Mark Steyn has a piece in The New Criterion on the effects of "popular" music on the culture at large (hopefully it won't disappear behind a firewall). Steyn's is that the rise of rock, rap and the other various styles of "popular" music, leading to their ubiquity in society at large has had the effect of unmooring music from its long and rich tradition in Western society so that we no longer have any barometer for judging what is actually good and worth preserving, causing us to reach out for the latest fad and undermining the foundations of culture.
As someone who very much enjoys a fair amount of "popular" music, indeed grew up listening to mostly rock music, but has of late come to a greater and greater appreciation of classical music, I'd have to say that he's right. What I find most interesting about the phenomenon, though, is how I've come to view the various forms of "popular" music in light of having developed something of a taste for classical music. I still enjoy a lot of what I used to enjoy both in terms of specific groups and songs, as well as styles of music, but listening to classical music has caused me to draw a distinction between what I like and what is actually good. I also find myself drawing the conclusion that songs are good as far as they go. That is, while Stairway to Heaven may not measure up to Beethoven's Fifth, within the constraints imposed by the genre of rock music, it is an excellent song, and I will listen to it if I run across it on the radio.
Interestingly, I seem to be in the same place with classical music as I was when I first started listening to rock music. There are pieces I recognize instantly, but mostly its all just classical music, and I'm not at the point where, beyond a few well-known pieces (e.g. Ride of the Valkyries), I cannot readily differentiate between composers and pieces. Maybe as I listen to more and more of it, I will be able to better distinguish between composers and styles and maybe even learn some of the terminology (I have no idea what the difference between an adagio and a libretto is, for instance). But as things stand now, all I can really say is that there's much more to music than "popular" music, and it is worth investigating because it is the foundation of the western musical tradition, and the more we ignore it, the more vapid "popular" music becomes.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Well This Settles It, Then
On balance, Republicans are sane, and Democrats are crazy. Well, maybe not, but the poll is at least as credible as all those studies claiming conservatives are somehow inherently mentally defective. Still, the Kossacks and their ilk serve as anecdotal support that more Democrats are mentally unbalanced than Republicans, but the independents are nuttiest of all. Probably being unable to make up their minds drives them over the edge.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Russian Machinations
Michael Ledeen has a fascinating piece on Russian political maneuverings relating to the Iranian nuclear issue. I've come to suspect for awhile now that Russia was attempting to manipulate the situation so as to bring about an attack on Iran from either Israel or the United States, and Ledeen lays out the case for how and why they are doing this succinctly. But I suspect his analysis, while accurate as far as it goes, falls short of what's really going on.
We hear with some regularity that President Bush recognizes the threat posed by Iran and by their pursuit of nuclear weapons, and about how he feels that is his responsibility to see that the situation is resolved on his watch, not left to his successor. The president has also said, somewhat to his apparent embarrassment, that Vladimir Putin is someone with whom he can work (having come to this conclusion by looking into Putin's soul). I can't help but think that all of Russia's bluster, the mounting tensions between the United States and Russia as relations appear to deteriorate, Russia's support for Iran both materially and politically on the nuclear issue, and the apparent American fecklessness in the face of Iranian intransigence on many fronts, including support for insurgents and militias in Iraq, are a deliberate cooperative act on the part of the United States and Russia to get the Iranians to expose themselves to attack, to stick their necks out too far so that there will be no option but for the United States, either alone or with a small group of allies, to attack Iran, destroy its nuclear program and undermine the regime in Tehran.
I don't have any hard evidence of this, nor do I have any particular expertise in this field, but as the Bush administration and the American military continue to increase the rhetorical pressure on Iran, and as European negotiations appear more and more ineffective, and the deal with North Korea looks more and more like a bad deal, the more quickly the prospects of a peaceful resolution to the crisis show themselves to be empty (whether they always were is a matter for debate). And if options like diplomacy and sanctions are going to be ineffective, that leaves only options like sabotage, insurrection and military action. Recognition of this may not bring allies flocking to the United States' efforts to disarm the mullahs, but it should at least buy the political cover necessary to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.
Now all of this may be dead wrong. American fecklessness in the face of Iranian and North Korean intransigence may be genuine. Relations with Russia may be as bad as they appear. Russia may be more concerned with keeping the United States occupied so as to increase its own international standing than with preventing the mullahs acquiring nuclear arms. The United States government may just now be waking up to Iranian mischief in Iraq, though they've certainly known about it since 2003. In the morass that is international politics, there's no way to be sure, but it strikes me as being the height of absurdity that the president would stand for having an issue on which he places high import handled and such an inept and disjointed manner, even if some of his actions on the domestic front do not inspire confidence in this belief.
We hear with some regularity that President Bush recognizes the threat posed by Iran and by their pursuit of nuclear weapons, and about how he feels that is his responsibility to see that the situation is resolved on his watch, not left to his successor. The president has also said, somewhat to his apparent embarrassment, that Vladimir Putin is someone with whom he can work (having come to this conclusion by looking into Putin's soul). I can't help but think that all of Russia's bluster, the mounting tensions between the United States and Russia as relations appear to deteriorate, Russia's support for Iran both materially and politically on the nuclear issue, and the apparent American fecklessness in the face of Iranian intransigence on many fronts, including support for insurgents and militias in Iraq, are a deliberate cooperative act on the part of the United States and Russia to get the Iranians to expose themselves to attack, to stick their necks out too far so that there will be no option but for the United States, either alone or with a small group of allies, to attack Iran, destroy its nuclear program and undermine the regime in Tehran.
I don't have any hard evidence of this, nor do I have any particular expertise in this field, but as the Bush administration and the American military continue to increase the rhetorical pressure on Iran, and as European negotiations appear more and more ineffective, and the deal with North Korea looks more and more like a bad deal, the more quickly the prospects of a peaceful resolution to the crisis show themselves to be empty (whether they always were is a matter for debate). And if options like diplomacy and sanctions are going to be ineffective, that leaves only options like sabotage, insurrection and military action. Recognition of this may not bring allies flocking to the United States' efforts to disarm the mullahs, but it should at least buy the political cover necessary to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.
Now all of this may be dead wrong. American fecklessness in the face of Iranian and North Korean intransigence may be genuine. Relations with Russia may be as bad as they appear. Russia may be more concerned with keeping the United States occupied so as to increase its own international standing than with preventing the mullahs acquiring nuclear arms. The United States government may just now be waking up to Iranian mischief in Iraq, though they've certainly known about it since 2003. In the morass that is international politics, there's no way to be sure, but it strikes me as being the height of absurdity that the president would stand for having an issue on which he places high import handled and such an inept and disjointed manner, even if some of his actions on the domestic front do not inspire confidence in this belief.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Was Listening to NPR Earlier Today
And I heard that Jennifer Granholm is likely to endorse Hillary Clinton for president. That's no surprise, but think Granholm's endorsement of Hillary might hurt her in Michigan more than it helps. I can see the Republican barb now:
The woman running Michigan into the ground has endorsed the woman who will run America into the ground.
Some Deal
Jack McHugh of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has the goods on the deal that ended the brief government shutdown in Michigan. All politics aside, I'd like to think that I might be wrong in thinking this deal will only make Michigan's economy worse while doing nothing to resolve the budget problems facing the state, but I don't see it happening. Things are going to get worse for Michigan before they get better, and the least bad scenario is things getting bad enough quickly enough that Michigan has the sense to elect free-market, fiscal conservatives in the 2008 and 2010 elections.
Where's John Engler when you need him?
Where's John Engler when you need him?
Friday, October 05, 2007
Either/or or Both/and?
Cynical Synapse has posted a reply to my recent post on the sources of Michigan's brief shutdown. I don't know how much more I want to say on this because it looks to me like we aren't too far apart on this issue, but I think some clarification is warranted.
Synapse argues the following:
On one level, this is certainly true. Both parties are interested in maintaining and increasing their own power at the expense of the other party. This was clearly an essential part of the dynamic which led to shutdown, and all involved deserve equal blame for using the pending shutdown to make a political power play, but to dismiss the philosophical differences between the parties is to dismiss the foundation of the power play by the two sides. Because our elected officials are held accountable publicly through the electoral process, their ability to gain and hold power is grounded in the perceived effectiveness of their policies, and because it is impossible to determine the effectiveness of a policy until after it has been allowed to play itself out, you need to have well-grounded principles underlying your policies in order to justify their implementation. These principles also come in handy after the fact if the policy is the result of a compromise. Any good results are due to the implementation of your principles, while bad results proceed from the implementation of your opponent's principles.
To make a long story short, self-interest dictates adherence to principle (or at least the appearance of it). But there's another side to the story because adherence to principle has to translate to real-world benefits for those impacted by policies implementing these principles. Thus, you want the policies you implement to benefit tangibly as many people as possible, because people vote based upon their own self-interest, and if adherence to your principles benefits them, they will vote for you and people of similar mind. Thus, if you adhere to certain principles, you believe that they are true, or at least more true than those of your opponents. From this, it follows that if your opponent's principles undermine your own, policies based on those policies will be bad policies because people will be worse off than they would have been if your principles had played a greater role in forming said policies.
But this can't be the end of it because if you simply cave into the other side, allowing them to have their way, in what sense can you be said to be standing for your principles? Simply casting a vote in silent protest is little more than lying down and letting yourself get run over by a stampede. If you're going to lose a political fight, you want to go down valiantly, inflicting as much damage as possible to your opponent to establish where you stand, why you stand there, and how committed you are to holding that ground. This way, when things go South, you can say that yours was and is the better way.
Ultimately, political aims are cyclical. You advance policies grounded in certain principles because you believe they will make people better off. You want to make them better off because they will then give you the power you seek. You then use this power to advance more policies you think will make people better off because they will reward you by either allowing you to maintain your power or giving you more.
In the end, you can't separate philosophy and politics in the political process because both are essential elements of the process. Sometimes one element is more clearly seen than the other, as in the budget fiasco, but while both parties were using the mess to try and gain political advantage (and share equal blame in this regard), the philosophical differences between the parties were and are real, not simply window-dressing, and because I think the Republicans were more right than the Democrats on how best to deal with the deficit, they are more blameworthy than the Republicans.
Synapse argues the following:
The parties involved—the Democratic governor, Republican majority leader in the State Senate, and to a lesser degree the House speaker, a Democrat, want us to believe this was about the Democrats and Republicans standing up for philosophical differences in what government should be. The fact is, there's not that much difference between the two parties any more but the doublespeak they wrap their spin in.
On one level, this is certainly true. Both parties are interested in maintaining and increasing their own power at the expense of the other party. This was clearly an essential part of the dynamic which led to shutdown, and all involved deserve equal blame for using the pending shutdown to make a political power play, but to dismiss the philosophical differences between the parties is to dismiss the foundation of the power play by the two sides. Because our elected officials are held accountable publicly through the electoral process, their ability to gain and hold power is grounded in the perceived effectiveness of their policies, and because it is impossible to determine the effectiveness of a policy until after it has been allowed to play itself out, you need to have well-grounded principles underlying your policies in order to justify their implementation. These principles also come in handy after the fact if the policy is the result of a compromise. Any good results are due to the implementation of your principles, while bad results proceed from the implementation of your opponent's principles.
To make a long story short, self-interest dictates adherence to principle (or at least the appearance of it). But there's another side to the story because adherence to principle has to translate to real-world benefits for those impacted by policies implementing these principles. Thus, you want the policies you implement to benefit tangibly as many people as possible, because people vote based upon their own self-interest, and if adherence to your principles benefits them, they will vote for you and people of similar mind. Thus, if you adhere to certain principles, you believe that they are true, or at least more true than those of your opponents. From this, it follows that if your opponent's principles undermine your own, policies based on those policies will be bad policies because people will be worse off than they would have been if your principles had played a greater role in forming said policies.
But this can't be the end of it because if you simply cave into the other side, allowing them to have their way, in what sense can you be said to be standing for your principles? Simply casting a vote in silent protest is little more than lying down and letting yourself get run over by a stampede. If you're going to lose a political fight, you want to go down valiantly, inflicting as much damage as possible to your opponent to establish where you stand, why you stand there, and how committed you are to holding that ground. This way, when things go South, you can say that yours was and is the better way.
Ultimately, political aims are cyclical. You advance policies grounded in certain principles because you believe they will make people better off. You want to make them better off because they will then give you the power you seek. You then use this power to advance more policies you think will make people better off because they will reward you by either allowing you to maintain your power or giving you more.
In the end, you can't separate philosophy and politics in the political process because both are essential elements of the process. Sometimes one element is more clearly seen than the other, as in the budget fiasco, but while both parties were using the mess to try and gain political advantage (and share equal blame in this regard), the philosophical differences between the parties were and are real, not simply window-dressing, and because I think the Republicans were more right than the Democrats on how best to deal with the deficit, they are more blameworthy than the Republicans.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Mere Ineptitude?
Cynical Synapse blames the brief shutdown of Michigan's government on the sheer ineptitude of Governor Granholm and the Michigan legislature. As a small-government conservative with something of a libertarian bent (especially economically), I find myself highly sympathetic to this argument.
However, there is something else at play here which Cynical Synapse ignores and tends to be dismissed by those who don't pay much attention to politics: the fundamental philosophical differences between the two parties. This dispute was born of irreconcilable differences between the two parties on the role of government in society, and the economy in particular. Is government the engined driving economic growth, or are the economic needs of the people more dependent upon and better secured by an effectively functioning market only minimally constrained by government regulation and interference? All of the stonewalling, politicking, maneuvering, demagoguery, procrastination, inflexibility, and general b.s. surrounding the budget fight were an attempt by each party to craft the budget in a manner consistent with its view of the role of government.
What's more, it really should be no surprise that politicians in political institutions play politics with political issues. It may be ugly, but this is how we have decided to make our laws. We choose up sides and do everything in our power to make sure our side wins because we believe our side is right. When the resulting policy doesn't perfectly reflect our principles, we do everything in our power to make sure the resulting policy shows the wisdom of our views by claiming credit for the policy's successes and blaming its failures on the aspects of the policy favored by the other party.
Another factor that has to be considered is the fact that Michigan's constitution prohibits the state running a deficit. Therefore, it was impossible for both sides to come together and agree to kick the can down the road with deficit spending. Spending had to be cut and/or "revenues"* (i.e. taxes) had to be raised. Republicans favor the former solution while Democrats favor the latter, and both sides were probably going to have to give. The question was over who going to come out ahead politically, and both sides deliberately engaged in brinkmanship to either get all of what they wanted (not likely) or to make the other side look bad, and both sides succeeded at that.
A final factor in the situation is the current plight of GM, Ford and Chrysler. For decades, Michigan has been dependent upon the auto industry for a huge portion of its tax revenue. With the struggles facing the Big Three in terms of sales and expenses and these companies locating plants outside the United States to cut costs, not to mention straight plant closings, Michigan has suffered a massive reduction in tax revenue from one of its biggest sources, and it has paid the price for the profligate spending supported by these tax revenues. It is unfair to say that the current government of Michigan owns a budget crisis that was dropped in its lap by the lack of foresight by previous governments and the travails of the auto industry. It is fair to say that after five years of economic hardship, the state government has failed to put Michigan in a position to overcome its economic struggles. The tax plan that was passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor was a short term solution at best. It would not surprise me in any way if we were debating this same issue of tax increases versus spending cuts at budget time next year.
*I find using the term "revenues" in this context to be rather dishonest. There are two factors in determining the size of tax revenues: the tax rate and the size of the tax base. It is true that, given a fixed (in monetary terms) tax base, increasing taxes will increase revenue, but it is also true that given a fixed tax rate, increasing the monetary value of the tax base will also increase revenue. What's more, if a cut in a tax rate causes a sufficient rise in the monetary value of the tax base, it is possible for revenues from those taxes to increase.
However, there is something else at play here which Cynical Synapse ignores and tends to be dismissed by those who don't pay much attention to politics: the fundamental philosophical differences between the two parties. This dispute was born of irreconcilable differences between the two parties on the role of government in society, and the economy in particular. Is government the engined driving economic growth, or are the economic needs of the people more dependent upon and better secured by an effectively functioning market only minimally constrained by government regulation and interference? All of the stonewalling, politicking, maneuvering, demagoguery, procrastination, inflexibility, and general b.s. surrounding the budget fight were an attempt by each party to craft the budget in a manner consistent with its view of the role of government.
What's more, it really should be no surprise that politicians in political institutions play politics with political issues. It may be ugly, but this is how we have decided to make our laws. We choose up sides and do everything in our power to make sure our side wins because we believe our side is right. When the resulting policy doesn't perfectly reflect our principles, we do everything in our power to make sure the resulting policy shows the wisdom of our views by claiming credit for the policy's successes and blaming its failures on the aspects of the policy favored by the other party.
Another factor that has to be considered is the fact that Michigan's constitution prohibits the state running a deficit. Therefore, it was impossible for both sides to come together and agree to kick the can down the road with deficit spending. Spending had to be cut and/or "revenues"* (i.e. taxes) had to be raised. Republicans favor the former solution while Democrats favor the latter, and both sides were probably going to have to give. The question was over who going to come out ahead politically, and both sides deliberately engaged in brinkmanship to either get all of what they wanted (not likely) or to make the other side look bad, and both sides succeeded at that.
A final factor in the situation is the current plight of GM, Ford and Chrysler. For decades, Michigan has been dependent upon the auto industry for a huge portion of its tax revenue. With the struggles facing the Big Three in terms of sales and expenses and these companies locating plants outside the United States to cut costs, not to mention straight plant closings, Michigan has suffered a massive reduction in tax revenue from one of its biggest sources, and it has paid the price for the profligate spending supported by these tax revenues. It is unfair to say that the current government of Michigan owns a budget crisis that was dropped in its lap by the lack of foresight by previous governments and the travails of the auto industry. It is fair to say that after five years of economic hardship, the state government has failed to put Michigan in a position to overcome its economic struggles. The tax plan that was passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor was a short term solution at best. It would not surprise me in any way if we were debating this same issue of tax increases versus spending cuts at budget time next year.
*I find using the term "revenues" in this context to be rather dishonest. There are two factors in determining the size of tax revenues: the tax rate and the size of the tax base. It is true that, given a fixed (in monetary terms) tax base, increasing taxes will increase revenue, but it is also true that given a fixed tax rate, increasing the monetary value of the tax base will also increase revenue. What's more, if a cut in a tax rate causes a sufficient rise in the monetary value of the tax base, it is possible for revenues from those taxes to increase.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
The Madness Grows
Friday, the state of Michigan sent a memo to 35,000 of its 53,000 workers instructing them not to come into work on Monday because they are being temporarily laid off until such time as a budget is passed. This is reasonable as you don't want to have people come into work if you can't pay them, but there's a problem. Union contracts require at least twenty days' notice of impending layoffs to give those workers time to prepare (one of the good things unions have been able to procure for their members). Several hours after the temporary layoffs were announced, the Civil Service Commission failed to enact a rule change that would have enabled the governor to follow through on the announcement. Granted, it's not like this is something that sort came out of the blue, so workers have probably been preparing for this eventuality for some time, but the governor's failure to put herself in a position to deal with the looming shutdown by temporarily laying off non-essential workers in a manner consistent with the contract the state has signed with its workers' unions is yet another example of how her governance of the state has been utterly inept.
Governor Granholm is bound and determined to advance policies which continue to prevent Michigan from dealing with its severe economic problems (highest unemployment rate in the country) for the sake of protecting the interests of her union backers, and now she's willing to let the government close down in order to secure these aims. The sad thing is that the tax increases the governor wants to impose aren't even necessary for the fiscal health of the state. What's more, if the state wanted to save another $194 million, it could move its employees into Health Savings Accounts.
In her 2006 State of the State address, Granholm said that, because of her economic policies, we'd be blown away (this after four years of the state economy tanking on her watch). So far, she's being proven right, though not in the way she probably had in mind.
Governor Granholm is bound and determined to advance policies which continue to prevent Michigan from dealing with its severe economic problems (highest unemployment rate in the country) for the sake of protecting the interests of her union backers, and now she's willing to let the government close down in order to secure these aims. The sad thing is that the tax increases the governor wants to impose aren't even necessary for the fiscal health of the state. What's more, if the state wanted to save another $194 million, it could move its employees into Health Savings Accounts.
In her 2006 State of the State address, Granholm said that, because of her economic policies, we'd be blown away (this after four years of the state economy tanking on her watch). So far, she's being proven right, though not in the way she probably had in mind.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Once More Into the Tank
Michigan's government is on the verge of shutting down because an agreement cannot be reached on whether to simply cut spending or raise income taxes as well. Governor Granholm and her Democrat allies in the state legislature contend that the income tax must be raised to overcome the $1.75 billion shortfall. Republicans feel that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has a way to do it. Of course, shutting down the government should save money too. Shut everything down for a couple weeks, and that should clear up that pesky budget shortfall. Granted, this will make for some difficulties, but it might not be all that bad.
Michigan is in the tank economically, and raising taxes will only make things worse, not to mention making things harder for a lot of people struggling to get by as it is. Republicans should stick to their guns and resist the siren song of increased revenue through increased taxation. Michigan's government is highly inefficient, and it needs to straighten itself out, streamline its spending and bureaucracy, and not pursue a short-sighted tax increase that in the end will only serve to hit Michigan's citizens in their pocketbooks and create a disincentive for businesses to invest in the state. In this environment, the consequences of a brief shutdown are better than the consequences of a tax increase that is, for all intents and purposes, unnecessary.
Michigan is in the tank economically, and raising taxes will only make things worse, not to mention making things harder for a lot of people struggling to get by as it is. Republicans should stick to their guns and resist the siren song of increased revenue through increased taxation. Michigan's government is highly inefficient, and it needs to straighten itself out, streamline its spending and bureaucracy, and not pursue a short-sighted tax increase that in the end will only serve to hit Michigan's citizens in their pocketbooks and create a disincentive for businesses to invest in the state. In this environment, the consequences of a brief shutdown are better than the consequences of a tax increase that is, for all intents and purposes, unnecessary.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Why Do They Hate Us?
Is it because of our foreign policy, as many on the left and some paleoconservatives assert? Is it because of our liberty and/or decadent lifestyle, as maintained by many on the right? No. Al Qaeda hates the West and wages jihad against it because the West is not Muslim.
Jean-Francois Revel once said that "Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it." Al Qaeda recognizes this and uses its propaganda to convince the West to direct its blame for the present unpleasantness inward on itself instead of blaming those who actually perpetrate terrorist attacks. Is it merely a coincidence that, say, al Qaeda's propaganda vis-a-vis Israel lines up nicely with those elements of the left for whom Palestine is a cause celebre as well as paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan? Is it any coincidence that al Qaeda's condemnations of Western decadence line up nicely with the criticisms leveled by many social conservatives (among whom I would number myself)? Irrespective of whether or not these criticisms have merit on their own, al Qaeda's purpose in issuing these proclamations is to cause people in Western society to turn their attention from the real enemy, al Qaeda and the various other Islamofascists, and make the disparate factions which make up Western society waste their energy fighting each other instead of fighting the forces waging open war on the West with terrorist tactics.
The West has been horribly divided since the Reformation (and Christendom since Rome and Constantinople split in 1054 A.D.), and its energies have largely been expended with internal conflicts that have had devastating consequences, especially for Europe, culminating in two World Wars and the Cold War. True, great political, economic and technological progress have been made, especially within the last hundred years, but this progress has masked a crisis of truth, not to mention the demographic crunch that threatens to undermine the most advanced nations in the world. Simply put, the West has enough problems as it is. We can scarcely afford to let al Qaeda propaganda exacerbate the divisions that threaten to undermine our efforts to deal with the threat posed by al Qaeda and their ilk.
Jean-Francois Revel once said that "Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it." Al Qaeda recognizes this and uses its propaganda to convince the West to direct its blame for the present unpleasantness inward on itself instead of blaming those who actually perpetrate terrorist attacks. Is it merely a coincidence that, say, al Qaeda's propaganda vis-a-vis Israel lines up nicely with those elements of the left for whom Palestine is a cause celebre as well as paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan? Is it any coincidence that al Qaeda's condemnations of Western decadence line up nicely with the criticisms leveled by many social conservatives (among whom I would number myself)? Irrespective of whether or not these criticisms have merit on their own, al Qaeda's purpose in issuing these proclamations is to cause people in Western society to turn their attention from the real enemy, al Qaeda and the various other Islamofascists, and make the disparate factions which make up Western society waste their energy fighting each other instead of fighting the forces waging open war on the West with terrorist tactics.
The West has been horribly divided since the Reformation (and Christendom since Rome and Constantinople split in 1054 A.D.), and its energies have largely been expended with internal conflicts that have had devastating consequences, especially for Europe, culminating in two World Wars and the Cold War. True, great political, economic and technological progress have been made, especially within the last hundred years, but this progress has masked a crisis of truth, not to mention the demographic crunch that threatens to undermine the most advanced nations in the world. Simply put, the West has enough problems as it is. We can scarcely afford to let al Qaeda propaganda exacerbate the divisions that threaten to undermine our efforts to deal with the threat posed by al Qaeda and their ilk.
Want the Government to Fix Health Care?
What if government is the problem? The CATO Institute's Michael Cannon explains.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Abortion and the New Eugenics
Dissent magazine has published a fascinating piece by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow on a rift emerging between two factions of the abortion rights movement: those who believe reproductive rights include the right to determine the genetic makeup of your children and those who, for a variety of reasons, don't. That such a divide exists is no surprise, but what makes the piece interesting is the attempt to dissociate abortion rights from eugenics, though it is ultimately unconvincing.
Though the argument is eloquent and largely well-reasoned, it falls apart on two points. The first is the apologia for Margaret Sanger's views on eugenics. For those who are unaware, Margaret Sanger was the inventor of the birth control pill and the founder of Planned Parenthood who propagated views on eugenics that are, frankly, odious (see the piece for one example). Tuhus-Dubrow essentially asserts that Sanger didn't believe what she said, only advancing these views out of political expedience, while not providing any hard evidence in support of this assertion. It may well be that this is correct, but Tuhus-Dubrow gives no reason to accept this as so.
The other area where Tuhus-Dubrow's argument is falls short is much more interesting because it goes to the fundamental divide between the pro-abortion and pro-life factions. Tuhus-Dubrow writes
Many feminists are troubled by sex selection, but fear that regulating any aspect of reproduction could jeopardize abortion rights.
Though the argument is eloquent and largely well-reasoned, it falls apart on two points. The first is the apologia for Margaret Sanger's views on eugenics. For those who are unaware, Margaret Sanger was the inventor of the birth control pill and the founder of Planned Parenthood who propagated views on eugenics that are, frankly, odious (see the piece for one example). Tuhus-Dubrow essentially asserts that Sanger didn't believe what she said, only advancing these views out of political expedience, while not providing any hard evidence in support of this assertion. It may well be that this is correct, but Tuhus-Dubrow gives no reason to accept this as so.
The other area where Tuhus-Dubrow's argument is falls short is much more interesting because it goes to the fundamental divide between the pro-abortion and pro-life factions. Tuhus-Dubrow writes
Many feminists are troubled by sex selection, but fear that regulating any aspect of reproduction could jeopardize abortion rights.
The relevant legal infrastructure adds another complication. The court decisions that uphold rights valued by progressives could also afford protection to the right to design babies. This applies to all of the major cases affirming the right to contraception and abortion: Griswold and Roe, but also Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which recognized the right of unmarried people to use contraception, and even Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which allowed some restrictions on abortion but reiterated the essential right of people to make decisions regarding reproduction. Further, Lawrence v. Texas (2003), hailed by the left for striking down sodomy laws, dramatically limits the ability of government to restrict personal decisions “absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects.” Although progressives welcome these freedoms, the implications for the unfettered use of reprogenetic technologies are disturbing. (Of course, the recent decision in Gonzalez v. Carhart raises questions about the durability of these liberties under the current Supreme Court.)This is where pro-choice activists go wrong and why, in my mind, the link between abortion and eugenics cannot be severed in good faith, only shoved into the background. It is certainly true that the pro-choice movement seeks to give women "freedom to control their own lives and bodies," but where pregnancy is concerned, a woman cannot control her own life and body without controlling the life and body of her unborn child. If, as Tuhus-Dubrow argues, it is wrong for women (or men for that matter) to determine the genetic makeup of their children because it is wrong for them to control the lives and bodies of their children, then it is also wrong for them to terminate their pregnancy because terminating the pregnancy by its very nature involves exercising the ultimate control over the lives and bodies of their children by killing them. Thus, the case for abortion rights Tuhus-Dubrow seeks to preserve cannot be preserved without simultaneously securing the case for designer babies.
Legal issues aside, in the court of public opinion reproductive rights may be conflated with a libertarian view on genetic technologies. University of Texas law professor John Robertson has defended the use of reprogenetic technologies on the grounds of “procreative liberty.” His argument goes like this: people have the right to procreate; sometimes the choice whether to procreate depends on the qualities of the prospective offspring; therefore, enhancement must be permitted (although he endorses limited restrictions). British author Nicholas Agar, in his recent book Liberal Eugenics, writes, “The eugenics defended here [is] primarily concerned with the protection and extension of reproductive freedom.” Thus can the concept of reproductive choice be appropriated and abused.
The first and least controversial task for pro-choice activists, then, is to make it very clear that the rights for which they have fought are fundamentally different from the right to determine the genetic makeup of offspring. Whether the latter right is legitimate or not, it is not the same as or an extension of the former. Pro-choice activists have struggled for women’s freedom to control their own lives and bodies, not to control the lives and bodies of their children . (emphasis added)
Monday, September 24, 2007
This'll Help Michigan's Economy
GM workers have gone on strike. According to UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, the talks broke down over the issue of job security. Not being privy to the details of the negotiations, I don't know what changes GM wanted to make to the contract that would have made it easier for them to fire workers, but from what I've heard about workers in GM plants getting away with, GM needed some leeway here. I've heard stories of workers leaving work several hours early to go to a bar and having a co-worker punch them out at the appropriate time. Oftentimes it is so difficult and costly to fire workers who perform their jobs poorly that it is less costly to keep them on than to fire them and replace them with someone who will do the job well.
Now, it certainly reasonable for the UAW to protect its workers from arbitrary and/or unjust firing, but in order for GM to once again become the class of the automotive world, it must have the flexibility to ensure that it can hire the most effective and efficient workforce possible. The two must be balanced, and right now the scales are tilted heavily toward the UAW to the detriment of GM, its shareholders, its consumers, and its workers.
Now, it certainly reasonable for the UAW to protect its workers from arbitrary and/or unjust firing, but in order for GM to once again become the class of the automotive world, it must have the flexibility to ensure that it can hire the most effective and efficient workforce possible. The two must be balanced, and right now the scales are tilted heavily toward the UAW to the detriment of GM, its shareholders, its consumers, and its workers.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Potentially Bad News on The Diplomatic Front
Saturday, September 08, 2007
This Is News?
The pope is opposed to abortion. Certainly the Holy Father's speech was newsworthy, but the headline gives the indication that the content of his proclamation of what has been Church teaching from the beginning was somehow unexpected. What's next? Shock that the pope believes the bread and wine offered in the Mass are transsubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ?
Still, it was good to read this quote:
It's also kind of funny to see Reuters' biases in plain view in the following quote:
Here in the States, politicians talk about how children are our future (true, even if it sounds tacky), but in Europe, it's become "Children fund our pensions." And of course, high housing prices are more of a disincentive to having children than, say, the astronomically high taxes in most of Europe.
Still, it was good to read this quote:
"It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself," he said in an address at the former imperial Hofburg Palace.
"This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right -- it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society."
It's also kind of funny to see Reuters' biases in plain view in the following quote:
The average birth rate in the European Union is down to about 1.5 children per woman, raising fears that an ageing population will not be able to finance pensions systems.(emphasis mine)
Some European countries have adopted, or plan to, incentives to encourage couples to have children, to try to reverse trends where couples have fewer children and begin families later. Experts say high housing prices are partly to blame.
Here in the States, politicians talk about how children are our future (true, even if it sounds tacky), but in Europe, it's become "Children fund our pensions." And of course, high housing prices are more of a disincentive to having children than, say, the astronomically high taxes in most of Europe.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Will We Have to Rename Them Flemish Waffles?
Ethnic tensions are on the rise in Belgium as the industrious Flemish are getting sick of supporting Wallonian welfare queens.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
What Gun Control Hath Wrought
In Great Britain, where private handgun ownership is banned, and it is exceedingly difficult to obtain any sort of gun legally, parents now want to send their children to school with body armor.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Al Gore's Delusions of Godhead
Mark Steyn pokes fun at the tendency of prominent Democrats to cite generic African proverbs, and in the end he takes a jab at Al Gore:
While I'm tempted to point out that going far quickly together would likely produce immense greenhouse has emissions and leave it at that, a closer reading of Gore's quote has some rather disturbing implications. You can move most quickly on your own once you have decided upon a course of action because you naturally go where you decide to go without needing to expend energy to make sure everyone else stays in line. You can go far in a large group because there's strength in numbers. Gore wants the best of both worlds: having large numbers of people embark on a quest to end global warming with the focus and resoluteness of purpose of an individual. The only way to achieve this is for the group to completely submit its will to the individual who decides where to go and how to get there. In other words, Al Gore wants the world (ultimately) to blindly submit to his will in an effort to combat global warming.
"There's an African proverb that says, 'If you want to go quick, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.' We have to go far quickly," former Vice President Al Gore told a packed, rapt house at the Benedict Music Tent Wednesday. With many scientists pointing to a window of less than 10 years to moderate the effects of global warming, he said, meaningful change is still possible, but "It is a race."
While I'm tempted to point out that going far quickly together would likely produce immense greenhouse has emissions and leave it at that, a closer reading of Gore's quote has some rather disturbing implications. You can move most quickly on your own once you have decided upon a course of action because you naturally go where you decide to go without needing to expend energy to make sure everyone else stays in line. You can go far in a large group because there's strength in numbers. Gore wants the best of both worlds: having large numbers of people embark on a quest to end global warming with the focus and resoluteness of purpose of an individual. The only way to achieve this is for the group to completely submit its will to the individual who decides where to go and how to get there. In other words, Al Gore wants the world (ultimately) to blindly submit to his will in an effort to combat global warming.
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Thursday, July 19, 2007
Earmarks Gone Wild
That's Drudge's label for this story. I'm picturing a bill lifting its cover page to reveal a couple of strategically placed dollar signs.
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Monday, July 16, 2007
An Unnecessary Dichotomy
Britain's Guardian newspaper is reporting that
Now, I find this conclusion rather dubious at this point and would have a great time pointing out the flaws in the article's argument, my time is better spent asking the following question: Why do the solutions to foreign policy issues have to be viewed through a prism of either diplomacy or military action? Why can't problems like this be viewed through a both/and prism instead (much like President Clinton's bombings of Yugoslavia to bring the Serbs back to the negotiating table in the mid-1990's)?
In this instance, there is tension on several fronts between the United States and Iran, from Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program, to Iranian interference in Iraq and Afghanistan. It goes without saying that given the military position of the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a full scale war with the mullahs is undesirable, though it may become necessary if a negotiated settlement of the issues cannot be reached (color me highly skeptical at best).
Now, in order for a diplomatic settlement to be efficacious in bringing these U.S.-Iran crises to an end which secures the interests of the United States and her allies, Iran has to see such a settlement as being in its best interests, and the United States needs to be able to trust the Iranians. Given how things have progressed so far, neither of those conditions is present. Ali Larijani continues to stall the Europeans while the Iranian nuclear program continues unabated (while Russia and China give their tacit approval), and Iran continues to support both Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shiite militias there, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan (never mind their alliance with Syria and their support for the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah).
This is where the military element comes into play. If the United Sates were to declare the right of hot pursuit into Iran (including tracing supply lines to their source an eliminating them), Iran would be paying a price for their interference in Iraq and Afghanistan. At this point, Iran could either escalate or capitulate (neither a very attractive option), unless the United States offers them the out of a negotiated settlement whereby Iran ceases its interference in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the United States ceases its incursions into Iran (reserving the right to resume them should Iran's interference in Iraq and/or Afghanistan resume, of course).
Two effects should result from this: Iran's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan would cease (or at least be severely curtailed), and the United States will have shown the will to use her power to secure her interests, giving her a newfound credibility on the international stage. This can then be brought to bear in the Iranian nuclear crisis, where the threat of military action (unilateral, if necessary) can be used to buy breathing room to reach a diplomatic settlement (i.e. either Iran ceases its uranium enrichment immediately and verifiably, or the United States does it for them, even if that means Israel hitting Syria). Furthermore, if the United States makes it clear that any breach of a resulting agreement by Iran will be viewed as an act of war, Iran will have a rather powerful incentive to abide by any agreement reached.
Of course, diplomacy isn't just about beating people over the head with sticks (or threatening to do so), it's also about offering them benefits. In this case, it seems reasonable to me that the United States should publicly announce its desire to reach a solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, preferably diplomatically and offer direct negotiations with the Iranians with the understanding that a refusal by Tehran to negotiate will indicate that they are not willing to resolve this diplomatically, which will be viewed by Washington as a causus belli. And because a relationship of trust must be established between the parties, the United States, as a gesture of goodwill, will reestablish its embassy in Tehran (with adequate security, of course), provided Tehran reciprocates by immediately suspending uranium enrichment in a verifiable manner.
The major objection to this move would be that it does too much to prop up, the oppressive, hostile, tottering mullahcracy in Tehran and would lead to greater oppression of the Iranian people. What's more, even if Tehran shuts down what we know about, they surely have more we don't know about. The second point is almost certainly true, and the second one could very well be, but it doesn't have to be in the long run or even the medium run. The United States should use her embassy for diplomatic purposes, yes, but she should also use it to broadcast Voice of America to the Iranian people and as a base to establish a human intelligence network within the Iranian government. Also, as negotiations progress, the United States should borrow from President Reagan's playbook and insist upon human rights provisions (e.g. the release of political prisoners) as a prerequisite to any deal. If done effectively, these should give us better knowledge of what the mullahs are doing and help undermine their grip on the Iranian people.
Would something like this work? I don't know. It's easy to lay out something like this on a blog, it's another thing entirely to have to make it happen. Still, I don't see why an effectively integrated military/diplomatic approach focused on results over process can't succeed.
The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
Now, I find this conclusion rather dubious at this point and would have a great time pointing out the flaws in the article's argument, my time is better spent asking the following question: Why do the solutions to foreign policy issues have to be viewed through a prism of either diplomacy or military action? Why can't problems like this be viewed through a both/and prism instead (much like President Clinton's bombings of Yugoslavia to bring the Serbs back to the negotiating table in the mid-1990's)?
In this instance, there is tension on several fronts between the United States and Iran, from Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program, to Iranian interference in Iraq and Afghanistan. It goes without saying that given the military position of the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a full scale war with the mullahs is undesirable, though it may become necessary if a negotiated settlement of the issues cannot be reached (color me highly skeptical at best).
Now, in order for a diplomatic settlement to be efficacious in bringing these U.S.-Iran crises to an end which secures the interests of the United States and her allies, Iran has to see such a settlement as being in its best interests, and the United States needs to be able to trust the Iranians. Given how things have progressed so far, neither of those conditions is present. Ali Larijani continues to stall the Europeans while the Iranian nuclear program continues unabated (while Russia and China give their tacit approval), and Iran continues to support both Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shiite militias there, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan (never mind their alliance with Syria and their support for the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah).
This is where the military element comes into play. If the United Sates were to declare the right of hot pursuit into Iran (including tracing supply lines to their source an eliminating them), Iran would be paying a price for their interference in Iraq and Afghanistan. At this point, Iran could either escalate or capitulate (neither a very attractive option), unless the United States offers them the out of a negotiated settlement whereby Iran ceases its interference in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the United States ceases its incursions into Iran (reserving the right to resume them should Iran's interference in Iraq and/or Afghanistan resume, of course).
Two effects should result from this: Iran's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan would cease (or at least be severely curtailed), and the United States will have shown the will to use her power to secure her interests, giving her a newfound credibility on the international stage. This can then be brought to bear in the Iranian nuclear crisis, where the threat of military action (unilateral, if necessary) can be used to buy breathing room to reach a diplomatic settlement (i.e. either Iran ceases its uranium enrichment immediately and verifiably, or the United States does it for them, even if that means Israel hitting Syria). Furthermore, if the United States makes it clear that any breach of a resulting agreement by Iran will be viewed as an act of war, Iran will have a rather powerful incentive to abide by any agreement reached.
Of course, diplomacy isn't just about beating people over the head with sticks (or threatening to do so), it's also about offering them benefits. In this case, it seems reasonable to me that the United States should publicly announce its desire to reach a solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, preferably diplomatically and offer direct negotiations with the Iranians with the understanding that a refusal by Tehran to negotiate will indicate that they are not willing to resolve this diplomatically, which will be viewed by Washington as a causus belli. And because a relationship of trust must be established between the parties, the United States, as a gesture of goodwill, will reestablish its embassy in Tehran (with adequate security, of course), provided Tehran reciprocates by immediately suspending uranium enrichment in a verifiable manner.
The major objection to this move would be that it does too much to prop up, the oppressive, hostile, tottering mullahcracy in Tehran and would lead to greater oppression of the Iranian people. What's more, even if Tehran shuts down what we know about, they surely have more we don't know about. The second point is almost certainly true, and the second one could very well be, but it doesn't have to be in the long run or even the medium run. The United States should use her embassy for diplomatic purposes, yes, but she should also use it to broadcast Voice of America to the Iranian people and as a base to establish a human intelligence network within the Iranian government. Also, as negotiations progress, the United States should borrow from President Reagan's playbook and insist upon human rights provisions (e.g. the release of political prisoners) as a prerequisite to any deal. If done effectively, these should give us better knowledge of what the mullahs are doing and help undermine their grip on the Iranian people.
Would something like this work? I don't know. It's easy to lay out something like this on a blog, it's another thing entirely to have to make it happen. Still, I don't see why an effectively integrated military/diplomatic approach focused on results over process can't succeed.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
There Goes My Brilliant Idea
Somewhat to my surprise, Israel has declared that it won't intervene in Gaza following its takeover by Hamas. The reason this comes as a surprise to me is Hamas is backed by Iran and Syria, who also support Hezbollah. Furthermore, tensions between Syria and Israel have risen to the point where some believe there might be war between the two countries this summer. If that is indeed the case, it would be prudent for Israel to attempt to secure itself against an attack from Hamas in retaliation to Israel engaging Hezbollah and/or Syria in combat, avoiding a two-front war. Furthermore, it is likely that Israel would receive political cover for intervening in Gaza from some unlikely sources, namely Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who are concerned over Iran's growing influence in the region and would want to see Iran's hand weakened strategically by the loss of the newly-acquired Gaza strip and politically by a humiliating loss at the hands of the Zionists.
As long as Hamas and Fatah were fighting each other in the Gaza Strip, it was in Israel's best interest just to let them kill each other, but now that a winner has emerged, some sort of engagement is needed. If Fatah had emerged victorious, a diplomatic solution was not inconceivable (even if it was unlikely), but with Hamas' triumph in Gaza, it will only be a matter of time before Hamas consolidates its power in Gaza and turns its attention to Israel. Israel would do well to act to limit the danger posed by Hamas' control of Gaza, and that necessitates military action.
As long as Hamas and Fatah were fighting each other in the Gaza Strip, it was in Israel's best interest just to let them kill each other, but now that a winner has emerged, some sort of engagement is needed. If Fatah had emerged victorious, a diplomatic solution was not inconceivable (even if it was unlikely), but with Hamas' triumph in Gaza, it will only be a matter of time before Hamas consolidates its power in Gaza and turns its attention to Israel. Israel would do well to act to limit the danger posed by Hamas' control of Gaza, and that necessitates military action.
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Saturday, June 09, 2007
Media Bias? Probably.
Jules Crittenden has some interesting casualty numbers from Iraq. They're interesting not because they somehow disagree with figures for the deaths of U.S. troops or Iraqi civilians in Iraq, but because numbers like this have not shown up in any story about Iraq in the reporting of any major news organization (including that redoubt of "conservative" journalism, Fox News). They are figures for the number of terrorists killed or wounded in Iraq since January of this year:
Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and the Shiite militias (all funded, trained and supplied by Iran and/or its proxy, Syria) are no match for the American military, and numbers like this prove it. There is no way the United States can lose this war militarily. The only way we can lose is if we lose the political will to continue fighting. The terrorists, as well as Iran and Syria, have recognized this and have carried out attacks designed to have maximum political, not military, impact, and they have succeeded in undermining support for a war that, by any objective measure, the United States cannot lose. What is unfathomable is that most of the American media and many political figures in the United States have either fallen for this gambit or used it to further their own political ends to the detriment of the American war effort. Also, for reasons stated here, I think this has had the ironic effect of increasing civilian casualties in Iraq.
Hat Tips: The Corner, Instapundit
Chuck Simmins of TDW had been toiling away diligently, recording the deaths of terrorists as reported by MNF-I flaks. Turns out, they weren’t reporting them all. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno had a press conference recently, largely ignored by the press, in which he reported 3,184 terrorists killed since January 2007, and another 1,018 wounded. Simmins took that number, subtracted the ones he had already logged to avoid duplication, and then averaged them out over the last six months. Turns out our soldiers are killing terrorists at a rate of up to 10 to 1.So, in the past five-plus months, nearly as many terrorists have been killed as U.S. troops have been in the past four years, two and a half months. One of the reasons I think support for the war has fallen as much as it has is that reporting the cost of soldiers' and Iraqi civilians' lives and terrorist attacks in conjunction with the benefits of a messy political process, which have been spotty. I have a very hard time believing that people's opinion of the situation would be so pessimistic if U.S. casualties were consistently juxtaposed with terrorist/militia casualties because such numbers make it clear that the terrorists are paying a heavy price to inflict casualties upon American troops. This is something Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar have recognized, which is why they're siding more and more with the Americans (along with the fact that al Qaeda in Iraq overplayed their hand).
Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and the Shiite militias (all funded, trained and supplied by Iran and/or its proxy, Syria) are no match for the American military, and numbers like this prove it. There is no way the United States can lose this war militarily. The only way we can lose is if we lose the political will to continue fighting. The terrorists, as well as Iran and Syria, have recognized this and have carried out attacks designed to have maximum political, not military, impact, and they have succeeded in undermining support for a war that, by any objective measure, the United States cannot lose. What is unfathomable is that most of the American media and many political figures in the United States have either fallen for this gambit or used it to further their own political ends to the detriment of the American war effort. Also, for reasons stated here, I think this has had the ironic effect of increasing civilian casualties in Iraq.
Hat Tips: The Corner, Instapundit
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Thursday, June 07, 2007
Why Is This Happening?
One of the arguments meant to mollify conservatives who object to the amnesty bill working its way through the Senate was that it would lead to an increased percentage of Hispanic voters joining the Republican party. Apparently that's not the case.
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Tuesday, June 05, 2007
How Bad Is It in Cuba?
Even the brothels are closing:
This does not mean that those still in Cuba are acquiescent or happy. They are far poorer than their eastern European counterparts were in 1989: the average wage, at $20 a month, can barely feed a single person for a couple of weeks. You cannot spend any length of time in Havana without noticing the lack of food for the majority of Cubans. The mother of a friend, an old lady who lived in one tiny rotting room in a former brothel with her son, gets by selling matchboxes to her neighbours, having stolen them from the factory where she worked. Another acquaintance keeps pigs on her balcony and sells pork to a few locals. The luckier ones sell cigars or taxi rides to foreigners. An elite work in hotels.I also love the contrast between Cuba and the U.S. implied by that last sentence. In Cuba, hotel workers are considered elite. In the U.S. hotel worker tends to be one of those "jobs Americans won't do.," so we hire illegal immigrants to work in our hotels (unless the job requires English proficiency).
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Tuesday, May 29, 2007
With All This Star Wars Love
Somebody had to throw water on it, and Mark Steyn floods the scene with his evisceration of the prequel trilogy.
Money quote from the review of Swill Rots:
Money quote from the review of Swill Rots:
You can’t make the core of the story the absolute overpowering love of boy for girl when the two of them have all the sexual chemistry of their Burger King merchandising tie-in action figures.
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Sunday, April 22, 2007
Were There WMD in Iraq?
If Dave Gaubatz is correct, there were.
Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq — two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra — which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true.
This was, in the first place, because of the massive size of these sites and the extreme lengths to which the Iraqis had gone to conceal them. Three of them were bunkers buried 20 to 30 feet beneath the Euphrates. They had been constructed through building dams which were removed after the huge subterranean vaults had been
excavated so that these were concealed beneath the river bed. The bunker walls were made of reinforced concrete five feet thick.‘There was no doubt, with so much effort having gone into hiding these
constructions, that something very important was buried there’, says Mr Gaubatz. By speaking to a wide range of Iraqis, some of whom risked their lives by talking to him and whose accounts were provided in ignorance of each other, he built up a picture of the nuclear, chemical and biological materials they said were buried underground.‘They explained in detail why WMDs were in these areas and asked the US to
remove them,’ says Mr Gaubatz. ‘Much of this material had been buried in the concrete bunkers and in the sewage pipe system. There were also missile imprints in the area and signs of chemical activity — gas masks, decontamination kits, atropine needles. The Iraqis and my team had no doubt at all that WMDs were hidden there.’There was yet another significant piece of circumstantial corroboration. The medical
records of Mr Gaubatz and his team showed that at these sites they had been exposed to high levels of radiation.
And what happened to these WMD?
The problem was that the ISG were concentrating their efforts in looking for WMD in northern Iraq and this was in the south,’ says Mr Gaubatz. ‘They were just swept up by reports of WMD in so many different locations. But we told them that if they didn’t excavate these sites, others would.’
That, he says, is precisely what happened. He subsequently learnt from Iraqi, CIA and British intelligence that the WMD buried in the four sites were excavated by Iraqis and Syrians, with help from the Russians, and moved to Syria. The location in Syria of this material, he says, is also known to these intelligence agencies. The worst-case scenario has now come about. Saddam’s nuclear, biological and chemical material is in the hands of a rogue terrorist state — and one with close links to Iran.
So the Russians, who are currently building a heavy water nuclear reactor for the Iranians at Bushehr and are currently blocking efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear program helped transport Saddam's WMD to Syria, Iran's closest ally.
Of course, all this assumes Gaubatz is right. As someone who already believed Saddam's WMD had made their way into Syria, I'm inclined to believe him. What's more, his account of why the WMD weren't found there tracks pretty well with what we already know about the performance of both the intelligence community and the Coalition Provisional Authority. His account would also explain how insurgent groups in Iraq were able to get their hands on the chlorine gas that have been used in several truck bombs detonated in Iraq, though it would also raise the question of why nothing more potent has been used.
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Al Gore 2008?
Maybe.
Right now he seems like the Dems equivalent of Fred Thompson. He's the guy on which people dissatisfied with the current crop of candidates have pinned their hopes. This would seem to leave him with a slightly smaller constituency among Democrats than Thompson has among Republicans, but I could also see supporters of Hillary, Obama and Edwards giving him a fresh look if he were to actually announce his candidacy. Personally, I think he'll do something similar to Newt Gingrich. He'll look at how the field develops over the summer, and if no candidate emerges as the clear front-runner, he'll get in the race. The other likely possibility is that he'll get in if one of the big three candidates falters. He may also get in just to stop Hillary getting the nomination, though I think he'd have to be pretty confident in his chances of winning the nomination himself to do that.
In the end, only Al Gore knows his own mind, and this only so much idle speculation. Still, I think Gore gets in the race before the end of the summer unless someone opens up a big lead by then.
Right now he seems like the Dems equivalent of Fred Thompson. He's the guy on which people dissatisfied with the current crop of candidates have pinned their hopes. This would seem to leave him with a slightly smaller constituency among Democrats than Thompson has among Republicans, but I could also see supporters of Hillary, Obama and Edwards giving him a fresh look if he were to actually announce his candidacy. Personally, I think he'll do something similar to Newt Gingrich. He'll look at how the field develops over the summer, and if no candidate emerges as the clear front-runner, he'll get in the race. The other likely possibility is that he'll get in if one of the big three candidates falters. He may also get in just to stop Hillary getting the nomination, though I think he'd have to be pretty confident in his chances of winning the nomination himself to do that.
In the end, only Al Gore knows his own mind, and this only so much idle speculation. Still, I think Gore gets in the race before the end of the summer unless someone opens up a big lead by then.
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Monday, April 16, 2007
Things Were Better Then
In some ways, things were really better then than now. Now it seems like we've become a bunch of paranoid wilting flowers without a shred of common sense.
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Thursday, April 05, 2007
Will the Dems Cut Funding for Iraq?
Mario Loyola thinks they might. I don't see it happening any time soon, though they seem to be trying to build political momentum toward it. Hence the date-certain for withdrawal of U.S. forces in the war supplementals. Still, the President has said he will veto any funding bill with a time line for withdrawal, and this puts the Dems in a corner. Either they cut funding immediately, which they don't feel they are in a position to do safely, or they fund the war without a time line for withdrawal, in which case they will have acquiesced to a war they supposedly oppose, fatally undermining their position.
Honestly, I think the Dems moved too quickly on this issue. Iraq played a critical role in their victory in 2006 because things were obviously going so badly there. The American people were clearly dissatisfied with the sate of affairs and wanted something different, but they weren't ready to throw in the towel. Realizing this, the President made some personnel adjustments, replacing Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates and putting General David Petraeus in charge in Iraq. He also made tactical and strategic adjustments, initiating the troop "surge" and taking limited actions against Iranian agents working to undermine the Iraqi government.
At this point, it would probably have been best for the Democrats to say something to the effect of "The American people voted for a change of course in Iraq, and this appears to be just that. The President appears to have heard the wishes of the American people and is responding positively to them. We will give his new plan a chance to work, but if, in six months time, this new strategy proves as ineffectual as the last one, we're pulling the plug." This would have meant the issue would be coming up again this fall as appropriations season rolled around again, making it the natural time to consider cutting off funds. It also would have left Democrats with an out should the surge appear to be working. Instead, whether out of sheer shortsightedness or the perceived need to appease their anti-war base, the Democrats have forced themselves into a corner which will have disastrous effects, either for them or for American foreign policy.
Honestly, I think the Dems moved too quickly on this issue. Iraq played a critical role in their victory in 2006 because things were obviously going so badly there. The American people were clearly dissatisfied with the sate of affairs and wanted something different, but they weren't ready to throw in the towel. Realizing this, the President made some personnel adjustments, replacing Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates and putting General David Petraeus in charge in Iraq. He also made tactical and strategic adjustments, initiating the troop "surge" and taking limited actions against Iranian agents working to undermine the Iraqi government.
At this point, it would probably have been best for the Democrats to say something to the effect of "The American people voted for a change of course in Iraq, and this appears to be just that. The President appears to have heard the wishes of the American people and is responding positively to them. We will give his new plan a chance to work, but if, in six months time, this new strategy proves as ineffectual as the last one, we're pulling the plug." This would have meant the issue would be coming up again this fall as appropriations season rolled around again, making it the natural time to consider cutting off funds. It also would have left Democrats with an out should the surge appear to be working. Instead, whether out of sheer shortsightedness or the perceived need to appease their anti-war base, the Democrats have forced themselves into a corner which will have disastrous effects, either for them or for American foreign policy.
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Question for Believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming
If global warming is caused by increased emissions of carbon dioxide resulting from human industrial activity, as opposed to increased solar activity, why is Mars warming at a rate four times faster than the Earth?
I do realize that correlation does not imply causality, but if there is no causal link between the warming of the Earth and the warming of Mars, there must be some other explanation for the warming occurring on Mars. And before anyone points out the effect wind storms are having on Mars, let me point out that wind occurs when air in one region becomes warmer than air in another region and air moves to reestablish thermal equilibrium. The sun heats the Martian atmosphere just as it heats the Earth's atmosphere. If the sun is more active, the areas of the Martian atmosphere exposed to the most sunlight will become warmer relative to the areas that receive less sunlight than they otherwise would be. This greater temperature difference between regions leads to more severe windstorms, which then kick up more dust, reducing the albedo effect discussed in the story.
It may well be that man is largely responsible for global warming (though I very much doubt it), but in order to establish this, increases and decreases in solar activity must be conclusively shown to have little to no effect on climate.
I do realize that correlation does not imply causality, but if there is no causal link between the warming of the Earth and the warming of Mars, there must be some other explanation for the warming occurring on Mars. And before anyone points out the effect wind storms are having on Mars, let me point out that wind occurs when air in one region becomes warmer than air in another region and air moves to reestablish thermal equilibrium. The sun heats the Martian atmosphere just as it heats the Earth's atmosphere. If the sun is more active, the areas of the Martian atmosphere exposed to the most sunlight will become warmer relative to the areas that receive less sunlight than they otherwise would be. This greater temperature difference between regions leads to more severe windstorms, which then kick up more dust, reducing the albedo effect discussed in the story.
It may well be that man is largely responsible for global warming (though I very much doubt it), but in order to establish this, increases and decreases in solar activity must be conclusively shown to have little to no effect on climate.
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Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Never Saw This Coming
Daylight Savings Time has little or no effect on energy consumption. I wonder why. Could it be that Daylight "Savings" Time doesn't actually effect the length of a day?
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Friday, March 23, 2007
Well That Settles It, Then
I'm going with Romney. How could I do otherwise after learning this?
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
Which of the Following Doesn't Belong?
These are the teams who will be playing in the NCAA hockey tournament: Minnesota, North Dakota, Michigan, Air Force, Maine, Massachusetts, Clarkson (RI?), St. Cloud State, Miami (OH), Boston College, St. Lawrence, New Hampshire, Notre Dame, Boston University, Michigan State, and Alabama-Huntsville.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Stalin Was Right
When a person dies, it's a tragedy. When a million people die, it's a statistic.
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Friday, March 09, 2007
First Pfizer, Now This
Comerica is moving to Dallas, and Michigan's woes continue. How much longer before Google decides it's not worth setting up shop here? The state is over-taxed, over-regulated, and this will probably cause Granholm to propose still more tax increases next year, causing still more businesses to try and find more favorable environments to do business. Granholm's proposed solution is to increase spending on higher education, which will drive up the tax burden on Michigan residents and on businesses in the state, while likely only having the effect of driving up tuition rates at Michigan's colleges and universities. What's more, while it's possible that Granholm's spending increases may lead to improvements in higher education, the cost of the increased tax burden on businesses would dampen, if not completely offset the benefits of a better trained workforce, causing businesses, who might otherwise see a state with large numbers of people looking for work (Michigan's unemployment rate is second-worst in the nation) as a good place to put down roots, to do their business elsewhere. As a result, these supposedly better-qualified graduates will look for work out of state, and Michigan will have ended up subsidizing the economic growth of other states at the expense of its own future prosperity.
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Thursday, March 08, 2007
To Vote or Not to Vote?
That's what this test is attempts to determine. According to it, not only should I vote, I should actually be in politics because I got all of the questions correct.
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Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It
Know thyself. This wouldn't make for the most exciting episode of Mission: Impossible, but it would be the one that finally foiled Jim Phelps.
Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily
Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The Boy Who Cried Genocide
Brendan O'Neill, spiked online editor, makes the case that the term genocide has become a purely political term by which those who level the accusation of genocide at others can make themselves feel morally superior. In short genocide has become little more than a political cudgel. I agree with much of what he has to say, especially in regard to laws making it a crime to deny that a genocide took place (e.g. laws against Holocaust denial in Austria and Germany, France's law against denying Turkey's genocide of Armenians), or laws making it a crime to affirm that the genocide happened (e.g. Turkey's law against recognizing the Armenian genocide). I would only add that such laws diminish genocide, making it a secondary issue. If I am in Turkey and I claim the Armenian genocide happened, I am setting myself in opposition to the Turkish government. If I deny the Armenian genocide in France, I am setting myself in opposition to the French government. Thus, the issue becomes not whether the genocide occurred or not, but rather whether I support one government or another.
However, the piece has a fatal flaw: O'Neill fails to ever clearly define what genocide is. He admits that the Holocaust fits the bill, but he seems skeptical about what happened in Rwanda. Yet he never explains his skepticism beyond saying that
Still, O'Neill is right to point out that the term genocide is thrown about far too readily, mostly by the left (e.g. charges of the United States committing genocide in Iraq, or Israel's genocide against the Palestinians, though Pat Buchanan would also be comfortable leveling this charge). The problem with this is that, much like with the charge of racism, calling things genocide that don't even remotely look like genocide renders the term meaningless.
Webster's defines genocide as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. What happened in Rwanda was genocide. From what I can tell, the events in Darfur are genocide. Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad is threatening to wipe Israel off the map. That sure seems like a threat of genocide to me. Modern technology makes it relatively easy to travel great distances and kill many people in a short period of time. Thus, it becomes easier to commit genocide. The fact that the term is bandied about with little or no concern for anything beyond scoring a cheap political point should not blind us to the fact that there is a murderous side to human nature, and sometimes that murderousness manifests itself in social groups as an urge to eliminate a rival group. The Hutu wanted to eliminate the Tutsis. Ahmadinezhad wants to destroy the Jews, as did the Nazis. Shiites in Iraq were trying to destroy the Sunnis there until recently (they seem to have gone to ground for the moment). This is nothing new. What is new is man's ability to act on his hatred in such a far-reaching manner. This means that once the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away, any society is liable to commit genocide. In failed states such as those of Africa, the veneer of civilization is very thin indeed, and the threat of barbarism is that much higher.
The fact that the word genocide is thrown about too readily should not blind us to the fact that it is still more than a rhetorical and political weapon, a way for Western nations and designated victim groups to gain the moral high ground. After all, if Muslim unrest continues to grow in Europe at the rate it has, various European nations might seek to implement a genocide of their own.
*Granted, Western nations do not always fulfill their obligations as laid out by the just war theory and the laws of war, but the West has striven over the past several centuries, especially as wars grew larger and technology more deadly, to construct a framework to constrain the effects of war, to make it more civilized.
However, the piece has a fatal flaw: O'Neill fails to ever clearly define what genocide is. He admits that the Holocaust fits the bill, but he seems skeptical about what happened in Rwanda. Yet he never explains his skepticism beyond saying that
Consider how easily the genocide tag is attached to conflicts in Africa. Virtually every recent major African war has been labelled a genocide by outside observers. The Rwandan war of 1994 is now widely recognised as a genocide; many refer to the ongoing violence in Uganda as a genocide. In 2004 then US secretary of state Colin Powell declared, on the basis of a report by an American/British fact-finding expedition to Darfur: ‘We conclude that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility.’ (4) (The UN, however, has not described Darfur as genocide.) Even smaller-scale African wars are discussed as potential genocides. So the spread of instability from Darfur into eastern Chad has led to UN handwringing about ‘genocide in Chad’. During the conflict in Liberia in 2003, commentators warned that ‘Liberia could be plunged into a Rwanda-style genocide’ (5).
The discussion of every war in Africa as a genocide or potential genocide shows that today’s genocide-mongering bears little relation to what is happening in conflict zones on the ground. There are great differences, not least in scale, between the wars in Rwanda, Darfur and Liberia; each of these conflicts has been driven by complex local grievances, very often exacerbated by Western intervention. That Western declarations of ‘genocide!’ are most often made in relation to Africa suggests that behind today’s genocide-mongering there lurks some nasty chauvinistic sentiments. At a time when it is unfashionable to talk about ‘the dark continent’ or ‘savage Africans’, the more acceptable ‘genocide’ tag gives the impression that Africa is peculiarly and sickly violent, and that it needs to be saved from itself by more enlightened forces from elsewhere. Importantly, if the UN judges that a genocide is occurring, then that can be used to justify military intervention into said genocide zone.
Hardly anyone talks openly about a global divide between the savage Third World and the enlightened West anymore. Yet today’s genocide-mongering has nurtured a new, apparently acceptable divide between the genocide-executers over there, and the genocide-saviours at home. This new global faultline over genocide is formalised in the international court system. In the Nineties, setting up tribunals to try war criminals or genocidaires became an important part of the West’s attempts to rehabilitate its moral authority around the globe. In 1993, the UN Security Council set up an international tribunal to try those accused of war crimes in the Former Yugoslavia. In 1997 the international war crimes tribunal for Rwanda got under way; there is also one for Sierra Leone. As Kirsten Sellars argues in The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, for all the claims of ‘international justice’, these tribunals are in reality ‘political weapons’ wielded by the West – attempts to imbue the post-Cold War West with a sense of moral purpose by contrasting it favourably with the barbarians in Eastern Europe and Africa (6).
In other words, because everything looks to us like it is or could be genocide, despite different causes and the fact that Western intervention may have exacerbated it, none of it can be called genocide. The other, more chilling possibility, is that large-scale tribal wars in Africa are inherently genocidal. In other words, if the conflict becomes severe enough, one side will try and exterminate the other. That is what happened in Rwanda, when the Hutu attempted to exterminate the Tutsis, but O'Neill at least implies that that is simply the way African tribes fight their wars and who are we to judge them, especially if Western involvement has made things worse? If they want to slaughter each other, let them. This is an interesting combination of multiculturalism and a sort of international libertarianism. Their ways are as legitimate as ours, and as long as we're not harmed by them killing each other, we have no right to intervene.
O'Neill's argument is actually rather clever in this regard. From the standpoint of a multiculturalist, it is unassailable. However, I am not a multiculturalist. Therefore, I can say that, at least on this count, the principles of the just war theory and the rules of war outlined in treaties like the Geneva Conventions provide a way of fighting war that is morally superior to the mass slaughter of civilians.* I have no problem making this assertion, and I am willing to defend it if need be.Still, O'Neill is right to point out that the term genocide is thrown about far too readily, mostly by the left (e.g. charges of the United States committing genocide in Iraq, or Israel's genocide against the Palestinians, though Pat Buchanan would also be comfortable leveling this charge). The problem with this is that, much like with the charge of racism, calling things genocide that don't even remotely look like genocide renders the term meaningless.
Webster's defines genocide as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. What happened in Rwanda was genocide. From what I can tell, the events in Darfur are genocide. Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad is threatening to wipe Israel off the map. That sure seems like a threat of genocide to me. Modern technology makes it relatively easy to travel great distances and kill many people in a short period of time. Thus, it becomes easier to commit genocide. The fact that the term is bandied about with little or no concern for anything beyond scoring a cheap political point should not blind us to the fact that there is a murderous side to human nature, and sometimes that murderousness manifests itself in social groups as an urge to eliminate a rival group. The Hutu wanted to eliminate the Tutsis. Ahmadinezhad wants to destroy the Jews, as did the Nazis. Shiites in Iraq were trying to destroy the Sunnis there until recently (they seem to have gone to ground for the moment). This is nothing new. What is new is man's ability to act on his hatred in such a far-reaching manner. This means that once the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away, any society is liable to commit genocide. In failed states such as those of Africa, the veneer of civilization is very thin indeed, and the threat of barbarism is that much higher.
The fact that the word genocide is thrown about too readily should not blind us to the fact that it is still more than a rhetorical and political weapon, a way for Western nations and designated victim groups to gain the moral high ground. After all, if Muslim unrest continues to grow in Europe at the rate it has, various European nations might seek to implement a genocide of their own.
*Granted, Western nations do not always fulfill their obligations as laid out by the just war theory and the laws of war, but the West has striven over the past several centuries, especially as wars grew larger and technology more deadly, to construct a framework to constrain the effects of war, to make it more civilized.
Wired to Believe in God
An interesting look at the two main hypotheses surrounding the biological basis for religiosity in mankind.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite? Not in France
Distressing developments in France:
Besides, if a punch of two-bit punks are stupid enough to film their assaults on innocent people, it would make the most sense to get a copy of the assault and use it to put the perpetrators behind bars. But that would require actually going after the perpetrators.
Granted, Sarkozy has shown more willingness to do than pretty much anyone else in the French government, but it looks to me more like he is using is tough-on-crime reputation to push through a law that, should he become president, lays the groundwork for undermining any press that portrays him negatively. I can understand why he would want to do so, especially since he will probably have to take some pretty harsh measures to restore order to the Muslim ghettos of France, where the rule of law has all but collapsed. Still, this law, should it go into effect, would be another milestone on the road to authoritarianism in France.
Oh well. France has had five different constitutions since 1789. That means, assuming republican government for that entire period (to make the math easier), the average French constitution has lasted for 43.6 years. The Fifth Republic has been around since the end of World War II, meaning that it has lasted over fifty years. In other words, it's run almost ten years longer than the average French constitution. If you factor in the Napoleonic era, the time when France was controlled by the Nazis, etc., the Fifth Republic's performance looks that much better (if someone better versed in French history than I could give me better numbers, I'd appreciate it).
Hat tip: Drudge
The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizesA cynic (and I would place myself in this camp) would say that the French government recognizes that there is a problem with violence in France, particularly in the Muslim ghettos, and that they are incapable of dealing with it. Therefore, it has decided that only professional journalists can film/show acts of violence. Of course, the government ultimately gets to decide who is a "professional" journalist and who isn't, and if a heretofore "professional" journalist films/broadcasts an act of violence of which the government disapproves, what's to stop the government from no longer recognizing the offending journalist as a professional? This is a power-grab, plain and simple, even if it is being proposed by the man I would like to see become France's next president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than
professional journalists.
Besides, if a punch of two-bit punks are stupid enough to film their assaults on innocent people, it would make the most sense to get a copy of the assault and use it to put the perpetrators behind bars. But that would require actually going after the perpetrators.
Granted, Sarkozy has shown more willingness to do than pretty much anyone else in the French government, but it looks to me more like he is using is tough-on-crime reputation to push through a law that, should he become president, lays the groundwork for undermining any press that portrays him negatively. I can understand why he would want to do so, especially since he will probably have to take some pretty harsh measures to restore order to the Muslim ghettos of France, where the rule of law has all but collapsed. Still, this law, should it go into effect, would be another milestone on the road to authoritarianism in France.
Oh well. France has had five different constitutions since 1789. That means, assuming republican government for that entire period (to make the math easier), the average French constitution has lasted for 43.6 years. The Fifth Republic has been around since the end of World War II, meaning that it has lasted over fifty years. In other words, it's run almost ten years longer than the average French constitution. If you factor in the Napoleonic era, the time when France was controlled by the Nazis, etc., the Fifth Republic's performance looks that much better (if someone better versed in French history than I could give me better numbers, I'd appreciate it).
Hat tip: Drudge
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Eccentric Health Care
This could be our tax dollars at work if the United States turns to socialized medicine.
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Saturday, March 03, 2007
Jan Crawford Greenburg Is Officially My Favorite Legal Correspondent
Not only does she know legal issues, she's conversant in football as well.
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
This Is News?
The BBC is reporting that it has received copies of plans for American air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and military infrastructure. I don't know who leaked these plans and why, but is it really a surprise that the United States has developed a plan of attack should the need to bomb Iran arise? The Department of Defense has contingency plans for attacking most countries in the world, if not all of them. Heck, we even have a plan for invading Canada. What's more, given that a military confrontation with Iran seems more and more likely all the time, it only makes sense that the Pentagon would develop and u-to-date plan of attack to eliminate its primary target- Iran's nuclear program- while taking measures to limit Iran's response capability.
I'm curious, though. One of Iran's tools of response would undoubtedly Hezbollah. Has the United States taken steps to limit Hezbollah's ability to respond to an American attack on Iran? Have the United States and Israel worked out an arrangement whereby Israel would reinitiate attacks on Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon? If so, would the Lebanese government support such a move, hinder it, or stand aside? The article doesn't say, and that's probably for the best.
I'm curious, though. One of Iran's tools of response would undoubtedly Hezbollah. Has the United States taken steps to limit Hezbollah's ability to respond to an American attack on Iran? Have the United States and Israel worked out an arrangement whereby Israel would reinitiate attacks on Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon? If so, would the Lebanese government support such a move, hinder it, or stand aside? The article doesn't say, and that's probably for the best.
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Sunday, February 18, 2007
This'll Do A Lot of Good
According to Reuters, there are some people in the space business who want the U.N. to take the lead in preventing asteroids striking the Earth. Measures will include intense periods of negotiations with the asteroids, inspections by the International Asteroid-Earth Agency (until the asteroids kick out the inspectors), and corrupt trade arrangements which allow U.N. officials to enhance their collections of space rocks.
Meanwhile, on the Ecumenical Front
The Times of London has published a story about leaked Anglican-Catholic documents laying out a possible path to reunification between orthodox Anglicans and Rome. While I am encouraged by the partial repair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic schism on the whole, it seems a shame that this reunion is being driven by schism within the Anglican Communion and that the radical elements within the Anglican Communion are driving it to suicide by changing fundamental teachings on issues of faith and morals (ordination of active homosexuals, the blessing of homosexual unions, etc.). The pursuit of Christian unity should be driven by the desire to see Christ's prayer in John 17 that all Christians be one, not in an attempt to avoid being dragged over the edge of a cliff by those who would subjugate eternal verities to progressive ideology. In other words, I would rather see a reunion between London and Rome than see Rome gather up the survivors as London wrecks itself on the shoals of fashionable ideology.
Still, I can't possibly imagine any Pope plunging the Roman Catholic Church into the sort of crisis in which the Anglican Communion now finds itself. Homosexual acts have always been considered immoral by the Roman Catholic Church, and as defender of the deposit of faith as defined by Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium, no Pope would ever knowingly sanction any practice that undermined the Church's teaching on this matter. This means the ordination of those known to be active homosexuals will never receive official sanction (even if many bishops have turned a blind eye, with disastrous consequences from which the Church has yet to recover), nor will the blessing of homosexual unions (never mind polyamorous relationships). The Church must rest upon eternal verities (indeed The Eternal Verity), else she will surely founder and sink. And by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, it is the Pope who strives to ensure that the three-fold cord of Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium binds the people of the Roman Catholic Church to Christ, the bridegroom, and through Him, to God the Father, Creator of all things and their Foundation.
Still, I can't possibly imagine any Pope plunging the Roman Catholic Church into the sort of crisis in which the Anglican Communion now finds itself. Homosexual acts have always been considered immoral by the Roman Catholic Church, and as defender of the deposit of faith as defined by Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium, no Pope would ever knowingly sanction any practice that undermined the Church's teaching on this matter. This means the ordination of those known to be active homosexuals will never receive official sanction (even if many bishops have turned a blind eye, with disastrous consequences from which the Church has yet to recover), nor will the blessing of homosexual unions (never mind polyamorous relationships). The Church must rest upon eternal verities (indeed The Eternal Verity), else she will surely founder and sink. And by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, it is the Pope who strives to ensure that the three-fold cord of Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium binds the people of the Roman Catholic Church to Christ, the bridegroom, and through Him, to God the Father, Creator of all things and their Foundation.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
He's Doing What?!? I'm Confused
Hugo Chavez is planning to solve Venezuela's growing inflation problem by simply "lopping three zeros from the currency." At best, this move won't make the situation worse (sort of like waxing your car in an attempt to fix its busted radiator). If something costs $5.00, lopping a couple of zeros off the currency doesn't alter the cost of the item. It only makes yesterday's $5.00 worth $.05 today.
Of course, if people conduct their financial transactions with cash, this means the value of a bill is worth, in this case, 1,000 times what it was. Thus, people are richer, and the problem is solved, right? Wrong. Money, like everything else in economics, is subject to the law of supply and demand. Lopping three zeros off the currency effectively increases the money supply by 100,000%, and the value of money will adjust until supply equals demand (i.e. prices will shoot through the roof until the situation looks the same as it did before but is really 1,000 times worse).
To prevent prices skyrocketing, Chavez is looking to implement and enforce price controls, but as the story notes, this will lead to decreased supplies of goods and services. In addition artificially low prices will artificially raise demand. The combination of artificially low supply with artificially high demand will lead to widespread shortages of goods and services as demand far outstrips supply. As a result, Venezuela will have the worst of both worlds: lots of worthless money they can't spend on anything, at least officially. I'm sure the black market will do quite well.
As Alberto Bernal says of Chavez in the article, "He has a funny understanding of the problem."
Of course, if people conduct their financial transactions with cash, this means the value of a bill is worth, in this case, 1,000 times what it was. Thus, people are richer, and the problem is solved, right? Wrong. Money, like everything else in economics, is subject to the law of supply and demand. Lopping three zeros off the currency effectively increases the money supply by 100,000%, and the value of money will adjust until supply equals demand (i.e. prices will shoot through the roof until the situation looks the same as it did before but is really 1,000 times worse).
To prevent prices skyrocketing, Chavez is looking to implement and enforce price controls, but as the story notes, this will lead to decreased supplies of goods and services. In addition artificially low prices will artificially raise demand. The combination of artificially low supply with artificially high demand will lead to widespread shortages of goods and services as demand far outstrips supply. As a result, Venezuela will have the worst of both worlds: lots of worthless money they can't spend on anything, at least officially. I'm sure the black market will do quite well.
As Alberto Bernal says of Chavez in the article, "He has a funny understanding of the problem."
GM Needs More Problems
Apparently, GM is in preliminary talks with Daimler Chrysler to see about purchasing the Chrysler Group from Daimler. In the short term, this strikes me as being a bad idea. Both GM and Chrysler are struggling and having to lay off workers to cut costs. GM acquiring Chrysler would only exacerbate this problem as redundant personnel (and possibly redundant infrastructure) would have to be eliminated, while GM would have to spend large amounts of money to make Chrysler's systems compatible with its own. If the situation is managed well, things could work out in the long run, but GM has enough of its own problems without having to worry about Chrysler's as well.
I expect GM's executives realize this and don't really expect anything to come of this.
I expect GM's executives realize this and don't really expect anything to come of this.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Too Cool, Man
It would appear that an international team of astronomers has devloped a way to indirectly map dark matter.
More Muslim Rabble-Rousing
This time in Britain. It would appear that living in a multicultural society also produces contempt for that society.
Can't We All Just Get Along?
Apparently not. In a piece for The American Conservative, Steve Sailer reports on Professor Robert Putnam's finding that racial and ethnic diversity erodes social trust and cohesion. That this is the case shouldn't be that surprising. There are two groups* people tend to trust most: their family and their friends. To a lesser extent, we trust those who seem to share certain beliefs with us, value similar things, engage in similar practices, and take part in similar traditions. To a lesser extent, we trust those who something look like us. In short, we tend to trust people with whom we have things in common, and the more we share in common with someone, the more likely we are to trust him. We can identify with these people, see where they're coming from. If we're concerned about being stabbed in the back, we can pick up signs of betrayal the more familiar we are with the person in whom we have placed our trust.
On the other hand, if we have no real experience or common tie with a person or a group, we have no basis for placing or trust in said person or group. Furthermore, absent a necessity of some sort (e.g. having some common task to perform, being in a desperate situation, etc.), there is no reason to attempt to forge the sort of bond that will lead to trusting someone. This is simply human nature, and it's not going to change.
Still, this is not the whole picture. The United States has always been racially and ethnically diverse, yet by and large racial and ethnic minorities (religious ones, as well) have eventually been able to assimilate into American society.** Why is this the case? Sailer offers the following to explain why ethnic minorities have been largely able to assimilate into American society:
Sailer sets this in direct contrast with the situation in Mexico, where trust does not extend beyond the extended family. This is of pressing concern because of the large numbers of illegal immigrants in the United States who are from Mexico, as well as those who will continue to come across. With as many as 12 million illegal immigrants on the United States today, most of them from Mexico, and living and working in the American Southwest, they have established large enough enclaves where they have little need to interact with Americans outside of work. This separation is reinforced by the language barrier between Americans who speak English primarily and Spanish-speaking Mexicans. Sailer sums up the situation this way:
*The two groups need not be mutually exclusive.
**To a large extent, the great exception had been Black Americans. At least in part, this stems from the fact that the same rule of law that enables other racial and ethnic minorities to assimilate into American society was used to prevent Black integration into American society, first through slavery, then through Jim Crow and other similar laws.
On the other hand, if we have no real experience or common tie with a person or a group, we have no basis for placing or trust in said person or group. Furthermore, absent a necessity of some sort (e.g. having some common task to perform, being in a desperate situation, etc.), there is no reason to attempt to forge the sort of bond that will lead to trusting someone. This is simply human nature, and it's not going to change.
Still, this is not the whole picture. The United States has always been racially and ethnically diverse, yet by and large racial and ethnic minorities (religious ones, as well) have eventually been able to assimilate into American society.** Why is this the case? Sailer offers the following to explain why ethnic minorities have been largely able to assimilate into American society:
The importance of co-operativeness has fallen in and out of intellectual fashion over the centuries. An early advocate of the role of cohesion in history’s cycles was the 14th-century Arab statesman and scholar Ibn Khaldun, who documented that North African dynasties typically began as desert tribes poor in everything but what he termed asabiya or social solidarity. Their willingness to sacrifice for each other made them formidable in battle. But once they conquered a civilized state along the coast, the inevitable growth in inequality began to sap their asabiya, until after several generations their growing fractiousness allowed another cohesive clan to emerge from the desert and overthrow them.
Recently, Princeton biologist Peter Turchin has extended Ibn Khaldun’s analysis in a disquieting direction, pointing out that nothing generates asabiya like having a common enemy. Turchin notes that powerful states arise mostly on ethnic frontiers, where conflicts with very different peoples persuade co-ethnics to overcome their minor differences and all hang together, or assuredly they would all hang separately. Thus the German heartland remained divided up among numerous squabbling principalities until 1870. Meanwhile, powerful German kingdoms emerged on Prussia’s border with the Balts and Slavs and Austria’s border with the Slavs and Magyars.
Similarly, the 13 American colonies came together by fighting first the French and Indians, then the British. In this century, two world wars helped forge from the heavy immigration of 1890 to 1924 what Putnam calls the “long civic generation” that reached its peak in the 1940s and ’50s.
There is a good deal of truth in this, and I don't disagree with it per se, but I think Sailer misses something important (though he does touch on it in a slightly different context). The United States is governed by the rule of law, before which all are equal. Thus, there is built into the very fabric of American culture the notion that good citizenship is determined by adherence to the law and the willingness to defend the American Constitutional order, not by your culture of origin or who your relatives happen to be. The United States is a meritocracy, not a class-based or ethnically-based society. You are defined by what you do, not from whence you came. Thus, Americans have traditionally been culturally conditioned to resist the natural human inclination to mistrust anyone sufficiently different, provided the minimum baseline of acceptance of the traditional American beliefs in meritocracy and the rule of law.
Sailer sets this in direct contrast with the situation in Mexico, where trust does not extend beyond the extended family. This is of pressing concern because of the large numbers of illegal immigrants in the United States who are from Mexico, as well as those who will continue to come across. With as many as 12 million illegal immigrants on the United States today, most of them from Mexico, and living and working in the American Southwest, they have established large enough enclaves where they have little need to interact with Americans outside of work. This separation is reinforced by the language barrier between Americans who speak English primarily and Spanish-speaking Mexicans. Sailer sums up the situation this way:
While no more than 12 percent of L.A.’s whites said they trusted other races “only a little or not at all,” 37 percent of L.A.’s Latinos distrusted whites. And whites were the most reliable in Hispanic eyes. Forty percent of Latinos doubted Asians, 43 percent distrusted other Hispanics, and 54 percent were anxious about blacks.
Some of this white-Hispanic difference stems merely from Latinos’ failure to tell politically correct lies to the researchers about how much they trust other races. Yet the L.A. survey results also reflect a very real and deleterious lack of co-operativeness and social capital among Latinos. As columnist Gregory Rodriguez stated in the L.A. Times: “In Los Angeles, home to more Mexicans than any other city in the U.S., there is not one ethnic Mexican hospital, college, cemetery, or broad-based charity.”
Since they seldom self-organize beyond the extended family, Los Angeles’s millions of Mexican-Americans make strangely little contribution to local civic and artistic life. L.A. is awash in underemployed creative talent who occupy their abundant spare time putting on plays, constructing spectacular haunted houses each Halloween, and otherwise trying to attract Jerry Bruckheimer’s attention. Yet there is little overlap between the enormous entertainment industry and the huge Mexican-American community.
In late October, I pored over the 64-page Sunday Calendar section of the L.A. Times, which listed a thousand or more upcoming cultural events. I found just seven that were clearly organized by Latinos. While it’s a journalistic cliché to describe Mexican-American neighborhoods as “vibrant,” they aren’t.
Some of this lack of social capital is class-related—Miami indeed has a vibrant Hispanic culture, but it’s anomalous because it attracts Latin America’s affluent and educated. In contrast, Los Angeles is a representative harbinger of America’s future because it imports peasants and laborers.
What does this mean? If the Mexican population continues to grow at anything like the rate it has been, it will lead to a bi-cultural society with the Americans and the Mexicans staring tensely at one another across the walls of their cultural enclaves. America's civic culture will decline even faster as trust among her citizens declines still more, and the state will attempt to step in and fill the void that once was filled by America's vibrant civic society. In short, the state will assume massive new powers in an ill-fated attempt to preserve public order. Just like what's happening in Britain, if not quite as bad.
*The two groups need not be mutually exclusive.
**To a large extent, the great exception had been Black Americans. At least in part, this stems from the fact that the same rule of law that enables other racial and ethnic minorities to assimilate into American society was used to prevent Black integration into American society, first through slavery, then through Jim Crow and other similar laws.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
From President Bush's Mouth
According to the Associated Press, the government may have the authority to open private mail without a warrant under certain circumstances. According to Andy McCarthy, this has always been the case. As Andy McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor, I'm willing to take his word for it. Still, there's nothing unusual about news outlets blowing stories out of proportion. What is unusual about this story is the mind-boggling stupidity of the opening paragraph.
A signing statement attached to postal legislation by President Bush last month may have opened the way for the government to open mail without a warrant. The White House denies any change in policy.This is ludicrous. A measure becomes law when it is included in a bill passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the President, or if passed by a 2/3 majority in each house of Congress following a Presidential veto. Signing statements carry no force of law whatsoever. They never have, and without a Constitutional ammendment, they never will. This is the stuff of School House Rock, and the fact that an error this obvious should slip passed reporters and editors either out of ignorance or out of a desire to make the story read a certain way calls into question the ability of the Associated Press to be a reliable source of news.
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