Maggie's Farm

So requests VDH at Pajamas. I agree.

America remains the Land of Opportunity, and the politicians should be extolling that, and bringing inspiration to those who want or need the encouragement instead of pandering to peoples' sense of ineffectiveness and their desire for some "help" from the government which will never arrive without a loss of dignity and freedom.

The politicians should be saying "We'll provide justice, civic peace, protection from external enemies, minimal interference and taxation, and personal freedom so you can go out there and pursue your dreams - whatever they may be."  

Sometimes I think the Dem ideal is for everybody to become a "ward of the State." I find that attitude to be insulting, negative, and destructive to the human spirit. Furthermore, I have minimal respect for anyone who wishes to "govern" me: I desire to be self-governing.

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' " Ronald Reagan

If you have any doubts about opportunity, read about this guy who built a life with nothing but $25 and a bed in a homeless shelter.

Mr. Jacobs opened England's first coffee house in Oxford in 1650. It was two years later that another coffee house was opened in London by a Greek, Pasqua Rosee, in partnership with Daniel Edwards, an Englishman. By 1700 some two thousand such coffee shops were established.

The word "tip" dates back to the old London coffeehouses. Conspicuously placed brass boxes etched with the inscription, "To Insure Promptness," encouraged customers to pay for efficient service. The resulting acronym, TIP, has become a byword.

I also learned on that site that the darker roasts contain less caffeine, and that the coffee tree was introduced to Hawaii as an ornamental plant - not for production.

Photo on left: Ripe Kona coffee beans.

Those were the first three questions asked of She Who Must Be Obeyed by the young Barristerette's college advisor. No, no, and, sadly, no. ("Big bucks" seems to mean a third to a half million at minimum, with more to follow if your kid doesn't flunk out)

Apparently legacies do not carry too much water anymore except at Princeton, and extracurricular passions matter little unless almost world-class ability has been demonstrated. We were also advised that GPA matters more than the classes taken, so avoid classes in which one cannot excel: schools worry about their magazine rankings, and GPA of kids admitted is a factor in that.

Well, the latter advice made me despair about higher education, because if kids avoid things that are difficult for them in high school for college admission purposes, and then avoid them in college for grad school admission purposes, how will they ever learn what they need to understand the world?

Kids have to take courses in which they cannot excel.

One cannot understand much about this world without calculus, Shakespeare, statistics, economics, chemistry, physics, bio, history, geology, Chaucer, philosophy, religion, music history and theory... etc. Of course, you can learn all these things after you get "educated" in schools (not so easily, though, with statistics and calc) - but then what is formal education good for other than certificate-chasing, professor-employment, and kid-indoctrination?

Sometimes I think I am too old-fashioned for this modern world.

Before I decided to post this little meditation, I ran into this book review/essay re Higher Education's Loss of Purpose. A quote:

...the research ideal devalues the connection with thinkers of the past. The belief that students benefit from participating in a timeless conversation with the great voices of our civilization falls by the wayside.

That was all bad enough, but the tide of political correctness (an edgy term for someone from the heart of mainstream academia) washed over the humanities with the destructive force of a tsunami. Why? Because the insistence of the diversity/multiculturalist crowd that human beings are imprisoned by their immutable characteristics (race, gender, class) means that there is no point in trying to learn from the past. Dead, white males and their “hegemony” are what we must break free of, not learn from. In one of his most penetrating sentences, Kronman asks, “For if my most fundamental attitudes are conditioned by my race and gender, so I cannot help but see and judge the world from the vantage point they fix, how can I ever hope to escape their orbit, subject these attitudes to critical review, and set myself the goal of living in some way other than the one they prescribe?”

Whereas the physical sciences and some of the social sciences have rejected the idea that there is any pedagogical value in “diversity,” the humanities swallowed it whole and thus further degraded their intellectual standing.

Photo on top: An 1837 one-room schoolhouse in Norwalk, CT
Lower image: Harvard College, 1767

Happened to hear Rush while doing a quick errand today. Rush re McCain: "They are trying to run us out of the Republican Party."

Rush is usually right about things, but this proves to me that he has MDS bad. It's nice, in a way, to see that he is imperfect in his insights. My comments for Rush:

1. Who is "they"? "They" are Republican voters, like me. There is no vast anti-conservative conspiracy.
2. "run us out"? That's crazy. I voted for McCain, but I am much more conservative than McCain, and I have no wish to run anybody out. I just voted for the guy who I think can win, and who will put sane folks on the courts and benches.
3. The "Republican Party." The GOP, as we have said before, is not owned by Conservatives. There are times when I wish it were, but a diversity of opinion is a healthy thing, overall.

People need to get a grip. One more point: I do not think people vote simply on proposed policies and positions. If they did, you could run position papers for office. Sometimes they vote simply for who they "like" or trust as a person. How people vote is often complex, but they own their vote, and can do with it whatever the heck they want. It's silly to blame them and it is silly to blame McCain, because no-one is forced to vote for him.

Addendum: Wizbang on why to get behind the peoples' choice

Reposted from May, 2005:

Haven't read the book, and never saw South Park either. I don't watch TV - total waste of life. But Anderson's book is rapidly becoming a Big Book, so I had better take a look at it real soon. It concerns the culture wars.  There is a very nice interview in Frontpage by Jamie Glazov with Brian Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias.

Among his statements in the interview:

"Technology has radically undermined this liberal media dominance. South Park Conservatives is in part a brief history of new media, and I show how talk radio, cable television (above all Fox News), and now the Internet and blogosphere have brought right-of-center views and perspectives long excluded by the media mainstream right to the heart of national debate. The change has taken place virtually overnight: the oldest of these media, political talk radio, is really only 15 years old or so, and the newest, the blogosphere, didn’t really exist five years ago." 

 And (this is becoming a familiar theme):

"In the academy, change is harder to achieve, because the tenure system has guaranteed a certain kind of intellectual—reflexively left-wing culturally and often quasi-socialist or out-and-out Marxist in their views on political economy—remains the norm. Left-wing professors are going to hire other left-wing professors and give tenure to other left-wingers. The difficulties experienced by cultural and political conservatives or even defenders of the Western cultural tradition in getting tenure means fewer and fewer of them go into academe. "

Read the interview.    

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.

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:

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.