I can haz Primordial Monotheism?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2406596/posts
An interesting link that compares various viewpoints on Man's original religion. The article makes a good case (with supporting evidence) for monotheism as mankind's original religion.

Money Inflation vs. Price Inflation

Buddy explains the difference...

"folks need to bear in mind a crucial distinction between “inflation” and price inflation. inflation is here –the supply of dollars per underlying value has already been tremendously inflated. what we don’t see in the general economy is a commensurate ‘price’ inflation –and we can thank falling demand for that. Curing that hangnail by cutting off that finger, sorta."

...

"So banks look at the parabolic money supply growth, see higher rates ahead and depreciating rather than appreciating loan portfolios. In order for the fiat money to appreciate these real estate portfolios, housing demand has to rise, which requires job creation, which requires business expecting better sales, which the fiat money is supposed to create, but can’t until it is lent, which it won’t be because banks are worried about money inflation = asset deflation. This is the ‘what’s different this time’ –and it has everything to do with the system operating within a powerfully anti-market politics. Price deflation is like a union –great if you have one of the fewer and fewer jobs your system is allowing. "

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/11/23/odds-against-tomorrow/#comment-72

I said a while back to myself when thinking all of this through "deflation is not so bad... as long as you are able to keep your job"

Vindication of my ability to think (on a limited basis at least) appears to be at hand. Hurray!

Honesty...

... is such a lonely word.

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/11/23/odds-against-tomorrow/#comment-40

A bit of a rant...

... but he has a point.

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/11/23/odds-against-tomorrow/#comment-42

The Why's & Wherefore's of the Supermajority

Here is another nominee from the best comment contest that really stands out. kudos to JMH.

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/08/27/5g/#comment-95

PS. TWANLOC = Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen... in case you were wondering. ;)

Congress VS. The Fed

Here is a link to a coment By L3 over at BC. it was nominated in the "best comment" contest thread and when i went back to read it I remembered the insights it provided and wanted to blog it so as not to lose it.

enjoy

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/05/18/the-death-of-kings/#comment-34

Karl Marx as Religious Eschatologist

http://mises.org/story/3769

Unbelievable! I learned a ton from this piece. For one I had always assumed that communism started with marx, but here the earlier roots of communism are explained.

Also this details and explains the spiritual world-view that underlies communism. its a world-view where individualism simply does not exist. This is the satanic plan from the war in heaven. Under it the highest and ultimate destiny of man kind is to surrender individual will to a cosmic collective governed by a single, infinite, self. But its not really even a collective as that would imply a collection of individuals. In this plan there is only one infinite will and it stands alone and there is nothing beyond it, it is the universe. In short Satan's will would have become the only operative will in the universe overriding, consuming, even the Father ("give me your glory"), whereas the Father's plan created/allowed individual agency.

There is irony and hypocracy here in that Satan had an individual will given to him by the Father and was thus permited to hatch and offer his scheme, which he then tried to use to take away every one elses will including the Father who had granted him his will in the first place. It's like Zeus and the Titans.

The eerie part is that the satanic world-view uses certain words - like "freedom" or "diversity"- but the meanings are inverted. It reminds me of Orwell: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. I'm only about a 1/3 of the way through this, but I had to blog the link so make sure that i dont lose it.

On War and Apocalypse

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/07/apocalypse-now#

I mind altering piece if you can get into it, though not all of it holds water unless you take a fairly broad view of things (nit pickers will find plenty to disagree with). Though I'm not a radical pacifist upon first reading I felt this piece made a decent arguement for the position.

Its written from a catholic perspective so a little "decoding" may be necessary ( ie. "the passion" roughly equates to "the atonement" in LDS terms).

The miracle of the loaves and fishes

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/10/14/the-miracle-of-the-loaves-and-fishes/

Religious Freedom

Full text of an address By Dallin H. Oaks on the subject of religious freedom.

Update 10-21-09: Originally I had the full text posted here, but it really is too long for that. enjoy the link.

The Ungoverned

A story where the Second Amendment is writ large.

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520724/1416520724___4.htm

Nature & Distribution of Work & Wealth and the coming Political & Spiritual Realignment

Here is a gem of a comment from Leo. It's monstrously long but it hits so many nails so squarely on the head that I just have to quote it in its entirety. Enjoy:

Leo Linbeck III:

It does seem as if we are entering a period of political realignment. There are no doubt many reasons for this, but many of them link back to this undeniable fact: in the developed world (aka the West), life is not really that tough.

The West has been able to sustain, through bubbles and busts, a productive capacity that is unmatched in human history. Never before have so many gotten so much with so little effort.

But this fact – which is a largely good news – has a dark side. Human beings are dynamic entities, and so must strive, must exert, must drive, must keep moving to be complete persons: in short, we must work.

Even shorter: stasis = death.

However, the wealth created by the productive capacity mentioned above has resulted in significant numbers of our citizenry who do not have to work. Interestingly, the “non-productives” are concentrated at the ends of the income spectrum.

The very rich do not have to produce because we have created a system in which they have so much accumulated wealth that it is almost impossible for them to spend it all. They can safely stop working, and never need worry about not having life’s necessities. In fact, many of them never need worry about not having life’s luxuries. Additionally, many of the very rich have never produced, because their wealth is inherited.

The very poor do not have to produce because we have created a system which has redistributed wealth to them through the government, at little or no cost. They can safely avoid working, and never need worry about not having life’s necessities. In fact, the latest trends are to see to it that they have enough money to enjoy life’s luxuries (at least by global standards) – TV’s, cars, drugs, stylish clothes, high-quality, on-demand healthcare, etc. – goods that only the rich can afford outside the US. Additionally, many of the very poor have never produced, since they inherited their access to state largess through a system of cyclical illegitimacy.

The Left has become the voice of these groups, the representative of the non-producer. They use parlor tricks – accolades heaped upon “generous” donors who give money to “good” (aka left-wing) causes, heart-rending stories of poor children who don’t have enough to eat, feel-good reports of government programs that helped Ms. Doe to get back on her feet – to convince us that their side is the side of virtue.

But the policies promoted by the Left are not virtuous. They attempt to further increase the number of non-productives. They promote policies that bias the system against the entrepreneur; they promote regulatory frameworks that benefit big business (businesses which are, because of their scale, filled with non-productives); they promote nationalized healthcare, so that you don’t have to work to get coverage; they promote expanding entitlements, so that you can retire (i.e. stop working) early; they promote unionization, so that workers can have someone “on their side” trying to get the maximum amount of economic rents for the minimal amount of work; and so on.

Work is a path to virtue by enabling and rewarding good actions. Policies that seek to minimize work, then, can hardly claim to be virtuous, regardless of their intentions.

The current difficulty in the US (and, it seems, in the UK) is that the Right has all but abandoned its role as the voice of the producer. Largely, this is because the behavior of the Republican Party (the supposed representative of the Right) has been utterly hypocritical. Republicans said they were for limited government, low taxation, scaled-back entitlements, less government spending and regulation, etc. But when in power, they didn’t walk the talk.

This hypocrisy has left the Republican Party in tatters. From 2000-2008, according to Gallup polls, the Democratic Party’s favorable rating has not changed: it was 53% in 2000, and 53% in 2008. During that same period, Republican favorables went from 54% to 40% – a massive, 14-point drop. The basic reason is hypocrisy. I respect someone I disagree with if they really act in accordance with what they say. I don’t respect someone I agree with if their actions don’t match their professed beliefs.

So conservatives have abandoned the Republican Party in droves, further weakening the Left’s unrelenting attempts to move the US toward “democratic centralism.”

At the same time, the Left has vilified the productive sector, accusing it of being greedy, narcissistic, over-consuming, racists, sexist, etc.

Greedier than Charlie Rangel? More narcissistic than Barack Obama? More over-consuming than Al Gore? More racist than Jesse Jackson? More sexist than NOW? Really?

No, not really. In the real world, the productives realize that a business can’t succeed if they don’t share the wealth and credit, can thrive if it doesn’t conserve, and can’t retain talent if it allows its biases to prevent the recruitment and retention of talent.

And so, we are left with a situation where a huge chunk of the citizenry has no effective representation. This is the reason there will be a re-alignment. In a republic, citizens will not long tolerate being unrepresented. Something has to happen.

So who will speak for the productive sector? The political entrepreneur who steps forward to bear this standard will tap into an enormous and increasingly energetic base of support. It will take a while for these leaders to emerge, but when they do the re-alignment will happen fast. The good news is that our basic legal framework – from the Constitution on down – supports the emergence of such a leader. Revolution is not necessary.

The bad news is that such a leader has not yet appeared, and the number of non-productives is growing fast, so time is short. Perhaps David Cameron is such a leader in the UK (I have my doubts, but keep hope alive), but there is no one like that who has yet emerged in the US.

But I remain confident a new group of leaders will emerge. And, somehow, I feel like the internet will play a leading role in this drama. As will blogs like Belmont Club, and the thoughtful and engaging members herein.

The times, they are a changin’.

L3

Oct 11, 2009 - 5:36 pm

Here is a follow up from Leo.

Leo Linbeck III:


WSL,

Thanks for the kind words.

I would like to see him expand his ideas to consider what becomes of our society when more people inhabit the idle sector than the productive. What mechanism exists to keep the country functioning when all signs point to the profitability of living off the work of others? Or does a society, reaching such a point, simply collapse into anarchy?

Well, I don’t know if I’m the best guy to expand on that, but here’s my best shot.

I think the thing to watch is the spiritual dimension. My unscientific, anecdotal observation is that a lot of people never stop producing. I have also observed that those folks are disproportionately believers in God. My hunch is that they see that all of their actions have meaning, so they never stop acting, never stop working.

These people – regardless of which creed they profess – are always looking for a plow to push. I’m sure you know people like this. If their employer goes out of business, they find another job. If they get fired by their employer, they start a business. If their business fails, they find another to start. If they sell their business, they either start another, or they turn their attention to needy causes.

In addition, there was a time when these folks were held up as exemplars of citizenship in our communities. They were treated with respect, and felt proud of their role as producers. Organized religion played an important, perhaps central role in this esteeming process. This community admiration, in turn, induced young people (especially young boys) to strive to emulate their behavior.

Where there is a breakdown in faith, there is a breakdown in hope. And when hope evaporates, so does the willingness to defer gratification that is at the heart of production. After all, at its very core, to produce is to defer gratification. I invest my time making widgets, with the expectation that I can sell the widget for more than it cost me. That requires hope.

Hopelessness is a barrier, then, to production. But the solution to hopelessness is not hope. The solution to hopelessness is faith. And it better be faith in God, cause faith in human beings – who are, after all, flawed – can’t sustain hope, but faith in God can.

Sorry for the digression, but to summarize, my view is that so long as there is a strong religious underpinning to a society, these temptations to idleness can be resisted. That is why I remain optimistic about the US. Depending upon the poll, the percentage of Americans who believe in God ranges from 73-94%. That’s a big reservoir of faith.

Conversely, things are not quite so promising in Europe. There, belief in God is ranges from OK (Poland at 77%) to worrisome (Ireland at 58%) to troubling (UK at 29%) to scary (Sweden at 17% [insert link to Nobel Peace Prize here]). The reservoir is almost drained; still, it will get refilled. It’s just going to be refilled by a different creed.

So, my optimism for the US basically rests on our faith. Which is why, I believe, the liberal project for America will fail – Americans won’t change their beliefs fast enough for the process to progress to the point of irreversibility.

Finally, an interesting test of whether I’m right to be optimistic is probably healthcare reform and abortion. It is clear that the President wants to have public funding of abortion. But regardless whether abortions are eventually paid for by the Federal Government, I’m almost certain that the President will not be able to get abortion passed “through the front door.” He’ll have to sneak it in the back door through some kind of administrative ruling. Why? Opposition, primarily, of the Catholic Church.

Faith still really does matter in the US. It is our true hope, as long as we don’t change.

Cheers,
L3


Oct
11, 2009 - 7:33 pm

Alternative energy: an alternative view.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/nuclear-energy-the-only-solution/

I found this article makes quite a bit of sense.

Just look out the window

Vaclav Havel’s New Year’s Speech. Just look out the window.

(HT: Lifeofthemind)

Homosexuality and Natural Law

this materiel is a bit dated (late 1980's) but it doesn't pull any punches.

here is the comment from belmont that lead me to it:

"There’s a discussion by Harry Jaffa from Clairmont McKenna College about Homosexuality and Natural Law (that’s OT but bear with me ). The pamphlet, which is a series of essays and letters, makes the point that we have lost a moral vocabulary that used to be part of our culture. I think that is a result of making education a major function of Government, coupled with the elevation of hostility to a common understanding of the divine to a major civic principle. We now (even in Belmont Club) speak of “values” instead of Virtues. The former being transitory the latter timeless. Schools cant teach Virtues without encountering the transcendental. Once encountered, it must be explained. The explanation requires the explaining teacher to express a position that may be politically unacceptable."

"The power of negative thinking"

This article was linked in a comment thread about the cash for clunkers program over at BC (link to post).

here is an excerpt:

"Chapter 4 should be titled “You’re Not So Special.” For two generations we’ve been telling children that they are special. Now we have an emerging generation of depressed adults who need constant affirmation. The demanding, impertinent and entitled individual is a weak and emotionally unstable neurotic who clings to false optimism because truth and reality are too frightening and difficult. One ought to ask: What makes all these “special” people so special? There’s nothing special about a narcissistic crybaby, and nobody likes self-pity, blubbering or whining."

Read the whole thing.

another BG jem

here is a great thread from the belmont club. the conversation started with a discussion on health care but also has some interesting coments later on about progressivism vs. liberal capitalism. The comment thread is very long but worth reading.

Electing God

BC gem

here is a link to a post called Central-Blanking that explains some of what is going on with the Fed. The comments are good all the way down.

The trouble with Fed hating (you Fed haters know who you are) is that you cant get rid of the Fed with out replacing it with something... and coming up with a good idea for a replacement is hard... and it leads to the possibility of reforming the Fed instead of abolishing it, which is distasteful to hardcore Fed haters... they want it gone not reformed.

Full disclosure: I used to be a Fed hater... now im more of a fed disliker. I still see things in what is probably an overly simplistic way, but I'm in favor of a public debate on forging new structures to handle the US monetary system.

comment tracker: 06-03-09

I made a comment here: http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/06/02/dont-tell-me-words-dont-matter/#comment-23. click the link and scroll up to see the comments I'm replying to.

El_Heffe:
@ cadmus #17
I think you are using the word democracy some what loosely. There is nothing inherent in democracy that would require respect for others. Democracy is all the people participating directly in a legislative process where the majority rules absolutely, full stop. Democracy is not composed of a constitution or laws, and when the middle easterners you mention say that “it means we get to do what we want” they are closer to the real (practical) meaning of democracy than you are, especially if they are part of the majority.

Perhaps the word you are looking for and the concept that you are trying to introduce is actually that of a republic. The concept of republic (especially the american flavor of it) carries with it a connotation of rule of law and respect for minority rights under the law (I’m, of course, talking about political minorities here, not racial minorities).

@ Quelle #19
right on … see also genesis chapter 47:13-20

13: And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt and all the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine.

14: And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which they bought: and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.

15: And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.

16: And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail.

17: And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year.

18: When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent; my lord also hath our herds of cattle; there is not ought left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands:

19: Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate.

20: And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh’s.

Keep in mind that Joseph was relatively benevolent… he gave the people back enough land and seed for them to then support them selves… and *only* took 20% off the top. The feds are taking more than that now and licking their chops for the
rest.

Also the money in egypt “failed” more or less on accident… but we have people that almost seem to be driving us off a cliff on purpose. The example of pharoh indeed.

Heads up!Jun 3, 2009 - 11:10 am,

oops this turend into an exchange

here is the rest

Cadmus:
El_Heffe
You are correct about majority rule. But, in a democratic system the majority still accepts and respects the right of the minority to have a different view, and its right to continue to promote its view and vie for gaining the majority. Whether they succeed or not depends on how many people they can convince, with words and examples, not force.
A Republic is a system that allows democracy to work on a larger scale, where all the people cannot gather in the Arena and vote on every issue. So people elect representatives who will then gather and vote on their behalf.
In a democratic/republican system, the majority does not oppress the minority and prevent it from ever speaking again. It does not deny the minority’s right to monitor the majority’s rule and point out where it has gone wrong and try to capitalize on that to win support.
This is not something you can simply put on paper and expect people to abide by. This kind of respect for differences must be inducted into people’s thoughts and culture before it can become a constitution. If not, the winners will become rulers for life and the democratic experience will end on the first run.
We have seen this so often in the Middle East, presidents get elected and then declare themselves presidents for life. Or, they conduct sham elections that in effect deny anyone from truly competing for office. Egypt is a prime example.
That is because they believe that democracy gave them the right to “do what they want”, and they have no obligation to respect and accept others.
The reason Lebanon succeeded where others failed, is due to the fact that the people have lived all their history in a mixed society, where differences are all around them. Having people with different views was natural and expected. It is these differences that gave birth to democratic principles in Phoenicia thousands of years ago, which then moved to Greece, Rome and the rest of the world.
The war does not deny that fact, but rather re-enforces this point. In spite of all the conflicts of the past 35 years, all the foreign interventions and fanatic movements, the Lebanese people continue to live in mixed communities and, on a personal basis, respect each other’s opinions. They continue to insist on a unified pluralistic country.
Even Hizbullah, which originally aimed at an Islamic state in Lebanon, has found it necessary to moderate its speech to remain accepted among its own Shiite constituency. It is not out the kindness of their hearts that they proclaim their respect for other Lebanese communities and their willingness to share power with them. And, it is not due to the opposing force that prevented them from doing it. They have the weapons and have had the cover to this for a long time.
This is purely due to the fact that the Shiites would not go along with their original objectives. The only reasons Hizbullah remains a viable force in Lebanon are, the ongoing conflict with Israel and the fact that the Shiites see that the world is not willing to provide the Lebanese Army with the necessary weapons to defend them, and the social support network it built during the war years when Government services mostly disappeared. Beyond that, Hizbullah’s support is limited to a very small minority.
Next Sunday, Lebanese go to the polls to elect the next Parliament. There are many Shiites running against Hizbullah and its right to bare its arms. They have not been killed or denied that right. Try that in any other country in the Middle East.
It is that kind of cultural acceptance and respect of the “different” others that allows democracy to exist. Without such acceptance and respect, the majority elected in the first elections will become the new dictatorship.
Two years ago a lone brave sole decided he wanted to run for President in Egypt against Mubarak. He has been in jail ever since. Washington and the international community protested briefly and then forgot about it. No one else dared run, and the elections were simply a “Yes” or “No” for Mubarak. Other countries are just as bad, or even worse.
That is the kind of culture Obama will be addressing.
Cadmus
Jun 3, 2009 - 12:18 pm 25. El_Heffe:
Cadmus
“But, in a democratic system the majority still accepts and respects the right of the minority to have a different view, and its right to continue to promote its view and vie for gaining the majority. Whether they succeed or not depends on how many people they can convince, with words and examples, not force.”
I respectfully disagree, though i must admit that this is really just a matter of terminology. I know what you mean when you say “democracy”, but you are using the wrong word to convey your meaning. You are describing a republic but calling it a democracy.
By definition a “pure democracy” is essentially a temporary tyranny of the majority. This state is always captured by some other form of govennment, and often winds up as a dictatorship.
“But a pure democracy is not practical” you say… I agree… not only is it impractical, it is also undesirable and has rarely existed. Pure democracy only has a chance with relatively small groups of people and in relatively non-technical societies were issues are simple enough that literaly every one can understand all the details. less pure forms of democracy however have come about at various times and all of them have the traits of a pure democracy in proportion to their “purity”.
“A Republic is a system that allows democracy to work on a larger scale, where all the people cannot gather in the Arena and vote on every issue. So people elect representatives who will then gather and vote on their behalf.
In a democratic/republican system, the majority does not oppress the minority and prevent it from ever speaking again. It does not deny the minority’s right to monitor the majority’s rule and point out where it has gone wrong and try to capitalize on that to win support.”
You have got the scent of it here but you have missed the most significant part … you havent explained *why* the majority doesn’t oppress the minority under a republic… and that is a significant feature of a republic that is distinctly absent from a democracy (democracy nearly always devolves into a minority opressing the majority).
In a democracy the people directly excersize their political power (which is rightly their own as individuals). In a republic the people delegate their political power to their representative. In doing this they participate in an implicit collective agreement that others (or the representatives of others) will acknowledge their representative as legitimately weilding politcal power on behalf of them as the constituents. in exchange they agree to recognize the legitimacy of the representatives selected by other groups of constituents.
This is the foundational “unwritten law” if you will, that must be respected in order for any republic to exist (its really more like a question of legitimacy). If others refuse acknowledge that the representative weilds the power of his constituents then the system breaks down.
Because every one wants their representatave to be acknowledged, and be able to function on their behalf, they agree to allow the representatives of others to function on the behalf of their respective constituents. And thus all parties to this system implicity agree to respect the outcomes of the interactions between the representatives.
From this is born the concept of minority rights. Because if a constiteuncy were to just disavow their representative and “take back” their individual political power every time a decision didnt go their way then the whole system would lose legitimacy and break down… therefore it is in the interest of the majority to respect the rights of the minority (and not become abusive) in order to maintain the integrity of the whole system and thus prevent the situtaion from devolving into a democracy, which is at best cumbersome or at worst the path to some form of tyranny (in which case even the majority becomes oppressed - since all forms of tyranny basically amount to a minority with undue power using that power to stay in power).
See how this works? … See the fundamental difference between a republic and a democracy? words mave meaning, words do indeed matter wether they are on paper or not.
I respectfully defer to your understanding of the Lebanese situation. I do not have significant experience with the peoples of any other nation than the United States, and likewise no experience to speak of with middle easterners. I just know the difference between a republic and a democracy.
best regards.
Jun 3, 2009 - 4:42 pm 26. El_Heffe:
PS. alot of this is in the declaration of independence … “disolve the political bands” etc. The colonists took back their political power thus claiming legitimacy for their political actions and delegitimising (for them any way) the political order in which they had previously been participating… and they did this because they were an oppressed minority.
This is how governments (and forms of government) die… loss of legitimacy. This is why “pure republics” can’t oppress their minorities.
However because in a democracy there is no one to take back your political power from (you are already weilding it direclty) majorities in a “pure democracy” dont have to worry about this, and can therefore oppress the minority all the day long… untill some one co-opts the democracy that is.
PPS. Monarchs and dictators don’t have legitimacy in todays world, the american experiment has seen to that. Monarchs are now almost universally figure heads, and dictators stay in power only by force.
Jun 3, 2009 - 4:57 pm
27. El_Heffe:
… or by realpolitik.

comment review: 05-30-09

belmont club now has a link to older posts so i have stopped cloning the posts here.

i will continue to have coment review and other thoughs posted here however.

for example...

40. no mo uro:

There has never been a benevolent regime controlled by atheists, in fact more people died violent deaths at the hands of atheist regimes in the last century than dies in all the religious conflicts in history COMBINED.

The more atheist an institution becomes, the less open and free it becomes. A prime example would be the educaction industry in the U.S., where, as the population of professors has become increasingly atheist and secular (or, at best, some anemic form of Christian), freedom of speech has declined. Another example would be postmodern Europe.

Groups of people who claim to be Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu can do and have done bad things, but they have, historically, also created enlightened and free societies. There has never been a society controlled by atheists which has done this, and I suspect there never will be one.

I can say that all - every single one - of the most intolerant people, with regard to religion, that I have met have been atheists. More so than any of the Muslims I’ve encountered, and that’s saying something. It’s been my observation more often than not that an atheist is not someone who doesn’t believe in God but rather someone who views themself as godlike.

I have added some comments of my own to the crisis of unfaith thread... i start at comment 56

Congress vs the Fed ... can you find the "white hat"?

A very insightful (and even predictive) comment by L3

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/05/18/the-death-of-kings/#comment-34

This reinforces for me the significance of the fact that the founders never really debated fully or settled the question of how best to handle monitary policy when laying out the constitution (they just sort of tossed it in with the legislative). Structural forms in government are important. The levers of power must be separated widely enough from one another that any small/medium collection of bad actors will have difficulty in reaching enough of them to bring the whole system under permanent control (this says nothing of course, about the chances of a large group of bad actors attempting to capture the system). Leo seems to have no objection to the way Federal Reserve power is assigned… but to me there is room for improvement. The seats in front of the levers of power (all of the levers of power) should be filled by processes in harmony with the principles of a republic. … again more emphasis structural forms.

Its natural that there should be a temptation whenever a wise/competent/benevolent public servant (or one who appears to be these things) comes on the scene to rely on them. To place as many important things under their control as they can successfuly administer. to give them expanded powers to enhance their ability to do good with their core powers. This temptation to rearrange the levers of power for the seeming benefit of the public must be resisted at all costs. When too many levers can be reached from one seat there is no aparent danger while one of worthy character occupies the seat… but it is an historical certainty that some eventual successor will prove less worthy… and oppression will follow… then the spilling of blood to pry the levers of power from his hands and set them a respectable and safe distance from one another again.

Separation of powers is the most significant structural feature of the US constitution. From grade school civics lessons we all automatically think of the separation of powers as primarily encompassing the judicial, legislative, and executive with the monetary power lumped in with the legislative (where as before the constitution most forms of government would have had monetary power with the executive), but I wonder if the time may not be approaching when monetary power needs to be seen in a similar light to the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial; and therefore separated and established as its own branch of government. Likely small and relatively independent, something along the lines of the supreme court (but without the bit about life-time service).

comment review: 05-06-09

Here is a good one... especially the last part.

13. bogie wheel:
The criminalization of political differences may be the worst structural effect of this Administration. Yes, the economy is being transformed and yes, our national security may be degraded, but without the ability to conduct open, honest, candid civil discourse the mechanisms for change are, to use a strong word, castrated.

Good observation, batman. And for those people (not most here) who insist that the worst that can happen under TOTUS is for America to become a socialist-democratic purgatory of strangling nanny-state regulations …

… this is a very bad sign.

Having a public space for political dialogue — which can get fierce, nasty, and quite personal (if you think contemporary presidential campaigns are rhetorically vicious, check out some of the ones from past elections) — is essential to our system of government. Hence the First Amendment.

Driving disagreement out of that public space — by mob ridicule (Miss California, anyone?) or by outright criminalization — does NOT eliminate the thoughts behind that disagreement. All it does is (1) ensure that expression of disagreement will seek other avenues, and (2) take TPTB, once committed to complete elimination of disagreement, down the trail of actually going after the “bad” thoughts themselves. At which point you get Soviet-style psychiatric abuse.

Totalitarianism seeks to control not just every sphere of the slave’s life, but every expression of the slave’s person as well.

First they came for the behavior …

Then they came for the speech …

And finally they came for the thoughts …

To say that this is the complete antithesis of the American citizen’s standing under the US Constitution would be putting it far too mildly.

May 2, 2009 - 3:02 am

Thoughts lead to speech, and then thoughts and speech lead to behavior (action). Freedom is bound to be collectively present or absent in these 3 spheres together. Because fewer and fewer people are willing or able to take the time and put in the WORK to think (due mostly to defective primary/secondary education and also economic pressures) the capability of our society in that sphere is less than it has been in generations past. Correspondingly our other freedoms are subject to decline, since thought is the wellspring of speech and action.

Its funny how freedom of speech (and even action) can be enshrined in law yet rendered moot by a subtle undermining of the ability to think. It also inspires a gentle revision of the old saying, from: "those who don't read are no better off than those who can't" into "those who don't think (or act) are no better off than those who can't." Motivation/incentive is as big a part of the problem (and solution) as is ability.


...

here are some other rants/musings from Whiskey and Mongoose that I found interesting.

BC:05-05-09

fallen a bit behind it seems.

May 5th, 2009 7:13 am
Air Force None
The New York Post says that none of the photos taken during the VC-25 flyover of Manhattan will be released to the public, by order. “The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said yesterday. ‘We have no plans to release them,’ an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further.”

May 4th, 2009 8:19 pm
The PKK loses its gamble
Noah Shachtman at Wired reports that Iranian helicopters have carried out airstrikes on Kurdish villages in Iraq, the first since the US toppled Saddam Hussein.

May 4th, 2009 6:33 am
Why should they worry?
The Voice of America reports that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is on a trip to the Middle East to reassure Egypt and Saudi Arabia that it is not abandoning them simply because it is engaging Iran.

May 4th, 2009 6:21 am
The taxman cometh
Open thread. Will Obama’s new tax compliance initiatives drive more companies overseas or is it simply a way of getting tax cheats to pay their fair share to the public coffers?

May 3rd, 2009 10:13 pm
Moral integrity
Step right up folks and take your political correctness quiz. For five points: who does a progressive person cheer for in a head-on clash between the NYT company and it’s unions?

May 3rd, 2009 9:36 pm
All roads lead to Rome
Lobbying is now a boom industry. The New York Times reports that in an era when people find they can do without many things, the one thing they can’t do without is influence in Washington. In an article entitled “Lobbyists Prosper in Downturn”, the NYT notes that while

May 3rd, 2009 4:01 pm
Houston, we’ve got a problem
The Examiner’s Caroline Grannan warns readers about the dangers of letting a ‘titan’ named Leo Linbeck III “build an empire of KIPP schools … Leo is also very involved with KIPP, one of the most successful public charter school programs in the U.S. He has been the ‘Chief Growth Architect’ at KIPP:Houston, leading the development of a plan to grow to 42 KIPP:Houston schools in the next 8 years, ” and involved with trying to match up high school teachers with scholars.

May 3rd, 2009 3:22 am
I will decide who gets what
Megan McArdle asks how you would want a hedge fund to behave if it handled your money. It’s not entirely an idle question. Hedge funds often represent institutional investors. The NYT reported in 2005 that one of pension funds that had moved assets into hedge funds was the General Motors fund. It’s been alleged, though I haven’t been able to find a hard citation, that the UAW pension fund is partly invested in hedge funds.

May 2nd, 2009 3:45 pm
Not exactly nine to five
How does this compare with working for ACORN? An NYT article entitled Dream job: Training Afghans as bullets fly describes the life of two Marines in outpost with 30 Afghans. “Their senior mentor, Cpl. Sean P. Conroy, of Carmel, N.Y., is 25 years old. His assistant, Lance Cpl. Brandon J. Murray, of Fort Myers, Fla., is 21.”

May 2nd, 2009 3:32 pm
Let loose the dogs of words
The New York Post says that “print reporters have posted a sign in the desk area of the White House press room reading, ‘Blog-Free Zone.’” (Hat tip: James Linville). I wonder what that’s supposed to mean?

May 2nd, 2009 2:37 pm
Lost
History will probably remember the Guantanamo Bay prison for longer than the already forgotten Prison S-21, where up to 20,000 people were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge. “Even though the vast majority of the victims were Cambodian, foreigners were also imprisoned, including Vietnamese, Laotians, Indians, Pakistanis, Britons, Americans, New Zealanders and Australians.” These were captured on the high seas as they were sailing through the South China Sea. “They included four Americans, three French, two Australians, a Briton and a New Zealander. One of the last prisoners to die was American Michael Scott Deeds, who was captured with his friend Chris De Lance while sailing from Singapore to Hawaii.”

May 1st, 2009 10:26 pm
A land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new
In Eric Ambler’s Epitaph for a Spy, the insignificant protagonist, Joseph Vadassy, is accidentally caught up in intrigue at a beach resort where behind the gay facade, danger lurked unseen. While sitting in the garden he observed that despite appearances, all around him in the flowers, a vast tableau of death was being played out among insects and nocturnal birds, with unseen tragedy just behind every beautiful petal. Nothing in the world, he observed, was quite as unblemished as it seemed, as he would learn when the police came for him on subject he knew nothing about.

May 1st, 2009 8:28 pm
Thanks but no thanks
Andy McCarthy declines an invitation to participate in “the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy”. The text is at the link. Most of the reasons for his refusal are straightforward.

May 1st, 2009 1:06 pm
In the central blue
Here are two interesting articles on how well Russian air to air would fare against US aircraft. The first tries to estimate the effectiveness of Russian Beyond Visual Range missiles against the US capabilities and argues that Russian aircraft, with their large missile loadouts and huge missile airframes can compensate somewhat for US quality by firing multiple missile salvos, which in many-on-many situations can generate a one for one tradeoff against US aircraft.

April 30th, 2009 7:46 am
Sealed with a kiss
The BBC reports that the suspects in the Hariri murder are off the hook as Hillary Clinton vowed never to “sell out” Lebanon in an AP article.

April 30th, 2009 3:38 am
The price of safety
So does this mean that Barack Obama agrees me? Or do political circumstances only create the illusion? The LA Times reports that the President has acknowledged that voluntarily refusing to employ certain forms of coercive interrogation may make it harder to obtain intelligence from enemy captives. However, he is willing to pay the moral price.

April 29th, 2009 4:04 pm
Up, up and away
A 6′4″ Eric Hagerman says he dreads flying because there simply isn’t enough space in an economy class seat for his outsized frame. More importantly, he argues there isn’t enough space in it for the ‘average’ sized person. The passenger can get into the space provided, but once there, he is practically immobile.

Comment review: 05-04-09

Leo on Public Goods:

3. Leo Linbeck III:
Every dysfunctional social movement has, at its core, at
least one major misconception. Socialism’s is the perfectibility of human
beings. Nazism’s was the superiority of the Aryan people. Juche’s is the
infallibility of the Kims.
The current brand of American liberalism believes
that a public good is any product or service that can be provided by the
government. If the government can provide something, the government should
provide it.
This is not the economic definition of a public good. By that
definition, a good is a public good if, and only if, it meets both of the
following criteria:
1. The marginal cost of providing the product or service
is low.2. The marginal cost of excluding someone from the product or service is
high.
Goods that meet these criteria must be provided by the government
because a private provider could not prevent free riders, therefore has no
incentive to produce the goods. Also, because the marginal cost is low, there
are significant economies of scale that can make everyone better off if they can
be realized.
A classic example of a public good is national defense. If we
protect our nation against invasion by a foreign country, and a baby is born,
the cost of protecting that additional baby is basically zero. However, the cost
of excluding that baby from our security shield is very high.
The fact is
that most goods are private goods. There are very few public goods, and even
some “traditional” public goods are becoming private goods as technology
changes. For instance, roads were once considered a public good, mainly because
they didn’t meet the second test (how could you exclude drivers from entering a
freeway without slowing down traffic and imposing a very high cost on everyone
else?). Now, however, with RFID tags and license plate recognition systems, the
cost of keeping people out has dropped dramatically, and probably will continue
to drop. This means that roads could eventually become fully
privatized.
However, the modern American liberal believes things like health
care and education are public goods. But they’re not; it’s pretty cheap and easy
to keep people out of hospitals and schools, and the marginal cost of healthcare
is pretty high. What they really mean by public goods is that they want the
public (ie. the government) to provide them.
It is pretty clear the Framers
understood the rarity of public goods, even if they did not have a neat economic
definition to go by. That is why they had a set number of enumerated powers
which were supposed to limit the scope of the Federal government to only those
things that were clearly public goods (national defense, postal service, minting
money, diplomacy, etc.). But over the past 80 years, the scope of government has
expanded inexorably. Now mortgages are held by some to be goods that must be
provided by government. GImme a break.
Barnett is right in that the only way
the expanding writ of the Federal Government can be stopped and reversed is by
constitutional amendment. Whether the Tea Party movement is the right vehicle
for advancing this agenda is open to debate.
But it certainly can’t
hurt…
L3
Apr 27, 2009 - 8:34 pm

comment review: 05-02-09

more from leo:

33.
Leo Linbeck III:
Great post, W.
Perhaps faith is the art of tentative
answers.
I’ve always thought that reality is like a a set of nonlinear
partial differential equations, sort of like a much more complex version of the
Navier-Stokes equations. It can’t be solved as-is, so we are all forced to throw
out terms to make the problem tractable. Trying to solve it as-is will simply
drive us crazy.
Thing is, different people throw out different terms, but not
all simplifications are equally valid. Throwing out the wrong term will give you
a really wrong answer. Sure, the problem is solvable, but the answer is not
true. (Kind of a variation on Gödel.)
In the end, then, our world view is
defined by what we ignore. So choosing what to ignore is the art of faith, an
art that relies on both Athens and Jerusalem. But while all answers are indeed
tentative, if we ignore the right terms we never stray too far from the truth.
And that is a comforting thought, especially when we are confronted with
evil.
Cheers,L3
Apr 27, 2009 - 5:37 pm

here is more leo

3. Leo Linbeck III:
Every dysfunctional social movement has, at its core, at least one major misconception. Socialism’s is the perfectibility of human beings. Nazism’s was the superiority of the Aryan people. Juche’s is the infallibility of the Kims.
The current brand of American liberalism believes that a public good is any product or service that can be provided by the government. If the government can provide something, the government should provide it.
This is not the economic definition of a public good. By that definition, a good is a public good if, and only if, it meets both of the following criteria:
1. The marginal cost of providing the product or service is low.2. The marginal cost of excluding someone from the product or service is high.
Goods that meet these criteria must be provided by the government because a private provider could not prevent free riders, therefore has no incentive to produce the goods. Also, because the marginal cost is low, there are significant economies of scale that can make everyone better off if they can be realized.
A classic example of a public good is national defense. If we protect our nation against invasion by a foreign country, and a baby is born, the cost of protecting that additional baby is basically zero. However, the cost of excluding that baby from our security shield is very high.
The fact is that most goods are private goods. There are very few public goods, and even some “traditional” public goods are becoming private goods as technology changes. For instance, roads were once considered a public good, mainly because they didn’t meet the second test (how could you exclude drivers from entering a freeway without slowing down traffic and imposing a very high cost on everyone else?). Now, however, with RFID tags and license plate recognition systems, the cost of keeping people out has dropped dramatically, and probably will continue to drop. This means that roads could eventually become fully privatized.
However, the modern American liberal believes things like health care and education are public goods. But they’re not; it’s pretty cheap and easy to keep people out of hospitals and schools, and the marginal cost of healthcare is pretty high. What they really mean by public goods is that they want the public (ie. the government) to provide them.
It is pretty clear the Framers understood the rarity of public goods, even if they did not have a neat economic definition to go by. That is why they had a set number of enumerated powers which were supposed to limit the scope of the Federal government to only those things that were clearly public goods (national defense, postal service, minting money, diplomacy, etc.). But over the past 80 years, the scope of government has expanded inexorably. Now mortgages are held by some to be goods that must be provided by government. GImme a break.
Barnett is right in that the only way the expanding writ of the Federal Government can be stopped and reversed is by constitutional amendment. Whether the Tea Party movement is the right vehicle for advancing this agenda is open to debate.
But it certainly can’t hurt…
L3
Apr 27, 2009 - 8:34 pm

Comment review: 05-01-09

another good education coment from LL3.

54.
Leo Linbeck III:
So, I guess I have a different take on this issue.

I’m not at all worried about the 12-year-old tunaphobe. Any kid whose parents can
afford to take them to a restaurant where seared tuna is on the menu will, by
the end of their senior year in high school, be able to read, write, and
calculate well enough to enter college and get a degree. These kids will likely
enter the workforce, make good money, pay their taxes, and vote. Over time,
armed with enough literacy and numeracy, they will come to see that the
environmental movement is anti-human; after all, the ecos hardly mask their
hostility to homo sapiens sapiens.

Now if they choose to live in a liberal
bubble like the West Village or Haight-Asbury, they’ll still believe all this
gobbledygook. But, then, that’s the way they’d believe regardless of what they
learned in 3rd grade, because those bubbles generally operate on, and attract
people to, a collective identity narrative that is impervious to logic, reason,
and data. The good news is that these bubbles are small,
electorally-speaking.

No, the big danger to our republic is the mass of urban
children who either don’t graduate from high school (>50% nationally), or
graduate with such minimal skills that they are dependent upon their “betters”
in the political world. Without the ability to read, write, figure, and think
critically, they are easily manipulated by the latest purveyor of
snake-oil.

Since Plato (at least), it has been well-known that a republic
relies upon an educated populace. Circumstances and environments change, and it
is the ability for the citizen to assess these changes themselves, without the
“leadership” of the so-called elite, that allows them to make good decisions as
a collective, through the ballot box.

What we are seeing in the AGW movement
is an attempt to leverage widespread ignorance into political power through the
liberal application of arguments from authority. This style of argumentation is
most effective on those who are intimidated by smart people, and it is a lot
easier to intimidate the illiterate.

So, at the end of the day, I’m not as
concerned that kids are learning the wrong stuff (though this is still a
concern). I’m much more concerned that kids are being rendered incapable of
learning and thinking on their own, and it is this incapacity that leaves them
open to the demagoguery that characterizes the proponents of AGW.
And it is
this incapacity that puts our republic at risk.
L3
Apr 25, 2009 - 5:03
pm

Comment review: 04-29-08

The second to last paragraph makes a ton of sense (especially to anyone who *isnt* convinced perpetually that "the sky is falling... we've just had our last free election!") and if true has the logical potential of leading to a unified foreign policy for dealing with militant islam that would bridge across administrations of varying parties (Hey ... I can hope for 3rd party traction ... right?).

check it out...

32. ADE:
Er, can I do a Doug?
From a speech by P J O’Rourkein Sydney:
America has wound up with a charming leftist as a president. And this scares me. This scares me not because I hate leftists. I don’t. I have many charming leftist friends. They’re lovely people - as long as they keep their nose out of things they don’t understand. Such as making a living.

When charming leftists stick their nose into things they don’t understand they become ratchet-jawed purveyors of monkey-doodle and baked wind. They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the door of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people’s money. They are the lap dogs of the poly sci-class, returning to the vomit of collectivism. They are pig herders tending that sow-who-eats-her-young, the welfare state. They are muck-dwelling bottom-feeders growing fat on the worries and disappointments of the electorate. They are the ditch carp of democracy.

And that’s what one of their friends says.

And now that I’ve offended Doug, I’ll redeem myself with this explanation of the Master Strategist

“President Obama’s reaching out to the Muslim world at the start of a new American administration, is welcome, smart, and can play a big part in defeating the threat we face. It disarms those who want to say we made these enemies, that if we had been less confrontational they would have been different. It pulls potential moderates away from extremism.

“But it will expose, too, the delusion of believing that there is any alternative to waging this struggle to its conclusion. The ideology we are fighting is not based on justice. That is a cause we can understand. And world-wide these groups are adept, certainly, at using causes that indeed are about justice, like Palestine. Their cause, at its core, however, is not about the pursuit of values that we can relate to; but in pursuit of values that directly contradict our way of life. They don’t believe in democracy, equality or freedom. They will espouse, tactically, any of these values if necessary. But at heart what they want is a society and state run on their view of Islam. They are not pluralists. They are the antithesis of pluralism. And they don’t think that only their own community or state should be like that. They think the world should be governed like that.

“In other words, there may well be groups, or even Governments, that can be treated with, and with whom we can reach an accommodation. Negotiation and persuasion can work and should be our first resort. If they do, that’s great, which is why if Hamas were to accept the principle of a peaceful two state solution, they could be part of the process agreeing it. But the ideology, as a movement within Islam, has to be defeated. It is incompatible not with ‘the West’ but with any society of open and tolerant people and that in particular means the many open and tolerant Muslims.”

Mea maxima culpa,
ADE
Apr 25, 2009 - 3:58 am

I havent read this link below... but I will get back to it.

35. ADE:
Apparently my quote above (which was from a Tony Blair speech in Chicago) was a ripper in full. Here it is.
ADE
Apr 25, 2009 - 5:25 am

Update: I read the link to the full speech by Tony Blair. Its quite good and relatively brief. I recommend it.

BC: 04-29-09

April 28th, 2009 3:14 pm
The wizard war
MSNBC reprints an NYT article describing cyberattack and defense concepts that are either already in place or are being developed. Many of these concepts were apparently developed during the Bush Administration and their use and success is still highly classified.

April 27th, 2009 10:14 pm
“And then I lit a match to see if there was any gas left …”
The Associated Press reported that an Air Force One type of aircraft was flown over New York city to update the file photograph that is used for publicity purposes. Instead of being a photo opportunity of the aircraft itself, the episode ended up taking a snapshot of the bureaucratic mind.

April 27th, 2009 7:18 pm
Competing governments: Federalism revisited
Randy Barnett described his proposal to place ten Constitutional amendments at the center of the Tea Party movement to Michael Leahy and Glenn Reynolds at Pajamas TV. What seems interesting to me, apart from the proposals themselves, is the reaction they are likely to provoke among those who feel that the centralization of power with the Federal Government is something devoutly to be desired.

comment review: 04-28-09

good comment on home schooling and free market possibilities here

BC: 04-27-09

April 27th, 2009 3:59 am
A trace of memory
Napoleon Bonaparte once said that “history is a set of lies agreed upon.” Perhaps another, but subtly different way to express this ambiguity is to conclude that history is a narrative where all the accusations are true. Nowhere is this better illustrated than the record of torture during the Marcos regime.

April 26th, 2009 9:47 pm
Repel boarders
The headline tells half the story: Israeli guards aboard Italian cruise ship repel pirates off Somalian coast .

April 26th, 2009 8:12 pm
Left to ourselves
Eli Saslow chronicles the slow decline of Greenwood, SC during the first 100 days of the Obama administration in the Washington Post. It’s a town with unemployment over 11%, with people unable to pay their bills, pay for heating. It’s a place where old ladies have only a box of grits in the cupboard. It’s an story centered on the efforts of a city councilwoman that is without villains; but it is also one without transcendent heroes.

April 26th, 2009 3:18 am
Waltzing Matilda
It was Anzac day yesterday and I thought I’d post an old Seekers rendition of Waltzing Matilda. The vocalist is Judith Durham.

April 26th, 2009 2:40 am
Predator versus prey
One of the questions raised by the Craigslist Murder was why the suspect might have done it. Silly question, says Kate Harding of Salon, who argues that the suspect currently in custody fits the profile of a sociopathic serial killer perfectly. It’s just that we’re too biased to notice.

April 25th, 2009 10:41 pm
Caving
The character of Bill the Butcher in the movie Gangs of New York explained the secret of power of terrorism. It is the ability to command obedience through fear. Bill explained, “I’m forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts. Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That’s what preserves the order of things. Fear.”

April 25th, 2009 5:47 pm
Baghdadi
The BBC asks whether Iraq is sliding into possible civil war again. “The sudden upsurge of violence in Iraq has set the alarm bells ringing and raised many disturbing questions. Does it mean the situation is sliding back out of control, as US troops prepare to leave Iraqi cities by the end of June and quit Iraq as a whole by 2011?” In order to answer that question there are two pieces of information that would be nice to have.

April 25th, 2009 3:23 pm
Zuma
Jacob Zuma won the Presidency of South Africa, but neither as narrowly as the opposition predicted nor by as large as a margin as the ANC formerly enjoyed. All Africa focused on the setbacks inside of Zuma’s victory.

April 25th, 2009 3:08 pm
Spam settings
The spam filter has been filtering out a number of regular commenters. I am looking at the issue now.

April 24th, 2009 4:20 pm
While other monsters roamed the earth
Meanwhile, who cares about the security of Pakistani nukes, the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Global Warming is the greatest threat facing mankind today! The UK’s chief scientific adviser, David King, said that ‘climate change’ was a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism. Meghan Cox Gurdon, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that today’s well educated child has nightmares about her father ordering seared tuna in a restaurant, not experiencing a dirty bomb in New York City.

April 24th, 2009 3:43 pm
Suddenly
The Times Online says the administration is now pressing Islamabad to fight after its disastrous peace agreement with the Taliban in the NWFP inaugurated a pell-mell retreat.

April 24th, 2009 12:47 pm
The Twelve Monkeys
Barney Frank’s oscillating views on housing (shown in video after the Read More) underscore the question of whether anyone saw the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis coming. After all, if the primary purpose of additional proposed regulatory oversight, the control, the ‘accountability’ of the new managed capitalism is to ‘prevent’ a similar occurence, then events like the subprime crisis have to be detectable in principle while they are still in the offing. Legal researchers are trying to settle the question of whether the meltdown was predictable because the success of class-action suits depends to a large extent on it. If events like the meltdown are not predictable then no bureaucracy is going to be able to prevent it.

Economic insights from the Book of Mormon

An interesting link I got in my email.

http://www.farmsresearch.com/publications/jbms/?vol=1&num=1&id=2

The comming of the fourth american republic

From a link deep in the comments on the "Not For The Locks On Doors" post:

http://american.com/archive/2009/april-2009/the-coming-of-the-fourth-american-republic

April 23rd, 2009 8:31 pm
One country’s nightmare experience with engaging the Taliban
Pakistan’s. The Dawn is describing the pell-mell retreat that followed the government’s negotiatated agreement with Islamists. The province of Swat is now doubtful and the retreat continues towards Islamabad. The Dawn asks what happens if “the center cannot hold”.

April 23rd, 2009 6:29 pm
Notes from all around

April 23rd, 2009 4:51 am
Links sent by readers April 22, 2009

April 22nd, 2009 3:14 pm
One more day
James DeLong argues that while the US has been operating under the same Constitution since 1789, the rearrangements since mean that the US is operating under what he terms the Third American Republic. DeLong reckons that the Civil War ushered in the Second, while the New Deal ushered in this last. The defining criteria, in each case, has been the extent of the Federal Government and its relationship with other elements in society. He maintains that the New Deal established the “special interest State”.

April 22nd, 2009 1:26 pm
Terrorism and moral torture
Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe adopts what I think is a morally sustainable position on the use of torture. He declares himself against it even if its use were necessary to save a city. Unlike other pundits, Jacoby allows for the possibility that coercive interrogation will work; that it might save the lives of innocent people. He is simply unwilling to pay the moral price that is necessary to save them. Jacoby writes:

April 21st, 2009 2:18 pm
Not for all the locks on doors
The WSJ reports that “computer spies”, probably from China, have stolen terrabytes of data from the F-35 project. They exploited vulnerabilities in a contractor’s system to siphon out data, which they encrypted before putting it on the wire, so that it may still be unknown exactly what was stolen. However, sources believed that the really important system details had escaped compromise, on the basis of the isolation of the data from the stolen information. The intrusions were first detected in 2007 and continued into 2008.

April 21st, 2009 6:48 am
Modern Times
On the day after the NYT won five Pulitzer Prizes, Reuters reported that the company suffered a first quarter loss “of $74.5 million, or 52 cents a share, compared with a loss of $335,000, or nil cents a share, in the quarter a year ago.” Bill Keller claimed that Pulitzer Prizes showed why the NYT was an indispensable institution, citing its ability to hire lawyers to break a story. But if so, why is it losing its shirt?

BC: 04-21-09

April 21st, 2009 2:50 am
The Gates defense budget
Max Boot looks at the new defense budget and concludes that although he agrees with particular line item cuts and realignments, that overall it is still an “austerity budget” premised on the calculation that the US will largely fight counterinsurgencies in the near future. But Boot is worried that the future may bring surprises and that the US may leave itself unprotected if other scenarios eventuate.

April 20th, 2009 8:58 am
Mosquito versus man
The Los Angeles Times describes the development of the five pound Spike missile at China Lake. The missile represents the continuation of two trends: the requirement for weapons with controllable lethality and the rise of the unmanned platform as the premier weapons delivery system.

April 19th, 2009 5:48 pm
The universe of low life
Rod Norland of the New York Times writes that in Baghdad the best police sources on the activities of the JAM and al-Qaeda are prostitutes.

April 19th, 2009 3:55 am
Korengal
The New York Times describes in an ambush executed by a First Infantry Division platoon on an equivalently sized Taliban unit in the Korangal Valley, resulting in the death of 13 enemy and perhaps many more. The NYT says that “The one-sided fight, fought on the slopes of the same mountain where a Navy Seal patrol was surrounded in 2005 and a helicopter with reinforcements was shot down, does not change the war. … But as accounts of the fight have spread, the ambush, on Good Friday, has become an emotional rallying point for soldiers in Kunar Province, who have seen it as a both a validation of their equipment and training and a welcome bit of score-settling in an area that in recent years has claimed more American lives than any other.”

April 17th, 2009 5:43 pm
Your turn
Glenn Reynolds has a set of links which survey the debates ensuing from Barack Obama’s release of Bush-era legal reviews of interrogation techniques. It raises two separate sets of issues, both of which are linked. The first is whether the interrogation methods used in the past are absolutely repugnant to the American people, and more narrowly, illegal; and secondly whether any of those techniques can be used in the future.

BC:04-17-09

April 16th, 2009 5:26 am
Retrospective Iraq
Michael Totten interviews Thomas Ricks about his new book. Michael writes:

April 15th, 2009 1:30 am
I dreamed a dream
Didn’t expect that, did you? Video at Fausta’s Blog

April 15th, 2009 12:58 am
Iran, Texas and other interesting stuff
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts Iran’s future. A 20 minute YouTube video. De Mesquita asserts that Ahmadinejad is on way down, but also claims that the equilibrium in Iraq is only marginally susceptible to US influence.

April 14th, 2009 7:50 pm
Getting to Zero
Czech journalist Milan Vodicka explains in a guest editorial in the NYT why he is skeptical about Barack Obama’s plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

April 14th, 2009 6:45 am
Culture post of the day
Phil Spector’s conviction started a cascade of free association and so here’s the trivia question of the day. What song has made it to the top of the charts one decade after the other under different covers? In the 1990s, it hit the top of the British charts when it was sung on a drama series. Elvis Presley sang it six weeks before his death. The most famous version is by the Righteous Brothers, but it was really performed only as a solo.

April 13th, 2009 6:29 pm
As the world turns, and turns
Two news stories illustrate how the law of unintended consequences operates in public policy. The Daily Mail describes what happens when not enough resources for treating mouth disease are coupled with increased funding for tooth extractions. Amy King from Plymouth provides the headline: ‘I couldn’t find a dentist… Now, aged 21, I’ve had to have all my teeth removed’. It makes some sort of sense. No teeth, no problem.

April 13th, 2009 2:57 pm
“You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling”
Just in. Music legend Phil Spector has been found guilty of murder.

April 13th, 2009 2:41 pm
Bangkok
Michael Yon talks about the situation in Thailand. There are several other resources which readers might use, one is the ever useful Jotman, who gets around the region a lot.

cool blog about greek stuff

http://hollow-lakedaimon.blogspot.com/

BC: 04-13-09

missed some...

April 13th, 2009 5:18 am
Circular running torpedo

British blogger Guido Fawkes has broken the story of an attempt by British Labor operatives to smear political rivals and their wives by circulating ’salacious’ emails on their private lives. It has already led to the dismissal of one of Gordon’s Brown’s men and is now being called the moment the British blogosphere came of age.

April 13th, 2009 3:05 am
How should the crew have responded?
Many experts agree. That what happened on the Maersk Alabama should never happen again.

April 12th, 2009 11:35 pm
Icepick vs AK-47
The AP describes your average Bangladeshi-American seaman from Connecticut, who happened to be sailing on the Maersk Alabama, who’s now thinking of quitting as a result of a certain unpleasantness off Somalia.

April 12th, 2009 7:27 pm
Heading it off at the pass
David Kilcullen, interviewed for the Sydney Morning Herald, says Pakistan could collapse before the end of the year and that the coalition is in race against time.

April 12th, 2009 2:34 pm
Then there was one pirate
There are emerging new details on the rescue of Captain Phillips . According to the Washington Post, the Captain was freed after Navy SEALs shot down three pirates on the lifeboat, which was being towed by the destroyer Bainbridge. The fourth pirate was aboard the destroyer negotiating.

April 12th, 2009 11:03 am
Freed
The BBC says that Captain Phillips has been “released”, but the first details suggest he was rescued in an operation. One pirate is reported to be in custody. But the apparent end of the Maersk Alabama incident leaves unresolved the larger question of what to do with the Somali piracy problem and whether the pirates will be tried under the new rules the administration has decreed for ‘detainees’.

April 12th, 2009 1:02 am
The negotiations for Captain Phillips
The NYT describes the state of play.

April 11th, 2009 8:11 pm
In Afghanistan
Scott Kesterton sends this message:

April 11th, 2009 4:13 pm
Wider still yet wider
Robert Kaplan describes the logic for negotiating with the Taliban in order to “make progress and find an exit strategy” in Afghanistan. But halfway through the article the reader will come to the realization that Kaplan isn’t talking about the War in Afghanistan at all, but about something much larger: Pakistan, India, Pashtunistan, the Great Game. The discussion is about the Taliban only in the sense that when you talk about a dog, it necessarily includes the tail. Kaplan places the origins of the Taliban in Islamabad — and the region.

April 11th, 2009 12:28 pm
Thinking it over?
Australian officials have apparently failed to get any details on the Obama “plan” on Afghanistan. Xinhua reports: