Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

So this post is a long time coming… Sunday is an exciting day for me, because I’ve been closely watching and researching how Web 2.0 is altering politics (by the way, I hate the term “Web 2.0″, but more on that later). One of the web’s main disruptive forces is its ability to level the playing field. As long as the government isn’t censoring things (like in China), everyone and anyone has an equal voice online. And their popularity and ability to spread their ideas is suddenly a function of the quality of their message.

In the past, if you wanted to get a message out, you needed to have access to the mainstream media (the TV networks, the newspapers, etc.). That was, of course, nearly impossible for the ordinary person for a couple of reasons. First, the editorial boards decided what was important, and second, put simply, money talks. If you don’t have it, or have a way to make it, they aren’t interested. Yes, it’s a sad statement, but why are almost all the major political candidates either extremely rich or connected to the rich?

The Internet however, is less interested in who’s rich. For the most part, it’s democratic. If you have page views (e.g. votes), you are important. Traffic is king. And traffic comes from content.

Content is important, so if you have it, you get massive support online. Mainstream politics is all about the sound bite: that five second clip for the TV news and that 10 word quote for the papers. On the Internet though, that isn’t enough; who’s going to care about a page that just has a five second video clip or 10 words?

Suddenly now you have to explain your arguments and since your audience has vast amounts of information at their fingertips, you better have put some thought into it. After all, any idiot with a blog can point out the flaws of poorly construed ideas pretty quickly.

Now along comes a little known Congressman from Texas: Ron Paul. I first heard of Dr. Paul in college. As I became involved in numerous political organizations in college, I got frustrated that all most of us knew were the usual soundbites. But what was missing was the depth of analysis; a lot of things sound great in a 15 second proposal. But they sound stupid once you start asking the right questions.

Ron Paul, though, in all his speeches and writing demonstrated an deep understanding of the topic and always gave a clear answer on why he was doing something. He voted against the Patriot Act, against the Iraqi War, and gave strong impassioned speeches against them. He’s never voted for a unbalanced budget and is known as “Dr. No” for voting against so many things in Congress.

When I saw the announcement that Ron Paul was running for president, I thought to myself, “Finally a candidate I can vote for in the primaries.” But I didn’t expect him to do that well, and figured that at least a few people would hear his strong defense of liberty and the world would be a slightly better place for it.

But, I’m amazed at the extent that this message of liberty has spread. The grassroots support has been unprecedented and Ron Paul has embraced it as any free market supporter has: just let the people do what they want.

As a result, his supporters have, among lots of other things:

• Launched a blimp (at a cost of over $250K)
• Arranged numerous airplane banner ads over major sporting events
• Self organized to an extent never seen before (nearly 88,000 Meetup volunteers, compared to 5,600 for Obama).
• Organized a campaign to send a handwritten letter to every voter in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. And they are almost done.
• Minted gold coins with Ron Paul likeness. And when the Fed raided and shut down the place, they created chocolate coins.
• Taken out full page ads in the USA Today

And, remember how money talks? Ron Paul supporters have organized fundraising campaigns completely independently of the official campaign. The November 5th “Money Bomb” was independently organized and raised $4.2 million in one day. And so far this quarter, Ron Paul has raised over $12 million, which is more than any Republican raised in all Q3.

The money is coming from ordinary people, not fatcats and lobbyists like the Hillarys of the world. According to RonPaulGraphs, his $12.1 million raised (so far) came from 140,000 people. This means that average donation was $86.

So normal people are the ones that are supporting this message and more and more people are trying to learn more about him. Check out this graph of people searching for Ron Paul on Google compared to the other candidates. The same forces that govern popularity online are translating into “the real world”: ordinary people can make a difference.

History has a handful of inflection points where something big happens, everyone stops takes notice, and the course of history changes. I think Sunday may be one of those days. Ron Paul supporters are using the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party to launch another 24 hour money bomb. I think that the millions that will be raised, the rallies held all over the nation, and the expression of the will of the people will surprise people. And they will take notice. And the world may change.

And just in case, if this is one of those important days in history, remember where you are on Sunday. One day your grandkids may ask you, “Where were you during the Tea Party of ‘07?”

Today is Milton Friedman Day, honoring the great economist who was “the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century, possibly of all of it (from The Economist, subscription required).” While at the time (post WWII) his support of the free market was considered radical and fringe, his views are now mainstream. In addition to changing the policies of US and UK governments, his ideas were studied underground in Soviet Russia and have played an important role in transforming the economies of countries like China and India.

He argued that if economic freedom is introduced in countries, political freedom will tend to result. A great example of this is Chile, which went from being ruled by Pinochet to peacefully adopting democracy.

In addition to having significant impact on the economies of the world, he pushed for very important domestic changes. His proposal to eliminate the draft in favor of a volunteer army was derided originally and now is nearly gospel. Any politician that wants to bring back the draft for the Iraq war is instantly derided as a nutcase.

He is also created the Permanent income hypothesis, which basically states that consumers’ consumption patterns are not determined by current income, but by their longer-term income expectations. The key conclusion being that transitory changes in income don’t change long run spending. It seems obvious now, but this idea came at a time where economists felt that people were immensely stupid consumers and needed the government to tell them what to buy and when.

PBS will be airing a documentary about the life and ideas of Friedman this week. I’ve set my “Tivo” and am looking forward to watching it. :-)

Today’s Martin Luther King, Jr. day. And we honor Dr. King by getting to stay home from work. :-) Google gives us this federal holiday off, while Microsoft didn’t. At Microsoft, we’d have to use one of our “floating holidays” if we want to stay home. So I get a nice 3 day weekend, while Crissy, coming off 2 snow days, gets a 5 day weekend!

When reading the Wikipedia article on Dr. King, I learned that he is one of only 4 individuals to have a federal holiday (the other 3 being Jesus, Washington, and Columbus). I thought that instead of Washington’s birthday we celebrated “Presidents’ Day”, but it turns out the official holiday is Washington’s birthday. He was born on Feb 22, but since, apparently, having a 3 day weekend is more important than honoring the actual day, we celebrate on the 3rd Monday of February.

In 1989, William Lind  was primary contributor to the idea of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). The simple definition of 4GW is any war or conflict where one of the major players is not a nation state, but a group that is bound by an ideology. Initially it was used to describe the Cold War period, where “warfare” used secrecy, terror, and subversion more than tanks, planes, and ships.

Since ideology is deeply involved in this sort of warfare, traditional military tactics can be detrimental. This analysis provides very interesting conclusions about American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Israeli operations in Lebanon and Palestine.

I found a good article on what the generations of warfare are here. The first generation is when battles were formal and orderly. Armies would dress nicely, meet on a field, line up across from each other and then kill each other.

Once more powerful weapons began more prevalent, this strategy became suicidal and was put aside. The second generation was developed by the French army in World War I: massive firepower. The goal is attrition, and can be summed up by, “The artillery conquers, and the infantry occupies.”

For all the Americans that make fun of the French, you should keep in mind that our army today uses the same tactics that French developed almost 100 years ago (i.e. “Shock and Awe”).

The Third Generation was popularized by the Germans: maneuver warfare (i.e. blitzkrieg). The goal here is not to use brute frontal force, but to get to an enemy rear position and collapse his army inward. Speed, surprise, and dislocation are much more important

With the US military stuck in second generation tactics, you can see why it takes so long to put a sufficient force on the ground. You have to move men and massive amounts of ordinance and infrastructure. For example, take Camp Anaconda: one of four major military bases in Iraq. It has 28,000 soldiers and 8,000 civilian contractors and offers movie theaters, American fast food and dance lessons. The air traffic is so heavy, that it is the second busiest airport in the world. I saw a PBS documentary on this camp. It’s fully air-conditioned and quite nice; especially compared to the tents and shacks that the native Iraqis live in next door.

There are very interesting things in the framework of this analysis, including the how the culture of martial order is changed through generations and how morality of actions may now be more powerful than any weapon.

Much more on this later…