The people who pioneered democracy in Europe and the United States had a low but pretty accurate view of human nature. They knew that if we get the chance, most of us will try to get something for nothing. They knew that people generally prize short-term goodies over long-term prosperity. So, in centuries past, the democratic pioneers built a series of checks to make sure their nations wouldn’t be ruined by their own frailties.

The American founders did this by decentralizing power. They built checks and balances to frustrate and detain the popular will. They also dispersed power to encourage active citizenship, hoping that as people became more involved in local government, they would develop a sense of restraint and responsibility.

In Europe, by contrast, authority was centralized. Power was held by small coteries of administrators and statesmen, many of whom had attended the same elite academies where they were supposed to learn the art and responsibilities of stewardship. Under the parliamentary system, voters didn’t even get to elect their leaders directly. They voted for parties, and party elders selected the ones who would actually form the government, often through secret means.

Though the forms were different, the democracies in Europe and the United States were based on a similar carefully balanced view of human nature: People are naturally selfish and need watching. But democratic self-government is possible because we’re smart enough to design structures to police that selfishness.

James Madison put it well: “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind, which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.” But, over the years, this balanced wisdom was lost. Leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it. A gigantic polling apparatus has developed to help leaders anticipate and respond to popular whims. Democratic politicians adopt the mind-set of marketing executives. Give the customer what he wants. The customer is always right.

Having lost a sense of their own frailty, many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements. They become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs. Like any normal set of human beings, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay. The consequences of this shift are now obvious. In Europe and America, governments have made promises they can’t afford to fulfill. At the same time, the decision-making machinery is breaking down. American and European capitals still have the structures inherited from the past, but without the self-restraining ethos that made them function.

The American decentralized system of checks and balances has transmogrified into a fragmented system that scatters responsibility. Congress is capable of passing laws that give people benefits with borrowed money, but it gridlocks when it tries to impose self-restraint.The Obama campaign issues its famous “Julia” ad, which perfectly embodies the vision of government as a national Sugar Daddy, delivering free money and goodies up and down the life cycle. The Citizens United case gives well-financed interests tremendous power to preserve or acquire tax breaks and regulatory deals. American senior citizens receive health benefits that cost many times more than the contributions they put into the system.

In Europe, workers across the Continent want great lifestyles without long work hours. They want dynamic capitalism but also personal security. European welfare states go broke trying to deliver these impossibilities.

The European ruling classes once had their power checked through daily contact with the tumble of national politics. But now those ruling classes have built a technocratic apparatus, the European Union, operating far above popular scrutiny. Decisions that reshape the destinies of families and nations are being made at some mysterious, transnational level. Few Europeans can tell who is making decisions or who is to blame if they go wrong, so, of course, they feel powerless and distrustful.

Western democratic systems were based on a balance between self-doubt and self-confidence. They worked because there were structures that protected the voters from themselves and the rulers from themselves. Once people lost a sense of their own weakness, the self-doubt went away and the chastening structures were overwhelmed. It became madness to restrain your own desires because surely your rivals over yonder would not be restraining theirs.
This is one of the reasons why Europe and the United States are facing debt crises and political dysfunction at the same time. People used to believe that human depravity was self-evident and democratic self-government was fragile. Now they think depravity is nonexistent and they take self-government for granted.

Neither the United States nor the European model will work again until we rediscover and acknowledge our own natural weaknesses and learn to police rather than lionize our impulses.

I’m convinced my brain is biodegrading. Today I went to the grocery store – at least, I think it was today. I had made a list of things I needed, but left the list at home. So I wandered the aisles, trying to remember what I had gone there to buy, finally deciding on coffee. Yes, that’s it, coffee, because like most people my age I’m convinced that all I need is a little kick of caffeine and my brain will sputter to life!

I set off with firm purpose, but halted in the pet aisle, suddenly unsure that I had enough birdseed. If you’ve got a pet bird, you
understand the problem here. If it’s 10:00 PM and you’re out of birdseed, you can’t just order a pizza for your bird, even one with a sesame seed crust;you’ve got to head out into the cold and dark to find an all-night bird-food store, first fortifying yourself with a cup of coffee so you’ll remember where you’re going. I finally decided not to pick up any bird seed, because (a) surely I’d remember if I were out, and (b) I don’t own a bird.

I stopped at the dairy case, but didn’t buy anything because I realized that actually I Can Believe It’s Not Butter! A little while later a clerk noticed me reading the label on some prenatal vitamins and asked if I needed help.

“Yes,” I told him. “‘TMm looking for…” I made vague hand gestures, hoping he would somehow guess what I wanted, since I couldn’t actually recall, myself. He frowned. “You need a Bill O’Reilly action figure?” I was pretty sure I already had one of those, but I didn’t want to appear to have forgotten why I came to the grocery store. “Yes, and, um, marmalade to go with it.”

I was following him when we passed the coffee display, and something trickled into my brain that felt very much akin to a thought.”Not marmalade! Coffee! That’s what I meant!” Joyously, I grabbed a bag of the stuff, pumping the hand of the clerk, who was glancing around as if to locate my legal guardian.

On the way to the cash register I walked up the pet aisle and paused in front of the birdseed, feeling troubled about something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I paid for my purchase at checkout with a credit card because when I attempted to use my debit card I couldn’t remember my PIN. Whistling cheerfully, I started to leave, but the checkout clerk summoned me back.”Sir! You forgot your card.” I shook my head as if this was the first time in my life I’d ever done something so foolish. The clerk smiled at me when I retrieved my card and turned away, but called out to me when I’d only gone a few steps.”Sir! Your coffee?” I stopped. “My what?” “Your coffee, sir.” I regarded her blankly. “My what?” “You forgot your coffee.”

We stared at each other until finally she sighed and held up the bag, shaking it gently.”Oh, right! My coffee!” I laughed in a “this-is-our-little-joke”
fashion. The security guard appeared at my elbow to make sure there were no additional problems.

In the parking lot, as I backed out of my space, I was startled by a thump on my hood, as if a bird had died of hunger in mid-flight and landed on my car. It turned out to be the bag of coffee, which I had left on my roof as I searched for five minutes for the keys I had been holding in my left hand. I did not leave the coffee in my car when I got home; I drove with the bag tucked into my lap. However, because I set it down to try to find the house key that turned out to be in my left hand, I wound up leaving my purchase on the front stoop for half an hour. Eventually, I retrieved it and tried to put it in the freezer, but I couldn’t – there was no room.

It was full of coffee.

A wine bottle fell from a wagon and
broke open in a field.

That night one hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered

and did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
and began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the “night candle” rose into the sky
and one drunk creature,
laying down his instrument,
said to his friend ~
for no apparent Reason,

“What should we do about that moon?”

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music
Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift — versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Web archive of Panhala postings: www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html

Polar Bear: “I come in Peace.”

Norbert Rosing’s striking images of a wild polar bear coming upon Tethered sled dogs in the Wilds of Canada’s Hudson Bay…

The Photographer was sure that he was going to see the end of his dogs when the Polar bear wandered in.



It’s hard to believe that this polar bear only needed to hug someone!

The Polar Bear Returned every night that week to play with the dogs.

At 120 Degrees in Australia, it was so hot for a week that Koalas were asking people for water… It’s never been seen before.


One went to a house to try to hide from the heat and to get a bit of shade, and here’s what happened when the owner gave him something to drink.