Off For Parris Island

Some of us, anyway. We might hit both ferries on the way down, at New London and Cape May. Posting will be light.

The Snapshot

It's a photo-op culture, because photos stick in the memory well. People believe that if you can make the snapshot happen, then everything is all right somehow. A friend tells me how much he wants a two-state solution for Palestine, but when you press him, he hasn't really thought it out what will happen after that snapshot moment. Everyone shakes hands and rejoices, journalists take pictures, people feel relieved. We have achieved Snapshot.

What happens next? Well, pretty much the same thing as now, except Israel's enemies have more leverage and legitimacy. One year later, things are no better, perhaps worse. But Americans and western Europeans have comfortably put it up on the shelf because of the snapshot achievement. See Oslo, for example.

It's not just a liberal thing, though they are more prone to it. Conservatives loved the purple finger snapshots in Iraq. Even though everyone kept saying "it's only a beginning," they were saying that because they knew many of their countrymen were thinking it was an accomplishment with some finality.

People who want universal health coverage want the snapshot: the moment when they can sigh with relief that if at this minute, a kid gets hurt in Yonkers, he is covered. What happens to research, access, wait-times, and cost after that simply "don't enter into it."

Heck, I understand it only too well. A life of successive comforting tableaux - who wouldn't want it?

Bailout, Stimulus, Budget

Here's the amount of money of AIG bonuses, that lefty groups are organising protests about and everyone is kicking capitalism and the unrestricted market about. It represents $165,000,000

$

Now, here's part of the bailout money alone. Remember that the full bailout, plus the stimulus, plus the new budget, is three thousand times as much - that is three thousand times as big as the following collection of $'s (each equaling $165,000,000). Point to a few at random and think "one hundred and sixty-five mil. Do this eight times a day for a year"

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What I Miss By Not Having TV

Via Wheat Among Tares

Road Rally Testing

The date is set for April 18, starting in Concord at 4pm (Exit 2 off 393, near East and West Sugar Ball).

Let me know what your teams of four are. My brother Jonathan and new son Kyle are both available as team members.

I have Concord area maps that include the proper locations in Concord and Bow. I recommend a good state map, a compass unless you can find south on your own, pencils and scrap paper, and whatever reference materials you want. Laptops are allowed.

Journolist

Mickey Kaus has leaked a journolist thread (that heretofore anonymous group of 300 liberal journalists which has excited so much comment in the last week). It includes comments from such liberal notables as Jonathan Chait, Matthew Yglesias, Nation editor Chris Hayes, American Prospect's Matt Duss, Eric Alterman, Katha Pollit - an all-star progressive journalism team, thinking they were off-the-record. This is not a parody. It's from Slate, not The Onion.

Well, no wonder they believe that conservatives are seething masses of hate under the skin. It's projection.

This is their cream of the crop.

JorgXMcKie, commenting at Moe Lane's blog, wins the thread.

The whole thread reads like the HS chess club bitching about the jocks and attempting to re-assert their own values by staging a Star Wars trivia contest.

We have all run across such comments in online discussions, of course. The internet is full of them. You can find equally hateful and idiotic things written by conservatives in the threads at oh, Little Green Footballs or Daily Pundit. Here's the difference: they aren't the authors of the essays, and they aren't the drivers of the discussions. They are a sideshow.

Another View

My post a few weeks ago about the elderly psychiatrist who cannot seem to face the hard questions (The Truth is Veiled) elicited several responses. In the interest of fairness, I should point out that a coworker who I shared the essay with thinks that he is not evasive of the questions, but richly spiritual and questioning. I still disagree, but thought an alternative viewpoint should be noted.

Blog Neglect

I apologise to the folks whose sites I regularly comment on that I haven't been over. Integrating a fifth son into our schedule has been smoother than expected, but not without its inconveniences. Posting less is one thing, but I'm generally a better commenter than initiator, and reading without interacting at your sites is a move away from my strengths. I'm sure you'll all do fine without me, but I thought it polite to at least explain my absence. Next week will be worse, as I go down to Parris Island for Chris's graduation from boot camp.

I have also been frustrated enough by the truly amazing list of Obama problems to return to some deeper, more timeless reading in order to get perspective. I should do more of that anyway, rather than merely reacting to the events of the day, but I have more incentive now. We may be at a precipice, and sudden, instinctive moves on our part might be dangerous. Pick up your Bible, your Plato, your Marcus Aurelius, your Chesterton or Chanson.

Book Destruction & Chronocentrism

It's easy to put a paranoid spin on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 - especially as the first year of prohibited children's books is 1984. In an attempt to protect children from dangerous inks with lead in them before 1985, books older than that can no longer be distributed to those under 12. Used children's clothing is also prohibited, and thrift shops around here have had to throw out enormous quantities of what any of us would say are "perfectly good" clothes. Consignment shops are sending items back to their original owners. The net effect on the clothing is that there is less of the discount stuff for parents to purchase for their children, which will raise the price. It is a shameful unintended consequence of the legislation, hitting poor parents proportionally much harder.

The loss of the books is more subtle. The American Library Association warned Congress of the possible ridiculous consequences of CPSIA, and they are just ticked enough to take the view that this legislation doesn't apply to them until they are told otherwise. Good on them, then, as it's easy to see how public library collections could be devastated by this. Schools less so, but the effect would still be there. Used booksellers will have to get out of the children's market altogether, which strikes me as another blow to poorer families. But no one is sure whether CPSIA enforcement will include libraries or not at this point. The law clearly says "distributing," not "selling." At a minimum, an opening has been created for a person to officially demand a book's removal on lead-based ground even if the motivation is transparently about content.

No one intended this. It's not some liberal plot to eventually control all our children's reading. If that were the case, they would have found a way to make 1960 the cut-off date. But such loopholes can and have been used by the unscrupulous.

Yet even without the paranoid possibilities there are reasons for concern. The act disproportionately affects out-of-print titles. This is the last you will see of my Aunt Jennie's books (as pictured) except within the family. (And are we technically in violation of the law if we let Emily read our copy before she's 12?)

The net effect is to take more old books out of circulation. This will scarcely be noticeable at first. Many old favorites come out in new editions, and the titles with serious demand will remain available. Not many children read old books these days. This was always true, but will become more pronounced. Two generations ago, children read older books because there weren't that many titles available. You took what you could get. Some of us were certainly charmed by stories out of a previous era, but I can't say with assurance we would have read them if other things had been available. I was much more likely to read classics than other children, but I read the Alcott books because I ran out of other things to read at my grandmother's. Similar circumstances at summer camps brought me to the Frank Merriwell and Leatherstocking books. I had to read something.

The internet has made many older works more easily available, and in that flood we don't notice the larger flood of the internet as the Encyclopedia of Now. I rejoice that I can find old things, and they will be available on Kindle for my grandchildren - more available than they were to me. But they will be in competition with ten times as many new things, many quite worthy. Over many months, the minds of our young will be less shaped by immersion in cultures that have come before.

There is a peculiar power to the education of entering of another culture. In our multi-culti world, it is the older cultures that are fading like old photographs. CS Lewis describes the necessity in his introduction to Athanasius: "On The Reading Of Old Books." It is not long, and I encourage you to read the whole thing. Other eras are not without their biases and blind spots, but they are different blind spots than we find in our own era. Even in children's literature - perhaps especially in children's literature - the reader encounters people who see things in quite different ways. These are not so far apart from our own lives as to be not understandable, but they see things differently. Divorce is rare, but widowhood is common. Poverty is just one of the many possible difficulties of life. Small luxuries, such as a ribbon for a pretty girl's hair, can send people into raptures. Whole books are written with no mention of romance or underwear. Christians of other eras take mere church attendance as a possible spiritual danger, and regard angry words as a serious disruption to family harmony. They might be quite foolish in all this, but the point is that they see things differently. We enter their world and see how moral questions might be the same and yet different.

We are slowly cutting ourselves off from earlier selves. No one is doing this to us, we actively choose the shiny, shiny. Even those of us who have a deep fondness for older things don't seek out other old things. We are comfortable with the familiar old things we have. If we pick up something different, it is far more likely to be something new. The improvements in visual technology we unconsciously ascribe to our being more real than they were. Video games and movies had fewer effects (and besides, those people had incredibly stupid hair) - our brains automatically tell us the folks living then had a similar clunkiness about them. We do this even if we were those people and lived then.

Emerging Technology

For those of you who like to see science fiction as it approaches, The Next Big Future has a roundup of tech stuff that is moving beyond the talked-about stage to the startup stage. Remember that if even a third of these pan out, it's a whole new world. The fusion and the quantum computers really caught my eye.

Instapundit, as usual for these things.

Kingston Trio

I was tempted to put up MTA, but I always liked this one. This looks like a guest appearance on a TV show, where the trio is loosely part of the plot somehow. Love the harmony. Maybe the woman in the back is a music teacher.

Post 1800 - The Answer Is Seven

When Ben was on math team as a sophomore, his team decided that when you had to take a guess, the answer was 7. It was right more often than you'd think, and they even considered shirts emblazoned with it.

That "7" would occur with extra frequency was not a surprise to me once I considered the matter. I suggested that -1 would also be common, and at upper levels, 2pi revolutions would show up more often than you'd expect. Seven is just beyond the level where you might get lucky and notice a relationship. If you saw a 216 in a long numerator and a 108 in the denominator, a clever person might pick up the connection and save computational steps. Anything ending in 5 or 0 is going to have obvious factoring. But seven, no one is going to see into a seven - relationship by luck.

These math test makers are essentially evangelists. They want you to see the elegant beauty of how complicated, messy conglomerations resolve to something simple. 29 is also beyond intuitive math, as is 9.7, but those aren't so much fun. You have to think like these math teachers - they think it is just very cool when numbers operate cleanly like that. But they don't want to make it too easy. Thus, the use of the answer -1, instead of just 1, which would of course be the ultimate in cool resolutions. With -1 you have to keep track of the signs. Heheheh, a lot of them won't be careful at this point and they'll forget to switch the sign. Won't they feel silly, then?

The SAT and other standardised test people don't design things this way. They might want to, but they have to make you grind out the answers, so that 13.2 is a real possibility. They're just trying to test you accurately, not convince you of math's elegance.

You have to think like the people making the test. As the remarkable book Up Your SAT (the precursor to Up Your Score) puts it, the paragraph in the comprehension section is not going to say that Beethoven sucks. That will never be one of the main ideas you're supposed to carry down to the multiple-choice questions below. Being able to think like a test-maker is worth an unfair number of points. Of course, one could argue that figuring out how a test-maker thinks is itself a measure of intelligence.

Math team, when in doubt, guess 7, or -1 if they're playing with the signs. There might be some bias toward those answers on the SAT, but nowhere near as strong.

Solzhenitsyn, The Americans, And The French

I had known that Solzhenitsyn has gradually become anathema to the left. He is regarded as a crank by many in the American academy, and the erosion of his reputation here is a fascinating story. I had not known that he remains popular in France, and is regarded seriously even by those who disagree with him. Bernard Henri-Levy and Raymond Aron were powerful figures in a strain of French intellectualism that is first of all anti-totalitarian, and thus deeply suspicious of all marxist strategies, though neither were in any sense right-wing. American leftists pay lip service to this anti-totalitarianism, but tacitly side with any number of dictators and despots, so long as they stick a finger in the eye of conservatives. In France this is less true. If their marxists are more thoroughgoing than ours, there is at least a clear division with anti-marxists who subscribe to classical liberalism. Everyone on the left seems infected with some marxism here, ranging from a whiff to a deluge. Good on the French, then. (Side note: I regard Henri-Levy as lazy and sloppy intellectually, but highly perceptive)

It’s nice to read something to approve of about French intellectuals for a change, isn’t it?

It has also been gratifying to learn that Solzhenitsyn retains some important defenders among the intelligentsia here. In the first years of his exile, it slowly dawned on the American left that Aleksandr was rejecting not only Stalinist and Soviet excess, but marxism itself (Quelle horreur, eh?). His depiction of Russian elites in August 1914 revealed that he thought them dangerously wrong, and a primary cause of the 1917 revolution. Worse, Solzhenitsyn was traditionally religious in outlook. Much of later criticism had these key failings at its foundation, though this was seldom conscious or acknowledged. The revelatory comments are fairly obvious to those alert for them, however.

He believed the West should oppose the Soviet Union rather than engage it, and embrace its own religious heritage rather than reject it. He believed the West had lost its courage and moorings. He saw the origin of political problems in moral decisions.

Shortly after Solzhenitsyn's watershed Harvard commencement address, Mike Barnicle stated that S "couldn't write his way out of a paper bag." I imagine that must be because the Russian's One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch and The Gulag Archipelago are the only serious competition to Barnicle's commentary on Boston Globe Cartoons for "Most Significant Book Of The Twentieth Century."

There remain aspects of S that deserve criticism. His insistence that the Russians were the primary victims of marxism allowed him to diminish the role that the Russian people played in imposing this horror on other countries. He refused to see the Holodomor, for example, as anything but an excess of what was happening everywhere, including Russia. But he remains the indispensable writer of the 20th C.

Judd Gregg

Judd Gregg is retiring from the Senate in 2010.

So, Judd Gregg for President, 2012.

Today on CNN "State of the Union" Gregg said the massive budget will bankrupt the economy. By nominating him to Commerce, Obama has already implicitly stated that a lot of Democrats don't think Gregg is an uncooperative crazy Republican that no one can work with. The far left went nuts over the nomination, saying that Gregg is an extremist conservative, but those are good enemies to have. Judd has a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of about 80, a bit low by national Republican standards, but high for the Northeast. Way higher than Specter, Snow, and Collins. Most of his lost points are on environmental issues.

I'm looking for 60% of the vote next time, not 50.3%

Some Needs Aren't All That Special, I Guess

Frequent commenter Retriever has weighed in on the President's Special Olympics gaffe. The frontline report, of her own son's defense of his classmates, and the turmoil at the therapeutic school as all the Obama-supporting staff reassured their students that they really are valuable, despite the president's implication otherwise, is worth reading.

I was thinking that a man who cannot speak coherently or appropriately without a teleprompter has very little business snarking at people with disabilities.

Obama's mistake is in one way not serious, yet in another, very serious indeed. People misspeak. In searching for negative comparisons, we necessarily have to imply something lacking about someone else. Trying to describe something negative about AIG executives, Obama compared them to suicide bombers. We object to that for the opposite reason, because suicide bombers are generally agreed to have some important part of their humanity lacking, and the comparison with business executives who may or may not be responsible for a company's failure seems a bit much. Al Gore referred to the Taliban wing of the Republican Party, and at a different time, the double-chromosome portion of his opposition.* When you make a comparison for dramatic effect, you are likely to offend on one side of the equation. People make such incautious statements all the time, because they don't have a finely-distinctive repertoire of negatives to draw from. Which is a good thing.

Once you are aware of an issue, however, you become protective of the feelings of that group, especially if it touches you in some way. We cannot all be always aware of every possible offense, but we try to decently avoid offense. As so many people have been protective on Obama's behalf along racial lines this past year, to the point of ludicrous overinterpretation of nonracial comments, he might set himself the task of being especially careful about giving offense. But no, that is beyond him, I believe. He is very quick to insult whole categories of others. It is revealing that this protectiveness, required of leaders of nations rather than interest groups, does not occur to him. He doesn't dislike kids at Special Olympics - when he thinks of them, I'm sure he wishes them well and hopes they succeed.

But he doesn't think of them. They aren't a star group of victims, because you can't blame their problems on his political opponents. They aren't on his radar. They don't matter. (They matter now, of course. Look for some high-profile event where he says something nice and gives them money. Government money, of course, not his.) It's just a group of people he thinks should be given money and then go away.

*Tangentially, I think Gore was not reaching for a Down's Syndrome reference there, but to Klinefelder Syndrome, which was once thought to be implicated in hypermasculine, violent, learning-impaired behavior. Which wouldn't have been any better, but would have offended fewer people.

Triune Intuition

Alexander Schmemann, writing years ago in the New York Times Magazine, brought forth a concept that resonated deeply within me:

When I speak of a "Christian writer" and of Solzhenitsyn in particular, I have in mind a deep and all-embracing, although possibly unconscious, perception of the world, man, and life, which, historically, was born and grew from Biblical and Christian revelation, and only from it. Human culture as a whole may have had other sources, but only Christianity, only the revelation of the Old and New Testaments contain that perception of the world which, incorporated into human culture, revealed in it the potential, and indeed the reality, of a Christian culture. I shall call this perception the triune intuition of creation, fall, and redemption. I am convinced that it is precisely this intuition that lies at the bottom of Solzhenitsyn's art, and that renders his art Christian. "Reviving Myths of Holy Russia," 1979

Solzhenitsyn noted that Schmemann described something of his faith as revealed in his writing that he had not fully recognised himself, but entirely agreed with.

It is this intuition, always present, which caused me to regard my Christian conversion as a homecoming, rather than any new insight. A good Creation, spoiled by man's action, redeemed by the continuing act of God - I knew this to be true of the world, the culture around me, my friends and family, and especially myself. It is precisely what I recognised as deeply Christian in Tolkien, though neither Christ nor Church are mentioned. Lewis writes of this perception as well, seeing in this triune intuition the nature of reality, which he reluctantly concluded was present in Christianity's explanation and no other.

It is certainly not the only possible Christian intuition of the world. I know believers who have regarded my discursions on such topics with puzzlement. But this intuition I knew to be true, and was my lighthouse.

Too Much Power

"The rich have too much power," someone said yesterday. It is a commonly-held sentiment, but I wonder what it means? I don't know who the richest people in my town or my state are, but I doubt that they have much power over me. Town and state officials, not all elected, have much more power over me. They in turn do not necessarily have that much power to do what they want. Their power is derivative, a community consensus of what we all should be able to do and not do to each other. In that realm, the rich do have more power to do what they want to.

Yet even that is hardly unlimited, and there are ways that one can do that without having a lot of money. The power to be left alone, particularly beloved of libertarians, is sometimes accomplished in the opposite way. People limit their wealth to get off the grid, not be connected to the government or standard economy, or otherwise extricate themselves from others having power over them.

Taxation is a limitation on the power of everyone. The more your money goes into gas taxes or property taxes, the less power you have to do what you want. Further, how officials use that money to structure the society around you also has its effect. Moving to another location is an enormous power, allowing one to get away from difficult people, dangerous neighborhoods, and declining economies. Still, one has to live somewhere, and that somewhere will have its own rules and structure. Eastern Europeans move to the west. Western Europeans move to Canada, New Zealand, and the US.

Ernest Copley Vs. Solzhenitsyn

From the title, you'd think old Ern was going to take it on the chin here. Who can stand in philosophical depth against the Lion of Russia? AVI, I never heard of this Copley guy. But Ernie's going to score points. Whether you end up siding with Aleksandr or Ernie is going to be up to you, but Copley will hold his own.

I am reading The Soul and Barbed Wire, an overview of Solzhenitsyn's works. It is reminding me of some approaches and understandings I held long ago, which deserve reconsideration.

By the early 80's, I had moved from the politics of redistribution to a mild Christianised socialism. If everyone would just be maximally generous, I thought, we wouldn't need to be discussing the politics of this at all. But, as people aren't maximally generous, and tend to turn away from seeing need, I reasoned, we are stuck with a rather onerous, inefficient, corrupt method of caring for the poor via government. Yeah, Jesus didn't say that, exactly, but He does want us to care for the poor, and this is the only choice on the menu to get there.

Solzhenitsyn believed that the goal of a people is to maximise the spiritual health and wealth of all, and this is true prosperity. However difficult that may be to measure, it's hard to argue with that goal. I acceded to that thought in large measure. For the American people to learn to be good and generous and unmaterialistic seemed an excellent place to put my energy. If the Christians could learn that, more people would want to be Christians, or at least dimly perceive a need to aspire to that society. The giving would be Enough, I felt, to create a sort of voluntary socialism. If people had basic needs met, however unevenly, then all this politics stuff would be unimportant. Opposed to this was the highly fundamentalist belief that this world was always going to be crap and unjust, and making heaven on earth was dangerous. I reconciled this with the running idea that I, at least, should do my bit to grow toward spiritual gianthood. The world might go wherever it would, and there would always be evil and injustice, but we Christians had a responsibility to develop ourselves for the next world and be an example in this one.

Enter Ernie Copley. The exact phrasing has long escaped me, but it was something along the lines of "If I were a starving person, instead of a system that makes you more generous, I'd be interested in a system that gave me more food." I squirmed against that at the time, but it stuck with me. Wherever else we go in the discussion from here on in, that is one large rock in the stream. The method that feeds, houses, and clothes more people has an enormous moral head start against all the theories and theologies that try to compete with it.

I didn't like the Life Competition idea that said we lab rats would get more food if you shocked us into jumping into a job and having to sweat it out for our daily pellet. It seemed cruel. Why should we work to build a society like that, anxiety-ridden, competitive, and harsh, when for just a little bit more effort, we could have a society where we lab rats were fed graciously and calmly? It would leave us time to pursue the arts, or nuzzling our young, or - did you hear this Jesus? - in prayer. If a few people have to go just a little bit hungrier in order to get there, that's too bad, but the best we can hope for in a fallen world. Right? Right? And if some rich people, insulated from the storms of life, have to confront the realities that others face, why, that might even be a good thing, mightn't it?

Except. Except it's not just a little bit more effort to get a lot more comfort-for-all. In practice, even a whole lot more of generosity via government doesn't seem to improve the general standard of living. In the long run, it looks suspiciously as if the cruel method feeds more people. That slow 2% GDP improvement year after year since the free market became the norm 200 years ago adds up over the 1/2% year over year improvement that preceded it for six centuries; which in turn was better than the 0% improvement for a few thousand years before that. A collapse caused by the free market looks like a catastrophe, because we can imagine how it could have been avoided if we'd all just suddenly gone big government six months before.

Except. Except we would just be trading off for some other catastrophe, brought about by that system.

Let's hold off right there for the moment. There's plenty to think about. But of course, I'm going to switch directions a bit and examine what we lose by that method. Reading Solzhenitsyn will do that to you.

School Conference

Today I went to teacher conferences for the eighth child (includes three foster children, one of which, admittedly, was doing fine late in highschool and we just wanted to check in). Thirteen schools, starting with Miss Jacques in Manchester in 1977 and including two in Romania in 2001. Spanning thirty-two years and including over seventy teachers - I didn’t count St. Andrew’s Musical Kindergarten, as I don’t think we actually conferred with anyone there – we just sent the kid and showed up for closing exercises in June. I’m glad we weren’t the sort of parents who intervened on our children’s behalf while they were in college, or it would be more.

And you know what? It's easier now. I can download the information to cause teachers to see my child the way I want in just a few minutes now. I can spot-translate their comments without having to review it after with my wife.

They like Kyle. He's polite, he's witty, he doesn't look for trouble. For a kid who has missed 23 days and been tardy 28 this year, he's doing fine.

The secret to being a great parent is having nice kids who make you look good.

The Roots of Liberal Condescension

William Voegeli's essay from a few weeks ago has been linked at three separate sites I frequent, suggesting that it strikes a chord. It certainly fits with my Cultural Tribes theme.

Later in the essay, "The Aimlessness of American Education," Buckley elaborated on the "common premise" the university rejected: "The Ten Commandments do not sit about shaking, awaiting their inevitable deposition by some swashbuckling professor of ethics. Certain great truths have been apprehended. In the field of morality, all the basic truths have been apprehended."

Buckley's position, then, is not really populist. The –ism of populism is the idea that the people are inherently more sound and virtuous than the elites. Buckley is saying, less categorically, that we live in an age when the people happen to possess better judgment than the professors. If the reverse were true, if the professors had more respect than the people for God's laws and tradition's wisdom, Buckley's argument would have favored entrusting government pari passu (as he would have said) to scholars instead of citizens.

What sets the people in the phonebook apart from the professors, according to this argument, is that they believe in and defer to profound truths existing outside of history. They are willing, furthermore, to accept that the "democracy of the dead," incorporating the cumulative judgment of people long gone and forgotten, might well have grasped those truths better than people, even very smart people, who happen to be alive at this moment.

The professors, by contrast, expect to be deferred to, not to be the ones deferring. Their "intellectual arrogance" is a consequence of the assumptions of progressivism, an –ism that treats progress as the fundamental reality.

Longish, but as one section is repeated at the link, it's not so bad as you'd think.

Legal Question

When John-Adrian marries Samantha, he will be 25 and she, 20. If you buy alcohol for your underage wife, is it against the law? Ignore, for the moment, the reality that no prosecutor would bother, to avoid the laff factor if nothing else.

Your Honor, I thought it would be okay, seeing that she's my wife..."

Young man, the law was designed to prevent older men from taking advantage of younger women.

Well, to be honest, Your Honor, that was the general idea, but...

Obama

Thanks to neo for the idea

Not An Accident

This will be one of those sermons that will be rejected by the people who need to hear it, but unnecessary to those who will.

You Obama supporters who went back and forth, agonising over the decision before pulling the lever for Barack. I'm not yelling at you. As the growing incompetence is revealed, you will make the adjustments yourself. Plus, being the optimistic sorts that you clearly are, you will find some good things about the Obama administration that we postliberals will be unable to perceive, depressed as we are by the feckless offense given to allies, the political retribution, and the undermining of justice - all at tremendous expense. So we need you to notice those bits to keep us from getting suicidal.

And if you still haven't gotten there to recognising your mistake, no worries, mate. You will.

It's you others I'm talking to. The danger is that if things don't go well, you will retreat to the same position you did with the Clintons - that they were people who wanted to do good for the country but were unfortunately flawed, allowing their political opponents to hamper them. When such thoughts begin to occur to you about the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress, resist them. I want to take that excuse away from you. I want to make it harder, not easier for you to see the reality. I want to make it more expensive to admit you were wrong, and not allow you to plead guilty to a lesser offense.

I believe the key to America's improvement lies with progressives' ability to see the realities of the world and about themselves, and I don't want that to be watered down or deflected. The changes we will need to make will not come from 51% Republican majorities, but a greater national consensus of over 60%, applied consistently for more than one session of congress.

You have believed that politicians saying nice things to people who are oppressed - and insisting that everyone else say nice things - is more important than the downtrodden having actual jobs and dignity. You have believed that people having stuff collectively is worth more than self-respect. You have voted for that and you have gotten it, and when it tanks, you must not think it is some accidental misfortune.

You have believed that regular people will not get good things unless government makes it happen. You take it as a given that something called the market will treat people unfairly, and civil servants, not perfect but well-meaning, are needed to prevent abuse. You have thrown your lot in with the idea that the government is far less corrupt than private industry, and have hired that fox to guard the henhouse. This is exactly where Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Rangel, Dodd, et alia are taking us. When government corruption prevents recovery, it is not because you have had the bad luck to elect a few bad apples in with the good folk.

You have believed the spin that Obama's predecessor was stupid and incompetent, and reasoned that smarter people must obviously do better, so everyone can relax. You have bought the lie that governing is actually pretty straightforward if the leaders can just be inspiring enough and apply liberal ideas. Governing is hard, and as the reports of Obama being overwhelmed and tired are already surfacing in the first two months, I want you to come to grips with the reality that it is not his opponents who are just making things impossible. Obama has the greatest party majority with the President since Jimmy Carter 30 years ago. When the windmill falls, it's not Snowball's fault.

I say all this fully granting that Obama is inheriting a difficult situation. Remember, however, that it is partially of his own making, and even more, of his party's making. Remember also that this is the US Presidency we are talking about. It's never easy. If it were easy, we could elect any charming and bright person with a good heart to do it.

Truly, I would rather you continue to deny reality, infuriating as that is, than to accept a face-saving evasion. We will absolutely need significant majorities to get out of this, and you taking a flier on a couple of safe-sounding Republicans next time just isn't going to cut it. The safe-sounding Republicans, quite frankly, I will be voting against in the primaries.

New Bookmark

The Barrister over at Maggie's Farm ran a reposting of an article in Touchstone from several years ago: Anthony Esolen's piece Who Is My Neighbor? I quote the same section as Barrister does from the essay:

If Jesus’ parable is an extended metaphor for a life of mercy—if we are to treat those suffering souls whom chance has thrown in our way as if they were people among whom we live—then we have taken the wheels off that metaphor’s vehicle. If you do not really have neighbors, how can you understand Jesus’ command to be a neighbor to others? You have to disembody it, etherealize it into a manifesto of general benevolence and almsgiving (perhaps of the political variety, whereby you stoutly sacrifice the alms of other people). Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and you hear a call to be kind to your friends and to give to the United Way.

But before I come to how I think that parable must be understood, I should vindicate myself and my family just a bit, and in so doing point out a few reasons why neighborhood life in America is past. You see, my wife and I are not by nature sullen or withdrawn or suspicious. We live in a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, but we have begun to spend summers in a small home in an old fishing village, called West Arichat, on the coast of Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia. In that village, after only a few weeks, we have met more people—have been in their homes, have eaten with them—than we have in eight years in our place in the States.

Esolen examines how the difference in neighborhoods has changed the way we understand the parable - not for the better. As we are on the lagging end of the cultural shift to few children and community isolation, it was especially poignant for me to note that we too, with four - now five if the court grants permanent guardianship - children are yet far from the neighborhoods of my childhood.

Great site. New bookmark.

Sky Skan

My younger brother Scott just started working for this company. They make planetariums (yes, that is the correct term, not planetaria, because once a word enters English is the singular, it will take an English and not Latin plural thereafter), and similar items. He is a filmmaker/videography/editor type, like my son Ben. At the link is some of their product.

These are immensely cool educational tools, and I wish my school had had them.

Never Been To Spain

I forwarded a post of Bob's over at No Oil For Pacifists to a (very) liberal relative in CA. He grudgingly acknowledged some worth in the post, but objected to Bob's use of the word socialist. It strikes him as one of those over-the-top-things that conservatives say that show they are just wingnuts who don't know what they are talking about. He calls them Socialists. How can you take these people seriously?

I won't pretend that I don't know what he means; I know many people take it that way and disregard anything said after. Yet I contend that this is an emotive, illogical response, and the term in its denotative meaning is accurate.

Certainly you can find people who are more socialist than California teachers, but just because they aren't pure or absolute socialists doesn't mean the label is undeserved. Heck most of American society has some socialist streak, and it's percentages of how much the government owns versus how much the taxpayer owns that we argue about.

This false dichotomy by progressives is an artful defense. Unless someone is Scandinavian, or belongs to a party that has the word socialist in its title, they believe it's an inaccurate term that shouldn't be used.

It reminds me of the joke about the snooty woman who asks her friend if she has ever been to Spain. Well, I've been to Madrid, comes the reply. "Oh my dear, you still haven't been to Spain."

Using the word socialist for any redistributive plan is legit. One might reasonably ask for clarification or ask for distinctions to be made, but the term is intellectually defensible.

True Patriot - A Review

I reviewed this book eight months ago - it seems like forever. I was thinking about the hypocrisy issue today and thought I would reprint this. From the comments, I am wondering if Terri's hair has become Important yet?

The True Patriot, by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer.

Clerk: There's no such thing as a bloody cat license.

Praline: Yes there is!

Clerk: Isn't!

Praline: Is!

Clerk: Isn't!

Praline: I bleeding got one, look! What's that then?

Clerk: This is a dog license with the word 'dog' crossed out and 'cat' written in in crayon.
(Eric the Half Bee, Monty Python)

This is a book of liberal pieties with the words “Liberal Pieties” crossed out and the words “True Patriot” written in in crayon.

After I rejected this book on the basis of its dishonest

Title

Introduction

Table-of-contents

Back-cover quotes

Author bios, and 

Ad campaign,
I was challenged by a progressive to actually read the pamphlet. As is common in such situations, there is the idea that a book with obvious flaws in its basic approach is going to somehow reveal itself to be balanced and tightly-argued if examined in detail.

I am not sure I am glad I read it, but I did learn something worth knowing: True Patriot is even worse than I imagined. From the table of contents I expected that the book contained extended, if artfully chosen, writings of famous Americans, interspersed with snippets of commentary by the authors. In fact, it contains extended writings by the authors, interspersed with artfully-chosen snippets by famous Americans.

The book exists to feed progressive self-righteousness and for no other reason. The authors are undoubtedly sincere in believing that they are exploring a neglected side of patriotism, which they believe to be more important. They seem earnest and well-meaning in many ways. But they have completely misunderstood the more traditional meaning of patriotism, and are able to refer to it only in caricature.

Unfortunately, in too many quarters patriotism is understood to celebrate might for its own sake, power as its own end. Patriotism has become a cheap brand, a soundtrack and package of graphics signaling complacent conformity: wave your flag, but don’t rock the boat. Patriotism, to many Americans, signifies only empty swagger. It has been wrested by self-satisfied salesmen singing “You’re with us or against us.” It has been used to justify dubious acts of war-making and lawmaking. It has been stolen to silence dissent.

Is this dishonest or merely stupid? Who in America have they discovered celebrating might for its own sake? What political group is telling us to wave your flag but don’t rock the boat? Did they really not understand in context the anti-terrorism quote by President Bush, or do they understand it but pretend not to for rhetorical effect? Whose dissent has been silenced? Not theirs, certainly.

False patriots think that wearing little flags on their lapels is the full measure of their patriotic duty.

Huh? Do they know anyone like that? I suspect this is merely a poorly-disguised attempt to provide Obama with cover. Because merely wearing a pin is inadequate patriotism, therefore we can recognize true patriots by the fact that they don’t wear a flag pin. Sure, and real Christians wear no crosses, real feminists wear bustles, and real environmentalists drive muscle-cars that get 6 mpg.

False patriots say that the wealth of the wealthy is proof of their virtue.

Oh, I get it now. No one actually says those things, of course. That would be too obvious. But that is what those other guys really mean (We won’t mention them by name, but you know who we mean). Don’t bother to look up the arguments and positions of people you disagree with, just read their minds.

Let’s go back to the Introduction, the screaming tip-off that told me exactly where they were going to go:

Patriotism, as an idea, has been co-opted over the course of a generation by right-wingers who use the flag not as a symbol of transcendent national unity, but as a sectarian cudgel against the hippies, Francophiles, free-lovers, and tree-huggers, who constitute their caricature of the American left. The American left, for its part, has been so beaten down by this star-spangled caricature that it has largely ceded the notion of patriotism to the right. As a result, the first reaction of far too many progressives to any talk of patriotism is automatic, allergic recoil. Needless to say, this reaction simply tightens the screws of the right’s imprisoning caricature.

Well, they say if you remember the 60’s you weren’t there, and I fully admit the authors may have blown more dope than I did. But in what alternate universe was it that the right wing wrested the flag from the cold, dead fingers of liberals who clung to the “symbol of transcendent national unity” and wept bitter tears when it was taken from them.?

I wasn’t just an observer, jack. I was one of those clowns who sniggered at the flag. Prior to the 60’s, everyone did indeed claim the flag as their own, liberals, moderates, and conservatives, and flew it proudly. It was the left who flew it upside down, or burned it, or wore it only ironically in “Easy Rider.” Good Democrats of the day were appalled by these attacks on their flag. See Chicago, 1968, Democratic Convention, for example. The question of who-started-it may often be ambiguous and trivial, not worth pursuing. But who-started-it is sometimes the whole point, as in Belgium 1940, or OJ Simpson 1994. If Liu and Hanauer can bring this crapola into print even after editors have had a look at the manuscript, what other pink elephants might they be seeing?

I often vacillate in concluding whether high-profile liberals are deceptive or self-deceptive. Because most actual human beings of liberal persuasion I encounter seem no less genuine and upfront than the moderates, libertarians, unaligned, and conservatives I know, I usually lean to the view that they are self-deceptive, comfortably believing what is more pleasant because – well, who wouldn’t, given the choice? It’s the natural bent of humankind unless one fights against it.

But then books like this come out and become popular, lauded by people with Important Hair, and regarded with misty-eyed satisfaction. It is at that point I begin to doubt, and instead ask Are they trying to take us for rubes?

Forgot to mention – sorry. I recoil against such phrases as true patriot, true Christian, true American, whatever point-of-view they originate from. Such immodest claims strike me as protesting too much. Much better to follow CS Lewis, who entitled his summary of the faith Mere Christianity.

Now it can be revealed: the bios of the authors, Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer.

Honey

I bought a large quantity of honey at Hannaford's yesterday. The lady at the checkout smiled and told me how she gets "raw honey" from people she knows in New Boston, who tap their own trees for it.

I am really glad this lady doesn't work in produce.

Found Out

Curses! They have discovered our secret. Proceed to World Domination Scheme 4A.

Road Rally Possibles

Road Rally test will be either 4/18 or 4/25 (Saturdays) starting in Concord at 4pm, ending here for light supper 2 hours later. Lauren and Tim are excited, Adam is intrigued. My brother Jonathan and new son Kyle are both possible teammates. Son Jonathan is more resigned than amused, Heidi is politely inscrutable.

Party Realignment

Third parties and threatened third party runs keep popping up in American history. The Greens and Libertarians are the biggest small parties just now, but at least have the credibility of some endurance. Other third parties have made bigger splashes in elections, but have then immediately faded. Many, many Americans express dissatisfaction with the two major parties, but somehow, other parties never attract enough voters to become a force.

A semi-independent movement within a party might be more effective. There are already informal factions within the two major parties, but the only one that has current observable power is the Blue Dog Democrats. It makes an intuitive sense, for it combines the best of both worlds: you get most of the benefits of being in a major party, plus some of the benefits of being a separate party.

In the run-up to the Civil War, there were groups such as Independent Democrats, and Democratic-Republicans as well as the Free Soil, Whig, and other entirely separated parties. It was this hybrid nature that led to the eventual realignment that has endured to the present day.

Creating such a subgroup makes a declaration: we Independent Democrats will side with our party in a pinch and for many purposes, but on a few important issues we will go our own way. Such things already happen in Washington, where various caucuses wield influence within their parties, but these identifications exist only informally among the electorate.

I’m a Sorta Republican. A sweet-jesus-those-liberals-are-insane Republican. A Default Republican. As you can see, I’m not very excited by that, but neither am I unhappy. No party is ever going to be quite what you want. If you divide and redivide too much, you become like Brian Jacques’ Guerrilla Shrews. But I might get more excited by a subgroup. You could certainly make a group of Budget Republicans who would by design be de-emphasizing other issues in favor of controlling spending. That might also have more appeal to moderates and independents. Sununu and Gregg were/are clearly Budget Republicans.

I think this works in general, not just for Republicans. For the Democrats, already a more fragmented group, the designations might be a PR loser rather than winner, though.

Are realignments likely to happen any other way?

Star Wars Diplomacy

Just to confuse the images in my previous post about R2D2=CIA, C3PO=DOS, I was remembering the "chess" match on board the Falcon in the original movie. R2 is playing Chewbacca in some hologramic strategy game, gets informed by Han that he will get his arm ripped off by the wookie if he wins, and is instructed by C3PO to "let the wookie win."

This applies to our own Dept of State, though roles are getting switched here. Our DOS keeps insisting "We can beat these countries in chess. Really we can. Let us play. Don't interrupt us." That is what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to have that attitude, and I don't want them to abandon it. But it shifts subtly but inexorably to the idea that everyone else is stupid. They really don't get that many other countries will abandon the game and rip our arm off if they're losing.

Yeah, yeah, I work with a couple of retired CIA guys who assure me that it's just the opposite - that it's the career guys who really know the score. But if you get them talking excitedly, the cracks show. They resent Israel getting in the way all the time. They're sure that we could do business and get along better with those Arab countries if we had a "more realistic" ME policy. Yeah, those wookies will rip your arm off, dude. And you thought the same thing about the Russians, I recall, though you gloss over that now. In the end, the right wing nutcases underestimated the Soviet Union's evil, and the reasonable people weren't even close.

Those wookies will rip your arm off. They don't get that one fact.

ADHD

Until I read some anecdotes about history and treatment today, I don't think it had quite sunk in how many anxiety symptoms I showed as a child. I just thought of myself as quick, a little eccentric, a little nervous. My mother got billed every year for the textbooks I ruined by ripping off pieces of paper to chew. No, not the corners, the whole bottom margin, then the side, and by the end of the year, the top. And I knew she couldn't afford it and hated myself for it. I chewed all pencils and pens, regularly getting mouth slivers, or ink squirts in my mouth. I got kept in for tapping. And rocking. Unraveled my sweaters. Bit my nails. Factored numbers in my head endlessly. Ate my erasers and rulers (you had to be careful around the metal edges though).

It is true I was arrogant and lazy at school, and those may have been the primary factors in my just getting by at all levels of school, despite my IQ. But I am increasingly amazed that I got through at all. My strongest memory of school every year was of enduring sitting still, getting through to the bell.

Had I known there was a "reason," a "condition" that made me that way, I don't know whether it would have helped. I suspect I would have used it as an excuse.

Charm School

I was reminded again how many of my patients do not need mental health treatment, but charm school. I could fill a charm school with my referrals every year. My new line is "You know, I'm easily manipulated by people who are polite."

The difficulty is that those were designed for women, and about 60% of my referrals would be male.

The Star Wars Government

R2D2 is what you wish the CIA were like: all the hotshots get the glory, but when you look at it, R2 is what makes the whole thing work. Who projects the hologram of Leia? Who shuts off the crushing walls? Who finds where the teenie bomb is supposed to be dropped in the Death Star?

C3PO is more like the State Department. Of course, our State Department wouldn't be so twerpy and ridiculous. They are a serious, socially facile bunch.

On the other hand, C3PO would have gotten the Russian translation for "Reset" correct.

The Curve Ball and Opportunity Cost

The Curve Ball and Opportunity Cost

The curve ball is actually a drop pitch (which makes sense when you consider that the bat is about 10 times longer than it is wide – whole different subject. Sorry). It falls faster than the batter expects it to. Because there is only a tiny incremental change from the expected to the actual at any given point, it takes awhile for this difference to accumulate. Even 10 feet away from the batter, the difference isn’t that great. The difference in both drop and angle of drop finally becomes large in the last few feet, giving the impression that the ball “drops off the table” when it is thrown particularly well.

We are warned that something similar will happen with temperature - or population, disease, and a dozen other things. Those may not happen, as other factors come into play, but the principle holds: some effects are cumulative, and not noticeable until it’s too late.

Opportunity cost can follow this pattern if the cost persists. If you lose $10, what you would have bought instead might not be easily identifiable. If you lose $10/day, you can usually trace what else in your life has to go to make up for the loss. Let’s say you figure out that the tenner per diem would have gone into savings that would have collected interest, or training that would get you a much better-paying job. You discover that this opportunity cost thing may be costing you even more.

In one sense, you are not losing anything, because you just stay the same as you did last year, which is by definition endurable. Some people never notice what they have lost, just wandering along. Some quite happy. You can see why it would be an okay life – better, in fact, than many others live. Yet it is also easy to see how expensive this opportunity cost could become over time, for your life and your descendants.

Research is cumulative. Technology is cumulative. If we give up improving medical or energy knowledge this year, it costs us forever. We are always at least one year behind, and if we get into that bad habit, we fall further behind.

People die from this. We just can’t tell who.

On medical advances, for example, it just torques people off no end that pharmaceutical companies make money for anything other than noble-sounding endeavors. That they make their money on ED drugs, pain meds, and treatments for the cholesterol levels of people who eat at McDonalds doesn’t feel as noble as developing cancer pills for a buck apiece. If they had a side business producing cocaine to support their research on other stuff, it would still be a net gain to society.

I suspect that people clamoring for universal health coverage don’t really believe in the opportunity cost of no one being able to afford investment in research. The stimulus and budget include research funds, and that’s a good thing. You could perhaps even make an argument that we should strain every nerve and squeeze every nickel, impoverishing ourselves now for the sake of prosperity later. I wouldn’t, but one could. Market factors – allowing people to make money by developing those things – are going to be more powerful.

It is not a morally indefensible position to say “Heck, Europe funds universal health coverage, so we must be able to afford it. And they make medical advances too – oh, they don’t so much anymore? Oh, well - If we don’t make medical advances, we won’t really know who we’re refusing to save, so we’ll be happy enough.”

It just seems odd to call that idea progressive. It seems that progress toward a political ideal is worth more than, y’know, actual progress.

Repeat argument for food and starving populations.
Repeat argument for energy production and impoverished nations.
Repeat argument for educational technology.

Sure. Progressive.

Post 1776 - Independence

Kyle is officially, court-ordered, here for the school year. And it really is my 1776th post.

Road Rally Coming

What we call a road rally is more a puzzle hunt in cars - it's not the classic cars driving around thing.

I am doing a simple one for the highschool students as a CHIC 2009 bonding thing. The actual event will be in May. Prior to that I will need people to test it in April. It will be 2 destinations in Concord, 2 in Bow, 2 in Dunbarton, and 2 in Goffstown, ending here. BSKing, Erin, and Boethius might all be interested in testing it. (Bethany will have a significant advantage in one section). Jonathan has grudgingly said yes and will offer it to his Monday small group - Lauren and Tim should be game, with more enthusiasm than accuracy, I imagine.

For those from my church, for the actual competition in May there must be both adults and kids in each car - and you can't drive your own kids. We're going to spread this around.

Flamingos, Real and Plastic

I bought only official Don Featherstone flamingos in my day. Featherstone was a recently-graduated art student who lucked into an amazingly long-lasting creation in 1957. He retired early to central Massachusetts on that money and liked to ride around in a Stutz-Bearcat while in Roaring 20's garb. Quite a character, apparently.
That's Don in the picture.

Once you've got a few plastic flamingos scattered about your office, people comment. Specifically, they tell you everything they know about either lawn ornaments or real flamingos. This is seldom interesting.

But occasionally the odd interesting bit does come in. Someone told me that flamingos were naturally white, but the pink shrimp they ate made them pink. This turned out to not be true, but something close to that is. Healthy flamingos, who have eaten plenty of Beta carotene, are pink. Without that nutrient, they are white. Shrimp, as well as blue-green algae, are an excellent source of Beta carotene. So eating pink shrimp does make flamingos pink, but indirectly, not by absorbing some pink dye into their feathers.


I wonder what makes the shrimp pink?

Holodeck: World Builder

Randy Barnett over at Volokh Conspiracy links to Bruce Branit's World Builder. It's an 8-minute film of a guy making a beautiful virtual world for his girlfriend. Touching. Beautiful. All those things.

Also worrisome. We are not many decades away from being able to build high-quality virtual worlds of some sort. So when other guys start building these beautiful Italian villages for their sweeties for Valentine's Day, you're going to have to do it too. Aaieee! Hopefully, you will be able to purchase these programs at some reasonable price.

On the bright side, my son Ben might be the one who sells a whole personal line of these things.

Humorous Political Test

Don Hagen asked me to link to his test, which reveals what your politics are. Example:

1: Government's practice of stealing from the rich to give to the poor is...

CONS: a crime.

LIBL: a brave, generous and heroic deed.

LBRT: a foolish, misguided attempt at social engineering.

COMM: an inspiration to us all.

I'd say this isn't the way to approach me, but apparently it is. Especially if you have Michael Totten and old AVI pal GM Roper on your blurb.

Hard Choices

I mentioned previously that cultures that cannot make hard choices are going to be poor soil for Christian belief. Whether that is the seed choked by weeds or the shallow soil I leave for you to ponder.

This applies also to individuals who cannot make hard choices, though that is hardly the only reason for non-belief. I know people capable of facing hard choices in other areas who are not believers. I know believers who have diminished capacity for making hard choices. Still, there seems to be some correlation. It is a fascinating inversion of the teaching of Freud and most personality theorists of the early 20th C: the idea that people believe in a God because they want or need it to be true turns out to be nearly the reverse in practice. As CS Lewis wryly observed, “Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about 'man's search for God.' To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat." Most believers I know have periods of wanting to be let off the hook. Most nonbelievers express some distaste or even horror of being like us, with all they would have to “give up.”

In my profession we often encounter people who refuse to not feel good. This refusal to give up feeling good leads ultimately to a crummy life, which also doesn’t feel good. It is a formidable barrier to getting better. I am not entirely unsympathetic. Which of us wouldn’t prefer to feel good? What’s the benefit of embracing pain for no reason? I have always felt the proper answer to the motivational statement about pain is No pain = no pain! Why look for trouble?

People find that giving up substances of abuse leaves them bereft of pleasure for quite a while. Many psychiatric medications, especially anti-manic agents, have similar effect. I just feel slowed, doctor, not like myself. It’s like I’m in a fog. I can see why folks want to give that a pass. Once cocaine (or mania) has blown out your pleasure responses, it’s tough to find joy in smelling the flowers. But sometimes it’s the only road home. It’s a hard choice; yet if you can’t choose the harder road, then you’re not ever getting home. It may not be fair that you have to face this choice while others don’t. But there it is.

I believe the truth is ultimately a comfort, while a lie is ultimately misery. I also labor under the misapprehension that when people ask my opinion, it’s because they want my opinion. In college, I worked with an elderly black waiter who used to say, “If you cain’t be told, you cain’t be taught.” Dam’ straight, Ben.

“I have a certain reputation for bluntness here,” said my second son, as I was explaining to some of his amazed coworkers that he was the most tactful of the Wyman males. I’ll bet he is tactful, though. It’s just hard when you hear people more clearly than they hear themselves. I’m not trying to criticise the depth of anyone’s faith here – Sure you are. And it’s insulting. And now you’re insulted that I pointed it out. I was only offering my opinion - No you weren’t. You said that’s what Jesus wants. All I said was – No, you said volumes more than that with tone of voice. And you’ve changed the exact words to boot. (We seldom actually say these responses out loud, mind you. We just hear you evading the truth and are irritated by it. It’s hell to see what others don’t. In my earlier poll In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man… James had the best response in the comments:…lying dead on a ledge half-way up the mountain)

Frank Schaeffer’s* personal issues (which were detectable way back when I read Addicted To Mediocrity in 1982) scream out at me at the link. They don’t, somehow, to the editors at the Times? The NYT, which has opined that George Bush went into Iraq because of some father issues? The Folk Song Army’s issues are immediately transparent. Andrew Sullivan’s issues are immediately transparent. The State Dept wants more diplomacy because that’s what makes them important. Chris Martenson’s comment today echoes this gloriously. "That is the weak and easy road to take, and so, with history as our guide, we can be nearly 100% sure that our leadership will follow that route as certainly as water will seek a drain." An elephant in every room.

I greatly fear those who cannot self-observe yet make pronouncements. I fear them for good reason: I know how dangerous I am when I make pronouncements without examining my own motives. Do I fear poisonous ideas being left out on the buffet for anyone to take? A bit. There should at least be a sign that says, “Some people think this is poison.” But I object more strongly when the poison is being actively loaded onto people’s plates. I tend to intervene.

That comes awfully close to the center of my religious, social, and political arguments. Do you want a particular answer to be true? Then be most suspicious of that. Or, working in reverse, is there an answer you resist? Find out why.



I am descended from Puritans, Dark Lutherans, and Scots Presbyterians - this is the gift we bring you: good medicine might taste bad. We are accused of believing that good medicine should taste bad, but I think that exaggerated. We’re just prepared for it.

*The NYT also doesn't notice that this is an ex-conservative no one has heard from in decades. His cred is based on having an autographed football from Jerry Falwell or something. What to do? You grow up in Switzerland and are a filmmaker, for Pete's sake, and a novelist who exposes the dark underside of fundamentalism and they still don't accept you at the Times.

Folk Song Army

In a recent comment section, someone linked to Tom Lehrer's "The Folk Song Army." (Was it Gringo? Carl? Gringo, you would like Carl's site, BTW)


Yeah, I know that was only his voice, not Lehrer in performance - though you've got to like Pete Seeger in that Lenin pose. But I hate to tease the audience that way, so here's Lehrer live - so many to choose from.