I was fascinated when I came to the part about The Stockdale Effect in the book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t.

The Stockdale Effect refers to Admiral James Stockdale, he of Ross Perot running mate fame. And while Admiral Stockdale was ridiculed for his “why am I here” comment during the Vice-Presidential debates in 1992, the truth is that he was an extraordinary man.

He was captured in 1965 when his plane was shot down and he was forced to parachute into a village where he was promptly beaten senseless. He spent the next seven years as a Prisoner of War in the Hoa La prison where he was routinely tortured and beaten. His capturers expressed interest in using him as a propaganda tool to show how “humanely” the NVC treated their captives. Rather than allowing himself to be misused as a weapon against his country, Stockdale beat himself with a stool and slashed his face with a razor, permanently disfiguring his face and rendering their plans useless.

Just thinking of this makes me want to cry, possibly because I doubt my ability to be able to do this in the same situation. What an extraordinary man!

But what got me in the book was when the author spoke of meeting Stockdale and asking him how he made it out of the camp. Stockdale told him that the end result was never in question, he was going to get out and see his family again. Then the author asked him why some people didn’t make it out of the camp and Stockdale told him it was because they were optimists.

He explained that the optimists began by telling themselves and everyone else that they would be out by Christmas and Christmas came and went. Then they would be out by Easter and Easter came and went and eventually Christmas was back again and the optimists had become so demoralized by that point that they literally gave up. Stockdale rather focused on the stark reality of each day and met the challenges of each minute with brutal honesty with the understanding of what the final outcome will be, seizing daily opportunities to advance toward that goal as they presented themselves.

I’d like all conservatives to share in this Stockdale moment: even with all the power in the world, almost controlling three branches of Federal Congress, this Republican Party has become completely ineffectual at bringing about positive social changes to match their supposed worldview. In other words, they are not hitting the people in the heart.

Most Republicans (and conservatives for that matter) are suffering from this disease of optimism that Stockdale referred to. They think the fact that tax cuts were passed so quickly overshadows the fact that spending rose ridiculously under the same administration.

They think that a few pretty words about social security reform to “save the system” trumps the fact that the most heinous spending bills have been forced upon the American people in the form of the bullshit Education reform No Child Left Behind and Medicare Prescription Drug Supplement which really equal “Let’s drive good teachers out of the trade with ridiculous beauracratic hoops which treat learning like meat processing or building cars” and “Let’s confuse seniors so completely that they die of bewilderment trying to figure out a more complicated system than the jumble of crap they had just almost gotten used to while going broke at the same time.”

Let me make it clear that I believe in an America where every person has the opportunity to grab the mic and speak their peace, but I also believe that they must first earn the respect of their audience.

I believe in an America where each citizen’s life and property is protected by the government and where anyone can enter any local library and start being educated to move ahead into their vision of creative happiness.

I believe that when left alone in a system of trust and resource, human beings generally do the right thing but that there are those that don’t and that’s what jails and guns are for.

I believe that, so long as no one is endangering any one else’s life or property, we are each free to eat, drink, smoke, swallow or generally abuse our own bodies in any way we see fit and that the government has no more say in this than Santa Clause has over what color eggs are in the bunny’s basket come Easter.

It’s time for conservatives in this country to wake up and realize that the Corporatism that has marked the Bush years in office has left Conservatives (and trusting Independents like me) with a hunk a hunk a burning disappointment on the domestic front. The administration started off full of steam but we can see now that it was a Viagra induced erection, a smoke screen to hide the shady executives who now control the most powerful economy and military force in the world.

And it’s time for these emasculated corporate executives and unscrupulous trial lawyers who now desecrate the hallowed halls of a government built for the people, by the people, and of the people, to remember that one line in the Declaration of Indpenedence which reads:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

If that be treason, then make the most of it.

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