Maggie's Farm

As quoted at Evangelical Outpost from an interview with the superb Roger Scruton, titled The Market and Human Nature:

MG: What deleterious consequences result from the "free market ideology" you mention? Are there particular economic arrangements that conservatives ought to prefer?

Scruton: The free market is a necessary part of any stable community, and the arguments for maintaining it as the core of economic life were unanswerably set out by Ludwig von Mises. Hayek developed the arguments further, in order to offer a general defense of "spontaneous order", as the means to produce and maintain socially necessary knowledge. As Hayek points out, there are many varieties of spontaneous order that exemplify the epistemic virtues that he values: the common law is one of them, so too is ordinary morality.

The problem for conservatism is to reconcile the many and often conflicting demands that these various forms of life impose on us. The free-market ideologues take one instance of spontaneous order, and erect it into a prescription for all the others. They ask us to believe that the free exchange of commodities is the model for all social interaction. But many of our most important forms of life involve withdrawing what we value from the market: sexual morality is an obvious instance, city planning another. (America has failed abysmally in both those respects, of course.)

Looked at from the anthropological point of view religion can be seen as an elaborate (and spontaneous) way in which communities remove what is most precious to them (i.e. all that concerns the creation and reproduction of community) from the erosion of the market. A cultural conservative, such as I am, supports that enterprise. I would put the point in terms that echo Burke and Chesterton: the free market provides the optimal solution to the competition among the living for scarce resources; but when applied to the goods in which the dead and the unborn have an interest (sex, for instance) it wastes what must be saved.

Hayek's concept of "spontaneous order" is what knocks me out.

The world is manifestly full of that kind of mysterious order, from the nature of the cosmos to human nature (aka "design" as opposed to chaos), and I'd love to post a lengthy riff on that enticing topic - but it's too late tonight and I avoid discussing transcendent issues here on Ye olde Blogge. So, instead, I'll post of photo from our men's Bible study group's prayer-and-cocktails-and-sunset dinner-and-cigar outing tonight, down on Long Island Sound. The very existence of our group is an example of "spontaneous order," one tiny example of the order in the universe which I believe to be a manifestation of God.

I wish I could post a photo of this cheery, self-disparaging, Christ-centered and humorous group, each one waving a fine ceegar with a glass of wine in his hand - but I wouldn't do that.

Nice boat. Thanks, bro, for taking us all out on the water tonight. The sea brings me close to Christ. It reminds me of how much of Scripture takes place on or near the water.

Part 3 of Sowell's The Imitators series begins like this:

Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."

Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies."

These people were always finding water all over their pool deck and furniture every time they came home after being away for a few hours. They thought the neighborhood kids were waiting for them to leave, and using the pool. However, they could never catch them doing it. So, they set up their video cam and left. This is what they found out:

Krauthammer observes that, as the years grow between 9-11 and the present, old-fashioned "sophisticated" doubt returns to fashion and "people with "deeply-held views"" are viewed with suspicion, if not with fear:

"Nothing has more aroused and infuriated the sophisticates than the foreign policy of a religiously inclined President, based on the notion of a universal aspiration to freedom and of America's need and duty to advance it around the world. Such liberationism, confident and unapologetic, is portrayed as arrogant crusading, a deep violation of the tradition of American pluralism, ecumenism, modesty and skeptical restraint.

That widespread portrayal is invention masquerading as history. You want certainty? You want religiosity? How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it."

Read entire:  Click here: TIME.com Print Page: TIME Magazine -- In Defense of Certainty

I wish I had written this piece by John Hawkins, Why Liberals lie about what they believe.

It's really quite simple.

John Hatcher's new book on the plague, reviewed in NY Sun. The glowing review begins:

This totally absorbing book presents the best account ever written about the worst event to have ever befallen the British Isles. In the hands of John Hatcher, an English medievalist of sober and steady reputation who has for decades been squirreled away in one of the smaller, older, and least obtrusive of Cambridge colleges, the extraordinary tragedy of the great plague — which wiped out as much as 60% of the population of 14th-century Europe and killed an estimated 75 million worldwide — has been brought to life in a manner rarely attempted, and with a level of success even more rarely achieved.

 Related: How Dark was It? A new history of medieval Europe.

I had only one superstition. I made sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.

Babe Ruth, with good advice for lawyers, carpenters, bankers, electricians, doctors - and everybody.

One quote from a piece with the above title by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar:

If one of the disadvantages of an elite education is the temptation it offers to mediocrity, another is the temptation it offers to security. When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhattan or a mansion in L.A.; you have to drive a Honda instead of a BMW or a Hummer; you have to vacation in Florida instead of Barbados or Paris, but what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you’re suited for, work you love, every day of your life?

Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.

Read the whole thing (link above).

A photo of the Yale campus, designed to make clever if snot-nosed kids buy into the illusion that they are 19th century aristocrats at Oxford or Cambridge rather than the humble but literate Congregationalist pastors Yale was originally created to produce:

From the Supremes today:

“The inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right...”

Without self-defense, a person becomes a sheep in a world with wolves.

Bravo to the five Justices who honor our Constitution over their personal preferences, and bravo to Justice Scalia for putting it all in historical context. The justices'  personal opinions should have no role in their job: it's not what they are paid to do. After all, everybody has an opinion on everything. Opinions on stuff are a dime a dozen.

Anyway, it's a big step in the right direction. More later...

Updates: Lots of links at Drudge and Memorandum. And here is the Supreme's announcement. Also, "Yahoo" at Yahoo.

Sometimes forces defy control, like weather. This about captures it.

It's not a perfect world, and only the seductive and subtle salesman Devil himself would suggest that it could be otherwise. Life will teach us humility, if nothing else: it seems designed to do so.

Furthermore, as our Dr. Bliss often says, no two people would ever agree on what "perfect" might mean anyway. For some, it's the womb. For others, it's constant challenge and difficulty.

Imus interviewed Rolling Stone's Jan Wenner this morning, about Wenner's recent interview of Obama. (Wenner is an Obamamaniac, but it's all about style for him. And "change" - as Wenner profoundly said, and I paraphrase: "Everything is going so wrong. We all want change today.")

Anyway, Wenner said that Obama told him that his favorite song is Dylan's Maggies Farm, which he has on his iPod. Clearly we enjoy the spirit of the song too, but if Obama really wants to be a cool dude, he needs to get hip to Maggie's Farm blog.

Practicing medicine has become a crappy job. Insty

Tom Wolfe returns to Wall Street

Where in the Constitution....does it permit Congress to tell us what lightbulbs to use? Ted Poe is funny.

Dalrymple begins:

Is the European Union heading for a Yugoslavian-style denouement? It sometimes looks as if its political class, oblivious to the wishes or concerns of the EU’s various populations, is determined to bring one about. The French and the Dutch voted against the proposed European Constitution, but that did not deter the intrepid political class from pressing ahead with its plans for a superstate that no one else wants. To bypass the wishes of the people, the politicos reintroduced the constitution as a treaty, to be ratified by parliaments alone. Only the Irish had the guts—or was it the foolhardiness?—to hold a referendum on the issue. Unfortunately, the Irish people got the answer wrong.

Read the whole thing.

An excerpt from an excerpt from an Alan Charles Kors essay in New Criterion:

The power of universities comes from their monopoly of credentials. As Richard Vedder so deeply understands in his “Going Broke by Degree,” they are the only institutions allowed to separate young individuals by IQ and by the ability to complete complex tasks. They do not add value to that, except in technical fields. Recruiters do not pay premiums because of what the Ivy League or the flagship state universities teach in English, history, political science, or sociology. They hire there despite, not because of, that. Recruiters do not pay premiums because our children have been sent to multicultural centers for sensitivity training. Recruiters pay premiums for the value already there, which universities merely identify. So long as recruiters pay premiums, however, it is rational for parents who wish to gain the most options for their children to send them to the university with the most prestigious degree. That will not change in the current scheme.

I had the great pleasure of attending the 50th wedding anniversary of an old pal, a NYC lawyer and role model and his wonderful and beautiful wife, down at the Larchmont (NY) Yacht Club last night.

Yes, he still takes the train to the city each morning.

One of their fine daughters read a quote from the excellent book Corelli's Mandolin, in which Dr. Iannis discusses his marriage:

Love is not breathless, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day... That is just being "in love," which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident...we had roots that grew towards eachother underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

I have liked making money since I was a kid. Still do. Finding honest and satisfying ways to make money has always been an interesting and amusing part of my life. Bird Dog asked me the very simple and direct question of why making and saving money pleases me.

- It gives me choices
- It makes me feel secure and independent to have it
- I can take interesting trips
- I can buy toys if I want to (but being able to afford them makes me covet most things less - it's what I
     term the "choice effect.")
- I can feed the wife's horses and dogs
- I was made to work. Always thought resting was for the grave. Love working on anything, from a complex tax-dodging trust to a tractor carburetor. Compensation is the icing on the cake.
- I can provide a nice environment for the family
- I can educate the kids - and help with the grandkids -  without taking charity or other people's hard-
     earned money
- I can give plenty of money away for causes that matter to me
- I can have fun fussing and worrying about my goofball investments
- I can enjoy work more if I don't have to work, and I don't need to go into a depression when the barn
    needs painting or when the tractor breaks
- I can buy some art that I like to look at

How's that for starters?

The story from 1943 begins like this:

"Charlie Brown was a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot with the 379th Bomber Group at Kimbolton, England. His B-17 was called 'Ye Old Pub' and was in a terrible state, having been hit by flak and fighters. The compass was damaged and they were flying deeper over enemy territory instead of heading home to Kimbolton.

After flying over an enemy airfield, a pilot named Franz Steigler was ordered to take off and shoot down the B-17. When he got near the B-17, he could not believe his eyes. In his words, he 'had never seen a plane in such a bad state'."

Read the whole thing. 

Image by Jamie Iverson, available here.

Good grammar doesn't reveal your IQ, but it does reveal the quality of your reading and your education - or your absorption therof. So, to refresh my grammar, I shall review "will" and "shall", and you shall listen to me.

The important verb "will" has two conjugations: for plain future, it's "(I or we) shall..." and (You or they) will...". For commands, promises, and assertions, it's the reverse. Simple.

This is a re-post from the archives:

Michael Shermer, in The American Scientist, has written a thoughtful piece entitled "The Soul of Science" about how he claims that he finds fully-satisfying non-transcendent meaning and purpose in his life. My title above is a bit tongue-in-cheek, and I have not dropped the dime to the Spanish Inquisition - lost their phone number. Nor do I have any argument with anyone who feels simply that "Life is to Live" - I think that is an entirely wholesome, if willfully unreflective, approach to the miracle of existence. We all have to map our own way of being in the world; that's the burden and blessing of freedom.

You can easily tell from his earnest writing that Mr. Shermer is a very good, decent, likeable, thoughtful fellow. But there is something in his piece, an undercurrent of trying too hard, or protesting too much, that makes me wonder whether Mr. Shermer is resisting something in himself. I am not a religious man, nor - God forbid - a "spiritual" man. But, like most people, I have a feeling about, or interest in a transcendent force. Call it what you will. And I do find an unaccountable joy in singing hymns about Jesus which causes me to imagine that something "out there" is connecting with something "in here."

Some of us Maggie's crew had dinner with The Analyst, Dr. Bliss, last month in Cambridge. She expounded on the theme that "everyone worships something," whether they know it or not. She feels that self-worship - the idolatry of "self-fulfillment" and "self-importance" and "self-realization" is the pop alternative to a deity. At which point Bird Dog tends to crudely interject about his yet-unwritten book entitled "I'm An A-hole, You're an A-hole" - the theoretical counterpoint to that best-seller of the 70s I'm OK, You're OK. I have doubts about whether Bird Dog's title will sell books, but I get his point.

Shermer puts everything in a science frame:

Humans have an evolved sense of purpose—a psychological desire to accomplish goals—that developed out of behaviors that were selected for because they were good for the individual or the group. The desire to behave in purposeful ways is an evolved trait; purpose is in our nature. And with brains big enough to discover and define purpose in symbolic ways that are inconceivable to millions of preceding and coexisting species, we humans are unique.

Despite his welcome humility about it, I guess Shermer "worships" science, or genetics, more or less, since that is how he decides to frame his experience of reality.

Read entire and see what you think. I am out of time. (The ironic choice of photo is of Baal, AKA Beelzebub, to whom live children were sacrificed in Christ's time.)

From Obama and McCain:

Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober-- if not grim-- assessment of where we are.

Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.

This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world-- Iran-- is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.

The Gulf Stream (as compared to the related North Atlantic Drift) is of as much interest to blue-water sailors as it is to fishermen.

Many years ago, I regularly fished for tuna with friends off Montauk on Long Island. We would usually leave at night, steam East, and hit the edge of the Stream by morning. There seemed to be a water color change, but the tell was the water temperature change. 

I did not know that Ponce de Leon was the first to take advantage of its 2.5 knot current, or that Ben Franklin mapped it in detail.

In any event, the Gulf Stream is particularly relevant to yachtsmen in the New York Yacht Club's annual Newport-Bermuda Race (aka The Bermuda Race), because their southeastern route tends to buck the current, and because the Stream is a "weather breeder."

The Stream is not static: it wiggles and throws off arms and segments. UConn Oceanographer W. Frank Bohlen has been providing updated Gulf Stream tutorials to the Bermuda Race race committee for years, for the use of the sailors.

Here's a sample of his reports, this from his June 2, 2008 report on the Gulf Stream.

Image is borrowed from Theo.

This is an old re-post:

I stumbled onto this old Auster review on the View from the Right yesterday. He reviewed Brookhiser's The Way of the Wasp, (which I read when it came out in 1991, with the hope that I might understand myself a little better). America has been historically a WASP culture, in the best sense of the term, and that is why it is such a fine country. Does anyone doubt this? It's the culture that dares to interrogate itself.

One quote from Auster's piece:

In his account of the degeneration of this pattern of useful virtues into an opposite set of vices, Brookhiser illuminates our current disorder. Conscience, the monitor of the self, has given way to the untrammeled self, along with the attendant liberationisms; lower-class welfare mothers and upper-class S&L con artists are equally products of a culture that has thrown away the constraints of conscience. Instead of industry rewarded by success, we have ambition striving for gratification. Civic-mindedness has been displaced by the group-mindedness that now dominates our politics, while the objective test of use (which implies a moral standard derived from nature) has given way to diffidence: "[Things] are, therefore we defer to them"--a neat characterization of America's timorous response to every minority demand.

Consider reading the book, or at least Auster's review, whether WASP or not. It's the story of America's strength and freedom and traditions and manners, all based on stern Protestant moral codes of modesty, duty, sacrifice, self-sufficiency, courage, self-denial, integrity, work, respect, honor, and emotional restraint. With a strong, monitoring, rather punitive conscience to watch over it all. It is impossible to be a nation or a community without shared behavioral codes, and these are still the core of our culture, despite endless assaults upon them from a variety of directions. It's just too damn bad if these codes aren't always fun or instantly gratifying or ego-enhancing: They are for the grown-ups.

One year ago, as the Immigration Reform bill was being debated, David Frum wrote How I Rethought Immigration. One quote:

It seems impossible that the immigration bill can succeed: A large majority of the American people claim to be following the immigration debate closely, and that majority opposes the immigration plan by a three-to-one majority. And when the bill collapses, it will take what little remains of the president's political capital with it. Did I say capital? No, that has long since been spent. It is his credit that he is now exhausting.

My favorite handgun is my Les Baer 1911 Thunder Ranch Special.

Nobody builts a .45 like Baer, perfectly weighted and balanced so you can actually hit the target, and not get pushed backwards.

A bit too heavy and bulky for carrying in your back pocket, however.