Might have posted this before, but it’s worth doing again…

I’d say right about now, we’re somewhere around the 8:30 mark…where they’re pouring the elixir on the ground and the charlatan salesman is yelling “Now now gentlemen, no need for violence.”

You need to be very careful when a desire to hang on to freedom is characterized as somehow weird, anti-social, intransigent, dangerous or nutty.

Build things, that is. Build and rebuild.

On the anniversary, Sonic Charmer is inclined to leave it alone. I’m leaning somewhat toward his side of things. Advice Goddess Amy Alkon is having trouble with the F-word, as am I…ultimately, I decided to go the same route as Don Surber.

Others remembering include Tea Party Tribune, Rick, Phil, Buck, Robert at Small Dead Animals, Neo, Ace, Rottie and Gerard.

Caught a couple of fresh-grilled hamburgers at the company pool party yesterday, somewhere around three in the afternoon. They were a little on the rare side, and I rode my bike home some seven miles, getting a flat on the way…lots of dehydration, more sunburn than was planned, some indigestion from the raw meat, which means Friday evening was spent in a nap. And all this culminates in the conclusion that as of this morning I was starving. So I rode my bike to a local sandwich shop. It’s a “Hof Brau” imitation thing where they carve up the meat right in front of you. Right next door to where they had a mail stop for my Netflix drop-off, so that was pretty cool.

So in line in front of me, is a momma and her whelps. She’s about a decade younger than me…I have no idea where the dad is…there are a couple of male ten-year-old tow-heads in Judo outfits, and a pair of teenage trollops decked out in the “cootchie cutter” super-tight jean shorts I wish the ladies would be wearing in their mid-to-late twenties or so. So we’ve got two ten-year-olds and two sixteen-year-olds. And I was struck by the “mother ship” configuration going on here…Mom was just barking out order after order after order, command after command after command. Really something to watch. You go here, you go there. The tow-headed kids are having salads — wonder how that came about. So the guy behind the counter is asking the little guy what kind of cheese he wants on top and the Mom is interrupting her own commandment-dishing-out exercise long enough to yell over “He probably wants blue cheese”…and then an issue is somehow made of the idea that salad consumed by a person wearing a Gi, is likely to become salad worn on the sleeve of the Gi. So she instructs the little cretins to roll up their sleeves. Oh no she doesn’t; she has one hold his arms out, and she rolls up the sleeves for him while she continues to belt out Great Santini commands in all directions.

What struck me was the reaction of the four kids. The two jean-short-sluts, of course, immersed themselves deeply in “Best Friends Forever” hobnobbing, jibber-jabbering to each other a mile a minute while all the people and furnishings and air space around them disappeared. The two tow-heads did what boys will do, taking a more individualized approach, daydreaming about Pokemon or Fred Flintstone or something. Mom continued to belt out orders as if she was the center of attention…and nuclear powered.

Mercifully, I was allowed to line-jump. I got my grub. They got theirs. I got a pub table, teen trollops got another pub table and Momma and Judo artists got a booth across from the trollops. When Momma had to excuse herself to go resolve biological issues, things got real interesting. Wonder sluts began assaulting the martial artists…something to do with wiping salad dressing on the Judo outfits or something. Martial artists are not just sitting there & taking it, they’re dishing it back out. It was pure chaos. And, on some level, rather healthy and therefore appealing; a wholesome chaos. Mom’s gone, let’s act like people again.

Momma emerged and there was a predictable smackdown as she busied herself with restoring order. Each of the four combatants was entirely innocent — you could just see the golden halos over their heads. Momma barked out some more orders, replied with a wordless upraised hand to this-or-that protest, and made some superficial motion toward actually consuming food.

Anyway. It’s just interesting, to me, that nobody has any interest or ability to socially interact as normal people until the momma bear is gone. And that only has to happen for about five seconds or so.

Let’s just cut to the chase here: Kids do not take care of what they see someone else is already managing…or trying to manage. They will not join in any team effort with Mom, to “help” get their own food ordered. Frankly, I wouldn’t either. If Mom takes over the whole show, they quietly fantasize about the ground swallowing them up…and yeah…that’s what I would be doing, too, if I were them.

Learning disabilities? Social immaturity? Let me just state the obvious — that which everybody knows to be true, but everyone’s too smart to say out loud except me. Kids do what they can see needs to be done. They are not going to participate socially until such time as an avenging angel descends on us, spreads pixie dust around all the Moms, and silences them. Is that not sexist enough yet? Shut UP, moms. Let the kid order his own salad.

Or else…I don’t want to hear a single word about ADHD. So long as I see the adults show the behavior I saw today, I will expect to see the kids showing the behavior I saw out of them. The operative formula here is something like: Social competence in the kids, plus words-per-minute out of the Mom, equals C, a constant. So zip it. Let’s see what your kids really have going on.

I imagine a hundred out of a hundred mothers will reply that this advice, for this reason or that one, somehow doesn’t apply to them. How I wish that were truly the case.

Update 9/11/11: You know, it occurs to me — over the last twenty years, what is the caricature of the parent that has been most stigmatized other than the deadbeat dad…it is the overly-involved dad, sitting in the front row at the soccer match, yelling at the whelp to do everything that’s needed to score the goal. Win! Beat! Get! Grrrr! From the beginning, I’ve been a little confused and disoriented as to which entity I found less sympathetic; the Great Santini dad who’s ruining what should be a pleasurable outing for everybody, or his critics. Who are these people who are signing their curtain-climbers up for soccer and then working so hard to make it into a non-competitive sport? And since when is it the worst thing a dad can do, to want his kid to do something well — how’s that even make the list? What happened to burnings & beatings and sending ten-year-olds out on liquor runs?

But this thing with the moms who won’t shut up, it’s exactly the same thing. It has the same effect. The only difference is, the pushy moms are interfering to stop their kids from living life, and the pushy dads are interfering to stop their kids from losing a game. If you accept the premise that both are doing damage, the dads at least stop doing the damage when the game is over and the van doors slide shut.

Here we are all puzzled about why learning disabilities are skyrocketing; I’ll bet if you round up lots of SLD kids, you’re not going to find too many with dads berating their game performance on the soccer field. But I’m pretty sure you’ll find they all have pushy moms. I’m really not sure how & why the moms are getting away with this behavior that does this kind of damage to our society. Is it just because they’re girls?

Just run the words through your head a few times: The President is going to give a speech to address the jobs crisis. Think about our brief and flirtatious history with President Obama; how many speeches does He give in a year? How many speeches has He already given about the economy? Run the words through your noggin yet again. The President is going to give a speech about jobs. This date, this time! Be sure and tune in!

I’ve been working in technology for twenty-three years now. That’s counting just the time I’ve been thrown in with a bunch of other tech geeks in that “Lord of the Flies” situation that seems to follow us around throughout our entire careers. So believe me, I have met my share of big egos. But from all I’ve seen and heard, it seems there is this threshold of ego that can be defined in this way: If a problem emerges that is new in nature or vague in definition, the subject will confront the problem by giving a speech.

I think, at that threshold, we fulfill a meaningful litmus test of a true mental disorder.

And it would not surprise me to learn that the dozen or so words I asked you to reiterate to yourself, to cast a renewed spotlight on the plain observation that they are nonsensical, led directly to the Republicans’ decision that no rebuttal would be made — that they decided right there & then that none was necessary. Just sort of says it all, ya know? President Obama has figured out the job crisis is sufficiently serious that He must do something to provide a remedy, and right now…so…He’s going to give a speech. Now who, exactly, is hearing about that and thinking “All RIGHT! Things are sure to get better now!” Anybody? Anywhere?

Yes, it’s a mental disorder. It’s a learning disability, too, since you can’t take in any new information while your lips are moving.

We shouldn’t become enamored of our own pessimism…there is no constructive observation to be made there…but we can’t improve the situation as it really exists, if we don’t recognize how bad the problem is. And it seems to me that within government and academia, as well as with some businesses, most or all of the executives who hold real power and decide real things with real authority, are afflicted with this mental deficiency. A problem comes up, and Step One is to give a speech. Is that all that’s needed to address the problem? A lot of them seem to think so.

And really, where I start to become alarmed is where I prognosticate about what would happen in an advanced civilization in which everybody who was a power-broker of any kind, was mentally feeble in this way. I imagine no new things would get built that do anything useful; or, very few would do that. I imagine the things that used to work years ago, would start to crumble and fall apart. And, uh, well? Isn’t that exactly what’s happening?

Armed gunmen have taken over Nakatomi Plaza! All right, it’s time for some decisive action…so everyone gather around! I have something to say to you!

Captain, we’ve hit an iceberg and the ship is expected to sink within the hour! Okay, get all the passengers up on deck right now. But there aren’t enough lifeboats! No, we’re not bringing them up to put them in the lifeboats; I’m going to give a speech to address this crisis.

Sir! The Huns are at the gate! They carry torches and they are setting fire to our city! Right, now get all the residents into the village square pronto…is this microphone working?

I think it starts in childhood. I think what happens is, Junior speaks to a large crowd — some people are just built to — and earns some accolades from parents and teachers because the speech-job is better than average. The thing of it is, if you watch the parents and teachers congratulate students for doing a better-than-average job in a spectator environment, you’ll notice nobody ever does it halfway. Nobody ever says “you didn’t suck as bad as usual” or anything like that…no muted-tone “nice job.” Isn’t that funny? Grown-ups seem to have this fake exuberance that is directly proportional to the number of people who watched the performance. “Nice job” is for the budding artist who grinds out his handiwork when nobody is watching. That poor kid will never be carried around through a crowd on his buddies’ shoulders. But the aspiring gymnast or football player or speechmaker pulls in the can’t-find-a-way-to-express-it-adequately applause and accolades and high-five — that’s where the real atta-boy is. When the talent & strength is observed by a large number of spectators, simultaneously. Then, it seems this unwritten rule emerges that if a positive thing might possibly be said about what was accomplished, then that thing has to get said, and emphasized in every possible way.

Could this alter the course of a child’s natural development? It is manifestly absurd to try to deny it. That’s why it’s done. But the alteration is not completely positive…

So I guess these people, in childhood, are overly-indulged. And from this they form the impression that their speeches can solve everything. Bring the unemployment rate down, heal the sick, save the planet, turn water into wine, drive off an alien invasion, cure AIDS and Cancer, make a perfect sandwich, land a man on the moon a few years afterward…

People tend to lose sight of the self-evident fact that speeches don’t do these things.

And they go crazy. Yes, crazy. Don’t forget, Barack Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod — loaded up with His speeches. To this day, no evidence has emerged that the President has ever understood what might be wrong or inappropriate about that. It pretty much underscores exactly what I’m talking about here, doesn’t it? So I would like to see an ICD-9 number assigned to this; it would be a reasonable move. Sort of an offshoot of NPD (301.81), but not quite the same thing. Much, much more dangerous.

I mean seriously: How big of a threat can a mental disorder become? Let’s say, if a walking textbook incarnation of the disorder becomes President of the United States, and as a direct result of that, a whole bunch of national problems get worse and none of ’em get any better. So I ask again: What exactly is it we’re seeing right now? If this doesn’t make it sufficiently important for us to start recognizing this hitherto-unrecognized mental disability, then what does?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

From Maggie’s Farm, by way of Gerard.

Update: Just to help define why it’s too much to swallow, and not good for anybody.

From Roger Kimball, by way of Glenn Reynolds.

Maybe I should revise my opinion about these shout-fests where the two sides talk over each other. Up until now I’ve regarded it as a non-edifying, even stultifying, forum because it simply isn’t possible for any new information or revelations to come out amid all the flotsam and jetsam.

Apparently, not only might I have been wrong about this, but my perception may have been the exact opposite of the truth.

Was it even a slip-up??

From The Blaze.

I very often hear of our progressives comparing the national economy to a gas engine. Their point, as I understand it, is that all the ingredients can be there for high performance — valves closing as they should, spark, fuel, aspiration and so forth — and the net output might be zero simply because the machinery hasn’t been started. So lack of motion equals lack of motion. Prime the pump. Close the switch. Spin the crankshaft and off we go.

It leads to a mistaken conclusion because the economy is much more like a pair of wild animals. If the species are compatible and the attraction is there, nature will take its course, and if it doesn’t then something’s wrong. Or…if it really is a gas engine, the “starter” theory is mythical. An economy with all the working parts in place & in good order, will take off with no starting necessary. If it isn’t running, that’s your reading on how good the parts are & how well they’re fitting together.

If we are to fit the liberal message and strategy into the gas engine analogy, the plan is to siphon the gas out of the tank while the engine is running, until such time as the engine quits. When it quits, indulge in your “starter” theory, charging the taxpayers somewhere between half a trillion and a full trillion per yank…a service the liberal will have to provide, since everyone else is too stupid.

And don’t anybody even think of putting more gas in the tank because that would be greedy.

The subject is the “new tone,” you know, that “civility” thing.

Mr. President, we all remember your eloquence in Arizona last January, when you declared that irresponsible rhetoric had no place in public discourse. You said,

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

So, did you mean that? Because it seems like if you meant that, you would have been mortified to follow Hoffa’s incendiary rhetoric, and you would have found a way — with smart diplomacy — to have corrected him; you’d have been horrified to know your Vice-President was calling his fellow countrymen “barbarians” and you’d have suggested that maybe “Joe was just a little excited, but I’ve talked to him.”

Instead. Silence.

My father always told me that “silence implies consent.”

It is the tragic nature of demagoguery that it can be effectively practiced in a passive style as well as in an active one, in fact it adds an appealing attribute of plausible deniability when it is practiced passively. A “wing man” or a “pit bull” can lunge in for the attack while the leader of the movement stands back and observes. The incriminating association is made only by the few in the minority who practice their talents at noticing what is done, not merely by what is said; some among those who remain will insist that all in attendance must indulge a game of pretend, recognizing a separating partition that isn’t there.

Just a meaningful repudiation, is all the Anchoress requests of her President. And her humble request is left unfulfilled.

Silence is consent.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

Sonic Charmer has found a humdinger to be filed away in the folder marked “For when lefties tell me to just shut up and listen to the economists.”

The key paragraphs:

A couple of hours after talking to an ABC correspondent about the woeful job numbers and what might be done to improve them, I was in the Bloomberg TV studios debating a guy from Heritage. He went on for several minutes about the damage being done by high taxes, excess regulation, business “uncertainty” about future tax hikes and regulatory burdens. I asked Bloomberg’s host whether he was aware that corporate profits relative to national income had just hit a 60-year peak? He had heard rumors to that effect. Was he aware that taxes on corporate earnings were at a 60-year low? The Heritage guy had heard that might be the case.

Then why was uncertainty about taxes and the future burden of the Affordable Care Act holding back business investment and hiring right now? If managers thought taxes or regulatory costs might go up in the future, wouldn’t it make sense to take advantage of today’s low taxes and lower burdens to invest and hire today? According to the “uncertainty” argument, businesses are fearful they might face high taxes and extra health costs in 2016 or 2018. Shouldn’t they expand hiring right now and scale back employment when they actually face higher costs (if they ever do)?

Nevermind the ramshackle structure of the flawed argument, just look at the point that is being made: “Darn that reality, it refuses to comport with my theories, how shall we punish it?” It is a classic example of Thing I Know #400.

Lately I’m noticing a prevalent and widespread sickness in which opinionated people conflate or confuse their preferences with regard to what should happen, with what might make sense. In other words, they cannot understand “surprise” events, or events contrary to their vision. They are often heard to protest that such a contraband event is senseless. They say this when in fact it is perfectly reasonable given the antecedent events related to it — what is senseless, is the failure to anticipate that it would happen.

Particularly applicable to the field of economics, which must be a study in the approximate prediction of human behavior — for, if it cannot be practiced to facilitate that, then it has no purpose whatsoever. So yeah, what are you guys studying, exactly? What are you smoking?

No, I don’t have an economics degree and I’m asking the question anyway. Find a way to deal.

As far as the argument itself, Sonic has already dissected it thereby dirtying his hands. No point to me jumping in & doing the same.

Hat tip to Captain at Small Dead Animals.

Cassy’s pissed, and rightly so.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The trouble with women is that women are people, and people are flawed. So this isn’t really a woman thing. I notice when people get into a group setting, especially online with that semi-safe semi-anonymity, and say “Is it okay if I…” there are two things that are going on. One, the right answer is no and they damn well know it; two, they’re hoping to make it into a yes. Psychologists have a specific term to describe this: Validation.

In my book, that’s a betrayal of wedding vows already. The husband didn’t marry hundreds and hundreds of future best-friends-forever who have yet to be met and maybe, in some cases, have yet to even be born. He didn’t marry a bunch of semi-anonymous female busybodies on the Internet. Why should his married life be affected, in any way, by the opinions spouting forth from such outsiders? He married a woman…one woman…one mature and capable woman, which means that woman is duty-bound to come up with her own ways of handling things.

This is an equal-opportunity complaint. Lately I’m just completely bowled over by the number of ways some people conjure up, to demonstrate they never were ready for marriage — without coming out & saying it or even admitting it to themselves. It’s not a country club membership or a fun hobby to try out for a little while.

The Atlantic.

I’m only 23 and it’s been barely over a year since I graduated from university. Yet already the work environment and the consequences of the “real world” have warped and degraded me. All I have are feelings of disillusionment and betrayal. If I were a mood ring, the color would translate to somewhere between quite desperation and self-loathing. I work full-time at a temp position that under-utilizes me. I make sure not to finish work to quickly, for fear it doing so will only shorten my employment. Before that I worked in retail. Before long, I may end up back there.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Hmmmm…interesting.

Compared with other children with absentee dads, kids whose fathers were active parents in early and middle childhood had fewer behaviour problems and higher intellectual abilities as they grew older — even among socio-economically at-risk families.

Hat tip to Gerard.

Jewel adds:

Somewhere, the shrill and dying voices of barren, bitter feminists is rising to some crescent moon, uncomforted by their futile attempts to alter reality, which has so disappointed them. They have found out what the Weather Worshipers have found out: That Nature doesn’t really need them as protectors. Reality always finds a way.

James Hoffa, Jr., warming up the crowd for the President, says “let’s take these sons of bitches out.”

Media Matters is outraged that anybody notices, but Jim Hoft is having none of it.

So the focus of MM’s complaint is a video clip in which Fox seems to have skipped forward to the good part with the sons-of-bitches…leaving out the bit about voting. From reviewing the second clip, it seems this is a valid complaint but it’s also a trivial one. How many times a week have we been admonished to treat the office of the President of the United States with respect — by people who can’t tell the difference between respect and reverence? And then go on to make introductory speeches for the President with language like “take these sons of bitches out,” or defend people who make speeches like that. Respect for the office of President? We need someone to pick & choose when that is due, and when it is not, I guess.

The weasel who comes on to defend Hoffa, says it strikes him as “disingenuous” to complain about Hoffa when you have these Tea Party people “roaring” and “foaming at the mouth.” Nothing provided to back up that story; guess we’re not supposed to ask for it. Okay so the defense is now complete. Everybody does it, and Hoffa didn’t.

Progressives just love to talk about “the video takes his remarks out of context” and they just love talking about what the other guy did. Both tactics divert the argument into thicket patches of details, and it takes time for fair-minded people to sift through the details. How much time do you have every day for watching YouTube clips?

Meanwhile, the whole “context” thing is a complete bunny trail. Go round up a hundred people who think it’s inappropriate for Hoffa to make these remarks. How many, do you think, believe he was actually threatening physical violence?

Most of them, I think, will see it the way I do: It manifests a mindset, an us-versus-them mindset. These are the people who are not supposed to have that mindset. They want to bring the whole world together, supposedly. Overcome differences, world without borders, we’re all in this together, blah blah blah et cetera.

Megyn Kelly notes that everyone on the left seems to be getting a pass for putting this nastier “get the sunsa bitches” sentiment to voice — everyone seems to be getting excused by their colleagues, very few on the progressive side are trying to police their own. I think they’re playing a game of “let’s see where the boundaries are.” Ever have a relative who made it into adulthood without ever having been meaningfully disciplined? Every now and then they’ll make some slight against somebody, and better-than-even-odds they’ll do it without being aware of it, and get called on the carpet for it. The response? Anger. Theatrical, audible anger…and it’s anger because of what happens next. What happens next is a change of subject. Now just a minute, are you accusing Bubbins of something? How dare you. Oh yes, let’s all have a long, drawn-out circular conversation about whether it was fair to expect Bubbins to have known he shouldn’t do that…were his words taken out of context…Officer Krupke, I have a social disease but deep down inside me there is good. Bubbins will get an apology out of the person from whom the conflict emerged — or, he will get a proxy apology, a consensus decision that Bubbins was the victim here. Either way, Bubbins wins.

So give it a try, Bubbins! “HOW DARE YOU PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH!”

They’re in a game of throw crap at the wall, see if it sticks. Like the dysfunctional and over-indulged brother or cousin…the one who is constantly blowing up in some kind of rage, without appearing genuinely angry about anything, usually right after having stepped in something and getting caught. The one who, typically, is never given any meaningful responsibilities.

But these people are in charge right now.

Update: Neal Boortz thinks what we’re seeing is the rage of a large hungry beast that has lately been starved. He’s got links to data that back this up, and more examples to offer of the predatory rage.

Blergh.

I’m sure that comment was a dig at Rick Perry. But it is useful as a device to get us talking about something not too much discussed; and that, in turn, illustrates rather vividly why Sarah Palin’s fifteenth minute is very far away from being up.

Me, I rather like Rick Perry. If Palin announces she isn’t going to run, Perry would be my pick. All the talk about him being an entrenched power mogul is a little bit overblown & lacking in perspective, in my opinion. He started being Governor of Texas, what, when George W. Bush stepped down to serve as President or something? So, beginning of 2001, ten years ago? Yeah, and? We’ve got people serving in the United States Senate for generations.

But we are overdue for a paradigm shift.

The way I see it, people living in a free society are always going to be predisposed to separate themselves into exactly two important factions; they will unify into one piece only in the presence of a truly grave threat, and then not for any sustained length of time. And if ever they are to fracture into three or more pieces, they’ll place a high priority on healing the smaller cracks and fissures, to overcome those, but also to keep the one yawning chasm in place. So that is the natural juxtaposition of a free people, from what I have seen. One big major split with two large crowds, one on either side of the big split.

Our big split has been rotated. When FDR changed the way we do business in the United States, around that time it became a split of: Management versus labor. The democrats wanted it that way, reasoning that if elections are decided by votes, labor gets more votes so everything is going to be democrat-heavy for a few decades. And that is precisely what happened. After awhile, though, people began to figure out organized labor existed for the purpose of making itself more expensive and we all were paying the price. And so there was a balancing that came about. But the polarization was between labor-sympathetics and management-sympathetics. Or let’s label that last one — people who are capable of looking down the road. People who actually read about what’s going on and put it all together; people who are capable of saying “So we work these generous compensation and vacation packages into the price of things manufactured domestically…we bitch about exports going down, imports going up, ‘jobs being shipped overseas’…and…hello, clue??”

That has been the liberal/conservative divide. At least on domestic issues dealing with regulation of the private sector.

But as far as reality is concerned, there is a different divide being created by a shift in executive power. Our modern loathing of details that make things work, has inclined us to vote in these executives to make decisions based on vague campaign promises, rather than to vote directly on the policies ourselves. Obama is perhaps the very pinnacle of this trend, having campaigned on little more than a bumper sticker slogan of “hope and change.” He was confronted by a tidal wave of criticism over the excessive vagueness of this “plan,” but the tidal wave of criticism was insufficient to stop Him, so we voted in ’08 that bumper sticker slogans were enough. The trend has been building for a very long time, that we don’t want to get into our election season squabbles about policies, we want to get into our election seasons squabbles about…Michelle Obama’s arms, Barack’s dance moves, John McCain can’t send e-mail, Palin doesn’t know the answer to trivial pursuit questions and oh my goodness doesn’t Joe Biden have an impressive wide white straight-toothed smile? Such a nice man.

So we don’t argue too much about “how many jobs are we going to lose to satisfy organized labor’s insatiable demands?” At some point, you’ve shipped all the jobs overseas you can afford to ship overseas, and we’re probably there…next step is the public sector unions getting everything they want, and it seems that particular battle might have been resolved, this time against the unions. So it’s more-or-less settled. In this way, we’ve “grown up” somewhat, probably far too late, and come to realize we’re all in the same boat as far as providing goods and services. Management and labor are seen by the electorate as being more-or-less on the same side. People don’t say so out loud. But M&L are only placed in conflict with each other during some spat about maternity leave or the latest labor demand for better medical benefits or more vacations. Which I think is seen by most nowadays, the way I have always looked at it: as something that is not a public policy issue.

Maybe that’s because in the 21st century labor lacks the ability to get into specifics. They can’t say “Our rights are being oppressed if we don’t get our four weeks vacation, management wants to restrict us to only three!” The average voter would reply with “Uh hey waitaminnit…I only get two where I work.”

The new polarization, I think, is between people who have jobs that actually produce things — or are trying like the dickens to get hold of a job that does that, based on the experience they’ve accumulated to date — and everybody else. The moochers who think work is for suckers, the pencil-neck bureaucrats, the lawyers, the rules & regs people, the politicians, the buyers and sellers of so-called “toxic assets.”

Like Palin said (about 1:40): “We are governed by a permanent political class.” They are completely out of control. Because our major split has been mis-aligned from reality for about, oh, thirty years or more…they have realized a huge benefit from their complete lock on our political and educational institutions, with the other side enjoying no representation at all, or very little. Hence my comments about the polarization being in need of an update.

We have labor and management in the business of building something that other people can actually use, for which customers and clients will willingly pay real money. And then we have labor and management in something that isn’t a business at all. Coming up with new & creative excuses for slapping taxes on things. Regulating, regulating and regulating some more.

We’re running into all kinds of problems when the second of those two groups, makes it their “business” to pretend to know something about how the first of those two groups builds their stuff — when they really don’t know much of anything about anything.

We have a new yawning political chasm between those who run out of money and must take their lumps for having screwed up — on the income, on the expenses, or on the budgeting, one way or another it will be their fault; and, those who run out of money and can simply pass blame on to the taxpayer for not having paid enough. That is our new dividing line.

The labor/management split is out of whack because it’s out of date. The last time it made any sense, the clothes worn by the Monopoly Man were almost still in style.

And so this gels into a perplexing question for those who insist Palin is “doing damage” and her “fifteenth minute is up”: Do you think there might be some validity, any at all, to my observation that we are polarized in a whole new way and that the older labor/management schism no longer reflects reality? And, if you’re willing to concede that, if only partly — who besides Palin is going to carry the interests of the wealth creators…that would be wealth-creation management, as well as wealth-creation labor…to the halls of power where the rules are made? Who else is as likely? Who else is as fit?

Because, you see, this is why there’s this red ink all over the place. The people who build things that actually might command a willingly-paid price, haven’t had a voice in Washington. They haven’t been trudging to the Potomac to make themselves heard. They’ve been too busy; they’ve had work to do. Even now, when they’re participating, it’s only under protest and it’s only with the time they can spare as they try to continue making things that generate real wealth for themselves & others. The rest of the country needs them, more than they need the rest of the country. And so we have been leaving the rule-making to people who don’t know how to build working valuable things, and don’t care to learn how. We have been making rules that destroy wealth, because we have been allowing the rules to be made by those who do not respect the creation of real wealth.

I keep hearing from the Palin-haters “What exactly is Palin’s plan to fix what’s broken?” The question, it seems to me, is what exactly is going to be done by anybody else, to wrest the power out of the grasp of those who consume and destroy, building nothing, and get it into the hands of people who know how to build things? Who else do you Palin-bashers have in mind to get that accomplished?

Update: The complete speech in transcript and video form. Doesn’t settle whether she’s running or not, but it’s enough to change the odds at the betting tables quite a bit.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

George Lucas is still screwin’ around…picking at his lifetime masterpiece like a little boy picking at the crusty scab on his knee.

Screw it, I say. I have a story too, and I’ve been just itching to make that stupid duck into a pelican. Pelicans are just as surreal and exotic and giggle-inspiring as ducks, and they’ve got more business being around the ocean. Probably make better pets too. So if Lucas gets to stir his own pudding then I can do the same. A pelican it is.

Also, I would argue my story has done a much better job of mirroring real life. Still not clear after all these decades why exactly the rebel alliance got started. Slavery? Some fans are under the impression the rebellion represents the Confederate States of America and Emperor Palpatine represents Lincoln…so that doesn’t work. Clear win for my side. Hope the Pelican is dead…History and Logic are in complete agreement, Rhetoric is — well okay. In my story she runs up a huge mound of debt and hits the road, in reality the bitch is still around and we’ve gotta listen to her prattle on some more next week. But it mostly works. Pretty good for two and a half years, if I dare say so myself.

And Han shot first, George.

From here.

Too good not to snag…

Exactly right. From here.

Every time I see this blithe dismissal of the Tea Party — represented aptly by Waters’ “go to hell” comment — I see yet another reminder of what I think people are starting to figure out everywhere:

Modern liberalism is the triggering of some vast, omnipresent plan to affect the human condition. The plan will be enacted far & wide, your involvement in it will be compulsory not voluntary, and there will be no getting out of it once you’re in it. But very few will be privileged to participate in figuring out what the plan will be. Planned by the elites, imposed upon the masses; those are the vital ingredients.

This was a non-story.

As was this. For the record, I’m willing to grant President Obama the benefit of the doubt that the scheduling of the “jobs” speech was a coincidence. Not quite so much because I think it was, but because I see the whole thing as entirely inconsequential.

You can imagine, therefore, how pathetic I think this was. And let’s not even start thinking about this or this. Stories like those only highlight the futility involved in listening to more of Dear Leader’s blah, blah and blah, and that’ll just piss us all off some more when something good on teevee gets pre-empted for it. Like, for instance, I dunno…A Very Special The Kardashians?

I do have to wonder, once again, what’s going to happen when Barack Obama is out of office. All you people on the left and on the right who are so sure He’ll cruise to re-election no matter how bad the economy is — you do realize, even granting for argument’s sake your prediction will come true, it’s still a when and not an if, right? Someday, Obama is going to be a former President.

Should high-ranking officials in Congress resign in disgrace, then, too, for politely suggesting He should pick a different day for His latest styrofoam-packing-peanut speech? Has this been thought out at all?

It’s just another reminder, I think, the latest of many that: Many among Obama’s supporters are not cheering Him on to advance the hopes & dreams of persons-of-color, or to actually get anything done, but just to win arguments. They live in a world of “everything takes a back seat to O.” In left wing politics, this has always been true of the svengali at the top of the power pyramid — a mistake ceases to be a mistake when He is the one who makes it. These poor wretches, somehow, have personally externalized the experience of “being right” and thus have trivialized it. They support King Barry The First, essentially, for no better reason than they just want to win arguments.

Theirs is the story behind the non-story. President Soetoro’s people failed to think something through, He received a polite request as a result and He, with equal politeness, acquiesced. Perhaps because He has what it takes for Him to show true politeness, or perhaps that’s not the case and He just figured out that there was no win for Him here so He’d better save what face He could. I really don’t give a good goddamn about that. It’s really a challenge for me to think of anything less worthy of a good mulling-over. It’s a complete tangent. They ran into a snag and they worked it out…whatever.

But these people are completely beside themselves and no — I don’t think they’re ready for Barack Obama to not be President anymore. They won’t be ready for it in 2013 or 2017 or ever.

If Barry does win a second term, there is going to be a call for a repeal of term limits. I don’t think He will. But if He does, then mark my words on this and you read it here first.

They will want Barry ensconced for life. Because they want to win arguments. Period.

Shelby Steele:

American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.
:
Our national exceptionalism both burdens and defames us, yet it remains our fate. We make others anxious, envious, resentful, admiring and sometimes hate-driven. There’s a reason al Qaeda operatives targeted the U.S. on 9/11 and not, say, Buenos Aires. They wanted to enrich their act of evil with the gravitas of American exceptionalism. They wanted to steal our thunder.

So we Americans cannot help but feel some ambivalence toward our singularity in the world—with its draining entanglements abroad, the selfless demands it makes on both our military and our taxpayers, and all the false charges of imperial hubris it incurs. Therefore it is not surprising that America developed a liberalism—a political left—that took issue with our exceptionalism. It is a left that has no more fervent mission than to recast our greatness as the product of racism, imperialism and unbridled capitalism.

But this leaves the left mired in an absurdity: It seeks to trade the burdens of greatness for the relief of mediocrity. When greatness fades, when a nation contracts to a middling place in the world, then the world in fact no longer knocks on its door. To civilize America, to redeem the nation from its supposed avarice and hubris, the American left effectively makes a virtue of decline—as if we can redeem America only by making her indistinguishable from lesser nations.

Hat tip to Professor Mondo.

Randall Hoven, writing at American Thinker, comes up with a list of events & issues about history showing the Tea Party to be on the right side — whether people are paying attention or not. It is an impressive list, longer than I think a lot of people would imagine it to be.

I expect they are going to continue to be right, so long as they keep the platform narrow and reasonable, because the point they’re trying to make is one that human events are always going to support: Robbing Peter to pay Paul, as they say, makes for a sore Peter. It makes for a situation in which Paul must be expected to do a lot more of whatever it is Paul was doing, and Peter will do a lot less of whatever it is Peter was doing. This is the way people are built; we respond to incentive; so this isn’t going to change.

The list is endless. If you were thinking of starting a business or making an investment that might not pay off for five or ten years, would you feel like you know the rules and could depend on them? No, you’d hunker down, which is exactly what everyone with any money left is doing right now.

This jobless recovery is not some mystery. It is very clearly the result of decisions — decisions made by Obama and the Democrats. At every opportunity they grew government, shrank the private sector, and viewed budding enterprises as little more than beasts of burden — something to whip while healthy and carve up and eat when not.

As Robert Mugabe viewed white-owned farms, Obama views corporations not yet in Chapter 11.

Nothing Democrats did helped; everything they did hurt. Everything. Min wage. TARP. Stimulus. ObamaCare. The Gulf oil spill. Every budget they ever proposed, written or not. Every little czar they put in place to spend other people’s money and to bully the only productive people still toiling away at the thankless tasks of making stuff and providing jobs.

At every point, the Tea Party and its sympathizers tried to stop these idiocies, only to be called ignorant racists.

But whether or not the Tea Party is right, is only half the issue. The other half, perhaps more important, is how we as a nation are going about conducting the argument.

Everything you can do to botch an experiment, we’re doing. First thing we did was elect minority tokens to represent the way the lefties think our economy should work: Woman as House Speaker and black guy as President. These are improvements, for sure, on some level since it does us no credit to have big long uninterrupted lines of white dudes in these offices going all the way back to the founding of the nation. If that was the only point to it, I’d have no problem — but it isn’t. The tokens were put there to sell things. You can only say nice things about Speaker Pelosi or else you’re a sexist; can’t disagree with President Obama or else you’re a racist. That was the point. President Obama was positioned where He was positioned, and put where He was put, to sell things that otherwise could not be sold. And that’s not just an observation about His skin color, it’s everything about Him. His sex appeal, His speaking style, all the charming superlatives that His admirers will define and a whole lot more that they won’t. Not a single one of these embellishments have anything to do with making anything better, unless you happen to have something to gain by Barack Obama winning an argument. That, as I’ve written many times before, is His only contribution: Selling crap that shouldn’t be sold.

We engage “these idiocies” as Hoven calls them, one after another, each time without waiting to see how any of the previous idiocies have worked out. That thwarts a whole lot more than simply observing that perhaps they’re not a good idea; had any of them worked, but with caveats, there would be opportunities to improve. Can’t do that either. So that’s another thing we did wrong.

The scope is universal. Everything has to be enacted sea to shining sea. Freedom must yield, nobody outside Washington can choose anything. Also, once the idiocy is tried, it has to enjoy the benefit of maximum impact. So everyone has to be affected and nobody can be allowed to get away from it. That’s necessary, of course, because some of the people involved are viewed the same way Robert Mugabe viewed white-owned farms; so who would participate voluntarily in such a role?

So to me, the insults flung at the Tea Party — by people who plainly aren’t looking at the facts, not monitoring how the evidence is shaping up to appear in columns like Hoven’s — are just icing on the cake, a final layer of national wrongdoing. We’re having a discussion that I think is worthy enough, if we were to have it reasonably: Should the government step in after the free market has determined who-gets-what, and rearrange the results to make them more fair? But “reasonably” is the key word. If we were to have that discussion reasonably it would be a short one. So we break — every — single — rule — we possibly can. Choose minorities to present one school of thought, just so anybody who shows any resistance can be called a racist. Put Washington in charge of everything. Never wait to see how anything works before trying the next thing, just slam ’em in. No test beds allowed, completely out of the question, federalize everything, expand the scope all across the fruited plain, make everything compulsory and don’t allow anything to be voluntary.

That way, there’s no control to the experiment. The results can be as dismal as you can possibly imagine, and at the end of it you get to say “Yeah but who knows what could’ve happened if we didn’t do it. Better agree with me about that or else you’re racist.”

But it only works on people who don’t pay attention. Yes that is a super-majority, to be sure…but as the economy continues to sour, the silver lining in the cloud is that people are given incentive to pay closer attention. That popular yard sign in circulation right now, “If you voted for Obama in ’08 to prove you’re not a racist, you need to vote for someone else in ’12 to prove you’re not an idiot,” is becoming sadly persuasive. Sixty-five percent of Americans now disapprove of the President’s economic policies; the “do what I say or else you’re a racist” glue is not holding up the wallpaper.

What this all comes down to, is that there is a reason we’re hearing the Tea Party people are crazy: They’ve spoken out about a public issue, which automatically means they have to have enemies. And those enemies have no place else to go other than slander. That’s the bottom of their barrel now, and they’re scraping it. There’s a referendum taking place here and it’s on something much, much bigger than President Obama or His skin. We’re having a referendum on whether the right to private property is higher than political demagoguery, or whether political demagoguery can trump the God-given right to property. Even though the experiment’s been done all wrong, the verdict that is being delivered, unmarred and unsullied — you certainly can’t argue Obama’s way hasn’t been given a fair shake — is that the right to property must win or else civilization cannot endure. You can’t get the bills paid, with your “sore Peters,” that is, if the people paying the bills are to be treated as evil, attacked for doing what they do, discouraged from continuing to do it.

There is a campaign underway to associate the Tea Party with some kind of psychosis, to call the people caught supporting it crazy or nuts. You hear the term “crazy Tea Party rhetoric” often enough that, for me to go inserting links to buttress the observation, would be redundant, pointless, needlessly time-consuming and silly.

As I commented over at the Hello Kitty of blogging (I think you need a Hello-Kitty-of-blogging account to follow that link), I perceive the results of this campaign to be mixed. It is constantly moving along because it is constantly pushed, but it is building up no momentum because in their inner consciousness, I believe Americans hold an unshakable understanding that is contrary to this. There isn’t anything crazy or nuts about insisting your property is your property. It’s not crazy to say, if some jackass who wears a suit well and talks a mile a minute and manages to rake in a thousand more votes than his competition on election day, wants to achieve personal control over some vast mountain of loot, maybe the right thing for him to do is resign from his “public service” position and start a business. This isn’t nuts at all. And if people are constantly told that it is, even every single day, they aren’t going to sign onto that idea unless they wanted to sign on to it in the first place.

Now, this Dr. Helen post has about seven months of dust on it, and I assume by now she must have finished that book which I’m just getting around to ordering. But I’m much more interested in the study that says, when people are presented with an opportunity to destroy the wealth of others, not only are they inclined to go ahead but they are strongly motivated. They’ll pay for the privilege. See, this is why conservatives have a tendency to be religious and liberals are more inclined toward the secular. It all goes back to that damn apple. There is goodness; there are the base impulses that stir within us; these are two different things. Civilization must therefore entail some kind of restraint being placed on instincts from which we cannot separate ourselves, because they are part of us. We fell with Adam. In the world of liberalism, goodness is survival-of-the-fittest and hey, we must have it because we’re here. Every thing on earth your little heart desires is either a “civil right” that’s been legislated as one, or will be legislated as one someday soon. Which means individual effort is useless. It also means, every single act you can perform as an individual has been declared illegal already, or might very well be declared illegal soon. Irony: When every little thing is a “right,” nothing is.

A couple months ago Neal Boortz went to see Green Lantern and the story resonated with him. He likens the democrat party to Parallax, the cosmic being that thrives on yellow, fear-based, energy. Viewed through the lens of the “Tea Party is nuts” campaign, his corollary makes a lot of sense. One thing though: If you go see the movie, you’ll see the green will-based energy came first; there is an errant mindset emerging (spoiler?) that the green power rings are inadequate against the threat, and someone needs to build a yellow power ring and use it to do what the green power rings cannot do.

May I humbly suggest the exact opposite. We have these “un-Green-Lantern” people running around, un-policing the known universe exactly the same way the Green Lantern Corps police the universe. There are thousands of them, some paid by George Soros, others doing it for free, waving around their yellow power rings, getting the word out that it’s crazy and evil to want to hang on to your own property. Using fear to drive home the mantra that we’re all screwed unless we gather our possessions, put it in a great big pot, and let the wise elders exercise the control over it that we’re not good enough to exercise. In our real-life universe, it is the yellow, fear-based power-ring that exists already and is in fact everywhere and we’re seeing it in the mythology about the Tea Party patriots being mentally feeble and crazy.

The momentum is not being built, because green energy is present in all living things. Let’s forge the green power ring, and drive home the contrary message that makes sense:

It is freakin’ batshit-crazy to look at some guy who has a lot of money, and see a walking billfold. Or some kind of task that is left undone which, should that rich guy’s property be distributed — or destroyed! — has now been properly addressed and can be jotted down as a job well done. In brightest day in darkest night…channel the will. The green energy, which calls out crazy as crazy, and recognizes sanity as sanity. The study from ten years ago seems to indicate we all have this craziness. Well, if there’s one lesson to be learned from the Fall of Adam, it is that there is a meaningful difference between the impulses that are inextricably bound to our very being, and the desires that are to be channeled into a civilization destined to endure. Everything we feel, is not necessarily good. There has to be some restraint.

And the recognition of one’s own rights as an individual, is not where the restraint needs to be applied. The civilizing restraint has to be applied against the destructive impulses. That’s what we can learn from the study, that redistribution is really destruction. That is the innate desire. “Fairness” isn’t really the driving force. That’s really nothing more than a catch-phrase. The motivation is to destroy, and to destroy out of pure jealousy. It is crazy, it is nuts, and the time has come to start calling it out.

There’s been a slow, creeping, gradual change in direction here and it isn’t good.

1950: Your honor, the defendant just snapped and killed three people.
2010: Your honor, I’m innocent, I just snapped and killed three people.

Regardless of how you look at the world and the things in it, if your brain is even somewhat properly engaged, this is just blisteringly offensive.

The White House has issued detailed guidelines to government officials on how to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, with instructions to honor the memory of those who died on American soil but also to recall that Al Qaeda and other extremist groups have since carried out attacks elsewhere in the world, from Mumbai to Manila.
:
Copies of the internal documents were provided to The New York Times by officials in several agencies involved in planning the anniversary commemorations. “The important theme is to show the world how much we realize that 9/11 — the attacks themselves and violent extremism writ large — is not ‘just about us,’ ” said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal White House planning.

…Obama administration officials caution that public commemorations here should not cast the United States as the sole victim of terrorism, an argument underscored by killings and maimings from extremist attacks overseas.

Some senior administration officials involved in the discussions noted that the tone set on this Sept. 11 should be shaped by a recognition that the outpouring of worldwide support for the United States in the weeks after the attacks turned to anger at some American policies adopted in the name of fighting terror — on detention, on interrogation, and the decision to invade Iraq.

The apology tour…continues…

Hat tip to Weasel Zippers.

William Teach speaks for me:

Who the hell do they think was attacked on September 11th? Yes, there were citizens of other countries killed in the Twin Towers, but the attack was on America. Talk about tone deaf!

On Planet Obama, you’re never tone deaf when you’re in the middle of talking smack about America.

Paul Krugman is digging up an old corpse and making it dance once again.

This was already dealt with, more than a little bit effectively, years and years ago. Not from over here and not by me.

However, we have had a few things to say about it. Here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

So why is Paul making those bones dance in the moonlight? Right now? I think it’s damage control. It is a strange and fascinating thing to observe, when you think about it: People who push what they call “science,” which happens to implore people to live life littler, are never seen to support any kind of “science” that would enable people to live life bigger. Ever. Even though, throughout the centuries, what we have classically called “science” has offered a bounteous cornucopia of gifts — without trying to — that have improved our lives immeasurably.

Once again, I notice, we need to take a much closer and more scrutinizing look at how the word is being used. Real science is apolitical. So what is this word really being used to describe? If you use it to “conclude” something, and then gauge the character of others based entirely on whether or not they believe the same thing — is it right to call that “science”? Really? Because if there’s a proper dictionary definition for “Holy War,” then I think that little ritual would adhere to such a definition right down to the letter.

A sacred-cow theory is questioned, and a loudmouth lays a smack-down:

He’s almost certainly wrong, of course. It’s just been given a fair try, and in my own experience I’ve yet to get a job from an unemployed person or hear of anyone else get a job from an unemployed person. Tattoo parlors don’t usually have employees, no matter how much business they’re doing that they weren’t doing the month before. The same goes for the grocery stores moving the milk, cereal, malt liquor and cat food; if they’re in a depressed area and their cashiers are taking in lots of food stamps and unemployment checks, they’re not to go out and hire a lot of people just because the benefits have been extended.

But of course, none of that is really proof; Carney could still be right. Thing is, it’s when we consider that Carney might be right, right there & then it’s vividly illustrated how badly he’s mishandling this could-be-right theory of his. He swerves off deeply in to Argumentum Ad Plausible territory: “My theory is plausible, or at least it sounds plausible when I describe it, that proves anyone who doesn’t support it is a dumbass.”

It is a Vibranium Adamantium Lightsaber theory that cuts through anything & everything. It is the wildcard in the paper-scissors-rock game, burning through the paper, smelting the scissors and atomizing the rock. Mine beats yours, haha! Proof? Evidence? What are those? You only show your ignorance by asking, mortal!

I’m impressed by the civility of the many liberals with whom I’ve discussed these things — they give me one chance to reform my ways, by walking through the plausible Vibranium theory from beginning to end as if I’ve never heard it before. Unlike the reporter-babe in the video though, often I don’t pose the question as a “how” about the whole thing, my pattern is to ask a “what happens when” about some specific detail within. What happens next is almost cute: They magically zip back up to the thirty-thousand foot level and recite the litany all over again. That’s my one chance. I’m supposed to genuflect on the spot and mend my ways. When, instead, I point out “yeah I’ve heard that a whole lot of times before, we just gave that a shot and it didn’t work” suddenly I’m a moron.

But we did give it a shot. Wasn’t that the complaint about trickle-down? Gave it a shot and it didn’t work?

But the weirdness is how they apparently can’t distinguish between a question about a detail within the plan…and a complete lack of knowledge about the plan itself. The remedy is always the “Our Theory 101” lecture with lots of pontificating and piousness. It reminds me of how they’re always saying we “need to raise awareness about global warming.” Seriously? In 2011, you think there’s someone out there who has yet to hear about it?

I wonder if this clip is what inspired Sonic:

As I alluded to over on this EconLog post, economic discussions often reduce to two camps:

• People who think of the economy in a very simplistic (essent[ia]lly cartoonish) way, abstracting away all details and likening it to a machine you can control and tune – tweaking dials, pulling levers, opening valves, priming pumps.
• People who don’t, and who instead think the economy is pretty complicated, and details matter.

Now, fine. Two approaches, to each his own, right? But here’s what I find astonishing:

The former group thinks they are Smart and they look down with sneering contempt on the intelligence of the latter group.

This is quite inexplicable. I am at a loss to understand it. Trying to explain this curious role-reversal phenomenon almost belongs neither to economics nor even to the study of politics. I am convinced it belongs to the realm of psychology. [emphasis mine]

I’m getting there myself.

I’m a little bit down on the discipline of psychology here. It tends to be a source of confusion, rather than enlightenment, when we get into those fault lines where a mental feebleness lazily & hazily borders on a natural but unfortunate personality attribute. In this case, simply being a dick.

One of the personality attributes of dicks is a complete lack of humility: It’s this way, there can be no doubt about it, because I just said it’s that way. I have my Vibranium Adamantium Lightsaber with me, I’m incapable of making mistakes because if I ever make a mistake it stops being a mistake and becomes the right thing to do, so that settles that.

Okay fine, you’re a dick. But is it too much to ask that dicks be able to complete a thought logically, and figure out what’s going on — sort of bend their preconceived notions to fit reality rather than the other way around? We expect doctors to do that. Anybody who’s spent as much time as I have working with doctors as I have, want to tell me there’s a shortage of dicks in that field? Sure not all doctors are dicks. But they’ve got their rep. There’s something to it, I can tell you that. So yes, you can be a dick and still find out in a reasoned, methodical and scientific way what’s going on. Sort of earn the privilege of your dick-ish-ness, as it were.

These people don’t do that. They don’t so much as make an initial or precursory gesture in that general direction; not even close. They know what they know and anybody who gets in the way must be an ignoramus. And sadly, that includes whatever muse you choose to represent reality itself — reality must bend and yield, and if she does not, then she’s a stupid idiot too.

No — really.

Put this up on the Hello Kitty of Blogging because I was hoping I could do what Armstrong & Getty are doing, on a smaller scale, and find out how much & how often this is going on among my personal acquaintances…

But it occurs to me it’s probably just as good to bounce it off my “blog peeps” as well. It seems to be a national problem. From here in the Golden State, ya know, it’s kind of hard to tell.

It starts with something the radio dudes opened up…quoting from my page (Fb subscription required):

Jack and Joe are taking phone calls right now about school classrooms forcibly redistributing school supplies so one kid doesn’t feel bad about another kid having better stuff. Rather shocking how many teachers & parents are calling in with this blase attitude of “Oh yeah, you can’t have order in the classroom otherwise…” WTF??

Here, let’s list out the problems one by one. One: It’s communism. If you think it isn’t then your definition of communism is too narrow to work because you’re waiting for Che Guevara and Leon Trotsky to come back from the dead before you see any communists.

Two: When I was a kid, if a crayon fell on the floor it didn’t cause commotion. If it did, they removed the kid that caused the commotion and made sure he wouldn’t do it again.

Three: This seems to be going on in quite a few places — I was previously made to understand it hardly goes on anywhere. One caller said it would only take one lawsuit to bring it to a stop, and Jack commented well nobody wants to be that parent. Funny: When the time comes to sue the school for saying “under God” in the pledge, a LOT of parents want to be that parent.

And four: You know what? Real life doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to say “Hey he has something I don’t have, now I feel bad” and hope someone brings it to you. Well…not until a couple years ago…

What everyone seems to be letting go on this thing is: From all I’ve been able to tell about it so far, the one thing all of the reports have in common is that everywhere this is going on, there has been some kind of opaqueness to it. The creepy-crawly slithery-squirmy stuff is proliferating and thriving in the dark. It’s good old “Thou Shalt Not Covet” commandment-breaking jealousy…along with all of the inevitable miseries cropping up around it that must’ve inspired the Commandment in the first place. When the rock is uplifted and the light streams in, the critters scurry. Light, plainly and clearly, is the answer. And yet the push is on to keep the place dark. Don’t tell anyone. Yeah, I’ve been seizing your kids’ stuff, what’s your problem? Pipe down, shut up, go away, we’re doing what we need to do to keep order in the class.

I’m liking Jack Armstrong’s attitude: “You’re not taking my kid’s stuff, not gonna happen, listen to me carefully here: It isn’t going to happen.” That’s the right attitude. We need more of that.

I’ve already done my bit — had the conversation with my kid years ago, last time I heard about it. We’ve not had our experience with it just yet. But that’s us. What’s happening with everybody else?

Why is this such a sad and pathetic empty shell of what it is supposed to be? Not — why do we tolerate it as it is; that’s a different question which I’ll explore some other time. The question that surfaces here is, why do they require the tolerance. What does it take to prattle on for a third of a century about such timeless social problems when you don’t have anything to offer about how to make them better.

A well-thought-out answer arrives from over…here.

Sometime in the mid-1970s, near the end of the Vietnam War, liberalism in America died an intellectual death. Since that time, virtually every new idea — whether good or bad — about how to solve our most important economic problems has come from the right. Virtually nothing has come from the left.

Do you doubt that? Okay, it’s test time. Tell me what the liberal answer is to the problem of our failing public schools. …..tick, tick, tick ….. I’m waiting …. tick, tick, tick …. Give up? What about the liberal solution to the failed War on Poverty? … pause….. pause ….. pause …. No luck there either?

Okay, let’s take what President Obama says is the biggest domestic problem we face. What is the liberal solution to the huge unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare? ….. Can’t think of one? What about solving the problem of unfunded pensions and post-retirement health care benefits for state and local workers? …. Not even a vague suggestion or two? Wow. We seem to be really striking out.

Well, can you tell me what a liberal income tax code would look like? Zip. How about a liberal international economic system? Nada.

Note: I’m not asking if you have a liberal acquaintance who has an opinion or two on these matters. I’m asking if you can produce a solution that would be generally recognized as the liberal solution.

Mr. Goodman finishes strong. Check it out.