Maggie's Farm

Romney for President

I am old enough to remember supporting Romney's father when he ran in the primaries. The kid seems like a strong possibility for the Repubs. The other candidates will doubtless be vastly relieved to hear that I am not going on record as supporting him, though, yet. But McCain - forget it. A true wingnut. And it won't be Frist either - he lacks the common touch and he wears stupid neckties.

NERepub has the story.

The Cochin Harbour Terminus Station and the Train of Hope

This is one reason the internet is so enjoyable: more bare, ruined choirs. From The Hindu: As you make your way through the deserted parking lot and step inside this old structure, a foreboding silence acknowledges your presence. The only sound that greets you in this vast building is the echo of your footsteps. Memories of another day, when this structure once represented the lifeline of Cochin sweep past. One of those memories, quite vivid, of me dragging my mother through the hustle and bustle to the Higginbothams book stall (that stood by the entry to the platform) coaxing her to buy me the latest Enid Blyton, while following hastily the porter, laden with our luggage to board the Madras Express, remains etched.

Bible Talk

I don't care whether the Bible is taught as folklore, myth, revelation, literature, or whatever else. All I know is that, if you don't know your Bible - both Old and New Testaments - you can't understand much about the world we live in, or Western Civilization in general. In other words, you are ignorant. Heck, you can't even understand Bob Dylan if you don't know the Bible, much less anything else - even if it isn't your goal to know God.

There are three legs on which our reality stands, and they are the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle. Most things since then are mere commentary. Bird Dog emailed me today to ask for help on a piece he is doing on a Civics and Citizenship Curriculum, another subject about which ignorance seems to reign.

(And yes, I do understand that the Left reflexively likes to undermine the legs of that stool any time they can, with the hope of replacing the stool with some new stool. But I am not writing about politics here.)

A REPORT JUST ISSUED BY the Bible Literacy Project (more on this later) suggests that young Americans know very little about the Bible. The report is important, but first things first: A fair number of Americans don't see why teenagers should know anything at all about the Bible. Scripture begins with God creating the world, but there is something these verses don't tell you: The Bible has itself created worlds. Wherever you stand on the spectrum from devout to atheist, you must acknowledge that the Bible has been a creative force without parallel in history. Go to the center of Paris and drop in on the apotheosis of the French Middle Ages--Sainte Chapelle, whose walls are made almost entirely of stained glass. It "has rightly been called," writes the scholar Shalom Spiegel, "the most wonderful of pictured Bibles." The King James Bible, says Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "has influenced our literature more deeply than any other book--more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare--far more deeply." The poet and painter William Blake calls the Old and New Testaments "the Great Codes of Art." America's foremost prophet offers his culminating vision in the second inaugural address--"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right . . . " Lincoln's speech "reads like a supplement to the Bible," writes the historian William Wolf, with its "fourteen references to God, four direct quotations from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew, and other allusions to scriptural teaching." "The best gift God has given to man," Lincoln called the Bible. "But for it we could not know right from wrong." Ronald Reagan called America "a great shining city on a hill," three-and-a-half centuries after John Winthrop (sailing for Boston in 1630) anticipated a new community that would be "as a Citty upon a Hill"--invoking the famous verse in Matthew, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid" (5:14). Which harks back in turn to the prophets (Isaiah 2:2-3, Micah 4:2) and the book of Proverbs (4:18). John Livingstone Lowe called the King James Bible "the noblest monument of English prose" (1936); George Saintsbury called it "probably the greatest prose work in any language" (1887). Nearly two millennia earlier, the great Pharisee rabbi Hillel described the ideal life: "loving peace and pursuing peace; loving humanity and bringing it close to the Torah." Here is a basic question about America that ought to be on page 1 of every history book: What made the nation's Founders so sure they were onto something big? America today is the most powerful nation on earth, most powerful in all history--and a model the whole world imitates. What made them so sure?--the settlers and colonists, the Founding Fathers and all the generations that intervened before America emerged as a world power in the 20th century? What made them so certain that America would become a light of the world, the shining city on a hill? What made John Adams say, in 1765, "I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence"? What made Abraham Lincoln call America (in 1862, in the middle of a ruinous civil war) "the last, best hope of earth."

Read the whole thing: Weekly Standard

Patriotism

Why would Newsweek have printed their toiletgate piece - even if they knew it to be true?

In wartime, as in life, bad things happen and mistakes happen. But who would want to publicly air the dirty laundry, especially if it would damage America's cause and her fighting people? Who would think that Abu Graib was a bigger story than repeated beheadings and suicide bombings? Or Saddam's mass graves? It's as if a few incidents of American mistreatment of prisoners of war during WW2 had received more headlines than the slaughter of the Jews - and Saddam did operate a kind of holocaust of his own.

If a journalist identifies themselves as an American, then it is their duty as a citizen to self-censor during wartime. It doesn't matter how you feel about the war: there were pacifists during WW1 and WW2 and Korea, but they weren't going emotionally anti-American during those wars, except for the Communists.

I have come up with two possible answers to my question. The more benign is what Laura Ingraham said last night - they see themselves as "citizens of the world" and not of the US. (But which world?, I ask. It's a big world.) The second is to see more malevolence - to see a reflex to undermine any American cause especially during a conservative administration.

In either case, I see it as immature, disloyal, dangerous, and destructive to the very country that gave you all you have, including the freedom to behave in traitorous ways. This isn't the 1960s, and it just isn't cool anymore. It is shameful.

Grow up, get real, put down your cocktail and and take a good, hard look at yourselves, journalists. Please.

Update from Ed.: Prager agrees with Barrister.

Propaganda vs. Debate

Paul Mirengoff of mighty Powerline studies the figures of speech used as substitutes for reasoned argument by the Left. As many of us at Maggie's point out regularly, as the Left loses power and relevance, their voices become shriller, more hysterical, and meaner.

The past election escalated this slide into a paranoid detachment from reality. Next will be the rubber room. Sure, there are plenty of valid and compelling criticisms to be made against the Conservatives in action - especially hypocrisy - but equating the US with the Khmer Rouge ain't one of them.

The US stinks at debate. For forty years, there was minimal debate with a Liberal press and a liberal government and a liberal "establishment". Then, thanks in part to the removal of the Fairness Doctrine and in part to cable and in part to blogs, we conservatives - most of us ex-liberals ourselves - are all prepared to debate ideas, but the Left will not engage in that way. All we get are tantrums and name-calling and manipulative propaganda. Well, forget the Left. The Left is dead. But even normal good Democrats - c'mon guys and gals - let's debate the ideas honestly. It would be good for the country.

But hmmmm, let me think a minute...shucks, gee whiz, do ya think maybe that's not what politics is all about?  Is it possible that the Repubs still think they're in a debate, when they're really in a shooting war with real bullets?

What's the Matter with Thomas Frank?

Honestly, this guy - the auteur of What's The Matter with Kansas - is so out to lunch I cannot believe it. This guy is trying to understand the "culture wars." Hello, Thomas. This has been going on for years. Where have you been? He's supposed to be a cultural commentator, but the guy needs an expedition to talk to normal folks. It's like a safari for him. Load all the Range Rovers with brie, chardonnay, Evian, and baguettes. Make sure the drivers are well-armed, but keep those scary guns away from me!

So now Frank has a big piece in the NYROB in which every "insight" is, like, duh! Who knows - maybe for regular readers of NYROB these are insights into the great unwashed. But I read it regularly, and I bathe (when I have time), and I am a fairly regular sort. The average redneck Yalie Yankee lawyer who prefers Dewars to chardonnay, which is a lady's drink.

Besides seeming only average-bright, Frank aspires to stylish writing and stylish views. But his style is obsolete. As in his book, he assumes that class and materialism are what life and politics are all about. It's his only lens - or is he just pretending it is? He doesn't use the Marxist term "false consciousness," but it's what he thinks he is talking about. That tells me a lot about him, but not much else.

An example:

"But in the election of 2004 all the class anger was on the other side. Now it was the Democrat whose aristocratic lifestyle was always coming into question, who couldn't seem to take a step without detonating some explosive reminder of his exalted position. And it was Republican operatives who were gleefully dropping the word "elitist" on the liberal at every turn for his affected, upper-class ways. For his supposed love of brie cheese. For his wealthy wife's supposed unfamiliarity with chili. For his mansion. His yacht. His windsurfing. His vacations with celebs on Nantucket Island. The secretary of commerce said he thought Kerry "looks French." The House majority leader made a habit of starting off speeches with the line, "Good afternoon, or, as John Kerry might say: 'Bonjour!'" The NRA came up with an image that brilliantly encapsulated the whole thing: an elaborately clipped French poodle in a pink bow and a Kerry-for-president sweater over the slogan "That dog don't hunt."^[10] 

Yeah, I forgot. He also uses footnotes! What is he - a scholar?  My point is that you can tell how out-of-it he is by his statements he presents as revealing, as if he were studying the sexual habits of the natives of New Guinea, while he's talking about you and me. Why doesn't he simply give Maggie's a call? I know you won't read it, but here it is anyway.

Think Tanks?

Who needs expensive think tanks when you have one-man volunteer think tanks like Bainbridge and Brewton around? In this piece, Brewton hits every important button:

"Those two doctrines of human understanding – individual economic liberty and individual moral responsibility – are inseparably intertwined.  Mandating a purely secular society, as liberal-socialists do, is the equivalent of removing an individual’s oxygen and draining his life’s blood.  It is metaphorically to decapitate civilization."

Read entire Adam Smith vs. Robert Reich.

The Death Tax

We are agin it. We like the idea of being able to hand stuff down to the kids, especially land that has been in the family for generations. As an attorney, it breaks my heart to see families forced to sell grandpa's farm, or country place, to developers to rape the land to cover his estate taxes. In my experience, the extremely wealthy never pay them anyway - it's more professionals like me, or small business owners and farmers, who end up paying them.

So, I ask myself, do we have this death tax as just one more source of $ for the govt, or as social engineering, ie to prevent prosperous, but not ultra-rich, families from accumulating capital, assets, independence and choice? If the latter is the goal, there's an easier way - a marginal income tax rate of 100% for everything over $150,000. Or make it 100,000 - what the heck. Don't screw the family and heirs - let's just screw the poor slob who is working and saving his whole life to build something, while he's still alive to feel the pain...and to vote.

Two good and convincing pieces on the subject; one from WSJ and one from The View from 1776.

Polls, Made to Order

It's pretty well-known that the results of polls can be easily pre-determined by the way in which the questions are asked (eg "When did you stop beating your wife?"). When polls are intended to influence or to advocate, a savvy pollster can come up with just the numbers you want by tilting the questionnaire. So how do we know when to trust a poll? Unless we are poll experts, we need a Pat Caddell on TV to go over it for us.

Michael Barone takes a closer look at some recent poll numbers, including Social Security and Schiavo, among others, here.

Freedom

We say and believe that we love it, but what exactly is it?

We believe it is a vision embodied in our Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution and especially in the Bill of Rights, but what does it mean in ordinary, everyday life?

Does it mean habeas corpus? Does it mean voting? Does it mean "doing what you feel like"? Does it mean property rights? Capitalism? Does it mean worshipping whatever God or gods you prefer?

The psychologists tell us that humans have an ambivalent relationship to freedom. They say humans, as a mass, are torn between an adult desire for freedom and independence, and a childish desire for security and protection. And that the ambivalence is reflected in the ways they live as well as in their politics.

Thus there are many who will happily sacrifice freedom for a feeling of safety. Statists and totalitarians of every flavor appeal to that desire for security and protection from a parental State. Selling freedom is in many ways a harder sell, as much as we think we love it. On Maggie's Farm, we tend to prefer freedom and independence, but we do have that Yankee mind-set. We prefer poverty with opportunity to poverty of spirit...or so we would like to believe.

When I'm able to clarify my thoughts, I'll write more. Read William Galston as he tackles the thorny subject: Click here: "Taking Liberty" by William A. Galston

Causes of Terrorism, Again

Maggie's has been over this ground several times. (I could bring the posts up if we could figure out how to do the permalinks.) This is just more evidence that Maggie's is always right. Our general view has been that terrorism is caused by terrorists - ordinary evil, destructive folks like the ones The Analyst discusses -  and this supports that. When will we quit trying to "understand" badness? Rotten sleazy people are a dime a dozen in this world. What's to understand?

What is worth understanding is goodness and selflessness and sacrifice and integrity. How does that kind of behavior appear in ugly apes like homo sapiens for whom the Law of the Jungle seems to come naturally?

"London's Sunday Times has reported on new research that reveals that the typical al-Qaeda recruit is a well-educated professional. He is likely to have been educated in the West and come from a wealthy family, according to forensic psychiatrist and researcher Marc Sageman, who examined the backgrounds of 500 al-Qaeda members."

Maybe a bit of rationality will enter the picture. Isn't intent an aspect of determining guilt? These stories remind me of that girl who was suspended for tylenol - it violated the zero tolerance for drugs policy.

"HOUSTON – Unaware it had turned cool overnight, Eddie Evans's 12-year-old son bolted out of the house in shirt sleeves. He was on his way to the bus stop when his mother called him back for a jacket. In third period the boy discovered that the three-inch pocketknife he had taken to his last Boy Scout meeting was still inside his coat - a definite no-no under the school's zero-tolerance policy. Unsure what to do, he consulted a friend before putting the knife in his locker. The friend turned him in and, after lunch, police arrested him and took him to a juvenile-detention center without contacting his parents, according to senate testimony" 

 From: Click here: Why tolerance is fading for zero tolerance in schools | csmonitor.com

The Monks

I have been wondering who those monks were who have been on TV all week. Thanks, reader, for forwarding this to us. Monks are a good thing. Interesting story: Click here: Tampabay: Friars at Schindlers' side felt own loss

Pewgate

"The blogosphere is under attack. For three weeks, bloggers have battled the Federal Election Commission, seeking exemption from campaign finance laws that would effectively regulate political speech on the Web. How did it come to this?"  Click here: FrontPage magazine.com :: Pewgate: The Battle of the Blogosphere by Richard Poe

Brown University

How advanced and sophisticated they are over there in Providence. Surely a beacon of reason and hope in a wayward world. An applicant tells me their application form has a part that says:

Circle One:

Male
Female
Other

I must admit I am intrigued by the "Other" category, but in a way that I do not respect in myself, a sort of morbid curiosity, I suppose. The thing that brings people to side shows. At least it doesn't ask "Gender Preference." Heck, who wouldn't want to be a guy? It's not so bad to be one. Or am I hopelessly outdated?

We have been following the EU/Europe large-picture story, relying heavily on Mark Steyn's and VDH's relentless insights. Here's more on England's search for yet another "third way" that they hope will work...but I wonder why they bother, when there's a model that works right in front of them - the US.

Irwin Stelzer in The Daily Standard: "NOW THAT THE SOVIET UNION is no more, there are two economic models on offer in the world--three, if you count Cuba and North Korea, which there is no reason to do since imitators are hardly lining up for that short-cut to impoverishment. The American model can broadly be described as one that emphasizes individual initiative, flexible labor markets, low taxes, and minimal regulation. The European model, which explicitly sees itself as an alternative to the red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism of the United States, emphasizes collective responsibility, regulated labor and product markets, and high taxes to fund a generous safety net.

Then we have Great Britain, in which Tony Blair's Labour party is attempting to find a "third way" between the U.S. and European models. When it comes to economic policy, it is Labour chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown who has taken on the task of finding that third way."  Read entire:  Click here: What Can Brown Do For Them?

Christmas now, in Beirut, from the NY Sun: "Above a busy shopping street where a bomb blew out the front walls of a building Friday night, injuring nine people, there now stretches a long row of glittering lights. Local authorities have rekindled the decorations left over from Christmas. "They want to show the bombers that they are building," a policeman guarding the site said."  Click here: In the Media

I like reading the great Andrew Sullivan (the only other "greats" I use in my lexicon apply to Krauthammer and Mark Steyn), but only sometimes agree with him. He predicts "The Great Conservative Crack-up"...wishful thinking, perhaps?  "Beneath the surface, however, American conservatism is in increasing trouble. The Republican coalition, always fragile, now depends as much on the haplessness of the Democrats as on its own internal logic. On foreign and domestic policy alike the American right is splintering. With no obvious successor to George W Bush that splintering will deepen." Click here: Comment: Andrew Sullivan: Bush’s triumph conceals the great conservative crack-up - Sunday Times - Times Online