Wednesday, November 7. 2007
Excellent short new video, "Consistent Conservative," at Fred '08, here. The guy is good, but does he really want the job enough to win it? Below, his recent video on Hillarycare.
Hitchins: Jihadists aren't in Afghanistan - or Iraq - because we are there. A quote: "No end in sight" is another favorite mantra of the anti-war mentality. And how true that melancholy reflection seems to be. The latest news is of a very nasty Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand, butchering Buddhist villages (remember the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues at Bamiyan?) and making demands for the imposition of sharia law. Perhaps someone will identify for me which Thai and Buddhist—or Western imperialist—crimes have led to this sudden development. Or perhaps it will be admitted, however grudgingly and belatedly, that there is something sui generis about Islamist fanaticism: something that is looking for a confrontation with every non-Muslim society in the world and is determined to pursue it with the utmost violence and cruelty. It is also seeking a confrontation with some Muslim states and societies.
Read the whole thing. Jihad is a world-wide movement of violence and oppression in the name of their god: they say so themselves. Pretending it ain't so does no good whatsoever. This will go on for a long time, in many places.
Tuesday, November 6. 2007
 Blair:
The British government warns:
British Environment Minister Joan Ruddock has warned citizens that by not eating leftover food, they are effectively causing climate change.
As I munch dutifully on leftover Halloween candy, I am wondering what exactly she means by "effectively." I think she means "ineffectively."
Monday, November 5. 2007
From PJ O'Rourke in Generation Vex, Weekly Standard last year (h/t, Buddy). One quote:  The pittance that is a current Social Security payment was intended to maintain the doddering retirees of yore in their accustomed condition of thin gruel and single-car garages. Such chump change will hardly suffice for today's vigorous sexagenarians intent on (among other things) vigorous sex in places like Paris, St. Bart's, and Phuket.
How can present Social Security allotments be expected to fund our sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding and white-water rafting, our skiing, golf and scuba excursions, our photo safaris to Africa, bike tours of Tuscany and sojourns at Indian ashrams, our tennis clinics, spa treatments, gym memberships and personal fitness training, our luxury cruises to the Galapagos and Antarctica, the vacation homes in Hilton Head and Vail, the lap pools, Jacuzzis, and clay courts being built thereat and the his and hers Harley Davidsons? And we haven't even touched on the subject of Social Security's civil union life partner, Medicare. It won't take much sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding, and white-water rafting before we all require new hips, knees, elbows, back surgery, pacemakers, and steel plates in our heads. And the expense of these will be as nothing compared to the cost of our pharmacological needs. Remember, we are a generation that knows drugs. From about 1967 until John Belushi died, we created a way of life based almost entirely on drugs. And we can do it again. Except this time, instead of us trying to figure out how to pay for the fun by selling each other nickel bags of pot, you the taxpayer will be picking up the tab. And did I mention that we'll expect to be airlifted to the Mayo Clinic every time we have an ache or a pain? Nothing smaller than a Gulfstream G-3, please. So just give us all the money in the federal, state, and local budget. Forget spending on the military, education, and infrastructure. What with Iraq, falling SAT scores, and that bridge collapse in Minneapolis, it's not like the military, education, and infrastructure are doing very well anyway. Besides, you don't have a choice. We are 80 million strong. That's a number equal to almost two-thirds of the registered voters in the United States. Do what we say or we will ballot you into a socio-economic condition that will make North Korea look like the clubhouse at Pebble Beach.
Link to the whole piece is above.
Sunday, November 4. 2007
 Since we posted Zaccheus today, these comments seem timely. (Tax collectors, in Roman times, were wealthy because they worked on commission, and I suspect that they were viewed the same way we view the IRS.)
Rob Port says Most rich people are smarter than you, and work harder. I have no argument with that. My experience with people bears it out. I would add, however, that most rich people are pretty good at dealing with people, too. A quote from the piece at Right Wing News: To put it bluntly, for every Paris Hilton in the world there is a Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs who rose to the top because of their brains, hard work and ability to innovate. This will anger a lot of the class warfare people who are likely union supporters and subscribe to John Edwards' "two Americas" theory, but those people are mostly angry because nobody wants to believe that their lack of fulfillment with their lives is their own fault. It's always easier to blame some invisible, anonymous conspiracy.
I do not happen to believe that wealth=life fulfillment, but for many folks it seems to be a big part of it - and it's a free country. Whole thing here. And my recent related piece, Love the Prosperous. Photo: A smart rich person
From A Jacksonian's Three Organizations, One Quagmire: By not having a conscript military, the US invests its time and energy on those volunteering to take up military work as a profession. That is not understood as a profession by the other professional classes in America, and those classes tend to devolve military work as 'shooting and killing' only. That does happen, yes, and military conflict requires that the wilingness to counter an enemy with brutal means must be done for survival of one's own forces and to reach the goals of the Nation in such a conflict. Denigration of all other professional classes, but particularly in academia, has lowered the ability of the US population to understand military work and how it works. Without knowing the why it is done the way it is, and how things are achieved not just by killing, nearly an entire generation of Americans are left with very little concept of the utility and necessity of military power.
A reposting of Bruce Thornton's 2004 essay of the above title. A quote: If Judeo-Christian belief is so central to the ideals that created our government in the first place—if, as de Tocqueville wrote, "Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights"—then the current anti-Christian fundamentalism strikes at the root of our political order. For if we are, as the secularists tell us, mere material creatures bound to one another only by contractual relations to be dissolved or altered at will, then what will provide the basis for all those selfless actions and emotions that any community depends on for its cohesion, and that keep freedom from degenerating into mere license, the power to do and consume whatever gratifies our selfish will and appetites? Where will fundamental values come from, all those beliefs that bind us into a community, and that we are willing to die and kill for, not because they have been scientifically proven but because we believe passionately that they are right and true and will benefit the greatest number of people? The secularists have failed to provide an alternative for the religion that they have discarded. Into this vacuum has rushed any number of pseudo-religions, from Marxism to scientism to environmentalism, that are infinitely more irrational and mischievous than traditional Christianity. Yet this secularism is the creed dominating the schools, one more dogmatic, more intolerant of dissent, and more prone to self-righteous hypocrisy—in short, more fundamentalist than the beliefs of most Christians. For those concerned about the dangers of religion to our political life, then, look to these creeds, which are passed off as the fruits of science and reason, rather than to a Christianity that has been banished from the political culture it helped to create.
The whole essay here.
Saturday, November 3. 2007
 A conversation I heard yesterday on Sean Hannity's radio program was a stark reminder to me of what Conservatives and the liberty-loving are up against with the woman voter.
The caller was an obviously bright, cheerful, likeable, married young mom from Long Island. Sean was his usual polite and friendly self, but he did press her on her points. She wanted free medical care for her kids, and for herself. Then it evolved that she also wanted free day care, and then it became clear that she wanted free housing available too, and auto insurance and medicine. Sean asked her if she felt that the government should give her a free car, to which she said no, noting that the government already provides bus service where she lives - but her family has cars. She said twice that in Europe, people are "taken care of." I think Sean also asked her about free food, but I don't recall. Sean was, appropriately, trying to find the limit of what she thought other people should buy for her. She believed that everyone should be taxed at 50% as a minimum, in exchange for "services." The notion of markets was irrelevant to her, as were such abstract notions as freedom. I believe that this is a particularly female view of life, and related to my post of neo-neo's 2-part essay on marriage and divorce today. Women with kids want to feel safe and secure. It's the biological priority. In a world full of divorce, without tribe or the tight extended families of the past, it should be no surprise that women look elsewhere for security. Women's Lib, with its leftist leaders, spoke about independence and autonomy and freedom but acted, politically, as if they wished to exchange dependence on men for dependence on the taxpayer: that has become the family farm, and the "village," and the "tribe" of the present.
Friday, November 2. 2007
Is this Hillary sex story for real? Her "body person"? Or is it "fake but accurate"? Or is it dirty tricks? I hope it's not true. I'd like to see primaries and elections on the issues, but I have learned, over time, that politics is warfare. The young lady mentioned is certainly a cutie-pie, and rumors of Hillary's proclivities go back to the Little Rock days. Everybody's heard them.
 The NYT reports that:
The rescue of the Florida Everglades, the largest and most expensive environmental restoration project on the planet, is faltering. Seven years into what was supposed to be a four-decade, $8 billion effort to reverse generations of destruction, federal financing has slowed to a trickle. Projects are already years behind schedule. Thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat continue to disappear, paved by developers or blasted by rock miners to feed the hungry construction industry. The idea that the federal government could summon the will and money to restore the subtle, sodden grandeur of the so-called River of Grass is disappearing, too.
Instead of complaining about the federal government's stinginess, why not consider what more Florida can do now, if not to restore the entire ecosystem, to stop the development of a habitat and a hunk of land that most Americans agree is worth protecting as a precious piece of our national inheritance. Photo: NYT photo of the Everglades in Palm Beach County
You can tell because idiot, self-hating dhimmis like this start speaking up. h/t, Theo Blog power? U of Delaware drops thought-reform program Also, Nobel winner refuses prize: denounces global warming hoax
Thursday, November 1. 2007
The leftist tilt of the major American newspapers, from Will: 
Read his whole piece, with more of his typically-informative charts, at Willisms.
From Roger Simon's piece on the Dem debate: Hillary Clinton does not say what she means or mean what she says.
There is an Ends Justify the Means mentality and ultimately, I suspect, the Ends are Me Me Me even more than they are Socialism. Sounding virtuous about wanting to hand out other peoples' hard-earned money is just her chosen tool, while she hangs out with, and collects $ from, all of her billionaire friends. But she cannot finesse things the way Slick Willie can.
Wednesday, October 31. 2007
 From a student "training" document at the University of Delaware, as quoted in a piece at Thompson:
... “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”
I guess that means that my skin tone determines my character and my moral fate. That sounds a teeny bit racist to me. Photo: A typical "white people" cocktail party last week in leafy, sophisticated Wellesley, MA
Feldman at American Thinker, quoting a piece by Poe: In it, Hillary declared, "We are... putting together a network in the blogosphere". She attributed its success to the efforts of "institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress..." With these words, Hillary confessed to a federal crime. Both groups are supposedly "non-partisan", 501(c)3 tax-free organizations, strictly prohibited from coordinating efforts with a national political candidate such as Hillary.
The Feldman piece here. The Poe piece here. (thanks, H)
Americans are largely satisfied and optimistic about their personal lives, but pessimistic about their public institutions, says David Brooks in a NYT opinion. I am not sure that is necessarily a bad thing. A quote: Sixty-eight percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Sixty-two percent think that when government runs something, it is usually inefficient and wasteful. Sixty percent think the next generation will be worse off than the current one. Americans today are more pessimistic about government’s ability to solve problems than they were in 1974 at the height of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War. This happiness gap between the private and the public creates a treacherous political vortex. On the one hand, it means voters are desperate for change. On the other hand, they don’t want a change that will upset the lives they have built for themselves.
I have no doubt that the relentless negativity of the media contributes to that, but it still sounds like the America I know and love - people running their own lives as they see fit, and grumbling and suspicious about politics and the gummint. What would make me worry would be people loving their so-called public institutions.
Tuesday, October 30. 2007
We posted Bruce Thornton's fine piece in City Journal titled Fighting at a Disadvantage a while ago. I wish to correct his use of the concept of a "therapeutic sensibility" which makes excuses for Islamist war and terror. BT has probably never been in therapy: if he had been, he would know that finding excuses ain't part of it - nor is sympathetic hand-holding and commiseration. If you were in therapy with me, Mr. Thornton, you would find me pushing you towards your maximal degree of responsibility for your own fate and your own life. The notion that therapy entails making people feel good by the shrink allying themselves to the patient's weakest parts is way off. The best therapeutic sensibility is usually to be kind and respectful, and yet tough as nails, I believe, which is why many people cannot handle it. It can be like surgery without anesthesia. We therapists do not charge money for hugs: it is another, older profession which does that. I like everything else Thornton writes, however.
Monday, October 29. 2007
 In response to the piece we linked at Protein about Robert Reich and the Left's age-old desire to steal wealth, I reply "Appreciate and thank the wealthy, and provide a safety net for the unfortunate."
We have written about poverty in America several times. The prosperous are a precious thing, and we have tons of them in America. The more, the better. I know that not everyone pursues prosperity: many pursue other goals instead. But the more wealthy people we have, the better. Wealthy people do not ask the government (meaning their neighbors) for stuff, they live independent lives, they donate time and money to charities, they tend to be civic-minded and grateful, they "ask not what America can do" for them, they educate their kids, they spend money and keep the retail economy rolling, they invest in businesses which grow and create jobs, etc etc. Without the estate tax, we would have many more wealthy in America than we have now. And if more people had good old Yankee thrift and the backbone to resist every temptation, we'd have even more wealthy people. Wealth is not the most important thing in life, but private assets are the foundation of being a Free Man or Woman. The goal of American policies should be to help create as many wealthy people and families as possible.
Racial hatred does not arise spontaneously. It is cultivated by political leaders seeking to use it for their own purposes. The divorce of white Southerners from the political leaders who kept them dependent on Democrats to continue segregation has changed an ugly socio-political dynamic dating back to the foundations of the United States. This does not mean that racism has been eliminated-far from it. But Bobby Jindal's election is the latest evidence of the transformation -- in a single generation -- of what had been the voting block of reaction and racism through all preceding American history. The Republican southern strategy has produced one of the greatest victories ever won for the cause of civil rights in America.
From Protein, on a piece by Robert Reich: Certainly, this isn’t about fairness in the tax code. Reich, Rangel, et al have no interest in “fairness”. What this is about is property rights and who ultimately gets to control them. What we have here are not “liberals” but statists who cover their envy of others’ success with sanctimonious socialism. Reich believes that people have no right to own more than 50% of their earnings and they must pay yearly rental to the government of their property. “Reich only wants to do this to ‘the rich’” you say? I don’t buy it. For one he disengenuously cites Eisenhower and JFK tax rates and skips Ronald Reagan. Facts about the tax code and tax rates of those eras and increased federal revenues as they changed and rates fell would belie his jealous hissy-fit. And that’s what this boils down to — envy, jealousy … the coveting of your neighbors success. It’s the excuse offered by the people who shoplift “hey, they’re rich, they won’t miss it and I wanted it.” Reich has the “morals” of a petty thief.
Read the whole thing.
Saturday, October 27. 2007
 The road to the Total State:
...my view is that we in the west are already well on the way to a new form of post-modern totalitarian state (what Guy Herbert calls 'soft fascism') in which behaviour and opinions which are disapproved of by the political class are pathologised and then regulated by violence backed laws "for your own good'' or "for the children" or "for the environment".
Whole brief post at Sami. I agree. This is what governments always tend towards, and it must be resisted by proud, strong free men and women before we all become serfs of The State. If you think that is hyperbole, then just watch, say nothing, and do nothing. The "political class" isn't wise - it's crafty and smart, but fundamentally rendered insane by power. It is a governmental disease, akin to alcoholism, and it seems to be universal. Our Founders feared this, predicted it, and made valiant efforts to prevent it. People who renounce power over others too rarely go into government.
Interesting politics. Pajamas
When people talk about being guided by science, I get the creeps. It gives me the same sort of creeps that Utilitarianism does. It has overtones of "scientific socialism," for me, and Brave New World. "Science" is amoral. Facts are amoral. Pure reason is amoral. Prof. Deneen agrees.
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