Amber Waves of Grain

Americans have always romanticized the farmer. Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example."*

Children are doused with farm stories. At one and two I sang "Old MacDonald" and "The Farmer in the Dale." As I grew older, my mother read me reams of picture books set on farms and, later, Charlotte's Web and Farmer Boy. When I was eight years old I declared that I would marry a farmer when I grew up.

I don't know how much other countries romanticize farming and farmers, but to me farming seems to fit the American ideal, as defined by Americans. We imagine the family farm, self-sustaining, self-made, the triumph of the individual. Of course, most farms in the United States today are factory farms.

And, honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that. Perhaps this is because I romanticize industry instead (I think my father's plant looks like fairy land; I took the heart the words of my engineering professor: "Industry is what allows you to be at a university instead of picking turnips.") There is nothing intrinsically more moral about an agricultural society, and nothing that makes a farmer more noble than a factory worker or manager or owner.

In fact, I think we need to de-emphasize agriculture by eliminating farm subsidies. This would be immensely more fair to farmers in other countries such as Mexico, whose goods can't compete against heavily subsidized United States crops.

In this case, at least, I disagree with Thomas Jefferson.

Not Everything Happens for a Reason...

...and yes, I do believe in God.

It seems strange to me that the same people who believe fervently that God gives man freewill believe that God orchestrates every single event in our lives as part of his apparently intricately-precise plan.

But these two things are inconsistent. If I get fired, is it because God wanted me to have a learning experience? Or is it because my boss exercised his free agency to fire me if he felt like it? It's true that God might have impressed on him, "Fire her," or "Don't fire her," but there's no reason to assume my boss is in tune with the promptings of the Spirit.

While there might not be a reason for everything, there's a reason for Everything. Life as a whole has meaning and purpose, man are that they might have joy, and this holds true even if God doesn't always specifically pick out what college we'll be accepted to or who we'll meet or when the people we love die. I believe that everything, including the random vagaries of human agency, has the potential to lead us to fulfill the overarching divine purpose of our lives.

But we're not going to grow into our purpose if we lie around like dead fish, waiting for God to slap us with Meaning. Life is an active process, where we take whatever is handed to us and, with the help of divine inspiration, turn it into something meaningful, building a path to the Purpose, the glorious Reason for it all.

Buy American (If You Feel Like It)

So we have been urged to buy American to help our compatriots out in these troubled economic times.

I've never gotten the "buy American" thing. Why does a struggling American businessman deserve my money more than a struggling Japanese businessman? I don't get the "buy local" thing, either. Why should I support local farmers more than farmers somewhere else?

I felt the same way back when everyone was griping about outsourcing, grumbling that foreigners were "taking our jobs." They're not our jobs. They belong to whoever balances their own need for a living with an employer's need for someone competent.

I fervently believe that free trade will bring the best for everyone involved. The entire world is going through a rough patch, not just us, and this is no time to hunker in on ourselves. It's not that I'm not proud of being American, but I don't think pride in your own country requires you to see the rest of the world as Them in a bitter, impersonal game of Us vs. Them.

So buy high quality. Buy inexpensive. Think of it as giving peace a chance.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

means it's a week before finals, and we spend our days on the grass in front of the girls' dorm. By we I mean the entire school, two-hundred sixteen-to-eighteen-year- olds spread beneath the heat of a Mississippi May.

The couples have blankets to themselves and work steadily at getting us all a Reputation among passing college students. Most of us, though, gather in clots to laugh and talk and read and nap. It's against the rules to be outside without shoes, and the grass is filled with stickers, but we kick off our sandals anyway.

I brought out my books, swearing I'd do homework, but instead I use my bookbag as pillow. Sam plays music off her laptop, Leslie shoots video for her vlog, and I have class in an hour. But maybe, by then, we'll have evaporated and become part of the air.

Someday we will die and our ashes will fly from that aeroplane over the sea. But for now we are young; let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see. - Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"

On Budgets

The new federal budget is titled "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise."

It's a slogan. I feel like, to read it aloud, I'd have to have my teeth whitened and stand in front of an American flag with a fan aimed at my face. I hate slogans. They are inherently meaningless and manipulative. They are flash and fluff. They are designed to set the pleasure centers of the average voter brain chiming without even touching the rational thought centers. And, sadly, modern politics couldn't succeed without them.

I didn't even know budgets had titles. I checked and found that all of President Bush's budgets but the first one were titled "Budget." The first was called "A Blueprint for New Beginnings: A Responsible Budget for America's Priorities." I couldn't find the title for Clinton's first budget, but the last two presidents at least gave their first budget a slogan title. At least Bush's budget, while it also used "Responsible" as a meaningless buzzword, left out patronizing mentions of "Renewing America's Promise." Federal budgets do not renew America's promise. Americans renew America's promise.

Someday a politician will win my heart by promising to name his very first budget "Budget."

For the Lightning

"Go on and be good peasants, safe peasants, superstitious peasants--or have worlds to conquer again. To control the lightning again."

That speech is from the climax of Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In the novel, a comet hits the earth and society crumbles. However, a nuclear power plant survives intact. The heroes have a chance to take control of the plant, but first they must fight the combined forces of a band of cannibalistic army men, an inner-city gang, and a maniacal preacher (really).

The heroes are about to back down before one man, an astronaut, stands up and inspires them to rise up "for the lightning." I read Lucifer's Hammer when I was fourteen, picking it out from the bookshelf in the room where Dad kept his tools. The astronaut's passionate, fictional speech struck me, then, and stuck. It comes into the back of my mind every time I'm astounded at technology, and it comes to mind when I think about nuclear power.

And what I think (about nuclear power) is that it's important. It's cheap and efficient. It'll be there once oil runs low and it doesn't produce carbon dioxide. My dad likes to say that the only things that cost anything are people and energy, so a good way of providing energy opens the doors to... everything.

That's why I'm considering going to grad school to become a nuclear engineer, once I graduate. It would be amazing to make lightning.

Thoughts on Federalist 51

I just finished reading the Federalist Papers numbers 10, 51, and 57 for class. For some reason, a couple of points in 51 caught at me more than the rest of the documents.

The first is Madison's statement that "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Not only does this strike me as true, it reminds me of my roommate, who wistfully wishes that we didn't have to have laws.

However, while it's true that if men were angels, no government would be needed, if men were demons, no government would work. In fact, the whole principle of government depends on most people being basically decent and honest. It would be impossible to enforce laws against say, stealing, if 90% of people ran around robbing each other blind. Our society depends on most people following laws and honoring contracts without coercion. The fact that society continues to click along is a wonderful testament to the innate goodness of mankind. We are, if not angelic, at least humane.

The second thing that struck me is one of the methods Madison proposes to keep a majority from trampling on the rites of a minority. He says that in the Republican government of the United States "the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority."

What struck me about this is that it seems to strike against the constant calls for "unity" in our current political situation. I think that there is a constructive sort of unity, involving respecting each other despite political differences and treating everyone fairly and with courtesy. This is probably what most people mean when they say we need more "unity."

However, there is a second form of unity, a destructive form and one which Madison warned about. In this form, people surrender their principles purely for the sake of becoming "unified." I fear that, as we recognize the need for the first sort of unity, we sometimes couple it with the second sort, and this could be dangerous. It's bad enough that we currently only have two major political parties. Let's not insist that they agree on everything, 'kay?

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

I take issue with the way that people talk about jobs. I especially dislike the idea that the government can "create" jobs. Jobs aren't created, they grow, like mushrooms springing from the soil of unmet need. To try to create one would be like trying to piece together a mushroom out of artificial proteins. I hear that Obama wants to "create green jobs," but a job that has to have government money fueled into it continually is not sustainable. It's make-work, like when the teacher has you spend all your classtime copying vocabulary words from the back of the book. I do believe that governments can encourage the growth of jobs, most likely by stepping back, lifting regulations, and letting things run their course.

And then, besides "creating jobs" there's "destroying jobs." I recently had a conversation with someone I deeply respect about Wal-mart. She contended that Wal-mart is bad because it moves into small communities and destroys jobs by driving out small businesses. I, on the other hand, remember when Wal-mart moved out of my small town and set up shop in the next town over. There was weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and lots of bitter muttering about how Amory stole our Wal-mart.

But setting aside the fact that Wal-mart provides cheaper shopping for small, poor communities like my hometown, what is its effect on jobs? Well, if Wal-mart gets the same amount of selling done as small businesses with fewer employees, I guess it does destroy jobs. But is that actually bad?

Let me explain. A long time ago, 100% of humans were employed as hunter-gatherers. Then, one day, someone thought, "Hey, I can move these berry bushes into a field beside my cave and take care of them all!" Agriculture decreased the number of people it took making food in order to support a population, thus destroying thousands of jobs. Our jobless ancestors, then, looked around at each other and said, "Hey! We can do other stuff." Or, more probably, it took a generation for the children of unemployed hunters and gatherers to begin making clothing and learning about medicine.

Flash forward to the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites were scared out of their wits of new textile machines, which were putting them out of work. In the long run, however, the loss of factory jobs was good for everyone. Since the economy needed fewer factory workers, less urgent needs grew up, like so many spotted mushrooms, into new jobs. If it weren't for the Industrial Revolution we wouldn't have as many social workers or research scientists or professional athletes.

In the end, Wal-mart and weaving machines "destroy jobs" by increasing the output for person, making the whole world worth more. And that, increasing the worth of the world, is the secret to fighting poverty and disease and saving the environment and generally polishing life to a silvery luster.