Myrhaf

Scrambled Eggs

2012-03-03T18:00:00.000-08:00

As a brief addendum to my recent post on acting, this video on YouTube, 10 Reasons Why I Hate Method Acting, got me thinking about all the nonsense about acting. For the most part I agree with Coach Scotland. David Mamet's books on acting also demolish the Strasburg school of acting that places so much emphasis on evoking emotions -- in the actor, not in the audience.

When I was a teenager and a drama geek in high school, I read something that said if you act Hamlet, you should know what Hamlet ate for breakfast. I took this advice seriously. It came from an AUTHORITY. He must know what he is talking about, right?

For years after that when I would prepare a role, I took a few minutes to decide what my character ate for breakfast. It was always scrambled eggs. Perhaps this is because I enjoy scrambled eggs.

Bottom the weaver in A Midsummer-Night's Dream? He ate scrambled eggs for breakfast. Joe Keller in All My Sons? Scrambled eggs. Jupiter in Amphitryon 38? Even the gods eat scrambled eggs.

Finally, I told myself, "If someone asks the breakfast question, just say scrambled eggs for all characters." (I even wondered at one point if I should have an answer for lunch and dinner, too.)

I did not suffer this nonsense because I thought it would help my acting. I knew it was pretty much a waste of time. I did it so that if anyone asked about my character's breakfast, I would have an answer -- because I wanted people to think I was a serious actor. I did not want some acting know-it-all to sneer at me and ask, "You don't know what your character ate for breakfast? And you call yourself an actor?"

Thus does nonsense flourish. Some authority says this is good, this is cool, and young people, desperate to have others think they are smart and hip, parrot the nonsense. Political Correctness preys upon fearful young people this way. The argument from intimidation, which Ayn Rand dismantled in one of her many great essays, uses the same fear.

By the way, Ian Fleming was also a great lover of scrambled eggs and he made his hero James Bond eat them. He loved to detail Bond's style -- what he drank, his clothes, his cigarette lighter, his car. He even wrote a recipe now called Scrambled Eggs James Bond.

So if Daniel Craig is asked what Bond ate for breakfast, he could say scrambled eggs and actually get it right. Or he could give the questioner a withering stare and make him feel really, really stupid.

I am currently working on Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing and Buckingham in Richard III. They are both huge eaters of scrambled eggs, you bet.

100 Points

2012-03-02T20:01:00.003-08:00

Today is the 50th anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game. It is an astonishing achievement, one of the greatest personal feats in sports history.

On 710 ESPN people have been discussing whether it will ever be done again in an NBA game. All the experts say no. In 1962 Wilt towered over the rest of the league; today the players are taller. Only Kobe Bryant, who scored 81 points in a game himself, says yes, it will be done again.

Kobe is right! It will be done again, though maybe not in my lifetime.

I base this prediction on one fact: never is a long, long time. It's not just the rest of my lifetime or the rest of the 21st century or the 22nd century or the 23rd century. Never is forever.

If the NBA lasts long enough, someone will score 100 points again. It will take a perfect storm: a great player will have to be "unconscious," shooting phenomenally well; the opponent will have to have lousy defense, but stay close enough in the game to keep the great player on the floor; and the opposing coach will have to be stupid enough not to double or triple team the great player. So it will take greatness on one side and epic stupidity on the other.

But what if America meets its demise? It could all end in a nuclear holocaust or a meteor strike. In that case, the naysayers can go "Nyah, nyah, nyah, no more 100-point games!"

The NBA could survive the political discorporation of the USA -- if the people in North America want their basketball more than they want a nation called the United States of America.

I think sports would survive if America became some kind of dictatorship because tyrants need bread and circuses to keep the masses sedated. The quality of sports would decline with the end of freedom, as dictatorship causes economic decline and scarcity of resources. The market creates more and more resources and scientific advances that can go into training, medicine and sports science; this would end under dictatorship, and the quality of everything, including sports, would deteriorate. Olympic times would go up and people would wonder how athletes in the old days ever ran so fast and jumped so high. But this might actually make the possibility of another 100-point game more likely. A phenomenon like Wilt or Michael Jordan could blow away a league of declining skills in the darkness of tyranny.

Then there are the Christian mystics who believe the end of the world is nigh. (How can they know when it's supposed to come like a thief in the night? They write books, make movies, run web sites and predict the exact day the world will end. This is a noisy thief coming.) If these people are right, then Wilt's record is safe.

I say it will happen again. But don't hold your breath.

UPDATE: Revisions.

The Art of Acting: Recent Thoughts

2012-03-01T21:18:00.002-08:00

My thoughts on acting continue to evolve. Here is where I stand now.

I am more convinced than ever that the great theorist of acting has yet to come. Stanislavsky, though of much value, is not the last word on acting. He was the first word, and a good start, too. The theory of acting is like the science of physics after Galileo but before Newton. We know some, but it hasn't all been put together yet.

Until the great theorist appears, actors must stumble on, learning their craft by trial and error from the most important teacher: the audience. You learn to act by acting, just as writers learn by writing.

At the moment I am preparing several roles for a Shakespeare festival -- Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing and Buckingham in Richard III. I am using the approach of Harold Guskin, as set down in his book, How to Stop Acting.

It's good. Damn good. It's the best "method" I've ever used. As I work, I find surprising line readings and points of view, all unplanned, all coming to me from my subconscious mind. I speak the lines more naturally than ever; it is me in those circumstances and conditions.

Guskin opposes scene analysis. He thinks such intellectual work just gets in the way of what he calls "instinct" -- what I call the subconscious. The whole point of his approach is to get rid of all preconceptions so that you get in touch with what your subconscious mind feeds you.

Why is this good? Because that's the way you talk in real life. The words come to you from the subconscious, and that's the natural way we talk. If you can get to the point as an actor that the words in the script are coming to you the way words normally do, then you sound natural.

His approach takes a lot of time -- probably more time than most actors are used to spending on their lines, especially actors who are not getting paid for what they do.

I am not convinced that all scene analysis is bad. In real life, you have a purpose when you speak. How do you find the character's purpose in speaking? Well, by thinking a little about his intention, or objective. That's scene analysis.

Then again: when I studied verse speaking with David Melville of Independent Shakespeare Company, I asked him if he worried about objectives. He said no. He is strictly of the Noel Coward school of acting: learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture. And he is a good actor. Go figure.

Guskin is good because he mirrors so much of the theory about writing fiction. The writer must tap his subconscious. Same with the actor. I think Guskin's approach integrates well with Ayn Rand's The Art of Fiction.

Here are some principles of my own that I hold as important.

1. Don't rush results. I believe this is the number one mistake made by beginners. They have a shallow idea of how the line is supposed to sound -- which they got from watching actors on stage and in film and TV -- and they imitate those results. Then they stop thinking about the line and carry their vapid results into performance. Method acting, and all good schools of acting, are all about getting to results in a good way rather than imitating the results of famous actors.

Of course, you will have problems with many directors who want immediate results. I worked with one director who, on the first day of blocking, while we were stumbling around with scripts in hand, wanted projection, energy and quick cues. He wanted the performance. This is called "bad directing." What do you do with such a director? Give him what he wants, then go home and do the real work. When you shine before the audience, he'll take all the credit for his brilliant direction. You'll know the truth.

Closely related to this:

2. Imitate what people do, not what other actors do.

3. There are two general stages of acting: finding the reality and communicating it to the audience. Strasberg erred too far on finding the reality, and forgot the audience. Mamet and perhaps Guskin err too far on ignoring the work of finding the reality. Rushing results is often worrying about the communication to the audience too soon.

4. An actor must act, just as a writer must write. Moreover, it's best to act in plays, in which the purpose is to perform before an audience. I've never liked exercises. They always say an artist must practice, practice, practice, but I believe the best practice is being in plays. The audience is the greatest school of acting. Having the ultimate purpose of performance makes all your practice purposeful, important, efficient and meaningful.

5. Listen to the other actors. This is emphasized by the Sanford Meisner school of acting. I don't know if all his exercises of two actors repeating things back and forth are worth a damn, but I do know that listening to other actors is great. Most people listen in real life (except bores who love the sound of their own voice). Listening creates reaction. Listening also puts you in touch with the subconscious. Listening is natural; it's what we do in life. Don't stand on stage just waiting for your time to speak.

6. Research is BS. Anyone who reads medieval history while preparing for a role in Richard III is wasting his time. What does Shakespeare's Renaissance imagination have to do with the reality of the War of the Roses? It's all in the script. You must understand what you are doing and who you and the other characters are, but most of that information is in the lines. Ask the director or dramaturg if you're confused.

7. Ask yourself why you act. Do you love it?

Look at poets. Can there be a less rewarding artistic endeavor in our age than poetry? There is no money in poetry. Few care about it. But some people write poetry from some unquenchable inner urge. It's who they are; they are poets. Why are you an actor? It's good to think about these things. Stella Adler certainly did.

Andrew Breitbart, RIP

2012-03-01T18:24:00.000-08:00

I never knew Andrew Breitbart, but I admired his courage. The left despised him; in fact, they still do, and they are now heaping scorn on his corpse, as one would expect from the tolerant and kindly left. They hate him because he was effective. He took down Acorn, their instrument for undermining elections in America, and so became a leading target of leftist bile.

Following his Twitter feed was a daily lesson in the frothing madness of the left. Breitbart always retweeted the insulting, hate-filled tweets he got; he was happy to let his enemies reveal themselves with their own vituperation. They are a seething, juvenile, mean-spirited lot, and not terribly clever, either.

(I gave up following Twitter because every week or so my password would not work and I would have to change it -- most exasperating. Maybe my computer has a virus or something.)

Courage is important in our age. The increasingly totalitarian left depends on conformity of thought. This does not mean persuading those who disagree with them, but shutting them up. And the best way to shut someone up is make him afraid to speak his mind. Smears, intimidation and character assassination are the methods of the left. (How many people in Hollywood , publishing, government or academia remain silent because they know that speaking out is career suicide? How many women, minorities and gays toe the PC line because stepping over it means shocking decent people more than profanity did in the Victorian age?)

The main purpose of government schooling now is to mold young Americans into docile conformists. Political correctness is leftist thought control: these things you are permitted to say -- those other things, no decent person must say. Independence is the virtue above all others that the left cannot abide.

When the left accepted the premise that the end justifies the means, they crossed a line. They are now the totalitarian left. This ain't your father's Democrat Party. These people are radicalized, and they mean war. Words are no longer tools of rational communication; they are weapons to be used in the political struggle.

With the left so far down the road to serfdom, good men need courage above all. Andrew Breitbart had it. We lost a brave fighter for freedom.

Infantilization of the West

2012-02-28T20:01:00.002-08:00

A young man in college that I know says Hollywood did not perfect the art of making movies until the late '70s. He won't watch anything before the Blockbuster era. Forget Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, M, and a thousand other classics; give him Terminator.

I suspect most young people would agree with him, though they might not be so arrogant as to dismiss Hollywood's Golden Age in bold contempt. And not just young people: my Mother, who grew up watching the movies of the '30s and '40s now finds them too tedious to sit through.

It sickens me. I think just the opposite, that movies used to be good, but with Jaws, Excorcist, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc., Hollywood learned it's a fool's game to try to write intelligent movies for adults. They give the people what they want, and the people want comic books.

I recently read an anecdote from a writer who took his young son to see "Aristocats." It was a cartoon, so he thought his boy would want to see it. About five minutes into the movie he noticed his son had turned his back to the movie and was crying into the seat. When asked what was wrong, the boy said, "I don't want to watch a movie about grown ups!"

Apparently, "Aristocats" is about teenage cats who have teenage concerns such as falling in love. The boy wanted to watch cats his own age.

Now, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this child. I think he is representative of kids today. But I must say, things have changed, and not for the better. When I was that kid's age, my favorite movie was Lawrence of Arabia. I enjoyed James Bond, horror movies, war movies, westerns, Jason and the Argonauts, Doris Day movies, Elvis Presley movies; these cats are all adults. Seriously, I can't think of any movie about children that I loved. The closest thing that comes to mind is Sound of Music, Mary Poppins or Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. But those were more about adults who had children around, like Father Goose.

I also noticed recently that Barnes and Noble has a large section, in its dwindling space alotted to those relics called books, for Teen Books. A whole aisle of books written for teenagers. Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but when did this happen? When I was a teenager, I was reading, among others, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Asimov, Heinlein, Ellison, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Dick, Simak, Farmer and Tolkien. (I also read comics, which are for kids, but even they are about adults trying to save the world. Not many comics deal with the agony of acne.) Teenage literature? You must be kidding me. Are today's teens retarded?

Western culture is being infantilized. I don't think it's a conspiracy, and I'm dubious of the claims that the Frankfurt School of communists is behind it all. I think it's a manifestation of the death of reason in philosophy. I don't know the exact chain of cause and effect. I suspect that consumers get used to what producers give them: no one knew he couldn't live without an iPhone until Steve Jobs invented it. The producers of our culture, the intellectual elite, long ago lost all confidence in reason, and the virtues dependent on reason, such as independence, productivity, integrity, and so on. They give us the reality they can believe in -- sensationalist action without thought, without mature values.

Open any book written by George Eliot. I am always struck by how characters talk in 19th century literature; they speak in rounded, complex, grammatical sentences. They have the respect for other people to speak in considered propositions, as if communicating with reason were important.

Compare that dialogue to just about anything you get in post-modern literature. Today's writers think subtext -- the hidden, unstated meaning -- is more important than explicit communication. (An idol of mine, Henrik Ibsen, was a pioneer in subtext, and it can be breathtaking when done well.) So you get inarticulate louts saying uh a lot, because they're experiencing a midlife crisis or hung up by their oedipus complex, or whatever. After a century of naturalism and modernism, we have lost all confidence in rationality; it just doesn't seem true to fiction writers.

The ramifications of all this will reverberate profoundly throughout the 21st century. It won't be good.

Superbowl XLVI

2012-02-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

The New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 21-17. The experts on sports talk radio assured us that the Pats did not deserve to be two-point favorites with the strength of the Giants' defense, and they were right.

The game was a textbook study in the importance of field position. Tom Brady of the Patriots had his back against his own end zone much of the game, and was sacked in the end zone once for a safety. The Giants on the other hand started only two drives on less than their own 20-yard line, and started one drive on the 48. Congratulations to the Giants' kicking, punting and special teams for keeping New England in bad field position.

It was an exciting game, only the second NFL game I watched all the way through this year. I find the NBA immensely more entertaining. I'm more interested in watching my Lakers play the revitalized 76ers tonight than I ever was about the Superbowl.

Oh, and then there was the rest of the spectacle. Madonna was good. I don't know why anyone would sit around listening to her bubblegum/disco music and her chipmunk voice, but her live show is kitchy, campy fun. She entered like Cleopatra on a float pulled by slaves, wearing some headpiece that looked like it was stolen from the Asgaard set of Thor. Come on, who couldn't love that? It's better than some geriatric rock band singing songs of young lust from 1969.

The commercials were okay, but they have become too belabored and self-conscious for me to pay more attention to them than the ranch dip on the table. Their purpose is to make everyone talk about the commercial, which seems like a postmodern distortion of the purpose of advertising.

Like everything in American pop culture, the Superbowl spectacle long ago ossified into self-parody. It is important because we want important values in our lives and we return to such rituals in some nostalgic quest to find thrills that once meant something. Perhaps to the young Superbowl XLVI had real meaning.

I'm overthinking this, huh? Yeah, I'm no fun at parties.

Tebow

2012-01-13T22:37:00.000-08:00

There are two distinct issues concerning Tim Tebow.

First is his ability as a quarterback in the National Football League. He finds a way to win. I respect that.

Second is the idea that he begs some all-powerful supernatural being for help, and this being helps Tebow because he begs with great sincerity and belief. I do not respect that.

Are we living in the dark ages? Or is the widespread respect and admiration for a football player who begs for help from some all-powerful supernatural being (for whom there has never been a shred of evidence) an indication that we are heading for the dark ages?

11/22/63 by Stephen King

2011-11-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

11/22/63 by Stephen King is an imaginative and ambitious time travel story. This well-written science fiction novel should get nominated for a Hugo Award.

The story is about a man who goes back in time to kill Lee Harvey Oswald and stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the date that titles this novel. The hero thinks that American history would be vastly better if JFK was not killed: RFK and MLK would not have been shot, the Vietnam war would not have escalated, there would have been no race riots and I suppose Americans would have danced with flowers in their hair as they sang "Kumbaya."

The "rules" of this fantasy world are for the most part well thought out and they provide excellent plot twists. I won't spoil the plot, but I'll say that King is a master of suspense, and he kept me turning the pages, despite a few slow patches. The action sequences are superb.

The characterization is strong throughout. Oswald is particularly good; he is a mediocrity, driven crazy by an overbearing mother, who wants to be a big shot. Socialist literature stokes his resentment and reassures him that his failure is not his fault, but capitalist-imperialist America's. As an Objectivist I loved the scene in which Oswald and an ideological comrade discuss Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. King's knowledge of the period is so deep and well researched that everything has the ring of truth.

The most exasperating thing in this book is Stephen King's politics. Like most liberals, King overstates the importance of race in America. He also forgets that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats. The hero tells his girlfriend in the past that in the future America elects a black man as president. She asks if he is doing a good job. The hero says, "Opinions vary. If you want mine, he's doing as well as anyone could expect, given the complexities." Stephen King writes comedy!

Creepy is a trendy word, and I try not to use it for that reason, but when it comes to King, no other word fits. It's way creepy that when the hero gets close to changing the world, time fights back, because as King puts it throughout, time is obdurate. And time has teeth. This makes all of reality out to get the hero; it's existential horror. Did I say it was creepy?

David Farland tells a story of Algis Budrys saying to him that King would never be a great writer because he can't decide whether evil comes from human choices or from the outside. Is it a matter of free will or is the universe malevolent? Judging from the last 50 pages or so, King has still not made up his mind and wants to have it both ways.

Oh, on the conspiracy stuff, King is sane. He believes Oswald acted alone.

What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear

2011-10-12T01:56:00.000-07:00

The Nazis scapegoated the Jews; the communists scapegoated the bourgeoisie; the New Left scapegoats the rich. The Occupy Wall Street noise is an attempt by the Democrats to keep the narrative on point: to keep the American people's anger directed at the left's favorite scapegoat, the rich, and to keep the blame away from the Democrats.

Unlike the Tea Party, which was a spontaneous reaction to the Democrats' frightening power grabs, OWS (or the Flea Party) is a calculated movement orchestrated by the leadership on the left. An ad in Craig's List offered people between $350-$650 a week to protest. Behind the ads is the Working Families Party, which is tied to ACORN. The money for the "Occupied Wall Street Journal" comes from George Soros, among others.

So there is something happening here. But what exactly? Here is my explanation, as informed by my understanding of Austrian economics.

The mixed economy is a combination of freedom and controls. It is freedom "regulated" by the state, but the controls are not yet dictatorship. All the economic problems in a mixed economy come from the state intervening in the free market. Statist propapaganda is aimed at hiding the state's role in our problems, and keeping the blame on freedom. They do this by demonizing the rich.

Ludwig von Mises explained why the mixed economy leads to ever greater government control, and eventually to dictatorship. Don Lavoie (PDF) summarizes the Mises Interventionist Thesis:

Attempts to violently manipulate the outcomes of [the market] process lead to reactions that the intervener can neither specifically predict nor effectively prevent. Efforts to make the initial intervention work as designed must take the form of ever-wider and more obtrusive interventions, which are in further conflict with the workings of the market mechanism. In the end the interventionists must either extend their activities to the point where the process has been completely sabotaged or they must abandon their quest to control the market. Any “middle way” between the extremes may, of course, be advocated but would consist in a series of haphazard shocks to the system....

We are in an economic crisis created entirely by state intervention in the economy, through onerous regulations, taxes and misallocation of capital caused by the Federal Reserve. Corporate greed and corruption cannot affect an entire economy; only the government can do that. I believe we are at a pivotal moment: will we begin to repeal the intervention or intervene even more and plunge toward total state control?

Me, I'm not optimistic. The chances are our next president will be Mitt Romney, a Rockefeller Republican. He won't repeal a damned thing. ObamaCare will be cemented into place and we will continue down the road to serfdom. We might not run to the abyss of dictatorship as fast as the Democrats want, but we'll get there.

As Mises himself wrote,

It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.

With nothing but nihilists on the left and fools on the right, there is little hope.

And that's what's happening here.

Blog Update

2011-09-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I sold a story to Daily Science Fiction. I will link when the story goes up.

The writing goes well. Even the stuff that gets rejected is good enough to e-publish myself. The best part is that I'm having fun writing adventure fiction. It exercises imagination and plotting ability. I surprise myself daily by achieving a level of writing I did not know I could reach.

I'll be getting into e-publishing. I've been reading some interesting blogs on self-publishing, such as Dean Wesley Smith's, David Gaughran's and Bob Mayer's.

The great things about putting fiction up on Kindle, Nook, etc. and making POD books are: 1) You get a lot of the money and have total control, because you are the publisher and there is no bloodsucking tic of an agent to take 15%; and 2) Your work stays available forever instead of sitting on the shelf for a month and then being remaindered.

The bad things are: 1) You have to do all the work publishers used to do; and 2) You will never make George R.R. Martin-J.K. Rowling-Stephen King kind of money -- your books will never make it to the tables in Costco.

But smart writers don't miss any option. Try to get a traditional publisher, and if that fails, publish it yourself. Or publish it, then send a letter to a traditional publisher offering them a free copy and saying you will take it down if they want to publish your book. All of this can be done without agents taking 15%.

As I publish, this blog will become part of my marketing plan. I'll have to change the name of the blog to my real name, William Greeley, and blog more actively. Using this blog might not be a good idea, as my views are not mainstream. I offend everyone, left and right. Is that a good marketing strategy?

I would announce the name of my self-publishing house, but I need to get the url first. Do I need to copyright the name? What is that process?

Should I get a checking account in the business's name? Smith says so. What if a store writes a check to the publishing name instead of my name?

This is an exciting time for writers. The internet has opened more possibilities than any time since the golden age of pulp fiction.

Speaking of which, I just read that H. Bedford-Jones, known as "King of the Pulps," regularly wrote 5,000-10,000 words a day -- on a typewriter -- and was capable of writing an entire 25,000-word novella in one day. That's 100 pages! At a penny a word, he would make $250 for that one day's work. At a time when lunch cost 15 cents, $250 would buy you last year's car.

If he can write 20-40 pages a day on a typewriter, surely I can write 10 on a computer. The key is motivation, and knowing I have the internet self-publishing option is quite motivating.

10 Crazy Things I Believe

2011-09-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm getting it all out in this post. After this you will be certain I am a certifiable lunatic.

I want to emphasize up front that I am not a physicist or scientist in any way. I took one physics class in college to fill my science requirement. As with most of the general courses outside my major, I skipped the classes, showed up to take the tests, and got a C. Then I returned to acting and drinking. I was not a good student.

What follows are my honestly held opinions.

1. The Big Bang never happened. Existence has no beginning and no ending. The universe cannot be measured by place or time, for it is all places and all times. The universe is eternal, which means "out of time." Time is the measurement of motion within the universe. It is impossible to step outside the universe to measure its size or time of existence.

2. Much of 20th century physics is nonsense -- Shroedinger's Cat, super string theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- it's all baloney. The problem is that modern physics has gotten away from reality, and is judged only by internal mathematical coherence. So physicists can spend their lives building cloud castles in the air that have nothing to do with the world we live in. Modern physics has been great for science fiction, because the physics theories themselves are science fiction.

3. God does not exist. There is no evidence. People exist, and people can lie. Religions are ancient lies. More recent lies are called cults.

4. Men and women are different. I've lived with many women. Not a one of them ever took out the garbage.

5. Western civilization is superior to all other cultures. This is why they are becoming like us.

6. Curtis LeMay and Joseph McCarthy were more right than their detractors. Unfortunately, history is written by the winners, and the left dominates academia and culture. LeMay was satirized in Dr. Strangelove, but his advice to bomb Vietnam into the stone age would have saved American lives. The Venona files have shown that McCarthy was right: there were communist agents in the US government.

7. The world will be a better place once the Baby Boomers are dead. This might seem cruel, but the death of every aging altruist/collectivist/statist/New Age fruitcake makes the world a better place. The New Leftist cultural revolution of the '60s and '70s left such a profound stamp on the Boomers that most of them are beyond redemption.

8. Some day Rock'n'Roll will be considered barbaric noise by most people. Only a small, drugged-out cult will listen to music with a backbeat; perhaps they will be called Deadheads. The rest will enjoy music that emphasizes melody, and that music will hit beats one and three, without the backbeats on two and four. Backbeat deemphasizes melody.

9. A rocket shot down TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. I don't believe many conspiracy theories, but I do think Clinton stopped the investigation of Flight 800 before the truth was discovered because he did not want to go to war with Iran, especially not since he was in a reelection campaign. Airplanes do not just blow up in midair by themselves. Witnesses saw streaks of light going up before the explosion. Getting a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky is the least of Clinton's transgressions; ignoring the Islamist threat and giving missile technology to the Chinese are worse. The Clinton legacy will haunt national security for years to come. (To be fair, Reagan and Bush 41 also ignored the threat of Islamofascism.)

10. Environmentalism is not science. Ecology is an invalid concept. Environmentalism is an enormous pseudo-scientific attempt to destroy capitalism. The Old Left said it would be more productive than capitalism. In the 1930's many thought the west was doomed because Stalin had five-year plans, and we had no plan. By the 1960's it was clear that capitalism, without central planning, produces more than communism. (Read Mises.) So the New Left changed tactics and declared that productivity itself was bad; thus was the ecology movement born. Furthermore, there is no such thing as "the environment." There are environments -- my environment, your environment -- but THE environment is as mystical a concept as God.

If my 10 crazy ideas are true, then you can see that what most people take as normal is actually a twisted aberration. We live in a culture of lies and illusion. But when you've lived in a sewer all your life, you get used to the smell, and the air at the top of a mountain smells strange and unnatural.

Hm...

2011-09-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

My Political Views
I am a far-right social libertarian
Right: 9.96, Libertarian: 8.02

Political Spectrum Quiz

Epic Fantasies

2011-08-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

Spoilers ahoy!

I listened to Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World at audible.com. It's the first book I've listened to. The method worked well with a story written in clear, fairly simple prose.

The story is good adventure fiction. Jordan combines the epic quality of Tolkien with the pulp action of Robert E. Howard, and achieves both wonder and suspense. He never goes long in this story without giving readers something to worry about, conflict or battle action.

This is a book for young people. The POV characters are teenagers, and it's about teenage concerns: striving for self-definition and flirting, mostly. You know the phrase, "he thinks the world revolves around him." Well, here it is literally true, with the main character discovering he is the one prophesied to save the world. That's a powerful adolescent fantasy.

Like Lord of the Rings this story involves a wizard who goes to some country bumpkins and orders them to follow. The group of kids go on a long quest across the world, and they are special because "the blood of the old ones is strong in them." If this sounds outlandish to you, then you probably want to return to your mystery or romance novel.

Th quest involves staying at an endless number of inns along the way. The group is chased by a variety of evil beings such as trollocs, who serve as Jordan's orcs. When the three boys sleep at night their dreams are troubled by an evil dark lord called Balthamel, who wants the boys to submit to him. "Luke, embrace the dark side."

The army that supposedly fights for the good side, the Children of the Light, are as much a nuisance as the dark ones. The Children of the Light, like the Inquisition, torture people until they confess they serve the dark side. This is one of the more original twists in the novel -- and it comes straight out of history!

My biggest problem with the book is that the magic is too easy. Moiraine, this story's female Gandalf, bails out the group at least a half dozen times, and her powers seem to expand each time. In Act II there is a long stretch in which the boys are separated from Moiraine; it had to be done to keep up the suspense. Otherwise, readers would think, "Oh, Moiraine will pull something out of her hat."

Staying at inns gets a little repetitive. Also, whenever the group needs information, one of the knowledgable characters explains what happened 1,000 years ago during the time of legends or whatever. It gets a little tedious, but I suppose this can't be avoided in epic fantasy.

Will I go on to book two? No. I'm not that interested in the story -- certainly not for another, what? 13 books? But then, it was not written for me. Had I read the book 40 years ago, it would have blown my teenage mind, as did Lord of the Rings, Dune, Foundation, Stranger In a Strange Land, Rendezvous with Rama, Way Station and Riverworld.

I learned a lot studying Jordan's pacing, his dramatization, his characters, and so on. I don't think listening is the best way to study writing, but it's good for a different perspective. (BTW, Michael Kramer is a talented reader.)

If you want to write an epic fantasy, you must study the important books in the field today -- not just the ones from the golden age -- in order to understand what the market wants. Jordan is a thoroughly competent professional, and a huge influence on the field.

Personally, I think the story template of the young bumpkin who discovers he has special powers and saves the world is tired. Epic fantasy needs to find something new. Admittedly, it is hard to find something as powerful as the classic "hero's journey" of Joseph Campbell.

I finished all five books of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire last month. I did it the old fashioned way -- reading books made of dead trees. And those books are some doorstops! Martin has cleared a forest with this series.

I read the first one back in the 20th century, then started the second one, but got bored and put it down for 10 years. The HBO series of "The Game of Thrones" reignited my interest, and in a marathon of summer reading I finished book two and then blew on through the next three books.

Martin is a brilliant writer. He keeps you turning the pages. He writes the set pieces as few can. Unlike Jordan he trades the classic quest template for something more modern and naturalistic. In Hollywood-speak the Song of Ice and Fire series is War of the Roses meets Lord of the Rings. Instead of good vs. evil, Martin's story seems more like gang warfare, albeit one gang (the Starks) is more honorable and sympathetic than the others. His characters are famous for all being shades of gray. Most reviewers take for granted that this is a sign of sophistication, but I'm not so sure. There is evil in the world, and just because "everyone has his reasons" does not make Hitler less evil.

It is also considered sophisticated to have profanity and graphic sex. It makes all the characters seem to dwell in the gutter. There is little romance in Martin's vision.

Martin's naturalistic, brutal world seems fresh for the same reason the naturalism of the 20th century did. Just as romanticism had become stale, today's epic fantasy is hackneyed.

It's like impersonations. When some water cooler clown says, "you dirty rat," he is not actually doing James Cagney. He is imitating his father doing Frank Gorshin doing James Cagney. No one impersonated George H.W. Bush until Dana Carvey did, and then everyone imitated Carvey. Likewise in fantasy, the hacks are not even imitating Tolkien at this point; they're imitating Dungeons and Dragons. The spirit of the original is a pale palimpsest when you've got writers inspired by a game based on a novel written 70 years ago. Studying Dostoyevsky and Flaubert prepares a writer to write great prose. Role playing games prepare a writer for nothing.

Martin does use such classic fantasy tropes as prophecies from the past and dragons -- there is even one dwarf -- but he refreshes them. This is certainly not the paint-by-numbers fantasy of Forgotten Realms.

The story loses steam in books four and five. The plot advances a few inches maybe in these books. Martin says he is a gardener as opposed to an architect, meaning, I think, that he writes without an outline. Books four and five could be subtitled "The Dangers of Gardening." I'll read the sixth book when it comes out, but I'm losing confidence in this series.

The problem is that Martin sets up certain expectations -- most notably involving the character Daenerys and her dragons. I want her to get to Westeros, kick ass and chew bubble gum, but instead she is dicking around in eastern countries. Who cares if she frees the slaves in Timbucktoo? When an author sets up expectations and then the characters do not make purposeful progress toward those goals, a story is just treading water. Not good.

The Mother's Day Massacre

2011-05-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

At one point Ron Artest stole the ball at mid-court and broke to the hole, looking to score an easy breakaway basket. He jumped to dunk the ball... but could not get it over the rim. That was the story of the afternoon for the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Lakers looked exhausted and confused, as they have looked for most of the games since that splendid 17-1 run after the All-Star break that had us all convinced the champs were the team to beat. They looked like they were already booking their hotels in Hawaii and breaking out the fishing rods.

The Mavs shot lights out. The final score was 122-86.

It was the most painful game I think I've ever watched. Odom and Bynum got ejected for cheap frustration plays. Bynum's flagrant foul was especially ugly, as he slammed his forearm into Barea's exposed ribs when Barea went up for a basket in the paint. Then Bynum took his shirt off as he walked out, looking like a punk with no class. As a Lakers fan, I was embarrassed.

Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register reported before the game:

Magic Johnson, who has sold his minority ownership of the Lakers to Patrick Soon-Shiong but still has a title with the team, made strong comments Saturday on ESPN about the need to break up the team if it is eliminated from the playoffs.

Johnson alluded to needing to find players hungrier for championships and trading either Pau Gasol or Andrew Bynum.

“Group has probably been together too long. … Probably have to blow this team up,” Johnson said.

Phil Jackson responded Sunday about the comments: “They were uncalled for at this time. Not surprised.”

Phil is not surprised that Magic made uncalled for comments. Phil is right: if the Lakers were to attempt a comeback, they didn't need comments about blowing the team up. But Magic is right also: changes must be made.

Why did the champions implode? I have to go back to George Karl's diagnosis of mental fatigue. I also suspect Kobe is injured more than we know; he has finger injuries, knee problems and a sprained ankle. The big question is whether there is something more going on in the locker room.

This was not the way Phil Jackson was supposed to end his career.

Throughout the season people talked about the Lakers "flipping a switch." Don't worry about unexplainable bad play -- the Lakers will flip some magic switch and play well. Right. The switch has been flipped, the lights are out and it's dark in here.

Lakers Poised to Make History

2011-05-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

In my last post I was realistic about the Lakers, who lost last night to the Mavericks and are now 0-3 in the series. To hell with realism, now I will be a homer, a fan.

The Lakers could win. They need four in a row. No team in NBA history has come back from 0-3, although as Kobe quipped, it happens in hockey all the time. This is highly unlikely, as the Lakers have been playing horribly while the Mavs are firing on all cylinders. Dirk Nowitzky is playing like a superstar.

The Lakers just need to look at the game on Sunday this way. Can they win a game against the Dallas Mavericks? Of course, they can. They have done it before. A game is a game. They can win a game.

Most of all, Pau Gasol must find himself again. He's been a face on a milk carton during the playoffs. No team can lose its second best player and win. (What if the rumors are true that Pau is playing bad because his girlfriend dumped him? Dude, that is so... beta male.)

If the Lakers win on Sunday, they return to Staples Center (not "the" Staples Center, BTW), where they could win again beneath Jack Nicholson's benevolent gaze. Then they go back to Dallas for game six, where the Mavs feel the pressure to win, return to form and collapse. Then it's game seven in LA, the series tied, and the Lakers win a game against a nervous Dallas.

It's as easy as that. The Lakers have Dallas right where they want them.

First, the Lakers need to play for 48 minutes on Sunday, something they have not done. They must find a way to surmount their mental fatigue. They will have to reach down deep and take their execution up a step.

They need to find the heart of a champion. The eye of the tiger. (Have I missed any cliche?) If they find the will to win, it's not impossible that they do it.

Lakers Run Out of Gas?

2011-05-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

The 2010-2011 Lakers are the most frustrating team I have ever followed closely. When they show up they are unbeatable. There are too many games, however, when they seem to check out mentally. They don't play with energy and focus, and lose to teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Now in the conference semi-finals, they are down 0-2 to the Dallas Mavericks. The Lakers lost the first two games at home. Mark Medina of the LA Times says the Lakers are done. It's hard to disagree.

On the Stephen A. Smith show a few weeks ago George Karl said the Lakers' problem is mental fatigue. You see, a season is 82 games long. When a team goes to the finals three years in a row, they play extra games. The Lakers have played four seasons in three years.

In this time the Lakers have gotten three years older, too. Kobe's body is banged up after 15 years in the league. Earlier this year he said his knee is bone on bone -- no cartilage left.

It looks like it's all catching up with them. Now on top of it all we hear the team has "trust issues." They don't trust one another. This too might be the result of mental fatigue.

If this series were a Hollywood movie, it would be set up for a big Act III thrilling comeback. The Lakers win three games to bring it to a game 7 and then win on their home court. It could happen. I believe three teams in history have come back after losing the first two at home. Maybe Phil Jackson has some Jedi mind tricks he can play.

I'll be rooting for them on Friday, but realistically, I think Mark Medina is right. The Lakers could show all the heart they can muster, but they just might not have it. You can push the accelerator to the floor, but if there is no gas in the tank...

Recent Reading

2011-04-17T02:36:00.001-07:00

I'm reading two boring novels.

The first is They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy. You've never heard of it for the same reason there are two baffling accent marks in the author's name – it's Hungarian. Hungarian is a strange tongue in the Finnish-Estonian language group, which is not related to romance languages or Germanic languages. If you hear white people speaking and you have no idea what language it is, they might be Hungarians.

The story is set in Transylvania in 1905. It shows life in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. There are lots of counts, balls, servants; many vapid people, and a few deep people.

First I must give my opinion that the title is one of the worst ever for a novel. War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, The Man Who Laughed – these are splendid titles that promise both drama and food for thought. But They Were Counted? What's that about, math class?

Worse, the book is the first of a trilogy that has two names, The Writing On the Wall and The Transylvanian Trilogy. Since Bram Stoker's Dracula, Transylvania has come to mean the silliness of Halloween. It's a section of Central Europe that Americans cannot take seriously. The other two books are called They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided. The titles seem to promise a story about a people who get screwed by history. It all sounds deterministic, but we'll see.

I'm reading this as part of research for a novel I'm planning set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

I just finished page 87. Here is what happened in the plot in 87 pages: The hero, Balint Abády, is in love with a young married woman. He tries to kiss her on page 87, she gets angry, and he thinks he has lost her forever. The rest of it is filled with a ball in which a vast array of characters, from the nobility to barefoot servants, are introduced.

I'm holding out hope that the novel will get more interesting. Sometimes old-fashioned novels start out boring but pick up once the plot gets going.

The second novel I am reading is Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. We're told this novel is brilliant, one of the greatest ever. Both V.S. Pritchett and Somerset Maugham loved it. Pritchett called it the ancestor of all British novels. If he's right, that might explain why I prefer French and Russian novels; it's in the genetics.

I've read about 200 pages. This novel was written before people knew how to write novels. The dictum "show, don't tell" was unknown. Fielding writes his story as if he were telling an after-dinner anecdote to his friends. He'll digress for a chapter on some matter that has nothing to do with the story, then sum up in a paragraph what should have been dramatized at length. It's all done in windy 18^th-century prose, replete with semi-colons, parenthetic phrases, dollops of latin and assurances to the good reader. Few of these sentences could fit into a Tweet; some might find this a blessed relief from modern manners.

I can't read more than a chapter a day, and I'm having a hard time forcing myself to read even that much. I'll let you know in a future post if it gets better.

My Night Out

2010-09-20T17:32:00.001-07:00

I went to a local bar last night because it was karaoke night and my brother was singing. I was probably the oldest person there. Most of the crowd was "Generation X," with a few younguns in the generation after that, the Millennial generation.

I noticed that many of the people, including me, were overweight. America is a chubby nation. Capitalism has made food so plentiful and cheap that without regular exercise and some discipline on what you stuff into your piehole, you'll get fat. You can't eat cheeseburgers, burritos and pizza every day and stay slim. It's a real problem for some of us. I hope I don't sound whiny, but there are Jack In the Boxes and Del Tacos and so on everywhere. I mean, everywhere you turn -- temptation!

Of course, the problem is not capitalism -- it's that people must pay more attention to diet and exercise. No, we don't need Obama to come up with some ghastly agency to monitor what people eat. Free individuals need to find a free solution. And there is only one solution, the only solution there has ever been: consume fewer calories than you use over a long period of time.

It was a fun evening listening, with a few notable exceptions, to amateurs butcher songs. I'll never be able to listen to Led Zeppelin's "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" again without thinking of one fellow's, er, exuberant performance.

I bought a Hanger 24 Orange Wheat beer and a shot of Jameson's, $11. I gave a $4 tip, which will send shivers of dread through Inspector and Gus Van Horn, anti-tippers both. Then I had another round. The total of two beers and two shots cost me 30 bucks. Yes, I thought the obvious when I got home: I could have bought a bottle of Jameson's and a case of beer for that much. But then I would have sat at home in my lonely living room with my three cats watching me as I drank too much.

By the way, I heard on the radio that any single man who owns more than one cat is creepy. I guess I'm creepy.

I also heard or read someplace one of these relationship experts say that men should only drink scotch. Is that not idiotic? Apparently to this woman if a man drinks vodka or Kentucky bourbon or tequila -- or even beer and Jameson's -- that's a deal breaker.

Also by the way, the word creepy is a current fad. I pay attention to these little catch phrases and words that become popular because I want to keep them out of my fiction. Current offenders are creepy and How's that working out for you or some variant. Rule of thumb: if you hear any catch phrase in a commercial, it's a cliche. Mises wrote in Human Action, as I recall, that advertising is for informing the slowest among us about a product. Don't let the stuff you hear in ads near your fiction.

If you're wondering, no I did not sing. It would take more than two beers and two shots of Irish Whiskey to make me sing, copper. I know that if I did sing, I would be as awful as most of the howling I heard last night. Yes, the point of karaoke is not to be good but to have fun. Being a drunken fool in front of an audience is not my idea of fun. Call me a stick in the mud. But I can watch others be a fool... for about as long as it takes to drink two beers and two shots. Then I've had enough. Then I start thinking, "Hm, I could be at home right now reading David Harriman's The Logical Leap..."

I've never been a real party animal.

And I spent all day on that comma...

2010-07-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

I write like
Oscar Wilde

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

ZZZZZZZZZZ...

2010-06-26T05:02:00.001-07:00

I've neglected this blog. If anyone still stops by here, I'm sorry that you've seen nothing new for months. Myrhaf is a wasteland these days.

I have been blogging more over at New Clarion. It's a group blog, although to be honest, it's not doing much better than this one. I'm beginning to think of it as a failure. I'm wondering if I should just come back to Myrhaf.

The rest of my life has been busy. Since March I have been in rehearsal or production of Shakespeare plays. I played Bottom in Midsummer-Night's Dream, Capulet in Romeo and Juliet and the Ghost and Claudius in Hamlet at a local Shakespeare festival. That was a lot of work. Currently I am rehearsing Shylock in Merchant of Venice at 3 Theatre. This project will last through July, possibly into August -- not sure about the extent of the run yet.

I think I'm done with local theatre -- read amateur theatre. I am about to join the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Once I'm in that for a year, provided I work at least three days as an extra, I can then join Actors' Equity Association. I'm not terribly happy about having to join these unions, but it's the only way to make money acting in America.

Playwriting has been going well. After July I can spend more time writing, and who knows? Someday I might actually finish something. Then will the lion lie with the lamb, Jesus will return to earth, the Winter Olympics will be held in Hell, and both Al Gore and Sarah Palin will say something wise and witty.

The Perks of Power

2010-02-02T14:44:00.001-08:00

Free market supporters love to use the hypocrisy argument against statists. It's been around a long time. To name a few examples that come to mind:

The health care of Senators and Congressmen is better than what Americans would get in the plans of those politicians.
Al Gore's house leaves a huge carbon footprint. Political leaders from around the world flew carbon-spewing jets to Copenhagen.
Nancy Pelosi's relatives flew military jets instead of commercial airlines.
A Canadian politician goes to America for his heart surgery.

You can probably think of more examples. None of these is actually hypocrisy. The politicians involved all believe they are in a special class to which the rules do not apply. It's not hypocrisy, it's the prerogative of power.

In socialism there are two classes: the rulers and the ruled. The rulers, a small elite, were called nomenklatura in the USSR. The rest of the people functioned as the elite's slaves.

Robert Tracinski explained the phenomenon at TIA Daily:

The left is Platonist at its root. It does not begin by observing the actual requirements of human life or the means by which much of the world has risen from mass poverty to opulent wealth in the past two centuries. Instead, it begins with a whole series of moral and philosophical preconceptions—that self-interest is evil, that money-making is corrupt, that achievement in the material world is morally suspect, that the independent individual is dangerous—and then tries to bend the real world to fit these preconceptions.

Or to put it in more philosophical terms, instead of starting with observation and moving up to concepts, the method of Aristotle, the left starts with concepts and projects them onto the world, the method of Plato.

In keeping with this approach, the left is also Platonist in its attitude toward the minds of others. Like Plato's philosopher-kings, the leftists like to imagine themselves as endowed with a superior mental faculty which entitles them to look down on the fact-bound reasoning of the unenlightened masses.

Fundamentally, there is no hypocrisy. The rules they dictate to the masses were never intended to apply to the rulers. They're special people, motivated by altruism and uncorrupted by greed like the rest of us blinded by capitalism.

Taken to its logical end, the rulers are above the rule of law. In socialism there is no rule of law, only the rule of men. The rulers dictate to the ruled, and they call whatever whims of rule they establish law.

The only hypocrisy involved is that because of America's tradition of liberty, the rulers must pretend they are "public servants." They must pretend they serve the constitution, which they regard as a meaningless document. This pretense is convenient because it mollifies those who are ruled and keeps them from rebelling against the ruling class.

Instead of calling it hypocrisy, I think it would be better to point out that our rulers' actions are perfectly moral by their premises. They get to live by their own special rules. That's the way statism works, and that's the way it will be until we restore freedom in America. If you put it this way instead of using the hypocrisy argument -- as if the norm were that politicians were humble "public servants," a bunch of Mr. Smiths going to Washington -- then you stand a better chance of educating the people. A man won't lose his chains until he sees them.

Moral Support

2010-01-09T12:50:00.001-08:00

I gave my red Les Paul a workout with a Peavey amp (listening through headphones). Quite happy with the tone: clean but a little beefy.

They can take away my freedom, but they can't touch my soul.

2009 and Beyond

2010-01-05T15:20:00.001-08:00

The two most remarkable stories of 2009 were Obama-Reid-Pelosi’s attempt to ram America into European-style socialism and the reaction to it among the people — the tea party movement. John Lewis argues that Obama’s ideological consistency has brought clarity to American politics, which is why the President’s policies created so strong a reaction in his first year of governance.

The Democrat push to expand big government is not surprising, but the reaction against it among the America people is surprising — I thought Americans had lost the capacity to oppose statism — and that reaction is as heartening as the Democrats’ actions are depressing. America is now thought to be turning to the right (HT: Instapundit). A Scott Rasmussen poll shows Americans to be deserting the Democrat Party.

The Democrat reaction to first the tea parties and then the town hall protesters was to smear those involved, calling them racists, Nazis, KKK and even “evil mongers.” Their reaction is stunning when you consider the numbers:

Only a fourth of all Americans approve of the direction Obama and Congress are taking the country, according to a Gallup survey. A similarly dismal proportion approve of the job being done by Congress under the leadership of Reid and Pelosi. Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed prefer that Congress do nothing to reform health care rather than take final action on either the Senate or House versions of Obamacare.

Action/reaction: the radicalization of the left has partly radicalized the right. Ayn Rand and Objectivism had increased visibility in 2009. Signs about John Galt showed up at tea parties. Atlas Shrugged sold more copies than ever before in its history, a publishing phenomenon for a 53-year old book despised by the cognoscenti of both the left and the right. And please note that although William F. Buckley pronounced Objectivism dead a quarter century ago, it is not God and Man at Yale that people are turning to as they resist the growth of big government.

Two other stories of surprising good news in 2009 were Climategate and the Iranian Revolution. The “science” of AGW is taking more and more criticism. A new study from the University of Bristol says the ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere has not increased in 150 years. Alexander Cockburn points to a piece by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner that argues the greenhouse effect violates the second law of thermodynamics.

…a cooler body cannot warm a hotter body without compensation. Greenhouse gases in the cold upper atmosphere cannot possibly transfer heat to the warmer earth, and in fact radiate their absorbed heat into outer space.

Whether these “deniers” are right or not, more and more voices are questioning the environmentalists’ vaunted “consensus.” Let the truth be heard!

In Iran the regime of the mullahs continues to kill protesters, even running them down with trucks, but the protests do not stop. The momentum seems to be with those who oppose theocracy. Obama’s response appeasing the dictatorship has been shameful.

One last bit of good news from 2009: Obama is reported to be tired. “Fundamentally transforming the United States of America” is hard work. It takes the energy and ruthless will of a Robespierre or a Lenin to do it right. Obama has too much Peter Keating in him to be the complete monster.

What does this mean for 2010? One can only guess, of course. Whatever happens, I believe we are at an important moment in history. The next few years could determine our course for the next generation.

The left is hard to predict because it has lost all confidence in reason and now believes only in force. That’s why their first response to opposition is always lies, smears and name-calling. I believe they will continue full steam ahead in the direction set in 2009. Their altruist-collectivist morality justifies (to them) any means to the end of state power over the individual.

I suspect that enormities are being perpetrated by the bureaucracies right now that we know nothing about because publicizing them is not in the interest of the leftist mainstream media. Obama might put more pressure on the bureaucracies to expand state power by fiat, growing like mushrooms in the dead of night. Let the House, Senate and President get all the media glare while the alphabet agencies destroy freedom in the shadows. The administration has already said that if cap and trade is not passed by the legislative branch, then the EPA will do it anyway by regulation. Will of the people? The Constitution? Please, we’re talking about power here. Get serious.

The biggest thorn in Obama-Reid-Pelosi’s craw is America’s freedom of speech. Since the totalitarian left has given up on reason, they have no confidence in arguments to counters arguments. Words are just the tools of force. You say what you need to say to gain power. As the left sees it, their every step toward socialist utopia is obstructed and delayed because the evil Rush Limbaugh agitates the people with his lies. If the left does something daring in the next few years, it might be in the area of restricting speech. It depends on what they think they can get away with. Keep a wary eye on this issue.

The right is at a crossroads. They can move in the direction of liberty and individual rights or they can stay with Bush’s compassionate conservatism. Between the religious right and the pragmatic moderates I have given up on the Republicans. I think they will be the undeserving beneficiaries of the people’s rage against expanding big government in November of 2010. After that they’ll probably blow it, as they always do.

I sense that the tea party movement has stiffened the GOP’s spine a little. If so, it means that the American sense of life might rescue America from socialism once again. This would be the best news of all, as I thought America had let it go since 1972. Could it be that the ideas of Ayn Rand are already spreading through our culture and affecting our politics?

UPDATE: Slight revision.

I’ve already written this post twice because the first try was lost when my computer locked up. And it happened just as I was getting ready to click on “publish!” I regrouped after a few minutes and rewrote. As always writing gets better in rewriting.

What Will Follow?

2009-10-17T11:53:00.001-07:00

The totalitarian left is fascinating to watch -- in a car wreck kind of way. One gazes at the twisted metal and broken glass of the left and wonders if he'll see any dead bodies amid what was once a shiny, functioning machine.

For the last few weeks we have seen the left attack Rush Limbaugh in the only way it knows how anymore: by lies and character assassination. Whatever you might think of Limbaugh, and I have problems with him, he is not a racist. To stop him from being a part-owner of an NFL team, the left fabricated racist quotes. They didn't just take questionable remarks out of context; they made up stuff that he never said.

This is not just the work of activists or partisan media. It goes all the way to the top of the Democrat Party. As NRO writes,

What makes the ongoing assault on Rush disturbing is that the White House is a participant in it. As Time magazine and others have reported, a small group of Democratic operatives and media figures — Stanley Greenberg, Paul Begala, and James Carville — have colluded with members of the Obama administration — Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs — in a campaign to demonize Limbaugh, using him as a proxy target for congressional Republicans.

The message from the left's campaign to destroy Limbaugh is clear: if they can do it to Rush, they can do it to anyone. I suspect there are many opponents of Obama and socialism across America who are wondering if they should stick their neck out, knowing that if they speak out they put themselves at risk to the smears of the left. It's not a reign of terror, but it is a reign of intimidation. The left doesn't answer its enemies, it shuts them up.

In addition to the smearing of Rush Limbaugh, we have seen various leftists bare their fangs and expose their raw hatred of their enemies with some remarkable statements. If the like were uttered by any Republican, it would mean the end of his career.First, from Congressman Alan Grayson:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) warned Americans that "Republicans want you to die quickly" during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night.
His remarks, which drew angry and immediate calls for an apology from Republicans, were highlighted by a sign reading "The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly."

Congressman Grayson has refused to apologize for this statement; his courage in standing by an outrageous insult has made him a hero on the left.

Second Garrison Keillor came up with a mean-spirited quip that any deficit in health care spending could be covered by cutting off health care from the GOP. Not much of a joke, but a glimpse at an old leftist's hatred of the enemy.

Finally, all summer long wise leftists turned their gaze to the town hall meetings and Tea Party protests, and wondered if the Republic will survive. Thomas Friedman fears violence from the right.

I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

Friedman cites as an example some idiotic poll that a nobody put on Facebook, and:

...Mr. Obama is now having his legitimacy attacked by a concerted campaign from the right fringe. They are using everything from smears that he is a closet “socialist” to calling him a “liar” in the middle of a joint session of Congress to fabricating doubts about his birth in America and whether he is even a citizen.

These examples are laughable compared to the venom spewed by the left in a propaganda campaign that goes all the way to the White House.

Nancy Pelosi was moved to tears as she contemplated the prospect of violence from the right.

“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

Remember, at the massive Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C. on September 12, which had 70,000 people or more, depending on whose crowd estimates you believe, not one person was arrested. It was a peaceful assembly of citizens concerned about their burgeoning big government and the loss of freedom. At the G20 summit in Pittsburgh a few weeks later leftist protesters did what they always do:

Anti-G20 protesters rampaged through the city centre of Pittsburgh tonight, smashing up shops and throwing rocks at police, as officers used tear gas and baton-charges in an attempt to bring them under control.
In riots which continued through evening rush hour, about 300 protesters were reported to have remained from an initial crowd of 2,000 in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s Little Italy.
Frustrated in their attempts to reach the venue where world leaders are meeting the crowd, many of whom wore face-masks and armed themselves with rocks, broke windows at fast-food restaurants, a BMW dealership and a bank in the area, about a mile from the fenced-off convention centre.

If you want socialism and you riot: yawns all around; if you want liberty and you carry an insulting sign: STOP THE MADNESS BEFORE SOMEONE GETS HURT!

I think we're seeing the death throes of the left here. "Death throes" might be hard to buy, given that the Democrats have control of the executive and legislative branches and are currently toiling to effect Obama's program of "fundamental change" for America. (Ask not for whom those chains clink; they clink for you.)

The left has only ad hominem arguments, lies and smears. That's it. They don't argue the substance of health care, they call the town hall protesters racists, evil-mongers, a mob, and so on. I have to think that Americans outside the Democrat base are noticing. I believe the Democrats are bleeding voters at the margins.

The pollster Alex Bratty says in this PJTV interview that independents are "fleeing" from President Obama. She says a majority of independents want less government intervention in the economy. A Fox News Poll says only 43% would vote today to reelect President Obama.

I would advise the left to ram as many of their programs down America's throat as they can now while they have the power to do it, because that power will not last. Most Americans don't want what the left is selling -- or more properly, what the left is forcing on them.

The $64,000 question: who will replace the left? Yaron Brook in the PJTV interview linked to above says this is an opportunity for the Republican Party to make the case for freedom, individual rights and less government. Will they do it?

It's been observed that great men need the opportunity to rise to greatness. There must be an historical circumstance in which their greatness is wanted. The moment is now for someone in the Republican Party to carry the standard for liberty. Is there anyone out there capable of doing it?

Or will the power vacuum be filled by the religious right? I heard recently from a friend about a career military man who, after decades of duty around the world, retired and returned to Omaha, Nebraska. He said he was stunned at how the place has changed: religious fundamentalism has grown there. The rise of religion, as people turn to mysticism for values they can't find in the radical skepticism of modern philosophy, is transforming America.

They say the chinese character for crisis combines two words, opportunity and danger. We could be at a turning point in America, a point of opportunity and danger.

Secrets and Revelations

2009-10-11T20:37:00.001-07:00

When I studied screenwriting at UCLA I was quite dubious about one teacher. I doubted whether he knew what he was talking about. He didn't explain the reasoning behind his principles very well, he just pronounced wisdom as if he were the Oracle of Delphi and we were to accept it on faith. He didn't give you the why behind his pronunciamentos, so they came off as Platonic ideals unconnected to the facts of reality.

One of his rules was "Don't keep secrets from the audience." This baffled me. What about plot twists? Reversals? Surprise endings? Whodunnits? There were enough obvious contradictions to his rule that I dismissed the teacher as a bizarre old coot.

Today I was working on a romantic drama plot that I've been struggling with for months. Part of the plot involves a spy, whose identity is revealed to the audience late in the play. Suddenly it occurred to me how much more interesting it would be to reveal his identity to the audience early and show his struggle with his duel loyalties. The plot twist would come around the end of Act I instead of the end of Act II -- which would give me more substance for those difficult stretches in Act II.

I realized that I was following the old coot's advice! When I kept the secret from the audience, I was creating a coup de theatre: melodrama. Now that I let the audience in on the secret, the spy's story becomes drama, as the audience sees his internal struggle.

I would put the old coot's pearl of wisdom like this: Consider not keeping a secret from the audience. Obviously, there are some secrets that should be kept from an audience, otherwise Agatha Christie would not have had much of a career. However, it is a good exercise to play around in your imagination with those late plot twists and see what happens if you let the audience in on something early.

Ayn Rand makes a fascinating identification in The Art of Fiction. She says suspense is letting the reader in on the author's intention. Little hints of what is to come create expectation -- suspense. You could say suspense comes from not keeping secrets from the audience.

Secrets and revelations tend to be the stuff of melodrama. To dramatize an internal conflict the audience has to be in on the facts and circumstances that create the conflict.

10 Things You Did Not Know About Me Until Now

2009-09-26T01:48:00.001-07:00

1. I was in a mime troupe. Yes, in my youth, I committed mime. I could even moonwalk. I've been haunted with guilt ever since...

2. I once had some 7,000 comic books, including Avengers #1, Fantastic Four #2, so many more. I sold them for peanuts in the 1980's to move to New York City.

3. I once had a pre-CBS Stratocaster. I sold it for peanuts in the 1980's to move to New York City.

4. I once lived in New York City. Was it worth selling everything I had for peanuts to move there? Yes. Yes.

5. The last TV show I watched regularly, not counting late night reruns of "The Honeymooners," was "All In the Family" around 1974.

6. I was a carpenter at Joseph Papp's New York Public Theatre. I was the worst carpenter in the history of the theatre since the day Thespis said, "I'm ready for my close-up."

7. In 1966 in Pomona, California, there was a garage band on our street. Lo, and he heard that Fender amp cranking out the chords to "Gloria," "Wild Thing," and "Satisfaction." And he saw the promised land. And he said, "It is good."

8. One of my odd prejudices is that I think all musicals should be musical comedies. I can't take serious musicals seriously. "A boy like that, he keel your brother." I dunno. I'll take Gershwin and Porter and Berlin any day over the modern musical. Old school? I'm paleolithic, baby.

9. My 10 favorite playwrights, starting at number one, are: Shakespeare, Ibsen, Schiller, Rostand, Sophocles, Rattigan, Shaw, Corneille, Moliere, Chekhov. In a month I might come up with a slightly different list, especially toward the bottom.

10. In my darker moments, I think America is heading toward a civil war. I suspect it is our most likely future. The New Left is totalitarian. When they shut down free speech, as they are now striving to do, there will be no recourse but violence. The libertarian, individualist right will resist. The 21st century will be ugly -- but interesting.

The Jew of Malta

2009-09-21T13:39:00.001-07:00

The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe is a highly entertaining play. Technically it is a tragedy because the central character dies in the end, but that character, the Jew Barabas, is so hilarious as he commits his crimes that it's hard to take any of it seriously. Like Shakespeare's Richard III, Barabas has so much fun being evil that the audience has fun as well. I think of the play as Hamlet meets the Joker: a revenge play with an evil clown as the central character. I would call it a savage satire.

(It makes me wonder if Shakespeare was attempting to write his own tragedy that is also savagely funny with Titus Andronicus. Face it, the scene in which Lavinia, without hands, takes a stick in her mouth to write in the sand is funny in a sick way. Shakespeare soon realized that his was a gentler muse.)

The play is antisemitic, as is The Merchant of Venice. Marlowe and Shakespeare are products of their culture and they reflect the attitudes of their time. The problem goes beyond antisemitism, as Renaissance plays are filled with medieval values we would question today. Shakespeare seems to accept the divine right of kings, and at the end of his tragedies order is always restored with the last line going to the person of highest nobility left alive onstage. A feminist woman once told me that Katherine's last speech in Taming of the Shrew should be played today as if she is lying and manipulating Petruchio in order to survive in a patriarchal society.

The thing to remember is that antisemitism is not the fundamental purpose of either Marlowe or Shakespeare's play, but is a side issue. Both Marlowe and Shakespeare were great artists, who wrote their plays on broader themes. The Jew of Malta is a play about human nature that says man is a cynical egoist. The word cynical is there to distinguish Marlowe's idea of egoism from Ayn Rand's idea of rational egoism. In the traditional, Christian morality, egoists are thought of as monsters -- Nietzche's Blond Beast -- who will climb over a mountain of dead bodies to get what they want. And mass murder is exactly what Barabas does. People talk about all the dead bodies in Hamlet; in Marlowe's play there are too many dead to count -- the antihero poisons all the nuns in a convent and burns down a house with people in it -- but most of the killing happens off stage.

If you're like me and the idea of poisoning all the nuns in a convent makes you laugh, then this play is for you. (No, I'm not being serious here. I don't really support the mass murder of Christians.)

There is a deep strain of cynicism in Jacobean drama. Webster, Marston and Middleton all wrote dark, dark plays. Even Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens is cynical. I think it all started with The Jew of Malta.

What makes this ugly play entertaining is the humor. And there is no question in my mind that Marlowe meant to be funny. For instance, at one point Barabas's daughter Abigail asks the slave Ithamore a question. He answers with the rhetorical question, "Am I Ithamore?" as in, "Is the Pope Catholic?" Abigail replies -- and I imagine the actress pausing a moment first -- "Yes." She is so slow that she answers a rhetorical question. That's funny. Isn't it?

Or take when Barabas first buys his slave Ithamore. When Ithamore learns that Barabas is evil, he worships his master. They get along so well as they commit mayhem that Barabas wishes Ithamore were his son. How else can you play that but for comedy? And the way Barabas manipulates the stupid Christians is just a scream.

And then there is Barabas's death. If you don't want it spoiled, skip to the next paragraph. Barabas dies by accidentally falling into a huge vat of boiling water that he is preparing to cook other people. Please, it's so absurd that you have to play it for comedy.

Is there any good reason to produce this play nowadays? If you want to do an edgy, politically incorrect play with some sick humor, then this is it. It's interesting that a play can still shock after four centuries. You also get a better understanding of the context of later Renaissance drama, as they all wrote in Marlowe's shadow. In Midsummer-Night's Dream, with Pyramus, Shakespeare parodies Barabas's last line, "Die, life: fly, soul; tongue, curse thy fill, and die!" Finally, the part of Barabas is a great part for a comic actor -- and we comic actors are always looking for great parts.

Best of all, Barabas poisons all the nuns in a convent. Come on, admit it: that's entertainment.

After his death Marlowe was accused of atheism. I don't know if that was true or just propaganda, but he made this atheist laugh.

Crow, Served With A Nice Creamy Sauce

2009-09-08T03:40:00.001-07:00

In my last post, I quit acting locally. In this post I announce the creation of a local theatre company.

Does this make any sense? Am I confused?

For some time now Steven Sabel, a local director, has been asking me when I will direct. I kept putting him off because it seems like way too much work, and I thought I should concentrate on acting and writing. Then I would think of all the plays I wish I could produce and how I would do them. Maybe Steven knew something about me that I didn't know.

Recently, I thought of how much I would like to play Leontes in The Winter's Tale. As I looked through the script I got a lot of good ideas on staging it. I developed a "vision" of how it should be done. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I could do it and make a good show of a beautiful play.

Then I thought, "Now all I have to do is find a director, explain to him the concept of the show, what happens in every scene, and give him the cut..." That's when I realized that maybe I am the director.

I still would like to find someone to help direct because I can't see myself on stage. It would be nice to have a director to run the rehearsals so I can focus on acting, especially late in the process.

I went to a local theatre that is supportive of the arts and explained my idea. I got a deal in which I can use the space for free as long as we promote the hell out of the play and they take the box office at least to the point that they cover their "nut." If we sell enough tickets to actually make a profit, then we'll even get some of the money. They help out on the technical side, too. It's a good deal for both parties. They have the space and I have the show to fill it. They don't make any money if their theatre is dark.

The name of the company is Next Renaissance Acting Troop. Or N-RAT, which sounds like something out of a Cordwainer Smith short story. (Science fiction. Never mind.) The word Renaissance looks to the past, and I do want to produce classical plays by such authors as Sophocles, Pierre Corneille, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Carlo Goldoni, Friedrich Schiller, and Victor Hugo. I'm also interested in shows by the early modern playwrights -- Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Schnitzler, Shaw. I considered calling the company Theatre of Lepers because we would only do shows no one else wants to touch. (Polyeucte? What is that, a molecule?) I rejected that idea because I didn't want to put the focus on the negative -- and I can just imagine getting a letter of complaint from some lepers grievance organization.

The word Next looks to the future. I believe drama is not flourishing at the moment, but then, there have been few periods in history when it did flourish. As our culture moves from the black hole of postmodernism to a more rational philosophy, things will change. Someday there will be another Renaissance. I have no delusions that this little company will help bring about cultural change, but looking to a better world keeps my purpose lofty.

I have long desired to have an artistic home where I could produce the plays I write. Being able to gather actors for just a cold reading will help me after a first draft. Nothing like hearing actors struggle with your words to reveal problems.

So now I'm busier than ever and I still have the problem of dealing with actors who are not serious about the art. We'll see if the problem proves itself to be unsolvable.

For now, I want to take on this challenge. I won't live forever. Michael Jackson was younger than I, and he's dead. (But then, I don't use an IV as an alarm clock.) I don't want to enter my old age full of regrets about projects I did not undertake because of fear. Fear is the great destroyer of aspirations. No fear. Let us move into the future with courage.

Art and Purpose

2009-08-15T22:51:00.001-07:00

At the end of the month I'll be done with 12th Night, and done with acting, unless I can find a paying gig. I do look forward to writing every day without the enormous time commitment of rehearsal and performance. The time commitment is greater than just the hours spent with the other actors; acting takes over my life at home. I find it hard to write when I have an acting obligation I should be working on to perfect my part.

When I was in college my professors had nothing but contempt for community theatre. When I told one I was working for a local theatre festival in the summer, he said he hoped I didn't come back in the fall a worse actor for working with all those community types. At the time I was leery; his condescension struck me as a bit elitist.

Now I think my professors were right. I've tried to stay away from community theatre and work with companies that at least have the ambition to be professional regional theatres someday. That ambition does make a difference, but even so, those companies have no money and are forced to use actors with a community theatre mentality.

What do I mean by "community theatre mentality"?

It comes down to purpose. Of the three cardinal values defined by Ayn Rand -- reason, self-esteem and purpose -- purpose is the one that has been least explored by Objectivist philosophers (although I think I read that Dr. Tara Smith is writing a book on purpose). Perhaps it has been neglected because Aristotle made such a brilliant start with it.

Purpose is Aristotle's "final causation." It defines what one will do in an action.

In writing, I have come to learn that purpose determines whether or not a writer has a chance of writing something halfway decent. If you set your purpose as writing a comic book or a soap opera, that's what you'll get. If you set out to be a hack, you'll be a hack.

A writer cannot create great art unless he sets that as his purpose. Setting out to write great art does not guarantee one will succeed in meeting that purpose, but setting a lower purpose does guarantee that one will not write great art.

Of course, in our present culture, many writers never consciously define their purpose. They think something like, "I want a career as a screenwriter. I need to write what Hollywood will buy." This purpose pretty much guarantees that one is on the road to hackdom. To see the result, go check out the load of dreck at your neighborhood multiplex.

If a writer does not consciously strive to put art above money, he is doomed to a life as a whore. For many that is fine because they have no conception of any art greater than the whoredom they see in popular culture. To ask them to write something on the level of Friedrich Schiller would be like asking a punk rocker to play a diminished ninth chord.

The tragic cases are the ones who have some conception of what is better, but destroy the best within them in order to put food on the table in a mindless culture that only wants garbage. See Ayn Rand's short story, "The Simplest Thing In the World."

I write this as a defender of capitalism and money. Money is not the root of all evil. Money does not corrupt all it touches, as some Platonist might think. However, there are other values than money. It is the artist's responsibility to be clear in his mind that he does not compromise his art for money. Once you have that understanding, then I say go for the big bucks all you can. There is nothing in the least wrong with getting rich. The best deal is to make money while making great art, as Ayn Rand did. In the 19th century, before naturalism separated thought and plot, it was common for great novels and plays to succeed in the market place.

I should clarify here that there is nothing wrong with writing good popular art without deep ideas. Agatha Christie, P.G Wodehouse, Noël Coward, Harold Lamb and so many others wrote good, entertaining stories that do not rise to the standard of great art. I suspect that they all wrote what pleased them, what they wanted to read. To write a page-turner with suspense and twists is no mean achievement; try it sometime. But even on this level, a writer must be clear about his purpose and avoid any second-hand imitation.

In acting purpose makes all the difference. If an actor sets his purpose as making a career of it, then he strives for professional quality. He must meet the highest standards. Furthermore, he will put in the time needed to act well because acting will be a priority. Among professional actors there are differences. Some are content just mugging in sitcoms, so long the paychecks keep coming in. Others want to be classical actors and undergo more training.

Since I began acting locally four years ago, in every show there have been anywhere from a couple to a handful of actors who don't get their lines memorized until dress rehearsal -- and some never entirely get their lines cold. This is unheard of in professional theatre. Jon Jory in his book says actors should have their lines memorized after they block a scene: never do a scene twice holding a book. Noël Coward thought actors should have their lines memorized before rehearsals begin: don't waste precious rehearsal time fumbling around with lines.

Non-professional actors have day jobs, families and lives outside of theatre; acting is a hobby or a social activity. When you approach it that way, your thinking is different -- it's unprofessional by definition.

Non-professional actors have lower standards. (Many have no conception of standards or how to go about acting. They just get on stage and play make believe like children. Some actors with a little natural talent can get away with this their entire lives.) Non-professional actors are not going to work hard on their lines because they know they don't have to. The director can bitch all he wants, but he won't replace the actors for being late on their lines with someone new -- someone who would have only a week to memorize a part from scratch.

I'm just talking about memorizing lines here. All the other acting work you might read about in Stanislavsky is not a factor here or even for many actors in Hollywood.

I've worked with some fine actors. In every show there are a few who do quality work that could compete professionally if they wanted to. Those people keep the smaller Shakespeare festivals chugging along. My hat is off to those talented people who manage to do it year in and year out without pay. Long may they run.

I can feel myself getting lazy. I know I don't have to work hard. When other matters press, I know acting can be put aside. I feel the rust corroding me at the edges. Rust never sleeps. If I keep acting with non-professionals, then my standards will lower to theirs. It takes a titan of discipline to maintain standards when good enough is good enough. I don't know if I have that discipline.

So it's time for me to move on. From now on I either get paid or I do something else with my time than acting.

When Words Are Weapons

2009-08-15T04:27:00.001-07:00

There are, I believe, two factors that explain the Democrat ad hominem strategy against their opponents in the health care debate (not that there's much argumentation of ideas going on). One factor is general, and the other more specific.

The general cause is the decline of reason in modern philosophy, and its effect on the left. The postmodern left does not believe that there is reason, but only subjective narratives determined mainly by ethnicity and sex. Language to the left is not used by reason to persuade, but is a weapon used to gain power. Language is a form of force.

This is why the left hates advertising so much; they think it is the way corporations manipulate the minds of the masses and make them act in ways against their own self-interest (in other words, corporate propaganda turns the innocent into right-wingers). One of Obama's first acts when he took over GM was to cut their advertising budget.

Since words are weapons, the left uses them as such. They tend naturally toward character smears and the "politics of personal destruction." So they're going after their opponents on health care the only way they really know how, by calling them a "mob," "right-wing extremists," "racists," "KKK," and I've probably missed a few choice epithets.

This is why Obama said,

"But I don't want the folks that created the mess -- I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking...I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."

Toleration used to be valued on the left, but those days are over. When words are weapons, then talking is force. You don't want the enemy to "do a lot of talking."

The more specific cause is the Swiftboat advertising campaign against John Kerry in 2004, an event that seems to have traumatized the left. Recently Senator Franken -- no, I can't believe he's a Senator either -- was nasty to Warren Buffet about Buffet's support of the Swiftboaters. The Democrats still remember it well, and it still bothers them.

As the left views words as weapons, it concluded from the Swiftboaters that the mean-spirited right is really good at using words to attack their side. I would say the Swiftboat attack devastated Kerry because it hit home with the truth. I think it was Aquinas who said that the most powerful argument in a debate is the truth. This doesn't even register with the left. There are no absolutes, no reason, no truth.

The left concluded that Kerry's problem was that he let the Swiftboaters sink him without responding. It has become dogma among the Democrats that when the Republicans attack, you attack back hard and fast. Thus Obama aides said they would “punch back twice as hard” against their critics. Now, even though 70% of independents are against the health care bill in the House -- which means a majority of voters -- the Democrats don't care, they're fighting back to avoid John Kerry's failure.

Modern philosophy has corrupted our culture and created this nastiness. The left sees words as weapons, and probably some precincts of the right, who are not altogether immune from the dominant trend in philosophy, also have no confidence in or understanding of reason. When people use words as weapons in the pursuit of power, without regard to the truth, can the use of real weapons be far behind? How long until factions begin shooting at one another?

UPDATE: Corrected a name. Al Franken feuded with T. Boone Pickens, not Warren Buffet, as I first wrote.

Les Paul, RIP

2009-08-13T16:28:00.001-07:00

We take the electric guitar for granted but somebody had to invent it. That man was Les Paul. Though it might seem obvious to us today, it took ingenuity and creativity to do it right. Les Paul came up with a brilliant innovation:

As ensemble sound levels were growing with amplification, his goal was to improve tone and sustain, while minimizing feedback, so he designed an instrument with a solid body, reducing vibration in the frame and concentrating it in the string.

I own a Les Paul. After more than half a century, the guitar is still the standard of excellence. Jimmy Page got an astonishing range of sounds out of the guitar. For a pure, beautiful Les Paul tone, I would recommend listening to Duane Allman's lyrical lead solos.

Les Paul was a giant. His life is over, but his achievement is eternal.

A Joke From My Childhood

2009-08-10T02:59:00.001-07:00

There was this monastery where all the monks took a strict vow of silence. They couldn't talk at all, except on Christmas day during dinner at 6pm, when one monk could say one thing.

One Christmas it was Joe's turn to talk. At 6pm, as they were eating dinner, Joe stood, cleared his throat, and said, "I hate the mashed potatoes here."

Then Joe sat down and the monks continued eating in silence.

A year passed in silence. The next Christmas at 6pm it was Sam's turn to talk. Sam stood, cleared his throat, and said, "Well, I like the mashed potatoes!"

A year passed in silence. The next Christmas at 6pm it was Claude's turn to talk. Claude stood, cleared his throat, and said, "I request a transfer to another monastery. I can't stand this constant bickering!"

Forty Years Past

2009-07-20T00:23:00.001-07:00

Full forty years ago the giants leapt,
And made the moon a place that man can go;
The solemn glory that is science kept
All eyes focused on a black and white glow.

Though I was twelve and must have watched it too,
I can’t remember clearly if I did.
I took it all for granted, nothing new;
“Man on the moon? Of course” -- thus shrugged the kid.

For Asimov and Heinlein had my mind
Already colonized with flying ships,
And flown me to the farthest star to find
The galaxy in hyperspatial trips.

And Bob Kane, Gil Kane, Ditko, Kirby, Lee,
Buscema, Infantino, Gardner Fox,
Roy Thomas, Barry Smith: they gave to me
Imagination far beyond the box.

Now forty years have passed, and some I miss;
I look back at that triumph and I sing,
The man is still the boy except for this:
He nothing takes for granted. Not a thing.

Poetry

2009-07-19T14:53:00.001-07:00

I know that I shall never see
A vegetable as poetry.
To see some goddamned tree as art
Is hearing Mozart in a fart.

Shape of Things to Come

2009-07-18T22:44:00.001-07:00

I missed the US Postal Service when they knocked on my door yesterday with an important package I've been waiting for impatiently. The postman left a note on my door that I could pick up the package at the post office on Saturday between 9-11am.

So today I went to the post office at 9am today to pick up the package before going to rehearsal at 10am. I waited until 9:30am, but the window that is supposed to be open from 9-11am never opened. I'll have to wait until Monday to get my package.

It says on the sign that the window is open from 9-11am on Saturday, but it takes a human being with initiative and a sense of responsibility to actually open the window and serve the public. This is probably too much to ask of government employees on many Saturdays. They're busy, life is rough, and customers suck, so if they just evade the window long enough, then they can do other things. It's not like they'll be fired for ignoring the public.

My local supermarket is open from 6am-11pm every day except for a few holidays. They always open at exactly 6am. The manager never says to his employees, "Let's open a hour late today. That way we can sit around out back and smoke cigarettes and gossip. Screw the customers!" They open at 6am because they don't want to lose any of their profits.

Government bureaucrats don't pursue profits. They follow regulations. The customer is just a nuisance, one of the many unpleasant obstacles to happiness they must deal with throughout the day. The supermarket manager delights to see more and more customers because it means more and more profits. The postal worker sees more customers as just more work, and he gets paid the same regardless of how many customers he makes happy.

When we socialize medicine in America, going to the doctor will be like a combination of going to the post office and the DMV. We're talking lines, bureaucratic procedures, and little incentive for government workers to give a damn. Imagine: doctors who resent every new patient as just so much more work they are forced by the system to do.

We're destroying our country, and when you ask Obama voters why they voted for him, they don't really know. He made them feel warm and fuzzy. That's good enough, isn't it?

UPDATE: Revision.

The Land of Happy Slaves

2009-07-14T03:34:00.001-07:00

Community is built around a lie
To shield the meek from looking to the sky.
Religion is a structure of excuse
To have believers tying their own noose.
The modern state’s a king without a throne
To stop free men from standing all alone.
The state’s a wiseguy nudging with his gun,
"You need protection; pay me and it's done."
And politics is nothing but a fog
Of words designed to make each man a cog,
An oiled function in the great machine,
All higher aspirations left unseen.
“Obama!” cry the million mindless slaves,
Their stunted, blighted lives like living graves.

God Sees the Truth, But Waits

2009-07-04T11:29:00.001-07:00

I read a short story by Leo Tolstoy called "God Sees the Truth, But Waits." Ghastly, just ghastly.
I will tell the entire plot. If you want to read it unspoiled, stop reading NOW.
You've been warned.
Ivan Dmitrich Aksyonov decides to travel to Nizhny Fair. His wife begs him not to go because she had a bad dream about this trip. He laughs her off and leaves anyway. Halfway to the Fair he stops overnight at an inn. He is awakened the next morning by the police because there has been a murder at the inn that night and he is a prime suspect. He is not worried as they search his things because he knows he did not not commit the murder. The police find a bloody knife in his bag.
Aksyonov protests that he is innocent, but no one believes him, not even his wife. Aksyonov is condemned to flogging with a knout and life imprisonment in the mines in Siberia.
After 26 years in Siberia Aksyonov's hair is white and his happy spirit is broken. He prays to God a lot and the other prisoners respect him.
A new prisoner, Makar Semyonovich, who comes from Aksyonov's hometown, arrives. After some discussion, Aksyonov suspects that Semyonovich is the real murderer. He finds Semyonovich digging a hole to escape in the night. The next day the authorities ask Akyonov who dug the hole. Aksyonov says he does not know.
That night Semyonovich falls to his knees before Aksyonov and confesses that he committed the murder 26 years ago and hid the knife in Aksyonov's bag. He begs for forgiveness and weeps as only guilty Russians can.
The last three paragraphs I must transcribe completely for them to be believed:

When Aksyonov heard him sobbing he too began to weep.
"God will forgive you!" he said. "Maybe I am a hundred times worse than you." And at these words his heart suddenly grew light and the longing for home left him. He no longer had any desire to leave the prison, but only hoped for his last hour to come.
In spite of what Aksyonov had said, Makar Semyonovich confessed his guilt. But when the order for his release came, Aksyonov was already dead.

Now, that's a Christian short story -- real, medieval Augustinian Christianity, not the watered down American stuff. Justice on earth is meaningless because God knows who is guilty and innocent. We humans should turn the other cheek and leave justice to God in the afterlife.
Tolstoy dramatizes his theme perfectly. It is a powerful story. But what a theme! Tolstoy's is not a philosophy for living on earth, but a philosophy of self-abnegation and renunciation of values and happiness. In every fundamental respect Leo Tolstoy and Ayn Rand are opposites, despite their both being brilliant writers of long novels who were born in Russia.

Great Minds of Western Civilization, Hollywood Series

2009-07-01T07:46:00.001-07:00

Proof that one need not have even average intelligence to be a good actor:

"The title of the film is 'Public Enemies,' but I don't see John Dillinger as an enemy of the public," Depp told the Los Angeles Times. He noted that J. Edgar Hoover was the man who sent federal agents after Dillinger, and remarked, "I mean, who's the real criminal?"

Lakers Win

2009-06-14T21:01:00.001-07:00

After the Lakers blew away the Magic in the first game I wanted to write a post announcing that the series was over. No way the Magic beat the Lakers. I resisted because, as Yogi says, it ain't over till it's over. I also resisted crowing when the Lakers won the second game and went up 2-0. It's hard for a team to come back after losing the first two games.

The fourth game was pivotal. The Lakers went into it with a two games to one edge. If the Magic win that game, the series is tied, 2-2. But the Lakers won in overtime, making it 3-1. The difference between 3-1 and 2-2 is immense. At 2-2, it's a best two out of three series. At 3-1, the team with one win is facing elimination and has to win the next three in a row. But I kept my quiet after game four because of what Yogi says.

Okay, now it's over. Hollywood beat Disneyworld. It took the Lakers five games to beat the Magic. The Magic lived by the three-point shot and died by it.

Dwight Howard, the Magic's center, is the best center in the game, but he has never shown that he deserves to be ranked among the best of all time. Sometimes he disappears in games. He has a million dollar smile -- he really should try acting -- but it's still a question whether he has the toughness and will to be a champion. His Superman dunk in last year's all star game was, as the kids say, sick. At best he might end up basketball's Ted Williams -- a great player whose best moment was in an all star game. (Or in the slam dunk contest on all star game weekend.)

Kobe Bryant proved he has what it takes to be a champion. He will be considered one of the very best that ever played the game when his career is all over. If he stays healthy and productive for another five years, his points total will approach Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 38,000 and some.

Phil Jackson won his 10th ring as a head coach. Derek Fisher was asked what makes Jackson a great coach. He said something to the effect that he's not a dictator. He leaves you free to be you and make your own choices. Oddly enough, that's exactly what I like in a stage director. I hate the directors who have all my blocking plotted out before the first read-through.

The Lakers got a little lucky this year. Both Yao Ming of Houston and Kevin Garnett of Boston were injured in the playoffs. A healthy Boston is a much harder team to beat than Orlando. It would be great to see the Lakers beat the Celtics for the championship next year.

The Lakers also got a little lucky when they picked up Trevor Ariza. I think they made that trade mostly because they wanted to dump Maurice Evans and Brian Cook. Ariza looked like he would be a guy who comes off the bench in defensive situations. He played so well that he became a starter. He defends well, he can shoot the three as well as drive to the basket and dunk, and he is the most talented thief in the game. I've never seen anyone steal the ball as well as Ariza.

Maybe the Lakers also got a little bit lucky when they picked up Pau Gasol, the most skilled seven-footer in the league, for, like, nothing. But as either Branch Rickey or Winston Churchill once said -- I've seen the quote attributed to both -- luck is the residue of design. Give General Manager Mitch Kupchak his due.

It's amazing where the Lakers are today, considering the disarray they were in just two years ago, with Kobe demanding a trade.

Next year the Lakers are the team to beat. Every place they go on the road will sell out their seating all the way to those nose bleed seats next to the air conditioning ducts. The opposing teams will play at their adrenaline-fueled best against the champs. The 2009-2010 season will be a gauntlet that will leave the Lakers lean and mean for the playoffs.

The dynasty began tonight.

Star Trek

2009-05-20T02:26:00.001-07:00

I watched "Star Trek" at the IMAX. It was cleverly written. The actors all look like youthful versions of the original cast, and that's fun. Nice eye candy.

Of course, as with all summer blockbusters, you have to check your brain at the door. (Skydiving from space?) These movies pile improbability on improbability until one stops caring about the people or the plot and just absorbs the special effects and spectacle in a kind of numbness. If my praise sounds faint, it's about as much as I can muster for a Hollywood action-adventure flick.

To think that people used to go to plays by Schiller and Hugo, and now they're happy with sound and fury signifying nothing.

This being Hollywood, the movie had the obligatory "Don't be logical, trust your feelings," line. How original! If they ever made a movie that shows reason as a value, I'd faint. (Actually, I've never fainted. I'd probably say, "Hm. Didn't see that coming.")

I shiver in dread to think how Hollywood will f**k up Atlas Shrugged.

New York Memories

2009-05-07T18:24:00.001-07:00

When I lived in New York City in the '80s, I went to see about a room for rent on the Upper West Side. It was in a beautiful neighborhood just a block from Central Park. As I recall, the room was going for $300. Why was a room in this neighborhood going so cheap, I wondered?

The man who owned the apartment had been drinking when he let me in. He liked me at first sight and wanted me to take the room.

"Before we go any farther," he said,"I need to tell you about my thing."

"Okay. What's your thing?"

"I like to go into Central Park at night and hide in the bushes and give guys blow jobs."

"That's your thing?"

"Yes."

"That's quite a thing."

"Oh, yes! I meet the most interesting people."

"I'm sure."

"I've done priests. I make them hide their cross before I'll do them."

"Why?"

He seemed surprised at the question. "Everything it stands for. I think it's better for them if they put the cross away while I'm doing it. I also did a policeman. He let me ride on the back of his motorcycle."

The fellow shivered in delight at the memory of riding that motorcycle.

"I dunno," I mumbled, "I think I better look elsewhere."

"Why?!" he cried in dismay.

"I just... I'm a little uncomfortable with your thing. Not that there's anything wrong with it, if, you know, that's your thing. I'm conservative."

"So am I!"

"Right. I mean... my mother would disapprove," I said rather lamely.

"Oh, I know! Mine does, too."

I got out of there as fast as I could.

Thus did I end up taking a room in a loft in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. When I moved to New York in 1984, I took along a book on how to move to New York. Yes, I would buy such a book. It advised against moving to Williamsburg -- too dangerous. By the time I left New York in 1995, Williamsburg had become trendy. You saw lawyers and Wall Street types coming over to the bars.

I liked Williamsburg. There were three main types of people there at that time: Hasidic Jews, Puerto Ricans and young artists. It was a bizarre mix of people that made the place seem exotic and romantic, in a decaying urban sort of way.

I remember quite vividly walking across the Williamsburg Bridge on nice days when the crisp air came down out of Canada and blew away the humid Caribbean air. The buildings of Manhattan shone with clearly defined lines on such a day.

When I would return to California on vacations I was surprised at how big and clean the suburban streets were. I was stunned the first time I saw a supermarket check out counter with an electronic reader beeping as the items were passed over it. The bodegas of Williamsburg had no such science fictional technology. As exciting as New York City was -- nothing like it in my experience -- the quality of life in California was higher. More boring, but easier. I never did get used to the winters back east.

Reminiscing On Rock'n'Roll and Sex

2009-03-26T12:05:00.001-07:00

I hated Queen in the '70s. I thought they were just a Led Zeppelin wannabe. The idea amuses me now, because the two bands could not be more different. Led Zeppelin is the ultimate heterosexual band. Queen is gay -- campy and gay. ("Fat Bottom Girls" is not how heterosexual men lust. Well, except maybe for Sir Mix-A-Lot.)

Led Zeppelin had no wit, godawful lyrics, and little care for formal tightness. They were the blues on steroids, and they managed to take everything too far. As Eric Clapton said, when he first saw them perform in 1969, "They overstated their point." Their live concert film, The Song Remains the Same, is tedious and unwatchable now, but at the time it was exactly what I wanted. Nobody else compared. I was, and still am, in awe of Jimmy Page's guitar prowess. He got sounds from his guitar that no one else gets to this day. He was also one of the few hard rock guitarists who could play intense jazz chords with distortion and make it sound good. (It's because he sold his soul to the Devil, dude! He lives in Aleister Crowley's house!)

Queen's homosexual sensibility completely eluded me in the '70s. But then, it was not until years later that I realized I was one of the few straight male high school thespians. All those other guys were flaming gays, and I never realized it.

Another thing I never realized was how sexual a lot of lyrics were. I'm stunned now that our parents let us listen to this music and play it in our garage band. For instance, take the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman."

I met a gin soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis,

She tried to take me upstairs for a ride.

And,

I laid a divorcee in New York City

When I was a child it never occurred to me that Jagger was singing about sex.

Or take one of my favorite jamming songs, "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" by Ten Years After.

Good morning little schoolgirl,

Can I come home with you?

And,

Baby, I want to ball you

I want to ball you all night long.

Not only is that blatantly about sex, but it's perverted and sinister. The singer is, I presume, a grown man trying to pick up a schoolgirl. We used to sing this song in our band in high school, and our parents never said a word about it.

Before I went into the Air Force, my mother took me aside and told me not to linger in bus station bathrooms because homosexuals hang out there. I did as she instructed, and went in and out of the bathrooms as quick as possible, without making eye contact for fear that one of these mysterious homosexuals might seduce me with his secret powers. She gets terribly embarrassed when I tell this story now, but I always do tell it at family gatherings because it's just too hilarious.

We're more open about homosexuality now. It's out of the closet. This is probably a good thing: people fear what they don't understand. On the other hand, I suspect that with the rise of religion, parents are not as uncaring about sexual lyrics as they were back then.

I don't know if America is more puritanical now or then.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Huh?

2009-03-22T13:20:00.001-07:00

Kathleen Parker has stumped me with her latest column. What does this mean?

Tragicomedy, in which gods and men reverse roles, may be an honored dramatic genre, but is this any way to live?

I have no idea what she is saying. Here is the complete paragraph, in case the context helps makes sense of this sentence.

Obama's appearance on Jay Leno's show Thursday night -- joking lamely that his bowling is "like Special Olympics or something" -- is symptomatic of a broader blending of the serious and the comic that makes sane people feel slightly displaced. Infotainment isn't a new topic, but the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. Tragicomedy, in which gods and men reverse roles, may be an honored dramatic genre, but is this any way to live?

Tragicomedy, was first defined by the playwright John Fletcher, whose early plays with Beaumont, such as Philaster, were popular hits that brought tragicomedies in vogue on the London stage.

(Shakespeare's last plays, called romances, follow the tragicomedy fad. This is one of the better reasons that the Earl of Oxford could not have written the plays, as he was dead when all this happened. For us to believe Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays, we would have to accept that he wrote tragicomedies years before anyone else did, and the King's Men did not happen to produce these plays until after 1608, when Beaumont and Fletcher happened to make the genre profitable.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Tragicomedy. Fletcher's definition:

"A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants [i.e., lacks] deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy; yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy."

I don't what Parker means about men and gods reversing roles. If anyone can explain that, please do. For extra credit, explain what all this has to do with President Obama.

Rehearsal Update

2009-03-18T16:31:00.001-07:00

I'm doing the Ghost in Hamlet and First Gentleman/Elbow/Friar Peter in Measure For Measure in the 2009 Redlands Shakespeare Festival. Hamlet is a masterpiece of drama that combines a thriller plot with philosophy and poetry. Measure For Measure is a fascinating play of religion and politics that has never been an audience favorite. Me, I would much rather do it than A Midsummer-Night's Dream again.

Last night's rehearsal of Measure For Measure was good. We paraphrased what we were saying in one scene; after that our acting improved greatly. It's funny how something obvious and fundamental like understand what you're saying makes all the difference -- and yet, actors sometimes default on this basic responsibility.

I was in a show by Beaumont and Fletcher once, long ago. B&F were Shakespeare's contemporaries, and for about 100 years they reigned as the most popular playwright in the English Language. Shakespeare regained the throne in the early 18th century and holds it to this day. The B&F body of work, over 50 plays, should be attributed to Fletcher and Friends, as Beaumont was involved in less than 15 of the plays.

Anyway, after a performance of Knight of the Burning Pestle, someone asked the leading man what he was saying in a certain speech. He confessed, "I have no idea what I'm saying."

He was just standing onstage, saying the words. If you know no one in the audience will care and if you don't have much pride of craft, then it's easy to get lazy.

Lakers Update

2009-02-09T05:14:00.001-08:00

The Lakers are the best team in the NBA. This is not merely a homer opinion. They just went 6-0 on a six-game road trip in which they lost their star center, Andrew Bynum, in the second game. They finished the trip beating the two best teams in the East, Boston and Cleveland. In Cleveland they ended the Cavaliers' 23-game winning streak at home.

Four years ago the Lakers were Kobe Bryant and the other guys. Beating them was easy: stop Kobe and make "the other guys" beat you. This strategy no longer works. In the Cleveland game on Sunday Kobe had the flu, requiring an IV during halftime; Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol and the rest stepped up their game. Their defense kept the great LeBron James on the perimeter most of the game.

A lot of times when teams attempt to "rebuild," they fail. "Rebuilding" is often just a euphemism for lousy. Look at the Clippers; they have been rebuilding for decades. Look at the Dodgers in the 1990's. The Mavericks were perennial basement dwellers until Mark Cuban bought them.

It has been amazing watching the Lakers rebuild after the departure of Shaquille O'Neal and do everything right. Or if they got something wrong at first, such as acquiring Smush Parker, they corrected their mistake fast enough. They drafted Andrew Bynum out of high school and got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to mentor him. It has been a joy watching him develop, and maybe he will join the great Lakers tradition of centers that stretches back to George Mikan. They resigned point guard Derek Fisher, who brings leadership and experience to a young team. They traded Brian Cook and Mo Evans for Trevor Ariza, who has been brilliant; I've never seen a player steal the ball as well as Ariza. They traded Kwame Brown and others for Pau Gasol, a 7-foot power forward who scores and passes and fits perfectly in the triangle offense. (If you just look at the players involved, the trade does not make sense. The Lakers gave Memphis salary cap relief, which is what they wanted most.) You have to give General Manager Mitch Kupchak credit.

In the last week the Lakers traded away Vladimir Radmanovic to the Charlotte Bobcasts for Adam Morrison and Shannon Brown. I don't know if those two players will help LA, but like most fans, I'm not mourning the loss of Vlade. The "Space Cadet," as Phil Jackson called him, was a serious problem. He broke his contract last year and went snowboarding and hurt his shoulder, which is a stupid mistake. Then he lied about it, which is inexcusable. The Lakers fined him $500,000, but they should have voided his contract and waved good-bye. Dr. Buss was being kind by just fining the Space Cadet.

Kevin Ding writes,

In his final Lakers practice on Friday, Radmanovic didn’t wear basketball shoes. He wore Vans – the low-top, slip-on kind of sneakers favored by skateboarders and, yes, snowboarders.
Seriously.
Or not seriously … because what undermined Radmanovic, 28, in every attempt to make his mark as a Laker was a lack of seriousness about his profession.

Worst of all, the Serb could not defend Paul Pierce in the finals last year. If nothing else, you can think of the trade as an "adjustment," as the Lakers look to the playoffs in '09.

Now the 41-9 Lakers have many scoring options, a hustling defense and one of the best benches in the league. And they have Kobe Bryant, one of the greatest players of all time, a guy who can make something happen all by himself in crunch time.

Plus they have Phil Jackson's Jedi mind tricks, which seem to freak out the opponents. When Jackson said over the weekend that LeBron James "gets away with murder," he was playing tricks that he learned from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Sure enough, the Lakers held James to 16 points; he did not get away with murder.

Oops, I Did It Again

2008-12-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I posted on this blog that I almost forgot my username and password.

The other blog is going well. I hope you visit there. My sister does not like it as much as this one. But then, she's a liberal who can barely tolerate what I write, so I'm sure reading six other Objectivists is asking too much from her.

I swore I would stop acting. I really need to focus on writing. I saw an audition notice for Much Ado About Nothing, and told myself not to audition for Dogberry even though I've wanted to do the part for 35 years. Then the director called me and asked me to play Dogberry. I said no. Then I said yes.

I feel like Michael Corleone in The Godfather II. They keep dragging me back in!

Miss World

2008-12-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers.

It Ain't Lookin' Good

2008-12-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

Woke up to the sound of a civil war,
Wondered what the screamin' was for.
Looked out the window to get a peek
Bobby Joe asked, "How's the weather, Zeke?"

It ain't lookin' good.
It ain't lookin' good.
Daddy's done been drinkin',
Mama's got a gun.
It won't be much fun.

My Daddy is a family man, you bet.
About as good a man as you can get.
Got too much love for just one family.
Got another wife in Franklin, Tennessee.

It ain't lookin' good.
It ain't lookin' good.
Daddy's done been drinkin',
Mama's got a gun.
It won't be much fun.

We're a tight-knit family, I guess,
Tighter than Aunt Eloise's dress.
If you want some proof, I know you do,
My Dad's my father and my uncle, too.

It ain't lookin' good...

My daddy took to gardening this spring,
But he don't grow no ordinary thing.
His agriculture makes me scratch my head,
He grows some funny weeds out in the shed.

It ain't lookin' good.
It ain't lookin' good.
Daddy's smokin' something,
Mama's got a gun.
It won't be much fun.

(Copyright William Greeley 2008)

Something's Coming

2008-11-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry that posting has been light, but I'm about to start posting on a new blog with Bill Brown and others. In fact, I've already written a post for it, "The Purpose Of It All," about the tsunami of spending and regulation Obama has in store for us. As soon as the new blog gets going, we'll let you know and you'll be able to read it there.

I will leave this blog intact for more personal posts and offbeat stuff. If I ever sell a play or get my songwriting project off the ground, I will use this blog to promote those efforts. Who knows, I might sneak in some self-promotion on the other blog as well.

UPDATE: The new blog is ready for you. It's called The New Clarion.

Around the World Wide Web 82

2008-11-19T05:09:00.001-08:00

1. The Mayor of Batman, Turkey is suing Warner Brothers for using their town's name. The case is being followed closely by the mayors of Conan the Barbarian, Finland, Plastic Man, Uzbekistan and Captain America, Nigeria.

2. Cafe Press has a line of Impeach Obama gear. He's not even president yet. Needless to say, he has not done anything to deserve impeachment. This is just partisan politics hatred combined with the urge to be the first kid on the block to wear a hip new t-shirt. This is the kind of thing I would expect from the left. Disappointing.

3. This will cheer you up.

4. Recently in my day job I listened to an Urban station that celebrated Obama's election as President by playing clips of guests explaining why they supported Obama. Most answers broke down to two reasons:

a. It will be historic to elect an African-American president.

b. Obama makes us feel hopeful.

One person got specific and said that Obama would give everyone health care. (How does he do that? Is he magical?)

John Ziegler has interviewed Obama supporters in How Obama Got Elected. It is astonishing how ignorant people who depend on the MSM for news are.

5. Victor Davis Hanson has interesting thoughts on the death of the media and on recession.

6. Funny. They go down like bowling pins at this wedding.

How Socialism Comes to America

2008-11-15T07:52:00.001-08:00

Robert Tracinski writes of Obama's planned $50 billion bailout of the "Big Three" Detroit auto manufacturers:

It is actually a plan for de facto nationalization which will turn the Big Three into permanent wards of the state whose purpose is not to make a profit but to serve the "social goals" set by government.
Obama is backing a plan to pump $50 billion into the big American automakers, while also establishing "a czar or board to oversee the companies"—call it Gosplan—which will supervise "a restructuring of the auto industry." That's exactly what Detroit needs to recover: the benefit of government central planning.
In essence, this is a plan for nationalization of the American auto industry under a new government-appointed board of directors who will supposedly tell the Big Three how to make a profit again.

Blinkered pragmatists will sputter, "But the government is not seizing the property, so it's not socialism!" No, that would be socialism on the communist plan. This is socialism on the fascist plan, in which the property remains nominally in private ownership, but the government dictates what the owner will do with his property. In America the dictation is called "regulation." In this case the dictator will be an "auto czar."

As Tracinski goes on to demonstrate, this is being done to protect a powerful pressure group, the unions. If the Big Three went bankrupt and were bought up by other auto makers, the power of the United Auto Workers would suffer.

American fascism makes corporations bureaucratic managers of the welfare state. Instead of just paying workers, corporations also provide health care and retirement pensions. These functions, along with a sea of regulations, give corporations two missions: make a profit and serve as a mini-welfare state. By passing welfare state functions to the corporations, the government expands the welfare state, but evades any censure for the expansion or any blame for the corporations' failures.

The Democrats are driving this intervention in auto manufacturing, but is there any doubt they were emboldened by the Republicans' bailout of Wall Street? (The Republican led bailout started at $700 million, then was revised to $1 trillion. Now the cost is estimated at $1.8 trillion. The plan has been around less than two months.)

Michael Barone writes,

The Detroit Three are taking advantage of the passage of the $700 billion financial bailout to argue that they, too, need government money to go on.

The conservative David Brooks thinks the bailout is a bad idea, but gets the cause wrong:

It is all a reminder that the biggest threat to a healthy economy is not the socialists of campaign lore. It’s C.E.O.’s. It’s politically powerful crony capitalists who use their influence to create a stagnant corporate welfare state.

But if America had a laissez-faire capitalist economy, then C.E.O.'s would have no influence and no recourse but to pursue a profit in the free market. By Brooks' thinking, if we just had virtuous people in the private sector, then statists such as Obama would never dream of increasing state intervention in the economy.

America's descent into fascism proceeds by the script written by Ludwig von Mises. Government intervention (regulations and government backed union power) have created a crisis in automobile manufacturing. This crisis does not inspire the government to withdraw its intervention, but to increase it with a $50 billion subsidy and the creation of an auto czar who will dictate even further to the industry. In the end we will have the same result as communism, but with private ownership serving to hide the extent of state control.

We are at a turning point in America. The state is about to make an enormous power grab. In addition to the de facto nationalizing of Wall Street and the auto industry, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support are plotting to nationalize 401k pension funds. This plan would give the government trillions of dollars in pension funds to spend now; the money would be replaced by government IOU's like the nonexistent social security trust fund. With Obama in the White House and increased Democrat majorities in the Senate and House, can this looting be stopped?

Is There a There There?

2008-11-11T10:14:00.001-08:00

It is early yet. The election was one week ago. Obama will be President-Elect until January 20, 2009.

After one week it looks like the defining theme of Obama's presidency will be his famous self-definition, "blank screen." I think it was Tallulah Bankhead who said, "Deep down I'm really quite shallow." I'm beginning to think this a good description of Obama. At his core he has no core. He is a man whose essence is the desire to show other people what they want to see.

What would you expect from a Democrat blank screen? The Democrat status quo. Ron Radosh writes,

The appointment of Rahm Emanuel is more evidence for what I suggested the other day, that Barack Obama will seek to govern from the political center. As Ben Smith and John Harris suggest on Politico.com today, one must not confuse Emanuel’s tough game playing with ideology. As they and others have argued, Emanuel’s reputation is that of a centrist, who has often sought to reign in the left-wing of his party, “who does not share the reflexively liberal views of many of his House colleagues.” That judgment was seconded by Rep. Jim McCrery (R-LA) who said that Emanuel “is closer to the center, from a policy standpoint, than many of the Democratic Party.” It was also shared by Lindsey Graham, who said that while a “tough partisan, he understands the need to work together.” Graham called him “honest, direct, and candid” and a man who will “work to find common ground.”

Max Boot sees Encouraging Signs From Obama:

I worked for the other guy in the presidential race, but I have been cheered so far by the early indications of how the Obama administration is shaping up. Scuttlebutt has it that the front-runners for Treasury secretary are economist Larry Summers and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner. Either one would be a good, centrist choice. So, too, would be Jim Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser for Bill Clinton, who is now a rumored choice for national security adviser in the Obama administration.
It goes almost without saying that nothing would signal Obama’s moderate credentials more than retaining Bob Gates at Defense. So it is encouraging to read in the Wall Street Journal that the president-elect is “leaning toward” such a move, and that Gates “would likely accept the offer if it is made.” As the Journal notes: “the defense secretary strongly opposes a firm timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq, and his appointment could mean that Mr. Obama was effectively shelving his campaign promise to remove most troops from Iraq by mid-2010.”

Going with the status quo is better than the wildest fears of the right, that Obama would try to create a socialist dictatorship from day one. However, in a time when Republicans socialize Wall Street with some trillion dollars and Democrats want to nationalize 401k plans, the status quo is bad enough. There is no widespread movement to cut spending and dismantle government intervention in the economy.

But what choice does Obama have, if he wants experienced hands in his administration, than to choose from, well, those who have experience? Radical leftists are a double risk in that they have no experience. In today's climate, when politicians are terrified of taking blame for anything that goes wrong, it's hard to see how the Democrat establishment would let Obama fill his administration with unknown faces.

Another sign of Obama's deep down shallowness -- an amateurishness that merits watching in the coming years -- is his uncertainty and flip-flopping, the same stuff we saw during the campaign.

First, he was for involuntary servitude for college students, then he decided that it should be voluntary and pay $40 per hour! Then he deleted his website and we have no idea what he wants.
Then, he was for the Polish missile-shield when he was talking to Poland's president, but backtracked when he was talking to the U.S. press. (Now, Poland is kowtowing to Obama, saying it was all a misunderstanding.) This is an echo of Obama's NAFTA gaffe with Canada, which was also blamed on a misunderstanding with one of Obama's advisers.
This morning he was for closing Guantanamo Bay, and having the detainees face criminal charges in U.S. criminal courts, courts using the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or new, specially created national security courts. This evening, he has backtracked yet again.
"There is absolutely no truth to reports that a decision has been made about how and where to try the detainees, and there is no process in place to make that decision until his national security and legal teams are assembled," said Denis McDonough, a senior foreign policy adviser for the transition team, in a statement.
So where did those original reports come from? According to the AP, Obama's legal advisers.
One hand doesn't know what the other is doing so we end up with many conflicting statements. Mr. President-elect has to keep "clarifying" the positions his subordinates keep releasing on his behalf. It's almost like he has no leadership experience whatsoever.

If this goes on, then Obama will quickly disappoint his more intelligent supporters.

Competence isn't just a technique you learn from reading management books. It rests on having firm convictions. A man who can be blown one way or another by any gust of wind will be incompetent. All the evidence we have so far, from the campaign and one week as President-Elect, points to a man without principles, a man who can change 180 degrees on an issue if the need of the moment requires it.

I find all this immensely encouraging. If my analysis is correct, then Obama will be the second Democrat president in a row who was a social metaphysician -- a man who primary orientation to reality was not the facts but what others think of the facts.

A man without a core is easy to push around. Look at what the Republicans did to Clinton, a Democrat who was so intimidated by the right that he declared the era of big government to be over. The best thing that could happen to America right now is a neutered Obama worrying about uniforms for school children.

But it is still early and Obama could have big surprises in store for us. Clinton had to suffer the national health care debacle before his presidency diminished. Plus, Obama will not be hampered by Clinton's sexual appetite and risky behavior.

Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, "There is no there there." Will Obama be an Oakland president?

UPDATE: From Gabriel Melor:

Obama appears to be abandoning his promised commitment to end government torture.

Melor concludes:

The Administration-elect is only a week old and already it's foundering because of a lack of leadership.

Cartoon Politics

2008-11-10T09:30:00.001-08:00

John Derbyshire writes,

What routinely happens with a pointed NRO column is that you get a flutter of emails from appreciative conservative readers, some perhaps taking you to task on some particular point or other, or scolding you for grammatical faults (NRO readers are terrific grammarians). Then there's a pause. Then your piece get out into the Lefty blogosphere somehow, and you get a second wave of emails from ourtraged Lefties.
This is, as I said, routine. It's happened often enough, I have the measure of it, and know what to expect. Last week's Lefty emails were, though, quite unusually vituperative. I noticed the same in the weekend Letters columns of the New York Post. The Post editorialized for McCain, and carries some good conservative Op-Ed writers (including some of ours), but treated Obama with kid gloves, as McCain did. Yet they got some really vituperative letters from scandalized Obamarrhoids, furiously indignant that anyone should criticize The One.

It occurs to me that the left treats Obama the exact opposite of how it treated Bush. Bush was reviled as evil. For eight long years the left hated Bush intensely. Leftists mocked, screamed, chanted, fund-raised against, demonstrated and wrote furiously, clogging the internet with some criticisms that had something to do with reality and a lot of lies, smears and fantasies.

Just as the left demonized Bush, it beatifies Obama. It writes hagiographies. It ignores any potentially embarrassing investigations. It obsesses about how happy America is at the election of Obama. (In Topeka, Kansas, there is a movement afoot to make a national holiday after Obama. Never mind that Obama has achieved nothing but to be elected president; these people think Obama deserves a national holiday simply because of the way he makes them feel.)

In both cases the left makes a cartoon of reality -- or perhaps a Soviet propaganda poster would be a better fit. Leftists cannot think of politics in a sophisticated, adult analysis; they look with the eyes of a child or a savage. Bush is Chimpy McHalliburton, and Obama is the One.

I'm not making a pragmatist case for complexity-worship here. I'm not saying there are no absolutes, only shades of gray. I'm saying the left simplifies reality in accordance to its ideology and looks no further. The left evades reasoning about either Bush or Obama.

This cartoon version of politics is what happens when a faction loses confidence in reason and believes that force only is useful. Leftists demonize or beatify depending on the emotion they feel. No further examination is necessary. What's the point? Bush evil, Obama holy; the truth is obvious. Who needs evidence, analysis or a decent respect for the opinions of mankind?

The criticisms of Obama from the non-left will continue, much to the dismay of the President-Elect's supporters. The left does not want to answer disagreement, but wants to stifle it. With help from the MSM, Democrats will demonize the Obama deniers. How far will the left go to shut up the opposition? A better question: how far will the American people let the left go in shutting up the opposition?

A Nation of Followers

2008-11-10T00:04:00.001-08:00

My brother is a tattoo artist. He reports he is getting college girls who want the Obama O tattooed on them. (Is this better than a tramp stamp?)

Have you ever heard of people getting a tattoo of a politician's symbol? Did any Republican girls get W tattoos in 2000? Obama is an entirely new phenomenon. He brings a cult of personality into American politics.

Peggy Noonan notes,

...[The GOP] lost the vote of two-thirds of those aged 18 to 29. They lost a generation!

Two thirds of young voters voted for Obama. Most of these people, I suspect, did not question Obama when he said in his typically gaseous victory speech,

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

It did not occur to them to ask, "Where? What the hell are you talking about, Obama? Exactly what is your goal?" Instead, they cheered. Wherever you want to take us, our leader, we will follow.

Some Obama supporters, like Peggy Joseph, who thinks voting for Obama means she won't have to pay for her own gas or mortgage, are the product of the welfare state. These people have been taught all their life to look to the state for handouts.

Others are the fruit of progressive education. These are socialized people. They are collectivists terrified to think for themselves. They want to be told by the group what is cool, what is hip, what bears the stamp of approval of the group. Obama is so cool! Let's get his tattoo!

Those who do not go along with the group will be denounced as unpatriotic, racist and selfish. The popular phrase, "They just don't get it" will be used. It's a convenient phrase for those who follow the vibe of the group, as it obviates any rational argument. You either feel it or you don't, you get it or you don't.

These people are ready for a dictatorship. They are a collective waiting to be told what to do.

You can't have a dictatorship without a significant portion of the population that is willing to follow orders blindly. Benjamin Franklin's words haunt us. When asked what they were creating in the Constitutional Convention, he said, "A republic -- if you can keep it."

We cannot keep it with a nation of people who are unquestioning, passive sheep.

UPDATE: Revision.

Around the World Wide Web 81

2008-11-08T13:24:00.001-08:00

1. Obama made an ungracious joke about Nancy Reagan today in his press conference, for which he has since apologized. He has an odd juvenile streak, as when he scratches his face with his middle finger. I don't want to psychologize, but I have to wonder if these moments of inappropriate humor are expressions of a frightened little man, way in over his head, who does not want to be taken completely seriously.

2. How nice that Maya Angelou does not have to apologize for America any more. Unfortunately, the rest of us still must apologize for bad American poetry.

3. Imagine if the MSM had supported the Bush presidency. Imagine them not opposing everything Bush did, not searching for scandals in everything from Enron to Halliburton to torture to the Patriot Act. How different would the last eight years have been? We're about to see in the Obama presidency. Chris Matthews said his job is to help make the Obama presidency work -- not to judge it fairly or to examine it with an eye to keeping it honest, but to help make it work. I have never in my life heard a member of the media say something like this.

The danger here: an administration that knows the MSM will look the other way will have less fear of being caught in corruption.

4. Nancy Pelosi, in her first press conference after the election, warned of diminishing options.

Nancy Pelosi gave her first post-election press conference Wednesday, offering a sober analysis of the Democratic agenda in the near term.
“Many of our options have been diminished because of the downturn in the economy over the last couple months,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi said the economy is “the top item” on the agenda moving forward and said she plans to continue to push for a second economic stimulus package. She also mentioned a children’s health care bill and stem cell research legislation as key priorities in the short-term.
The speaker acknowledged the enormous expectations facing Obama after Democrats increased their majorities in both chambers, but warned that Democrats will face some tough decisions in the coming months.
“We have to choose our priorities very carefully according to what is achievable,” she said.

She also said Obama should govern from the middle. Why the caution? Democrats are in control of the Presidency, Senate and House; why don't they go all out?

The Speaker of the House counsels caution because things could go wrong and politicians are terrified of getting the blame for anything. They remember Clinton's first two years, which led to Newt Gingrich and the Republicans winning the House in 1994 with the Contract for America. (The Republicans collapsed like a cheap lawn chair during the budget battle of 1995, and have been a me-too big government party since, but that's a different story.)

Imagine if laissez-faire capitalists were in the Democrats' position. Would they fear going all out? Would they fear being blamed for failure? No, they would not, because they would know their policies are both moral and practical. They would know that dismantling the welfare state would generate tremendous wealth and increase every American's standard of living. They would know that repealing laws and regulations that violate individual rights is the moral thing to do. Just as a man cannot have too much health, a nation cannot have too much liberty.

The Democrats must proceed with moderation because they are dispensing poison. If they give America too much poison, it will die; they must temper their poison so that the state can ride the private sector as a parasite.

5. Don't be fooled by Obama's changing the wording of his national service plan from "require" to "setting a goal." Can you imagine how much intimidation an individualist student who refused to participate in the program would get from the thugs of the left? Service to the collective will be as voluntary as our tax system supposedly is.

6. There is a lot of talk that Republicans need another Great Communicator like Reagan.

Two related points: First, the Great Communicator was a smear created by leftists who thought Reagan fooled the American people into accepting what was bad for them -- you know, all that nonsense about the free market. The left painted Reagan as all style and no substance.

Second, GHW Bush, Dole, George W. Bush and McCain have all been lousy communicators because they had nothing to communicate. Pragmatism is not a banner to rally around. "I'm not as bad as a Democrat" does not give voters a positive value for which to vote.

Reagan was the last Republican presidential candidate who had something to say. He was indeed terribly flawed, but compared to his successors he had principles.

And remember, when Reagan developed an interest in politics he studied Austrian economics and was familiar with the Foundation for Economic Education. Although he was smeared as an "amiable dunce," he was actually the intellectual superior to most politicians these days. His effectiveness was tragically undercut by pragmatism and religious values, but he knew that government was not the solution, it was the problem.

Here It Comes

2008-11-07T19:57:00.001-08:00

Obama has called for a "draft" to force young people to do compulsory service:

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

Wow. Obama gets elected and the first big idea he floats is forced labor. I don't know what is more stunning, Obama's plans or the fact that America just shrugs and yawns like a nation of sleepwalkers. The state forcing people to work? No big deal. What's on TV tonight?

Well, Michelle Obama did say, "Barack Obama will require you to work." We can't say we were not warned.

Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has called for compulsory service in a book he co-wrote:

It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. ...

Here's how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They'll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we're hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities' most pressing needs.

J.D. Tuccille goes on to note,

Emanuel and co-author Bruce Reed insist "this is not a draft," but go on to write of young men and women, "the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service." They also warn, "[s]ome Republicans will squeal about individual freedom," ruling out any likelihood that they would let people opt out of universal citizen service.

Emanuel does not seem worried that Democrats will squeal.

I'm not so sure many Republicans these days will squeal at Obama and Emanuel's dream of enforced servitude. I told my Christian friend, who is certainly no liberal, that Obama wants compulsory service for young people. He thought it was a great idea, that all young people should have to do time serving our country and learning good values in the process. The conservative loon Michael Savage thinks it's a great idea. William F. Buckley thought it was a great idea.

So now, finally, we know what change means. Change means bringing slavery to America.

The Bright Side

2008-11-05T09:54:00.001-08:00

Barack Obama had to lie in order to win the presidency.

Obama had to lie that he would cut taxes. He had to act tough toward our enemies. He had to turn his back on radical anti-Americans he has allied with over the last 20 years.

Despite the urging of the netroots, Democrats still cannot campaign proudly and honestly as who they are. They cannot say, "I am a liberal. I want to expand government control over your lives. I want to raise your taxes and deny you the right to bear arms. And I intend to appease our enemies abroad."

So maybe America has not moved to the left. Maybe Obama won for superficial reasons in a country full of voters who don't give politics much deep thought. Given a choice of statists, they went with the charismatic young one.

The Republicans have a great thing thing going for them for the next two years: the Democrats control the Presidency, Senate and House.

Remember, the Jimmy Carter presidency led to the second best president of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan.

Meet the New Boss

2008-11-04T22:20:00.001-08:00

A year ago I predicted that a Republican would win in a landslide on November 4, 2008 because Hillary Clinton would be the Democrat nominee and America would never elect someone that far left as president. Today Barack Obama, who is even farther to the left than Hillary, won a solid victory as president.

I might have been right 20 years ago, but America has changed. It looks as if America has moved to the left.

People make much of Obama being the first black president, and indeed that is a good sign that America is not a racist nation. The ideal that all men are born equal lives in our country. Aside from this, I can find little to celebrate in an Obama victory. He is pro-choice, and the religious right has suffered a temporary setback; these are good things.

The bad far outweighs the good. Obama has promised some trillion dollars in new spending. He will probably appease our foreign enemies. As Biden said, he will be tested by enemies who smell weakness. He wants all Americans to sacrifice for the good of the collective. Reviving the Fairness Doctrine is a threat. Three Supreme Court Justices will retire in the next four years, and they will be replaced by the worst judges imaginable.

And the maddening thing is that we know very little about who Obama really is, so we don't know how bad the next four years will be. Is he your typical Democrat? Or is he a radical leftist with a hidden agenda? There were a lot of troubling little things during the campaign, such as Michelle Obama's ominous statement, "Barack Obama will require you to work." These folks don't seem to understand that in a free country the president does not force people to work.

But then, with large Democrat majorities in the Senate and the House, just being a typical Democrat might be bad enough to seriously expand state power and destroy liberty in America.

Well, congratulations to Barack Obama. And to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. It's their show now. Let us see what Democrat power brings to America.

UPDATE: In my channel surfing last night I heard Jeffrey Toobin on CNN say something about how wonderful it is to see "gender diversity" in the crowd at Obama's rally. Gender diversity. In other words, there were men and women there. As if only men go to Republican rallies, I guess.

New Leftist jargon leads one to sheer blithering idiocy.

My Vote Is Cast

2008-11-04T14:09:00.001-08:00

I left the presidential vote blank. I voted for my Republican Congressman, Jerry Lewis. (Hey, lady!) He's a worthless old pragmatist and a champion of pork, but we need Republicans in the Senate and Congress to oppose the coming push for socialism from the Democrats.

I voted yes on Propositions 9 and 11. One was about notifying victims if criminals get bail and the other was about having a commission do redistricting instead of the politicians in Sacramento. Perhaps Proposition 11 will stop outrageous gerrymandering. On all the other propositions I was Dr. No.

There was no line at my polling place, as usual.

I remember on election day in 1992 when Bush was photographed in the afternoon, way before polls closed, carrying a fishing pole as he got in a car. That was the year the bizarre Ross Perot got 19%, which allowed Clinton to win. Bush knew it was over and was already thinking of fishing. It was the last symbolic act of his half-assed presidency. I'll be watching TV this afternoon for any shots of McCain carrying a fishing pole.

I would not expect Obama ever to carry a fishing pole, especially if it looks like he will lose. At that point he will be working hard with his advisers on how they can use legal maneuvers to undermine the election. Leftists are serious about power; they're not about to give up and go fishing.

Random Thoughts the Day Before

2008-11-03T07:55:00.001-08:00

If Obama is elected tomorrow, then for the first time in history America will have a president who loves America less than the President of France loves America. I do not write this in jest; I'm serious. Here is the highlight from President Sarkozy's speech to Congress:

America did not tell the millions of men and women who came from every country in the world and who—with their hands, their intelligence and their heart—built the greatest nation in the world: "Come, and everything will be given to you." She said: "Come, and the only limits to what you'll be able to achieve will be your own courage and your own talent." America embodies this extraordinary ability to grant each and every person a second chance.
Here, both the humblest and most illustrious citizens alike know that nothing is owed to them and that everything has to be earned. That's what constitutes the moral value of America. America did not teach men the idea of freedom; she taught them how to practice it.

On Friday Obama said electing him would "fundamentally transform" America. I believe the transformation he has in mind will be the death of the individualism that Sarkozy believes is the "moral value of America." Obama wants to destroy the remnants of individualism and turn American into France.

I watched CSNY/Deja Vu over the weekend. This is a documentary of their tour in 2006 to protest the war in Iraq. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young used to be smug, insufferable, moronic hippies. Now they are smug, insufferable, moronic, fat old hippies. Anyone who goes to any rock star for politics deserves what he gets, and this goes double for hippie rock stars. I knew the politics in this movies would be bad, but I was hoping for some good music. There is none. The songs are cut short to make way for more idiocy.

Not once in the entire film does anyone make a case against the war. Rational argumentation is ignored. Instead we get emotion. We are shown a group of veterans that needs to get together and hug and cry. (My liberal sister, watching with me, said they need to "man up.") We are shown a mother who lost her son in Iraq. She says the war is "just wrong" and then she cries a lot. This is not a film meant to persuade its opponents; it is emotion for those who agree to wallow in. A complete waste of time.

We hear a lot of talk about how blacks will riot if Obama loses. Do I detect wishful thinking among the liberals who make these predictions? Is this another form of intimidation? Hey, white people -- vote for Obama or else!

Do you remember one of the first things Clinton did as president? It was to throw out his promise to cut taxes. That promise was always a lie. Clinton never had any intention of cutting any tax, but he felt he had to lie about it to win the election.

Is there any doubt Obama's promise of cutting taxes is another lie meant to win an election? Already the Democrats are signaling it's a lie by throwing out different numbers of how much a taxpayer will have to make before he gets taxed-- $250,000, $200,000, $120,000. The top figure is pure fiction meant to win the election. The other figures are meant to confuse and to ease people into the reality that their taxes will be raised when Obama is election.

Sometime around mid-November, I would guess, one of Obama's economists will announce that the deficit is even greater than anyone had suspected -- damn that Bush and those careless Republicans! -- and the tax threshold will just have to be lowered. Everyone will be called to sacrifice.

If Obama is serious about spending and redistributing wealth -- and what else are Democrats serious about? -- then he will have to raise taxes, I believe, on the upper middle and middle middle class.

One option is to start at, say, $60,000 a year, gradually increasing the percentage of the tax increase as you go up from there. Then inflate the hell out of the currency so that your average clerk in a grocery store makes $60,000 a year. Thus you achieve your goal of making everyone in America work a little bit more for the state. The destruction of wealth will be ghastly, but if they cared about the destruction of wealth, they would not be Democrats.

All of the items in this post have been attacks on the left -- and yet, I kind of hope Obama wins tomorrow. Why? Clarity.

Obama has attacked the virtue of selfishness. It is clear that he opposes the philosophy of Ayn Rand. As his big government policies fail, many Americans will put two and two together, if they still teach putting two and two together in public schools.

Plus, an Obama presidency will provide limitless content for this blog.

Gather Darkness

2008-10-31T09:06:00.001-07:00

Recently I discussed the financial crisis with a Christian who has never read a book of economics. He began by denouncing the greedy CEO's on Wall Street. I argued that greed had nothing to do with the problem, but it was entirely the fault of government intervention in the economy. After all, how does it help a greedy CEO to bankrupt his company? He won't get another job if he does. How is it greedy to commit career suicide?

The Christian took my points several times. He is an honest man who wants to know the truth, and he accepted my arguments. Then a few minutes would pass and he would be back talking about greed. I was struck by how he would return to the point of greed even though he understood it was not really the issue. His morality and the premises he had automatized in his subconscious would not let him believe greed was not at fault.

I take this conversation as evidence that the entire political battle in America is really a battle of ethics. You can win economic arguments all day, but as long people think that morality is self-sacrifice, we will never make significant progress in rolling back the state. The 20th century is one long cautionary tale with a clear moral: socialism does not work. And yet both Republicans and Democrats are leaping over themselves to expand government control of the economy. Spending just keeps skyrocketing and liberals crow that the age of the free market is over. No more of that trickle down stuff for America! We're gonna take as much money from the rich as we want and shower in wealth!

Democrats know full well that the battle is moral. They never bother to make complicated economic arguments. In part this is from ignorance: somehow I don't think geniuses such as Henry Waxman or Robert Byrd have spent 10 minutes trying to understand Ludwig von Mises. But their ignorance is not the fruit of sloth. They don't care about economics because they know it's a waste of time. All they need do is mention obscene profits or greed, and conventional morality makes the rest of their case.

Those who pooh-pooh the fear that Republicans are becoming the party of religion are not paying attention. On my local right-wing talk radio station, part of Salem broadcasting, all the political ads are meant to appeal to the religious right. There are no ads for McCain (it's California), but there are ads about propositions. The two issues getting advertising are abortion and gay marriage (they're against both). Three of the stars on the Salem network are Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved and Dennis Prager -- all religious conservatives. (Hewitt and Medved, at least, are very much economic pragmatists who denounce "extremism" because they think moderates only can be elected these days. Limbaugh is better in this respect.)

Former baseball pitcher Frank Pastore, who sometimes fills in for Hewitt, has titled his latest column, The Christian Case Against Barack Obama. He does not give any reasons in the column, just advertises some videos in which he supposedly lays out his case. My point is that you see more stuff like this than you used to.

20 years ago we knew that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were part of the Republican Party, but it felt like they were confined to a ghetto within the party. They were the voice of the Bible Belt. I was amused or sometimes disgusted by them, but I never took them too seriously. Now the religion is more widespread. Prager and Medved, intellectual Jews, would not be mistaken by anyone for Southern Bible thumpers.

John McCain had to pick the very religious Sarah Palin in order to win the base of the Republican Party.

President Bush is the religious right's greatest success so far. His pathbreaking presidency has integrated religion with the welfare state. He calls it "faith based initiatives." Dr. Peikoff says George W. Bush is to the religious state as FDR was to the welfare state.

The question of how dangerous the religious right is compared to the socialist/nihilist left, in both the near and long term, is legitimate; however, it cannot be argued any more that the religious right is increasing its hold on the Republican Party. Perhaps it controls the party.

In the comments on the last post on this blog I dismissed the idea of trying to predict the future. That was before I read this quote Donald J. Boudreaux uses from the socialist Norman Thomas in the early 20th century:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."

There is a man with a crystal ball.

We seem to be at the beginning of a new period in American history, a dark time of increasing state control. In such a moment people speculate a lot about the future. What will happen? Galileo Blogs thinks we will relive the '70s. (If so, can we do it without the bell bottom pants and leisure suits?) Arthur Laffer says the age of prosperity is over.

Those are educated guesses. We might live through something entirely unlike anything America has yet seen.

One event can change the world. World War I destroyed the benevolent and secure -- leftists would say smug and bourgeois -- culture of the 19th century. Things could never be quite the same after that cataclysm. As I have written several times on this blog, both Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises noted that no one who did not live before WWI can quite understand how positive and benevolent the west was then. The idea that fuels all of Joseph Roth's fiction is a longing for that era, a culture that would never live again. As another writer put it, you can't go home again.

The greatest world-changing event in history is Alaric and the Huns' sacking of Rome in 410 a.d. Until then the city of Rome had been accepted as a metaphysical fact of reality, like gravity or the sun rising in the east or the stars coming out at night. The sack of Rome shocked people throughout the Empire and destroyed their confidence. Augustine wrote City of God in response: all of man's creation on earth is impermanent; only the realm of God is permanent and real. The Roman Empire was over -- it was just a matter of time.

Could such an event happen in America? Yes, if there were a force in the world comparable to the barbarians in the 5th century. If, say, a religion wanted to destroy America and erect a worldwide theocracy -- a religion whose adherents believed God wanted them to kill infidels and who were willing to commit suicide in order to enjoy 72 virgins in paradise -- yes, there might be some danger if such a religion were at war with America. Fortunately, as we have been told, Islam is a religion of peace.

Besides, if such a totalitarian ideology were at war with us, we would quickly destroy all states that sponsored these warriors. We would wipe them out and demoralize their cause for all time. We would not make a half-hearted effort, swatting them down some, then appeasing this enemy and letting him survive to attack us another day. To take such a tremendous risk with America's security would be foolish and suicidal. Our leaders in Washington, D.C. are good and wise; why, they would sooner do something futile and senseless like socialize Wall Street than appease an enemy that wants to destroy us.

One suitcase nuke could change the world.

Around the World Wide Web 80

2008-10-28T13:22:00.001-07:00

1. George Reisman on the notion that laissez-faire capitalism is responsible for the latest economic crisis.

2. Renee Katz of Adventures In Existence has a You Tube page of her own. Somehow she survived 12 years of lower education with her ability to think independently intact. Maybe there's hope.

3. This magician/comedian is hilarious.

4. The most benevolent and revered One has been embarrassed recently by Joe the Plumber and the broadcast journalist Barbara West. Both people had the poor judgment to ask Obama or Biden tough questions. Now Joe the Plumber and Barbara West's husband are being investigated. This is what life under Obama will be -- anyone who does not toe the line will find himself subject to intimidation and character smears.

5. Interesting insight into the mind of Bill Ayers by Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant who infiltrated the Weathermen.

If you read the whole interview, it becomes apparent that, at least to Grathwohl, Ayers is an egoist — but one who placed others at risk, counting on them to do much of the dirty work. Grathwohl notes that oftentimes Ayers left the heavy lifting to the women in the movement, while he himself wanted nothing more than to be in charge.
Power at all cost. Attack by proxy. A sense of entitlement. The arrogant notion that of course he should be in charge of the revolution and the refiguration of the country and all its citizens. A cadre of sycophants willing to follow his lead, oftentimes without question. A complete and utter disregard for the bourgeois rules of the “Establishment” — be it the law, the courts, or the principles upon which this country was founded.
Sounds to me like he built Obama into a polished, improved (in the Alinsky sense), multicultural likeness of himself — and has taught him to play the system and build his own army of political golems.

It remains to be seen just how radical Obama is, but if the worst fears of the right turn out to be justified (and if Obama wins next week), then we'll be living through the most remarkable political story our our time: a leftist radical gains the ultimate power in America in order to destroy capitalism. That's pretty damned dramatic.

6. Michael S. Malone is embarrassed to call himself a journalist.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.
That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why is this happening?

Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.
In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.
And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.
With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.
And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country...

Journalists in the tank for Obama because of the self-interested desperation of a dying industry? Could be.

Savoring Ayn Rand's "Red Pawn"

2008-10-27T19:43:00.001-07:00

Savoring Ayn Rand's "Red Pawn" by Dina Schein is an excellent literary analysis of a great story that is little known. It's one of the best stories I have ever read, which is remarkable because it is not a novel or a short story or a script, but a treatment Ayn Rand wrote to sell the story to Hollywood. It was her first sale.

The movie was never made because it takes place in Soviet Russia and, although politics is not the subject of the story, Rand portrays communism honestly. An honest movie about communism was not possible in the 1930's, Hollywood's "red decade." Almost 80 years later, the Soviet Union no longer exists, but the movie still has not been made. Now the problem is more likely to be that filmmakers in our present culture would not know what to do with a great romantic story. In the '30's MGM, with its stable of glamorous stars and great directors, might have done the story justice; one cringes at what today's Hollywood would do to this story.

It would be criminal to spoil the plot here, so I won't say a thing about it, except that it is great drama. Rand follows her own teaching in The Art of Fiction to create an intense value-conflict that builds to stunning climax. You can read the story in The Early Ayn Rand. Certainly, you should read it before you consider listening to Dina Schein's lectures.

Dr. Schein analyzes the plot, characters and theme of "Red Pawn." She looks at how to analyze fiction, so the listener learns not just about "Red Pawn," but also about how to think about fiction in general. The course is especially useful to fiction writers, as Dr. Schein looks at Ayn Rand's fiction writing process. There are also some excellent tips for screenwriters.

I sometimes think of Ayn Rand's teachings on fiction writing as my secret weapon that most writers know nothing about. After a century of naturalism, writers have forgotten how to use value-conflicts to build a suspenseful plot that culminates in a climax. They know about conflict, but they give it little thought beyond something like, "the bad guy wants to destroy the world and the good guy wants to stop him." And it would be the better ones, who want to write an exciting plot, who think that much. Without a conscious understanding of value-conflicts, it's easy for a plot writer to get bogged down in trivia or sidetracked by nonessential matters.

Bureaucratizing Wall Street

2008-10-26T15:01:00.001-07:00

I heard a radio morning show in which the DJ's and their callers were outraged over a Wall Street firm that received bailout money from the US government, then sent its executives to a posh spa for a retreat that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone was outraged over this irresponsible behavior. To the people on this show, here was evidence of the fundamental cause behind the financial crisis: corporate greed. The fat cats only care about themselves and that's why America is in trouble.

My reaction is different. Let's say you give a man $10, and he spends it irresponsibly. He buys cheap wine and cigarettes and spends the night in foggy dissipation. It seems to me you can reach one of two conclusions:

1. I should not give this man any more money.

2. In the future I must watch this man carefully to make sure he spends the money I give him well.

Private individuals should choose #1. Once you give someone money, it is his property. You have no power to force him to do what you want with the money. If you continue to give money to someone who wastes it, whose fault is that?

The government always chooses #2. Unlike private individuals, the government has the power to force people to act as it wishes. Not only will it watch how Wall Street spends the money the government "invests," but it will pass laws dictating what can and cannot be done with the money. With the money will come regulation.

As Ludwig von Mises explains in his brilliant little book, Bureaucracy, government has to use regulation because it is not driven by the pursuit of profit.

In the private sector, everyone pursues one goal: make a profit. A chain store does not need a bookshelf full of regulations directing store managers on how to pursue profit. Within a few simple rules such as employee uniforms and corporate image, the individual store manager is left alone to solve the problem of making a profit.

In the public sector, however, functions such as police, courts and military are not motivated by the pursuit of profit. Thus the government must write books of regulations telling employees in detail what they must do in every situation.

To the extent to which government subsidizes the financial sector, that sector becomes a government agency. Its function becomes part private and part state. Wall Street firms that take government money will have two purposes: to make a profit and to do what the government wants.

Supposedly, the government is spending a trillion dollars to keep firms from going bankrupt. In theory all this money should go toward the pursuit of profit. But watch how this government involvement grows in the coming years. The government is not driven by the pursuit of profit, but by other concerns, such as altruism, collectivism and the public good -- not to mention giving money to pressure groups in order to buy votes. Government will force Wall Street to cater to its concerns, not just to pursue a profit.

Look for a big push in the coming years to turn corporations into mini-welfare states. This trend goes back to the 1940's, when employers sought to get around confiscatory income taxes by giving employees "free" health insurance. Tying insurance to work was a disastrous unintended consequence of high taxes.

Making corporations do welfare state functions is the fascist way to socialism. Mises, writing in 1944 when the Nazis still existed, describes the totalitarian end of turning entrepreneurs into bureaucrats:

The Nazis have succeeded in entirely eliminating the profit motive from the conduct of business. In Nazi Germany there is no longer any question of free enterprise. There are no more entrepreneurs. The former entrepreneurs have been reduced to the status of Betriebsführer (shop manager). They are not free in their operation; they are bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by the Central Board of Production Management, the Reichswirtschaftsministerium, and its subordinate district and branch offices. The government not only determines the prices and interest rates to be paid and to be asked, the height of wages and salaries, the amount to be produced and the methods to be applied in production; it allots a definite income to every shop manager, thus virtually transforming him into a salaried civil servant. This system has, but for the use of some terms, nothing in common with capitalism and a market economy. It is simply socialism of the German pattern, Zwangswirtschaft. It differs from the Russian pattern of socialism, the system of outright nationalization of all plants, only in technical matters. And it is, of course, like the Russian system, a mode of social organization that is purely authoritarian.

It's hard to imagine America getting this bad, but according to Mises it's just a matter of time before interventionism ends in totalitarian control of the economy. Intervention leads to crisis, which leads to further intervention, which leads to further crisis, which leads to... you get the idea.

"Socialism of the German pattern" has an added, irresistible benefit to politicians: they evade responsibility. They dictate to corporations what welfare state programs they must enact, but when things go wrong, the politicians blame the greedy corporations. As long as the corporations are driven in part by the profit motive, they are immoral to altruists. With each new crisis, the capitalists, "blinded by greed," will always be blamed, as noble altruists such as Hillary Clinton and John McCain preen about how they just want to help the little guy.

But there will be other unintended consequences of forcing entrepreneurs to behave like bureaucrats -- so many that it would take a book to be comprehensive. To look at just one more, Mises writes,

To say to the entrepreneur of an enterprise with limited profit chances, “Behave as the conscientious bureaucrats do,” is tantamount to telling him to shun any reform. Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator. Progress is precisely that which the rules and regulations did not foresee; it is necessarily outside the field of bureaucratic activities.

The virtue of the profit system is that it puts on improvements a premium high enough to act as an incentive to take high risks. If this premium is removed or seriously curtailed, there cannot be any question of progress.

The more capitalists are forced to follow regulations, the less progress and innovation we will have.

This trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street will prove to be more costly than just the money involved. The financiers should have declined the money, saying, "No thanks -- we can't afford it." The greatest cost will be our liberty.

Goodbye, GOP

2008-10-25T12:22:00.001-07:00

I listened to a lot of talk radio yesterday. Both Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt emphasized Obama's pro-choice in abortion stand in hopes of motivating the religious right to vote. Hewitt spent his entire show taking calls only from Catholics in battleground states, hoping to use Cardinal Rigali's message to Pennsylvia Catholics to get out the vote on the religious right. Limbaugh even expressed the wish that those who support abortion leave the party.

There was nothing from them about the creeping fascism that economic interventionism is bringing us. Clearly, both men see the Republican Party as a party of religious values first. Economic liberty, which they would both say they support (Limbaugh especially, as Hewitt views free market "extremism" as an electoral loser), is a secondary consideration.

It was a depressing experience. Here we are, nearing election day, and the Republican propagandists are getting serious. Time to motivate the troops! And so, both Hewitt and Limbaugh end up talking about how Obama wants to "kill children in the womb." Yes, we should never vote for Democrats because they want to kill children.

As a farcical ending to a disgusting day, I listened to as much of Michael Savage as I could take. The man is a conspiracy theorist. When you step back and analyze what Michael Savage says, he sounds remarkably stupid. He brought up the militia movement of the '90s, which he thinks was a good thing, and told his listeners in ominous tones that the movement was destroyed by the government. He thinks the bailout came because of a secret agreement between the politicians and their friends on Wall Street to give them hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from Main Street.

Savage also is hot on the foolish story about Obama's birth certificate. Because the certificate is not the original, but a copy, Savage thinks it is fake and that Obama was actually born in Kenya and is thus not eligible to be President of the USA.

So what if Obama's birth certificate is a copy? That's all I have. I had to pay money to the county in Kansas where I was born to get the copy. It's good enough to get me a drivers license, passport and social security card.

So here are three of the most influential propagandists of the right, with two of them telling their listeners Obama is "against life" and the lunatic third one screaming that Obama was born in Africa. Is it any wonder this country is going down the drain?

I intend to respect Rush Limbaugh's desire and leave the Republican Party. I will reregister as an Independent. It's not the party I joined 20 years ago. As Reagan once said about the Democrats, I didn't leave the party, the party left me.

A Message to Young People

2008-10-22T01:28:00.001-07:00

If you're not like totally into politics? I mean, if you can't like name both the Vice-Presidential candidates, or if you can't name even the Presidential candidates, or if you're uncertain as to what I'm talking about here, don't worry about it. It's totally cool. Only geeks keep track of that stuff anyway. But here's the really cool part: you should not worry about it. Forget about it, man. Play video games and watch TV. And when the voting day comes -- I won't bother you with the date, because it's better you remain vague about it -- just stay in bed. Don't worry about voting. It's cool. You can leave that to other people. Who cares?

Don't listen to those self-righteous poseurs who tell you that you have a responsibility to vote. You don't have to vote if you don't want to. It's called freedom. And forget that stuff about how you won't have the right to speak out for the next two years if you don't vote today. You can say whatever you want, but mostly you have better things to talk about anyway, so blow off those idiots.

Don't let any of those clowns make you feel guilty for not voting. The opposite of what they say is true: if you don't vote, you are serving your country. You are helping America if you don't vote, because only informed citizens should vote. You don't want all that hassle of learning about the candidates and the issues. There's nothing wrong with that. Really. Just stay home, put on some tunes and fire up the bong. Fuck voting.

This has been a public service announcement.

Another Blow to My Male Ego

2008-10-21T22:21:00.001-07:00

I went to the doctor yesterday. I have to get a hearing aid. It will cost me $2,300. Insurance does not cover it because they figure you can live without a hearing aid. And indeed, you can -- if you want to spend the rest of your life saying, "What? Could you repeat that? Once more, and enunciate, please."

How will I ever attract another woman with a piece of plastic in my ear? My life is over...

The Myrhaf Endorsement: Abstain

2008-10-20T10:56:00.001-07:00

Interventionism (or the mixed economy or the welfare state), with bipartisan support, has America in bad shape right now. The government just voted a $1 trillion bailout of Wall Street, money to be handed out per Treasury Secretary Paulson's discretion, making him in effect America's economic dictator. Social Security is heading toward a crisis.

Look for the government to inflate the hell out of the dollar in an attempt to manage this crisis without cutting spending or raising taxes. Inflation is a hidden tax, the politicians' favorite tax. Due to widespread ignorance of economics, Americans don't understand that inflation is created by the government printing more dollars. People feel the pinch of rising prices in their wallets and they blame those greedy capitalists who keep raising prices because they are unpatriotic and just in business for their own good. This popular anger at capitalists is music to the socialists' ears.

We are very much in the position of the Weimar Republic right now. Government intervention is causing crises, yet Democrats such as Barney Frank are saying, "The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it." The crises will expand and intensify as the government pours gasoline on the fire. America is setting itself up for that which followed the Weimar Republic: a fascist dictatorship.

Since America is the richest and most powerful nation in the world, it would likely drag the rest of the world into dark times with it. If you think depression would devastate America, a nation in which poor children's number one health problem is obesity, imagine how hard times would hit poor countries. We could be on the edge of worldwide starvation, war and the other horsemen of the apocalypse. Parts of Africa could go medieval.

This is the context as we Americans ponder how we should vote. Here is my explanation of how I will vote.

Recently, John Lewis sent an email to the Obloggers group containing this information:

In July the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which details their plan to force Americans to reduce emissions of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse gases.” This follows on an Executive Order signed by President Bush, which was made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court decisions ruling that CO2 is a “pollutant.” (!)
This plan will strip the American people of their freedom, and place them under the control of a single, all-powerful, federal agency. Industrial permits, furnace regulations, auto emissions testing, building permits, transportation, and food production—all will fall under the boot of the EPA. Environmentalists will use lawsuits to pressure the EPA to tighten an ever-shrinking noose around the neck of every American.

This is the first and only time I have heard about this Executive Order signed by the Republican Bush. The statutory framework now exists for the EPA to dictate to every American how much CO2 he can emit. Such a broad Executive Order gives the EPA the power to control virtually every aspect of our lives, from how much we produce to how much we travel to our heating and air conditioning to our very exhalations of breath. The limits on the EPA's power will be determined by what they think they can get away with before people revolt. Using the time-tested frog-cooking method, they will start modestly and ratchet up the controls a notch at a time.

I submit that if Bush were a Democrat president, we would have heard about this totalitarian Executive Order from right-wing radio talk shows, right-wing bloggers and Fox News. The Republicans would be screaming that leftists want to destroy our freedom -- and they would be right. But Bush is a Republican, so we hear nothing. The Democrats have no reason to publicize this Executive Order because they support it; government control of every aspect of every citizen's life is The Way Things Ought To Be. Republicans have no interest in attacking Bush because it weakens their party. Talkers such as Limbaugh and Hewitt focus like a laser beam on the Democrats and, with occasional exceptions designed to counter criticism like this, they ignore Republican folly.

Gus Van Horn has detailed Bush's Statist Legacy. The first two items alone would be enough to vilify him among Republicans, were Bush a Democrat:

Sixty-eight per cent. That is how much total federal spending rose under Bush. That is more than double the growth in federal spending over the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency.
Bush was aided and abetted by a Congress dominated by Republicans until 2006. Juicy spending bills were passed on everything from farm subsidies to health (up 44 per cent) and education (up 47 per cent). After all, Bush had run as a "compassionate conservative"; he introduced the largest new entitlement since the Great Society programs of the 1960s: a prescription drug benefit for seniors that will add a US$1.2-trillion liability over 10 years.

And don't forget that Bush, a Republican, outlawed the incandescent light bulb, a dictatorial law that is richly symbolic. I like to think that 100 years from now Bush will be remembered as the man who outlawed the light bulb.

The Ayn Rand Institute calls the recent bailout of Wall Street The Road to Fascism:

The government has announced that it plans to use $250 billion to buy ownership stakes in various U.S. financial institutions. According to the New York Times, nine major U.S. banks have already been forced into the program....
According to Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “In herding banking executives into a room and making them an offer they couldn’t refuse, the Paulson regime took its latest and most disturbing step yet on the path to state control of the economy.
“If fascism means coercive state control over nominally private property, then there is no more chilling sign of creeping fascism in America than government’s encroachment on the lifeblood of the U.S. economy—its financial institutions. While the government assures us it will be a ‘passive investor,’ merely funneling cash into the banking system rather than dictating how banks function, this is a lie. Not only does the money come with strings attached--such as restrictions on executive compensation, dividend payments, and the types of investments banks can make—but politicians are already promising a web of further controls. As John McCain recently noted, ‘We will not merely inject billions of dollars into companies and walk away hoping for the best. We will require that those companies be reformed and restructured until they are sound assets again, and can be sold at no loss—or perhaps even a profit—to the taxpayers of America.’

Note that Paulson, Bush and McCain are all Republicans. Republicans, not Democrats, are driving this fascist power grab of America's financial institutions.

This is the most important reason we should not vote for a Republican for president: When Republicans expand state intervention in the economy, no one cares. Poor, hapless Democrats! When they try to get away with a fraction of what Republicans can get away with, those same Republicans scream bloody murder. Yes, the Republicans are laughable hypocrites -- but their hypocrisy is the only thing that stops Democrats from erecting a socialist tyranny. That's the way partisan politics works in America.

Republican presidents do more damage than Democrat presidents. Among the last four presidents, the only one that did not expand government spending was the Democrat, Bill Clinton. The Republicans all spent money like drunken sailors in a Texan whore house.

This year the Republican candidate is John McCain. He gives us even more reasons not to vote Republican. Craig Biddle writes,

On the domestic front, McCain promises to “take on” the drug companies, as if those who produce and market the medicines that improve and save human lives must be fought; he promises to ration energy by means of a cap-and-trade scheme, as if the government has a moral or constitutional right to dictate how much energy a company may purchase or use; he promises to “battle” big oil, as if those who produce and deliver the lifeblood of civilization need to be defeated; he promises to “reform” Wall Street, as if those who finance the businesses that produce the goods and services on which our lives depend are thereby degenerate; he seeks to uphold the ban on drilling in ANWR, as if the government has a moral or constitutional right to prevent Americans from reshaping nature to suit their needs; and so on.

And on foreign policy,

McCain promises to “respect the collective will of our democratic allies,” as if America has no moral right to defend her citizens according to her own best judgment; and he promises to finish the “mission” of making Iraq “a functioning democracy” even if it takes “one hundred years,” as if the U.S. government has a moral or constitutional right to sacrifice American soldiers to spread democracy abroad.

Ryan Calhoun at The Dirty Kuffar reminds us that McCain is willing to reinstate the draft.

McCain has stated time and again that the only time he would support a draft would be "if World War III broke out".

As bad as Republicans are these days, McCain is even worse. He is an ideological nationalist and collectivist. He disdains the free market. He sneers at the pursuit of profit. He believes the essence of morality lies in the individual sacrificing for something greater than himself.

Another reason it would be preferable to have a Democrat president is clarity. When Republicans like Bush expand government, we do not get clarity. Instead, Democrats blame the free market rhetoric of the Republicans for the latest crisis. Thus we get talk about Reagan's "trickle down econonmics" as the cause of the meltdown in September. Under a Democrat president, the destructive policies of government intervention become clear.

By the logic of my argument I should be endorsing Obama here because Democrats are not as effective at destroying liberty in America as Republicans. I can't do it. I've never voted for a Democrat in my life, and I'll be damned if the first one I vote for is a far left radical who has allied himself with anti-Americans and then lied about it when his alliances became politically inconvenient.

Obama, a social metaphysician who prides himself on being a "blank screen" on which others can project what they want to see, is not a fringe character in the Democrat Party. He is the party. He represents most of the base. The entire party leadership has been as radicalized as Obama. If the "Reagan Democrats" understood how far left the party is (if they did not depend on the MSM for their news), they would run from the party.

It is possible that Obama, like McCain, is worse than the average politician in his party. There is the possibility that Obama is an ideological radical who -- with full, explicit consciousness -- is hiding his true intentions in order to gain power and then use the presidency to advance socialism in America. I don't think he can get far without a mandate, but I can't entirely dismiss this suspicion. But if this is true, it makes Obama only a more exaggerated version of all Democrat candidates, for every one of them since the landslide defeat of McGovern in 1972 has lied about how far left he is.

But even if we go just by what he has promised, which would add another trillion dollars to the federal budget, that alone makes him unworthy of our vote.

In voting for the lesser of two evils, there is only so much evil a voter should be asked to swallow. I will feel better about myself not voting for either Obama or McCain. Whichever one is elected, things will get worse. There are arguments for and against both men; they come out to a wash. Who knows which candidate would end up marginally worse than the other?

More important than the presidential vote is your Senate and House vote. It is important that we get Republicans in the legislature. They're the only ones that would slow down an Obama presidency. Perhaps they would moderate McCain's worst statist excesses.

I realize there is risk in my thinking. It depends on the Republicans maintaining their role as a vigorous opposition party. Fewer Republicans have the stomach for fighting every year. At some point, the party might conclude, "We're all socialists now." If so, we'll get to dictatorship a little faster than otherwise. Right now their opposition to Democrat presidents is our last hope.

Go to the polls on November 4th. Vote Republican in everything but president. Don't vote for president. Perhaps a large bloc of abstaining voters will send a message that our two major parties need to give us better candidates for whom to vote.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that on election day I will be sending $100 to the Ayn Rand Institute. With this I will know I am actually doing something to bring about change instead of just casting a meaningless vote.

Who Is Barack Obama?

2008-10-17T04:25:00.001-07:00

We know that young Barack Obama came under the influence of the ideas of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was a communist who taught, as I understand it, that socialists should become part of the capitalist power structure in order to destroy it from within.

(I have my doubts as to how effective this theory is. Once you become part of the power structure, and your livelihood, your mortgage payments, your future and your children's future all depend on that structure, would you want to destroy it? The system changes radicals before they can change it. Gaining power in our mixed economy would turn communists into fascists. At worst, socialists would work to destroy everything but their power and their 401k's.)

The still unanswered question about Obama is: what does he want? Does he secretly intend to destroy capitalism from within? Or does he want power to further the welfare state like your garden variety Democrat? How radical is he?

We know one disturbing thing about Obama. He is willing to lie in order to gain power. He said Ayers was just a guy in his neighborhood. That was a lie. He said he did not know Jeremiah Wright was an anti-American radical. Larry Elder writes,

In "Dreams from My Father," Obama talks of attending the "Audacity of Hope Sermon" (pages 292-293). There is an audio book in Obama's own voice reading this passage. Obama hears Wright speak of Hiroshima and Sharpeville as examples of acts of injustice....
What is Sharpeville? In 1960, the South African apartheid government shot down unarmed protestors, killing 69 black men, women and children. Most of the dead were shot in the back, and nearly 200 more were wounded.
Obama felt no sense of outrage to hear Hiroshima and Sharpeville mentioned in the same breath. Indeed, he was so inspired by the sermon that he uses the sermon's title -- "Audacity of Hope" -- for his second book, and as the theme of his campaign!

I would have run from Wright. Only an anti-American radical would liken Hiroshima to Sharpeville. Obama forged an alliance with the man, then lied about it when Wright became politically inconvenient.

Rush Limbaugh made an interesting observation of Obama yesterday. Obama is being praised for keeping his cool in the debates. Rush said Obama is not cool, he is cold. This is true. He keeps his emotions so controlled that he comes off passionless and reserved. It makes him hard to read. He seems to have made a conscious decision to create a persona of "presidential temperament," which is a front intended to reassure voters that he is no wild-eyed radical. It makes me more suspicious that he is hiding his true intentions -- which brings us back to my original question. What does he want?

I've linked to this several times, but we would do well to remember it:

His mild-mannered style has thrown off even some angry black radicals, who want him to speak out more forcefully about the legacy of U.S. racism and economic inequality.
One is Princeton professor Cornel West, a militant black and self-described socialist. Reportedly, West was reluctant to join the refined Obama's presidential campaign until Obama took him aside and explained to him that he had to walk a rhetorical tightrope to reassure whites. West is now solidly on board his campaign as an adviser.

Another thing worries me. We have seen in Obama's campaign a brazen new approach to political success that seems to be working (Obama's election as President will be the fruit of this new approach). Here's how it works. Obama will lie and depend on the MSM to let the lie rest uncontested. Then he will accuse his opponents of lying, which is taken up by the MSM and the left side of the blogosphere. Finally, Obama's opponents are smeared as racists or full of hatred if they stand in the Messiah's way.

The lies and smears are part of the totalitarian contempt for reason on the left that has been around a long time, but never before have we seen a candidate so willing to lie (and so good at it) coupled with a media so willing to make his lies the accepted "narrative." The left believes that the truth is irrevelant; politics is the conflict to establish your narrative over your opponent's narrative. The next step will be shutting up conservative talk radio and developing a brown shirt force to use force and intimidation against all those capitalists too blinded by greed to understand that they exist as sheep to be sacrificed to the state.

(The foolish George W. Bush has given statist Presidents a new tool to use in any ginned up "crisis":

On October 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. The new law allows the President to declare a “public emergency” at his own discretion, and place federal troops anywhere throughout the United States. Under this law, the President also now has the authority to federalize National Guard troops without the consent of Governors, in order to restore “public order.” The President can now deploy federal troops to U.S. cities, which eliminates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. In short, Bush can now declare Martial Law anytime he pleases.)

Another troubling trend has been the collapse of the conservatives. As altruists they are intellectually helpless against any expansion of state power framed as helping the needy among us. Every year fewer conservatives bother to oppose big government. The more voters depend on government handouts, the harder it is for politicians to advocate any cut in spending.

The trends on the left and the right indicate that we are entering a new period in America. This new period will see the spread of state power and the death of our freedoms, one by one.

Whether or not Obama consciously wants to destroy freedom in America -- and I think that as a "blank screen" he has become more a mixed economy Democrat than any communist -- the welfare state is doing it anyway, crisis by crisis.

Typical American Voters?

2008-10-15T11:22:00.001-07:00

Ben Smith received this email from a Republican consultant who ran a focus group that watched an ad attacking Obama:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

If these people are at all representative of the thinking among the American electorate at large...

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Scenes from the Decline of Freedom in America

2008-10-14T21:02:00.001-07:00

1. In the November 1968 issue of The Objectivist, Joan Blumenthal writes in "Art For Power's Sake" that the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1942:

"It is hardly lack of due process for the Government to regulate that which it subsidizes."

I bring this up to note that the government "investing" $750 billion -- and that's just the starting figure -- will likely bring a disastrous increase of government power over Wall Street. The state regulated through the SEC and laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley before they were invested. Imagine what they will do now that the government is subsidizing Wall Street. For instance, until now they have "jawboned" CEO's about "golden parachutes," huge bonuses, etc. Do you think lawmakers will be content from now on with just complaining?

2. Whichever candidate is elected, we will likely see a vast welfare state program in which young people do "service" to the government in exchange for a college education. This will be the beginning of a program that eventually forces every young person to serve the state for two years, either in the military or some make-work program. It will be spirit crushing drudgery that will be hardest to bear by the best, most independent thinking young minds.

3. Barack Obama is the first presidential nominee to use legal and mob intimidation to shut up his opponents. Obama said,

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face."

Look for a big push for a return to the Fairness Doctrine if he is elected. If his coattails bring along a lot of Democrat Senators and Congressmen, watch out. We could be heading for Canada-like laws against "hate speech" -- that is, politically incorrect speech, or speech that is inegalitarian. Statists the people have the right to say what they want -- as long as they say what the state approves.

Obama's disdain for the right to free speech is troubling because we desperately need to spread a rational philosophy in order to change the culture. It is freedom's last hope.

4. In his latest TIA Daily Robert Tracinski reminds us of a stunning speech by Al Gore in September in which he called for mob violence, though he did not use those words, of course.

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.

Tracinski observes that civil disobedience is supposed to be aimed at government. Against private industries, it is mob violence. He also observes that there are no commercial-level businesses that use "capture and sequestration" because costs would increase by 50%. In other words, Gore is calling for mob action against just about every business with a smoke stack.

Here are two of the most prominent Democrats, the present presidential nominee and a former one, urging people to use force. These calls are the beginning of what will develop into a brown shirt force on the left. Already people know not to put Republican stickers on a car in certain neighborhoods, such as college towns. This climate of fear is what the left wants throughout America, and the nascent brown shirt force implicit in Obama's and Gore's calls for intimidation and mob violence will be the agents of force. People will learn to think twice before they speak out against the left. The left wants people living in fear.

We are heading into the most dangerous and challenging period in American history. Yes, Americans have faced huge challenges before -- wars, depressions and riots, among others -- but never before has America been so philosophically and culturally rotten; never before has state power been so advanced. We are likely to lose a lot of freedom in the time of evil we are entering. How we respond to the next 10-20 years should tell us if the rest of the 21st century will further the decline.

UPDATE: The Dougout has a clip of Obama calling for the creation of a "civilian national security force." This force would serve as an American KGB.

A Week of TIA Daily

2008-10-13T13:50:00.001-07:00

MONDAY

There will be no TIA Daily post today, as I stubbed my toe over the weekend. The actual pain lasted only a few minutes, but it threw my sense of life out of whack. I never post when my view of the universe is less than benevolent.

TUESDAY

There will be no TIA Daily post today in honor of the holiday. Today is National Processed Cheese Day, and I have always considered processed cheese a triumph of American capitalism. Think of me when you eat your grilled cheese sandwich made with Velveeta!

WEDNESDAY

There will be no TIA Daily post today because we're focusing on our next print issue. We would like to increase production of our print issues to, well, at least more than one issue every three years.

THURSDAY

There will be no TIA Daily post today or tomorrow because I am traveling to a convention of conservatives. I need to network in order to get a good gig and fame, because I don't know if this TIA Daily thing is going anywhere.

FRIDAY

Your subscription is about to expire. Please pay $74 now or you might miss a day of our penetrating commentary that you cannot get anywhere else.

(This post is gentle satire. I respect Robert Tracinski and find his writing of great value. He has a talent for observations that everyone else misses. I expect to resubscribe to TIA Daily when the time comes.)

Despicable?

2008-10-11T02:09:00.001-07:00

Sports broadcaster Tim McCarver called Manny Ramirez "despicable" for some of the things he did in Boston.

I have a lot of respect for McCarver. Having grown up in Southern California, I was spoiled by the dulcet tones of Vin Scully, the smoothest baseball announcer ever. When I moved to New York in the '80s I was surprised to hear Phil Rizzuto (Yankees TV color commentator), Bob Murphy (Mets radio play by play) and Ralph Kiner (Mets TV play by play). All three were strange. Rizzuto was the ultimate homer who would start rambling about cannolis in the middle of a comment, then ask his partner what he should have been talking about and end by screaming "home run!" when a Yankee hit a pop-up to shallow left; Murphy had the weirdest sing-song cadence you'll ever hear; and Kiner would make my night trying to say "sponsored by Mitsubishi." Sponsored by Mitsubishi, Ralph, sponsored by Mitsubishi. Come on, you can say it tonight! After listening to Scully all my life, I felt I had moved to some cowtown in Nebraska, not New York City.

McCarver (Mets TV color commentator), however, was always interesting. He had insights into the game of baseball that others missed. Sitting behind the plate for 21 years as a catcher, he had studied the game from an excellent vantage point. Moreover, his passion for the game made viewers love the game more. That is a rare talent for a broadcaster.

Now, I don't know a thing about what Ramirez did in Boston. I'm glad he's on the Dodgers, because without him the boys in blue would not have made the playoffs. (As I write they are down 0-2 to the Phillies, so they might not be in the playoffs for long.) I gather he was unhappy at Boston and stopped playing hard. This forced Boston to trade him.

Despicable doesn't seem like the right word to use in this case. The word carries with it a moral judgment. You could call a liar, a vicious criminal or a child molester despicable.

It sounds to me like Ramirez lost his motivation in Boston. When that happens, it is easy not to work hard. You might call it unfortunate, regrettable or wrong, but despicable?

(Also, Andrew Sullivan has used the word lately to describe John McCain. In his case it just makes me think of Sylvester the Cat. DithPICKable!)

Tim McCarver cares about the integrity of the game of baseball. As I noted above, his love of the game makes watching it more fascinating. He gets angry when he sees modern players phone it in, and I can see his point. When a man puts on the uniform, he should play hard. When a player becomes unhappy with an organization or thinks he has not been treated fairly, the reality is that he might deliver less than 100% effort. The word despicable in this context sounds hysterical.

I'm not disputing McCarver's judgment. I just wonder if despicable is le mot juste.

UPDATE: Slight revision.

Republican Anger

2008-10-10T17:24:00.001-07:00

Here's the latest silliness among the reality based community. From Devilstower at Daily Kos:

There's something happening here, and what it is, is all too clear. McCain - Palin rallies over the last few days have disintegrated into festivals of hate, and the two candidates at the center of this are encouraging it.
...
McCain and Palin are soaking in the crowd's anger, amplifying it, and feeding it back.
...
The language McCain and Palin are using: "radical," "palling around with terrorists," "willing co-conspirators" is growing more heated by the day. It's language that's compounded by the "dangerous" commercials McCain is running across the country. It's the kind of language that you use in describing an enemy in wartime. It's the kind of language that not only excuses violence, but encourages it. More and more it sounds as if McCain has inhaled the ghost of Joseph McCarthy and is exhaling the fevered rancor of Charles Coughlin.
...
Whatever it is, it's ugly. And getting uglier. Any decent candidate -- any decent human being -- would be working now to tamp down that ire, not raise it.

Hunter at Daily Kos then takes up the theme, speculating that McCain is losing his sanity.

I'm honestly beginning to think that McCain is... unhinged. Not by a lot, but by enough. ...I can't help but look at the McCain/Palin campaign's sudden, apparently random focus on Obama and Ayers -- in the middle of a complete economic meltdown, no less -- and think, what the hell?
...
I also think you have to be more than a little nuts -- or at least very, very bitter -- to be egging on crowds to the extent that both Palin and McCain have been. The last week has seen Republican rallies turn into screaming hate-fests, celebrations of the notion that the other candidate is a terrorist, or is anti-American, or is a danger to the nation or the like: stuff that the Secret Service really, really dislikes, and would generally put a stop to if it wasn't their own damn charges leading the rhetoric. From Palin, I'd expect it. She's proven herself at this point to be dumb as a f--king rock, and has a history of being bitterly, viciously mean in service of whatever it is she wants. She probably thinks the rallies are a hoot.

By the time Kagro X throws in his (or her) two cents, the Kossacks are hallucinating "incitements to domestic terrorism."

It's clearly the right thing to do to demand that John McCain and Sarah Palin's sick incitements to domestic terrorism must stop.
But it's not going to. This is how they do things. When Republicans are in power, as they are now, they use the mechanisms of government to do their political violence to the constitutional order, as they've done by "normalizing" the existence of the surveillance state, of secret government, and even of nationalization of entire economic sectors.
It's when Republicans fall out of power, or fear falling out of power, that the violence they do to what used to be our system of government threatens to turn physical. And it's the fear of being overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box that's bringing it out in them now.
It's no coincidence that the traditional media is noticing a disturbing uptick in violent rhetoric at McCain/Palin events, both inside and out, and from both the candidates and the crowds. It had to happen. Sarah Palin's entire political career is steeped in the same wingnut "black helicopter" militia insanity that manifested itself in the Oklahoma City massacre and other infamous explosions of blood-spattered, far-right paranoia like Ruby Ridge and Waco. Wading in up to their hips right at the peak of it all, though admittedly at the far-flung fringes of it all, were Sarah Palin and the man whose bizarre personal vendettas she lives to prosecute: Todd Palin.

The madness inspires Andrew Sullivan to a stirring post that needs to be set to music by Wagner.

The McCain-Rove fusion ticket has spent seven days spewing 100 percent negative advertizing, roiling angry mobs, deploying Palin to call Obama a traitor and a terrorist, pushing Fox News propaganda - and they have indeed succeeded in capping Obama's national rise at just under 50 percent. But McCain's numbers keep sliding and are lower on Friday than they were on Monday: 41.8 percent on Pollster; 42.9 on RCP; and a projection of 347 electoral votes on 538. Can you lose an election and your soul? McCain is testing the premise. It's a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions - because McCain did it to himself.

Angry Republicans! Is it the end of freedom in America?

Leftists have antennae finely attuned to catch any whiff of negative emotion on the right. It sets them apondering strenuously, as we saw above. But to the constant barrage of anger, hatred and fear from the left for Chimpy McBushnazi, they can't be bothered even to yawn.

Need I remind the reader what we have seen on the left for the last eight years? Calls for Bush and Cheney to be tried as war criminals? Accusations of genocide? Calling Republicans Nazis? The hatred and anger on the left has been unrelenting. Michelle Malkin wrote a book about it called Unhinged. Unlike the angry Republicans, when leftists get angry, some of them do commit violence.

I'm angry myself because I have a lot of questions about Barack Obama that I would like answered, but the MSM have decided not to press Obama to answer any questions that might embarrass him. It's outrageous how the media are coddling and boosting Obama.

I'm not sure if the Kossacks (and the very strange Andrew Sullivan) honestly fear that the angry Republicans are a danger to become violent mobs. I picture in my imagination a bunch of country club Republicans throwing trash cans through the window of a Starbucks, then texting their broker to see if their Starbucks stock is still okay. Yes, a Republican mob is something to fear.

I suspect that what they really fear is that McCain will use this emotion to motivate Republicans to vote. And fear this they should, for attacking the other party is all that either major party has in our time. Fear, anger and hatred of the other party is the way both parties rouse their base because neither party has anything positive to offer America. We live in a welfare state in which two gangs -- Democrats and Republicans -- fight over power so that they can control who gets to dole out the loot to pressure groups in hopes that the money will buy more votes in the future.

Every two years we see this spectacle of these two gangs reviling one another, hoping to make voters fear and loathe the other side more than they fear their side. Sometimes the attacks are true, sometimes they are not. Sometimes the emotions are rational, sometimes they are not. Each party's base buys into the attacks from their gang; the independents, who have no emotional attachment to either party, tend to be disgusted by the negativity.

If a party stood for liberty and individual rights, then perhaps it could motivate voters to vote for them out of admiration for their values, not just fear and loathing of the other gang. Such a party does not exist in America.

"It's earlier than you think." --Ayn Rand, 1964

Is It Socialism?

2008-10-10T08:36:00.001-07:00

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House argues that Obama is not a a socialist. (Right Wing Nut House is meant to be an ironic name, as Moran is actually a pragmatist Republican, the type that has plagued the party at least since WWII. In the 1960's, Moran would have been a Rockefeller Republican calling Goldwater an "extremist.")

Calling Obama a “socialist” simply isn’t logical. He doesn’t share the belief that industries should be nationalized by the government or even taken over by the workers as many American Marxists espouse. He may not be as wedded to the free market as a conservative but he doesn’t want to get rid of it. He wants to regulate it. He wants “capitalism with a human face.” He wants to mitigate some of the effects of the market when people lose. This is boilerplate Democratic party liberalism not radical socialism.

I detest conservatives throwing around the words “socialism” and “Marxism” when it comes to Obama as much as I get angry when idiot liberals toss around the word “fascist” when describing conservatives. I’m sorry but this is ignorant. It bespeaks a lack of knowledge of what socialism and communism represent as well as an ignorance of simple definitions. Obama will not set up a government agency to plan the economy. He will not as president, require businesses to meet targets for production. He will not outlaw profit. He will not put workers in charge of companies (unless it is negotiated between unions and management. It is not unheard of in this country and the practice may become more common in these perilous economic times.).

An Obama presidency will have more regulation, more “oversight,” more interference from government agencies, more paperwork for business, less business creation, fewer jobs, fewer opportunities. It will be friendlier to unions, more protectionist, and will require higher taxes from corporations (who then will simply pass the tax bill on to us, their customers). But government won’t run the economy. And calling Obama a “socialist” simply ignores all of the above and substitutes irrationalism (or ignorance) for the reality of what an Obama presidency actually represents; a lurch to the left that will be detrimental to the economy, bad for business, but basically allow market forces to continue to dominate our economy.

Moran makes one mistake. He equates socialism with socialism on the communist plan. He forgets the fascist plan, which is what America is on. In the fascist plan of socialism, the means of production is left in the nominal ownership of private individuals. All government does is regulate it, along with all the other things Moran says Obama will do above.

The fascist plan is attractive to American politicians because it is deceptive. They can get away with dictating the economy without actually seizing ownership. Moreover, they avoid responsibility and blame when things go wrong -- as they are doing in the current crisis, which was caused by government intervention, but is blamed on deregulation. When things go bad, socialists on the fascist plan depend on pragmatists like Moran to assure the "extremists" that everything is fine and all we're in for is a little more regulation. We can live with a little more regulation, right?

Ultimately, the mixed economy is unstable. Government intervention creates crises which lead to greater government intervention, which creates new crises which lead to further government intervention until the economy is controlled by the government in a de facto, if not de jure dictatorship.

As the welfare state grows, we become more and more accustomed to the loss of liberty. A man 100 years ago would certainly think the level of government intervention in the economy today is dictatorship. Benjamin Franklin said, "It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part." Things have changed since the Enlightenment. We would now perceive a government that only taxed 10% of wages as almost laissez-faire.

As a piece in the UK's Telegraph, pointed out by Harry Binswanger on HBL, writes,

The maxim of the American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand came close to fulfilment before the denouement of Old Labour on May 3 1979: that the difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.

On the Debate I Did Not Watch

2008-10-08T04:57:00.001-07:00

I missed the debate last night. The Lakers had their first pre-season game. I'd rather watch the Lakers play a meaningless game than watch two idiots argue over how they plan to spend the money I make.

The Lakers look good. Their 20-year old center Andrew Bynum nailed his first three shots, several of which were 10-foot jump shots; he's not just a dunker like Shaq. Bynum is being tutored by the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and it shows.

But you don't come to this blog to read about sports.

Reaction to the debate on the right ranges from not enough to change things to disaster.

Not only does McCain approve of the bailout, but he wants to expand it by $300 billion! On a purely political level, setting aside whether or not bigger government is a good idea, this strikes me as a loser. It's not the way a Republican wins an election. Those who think bigger government is a good idea will vote for the Democrat. The rest will vote for McCain for other reasons, hoping he doesn't go too far in the pursuit of socialism. Some Republicans who might have voted for McCain will be demoralized by his socialism and stay home on November 4th.

I'm beginning to wonder if McCain believed his PR a bit too much during all those years when he was the media's pet Republican. He concluded that the way to success is to oppose the Republican base and court independents. This is looking like a loser strategy. October 8, 2008 is a hell of a time to figure this out. It might be too late for McCain to give himself up completely to his conservative advisers and follow Sarah Palin's lead to the White House.

I predict that if McCain loses in November he will instantly become the MSM's favorite Republican again. But he will also become the Republican most reviled by the right. Conservatives had to swallow a lot to support McCain. They did it because they want power. If McCain can't deliver power, he is useless. If a lot of Republicans are like me, they will want McCain to go away and never be heard from again.

UPDATE: Boortz complains about McCain's performance in last night's debate:

So many lost opportunities last night ... how in the world does someone light
a fire under this guy? There's not all that much time left.

It's too late. McCain is who he is -- and that is someone who is ignorant and contemptuous of free market economics. We are now seeing why he never should have won the nomination. It is not just that he is wrong, but he can't win. Statist Republicans can't beat Democrats at their own game.

Around the World Wide Web 79

2008-10-08T03:50:00.001-07:00

I understand it is against military policy for our troops to call the enemy insensitive names such as camel jockey.

Imagine a Marine fighting in intense, hand to hand combat. He screams, "Die, you raghead son of a bitch!" Is this Marine now subject to military discipline because in the process of killing the enemy he called him a bad name?

And I ask again, is this any way seriously to fight a war?

1. Bernard Chapin has an excellent look at Obama's smear tactics.

Barack Obama’s tactics are totalitarian and un-American. They illustrate that, while we should reject him for a thousand reasons this November, none is more convincing than the palpable contempt he has shown for free speech.

Indeed, free speech is our most valuable right, if rights can be more valuable than one another. Spreading reason is our only chance of changing this culture, which is marching in ignorance toward the abyss of socialism. We desperately need to maintain free speech or all is lost. This is one area in which, so far, the left is clearly worse than the right.

2. The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has set up a web page regarding the economic crisis.

3. Obama's plans to destroy freedom in America.

4. McCain is said to be grumpy about having to attack a Democrat.

After his first debate with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), both spectators in the hall and commentators on TV noted that McCain had deliberately avoided looking at his rival.
A close McCain friend said the reason is clear: McCain is miserable about having to run a campaign that’s antithetical to his persona.
“He is basically having to be somebody that he isn’t,” said the friend, who remains strongly supportive. “He is just not a guy that goes on the attack in public. For him to be on the attack constantly, attacking Obama’s character … McCain is uncomfortable with that, and it’s made him grumpy.”

How sad that Senator McCain is inconvenienced in this election, and must attack his ideological soulmate, a Democrat.

We should not be surprised by this. McCain achieved prominence by attacking Republicans and allying with Democrats. This is how he became the MSM's favorite Republican.

If McCain goes on to lose, it will be because, in a contest between a Democrat and a me too Republican, voters went with the more consistent Democrat.

5. Bolivia is on the brink of crisis.

Bolivia is synonymous with political and social strife. Long known for its deep social inequities and political turmoil, this country of 9 million people has increasingly been divided geographically, economically, and even culturally. Two groups now fight for control of the state: those in the lowlands, mostly capitalist mestizos (people of mixed European ancestry) who support globalization and benefit from Brazil's booming economy, versus the indigenous groups in the Andes, the anti-American Aymara and Quechua, who prefer state control of the economy.

This reminds me that if Obama is elected, every anti-American force in the world will think, "Now is the time to test America's strength."

6. Who is Obama? I have struggled with this question on this blog. I find it astonishing that on October 8, 2008, we still do not know. The man is a cipher. The big question: is he hiding radical leftist, anti-American plans?

A.M. Siriano asks the question the MSM are afraid to ask: What if Obama doesn't have America's best interest at heart?

We don't know the answer to that question. This is not hysteria or fear-mongering, but a rational question raised from what little we do know about Obama. He said he admired his father; the man turns out have been a hardline communist. He spends 20 years listening to a radical, anti-American preacher, then lies about it. He forges an alliance with an anti-American terrorist, then lies about it. When speaking to his fellow leftists in San Francisco he reveals a condescending, materialist view of Americans turning to God and guns because of economic hardship.

Who is Obama?

Ignorance of History

2008-10-07T03:11:00.001-07:00

I was watching TV once with a young woman in her 20's. The show, on the History Channel, I think, mentioned the war in the Pacific in WWII. The girl asked me who won the war in the Pacific.

How does an American reach voting age still so ignorant of American history as not to know who won WWII?

Here are other examples of American ignorance of history.

When the state runs schools, its primary goal is not education but indoctrination. The communists wanted to create citizens loyal to communism. The Nazis wanted to create little Nazis. In America, the New Leftist welfare state wants to create New Leftist welfare statists.

Knowledge of American history does not advance the New Left's goal. In fact, knowledge of America's individualist heritage and history of freedom can only get in the way of their goal of creating little statists.

Moreover, a citizenry that is educated at all, not just in history, is not in the interest of the teachers unions and government run schools. Intelligent, independent thinkers might question the premise of socialized education. Why would teachers whose jobs and pensions are dependent on the perpetuation of the current system want to create independent thinkers who might take it all away from them? Better to create Americans who can be lied to and controlled. An ignorant populace is an obedient populace. Obedience is the ultimate goal of state indoctrination.

Americans will continue to be dumbed down as long as that is in the interest of those in charge of young minds.

Is It Over?

2008-10-07T00:31:00.001-07:00

Robert Stacy McCain argues that the presidential race is over.

John McCain lost the election Sept. 24 and Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. Nothing that is likely to happen between now and Nov. 4 can change this outcome.
Since Sept. 24, polls have increasingly pointed toward a Democratic landslide. Obama not only has an outside-the-margin advantage in nearly every national poll, but leads strongly in enough battleground states that if the election were held today, the Electoral College vote would be 353 for the Democrat, 185 for the Republican. Even Karl Rove's electoral map now shows Obama winning.

R.C. McCain blames the bailout bill. McCain took a leadership role in passing a bill that most Americans did not like. In doing so he sided with Bush and cemented the impression Obama has been trying to sell that a McCain presidency would be Bush's third term.

If this argument is true, then there is some poetic justice to McCain losing because of his economic ignorance. This is precisely why he should lose. What kind of Republican can't even muster an attack against the Democrats for causing the mortgage crisis with their social engineering of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The irony is that McCain will lose because he is too much of a liberal on economics. This is a lesson Republicans would do well to learn.

But there is also an exasperating side to all this. Why should Obama benefit? Do voters think Obama understands economics any more than McCain? Don't they know that he represents more of the big government policies that created the mess we're in?

It becomes theatre of the absurd when you consider what Obama did during the bailout. He did what always does: nothing. The guy is like the Peter Sellers character in Being There.

Apparently, being the emptiest suit is the path to victory in 2008. When you take a bold stand, you can get blamed for it when things go wrong. When you do nothing and remain a "blank screen" for voters to project their ideals upon, you can ride their fantasies all the way to the White House.

I am worried most right now about Obama's coattails. More important than the presidential vote this year is the Senate and House vote. We must elect Republicans in the legislative branch to oppose Obama. If Obama gets 60 Democrats in the Senate and more Democrats in the House, and the MSM inform us that the age of Reagan is over and that Obama has a mandate for socialism... watch out. I would say the sky's the limit for Obama, but he will be taking us down, not up. Hell's the limit.

UPDATE: I see that yesterday McCain did begin attacking Obama about the mortgage crisis. It's a good line of attack, if it does come a week late. By the way, with all the crazy twists and surprises we've seen this election year, it might be too soon to call this race over.

The Premise of Power and the Power of Premises

2008-10-06T05:34:00.001-07:00

I chatted with a liberal Democrat today. She denounced Sarah Palin as an idiot. Like a parrot she recited the impression of Palin the MSM have been working overtime to convey to voters. Palin is stupid, dangerous and unworthy of power.

And Obama and Biden are what? Geniuses?

Democrats never think Democrats are stupid or inferior. Democrats can smell the aura of power lust in their fellow party members, and this aroma -- an intoxicating blend to the left -- gives their side legitimacy and weight. If a politician has nothing else but the will to power, he has enough for the left. To want to control others -- to deprive them of their freedom and dictate how they should live their lives -- is the be all and the end all of leftist politics. It is their moral and political ideal.

Democrats can sense that Sarah Palin is not consumed with power lust. She is a typical middle class American, with values outside the quest for power that are as important to her as her political career. To the left she should be among the ruled, not the rulers; among the cattle, not the cowboys. Their outrage at her is like that of a slavemaster in the ante-bellum South toward a slave who wants to learn to read. This one is uppity. This one must be put back in her place.

This year we have seen the premise of power intensify on the left. For the first time, a major party candidate has taken on elements of a cult of personality usually seen in communist countries. Children sing mawkish songs praising the great Obama. Obama has used legal threats and intimidation to shut up those who would speak against him. The MSM act like Pravda in the old Soviet Union, self-censoring any news that makes their glorious leader look bad. On top of all this, the financial crisis has led to greater government intervention in the economy. Things are changing quickly for the worse in America.

Most people, I would submit, do not understand how bad things will get or how quickly we can lose our freedom. Many Americans, especially pragmatists, have a hard time understanding that principles tend to work for those who act most consistently by them. Philosophic premises follow logic to its extreme end, despite the denunciation of extremism by moderates.

Perhaps the greatest example of the logical working out of premises in history is the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius that climaxed at the Council of Orange in 529 a.d. Wikipedia explains:

Pelagianism is a theological theory named after Pelagius (ad. 354 – ad. 420/440). It is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature (which God called very good), and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without Divine aid. Thus, Adam's sin was "to set a bad example" for his progeny, but his actions did not have the other consequences imputed to Original Sin. Pelagianism views the role of Jesus as "setting a good example" for the rest of humanity (thus counteracting Adam's bad example). In short, humanity has full control, and thus full responsibility, for its own salvation in addition to full responsibility for every sin (the latter insisted upon by both proponents and opponents of Pelagianism). According to Pelagian doctrine, because humanity does not require God's grace for salvation (beyond the creation of will),^[1] Jesus' execution is devoid of the redemptive quality ascribed to it by orthodox Christian theology.
...
Pelagianism was opposed by Augustine of Hippo, who taught that a person's salvation comes solely through a free gift, the efficacious grace of God, and that no person could save himself by his works.

It would have been much better for Christianity and the west if Pelagianism had held sway and man had not been condemned with Original Sin. But the logic of Christianity's premises made Augustine's victory inevitable. Man was stripped of nobility and considered a worm, a helpless wretch entirely dependent on the grace of God for salvation. Life on Earth was belittled as an illusion; this was a place where one could be tempted by Satan. Augustine denounced science as "the lust of the eyes." This was the philosophic death blow to classical civilization.

The triumph of Augustinism resulted in the Dark Ages. Though the empiricist-minded love to cite 20 or 30 reasons that might have contributed to the Dark Ages, from weather patterns to barbaric migrations, those factors always existed. They had the power to devastate civilization in the 6th-10th centuries because the west was disarmed by philosophy. People were not taught to look at reality scientifically in order to find solutions that would improve human existence. What was the point? This world was an illusion. Only life after death had any meaning.

Doubtless, there were many upper class Romans in the fourth and fifth centuries who scoffed at the idea that Christians would take things to extremes. How could anyone without a suicidal death wish want to destroy their glorious classical civilization? Why would they let their institutions, their cosmopolitanism, their learning and their rule of law slip away and be forgotten? Rational people don't do such things.

And yet it happened. It had to happen because people would rather be moral than practical. In a conflict between the moral and the practical, people go with their morality. (A proper morality does not conflict with practicality, but the west does not follow a proper morality.) The premises of Christianity are at war with happy, productive life on Earth. Christians followed their premises into darkness and chaos.

Today the premises of altruism, statism and collectivism are leading America toward a fascist dictatorship. The left is more consistent with these premises and more committed to following them to their logical end. And that end -- make no mistake about it -- is totalitarian dictatorship. Many will scoff at this as those Roman patricians did, but we have already caught a glimpse this year in that list of trends noted above where the logical working out of our premises is taking us.

The lust for power is greatest on the left, but the right is catching up. The right is declining rapidly as it forgets its heritage of half-hearted mumblings about free markets and becomes a full-throated welfare state party. In the long run the right is more dangerous than the nihilist left because it brings with it that great destroyer of civilization, religion. People cannot live long with nihilism; they can, however, accept the destruction of values on Earth if they think they will be rewarded for eternity after death. Religionists will make hell on Earth for the promise of heaven in a supernatural realm.

Altruism, the idea that only sacrifice is moral, is a morality of death. It is opposed to the Enlightenment values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The premise of altruism is leading America toward the abyss. Our only hope is to change our philosophic premises.

For those who yearn for good news, I will say this: we are much better off than the west was in the 6th century a.d., for now we are philosophically armed. Now we have a defense of the morality of rational self-interest, the epistemology of reason and the metaphysics of reality. We have the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It's just a matter of spreading the news.

Until then, things will continue to get worse. Before this year I thought we had plenty of time to get the word out. Now I'm not so sure.

An American Carol

2008-10-04T00:31:00.001-07:00

I went to see An American Carol. It has some novelty value as a right-wing movie made by Hollywood. As Dr. Johnson said of a dog walking on two legs, the wonder is not that he does it well, but that he does it at all. Aside from the interest of watching a right-wing movie, which gets old pretty fast, the film has little of worth. Like most movies, it is idiotic and tedious.

I was the only patron in the theater at a 10:15pm screening on Friday night. I got up during the second half and stood for awhile to keep myself awake. I don't expect this movie to do much at the box office. (BTW, the ticket, a bottle of water, small popcorn and candy cost me $22. For a family of five we're talking $100. I would guess that's why they make DVD stores.)

Hollywood can make stupid left-wing movies, and now it has proved it can make stupid right-wing movies. Mostly it makes just stupid movies that don't aspire to any ideology. When Hollywood makes good, intelligent movies, I'll be impressed.

On the way home I heard "Since I've Been Loving You," by Led Zeppelin on the radio. What a great song. Both Page and Plant are at the top of their game on that recording. Page's guitar work is amazing.

The Vice-President Debate

2008-10-02T21:04:00.001-07:00

Man, that was boring.

The big question, of course, was how Sarah Palin would do. Would she be the bad bullshitter she was in recent interviews? Would she be the drooling moron the Kossacks so desperately want to smear her as?

She was poised, intelligent and confident. She passed the test easily. She also has a winning personality and charisma most politicians would sell their soul to have. Charisma has always been the CW about the Democrats' idol, President Kennedy. If the MSM were not functioning as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, the word charisma would be mentioned in every lead paragraph of every story written about Sarah Palin. Since she is a Republican, the story they tell instead is one of a stupid, unprepared woman. Americans saw tonight that the MSM's story has little to do with reality.

This is not to say Palin does not have a serious problem in that she has never been terribly interested in national issues and is not informed. When Couric asked her what Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with, she couldn't even come up with Kelo. This is a woman who has been far away in the arctic circle not paying a lot of attention to American politics.

Facts can be learned fairly fast, though. Can Obama ever learn the values of freedom and individualism? Can Obama unlearn a lifetime of being surrounded by anti-American radicals? I'm a lot more worried about the premises Obama brings to the White House (and his strange, nebulous character) than I am about Palin's preparedness to serve in the Oval Office if McCain should die as President.

Most of the debate can be dismissed as welfare state BS. Both Palin and Biden speak in platitudes designed to offend as few voters as possible. Obama talks about change and McCain talks about reform, but whoever gets elected will give us bigger government and business as usual.

Palin's biggest failing was to agree with her running mate -- something Vice-Presidents pretty much have to do -- that the problem on Wall Street is greed. Those darned financiers just wanted to make too much money, and somehow that created the current crisis. So Palin is rather stupid -- not in the way the Democrats think, but because she talks like a Democrat.

At one point, and I can't find a transcript of the debate to copy and paste from, Biden accused McCain of supporting deregulation. I believe Palin denied it. Deregulation did not cause the economic crisis; it is what we need to solve the problem and get the economy moving again. But on deregulation McCain/Palin side with the socialists. In their deep ignorance they have chosen to side with power over liberty, with darkness over light. History will not be kind to them.

The Cloward-Piven Candidate?

2008-09-30T03:51:00.001-07:00

When the Russians invaded Georgia in August, Republicans must have smugly thought, "Good. When issues of national security dominate people's concerns, they vote Republican!" History had returned, the glib saying went, and that was good for McCain.

In this bizarre election year they should have known history had some more to say. What do we get in September? The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. For whatever reason, this seems to be helping the Democrat.

The graph in this post by Jay Cost shows McCain's poll numbers falling with each bit of financial news.

This election is beginning to look like an absurdist comedy to me, especially if Obama goes on to win. Obama is a comic character. What has he done in life but run for office? He voted present over 120 times as a State Senator. He's a guy who stays quiet and goes along with the machine.

During the negotiations for the bailout bill -- despite what you think of the bill, and I do not support it -- McCain went to Washington and was in the trenches doing whatever Senators do. Obama did nothing. The bill collapses and Obama's lead over McCain grows.

Jim Simpson thinks something more sinister is going on, something called the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?
Why?
One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.
I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.
The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:
"The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."

In other words, Democrats don't care if their policies destroy the economy because that serves their ultimate end of socialism. Crises are good for the left. They blame capitalism and then move us closer to socialism. You'll note that the standard line on the left is that deregulation caused the current crisis and solution is more regulation. The cause of our problems is never government and the solution is never freedom.

Is Obama in on this nefarious goal of advancing socialism through crisis? Simpson thinks so:

I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was?? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?
As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN's Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN's successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN's representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns -- both with money and campaign workers; it is doubtful that he was unaware of ACORN's true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

I'm suspicious of Simpson's explanation. If Obama believes in and fights for Cloward-Piven, then he will have a contradiction at the heart of his presidency, for presidents are admired for their accomplishments, not the crises they create by screwing up. Or does Obama plan to go past the crisis phase to the institution of socialism?

Another thing that makes me suspicious of Cloward-Piven is that, as Mises and the Austrian economists have demonstrated, government intervention creates crises regardless of the motivation of interventionists. Many politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, earnestly think they are making things better when they pass laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley or the Community Reinvestment Act. (Are the well meaning ones mere useful idiots of the radicals?)

Finally, Simpson's theory reminds me of the John Birch Society's old ways of finding a communist conspiracy behind, well, everything. As Ayn Rand wrote, the Birchers don't understand the role of philosophy. Those who hold the same philosophic premises will tend to want the same political policies. Those who do not understand the role of philosophy in man's life think conspiracy theories are at work.

None of my reservations refute the idea that there are radical groups out there that want to replace capitalism with socialism. No question, these leftist radicals exist, they have infiltrated to the heart of the Democrat Party, and Obama has had connections with these groups all his life, starting with his hard-line communist father. But the goals and machinations of the radical left are not the fundamental explanation of America's stumbling from crisis to crisis toward socialism. No, at the root of the problem is the philosophy of altruism, which leads to government intervention in the economy to help the "little guy," and which -- rather conveniently for the acolytes of Cloward-Piven -- does not care if its programs make the world actually better. With altruism, intentions are always more important than results. In the end, altruists are more interested in putting chains on the rich rather than raising the standard of living of the poor. As Ayn Rand showed, their goal is to attack the good for being the good. This destructive, nihilist philosophy led to Cloward-Piven, not the other way around.

Paul Newman, RIP

2008-09-27T21:15:00.001-07:00

Great movie actors have an elusive, hard to define quality called screen presence. It is not just a matter of beauty, although beauty helps. Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn and the mature Joan Crawford, none of them great beauties, had screen presence. Hedy Lamarr, called by some the most beautiful woman of the last century, wasn't much of a screen presence. (These actresses flourished back when Hollywood made movies for adults. Today Hollywood is a factory for making comic book movies, and actresses too old to play the action hero's sex kitten struggle to find work.)

Paul Newman had screen presence as much as anyone ever has. He was the ultimate movie star, although he had contempt for Hollywood and chose to live back east. I remember him reading a letter from a fan of his food products that said toward the end, "My wife tells me you are also an actor." The writer went on to wish him luck in his acting career. Newman carried the letter in his wallet to keep his Hollywood fame in perspective. He was not one to believe his press agent's PR.

Newman also said once that every audition he went to in the '50s, he would see James Dean coming out the door with the part. (How would like to be a mere mortal actor back then competing against Paul Newman and James Dean?)

I'm conflicted about Paul Newman because, though he a brilliant actor, he represents the rise of naturalism in Hollywood in the '60s. I'll never forget how startling and original Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was in 1969. Early in the movie there's a scene in which Butch (played by Newman) is arguing with this big guy in his gang. It looks like the scene is heading toward a fist fight -- standard stuff in westerns. Then Newman kicks the big guy in the balls. The fight is over before it begins. My 12-year old self could not believe what I was seeing. He kicked him in the balls!

If the kick in the balls seems like a cliche now, it is only because William Goldman's screenplay is one of the most influential scripts of all time. Before this movie, good guys did not kick their enemy in the balls. Cowboys were heroic and noble; they had a code of ethics.

This brash, rule-breaking naturalism was fresh and unexpected in 1969. However, I do not think it has been good for American culture since then. Naturalism works like a literary Gresham's Law: bad heroes drive good heroes out of the culture. Just as in our value-deprived culture there are young people today who have no idea of what a beautiful melody in popular music would sound like (because they don't listen to Radio Dismuke), so the young have never seen a hero who is good, noble, moral and intelligent. Instead, they get psychotic Dark Knights and mystics with lightsabers.

The essence of Newman's career is described:

Newman gave strong performances and appeared in important movies in each of the decades he worked. Still, it's the two indelible title roles from the early 1960s -- paradigms of what came to be called "antiheroes" -- that throw the longest shadows. In "The Hustler" he played "Fast Eddie" Felson, a cocksure pool player come from the West Coast to New York City to challenge the legendary Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Eddie has talent to burn but not yet the "character" to avoid snatching defeat from victory. The drama -- which takes on Faustian overtones via an enigmatic gambler (George C. Scott) who diagnoses Eddie as a "born loser"-- ends on a note of bleak triumph, but only after exacting a terrible cost from Eddie and those who loved him.
No matter how brash, rash, or sulky Eddie Felson became, he still compelled sympathy. "Hud" is a portrait of "an unprincipled man," a "cold-blooded bastard" who "doesn't give a damn" about anybody or anything. Up to a point, this was not an unheard-of challenge for an avowedly serious actor, especially one with cred from Yale School of Drama, the Actors Studio, and performing in original Broadway productions of plays by Tennessee Williams and William Inge. But "Hud," and Hud, went beyond. Surely there'd be a turning, some piercing blow or epiphany to show Homer Bannon's unloved second son the way to "character"? No. Nothing reformed Hud. His character was what it was. And he remained true to it even as he casually slammed the ranchhouse door in our collective face. The End.
So Hud compelled scant sympathy. But he could charm the dew off the grass, and certainly the audience. And despite the film's firm denunciations of Hud and his heartlessness and materialism, that was at bottom OK. Because as the tagline on billboards assured us: "Paul Newman IS Hud."

He could play antiheroes because he was so damned likable on screen. You couldn't believe a face that noble was really bad inside. With Hoffman, Pacino, De Niro, Malkovich and the rest you can believe it because there is nothing heroic in these faces.

Paul Newman can hardly be blamed for acting in the movies of his time. He brought glamour to movies like the overrated Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler and Cool Hand Luke and the more tightly plotted The Sting. It would have been nice to see him as Don Carlos or Hernani or Jean Valjean or Cyrano. Could he have played a hero of great moral stature? I think he might have risen to the occasion. Maybe not: he might have dragged these heroes down to his level of comfort because, after a lifetime of acting flawed antiheroes, he was no longer capable of playing a moral giant.

An lntellectual Thug

2008-09-27T18:16:00.001-07:00

I just checked in with Rule of Reason for the first time in a week. Holy cow, I missed a hell of a lot of action over there. Apparently, you can't let more than a day go by without seeing Rule of Reason.

Nicholas Provenzo was on the Laura Ingraham Show, which is, astonishingly, the fifth most popular radio show in America. (Ingraham is rumored to be hell to work for. Watch the video of her complaining to her staff on the set of her Fox News show.)

People like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity represent the decline of conservatism. They are intellectual lightweights who come to conservatism by reading National Review and listening to Rush Limbaugh. They understand food fight TV journalism, shouting down an opponent and scoring quick points, rather than long, coherent arguments. Modern philosophy infects them to the point that, like the left, they use arguments from intimidation and mockery to shut up their opponents instead of rationally refuting them.

Listen to this MP3 of Ingraham interviewing Provenzo. She reveals herself to be staggeringly stupid and dishonest. She takes one of Provenzo's points -- that a Down Syndrome person is marginally productive -- rips it out of context, and then tries to play "gotcha" by asking if Provenzo would kill actual human beings, such as people suffering from Alzheimer's, because they are marginally productive. Her interview was so unfair and crude that I have to think that any of her millions of listeners who did not sense she was doing something wrong must themselves lack intelligence or listen to her out of focus. (This last happens all the time when people are driving into work with the radio on. They have to split focus between driving and listening, which I would think must affect their ability to judge an argument. There have been studies showing that many people have no idea what was advertised in a block of spots; all they noticed was that the music was not playing.)

In the video linked to above, you can see that she took care to wear a cross around her neck on air to announce her Christianity and her morality. Indeed, that cross and her actions reveal more than she intended about her morality.

The First Debate

2008-09-26T20:41:00.001-07:00

McCain beat Obama in tonight's debate. He wiped him out. Foreign policy is the one area in which McCain is clearly superior to Obama. This one wasn't even close.

William Kristol brought up the analogy of a boxing match on Fox News. If this were a fist fight, McCain knocked Obama down and then kicked him almost to the point of unconsciousness. Obama lay in blood with snot dripping from his nose, whining, "Mommy! Make the bad man go away!"

It is disgusting that Obama holds as one of his foreign policy goals "to restore America's standing in the world." If America is in low standing in world, then there is something wrong with the world, not with America. In effect, high on Obama's to do list is to kiss the butt of every two-bit socialist dictator around the world and to give them boatloads of taxpayer dollars.

Neither candidate is great on the issue of talking to Achmadinejad. You don't talk to man like Achmadinejad; you kill such a man. The very act of talking to a dictator who wants to destroy you is worse than anything that could be said in these vaunted discussions because it gives the dictator moral sanction. How can you wipe out a regime if it is decent and rational enough to talk to? You can't. And that's why Obama is desperate to talk to our enemies: the act of talking itself prevents us from attacking. For someone who voted present over 120 times as a State Senator, it is important to be relieved from any expectation or responsibility to take action. Talking is what politicians do when they pretend to have a solution but in reality have nothing. Obama has nothing. He is all symbolism and no substance.

Even on the economy in the first half hour of the debate, McCain won. Obama's big idea is to redistribute wealth. Hey, there's an original idea! When he talks about tax cuts for 95% of Americans, he means a tax increase for the richest 5%. That's redistribution from the richest to the rest of America. This has been Democrat policy for, I dunno, a hundred years or so? Will the Democrats ever come up with a new idea?

McCain came off as a man who understands that the world is a dangerous place and America must preserve peace through strength. Obama came off as a shallow cipher and an empty suit who wants to appease America's enemies.

In economics, both candidates prescribe more of the poison that is killing us: government intervention. In foreign policy, only Obama prescribes more the poison that is killing us: appeasement. McCain will probably come around to appeasement, but he prescribes a lower dosage of the poison. I guess that's the most one can hope for from a Republican these days.

And Another Thing...

2008-09-26T10:01:00.001-07:00

I take a break from my break on this blog to urge you to take an hour to watch this lecture by Yaron Brook called, "The Resurgence of Big Government." Not only is Dr. Brook an Objectivist, but he used to teach finance at a college, so he, like, actually knows what he's talking about regarding economics.

You won't find any commentary this good from conservatives, neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives or libertarians. (Commentary from liberals, socialists and environmentalists on economics is about as useful as flapping your lips with your index finger while vocalizing. Try it! You'll sound just like Barney Frank.)

On another note, I heard on the radio that a church in the midwest, referring to Katy Perry's smash hit, "I Kissed A Girl," had a sign out front that read, "I kissed a girl and I liked it -- then I went to hell."

UPDATE: This commentary by Hugh Hewitt castigating House Republicans for having the temerity to question Paulson's bailout plan shows why Hewitt is the worst. Republicans should be saying, "Uh, wait a minute..." about the greatest leap toward socialism in recent memory. But if the government does not intervene and the meltdown spreads, then McCain's presidential hopes might suffer, and Hewitt cares only about one thing: Republican electoral success.

Republicans embracing big government for fear they might lose the next election is destroying the party. Voters are not stupid: if they want Democrats, they know they might as well elect real ones instead of these trembling, spineless creatures that are me too Republicans.

A Few Notes

2008-09-22T19:05:00.001-07:00

I just finished playing Prospero in The Tempest with the San Jacinto Shakespeare Festival. It was a hard role, almost 700 lines, much of which were expository monologues in the dense poetry of Shakespeare's late style. Next week I have a big audition for the summer of 2009.

I need to take a break from politics until events warrant a comment. Both campaigns are busy slinging mud, with the left as always a bit more dishonest and outrageous. (A rule of thumb: whatever the left accuses the right of doing, the left is actually doing to the right.)

The financial meltdown has been caused by economic miscalculations that came about as the result of government intervention. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans show much understanding of this; they would profit mightily by reading the Austrian Economists. Instead, they prescribe more of the poison that is killing the patient. They are hoping that inflation -- a hidden tax that falls hardest on the weakest in society -- will get us through until the next guy takes over. Then it is his problem. So, instead of a market collapse, every American will "sacrifice for something greater than self-interest." McCain should be happy! Nationwide suffering: altruism doesn't get better than that. (And as a bonus from inflation, because of pervasive economic ignorance, the statists in the government can scream at corporations for raising prices, and use inflation as an excuse to further destroy freedom in America. Really, for big government, inflation is like manna from heaven.)

I hope to relax and get some reading and playwriting done. If all goes well, I will take at least a week off from this blog.

Here are a few links for your enjoyment.

1. What Would Ayn Rand Have Done?

The only quibble in the piece is the writer's idea that Ayn Rand would have hated a postage stamp with her image on it. Since she was a philatelist, I think she would have liked it.

2. Imagine an intelligent creature that hunts other intelligent creatures. The predator delights in cracking open its prey's skull to eat its brains and in snapping its bones to suck out the marrow.

Science fiction? It happened on Earth. The predator was the human being; the victim was the Neanderthal.

The Nature of the Democrats

2008-09-19T11:49:00.001-07:00

For years I've been following one of the most ominous trends in American culture, the radicalization of the Democrat Party. The Democrats are taking on aspects of a totalitarian party. Force, lies and intimidation replace reason in the party's pursuit of power.

Obama's campaign has taken this totalitarian trend farther than any Democrat presidential candidate has done before. The campaign has taken a series of troubling actions.

It smeared McCain in a cynical, outright dishonest ad in which Rush Limbaugh's comments were taken out of context to make Republicans look racist. Limbaugh writes,

...the commercial flashes two quotes from me: ". . . stupid and unskilled Mexicans" and "You shut your mouth or you get out!

The "stupid and unskilled Mexicans" remark came while he was defending NAFTA, and attributing that line to its opponents. Limbaugh believes the opposite about Mexican workers.

Limbaugh sums up,

The malignant aspect of this is that Mr. Obama and his advisers know exactly what they are doing. They had to listen to both monologues or read the transcripts. They then had to pick the particular excerpts they used in order to create a commercial of distortions. Their hoped-for result is to inflame racial tensions. In doing this, Mr. Obama and his advisers have demonstrated a pernicious contempt for American society.

This ad shows a shocking contempt for the truth from the Democrats. These people have decided that their end of power justifies any means.

This week Obama exhorted his followers,

I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.

(Bold added.)

This is asking for more than just persuasion. This is not just asking the Bambis of the Democrat party to show some spine. This is asking for Democrats to intimidate. Getting in another person's face is an attempt to instill fear and silence that person. The threat of violence is implicit. This is not about reason; it is about force. Obama is turning his supporters into proto-brown shirts. Today they are asked to intimidate. What might they be asked to do tomorrow?

If any Republican exhorted his followers to get in the other side's face, the MSM would take this as evidence of the Republicans' mean-spirited nature.

Also this week Palin's emails were hacked into by a 20-year old boy who happens to be the son of a Democrat Tennessee State Representative.

ACORN, which registers voters for the Democrats, is suspected of voter fraud.

...ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign of possible fraud showed a number of people living at an address that turned out to be a restaurant.

We will see a lot more voter fraud on November 4 as the Democrats try to steal the election. It worked for them in 1960 and they almost pulled it off in 2000.

For weeks now Obama has attempted to silence his critics with intimidation from lawyers and his followers.

In today's Chicago Tribune, the Obama camp responds to nitpicky concerns about their attempts to shut down radio shows that might say things they don't like, via their "Obama Action Wires":
"The Action Wire serves as a means of arming our supporters with the facts to take on those who spread lies about Barack Obama and respond forcefully with the truth, whether it's an author passing off fiction as biography, a Web site spreading baseless conspiracy theories or a TV station airing an ad that makes demonstrably false claims," said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt.
Having listened to the previous Milt Rosenberg show with Stanley Kurtz that got "Action-Wired" (which is available here), I can tell you what this translates to:
"We'll provide a page of talking points for you to spout at the host and his guest. Just read it from your screen. Unfortunately, we're unable to provide you with the necessary brainpower to keep up when the host asks you to explain the reasoning behind 'your' opinion, or poses any other question that isn't found in our script.
"But that isn't the point anyway. We just want to tie up their phone lines with thousands of angry calls, both to intimidate them and to prevent people with legitimate questions from getting through. Yes We Can... Shout Down All Blasphemers."

(Bold in original.)

Robert Tracinski in his latest TIA Daily traces the left's problem back to the 1930's:

The modern left was born from America's "Red Decade," in which the intelligentsia embraced collectivism and dictatorship and hailed the bloodthirsty Soviet regime as a noble experiment. The left was born out of a conscious act of treason, not just to America, but to the principles it stands for.
...
The root of the American left's fundamental sympathy with the Soviet Union—and with dictatorship in general—is that they share the basic political outlook of the Soviets: a belief in rule by force. This infects every element of the left and explains why the left tends to inject thug tactics into political campaigns...

If the party has been rotten for 70 years -- and I think it got really bad with the ascent of the New Left in the '60s -- it is remarkable they have not done more damage to America's tradition of freedom by now. I have to think America dodged a bullet by electing only two Democrat presidents in the last 40 years.

I have argued that Obama, as one who prides himself in being a "blank screen" on which others see what they want to see, reflects the unexceptional, generic Democrat Party. He is not one to forge a new ideological path within the party. He senses the accepted, majority opinion and goes along. But this same man shows the totalitarian tendencies described above. Those tendencies are very much a part of the nature of the Democrat Party today. This is who they are. This is how low they have fallen.

Harry Binswanger asks an interesting question on HBList. After he had the nomination in the bag, Obama moved to the center, adopting Republican positions on various issues (to the point of advocating more war in Afghanistan), and yet, the left has complained little. They are staying silent about Obama's positions.

Why? What do they understand about Obama that the rest of us don't?

Abortion and Eugenics

2008-09-17T19:28:00.001-07:00

The immensely popular conservative blog, Hot Air, put up a link that read, Objectivist writer: It’s very morally important to abort social burdens like Trig Palin. The link is to a post at Newsbusters criticizing this post by Nicholas Provenzo at Rule of Reason. I believe Lew Rockwell also linked to it.

The fur is flying in the comments section to Mr. Provenzo's post. I've read the post carefully twice to see what he wrote that is so controversial, but I can find nothing to disagree with. Despite Hot Air's mockery implying that Provenzo is a moron ("very morally"), the piece argues intelligently that it is rational and perfectly moral for a woman to abort a fetus she knows will be defective.

The post brings up a major argument by opponents of such abortions:

...the anti-abortion zealots try to attach a dirty little slur to these abortions, labeling them a form of eugenics. For example, in 2005, as he condemned those who opposed federal legislation that would have attempted to dissuade women carrying fetuses diagnosed with severe disabilities from having abortions, conservative pundit George Will wrote:
If it is not unobjectionable, let's identify the objectors, who probably favor the pernicious quest -- today's "respectable" eugenics -- for a disability-free society.

Eugenics is the opposite of a proper defense of a woman's right to abortion. Eugenics is collectivist. It is the idea that a race must be protected by weeding out the weak and making sure they do not breed. Eugenics holds that individuals must sacrifice for the good of the race.

A woman's right to an abortion has nothing to do with the good of any collective; it is only a matter of her individual rights. For her own selfish happiness, she has the right to abort a child that will be mentally retarded.

The comments to Provenzo's post, 108 comments long as I write, are mostly a cesspool of mysticism. The anti-abortionists assert, as they always do, that abortion is killing a baby. A fetus is not an actual baby, but a potential one, just as an acorn is not an actual oak tree. I believe it is the idea that God inserts a soul into the fetus at conception that confuses the believers.

I didn't notice any liberals attacking Provenzo, which figures, considering where the links came from, and considering that liberals are pro-choice. Those comments confirm my suspicion that America will never be destroyed by the nihilist left, but by conservatives and libertarians who pose as defenders of liberty but are in fact its enemies.

Around the World Wide Web 78

2008-09-17T01:00:00.001-07:00

1. When McCain beats Obama in a landslide in November, you can think of it as job security for Tina Fey.

2. What's the Matter With Canada? subtitled, "How the world's nicest country turned mean," is actually a story about what is right with Canada. The liberal writer of this piece does not understand freedom and equates socialism with morality, and is therefore baffled by the conservatives in Canada.

Canada was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the fight against climate change, and as recently as 2005 it was the Canadian environment minister who helped broker an agreement to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. Then last December, at a U.N. conference in Bali to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, Canada executed a neat 180-degree turn, trying to block an agreement that set a target for future cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions. Of the 190 countries at the conference, only Russia supported Canada's position.

Thank you, Canada and Russia! (And what does it say when Russia is saving us from environmentalist regulations?)

...Canada is now the only Western country that still has one of its citizens held in Guantanamo, but Ottawa has refused to press for his release.

Imagine that -- Canada is letting a terrorist rot in Guantanamo. Oh, the humanity.

The Conservative Party, formed five years ago in a merger of the country's two right-wing parties, is Canada's first experience with an anti-government, socially conservative party in the mold of Reagan-Bush Republicans. Its leader, Stephen Harper, who is now the prime minister, once called Canada "a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term."

Man, that really is mean. If they keep this up, where will America's Democrats threaten to move if Republicans win an election?

3. How can conservatives listen to Sarah Palin and think she is on the side of freedom? She is every bit as ignorant of economics and every bit the statist nightmare that John McCain is. Watch her speak in Colorado as she promises to continues the trend of expanding regulations and persecuting CEO's. Because management has not run companies "responsibly," this fascist wants to stop "multi-million dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEO's who break the public trust." She is promising non-objective law and greater intervention in the economy. Her ideas will not solve the problem, which is too much government regulations in the first place.

The coming McCain/Palin administration will be bad for America. Four years from now we will all be a little more enslaved than we are now.

4. Obama meddled in Iraq.

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January.
The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari to confirm the conversation, and there was concern that there were enough aggressive reporters based in Baghdad with the sources to confirm the conversation that to deny the comments would create a bigger problem.

Maybe if Obama ignores it long enough the MSM will move on.

As to the original meddling, I think so little Obama's intelligence and his grip on reality that I doubt he understood he was doing anything wrong.

5. Some of Obama's coworkers from the '80s dispute Obama's version of what he did while working at a newsletter publisher. For instance, he says he had a secretary when in reality he did not.

We're not holding our breath until Andrew Sullivan and the Kossacks jump up and down and shriek that Obama is a "LIAR!"

6. McCain would rather attack businessmen and undermine capitalism than attack Democrats:

John McCain was interviewed this morning on CNBC's Sqawk Box program about the Wall Street crisis by the lone conservative anchor, Joe Kernan. Kernan, doing everything he could to point McCain in the right direction, fought an uphill battle as McCain was blaming most of the problem on CEO's who had "broken the public trust" and on "unfettered capitalism" in the spirit of "Teddy Roosevelt."
McCain managed to blame both parties equally in the mess, refusing to acknowledge that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers are all much more aligned with Democrats in congress than with Republicans. The Arizona Senator mentioned that he was willing to "reach across the aisle" to help solve these problems and "restore Americans' faith in government."

You know what this is recipe for? BUSINESS AS USUAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C. Both Obama's promise of change and McCain's promise of reform are two steaming piles of horseshit. All we will get is more and more government intervention in the economy until someday it all collapses. America will then be ready for a dictator who promises order amid the chaos.

Season of Mud

2008-09-15T16:51:00.001-07:00

In an election year, the time between Labor Day and the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is Mud-Slinging Season. Both parties are in the spirit of the season.

The Democrats, traumatized by the Swiftboat campaign against Kerry in 2004, have been assuring their base since the primaries that they won't let it happen this year. This year, we hear over and over, they will give as well as they get. In reality they always have given as well as gotten, but as altruists their self-image is so wrapped up in the idea that they are nice, benevolent people that they evade their own mudslinging. Their moments of victimization at the hands of the beastly Republicans (Swiftboat! Swiftboat!) are seared into their memory, but they forget that they invented Borking.

Obama has been reeling since McCain chose Palin as his Vice-President -- and whether you like McCain or not (I do not), you have to admit that his choice was brilliant, simply because it stole the spotlight from The One. (Picking a VP has always been about helping a candidate win an election. JFK is reported to have loathed Johnson, but he needed Texas so LBJ was his man.)

So what do Democrats want Obama to do now? What else? Get dirty:

According to NBC and the New York Times, Democrats have put enormous pressure on Barack Obama to start hitting John McCain in a more personal manner and to get his momentum back in this race. Team Obama says that the “bed-wetting” will not knock them off their game plan, but according to Andrea Mitchell, that may change.

Obama has taken some mockery because he has announced three or four times that he will take off the gloves.

Wham! You do that again and the gloves are off. Wham! You must not have heard what I said. One more time and the gloves are coming off... Wham! Okay. Okay, that hurt. It is bare knuckle time, baby. Wham! You are about to ANGER ME. I shall doff these expensive gloves. And I am just crazy enough to do it. Wham! What the hell is wrong with y... Wham!

The geniuses at Obama Central came up with an ad criticizing McCain for not using email. (That is some bare-knuckle brawling, man.) It turns out that McCain can't type because of his injuries from being tortured. Obama's attack succeeded only in reminding people that McCain is a war hero and that Obama's campaign is too incompetent to use google. Over the weekend the Obama camp decided to attack McCain because he is old.

Mickey Kaus is unimpressed by Obama's negative campaigning against McCain's supposed lack of honesty.

The current lib blog-MSM-campaign tack--getting outraged by McCain's "lies"--is a total loser strategy. Why?
a) MSM outrage doesn't sway voters anymore. It didn't even back in 1988, when the press tried to make a stink about George H.W. Bush's use of "flag factories," etc. After this year's failed MSM Palin assault, it certainly won't work;
b) When Dems get outraged at unfairness they look weak. How can they stand up to Putin if they start whining when confronted with Steve Schmidt? McCain's camp can fake umbrage all it wants--the latest is that an Atlantic photographer took some nasty photos that the mag didn't run!--and nobody will accuse MCain of being weak. That's so unfair. A double standard. Dems can learn to live with it or complain about the unfairness for another 4 years. Their choice.
c) It's almost always impossible to prove that a Republican attack is a 100% lie. Either there's a germ of truth (Kerry did hype his wartime heroism at least a bit) or the truth is indeterminate (i.e., there's no way of knowing what Obama meant by "lipstick"--just because he and McCain used the word earlier doesn't mean he didn't think using it now, after Palin's speech, didn't add a witty resonance).
d) Lecturing the public on what's 'true" and what's a "lie" (when the truth isn't 100% clear) plays into some of the worst stereotypes about liberals--that they are preachy know-it-alls hiding their political motives behind a veneer of objectivity and respectability.
e) Inevitably the people being outraged on Obama's behalf will phrase their arguments in ways well-designed to appeal to their friends--and turn off the unconverted. ('This is just what they did to John Kerry and Michael Dukakis!' As if the public yearns for the lost Kerry and Dukakis Presidencies. 'Today's kindergarteners need some sex education. Just because Republicans are old fashioned ...' etc. Or 'These are Karl Rove tactics,' which signifies little to non-Dem voters except a partisan rancor they'd like to put behind them.)

As always with liberals, there is a weird disconnect from reality. All their huffing and puffing about going negative should not be necessary because they have the MSM to do their mud-slinging for them. For the last two weeks we have seen the most remarkable attempt, both extensive and intensive, at character assassination at least since Clarence Thomas or Dan Quayle. The media have been desperate to define Sarah Palin as stupid, inexperienced, strange and nasty. They have employed outright lies, such as that Trig Palin is not really Sarah's son, but her daughter's son. Leftist radio host Randi Rhodes has suggested that Palin molests teenage boys. It has been observed that in two days Palin underwent more investigation from the media than Obama has suffered in 18 months. Charlie Martin is keeping track of the rumors about Palin; he is up to 71 now.

The left side of the blogosphere believes its mission is to sling the mud that is beneath Obama to sling. Andrew Sullivan hyperventilates:

I intend to be relentless for the next six weeks, morning, noon and night, weeks and weekdays, exposing the lies of the McCain-Palin campaign and showing their unfitness - in terms of competence, decency, intelligence, and experience - to become president and vice-president of the US. I will be making arguments and presenting facts in ways I do not expect and do not want Obama himself to engage him.
But these last two weeks - and this absurd, insulting pick for veep - has roused me. As I know it has roused many. McCain needs to be more than defeated. He needs to be exposed as the dishonest, despicable, desperate and dishonorable cynic he has become.

Let's hope he wiped the foam from his mouth when he finished writing that.

(Sullivan, just to provide context, happily publicized the unfounded rumor about Trig Palin's parentage. When the rumor became a joke because of pictures of Sarah Palin in full pregnancy, and testimonies from eye witnesses in Alaska, Sullivan was still demanding that the McCain campaign prove the arbitrary lie was not true.)

McCain has slammed Obama with some effective ads. He belittled Obama as a celebrity, likening him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. He mocked Obama's messianic pretensions. He attacked Obama for wanting to teach sex education to kindergartners. He hit Obama about his use of the phrase "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," which ad managed to dominate two or three news cycles.

McCain's ads have been effective at defining Obama because Obama is an oddly undefined man. There is something shadowy and obscure about him. Who really is Obama? Charles Krauthammer has observed,

Eerily missing at the Democratic convention this year were people of stature who were seriously involved at some point in Obama's life standing up to say: I know Barack Obama. I've been with Barack Obama. We've toiled/endured together. You can trust him. I do.

An undefined man is vulnerable to hostile definition. By contrast, earlier this year the Obama campaign quietly trotted out a series of prominent Democrats to belittle McCain's military service. (Another smear campaign Democrats evade as they keep telling themselves, "We're the nice guys! We're the nice guys!") This campaign failed because voters know who John McCain is. Democrat sniping at his military experience was a loser that only reflexive, anti-American leftists could entertain as a good idea.

I would submit that Republican negative campaigns have been quite effective for over three decades now. This is not, as Democrats believe, because Republicans are naturally mean-spirited and Democrats are these wide-eyed Bambis who must force themselves to attack their fellow man. It is because Democrats cannot be honest with the American people about their socialism; if they were, the party would go the way of the Whigs in two weeks. This sets them up like bowling pins to be knocked down by a few ads pointing to the facts of a candidate's liberalism.

John McCain promised "to take the high road," then immediately went negative against Obama. Despite protestations of high-mindedness on both sides, they both have gone negative, as candidates have since the birth of the Republic. They do it because it works. When mud-slinging stops working, then the slinging of mud will stop.

Neither side can afford to run just positive ads because both parties are essentially the same: they are welfare state parties. They are two gangs fighting over power so they can spend the taxpayers' money the way their pressure groups want it spent. Neither party stands for real political values such as individual rights and liberty. Neither side has ideals worth advertising.

When you have two parties dedicated to expanding government power in a country that once believed, long ago, in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then it is best to say as little as possible about your true intentions. It is much safer to attack the other party and keep the focus on them -- attack, attack, attack. Rush Limbaugh has made a career mocking liberals, but you'll notice he says little positive about Republicans these days. What is there to say? "The Republicans will destroy your freedom only half as much as the Democrats"? Not many votes in that message.

The Blank Screen President

2008-09-12T15:56:00.001-07:00

In May of 2007 Barack Obama made an odd gaffe:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died.

The death toll was 12.

"In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser.

He blamed the error on being tired, but ask yourself: at your weakest moment, would you mistakenly exaggerate a death toll of 12 to 10,000?

There is a deeper explanation. Barack Obama's habitual way of thinking does not focus first on the facts, but on other people's emotional reaction to what he is saying. He was so focused on the effect of his story that, like a fiction writer, he made up the fact he needed for that effect.

He has described himself variously as a "rorschach test" and a "blank screen" on which people project what they want to see. Always with Obama his primary focus is on what other people think. The reactions of other people guide him as he speaks -- and facts are malleable things that can be made to fit the needs of the moment.

Obama is greatly feared on the right as a crypto-socialist who is acting moderate to gain power. This is possible, but I don't think it is the fundamental explanation of his character. His radicalism in the past has been the result of being surrounded by radicals. In liberal Chicago, he did what was needed to rise in the Chicago political machine. He reflects back to people what they want to see. If anything, Obama's far-left positions show how far the Democrats in general have moved to the left.

He has shown an astonishing ability to flip-flop on his positions. On issue after issue, he has changed his mind, as if his principles and positions are of secondary importance to what the voters want to hear. Recently, he even admitted that the surge had worked.

Look at the way he soaks up adoration when he speaks before large crowds. For a social metaphysician like Obama, in which metaphysical importance lies not primarily in the facts of reality but in what other people think, the adoration of the masses must be something like a peak experience. It doesn't get better than that.

His speaking technique has been shaped by his psychological orientation to reality. He speaks in sonorous, idealistic phrases -- that have no substance. His empty rhetoric about change we can believe in is meant to emotionally move the crowd of the moment without further meaning.

I suspect that Obama's epistemology -- and his popularity among the young -- is the product of American educational theory. John Dewey's progressive education seeks to socialize students. It emphasizes getting along. It produces people who are not independent thinkers, but who want to go along with the crowd. But Obama's thinking could be just the way he developed himself, regardless of schooling. Man is a being of self-made soul, after all.

It looks like the Democrat primary voters chose Obama because he is capable of inspiring oratory and because he is black. Had the media "vetted" Obama the way they do Republicans, he never would have survived the primaries. But the media, being on Democrats' side, have not done them a favor by going easy on Obama in the primaries. The presidential campaign is a long endurance trial, and with talk radio and the internet, the Democrat is bound to be tested even if the MSM favor him.

Here is the greatest irony about Obama. If he were elected, his administration would change nothing. The word he campaigned on would be his last consideration. What does a blank screen reflect when he is inside the beltway? He reflects the inside of the beltway. Business as usual would be the theme of Obama's presidency. The conventional wisdom at the State Department would be his foreign policy. The conventional wisdom among Democrat economists would be his domestic policy. Obama would be a servant, enacting policies others tell him to do.

But Obama would also try to appease and go along with Republicans -- who are, despite what the moonbats might think, people too. An Obama presidency could very well end up like Bill Clinton's: an initial push for socialism and big government, disastrous failure by mid-term, then being pushed around by Republicans for the rest of his time in office. This, folks, is the best-case scenario.

Of course, the world is a dangerous place, and the next presidency will likely be shaped by events from abroad. Militant Islam is at war with us, Russia is aggressive, and there are many others enemies around the world just waiting for a sign of American weakness before they make their move. With Obama, the question to ask is not, "How would Obama react," but "How would the Democrat foreign policy establishment react?" The establishment would tell Obama how to react.

Really, in electing Obama we are electing the generic Democrat. In this case the generic has a name; it has little else.

Around the World Wide Web 77

2008-09-09T20:34:00.001-07:00

I have driven up to the beautiful state of Oregon many times. I love Oregon! Of course, to a Shakespearean actor like me, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a kind of heaven on Earth.

Once back in the '80s, as I crossed the border I saw an official sign that read something like, "Welcome to Oregon -- just don't stay here."

How is that for hospitality? I guess Oregonians have a dim view of Californians. They think it's okay if we go up there to spend money, but they don't want us moving up there.

1. What the world has been waiting for: Barbra Streisand speaks out on McCain choosing Palin as his VP:

Maybe he was sick of the lack of media attention…maybe he had enough of the late night talk show hosts poking fun at his age…maybe he realized that belonging to a party that has been associated with rich, white men was not going to connect with voters in this historical election year. Or maybe he was just ready to take back some of the spotlight that has shined so brightly on Barack Obama and the Democrats since the beginning of the Democratic convention. Desperation can motivate people to make some pretty cynical and hypocritical decisions. Whatever the reason, John McCain’s Hail Mary-- in the form of Vice Presidential pick Governor Sarah Palin--sent a very clear message to America about how he views female voters. Women, he thinks, will vote another woman into office regardless of the candidate's values, experience and political positions.

Palin shored up McCain's conservative base and she appeals to independent women voters. She even appeals to some moderate Democrats, as Gallup reports McCains support among Democrats has risen from 9% to 14% since the convention. I don't think McCain could have picked another person in America who would have helped him so much as Palin.

2. John Hawkins has decided to vote for McCain for a similar reason to why I used to vote Republican.

...it may have been Barack's inability to do the job that had me rethinking my non-vote for McCain, but it has been the Left's treatment of Sarah Palin that put me over the top.
...
Andrew Sullivan, the Daily Kos, and the rest of the slime merchants drug everyone from Palin's baby to her husband through the mud. Then the same mainstream media that spent weeks protecting John Edwards immediately launched countless attacks at Palin's family. Do a search on Sarah Palin's name and you'll find more disproved rumors and outright lies than facts -- and it's meant to send a bullying message to other conservative women.
"If you oppose the Left, we won't just lie about you and try to destroy your reputation, we'll come after your children, too. So, you just keep your mouth shut and stay out of the spotlight."
The only way the Left can be persuaded not to continue these tactics is to defeat them. If the McCain/Palin ticket goes to the White House, the lies and attacks on Palin's children will be considered to be a failure, and the Left will back off. If not -- if they win -- you will see even more attacks on the families of conservatives. In other words, it's sad to say, but the only way to protect the families of conservatives is to hit the Left in the only place that really hurts them -- at the ballot box.

Hawkins is wrong. The left will not learn a lesson about smearing if they lose the election. Being liberal means never having to learn from your mistakes. They will continue to smear because they believe in force, not reason.

3. With the radicalization of the Democrat Party and the advent of Borking, the Dems have become dependent on "October Surprises" to win elections. An October Surprise is the late release of dirt about an opponent that hurts him in the election.

Today we hear that the Obama campaign has 30 people in Wasilla, Alaska digging for dirt on Palin.

...Democrats have airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage, the state capital Juneau and Mrs. Palin’s hometown of Wasilla to dig into her record and background. My sources report the first wave arrived in Anchorage less than 24 hours after John McCain selected her on August 29.

Well, good luck, Dems. If you people were half as knowledgeable about economics as you are about character assassination, all of our problems would be solved.

Any Governor who sells the private jet because she thinks it wasteful is probably honest. The Democrats had best find a blockbuster or do nothing at all, otherwise the world will laugh at them.

4. Gallup shows the convention bounce.

You can't blame the Democrats for not seeing Palin coming. Conventional wisdom says people don't vote for Vice-Presidents. In Palin's case, however, people are voting for McCain/Palin because of Palin. It has been said that Palin is the biggest thing since Reagan entered politics 44 years ago. Actually, she is bigger than that. I don't think any Vice-Presidential candidate has made such a difference in American history.

I hope the Democrats spare us the usual excuses when they lose: the Republicans are Godzilla, the Democrats are Bambi; the media have a right-wing bias, the people are hypnotized by corporate America, America is racist, Diebold, etc. Sometimes you just get hit by something unprecedented. (Doubtless, the religious right will explain Palin as the will of God. She is America's Joan of Arc!)

5. Obama is tight with the religious left.

At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Obama tapped Wallis to oversee the drafting of the faith-based plank of the party platform (which, by the way, champions outreach programs for "ex-offenders").
"This is a very faith-friendly convention," Wallis said. "I think Democrats have really gone through an important change." But their newfound faith is not one most mainline Christians would even recognize, let alone embrace.
Like Wright and Obama, Wallis believes that biblical faith compels radical social action. Their political ministry is called the "social gospel," but it's really just socialism dressed up in a cheap tunic. They refuse to separate personal faith from political activism, whether at home or abroad.
...
Wallis agrees with Obama that American racism and capitalism are to blame for inner-city poverty, and echoes his oft-repeated call for "economic justice." They share a spread-the-wealth vision, including subsidizing the working poor beyond expanded tax credits and minimum-wage hikes.

Everything about Obama is scary -- except that he seems to be an incompetent mediocrity with a slow mind. I find all those traits oddly reassuring.

6. Afro Ninja. Because you need a laugh.

Party First, Country Second, Liberty Never

2008-09-08T17:49:00.001-07:00

I listened to Hugh Hewitt as I drove to the post office today. Hewitt was at his worst.

His caller was a Democrat woman who is voting for "Sarah and John." (Apparently, John is an afterthought to Sarah voters.)

Why is she voting for Sarah? Because this woman had a special needs child of her own and she doesn't want other women to go through what she went through.

In other words, she is voting for Sarah for what used to be Democrat reasons. This woman is a member of a pressure group and she expects Sarah to throw taxpayers money at her cause. She expects Sarah to expand the nanny state and destroy a little more of our freedom -- in the name of helping mental retards. Excuse me, "special needs babies."

And Palin is supposed to be the one on the ticket that wants small government! What a joke!

Hewitt, of course, was delighted. He doesn't give a damn about freedom or any other principles conservatives were once supposed to hold dear. Hewitt wants electoral success, and anything the Republicans have to do to win is fine by him.

This is the death of the Republican Party. It is now just another welfare state party, a gang grasping for power so they can spend the money you make.

I do not see how I can ever again give this party my vote.

The Ruling Class Sneers

2008-09-08T16:12:00.001-07:00

In all the hysteria, smears and sheer, unhinged hatred among the precincts of the left in reaction to Sarah Palin, Martin Peretz earns special distinction with his blog post called Please God, Do Bless America and Rescue Us From These Swilly People!

Just a few lowlights:

...I am still reeling from last night's malign hysteria at the Republican convention. This is a rotten crowd, even the pious Christian Huckabee and certainly Mayor Guiliani and the aspiring vice president, Sarah Palin.
...
If Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi had been decked out like soccer mom Sarah last night the G.O.P. would have called them tramps. Why, a hem two inches below the knee! So risque! I giver her her due: she is pretty like a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy's.
Let's face the truth: If Bristol were Joe Biden's daughter or, worse yet, Barcak Obama's, the epithet "slut" would be on everyone's tongue in St. Paul. But since she is Palin's daughter she has been treated as if she were a saint...

Peretz has a strange idea of how the average Republican acts. 50 years ago there might have been some sniffing at Palin's dress, but today? Please. She was dressed like your average professional woman. No one would think twice about it -- no one, that is, but Martin Peretz, stewing in his fear and loathing of the right.

Behind Peretz's condescension lies something people don't talk much about in America: class hatred. Peretz is among the ruling class, the elite; Palin is firmly rooted in the great American middle class. Leftists usually hide their disgust at the bourgeoisie, but Peretz lost control and let his snobbery free for the world to see. It's not a pretty sight.

The enemies of capitalism, from the very first ones, the conservatives of the early 19th century, have strived to recreate the society of rigid class distinctions the west had in feudalism. In feudalism, everyone knew his place; in capitalism, as they say, a family can go "from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." Capitalism is fluid. The potential for the individual is limited only by his talent and his will.

Charles M. Schwab is a spectacular example of the kind of opportunity society America was in the 19th century. He started out as a stake driver working for Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie didn't care about family connections or education, he was on the lookout for one thing only: competence. He saw it in Schwab, and gave him more and more responsibilities. By the age of 35, Schwab was the President of Carnegie Steel Company. (Charles M. Schwab is not to be confused with Charles R. Schwab, the founder of the brokerage firm.)

Since that time, the state has grown massively in America. Statists think America was all wrong in the 19th century and they're working reform society. To statists, the masses are full of hapless souls who must depend on the state to survive. With the growth of big government, society divides into two broad classes: those dependent on the state and the state. In communist countries the classes are the proletariat and the nomenklatura.

Those who depend on the state lose power to the state. When the state helps the dependent masses, it gains power over them. It's a nice deal for the state.

Peretz betrayed the ruling class's contempt for one who, though also part of the state, is too much imbued with middle class sensibilities for the elite. One look at Sarah Palin and they know she is not one of them. (I say give her time; if anything can corrupt her, a term as Vice-President should do it.)

Don't take this post as an endorsement in any way for McCain/Palin. I don't see me voting for McCain. I'm just pointing out that part of the intense emotions on the left about Palin come from the elite's secret view of itself as the ruling class. They see crass, rural, Wal-Mart-shopping hockey moms like Palin as an affront to their good taste. Palin's greatest crime turns out to be that she did not know her place.

Rule of Thumb

2008-09-08T05:39:00.001-07:00

A common idea in science fiction is dumb animals -- cats, dogs, pigs, dolphins, etc. -- evolving so that they have conceptual consciousness. I don't think it will ever happen in reality.

First, it would be cruel if an animal like a cat had concepts. They don't have opposable thumbs. They can't manipulate tools. They could use a computer keyboard only laboriously, tapping out letters with their two front paws. Even then, they would constantly be hitting the wrong keys. I do it often enough, and I have these superior fingers.

Worse, they can't talk. It would be difficult for them to learn concepts and even more difficult to communicate concepts.

And cats spend a lot of time grooming themselves. Licking themselves. How fast would that get old if they had half a brain? They would bore of it, or be embarrassed by it, and stop doing it. Then they would begin to stink.

Every aspect of a cat's life, from purring when petted to eating food from a bowl would be a source of humiliation to a creature with intelligence.

It would be worse for dolphins, who must live in water. Try reading a newspaper under water. To be condemned to an existence of endless swimming and eating live fish and making idiotic noises -- it would be a cruel fate to wish on a creature that could think.

Humans would be at a terrible disadvantage without the thumb. Which raises the question: How is it that humans evolved conveniently with conceptual consciousness AND the ability to speak words AND opposable thumbs? Is it a coincidence? Is it an argument for God? Wouldn't such perfection of form demand a designer?

I have a wild-ass guess as to why humans evolved with thumb, speech and a mind. I won't honor my guess by calling it a theory or a hypothesis; I won't pretend to be a scientist.

My guess is that the thumb and speech came first and then accelerated the evolution of consciousness. The pre-human creatures with thumbs would have been able to use their thumbs in countless ways with crude tools. Existence with a thumb would have rewarded the most intelligent of these humanoids. The one who first figured out he could pick up a rock and dash out the brains of his neighbor would have survived longer and had more children.

The ability to speak would also have accelerated the evolution of consciousness, as these pre-humans would have been able to give their concepts the auditory symbols of language. Without the ability to speak words, their minds would have remained in a state of chaos and percepts. Later they would write down their language with the help of those invaluable thumbs.

So that is why dumb animals with paws, hooves or flippers will never evolve conceptual consciousness. Without a thumb and speech, intelligence has no survival value.