Maggie's Farm

From David Warren's Making Things:

In his heart, the hyper-modernist not only still believes in progress (or, "hope and change") in the face of all evidence to the contrary. He also deeply believes that nothing matters, because everything is going to change anyway. Hence his inability to make anything worth keeping.

We have a society that ought to be haunted by Chartres: by the fragments of our landscape over which great steeples once rose, declaring truth in stone meant to outlast ages. Instead we look around at a clutter of cheap franchise operations; and traffic accelerating from nowhere to nowhere.

Woody Allen: "It Would Be Good If Obama Could Be a Dictator for a Few Years".

As he sometimes does and has done, usually with humor, Woody captures a certain arrogant, elitist, Upper-West-side Manhattan world view of the world. I, for one, at this point, find it despicable, hateful, and anti-American. Furthermore, it shows a condescending contempt for relatively decent and ordinary people like me. 

With the history of western Socialist dictator-types - Robespierre, Bismarck, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, etc, it is remarkable to me that somebody like Woody would long for another.

Heck, maybe we could have a utopia if I were dictator for just a few years. I am fairly intelligent, Ivy-League educated, and knowledgeable, and have lots of experience about how things work in the real world (far more than most career politicians), and I have informed opinions on almost everything too.

Problem is, I have no interest in having power over anybody else. I hate power, except over my own life. I have studiously avoided power during my entire fairly-successful career, and have refused a number of offers of power, large and small. Power over others is revolting to me. That's why I post on Maggie's Farm.

Woody's attitude is just freaking amazing to me, and says a lot. As much as I enjoyed Sleeper, I am done with the guy. He had no morals anyway but I tend to give "artists" a little leeway. Why? Because I am stupid and like to be entertained.

Authoritarian Leftism is a sickness, and as evil as sociopathy. Maybe it is a form of sociopathy. I don't know. These people need to learn a little humility...and a few other things too.

From a brilliant piece at Am Thinker on immigration, from Dunn:

The left wishes to use the illegals as a battering ram against the American polity, the same as they used labor, and blacks, and every other group they ever encountered. Illegals will become a new protected class, with privileges and entitlements denied the rest of the populace (including, ironically, current members of previous such classes). They will be discouraged from learning English, as occurs today under the doctrine of "bilingualism", to assure that they remain a separate presence. A vast bureaucracy will arise to "assist" the new citizenry, funded with billions -- oh hell, make that trillions, this is the Obama era -- and staffed with sociologists, ethnographers, psychologists, and other disciplines unimagined today. All will be of the same political persuasion. A permanent crisis atmosphere will be generated around the new class. The "Amnestee" question will lead to endless problems and ramifications and act as a permanent indictment of the country and its policies. The native population (not to mention legal immigrants) will grow increasingly embittered and angered. The former illegals will be rendered even more miserable than they are today.

Via Cramer:

If you cross the North Korean border illegally you get 12 years at hard labor.

If you cross the Iranian border  illegally you are detained indefinitely.

If you cross the Afghan border illegally, you get shot.

If you cross the Saudi Arabian border illegally, you will be jailed.

If you cross the Chinese border illegally, you may never be heard from again.

If you cross the Venezulan border illegally, you will be branded a spy and your fate will be sealed.

If you cross the Cuban border illegally you will be thrown into political prison to rot.

And the author could have mentioned that if you cross the southern border of Mexico illegally, you are subject to a two year prison sentence.

If you cross the U.S. border illegally you get:

A JOB,
A DRIVERS LICENSE,
SOCIAL SECURITY CARD,
WELFARE,
FOOD STAMPS,
CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE,
FREE EDUCATION,
FREE HEALTH CARE,
A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE
THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY’S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON’T GET ENOUGH RESPECT
* AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.

Will Cain chats with Derbyshire

I missed this one, re the now almost-forgotten Times Square bomber, from Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, professor, Washington and Lee University

I think the politics of this incident will turn heavily on who is found to be responsible. If, as seems unlikely, the bomb is linked to South Asian or Middle Eastern terrorists, questions will again arise as to whether the Department of Homeland Security is doing all it can do to keep us safe. If, as I believe is much more likely, the bomb was placed by a right-wing lunatic, it seems to me that questions need to be raised as to whether the right-wing media bear some responsibility for stoking the delusions of such people through their relentless and often unfounded attacks on the Obama administration and the federal government.

We need to consider whether it isn’t time to return to responsible, ethical journalism.

No, we need to consider whether it isn't time for absurd, ideology-blinded profs to shut the heck up, and administer themselves a bit of needed self-criticism. As I recall, Mao always used to send the Profs out to the fields for a while...or a long while, presumably to refresh their minds.

Department of the Obvious, for guys anyway. Quote via Riehl:

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner admits he's not much of a 3-D enthusiast. But he says if there's something people would most like to see in 3-D, it's "probably a naked lady."

Jay Cost on how the people will speak truth to power in November. A quote:

The entire political class needs to understand that the coming events transcend ideology and partisanship. The electoral wave of 2010 will have been preceded by the waves of 2006 and 2008. That will make three electoral waves in a row, affecting both parties and conservative and liberal politicians alike. The American people are sending the establishment a message: we're angry at the way you are running our government; fix it or you'll be next to go.  

Classic, but serious, Steyn. Robinson pulls out some of the best quotes. h/t Theo

As a nasty antidote to the usual saccharine, sentimental, schmaltzy, Hallmark-created Mother's Day, I will dare to offer this provocative link: Sorry, men ARE more brainy than women (and more stupid too!) It's a simple scientific fact, says one of Britain's top dons. A lady Don, mind you.

All men knew that already, but were askeered to say it for fear of the innate female propensity for violence, vengeance, grudge-collecting - and their use of their sexual charms and sharp tongues to oppress, manipulate, and control the hapless males of the species. Why the professional feminists never discuss this is a mystery, but females are a mystery to men anyway.

Photo is a no-doubt future mother, eagerly awaiting - or inviting - vigorous fertilization, via Theo. From her spectacles, surely one of the bookish, intelligent ones (like Mrs. Barrister).

Me? I am certainly one of the stupid men, as the simple fact of my posting this link must make obvious.

Gremlins - evil gremlins - kept our site down all day today. This is good, from Bergner at Weekly Standard: Europe Is No Model - The genius of American politics.

No regular American would want to be anything like Europe, however much we like to visit them to try to experience their interesting and colorful history, and to hear their quaint accents and languages. The real Disney Europe is what I call it. A receding, suicidal civilization. The charm comes from their having been frozen in time by insane governments - not from their present condition.

Go see it before it disappears and becomes a subject for anthropological study.

Cask-aged vintage Dominican Romeos, on sale.

"...four-year institutions of higher education (IHEs) graduate less than 60 percent of their students in six years..."

So what? Given how lax American higher ed has become in requirements and expectations, I am surprised it's below 60%. Apparently, historically, American graduation rates have never been very high.

Quickest way to increase grad rates would be to simply sell degrees, or to hand them out for free like the Wizard of Oz.

Now I do realize that a "college degree" no longer necessarily means a Liberal Arts degree as proof that one has mastered a language or two, calculus, sciences, masterworks of philosophy, theology, and literature, etc: many colleges today entail various combinations of remedial education, high-school level coursework, and job training. Flunking out is a thing of the past, so lots of folks must just figure it's not worth the trouble. They could be right.

The MSM views Shazad's motive as a "mystery" (h/t, Am Digest).

The answer seems self-evident to me: His Pathfinder was a piece of crap, and he wanted to let the world know. And where else but Times Square?

From his piece at RCP:

Currently, the U.S. has the highest legal immigration in the world. Every year, we allow 750,000 immigrants to enter the country legally and make them eligible for citizenship within five years. Two hundred and fifty thousand aslyees are also permitted to enter annually. Those legal immigrants have the right to work and earn a living; the asylees are eligible to work six months after applying to work. If we need more immigrants, as many think we do to expand the workforce of our graying population, then we can easily increase the number of legal immigrants.

If we give the current illegals amnesty, you can be sure that 20 or so years from now, there will be a clamor for another amnesty bill as the illegals will continue to pour in.

Why do they thrive? From David Brooks:

What matters are historical experiences, cultural attitudes, child-rearing practices, family formation patterns, expectations about the future, work ethics and the quality of social bonds.

Researchers have tried to disaggregate the influence of these soft factors and have found it nearly impossible. All we can say for sure is that different psychological, cultural and social factors combine in myriad ways to produce different viewpoints. As a result of these different viewpoints, the average behavior is different between different ethnic and geographic groups, leading to different life outcomes.

Fred Barnes: Democrats at Ramming Speed - The White House wants to pass as much legislation as possible before losing its big majorities, no matter how unpopular its proposals are.

Sounds about right. Such opportunities to destroy American life are rare.

Taking offense, these days, seems to confer the moral authority of sacred victimhood rather than to identify one as a hypersensitive twit, as a disguised bully, or as a manipulative schemer.

I don't know how that happened, but two can play: Offense works both ways. 

Bailout making things worse, at Reason:

...you have politicians defying the will of the voters to pour more water into a leaky bucket; transnational economic planners destroying a currency in order to save it; markets responding to those actions with predictable horror; and the few recipients of all the largesse too dumb to say "Thank you." This is apparently what EU stability looks like.