Maggie's Farm

Should Federal governments (ie taxpayers) support non-commercial arts?

Bert Prelutsky says "No."  More on the subject from Alberta, via Dust My Broom. 

And, finally, "It's The Arts:"

"I wanted to acknowledge luck; the chance and benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others, who might not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it."

"I was always a character actor, but I looked like Little Red Riding Hood." 

Westport, Connecticut's Paul Newman, RIP

Photo: Newman with wife Joanne Woodward, at home. Good people.

Jim Manzil at NRO writes, about Weinberg's Without God in the NY Review of Books:

Steven Weinberg (Nobelist in physics) says this in the recent essay “Without God” in the New York Review of Books:

[T]he worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions.

Really – why not?

Indeed, the materialistic, "scientific," and utilitarian views of life are cold as ice. But real scientists aren't cold. They are as emotional and "spiritual" as everybody else.

Casual business dress is passe (I don't know how to do an accent aigu on this machine).

I learned this from the Wall St. kid of a friend this weekend. They were informed that, from now on, Business Formal is their required dress code, all week.

That's good news for Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor - if there is anybody left on Wall St. to need the clothing.

What do I wear to work? Blazers or tweed jackets and tie, and grey trousers. Brooks shirts. I wear good suits to court, but I only own 5 of 'em for court, weddings, and funerals.

At Commentary.

Very simply said, I do not agree with Socialists, because with Socialism nobody feels like working hard or being creative, inventive, or taking risks (unless they are seeking power, and people who seek power are creeps). Why would anybody bother, without the excitement or the possible rewards?

Morgan Stanley and Goldman have turned themselves into bank holding companies. Now they will be commercial banks.

It's a fascinating development. As the above piece in the WSJ notes, now the venture guys and the hedgies will probably become the sources of innovation and creativity.

How are your teeth?

Teeth are a sensitive subject. When you lose one as an adult, you feel a bit emasculated. Lose a handful, and you can develop a clinical depression.

And root canals are a torture which even the CIA would never inflict on Osama. My first one was without Novocaine at age 14. The elderly dentist didn't "believe in" Novocaine. I have had plenty since then.

Plus it costs big bucks to keep good teeth after 45, unless you are one of the lucky ones with genetically strong enamel.

My teeth are mediocre-to-poor. I have one implant so far, many crowns, and a number of failing crowns. My wisdom teeth were pulled years ago. I have some extractions and two more implants on the way, plus a bridge. Most of my teeth have fillings and miscellaneous repairs. My dentist blames it on cigars and bad tooth genes, and says I need a serious big-time periodontistry before he can do any more repairs and reconstruction.

I also lost a few front ones playing hockey in prep school. The brother of my then-girl friend stuck the end of his stick in my face, entirely by accident no doubt.

Whenever I am sent to a new person, eg a periodontist or an implantologist or an oral surgeon, before I open my mouth I always say "Promise you won't say 'Oh my God what a mess.'"

This stuff gets expensive. But even worse is that it is a depressing reminder of ones' aging and deterioration, a memento mori.

Entropy always wins. We pay and struggle, but we always lose the battle.

A reader, "Rural Counsel," offered this deeply American comment on my post yesterday about Elite Northeast Conservatives:

I think it boils down to a rural versus urban mindset. Or in a related concept, to the old social classes. There was a time that conservative meant "wealthy." Prep school. Ivy League.

Those days are long gone. Conservative now contains the best of American independence and stubborness, self-reliance and work ethic, individualistic. And that, my friends, describes most folks who make a living off the farms and ranches across that "flyover" country.

Elitism doesn't cut it any more. We've seen that electing elites doesn't get us good government. Intellect is nice, but it doesn't fill the bill. We need more grit and temperment than we do PhD dissertations. These self-anointed conservative intelligentsia are about as outdated as the Electoral College; they need to get the chip off their shoulders and become a little more egalitarian.

I may spend my first and last hour of the day out in the barn feeding and watering cattle. I may clean stalls and spread manure on my fields. I sweat every summer getting my hay crop in, and take the chainsaws out in the woods in the fall to cut my firewood for the winter. I'm more likely to be welding on equipment or changing the bearings on the kicker on my baler than I am to be reading the NYT or National Review. I'd rather be taking my kids out to target shoot than being in the "know" about inside politics.

But you know what? I've got three engineering degrees (2 from MIT) and a law degree. I don't need to be told what to think. Just point out the facts; I can draw my own conclusions.

I've met plenty of folks with Ivy League degrees, and they aren't particularly better or brighter than the blue collar guys I used to work with in the chemical plants. And frankly, they aren't as nice. Or as trustworthy.

We don't need first class intellect and second class temperment in the Executive Office. Common sense and a "show me" attitude are the right tools.

We should vote for someone that we'd be comfortable sharing a foxhole with, not someone with the biggest stack of diplomas. Because the important part of the job is a lot closer to picking a business partner than it is picking a college president.

This reader sounds a lot like me: A chain-saw, pick-up truck and single malt Conservative - but I am a blue-blood and an Ivy Leaguer too, for whatever it's worth, these days: not too much. Which is for the best, probably, although it does enrich one's life in subtle and private ways.

How will Wall St. turmoil affect Main St? It will make borrowing more difficult.

It's all explained by Steven (Freakonomics) Levitt in the NYT today.

People talk about the Canadian system (horrible for Docs and patients) and the NHS (which 56% of Brits want eliminated). Few discuss the way the French do it, but it's worth thinking about.

Part 1 of Health Care Reform discusses the history French system, noting "They emphasize private, fee-for-service practice even more than we do." If you are interested in the topic, Synthstuff links all 4 parts of this essay, written by a Doc who likes the system.

Hilarious! (h/t, Right Wing Prof)

Dunn in Am. Thinker discusses the alienation of the elite Northeast conservatives from the rest of American conservatism. He begins:

The selection of Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential candidate has revealed a serious chasm in conservatism, a chasm separating conservative elites – opinion leaders, pundits, spokesmen -- from the vast population of center-right Americans they purport to represent.

As a more-or-less elite, prosperous, hyper-educated Northeastern conservative, I think he has a point - but it doesn't apply to me. I have an F-150, I like Palin, and I get a kick out of Rush (though I rarely have time to hear him).

Re the subprime mortgage mess, from the intro to an essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the limits of statistics:

Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology; you can't be a modern intellectual and not think probabilistically—but... let's not be suckers. The problem is much more complicated than it seems to the casual, mechanistic user who picked it up in graduate school. Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now. It can even bankrupt the system (let's face it: use of probabilistic methods for the estimation of risks did just blow up the banking system).

His (somewhat technical) essay is here.

Many businesses fail every day, and that's the way it ought to be. Otherwise, we would still have buggy whip factories in New York City. In Capitalism, failure is not a dirty word. In fact, failures reveal the success of the way things work.

While McCain and Obama seek to grab news space by blaming someone or something for the Wall Street business failures, I do not. Businesses come and go, from bait shops to corner lunchrooms to investment banks to car manufacturers. I feel badly for folks who lose their jobs, but otherwise I feel good about the creative destruction that Capitalism provides space for. Business is all about calculated risk: in the end, what profit rewards is risk, regardless of the product.

These investment banks were gambling to stay alive in a changing world, and made bad bets. Competition is what hones businesses - and they eventually fall if they cannot keep up or adapt - or behave imprudently, or encounter bad luck.

I deal with many business people in my work, and it is my conclusion that the biggest obstacle to business creation, and thus capital creation and job creation and wealth creation, is the government. Note that the biggest screw-ups of the year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were government agencies. So much for government's role in the financial industry: it inevitably becomes politicized, mediocratized, and corrupted - as with any government involvement in any industry. Few people in government could figure out how to run a candy shop, much less a complex enterprise.

Otherwise, they'd be doing it.

Related: Tyler Cowen on how regulation made the problems worse. Also on how the hedge funds manage risk better than the investment banks.

Also related: How the Dems supported the sub-prime fiasco. Follow the money. And the banks were all too eager to play that game - as long as there were buyers for the junk. A game of musical chairs, as in all bubbles.

While the democratization of Capitalism via the huge increase in investing by the general public over the past 30 years is a wonderful thing, there is also a downside. The downside is that people complain when they lose, and expect the government to do something about it - or to prevent it. They want to privatize gain but socialize risk.

Related: How Fannie and Freddie co-opted the politicians. As Rush says re F and F, where are the investigations? The special prosecutors?

Indeed they are, and they don't mind putting their cards on the table. Quite a remarkable development, really. And the further they go with this, the more they have at stake and the more outlandish their behavior.

However, the Repubs are used to this headwind. They have dealt with it since that "dumb, inarticulate" Eisenhower ran against "smart, sophisticated" Adlai Stevenson.

Stevenson had a metrosexual taste in ties, like Obama. What's that about?

Robert Samuelson, in Getting Real about Health Care: It's not about coverage. It's about cost, begins:

Whoever wins should put health care at the top of his agenda. But the central problem is not improving coverage. It's controlling costs. In 1960, health care accounted for $1 of every $20 spent in the U.S. economy; now that's $1 of every $6, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that it could be $1 of every $4 by 2025. Ponder that: a quarter of the U.S. economy devoted to health care. Would we be better off? Probably not. Countless studies have shown that many diagnostic tests, surgeries and medical devices are either ineffective or unneeded. "More expensive care," notes CBO director Peter Orszag, "does not always mean better care."

Read the whole thing. Of course, the only way to control costs is to limit services. HMOs do that, and people rebel.

Besides freedom, what do American people value more than their health (well, plus their guns and Bibles)?

Tom Brewton directed us to a new piece by Richard Neuhaus in First Things, A New Order of Religious Freedom. It's about religion and politics.

One quote:

More than he wanted to be remembered for having been president, Mr. Jefferson wanted to be remembered as the author of the Virginia “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom.” In the text of the bill he underlined this sentence: “The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.” In a republic of free citizens, every opinion, every prejudice, every aspiration, every moral argument has access to the public square in which we deliberate the ordering of our life together.

Another:

In a democracy that is free and robust, an opinion is no more disqualified for being religious than for being atheistic, or psychoanalytic, or Marxist, or just plain dumb. There is, or at least there ought to be, no legal or constitutional question about the admission of religion to the public square; there is only a question about the free and equal participation of citizens in our public business. Religion is not a reified thing that threatens to intrude upon our common life. Religion in public is but the public opinion of those citizens who appeal to religion in public.

If you are a black conservative, would you consider voting for Obama anyway?

Or if you are a white guy or gal, try imagining being an American black guy or gal and ask yourself whether you would vote for Obama, even if you disagreed with many of his basic assumptions, and even if you had some doubts about his preparation for the job.

I would be interested in our readers' comments.

A quote from The Censor in the Mirror by Ha Jin in American Scholar:

In the summer of 2004, Yuan Hongbing, a Chinese writer, defected to Australia, taking with him four fiction manuscripts. After Yuan’s novels were published abroad, some top Chinese leaders were flustered. Luo Gan, director of the Politics and Law Committee of the Chinese Communist Party at the time, went so far as to give orders to punish with a death sentence whoever dared to pirate the books. Li Changchun, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, who is in charge of ideology, issued the following directive: “The General Administration of Press and Publications, the Border Police, and Customs must work closely to prevent Yuan Hongbing’s novels from being smuggled into the mainland. We must ponder about this phenomenon: For many years our party has spent a great amount of manpower, money, and material resources in bringing up many writers, but our writers have not created any work that can trump Yuan Hongbing’s fiction artistically.” Regardless of whether Li was capable of literary judgment, he did raise a serious question for the party. The answer is clear and simple: The system of harsh censorship has crippled and “sterilized” the writers and artists who exist within its field of force.