America in Decline

The Wall Street Journal had a great editorial Drill, Drill, Drill that makes an excellent point. Daniel Henninger says that the US Congress, Senate, and public, have purposefully chosen regress over progress. This purposeful decision maybe a mistake, but never-the-less, that is where we find the US today. The US has chosen to be unimportant economically, strategically, and technologically. (I'll add, about the only thing we excel at is porn, online gaming, and pro-sports. But, hey, were happy.)

The media pushes this nonsense at us and we start to think that this is the way the world really is. But, the liberal left, and the media, are committing fraud by only telling us only part of the truth--verses telling us the "whole truth."

For example, when every I see pictures of News about the Middle East, the scene is always portrayed as some poor dusty village. The News pictures always show us bombed out buildings. The women and children are always bedraggled. The public square and market place are in crumbling ruins. Life in this war-torn world appears to us, in the affluent West, to be a horrible existence, requiring US and UN Financial Aid. Maybe a little more compassion would right the lives of the stragglers milling about in the mangled public square.

Additionally, aside from an occasional Molotov Cocktail or rubber tire burning scene, men are not present in these poetic images. In my mind, I always thought the men were in the guerrilla camps training to slit Americans by the throat. No doubt the media wants us to think that the men are all dead at the hands of those "nasty Americans". In either case, the media has left holes in their story so that we are forced to make unwarranted assumptions about the conditions of life in the Middle East.



Here, another facet of the story that is never seen. The men aren't at home because they are away at their construction jobs, in Dubai. Note, Dubai has more construction workers than residents.

There's More -- If you look under the hood...

Now that you've had a day or two, to digest the parable, here's something to think about...

Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can't make money paying American wages. TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter's results: TOYOTA makes $4 billion in profits while Ford racked up $9 billion in losses.

Here's my take...and I'll start with some questions...

1. Do you think the Japanese management, at Toyota, is just better a creating a profitable mix of engineering and factory management?
2. Is the profit missing from Ford's results because the Senior Executives squandered the opportunity and gave themselves an undeserved raise?
3. Does either culture have any underlying contemporary ideas that would influence quality or workmanship?

The answer to the first question is 'No.' Both the US and Japan exhibit Top-Notch engineering and management skill.

The answer to the second question is, also, 'No.' Even if you envision the upper management of Ford Motor Company as unscrupulous scoundrels, they couldn't possibly abscond with several billion dollars in profit. Nor, could they successfully hide their thievery while posting record-setting corporate losses.

This leaves question number three, as a possible culprit.

Notice, that in our parable, the US company doesn't have enough workers. The parable implies that the organization is heavy with supervisory personnel and upper management. This leaves only one poor sap to row the canoe. The modern management team realizes the job of a 'rower' must be terrible. So they offer pens, pencils, and an occasional free dinner. The cultural reason for this dilemma is that, in the US, hard-work has no place of honor. All of the men and women, who used to be rowers, got promoted. Why? Because there is no value to manual labor.

Do you think the Japanese are just persuing the profit motive? Or, could there be real value and satisfaction in a job well-done?

This is a classic example of the promotion of humanitarian equality rather than the kind of God-given equality promoted by a Biblical understanding. In the eyes of our founding fathers, equality was a simple rejection of 'rights-by-birth.' There was no longer to be a king or nobility. Hereditary offices were abolished and people were allowed to flourish. People could reach whatever station in life their qualities and efforts could earn.

Equality of opportunity and equality before the law were realized only imperfectly but remained worthy ideals for Americans. In our modern era, however, the old-fashioned Puritan Work Ethic has been jettisoned for an entirely humanistic (as opposed to theistic) perspective.

Humanism is a thoroughly materialistic religion and can only measure equality in monetary or material terms. This modern cultural rejection of the honor of achieving excellence in all aspects of work, creates a vacuum where only the high-profile jobs receive any attention. Normal jobs are deprecated leading to the needless promotion of superintendents and management.

The contemporary disdain for the actual working class has been growing, recently. The result is illustrated in this parable. Even though the rower got some free ball point pens, his position is not viewed as valuable and his work is not seen as honorable. In fact, all of the soon to be promoted rowers never choose to continue in their productive positions. There is no honor in hard work. Yet oddly, people find honor in being promoted to relatively worthless positions.

The modern humanistic perspective that denies the value of the boot-maker, or bread-baker, does so at its own peril. In the modern factory, this misguided notion also leads to the promotion, and protection, of workers who are not actually contributing to producing a viable product.

The battle-cry for this destructive behavior is always, "People matter more than the products they produce." Yet, paradoxically, people can't be seperated from their own activities. These ideas actually represent a counterfeit Christian love being exercised as Altruism. It permits the promotion of the non-productive, while allowing the destruction of the productive.

All because, as modern humanists, "We care..."

An interesting Tale...

I've received the following Modern Parable, as an eMail forward, and I liked it... Except...

Its quite the over simplification and I think if fails to target the real problem. The tale is shown here for your perusal. Think about it, laugh, agree or disagree; then tomorrow I'll add some of my thoughts to the mix.

A Modern Parable

A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (Ford) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River.

Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to four steering supervisors, three area steering superintendents, and one assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the one person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing TeamQuality First Program,' with meetings, dinners, and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.

The End.