The Bosque Boys

What ants and bees can teach us about the benefits of a free society.

The July issue of the National Geographic contains a great article entitled "The Genius of Swarms." It presents scientific findings on the behavior of swarming animals such as the movement of shoals of fish, herds of caribou, and flocks of birds. None of these groups has a leader coordinating the response to a predator, yet the groups respond with movements that confuse the attacker, giving a better chance of escape. It seems that each individual, while unaware of the "big picture," moves in response to those around it according to certain simple ingrained rules.

Even more amazing is the swarm behavior of social insects such as ants and bees. Without leaders giving commands, the hive or hill functions efficiently through the choices of each member. While an individual ant or bee is not smart, the group behaves in an intelligent way.

One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all--at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.

Scientists are creating mathmatical/computer models of swarm behavior and finding fruitful applications. For example, a large company in Texas uses a computer model based on ant behavior to schedule delivery routes for its trucks--the money savings has been significant. Southwest Airlines is testing a similar model to manage plane traffic at the Phoenix airport.

Even more interesting, for the point of this blog, are the applications for human society. For example, bees choose a new hive during swarming based on the choice of a critical number of scouts: a bottom-up not a top-down decision making structure. One bee researcher has applied bee decision making methods to human choices.

The bees' rules for decision-making--seek a diversity of options, encourage free competition among ideas, and use an effective mechanism to narrow choices--so impressed [the researcher] that he now uses them at Cornell as chairman of his department.

So perhaps those who wish to create a command-economy and a society led by elites in a top-down manner, are the ones fighting nature. Free societies and free economies may be naturally more intelligent than elite managed ones.

Quick Thought on Campaign 2008:

Why I continue to predict "Clinton-44" with confidence:

Conventional wisdom and tradition seems to indicate that the "candidate of change" has the advantage in presidential elections.

For the most part, this is true during times of upheaval, real discontent and/or uncertainty:

Abraham Lincoln in 1860
FDR in 1932
Nixon in 1968
Ronald Reagan in 1980

It is also true that an adept challenger exaggerates a sense of crisis and manufactures a certain amount of discontent to win elections:

JFK in 1960
Bill Clinton in 1992

And it is also true that sometimes we the people grow restless with a pretty good thing, which is also a part of the explanation for 1992.

Do we really want change in 2008?

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton will advertise herself as the "agent of change" in the upcoming contest--but, realistically, that assertion is a hard sell. No one in this race (Republican or Democrat) seems more battle-hardened and grizzled than the Senator from New York.

The real question for Hillary is this: do Americans want real change or do we want to return to the status quo antebellum? I think the answer may surprise most of us.

If you visit the Clinton Library in Little Rock, you may purchase "I Miss Bill" bumper stickers. I am told they are top sellers.

If Hillary gets by Barack Obama in the primary, and I think she will, Mrs. Clinton represents a very appealing notion of nostalgia for our recent past--and even our present sans Iraq.

Forget about the facts for a moment. Perception is more important than the truth when it comes to politics and history. Most Americans are very angry and frustrated with George Bush at present. Mrs. Clinton will have the luxury of lambasting the sitting President, which should prove quite popular, but she will also offer an implicit promise of returning to the good old days of peace and prosperity and Clinton management.

Do we really want change? Americans are furious about Iraq and slightly discontented with some other things (it is the human condition to be less than satisfied), but most of us, if we took a moment to look hard and deep at our lives, are surprisingly content with our world as it is.

Yes, Mrs. Clinton will give lip service to global warming, universal healthcare and a fairer and more compassionate society--but, in essence, she will be selling more of the same with less incompetence.

My hunch is that it will be a winning pitch.

Previous Bosque Boys posts on Hillary-44:

From last September, "Clinton-44: Part I: If elected president of the United States in 2008, Hillary Clinton will make the least attractive and least affable chief executive of the modern media age. From the piercing laugh (oftentimes when nothing is funny) to the menacing scowl when the TV cameras catch her in unguarded moments, Mrs. Clinton tends to come across unnervingly manufactured, even soulless at times."

Nevertheless, "Why she's probably going to win..." (full post here).

UPDATE: Regular reader and commenter, Lily, directs us to this provocative piece on selecting a president: "Elect Mr. Right, not Mr. Right Now" here. Thank you.

A man who was a significant evangelical force in the pro-life movement from its early days died recently. This article from Christianity Today highlights his accomplishments.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the opposite corner of the state from me, is a small-sized city with a lot of tension over illegal immigration. This article from MSNBC captures the current mood of the town.

Some of the most aggrieved criticism of the Libby commutation last week came from sentencing guideline experts. Expressing outrage over special treatment, a number of legal specialists castigated the President for showing mercy to his subordinate after turning a cold shoulder to so many others over the course of his administration.

Is it hypocritical for the President to show leniency toward a loyal member of his administration--and not to others? On its face, we are hard-pressed to conclude anything other than blatant favoritism. Inarguably, these experts on sentencing practices have a point, especially in terms of the larger issue that they are attempting to spotlight.

On the other hand, the Libby case may tell us much more about Washington politics than it reveals about the American justice system in general. Rhetoric aside, Scooter Libby is no "ordinary Joe" convicted under normal circumstances.

Why is this different?

Customarily, an ordinary person does not contend with a top-flight US attorney, appointed as a special prosecutor with unlimited resources, instructed to devote all his energy toward investigating a specific incident, which may or may not have been a crime, and under intense pressure from the media and much of the political establishment in Washington to produce a public scalp.

In the end, the Prosecutor obtained a conviction. Nevertheless, the extraordinary nature of the case was exacerbated by the fact that the prosecutor did not charge Libby (or anyone else) with violating the law that originally precipitated the investigation.

Should the President treat Libby like just another convicted criminal under these circumstances?

It occurs to me that the proponents of sentencing reform are asking the wrong questions and scoring a few cheap debating points on an intensely political but not necessarily analogous event.

If, in the end, the President takes extraordinary action to spring a person of good character caught in a trap set through extraordinary means—then, that is the way the game is played. The constitutional power of the President trumps that of his tormentors. From check to check-mate on the Washington chessboard.

Other Bosque Boys thoughts on Scooter Libby:

"Bush and Libby: The Morning After" (ramifications) here.

"A Judicious Use of the President's Power: in his own words..." here.

The entire Bosque Boys file of posts pertaining to Libby here (click and scroll).

You may "bookmark" the Bosque Boys by clicking on the icon in the upper right corner.

I attended the national meeting of my denomination as a delegate last month. I hope to have a post covering that soon. But, for now, a bit on Canada and same-sex unions.

Our Canadian delegates usually were in the lead in opposition to any support for same-sex unions. I asked one of them about this. He told me that the churches in Canada felt under pressure from their society and government to conform to a mandate accepting same-sex unions.

He referred me to this article and this article.

The Canadian courts have mandated acceptance of same-sex unions. And, while religious institutions are exempt, the pressure continues. For example,

A Christian camp in Manitoba is facing a possible human rights complaint because it refused to rent to a gay and lesbian group. A British Columbia Board of Inquiry's recent ruling that the Knights of Columbus may refuse to rent their hall for a same-sex wedding reception because it violates their "core beliefs" as a religious organization is relevant to all churches that rent their facilities. While the tribunal ruled in the Knights of Columbus's favour, they were still fined "for injury to the lesbian couple's dignity, feelings and self-respect."

Here in the U.S. the Methodist Camp at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, faces a simliar situation. Perhaps churches and church camps in the U.S. may need to restrict public access to their facilities in order to avoid lawsuits from gays and lesbians.

A few weeks ago, I suggested that the Lugar "rupture" might not be a full-blown revolt at all. As I said then, I suspect the hand of [Secretary of Defense] Robert Gates in all this.

Recent reporting has hinted at Gates's inclination toward a revised role for American forces in Iraq, angling toward a reduced US presence in the near term. Read between the lines of this New York Times story here for some of that.

An aside: it is worth keeping in mind that Gates was a member of the Baker-Hamilton Commission.

You may re-read my 25 June summary of Lugar's speech here. As I said then, Lugar's analysis does not ignore the reasons why we are where we are. Moreover, his plan acknowledged that an irresponsible "redeployment" will prove disastrous to us and the world.

But his statement also acknowledged one undeniable, irrefutable, irresistible fact of life: No American President can fight (much less win) a war without the support of the American people. We can argue all day long about whether the people and politicians were right to abandon the President on this war--but those debates are completely irrelevant to the reality that the people have soured on Iraq, and retreat, at this point, is merely a matter of when and how.

My other question from that previous post, however, is actually the most crucial to our future:

If this signals that the President is willing to consider a "thoughtful Plan B," are the Democrats willing to forego political advantage to save the country?

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has released its findings on positions taken by the presidential candidates relating to LGBT issues. Here is the information in chart form (Adobe needed). Here is the press release (Adobe not needed).

No real surprises in the information. In general, the Democrat aspirants are much more committed to LGBT issues than are the Republican, though only two of the Dems explicitly support same-sex marriage--Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich. On the Republican side Rudy is in a weak first-place with his support for Civil Unions and opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Once more the modern Democrats show themselves to be the party committed to social change, and modern Republicans to be more committed to tradition.

I wrote this last year on the President's birthday. Back then his approval ratings were in the mid-30s. As he said recently, those were the good old days. My sense is that things won't always be this bad for Bush. We'll see. No matter, for all his faults, I continue to like the President and believe that he is a good man.

From this time last year:

My heart goes out to George W. Bush. I understand his “compassionate conservatism” in a way that defies reason or logic. That is, I share the President’s susceptibility to a lump in the throat.

Many of his critics see him as insincere (among other things), but I have no doubt that George Bush’s most powerful emotion is empathy. The President often gets into trouble with conservatives when he identifies too emotionally with people. “No Child Left Behind” was the product of his earnest belief that every child is important and deserves better. The “soft bigotry of low standards” was for him incredibly real.

One presidential psycho-analyst, published on the subject, avers that George Bush grew up fearing that he was the child being left behind. Maybe, this is the key to Bush the man.

For all of us who look at the world and see it as a scary, cruel place and feel damn lucky to have a good job and a loving, wonderful family, the “lump” comes rather easily. If you spent a great deal of your life worrying about screwing things up (I warned you this would be personal), and then one day the clouds open and you realize that you have been greatly blessed beyond anything you deserved, the “lump” is always in there, lurking just below the surface.

You can scoff at George Bush. Ann Richards famously said of his father: “George Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.” You can easily apply that kind of mean-spirited analysis to Bush the son. But it misses the point. In America, it is rather easy to get “picked-off” third base, and that is exactly what almost happened to George W. But he survived. For all the “swagger” and confidence, there is also the humility that comes from barely dodging a perilous bullet.

George Bush has the ability to look into the eyes of an immigrant family attempting to gain access to an American life and be moved. Or look at two young people on their wedding day and feel misty, knowing the joy of finding a soul mate but also the daunting task that awaits them. There is a depth of understanding in the President that comes only from a certain amount of personal pain and fear and inner struggle.

In many ways, Bush is the most human of the modern presidents. And on this week of his sixtieth [sixty-first] birthday, I offer a very personal thanks for his compassion and his attention to duty.

In closing, please consider my absolute favorite Bush line, which is also an excellent set of principles for Christian leadership (from his 2000 Acceptance Speech in Philadelphia):

I believe in tolerance, not in spite of my faith, but because of it.

I believe in a God who calls us, not to judge our neighbors, but to love them.

I believe in grace, because I have seen it ... In peace, because I have felt it ... In forgiveness, because I have needed it.

I believe true leadership is a process of addition, not an act of division. I will not attack a part of this country, because I want to lead the whole of it.

Other nice things I have said about the President over time:

"The Pain of the Presidency" here.

"Don't Feel Like the Lone Ranger" here.

"Pray for George Bush" here.

"Ranking Bush" here.

Kudos to Tocqueville, who predicted, way back when, that the ACLU had no standing in this case contesting the government’s use of warrantless surveillance to monitor suspected terrorists.

Full story via the Washington Post here.

Earlier Bosque Boys coverage here.