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- Have you ever watched BookTV on CSPAN-2? It airs every weekend for 48 straight hours. It features hour-long interviews with nonfiction authors about their newly published books. I find it a much better way to learn about a subject than listening to twenty-second sound bites and opposing analysts constantly talking over each other.
- Last weekend, I learned about the Mexican drug wars. The Mexican government appears to have lost control of their country. Many of the local police departments and even members of the national military are acting as mercenaries, helping to fight the fight for the drug lords. $100 is the going price for a hit. It’s a mess, it’s getting worse, and it’s happening on our southern border.
For more FPT and three more spectacular Montana fall pictures, keep reading.
- In another segment, I heard a panel discussing the Arab Spring. The U.S. spent $805 billion to liberate Iraq and $1 billion to liberate Libya. With the announced troop pullout of Iraq by the end of the year, will we have essentially accomplished the same thing in both places? If so, what’s a better ROI?
- It would appear that Iraq has a better long-term chance to maintain a democracy than the newly forming government of Libya. My best hope is both countries will be friendly to the west and establish and maintain governance that respects individual rights and freedoms for all its citizens.
- It occurs to me that the United States can offer help, but ultimately each country, and each country’s people, need to help themselves.
- I’m not an isolationist, but we have enough of our own issues here at home that need fixing. We cannot and should not attempt to be the police of the world.
- From BookTV, I also learned that our seventh President, Andrew Jackson, was the last President to fight in a duel and kill an opponent. Learning that puts some perspective on the fate that Muammar Gaddafi received last week and what initially struck me as uncivilized. Much of the world is still living in the Wild West.
- The more I learn, the more I realize there is a lot I don’t yet know.
- What always looked like black and white now looks gray.
- Eight years ago, I put in motion the plan to move to Montana for a simpler life. While I did manage to move here four years ago, my life was infinitely more complicated by the time I arrived. The last three years have been spent de-complicating and cleaning up messes. Life suddenly seems simple again.
- Comparing my life to our country and our government leaders, I’d like them to de-complicate and clean up some messes. Why is it that no government program gets downsized or goes out of business like the rest of the economy?
- I’m not anti-government … I’m anti-wasteful government. I don’t want bigger, I want more efficient. I don’t want new, I want fixed. I don’t want more promises, I want kept promises.
- On the lighter side, it’s fall in Montana. Boy-o-boy, I’m sure glad I moved here!
- Maybe the moral of the story is that life is never simple. It just vacillates between varying degrees of complicated.
Next Blog Title: Stories of Gumption – Ray Peterson
Next Blog Date: October 31, 2011