Thursday, July 5. 2007
How are we doing in Iraq since January? AQ Feeling the Heat, at Flopping.
 It's a trite old slogan now. You all know where it's from. But like most things that are truly useful, they fade into the background until they are essentially invisible, a plain sort of wallpaper perhaps; and people only point out whatever shortcomings such things have. Only Europeans are bigger ingrates than Americans. We seldom appreciate anything we have; they don't appreciate the things they have, and don't appreciate us, either. An example: I could search the internet for half a second and come up with millions of documents, scholarly and rant-like alike, telling us all how bad the Interstate Highway System is. All the evils it generates. Try finding out the sum total of what it's added to the betterment of our country, and by proxy, the world. I submit to you that no one bothers to even attempt it, because the benefits of the thing are so enormous and so far-reaching that you couldn't even begin to quantify it. So everyone just takes the benefits of it for granted and rails about a swamp that got filled in, or pollution - a little real, mostly imaginary. But then, it's much easier to complain about your cable bill than to turn the TV off, ain't it? I want you to read an entire blog. You heard me, the whole thing. William Kamkwamba's Malawi Windmill Blog I'd like to think that guy is just like me. But it would be presumptuous of me to claim it. But I'd be proud if someone said it about me, that's for sure. I'm going to head a lot of people off at the pass right now. His accomplishments have nothing to do with Gaia-love windpower one-world eco-blathering World Bank recumbent bicycle Earth Day carbon footprint nonsense. A man, aided by friends and family, is able to use his active mind and his efforts to improve the quality of his family's life through his own exertions. That, and he is able -- and allowed-- in a small way to lay his hands on the things he needs to do it. It boggles the mind what that man could do with access to a library and a Home Depot. Please take heed: I said library and not university. A university is now generally simply an intellectual bootcamp, where you are taught that no one needs what William, and many like him, desperately and manifestly do need; things that you take for granted because you have the dough for a 600 dollar phone toy with no inkling of how it, or anything else for that matter, gets to you. They talk a good game about helping people like William in the abstract, as part of a faceless horde. Reality intrudes quickly, though, and they don't do much of anything that helps any individual like William, and generally do a great deal to harm or hamstring him. I fear many might be sanguine about returning such as me to the local equivalent of where William is now -- reading a dogeared book in the dark, slapping at the malarial mosquitoes -- as long as they can call it "progress" on the trust-fund circuit. Also take heed: I said Home Depot and not an Al Gore celebrity self-congratulation extravaganza. They fly over people like William and me, look out the private plane's window and say: No one needs what they want. Please have my concubine feed me another lotos blossom.
I feel better about the world because William Kamkwamba's in it. You want to help him? Start by getting out of his way.
This blowback against “globalization from above” has spread to every corner of the Earth. It now threatens to kill sensible, moderate steps toward the freer movement of goods, ideas, capital, and people.
What is the best way to help poor countries? What William Easterly in Foreign Policy terms "the ideology of development" entails sending in development experts to tell the country what to do, and it is all the rage these days among economists, organizations like the World Bank, and commentators like Thomas Friedman. Easterly says: Like all ideologies, Development promises a comprehensive final answer to all of society’s problems, from poverty and illiteracy to violence and despotic rulers. It shares the common ideological characteristic of suggesting there is only one correct answer, and it tolerates little dissent. It deduces this unique answer for everyone from a general theory that purports to apply to everyone, everywhere. There’s no need to involve local actors who reap its costs and benefits. Development even has its own intelligentsia, made up of experts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and United Nations.
The problem is is that such top-down impositions of "reforms" and development plans have never worked anywhere. What does seem to work is for nations to find their own paths to prosperity, organically, from the inside, out. As Easterly notes: Unfortunately, Development ideology has a dismal record of helping any country actually develop. The regions where the ideology has been most influential, Latin America and Africa, have done the worst. Luckless Latins and Africans are left chasing yesterday’s formulas for success while those who ignored the Developmentalists found homegrown paths to success. The nations that have been the most successful in the past 40 years did so in such a variety of different ways that it would be hard to argue that they discovered the “correct answer” from development ideology. In fact, they often conspicuously violated whatever it was the experts said at the time. The East Asian tigers, for instance, chose outward orientation on their own in the 1960s, when the experts’ conventional wisdom was industrialization for the home market. The rapid growth of China over the past quarter century came when it was hardly a poster child for either the 1980s Washington Consensus or the 1990s institutionalism of democracy and cracking down on corruption.
I think this is an important essay. Read the whole thing at Foreign Policy. Addendum from The Editor: Closely-related. Jonah Goldberg via Driscoll argues that wealth does not come from material things: National prosperity is a reflection of a civilization - its laws, culture, knowledge, attitudes, morals, values, and personal and business habits. Buildings and dams and armies of bulldozers are the least of it. To quote Goldberg: A potential lesson for the World Bank may be that building roads, dams, and factories in the third world is a fool’s errand until those nations have the intangible capital required to maintain such things. The Marshall Plan’s success in rebuilding Europe after World War II stemmed not from the U.S. footing the bill for concrete and bulldozers but from the intangible capital locked in the hearts and minds of everyday Europeans.
This helps explain, I believe, why some parts of the world, like much of Africa, parts of the Middle East, much of Central America and parts of South America are rich in resources and opportunities and yet remain poor by modern standards. It's the culture.
Wednesday, July 4. 2007
On the ride home from Home Depot this afternoon, I heard a re-run of Hannity interviewing Rudy this past week. I know that many conservatives do not trust his conservative convictions, but I do. Very impressive: cheerful, optimistic, common-sensical, market-oriented, quick-thinking, and happy to talk about the American ideal of limited government. It might have been a high-class con job, but it didn't sound like it. His best sound bite in the conversation was "The Democratic candidates want to take America backwards."
President Calvin Coolidge began his Independence Day speech in 1926 thus: "About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful." What a great guy. Who gets credit for him, VT or MA? Read the whole thing.
 What is that photo in Camp Victory, Baghdad, all about?
It is good. Find out, at Gateway.
A quote from Peter Schramm's piece of the above title at Weekly Standard: Over fifty years ago, when I was just shy of my tenth birthday, my family fled Hungary during the failed revolution against the Russian Communists. Our family's story was like so many of the refugees from communism, complete with relatives arrested, property seized, and a nighttime dash to freedom. The decision to escape was an easy one to make (although not so easy to execute), but the question I had--the one I distinctly recall asking my father--was "where are we going." We could have stayed in Europe--and indeed, the Germans would have welcomed us as Volk deutsche because of our German surname--but this was not my father's plan. "We are going to America," he said. "Why America?" I prodded. "Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the wrong place."
Read the whole thing.
Tuesday, July 3. 2007
UK Moslem jihadist attacks cause PM Brown to ban associating the word "Moslem" with the word "terror." I suggest the Brits do what Tim Blair does, which is to term them all "Presbyterian terrorists."
Via Althouse: Scooter Libby emerged as the least absurd character in the entire drama, and yet he was the one who committed a crime. President Bush entered the stage like a character from another world, a world in which things make sense.
His decision to commute Libby’s sentence but not erase his conviction was exactly right. It punishes him for his perjury, but not for the phantasmagorical political farce that grew to surround him. It takes away his career, but not his family.
 From Hansen. A quote:
It is stereotypically easy to identify authoritarians who seek restrict civil liberties during war in the name of "national security." But it is much harder to take on crusading special interest groups, district attorneys, court justices, and liberal Senators who ignore, twist, or subvert our constitutional freedoms under the liberal clarion call of helping minorities, stopping the war, or championing the underclass. If we are to lose our civil liberties, it won't be all of sudden due to Patriot-Act zealots in sunglasses and flattops, but rather insidiously and incrementally by egalitarian professors, moral crusaders, muckraking journalists, and government utopians all unhappy that constitutional justice is too little and too late for their ever impatient desire to ensure heaven on earth.
Their utopia is my Brave New World nightmare, and I am sure that VDH agrees. Read the whole thing (h/t, Jules).
Dr. X has discovered the real reason for Moslem rage against Salman Rushdie. Her name is Padma.
Monday, July 2. 2007
 We have written so much about Jihad Denial that we are sick of writing about it. I'm just as happy to let S,C and A take on the subject, (with reference to the UK attacks) with Dr. Sanity's help.
However, I do object to the references to "Leftist stupidity." That is not an argument - it's an ad hominem - and it does not do justice to the political calculation behind Jihad Denial. Fact is, "jihad" just doesn't fit "the narrative." Especially Jihad by doctors. That's all there is to it. Like the New York Times, they just try to minimize or ignore facts that get in the way.
I am pleased that Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence. It was insane, as was the entire case from the beginning.
 Larry Auster notes that there is no response in the UK to Moslems in the news yesterday advocating and justifying further terror in the UK.
Every time I think the Brits are just about to grow a pair, they let me down.
This little FICA review came in over the transom today, full of facts which the youths ought to be aware of:
Franklin Roosevelt introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:
1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary,
2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,
3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,
4.) That the money the participants put into the independent "Trust Fund" rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and,
5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.
Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month - and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to "put away," you may be interested in the following: --------------------
Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent "Trust" fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and
Senate.
--------------------
Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social
Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.
--------------------
Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking" deciding
vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.
-------------------
Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!
-------------------
Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violation of the original
contract, the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!
And the worst part about it is, uninformed citizens believe it!
And I might add that none of the people controlling SS in our government
are dependent on it in the least. Congressmen have a completely separate fully funded retirement system. There is no decrease in their pay level at retirement.
 Dalrymple thinks about why Australian academics are in love with the idea of genocide of their aborigines. A quote:
...if you are unhappy in a country like Australia, you have to consider the possibility that the problem lies with you rather than with the conditions that surround you. This is a disagreeable thing, particularly for an intelligentsia, which is deprived by it of a providential role for itself. What does an intelligentsia do when a country is already as satisfactory in its political arrangements and social institutions as any country has ever been? Intelligentsias do not like the kind of small problems that day to day existence inevitably throws up, such as termites in the woodwork or conflict at work over desk-space: they like to get their intellectual teeth into weightier, meatier problems. What could be a weightier problem than a prosperous, fortunate country that was founded upon genocide? Clearly, if it was so founded, an intelligentsia is urgently needed to help it emerge from the dark moral labyrinth in which it exists, hitherto blindly. For only an intelligentsia is sufficiently used to thinking in abstractions to be qualified to act as guide to the nation.
Read the whole thing. Photo: Australian Aborigine with didgereedoo
Saturday, June 30. 2007
Update here. It's odd the way the Brits now term middle-easterners "asians." They are not what we consider asians. It's gratifying to see that the crowd tackled and captured the bad asian.
Shamelessly stolen borrowed from Powerline: 
 Excellent news video from ABC on the school desegregation case (from Patterico's piece on the subject). Forced bussing was a catastrophe for our cities and for kids of every color. In a city, kids should be able to walk to grammar school and, if you want parents involved, they ought to be able to amble over there too.
It was telling, on that video, that the black Louisville civil rights fighter applauded the Court's decision, but the white Lefties on the Court just don't get it. It's not the 60s anymore, and those battles have been fought and won. Hotheads with agendas and rent-seekers continue to try to stir the pot, but it's over: happily, race is not a big deal to anyone anymore and, as we have often said here, nowadays it can be difficult to tell what race somebody is anyway. America might not be a melting pot, but it's a racial melting pot. You could go nuts trying to put a racial label on people. We believe in color-blindness, character-awareness, and culture-alertness. For example, my so-called "white" Yankee kids have Irish blood and North African blood from southern Italians from their Mom, and American Indian blood and Brit blood from me. On the other hand, my daughter's friend is "Hispanic" for school and college purposes (where that 'hispanic" comes in mighty handy), with an aristocratic Spanish father with a family castle in Spain (with a large hunting preserve where they occasionally hunt with King Juan Carlos), married to an "anglo" American doctor. The Roberts Court: Sanity, Common Sense, and the requirements of the Constitution. It sounds like Breyer lost his cool during this case, but what does he know about being a black 8 year-old? Nothing. Justice Thomas does know, and he knows more than that: he understands the condescension of the Left towards their plantation darkies. He has been hunted down by their hounds for escaping Massa's plantation and for not being what the Dixiecrat Dems used to call "a good nigger." We are rarely reminded that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican (albeit a rather liberal one, back in the pre-conservative era), and that it was the Repubs (Eisenhower, for starters) who began the civil rights movement. (Well, maybe you could mention Repub Lincoln, too.) Photo: A famous 1991 Benetton advertisement
Friday, June 29. 2007
The swing guy has all of the power on a court with Clinton-appointed frozen-in-time 60s-era Leftist judicial activists on it. Nice summary by Betsy. Apparently the joys of a sunny, golf-filled Florida retirement are not yet beckoning Justice Stevens or "Sleepy" Ginsberg. Power is difficult to give up, and to pass on to younger folks. It is getting to be a pattern where these Justices want to die in the saddle. Plus it's an easy job for the Justices: their associates do all the lifting, and the perks and vacation time (June to October) can't be beat. A pretty good gig, except for the lousy government pay. Senile dementia is no problem, because you have tenure and only God can fire you!
Are there more? This is London. Al Quaida suspected of importing their quaint Middle Eastern cultural traditions, and their religion of love and peace, to a tolerant and welcoming Britain. Update: They IDed the guy. Has arrest record for Al Quaida bomb plotting. How can a country treat such cases as ordinary criminality? Makes no sense. Gentle Western law is of no concern to Jihadists.
It may not mean much more than an expression of sentiment, but Pence's amendment to forbid the FCC from resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine saw a lot of support in the House. Naming that thing "Fairness" was a slick piece of double-speak, wasn't it? It put people in the position of voting against fairness. On the other hand, I thought most people in Western Civilization grew past the "No fair!" schoolyard complaint around age 10. Maybe 11.
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