“The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers.”
“Moral cowardice is fear of upholding the good because it is good, and fear of opposing the evil because it is evil. The next step leads to opposing the good in order to appease evil, and rushing out to seek the evil’s favor.”
– Ayn Rand
ExxonMobil switched strategies from principle to appeasement early in the first term of President Obama. I have watched, step-by-step, a great corporation become mediocre for the first time in its storied history.
I long for Lee Raymond, who was honest and demanding–with impressive results for the shareholder, employees, consumers, and the national/international economy.…
Ed Note: With tens of millions of Americans preparing for travel this Memorial Day weekend, Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of the Open Road‘ [Leaves of Grass (1856)] is apropos. His call to adventure in the mid-19th century, a time of Westward Expansion for the U.S., resonates for all of us today in travel.
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.…
“I have to admit, the ERCOT blackouts have shaken me. The amount of physical damage and human suffering they caused is astounding. Obviously, the “market” failed to provide the service reliability that customers expected and deserved.”
– Robert L. Borlick, Independent energy consultant, here
It is tough when your belief system gets rattled by reality. Very few people can handle that well. The best prevention strategy is to keep an open mind, and understand other views about as well as your own. Be polite, and stay modest (‘the higher you fly, the harder you fall’).
One longtime electricity planner, Robert L. Borlick, is angry. His ideal regulatory/planning system, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT/ERCOT), crashed. He is in denial, having claimed: