May 11, 2013
Political Language?
A beloved relative posted this today. I cannot embed, but you'll want to go read the headline on Upworthy.com. "The Earth-Shatteringly Amazing Speech That'll Change The Way You Think About Adulthood."
For those who do not have progressive friends on Facebook: a) what in the hell do you do for aggravation?, and, b) know that Upworthy.com belches out a constant stream of stuff like this which is fawned over by Facebook Progs in search of something really deep. I'm being mean and petty -- but you have not yet watched the video. Watch it coast to coast and tell me I am being harsh.
It's humorous in a David Sedaris -NPR kind of way; you can hear the chattering classes tittering in the audience. Talk about first world problems -- the wheel on his shopping cart sticks! Can't Harry Reid do something about that? Children ride in these carts ferchrissakes!
Yes, life sucks so bad. Your sweet car gets stuck in traffic, and the supermarket is so full of plenty that you have to walk through clean and "over-lit" aisles full of inexpensive varieties of goods to get what you want. The f***ing humanity!
But the solution, kindly provided (that's what makes it soooo amazing!) is to realize everybody else's life sucks too! Maybe worse! Damn, I feel better.
How about you appreciate the affluence that a bad shopping cart wheel is the worst part of your food acquisition experience (vis-a-vis hunting down a mammoth with a spear...)? Or hows and aboutin' you plan ahead to shop at a less congested time. Or order online? Or start a company that delivers groceries to the others who find this unpleasant?
I came here to rant, but I left a comment for my dear cousin:
"I hope this guy does not work the 'suicide hotline.'"
Yes my friends you've just spent tons of money and time to get this great education which you really needed to have because only the educated know that big secret found in the lines of a Jimmy Buffet song.
"Life is mostly attitude and timing"
Unbelievable.
Posted by: Terri at May 11, 2013 10:12 PMAnd our parents thought the kids of their generation were worthless, stupid lazy-asses. We were pikers! Today's crop wouldn't know "adulthood" if their Depends undergarment slipped.
Posted by: johngalt at May 12, 2013 12:06 PMFebruary 6, 2013
A Rant is Clearly Required
<rant>
These ^&!@*^ing people have a lot to answer for!
Ranting is not my thing, but we sit back and let "them" push "these things" through.
We know better. We knew about ethanol mandates. We knew about plastic bag bans. We knew about the moronically foolish inefficacy of Kyoto. And yet, these predictable policy train wrecks keep happening.
San Francisco's Plastic Bag Ban Kills About 5 People A YearI was aware of the negative economic consequences of plastic bag bans and plastic bag taxes, both for bag manufacturers and businesses that use the bags. I was also aware that when you raise the price of things (as the plastic bag tax does in places like D.C.), you make things harder for the people least able to adjust to arbitrary price increases -- the poor. And I was aware that any environmental benefit we're likely to see from bag bans and bag taxes is speculative at best.
I was not aware that the plastic bag bans have a death toll, as Ramesh Ponnuru writes in Bloomberg:
Ponnuru offers a novel; suggestion: how about leaving people alone?
The authors argue, not completely convincingly, against the idea that regular washing and drying of reusable bags would solve the problem. They point out that the use of hot water and detergent imposes environmental costs, too. And reusable bags require more energy to make than plastic ones. The stronger argument, it seems to me, is that 97 percent figure: Whatever the merits of regularly cleaning the bags, it doesn't appear likely to happen.The best course for government, then, is probably to encourage people to recycle their plastic bags -- or, maybe, just let people make their own decisions. Plastic-bag bans are another on a distressingly long list of political issues where I cannot see eye to eye with Eva Longoria.
Like ethanol. There is NO BENEFIT (see, it is a rant if you use all caps!). It is a non-solution to a problem that may or may not exist. Yet, undeterred, they'll be on to their next big fix, ignoring the hungry Guatemalans and dead infected Americans in the wake of previous "successes."
</rant>
Huzzah! Imagine the benefit to society if government, and the media which drives much of its behavior, instead focused its considerable resources on issues of greater import, e.g. how many squares of toilet tissue Eva Longoria uses in the loo.
Posted by: johngalt at February 6, 2013 6:29 PMWho cares if washing the bags will happen or not? The best course for the government is to sit down, shut up and no run around banning anything and everything they see.
Posted by: Steve D at February 8, 2013 5:30 PMDecember 20, 2012
Sarah Hoyt - "Ungovernable"
Sarah Hoyt, who grew up in the Socialist Paradise of Portugal and is a successful author of many a fine SF/F novel, sees the future...and has faith that the American people will weather the difficult times ahead with some measure of style:
I’ve said before that I became an American by reading Heinlein books. This is true at least to an extent, though I’d be at a loss to explain the process to you. I mean, if you knew how to do that, book by book, chipping away, so someone starts out wondering what’s wrong with all those Americans who don’t like taxes (don’t they know taxes are civilization? And have always existed) and ends up thinking getting a Don’t Tread On Me tattoo is a brilliant idea, even while immersed in a socialist, communitary system, we’d have no problems. We’d just use “the process.”Mind, you, it is likely that the er… Heinleinizing (totally a word. Don’t worry your pretty head) of my opinions came from watching socialism up close and personal. Heinlein had help. But all the same, and even so, by the time I came to the States as an exchange student I had been, so to put it, primed to react to the US as “home.”
(...)
This is why statists of any stripe so often throw their hands up and call us ungovernable. Not that this gives them the idea they shouldn’t try. No. Instead, they try to devise more cunning ways of governing us. You have them to give credit for dreaming the impossible dream. It’s the one proof we have that the sons of beetles are Americans.
So… after sixty years of creeping statism, they’ve now “captured the flag” – they have actually got all of the important systems sewn up: news, entertainment, education, government.
They think – can you blame them? – that they won.
I won’t say they can’t hurt us. They can. The mechanisms they’ve seized hold of are important and they are – natch – misusing them.
I’m not saying that this will be easy. It won’t. Our economy is likely to be an incredible shambles, and I’ve said before I think we’ll lose at least one city.
But, listen, the problem with these sons of… Babel is that they might be American, but they’re not American ENOUGH. If they were, they’d understand “ungovernable” and this willingness for each of us to go it alone (often for common benefit, but on own recognizance, nonetheless) is not a bug. It’s a feature. And that it’s baked in the cake of a people who came here to escape the top-down spirit of other places. Some of the black sheep (or as one friend of mine calls it, the plaid sheep) attitude is genetic, hereditary, inborn. And enough of us have it.
Finally, let's note that Sarah is from COLORADO. There's just something about that place. Rand didn't choose it to be a star of Atlas Shrugged out of thin air.
Not to diss on brother ew's excerpting skills, but read the whole thing. Touquevillian.
Posted by: jk at December 20, 2012 1:22 PMI see I spelt it "Unogvernable" in the link but I'm leaving it 'cause it's appropriately symbolic!
Posted by: Ellis Wyatt at December 20, 2012 1:32 PMAn interesting comparison of American individualism and European specialization. One might expect comparative advantage to give Europeans the edge, but that's not the way this essay reads. Instead it gives them, stagnation.
Could it be that specialization, while more efficient, also creates monopolies? Or at least cartels. Supply is diminished and costs rise to the point where the nonessential is just dispensed with. A translation: Nonessential = luxuries.
So in addition to individual empowerment and, yes, liberation, the human tendency toward generalization also tends toward larger and freer markets. Whoa - felt a shudder just then.
Posted by: johngalt at December 20, 2012 5:36 PMSorry man, but I don't see any of that. I see a bit of class-distinction (Americans don't "know their place") versus a bit of boisterousness. A bit of community spirit. Yet even in the context of our specialization discussions I don't see it here.
Posted by: jk at December 20, 2012 6:17 PMI think it's not exactly specialization or generalization, but American's do-it-yourselfization that she is getting at. When merde happens, more Americans jump in the water and rescue the kid, fix the leak in the dam, put out the fire...whereas most Euros wait for the official, credentialed unionized repair person. Our government officials are always trying to turn us into that, but she thinks it hasn't really taken.
Posted by: Ellis Wyatt at December 20, 2012 7:43 PMPart of the thing with Europe is the worship of the “experts.” “We’ll take it to the expert” or “We’ll have the expert do it.”
There is more than one thing going on here, I admit. One is a submission to authoritah. Another is a certain humility that "one person can't do everything." Though whether it is a chicken or its egg, this condition depends upon specialization.
Maybe it's my exposure to academia that makes me more sensitive. Whenever someone tells me I "can't" then I, like Heinlein, become more determined. "No, buddy ... YOU can't!"
Posted by: johngalt at December 21, 2012 4:04 PMNovember 5, 2012
Albert Jay Nock: The Masses and the Remnant
Have you read the Book of Isiah lately? As we head into tomorrow and the Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes, I recall what the great Albert Jay Nock had to say in The Atlantic Monthly back in 1936:
It was one of those prosperous reigns, however — like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington — where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash. (...)"Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life." (...)
Why, if all that were so — if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start — was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it." (...)
As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, laboring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.
One may, if one has actually had a semblance of an education, recall that the Founders made sure the masses would not have a real voice in how the United States was to be run. As in every Republic in history, this gradually broke down. 1913, 1933, 1965...each step in the process seemed right at the time. There were good reasons; all the best professors at America's finest universities taught them.
And so we have come to this pass. Tomorrow, I expect that the masses will reelect the President and accelerate the time whent he Remant must again rebuild a failing society. Take a deep breath, Three Sourcers. We are a piece of the Remnant and better put on our armor and sharpen our swords, for truly the Scheiss is coming.
I realize that this is serving as a sort of election prediction. I would be delighted to be proven wrong tomorrow. If so, I will happily go right out of the Prophecy business!
Posted by: Ellis Wyatt at November 5, 2012 3:47 PMMight I add, when the Scheiss hits the rotary impeller, it will not be distributed evenly.
Isaiah had an unenviable job laid out before him. I disagree with you about tomorrow's expectations, but even with the SCOAMF departing 1600 Pennsylvania, it only slows down the process. Eventually, all Republics follow the course of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
That being said, it will be the place of the Remnant to rebuild in the aftermath of the economic carnage, and I'd recall these words to your mind for that situation:
"The road is cleared," said Galt. "We are going back to the world."
Posted by: Keith Arnold at November 5, 2012 4:16 PM"SURVIVOR: US Economic Collapse Edition"
Posted by: johngalt at November 5, 2012 5:16 PMSeems like there are several places I could put this reply but I am going to put it here because, I think I must be counted among the pessimists at this time. I don’t wish to be remnant. Such re-building will require guns, and hunger. I might survive such but as one of the few parents on this blog, I realize that it would be very hard on my little kids. It will cost them a childhood if not more.
I remember on election eve 4 years ago thinking that we would probably win because there was no way that 50% of our electorate was stupid enough to vote for such a thinly-veiled, failed socialist ideology. Boy was I wrong! I clearly misjudged our electorate. I still don’t think they are mostly stupid, naïve, uneducated, or lazy. I think they are mostly irrational. I don’t think they are intentionally or maliciously irrational. I think they are unknowingly trained to be irrational.
For example, many say that, “health care is a right, everyone should have healthcare.” But they also agree that Doctors, Nurses, and Janitors in hospitals deserve to be paid. So how can I have a, “right,” to someone else’s efforts? But the vast majority of Americans are capable of holding these and many other inherently contradictory ideas.
So I think they will re-elect Barack Obama because they are incapable of recognizing which policies have resulted in our current economic woes, and which policies might correct them based on rational analysis. I sure hope I am wrong again!
Win or lose, I will continue my efforts to fight the destruction of this country as we know it.
As my jg says, “Atlas Shrugged was a cautionary tale, not a blueprint.”
October 25, 2012
Joda Vida Loco
Colorado has been in the national news again for the past weeks, and for another horrific reason. Ten year-old Jessica Ridgeway disappeared on her way to school October 5th and was found dead some days later. I hung on every bit of news with an uneasy combination of need to know, fear, and a simmering rage and hatred for the unhuman monster who could perpetrate such a crime. I was not surprised to learn that the confessed suspect is a maladjusted male who was teased mercilessly by classmates, including girls, and with bizarre interests such as medical examination and mortuary science. I was surprised to learn that he is but 17 years old himself.
I haven't written anything about this before now since I'm confident my thoughts and feelings are universal, particularly amongst parents. But today I want to cite a coincidence that I think is at least a partial clue into the devolution of a human mind to the level we witness here. Last weekend, while harvesting the season's final hay crop, I found a book discarded along the county road that passes our farm. I picked it up. I was mildly taken aback by the doodled word-cloud that covered the outside in half-inch tall red letters:
FEAR, PAIN, SICK BOY, Tourtcher, MADDNE$$, Die By The Sword, DEATH, suicide, I For AN Eye, Blood For Blood, F*** The World, Vengeance I Demand, War, MEth, F*** Sleep, Murder, CRip, KillER, No Mercy, Lust, NO $URENDER, HATE, Rage, REtROBution.
My Hunger, LiES, TRUE Love (garbled), -> Killa, WASTED Time, TRust no Bitch, Kill All that Snitch, F*** The PiG$, ANti Government!, Anti ChRISt, Anti All Realigion.
104% Blood BANG 104% the Punnisher. Demon.
Joda Vida Loco.
I have no idea whose this is, or how it got on the side of my road. But it seems obvious to me it is a school-aged rant. I remember my high school years. It wasn't easy trying to fit in and be myself all at the same time, particularly when I didn't even really know how to "be myself" or who I was. I scribbled kill this, kill that. But this seems beyond anything I ever thought or felt. It brings my constantly integrating mind back to one thing: The crippling of young minds.
Teach your children. Teach them well.
September 25, 2012
jk Takes a Contrarian Position
Brother jg and I both enjoyed the political pundits we follow on twitter mixing up replacement-ref-bashing and politics. You can see a few in the #3src Twitter widget. (By the way, if you have four characters, add it to your tweets -- this is not an exclusive club and I see a lot of blog friends' tweets that I wish they had tagged.)
But I am not abandoning my position of taking Capital's side against Labor. Even after that horrible game. Even after the Interc-- I mean touchdown that ended it. I encourage the owners to be reasonable but hold firm. And I decry that the entire sum IQ of the nation's sportscasters (over/under?) has been devoted to demanding capitulation.
Yes, they suck -- but they suck in a fair, random and chaotic/unpredictable way. Too bad about the bad calls in the last two minutes, Packers, but as my friend routinely tells his kids after a close loss: you want to avoid close losses, score more points. One of the nation's premiere quarterbacks was sacked eight times and held without a touchdown pass. You can't blame that on rookie refs.
I was at LOTR and just caught the last quarter. But I assume if the other games I have seen are anything to go by that lads in green and gold benefitted from a questionable call or two. Suck it up. Score more.
After the teachers' strike in Chicago, I do appreciate that the referees' walkout is legitimate, legal and moral. You guys cannot do this without us, they claim, and many think they are right. I am going to continue to be a stooge for capital and encourage the owners to stand firm.
But damn -- that was a bad call.
My understanding is that the refs were locked out by the owners. They aren't on strike.
As bad as things are with NFL officiating I fully support the owners' position. BUT, they need to decide if saving tons o bucks in referee compensation is worth damaging their brand. Their companies, their choice.
I heard a known conservative-minded sports commentator say today, "The commissioner can do whatever he wants. The owners can do whatever they want." It sounded derisive at the time, but it is true and as it should be.
Posted by: johngalt at September 25, 2012 1:02 PMJG, you appear to be accurate on the lockout-vs-strike issue. The way I hear it, though, it's not a "tons o bucks" issue; one person I read had calculated that for the 120 refs, the total increase in compensation costs is just $35,000 a week total for the lot of them - a drop in the bucket for a business like the NFL. They could completely underwrite that with just two more fines a week for helmet-to-helmet hits (okay, I'm guilty of snark on that one. Sorry).
If it's true that the money isn't that big and the real sticking points are the ability to replace poorly-performing refs and modification of a cherry pension, then the situation does equate in my mind a lot more with the Chicago teachers.
It's been written that on top of their jobs averaging $149,000 a year, the majority of refs have regular day jobs as well. I don't know whether that's true, but if it is, then I would extend your final thought. The commissioner can do what we wants, and the owners can do what they want (except choose who to sell their teams to and move to where they want to move, of course, but that's for another discussion). So can the refs. If they're not getting what they want, they're totally free to go do whatever else they want with their lives and let others compete for the vacancies their departures create.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at September 25, 2012 1:57 PMYou missed something (UPDATE: I mean by not viewing the game, I am not criticizing interleaved comments). The final play was somewhat the icing on the cake. The final five minutes were played pretty much by Lewis Carroll rules. Phantom pass interference and roughing the passer penalties were followed closely by non-calls of the same blatant offenses.
Business Week, which I consider farther left than The Nation, unsurprisingly misses the key difference. The NFL is a private entity which must consider damage to its brand versus discounted future costs and labor flexibility. The children and taxpayers of Chicago are underrepresented in negotiations, but I think the NFL owners are pretty well lawyered up.
C'mon. You gonna stop watching because the refs are bad? I didn't know there was such a thing as a conservative sportscaster -- but I think the rest are overplaying the damage card. Three hundred angry calls to the Wisconsin local sports talk radio station don't cost the league anything. I think it unlikely that people will stop watching or buying the terrible beer that is cleverly advertised.
Go billionaire 0.1% owners! Smash those poor $150K guys! Show no mercy!
That cherry pension plan is probably costing a lot more than $35k per game. That was the tons-o-bucks I was thinking of. To the extent the sticking point is performance reviews and replacing bad refs, I'll posit that this is the Revenge of Ed Hochuli whose call in that 2008 Broncos game, by the way, effectively reversed the outcome of the game.
Let's step this debate up a bit though: Limbaugh points out that the poor officiating in today's NFL is analogous to partiality in the news media covering American politics. "Which is a greater outrage?"
Posted by: johngalt at September 25, 2012 2:21 PMI'll go along with that: anyone upset by the damage done by the incompetent refs and not upset by the greater and more relevant damage done by the obviously-biased Obama Steno Corps - er, the Mainstream Media™ - ought to have his head and his priority examined.
But if we're going there, then consider:
LIFE IMITATES POLITICS: Bad calls have always been a part of football; we accept that refs aren't perfect, but we do require them to be neither incompetent nor partial. Green Bay was a victim of that last night, but here's a truism: if it's not close, you can't lose a game due to one last-minute bad call. You want the score to be outside the margin of ref error.
That applies to elections just like football. You want to make the margin of victory greater than the margin of fraud. If you do that, you can't get burned by bags of votes mysteriously appearing in the trunk of someone's car, or voting irregularities in the polling places.
Josef Stalin once reportedly said "It's not the people who call the plays, it's the people who make the calls." Stalin was, according to some anonymous sources, an ardent New England Patriots fan.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at September 25, 2012 2:43 PMYou ever see a picture of Stalin and Belichik together? Just askin'...
Posted by: jk at September 25, 2012 3:05 PMAugust 30, 2012
"Straight Outta Rand"
Via Althouse
"That’s straight out of Rand, and ’50s anti-Communist paranoia."
To the tune of, well you know:
You are now about to witness the strength of reason
Verse One: Paul Ryan
Straight outta Rand, crazy m*********** named Ryan
From the gang called GOP
When I'm called off, I take the gloves off
Rhyme a syllogism, and bodies are hauled off
You too, Walsh, if ya f*** with me
Mitt Romney gonna hafta come and get me
Off yo ass, that's how I'm goin out
For the punk m*********** that's showin out
Progressives start to mumble, they wanna rumble
I throw the math and they cry and stumble
Goin off on a m********* like that
with a sharp brain that's pointed at yo ass
So give it up smooth.
Ain't no tellin when I'm down for a rational mind move
Here's a budget rap to keep yo thinkin
with a debt like that, you should be blinkin
Reason is the tool
Don't try and call me no m********* fool
Me you can go toe to toe, no maybe
I'm knockin liberals out tha box, daily
yo weekly, monthly and yearly
until them dumb m********* see clearly
that I'm down with the capital R-A-N-D
Boy you can't f*** with me
So when I'm in your neighborhood, you better duck
Coz Paul Ryan is logical as f***
As I leave, believe it, I'm manned
and when I come back, boy, I'm comin straight outta Rand
What can I say, it's rap day. That ain't no 'hip-hop."
(ADDED: If you are not familiar with the original source material for this parody it probably makes no sense, so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33jyoyJNa2c)
Posted by: Ellis Wyatt at August 30, 2012 4:08 PMJuly 5, 2012
I Don't Need Your (Culture) War. However...
In response to my post Law of the Day on Tuesday, Brother jk notes "I tend to run from this stuff because it is tainted with "The Cuture War" which I avoid."
Amen, brother. The "Culture War" belongs with the Wars on poverty, drugs, cancer, etc. They aren't "wars" and they can't be won. However, neither can we disconnect our love of liberty from the culture that sustains it.
I'm not planning to make this an wide-ranging essay, just a few observations and assertions that can be tested and critiqued. I am a huge fan of Paul Johnson's epic Modern Times, and on the Fourth of July Ed Driscoll of PJ Media taps it, if only to partly disagree with Johnson's main thesis.
It's a great, wide-ranging piece, but I don't think Driscoll has quite hit the nail squarely on every point, this time. The New Man theme, the "starting from zero" conceit, got its big debut with the French Revolutionaries, not the scientific socialist eugenics technocrats of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. About a million died in that 18th century effort to change the very nature of humanity, admittedly a pittance compared to the tolls of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and their heirs, but given the old technology the French had available, pretty large, non?
One of the many, many wonderful things about the U.S. of A. is that we managed to have our culture "wars" over the last five decades with hardly a handful of persons actually killed on either side. Lots of court battles, from Griswold to Roe to Lawrence and all points in between, have broken the legal power of the State to ban birth control, abortion, adultery and sodomy. The battle in most educational institutions to "celebrate" homosexuality, teenage oral sex and condoms for every 12-year-old has been won, and our third graders are being drilled on how "proud" people should be about, well, you know, THAT.
We are in the middle portion of a vast experiment in yes, moral relativism. Nothing is bad, except "trying to tell other people what to do." The funny thing is, the Founders, who ranged in religious conviction from hard-core Christian to Deist to (closeted) atheist, all seemed to believe that individual liberty and continued self government would have to stand on a base of a moral people.
I consider myself a libertarian. I don't believe the power of the state should be used to enforce all of my personal beliefs about the Good, the True and the Beautiful. However, I don't believe that a culture that says it's beautiful to have children with no fathers and no means of support except the state, to screw who- or what-ever you want without social censure and to "tolerate" the intolerable is going to continue to thrive.
I don't want a war, for sure, but I want to be able to apply social pressure to meet the standards that allow for freedom and prosperity. These standards include some restraint and delayed gratification. I'll keep speaking up for those, call it what you may.
Speak up, by all means available. Convince, cajole, even tell "other people what to do." But do so privately. Keep the power of the state out of it.
I'm reiterating rather than contradicting (except on the point that humanity can't win a "war" on cancer) but the focus of your ire should not be those engaged in anti-success behavior, rather the government policies which enable and encourage them. The Siamese-twin of liberal social policies must be a complete dedication to allowing individuals to succeed or fail by their own lifestyle choices. The social safety net is the root cause of cultural decay, not freedom.
I'm reminded at this point of an awesome Tweet by brother Robert last week: "Reality doesn't listen to speeches."
Posted by: johngalt at July 5, 2012 5:24 PM"The social safety net is the root cause of cultural decay, not freedom."
I would add that the government coerced social safety net is the root cause of decay.
The VOLUNTARY social safety net that indicates that we have the wealth to support our children, parents, friends and neighbors and even complete strangers if we wish to is the hallmark of a hugely successful society.
Your points are well taken, and I could have been clearer--all of the things I see as undermining the culture are indeed national government approved or supported laws, programs or education system initiatives. I would argue that states should have the right to restrict or ban some of the things I rant about, see Justice Scalia's many dissenting opinions...
I fight with myself on whether I would vote for them, though.
"Nobody ever said it was gonna be semi-tough."
Posted by: Ellis Wyatt at July 5, 2012 6:25 PMMay 15, 2012
The Gay Marriage "Distraction"
It is a well travelled Republican talking point that the gay marriage issue is a distraction from President Obama's economic record. It's true of course, but the Republicans are as much to blame for said distraction as the Democrats.
A friend from suburban Wichita, Kansas emails a link to this story about a public school teacher posting his views against gay marriage on his Facebook page. He has every right to his beliefs, of course, and to speak them publicly. But by continuing to oppose legal recognition of same-sex marriage we allow him to become the face of our conservative party. I will not stand silently by. How many of us have wished we could have been present in the face of an incident of racial discrimination in the segregated south and that we would have had the courage to say, "No, that is wrong?" Same story, different age.
My Kansas friend sent the link with the note "Need your comments here" to both me and my brother. What follows is my response, which rebutted my brother's.
[Brother] writes that it is "nonsense" that established law denies a right for same-sex marriage, then declares there is "no defined right for same sex couples to "marry." Which is it?[Brother] writes that "The majority of the country does not care what people do in their own bedrooms or whom they decide to 'love'" but then proclaims homosexuality "abnormal" and that he doesn't support homosexual weddings because that would "redefine something that has been a pillar of communities for 5000+ years" and "the more we break down the institution of marriage to simply be a whim, the more our society will continue to degrade." So you, and "the majority of the country" are fine with homosexuality, you just don't want to acknowledge it in law?
[Brother] faults Conkling, the Hutchinson teacher, for "taking the cause backwards" and "fuel[ing] the opposition" by opposing gay marriage on religious grounds. I say [brother] is no different by attempting to oppose this individual liberty on non-religious grounds, whatever those might be. Until he clarifies his contradictions there's no way to know what objective basis he claims.
Conkling's "logic" is even more fallacious: Homosexuality is wrong because it is a sin, equal in God's eyes to all other sins, and we are ALL sinners. He says all sins are equal in God's eyes so homosexuality is equal to murder, but it's also equal to lying. Do you agree that lying is as wrong as murder? I don't. Conkling says he condemns gay marriage "because those who embrace it will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." First of all, doesn't the bible teach man to "judge not?" Secondly, there are other beliefs about heaven and sin and for one man to impose his own upon all other men is just as wrong as Sharia law.
Would it not be better to simply allow civil unions, conferring all the legal rights of marriage while witholding the term "marriage" than to continue to allow this issue to divide Americans and distract from issues that actually matter to all of us, like whether or not America will be a socialist country? And even if they aren't satisfied with civil unions and come back next year demanding "marriage" who cares? Whatever it is called it will still be a minority behavior. Unlike drug legalization nobody makes a legitimate case that legal homosexual marriage will cause more homosexuality. (But so what if it did? Will that affect you? Your children? Anyone who is not "abnormal?")
The cause of western laissez-faire capitalism is a cause of individual liberty. Individual liberty in commerce is a human birthright, as is individual liberty in social relations. Individuals are, by their nature, free to join a commune or establish a nuclear family; free to love another of the same gender or of the opposite gender. If you want to live free of oppressive taxation and wealth redistribution your only argument is individual liberty as a human birthright. But you weaken that argument by denying others a liberty of which you disapprove. Stop it. Admit your mistake and strengthen your position in the debate that really matters - that really affects you and your family's lives - by abandoning a debate that doesn't matter. Don't insist that your beliefs hold dominion over the beliefs of others lest they turn your logic back on you and insist that you are your brother's keeper.
Agreed and well said. There are quite a few things which may be defined as sinful which we do not elevate to statute. "Coveting thy neighbor's ass" is still okay in Weld County, as far as I know.
I allowed a many-years-old subscription to National Review elapse when they demanded -- on the cover -- a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage. I wasn't petulant about it, still respect NR, and have slid a little money their way since.
But I basically reached the same conclusion, that I could not employ the supremacy clause for a personal matter and expect others to defend my economic liberty. I suspect that would not have happened under WFB's more libertarian hand but I have no empirical proof.
On the pragmatic side, I think it remains a killer. Trying to attract somebody younger than 30 to the table of liberty is difficult in the wake of North Carolina's vote and now Colorado's lack of vote.
JK drops his subscription to the National Review and I drop out of the Republican party. I struggled for several weeks about attending our caucuses, knowing that Party of God types would choose Rick Santorum and that a majority of the evening would be spent pushing an amendment to our state constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman. Even before Obama weighed in the strategy was to generate voter turnout based on opposition to gays. I cant possibly vote for Obama but I will not be in a party or campaign that seeks to benefit from an assault on the dignity and liberty of my brothers and sisters. And I won't be alone. Republicans are on the wrong side of history when it comes to Gay rights and they will pay a price for decades to come. Fifty years from now nobody will remember the Bidden gaffes or Obama's fundraising predicament; people will remember the first black president was the first to run for office as a supporter of gay marriage. Democrats enjoy almost unanimous suppport in the African American community based on Kennedy/Johnson era civil rights legislation and if Republicans don't wake up they will lose another voting block.
JK and John Galt, as always, provide a reasoned argument rooted in the Constitution and I appreciate that but this has become something more visceral for me. A couple of weeks ago a little girl in a town next to ours hung herself after being bullied for a year over her mother's sexual orientation. Last night I went to a funeral for one of my daughter's classmates. He climbed onto an overpass and jumped onto the highway below. He was bullied to death for being Gay. I am sickened and heartbroken. I will not be in a party that would deny the basic human dignity and equallity due every man and woman. I wont be part of a political movent that would deny the choice of marriage, the most important, valuable and meaningful decision I've ever made, to others. Bob Marley sings of "forwardin' this generation triumphantly," though in my case it is our younger generation that has been "forwarding" me. Henceforth I intend to help them "sing songs of freedom" and if the Republican party wants to block freedom's way I intend to roll right over them.
Posted by: sugarchuck at May 16, 2012 9:55 AMJK is correct about established attitudes, and I think my brother's beliefs reflect his environment more than his heart. The Kansas friend I mentioned lives near Wichita, more evangelical even than Colorado Springs and yet he replied to me, "in my world in Kansas USA I could care less what the corn-****ers do, just don't interfere with me or my family." A libertarian position that, if a bit intemperately stated.
I can't cite examples of friends or neighbors who've been affected by discrimination, and dagny observed that my attitude has *ahem* evolved. I can say I was profoundly ashamed when my neighbors and fellow delegates loudly booed the speaker from Colorado Log Cabin Republicans when he suggested the Colorado civil unions bill should be supported. When I said, fairly loudly and to no one in particular, "Hey, be nice" the woman next to me turned around incredulously. The rest of the conversation was unspoken but I do believe I impressed upon her that her attitude was something upon which she should reflect.
I had a similar experience at the Romney rally last week. A woman asked me if I wanted to sign her pro-life petition, ubiquitious at GOP events. I shook my head and asked her if she was aware that over two-thirds of Republican delegates to the state convention approved a resolution that abortion and pregnancy are personal, private matters and not the business of government. She was speechless but a man nearby blurted out, "Well they are wrong!"
In the first case I pleaded for civility, and in the second merely cited a fact. The reaction from those who heard me was reflexive, but shallow and unsupported. There was no furher debate or discussion, the respondents merely drifted away silently. These are simply ideas which they've never considered. None has dared utter them in such settings, in all likelihood.
Ayn Rand said that silence in the presence of ideas which you find abhorrent is tacit approval of them. Simply say, "I disagree" she advised in 'Philosophy, Who Needs It?' I hope that brother Sugarchuck, or any of the rest of us, will not abandon the Republican party when it most needs a voice for liberty. Our country's present state of divisivness and the failed leadership of the president present an opportunity to discredit the idea of socialism, but the left is not the only source of discredited ideas - the unchallenged dogma of social "norms" on the right should be confronted at the very same time.
To those who say that gay marriage or even civil unions are just a "drip, drip, drip of liberalism" I give the following reply:
Liberalism was established for the promotion of liberty. Thomas Jefferson was a "liberal." George Washington was a "liberal." Modern leftists co-opted the term and it has come to mean socialist or communist. I'm all for liberalism, but not socialism or communism. I understand the difference. Do you?Posted by: johngalt at May 16, 2012 12:27 PM
March 6, 2012
What if?
This clip is about much more than just Ron Paul.
Hat tip: M4GW
And then there's this Whittaker Chambers-esque rebuttal.
I wondered where the Judge went, I have not seen him in some time.
Put me in the Occam's razor group: bad ratings. (I don't have much other truck with in your rebuttal link. The Founding Fathers were horrified at the development of "Factions," not proud developers of the first parties. Rep Paul's spending record is better than Senator Santorum...)
I did get itchy fingers because I have seen several lefty Facebook friends post this -- with approbation. I guess half bashes Republicans, it must be 50% okay. But I was still surprised. My favorite comment was "How did they slip this past the FAUX censors???" Umm, he does this about every night, people.
In the end I have to put the Judge -- entertaining as he can be -- in my "Libertario Delenda Est" camp. I may not be overwhelmed with Governor Romney's liberty bone fides, but the idea that he's "just like Obama" will go a long way to giving us a second Obama term.
February 10, 2012
Two Minute Hate: Sen. Santorum Edition
Yesterday brought two events to wake me from my "Senator Santorum is okay...nothing to worry about...move along..." stupor. I must confess, I have given him too much benefit for a world of doubt. Blog sister dagny was right all along.
Event one: I don't want to speak out of turn, but a good friend of mine confided to be "done" with the GOP. I've heard this 100 times and said it seven or eight, but this was pretty serious. The confluence of an anti-gay-marriage initiative and Santorum's Tuesday Sweep was too much to bear. I'll leave out the back-and-forth but share the conclusion without permission. "I'll vote against Obama and puke in the parking lot."
We all get a little down; this is something worse. And what do I say "Mitt Romney! Mitt Romney! Mitt Romney!!!?"
Event two. I'm never sure what to make of Fox Business's Judge Andrew Napolitano. He puts on a good rant, but he never weaves it into anything pragmatic. Still, it's good to have truth tellers. [Side note: A guy put one of Napolitano's rants on FB and all his liberal friends said "That was on FOX? Boy I bet the censors were sick that day!" Umm, guys, he does that every day and I cannot think of another network that would put it on.]
Last night he had Reason's Matt Welch on for a brief segment to whack the Senator about his stated aversion to libertarianism. Santorum looked at the camera and said "I want to drive libertarianism out of the Republican Party." That stings a bit.
Then one remembers his debate performances. Rep. Ron Paul would make a statement. Speaker Gingrich would grind his teeth a little and wait for "Crazy Uncle Ron" to finish. Gov. Perry might roll his eyes. Gov. Romney probably did not play "Bizz-Buzz" in college, but he would have been good -- he combined a friendly smile with a blank stare, the essence of non-committal.
But Senator Santorum would pounce! High dudgeon and incredulity: "You really believe X?" While one can consider many of Paul's ideas out of the GOP mainstream, I suggest we at least join Senator Jim DeMint and give these ideas a basic respect to keep their believers in the party.
Perhaps life is good in a very bad year. Senator Sweatervest and Speaker Crazyman can split the non-Romney vote, each keeping the other out. We might well end up with Governor Romney (what, no disparaging sobriquet?) but maybe it is time for least evil. Ron Paul could continue to tell the truth and concomitantly place third or fourth.
And were Gov. Doginthecrateontheroof (who's your daddy?) to choose a Paul or Rubio for Veep, I might find some enthusiasm.
And, we've always been at war with Eurasia!
UPDATE: Kim Strassel suggests he needs a message beyond "Faith, Family, and Freedom."
Yeah, but the Democrats are a) lying and b) won't do anything about it. Republicans are signing petitions and shouting applause lines.
Both immigration and gay rights present conservatives with opportunity for a reasonable legal foundation -- but one that can quickly devolve among rank-and-file to unseemly yeah I'm going to say it bigotry. I appreciate nuanced serious positions that differ with mine but also get quickly irked among the less nuanced populists.
Both "Two-minute hate" and "We've always been at war with Eurasia" are from Orwell's 1984. Work would stop for two minutes and Emmanuel Goldstein would be displayed on giant TV monitors so everybody could yell at the traitor. Only the actual enemy used to change with the politics of the leaders, who would never explain, but would always assert that we have always been at war with xxxx.
JK, you have just put the final nail in the coffin that was my support for Santorum.
Consider the Kool-Aide drained. Go Romney. yay
Posted by: Terri at February 10, 2012 4:20 PMMitt-mentum! Feel the excitement!
Posted by: jk at February 10, 2012 4:23 PMI'll part with you only on the characterization "bigotry." My dear neighbors who may express a profound opposition to the cultural modifiers you cited do so out of a sense of defending a heritage and a way of life that's pretty swell, and if guilty of anything it is a misdirected rage that should rightfully be aimed at a collectivist government that, despite its many and variable claimed goals, seeks nothing more than to destroy the good for no other reason than that it is good. They are absolutely positively, with a very few rare exceptions, not bigots.
I wonder what "Senator Sweatervest" would say if he learned just how close he came to one of the epicenters of libertarianism in the party when he shook hands with the denizens of the ThreeSource.com table at the LDD. Personally I think he suffers from the same misdirection. Give me half an hour with him.
Posted by: johngalt at February 10, 2012 4:29 PMCalling the word parser. Can a non-bigot be guilty of bigotry? I say "Certainly, you greasy dago!"
Seriously, I don't think the great unwashed are bigots but I do think I've seen them do/say things that I would call bigotry. On immigration, ThreeSourcers have made intelligent distinctions of sovereignty and incorrect but serious evaluations of economics.
But on the street, at the Tea Parties, and at Thanksgiving dinner, I hear complaints about Spanish restroom signs at Target, "Dial one for English" at private companies, and an Aurora Pizza joint's accepting Pesos (George Selgin, call your office).
I remember Amendment Two many years ago in Colorado, where I found myself on the other side of my normal political allies. Of course, there were good people on both sides, but I remember some pretty unenlightened comments that went far beyond the legislative question. I've already spoken too much for another but I sense there might be some of that underlying.
That's correct, as the great American "melting pot" experiment, having been proven a resounding success, is forceably abandoned in the name of multiculturalism. We are told this is necessary to celebrate and honor other cultures when in fact, it is merely to denegrate and dismantle America's. Of the portion of the citizenry that recognizes this and wishes to reverse it, some react differently than others.
Yes, that plays into the hands of the destroyers and we must help our misguided neighbors understand: The pernicious threat to Americanism is not "others" but the redistribution of wealth and property.
Posted by: johngalt at February 11, 2012 10:18 AMNovember 13, 2011
A Liberal Progressive Government Organizer's Job is Never Done
To piggyback on a theme of the excellent Review Corner jk miscategorized as self-promotion, I'll indulge in some self-promotion. The extended family gathered at my brother's home in Boulder County Friday evening for dinner and viewing of Atlas Shrugged Part 1 (HD DVD - egads.) While driving back home to Weld County my talk-radio alter ego, Jon Caldera, was conversing with listeners (850 KOA, Denver's News, Weather, Broncos and CU Buffs Station) about the latest social engineering in Boulder - speed limits for bicycles in crosswalks. [Ponder the disconnect in that headline.] "Boulder goverment wants to regulate every aspect of our lifes," Caldera wistfully concluded. As a 20-year resident of the town, having just viewed the most "leave me alone" movie ever made, and having just been regaled of the woes one endures when attempting to add a couple of rooms to one's Boulder County home, I was compelled to call.
Final hour of Caldera's Friday, 11/11/11 show.
After the 15 second commercial, drag the progress bar to 26 minutes 20 seconds. I’m on for about 6 minutes.
Well played, bra, well played.
The creeping Boulderism he discusses has me alarmed. For most of my 18 years on the eastern edge of the county, my little burg of Lafayette was safely removed. Now that I have escaped, it is completely Boulderized.
In true, blue-state style of course, it has a bunch of superb restaurants. If the good guys ever rule the world, there won't be anyplace to eat.
July 4, 2011
My Favorite Supraconstitutional Event
Call me names; throw jk from the train if you want. But I watch "A Capitol Fourth" on PBS every year. Steve Martin just brought his bluegrass band. I love it.
UPDATE: Ms. Jordin Sparks nails the National Anthem. I may have to start watching "Idol..."
June 23, 2011
An Insight Into ObamaCare®
Peter Orszag, of "bend the cost curve" fame, has now been demoted from US Medical Czar Plenipotentiary to "Bloomberg Columnist." For this, Lord, may we be truly thankful...
But he's worried, he is. You see, Americans are living longer than ever, and there are many important innovations in health technology and knowledge. He documents several of them in "How My Wi-Fi Scale Adds to America's Class Divide." Oh, the bright kids in the front see where this is going...
But it's worrisome, too, because the same technological change that allows any of us to walk around with all this personal data at a glance may wind up exacerbating the growing gap in life expectancy between people with high levels of income and education and those without.
If I may translate (I took a semester of Orszaggian in college): "exacerbating the growing gap in life expectancy" means that some people will live longer. O cruel world! Why, if we grow life expectancy to 150 years, that will exacerbate the longevity differential between those who die young.
And it is grossly unfair, because the people living longer are wealthy! They can afford a Wi-Fi Scale! Correct me if I am wrong, but causality might be what economists call "bassackwards" here. Professor Reynolds has suggested that Obama Administration members (Orszag, check) confuse the markers of middle class with the habits and skills that produce it. Give them a house, and they will have the same advantages that a person who works hard, saves and protects his credit rating has -- see, they both have a house! (To be fair, Reynolds directs this more at the ruling class, but I think it works.)
What about those damned, lucky rich people who are going to outlive their disadvantaged counterparts?
The leading explanations for this involve health behavior -- including diet, exercise and smoking. For example, men 50 and older without a high-school education are more than twice as likely to smoke as those with a college degree. Exercise behavior also varies substantially. Among 45- to 54-year-olds in one study, only 16 percent of those without a high-school degree exercised vigorously at least once a week, whereas 56 percent of college graduates did.If the new personalized health technologies wind up being used disproportionately by people with more education and income, driving that group toward even better health, they will probably cause the gap in life expectancy to widen still further.
So, Pete, buddy. A guy could read that and see that guys who exercise, eat well and don't smoke are healthier and live longer. Might they also be more likely to buy a Wi-Fi scale and a medical ID bracelet?
Might -- and I know I am way out on a limb here -- might those serious. forward looking individuals be more likely to complete their education and be successful in careers?
I don't know about your senior year in high school, Mr. O, but mine did not have the magic health class that told me how to care for myself. You got much further in college than I did; maybe it was a 400 level course, or postgrad. But I have this sneaking suspicion that you describe a behavior and not a class.
Hat-tip: Prof Mankiw
UPDATE: I fixed the spelling of Orszag (was Orzag, mea culpa). Someday, I will tell you all the story of the Knoxville Law Professor I have proofreading for me. It's a good one...
May 28, 2011
Rant Contest
A serendipitous review of the "Rant" category on this site revealed that, in its history, we've collectively published just FOURTEEN! Shame on us.
Here is the scoreboard to date:
AlexC- 2
JG- 7
JK- 3
BR- 2
It's a long weekend. The challenge is on!
What's the score for thoughtful, well reasoned exegeses? Oh, never mind.
Posted by: jk at May 28, 2011 5:15 PMIf one reviews the entries in the category he will find that all of them are thoughtful and well reasoned something-or-others. Maybe we'll change the category to "Rant."
I use the label to mean "this is something that has some original content."
Posted by: johngalt at May 28, 2011 6:31 PMMarch 11, 2011
WTF?
The repercussions of the 7th largest earthquake in recorded history are just being understood but there's still time to take a shot at the happiest city in America and one of her sacred cows - windpow .. pow .. poof.
Whilst driving my one-ton diesel pickup (by myself) to pick up a lunch burrito I happened to pass Boulder's swank new "multi-use" development that occupies the old Crossroads Mall site. It's called Twenty-Nineth Street. (No, not 29th Street, "Twenty-Nineth Street.") On the most prominent corner of the property, 28th and Arapahoe, they've installed one a them newfangled "wind turbines." "Free energy from the earf" I think they call it. And on a day when wind had whipped a "controlled burn" out of control in the mountains, the weather reports warn of "60 mile per hour gusts" and the average wind speed at Atlantis Farm has been 15 mph or higher all morning the wind turbine is - not spinning. It twists in the wind alright, and the blades aren't completely frozen but if it completes a full revolution in a minute I'd be surprised.
Could it be that these things require, not just subsidized installation but subsidized maintenance? Stop. Stop! You're killing me!
More of them green jobs, man! Somebody's gotta fix those things!
I wonder if they lock in high winds. The one in front of the Lafayette library never spins when it's really whippin', yet I frequently see it spinning in a lighter breeze. Safety issue?
Posted by: jk at March 11, 2011 3:58 PMOctober 1, 2010
Is This a Sick Joke?
While on assignment recently in Chicago, The Refugee had the occassion to drive on I-88 in the western suburbs. This would be unworthy of mention except that upon entering the highway he was greeted with a large sign proclaiming, "RONALD REAGAN MEMORIAL TOLLWAY." Seriously?!? Is this some Democrat pols idea of a joke? It's hard to imagine that The Gipper, who's signature issues were lower taxes and getting government out of the way, would want to be immortalized with a tax collection mechanism that impedes traffic.
April 11, 2010
"Capitalism is the only truth that keeps the nation healthy and fed."
I happened upon this on FNC's Huckabee show yesterday and have to share it, now and for posterity.
Actor Jon Voight, one year the junior of my 'mad-as-hell over the state of American governance father' uses his interview on the show as a platform for a ranting expose against the sitting President of the United States, except that he isn't ranting - he's sober as a judge and serious as a heart attack.
Hat Tip: Marc Schenker at Associated Content who gives a thorough review of the letter and its presentation. Special recognition for the word "Bailoutpalooza."
UPDATE: [12APR 12:38 MDT] I checked google news to see if any other media outlets were talking about the Voight letter. You can see all four related stories here. But you can't see the original story that I HT'ed anymore. Apparently AssociatedContent.com has blackballed it. And earlier today the original author, Marc Schenker, posted another story revealing the censorship. Of course that posting gets "The content you're looking for has been removed" treatment as well. But google saw it before it was yanked.
Associated Content Censored My Accurate Reporting on Voight's Criticism of Obama Associated Content - Marc Schenker - 19 hours ago today. As some of you have read, my article of today ACCURATELY REPORTED on Jon Voight's criticism of Barack Obama, which was delivered on Mike Huckabee's ...
Is this a genuine case of internet censorship? Anyone know how to access the google cache pages?
AssociatedContent.com "is an open content network. AC's platform enables anyone to participate in the new content economy by publishing content on any topic, in any format (text, video, audio and images), and connects that content to consumers, partners and advertisers."
Apparently some content is less equal than others.
Mega hat tip: The patriot who youtubed the Huckabee appearance - "DouggieJ." It may only be a matter of hours before youtube blows him away too.
Note: As of this UPDATE, the video has 18,458 views (compared to 196,251 who viewed 'Obama can't name any ChiSox players?')
I dunno man. It's nice to hear a Hollywood cat talk up capitalism, but I think rape and poison are over the top.
Posted by: jk at April 11, 2010 3:27 PMA more appropriate word may be found than rape but poison is precisely correct: "Giving them the idea that they are entitled to take from the wealthier who have lived and worked in a democracy that understands that capitalism is the only truth that keeps a nation healthy and fed." [pointed glare]
Keep swallowing that and, when you run out of the wealthy, you're dead.
Posted by: johngalt at April 11, 2010 6:00 PMDecember 22, 2009
He Hate Me
Capturing my thoughts in the wake of the Nebraska (and Louisiana and Vermont and Massachusetts and Connecticut and NEVADA) windfalls.
love it. nice XFL connection.
Posted by: AlexC at December 22, 2009 5:27 PMDecember 2, 2009
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Coach Josh McDaniels has apologized to the six million viewers who heard him use bad language when (Dave Barry would herein point out that the author is not making this up) yelling at professional football players.
Y'know, I'm a bigger fan of civility than my blog posts let on. I watch the 1956 Stanley Cup finals and believe that we are really missing something not having Joe Louis Arena populated with fans in suits and ties. Yeah, they're all male and white, but the boorishness of society does get me down. Freedom and civility need not be mutually exclusive.
But, darn it all, I don't think anybody is too surprised that a pro football coach might use a few salty bon mots after his team gives up 15 ^%&%@ yards in procedure penalties in the %^&*$@ red zone when the team is trying to snap a &^*%$@# four game losing streak.
The broadcast was done by the NFL network, which gets to follow cable rules. The local FOX affiliate rebroadcast it. If we must have a witch hunt, I think they should have probably caught it. Personally, I would just say "Shit Happens" and move on...
But forcing the coach to apologize? I saw some smarmy nanny-moms on TV who were aghast. There is something really wrong here, that we can feign this hyper-sensitivity in an ocean of crassness.
Can't swear in a football huddle...
Can't smoke in the armed forces...
Can't use arm-twisting tactics on spies and terrorists...
What is this country coming to? Before you know it there will be no praying in foxholes.
Posted by: johngalt at December 2, 2009 3:15 PMI can't tell if he's smiling or not -- can you?
Posted by: jk at December 2, 2009 4:20 PMNovember 2, 2009
A Philosophical Ramble
Ulysses Grant drops an interesting line in his (awesome, awesome, awesome) autobiography. He says -- during an uncharacteristic digression in the middle of military history -- that he "always thought the South could profit from defeat." He explains that the Confederate States were built on an inferior economic system and that both slaves and non-property holding whites would be better off under the North's economic system.
I'd suggest that the bulk of the country today, myself included, agrees with that. I got to wondering why "enforcing our values and way of life" is accepted for slave-holding States who were following the United States Constitution, but it was not acceptable for us to impose those same values on the indigenous peoples of America who had generally far worse governments than Mississippi, South Carolina, and Alabama. I’m very sympathetic to those who feel that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were forced on the returning States. But I think that is a procedural question, the abolition of chattel slavery by force is accepted mainstream thought.
This is the kind of thought that will ensure that I never hold elective office. If anybody wants to throw their futures away in the comments, I'd be extremely interested.
I got to wondering why "enforcing our values and way of life" is accepted for slave-holding States who were following the United States Constitution, but it was not acceptable for us to impose those same values on the indigenous peoples of America who had generally far worse governments than Mississippi, South Carolina, and Alabama.
Simple: because we never did such thing in the first place?
Lets take the Cherokee as an example. We did not enforce our values on the Cherokoee. Heck, they tried their best to emulate the Western example, inventing a syllabary alphabet, published their own newspaper, built upwards of 60 black smith shops, and wrote their own constitution. How did we reward the adoption of our ways? We killed their leaders, took their land, and forced them to move a thousand miles away to federally defined and enforced reservations.
Forgive me for sounding like Howard Zinn, but this is exactly what we did. We did not play the role of a benign enforcer of proper morality and governance. Following the Jackson administration, we took indigenous property, broke treaties with indigenous peoples, and destroyed the liberty of indigenous peoples. We did not impose values. We betrayed them.
Posted by: T. Greer at November 2, 2009 10:36 PMCan't argue. I'm most disappointed with the abrogation of treaties (and the 11th Amendment denying them a chance at redress). I don't think Howard Zinn and your local History Professor would agree that we should have simply conquered and forced assimilation.
But the real anger at American policy that I read and see is not that -- it is the subjugation of their lifestyle: our (and it's always second person) enforcing our values on another culture. Who are we?
In my darker moments, I answer that "we" were the guys who created the free business climate that enables Sam Colt to invent interchangeable parts.
Reading about Tecumseh's brother, "The Shawnee Prophet," I have been held captive by the disconnect between the numinous native American of today's history and media compared with the reality of tribal rule that recognized no minority rights and was less of a stranger to atrocities than our history.
It's quite possible that I have rebelled against the Kevin Costner vision too far and have lost center. It doesn't help that the topic is so taboo I feel guilty typing this. There's no search for truth.
Fair enough. Your right of course -- if the Indians owned slaves (some of the afore mentioned Cherokee did, oddly enough), the men in blue would not be celebrated for forcing a "more just value system" upon the Indians.
Along a similar vein of thought is this: if the slaves of early American republic were multiracial, would academics still be so angry about the subject? At times I can't help but think that it is not the restriction of liberty the racism of the slavers that so disgusts progressive-types.
Posted by: T. Greer at November 4, 2009 11:15 PMSeptember 7, 2009
I Love Oil
(And why everyone else should too.)
JK recently heralded America's Petrosesquicentennial, the 150th anniversary of the first American oil well. We are quite enamored of the "black gold" on these pages. And why not? 3.8 gallons of oil derived gasoline (you may have heard of it - it's been used as a primary motor fuel for nearly a hundred years) which can be purchased on any street corner for about ten bucks, produce as much energy as an average lightning bolt (about 500 megajoules.)
And the safety of this miracle fuel is such that anti-industrial zealots like those on Dateline NBC have had to use remotely detonated explosives to recreate accidental fuel tank explosions.
But there's more to oil than gasoline. Much more. Modern necessities made from oil include jet fuel, propane gas, plastics, asphalt, and dozens of petrochemicals essential to hundreds of industries we could hardly imagine living without. (Paints, fertilizers and textiles to name just a few.)
I went searching for the historical significance of the Petrosesquicentennial and found the following graph of world population and income since 1500. It shows a precipitous rise in population around the time of the Industrial Revolution. But the per capita world GDP rose only 31 percent in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution (1820 to about 1870). In the next 30 years however, inflation-adjusted individual incomes went up another 45%, and 20 years later nearly doubled from there. Finally, by the end of the 20th century, individuals earned a whopping SEVEN TIMES what their ancestors did at the time commercial oil production began.
(Click on graph to enlarge)
While the Industrial Revolution began in the early 1800's without oil it "centered on improvement in coal, iron and steam technologies." The truly modern developments "steel, electricity and chemicals" were hallmarks of the Second Industrial Revolution which, though not clearly delineated from the first, roughly coincided with the commercialization of oil in America.
So if you love iPods, cell phones, jet planes, mass transit, modern medicines, supermarkets, artificial light, white collar jobs ... and the income to pay for all of these and more ... you'd best come to grips with your closet love affair with oil.
UPDATE [10:43a EDT]: As often happens, I omitted a key argument in the thread. The point of all this was to set up the assertion that the advent of cheap and abundant oil was not only coincident with the Second Industrial Revolution, but catalyzed it. Try to imagine the course of the industrial age without it. Certainly a gallon of gas could have been replaced, say with 121 cubic feet of natural gas or 9 pounds of coal, but extracting and using a liquid fuel proved far more practical and economical than those gaseous or solid ones, at least for some uses. And I contend those uses were - and remain - important. Add to this the less obvious fact that many chemical uses of oil may be irreplaceable.
Oil has clearly fueled prosperity. Not only that, it did so for everyone.
And let's not fail to celebrate John Rockefeller, who gave non-wealthy Americans the gifts of affordable heat and light. His nickel-a-gallon kerosene provided productive hours of reading and working to those who could not afford dollar-a-gallon whale oil.
For this generous gift to our nation's poor and his unprecedented philanthropy, we call him a "robber baron."
Posted by: jk at September 7, 2009 11:23 AMOctober 22, 2008
American Journalism Dismantled by ... a Democrat
If John McCain is going to win this election it will be with the help of great Americans like Orson Scott Card. A science fiction writer (who's work dagny likes) he's also a Democrat and a newspaper columnist published in North Carolina. And according to Rush Limbaugh (where I first heard this) he's far enough left to be pro gun control. And yet, he takes American newspapers apart:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
(...)
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
(...)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
(...)
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
(...)
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
Every blogger should link this column.
Every American should send it to his local newspaper.
September 22, 2008
If You Think the Price of Arugula is bad...
The Refugee was recently shopping and noticed that the price of his favorite cheese has increased from $7 to $8. What do they make this stuff out of - petroleum?
An eight dollar cheese eater! Out to coffee last week, The Refugee kept dropping french phrases and Sartre quotes. I am starting to worry.
Posted by: jk at September 22, 2008 7:40 PMAm I the last one to notice that even a small coke purchased separately (not part of a combo-meal) is a buck fifty?
Pick your favorite reason:
1 - Fuel surcharge for delivery of beverage syrup and (horrors) CO-2.
2 - Devaluation of the dollar through inflation.
3 - Congress' shiny new minimum wage law telling burger joints how much they must pay local high-schoolers to lean out of a window and hand you a cup of mostly ice and a little carbonated sugar water filling in the spaces.
Posted by: johngalt at September 23, 2008 11:22 AM4) Increased demand for corn sweetener from fuel mandates;
5) Fifty-cent tariffs on Brazilian sugar that could substantively lower the cost of sweetener and fuel (President Clinton famously took calls from sugar lobbyists while he was in consultation with that woman, Miss Lewinsky). Keep in mind that recent studies show sugar to have just as much nutritional value as corn sweetener.
6 - The emergency "Federal fast-food rescue from economic reality" plan hasn't yet been passed and signed into law "before the end of the week" in order to prevent "global economic disaster."
Posted by: johngalt at September 23, 2008 3:44 PMJuly 26, 2008
An Olive Branch from One America to the Other
John Edwards' greatest legacy in American politics may be in revealing the existence of "Two Americas" that uneasily coexist with each other in the same time and space on this continent. I propose the following olive branch, from one of those Americas to the other:
"You let us legalize drilling for oil and we'll let you legalize pot."
Now that's what I'd call a real kumbaya moment.
That would be win-win for the libertarians, where do I sign?
Posted by: jk at July 26, 2008 7:04 PMWouldn't it be win-win for everyone? Who could possibly want pot AND oil to be against the law?
Posted by: johngalt at July 27, 2008 1:17 AMYou need to use some smiley faces or LOL or something, I can't determine the sarcasm level.
At the risk of seriousizing frivolity, how many people would support legalized pot and ANWR drilling? I'd say about 9%, making a pretty good little-l-lib identifier. Though my favorite is still the Instapundit commenter: "I dream of an America where millions of happily married gay couples have closets full of assault weapons."
I tried to get my point across with a one-liner but it seems we've got different impressions of what "win-win" means.
In "my reality" it doesn't mean that a majority of voters win on BOTH counts, but that by giving up something of less value (to them) they receive in return something of greater value (to them.) Hence my question, with ZERO sarcasm: "Who could possibly want pot AND oil to be against the law" meaning that drilling for oil is likely of more value to those who want to "prevent the decay of our nation's moral fabric through abuse of the demon-weed" and I presume, from observation of citizen's initiative efforts, legalization of pot (use, cultivation, sale, possession, etc.) is more important to hippies than ANYTHING else on earth.
So the only subset of voters for whom this proposition is NOT win-win are those who value neither legal use of petroleum oil or legalization of cannibis. How many people are really in that group? Who would they be? Puritanical environmentalists? Show me one!
Posted by: johngalt at July 28, 2008 3:44 PMThanks for the explanation -- speaking slowly and using very small words usually works great.
I'm fine with drilling AND assault rifles AND pot AND gay marriage -- if we can only do something about those wicked trans-fats!
I am really intrigued by this book recommended by Samizdat Dale Anon. Anybody read it? (This full-color graphic novel re-tells the story of police Lt. Win Bear, who while investigating the murder of a university physicist, gets blown "sideways in time" and finds himself in a technologically advanced, fabulously wealthy world where government is nearly extinct and everyone carries guns.)
October 12, 2007
Two Personal Attacks
Don Luskin says "Conservatism is Doomed."
...when even reliable warhorses like columnist George Will start swallowing the Left's lies about economics. First it was Will's puff-piece adulating Austin Goolsbee, Barack Obama's economic hatchet man. Will's column was too crowded with charming lifestyle details about Goolsbee to bother to mention his 2005 "paper" claiming that any benefits of the Bush administration's Social Security reform proposal would be consumed in fees earned by the investment industry -- when, in fact, the administration's proposal specifically ruled out precisely the high-fee investment vehicles that Goolsbee used in his "study."
Conservatism may well be doomed, but Mister Will is not a reliable indicator. Will is "conservative" on some level, but he is "Washington establishment" far more than ideological. Will's whacks at President George Herbert Walker Bush gave us President Clinton as much as Ross Perot. I trust Will on Baseball, but not on politics.
While I am handing out disapprobation. I fell for the early reviews on Austin Goolsbee. He was associated with the University of Chicago (moment of reverence) and was recommended by a lot of libertarian bloggers. He has been a regular guest on Kudlow and Company, and while he is no doubt a bright guy, he truly is a party hack. He doesn't attempt an academic distance from politics, he proudly parrots the Obama/Democratic line.
Let's see, who else is on my list here: the impressionist who sings "Take me out to the ball game" on TBS every 17 seconds...
January 7, 2007
What Can Brown Do for You?
We love to shop online. Living on a farm and spending most of our time in town doing the ol' 9 to 5, it's incredibly convenient to point and click and have our "must haves" show up on the back porch some predictable number of days later. It also has a nostalgic element as I imagine my grandfather ordering from the Sears catalog decades ago.
Online tracking services make the experience even better. Until there's a blizzard the week before Christmas.
I don't begrudge UPS having delivery delays during the storm of the century. Particularly out here where the roads were frequently impassable.
I don't even really fault them for sending their employees home on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, despite the fact postal carriers worked both of those days to help make Santa Claus proud.
What I do hold them accountable for is the gall or incompetence or both to tell a customer (me) on Saturday that my packages were "on the truck for delivery today" and then, when they didn't arrive, to tell that same customer (still me) that all UPS facilities were closed and that "only air shipments were delivered yesterday."
Had they told me this on Saturday I'd have driven to their distribution center to retrieve the items myself. Perhaps they consciously decided to lie to people to discourage throngs of angry Santa's helpers arriving on their doorstep. Who knows.
What I do know is that the week before Christmas is for shipping companies what the day after Thanksgiving is for retailers. It's their Super Bowl. It's their chance to rise to the occasion and demonstrate their commitment to customer service and to win customer loyalty for life. As far as I'm concerned, UPS laid an egg.
Now my occasions for yelling at the television aren't limited to pick-pocketing politicians, they also include UPS commercials.
What can Brown do for me? "Go to jail. Go directly to jail. If you pass Go, do NOT collect $200."
And yet you are not coerced to support Brown with your tax dollars nor compelled to use it for letter delivery.
I order everything online as well, I was going to give a leg up to UPS through the triumvirate blizzard. They came a few times in very bad weather, USPS missed several days. A different scale but they have different jobs.
September 24, 2006
Nickname Fetish
(this is the part where I channel Jerry Seinfeld)
What's the deal with liberals and their nicknaming of people?
How many different variations of George Bush are there?
I think it's evolved into Chimpy McBushburton or something.
But here's a new one.
Let's break this down.
1) Felix. Some how appealing to the whole Jewish thing. Perhaps some latent anti-semitism. Hard to say.
2) Allen. To make the nickname work, you need the connection to Senator Allen.
3) Macaca. Apparently it's a vicious ethnic slur that can be found in high abundance on liberal blogs. Incredibly no one seems to know what it really is, nevermind using it on a regular basis. Unlike the other vicious ethnic slur that dare not speak it's name.
4) Jr. His father's name was George Allen. A football coach, hall of famer, too. Diminutive, however.
You may be familiar with the incumbent Republican representative of CO-4, Marilyn Musgrave. I posted a pair of blogs in August about her. Well, I finally heard what the local lefties are calling her when "Progressive Radio's" morning host Jay Marvin referred to her as... "Marilyn Manson Musgrave." Now THAT's a stretch of credulity.
Posted by: johngalt at September 24, 2006 10:59 AMI was wondering when "macaca" was going to find its way onto these pages. I've been waiting for the perfect joke opportunity to say "don't call me Macaca!"
TNR has been all fusillade all the time on Senator Allen. As a southern social conservative, I think he's easy to ridicule and they smell a bit of blood in the water (we're having a sale on metaphors this paragraph).
To be fair, I think the Felix-as-anti-Semitic charge against his detractors may be as risible as the "macaca" accusation against the Senator. Felix is a funny, French moniker (now Neds and Felixes are going to boycott ThreeSources) which is incongruous with the big cowboy booted Allen.
I think the answer, Jerry, is that they think they're being very clever. Now that's scary.
April 28, 2006
MySpace: The End of the Internet As We Know It
Web2.0 is a hot buzzword.
So everyone's got to get in on the hype.
- Both YouTube and MySpace fit the textbook definition of Web 2.0, that hypothetical next-generation Internet where people contribute as easily as they consume. Even self-described late adopters like New York's Kurt Andersen recognize that that by letting everyone contribute, these sites have reached a critical mass where "a real network effect has kicked in."
But the focus on the collaborative nature of these sites has been nagging at me. Sites like Friendster and Blogger that promote sharing and friend-making have been around for years with nowhere near the mainstream success. I've got a different theory. YouTube and MySpace are runaway hits because they combine two attributes rarely found together in tech products. They're easy to use, and they don't tell you what to do.
YouTube is actually pretty cool.
But I'm convinced you have to have a high threshold for pain to be a MySpace user. As a result of this article, I decided I'd see if any people from my high school were on there. (Bensalem Township HS, Class of 1995, btw)
Yes they are. (21 out of 450)
Unfortunately they have no self control when it comes to these pages. Is it possible to open up a MySpace page that doesn't peg your CPU @ 100% or kill your web browser? Not everyone wants to hear your favorite song when you load the page!
I finally opened up the web page source and found the host that serves the music, lads.myspace.com , put it in my hosts file pointing to 127.0.0.1 and now myspace is pleasantly quiet.
But that doesn't solve the problem of garishness. Which is why I bolded the above line.
Anyone can build a webpage. It's like 1995 all over again, except instead of obnoxious blink tags, we have superflous flash animations, multiple embedded videos, Bon Jovi and black text on a black background!
I shouldn't want to punch my computer when I want to see what old friends are up to.
I'm all for making the internet and computers easy. We all benefit.
I guess that's the downside of freedom to do what you want. No one's stopping you from being obnoxious... especially if you don't even realize it.