Welcome to the podcast. My name is Douglas Wilson. This is episode 370. Episode 370.

What I want to do is talk a little bit about the ruckus that's going on at the federal level with regard to Doge, Department of Government Efficiency.

Now, if you're anything like me, when you heard that they were setting up a department

of government efficiency, you thought yourself, uh-oh, because maybe you've had to deal with

federal forms before, and in fine print at the bottom of this federal form you're struggling

with, it says that they are operating

within the confines of the Paperwork Reduction Act, and you say, okay, the language, the

fighting bureaucracy or cutting red tape or reducing paperwork language of bureaucrats at the federal level can be pretty Orwellian.

In other words, the very opposite of what the words say. And when I first heard about the Department

of Government Efficiency, I thought, okay, great. We're going to have a Department of Government

efficiency 75 years from now, making us all a little bit sadder.

But I've been pleasantly surprised, and the Department of Government Efficiency is really going after it.

I want to mention a couple of principles of war with regard to this.

Many years ago, my father wrote a book called Principles of War, and principles are distinct from tactics or weapons. So tactics, weapons,

methods would be things like aircraft carriers versus triremes, javelins versus rifles or you know you've got

different techniques different tactics different things you do the nature of warfare has changed

from the time that you had regiments of men with slingshots and of, I've seen some of the stones that they used to

throw with those slings, and they're basically the size of softballs. So they'd be a formidable

weapon. But the weapons change. But principles don't change. Principles are things like pursuit

or surprise or objective or concentration,

economy of force, and communication. My dad wrote a book applying those principles, the principles

of war, that you would learn from Sun Su, the Art of War, or Klaus Wits, or any of those johnnies, and apply them to,

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