The Jim River Review

Penis Envy on Campus

2005-05-04T23:08:00.000-05:00

More evidence, as if any were needed, that only one view is allowed on many college campuses. From the National Review:

College administrators have been enthusiastic supporters Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate “V-Day” (short for Vagina Day) every year. But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the official reaction was horror. Two participating students, Monique Stuart and Andy Mainiero, have just received sharp letters of reprimand and have been placed on probation by the Office of Judicial Affairs. The costume of the P-Day “mascot” — a friendly looking “penis” named Testaclese, has been confiscated and is under lock and key in the office of the assistant dean of student affairs, John King.

Jim River Merges with Large Body of Water

2005-01-18T11:19:00.000-06:00

The Jim River Review has now moved and merged with South Dakota Politics. Professor Schaff and myself can be found blogging there on most days. SD Politics was formerly Daschle v. Thune, and played a significant role in that famous Senate race. We are proud to join Jon Lauck on his site.

The Trouble with Tsunamis Is . . .

2005-01-13T22:59:00.000-06:00

You can't easily blame them on George Bush. If the weather heats up or cools off enough to make someone slightly uncomfortable, that's because the Texas Shrub refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. But how exactly can he be blamed for undersea earth movements? There are a few paranoid fantasies floating around concerning new superweapons, but the safer response is to do as John Pilger does in the New Statesman, and argue that Bush really is a tsunami.

The charming thing about Pilger's relentless hatred of everything American is that it is largely matched by a hatred of anything British. One should have such enemies. He discredits everything he stands for.

A Journalistic Scandal You May have Overlooked.

2005-01-13T11:32:00.000-06:00

The irrespressible Michael Fumento details a Jason Blair type scandal at USAToday. In the process he tells a good story about bad science. Read the whole thing.

Everyone Katie Couric Knows Is An Idiot

2005-01-13T09:49:00.000-06:00

NRO's The Corner leads us to this missive by the goddess of early morning talk shows:

"You know, Larry, I usually tease you about kind of the inordinate attention some of these stories get, but everybody I know, they were very upset this weekend about this particular breakup, because it sort of made you feel like, 'Gosh, can any marriage last?' And here they seemed really suited to each other. They were, you know, so attractive. They both seemed like very nice people. And I actually called our newsdesk on Saturday and said: 'I know that we have this tsunami going on, and--and all these people, but is it true that they broke up? I mean, so I think a lot of people are really interested particularly in them as a couple. Why do you think that's true?"

So it takes being attractive and nice to have a lasting marriage? I guess that explains my single status. When will President Bush declare war on celebrity break-ups? This reminds me of the central theme of the worst film in memory, Pearl Harbor, which was "What's truly bad about war is that it keeps good looking people from hooking up."

Defending Wal-Mart

2005-01-13T09:15:00.000-06:00

A column in the NY Post today (hit the link above) defends superstore giant Wal-Mart against the forces of darkness, also known as the New York City Council. I have my own ambivalence about Wal-Mart. This column, written by one Ryan Sager, references the "creative destruction" of the market, emphasizing the creative aspects of Wal-Mart in terms of jobs and wealth. This is my beef with the (usually) conservative defenders of Wal-Mart and the market in general. They tend to dwell on the creative at the expense of the destructive. While I see the overall benefit of Wal-Mart in what it creates, it still sucks to be on the "destructive" side of progress. I see all the benefits of outsourcing (see Dan Drezner's "Outsourcing Boogeyman" in a recent Foreign Affairs) but it is no fun if it is your job being outsourced. Be that as it may, the opposition of local governments like those in California, Vermont, Chicago, and now in New York, to Wal-Mart is baffling to me. Don't people in these places like buying necessary consumer goods (toothpaste, underwear, "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" on DVD) at low prices? Would they prefer the "working man" pay more for these items? Do their communities have so many jobs they just don't need any more? The opposition to Wal-Mart strikes me as largely motivated by an irrational hatred of business, especially one that is, God help us, successful. If we are going to try to help the poor, it'd be best if we weren't angry at those who create wealth.

From Broad Construction to Snip and Tuck Construction

2005-01-11T21:45:00.000-06:00

Opinion Journal directs us to this delightful example of amendment on the fly from the ACLU free speech page:

It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The Constitution’s framers believed that freedom of inquiry and liberty of expression were the hallmarks of a democratic society.

Here is the actual text of the first amendment, from Epublius.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievance.

This is a case of careless lieing to make your point.

Powerline on the CBS Report

2005-01-11T20:20:00.000-06:00

Powerline makes much hay of the obvious weaknesses in the CBS memo gate report. It rather studiously avoided passing judgment on the authenticity of the Killian documents, and instead made a strong case for the appearance of inauthenticity. The latter, the report clearly implies, should have set off the warning bells.

Nor does the report take the question of political bias seriously, as far as one can tell. But it seems to me that the latter amounts to another self-imposed injury on the part of CBS. Lots of network talking heads and former network talking heads bobbed up on cable last night, and virtually all of them denied that political bias played any role in the scandal. This is so implausible as to discredit anything else they had to say on CBS's behalf.

Wouldn't it have been far more plausible to argue that political bias played a small role but did not determine the outcome? I can believe for example that the primary motive behind the scandal was desperation over viewer loss, and that the 60 Minutes team might well have run a damaging story about Kerry if they believed it would help them in the ratings. But fear of helping Bush back into the Whitehouse would surely have created a little friction in the scandal machine, and might have been enough for them to check out the sources a little more thoroughly. As it was the desire to hurt Bush probably greased the wheels instead. Admitting this much would hardly make the network look worse. Indeed at this point arguing that the desire for a scoop trumps political bias would make the network look a little better.

Military intelligence

2005-01-11T13:21:00.000-06:00

I recently finished John Keegan's Intelligence in War, which, as the name suggests, is about the strategic and tactical use of intelligence in wartime. Keegan uses various case studies (Admiral Nelson chasing French through the Mediterranean, Jackson in the Shenandoah, German attack on Crete in WWII, etc) to illustrate lessons about how intelligence is gained, and more to the point, how it is used during warfare. The central point is this: While obviously it is better to have good intelligence, it is not a substitute for fighting will and the ability to think on your feet when inevitably circumstances change in a way the renders your intelligence moot. Also, intelligence is always inaccurate to one extent or another. It can only give you a partial picture. I think Keegan is trying to warn us away from a modern conceit that somehow intelligence will save us from having to make difficult foreign policy decisions and having the will to see them through. Intelligence will give us obvious answers, some think, such as whether we should invade Iraq or not. Intelligence, Keegan suggests, is not a substitute for judgment, leadership, and will.

Crap and Corruption at CBS and CJR

2005-01-10T21:00:00.000-06:00

It seemed very odd to me that CJR would publish its Blog-Gate just before CBS issued its report on the Memogate scandal. What is certain is that in light of the CBS report, the CJR piece looks even dumber than it did on first read.

"Blog-Gate," written by Corey Pein, tries to argue that the bloggers were guilty of the same sins as CBS, but to do so he is forced to pepper his essay with howlers and wrap himself in self-contradiction. Consider this one:

Ultimately, we dont know enough to justify the conventional wisdom: that the documents were apparently bogus (as Howard Kurtz put it, reporting on Dan Rathers resignation) and that a major news network was an accomplice to political slander [my italics].

It may be true that " copies cannot be authenticated either way with absolute certainty," and therefore we do not know for sure that the documents were bogus (i.e., forged). But we know for sure that the documents were "apparently bogus," for that's the way they appear to any reasonable person. While the CBS report is careful to deny any finding concerning the authenticity of the Killian memos, it leaves no question that the documents were highly questionable and should have triggered greater scrutiny. Consider Section VII B of the Report, "The Language and Format of the Killian Documents Do Not Match Those of
the Official Bush Records ." Consider the following:

Four of the Killian documents . . . have signature blocks on the right side of the page. Three of the former TexANG personnel interviewed advised the Panel that the signature block in documents from the 147th Group would always be on the left. The Panel has reviewed the official Bushrecords, including four official documents signed by Lieutenant Colonel Killian, and has confirmed that the signature block in memoranda and letters of the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group was always on the left. Indeed, in the official Bush records available to the Panel, the signature block on documents from the 147th Group was on the left at least 20 times and was never on the right.83 Accordingly, the referenced Killian documents deviate from standard
format.

And this:

Four of the Killian documents have signature blocks, but the format of the signature
blocks varies greatly. . . . Among the official Bush records available to the Panel are five documents signed by Lieutenant Colonel Killian. These records evidence instances where Lieutenant Colonel Killian signed in accordance with the standard format and no instances where he signed as in the Killian documents. . . . The deviation of the Killian documents from standard format of the signature block is another indication that the Killian documents may not be authentic.

The report goes on to consider a variety of ways in which the Killian memos differ from authenticated documents including those that really were written by Killian. While we cannot demonstrate from this that the Killian memos were bogus, they damned sure look bogus. To deny that is stupid.

Pein repeats the silly assertion that the memos "could be fake but accurate, as Killians secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told CBS on September 15." But this undermines his own case. The bloggers turned out to be right about the documents: they are "apparently" bogus. If being right is all that counts, how can he complain about the bloggers faulty fact checking or their many obvious biases?

The CJR is supposed to support good journalism. This article confines itself to protecting bad journalism from outside scrutiny.

The Left Shall Rise Again!

2005-01-08T20:36:00.000-06:00

Having grown up in the South (Craighead County, Arkansas, to be precise), I have seen my share of folk who can hang on to a lost cause for a very long time. Now we are witnessing this same spirit in the contemporary left. Knightrider, posting on Dec. 30, urged the Democrats to filibuster the certification of Ohio's electors. Thanks to Polipundit.

According to research done here, once an election challenge has occurred, the House and Senate split into their respective bodies to deal with the challenge. According to the federal statute on this issue, both houses have a 2 hour limit on debate, after which they are supposed to vote to accept or reject the electors. However, Senate Rules contradict the federal statute: the Senate Rules allow unlimited debate unless 60 Senators vote to cut off debate. The Senate Rules are Constitutionally granted. The Constitution trumps a federal statute.

Why is this so important? Because once the electoral college votes, Bush could be removed only by impeachment. That's important because Knightrider is still hoping for a couple hundred thousand votes to mysteriously pop up somewhere in Ohio.

Meanwhile at the Daily KOS, the war for the authenticity of the infamous "Killian" Memos goes on without pause.

DailyKos was one of the very few sites that did any serious counterinvestigation into the claims that the documents were word-processed forgeries, through this story and multiple followups, and found that the right-wing blog "forgery!" claims could be disproved pretty easily.

This shows a kind of disengagement from reality that will probably deepen rather than fade with the passing of the years.

The Peculiar Demographics of the Zombie Vote

2005-01-08T01:27:00.000-06:00

A question was raised recently concerning the fact that it is usually Republicans who challenge votes in elections. Why don't they want everyone to vote? A clue is provided by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (what a good paper name!).

At least eight people who died well before the November general election were credited with voting in King County, raising new questions about the integrity of the vote total in the narrow governor's race, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer review has found.

This calls to mind something one of relatives once said about voter demographics in my home state of Arkansas. Jews and Catholics can sometimes be persuaded to vote Republican, she said, though it is very difficult. It is even harder to get Blacks to vote Republican, though in rare cases it can happen. But for some strange reason, the dead always vote Democrat.

Why We Still Need Ted Kennedy

2005-01-07T22:55:00.000-06:00

Just when you thought Congress couldn't get any funnier, there comes this piece from the Wall Street Journal. It involves Ted Kennedy questioning the humanity of "water-boarding," where you make someone think he is drowning. Even a low grade idiot would have advised this Senator not to go there. But instead of that, he had only his own wits.

Best of all is the "Best of the Web" article title: A Bridge Too Far. Now that's comedy.

Theology and the Tsunami

2005-01-07T20:10:00.000-06:00

In the season opener of Joan of Arcadia God skips up to Joan in the form of a little girl with curly blond hair and glasses. Joan, who is just back from a few weeks in a clinic because she was, well, talking to God, puts her hands over her eyes and says "You aren't there! You aren't there!" God replies in a little girl voice: "That's what people keep telling me."

There's nothing like a tsunami to bring out the foul-weather atheists. Ron Rosenbaum announces in the New York Observer us that "Disaster Ignites Debate". Rosenbaum makes the argument from evil well enough, but spoils the fun by trying to be cute. Calling God "Big Guy" shows a kind of disdain for believers that does not really help much when he finally urges a truth between believers and non-believers.

Martin Kettle, writing in the British Guardian, compares our reaction to earthquakes with that of 18th century Europeans, and decides that the latter "ask questions we shy away from." Atleast the British left can see some of the disadvantages of political correctness:

The need for mutual respect between peoples and traditions of which the Queen spoke in her Christmas broadcast seems to require that we must all respect religions in equal measure, too. The government, indeed, is legislating to prevent expressions of religious hatred in ways that could put a cordon around the critical discussion of religion itself.

That's too bad, because

A non-scientific belief system, especially one that is based on any kind of notion of a divine order, has some explaining to do . . . . What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life?

So political correctness is bad because it might protect the pious from the drubbing they deserve.

These essays get the problem of evil basically right. A God who was both omnipotent and omni-compassionate would necessarily be both willing and able to prevent such terrible tragedies. Since God did not prevent it, then either he is not the one or not the other, or perhaps not anything at all.

I happen to agree that the argument has no solution. But at the same time anyone who thinks that this is an insoluble problem for religion doesn't understand what religion is. As philosophy begins with a puzzle and responds with a question mark (what is nature? What is God?), piety begins with the problematic character of human life, mortality and pain for example, and responds with an exclamation mark. Religion (at least the great religions) insist that human beings should behave as if there were a God (or in the case of Buddhists, as if the Dharma is perfect) regardless of what the evidence shows. Jews and Christians do not have to wait for a holocaust or a tsunami to come along to know that evil in the world is a challenge to God. In fact, the sages have always recognized that it is harder to be pious when things are going well than when they are going terribly.

The Jewish philosopher Emil Fachenheim has argued that the holocaust was an example of inexplicable evil, and that salvation from it was possible only because human beings were capable of equally inexplicable instances of resistance.

Whether one responds to life with a question mark or an exclamation mark, it is clear that the latter is posited out of no naivete. When you are sunning yourself on the beach, look around for the pious. They will be the ones warning that the wave is coming.

What do teenagers believe?

2005-01-06T11:24:00.000-06:00

This is the inaugural post where the title of the post (what do teenagers believe) serves as a link to an article. This is a link to a very interesting interview from Christianity Today about the beliefs of teenagers. This fellow draws two conclusions. 1. American teenagers are more like their parents in their religious beliefs than is normally assumed. They are not as rebellious as teenagers are suspected of being. 2. Those religious beliefs are more accurately described as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism than Christianity. As I am want to say, it is the gospel of "It's nice to be nice to nice people."

This is the anticipated effect of democracy on Christianity, according to Tocqueville. Christianity will have to justify itself on the grounds of equality, thus any religious authority (even that of God?) is suspect. Like much else in democracy, religion will be reduced to the lowest common denominator, not really questioning the assumptions of materialistic egalitarianism of America. Tocqueville writes, "We shall have occasion to see that of all the passions which originate in, or are fostered by, equality, there is one which it renders peculiarly intense, and which it infuses at the same time into the heart of every man: I mean the love of well-being...The more the conditions of man are equalized and assimilated to each other, the more important is it for religions, whilst they carefully abstain from the daily turmoil of secular affairs, not needlessly to run counter to the ideas which generally prevail, and the permanent interests which exist in the mass of the people."

Moderate Republicans

2005-01-05T10:57:00.000-06:00

From what I read about the new book by Christie Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey and Bush's first EPA director, she chides the Bushies for being too ideological in their opposition to big government. She calls for the party to moderate itself so it can win elections. There are a couple problems here. First, perhaps Christie Todd Whitman was asleep this past November, but Republicans did pretty well in the past election. In fact they have done well in in the past two elections under George Bush. If that's losing, show me winning. Second, I thought it was the dreaded evangelicals who had captured the GOP and driven it too far right. So not only are the Republicans too religious, they are too anti-government? Let me put this together. Repbulicans should give up their defense of marriage, defense of the unborn, and learn to love big government. In short, they should be Democrats. Why not give up on the fight against terrorism, while we're at it? Again, we have a party that fully embraces what Whitman and other critics of the Repbulicans advocate. They are the Democrats, and they can't win anything these days.

Atlas Shrugged

2005-01-05T10:46:00.000-06:00

Today NRO republishes one of the best book reviews I have ever read, namely the Whittaker Chambers review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I think he largely gets Rand correct. I have not read much Rand. I've read We the Living and some selections from The Virtue of Selfishness. The first thing to say about Rand as a writer is that she is decidedly third rate. Not even second rate. Even Randians will admit, in moments of rare honesty, that Rand subsumes story to ideology. That's a nice way of saying her novels are no good qua novels. Her philosophy is a kind of childish Nietzscheanism fitting for the likes of Marilyn Manson or your average college sophomore. Randians like to pride themselves on their bold individualism, so it is odd that you will find no more sheepish ideologues than Randians as they flock to the shepherding of Rand. If you think Straussians are cultish, you should spend some time with Randians.

The real threat to world civilization

2005-01-04T01:35:00.000-06:00

Jared Diamond, whose Guns, Germs, and Steel, was one of the best books of its decade, has lately been on the theme of the fall of civilizations (read: ours) . See his most recent piece in the NYT.

Diamond identifies a number of factors that lead to the fall of civilizations, but the one he most favors is the destruction of the enviornment. He doesn't notice what seems to me the single most likely threat to the current world civilization: dramatic population decline. See Russia: The Sick Man of Europe, in the Public Interest.

The NYRB becomes Motherjones

2005-01-02T22:49:00.000-06:00

I hadn't noticed it yet when I posted the last blog, but the danner piece appears simulataneously on the NYRB site and MotherJones. The latter, of course, is an explicitly left wing magazine. That tells you all you need to know about the current trend of the former.

The Unbearable Lightness of the New York Review of Books

2005-01-02T18:48:00.000-06:00

The New York Review of Books used to be the best kind of book review: it had a clear slant, but frequently published articles challenging the conventional wisdom on both sides. Of late it has become a partisan Democratic rag. In its pre-election issue it featured a dozen or so celebrity authors speaking on on the choice facing Americans. There was not room for one pro-Bush voice.

Evidence that partisanship has given way to a sloppy dishonesty is found in "How Bush Really Won," a summary of the election written by Mark Danner.

If one stands back a bit and lets the drifting smoke of the pundits and the preachers and the exit poll analysts begin to clear, three interesting facts about the 2004 election stand out. The first is that the election was very close —historically close, in fact.

On its face this claim is nonesense. Of the 27 Presidential elections between 1900 and 2004, four (2000, 1976, 1968, and 1960) were closer than 2004, and a fifth (1916) was almost as close. 2004 lies squarely in the group of close elections, but it hardly sets any historical precedent.

So Danner must spin the result to make it seem unusually low, and this he does by comparing Bush's margin of victory specificially with other victorious Republican incumbents. All of the latter enjoyed margins of victory between 16% (Eisenhower) and 23% (Reagan).

As these numbers show, incumbency is a huge advantage; nonetheless, Bush's reelection was a squeaker, the closest for a Republican in more than a century.

In fact his numbers show nothing of the kind. To measure the power of incumbency, one would have to compare the figures with those of non-incumbents, and perhaps Republican with Democratic incumbents. The latter have not fared well at all, considering how many have been either defeated or did not even dare to run again. If the power of Republican incumbency is the issue, the chart should have included Bush41 who, after all, had a popularl vote margin so low he actually managed to loose.

That five out of seven Republican incumbents won by overwhelming margins is an interesting historical fact. That one won by narrow margins is not. It is no more than spin, and rather sloppy spin at that.

When the Bats hit the Fan

2005-01-01T13:12:00.000-06:00

Its a safe bet that any new technology for generating energy will also generate opposition from the envirnmental left as soon as it shows signs of actually working. I had always supposed that this was a congential political reflex, but I begin to suspect that nature herself has decided, as my brother would put it, to "play with their heads."

See this story from the New Year's Day WAPO. The Wind Turbines at Moutaineer Wind Engergy Center in West Virginia have killed thousands of bats. Apparently from the point of view of the flying mammal population, nuclear power was much to be preferred.

Now I like bats a lot. Every summer they scour the Ozark mountains clean of misquitos, and make for great camping up there. But I also like electricity, so someone better teach the bats how to avoid the fans.

A Good Column by Bob Herbert

2005-01-01T01:01:00.000-06:00

Yes, you read that right. Until now I have not read a column by Herbert that I did not judge jaundiced beyond reclamation, but his piece in the NYTs on the Tsunami is quite good. It is almost free from the carping peevishness that is his stock and trade, and even includes a marvelous quote from Shakespeare:

The killer waves that moved with ferocious speed across an unprecedented expanse of global landscape flung their victims about with a randomness that was all but impossible to comprehend. People in beachfront dwellings ended up in trees, or entangled in electrical power lines, or embedded in the mud of hillsides. People died in buses, cars and trucks that were swept along by the waves like leaves in a strong wind. Sunbathers were swept out to sea.

In that environment, Einstein must stand aside for Shakespeare, whose Gloucester said: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."

E.J.Dionne as the Unreconstructed Democrat

2004-12-31T11:45:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure if bad air, like cow flatulence, constitutes a green house gas, but if it does E.J.Dionne may merit his own section in Kyoto II.

One would have thought that almost two months after the election he would have stopped writing the same column over and over again. But no, here it is again in this morning's WAPO. Consider the first of his lessons from 2004:

Relentlessness pays off. President Bush won reelection by ignoring the conventional wisdom that vicious attacks on your opponent don't work and turn off voters. As soon as John Kerry won the Democratic nomination, Bush's campaign went on the attack and never stopped. It worked.

He seems to conflate a recommendation (we have to be even more relentless) with the Democrat's favorite whine (the Republicans were negative, nasty, vicious, bad, and nasty). If he is urging them not only to be relentless, but to be relentlessly negative, he is at least following his own advice.

Democrats will never move on until they get this out of their system. Consider the next line:

Kerry was painted as arrogant and privileged, compared with an arrogant president who was far more privileged.

It may be true that Bush was more privileged in one sense: his father was President. But most folk didn't see him that way, nor did they see him as arrogant. Kerry, by contrast, seemed a poster child for noblesse oblige, which for all of its oblige cannot but come off as prideful.

In fact calling Bush dumb, as they did incessantly, undermined the charge of arrogance. The more attention they paid to his language problem, the more he seemed like an ordinary guy. But Dionne cannot see this. Instead he dreams up contradictions in the Republican case against Kerry.

Kerry was made out to be a flip-flopping liberal, and never mind asking how someone can be a flip-flopper and an ideologue.

Well, lets take this slow E.J. A flip-flopper is not necessarily someone who has no principles. It might someone who is willing to sacrifice them at a moment's notice depending on the direction the wind is blowing. Kerry was surely a liberal in principle, and had he been in a commanding position he would have espoused and pursued liberal policies.

As it was he flipped and flopped persistently until very near the end. Were either of his key votes on Iraq, authorizing force and against funding, motivated by anything other than expediency? Wasn't his opposition to capital punishment in almost all its forms something of a principle? And wasn't his decision to be in favor of it for terrorists something of a flip-flop?

Dionne is making a case that is patently absurd on behalf of a cause that has already lost. He might as well stick a Confederate flag in the window of his pickup truck.

very quick update

2004-12-30T13:41:00.000-06:00

In the time it took me to type the previous post, Americans had donated another $18,000. Go to Amazon and you can follow this amazing effort by the most generous people in the world. I point out that while Americans are devoting tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to help a country of very little importance to us, Osama Bin Laden is calling for the boycott of the Iraqi election and calling all who do participate traitors, which I guess makes them legitimate targets for terrorist "insurgents." Please don't give me any moral equivalence crap.

Stingy

2004-12-30T13:36:00.000-06:00

As of this moment, stingy Americans have donated $5,244,122.79 to Thai disaster relief via Amazon.com. We really are a bunch of tight fisted bastards. Meanwhile, the UN has promised vast amounts of hot air, muddling, and a healthy dosage of corrupt bureaucracy. Keep up the good work, Kofi!

Soggy thinking about Tsunamis from the Progressive

2004-12-30T01:48:00.000-06:00

Matthew Rothschild, editor at the Progressive, has these thoughts about Mother Nature:

While such a brutal force of nature would have exacted a terrible price in any event, the magnitude was compounded by man-made factors.

The first was a lack of a functioning early-warning emergency system. The United States set one up for countries on the Pacific more than five decades ago, but none was in operation for the countries bordering the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.

I confess I am dubious about the effectiveness of such warning systems. How many people would an alarm reach, and how many would actually have time to move to higher ground before the wave hit? But marginal effect would be better than none.

The second factor is not technological at all, but economic and political: and that is, mass poverty. Half the worlds working population makes $2 a day or less. Those who live in coastal areas cannot afford the high rent of the high ground.

This is surely a cultural and economic accident. If such a wave had hit square on San Francisco it would have been the rich, for the most part, who would have been washed into the bay. I can't help noticing that pretty much every county that voted for Bush would have been safe enough. There is no guarantee that the relief of poverty in Asia would not produce a similar taste for ocean front property.

But it is the grand idea of liberalism that seems most suspect here.

Ten years ago, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a report on disaster mitigation. Principally as a result of their poverty, it noted, developing countries are especially vulnerable to natural hazards. Hazard events which would cause limited damage and few casualties in a rich country often cause extensive damage and substantial loss of life in a developing country context.

This is almost certainly true in general, but if you are talking about mitigating the danger of tsunamis by moving fisherman and shanties away from the sea, no mere distribution of wealth is going to do the trick. You are going to have to produce much more wealth than the world as yet possesses and in effect make all the poor rich. But the Progressive is in general opposed to wealth production. It will allow only redistribution, and for that reason has nothing interesting to say about this particular natural disaster.

Dutchland Uber Alles III

2004-12-29T22:47:00.000-06:00

The intrepid Ian Buruma weighs in on the Dutch Disease in the New Yorker.

Nick Coleman Attacks Powerline

2004-12-29T01:10:00.000-06:00

Powerline, arguably the most successful contemporary blog, has goaded Nick Coleman of the Star Tribune into coming out to fight. His next column is devoted to venting against the Twin Cities Blog. Anyone who suspected Coleman was a dim bulb can file this one under Open Mouth Removes Doubt.

Coleman's piece, and Powerline's reply, illustrate the respective weaknesses of old media political commentary and the best of the blogosphere respectively. A newspaper columnist ordinarily addresses a small audience of people drinking coffee, eating raisin bran, and dressed in, well, pajamas. If his readers notice mistakes either of fact or logic, a few of them may write letters. But most will make do with chewing a bit more slowly. For that reason most columnists tend to be rather sloppy, and Coleman's diatribe is a good example.

It is full of snappy little phrases like "They don't speak truth to power. They just speak for power," and below the belt punches like the following:

If you read Powerline, you know them better by their fantasy names, Big Trunk (that's Johnson) and Hind Rocket (Hinderaker). I will leave it to the appropriate professionals to determine what they are compensating for.

That last one was moderately clever, but it is not in any sense on point. It adds no ideas or information to the exchange. If it tells us anything about the author, it is only that his emotional development appears to have concluded around age 14.

By contrast, consider this from Powerline's reply:

Coleman says we "pursu[e] a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers." If by that he means that we're conservatives, we plead guilty. The think tank in question appears to be the Claremont Institute, with which we have an extremely loose affiliation. And if he means to suggest that we share Claremont's respect for the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we can only plead guilty once again.

Here, one learns quite literally where the folks at Powerline are coming from, both in the context of contemporary political thought and in the more profound sense of fundamental principles.

The blogosphere appeals to readers who want more: more ideas, more information, more analysis. Coleman is far too old a dog to learn such new tricks. He'd better stick to readers who are half asleep.

The First "Damned if you do" Award

2004-12-28T11:27:00.000-06:00

Goes to Brent Staples, writing in the NYTs about the political impact of large prison populations in upstate New York.

The mandatory sentencing fad that swept the United States beginning in the 1970's has had dramatic consequences - most of them bad. The prison population was driven up tenfold, creating a large and growing felon class - now 13 million strong - that remains locked out of the mainstream and prone to recidivism. Trailing behind the legions of felons are children who grow up visiting their parents behind bars and thinking prison life is perfectly normal. Meanwhile, the cost of building and running prisons has pushed many states near bankruptcy - and forced them to choose between building jails and schools. Seldom has a public policy done so much damage so quickly.

Staples's "locked out of the mainstream" and "prone to recidivism," are both interesting phrases in the context. Locking criminals out of the mainstream is precisely what prisons are for, and recidivism is what we call a crime only if the perpetrator was caught twice for it, during such time as he was not locked out of the mainstream.

Staples recognizes that many backward readers might think that the mainstream is better off with criminals locked out of it, so he must assure us that this is not the case.

The public thinks keeping a large chunk of the population behind bars is responsible for the reduced crime rates of recent years. Studies cast doubt on that theory, since they show drops in crime almost everywhere - even in states that did not embrace mandatory minimum sentences or mass imprisonment.

Studies also show that when criminal penalties are steadily reduced in a country, crime goes up, and when they are increased, it goes down. I hate to be so vulgar as to resort to common sense, but its hard to rob a liquor store from inside of a prison.

See especially Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales, 1981-96. This study, conducted by the Department of Justice, shows a pretty strong correlation between incarceration rates and crime rates, and shows how England comes to lead the U.S. in many types of crime as a result of locking fewer folk out of the mainstream.

But Staples believes that this involves a scam:

Nearly all of the prisoners ended up in upstate New York, where failing farms and hollowed-out cities offered a lot of room for building. Politicians in these sparsely populated districts caught on quickly and began to lobby to have the new prisons located in their communities. . . .

The influx of inmates has brought desperately needed jobs to the region and resulted in districts whose economies revolve around prison payrolls and whose politics are dominated by the union that represents corrections officers. The inmates also helped to save political careers in areas where legislative districts were in danger of having to be merged because of shrinking populations. Inmates, as it turned out, were magically transformed into "residents," thanks to a quirk in the census rules that counts them as living at their prisons. Although people sentenced under the drug laws frequently serve long sentences, many prisoners remain behind bars only briefly before returning to homes that are often hundreds of miles away.

Felons are barred from voting in 48 of 50 states - including New York. Yet in New York, as in the rest of the country, disenfranchised prisoners are included in the population counts that become the basis for drawing legislative districts.
An eye-opening analysis by Prison Policy Initiative's Peter Wagner found seven upstate New York Senate districts that meet minimal population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count. . . .

The idea of counting inmates as voters in the counties that imprison them is particularly repulsive given that inmates are nearly always stripped of the right to vote. The practice recalls the early United States under slavery, when slaves were barred from voting but counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning representation in Congress.

So basically the prison system is a form of kidknapping practiced by upstate Republicans. Unfortunate victims of drug laws are captured and held at least long enough to count in the census, and in turn the artificially enlarged counties send representatives who maintain draconian drug laws. Its a good deal if you can swing it.

But what was wrong with the three fifths clause was that slaves were denied their liberties, not that they were represented in Congress. Children are counted for purposes of representation even though they do not vote.

And that, I think, is really Staples bottom line. The incarceration of criminals, at least in the case of certain crimes, is tantamount to slavery. At the very least they ought to be able to vote themselves out of prison. He is of course entitled to such opinions. But I suspect they would be hard to sell in the state legislature, even without artificially inflated Republican counties.

So long as felons are imprisoned, and denied the right to vote, should they be represented in the state legislature or in the U.S. Congress? If they weren't represented, Staples would no doubt be crowing about how that denies their humanity. So I awarded him my first "Damned if you Do" award.

Something else that's wrong with France

2004-12-26T19:03:00.000-06:00

Guess what: the French legal system doesn't work as well as the English Common law system as a basis for modern economies. See Legal Affairs.

Live From Minnesota

2004-12-25T22:43:00.000-06:00

Prof. Schaff sends late Christmas night greetings from the frozen tundra of Minnesota (although he is actually south of South Dakota's Jim River). Imbibing many a Christmas spirit and ingesting way too much Christmas ham, he turns his attention to the stealing of votes. Let me build on Prof. Blanchard's response to Kos. The question can be flipped on its head. Instead of asking why Republicans always want to stop counting ballots, why not ask why the Democrats are so eager to bend (break?) the law to further their own interests? If there is contempt here, the Democratic contempt for the law is at least as deep as any Republican contempt for democracy. Every state has rules about what constitutes a legal vote and how counts and recounts are conducted. The Democrats seem more than happy (Florida 2000, Washington 2004) to ignore those rules to get at the unmeasurable concept known as "voter intent." But we don't count voter intent; we count votes. There has to be some standard set before an election to separate votes from non-votes. I recall oral arguments in Bush v. Gore in 2000 when they were discussing this very question: how do you get at voter intent. Justice O'Connor asked Gore lawyer David Boies why not just use the standard that was printed in ever voting booth in Florida, which told in remarkable detail how to fill out the ballot and what constitutes a vote. Boies had no response to that, which I think ultimately doomed his client. We cannot have a decent democracy unless there are clear standards as to what is a vote and what is not. The recent events in Washington suggest the Democratic party is willing to go to some length, including paying for a statewide recount, in order muddy the idea of what is a vote in order to find the votes the party needs.

Big Jim River Answers KOS's Question

2004-12-25T16:57:00.000-06:00

The Daily KOS asks:

(Why is it that it is always the GOP which wants to not count ballots? Don't answer that.)

To which we reply that it isn't quite always the GOP that does this. Who challenged overseas military votes as invalid during the Florida controversy in 2000? Hint: it wasn't the GOP.

But is fair enough to say that more Democratic votes are challenged by the Republicans than vice versa. Why? Let us suggest two answers:

The GOP is congenitally hostile to Democracy, and wants to exclude as many people as possible from the process. This is what KOS is hinting at, so might was well put it on the table.
Virtually 100% of the folk who vote Republican are both qualified and competent to cast legal ballots. With the rare exception of overseas military votes, there just isn't any margin in challenging GOP ballots. By contrast, some folk who intend to vote Democrat can't seem to manage it, and some of them aren't altogether entitled to vote for reasons of citizenship or residence in some correctional facility.

We will leave it to the imagine of KOS which of the two explains more.

Merry Christmas from the Jim River Review!

2004-12-25T11:16:00.000-06:00

And a very happy new year.

Dutchland Uber Alles II

2004-12-23T01:46:00.000-06:00

The crisis of confidence that Dutch Liberalism is now suffering continues to generate print. See

Holland Daze, by Christopher Caldwell in the Weekly Standard, and
After Van Gough, by Wouter Bos, in Prospect.

Gary Becker on Global Warming

2004-12-21T16:11:00.000-06:00

A good discussion of some of the problems with the Kyoto Protocal, in The Becker-Posner Blog.

South Dakota Comes in First!

2004-12-21T15:14:00.000-06:00

A list of states with percentage of citizens who have a right to carry license. Blog O'Stuff.

I found this on No Left Turns.

The British Left and Israel

2004-12-21T14:20:00.000-06:00

David Hirst, filing from Damascus, has this in today's Guardian.

It is not that US presidents have ever underestimated the importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The trouble is that, thanks to the partisanship noted in the Pentagon, they can never acknowledge the real nature of the problem: essentially one of decolonisation. So, far from opening up new opportunities, Arafat's death will almost certainly reconfirm that congenital inability - though this time because of Iraq and al-Qaida in more critical circumstances than ever. If the Palestinians were to secure the redress that other colonised peoples have, there would either be no Israel - as there is no Algérie Française - or a bi-national state, like South Africa, in which it would lose its exclusively Jewish character.

This is what Hirst considers only fair: the extinction of the Jewish state. If the Palestinians are willing to consider anything less than that, they are being magnanimous. Are they in fact willing to consider less?

They have committed themselves, via Oslo, to the loss of 78% of their original homeland.

How much such a "committment," punctuated by a persistent campaign of bombing civilian targets, is worth, Hirst does not consider. Its hard not to think that he would prefer the fairer solution.

The Moral Minority Speaks Out

2004-12-20T11:20:00.000-06:00

One of my friends and esteemed colleagues who shall remain nameless (Jim Seeber) attacked the moral courage of religious conservatives in his weekend column in the Aberdeen American News.

The column vents a good deal of frustration left over from the recent election, but amounts to the argument that anyone who does not want to endorse the political principles of the Democratic party during, say, Lyndon Johnson's administration, must be guilty of some character flaw. Now in my case this may be a good bet, but I am a little less ready to make that judgment of everyone who is not 30 years backward in his or her political perspective.

Consider the following statement from his column:

Where are the anti-abortion protesters when it comes to concerns about the failure of the Bush administration to support the Kyoto Accords or other global measures to reduce pollution that is clearly leading to global warming?

Well I don't know exactly what most prolife folk think about global warming. But I do know that pollution is not clearly leading to global warming. I am also of the opinion that the Kyoto treaty is so stupid in its design that only a fraternity of asylum inmates or, what is the same thing, a gaggle of bureaucrats in Brussels, could toast it. Consider the following facts, none of them disputed.

The current warming trend, if it is real and not the product of our changing instruments of measurement, began well before the industrial revolution and cannot therefore be caused entirely by "pollution."
The Kyoto treaty would cost tens of billions of dollars, largely measured in lost economic growth.
It fights global warming by retarding the growth only of the more advanced economies; it would leave the greatest sources of new green houses gases (China, Brazil, etc.) untouched.
If fully enacted it would not come close to preventing global warming. It would, by the very estimates of the experts behind the treaty, only slow warming down by a handful of years.

Now, maybe there are better arguments for the treaty, ones that its proponents are for some reason keeping in reserve. But those who remain skeptical, whether they are pro-life or not, might oppose Kyoto for some other reason than a lack of moral courage. They might oppose it because they are capable of evaluating evidence and forming reasonable conclusions. The Kyoto treaty doesn't have a snowball's chance in Honduras of ever being enacted. Maybe we should spend our fifty billion on something more practical, like a free electric car for everyone, and a few nuclear plants to charge them up.

Roeing against the tide.

2004-12-20T11:10:00.000-06:00

Strange column by Stuart Taylor on the Supreme Court today. I have alot of respect for Taylor, as he is one who tries to be moderate in language and see the legitimate arguments of all sides. Yet this column strikes me as being, if you will, too moderate. Taylor admits that many precedents set by the liberal court in the 1960s and 1970s were wrongly decided, and he names Roe v. Wade as being a particularly hard case to justify on Constitutional grounds, yet he argues that these bad precedents should be left in place because they have support amongst the public. He believes there will be political Hell to pay for Republicans if the Court becomes doctrinaire on the right. While I understand his argument based on politics (although I think he overstates it), as a matter of law I find it hard to justify. Taylor agrees with the conservatives that Roe v. Wade is a bad decision, but he thinks it should be defended because the people have come to accept it. Taylor thinks we absolutely must honor the precedent of Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned the precedent of Bowers v. Hardwick. We should allow governments to treat people differently based on skin color, Taylor seems to argue, when the majority thinks this is a good idea. Taylor, a lawyer, finds himself defending bad law in the name of public opinion. Taylor, consciously or not, buys into the liberal activism of the "living Constitution" which says that the Court should take into account our "evolving standards" as they make decisions on our thorniest moral and social questions. Taylor's Court is just another political branch, trying to read public opinion to help it rule on the most controversial questions. This is the best argument FOR judicial restraint. These controversial subjects are of the kind that require moderation and compromise, yet the Court, given the adversarial process, is ill suited to provide such virtues. And when it tries to compromise, it is using the art of the legislator, not the art of the judge. Compromise is more often an act of will, not judgment, and thus should be left to the people rather than the judges.

Bad Kofi

2004-12-20T11:00:00.000-06:00

A column in the Wall Street Journal today by a self-proclaimed liberal multilateralist call for Kofi Annan's removal as Secretary General of the UN, citing UN action (or inaction, as the case may be) in Rwanda and Bosnia that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands. One reads this column and wonders how anyone can see the UN as giving legitimacy to any operation,the Iraqi operation, for example. The Bush administration, far from being ashamed of not getting final UN approval for Iraq, may want to wear it like a badge of honor. Under Annan, the UN has become the spokesperson and appeaser of murderers everywhere, from Rwanda to Bosnia, and now in the Sudan. It reminds me of on of the more timely verses from Scripture, from Jeremiah 6:14-15: "They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD."

Tom Daschle and Closure

2004-12-19T01:19:00.000-06:00

What follows is my most recent column in the Aberdeen American News.

When Tom Daschle was chosen leader of the Senate’s Democrats, he probably thought he was bullet proof. I certainly thought so. Incumbent senators are nearly always favored to win reelection. Well established and powerful incumbents usually enjoy more job security than an hereditary monarch.

I did not really believe in the possibility of a Daschle loss until I came to be in Sioux Falls, shortly before this year’s election. At maybe a half dozen intersections, including one across from the Empire Mall, I saw crowds of young Thune supporters cheering and waving their signs at the stream of traffic. I do not mean to slight Daschle’s people. No doubt they too were working their fannies off for their man. But on that day, all the momentum looked to be on the Republican side. And this was in a Democratic stronghold.

I first met Senator Daschle in 1994, when he appeared at a campaign event on behalf of Jim Beddow, the Democratic candidate for governor. One of my students who worked on the Beddow campaign invited me to that event, held in an Aberdeen home. But when she introduced me to Tom, I think she was a bit worried that I was going to cause some kind of trouble.

I did not entirely disappoint her. After we shook hands, I asked the Senator what were his chances of becoming minority leader. I had in effect asked him two things at once. Was he going to lead the Senate Democratic caucus, and were the Democrats going to loose their majority? He feigned a motion as if he had been punched in the stomach, but then proceeded to candidly answer both questions in the affirmative. He was right on both counts.

Since that evening I have had a fondness for the man. In several subsequent encounters he always been thoughtful and honest in answering my questions, at least when the mikes were switched off. I’ve known politicians who wouldn’t give you a straight answer to a question if the two of you were trapped alone in an elevator.

Daschle is also short, and I like that in a man. He might be one of the few members of Congress I would have a chance against in a good round of fisticuffs, and I include Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. When Daschle addressed that room in Aberdeen he did so from over a banister, half way up a flight of stairs. This was an elegant means of rising above his physical limitations.

Other limitations could not be so easily surmounted. As a party leader, Senator Daschle confronted a problem that has become critical for many congressional Democrats. He was elected from a solidly red, conservative state, but belonged to the blue, and increasingly more liberal party. This can create what social scientists call “cognitive dissonance.” Daschle represented a party that is fond of such things as animal rights and gun control. He was bound to look a bit odd then, when he showed up on the campaign trail carrying a hunting rifle and wearing hip waders.

Daschle lost, I would guess, because his enemies could exploit this dissonance. They managed to make the case that he wasn’t really from South Dakota anymore. His real home is in a cushy beltway suburb. Like those expatriate Arkansans, Bill and Hilary, he is now more akin to a Heinz-Kerry or a Kennedy, than to anyone who really enjoys killing ducks and deer. John Thune, by contrast, gives the impression that he only ran for Senate out of a sense of duty, that he’d much rather be here. This may be unfair to Daschle, but fairness has never been a conspicuous feature of politics.

Daschle’s political career says at least a couple good things about South Dakota. It says that we are capable of producing extraordinary persons, one of whom briefly led the upper house of the U.S. Congress. It also says that our senators and representatives belong to us, and not the other way around. When the citizens of this state decide to replace one of them, not all the glitter and power of the nation is enough to save him.

More Africa

2004-12-18T09:59:00.000-06:00

Daniel Drezner writes on a piece from the Chicago Tribune about Islam in the nascent African democracy of Mali. This article points to two things, one positive and one negative from the US perspective. First, Mali shows that democracy and Islam are compatible, something about which some Americans are skeptical. This is the good news. The bad news is that outside influences, mostly Wahabbis from Saudi Arabia, are trying to change the traditionally tolerant Malian Islam to a more severe or "fundamentalist" Islam. (I dislike the term "Islamic fundamentalism" because it suggests a return to "fundamentals" or the beginning, while it seems most Muslims view the "fundamentalists" as innovating or even perverting Islam. ) Here the analogy often made by Bernard Lewis is apropos. Imagine the KKK or some such group captured the oil wealth of the US. They then used this money to fund schools all over America to advance their particular view of Christianity. This is something of what is happening within the Muslim world. The most extreme and dangerous Muslims, the Wahabbi of the rather extensive Saudi royal family, have untold wealth. They are using this wealth to promote their brand of Islam. This is even worse than the analogy Lewis posits because most of the areas of Wahabbi hegemony have no public school system, so the Wahabbi schools may be the only ones in existence. Further, the Wahabbis build mosques all around the world. Indeed most mosques in the US are owned by Wahabbis. This does not mean that those worshipping there are Wahabbi, just that the ownership of the mosque is. One worries that in desperately poor places such as Mali the money of the Saudi Wahabbis will have much influence, and undermine the noble experiment in democracy that Malians are attempting. Where are the US foreign aid dollars to combat this?

Fiddling While Africa Dies

2004-12-18T09:31:00.000-06:00

I am by no means an expert on AIDS drugs, but this news story about possible problems with the drug nevirapine and the US role in its introduction to Africa is a bit stunning. Given the dreadful rates of HIV and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, how parsimonious should we be in distributing new drugs? According to this story, 70% of the 45 million HIV cases worldwide are in Sub-Saharan Africa. You'd think they'd be happy to have new drugs. Here's what the news story says about the fellow, Dr. Edmund Tramont, who changed a report to streamline introduction of nevirapine:"Dr. H. Clifford Lane, the NIH's No. 2 infectious disease specialist and one of Tramont's bosses, has said an internal review cleared Tramont of scientific misconduct.

He said Tramont changed the report because he was more experienced than his safety experts and had an 'honest difference of opinion.' Tramont has also argued that Africans in the midst of an AIDS crisis deserved some leniency in meeting tough U.S. safety standards."

Does anyone disagree that given the epidemic of AIDS in Africa that it is perhaps foolish, even deadly, to hold the same high standards for that situation as we do for the general US public? Oh yes, there is disagreement. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who must have the best publicist in America, has spoken up once again, decrying the use of Africans as guinea pigs. Rev. Jackson shows the truth of the maxim, "It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it." In fact, that almost sums up the Reverend’s career. It is said that desperate times demand desperate measures. I would say that the epidemic with AIDS in Africa is a desperate situation. And the response by the US NIH to speed up the use of certain drugs seems less than desperate; in fact it seems quite reasonable. Jesse Jackson has firmly planted himself in the "blame America first" camp. Pay no mind to the fact that this drug is highly successful in preventing the transfer of HIV from mother to child. Pay no attention to the fact that the decision by the NIH to move ahead with nevirapine before all scientific questions are answered may end up saving lives. No, here's a chance for the Reverend to bash the US government. Who is using Africans as guinea pigs?

Apples and Orange Revolutions

2004-12-17T01:11:00.000-06:00

Faculty meetings are great places for collecting absurdities, so much so that it seems as if that were their chief purpose.

This afternoon a colleague blurted out this piece of wisdom: that he dreamed of a time when we would spend as much on education as on defense.

It is difficult to count the things wrong with that statement. But lets start with this: no decision, whether it is about the Federal Budget or Class Schedules, can be made unless the power to decide is protected. Defense is a more important consideration for government than education for the simple reason that the latter is something that can be managed privately but the former is not. If all government in the U.S. were to suddenly stop funding education, those of us with children would find some way to school them. But when it comes to defense, united we stand and divided we fall under someone elses budgetary authority.

And besides, Americans spend more on gambling than they do on education. If you want something to bitch about, bitch about that.

More Bytes for the Buck!

2004-12-17T01:03:00.000-06:00

This is the first blog entry on my new computer, A Dell 3000 with a few bells and whistles added.

A few reflections:

The new machine is about five times faster than the one it replaces.
It has about 4 times as much storage space, and about as much again in internal memory, and that's not to mention the other inovations that make the central processor run as fast as advertised.
It has a flat screen that is officially the same size as the older one, but is in fact about an inch and a half wider.
It costs about half what I shelled out for the old one.

The economists out there may want to refine my judgment, but it seems to me that I have become about 8 times wealthier in terms of personal computing power as I was when I bought my first Dell. That, kids, is wealth production. Not bad.

Cell Phones

2004-12-15T16:02:00.000-06:00

I am begging the FCC to continue the ban on cell phones on planes. It is the only cell free area left. I know I am a bit of a luddite on this question (despite owning a cell phone, which I seldom use), but the ubiquity of cell phones has become annoying, to say the least. The most annoying thing to me is the idea that there is nothing worse than being out of touch. Everywhere we go we must be constantly accessible. And God forbid we should not know where are loved ones are at every second. There are those people in the airports who have these conversations: "OK, it's ten minutes until the plane takes off... I'm getting on the plane...Their closing the door...The plane just landed...I'm taking my luggage down...I am now getting off the plane...I am now unzipping...I am now going to the bathroom..." They must tell us every second of their lives. Don't even get me started on the pretentious businessmen and their high price phones who must impress us with their very important phone calls. "Wow, he must be important. He can't let business wait one second." OK, so I am grumpy, but I really hate the dependence on cell phones which has overtaken us so quickly.

Medal of Freedom

2004-12-14T18:00:00.000-06:00

I am quite sure I could run the CIA at least as incompetently as George Tenet. Perhaps someday President Bush will give me the Medal of Freedom, too. Tenet is to be commended for coming up the basic plan of the Afghanistan operation. Other than that he was a disaster.

Did the Jim River Review start something?

2004-12-14T17:57:00.000-06:00

Prof. Blanchard seems to have been on the cutting edge. More on global warming (or climate change as the dissenters call it) here and here.

Roots of Tyranny

2004-12-14T17:44:00.000-06:00

Grading student papers on the subject of civil disobedience today I was struck by the radicalism of Henry David Thoreau. OK, this isn’t exactly news, but when juxtaposed to Lincoln (as the assignment required) one sees the tyrannical impulses of Thoreau. The man actually writes in “On Civil Disobedience” “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” No responsibility to the public. Complete obsession with the self. Would Caesar, or Napoleon, or Stalin have put it any differently? Some colleagues and I were discussing genocide the other day. The question at hand was whether the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s was worse than the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. Let’s stipulate that both are horrific. But I claim the Khmer Rouge genocide was worse in that it was done in the name of good (yes, I know that these things are messy and stated and unstated motives get mixed around). In Rwanda the struggle seems to be merely, if you will, one of power. We want power; you stand in the way; you die. In the history of man, this is sadly common. The totalitarian mindset, though, is more pernicious. It does great evil while claiming to be good. Was it Chesterton who warned, “Beware of the ‘nice’ man”? That firm conviction of right, which is the dark side of ideology, and the attendant horrors that follow seem to be a 20^th (and 21^st) century innovation. Beware the do-gooders.

Kerry Really Won Version 87.1

2004-12-14T11:57:00.000-06:00

The Star Tribune has a cover story observing that Kerry won about the same set of states that Lincoln won, and, get this, that Bush defeated the railsplitter from Mass. by the narrowest margin of any President reelected to a second term.

They fail to mention that Bush also has more moles on his left foot than any Right handed Republican President ever. Did the voters consider that before touching their screens? I think not.

Dutchland über alles

2004-12-14T01:51:00.000-06:00

A couple of interesting articles have appeared on the extraordinary discomfort now afflicting Holland, traditionally Europe's most open nation. Maria Maragonis, in The Nation, gives a brief and interesting account of Theo van Gogh's murder, and the man who allegedly cut his throat. Her bottom line is that radical Islam is now an integral part of the Dutch social fabric, and that the problems can be dealt with only by

a new conversation opened up in Europe between Muslim organizations and the traditional groupings of the left-trade unionists, feminists, peace campaigners and environmentalists, antiglobalization activists, the remnants of the old left sects. The relationship is new and raw, and mistrust on both sides runs deep.

This is a very hopeful vision for the left, but one wonders whether it isn't the Dutch who burned Mosques in reaction to van Gough's murder, and the presumably Muslim arsonists who burned churchs in reply, that really see eye to eye. Just right now, both rightwing politicians and centrists are, as she says, "exploiting fears of Islamic extremism." Exploiting here means raising genuine concerns.

In the British Telegraph, the emphasis is on a now steady stream of Dutch middle class folk out of that nation, reversing a trend of net immigration for the first time in decades. If the middle is leaving, it surely cannot hold in the Netherlands.

The Greek word NOMOS was originally the word for a fenced off pasture. It became, especially in the hands of philosophers, the word for the moral roots of a society. Every regime, especially a liberal one, must draw lines between what is tolerable (toleration) and what is not. This would be the question that the Dutch are now confronting.

The Incredibles

2004-12-13T14:17:00.000-06:00

Just saw The Incredibles over the weekend. I haven't had this much fun at a movie in years. It might be the best non-live action Superhero movie yet. The CG characters and images were crisp and fascinating, and very well conceived. The architecture and automobiles were early sixties in style, and reminded my wife of the first James Bond movies. This was further reinforced by the music, which was just a hair off of the score for You Only Live Twice. There were also obvious tributes to Johnny Quest. The killer robot is a variation on the great spider robot from one of the most memorable Johnny Quest episodes, and flies in a very similar triangular aircraft. Each member of the Incredible family had powers lifted from familiar comic book characters. The little boy, Dash, is the Flash. Mom is the female version of plastic man. The daughter is Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four. For those of us whose childhood was filled with such characters and painted in such colors, the movie had a deep resonance.

Politically, the show had an understated conservative theme. Most obviously, it was nice to see a traditional family that functioned at least as well as the Brady Bunch. Dad works. Mom stays at home. More subtly was a dig at egalitarianism. The evil genius who is the villain promises to give technologically generated super powers to everyone. If everyone is special, he says with a smirk, then no one is special. All the Children cannot, in fact, be above average.

They only hate our friends.

2004-12-13T01:51:00.000-06:00

Saturday's Doonesbury illustrates the most despicable passion on display among liberal critics of the Iraq war. Uncle Duke goes out and scatters a force of "Iraqi guardsmen" merely by yelling "Boo!" Uncle Duke's contempt is obviously shared by Garry Trudeau.

It is obviously reasonable to question the integrity of the nascent Iraqi army and police. But to be contemptuous of them suggests a darkness in the heart. Those who have enrolled in such forces have been murdered at a much higher rate than American troops. And, to use a phrase that should tug at Trudeau's heart, they have mothers too. And yet still they enlist.

Hatred of Bush has become the measure of all things for such as Trudeau and John Kerry. Anyone who sides with the U.S., so long as Bush leads it, is worthy only of contempt. Those who sell missiles to our enemies are worthy allies, so long as they strive to embarrass the shrub.

Deaniac

2004-12-12T17:26:00.000-06:00

Caught Howard Dean on Meet the Press this morning. Dean, who wants to be head of the Democratic National Committee, is both a blessing and a curse to his party, it seems to me. His belief that the DNC should be more grassroots (bottom up rather than top down), seems quite sensible to me, and probably correct. Yet Dean is a poor spokeman for his party. Dean continued to show today that he is unserious about the war on terror and also subscribes to the "do nothing" attitude of most of his party on Social Security. Dean is the worst kind of democratic (notice the small "d") politician in that he truly believes that he is on the side of angels. Yes, there is plenty of that in both parties and it is unfortunate wherever it is found. Dean seems to be a member of that particular kind of leftists, the kind we used to call "compassion fascists" when I was an undergrad. These are the people who believe they have a moral right to govern because they care more than other people do. Does Howard Dean really believe that George Bush only cares about rewarding all his corporate friends at the expense of the poor? Now, Bush's policies might be good or they might be bad, but I suspect Bush cares about the poor and working class just as much as any of us do. The Deaniac style of demonizing anyone who disagrees with his liberal politics (especially those devils the Republicans) will only seek to alienate voters who share many, but perhaps not all, conservative values. Most people don't like being called evil or stupid. So by all means, Democratic party, make Howard Dean your chairman. You can get all the joy of moral purity and all the sorrow of losing elections.

Moore Silliness

2004-12-12T17:21:00.000-06:00

I read on NROs "The Corner" that Michael Moore is comparing himself to Rosa Parks. Funny, I don't remember them selling tickets to the Montegomery bus boycott. I wonder how rich Rosa Parks got off of that?

Baby It's Warm Outside

2004-12-12T16:54:00.000-06:00

Apropos Prof. Blanchard’s post below about global warming, today’s Daily Telegraph contains a piece by environmental dissenter Bjorn Lomborg pointing to the foolishness of the Kyoto fetish. He points out that even given the evidence of global warming, there seems to be little we humans can do to stop it, and any serious attempt to do so would be so economically disastrous it would cause more harm to those most at risk from potential global harming (namely the poor of developing countries) than the actual global warming. There are a couple lessons to be learned here. First, attempts to punish the rich in the name of abstract justice seem often to cause the poor more pain than the supposed injustice being fought. Enron is a good example. My point is not that we should ignore Enron’s illegalities, but that when “evil” corporations fail, the average person suffers more than the greedy executive. Sure, some executives are going to jail, but the people who really suffer when major corporations cease being profitable are the hoi polloi who make up said corporation’s workforce. One should think twice before blindly soaking the rich in the name of justice, as seems to be the logic of the Kyoto Protocol. Second, the Bush administration has been pilloried in some circles for being both unilateralist and for being poor on the environment. The administration’s abandonment of Kyoto is used as case in point for both “sins”. I am wondering if there is anyone left who actually believes in Kyoto except addled Democratic presidential candidates who had to think of some way of attacking George Bush on these unilateralist and environmental counts. Nations who once supported Kyoto have fallen by the wayside, seeing the damage it would do to their economies. If memory serves, when Kyoto was first negotiated during the Clinton administration, the Senate voted 95-0 to recommend it not be ratified. This stopped Clinton from ever sending it up to the Senate. Perhaps the desire for purity conscience regarding the environment should trump economic considerations, but let’s not forget that those who will suffer most from a world wide economic downturn will not be the Ken Lays of the world, it’ll be the poor that the compassion fascist often claim to care about so much. And then let’s not blame the administration for seeing the shabbiness of Kyoto as policy.

Frog Watch: A great dismay among Les Francais.

2004-12-12T13:35:00.000-06:00

The French, according to Robert Blackwill, are of two minds about Iraq. Emotionally, they want the U.S. to fail. Intellectually, they know they must help us succeed. Blackwill thinks that the head must ultimately win out, and that there is now an opportunity for the two nations to put animosity aside and work toward establishing democracy in Iraq.

Blackwill was a special assistant to Bush 41, and now presides over a lobbying firm. Maybe he's right, but this is the kind of thing an international lobbyist would be expected to say.

What I don't expect him to say is that the head has been in charge all along. While anti-Americanism no doubt made Chirac more popular, it was not the motive for resistance to American policy Iraq. The motive was to keep all their cushy under-the-table deals with Saddam a secret. That having failed, they have less reason not to join the U.S., and no good reason not to fear the consequences of U.S. failure. The French are, well, French. But they are not stupid.

The question then is what, if anything, they can do for us. Only a significant infusion of troops is in the cards, and it is hardly likely that the French have the heart for that. Still, it would be an excellent chance to look magnanimous, and appear to be saving the cowboy President from his own mistakes.

Tyranny vs. Imagination

2004-12-11T19:14:00.000-06:00

Lucas Morel, writing in No Left Turns, comments on "The Republic of the Imagination," by Azar Nafisi, in Sunday's Washington Post. The piece shows, according to Lucas, how "how tyrants oppress individual freedom (and hence diversity of thought) by attacking the imagination expressed, particularly, in fiction."

This is obviously one point where politics and literature meet, and it can thus be as useful to teachers of politics and to teachers of fiction. For several years I have used an essay by Mario Vargas Llosa, which employs some of the same themes. See "Questions of Conquest", Vargas Llosa, Mario, Harper's; Dec 1990, P. 45.

Like everything Vargas Llosa writes, it is exquisitely crafted and penetrating. Perhaps the most interesting point in the essay is his consideration of the defeat of the Inca, Atahulpa, by the conquistador Pizarro. How did 168 Spaniards defeat an army of 80,000? Vargas Llosa argues that outcome had to do not only with the social but with the psychological structure of the colliding cultures. The Inca Empire was an extraordinarily totalitarian organization. This may have allowed it to eliminate hunger, but it created a terrible vulnerability. Once Pizarro's men had captured the Emperor, his army froze. The Inca soldiers were incapable of acting without orders from above, and so they simple stood and let themselves be slaughtered.

Vargas Llosa's argument brings to mind Machiavelli's comparison of the Turk vs. The French. The former is hard to defeat in the field, as he has complete control of his forces. But once defeated, he stays defeated. The latter is easier to defeat, as you can often divide his forces. But then you have to go about striking down every little lord, for each Aristocrat fancies himself the next King.

There may be a reason why so many of the politicians in today's Eastern Europe are poets. Only a society of individuals is capable of reading and writing novels. Likewise a society of readers is most resistant to any totalitarian project.

Uniformity in the University

2004-12-11T14:56:00.000-06:00

The extraordinary lack of political balance in American Universities has been noticed by the Brits at the Economist.

People's Choice

2004-12-11T11:45:00.000-06:00

Sorry Professor Blanchard, I voted my heart and went with Spiderman 2. With great power comes great responsibility. So vote wisely. By the way, there is also an opportunity to vote for The Passion of the Christ for best drama. Such a vote helps reduce one's time in Purgatory.

We had Winter Commencement at NSU today. Maybe if we are lucky Prof. Blanchard will favor us with all of his "cum laude" jokes. Both of them.

On Second Thought

2004-12-11T09:42:00.000-06:00

Peter Rothburg, in The Nation, urges leftests to vote for Fahrenheit 9/11 for the People's Choice Awards. On first thought I considered a countermove in favor of The Incredibles, or maybe the next James Bond Movie. On second thought, anything that keeps Michael Moore in the public eye is probably good for the Conservative Cause. So take Mr. Rothburg's advice. Log on and vote for Michael.

Just what you suspected about NPR's Audience

2004-12-10T18:49:00.000-06:00

The Tavis Smiley Show is ending its three year run on National Public Radio. Although the show attracts 900,000 listeners a week, it seemed to offend NPR's more traditional audience. In a brief Time Article, Smiley had some interesting things to say about NPR and its Blue State Fans.

IS IT TRUE YOU GOT ANGRY LETTERS FROM LISTENERS WHEN YOU STARTED AT NPR?

I can't begin to tell you the hate mail that I received when I started three years
ago. I remember one listener emailing me to complain that my laughter was too
boisterous. They didn't like the way I talked, the way I sounded. Because my
whole style was so antithetical to what the traditional NPR listener had been
accustomed to. And they really didn't like the substance of what I was talking
about, initially. But they came to appreciate it.

WHAT'S MORE DIVERSE THESE DAYS--NPR OR PRESIDENT BUSH'S CABINET?

Bush's Cabinet. It is ironic that a Republican President has an Administration that is more inclusive and more diverse than a so-called liberal-media-élite network.

BUT DO BUSH'S MINORITY SELECTIONS REFLECT THE VALUES OF THE COMMUNITIES FROM WHICH THEY COME?

There is a distinction between symbolism and substance--Zora Neale Hurston once said, "All my skinfolk ain't my kinfolk." But whether one likes or loathes the people
Bush has chosen to be part of his Administration, he is reaching out.

Introduction

2004-12-10T17:05:00.000-06:00

Welcome to my first post on the Jim River Review. Tolkien fans who are also interested in the war on terror will be interested in this Victor Davis Hanson piece from NRO about the problem facing Europe and the rise of Islam within and surrounding its borders. Right now demagraphics are not with Europe. Time will tell whether Europe will help Westernize (or keep Western) Turkey, or whether Europe will become Islamized in a radical way. I understand Wahabbis are building a mosque in Athens. We'll see if the traditionally non-radical Islam of SE Europe can withstand the Wahabbi influence that is now generously funded out of Saudi Arabia.

Welcome to the Jim River Review!

2004-12-10T15:50:00.000-06:00

This blog represents the total combined mental muscle of the political science department at Northern State University. Check in here for shrewd political comments, perspicacious observations, and flatulent venting.

Eskimo Blue Day

2004-12-10T15:42:00.000-06:00

Below is a piece I wrote for my column in the Aberdeen American News.

When a missionary first tried to explain Hell to the Eskimos, he ran into a problem. Hearing about a place of eternal fire, they wanted to know how to get there. I confess that I have a similar reaction to the idea of global warming. Having slid and slogged through more than a decade of Dakota winters, I’m in favor of it. Maybe, like the Eskimos, I need a few more details.

First it’s necessary to distinguish the science of global warming from the politics of global warming. The science is solid: certain “greenhouse gases” trap more of the sun’s energy than other atmospheric vapors. Due chiefly to industrial exhaust and agriculture, the proportion of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is rising. All things being equal, the earth should get warmer.

Like any other theory, this one has to be tested. This isn’t easy. You can’t just shove a thermometer under Mother Nature’s tongue. You have to take measurements by land, sea, and atmosphere, at locations all over the world. You can also look for less direct indicators, like receding glaciers or melting polar ice sheets. The evidence from all those sources is ambiguous and sometimes contradictory, but it’s pretty certain that Planet Earth is in a warming trend.
It’s not clear we had anything to do with this. Global warming began well before the industrial revolution, or the green revolution. And temperatures actually declined between 1940 and 1980, a period in which green house emissions were surging. We don’t know why. We do know that global weather can cycle between extremes all on its own, thank you. But probably human activities play some role in setting the terrestrial thermostat.

Finally, its almost impossible to evaluate the effects of all this. Global warming does not necessarily mean dry and blistering summers. It might mean warmer nights, longer growing seasons, and more reliable rain. You’d have to be a farmer to find bad news in that. And more carbon in the atmosphere may accelerate forest growth, which will thus absorb more carbon. Warm temperatures may mean more clouds, which reflect more sunlight back into space. All this is good science. But it can’t tell us anything definite enough to be very useful.

The politics of global warming is something else. Here the game is to tell scary stories so people will start behaving the way Ralph Nader wants them to. Here’s my version of one story, “Hothouse Planet.” Greenhouse emissions raise average temperatures between 2 and 10 degrees. The polar icecaps melt, and pretty much every part of California that voted for Al Gore is now under water. Rainfall declines, or maybe it increases. But Howard Dean, now safely back in Vermont, comes down with malaria. Wildfires out west eat up millions of acres of tax-subsidized insurance dollars while the last manufacturer of cross country skis switches to water sports. The population of Aberdeen swells as refugees from New Orleans flow up I 29.

If that doesn’t scare you, consider “Icebox Planet,” opening next week at Carmike. Fresh water from melting poles shuts down the conveyor belt of warm Atlantic currents. Never mind that the conveyor belt chiefly warms Europe. How sad would you really be if it snows on Jacques Chirac while he vacations on the Riviera? But bear with me. A new ice age sets in. Polar bears walk across Lake Superior and attack magnet schools on Chicago’s Southside. Howard Dean endorses the building of nuclear power plants, while rugged honeymooners ice climb Niagara Falls. The population of Aberdeen swells as refugees from Winnipeg flow down I 29.

I know enough about science to know when I’m being suckered. A theory is only as good as its range of predictions is tight. If the lady in the lab coat says solution X is about to warm by 5 or 6 degrees, she might be doing good science. If she says that it will eventually freeze, or boil, or maybe jump out and do circus tricks, that’s not science at all. If someone tells you that unless you give up your Toyota Land Cruiser the earth will either melt or ice over, hold on to your wallet. You’re watching a snow job.