Auld Lang Syne

Elizabeth Scalia on her remembrances of the Kennedy years and Auld Lang Syne.  She also links a piece on food shortages here in the Central Valley, one of the great food-producing regions of the world.  It is relevant to some of our personal challenges, and those of our friends.  Peggy Noonan talked with several people about their impressions of the song we sing every year:

"Auld Lang Syne" — the phrase can be translated as "long, long ago," or "old long since," but I like "old times past"—is a song that asks a question, a tender little question that has to do with the nature of being alive, of being a person on a journey in the world. It not only asks, it gives an answer. . . .

But "the interesting, more serious message in the song is that the past is important, we mustn't forget it, the old has something for us."

So does the present, as the last stanza makes clear. The song is not only about those who were in your life, but those who are in your life. . . .

A lot of food for thought on New Years Eve day. Hope everyone is looking forward to a wonderful New Year.

Michael Crichton, Science and Global Warming

The late Michael Crichton describes the "nasty, unfair, brutal" response of his fellow liberals in the Global Warming camp to his book, State of Fear. He supported a traditional scientific approach over the post-normal approach to science favored by global warming alarmists. Entire interview is here. Critique of An Inconvenient Truth here. Note that Crichton died before Climategate confirmed many of the points he made in these videos.

Michael Crichton talks with high school students:

1. Although he does not name the Sierra Club, he gently explains to students how the lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club helped lead to the deaths of 30 million people - "more people than Hitler and Stalin together killed". People of color.

2. Should environmentalism be a religion?

3. His personal interest in people's attraction to totalitarianism.

4. Second-hand smoke

Richard Fernandez looks back at the alarmism concerning Global Cooling in the 1970s, to which Crichton made reference.  Prominent Global Warming alarmist James Hansen was just a lowly computer model developer back in those days of global cooling alarmism.  I don't think he got nearly as much publicity (or money) then as he does now.

. . . . .   Can a New Ice Age be blamed on America? If it can, then it’s real. Otherwise it is false. Over the coming years and beyond my lifetime, historians may wish to apply this formula: V = American Policy multiplied by the absolute value of any variable. It’s always America’s fault.

And of course, whatever problem with the climate emerges in the future, The Left Must Be Put In Charge.

Because the Liberal Elite is always right.  Somewhat brutal, but hilarious. There are a lot of people just  like this on the Left.  Especially in academia.

Mao's Great Leap to Famine

Just a reminder that, at one time, Chinese peasants were escaping to North Korea to avoid starvation, rather than the other way around. Aside from the deaths during the revolution, the "cultural revolution", etc.,

In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths.

Between 2 and 3 million of these victims were tortured to death or summarily executed, often for the slightest infraction. People accused of not working hard enough were hung and beaten; sometimes they were bound and thrown into ponds. Punishments for the least violations included mutilation and forcing people to eat excrement.

Yet more than a decade later, thousands of students at American universities were still reverently carrying around Mao's Little Red Book. And even today, many intellectuals continue to believe that Marxism could work if only the right people were in charge. The New York Times recently ran a puff piece on Marxists pontificating and playing in New York City.

Glenn Reynolds:

Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.

Dennis Prager: "The bigger the government, the more of its citizens' lives it 'owns'."

A small example of what happens when government officials implement their great ideas about how to achieve "progress":

Mao encouraged the establishment of small backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban neighborhood. Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces the local environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of peasants' houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to supply the "scrap" for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories, schools and even hospitals. As could have been predicted by anyone with any experience of steel production or basic knowledge of metallurgy, the output consisted of low quality lumps of pig iron which was of negligible economic worth.

. . . According to his private doctor, Li Zhisui, Mao and his entourage visited traditional steel works in Manchuria in January 1959 where he found out that high quality steel could only be produced in large scale factories using reliable fuel such as coal. However he decided not to order a halt to the backyard steel furnaces so as not to dampen the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses. The program was only quietly abandoned much later that year.

Substantial effort was expended during the Great Leap Forward on large-scale but often poorly planned capital construction projects, such as irrigation works often built without input from trained engineers. . . . .

Despite these harmful agricultural innovations, the weather in 1958 was very favorable and the harvest promised to be good. Unfortunately, the amount of labor diverted to steel production and construction projects meant that much of the harvest was left to rot uncollected in some areas. This problem was exacerbated by a devastating locust swarm, which was caused when their natural predators were killed en masse as part of the Great Sparrow Campaign.

Although actual harvests were reduced, local officials, under tremendous pressure from central authorities to report record harvests in response to the new innovations, competed with each other to announce increasingly exaggerated results. These were used as a basis for determining the amount of grain to be taken by the state to supply the towns and cities, and to export. This left barely enough for the peasants, and in some areas, starvation set in. During 1958-1960, China continued to be a substantial net exporter of grain, despite the widespread famine experienced in the countryside, as Mao sought to maintain "face" and convince the outside world of the success of his plans.

Even more democratic nations can face serious unintended problems due to the sincere efforts of government officials and their favored business allies to implement their good intentions. Especially when the government exempts itself from criticism.

Illustrative Video: GREAT MOMENTS IN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Note that the tragic dimension of unintended consequences attaches itself like a lamprey to public-sector derring-do rather than quaint lab accidents and kitchen-based discoveries.

Bipartisanship, "No Labels"

Some interesting developments in the "tax deal between Obama and the GOP":

1. At the joint press conference between President Obama and former President Clinton, President Obama left to attend a Christmas party, leaving Clinton to defend his positions. Paul Gigott:

“I love the symbolism of two Democratic presidents — not one, but two — endorsing Bush tax cuts, saying, ‘We need them crucially to help the economy’.”

During the press conference, President Clinton called conservative Charles Krauthammer's piece (calling the tax deal "the swindle of the year")"brilliant". Krauthammer quipped:

The fact that he praised me means that my career is basically over, although perhaps — I think NPR has an opening, I think the Juan Williams spot. …

Or I could return to psychiatry. The House Democrats could really use someone right now. They’re very agitated. I would go into that caucus and just do a Valium spray and get all of ‘em at once.

2. Bernie Sanders, the declared socialist in Congress, decided to filibuster. Other progressives are also up in arms. But on the other hand, they have been pushing the "No Labels" meme. President Obama starts a "charm offensive" with new Republican leadership in private, while promising to fight them in public.

President Obama made one especially deceptive statement about the Republicans' position on tax cuts which totally destroys any possibility of bipartisan good will:

"When they expire in two years, I will fight to end them," Obama said. "Just as I suspect the Republican Party may fight to end the middle-class tax cuts that I've championed and that they've opposed."

He's apparently still a class warrior at heart. He has indicated several times that he considers his role that of a "community organizer" (although one who is a "strong leader" rather than one who stays in the background while pushing power down to the people according to Saul Alinsky's "rules for radicals".)

Did Stalin commit genocide, or just mass murder?

Does it really matter?

An interesting book review by Illya Somin:

Absent Stalin’s malign influence, Naimark contends, the regime probably would not have committed mass murder or genocide on such a large scale. There is little doubt that Stalin’s paranoia and sadism influenced Soviet policy. Nonetheless, I think Naimark overstates the importance of Stalin’s personal role. Most of the major repressive policies and institutions — including the secret police and the Gulag slave labor camps — of the Soviet state were begun by Lenin, not Stalin. As historians such as Richard Pipes have shown, even the terror famine was a reprise of the first Soviet effort to collectivize agriculture in 1918–21 (which also led to a famine in which millions died). Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s main rival for power after Lenin’s death, attacked Stalin on the grounds that his policies were too generous to “bourgeois” elements and otherwise not repressive enough. Had Trotsky defeated Stalin, life for most Soviet citizens might have been just as bad or even slightly worse. One of the very few ways in which Stalin was harsher than Trotsky was in his much greater willingness to kill and imprison members of the Communist Party elite. Here, Stalin’s extreme paranoia about possible rivals for power really did make a big difference. Under Trotsky, the party comrades would have suffered a lot less; the rest of the population would not have been so fortunate.

More generally, Stalin’s policies were far from unique in the communist world. Almost every other communist regime engaged in very similar mass murders, including in countries like China and Cuba where the rulers had a high degree of autonomy from Soviet control.

Check out the discussion in the comments.

The New York Times and Stalin

During Stalin's forced starvation of Ukranian peasants, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty  falsely refuted the true stories of starvation by other Western reporters. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his lies.

The New York Times recently ran a puff piece on Marxists pontificating and playing in New York City. It is unthinkable that the New York Times would run a puff piece on "Fascists pontificating and playing" in New York City.  But Mussolini's brand of fascism, for example, was far less destructive and brutal than Marxist communism has been (though the two ideologies held much in common in both theory and practice).

 One begins to get an impression of the hold that Marxism has had on our intellectuals for so many decades.  If only the right people had tried it, utopia would be have been achieved.  But since the West won't accept revolution, it's better to socialize Western countries a little at a time.

UPDATE: Video at the link - Marxist study groups and games in NYC. Yes, there are still REAL Marxists in America. Who read Stalin's works for ideas.

Thought for the Day

"Pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes."

-John Ruskin

From Forbes.

Moderate Muslims, Rational Islamic Theology

Claire Berlinski contrasts the moderate Muslims she lives around in Turkey with radical Muslims. Start the video, then go to full screen for better video quality.

On Ricochet (a blog-like discussion forum), she discusses a new book concerning a time, prior to the ninth century, when Islamic theology may have been more conducive to reason than it is today.

The answer ... completely hinges on God’s relationship to reason in Sunni Islam. Is God reason, or logos, as the Greeks would say? If God himself is reason, then it is hard to close the mind because one would then be closing oneself to God. This, in fact, was the view of the first fully-developed theological school in Islam, the Mu‘tazilites. The Mu‘tazalites asserted the primacy of reason, and that one’s first duty is to engage in reason and, through it, to come to know God. . . .

However, the school of theology that arose to oppose the Mu’tazilites, the Ash‘arites, held the opposite. Unfortunately, by the end of the ninth century, they prevailed and became the formative influence in Sunni Islam. For the Ash‘arites, God is not reason, but pure will and absolute power. He is not bound by anything, including his own word. Since God is pure will, He has no reasons for his acts. Thus what He does cannot be understood by man. One of the things that God does is create the world, which also cannot be understood. . . .

Interesting reading if you're up for some academic cross-talk.

There's a lot most of us don't understand about Islam.

The Chilean Mine Rescue, Chris Matthews, Two Presidents

While the world celebrated, Chris Matthews took this story as an opportunity to become completely unmoored from reality, declaring to the head of the AFL-CIO that if the miners had been tea-partiers, they would have been dead in two days.

Ann Althouse:

What that shows is that Matthews — in stereotypical liberal fashion — has forgotten the way private individuals cooperate and help each other. The government and only the government must be the source of all beneficence. If you don't want the government to solve all your problems, you must think you and everyone else can be 100% self-reliant.

A couple of simple questions for Mr. Matthews:

If Tea Partiers are so consumed by an “every man for himself” philosophy, why are their gatherings typically so well-organized and why do they leave, say, the National Mall spotless?

If unions, on the other hand, are so dedicated to cooperation and respect for others, why did so many of their buses leave before the OneNation rally was over, leaving some speakers to speak to a few stragglers? And why did they trash the National Mall?  

Unions are just as subject to corruption and decline as business and government are. When unions are protected in their declined state by government, decline is likely to get worse.

The President of Chile called for international help from the best and the brightest, promising to keep bureaucracy from interfering. As a result, the rescue came much sooner that the December estimate.  In contrast, during the Gulf Oil Spill, President Obama rejected most international help for months.  He refused to suspend the Jones Act, which kept the Dutch and others from helping directly. Apparently, in the President's mind, the interests of unions outweighed the interests of fishermen and  others whose jobs were threatened by the oil spill. The Jones Act specifies that foreign entities working with our government (including in disasters) must be unionized. It has been suspended by other presidents in the past in emergencies. (Oh, and EPA regulations requiring near-perfection in equipment for removing oil from water also prevented much oil from being removed from the gulf by the Dutch).  Many people were disappointed with the President's response. Chile's politics and culture seem to be in an ascendant phase, in comparison.

The rescue of Chilean miners recalls an earlier rescue

A wonderful story. A leader emerged who "rallied the troops" to cooperate in a disciplined survival regimen. A strong leader is crucial in desperate circumstances, but command-and-control leadership is less effective when conditions are not so dire. The President of Chile also contributed to the general air of competence in response to this emergency.

An interesting perspective on the miner rescue from Daniel Henninger: Capitalism saved the miners.

Some will recoil at these triumphalist claims for free-market capitalism. Why make them now?

Here's why. When a catastrophe like this occurs—others that come to mind are the BP well blowout, Hurricane Katrina, various disasters in China—a government has all its chips pushed to the center of the table. Chile succeeds (it rebuilt after the February earthquake with phenomenal speed). China flounders. Two American administrations left the public agog as they stumbled through the mess.

Still, what the political class understands is that all such disasters wash away eventually, and that life in a developed nation reverts to a tolerable norm. . .

Chile has a new American hero from the private sector.  But NASA, a U.S. government agency, provided a lot of help in Chile, too.  Somehow, the flexible Chileans seemed to be able to coordinate government and private help.

 Wretchard recalls another dramatic rescue of 33 men which required perhaps even greater flexibility in the responses of the rescuers, not to mention extraordinary courage on the part of some of them.

Zero Tolerance for Speaking Truth to Power

Rep. John Conyers asked comedian Stephen Colbert to leave the committee room rather than present live "testimony" concerning immigration. Donald Sensing compares the media reactions to testimony by Stephen Colbert and Christopher Coates on the same day:

Colbert 1,300; Coates 196


That's the count on Google News' leads of the coverage of the testimonies of comedian Stephen Colbert and Dept. of Justice official Christopher Coates. Colbert testified before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. Coates appeared before the US Civil Rights Commission. . . .


Note that the major media covered Colbert exhaustively, but were conspicuously absent from covering Coates. That was left almost completely to online media, especially blogs. From curiosity, I watched NBC News primetime broadcast. Colbert was the lead story. There was no mention ever of Coates. And they wonder why their viewersehip is plummeting?


Fortunately and commendably for Colbert, his "testimony" was dripping with all the sober gravitas it deserved. . . .


Coates told the commission that he was testifying as a whistle blower since he had been instructed by his DOJ superiors not to speak.


You know, some more "zero tolerance" that this administration has for speaking truth to power, especially when the power is them and the truth is, well, the truth.

Read the whole thing.  Interesting take on Colbert's apparent realization that it was absurd that he had been asked to testify about immigration.

More on the Coates testimony.  Interesting links.   Possible legal ramifications for cases with minority plaintiffs.   Criticism of AP story, kudos for real journalism.

Josh Gerstein reports the story for Politico. Gerstein's story is a model of good journalism.

Background: Older posts on the New Black Panther case which Coates discussed in the hearing (and related issues of equality before the law) here, here and here.

Coates must be an extraordinarily strong individual to have remained in the DOJ after his demotion for supporting equality before the law. His testimony, against the orders of his superiors, probably ends any possibility that he could return to his career at the DOJ. But it was probably over before now, anyway. One of his subordinates had already quit to become a whistleblower. Going public may actually reduce the hostility which Coates must have been facing within the DOJ as a whistleblower. Here is an account of what he said at the going-away event at the time of his demotion.

Of course, there's a possibility that the Colbert appearance was not planned as a diversion, but was just another devastatiing unforced error by this Congress.

Nancy Pelosi on "Hollywood-American" Colbert: “He’s an American. He has a point of view.” From the comments:

“He’s an American. He has a point of view.” I thought Congress sought testimony from people with some expertise. There are fifty people in front of the local Home Depot who know more about this than Colbert.

North Korea: Run by and Emperor

Dennis Prager interviewed the author of a new book on the ordinary lives of North Koreans. She noted that North Korea is not a typical communist country, but rather one run by an emperor. Dennis pointed out that most Communist countries are run by emperors, even when the horrors don't get as bad as those in North Korea, China or Cambodia.

She noted that in NK, the people are the possessions of the government. Dennis pointed out that the bigger the government, the more of its citizen's lives it "owns".

Happy Constitution Day

Restoring Madison's Vision

Can the Constitution be sustained in such a large country?

Toqueville and today's America. Did he miss some developments that make "soft despotism" less attractive? Something to think about.

Obsession with the Feelings of Muslims

The Ground Zero Mosque has become a soap opera. Inspired by the opposition to the mosque's location, a publicity-seeking Pastor threatening to burn Korans set off the Muslim World, asked for, and got, a message from the White House, and also got a "friendly warning" from the FBI before calling off his stunt. Spengler (via Tigerhawk) comments on larger implications in the big, nasty world of international intrigue:

Meet the Reverend Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior. It appears that pinpricks can produce chain reactions in the Islamic world. The threat may be termed asymmetrical because Islam is more vulnerable to theological war than Christianity (or for that matter Judaism).

As the youngest of the major religions (apart from Sikhism), Islam must defend its historical narrative more fiercely than the older religions. Islam never withstood the withering criticism of Enlightenment scholars from Spinoza to the Jesus Project determined to discredit sacred texts. And because the Koran is not a human report of God's word, like the Christian and Jewish bibles, but rather the "uncreated word" of Allah himself, any challenge to its authority cuts at Islam's credibility. The fact that Islam has established neither a Magisterium in the Catholic sense, nor an authoritative tradition like that of Orthodox Judaism, leaves it decentralized, divided and fractious. . .

Russia has more urgent reasons to sow discord in Muslim countries, and centuries of experience in doing so. Simply because America has committed its reputation and resources to stability in the Muslim world, Russia has an interest in promoting the opposite. Russia views the world as a chessboard, in which pressure on the flanks increases its control of the center of the board. Moscow's on-again, off-again deal to supply Iran with an advanced anti-missile system, for example, represents a bargaining chip that it can use with Washington for a variety of purposes.

There is a deeper Russian interest in fostering Muslim weakness, though. Before mid-century the Russian Federation likely will have a Muslim majority. . . .

But back in the U.S., the liberal elite wants to reach out to Muslims. James Taranto, September 16:

The real problem here is that the liberal elite has responded to 9/11 in a totally inappropriate way. When the only tool you have is a hammer, the cliché goes, every problem looks like a nail. To American liberals, every problem looks like the civil rights struggle, the original one of which was their last real moral, cultural and governmental success.

That is why the liberal elite sees 9/11 less as a national security challenge than as an imperative for a kind of affirmative action aimed at ensuring that "inclusiveness" extends to Muslims. . . . And of course it is what Americans everywhere see in the obnoxious plan to build a fancy 15-story mosque adjacent to the site of an Islamic supremacist atrocity.

But whereas white Americans collectively had a great deal to atone for in their historical treatment of blacks, it is perverse and offensive to suggest that 9/11 leaves Americans with an obligation to atone to Muslims. . . .

Multiculturalists cheering on the Cordoba House

I left a comment at US News and World Report piece by Robert Schlesinger concerning the "new nativism" in the U.S. which is the alleged cause of the Cordoba House controversy, spacing changed here:

The Cordoba Initiative Hardens Differences

The current controversy over this project, and the hardening of positions on all sides, was almost certainly anticipated in advance. I think Victor Davis Hanson got it right. The initial choice of the title, "Cordoba House" for the (now) Park51 complex and the continued use of "Cordoba Initiative" for the project means different things to different people:

"Cordoba is as much a mythical construct of a long-ago multicultural paradise so dear to elite liberals as it is a fantasy rallying cry to Islamists to reclaim the lost Al-Andalus. . . So Cordoba is a two-birds-with-one-stone evocation: in the liberal West proof of one’s ecumenical bona fides; in the Middle East proof of one’s Islamist bona fides."

But even beyond Islamist vs. multiculturalist fantasies about Cordoba, there are reports of Muslim scholars who are convinced that this is a Jewish plot to connect Islam with 9/11.

Everything is so simple to proponents of multiculturalism like Mr. Schlesinger. The "new nativism" in America, as characterized by over-the-top statements by a distant third-place candidate in a primary election in Tennessee, can be the only explanation for the widespread disapproval of the "Cordoba Initiative". Because multiculturalists are in a "group think" intellectual world, they believe that everyone else must think the same way.

And Mr. Schlesinger is certain that this project would "enrage" bin Laden. How does he know that? Hasn't bin Laden repeated western liberal talking points in his most recent messages to the world?


Why wouldn't he be happy about the completion of an Islamic cultural center topped by two floors of mosque, erected in place of a building which had been damaged by parts of one of the 9/11 planes, scheduled to be opened on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when the Ground Zero memorial will not even be finished? Even if the backers say that they are trying to promote understanding between "people of the book" (excluding atheists and practitioners of Eastern religions, of course)?

Positions do seem to be hardening. People pick out the most extreme positions to characterize others' views. For example, concerning a previous comment, I don't thnk that most honor killings are conducted in accordance with sharia law, or that genital mutilation is part of sharia law, even though both practices occur with impunity in areas where sharia law is considered to be the law of the land. On the other hand, Mr. Schlesinger should not pretend that sharia law is not making inroads in several countries where Muslims are currently pushing against western-style law.

Seriously, VDH has some fascinating thoughts on the cynical brilliance of this project, plus some corrective world history.

And here, he debates Alan Dershowitz concerning the ADL's opposition. Other contributors at VDH's website: Raymond Ibrahim and a "citixen comment" by Karen Lugo.

RELATED: From Twitter

Jim Treacher:

How about "Not-at-Ground-Zero Mosque-Type-Structure for People Who May or May Not Be Muslims, Not That We're Judging"? Kind of a mouthful...

New rule: Turning down a job is now a violation of religious freedom.

If construction crews refuse to work on the #911DebrisFieldMosque, then the religious-freedom-fighters will. Pack a lunch,

Iowahawk:

Of all the arguments in favor of the mosque, I think the "opponents are subhuman racists" one is the most persuasive.

But it's not the one Howard Dean is making. For a change.

Who feels threatened by the Ground Zero Mosque Issue?

Nancy Pelosi wants investigations into who is funding those who want the Cordoba House moved further away from Ground Zero.  Wretchard:

Pelosi’s remarks provide an insight into a world in which nothing happens unless it is bought and paid for. Since these are the rules the denizens of that universe have lived by, they cannot conceive of a world that does not run on pure corruption. . . .

The important thing to remember is that Pelosi’s call for an investigation into those opposed to building of the mosque are geared towards preventing any further discussion on the subject, not expanding it. Since the administration and its allies control vast prosecutorial resources and powers of publicity, an investigation of the Ground Zero mosque’s backers and those opposed will certainly focus on the opposition. The backers will be given a free ride.

Read the whole thing. Watch the videos.

And read this intelligent piece by The Anchoress about conditions under which a mosque would not have seemed so threatening, and follow the links for other viewpoints:

The crater in Lower Manhattan has become a permanent aching void, but nature abhors a vacuum and so from its empty depths something must arise. In a near-decade that “something” could have taken the form of a park, or a memorial, or a glistening new tower, and the construction of a mosque two blocks thence would have been nothing more than a reinforcement of the notion of American Exceptionalism and what Madeline Albright called The Indispensable Nation, and the narrative would have been a stirring one:

“. . . brought to her knees, Can-Do America has rebuilt and moved on; a proposed mosque two blocks from the new construction only emphasizes her broad shoulders, her self-assurance, her commitment to liberty; it demonstrates to the world the strength that America draws from her own character and constitution, and from knowing who she is . . .

All of that would have been a psychological victory over the spectre of terrorism; it would loom large in the minds of the world and a mosque built in its shadows would only be a mosque, unremarkable in a nation dedicated to freedom of religion.


But. . . .

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, herself a victim of abuse, was driven from the Netherlands for speaking about abuse of women in the name of Ialam. Here, she writes on the clash of civilizationa.

Thomas Sowell at 80

A national resource. Entire "Uncommon Knowledge" interview at the link. Part 3, on loss of personal responsibility in America and degradation of Harlem since he lived there in the 1940s.

Peter Robinson says Sowell is popular among college students today. One fan puts up quotes and links to Sowell's columns on Twitter. Sowell's closing advice to college kids,

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

Sowell also believes that people were "bigger" during Brokaw's Greatest Generation

Were the people more real when America was less rich? Hope we don't throw away what they built.

Obama's Popularity dropping in the Arab world, too?

President Obama faces, among other problems, difficulties among former supporters. the current instability in Iran and the controversy over the proposed mega-mosque at Ground Zero.   Wretchard now writes about the falling poll numbers for Obama in the Arab world.

When respondents were asked to name the world leader they admired most, Obama’s standing was less than 1%. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was cited most often (20%), followed by last year’s top pick, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (13%), and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad (12%).

The hope that appeasement would be rewarded by respect has earned the President a kick in the nose. Perceived strength generates its own legitimacy in rough places; Arabs who have traditionally feared Persia now believe it has a right to build nuclear weapons. They have watched Iran push the President’s flaccid arm down to the table and drawn their own conclusions. The policy of apologizing for America has not won friends or influenced people; it has not even delegitimized Iranian expansionism. It has produced the contrary result.

Wretchard also describes the desperate search for magic words to bring back the domestic approval seen during of Obama's campaign and inauguration, in the face of our current perilous circumstances.

Jon Stewart Show: The Racism Card is Maxed Out

"A shot of common sense from the unlikeliest of sources: "

TigerHawk:

This is very good, although probably NSFW in our modern high liability workplace, where all the various "cards" remain in full force and effect.

Mosque at Ground Zero?

Does opposition to a mosque at Ground Zero mean you're a xenophobic, Islamophobic American hater-of-the-other?

Not necessarily. One prominent Muslim scholar claims that the plans for the Ground Zero Mosque are evidence of a nefarious plot by the Jews to discredit Islam!!! Read the whole piece. A teaser:

When the pope comes to London next month, he is going to be greeted by substantial numbers of protests organized by people calling for his arrest and accusing him of the wildest hatreds. Yet we do not hear that critics of the pope are bigoted, “Christianophobic.” Nor even if they were should it cause any alarm.  But Islam is different.

Why? It goes back to the “phobia” business. Arachnophobia is an irrational fear of spiders and claustrophobia is an irrational fear of small places. They are irrational because most small spiders and most small spaces do not kill you. There are, however, very sensible reasons to be fearful of many forms of Islam.  Commuters in London and Madrid know why. As do Dutch filmmakers. And so do the numerous Muslim-born writers, artists, and musicians who spend their lives in hiding for fear of murder from their erstwhile co-religionists for “crimes” like “apostasy” and literary criticism.

But the cowardice in identifying this and cringing stupidity of what passes for intellectuals and commentators in America, like the U.K., today is staggering. . .

For Muslims, the answer to radical Islam may well be some nice official version of Islam that hasn’t yet been discovered. But for free and open societies, the answer to radical Islam is not Islam. It is free and open societies. It doesn’t matter what Muslims believe, anymore than anybody else. But it matters how they behave. . . .

Your Tax Dollars at Work: The Ground Zero Imam is being sent by the U.S. State Department on a good-will trip through the Middle East.   What could go wrong?

Meanwhile, the church which was crushed when the towers fell has not been re-built due to bureaucratic obstacles. This demonstrates a double standard as officials rush to approve the building of the 13-story mosque in time for it to open on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Note: part of one of the planes hit the building where the mosque is proposed.

Is Obama Obsolete?

Fouad Ajami:  

Mr. Obama could protest that his swift and sudden fall from grace is no fault of his. He had been a blank slate, and the devotees had projected onto him their hopes and dreams. His victory had not been the triumph of policies he had enunciated in great detail. He had never run anything in his entire life. He had a scant public record, but oddly this worked to his advantage. If he was going to begin the world anew, it was better that he knew little about the machinery of government.

He pronounced on the American condition with stark, unalloyed confidence. He had little if any regard for precedents. He could be forgiven the thought that America's faith in economic freedom had given way and that he had the popular writ to move the nation toward a super-regulated command economy. An "economic emergency" was upon us, and this would be the New New Deal.

There was no hesitation in the monumental changes Mr. Obama had in mind. The logic was Jacobin, the authority deriving from a perceived mandate to recast time-honored practices. . .

Read the whole thing.

On the lighter side: The "Professional Left" goes after Obama's Press Secretary for  giving them a small taste of what he routinely dishes out to conservatives.  Keith Olberman pontificates from his reality-based universe.   Jaw-droppingly wrong.   But very funny.   Nate Silver, who formerly blogged at nasty, hard-left, Soros-funded Daily Kos, is also linked on HotAir, above. Roundup of "Professional Left" reactions.

 Gibbs retreats. Well, sort of. Will he have to go back to trashing only conservatives?  Stay tuned to the White House.

Iran - Then and Now

In college, I had a pretty modern Iranian roommate. She usually wore rather tight bell-bottomed jeans.  She and her friends were somewhat negative about the Shah, whose regime had allowed her to come to the U.S. They had heard about the Ayatollah in France who might improve human rights in Iran. Lots of Iranians felt the same way. But when "the revolution" came, she quickly became suspect because she had lived in America. In those days, back in Iran before the Revolution, Iranians dressed like this.

NOW, women are gang-raped and murdered by government militias for failing to cover themselves sufficiently. And 12-year-old girls are encouraged to become prostitutes, in "temporary marriages" near religious shrines. With permission of their father or male guardian. To protect public morality.  There is unrest in Iran again. Before the American action against Saddam Hussein, hated (by the Left) "neo-conservative" Michael Ledeen had recommended non-military action to support revolutionary forces in Iran rather than invasion of Iraq. He hasn't changed his mind.

As the regime increasingly wages war against itself, the comings and goings of seemingly powerful people have become almost impossible to sort out. There have been repeated purges in the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards, and the supreme commander, Gen. Jafari, has now publicly stated that many senior officers had actively sided with the opposition. Why then, the general was asked, had he not punished them properly (with torture and death)? His answer was telling: it’s better to convince them of the error of their ways.

This is a surprising answer, to be sure, but after all it is the same answer that the supreme leader has implicitly given to the much asked question: why have you not properly punished the leaders of the Green Movement, Mousavi and Karroubi? In both cases, the regime is afraid to move decisively against their opponents. Khamenei & Co. are real tough guys when it comes to torturing and killing students, political activists, homosexuals, Bahais, Christians and women. But even when it comes to their favorite targets — the women — they retreat in the face of strong protests, as in the recent case when they suspended the stoning of a poor woman unfairly accused of adultery. Her plight has attracted international attention, and the regime backed off.

Conservative? Then you must hate "the other".

Dennis Prager:

A Washington Post columnist writes a serious column about what could be a parody of conservative positions. If you want to see yourself in the liberal mirror, read on.

Yglesias:

This year, us-vs.-them controversies are proliferating,

And it's all because of the economy. Especially the hatred and zenophobia. Because according to the dominant ideologies of today's left, money and power trump most other moral issues.  Most of the Left is also very concerned about their notions of equality and "diversity".    VDH has a few alternative ideas about the reasons for the present conflicts in our society and politics.

Yes, one walk across the Yale or Stanford campus circa 1975, and one could see pretty clearly what sort of culture that bunch would create when it came of age and was handed power. If that is reductionism, so be it.

And Yglesias is truly worried about "America's commitment to religious freedom"? Please.

Actually, he's sort of on the same page with Glenn Beck with regard to the right of Muslims to build a mosque at Ground Zero.*  But there is a very strong current within today's Left which is bent on destroying the influence of traditional religions, except for the one which is an actual, physical threat to it.

Because, when you don’t confront real evil, you hate those who do.

The greatest challenge for the Israeli position isn’t in the media. It’s on the typical college campus. Because there, the truth doesn’t matter. . .

Yes, this unwillingness to show judgment, for judging simply means discerning between two ways, will cause destruction.

To not discern, to lack judgment, is not a mark of intelligence. In fact, a lack pf perception is as handicapped as being actually blind.

* Update: I don't listen to Glenn Beck often, but now he is on early-morining radio, and I heard him say that he had changed his mind, based on the increasing evidence of ties to terrorist groups among the backers of Cordoba House.  How the Gutfield gay bar could get around zoning restrictions.    The Democratic governor of New York is offering State help if the backers will move the mosque further from Ground Zero.

Update 2: Paul Mirengoff does a miniFisk on the Yglesias piece.

The Power of Narrative: History of World War II

Via Instapundit, Tigerhawk links Wretchard: “It is a measure of the power of narrative that we publicly grieve more for the deaths of our enemies than those of our allies in a war that is now fading quickly from human memory.”

As the New York Times remembers Hiroshima, try this quiz. Name the two greatest losses of civilian life in the Pacific war. Hint. In both cases the civilian casualties were greater than Hiroshima’s. In one case the event took place on American soil.


Casualties
Hiroshima 70,000–80,000
Battle of Manila 100,000
Nanjing 300,000

Check out the Belmont Club comment thread, too.

Those killed at Hiroshima, and later Nagasaki, were killed in spite of their
being non-combatants.

Most of those killed in Manila and the vast majority of the slain in Nanjing
were killed because they were non-combatants. Wherever the Japanese went, the slaughter started after resistance ceased.

When the Americans carried the day, the killing stopped as soon as the victory was won.


We've nothing to apologize for.

And for a powerful example of how to counter the "narrative", go back to the link at the top of this post and watch the Bill Whittle vs. Jon Stewart video linked by Glenn Reynolds.

A feisty view here.

The value of returning to original source documents when studying history.

Judge Walker's Ruling: Egging On Conflict, Re-affirming Power

What a nightmarish can of worms Judge Walker has opened with his haughty, earth-shaking decision on Proposition 8. It is clear that the Left will never settle for the Rush Limbaugh-Elton John Compromise.

Wretchard:

Although the debate over Proposition 8 is going to be argued in terms of the legal doctrine of equal protection, in the light of recent developments in Arizona, Missouri and Texas, it is inevitably going to seen as another tussle between the Feds and the States, between the Center and the Periphery, and unlikely as it may seem in the case of California, between Red and Blue. What is interesting about these disputes is that they seem to be multiplying and increasing in frequency rather than diminishing. Conflicts normally either disincentive the parties from further argument or egg them on. In this case, the eggs have it. The question is: why?

Later, in the comments, he provides some of his own thoughts:

Leaving the morality and religion out and only the politics in, JC in KZ probably has it right. Marriage, or whatever you want to call it, is part of something that sits underneath the civilizational rules.  It’s rooted in biology. In the statistical distribution of human genes.  It’s like VmWare running under a number of different operating systems.  It is argued that the practical problems of homosexuals can only be solved by getting the OS to take over the VmWare.  But that makes the solution far more complicated than it has to be or maybe even infeasible.

It is politically difficult to sell a solution stated in terms that are intuitively — I will not say rationally but intuitively — repellant to 90% of the population.  There are other ways to meet the practical needs of homosexuals without resorting to cramming it down the majority’s throats in this particular way.  But the Left will have this way and no other.


There’s a certain petulance to this insistence which goes far beyond the actual scope of the problem.  In fact, it’s not a debate about homosexual rights at all.  It is about who gets to officially define human nature more than anything else. Human nature must be made infinitely adaptable to the requirements of the planners. Otherwise there would “high beauties forever beyond their reach”.

I’ll wager that one day the Left will decide gays have no rights. And on that day they will have none.


I don’t think this is about “legislating morality” either way. It is about power. It is an unnecessary, gratuitous and pointless dispute in a world where it is easier to live and let live. And that meaninglessness is the reason it is so compelling to the left. What is power but the ability to insist on the pointless?

Wretchard's statement about future betrayal of gays by the Left is a little shocking.  But he has personal experience with perfidy by leftists.  And maybe "pointless" is an over-statement.  The conflict DOES provide lots of employment among the ruling class. As illustrated in Iowahawk's report on this
 wedgeapalooza.

Update: Random thoghts by Victor Davis Hanson on Angry America. He's our neighbor from up the road. He's a farmer and an academic. He knows about real life, ancient history and theoretical, idealized life. The kicker comes at the end.

Gay marriage - A simple issue? Really?

When I was in elementary school, there was exactly one child among two classes my age, 50 or more children, whose parents were divorced. Well, for a few months there was a second girl, who became my best friend, whose mother was divorced. She and her mother moved suddenly, and we never got a chance to say good-bye. There were no children in my class who were living with deliberately single mothers. Some things have changed since then.

Changes in technology (birth control) and law (no-fault divorce, etc.) decreased the importance of marriage in society. And theories from the Left have knocked marriage first one way and then the other. In my lifetime, marriage has been portrayed by the Left as a meaningless piece of paper, as slavery, as an expression of patriarchy and authoritarianism,  as an institution within which any woman who has sex is being raped, as an arrangement of temporary convenience, as in "starter marriages", and as many other things. Lots of people have felt lots of pain as a result of these various theories. NOW, marriage is suddenly a constitutional right. Until the Left comes up with another goal.

People are starting to talk about some of the legal problems which are posed by same-sex marriage. Like what do you do with the "presumption of paternity" in the case of a lesbian marriage? Or annulment based upon a non-consummated marriage? The law books must be full of wording that will need to be changed, all because of the insistence that the definition of ONE WORD be changed.   What about the Rush Limbaugh-Elton John Compromise?

Gay marriage seems to me to pose the danger of making marriage less attractive to heterosexual men, especially in "at-risk communities" where young men already think of "Sperm Donor"as an ideal family role.

For one thing, the NYT reported that about half of gay married men in Massachusetts do not consider sexual fidelity to be particularly important. Understandably. So, if gay and straight marriage are "totally the same", why shouldn't straight men expect that their wives will be cool with hubby having sex with other people? If your girlfriend doesn't like that idea, why get married and face conflict over your desire for other women? Is there any value to the idea of marriage as a "civilizing bridge between the sexes", requiring both partners to rein in their natural inclinations for the benefit of the partnership?  Should the word "marriage" be made so broad that such social responsibilities become less obvious?

And then there's the recent liberal theme that fathers are, at best, second-rate mothers. Never mind increased pathologies among youths in fatherless homes. Or "daddy-hunger" among young children. Signs of "daddy hunger" such as a child having to be "pried from the leg" of a male day care worker every day are interpreted not as signs of distress over the absence of a father, but as evidence that the child-care worker makes a fine father substitute. When a boy suggests that his two mothers can find a dad to move in with them, it's just "cute". Mentioning those phenomena in a concerned way will soon be "hate speech" directed at a protected minority.

The Left has characterized the idea that children do better if their fathers are involved in their lives as irrational bigotry. President Obama was apparently totally off-base when he tried to convince young black men to take more responsibility for their children.  Sometimes I wonder if the President's opposition to same-sex marriage might be partly due to his difficult experiences as a community organizer in Chicago, dealing with a culture dominated almost totally by women (with the men often entering gangs instead of staying with the mothers of their children).

If fathers get no respect for any unique contribution as a parent, WHY NOT be the sperm donor for a lesbian couple instead of marrying? Or brag about your "baby mommas" raising your kids with their own mothers (since two women make the ideal parenting team).  This would be in line with some old British/American feminist and socialist positions which seem to be making a come-back now.  Though limiting the number of male children is not being pushed currently.

The feminist position on sex education remains:

What is important here is to separate sex from procreation

And hence, from parenthood. As liberal policies have done in the South Side of Chicago.

The push to encourage acceptance of gay and bisexual relationships as "normative" also seems to be having an effect in "at risk" populations. A friend who works at a Job Corps reported that a very high percentage of the students, upwards of 40%, self-identified as gay or bisexual, with a high percentage of those claiming to be bisexual. I am bracing for the liberal push for "bisexual marriage rights".

During the relatively short period in ancient Greece when male homosexual relationships were revered as "purer" than those with women, because there were no concerns of marriage or inheritance, bisexual behavior increased dramatically. And the independence and status of women were also reduced in Athens during this "golden age", with sequestration and veiling of upper-class wives. Prostitutes had more freedom than other women. But at that time, marriage and homosexual relationships were thought of separately.

 Who knows what bisexual "family relationships" will be promoted in the near future by the "marriage is a constitutional right" crowd? Whatever they are, they will not fit the ideal model demonstrated by large-scale studies, which show that the best environment for growing children is in a stable, low-conflict home with both biological parents. (As far as I know, most of the smaller comparative studies with same-sex parents compared those families to heterosexual families with divorced and re-married or co-habiting  parents, due to the small number of children raised from infancy in a same-sex household).

I was not particularly surprised that many young women in the Job Corps would claim to be bisexual, as more information is coming out recently concerning the "fluidity" of female sexual orientation. Plus all the stories about women in Hollywood and elsewhere who seem to change their sexual orientation, and pornography directed at men which feature lesbian sex.

 But my friend said that there was also a high percentage of young men who claimed to be bisexual. Interesting how the old hard-left theme that sexual orientation is just a matter of "social conditioning" is now making a comeback, after the Left spent years trying to convince us that sexual orientation is totally immutable. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, with many women being more "flexible" in their sexual attractions. More information needed. Exciting, unsettling times ahead.

Why does the Left HATE conservatives?

Dennis Prager:

Of all the recent revelations to come out of JournoList, an e-mail list consisting of about 400 liberal/left journalists, perhaps the most telling is the depth of their hatred for conservatives. That these journalists would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. What is jolting is the hatred of conservatives on display, as exemplified by the e-mail from a public-radio reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death — and the apparent absence of any objection from her fellow liberal journalists.

Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs — such things exist on the right as well — but to mainstream, elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the Left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the Left’s hatred of conservative individuals. . .

From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people of the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them. The question is, why?

Here are three possible answers.

First, the Left thinks the Right is evil. . .

Second, when you don’t confront real evil, you hate those who do. . .

. . . The enemies this administration is prepared to name are the Republican party, the tea parties, Fox News, and talk radio. . .

Third, the Left’s utopian vision is prevented only by the Right.

From its inception, leftism has been a secular utopian religion. As Ted Kennedy, paraphrasing his brother Robert F. Kennedy, said, “Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not?” That exemplifies left-wing idealism — imagining a utopian future. There will be no poor, no war, no conflict, no inequality. That future is only a few more government programs away from reality. And who stands in the way of such perfection? Conservatives.   How could a utopian not hate a conservative?

. . . The problem is that this hatred does not decrease when the Left is in power.

Hatred of conservatives is so much a part of the Left that the day the Left stops hating conservatives will mark the beginning of the end of the Left as we know it.

Read the whole thing. Do his observations square with yours?

Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters and Arizona Sheriffs?

To repeat myself just a little, Wretchard has an interesting take on the sudden end to Charlie Rangel's special status, which for many years exempted him from "the rules".   In reference to the inability of our Ruling Class to notice danger signals around them, he writes:

No better symptom of the absence of alarms is the genuine astonishment of Charles Rangel that it is illegal to break the law.  Almost as a matter of course he concealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, used Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for private causes, took four rent controlled apartments for himself.  Innocently. He probably didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.   Things had been so sweet, so long that even after he was offered the chance to negotiate his way out of 13 separate violations of House rules and federal statutes he simply refused to believe it was happening. . . 

1.  Those whom the gods will destroy, they first make mad with power.

Charles Rangel’s problem is that the old world has picked this moment to suddenly die underneath him.   He won his last race with 89% of the vote, as big a margin as you can get outside of North Korea or Syria.  Now he faces 13 counts at the hands of colleagues who are his “friends,” but maybe not “friends” enough to lose their next election on his behalf.  It’s unfair in a way.  Nick Nyhart of the Huffington Post says that because the “whole system” is guilty, Charlie Rangel shouldn’t be singled out for punishment.  He wants the Republicans on trial too and hopes Rangel doesn’t have to face ethics charges.  “Rep. Rangel may be the one in the spotlight today, but it’s the whole system that’s guilty.”  He might be right at that.  But he should be careful what he wishes for. The road is like a river.  Once you step on to it, there’s no telling where it takes you. . . .

But what could Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters possibly have in common with Arizona sherrifs facing the dilemma of a federal government unwilling to enforce immigration laws?  I find this observation to be very astute.  Read the whole essay.  We're on the brink of some very serious breakdowns in the way we have been accustomed to the world working:

Although Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters* and Arizona sheriff Paul Babeau have nothing obvious in common, a single thread runs through their recent actions.  Each is unwilling to be reined in.  Rangel and Waters are thumbing their noses at the Congressional ethics committees attempting to investigate them for corruption.  In the instance of the sheriff, he is pushing back against what nearly 70% of the population regard as the irrational immigration policy of not enforcing it. The other side is pushing back too — at the law. “Undocumented and unafraid” was the slogan of 22 self-confessed illegal aliens who sat in five Senator’s offices in the Capitol. . .

“Civil disobedience”, once a term of honor used by those who fought tyranny, now means “I’m walking out with the TV from the store and you can’t stop me.” If Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel and the “undocumented and unafraid” bunch are willing to simply tear up the tickets in the face of law enforcement, and law enforcement, as typified by Sherrif Joe Arpaio are determined to issue the tickets anyway, what impends is not a simple “failure to communicate” but a warning that the legitimacy of the system is under attack. Fewer and fewer know the rules any more.   And the word that everything is there for the taking is leaking out.   News that a Mexican drug cartel has put a price on Sheriff Arpaio’s head isn’t really so surprising. . .

Pinal County (Ariz.)_ Sheriff Paul Babeu said, “What’s very troubling is the fact that at a time when we in law enforcement and our state need help from the federal government, instead of sending help they put up billboard-size signs warning our citizens to stay out of the desert in my county because of dangerous drug and human smuggling and weapons and bandits and all these other things and then, behind that, they drag us into court with the ACLU.”  President Obama who ran on being post-everything has partnered with everyone. The result is that no one knows whose side he is on; and that engenders a feeling of betrayal in everyone who thought he was on ‘their’ side.

The problem is that when public policy and its enforcement mechanisms blink on and off like a broken intersection stop sign nobody knows if the signal is meant to be obeyed or not. Eventually people who stare at the light decide ‘not’. . . . .

2.  The wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind very fine:

The designers of the American political system set it up to tolerate local dysfunction — the Federal system established limits on power and created firewalls against the spread of the consequences of their abuse.  But those limits were inconvenient to the boundlessly ambitious.  Since World War 2 the narrative has been of increasingly putting the central government in charge of everything. The Super New Dealers are here. That centralized the risk as well. Once the firewalls on imbecility have been dismantled the inevitable consequence, as in the case of the global financial system, is that limits to their dysfunctional effects are removed as well.

Then you have a cascading effect. One reason why systems often don’t fail gradually is because small changes, each seemingly inconsequential in itself, can come together and enable each other. The blaze just jumps when it exceeds a certain temperature. Just as people often think they have more money than they have, the system had less ‘give’ than its masters believed. Now the challenge on the left will be, not as they believed, to ensure their permanent majority, but to simply ensure that the bills are paid and that their routine instructions are followed.   It’s an ancient process, one already known to the Greeks. Hubris, which was defined as “ruin, folly, delusion” is often followed by Nemesis. That wasn’t hard to guess thousands of years ago. But for some moderns, who would have thought it?

3.  When it gets dark enough, you can see the stars.

Are things dark enough now that we can see the stars, or will things get worse first?

"Rep. Maxine Waters is vowing to fight charges that she violated House ethics rules. But Waters may face an uphill battle. . .

. . . Frank inserted language in the TARP that enabled OneUnited to draw $12 million in aid. Frank did this even though OneUnited had what the Post calls a "mixed" record of lending to minority communities. That's a charitable characterization. According to the Globe, the handful of mortgages the bank had written in recent years were mainly to wealthy clients in chic locations, including the South End and Martha's Vineyard, despite the bank's stated mission to support Boston's urban communities. . .

In addition, OneUnited had run afoul of regulators for buying its executives a Porsche. Other perks included a $6.4 million beachfront mansion in Santa Monica the bank says it used to conduct business. . . .

OneUnited has missed all but one of six scheduled payments to the Treasury Department. . .

More on Our Ruling Class

Further to the Codevilla essay, Wretchard discusses Caroline Glick's article on the foreign policy implications of The Essay Read Round the World. Plus thoughts on Niall Ferguson's positions, presented in Australia: Ferguson describes how rapidly empires can fall.

The Bourbon monarchy in France passed from triumph to terror with astonishing rapidity. The sun set on the British Empire almost as suddenly. The Suez crisis in 1956 proved that Britain could not act in defiance of the US in the Middle East, setting the seal on the end of empire.

But those things happen only to the denizens of history.   People who live in the today usually think they are different. So despite evidence of dramatic change, people who have spent their whole lives among the policy certainties of the postwar period find it difficult to accept they may have to build a world of their own from first principles. Ferguson asks his audience: “what would you do in a world without America? Has the question even crossed your mind?” . . .

Australia’s post-war foreign policy has been, in essence, to be a committed ally of the US. But what if the sudden waning of American power that I fear brings to an abrupt end the era of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region? Are we ready for such a dramatic change in the global balance of power? Judging by what I have heard here since I arrived last Friday, the answer is no. Australians are simply not thinking about such things.

But if the Australians are not thinking about it, the Chinese are certainly preparing for it. . . .

Don't know if I am ready for China to be "policeman to the world".

More:

If the love of money is the root of all evil, the lack of it is the cause of the fall of empires. Ferguson gave some examples:

Think of Spain in the 17th century: already by 1543 nearly two-thirds of ordinary revenue was going on interest on the juros, the loans by which the Habsburg monarchy financed itself.

Or think of France in the 18th century: between 1751 and 1788, the eve of Revolution, interest and amortisation payments rose from just over a quarter of tax revenue to 62 per cent.

Finally, consider Britain in the 20th century. Its real problems came after 1945, when a substantial proportion of its now immense debt burden was in foreign hands. Of the pound stg. 21 billion national debt at the end of the war, about pound stg. 3.4bn was owed to foreign creditors, equivalent to about a third of gross domestic product.

Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed in Washington, as the US contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $US1.47 trillion ($1.64 trillion), about 10 per cent of GDP, for the second year running.

But alarm bells aren’t ringing in Washington. The entire alarm system has been disabled, disconnected, perhaps scrapped. Anyone who wants to turn it back on will have to root through the dumpster to see if any usable parts can still be retrieved. No better symptom of the absence of alarms is the genuine astonishment of Charles Rangel that it is illegal to break the law. Almost as a matter of course he concealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, used Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for private causes, took four rent controlled apartments for himself. Innocently. He probably didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. . . .

Everyday evidence of the existence of a Ruling Class:

The Academic-Industrial Complex: University presidents on corporate boards, etc.

Social Privilege and the career of Elena Kagan. Written by a lefty.

"Taxes are for the Little People" - Yachting and Vacation Edition

From the Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe:

From Newport, R.I., where Kerry’s ‘Isabel’ was berthed before heading to Nantucket, to Rhinebeck, N.Y., where Chelsea Clinton was married in a mansion modeled after Versailles, today’s Democrats are looking more like Louis XVI than Tip O’Neill. Kick in the First Family’s vacation plans for Martha’s Vineyard, and there’s a real air of Marie Antoinette & Co. retreating to idyllic gardens, while Fox News whips up revolutionary flames. The ethics charges against Representative Charles Rangel of New York are added foie gras.

The author goes on to make a case that the image is only superficial, because:

While Republicans drape themselves in middle class values, they are sticking it to the middle class. It’s all in the effort to deny Obama and the Democrats any positive political message.


Last week, Senate Republicans rejected a bill to aid small business with expanded loan programs and tax breaks.

BUT she leaves out some details about the bills they voted against:

First, the tax provisions to which she refers are a provision of Obamacare which requires the issuance of a 1099 for anything purchased over $600. Insofar as every Republican in the house and senate voted against Obamacare, they already voted against this nonsense. Secondly, in an effort to repeal the mistake which nearly every Democrat in the house and senate voted for, they proposed a bill repealing the provision, but enacting a large tax increase as well. It was for this reason that Republicans voted against the bill; because it was a tax increase.

So which is Joan Vennochi? Is she a liar or an ignoramus?

She also mentions Scott Brown's vote against a bill to extend unemployment benefits. What doesn't make it into the news, because of people like Joan Vennochi, is that the Republicans explained that they were voting against the bill BECAUSE IT WAS 'FUNDED' BY ADDING IT TO THE DEFICIT. They proposed funding extended unemployment benefits with unspent "stimulus" money. It is true that they were trying to hold the Democrats' to their "pay as you go" pledge, so their opposition was partly political. But they were also voting in favor of the interests of FUTURE middle-class Americans. And probably in the interests of middle-class Americans not too far into the future. Not that they didn't lose their way in the past with their own deficit spending. But deficit spending during this administration is WAY out of control and truly threatens rising generations.

Roger L. Simon on the Party of the Rich and the Press:

But wait, as they say, there’s more. At this moment, two of their leaders from a supposedly disadvantaged minority are about to be tried for ethical transgressions (read: thievery) even Congress couldn’t sweep under the rug. Never mind that these transgressions mostly exploit the very minority these people purport to represent. It’s part of the game. Convince minorities they should act like victims. Extort guilt payments from the majority and keep the change. Meanwhile, nothing improves for the minority because it would interrupt the system.

This all occurs during the administration of a president who once trumpeted “transparency” and “change,” pronouncements that seem to have been made so long ago now you can’t remember if it happened before or after the fall of the Roman Empire. This same Democratic president, however, continues to collect big royalties from books he may or may not have written. He’s certainly not the first.

Furthermore, in recent days, some Grub Street drones have been revealed to be enablers, or perhaps cheerleaders, of all the above. Particularly clueless, this crowd does the low-paying grunt work for their truly plutocratic Democrat employers from Huffington to Sulzberger. At least the Dems’ Hollywood supporters are making some decent money off their useful idiocy.

Talk about a confederacy of dunces. . . .

I used to think, as I wrote in my book on Hollywood of a couple of years ago, that these limousine liberals created “mini-me” clones out of the Austin Powers flicks to proclaim publicly their undying support for the common man; so that, in their private lives, these same “progressive plutocrats” could go on raping and pillaging as before. Barbra Streisand is a typical example, but George Soros, more than any movie star, is the poster boy for that kind of behavior.


But these days, it seems, even the “mini-me” is being abandoned. The pretenses are gone. No more Mr. Good Guy, phony as he was. No more obeisance to Mother Teresa (she’s dead anyway) or special concerts for African AIDS. It has evolved to another stage. Chelsea Clinton gets her multi-million dollar wedding no matter how it looks to the rest of us. John Kerry acts as if having tax issues for your yacht is just another average problem for Joe Normal, and Al Gore … well, the less said about him the better.


When I say it has evolved to another stage, I also mean that our political leaders now behave more or less like members of competing Mafia families. The Clintons do not invite the Obamas — or the Gores, for that matter – to their wedding. That Jenna Bush’s wedding cost a paltry one hundred grand is forgotten, a thing of the past barely commented upon. Chelsea marries into a family whose connections are no more savory than the Corleones, as Ron Radosh reminds us.


Meanwhile, the tea partiers are accused of racism that no one can prove. The illusion that the Democrats are the party of the people continues. And the beat goes on.