birds-and-the-bees" lecture giver in your community happens to be), as I say, if you happen to miss that lecture, then by all means, take my advice, and marry someone with their master’s degree in Child Development.
Of course, I am sure you are asking yourself, "Why doesn’t Shauna write the book?" Well, actually, she has thought about it, and even mentioned that she might do it, but, what with having to take care of 7 children (8 counting you-know-who) and having frequently to manage on rather slender resources, she has been rather too busy. But what with the children leaving, she still may get around to it--and a very interesting and enlightening book it will be too, but, (and I don’t mean to boast) I can’t help but feel that it won’t be quite the outstanding book I could have written if only I had heard the rest of Dr. Call’s lecture.

Romance--IX Our wedding.

2009-02-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

IX. Shauna and I get married.
On June 29, 1978 I was married and sealed to Shauna H. Bowman in the Salt Lake Temple.
Some days before I had noticed my roommate, David Lamb, pressing his pants before going on a date. This, it had seemed to me at the time, was rather disloyal, probably un-American, and certainly in violation of some sort of rule. After all, all pants and shirts sold in America state specifically on the label, or somewhere that they are non-wrinkle and need no pressing, so no matter how many wrinkles they might appear to have, by definition, they have none. But since it was my wedding day, and since my suit pants did appear to have a good many wrinkles, I decided that on this one special occasion, it would be permissible to follow my roommate’s example and press my pants. (I hasten to add, should this manuscript fall into the hands of an enforcement official of The American Ladies Garment Union, that I have never pressed anything since then). This took rather longer than anticipated since I had not done it for several years, but I still managed to finish the task in time to get myself to the temple on time for the wedding.
The wedding itself, what little I actually remember of it, was wonderful. All my immediate family and much of Shauna’s extended family were there.
The man who performed the sealing was a stranger to both of us, but he had all kinds of wonderful advice. As soon as she could get alone for a minute or two, Shauna took extensive notes on that advice, an example I wish I had followed. The reason is that, not remembering anything he said, I never am able to say for sure whether Shauna is living up to all that advice. She, on the other hand, is always bringing up little tidbits of admonition that she implies I shook my head in agreement to in those moments of rapturous anticipation. It is the recognition of these little "if-only-I-had-acted-more-wisely-at-time insights that make one realize that life had more bumps than are absolutely necessary.
What I do remember perfectly--other than the obvious fact that I married Shauna--was that the man who married us was the guest speaker at our ward the very first week after our honeymoon. This was much too much of a coincidence to be one. It was clearly meant as a sign. I must confess, however, that I have never quite been able to figure out what it was a sign of.
What I have since learned, having attended several weddings at the temple in the interim, is that, not only did I marry Shauna, but I did so--as is clearly pointed out in the ceremony--of my own free will and choice. Now whether I was aware of that fact at the time, I really don’t remember. I mean by that, whether I was aware that it was part of the ceremony. I was willing, and I feel, as eager as any bridegroom, and maybe more than most, but at the time, if I was aware of it, I would have it was most superfluous to bring it up. But since then I have known so many--mostly bridegrooms, but some brides--who after a few years of marriage announce that they no longer love their companions, and indeed, they never did. They claim at that point that they only married because they were "forced" to do it, usually by pressure from parents, or a Bishop or Stake President, or "the Church", whoever that is, I mean, it is hard for me to imagine "the Church" being able to apply much pressure. At any rate, I have heard this so often, that whenever I attend a wedding in the temple, I can’t help but look around to see if there is someone present with a suspicious looking bulge in this clothing that would indicate a pistol, a shot gun, or a pair of brass knuckles ready for use in case the party being "forced" should become recalcitrant. I am happy to report that I have never seen such. Indeed, I must say that at the marriages I have attended, the bridegroom has seemed, if not quite as willing and eager, almost as eager as I myself was on the occasion of my own marriage.
After the wedding, we (as in the royal "we", neither Shauna or I took any pictures) took pictures. We then went to the wedding breakfast. It was the custom (I believe it still is) for the groom’s parents to pay for the wedding breakfast. My dad got off rather easy because Shauna and her friends stayed up most of the night preparing most of the food for the occasion.
After the wedding breakfast, which I will admit I have mostly forgotten except that I do remember being impressed with the quality of the food, and was wondering why my father-in-law was so often frowning. I concluded that he was probably thinking how very expensive the breakfast might have been had Shauna married the doctor’s son, Herbie, to whom she was earlier engaged. At any rate, a good time and much good food was had by all before I went off to get the tuxedos for the reception.
The reception was, of course, mostly Shauna’s friends and family. A few people from my ward and my work came so I did know some people there. The most vivid memory for me was the U of U folk dance team (of which Shauna had been a member) weaving in and out among the guests doing an Israeli Snake dance. The most lasting memory was a picture taken by my brother-in-law, Allen, of Shauna’s grandparents. If I had painted the picture, I would have titled it "Love at Sunset". I later saw a copy of it framed in several of her family’s homes.
I enjoyed the reception, but was glad when it was over. Shauna and I went out to her VW and found the customary wedding reception treatment. We had to remove newspaper and confetti in order even to get in to it, but we left the cans dragging until we got a couple of blocks away. We kissed and headed off to the Little America Hotel, where we had reservations to begin our life together.

Romance--VIII I become engaged for real

2009-02-12T11:56:00.000-08:00

VIII. Shauna and I become engaged--for real.
That night I got no sleep. It seemed to me that I was locked in a nightmare. "I thought I knew her so well, and then she does this to me." I thought as I tossed and turned. "It just goes to show you that no matter how well you think you know a person, they are likely to surprise you--especially at some crucial juncture of your life, like when you are proposing marriage."
I agonized over the whole situation all night, or at least, until early in the morning. Just before time to get up, the solution finally came to me--break the engagement.
I, of course, had heard of broken engagements. I had even had roommates who had broken their engagements. In fact, I had one roommate, (admittedly he was a bit strange) who broke three engagements in as many weeks (actually it was his finances who broke the engagements when they realized how strange he was). But in telling about him, I digress. The point was, people do break engagements. This it seemed to me was the perfect solution. Indeed, it was the only solution. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. But, or course, under the tremendous strain occasioned by Shauna’s absolutely stunning (and, I thought, rather thoughtless) surprise acceptance of my proposal, the obvious solution had somehow eluded me. But with it firmly in mind, I slipped off into peaceful slumber for the few remaining minutes of night.
As is so often the case, what seems like a perfect solution to a terribly knotty problem when viewed from the perspective of the middle of the night in a sort of half-dream world, loses a good deal of its glamour when viewed in the cold hard light of day.
As mentioned above, I have personally known several men and women who had broken engagements. But it had not been easy for any of them. Furthermore, none of them that I know of had broken the engagement less than 24 hours after entering into it. But worst of all, I imagined what Shauna’s reaction might be. The worst case would be if she waxed tragic, like the end of an opera and went into the kitchen, took out a carving knife, and stabbed herself. Of course, worse still, would be if she stabbed me first. Almost as bad would be if she went into hysterics and began yelling, "You will hear from my lawyer!" As I thought of that scenario, I took some comfort from the fact that my father was a lawyer himself, but upon reflection, I realized that he was getting a bit impatient with my postponement of marriage, and might very well offer to represent Shauna in a breach of promise suit.
At any rate, no matter how I thought about it, the picture was not pretty. I decided that the very best I could hope for would be something like, "Well! I like that! One day you propose and the next day you change your mind. What kind of a jerk are you?" That, as I said, was the best I thought I could hope for. Worse were the responses described above and a dozen others, almost as bad, that I envisioned during the course of the day.
Finally, the moment of truth arrived. With a heavy heart and apprehensive demeanor, I went to Shauna’s apartment.
"How was your day?" she greeted me cheerfully as she opened the door.
"It had its ups and its downs," I responded trying to sound as gloomy as I felt.
"Oh, really. What were its ups and what were its downs?"
"Its ups were when I remembered that we were engaged and its downs were when I remembered that we were engaged."
The extremely perceptive reader will note that I was exaggerating, if not down right lying when I said that the day had its ups, but, I felt I had to say something that would soften the blow that was about to come. Having said that I broke into an impassioned appeal stating that being engaged so soon was too much for me. To my surprise--and delight--there was no blow to soften. Shauna just laughed. "Well, maybe it is a bit soon. If you want to date longer, that’s fine. Whatever you want."
It was at that moment that I decided I really did want to marry her--only not right away.
We resumed our previous dating pattern. For Easter, which came early--in March I believe--that year, Shauna went up with me to meet my sister, Loni and her family. Shauna found out about my bringing JoAnn up for Thanksgiving when my niece, Jenni, against the express orders of her mother, said, "I like you better than the girl he brought up at Thanksgiving."
I decided that if she could survive that, she could survive anything, so I asked her again to marry me. And again, she accepted. Except this time it was her turn to call up and change her mind--or so I thought. She says now that she merely wanted a more definite proposal, but whatever the case, once again, we were engaged for only one day.
We had resumed dating for only a couple of weeks when I noticed a large lump in a lymph node. The doctor said it was either tuberculosis, an abscessed tooth or cancer, since, he claimed, it was much too large to be due to bacteria. He sent me to the clinic for a TB test and to the dentist to check for an abscess--both of which I did with great promptness. And both came back negative. There followed a very agonizing week.
On the weekend I had a date with Shauna. Her old boyfriend, Herbie Ungricht, who was, by this time dating Shauna’s roommate, Yvonne, was waiting for his date on the couch. Since he was in his last year of med school, Shauna decided to get his semi-expert opinion on my condition. He felt my lump.
"Bad, very bad," he muttered. "I can’t say for sure if it is cancer, but if I were you, I wouldn’t start listening to any long playing records, or start reading any to-be-continued serials." On that cheery note, Shauna and I went on our date. I must confess to being greatly discouraged--not, of course, as discouraged as the night I first proposed to her--but greatly discouraged, nonetheless. I must also confess to being more than a little annoyed when the doctor announced that it turned out to be only a bacteria after all. He gave me an antibiotic and the lump disappeared the next day.
I was so relieved that I decided to celebrate, but rather starting to listen to a long playing record or reading a to-be-continued serial, I went over to Shauna’s apartment, and for the third time, asked her to marry me. This time it took.
A few days later it was my brother, Erin’s, graduation form BYU. Shauna and I along with my parents, my other brother, and my sister and their spouses had dinner and then went over to Erin’s apartment where everyone presented him with graduation trinkets. After that ritual, I blurted out that I had an announcement. I then reported our engagement. Immediately after making this announcement, Shauna and I left. As soon as we stepped out of the house, we heard and loud spontaneous, "Hurrah, finally."

Romance--VII I propose

2009-02-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

VII. I propose, and learn that no matter how well you think you know someone,
sometimes you are in for a shock.
In the back pocket of my trousers I carried the small card I had filled out during the meeting described in the previous chapter. As the date on that card approached, as I mentioned, I realized that I had somehow gotten myself into a position that I could fulfill the challenge I had set for myself on that card and I determined that I would do it.
I was, of course, nervous about the whole thing. After all, I had only known Shauna for 6 months. We had only dated for 4 months or so and I had dated her exclusively for only a month and a half. There was, naturally, the possibility that she would react with absolute shock and say something like, "Don’t tell me that you are one of those nuts who goes around proposing at the drop of a hat? My answer is no! Absolutely not. Take me home right now. I never want to see you again." As I say, she could always say that or something like it, and I will admit that I would be hurt, deeply hurt, if she did, but, I confess that I thought it most unlikely.
I assumed that her most likely response would be something like, "This is a bit sudden. We need to date more and think about it while we get to know each other better." That, I felt, would be her most likely response, but I was determined to do all I could to prevent the first response. I made reservations at the restaurant rated by Utah Holiday Magazine as #1 in Utah, Balsam Embers. I sent her a dozen roses, and told her to be sure to wear a dress.
I picked her up and she was absolutely stunningly radiant. I think I said something terribly clever and wonderfully romantic like "You look nice", but I’m not sure I said anything that clever because I was terribly nervous. I probably said just "Hi."
At any rate, we went to the restaurant. I’m not sure what we talked about, or even what I said--if I said anything. As "the great moment" approached I became increasingly nervous, so much so that as I stood up to leave, I smashed into a trayful of glasses being carried by a waiter. Shauna burst out laughing, which was really a relief, because I was so nervous that were it not for the comic relief of the head-to-tray encounter, I’m afraid I might have crashed on the way to the chosen site to pop the question--temple square.
The plan was--i.e. my plan--to ask her to marry me as we strolled around, and gazed up at, the temple. Unfortunately, for my plan, as we stepped out of my car, we were met by Harold-----, a new convert from my ward. He was obviously glad to see us.
"Oh, you two came down to Temple Square. How wonderful! Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll just walk around with you. I’m sure you know ever so much about everything here."
Of course, I did mind, I minded very much, but what could I say? To my annoyance, Shauna was not only kindly, but encouraging. After walking around for a bit, it was evident that Harold had no intension of leaving us. Now, it is not always true, as they say, that three is a crowd, but when you are planning to propose marriage, it is.
After, what I deemed a rather decent interval, I said, "Harold, actually we are going to a dance, so I’m afraid that we will have to leave you." But, it became immediately clear that we were not going to lose Harold until we actually did leave.
They say that all the great moments of history--and of life--never turn out exactly as you plan. If Napoleon had not had a toothache at Waterloo, no one would even know who Wellington was, (of course, not many know who he was even with Napoleon’s toothache, but you get my drift). Anyway, just as a toothache botched Waterloo (for Napoleon, not Wellington), so Harold more or less botched my plan of proposing to Shauna as the two of us gazed blissfully up at the stars above the temple spires. But I was determined to go ahead with the proposal anyway. So just as I opened the door of the car and was helping her into it, I blurted out, "And by the way, will you marry me?"
I then closed the door, jauntily stepped around the car and braced myself for her response as I slid into the drivers seat.
"I can say it!" she exclaimed enthusiastically as she grabbed my hands. "I prayed that I would be able to say ‘yes’, and I can! Oh, yes! Yes! YES!".
When I was growing up going to school, occasionally I remember being shown a picture of a large hole in the ground. The caption below the picture reported that this was a large hole in Arizona where a meteor had struck. Someone in the class--possibly even the teacher--would say something like, "Just think. If you lived 300 miles farther south and 3000 years ago, you might have been struck by that meteor." This was undoubtedly true, but I must admit that I felt like this was not something I needed to spend much time worrying about. But I can honestly say that if I had actually been struck by that meteor, I would not have been more surprised than I was when Shauna said "yes" to my proposal.
I consider myself a rather astute observer of the human condition, and admittedly, that rather astute observation has led me to the conclusion--which I arrived at after a great deal of looking around with close (and again, astute) observation of what was going on around me--that there are a great many women who have said "yes" to marriage proposals. It just never occurred to me that Shauna might be one of those.
The meteor had struck. I muttered something like "Oh, wonderful." Then, having seen in a movie, or, maybe a play, or something, that you should kiss the girl when she accepts your marriage proposal, I kissed her. But I can say with some assurance that if the kiss had been filmed, it would have passed the strictest censorship by early Puritans, or Amish or my mother.
We drove to the dance in total silence. I didn’t know what to say, but doubt that I would have felt like saying it if I had. I sensed that I was supposed to be happy, but I wasn’t happy. I was miserable beyond words. Only 2 months since my 35th birthday and I was engaged to a girl I hardly knew.
We danced in total silence. Shauna, who earlier in the evening, in my mind, combined the best looks of Maureen O’Hara, Jean Simmons, and Audrey Hepburn, now looked to me like the Wicked Witch of the West--only worse.
After a couple of dances, I suggested we stand the next dance out. While we were standing together a young man (who neither of us knew) came up and asked Shauna to dance.
"I’m sorry," she said. "I can’t. You see, I’m engaged."
"Well don’t let that stop you," I said quickly, almost insistently.
She shook her head. "I’m sorry," she repeated softly.
I felt a little foolish, but I suppose I was sort of hoping that he would propose, and, although I had the prior claim, I would, at that point, have very quickly surrendered it.
At this time, I simply threw in the towel. I took Shauna home, said "good night" with a very mild kiss, and headed home with an unbelievably heavy heart.

Romance--VI A brief interlude

2009-02-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

VI. A brief interlude in which I explain why I proposed to Shauna after so short a courtship.
It was toward the end of August. I was sitting in the single’s ward in the Ensign Stake. We met in the old 20th ward building at 2nd Ave and J--a beautiful old building with antique stained glass windows.
My roommates and several others were waiting with me for Priesthood meeting to begin when Larry_____, the 2nd counselor in the Bishopric, walked in. "Hey, Larry," someone called out, "what are we talking about in Priesthood meeting this morning?"
We were a close group. We enjoyed a great camaraderie and even in Priesthood meeting exchanged a good deal of good-natured banter. Most of us were well into our thirties with a few even into their forties. All of us, I believe, wanted to marry, but were either frightened at the responsibility or for some other reason, just not ready for it yet.
Larry looked at us with a serious expression. "Take my advice and don’t try to joke with the Bishop this morning," he said. "He is nothing but dead serious. His best friend died this week. This is going to be one earnest lesson."
Our bishop, Bishop Stephen Nebeker, was so easy of manner, that I couldn’t help but feel that Larry was certainly exaggerating his seriousness. He wasn’t. Bishop Nebeker came in late--during the opening song. I, and almost everyone in that room, felt the sense of oppression in his manner.
After the opening prayer, Larry stood up and announced that the Bishop would be giving the lesson that morning.
"Brethren," he began in a very solemn tone of voice, "for some time now I have had the feeling that many of you are simply drifting. You are simply going no where, constantly postponing making important decisions. Ask yourself, ‘If I continue doing what I am doing now, where will I be in a year--in 10 years?’ I am not talking just about getting married--important as that is--I’m talking about every aspect of your lives. The lack of marriage is quite frankly merely symptomatic of the pattern of your lives.
"I feel deeply about this because this past week one of my dearest friends, Carl Okleberry, passed away from cancer. He was only 37 years old--younger than some of you. Was it because he was not living righteously? He was the Bishop of my home ward" (as he told us this, he was weeping). "He and I served together in the Young Men Presidency. He leaves behind 5 young sons and a beautiful wife."
Suddenly, he stopped speaking, paused for several moments, ceased weeping and looked out at us with a rather stern expression. "I don’t know why someone so young, so righteous, with so much to love for and so needed by family, Church and community would be struck down by so dread a disease, but this much I do know." Here he paused again, looked out at each of us individually, and then raised his voice and spoke slowly and deliberately, "Carl Okleberry may have lost his life, but he still has, and always will have, a beautiful wife and 5 wonderful sons, and the way things are going that is a great deal more than many of you will have unless things begin changing, and rather quickly, in your lives."
I wish I could convey the powerful spirit that was in that meeting. I have seldom, if ever, been so deeply moved.
Bishop Nebeker passed out cards & told us he wanted us to write down something we wanted to achieve in the next 6 months. I wrote that I wanted to meet someone that I could feel I could marry and that before 6 months passed, I would ask that girl to marry me.
As that 6 months date approached, I remembered the spirit of that meeting and I simply felt I had to fulfill my commitment. I realized that I had met someone I could feel good about asking to marry me, so I determined that I would ask Shauna to marry me.
Looking back on my life, I really wonder if would ever have found the courage to ask anyone to marry me without the tremendous push of that meeting. Bishop Nebeker was right--certainly about me, at any rate. I was simply drifting, postponing, dreaming, hoping, but doing very little.
And I was not alone. The counselor, Larry, was older than I, but the same pattern was, outwardly, at least, apparent in his actions. He had dated, probably dozens of girls in his life, but, as soon as things began to get serious, something, and I suspect his case was similar to mine and many others in that room, came up that ended the relationship. I doubt very much that without the impetus of that stern admonition that he would have changed course. He had dated, rather casually for several months, a particularly attractive English girl. She had an absolutely delightful British accent. After the meeting, he moved rather quickly (for someone in that group, at least) and within a month or so, he was engaged and shortly thereafter, he was married to the English girl.
And a good thing too. Within a year, he and his English wife had a child. Within another year, he was dead of a brain tumor, but he, like Carl Okleberry, would face resurrection knowing he had a family.

Romance--V--I make a decision

2009-02-09T11:53:00.000-08:00

V. Christmas getaway during which I make a decision.
After the Christmas party problem, I did all I could to heal the breach with Shauna by taking her out before I went on my Christmas vacation. But, of course, I also took JoAnn out very briefly. Then, just before leaving, I dropped by each of their apartments and gave each her Christmas present form me--a music box playing a romantic melody--Somewhere my love--and a journal in which I inscribed a romantic note. I was so proud of the inscription that I used exactly the same one for each girl (changing the name in the "To _______")--a fact that would come to haunt me later.
I had a wonderful time on my vacation. I rode down to my parents’ place in Southern California with my brother, Erin, and sister-in-law, Janice. They seemed wonderfully happy, and I must confess that I rather envied them. It was also a welcome break from carrying on a double courtship while pretending to each girl that my real affections were centered only--or, at least, mostly--on her.
I decided that I could not continue with the duplicity in which I found myself, and determined to end one relationship, but which?
On my birthday, I received a telegram from Shauna wishing me a happy birthday. That telegram more or less tipped the scales. As soon as I got back, I went to JoAnn, confessed that I had been dating someone else and that I needed to break off our relationship. I may have misread her feelings, (I frequently did with girls) but it seemed to me that she was mostly disappointed that I broke up with her before she had a chance to break up with me.
I began dating Shauna exclusively, but it seemed to me that she was beginning to turn cold too. I was later to learn that she was being hotly and ardently pursued by her former fiancé, Herbert Ungricht Jr., who was in his last year of medical school and did not wish to go into residency in a far-off location as a bachelor.
Nevertheless, on Valentine’s day as I stumbled out the door of my apartment, I found a blueberry cheesecake and a lunch sack on my front porch containing the inscription "For Merrill. Happy Valentine’s Day. Shauna."
At lunchtime, as I munched on those sandwiches, I dreamed about how wonderful it would be to have that quality of sandwich every day--little suspecting that I was eating the only sandwiches Shauna would ever make for my lunch. But I have gotten a blueberry cheesecake every Valentine’s day since then.
As I ate my lunch, I remembered that I had promised myself and had made a strong commitment and the date for both was coming up. I knew I needed to follow through.

Romance--IV Our dating resumes--with an exception

2009-02-06T13:42:00.000-08:00

IV. Shauna and I resume our dating where we left off--with an exception.
After Shauna passed her test, I was thrilled, of course, to be able to start dating her again. But I was also thrilled to be able to start dating JoAnn Parker again. I had dated JoAnn for over six months before she broke it off, which was shortly before I met Shauna. She had the advantage of being a returned German missionary. (Shauna had gone to France-Belgium on her mission.) And although, we never actually spoke German on our dates, I could visualize us sitting together, blissfully reading Schiller and helping our children recite "Das Lied von der Glocke". On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine Shauna getting very excited about Schiller and I was certainly not likely to get excited about Voltaire. But there were other things. The fact is, I loved being with each one. I loved Shauna’s laugh and cheery enthusiasm about so many things, but with JoAnn, well, there was always Schiller.
My life settled into a fairly predictable routine. I dated each girl twice a week--once during the week--a sort of quick, informal date-- and once on the week-end, in a more conventional, formal date--usually, a movie or a dinner.
I came to feel more and more sneaky about the whole thing. Oh, I made it clear that I was dating others, but that was the problem, I never had the courage to tell either of them that "others" was really "another". The once-only-on-the-week-end thing was tough. I implied to both girls that it was a sort of code--rather like the "Code of the Woosters", only the "Code of the Gees" that until you were engaged you never took a girl out more than once on a week-end.
For Thanksgiving I went to visit my sister, Loni, in Rexburg, but, I also visited JoAnn at her parents’ home in St. Anthony and met her parents. She came down and met Loni, Allen, and their children. We had a wonderful time together and by the time I was on my way back to Salt Lake on Sunday night, I was sure that I going to marry JoAnn.
But once back, my certainty began to evaporate. I was just so strongly attracted to Shauna that as soon as I talked with her, I fell right back into the old dating pattern.
Most worrisome was the impending problem of company Christmas parties. Both girls had asked me before Thanksgiving to go with her to hers, and I had tentatively agreed, but was nervous. What if they were on the same night? I was sweating bullets until JoAnn said hers was on the Saturday before Christmas. I pressed Shauna and breathed a sigh of relief when she gave the date, which was the Friday before Christmas. At that point I positively promised each that I would go with her. I simply couldn’t believe my good luck. Unfortunately, what I failed to reckon with was the fact that Shauna was as poor with dates as she had been with math (before I tutored her, naturally). In a sense, the problem of the two cans of orange juice had raised its head again.
A couple of days before the party, she announced that she had gotten the date wrong. It was actually on Saturday. I felt terrible, but I had to tell her that I simply could not go. What was worse, was that the date with JoAnn did not go well at all. I began to sense the same sort of coolness that I had sensed before we broke up with me at the end of the summer. I found myself wishing that I could have gone with Shauna to her party.

Romance--3 Out dating comes to a halt

2009-02-05T11:27:00.000-08:00

III. Our dating career comes to a sudden and surprising halt.
I was sitting in my not-too-comfortable apartment on D street looking forward to the week-end and another blissful day with Shauna when the phone rang. As those of us who are punctilious about our grammar are careful to say, "It was she."
"I need you to help me", she said almost pleadingly and then added with a sense of urgency, "tonight."
We 34 year old bachelors on a roll with an exciting dating partner are always willing, and usually even eager, to help said dating-damsel-in-distress, especially since the age of dragons--and similar dangers--has pretty much past. "Certainly," I responded chivalrously, "name the time and place and I shall be at your service." Well, what I actually said was more like, "Ah-er--I suppose so. What do you need me to do?" But the intent was the same.
Shauna then launched into a long and, I’m afraid to say, tedious explanation, the gist of which (for the benefit of the impatient reader) was that she was hired to teach 2nd grade with the understanding that she had a teaching certificate. She did not have said certificate, because she lacked a math class, which, if she did not complete by October 31st (it then being early October), she would lose her job. The tedious part of the explanation, which, as I mentioned above, I have spared the reader on account of his/her impatience, had to do with how and why she was hired when she lacked the required certificate. Naturally, through all of this, I became increasingly eager to know how I was supposed to help, my teacher-certificate-awarding-capability being very very limited. When I finally mentioned this, she explained how I was to help. Fortunately, she explained, she did not actually have to complete the class. All she really needed to do was to pass a test challenging the class, which she planned to do the next day, with a little help from me by way of prep-study that evening.
I was happy to oblige.
Accordingly, a short time later, I found myself with Shauna in the Murray City library. She opened a math book containing a practice quiz and said, "Let’s start with some of these problems."
It was somewhere between 20 and 40 seconds into this training session that I realized that there was absolutely no hope that she was going to pass that math test. At this point I was in something of a quandary. I really liked Shauna and was, therefore, eager to be as helpful as possible. On the other hand, I felt certain that by associating myself too closely with the disastrous results of the upcoming test, I would be leaving an unpleasant association toward me in her mind. I decided, therefore, that the safest course was to be helpful from a distance. I told her that I felt it best if she worked alone until she had a question and that I would be looking over the library collection while she studied, and consequently, would be handy if she needed me. During the next half hour or so, she called me over a couple of times. Shortly after she called me the last time, a rather handsome fellow walked over to her and they began an animated discussion. I was just getting a bit annoyed by this when Shauna signaled for me to come over.
"This is my friend, Larry ______," she introduced as I approached. "He’s studying to be a seminary teacher." We shook hands and as we did so Shauna continued, "This is my friend, Merrill. He’s and engineer."
"Oh, I started out in engineering." Larry said enthusiastically (he was always enthusiastic), "but I decided that I am more of a people person than a machine person."
"Yes," I responded. "There are only two kinds of people; those who relate to people and those who relate to machines, but, of course, you can’t relate to both." I tried to sound ironical, but to no avail. Although I really don’t believe that you are either a people- or a machine-relater, I do believe that there are only two kinds of people--those who understand irony and those who don’t. Larry was one of the "don’ts".
"That’s really true," he said--as always, enthusiastically.
"Well, I guess I better get back to studying," Shauna said with a smile--and she did have the cutest smile. She tried to study for a few more minutes, but it was obvious that the conversation with Larry had broken her study pattern, so she gave it up and we went out for a snack and then home.
The next day after work I got a call. "You will never believe this, "Shauna almost sobbed. "I failed the test!" This, I felt, was one of the very few of life’s little shocks for which I was, in fact, amply prepared. "Now I have to take the class," she continued, "and I have to finish it by the 31st or I lose my job. You’ve got to help me."
We worked out a plan of attack and made an agreement. There would be no dating whatsoever between us while she was working on the class. Ours would be strictly an academic arrangement. She would come over every night and we would work through one chapter and she would mail it in.
And we did it. She completed all the assignments, took--and passed--the final exam, with, I believe, one or two days to spare.
Although we did no dating, this was the best dating investment I ever made in a most, as mentioned before, unillustrious dating career. We learned more about each other than we would have learned in many months of conventional dating.
Toward the end of October, I got a call from JoAnn Parker inviting me to go with her to a symphony orchestra concert. I took an evening off from math tutoring. JoAnn and I had a wonderful time and it was clear that she had reconsidered her previous rebuffs.

Romance--II Shauna and I begin dating.

2009-02-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

Shauna and I begin dating.
Several days after the fascinating details recorded in the previous chapter, I was walking down the street with my usual jaunty gait when JoAnn Parker honked and waived at me as she drove by. From this action, I quite naturally concluded that she regretted breaking up with me and that she was quite madly in love with me. I, therefore, after a few days of working up the necessary nerve, asked her to go with me to a production of "The Merry Widow". She accepted, but from a certain coolness in her tone of voice, I concluded that the honk she had given me was not intended to convey all the meaning, or, at least, exactly the meaning, I had read into it. In fact, I rather gathered that she did want to see "The Merry Widow", but would have preferred to do so in someone else’s company.
I knew that if the date was as big a bust as our last one had been, that I would be depressed for at least a week--most likely longer--so I decided to take steps to shield myself against depression by getting a date with someone I could be excited about for the next night. The only such person who came readily to mind was Shauna Bowman. So accordingly, I called her and invited her to go with me to a production of "The Mikado" at the Promised Valley Playhouse. To my delight (and somewhat to my surprise), she accepted. Since this was Thursday night and our date was for Saturday, I was nervous that there would be no tickets left, so I dashed down to the box office.
"Do you have any tickets left for Saturday night?" I asked eagerly.
"Certainly."
I breathed a sigh of relief and pocketed the tickets without even bothering to look at them. To this day, I am not sure whether that was a good thing or a bad, but it did result in a surprise--and not the kind we generally look forward to.
I had been correct in my assessment of the situation with JoAnn. The performance of "the Merry Widow" was delightful; the date was not. It became quickly apparent that JoAnn had accepted the date to (a) see "the Merry Widow" and (b) to make it clear to me that she most certainly and definitely did not desire a return engagement. At the end of the play, I suggested that we go to an ice cream parlor for a snack, to which she responded, Let’s not. It’s late and I’m tired. Let’s go home". Which, of course, we did.
I was somewhat depressed, but I was grateful, and even excited, that I had prepared myself against great depression by making the date with Shauna.
I found out later that I came very very close to an exceedingly bad case of double depression. Shauna had spent most of the day with Leroy Hannon, who had come all the way up from Texas to visit her. Just before our date, she decided that since he had come all that way that she really should spend the evening with him. She called over to my apartment to cancel our date, but, fortunately, I had already left.
She sent Leroy off to friends and was taking out her garbage, when she saw me clearing a spot in my car for her by transferring books and papers from the passenger seat to the trunk.
"Obviously, he isn’t anymore excited about this date than I am," she thought.
The date was exactly the opposite my date the night before. Although, I avoided the disaster of having the date actually canceled, the rest of the date was a series of disasters. But the overall date was, for me at least, delightful. The first problem was that Shauna assumed that when I had asked her to "The Mikado", that I meant the restaurant of that name and had, therefore, not eaten and was most hungry.
When we got to the theater I presented the tickets and we were shown to our seats, but we soon noticed that a couple kept staring intently at us. At first, I assumed that the girl was doubtlessly one of 100 girls--as mentioned earlier--I had previously dated and was staring at us, annoyed that I had found so attractive a replacement, but it became apparent that such was not the case, because the fellow was, if anything, staring more intently than the girl. I was relieved, therefore, when they left, but shortly, they returned accompanied by an usher.
"May I see your tickets?" he asked. When I produced them, he continued, "You will need to come with me." He conducted us down to the lobby, but I noticed as we walked out that the couple, with a look mixed with relief and triumph, seated themselves in what had been our seats.
"I’m afraid that your tickets are for the wrong night. These are worthless," the usher announced as we stepped into the lobby. Sure enough, a glance at the tickets showed that they were for Thursday night. I can only imagine that I was so excited about the need for tickets that the ticket person assumed I wanted them for that very night.
I was about to have us leave the theater, when Shauna said, "Absolutely not! You bought those tickets and didn’t use them. She marched up to the box office and voiced strong objection to the ticket person, who finally relented and had an usher conduct us to two vacant seats at the back of the theater.
I am not a real "Mikado" fan, but the performance was enjoyable.
Afterwards we went to Snelgrove’s for an ice cream. I didn’t care much for ice cream, so I ordered the smallest one on the menu and Shauna, although, I am sure she was famished, followed suit.
I had a marvelous time on our first date and promptly asked her for a second. Indeed, there followed a series of absolutely delightful dates.
Our third date took us to Layton to her cousin, Jennifer’s, wedding reception, which was held at Shauna’s grandparents Harris’s home. Of course, I met them. They were a delightful couple and association with them was to loom large, not only in our courtship, but also in our early married life. I also met her father, whose first words to me were, "Come by the house sometime and we can have a beer together."
Our 4th or 5th date was to Tremonton where we attended her cousin, Cami’s, missionary report. I enjoyed the report and I enjoyed being with Shauna on the way back, but both trips were frustrating. The trip up because she had brought a French girl friend and they sat together in the back seat and talked only with each other. That was bad enough, but to add to the misery of the moment, I got a ticket for having an expired safety inspection. (In my defense, I had actually taken it in for inspection, but the mechanic had not gotten to it.)
On the return trip, the French friend stayed in the back, but Shauna sat up front so we talked, but we drove back in a roaring blizzard, which dampened the experience considerably.

Romance--1 How I met Shauna

2009-02-03T14:47:00.000-08:00

Our Love Story
by Kaey Gee
I. How I Met Shauna
I was 34 years old. I had dated over 100 different girls through a long, but singularly unillustrious dating career.
I was sitting in my apartment on D street when the phone rang.
"Hello," a pleasant female voice said. "This is Shauna Bowman. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but Pat Knaus gave me your name and said you might be willing to come to a swimming party."
"I love swimming, " I responded enthusiastically--a true statement, made more so by the fact that I had just recently learned to do it, and even more so by the fact that the female voice at the other end of the line was very alluring. "Where and when?’
"Well, my folks have a swimming pool, but we are not going to hold our party there. Instead, a friend of my folks is coming to our house and we are going to hers. It is this Saturday night. Can you come? I need to know because if you can, you have a food assignment."
I agreed after a few more questions that I would come.
"Then you need to bring two small cans of frozen orange juice."
"What if I bring one large can?"
"Absolutely not. It must be two small cans."
I agreed to come--bringing two small cans of frozen orange juice, and then promptly called Pat Knaus, a friend with whom I danced almost every week at the Thursday night LDS dances at the Terrace Ballroom. The whole thing sounded terribly fishy. Why go into a long explanation about the game of musical swimming pools? And why insist on two 6 oz cans of orange juice rather than one 12 oz. can? Of course, I know the answers now. The first was due to the fact that Saturday night was the weekly drinking party at her parents’ home. The second was answered by the fact that 6+6 = 12 was a bit of advanced mathematics about which Shauna did not care to give a great deal of thought--a fact that was to play a most important part in our courtship in just a few weeks.
But, of course, I didn’t know any of that at the time, so I called Pat Knaus, who assured me that Shauna--and the party--were on the up and up.
So accordingly, Saturday night found me wending my way--slowly, as Shauna is fond of pointing out--down a street in Sandy, looking for the proper address. When I found it, I pulled up and the car which had been following me down the street pulled in behind me. Three girls tumbled out and the driver, a short girl of very attractive figure and even more fetching smile, approached me.
"You must be Merrill," she said, revealing a row of perfect teeth behind that smile. "I’m Shauna. Did you bring the two cans?"
Assuring her that I had indeed performed my part, we went into the party. I very much enjoyed that party. Pat Knaus was there, but she was much too busy flirting with John______, a handsome MD doing residency, to spend much time with me. Becky Armstrong, an old flame of mine, was there and we spent some time together. Sherry Sieverts, a good friend of Shauna’s, spent much time extolling the virtues of her friend. So I decided to try to get to know her personally, but with very little success. I did get to speak briefly with her by offering to dry the dishes she was washing. But having done that she was off on some other task, making sure that everything was in order--a pattern that has not much changed in the intervening thirty years.
I was one of two--both boys--who actually did some swimming. Shauna, later made much of the fact that I wore my shoes and black socks out to the pool, but not having brought any red socks or other swimming-appropriate gear, I had no choice.
Since there was a Stake dance in my stake that same night, I left the party early. I rather hoped that JoAnn Parker--the girl I had been dating all summer--would be there. On our last date she had made it clear that she did not wish to date me anymore, but I thought that meeting her at the dance might be a way to rekindle the romance, but, as I headed for the dance, I realized that the likelihood that JoAnn, who hated to dance, would be there was tiny. So I went straight home.
The next day, I penned a "thank you" to Shauna for inviting me to her party, little expecting that I would ever see her again--a feeling I’m sure she shared, the only thing about me that she could even remember being my black socks.

Romance--intro

2009-02-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

Since February is Valentine's month, I have decided that I will post the story of how I met and married my wife, Shauna (with her permission, of course). It is only fair to say (as she does whenever I tell this story), that her version of how it happened is a little bit--and in some places, more than a little bit--different.

change--4

2009-01-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

In my earlier discussion I talked about the difficulty in making a change for those people who have serious problems. They resist change to the point that they are willing to gamble or steal in order to guarantee a desired lifestyle, or those who pick up drug or alcohol addictions. But what about ordinary people who don’t have those severe problems. Why is it so many of us have so much difficulty doing the things we know very well we should be doing?
I think one reason might be the fact that we are trained in government schools. Much of the premise of government schooling is false. Teachers in public schools are essentially bureaucrats, paid partially from local taxes and other local sources, but partially, and in most states, increasingly, by the state government. They are, therefore, not paid by those they serve and to a great extent, their pay is almost independent of that service after they have worked as teachers for more than a few years. The premise that is, therefore, transmitted to students is that an education entitles a person to a certain standard of living almost independent of the quality of the service rendered in exchange for that pay. In such a system, status within the system is far more important than the quality to service; hence, years in service, promotion to administration, number of degrees, and other criteria only peripherally related to the quality of service become determinants of the amount of remuneration. In that case, the chief motivation to improve, becomes seriously diluted. It is for this reason that one can visit a typical public school and find teachers who are poor, even terrible, examples of what they are supposedly trying to teach--health instructors who have poor health, math instructors who can barely work problems, and above all, a majority of teachers who have ceased to believe in the value of education, at least, as far as it concerns themselves, that they have not read a book or taken a class in years other than what is required to maintain their certification.
I cannot help but feel that if we were really convinced that the quality of our characters were the single biggest determinant of the richness of life’s rewards, that fewer of us would have such profound struggles when we recognize the need for personal change.

natural law--2

2009-01-21T12:51:00.001-08:00

In my earlier discussion of natural law, I mentioned that there is a problem with the 7th commandment--thou shalt not commit adultery. If we restrict the meaning of "adultery" to mean sexual violation of the marriage covenant, then this commandment follows from the Golden Rule. If, however, we take the commandment to mean, as the supporting material in both the Old and New Testament, clearly declare it to mean, any sexual activity outside the bond of legal marriage, then the commandment does not necessarily follow from the Golden Rule--as many liberals and libertarians clearly state. Of course, one possible reason for the drive to define the union of two men or two women as "marriage’, is to make it legitimate to those who profess belief in scripture, but I suspect that is a minor motivation.
If we keep with the narrow definition of adultery, then a bachelor is free to indulge his sexual appetite with equally free women, e. g. prostitutes. Liberals and libertarians are quick to point out that there is nothing really wrong with this because it occurs between "consenting adults". Although, I suspect, that they would be quick to state that they personally find the practice abhorrent, they would state that there is nothing really wrong with sexual liaison with animals. Currently, pedophilia is officially deplored, but the number of people practicing it is growing so rapidly, that there can be little doubt that those who do will soon have the political clout to make it as respectable as sexual promiscuity between adults of both sexes is today.
There is, of course, good reason why these practices were condemned in scripture. They are enormously addictive and destructive. The AIDS epidemic that has afflicted so many in Africa is said to have stemmed originally from animal-man sexual liaison. The promiscuity so widely heralded as a "right" by liberals and libertarians has resulted in the curse of abortion, in which women come to hate their most intimate neighbor--the one in their own bodies--a fact eloquently declared by Mother Teresa at a National Prayer Breakfast at which many political leaders including the Clintons who favor abortion participated.
The tolerance of sexual deviations invariably leads to the belief that natural laws and natural rights are whatever those who exercise power say they mean. It explains why so many liberals and libertarians, while sometimes giving lip service to belief in scripture, do not believe in it as a source of information about natural law. But if we do not go to scripture, where do we go? We invariably descend into a Darwinian cesspool where survival of the fittest is the only natural law. The recourse to such a society is always violence. Kipling describes such a society by stating "we were promised a fuller life--which started by loving our neighbor, but ended in loving his wife." The consequence? "Till our women had no more children"(They are all aborted as unwanted) "and our men lost reason and faith." How much reason is there in what the Federal Government is currently doing "to get us out of the recession?" My own feeling is that a careful analysis would show a direct correlation between acceptance of sexual promiscuity and deviation and the acceptance of more obvious violations of natural law such as taking one man’s property for the benefit of another because doing so will help "get us out of the recession".
But America was, and to a certain extent, still is, the proof that there is a law above that of survival of the fittest. Jerry Brown’s--and so many other of our political leaders’ schemes--are really attempts to undermine that proof.

natural law-1

2009-01-20T13:11:00.000-08:00

Recently Jerry Brown has requested that the California Supreme Court overturn the outcome of the election in California denying the right of homosexuals to marry. As justification he uses natural law and natural justice, two subjects about which, I suspect, he knows almost nothing. At the foundation of his philosophy of natural law is law based on force and power--which is, unfortunately, the understanding of natural law that has predominated the discussion from earliest times and in most countries.
But our forefathers in this country had a very different concept of natural law. For them, natural law was based on scripture. The reason is clear. If there is such a thing as natural law, to us as mere mortals, it is unknowable. We generally recognize the existence of laws of physics such as Newton’s laws of motion and the laws of electromagnetism described by Maxwell’s equations, but even when we move up to chemistry we find that we are in areas that are best described as empirical relationships rather than laws. We can use our knowledge of these relationships to predict the outcome of certain reactions when the elements or compounds are fairly simple and there are only a few of them and environmental conditions are right, but these are hardly laws. When we move into the realm of biology, to speak of laws is pure conceit. A believer in Natural law cannot even tell you the "law" that informs you what you should eat for breakfast. Even when the number of variables is held to two, the results are imperfect and unpredictable. Would anyone seriously describe Linus Pauling’s relationship between vitamin C and the common cold as a law? And yet here is a biological relationship reduced to two variables with empirical data from dozens of well designed experiments performed on hundreds--possibly thousands--of subjects. If it is impossible to arrive at a set of laws governing biological behavior, what can be said of psychological, sociological, and political behavior--all much more complex than simple biology.
And yet laws governing behavior in these areas we must have. For our forefathers the answer was, either those who have power to enforce their wills on others or a voluntary submission to law based on scripture. They chose the latter. The basis of that natural law is the scriptural edict that "God is no respecter of persons." Jesus summarized the entire scriptural law with the statement we know as the "Golden Rule". Of course, a summary is just that. It leaves many details unexplained, many of which are not immediately derivable from the summary. Part of the law, for example, is the Ten Commandments. It would be difficult to derive the first five of those commandments from the Golden Rule. The second five are easily derived from it in our dealings as individuals with others with the exception I will explain below. But if we accept the Rule, then the law against murder, adultery, stealing, lying, and even coveting follow because we do not want those things done against us. Most men, for example, are not very happy at the prospect of discovering that their wives are sleeping with the neighbors or the men at work, and, therefore, if they accept the Rule, they don’t sleep with other men’s wives.
Of course, later in his ministry, Jesus gave a more expanded summary of the "law and the prophets" known as the Two Great Commandments--love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. The latter, of course, is derivable from the Golden Rule; the former leads us to accept the first five of the ten commandments. These commandments were accepted as natural law transcending the laws made by man as king, parliament, oligarchy, dictator or whatever. The Golden rule or 2nd Great Commandment is essentially adopted into our political heritage in our founding document as the statement, "all men are created equal". It is the incorporation of this natural law into our political structure that sets us apart, but those who wish to live at the expense of others using political force are always in every way possible turning from this natural law, often while giving it lip service. For example, we have the Two Great Commandments given us in scripture from two sources, one Jesus himself, but the other, from a Jewish lawyer. It is the in response to this lawyer that Jesus gives us the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
This remarkable parable illustrates the difficulty we face interpreting natural law in the light of political and social pressures. Mercantilists at the time of Adam Smith, and many to this day, considered themselves religious people but they simply refused to acknowledge that God is no respecter of persons. Pat Buchanan, a modern mercantilist, has never, and, in my opinion, it is unlikely that he ever will, understand this parable. Undoubtedly, he would say that it teaches us that we should help someone in trouble or in need if we happen to come across such a person. Jesus, of course, taught this idea by precept and example in numerous ways using numerous illustrations, but that is not the main point of this parable. This parable came in response to the question, "who is my neighbor whom I should love and whom I should treat as I would have him treat me?" One of the greatest books in Western Civilization, "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, was written to amplify Jesus’s response. Many great minds, starting with Alexander Hamilton and including such men as Marx and Keynes, were impressed with the techniques that Adam Smith developed in making his amplification, but they didn’t like his conclusions.
This sort of desire to believe in the natural law on a very narrow basis, but deny it’s validity in broader application is most common in political setting. The man who pays much less than he originally contracted to pay for his house, for example, because the government has diluted the value of the currency through inflation, seldom, if ever thinks of himself as violating the 8th commandment, anymore than does the politician who kept himself in office by supporting the dilution. The man who collects Social Security hardly thinks of himself as being party to a fraud, nor again, does the politician who was able to originally sell him on the idea by telling him he was buying into an annuity program. These, and almost everyone else in our society, shares Pat Buchanan’s problem. They simply refuse to see the violation of natural law in their actions because they are politically popular or personally profitable, or, in too many instances, both.
Although the belief in the force and efficacy of natural law (as contrasted with man-made law) has become greatly diluted as we have left our scriptural bearings, the belief in the basis is still there. Few people openly espouse stealing, or lying, or murder. But there is with the 7th commandment--that against committing adultery a special problem, which we will discuss in a later essay.

Change--3

2009-01-16T10:09:00.001-08:00

One intriguing question for me is: why is it so difficult to change? There is this week (1/11-1/16/09) in the Deseret News there is a series of articles about addiction--mostly drug and alcohol addiction. They claim, based on some sort of survey by a government bureau, that there are over 20,000 people in Utah alone who need drug treatment services, but only about 10% are aware of that need. Apparently, the government feels that over 20,000 people in Utah need, from one problem alone, (drug and alcohol addiction) to change so badly that only professional interdiction of some sort will get them make that change and yet they either don’t know that they need to change or they are convinced themselves that they can make the change without professional help. Even some, according to the article, who recognise the need for help, feel that they can, or will, do it on their own because they lack the resources, or feel that they do, to use professional help.
Of course, those who steal and gamble, can be seen as attempting to prevent the need for change. In earlier days when there were not so many lotteries as there are today, the newspaper would typically publish the first comments of a "big winner". The comment I remember being most often reported was, "I don’t want anything to change." My own comment in private response was "then why did you buy a lottery ticket?" I believe that what they typically meant was that they didn’t want friends and family to view them as being different now that they are rich. But in all probability, they are going to be different and things will indeed change, but they will be different and things will change in ways that they would not want them to. For one thing, suddenly wealth almost always increases self-indulgence, and almost all rational men want to change in a direction away from self-indulgence, or at least, if they wish to indulge themselves it is in very controlled and very careful directions. For example, they may want to go on a cruise or visit a popular tourist spot or throw parties for friends and family. They may do some of those things, but usually, the self-indulgence takes forms that they had wished to change in the other direction. In War and Peace, the hero, Pierre Busuchov, in the early part of his life, talks endlessly of the value of liberal reforms, and says that if he were in control of his father’s vast estate, he would institute those reforms amongst his fathers serfs. Because he is an illegitimate son, he does not expect to have more than the regular allowance from the estate that he has always had. But his father has a change of heart on his deathbed and leaves the entire estate to Pierre. Pierre, however, is so overwhelmed with self-indulgence at his new-found wealth, that inspite of the fact that he is the richest man in Russia, he cannot muster the surplus capital to institute the reforms.
But those of us who do not gamble or steal or in some other way find ourselves the possessors of enough wealth to escape the need to change, still have a very difficult time changing, why? We will explore that question more later.

Change--2

2009-01-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

Of course, when we think of change, we often think of the social and political context in which change is made. We tend to think of conservatives as being opposed to change, with reactionaries being conservatives who are not only opposed to change but who want to undo recent changes and bring back the "good old days". On the other hand, liberals are supposedly all in favor of "progress", i. e. change that gets us to the utopian society that they promise in their political platforms. Radicals are liberals that are willing to use force, even violence, to bring about the changes that they desire. Those are, of course, the textbook definitions of those terms.
When looked at very closely, however, we find that almost every political platform is ultimately a platform opposing change. A radical unionist doesn’t really want to change everything in society, in fact, what the radical unionist most often wants is to use force, or even violence, to protect his job. He is, in fact, willing to force everyone else in society to change so he won’t have to. Likewise, the liberal that supposedly wants progress, really generally wants a guaranteed life so that he, and his supporters, will not be challenged and so that, no matter how much society may be changed, no personal change will be required on their part. The conservative in today’s society generally favors the status quo--why?, so he (or she) won’t have to change. It is this constant desire to oppose change in some way that characterizes most political movements.
The exception is the American revolution. Edmund Burke said of it that it was not a revolution at all but a revolution prevented. It was, in fact, the most radical imaginable of all revolutions, although, admittedly beginning in Europe, mostly in England, with ideas from the New Testament. But those ideas were (and still are) radical in that no large society had ever really accepted them. The ideas include the Golden Rule, the fact that God is no respecter of persons (and hence, all men are created equal), that the Samaritan (and hence, the foreigner despised by the political elite) is , or can be, "good", that your past (and that of your ancestors) does, or, at least, should not, determine your standing in the eyes of God or man, i.e. change (repentance) is possible and desirable, and finally, there are immutable laws (commandments) that transcend man’s laws our conformance to which is more important for present and future well being than anything dictated by man or any group of men.

Change--1

2009-01-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

Having taken a vacation in December, I am beginning the New Year by using this month to discuss change. Why is change so difficult? What are the social, political, and economic roadblocks to personal change? Do we really want to change? And, if so, how much and in what direction? We will begin tomorrow with a discussion of political change and the meaning of conservative, liberal, radical and reactionary.

Addiction Recovery

2008-12-04T09:42:00.000-08:00

Sunday we had a someone from LDS Social Services speak to us about their twelve point addiction recovery program (They call it ARP). Most of the sessions involve recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. The next highest number of sessions currently available deals with pornography and sexual addictions. The least number (and let's face it, the one that should have the most number of sessions, at least, in my area of the world) deals with eating and over-eating addictions.

Last week I viewed the new film, "Happy Valley" which deals with the drug addiction problem in Utah Valley--the "Happy Valley" of the title. After both of these presentations I couldn't help but ask myself, "Why is addiction to self-destructive behaviors such a problem in our society?"

In his wonderful book, "The Free Market and Its Enemy", Leonard Read states, without any proof, that it is his conviction that anyone living completely in the free market will not descend into that market and "vote against himself." I agree, which says that few of us, no matter how much we believe ourselves to be operating in the free market, are actually doing so, because most of us go into the what we view as the free market and "vote against ourselves". Mr. Read himself, according to his biographer, Mary Sennholz, went into the free market every day and bought exactly 18 cigarettes--his daily ration of self-destructive votes. The very fact that he so scrupulously limited himself to exactly 18 must have been an indication to him that there was a problem, unless by an interesting bit of logic or evidence, he actually believed that smoking 18 cigarettes was beneficial but with the 19th they suddenly become destructive. In one of his books he tells how annoyed he was at a FEE board of directors meeting when the director sitting next to him chided him for drinking coffee. (I have always wondered if the director in question was Ezra Taft Benson--I can't imagine anyone else on the board of directors who would care). But the very fact that he took umbrage must have been an indicator to him that he really somehow felt that he was "voting against himself". If for example they had chided him for drinking orange juice, I think he would have merely responded, "I like orange juice and believe furthermore, that it does me good."

My own conviction is that the depth of our addictions is also, in a sense, the measure of the depth of our enslavement. We are told that the people of the communist countries had a horrible problem with alcohol--a problem that apparently no amount of rules, laws, or strict enforcement could alter.

Thanks-7

2008-12-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

I conclude my series on thankfulness with a couple of thoughts about it.

Sunday night the Burmese refugees gathered in their apartment complex to celebrate the coming of the month in which Christ was born. They gathered, sang hymns, watched Christian videos, and similar activities starting at 6:00 PM. Then at midnight they gathered in prayer. I am deeply touched by this expression of gratitude for their Savior. I reflect on my own situation. Here are people who were driven from their homeland (they were forced out of Burma into refugee camps in Thailand) because of their religion (Christianity is an unpopular minority religion in Burma) and the fact that they are different in other ways. But I wonder if I would have that same fortitude. Of course, America is corrupting many of them even now. Some are beginning to struggle with problems that they could hardly have imagined in Burma or Thailand, i. e. drugs, alcohol, pornography and the like, but I suspect that most of them will raise above those things. What will assist them in that struggle is that they also must struggle with something that many Americans never experience--poverty. None of us wants to be poor, but poverty does often--not always--make us more humble and that is a good thing. Better, of course, is to have plenty and still be humble, but that is very difficult. Christianity is dying worldwide, because its adherents refuse to make the sacrifices necessary to keep humble.

I read much conservative literature and in that literature there is much brow beating about the raise of "evil Islam" and the decline of Christianity. They predict that in just a few years, Europe will be more Islam than Christian. It is not hard to see why. The daily practice of prayer and the regular practice of fasting have all but disappeared in the lives of most Christians. I am reminded of something I saw in a video by John McDougal--a man I greatly admire. He went to his church (he is a Methodist) and heard a sermon about the plight of starving people somewhere and decided that it would help him to understand their plight if he fasted a couple of meals. He did that and then, in the video, describes the absolute agony he went through with this experience and the joy he had in finally--after missing two meals--being able to eat again. He concludes the section on the video by stating that he decided that missing meals was not a good way to appreciate the plight of the poor--too much of a sacrifice. My own reaction was different. I was amazed. Here is a man, presumbably a Christian, who apparently goes to church at least occaisionally, has probably a passing familiarity with the Bible, and yet, has gone his whole life and fasted once for two meals? The devout follower of Islam, of whom I have known a few, carry on such fasts for an entire month out of every year. They pray at least five times every day, and we wonder why Christianity is losing out to them? When I was in Germany, the population was 90% Christian, the churches--on a typical Sunday, not Easter or Christmas--were 99% empty. Most Germans had never in their lives offered up a formal prayer, much less fasted on a regular basis. As I contemplate my Burmese friends, I am grateful for the reminder that there are Christians who care about Christ.

Thanks-6-Freedom-2

2008-11-26T10:39:00.000-08:00

Today I complete my expressions of gratitude for freedom. I think that we should all focus much more than we do on the freedoms we now have and worry less about the ones we are losing, as discouraging as it is to lose them.

I believe that we have more freedom than most countries because we have a heritage of the belief in God as the source of freedom. The apostle Paul tells us that where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom. Obviously, as we lose one, we lose the other. Jesus in a very famous statement said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Although almost everyone acknowledges the importance of truth as a precusor to freedom, there is widespread disagreement as to what is true. Much of the problem, I believe, is the fact that we tend to forget the first part of the scripture. "Then spake Jesus to those Jews who believed on him, 'If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." It is clear that there are at least three things necessary for us before we can be free-- belief, obedience, and truth. Too often we forget the importance of the first two. Jesus spoke to people who were, if not in bondage, at least, in subjection to a foreign power, and therefore, not really politically free. His prescription, therefore, is more intended to apply to us as individuals and families. We are, or at least have been, "a free country" because many individuals in our country followed the formula.

On this Thanksgiving I hope and pray that I can be truly grateful for the freedoms I have, but more importantly, determine to deepen my belief in God, strengthen the resolve to be obedient to the truths I already have, and expand my knowledge of truth so I may increase the measure of freedom I already enjoy. That would be my wish this season for us all.

On the falling price of oil

2008-11-17T09:50:00.000-08:00

I intended this bit of tongue-in-cheek cynacism as a letter to the editor of the Deseret News, but I realized that it was much too long to for that purpose so I publish it here.

November 17, 2008
Dear Editor:
Have you purchased gas lately? Don’t you realize what is happening? Our oil companies are going broke! What is needed is an immediate, massive, unprecedentedly huge, government bailout to save our oil companies. To get the ball rolling I contacted all of our political leaders. Of course, I was unable to speak with them directly but their assistants assured me (under conditions of anonymity, of course) that their sentiments were exactly the same as their boss’s and I could, therefore quote them as if coming straight from the boss himself.
Senator Hatch was all in favor of the bailout. He said it reminded him of his efforts some years ago to save our textile industry when a company from some small Asian country began dumping textiles on the American market. It turns out that they had been able to make these textiles because they had made pirated replicas of an American Spinning Jenny that they had copied from the display model at the Smithsonian Institute.
I was somewhat hesitate to approach Senator Bennet because I remembered all those ads he had done in his first campaign about how concerned he was about the National Debt, but when I finally did get up the nerve he just laughed and said he hadn’t thought about the National Debt for years. He said he is all in favor of the bailout, no matter how expensive, as long as it can be pushed through before President Bush leaves office. With a Democratic administration in office he said he is going to have to start worrying about the National Debt again.
Congressman Bishop was skeptical about a bailout until I pointed out that it would mean there would be no more jet fuel. With his usual insight, he realized immediately that this bailout was therefore a key component of his ongoing effort to keep Hill Field in Utah.
Congressman Matheson said he was unalterably opposed to any bailout for any private companies, but when I pointed out that what with regulations, subsidies, wind-fall profit taxes, etc., the oil companies were essentially a branch of the Federal Government, he agreed that by all means we should go ahead with the bailout. He even thanked me for bringing a bailout to his attention that he could wholeheartedly support.
Jason Chavetz said he would support a bailout only if it included a condition that the oil companies could not hire anyone who speaks, reads, or writes Spanish. He did say that he felt that we should not be hard-nosed about conditions like this and that he would agree to an exception if the employee could prove that he learned his Spanish at a junior high named after an American President.
I also contacted the economics and business professors at the U of U. They said that they were always in favor of any measure to increase government spending but they were particularly excited about this one so long as it includes some very harsh language about the almost criminal behavior of the oil company executives. They said that this sneaky lowering of prices is just one more proof--as if any more were needed--of the irresponsibility, mismanagement, and greed of corporate officials.
But, this is so serious that not only our political and intellectual leaders, but the average citizen must get involved as well. They can begin, if they buy their gas with an oil company credit card by adding an exact amount of dollars, in increments of $10 up to $2000, to their credit card payment. The oil company will then realize that this is a charitable contribution and will use it to help them raise gasoline prices to a more reasonable level. This effort is so important that a non-profit organization called, Save the Oil Companies/Corporations & Energy Resources (SOCCER), has been formed with Gov. Jon Huntsman as Chairman. He says that as long as they can get a person from the East with a Utah reputation to back him up, he will put all the resources of the Utah State Government behind this effort, no matter how many people in Utah oppose it, because SOCCER is something he really believes in.
As you can see, this bailout is critical, it may already be too late. Unless we get an immediate, gargantuan, government bailout of our oil companies our whole free enterprise system may be in peril!

Reflections on the recent election-2

2008-11-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

The paper yesterday (11/12/08) headlined that "most confident that Obama can fix the economy". It is discouraging to me that so many Americans seem to have forgotten that ultimately the only tool a president, or anyone else in government for that matter, has to fix the economy is a sword. In past elections we have been given the choice between two candidates, one who is all for brandishing the sword with greater swagger and one who is for sheathing it, partially at least, but in this election each presidential candidate was simply out to prove to the largest number of people possible that he would be the best swordsman in their behalf. Obama was clearly the winner in that contest.

But as I contemplate what is necessary to fix the economy, I mean really fix it, I can't help be a bit skeptical about "most people's confidence". One thing Mr. Obama could do as president, for example, is change the tax laws so that individuals and even most small companies did not have to hire a tax accountant to "do their taxes". This would remove an enormous drag on our economy and free up much needed capital. He could encourage the repeal of laws providing subsidies, regulations, grants and other legal aids to people and corporations thus removing the motivation to hire lobbyists and lawyers, thus again removing another enormous drag on our economy.

With the law thus simplified the ordinary citizen would be more motivated to live by the laws that are almost universally accepted in theory, such as the traffic laws, instead of feeling that there are so many laws why try to live by any of them if they are inconvient or if we happen to be too drunk or even too sleepy to abide by them. This would provide a tremendous reduction in the number of personal injury attorneys and other losses to the economy due to disobedience to laws that even those who disobey them agree to in theory.

I wonder if Mr. Obama will be able, or even try, to reduce the number of people in our country who are determined to live directly at the expense of others through stealing or fraud or gambling. I wonder if anything he suggests will reduce the number of people who live partially or completely at the expense of others because their use (and abuse) of drugs and alcohol have made them less (or completely) unproductive. Will we have fewer people with cancer, or diabetes, or heart disease, or obesity, causing an enormous drain on our economy, when Mr. Obama becomes president? Or will he continue to spend money in an attempt to cure these problems without so much as addressing possible lifestyle connections?

Will he, like so many of the economists at our most prestigous university, refuse to acknowledge the correlation between the erosion of our currency and the erosion of our character? Or will he, like them, and most in the media, refuse to acknowledge any correlation at all between character and the economy?

Will we have fewer of our people in prisons under Mr. Obama? The same day that people were expressing confidence in Mr. Obama to fix the economy, a man in my city was arrested for sexually attacking young children. He was released today because there was no room for him in the jail, thus making it necessary for those of us in this city to spend our resources to do what the government should be doing--providing protection from such. Will we be able to dispense with the cost of private security systems, carefully gated communities, special school police and maybe even locks on our cars, our homes, and our important papers when Mr. Obama becomes president?

Will we have more people living up to their commitments? Will we have fewer adulterers, less pornography, and hence, fewer men (with many simply giving up and becoming dead-beat dads), trying to support multiple families? Will people honor the promises they made across the altar at marriage? Will our children feel more secure from the devastation of divorce?

I, like everyone else, wish the best for President-elect Obama, not only for my sake, but more especially for the sake of my children and grandchildren. But in everything I have heard him say I cannot help but believe that at the end of his term--be it 4 or 8 years--in office that we will have more tax accountants, more lawyers and more lobbyists. Our money will be worth less and we will have more people addicted to drugs and alcohol. Our people will be sicker, sadder, and and both their persons and their property--and worst of all, our children--will be less secure. My greatest fear is that more--many more of our people will be determined, through either personal or public means, to live at the expense of others. And that cannot in any permanent way, "fix the economy".

Thanks--5--Freedom-2

2008-11-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

Today I continue my expression of gratitude for freedom.

My earliest memories were of post WWII Germany where Dad was involved with the war crimes trials. I vividly remember the despair and poverty of the German people at that time. I now realize that part, if not most, of that despair stemmed from dashed expectations. In a sense, the German people had bet the store on Hitler and had lost.

I have often wondered what would have happened if Hitler had won the war. How would our lives be different? In one sense, of course, he did win the war. That is the sense outlined so clearly and unforgettably in Frederick Hayek's wonderful book, "The Road to Serfdom". Writing at the end of the war, but before it was completely won, Hayek pointed out that although it was unlikely that the Germans would be ruling Britain, the ideas that had motivated the Germans were already, in large measure, ruling Britain, i.e. the ideas of central planning and socialism. The idea that government can be, and even should be, the provider of last resort. Those ideas were so deeply imbued in the minds and hearts of Englishmen at the time Hayek wrote that they made no stir whatsoever and I doubt that we would have ever even heard of Hayek were it not for the fact that his book was given a powerful review by Henry Hazlitt and subsequently became a bestseller in America, largely because there was enough of the spirit of independence left in America that the idea of becoming a society of subserviants to central planners was still disturbing. Today, of course, we have traveled a long way down that road. And, it is important, I believe that we ask ourselves about freedom. What is it? Why is it important, or is it? Can I, to use Harry Browne's famous words, "be free in an unfree world?" If so, how?

I begin the exploration by reflecting on a couple of my experiences in Germany when I returned there in the early 1960's. At that time there was a small resurgence of Neo-Nazi sentiment. The German government in alarm, flooded the TV programming (there were only two channels--both government controlled) with anti-Nazi material. Predictably, there was a backlash of anti-anti-Nazi sentiment. I vividly remember two comments of people telling me why they had supported Hitler.

The first came from a lady I greatly admired, who was, during the Hitler regime, a devout Catholic--a person I thought would have been adamantly opposed to Hitler. On the contrary, she reported, "I supported him wholeheartedly--we all did. Before Hitler our children were getting into all kinds of bad things, things totally foreign to German tradition and culture, things like drugsand pornography. Hitler took the youth and got them into good things. After Hitler you could be proud of your children again."

The second comment was one I heard reiterated almost more often than any other except the almost universal comment that "Hitler got us all working again." It went something like this. "Of course, I supported Hitler. Before Hitler you hardly dared walk the streets of the city at night. Some parts of town you didn't dare go into even during the day. After Hitler, if you accidentally left your wallet on a park bench or at a bus stop, you could return the next day and be sure that if it wasn't where you left it, it was at the Lost and Found office of City Hall with all the money you left in it still there. The streets, any streets, anywhere, were safe day and night."

In a sense, of course, these people were saying that under Hitler they were actually freer than they had been before he came to power. There is a problem with all this, besides the obvious regimentation behind it. This was usually mentioned as an aside when people made comments like those above with an off-hand addendum like, "if only he hadn't started the war" or "if only he hadn't done what he did to the Jews". The real problem was that Hitler was doing what would more appropriately be done at the family and local government level. And that is precisely, in my opinion, where freedom fails. Freedom is defined by the actions and habits and mores of our people, our families, and our local communities. When we turn those over to the central authority, no matter how good a job it seems they are doing, freedom falters. But, until it does completely we should be grateful and cherish what remains.

Thanks--4--Freedom--1

2008-11-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

On Veterann's day I express my thanks for my freedom. We are always admonished that we should express gratitude for those who sacrificed by serving in the Armed Forces so that we could enjoy our freedoms. I am a sort of a veteran myself. I was drafted with the idea that I would be sent to Viet Nam, but by the time I had finished basic training and done some on the job training at White Sands Missile Range, the war was winding down, so I was never sent and I spent my time at White Sands learning how terribly corrupting a government job can be, and usually is. It was for me, and for almost everyone I knew. Nevertheless, I am grateful for those who really did sacrifice, even though, I suspect, for many, as for me, the sacrifice was not entirely voluntary.

It is, of course, quite a different story for many who served in WWII. My father, and I suspect many others of our soldiers, volunteered before they were drafted. Dad was rejected, and ever afterwards felt so about it. In a sense, he served because he was involved in the war crimes trials after the war. Of course, WWII was quite different from Korea or Viet Nam or Iraq today, in the sense that we got militarily involved only after we had been attacked. One hopes that the books stating that Roosevelt set up the attack at Pearl Harbor so we would get involved are untrue.

The fact remains, however, that we lost as much in the way of freedom from most of our wars as we gained, if not more so. Nevertheless, we should be grateful for what we have, and I am.

Adam Smith, after going on The Grand Tour of Europe reported that the people in every country were proud of their freedom, but that they really did not understand it very well. I suspect that that is true of us today. We look back on the conditions in most of those countries and wonder, "how could they be proud of their freedom? What freedom?" Most of them did not enjoy the freedoms of which we are most proud, i.e. freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press. They, on the other hand, if they could look at our situation, would undoubtedly be aghast at the per cent of our incomes that we give to governments at all levels and would exclaim,"You call that freedom?" They would probably view the enormous amount of governement regulation of our lives and our economy and mutter, "Those people are little better than slaves." The most intriguing question for me would be, "Would they envy our lifestyle or our comparitive wealth?" Some probably would, others would declare it not worth the cost.

At any rate, I am grateful for the freedoms we do enjoy. In future entries, I will explore what it would be like not have those freedoms.

Thoughts on the election

2008-11-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

My wife, Shauna, teaches in a small private school, Capitol Hills Academy, whose students are mostly from the lower middle class. Some of the things that occured there after the election are interesting.

She has two young (she teaches first throught third grades) black boys in her class. One came to class Wednesday morning very outspoken. "Obama's family were slaves so now he wants to make us all slaves. I don't think it's fair. Just because he is a slave is no reason to make us slaves. " He then turned to the other black student and said, "I suppose you are happy about the election?" To which the other student replied, "Of course, he will be a great president."

Both boys, of course, reflect the outlook of their parents, but it is good to know that there is at least one black student here that is a potential replacement for Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas.

In the older class, taught by Jodie Millard, the students were for the most part jubilant over the election of Obama. When Jodie asked why, the typical response was, "Now there will be no more rich and no more poor. We will all be equal." "And you think that is good?" Jodie asked incredulously. "Of course," was the typical response.

Jodie decided to show the students what it meant at a practical level. She gave the scheduled spelling test that day. The next day, when the papers were turned back, they were duly marked--the correct answers checked, the incorrect answers x'ed, but the students found that no matter what their tallies in terms of correct or incorrect, everyone got the same grade--a "C". One of the top students in the class, one who had been most excited about "everyone will now be equal" protested vociferously, but Jodie merely reminded him that "we now live in a country where everyone is equal". The next day the boy's father showed up at the school, saying generally he liked the school, but it was absolutely unfair that his son, who was a very diligent student should be given the average grade for the class. His son, of course, was merely expressing the sentiment he had heard at home when he praised Obama for making everyone equal, but like so many others, the parents actually complained bitterly when the policy meant having less than they felt they had earned.

Thanks-3-vote-3

2008-11-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

Today I conclude my series on why I believe we should be grateful for the right to vote and why I believe we should exercise that right even in national elections where our vote cannot possibly affect the outcome, at least, not directly.

In national elections it was Frank Chodorov who said that we should not vote because voting gives legitimacy to the government. He cited the Soviet Union with its record (at that time) of a 98% participation in elections, even though in most cases, there was not only no opposition party but not even opposing candidates from the Communist Party. I have a different take on that situation than Mr. Chodorov. I believe that they were simply trying to show that they were a better "democracy" than the so-called democracies in the western world. In almost exactly the same way, the Soviets built model stores, housing complexes, hotels, and other buildings with the sole purpose to impress visitors that they were as good or better than the US.

I will never forget my own experience in East Berlin several years before the fall of the Wall. I went, along with several other American tourists on a guided tour of East Berlin. At the end of the tour we were taken down a street with beautiful new apartment buildings. At the end of the block there was a large hotel. As we pulled into the drive-in circle and came out of the bus, we saw the man in the large Mercedes in front of our bus toss his keys to a valet who proceeded to drive the car around the hotel into what we assumed was the parking terrace. When we got into the hotel it was a bee-hive of activity. We entered the stunningly decorated, spacious lobby with a huge, wide staircase leading, we assumed, to the hotel suites. As we entered people were coming down the staircase and approaching the desk. As it was their turn they demanded to be given reservations to various other cities in Europe. Others were announcing that they had just arrived from some place in Europe and wished to be shown to their rooms. I didn't feel too well so I stepped out of the hotel and sat down on the front step. Our guide followed me and in somewhat of an alarmed voice demanded to know what I was doing. I said I didn't feel too well and just needed to get some fresh air. She said that would be OK but instructed me not to leave the hotel premises and asked that I go to the gift shop as soon as I felt better. I had planned to do that but after a few minutes I became fascinated with the fact that no one either came in or left the hotel. No car, no person, no taxis, nothing. In the 45 minutes I sat on the stair, until we left to return to West Berlin no one or no thing entered or left that hotel. It dawned on. The whole thing was a gigantic act. The people running up to the desk were not tourists, they were actors. I suspect that the nice apartments on the rest of the street were exactly like the dreary, run-down apartment houses that we had seen in the rest of East Berlin, only with a nice facade. But the point is that just because they wanted us to think that they had luxurious hotels, appealing and comfortable residential housing and probably other things had we gone on a more extensive tour, does not mean that those things are bad. We wouldn't destroy our hotels because the Soviets wanted them. Likewise, just because the Soviets wanted us to think they had a better or real democracy by requiring a large voter turn-out, is certainly no reason for us not to vote.

In my opinion the single biggest reason to cherish our right to vote is because it is almost the only vestige of our governmental system that adhers to the political creed: "all men are created equal". Indeed, I suspect, that that is the primary reason that so many libertarians, like Mr. Boudreaux are so opposed to voting. Mr. Boudreaux acknowledges that he is a skeptic, i. e. he does not even believe that "all men are created" much less that they are created equal. For the skeptic, no matter what his pretensions, man is an accident and it takes an angel, in which, of course, skeptics do not believe, to believe anything but that he is a fortunate accident and everyone else is a less fortunate accident and most are a catastrophe. In the case of Mr. Boudreaux, we know from his article that not only does he believe himself to be better than others, but better than most others combined. He says in his article, "I implicitly agree--by voting--that the process of selecting people to exercise power over me is legitimate". In other words, he does not feel that he should be subject rules at any level of government. He is to be the sole determiner of what is right and what is wrong for himself, at least.

The right to vote tells us that in the eyes of the law I am as valuable as the next man, and he, in turn, is as valuable as me. We need, therefore, in my opinion, to cling to this last vestige of equality before the law.

Thanks-2-Vote-2

2008-11-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

Today I continue with the idea that we should be grateful for the opportunity to vote. As I did yesterday, I will be responding to Donald Boudreaux's argument in his article, "I will not vote" which is basically that it is simply a waste of time since a single vote can hardly affect the outcome of an election. I admitted to seeing some truth to this argument for large populations--say a presidential or a senatorial election--but no merit in it for small populations such as a local election. Mr. Boudreaux's response to my letter was that two researcher's, Brennan and Lomasky had shown that even for small populations such as a town with only 1000 registered voters for which a local election might result in as few as 80 voters, the chances of a single vote affecting the outcome is as small as an election involving a million voters. Today I want to use an example that will get us closer to the objections to voting raised by Frank Chodorov. Essentially, these are that by voting we lend legitimacy to a government with which we might not agree. I will deal with this argument explicitly in a later issue. Mr. Boudreaux, incidentally, touches on it in his own article, but very lightly.

At one time Mr. Boudreaux was the department chairman of the Econ Dept of George Mason University. I will use his position to postulate my example. Suppose that the president of the university has proposed that the various micro-economic classes currently being taught at the university in various colleges all be transferred to the Econ Dept., e. g. the Engineering Economics class currently under the auspices of the engineering dept. would be transferred to the Econ. Dept. This would also be done for budgeting classes taught in the Home Ec Dept., medical econ. classes in the med school, legal econ in the law school, etc. The proposal is that the transfer be as neutral as possible in terms of budget. This is made possible by the fact that currently all such classes are actually taught by graduate students and it is foreseen that this would continue to be the case. The only change would be that currently the classes are listed in the catalogue under the various departments and are supervised by Professors in those departments. Under the proposed arrangement they would all be listed under economics and would be supervised by economics professors.

At a meeting involving all the professors involved, including all the professors in the econ dept., there is a very lively discussion. The economics professors are pretty much divided on the issue. Some feel that providing oversight to the classes would involve learning a great deal more about the specific subjects, engineering, home ec, medicine, etc., than they care to learn. Others feel that this would provide an opportunity to introduce students who would not normally take a regular econ class to some important concepts in macro-economics, as well as give a bit broader view of micro economics than they are currently receiving. The professors in the other departments are pretty much all opposed to the idea.

Since the discussion generates so much feeling, Mr. Boudreaux decides that it would be best to have a secret ballet, taken at the university testing center. Only the 20 members of the economics dept. and the 20 members of the other depts directly invovled in the change would be allowed to vote. Accordingly, Mr. Boudreaux provides a list of the 40 names to the head of the testing center with instructions that only those on the list be allowed to vote and at the end of the day allowed for voting the names crossed off of those who actually voted is to be destroyed so that no one can know who did and who did not vote.

In our hypothetical example, the testing center is across the campus from the economics dept. and involves either a lengthy walk or driving and looking for parking, i.e. a bit of a time sacrifice is involved. The members of the econonomics department, under the close supervision of Mr. Boudreaux have all studied the work of Brennan and Lomasky and, are, therefore, fully aware that one vote in 40 is as unlikely to determine the outcome as 1 in a million, so, with one exception, the newest member of the faculty who has not yet taken the time to thoroughly master the concepts in B & L, no one in the department votes. The members in the other departments all vote, hence, only 21 votes are cast.

My purpose in using this example is to point out that in one sense, Mr. Boudreaux is perfectly correct. There is little point in the members of the economics department voting. The people in the other departments are pretty much against the issue and the econ dept. is divided. The outcome, therefore, is clear. There is, of course, always the possibility that several of the people in the other departments are also aware of the work of B & L and, therefore also don't vote, but that is not likely. As diligently as I have studied engineering economics, I have never heard of Brennan and Lomasky. If engineers, who, as almost everyone concedes, know almost everything worth knowing, have never studied those two men's work, it is extremely unlikely that the professors in home ec, law, medicine, etc, are familiar with it either. But my point here is that the vote, in this case, and almost all cases involving local voting, transcends the outcome. If, for example, the president of the university were to ask for the outcome and were told that only 21 of the 40 possible people voted, he would feel, rightly, in my opinion, that there was a great deal of culpable apathy at his university. If he were informed by the head of the testing center, that although, he would not name the specific people involved, only one professor from the econ dept. voted, he would wonder at their desire to be involved in the affairs, other than their most immediate duties, of the university.

And that is precisely the point. Voting in a local election does precisely what Mr. Chodorov and Mr. Boudreaux say they do not want done--it lends legitimacy to the work of local government. And that is what is most desperately needed in America today--a sense of loyalty and legitimacy of involvment with local affairs.

Thanks-1-Vote-1

2008-11-03T08:08:00.000-08:00

I took the month of October off from my blog. This month, because it is Thanksgiving, I am going to offer comments on various things for which I am grateful.

I begin with gratitude for the right to vote. Most of us, myself included, will be grateful when this election is finally over, but still, in my opinion, we should be very grateful for the right to vote.

I am grateful that The Freeman magazine published my letter in its October edition in which I responded to Donald Boudreaux's article entitled "I Won't Vote". The main thrust of Mr. Bourdeaux's argument is that voting is a waste of time since a single vote has almost zero probability of affecting the outcome of an election. I argued that while that may be true in national elections, it is not true in local elections which are frequently decided by a handful of votes. He in turn responded quoting the work of two men, Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky, that even in elections with small voting populations, single votes have little affect on the outcome. He says that even in a locality with only 1000 registered voters this would be the case. Since in a local election--one chosing city councilmen or school board members--the number of actual votes cast, assuming that the town is similar to my own, would range from 80 to 150 votes, Brennan and Lomasky are saying that a single vote is essentially worthless at very small populations. It would have been interesting had Mr. Boudreaux, rather than merely refer us to the text, which I doubt very much many of us have access to, told us at what threshold a man going to the polls could feel that his effort to go and vote would be worthwhile. Since they apparently feel that in a field of 80 voters it is not worthwhile, my own guess is that the number is quite small, probably of the order of 20 or 30 or even smaller.

Later, I will deal with my own conviction that we should be grateful for the right to vote even if our vote does not, as Mr. Boudreaux argues makes absolutely no difference, which I agree with him is certainly true in very large populations such as a state or national election, but right now I want to look at the smaller populations. In local elections, I believe, as I stated in my response, we should be not only grateful for the right to vote, but make sure that we exercise that right. I will try to illustrate with an example.

Supposing you live in a town with only two thousand registered voters--a situation approximating my own situation. In a local election two city councilmen are being chosen each from separate districts of one thousand registered voters each. The city coucil consists of 5 members, three of whom are "at large", and two of whom represent smaller districts. This also approximates my own situation. In our example, the 3 at large members of the council are not up for election this year.

The big issue in the election is, should the city hall be replaced. It is older, but still perfectly functional, but advocates for replacement point out that a new building would have many built in features accomodating newer technologies making city government, they claim, more efficient, and would also be made bigger, thus allowing for future expansion. Governments are generally eager to allow for future expansion. The problem, of course, is that this would necessitate an increase in taxes. Let us assume that you, as a voter, feel that this is not only not necessary, but even undesireable, and, therefore, you cast your vote for the candidate that opposes replacing the city hall. The day after the election you discover that (1) the issue was of strong enough interest to attract 20% of the registered voters in both districts--an unusually large turnout for a local election, and (2) in both districts, the candidate opposing the new city hall won by a large margin, approximately 120 to 80, in modern American politics, essentially, a landslide victory. Of course, you note immediately, that Mr. Boudreaux citing Brennan and Lomasky, was correct. Your vote did not decide the outcome. Without you the candidate you favored would still have won. Was it worth the ten to twenty minutes it took out of your day to cast your vote? My argument is, even though you did not directly effect the outcome, it was. The reason is that the election in a representative style government never really decides the issue. In this case, the at large councilmen could still vote for a city hall, however, the fact that the candidates voting for the new city hall were so handily defeated sends a clear message that the residents do not desire a new building. This would have a decided effect on the deliberations on the issue.

In my next blog, I will address reasons that, I believe, should give us reasons for being grateful for our right to vote on local issues--an area where I feel we should be much more involved and for which we should cherish all our rights much more than we do.

Movies--6--Bells are Ringing

2008-09-24T10:47:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of this little gem of a movie musical by an article by Pat Buchanan entitled "The Party's Over" about the recent financial debacle. I will refer to the article later because it is so completely different than the party's being over in this movie.

The movie is about a girlnamed Ella Peterson, played by Judy Holliday, who works as a switchboard operator for an answering service. However, she goes beyond just answering the phone for the clients by giving them advice and in other ways getting involved with their concerns. For example, one of the clients uses her to tell her son what Santa Claus would like him to do. Her extra involvement with the clients is a concern of her boss, played by Jean Stapleton. As an aside, there must be at least twenty years separating this movie from "You've Got Mail" which also features Jean Stapleton, but she looks (and acts) the same in both. Our heroine is particularly concerned about a client who apparently is having trouble meeting a committment to write a play. He is continually getting calls demanding to know how the writing is coming--calls which he does not return. Finally, Ella decides to take matter into her own hands and, finding his address in company records, go and sits on him, initially literally and then figuratively, until he begins work on his play. For some reason, she decides that her own name is too prosaic, so she tells the playwright, played by Dean Martin, that her name is Mellissante Scott. They develop, first a working relationship and then a romantic attachment. He invites her to a party hosted by the producer of his play. The party is attended by people who clearly hope to get "in the big time" by dropping names of famous people with whom they supposedly associate. They sing a very clever song about the name-dropping bit. But while at the party, Ella realizes that these are not her kind of people. She is not, after all, "Mellissante Scott", she is plain old Ella Peterson. In this moment of self-recognition, she writes the playwright a "good-bye" note, leaves the party, and as she returns to her work, she sings the beautiful, plaintive ballad, "The Party's Over". Of course, it all works out in the end, because she is the kind of person for whom the party is never over, it is just a different kind of party--the party of always helping and serving people. As the movie ends we see Dean Martin and Judy Holliday walking hand in hand on their way to the real party--a party that will undoubtedly involve many of clean-up chores she mentions in her song, but they will, besides dirty dishes most likely also involve dirty diapers, but there will be much of happiness as well as some heart ache.

Which brings me back to Pat Buchanan. The "party" to which he refers is the collapse of many of the financial institutions of late. But unlike Ella, Pat has had no realization of who he really is. He is, after all, one of the big-names who enjoys dropping even bigger names. His article is not plaintive, it is bitter. He clearly does not want the party to end. He is doubtlessly convinced that with bigger tariffs and more restrictions and other government action, the party can continue. For him and his type, almost anyone who sees the solutions to life's problems in the granting of special benefits through law, the real party will never really begin.

Movies--5--How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

2008-09-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

In two previous reviews--Holiday for Love and Sabrina--I have criticized the Hollywood portrayal of business. This movie, originally a play, is a deliberate spoof on the business world. Of course, what makes a spoof funny is that there is an element of truth in the spoof. In this spoof we have a fictional company making a fictional product. Almost no one in the company knows what the product actually does or is used for. The division of labor makes this entirely possible. As Leonard Read pointed out in his marvelous essay, "I, Pencil", thousands of people contribute to the making of pencils that have no idea what a pencil even is. This is as true within individual companies as it is between companies that do business with each other. A secretary for a company that makes electrical transducers may not have a clue what a transducer is or does and yet be a marvelous secretary making a vital contribution to the company. In this movie the product is "wickets" and apparently no one knows what one is or does.

The basic story is that a young man obtains one of the myriad "how-to-do-it" manuals with the same title as the movie, and follows the directions explicitly, thereby rising from mail-room clerk to Chairman of the Board of Directors in a week or so. The advice consists largely in buttering up key individuals and stabbing others in the back. Of course, the movie portrays a company pretty much in the same light as more serious portrayal with a bit of exaggeration. In more serious movies criticizing, either directly or indirectly, the corporate executives know little about what is going on in the marketplace or even in the business end, but here they know absolutely nothing. In this movie, the hero, Ponty, holds almost every executive position in the corporation, but there is never an indication that he knows the anything about the competition or even the product itself. In more serious movies, we see secretaries who spend a great deal of time primping and flirting, but here, that is all they do. In both serious movies, and in this spoof, the idea that the corporation should serve customers is not mentioned or considered. The purpose of a corporation is to serve the people in the corporation--at least, Hollywood sees it that way.

The movie is a musical with some wonderful songs by Frank Loesser, who also did "Guys and Dolls". My own favorites were "I Believe in You" and, my very favorite, "The Brotherhood of Man". In the Brotherhood of Man scene, the chairman of the board is deciding what to do, after a marketing scheme has resulted in a disaster for the company. With the companies entire executive board assembled in a conference room, he ponders, "The question is what to do, and who to do it to?" At that juncture when Ponty, and possibly everyone else is in real trouble they sing, "The Brotherhood of Man". The theme of the song is that we are all part of the great brotherhood of man and should be treated with kindness, love, and respect. It is interesting to me, that these men, everyone of whom is much better off, financially at least, than the overwhelming majority of the "brotherhood of man" and who is hoping to hang on to his high corporate position precisely so they do not have to enter into the ordinary "brotherhood", should suddenly be waxing so eloquent on the brotherhood of man. Actually, it is probably best that we remember the fact that we are in the brotherhood of man when things are going well and, therefore in a position to support, in some way, the more downtrodden of the brotherhood. When things are going rough for us, it is probably more helpful to remember the Fatherhood of God, i. e. that it is through Him that we "live and move and have our being."

Movies--4--Dave

2008-09-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

"Dave" is a very enjoyable movie with a happy ending that is probably more improbable than the numerous other improbabilites that are essential to the plot. Basically, it is the story of a young man named Dave who has two very valuable talents. First, he loves helping people and is delightfully friendly and outgoing. Second, he bears an uncanny resemblance to the President of the United States. As we meet Dave early in the movie, he uses both talents in the free market to earn a living. The first he uses to help people find work, i. e. he runs an employment agency. The second he uses to do business promotionals suggesting that the President recommends his client's products or services.

It is his second talent that drives the plot, which is similar to "On the Double", "That Night in Rio", "On the Riviera" etc where an "ordinary Joe" is enlisted to impersonate a prominent person on a short term basis. Since Kevin Kline, the star of Dave, lacks the comedic talents of Danny Kaye, the story is more straight-forward, along the lines of "I was Monty's Double". Dave is initially hired to substitute only very briefly for the real President so he can get away to a tryst with a paramour. But while making love to her, he has a stroke, so the President's Chief of Staff enlists the aid of the President's speech writer and the Secret Service men who originally hired Dave to make the switch more permanent until the President recovers. Actually, the Chief of Staff is hoping to somehow arrange it so that he will be made President, but, of course, only the speech writer knows that. The stroke apparently is so serious that there is little hope that the President will, in fact, recover enough to resume office.

The story is driven by the fact that the real President is a real jerk. He cares about no one except himself, but uses all of his staff to take the blame for his selfishness, i. e. somehow he gets the blame shifted to his staff for vetoing all those worthy programs that Hollywood loves to support, e. g. homeless shelters, aid to the needy, arts subsidies, etc. Of course, the Chief of Staff is an even bigger jerk. He wants to veto everything except aid and subsidies to himself. It turns out that the President's philandering and his hard-hearted attitude toward homeless shelters have driven a wedge between him and his wife, who wishes to have nothing to do with him, which is, of course, an important assist in the plan to substitute Dave.

Of course, the outcome is predictable. Dave and the First Lady fall in love when she figures out that he is not the real jerk she has come to know and hate all these years. She discovers this when, on a publicity visit to a homeless shelter, Dave shows an uncharacteristic (for the real President) interest in both the children at the shelter and her. Her suspicions are confirmed when she confronts Dave in his shower, conveniently located, like all showers in modern Hollywood movies, in the center of the living room, and discovers that he is missing some important moles and other tell-tale birthmarks. She clinches her suspicion by trapping him into telling about an experience that the real President never had. They spend a pleasant evening on the town together, but go back to the White House, where things are rapidly coming to a head.

The thing that has brought things to a head is that Dave, the quintessential nice guy, is tired of vetoing bills for the homeless and, in addition, he is determined to push through, entirely on his own, a full-employment jobs bill. This upsets the Chief of Staff, who, quite rightly it must be admitted, remembers that Dave is not the real President, and, although painfully aware that he also is not, feels strongly that he should be, and is, therefore, incensed when Dave fires him.

In the end, Dave gets his full-employment jobs bill, although, it is the Vice-president, having taken over as President, who pushes it through for him. We last see Dave running for City Council, the place, we are informed earlier in the movie, where the Vice-president got his start in politics. He is still running an employment service, which tells us that his full-employment bill, although passed, did not work.

I mention that the happy ending is probably the most improbable part of the whole movie, not so lmuch because it is improbable that a former First-Lady would marry the proprieter of an employment center, as the fact that, if Dave is successful in his political aspirations, she will in all likelihood wind up married to as big a jerk as before. I doubt very much that the President she initially married was a big jerk when she married him. He became a jerk for the reason so cogently made by Lord Acton, i.e. power corrupts. Dave is a wonderful man precisely because he has talents that he uses to serve other people. He sees the possibility of political office as greatly extending his ability to serve because it invests him with power, but power corrupts. As soon as he gets power, he will cease to be the Dave we know and love. He may not become exactly like the President he temporairly replaced, but he will have problems, because power corrupts.

One of the things that Hollywood, and even the American people find very difficult to believe, is that as soon as we begin using the power of law to force people to do what we would like them to do, or even what we feel they should do, it is personally corrupting.

Movies--3--Sabrina

2008-09-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

"Sabrina is a movie originally adapted from a play, "Sabrina Fair" by Samuel Albert Taylor (The "Albert" is important because without it you might confuse him with Samuel Wooley Taylor and think that "Sabrina" is a movie like the latter's "The Absent Minded Professor, which it is not). Basically, it is the story of a young girl, Sabrina, who has fallen madly, hopelessly, in love with a rich, young playboy, David Larrabee. Because she is awkward, ungainly, and the Larrabee's chauffer's daughter, her love is, as stated above, hopeless, and her father sends her off to Paris to learn a trade. She comes back elegant, beautiful, and marvelessly self-confident, so that, not surprisingly, her fondest dream is realized when the object of her affection, David, falls madly in love with her. The trouble is that while she was in Paris, David has gotten himself engaged to another woman. That engagement is a necessary element in David's brother, Linus's, latest business venture. Linus fears that the breaking up of the engagement will destroy the chances of his being able to pull of his business deal, so he sets out to undermine the relationship between David and Sabrina by temporairily crippling his younger brother and using the resulting time to get Sabrina to fall in love with him, which Sabrina obligingly does. At the last minute, however, Linus realizes that this is rather an underhanded and shady thing to do so he obligingly gives Sabrina back to David. Depending on what you think of the characters and very dependent upon the portrayal, all turn's out in the end for the best, or, at least, what the screen writers intended us to think is the best. I have seen the play "Sabrina Fair" twice and in both instances I have felt that the ending was both believable and satisfying, something I cannot say for either of the movie versions.

In the original movie version the leads are played by Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart as Linus Larrabee, and William Holden as his younger brother, David. Of course, it is entirely believable that Humphrey Bogart's character, and almost anyone for that matter, would actually fall in love with Audrey Hepburn. What strains credulity to the breaking point is that Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina) would actually give up her infatuation with William Holden in favor of Bogart's Linus. I must admit that Hepburn really does make it almost convincing which is a testimony to her ability as the consummate actress. Part of the reason, however, that it works is that Linus is portrayed as a basically decent, competent, caring person who really does want the best for everyone. This is a role for which Bogart is clearly out of character--a far cry from his normal tough-as-nails, hardboiled, cynical, tyrant role. The casting makes little sense until you discover that the role of Linus was orginally intended for Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart was a last minute substitution. Cary Grant, of course, would have been perfect for the role and it is clear that the script was tailored with his normal character in mind.

The remake of the movie has Harrison Ford as Linus with I have no idea who as Sabrina and David. David actually does a fairly decent job, but the actress portraying Sabrina does not. Part, if not most of the problem, is Ford. He plays the role as undoubtedly the role would have been scripted had it been done for Humphrey Bogart. He is portrayed as Hollywood usually portrays businessmen, as being selfish, greedy, egotistical and thoroughly unlikeable to everyone except his mother. And even though, I felt, the portrayal of Sabrina was not all that sympathetic in this new version, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. If she does, in fact, marry Linus as the ending sort of implies she might, I suspect that theirs will not be a match made in heaven or anywhere in proximity thereto, as Linus, as portrayed by Ford, is clearly incapable of loving anyone but himself with the possible exception of working up a tiny bit of affection for his mother and an equally tiny bit of admiration for his very efficient secretary.

The two versions of the movie show how very much the perception of business, or, at least, big business, is portrayed in Hollywood. In the Bogart version, Linus, is always expanding his business and merging with companies because he is convinced that he can run them better and thus increase the amount of employment for the common man. He takes companies with promising products, adds his own expertise and capital and enlarges them, thus increasing opportunities for both workers and consummers, making everyone better off. In the Harrison Ford version, on the other hand, Linus is portrayed as a hachetman. He gets rich by merging with a company that has a product that is developed and has manufacturing equipment in place and takes over the operation and fires most of the workers, thus reaping in all the profits from the sale of the new item for himself. I wonder why Harrison Ford did not use all the expertise acquired in the making of Sabrina to fire all the people listed at the end credits of his movie, and all subsequent movies. He could thereby make himself a great deal more money and save us all the trouble of having to sit through those end credits. Movies never used to have end credits. If they did it was merely a relisting of the cast telling you exactly who played what person. Are all those additional people necessary because of a rule by the labor union, or the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals? The very idea that a businessman could get rich by firing all kinds of workers has credibility only because so many of our large corporations, due to subsidies, import restrictions and tariffs, and other government rules and regulations, have come to be nearly as inefficient as the government. I think it was the economist, John Kenneth Galbraith who once complained that he was convinced that many big corporations were as inefficient as the government. He actually phrased his complaint as a rhetorical question, but the answer is that there are none, unless there is government involved. The reason is that no one voluntarily pays some one else for doing nothing. Unless the companies that Linus was always merging with, had lots of "fat" due to government subsidies and other government actions, every person he fired would result in less output, and hence, ultimately, less profit.

The fact of the matter is that in a free society we do not voluntarily do business with the kind of people that Linus Larrabee is portrayed as being in the Harrison Ford movie. In such a society he would either need a lot of government force to stay in business or he would be best advised to take all his money, while he still has any, and put it in government securities.

Movies--2--Holiday for Love

2008-09-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Holiday for Love is a made-for-TV Hallmark movie. Like many of its companions, it is a delightful love story centered around a holiday theme. The title itself bears little relation to the content of the movie. I think in this type of movie the goal is to get the words "holiday", Christmas, Season, and something related to romance or love in the title. I am reviewing it because I think it tells us a great deal about how our popular culture views business and corporations--a theme I will explore further when I look at the various incarnations of "Sabrina".

The movie stars Tim Matheson, Melissa Gilbert, and country-western singer, Travis Tritt, who sings a delightful country-western Christmas song at the opening of the film. The story centers around a large tractor corporation, "Bean's Tractor", that is having a tough time and is being forced to down-size in order to remain profitable. The company has several plants throughout the midwest and company executives are being sent to each plant to determine who in the plant should be let go or even if the entire plant should be closed. For some reason, the top executives feel that it is necessary that this whole operation should be kept top secret, so the executives are sent to the various plants with the story that they are actually making large purchases from the plant. Why such a thing would be necessary for a company to find out what is going on in its own plants is never, of course, explained, but it is an essential part of the plot. The fact that the top executives of the company would be completely in the dark about what goes on at their plants, and that the people working in the plants should be completely unacquainted with the top company executives, leaves us to wonder how the company has managed to survive at all, but that is not really addressed.

The CEO of the company is a sympathetic character who is clearly distressed about having to lay people off. He makes it clear that the actual layoffs will not occur until after the Christmas holiday. I will contrast him with Harrison Ford, the CEO depicted in the latest version of Sabrina. The hero, Tim Matheson, who is the CEO heir apparent, is sent to a small town named Athens, coincidentally, the town in which he grew up, but left in late childhood. No one knows him, but he remembers some of the people and is shown early in the movie exploring his old (now abandoned) home.

Since he represents himself as a potential customer with a large order of tractors, he is treated as the town hero. Everyone goes out of his/her way to be kind and he is offered goods and services gratuitously. In the meantime, he manages to fall in love with the heroine, Melissa Gilbert, who, like almost everyone else in town works at Bean's Tractor. She points out that her father (he is general manager of the plant), her brothers, and even more distant relatives work at Bean's. Through a series of interactions, she finds herself falling in love with Tim although she has been engaged to Travis Tritt for a long time and the engagement is going nowhere. As the movie moves along, we meet several other of the townsfolk, almost all of whom work for Bean's Tractor, even though many, if not most also have other jobs.

At some point the general manager, the heroine's father, realizes that our hero is not on the up-and-up and is actually there to downsize or even close the factory. At that point the attitude of everyone in the town changes dramatically, and Tim finds that he, not only gets the cold shoulder from everyone, including Melissa, but he can hardly even get any service or goods as people show a reluctance to have anything to do with him even in business transactions.

He returns to company headquarters and makes his report along with the recommendation that the plant at Athens be allowed to stay open without any layoffs and be used to make a new line of Bean Tractors that would be affordable for the small farmer such as Melissa.

He returns just in time for the company Christmas party. When the general manager sees him, just before saying grace at the Christmas party, he says a prayer that is spiteful and mean-spirited. In the speech that follows, Tim announces that no one will be laid off, at which point he again becomes the local hero. In that speech he calls the people of Athens good and hard-working. I would characterize them as neither. They have come to see Bean's Tractor as a source of guaranteed income, in exactly the same way as many, if not most government employees view their jobs. They put in their time at Bean's in order to pursue hobbies or alternate careers. Melissa, for example, uses her resources at Bean's to run what amounts to an animal shelter. The man who operates the local inn, works at Bean's until he can make a go of the inn. One suspects that even the general manager is at least as interested in using his position to provide employment for his family and friends as he is in the welfare of Bean's.

What bothers me in all this, is that this is clearly the attitude of the people who made the movie. Corporations are there more to serve their employees than there customers. The corporate executives that lay off employees are merely greedy no-goods. The executives in this movie are portrayed as people who have absolutely no knowledge of what goes on in the local plants, and very little knowledge of what the company is doing. It has never occured, apparently, to any of them to make tractors affordable to the small farmer. They are portrayed as men and women who get their MBA's and then just sit around collecting huge salaries at the expense of "the little guy out in the field". When times get tough, none of them suffer, they just lay off the workers. This is an attitude I will explore more when I look at the movie "Sabrina".

What is never made clear, is that a company has very limited resources. True, the CEO is portrayed as being hard-pressed and being forced to make the lay-offs, but it is never made clear that be saving all the jobs in Athens, the company will be forced to be harder on plants in other towns. It is this failure to recognize that corporations can only succeed by serving the needs and wants of consumers, that makes Hollywood productions so obviously anti-business.

The ending, of course, is predictable, but it is delightful getting there. What is important for my essay is the attitude the people have toward Bean's and the implied attitude of those who made the movie.

Movies--1--While You Were Sleeping

2008-09-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

I have decided that this month I will make comments on several favorite movies starting with "While you were sleeping" starring Sandra Bullock and Bill Pulman.

My brother recommended this movie and it has become something of a favorite. Like most modern Hollywood movies it suffers from bad language, but it is a delightful movie otherwise. The basic story is that a young woman has imagined herself in love with a handsome young man who rides the subway every morning. Since she is the ticket seller, she sees him and fantacizes a relationship with him, although, they have not, in fact even exchanged a greeting. On Christmas day, however, the young man is attacked by muggers and thrown onto the track. The fall leaves him unconscious in the middle of the track. Sandra Bullock, the tickettaker, sees his plight and is able to move him off the track shortly before the train passes, thus, saving his life. Later in the hospital, she sees him lying in his bed and speaks her fantasy outloud. A passing nurse, assuming that the expression is factual, assumes that she is engaged to the man and announces it to the hospital staff, who, in turn tell it to the man's family when they arrive. The family include Glynis Johns and Jack Warden--who have always been fun in the movies I have seen them in.

The family takes Sandra Bullock in (assuming that she will be part of the family as soon as the son comes out of the comma that his experience has left him in). They make an extra effort, because apparently, the relationship with the son before his mugging had been increasingly distant. He had left the family business to become a lawyer, and had been successful at it and rather pusued his own life making contact with the family only very occasisionally. Sandra Bullock is strongly drawn to the family and begins visiting them frequently. She is especially strongly drawn to the oldest son, who, although initially very skeptical of the fact that Bullock is actually engaged to his brother, becomes a believer, and increasingly ardent admirer of her. The end, of course, is predictable, but the fun is in getting there.

One thing I particularly liked about this movie is that the lawyer did not come out on top. Movies, it seems to me have a special affinity for lawyers, mostly, I believe, because the writers have not the imagination, or experience, to believe that anyone else (with the possible exception of doctors) can start from scratch and be successful. In the movies, if you need someone to start from rather ordinary or especially if they must start from straightened circumstances, and yet make good in a rather brief period of time (brief enough to still be young enough to be marriageable material), the movies almost always chose to make the hero or heroine a lawyer. In this case, the hero is working in a somewhat-but-not-spectacularly-successful middle class business, and, inspired by the heroine (who is a lower middle class ticket taker) plans to launch out on his own in what we can assume will be a most risky venture. The business he is leaving is itself intriguing because it can best be described as filling a niche in a very competitive market--furniture (the family buys furniture from estates--mostly from families who do not want to keep the furniture of recently deceased relatives). At the end of the movie, we rejoice that after so many mix-ups and humorous, but embarrasing experiences, the two lovers have found themselves, but, I for one, rejoice in the fact that they will most likely have a period, and likely an extended period of financial struggle. The movie makes it clear that the financial success of the lawyer brother has not only led him away from his family, but led him into a lifestyle very foreign from his religious roots. He tells us when he comes out of his coma, that the near death experience have made him a new man, but somehow, I suspect, that when he finds himself again surrounded with all the trappings of wealth--an mostly unproductive wealth--that he will find himself rather soon back where he was. Although, the corruption due to unproductive wealth is certainly common in society, it is not often depicted in movies.

For its humor and the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, lessons about life and living, I give it an alpha.

Controversies--Wisdom

2008-08-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

I conclude this month's topic of controversies with a discussion of the third Franklin's formula--Health, Wealth and Wisdom. The controversy about wisdom, or at least, learning, where the controversy usually settles, is the same as the others, i.e. the belief that it can be acquired through exchange, generally with a third party footing the bill. This leads to any number of problems, but today I will focus on one--lack of value, created, in my opinion, by lack of values.

It is often bemoaned that a high school education is of little value, and the value of a college education is constantly decreasing. More and more, it is expected that a person get an advanced degree before they can be really useful. The real problem, I believe, that in our public schools, students are simply not taught values and hence, their education is of little value. I begin with a simple example, tying us back to where we began--health.

In a typical public school curriculum, students receive some sort of health education almost every year through high school, and are usually required to take at least one class of health instruction as part of their general education requirements in college. The lack of value in this instruction is clearly evident in the low grade of health, not only of the students, but of the teachers themselves. Of all the health values that could and should be taught, the most important is good posture. Good posture may not be the most important of all possible health values, although, it ranks amongst the most important in a good number of alternative health systems, but it is the one value that can be taught and inculcated in the students in the classroom. A teacher can give ever so many wonderful lectures on the importance of good diet or adequate sleep, but he has little control over whether the student practices what he has been taught. But for one hour a day, he has very good control over whether his students practice good posture. Having substitued in several health classes at the high and junior high level, I can say that very few of the students have been taught in any meaningful way about good posture. Some have not even had the subject mentioned. But when I tell them that for the day, at least, that I am teaching, good posture is an absolute requirement of the class, they stare at me as if I had two heads. They don't mind being given a lecture and even a test on the value of good posture, but that it should be required of them is absolutely unheard of.

In math this has been an experience that is even more pronounced. When I require that the students have some facility with numbers they, and often when they complain about it to their parents, their parents complain vociferously. In one school they complained so loudly that the principal promised to replace me as quickly as possible. "They are here to learn algebra," the parents said. "Why should they have to worry about arithmetic. They can do that with calculators." The result, of course, is that many master calculus, and some even ordinary differential equations, in high school, but are unable perform the simple math tasks required of daily living.

I am reminded of an editorial by Lester Thurow many years ago on the Nightly Business Report. Professor Thurow--at the time an economics professor--was stating the absolute requirement for government charity, since the average American--and particulary, the average college graduate, is too deeply in debt to be charitable. As proof he offered his own experience. He was required to review the applications of students wishing to become economics graduate students at his university and he said that the average student was over 10,000 dollars in debt. (Since this was several years ago, this is the equivalent of 5 or 6 times that amount today). What he would, of course, never acknowledge, was that this was less an indication of the need for more government charity, and more an indication of the failure on the part of his colleagues to teach values adequately, or even at all. Here were students hoping to be able to manage the economies of banks, businesses, communities, states and even nations, who clearly could not manage their own. Professor Thurow would probably have been surprised and even insulted at the idea that he and his colleagues should be held responsible to provide such training.

All of this, of course, results in, as lack of understanding of value always does, in waste and the waste in schools is enormous. Not only in the waste of time, but in resources.

Controversies--Wealth--Conclusion

2008-08-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof". I conclude by noting that our success, like Newton's, is dependent upon the recognition that God is a govenor who cares for those over whom He has governance. When we look to another govenor, we are always looking to the use of force. The use of force in the pursuit of wealth is like the use of dirt to oil a machine, the difference being that we almost always recognize that dirt is not particulary good for the machine, whereas the use of force almost always seems to work wonders.

I remember a pamphlet in a library of a collector. He specialized in collecting journals, family and personal histories, and local and community histories. I became intrigued by the writing of a man whose name I have forgotten. He wrote his life's story, obviously, only for his family. It was crudely printed, unedited, and bound in cheap heavy paper. But the story it told was intriguing. The man related one miracle after another that had occured to him in his life. On numerous occasions he had exercised faith to heal others and to be healed. On other occasions his financial situation had been desparate but he had exercised faith and received inspiration to remedy the problem. As the depression deepened he called repeatedly on God to help him escape poverty and privation, and was successful in truly miraculous ways. But the last "miracle" he recounts is the fact that although there was some question of his being eligible, the government bureaucrat who had the final say, granted him his request to begin receiving Social Security benefits. That was the last miracle the man recorded in his life story. I suspect that he felt that having the power of the law now to support and sustain him, and now that he could afford conventional medical care, he had no further need of God's assistance. He had turned his life over to another govenor.

Lavarr Webb co-authors a weekly column for the Deseret News. Earlier, Mr. Webb was its managing editor. Upon leaving that post, he wrote an article detailing the absolute horror and agony of that free market position. He quit it to become, what he is now--a lobbyist. His column is an ongoing debate. He defends the Republican party position. His co-author, Frank Piganelli defends the Democratic party position. In his column, Mr. Webb is always criticizing the "far right wing" Republicans--those who attempt to get government out of all activities that are legitimately part of the free market (education, health care, job training, etc). One suspects from his parting article that Mr. Webb himself would do almost anything to avoid having to return to a total free market livelihood. Mr. Webb claims faith, but like the man of the pamphlet mentioned above, his first and most reliable assurance is on the force of law. His co-author, Mr. Piganelli, is like most liberals, an avowed skeptic, with little use for anything but the force of law. One hopes, of course, that in the course of his life, he may have had a brush with the free market--possibly a paper route, or a stint a grocery bag boy, or a janitor position in college, but I doubt that if you were to look at his resume you would find any indication of any first hand experience in the free market. The number in our society like Mr. Piganelli is growing. There are now more lawyers in my county than any other profession that we could associate, even remotely with the free market. Hence, our fear and dislike of the necessity of earning a living "economically" grows yearly, as does, of course, the burden of government and other unproductive and marginally productive activities in our society.

And the reason is not hard to find. Even those who profess faith in God in other aspects of their lives, have almost no faith in God as a govenor, particulary, as God as a govenor who makes provision for our daily needs. I was always amazed, for example, when I was working with school teachers, most of whom professed some degree of faith, how many would become indignant, often angry or even belligerent, if you suggested some reform that would move the public schools more into the free market. Without a measure of force, they feel that life would be hard. I suspect that most of us feel that if we depend on the free market we will wind up like Daniel and his friends living on "pulse", whereas if we rely on the force of law we can sit with Belshazzar at the feast. To many of us would, like the children of Israel in the desert, rather have the left overs of Egyptian masters than a daily ration of manna--even if it means putting up not only with slavery, but the "diseases of the Egyptians". The result of all this is that many if not most of our people hope to live by force of law--an endeavor that is not very productive of wealth.

Controversies--Wealth--3--Jobs--III

2008-08-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

That politicians, political activists such as unions and professional societies, lobbyists, and others who wish to live "politically" should be willing and even eager to burden jobs comes as no surprise. Their source of wealth depends upon ordinary working people transferring a part of the wealth they have earned "economically" to those who wish to live "politically". The question is why is it those ordinary people so willing to allow jobs to become so heavily burdened. We have already discussed one reason in our exploration of the "health-care" problem. Today we look at two other reasons, the first is closely related to health care. Earlier, we considered the reason due to fear of a serious long-term illness. Now we consider the effects of a sort of low level lack of health.

The problems stem from the idea that "jobs" imply work. Many, if not most Americans, recognize that they are simply incapable of the sustained effort required to earn a living in a totally free market environment. They, therefore, look for some kind of guarantee. One such guarantee is making it difficult to lay a person off. Another, of course, is job-loss insurance. To understand why they are incapable of a sustained effort I am going to cite a popular weight loss book. The book is "Fit-or-Fat by Covert Bailey. In his book Mr. Bailey tells that he worked on the ski-patrol as a young man. One of the requirements was to carry a 10 lb. pack with various items that would be helpful if he found someone in trouble. He skied around and was very active all day without the additional weight bothering or hindering him in any way. He found, however, that when he gained ten pounds, that he tired much sooner even if he did not have to carry the pack. In other words, being ten pounds overweight was much more enervating than carrying an equal amount of extra weight when he was at his correct weight. Many Americans acknowledge that they are overweight, but it is unimportant because their work requires mental effort rather than physical. The problem with this sort of thinking is that mental effort is probably hindered as much, if not more, by poor health. The Greek motto--a sound mind requires a sound body--almost certainly applies.

As problematic, probably more, than the fact that many Americans are incapable of providing for themselves in a truly free market arena, is the problem that many do not know what hard work is. Almost everyone thinks of themselves as being a "hard worker". But it is important to recognize that some "hard work" is simply not worth doing and some is counter productive. Harry Reid, in describing the people in his hometown, said of them that "they never shunned hard work". This is a better way to think of the value of effort. In the Sherlock Holmes story "the Redheaded League" the crooks can certainly boast that they worked very hard, mentally and physically. They devised a scheme so complex and confusing that only the Greatest Brain in detective story history is able to unravel it. They also dug a tunnel underground a considerable distance to break into the Bank of England, requiring an admirable amount of physical effort. But what they were really doing was shunning the really hard work--the effort, both mental and physical, required to provide for themselves in a free market, i. e. the effort to live "economically". It is the attempt to avoid of this effort that gives the burdening of jobs one of its greatest appeals.

Controversies--Wealth-2--Jobs--II

2008-08-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Why is it so hard to find a job in almost every country in the world? One answer, of course, is that there are simply too many people chasing too few jobs. But as we saw in the introduction to this section, there was a time in America when the problem was that there were to few people with too many jobs. One thing is certain and that is that there is never a shortage of things to be done.

If you were to go to a typical third world country, say, in Africa. The thing that strikes you is the sheer number of things that need to be done. People are living in squalor. Most of them, from young to old, are sick much of the time, some with very serious diseases. They live in huts made of anything they have at hand. In the midst of a steaming jungle, they have no potable drinking water. They are always hungry and starvation is common. And yet, when you inquire about jobs, you discover that 60, maybe even 80% of their people are unemployed. Furthermore, they seem to lack any sort of initiative and even energy to do very much. They are largely dependent on outsiders. Charities provide them with food, dig the wells for their water, provide whatever medical care they receive, and give them what few educational materials they might have. Foreign governments, usually the US build the power plants they have to provide a modicum of modernity. The people seem curiously passive. They are interested in religion, but their religion seems unable to motivate them to save themselves even in this life, much less the next. They seem unable to do anything for themselves.

Of course, it is not quite so bad in the US, but it certainly seems headed in that direction. This is particularly true when you reflect that earlier in the history of our country, except in times of recession or "panic" jobs were readily available. Katherine Hepburn, in an interview describing her career, says of the time when she was young, "Getting a job was easy, anybody could get a job. Keeping it was what was hard." The journalist/economist, Henry Hazlitt, says almost the same thing in his story about how he became a newspaper man. He had started college, but the dealth of his father had made it necessary to find work to help support the family. He said he could always find a job. Men were eager to hire anyone they could find, but, he quickly discovered that he had a harder time actually doing the job than he had guessed so he lost one job after another until he finally found one working for a newspaper. He began, of course, doing menial work, and soon progressed to become a top notch reporter--a job, with the exception of a brief stint as an editor, that he held the rest of his very productive life.

The point here is that something has obviously changed. Today, the difficulty lies in finding a job. But once you have found it, your employer has a hard time firing you. The problem, of course, in our society, indeed, in almost every society of the modern world, is that we have burdened jobs to the point that it is a wonder that finding a job in any country is not as difficult as it is in that African nation. An employer who hires someone is getting a horrible burden. He is responsible for his health care. He has to provide for vacation and holiday pay. He has to pay taxes to take care of the employee for a period of time if he finds he has to lay him off. At one of my places of work they posted the notice of requirements for the environment. They had to provide restrooms, of course, but there were numerous other things. The two that I remember was that the floors had to be "tight", whatever that means, and the required drinking fountains had to have an arc of at least two inches.

The addition of every burden on a job, of course, reduces the number of available jobs. But, more seriously, it makes those in the society more passive, more dependent. The motivation for promising others that they will be "taken care of" is that those who make those promises will themselves be "taken care of" in addition to adding to their power and control. They live at the expense of others. It is this conviction, the conviction that it is alright to live at the expense of others that we will explore in future discussions.

Controversies--Wealth1--Jobs-I

2008-08-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

Very few men have sufficient wealth that they can live off interest, i.e. they must work for a living. Finding work, or "a job" is, therefore, critical to most men's well being, hence, the controversy over employment and unemployment. If men cannot find jobs, in our society, at least, they turn to government. In some cases to provide direct assistance, in most cases, since that continues to have a negative connotation, albeit increasingly less so, to provide jobs.

The fallacy that government can provide jobs stems from the same basic fallacy that underlies government provision of health care, i. e. that something can be bought or obtained by exchange, which, in fact, cannot be bought. Government jobs fall readily into three categories, (1) legitimate government funtions such as police, (2) make-work schemes and (3) assumption of the government of functions belonging to the free market. In the first case, the number of jobs is typically very much limited. In the second, the both the number of jobs and the duration of the program providing them is limited by the fact that people become increasingly resistant to the obvious waste involved. Therefore, the largest effort comes in transferring free market functions to the government. We usually speak of this as being inefficient, which, of course, it is, for the simple reason that those involved in such programs would have to be angels to avoid using the force of law to expand both their salaries and their scope of power beyond what the free market would allow.

Controversies--Wealth--Introduction

2008-08-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

Although there is much more I could say about health, I have decided to move on to the second part of the formula and for the next few entries discuss the questions surrounding wealth.

In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith divides nations into three categories, wealthy, medium, and poor. As examples of each he uses China, England, and "the Colonies" or what is soon to me the US, respectively. But it is clear from his discussion that he is really discussing opportunity as well as wealth. They seemed to him to be inversely related. China, I suspect, he listed as being wealthy, or at least as wealthy as its traditions, government, laws, etc, would allow it to become, because of the huge government supperstructure. The impressive "Forbidden City", the vast network of government bureaucrats, the ornate buildings and colorful costumes of the wealthy. But the inverse was the lack of opportunity. Unwanted or unprovided children were simply killed. The rate of infanticide among the poor was high. Indeed, if a man died leaving a widow and orphans, if no provision could be made for them by extended family they were all simply "eliminated". In England, while not quite so impressive in government and bureaucracy, the opportunity was not quite so dismal. There if a man died leaving widow and orphan they were placed in a poor house or on some kind of minimum subsistance dole, so at least, they were not eliminated. But most interesting was the US. The colonies, as he knew them (the US declared independence a few months after his book was published), were poor. They had no impressive buildings of any kind, certainly no large cathederals or impressive palaces or government buildings. The streets and other "public works" were primitive. But what America did have was opportunity. There, according to Smith, if a man died leaving a widow and orphans, she almost immediately had offers for remarriage, even if she were poor, but men wanted to raise the children. Children, indeed, people in general were viewed as the most important wealth. They were for our founding fathers, long before Julian Simons invented the term, the"ultimate resource".

Historians and economists in our day, most of whom are really bureaucrats themselves, at least, in the sense that their incomes are indirectly, or increasingly, directly dependent upon some level of government, attribute this opportunity to ready availability of land. The people themselves who lived at the time attributed it, more correctly, in my opinion, to the reduction in tyranny, reduced when compared to Europe. They were very sensitive to the fact that it was always rearing its ugly head.

To be subject to tyranny of any kind is very discouraging enervating. It is probably the chief reason that poverty is so widespread in the world and throughout human history. The question then becomes why is it tolerated? To understand that I am going to refer to one of my favorite plays, "The Barretts of Wimpole Street". The play is the story of Robert and Elizabeth Browning's courtship. Elizabeth Barrett was the daughter of a wealthy man who had a very large family. He had 12 children, 9 of whom survived into adulthood. Mr. Barrett was a very strong-and self-willed man who decided, probably after reading Malthus's book on population or similar nonsense, that none of his children should marry. In the play, of course, Elizabeth defies her father and marries Robert Browning, and one other daughter does likewise. Eventually, another of his children follows suit. Mr. Browning would have nothing to do with the three who married. He not only disinherited them, but he even refused to open any correspondence from or about them. Why would six adults put up with that kind of tyranny? The answer, of course, is in his wealth. They were afraid to loose material comforts and status in society if they went against "Papa's" wishes. In addition, he would be become angry and vengeful if anyone went counter to his will.

Of course, Mr. Barrett is an example of a family tyrant. The bureaucratic tyrant, however, uses exactly the same carrot-and-stick tactic. And unlike Mr. Barrett, whose motives are not precisely known, at least, to the sources I have read, the bureaucrat, the politician exercise tyranny for a combination of wealth and power. The result is, of course, general loss of wealth, in the fullest sense of the word. But some wealth and usually a great deal of power is transferred to those exercising the tyranny.

Controversies--8--Abortion

2008-08-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

In this continuing health controversy series I am going to look at two lifestyle related controversies. The first is the question of abortion. My own feeling is that the abortion controversy is essentially irresolvable until our lifestyle is corrected. It remains a controversy and will continue to do so, in my opinion, until either our lifestyle is corrected or until our society becomes an economically driven, as opposed to a politically driven society. Let us look at various aspects of the controversy.

There is almost no point in arguing about abortion from a religious standpoint, although, it is precisely that standpoint that is the chief objection that the most ardent opponents have. The problem, of course, is that our religions are all very different. Our religion can best be described as our feeling about our relationship with God. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who pointed out that most people's relationship with God is very tenuous, which, in turn, makes the relationship we have with our fellowman very undependable, if it is built exclusively on the nominal committment we have toward God. Furthermore, we have long since learned that our nominal religious committments are not indictative of our real religious convictions. Even devout Catholics do not always bring their convictions into harmony with those of the Pope, even on so important an issue as abortion. Therefore, the argument simply degenerates into which is better, your religion or mine. This may be a fun argument but never very productive. It reminds me of an experience my roommate had on his mission. Some boys were taunting him and throwing rocks at him because he was a Mormon missionary, and therefore, they claimed, no Christian. "I grabbed those kids and whipped them until they pleaded for mercy, thus proving that I was the better Christian."

The most common grounds on which we conduct the debate is moral. This is also, in my opinion, pointless. Since murder is for most Americans a represhensible crime, opponents attempt to prove that an unborn child is, in fact, a little child. Those who favor abortion, on the other hand, simply point to the fact that small fetises look like, and, they claim, are very much like little fish or other animals.

The political debate boils down to the question of jurisdiction. There is no question that if the Federal government let the question alone, that there would be some places where abortion would be allowed, more where it would not be. But the question of jurisdiction is one that affects dozens, probably hundreds of issues, debating it with something so controversial as abortion, about which people feel so deeply on other fronts, makes the debate almost certainly irresolvable.

The only hope for resolution of the debate, if there is any hope at all, is on the question of lifestyle. Currently, of course, that is a way unsatisfactory to both sides, because many on both sides of the debate cling tenaciously to what I call the "abortion lifestyle". Our current lifestyle is the cause of much abortion simply because it pushes the age of maturity down to the point where sexual immorality is almost certain to occur at a very young age, especially among young girls growing up in disfunctional families, but it is a constant temptation even among those who are raised under the best of circumstances. I remember the sorrow I would contemplate when I used to do substitute teaching in 7th grade math classes as I looked at the number of girls at that age who were fully formed and obviously--all too obviously--fully sexually mature. For such a girl the idea that she must wait until she has graduated from college before she can marry and enter into "legitimate" sexual relations means waiting for a period of time longer than she can remember--in other words, more than a lifetime, as she perceives it. We tend to forget that before the Roosevelt food plan and other government programs so drastically altered our lifestyle, that the average age of sexual maturity for girls was 17. Now it is not unusual for girls in grade school to be fully mature sexually. There is obviously an enormous difference between a girl being told to "wait until marriage" if the time of expectation is just a small fraction of her experience and one being so told when she cannot reasonably expect to marry for a time longer than she can remember.

Even among the older women who choose abortion, the real reason for most is not what we normally think. We think of those as the feminist woman who carries placards stating that "her body is her own" and appears on television talk shows loudly proclaiming that she should be able to abort a baby if it is of the wrong sex, or if it will interfer with her career, or even her planned vacation. The more common reason is that there is a problem with the pregnancy, again, more often than not a result of various health factors tied to our lifestyle.

Again we come back to the fact that so many of our controversies have been the result of politicians and political leaders misleading us in various ways, but mostly by telling us directly and indirectly that we are, because we live in a rich country, entitled to live as irresponsibly as the rich have traditionally lived.

Controversies--7--Darwinian Evolution--IV

2008-08-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

I consider Darwinian evolution the Achilles Heel of the libertarian movement. The political problem with many, if not most, libertarians, is their undiscriminating view of any restriction on what they see as their "freedoms" or "rights". By undiscriminating, I mean that they make no distinction between an abridgement of their "freedoms" by a local or state government and by the Federal government. They get as exorcised about a city council passing a restriction on the sale of fast food as they do about Federal wiretapping infringements. This has always bothered me about them and I have often asked myself, why can't they see that our government system was never intended to provide some sort of absolute freedom, but to provide checks on Federal government power.

The problem came to me forcefully in an experience I consider almost providential. I came home one night, picked up the paper from the porch and the mail from the mail box. The mail included a copy of "The Freeman", the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education. Glancing through both, I noticed that both contained an article by the libertarian economist, Walter Williams. As is my custom, I read the paper immediately and saved the journal for reading later in the evening. The article by Williams in the paper contained the best explanation of the problems with Nazi Germany that I have read anywhere in so short an exposition. Of course, von Mises's "Omnipotent Government" is better, but that is a book of 200-300 pages. I have always been interested in Nazi Germany because my father was involved in the war crimes trials and I grew up there and returned for my mission, where I talked with hundreds of Germans about their feelings about Hitler and the Third Reich. Williams explained that much of the problem stemmed from the Germans' willingness, even eagerness, to pass responsibility that rightly belonged to individuals, families, and local governments onto the Federal government. Later that evening I read Prof. Williams' article in the Freeman. It was almost a controdiction of his earlier article, if not directly, certainly in spirit. He castigated various city councils and county commissions for passing laws and ordinances with which he did not agree and called them "Lifestyle Nazis". From the earlier article it was perfectly clear that he knows that "Nazi" means "National Socialist" and whatever you may think of a person who passes a zoning law or a smoking restriction in a cafe, you certainly cannot accuse them of being either "National" or "Socialist" without greatly distorting the term. As I read his articles I asked, why are they that way?

It became clearer to me in another of Prof. Williams articles, when again he was denouncing a city commission for passing a smoking restriction of some kind. This time he exclaimed, "They are trying to take away my right to be unhealthy." I decided that the political problem with libertarinism is that they wage an idealogical battle for freedom on all fronts and ignore the real major problem. Rather like an army being attacked by tanks and missiles spending as much time looking for hornet's nests to eliminate. I am convinced that if the Libertarian Party is ever going to make an impact in America, that the one right they will have to give up is "their right to be unhealthy", but as a practical matter, (with the exception of some very outstanding libertarians like Ron Paul) that is the one right that they demand before all others. And I have to ask, why? And the answer is, of course, that they have some very bad habits which they are determined to defend before anything else.

Which brings me to Darwinian evolution. Why, in modern America, would anyone defend the use of even the mildest drugs, much less the more powerful recreational drugs such as cocaine and heroin? The answer is that they are powerfully stimulating and people enjoy using them. My own feeling, however, is that, for most people at least, they would loose their appeal if those people knew that they were self-destructive. They don't know that because they have been convinced by Darwinian thought that life at every level is reducible to chemistry and physics and therefore, no matter how irresponsible a person's lifestyle, i.e. no matter how much his lifestyle and habits may degrade his life, it can be restored, and maybe even enhanced, by the physical and chemical means.

We often hear that the polical spectrum forms a circle as opposed to a line, with the far right--the libertarians, meeting with the far left--the ultra-liberals, joining. On this issue this is largely true. They both have almost unbounded confidence in the ability of modern medicine to overcome any lifestyle problem with the application of physics and/or chemistry. What they disagree on, of course, at least nominally, is who should pay for that application. There is, however, I believe, a bit of residual and even rather deep-seated suspicion in the majority of our people, that "the right to be unhealthy" is not worth fighting for and even worth voting for.

Controversies--6--Darwinian Evolution--III

2008-08-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

Scientific theories are known to most men almost exclusively through their applications to their lives. In the case of Darwinian evolution, the most important application has been to the practice of medicine and health care. A little thought will make it clear that there are at least three ideas stemming from Darwin's thought which have been devastating to the practice of medicine and health-care in general.

The first is the idea that man's body is a work in progress. This has resulted in the idea that certain of men's organs and body parts have become more or less superfluous through the process of evolution. Hence, it was the custom for many years to simply remove the tonsils upon the slightest provocation, or even on no provocation whatsoever. Because it has been found that the tonsils do indeed serve a purpose, there is an increasing reluctance to simply remove them when a child gets a sore throat. When I was young, the tonsils were routinely removed. I, and all my siblings, had our tonsils removed. Of my own children, only the eldest has lost his tonsils. Nevertheless, the tonsils, the appendix, the gall bladder, and probably other body organs are seen as removeable without serious side effect, because we have sort of evolved beyond their usefulness. Indeed, our whole attitude toward body organs has been deeply influenced by this thought. The emphasis in modern medicine is hardly what can we do to spare an organ, but can it be removed or replaced. In many ways this has grown almost frightful. Can anyone really believe that it will soon be that people who are rich or important have a right to the organs of those who are poor or unproductive or in some other way superfluous?

The second is the idea that what goes on inside the body mirrors what goes on outside the body. If Darwinian evolution were a company instead of a theory, its motto would be "progress through violence". Just as life in society is viewed in the Darwinian world view as "survival of the fittest" in a "dog-eat-dog" world. So what goes on inside the body is viewed as a constant struggle between body parts that, for the most part, are kept in control when you are young or if you have very good genes, but as you age, or if you are genetically unlucky, parts of your body begin to overcome other parts. Your white corpuscles eat up your red corpuscles or vice versa. The sodium begins to overpower the potassium, the body cells in one part of the body become renegades and begin overpowering everything, one organ begins doing the work of another, and so on. And, of course, there is the ever on-going relentless struggle against germs of all kinds. This kind of thinking has so predominated our thinking about medicine and health that we almost worship youth and youthfulness. It seems impossible for us to believe that there are actually societies that revere age, not only for its wisdom and experience, but because, until extreme old age, the elderlly are the most productive and healthiest members of society.

The third is the idea that live at every level is reducible to physics and chemistry. This has led to the belief that life can be restored and even enhanced through physical and chemical means. Of the three ideas, this is the most destructive. It, more than any other idea, has led us to believe that we can live irresponsibly, and that with a pill, or an operation, be restored to "my old self".

The tragedy of this thinking is that we spend more time and money in escaping the consequences of poor choices than in correcting a poor lifestyle. Medicine has become an endless quest for new cures rather than a study of what we must do to live healthfully.

Controversies--5--Darwinian Evolution--II

2008-08-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Although we tend to think of Darwin's theory of evolution as a scientific theory, we deal with it in popular discourse much more like a political theory or idea. The very fact that Darwin's theory is still a subject of debate after all these years is a clear indication that it has a very large political component. Compare Darwin's theory with other scientific theories or ideas that are important economically and even politically. For example, there is hardly any scientific concept more important to our way of life and our economy than the thermodynamic cycles that explain the operation of our large engines, particularly the Otto cycle that explains the operation of the internal combustion engine.

Suppose you go into an automobile dealership and the salesman approaches you and asks if he can help you. You respond that you are interested in buying a new car. The salesman in turn responds that he has many fine automobiles that he would be glad to show you, but before he does, so that he doesn't waste his time or yours, he requires you to sign a statement saying that you believe in the Otto cycle. The most likely response to such a request of 99.99% of the American public would be, "Otto cycle? What the blazes is this Otto cycle that I am supposed to believe in?" Fairly recently I have read two commentaries by prominent political pundits, George F. Will and Thomas Friedman, bemoaning American ignorance of Darwin's theory of evolution and yet Darwin is no where near as important in our day to day lives and our economic well being as the Otto cycle. Why don't they bemoan American ignorance of that? The fact is that compared with their knowledge of the Otto cycle, American high school students are positive whiz kids on their knowledge of Darwin.

We really don't even speak about "belief" in respect to scientific ideas. I doubt that there is even an engineer who has applied to work at an automobile company or teach at a university who is asked if he believes in the Otto cycle. Can you imagine an electrician showing up at your doorstep saying he would fix your house wiring only after you sign a statement assuring him that you believe in Maxwell's equations?

Obviously, we can have no quarrel with the biologist who assures us that because he understands Darwin, he is able to develop more disease resistant peaches, or the geologist who states that his understanding of Darwin enables him to better find oil. For my part, I would be a little sceptical of such statements, but I certainly cannot argue with them if I want better peaches or more oil. One reason I am sceptical of such claims stems from personal experience. I invite, for example, the reader to get a copy of the first edition of James Watson's "Microbiology of the cell" and read the paean to Darwin and compare it with the similar essay on Mendel in the same volume. Mendel's work relates very directly and very understandably to everything that follows. On the other hand, after waxing eloquent about what a wonderful guy Darwin was and how very important his work was, the only thing Dr. Watson can actually come up with to relate what follows in his volume to Darwin's work is that somehow it shows that cell biology follows the same rules as chemistry and physics. To someone in physics this is a stretch, although, Watson's partner, Francis Crick who was a physicist (Watson was a biologist), was a big fan of Darwin so he must of somehow made reconcilition, but the only reconciliation I ever heard in my studies was "life is an open system"--a rather lame reconciliation at best.

The point here is that we discuss and treat Darwin's theory different than any other scientific theory, and the way we treat it is really an indication that, in popular discourse at any rate, it is more in the political arena than the scientific arena. We will, in my opinion, never know the value of Darwin's theory until it is removed from the political arena, any more than we can know the value of anything that belongs in the free market, but is transferred into the poitical market.

In the next segment I will try to relate the problems that Darwinian thought has created for health care and thus relate the two controversies.

Controversies--4--Darwinian Evolution--1

2008-08-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

In dealing with controversies I am still working with health care. I have in previous articles explored the political/economic policies that have contributed to our current poor state of health, e.g. the "Roosevelt" food plan that grew out of the farmer's subsidies and the "Truman" health care plan which grew out of the imposition of wage controls after WWII. I then looked at the implied policy, implied in that it is never explicitly stated as such, that because America is a "rich" country, that its citizens have the right to live as irresponsibly as the rich have traditionally lived. Today I begin an exploration into the deeper roots of our health problems. These extend back to the very beginning of our Republic and beyond to our European roots. I am going to do it in a rather round about way by looking at another controvery, i.e. Darwinian evolution.

It is important to recognize that although we discuss Darwinian evolution as a subject of science, the controversy that surrounds it has little to do with science and a great deal to do with politics. It is my firm belief that any object, theory or thing that properly belongs in the free market, whether that market is the market for sugar or homes, or capital, or ideas and theories, and is shifted to the political arena, where it really does not belong, determining the value of that thing/object/idea/theory becomes very difficult. Indeed, a great deal of the motivation to keep whatever it is that has been removed from the free market firmly in the political market place, is that those who keep it there are afraid that it (whatever "it" is) would be vastly undervalued in the free market. We will see how this applies to wages later. Today we are exploring this idea with respect to a theory--Darwin's theory of evolution.

For me, this is best illustrated by my own experience, which I offer forewith.

When I began my graduate school studies in biophysics, the physics department was about equally divided on the subject of evolution. About half said they were sceptical about it due to 2nd law (of thermodynamics) considerations and the other half essentially said, "The geologists and biologists accept it. They are scientists. I am a scientist. I wouldn't like them making declarations about my science, I don't think that I should make declarations about theirs." When, and if pressed, they would add, "Besides life is an open system and the 2nd law doesn't apply." My own major professor, and the university's only biophysicist had not made his view known, so I was eager to hear what he would say when he was asked to give a lecture on Darwinian evolution. The lecture was a part of a series of lectures on controversial topics, most of them, of course, political in nature. Dr. Dibble, my major professor, began his lecture by citing several of the examples provided to him by the geologists and biologists when they heard that he was to give the lecture. He said that he was impressed with all these "proofs" but that they did not overcome his own doubts due to the 2nd law considerations. In short, he could not accept the validity of the theory of evolution as expounded by Darwin because, he felt, it violated the 2nd law.

Had he been asked to give that lecture at the end of my graduate career, I suspect that he would have been forced to temper his conclusion considerably. The reason was that in the interim the legislature of Lousiana, in an effort to stem the outflow of students in the public school whose parents were using alternatives because of the objection to materials being taught, notably evolution, passed a law saying that if Darwinian evolution were taught an alternative should also be taught. Not surprisingly, the geological society and the biological society objected. Unfortunately, the American Physical Society, whose business, in my opinion, it was none of, also issued a statement of protest and added effectively, that anyone wishing to consider themselves a part of the physics community would back them up. This, of course, would have been only so much hot air, were it not for the fact that the American Physical Society wields a great deal of influence in deciding who gets government research grants. In other words, if you wanted to get any government money for your research, you better not be making any anti-Darwinian comments.

As a sop to the members of the society who had 2nd law objections, the society magazine "Physics Today" published an article by a Russian physicist showing, he claimed, at least, that at the beginning of every physical process there is a very short period of time when entropy decreases (i.e. the 2nd law is effectively violated). Conviently, he made the period of time for any observable process (such as an explosion) so short that his theory was not really experimentally verifiable. (For example, in a process such as an explosion which from beginning to end might last 30 seconds, the period of entropy increase was only one trilloneth of a second). His "proof" consisted largley of a series of rather complex statistical themodynamic equations. Since I was taking a graduate class in statistical themodynamics at the time, I suggested to the instructor that going over the equations in this article might afford a better example than the ones in the text book. He initially agreed, but later changed his mind saying that he didn't have time in the class to do it. My own guess is that he either didn't understand the equations himself or decided that the whole subject was too politically charged to get involved with.

In the next post I will continue this subject by looking at the difference in the way we look at typical science theories and the way we look at Darwinian evolution. For now, I merely wish to state that my own experiences, including the one detailed above have convinced me that knowing the truth of Darwin's theory--indeed of any theory--so long as it remains in the political arena is very difficult, if not impossible.

Controversies--3--Healthcare--II

2008-08-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

Supposing I come to you with the following proposition: "I know you hate to eat vegtables. I hate it too, but here is what I will do for you. For a price, of course, I will eat your vegtables. You can eat pies, cakes, cookies, hot dogs, fries, chips, anything you want and not worry about it, because you know that I will be eating spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli and all that sort of thing, for you." I suspect that most people would say that closing with such a bargain would be stupid. But the important question is, "since almost all Americans would say that closing such a bargain would be insane, why do they actually eat as though they had closed it? I think there are at least two answers. First, most Americans do not really believe that what they eat is all that important. And second, Americans have been fed so much information and misinformation about what is best to eat, that they are hopelessly confused, and simply give up and eat whatever they want.

Let's deal with the second problem first. In his excellent book, "The China Study", T. Colin Campbell lists a typical days menu that falls within the current government recommendations for a healthy diet. For breakfast he suggests a bowl of Fruit Loops with low fat milk, with M&M candies for dessert. For lunch and double cheeseburger is recommended. Since that isn't much, a big meal is called for dinner consisting of 3 large slices of pizza, a large glass of soda pop, and a hearty helping of sugar cookies for dessert. He breaks this down and shows exactly how this menu fits into the current government guidelines for a healthy diet. The key, of course, is that if you do eat that way you have to take a multi-vitamin pill. So essentially, the government bureaucrats paid to recommend our lifestyle and diet, are saying that we can eat whatever we want as long as we take a multivitamin.

Now to the first problem. Essentially, that problem is why do Americans believe this. Do they really think that they can be healthy on a diet of Fruit Loops, M&Ms, cheeseburgers, pizza and sugar cookies as long as they take a multivitamin pill? The answer is that they probably don't think about it. They are convinced, because our political leaders have essentially told them so, that because they are Americans, they can live as irresponsibly as the rich have traditionally lived. And just as the rich have assumed they could in some way buy themselves out of the consequences of that irresponsibility, so Americans are told that if they vote for the right people, those people will see that their irresponsibility is paid for.

The consequences of both of these problems is, of course, tragic. At enormous cost, our people are indeed surviving many years with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, osteoporosis, and numerous other chronic diseases. But how long will we be able to pay the cost?

Controversies--2--Healthcare--I

2008-08-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

For the past twenty years, the most consistent controversy in American politics has been over health care. Currently, as the economy is struggling, that controversy takes the front page, but even in that case a good deal of the controversy swirls around the fact that when a person loses his job, he typically also loses his health insurance, i.e. his access to "affordable health care". Even among those in our population who currently consider themselves relatively healthy there is great concern about health. Few of them do not have a parent, a sibling, a close relative or friend who do not struggle with a very expensive, chronic disease. And, although our life span is increasing, or at least, if you believe the media reports, it is. It is becoming enormously expensive to keep it increasing. When I was grade school we talked about cancer in health class and, knowing it was a dread disease, I was enormously relieved to read in the text that it was almost (with the exception of leukemia) exclusively and entirely a disease afflicting the very aged and that anyone under 60 need not worry about it. Anyone who has read through the obituaries lately knows that that is no longer the case. Likewise, adult onset diabetes was a relatively rare disease. I personally knew or even knew of on one that had it. Now, among my older friends, there are very few who don't. I remember a statement by Paul Dudley White, famous as President Eisenhower's heart doctor, that in the early days of his practice, the average American doctor had never even seen a case of heart disease. The backdrop for the controversy over health care in America is the terribly poor health of the American people. But why are they in such poor condition?

The first, and possibly most important thing to recognize about American health is that it has never been good. Americans from the earliest days of our country's founding have suffered from poor health. My own feeling is that the reason for this is that Americans have always turned a large measure of the responsibility for their health over to government. This was, of course, a tradition that they inherited from Europe. There medical doctors were trained in government schools and were typically the third and fourth sons of nobility, i.e. those for whom a position had to be provided. The tradition of government control of medical schools passed on almost seamlessly to America even after it won independence from Britain. Benjamen Rush, a prominent founding father and medical doctor, is reported to have called for freedom of medicine during the early debates about our government, but obviously that call was never incorporated into the Constitution. Of course, had an amendment been passed in the Bill of Rights requiring freedom of medical practice, it would have had little effect until after the Civil War, because until then all regulation was at the state level, but it would certainly have an enormous impact today.

Actually, there came a time when we did experience a sort of freedom of medical practice. This occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century, when discontent with the standard medical practice became so widespread that a number of alternatives sprang up. But rather, than give up control of medicine, most state legislatures merely expanded the franchise. Many students who have a favorite alternative health practice such as Hygiene (my own favorite), hydropathy, natureopathy, osteopathy, etc, are surprised to discover as they study its history that many of the early practiciners of that alternative had MD degrees. This was due to the fact that many states would allow schools teaching those alternatives to grant MD degrees. After the Civil War, and particularly, after the formation of the AMA, this franchise was again narrowed down to allopathic schools, and the practiioners in other alternatives had to award different degrees, if, in fact, the practice of that alternative was allowed at all.

The control of medicine remained largely with the state governments until the beginning of the 20th century when, with the creation of the FDA, it passed increasingly to the federal government. Because medicine has always been government controlled in our country, the corollary has been that our people have always believed that health could, to a certain extent, be bought. But that belief was tempered a great deal, even in my youth, to the belief that only in a very limited way could health be bought. It has only been in the past 30 years or so that a many, if not most Americans, have subscribed to the idea that more money translated into more health. In fact, that health requires so much money that for the average person to enjoy maximum health, the cost must somehow be passed onto others. The reason that people were sceptical about that idea when I was young and before, in my opinion, is the common observation, that rich people, those who could afford unlimited health care, were not particularly healthy. They were the ones suffering from the host of chronic diseases. One, osteporosis, was even named Dowager's Hump, meaning rich woman's hump.

Two government policies have, in my opinion, contributed greatly to the demise of American health. Both came as "unintended consequences" of poor economic policies. The first, and most devastating, came with the decision by the Roosevelt Administration to subsidize the most politically powerful farmers, the cattlemen, the dairy farmers and the large grain growers. This in turn led to the promotion by the government of these crops which promotion was canoized as the "Four Food Group" plan. Under this plan, the American people were told that three-fourths of their food (by weight--a further addition to the deception) should come from very calorically dense foods, leaving the American people to get 100% of their nutrition from less than 5% of their calories. Indeed, if the government had not required that these foods be "enriched", Americans would have been dying from Third World deficiency diseases such as beriberi, rickets, and scurvy. As the government has become more involved financially with health, there has been a growing discension within the government itself about this food plan. The first result was the push to reduce the fat content of the items in the meat and dairy groups so that, if Americans chose to use low fat meats and dairy products, they would increase the nutritious portion of their diets to as much as 10%. Later, of course, the four food group plan was scrapped altogether in favor of the "Pyramid" which is a slight, albeit, very slight, improvement.

The other disaster was the implementation by the Truman Administration of wage and price controls after WWII. Since the Democratic party was largely dependent upon labor union support, they had to give concessions to the wage freezes and the concessions they gave were to allow benefits to be increased and not counted as wage increases. The result was the health care system as we know it. Because it was not really designed with health in mind at all, but rather as an under-the-counter wage increase, the result has been to harm, more than help, health. Indeed, any objective observer would not call it a "health-care" system at all. It is, in fact, for the young and early middle aged a system of symptom alleviation, and even, symptom supression, and for the older middle aged and elderly a system of disease management.

The result of all this has been that the American people have been consistently misled as to what constitues real health and many have been convinced that they have the absolute right to live as irresponsibly as the wealthy have generally lived with respect to health. The real controversy should not center around how can we get someone else to pay to get us healthy. The real controversy should be, how can we develop a true "health care" system.

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