I Have Moved

Since Blogger updated itself, I decided to simply start a new blog rather than clean up this one. I also wanted a new focus - perhaps more thoughtful and operating without the sense of "needing" to blog about the latest "news" on a daily basis. As I said in my last post, I have been reading and writing more. Some of the results may show up on my new blog. Come and visit. It's called:

A Mind Aroused

I'll make some minor changes to this blog, as time permits, and keep it as a resource of information for as long as it's useful.

New Year's Resolution

I'll be blogging less in 2007 since I am reading more and writing lengthy essays (which may end up as a book.) When I do post something, it will be to save a record of a particularly rewarding link.

I'll be back - someday.

The New York Times

Profits have plunged! I wonder when someone or some group will call for public funding?

Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils

I've been voting for the lesser of two evils my whole life... Here is an interesting post that takes me to task.

The Bullies Who Want to Stop Free Speech

Peggy Noonan's recent column is priceless... The left in this country seems to be saying that free speech is fine as long as it's "agreeable" free speech. Enter into a dialogue that isn't the party line and you are out-a-here.

Capitalism That Is Just

Opinion Journal has an article by Columbia professor Edmund S. Phelps, the new Nobel Prize winner of economics discussing "Dynamic Capitalism" and the justice therein, if allowed to operate without politicized cronyism.

Feminism

Keith Burgess-Jackson asks an interesting question: "If you know of even a single case in which a particular man and a particular woman, doing precisely the same job for the same employer, with the same credentials, qualifications, and experience, are paid differently for it, let me know."

Check out the link.

Stem Cell Research

Here is a thought provoking essay on the subject, from First Things.

Farm Lobby Hard at Work

After reading this, it sounds like the farm lobby are the only ones with access to the lawmakers! I thought the Farm Bill was about helping the small farmer? Yea, right! Disgusting.

Pearl of Wisdom

“The more you eat, the more you are.” Norman Vincent Peale Burger.

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

I've read all of Cormac McCathy's books except Suttree, and I'll get to that in due course. He is one of the best, in my opinion, and he's written a new book called, The Road. I read this glowing review this morning and have added The Road to my list of books to be read and absorbed.

"Omnibus."

Peggy Noonan reminisces about the time when the media elevated us. The old show from the 1950's, Omnibus, was advertised by a company where I used to work.

Noam Chomsky

Here is a well-written piece from Roger Scruton on linguistic expert Prof. Noam Chomsky.

Protectionism for the Steel Industry

From Cafe Hayek - Read Don Boudreaux's letter! This kind of thing has been going on a very long time; I remember it from the '60's.

Muslim Certainty

Here is part of an excellent post from Enchiridion Militis:

"In Andrew Bostom’s excellent column today, he gives us a glimpse of the classical Muslim attitude toward religious dialogue. Ibn Khaldun is considered perhaps the greatest mind the Islamic world ever produced. Here is his opinion of Christians:

We do not think that we should blacken the pages of this book [the Muqaddimah] with discussion of their [Christian] dogmas of unbelief. In general, they are well known. All of them are unbelief. This is clearly stated in the noble Koran. To discuss or argue those things with them is not up to us. It is for them to choose between conversion to Islam, payment of the poll tax, or death.

Conversion, subjugation, or death. Three choices."

I fear we are slow learners!

The Zero Sum Economics Myth Lives On

From Cafe Hayek - The comments are worth reading also.

The Useless UN

Read it all from Opinion Journal:

At issue is whether the U.N. can have any role in enforcing collective security--and the mystery is why the very nations that say the U.N. must do so are doing the most to undermine it.

Bill Gates

This is flying around via e-mail. I have no idea of its accuracy but its a good message regardless:

"Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one."

You Get More of What You Subsidize & Less of What You Tax

From The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid, a remarkable proposal by Al Gore:

AL GORE THE SUPPLY SIDER Anything for global warming, I guess -- even if it means admitting that income taxes kill incentives and kill jobs:

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Monday suggested taxing carbon dioxide emissions instead of employees' pay in a bid to stem global warming.

"Penalizing pollution instead of penalizing employment will work to reduce that pollution," Gore said in a speech at New York University School of Law...

"Instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees it would discourage business from producing more pollution," Gore said.

Professor Disputes Global Warming is Human-caused

Via Drudge:

Global warming is happening, but humans are not the cause, one of the nation’s top experts on hurricanes said Monday morning.

Bill Gray, who has studied tropical meteorology for more than 40 years, spoke at the Larimer County Republican Club Breakfast about global warming and whether humans are to blame. About 50 people were at the talk.

Gray, who is a professor at Colorado State University, said human-induced global warming is a fear perpetuated by the media and scientists who are trying to get federal grants.

“I think we’re coming out of the little ice age, and warming is due to changes to ocean circulation patterns due to salinity variations,” Gray said. “I’m sure that’s it.”

Gray’s view has been challenged, however.

Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said in an interview later Monday that climate scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that most of the warming is due to human activity.

“Bill Gray is a widely respected senior scientist who has a view that is out of step with a lot of his colleagues’,” Pielke said. But challenging widely held views is “good for science because it forces people to make their case and advances understanding.”

“We should always listen to the minority,” said Pielke, who spoke from his office in Boulder. “But it’s prudent to take actions that both minimize human effect on the climate and also make ourselves much more resilient.”

At the breakfast, Gray said Earth was warmer in some medieval periods than it is today. Current weather models are good at predicting weather as far as 10 days in advance, but predicting up to 100 years into the future is “a great act of faith, and I don’t believe any of it,” he said.

But even if humans cause global warming, there’s not much people can do, Gray said. China and India will continue to pump out greenhouse gases, and alternative energy sources are expensive.

“Why do it if it’s not going to make a difference anyway?” he said. “Whether I’m right or wrong, we can’t do anything about it anyway.”

But Pielke said it makes sense to reduce humans’ impact on the climate.

“There are uncertainties. It’s not like you change your light bulbs today, you’re going to have better weather tomorrow,” he said. “It’s even better if those actions you’re taking make sense for other reasons, like getting off Middle Eastern oil or saving money.”

More Reflections on the Pope's Speech

From Opinion Journal:

For the pope, the precondition for any meaningful interfaith discussions is a religion tempered by reason: "It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures," he concluded.

This is not an invitation to the usual feel-good interfaith round-tables. It is a request for dialogue with one condition--that everyone at the table reject the irrationality of religiously motivated violence. The pope isn't condemning Islam; he is inviting it to join rather than reject the modern world.

By their reaction to the pope's speech, some Muslim leaders showed again that Islam has a problem with modernity that is going to have to be solved by a debate within Islam. The day Muslims condemn Islamic terror with the same vehemence they condemn those who criticize Islam, an attempt at dialogue--and at improving relations between the Western and Islamic worlds--can begin.

Teaching Economics

An old post from Catallarchy (thanks to Econlog):

"To all those interested in forcefeeding economic intelligence to the public, I suggest the following:

Every time you purchase something, follow this procedure.

1. Walk to cash register.

2. Take out wallet.

3. Pull out money.

4. Turn around and face crowd, holding money in upraised fist.

5. Announce authoritatively to onlookers: 'You see this money? This is money that I would have spent on my window. If it were broken… But it wasn’t broken! And so I’m buying some stuff with it.'

6. Smile, pay, and exit.

Such a procedure could become a trademark amongst the economically wise, a virtual handshake between peers, a badge of honor, and a great way to meet hot, sexy, free-market members of the opposite sex."

"Oriana and Rosie"

Consider this an update to my recent post (or not); The Anchoress tells more about the greatness of Oriana Fallaci and then skewers Rosie O'Donnell. Here is an except from he skewering part:

"... I must mention O’ Donnell, because while she claims herself a woman of the left, she is the polar opposite of Fallaci, and I cannot let Fallaci go without focusing for a second on how far the left as devolved. Where resistance-member Fallaci was intelligently confrontational, trendy-cause committed O’ Donnell is merely shrill. Where Fallaci dared to look at the effects of Christianity and Islam on civilizations and see real differences and moral distinctions, O’Donnell casts a vapid, bigoted glance and calls them all cake, declaring: 'Radical Christianity Is Just As Threatening As Radical Islam.'

After all, she doesn’t have to think. The thinking has been done for her by her co-ideologues. All she has to do is fall in line and parrot.

I gag. I barely want to waste the energy to respond to it, because she’s really not worth it. So, I’ll simply leave it to Ms. O’Donnell to point out to the rest of us the buildings that have been flown into, the throats that have been slit, the genitals which have been mutiliated, the raped women who have been killed for their victimhood, the countless suicide bombers who have died screaming 'Jesus is Lord' as they blew themselves up, the gays who have been hanged for being gay, the raging Catholics who rampaged through the streets burning Andres Serrano in effegy when he submerged a crucifix in urine and called it 'art,' the Christian who have murdered filmmakers for making less-than-flattering films about their faith…

Come on, Rosie, make your case and justify that moral equivalence you so easily, lazily, thoughtlessly burp out to the assured applause of your Upper West Side audience. Don’t point to a few sick extremists who have killed abortionists, unless you are willing to admit that the Christians themselves have condemned such violence. Show us the justification for your statement that 'Radical Christianity Is Just As Threatening As Radical Islam.'

The truth is, Ms. O’ Donnell, 'radical' anything is unappetizing, whether that be 'radical' judges creating laws out of whole cloth, just because they want to, or 'radical' gays storming St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Notre Dame Cathedral (hmmmm, musta missed it when the 'radical' Christians stormed the Lilith festivals!). Can you admit that? Do you have that much intellectual honesty?

When you are done justifying that incredibly prejudiced, stupid and unfounded statement, Ms. O’ Donnell, you might then (to compound the moral strength of your own superior ideology) point out the hospitals and soup kitchens and crisis centers you and your leftist pals have built around the world, and you can reassure us that they treat anyone in need, even if they don’t belong to your club. I’m sure they can be found in every city. You can display the free clinics and kitchens and schools and job training centers you and your friends have built in Haiti and in Africa, and in Appalachia. You can show us the homes built to help single mothers who choose to keep their babies (because you’re 'pro-choice ,' right?) and which teach them to become independent. Please make your case, Ms. O’ Donnell. We’ll wait." (Bold mine)

The Pope's Recent Message

Instapundit has numerous updates to this latest "Muslim rage" over the Pope's comments. - My favorite:

Ed Morrissey sees an imbalance: "People use words to criticize Islam; Muslims use stones, fire, and eventually bombs to protest back. When was the last time Christians threw firebombs at a mosque to protest Muslim imams characterizing Christianity as polytheistic? When have we seen Jews firebomb mosques for Muslim leaders calling them the descendants of pigs and monkeys, a common insult from both religious and secular Muslims in the Middle East? Muslims have proven Benedict prophetic, and don't think for a moment that this wave of violence has peaked."

The Anchoress thinks that Benedict has them exactly where he wants them: "Benedict has managed - in his very scholarly fashion - to apply a very hot drawing poultice to the enormous and festering boils of both radical Islamism and rampant secularism."

Oriana Fallaci

In this little tribute to Oriana Fallci, Tunku Varadarajan opens with this paragraph:

Even as Oriana Fallaci breathed her last through lungs marinaded in enough nicotine to sink a ship (leave alone a birdlike creature who weighed no more than 80 pounds at best, pearl necklace included), protests rumbled in the Muslim world over a recent utterance by Pope Benedict XVI in which he faulted the prophet, Muhammad, for exhorting his followers to spread Islam by the sword. Effigies of the pope have been torched by mobs, although the irruption has also included unintended drollery; a spokeswoman for the Musharraf dispensation in Pakistan observed yesterday that "anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence." (Bold mine)

Huh? What an utterly absurd statement! Anyway, read the whole piece; the woman who described Europe as "Eurabia" is now gone.

More on Wal-Mart

The latest on Wal-Mart by Greg Mankiw, George Will, and Jason Furman, all linked via Asymmetrical Information.

Bush

I have a pretty good track record in not commenting on George Bush; it's sort of a personal commitment. While my blog wanders all over the place, I've taken the position to avoid "Bush" as a topic. Also, some time ago, I quit reading the tirades of unhinged lickspittling angry leftists sickened with Bush Derangement Syndrome as well as Republican sycophants. Personally, I'm not very pleased with the man. The kindest thing I can say about him (and have said in private for a long time) is that he certainly believes in what he is doing. Period. Those who make a living writing in a civilized manner about politics are better at reflecting on President Bush anyway. See Peggy Noonan. Read the whole thing because she ends up claiming the Democrats are unlikely to win leadership this fall, stating that "you can't beat something with nothing." I think you can... In this context - Promise everybody what they want to hear, charmingly, convincingly and with charisma. Who is capable of that is open to question, and delivering the goods could be quite painful, but that's not the point. Promising the moon to an exhausted public has worked before, e.g. FDR, and could again. Regardless, here are some excerpts:

They say the election is all about Iraq. It's not. It's about George W. Bush. He dominates the discussion, or rather obsesses the discussers...

I think that Americans have pretty much stopped listening to him. One reason is that you don't have to listen to get a sense of what's going on. He does not appear to rethink things based on new data. You don't have to tune in to see how he's shifting emphasis to address a trend, or tacking to accommodate new winds. For him there is no new data, only determination.

He repeats old arguments because he believes they are right, because he has no choice--in for a penny, in for a pound--and because his people believe in the dogma of the magic of repetition: Say it, say it, to break through the clutter.

There's another reason people don't listen to Mr. Bush as much as they did. It is that in some fundamental way they know they have already fully absorbed him. He's burned his brand into the American hide.

Pundits and historians call Mr. Bush polarizing--and he is, but in some unusual ways. For one thing, he's not trying to polarize. He is not saying, "My team is for less government, your team is for more--my team, stand with me!"

Mr. Bush has muddied what his team stands for. He has made it all come down to him--not to philosophy but to him and his certitudes.

What is polarizing about him is the response he elicits from Americans just by being himself...

Farm Subsidies

Note this absurdity from Cafe Hayek:

Reported in "Harper's Index" (Harper's, October 2006, page 13):

Minimum amount of USDA farm subsidies since 2000 that have been paid out to people who do not farm: $1,300,000,000.

That's $1.3 billion. One program. And this by an institution -- the state -- that many conservatives trust to build nations abroad and many left-liberals trust to make better decisions for each of us individually than each of us individually will make for ourselves.

A River Runs Through It

Last night my wife and I watched the 1992 film, A River Runs Through It. I hadn't seen it in its entirety since then; and I wanted to watch it again for the memorable fly fishing scenes since I now endeavor to develop skills in that sport. I'd forgotten this piece of a sermon from the Rev. Mclean:

"Each one of here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing help, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it's those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding."

It's anything but curmudgeonly, I know; but it's hard to be cynical with such a profound statement.

Basic Economics

Plenty of good reading is available on-line:

"That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen," by Frederic Bastiat.

"Economis in One Lesson," by Henry Hazlitt.

Any additional suggestions?

PC BS!

La Shawn Barber is ticked off!

"I honestly don’t know what’s worse: Muslims and foreigners who want this free and wonderful country to change to suit them, or our tendency to prostrate ourselves before them and concede to their ridiculous demands.

Back in June I wrote about Muslims in Maryland who wanted their religious holidays on the school calendar. Today I had the displeasure of reading about public swimming pool policy changes based on Muslim sensibilities, safety standards be damned.

Utterly stupid, and I don’t often use the word stupid. It’s a lazy way to express frustration, but at this point, I don’t care.

If Muslims had their way, sharia would be the law of the land (think I’m exaggerating?), and homosexuals, for example, might be stoned to death or hanged. The bozo bloggers who complained about an 'offensive' sentence in this post would have a lot more to worry about than a black woman blogger who thinks they’re hysterically humorous as well as hypocritical."

Read the whole thing.

Porkbusters Update

From The Corner:

"No holds [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

The senate tonight passed that coburn-obama database bill. Porkbusters rejoice. Next stop: earmark reform? Go congress go!"

You bet!

The Paternal State, The Maternal State, and Liberty

To a post on Paternalism over at Tom Anger's blog, I made this comment:

I've had it in my mind the idea that the Right is "Paternalistic" and the Left is "Maternalistic." Neither side ever considers that these methods of control, as they are manifested, are weak alternatives to actually dealing with people as adults. Hmmm... Having just written that, I realize that it probably requires an essay to explain it!

I have not written the essay but, after considerable digging, I found the source of my thought from The Proceedings of the Fresian School, authored by Kelly L. Ross, Ph.D Department of Philosophy at Los Angeles Valley College in his essay on The Paternal State, The Liberal State, and the Welfare State. In it, he gives a history lesson on the origins of Paternalism, liberalism in the classic sense, and the welfare state, stating:

"From the Greeks to the 18th century, the job of lawgivers was widely regarded as fostering the virtue of citizens. Originally, this may have been mainly to promote the health and strength of the state. Later, the salvation of individuals became a religious issue, but what was needed to please God usually involved many of the virtues that otherwise were already thought to contribute to the strength of the state. This kind of state, a protector and promoter of virtue, was a paternalistic state, acting like a father, whose job was to punish, but which otherwise was relatively indifferent to the welfare of citizens. Being virtuous, citizens were expected to be able to care for themselves, or stoutly do without. Only the truly destitute and helpless, the widows and orphans, the halt and the lame, could expect care from the state or, at least, the Church. Since there wasn't actually a lot of wealth to go around, and the ruling aristocracies of most Mediaeval states expected to live in a style commensurate with their status, most poverty was not regarded as something that much could be done about anyway. After all, Jesus had said, 'For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good' [Mark 14:7]."

But things changed with classical liberalism: "From the 17th to the 18th century there was a revolution in this approach. John Locke held that the purpose of government was simply to protect natural rights, i.e. protections of person, property, and contract from wrongs by others. This meant that the virtue of the citizens was no longer the principal concern of lawgivers. While the revolution did not immediately mean that virtue was of no concern to lawgivers, the tendency was in that direction because of the reasoning that there were natural rewards and natural penalties to virtue and vice...

Meanwhile, however, there was a new competing ideology over and against both paternalism and liberalism. What if, one might ask, the squalor of the poor was not due to their own vices, but to forces beyond their control? What if such forces were promoted by a social order that only benefited others? This goes back to Rousseau, who held that "civil society" was simply a conspiracy by the rich to guarantee their plunder... With these new ideas, there would be no 'undeserving' poor. What would be needed was a new social order, a thoroughgoing political order, that would simply provide to all whatever they needed. This aptly came to be called 'socialism.'"

He has a lot to say about the "welfare state" and calls it Maternalism. In closing, he says: "When truths of economic principles like those of Public Choice theory or Say's Law are never heard in political discourse and almost never heard in public at all, things do not look good for the future of freedom. As the welfare state runs up against fiscal failure, the rebound can as well be back towards paternalism as towards liberalism. The ongoing popularity of the war on drugs and the virtual media black-out of principled criticism of it holds out little hope that liberal priniciples can be reestablished in that direction. Meanwhile, most citizens seem to have come to believe that a non-judgmental, unconditional maternal care is what the government owes them. In a democracy, this means that politicians will continue to promise the Moon and shuffle the paperwork under the carpet. Unlike Enron, the fraud and diseconomies of this can be concealed for decades, as long as the debt can be obscured or deferred. The Social Security system will cease to run a surplus and begin to draw on the Treasury some time beween 2012 and 2018, by current estimates. Politicians promising ever more benefits can hurry that along a bit. They do say that people get the kind of government they deserve. And the Founding Fathers did say that the Republic would only last as long as the virtue of the citizens. The greatest evil of the welfare state, indeed, is that it is designed to protect people from the consequences of vice. Now we have the worst of both worlds, and the most noxious and evil of combinations, when many in government think it is their job to enforce virtue, paternally, but then actually have to promise, maternally, to protect everyone from their own imprudence and folly -- meaning of course, that the remaining prudent and wise must pay the cost. They don't like that, but their political voice is usually muted or distracted. "

Read the whole thing.