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George Will: On Freedom Of Speech

December 4, 2012, 8:42 am
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By Rachel Manteuffel

Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post
George Will's column on the weenie rules instituted by several colleges attempting to police offensive thought and behavior has lit up the comments on the Post Opinions page. Will argues that colleges should be the last places on Earth where some ideas are forbidden, and it is antithetical to education to try to ban speech that makes other people uncomfortable. He cites a case in Indiana where a student was officially reprimanded for carrying a book with a picture of Ku Klux Klansmen on the cover, even though the book was anti-Klan. Banning any hints of racism, sexism and other isms, Will contends, essentially make it impossible to discuss racism, sexism, etc. PostScript is delighted, and a little surprised, to find herself thoroughly in George Will's corner here, with the offensive.
So were many commenters. handofjustice1 says authorities should follow the "sticks and stones" rule:
There's no right not to be offended. When the racist jerk yelling epithets at you begins to throw pine cones or snowballs at you, then you have something actionable.
Cindii says the system will always be flawed because it will always be run by flawed people. Maybe there should be some checks and balances?
Excellent read, Mr. Will. Within the system (including education), our freedoms to learn, read and speak are dictated by those in charge of the institutions, who judge what is and is not acceptable within the confines of their own, biased, minds.
Some argued that censorship is an especially bad thing for education, because of the opportunities for teachable moments.
jeffdc1 
The answer to those acts and other dastardly ones is not to prohibit that speech but to broadcast what those people did so they can feel the full weight of public disapproval. I also support the right of Nazis and KKK member to march wherever and whenever they want. We cannot ban ideas or speech simply because a community is horrified or thinks that something is unacceptable. Defeat bad ideas and hateful speech by persuading a majority that the ideas are bad and the speech is indeed hateful. Otherwise, you may find your speech banned one day by those who think your ideas are bad and your speech is hateful. It is, to me, pretty simple.
argie 
Life is offensive. People always will be "offended" by someone's opinions, views, likes/dislikes, etc. Instead of teaching people how to deal with reality and how to counter someone else's opinions intelligently, with solid arguments and convincing reason, academia is teaching society that ideas found "offensive" ought to be shouted down and drowned.
murray1665 is sympathetic to the school administrators who create the rules curtailing free speech:
It is the responsibility of school administrators to walk the fine line between protecting the rights of students to exchange ideas and ensuring a safe environment where all students feel able to express those views. This is no easy task in this day and age considering our incredibly diverse population and the thousands of self-proclaimed whistle blowers/reporters/bloggers who are just waiting to pounce on a "big" story. I will not be one to pass judgment on Will's examples, as I was not present for any of those incidents, but I do understand the difficulty these school leaders face on a daily basis. They will never satisfy everyone, but even if that book 100 cases of this, it still is a tiny percentage of the exchanges that occur daily on college campuses.
Centsorsense remembers back when things got really offensive:
People used to set trash cans on fire, then roll them down the stairs for fun. Now kids get in trouble for reading books? I guess that is what happens when kids are less violent . . .?
guyslp agrees with Will about the listed cases, but not his broader conclusions:
I doubt a single reader, myself included, could support those "enforcers" in the specific situations cited. They were wrong, it's that easy.
Go take a look at the student/university newspapers and their stories on these incidents. After that, get back to us decrying the death of free speech.
PostScript too wishes she could find more specific information about some of these cases. What does it mean that a student is charged with and convicted of "racial harassment" by a school administrator? The case in question, with the Klan rally on the cover of a book, seems to have been reversed after a surge of media attention from the group Will cites, and they note his school record was cleared.
With time and media attention, this case seems to have been corrected. PostScript would even venture to say this is exactly how bad ideas should die, in opinion columns and in comments sections and in reinforced special free-speech offending bunkers. Aw look, you guys, a teachable moment.
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"No Swimming Allowed"

December 4, 2012, 1:54 pm
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Dear Fred,

I've been "under the weather" lately and am only getting a couple hours work done each day.

I think your view of literalism is important.

You remind me of an epiphany I had when hiking the shores of Hemlock Lake - one of two minor Finger Lakes that serve as resevoirs for the City of Rochester, 25 miles north. 

There has never been residentiall (nor commercial) construction on the Hemlock shore, but at regular intervals signs are posted saying "Sailboats Permitted" and "No Swimming Allowed."

Although I am not much of a sailor, I know that "sunfish sailing" routinely pitches crew members into "the drink."

My realization was this.

The "authorities" know that some people will swim in Hemlock Lake, if only because authorization of sailing makes it inevitable.

However, what good is a sign that says "Not much swimming allowed?"

If the authorities let it seem there are exceptions-to-rules, thenevery individual will make himself an exception and there will be no general rule.

So, to achieve the desired end of keeping swimming within acceptable limits, it is necessary to proclaim absolutist fictions.

NO Swimming Allowed.

Literalism is an absolutist fiction which --within limits -- serves laudable (even necessary) ends.

Pax

Alan


On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
skip the nursing aide story

what about this insight that I had about literalism? Remember when Mary Martin as Peter Pan said if we don't all believe in fairies then Tinkerbelle will die? We have to believe or she will die?

So I realized -- although it might not be true at all -- that literalism has its place in the culture. Somebody, some few, need to believe that Moses parted the red sea, and Noah survived the flood -- that these are not just stories -- because if they are just stories they are merely amusing.

And if they are literally true, and the earth was made in seven days  - we have to throw science out window

I think the real truth is a contradiction that we have to live with us.



--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

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Obama To Fill Key Posts. Hagel to Pentagon. Romney to Commerce? Lugar to Defense?

December 4, 2012, 8:40 pm
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US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) (L) smiles next to US Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) during a news conference at the Amman Citadel, an ancient Roman landmark, in Amman, Jordan, July 22, 2008. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji

Alan: In the name of bipartisanship, Obama would do well to make Dick Lugar his Secretary of Defense and to offer Commerce to Romney. 

Romney would likely decline but might also realize that his participation on a "team of rivals" could bring important business expertise to "the president's table." 

Dick Lugar would make a brilliant Secretary of Defense while also serving as continual reminder to the Tea Party's that toppling Lugar in Indiana's 2012 Republican primary was the kind of predictable political disaster that results from inordinate focus on ideological intransigence to the exclusion of expertise and accomplishment. 

If the Republican Party is to save itself from the fate of the Whigs - and thus resume its proper role in the necessary Polarity of Politics - the GOP must not ignore "The Lugar Lesson" before taking it to heart. 

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Obama to fill key posts in weeks, Hagel on Pentagon short list

By Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON | Dec 4, 2012 
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama is expected to announce his nominees for secretaries of state and defense in the next two weeks, with former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel on the short list of potential choices to head the Pentagon, senior administration officials said on Tuesday.
Hagel, whose appointment would give Obama's reshuffled second-term Cabinet a bipartisan cast, met the Democratic president at the White House this week to discuss a post on his national security team. But there was no sign that Obama had decided on any of the key nominations he will put forth.
Obama is still deliberating whether to unveil his top national security appointments, likely to include a new CIA director, in a single high-profile package this month or to name them one-by-one, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Other top contenders to replace Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are believed to include former senior Pentagon official Michele Flournoy, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Democratic Senator John Kerry.
Complicating matters, Obama is also deciding whether to nominate Kerry as secretary of state to replace Hillary Clinton, or to go with Susan Rice, embattled U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Rice is a long-time confidante of the president, but picking her would lead to a tough Senate confirmation battle over her comments in the wake of the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has coveted the job as America's top diplomat and would face a much smoother confirmation process if nominated. It is unclear, however, whether he would accept the Pentagon post instead.
If Obama nominates Kerry for State, he could the risk opening up a safe Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts, which Senator Scott Brown, the Republican who just lost his seat to Elizabeth Warren, could run for in a special election.
Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Tuesday, reiterated that Rice is "highly qualified" for the job, but said, "I haven't made a decision about secretary of state."
NEW FACES FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
Obama's choices for State and Defense will essentially set the tone for his administration's handling of a wide range of global issues in his second term, including Middle East upheaval, Iran's nuclear standoff with the West and efforts to wind down the war in Afghanistan.
With candidates still going through the vetting process, Obama is not expected to unveil his choices before next week, but he has every intention of making his announcements before the end of the year, the administration official said.
The choice of Hagel, a moderate on foreign policy who currently co-chairs Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board, would give the president a Republican in his Cabinet at a time when he is trying to win bipartisan cooperation from congressional Republicans on taxes and spending to avoid a looming "fiscal cliff."
It is also possible that Hagel's name was being floated to show Obama's willingness to reach across the aisle, even if he ultimately does not nominate him.
A social conservative and strong internationalist who co-chaired John McCain's failed Republican presidential campaign back in 2000, Hagel might seem an unlikely pick were it not for his dissent years ago on the Iraq war launched under former President George W. Bush, a Republican. That war was the issue on which Obama also rose to national prominence.
Hagel served two terms in the Senate, representing Nebraska, and left in 2008. He is a professor at Georgetown University.
Since he left the Senate, Hagel has been a big critic of his own party. He told the Financial Times newspaper in 2011 that he was "disgusted" by the "irresponsible actions" of Republicans during the debt ceiling debate.
Former President Bill Clinton chose former Republican Senator William Cohen to lead the Defense Department, and Obama kept Robert Gates, former President George W. Bush's last defense secretary, on board for the first part of his term.
Hagel has also been seen as a contender to take over at the CIA, where retired general David Petraeus resigned last month amid a scandal over an extramarital affair. CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who took over as acting director, and White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan are also in the running.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Jackie Frank and Stacey Joyce)


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"Life of Pi"

December 4, 2012, 9:32 pm
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Dear Chuck,


I thought Life of Pi even better than Roger Ebert's glowing review: "a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to "life."" 


My favorite book, Chesterton's "Orthodoxy," holds that life is properly valued when treated as a shipwreck.  Pi walks the talk. 


I recommend seeing Pi in 3D, an opinion shared by Ebert… who generally despises the medium.


I also recommend a theater with a powerfully luminous projector. 


Wynnsong's projector is adequate, but I think Southpoint would be a better choice.


As you may know from the book, Pi is a great story - so well rendered by Ang Lee that there is even an argument to "see the movie before reading the book."


Plus, Lee's techno-humanistic vision is groundbreaking, most remarkably for technology's service of human ends. 

When the movie opens, the "narrator" is interviewing Pi after a friend tells of an Indian scholar with a story that will “make him believe in God.”


Pax,


Alan




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The Trivial Causes Of World War I ...And By Extension, World War II

December 4, 2012, 10:28 pm
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More than a third of the soldiers killed in World War 1 were listed as missing in action. Their corpses rotted where they lay and "the earth swallowed them" - greatly assisted  by the constant upheaval of artillery barrage.

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Although I am not a keen student of World War I, I have examined it sufficiently to satisfy myself that its causes were primarily trivial, and secondarily exacerbated by diplomatic pose-striking.

It is also clear to me that World War II was a continuation of World War I whose concluding Treaty of Versailles was so inordinately punitive that one could argue Hitler's inevitable rise to power.

Read Wikipedia's entry, "Causes of World War I" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I  -- and when done, ask yourself: Do the purported causes of World War I make sense now?

I recently asked a retired general friend - a very smart fellow who has traveled in 200 countries and visited both poles twice - what caused World War I.

He answered that he didn't really know.

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"One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. . .  The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared. What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger comes from a psychotic getting into a position to fire the first shot in a nuclear war? Psychotics will be suspect. The sane ones will keep them far from the button. No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command. And because of their sanity they will have no qualms at all. When the missiles take off, then, it will be no mistake." 

"A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann" in Raids on the Unspeakable." Thomas Merton - New York: New Directions Publishing Co., 1964 

http://alanarchibald.homestead.com/ThomasMerton.html


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"The history of the 20th century proves the view that as the vision of God fades, we first become clever monkeys; then we exterminate one another." 

Paul Johnson




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Grover Norquist Approves Expiration of Bush Tax Cuts

December 5, 2012, 6:15 am
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Grover Norquist stands ‘corrected’ again

Posted by Jonathan Capehart on December 4, 2012 
Earlier today, Grover Norquist was on MSNBC’s “Now with Alex Wagner” talking about the “fiscal cliff” and taxes. During the interview, Joy-Ann Reid, managing editor of TheGrio.com, pointed out the president of the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) once said that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would not violate his no-tax-increases pledge. Norquist pushed back.
What she is quoting is a Washington Post misreading of what I said in an editorial board meeting, which was corrected that day. So, I said it correctly three times and  evidently incorrectly one time and the reporters decided to run with the one. But it was fixed before noon the next day.
The only thing right about what Norquist said was that he talked with The Post editorial board. His startling admission that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would not violate his pledge was big news in July 2011. That was right in the middle of the debt-ceiling fight between President Obama and congressional Republicans. And Ruth Marcus was the one who peppered Norquist on the question and wrote the editorial highlighting what was seen as a hopeful development.
When I contacted Marcus to get her reaction to Norquist’s revisionist history, the columnist was characteristically blunt. “Nothing was ‘corrected.’  Nothing needed to be ‘corrected,’” Marcus told me in an email. “I asked Norquist repeatedly whether allowing tax cuts to expire would be a violation of the pledge–precisely in order to be certain that we were not ‘misreading’ what he said. Anyone who has any question about whether he was misinterpreted or taken out of context doesn’t need to rely on my recollection. Just listen to the audio and judge for yourself.” You can listen to the audio of the exchange between Norquist and Marcus if you click here.
ATR was none too pleased with the editorial and wrote a letter to the editor, which ran on PostPartisan with comment from the board on July 21, 2011 at 1:42 p.m.  By 2:40 p.m. that same afternoon, Marcus filed a PostPartisan of her own.

You will notice that Norquist’s group, in its artfully worded response to a Washington Post editorial quoting Grover Norquist as saying that letting the Bush tax cuts lapse would not violate the no new taxes pledge, did not deny that’s precisely what he said. Repeatedly.
So, despite what Norquist says, nothing was “fixed.” Counter to what he said on MSNBC, nothing was corrected. The man whose hold on Republicans is weakening is the one who stands corrected — again.
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Conservative Columnist Kathleen Parker's Penetration Of GOP Bafflegab Re Susan Rice

December 5, 2012, 6:35 am
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Kathleen Parker
Kathleen Parker
Opinion Writer

Susan Rice and the Senate’s blame game

By , Published: December 4, 2012

A variety of insults have been deployed in opposition to Susan Rice’s likely nomination for secretary of state: She is not qualified; she’s too aggressive; she “misled” the public following the lethal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya.
Upon closer examination, however, the real reason may be less complicated. She’s not a member of the most elite club in America, the U.S. Senate. Also, she appears to be President Obama’s first choice.
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As anyone with a television knows, Rice has come under fire by the new, revised Tres Amigos — Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, plus Susan Collins of Maine. All have expressed concerns about Rice’s role in delivering the administration’s explanation following the Benghazi attack, which initially was blamed on street protests over an anti-Muhammad video but later was confirmed as a terrorist attack.
While Collins, who previously supported Rice, says she still has unanswered questions, McCain — whose understanding of qualified women candidates is legendary — has promised to block Rice’s nomination. Graham, who most certainly will be “primaried” in the next election by South Carolinians who doubt his commitment to hard-right lunacy, followed suit, as did Ayotte.
Off somewhere letting her hair grow, Hillary Clinton knitted her brow and noted that Rice has been an excellent U.N. ambassador. Which is to say, she didn’t exactly go to the mat for her female colleague, who had the audacity to support Obama for president rather than the former first lady.
In Ganglandia, it’s the New Kids vs. the Clinton Machine. How dare Rice, once a Clinton administration appointee, defect?
Clinton, a McCain buddy from their years together in the Senate, reportedly prefers another Senate pal, John Kerry, as her successor. So does McCain & Co. So, needless to say, does Kerry, whose chiseled jaw alone constitutes a diplomatic arsenal. There’s clearly no profit in Clinton, a likely presidential candidate in 2016, alienating allies and devaluing her own currency for Rice.
Even so, the opposition’s arguments are weak, chief among them that Rice isn’t qualified. This from McCain, whose vetting history includes about 80 minutes ofconversation with Sarah Palin before selecting her as his running mate in 2008. McCain’s opinion about Rice’s qualifications is only slightly less compelling than his thoughts on Playtex vs. Spanx.
For the record, Rice is a graduate of Stanford University and a Rhodes scholar, who served as the assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Even this is troubling to Collins, who said that the Benghazi attack “in many ways echoes the attacks on [U.S. embassies in Africa] in 1998 when Susan Rice was head of the African region.”
Given this logic, shouldn’t all eyes now be on Johnnie Carson? No, not the former “Tonight Show” host, Johnny Carson, but the current assistant secretary of African affairs. If Rice is somehow responsible for the 1998 attacks, shouldn’t Carson be scrutinized now for Benghazi?
Everybody brave enough to enter the public arena gets a few free passes when they utter something short of brilliant, but most of the criticisms aimed at Rice seem ungrounded in reality. To blame Rice for representing the administration’s position as provided to her at the time is missing the target, which is properly the White House.
Does Rice have an aggressive personality, as some have said? And does this pose a risk in nominating her? Yes and yes. She notoriously once flipped the bird to diplomat Richard Holbrooke during a State Department meeting.
Such an impulsive act is no recommendation, but is it emblematic or merely anecdotal? Aggression — and even occasional rudeness — is rarely considered a flaw in men. And even aggressive men learn to temper their impulses as circumstances warrant. Thank goodness Rice didn’t tell Holbrooke to go do that which one cannot do to oneself, as Dick Cheney once suggested to Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. Or, heaven forbid, insist that we invade another country based on bad intelligence, as another Rice, who became secretary of state, once did.
The investigation into what transpired in Benghazi — bad things sometimes happen in dangerous places — is certainly appropriate. The administration’s incoherent handling of information deserves scrutiny. But Rice, barring something we don’t know, clearly has the qualifications for secretary of state.
And thoughtful Republicans might reconsider the image of white men ganging up on a highly qualified black woman as they ponder the reasons for their collapsing tent. The road to redemption ain’t thataway.
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Republicans losing fiscal cliff blame game 2:1

December 5, 2012, 6:42 am
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4832 Comments

Posted by Chris Cillizza, Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan on December 4, 2012 

A majority of Americans say that if the country goes over the fiscal cliff on Dec. 31, congressional Republicans should bear the brunt of the blame, according to a new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll, the latest sign that the GOP faces a perilous path on the issue between now and the end of the year.
While 53 percent of those surveyed say the GOP would (and should) lose the fiscal cliff blame game, just 27 percent say President Obama would be deserving of more of the blame. Roughly one in 10 (12 percent) volunteer that both sides would be equally to blame.
Those numbers are largely unchanged from a Post-Pew survey conducted three weeks ago and suggest that for all of the back and forth in Washington on the fiscal cliff, there has been little movement in public perception. The numbers also explain why Republicans privately fret about the political dangers of going over the cliff, while Democrats are more sanguine about such a prospect. 
The blame question is all the more relevant because a near majority — 49 percent — of those polled expect the Dec. 31 deadline to pass without a deal, while 40 percent expect a deal to be cut. Perhaps indicative of which side believes it has the upper hand in the negotiations, 55 percent of self-identified Democrats believe there will be a deal, while just 22 percent of Republicans feel the same. Thirty-seven percent of independents expect a deal; 52 percent do not.
There also appears to be a disconnect between a general sense that going over the cliff would be bad for the country and an acknowledgement of what it would mean for peoples’ lives.
Roughly two-thirds of all Americans say that not meeting the Dec. 31 deadline would have “major” consequences for the U.S. economy, but just 43 percent believe that it would have a “major effect” on their personal finances — despite the fact that taxes would go up on the vast majority of the population on Jan. 1 if no deal can be reached.
Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll
Republicans are well aware of where the public seems ready to put the blame if no deal on the cliff is reached. It’s why House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) offered a counterproposal Monday to the one President Obama laid out last week. Simply letting stalemate stand for the next 10 to 14 days is unacceptable to Republicans who know they have to do everything they can to avoid the cliff — and the blame for it that seems likely headed their way.
Ailes tried to enlist Petraeus for White House bid: The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reports that in the spring of 2011, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes relayed a message to Gen. David H. Petraeus, urging him to run for president if he wasn’t offered the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The messenger, Fox News national security analyst Kathleen T. McFarland, discussed with Petraeus the possibility of Ailes resigning to run his bid and News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch bankrolling it, but Petraeus wasn’t interested in running. Ailes said Monday the message he sent to Petraeus “was more of a joke.” Petraeus at the time was commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He resigned last month as CIA director.
Bloomberg urged Clinton to consider succeeding him: New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) reportedly called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton some months ago to encourage her to think about entering the 2013 race to succeed him as mayor of the nation’s largest city. 
Clinton made clear she wasn’t interested, but the outreach underscores her popularity and the extent to which she is in demand, politically. The call’s revelation could also complicate relations between Bloomberg and presumptive candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D), for whom the mayor has privately signaled support. 
Smith, Wallingford considering bids to replace Emerson: Missouri Republican Party Executive Director Lloyd Smith and state Sen.-elect Wayne Wallingford (R) each released statements Monday saying they would consider running to replace Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R), who announced that she will resign next February. Smith is Emerson’s former chief of staff. Wallingford is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. The 8th District party central committee will choose nominees for next year’s special election in the heavily Republican district. 
Fixbits:
Former House majority leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) is parting ways with the tea party group FreedomWorks, and it doesn’t sound amicable.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is feeding Democrats’ efforts to weaken filibuster rules.
Smart Politics notes, somewhat astoundingly, that states vote against their governor’s party for president more often than they vote for it.
Harvard’s Institute of Politics has posted audio files of last week’s election post-mortem, featuring top aides to the presidential candidates.

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Senate rejects treaty to protect disabled around the world

December 5, 2012, 6:45 am
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Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), center, gestures during a news conference in Washington 

By , Published: December 4, 2012
The Senate has failed to ratify an international treaty intended to protect the rights of those with disabilities, as a bloc of conservatives opposed the treaty believing it could interfere with U.S. law.
The Senate voted 61 to 38 to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, a tally that fell short of the two-thirds needed to sign on to an international treaty.
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The 2006 treaty, which forbids discrimination of the disabled, has enjoyed bipartisan support. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the treaty would encourage other nations to develop the kind of protections the United States adopted 22 years ago with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The international treaty’s thrust, he said, was a message: “Be more like us.”
But the treaty has split Republicans. Among its most vocal supporters were Republican war veterans, including President George H.W. Bush and former senator Bob Dole, who was injured in World War II and made a rare return to the Senate floor Tuesday to observe the vote and lend his stature.
Other conservatives were deeply suspicious of the United Nations, which would oversee treaty obligations. Those who opposed the treaty included former senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, the father of a developmentally disabled child who had traveled to Capitol Hill last week to encourage fellow Republicans to vote no.
He and other conservatives argued that the treaty could relinquish U.S. sovereignty to a U.N. committee charged with overseeing a ban on discrimination and determining how the disabled, including children, should be treated. They particularly worried that the committee could violate the rights of parents who choose to home school their disabled children.
“This is a direct assault on us,” Santorum said.
Nations that have signed on to the treaty include China, Iran and Syria. Opponents said that American approval might give the impression that the United States accepts how those nations treat their disabled citizens.
“The hard reality is that there are nation-states, like China, who do like to sign up to these organizations and gain the reputation for doing good things while, in fact, not doing good things,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)
Supporters dismissed those fears as paranoid, noting that the treaty would change nothing in U.S. law without further approval from Congress.
“With these provisions, the United States can join the convention as an expression — an expression — of our leadership on disability rights without ceding any of our ability to decide for ourselves how best to address those issue in our law,” said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.).
The risk of rejection grew after Santorum and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced that they had gathered the signatures of 36 fellow Republicans on a letter opposing the adoption of the measure during this month’s lame-duck session.
But its proponents had pushed forward in hopes of peeling off a handful of Republican opponents. Senators were greeted this week near their basement subway by veterans and others in wheelchairs who pushed for support.
In deference to the solemnity of the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) asked that senators cast their votes while seated at their desks — a rare move to observe the chamber’s formal rules that require each senator to respond to the clerk’s announcement of their name with an “aye” or “no.”
In practice, senators usually vote by giving a signal to the clerk — sometimes a thumbs up or down.
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"Why Liberals Think What They Do"

December 5, 2012, 9:36 am
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Siren


Dear David, 


Thanks for sending "Why Liberals Think What They Do" by Victor Davis Hanson.


It is admirable rhetoric... and mostly mistaken.


To begin, life is muddle.


My enduring hope is for progress, not perfection.


Therefore, I forswear political judgments that predicate Impossible Purity. 


A frequently overlooked truth is that The Final Solution was, at bottom, a quest for absolute purity. 


It is also true, in a more general sense, that impossibly pure principles generate theoretical enthusiasm while practically castrating the enthusiasts who subscribe to them. (Note The Tea Party's meteoric rise followed by the suddenly real question of The Republican Party's survivability.)


Too often the quest for perfection discourages people from achieving the good that is within their grasp. 


I recommend “Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth” http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html


Like the lure of ancient Greek Sirens, "perfect ideology" seduces us to abandon our proper posts "in the midst of the muddle," instead plunging overboard into depths that seem profound but are functionally uterine.


Those seduced by the embryonic calm of "uterine perfection" -- be it dogmatic perfection, doctrinal perfection or ideological perfection -- tend to sideline themselves, to "feel" they're doing what's "best" when mostly they don't do much of anything... unless obstruction and obfuscation are considered achievements. 


"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.” "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Thomas Merton http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html


***

(Alan: My interlinear comments are in 

purple.)

Why Liberals Think What They Do


By Victor Davis Hanson 
October 30, 2012 



Note that Barack Obama is running not on his liberal record, but as a challenger against incumbent Mitt Romney who has done all sorts of terrible things like causing the 2008 meltdown (This statement is lunatic, close kin to Romney's accusation that Obama advocated “the politics of revenge.” Hanson should at least begin his argument by stating a fact, not a falsehood. While trying to fact check Hanson's claim, I came across a similar allegation leveled against Obama, an allegation also without merit. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/09/fact-check-obama-had-more-to-do-with-2008-economic-meltdown-than-bush-ever-did/) and outsourcing jobs to China. (In a global economy, the entire thrust of predatory capitalism is to outsource jobs.) In Obama’s view, given the supposedly tranquil world abroad, (We are living in the least violent time in history, although alarmism would have us believe otherwise.  http://paxonbothhouses.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/our-national-pastime-is-self-terrorization-violent-death-is-at-an-all-time-low/) we must try nation building at home, and thus concentrate on bold new initiatives like stimulus, infrastructure, green jobs, and federalized health care — none of which have been envisioned before, much less funded. (If Hanson took a wider view, he would see that all industrialized countries have not only envisioned "national" healthcare, but enacted it. As a result, the rest of the world spends only half as much per capita to enable their citizens to live longer than we Americans. At the following webpage, be sure you click to enlarge graphic. ttp://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-care.html) And to the extent Obama has a concrete example, he points to efforts of the private oil sector to find more gas and oil despite, rather than because of, his own efforts. (Solar energy is the future. The more obstructionist we are, the more we refocus on fossil fuels, the greater the damage we cause to the American economy. All branches of the American military are now planning for the unprecedented upheaval occasioned by Global Warming.) Conclusion? Obama himself apparently has given up on liberal ideas in lieu of Big Bird, binders, bull****ter, movie stars, and hip-hopsters, which prompts the question: does anyone believe in liberal ideology anymore — and if so, why? (To say that Obama’s agenda distills to Big Bird, binders, bull****ters, movie stars, and hip-hopsters is beyond absurd. The “White Right” would have NO fear of Obama if these were, in fact, his issues. His Issue, however, is income redistribution, without which, the whole capitalist house-of-cards tumbles: you can not fuel a consumer economy when consumers receive starvation wages. Aware of this ineluctable fact, Henry Ford paid his workers eye-poppingly high wages so they could buy the cars they made. You may contemplate the real results of income inequality by reading Reich and Kristof at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html)


Did California’s redistributive elite really believe that they could all but shut down new gas and oil production, strangle the timber industry, idle irrigated farmland, divert water to the delta smelt, have 37 million people use a highway system designed for 15 million, allow millions of illegal aliens to enter the state without audit, extend free medical programs to 8 million of the most recent 11 million added to the population, up taxes to among the highest in the nation, and host one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients — and not have the present chaos? (Oil and gas are doing fine. The timber industry is not strangled. Agribusiness is in good shape. Yes, we need infrastructural improvement like renovating the highway system. And yes, in the short haul, this will be costly. But given current interest rates, there is no better time to undertake highway improvement than now. Furthermore, if we delay, the relative cost of renovation becomes "magnitudes higher" - like "not fixing that leak in the roof" until the mortgage is paid off.  Admittedly, welfare is not a pretty picture but with globalization, automation, robotization and software enhancement converging to permanently eliminate traditional, "brawny" "jobs," the choices are 1.) some kind of welfare, 2.) enforced sterilization, 3.) remaking the United States as Sudan, 4.) The Final Solution. Yes, we are free to choose among these options, but let us consider them squarely.)



The California schools — flooded with students whose first language is not English, staffed by unionized teachers not subject to the consequences of subpar teaching, and plagued with politicized curricula that do not emphasize math, science, and reading and writing comprehension — scarcely rate above those in Mississippi and Alabama. (California’s budgetary problems distill to Proposition 13, enacted decades ago when I lived in The Golden State. Even so, to say that California’s schools “scarcely rate above those in the conservative states of Mississippi and Alabama, is, at best, grandstanding. Conservative states have always had their heads up their ass, and nothing has changed except for the amplification of stupidity. I will also note that California is about to have a budgetary surplus. California will come roaring back while "The Bible Belt" continues lagging the field in everything but ideological bravado. http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/3918200/californias-budget-shows-signs.html)



Do Bay Area greens really believe that they that will have sufficient water if they blow up the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir? [1] Did Barack Obama think that the Keystone pipeline or new gas and oil leases in the Gulf were superfluous, or that we do not need oil to make gasoline, wheat to make flour, or to cut timber to produce wood? (The Keystone pipeline will produce a piddling total of 5000 permanent jobs and do nothing to lower the cost of gasoline, which – when "boom times" re-commence – will be driven through the roof by unprecedented demand in China and India. http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/14/143719155/just-how-many-jobs-would-the-keystone-pipeline-create I do not know “the green plan for Hetch Hetchy" but California’s Democratic government is not going to jeopardize the Bay Area’s water supply. If we want to play the “really believe” game, consider what happened the last two times America elected Republican presidents. In fact, there is a lockstep relationship between Republican administrations and economic catastrophe. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/republican-rule-and-economic.html Although both parties are guilty, alarmism is GOP mother's milk. As Mencken put it: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.")


Did liberals (and their hand-in-glove employer supporters who wished for cheap labor) think that letting in millions from Central Mexico, most without legality, English, or a high school education (and in some sense at the expense of thousands waiting in line for legal admission with capital, advanced degrees, and technological expertise), was not problematic and that soaring costs in law enforcement, the criminal justice system, the schools, and the health care industries were irrelevant? (My judge friend, AC, a North Carolina state senator in the 1970s, says that as soon as vigorous recovery begins “we will beg Mexicans to come back, whether they’re legal or illegal." Inconvenient Truth: Big Money – mostly Republican - craves cheap labor like a horny teen in a whorehouse with his Daddy's credit card.)


What, then, are the motivations that drive so many to such absurdities? Note here that I am talking of the architects of liberalism, not of those who receive generous entitlements and whose desire for bigger government is thus existential and elemental.



Equality of result (Alan: I know no one who wants equality of result. What "we" do want is less plutocratic inequality. Ironically, it is important to reduce such inequality because plutocracies are not healthy economies. Plutocrats themselves are spiritually and psychologically shrunken people who neither foster nor tolerate the "open source" creativity that is a sine qua non of buoyant western economies. How do I quantify income inequality? CEO compensation increased $725% between 1978 and 2011. The average worker’s compensation increased 5.7% over the same period. Not only does this discrepancy suck, it destroys the American body politic in any recognizable form. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/02/business/la-fi-mo-us-ceo-pay-231-times-more-than-average-workers-20120502  Again, I recommend Robert Reich and Nicholas Kristof’s articles at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html)   )



Keen minds from Aristotle to Montesquieu and Tocqueville have lamented that the proverbial people sometimes prefer equality under authoritarianism to inequality accompanied by personal freedom. As long as there was grinding poverty, the liberal agenda of “leveling the playing field” made sense enough — Social Security, disability insurance, the 40-hour work week, and Medicare. But once modern mass production and consumption arose, energized by globalization and the entry of billions of new foreign workers into the equation, and high technology extended the appurtenances of the aristocracy to the poor (today’s ubiquitous smart phone is 100 times more versatile than yesterday’s $3,000 primitive suitcase cell phone), how could you keep promoting government-sponsored equality for the less well-off? Ensure no one has to drive a Kia? Petition on behalf of those who do not yet have an iPad? (Wow! How did Hanson know that?!? Everyone I know is circulating that petition right now! Fact: The playing field is less level in the United States than anywhere in the developed world.  Inequality and lack of social mobility are existential dangers to The Common Good, or, as the Preamble to the Constitution puts it “The General Welfare.” ... Containing the words “general” and “welfare” it is no wonder that the American Right rarely mentions the Preamble, which is - in effect - America's "Mission Statement." Of course, we need not be America any longer. The Sudanese Option is open – and increasingly popular on the ever-alarmist right side of the aisle.



Weighing over 250 pounds, not rickets, is a national plague. Riots target sneaker stores, not food bins. Sandra Fluke naturally become the epitome of frustrated liberal-mandated equality. We are to believe that an upscale white law student, who by choice enrolls at a Catholic university, is deprived because her university will not pay for her condoms or abortion pills. Her cell phone no doubt costs more than a year’s supply of prophylactics [2]. The result is psychodrama, not class struggle, as liberals strain to find ways in which America is Les Misérables rather than the Kardashians, plagued by this obsession to step in and make everyone (except themselves) the same. (This line of reasoning is trivial, revealing the puerile Right's fondness for "cutesy exemplification." American conservatives much prefer that “these people” not reproduce which makes hand-over-fist distribution of free contraceptives a no-brainer.  If conservatives were honest with themselves, free contraceptives would be a “coded line item” on electronic food stamp cards. Not only will welfare queens render infertile, but liberals like Fluke will diminish their own fertility... Never mind that insurance always covers the cost of Viagra.)



Voters



Romney almost forfeited the election when a video was leaked about his honest, though inexact, admission that 47% of Americans would, by needs, be unsympathetic to any agenda that cut spending and taxes, given their dependence on government “stuff.” Borrowing money to pay for more entitlements for the liberal mind is good politics, killing two birds with the proverbial one stone. The less well-off are indebted to those who gave them subsidized food, health care, shelter, even cell phones and will vote accordingly to ensure the liberal political class remains in power. And as deficits grow, the calls for higher taxes on those who “didn’t build that business” and are “fat cats” and never knew when they should stop profiting only increase. Liberalism is about power and influence, impossible without millions of dependent constituents.



“Them”



Liberals believe that there are lots of crass and greedy one-percenters who live to profit, and as refined Greeks expect grubby Romans to work while they think and plan. Like cockroaches, you cannot get rid of the one-percenters, given their elemental grasping. They will always get up at a 5 a.m. to chase the next superfluous buck in carbon-polluting oil exploration, Wall Street speculation, smoky trucking, or unsustainable farming. They are sheep with inexhaustible fleece. (They do not have inexhaustible fleece, but are so heavy with their recent growth that it’s time for shearing. This happens at regular intervals. And it is happening now. In fact, sheering is overdue. Not to shear would be catastrophic.) So liberals do not really believe that anyone will stop working due to Obamacare or a 40% income tax rate. (The highest marginal tax rate when Eisenhower ruled over the Golden Days of the 1950s was 91%. Why is 40% frightful?) Jerry Brown (who is on the verge of getting California back in “the black”) might say of overtaxed Californians, should his 13% income tax rate pass, “Where else could they go?” (I lived in California for 11 years and damn near everyone admits that the Golden State's troubles are disproportionately attributable to Proposition 13 which fixed property tax, forevermore, at 1% of real estate’s sales price.) For those who cling to their profits, you could tax them at 90% and they would still scheme to find a way to have more than others — so what does it matter if they pay more? (Not a person on the left side of the side aisle has mentioned 45% much less 90%. Not even in their wet dreams.)



Exemption



Liberals believe that abstract caring allows them seclusion and cocooning in the real, material world. Private schools, tony upscale suburbs, nice Volvos and Lexus SUVs, jet travel to Tuscany, a fine Napa $100 wine, Harvard or Stanford for junior — all that reeks of privilege and exclusivity, and can prompt remorse. (The presumption that all hard-working capitalists are conservative conveniently overlooks the liberal politics of Buffett, Gates and Costco founder, James Sinegal, not to mention that most of California’s super-successful entrepreneurs are, like the rest of the state, liberals. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/06/wage_against_the_machine.html) In some sense, Costa del Sol and Martha’s Vineyard, like John Kerry’s yacht or John Edwards’ home, are antithetical to the entire liberal value system. (John Kerry’s fortune is his wife’s fortune, the liberal heiress of Heinz Soup. "In some sense" any allegation can be made about anyone or anything. "Exceptions to rules" do not -- as the conservative psyche assumes -- constitute "new rules." Exceptions are exceptions. And rules are rules.) But if one is loudly for “pay-your-fair-share” higher taxes, or for affirmative action, or for more deficit spending, then one feels absolved from guilt over his isolated privilege — and can enjoy it without lamentation. And if one makes enough money not to worry about a few more taxes or fees, then a mind at peace is a pretty good deal. Lots of those who now reside in Portola Valley and the Berkeley hills helped to promote policies whose deleterious results fell on distant others, out of mind, out of sight, far away in Porterville and Stockton.  Liberalism is an elite person’s psychological investment in enjoying a guilt-free affluence. (Even economically, Democratic Liberalism works better than Republican conservatism.  See “Republican Rule and Economic Catastrophe: A Lockstep Relationship” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/republican-rule-and-economic.html  Also see “Personal Irresponsibility in Red States” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/personal-irresponsibility-in-red-states.html  See


Naiveté



Large percentages of the population now work for government [3] — federal, state, or local. Millions more are divorced from the tragic world of mining or drilling where nature is unforgiving. That distance has allowed Americans in droves to disengage from both the private sector, where one either makes a profit or goes broke, and the grimy processes by which we live one more day. A San Francisco professor, a Monterey lawyer, and a Sacramento bureaucrat do not know how hard it is to raise beef, grow peaches, find and pump oil and gas, and haul logs out of the forest and into Home Depot as smooth lumber, or what it takes to build a small Ace Hardware business. The skills needed to keep a 7-Eleven viable in a rough neighborhood, I confess, dwarf those of the classics professor. (Liberal Europeans raise beef, grow peaches, pump oil and haul logs, and they do these things quite well and far more cleanly than we.  Sure, a few Mediterranean latecomers to the European Union created a mess. But, by and large Europe is plenty profitable. And her standard of living, on average, thumps ours. American yahoos are obsessed with the fact that -- over time -- Europe grows at a 2% rate whereas the United States at a 3.5%. So what? As I see it, this meaningless differential is paralleled by the difference between "civilization" and chest-thumping barbarism. Hey! Give me civilization any day. I know many Europeans and they all laugh – out loud – at the prospect of moving to the United States. Inconvenient Truth: Lazy ass capitalist paper pushers lodge most of the complaints about “lazy liberals” because most capitalist magnates – as opposed to small scale entrepreneurs – have never raised beef, grown peaches, pumped oil or hauled logs. And they certainly have not done the hard research that would bring to light the many ways in which anthropogenic global warming is already evoking economic havoc.  I would bet dollars dollars to donuts that the author of this article is not a real entrepreneur but “the guy” in the suit at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/brilliant-new-yorker-cartoon.html )



In the elite liberal mind, there is instead a sort of progressive Big Rock Candy Mountain. Gasoline comes right out of the ground through the nozzle into the car. Redwood 2x4s sprout from the ground like trees. Apples fall like hail from the sky; stainless steel refrigerator doors are mined inches from the surface. Tap water comes from some enormous cistern that traps rain water.  Finished granite counter tops materialize on the show room floor. Why, then, would we need Neanderthal things like federal gas and oil leases, icky dams and canals, yucky power plants, and gross chain saws — and especially those who would dare make and use them?  (Nice rhetoric… but bullshit. In general, Democrats have a much clearer idea of real production than the slob-fat, red-state layabouts who are not one whit smarter than their God-damned, Know-Nothing fundamentalist bullshit. I live here. I know.)



Anger, envy, and the primordial emotions



For some, especially those who are well-educated and well-spoken, a sort of irrational furor at “the system” governs their political make-up. Why don’t degrees and vocabulary always translate into big money? Why does sophisticated pontification at Starbucks earn less than mindlessly doing accounting behind a desk? We saw this tension with Michelle Obama who, prior to 2009, did not quite have enough capital to get to Aspen or Costa del Sol, and thereby, despite the huge power-couple salaries, Chicago mansion, and career titles, felt that others had far too much more than the Obamas. (“And thereby felt that others had far too much more than the Obamas.”  Karl Rove did the dire disservice of pimping irrational allegations as gospel truths and, in the process, taught an entire generation of conservative politicians to demagogue their addelpated constituencies. One Big Lie after another they have been rendered witless. Take a look at Karl now…  “Avalanche On Bullshit Moutain” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/john-stewart-karl-rove-fox-news-and.html)  “Never been proud,” “downright mean country,” “raise the bar,” etc., followed, as expressions of yuppie angst. (Yuppie angst? Isn’t it time for this Hanson to get out of his 1980s condo? Yuppies? The guy is about as current as beatniks.) The more one gets, the more one believes he should get even more, and the angrier he gets that another — less charismatic, less well-read, less well-spoken — always seems to get more. (I believe Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and most other people who are better read and more eloquent than Donald Trump deserve more. But I don't see them - nor myself - as envious. Mostly, we experience a sense of pity. It is an inconvenient truth that “half the time, shit floats." If Republicans are such smart people, how did Trump, Adelson and Romney  conduct such laughable campaigns, completely reliant on self-induced delusion? These guys couldn’t buy a clue, and most intelligent Americans do not want to imitate them, nor their "success."  Yes, many Americans believe they should get a bigger piece of the pie if only to preserve democracy and to shove plutocracy back to the dark place from which it came. Check out George McGovern’s “Defense of Liberalism” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/george-mcgovern-case-for-liberalism.html  "The merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern market. The things that change modern history, the big national and international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations, the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages, the big expenses often incurred in elections - these are getting too big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims. 

         There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.    G. K. Chesterton )


So do not discount the envy of the sophisticated elite. The unread coal plant manager, the crass car dealer, or the clueless mind who farms 1000 acres of almonds should not make more than the sociology professor, the kindergarten teacher, the writer, the artist, or the foundation officer. (No left-winger I know proposes “income equality.” It's as absurd as saying "the College of Cardinals banged Mother Theresa weekly." What we do propose is a living wage because, as Henry Ford saw at the outset, if workers didn’t make enough to purchase the cars they manufactured, consumer-driven industry would never prosper. And so, he paid them unprecedentedly hefty wages. Have you seen "Inside Job?" http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-dose-october-152011.html Contemporary capitalists are in it for themselves, only for themselves, even if it means their bogus economic practices kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Once globalized, it became completely inconsequential to these predators whether the United States survived in any recognizable form. As government models go, Sudan is moving up fast.) What sort of system would allow the dense and easily fooled to become better compensated (and all for what — for superfluous jet skis and snowmobiles?) than the anguished musician or tortured-soul artist, who gives so much to us and receives so much less in return? What a sick country — when someone who brings chain saws into the Sierra would make more than a UC Berkeley professor who would stop them. (The next “chapter heading” epitomizes the previous sentence.)


Nihilism



Finally, we come to a small subset that simply does not like America’s wealth and capitalism, supremacy overseas, and ubiquitous global culture — or at least believes that anything not his own must be far better (an oikophobia [4] or hatred of one’s own household). He bores us with lectures on the wonderful EU, the superior La familia romance of Latin America, the “it takes a village” values of Africa, or the Cairo speech mythologies of the Middle East.  Because America is so affluent, it allows so many the luxury to dream of how our wealth is so ill-gotten — as long as quiet others in the shadows ensure that life remains pretty good in San Francisco and Madison. Contrarianism is an innate characteristic, but one indulged without risk, only when the larger tribe is safe and secure. (Predatory capitalists, totally invested in financialization rather than nuts-and-bolts productivity, have made "the tribe" unsafe and insecure. Cowboy Capitalism has nearly nothing to do with yesteryear's productivity and everything to do with devising ways to employ fewer Americans for no end higher than the magnification of private opulence at the expense of public squalor. It’s an “Inside Job” -  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-dose-october-152011.html)



In short, twenty-first century elite liberalism has become a psychological condition, not a serious blueprint on how to solve real problems. The president knows that — and so without ideas has been reduced to name-calling and sermons on Big Bird. (It was Romney who made an issue out of Big Bird. In America, all trivialization – whether it is the slutification of Sandra Fluke, Grover Norquist’s “Tax Pledge,” or insanely disproportional attention to the Benghazi tragedy is the work of ideological diversionists in the pay of plutocrats.  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/not-content-with-just-one-suicide.html



Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson





URLs in this post:



[3] now work for government: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6677.html

[4] oikophobia:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704147804575455523068802824.html



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Poll: Hillary in 2016 a Popular Idea

December 5, 2012, 5:30 pm
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By Greg Holyk | ABC OTUS News – 12 hrs ago
Carried by a new high in personal popularity and broad approval of her work as secretary of state,Hillary Clinton closes out her diplomatic career with majority support as a candidate for president in 2016.
Fifty-seven percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they'd back a run by Clinton to succeed Barack Obama, vs. 37 percent opposed. That includes a broad gender gap - 66 percent support for Clinton among women, dropping to 49 percent among men.
Clinton is expected to step down soon from her leadership of the State Department, a position she accepted after narrowly losing the Democratic presidential nomination to Obama in 2008. She's demurred on the prospect of another bid for the presidency.
Clinton's fared well during her tenure at State; 68 percent approve of her work, second only to Colin Powell among the last five secretaries of state. (He managed a remarkable 85 percent approval in 2002 and 2003.) Similarly, two-thirds in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, see Clinton favorably overall, numerically a new high in her long public career as first lady, U.S. Senator, presidential candidate and top U.S. diplomat.
Clinton's recovered from personal favorability as low as 44 percent in April 2008, during her presidential run; she also dropped that low in June 2003, when she was discussed as a possible candidate in the 2004 presidential race, and in June 1996, during the Whitewater controversy. Those dips underscore the potential risks should she climb back into the political fray.
In another sign of the challenges of a political candidacy, intensity of sentiment is better for Clinton personally, and as secretary of state, than it is for her as a candidate. Her "strongly" favorable rating and strong approval of her job performance outnumber her strong negatives, in both cases, by more than 2-1 margins. Strong support for her as a candidate also outweighs strong opposition, but much more narrowly, by 9 percentage points, 36 to 27 percent.
2016 and GROUPS - Politics are comparative, so actual support for Clinton as a candidate would depend more than anything on her opponents, in the Democratic primaries and general election alike. That said, having 57 percent willing to give you a look (55 percent among registered voters) is not a bad starting point - and the differences among groups are telling.
In addition to the gender gap there are sharp differences between age and racial groups, generally similar to Obama's support patterns. Young adults, age 18 to 29, support Clinton for president by nearly 2-1; that falls to an even split among seniors. And while she gets 52 percent support among whites, that jumps to 70 percent among nonwhites, a strongly Democratic group.
Clinton does less well among nonwhites than did Obama, who won re-election with 80 percent of their support last month. That said, while majorities of white men and married men say they'd oppose a Clinton candidacy, she's backed by more than six in 10 white women and married women - two groups that Obama lost.
Among other groups, support for Clinton in 2016 tops out at eight in 10 Democrats and liberals, vs. 23 and 24 percent of Republicans and strong conservatives, respectively. About two-thirds of moderates and six in 10 independents say they'd support a Clinton candidacy.
It's hard to see Clinton winning 23 percent of Republicans in an actual campaign; no Democrat has come close to that mark in exit polls dating back 36 years. That's another sign that, while currently her numbers are positive, actually running for president can be messier than it looks from a popular perch at Foggy Bottom.
METHODOLOGY - This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cell phone Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,020 adults. Results have a margin ofsampling error of 4 points. The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by SSRS/Social Science Research Solutions of Media, Pa.
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Easter Island Statues. Over 80% of their body length is buried underground.

December 5, 2012, 5:49 pm
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Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers

December 5, 2012, 6:45 pm
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First things first: No, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is not using drones to vaporize poachers. But thanks to a five million dollar grant awarded by Google on Tuesday, the organization is expanding its use of unmanned aerial vehicles to track and deter criminals who illegally hunt endangered animal species around the world. 
WWF spokesman Lee Poston is not calling these vehicles drones, because he doesn't want people to confuse them with the military kind. According to Poston, they are "sophisticated radio-controlled devices like hobbyists use" that can be "controlled from your iPad or other device." But the WWF website does call them "conservation drones."
Prior to receiving the Google grant, the WWF had already deployed trackers in Nepal's national parks. These drones are light enough to be launched by hand and can be programmed to fly about 18 miles at a maximum elevation of 650 feet, for almost an hour. The cameras on the drones allow rangers on the ground to spot would-be poachers, especially in hard-to-reach places.
The Google funding will enable WWF to expand its drone program in Asia and Africa to protect rhinos, which are hunted for their horns; elephants, which are pursued for their tusks, and tigers, which are killed for everything from their eyes to their reproductive organs. The grant will also be used to advance wildlife tagging technology, specialized sensors, and ranger monitoring software.
The anti-poachers are exploring other high-tech measures as well. "We are looking into how to track animal parts using things like DNA," says Poston. "So if a ranger find a rhino horn on the ground, we can figure out what happened." 
The grant is part of Google's flagship Global Impact Award program, which this year, is providing a total of $23 million in funding to nonprofits addressing various challenges through technology and innovation. Some of the other organizations that received awards on Tuesday included the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media (which recently put out a study on why women have fewer speaking parts than men) and charity: water, which increases water access in developing countries through technology. 
This grant "is going to have a huge impact," says Ian Morrison, another WWF spokesman. "The poachers and the crime syndicates that fund them are getting more and more sophisticated, and it's time for us to step up our game too, and level the playing field." 
Note: This image is not an actual Google-funded drone. 
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New Satellite Images Reveal What Earth Looks Like At Night

December 5, 2012, 7:49 pm
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 “There is less difference than people think between research and adoration.” 
Pere Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. 

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/scientific-research-as-adoration-pierre.html
  • Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observator
  • New Jersey, Manhattan and Cape Cod
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • Chicago and the Great Lakes
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • Northern Africa
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • Australia
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • Caribbean islands
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • Europe
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • Japan
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • The Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • The Nile and its delta
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory
  • Florida
    Suomi NPP Satellite/NASA Earth Observatory

9 OF 11
View slideshowi
"The night is nowhere as dark as we might think."
That's the word from Mitch Goldberg, program scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's Joint Polar Satellite System. Together with NASA, scientists have unveiled a new composite, cloud-free image of our planet at night.
The imagery, which was posted to NASA's website on Wednesday, shows the planet bathed in cool blue, with city lights radiating out in sinewy yellow splotches.
The pictures that make up the massive composite image were taken over nine days in April and 13 days in October of this year, by an instrument on a satellite that's "sensitive enough to detect the nocturnal glow produced by Earth's atmosphere and the light from a single ship in the sea," NASA states. The satellite collected 2.5 terabytes of data in 312 orbits of the planet "to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and islands."
A view of the Earth's lights at night, acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite.Enlarge image
A view of the Earth's lights at night, acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite.
NASA
And the picture is stunning: Spin west to east across the U.S. and you see the brightness of Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles giving way to the Great Basin and the Rockies; the ordered grid of Midwestern cities and counties draw lines of lights to Dallas and Chicago.
And down in the Gulf of Mexico, ships and oil rigs dot the water. In Africa, bright yellow traces the Nile River delta.
NASA says that in addition to just making pretty pictures of the planet, the specialty camera will aid in nighttime forecasting, giving researchers clearer pictures of storm, fog and other weather conditions. And the optics aboard the Suomi NPP satellite isn't just your standard issue 5D with a superlens; the imager repeatedly scans a scene and turns it into pixels. Then the images are evaluated. If the signal in each pixel is too dark, it's amplified; if it's too bright, it's prevented from oversaturating.
"It's like having three simultaneous low-light cameras operating at once and we pick the best of various cameras depending on where we're looking in the scene," Steve Miller, a researcher at NOAA's Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, tells NASA.
We cut a few smaller images from the huge global map. But if you want to download and explore the original image yourself, you can. There's even a gargantuan, 54000 x 27000-pixel image, guaranteed to crash any browser, for those who dare.
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Remembering Jazz Pianist Dave Brubeck

December 5, 2012, 8:23 pm
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by JACK ZAHORA


Dave Brubeck performing on the pilot episode of a television program in 1965.Enlarge image
Dave Brubeck performing on the pilot episode of a television program in 1965.
CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
To listen to Neda Ulaby's appreciation of Dave Brubeck's life and career, as heard on All Things Considered, click the audio link.
For millions of Americans who came of age in the 1950s, Dave Brubeck was jazz. His performances on college campuses, Top 40 radio play, his role as a jazz ambassador for the U.S., his picture on the cover of Time magazine — all made him one of the most recognized and recognizable musicians of the era.

He died Wednesday morning, the day before his 92nd birthday, in Norwalk, Conn. The cause was heart failure.
Brubeck's start in music was like the jazz he played: unorthodox. He never learned to read sheet music growing up. And he developed his chops playing in a military band for Gen. George Patton's Third Army. In the '50s he formed a quartet with saxophone player Paul Desmond that broke into the Top 40 with "Take Five." It was released as a million-selling single with "Blue Rondo à la Turk" on the flip side.
That song is in 9/8 time — a radical departure from the 4/4 rhythm that Brubeck says Americans were comfortable with at the time. Audiences weren't the only ones taken aback by his music. In interviews that aired on NPR's Jazz Profiles series, Brubeck and Desmond said their musical styles often clashed.
"I was very wild harmonically in those days," said Brubeck. "And the first chord I hit scared Desmond to the point where he thought I was stark raving mad."
"Well," said Desmond, "I was trying to play some sort of melodic chorus, and he would be in 15 different keys on an out-of-tune piano, and there were occasions where I was totally desperate about the situation."
Nevertheless, the two collaborated for decades. In 1959, a song that Desmond wrote earned the quartet its greatest success.

"Take 5" was named after the song's 5/4 time signature.

It appeared on the album Time Out with other tunes that jumped back and forth between different rhythms. The president of Columbia Records was excited that the album was so different from anything else on his label.
But Brubeck said the marketing department was not. "They said, 'You've broken all the rules — the unwritten laws of Columbia Records. You have all originals on this album. Also, you want to use a painting on the cover, and people can't dance to this.' "

Radio stations in Chicago and Detroit disagreed, playing "Take 5" repeatedly.
Brubeck saw the fruits of that exposure firsthand. "In Detroit," he said, "that whole ballroom was dancing in 5/4 — you know, where they throw couples up in the air and between their legs and over their shoulders."

The song climbed to No. 25 on Billboard's Hot 100. College students across the country were dancing to it. In fact, Brubeck made his name playing colleges in the early '50s. One of his early successes was his recording Jazz Goes to College.

After the original Dave Brubeck quartet broke up in the '60s, he came out with an album composed of music he once thought was too structured. In 1968, Brubeck collaborated with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on a religious piece calledThe Light in the Wilderness.

Jazz critic Nat Hentoff says he was blown away by Brubeck's transformation from jazz player to classical composer. "He's a much underrated composer. I heard a concerto — it was a religious work, and it was so powerful that it brought me to tears."

Later, Brubeck joined the Catholic Church. He became fascinated with composing religious fugues, operas and symphonies. That's not to say Brubeck stopped touring with his jazz groups — some of which included his sons.

Even after bouts of serious illness that forced him into a wheelchair, Brubeck seemed transformed as he sat at the piano — striking the keys with an energy he never seemed to lose. He played hundreds of gigs around the world almost till the end of his life.
Hentoff says Brubeck's professional longevity will be his legacy. "Professional musicians eventually may say, 'OK, we figured out some changes in rhythms that influenced us to think about.' But the main point is the vitality that keeps going. I always called jazz the life force and, my goodness, Mr. Brubeck exemplifies that."
Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck

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Search

Diane Rehm: The Challenge Of Feeding America’s Hungry

December 5, 2012, 8:42 pm
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Panelist Stephen Moore was delightful!

His caricaturish portrayal of a whiney, aggrieved conservative, deserves recognition by The Academy.

His voice on the verge of panic, Mr. Moore expresses righteous certainty that legions of poor people are ripping him off - and ripping him off personally! 

If only he could stop The Theft. he - and all his friends! - could finally be happy.

Yes, aggrieved whining is a common -- nearly ubiquitous -- conservative trait. 

But the combined comedic genius of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and George Carlin could not create a satire half as good as Moore's (unconscious) satirization of himself.

Whether you concentrate on the man's content, context or tone, this guy is straight from Central Casting.

Well done Mr. Moore! I see an Oscar in your future!


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The Challenge Of Feeding America’s Hungry

December 5, 2012
In this Monday, July 30, 2012 photo, Dave Krepco, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank, checks on inventory at the food bank warehouse in Orlando, Fla. In the past four years, food distribution to 500 pantries, shelters, and other relief agencies in the six-county area has jumped about 60 percent. In the last year alone, that amounted to 36 million pounds of food. Krepcho estimates about 30 percent of those seeking help are first-timers. They&#039;re blue-collar and white-collar, many middle class, even some upper middle class. They include college-educated couples and professionals. - (AP Photo/John Raoux)
In this Monday, July 30, 2012 photo, Dave Krepco, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank, checks on inventory at the food bank warehouse in Orlando, Fla. In the past four years, food distribution to 500 pantries, shelters, and other relief agencies in the six-county area has jumped about 60 percent. In the last year alone, that amounted to 36 million pounds of food. Krepcho estimates about 30 percent of those seeking help are first-timers. They're blue-collar and white-collar, many middle class, even some upper middle class. They include college-educated couples and professionals.
(AP Photo/John Raoux)
Americans are relying on what we used to call food stamps in unprecedented numbers. According to figures released in September, more than 46 million Americans, about one in seven, are getting government assistance for food, but it’s estimated that millions more struggle with hunger. The nation’s food banks, supported by private dollars and donations, are straining to fill the gap. Federal funding for food stamps is not on the line in the current tax and spending negotiations, but some believe new limits on government food assistance programs are needed. Please join us to discuss hunger in America and what we can do about it.

Guests

Stephen Moore 
member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
Deborah Flateman 
CEO, Maryland Food Bank.
Stacy Dean 
vice president of food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Eric Olsen 
senior vice president of government relations at Feeding America.
     

Comments


Catamaran wrote:
Not Stephen Moore! Again! The author of "Bullish on Bush: How George Bush's Owenership Society Will Make America Stronger" in 2004! What, no follow up sequel Mr. Moore?
Note the odd but appropriate misspelling of 'owenership' for the book at Amazon. The man should never be asked for his opinion on anything to do with the economy again. Ever. Please drop this Republican spinmeister from your Rolodex Diane.

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The GOP's Fondest Wish

December 6, 2012, 6:44 am
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(I just received the following email from my most dependable conservative correspondent.)

Message to you from a young Democrat

                                                          []

"My Momma said quit checkin' yo' messages and
get yo white ass back to work so she don't haf to."



Alan: Afro-Americans comprise but 12% of the population. How about the victims, parasites and moochers who comprise the other 35%?

In October and November, I spent 40 hours canvassing for the Obama campaign - including a full day in my home town's traditionally black neighborhood.. Of all the people I interviewed - anywhere - I met one alcoholic, one lunatic, and a few white people who were rude. 

My 75 year old friend AC, a devout conservative Christian and retired District Court judge, sat on the bench  for 12 years where he had daily opportunity to contemplate "the worst" humankind has to offer.

Recently, I asked  AC -- and also a 7th Day Adventist Mexican laborer -- what percentage of people they thought were genuine ner-do-wells.  

AC answered 5%. 

LN answered 3%.

Given their "position"in the world, I was surprised their answers were not higher. 

In any event, I wish good luck to all my conservative readers with that "47% Project" of yours.

I think it's brilliant!

Good luck with the minority vote too.

Ah, and best wishes with women!

I mean it when I say: "Keep a steady course. Don't change a thing."


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Socialism

December 6, 2012, 7:50 am
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The GOP

Party of The Firm Grip

***

(Pending Report: Mother Theresa and The College of Cardinals' Holiday Orgies) 

***

Pssst.

Obama is a Rockefeller Republican.


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Republican "Footprint" Compared With Actual Republican Substance

December 6, 2012, 8:09 am
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John Ford, John Wayne, Aquinas and Theosis (Christian Divinization)

December 6, 2012, 10:34 am
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***

Dear Fred,


There is truth in what you say.


But it is proportionately more significant that "the fundies" spurn science -- whether "hard" or "soft" -- whenever it contradicts their religious beliefs. 


Alternatively, I agree with Aquinas that frank contradiction between terrestrial truth and God's Truth cannot exist.


"Arguing against those who said that natural philosophy was contrary to the Christian faith, (Aquinas) writes in his treatise "Faith, Reason and Theology that "even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible." "Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World" by John Freely - http://www.amazon.com/Aladdins-Lamp-Science-Through-Islamic/dp/0307277836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327882581&sr=8-1


Although there is plenty of nonsensical psychological pseudo-science, it is a signal achievement of the 20th century that modern psychology limned the existence of "the personal shadow," "the group shadow" and "projection psychology." 


These are realities. 


And "fundamentalists" deny them, in large part, because they are committed to the Old Testament's Thunder Sky God (who, as you know, is not the only God in the Old Testament). 


The fundies deny them because they are determined NOT to undergo the spiritual turmoil and metanoia that would deprive them of their self-arrogated status as American "exceptionalists" and right-hand "smiters of God" who have carte blanche to whoop any darkie's ass whenever the f___ they feel like it.


Have you read any de Chardin? http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/scientific-research-as-adoration-pierre.html


To everyone's astonishment, Pope Benedict dedicated a recent "homily" to him. http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin.html 


I don't think de Chardin is "absolutely" right. (I don't believe we can often determine what is absolutely right, and then mostly in small things.)


I do believe that de Chardin's religious metaphors are better-suited to life as now lived, which is not to say that the essence of the human condition has changed.


It is to say that we are very different people than we were as recently as John Wayne, not to mention the superstition-saturated, pre-scientific, patriarchal, largely-illiterate people of agricultural (and nomadic) bible times. 


Over the last couple of nights, I watched "The Searchers" - perhaps The Duke's best-known film - and was astonished by how many of the suppositions that Americans held about "cowboys," "Indians," and "manliness" have changed since the film was made in 1956. (That "The Searchers" was directed by John Ford was even more flabbergasting.)


I encourage you to watch this film and see if you don't feel more sympathy for the Indians than for the white guys - even though Ford's intent was antipodal. 

I recently had similar reaction to Disney's "Johnny Tremain." Watch the prolonged scene in which "buckskin-camouflaged" Minute Men, hidden in hedge-rows, pick off marching "red coats" one by one. 


I watched it with my Danny and all I could see were terrorists detonating roadside explosives.


When "the fundies" acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic global warming and "shadow/projection psychology," then we'll discuss "the details."


Pax on both houses


Alan 


PS Other interesting bits from Aquinas: 


"The good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided" is not very helpful for making actual choices. Therefore, Aquinas believes that one needs one's reason to be perfected by the virtues, especially prudence, in order to discover precepts of the Natural Law that are more proximate to the choices that one has to make on a day to day basis. http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/natlaw.html


"The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (This process has been given the name "theosis." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosis)  


Aquinas thought is also found on page 460 of The Catholic Catechism: "The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."" http://www.askacatholic.com/_webpostings/answers/2008_07JULY/2008JulyHowCanMenBecomeGod.cfm




On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:38 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:

I generally have at least 2 or 3 insights before breakfast, and another dozen during the afternoon.

Today, I'm realizing that the Baptist/fundie/literaist contempt for science might actually be a necessary rebuke of the social sciences which are faux from top to bottom. The puke of modern psychology and sociology, the utter masquerade of certainty and spurious statistics causes a worldwide stench and our Baptist/fundi/literalists cousins cry in horror  -- unfortunately they are a bit misdirected when they crash into real science

But think on how much you and I and and they might agree on a critique of social science.

--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001
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