Victor Davis Hanson -- The Rise and Fall of Current Western Civilization

Victor Davis Hanson is a rarity among contemporary commenters because he comes at punditry from the perspective of a credentialed scholar.  He has written many books, many if not most about wars and battles that changed or altered the course of history in a major way.  His most recent one "A War Like No Other" describes how and why the Spartans and Athenians fought each other for so many years (maybe almost 100?) during what has been called by historians The Peloponnesian War.  In addition to his scholarly efforts, Davis is, I believe it's now the third generation farmer in Central California. He also writes for many conservative publications (and probably a few of the other persuasion occasionally).  In short, he's kinda unusual -- a scholar, a for profit farmer, a commenter on current affairs, and a conservative through and through.  He has written a column recently for PJ Media entitled ""Why Did Rome Fall -- and Why Does It Matter Now" which displays all of his talents described above and provides some interesting fodder for thought.  The article is here and almost as interesting as the article itself are some of the comments that follow it.

Obama's Budget and Deficit Spending

This article by a Cato Institute analyst is quite revealing.  The author asserts that the budget deficit scheme was essentially put in place by Bush in the waning days of his administration and that Obama is mosty simply carrying on with Bush policies that caused the huge increase in debt levels.  The Cato Institute is libertarian and therefore much more conservative than liberal in its politics and policies, so there is no obvious blame-everything-on- Obama thing going on here.  What he does say is that Obama promised change, "go through the budget line by line", get the fiscal house in order, etc, but in reality is simply building on the profligate Bush budget of 2009 which he inherited.  Basically this article underscores why so many conservatives were disappointed in the Bush administration which never really seriously attacked government overspending and runaway entitlement programs.  One may chalk this lack of resolve by Bush to 9/11 and the need to pander to the liberal big spenders in Congress in order to gain support for the WOT efforts.  On the other hand Bush was never a real Reagan conservative, any more than his father was, and while he believed in free markets, et al, let's remember he never vetoed any of those outrageous spending bills served up to him year after year.  Obama is a weak, ridiculous excuse for a CIC, however a lot of his problems were served up during the Bush years.  Bush is a good man and acted like a CIC should in the aftermath of 9/11, but his commitment to true conservative principles was always suspect.

Unions - Necessary Evils or Just Evil

Michael Barone tackles this subject in the context of public service and private industry unions and concludes what anyone with an I.Q. of over 50 long ago figured out:  Unions are bad news for consumers, taxpayers, and the long term survival of corporations.  His example is Detroit where unions, with the help of some lame corporate management, managed to bankrupt two major car companies and left the third one limping along.  What unions do best, besides feathering the nest of the union leaders, is protect the jobs that already exist at any given company.  They do this by limiting the company's ability to innovate, eliminate wasteful jobs and create flexible, efficient workplaces.  A case can be made that unions many years ago did help introduce some safety measures in mining and manufacturing that improved working conditions, but that was long ago and probably of limited value in any case.  As for the public service unions there is no argument for these entities to exist.  They have destroyed the state governments in every blue state with their excessive pay and benefits.  They have dumbed down the education system in the US with excessive layers of useless administration, featherbedding rules and the like.  There is no excuse for these unions now, if there ever was, which I doubt.  Barone has it about right in his analysis.