Maggie's Farm

It's not your parents' humanism. Scruton never disappoints. His main point is that the Old Humanism was about building up mankind's strengths and virtues, while the New is negative, and stands for nothing worthy. A quote from The New Humanism:

Like so many modern ideologies, the new humanism seeks to define itself through what it is against rather than what it is for. It is for nothing, or at any rate for nothing in particular. Ever since the Enlightenment there has been a tendency to adopt this negative approach to the human condition, rather than to live out the exacting demands of the Enlightenment morality, which tells us to take responsibility for ourselves and to cease our snivelling. Having shaken off their shackles and discovered that they have not obtained contentment, human beings have a lamentable tendency to believe that they are victims of some alien force, be it aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the priesthood, or simply the belief in God. And the feeling arises that they need only destroy this alien force, and happiness will be served up on a plate, in a garden of pleasures. That, in my view, is why the Enlightenment, which promised the reign of freedom and justice, issued in an unending series of wars.

That is, I think, a profound observation.

Have you ever heard of "The Belgian Dream"? No, you haven't, because there isn't one.

Mark Steyn, on the radio today

A repost from last year -

From Joseph Bottum at First Things. A quote:

He begins:

America was Methodist, once upon a time—Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian. A little light Unitarianism on one side, a lot of stern Calvinism on the other, and the Easter Parade running right down the middle: our annual Spring epiphany, crowned in bright new bonnets.

The average American these days would have ­trouble recalling the dogmas that once defined all the jarring sects, but their names remain at least half alive: a kind of verbal remembrance of the nation’s religious history, a taste on the tongue of native speakers. Think, for instance, of the old Anabaptist congregations—how a residual memory of America’s social geography still lingers in the words: the Hutterites, Mennonites, and Amish, set here and there on the checkerboard of the nation’s farmland. The Quakers in their quiet meeting­houses, the Shakers in their tiny communes, and the Pentecostals, born in the Azusa Street revivals, like blooms forced in the hothouse of the inner city.

And yet, even while we may remember the names of the old denominations, we tend to forget that it all made a kind of sense, back in the day, and it came with a kind of order. The genteel Episcopalians, high on the hill, and the all-over Baptists, down by the river. Oh, and the innumerable independent Bible churches, tangled out across the prairie like brambles: Through most of the nation’s history, these endless divisions and ­revisions of Protestantism renounced one another and sermonized against one another. They squabbled, sneered, and fought. But they had something in common, for all that. Together they formed a vague but vast unity. Together they formed America.

and

...somewhere around 1975, the main stream of Protestantism ran dry. In truth, there are still plenty of Methodists around. Baptists and Presbyterians, too—Lutherans, Episcopalians, and all the rest; millions of believing Christians who remain serious and devout. For that matter, you can still find, ­soldiering on, some of the institutions they established in their Mainline glory days: the National Council of Churches, for instance, in its God Box up on New York City’s Riverside Drive, with the cornerstone laid, in a grand ceremony, by President Eisenhower in 1958. But those institutions are corpses, even if they don’t quite realize that they’re dead. The great confluence of Protestantism has dwindled to a trickle over the past thirty years, and the Great Church of America has come to an end.

And that leaves us in an odd situation, unlike any before. The death of the Mainline is the central historical fact of our time: the event that distinguishes the past several decades from every other ­period in American history. Almost every one of our current political and cultural oddities, our contradictions and obscurities, derives from this fact: The Mainline has lost the capacity to set, or even significantly influence, the national vocabulary or the national self-understanding.

Read the whole thing.

I agree with Coyote: this is creepy.

Our MSM has already been a voluntary mouthpiece for the Left and an apologist for the Dem party for many years. How much more so would it be if they were financially beholden to the givernment?

Most Americans, unlike Europeans, are emotionally mature enought to be willing to see that government is not run by their betters, but by cowardly morons - often by cowardly moronic narcissists who could never handle a real, demanding job in which their added value could be measured.

The widespread recognition of that is one thing that distinguishes America from nations with monarchic, dictatorial, and dependency traditions.

Hope springs eternal from the human breast, though, doesn't it? Even from those who know better.

I have felt disgusted and embarassed by our federal government and the administration over the past few weeks. We posted earlier today that these people could not run a successful candy shop, much less the government. But they have not shown that they can even run their own lives honestly and effectively. That's why I want them as far as possible from my medical care, my investments, my business, and my pocketbook - and from everything else in my life. Please - do me no favors.

Three posts that captured some of my feelings today:

Obama's simple political strategy. Wizbang

The antique ideas from the Dems. So old, they are marketed as new. Am Thinker

Bonfire of the Trivialities. Krauthammer

Liberal views; Belgian Brains. Goldberg

If you can ease antitrust laws for newspapers, why not for anything else? This government is casual about the role of law in this country. Related: Pelosi says enforcement of immigration laws is un-American. That must mean that breaking the law is American.

Ramesh Ponnuru: The Pride of the Liberals. He begins:

Sometimes political movements, as they grow old, become arrogant, insular, and dismissive of criticism. Critics said that the conservative ascendancy of the last few decades succumbed to that disease, and there is more truth in it than conservatives would like to admit. What we are seeing in Washington, D.C., right now is different: President Obama and his supporters are showing early symptoms of this syndrome in the first flush of victory. The liberal ascendancy is already becoming a liberal complacency.

Read it.

A Columbia prof teaches a highly diverse class of Columbia's famous and required  Contemporary Civilization. He discusses in A Look at Real Diversity.

He concludes:

I have been teaching a class on Western Civilization since September.

It is highly diverse.

My brown students are no less -- but no more -- meaningfully "diverse" than the others.

And in our class, together in all of our diversities, we have had a multifaceted and utterly human journey.

I'd give almost anything to teach that course for a couple of years.

"I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God."

"I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and despised in the eyes of many."

"Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me."  

Also, a reader sent in a hymn - a new one to me - St. Patrick's Breastplate - which is a translation from Gaelic. Good tune, and it uses those words in the third quote.

Perhaps we already linked Voegli's essay of the above title, but, if we did, it bears repeating. Here's one quote:

Our age has seen political disdain become seamlessly integrated into cultural disdain. The prominent novelist E.L. Doctorow showed the way in 1980 when he wrote that Ronald Reagan had grown up in "just the sorts of places [small towns in Illinois] responsible for one of the raging themes of American literature, the soul-murdering complacency of our provinces.... The best and brightest fled all our Galesburgs and Dixons, if they could, but the candidate was not among them." Reagan did attend college, but not the kind that would have given him some exposure to the world outside the soul-murdering towns where he grew up, and to moral ideas calling into question his parents' religion. Instead, wrote Doctorow, a "third-rate student at a fifth-rate college could learn from the stage, the debating platform, the gridiron and the fraternity party the styles of manliness and verbal sincerity that would stand him in good stead when the time came to make his mark in the world." Achieving success in his first job out of college, as a radio announcer in Des Moines, Reagan made a number of local speaking engagements, "giving talks to fraternal lodges, boys' clubs and the like, telling sports stories and deriving from them Y.M.C.A. sorts of morals."

We see here all the basic elements, employed for the past 28 years, of liberal condescension. Every issue of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, or Rolling Stone makes clear that the policy positions of George W. Bush, Republicans, and conservatives in general are wicked and stupid. The real problem, however, is that everything about these people—where they reside, what they believe, how they live, work, recreate, talk, and think—is in irredeemably bad taste. To embark on a conversation with one of them, based on straight-faced openness to the possibility of learning something interesting or important, would be like choosing to vacation in Wichita instead of Tuscany.

That's the evaporation of wealth in the US in 2008 - not including 2009. Some of that was mine - enough to make a difference in my plans and in my comfort level. No, I do not expect markets to only go up, nor do I ever expect to sell our house (which still has a significant mortgage) - but this was a tornado. A fluke.

Being no longer a young fellow, I must admit that it causes me some anxiety. We don't have pensions (who does these days, except government employees?). We have 401-Ks. I have no problem with working forever, but I did want some choice about it. I like choices.

IBD explains why it matters to everyone.

Tigerhawk explains why Lefties should be pleased about wealth destruction. More equality, etc. Tigerhawk can be a bit flip about it, though, because he is a young guy, full of beans and ideas, and clever enough to outsmart Obama's Socialist plans for us.

A re-post from 2005:

Anthony Esolen:

If Jesus’ parable is an extended metaphor for a life of mercy—if we are to treat those suffering souls whom chance has thrown in our way as if they were people among whom we live—then we have taken the wheels off that metaphor’s vehicle. If you do not really have neighbors, how can you understand Jesus’ command to be a neighbor to others? You have to disembody it, etherealize it into a manifesto of general benevolence and almsgiving (perhaps of the political variety, whereby you stoutly sacrifice the alms of other people). Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and you hear a call to be kind to your friends and to give to the United Way.

But before I come to how I think that parable must be understood, I should vindicate myself and my family just a bit, and in so doing point out a few reasons why neighborhood life in America is past. You see, my wife and I are not by nature sullen or withdrawn or suspicious. We live in a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, but we have begun to spend summers in a small home in an old fishing village, called West Arichat, on the coast of Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia. In that village, after only a few weeks, we have met more people—have been in their homes, have eaten with them—than we have in eight years in our place in the States.

Read entire piece at Touchstone.

How computer modeling worsened the financial crisis. American Scholar

How the Wall St. physicists tried to outsmart the markets. NYT.

Everybody loves to find a scapegoat. Never imagined that physicists would be them. Me? I blame Congress.

All 27 of the series, online.

Love that 50s soundtrack. #17 about Guam is good. Americans are good at doing things.

I do enjoy it when others do my work for me.

This piece, Putting Obama on the Couch (h/t, Cafe Hayek) offers a few of my favorite cognitive biases: Wishful Thinking, Planning Fallacy, Overconfidence Effect, Attentional Bias and Anchoring Bias.

A Mr. Free Marketesque wave of a fine cigar to all of the sites that linked with Bruce Kesler's excellent and well-researched post on ObamaCare here. Light one up for the cause of freedom and choice in medical treatment, with our thanks.

We do want to get those facts out there because in a DC health care debate we will be the recipients of many self-serving and emotionally-manipulative lies and scare tactics.

Our Editor and I have had an email discussion about Kesler's post. Sad to say, we agree that the facts often play a minor role in politics because Lefty politics is all about accumulating State power. Their term is "by all means necessary." Of course, that means removing notions of freedom, free choice, and self-reliance from all of their political equations. It isn't even discussed.

Except for abortion (which is arguably a political issue of self-determination but not, of course, for the tiny new life that is snuffed out), have you ever heard a single Dem or Lefty argument for more freedom, more independence, and less State power over the individual person? Or his/her hard-earned money?

Here at Maggie's, we tend to believe in the virtues of freedom and self-reliance for most, and the human tragedy of dependency only for those unfortunates who require it. That's the only way to build people with strong spirits. The only "universal" things we want from the Feds are protection from foreign enemies and law-enforcement.

(We should note that our blog friend Shrinkwrapped posted a simultaneous and fine piece on the same subject: Preparing for the "Healthcare Reform in the United States" Debate: Beware of GIGO)

Related to our first link of this morning, Focus on Outcome, we see this from Dr. Clouthier: We need to redefine merit...because standardized testing is racist.

How come I always thought that merit was supposed to be the solution to genetic and ethnic bias? I guess not. Racism and ethnicism are the new anti-racism and anti-ethnicism. Silly me to have trouble with that, after all this time.

With this obsession with the genetics of skin tone, why don't we simply revert to the old way, where our genetic blood-line determines what we get to do? No, I have no African blood (well, way back we all do), or royal blood either. English serfs mostly - essentially slaves (does that give me a leg up?), I believe, back in the 1400s. Hard workers who survived long enough to reproduce. A random knight or two, I believe, for whatever that's worth, and a few clergymen.

Thank God, no Irish blood.

I asked my excellent carpenter-handyman how business is going these days. He was replacing a couple of windows and fixing a few doors for us. A 2-day job. He stays entirely on one job until it is done, and he is meticulous.

He said he is making more money from 3-day jobs now than he was making from 3-10 week jobs last year. He confided that he generally makes $100-150,000/year, and that he is happier working solo instead of with the employees that he had for many years. Less aggravation, and happier customers. He is booked up for the next four months.

The guy is a serious history buff so he is fun to have around. He starts work a 7 AM, and refuses to work after 4 pm to protect his personal and family time.

Roast grouse recipe wars between The Englishman and Mr. Free Market.

My guess is that the Brit grouse, for dining, are unlike our delicately-flavored flavoured Ruffed Grouse and more like our Sharp-Tailed Grouse.

Photo above: A Highlands grouse walk-up hunt. Wonder why there are no trees? There were, once. The Great Caledonian Forest.
Photo below: Red Grouse

h/t, Right Wing Prof:

I heard Doris Kearns Goodwin interviewed on Imus this morning during my 6 AM drive to work, and lost all respect for her. She was flacking hard for Obama.

She claimed that "nobody knows what to do about the economy." She said that Obama must experiment with government's role just as FDR did. She said his personal popularity polls show that people believe that he cares, and that's the important thing. She said he needs time to solve all the problems (What!?!). Oh, I almost forgot. She said that teleprompters are the modern way (although neither she nor Don Imus were using one).

Wrong on all counts. Pure flackery by a partisan Dem delivering Dem talking points propaganda. I would have expected more from her.

I'll just take her first point, because I happen to know what to do: 1) Restore the uptick rule to discourage the highly profitable bear raids against solid companies (rumor is that Russian and Chinese hedge funds are making a mint doing that, probably in collusion). 2) Cut corporate taxes to encourage hiring 3) Cut cap gains taxes to encourage investment in business growth 4) Cut individual tax rates to unleash spending and to remove the crushing threat of higher taxes 5) Get rid of "mark to market": it makes it almost impossible to make a long-term inventment in a tree that needs time to bear fruit. 6) Quit the war against business and the delusion of big government "solutions" (ie my money) to everything from my health to GM's de facto bankruptcy, and 7) Talk up the American economy and its resilience.

In other words, unleash the animal spirits of the economy and the creative power of the  people instead of frightening everybody by threatening to put it all on a tighter leash. People yearn to be unleashed to do things and to follow their dreams, and not to be hand-fed or to become serfs to The State. Disincentivization to effort and reward has been tried elsewhere, and it does not work very well. (Plus a prosperous nation is in a good position to take decent care of its feckless, unmotivated, parasitic, and unfortunate.)

But they will do none of those things, because they are not about what works. They are about their ideology and their political goals. They are clever, crafty and tricksy - but deeply unwise, and unwilling to think outside their little old 1930s box.

Why? Same old reason: These people live inside government, and thus play the government game. They love power, and somehow became deluded into thinking that they are smarter than us regular folks. Wrong! Disgusting as it may be, whatever 'system" they give us, people will find a way to "work it" for their own interests. It's called "incentive," and it is quite human: people want to take care of themselves, their families and their loved ones - and they want to be free to do things their own way, whether they screw it up or not.

It's about human dignity. Nobody can give anybody that. All anybody can do is to free people to pursue it.

His post begins:

It is on the record -- thanks to Politico.com -- since last fall, the White House, led by Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff to Barack Obama, has been targeting me, your host, your harmless, lovable little fuzzball.  Their standard operating procedure: they need a demon to distract and divert from what their agenda is.  They need a demon about whom they can lie so as to persuade average Americans that they're the good guys, the benevolent good guys, and the mean SOBs are their enemies trying to stop this great young little president from doing miraculous and wonderful things. 

Read the whole thing, because in this Rush not only challenges Obama to a debate on the issues, but cruelly includes a photo of Rahm Emanuel at his ballet class.

Yes, it is all a distracting and undignified sideshow. Here's the important part: I don't understand, however, even tactically, why the WH and the Dems bother going on a daily attack mission when they have Congress and the WH. Wouldn't they rather appear strong, confident, and above it all rather than like pitbull pols? Why the mudslinging?

Maybe their polling is telling them something.