The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth Edition) defines curmudgeon as “An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions”. I became a curmudgeon along about late 2008 when I watched the United States of America completely forsake the principles of its founding on behalf of a few bankers that didn’t understand how to manage risk. It made me ill-tempered and full of resentment, and left me clinging to stubborn notions, like the idea that best prescription for poor risk management is not socializing losses but is instead allowing the sufferance of pain by the risk managers that failed.
The immediate cause of my resentment was the rescue of the banks and of my previous industry–residential real estate–by a multitude of fiscal and monetary measures beginning in the latter half of 2008 and continuing until today.
In June of 2009, I closed my residential real estate law practice. I was simply unable to participate any further in the shenanigans–the fraud and deceit–that government rescue and takeover of the industry represented, and still does. Having served six years as an Army helicopter pilot in the eighties during the Cold War, ultimately witnessing the triumph of freedom over tyranny when the Berlin Wall fell along with the Soviet Union, it seemed obvious to me that all our sacrifices had been for naught. We won the Cold War only to adopt the philosophy of governance of our vanquished foes just two decades later.
I was able to quit because the boom years in real estate had been very good to me and my family. I was completely out of debt by my forty-second birthday (2004) and then used the remaining years to fortify the finances for the lean years that I knew–that anyone should have known–were coming.
I’m a 1985 Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Alabama school of Commerce and Business Administration where I majored in economics. I graduated in 1995 with a Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law. In between I spent six years flying helicopters for the US Army. My final tour of duty was Desert Storm.
I’m married with two children, ages sixteen (boy) and thirteen (girl). The boy recently underwent a second bone marrow transplant for relapsed leukemia that he’d had when he was seven. Closing my real estate law practice, though I did so a couple of months prior to knowing about the leukemia relapse, would have been necessary anyway. My wife was the primary caregiver the first go-around. It was my turn this time. Besides, she carried the insurance in her job with a too-big-to-fail bank.
I bought some farmland in Northeast Alabama in 2008–about the time it became clear to me that things might get very ugly before this is all resolved. I’m not a survivalist nut, but I am a survivor. It will be my family’s escape hatch if and when financial Armageddon finally arrives.
In the meantime, I decided it was time to join the debate. If nothing else, perhaps my jeremiads will one day prove prescience on my part. It’s really not hard to see that the United States is on an unsustainable trajectory, and that all this won’t end well. Consider this as something of a blog noir on where this all is leading.
The Curmudgeon's Attic 
Curmudgeon,
Found your blog through Barry’s site. Bet you’ve never heard that before…As a scientist (physicist), I have to take exception to something in your recent post on AGW, where you said “Scientists are conservative? Really? So, they never manipulate data to achieve results that they hoped their experiments would yield? Forgetting the reality of the e-mail scandal, how many scientists have ever stood before a podium to announce the results of their experiments to say, “We thought our research would reveal “x” problem was caused by “y”, but instead we found that “x” problem didn’t even exist”?”
Actually, scientists are “conservative” by nature- not meaning politically conservative, but trained as skeptics. As you rightly point out, good science requires skepticism. A scientist must remain skeptical even of a theory he is advocating.
As for finding and reporting results contrary to initial expectations, this happens all the time. Nobel Prizes are awarded for such findings, on occasion. We’s still be practicing blood-letting and astrology if we didn’t.
Otherwise, I respect your arguements, although I remain skeptical…leaning pro-AGW on details of science I won’t go into here.
DM
Thanks for your comments. Indeed, I did not mean to imply that scientists (the good ones) are not conservative, but as you say, are skeptical. We need more questioning skeptics about the science of global warming, not more shrill political analyses speculating about its imagined effects.
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Hello Curmudgeon! 🙂
I am a journalist from London and would want to indulge in a debate with you for one of my projects. If possible, please let me know your email id. Thanks
Have you read any of Russell Kirk’s works? You would probably like him.
I just made a comment on your review of John Mayer’s “Submarine” song — and have to say we have quite a bit in common. I’m also a lawyer (J.D. class of 2008), though I left that world some time ago. My brother was diagnosed with leukemia when we were both quite young – almost the same age as your son. We were a match for bone marrow donation, and although that procedure was successful, he passed away from later complications. This particular form of leukemia is now cured over 99% of the time with a pill, and I’m very grateful for that. My prayers and best wishes for your boy.