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.
Tom Brewton nails down the main point, which I feel is one of the most important statements that can be made about modern politics. Gandhi said it too - "If you would change the world, first change yourself.":
"Hayek thought he had observed an important change in the character of the British people, as a result both of their collectivist aspirations and of such collectivist measures as had already been legislated. He noted, for example, a shift in the locus of people’s moral concern."
I think we linked this piece once, but I can't remember. It's from Munchkin Wrangler (h/t, Right Wing Prof), and begins thus:
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
From our friend at Sippican Cottage, with a piece at Pajamas of the above title, a quote:
The least efficient entity I’ve ever encountered is the government, at all levels, in all instances. Even when it’s being ruthless, it takes its sweet time about everything. Death Row would be a drive-up window with a menu, open all night, if McDonalds ran it. (Would you like “fried” with that?)
And me, Mr. Vertically Integrated himself, knows all about inefficiency. I can’t answer the phone if I can’t hear it over the table saw I’ve got running while I should be coding my website anyway.
Hillary Clinton’s big idea is to think the government can run a vertically integrated version of Medicine. I have my doubts. Bad managers like vertical integration because they are immune to outside pressure to perform. There are no upstream producers giving you things before you’re ready to process them, and no downstream vendors selling things before you’re ready to supply them. And vertically integrated monopolies run by the government don’t even have to worry about the customers. No one can go to another vendor. And the opposition party cannot offer an alternative other than the destruction of what been cobbled together, which is like asking if you’d like your ration card torn up during a famine once the thing gets going. The beast will never die once Igor pulls the switch, until it collapses under the weight of its own bureaucracy.
Hillary’s already told me to drop dead, figuratively. She’s looking for the power to enable her to tell me to drop dead, literally, now. Wanna give it to her?
A wave of the long, fat, Freudian cigar to Dr. X, who found that Jason Jones at Bookslut is re-reading his Standard Edition (24 books), at the pace of one book per month.
What is most worthwhile about reading Freud, preferably with a guide of some sort, is watching a powerful mind at work, searching for patterns and understanding, having ideas, then rejecting them, revising them, and often just getting stuck. Looking for a path through the wilderness of the soul. Book 1 includes A Project for a Scientific Psychology, a remarkable effort in which he admittedly reached a dead end, and asked for the manuscript to be burned.
Jones' reflections on Book 1 here, and Book 2 here. We will try to keep up with these as they come out.
Comment from Dr. Bliss: It is a sad fact that Freud's thinking, over time, has become deeply misunderstood, trivialized, misinterpreted, abused, and misused - and his errors magnified. His goal, most simply put, was to create a framework for understanding the irrational in mankind, with the hope that this might help individuals gain mastery over their lives and their destinies.
That hootenanny post reminded me of Christopher Guest's spoof of the Folk Movement, the movie A Mighty Wind. The film is good for a few poignant giggles, especially if you have even a vague memory of that innocent, goofy era.
Here's one clip with music, and, below that, another clip from the film.
Governments don't produce wealth. A quote from Madden at TCS:
Unfortunately, many people are heavily influenced by some news media that preach a fixed-pie-and-keep-others-from-the-table mentality. Wealth creation is missing from their world views. Somehow they have overlooked the essential facts that business is a creative activity, and that something always must be created before it can be used by its creators, voluntarily exchanged, or sent to Washington to pay taxes.
Bring your guitar or banjo and sing Michael Row the Boat Ashore along with all your Commie friends! By 1963 there was a Hootenanny TV show. I think the 1962 flyer below, borrowed from this interesting blog, is genuine. It's printed (probably as an in-kind donation to The Folklore Center) on the old Merrill Lynch paper - Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane. h/t, Sippican
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’
7 They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ 8And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.
9 ‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ 10Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
12 ‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance; 15for I will give you wordsand a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17You will be hated by all because of my name. 18But not a hair of your head will perish. 19By your endurance you will gain your souls.
We plow the fields, and scatter the good seed on the land, But it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand; He sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, The breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain.
Refrain: All good gifts around us Are sent from heaven above, Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord For all His love.
He only is the Maker of all things near and far; He paints the wayside flower, He lights the evening star; The winds and waves obey Him, by Him the birds are fed; Much more to us, His children, He gives our daily bread.
Refrain
We thank Thee, then, O Father, for all things bright and good, The seed time and the harvest, our life, our health, and food; No gifts have we to offer, for all Thy love imparts, But that which Thou desirest, our humble, thankful hearts
Matthius Claudius, Paul Erdmann"s Fest, 1782 (Wir pflugen und wir streuen); Claudius heard the words sung by local farmers;
Jane Campbell translated them from German to English in 1861, her version first appeared in A Garland of Songs, by Charles S. Bere, 1862.
While the Mrs. took the youngest Bird Dog theater-intoxicated and Shakespeare-intoxicated pup and her theatrical pal to the Vivian Beaumont to see the rarely-performed Cymbeline (the Beaumont is perfect for Shakespeare), my self-assigned chore was to clean up and polish ye olde farmhouse for the Thanksgiving hordes expected soon.
While finding many dust balls as big as alley cats, and some lost mail, magazines, a dried dog poo or two, and some important faxes under sofas, I cranked up my gigantic Legacy speakers for consolation.
They were the top of their line when I splurged on these darn things, delivered by an Airways Freight truck. 175 lbs. each, 5' tall, and they look like beautiful furniture. But what the heck was I thinking when I bought these monsters? (A movie-business friend told me I have the same ones Tom Cruise has in his house. Sheesh. That is not good.)
These speakers are powerful enough to knock down my walls or to blow a cow to the moon, but sensitive enough to capture the most subtle inflection of Dawn Upshaw's voice, like she is singing to you. The Messiah was on the CD player, from Eastertime. I listened to the whole thing while vacuuming, dusting, dog-poo-removing, polishing, and pickng up. How many Bibles do we have in this house? Well, I love that music and know every word, but I realized that I do music now on the computer. This dang computer-internets machine-thingy simultaneously shrinks and expands life.
I realized that I had not turned on that fine sound system, with the mega-ultra ultra amp, since Easter.
A fellow blogger has told me that he has troubles with freezing and slowness when visiting Maggie's, resulting in the dread Blog Frustration Syndrome. Does anybody else have that problem?
I have had that problem with Theo and Atlas but I assume it's my machine (which is about to be replaced), not their sites.Maybe caused by too many images? We love to post images, but the volume of images, combined with the length of our front page, might be a bit of a strain on a slower machine or a slower connection.
At Dino: Do you feel manipulated yet? Why isn't this CNN media collusion a scandal? Easy answer: because it's media collusion. Who is going to report this stuff except blogs?
Columbia capitulates to hunger strikers. Utterly pathetic and shameful. Were I Pres. of Columbia, I would have expelled them and had the cops carry them off campus, to re-apply if and when they decided to grow up.
Perhaps this is about Columbia's "effete moral gymnastics." I have an idea: Let's get 100 alumni donors like me to hold a hunger strike in front of Butler, to protest Columbia's endlessly-exasperating PC weeniness, and see what happens after we call the press to watch.
Heck, it could be fun, like the '60s. Plenty of lite beer, and a band - maybe we could get my old college pals from Sha Na Na to play. (They were/are good guys, and good students too.)
I could afford to lose a few pounds for a good cause - for the sanity of Alma Mater, from whom I have two degrees from the pre-psychotic era. (thanks, Opie, for alerting me to this depressing story.)
Unlike Hell's Kitchen which we posted about two weeks ago, NYC's Chelsea neighborhood has been on the gentrification upswing for over 30 years.
Now, it's as pleasant and cheerful as any neighborhood in the city. While it's known as a heavily gay area, it seems just more youthful than anything else. Tons of young professionals, and cozy 1800s townhouses. A darn civilized place to live in.
As everybody knows by now, NY Gov. Spitzer dropped his vote fraud plan, AKA drivers' licenses for illegals, and Mrs. Clinton "changed her mind" six minutes later.
I guess that is what they call "practical politics." 80% of Iowa voters opposed the notion. In my opinion, the damage is done, because now we know what they want, if they could only get it. And I have no doubt that Spitzer got an earful from Hillary on the phone.
Henninger on the '60s, in the WSJ. The Long Goodbye. Good stuff. Comments on the piece by Scott at Powerline.
Of 1968, Henninger notes:
The year began with sales of the Beatles album, "Magical Mystery Tour." In retrospect, it was a premonition. In late January, North Korea captured the USS Pueblo and crew members. A week later, the North Vietnamese army launched the Tet offensive. On Feb. 27, Walter Cronkite announced on CBS News that the U.S. had to negotiate a settlement to the Vietnam War. On March 12, Sen. Gene McCarthy defeated incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, aided by antiwar students that Sen. McCarthy called his "children's crusade." Two weeks later, LBJ announced on TV that he would not run for re-election. One week later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was only April 4.
A Treasury study refutes populist hokum about "income inequality."
OK, "hokum" is our word. The study, to be released today, is a careful, detailed piece of research by professional economists that avoids political judgments. But what it does do is show beyond doubt that the U.S. remains a dynamic society marked by rapid and mostly upward income mobility. Much as they always have, Americans on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder continue to climb into the middle and sometimes upper classes in remarkably short periods of time.
I think we linked this piece once, but I can't remember. It's from Munchkin Wrangler (h/t, 
A wave of the long, fat, Freudian cigar to
We plow the fields, and scatter the good seed on the land,
While the Mrs. took the youngest Bird Dog theater-intoxicated and Shakespeare-intoxicated pup and her theatrical pal to the Vivian Beaumont to see the rarely-performed Cymbeline (the 
A fellow blogger has told me that he has troubles with freezing and slowness when visiting Maggie's, resulting in the dread Blog Frustration Syndrome. Does anybody else have that problem?
Henninger on the '60s, in the WSJ. 
From Opinion Journal on Tuesday:
