Tuesday, March 18. 2008
Stanley Kurtz on Obama's speech. With me, you will get no perfect union on far Left-wing policies and judges. Count me out of that love-fest. My other reaction: Even if this guy is blowing up, he is sure dominating the news cycle. Rush today (approximately): "People say Obama can heal racial divisions. I say that Obama is proof that they have already healed." Are we being handed slick victimology? The points of the speech summarized, quoted at Q and O: - Black people have reasons to be angry about slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing discrimination;
- Whites have reason to be unhappy with (pre-reform) welfare, affirmative action, busing, and being called a racist for worrying about black crime rates.
- Wright was wrong in both his racial divisiveness and his belief that American society was static, and progress was not occurring.
- whites needed to do more to raise up black schools and black communities.
Wait! Did he lose a page here - what, if anything is the black community meant to do differently? Memeorandum has everybody's reactions.
 One of my many planned gardening projects this spring is to put in a row of three tree hydrangeas behind a low fence on which my climbing roses grow (they are New Dawn. Note to rose fans: those New Dawn roses need monthly fertilizer during the summer. In fact, all roses want regular feeding or they will not do well).
I like the old-fashioned look of the tree form, and they can be pruned to keep them small for a garden. The one in the photo is too droopy for my taste, I think, but it makes for a living bouquet.
This G.K. Chesterton essay seemed related to our piece on Deontological Ethics, and AVI touches on the same topic today: From a report of a talk titled "The Need for a Philosophy" by Chesterton in 1923, which is introduced thus: ...the sometimes lightly described 'Philosopher of fun' produces a powerful attack on two modern 'isms' that he accuses of being profoundly un-philosophical. If utilitarianism, ('brutaliarianism',) and relativism are allowed to become the modern way, "It means full steam in the darkness with lights out."
A quote: There was a famous American who said that England had no weather, only samples. That is true today of modern views about life. They are scrappy. Now what is excellent as regards weather is not excellent as regards the things of the mind. Modern England has no thinking, only thoughts. Thoughts can be brilliant and suggestive - journalism, literature and fiction are full of random thoughts on human life - but thinking is something different and it is extraordinarily rare. Some people, especially those who do not think, imagine that thinking is a painful process, but to my mind it is the best game in the world, and connected thinking of some kind - knowing what you mean and not following catchwords - is necessary for us all.
and ...what began as free thought has now developed into freedom from thought. All through history, there have been broad conceptions of the aims of life, tests of morality which masses of men have held and applied with certainty; but in the modern world these various systems have been abandoned and what is left of them is nothing but debris - a collection of broken bits, the ruins of past philosophies. There are some, like myself, who hold a mystical philosophy, a belief that behind human experience there are realities, powers of good and evil, and the final test for things is their influence for good or evil. The good power intends us to be happy and we are justified in being happy, but the real question is not whether we are happy, but whether, behind the things wherein we seek our happiness lies the, power of good. Are they parts of the good or of the evil?
Read the whole summary here.
What's the largest oil company in the world? Russia's government-owned Gazprom.
What's the largest company in the world? PetroChina.
What's the largest investment fund in the world? Abu Dhabi's sovereign fund. The new totalitarian global players, at The Boston Globe
A reader sent us two good arborist sites. I would never go up a tree with a chain saw, but I realize that I might not be all that safe with one even with my feet on the ground. ArboristSite ArborMaster
"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' " . Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964
 Don't look at it. It will distract you from Maggie's Farm and cause you to waste time. There is only so much time in the day:
The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys.
 The BS Bailout. Mankiw. Also, What the Fed needs to do. WSJ
The sun is so quiet it's creepy. Karl Rove's new job Found. The HMAS Sydney The Dem white male voters Tibet update. Not good. The WSJ says it's about China's relationship with religion. A quote: What is the appeal of Christianity to so many Chinese -- or, for that matter, of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, the old-time peasant religions and the newfangled Falun Gong? In "smashing" organized religion, Mao Zedong also destroyed the traditional institutions of charity and social support that used to provide succor to the lonely and the needy. Now that succor is desperately in demand, and the churches are there to meet it.
South Africa update. Not good. Mr. Free market From Surber on Hillary: Americans don’t want President Walter Mitty. Hillary should relax, stick to the facts and let O’Bama implode. Instead we get easy to disprove lies.
Her entire campaign is a fraud, IMO.
Mini-daffodils, and Brant decoy. (That's a tall Schipka "Skip" laurel out the window.) 
Monday, March 17. 2008
 "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
Was Immanuel Kant's Categorical (ie absolute) Imperative just a fancy way of coming around to the Golden Rule, as Bird Dog suggested the other day? Kant's ethics fall in the category of deontologogical (ie duty-centered) absolutism: he said that one should not lie even to save a life (but I doubt that he ever found himself in that situation). To my simple mind, teleological (outcome-based) ethics, like Utilitarianism, are not ethics or morals at all: our daily actions need to be teleological most of the time, but that is about practical judgement - not morality. As a foundation for a moral code, teleological ethics are insidious and dangerous. Like most people, my moral codes are not carefully thought through. They are mostly inherited from a long line of Yankee Puritans, and Christianity-based. Thus far, they have kept me out of the clink, but have not protected me from doing my share of stupid, cruel, or selfish things. Like most people, I only focus on morals when presented with a moral dilemma that comes up on the radar, because the rest of the time I am on moral autopilot. I guess I'd have to say that my morality is neither deontological nor teleological, but mystical as G.K. Chesterton would say (Ten Commandments, The Great Commandment, etc) in its origins, with a dose of my personal obsessionalism on top. Still, it's an interesting thought experiment to spend a day thinking about how - or whether - my daily decisions might be different if I consciously and deliberately pretend to adopt a different moral foundation. Image: Immanuel Kant Dr. Bliss comment: You are right that one's morality is not arrived at by deliberate thought. Guilt and morality are quasi-internalized during youth. After that, it's all about just learning the rules, laws, and socio-cultural expectations to avoid a messy life. Maybe I will post a draft of a piece I once wrote on the subject for a lay audience.
Re the excellent post below about Rev. Wright, here's a truth about America, quoted via Attack Machine: Q. Are Americans more or less charitable than citizens of other countries?
A. No developed country approaches American giving. For example, in 1995 (the most recent year for which data are available), Americans gave, per capita, three and a half times as much to causes and charities as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and 14 times as much as the Italians. Similarly, in 1998, Americans were 15 percent more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 percent more likely than the Swiss, and 32 percent more likely than the Germans. These differences are not attributable to demographic characteristics such as education, income, age, sex, or marital status. On the contrary, if we look at two people who are identical in all these ways except that one is European and the other American, the probability is still far lower that the European will volunteer than the American.
Best essay I have read on the subject, and it goes far beyond the story of the day. A quote: One can argue (unconvincingly, in my view) that Christian morality and teaching mandate government and political efforts to aid the poor and oppressed — as opposed to our individual responsibilities along such lines, or those facilitated collectively through the church. What one can not do is square such a constricted, monotone theology with Christianity’s vast octaves of orthodox teaching and history. If Christianity is nothing more than do-good government social programs which require no personal moral transformation, which frequently cause more harm than good to their intended beneficiaries, and require no personal sanctification or sacrifice — then who needs Christianity at all? Wrapping social programs in Scripture verses and Jesus-talk does not make them “Christian” any more than putting mascara on a pig makes her Miss Universe.
and another: The problem with ministers like Reverend Wright and others, who wrap their political and social agendas in Christian facades and Bible-talk, is that they are partly right. That social justice, concern for the poor and the underprivileged, and the mitigation of hatred and racism are — and have always been — emphatic teachings and priorities for Christianity is indisputable. But Christian opposition to injustice and oppression is not its sole and central doctrine, but rather a manifestation of the personal deliverance of the individual from the slavery and oppression of sin which Christianity offers. The half-righters have interchanged cause and effect — and thereby have guaranteed that the results of such efforts will be harmful rather than healing. For to be partly right is to be totally wrong — when the part in error is core truth about the nature of man and his relationship to God. Good deeds arising out of the darkness of the unredeemed heart invariably foster repression and dependency rather than deliverance and liberty. As Ratzinger points out, speaking of the natural evolution and outcome of liberation theology as a solution to oppression: … the overthrow by means of revolutionary violence of structures which generate violence is not ipso facto the beginning of a just regime. A major fact of our time ought to evoke the reflection of all those who would sincerely work for the true liberation of their brothers: millions of our own contemporaries legitimately yearn to recover those basic freedoms of which they were deprived by totalitarian and atheistic regimes which came to power by violent and revolutionary means, precisely in the name of the liberation of the people.
Read the whole thing.
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing...not curing...not healing...that is a friend who cares. Henry Nouwen
 Photo: A protester tells the truth! At Gateway
All the latest on Bear Stearns and the credit crisis at Memeorandum Ed Driscoll reviewed Liberal Fascism back in November The demagoguery of "optimistic despair." Related, as quoted at Insty: One understands why that might not seem obvious to black people of a certain age: Condi Rice, for example, has childhood memories of a segregated south and racial violence. But that's what makes Obama's association with Wright so significant. He's not from Alabama. He's a biracial middle-class Kenyan-Kansan Hawaiian-born Indonesian-raised Columbia and Harvard graduate who chose to immerse himself in the most corrosive and paranoid end of a racial-grievance ghetto mentality that is nothing to do with him, his family or his upbringing. He doesn't have the same excuse as a Jackson, Sharpton or Farrakhan.
Banned in Boston. If town governments can ban foods, what can't they, in their infinite wisdom, ban? "Everybody seems to be on the same side of this trade." Oil prices "…anger at God is normal. And God has big shoulders, He can take it." And other Lenten thoughts at Anchoress
Basket of Fruit, 1597. I note that this still life, and the previous one, both had flawed apples. Makes it more interesting. 
Sunday, March 16. 2008
I do not think that I like Eliot Spitzer, but I don't know him as a person. I do know that if he came to me for comfort and help, I would be happy to offer it to him as a fellow flawed, sinful, and foolish human. I would pray with him for himself and for his family, who are surely suffering for his idiot behavior. However, his story got the brain thinking about how, if you do 999 good, charitable, loving things in your life, and one bad, illegal thing (not that Spitzer is in that category - I doubt it, based on how he handled his powers as a prosecutor) - you are screwed if you get caught. Nobody will care about the other 999. That is why cops say that there are only two kinds of people - crims that haven't been caught, and those who have been. One must be careful in this life, because it can blow up in an instant.
 Death penalty for 9-11 planners? Bainbridge. Why is there any question? If I did something like that, I would lose all respect for anybody who would not kill me.
It's not nice to point. Conversations with conservatives at NPR. "Diversity" is only skin deep. How Moshe Feiglin was treated by the Brits. Those darn Jews are always the problem, aren't they? Evil Oppressor of the Masses Ed Driscoll led us to his Folk Marxism post. Snake Vodka? No thanks. Pass the Scotch, please. Young Rolling Stones. Taste-testing chocolate Easter Bunnies. I hate those hollow ones. A place where I would be uncomfortable dining. Obama's church responds. A hearty Welcome to European travelers. See New York! "Soft Jihad" is the next phase. Roger K. The other type didn't work too well, and they know we are all pussies, lacking in self respect, and do not value the civilization we have been given. How was the skiing? Wonderful. Snow a bit soft at the bottom, as expected. I love skiing without six layers. Thanks for asking!
Quoted from a AVI piece on victimology, and the one candidate who never pulls the "poor me" stunt: ...it is amusing to take a snapshot of how all these people came up and what was happening in the legendary year 1969. Hillary Clinton was graduating from Wellesley or her way to Yale Law School; Gloria Steinem, after graduating from Smith and publishing a book, was the lioness of the women's movement; Geraldine Ferraro had interrupted her law career to raise children (there may have been some actual suffering in that; she went on to found the - irony alert - Special Victims Unit); Reverend Jeremiah Wright was getting his master's degree. Barack Obama was an eight-year old stepson of an oil company executive in Indonesia. He would go on to Occidental, Columbia and Harvard.
John McCain was being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison.
- reposted from April, 2005
By guest author Shaun L. Kelly His distinct tenor, reassuring and cerebral, was the second-most heard male voice of my childhood. Only my father’s fixed baritone surpassed his as the soundtrack of my years growing up in the greater Boston area. For thirty-two summers - with discernible sagacity and style - Ned Martin served as the principal voice of the Boston Red Sox. In an age where humility and grace slowly receded from our national character, Martin’s modesty and elegance separated him from a host of other announcers – and people. He never intentionally developed a defined signature call for a homerun. The ball was simply “gone”. And yet, he used words as a composer uses the notes on a scale. He seemed to embrace the notion first put forth by Emerson “that every word was once a poem”. There was nothing ever “programmed” about Ned Martin. Cogent phrases seem to tumble from his mouth like falling stars. Unlike most sports announcers, Ned Martin was able to frequently quote from the most gifted bards of English literature - Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, Hemingway - in order to put the narrative of baseball into its proper context. He was a reader, and he brought a reader’s sensibility to each and every broadcast. Ned Martin was also a deeply-rooted theorist and philosopher. Because he had dipped into the bonfires of hell as a Marine at the close of the Second World War, Ned described each game as an inherent existentialist. Like his beloved Frost, he had a lover’s quarrel with the world. But Ned Martin was more than just a Red Sox announcer. To me, he served as a personal captain, steering me through the choppy waters of both youth and adolescence - guiding, nurturing, and instructing me as I listened intently, his most loyal and devoted student.
Read rest of piece below:
Continue reading "Thank you, Mr. Ned Martin"
Iraq, after five years. Jules and Vanderleun
Saturday, March 15. 2008
Saw it today, in NYC. See it, if you can. Well worth the trip. One heck of a cast.
 I am heading up to Stowe right now, our Vermont Yankee webmeister's home town, to ski tomorrow until my legs fall off. Spring is in the air, so ya gotta get it while ya can. Hope they have a case of Coors Lite cooling in the snow for me to cure my road buzz. Photo of Mt. Mansfield. Nice skiing, when the crowds go away. As they do, on the Ides of March. Here's some good stuff:
Lost u-boats found in the Black Sea. Where is Michael Moore? Who would flee Paradise? Me, for one. Re paradise, my Massachusetts tax paradise. Why do I live here, anyway? Sentimental, that's why. It's home. Just like beaten women who don't leave their husbands. Joba Mania. Why global economic inequality? Stumbling. Who cares, really? Money isn't everything. By American stats, I am poor, but I love my life. I just need a wifey, or a solid gal friend - preferably one who I can love, and who can make the big bucks. My ancestors knew how to deal with jerks. Cowards die once, twice, or whatever. But now, in my ancestral homeland, you can make money via polygamy. Cool. When can we get that progressive in the USA? with ten of them on the dole, life could be just fine. Shameful and disgusting, but profitable... Religion and Dem politics? The Corner. More on Social Security. Even if you are young, it comes on fast. Dem unity? Moderate Voice, which ain't so moderate these days. More on that mess at Classical. The WaPo makes an ass of itself. Dem Project. So many of my press colleagues are stuck in a past that they are too young to remember. Obamagate II. Politicians are such schmucks. As a rule of thumb, only a fool would expect anything good from them. Being humans, they have their own agendas but, being politicians, they tend to have no morals. Antisemitism is the cool new global thing. Great butter. I like the Danish stuff. Good cows. Dems having good fun with those FL and MI votes. It's ugly now, but somebody will make a deal. "What do you want?" Mis-matches mess up "minorities." I have seen this. Update on the whores in the Netherlands. More on the Pentagon's report on Saddam and terrorism. Powerline Leadbelly. The last tune is the best. Speaking the truth could be criminal in progressive Finland. How nice for them. The AP style guide on defending Obama, h/t LGF
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