December 23, 2015

Venezuela, The Vindication of Capitalist Democracy

          The evolution of Capitalist Democracy in the Americas clearly began with the creation of the United States of America. Its success has been predicated on this nation’s faithfulness to its original constitution.  America has preserved the fundamental pillars of its democracy, which are many but revolve around the Bill of Rights.  Furthermore, America created the fertile ground for democracy in Latin America by the liberation of those nations from European colonial rule, through the many manifestations of the American Monroe Doctrine.  It is undeniable that America has acted with self-serving interest and often abusively in its early relationship with other nations of this hemisphere.  However, the American government and its power classes have also acted abusively with its own people if we consider the plight of American Indians, slavery, and many other unsavory examples in its national development.  Humans everywhere have improved slowly.

          We can say that America acted in self-defense throughout the Cold War without discussing past recriminations and focusing only on the post-World War II period.  It was this survival mode that led America to support anti-communist dictators in Latin America, oftentimes with military intervention.  Free elections in Latin America during the period of the Cold War, with masses of angry people living in poverty, would have created a series of elected communist regimes.  In fact, it did in Chile. 

          The reality of Latin American dictatorships, although anti-communist, was one of repression and violence.  The opposition found allies in revolutionary communist movements and even in segments of the Catholic Church, which developed a radical form of Liberation Theology.  During this period, America found itself in opposition to social justice, even though the alternative was more repression and violence under communism.

          The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War has created a fascinating phenomenon; America has adopted a hand-off policy to Latin American democratic choices. Thus, we have communist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia… These governments present themselves as democratic socialist movements to obtain power, and then they rapidly move towards totalitarian socialist regimes, which is the essence of communism.  Communist regimes, once in power, either by revolution or election, dismantle democratic institutions and perpetuate themselves through force.  Eventually, these communist regimes suffered economic collapse.  Cuba has been able to avoid total economic collapse because of subsidies from Russia and Venezuela. 

          The system of Democratic Socialism has been allowed the opportunity to demonstrate its wonderful promises. So far, the sharing of wealth in Venezuela, as in Cuba, has led to societies that only share their misery.  There is simply no substitute for the productive capacity of free human spirits in pursuit of their own interest within a framework of a fair set of laws.  Economies thrive in free and fair competition for riches. Social justice cannot be achieved by centralized totalitarian control but by allowing free human beings to incorporate compassion, mercy, and love in their social institutions under the inspiration of their belief in God.   

          Venezuela struggles to regain its right to free determination through free elections, and the most recent electoral results show a desire for change.  The people of Venezuela have learned that socialism cannot deliver on its promise.  There are two options ahead for the socialist government; one, to accept a gradual return to capitalist democracy through a continuation of free elections, and two, to unmask its true identity and unleash its military on its opposition.  America also has two options ahead if the Venezuelan military suppresses all freedom; one, adopt a laissez-faire posture and watch it happen, or two, pursue regime change.  Ideally, a military force from Latin American democracies, with American logistical support, can force free elections in Venezuela.  Furthermore, such an alliance can establish a new diplomatic doctrine of democracy for all in all of Latin America.  

          That military force, with American support, should be strictly Latin American.  The communist parties have the right to compete in free elections. Still, they should never again be allowed to, once in power, eliminate a free press, political opposition, and free elections.  Communism, with its totalitarian essence, must be prohibited.  A multi-national Latin American army should preclude the creation of dictatorships either from the left or the right and someday make possible a Latin American Democratic 
Federation. 

Puerto Rico; The Canary in the Mine

Puerto Rico, the American territory in the Caribbean Sea, has become an economic basket case, a la Greece.  It is now the butt of jokes for television comedians, and it is being used as a Boogie Man to sell alternative investment instruments.  The sad part of this story is not the hardship that the Puerto Rican people will inevitably endure but the failure of the American population to grasp the simple fact that Puerto Rico is but the canary in the American national mine.  The irredeemable Puerto Rican national debt, or Greece's for that matter, pale by comparison to the $19 trillion American debt.  It is not a question of what Puerto Rico, Greece, and others will do to save themselves but what we can all do together to save humanity from another universal economic depression and to alter the please-everyone management style of modern governance.

Landing Zone, Volume 2

I have just published the second volume of the seven-book series on the Vietnam War, entitled "Landing Zone: The Shock."  More information on my website at www.CarlosArce.net.  Download a digital copy of the book from Amazon.com following this link - http://ow.ly/MJ93C

Surrender Management: Relative Morality

This writing states that the future of our successful society is intrinsically predicated on the outcome of our culture wars. The book touches on the nature of good and evil, the making of American general moral values, and the evolution of a multi-cultural America. It analyzes the growth of moral tolerance and how it continually pushes the limits, as well as the emergence of active secularism and moral relativism.

Many are the frightening questions we inevitably face: Will we continue to deny the poor credible police protection in their neighborhoods, adequate representation in our courts, and humane treatment in our prisons?  Will the battle over homosexual marriage and the rights of bisexuals morph into a debate over polygamy?  Will the argument over late-term abortion grow into a debate over how human is a baby in the first few months of life?  Will this generation of Americans continue to borrow and spend until only a bankrupt state is inherited by our children?

Intelligent people disagree on the causes and solutions to our dilemmas, or if there are any. Yet, Dostoyevsky's words continue to resonate with me: "If there is no God, everything is permitted."

www.CarlosArce.net

Relative Morality: Surrender Management at - http://ow.ly/MsMYG

American Jobs

Good American jobs are defined as those that have an American salary and carry American benefits.  The other jobs are those in other countries that pay less and offer fewer benefits.  The problem for Americans is that the lack of competition for good American jobs in yesteryears made our citizens educationally lazy, while disciplined Asian populations surged ahead in the knowledge competition.  Now we find that a good American job, European job, Japanese job, or Chinese job, or any other good job in the world will be auctioned off to the highest qualified applicant at the lowest price simply because Internet-based remote machine operations, teleconferences, virtual reality, and all the wonders of the cyber universe make it possible because it can be.

In the near future, a good job will be any available job in the world.  Americans are already getting used to being paid less for their work, as others around the world are delighted to be getting paid more.  Not too long from now, salaries will level off for everyone, and the dream world of a large middle class will be shared by many nations.  The question of how large will the American middle class be in the future is answered with another question; how fast will America fix its educational mess?

To download a copy of the book, follow the link below:

"Education Disaster in America": http://ow.ly/LFa6F

Please visit my website at www.CarlosArce.net

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My Copper Statuettes

These are some of the copper wire statuettes I have made over time and continue to make today.  Some have already been sold in an art gallery and will be available in others in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Palm Beach.  They are also available online through Amazon.com. For more information, please visit my website with the following link:

www.CarlosArce.net

How Do You Try to Write About a War

    

     How do you try to write about a war? You don't; you just do. I am beginning to publish a seven-volume serial novel on the Vietnam War, Landing Zone. The first book is entitled "The Beginning."

        This novel is not an autobiography, although it is substantially autobiographical.  It is based on my own one-year tour as an airborne ranger and infantry sergeant with a Recon Platoon of the First Cavalry Division-Airmobile in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia.  I write about the things that I expe­rienced and the things that I saw, as well as what I was told by fellow sol­diers in Vietnam about what they had experienced and they had seen.  It is an accurate portrayal of a combat soldier in Vietnam.

        Each of the 38 chapters of the novel is interconnected through the protagonist's experiences; nevertheless, every chapter is designed to stand alone as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Many serious and important issues about the Vietnam War are discussed or simply mentioned in the book as part of the plot, but the ultimate judgment is reserved for the reader.      

        There are over 500 photographs and some drawings and graphs, which are interspersed throughout the text of the novel to provide clarity and enhance understanding.  These visual aids have been selected from many thousands researched on the internet; they were deemed to be the most relevant and suitable for the particular story being told.  Photos or illustrations are used as an author’s creation, as public domain, or as “Fair Use” within the copyright rules of the United States.  They also serve to provide a parallel photo history of the war.

        I should finish publishing all seven books by the end of the summer. The first one is already available for digital download from Amazon.com for those of you interested in what really happened to America in Vietnam. 

Please share!

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The following link is provided for the book in Amazon.com:   http://ow.ly/LjApm

America, a Drug Consuming Society

America, a Drug Consuming Society

        

 It is fair to say that America has a drug problem, and it is also fair to say that we are not the only ones in the world with a drug problem.  From time immemorial, the human race everywhere has had a drug abuse problem.  The issue is a matter of degree.  The societies in the United States and many countries in Europe, because of their unprecedented national wealth and their free society systems, have reached a very high level of drug abuse.  The abundance of disposable income available to the average individual in the United States provides them with the uncommon opportunity to afford the cost of frequent recreational drug use.  It is estimated that 60% of all illegal drugs produced in the world are consumed by Americans, who make up 5% of the world's population.

The rampant use of illegal drugs in our society has been substantially responsible for a host of major social problems, the general deterioration of social organization, and the weakening of the basic moral fiber of the nation.  The American people, like people everywhere in the free world, feel powerless and helpless in the face of a drug use epidemic throughout its entire society.  This is the one area of social crisis where people are most likely to say, “There’s nothing that can be done;” this is the one area where we have surrendered the most.  Surrendering is not an option; it is a suicide pact.  Our society has to fight back, but it has to fight smart.  It is not just a matter of tougher law enforcement and better prevention and treatment programs; a new winning strategy with a fundamental revamping of our national drug policy is in order.  The problem does not primarily stem from drug production abroad, and it is not happening because of our inability to detect the sale of hundreds of millions of little bags of dope on street corners; we need to look at our society's demand for drugs and at official corruption at home.  This book aims to suggest a new course of action.

Visit my website: www.CarlosArce.net

Download a digital copy 

from Amazon.com:  Drugs in America: Surrender Management

Individual Accountability and the National Debt

Individual Accountability and the National Debt

Is it seventeen or is it eighteen trillion dollars of national debt, which we will have following the next debt ceiling escalation? It is hard to keep track. The so-called “unfunded obligations,” which are measured in hundreds of trillions of dollars when state and municipal profligacy is factored in, are not accidental calamities but underhanded, back-door scrounging of national vitality. It’s useless to search for smoking guns; we are all to blame to some degree. It is the system that has failed; it has moved our population from abundance to complacency and dependence. Unions and associations concentrate political power and compel legislators to give evermore entitlements to their members. Ben Franklin warned that “when the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Citizens cry for more benefits for themselves while lamenting the crushing national debt. Political leaders struggle to balance patriotism against electoral reality.

People will not voluntarily give back excessive benefits, however under served, and pending congressional compromise over the method of fiscal suicide is no consolation. The “sine qua non” element is constitutional amendments. Universal respect for our constitution has been the essence of our national success, and it is the key to our future survival. Two specific constitutional amendments, “sanity amendments,” are desperately needed: a balanced budget amendment and a national debt repayment amendment. A balanced budget amendment would coerce partisans into sharing the dreadful but unavoidable national pain. Our country’s predicament is comparable to a recent movie called “127 Hours,” where a hiker gets one arm trapped by a fallen rock and is ultimately forced to cut off his own arm to survive.

Every citizen expects to get what they paid for, and rightfully so. It is a common misconception of retired Americans, however, that the Social Security and Medicare benefits that they now enjoy correspond to their previous contributions. Let’s begin by reporting a fair and honest accounting of every citizen’s contribution to the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs. Let every person know what they put in, what a fair interest in that money has produced for them, and the total amount that in justice belongs to them. Let’s clearly pinpoint the end of everyone’s rightful compensation and the beginning of social charity. No person in need should be abandoned, but it begs the question, is anyone opposed to means-testing of deficit-financed social charity? We all have to accept that not all seniors are alike; some can pay their own way, while many more can partly contribute to their own retirement and medical costs.

A debt repayment amendment is never mentioned, and this is a major part of the problem. It is not enough to balance the budget over a number of years; the devastating debt we already have will zap our economy. A constitutional amendment will accomplish two very important things: it will create a debt repayment regime, and it will make it difficult for future legislatures to raise the national debt ceiling. A repayment regime would have to be designed as a generational, 75-100-year amortization plan. It would also require its own dedicated, tax-based revenue stream. Future augmentation of the national debt would not result from a painless stroke of the pen but with a corresponding increase in very public, mandatory taxes.

A final consideration for fiscal responsibility is the need to prepare for massive national spending on domestic issues like failing schools, illegal immigration, overcrowded prisons, energy dependence, crumbling infrastructure …, as well as possible expenditures for international issues like a pending space race with China, growing military and humanitarian involvement in developing Arab revolutions, possible escalation of our war on terror … As a society, we can and have practice “surrender management,” it is the inevitable result of a refusal to sacrifice. Immunity from sacrifice is not an American entitlement.

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www.carlosarce.net

Download a digital copy of this book at www.Amazon.com

It’s Time for National Youth Service

It’s Time for National Youth Service

The most valuable and most underutilized American asset is our youth population.    The United States is not a small nation; in fact, it has the third largest population in the world, after China and India.  American youth between the ages of 18 and 24 exceeds 24 million citizens. We speculate that at least half of them are high school graduates, computer literate, physically healthy, and mentally stable. This would give us a large quality pool of no less than 12 million young Americans.

        We are facing a sad reality in America with the overall state of our youth when we judge by American standards.  Our national school dropout rate stands at 30%.  The figures are more distressing when we look at the dropout rate among minority youth, which is reported to be over 50%.  It becomes outright heartbreaking in some parts of the country, as is the case in New York City, where the school dropout rate among black youth is above 70%.  The American youth that does graduate from high school is, as a group, notoriously below international achievement levels for developed nations.   Other metrics of American youth are equally troubling.  In many ways much of our youth is disconnected from our society, mostly because we ask very little from it; it is the classic tyranny of low expectations.  Perhaps we can begin to require more of our youth, to whom much is given by our nation.

Conscription of youth into national service has existed in practically all societies in human history.  For us, it was last applied during the Vietnam War when 1.8 million young American men were called into military service.  At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, and following a national trauma over massive youth anti-draft demonstrations throughout that War, our nation opted to discontinue the draft in favor of the creation of an all-volunteer army.  It was a capitulation to a rebellious segment of our youth and a clear example of surrender management in our government.

In times of war, our Army quietly suffers with insufficient manpower, using “stop loss,” the involuntary extension of soldiers’ enlistment agreements, to maintain manpower levels; over 50,000 of our troops have been subjected to this reprehensible “back-door draft.”  It is also disgraceful for our nation to require our soldiers to serve multiple combat tours while virtually all of our youth stay home, oblivious to our nation’s involvement in foreign wars and in an international anti-terrorism campaign.  America as a nation should bow its head in shame given the record numbers of suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder among our returning, multiple combat-tour serving troops, as well as among the neglected Vietnam veterans.  The real issue is not the legitimacy or morality of our present wars; it is the injustice and the foolishness of exempting our able young men from national service in times of war.  The Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that the segregation of soldiers from society leads to unstable political order, while the more contemporary French thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau theorized that ending conscription precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire.  Our country is a good and great nation with many good qualities; granting our youth a “free lunch” is not one of them.

        We should create a national youth service program with the re-establishment of a lottery-based conscription system.  One specific proposal presented here is the creation of a National Service Auxiliary Corps (NYAC), which would operate in a quasi-military manner.  Recruits would train and reside in camps, and they would be relocated around the country as needed.  Units would be detachable to serve within regular government agencies, like police, schools, immigration, public health, social services, etc.  Let’s not think for a moment that the bulk of our youth would complain; they are waiting for an opportunity to become proud Americans.  Let’s call on them to help us stop saying that “nothing can be done” about our intractable problems; let’s once more become a united, “can do” nation.

Available for digital download from Amazon.com
The American Disconnected Youth

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Carlos Arce Website

Undocumented Immigration Misunderstanding

Undocumented Immigration Misunderstanding

The undocumented immigration crisis will not be resolved without an effective mechanism to prevent future illegal immigration, both through border crossing and through Visa overstaying.  All opposition to the legalization of the 11+ million undocumented residents will eventually disappear after that.  The insistence by some on the granting of another amnesty, number eight since 1986, without preventing future illegal entry, is disingenuous and divisive; it also prolongs the suffering of the millions living in the shadows.  We do need millions of immigrants to come to America, but it needs to be a diverse group representing many parts of the world.  Each cultural group needs to arrive in digestible numbers so that our cultural assimilation machine continues to work without being overwhelmed by any cultural group.

Available for digital download from Amazon.com
Undocumented Immigration in America

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Carlos Arce Website