Granddad’s Dictionary

Table of Contents

Introduction
Accountability
Activists
American Exceptionalism
Ante
Arrogance
Art
Bureaucrats
Charity
Christianity
Civilization
Civilution
Climate Change
Competition
Consumerism
Corruptiion
Curiosity
Debt
Democracy
Disparity
Economics
Education
Education, Post Secondary
Elegance
Equality
Feminism
Forgiveness
Goals
Greed
Guns
Humility
Idealism
Immigration
Inheritance
Integrity
Islam
Jail
Judgment
Justice
Loss
Love
Luck
Marriage
Medicine
Meditation
Moderation
Native Americans
Paradise
Perseverance
Ponzi Scheme
Poverty
Rape
Regret
Regulation
Religion
Sanctimony
Security
Slavery
Standards
Statistics
Stress
Subsidiarity
Taxes and Subsidies
Time
Vertical Pronoun (The)
Victims
Acknowledgements

Excerpts

Arrogance

Arrogance is a learning disability. One who already knows everything, or thinks that he does has lost all thirst and incentive for learning.

Competition

Competition by its nature helps us to perfect ourselves, and makes us more unequal. We celebrate the athlete who hones skills and the coach who hones athletes and teams to record breaking championships.

We celebrate the Olympic Champions..... It seems normal and appropriate that the fourth best in the world gets no medal, no sponsorships, no celebrity, only the thrill of competing.

Corruption

There cannot be corruption when a well-informed buyer, of his own free will, makes a purchase with his own funds from a seller who faces competition! This is the moral imperative for free markets and for limiting the scope of government control of the economy.

Curiosity

The child in all of us who asks why and how has a great advantage in life. First, it is much more difficult to fool the curious. The curious do not take an assertion as a given. The curious want to understand the basis for any assertion, and thereby confound both the prevaricator and the naïve.

Debt

Accumulating debt is like bleeding to death. A need is perceived, and resources are spent before they are on hand. At the moment, it feels as innocent as a pin-prick. It feels so much better to enjoy the consumption than to avoid the pin-prick. Bleeding to death is not painful. Even at the point of no return, the organism feels fatigue, perhaps some euphoria of relaxation, but not pain. The last realization that it is no longer possible to control one’s own destiny, comes gradually. So it is with debt.

Equality

Nowhere in the wisdom of the ages is it said that we are all equally smart, equally talented, equally righteous, equally deserving or equally lucky. Nowhere is it written that we should be equally rich, equally healthy, or equally revered. Nowhere has there ever existed a civilization without huge discrepancies in power, wealth and intelligence.

Greed

Greed is a lot like garlic. Used properly, garlic adds complexity and delicacy with a little kick. It stimulates our taste buds. It gives our diet variety and interest. Yet as a diet staple, garlic provides little nourishment and makes our every pore reek.

Idealism

Idealism is by its nature dedication to the impossible. The idealist is often tempted to sacrifice the best possible for hope of the best imaginable.

Immigration

The ancestral home of nearly everyone in America is somewhere else. We all came here looking for a better opportunity and we found it. More than that we each brought our ingenuity and our labor and made America an even better place. Most of us were not pretty when we arrived.

Medicine

The first (policy principal) is that no medical care system can work well without a relationship of trust between doctor and patient. To deny that relationship or degrade it by denigration or bureaucratic muddle is to damage health care for all.

Native Americans

Most Americans feel more than a tinge of guilt for the extermination of nine million or so Native Americans through brutality and disease accomplished in the process of developing and organizing our nation. Unfortunately, fewer of us focus on the theft and fraud visited upon the 240,000 that remained alive in 1887 and their descendants. This is perhaps an even more egregious chapter, and with no possible excuses related to the clash of civilizations or Manifest Destiny.

Perseverance

Perseverance is the act of persistence. It is being steadfast. It is not waiting or depending upon others to move ahead or to catch us when we fall. It is essential to succeeding in any but the most trivial enterprise. The more worthwhile or necessary the enterprise, the more essential perseverance becomes… Human history would have been very dull and probably very short without perseverance.

Poverty

Poverty is by definition an unsolvable problem. Those among us with the least are by definition the poor. No one believes it matters that our poor have wealth and incomes 100 times that of the poor in China. No one proposes that we give our resources to China so their poor can be as rich as our poor. What matters is that our poor are poor by local standards of today.

Statistics

When we hear or read any argument supported by a statistic, we should always remember that even the most honest author picks the best possible statistic available to support his argument, and presents it in the most convincing way. Statistics can be valuable for analysis and communications, but they are also often used to confuse or mislead.

Stress
Stress can be one of the greatest natural enemies of man. In well-known ways stress leads to heart disease, strokes, overeating and thus obesity and diabetes. It complicates many if not most other diseases. Yet stress is almost entirely self-inflicted.
Victims

If we teach our children that they are victims of a discrimination or disability or of any adversity, they will believe us, and accept “victimhood.” If we teach them to focus on their abilities, and their responsibility to manage whatever adversity they face, they will believe us and take charge of their own lives…. If we really believe that one in ten of our children and young adults should be designated as “disabled” and that the 20% of us with the least are “disadvantaged,” how can we hope for them to be heroes?