We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
It's usually amusing to hear from PJ O'Rourke, but this post of his is rough on his own generation. Quotes:
America’s retreat from visible, tangible manifestations of superiority doesn’t hurt just our pride, our economy, and our place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s also a bad advertising campaign. America has one great product to sell, individual liberty. It’s attractive, useful, healthy, and the fate of the world depends upon it.
We are the most important and maybe the only country that fully embodies the sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility of each and every person. “American” is not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a culture; it’s a fact of human freedom. Our country was not created and is not governed by a ruling class or even by majority rule. America is individuals exercising their right to do what they think is best with due respect (to the extent human nature allows) for the right of all other Americans to do likewise. This is not an ideology or a system. This is a blessing.
The rest of the world would like to be so blessed. But the concept of individual liberty is harder to grasp than we Americans think. Those with little experience of liberty understand license and lawlessness better than they understand freedom. We want everyone on earth to have sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility. And we want everyone to want it for each other. We want this not because of our idealism but because of our selfish desire for a little more peace and plenty.
The world will never be good. People fight hard and cause a lot of trouble when commanded by their self-interest. But people fight viciously and cause ruin when commanded by the interests of others. Individual liberty is the best we can do. Try any other sociopolitical combination—collective liberty, individual oppression, communitarian despotism.
However, if we are going to promote the benefits of individual liberty, we have to show what free people can do. We need evidence to support the truths we hold to be self-evident. We have to advertise. Putting something double the size of the Burj Khalifa where the World Trade Towers once stood and building a Corvette that can top 300 mph would be a start.
Even assuming a full recovery from the Great Recession—possible, though not certain—the resulting prosperity will be qualified by greater competition for scarce economic resources. Massive federal budget deficits are only the most conspicuous sign of a society that has promised itself more than it can afford. To resurrect a familiar metaphor: A more slowly growing economic pie will face more claimants for slices. Some will receive bigger slices, others smaller.
Another:
The premise of the post–World War II affluent society, that we were or would soon become so rich that we could afford almost anything, was never true, but we often acted as if it were. We avoided unpleasant choices, especially in government, accepting routine federal budget deficits (46 out of 51 years since 1961). Now, limits are painfully evident. There are more promises than can be fulfilled. Meeting all of government’s spending commitments would require higher, broad-based taxes, which both liberals and conservatives reject, or perpetually large deficits, which both parties consider unsustainable and undesirable.
What looms is a future of more distributional struggles between young and old, rich and poor, different regions, and many interest groups. Each will defend subsidies, work to avoid tax increases, and maneuver for regulatory advantage.
The entire piece is worth studying. There are lots of people out there, young and older, who could be doing much more right now were it not for the Administration's horribly misguided responses to the recession.
The question of the Bush Tax cuts 'causing' the deficits, and hence the 'need' to increase taxes on the 'wealthy' is one which Democrats spend many evenings discussing. Clearly, Bush was an insane tax-cutter without any good ideas and caused every problem mankind faces today, and frankly every problem we've faced for the last 40 years. He was just that bad.
However, a non-partisan look at the cuts indicates something quite different. On a standalone basis, taking out all other additional spending programs from the last 11 years, what we find is the tax cuts paid for themselves, and then some. In other words, the issue isn't the cuts. The issue is all the additional spending which took place after the cuts. To be completely honest, and completely fair, not all the spending was by Bush, either. In fact, most of it was voted on with bipartisan support. Very little could be said to be purely Bush-related, let alone Republican-related.
Honesty is a difficult thing in politics. Typically I don't look for anything more than a minimal degree of it, what I prefer is a level of consistency of thought. The Republicans have their own challenges regarding honesty and consistency, but the Democrats have really done a good job of cornering the market on dishonesty and hypocrisy.
I've been busy the last few days with management meetings, mostly running from office to office and keeping people happy. However, there was a full day off-site meeting recently on the 44th floor of a relatively new high-rise on 57th Street. We had the entire floor to ourselves, and before the meetings got underway, I walked around and snapped a few pictures. Here's one:
A good view of the Hudson, Jersey City in the distance, down 8th Avenue from 57th. As I snapped this, I noticed several other people in the room doing the same thing. I laughed, and commented, "Isn't it strange, we've all lived in the New York area for years, we've been in so many skyscrapers, and here we are taking pictures?" One woman, who lives in Manhattan, replied "Yes, but you need to do this to remind yourself just how special it is sometimes. We tend to take it for granted." I agree. We don't usually stop to enjoy what we've got available to us.
The authors of the book in question believe that happiness comes from not working. That seems kind of strange, because I always felt that the foundation of happiness came from being useful and productive. A quote from the review:
The authors offer suggestions for how to change the balance between work and leisure. First, everyone should receive either a wage from the government (with no obligation to work to earn it) generous enough to enable him to work only part time, or a capital endowment at birth; the risk of people squandering their endowment in “riotous living can be reduced by limiting their spending to approved objects (such as education)”; in addition, the schools would educate people for leisure. Second, they recommend imposing a progressive consumption tax, to make consumer products more costly in the hope of discouraging people from working hard to be able to afford them (it could of course make them work even harder). Third, firms should be forbidden to deduct advertising expenditures from taxable income, since advertising encourages consumption.
But here is the oddest thing about the book: There is virtually no discussion of how people, their incomes halved, might be expected to employ the vastly greater leisure that the authors want them to have.
Don't ya love those would-be utopian societal planners? The authors of the book must live in some alternate universe. We can't all be Michelangelos, nor would most people decide to be.
...nowadays there is a new science of happiness, and some of the psychologists and almost all the economists involved want you to think that happiness is just pleasure. Further, they propose to calculate your happiness, by asking you where you fall on a three-point scale, 1-2-3: “not too happy,” “pretty happy,” “very happy.” They then want to move to technical manipulations of the numbers, showing that you, too, can be “happy,” if you will but let the psychologists and the economists show you (and the government) how.
On a long view, understand, it is only recently that we have been guiltlessly obsessed with either pleasure or happiness. In secular traditions, such as the Greek or the Chinese, a pleasuring version of happiness is downplayed, at any rate in high theory, in favor of political or philosophical insight. The ancient Chinese sage Zhuangzi observed of some goldfish in a pond, “See how happy they are!” A companion replied, “How do you know they are happy?” Zhuangzi: “How do you know I don’t know?” In Christianity, for most of its history, the treasure, not pleasure, was to be stored up in heaven, not down here where thieves break in. After all, as a pre-eighteenth-century theologian would put it—or as a modern and mathematical economist would, too—an infinite afterlife was infinitely to be preferred to any finite pleasure attainable in earthly life.
And
Ominously... happiness studies have been diverted into an applied science. The happiness measurers very much want to direct us and are itching to engineer a happy society. They do not know what they are talking about, but are very willing to put “policies” about it into practice anyway. In a finely argued but erroneous book of philosophy, for example, Daniel Haybron a few years ago made a case partly on the basis of the new science of happiness against what he calls “liberal optimism,” or the belief since the eudaemonic movement and the bourgeois revaluations of the eighteenth century that “people tend to fare best—and pretty well at that—when empowered to shape their [own] lives.” He doubts it. But on what basis, since psychology is singularly ill-equipped to yield such doubt? As Haybron himself points out, tests on college kids do not range across enough experience. History is more to the point. Of course people make mistakes about their lives, and sometimes spend their lives badly. But as even Haybron acknowledges, the liberal experiment since 1700 has yielded gigantically better lives in every sense for a constantly increasing number of us. Haybron, and many of the elite critics of how other people spend their time on Earth, is an admitted pastoralist and disdains the sick hurry of modern life. Yet is he himself not living a happy life, which his ancestor around 1800—who in any case died in childhood and childbirth—did not?
It's a major essay. As I have said here many times, "happiness" cannot be defined in an applicable way beyond simple-minded gratification, but unhappiness is easy to recognize. It's everywhere.
They have to, because of all the things people want to get from government (ie from their hard-working neighbors' pockets). As Bruce said earlier today, government has become the god to whom many pray for the stuff they want to make life easier. Utopia is always just around the corner if only people sacrifice a little bit more for the Common Good.
Quickest things to deal with the debt? Cancel Obamacare, reform Medicare and Social Security, and unshackle the economy so we can get some growth going. While they're at it, shutter the Dept of Education, shutter the Commerce Dept, cancel Dodd-Frank, let GM, Fannie and Freddie go bankrupt, and trust-bust the giant banks if they are too big to fail because if I want to invest in a bank, I will do it on my own. Almost forgot one detail: vote out Obama.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy studied "How America Gives." One of the study's charts shows a remarkable difference: "Red states are more generous than blue states. The eight states where residents gave the highest share of income to charity went for John McCain in 2008. The seven-lowest ranking states supported Barack Obama."
Yankee Northeasterners are cheapskates: "In states like Utah and Mississippi, the typical household gives more than 7 percent of its income to charity, while the average household in Massachusetts and three other New England states gives less than 3 percent."
What's the bottom-line?: "The reasons for the discrepancies among states, cities, neighborhoods are rooted in part in each area’s political philosophy about the role of government versus charity."
"The narcissism of small differences" was Freud's 1917 term for his observation that people with minor differences between them can be more combative and hateful than those with major differences. It is a handy concept.
He viewed this as a narcissistic issue because the distress comes from looking in the mirror, as it were, and seeing a pimple.
What it is about is that we want all of "us" to think exactly like us - that is, perfectly, and the "others" be damned - who cares? Until the "others" give us big trouble.
Freud's psychoanalytic "movement" was repeatedly fractured by such things. Pioneers advanced into the human unconscious, and focused on different aspects, and fought and lost friendships over it. In the end, Freud was usually correct, because he had the courage to tell the often-unpleasant, unpopular, and uncivilized truths about deep human nature.
Of course, the narcissism of small differences often applies to politics. But my best joke on the subject concerns religion:
I was walking across a bridge one sunny day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: 'Stop. Don't do it.' 'Why shouldn't I?' he asked. 'Well, there's so much to live for!' 'Like what?' 'Are you religious?' He said: 'Yes.' I said. 'Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?' 'Christian.' 'Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?'' 'Protestant.' 'Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?' 'Baptist.' 'Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?' 'Baptist Church of God.' 'Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?' 'Reformed Baptist Church of God.' 'Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?' He said: 'Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915.' I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off the bridge.
Now you can get it by mail, close your eyes, and pretend you are in God's country.
(Woops. Sorry - once again, we violated our rule to never say anything good about Montana. I will correct it by saying Montana Sucks. Do not go there, and do not move there. Chardonnay-sippers beware: you would hate it. It is full of redskin injuns, rattlesnakes, crazy horses, aggressive pangolins, evil horney toads, and Grizzly Bears, and excessively-armed paranoid meth-intoxicated right-wing rednecks who are always spoiling for a fight.)
Cereal is no good either. Pure carbs, no nutrition. Nobody under 50 eats cereal anymore except cowboys.
Pic on top is with friends hiking up on Ear Mountain, near the Bob Marshall Wilderness. A big hike. Leave the horses with the wrangler at the base. Have water in your backpack. Mountain Goats are up there. They eat the rocks.
Larry Bailey unleashed a prepared Democrat chorus to discredit former military special operators who oppose President Obama’s re-election.
"I have to admit that I'm a Birther," said SOS founder Larry Bailey, a retired 27-year veteran of the Navy SEALs, in an interview. "If there were a jury of 12 good men and women and the evidence were placed before them, there would be absolutely no question Barack Obama was not born where he said he was and is not who he says he is."
Larry Bailey and I are friends. Larry is absolutely not a speaker who minds his PR Ps & Qs, nor ever tried to be a diplomat. He is a devout patriot who has devoted his life to the security of the United States. I am not a birther, nor are those I know who supported his first efforts, the first of several independent other organizations of former military special operators, to raise attention to the concerns – also expressed by several leading politicians, including some Democrats -- that President Obama and his minions exposed national security secrets in order to bolster Obama’s re-election.
The usual Obama apologists and partisans quickly expressed their distaste for birtherism, understandable, but used Bailey’s words to attack all the other leaders of other organizations of special operators opposed to President Obama’s re-election. (Here's the leader of one of the other organizations of former special operators.)
Omigosh, Obama For America website reveals that there are Republicans among the leaders of the four independent groups of special operators. Obama For America was an internet-based campaign organization for Obama in 2008, re-named Organizing For America after the election for his permanent campaign, and now Obama For America is back.Guess what Obama For America, there are far more Republicans than Democrats among the military, and especially so among special operators in the various military branches
James Joyner, who sways with Democrat memes inside the beltway at his blog Outside the Beltway, with regard to one of the organizations of special operators, OPSEC (operations security), chimes in with “the fact that the group’s key spokesmen are all Republican operatives certainly changes the lens through which their charges should be viewed.” Oh, does it? Only for those looking for an excuse to look the other way.
Failed Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry – who trumped up his Vietnam veteran status, as usual, rolls out his attack on the over 60 of fellow Swift Boat veterans who exposed his lies or exaggerations about his service in Vietnam, and Kerry’s certain betrayal of Vietnam veterans after in likening us to the army of Genghis Khan. Paul Mirengoff notes: " Kerry never explains why he finds the criticism of Obama “outrageous.” Doing so would have required a defense of the administration’s serial disclosure of sensitive national security information."
I’m not defending Larry Bailey’s words, by any means. But, the effort by those supporting Obama’s re-election to avoid and broadbrush besmirch the valid concerns of special operators is typical of the Obama re-election campaign.Patriots, to the Obama folk, are those who support him. The special operators from the military and national security experts, whose lives are actually on the line and endangered by loose self-serving lips in the Obama administration, are denigrated by the Obama minions. In 2004, veterans and their families and friends saw right through John Kerry and, I confidently predict, will see through Obama like a soggy thin tissue too.
Like Animal Farm's Boxer, the American workhorse has worked itself to the bone, paying taxes on everything imaginable to subsidize the revolutionary state of the left, its mammoth bureaucracies and the bribes and favors that it doles out to its voting bases. Homes have been lost, lives shattered and families broken up so that America might "live up to" whatever promises the left has made to itself on their behalf. And like Boxer, the American and his way of life, is being taken away in a knacker's van billed as a trip to the veterinarian.
The left has forcefully accelerated the death throes of the American mule by pushing government spending beyond anything that the horse can cover. That leaves the overworked horse with only two options. It can either become a donkey and be fed and work without any say in what it is fed or how it works, or it can try to break free of the great socialist boneyard.
His essay/post summarizes many or most of the Maggie's political concerns about America. The government is making it too difficult to be a mule, but it is the mule who pulls their electoral wagon and pays their bills.
You don't need to open a restaurant. You can be a seafood farm entrepreneur.
Natural marshes no longer support the markets for Littleneck Clams and Atlantic Oysters - especially the delicious Wellfleets. These tasty mollusks have to be farmed, but it's not very hard work.
You buy the seed from a clam or oyster nursery, protect them from gulls and whelks, and harvest them at low tide in your pick-up truck as the orders come in. You plant them, nature grows them on plankton. Sometimes you have to rake mud off the oyster bins.
The small producer I chatted with out on the flats at low tide has around 1,000,000 clams growing right now, at various stages of development. These are 30 cents each, wholesale.
He has around 500,000 Wellfleet Oysters growing, at around 70 cents each, wholesale. That's a nice little inventory, but a bad hurricane or winter storm can obliterate your investment so it is best to save your profits for hard times. That is intelligent, no matter what you do for a living. I don't think you can buy insurance for clam beds or most other sorts of income.
In his spare time, he was a three-term First Selectman of Wellfleet "until he finished what he wanted to get done," as a local friend said. It's always wonderful to me to see how unskilled Americans without any higher ed can find good ways to make a living.
Cranky, laconic old Cape Codder. I said I was curious about how he did this, and he replied "I don't know. Been doing this for 50 years. I still don't know what I am doing" as he lit up a fresh Marlboro.
Those orange mats on the right are what they protect the baby clams with. Clams live in the mud. Each year, new seed clams to burrow in the mud under a new mat. Usually harvestable in 3 years.
The oysters grow in the wire bins. Those beehive cannisters collect oyster larvae, to reduce his costs of buying seed oysters.
Shellfish guys out on the flats with their trucks at low tide in Wellfleet Harbor. The most difficult barrier to entry in this line of work is obtaining rights to areas of mudflat. Waterfront landowners own the flats out to 200 yards.
Do you ever feel the need to confess your sins? To confess them to somebody else, other than in prayer or ritually in church (as in "Forgive us our trespasses")?
It is difficult in life to live without accumulating one's share of sins of commission, omission, sins of character, sins of unkindness, sins of arrogance, sins of self-centeredness, sins of cruelty, sins of self-indulgence, lies, thefts, personal flaws and weaknesses, and sins of passion or stupidity. These things burden our souls.
Pastor says "Lay it all at the foot of the Cross," and quotes Christ: “Go, and sin no more.”
People with serious religious aspirations often engage Spiritual Directors as guides. That's a serious and daunting business but I have heard that it can be a life-changing journey.
Do our readers sometimes feel the need to confess and, if so, to whom?
I'll say it again: government is a special interest group, and one of the few growth industries left in the US right now. Washington DC is a boom town: people go where the money is.
Democrats have never tried, much less managed, to convince voters that the Democratic domestic agenda is so beneficial that ordinary Americans — not just the CEOs of the companies they work for, or the stars of the TV shows they watch, but their own friends, neighbors, and co-workers — should pay significantly higher taxes for government endeavors.
Democrats hate Paul Ryan because he has taken the measure of their cowardice and made public the logical, humiliating conclusions of their disingenuousness.
Taxes are going to rise much further on the middle class. My simple theory is that the Left wants to take the money we all earn in the private sector, take their cut, decide what we need because we are too foolish and feckless to run our own lives, and then expect us to thank them with our votes for the service. They imagine we need care, like sheep, but we just want freedom from them. The Welfare State Industry underestimates the human spirit, and then shackles or cripples people to make their idea come true.
Try saving the money to open a corner pizza joint when you're paying a 50% tax rate. Then, try getting a license to sell beer there. Then, consider your employee cost of Obamacare. At some point, people say The Heck With It and you have an empty storefront. That's the way to end up like Euroland, where nobody tries to do anything except to hold on to their safe crappy job, and everybody just waits to retire on the dole to complete their entire safe, spiritless, crappy life while their government betters live it up. Serfdom.
It is a mistake for people to ignore the political appeal of the security of serfdom or slavery to the State or the Lord of the Manor, or dependency on the State, as long as those words are not used.
Re the photo, I find the entire US Capitol revolting in its grandiosity. What are we - the Roman Empire? Possibly many disagree about that, but, as a New England Yankee with a long pre-revolutionary heritage here, I strongly object to the notion of an imperial city. Those idiots should be meeting in a church basement where they might acquire a little humilty.
In the LA Review of Books, Andrew Scull on All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry's Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders.
It's a good summary of what has been going on in my field these days. One quote:
This reliance on symptoms, and on the simplistic approach of counting symptoms to make a diagnosis, creates a bogus confidence in psychiatric science. Such categories have an element of the arbitrary about them. When Robert Spitzer and his associates created DSM III, they liked to call themselves DOPs (data-oriented persons). In fact, DSM’s categories were assembled through political horse-trading and internal votes and compromise. The document they produced paid little heed to the question of validity, or to whether the new system of categorizing mental disorders corresponded to real diseases out there.
Over 50-years ago, my Bar Mitzvah was in a small, poor Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn. The training was by rote and the surroundings were typical of the Diaspora, what my Grandparents built in the freedoms of the US but, still, seemingly far removed from the deepest meaning for a young boy.
Since my eldest son was born, I’ve been determined that he experience and understand much more that he could carry through life. His Jewish education has been far more enriched. I’ve saved my airline miles since then, and next April, right after Passover, our family is going to Israel for Jason’s Bar Mitzvah. It will be on the Haas Promenade overlooking Jerusalem, where one can see its history and present. We’ll be traveling all over Israel for the next two-weeks, its wondrous and even miraculous diversity and beauties, several thousand years of history side-by-side with one of the world’s most advanced countries built with blood, sweat, tears, courage, and brains.
I made such a trip in my 40s and it changed and enriched my life. That’s my prayer and gift to Jason for his Bar Mitzvah.
This video captures some of that, in English, Jerusalem Of Gold, the third verse:
But as I sing to you, my city, And you with crowns adorn, I am the least of all your children, Of all the poets born. Your name will scorch my lips for ever, Like a seraph's kiss, I'm told, If I forget thee, golden city Jerusalem of gold.
Chorus
Oh, Jerusalem of gold, and of light and of bronze, I am the lute for all your songs.
Re-posted from Springtime, but late-summer/early fall is the best time for lawn repair in most of the USA. We are refreshing one of our raggedy lawns, next week, with power-seeding with a tough sports turf seed (tough enough for the dogs and kids and occasionally the horses), and doing the aerating at the same time. Then Milorganite. By Spring, it will be perfect and crowd out the weeds. You can rent a power-seeder and an aerator for a few hours very cheaply, anywhere.
I will spare our readers my usual springtime lawn-restoring post, and bring a new topic to your attention: Power Lawn Seeding. This machine injects grass seed to a proper depth in an existing lawn or a new lawn. It's overseeding, but with far more effectiveness than surface scattering.
It will quickly give you a new or refurbished lawn, and sort-of aerates it in the process but best to arerate at the same time. We happen to need about 1/2 acre done this way due to stream flooding in a storm last fall. Services like Lawn Doctor can do it, or you can rent the machine for cheap and do it yourself.
Naturally, you have to either pray for rain or water it regularly for a few weeks.
Re lawn fertilizing (which must be done 2-3X/year), I enjoyed the credentials of the person who wrote up this piece:Dawn West holds a B.A. in English from Harvard University and teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Many of the finest and most honest minds – conservative and liberal -- in and out of academia have argued, and sometimes succeeded, that campus speech codes often cross the line to suppression of First Amendment freedom of speech. The excesses in the wording of such codes, their arbitrary and often biased application, and the fear of usurping a constitutional right, together send chills up the spine.
Nonetheless, in court cases, private colleges have more leeway to enact speech codes than do public colleges, as they are not as subject to the First Amendment prohibition on government interfering with free speech. In the face of opposition to speech codes per se colleges, both public and private, have turned to anti-harassment policies. These seemingly turn the offense from the speech to the impact on those sensitive, and in effect make judging the offense even more subjective.Alongside, many campuses have instituted judgment procedures that deny those charged from confronting their accuser or, in some cases, even appearing to defend themselves. In many cases, those supporting such near star-chamber exercises in speech or behavioral prejudice are those judging for the kangaroo procedures. And, alongside these, liberal and leftist faculty have denied tenure or opposed research by those who have empirically challenged cherished thoughts or prejudices.
So, understandably so, any further enlargement of speech codes or definition of hate speech raises hackles among almost all those who have battled the present excesses. Further, most opponents have cause for little faith that in the prevailing leftist or hypocritical atmosphere on campuses that an enlargement to anti-Israel speech and actions that are anti-semitic would be enforced or fairly.
The occasion for the current discussion is the report by members of the University of California Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion task force on Jewish students (which I reported here). It recommends that a definition of anti-Semitism like that of the European Union be adopted to provide guidelines and current anti-harassment policies be enlarged to contain such guidelines.
Libertarian law professor Eugene Volokh, in opposition to the recommendation by the task force – from leaders of ADL and NAACP, still points out the elephant in the room. “[T]his is speech which does happen, which doesn’t generally lead to wide condemnation and counterprotests. The call for suppression by university, it seems to me, stems precisely from the fact that this speech isn’t suppressed by social pressure…” In other words, unlike speech and actions purportedly hostile to Blacks or Hispanics or gays, such equivalent or worse speech and actions against Jews or pro-Israeli students and faculty are not treated as seriously in the dominant left-leaning environment on campuses. Professor Volokh fears that such an enlarged anti-harassment policy, given the campus atmospherics, may lead to its use to further abuse free speech regarding other groups or causes.
These are, indeed, worthy arguments, paralleling many others. However, they still leave the elephant in the room, campus leadership ignoring or even encouraging vile anti-Israel speech and actions that are anti-semitic, and failing to enforce college rules that already exist to prohibit faculty use of college websites to promote such vileness.
Free speech advocates correctly assert that more free speech by those opposed to the anti-Israel forces is the best medicine. Many individuals and groups have used their free speech to expose such excesses. But, the offense persists, and as the task force report makes clear has created fear among pro-Israeli students and faculty and denial of academic and social opportunities.
The task force report just calls for exploration of reasonable guidelines, to “clearly define hate speech in its guidelines, and seek opportunities to prohibit hate speech on campus. The President should request that General Counsel examine opportunities to develop policies that give campus administrators authority to prohibit such activities on campus. The Team recognizes that changes to UC hate speech policies may result in legal challenge, but offer that UC accept the challenge.” U of C President Mark Yudoff summarily rejected the challenge: “I believe our current policies may go as far as they can, given constitutional limitations.”
This brings us back to the root cause, the runaway leftist environment on many campuses. No one expects that to change in any foreseeable future. Pro-Israeli students and faculty, and such taxpayers and tuition-payers, are on their own. Let’s, at least, hope that more see this challenge for what it is and step up their support for individuals and organizations that speak out against anti-semitism on campuses.
It's the best stone- and brick-cleaner, but it has to be handled carefully. I am cleaning a hearth with it.
When you buy it, buy goggles and gloves. It's actually a solution of hydrochoric acid - same thing your stomach is full of.
You can't let it near bleach - the combo produces chlorine gas which will kill you. So it is fun to use. You really do not want it on your skin either.
Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro aren't fancy. At least, they are not pretentious or social-climbing summer colonies. Nobody wears red pants or pants with whales on them, and even the rich folks inhabit very humble dwellings. Unlike the islands (Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket), you do not have to spend $10,000/week for summer rentals.
Nevertheless, tons of good fun family-friendly seafood restaurants, and lots of live music at night. It's altogether cheerful and jolly, full of happy, sunburned, and mostly attractive, fit, modest, and presentable folks (ie it ain't Snooki's Jersey Shore). Just right for me.
As much as I love the Farm in the Berkshire countryside, in the summer the sand and salt and piney woods and cheerful people and chilly water and seafood suit me best. Always will have a hold on my heart.
This old fishing and shipping village was in its heyday in the 1870s, when the train came through town. I believe this building began its life as a salt cod and shellfish warehouse - reader corrected me - a Lorenzo Dow Baker banana warehouse:
You can rent kayaks cheap at Gull Pond. Gull Pond connects to two other ponds, so you can have a nice time paddling around for a few hours and jump in the water any time you feel too warm. You can bring a picnic, too. Entirely pleasant despite my aversion to unsalted water. Had a chat with a fellow there from Maine. Complained to me that the water was too warm to be refreshing, but his kids seemed to love it.
No powerboats are allowed on any Cape "ponds." That's a welcome community policy. They are really small lakes.
Neat thing about Wellfleet: Lakes, harbor, ocean and bay within a mile's drive or bike. Lots of different ways to play in the water. What else is there to do in the summer, besides reading books and playing tennis? August is my personal Robert Parker Fest.
Next trip, I will bring camera, rent a kayak, and paddle around Nauset Marsh in Eastham at high tide and check out the wildlife. Gosh, I sure do love being up there in the piney woods and the cool salty air. Thankful, too, that both of my parents can still enjoy it. Yes, my Mom still kayaks and chows down on Littleneck clams and Wellfleet Oysters. Dad is a bit too rickety for kayaks but his brain is as Yankee-acerbic as ever.
Mrs. BD and I listen to Teaching Company cds in the car. Well, it's called "Great Courses" now.
Best college course I ever sat in on is Bob Greenberg's How to Listen to and Understand Great Music. It's on sale now. I cannot express how absorbing and wonderful he is to listen to. It's life-changing, even for somebody musically-disabled like me.
Handel wrote Messiah - 50 gem-like and unforgettable tunes - in 24 days.
School education isn't everything in life. There are many important things to know that cannot be learned in school. As parents, we all try to ensure that our kids acquire basic life skills to help them enjoy life and to participate fully in life.
What makes life interesting is that all parents have different ideas about this.
Here's my first stab at making a list of the things we have expected our kids to know how to do - or at least to give it a good try - before turning 18 (guys and gals):
- Handle firearms safely - Ride and groom a horse - Play a musical instrument and sight-read - Achieve some level of competence with at least one sport which can be played throughout life - Learn CPR, and basic lifesaving, water safety, and mastery of basic swimming strokes - Handle a sailboat and a powerboat with at least basic safety and effectiveness - Display appealing and engaging table and cocktail party manners - Strong familiarity with our religion - whether they believe or not - Manage their own money safely, and learn how to save it - Internalize our (sub-) cultural codes of conduct, from dress codes to effective job interviewing - How to prune trees, hedges, and shrubs - How to cook a good number of basic foods - How to cut, split, and stack firewood - and for boys, chain saw expertise - How to start a fire - How to (try to) catch fish and shoot a duck or pheasant. And clean them, too. - How to handle a tractor safely on New England hills - Row a boat, paddle a canoe - How to identify at least basic plants, wildlife, habitat types, and rock formations - How to travel in foreign countries - Vegetable gardening - Drive a standard transmission vehicle, change the oil, check the anti-freeze, inflate tires - At least basic understanding of household basics like painting, power tools, hammers and screw-drivers, making cement, etc. - Know the basic laws, and how not to break them - Know how not to get lost in the woods, and use of a compass - How to select friends - How to be an informed citizen and to participate in one's community
That's a start. I know that some of it is somewhat culture-specific to our lives, but it seems to me that all of these would come in handy for anybody.
My older son turns 18 this year and heads off to Miami of Ohio. Sadly, he will not be home on his birthday, as classes begin that week. While discussing what he'd like for his birthday, we heard "I want to eat in a real Manhattan steak house". No argument from me.
There are plenty to choose from. Keen's, Smith & Wollensky, The Palm, Peter Luger (technically Brooklyn, but one of the originals), The Strip House, Sparks (I worked across the street from Sparks in 1985 and heard the shots that killed PaulCastellano - we all thought it was a car backfiring), Del Frisco's and The Old Homestead are all top notch. After some discussion, the choice was The Old Homestead as this is a classic, original New York steak house.
It's usually amusing to hear from PJ O'Rourke, but 
The authors of the book in question believe that happiness comes from not working. That seems kind of strange, because I always felt that the foundation of happiness came from being useful and productive. A quote 
Deirdre McCloskey on 
They have to
"The narcissism of small differences" was Freud's 
Among the many fine things in Montana is 
The death of the American mule.
Middle-class taxpayers will pay a
I will spare our readers my usual springtime lawn-restoring post, and bring a new topic to your attention: 
