tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48149097371880500222024-03-13T07:50:05.469-04:00Contrapunctal DisjunctionsWhat (should be!) a daily blog of recipes, poetry, criticism, political commentary, and anything else that springs to mind.Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-4721319512790130292018-02-11T21:59:00.000-05:002018-02-11T21:59:36.869-05:00Tipsy Korean Reporting<!-- % ’ ‘’ “” — –
% ‒ ??
– endash
— emdash
― ??
an open minded person that LOVES talking to people with different views
-->
<p>There has been a bewilderingly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/11/world/asia/kim-yo-jong-mike-pence-olympics.html">large</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/10/asia/kim-sister-olympics/index.html">number</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-ivanka-trump-of-north-korea-captivates-people-in-the-south/2018/02/10/d56119fc-0e65-11e8-baf5-e629fc1cd21e_story.html">of</a> articles and Tweets during this Olympic season in praise of North Korea and its current public face, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of that poor country’s evil dictator. The phenomenon is strongly reminiscent of the crush the media had on Raisa Gorbachev in the late 80s and, of course, of the famous <i>Vogue</i> article on the stylishness and grace of Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syria’s evil dictator.</p>
<p>All the media personalities fawning over these wives and sisters of tyrants are, of course, solidly of the Left. They would not countenance the least trace of these tyranny in the United States. In fact, even shadows and phantasies of such an outcome give them the vapors and fill them with dreams of Hitler. Moreover, there is, last I checked, no mass emigration by media types to Russia, Syria, and North Korea, so one must assume that something deeper is going on than mere love of those countries and detestation for their own.</p>
<s3>Social Justice</s3>
<p>The Social Justice Warrior, in all his (whoops, zhis) manifestations, has been taught that all of society – indeed, all of life – is all and only about power relations. This theory is an odd congeries of Marx, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Fanon, and too many others to list, which has resulted, with stops at deconstructionism and postmodernism, in something called ‘intersectionality’. I won’t go into too much detail, other than to note that the Social Justice Warriors aren’t very good set theorists: What they mean by ’intersection’ is more commonly known as ‘union’. That is, each victim (and everyone’s a victim, except white, heterosexual, cisgendered males) is the union of all the categories of oppression zhe can be included in. People have no other existence and no other meaning than this catalogue of oppression.</p>
<p>This has two results. First, it demolishes the very ideas of society and justice, for SJWs mete out rewards and punishment solely on the basis of group membership – far indeed from the usual conception of justice – and reimagine society as an endless war of group against group – which somehow doesn’t seem very sociable. Second, it makes it impossible for SJWs to engage with people as people. They can see only labels and slogans. If one behaves in a way inconsistent with the labels they apply to one or says anything inconsistent with the slogans they parrot, then one clearly must be removed from human society. They are thus unable to deal with the quirks and quiddities of real humans: an outcome foreseen by, of all people, the cartoonist Charles Schulz:<br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lik9unHoLc1qfvq9bo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lik9unHoLc1qfvq9bo1_1280.jpg" width="320" height="271" data-original-width="576" data-original-height="488" /></a></div>
<s3>Power and Empathy</s3>
<p>In order to achieve their goals, the SJWs need power; in the Kims of North Korea, they see power at its most naked and ruthless. Naturally, they want it. They go to bed at night dreaming of all the good they could do if only they had the power they deserve. And people who love power love people who have power. So this is the first explanation of Olympic Kimolatry.</p>
<p>But most of us know something – if less than we should – about the horrors daily visited upon North Koreans by their rulers, and so wish, however futilely, that something might happen to relieve them of their suffering. Most of us have at least some fledgling sense of empathy, after all. And one would think that anyone concerned with Social Justice would have even more empathy for these starving and tortured people, so I am fascinated by the phenomenon of SJWs fawning over fascists. One must remember, though, that SJWs spend all their empathy on slogans and labels. They have none left for living, breathing humans.</p>
<p>This combination of lust for power and absence of compassion would be sufficient to explain their love for North Korea – but add to it a deep, all-consuming hatred of Trump on the part of both SJWs and the Kims, and there really was no possibility for them other than to idolize the powerful, compassionless, Trump-hating dictator.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-39461479251080516272017-03-17T20:05:00.000-04:002017-03-17T20:05:59.548-04:00Feminism and Literature<!-- ’ ‘’ “” — – ‒ – — ― -->
<p>My academic specialty – insofar as I can be said to have one – is English poetry and prosody. For several decades now, enterprising scholars have been mining the dusty and unopened books on the unlit, forgotten shelves of academic libraries to find examples of female poets ignored by sexist readers and academics. The anthologies students use are now filled with them, and everyone agrees to ignore the unfortunate fact that none of them come close to equaling the work of their male coevals.</p>
<p>Take Anne Bradstreet (please), from the <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/anne-bradstreet">Poetry Foundation</a></p>
<p>O Bubble blast, how long can’st last?<br/>
That always art a breaking,<br/>
No sooner blown, but dead and gone,<br/>
Ev’n as a word that's speaking.<br/>
<br/>
O whil’st I live, this grace me give,<br/>
I doing good may be,<br/>
Then death’s arrest I shall count best,<br/>
because it’s thy decree.
</p>
<p>This is the Protestant hymnody that C.S. Lewis derided as “fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music.” And yet our students are supposed to assess this drivel as the equal of Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. No, that's unfair. They believe this doggerel to be immeasurably superior to the work of any mere male.</p>
<p>And as for sexism: Were academics to frequent Hallmark shops and Christian bookstores, they would discover the best-selling poetess of the 20th century: Helen Steiner Rice, who is the direct heir of Bradstreet and who is every bit as good as her (now-)illustrious predecessor.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-69818947500007078122016-11-15T22:23:00.001-05:002016-11-15T22:23:20.318-05:00Notes on argumentation<p>I just checked Facebook for the first time in a while (I’ve been busy), and found this from a Facebook friend:
<blockquote>I just think it’s interesting how you don’t seem to be willing to apply your own metrics, measurements and evaluations of such to things that don’t fit your ideology. One person makes up a story about getting her hijab stolen= we will probably hear many many more instances of this... I ask about a woman who fabricates a sexual assault story, and if you’d apply that same hypothesis to those instances (that you will see or have seen many many more instances of that) and its... lets wait for facts. Or, even better- let’s divert the attention to another topic altogether... I just can’t argue with you. Hell, with you, even FACTS are only those that YOU find. So, thanks. I’m done. I’ll leave you to allowing your friends and family to back you up and validate your every view point.
</blockquote></p>
<p>I have several replies to this, of course, but note that this is a reply to a comment of mine in which I said that we should wait for facts before assuming that Trump supporters are on a murderous rampage across the country. Here’s a reasonable summary of the case that that Facebook friend adduced; it’s from a newspaper vehemently committed to the anti-Trump cause: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/11/04/murder-in-a-small-wisconsin-town/?utm_term=.a096582f34d1">The Washington Post</a>.</p>
<p>In reply, I cited a well-covered story of a hoax by a Muslim woman, who claimed that Trump supporters had been mean to her (<a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fklfy.com%2F2016%2F11%2F10%2Flafayette-pd-ul-student-made-up-story-about-attack-stolen-hijab%2F&h=aAQEz6Dof">Lafayette, LA</a>) as evidence that we should wait for facts before leaping to conclusions. Of course, I could also mention the Rolling Stone magazine’s recent libel verdict. Or the African-American Columbia professor who hung a noose on her own office door as a bid to get tenure because she was so oppressed. Examples can be multiplied endlessly — so much so that, in the absence of actual, physical evidence, one should always assume that a left-winger alleging a “hate crime” is lying. After all, the folks who really do commit hate crimes are too stupid to cover their tracks well enough to evade detection.</p>
<p>This is the fundamental problem — well, one of two, anyway. When it comes to matters of fact, both parties in an argument must be willing to accept that they can be proven wrong — this is called “falsifiability”. If there is no conceivable circumstance that would cause you to admit that you were wrong, then your argument is no longer based on either logic or evidence and should be abandoned. And, furthermore, everyone must agree that mere assertions constitute neither facts nor evidence (except, perhaps, of the asserter’s biases).</p>
<p>The other fundamental problem has to do with those assumptions which cannot be proven. We on the right tend to believe in freedom, even if that freedom leads to bad results. With few exceptions, liberals/Democrats/Progressives believe that no one should ever experience any pain no matter what choices he makes and that it is the responsibility of government to ensure that everyone’s lives are free of pain. Alas for them, this goal in unachievable — and so far as it can be achieved, it leads to stunted, stupid, and incapable human beings, as can be demonstrated by all those flocking to the “safe spaces” on American campuses today.</p>
<p>But these are what logicians refer to as “priors” or “axiomata” — those things which you assume are so obviously true that no proof is required — and, which, once you delve into them, you discover are not susceptible of proof at all, like the existence of God or the reality of moral truth. If you and your interlocutor cannot agree on your priors, then agreement will never come to pass — even if you both agree that each other’s logic is valid. Although, in my experience, left-wingers are not able to recognize a valid argument if they disagree with the priors. But, then, they also consider logic to be patriarchal, hegemonic, imperialist, heterosexist, <insert other bad words here>, etc.</p>
<p>This, by the way, is what made the Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton contest interesting. Hillary was actually more likely to have priors that actually reflected (what I consider to be) reality — but Bernie’s logic was more valid.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-49396629541566275982016-11-11T13:35:00.000-05:002016-11-11T13:35:34.074-05:00Cass Sunstein, Jonathan Gruber, and Michelle Obama: Why Clinton Lost<p>I don’t think it’s enough to blame Clinton’s loss on her lack of charisma, inability to carry a speech, unusually unpleasant personality, or penchant for being wrong on every major policy issue, foreign and domestic. Still less can it be blamed on her genitalia.</p>
<p>Rather, it’s the product of the approach to governance of three unelected Democrats who have had an outsized influence on the Obama administration and on the Democratic Party as a whole:
<ul>
<li>Jonathan Gruber, who famously attributed Obamacare’s passage to American stupidity: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.” (<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/223578-obamacare-architect-lack-of-transparency-helped-law-pass">The Hill</a>)</li>
<li>Michelle Obama, who led the fight for “nutritious school lunches” — which no one wanted to eat. (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/24/students-are-blaming-michelle-obama-for-their-gross-school-lunches/">Washington Post</a>)</li>
<li>Cass Sunstein, Obama’s Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, who popularized the idea of using public policy to “nudge” people into making decisions that he would approve of. (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/014311526X">Amazon</a>)</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>The common thread is the idea that people who have the best credentials (MIT, Princeton, and Harvard, respectively) have the right — indeed, the obligation — to tell everyone else how they should live their lives and, naturally, to inform them at length of how wrong they are if they don’t do as they’re told.</p>
<p>Oddly, most human beings react poorly to such condescension.</p>
<p>More and more, the Democratic Party has been about telling people what they must and must not say, must and must not do, must and must not think, must and must not question, must and must not believe. Yet Americans do not seem to have the same faith in the moral superiority and infinite sagacity of Progressive technocrats that the Democratic Party (and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party) elites do. This lack of faith is too often borne out by events: the stimulus, Obamacare, Libya, Syria — all dismal failures that Americans, unaccountably, blame on the Democrats who perpetrated them rather than the Republicans who tried to stop them, even though the Democrats have not ceased from explaining how everything is, always and everywhere, the Republican's fault. (E.g., <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/11/10/sen-franken-voters-mad-republicans-obamacare/">Al Franken on Obamacare</a>.)</p>
<p>It may be that Democrats have been seduced by their college-age voters, who do, in fact, want to be told precisely what to do and have no obvious ability to make their own decisions. Unfortunately for the Democrats, most Americans are adults.</p>
<p>I suspect that they will be in the political wilderness for a while yet.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-6375018013113382042016-11-04T12:43:00.000-04:002016-11-04T12:43:07.281-04:00Art, Politics, Publicity, and Silence<!-- % ’ ‘’ “” — –
% ‒ – — ― …
an open minded person that LOVES talking to people with different views
-->
<p>Those of us who follow politics are aware that Tony Podesta, a Democratic lobbyist and fundraiser who also happens to be extremely wealthy (how could <i>that</i> have happened?) is also a major collector of <a href="http://www.american.edu/cas/museum/gallery/2011-Fall-Podesta-Inner-Piece.cfm">contemporary art</a>. Or “art,” as it should be styled.</p>
<p>Those of us who follow art are aware that the criteria for art have changed substantially over the years. At present, the chief desiderata are shock, ugliness, disgust, and sloppiness; anything that requires talent, is beautiful, or is pleasant to gaze upon is disqualified from all the best museums — and, of course, from the Podesta collection. In short, the art world is a playground for three-year-olds who somehow have grown adult-sized bodies.</p>
<p>So it is not surprising that the Podestas number among their friends one <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101905042">Marina Abramović</a>, who is probably the most famous and well-regarded performance artist (“artist”) in the world today.</p>
<p>Tony Podesta is, of course, the brother of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. So, today, thanks to <a href="https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15893">Wikileaks</a>, we can witness the collision of the elite of the art world, who intentionally disdain and contemn the taste of everyone else, and the elite of the political world, who also disdain and contemn the common ruck — but while simultaneously attempting to win their votes. A challenge at the best of times, naturally … but even more so today, as Hillary Clinton regularly displays her overwhelming hatred for everyone who dares disagree with her in any way, however slight. One would ordinarily think this a deplorable failing in a politician, but these are not ordinary times. And, besides, the same approach worked (and still works) for Obama.</p>
<p>Abramović is a devotee of the Satanist Aleister Crowley, who, during his lifetime (1875–1947) was dubbed (not without reason) “the wickedest man in the world” and was one of the founders of what, today, is known as Wicca. She practices one of Crowley's made-up rites, “Spirit Cooking” — the disgusting details of which we will gloss over here, involving, as they do, bodily secretions and excretions of every sort — which fits in amazingly well with today’s contemporary art. So she invited Tony and John over for a Spirit Cooking dinner.</p>
<p>A (mostly safe) example of one of Abramović’s recipes can be found in an issue of <a href="http://www.vogue.com/13471929/food-artists-writers-cookbook-james-franco-marwssina-abramovic/">Vogue</a> which predates the Wikileaks revelation. More explicit (and less safe) images are now all over the place for anyone who wishes to look.</p>
<p>It is pretty clear that no politician who wants the votes of the majority of the American voting public would ever want to be associated in any way, or want any member of her staff to be so associated, with such a ceremony.</p>
<p>What is more interesting to me at the moment is the press coverage of this infamous dinner. It is absolutely certain that, were Trump (or any other Republican) to have engaged — or even been invited to — such a rite, the details would be on the front pages of every newspaper in the world. Since the Podestas are Democrats, the Clintonian omertà is in full force among the mainstream media, and even (for now) among the more respectable right-wing outlets, like National Review and the Weekly Standard. But the Drudge Report and the National Enquirer are, naturally, all over it, just as they were the only outlets to cover John Edwards’s deplorable (that word again) treatment of his wife while she was dying — without which, that cheating shyster could well have ended up President.</p>
<p>Needless to say, should Clinton win the election and manage to overturn Citizens United, anyone who dares publicize anything derogatory about Herself or any of Her minions would find himself in a Federal prison almost instantly. (Cf. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakoula_Basseley_Nakoula">Mark Basseley Youssef,</a> the only person ever imprisoned for using an alias on the internet, for an educational example.)</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-90510663179277699132015-12-29T13:37:00.000-05:002015-12-29T13:37:18.537-05:00On Islamophobia: A Phillippic<p>We must, before anything else, agree that “Islamophobia” is entirely the wrong term. Americans do not fear Islam (phobos [φόβος] means “fear” in Greek); rather, we despise it.
<ul><li>We see women who are not allowed to show their faces in public, and we are disgusted.</li>
<li>We see countries which make possession of the Bible a capital offense, and we are offended.</li>
<li>We see women who have suffered clitoridectomies to ensure that they will never have any pleasure from the sexual act, and we are appalled.</li>
<li>We see the casual mutilation of (alleged) criminals and the grotesquely cruel execution of others (by decapitation, crucifixion, stoning, throwing down from high places, burning) – always to the cheers of crowds of Muslims, and we are shocked.</li>
<li>We see an entire religion, half of the adherents of which fervently believe that <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/#penalty-for-converting-to-another-faith">leaving that religion should be punished by death</a>, and we are incensed.</li>
<li>We see that the only countries which still countenance slavery – and slavery of black Africans, at that, in, e.g., Mauritania and the Boko Haram–controlled areas of Nigeria – are Muslim, and we are outraged.</li>
<li>We see cultures which use Islam as the justification for men to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html?_r=0">sodomize young boys</a>, and our anger is overwhelming.</li></ul></p>
<p>And all these atrocities are committed in the name of Allah and his Prophet. So what else can we conclude but that this is the sum total of Islam? There is nothing else; nor can anyone deny it. Islam is based on nothing other than violence and sexual slavery (what Nietzsche called the “Will to Power”) – it has no, and never has had any, other claim to our attention: no metaphysics, no love, no mercy, no good works, no science (save that which they stole from Greeks and Hindus), no engineering (save that which they have been given by the West), no philosophy, no theology, no law, no justice, no economic successes (again, save the questionable gift of petroleum technology from the West); at best, a few acceptable works of poetry and some calligraphy – from the time of its (false) prophet, who raped a nine-year-old “wife,” <a href="http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2013/10/was-muhammad-pedophile.html">Aisha</a>, to the present.</p>
<p>Stated simply, there can be no faithful Muslim – that is, one who believes that the Koran is the infallible Word of Allah – who does not enthusiastically endorse <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal">all manner of sexual perversion and violence.</a> Make no mistake: the horrific crimes perpetrated by Muslims in Rotherham and throughout the world – especially in areas controlled by ISIS and other “radical” Muslim groups, but even in the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3361640/Saudi-millionaire-cleared-raping-teenager-telling-court-accidentally-penetrated-18-year-old-tripped-fell-her.html">great cities of Western civilization</a> – are exactly what every Muslim man wishes to do everywhere, and would, were it not for the fear of punishment, which our oh-so-enlightened and politically correct leaders – in America, in Europe, and throughout the world – work tirelessly to shield them from.</p>
<p>Am I wrong? I would like to be wrong. But there is no evidence that any Muslim anywhere speaks against these inhuman abuses in the languages of the people guilty of them. And who can blame them, really? Writing something like this phillippic in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, or Urdu would be a death sentence for anyone unfortunate enough to be a resident of a Muslim country. Some will point out that much lip service is paid to Western sensibilities in Western languages, and this is true, of course. But this can only be seen as a part of what Muslims call <i>taqiyya</i>: the idea that it is a moral good for Muslims to deceive the infidels. This is a fundamental part of the Muslim “faith,” if it can, indeed, be so called. And the prominence of <i>taqiyya</i> in Islamic thought does raise important questions for us – if we dare to face them – as we in the West deal with Islamic states and peoples.</p>
<p>But, nevertheless, we Americans are not afraid.</p>
<p>Instead, as <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/12/10/polls-show-americans-arent-afraid-want-president-will-make-isis-afraid-us/">John Sexton writes vis-à-vis ISIS</a>, we long for a president, a government, and a culture which will make <i>them</i> afraid of <i>us</i>.</p>Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-73986773710637382852015-11-14T18:57:00.000-05:002015-11-14T18:57:42.273-05:00Solving ISIS<p>Dr. Ben Carson has been criticized (justly) for his opinion that ISIS could be destroyed <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/10/ben-carson-republican-debate-isis-losers">“fairly easily.”</a> President Obama went so far as to say that Dr. Carson <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-carson-isis_5645f8e9e4b060377348a21f">“doesn't know much about”</a> foreign policy. And if anyone knows a lot about not knowing much about foreign policy, it’s got to be Obama.</p>
<p>But I think Carson is correct. It is easy to come up with a strategy that would take out ISIS – especially if one is willing to dispense with the Western rules of war (which ISIS, like most Muslim groups and Muslim countries, doesn't abide by, anyway).</p>
<p>What would happen if a President Carson (or Cruz or Rubio or Fiorina or *shudder* Clinton) – ideally with the support of Hollande, Merkel, and Cameron – said this:
<blockquote>
<p>I address this statement to the Ummah, the world-wide community of Muslims.</p>
<p>We know that the majority of Muslims do not approve of the theology and actions of ISIS. But we also know that thousands of Muslims flock to their banner and wage a terroristic war against everyone, infidel and Muslim alike.</p>
<p>As “infidels,” it is not our place to solve religious disputes in the Dar al-Salam from our position in the Dar al-Harb.</p>
<p>But it is our place to ensure that our countries and our people are protected from unprovoked, vicious, and cowardly attacks.</p>
<p>It is <i>your</i> place to police the actions and beliefs of your co-religionists.</p>
<p>Therefore, I solemnly swear before the Ummah and before all the world, that if you do not destroy ISIS within the next year, we will drop nuclear weapons on Mecca and Medina, to provide an everlasting symbol and reminder of the abject failure of Islam.<p>
</blockquote>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-79713984832359328232015-07-25T21:11:00.001-04:002015-07-25T21:11:48.536-04:00We're living in Harry Potter's world<p>Some bright fellow going by the sobriquet Coffeeman recently composed a little pictorial essay to explain why people hate Dolores Umbridge (the officious power-hungry apparatchik in the Ministry of Magic) so much. It’s well worth reading. Go ahead. I’ll wait.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tickld.com/x/the-real-reason-you-hate-umbridge-so-much-this-guy-nails-it">The Real Reason You Hate Umbridge So Much</a></p>
<p>During the school year, hardly a day goes by without some new story of teachers and/or administrators doing something incredibly stupid: ordering a lockdown because some idiot thought an umbrella was a gun, forcing a child to change his clothes because of a politically incorrect slogan, expelling a child for biting his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun, confiscating a child’s lunch because it doesn’t meet Federal standards, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Then there are all the sexual predators: The invaluable Instapundit regularly features stories of female teachers arrested for sexual relations with their charges (and just as regularly notes that their punishments [if any] are mere shadows of those meted out to men guilty of the same offenses).</p>
<p>Umbridges, one and all.</p>
<p>Then there are the busybodies who deem themselves qualified to override parental choices, even to the point of removing their children from their care for the offense of letting them walk through their neighborhood without Mommy hovering over their shoulders.</p>
<p>Umbridges, one and all.</p>
<p>Then there’s the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (or, more accurately, “Housing and Urban Decay”), which is using a new rule they concocted called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” the goal of which is to make every home and every neighborhood in the United States precisely like every other home and neighborhood. Because, after all, it’s unfair that people with more money have bigger homes than do people with less.</p>
<p>Umbridges, one and all.</P>
<p>In fact, Umbridgeousness is the natural condition of every government employee, and few indeed are those whose wages are paid by the taxes of their fellow citizens who do not arrive at the conviction that they are better, smarter, wiser people than those they work for and that they should by right have the power to regulate the lives of everyone else.</p>
<p>But Rowling’s Umbridge is not merely a petty tyrant, but a moral coward. She, like most of the rest of the Ministry of Magic, is unwilling to see the evil that threatens their world. Thus, instead of naming and facing the evil, she persecutes those who do.</p>
<p>Note that this is exactly the behavior of President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry. They will not name the evils we face (Iran, Isis, and Jihadism in general); they will not face it; they will not do anything to prepare for the fight against it; they insult, belittle, and persecute those who can and do.</p>
<p>At bottom, then, the 2016 American election is not between Democrats and Republicans; it is between those who suffer from moral cowardice and the conviction that they know best (Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge) and those who have the moral strength to confront evil and the humility to know that they don’t know everything (Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore).</p>
<p>In our world, Dolores Umbridge wears a pantsuit.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-77830386063961774972015-03-03T20:17:00.000-05:002015-03-03T20:17:17.762-05:00Tolkien’s English <p>I recently answered a question on <a href="http://www.quora.com/In-English-language-academia-is-Lord-of-the-Rings-considered-great-writing">Quora</a>, but latterly realized that my observation might well be unique ‒ and, indeed, a quick Googling did not reveal anyone else who had cottoned on to it.</p>
<p>When we were reading <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> aloud to our daughters while on our car trips, I came to the passages set in Rohan just after having read <i>Beowulf</i> in the bilingual edition of the Seamus Heaney translation ‒ of course, I am only slightly familiar with Anglo-Saxon, but enough to catch words now and then.</p>
<p>It is well known, I think, that Tolkien was an Anglo-Saxon scholar, and that he based the culture of the Rohirrim on that of the Anglo-Saxons.</p>
<p>What I realized, reading the dialogue aloud, was that Tolkien had expunged all traces of Greek and Latin from the words the Rohirrim speak. This is what gives their speech its unique flavor ‒ and is quite a difficult thing to do. If you read back through what I have written here, you will see many a word derived from those sources (usually via French, of course). Of course, I'm not trying ‒ but if I were, this post would take a couple of days to write rather than a few minutes.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-25332048263860775132015-01-17T23:18:00.002-05:002015-01-17T23:18:56.859-05:00An Especially Cruel Attack on American Liberalism<p>There’s an article on Salon (yeah, I get around) on <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/01/17/now_theyre_sliming_elizabeth_warren_fox_news_tactics_and_the_surprising_water_carriers_for_the_1_percent/">how the evvvuuuul Rethuglicans are attacking the saintly Liz Warren</a>.</p>
<p>You can read it if you wish ....</p>
<p>But my reaction is this:</p>
<p>Wait a minute: Paul Rosenberg’s<sup>*</sup> thesis is that the Left had complete control of the media from the 60s through the creation of Fox (OK, “Faux”) News and complete control of academia from the 70s until the present (and for the foreseeable future) and the problem is that liberal ideas have yet to be “discovered, developed, articulated, explained and communicated”?</p>
<p>I cannot imagine even Rush Limbaugh writing a more insulting, devastating, and definitive condemnation of the Left.</p>
<p>*According to the Salon bio, he “is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News, and a columnist for Al Jazeera English.” (Of course.)</p>Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-34197613770533180632014-10-07T10:36:00.000-04:002014-10-07T10:36:30.897-04:00A Strategy for Republicans<p>Various “psychological” “studies” – that is, experiments run by left-wing pyschology professors on their students – purport to show that Republicans have a pronounced bias toward obedience to authority. This is untrue, of course, as even a slight acquaintance with the climate-change debate should demonstrate. In fact, even the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-frimer/liberals-conservatives-conformity_b_5697849.html">Huffington Post</a> is willing to admit this.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, there may be something to it…</p>
<p>What is our first experience with authority outside the family? Why, school, of course. And most of us go to public schools, which means that those authorities are, by definition, government authorities.</p>
<p>And what is our experience of those authorities? That they are, one and all, without exception, unbelievably stupid, power-mad tinpot dictators.</p>
<p>Some might accuse me of hyberbole. You are invited to provide counterexamples in the comments: School administrators who are smarter, more knowledgeable, and more competent than I, a lowly B.A. in English.</p>
<p>The thing about government is that nearly <i>all</i> government workers are precisely like those we first met in elementary school: power-mad morons. And the further up the organizational chart we go, the more true that is. Teachers, for instance, are noticeably more sane and less arbitrary than their principals and other administrators (and, sometimes, even smarter and more knowledgeable). In fact, it is their interaction with those power-mad morons that is most responsible for driving competent teachers out of the profession.</p>
<p>But Republicans are unwilling to point this out, apparently in the belief that is is important for children to show respect to their teachers and principals. This Republican, however, didn’t do that. Respect is to be earned, not given: and if teachers, principals, and administrators show themselves to be stupid, ignorant, and dictatorial, then they should not be given any.</p>
<p>My children learned early on that they should assume that their teachers are idiots; in their (mercifully brief) public-school careers, they encountered one intelligent, competent teacher. All the others were clearly uneducated, lamentably stupid, and ferociously incompetent. This is apparently normal in New Jersey, for our school district (Hamilton Township) consistently places right in the middle of various ratings: Not quite so bad as Newark and Camden and not quite so good as Princeton and Montclair.</p>
<hr>
<p>“But what does this have to do with Republican strategy?” you might ask.</p>
<p>Two new things have arrived to afflict public education: Common Core and its amazingly incompetent implementation, especially in mathematics; and Michelle Obama’s <a href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/school-meals/healthy-hunger-free-kids-act">Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act</a>, which is bankrupting schools and starving children all over the country.
<blockquote>Aside on Common Core math: I've always liked math and am reasonably good at it (I was, as I like to say, the only English major in my class on partial differential equations). I understand what they’re trying to do to encourage an understanding of the structure of mathematics. But even I can be completely baffled by the poorly-posed problems petulant parents periodically post.</blockquote></p>
<p>Both are perfect encapsulations of Progressive ideology and practice (or praxis, as good Progressives say). Both begin with laudable objectives – All children should be educated! All children should be fed! – and immediately deteriorate into ineptitude. All children are not alike: they have neither the same educational nor the same nutritional needs. I, for instance, was under 100 lbs for most of my high-school career (I hit 105 in my senior year). It is senseless to feed the same lunch both to me and to the offensive line of the football team. Yet that is what Progressives do: it’s one-size-fits-all for everyone, everywhere, except the Progressive elite themselves, who exempt themselves from the strictures they place, or wish to place, on hoi polloi. See, for instance, Al Gore and Robert Kennedy’s carbon footprints, the meals the Obama children get at Sidwell Friends School (and at the White House), the health care members of Congress get, etc., etc., etc.</p>
<p>No Progressive ever lived, lives, or will live in the fashion he wants to force on you.</p>
<p>And that should be the constant refrain of the Republicans, along with a promise that they will ensure that every law and regulation that applies to the citizenry will be applied with equal or greater force to members – whether elected, appointed, hired, or contracted – of the government.</p>Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-52513035674968937522014-08-19T17:04:00.001-04:002014-08-19T17:04:56.919-04:00Serving, Protecting, and the Duty to Die<p>Growing up, I was told the story of Mike McCoy, an Air Force pilot who died in 1957 in a crash near my eventual home in the Orlando suburb of College Park. The story, <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orange/orl-mccoy-story,0,1880063.htmlpage">which ― alas! ― may not be completely true</a>, was that he stayed with the plane to ensure that it would miss Robert E. Lee Junior High School at the cost of his life and the lives of his three crewmen. The only loss of life on the ground was a single cow. This is why Orlando’s airport was long known as McCoy International and still carries the airport abbreviation MCO.</p>
<p>I was thinking about the events in Ferguson, the tremendous changes in American policing, and the heroism of the police and firemen nearly 13 years ago on September 11th. And this called to mind an essay of <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-ciardi">John Ciardi</a>’s from 1962.</p>
<p>If our police forces must be militarized, then let them be militarized like the pilots Ciardi describes. We should honor those who serve us; and we honor our policemen, firemen, soldiers, sailors, and marines because we believe that they are willing to die for us. When they put their own safety above that of the civilians they serve, they lose all claim to honor ― and should also lose such emoluments as salary and pension.</p>
<p>Ciardi is known today, if at all, as a translator of Dante. In the sixties, however, he was one of our pre-eminent men of letters. Among other things, he was the poetry editor and a columnist for the <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Review_%28U.S._magazine%29">Saturday Review</a></i>.</p>
<p>Here is his essay from October 6th, 1962 entitled “Ride a Hot Horse” (from <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Manner-speaking-John-Ciardi/dp/0813507316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408481460&sr=8-1&keywords=manner+of+speaking+ciardi">Manner of Speaking</a></i>, 1972, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ). I call this fair use, fwiw.</p>
<p>Note that Ciardi was a gunner on B-29s during WWII and flew 20 or so missions over Japan.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The opening of the Seattle World’s Fair was marred by an incident in which a <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2008/04/21/looking-back-tragedy-at-the-seattle-worlds-fair/">disabled jet crashed into a row of houses</a>, killing an elderly man and woman under their own roof while the pilot parachuted to safety miles away. A sad accident and one that is becoming sadly common as the jets fill the sky above and the housing developments fill the ground below.</p>
<p>But was it entirely an accident? It is possible, to be sure, that the plane was hopelessly out of control. But it is just as possible that the pilot, had he stayed with it all the way, could have managed to crash into an empty field rather than into those houses. I am asking if a pilot has the right to bail out of a disabled plane over thickly settled country, and I am moved to argue that he has not.</p>
<p>Nobody wants to splash the boys over the landscape. If a pilot runs into trouble and bails out over a desert, who could blame him for that, even if his jet happens by freak chance to come down on the one house within range or on a passing automobile? But to bail out over an urban or a suburban area is another case, and there, I must insist, the pilot clearly funks if he fails to ride it all the way down. There is always that chance that he can at the last instant avoid visiting his disaster on those below. And even if he cannot, even if his death goes for nothing, it is his job to try.</p>
<p>It is his job for the simple reason that he asked for it. No one gets drafted into flying jets. The boys have to want to, they have to fight for the chance to try, and they have to buck hard to get through their training. How can a would-be pilot ask for the job ― and ask for it that hard ― without understanding that he has a moral contract to spend everything, including his own life, to avoid dumping his disabled buzzer on the people below? Suppose, to select a horrendous example, that house with the elderly couple in it had been a school building. How does the pilot walk away from his parachute after that?</p>
<p>It may be that we have entered the age of the final moral funk, wherein sentiment can justify all. The government certainly went a long way toward justifying the funk of pilot Powers in the U-2 incident. Our government, to be sure, is now imitating the Communists in handing out only that information it wants the people to have, and perhaps, therefore, the whole truth will never be known. It is on record, however, that Powers was drawing $30,000 a year [note: the equivalent of about $236,000 in 2013] for occasional flights over Russia, and that his equipment included a destruction button and a poisoned pin. What can one conclude but that the button and the pin were meant for use and that the $30,000 salary was jeopardy pay? And what can one then conclude but that Powers took the cash and then funked it?</p>
<p>The boys know what they are asking for when they buck for wings. They like the flying pay, they like the badges, and they like the glamour the badges bring. Perhaps, above all, they like the feel of the hot horse under them. The hottest horse of all is, of course, death, and so long as there are boys in this world, some of them will fall in love with the sensation of riding him. As Melville wrote, <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175174">“All wars are boyish and are fought by boys.”</a> That love affair with the hot horse is of the boyhood of the race. But once a boy is on that horse, then it is his man’s job to ride it all the way.</p>
<p>T. E. Shaw (Lawrence of Arabia) was such a boy-man. He lived with his itch to ride the hottest horse. He died, foolishly enough (if I recall correctly what I read years ago and have since forgotten where), of his passion for riding a motorcycle too fast. The motorcycle happened to be his hot horse of the moment. But if he was still boy enough to have to open it up all the way, he was man enough to know it was not a free ride. He died of a choice he had made within himself long before. Gunning his crazy machine down the road, he came to that instant when he must kill either an innocent pedestrian or himself. <a href="http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-lawrence-of-arabia">He swerved off the road and killed himself</a>.</p>
<p>There is no need to grow romantic about the splendor of his choice. What was splendid about the man, finally, was his talent. What sent the boy hightailing down the road was no splendor but a problem for the psychiatrist’s couch. What remains is the fact that, between man and boy, Shaw made his choice clean.</p>
<p>The boys that fly the hot ones have the same choice to make. And like Shaw they have to make that choice in their own minds long before the moment of truth. It has to be made firmly beforehand, or their reflexes will make the wrong choice too late.</p>
<p>It may be a crazy choice to have forced upon oneself. Maybe they have to be a bit crazy to want to fly the hot ones. Maybe we are all crazy for having made a world in which we need a sky full of hot horses. But no boy ― and he has to be a boy, whatever bar, leaf, eagle, or star he wears on his collar ― can be allowed to go for crazy up to the time his buzzer runs into trouble, and then to dump his trouble on a row of houses while he floats sanely down in his parachute.</p>
<p>As the best, and least printable, of <a href="http://www.airgroup4.com/book/indx/index22.htm">World War II’s flying songs</a> starts off:
<blockquote>
I wanted wings,<br/>
Now I’ve got the goddamn things.<br/>
Hell, I don’t want them anymore.</blockquote>
</p>
<p>A lot of the hotshot boys, who had a high stateside fling flashing their wings for the girls, discovered in combat that they didn’t really want them anymore. But the fact remains that few of them broke and funked out. They had signed a contract with themselves. They had accepted the glamour, the flight pay, and the gravy-train freedom from all the nasty chores an ingrate army can dream up for noncrew members. They had asked for it and they had taken it. That adds up to a contract, and, like it or not, you keep that contract come flak, fighters, fire, or the heebie-jeebies. You may not want those wings anymore, but you’ve got them: they are tattooed on you. If you get killed flying, that’s tough, buddy, but nobody wrote out any special dispensation for your special skin. The contract itself was written on skin, on skin that was always of the most special kind ― the only kind there is.</p>
<p>If the boys in those jet cockpits do not have their contract clearly enough understood as a moral decision, it may be time to make it a court-martial decision. The gentle among us may cry out in horror against such a decision. It is no way to treat our dear boys, they will cry; the boys risk enough just in flying those ships to protect us.</p>
<p>But what we have to realize is that we cannot be protected by boys who risk enough. Nothing will cover us sufficiently until they risk everything. And, remember, the boys have not been forced. They asked for it. Every one of those bright badges has a piece of skin under it, and if the civilians insist on funking that fact, the boys had better get it clear, or clear out and go back to being civilians.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-57145836380427167912014-04-30T21:21:00.001-04:002014-04-30T21:21:17.180-04:00Inequality – A Screed<p>As “inequality” has become the premier buzzword among the progressive cognoscenti, I have proposed the obvious solution: That the government should take money from everyone who has more than median wealth and give it to those who have less – and do the same for income as well. Then garbagemen will have the same assets and income as CEOs, rock stars, and senators. What’s not to like? This is, after all, the goal of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/25/elizabeth-warren-occupy-wall-street_n_1030974.html">Elizabeth Warren and the Occupy movement she (claims she) engendered</a>: A state where no one ever has to do anything he doesn’t want to do and never has to go without anything he wants.</p>
<p>But those who protest inequality also protest that this is not at all what they mean: The problem is not that inequality exists, but that there is “too much” of it. Yet it seems obvious to me that if inequality is the problem, then equality is the solution and, contrariwise, if equality is not the solution, then inequality cannot be the problem.</p>
<p>So what is the problem? Everyone outside the Obama administration can see that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/happy-days-no-more-middle-class-families-squeezed-as-expenses-soar-wages-stall/2014/04/26/f4a857f0-7a47-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html">the American middle class is dying</a>, that poverty is rising, and the rich – especially those with close political and/or family ties to the Obama administration – are getting richer. The Democrats’ answer is to demonize the Koch brothers and to ignore George Soros, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Immelts, Robert Rubin, &c., &c., &c. The odd fact is that the richer one is, the more likely one is to be a Democrat.</p>
<p>(To prevent criticism, I should say that I’m not accusing Obama of not caring about poor people. Far from it! It’s because he loves them so much that he’s made so many more of them.)</p>
<p>But the Democrats are the party of the little guy ... does this mean that rich folks (other than the Kochs, of course) are finally seeing the error of their ways?</p>
<p>Well, no.</p>
<p>When one is at or near the top of the heap, one’s first priority is to ensure that one and one’s family stay at the top. There are two ways to do this: to make even more money and acquire even more power or to use one’s existing power and influence to ensure that no upstart is able to challenge one’s position.</p>
<p>The first method is hard work and is subject to the risk that some poorer person could outhink and outwork the existing elite. The second method is foolproof – and given that the children of the wealthy tend to be fools (have I mentioned the Kennedys already?), that’s obviously the best choice.</p>
<p>What we are seeing is the death of capitalism and the birth of a patronage-based society. Every successful large business has many government contracts, from defense contractors to school textbook publishers. These businesses are motivated to ensure that they keep their contracts; if this means lobbying Congress to restrict competition, then they will do that. If it means hiring the dimwitted scion of a political family (say, Chelsea Clinton), then they will do that. The Federal government is now so huge that no new fortune can be made except with its explicit permission.</p>
<p>Nanotechnology? Better get the EPA and FDA on your side. Information technology? Better work with the NSA. Automotive technology? Back to the EPA, but also the Deparment of Transportation. Financial innovations? Better buy yourself some SEC commissioners.</p>
<p>But it takes large amounts of money to hire the lobbyists, ex-politicians, ex-regulators, lawyers, and other flacks you need successfully to bend the government to your will. Only the largest and wealthiest can compete in that arena.</p>
<p>If anyone tried today to build computers in their garage, the EPA would be on them immediately to require that they first build a multi-million dollar plant with all the safety features the most paranoid fantasist can dream up. (Cost-benefit analysis routinely goes out the window when one is working “for the children.”) Messrs Hewlett, Packard, Jobs, Wozniak, and Dell could not have survived such an inquisition.</p>
<p>If anyone has a truly new and transformative idea – the kind that makes jobs for some people, destroys jobs for others, and causes general prosperity to increase – then those with interests already vested in the status quo will turn to the government to squelch the parvenus. See what’s happening with Uber, Airbnb, and food trucks.</p>
<p>Other strategies that would help keep the elite in their rightful place would be to, say, restrict education to the elites, or artificially depress the wages of the poor so they cannot hope to acquire capital. One could do this by, for instance, encouraging the development of an organization of teachers so devoted to milking local governments for wages, benefits, and pensions that they have no time to concern themselves with the education of children – something like the NEA and AFT. Or one could open America’s borders so that there will be an endless stream of workers eager to make even a few bucks an hour – something like “comprehensive immigration reform.”</p>
<p>The middle class is dying at the hands of government and its cronies. Only when the government is too small to affect the economy will the middle class have a hope of recovering. And only the Tea Partiers have any hope of accomplishing this – all the proposals by Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives have the ineluctable effect of further cementing the position of the current power elite.</p>Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-3049350646324251552014-01-08T21:28:00.001-05:002014-01-08T21:28:28.214-05:00How to fix the problem of income inequalityWhat if the Republican party in the House took income inequality seriously? (Don't laugh.)<br />
<br />
Why, they would pass the Harrison Bergeron Equality Act of 2014, giving the government unlimited power to ensure that every citizen of the United States have exactly the same income and exactly the same wealth as every other.<br />
<br />
There. Problem solved. And how could anyone object to something so manifestly fair and just? It would fly through the Democratic Senate and surely be signed by President Obama – even though every Senator and the President would personally lose lots of money under the law, because they’re just that dedicated to the American dream of equality. Aren’t they?Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-36873932404514393972013-11-15T08:17:00.002-05:002013-11-15T08:17:32.062-05:00Bloomberg, Obama, Health, and CapriciousnessNow, I am not a lawyer, but …<br />
<br />
The most recent <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/15/news/economy/obamacare-fix/">exception Obama has announced</a> to his eponymous law is a bit troubling. While it is certainly true that the executive branch has the discretion to decide whether or not to enforce a particular law against a particular person, it is also true that laws should be written so that ordinary citizens can easily understand their import.<br />
<br />
In the case of the ACA, so many loopholes and exceptions have been created and granted that no reasonable person can have any assurance that any part of the law will be effectual either now or in the future – and every assurance that the law will be unevenly enforced, depending on the whims and velleities of the administration.<br />
<br />
This reminds me of the decision of Milton Tingling in striking down Nanny Bloomberg’s soda ban: one of the reasons he found the law invalid was that it was “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences.” (<a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/sodaruling0311.pdf">PDF</a>) Does that not describe Obamacare as well?<br />
<br />
I should think, therefore, that an enterprising lawyer could argue that the entire law should be struck down as unconstitutionally vague.<br />
<br />
Any lawyers out there?Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-71834960867969381872013-10-29T14:35:00.000-04:002013-10-29T14:36:53.138-04:00How Obama should explain ObamacareThere’s a obvious way to explain the fact that Obamacare has led to the cancellation of millions of health insurance policies, so I thought I’d give our President a helpful tip. Here’s what he should say:
<blockquote>
<p>I understand that many of you have had your policies cancelled, are upset that new policies under the ACA will cost you more than you were previously pay, and cannot afford the increased premiums.</p>
<p>Let me be clear: No one feels your pain more deeply than I.</p>
<p>However, you are, perhaps, missing some of the benefits of the ACA. Sure, it probably will be more expensive than your present plan, but you’ll get a lot more for your money. Besides, the biggest health problem facing America is obesity; so, if you just cut down on the amount of food you buy, not only will you be able to afford your new health care, but you’ll eat less and thus be at far less risk for obesity-related diseases.</p>
<p>This will, in the final analysis, save both you and your country a great deal of money. You should thank me.</p></blockquote>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-33793393950685253802013-09-11T08:40:00.000-04:002013-09-11T08:40:28.808-04:00Why don't we just skip all the fighting and declare defeat now?Let me see if I can get the logic straight here:<br />
<ol>
<li>“In part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action, as well as constructive talks that I had with President Putin” … the international community will pressure Syria to give up chemical weapons.</li>
<li>Because the “credible threat of U.S. military action” was so important in achieving this (potential) diplomatic breakthrough, “I have, therefore, asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path.”</li>
<li>Therefore, while we needed the threat of force to get on the “diplomatic path,” that threat is not necessary in order to assure that we keep moving down that path. But Assad will understand that the U.S. can renew that threat at any moment – and Congress will surely go along.</li>
<li>Or, more likely, Obama cannot convince even the members of his own party in the Senate to authorize a military strike, so he's avoiding a catastrophic political/foreign policy defeat. Gosh, it's a good thing Putin and Assad are too dim to figure this out!</li>
</ol>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-40492892474247587202013-03-08T19:30:00.001-05:002013-03-08T19:30:43.707-05:00Wow -- a cogent criticism<p>So – a commenter mentioned that it would be worthwhile to mention where in <i>Religio Medici</i> my little quotation comes from: It's Section XXIV of Part I. Widely available on line; I like <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/3/5/11.html">Bartleby</a>.</p>Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-38539362369738767912013-03-08T13:11:00.000-05:002013-03-08T13:11:01.470-05:00Sir Thomas Browne and demosclerosis<p>The august <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/164644/">Instapundit</a> links today to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/08/what-if-the-gop-really-does-wither/">Mickey Kaus</a>’s discussion of <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/06/blue-civil-war-the-battle-for-california/">Walter Russell Mead</a>, which leads to links to discussions of demosclerosis, a term invented by Jonathan Rauch in <i>Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government</i> (1994).</p>
<p>Basically, the idea is that the government is too big and does too much, so too many people are invested in and lobby for particular government programs, causing the true commonweal to be ignored.</p>
<p>But this is not a new problem. It happens in all large systems. For instance, in his <i>Religio Medici</i> (1643), Sir Thomas Browne wrote</p>
<blockquote>Tis not a melancholy <i>Utinam</i> of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general Synod; not to unite the incompatible difference of Religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it as it lay at first, in a few and solid Authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of Rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements of Scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of Typographers.</blockquote>
<p>As a quondam typographer, I’ve long liked this sentiment. I have, more than once, added to the “swarms and millions of Rhapsodies” – books which, I can only hope, were never read and, if read, not remembered.</p>
<p>Of course, now there is hardly any typography left … and don't get me started on copy-editing and proofreading.</p>
<p>To return to my point: Let us reduce, not learning, but the Federal law “as it lay at first,” stripping from it that legislation which serves “only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements” of lawyers, judges, politicians, and pundits.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-91405396225162617782013-01-07T20:44:00.000-05:002013-01-07T20:44:08.731-05:00You didn't build that; you can't shoot that<p>I should begin by confessing that I do not own any firearms. I do, however, own two target bows, and, six weeks after I picked up my first real bow, I placed 50th in the NCAA nationals (then Title IX killed Men's Archery at my college *sigh*). And when I do go to a shooting range, I do tolerably well -- shooting is shooting, after all: though the mechanics change, the mind is the same.</p>
<p>However, my wife just got her rifle and pistol permits from the State of New Jersey ...</p>
<p>Reading the arguments for gun control, I was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu. They are very similar to the Obama economic policy, which is aimed first to belittle and then to prevent unapproved entrepreneurial activity. Your economic role is, preferably, to be an employee or client of the government; failing that, you should do non-profit work; or work for a creative or academic industry; or, if nothing else fits, work for an approved large corporation (GM, Goldman Sachs, Solyndra, etc.).</p>
<p>If you insist on working for yourself, following your own ideas, then you will be punished -- first by thousands upon thousands of pages of Federal regulations, then by the tax code, and, finally, if you get through those, by societal disapprobation. (See, e.g., the roles of businessmen in Hollywood movies.)</p>
<p>In other words, the Obama doctrine has no room for people doing their own thing in the marketplace -- only in the bedroom. The marketplace must be carefully controlled, for everyone's mutual well-being, by the government and its "Gleichschaltung" businesses.</p>
<p>Similarly, so must violence be controlled: Just as you have no business coming up with your own ideas for economic activity, you have no business defending yourself. If you are accosted by a violent criminal, your only approved option is to call the police. If they somehow fail to arrive in time (when seconds count, the police are only minutes away), then it is your duty to die.</p>
<p>Unapproved defence, like unapproved business, can only lead to societal chaos.</p>Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-58728955092834567472012-11-09T11:29:00.000-05:002012-11-09T11:29:13.693-05:00<h1>Further thoughts on the liberal rich</h1>
<p>I should have separated out immigration amnesty as a sixth policy. Unchecked immigration helps keep wages down for the lower classes, thus further impeding their ability to rise on the economic scale.</p>
<p>Also, the decoupling of work and welfare and the expanded provision of “benefits” such as unemployment insurance and food stamps help to diminish motivation at the bottom. That makes seven.</p>
<p>Finally (for now), the inattention to the national debt—remember, Obama admitted on the Letterman show that he doesn’t even know what the national debt is—and, <i>a fortiori</i>, the failure to deal with the fiscal gap will further diminish prospects for all those not already rich.</p>
<p>The “fiscal gap” is the difference between the present value of the expected cost of future government obligations—pensions, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, &c. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-08/blink-u-s-debt-just-grew-by-11-trillion.html">Lawrence Kotlikoff</a> of Boston University estimates that the Federal fiscal gap is $222,000,000,000,000, or about $707,000 per capita. Add to that the state gaps (nearly all states have ridiculously underfunded pensions), and you can easily get to three hundred trillion dollars, which is nearly one million dollars for every man, woman, child, and illegal alien in the United States.</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-57082420495275329682012-11-09T08:57:00.000-05:002012-11-09T09:02:35.359-05:00<h1>Why do the rich vote for Democrats?</h1>
<p>The news is that <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-wins-8-10-wealthiest-154837437.html">8 of the 10 richest counties in America voted for Obama over Romney</a>. Since everyone knows that rich people are selfish criminal bastards who don’t want to pay any taxes, this would seem to be counterintuitive. Why would they do that?</p>
<p>One theory is that rich people tend to be well educated and therefore can be expected to have an enlightened view of their responsibilities and of the role of government in society.</p>
<p>Yeah, right.</p>
<p>Thomas Frank, in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352467132&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas">What’s the Matter with Kansas</a></i>, make the liberal—or Marxist—argument that the only criterion one should use to decide how to vote is economic. Since, he argues, Kansas’s economy is actively harmed by Republican policies, it makes no sense that they consistently vote for more of the same.</p>
<p>So, using Frank’s approach, we should look for economic reasons for the rich to vote for Democrats.</p>
<p>Once one is in the top 5% of incomes, additional movement upward becomes very difficult, so one will be more interested in ensuring that one maintains one’s status than in striving to advance it. Throughout history, old money has always looked down upon the nouveau riche. One doesn’t, after all, want hoi polloi moving into one’s nice neighborhood.</p>
<p>Democratic economic policies could well have been expressly designed to keep the rich comfortable.</p>
<ol>
<li>We have an income tax, not a wealth tax (except for the relatively minor property tax). Thus, once one’s income is no longer derived from wages and is larger than the Social-Security cutoff (currently $110,100), income tax is not a great concern. However, for those trying to become rich, the marginal tax rate (federal, state, and sometimes local income tax, as well as payroll taxes [entrepeneurs are quite aware of both the employee and the employer “contributions” to Social Security]) can easily reach 50%, making the task far, far more difficult.</li>
<li>Our suburbs sprawl throughout the landscape, and most lower- and middle-class families desire bigger houses with bigger yards. These desires, if fulfilled, would naturally diminish the quality of life currently enjoyed by the rich in their suburban enclaves. This explains the long campaign against suburban sprawl. By aggressively promoting policies designed to keep people—especially minorities—cooped up in the urban core, the suburbs are kept safe for the rich.</li>
<li>The rich also need to deal with other countries, who might get wealthy and either compete with them for resources or actually move here. (Illegal immigration of the poor is fine, of course: they need someone to tend their lawns.) Hence the concern with global warming: the policies desired to prevent global warming will also prevent third-world economies from becoming a threat.</li>
<li>Unfortunately, given the structure of the American Constitution, anyone can, in theory, start a business and become rich. However, we can create regulations that will make it prohibitively expensive for all but those who are already rich to do so. Established companies owned by those who are already rich can either be grandfathered out of the regulations, lobby the government for an exception, or simply absorb the costs, relying upon economies of scale. None of these strategies are open to the small businessman.</li>
<li>Most effectively of all, the rich can ally themselves with the government, ensuring that government money is spent on them and on their friends. This is called crony capitalism, and adds further obstacles to upstart competitors. If your competition has a guaranteed permanent contract with the government, they will always have a substantial income advantage over you.</li>
</ol>
<p>Thus, if you are rich, you would be foolish to vote for policies that would further the economic freedom of those who wish to be rich like you. Such policies would inevitably diminish your relative status and are to be discouraged.</p>
<p>Given the Constitution, there is no conceivable set of polices other than these—higher income taxes, sprawl prevention, anti–global warming, more regulations, crony capitalism—that would be more effective in maintaining those who are now rich at the top of the economic heap. So, really, Frank’s question should be, “What’s the matter with rich Republicans?”</p>
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-73434196595238370572012-09-17T14:39:00.000-04:002012-09-17T14:41:25.167-04:00Squeeze, Stretch, and SprawlToday, the Pundit of Pundits has a couple of posts and a column about the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-09-16/obama-youth-unemployment-republicans/57789830/1">junior squeeze</a>, the <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/150868/">senior squeeze</a>, and the middle-class stretch.
Stanley Kurtz's <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312807/burn-down-suburbs-stanley-kurtz">new</a> book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Spreading-Wealth-Robbing-Suburbs-Cities/dp/1595230920/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347906415&sr=8-1&keywords=kurtz%2C+stanley">Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities</a> explains all this.
If young people are still living in their childhood bedrooms and senior citizens are moving in with their children in those same houses, the housing density in the US will rise appreciably, thus reducing suburban sprawl. So higher unemployment, a stagnant housing market, and much higher energy costs will lead to reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and less dependence on foreign energy sources.
These results are exactly those desired by the Obama administration; is it remotely possible that the means by which they are being achieved are, in fact, intended?
Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-9269787323668448692012-08-01T17:28:00.001-04:002012-08-01T17:28:36.804-04:00You Didn't Build Chick-Fil-A<p>There’s a remarkable difference between the controversy over what Obama says he didn’t say and the one over what he most certainly did say.</p>
<p>Why should “you didn’t build that” be the defining statement of the Obama campaign, while his “evolution” on single-sex marriage is all but ignored? There are, after all, as the current flap over chickens attests, a lot of folks who don’t like the idea ….</p>
<p>It all has to do with those (usually mythical) “dog whistles” that politicians are so allegedly adept at.</p>
<p>No one who was paying attention could look at Obama’s 2008 campaign and assume anything other than that his protestation of belief in traditional marriage and his opposition to single-sex marriage were simply election-year expedients intended to be discarded at the first practical opportunity – as, indeed, they were.</p>
<p>Similarly, no one paying attention could possibly mistake Obama for a small-government politician. But it is not yet politically expedient for him to campaign on his true belief, that the economy should be completely controlled by the Federal government, so he still pretends that he’s a “middle of the road,” “reasonable,” “moderate” capitalist like nearly everyone else in Washington.</p>
<p>But everyone knows that that’s not so: that he is, in fact, the most radical politician ever elected to office (and, yes, I include Kucinich) whose ultimate goal is the complete dismantling of the free enterprise system and the institution of state control over every aspect of our lives: what kind of cars we can drive, how far we can drive them, where and how often we can fly, what we set our thermostats to, what kind of groceries we can buy – and all in the name of “ensuring fairness,” “protecting our health,” and “combating global warming.”</p>
<p>So when he lets the mask slip and says – or appears to say – what everyone knows he really thinks, people get excited and Obama must, again, deny that he is who he is and believes what he believes.</p>Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814909737188050022.post-20443230076963427722012-03-09T10:48:00.000-05:002012-03-09T10:48:51.567-05:00College and the ArtsInstapundit linked to this article in the <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Tuning-In-to-Dropping-Out/130967/">Chronicle of Higher Education</a>. The author, Alex Tabarrok, writes that<br />
<blockquote>In 2009 the United States graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math, and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual-and-performing-arts graduates in 1985.</blockquote><br />
I come from an artistic family: both my parents were musicians, as are my wife and stepmother; our eldest is a fashion designer; our youngest is a songwriter; and I write poetry. Among the seven of us, we have lots of non-technical degrees (though I do like to point out that I was the only English major in my class on partial differential equations). And, of course, we have met many, many others who also have arts degrees.<br />
<br />
With few exceptions, arts degrees are unlikely to be worthwhile. Art is, fundamentally, something an artist does, not something an artist studies.<br />
<br />
The model for learning the arts is not the college classroom, but the master-apprentice relationship. Though I do think that anyone who wants to be a serious musician should spend some time in a conservatory learning ear training and counterpoint and harmony and such. Even so, the mentoring relationship is much more important: think of Nadia Boulanger.<br />
<br />
The rest of the academy should be approached carefully. In the field I know best, a strong case can be made that the academicalization of poetry has utterly destroyed its audience: it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that more people write it than read it. The reason for that is simple: a comparison of "unknown verse not worth knowing" from the 19th century with similar verse produced today is instructive: the older stuff is usually technically competent -- on the level of a mediocre TV show, pleasant enough, but insignificant. The modern stuff is acutely painful to read or listen to (and still insignificant).<br />
<br />
But what other visual and performing artists need is mentoring and work experience. A sculptor needs to learn to cast bronze. A fashion designer needs to know how to spec a design for large-scale production. A painter needs to learn to mix paints. A poet needs to learn prosody (well, OK: that's controversial -- the number of poets today who can tell an anapest from a dactyl is vanishingly small). An actor needs to act; a dancer, to dance. And for his acting, an actor will learn everything -- and dancers, well ....<br />
<br />
On the performing side, I think we suffer from the self-esteem movement. My wife teaches voice and piano. It is absolutely the case -- as has always been true -- that no more than a handful of her students will ever make a living at music and extremely unlikely that any of them will make a good living at it. And yet they are all and always told how wonderful they are.<br />
<br />
The mother of one of her students reported on a college fair at a local high school, where the most popular major investigated by the students was Musical Theatre. This major did not exist even 20 years ago. And a bigger waste of time and money can scarcely be imagined: one can have private voice lessons, acting classes, and dance classes for a fraction of the cost of college (and pay for it with the proceeds of food-service work!) and have the freedom to audition for professional jobs. If, after a year or two, one has not been hired, then one can simply move on to something else.<br />
<br />
So -- if you want to be an artist, stay out of college. Find a mentor. Make art. Perform. Then, when you've failed -- and almost all of you will -- you can go to college (or not) with some idea of what you can and can't do. And you will not be carrying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.Fredhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03400412044827672547noreply@blogger.com0