The consequences are many. Obviously, we do not have the collective ability to elect politicians who put American ideals first, ie an individual’s hard work results in personal economic well-being and independence from government; that a nation addicted to government welfare inevitably leads to economic bankruptcy not only through higher taxes but also through the necessity to borrow foreign credit required to uphold a state of welfare. The business climate, too, suffers, with expatriated companies setting up shop overseas along with their profits and jobs.

Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions, but perhaps not. With the recent passing of Steve Jobs, there have been some excellent articles/commentaries on Jobs and the company he created. Suffice to say that our economic choices have dire consequences – is the high human cost in the Asian suicide rate and child labor practice worth our adulation of companies such as Apple and the genius of those like Steve Jobs? I would say not.

Yet this does not abscond the Asian continent from its own guilt and compliance in the matter. What I would like to say is the death of someone like Jobs should give us all pause towards how we choose to live, especially in economic terms. Charity begins at home. Our ability to manufacture and produce our own goods on American soil also greatly reduces the moral hazard we all face each day at the supermarket in what we purchase.

Chalk it up to my Libertarian bent, but enough is enough. This marks the nth time in just the last eighteen months wherein Facebook has outright admitted to, has been suspected or has been accused of issues revolving around privacy. In the immediate term, the question is simple: Why haven’t you deleted your Facebook account yet?

Over on Mashable, Ben Parr recounts Zucker’s own admission in January 2010 that

[P]eople have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

Others have speculated in more eloquent opulence about the ghostly surrealism not only of actual privacy in our current age, but also the expectation of holding it within one’s grasp.

Humor lies within the irony of Facebook’s social relevance though the seriousness of the larger social picture dampens the mood. The fact of the matter is that the Zuckster tells us of the exact ill which plagues our society in plain language: People really have gotten comfortable sharing…infomation. In relation to the Facebook site, there isn’t much more than a passing late-afternoon yawn in our collective reaction. In and of itself, this might not be so bad. After all, the minute one connects to the internet, expectations of privacy are yesterday’s reality. ISP’s track us. Individual websites track us. Our preferences are warehoused and manipulated through banner-ads and, such as on Hulu, ads tailored especially for each viewer.

The trend of sharing information automatically passes into information collection and yet it still comes as a shock to the general populace when a company is “caught” or admits to the collection. The greater, and more depressing, issue is that we expect differently of our government, especially that one found in Washington, D.C. If people are comfortable enough to share their lives online, and soon with the new Facebook redesign, everything since they’ve been born, what right do we have to complain about traffic cameras? The criminalization of recreational drugs? ObamaCare?

I’ve heard many times the old adage that a republic is lost when the people discover how to vote themselves money. The antithesis is then perhaps that a republic is found where citizens’ privacy is of their utmost concern. After all, what is privacy other than how an individual chooses to live, though the coupling of choice and privacy is a double edge sword. For an individual cannot lay claim to either if his choice leads to the necessity of bureaucracy.

Disliking someone is one thing. To publish false statements about them is rather another thing, being childish at best.

As with other things in the past, I believe Palin misfired on this issue, too. Either sue the publisher and its author or do not. Stop dilly-dallying around by writing letters of possible intent to sue. On account of similarity, we all know how binding U.N. resolutions are.

September 11th continues to be the singular event in U.S. history wherein tragedy is celebrated on the same par as victory, ie V-E Day. And that is the real pinnacle of melancholy, unlike the destruction of the World Trade Center. September 11th didn’t happen because terrorists hate us for our freedom as Bush 43 and his ilk wished us to believe [sadly many of us still buy into that pile of malarkey]. Instead, our interventionism abroad finally ran into a theocratic system which repudiates everything we do to it. Rather than observing September 11th as a Day of Sorrow, we instead continue to look toward the future via the past – twentieth century foreign policy in the form of the destructive power of our bombs and the “heroism” of our troops.

Thus it is readily apparent that we still believe in Cold War tactics. Dulles’ CIA and its use of operative soft power -  Special Ops Forces and other directives which either prop up brutal dictatorships or depose them. LeMay’s Strategic Air Command – battleship groups, military bases and Central Commands set up in geographic locations throughout the world. This is done to emanate our potential ability to obliterate from the face of the earth any nation which threatens our “interests”.

It is no wonder how hubris is no longer found in the more benign form of seeing ourselves as a city upon a hill. It has found a new home in militarism and hawkish neo-con policy, evidenced in modernity in an illumined brilliance by George Tenet, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. To criticize our troops, to find fault with our adventurism, to question the military-industrial complex is to have true patriotism ridiculed. Whatever semblance of freedom we still clung to on September 1oth is gone. We are dithering in north Africa and Middle and Central Asia while our southern border has collapsed and we live in a morally and economically bankrupt society.

September 11th was a tragedy of epic proportions. Federalism is all but bled out. Come this year’s anniversary I will again refuse to observe it. I have too much pride.

Update

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman weighs in.

This knowledge deficit, and in particular a manifest failure and unwillingness to recognize the historical context and founding myths of Iran and in relationship with the West, has been tragically evident in the current crisis. Quite apart from the lack of strategic vision that led to the invasion of Iraq, it is now apparent that the Americans, and to some extent the Europeans, are struggling to find ways in which to solve the Iranian question. The consequence has been an over-dependence on rhetoric and demagoguery that has been confrontational rather than constructive, punitive rather than a means to a defined end. There has been a marked failure to distinguish between the state and the nation, and to recognize social changes and the political dynamic. Instead, much like Ahmadinejad, the preference has been to analyze Iran in the framework of a revolution that occurred more than a generation ago, as if all that has transpired since is inconsequential. More damning has been the failure to engage with Iran as a distinctive actor, as opposed to an extension of the Cold War or intra-Western rivalries. Particularly ineffective has been the tendency to view Iran through the familiar analogies of the Western experience, defining it as totalitarian and ignoring the complexities it represents. Such intellectual indolence may reflect a justified frustration, but it does not assist in the effective formation of policy. [p. 239]

Confronting Iran is worth reading for the nine page conclusion alone. For all that could be said about Western relations with Iran, especially U.S.-Iranian relations since at least 1953, Ansari concisely lays out the bare facts of those historical events that have been unfortunately developed into mythical allegories.

The reader would also be helping himself before approaching Confronting Iran by first beginning with two things. It would be wise to understand the concept of American Empire: its culture of militancy, both economic and otherwise, and the effect Empire has on not only how the world sees the U.S., but how the U.S. purposes itself upon the sovereignty of other nations in order to satisfy its own desires. One must also have at least some working knowledge of primeval Mohammadan Islam versus the modern world’s understanding of its militant form.

The fact of the matter is militant Islam gains credibility not only when the U.S. sticks its nose in the Near East for no apparent reason, but also when U.S. policies, whether through sanctions, rhetoric, or regime change, affect the otherwise likely economic prosperity of Near East nation-states. It is no small fact that our policies create havoc and give reason for those with no hope for economic self-sufficiency to join militant groups. One need only look to Stalin’s interference in Central Asia during the early Communist period in the 20th century to see how those societies are still affected from past outside interference.

In all, Confronting Iran is a timely read, especially in light of the views held by the near majority of current 2012 GOP presidential contenders.