Operations Manual

How to operate and maintain good order and discipline for a ship of state:

• “America in Decay.” Foreign Affairs. N.p., 15 Nov. 2014. Web. 15 Nov. 2014. N.B. A brief summary of the conclusions Fukuyama discusses at greater length in his two volume magnum opus on political order (see next reference)
• Fukuyama, Francis. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2014.
• Howard, Philip K. The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government. New York. W W Norton & Co. 2014. N.B. A much more detailed analysis of why the federal government is broken and in decay.
• Lasch, Christopher. Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. New York. WW Norton & Co. 1995. N.B. A much more passionate argument from a respected historian and social critic that our form of government is threatened from within by self-serving professional elites.
• Rupp, K.D. The Maid of Gettysburg. Indianapolis, IN. 2012 N.B. A fictionalized short story of what Lasch said in his book. Written under a pseudonym, K.D. Rupp, for obvious reasons when I was actively serving in the military. You can visit the Rupp home in Gettysburg.
• Muller, Martin N. and Wrangham, Richard W. (Eds). Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans: An Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression Against Females. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, 2009. N.B. An evolutionary argument for why the maintenance of good order and discipline in men is imperative…for women.  Culture and political order are the means to achieve this end. When any cultural and political order decays beyond a tipping point it is always, 100% percent of the time very, very bad news for women. The sentinel social statistic that serves as a warning that such a tipping point is about to occur is when nationally women successfully commit suicide in greater numbers than men. China used to be the only nation with this distinction. Now Pakistan and Bangladesh have joined the lengthening list.
• Kristof, Nicholas D. and WuDunn, Sheryl. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. New York. Knopf. 2009 N.B. More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century, they write, detailing the rampant gendercide in the developing world.
• Scherr, Allan L. and Jensen, Michael C. A New Model of Leadership. Cambridge. Harvard NOM Research Paper No. 06-10. 2007. N.B. This paper will serve as our guide for how to think about, and better manage, all the above problems.