We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
There are very few limits to what you can do to people in the modern interpretation of democracy. A version where only majority rule is required, but where there is no longer a respect for personal negative rights – as we know them from the American Constitution.
The easiest target will always be wealthy people, or even just working people and savers who did the right thing all their lives. As the bloated welfare states begin to collapse under their irresponsible promises, their crumbling value systems and their unsustainable demographics, it will be easy to convince more than 50 percent of voters that confiscating and stealing other people's money is OK for the greater good. Boston Consulting Group calculated that 28 percent of ALL private wealth is needed to meet just existing debts – not future obligations , mind you – and the money can only come from one place… Your pockets. Beware.
A lot of things have gone wrong over the past few years, but the seeds were planted many years ago. In the form of pressure for more people having the “right” to own their properties, even if they did not fulfill the traditional mortgage criteria – hence subprime. In the form of enormous “entitlements” to not just poor, but also middle-class people in the welfare states – hence ballooning deficits and debt. In the form of a Euro, a grand, political project with no practical foundation – hence crisis after crisis, with the dominoes stretching far into the distance.
For sure, a lot of financial institutions took advantage of the hands they were dealt. They are not without guilt and responsibility for the current mess. But the real problems lie not in people trying to take advantage of whatever conditions they operate under. The real problem lies in the framework that is created by politicians, preventing free markets to deal with excesses in the way capitalism always does.
Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan, paraphrasing Education Secretary William Bennett, said: “If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you’re liable to be given more money to do it with.”
What goes on these days at an elite, expensive, private liberal arts college? It's been studied, and parents might not be too pleased by the looniness there.
Students are encouraged to "think critically" about anything that threatens the college's dogmas on diversity, multiculturalism, gender, and sustainability, etc., but, for the most part, not to think critically about those dogmas themselves. That is the problem: such contradictions go unnoticed. And they go unnoticed because at Bowdoin, and places like it, there are precious few people who can point them out.
It all reminds me of a conversation I had with a nice lady last weekend. She was talking about the oppression of Muslim women. I offered the notion that she was not being very multiculturally-tolerant in wanting to impose her Western views on Muslim culture. I asked her whether we should not respect cultural differences.
Somewhat apropos: Islam’s Latest Fatwa Permitting Rape of Non-Muslim Women. Why does Islam seem so preoccupied with the interests in rape, pedophilia, homosexuality, bestiality, religious imperialism, and killing Jews? Surely there must be other, more productive and positive things in life to focus on.
Perhaps the Bowdoin faculty could enlighten me on these points because the only aspects of it which seem to be approved on college campi are the homosexuality and the killing of Israelis.
February, March, April and May are my busiest times of the year at work. No time to think except in the shower. No time for thoughtful posts. One must make hay while the sun shines.
Piers Morgan has armed security. And I read that Jim Carrey has an armed bodyguard whenever in public. Since I am cheap and not wealthy, I have to be my own bodyguard. If armed protection is OK for the President and Piers Morgan, it's OK for me.
I can't say I am too thrilled with what the Dem-ruled Connecticut legislature is about to do with firearms. I like to try my best to be law-abiding, but I do not know how many firearms we have around the place any more than I know how many hammers we have. Some are antiques, workable probably and oiled, but not fired for 30 years. Some are probably in closets and drawers we have never opened and in dark corners of the attics which we have never explored.
This place has been inhabited by firearm owners, country men, since 1823. As far as I know, not one of them every shot anybody, even if they deserved it.
My late father-in-law's farm, on which we now blissfully reside in commuting distance to Hartford, always had handguns (old .45 revolvers) in the drawer in the tack room of the barn (in case a horse needed shooting - broken leg, terminal colic, etc) and a .410 leaning on the barn wall for pigeons, Copperheads, and rattlers. He liked pigeon stew, and plenty of them lived in the barn before we tightened it up. (I liked the squab better.)
When he lived here, there was no crime at all. He was a big shot insurance fellow, and a gentleman farmer just as I aspire to be. Math genius actuary-turned executive, but farm-raised. Family tradition. Family farm, now. Third generation here, if we can keep it with the taxes which insist on taxing us as if we were a 60-acre housing development (they term that "taxable at best use". What is "best use"?). Otherwise, some developer will fill it with McMansions on 1/4-acre lots with no woodchucks, no horses, no goat, no meadows, no snakes, no barn pigeons, no barns, no barn cats, and no firearms. Safe and sterile.
Like most states with some creepy urban zones, most firearm crime is done by career crims and sociopathic and drug gangs, but I do not see our wise legislature attending to that at all. There are no dainty female suburban votes in that.
It is a rare American male who has never fallen for her. Powerline.
Cool choice of songs there, but her older country, country/rock, pre-Lanois, stuff is just fine with me too. She never quits reaching higher in her life. When you are given a gift, you just have to reach and keep reaching.
Bigotry is too prized a resource to just watch it drain away in some communal pool of brotherhood and sisterhood. The only thing to do is to find ways to dam it up and create national parks of bigotry that will allow future generations of civil rights warriors to rough it by camping out under the burning crosses while admiring themselves for their artificial courage in defense of a manufactured cause.
If I were a horny college student today, I think I'd feel more comfortable chasing the townie girls. But that runs up against this advice: Princeton mom: Women have a 'shelf life'. Why that article got so much attention is beyond me, because every gal knows it even if they decide to wait a while.
He called Keller a prophet. (He refers to anyone who speaks difficult, deep Truths as "speaking prophetically.") On the subject of even good things becoming false idols, he used these Keller quotes which I took from an Amazon review:
"The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them." Thus anything can be an idol and, really, everything has been an idol to one person or another. The great deception of idols is we are prone to think that idols are only bad things. But evil is far more subtle than this. "We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life."
If you happen to be in NYC on a Sunday, you could do worse than to visit his Redeemer Presbyterian Church. (It's a church, ie not a fancy building but a congregation of God-seekers and worshippers.) They have five worship locations in Manhattan.
Pastor Keller usually preaches at their 6 pm service at the Hunter College auditorium.
Neither Jesus nor any of the twelve apostles could get a job in any self-respecting mainline church in America today; none of them had a degree from an accredited seminary.
Christ is my Pastor, my Lord, my teacher, my guide, and my friend. Happy Easter, readers. The Barrister team is off to occupy our (mainline but distinctly non-Progressive and verging on evangelical) New England Congregational church, then a long brunch-lunch with cocktails and champagne, oysters, clams, squid, lobsters, foie gras sliders, rare prime rib with horseradish and rare lamb chops, Halibut with caper and tuna sauce, ridiculous desserts, then (for me) naptime. Why not?
I am halfway through Helprin's* latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow. I've read most of his novels.
It's a love story in New York, but also has been described as a love song to New York. I think he also approached it as a chance to put all of his thoughts about what life is about into the words of his protagonist. Thus sometimes he lapses into "telling" instead of "depicting." His protagonist is Harry Copeland, a Jewish NYC leather goods manufacturer just returned from WW 2 who falls in love with an enormously wealthy and social WASP heiress.
Unlike his (I think) masterpiece, Soldier of the Great War, the new book could have used some vigorous editing but, like all of his stuff, worth the read because he is a very smart and observant fellow who just can't resist throwing all of his thoughts in there.
Helprin has an impressive and interesting bio. He had many adventures in life before settling down to write stories (and political commentary on the side). That's the best way to do it.
I like the detail that he does most of the manual labor on his farm in Virginia.
(* Note: Not to be confused with Mark Halperin, the Time Magazine politico)
Horowitz: 
Image stolen from 
good dog warning sign 
From Mead on 
I am halfway through Helprin's* latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow. I've read most of his novels. 