Maggie's Farm

Bach's Double Concerto, 2nd movement. It's more from Heifetz' Master Class, with Heifetz inviting "student" Eric Friedman to play first violin. Life does not get any better than this (if you have half-decent speakers). I think Heifetz wants it sped up a bit, but it's fine with me as is.

Much of our recent social history, including the culture wars between liberals and conservatives, consists of the moralization or amoralization of particular kinds of behavior. Even when people agree that an outcome is desirable, they may disagree on whether it should be treated as a matter of preference and prudence or as a matter of sin and virtue. Rozin notes, for example, that smoking has lately been moralized. Until recently, it was understood that some people didn’t enjoy smoking or avoided it because it was hazardous to their health. But with the discovery of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, smoking is now treated as immoral. Smokers are ostracized; images of people smoking are censored; and entities touched by smoke are felt to be contaminated (so hotels have not only nonsmoking rooms but nonsmoking floors). The desire for retribution has been visited on tobacco companies, who have been slapped with staggering “punitive damages.”

At the same time, many behaviors have been amoralized, switched from moral failings to lifestyle choices. They include divorce, illegitimacy, being a working mother, marijuana use and homosexuality. Many afflictions have been reassigned from payback for bad choices to unlucky misfortunes. There used to be people called “bums” and “tramps”; today they are “homeless.” Drug addiction is a “disease”; syphilis was rebranded from the price of wanton behavior to a “sexually transmitted disease” and more recently a “sexually transmitted infection.”

This wave of amoralization has led the cultural right to lament that morality itself is under assault, as we see in the group that anointed itself the Moral Majority. In fact there seems to be a Law of Conservation of Moralization, so that as old behaviors are taken out of the moralized column, new ones are added to it. Dozens of things that past generations treated as practical matters are now ethical battlegrounds, including disposable diapers, I.Q. tests, poultry farms, Barbie dolls and research on breast cancer. Food alone has become a minefield, with critics sermonizing about the size of sodas, the chemistry of fat, the freedom of chickens, the price of coffee beans, the species of fish and now the distance the food has traveled from farm to plate.

Many of these moralizations, like the assault on smoking, may be understood as practical tactics to reduce some recently identified harm. But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the “moral” setting isn’t just a matter of how much harm it does. We don’t show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible, but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or crème brûlée. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles.

Read the whole thing.

Image: That is Jiminy Cricket, for you youths. Everybody's source of conscience and good, sober judgement.

On Friday (h/t, Right Wing Prof)

In CT, last night (thanks, reader)

A true teacher pushes you to your limits, and teaches you humility with perhaps a slight touch of kindness - when earned. "Which one do you have in your fingers?" "None of them." "Can you play 17?" "Not now." "OK, play #17."

Ezra Levant's comments at a Canadian Human Rights Commission "interrogation", re his publishing of the Mohammed cartoons. These videos via LGF. Excellent comments from Steyn. Also comments from Samizdata.

Bravo to Ezra.

Froggy Mountain Breakdown. Yes, I like to call it "froggy" instead of "foggy."

That's some dang band Earl has with him (thanks, reader). As somebody commented, how did my old Auntie Bertha get in that band? What fun they have. The piano isn't bluegrass, but it does add something to the mix.

Some good folks have gotten together to produce a daily, blog-based, non-partisan and non-ideological online newspaper, called The Issue.

They are notable for their "Issue of the Day," analogous to a front-page story in a newsmagazine, which takes a look at the sides of a controversial issue. Today: Smoker's rights.

Give them a look. I am sure that they would welcome Dr. Merc's critique of their site.

Grow a Brain is planning to quit that site, and perhaps begin another of a different sort. He is kind enough, though, to leave us with the screenplay for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Intentionally or not, Thompson's book, with its black, chemically-addled humor, depicted the dead end of the peace, love, hedonism and drug youth "culture" of the time.

From The Task: Book lV, The Winter Evening

OK. 

Due to popular demand, we give you babes, blues, and booze. Charming babe courtesy of Theo, and your beer du jour and yer good blues via Dust My Broom - click on his Friday music selection.

If we get too PC around here, we will lose our hearts and souls. We can't help it if we like pretty girls: we were born that way.

This oldie came in over the transom:

Scenario 1: Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.

1967 - Vice principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his own shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lockdown, the FBI is called, Jack is hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors are called in to assist traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.

1967 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police are called, SWAT team arrives and arrests Johnny and Mark. They are charged with assault and both are expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3: Jeffrey won't sit still in class, disrupts other students.

1967 - Jeffrey is sent to the principal's office and given a good paddling. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra state funding because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario 4: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1967 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.

Scenario 5: Mark gets a headache and takes some Aspirin to school.

1967 - Mark shares Aspirin with the school principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police are called and Mark is expelled from School for drug violations. His car is searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6: Pedro fails high-school English.

1967 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by local human rights group. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that making English a requirement for graduation is racist. Civil Liberties Association files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English is banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7: Johnny takes apart leftover Independence Day firecrackers, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up an anthill.

1967 - Ants die.
2007 - Homeland Security and the FBI are called and Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. Teams investigate parents, siblings are removed from the home, computers are confiscated, and Johnny's dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario 8: Johnny falls during recess and scrapes his knee. His teacher, Mary, finds him crying, and gives him a hug to comfort him.

1967 - Johnny soon feels better and goes back to playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces three years in federal prison. Johnny undergoes five years of compulsory therapy with a sensitive social worker specializing in sexual abuse.

Editor comment: re Scenario 6 - What's wrong with mowing lawns? It's good, clean honest labor, in my opinion. And the result is more measurable than most. Our modern world is too disparaging of real work. Useful effort is ennobling of any man or woman.

After Carrie Underwood's Jesus, Take the Wheel. Christians can take a joke (especially if it involves fishin').

This is so true, from Samuelson in the WaPo:

The big lie of campaign 2008 -- so far -- is that the presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, will take care of our children. Listening to these politicians, you might think they will. Doing well by children has now passed motherhood and apple pie as an idol that all candidates must worship.

"We will do whatever it takes to make America a better country, to give our kids a better future," says Mike Huckabee, winner of the Republican Iowa caucuses.

"We will deliver for our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren," claims Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic winner in Iowa.

"We're going to reclaim the future for our children," says Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Actually, these are throwaway lines, completely disconnected from reality.

Whole thing here.

"Whaddya gonna say? If there must be Democratic candidates in the world, I suppose a win for stealth-lefty Clinton is preferable to a win for far-lefty Obama or loopy-lefty Edwards. That victory speech, though— oy! “Young people who can’t afford to go to college to fulfill their dreams…” As I used to say when my mother told me to finish my greens because kids were starving in Africa: Name one. And why is going to college the only way to fulfill your dreams? And why should I care about some fool teenager’s fool dreams anyway?"

John Derbyshire, as quoted by Theo