Maggie's Farm

McCain too "mavericky" for you? Mitt too unelectable for you? Hillary and Bill too morally-challenged? Barry O. too lightweight and commy?

It was ever thus. If you want government to reflect your own views, then run for office yourself. Otherwise, cheer up, quit grumbling, and spend some time with the Spring Wayside catalog.

Photo: Rose Double Delight, from the catalog.

PS: I do not know who to vote for today. McCain might be able to win an election, but I agree far more with Mitt's current positions. Since appointments to the Supremes is my bottom line, and requires winning, I may hold ye olde schnoz and go with John. Sorry, Mitt - you are one fine fellow and deserve better, but I do not see you winning a national election this year.

PPS: We need a Gardening category on the blog.

Editor's note: Indeed we do. I created one, but it will take a while to backtrack. BTW, I am going with Mitt. Tough decision: practicality vs. policy. You are correct, B. - it was ever thus. In this life, we never get exactly what we want, except for lovely roses.

OK, I will grant you that Frank Loesser caused 9/11. But did the demonic imperialist Loesser also cause the Moslem hate and murderousness in Bali, Thailand, Burma, Turkey, England, India, Pakistan, and Africa? "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a great song, but who knew that it was that well-known in places like Bali?

To play it safe, let's just go ahead and ban that terrible tune which has understandably caused the world so much misery, hate, and bloodshed.

But first, before the EU and the UN ban it, one more time with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan with the insensitive Moslem-offending song that began it all:

A friend of Maggie's took this shot at the WTC site yesterday:

This is a re-posting from April, 2007:

We posted a QQQ last week from the fiery Mark Levin: "When was the last time you heard a Liberal talking about liberty?"

They never do. The term "liberal" is a misnomer, as classical liberalism was about freedom and firm limits to state power. The "new liberalism" is about expanding state power and parentalism over the citizens. And, as I always say, power, unlike wealth, is a zero sum game.

The New Liberalism is Authoritarian Populism, more or less, with a socialist reflex, and has a very high tolerance for state involvement in, and control over, our lives. Hence the Left's past idealization of Stalin, and current idealization of Castro and Chavez. And, of course, FDR.

On Maggie's Farm, we are classical liberals of the "Live free or die" variety. We feel that is what America is all about, and why we are the shining city on a hill - not because of our government, but because of free people. The government is not America.

This fundamental subject comes up because our editor emailed me a piece in Salon cited by a reader in response to Mark Levin's rhetorical question.

 It is an essay by Walter Shapiro in favor of repealing the Second Amendment. (The fact that legislation has effectively already repealed the Second Amendment for criminals and madmen carries no water for him. He doesn't want me to have guns.)

So it is a good example of New Liberalism. Here is the key quote:

Only in a nation forged by 18th century concerns about liberty and states' rights do firearms have a hallowed place in the Constitution.

How revealing. "Concern" about freedom and liberty is now obsolete, and replaced by...what? Let me share something: I know the "elites," and I am down with them, socially. And they have no more common sense than the fingernail of my pinkie.

Thank God that the New York delegation to the Constitutional Convention, and a few other delegations, insisted on the Bill of Rights. Most delegations thought it was unnecessary, and that such freedoms were implicit in the battles they had fought.

Perhaps Mr. Shapiro would be happier if he also could advocate a movement to repeal Amendments 9 and 10 also.

 Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Or why not just repeal the whole darn thing? We could replace it with this, and have a nice Bloomberg-style, Hillary-style dictatorship of the elite who are way smarter, of course, than us folks, and know what is best for us. After all, we are too stupid, and liberty is so scary.

Image: Constitution Hall, Philadelphia

A friend visited this place last summer, and just told me about it. Humber Valley Resort.

Salmon fishing, golf, sailing, ocean fishing, spa, fine dining, hiking, skiing, kayaking, sailing, snowmobiling, wildlife-watching, etc. In Newfoundland, a place I have always been curious about even before I read any Annie Proulx. (I thought Proulx was from Newfoundland, but she is from Norwich, CT, same as my Grandpa.)

Take a look at their website: good slideshow. They have 150 chalets.

I cannot understand willing suicide-bomber Jihadists, but I can understand being willing to die for a (good) cause, and can imagine doing so.

But I cannot even imagine a sort of human who could imagine using mentally disabled kids as remote-controlled bombs. It is sub-human - no - satanic, as far as I am concerned. I have at least as many devilish thoughts as the next guy, but I never would have had that idea nor, I would like to believe, would your average Moslem.

No American, even the most sympathetic multiculturalist, knows what it might be like to inhabit the soul of a person who would do such a thing - for any reason. Everyone knows these people are barbarians, but most are too polite to say so. However, the Western notion of "polite" does not go far in the Middle East, where different codes are in operation.

People have spoken to me about Western secular humanism and making a religion of human life. As a Christian, I do not believe that human life is the most precious thing. A gift, perhaps, but during most of human existence it has been "poor, nasty, brutal and short," and more of a burden than a gift.  It is unique - a world miracle - that Western civilization has arrived at a point at which it is unthinkable to use a dog, much less a human, as a guided missile against innocents. We have largely escaped the "brutal and short," except for our sociopaths.

Quantitative differences, accumulated, become qualitative differences. In radical Islam, we are dealing with something that is beyond our civil, soft, and sentimental comprehension. If they would leave us alone, I think we would be more than happy to leave them alone in their own Dark Ages like a historical zoo, an anthropological curiosity, a quaint tourism destination, or a Disney show - to emerge from cocoon when ready. Meanwhile, don't tread on me, because a soft and decadent Rome already went through a barbarian invasion and it did not work out well.

I do not want these people to like me.

(If this is incoherent, it is because Mark Levin is screaming in my ear with McCain Derangement Syndrome. And, mind you, I was a Fredhead, but I always simply vote for my most Conservative and electable choice. If I can be convinced that Mitt can win a national election, I will vote for him. I am old enough to know that one must always hold one's nose when voting.)

Editor's note: Our loyal reader AVI notes, in a comment, that NPR reported this story tonight simply as another suicide bombing. Incredible...but not. NPR is our BBC, omitting inconvenient facts when they do not fit their ideological biases.

Via Overcoming Bias:

A superintelligence from another galaxy, whom we shall call Omega, comes to Earth and sets about playing a strange little game.  In this game, Omega selects a human being, sets down two boxes in front of them, and flies away.

Box A is transparent and contains a thousand dollars.
Box B is opaque, and contains either a million dollars, or nothing.

You can take both boxes, or take only box B.

And the twist is that Omega has put a million dollars in box B if Omega has predicted that you will take only box B.

Omega has been correct on each of 100 observed occasions so far - everyone who took both boxes has found box B empty and received only a thousand dollars; everyone who took only box B has found B containing a million dollars.  (We assume that box A vanishes in a puff of smoke if you take only box B; no one else can take box A afterward.)

Before you make your choice, Omega has flown off and moved on to its next game.  Box B is already empty or already full.

Omega drops two boxes on the ground in front of you and flies off.

Do you take both boxes, or only box B?

Decide, then read about it.  Yes, it is related to the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Surber attempts to inject some rationality into Conservatives. It may be true that Leftists seem to own the Dem Party, but Conservatives do not own the Repub Party. If the Repubs cannot be a "big tent," they will never regain power.

It's a center-right country, not a right-right country and, if you will pardon my pontificating, politics is about compromise - even when it hurts. I'd like to be a purist too, but the reality of other voters, with other views, keeps getting in the way... and it always will.

I have long been a student of the above Law, but I have not seen it expressed so succinctly:

The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system.   The political system is simple, it operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives.  Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system.  When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.

That is a quote from Andrew Gelman, via a piece at Marginal Revolution inspired in part by a Dubner and Levitt (Freakonomics) piece in the NYT entitled The Red-Cockaded Woodpecker which explains how the Americans with Disabilities Act has resulted in lower employment levels among the disabled.

Both of the links are worth reading.

The cost of food around the world due to biofuels is a fine example. Michael Crighton's talk below does a fine job with the subject of complexity, when it comes to man's interventions in nature:

It is a truism that MSM economic news is always spun to be dire, or on its way to becoming dire, as long as Repubs are in power in DC.

The entirely predictable burst of the housing bubble in many parts of the country will hurt for a while (but I think it will ding markets more than people with jobs outside of construction), and of course the markets are in a tizzy due to the credit markets, but the US economy is still chugging along. Job growth remains strong, and note Surber today on manufacturing orders, and Rattner in the WSJ: Let's get real about the economy.

I will grant that recessions are usually only seen in the rear-view mirror, but the Maggie's Farm Chief Economist predicts slower GDP growth, but no meaningful recession, in 2008. He also predicts a bull market in election-year economic fear-mongering.

Related: How is the housing market in your county doing? Countrywide tells you. (h/t, piece on the subject at TigerHawk)

Related: Mankiw discusses an equation indicating a 35% chance that we are in a recession now.

I have no problem with their clan supporting Obama, but since we're on the topic of sociopathy (entry immediately below), here's Wizbang on Ted and Family - the Democrats' Royal Pain. Apparently none of them seems capable of holding down a job, so they go into politics.

Related: Regarding Evita, Roger Simon says "End the Monarchy" - and this:

The recent public display of arrogant, hot-headed Bill hopefully is starting to wake people up to this. Do we really want eight more years of the Clinton family saga, all their lies and self-deception? Suppose this turns out to be true? Do we really want to have to deal with that? And is there anyone out there who is honestly willing to bet it isn't possible?

Even though The New York Times doesn't seem to care and is willing to ignore this noblesse oblige in their slavish and banal endorsement of Hillary the other day, their own Frank Rich is beginning to smell a rat.

Quoted from Jihad Watch:

The Bush Administration has been unable to understand Islam. It has been willfully incapable of understanding Islam. Failing to understand it, wanting not to delve too deeply into the matter or listen to those who have done so, and preferring to fashion a policy based on the children's game of "let's pretend," this incoherent and confused administration seeks the explanation elsewhere for the relentless hostility of Muslim states and peoples. This hostility has never, not one whit, been mitigated by the receipt of vast sums, tens or hundreds of billions, in "aid" from Western countries (really a disguised Jizyah), while the American government, while Bush, while Rice, look for the explanations -- "poverty" and "lack of freedom" and anything else that can be offered up -- for that hostility, that meretriciousness, those smiles-with-murder-in-our-hearts behavior of, for example, our "staunch allies" in Egypt, and Saudi Arabia (those Al-Saud, a primitive but exceedingly rich tribe, all daggers-and-dishdashas, with sneers of cold command on their seemingly cloned faces). They look, that is, for everything but the texts and tenets of Islam, that any "defector" from Islam -- Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina -- could tell them about, and which the writings of any legitimate Western scholar of Islam (Schacht, Lammens, Snouck Hurgronje, Jeffrey, and dozens of others) would confirm.

Read the whole thing. (h/t, Israpundit)

A European pal just brough me a box of the Pleiades 44 ring size smokes today, on his way here from Paris. We looked 'em up, and see that JR has them, far cheaper than they can be bought in Euroland.

A darn pleasant smoke. I am on my second one - just to make sure they're good - with a glass or three of ancient port.

The political reformers of the 1960s brought us the modern primary system along with a vast array of grassroots- and foundation-supported activist political organizations. It was all intended to usher in a time of increased political engagement based on values and ideology rather than simple party power and patronage supported by the supposed, if imaginary, "pocketbook voters" of the past.

It was to be a new dawn for democratic politics - think about Common Cause - and it essentially replaced the smoke-filled back rooms full of shrewd old politicos with the money-people of today that purists, but few money-hungry candidates, now bitch about.

Jon Shields, in In Praise of the Values Voter in The Wilson Quarterly, explains that the (largely) left-tilted activists of the time believed that an ideological intensification of the parties, with an increase of "values voters," would culminate in the grand debate between liberals and socialists, which the socialists would win - leaving nobody motivated to build new businesses or to create new, profitable ideas.

It didn't turn out that way, because, while the Left took over the Dem Party which embraced their new values, the gradual rise of a mainstream Conservative America arose as a powerful force with its own values. Shields explains the disenchantment of the Left with "values voters:"

The chief answer is that they lost their enthusiasm for “values voters” because those voters turned out to have the wrong values. One of the great political ironies of the past few decades is that the Christian Right has been much more successful than its political rivals at fulfilling liberal thinkers’ hopes for American democracy. Liberals built an array of ­well-­funded public-interest groups such as Common Cause, Environmental Defense, NARAL ­Pro-­Choice America, and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. But most of these organizations asked little more of their supporters than ­check­book activism, and some were entirely supported by foundations. The Right, on the other hand, built genuinely grassroots organizations, including Operation Rescue, the Christian Coalition, and Concerned Women for America, whose members mobilized millions of disaffected evangelical citizens through ­church-­based networks. In his famously despairing account of Americans’ civic involvement, Bowling Alone (2000), Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam conceded the point, without appearing to find much solace in it: “It is, in short, among Evangelical Christians, rather than among the ideological heirs of the sixties, that we find the strongest evidence for an upwelling of civic engagement.”

Read the whole thing. I think it explains a lot. Conservative-Libertarian as I am, I think I would prefer to see less ideological parties. (I'd also offer the observation that generally, as one moves from the national stage to more local politics, ideology becomes less prominent and less important. In my town, you could not tell who is Dem or Repub from our discussions of the school budget: they are all trying to figure out ways to extract more money from State and Federal grants.)

Image: No "values" there: you can read about the history of NYC's Tammany Hall here.

I never saw anything racist about Little Black Sambo. The crafty Indian hero of the story makes the tigers run in circles until they turn into butter, and then puts it on a pile of pancakes.

But maybe I am plain blind, because I also cannot see how The Three Little Pigs could be offensive to Moslems (although I know they don't eat pigs, but what does that have to do with anything?). Since "some" Moslems do not care for dogs, monkeys, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, alcohol, theater, T&A, and many other good things, perhaps it might be safer just to go the whole hog and ban books and TV if one is afraid of getting bombed or beheaded.

Funniest of all is the worry about offending the "building trades." That's a joke, right?

Well, as I always say, this insanity on the part of "Government Agency" pussies offends the hell out of me.

Malanga in City Journal discusses the political rivalry, if not hostility, between blacks and new Hispanic immigrants: The Rainbow Coalition Evaporates. h/t, Powerline. A quote:

This battle over quotas for public-sector jobs is a glaring example of how immigration is turning the race-based policies of the last 40 years, originally designed to help blacks, against them. For African-American leaders like Claud Anderson, head of the Harvest Institute, the turnabout represents a betrayal of the civil rights movement: only blacks deserve quotas. “When did our government ever exclude immigrants or deny them their constitutional rights, as they did African-Americans?” he asks. But for other blacks, the demands of Latinos and Asians that government set-aside programs include them are further evidence that racial preferences were misguided in the first place. “Blacks who support skin color privileges now will be singing a different tune later once government starts discriminating against them once again, this time in favor of Hispanics,” writes columnist and blogger La Shawn Barber.

another:

Blacks may also be starting to realize that many Latinos hold intensely negative stereotypes about them. In a 2006 study that ten academic researchers conducted of various racial groups’ attitudes in Durham, North Carolina, 59 percent of Latino immigrants said that few or no blacks were hardworking, and 57 percent said that few or no blacks could be trusted. By contrast, only 9 percent of whites said that blacks weren’t hardworking, and only 10 percent said that they couldn’t be trusted. Interestingly, the survey found that blacks were broadly well-disposed toward Hispanics, though how long that will be true remains to be seen.

When Roger writes, it's a safe bet that he is writing what we would write, had we the time, brains, and talent. A quote from Hillary and Hayek, Redux:

As Hayek observed, the socialist, the sentimentalist, cannot understand why, if people have been able to “generate some system of rules coordinating their efforts,” they cannot also consciously “design an even better and more gratifying system.” Central to Hayek’s teaching is the unyielding fact that human ingenuity is limited, that the elasticity of freedom requires the agency of forces beyond our supervision, that, finally, the ambitions of socialism are an expression of rationalistic hubris. A spontaneous order generated by market forces may be as beneficial to humanity as you like; it may have greatly extended life and produced wealth so staggering that, only a few generations ago, it was unimaginable. Still, it is not perfect. The poor are still with us. Not every social problem has been solved. In the end, though, the really galling thing about the spontaneous order that free markets produce is not its imperfection but its spontaneity: the fact that it is a creation not our own. It transcends the conscious direction of human will and is therefore an affront to human pride.

The urgency with which Hayek condemns socialism is a function of the importance of the stakes involved. As he puts it in his last book The Fatal Conceit, the “dispute between the market order and socialism is no less than a matter of survival” because “to follow socialist morality would destroy much of present humankind and impoverish much of the rest.” We get a foretaste of what Hayek means whenever the forces of socialism triumph. There follows, as the night the day, an increase in poverty and a diminution of individual freedom.

Read the whole thing.

Whether it's internet dating or Indian software engineers or bloggers, it's about creativity - not competition. Tyler Cowen of Maginal Rev at Wilson Quarterly. One quote:

The rise of invisible competition has implications for nations as well as individuals and corporations. For the United States, those implications are overwhelmingly positive. Although Americans fret endlessly about the invisible threat of outsourcing, the rest of the world often sees the United States as the deadliest source of invisible competition. From information technology to cutting-edge medical research to higher education, Americans have achieved exceptional results relatively quickly, before the rest of the world had much chance to ­respond.

While American culture glorifies the competitive spirit, Americans are good competitors in part because they don’t always need that last-minute adrenalin rush. They tend to value change and innovation for their own sake, and they imagine themselves to be pioneers. The idea of striking out into unknown territory to build a better world is deeply embedded in the national psyche. The Protestant ethic also lives on, expressed in a commitment not only to hard work but to the idea that we fulfill ourselves through our labors. This helps explain why, to the vexation and puzzlement of Europeans, millions of Americans prefer to stay at their jobs rather than take all of their allotted vacation ­time.

The untaxed working class. Surber. I believe that everybody with income should pay some taxes as the cost of being a citizen.

Hillary Clinton quoted in a piece on her desire to run the US economy, in the NYT:

“You try to find common ground, insofar as possible. But if you really believe you have to manage the economy,” she said, “you have to stake a lot of your presidency on it. Because at the beginning is when you’re strongest.”

City Journal has a fresh new look and format.

In it, Architecture's Rogues Gallery by Kimball, who rips the narcissism of the famous architects of today. A quote:

Philip Johnson. Robert Venturi. Hassan Fathy. Peter Eisenman. Charles Jencks. Bernard Tschumi. Rem Koolhaus. Daniel Liebeskind. Norman Foster. Frank Gehry. Sykes has rounded up a rogues’ gallery of brittle egotism in which contempt for the traditional canons of architecture is exceeded only by contempt for the public. “The only important task,” we read in one typical expostulation, “is the vigilant corruption of the chain of causality that begins with ‘client’ and ends in ‘building.’” In other words, please pay for this building, but don’t bother me with any demands about how it looks or functions.

Done with Mirrors quotes from an essay by Peter Saunders: Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul.

The problem for those of us who believe that capitalism offers the best chance we have for leading meaningful and worthwhile lives is that in this debate, the devil has always had the best tunes to play. Capitalism lacks romantic appeal. It does not set the pulse racing in the way that opposing ideologies like socialism, fascism, or environmentalism can. It does not stir the blood, for it identifies no dragons to slay. It offers no grand vision for the future, for in an open market system the future is shaped not by the imposition of utopian blueprints, but by billions of individuals pursuing their own preferences. Capitalism can justifiably boast that it is excellent at delivering the goods, but this fails to impress in countries like Australia that have come to take affluence for granted.

and

By perpetually raising productivity, capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labour, freeing us to pursue ‘higher’ objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a ‘growth fetish’ has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twenty-five times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other ‘soul-enriching’ pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an ‘imbalance’ between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history.

There is another sense, too, in which capitalism has freed individuals so they can pursue worthwhile lives, and that lies in its record of undermining tyrannies and dictatorships. As examples like Pinochet’s Chile and Putin’s Russia vividly demonstrate, a free economy does not guarantee a democratic polity or a society governed by the rule of law. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, these latter conditions are never found in the absence of a free economy.(12) Historically, it was capitalism that delivered humanity from the ‘soul-destroying’ weight of feudalism. Later, it freed millions from the dead hand of totalitarian socialism. While capitalism may not be a sufficient condition of human freedom, it is almost certainly a necessary one.

Read the whole thing.

This fallacy site defines this fallacy as simply: "The appeal to pity takes place when an arguer tries to get people to accept a conclusion by making them feel sorry for someone."

Classic example: The boy who killed his parents pleads for mercy from the judge on the grounds of being an orphan.

Of course, pity is just one of the emotions which can be manipulated in order to attempt to overwhelm reason and to score points.

While a member of Congress from his home state of Tennessee, Davy Crockett is believed to have given a successful speech refuting an appeal to pity, regarding a Congressional appropriation of money to a widow:

"Mr. Speaker -- I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the Government was in arrears to him. This Government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the war of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor, and if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of; but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The Government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

That is one heck of a good argument - and an argument for the restraint of government as well. Crockett had the good sense to eliminate the tone of cold-hearted rationality with his offer at the end. More about the speech and its aftermath here.

Interesting fellow, Crockett. He was elected twice to Congress, then defeated twice, after which he said  "I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but if not ... you may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."

Which he did, and was killed by the Mexican Army while defending the Alamo in 1836.

Image: David Crockett (1786-1836)