Friday, December 28. 2007
As regular readers know, we all seem to have been thinking recently about the cost of liberty and the human ambivalence about freedom. See, for a few examples: Freedom? No thanks, and a word about Erich Fromm Is Liberty Obsolete? Of mice and men: Dems want the US to be like Denmark Live Free or Die. How come Liberals never talk about Liberty? Individual liberty erodes, one little trans-fat molecule at a time The dignity trap of "positive liberty" Liberty "Freedom to" vs. "freedom from," the duties of citizenship, plus Dostoevsky Shrinks, Thoreau, Pencils and Freedom A few Sundays ago our preacher spoke provocatively about the cost of Grace. We want to think of Grace as being, by definition, a freebie. My pastor says not. Roger Kimball recently discusses the cost of freedom. Perfect. Freedom and liberty are costly in money, lives, bruises, setbacks, and effort. And freedom is messy, too. All valuable things are costly, like relationships with man or God. Over time, the Left has actually managed to find a way to permit people's consciences to allow them to accept things and money from their neighbors which are not willingly given. Old-fashioned American dignity would not permit that. In the end, the issue is whether we, as citizens, want to pay the price, or whether we want somebody else to pay for it like the old bowl of lentils. There is no free lentil lunch. The infant in all of us wants everything good to be free to us, like mother's milk. If adults want to live in freedom, they need to get beyond that, because liberty is not for babies. Good things are costly. Related: Popular Dictators at Econlog, and The Allure of Tyranny by Stephens at Opinion Journal.
Thursday, December 27. 2007
 Our Iowa Editorial Committee has pondered long and deep, and decided that we will endorse, for the Repub nomination, Pogo. We Go Pogo!
Pogo has been running for Pres. since 1952, and it's time to give him a chance. He has the experience, and he won't play possum in the White House. This decision is not to disparage George Papoon ("Not Insane!"), who is also an excellent mammalian candidate but one who promises to permit voting by all kinds of animals, including unicellular animals. We are told on good authority that each one of us has more bacteria in our GI tracts than there are American voters, and we believe this could dilute the opinion of us superior and more thoughtful multicellular animals. 
Wednesday, December 26. 2007
Two of the most important events in American history involved George Washington at Christmastime. The first, of course, was the crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton which took place on Dec 26, 1776. That victory proved to an uneasy Continental Congress that Americans could stand up to European troops (in this case, Hessians). The second was Washington's resignation in 1783.
Monday, December 24. 2007
This charming little home is of very recent vintage, yet exhibits some fine Craftsman details, delicate brickwork and an ornate roof. It has recently hit the market and is available in move-in ready condition following a foreclosure. Great curb appeal: your neighbors will all want a piece of this property. 
Sunday, December 23. 2007
This Yule story, which occurred 3 weeks ago, came in over the transom:
 It started last Christmas, when Bennett and Vivian Levin were overwhelmed by sadness while listening to radio reports of injured American troops. "We have to let them know we care," Vivian told Bennett. So they organized a trip to bring soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital to the annual Army-Navy football game in Philly, on Dec. 3.
They created their own train line to do it. Yes, there are people in this country who actually own real trains. Bennett Levin - native Philly guy, self-made millionaire and irascible former L&I commish - is one of them.
He has three luxury rail cars. Think mahogany paneling, plush seating and
white-linen dining areas. He also has two locomotives, which he stores at his Juniata Park train yard. One car, the elegant Pennsylvania, carried John F. Kennedy to the Army-Navy game in 1961 and '62. Later, it carried his brother Bobby's body to D.C. for burial. "That's a lot of history for one car," says Bennett.
He and Vivian wanted to revive a tradition that endured from 1936 to 1975, during which trains carried Army-Navy spectators from around the country directly to the stadium where the annual game is played. The Levins could think of no better passengers to reinstate the ceremonial ride than the wounded men and women recovering at Walter Reed in D.C. and Bethesda, in Maryland. "We wanted to give them a first-class experience," says Bennett. "Gourmet meals on board, private transportation from the train to the stadium, perfect seats - real hero treatment."
Continue reading "A Yuletide Train Story"
Saturday, December 22. 2007
 A short piece at Stumbling helped me get a grip on a theme which had been nagging at me in an unformed way. As he says,
"Freedom doesn't make us happy." If my memory serves me, Freud said sort of the same thing about freedom from neurosis. Indeed freedom does not, nor is it intended to, by the usual uses of the term happiness. However, everyone defines happiness somewhat differently for themselves, and many do not find it to be a worthy pursuit in and of itself. Indeed, many look back in their lives and recognize that some of their toughest times were their "happiest" in retrospect because they were contending with challenge and discovering things about themselves and about life. Read the Stumbling piece. A QQQ earlier today noted that democracy is simply an effort to provide individual freedom from State power (but it can be a path to tyranny too). We believe that freedom has intrinsic value, and is a correlate of the dignity and capacity for self-determination of the individual. It is thus a Western ideal. Serfs and slaves know where they live and where their next meal is coming from, and thus have a foundation for material happiness. Being free is much more daunting and may not be for everybody (as Dr. Bliss often says) - but you get to chose your meal and take your own chances. In a free country, which the US still mostly is, each of us citizens can be an aristocrat of the human spirit. (And with a little luck and a little determination each one of us, even those on welfare, can live with more material blessings than King George lll had - eg endless hot water, large-screen TVs - which I will not permit in my house -, iPods, genuine medical treatments, central heat, and abundant fresh, healthy, delicious food from all over the world.) And, regardless of all of the above, I wish our readers a Happy Christmas and a re-birth of the Holy Spirit in all who seek it. Editor's comment: Yes, materialists understand simple animal happiness but not spiritual and psychological aspirations, and they tend to misunderestimate the soul and the capacities of everyone, except themselves, to figure out life and reality.
Friday, December 21. 2007
 This is not a way to mess up a good Martini: it's a whole different thing. This makes two:
8 oz real fresh apple cider - not apple juice
8 oz vodka
4 oz brandy
4 oz triple sec
2 oz fresh lemon juice
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp brown sugar . Stir or blenderize, then warm - not boil - in a saucepan. You can rim the Martini glass with some cinnamon sugar. Serve with a cinnamon stick.
Wednesday, December 19. 2007
 Attack Machine is on a subject we have discussed recently: the desire of some voters, mainly on the left, to seek more from politicians, or from government, than can be possibly delivered.
We recall that, when Christ arrived in Jerusalem, much of the enthusiastic crowd who greeted him with palm leaves were counting on him to be a political, if not military, savior for Judea - not a saver of souls for Judea and the world. Indeed, that was the meaning of the palms. The piece, Obama as Messiah, quotes Oprah: “We need a leader who’s going to touch our souls. Who’s going to make us feel differently about one another. Who’s going to remind us that we are one another’s keepers. That we are only as strong as the weakest among us.” “Are you the one?” It’s a question the entire nation is asking — is he the one? South Carolina — I do believe he’s the one.”
I am only as strong as the weakest amongst me? Give me a break. It's a sad day when people equate their government with their country, and seek inspiration, strength or - God forbid - spiritual injections from political leaders. It is infantile, un-American, and too close to blasphemy in its sentiment. False idols, false gods. It's pitiful. Pitiful because in a land of hard-won freedom we have earned the adult privilege of building our own lives, by our own individual lights, informed by our own spirits and our own gifts and our own beliefs. Therein lies the beauty and the grandeur of it - the faith in the individual - and that is why we hire random jerks to do the grimy government work: it's so they can protect us from enemies and tyranny, and to keep us free to pursue our personal goals in our own ways, as best we can. That is all I ask of these job-seekers. If anybody imagines that a politician or the government will change their life for the better, they are nuts. It does not take much history education to know that. In fact, the only reason we ever mention politics on this blog is because we wish to be left alone, and because some other arrogant jerks without normal difficult jobs, with the fantasy that they somehow know better than us, wish to bother us and to abscond with our hard-won freedoms and our hard-earned shekels - representing our sweat and time and tears and, in fact, our lives - to keep their stupid easy jobs. We do not appreciate that particular scam.
This came in over the transom (sans photo): 
In 1973 an Italian submarine named Enrique Tazzoli was sold for a paltry $100,000 as scrap metal. The submarine, given to the Italian Navy in 1953 was actually an incredible veteran of World War II service with a heritage that never should have passed so unnoticed into the graveyards of the metal recyclers. The U.S.S. Barb was a pioneer, paving the way for the first submarine launched missiles and flying a battle flag unlike that of any other ship. In addition to the Medal of Honor ribbon at the top of the flag identifying the heroism of its captain, Commander Eugene 'Lucky' Fluckey, the bottom border of the flag bore the image of a Japanese locomotive. The U.S.S. Barb was indeed, the submarine that 'SANK A TRAIN'. July, 1945 (Guam) Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz looked across the desk at Admiral Lockwood as he finished the personal briefing on U.S. war ships in the vicinity of the northern coastal areas of Hokkaido, Japan. 'Well, Chester, there's only the Barb there, and probably no word until the patrol is finished. You remember Gene Fluckey?' 'Of course. I recommended him for the Medal of Honor,' Admiral Nimitz replied. 'You surely pulled him from command after he received it?' July 18, 1945 (Patience Bay, Off the coast of Karafuto, Japan ) It was after 4 A.M. and Commander Fluckey rubbed his eyes as he peered over the map spread before him. It was the twelfth war patrol of the Barb, the fifth under Commander Fluckey. He should have turned command over to another skipper after four patrols, but had managed to strike a deal with Admiral Lockwood to make one more trip with the men he cared for like a father, should his fourth patrol be successful. Of course, no one suspected when he had struck that deal prior to his fourth and what should have been his final war patrol on the Barb, that Commander Fluckey's success would be so great he would be awarded the Medal of Honor.
Continue reading "The USS Barb sinks a train"
Tuesday, December 18. 2007
A particularly fine variation on a type of bungalow form that was very common from about 1900-1920. I especially like the use of an elegant archway to frame an additional entrance space leading to the front door. Japanese architecture, which we briefly spoke about a few weeks ago, emphasizes the creation of transitional spaces in between the indoors and outdoors, and this small space helps contribute to such a gradual transition here. Compare to the 1970 home below, where there is hardly any transition at all besides an uncovered concrete porch, leaving visitors completely exposed to the elements as they wait outside. 
Editor's comment: How can you be sure that isn't just a Bambi hitching a ride from a sympathetic animal-loving bicycler? Well, I could give you a half-hour shaggy dog story, entirely true by MSM standards, on the subject of a deer, skull-grazed by a 14 year-old in an old Maine apple orchard, which regained consciousness (the buck, not the orchard) after being hauled across the orchard and lifted over a barbed-wire fence (the deer, not the orchard), on a bike with the kid, and pedaled the bike (the wakened deer pedaled, not the kid) three miles to the nearest roadside bar and walked in and said (the buck, not the kid)...well, but I don't want to do that story today. That's enough unclear run-on sentences for one post.
Saturday, December 15. 2007
 I am a staunch nativist when it comes to wildlife. The damn English Sparrows are really bothering me this year.
We have two pestiferous Limey bird species here in Yankeeland and in the US in general - the English Sparrow (aka House Sparrow) and the Starling. Both were imported from Albion for a variety of silly reasons, back before people realized that biological imports create a mess for native species. These were two highly aggressive, invasive species who have wreaked havoc on our gentle native birds. Now, the English Sparrow is the most widely distributed bird on earth. Today, my irritation is with the English Sparrow. It is not, in fact, a lowly, timid mouselike sparrow at all, but probably a variety of European weaver finch. They are city birds, barn birds, and may fit into European ecology quite well but here they drive out our native sparrows and are dominating my bird feeder this year. I have no interest in feeding them because they can do very well feeding from dumpsters in parking lots and eating horse manure - one of their favorite treats. As Beantown's Mayor Curley would have said, I'd ship them all back to England if I could. More about the House Sparrow at CLO here.
A reposting from November, 2006 Stone walls are "newer" in New England than the early enclosures, which were made of wood. Split logs, like ol' Abe used to make, but not post-and-rail. They were the criss-cross leany sort which rested the rails on tilted posts. And to keep animals out of the cottage garden, they used paling fences. But in post-glacial New England, where the fields seem to grow stones over the winter, you had to put the loose rocks somewhere, so why not make a wall? It is hard to walk through any woodland south of Maine without stumbling across an 18th century wall, and sometimes you find an old apple tree in the corner, or an old apple-tree trunk. No doubt planted by the farmer for home-made cider, which was the only kind of booze the average Yankee farmer could afford. This hilly, rocky woodland, as can easily be seen by the size and species of the trees in the photo, was pasture until about 40-50 years ago: it is a young beech and oak woodland, typical of acidic lowlands in New England, and well-past the point at which it is appealing to grouse and woodcock. Good for the wild turkeys, though. The booming deer population, alas, vacuum-cleans the undergrowth, making it inhospitable for lots of small critters and birds: either we eat those deer or we return wolves and mountain lions to New England. (I'd vote for all of the above.) These woods are dotted with low-lying vernal - and autumnal - pools, which are excellent for the toads, tree frogs, salamanders, Box Turtles, etc. "Wetlands," as some term them. I call them swamps, and I love them: they are a cradle of life. 
Friday, December 14. 2007
 I used to view Al Gore as a fairly decent sort, honest as politicians go, affable, sometimes a bit clownish in his sanctimony and pomposity, a bit naive from his privileged youth and from never having held a real job in the real world, probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer but generally a well-intentioned guy who would be a congenial doubles tennis partner.
(I viewed his failure to be seduced by the Clinton slimy charm to be much in his favor. It has often been said that he cannot stand them.) Traumatic events can short-circuit people's brains, and I think this fellow has experienced a personality change, if not a psychotic breakdown as a result of the ego injury of his agonizingly close loss of the election. Until then, his charmed life had had no apparent disappointments or major rejections, unlike most people who toughen up from the hard knocks of life. Strings of luck tend to make people want to believe it's because of them, and not La bella Fortuna. I am not one for ad hominems. In fact, I am concerned about this guy's stability, specifically about the form of paranoid disorder known as monomania. Those with a monomania want everyone else to join in their obsession (eg Captain Ahab). People who think their mission is to save the world are insane by definition. Meanwhile, Old Man Winter just won't give us a chance to shovel the front walk before slamming us again. I often consider how many heart attacks would be prevented if only globalisticalistic warmening were really happening, but I love winter - I'd miss it. But I am not worried. Unlike Al Gore, I was a science major and I can look at data and stats with a modicum of savvy and healthy skepticism, knowing that 99% of it ends up being wrong - including, already, much of the science I learned in college. Among other things, my Ivy League scientist profs taught me that the world would be entirely without oil by 2000 with none left with which to produce medicines, and that the next Ice Age would begin about then, threatening civilization itself. Meanwhile, I plow the snow from my driveway today with relatively cheap gas: they might be right about the latter - the coming Ice Age. I am in it.
Thursday, December 13. 2007
 This planet has had plenty of catastrophic encounters with asteroids over the years, even in recent times.
Wikipedia notes, in the thorough entry on Impact Events: An impact event is commonly seen as a scenario that would bring about the end of civilization. In 2000, Discover Magazine published a list of 20 likely end of the world scenarios with impact event listed as the number one most likely to occur. Until the 1980s this idea was not taken seriously, but all that changed after the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater which was further reinforced by witness to the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 event. Since then there has been more interest from the scientific community and greater public awareness of the possibility of impact events.
Most impact events are small, like shooting stars and meteorites, but the Apophis asteroid is big, and it is due to come too close for comfort in 2036 If it hits the earth, as others have done in the past, it will surely solve all the problems with humans messing up the planet. Help us, Obi-Wan Algore! You're our only hope.
Wednesday, December 12. 2007
 ...people today are genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000 years ago, according to anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin. (Reuters)
We were puzzled by the report about accelerating evolution in humans. Didn't seem to make sense because one would think that the power of selection would diminish as mankind controls and creates his own environment. But it turns out that one of the authors of the suddenly-famous study is on our blogroll - paleo-anthropologist John Hawks. In a blog entry, Why Human Evolution Accelerated, he begins to explain the theory. It's all about population size. Simple math. A quote: ...the ecological changes documented in human history and the archaeological record create an exceptional situation. Humans faced new selective pressures during the last 40,000 years, related to disease, agricultural diets, sedentism, city life, greater lifespan, and many other ecological changes. This created a need for selection. Larger population sizes allowed the rapid response to selection -- more new adaptive mutations. Together, the the two patterns of historical change have placed humans far from an equilibrium. In that case, we expect that the pace of genetic change due to positive selection should recently have been radically higher than at other times in human evolution.
I think that is counter-intuitive. Image: Neanderthal man
Since we're speaking of global warming today, check out this chart. The red line shows the average annual temperature in the northeast United States, while the blue line shows the average number of home runs hit per game in Major League baseball each year (the graphs have been overlaid for convenience of comparison). Graphs are science, and the two lines clearly track together: the gradual warming of the first half of the century moving along with the end of the dead-ball era; a slow cooling as home runs declined from the 1950s to the 1970s; then a spike in the late 80's and 90's, with the warmest year all time (1998) the same year that McGwire and Sosa were chasing the home run record. My conclusion is that while Al Gore is definitely right on about the warming caused by CO2, we also need to do something to cut down on the number of home runs hit if we are going to get this runaway warming under control. Maybe controlling steroid abuse can help. Regrettably, we heard nothing about this critical subject from the soccer-oriented and baseball-deprived attendees at the UN Bali conference this week. (Related: see our piece on monomania) 
 Quoted by Dr. X:
Anatomists have found that in most areas of the cortex, for every fiber carrying information up the hierarchy, there are as many as ten fibers carrying processed information back down the hierarchy...
Ten times as many going "down" than "up"? I find it fascinating that there are such identifiable anatomical structures which correlate with what we know well: perception is not "input." It's our brain and mind's interaction with the input not just in the cortex where we expect processing and interpretation to take place, but also back down to the sensory level itself. So sensation itself is not passive reception: it is shaped by the cortex. Another quote: [Y]our understanding of reality is a far cry from reality itself. Your understanding of reality is constructed in large part according to your expectations and beliefs, which are based on all your past experiences which are held in the cortex as predictive memory. This is worth repeating: Many of your perceptions—what you see, hear, feel, and think is real—are profoundly shaped and influenced by your beliefs and expectations.
I think it's a big leap from the micro-anatomy of basic sensory perception to the theme of construction of reality, but it's always a good topic. The piece is further quoted and linked here. Photo: A stained cortical neuron in a sea of dendrites
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.
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.
Sunday, December 9. 2007
 A teleology is a basic component of most religions. As I understand it, Darwinian evolution contains no teleology and is based on random variation which "leads" nowhere.
However, even our non-scientific use of the word "evolution" connotes a sense of "progress." Philosophical naturalism cannot speak of progress, or "success" or "need" or "purpose" - only of temporary adaptations and maladaptations to conditions based on accidental genetic events. As the very lame Wikipedia entry says correctly: Teleology would argue that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight, form follows function, while naturalism is the reverse of this position: it would say that a person has sight simply because he has eyes, or that function follows form (eyesight follows from having eyes).
Auster discusses this in a short piece on the subject (The Intellectual Fraud which is Darwinism). Fact is, people have a tendency to fallaciously (via the pathetic, or anthropomorphic fallacy -or more specifically, personification) apply human notions like intent or direction to a Darwinian world-view which entirely lacks intent or purpose - but which does contain design (as humans comprehend it - eg snowflakes). Thus they impose a religious-like teleology upon a theoretically meaningless, purposeless and indifferent nature. This has no source in Darwin or in modern evolutionary theory, which reject any meaning or purpose in nature. In fact, the source of the teleology in science is the human desire to impose human notions of purpose on nature. Now one might argue that the use of animating figures of speech is nothing more that a way of making something dead feel more vivid and compelling - and that may be the case - but I believe that the figures of speech we use reflect how we really think about things. Tropes, with repetition, aquire a sort of pseudo-substance - a mental substantiality in the absense of reality. This is termed "reification." Reified tropes may be the origins of religious ideas. In that way, our animation of an indifferent nature with delusions of purpose and direction permits us to extend the notion of evolution to history, society, human activity, and even to the notion of human perfectability - as if "things" were "leading" anywhere: that is closer to religion than to Darwinism. But is it even possible to talk or think effectively without using figures of speech, without tropes (outside of math and formal logic, which may also be tropes of a different sort)? And is it possible for a human being to not reify some of their tropes, resulting in a religious-like belief or faith in them? ("My raspberries like full sun," "The earth has a fever," "Mankind and society are stumblingly evolving towards better, kinder realities," "Species seek adaptation," and so forth. Doesn't such language form a teleological foundation for a primitive religion? I say "primitive" because based on a "Ghost in the Machine" category error.) This is long enough, but these sophomoric musings could go on and on. (Mind you, this is written mainly from the standpoint of philosophical naturalism/materialism, as if that were the ground I stand on. It's not. When I hear the Messiah - or even listen to Alicia Keys, I cannot stand on that ground. And that's my point - no-one really can for very long unless they deaden their brain.)
Friday, December 7. 2007
 I am an Internaut. The Internet is a wonderful mess. I use it for most everything, including my livelihood now. I am deathly sick of about 90% of it, but that's OK, as you'd have to live to be a thousand to look at 10% of it anyway. There is an infantile sense of humor on the tubes that I find endearing. There's a really nasty sort of discourse that is its fellow traveler, so you have to sort of pan for your comedy gold, but it's there. And it's not always for the meek. Anyway, the Internet has decided that Hitler is funny. I applaud this derision. There's a kind of psychosis that goes along with it that we could do without --that decidedly milquetoast politicians or the former CEOs of software companies or people that try to stop you from stealing movies on bittorrent sites are Hitler, who is not funny at all when you're a very emo commenter on webpages looking to get the silly comparison meter to go to eleven. Hitler is very bad when George Bush is Hitler, and very funny the rest of the time, apparently. It's not new to make fun of Hitler. During WWII, Hitler was made sport of by everybody from Charlie Chaplin to the Three Stooges. In a way, I suppose the dead bastard would prefer to be remembered like he is in Germany -- spoken in a serious whisper with a sense of dread, by law. I like it much better to watch an old Looney Tunes cartoon and see a bunch of Jews in Hollywood make a mockery of him.
Continue reading "Is Hitler Funnier Than Rick Astley?"
Thursday, December 6. 2007
 - 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
Monday, December 3. 2007
A caveat: This is the sort of piece that I am always reluctant to write. I write this as a favor to our Editor but, in general, I am a skeptic about making any depth psychological speculations about groups of people, or about anyone I do not know in depth. It is all too easy to say that anyone who disagrees with me about something is either crazy or stupid, and that is not the respectful American way - nor is it necessarily accurate either. What are we to make of this report from Gallup? Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education.
Dems see themselves as more mentally/emotionally impaired. (In an egregious logical error (cum hoc ergo propter hoc), the article suggests an independent causal relationship wherein party identification effects emotional well-being.) Although I have no idea about whether a self-report of "mental health" has any validity at all, I would speculate that Republicans, statistically, with the Conservative and Libertarian flavorings of many Republicans, may tend to be more optimistic, hopeful, self-reliant, and to feel less needy and to feel less deprived. In other words, happier and probably better-adjusted people. That is pure speculation, but it matches my personal experience that Lefies tend to be more bitter and dissatisfied - also with no relationship to income, education, church-going or age. Externalization is a dangerous defence mechanism. It distorts reality by permitting a person to imagine that happiness and peace of mind - and likewise unhappiness - are usually generated externally rather than from within. Also, as I have mentioned in the past, I see a difference in the "transference" towards government between Conservatives and others. I think that those who are more prone to unconscious parental transferences are more likely to turn to, rely upon, and to trust or hope to trust, the State. Am eagerness for childlike transferences in adulthood is not a predictor of emotional well-being. Conservative-Libertarian types like me, I think, tend to view the people involved in politics and the State as being at least if not more venal, self-serving, corrupt, egotistical, foolish and ineffective as other areas of human endeavor like business, academia, non-profits, etc. I like to think that this view has been arrived at through a lifetime of experience, a lifetime's interest in history and public affairs, and repeated (very educational) disappointments and disillusionments during my foolishly naive, idealistic, Liberal youth. Experience and psychoanalytic training powerfully introduced me to the dark side of human nature - against my will. Yes, mine is the old story: mugged by reality. Literally mugged too, once, by a couple of barbarians with a handgun, in Boston. Alas, I was innocent and unarmed at the time, and therefore unable to give them a little toxic-lead lesson about my view of reality and of citizenship. "I gave at the office, pal." Boom!
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