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Archive for the ‘Ayn Rand Spins’ Category
Toilets With Urinals
Monday, September 29th, 2008STUDENTS say new signs on toilets at their union building might be making their WC just a ‘bit too PC’.
The traditional sign on the door of the Gents has been temporarily replaced with one that says ‘toilets with urinals’.
And the sign on the Ladies now simply says ‘toilets’ in a move to make the lavatories more inclusive for trans-gender students.
The signs on the toilets in the basement of Manchester University students’ union were changed after a meeting of the union’s executive in the summer.
It is thought the temporary ones will be replaced with permanent new signs in the near future.
How come it is, that over across the pond as well as here, when people become especially worried about making the right decision they start to talk in passive voice?
That really is the most effective way to make a bad decision, I’ve noticed. People start babbling away about what’s going to be inevitable, managing to squeak on through without muttering a word about who exactly thinks something’s a good idea, or what they plan to get out of it…they do it a couple more times…and voila. Poor decision. With consequences. That will be blamed on no one.
Potty Peer
Monday, September 29th, 2008The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented.
Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’.
Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast on BBC 2, was billed as a definitive guide to the history of global warming, including arguments for and against.
During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton. But the peer complained to Ofcom that the broadcast had been unfairly edited.
‘I very much hope Ofcom will do something about this,’ he said yesterday.
‘The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct.
‘I was interviewed for 90 minutes and all my views were backed up by sound scientific data, but this was all omitted. They made it sound as if these were just my personal views, as if I was some potty peer. It was caddish of them.’
You certainly can’t accuse the bloke of having been too Americanized. This yankee barely understands the meaning of “caddish” and he is completely baffled by this “potty peer” thing. What in the hell does that mean?
The article continues…
All their interviews, he claims, were heavily cut so that they appeared as personal views.
‘We do not dispute that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we do dispute its effects’, he said. ‘The data shows that 2008 is the same temperature as 1980 and that the effects of these changes in the atmosphere are not negative but more likely to be beneficial.’
It’s been said before that 2008 will be recorded by history as the end of the global warming hoax. I predict that will be the case…but nevertheless…the carbon cap-and-trade nonsense will continue, in fact, it will shift from voluntary voucher purchases, to voluntary-with-incentives, to “do it or we’ll withhold your highway funding” or some such.
Things work here pretty much the same way they work in Lord Monckton’s country, after all. Republicans and democrats are both in favor of personal liberties, protection of freedoms and choice, and making it easier to live life. And yet, decade by decade, there are more and more hoops you have to jump through to live that life, fewer decisions you’re allowed to make for yourself, and if you utter a peep of protest about it both Republicans and democrats will accuse you of being a whining little bitch.
Sure you have freedom of speech. You are absolutely allowed to call into question these various nanny-state rules and regulations. But how many of ’em do you recall ever having been rolled back…in your lifetime?
So global warming has been exposed as a complete sham. But the momentum has been built. The regulations are on the way, and once they’re here they’re carved in granite. They’re not going anywhere.
What’s a potty peer?
Bipartisanship
Saturday, September 27th, 2008This whole “bailout” thing — the actual money it’s going to cost is, is only a portion of the real damage, and it’s a minority portion. The real crippling payment for it comes out of the purse of our thinking. This is the price we really can’t afford.
We can’t have bipartisanship in the United States, because the fissure between our two parties is too deep. We have a party that values life, and another party that only pretends to value life when it really values death. We have a party that wants to work with the market and uphold the virtues of free enterprise, and another party that wants to get rid of free enterprise and put the market out of existence. We have a party that wants people to be independent and another party that wants people to be more dependent on their government.
You don’t find a compromise between these. You simply don’t.
This is where Sarah Palin really slipped and fell during that Couric interview. It’s always been her weak point — the talking points about bipartisanship. She runs out of things to say, she loops these things two, three, four times, it sounds terrible. Repeating something doesn’t automatically make it terrible. Speaking from talking points, instead of from the heart, sounds terrible. As a product, Gov. Palin has been enormously successful, and the success of that product comes from the prospect of translating ideas that work in the real world into our government. Whoever’s feeding her these talking points, is diminishing what’s wonderful about her and in so doing defeating the entire purpose.
Palin’s not alone. Nobody has said anything about the bailout yet, that has captured the public’s enthusiasm…which is a great pity, because the one thing that has a chance of getting us out of this mess is the one thing that would so capture the public’s enthusiasm.
And that thing is this.
Market forces, and populism, are like oil and water. Our nation has a long history, by now, of trying to mix the two together and it has never worked. It creates problems. Our tendency in dealing with these problems has been to blame them on the marketplace, rather than on the mixing, and then to indulge in more mixing. This latest meltdown is no exception, in fact, it’s already gone three laps on this merry-go-round and is starting a fourth. That’s why the dollar amounts we’re discussing are so staggeringly high. If we opt for more compromises where they aren’t possible, we will start that fourth lap and the next time we have to deal with it the dollar amounts will be even higher.
The marketplace has always been friendly to us when we have been friendly to the marketplace. That should be our paramount goal as we seek a solution to this crisis. And if it’s solvency we want, then we need to show our dedication to that solvency, and include that solvency in the objectives of this “oversight” we discuss so much and so often. I don’t know about you, but for the last several decades when I hear about regulatory oversight in the home lending market, I’ve heard a lot about “community outreach” and very little about solvency. So if solvency’s our goal, let’s make the oversight all about that, or else get rid of it altogether. But the status quo is, we pretend to appreciate the virtues of free enterprise, while engaging in a vicious assault upon it — and today, you see the result.
America needs to return to her roots. There is a difference between making it possible for people to live in freedom, with a minimalist government, and bringing them to harm. If you don’t believe that is so, you must not believe in the competence of people to eventually learn from whatever mistakes they may make. You have a right to that opinion. But that opinion is not centrist; it is not moderate; it is not compromise; it isn’t even American. From there, let the debate go forward, but let us debate things as they really are. Humans are glorious, intelligent creatures, Americans are among the most courageous and resourceful among humans, and we have always realized our most dazzling successes when left to embrace opportunity and danger as capable individuals. We got into this mess by putting security above opportunity. We will head in the exact opposite direction, to get ourselves out of it. And we will succeed. We will fix this mess we have made. That is the only way we can.
Update: Talk about humming from the same hymnbook. But there’s been no collaboration here, I found this after I’d written the above. It captures perfectly what I had in mind with these comments about the merry-go-round…so before anybody asks what that was all about, just hit play.
H/T to Neptunus Lex, via blogger friend Buck.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
Here I Stand. I Am John Galt.
Thursday, September 25th, 2008Here you go, you so-called “Objectivists” with your goth clothes and your black lipstick and matching fingernail polish and your candles and your pentagrams. This is what it’s all about, right here. It isn’t centered around denying the existence of God or overly concerned with killing babies.
It’s about being objective. Staying true to yourself. Living your life for the sake of none other, nor asking another man to live for yours.
I have had it up to my eyeballs with the ever-growing government, the nanny-state, the collectivism, the whole world demanding more and more from the producers. I am done with the corrupt politicians, the slackers, the deadbeats, and all the looters and moochers.
I am sick of a government which has drifted from its early Constitutional foundation of limited central goverment and great individual freedom, and become a bloated behemoth consuming 40 percent of our economy and hungry for more. I am finished with out-of-control political correctness and its attendant thought police outlawing truth in order to cater to those who would destroy us.
HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.
Whether the world around me likes it or not, I will put my foot down and insist on personal responsibility and accountability. I will tell my government to take its hands off my rights, my freedom, and my wallet. If the people of other nations are content to allow their countries to devolve into Hell, that’s their business. I’m sick of financing their destruction. They can plunge into chaos on their own dime.
As for my own, I will be a call for my government to return to doing those things which are right for a legitimate government to do – to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Not to regulate the price of milk, meddle with the mortgage market, bail out failing companies, or tell me how to raise my children.
HERE I STAND. I AM JOHN GALT.
And I have a pulpit. I may not be able to stop the motor of the world, but I will stomp on the brake, and I will fight for control of the steering wheel before the motor seizes up on its own – and believe me, that motor is on its way to seizing up.
I will give Caesar his due, but I will not bow to him.
I am John Galt. Come and join me, or come and get me. Here I stand.
McCain More Negative Than Obama?
Sunday, September 21st, 2008There’s been a slight turn in Obama’s favor as of last week. The hardcore left-wingers are predictably playing this up as hard as they can in hopes of producing a bandwagon effect to put The Chosen One over the top.
The blip isn’t as interesting to me as its perceived cause:
The change from a month ago may correlate with the perception among likely voters that the McCain campaign has been the more negative. Overall, 44% say McCain’s campaign has been the more negative, compared to 31% who say the same about Obama’s campaign. Among self-described political independents, 48% said they think McCain’s campaign has been more negative.
Are these likely voters watching the same guy I am? Ask Chosen One what he plans to do about people not getting enough Riboflavin in their diets…he’ll make it about ten words before he is forced to use the name “Bush.” And that’s being charitable. Ask him about hurricanes, he’ll make it to global warming before the first “uh,” and under-regulated greedy corporations before the second one. And use that word “Bush” probably two or three more times.
Maybe it’s that word “hope.” People have this mental weakness — they see the H-word floating past your lips, they don’t wait for substantiation. They just presume this is what you’re all about. It is a deeply engrossing word. You say “we have to have hope…and therefore I’ll be tying a hundred girl scouts to wooden stakes on my front lawn and setting ’em ablaze while they scream like banshees, and when they’re good and roasted I’ll ripe the entrails out of the bellies while they squirm some more.” All people will remember is the “hope.” Well…maybe it’s not that bad…but you get the idea. People don’t hold your feet to the fire to say something hopeful. Just throwing the syllable out there, is enough for ’em.
How do you fight this if you’re McCain? It’s a delicate question. Putting Hitler’s picture up on the television screen, captioned with “You know who ELSE was all about hope and change?” would make a compelling point, besides of a meritorious point, and on top of that would be historically accurate. But obviously this would be one step forward and three steps back. What we have here is a double standard — Obama can campaign “negatively” to the point of toxicity; McCain can’t even offer up the notion that he’s superior to the competition, let alone explore the reasons why.
Symbiosis, John. It’ll set you free. Put out three or four thirty-second spots tied to this theme, and you might as well start rehearsing your inauguration speech and vetting people for cabinet posts right there & then.
The liberal says, enact my proposal and we’ll enter into a symbiotic relationship. Next week, the liberal will have another proposal, and offer the same pitch — he won’t admit the last proposal failed to get us into this symbiotic relationship. He won’t offer to roll back this previous failed proposal. To our discredit, nobody will call on him to do so…
The conservative says we’re already in the symbiotic relationship. You are good for me. I am good for you. We can all go on doing exactly what we’re doing. The only thing we should really change is to get those damn liberals to stop voting.
The tax thing is a fantastic example of this. Obama has a plan that would call for a net increase of our taxes…and his defense is that while he would raise taxes on the evil rich, some 95% of households (or 80%, depending on your source) would see a tax cut — with those evil rich making up the difference, plus some. Therefore, depending on your point of view, it is valid to say —
1. Sum Of Parts: Obama’s plan increases the tax burden on us.
2. Vote By Tax: Obama’s plan cuts the tax burden for us.
And here come all these allegedly balanced and centrist fact-checkers, taking the second of those two points-of-view, without so much as a glance in the rear view mirror, without a scintilla of scrutiny or question. They’re saying the McCain campaign is telling lies…even though Obama would raise the overall tax liability. Truly, this is an abomination in the eyes of The Lord.
McCain, in response to this, could adopt the Morgan K. Freeberg platform of true conservatism:
Conservatives insist that taxes…exist for the purpose of raising revenue, not to punish any particular person or class of person.
:
Anyone who thinks people should be punished for having too much money or for making too much money, via taxes or by some other means, is invited by all good conservatives to leave the country and go live in another. (When I Start Running This Place, Item 42.) The planet is covered with envy-inspired socialist enclaves that will be most eager to accommodate…provided they let your miserable pinko communist ass in.
Well okay, he could leave that last part out. But you get the idea.
Like the frog sitting in a pot of water gradually working up to a boil, we’ve somehow been indoctrinated to the notion that “nice” people want a tax policy that takes things away from people who are having too good of a time of it, without much regard to where the collected revenues are supposed to go or how badly they are needed. In other words, “nice” people want tax policies that destroy other people. “Mean” people, on the other hand, are the ones who say there could be something wrong with this — maybe we shouldn’t be trying to destroy other people just because they have more money than most. Part of the reason this idea has taken hold, is that it hasn’t been challenged. Try challenging it.
You’ve got to try. The situation is so bad, the prevailing viewpoint so badly diseased, that the democrat party is popularly thought to be tirelessly fighting against interclass conflict. This, when nobody who’s been paying attention can name any two classes that the democrat party thinks should already be living in harmony together! Every time they run the show, all these privileged entitlement classes end up squabbling over who has the bigger and better claim to aggrieved status, so the other entitlement classes can be denied the alms, annointments, appointments and general ass-kissing.
We saw it when Obama and Hillary got down-and-dirty fighting over the democrat party nomination. Absolutely no discussion of policy disagreements at all. None. Zero. Just…whose turn is it? The blacks, or the gals? Whose feelings are gonna be hurt? And a bunch of “superdelegates” looking on, wishing they weren’t put in the postion of choosing which coveted entitlement class would be told to go stick it where the sun don’t shine.
That’s the point — they are not the change we have been seeking, because they can only put one entitlement class on the throne at a time, and the country’s way too big for their worldview. They do not believe in symbiosis and they certainly don’t believe in “diversity.” The democrat party view is that when two classes of people are different…especially if they are cosmetically different…it’s an inevitability that they have to be sent into a cage-match somewhere, and only one can come out alive. So explain why you’re different. Talk about why you picked Sarah Palin. Point out what really interests conservatives socially: Your motto, “America first,” means an end to the hyphen. We’re all just-plain Americans, and we’re all invested in how the economy does together, including the rich people. Point out that there aren’t any rich people hoping the market tanks. Point out there aren’t any men among McCain’s supporters, now expressing reluctance to go out and vote because of his DUMB OL’ GIRL running mate.
Remind us what the word “everyone” really means. Come up with some examples — there are a lot more than a few — of how the democrat party uses that word, when “some of us” is a lot closer to what they have in mind. Start out with the above-mentioned tax policy. Obama’s plan is supposed to work for all of us, and here he is defending it saying don’t worry, it only sticks it to five percent of taxpayers, the other ninety-five are sitting pretty.
Tell us that all democrat party plans are like that. That with the democrat party in charge, every little problem that comes along has a Snidely Whiplash due for a come-uppins’, even in cases where it’s inappropriate and irrelevant. Because it’s true. If anyone doubts you, talk about the Pelosi Congress. Two years in power, they’ve solved very little…but found lots of people to blame for things.
In view of that, it is quite absurd to seriously entertain the possibility Obama can bring us the “hope” or “change” anyone has in mind…let alone start debating it.
And if that doesn’t work, then Obama’s the Commander-in-Chief we deserve. Because that would mean our minds are already made up. Some young-handsome-guy comes along and uses buzzwords, presents himself as a uniter while he’s dividing people, an agent of change while naming a lifetime beltway fixture as his running mate, tax policies that work for “everyone” while making a big show out of sacrificing a tiny subset of the most productive taxpayers — and we just scarf it down. What’s the point of trying to discuss anything with an electorate like that? That’s like your kid telling you he isn’t stealing the cookies…mumbling around a mouthful of cookie. And you believing him.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
This Is Good LV
Sunday, September 21st, 2008Blogger friend Duffy…
In an earlier post I mentioned it but only in the context of the upcoming VP debates. I completely missed something. If paying more taxes is patriotic, it stands to reason that paying less taxes is unpatriotic. Therefore, our troops in war zones who are exempt from income taxes are unpatriotic. That also means that poor people, who do not pay income tax, are unpatriotic. Obama’s efforts to exclude people from the tax roles are also unpatriotic. Joe’s deductions on his tax returns for charitable giving are unpatriotic. Any mortgage deductions are unpatriotic. Child tax credits? Unpatriotic. I could go on all day. I would really really like Joe to continue on this line.
Yes, Joe. Take these on. Babble away.
I’ve noticed there is a particularly odious practice of “fact checking” about the tax plans of the prospective Obama/Biden administration — Obama/Biden is an anagram of “An Idea Bomb” — and the McCain campaign’s comments on those tax plans. Factcheck.org, to their discredit, has a wonderful example of this on their web site right now:
The ad continues McCain’s pattern of misrepresenting Sen. Barack Obama’s tax proposals as falling on middle-income families. It claims that Obama “promises more taxes on small businesses, seniors, your life savings, your family.” But that’s untrue for the vast majority of small businesses, seniors and individual taxpayers, who would see their taxes go down under Obama’s actual plan. He proposes to increase taxes only for those with more than $250,000 in family income, or $200,000 in individual income. [emphasis mine]
Via Karol, we have another such transgression committed by the AP:
Under the economic plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, people earning more than $250,000 a year would pay more in taxes while those earning less — the vast majority of American taxpayers — would receive a tax cut.
Although Republican John McCain claims that Obama would raise taxes, the independent Tax Policy Center and other groups conclude that four out of five U.S. households would receive tax cuts under Obama’s proposals.
Classic example of gulping the liberal koolaid without knowing you’re gulping it: “Oh don’t worry, that’s a tax on super rich people, not you!”
The pattern is that if it can be categorized as a tax cut for 95% of us, then everyone should be thinking of it as a tax cut for all of us, even if the remaining five percent see their tax liabilities go shootin’ so freakin’ high that it ends up being a net increase. It all depends on your point of view: In my world, if we all end up paying more, then we all end up paying more.
But I notice if you look at this through the left-wing lens, whether you know you’re doing it or not…like factcheck.org and the AP up there…then 95% of us pay less taxes.
And then if you look at that through the Biden lens — we’re just hemorrhaging our patriotism. Oh dear!
What’s the An Idea Bomb administration gonna do about that?
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
National Education Service
Saturday, September 20th, 2008Liberalism and conservatism. Here’s the difference…right here, baby.
Let’s make the elections all about this. Because they’re all about this already.
H/T: Bookworm.
Memo For File LXXIV
Thursday, September 18th, 2008Quoting myself over at Cassy’s place, as usual, nurturing my bad software-developer’s habit of leaving absolutely nothing unsaid. The subject is this weird article written up by some asshole by the name of Nicholas Provenzo, who is “troubled by…[Gov. Palin]’s decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome.”
I do not know how Mr. Provenzo feels about other issues we are debating hotly, nor do I very much care. For he is in some very impressive company on the “should’ve aborted Trig” platform, and that platform splices into some other platforms in a way that can no longer be denied by anyone honestly studying the polling and demographics. Elaborating further, I radiate my wisdom thusly…
It’s really damned peculiar when you start looking at other issues: The people who support these kinds of eugenics — that’s exactly what this guy is talking about — are the same ones who are constantly working at making people as expensive as possible, once they are here.
The minimum wage has to be automatically boosted. Everything’s gotta be a union shop. The “workers” deserve more vacation time, more medical benefits. Welfare benefits aren’t extended enough. You have the RIGHT…to family and medical leave, to sue your employer for looking at you funny, to sue him for not firing someone else who looked at you funny, to sue that guy who owns the house you were breaking into when you hurt yourself, to inspect the coins jingling around in your pocket and not see those horrible letters G, O, D.
Wouldn’t it be more logical if we were divided according to — make this enormous smorgasbord of rights available to every baby from the moment of conception…versus…people cost too much, so let’s cut these rights to the bone *and* institute a draconian code of eugenics. That kind of a divide would make a lot more sense. But instead, it’s flip-flopped. And these lefties are all twisty like a Mobeus strip; they say you have this enormous buffet of “rights” legislated in, a handful at a time, in response to random populist rage. But only if you make it across that vaginal finish line. Until then, you don’t get your vacation time, you don’t get annual bonuses, you don’t get the Bill of Rights, you don’t get to live and you aren’t even entitled to a humane demise…because you don’t exist.
It’s like they know. Their enormous accumulations of artificial “rights” are so expensive, that after awhile they can only be afforded if strict controls are put in place regarding who’s entitled to live in the precious utopia they’re trying to construct. Abortion is like the turnstyle to their precious little domed city.
It fascinates me endlessly that the same people who want the tree we call “humanity” to suck away at water and nutrients at an excessive rate through this exploding nanny-state, are the same people who want said vegetation…properly trimmed. Quality over quantity. There has to be something tying these oppositional motivations together. And they themselves cannot explain what it is, so it has to be something psychological.
Update: Provenzo himself replies, again, over at Cassy’s place. He says we’ve misstated his position — but then, every time he refers to the situation at hand, he’s careful to couch it in terms of a woman who would choose to abort the baby, and is perhaps about to be forced to carry it to term by some thuggish masculine martinet.
As a mother, Gov. Sarah Palin chose to carry Trig to term. This is not only the point Cassy was trying to make — although it is that — it renders Mr. Provenzo’s various summaries of the situation utterly invalid.
Provenzo clarifies himself in this follow-up:
In affirming a woman’s absolute right to abort an unwanted fetus, it seems I have triggered the wrath of the anti-abortion lynch mob if the recent death threats in my inbox are any indication. Such is life when confronting the morally ignorant with their irrationality, yet all their “pro-life” death threats aside, the fact remains: a woman has the unqualified moral right to abort a fetus she carries inside her in accordance with her own judgment.
What is the basis for this claim? What facts of reality demand that a woman enjoy the freedom to exercise her discretion in such a manner? At root, it is the simple fact that until the fetus is born and exists as a separate, physically independent human entity, the fetus is potential life and the actual life of the woman grants her interests and wishes primacy. As an acorn is not the same thing as an oak tree, a fetus is not the same thing as an independent human being. In the case of the fetus, its location matters: inside the woman and attached to her via the umbilical cord, its position in relation to the woman subordinates its status to her wishes; outside the woman, welcome to life in the human race.
But why is biological independence the defining factor of personhood in both morality and under the law? Why isn’t it the moment of conception, or the first instance of fetal heartbeat, or the first instance of fetal brain wave activity (just to name a few of the benchmarks often put forward by anti-abortion activists)? Again, it is the nature of the direct physical connection between the fetus and the mother. Physically attached to a woman in the manner a fetus is, the woman’s right to regulate the processes of her own body is controlling. Unattached and physically independent, the fetus is thus transformed; it is a person no different from anyone else and enjoys all the individual rights of personhood.
Needless, to say, this truth offends the sensibilities of some. They cannot fathom that something like the physical presence of the fetus inside a woman grants a woman power to control it as she controls the affairs of her own body. In a more just world, such people would simply choose not to have abortions, which is their every right. And leave it at that. Yet justice is not the aim of the anti-abortion mob. They simply seek to sacrifice unwilling women upon their altar of the unborn, reducing a woman to a mere birthing vessel the second a fetus exists in her body.
Here’s the flaw with Provenzo’s argument: It depends on the breezy conflation with moral sensibilities and facts. Now granted, perhaps he is so conflating so that he can stand atop the dais of intellectual superiority over his antagonists, as well as ethical superiority. It seems his ego gets a great charge when he does this. But it’s quite a simple truth that the two concepts he is so conflating, are quite different, so the conflation is a rather egregious abuse of logic and common sense.
Whatever you might make of the matter at hand — whether the mother’s right to choose supersedes the right of the “fetus” to live, or the right of the baby to live supersedes momma’s right to choose — this is a conclusion you have drawn, and it’s not a conclusion solely of logic. In using words like “truth” and “fact” Provenzo is essentially confessing to not sticking to the plane of reality and common sense, but rather departing from it. He’s arrived at his own moral code, and as icing on the cake has insisted, with no rational justification whatsoever, that whoever doesn’t agree with him is in possession of an inferior command of the facts.
Additionally, Provenzo has outlined his argument as the very definition of an invalid logical shortcut. It boils down to “babies are not babies until they have matured to the point they can exist outside of the mother; it is so, for I have decide that it is.” It’s fine fodder for those who already agree with Provenzo, who sympathize with him in the desire to feel superior to those who disagree! But it fails the most rudimentary test of a logical argument, for it isn’t even a compelling one. It has absolutely zero potential for winning reasoned converts.
There are a lot of people running around with this idea in their heads. I think what’s going on, is they’re just starting to understand why the Declaration of Independence was written the way it was; they’re just barely grasping the concept that rights can come from something, and of necessity, must come from something. They understand people can have “rights” that may offend those around them.
But they don’t know where to take that thought, because they won’t permit themselve to think of a Higher Power to whom the human race is accountable. That would interfere, you see, with this sacrosanct Right To Choose. I’ve hit on a favorite way to trip them up, and so far, not a single one of them has found a way out of the netting, in spite of their much self-professed intellectual horsepower.
It’s a simple question.
If a woman has an absolute right to abort a pregnancy at any instant in the term, and it’s non-negotiable, but some “mistaken” referendum pops up on my ballot in November that would criminalize abortions, do I have the “right” to vote yes on such a bill?
They don’t know how to answer that. About the most coherent answer I’ve ever gotten to that one is “yes, provided it doesn’t actually pass” or some such…yeah, you got it. At some point I have to stop challenging them, because I’m not sure their brains can think on this too long without melting down.
But the lesson here is, rights have to come from someplace. That’s how God does, after all, get involved in politics. If rights just come from people because there’s no God…then our rights are simply products of self-important snots like Nicholas Provenzo, jotting down words that say “this person has a right to do this, that person has a right to do that.” And this is the opinion of — whom, exactly? Provenzo? A majority? A minority that should be a majority? How long do we have these rights? Forever? Until next week? Until someone gets really, really grumpy and upset that these people have these rights? Until it costs someone some money?
It’s a fair question to ask. Because rights aren’t really rights, if you can only hang onto them so long as it makes someone happy that you’ve got ’em.
Perhaps, in the sitaution where a “fetus” continues living only in contravention to the wishes of the mother, what we are seeing is the very most emotionally jarring test possible of these things we call “rights,” and that attribute they have of enduring against the desires of others. And some of us have what it takes to continue a rational discussion past the point of realizing this, while some others do not.
Update: Cassy Fiano responds to Nick.
Nick’s argument seems to be that all he was saying is that it’s a legitimate choice to abort a child with severe retardation. But poor Nick seems to forget that we can still access what he wrote. And that wasn’t his argument. His argument was never simply about whether or not a woman had the right to choose. Nick’s original argument was that it was morally wrong and selfish for a woman to carry a disabled child to term, not to mention sheer disgust and condescension towards people with disabilities. You can see him saying that here:
Given that Palin’s decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.
And there’s more. You should go read it all, really. I can’t do it justice.
Cassy lives in a somewhat different world from me. This “what the liberal meant to say” stuff requires empathy, something I don’t have. So when I say “nurturing my bad software-developer’s habit of leaving absolutely nothing unsaid,” I mean leaving nothing unsaid regarding the subject at hand, according to the text of what the offender (Nicholas) actually wrote. Being empathy-challenged I’m unable to engage in a discourse about what he meant to say, should he so challenge…and, obviously, that is his game. “I never meant that.” Having talent in this area that I lack, Cassy is ready, willing and able to nail his ass to the wall.
I live in a universe that is much more about cause and effect. Nicholas’ argument boils down to one of — as I’ve said — “this right exists because I have decided that it exists.” It is the ultimate weak argument, because it is the ultimate non-argument; it purports to prove exactly what it presumes.
Without being able to empathize with Mr. Provenzo, however, I do believe I can define exactly where he has confused himself. When he says “inside the woman and attached to her via the umbilical cord, its position in relation to the woman subordinates its status to her wishes,” he is not so much stating a fact or a conclusion of sound logic, as announcing a personal value system for the purpose of accumulating a fellowship. If you agree, he’s ready to be your friend, if not, then move on.
That’s not truth. That’s not fact. It’s a belief, nothing more and nothing less.
No, in my world when we debate “rights,” we discuss the ramifications from all sides. Once a right is proposed for a specific class, obviously there is an interest held by the membership of that class in having the right. If there is a debate about the right at all, there’s probably another class that has an interest in the right not being granted. Here’s a great example — freedom of speech. I can think of all kinds of speech I’d like to have suppressed. What speech Mr. Provenzo would like suppressed, should be obvious. But if society is to work that way, it has to be a society with regulated speech. We sit down and vote on who gets to decide what, and whoever is in the minority has to just lump it and shut up.
You have the right not to be beaten up, and not to be killed. This is uncontested (or mostly so). Does that mean it’s impossible to find someone who would have an interest in you not having this right? Ah, no. Normal people, every week if not every day, feel that irrational impulse to clock somebody now and then. But we respect the rights of people not to be abused, not because that is the law, but because intelligent people know that’s what is needed to have even the beginnings of a civilized society.
Here we come to the central handicap of Provenzo’s argument(s). Most rights are accorded after some deliberation regarding whose desires are going to be thwarted. Provenzo sidesteps this deliberation and debate with the prized tactic of the forensically weak: You identify whoever would have an interest in not-granting the right Provenzo wants granted, and you define them out of existence.
In the 1700’s, the “negro” didn’t count.
In the 1800’s, the “injuns” didn’t count.
Post-Roe-v.-Wade, the “fetus” doesn’t count. It’s not a person. It’s tissue. Just like the people with black and red skin in centuries past…they didn’t count.
Provenzo’s argument(s): It sounds good, to a significant number of people, to say this stuff. Therefore, it must be so.
We do not want rights decided this way. In my cause-and-effect universe, if that’s the way they are parceled out then none of us really have ’em.
Update 9/20/08: This radio interview is a good one, by no means a softball session. Provenzo is confused, he says, about why he is being criticized. If he’s sincere in this, then he possesses a stunning apathy and ignorance about the concept of “choice,” such that I find it surprising he’d choose to write an article that’s supposed to be all about this.
The point of the opening line in the first essay, was to criticize a choice someone made. The opening line. Contextless. I really don’t see what else has to be deliberated about it, or why Provenzo finds it appealing to spin it the way he’s trying to.
Good interview. I recommend a listen or two…although it didn’t change my mind much.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
Paleofeminism II
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008On the last day of last year, I said…
I hope 2008 sees the end of this brand of feminism, I really do. The subject of the link in question is Page 8 of possible reasons Home Improvement jumped the shark, and “Guest” writes in with…
The show jumped with the “sandwich episode” where Jill really started to assert her own special brand of aggressive feminism. It was angering to watch Jill call her son a sexist because his girlfriend did his housework; the problem couldn’t possibly be on the girlfriend’s end, it must be the EVIL MISOGYNIST BRAD at fault because he LET her do his housework. In the end, everything was resolved, of course, when Jill converted everyone over to her point of view, aka the right one, including dimwitted Tim, who, of course, buckled under his wife’s demands yet again. Was there ever a single episode where Tim said, “Tough crap, Jill, this time it’s my way”?
I was watching this episode with my ten-year-old son, and found myself answering some complicated questions.
I went on to point out the flaw in Jill’s logic. I was garrulous, so let me sum it up in a single short paragraph here:
It’s the knight who is drawing this tangible benefit from the lady’s attentions. What, exactly, is he supposed to do according to this moral code handed down on high from matriarch paleofeminist Jill? The answer according to the script of the episode was — STOP the thoughtful girlfriend from making him sandwiches. Yeah that’s right. Snatch the peanut butter and jelly right outta her hands. That’s the scripted answer; the answer, in spirit, was “I don’t know.” That’s the trouble with paleofeminism. Paleofeminists won’t admit that their goal is really to get rid of men — but the elephant comes lumbering into full view in the middle of the room, when they are observed spraying instructions and orders at everyone in earshot, like some fully automatic rapid-fire trebuchet — or to invent a metaphor more functionally fitting, a claymore — and at the same time don’t know what to tell the men to do. We’re sexist pigs if our girlfriends make us sandwiches…how, then, do we remedy the situation and stop being sexist pigs? Catch the samrich-makin’ bitch in a full nelson and force her to drop the mayonnaise? It just doesn’t make any sense.
So I had good reason for wishing 2008 would see the end of paleofeminism. Very good reason. I like it when pretty ladies make me samriches. That’s because I’m sane.
Good reason…but not high hopes. And rightly so. For the frost is nearly upon the pumpkin, and what did blogger friend Cassy Fiano find for us. That’s right, another screeching screed at Feministing.
Check out this 1970 ad for bath oil (via Found in Mom’s Basement):
The text reads:
Sure. You live with him and take care of him and hang up his clothes. But just because you do the things a wife’s supposed to do, don’t forget you’re still a woman.
One of the nicest things you can do for a man is take care of your skin. That means Sardo. No other bath oil or bead has Sardo’s unique dry skin formula. It’s pure bath oil. The richest. The best. 3 out of 4 women saw and felt and loved the difference after just one Sardo bath.
How about you? Why don’t you do something soft and young and special for him. Feel wonderful all over with Sardo.
Wow, this is really taking some early-nineties Bryan Adams to its sexist extreme. I wonder if, when she wipes her ass, she’s also doing that for her husband?
Cassy unloads. And as usual, it’s pretty priceless:
What’s hilarious is how offensive the feminists say this ad is, but the commenters have zero problem whatsoever insulting and deriding the man for the hair on his arms. So it’s OK to criticize men for their looks but not women? What if a bunch of men were making fun of a woman because of something beyond her control, like her arms being hairier than normal, these same women would be shrieking with outrage.
It’s stories like these that make modern feminism so out-of-touch with reality and the average woman. When you’re worried about trivial bullshit like an ad from thirty years ago, or a Bryan Adams video that’s over fifteen years old, and make abortion the holy cow of your entire movement, and then call it fighting for women’s rights, it makes people not really take you very seriously. The thing is, there is real sexism in the world, and real women who are fighting real oppression. Most of this does not take place in the Middle East, but modern American feminism finds things like thirty-year-old bath oil ads and abortion more important than, oh, say three girls being buried alive for the “crime” of choosing their own husbands.
What motivates these bitter women? It obviously is not the “rights” of the modern woman. If it was about that issue, the girls being buried alive would at least register as a blip on the radar, one would hope. In fact, the samrich issue would not — Brad’s girlfriend wants to make him a samrich, she can go ahead and make him a samrich…the “choice” is hers, you see.
*sniff* *sniff* Smells like…some sort of collective bargaining.
Yes, that’s exactly what I think it is. Start out slow, and slack off. You get hired on to the team, which pumps out eight widgets per man per hour — you start cranking out twenty widgets an hour, boss gives you a big atta-boy, life will be all wonderful. Until you go home from work that day. It’s your co-workers, you see. You’re making ’em look bad.
This is exactly the same principle. You’re a woman, taking baths in oils to make your skin soft for that man o’ yours, make him a samrich or two…you know how those uppity men are, sooner or later they’ll start talking! And this puts pressure on the other jealous wrinkled up old gals. Can’t have that.
Perhaps this is why the feminists aren’t too interested in the teenage girls being buried alive, Cassy. See, not being murdered is an individual right. Forcing one amongst your peerage to start out slow & slack off, so that mediocrity can continue to be confused with excellence, that is a group right. A collective-bargaining right. Don’t do good works as an individual person, because you’re making the group-collective look bad.
Lower the expectations. For the good of the collective.
Just as union management demands to step into the role of the “real” boss…the wrinkled up old paleofeminist harpies are demanding to become the “real” husband. That hairy ape you’re living with, he’s just in the way. Don’t do anything to please him, or we’ll make you sorry.
Okay that explains everything — except one thing. With all this Sarah Palin news floating around, we’re already getting a crash-course that the feminist movement is pulling a bait-n-switch on us. They’ve been pissing and moaning that not enough women are winning high offices because not enough women are seeking those high offices…and that must have something to do with us grubby, awful, icky sexist men. Along comes Gov. Palin. To a rational mindset, she would appear to be the fulfillment of everything the feminists had been demanding all these years. Well, the feminists don’t like her, which proves the “womens’ rights” movement never had anything to do with women, and most certainly didn’t have much to do with their rights. It was all about a political agenda. Putting pressure on people to vote for unqualified angry women, was just a tactic for enacting that agenda.
What’s really awful for the feminist movement, is that Sarah Palin and the attacks against her don’t clearly state this for the understanding of whacky bloggers like myself. These events make all this plain to the average, Main Street voter. It’s the kind of damage only self-evident truth can do.
So why now for the attack on the Sardo ad? Why choose right here-and-now to really solidify that message to us…that feminism is all about marginalizing men, and driving a wedge between the sexes — that it has little or nothing to do with womens’ rights? It’s as if Feministing is terrified someone out here was not quite clear on things, and wanted to make sure the message was really spelled out for everyone.
Heyyyyyyy, here’s an idea. Let’s make the 2008 elections all about this. Vote McCain/Palin if you want men and women to get along, vote Obama/Biden if you think whenever a lady is softening up her skin or making samriches for her man, someone should jump in and force her to stop, whether she wants to stop or not. In the name of womens’ choice.
Meanwhile, if any nice-lookin’ ladies come along and start making me hot juicy pies and fetching me cold beers, I fully intend to support womens’ rights. I intend to let them. Sorry if that offends anyone.
Palin and the Common Good
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Mike has come up with the most valid reason to question the wisdom of voting for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it. The most valid one expressed so far.
That, of course, says very little. But the point is, Mike’s opened a dialog that I think is worth having, and I hope Gov. Palin is questioned on it. Firmly.
And he’s right — she did use that dreaded phrase 10:10 into this video.
I’m not going to brush this off or pretend it didn’t happen. I do think Mike’s reading way too much importance into this, since her small-government credentials are established now both in rhetoric and in fact. I just think it’s a phrase ripe for abuse, is all. She should address this.
How About Letting the Taxpayers Keep It?
Friday, August 29th, 2008A mystified taxpayer writes into the Sacramento Bee on August 26.
Let us buy things, not pay taxes
Would the Democratic Assembly please tell citizens why paying taxes is more important than spending one’s money as one chooses? Why are government programs more important than consumer items that actually generate tax revenue?
When tax revenues fall, hello, there is a reason. Why should we, and especially those on limited incomes, be forced to pay higher taxes rather than on goods and services of our choice?
Just asking for clarification.
– Cynthia Van Auken, Chico
An eyeball-rolling fan of big government responds with mock patience, today. Like, what the hell is the matter with this beleagured taxpayer, is she stupid or something?
Tax dollars benefit the economy
Apparently, Cynthia Van Auken is the product of private schools, uses an autogyro for transportation, has a private security guard and a superior fire retarding system for her home. Otherwise, like most of the rest of us, she has benefited from the taxes we all, including the employees of civil service systems, pay (“Let us buy things, not pay taxes,” letter, Aug. 26).
When we build roads, the private sector, under the supervision of civil servants, makes money that goes directly back into the economy. When we hire teachers, our children grow up able to make a decent salary, and the teachers’ salaries go to purchase products and pay taxes. These tax dollars benefit the economy just as much as the dollars spent by those who don’t pay taxes. I suggest Van Auken could benefit from a short course in economics. We must pay for services we want to use, be they airports, highways, police departments or fire departments.
– Joy M. Doyle, Sacramento
I couldn’t resist adding to the melee. Being evil, and all.
Lady,
Just what do you think people do with money when they are allowed by their gracious and benevolent state government to keep it? Stick it up their butts, or something?
Whereupon I yanked that virtual draft out of my virtual typewriter, crumpled it into a virtual ball, and tossed it in the virtual wastebasket.
Rolling a fresh virtual sheet of virtual paper under the virtual platen, I began anew:
Cyntha Van Auken was “just asking for clarification” but Joy Doyle bit her head off. I hope she enjoyed doing it.
Ms. Doyle, can your argument take on merely the appearance of merit, if it’s presented in a civil tone? I think it could; evidently, you disagree. That’s a shame. I’ve found ideas consistently presented in haughty and condescending tones tend to be bad. I also notice Keynesian theory is often presented this way.
One other question: On your next job interview, when your prospective employer asks why you should get the job, do you intend to say something like “when you pay me money, I spend it, and that benefits everybody”? If so – that, of course, would be very silly. If not, then I’m afraid I need some enlightenment: Why should our state government get credit for spending money, when individuals don’t?
I think that’s the issue Van Auken was trying to raise. I see you pretty much sidestepped it. That’s probably because you felt the need to.
I should add that today’s letters section carried another letter making the same point as Ms. Doyle’s, but exhibiting an exception to this rule about advocating Keynesian economics in snarky, snotty tones.
Paying for our quality of life
Allow me to answer Cynthia Van Auken’s question of why paying taxes is sometimes more important than spending one’s money as one chooses.
There are things that can’t be bought but instead require the ongoing investment of all of society. The basics include roads, police and fire protection.
Then account for the fact that bad things can happen to good people. If your spouse has a stroke or your child has a disability, do you want there to be programs so that you can work, go shopping and have respite from caregiving? If you get cancer and your insurance doesn’t cover all the bills, should you face bankruptcy and foreclosure? Do you really want the kids down your street to lack quality education and job opportunities, leaving them so hopeless that they’re willing to shoot each other over the color of a jacket?
Government services to address those needs are not charity but investments in our quality of life. We can argue about which investments and how much, but let’s stop pretending that we can have something for nothing. Part of being a responsible citizen means being willing to pay for the quality of life we want.
– Kathy Campbell, Sacramento
However, I have a bone to pick with Ms. Campbell too (although I’ll not further burden my poor local letters-to-editor guy with it today).
I keep seeing the same bullshit used to defend our ravenous state government’s insatiable apetite for money.
Roads.
Schools.
Police & Fire.
Educating our chiiiiilllllddddrrreeeeeennnn…
I’ll not tear into the entrails of our state’s budget to demonstrate how off the mark this is. For one thing, I don’t have a budget I could inspect in such a way just yet! That’s part of the reason, I’m sure, Van Auken wrote her letter in the first place; there are few state-level boondoggles bigger than California’s annual clown-puppet show.
Just take it from this Golden State citizen — take my word for it.
This state spends money on a lot of other things besides schools, roads and fire departments.
Why Healthcare is Not a Right
Friday, August 29th, 2008Right Wing News had a contest for the best “anti-socialized” post in the blogosphere, with a $50 prize for first place.
What will happen is that bloggers will write posts about socialized medicine. They can write them specifically for the contest or just because that’s what they happen to want to write about today, but once they write the post, they’ll send me an email letting me know that they want it entered in the contest (Yes, I do have to get an email. Sorry, but these are the rules I am working under).
Then, at the end of the week, I will select the best articles from that week on socialized medicine, will rank them, and then will link all the top posts on RWN. Furthermore, all the bloggers that rank will have the satisfaction of getting their work recognized and will get traffic from RWN — but first place will also receive $50.
We didn’t enter in this one…we are The Blog That Nobody Reads, remember? Anyway, we doubt like hell we could’ve done a better job than what took the top honors this week. Richly deserving, IMHO.
Rights really only make sense in the context of a lawful society. Governments are instituted, as a basic matter, to determine where one person’s rights end and another’s begins. For example, you have a right to free speech, but others have a right against defamation. If you say something untrue and defamatory about someone, the government can determine whose right trumps.
From the perspective of the government, a right is something that can be ensured to one citizen without taxing (in the broadest sense) another citizen. For example, the government can ensure your right to free speech without any cost to anyone else. No one has to listen (you do not, for example, have the right to be listened to). Nor does anyone have to publish your work. You do not, however, have the right to a full-page spread in the Wall Street Journal. If, however, you can afford to, you can purchase one and say pretty much whatever you want.
In a (mostly) free and (mostly) just society like ours, rights are plentiful. You have, to name a few, the right to bear arms, the right to your life, your liberty, the pursuit of your happiness. To be sure, however, this does not mean the government must buy you a gun. Nor does it mean government must purchase the things that make you happy. It only means that government cannot restrict these rights without due process of law.
Basic points which draw universal agreement — or damn well should — then, the writer goes in for the kill:
Consider a small society of 100 people, with laws not too dissimilar to ours. Let’s assume 2 of these people are unable, for whatever reason, to afford their own home. Among the other people are a carpenter, a logger, a blacksmith, a painter and a plumber. If the government is to provide those two people with housing, it has to either (i) tax everyone to pay the workmen to build the house or (ii) compel the workmen to build the house for free. Either way, the government must take something of value to provide this need to those who cannot obtain it on their own.
A masterful job of explaining the point from beginning to end. I intend fully to link back to this one in the future…liberally.
Comcast To Cap Internet Usage
Friday, August 29th, 2008Yeah they’re going to be sending angry schoolmarms right into your home office to rap you across the knuckles with heavy wooden rulers. Well, virtually anyway:
Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies.
“If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast’s Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use,” according to the company’s updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use.
Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year.
Not to worry, this is the United States. Of course there’s still a right way and a wrong way to do this. The right way would be to do what cell phone companies do, which is to offer plans selected by the customer, to project their usage. If you want to sign up and you think you’ll be using more than 250 GB, you pick a different plan and pay extra.
And, being this is the United States, and Comcast made the wrong decision, the competition of the marketplace will fix this fine and dandy. We don’t need me or one of my friends to take over this place and make these companies do things the right way. We believe in freedom of the customer to wear the Internet out, as long as he hits himself in the billfold and nobody else; and we believe in the freedom of companies to make boneheaded decisions about how to treat their customers, and succeed or fail by those boneheaded decisions. Freedom all around, that’s our motto!
Or is it.
As Web usage has rocketed, driven by the popularity of watching online video, photo-sharing and music downloading services, cable and phone companies have been considering various techniques to limit or manage heavy usage.
But Comcast has come under fire from a variety of sources for its network management techniques. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission investigated complaints by consumer groups that it was blocking peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent, and earlier this month ordered Comcast to modify its network management.
Comcast has said that by the end of the year it will change its network management practices to ensure all Web traffic is treated essentially the same, but has also been exploring other ways to prevent degradation of its Internet service delivery. [emphasis mine]
Hey Founding Fathers! I’m a time traveler from 2008! In my time we’ve modified this government you’re putting together now, into a predatory leviathan that gives orders to private entities about how to sell commodities to each other, like molasses, leggings, silk, tobacco and sugarbeets.
What would they say?
Ah well, being a bunch of clueless old dead white guys & all, they wouldn’t understand the nuances of our nation’s history, most notably the Red Lion v. FCC ruling from the Supreme Court back in 1966.
Before 1927, the allocation of frequencies was left entirely to the private sector, and the result was chaos. It quickly became apparent that broadcast frequencies constituted a scarce resource whose use could be regulated and rationalized only by the Government. Without government control, the medium would be of little use because of the cacaphony of competing voices, none of which could be clearly and predictably heard. Consequently, the Federal Radio Commission was established to allocate frequencies among competing applicants in a manner responsive to the public “convenience, interest, or necessity.”
As is the case with a lot of the SCOTUS rulings from the 1960’s, generations later we’re only now beginning to appreciate the full scope of damage done by them. Radio is a “scarce resource” (the phrase is used extensively throughout Red Lion); therefore, some centralized office is needed to assign the frequencies and prevent this “cacaphony”; the Federal Government’s authority is conferred entirely on the basis of that logistical need for coordination.
From that we had the Fairness Doctrine. You own a radio station, you interview Al Franken for half an hour, maybe I can petition the FCC to force you to let me come on for thirty minutes and offer a rebuttal. And maybe the FCC will say yes. You’ll stammer “B-b-but I was just interviewing him about the weather in Minnesota and how things are going in general” and maybe the apparatchicks will say — We don’t care, Mr. Franken is a political figure, therefore you put out political content.
The First Amendment protects you from that kind of meddling if, for example, you splashed a transcript of your interview of Al Franken on a billboard by the side of the freeway. Not a scarce resource, you see. But there are only so many radio channels to be parceled out; this is what separates the radio from the billboard and, for that matter, from leggings and sugarbeets.
Nation of veal calves. We’re becoming a nation of veal calves. The story of Comcast’s bad policy is a story of an encroaching nanny state, and quite a frightening one at that — for the cure is just as bad as the disease. Both involve “oversight” from some supposedly wise and beneficent authority, which in turn is qualified to be neither wise nor beneficent. And, we’ve neglected to go through that obligatory hoop-jumping by which the Internet is supposed to be somehow categorized as a “scarce resource” subject to regulation, more like radio and less like sugarbeets. We didn’t even ponder the question. This is the most alarming thing of all; a commodity is subject to possible depletion, and the debate’s over. Right away, we’re putting some wise, all-knowing demigod into some capacity in which he can tell others when to jump, how high, and when to come back down again. And after we’ve done that, we won’t even care about what his name is. Just another nameless, faceless, unaccountable bureaucrat with power over life and death.
And so I know what the Founding Fathers would say.
The same thing they’ve said, in my dreams, every time I’ve traveled back to tell ’em what’s going on.
“Uh, two thousand eight minus seventeen seventy-six equals two hundred thirty-two…gee…well, that kind of sucks.”
“Netroots Platform”
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Delaware Liberal sees a need to create a more specific “netroots” platform, and so he has jotted down a statement of general principles:
The American Dream begins with every American’s right to be healthy, educated, and to live in a safe community and a clean environment. We believe vibrant economy is built with American jobs, well-paid productive workers, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit. We believe responsibility, honesty, and compassion are fundamental to a successful nation and that efficient government, effective public investments, and fiscal responsibility serve our citizens best.
We believe protecting personal liberty begins with the right of every citizen to enjoy their full civil liberties with equal access to opportunity and justice[.] We believe in the values of freedom, fairness, and respect. We believe the cornerstone of democracy is honest elections, transparent government and a deep commitment to our nations’ Constitution and Bill of Rights.
We believe leadership with global cooperation is the best way to secure peace and acting on environmental challenges strengthens our nation and protects the Earth. We believe the power of the United States must be used honestly and wisely.
We believe America’s promise of prosperity, liberty and security belongs to all Americans and that our nation’s strength lies in a shared commitment to these ideals.
Paragraph 2 is so vague as to become complete ineffectual. It does not identify any point of disagreement with any other competing platform, nor does it explain how, exactly, “the right of every citizen to enjoy their full civil liberties with equal access to opportunity and justice” makes it possible to “protect…personal liberty.” I presume I have to watch To Kill A Mockingbird one more time; if that is a control scenario, to which the “netroots” oppose a societal regression, well then I agree we shouldn’t go back to that. Who wouldn’t?
Paragraph 3 is a mish-mash between code words for a world government at the expense of American sovereignty, and…more ineffectual nonsense that doesn’t mean anything.
Paragraph 4 is more pap.
Paragraph 1, to me, is the scary part. Sure it sounds good. We have all these rights! Cool! Except, these rights include things that would cost other people their choices, their money, or both. You know what that reminds me of? It reminds me…of…this:
Article 40
Citizens of the USSR have the right to work…Article 41
Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure…Article 42
Citizens of the USSR have the right to health protection…Article 43
Citizens of the USSR have the right to maintenance in old age, in sickness, and in the event of complete or partial disability or loss of the breadwinner…Article 44
Citizens of the USSR have the rights to housing…Article 45
Citizens of the USSR have the right to education…Article 46
Citizens of the USSR have the right to enjoy cultural benefits…
I’ve noticed something over the years. And I’m going to keep it to myself.
Hah! Kiddin’…
…no, I’m going to jot it down. Right here. This thing I’ve noticed over the years has to do with what local cultures — not actual nations, per se, but just enclaves in which there is a localized code of expectations for people’s behavior — seem to have a consistent equation with a constant product, said equation consisting of individual obligations and societal obligations. When I say “constant product” what I mean is the more of the former there is, the less there is of the latter, and vice versa.
If every little bad thing that happens is blamed on “society,” people act irresponsibly.
If people are entitled to things unconditionally, they end up, ironically, losing those things. Free speech doesn’t fall into this. Things that cost other people money, seem to. That appears to me to be the defining boundary. If someone else has to pay for these things to which you’re entitled, sooner or later, there’s a big pot of money that is tapped out and then there’s some kind of crisis.
Oh, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about though…I write from California…which is about to begin its eighth week of not having a constitutionally-required budget signed…
Yeah, delawaredem, by all means feed us some more of that mushbucket o’liberal goodness. It works out so well everywhere it’s been tried.
This is John Galt Speaking…
Thursday, August 14th, 2008Yeah, they start off by picking on my guy Fred.
But that’s okay. Fred Thompson is a far cry from the “Mr. Thompson” guy in the book, but give the Objectivists credit where it is due. It is a truism of life — you “sacrifice for the greater good” and nobody says “oh, goody, he’s a good person he sacrificed let’s leave him alone.” Nope. They come back like the ducks and geese you shouldn’t have fed, and the “moral ideal” by which they demanded your original sacrifice, becomes a distant memory — in no time at all.
And your “original” sacrifice becomes an “original” sin.
Sen. Thompson did fall for it. Although he had his reasons. I’ll get into that some other time, it’s a little off topic. For now, I think it’s important that Mr. Galt’s speech be disseminated far and wide, in some other format besides pp. 923 through 977 in micro-font. It’s an important message.
August 4
Monday, August 4th, 2008Bidinotto reminds us what exactly is so important about this date. Thanks, Jim. Handy to know right about now.
Ingratitude
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008Via Conservative Grapevine, a Jonah Goldberg article, one of his better ones. Actually, it’s very, very good. There’s a little bit of solid gold in each and every sentence:
It’s an old story. Loving parents provide a generous environment for their offspring. Kids are given not only ample food, clothing and shelter, but the emotional necessities as well: encouragement, discipline, self-reliance, the ability to work with others and on their own. And yet, in due course, the kids rebel. Some even say their parents never loved them, that they were unfair, indifferent, cruel. Often, such protests are sparked by parents’ refusal to be even more generous. I want a car, demands the child. Work for it, insist the parents. Why do you hate me? asks the ingrate.
:
People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.The interesting question isn’t “Why is there poverty?” It’s “Why is there wealth?” Or: “Why is there prosperity here but not there?”
I think an apt analogy can be drawn with cars. This car over here demands oil changes and nothing else, up to one hundred thousand…two hundred thousand…three hundred thousand miles, even more. that other car over there is up to seventy thousand and the mechanic is giving the owner the go-car-shopping speech. You can ask “Why do I need a new engine after seventy thousand miles?” Or you can ask…how come this car over here has one service record, and that car over there has a different one.
If you stick to the Goldberg paradigm and ask “why this over here and that over there?” your answer might come in the form of driver incompetence. It could…but that’s only one possible reason. You might just as likely find out that model of car isn’t known for making it to six digits on the odometer, no matter what. You might learn more severe demands were made of it; it was driven where summers are hotter, winters are colder, and heavy loads had to be towed much of the time. Maybe the oil changes weren’t done on time — it was driven well but maintained half-assed.
But to guarantee that we won’t be blaming the driver, we have to stay away from the Goldberg paradigm and ask the silly question. “Why didn’t my car last?” Goldberg is right, it’s a silly question. It’s the question people ask when they don’t really want an answer.
And that is the way we handle poverty in the world. Because we’re so “civilized.”
Playgrounds Need More Risk
Friday, July 18th, 2008…so said this expert across the pond over two years ago.
Britain’s leading play safety expert has some simple advice for grown-ups: relax. Let your kids have fun; let them be challenged; let them explore – and let them take risks.
David Yearley, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, says that years of concentrating solely on safety has led to the spread of ‘boring’ public play areas. With £124m in lottery cash earmarked for sprucing up playgrounds, he says it’s time to shift the focus to ‘controlled risk’.
Yearley, keynote speaker at an international conference in Loughborough this week, said: ‘We need to provide play environments so that children can experience risk in a controlled and managed way.’
Yeah, for one brief, shining moment, there was light at the end of the tunnel. A little bit of respect for old-fashioned, rough-and-tunnel, “Hold My Beer And Watch This” manliness.
Maybe that was there, but the more pressing concern was…
Play can be dangerous: 40,000 British children – from an under-15 population of about 12 million – are injured each year. One child dies every two or three years as a result of a playground accident.
Yearley said that, unless playgrounds provide ‘exciting, stimulating’ diversion for children, there is a danger that children will not use them, and will play instead on railway lines, by riverbanks or alongside roads.
Well ironically, this much older article was more in line with the concerns I have about kids today.
A GROWING number of children’s playgrounds are too safe and designed more for anxious parents than the rounded development of their cosseted offspring, research-ers say.
A three-year study written in conjunction with the University of Manchester surveyed 872 families and found that a concern for safety often hampered children’s ability to learn for themselves. In two- thirds of cases, a decision to use a particular playground was made by parents and not by their children.
Dr John McKendrick, of Glasgow Caledonian University, one of the report’s authors,said: “There is too much concern with safety. Good parenting has been seen as interventionist parenting for too long … parents are using playgrounds for their own benefit and not for their child’s.
Bingo! Good parenting seen as interventionist parenting. How many times have I had this conversation with Kidzmom, and with mothers in general…”So, when he’s eighteen and graduated from high school, are you planning to be there to –” “Yeah, I know…” The final two syllables of the retort are drawled out wistfully, understanding the problem, knowing it’s a significant one, but not being able to dredge up the drive to confront it.
Now, get a load of what Cassy found out, via Wizbang, about potato sack races.
The sack race and three-legged race have been banned from a school sports day because the children might fall over and hurt themselves.
:
Simon Woolley, head of education at Beamish in Co Durham, said: “We looked at a three-legged race and a sack race but what we want to do is minimise the risk to the children. We thought we would be better to do hopping and running instead because there was less chance of them falling over.”
We are living in an over-lawyered society. The nightmare scenario that led to this, was for that dreaded playground sound to be heard — “++plop++ WAAAAAHHHHH!!!” — and a lawsuit to ensue.
So no plop.
This is a great definition of a bad idea. Everyone says “we had better do it this way”…but nobody wants to sign onto owning the decision. Nobody says this is a better way to do it.
Nobody really wants to sign their name under the idea that the kids are genuinely “unharmed.” Because deep down, we all understand that isn’t true. But we have to do it this way; it’s “for the children.”
How Big a Boondoggle was the Big Dig?
Thursday, July 17th, 2008This big…at latest report…
Big Dig’s red ink engulfs state
Cost spirals to $22b; crushing debt sidetracks other work, pushes agency toward insolvencyMassachusetts residents got a shock when state officials, at the peak of construction on the Big Dig project, disclosed that the price tag had ballooned to nearly $15 billion. But that, it turns out, was just the beginning.
Now, three years after the official dedication of the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel, the state is reeling under a legacy of debt left by the massive project. In all, the project will cost an additional $7 billion in interest, bringing the total to a staggering $22 billion, according to a Globe review of hundreds of pages of state documents. It will not be paid off until 2038.
Contrary to the popular belief that this was a project heavily subsidized by the federal government, 73 percent of construction costs were paid by Massachusetts drivers and taxpayers. To meet that obligation, the state’s annual payments will be nearly as much over the next several years, $600 million or more, as they were in the heaviest construction period.
Big Dig payments have already sucked maintenance and repair money away from deteriorating roads and bridges across the state, forcing the state to float more highway bonds and to go even deeper into the hole.
Among other signs of financial trouble: The state is paying almost 80 percent of its highway workers with borrowed money; the crushing costs of debt have pushed the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which manages the Big Dig, to the brink of insolvency; and Massachusetts spends a higher percentage of its highway budget on debt than any other state.
You realize, don’t you, that this is everyone’s fault — even the fault of people who don’t live in Massachusetts. Whenever we’re given an option to evaluate the desirability of some massive government undertaking that has been previously handled in the private sector, we tend to make the decision by meme. There are popular memes and unpopular memes.
Example: A man handing the television remote to his wife, is a popular meme. Her handing it back to him, and maybe making him a sammich, would be an unpopular meme. Her and the kids calling him a clueless dork would be a popular one.
Like that.
Well, this is turning into an apt description of how government boondoggles come to exist. They aren’t really sold to us in the first place under a thesis that they will stay within stated budget parameters. Yes that is what the wording of the sales pitch says — but we don’t check it out.
We shouldn’t be buying into these things by meme. We should be buying into them based on history. It’s easy to demonstrate that we don’t do that. Quick: Where is the master atlas of government efforts, nationalized away from private enterprise, with ratings on how much they cost versus how much they were supposed to cost, how successful they were, whether they did what they were supposed to do. In a sane universe, not only would such a list exist, but we’d be adding to it constantly, and cracking it open every time we were asked to support a new such undertaking.
That’s pretty much what the bank does when you apply for a loan.
If we did that, we would all be practically the dictionary definition of the word “conservative.”
But we don’t do that. We decide by popularity of the meme. Therefore, even with the Big Dig in the rear view mirror (as it will be, throughout at least the next thirty years) — we’ll be doing this again.
Let’s Make the 2008 Elections About THIS…
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008H/T: Hot Air, via Cas, who bottom-lines the issue expertly, in a way we’ll be able to decide it in November.
This sums up, in a nutshell, the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans usually believe that Americans are smart enough to run their own lives; Democrats don’t. Republicans usually think that Americans deserve to keep their own money; Democrats don’t. Republicans usually think that Americans will lead their lives perfectly fine without government intervention; Democrats don’t.
Liberals just can’t seem to grasp the fact that people don’t need their all-knowing wisdom-filled genius to live happy and full lives. When President Bush said that it was presumptuous to tell Americans how to live their own lives, I wanted to cheer.
This is what President Bush says right before his approval numbers trickle upward a point or two — read that as, away from Congress’ approval rating which is much lower.
When he values agreement above clarity and starts “reaching across the aisle” to “unify” with the folks who have no qualms at all about telling us when to plug in our coffeemakers and where to set our thermostats and what language to teach our kids…that is when his approval rating goes DOWN.
The record bears this out.
We’re Not Selfish Enough
Thursday, July 10th, 2008Via Cassy, we learn of a DailyKOS kid who lets loose on what’s really bugging him about the US of A.
And with apologies to my friends in Canada, he claims to have been talking to one of yours…and, having grown up within a stone’s throw of your border, by reason of experience from those olden days which I’ll leave unexplained here — this is why I believe this is not a joke. Don’t be too offended, I like some of your beers.
You Americans Aren’t Selfish Enough
by LithiumColaYou pay all these taxes but you don’t want anything in return for it. You don’t want free health care. You don’t want time off of work. You don’t want anything. You’re not selfish enough.
You get mad when someone is taking welfare and sitting on their ass. What have you got against sitting on your ass? The whole point behind having a government and paying taxes is to have more time to sit on your ass. That’s what technology is for. You Americans work longer than anyone, pay all these taxes, make all these robots, and then not only don’t you sit on your ass, but you get mad when anyone else does. You’re fucking crazy.
You say, “people on welfare are lazy.” What the hell is wrong with lazy? Do you want lazy people to starve to death? Don’t you want to be more lazy? Don’t you want a hobby? Why not?
Again, I could understand that if you weren’t paying all these taxes, I guess. But you are, and you seem like you don’t want anything for it.
I see it over and over again and yet it continues to take me by surprise…just a little. But the left is everlastingly consistent. It has a message. When it comes to propagating that message, all work is worth doing (note that our KOSKid took the time to type this in…without a robot, I presume). All enemies are worth confronting.
Outside of propagating that message, no work is worth doing and no enemies are worth confronting. And that brand of nihilism — this is the surreal part — is the message.
It is self-reproducing, exponential expansion of quantity — with no quality. Do…whatever it takes…bear any burden, pay any price…to spread the word: No burden worth bearing, no price worth paying. Let the robots do it.
The Food Shrink Ray
Thursday, July 10th, 2008You ever notice when people don’t put a lot of thought into something, they end up exaggerating their importance — and because they exaggerate their own sense of importance, paradoxically, they end up envisioning themselves as a bunch of lab rats?
That probably needs clarification. I’ll explain. Start with this article about shrinking food packages…
With fuel and delivery costs rising, food manufacturers are faced with raising their prices or giving you less, and it seems that less is the growing trend.
To Dean Smith, the two containers of Breyers ice cream looked exactly the same at his supermarket in Evansville, Ind. Then he looked closely and figured out that the old package was 1¾ quarts, while the new package was just 1½ quarts.
“You can’t tell at all,” Smith said.
But the article isn’t about ice cream. It discusses cereal, cheese discs, coffee, sausage rolls, kitchen bags…on and on. Each of them charging the same price, or more, for smaller packages.
But [Consumer Reports editor Tod] Marks said the practice was just a way to hike prices under the radar of consumers.
“It’s a shell game, call it what you will,” Marks said in an interview on NBC’s TODAY. “In these tough economic times … the worst thing that can happen for a manufacturer at this point is to raise prices. So they use this sneaky tactic of giving you less and charging you more.”
And consumers do notice.
“When you find out you’re paying more but getting less, you’re left to believe somebody is doing something wrong,” Randy Compton said on a recent shopping trip to an Apple Market in Mobile, Ala.
Okay, let’s just explore a bunny trail for a second: This complaint is going to resonate with a lot of people, who will then go on to complain how embarrassed they are in “the eyes of the rest of the world” over what huge guts and butts Americans have. And our nation is fat. And it’s true that charging more for less food is a covert way to diminish our lifestyles…but to be sincere about it, you need to put some real passion into complaining about one of those, or the other. You can’t have both.
But the primary thrust of my point here, is about the lab rats. Why do we have to imagine there’s always a sinister conspiracy. “Hah! We’ll put thirteen ounces in this ‘one pound’ package of coffee, and we’ll FOOL OUR CUSTOMERS! Muhahahahahah…!!” (Pause to twirl the tip of your bad guy mustache with your fingers.)
The truth is, this is the way competition works — the consumer is not so important as to justify such sadistic motives. And I would expect a Consumer Reports senior editor to catch on to this. If you’re charging 8.99 for a pound of coffee and your competition is charging 8.99 for a pound of coffee, and then the price of coffee goes up because the price of diesel fuel is over 5.40 a gallon, and your competition starts selling 13.5 -ounce “one pound bags” so he can keep charging 8.99…what’re you gonna do?
1. Take a loss
2. Sell your own 13.5 oz bags for 8.99
3. Keep the bags at one pound and sell them for 10.99
You don’t have to have a degree in economics or in marketing to understand options 1 and 3 are suicide.
This is nothing but economic ignorance. People had the thought in their heads that oil could go up to $150 a barrel, and the price of Nutter Butter Bars would stay exactly where it is. Well, they thought wrong. They got an education.
I do think it’s a good economic alert to sound for the retail consumer. But this is something you learn when you move out of the house and do your own laundry. All ketchup doesn’t come in 32 ounce bottles. But if you’re concerned about it, you can just read a couple numbers on the container of whatever-it-is you’re buying, and skip the economic-class-warfare Pravda propaganda articles in glossy magazines, masquerading as shopping tips.
Want a bigger jar of strawberry jam for your four bucks?
Sacrifice!
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008Carl at Simply Left Behind (which is a lefty blog) is opining on what’s wrong with us nowadays and sounding…very conservative…
You get hit by a car. You sue the other driver. He hires a lawyer and sues you back to try to prove that, indeed, it was your fault for stepping in front of his car.
:
You see a woman in an emergency room collapse. She lays there for 24 hours and dies. No one does a thing. Why? Because someone else should have handled it.You walk down a street and a piece of newspaper blows across and wraps around your ankle. You stand next to a garbage can, yet rather than reach down, pluck the paper and toss it in the bin, you shake your foot and off it flies to litter again. Serial litter, I like to call this.
We fight a war in a far-off land, and the only sacrifice we’re asked to make is to load up on debt and shop some more. Arguably, given what has happened, this might turn into the ultimate sacrifice for many of us, but that’s a different story.
And I would add to that, the story of Sergio Casian Aguiar curb-stomping his own son to death for a full seven minutes. While bystanders watched.
A spectacle that shocked and horrified conservatives, while liberals made excuses:
“I would not condemn these people,” said John Darley, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University who has studied how bystanders react in emergency situations. “Ordinary people aren’t going to tackle a psychotic.
“What we have here,” Darley said, “is a group of family and friends who are not pre-organized to deal with this stuff. They don’t know who should do what. … If you had five volunteer firefighters pull up, you would expect them to have planned responses and a division of labor. But that’s not what we had here.”
Carl’s cognitive dissonance on the virtue of sacrifice is a source of endless fascination to me, in part because he represents so many millions besides himself. And while parts of his thesis make sense, together as a whole it is a baffling tangled mess of contradictions.
When the newspaper attaches itself to your ankle you’re supposed to bend down, pick it up, and throw it away!
Okay, with Saddam Hussein that is exactly what we did. Carl doesn’t like that…
But it makes sense! Because there was no sacrifice!
Yeah, well, we sacrificed plenty. That’s the point of all these war protests…supposedly we’re drafting our innocent doe-eyed children, boxing ’em up, hauling ’em to Iraq where they get blown up by the thousands. And that’s wrong! But that’s a sacrifice if ever there was one. So…your point?
It’s only the sacrifice of a few! It doesn’t affect everyone, so it doesn’t count!
We-ell, as I pointed out in my comment, in a lot of other areas a financial sacrifice is supposed to count, and supposedly, the Iraq war is responsible for crude oil that costs $149 a barrel. When we pull in to a gas station and have to part with $50 to fill a twelve-gallon tank, that seems to me to be a sacrifice, especially when by Tuesday of next week we’ll have to do it again.
Unless financial sacrifices don’t count, in which case Carl just nullified every speech made by every tax-and-spend liberal who ever wanted to “roll back the Bush tax cuts” for the virtue of sacrifice.
I think liberals like Carl are confused on the concept of sacrifice. There are two definitions to it: There is the outcome-based sacrifice, in which the “sacrifice” itself is just a negligible and unpleasant side effect in the process of upholding what truly matters. The narrower definition, in which the pain is the point, is what John Galt was talking about in that monstrously long speech of his:
Sacrifice is the surrender of value — of a higher value to a lower one, or of the good to the evil.
The code is impossible to practice because it would lead to death, and thus moral perfection is impossible to man.
The Doctrine of Sacrifice cannot provide man with an interest in being good.
Since man is in fact an indivisible unity of matter and consciousness, the sacrifice of “merely” material values necessarily means the sacrifice of spiritual ones.
The self is the mind, and the most selfish act is the exercise of one’s independent judgment. In attacking selfishness, the Doctrine of Sacrifice seeks to make you surrender your mind.
The Doctrine of Sacrifice commands that you act for the good of others but provides no standard of the good. And it requires only that you intend to benefit others, not that you succeed.
The Doctrine of Sacrifice makes you the servant and others your masters –and adds insult to injury by saying you should find happiness through sacrifice.
Somewhere in there Galt made a mention of the mother who went without eating so that her infant could eat; that would not be a sacrifice, according to Galt who was using the pain-based definition of “sacrifice.” That mother would be upholding an ideal important to her system of values, simply paying a price necessary to acquire it. Sacrifice, Galt said, would have been giving up her child for the sake of something not important to her. (Update: It actually had to do with sacrificing the child for a nice hat. See below. My memory managed to “sacrifice” the finer details to retain the overall picture; cut me some slack, it’s a freakin’ thirty-five thousand word speech.) That is what is meant by surrender “of a higher value to a lower one.” It entails a net loss, because the pain is the point of the exercise.
My thinking is, the people who agree with Carl, also agree with John Galt. Sacrifice is not about principles. Sacrifice is identifying what is important to you, and then getting rid of it.
Our liberals do not feel the conflict of this dissonance when they talk about raising taxes on rich people. Money is supposed to be important to rich people, right? And so we force them to get rid of it through higher taxes. When we talk about meeting the objectives, we already begin the process of losing the interest of our liberals; their eyes glaze over, and they yearn to spend their precious moments on a rerun of The Daily Show or watching another one of Keith Olbermann’s recycled rants. But we complete that process of alienating them when we talk about meeting the objectives through private charities.
This is because in the more specific, liberal-and-Galt definition of “sacrifice,” private charities don’t meet the criteria. They are voluntary. The donors are exchanging an inferior value, which is the cash that is donated, for a greater one which is the beneficial effect of the charity. They choose this. In so doing, they are upholding their own systems of belief and therefore are not “sacrificing.”
I suspect that is the real reason why so many of our liberals can hold their protests about the latest handy round body-count in our “illegal and unjust war,” on the one hand — and on the other, decry the lack of “sacrifice” that has been made in the war. Real people like you and me who have red blood in our veins and are from Planet Earth, look at that and say “how can you protest both?” The answer to that is easy.
Liberals are like the girlfriend who is unhappy with her engagement ring if the prospective groom still has money left after he bought it — the size of the ring isn’t the point, how good it looks isn’t the point, how much did it cost isn’t really the point; the point is, did it cost enough that it hurt him.
This is why their ideas are unfit for implementation in the real world. Out here, if you have a job to do, and you get it done but it didn’t cause you pain, that’s a success. If it was such a painful experience that it injured you, it’s still a failure if you didn’t meet the stated objectives. Reality says it’s all about getting the job done, not what you give up to do it. Our liberals don’t agree. They think, if you’re suitably diminished that you can’t do anything else, and your intentions were noble, then that’s all that matters. Whether the job got done, is just a side bunny-trail to them.
This is provable. Saddam Hussein is that newspaper flying about the ankles if ever there was one. One President kicked him aside to be blown further down the sidewalk, and another President picked him up and stuck him in the trash bin. Our liberals are furious at the President who chucked him in the trash bin. They won’t say why.
Update: John Galt’s comments on sacrifice, whittled down to the bare bone, heavily edited from the state in which they exist starting on p. 940:
The word that has destroyed you is ‘sacrifice.’ Use the last of your strength to understand its meaning. You’re still alive. You have a chance.
‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. ‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. ‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.
:
If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is. If you give your friend a sum you can afford, it is not a sacrifice; if you give him money at the cost of your own discomfort, it is only a partial virtue, according to this sort of moral standard; if you give him money at the cost of disaster to yourself – that is the virtue of sacrifice in full.
:
A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values. If you start, however, as a passionless blank, as a vegetable seeking to be eaten, with no values to reject and no wishes to renounce, you will not win the crown of sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice to renounce the unwanted…
:
If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a ‘sacrifice’: that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty.
:
Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice – no values, no standards, no judgment – those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values, sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to the evil.The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral – a morality that declares its won bankruptcy by confessing that it can’t impart to men any personal stake in virtues or values, and that their souls are sewers of depravity, which they must be taught to sacrifice. By its own confession, it is impotent to teach men to be good and can only subject them to constant punishment. [emphasis mine]
Now, I have not heard a single lefty-leaning Bush-bashing blue-blooder — not once! — seek to assert that the war in Iraq, oh dear if only it entailed “sacrifice” from us all the way that noble effort by FDR that was World War II demanded rationing of rubber, steel, wood, et al…why, then the War On Terror would be an equally heroic deed and then they’d be able to get behind it. I have not heard ’em say that one single time.
But I’ve heard ’em, many-a-time, throw out some platitudes designed to bully the casual thinker into believing that’s where they were coming from. That glittery, glistening heroic sheen of “sacrifice,” yesiree! That’s what Bush’s unjust and immoral war is missing. We aren’t sacrificing enough!
But John Galt’s words put that into a whole different light, don’t they. ‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t. It is therefore morality for the immoral; it is a moral code for those who cannot appreciate having one.
Not that asphalt rationing would bring any of these nattering nabobs on board. It wouldn’t. If you parse Carl’s words very carefully, and listen to the other nattering nabobs very carefully, you’ll see they are promising no such thing. The universality of our sacrifices has nothing to do with it — the country is engaged in an intensive effort, there’s still a Republican in the White House, and that is all it takes to inspire their impassioned opposition to what we’re doing.
All the bitching about “sacrifice” is just a red herring — and that’s the best part about it.
Can’t-Do Society
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008From an article I pegged yesterday:
Although going aggressive can put a company in a better position to survive a slowdown, few firms can resist becoming risk-averse. Thus, mid-level leaders find themselves pulling back and focusing entirely on how to meet short-term financial goals. Not only can this strategy set a company back competitively, it also can demoralize top performers.
Victor Davis Hanson notices the same thing about society as a whole, and credits Shakespeare for pointing it out:
Shakespeare warned us about the dangers of “thinking too precisely.” His poor Danish prince lost “the name of action,” as he dithered and sighed that “conscience does make cowards of us all.”
With gas over $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the United States has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil — and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks to fill a tanker.
Building things is a good indication of the relative confidence of a society. But the last American gasoline refinery was built almost three decades ago. As “cowards of our conscious,” we’ve come up with countless mitigating reasons not to build a new one. Our inaction has meant that our nation’s gasoline facilities have grown old, out of date and dangerous.
Zing!
But…at that point, VDH is just shifting into second gear. Once he has the momentum built up, see what kind of a turn things take:
We are nearing the seventh anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Its replacement — the Freedom Tower — should have been a sign of our determination and grit right after September 11.
But it is only now reaching street level. Owners, renters, builders and government have all fought endlessly over the design, the cost and the liability.
In contrast, in the midst of the Great Depression, our far poorer grandparents built the Empire State Building in 410 days — not a perfect design, but one good enough to withstand a fuel-laden World War II-era bomber that once crashed into it.
But even then, the can of whoopass has yet to be opened.
Smackdown —
Finally, high technology and the good life have turned us into utopians, fussy perfectionists who demand heaven on earth. Anytime a sound proposal seems short of perfect, we consider it not good, rather than good enough.
Hamlet asked, “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” In our growing shortages of infrastructure, food, fuel and water, we’ve already answered that: “Not to be!”
Don’t worry. It’s a good hurt; this is something we needed to be told about ourselves.
Most of what’s wrong with us, would be cured instantly if we got rid of this “Lots of tumblers have to fall into place to make something go but the lowliest mail clerk can pull a cord and make everything stop” stuff.
Backing the Nanny State…AGAIN
Saturday, June 28th, 2008That makes two, for me, counting the hands-free requirement that goes into effect Tuesday. I’ll back up the nanny-state goo-gooders again here. All those of you who’ve said I’m “locked in” to my viewpoints on things, take note, I can be flexible if things make enough sense…
Under new regulations, parents who are asked by the organisers of a children’s sports team to take other children to sports fixtures like football or cricket matches will have to be vetted.
:
The new rules are part of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and are due to come into force from October next year at the same time as a new Independent Safeguarding Authority to vet adults.
I was wondering about this when my bicycling experience was tapped to teach the cub scouts how to hit those trails. Yes I get checked out when my registration is complete…but…I can lead these kids into the woods on bicycles? Sure, I’m the dad of one of ’em, but other than that what do you know about me?
It’s not the kind of thing where “if you do nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about.” I had the hair go up on the back of my neck, in particular, when one of the littler ones straggled and I had to go chasing off after him. It gets a guy to thinking: This is a fairly commonplace thing. I’m me. What of the other guys who are put in this situation, who aren’t me? Are they all parents? What if a couple of them are “That Weird Uncle So-And-So” who’s taking the family’s little tyke to the bike meet, whom the parents are just sure is alright…everyone else is sure because the parents are sure…
Like I said. When you’re a parent, the mind wanders. Yes, if you have a virtual stranger around other people’s kids, you ought to know something. I would hope it wouldn’t be a controversy.
Professor Frank Furedi, whose “Licensed to hug?” report for thinktank Civitas this week triggered a debate about the use of Criminal Records Bureau checks, said he knew of parents who have been rebuked for taking too many children to matches without being vetted.
He said: “I have talked to people who were reprimanded for taking three to four boys to football training. They were told they should have spoken to the manager.
“People can drive their own children to matches – but to drive four kids to the same match you should get CRB-checked.”
Makes sense to me. And it seems they got that far without doing it this way in uber-nanny-state Britain, no less. Whod’ve thought it.
Update: Regarding that other nanny-state thing, the hands-free deal. My thoughts are pretty much the same as what they were two years ago — except, as of now, I have in fact successfully trained myself to avoid texting. With considerable but not insurmountable difficulty.
Frank Drews. David Strayer. William Johnson. As of today, those are the only names I have found behind “all these studies that say” that hands-free devices fail to make driving safer. I continue to be told there are all these studies that say it’s the conversation that distracts the driver and not the physical presence of a hand-held device pressed up against the face. Those “studies” are attempting to assert a physical impossibility — when holding a device up to the ear, I cannot change lanes, and neither can you. And, furthermore, to the best I can determine, those “studies” are just being cranked out over and over again by three people. For reasons I don’t know, and don’t really care to find out because it doesn’t matter.
It’s a bunch of baloney. Two hands are better than one, and the discussion ends there.
Having said that, I do agree that the root of the problem is an exaggerated sense of self-importance because out of a hundred calls coming in to your cell phone, only one or two are important enough that it makes sense to take ’em while you’re driving…hands-free device, or no. By that I mean, someone is in the emergency room, and it’s somebody you didn’t know was in the emergency room before you took the call.
Here in NorCal, people take a hundred calls out of a hundred. About stupid crap.
“Get milk on the way home” doesn’t cut it. Sorry, it just doesn’t. If you weren’t planning to get groceries on the way home as of that morning, you don’t need to pick ’em up tonight. If you were, and something got left off your list, call the missus after you park the car at the store. If you’re worried that by the time you get there, she might have her phone turned off or she might otherwise be unavailable…you know what? She doesn’t really want the damn milk!
So shut up & drive.
A Blue State Columnist Comments on Our Gun Culture
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008My goodness, that thing I know about people that nobody told me when I was a child, is getting a good workout. Let’s start with the headline of the column:
Walsh: Time to grow up and put your guns away
Christ on a cracker, are we in a competition for the “snooty condescending prick” award here?
I understand the thrill of firing a Glock (I’ve done it), the euphoria of hitting the center of a target (and that, too), generations of family deer-hunting weekends and the legitimate self-preservation instincts of Utah’s elected concealed weapon carriers.
But the OpenCarry movement is a mystery to me. What kind of psychology – overcompensation, paranoia, antisocial personality – is behind that thinking?
Uh…how about taking real responsibility for something, as in, “I’ll pack the equipment to do it myself if everything else fails”? And since that is a far bigger issue than just the conceal-carry situation, you, Ms. Walsh, have just revealed yourself to be a stranger to that line of thinking. Good. Now I know you’re one of those “I done my bit and if it goes to crap it’s not my fault” people.
Hope nobody’s depending on you for protection.
“Second Amendment questions aside,” says [Anthropologist Charles] Springwood, a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, “the real debate seems to me a cultural and social one: Do we want a society in which it is an unconscious emblem of everyday life that folks move about with ‘portable killing machines’ strapped to their bodies?”
Well I dunno. I was born well after the days of the Old West, so I haven’t lived in “a society in which it was an unconscious emblem” blah blah blah. But I was born in the sixties. So I’ve lived in a society in which violent criminals got arrested for damaging property and hurting people, and released on technicalities, and then when men women and children were chopped down like cattle marching to slaughter the law rolled it’s eyes and sighed and said “ah, well.”
Ms. Walsh, I recommend you just think of it as the mark of a civilized society — people living here have the right to defend themselves. That means, if they anticipate something bad might happen to them they can prepare for it, and it’s not the business of you or the busybody lawyers and anthropologists in your rolodex to second-guess ’em about it. Nerdy little boys, getting beaten up by bullies on the playground, can hit back. All that good stuff.
Mark of a civilized society. As opposed to one that requires the people living within it to just sit around waiting to be victimized…which would be the mark of a primitive society.
Oh, and that thing I know about people that nobody told me when I was a child, that’s getting such a good workout lately? That would be #27:
27. People who make a conscious decision not to offer help or defense to someone who needs it, don’t want anyone else to help or defend that person either.
Happy Galileo Day
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008Today’s the 375th anniversary of Galileo Galilei’s appearance before the Grand Inquisition, and the FARK kids are going nuts.
Agnosticism seems to me to have something to do with age. In other words, younger atheists tend to be gnostic atheists; they know there’s no God, because they’ve figured it out. There’s no evidence in either direction so the presumption should lean against God, and He should receive no benefit of doubt. They pulled this part out of their asses. They have faith. They achieve a fellowship through this faith, and in that sense achieve cultism of the purest kind.
I was impressed with how fair the linked article is. You look at events today, objectively, with a decent respect to both sides, and then you look at the details as reported by the article — it’s the same thing. You can make the connection either one of two ways: The inquisition represents our global-warming types and Galileo represents our skeptics, or vice-versa. Both sides are making the same mistakes. And that’s true of intelligent design versus evolution and any one of a number of our other hot topics.
There is no doubt the church was in the wrong. A commission formed by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s admitted as much. But was it fully responsible? There were, in fact, two other parties at fault.
One was Galileo himself. His vanity, sarcastic words, contempt for lesser minds and half-truths had earned him fierce enemies among the intellectuals of Europe–especially among the Jesuits. Galileo even fudged at least one experiment.
The second set of culprits were naturalists (the scientists of the day). Advocates of the pagan philsopher Aristotle resisted Galileo’s findings. The pope and cardinals would not have acted if dozens of these “scientists” had not said Galileo was wrong. Some hated Galileo, who had hurt their feelings. Others felt that Aristotle and the Bible should not be overturned without solid evidence. It did not matter that both Kepler and Galileo had shown that the Bible could be interpreted to agree with the new science. Their own eyes showed them that the sun, not the earth moves. Galileo could not provide hard evidence to the contrary. Solid proof for the earth’s movement around the sun was two hundred years away, when tiny shifts in star positions and subtle pendulum motions were finally measured.
Human fallibility, arrogance, and lazy group-think. On both sides.
There’s a lesson there.
There’s at least the hint of a God, too. For who else is there to laugh His ass off at us?
Memo For File LXII
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
Now that I’ve picked on him, noodle on the following as an equal and opposite righteous thrashing of the other guy. Along with all those bosses you know you’ve had…the aggravating ones that, now that you’re done with ’em, they haven’t been worthy of too much thinking since then.
I was trying to find this description of Wesley Mouch in Atlas Shrugged, last year sometime, and anytime you go looking for anything in Atlas Shrugged it’s like finding a tiny needle in an enormous haystack. I came up empty back then — and then when I went looking for the passage about Cherryl Taggart (finally locating it on p. 827) I stumbled across the Mouch thing on p. 496.
It’s pure gold. Describes much in our lives. More than it should. You know people like this; you know you do.
Wesley Mouch came from a family that had known neither poverty nor wealth nor distinction for many generations; it had clung, however, to a tradition of its own: that of being college-bred and, therefore, of despising men who were in business. The family’s diplomas had always hung on the wall in the manner of a reproach to the world, because the diplomas had not automatically produced the material equivalents of their attested spiritual value. Among the family’s numerous relatives, there was one rich uncle. He had married his money and, in his widowed old age, he had picked Wesley as his favorite from among his many nephews and nieces, because Wesley was the least distinguished of the lot and therefore, thought Uncle Julius, the safest. Uncle Julius did not care for people who were brilliant. He did not care for the trouble of managing his money, either; so he turned the job over to Wesley. By the time Wesley graduated from college, there was no money to manage. Uncle Julius blamed it on Wesley’s cunning and cried that Wesley was an unscrupulous schemer. But there had been no scheme about it; Wesley could not have said just where the money had gone. In high school, Wesley Mouch had been one of the worst students and had passionately envied those who were the best. College taught him that he did not have to envy them at all. After graduation, he took a job in the advertising department of a company that manufactured a bogus corn-cure. The cure sold well and he rose to be the head of his department. He left it to take charge of the advertising of a hair-restorer, then of a patented brassiere, then of a new soap, then of a soft drink — and then he became advertising vice-president of an automobile concern. He tried to sell automobiles as if they were a bogus corn-cure. They did not sell. He blamed it on the insufficiency of his advertising budget. It was the president of the automobile concern who recommended him to Rearden. It was Rearden who introduced him to Washington — Rearden, who knew no standard by which to judge the activities of his Washington man. It was James taggart who gave him a start in the Burueau of Economic Planning and National Resources — in exchange for double-crossing Rearden in order to help Orren Boyle in exchange for destroying Dan Conway. From then on, people helped Wesley Mouch to advance, for the same reason as that which had prompted Uncle Julius: they were people who believed that mediocrity was safe. The men who now sat in front of his desk had been taught that the law of causality was a superstition and that one had to deal with the situation of the moment without considering its cause. By the situation of the moment, they had concluded that Wesley Mouch was a man of superlative skill and cunning, since millions aspired to power, but he was the one who had achieved it. It was not within their method of thinking to know that Wesley Mouch was the zero at the meeting point of forces unleashed in destruction against one another. [emphasis mine]
Kinda reminds me of a certain energetic and charismatic young man — a decidedly underqualified young man — running for President this year. But that’s just my opinion, of course.
Update: One of that underqualified young man’s supporters argues for nationalizing the refineries…as classic an illustration as can possibly exist, of confusing mediocrity with excellence.
Link: sevenload.com
Hat tip to St. Wendeler at Another Rovian Conspiracy. The uh, er, socializing, I mean, uh, whatever was acknowledged to be a Maxine Waters “oopsie” moment…mouth started getting ahead of her brain there. Well, it doesn’t seem to have been a misstatement at all. As St. Wendeler points out, they’re getting more brazen, more sure of themselves, and their true colors are starting to show.
They’re disciplined in dealing with the situation of the moment, and therefore presume that those among them who are capable of amassing power, must be cunning and brilliant and therefore their plans must be ingenious. It’s a simple case of mediocrity being confused with excellence. And plans that have been tried repeatedly, and failed, being thought to possess some sort of beneficiality or merit.
Be afraid; be very afraid.