None the Wiser

2003-09-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

You Don't Say...

Headline from today's WaPo:

U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rising

As opposed to falling?

2003-08-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

Update on the Lemonade Sisters

In this post I relayed the now-infamous story of two little girls who had their lemonade stand shut down for failure to obtain the proper business license from the St. Paul authorities.

As with the last such incident, the mayor has stepped in and told his local functionaries to back off. The little entrepreneurs are back in business, and business is good.

So why am I not smiling? Well, there's this:

According to a contrite officer of the Office of License, Inspections and Environmental Protection,

"We don't make the laws; we only enforce them."

You forgot "unthinkingly, blindly, and with no basic regard or compassion for our fellow man."

Also, there's this:

This is being praised up and down as some kind of victory for the common man, proof that, in the words of City Council Member Jay Benanav,

"You can fight City Hall sometimes. You've won!"

and of their mother,

"The girls got a kick out of knowing they could stick up for themselves."

No, this case absolutely is not proof that the system works, or that you can beat City Hall. All it demonstrates is that the mayor of the city of St. Paul was bright enough to know bad press when he saw it, and cut his losses. Had our enlightened, Platonic mayor decided to stick to the rules, there would have been exactly jack-squat anybody could have done about it.

They didn't beat City Hall. City Hall decided to cover its own ass with a rational PR decision, this time. Again, suppose the city refused to back down. What recourse would there have been? Zero.

So the real lesson of the story is that if you have to live under petty tyrants, you'd better hope they're merciful.

2003-08-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

Just Terrible.

That's the only way to describe this steaming heap of nuggets, a column by a Rev. Peter Mullen, Anglican, in this weekend's Opinion Journal.

Essentially, he expresses dismay at the current state of the small-"c" church, particularly as evidenced by the recent ascention of Gene Robinson, an open homosexual, to the status of bishop in the Anglican Church. I'm of two minds about this:

Good for the Reverend, since whatever my own thoughts on homosexuality might be, I think the "Western church," as he calls it, has basically thrown in the towel. He makes a pertinent point, namely, that a church that simply follows the whims of popular secular opinion is no church at all, as it lays no claim to any kind of intransitory Truth.

The quality of the piece ends there, though. He writes, in unbelievably glib tones,

The Bible, in both the Old Testament and the New, condemns homosexuality as a sin. But it is not the only sin, though the church behaves as if it were. St. Paul lists a whole repertoire of sins: pride, vain-glory, envy, gluttony, hatred, malice, conspiracy, backbiting and so on. But when did you last hear of a churchman thrown out of the choir for gluttony, or a woman dismissed from the Ladies' Circle for backbiting? Besides, the Christian faith has always taught that we should hate the sin but love the sinner.

This mealy-mouthed concession strikes me as odd, considering the point I mentioned above. Does the Reverend not see the difference at work here? The real question isn't when the "last time" was that a person was ejected from the church for backbiting, but rather when the last time was anyone proclaimed gluttony and back-biting sinless, in keeping with the changing times.

Of course thieves and gluttons manage to find themselves ordained into the church's hierarchy. We're all sinful creatures. But how many of those attend Thief Pride Parades? Last I checked, the agenda of gay Christians was not to find acceptance in spite of their sexuality, but rather because of the fact that they were loved by God in that special way reserved for gays.

This bishop does not, to my knowledge, admit to the sinful nature of his tendencies nor ask the forgiveness of his parishoners. Campaigning for the wholesale acceptance of your vice isn't the same as begging God's mercy in light of them. The argument isn't over whether thievery is still a sin, but whether homosexuality is, and the Reverend ought to have realized this without pausing for thought.

Then, in the opposite direction, I have a problem with this:

Homosexual bishops? How long before we see paedophile bishops, necrophile Deans of Cathedrals and cannibalistic Archdeacons?

I'm sorry, but to compare willing adults egaged in willing behavior, sinful or not, to the forcible molestation of children is too much. Cannibalism? Gracious, grow a sense of proportion, Rev.

Even more puzzling is the fact that this seems contradicted by what precedes it:

Few would ever condemn a faithful, loving relationship between two people of the same sex...

Except you, four paragraphs later.

...but when promiscuous homosexuality becomes a sort of fashion statement, many people are sickened. Nowadays the love which once dared not speak its name screeches at us in the tones of high camp from every high street.

So what you're saying is that "few would condemn as sinful" something you place on the road to paedophilia? Unless, that is, you advertise it publicly? What is this guy actually saying?

Look, if the thing is morally impermissible because it's having its name-brand shoved in our faces, then by that standard heterosexuality must also be a pretty rotten condition. If it's a sin by its very nature, then this pair of sentences sounds like mere hokey-pokey, more appealing to that sentimental critter in all of us who wants to be good without making judgments about behavior. Which is what he says is wrong with the church.

What is wrong with your church, my friend, is that it has refused its proper role as a counter-cultural institution, and has instead sought broad acceptance (and the power that comes with it) by moderating its stance on touchy issues like these. This began with the acquiescence of church authorities to secular pressures and a failure of faith that led them to abandon the teachings of Christ for the more comforting and self-affirming spectacle of overflowing pews and donation plates.

In short, your church has made the deal that Machiavelli proclaimed necessary of politicians because of the human condition: In order to have the influence required to do good for others, you must sacrifice your own moral character in the process. Thus the Anglican church waxes coy on the meaning of "is" for the sake of attracting a larger flock--not realizing that all it gains by that process will be a flock with no shepherd. It will have already disqualified itself for that role.

So make up your own mind first, Padre, and maybe the rest of the world might take your religion seriously again.

2003-08-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

Yuck

If I can be allowed a moment of self-reflection, that last post was a great example of what I consider to be my own complete lack of skill and elegance as a writer. In fact, I think it's so miserable that I'm going to preserve it just as it is, an eternal reminder of why laziness and self-satisfaction erodes our potential.

(For those of you who aren't up to date on the issue, I once considered myself talented. I'm a great example of why high self-esteem is the source of, rather than cure for, much of what is wrong with young students today.)

2003-08-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

Why Socialism Breeds Brutality

This story makes me angry, saddened, and afraid. [link via The Corner's Kathryn Jean Lopez] Yeah, it's got it all:

Mikaela and Annika Ziegler of St. Paul, Minnesota, found themselves on the wrong side of the law for operating an unlicensed lemonade stand. According to some wooden bureaucratic monster going under the name and title of "Licensing Director Janeen Rosas,"

...Mikaela was violating St. Paul Legislative Code Chapter 331A.04(d)(24), which requires a license for "A temporary establishment where food sales shall be restricted to prepackaged nonpotentially hazardous foods or canned or bottled nonalcoholic beverages; operating no more than fourteen (14) days annually at any one location."

Rosas said the city has received more complaints than ever this year about sellers at the fair, although she said no one had registered a gripe about the enterprising Ziegler sisters.

"If someone were to get ill from one of these products, with a license we're more able to track them back," she said. "And at the fair it's an equity issue. Allowing some people to sell without licenses gives them an unfair advantage over others."

Of course, by eliminating this silly and unnecessary regulation, and "allowing" everyone to sell lemonade at their own liesure and expense, you could eliminate with it this insultingly disingenuous hand-wringing over the fairness of the competitive market at the local State Fair. The claim that shutting down a 6-year-old girl's lemonade stand in the interests of equity inadvertantly proves the most essential and important point against government busy-bodies: the logic of enforced "equity" leads inexorably to such absurdities as these, and ultimately to tyranny. The (increasingly common) appeal to matters of public health is not just silly, it's immoral. Insinuating that little girls selling unlicensed lemonade poses a dire threat to the public welfare is low, though perhaps not by the standards of your average left-liberal, whose irrational hatred for the profit motive has led them to passionately defend, even now, such luminaries of 20th Century barbarism as Fidel Castro.

As we libertarians constantly warn, the icy inhumanity exhibited by such pathetic functionaries of the state does not ever decrease as regulation grows more complicated, burdensome, and vicious. By what logic can the socialist condemn the practice of harassing little girls over lemonade licenses? Their unremitting and foolish hostility to capitalism leads them into constant pronouncements against the culture that inculcates children into the supposedly ghastly machinery of free enterprise. By their own reasoning, these girls have been done a favor, and saved from a potentially corrupting lesson in the false joys of greed and selfish entrepreneurship.

Well, mission accomplished. What should have been a fun lesson in the rewards of individual initiative has been successfully crushed under heel, and replaced by the much more politically correct lesson in the arbitrary power of the state, and the need for total obedience to local authorities and their petty despotisms.

If you can't tell, I take incidents like this very seriously.

It reminds me of my recent visit to the DMV in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Short version:

I was visiting my dad. He was going to give me a car. I wanted a tag, to avoid getting pulled over, towed, and stranded by some dutifully vigilant state trooper in Tennessee.

So we went to the local authorities, to beg their leave to engage in this little transaction. First, of course, I insured the vehicle as per the state's requirement that I protect myself from myself. After an hour of wrangling over the minutae of my plans, they finally declared that they could offer me no tag whatsoever, since I neither lived in the state nor planned to live in the state. Even my proof of insurance was invalid, since I had purchased it in Indiana--where, you know, I do live. If my father was planning to sell the vehicle, and needed a temp tag to place on it in the meantime, no problem. But a gift? In transit? No dice.

Suddenly I understood. When I had called the DMV earlier that day, the woman who answered the phone strongly encouraged me to lie to whomever I encountered on arrival, and inform them that my dad was selling the car. I shouldn't even walk into the office, lest they suspect the ruse. My dad refused, citing something about honesty being some kind of policy. So much for that.

It occurred to me that what I was both experiencing and witnessing was the precise mechanism by which red tape breeds criminality. Even the local apparatchiks themselves thought the best way out of the jam was simply to break the law, and save myself and everyone else a big headache.

In the event, some loophole was invented on the spot, but only after I demanded to know why it was effectively illegal to recieve a vehicle as a gift in the state of Florida. It took them a while to get the point, but at least initially they were perfectly ready to turn me out of their office with no tag and no legal way to drive my car home.

My brother, in the meantime, is currently making car payments for a vehicle he can't register, because of some similar regulatory nonsense. The car was also, it happens, a purchase from a parent out of state, but since he can't legally drive it and six months have elapsed with no progress on that front, he's considering just giving it back and putting the money to some other use.

And businesses continue to flee California in droves, and the death toll in France mounts for lack of air conditioning. And socialism's popularity never abates.

2003-08-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

Old Reliable

The best thing about traditionalists is that they're, by definition, reliable. The philosophical battle over modernity is an interesting one, especially since the camps involved are very different than we're accustomed to thinking of them in this supposedly bi-polar American ideological landscape.

In truth, there does not exist in the U.S. any reasonably coherent "spectrum" that runs the gamut from left to right, and I think that the belief that such a spectrum exists is the source of much confusion and ill-will in contemporary political discourse. We refer to the "far left" and the center-right as a matter of convenience, but we do it so much we come to take the symbolism rather more seriously than we ought. In any case, I'm still working on my own comprehensive political theory, so I won't go on much more about that.

But consider this: perhaps the most bizarre allegiance to arise from the intellectual war on modernity is that between anti-porn feminists and what you might call "family values conservatives." Even though both "conservative" and "liberal" intellectuals have criticized modernity for various reasons, for the most part both sides envision themselves as its guardians--protecting the "advances" of modern society from the tyrannical impulses of their enemies.

Now, on the left this is increasingly not the case at all, since they are incapable of defending their program using anything but the language of modernity. Their problem is that they can talk relativism, but they realize (on some level) that they can't live it. The result is a growing enslavement to the mind- and soul-destroying fashions of the totalitarian post-modern academy. For this reason, the conservative side probably makes the more plausible claim to its identity as modernity's handmaiden.

But they have a problem, too, and this is spelled out best by such old-school conservatives (I do not say "paleo-") as Allan Bloom and Peter Kreeft. Often labeled the "far-right," such social and religious conservatives make, to my eye, the most intriguing and effective critique of Enlightenment thought available (Kreeft refers to it cleverly, if unfairly, as the "Endarkenment"). You must watch your step, however, because it's easy to mix them up and lump them in with the Jerry Falwells of the world, which the left does routinely.

I stumbled across this example of the method by one Jim Kalb, an orthodox Catholic with a formidable command of the topic. He rehashes a lot of territory here, such as the argument that the lack of a comprehensible set of standards is itself a standard, and that its imposition on society is therefore self-contradictory. I'm not sure I agree on this point, but this snippet is worth a look:

In fact, it’s impractical to demand that people have a public morality opposed to their private beliefs. Man and morality have an essential social component. The modern advanced liberal state is everywhere. It educates the young. It confers honor, disgrace and punishment. It suppresses public manifestations of non-liberal attitudes. It intervenes to reform public attitudes on things as basic and close to home as the relations between the sexes and rearing of children. It makes life and death decisions. It demands our supreme loyalty. How could it leave private morality untouched?

And in any case, saying “each of us is free to adopt whatever measure he wants” is just another way to say “man is the measure.” Why think the phrasing changes anything?

Whatever you think of it, this view of morality in the public square is precisely what animates many social conservatives who no longer feel free to raise their families according to their own moral standards. Their hostility to sex on television, explicit sex education, and so on are based on a sense that, especially in the mass communication age, the demand that they keep their ethics to themselves seems unreasonable and dishonest.

When you consider that leftists themselves present their pet cultural ornaments, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Will and Grace in one instance and free condoms in schools on the other, as deliberately-measured steps towards the creation of a more liberal social environment, it would appear that those concerns have merit. Only when the "liberalizing" effects of a broadly amoral politics and culture are asserted do leftists alter their course and scoff that, of course, these things will have no impact on the children and family lives of conservatives. They sneer that only superstition and paranoia inspire conservatives to believe that leftists are out to impose their values on the rest of us, and that of course liberals would never think of such a thing. You know, Tolerance, and all that.

The very existence of such a disagreement, in my view, puts the lie to the silly notion that our present struggle is not about the imposition of values.

An interesting exchange from one of Peter Kreeft's better books, A Refutation of Moral Relativism, goes something like this:

Relativist: You're just mad because we're winning.
Absolutist: No, I'm mad because you're lying. You preach tolerance but reality dictates that relativism is impracticable. So you impose your sick moral code--that is, your absence of any code at all as a matter of principle--on the rest of us, by law. You then claim a halo for your refusal to impose morality.

In essence, I think this is right. But I don't present Kalb's piece because I agree with it, I only do so as a matter of interest for the curious. What he demonstrates is that there is a perfectly rational and honest critique of modernity available, whatever else anyone may say about it. Really, all the best arguments are going on within the "Right," since leftists are today practically incapable of offering a plausible criticism of anything--at least, they are incapable of doing so as leftists.

Food for thought.

2003-08-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Last Word on Hamas

This post by the always-readable lefty blogger Oliver Kamm pretty much says it all:

[T]he EU felt that cracking down on front organisations for terror would be inimical to a negotiated peace. I throw up my hands in disbelief. Only when Israeli civilians feel safe when they travel on a bus or go shopping - the things that are the stuff of everyday life, but for which reserves of courage are required by Israelis - will a negotiated peace, and a Palestinian state, become a reality. And that requires a serious, good-faith effort on the part of the Palestinian Authority to defeat Hamas.

In the circumstances, the British government's pressure is not before time. The notion that the activities of Hamas can be segregated between the violent and the philanthropic is worse than ill-informed: it's frivolous. The distinction itself is a mainstay of Hamas's propaganda, and is a means by which it draws supporters into terrorism. The ostensibly non-violent activity - the Da'wah - agitates and recruits, provides infrastructure and raises funds. It is the route traversed by men who later become rioters and finally suicide-bombers.

There's much more.

2003-08-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

My Hero

... is Tex at Whackingday. For a chuckle, read his hysterical (and characteristically indelicate) fisking of a recent book by David M. Jacobs, er, PhD:

The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda.

2003-08-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

Just About Right

In a post about what he refers to as the "destructive naivete" of Western intelligencia, Billy Beck muses that

If that UN Baghdad mission doesn't bag this year's Darwin Award, then the award itself is no longer authoritative.

Some might think this cruel and insensitive, and maybe it is. It also happens to be true.

2003-08-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Puppies and Syllabi

What's the connection?

Well, there really isn't one, outside of my own present preoccupation therewith. For the purposes of a web diary, though, that's enough.

This week (and weekend) I got a fresh supply of each. First, the syllabi:

It's impossible for me to convey, in any vivid way, the depth of my loathing for the semester-opening shot across the bough that is syllabus distribution. Each and every time, I hope to be pleasantly surprised, intrigued even. Each and every time, I shake my head in disgust and steel myself for the road ahead.

The modern professoriate, like the swine of Orwell's Animal Farm, have not the barest clue just how miserable life as a libertarian student can be. We are the non-coddled minority, one of several distinct groups against whom no slander is considered too coarse. It begins, always, with the syllabus. It's my glimpse into the extraordinary exercise in restraint that every class discussion, debate, or assignment is certain to be.

If you aren't a leftist, you simply have no idea what I'm talking about, and probably never will. Andrea Dworkin would not have it so bad if she were forced to quietly sit through five years of Catholic Catechism. Not only do I have to suffer an equivalent test of mental torture, but my very professional future depends upon near-total smiling acquiescence to the thing.

Scanning my syllabus each semester, I have the opportunity to witness the fine art of the Stacked Deck unfolding before my eyes. This fall's set of readings is a classic in the genre. All the right notes are hit, but in case you're a beginner, I'll just highlight the big things to look for when sniffing out indoctrination shoddily dressed up as education:

1- Do the class readings heavily favor a particular view or related set of views (e.g., feminist, social constructivist, environmentalist, and so forth)? Do class lectures favor explication of these viewpoints ("conceptual frameworks") at the expense of all others on, say, a four-to-one basis?
2- Does that same side of "the debate" always have the last word? Is the same side of the ideological divide consistently answered by the other? And answered? And answered? And answered some more?
3- Do the words "oppressive," "capitalist," and "system" manage to find their way into readings with mind-numbing frequency? (If so, that "tuning out" sensation you may experience is not just normal, but healthy.)
4- Is something which is obviously true described as an "Enlightenment assumption"?
5- Does the word "social," by some bizarre coincidence, appear exactly the same number of times as the word "justice"?
6- Are you obviously being spoon-fed socialist propaganda, the aroma of which is powerful enough to overwhelm even the most generous splash of patchouli essence?

There are others. These should serve as a working start.

I must say that one exception to this virtually iron-clad pattern of systemic Deck-Stacking has arisen this semester, but I'd rather avoid revealing the good professor's name. After all, his/her commitment to diversity, peace on earth, the rehabilitation of the Soviet Union's undeservedly ghastly reputation, and other forms of cosmic justice might just come into question if it were discovered there were traces of "objectivity" (that discreditable pretense of The Patriarchy's secret police) in his/her course lectures and reading requirements.

In short: Woo-hoo! School's in!!

Honestly, I am really glad it is, and I have to say that even the most transparently biased of my teachers at IUPUI have been unfailingly amiable and generous with their time. My gripe is institutional and philosophical (I won't say "cultural," since I believe the institutionalized leftism of the academy to be a kind of anti-culture), and in any event it's interesting to note that they may have discovered the one way possible to make radical chic uncool--by growing beards and cramming it down young peoples' throats.

In other, better news, there is a new addition to the family: Maribel, or Mary, the Beagle. She spent her first night with us last night and so far, she's just as sweet and lovable as you might expect.

(I must say, I got a little thrill out of the very experience of making a tax-free purchase, though this was immediately negated by our rather heavily-taxed purchase of doggie paraphernalia afterward.)

We rode about an hour into the countryside, noted the seemingly endless expanse of supposedly disappearing rural scenery that constitutes 99% of every road trip we take, and paid a visit to a kindly woman with an eight-week-old litter of wrinkled-nose-inducing cuteness. What a sight. Six or so baby beagles frolicking--it's been a while since I've seen anything frolic up close--in the grass.

We picked the one with the red head, the white markings splashed on her hindquarters, and the kissable little dash of white on the nose.

OK, this is getting nauseating, even for me. Needless to say, Mary is absolutely precious, though it's been a little heart-breaking to hear her crying and whining while she looks around for her litter-mates. Ever so slowly, she's settling in. As she does, I'm getting a lesson in the special joys of sleep deprivation. And getting into it with relish.

Well, I still have some studying and puppy-kissing to do, so I'll touch base again later.

2003-08-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

Men in White

Here's an interesting shot of Jew-hating thugs running around in white sheets with their faces behind masks, burning effigies of their enemies and hiding behind one of the three monotheistic traditions. Hint: it isn't the Klan. It's a far more serious bunch.

I find the similarity intriguing.

An interesting dilemma is this: The rally depicted in the linked article would be considered protected speech in the USA, though there are a lot of people who would prefer that it wasn't. The right, and most of the libertarian center, generally stands up for the freedom of racial provocatuers such as the KKK to march and hold rallies and so forth, even in Jewish neighborhoods.

I happen to agree that even this execrable form of expression is and ought to be protected by the US Constitution. The left, predictably, disagrees, since the offensive character of the expression in question does not find its source in some convergence of sacred Christian symbolism and human excrement.

A reversal of viewpoints takes place when we shift our attention to the West Bank. Leftists become indignant and even downright principled where the right to assembly is being siezed upon by Hamas, the PIJ, or anyone else who murders Israeli children for sport.

The right, meanwhile, loses its adamant devotion to the sanctity of free expression when the racial terrorists in question are Arabs hiding behind the Koran, rather than WASPs hiding behind the Bible.

So what's the answer? I'm not sure, but I think some of the relevant differences are as follows:

1- The US government does not actively fund and encourage the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.
2- The Klan is not (any longer) a serious political movement of any appreciable influence.
3- Hamas is rather commited to the slaughter of civilians and has proven itself so through recent, frequent, concrete acts of mass murder.
4- The PA has agreed, as a condition of Israeli concessions, to put a stop to "incitement" in the West Bank and Gaza, and has no Constitutional obligations one way or the other. It has never done so.
5- The conditions of civil society do not exist in a war zone, by definition.

There are others, but it's early and I'm just getting warmed up. The controversy here has only been hinted at to my knowledge, and I present it here only as food for thought. I should probably say also that even though the link I provided is for LGF, I really dislike Charles' practice of labeling such posts "Religion of Mass Murder."

(I know, it's meant to counter the constant protestations of Islamic apologists like Hussein Ibish that Islam is a "religion of peace," or even the "religion of peace." There are, ahem, fertile grounds for a rejection of such a claim, but I think his blanket characterization only gives ammunition to those critics who accuse him of bigotry, while alienating more than a few undecided readers. In any event, I still enjoy and recommend Charles' blog, and I regret that I have to routinely qualify my support for his work in this way. Charles, just a few degrees cooler, buddy...)

In other, more light-hearted news, I'm getting a puppy. A Beagle, preferably. We'll see how that goes, but the search begins today. I adore Beagles, and agree with Andrew Sullivan that they are very good for the soul. In fact, I prefer them to people, and it is a source of some consternation for me that they cannot be trained to work at the DMV.

Later, I'll give you dear readers an update on the first week of classes here in Indianapolis, and the depressing ritual of syllabus review.

2003-08-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Some Things Never Change...

...and I am unsurprised to find that the quality of Erin O'Connor's higher ed blog, Critical Mass, is among those things. This week, in case you didn't already know it (it is a bit presumptuous of me to provide links when I'm the one who's been out of the loop for three weeks), Erin has as a guest blogger Professor Frederick K. Lang.

Lang is one of many college educators who have found themselves on the business end of an academic witch hunt for daring to teach at a high level. The modern academy is in the Marxism advocacy business, and one predictable consequence is a revulsion among administrators and high-powered faculty for any practice which might reward hard work and talent over incessant bitching.

His series, Ignorance is Business, begins here. Check it out.

2003-08-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

I'm Baaaack

I will consider it nothing less than a miracle if I ever get back the readership I had prior to my vacation. I never bothered to announce, formally, that I'd be gone for about two weeks. Well, I was. Terrible breach of good sense, I know, but once I was on the road, that was it. I haven't read a single shred of news or a single weblog in weeks.

I'm slowly easing back into the groove, but school started this week as well, so I have to be solicitous of my more serious duties. NTW will be back in full swing shortly, though, so fret not.

I spent the last two weeks in Jacksonville, Florida and Columbia, South Carolina. It's a bit of a long story, and not one anyone might be interested in who didn't actually take part in it, so I won't drone on about my visit home. I can't imagine anyone cares.

I did witness something memorable on the flight from Indianapolis to Charlotte.

An English family sitting close to me at the gates had been visiting a friend here. They had never seen the United States, and decided to takeup their old friend on his repeated offers to put them up for a visit.

The elder of the two children they had with them was a beautiful boy of about ten. He was wearing a Stars and Stripes bandana with evident pride.

When they boarded the plane and sat in the row behind me, they had a quick chat with a flight attendant, also originally from the UK as luck would have it. As I listened in to their conversation I overheard a muffled sobbing, and turned around to see the boy crying into his mother's chest. She was smirking and stroking his hair, whispering to him that it was OK. She looked up at me, smiled good-naturedly and said, "It's just dawned on him that we're really leaving America."

I smiled back, and returned to reading my book.

More later.

2003-08-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

The Nightmare Is Upon Us

Well, upon me anyway. This is the weekend of the move to Indianapolis. We'll be loading up and actually leaving on Tuesday the 5th, but it promises to be a busy weekend anyway. So, blogging will have to suffer.

Naturally, this hurts me a lot more than it hurts you. Stay tuned.

2003-08-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Impervious to Parody

As a wise man once said:

Heh.

UPDATE: I failed to credit Samizdata.net for the link when I posted this. Sorry, guys and gals.

2003-08-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Laugh-Out-Loud Ridiculous

That's how I'd characterize Nature magazine's "study" indicating that...well, I'll let Steve Hayward tell it:

Last fall Nature magazine carried a news story explaining that conservative rule makes more people want to kill themselves.

“Suicide Rises Under Conservative Rule,” read the September 20 headline on nature.com, the website of Nature magazine. “A nation’s suicide rate increases under right-wing governments according to two studies that have looked at Australia and Britain over the past century.” The story was based on two refereed articles in the British-based Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. One of the articles is entitled: “Mortality and Political Climate: How Suicide Rates Have Risen During Periods of Conservative Government, 1901-2000.” The subhead tells it all: “Do Conservative Governments Make People Want to Die?”

Whatever the methodological problems with this might or might not have been, I would simply retort the following:

"Historians: Genocide, Famine Rises Under Leftist Rule".

2003-08-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

Preaching Capitalism, Practicing Socialism

It's a familiar theme. A good exposition of the tensions at work here is available at Lew Rockwell, courtesy of James V. Schall. A snippet:

So, if I were to answer the question about why I, even though a “practicing socialist,” am an advocate of a free market, it is because I think it is really the only way that the poor will be helped or the only way in which a rich society can remain free to deal with things beyond politics. We are in an anti-growth, ecologically oriented ideological world that is not based on the idea of the real abundance of nature and of the effects of mind with regard to things. The real enemies of the poor are those who maintain ideas or institutions, including governmental ones, that do not work.

I got this via Catallarchy which, incidentally, you ought to be reading without any prodding from me. Bookmark it.

2003-08-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Really Good Review

Tech Central Station has a good review of Steven M. Barr's Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. In it, Kenneth Silber takes a fair but skeptical look at Barr's defense of "intelligent design" theories of the universe. I would emphasize that this is an uncommonly balanced review of a book whose thesis does not command the reviewer's assent. So, even my readers inclined to accept the existence of a divine creator will find the article of interest, if for no other reason than because it sells the book as a worthwhile read.

I haven't read Barr's book, but I found this counter-point downright charming in its elegance:

Barr rightly distinguishes between two types of design arguments: cosmic design arguments that focus on overall features of the universe; and biological design arguments that focus on characteristics of organisms. He propounds cosmic design, but also asserts that scientists have been too dogmatic in rejecting biological design. Yet what Barr, like many other design theorists, fails to recognize is that these two types of design are in tension with each other. If the laws of physics are fine tuned for life, then it is no surprise that life will evolve without further intervention. If intervention in biology is needed, that suggests the original fine tuning was inadequate in some way.

I don't like arguments from design, though my own faith in God is pretty dependent upon a variant of the cosmological argument. In any case, as compelling as it might be to think so, the unlikelihood of the existence of intelligent life strikes me as a very, very unsound argument for God, even if it is admitted to be only probable.

Why?

Well, because it can be used by substituting any present-day condition for intelligent life, without affecting the argument. Suppose we calculate the statistical probability that conditions in the early universe would be precisely such that human beings would exist as they do today, and find that they are approximate to a monkey sitting at a typewriter and hammering out the complete works of William Shakespeare. What follows from that?

Only that, of all possible worlds, ours is an exceptionally unlikely result. The problem with proceeding from here to an argument for intelligent design seems obvious:

ALL possibilities in our formula would be similarly (if not equally) improbable. Using this variant of the intelligent design argument, one could say that any event--when one considers the exceptional unlikelihood that the universe would have proceeded just so as to bring it about--is an argument for God's existence. My hair color, indeed my very existence, are themselves contingent upon an incalculably large number of prior events happening just as they did. The fact that I am typing this blog, the fact that you are reading it, the fact that it rained this weekend, the fact that the sun is yellow, the fact that Jupiter is a large gaseous planet rather than a star, the fact that tigers have stripes--all these things are extremely unlikely to have happened, when measured against the number of things that could have prevented them.

So, in a certain sense, every event one can point to is really unlikely, and only a fool would have bet on any one of them happening if he had had the chance one hundred billion years ago. No lotterly has odds so low as one that would have predicted, a thousand years ago, that I would exist and would be wearing a watch today--but here I am. What if the universe had been totally different, because of some slight variation in the temperature of the primordial cosmos? Would that then support the likelihood that God exists? After all, it too would be only one of an infinite number of possibilities.

So this version of the argument from design is, in my view, akin to pointing at an orange lying on the floor and asserting that its having fallen proves there must be a God.

I find this reasoning unpersuasive, to put it charitably.

2003-08-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

James Woods--The Salon Interview

Woods appears in one of the most obnoxiously smug dens of leftist journalism on planet earth, Salon.com, and does a real fire-breather of an interview. Worth a look.

2003-08-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

A Little Morning Politics

Charles Krauthammer on the media's reaction to the deaths of the Brothers Hussein:

That deadness [of Uday and Qsay] offended the sensibilities of a few, most characteristically, the supercilious British reporter who confronted Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Baghdad (who announced the killing of Uday and Qusay), with the charge that the United States should have taken them alive, not just to produce more information but to provide war crimes trials. Why did you not just wait them out, he asked?

The question was as astounding for its stupidity as for its audacity. The obvious answer is that waiting would have opened the unacceptable possibility of escape. One might add: Imagine what would have happened had a siege been declared, and days spent waiting for the food and ammunition inside the house to run out. The world media descending on the scene would have made Camp O.J. look like a Cub Scout barbecue. Mediators representing everyone from Putin to the pope would have fallen over each other to negotiate the terms of surrender.

But Charles, that's exactly the point. That self-same supercilious reporter missed the story of a lifetime and, as they so often remind us, it's all about the media.

Also, I watched Paul Gigot on C-Span for a few minutes this morning. What always strikes me about shows like Washington Journal is the unremitting fury in the voice of every caller. They must be deliberately screening for embittered smart-asses.

The caller who caught my attention was (of course) an older man who, after his introductory salvo of humorless sarcasm, proceeded to drill Gigot on why exactly there was no readily available definition of the phrase "weapon of mass destruction" on the internet. After all, he mused with Howard-Zinn-like hateur, a B-52 loaded with 50,000 lbs of bombs might be accurately described as a weapon of mass destruction too. He concluded that the phrase was, you guessed it, "invented by the neocons" as a way of advancing their agenda.

You might think responding to one random phone call on my weblog a total waste of effort and time, the mental equivalent of kicking a puppy. I can tell you from extensive experience, it's nowhere near as fun as kicking a puppy. I feel obligated, though, since there is the outside chance one of NTW's readers was unsatisfied with Gigot's answer. Or lack thereof.

I've heard this same "argument" formulated a thousand different ways, so let's just say I'm responding to an entire genus of leftist thought on the subject.

The problem is that it's not an argument, properly understood. It's a semantic point, good for a little "tee-hee, I'm so clever" moment but not much else. Nothing actually follows from it. The term "WMD" is a bit elastic, but so what? Nobody wants Kim Jong Il in possession of ten fully-armed B-52's bristling with guidance technology either, and nobody is arguing that it would be just fine if he were. If what the caller means is that conventional weapons can, in the aggregate, have similar destructive force to a single atom bomb or chemical warhead, he's right. North Korea's artillery battery is designed to approximate exactly this effect. That's why they are a problem. So again--what's the point?

After all, we have nuclear weapons already, so if the point is simply to impeach the United States for possessing awesome firepower, well, no Air Force bomber need enter into it. Unless your case is to make the point that the U.S. Air Force is for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from the Republican Guard.

(It's more likely that this line of thinking is related to the leftist's vision that it's the gun that kills, rather than the shooter. One can see where the gun control mentality touches on so many other issues here. A person who points to our own military arsenal is missing the point in a very, very big way. Moral equivalence, anyone?)

In any case, if you really want to play semantic games, let's have a little fun with it: A B-52 is a delivery system, just as an ICBM or a Scud might be. We aren't worried about how many missiles or bombers Saddam might have had, so much as what he might have put in them. The warhead is the weapon, not the missile.

A 20,000 lb bomb is terrible, but it isn't a nuke and neither is it a bug or a gas that can wipe out an entire town. Put it on a B-52, and it's still just a ballistic explosive. So if you want to get cute, a B-52 isn't a weapon of mass destruction, it's a plane. And we, at least, do not use planes as "weapons" per se.

All this is pretty stupid, of course, since the point isn't the actual words "weapons," "mass," and "destruction," but rather the context in which they are used. In conjunction with a regime like Saddam's or the Iran's, they were (and, in the latter case, remain) a really serious problem. Safely tucked away in the Nevada desert, protecting our shores from even the remotest possibility of foreign invasion, they are a blessing.

Lastly, let's turn this around: Is there a strictly workable and universally-applicable definition for "neocon" on the internet? Or is it just a word advanced by the left to advance their agenda?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

2003-07-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

A Sad Farewell

None the Wiser's club-wielding blogfather, Clubbeaux, will be signing off as of today. He and the rest of the Harp Seal Clan will be flying to Antalya, Turkey, to take up residence and toil the days away at Paul's Place, a little coffee shop on the Mediterranean coast. I truly envy him the opportunity, and I'll be praying his journeys go well.

I can picture him now, writing his next novel on that incredibly gorgeous beach (scroll down for a nice picture).

Dave, you'll be missed around these parts. God bless you, friend.

2003-07-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

Joining the Cacophany

Let me be about the fiftieth right-libertarian blog to recommend one Oliver Kamm to all my loyal (ha ha) readers. The best thing about him: he's leftist, Keynesian, and none the worse for it.

Oliver is a self-described "Scoop Jackson Democrat." His blog is one of the very few left-of-center corners of the blogosphere that hasn't completely degenerated into frothing insanity since the election of George W. Bush. (It's of anthropological interest, then, if nothing else.)

Seriously, Oliver's a very, very bright customer and his site is a source of that increasingly rare delicacy in today's world: non-poisonous political discourse. It's every bit as refreshing as it sounds, so go check him out.

2003-07-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

Partisanship vs. Bias: A Crucial Distinction

Now this is interesting. Neil Cameron, at the National Association of Scholars weblog, responds to an article by Greg Yardley which insists the government step in and "do something" about the pervasive bias in history departments across the country. I think Neil has this exactly right:

Partisanship is what historians, and scholars in other liberal disciplines, are bound to display as a simple feature of their individual character. The approach made to documents is bound to be different for the religious or the secular, the radical or the conservative. Some of the most intellectually and morally instructive history has been written by passionately partisan scholars.

[...]

Bias literally means "slant," and what is typical of the awful stuff produced by contemporary academic radicals is that it is so slanted as, at a minimum, to suppress the whole truth, and in many cases propagate outright lies. In the Cold War years, this charge could sometimes be justifiably brought against those historians who were actual communists or fellow travelers, since it was impossible for them to give an honest account of the countless historical topics on which the Party had a "line." But the causes of appalling bias by the radicals of the last two decades have been somewhat different.

He also points out that any government "fix" for this problem would be an unmitigated disaster, and that the mere suggestion is entirely unrealistic in the first place. As a student of history, I found this response enlightening, but anyone interested in the academy will probably glean a little insight from it.

2003-07-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

Teknomusik: eine Sache von besonderer Bedeutung

(OK, so that heading might be completely nonsensical, but so far as I can discover it's technically correct.)

This week I've been busy packing for the move. Still.

Fortunately, my latest excuse for failing to update NTW consistently has also set me to thinking about my love affair with electronic music. That makes this as good an excuse as any to ramble about one of my favorite topics.

I've been making some tapes for my sister, also a person who develops and subsequently nurtures deep emotional connections to musical artists and styles. Almost everyone, of course, loves music of some sort or other, but for some of us that relationship is more intimate than it is for others.

I am a member of that all-too-common breed of music fans who can fairly be described as a "fanatic" (I have no idea whether "fan" shares some etymological roots with "fanatic," and don't care); I am thinking of that definition of the word that comes to us from Churchill. That is, "a person who cannot change his mind and will not change the subject." Once the conversation wanders to music, both my passion and my ignorance take complete control of me.

So, when my sister allowed a recent discussion to land on the topic of electronic music, she ought to have known that a few tapes were in her future. In any event, I've been spending hour after hour listening to and recording various tapes and CD's, trying to compose a collection that accurately reflects my own early influences.

It's often remarked by people inside the electronic music scene that one really does become infected by it. Once you've been bitten by that rave music bug, all other musical inclinations evaporate completely, at least for a time. And while I've flirted with the idea of abandoning it--sometimes, like all other forms of art, it all sounds the same--I've discovered that my conversion to electronica has been so total as to disabuse me of any lasting enjoyment of acoustic musical performances. Even my beloved Velvet Underground has been reduced to the status of an occasional and temporary change of pace. Before long, an actual malaise sets in and I feel guilty and depressed, if I allow my dance records to sit too long.

I don't care overmuch why this is. Others--my friend Billy comes to mind--will probably tell you that the fascination with electronic music is as artificial and synthetic as the music itself. Elvis fans, rockabilly diehards, the nostalgic--all these exhibit a visceral loathing for what they perceive as electronic noise masquerading as music. I couldn't disagree with them more, for a lot of reasons, but in any event I and many like me have as blind a loyalty to electronic dance music as all the blackfooted legions of Deadheads have to that greatest of rock bands. Yes, I was a Deadhead once too, and even toured the east coast more than once.

(God, please accept this, my weblog, as a humble offering of penance.)

Anyhow, whether a person considers electronica--which I generically, if inaccurately, refer to simply as dance music--"authentic" or not, its roots are little appreciated by its critics, as is its broad appeal. Not since the Beatles have so many, in so disparate and far-flung a collection of places, danced to the same tune. Many young people are oblivious to the fact that the tracks they hear on Saturday night can be heard in London, Berlin, Sydney, Prague, Ibiza, and Rome. But just as many aren't.

Indeed, many are drawn to dance music precisely because of its power to unite people in celebration of their existence. In spite of its determined and at times repugnant hedonism, it is my view that the global dance music scene is the most life-affirming and anti-nihilistic "youth culture" phenomenon available in the contemporary world--a real diamond in the rough, since virtually every aspect of Western pop culture has become the very opposite. It is in this sense counter-cultural in all the right ways. What destructive elements it does contain are largely borrowed from the wider landscape of Western society, and these are not essential to it (whether Senator Biden is willing to accept this or not).

The "rave" scene is in fact a cultural mongrel. Sometimes presented as a fusion of German electronica (think Kraftwerk) and American rap/hip-hop (think Grand Master Flash and Afrika Bambata), dance has in fact come to encompass a bit more than that. My view is that what we're seeing is a lot like the disco club scene, and a huge amount of the music itself is nothing more than disco riffs and samples set to synthetic 4-4 percussion.

Combine that with the outrageous clothes most notable for its incredibly large pants, the aesthetic fixation with flashing lights and neon, and the omnipresence of designer drugs, and what you have is a reworked disco scene perfected in its essentials by Gen X, for Gen X. It has a "retro" kind of appeal, to be sure, but it's as unique as anything before it. I should also say that even the youngest among the current crop of dance music fans is deeply aware of this borrowed identity, and recieve too little credit for the extent to which they acknowledge and celebrate the early influences to which they owe an artistic and stylistic debt. In fact, no community of fans and artists that I am aware of has done so much to give the originators their due.

(That very eccentricity has led many to dismiss it as a passing phase, and they may be right--although now in its twelfth year the scene shows no signs of weakening, in spite of constant predictions it is about to implode.)

What I adore more than anything, though, is what a testament to people's ability to get along, and to combine their own preferences and influences into a single aesthetic, that the dance scene really represents. Turntablism, smart production, a strong sense of harmony--all these things make the fusion of very different tastes into a single funky product possible.

It's a thoroughly libertarian affair, whether people realize it or not. The idea that we can exchange things that are valuable to each of us for different reasons--and become wealthier in the process--is the unspoken mantra of the dance music ethic. Some say money drives the scene, and it is for this reason a Good Thing Ruined By Greed. I call bullshit on this line.

Dance music is driven by a nexus of black markets--and it's good for this reason alone. Love of "the music" isn't primary, nor can it be. The music itself exists only because of the desire by some to succeed, and success isn't free. The record stores, producers, DJ's, promoters, and record labels all have a part to play in making the thing work, and the average raver's attachment to the "authenticity" of the scene, the extent to which it's really "underground, is just evidence of a lack of understanding.

Without the motive for worldly achievement, DJ Micro could never make a living entertaining crowds that number in the thousands--not because he wouldn't want to do it for free, but because he couldn't. If you hate paying a gang of faceless hoodlums running an illegitimate "production company" $30 for a ticket, then you need to get your happy ass back to the basement, where you and your friend DJ No Talent can enjoy all the "free" music you want.

Sadly, the average age of the dance music enthusiast has dropped steadily since, I would estimate, 1996. The music's association with drugs, like that of the hippie movement, has made it the target of Concerned Citizens everywhere; but since "the drug problem" isn't unique to electronic music, there must be something else at work. That dynamic is, I'm sorry to say, the number of very young people attending dance parties these days. I've witnessed kids as young as twelve skipping around raves, and I can tell you, they have absolutely no business there without an adult.

Most people whom I have spoken to, who are over 18 and are blessed with any amount of experience on the subject, agree wholeheartedly. The image of the reckless raver, nefariously seducing little boys and girls with the promise of late nights and loud music, is a total fabrication. A few responsible DJ's in the UK (John Digweed comes to mind) have taken to setting serious limits on the types of events they will play, complete with dress codes and age restrictions.

Of course, parents who allow their adolescent children to raise hell--totally unsupervised--until five o'clock AM should not be surprised to find that their little darlings have landed at the bottom of a pile of drooling clubheads. They should, however, have their damned heads examined (right after they finish watching the latest John Stossel report to find out what their kids are up to).

The last thing that's going to fix the problem of baby boomer inattentiveness is an act of Congress like the RAVE Act, since there is literally nothing happening there that cannot--and does not--go on at private residences every day. In typical baby boomer fashion, however, they are quick to absolve themselves of what "society" hath wrought and march straight to their local voting booth or city council meeting to ensure that the rest of us are properly ordinanced and legislated into submission.

Eventually, dance music will either wither for lack of inventive ways to please and accommodate its core audience while avoiding excessive attention from the government, or it will become a more mainstream phenomenon. Moby and car commercials notwithstanding, it has thus far avoided this fate, but not for long. At some point, the twin pressures of regulatory government and financial incentive will act to make dance music a more standardized affair, filling auditoriums courtesy of Ticketmaster. While almost to a person dance enthusiasts shudder at the mere mention of such a possibility, it is one than cannot be discounted, so long as young people continue to be recruited into the screaming, throbbing masses of partygoers that grow larger and more visible with every passing Saturday night.

A third possibility is that dance music will remain underground, but take a major hit in popularity, causing the scene to shrink to its pre-1996 size. After all, it happened to disco. That's what most of the real heads say they want, anyway. Punk, ska, surf, and the like have all been able to maintain a respectable existence on that level for as long as they've been around, unmistakably influencing popular culture without becoming one of its most visible manifestations. Perhaps electronic music has sold out to the extent that it can, and its eclectic style really will inhibit rather than promote its shift toward the center of the pop-culture stage. So far, it remains mostly absent from the All-Mighty Pop Charts, and I admit to hoping it stays this way.

We'll find out just how popular its appeal is in due course. Whatever the case, the heart and soul of dance music will remain those weekly resident DJ's toiling in relative obscurity, like Hipp-e in Colorado or DJ Garth in San Francisco. They are, and will probably always remain, my real inspiration every time I step to my own set of second-rate, mismatched turntables. As for initiates like my sister, I envy them that first knowing grin, that moment the bug bites them and the music clicks just right, when everything they thought they knew about electronic sound evaporates in a brief spasm of excitement, and they realize that rhythm, crescendo and decrescendo retain their mystical power in any medium--and that there is nothing so captivating, no emotion so pure, that it cannot be sublimated, at least in part, by the raw power of human art and ingenuity.

[WARNING: This post was composed under the influence of uncut, dirty beats.]

2003-07-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

A Procedural Note

A lot of bloggers have a lot of different takes on what constitutes good form in the blogging biz. By that I mean that different people have different opinions about what constitutes honesty, or truth in advertising, where blogging is concerned. After all, it's a little like traditional journalism, and certainly aspires to the same level of importance in the cultural and political scenes.

A lot of bloggers, I have noticed, are meticulous about leaving their posts exactly as they first were typed, and refuse to edit them later. On matters wherein the alteration in question might actually affect the outcome of a relevant dispute, or change the meaning of something they are on record as having said, I can see that this is an honorable practice.

None the Wiser, on the other hand, pretends to no importance at all in the wider world of online journalism. It is, and will remain, a devoutly personal enterprise. Furthermore, I have absolutely no tolerance for spelling and grammatical mistakes that I discover in my own writing. So, I reserve the right to make such changes as are necessary, at any time, to correct technical or minor stylistic imperfections in NTW's content.

However, I also think it important, once a person is on record as having defended a position or articulated a point of view, that he not misrepresent the fact of the matter by deleting or otherwise attempting to hide the meaning of any post whatsoever. This is a matter of basic honesty.

So while I do attentively edit my own posts with respect to technical errors and minor stylistic flourishes, When you log on to my site you can be assured that you will find it exactly as you left it last in its essentials. And should anything here ever become a matter of any controversy (which I believe to be improbable in the extreme) it will be considered by me etched in stone, forever fixed, until the Blogger Archive Gnomes have away with it.

2003-07-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

NFL to Millen: No Attempt to Follow Rules Too Sincere to Ignore

Clubbeaux makes an interesting point about the Detroit Lions.

For those of you not up to speed, the Lions have been fined $200,000.00 by the NFL for not interviewing any minority candidates for their newly available head coaching job. Not that they didn't try.

See, Steve Mariucci wanted the job, and Detroit wanted to give it to him. Considering that he is the best unemployed coach in the sport, and a Michigan native, there was never any doubt he was the best man for the job. So, of the five minority coaches offerred interviews, not one accepted. They weren't stupid, and they knew that in GM Matt Millen's position, they wouldn't hire anyone but Mariucci either.

Since none of the prospective candidates physically attended an interview, the Lions organization was found to have violated the NFL's "diversity requirements." Meaning that even though they made the requisite show of wanting a less-qualified candidate than Mariucci, the candidates themselves were too sensible to dignify the gesture with a trip to lovely Detroit, and stayed home.

So the Lions are being fined for something that someone else did. Or rather, for something someone else didn't do.

OK.

So Clubbeaux asks,

If GMs are required to interview blacks shouldn’t blacks be required to attend interviews? Or would that make too much sense and piss off the racists who currently run the NFL?

Good question.

UPDATE: I almost forgot to link to Scott Ott's widely-linked Scrappleface bit on this. Which is, quite naturally, hysterical.

2003-07-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

More Random Thoughts

One of my favorite regular contributions to the realm of internet commentary is Thomas Sowell's Random Thoughts. This week, we have a pretty decent lineup, with this being the best of the lot:

As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism -- unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.

Sowell is more conservative than I am. He also happens to be one of my personal heroes. Go figure.

2003-07-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

What He Said

Pretty good "glass half full" round-up of events--and our present circumstances--by Victor Davis Hanson. Quotable:

These are still perilous times. But if anyone on September 12, 2001, had predicted that 22 months later there would still be no repeat of 9/11; that bin Laden would be either quiet, dead, or in hiding; that al Qaeda would be dispersed, the Taliban gone, and the likes of a Mr. Karzai in Kabul; that Saddam Hussein would be out of power, his sons dead, and an Iraqi national council emerging in his place; that troops would be leaving Saudi Arabia, Arafat ostracized, and Sharon seeking negotiations; that new Middle East agreements under discussion — and all at a cost of fewer than 300 American lives — then he would surely have been written off as a madman.

All that and more were no mere accidents. They were the direct result of the work of thousands of brave and astute Americans who were as likely to be slurred during their risky ordeal as they were to be third-guessed in its successful aftermath — and predictably by the same opportunistic bystanders.

There's much, much more.

2003-07-24T17:58:00.000-07:00

Slow Day, and a Splatter Flick Revisted

Yesterday was Melody's birthday, so it's been a little bit slow around here in terms of news-gathering and what-not. We spent most of the day linging around yesterday, and I gave her the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. Anyone who knows me knows I loathe that show, so it was truly an act of generosity to be seen purchasing it at my favorite bookstore.

On the other hand, we did get to rent a movie, and since she was (inexplicably) interested in seeing a horror film, I picked out something I've not seen in ages: Evil Dead.

I'm not a big fan of splatter films, and the spectacle of people watching images of other human beings getting chopped screaming to little bits, and laughing at it the way they would Chevy Chase falling down a flight of stairs, has always turned me off. But even I have to admit that as horror films go, Evil Dead was a masterpiece. In fact, it doesn't matter what you think of horror films in general, the cinematography was unimpeachably brilliant.

Maybe the thing I like about it is that it's true to the genre. Horror flicks are almost like porno: some of the worst ones try to make themselves into serious art. In Evil Dead, we never find out why these kids are going to an incredibly spooky, ramshackle cabin in the middle of the woods. It just doesn't matter, or advance anything that Sam Raimi is trying to get accomplished. The imagery, camera work, make-up, and such tiny little plot devices as do exist do all the work needed to keep the tension relentlessly high throughout. We don't have to see the worried faces of their parents seeing them off, saying "You kids be careful now." In short, it's honest. Lots of gore and gratuitous close-ups, no sex in the backs of cars, etc.

What occurred to me last night while watching it was that it was original where it counted, and true to the genre where that counted as well. The girl-turned-goul staring out Linda Blair-like from under the baseboards throughout 3/4 of the movie was just horrifying, and an ingenious way to keep the terror at a constant, shrieking pitch. But the young victims were requisitely stupid and unfazed.

The best part of it was its simplicity, as is always the case with shoestring budget projects. To this end Raimi actually seemed to borrow not one, but several pages from H.P. Lovecraft's continuum. The "Book of the Dead" was an obvious tip to The Dunwich Horror's Necronomicon. The tape recording that served as an eerie testimony to the past exploits of a mad scholar-warlock, the bizarre tongues and incantations, even the old abandoned cabin just beyond the rickety bridge, all indicate Lovecraft's twisted influence. And since Lovecraft is one of very few horror writers I really admire, I was always a sure sucker for Evil Dead.

Even the gratuitousness of the violence strikes the right note of absurdity, a subtlety that is definitely lacking in the more recent teen slasher monstrosities (yes, even attempts as valiant as Scream 2). I suppose I think it superior to slasher movies generally, since the villain is a completely intangible army of wicked spirits, rather than a pointlessly cruel person with a vengeance complex. I admit, at any rate, to a few guilty giggles at the sheer wantonness of the carnage in Evil Dead. Today, that typically just translates into an attempt to shock (which more and more is dependent upon as much casually-presented sex, between as many 15- and 16-year-olds, as can be crammed into one house).

So I enjoyed a deplorable hack-and-slash gut festival for the first time in a while. Oh, and I made a citrus mustard pork roast that was, if I do say so myself, heavenly. Not a bad day.

Back tomorrow.

2003-07-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

The Envy of the Free World!!

Per Henrik Hansen has the goods on Denmark's unraveling social welfare state.

The final bit is of particular interest to me:

One option for young people is to leave. It was recently proposed by one of the three economists from the Danish Economic Council that if young people in Denmark wish to move abroad after they have completed their education, they should first have to pay back the costs of their education. Only when they have paid enough taxes to cover all the expenses of their education, would they be able to move abroad without having to pay the government first.

Thus do we have proposed the social-democratic version of the Berlin Wall, an economic barrier to prevent emigration so that the state can continue to tax people to sustain a system that is unraveling. The mere suggestion is a telling sign that Denmark has nearly reached the end of the road.

I say "particular interest" because I have the hardest time impressing on people why it is that the welfare state is a bear trap--that it is a sure route to arbitrary and tyrannical government. Read the entire article, for in it Hansen describes the way that "free" higher education (supported by a not-so-liberating 70% tax burden) has meant that people can no longer even pursue the careers of their choice, and that "free" health care has lead to shortages, delays, and preventable deaths (just as it has everywhere else it's been tried, and just as sensible free market theory predicts it will).

Once can rest assured that despite its social-libertarian reputation, Denmark also labors beneath the yoke of outrageously expansive anti-discrimination law, and that in very short order (if this is already not the case) every last thing the people do with their bodies will be thoroughly regulated by the state--which, after all, has such a keen interest in their well-being that it sees fit to ration life and death in the name of "social justice."

Do not envy those fools. But do read all about them at Mises.

2003-07-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

A Little Reality

OK, so let me get this straight:

Hamas, the PIJ, and other terror gangs devoted entirely and without reservation to the destruction of Israel, are demanding the unilateral release of hundreds of convicted murderers of Israelis...in return for nothing. This is not stipulated by the "road map" at all, even by implication.

Abu Mazen, meanwhile, categorically refuses to make any move to disarm or dismantle Hamas, the PIJ, etc. This is specifically mandated by the roadmap as the Palestinians' first obligation, before any other "confidence-building" measures can be taken.

As always, the world demands results, concessions, and still more concessions, from Israel. From the Palestinians it expects, and accepts, only excuses.

Thanks to Charles at LGF for reminding us that the situation is proceeding...normally.

2003-07-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

Got Scorn?

If, not, Kate O'Beirne's got you covered. Her remarks at NRO's The Corner:

There should be some embarassed blushing in the senior ranks who watched Pvt. Jessica Lynch's short remarks. Do they really believe that our defense should rest on the shoulders of this little girl? You can't begrudge her family and neighbors the joyful homecoming by Army helicopter, but it does contrast with the recent Washington Post story about a young male soldier, now an amputee, waiting for his cab, upon being released from Walter Reed, for his solitary trip to the airport.

I assure you, Kate isn't the only one who noticed the disparity. I've said from the start that this story might be great press, but it's no good for morale, for a number of very different reasons.

In other news, it appears we've nailed both Uday and Qusay. If so, that's just a massive blow for the coalition, and for the future of Iraq. We've been burned by identical reports before, but if I'm not mistaken this is being confirmed as I type. I'll wait until it's been really, really confirmed before I pop open a bottle of suds to commemorate the occasion.

Okay, it occurs to me that commemorate isn't the right word, but "celebrate" is a bit of a stretch. So I'll just say "celebrate" and drink a little more.

2003-07-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

Art and Censorship--The Most Tired of Conversations

I think the conversation is so tired because we incessantly hear the same platitudes about it, from the artists themselves, rather than any real discussion of the role of restraint in aesthetics.

I'm something of a free speech absolutist, so by and large I don't have any truck with censors. They aren't my kind of people, and I find the arguments favoring censorship circular and self-serving. However, I also find the following passage genuinely insightful, and worth a moment's thought:

It is, of course, a common prejudice that censorship is bad for art and therefore always unjustified: though, if this were so, mankind would have little in the way of an artistic heritage and we should now be living in an artistic golden age.

It's hard to argue with his reasoning, unless you're to accept the premise that we are, in fact, living in an artistic golden age (something I think is open to considerable doubt, to say the least).

I think the paragraph that precedes it is nothing short of inane. But the column, Theodore Dalrymple's latest for City Journal, is worth a read anyway. I especially agree with his assessment of Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover--a barbarically shallow and vulgar tale, devoid of stylistic or intellectual merit of any sort, endlessly promoted by the kind of pseudo-sophisticates whose only available means of proving their own intellectual credentials is a sophomoric attatchment to things thier parents wouldn't approve of.

[link via Armavirumque]

2003-07-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

Simply Astonishing

That's the only way I can characterize this letter to Ward Connerly, posted on Congressman John Dingle's (D-Mich) website. The Orwellian hypocrisy, historical obtuseness, and arrogance of this letter cannot be overstated. They speak for themselves.

Here is Ward's response.

Shaking my head in disbelief.

UPDATE: Erin O'connor has more.

2003-07-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

A Moral Call to Arms

In this somewhat long but nontheless magnificent piece, Fiamma Niernstein discusses the new anti-Semitism, as manifested through anti-Israeli rhetoric, and calls on Jews everythwere to reclaim their own moral conviction from those on the left who have tried to appropriate their legacy.

A brilliant article, in every respect. It's quotable as it can be, but I don't want to discourage anyone from reading it in its entirety. Do take the time to read it.

2003-07-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

Oh, Come On.

Maybe this is a standard practice these days, and maybe I'm just too much of an old codger to realize it. Maybe I need to get out more.

But just now, I came upon what has to be the most asinine bit of PC verbal tap-dancing I've ever seen in my life. OK, maybe not the absolute most, but definitely among the most.

I just got back from what passes for Indiana University's food court. It began innocently enough, as these sorts of encounters always do. One bake shop in particular has good chocolate chip cookies, so I stopped in there to grab some for Melody and myself. I noticed one of the little pastry trays in the glass display case was empty and, since my eye was wandering there anyway, I happened to look at what the sold-out goody was. The label read, and I'm not making this up:

Gingerbread Person.

Person. Now, I have a notoriously low tolerance for this kind of nonsense. But I can understand the chagrin of some truculent and touchy feminists (is there any other kind) who would like us all to refer to "spokespeople" and "salespeople." I think it's petty and unnecessary, but whatever. I can grasp the idea that there exists no longer a legitimate assumption that any given salesman or spokesman is literally a man. "He" might in fact be a "she." Though I must observe this: Since feminists also push the rather absurd idea that gender is a social construct and/or that there are five human genders, one must wonder why any offense should be taken in the first place, since the use of the suffix "woman" would therefore be just as arbitrary and presumptuous, wouldn't it?

But I can play along.

There exists a point in this pathetic little game, on the other hand, beyond which I refuse to venture. Is there really any chance that you're going to bite into a gingerbread man and discover that you've been decieved--that what you thought was a gingerbread man was actually a gingerbread woman? Is there any real assumption at work here that the cookie actually has a gender? Am I crazy, or is this the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?

Why am I spending my time on thinking about it? Principle, I guess you could say. But the real question is: Who really got so worked up about gingerbread cookies that they felt this change was needed? It occurs to me they could have labeled them "Gingerbread Cookies" instead, and avoided the reference to personhood altogether. They didn't. And you know why? They wanted to be sure everyone knew that the change had been made in the first place.

That was the whole point. To be certain that everyone knew how wrong it was ever to have referred to gingerbread men as, well, men. Even though nobody was ever at any time under the impression that it mattered.

Until now.

I mean, at the end of the day, Gingerbread Man isn't exactly a position of authority or respect in our society. Of course, now that we've recognized the full genderbread spectrum, maybe they will finally get their rightful due.

2003-07-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

The (Kraut) Hammer Is At It Again

Charles Krauthammer gets in what, in a saner world, would be the final word on the Niger nonsense.

2003-07-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

Blair's Speech

Yeah, I watched it yesterday. It was stirring in places, and yes, there was that classic Grim Resolve thing going on. Blah, blah. Everyone has praised it up and down. And while it's true, as Sully points out, that no contemporary American leftist could ever make so rousing a defense of liberty and keep his job, can we at least agree that it was nonetheless a thoroughly leftist speech, full of mealy-mouthed contradictions and self-flagellating exasperation? His fear seems as much to be a lack of order as anything else. His message: Unity, unity, unity, order, order, order. This is a man imploring the rest of us to join him--join Europe--join the world!!--join anything rather than submit to chaos.

But chaos is not the greatest threat to our liberty. "Liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order." I still believe this. I worry about enslavement, not the vague threat of terrorism generally.

Furthermore, though everyone seems to have liked this bit, I have a problem with this:

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior. Members of Congress, ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit, and anywhere -- (applause) -- anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

This refusal to credit Western Civilization with the most comprehensive and sweeping conception of political freedom and personal liberty--and make no mistake, these are Western values--is symptomatic of a mushy kind of multi-culti cultural relativism. Tony's--and the Left's generally--is a worldview that rejects the uniqueness and, ultimately, the very legitimacy, of Western individualism. There is no Near Eastern Adam Smith. There is no Far Eastern Thomas Jefferson. There is no South American Rene Descartes.

It's true that everyone, at bottom, is built with a love of freedom. But it is decidedly not the case that all peoples, plural, and all civilizations value freedom in the way that we do. I am simply astonished that anyone could say with a straight face that our attachment to freedom is not a product of our culture. This is obviously absurd, and it evinces a distinctly socialist view of Western Civilization as unspectacular, and of our liberty as either a sham or the mere product of good fortune.

This is not a man who understands the literature of his own people at all. Greek Democracy, Protestantism, the Renaissance, the French and American Revolutions, Emerson, Whitman--none of these things have anything to do with our attachment to liberty? Blind luck put us here? What is the equivalent story of the quest for liberty in Iran?

What Western Democracy has lately led a revolution to install a theocracy? If this view is to be believed, there ought to be liberal democracies with British conceptions of the rule of law all over the globe--but there aren't.

No, Tony belongs to the Cosmopolitan School of human rights, which sees nothing unusual in the Western tradition of respect for individual freedom, and is therefore very quick to toss it aside in the quest for Cosmic Justice, as Thomas Sowell would surely put it. It is furthermore simply ahistorical to believe that "anytime" people are given a choice, they choose freedom, as we understand it. The counterexamples to this are so overwhelming, I can't believe anyone actually bought this line.

What Tony and his adoring legions avert their attention from is the fact that "ordinary people" ARE the secret police. Hitler himself was an historically significant, talented, but in most ways entirely unexceptional man. And the masses themselves, all over Europe, rather recently turned out by the millions to give succor to Saddam Hussein, choosing a Baathist terror state over the possibility of American preeminence.

Sorry, I'm not buying what he's selling.

Anyone who spends any amount of time following the machinations of Blair and his cohorts in the UK itself will find him to be no friend of liberty. He has tossed Western liberalism to the side, and betrayed utterly the traditions of consensual government in Britain, in favor of a self-promoting scheme to capture the EU presidency. The EU itself is a profoundly anti-classical institution that speaks the language of "universal" human rights, "universal" taxation, "universal" jurisdiction--the language of collectivism and anti-particularism whose role in this world is always and everywhere to undermine and erode the reality of political, social, and economic liberty, all the while singing its praises. It accomplishes this by rejecting, in Gramscian fashion, the notion that the specifically Western preoccupation with freedom is sacred, a singular gift to humanity, and that we in the West are the inheritors of a most rare and special intellectual birthright--and the bearers of a great and privileged responsibility.

Beware the honey tongue of Tony Blair. Not only his blood, but his very soul runs red, and the truth of it is right there in this speech for those willing to see it, for those not too blinded by his ego-stroking, fawning sycophancy, for those not so eager for an ally in this our War on Terror. He is the head of New Labor, the mastermind of the Third Way. Never forget this.

And don't even get me started on Kyoto and "sustainable development"...

UPDATE: One other thing must be said. Exactly what is the realtionship between "political liberty is a Wetsern value" and "Milosevic was Serbia's savior"? Huh!? I'm not sure how that second part fits into the "myth," as he would have it, but it seems like an intentional smear, a delibertaely dishonest non sequitir, to equate the two ideas in any way. Maybe I'm being too picky. Maybe he was referring to all those people who think it is arrogant to "impose" out ideas of liberty on others. Maybe that's the more charitable interpretation. But in Blair's case, I'm not inclined to be very charitable.

2003-07-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

Nordlinger En Fuego

After a rather disappointing run of Impromptus columns lately, Nordlinger is back in top form today, with a piece packed so full of wit and style it just makes me smile. It includes this:

But how about this? The motto proposed for the EU is "United in Diversity" — again, a perfect nonsense phrase for this age. "United in Diversity" means precisely . . . nothing. These are just syllables crafted to soothe the contemporary ear, an ear increasingly dead, I'm afraid, to real meaning.

In language, as in most things, less is more. And Jay is a virtuoso of language. Read it.

2003-07-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

White-Hot Blog Entry Alert

Erin O'connor--all the blessings of God's grace be upon her--has penned another absolutely exceptional musing (it is too eloquent to be dismissed as a "rant") on the state of her own academic field, English Literature. O'connor is without question one of the future bright lights of her discipline, and her honest humility, combined with a conspicuous gift for the written word, makes her a must-read for anyone remotely interested in the worlds of knowledge and of culture.

She directs us today to an interview with the Great One of lit crit, Harold Bloom. It's worth checking out, but equally wonderful is Erin's own rumination on the subject:

I'm a bit of an oddball, having been trained by an intermediary generation of ideologues to be a theoretical clone (genus: cultural studies; species: body critic). Academically, I was raised to belong to the Rabblement of Lemmings. For a number of years, without fully realizing it, I rabbled along lemming-like, thinking that what I was doing was scholarly. I finally figured things out, but I would never have done so alone. I was lucky. I met someone with a shit detector and no fear. He let me know that academically, I was full of shit. I crapped on him for it for years. It was easier thus. But I eventually managed to put my considerable pride in a box where it belonged and began to undergo the humbling process of realizing just what a foolish parody of a scholar I was. No matter that this was what I had been trained to be and rewarded for being: you don't feel less a fool for realizing that everyone around you is one too.

I'll save the rest for you to read for yourself.

Erin, from a long-suffering Child of the Revolution, thank you.

2003-07-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

How Pathetic

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Andrew Sullivan, though talented and always a joy to read, is utterly incapable of clear and rational thought on the issues that most personally concern him. Moreover, he is probably more careless with words than any other "conservative" pundit of his stature (and no, I don't think Ann Coulter is of his stature).

In this one post (scroll down to Natural Law Update) he: 1) refers to social conservatives' "hostility to consensual sex," as though they only accept non-consensual sex as legitimate; and 2) fires off what has to be his hyper-emotional nonsequitir of the month: namely, that the recent scientific claim that masturbation reduces the threat of prostate cancer debunks natural law theory, all by its little lonesome.

For those of you who don't study moral philosophy, and have never read Aquinas, it doesn't. Natural law theory does not include as a part of its "burden of legitimacy" that an act must have no potentially beneficial outcomes to qualify as being functionally appropriate or "natural." After all, the study in question does not demonstrate that the entire purpose of ejaculation in men is to maintain healthy prostates. That would seem to reduce the whole of human reproductive functioning, and therefore the whole existence of the human species, to a mere engine for the preservation of the almighty prostate.

No, all it says is that this particular activity can have some unintended (and heretofore entirely unsuspected) positive consequence. And unless natural law is understood to be a kind of "dark matter utilitarianism" that requires all moral conduct to be self-destructive or at least without some discernible benefit, this is completely irrelevant.

This latest study is completely without consequence to the essentials of natural law theory. I'm not an adherent to the theory myself, and I think there are lots of very obvious problems with it, but the relationship of masturbation to cancer rates is definitely not among them.

2003-07-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Still Hamstrung

I'm still waiting for my new modem to arrive, so posting will continue to be intermittent for a couple of days.

In non-blogging news, I appear to be set to move to Indianapolis in just under a month. And counting.

My house is presently in that state of chaos that always intensifies in the weeks before a big move. Half my stuff is in boxes, the other half slowly becoming scattered and stacked. My tiny apartment has taken on that rat-maze quality. My wife and I are starting to squeeze past each other on our way to or from this or that room (there are only a few anyway), and I spend lots of time pacing around with a vague sense of distraction. I want either to pack or unpack. The waiting is getting a bit excruciating, and if you've ever lived in Bloomington, Indiana, you can probably sympathize.

So there's a sense of abstract business about the house, and it's impossible, whereas before it was just difficult, to relax. The move really can't come soon enough, just so I can have my office back. ("Your office?" you ask? Ah, therein lies the rub. That room, you see, is supposed to be a bedroom. It is, instead, our office space, just big enough for our respective desks and not quite big enough for all our books and papers. You haven't lived until you've slept on your own couch for a year. Priorities.)

Once there, I can take advantage of my newly-acquired grants and get a new computer, some socks, and maybe even some school-related items, like books or something. I'll also be a lot closer to my friend Dr. Lyons, and his lovely wife Anouk. It will be nice to live near somebody I actually like. As opposed to tens of thousands of people I don't.

In the meantime, I'll be trying to catch up on all the summer reading I should have been doing while I was drinking beer by the pool. On that list is Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, and as much of Yergin's The Prize as humanly possible. I'll also be flying to Jacksonville in August, and driving back.

Almost sounds like work, but I've got a lot to be excited about, and thankful for.

More later...

2003-07-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

"You Are Hated Here"

That's Merde in France's melancholy, if somewhat obvious, assessment of French attitudes toward America and Americans.

This is a topic all of us ought to care about, but few people seem to be taking it seriously. Merde is a pretty excellent and reliable source of information of the French media--which he tirelessly chronicles--and its predisposition toward anti-Americanism. This isn't subtle bias, folks, of the 43rd Street variety. Be aware that state-owned media in France is frighteningly saturated with what can only be classified as hate literature--most of it directed at the U.S. and, more reliably, Israel.

We in the States tend to laugh off suggestions of this type as paranoia, or at worst an acurate depiction of what must surely be a temporary and generally harmless "phase." It isn't. A daily scouring of European press reveals a hostility towards all things American bordering on hysteria that would be totally alien and ultimately unprintable in any respected American news source.

I plan to make my career in Eastern Europe myself, so there's little doubt I'll be exposed to quite as much of this as I can handle. It's no reason to stay away, but people really ought to be informed as to how our nation is depicted in foreign media. The relatively mild outburst of anti-French feeling here in the States, while still not totally abated, seems very much like a kind of "bump in the road" in what is really business as usual. Americans don't take themselves very seriously, as compared to other peoples around the world, and we're pretty willing to blithely swallow the French diplomatic line on all of this--a mere disagreement between friends, and so forth.

We assume this is outlook is universal, and that in fact the French embassy here speaks for the average French politician or even the average Parisian street vendor (properly licensed and bonded, of course). Our own officials have every interest in fostering this perception, since to fail in that would be to fail in the very mission of the State Department (as some see it), which is to smooth over our relations whenevever necessary.

Don't share in this hallucination. Sources like Merde and MEMRI are indespensible. Use them.

2003-07-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

The Sociology of Raines

The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid goes off-topic a bit today by fisking the now widely-fisked Howell Raines-Charlie Rose interview. The interview itself is something of a love-fest, and others have commented already on the evident delusion of Howell. What caught my attention was this bit:

"HOWELL RAINES: What no one has reported is what the story was actually about, which is I wanted a story about the sociology of a -- that's going on in the country where we have an industry that picks a sexually precious looking young woman, lifts her out of obscurity, elevates her to a level of wealth and acclaim far in excess perhaps to her talents and then drops her like that. That says something about the sociology of the country. It says something about the business of this country -- the record business, the entertainment business -- and it speaks to -- it speaks a language the language of style and culture that the people in this country under 35 are speaking. They know a world that a sophisticated reader of the New York Times need it's be exposed to, so the Britney Spears was a sociological story..."

OK, maybe it's just me, but is it seems to me that there isn't a leftist alive who is capable of an accurate reading of either human nature or those parts of it most often sublimated through culture.

Could it be that the phenomenon that Raines is describing has less to do with the record business than with our attitudes towards women as sexual beings? He's damn right is says something about the language that people under 35 are speaking. Specifically, it says that people under 35 will latch onto an attractive woman, get all the thrills they can squeeze out of her, and toss her aside when they've tired of her. Prevailing popular culture indoctrinates young girls into thinking of themselves as flavors of the month--we call this process liberation--while boys need only license, not any real encouragement, to think this way.

This is the mindset encouraged by our present attitudes about sex in general. Why would our attitudes toward sex objects be any different? Raines, of course, sees this as some kind of indictment of the recording industry, as though the industry did not simply respond to the whims of its customers--meaning the rest of us. Typical of all social leftists, Raines has cause, effect, means, and ends all mixed up.

2003-07-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

Say It Ain't So

One more reason to laugh out loud the next time someone mentions the sanctity of the ICC, and the principled nature of the people who promote it:

Stephen Den Beste has the goods on a very interesting day in the Hague. Our close friend and ally, Jaques Chirac, is said to have played a role critical role in hiding one Gen. Ratko Mladic from the U.N.'s prosecutors.

This doesn't surprise me, although the evidence is of a hearsay variety.

STB is betting the U.S. National Security Agency was responsible for the release of this new information, which is plausible, considering recent diplomatic circumstances in Europe. The Czechs' or Poles' Foreign Intelligence Services are an equally good bet, in spite of their meager "sigint" resources relative to that of the NSA.

2003-07-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, At Our Foreign Desk...

...John Hawkins directs us to this rather interesting article: Beijing Considers Its Korean Options. None of them are good.

I wonder whether Washington's rising interest in bringing NATO into the forefront of the Iraqi restructuring effort (a huge mistake) is related to the likelihood of serious trouble on the Korean front? In the event of a blockade, it could get extremely dangerous.

2003-07-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

Get That Farging Kant Outta the Courthouse

I'm becoming something of a stalker over at Prestopundit, the official blog of the Hayek Center. If you're interested in keeping up with the California recall, Greg Ransom at Prestopundit is the man to check in with.

Since the recall is of only mild academic interest to me, I instead direct your attention to his latest post:

The framers gave us a liberty right out of the tradition of British constitutionalism. [Randy] Barnett and [Justice] Kennedy are inserting a rationalistic post-Millian and post-Kantian liberty right -- one that imagines that "morality is the product of our reason" -- which it isn't, and a view which the framers had no part in making a part of American jurisprudence. The fantasy of constructed morality -- and constructed rights -- is a modern conceit, which the framers cannot be said to have given us as the law of the land.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly, Greg. Though largely a libertarian myself, I recognize that it is totally delusional to believe that moral anarchy in all things except private property was a foundational assumption of our country's beginnings. The common libertarian response seems to be that if the philosophical underpinnings of Lawrence weren't envisioned by the Founders then they certainly should have been. Perhaps, but that's very different from divining a Constitutional principle on this basis, which it seems to me requires some consideration of original intent, doesn't it?

2003-07-10T11:29:00.000-07:00

E.U. Acquires Symbols, Continent Shrugs

The charade of European unity continues apace. Check out this delightful post at Samizdata, and read the comments to find out what Yours Truly thinks about it (typos and all...yuck).

2003-07-10T09:58:00.000-07:00

Arrrrrgghhhh

My modem got its halo yesterday, so I won't have much of a chance to blog over the weekend. I'll be able to find other sources of hardware, though, so I ought to be able to poke my head in here a bit during the week.

More later.

2003-07-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

A Moment's Reflection

I need to take a second to pause, and consider where NTW stands now.

When I started this weblog, I really had no idea where I would be going with it. It has worked out to be something of a learning experience, a work in progress, and a humbling one at that. One thing I've picked up is that keeping a weblog is actually pretty hard, like every kind of writing.

Not that there's anything complicated about actually signing up for a blog, and typing your thoughts. What's difficult is coming up with something that isn't already being said someplace else over and over and over, and actually saying something worth reading. What I've dicovered is that you have a choice between shooting for a very wide readership, or settling for a small personal readership of friends and the occasional random web surfer. The second is where I've wound up, and I'm pretty pleased with that.

One observation I can't help making is that the blogosphere itself can be charitably described as self-referential. Another is that it is a form of communication decidedly lacking in civility, I think for some of the same reasons as the roadway. There is a thin membrane of anonymity between you and the people you're communicating with. Also, there's the ACPOTI syndrome--Anyone Can Post On The Internet. Any crank with a computer can log on and rant, and they do.

So, None the Wiser is just another rant in one big rant factory. That's the biggest weakness I can see, other than the low quality of the writing here. The other is the low volume of postings, which are a direct result of both my own laziness and lack of originality.

What's been positive has been the rather undeserved recognition I've gotten from fellow bloggers such as Tex and Dave. Also, it's given me a chance to sharpen my own sense of intellectual honesty. Until you've written an opinion that is available for billions of people to read and dissect, and subsequently to either accept or reject, you have no idea what kind of care it requires.

So what now? I'm pretty happy with NTW, but I think what it really needs is an injection of more casual topics that aren't being covered relentlessly by thousands of other blogs.

Secondly, I could use some promotion from more successful blogs such as Instapundit and Mean Mr. Mustard. This would increase the pressure on me to stay on top of my game, as well as provide an incentive for others to give me some feedback. So I'm presently hatching a plot to trick them into doing just that, but it's slow going. They're both very bright and have few obvious vices for me to exploit. All in good time, though.

In the meantime, look for a sprinkle of less-weighty commentary on NTW, as well as some more that personal "slice-of-life" garbage that has made Rachel Lucas such a blog starlet.

More later.

2003-07-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

Tackling the Burning Questions, As Always

The Master of Trite himself, Jonah Goldberg, asks the question on everyone's mind lately:

Is Dr. Strange gay?

2003-07-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Like a Rotten Limb...

The right seems to be jettisoning its bemused tolerance of Ann Coulter's, um, lively invective. When you're too blinkered even for David Horowitz, you've just sailed to the extreme rightward longitude of American political thought.

Sadly (and I only think this is sad because of Coulter's conspicuous wit), Ann's latest book, Treason, is evidently a work of sloppy and self-serving historical revisionism of the lowest order. Fortunately for the rest of us, the respectable right is busily savaging it.

She seems determined, even in her attempt to bleach the man's reputation, to make the exact same errors as Joe McCarthy, and to discredit anti-Communism all over again. Frankly, I wish she and Michael Savage would just elope to Pyongyang or something.

2003-07-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

Just In Case You were Thinking of Voting...

...don't. That's Porphyorgenitus' advice for the ignorant:

If you're ignorant, it's your civic duty to keep your ass at home on election day and spend the next two years getting yourself informed. Then vote (for better or worse I don't expect too many people who are oblivious about political topics will be reading this blog, so this post won't be reaching that audience). No one has any excuse to be uninformed - lack of money is no excuse (there are books, magazines, newspapers, and computers at every public library. Use them. Libraries can't even ban smelly, obnoxious bums who pester other patrons from the premises. Get a friend to read to you. If you can't read and can't make a friend, then at least watch TV; C-SPAN and PBSU and video courses are better than nothing). It takes time to make yourself informed, but no money.

Lots of other good stuff over there, so go check it out.

2003-07-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Us.

A good Independence Day to all of you.

I think it's a tribute to our remaining freedoms that we almost always wish one another a "safe" 4th of July. I never wish anybody a safe Easter, that's for damned sure. Only because we're still allowed to indulge in some measure of grown-up risk is this the case.

Enjoy it.

2003-07-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

An Issue Bigger Than Affirmative Action

Yes, of course there is such a thing. Namely, the quality of education actually taking place in the colleges themselves. The reliably sane National Association of Scholars knocks the back out of this one:

Very few seem to pay any attention to the contents of higher education any more. College and university administrators, of course, are not eager to rock the boat. A contented faculty and student body can translate into salary increases and personal promotion. Whatever people want, they can have, say many Chancellors and Presidents. Unless, of course, the request infringes upon an assortment of widely held assumptions about racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity. Or is conservative. [...]

[...] Faculty members are primarily interested in their careers, as well, and like to keep students happy. High grades and low requirements very often lead to high teaching ratings, which can be converted into higher pay and promotions. Why assign three books when the students complain about one? In time, this approach often leads to take-home exams. Only a professor's conscience demands academic rigor, and it takes little to stifle that inner voice.

Read it.

2003-07-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

Krispy Kapital

My fellow South Carolinians will appreciate this article at fortune.com on the surprising success of Krispy Kreme donuts.

[via mises.org]

2003-07-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

Read. This. Now.

Jonathan at Catallarchy (fast becoming a daily favorite) points to this astonishing column, which clearly and simply articulates the American individualist position. This is a real rarity anywhere, but on a metropolitan boradsheet it's truly a diamond in the rough. To wit:

Our government was founded as a decentralized representative republic whose power was limited to the protection of liberty and private property. The words "democracy" and "democratic" appear nowhere in the Constitution. A republic differs from a democracy like the rule of law differs from the rule of the masses.

Benjamin Franklin had it right when he said after the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that the delegates to the convention gave the people "a republic, if you can keep it." Unfortunately, we haven't kept it. We have reverted to a kind of democracy feared by the Founders, a centralized power controlled by majority opinion that can be arbitrary, impulsive and frivolous.

It gets better as it steams along. Go forth.

2003-06-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Thought for the Day

The history of baby boomer politics is the history of a generation determined to live comfortably and without guilt, at the expense of those who came both before and after themselves.

2003-06-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

Somber Day

Last night, after a few drinks with a professor of mine, I discovered that on June 20th Dr. Scott J. Seregny, Professor Emeritus and specialist in the field of Russian and East European history at the University of Indiana, finally lost his battle with cancer.

Dr. Seregny was perhaps the best teacher I've ever had the privilege to study under, and I had hoped to remain his student for many more years. Last winter, though, his illness began to overtake his energy, and he was unable to complete his teaching assignments for the semester. When he stopped coming around the office, I suspected he might have fallen ill, and this was confirmed for me by one of his colleagues, Dr. Kevin Cramer.

Dr. Seregny's work on pre-1917 peasant life in eastern Russia and the Ukraine was held in high esteem among peers in the field of Russian Studies. He was working on a study of post-Communist education in Russia prior to his death.

I guess I hoped he would recover, but it was a desperate wish. He was a warm, gentle, good-natured man, and my heart aches at his passing. No teacher has inspired me so much, nor done so much to encourage my studies. He was universally adored by students and colleagues. He was, quite simply, a bright and beautiful spirit.

He left this world at the age of 53. May he rest in peace.

2003-06-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

Bwahahaha!!

OK, am I the only one who thinks this reporter's use of quotation marks, as pointed out by Matt Welch at Hit and Run, is just friggin' hilarious?

Yeah, probably so.

2003-06-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Deep Thoughts of Tex

Tex at Whackingday has been somewhat en fuego lately. His latest missive about Anne Coulter:

Being an anti-communist doesn't give you a right to suck.

What he said.

2003-06-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

Strom, R.I.P.

Strom Thurmond's dead, at age 100.

Being a native South Carolinian, this is something of a strange moment for me. After all, I grew up in a state that never had more than one Senate race at a time, and the guy holding the other seat had been there for a percentage of our history reaching into the double-digits.

There's not too much I can say that won't be said elsewhere. I didn't think Strom helped the State's image at all, and it is a bit of a shame that he didn't retire fifteen years ago and enjoy the fruits of a very long, hard-fought life. I do think that all of us will feel at least a mild sting at his passing, though. Whatever cruel things the children at Democratic Underground or moveon.org have to say, I for one hope to live a life even half so rich.

To have lived the entire twentieth century, fought in its greatest wars, witnessed its upheavals, marveled at its accomplishments and stood aghast at its horrors--we should all be so lucky. Strom, you crazy old son of a bitch, may your soul rejoice.

2003-06-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

The Voice of Sobriety

I have a bumper sticker that reads "Charles Krauthammer: Dictator." It's a customized version of those election sticker templates, with the name and the office in red white and blue.

One of the reasons for my admiration of the Strangelovian columnist is his ability to calmly and dispassionately assess risks, outcomes, consequences...all those things rarely given their due in overheated policy debates, and totally beyond the mental grasp of chatty little Manhattanite head cases like Maureen Dowd. I know of absolutely no one else who could articulate a case for a pained acceptance of this past week's travesty at the Supreme Court.

His reason for celebrating the affirmative action rulings (which he recognizes as the logical and legal monstrosities that they are) is the only one that makes sense, and it's also (incidentally) the best reason to lament Roe. That is, the Supremes declined, in the end, to short circuit a democratic debate on a contentious issue by handing down a sweeping ruling that was certain to have very deep, divisive repercussions.

Let's be clear that in the final analysis, I think Charles is wrong, and that he misapprehends the actual legal impact this set of rulings will have. He misgauges the depth of support that racial preferences actually enjoy among the public, who overwhelmingly would not mourn their passing, and who would benefit immeasurably from a strong affirmation by our highest court that the Constitution means what it says with regard to the legal equality of all Americans, which is so fundamental to the existing order. Censorship is also popular with large swaths of the population at any given time, but the First Amendment exists precisely to counteract the whimsy of the mob where sensitive political speech is concerned. After all, there would be no need for a First (or, certainly, a Fourteenth) Amendment if the rights affirmed by it were uncontroversial and immune to attack by self-interested ideologues.

But some words worth pondering are here:

We learned from the abortion issue the doleful consequences of such judicial imperialism. In 1973, changes in public opinion and action in state legislatures were altering the landscape on abortion. At which point the court stepped in and took the issue out of the political arena. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued before she ascended to the Supreme Court, ``Roe v. Wade ... halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.'' The result has been 30 years of strife and agitation, as a disenfranchised minority continues to carry the fight against policy for which it has no political recourse.

It would be a pity to re-enact the experience with affirmative action. Popular referendums have already abolished racial preferences in California and Washington state. Such acts of abolition enjoy the kind of political legitimacy that--as conservatives, of all people, should acknowledge--is lacking when handed down by unelected judges.

Go read the whole thing. If there is a case for O'Connor's astonishing abdication of her duty, this is it.

UPDATE: Something just occurred to me that, to my mind, completely invalidates this line of reasoning by Krauthammer. That is, that the democratic process he's referring to as inviolable has actually already happened: it's called the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI is pretty clear on the issue of race discrimination at schools recieving federal funds, and the entire point of having a judiciary is to see that the plain meaning of the law is implemented wherever applicable. It isn't to refer back to the people what they meant when they said "no" to counting by race. Determining the intent of the legislature is an interpretive function of the Court, isn't it? Does Charles mean to suggest that the meaning of the Civil Rights Act is best left to local referendums and craven, spineless University administrators who, through their peculiar position as the supposed guardians of enlightened thought, are devilishly well-equipped to control the terms of any real debate on the issue?

Also, the establishment of the 14th Amendment came on the heels of the American Civil War, a war justified by decades of semantic gamesmanship and cowardly, legalistic hair-splitting of the race issue at all levels of government. What more do we as Americans need to suffer, in order to ensconce equal protection permanently into our Constitution? Hundreds of thousands of more dead Americans? More marches on Washington? Charles writes as though the ideal of a colorblind society were not saturating the legal landcape already, as though we had not had quite enough debate and democratic wrangling, as though new civil rights legislation were needed every twenty-five years to prove our commitment to the dream. When, exactly, will the principle of equality before the law be adequately asserted by the people?

2003-06-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

Peacekeeping Mercenaries?

That's the subject of this intriguing Noah Shachtman article at Tech Central Station today. The idea is that the United Nations could hire professional soldiers to do the nasty work of keeping the peace in the Congo, thus sparing the Congolese civilian populace any more rapine and bloodshed. Higher on the U.N.'s list of incentives, naturally, would be its own reputation as a viable instrument of global policing.

Though Brian at Samizdata is high on the idea (he thinks of it as a "private sector solution" that is certain to shame its blue-helmeted predecessor) I think it's positively insane.

It isn't that I doubt Brian's assumption that private troops would be a much more effective force than the current amalgamation of French, EU, and UN soldiers. Sure, they'd get the job done. What's more, they'd do it in such a way that--as Brian suggests--everyone will wonder why the hell we need multinational UN peacekeepers in the first place.

What bothers me is the likelihood that this could develop into a pattern. Yeah, that's what the UN is worried about too, but I don't think it's because they're concerned about getting shown up. The centralizing, command-and-control political culture at the UN is just incompatible with the supposed risks of independent action and lower-tiered decision-making.

I'm just very uncomfortable with the idea of some faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy like the UN bringing disinterested executioners to bear on undesirable armed movements--or individuals. I'd much prefer that whatever happens on the UN's watch happened with its very own powder blue seal of UN approval prominently emblazoned right on the package.

The question of command structure and force monitoring would be so convoluted that in the end, nobody's head at the UN is going to wind up on the chopping block should a force of mercenaries rape or murder some civilian--or group of civilians. UN accountability is already virtually nonexistent, but when such an organization starts simply paying its way out of bloody messes largely of its own creation, then the problem could get stickier yet. I'm not sure the UN's own record provides much consolation that their judgment can be trusted to such an extent that I'd be willing to channel US funds into its coffers, just for the sake of putting out contracts on militias who have embarrassed that august body in one way or another (which, let's be honest, is the UN's only motivation to get off its ass and help out under any circumstances).

Taken as an individual case, of course, there's not much the UN could do at this point in the Congo that would be worse than what it's doing at the moment, which is to say nothing much. But funding one side of, or some third party to, any given conflict is not the same as raising your own banner and wading into it yourself, putting your own blood, honor, and prestige at stake. I'd prefer that any atrocities, outrail failures, and serious fuck-ups were placed squarely on the shoulders of the UN itself, leaving it no room for absolution for its sins.

If the UN is going to continue to represent itself as some sort of neutral, peacekeeping lawgiver serving the interests of humanity, I want to see it put more than just its money where its mouth is.

2003-06-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

A Couple of Education-Oriented Links

Photon Courier has a fantabulistic collection of thoughts about "the dictatorship of theory" in the humanities.

Erin O'Connor reminds me why I'm not going into academia (again) with an email from a professor who is being suspended without pay for violating the school's harassment code (again)--for allowing a classroom discussion about the sexual content of a work of literature.

Oh, and Tex at Whackingday is right about Clifford Curtis.

2003-06-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

Blogger Problems...

Have kept me away, but it seems our new format is finished. It's ok. So anyhow, I'm back in business.

2003-06-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

We Were This Close...

Ever notice how the Palestinians are always just a few hours away from negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas? Operations commander assassinated? "Oh, well, now you've done it, because we were just within hours of negotiating a ceasefire." Terror suspect arrested in his home? "That's too bad, because we had just finalized a truce with Hamas which is now null and void." And so on.

Again, I only wish this was an insult to the intelligence of Western observers. Considering the fact that it works like a charm to convince people that the conflict is some kind of tit-for-tat boxing match, and that Hamas is ever at any time not planning and executing attacks on Israeli civilians, the reality is that people really are fucking morons.

Or how about these weekly declarations that now all bets are off. "Now we're going to target all Israelis." This within hours of some bus-bombing, or some ambush on a carload of children. Who are these people who actually buy this shit? I'll tell you. They're the same people who backed the Khmer Rouge, who apologized for Stalin, who back up Castro no matter what he does...in short, they're leftists.

Charles has an interesting breakdown of headlines from the last month or so that illustrates this point beautifully.

2003-06-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

Today's Top Blogosphere Story...

...is Dick Gephardt's statement to a Rainbow Push gathering with regard to affirmative action:

"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day," said Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.

As everyone is now saying: hold on just a damned minute, Dick.

First of all, the Constitution doesn't enumerate that kind of authority to the office of the President, and he has to know this. Why have a Supreme Court at all, if any ruling the President doesn't like can simply be brushed aside by Executive Order? Would such a system remotely resemble the America in which we presently live? Could it have produced the kind of result we see around us? What was FDR's court-packing scheme all about anyway? As others have pointed out, this is just an insult to the intelligence of his audience--and judging by the reaction from the left (nonexistent), it was a perfectly justified insult at that.

Pop Quiz.

Which is scarier: The fact that, A) a presidential hopeful could utter such a sentence, or the fact that, B) he could be cheered for it by a crowd of politically powerful ignoramuses?

Answer: Trick question. In reality, the two exist in a kind of simbiotic relationship.

Secondly, this isn't just a statement about affirmative action specifically. "Any wrong thing" the SCOTUS does on "any day"? Any at all? This is the Democrats' idea of democratic process? Of separation of powers? Well, actually, it is.

The basic Democratic--let's say leftist--viewpoint for the last fifteen or so years has been that the system we have is sacred, just so long as it doesn't constrain their efforts to remake society. While the goal--reshaping society in toto--is identifiably leftist in all respects, I find it endlessly fascinating that, at least in the U.S., this is accompanied by an extreme cognitive dissonance regarding the actual legal means.

OK, I'm being a little obscure. One good example is the 2002 Senatorial race in New Jersey, and the left's approach to it as distinct from their approach to the 2000 Presidential race. No one needs me to tell them about the way the left has interpreted the Florida ballot controversy in 2000. In essence, the rule of law had been subverted, the Supreme Court had "appointed" Bush as President, etc., etc. I'm not going into the particulars here. They aren't the point. The bottom line is that the left feels as though the system was corrupted irreparably, by a court who simply flouted the rules in order to get a politically desirable result.

Now, I don't know if that's true. I really don't. I've seen convincing arguments made either way, and I don't think we'll ever settle the debate. Once some time has passed, and tempers have cooled, I imagine we may reach some kind of historical consensus, but even that is a long way off. In any case, to this day the left howls with rage over the subversion of the law that supposedly occurred at the Supreme Court.

Now, compare this to the left's total abandonment of anything remotely resembling principle, or respect for the hallowed rule of law, just two years later when one of their own was on the ropes. Robert Toricelli was going to lose that NJ race, plain and simple, and everybody knew it. The law stated explicitly and unequivocally that the Torch absolutely could not drop out and have his party replace him on the ballot. There was a plainly stated number of days before an election after which this was simply illegal in the state of NJ. The primaries had already happened, and no party could legally "switch horses," as it were. The Torch dropped out altogether, in the face of serious fallout from a major corruption scandal.

So, the Democrats went to court. They argued before the Supreme Court of NJ that the people were entitled to a Democratic candidate. Of course, the fact that Toricelli had decided to drop out meant that they didn't have one. Of course, this would be illegal, but the Supreme Court of New Jersey found that the law had deprived the people of a "competitive" race, to which they were (somehow) entitled.

Frank Lautenberg went on to defeat the Republican, Doug Forrester, and the Democrats held their seat. Meanwhile, the campaign laws of New Jersey were essentially declared dead by the all-Democratically-appointed SCONJ. The law was written to ban exactly what the Democrats did, and the courts simply stated that the state legislature had made a mistake, and should rewrite the law. There was absolutely no legal, much less Constitutional, foundation for their ruling; even taking the least cynical approach it was a piece of pure self-serving political philosophy, with no justification beyond the fact that the Democrats shouldn't get their asses handed to them in New Jersey, now or ever.

Under questioning from the media, a Democratic campaign spokesman simply said that all these "legal niceties" were less important than the two-party system. One wonders.

Anyway, I can't help but imagine what the left would have said had this happened the other way around, say in South Carolina or Texas. You and I know. This is all of a piece with the left's overall political and legal philosophy, though. That's what's behind the absolutely inconscionable filibuster of Bush's court appointees, as everyone knows. Anyone stupid enough to believe that there is some actual, concrete principle at stake here that would have been at all recognized by the country's Founders ought to have their voter registration invalidated. The left's assault on the judiciary has reached such hysterical heights that I might vote straight Republican for the next twenty years just to help put a stop to it. And that makes me as sick as it makes the people who know me.

But this total disregard for the sanctity of an independent judiciary is what Gephardt's statement really reflects. There is an idea that prevails on the left these days that the Constitution is an obstacle to be overcome at every turn, a necessary outgrowth of the idea that its words can be said to mean anything at all, as long as what they mean is acceptable to themselves.

Think to yourself, just for a moment, if the exact same words had been spoken instead by George Bush. Suppose, for the sake of argument, he had made a speech this week to the Center for Equal Opportunity and promised that should the Court rule in favor of Michigan he would immediately overturn it via Executive Order. And for that matter, he'd do the same with every Court ruling he didn't like.

Do I need to paint a mental impression for you of what the screams of protest would sound like? The comparisons to Hitler's Germany? We all know the answer. Strangely, though, all is silent on the leftward front.

By now, is anyone surprised?

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has the goods on Gephardt's (exceedingly lame) response to his critics. And by the by, anyone who says we're taking his statements too literally is full of shit. Just read the quote. There's just no way to finesse what he said without totally mangling its plain meaning. There again, why stop at the Constitution?

UPDATE II: Brian with the Catallarchy crew has this great nugget:

So, I wonder, how is it that the party that is supposed to 'save us' from the civil liberty depriving Bush admin, has within its ranks two candidates for the job of Savior that wholeheartedly support an imperial, autocratic executive? The root problem is the same, just with different objectives, which seems to be the problem in general between the two parties.

That's not salvation, that's simply another master coming by and saying "we've got nicer chains."

How true.

2003-06-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

Affirmative Inaction

Well, the SCOTUS has issued a predictably anti-climactic set of rulings which essentially says you can discriminate by race in college admissions, except when you can't. Quotas are unacceptable, as are point systems, proportionality goals, and otherwise explicit numerical "targets," but a "critical mass" of minorities is a supra-constitutional priority of the Republic. Numbers bad. Euphamistic evasions and disingenuous rationalizations good. Uh-huh.

I'm glad you got that all cleared up for us.

I hardly have the energy to comment on this bit of cowardly hair-splitting by the O'Connor court, except to say that the ambiguity and nuance they so often discover in our Constitution, one of the most plain-spoken political documents ever written, is astounding. Astounding in its dishonesty, that is. Universities, of course, are loving this ruling, since it is so infuriatingly vague, and the language so slippery and elastic, that they can go right on doing exactly what they've been doing for years. As long as no one actually finds out what their system is, it's effectively legal.

Wow.

The bottom line is this: If I, with my self-same academic record, were a minority whose members are on average less intellectually accomplished than the rest of society (black but not Asian, Hispanic but not Indian), I could get into most any college or university I wanted. But I'm not, so I can't. Those are the facts, plain and simple. And this is what passes for "fair treatment" of minorities, and "equal opportunity." Which is to say that it isn't fair to expect blacks and Hispanics to measure up to the rest of society, and only a racist can expect them to win out on merit alone.

I would be so insulted by this concept were I actually a minority, it would take ten men to pull me off the person who said it in my presence. As it is, I'm an "angry white male" who doesn't see the justice in getting a rejection letter from Michigan or Yale on account of my skin color.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg is bummed out as well. Like me, he's a little too sad to be really fuming mad. He gets off this absolutely on-the-money shot at Bush:

I’m primarily struck by how sad it is that SAnDra Day ends her career (it is almost over, isn’t it?) by blasting a hole in the dike that heretofore had dammed (damned?) the waters of racial discrimination. But it is far too late in the day to criticize her for writing political, unprincipled opinions. It is not too late, however, to level that criticism against the Bush administration, and primarily against the president himself. The gutless, insipid Grutter brief he ordered Ted Olson to submit all but invited this result. Let’s hope the president is pleased by it, since a number of his formerly loyal supporters will not be.

UPDATE II: Best quote so far re: the Michigan case comes from Peter Kirsanow:

It is not an exaggeration to say that today a compelling state interest is any nice idea favored by the elite and backed by flimsy social science.

Yep.

2003-06-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Gone Fishin'

OK, not really, but I've been uninspired to keep up with NTW. Sorry about that.

2003-06-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

Exactly On Point

Political correctness is universally denied, misunderstood, or trivialized by those on the left who enforce its esoteric strictures. So it's great to see someone who can articulate exactly how such a slippery concept makes all of us less free.

I'm not writing this out of a concern about the gay marriage debate. Forget the context of the following link for a minute. Just check out this post by John Derbyshire in The Corner. He could just as well be talking about race, economics, history, or anything else when he says:

Another part of the strategy of extremists (of all kinds) is to make end runs around the First Amendment. Yes, you can say what you like: but if you cannot say it (a) in a school or university, (b) in a major broadsheet newspaper, (c) on any major network or cable TV channel, or even (d) in a respectable conservative magazine, what use is the First Amendment? And, as you surely know, there are a myriad things--ranging from the preposterous through the debatable to the indisputably true--that you cannot say in any of those places. You can, of course, go and stand out on Lexington Avenue and shout them at the passing motorists. Are you really willing to settle for that?

That's precisely the point. Being reduced to whispering one's opinions, or even cold hard facts, looking over your shoulder and making certain you are nowhere near a venue where they might have some kind of impact, is not the mark of a free society. It's the same "freedom" one enjoys to sleep on a park bench.

2003-06-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

Reason # 12,654 I'm a Right-Leaning Libertarian

A six-year-old girl had her lemonade stand shut down by the cops for operating without a business license.

She probably had the gall to operate without providing her little brother with affordable health insurance, too.

[Link courtesy Catallarchy.net]

UPDATE: OK, make that reason # 12,655. Dave Sims has the goods on a New Zealand measure that will tax farmers for the, um, gasseous emissions of their livestock. To combat global warming, don't you know. Yeah, that's the ticket...

2003-06-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

This is Nucking Futs

An Indian boy has incubated a batch of flying beetle eggs--which are now emerging from his urine. Nastiest...link...ever.

[Blame John Hawkins for this one.]

2003-06-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

He's Baaaack...

Stephen Green is back, and he's on a roll. For those new to the blogosphere, his Vodkapundit has been a staple source of witty, smirking libertarian cynicism for some time. Now that his house-buying travails are over, the bar is open again. Go enjoy a shot of what he's offering.

2003-06-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

Fisking Bill

Bill O'Reilly is his usual know-nothing self, so it surprises me that everyone is in a tizzy over his remarks about the internet. Anyway, Volokh has the best answer I've seen yet.

UPDATE: While you're there, follow his link or mine to his NRO piece on intellectual dishonesty re: the risks of gun ownership.

2003-06-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

Huh.

This article is kind of interesting. It notes a rise in the number of married stay-at-home moms in the last few years.

NOW, naturally, is responding by creating more initiatives to get these underachieving layabouts off their asses by shuttling those kids to day-care as much as possible. Typical.

What is missing from the list of possible causes, I notice, is welfare reform. Maybe that data isn't yet available. But after seven years and numerous other studies, I expect that the Census Bureau must have some way to calculate what effect, if any, the pressures of mandated self-sufficiency are having on the marriage rate of young mothers. It would be interesting to see whether the theory that welfare destroys two-parent homes by diminishing their economic incentives is supported by the demographic effects of welfare reform.

2003-06-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

LGF's Outrage Of the Day

Woa. I link to this article in Yahoo! News [hat tip: LGF] with a very heavy heart. The Romanian government's Ministry of Public Information issued a statement recently asserting that "within the borders of Romania between 1940 and 1945 there was no Holocaust."

In case you weren't aware of it, yes there was. There really, really was.

We said "never again," but I simply don't think Europe has ever fully dealt with its own guilt and complicity in the Holocaust. For all its bizarre and illiberal pronouncements banning racism and xenophobia, Europe remains a smouldering pit of anti-Semitic feeling. It is remarkable that all those supposedly magnanimous and idealistic gestures of progressive enlightenment have been directed at their own Arab populations, while Jews are asked to submit to frequent harassment and beatings without comment. Anti-Israeli sentiment is extremely bitter in Europe, and some speculate that this is largely due to the fact that the Jewish state's very existence is an historical monument to the stain on the Western soul left by the Holocaust.

I don't know. Maybe. The coming of the Cold War and the historical deep-freeze in which it placed much of Europe has probably been a contributing factor. Now that whole gruesome episode is a story whispered back in grainy black-and-white, a skeleton in Gandpa's closet that the younger generations are sure to resent having to atone for.

What I do know with cold certainty is that once Hitler made the unthinkable thinkable, it could be repeated. That was his real legacy, one that is often naively overlooked in our backwards-looking quest for (and squabbles over) context. And so it has been, in various places since, for various reasons. The West's response--to the Gulag, the Killing Fields--has been terrifying. That is, we have excused it, abstracted it, deconstructed it, justified it.

We have wedded grotesquely politicized notions of justice to murder, so that when confronted with the spectacle of children blown apart on their way to school on some or other Fox News roundtable, a pro-Palestinian college student from Berkeley could only think to sniff dismissively, "Well, you just have to distinguish the oppressor and the oppressed." (Transcript's gone from their site, sorry.) It's the only language she knows, the poisonous lexicon of inhuman Marxist rationalizations.

I can't decide which is worse: the Romanians' Memory Hole or the intelligencia's indecent verbal dodges. Whatever the case, I worry that by the end of the 21st century, "never again" might be replaced by "never was." So long as Holocaust deniers like Abu Mazen are held up as heroic moderates with which civilized people can be expected to deal, and the murder of half a million Jews can be officially denied by the perpetrators' descendants without rebuke by their peers in Pairs and Berlin, the prognosis for the soul of the West is frightfully bad.

UPDATE: Charles has stayed on top of this, and apparently after some hue and cry Romania has suddenly and inexplicably remembered their role in the Holocaust. "Oh, those Jews. Why didn't you say so?"

2003-06-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

Play That Fiddle, James.

James Lileks is up to no good, as always. This time he's beating up on some kooky idiotarian professor at UMinn, who's waxing paranoid about the Wellstone crash. Yeah, he's one of those professors. You know. The American kind.

It's the intellectual equivalent of kicking a puppy, really. But I can tell you from extensive experience that it's a lot more fun to watch that process than to participate.

It can't be excerpted, so click the dang link.

2003-06-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

Oh My.

Mike Hendrix has a picture of Laurie Dhue with an Uzi. If you needed another reason to read his blog, Cold Fury, you now have it, my friends.

2003-06-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

Just In Case You Remain Unconvinced

The Samizdata crew have a good post on the nice, long waits that British soldiers are having to endure for treatment of wounds they recieved on active duty, thanks to their nice, free health care ("the envy of the free world!").

[Even soldiers? Sheesh.]

It comes with a much-needed dose of Clue for all of you stuuuupid Americans who so love Tony "the Tiger" Blair, and a very helpful diagram at the end that should help clear up any remaining confusion.

2003-06-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

Holy Shit.

I can't believe what I just read. Somebody wake me. This is too much. I'm not sure I can go on.

The Mises Blog points us to an article on teacher compensation that was published recently by the Hoover Institution. The gist of the article is pretty much what I expected. Teachers make an obscene amount of money compared to people who work much harder and complain a lot less.

A couple of things leapt out at me, screaming to be fisked. To wit:

"I guess, to me, what it comes back to is how much of a value we put on education," said Patrick Rumaker, an elementary school teacher in Washington Township who heads the district's union.

I'm more than a little sick of that garbage. It may work on your Sucker Moms at the local PTA pow-wow but it's not gonna fly on NTW. The implication is, clearly, that you "can't put a price" on education (which is to say that no amount of money would be sufficient), or that if you can, it's mighty steep. First of all, "putting a price" on teachers and "putting a price" on education aren't synonymous, since highly paid teachers who can't teach seem to be the rule rather than the exception. Consider that as teacher salaries rise, the worse our education system becomes, and that connection diminishes further. But in point of fact, you can put a price on anything you want, and indeed you must do exactly that where matters economic are concerned.

Of course, to you, Ms. Rumaker, it "always comes back" to the question of what price we "put" on education. Never mind the fact that prices, rightly understood, ought never be "put" on anything. In any event, for real people, the question is a little more sophisticated: What price do you "put" on your labor? What is the value that price represents in hours worked, and quality of end result? What is the relative tradeoff between the two, and is it a good deal for the rest of us?

Then the real kicker. The king of boneheaded remarks. This is sheer gold. Or lead. Whatever. Check it out:

Ed Richardson, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, said it is difficult to compare teacher salaries to other professions because of the unique nature of the job.

"I don't know any other type of employment where you literally have to schedule your entire personal life around your work calendar," Richardson said.

Well, that's kind of funny, dipshit, because I'm having a hard time coming up with a single occupation that doesn't require a person to "literally" schedule their personal life around his work calendar. Oh, the humanity! Even the self-employed are more or less obligated to schedule their social and family life around those hours of the day and days of the week when they aren't required to work. Is the nature of the job really unique in this respect? Can he be serious?

And while we're on the subject, it would be nice if my "work calendar," that brutish intrusion into daily life that keeps food on my table, spanned nine months instead of twelve. Earth to asshole: All of us are constrained by work schedules. That is what it means to be a part of the workforce.

Although in your case I can understand the confusion, given that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of work going on in the public schools these days. Thanks largely to the union you represent.

Ugh.

UPDATE: Meghan Keane has more.

2003-06-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

Signals

There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the question of "cultural messaging," if you will. I share in this confusion, being something of an agnostic about it. (What I mean by cultural messaging is violence in video games, Barbie as the Model Woman, and so on.) What I find of special interest is hypocrisy--of which everybody is guilty at least some of the time.

Asked whether violence on TV causes violent behavior, or whether the glorification of drugs and criminality in music encourages the same in its listeners, libertarians are often quick to dismiss this as so much paranoid moralizing. Sometimes, they might be right. But it's hard to take seriously the notion that the behavior of young people is in no way seriously influenced by the messages they recieve from celebrities whom they admire (whose dress, slang, and political posture they mimic with rote predictability), while at the same time acknowledging that Coke is #1 in soft drinks for practically no reason other than their insane marketing and advertising expendtiures.

Conservatives, the real self-appointed gatekeepers of culture, despise political correctness in all its forms, encouraging the thin of skin the grow up and deal with free speech. Unless, that is, the speech you're referring to involves drug use or gays. In that case, well, pack your bags ladies and gentlemen, because you're going on a nice, long guilt trip. "Will and Grace is going to make little Johnny queer, I just know it!! With all the queers, and the drinking, and the...well, all the queers! And the heorin scene from Pulp Fiction, I mean, what the hell was that!?"

Taking an example from the other side of the spectrum, it's always interesting to note the dilligence with which the left is willing to critique media of all kinds, combing it for any tiny trace of misogyny or ethnic stereotyping. They will be the first to tell you that these encoded messages have a powerful effect on the minds of people who live with them daily. That's why feminists are convinced that the existence of a silly show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer will actually make women stronger and more independent. Maybe they're right. Maybe little girls everywhere will take it right to heart and their endocrine systems will respond by making them more competitive and risk-amenable than they are naturally.

But if that's so, it's a little rich to dismiss the persistent, constant, indeed ceaseless man-bashing in the media--including Buffy--as harmless fun that has no effect whatsoever on the self-image of young boys. Or that relentless propagandizing from gay activists in the schools will make children more accepting of gays, but that bombarding 12-year-old girls with messages about their obligation to be sexually agressive won't have any effect at all. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" approach that virtually defines feminism--but that's for another day.

I guess all I'm noticing is that everyone, on the right and left alike, enjoys milking the "nurture" side of the equation for all it's worth. For myself, I can't help but think that if there was some willingness on anyone's part at least to be consistent, then we might be on to something. I'm just sayin', is all.

2003-06-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

Read This Now, And Weep For Your Own Inadequacy!!

Erin O'Connor has a great post up on the insecurities of grad school life. Erin's observations are so astute and her style so clear and unimpeded by the pomposity that made me run screaming from the English department, that we at NTW hardly feel worthy. But we'll link anyway. A sample:

Getting socialized as academics happens at the same time that we are supposed to learn what we need to know to become academics--so we are imitating long before we are truly doing, trying to pass for something we all know we cannot possibly be yet, and feeling dirty and doubtful about it from day one. In English, for example, there is no real notion of starting slowly and progressing rationally, of first acquiring deep knowledge of language and literature, of then developing a strong understanding of literary criticism (historical, theoretical, methodological), of then beginning to make one's own informed contributions to the field. Instead, one begins by learning grandiose maneuvers: first year graduate students may not know their Shakespeare, they may not be able to read Middle English, they may not be able to tell a ballad from an ode or explain what makes a novel a novel, but instead of spending their time filling in these gaps, they are taught to devote themselves to such woefully banal and impossibly vague activities as deconstructing race and gender, critiquing the concept of subjectivity, and theorizing culture.

It's ridiculous, it's widespread, and it means that for many of us there is no real moment of apprenticeship, no acknowledged period of quiet, patient, guided study. Instead, "learning" becomes synonymous with imitating what we don't understand, imitating in turn gets confused with knowing, and passing becomes a way of life. This is one reason, I think, why there is so much pretension in the academic humanities, and why the pretentiousness so often takes the form of speaking in unintelligible tongues: jargon is a protective shield in a culture where the intellectual not only knows not what he thinks, but does not want to know this about himself.

That's a long excerpt, and the entire thing is that good. Go forth.

2003-06-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

Open Minded...Or Just Empty-Headed?

Never let anyone get away with calling you “closed-minded,” for no reason other than the fact that you hold an opinion which differs from their own. This is a debating tactic that hinges upon the accuser’s urge to shame the accused into silence. It is, unsurprisingly, a favorite of the fuzzy-thinking acolytes of the cultural and intellectual left.

There is a popular bumper-sticker that reads, “Minds are like parachutes—they only function when open.” We’ve all seen it. It’s one of thousands of such morsels of cheap sanctimony everywhere in evidence on college campuses such as the one on which I live. It’s an observation at once obvious and shallow.

I say “shallow” because it doesn’t seem to mean what the person displaying it thinks it means. If it did, it wouldn’t be an observation worth making. The fact that one must first understand and consider an idea or a possibility, before either accepting or rejecting it, strikes me as decidedly lacking in profundity. So the bearer of this little slogan must mean something else.

I don’t mean to harp on the sticker. The sticker isn’t the point. The point is the mentality that displaying it tends to reveal. The point is the phrase “open-minded,” as it is used more generally in conversation. Too often, one hears particular people, ideas, and institutions described as “open.” But I’m inclined to ask, “Open to what?” To bigotry? To hatred? This isn’t what’s meant by the word open, surely.

Usually, what is meant is that a particular conclusion is evidence of an open mind. It is sometimes argued that the reason leftists dominate the academy is that they are simply more open-minded than non-leftists, and therefore more intellectually robust. The implication is clear: Anyone who carefully and honestly considers the merits of any proposition will invariably come to a conclusion which is in essence compatible with leftist politics and Continental philosophy.

In one respect, this is true, but in only one respect. That is, one would have to be willing to believe almost anything in order to take Noam Chomsky seriously, or to apologize for Stalin, or to engage in the kind of double-think required to defend speech codes in the name of free inquiry. It’s generally true that only an academic, and the sycophantic teacher’s pets that pass for serious students in today’s humanities departments, can be so gullible as to swoon over such supposed “heroes of the downtrodden” as that narcissistic loser Che Guevara--whatever his record of executing children might have been.

Gullibility, though, isn’t considered a virtue even in the morally inverted world of the academic left—which is to say the academy, practically in toto—or among followers of the pop leftism so repugnantly embodied by such pathetic hypocrites as Michael Moore and Madonna. So again, when people use the words “open-minded” they must mean something very different.

On thinking about it (maybe a little too much), I’ve discovered that without intending to, people actually use this phrase to convey its opposite—which is a familiar trend in our post-modern culture. I know what they think they mean. They really do believe that if a person is really open-minded—if they just consider the issues at hand—they cannot but come to the conclusion that the welfare state can generate wealth, that global warming is a real threat, that affirmative action is a perfectly honest and rational policy, that white people really are racist in all they think, say, and do, that we really do live in a rape culture that celebrates and encourages what practically all of us find repellent, that there is no morally relevant distinction between Hamas and the USMC. All these things are obvious to anyone open-minded enough to consider them seriously. Anyone who doesn’t agree simply isn’t open-minded—they can’t possibly have applied their reason in an honest way to the issues at hand, with a willingness to come to the most sensible conclusion. Had they done so, they would agree with us, after all. Therefore, they must have refused even to consider the issue at hand thoroughly. They must be closed-minded. They must be closet racists. They must be evil. They must be re-educated. They must be stopped.

Of course, what’s actually going on here is a special kind of closedness. What’s actually being expressed is a commitment to an ideal that is so total and all-encompassing and desperate, that any disagreement must be considered evidence of something broken or malignant in the mind of the dissenter. It is the refusal to accept the possibility of honest disagreement between reasonable people. It is, therefore, a rejection of rationality per se. It is occasioned, I often find, by a refusal to debate the actual merits of a position, since it is considered by the person who holds it to be the only one to which a truly open mind can arrive.

The problem here, of course, is that open-mindedness, like philosophy, describes an activity but not a set of beliefs [hat tip to Dr. Timothy Lyons in Indianapolis]. There are no open-minded opinions, only open-minded ways of reaching them, and there are in fact open-minded ways of reaching diametrically opposed opinions. To favor gay marriage is not itself evidence of an open mind, particularly if the person holding that belief has never seriously considered the flaws in their own position—or even the possibility that it has any flaws at all.

Must we be open to everything? Well, if by “open” you mean “willing to believe,” then I’d say no—since that’s just a formula for credulity rather than thought. Rather, we ought be open to worthwhile ideas, and that entails a willingness to rigorously apply our own reason to determine which ideas those are. Peter Kreeft, a theologian and moral philosopher, compares our minds to our homes. Ought our homes be open to all? Well yes, but this must exclude burglars, rapists, and others who may pose a threat to our safety and integrity. We must invest a certain amount of energy in defending our homes from those who would threaten it—and the chambers of our minds must also be so ordered as to keep out faulty or dangerous ideas. Reason is the gift that tells us which is which.

Interestingly, what is really at stake here is more than mere semantics. In fact, “mere” semantics rests at the heart of very little, for the words we use and what we mean by them are fundamental to our understanding of the world and our capacity to convey that understanding to others. The newfangled conception of “openness” is a great example.

By misapplying the principle of the open mind, we can actually find that it leads us straight into a contradiction, one that is rampant in the social sciences. Sometimes, openness is understood to mean that we must give equal weight to all ideas and, in the context of multiculturalism, to the cultures that birthed them. There are a lot of problems with this, but sticking to the issue at hand I’ll just point out that the most pernicious (and entirely unintended) result of this mindset is that the entire study of differing ideas about the things that matter most becomes a pointless enterprise.

Why? Because all the ideas pretty much add up to the same thing. If openness is the end-state we’re after, rather than the mechanism we’re using to make some exclusionary judgment, then one is left to wonder: what place for curiosity? What is really gained by the study of contrasting ideas about good and evil, truth or falsity, and so on? The end result is a real indifference to the fault lines of clashing belief systems. If after all, what I think is no better than what someone else thinks, then the reverse must also be true. What benefit is there, then, in learning about what others think? By what process do we revise or our opinions and seek out truth? In point of fact, the study of various conflicting belief systems reveals no such equivalence at all, and the ideology which says it does is rather a self-defeating one.

If openness is king for its own sweet sake, then one must be open to the idea that blind dogmatism is also valid. It is, therefore, an incoherent mental posture to value openness above all the intellectual virtues, as the very end of human reason.

Naturally, this isn’t what is meant when someone claims a halo for their open-mindedness. What they mean to convey is that in fact their willingness to consider the issue with an unprejudiced mind has kept them on the path of wisdom. All this amounts to is the claim that no other conclusion than their own is rationally possible. And if this is the case, why consider the possibility that one has fallen into error?

This is why the most closed-minded people on earth are to be found in the college faculty lounge. Students, thinking that someone else has already done all the hard work of being open to all possibilities, simply parrot their professors’ views and congratulate themselves for their openness. So the most arrogant, self-congratulatory people around wind up sounding like broken records, chanting platitudes they consider to be true only by virtue of their being widely held by their peers. Real nonconformists, they.

And that’s my long-promised rant on open-minded dolts.

2003-06-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

New Blog

Oh, dear. The New Criterion now has a blog, called Arma Virumque. Splendid.

2003-06-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

Citrus Cries Uncle

Citrus College, one of many institutions of "higher" learning targeted by the Foundation for Indidvidual Rights in Education in their nationwide litigation campaign against speech codes, has thrown in the towel. In the face of an impending lawsuit from FIRE, Citrus has agreed to revise or strike much of what got the ire of Halvorssen and company.

This is good news, but the fight promises to be long and bitter.

2003-06-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Home Again, Home Again

Just in from a nice ten-hour car ride. A real treat, let me tell you.

I'm catching up on news and views. Evidently, Hillary's book is still a topic of conversation. How pointless is this? Most people who read the book will either blindly accept it and vote for Hillary in '08, or burn it in disgust screaming "Lies, all lies!!"

Frankly, I'm tired of the subject. She'll never be president, end of story.

Commander-in-Chief Hillary. Think about it. There's hardly a person in uniform who would pull the lever for her, and when she runs turnout among Republicans will never have been higher. She isn't even popular enough to prevent serious defections to third parties among Democrats. Forget it. It's never going to happen. I stand by this prediction, and will deserve no congratulations when I am proved right.

So, I'll blog about something worthwhile tomorrow. Now to bed...

2003-06-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

What's Up With Me

This weblog actually serves as something of a peek into my head, albeit a small one. My brother and sister sometimes look at it to see what's going on with me, so it occurs to me that I practically never mention any personal anecdotes on NTW. I'm just a private person, I suppose. If you want personal, go check out Lileks, where you can get a really fascinating blow-by-blow of the minutae of his life as a stay-at-home dad/writer/collector of assorted Americana.

Were I as gifted a writer as James Lileks, I might be able to make the hours I spend working for the information technology division at Indiana Univeristy seem interesting. But I'm not. So, John, Terri, just for you I'll start updating you and whomever else might be interested what I'm reading, listening to, and so on. Say, once a week.

Books currently off the shelf:

Norman Davies' God's PLayground: A History of Poland, vol. II.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

Music on tap:

Leonard Cohen's The Future has been making a regular appearance lately. It seems somehow appropriate, invoking the cataclysm with all the yearning and revelry that so commonly occasions it. Sample lyrics from the title track:

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
Western code.
Your private life will suddenly explode.
There'll be phantoms,
There'll be fire on the road,
And the white man dancing.
You'll see the woman
Hanging upside down,
Her features covered by her fallen gown,
And all the lousy little poets
Coming round
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson.

Give me back the Berlin Wall,
Give me Stalin and St. Paul,
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima!
Destroy another fetus now,
We don't like children anyhow.
I've seen the future, baby:
It is murder.

OK, so it's not very cheery. I'm not very cheery these days, though, so I'm channeling Cohen in an effort to make friends with my own melancholy temper.

I'm making for South Carolina tomorrow, which I suppose is home. It's where I grew up, anyway, and where my mother still lives. I'll be staying with the in-laws, which is not the bad thing that phrase so often portends. They're good people, and treat me like blood, so it really is like going home. On the other hand, it looks to be a short trip, which is a bit of a let-down, but such is life in student poverty.

I really am going to try to blog on my vacation, at least once. We'll see how that works out. Maybe when I'm back I can turn this blog into something a little more interesting, with Sienfeldian observations on the follies and foibles of my daily life.

Or not.

2003-06-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

The Real Crisis in Health Care: Government Nannyism

A topic I haven't blogged much is the increasingly totalitarian character of government health initiatives. I recently had a pretty heated debate with a friend who insists that "socialized medicine" is not only workable, but preferable to the current system. Though I pointed out that to believe this is to reject all evidence available to us in both the historical and contemporary record, he was not to be swayed. And while he even suggested that drug companies ought to "consider themselves lucky to be allowed to operate at all," he also regards himself as pretty much a centrist.

Terrifyingly, his assessment of where he sits on the political spectrum is about right. Giving government life and death power over all but the wealthiest citizens (the inevitable result of rationing medicine) is now considered a moderate position, so long as it can be dressed up by some or other heartfelt concern for the children, the poor, or one's latest bout of self-pity. The vast, all-important political center of American politics is notoriously susceptible to promises of free shit, impervious to all evidence that shortages, delays, and various human catastrophes will inevitably result.

In fairness, my friend is a very bright and reasonable fellow, in spite of the fact that he considers his time cheap enough to waste on me. It isn't malice, or stupidity, or anything of the sort, that drives the desire to hand one's health and well-being into the care of people who have no proven interest in caring for it. The government, though, is everybody and nobody, so it never comes in for the kind of blame it ought to. This same friend is deeply, viscerally, almost irrationally outraged by corporate dishonesty, but is happy to hand over tens of trillions of dollars to offenders far worse in magnitude, that is, the federal government--even in the knowledge that no accountability for that money is at all possible. It is a level of trust in government power I'll never quite grasp, really, unjustified as it is by any prior experience.

At any rate, I am increasingly worried about the state's obsession with my physical well-being. "Click it or ticket" campaigns are now ubiquitous, particularly in the presence of record-setting budget shortfalls. The war on drugs continues unabated, and now threatens to extend to tobacco. The "war on fat" has begun in the civil courts, but my wife, a graduate student in public health, has to endure ceaseless nanny state propaganda of near-Soviet proportions.

So it is with some dismay that I bring the following food (ahem) for thought:

The Surgeon General is on record as supporting a total ban on all tobacco products in the United States. [courtesy free-market.net] The hostility to individual rights intrinsic in any such ban need not be expounded upon, unless you're an idiot.

Meanwhile, in Great Britain, a physician is making headlines by calling for the prosecution of parents whose children are sunburned. In typical Doublespeak fashion, Dr. Rachel Morris-Jones concedes that, "I know we risk the dangers of the 'nanny state,'" but that's to be disregarded since "it is neglect to allow a child to burn severely and in extreme cases, and where it was a recurrent thing, I think I would be in favour of prosecution." How many times constitutes "recurring"? Every summer, as in my experience? Do Irish and Swedes get special consideration? What's "extreme" anyhow? She doesn't say, parents won't know, and only the courts will arbitrarily be able to decide this after the fact.

And just in case you're wondering what the connection is between these proposed measures, actual existing health care initiatives, and socialized medicine, Samizdata.net links to a chilling but predictable story in a perfectly-titled post: The price of "free" Britain's Labour government, facing crippling care and budget shortages in its system ("the envy of the free world!"), is proposing to integrate "contracts" according to which recipients of care would be bound to sign on to healthier lifestyles--as defined, of course, by government bureaucrats whose overriding preoccupation has lately been to introduce increasingly draconian methods of shortening waiting lists by unburdening them of all those pesky sick people (all of whom pay ever-more-exorbitant sums in taxes for their "free," increasingly unavailable, medicine). From the article:

"This type of agreement would not be legally binding. It would take the form of a joint statement of `mutual intent'," the Labour policy paper says. A Labour spokesman said: "We are consulting on setting out clearly what you can expect as a patient in the NHS...We also want to set out responsibilities people would have, for example not to abuse NHS staff. Say, by aggressively criticizing a broken and failing system?

In all seriousness, such a proposal seems unlikely to succeed--right now. But as the crunch becomes worse and worse, and with the UK soon to subsume its authority to regulate its own health care system to authoritarian and unelected "legislators" in Brussels, this kind of thing will eventually becomes legally and practically necessary, and by that time there is every reason to believe that the British will have no recourse available. Think of this as a peek into the year 2030.

It is inevitable that when the government is granted responsibility over a problem, that the allocation of funds to that problem becomes a matter of public interest and concern. Already, the rationale for banning smoking is that it costs the public too much money in smoke-related health care costs. When "the public" is paying for all your health care needs, it will follow that "the public" has a direct fiscal stake in everything you do--the amount of sleep you get, the foods you eat, the people you're screwing, the number of children you have--everything. Similarly, and more fundamentally, it is only because the state is assumed to have both the means and the duty to protect us from crime that some seek to ban or seriously restrict personal firearms ownership.

Never mind that the state has no such power or responsibility in the first place. In the face of a state monopoly on the means of mere survival, a people is completely and utterly helpless, subjugated, powerless to resist the dictates of their omnipotent caretakers. They become as defenseless as children, who must rely on luck and the grace of God to be blessed with benevolent parents--without which they are mere victims. Withholding either protection from thugs or medicine is a powerful weapon in the hands of any government, one used to ghastly effect in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, just to take a recent example.

People much greater than me have been toiling ceaselessly to hold the Leviathan at bay, but I'm despairing of the efficacy of their efforts. With such abdication of personal responsibility for one's own well-being so widely and so eagerly embarked upon, what hope remains for an ostensibly free people?

2003-06-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

And, One More Time...

Charles at LGF links to this bit in Yahoo! News:

"Hamas, Jihad Say Won't Disarm, Defy Palestinian PM"

PM Abbas and his fellows have vowed to fight terrorism. I'm reminded of a recent rerun of Futurama. Bender is discussing a movie deal with some big-shot actor, whom he is trying to con into accepting a bum screening gig. After wavering a bit, the actor finally is swayed by Bender's promise that an Oscar will be forthcoming. Somewhat dubiously, the actor asks if Bender is certain he can really guarantee an Oscar.

"I can guarantee you anything!" comes the answer.

And so it is with Israel. Once again, an American victory in the Middle East must be sheepishly and apologetically followed by coerced, painful political concessions by the Jewish state. Abbas makes promises he has no will or even authority to keep, and Sharon in return must take actual, concrete measures designed to A) publicly humble Israel, and B) reverse any strategic gains made in their fight against those who spend their nights dreaming up new ways to slaughter Israeli civilians.

Just the thought that more Palestinian kids are going to be manipulated by that horrific death-worshipping ideology, and that more Israeli innocents will be senselessly massacred, all so that the Arabs can be allowed to save face from another abject military defeat--it makes me sick.

It's official. Bush has lost my confidence.

2003-06-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

Calpundit Gets a Raw Dog Austrian Skool Econo-fisking

Ramesh Ponnuru in the Corner has located a damned good free-market blog from the Austrian school of thought. I'm a big fan of F.A. Hayek, so this post struck me as absolutely brilliant, in which he gives Kevin Drum what-for in concise form. Watch out for Catallarchy--this one could be a real winner.

2003-06-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

The Reason I'm Studying Poland

This is an article in Opinion Journal by Radek Sikorski, explaining why Poland is our most valuable European ally. Reading this also gives you a hint why the European Union will never work, and is probably nothing more than the historical context for another general European war. The Poles, for their part, will never trust the Central European bloc; the Central Europeans, meanwhile, will never really respect them as equal partners.

2003-06-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

An "Empire for Liberty"?

I'm not so certain I accept that there is such a thing. It has a deserate flavor, a quality of oxymoronic sanction--something like "libertarian socialism."

That is, however, the term that historian Paul Johnson has chosen to resurrect in his column, "From the Evil Empire to the Empire for Liberty," to be found in the latest New Criterion. This is another stab at the "Is America an Empire per se?" debate. Johnson's answer seems to be "Yes, in fact it is, and it's a good thing too."

I'm undecided on the particulars of his thesis, but for the record I believe America can be fairly described as an empire, albeit of a very recent species. As long as America dominates the seas, she will always be an imperial creature. What this means, quite naturally, is that the U.S. must have an explicit direction or an historical mission, and Bush, whatever his faults, recognizes this much. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends upon your politics, but I for one believe that in the nuclear age, for a lone superpower to remain adrift and lacking in constructive works would be a mad folly.

2003-05-30T18:35:00.000-07:00

Compassionate Libertarianism...

...On tap over at Tech Central Station, courtesy of the indispensable Radley Balko. Color Balko unimpressed with the Bush AIDS package. Leave it to a libertarian (the only real "liberals" on the planet) to react to the AIDS-in-Africa layout with total disgust--and for all the right reasons, too.

Knock-out summary:

Either way, Africa's primary problem isn't AIDS, it's poverty. AIDS is but one of several tragic and deadly symptoms, often brought on or exacerbated by poverty. And it's the height of hypocrisy for politicians to bask in warm praise that comes with throwing taxpayer dollars at high-profile symptoms while their cozying up to Big Agriculture interests contributes to the underlying problem.

That's some pungent invective, the top-shelf stuff, people. Do go read the whole thing.

2003-05-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

Krauthammer on the Road Block to Peace

Charles Krauthammer begins his latest column by writing that

On May 23, just a week ago, the official newspaper of the supposedly reformed Palestinian Authority carried a front-page picture of the latest suicide bomber dressed in suicide-bomber regalia. It then referred to the place where she did her murdering as ``occupied Afula.''

The town of Afula is in Israel's Galilee. It is not occupied. It is not in the West Bank or Gaza. It is within Israel. If Afula is occupied, then Tel Aviv is occupied, Haifa is occupied, and Israel's very existence is a crime.

This bit of incitement and delegitimation was, to my knowledge, reported in not a single American newspaper. It is simply too routine.

Listen (read) carefully: If you think Sharon is the real problem, you're a damned fool. If you believe this talk about "extremists on both sides" causing the supposed "standoff" in the Middle East, you're an even bigger fool.

Recently on MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews asked a guest whether he thought now was "the right time" for peace negotiations, given the presence of such a "hardliner" as Ariel Sharon in the Israeli PM spot. Buried in his question was the premise that everything would be going swimmingly were it not for Sharon's "hardline stance" on Palestinian incitement and terrorism--that the real obstacle to peace is Israeli intransigence and stubbornness, rather than Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He said this in all seriousness a matter of days after the first Sharon-Abbas meeting was derailed by a series of suicide bombings inside Israel proper, and clearly his assumption was that if only the Israelis would ignore acts of terrorism against bus passengers, like any civilized people should, then we could have peace in a matter of hours.

Again, the question is simply this: What peace agreement will bring an end to Hamas' rejectionism? Or that of the PIJ? Or Fatah? Each of these organizations have as their stated aim the total annihilation of Israel, and none has agreed to anything more than a tactical temporary cessation of operations at any time. Each has insisted it will never accept a "Zionist presence," ever. Each has said it would consider any peace agreement with the Israelis a betrayal of the Palestinian people. Arafat's head of Security on the West Bank has scoffed publicly at the idea that any Palestinian will be disarmed for any reason. That's Phase I of the "road map."

If the Palestinians wanted a two-state solution they could have had it twenty-five times over by now. Israel lives in peace with every single country that has recognized its right to exist, and several that haven't. The Palestinians don't even live in peace with each other. Do the math.

2003-05-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Good News and Bad News

And it's all the same news.

Dave Sims at Clubbeaux is moving to Antalya, Turkey, a small village on the Mediterranean Coast, to run a coffee shop. That is neither a joke nor a typo. Go congratulate the Harp Seal, and wish him luck on his latest venture. He's lived in Turkey previously, for a while, and if I'm not mistaken met Mrs. Clubbeaux there.

I'm a little sad to see him go. Clubbeaux was and remains my blog mentor, and NTW is partly a Dave Sims creation. More importantly, though, Dave is a wonderful guy, and it's a shame there isn't enough about America left to love that he's willing to stay.

This led me to thinking. Thomas Sowell said in the Random Thoughts section of his book Barbarians at the Gates that "One of the most heartbreaking statistics I have seen lately is that a quarter of a million Americans are emigrating from this country annually--and that one fourth of all Americans earning over $50,000 a year have considered it." I must confess to having considered it myself, if the opportunity ever presented itself. But why?

Dave remarks in his blog:

I love America. This is my culture, it made me what I am, I’m proud of it, I think it’s the greatest country on earth. But it’s not for me for the rest of my life.

Maybe because I’m not about money.

He goes on to say that wealth isn't everything America offers, of course. But he is onto something. Sowell's statistic (for which I can't really vouch, but have no reason to disbelieve) seems to indicate that once people earn their money, the U.S. loses its luster. Honestly, the only thing keeping me here is the fact that for the time being, money is very much an object, and unlike Dave I'm a bit of a sucker for it. I could get all smug and talk about property rights being the basis of all other liberties, and try to argue that Sims is missing the boat on what makes America great, but that would just be pseudo-intellectual bluster. There is, after all, more to life than license.

So what is it about America? Maybe cradle Americans--like cradle Catholics--can never appreciate what they did not choose for themselves, but I think that's only part of the story. I'm inclined to leave this place, in part because my heart has been broken by it. The best real chance for government by the people died a long, long time ago, and now I think America is just too big, too powerful, too rich, and most importantly, too divided to be what it could have been. It began with the scourge of slavery and will end with the scourge of socialism. Absent a second revolution, which is impossible against a government so well-defended as ours, the American ideal is all but dead and buried.

Now perhaps I'm just projecting my own thoughts onto others, but I think most Americans, and certainly those with the wherewithal to have "made it" in the U.S., are smart enough to know a sick joke when they see one. Dave, at least, recognizes that "freedom," as we live it today, exists in a whole lot of places that are less mournful and soulless than America. I adore this country, and my own nationalism is not a thing to mess with, but honestly, if I could get out of here I would. Not because this is a terrible place to be--it's surely among the best--but because my values and priorities are so different from those of my fellows.

My plans are built upon the assumption that I'll always be here, but I have to say that given the chance to get up and go bus tables for Dave, I would jump on it. More on this later, maybe.

In any event, good luck Dave, God bless, and if you ever want or need to come back, of course we'll leave the light on for you.

2003-05-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

"Schumerism" Explained, and a Few Questions of My Own

In this article in City Journal (one of the very best magazines in the country, without question, if for no other reason than the fact that they regularly publish the work of the smoking hot Heather MacDonald) Brian Anderson coins a new term, "Schumerism," to describe the new judicial philosophy of the Left. It's a bit elementary, but I think Anderson's intent here is to reach a very wide audience.

A truly independent judiciary is anathema to leftists, always and everywhere, for reasons too familiar to bother recounting here. One of the biggest reasons Roe v. Wade was a huge, huge mistake was the political cost it was sure to exact on America as a whole. A judiciary that is not beholden to strict party loyalty or ideology (and Constitutionalism, rightly understood, is not an ideology) is the only sure defense that a free people has against whimsical and tyrannical leaders. The same convoluted logic that says judges ought to simply hallucinate whatever they think appropriate into the law in order to cook up an unmitigated right to abortion also says they ought to avert their eyes from whatever rights the majority or the government finds inconvenient when the time comes. Where there is no rule of law, there is no real liberty, only despotism. It is a depressingly common kind of stupid, selfish recklessness that leads sloppy thinkers on the left and right alike to suggest that the law itself ought to reflect the personal prejudices of individual judges--and, naturally, themselves--without regard to democratic procedure or the careful delineation of powers that prevents the concentration of dictatorial authority in any particular office.

Of course, leftists have to maintain such a standard. They have chosen to live by the sword where the rule of law is concerned, and in so doing have violated the first rule of smart politics: Never give your friends those powers you would not want your enemies to have. The reasons for this are obvious.

Money quote from the article:

Should Schumerism become orthodoxy among judges, the consequences for our constitutional democracy will be grim. As Justice Thomas notes, if law is just politics “then there are no courts at all, only legislatures, and no Constitution or law at all, only opinion polls.” And if an independent judiciary becomes just a myth masking the exercise of raw political power, George Mason law prof Nelson Lund tersely argues, “we should really start asking why these politicians-in-robes should enjoy life tenure—and why they should get the last word on so many important policy issues.” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, blunter still, says: “It is simply not compatible with democratic theory that laws mean whatever they ought to mean, and that unelected judges decide what that is.”

This question is the single biggest issue facing the republic, and I think I am not exaggerating. It's so important, in fact, that it may cause me to register as a Republican for the first time--and if Democrats are smart, they will listen to the legions of people who are saying the same exact thing. It's less important that a Republican Congress (with plenty of bipartisan support) would pass the PATRIOT Act, than it is that we have a genuinely neutral judiciary capable of measuring it against some reasonably fixed legal standard. We fetishize "diversity" as a compelling state interest today, and argue that the 14th Amendment therefore doesn't mean what it seems to. Tomorrow, we will fetishize "security" in the same way, and woe be unto us if we so cavalierly dispense with the 4th or 1st Amendment then.

A judiciary that arbitrarily grants rights (Roe) today can take them (4th Amendment) tomorrow. Under such a system, we might have partial birth abortions on demand at the age of 12 without parental consent, but our right to smoke cigarettes might be summarily and categorically denied. And who could argue that there is a contradiction there, where the merits of Constitutional muster are a matter of taste and intuition? To what does one appeal, when the Constitution can mean anything (or nothing) at all? What legal armor remains in defense of Roe and Casey then, in a land of shifting majorities and a fickle political center?

Is the Democratic left so foolish as to argue that transitory ideology is and should be the single overriding criterion for that most sacred and critical of adjudicators, the Federal bench? Is it so arrogant as to claim for itself the prerogative to deny to our descendants those protections that have managed to survive the Civil War, the New Deal, and alcohol-free beer--that birthright we ourselves so breezily enjoy? Is it so blind as that?

I suppose that depends on the meaning of the word "is."

2003-05-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

How Odd...

To read a genuinely respectful column about Hugh Hefner by...George Will?

Almost gives me the creeps.

2003-05-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

A Quick Movie Review

Before I fled from my blog duties, I promised a couple of topics would be covered here. One was the new X-Men movie.

I must confess that I was, as a youth, something of a comic book geek. Although I tended to follow dark horse publications like Dave Sim's ingenious Cerebus the Aardvark (whose creator is not to be confused with Dave Sims of Clubbeaux fame), I was of course an avid reader of Marvel and DC comics also. Of these, The Uncanny X-Men was my uncontested favorite. This was probably for the very reasons that the comic was so popular in general. It, like The Amazing Spiderman before it, appealed to that childhood agony of feeling different, and alone. It also gave its readers an outlet for the elaborate revenge fantasies that so often occasion such feelings, and as its readership began to age these themes could easily be grafted onto the more complex issues of conflict and difference faced by adults. As one friend of mine recently put it, "When you scrape everything else away, it's about different people trying to get along." As mundane as this observation seems, it pretty much encapsulates what has made X-Men such an enduring forum for social commentary.

There is an underlying assumption in the X-Men stories that this basic human inability to get along, whether our differences lie in looks, values, or anything else, is a real tradgedy. But while there are good guys and bad guys who are easily discernible, the line between hero and villan is routinely blurred by complex moral questions--questions that one can find in topics from gay marraige to the Arb-Israeli conflict. So X-Men retains a dear place in my heart, mainly because it doesn't beat the reader over the head with answers or solutions that are pollyannish and inhuman in their sententious simplicity. At no point does humanity blithely set aside its concerns for its own safety and pass some Mutant Civil Rights Act; at no point do all the characters wake up and realize that we really can get along, if only we try; at no point does the University of California open a Mutant Studies program that gives students the opportunity to obsess over the contribution that mutants have made to American history, which is itself nothing more than the sad narrative of of country built on the backs of Gifted-Americans. Not only would this put an end to the comic, it would be a poor representation of how the world really works (except, unfortunately, for that last example), and Marvel always made its reputation on being the grittier of the Big Two comic companies.

But I don't have the time or inclination to write yet another Really Deep Contemplation of somebody's favorite comic book heroes. At the end of the day the comic book, like the movie, was created because someone wanted to make money doing something they enjoyed and did well. I dig that phenomenon. So I'll just hit the high points of the film.

First, the drawbacks. X-2 suffers from some of the same infimities that every comic book film has to overcome. First and foremost is the fact that most of the audience will not have been ravenous consumers of X-Men comics as children. As a fan, I enjoy the inside jokes and subtle hat tips to Old Skool collectors. As a movie-goer, though, I can see why (for example) Wolverine's casual use of the name "Bub" (as in, "You picked the wrong school to mess with, Bub!") might seem campy and awkward. For that matter, I can see why the use of nick-names like "Wolverine" and "Cyclops" might seem stupid. So X-2 was never destined to reach the dizzy heights of great filmmaking. 2001 it ain't. In short, it's a little silly, because the source material is so very escapist.

Secondly, playing more than one love triangle into any story is tricky, and it's probably a little too ambitious for a script like this one. Add to that the fact that Logan (a.k.a. Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman) was at the center of both of them, and you have a recipe for some pretty predictable and redundant moments. When Logan walks into the foyer of the mansion (which doubles as a school for super-powered mutants), he has not one but two encounters with jealous boyfriends whose transparently duplicitous lovers fall girlishly all over him. First one, then the next, all without his ever stepping more than a few feet from the front door. It seems awfully contrived, and definitely gives the impression of a heavy-handed plot device rather than a genuine interaction between real people. As such, the actors carry it off like androids.

Because the very premise of the movie is so fantastical, it's difficult to get a real performace out of your actors in a film like this one. It isn't their fault, but it certainly comes through on more than one occasion, especially during a sort-of-tragic death scene near the end (no spoilers here). One does get the impression that each of the actors (with the exception of Ian McKellan, who is brilliant throughout) is all-too-aware that they are on a movie set. It can't be helped, really. The final half-hour of the movie, much of which takes place in the confines of a supersonic jet, is especially wince-inducing in places.

In fact, most of the problems with X-2 can be found toward the movie's end. The story begins to drag a bit, but in fairness this is in part owing to its complexity. There are so many loose threads that have to be sewn up in the closing minutes that the editing becomes a problem as well, leaping from place to place so quickly that it's a little disorienting to watch. And this also gives rise to the rather abrupt ending of several intriguing plot lines--by now, the movie has nearly hit two hours in length and the adventure is becoming tired. Fortunately more than one of these has obviously been left fallow for more development in the near-certain X-3 sequel.

On the up side, X-2 has pretty much taken the heavyweight championship in its genre. Overall, I have to say I really, really liked this flick. Long-suffering comic fans know what I'm talking about here when I say that it's about damned time somebody got one of these films just right. There are frames of this feature that are not just reminiscent, but blatantly lifted from the pages of X-Men--and that's what we want. In fact, I think were owed that.

The opening scene involves an attempt on the President's life by Nightcrawler, the teleporting blue acrobat with a tail. It's such a genuinely exciting sequence because Bryan Singer has managed to brew up a perfect cocktail of cinema kung-fu and digital smoke and mirrors. It's easily the best two or three minutes of action I've seen in a movie in years. Once Singer has your attention, he manages to pace X-2 in a positively brilliant fashion, raising and lowering the level of tension like a conductor. It's a lot of fun to watch, though I can't speak for the X-Men initiate. (My wife certainly never read comic books, but she liked the film a lot.)

Character development is a critical piece of the pie in X-2, and it's a success here as well. What impressed me was the three-dimensional nature of each role, fleshed out with human motives and a reasonable dollop of complexity. Enemies find common cause, villains show their soft sides, and each character teeters visibly between heroism and depravity. It's a lot to ask of a comic adaptation, and Singer does the dead tree version proud. Again, it isn't Les Miserables, but it's nice to see the subject taken as seriously as is possible.

While the script has some weaknesses and there are places, as I said, where the actors' delivery is poor, on balance the acting is pretty impressive. I was especially taken by Aaron Stanford, who plays the "troubled young teen" (in the person of Pyro) flawlessly, and without resort to that cliched air of roguish irony that says, "Hey, I'm troubled, and I'll squint my eyes at you and pout if you don't believe me!" What could have been a throw-away character manages to add some depth to a film crowded with warm and likable protagonists.

Of course, the special effects are terrific, but this isn't a special effects piece--that's what's so great about it. The storyline isn't driven, at least in any glaringly obvious way, by the need to cram in this or that visual effect. Indeed, anyone who has ever read a comic book will tell you that this plot is very much like what one could expect from roughly a six-month to one-year string of comics, with all the fluctuations between action, suspense, intrigue and romance that can possibly be shoved into one concise package.

Nevertheless, the visual impact is what stays with you. Most importantly, the action is presented in such a way as to make the rest of the story make sense (for example: Pyro's reckless and sadistic attack on a set of police cruisers, wherein he gleefully throws sheets of flame in every direction, makes the Mutant Registration Act moving through Congress seem like a more plausible subplot). There is the obligatory cheesy hijink or two, like the little boy sticking out his forked, purple tongue--but that's Hollywood. X-2 does not rely on the kind of rapid-fire rat-maze video-game style that has become so incredibly tiresome and distracting. It's enough to see Shadow Cat run through walls, and Singer (or whoever) wisely decided not to bang us over the head with a lot of first person point-of-view camera work just to make sure we knew that we were watching something visually impressive.

Plus, the film is kinda gory, with lots of cool fight scenes.

There's a lot more I can say, but this has run rather long. Rest assured, X-2 is worth the price of admission, and it's rare that I go see a movie twice in the theater, which I gladly did. With everything I'm hearing about the new Matrix film sucking ass, I'm tempted to predict this will be the best film of the summer.

2003-05-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

OK, So I Lied

I wound up taking an extended vacation from the blog, but readers of NTW should feel somewhat comforted by the fact that I've taken a vacation from just about everything except my job lately. The blogosphere has been a little slow anyway, and I'm with those who have hypothesized that there is a post-war malaise that a lot of bloggers are only now climbing out of. So, sorry about that.

Speaking of the blogosphere, I just heard Tony Snow on Fox make a reference to--and I'm not making this up--"the power of the blogosphere." Once we hear the same words from Juan Williams the culture wars will be all but won, but I'm not holding my breath.

The story Tony was referencing was the row that has been circulating about Maureen Dowd's blatant misrepresentation and distortion of a quote from President Bush. (Spinsanity has the goods here.) I suppose the worst thing about that whole episode is the fact that she managed to really make waves and do measurable damage to Bush's credibility, and the Times refuses to run a correction (so far). They're much too busy digging up white guys to punish for relatively minor journalistic trangressions so as to rescue the image of their racial preference system. Consider it odd that a major newspaper--the major newspaper, in fact--is sacrificing its own credibility further just for the sake of their misguided committment to newsroom "diversity"? Then you must be a devotee of the Eric Alterman school of media analysis.

In any event, it says a lot about American pundits and journalists that a single fabricated quote by Maureen Dowd--who has degenerated into nothing significantly more serious than a gossip columnist--has been incredulously picked up and whispered around the leftist campfire over and over. Alan Colmes, Bill Press, et al have been playing "gotcha" ever since Dowd's column ran, without ever stopping to read the actual text of the President's words, even though for him to have actually said that al-Queda was "not a threat anymore" would have been wildly out of tune with everything else he's ever said on the issue. Now they are reduced to insulting our intelligence by trying to manufacture a debate over how those words ought to be interpreted, as though their meaning would be ambiguous in the absence of Dowd's obviously partisan and counterintuitive spin.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that the 'sphere got credit for this one, and Fox seems to be having a field day gutting the Times' integrity at this point. Kudos to Spinsanity and Andrew Sullivan (who is responsible for drawing so much attention to Spinsanity's article) for staying on top of this one. "Power of the blogoshpere" indeed. (It makes you wonder how soon the campaign is going to start, on the part of every leftist institution from the Democratic party to the universities, to impose heavy-duty regulations on internet publishing. Not long, I'm sure.)