Iowa movie, Iran could be groovy

I feel it’s my duty to call everyone’s attention to the movie coming out this summer set in the Iowa Great Lakes Region (where my parents live and where I was a boat salesman in Summer 2005). You can check out the trailer and other information at Arnoldsparkmovie.com.

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Slate.com is my favorite web site. If there's something I’m interested in, almost without fail I click over to Slate and they have an article about it. I’ve been interested in Iran lately, partly because it’s in the news a lot as “meddling” neighbor to Iraq, but also because I’ve been enjoying some of their delightful packaged foodstuffs. Could jam this tasty really be the product of an evil axis? Perhaps these devilishly spicy pickles, but the jam? Really?

I have the feeling we’re really on the wrong track with Iran. I’m no expert, I’ll admit that readily. But the place seems to be about as stable as any country in the Middle East and it’s more democratic than most! I hate to say it, but it looks like Thomas Friedman has made my point for me here. Just kidding, I like Friedman, but I love the harsh critique here—laughed out loud, more than once.

I guess I think that if you believe our ideas and beliefs are better—well, we can trust in them and they can win for us. "Win" being others adopt these ideas and beliefs. I’m not sure I’m expressing that very well, but think about Vietnam. We spent lots of time, money, and 60,000 American lives there. Thirty years later, the country is embracing capitalism, shipping us catfish, joining the WTO, and privatizing formerly state-run industries.

Again, if we think our ideas are better, and as a student of economics I think it’s clear capitalist, market economies are superior to planned ones (though I'm more an advocate for the "Scandinavian-style" capitalism with strong social safetynets), then let’s just let them work! In the case of Iran, the corrupt, out-of-touch government is defeating itself, except that the US continues to provide a convenient scapegoat for the leadership there. Amedinejad is a wack-o, no question, but people didn’t support him because of his extremism on the Israel issue, they supported him because of promises about economic and job growth. And they rebuked him in recent legislative elections where his party was weakened. I say the next president lifts embargoes, gets all kinds of American goods in there, buys lots of Iranian goods, and then we watch a growing Iranian middle class get tired of extremist populism. Slate to the rescue with background information here, here, and here. The last one is best.

It’s interesting the US took out Iran’s two main enemies in the Taliban and Iraq. And now the Iranian influence in Afghanistan is huge. They’re pumping in several cable news channels with plenty of Iranian propaganda--or so I'm told, I can't understand Persian...