Thursday, December 13. 2007
 Brits sign EU Constitution without obtaining the opinion of the citizens. Who owns a nation's sovereignty? Surely not the slimeball politician du jour.
And remind me again - why would a nation willingly give up its sovereignty to unelected foreign officials? Is this a return to a post-modern monarchy? Says EU Referendum defiantly today: We are not your citizens! In my opinion, the EU wants subjects, not citizens. But who are they, anyway? Arrogant jerks in suits, who want power and babes.
 The members who comprised it were seven-eighths of them, ...the meanest kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contracts, kept-editors, spaniels well train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyists, spongers, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers of the earth.
- Walt Whitman on a Democratic Party Convention.
Wednesday, December 12. 2007
 Hillary's campaign begins to rough up Obama re drugs. This is desperate, and will backfire. But they are getting desperate.
Also, Surber: A tortoise flipped on her back. The problem Mrs. Clinton faces is that the more people see of her, the less they like or trust her. Maybe the Dem primary voters are tiring of The Clinton Show? I know I am. I am a Fred-Rudy guy, but I know Obama would talk to me, and I'd love to have him as a next-door neighbor. Hillary would see me as an enemy. Regardless of her politics, she seems like an angry lady with little sunshine in her heart. Just like Huckabee strikes me as a light-weight twit - or should I say "goober." If politics is going to go back to slime, whatever happened to the Hillary is a Lesbian story, anyway? How did that interesting juicy story disappear so fast? I found it titillating.
Taking another look at the data, Holland in a piece titled The Marketing of Global Warming in On Line Opinion finds data cherry-picking all over the place. Here's the now-discredited scary hockey stick (no longer defended by anyone due to erroneous stat analysis, plus the Southern Hemisphere is, of course, entirely different): 
Here's the unmanipulated graph:  Holland's piece, with many more graphs and analysis, is here. h/t, An Englishman's Castle. Related: The Sky is Falling. And I see that the Pope, a far more scholarly sort than the pompous, thesaurus-addicted Al Gore, is a skeptic, but where's that Pope link I had earlier? Got to find it...OK Here it is.
Tuesday, December 11. 2007
A healthy trend, from John Fund in Opinion Journal (my bolds): In 1997, the Stockholm Network had five members; it now boasts more than 130 affiliated groups, stretching from Iceland to Armenia. In Bulgaria, the Center for Market Economics has played a major role in building support for the country's adoption of a 10% flat-rate income tax, effective Jan. 1. "Watch Bulgaria," says Steve Masty, an economic development specialist based in London. "The intellectual light bulbs that have been switched on there are now having real-world results." More than one guest at the Stockholm Network dinner commented that several countries in Europe that escaped the Soviet bloc less than two decades ago are now pursuing reforms that would be regarded as too radical for Western European electorates. In Slovakia, the introduction of a profit-based health system has led to the entry of two private health-insurance companies that have helped drop the state share of the health-care market to 65% from 80% in just two years.
Read the whole thing. "Free-markets and free people" is what is truly "progressive" in today's world. What is termed "progressive" in the US is retrogressive: it's not the 1930s anymore. Totalitarian socialism and Communism had their chance, and the results were not pleasant. Parts of Europe, Canada, and Australia are moving backwards, and parts forward. What about the US? Today, the true progressives are the bearers of individual freedom and not the bearers of State power. If the word "progress" has any meaning at all, it should mean the unleashing of the human spirit from external power and control. Just my humble opinion, but I deem myself smarter and more worldly than politicians and bureaucrats. I do not like or trust people who want power over me. They are sickos, by definition, who should be worrying about running their own lives in a sane and sober fashion instead of trying to run mine. Who are these people? as my friend L. often asks.
The Dem-controlled House has passed its Energy Bill, which is an exercise in fantasy. For one thing, it requires more ethanol than can be produced by the entire US corn crop. Adios, corn-on-the cob? Adios, grits 'n gravy? Furthermore, what good do plug-in hybrids do? Where do people think that plug-in electricity comes from - magic? It comes from gas and coal-fired power plants. Duh. What's the difference in whether you burn it in your engine, or the utility burns it? And what difference does it make anyway, with a world market in gas and oil? 
Myron Magnet, former editor of City Journal, has had a change of heart about immigration.
 The federal government today announced that it is changing its emblem from an American Eagle to an AMERICAN CONDOM because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually getting screwed!
Roger Kimball quoted from Another Headline You Won't See in The New York Times, or Toqueville, Gun Control, and The Price of Freedom: I say that I was surprised at the size and the temperature of the comment on a brief piece that was critical of gun control. I shouldn’t have been. Doubtless gun owners, like everyone else, are motivated by many things. Ditto for those who would outlaw possession of guns. But behind the panoply of motivations there is, I suspect, this fundamental philosophical divide: On the one side are people who see that we live in a free society, understand that freedom is not free—that it can often be quite an expensive quality—and who understand further that preserve freedom requires that individuals stand up for themselves, physically as well as in other ways. On the other side of the divide are people who see that we live in a free society, who may also understand that freedom is not free—they, too, might admit that it can often be quite an expensive quality—but who wish to cede important parts of that responsibility to the state. The former are likely to be small-government, low-tax supporters of the Second Amendment. The latter are likely to be big government, high-tax critics of the Second Amendment. I oversimplify, of course, but I believe the distinction I’ve limned here is a real one and one, moreover, that is worth meditating on, not only with respect to the question of gun ownership but, more generally, with respect to what might be the biggest issue facing citizens in Western democratic countries: the increasing concentration of state power and its intrusion into the fabric of everyday life.
The guy like totally gets it, and he writes better than any of us chicken farmers.
Monday, December 10. 2007
Q: "How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?"
A: "That's not funny."
We believe in good manners and respectful behavior except when it is undeserved, but we also believe in free speech and equal opportunity insults, especially for the purpose of humor, irony, and satire but occasionally to just smack some jerk around when feeling cranky. I am no different from anybody else in this. From American Thinker, A Quiet Defeat for Political Correctness? It begins: Maybe this is how political correctness ends; not with a bang, but with a whimper. Across the country, universities that had abandoned in loco parentis in the 1960s because it was too oppressive and intrusive have replaced it with in loco Big Brother programs of political and cultural re-education.
Read the whole thing. And at Pajamas, The Word Police from Brad Rourke: There’s a big fuss at the moment over a list of “no-no words” circulated by an office of the Army. Compiled by someone with expertise in equal opportunity matters, the list purports to be 76 examples of words that simply should not be used in the workplace, as they are hurtful. The email, in fact, has an accompanying PowerPoint titled “WORDS HURT!” While the majority of the words are ones that would – and should – get your children’s mouths washed out with soap, some are puzzling. “Colonial,” for instance, is on the list. Ditto “Canuck.” Many are chortling at the evident politically-correct overreach. The list evidently discourages workplace talk about Vancouver’s professional hockey team. Others are predictably angry.
Read the whole thing. As I said, genteel manners are fine, but "sticks and stones...". Heck, I have had acquaintances call me a Nazi - and I'm not even a Socialist... or of German ancestry. I'm mostly Libertarian. How they get Nazi out of Libertarian is beyond me.
Saturday, December 8. 2007
Friday, December 7. 2007
The book that sets the record straight: Democracy Project
Quoted from O'Neill at Spiked: Imagine a country where city officials could take it upon themselves to ban art exhibitions, pieces of music and other performances that might, in their view, provoke violence. Where a pub, club or gallery could be threatened with having its licence revoked, and effectively be forced to close down, if it played music or displayed art that has been blacklisted by officialdom. Imagine a country where a young woman could be put under house arrest for, amongst other things, writing poetry judged to be ‘dangerous’. Imagine a country where the strictures on what you can and cannot say are so stifling that arts institutions censor themselves, sometimes withdrawing potentially inflammatory plays or exhibitions in order to keep sweet with the powers-that-be. Surely no one would put up with such a regime? Even in Eastern Europe in the dark days of Stalinism, individuals protested against dictators who sought to control art and curtail artistic freedom. Yet all of the things listed above are happening right now, here in Britain, and people are putting up with it.
Read the whole thing. Yes, it's more about the Fascist Left.
A quote from the review of Mead's book by Heather Wilhelm at RCP: To his credit, Mead acknowledges--unlike some acolytes of the power of liberal capitalism--that the future of the Anglo-American system will, like thousands of years of human history before it, hold perpetual turmoil. The classic human mistake throughout the ages, well illustrated in "God and Gold", is an optimistic one: This time it will be different. This time we've figured it out. Global capitalism, while a tremendous blessing for many, also has its dark sides: cultural clashes, technological surprises, stateless actors impossible to deter. Together, America and Britain have unleashed a world-changing force, brewed over the course of 400 years. Hopefully, in the years to come, it will win enough friends and beneficiaries to help smooth the bumpy ride that awaits us.
Viking. Same thing in New Jersey. People aren't stupid: life offers incentives and disincentives.
From Greg Mankiw: A good topic for class discussion: What are the limits of government redistribution to achieve egalitarian goals?
His discussion here.
Thursday, December 6. 2007
A plan is just a guess in a party dress. Michael Yon, in his exciting Aug, 2005 piece Gates of Fire. How things have changed in Mosul.
 Roger Kimball - Hillary Clinton and Friedrich Hayek.
I have no time today to discuss it, but Kimball discusses one of our previous links today on Hillary, and radical communitarian thinking. Read it! (Do any of our readers still have one of those scythes? I do, but using a big noisy gas machine is more fun, and a work-out in itself. Wendell Berry on Scythes.)
 - In which we are reminded anew of Hillary's antediluvian trade policies. RedState
- Hillary gives Wall Street a Warning, quote from the NY Sun: Senator Clinton gave a clear indication yesterday that as president she would be happy to intervene in the management of the economy if she thought the free market was failing middle-class Americans. Speaking to donors and supporters at Nasdaq's headquarters in Times Square, Mrs. Clinton threatened legislation to regulate the mortgage lending industry closely if money managers do not come up with their own scheme to defray the effects of the subprime mortgage collapse. She also served notice on wealthy Americans that they should be prepared for tax increases.
- Quoted from Hillary's Charm Offensive by Voegli at No Left Turns: Haven’t we seen this before – the boundless sense of entitlement, the fury at those who would presume to deny the self-anointed candidate her destiny? Despite all the talk about how Hillary had grown in the aftermath of the health care debacle, the stories about how she had learned to play nice with others in the Senate, the same attractive attitudes and habits that endeared her to the nation 15 years ago are once again on display. Carl Bernstein’s book, A Woman in Charge, reports that in 1993 the First Lady beguilingly told a group of Democratic senators, who expressed doubts about the political feasibility of passing ambitious health care reforms, that the Clinton administration would “demonize” those who stood in the way of her plan. It was the last straw for Sen. Bill Bradley. “You don’t tell members of the Senate you are going to demonize them. It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy.” When her task force of 500 members and 34 committees sent the Democratic Congress a bill that was 1,324 pages long, it sank like an anvil. Smaller, simpler measures might have passed, but the First Lady refused to support any plan but her own. Bob Boorstin, a media relations deputy with the task force, told Bernstein that Hillary is “among the most self-righteous people I’ve ever met in my life.”
We first posted this piece by Dr. Bliss on July 14, 2005. Since that time, many have written on the same topic. Sometimes it's interesting for us to see what we were thinking a couple of years ago. We who try to be reasonable are befuddled by why the American and European Left have a reflex to defend the Jihadists, and to oppose combating them. The fact that they do so is amply demonstrated, endlessly, by the Great Horowitz, among others.
My theory is that the Left is nihilistic at heart. For whatever reasons, they have passed criticism and have come to hate their own civilization, which is admittedly imperfect but which, at the same time, cannot be matched anywhere, anytime, in history in its freedom, opportunity, safety, stability, and idealism. (Yale's famous rejection of the Bass donation was a high-water mark of this self-hating trend.)
The consequence is an anti-Western bias, but they refuse to offer an alternative, either because they do not have one, or because any offered would be rejected by voters. My belief is that our civilization is a fragile sculpture, a rare and precious thing, and that our Western Civilization is one of the most amazing things that humans have created, with, at its core, the idea that every individual human matters, as a child of God. That’s the core of it all, and it is at the core of Western medical practice and medical ethics too, since Hippocrates. We care for their injured in our hospitals, and they behead their prisoners. That is a big difference, one which relegates them to the barbarian category. “All men are created equal…”
It was not my brief on Maggie’s to get into politics, but I cannot ignore this one. What is behind the Left’s apologizing for Jihadists? Why does England welcome them? Why does the US welcome them? Why France and Germany and Sweden? Why does Canada welcome them? Why welcome your destroyers into your home?
I wrote a piece on Evil several months ago, but it had no political content. Hatred and destructiveness can derive from hundreds of sources, but most of the time social norms and rules prevent us from acting on such impulses. They are very human evils, or sins, if you will. If you live in a culture, or subculture, which endorses them, many will be pleased to follow – see Nazi Germany, the Mafia, the Weathermen, or any number of murderous, sadistic civilizations and cultures and subcultures throughout history - and relieved to be given a sanctioned outlet for such emotions. Humans are natural-born killers, after all, just like chimps, and it takes a heck of a lot of civilization to keep us on the right side of the road.
It’s clear to me from all that I have read that the Jihadists have long identified Jews and Christians as the “other” – sub-humans occupying potentially Islamic space. We do not do the same to them – on the contrary, we in the West bend over backwards to make them welcome and to accommodate their ways. Their denial of our humanity is their evil, even if it is endorsed by their culture and their religion, and their using our generosity and tolerance for their own purposes is evil as well, though they see it as justified by Mohammed. Fooling an Infidel is not a sin, and we "nice" infidels are too eager to be fooled.
So we quickly arrive at the religious core of morals and ethics, from whence they derive. The Jihadist believes that war on the West is demanded of him by God. I refuse to get morally relativistic and multicultural about that about that - leave that to the anthropologists. To me that is evil. Why does the Western Left like to ally themselves with this? One might imagine that woman-hating, fascistic, anti-human rights, primitively-capitalistic, oil and opium-dependent, hyper-religious movements would be anathema to them. But no. They are apologists. And I do not think it is as simple as the anti-Semitism of the Left, although that does exist, I believe.
My take on it all is that the Left longs for chaos, for trouble, for failure and failure of confidence, for cultural breakdown, to undermine the fabric of our culture. Thus the Left has a reflex to be contrary to all tradition, including moral, religious and patriotic traditions - and including the tradition of self-defense. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I suspect that they imagine that with adequate turmoil, they will prevail and create our socialist heaven on earth with them, of course, in control. However, they would create a nightmare – whether their own statist vision, or the Jihadist theocracy, where their women would be the first to be stoned to death in the stadium, and the men would be next in line. Jihad does not tolerate free-thinkers.
Thus hatred of their own civilization, and contempt for its defenders, seems to have become the hallmark of the Left. I view it as a cultural death-wish. I can understand the Jihadists – their individual evil impulses are culturally- and religiously-endorsed, promoted and rewarded, from childhood, thanks to the Saudi-supported Wahabist schools. But whence the West's cultural-suicide wish from within?
There are only two possibilities: they either believe the illusion that they might prevail following social catastrophe, or they operate in a near-insane denial of the capacity for evil and destructiveness in mankind – the wishful, childish notion that everyone is “nice underneath,” which is psychological nonsense, as reality and honest introspection reveal to us daily. I suspect mostly the former, since the Left has no trouble attributing evil to the defenders of our civilization, and virtue to themselves.
- Dr. Joy Bliss
The video is here. Worth listening to.
Tuesday, December 4. 2007
Dalrymple, in New English Review. It begins: Quite often one reads that such-and-such a country - the Congo, for example - is impoverished in spite of its abundant natural resources. The tone is usually pained and a little surprised; the writer seems to think that natural resources ought to develop themselves and benefit populations without human intervention, by jumping out of the ground and distributing themselves equitably, for example.
Read the whole thing.
|
