Militant Moderation

One thing that dooms a lot of diets and attempts at lifestyle change is an unrealistic goal.  Some people put a picture of when they looked good in a bathing suit on the refrigerator door as a symbol of their goal.  This may work when you want to loose 10 or 20 pounds to look like you did 2 or 3 years ago.  When you are 56 years old and your weight is over 290 pounds, a picture from when you looked good is just kidding yourself.

When Libertarians talk about returning to a political and social  set up like there was in 1776,  it is no more realistic than trying to look like I did when I was 20.  We cannot go back.  Then we were a small country with a small, spread out, rural population.  We were out in the boondocks separated from the great powers by oceans that took days if not weeks to cross.  A cannon that could be drawn by a team of horses was considered a weapon of mass destruction.

Today we are the 3rd largest nation in the world.  We produce over 20% of the world’s wealth.  ICBMs can reach any part of the globe in 20 minutes or less.  The oceans no longer protect us.  Asymmetrical warfare makes it possible for small nations and even non-nation enemies to inflict terrifying damage on our economy and even our citizens.  We cannot live in the past and America knows it, even if many Libertarians do not.

Just because we cannot return to the past does not mean we cannot learn from it.  America can be a better place where we can again be optimistic about our children’s futures.  By optimism, I don’t mean the “Yes we can” of the Obama administration.  That optimism is the joy of dropping the bag of deficit chips, leveraging ourselves off the couch and heading for the all you can eat buffet.

Once the nation sits bloated with the aftermath of this current feeding frenzy, it will be ready to listen.  Not to the GOP saying forget the food poisoning, remember the great meals we cooked up, but to us saying stop thinking only about your stomach.  We can tell you how to start feeling better now.

One of the differences between this attempt at lifestyle modification and past attempts is that although my goal is a total lifestyle makeover, I am not trying to change everything at once.  One aspect of my life, my sleeping patterns was chosen because it seemed that it could have the most effect with the least effort and that is where I started.

There is a real temptation when trying to reform society to try and tackle everything at once, this has been the history of Libertarianism.  For 30 years we have put forth what America needs to do to get back in shape.  America looks up from the couch, looks at what we have to offer, and says,”Can’t be done”.  It then goes back to chowing down on “deficit potato chip” while getting reabsorbed in the fantasy world the politicians present them.

Even if the reforms Libertarians present are correct, they are wrong if we cannot get them implimented.  30 years of failure should be enough to convince us that it is time to try something different.

It’s been said that if you plan to reform society, first reform your self.  As I approach my 56th birthday this week, I’ve decided to take up that challenge.  After all, I’m not famous enough to preach from the grave and I’m old enough to know that the alternative to growing older is not staying young but growing green and moldy.

My wife Julie for some odd reason wants me to stay around and is advising me on my lifestyle reforms.  The first problem I’m attacking is my sleep pattern, mainly a lack of sleep.  During the school year I usually sleep 4 to 5 hours a night.  The goal is to get this up to 8 hours in the summer and then try to keep it there during the school year.

We decided to start with sleep because of what my wife read in a book, The Schwarzbein Principle II, The Transition, by Diana Schwarzbein, M.D.  Why do I trust Dr. Schwarzbein?  I don’t, but I trust my wife.  Julie has spent the last decade learning about and dealing with my younger son’s autism.  I don’t know if autism can be cured, but I know that Alex has gone from a student who could not be in a regular classroom because he was so disruptive to a student that others want to have as a partner on any creative project.

Although my personal reforms are not the focus of this blog, I will be posting updates and reflections as the reforms continue.