Real Reform, Part 1 Introduction
In A New Contract With America, I included a bullet point about qualifications for congressional committee and subcommittee chairs: “Enact congressional policies to require minimum qualifications for committee and subcommittee chairperson positions. These qualifications will be like qualifications required…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 1: Huntington and the Balance of Forces
When I entered West Point in 1977, we were told the military profession was a calling and something far more than a job. But even then, the forces that would become the social justice movement were already at work.…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 2: The Nutcracker
This piece builds on Part 1 of the series. It morphs the balancing scale in Part 1 into a nutcracker based on the increasing Societal Imperative pressures and complex security environment that place a premium on the Functional Imperative.…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 3: Corporateness and Bureaucracy
Part 1 of this series introduced Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State and discussed careerism and jobs. Part 2 discussed the declining trust the public has in the military and introduced the nutcracker using Huntington’s two imperative: functional and…
Deterrence and the Interagency Process, Part 1: Deterrence
I came across an interesting article on LinkedIn on deterrence and how the military should be in control of it. I started a comment and midway through; I opened another browser tab to a quick search. When I got back…
Regulatory Capture and other Bureaucratic Problems
The preamble to the Constitution states: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings…
The Rise of the American Bureaucracy
Figure Source: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/rTLobyGkc.htm The US has had a bureaucracy in one form or another since its founding. For the first 100 years, it was small and appointed by the President or his administration leaders. Pundits called this process the…
Operant Conditioning and Conditional Expectations and Change
In Operant Conditioning, Path Dependency and Societal Revolution, Part 2, I brought in the concept of expectation management, but did not develop it too much. This post looks at it in more detail and how it relates to and reinforces…
Can a Free Republic be a Superpower: Part 2a: Is the US a Superpower?
On the surface, this question seems almost silly. The US has a nuclear arsenal, one of the strongest economies, and outstanding military power. Yet we ran from Afghanistan with our tail between our legs in near total disgrace. We did…
Can a Free Republic be a Superpower? Part 1: Introduction
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the…
