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Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Good News/Bad News
The good news: The plaintiff in a lawsuit tells me that my work was cited a number of times in a recent Rhode Island Supreme Court decision (not yet on the web). The bad news: the cites are in the dissenting opinion.
Can You Really Transmit Syphilis This Way?
From Winthrop's Journal, 2:268. It is also rather astonishing to me that the Puritans would use this method for relieving a woman with too full breasts: There fell out also a loathsome disease at Boston, which raised a scandal upon the town and country, though without just cause. One of the town ______ having gone cooper [worked as a barrel maker] in a ship into _____, at his return his wife was infected with lues venerea [syphilis], which appeared thus: being delivered of a child, and nothing [no symptoms] then appearing, but the midwife, a skilful woman, finding her body as sound as any other, after her delivery, she had a sore breast, whereupon divers neighbors resorting to her, some of them drew her breast, and others suffered their children to draw her, and others let her child suck them, (no such disease being suspected by any,) by occasion whereof about sixteen persons, men, women, and children, were infected.... And it was observed that although many did eat and drink and lodge in bed with those who were infected and had sores, etc., yet none took it of them, but by copulation or sucking. It was very doubtful how this disease came at first. The magistrates examined the husband and wife, but could find no dishonesty in either, nor any probable occasions how they should take it by any other, (and the husband was found to be free of it).
She was infected; he wasn't; and a wide range of sexes and ages seemed to catch it.
The Dangers Of Women Learning Too Much
This entry of April 13, 1645, from Winthrop's Journal, reminds us the hazards of women not remembering their proper role in society: Mr. Hopkins, the governor of Hartford upon Connecticut, came to Boston, and brought his wife with him, (a godly young woman, and of special parts [remarkable characteristics],) who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years, by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. Her husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve [correct] her; but he saw his error, when it was too late. For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her.[2:225]
My guess is bipolar disorder.
Zero Sum Economics In Puritan Massachusetts
I've been reading through John Winthrop's Journal in the course of my research. As I find interesting, amusing, or just unexpected items, I've been blogging them for the entertainment of my readers. This particular entry from April 13, 1645, may be considered a clear statement of zero sum economics. Winthrop describes how the English Civil War: kept servants from coming to us, so as those we had could not be hired, when their times [period of indentured servitude] were out, but upon unreasonable terms, and we found it very difficult to pay their wages to their content, (for money was very scarce). I may upon this occasion report a passage between one of Rowley and his servant. The master, being forced to sell a pair of his oxen to pay his servant his wages, told his servant he could keep him no longer, not knowin how to pay him the next year. The servant answered, he would serve him for more of his cattle. But how shall I do (saith the master) when all my cattle are gone? The servant replied, you shall then serve me, and so you may have your cattle again.[2:228]
James Kendall Hosmer, editor of the 1908 edition from which I quote, mentions that Winthrop wrote in the margin "insolent."
Of course, the solution that Massachusetts came up with (no surprise to those who live there now), was to adopt maximum wage rates for laborers, to prevent the servants from taking advantage of their better. As Winthrop explained in 1641: The court having found by experience, that it would not avail by law to redress the excessive rates of laborers' and workmen's wages, etc. (for being restrained, they would either remove to other places where they might have more, or else being able to live by planting and other employments of their own, they would not be hired at all,) it was therefore referred to the several towns to set down rates among themselves. This took better effect, so that in a voluntary way, by the counsel and persuasion of the elders, and example of who led the wa, they were brought to more moderation than they could be by compulsion. But it held not long.[2:24]
More Interesting Odds & Ends From John Winthrop's Journal
I am working my way through volume 2, and I present here a collection of interesting and surprising odds and ends.
Meteors, Mirages, and Colonial UFOs
Winthrop describes a number of interesting astronomical sightings, as well as some curious meteorological events. This event of September 11, 1641, sounds like a meteor or fireball: [A]bout 7 or 8 in the evening there appeared to the southward a great light, about 30 or 40 feet in length; it went very swift, and continued about a minute. It was observed by many in the bay and at Plymouth and New Haven, etc., and it seemed to all to be in the same position.[2:42]
On August 26, 1644: About nine in the evening there fell a great flame of fire down into the water towards Pullen Point; it lighted the air far about: it was no lightning, for the sky was very clear.[2:193]
He also describe what seem to be mirages--the very impressive superior kind, sometimes seen in the Mediterranean, where instead of just "water" (which in an inferior mirage is really the sky reflected off superheated air), you see the images of far away places (such as the Fata Morgana: When one of the ships came near Cape Ann... an hour and a half before night, there appeared to all the company a sun near the horizon, more bright than the true sun, (which was seen above it,) which continued near an hour, there being a small cloud between the true sun and that. This was affirmed by divers persons of credit, who were of this country and then in the ship. But it was not seen by upon the shore.[2:246]
This one from December 15, 1645: There appeared about noon, upon the north side of the sun, a great part of a circle like a rainbow, with the horns reversed, and upon each side of the sun, east and west, a bright light. And about a month after were seen three suns, aout the sun-setting; and about a month after that two suns at sun-rising, the continued close to the horizon, while the other (which was the true sun) arose about half an hour.
This report from June 28, 1648, coming immediately after a discussion of apparently supernatural events associated with a witchcraft trial, seems to be regarded by the editor of this volume with skepticism--but it does seem like one of those spectacular superior mirages that are sometimes seen: There appeared over the harbor at New Haven, in the evening, the form of the keel of a ship with three masts, to which were suddenly added all the tackling and sails, and presently after, upon the top of the poop, a man standing with one hand akimbo under his left side, and in his right hand a swod stretched out toward the sea. Then from the side of the ship was from the town arose a great smoke, which covered all the ship, and in that smoke vanished away; but some saw her keep sink into water. This was seen by many, men and women, and it continued about a quarter of an hour.[2:346]
For those in need of a starting point for a bizarre science fiction story, this entry from January 18, 1644 provides your opening hook: About midnight, three men, coming in a boat to Boston, saw two lights arise out of the water near the north point of the town cove, in form like a man, went at a small distance to the town, and so to the south point, and there vanished away. They saw them about a quarter of an hour, being between the town and the governor's garden. The like was seen by many, a week after, arising about Castle Island and in one fifth of an hour came to John Gallop's point
Gun Accidents: Some Types of Mistakes Never Change
Gun accidents do not seem to have been rare in Winthrop’s Massachusetts. Unsurprisingly, some are associated with militia musters. At a 1632 militia muster in Watertown, an "unloaded" musket discharged, hitting three men, although causing no permanent injury to anyone.[1:83]
Others seem to have been related to sporting use: Three men coming in a shallop from Braintree, the wind taking them short at Castle Island, one of them stepping forward to hand the sail, caused a fowling piece with a French lock, which lay in the boat, to go off.
The goose shot went through the thigh of one man, and struck another man in the chest. The third man was able-—barely-—to steer the ship home.[2:55]
The third type of accident should not be surprising. Three children left at home while the parents went to church, the eldest went outside, the middle child removed his father’s fowling piece from the mantle, cocked the hammer, and blowed in the mouth of the piece, as he had seen his father also do, and with that stirring the piece, being charged, it went off, and shot the child into the mouth and through his head. When the father cmae home he found his child lie dead, and could not have imagined how he should have been so killed, but the youngest child, (being but three years old, and could scarce speak,) showed him the whole manner of it.
Let's be careful to keep the guns properly secured, even for those of you reading this from the seventeenth century.
Diving Bells
Winthrop mentions the explosion of the Mary Rose in Boston Harbor in 1640. (Somehow, the ship's 21 barrels of gunpowder went off, destroying the ship.) He also describes how Edward Bendall of Boston made what sounds like the first diving bell (or at least, the first that I have read about) to recover her goods and guns: He made two great tubs, bigger than a butt, very tight, and open at one end, upon which were hanged so many weights as would sink it to the ground (600wt). It was let down, the diver sitting in it, a cord in his hand to give notice when they should draw him up, and another cord to show when they should remove it from place to place, so he could continue in his tub near half an hour, and fasten ropes to the ordnance, and pu the lead, etc., in to a net or tub.[2:67-68]
Sodomy Laws
There arose a question in the court about the punishment of single fornication.... The like difficulty arose about a rape, which was not [punishable by] death by the law of God, but because it was committed by a boy upon a child of 7 or 8 years old, he was severely whipped. Yet it may seem by the equity of the law against sodomy, that it should be death for a man to have carnal copulation with a girl so young, as there can be no possibility of generation, for it is against nature as well as sodomy and buggery.
I can't exactly figure out what happened. If this was vaginal rape, then the victim's age was irrelevant. If it was anal or oral sex with this child, then either the local sodomy statute, or Henry VIII's buggery statute would have applied, making this a capital offense. I know that both Massachusetts and Plymouth Colony struggled with cases where a child was fondled, but the lack intercourse prevented application of English law concerning rape. On the other hand, Winthrop seems to be saying that what happened qualified under the buggery statute.
I Guess Kerry Knows He Is In Trouble
FoxNews is reporting that McCain has definitely refused to consider being Kerry's running mate. That Kerry was even asking shows how much trouble Kerry knows he is in. Why would you ask a Republican--and in some respects, a fairly conservative Republican at that--to be your running mate? This is not quite a desperation maneuver, but it's close--and Kerry isn't even to the convention yet.
My guess is that Kerry knows full well that with the economy recovering so well, a lot of the undecideds who are motivated primarily by the economy are going to either vote for Bush, or not vote at all. He may also be considering the very real hazard that the Federal Marriage Amendment (or some alternative proposal) is going to cause large numbers of black Americans (not at all sympathetic to homosexual marriage) to either vote Republican, or vote Couch Potato. Perhaps he is afraid of what is going to happen when some of the embarrassing stuff from Vietnam Veterans Against the War--like the Senatorial assassination proposal that one of his current staffers proposed in the shaggy early 1970s--comes to light.
The Torture Memo
If you want to see the memo that has been a subject of discussion, the declassified version (with stuff blacked out, and an addendum removed) is here.
Parts of it are perfectly reasonable: why the Geneva Convention does not apply to al-Qaeda members or other "unlawful combatants."
Parts of it are primarily explanatory. How does our government understand the meaning of the various conventions on torture? Again, pretty reasonable arguments.
There are other parts of it that are extraordinarily hard to understand, perhaps because the lawyers that wrote it were a bit too busy trying to twist their brains enough to justify whatever it was they wanted to justify. In particular, pages 8-10 seem to be focused on demonstrating that you can't be convicted of torture without "specific intent," but "general intent" might be considered by a jury in deciding whether specific intent existed. Or something like that. It makes no sense to me, and I suspect because it didn't make much sense to the author.
Pages 10-12 have a dicussion of what constitutes torture: it must include "severe pain or suffering." My first reaction is, "What nonsense. Why this distinction?" The answer, of course, is that prison guards regularly inflict pain or suffering on prisoners. It is the only way to manage a prisoner who puts up a fight. I think that most people can recognize that it is legitimate to use a nightstick on a prisoner who has his hands on the bars, and refuses to let go so that he can be taken to another cell. Ditto for use of a chemical spray to force compliance. You can't operate a jail with nothing stronger than, "Pretty please, with sugar on top?" Especially when confronting al-Qaeda.
I think we can also agree that pulling out fingernails, or threatening to gouge out someone's eyes, constitutes torture. Where's the dividing line? There is clearly a dividing line somewhere between legitimate uses of force against a recalcitrant prisoner, and illegitimate levels of force. Mayhem--definitely torture. Several hours of using a hammer on the bottom of a prisoner's foot? Definitely torture.
What about solitary confinement, while trying to get Saddam Hussein to tell you the names of the people in his organization participating in the insurgency? What about putting him on a bread and water diet for three weeks? What about keeping in darkness for days on end? None of these involve inflicting pain. They do involve inflicting mental suffering. But then again, telling Hussein that he can't resume his career of mass murder and torture as President of Iraq constitutes mental suffering for him.
Defining torture is surprisingly complex. One bright line definition reduces us to begging prisoners to do what we want. Another bright line definition on the other extreme would allow infliction of pain that left no permanent injury. The mush line definition in this memo seems to be useless. I'm not happy with any of these definition so far.
Ignoring The Free Market--and Ignoring Energy Conservation
California legislators seem to be suffering from serious fantasy problems. This article reports on a bill that would require 20% of new houses (at first) to have photovoltaic cells to produce electricity: Last month, the California state Senate passed a bill requiring builders to install on new homes solar photovoltaic energy systems (search), which are solar cells that capture the energy of the sun. According to the plan, new homes would generate much of their own energy. When the cells generate more energy than the homes can use, the surplus would be sent to the grid. At night, these homes would take power from the grid because the cells would not be generating any energy.
I like the idea of solar energy--I even installed a solar water heater for my pool--and it definitely paid for itself, and then some, during the time that I owned my house in California. It was $4200, but then again, you should see the utility bills I was paying to warm that 28,000 gallon pool.
Environmentalists and several state lawmakers have lined up behind the proposal. Among the many claimed benefits are increased security for California's energy supply, environmental protection through the building of fewer power plants and the potential long-run economic gains for homeowners.
"Solar is clean. It follows the principle of distributed generation, which not only keeps us from keeping on building new power plants, but it also means you don’t have to build and maintain expensive distribution lines," state Sen. Kevin Murray (search), D-Los Angeles, the bill's sponsor, told Foxnews.com.
Although significant initial costs are attributed to solar power, advocates say homeowners would save on each power bill because they would only be charged the difference between the energy their homes sent to the grid and that which they took away.
I like the idea of photovoltaics. I like the idea enough that I spent some time investigating the economics of it when I lived in California, and energy prices started to rise. But at least in 2001, it just didn't make much sense--even with these $300 and $400 electric bills that I was getting. (Yes, I kept the lights off when not in use, and the house was only 2800 square feet, with no air conditioning.)
Not surprisingly, our federal government is a big booster of photovoltaics, and they have a very helpful booklet online about the subject. The booklet, however, is careful to emphasize that you will typically put out $30,000 to $40,000 to install a system that will meet the energy needs of a typical home (or about $6 to $8 per watt)--and of course, that only meets those needs while the sun is shining. In winter, when the sun angle is much lower, and clouds will probably reduce total illumination, you will get much less power. At night, no power at all.
The California Energy Commission reported that typical prices for residential energy in 2003 were between 10 and 14 cents per KILOwatt/hour. That means that at $8 per watt, it will take between 57,000 and 80,000 hours of full output for those photovoltaics to pay for themselves. Even in summer, you probably aren't going to get more than eight hours of full output, simply because the rising and setting sun don't provide that much direct sunlight. In winter, of course, the sun is lower, and it is only up for about eight to ten hours a day, total. I would suspect the best full output average is going to be closer to four hours a day, with a couple of hours a day at an average of 50% output. Call it the equivalent of five hours full output, winter and summer, including days it is cloudy, foggy, or raining. That means it will take 31 to 44 years for those photovoltaics to pay for themselves (and assuming that they don't require replacement during that time). You may do a bit better in some locations--but definitely worse along most of the California coast.
Oh yeah, the article does mention one of those little details: Without disputing the intentions of solar power advocates, builders say it would be more cost-effective to address the inefficiencies in California's older homes than to build solar energy systems on new homes, which represent a tiny percentage of the state's total homes.
But it seems to be difficult to interest environmentalists in saving energy, when they can go into the solar cell business.
Coyle said other ways are available to save on energy, including caulk and insulation, which may not be as romantic as solar power, but may be more effective.
"Energy inefficiency is much more pronounced for homes built prior to 1991," Coyle said. The state can "accomplish a lot more in aggregate energy savings with caulking windows and energy-efficient insulation than a solar-based strategy."
Like A Twilight Zone Episode
From Reuters--and where else but Japan would this one happen? TOKYO (Reuters) - The pajama-clad skeleton of a Japanese man has been found in a vacant apartment building -- 20 years after his lonely death.
UPDATE: A reader tells me:
The skeleton was discovered lying atop musty "futon" bedding earlier this month when workers getting ready to raze the derelict building entered the second floor unit where the man had lived, domestic media reports said on Thursday.
A newspaper dated February 20, 1984, was on the kitchen table.
Police believe the man, an employee of the construction firm that built the apartments in 1973, moved in after the building was vacated when the firm managing it went bankrupt, the reports said.
The man, then 57 and divorced with children, suddenly stopped coming in to work two decades ago but none of his relatives ever asked police to search for him.
"I had no idea that the apartment even existed," the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper quoted a 65-year-old neighbor as saying. Would you believe Germany. At least twice if you believe the wire service
All good points. If this news story were about something that deeper significance, I might have been a bit more skeptical. I do worry that too much of what Reuters reports in the serious news side is at this same level of accuracy.
stories regurgated by the local newspapers. I actually believed the story the
first time I read it in the pre internet era. I was not familiar with the
concept of urban legends. A few years later I read the same story, again about
a man found dead in an apartment in Germany and I had that "Deja vu all over
again" feeling.
...
I think this story is an urban legend being propagated as a hoax by someone who
can inject stories into the wire services. The story is not nearly as amusing
as Peter Jennings telling us that Lenin's corpse is for sale but could fall
into the same general category of a story injected into the wire service feed
without verification.
The story has several attributes of an urban legend. As noted above this story is a variation on a similar story I have seen in the papers at least twice about a German man who was not found until many years after his death. Someone who has access to the Lexus-Nexus news archive could probably find these stories. Note that neither the the deceased or his place of employment are named but enough is known about him to know his age, where he worked, that he was divorced and had children. One of the often repeated
rules of journalism is "Who, what, where, when, why, and how". Leaving out the name of the deceased ignores the who and leaves a veil of anonymity comparable to the anonymous "friend of a friend" that is pervasive in urban legends.
The article says that the building was vacated when the firm managing it went
bankrupt. The management firm is not necessarily the owner. Seems strange
that the owner of the building or a court appointed receiver did not contract
with another firm to manage the building. If the building was vacant and
scheduled to be demolioshed why did the deceased have a neighbor quoted in the
story. I would think that everyone would have been moved out of the building
before demolition. Tokyo is home to the most valuable real estate in the world.
A building in Tokyo would be too valuable to leave unoccupied and derelict for
twenty years. Like many ULs this one has a moral component that intends to
provoke sadness and sympathy for someone who died all alone in the night without friends or family present while telling us to live our lives such that our own
friends and family do not abandon us.
Alcoholism Down, Alcohol Abuse Up
Not as silly as it sounds, but this new survey of 43,000 Americans indicates that while alcoholism is down, alcohol abuse is up. The NIAAA study defines alcohol abuse as causing a failure to fulfill major role obligations at work, school, or home; interpersonal social and legal problems; and/or drinking in hazardous situations.
Compared to ten years ago:
Alcohol dependence, also known as alcoholism, is characterized by impaired control over drinking, compulsive drinking, preoccupation with drinking, tolerance to alcohol and/or withdrawal symptoms. Across the decade, the rate of alcohol abuse increased to 4.65 percent of the general population from 3.03 percent, while the rate of alcoholism fell to 3.81 percent of the general population from 4.38 percent, Li's team reported in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Anyone that has spent much time on a college campus knows that heavy drinking, and the problems related to it (rape, murder, DUI), are pretty widespread among young people. From what my daughter tells me about the University of Idaho (or DUofI), the problems are quite severe there--and I get the impression that this is true on many college campuses.
For those of you are are students reading this blog--you can wake up to something much worse than a hangover after a night of heavy drinking: STDs; pregnant; or covered in bruises. It may not hurt falling down the stairs while you are drunk, but you will feel it in the morning. You can wake up worse places than your own bed. You may wake up in a stranger's bed, a jail cell, or a slab.
Lech Walesa On Reagan
It's in the Wall Street Journal today--and well worth comparing to the insults of Reagan back then as a "cowboy" and to Bush today: GDANSK, Poland--When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Read it all. I regret that in 1980, and 1984, I was so ignorant of how the world works that I voted for Libertarian Party candidates, instead of Ronald Reagan.
Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.
...
I have often been asked in the United States to sign the poster that many Americans consider very significant. Prepared for the first almost-free parliamentary elections in Poland in 1989, the poster shows Gary Cooper as the lonely sheriff in the American Western, "High Noon." Under the headline "At High Noon" runs the red Solidarity banner and the date--June 4, 1989--of the poll. It was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the "Wild" West, especially the U.S.
But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland. It is always so touching when people bring this poster up to me to autograph it. They have cherished it for so many years and it has become the emblem of the battle that we all fought together.
Thanks to Professor Bainbridge for the link.
Free Speech: It's Dead in France
Brigitte Bardot doesn't really qualify as a great thinker, but I do believe that she should have the right to express her opinion. French law, however, seems to think differently: PARIS - French actress-turned-animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot was convicted Thursday of inciting racial hatred and ordered to pay $6,000 — the fourth such fine for the former sex symbol since 1997.
Gee, where could she have got that idea from? Just the fact that there are parts of France where teenaged girls get gang-raped by Muslim gangs, and no one thinks anything can be done about it? Oh yes, later in the same article, "France’s 5-million-member Muslim community is the largest in Europe."
The Paris court sentenced Bardot, 69, for remarks in her book “A Scream in the Silence,” an outspoken attack on gays, immigrants and the jobless that shocked France last year.
In the book, she laments the “Islamization of France” and the “underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam.”“Mme. Bardot presents Muslims as barbaric and cruel invaders, responsible for terrorist acts and eager to dominate the French to the extent of wanting to exterminate them,” the court said.
I wouldn't say it that way myself, but how could anyone think there's a connection between a large Arab Muslim population in a country, and terrorist attacks? She must be smoking funny drugs (or watching television). She told the court France was going through a period of decadence and said she opposed interracial marriage.
Again, I wouldn't have used language like this, and I certainly don't agree with her about interracial marriage, but she has a right to express her opinion--although apparently not in France.
“I was born in 1934, at that time interracial marriage wasn’t approved of,” she said.
“There are many new languages in the new Europe. Mediocrity is taking over from beauty and splendor. There are many people who are filthy, badly dressed and badly shaven.”
In her book, she also attacks homosexuals as “fairground freaks,” condemns the presence of women in government and denounces the “scandal of unemployment benefits.”
One of the most amazing claims that I often hear from the left is how much more protective of civil liberties the Europeans are. Certainly not the French!
The Impact of Offshoring Jobs
You always have to be careful how much you trust reports, but at least at first glance, it would appear that offshoring has been somewhat exaggerated. This news article discusses a government report that covers the first three months of this year and "only layoffs at companies where at least 50 people filed for unemployment insurance during a five-week period and the layoff lasted more than 30 days." (I suspect that this is because there are special reporting requirements for mass layoffs.) The news report mentions that this tends to miss small businesses, and individual job losses--but I also doubt that too many small businesses are outsourcing just a few jobs. They might be buying from an overseas supplier instead of an American supplier, but that's not strictly offshoring of jobs.
Anyway, to the numbers: In the first three months of the year, 4,633 U.S. workers were laid off because their jobs were moved to a foreign country, the BLS said. That represents less than 2 percent of the mass layoffs that totaled 239,361 during that period.
Admittedly, the first quarter of this year was not exactly deep in layoffs. The economy was already recovering. Even if this rate continued for all four years that the Democrats have been complaining about the "hollowing out" of America, this would be 74,000 jobs shipped offshore. This isn't wonderful, but it is not even close to the "three million jobs lost" that Kerry was screeching about a while back.
When seasonal and vacation-related mass layoffs are excluded, the proportion of workers who lost their jobs due to overseas outsourcing rises to about 2.5 out of 100.
Another 9,985 workers lost their jobs because the work moved to a different location within America, BLS said.
Most of the loss of jobs was because of the collapse of the dot-com bubble starting in April 2000 (before the election), and the dramatic crisis of confidence caused by 9/11. (Here's a graph and table showing unemployment rates over the last ten years.) As you can see, unemployment didn't hit 5.0% until September of 2001.
No, He's Not a "Computer Whiz"
Fox News describes him that way in the link. He's a grad student working on his Ph.D. in Computer Science. But I guess compared to most journalists, anyone who knows more than Ctrl-Alt-Del must be a "computer whiz." BOISE, Idaho — A Saudi graduate student was acquitted Thursday of charges that he used his computer expertise to foster terrorism.
And didn't have a clue what they were promoting? Well, at least he will be deported anyway.
The case against Sami Omar Al-Hussayen (search), 34, was seen as an important test of a provision of the Patriot Act (search) that makes it a crime to provide expert advice or assistance to terrorists. First Amendment advocates called the verdict a victory for free speech.
Al-Hussayen, a computer science student at the University of Idaho, set up and ran Web sites that prosecutors say were used to recruit terrorists, raise money and disseminate inflammatory rhetoric.
His defense maintained that his association with the Web sites was as a Muslim volunteer and computer expert who simply wanted to keep the sites in operation.
It is a reminder, however, that contrary to what a lot of leftists would like to believe, the Patriot Act doesn't give the federal government sudden Gestapo powers to arrest, convict, and imprison people that they don't like.
Opinion Polls
In spite of an unparalleled effort (at least since the news media tried to sink his father's re-election campaign by talking about a recession until they made it happen) to sink Bush with overcoverage of Abu Ghraib, and efforts of al-Qaeda and Baathists to disrupt Iraq, Bush remains a viable candidate. Fox News is reporting that in a two-way race, Kerry gets 45%, and Bush gets 43%. That's within the 3% margin of error--and because this was a survey of registered voters (as distinguished from likely voters), it means Bush could probably beat Kerry, depending on the state distribution of votes.
However, when you include Ralph Nader in the race, Nader gets 3%, and Bush and Kerry split 42%. This means that 2% are coming from Kerry, and 1% from Bush. I can understand why the hard left of the Democratic Party might prefer Ralph Nader--but I didn't know that there was a hard left of the Republican Party that might bolt for Nader! Perhaps what really happens is that all 3% of the electorate prepared to vote for Nader comes from Kerry, and 1% of the Bush voters, if they perceive Nader in the campaign, are prepared to vote for Kerry.
When you do the breakdown into states that voted for Bush in 2000 ("red states"), those that voted for Gore in 2000 ("blue states"), and the battleground states that were very close last time, the results are very interesting. In a three-way race with Nader, Bush has a 9 point lead over Kerry in the red states; Kerry has a 6 point lead over Bush in the blue states; Kerry has a 3 point lead over Bush in the battlefield states. What this means, from the standpoint of advertising is that Bush can afford to transfer media dollars from his safe states to the battleground states far more safely than Kerry can do likewise--even if Bush and Kerry spent the same amount of money.
If Nader could be persuaded to drop out (yeah, like Nader's going to do that--Kerry will drop out before Nader does), Kerry has a five point lead in the battlefield states, and the margin in their safe states for both Kerry and Bush is 10 points. Kerry has to persuade large numbers of Nader voters to vote Kerry in order to even the playing field--and that means pandering to the hard left, in a way that will almost certainly sink Kerry with the vast majority of voters.
The poll also finds that in spite of not finding the vast stockpiles of WMDs, 60% still believe that Iraq was the right thing to do. On economic confidence, the poll numbers give me some confidence that Bush is going to strengthen over the next several months: On the economy, today 53 percent believe it is recovering, up from 45 percent in late March. A 55 percent majority feels optimistic about the country's economy right now and 38 percent pessimistic, a sentiment that is essentially unchanged for over a year.
Governments Funding Terrorism
In the midst of this utterly surprising article claiming that Libya was funding an assassination attempt against Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah last year while Libya was renouncing terrorism (yes, that's sarcasm), I see this disappointing (but plausible, at least to me) claim: Alamoudi told the FBI and federal prosecutors that Qaddafi approved the assassination plan, although the Libyan leader's son has called the accusation "nonsense." Alamoudi's statements were offered in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors that are not complete.
Can't we find some Muslims who genuinely oppose terrorism, prepared to work for our government? And if we can't find such, why not?
He was indicted last October in U.S. District Court in Alexandria and accused of violating United States sanctions by traveling to Libya and receiving money from Libyan officials. Under federal guidelines, prosecutors could urge a judge to reduce his prison term in exchange for his statements, criminal lawyers said.
Alamoudi, a longtime spokesman for Muslim views in America as founder of the American Muslim Council, was paid as a consultant by the State Department to travel overseas and advocate tolerance and reconciliation among Jews, Christians and Muslims, but was thereafter accused of making statements in support of terrorism.
Who Wants To Live Forever?
Reading Glenn Reynolds' Tech Central Station column, it sounds like he does.
It's time for some philosophical musing. When I was 25, or even 30, if you had suggested that medical research could allow all of us to live forever, I would have said, "Wow, that's cool!" But now that I am in my late 40s, this sounds increasingly like Jonathan Swift's description in Gulliver's Travels of a land where people live to be hundreds of years old--but increasingly miserable as they age.
Now, you might be saying, "Sure, but Glenn is talking about medical research to stop aging, so you won't have to be old and decrepit." Even if this were possible--and I am very skeptical of this possibility--there are other forms of misery besides the physical deterioration of old age.
When I was 23, I got married. We drove away from the church in our 1979 Pontiac Grand Am for our honeymoon. If you remember the Carpenters' recording of "We've Only Just Begun," that could have been the soundtrack for that day. It is 24 years later, and I am still married to that same woman. Life was fresh and new, full of optimism and hopes.
As you get older, your high hopes and ambitions inevitably collapse around you. The wonders of travel turn into a series of disappointments. Your high hopes for your children come crashing down, especially when you discover the moral ugliness of the culture in which you are raising them.
The job that you enjoyed at 23, and 25, and even 28, by 35 or 40 has lost its luster. You do it because you need the money to pay your bills. At the same time, your financial obligations prevent you from making the career change that might make work fresh and new again. Imagine having to do a career change 30 or 40 times over a lifetime! No thank you!
As I have aged, my repulsion at this degradation that the left has infected our culture with just enrages me. When I was growing up, there was drug abuse. There were orgies and other forms of casual sex, where people were just used, and feelings got hurt. But that was largely high school and college, not junior high and upper grades of elementary school. I am not sure that I want to live another hundred years, and see the evil that will become the norm.
Back in 1975, post-Watergate, Lawrence Sanders wrote a powerful science fiction novel titled The Tomorrow File. Set in what is now our present, it imagines a future where because of Watergate, the President has relatively little power--but the Dept. of Health, Education, & Welfare (the predecessor to Health & Human Services) exercises enormous power, and the Secretary of HEW runs America.
The Tomorrow File is a post-Christian, and even post-secular morality America. Statements aren't true or false, but "operative" or "inoperative." (If you aren't old enough to remember the Watergate hearings, the significance may not be apparent.) When the protagonists of the story kill people that get in their way, they use the verb "stop" to avoid directly confronting what they have done.
The protagonists are members of an elite: babies that were supplied with enriched oxygen levels in utero, and are fearsomely intelligent. They complete their PhDs by 18, and go to work for the Dept. of HEW, where their ambition, intelligence, and complete immorality enables to manipulate and control the entire society. Of course, the protagonists are nearly all either homosexual or bisexual, somewhat mirroring the larger society. After all, why limit yourself, especially when sex is just one more weapon to use in the Machiavellian campaign of personal power acquisition?
As the narrator explains at one point, there are still elections, and almost 10% of the voters actually bother to vote. But it doesn't matter, because elections don't really change any policies.
In a lot of ways, I feel like I am already living in a low quality form of Sanders' novel. Increasingly, a bunch of smart, arrogant, and immoral people (judges, not Dr. Frankenstein-like scientists) have taken control, and rendered elections and legislatures almost irrelevant to the making of laws.
I spent a couple of hours on the phone last night with a law professor at one of the Top 20 schools. He explained that he was increasingly worried about any attempt at trying to challenge even the most clearly absurd gun control laws through the federal courts, because the Supreme Court is now completely unmoored from the Constitution, of which the Lawrence decision is an especially blatant example. He agrees with me that all sorts of nonsense is going to come from this. It may take ten years before the next shoe drops, but if the Supreme Court upholds laws prohibiting polygamy after deciding Lawrence, it will be only be because judges don't like Mormon schismatics, not because of consistency in the law.
Reading this case from the 9th Circuit in which the dissenting opinion argued that under Lawrence, there is a constitutional right to have sex with someone who has the mental capacity of a child...we are closer to The Tomorrow File than I feared, and I don't want to see that society fully implemented.
Interesting Treasury Yield Curve Behavior
The curve is flattening--not so much because the long bonds are dropping in yield--they are still in the 5.48-5.49% yield area--but yields out to two years or so are doing much of the yield increase. This is probably a good sign. My guess is that bondholders are assuming that the evidence of a recovering economy will cause short-term inflation, but they aren't worried about long-term inflation.
The general rule is that worries about long-term inflation cause bondholders to move out of long-term bonds, for fear that the bond's value will be diminished by inflation. As bondholders dump long-term bonds, this causes their prices to fall. If the price of a bond falls, because the coupon is fixed, the effective yield of the bond increases. Example: a Treasury with a 7.5% coupon pays a fixed $75 a year on a $1000 bond. If bondholders start selling these bonds, supply and demand drops the price, and it sells for $900, not $1000. The $75 per year coupon, however, now makes the yield 8.33% per year. Worries about long-term inflation therefore cause the yield curve to get steeper--with 30 year bond yields rising faster than yields on shorter Treasurys.
If bondholders aren't worrying about long-term inflation, they will either not sell, or will buy long-term bonds. All other factors being equal, the price of the bonds rises, because of a shortage of supply. This drives long-term bond yields down relative to short-term bonds.
On rare occasions, inflation worries will be so small that long-term bond yields will actually drop below short-term bond yields. When that happens, buying long-term bonds is a safe way to get a spectacular interest income. The people that bought long-term Treasuries at the last Treasuy yield curve inversion in the 1990s are probably very happy right now--holding Treasuries with 14% annual yields.
Powerful Eulogy For Reagan By Dick Cheney
It's over at the FoxNews website, but doesn't seem to have a direct link.
Foreign Fashion Model Expresses Opinions About Our President
Yeah, it's Rod Stewart's ex-wife, Rachel Hunter: Hunter explains, "If I could, I would vote for Bush. He has done what needed to be done because if Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden had their way, none of us would be around in 10 years.
"Clinton had a lot of tea parties with celebrities, but [right after] his term, somebody flew two planes into the Twin Towers. What do you want - somebody who keeps your children safe or somebody who throws nice tea parties?"
Not That Facts Much Matter To The Left
But this news story suggests that Hussein had not obeyed the UN resolutions: U.N. weapons experts have found 20 engines used in banned Iraqi missiles in a Jordan scrapyard along with other equipment which could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, an official said Wednesday.
The discoveries were revealed to the U.N. Security Council by acting chief U.N. inspector Demetrius Perricos during in a closed-door briefing. The text was obtained by The Associated Press.
The U.N. team was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrapyard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check in Turkey, which has also received scrap metal from Iraq.
The discoveries raise questions about the fate of material and equipment that could be used to produce biological and chemical weapons as well as banned long-range missiles.
The missile engines and some other equipment discovered in the scrapyards had been monitored by U.N. inspectors because of their potential dual use in both legitimate civilian activities and banned weapons production.
In his briefing to the Security Council, Perricos said U.N. inspectors do not how much material has been removed from Iraq that they had been monitoring.
The Sheer Injustice Of It!
Saddam Hussein's lawyer claims that his client has been tortured! Now, the news article also quotes from a recent letter from one of the greatest torturers in modern history to his daughters that might suggest otherwise: "In the name of the Almighty and Merciful God ... to my small family, to my big family," the letter said. "As for my spirit and morals, they are glittering with the blessing of God the creator and the great."
But of course, even if Hussein is being treated roughly to get information about the thugs running around murdering both Coalition soldiers and Iraqi civilians, there would be a certain justice to it. This article from the Guardian last year reminds us what Hussein had done to prisoners: In one of Iraq's most notorious prisons, Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, there were plastic shredders. They were a bit like an office paper shredder, except more robust, because they were designed to mince up old plastic. There, though, they were used to shred people. Just before the Americans arrived, Ms Clwyd says, the Iraqis "were executing all the remaining prisoners, and that's why nobody is found alive at any of the prisons".
UPDATE: Since some people seem to have some reading comprehension problems, let me explain complex concepts like "hypothetically speaking." See those two words "even if" just before the discussion of "treated roughly"? They imply that we are taking a certain assertion of fact for purposes of discussion, that "even if" this is true, how wrong is it?
But just before the war, Ms Clwyd met people in Kurdistan who had been in Abu Ghraib - "in fact they were the last people to come out alive" - and they confirmed the story. "People were either put in head first, or foot first. If you went in foot first, it took you longer."
She checked the story afterwards with someone from the prison "and they said yes, there were plastic shredders there and they were dismantled just before the military got there".
You will also note that I referred to being "treated roughly." That doesn't mean having your toenails pulled out, or electric shocks to sensitive parts. It may mean being kept in the dark for 23 hours a day, or being given a very, very boring diet, or in a 40 degree cell, or any of a number of unpleasant situations that aren't torture--but might cause Hussein to reveal information useful for saving lives.
Why Educate Al-Qaeda?
A few days ago, the Justice Department explained that Jose Padilla's plans included building a dirty bomb by wrapping uranium around explosives: We know separately that Zubaida did think the nuclear bomb idea was not feasible but he did think as well that another kind of radiological device was very feasible: uranium wrapped with explosives to create a dirty bomb. Zubaida believed this was feasible and encouraged Padilla and his accomplice to pursue it. He warned them, though, that it would not be as easy as they might think. But they seemed convinced that they could do it without getting caught.
Ordinarily, I would not comment publicly on this. Anyone with even a cursory education knows that uranium simply isn't all that radioactive. I wouldn't want powdered uranium blowing through my house, but to put it bluntly, it's not a high risk. The common isotope, U-238, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and is only slightly radioactive. U-235 has a much shorter half-life, and therefore more dangerous--about 700,000 years--but that's also the isotope you can use to make a nuclear weapon. I rather doubt that Padilla was going to easily get his hands on enriched U-235.
As I said, I would not have commented on this publicly. It appears that not only Padilla but his higher-ups in al-Qaeda are so ignorant that they didn't know this. But I now I see that the news media are making this information widely available--effectively, telling an ignorant bunch of terrorists what they do need to build a radiological bomb. It appears that the purpose of the article is to suggest that the Justice Department was being absurd in pursuing Padilla on this charge, because it would not have been very effective.
So what? Padilla's intent was criminal: to kill and terrorize an entire city. That he didn't know that it was not going to work does not make it less of a crime. If Padilla had bought a ton of "weaponized anthrax" that turned out to be baking soda, and then arranged to release it from a rooftop in Chicago, would it be less of a crime? The intent was criminal; the attempt was criminal. Incompetence by a criminal doesn't make it okay.
I am really bothered by the extent to which the left is trying to embarrass Bush at all costs. If Padilla had set off his "radiological bomb," it would have caused brief panic as Chicagoans ran in terror. The utterly ignorant reporters would have talked about how the Bush Administration had failed America, and how tens of thousands of Chicagoans would face lingering deaths from cancer over the next 20 years. A few days later, after dozens to hundreds had committed suicide, the same media organizations would have run a one column-inch correction on page 17, and continued blaming Bush for not doing something to prevent this attack.
Free Expression & College Campuses
I mentioned a few days ago former President Machen of the University of Utah defended why his institution should be exempt from Utah state laws: "The essence of my position is that a college campus is unlike almost any other public area of our society," says the university's president, J. Bernard Machen. "It's a place where people come together and actually engage in the free expression of ideas, and many times strong emotions are expressed."
Professor Volokh points to what is simply the most astonishing out of control example of what is actually a very common approach for universities to take in their pursuit of diversity and tolerance: Also expressly prohibited by this policy is verbal or physical conduct that denigrates or shows hostility or aversion toward an individual because of his/her race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, national origin or any other characteristic protected by law or that of his/her relatives, friends or associates and that:
And it goes on and on.
1. Has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work or learning environment. . . .
Examples of Inappropriate Behavior
in an Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Environment
* Derogatory comments about an individual's membership in a protected group, for example, calling someone an "old bag."
* Visual messages that are degrading to or reflect negatively upon protected groups, for example, cartoons that depict religious figures in compromising situations or displaying sexually suggestive pictures.
* Jokes that have the purpose or effect of stereotyping, demeaning or making fun of any protected group. An example might be jokes about persons with AIDS or an ethnic joke. . . .
I firmly believe that teaching kids the be polite is a very good thing. (I'm not sure that you can do this if they haven't learned this by college.) There are also examples of "free speech" that would qualify as harrassment. Following a student around and yelling "fascist" (you know, for being a member of the Young Republicans) or "fag" would both be examples of harrassment--this is not free speech. But this speech code is so over the top that it just floors me that a bunch of liberals would think that they could adopt a speech code like this without being sued. It is also makes me wonder how Machen would defend his position about "free expression" and "strong emotion" if such speech codes become the norm on college campuses.
Apologizing For Abu Ghraib
My mother forwarded this to me. It's cheeky, funny, and has a significant element of truth to it (although it appears the author didn't realize that there was a bit more than just humiliation involved in some of the abuses, and there remains some question in my mind whether this was just a first level failure of leadership): I Got'cher Apology, Right Here!
Of course there is one difference between the United States and most of these other countries which explains why we apologized, and they did not. We're a better country.
J. D. Pendry
"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."
- from The Man Upstairs, P. G. Wodehouse, 1914.
I had a great week. My bride and I spent our 31st wedding anniversary at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Thanks to those of you that sent your condolences to my wife. We were unplugged for a week. No computers, no phones, no news and no concerns. The toughest decision we made all week was if we should get out of the hot tub before our skin permanently took on the prune look. We saw some country music shows and ate chicken with our fingers at the Dixie Stampede. The shows are great. Each had in it a tribute to America, a tribute to veterans and a gospel music segment. I love country music and country people. We rented a cabin, shopped, ate, saw shows and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Life is good.
Then I got home and flipped on the TV and the computer. I'm certain now that somewhere out there someone wants me to apologize to the Arabs for being American and enjoying my decadent American vacation. Fat chance Osama, fat chance.
The President apologized. The Secretary of Defense apologized. Several Generals apologized. We're just all apologizing our hind-ends off to the Arabs on behalf of some poorly led meatheads. As we're prone to say over here in Wild Wonderful, time out Bubba. I demand that the leaders of all Islamic countries and Islamic religious leaders make a public apology to America for the atrocity committed in the name of their religion on September 11, 2001. 3 years and I'm still waiting. I want an apology from the Iraqis in Fallujah who killed, burned, mutilated, drug through the streets and hung Americans from a bridge. I want an apology from Syria for their support of terrorists fighting in Iraq.
I want an apology from Iran for its interference in Iraq. I want apologies from France, Russia, Germany and the United Nations for the money they received from Saddam Hussein in the oil for food racket -- their true reason for opposing the war. I want an apology from Saudi Arabia for financing bin Laden. Until I hear these apologies, I don't expect that I'll get my shorts in a bunch because a few miscreants stacked up some naked Arabs. Send me your hate mail. I don't care. All of this apology malarkey has practically spoiled a great week for me and I don't like it.
I am sorry for a few things, however. Teddy Kennedy, Robert Byrd, the 9/11 Commission, losing Vietnam, Hollywood, and not being rich come to mind.
I'm sorry that a first level leadership failure allowed soldiers to abuse prisoners. Soldiers are human and often find themselves in inhumane situations. Being human, they perform within the parameters of behavior tolerated by their leaders. There are many PFC Englands out there. They're followers who want to belong to the group and perform to what they believe are the leader's expectations. There is virtually no chance that these soldiers can get a fair hearing. American public opinion -- spurred by the "news" media and political hacks -- has them tried, convicted and ready to hand over to the nearest lynch mob. Maybe we could burn them and hang them from a bridge too.
I'm sorry that I have not seen one single leader remind the world that we are obligated to look after the rights of these accused soldiers. Not one, none, nada, zip. All of these soldiers are ours good or bad. Instead of insisting on protection of their rights, we are busily telling the Arabs how we intend to hold public trials for them in Baghdad and how we are more concerned about the rights of the people who want to kill us. Hell, why don't we just turn them over to al-Sadr? Is there anyone out there who believes that a military jury is going to render an unbiased decision in this case now? Don't you think that each jurist will be thinking of the ramifications of their decision more so than the rightness of it? If you think these soldiers have a chance of getting a fair trial, please write me and let me know how you came to that conclusion.
I'm sorry for a "news" media that has staunchly refused to report on any of the successes our soldiers and none of the good things they've accomplished, but go to great lengths to portray a few meatheads as the majority. It's enough to make me want to puke. This is the same "news' media which portrayed the actions of an Army Lieutenant Colonel as heroic after he threatened a prisoner with a weapon and then fired it several times -- one of those times near his head -- in an attempt to get information. With the glorification by the media of this incident, it should be no surprise that PFC England was leading a naked Arab around by a leash. She wasn't, however, shooting at his head. The sensationalizing of this issue by the American press has done more harm to American soldiers and America than any other act I can think of. Al Jazeera must be proud of its American affiliates. This is the same media, by the way, that demands we protect the rights of an accused rapist who just happens to be a millionaire athlete, demands that we protect the rights of twice-accused child molester who is also a famous millionaire, but stands ready to run up the gallows some misguided, poorly led Army enlisted people. Yep, I'm sorry about that. I demand an apology from the American press.
I'm sorry for the incredible lack of knowledge displayed by the "news" media and politicians on the functioning of a military chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It just shows us how few of them have actually served.
I'm sorry for the soldiers in the field who as usual will bear the brunt of the idiocy of the "news" media and political hacks. We ("news" media and political hacks) have severely weakened their ability to gain intelligence from prisoners. Anything short of serving prisoners candlelight dinner on fine linen will now be considered abusive. I guess we could turn them loose. Killing them in the streets is apparently not abusive.
Do not misunderstand me. I do not support what happened to these prisoners. I do think we need to look at it as part of the picture not the whole. This is the conduct of a tiny fraction of our soldiers. This is one leadership failure in an environment offering thousands of chances to fail each day. There was a public demonstration outside this prison a couple of days ago. A year ago, there would not have been an Iraqi within a mile of this place for fear of being taken inside there and truly tortured. We didn't stuff any of them into wood chippers as their previous leadership did. We didn't chuck any of them from the tops of buildings as their previous leadership did. We didn't give any of them an acid bath as their previous leadership did. We didn't chop them up and have their body parts delivered to their families as their previous leadership did. We didn't collect up their daughters and have the prisoners watch while we raped them as their previous leadership did. We didn't line up hundreds of thousands of them in front of a ditch and shoot them in the head as their previous leadership did. We didn't gas 5,000 of them either. Excuse me if I think making a pyramid from naked Arabs pales in comparison and I'm not sorry for that.
What you have just read is an example of Hillbilly Rage. Well, now my weekend is ruined.
(c) Copyright JD Pendry
This article may be electronically shared, republished or reprinted in it's entirety with original credit given and inclusion of all material following the Copyright notification.
Humor
This is a blonde variant of an old joke: Three women go down to Mexico one night, get drunk, and wake up in jail, only to find that they are to be executed in the morning, though none of them can remember what they did the night before.
The other version involves a doctor, a lawyer, and an engineer sentenced to be executed by guillotine. The first two are released when the blade fails to fall, but the engineer says, "Wait a minute, I think I see what's wrong...."
The first one, a redhead, is strapped in the electric chair, and is asked if she has any last words. She says, "I am from Grace University, and believe in the almighty power of God to intervene on the behalf of the innocent," They throw the switch and nothing happens.
They all immediately prostrate themselves; beg for her forgiveness, and release her.
The second one, a brunette, is strapped in and gives her last words, "I am from the Creighton School of Law and I believe in the power of justice to intervene on the part of the innocent." They throw the switch and again, nothing happens.
Again, they all immediately prostrate themselves; beg for her forgiveness, and release her.
The last one, a blonde, is strapped in and says, "Well, I'm from the University of Alabama, Huntsville and just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I'll tell you right now, you ain't gonna electrocute nobody if you don't plug this thing in."
"Reagan Is An Idiot" (Part 2)
Dinesh d'Souza has a marvelous collection of quotes from various American intellectuals demonstrating that they failed to appreciate that the Soviet Union was near collapse in the 1980s--unlike that stupid guy Ronald Reagan: June 8, 2004 -- WRITING on Ronald Reagan's achievements in Newsweek, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. notes, "Reagan's admirers contend that his costly re-armament program caused the Soviet collapse. Maybe so; but surely the thing that did in the Russians was that time had proved communism an economic, political and moral disaster."
Yup, Ronald Reagan was an idiot. Isn't it unfortunate that we listened to him, and not the "smart guys"?
Funny: Here's Schlesinger in 1982, observing that "Those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves."
...
In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote in Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability."
But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, an MIT economist and well-known author who, as late as 1989, wrote: "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."
Throughout the 1980s, most of these pundits derisively condemned Reagan's policies. Strobe Talbott of Time magazine faulted the Reagan administration for espousing "the early '50s goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic.
"Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end," Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind, "it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the USSR has learned to live."
...
Perhaps one should not be too hard on the wise men. After all, explained Schlesinger in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse: "History has an abiding capacity to outwit our certitudes. No one foresaw these changes."
Wrong again, professor: Ronald Reagan foresaw them. In 1981, Reagan told the students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame: "The West won't contain communism. It will transcend communism. We will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written."
In 1982, Reagan told the British Parliament in London: "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. . . . But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union."
Reagan added that "it is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens" and he predicted that if the Western alliance remained strong it would produce a "march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history."
More seriously, the core problem is that most of the American intellectual class was so in love with the ideals of socialism (if not its Soviet implementation) that they simply refused to see it for what it was: a doddering, incompetent system that had no future.
Anarchism and Property Rights
Professor Bainbridge discusses negative vs. positive rights here. Professor Volokh points to the complexities that suggest that short of anarchism, most conservatives and libertarians still believe that the government has an obligation to enforce rights--and often in a way that still gives some preference to poor people: Some (though probably not most) conservatives and moderate libertarians might insist that rich plaintiffs personally pay their full share of litigation and enforced (including the prorated salaries of police officers and judges, capital expenses, and other costs). But few would demand such payments as a condition of poor people's filing suit or calling the police: A poor person should be able to get the police to arrest someone who has taken his property, even without paying for the police officers' time and risk. (Anarchists may disagree with this, but most mainstream conservatives like Steve, or moderate libertarians like me, would, I think, take the view I describe.)
One issue associated with this question that I think needs to be discussed is the role that government plays in creating wealth inequalities by enforcing property rights.
There was a time, even as late as the 1920s, when America had a large anarchist socialist movement, and you can even see this in the anarchists of the Spanish Civil War. For many people, the notion of "anarchist socialist" seems like an oxymoron, but really, it isn't. Anarchists believed (and with some good reason) that government was one of the causes of disparities in wealth.
A really poor person (as distinguished from most "poor people" in America) usually has little or no property worth stealing. A wealthy person has lots of property worth stealing--even something like a house can be either stolen (as happened in Southern California some years ago--criminals literally dismantled some guy's house while he was on vacation, and took it) or destroyed.
In the absence of a government, the poor person's wealth is generally portable enough to take with him; he can--and probably would--protect his property himself. I remember reading a newspaper account a few years ago about a guy in Santa Ana, California, who had been burglarized so many times that all he had in his apartment was a bed. When he left the house to go to work, he took his TV and his gun with him. (He had a couple Dobermans guarding his stuff for a while, but the burglars stole them, too.)
The wealthy person would find it is extraordinarily inconvenient to be responsible for protecting all of his property all of the time--he could never leave the house unattended. In the absence of a government to protect his property rights, he has to hire someone to protect his property. For the average middle class person, this shouldn't be too expensive. A security firm that earns $5000 a year protecting your property is probably not going to jeopardize its long-term income by stealing $20,000 worth of stuff. (However: they might decide that it was worth doing if they only earned $1000 a year protecting your stuff. What are you going to do in an anarchy? Call the police?)
But what if you have a million dollars worth of stuff? It doesn't take 50x as many guards to protect a million dollars worth of property--but you will probably have to pay 50x as much for security service to make sure that the company doesn't decide, "Wow! We don't want to wait 20 years to make a million dollars providing security services--we can just get the million dollars by stealing this guy's stuff now."
There is the additional problem that a high value theft target is likely to attract disproportionate attention from thieves, simply because it is less effort to break into one house, and steal a million dollars, than to break into ten houses, and steal $100,000 from each.
In short, the cost of property protection in an anarchy is almost certainly not linear. Property protection costs rise faster than the value of the property to be protected. If you factor in the problems of kidnapping for ransom, this is even more true.
Our governmental system provides a basic level of property protection. The wealthy person will almost certainly hire private security firms as well, but if you are in the bottom 95% of Americans in wealth, our government's basic level of property protection does a pretty decent job. (The poorest of the poor, however, get little benefit from this system, since they have little property to protect.) When I go home at the end of the day, I can be pretty darn sure that no one will have broken into my home and stolen my possessions. I can be pretty darn sure that if I drive somewhere and park my car, that it will still be there when I return to it. (Note: if you live in Los Angeles, or a number of other semi-anarchist cities, disregard these last two sentences.)
To the extent that government protection of property subsidizes the wealthy, the anarchists had a point. The big problem was that government protection of property often subsidized the wealthy far more than the middle class, because of this non-linear relationship between property value and protection costs.
It was also true that the government was often not impartial in the 19th century. Corporations engaged in monopolistic practices, and the courts generally took no action against it, but labor unions found themselves subject to legal action for combining in restraint of trade. The anarchist socialists had a point on this as well--and perhaps the stronger point.
Another Cross Lawsuit
I've mentioned in the past the absurdity of the federal courts ordering removal of the Ten Commandments when the plaintiff alleged suffering "physical pain" from seeing it on public property. To be blunt, a judge should have either told the plaintiff to seek professional help, or stop engaging in perjury. I see lots of things that I offend me, but they don't cause "physical pain."
This cross lawsuit is technically correct; that is, it follows a bunch of very stupid precedents based on Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), a wrongly decided case. But again, we have a situation where the plaintiff is making claims that should cause a federal judge to engage in some sharp questioning--and then give the plaintiff a Bronx cheer.
In this case, a cross was set up in the middle of the Mojave Desert in 1934, as a war memorial, remembering the dead of World War I. This land is now in a national park, and the plaintiffs are alleging: Buono is deeply offended by the cross display on public land in an area that is not open to others to put up whatever symbols they choose. A practicing Roman Catholic, Buono does not find a cross itself objectionable, but stated that the presence of the cross is objectionable to him as a religious symbol because it rests on federal land.
To say that I find this unlikely--that a practicing Roman Catholic would be offended by the presence of a cross on federal land--should be obvious. But even if we accept this claim--so what? It offends him. The ACLU's argument has long been that you don't have a right to not be offended; if you don't like what's on TV (broadcast on publicly owned spectrum), change the channel.Defendants argue that Buono has not suffered injury-infact.
Yup. This is exactly the case. I understand the claim that the federal government should not be promoting a particular religion; it's an ahistorical understanding of the establishment clause, but there is a certain logic to it. But first of all, there needs to be an injury. If simply being offended is sufficient reason for the courts to start ordering people around, there are going to be lawsuits galore.
UPDATE: A reader points out that all this talk of being injured by the sight of a cross reminds him of a movie starring Bela Lugosi.
Did Anyone Else See This?
A reader tells me: The Disney Channel has been showing ads for an upcoming "original movie" which stars Hilary Duff in her recurring role as Lizzie McGuire. In this made-for-TV feature, apparently Lizzie goes to military school. The previews which I saw at least twice in the past two days show a number of scenes...one of which is (apparently)a quick shot of the drill team at this military school going through their paces in a gymnasium. The drill team members are carrying their faux rifles -painted all white- as part of their drill.
Please, tell me that this reader of mine imagined this.
During this scene, a BIG disclaimer is shown at the bottom of the screen. It reads, "No actual guns were used in this movie."
A Little More On The University Of Utah Declaring Sovereignty
I mentioned a few days ago that the University of Utah has decided that it doesn't have to obey the Utah Legislature--in particular, that the University of Utah may prohibit guns on campus, even though state law explicitly requires the university recognize concealed weapon permits.
The University's argument is that academic freedom will be impaired, because students will be reluctant to speak freely in the classroom out of fear that another student will take offense, draw a gun, and shoot them. (Well, at least I assume that it is another student they are worried about, not enraged faculty.)
I spent some time digging around trying to find a clear statement of the University's reasoning on this, since it sounded like, from most coverage that I have read, that the University of Utah had decided that the State of Utah was a subsidiary of the University, not the other way around. I found this truly amazing statement from the University of Utah's president: Students, for example, might restrain their opinions during classroom discussions on controversial topics like abortion and affirmative action, out of fear that they would say something that would prompt a classmate to brandish a weapon.
I think President Machen needs to get out more. When I go into downtown Boise, I see the rent-a-mob crowd carrying signs that say, "Bush Lied--Kids Died!" or similar sentiments. That's not free expression? There is not strong emotion evoked by such signs?
"The essence of my position is that a college campus is unlike almost any other public area of our society," says the university's president, J. Bernard Machen. "It's a place where people come together and actually engage in the free expression of ideas, and many times strong emotions are expressed."
By the reasoning of President Machen, any state allowing carrying of guns (either openly or concealed) has a similar potentially chilling effect on freedom of speech. For that matter, so does allowing people to carry knives. Or drive cars (quite capable of killing a dozen leftist demonstrators with one push of the accelerator). I think by President Machen's reasoning, you could make an argument that states that allow big strong people to wander around without handcuffs (to keep them from pummeling me for expressing strong opinions in public) has a chilling effect on freedom of speech.
I guess the most outrageous aspect of the whole lawsuit in federal court that the University of Utah brought was that it was brought as a 42 USC 1983 suit. If you aren't familiar with that section, this is the "Civil action for deprivation of rights" provision. This is the descendant of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Anti-KKK Act. And what were some of the actions that the Klan engaged in that caused passage of this law? Disarming freedmen of their guns, for the purposes of intimidation and murder.
UPDATE: I am informed by a University of Florida student that Machen is now in charge at University of Florida. Here's a quote that shows what matters: At the meeting, he targeted diversity as the No. 1 priority of UF.
“We can’t be a great university unless we are a diverse university,” he said at the meeting.
A Federal Appellate Court Judge Uses Lawrence To Find a New Right
Professor Volokh finds the questions that this case raises "fascinating." In some abstract sense, yes, this is a fascinating set of questions. But in practice, the judge who wrote the dissenting opinion is arguing that Lawrence leads to a constitutional right to sexually exploit retarded people.
First, the facts of the case, from the majority opinion, which told Anderson to suck up his punishment: Kevin Anderson was convicted in 1993 of first-degree rape and sodomy under Oregon laws that prohibit having sexual intercourse with a person “incapable of consent by reason of mental defect.” Or. Rev. Stat. §§ 163.375, 163.405 (the “sex crimes statutes”). He appeals the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He urges two points: (1) the trial court unconstitutionally excluded evidence of the victim’s sexual history and reputation under Oregon’s rape shield law; (2) the State of Oregon convicted him under an unconstitutionally vague statute.
How retarded is the victim in this case? The victim (hereinafter “JH”) is a 28 year-old moderately retarded
Now, there is some argument about the extent to which this was consensual, but that's rather beside the point. Anderson complained that he wasn't allowed to use testimony of others about JH's sexual history.
woman. Psychiatric evaluators have placed her level of emotional maturity at the six- to eight-year-old level; her communication skills at the five- to seven-year-old level; her adaptive functioning level in the “severely retarded range”; and her overall intellectual functioning level in the “moderately retarded range.” Her hearing, vision, and speech are impaired.
...
Anderson testified that he had seen JH dancing “suggestively” with men at bars. He had noticed that JH had difficulty speaking and surmised “that maybe her tongue was missing or some part of her tongue.” Anderson further testified that the sexual encounter at issue here was not their first; he stated that JH had initiated sexual intercourse on one prior occasion. Anderson claimed that the second sexual encounter, which resulted in his arrest and conviction and this appeal, was consensual, and that JH again initiated intercourse.The court excluded the following: testimony that JH was a “cat in heat”; reports from a counselor who worked with JH “to try to resolve problems with her sexuality”; testimony from her former boyfriend who described her sexual drive as “excessive”; testimony from two community members recounting how they witnessed JH rubbing her body against men, grabbing their crotches, and picking up men on street corners.
Hmmm. Anderson doesn't even get to know JH well enough to realize that she is pretty severely mentally retarded, nearly blind in one eye, and largely deaf, and he's upset that he can't get her described as "cat in heat" or having an "excessive" sex drive? Talk about projection.
What really upsets me is the dissenting opinion. While much of the dissent is arguing questions of what law should have been applied to this dispute, because the trial and previous appeals through the Oregon courts took place before Lawrence was decided in 2003, the dissenting judge finally uses Lawrence to find that there is a constitutional right to have sex with a woman whose mental and emotional capabilities are that of a child: What follows is my explanation as to why the sexual liberty interest set out in Lawrence v. Texas does indeed implicate the validity of Anderson’s conviction.
The dissenting opinion goes on to explain how because the Lawrence decision effectively strikes down all societal notions of sexual morality between adults, then the state may not interfere with her sexual liberty:
...
The question, then, is whether the sexual liberty interest outlined in Lawrence regulates the manner in which a state drafts and applies its statutory rape law as applied to adult victims. I believe it does.
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Before proceeding, it is crucial to note the interrelationship between JH’s sexual liberty interest and Anderson’s: If JH has, in certain circumstances, a constitutionally protected right to consent to sex and she does in fact consent, then there is no constitutionally legitimate basis, under Lawrence, to preclude Anderson from having sex with her in those circumstances. Anderson therefore need not satisfy the doctrinal requirements of jus tertii or third-party standing (although I believe that he could). He asserts his own right to engage in private consensual conduct, not JH’s.Expert testimony at trial also suggested an invitation to apply one’s own moral framework to JH’s sexual choice. In explaining why JH’s consent was not valid, the prosecution’s non-medical expert on sexually abused, mentally retarded individuals testified that whereas JH sees “sex” as merely a physical act, “If you ask, you know, anyone else what sex was or what intercourse is you see an entire picture. You see the candles, the wine, the dating, you know, whatever else goes on. With her sex is just one quick spur of the moment thing.”
For all that supporters of Lawrence talk about love, commitment, and relationship, the fact of the matter is that by scrapping all notions of sexual morality between adults, Lawrence is opening the door to scrapping laws intended to protect an adult with the mental capabilities of a chid from exploitation by a guy who barely knew this woman. Does anyone find it unlikely that the same reasoning won't be applied to strike down child molestation laws (as the ACLU has already tried--and failed--to do)?
That the state may not burden a particular sexual choice out of distaste or disagreement is the central holding of Lawrence. 123 S. Ct. at 2478 (“When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person . . . [t]he liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.”). Taking Anderson’s version of the facts as true (the jury having rejected the only other version of the facts available), JH’s sexual choice was clearly demonstrated and uncoerced.
"That Idiot Reagan"
It was very fashionable for intellectuals to regard Reagan as an idiot--rather like they regard President Bush. Why? In Bush's case, it was because Bush occasionally managles English. In Reagan's case, what was once said about Winston Churchill's oratory was also true of Reagan, "Heavy guns, but not very mobile." Reagan was sometimes a little clumsy and a little shallow in his understanding of the big issues--and it would sometimes show when he had to respond to questions. (The same is definitely not true of President Bush.)
But the big problem--the reason that Reagan was a "moron" or an "idiot," and the same reason that the left and some liberals still largely view Bush that way, is that both men knew what was right and wrong, and made no apologies for it. Natan Sharansky, one of the more prominent Soviet human rights activists, wrote a splendid column for the Jerusalem Post (free registration required) that emphasized this: In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.
This is exactly what caused the left and liberals to hate Reagan so deeply, and why many of them have transferred this hatred to President Bush: a belief that right and wrong are not culturally determined, but reflect universal truths.
...
Those same critics used to love calling Reagan a simpleton who saw the world through a primitive ideological prism and who would convey his ideas through jokes and anecdotes.
...
What his critics didn't seem to understand was that the jokes and anecdotes that so endeared Reagan to people were merely his way of expressing fundamental truths in a way that everyone could understand.
Reagan's tendency to confuse names and dates, something I, too, experienced first-hand, also made him the target of ridicule.
...
Reagan may have confused names and dates, but his moral compass was always good. Today's leaders, in contrast, may know their facts and figures, but are often woefully confused about what should be the simplest distinctions between freedom and tyranny, democrats and terrorists.
The legacy of president Reagan will surely endure. Armed with moral clarity, a deep faith in freedom, and the courage to follow his convictions, he was instrumental in helping the West win the Cold War and hundreds of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain win their freedom.
The left (and some liberals) engage in a lot of moral posturing as though they believed in right and wrong as absolutes. The abuses at Abu Ghraib; the often grossly false representations of the Patriot Act as the beginnings of a police state; the insistence that the apparently erroneous WMD reports were "lies"--all of these are arguments phrased in terms that imply that good and evil exist in high contrast.
Yet I have spent most of my adult life listening to the leftists argue for moral relativism: that the United States and the Soviet Union were not fundamentally different in their ambitions and goals; that the liberties of the United States are really no better than the guarantee of employment that Soviet citizens enjoyed; that all forms of sexual behavior are equally valid (homosexuality? group sex? pedophilia? animals? the more the merrier!); that Ebonics and Standard English should be regarded as equally valid and useful; that every culture's behavior is not only equally valid, but probably more valid than the norms of our society, just because our culture is not "authentic."
Moral outrage from the left is strictly a political maneuver. I no longer regard their screeching as meaningful, no matter how many television channels, daily newspapers, or news magazines they control.
Illinois County Pays $50,000 For Unlawful Arrest of Gun Owner
From the Chicago Tribune: DuPage County has settled a federal lawsuit filed by a man whose arrest on weapons charges two years ago became a rallying point for a group advocating the right to carry concealed handguns.
John Horstman, 43, of Schaumburg picked up a check for $50,000 at the DuPage County state's attorney's office Wednesday. DuPage County sheriff's police had arrested Horstman on July 24, 2002, and charged him with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon for carrying a 9 mm handgun in a case in his backpack while bicycling along the Illinois Prairie Path.
DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett dropped the charges Aug. 8, 2002, saying the evidence failed to warrant the allegations. Horstman, a computer systems engineer whose only previous brush with the law was a speeding ticket, filed suit soon after.
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Horstman's arrest became a rallying point for Concealed Carry Inc., an Oak Brook-based group promoting the right of law-abiding citizens to carry weapons. The group, which also advocates the consolidation and clarification of Illinois gun laws, used Horstman's case to draw attention to a clause in the state gun law that allows registered owners to carry an unloaded gun "enclosed in a case, firearm carrying box, shipping box or other container."
"What we're looking at here is the first step of holding state's attorneys responsible for arresting law-abiding gun owners," said John Birch, president of Concealed Carry. "I'm a supporter of Joe Birkett. This is not directed at Joe. This is directed at the process as it exists in the state of Illinois."
DuPage County First Assistant State's Atty. Nancy Wolfe noted Wednesday that the county admits no liability in the out-of-court settlement. Birkett has called for Illinois to clarify its gun laws.
"We resolved the case by settlement for an amount agreed upon by both parties," Wolfe said.
"I'm not going to comment any further on it."
The $50,000 settlement is significantly less than Horstman sought when he filed the complaint in federal court two years ago. He had been seeking more than $1 million for a wrongful arrest.
Freedom of Religion Threatened--And The ACLU Is On The Right Side!
From CNN: RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- The Rev. Todd Pyle thought it was the perfect spot to baptize 12 new members of his church. The river was calm and shallow, and there was a shaded area offshore for people to stand.
I suspect that this quote is missing some words, but essentially, his argument raises an interesting question that has been an issue ever since the Yoder decision: if the government passes a law prohibiting some action, and that action interferes with someone's religious beliefs, is that a violation of freedom of religion?
"It was a very serene place," he said. "It was special."
But officials at the Falmouth Waterfront Park, a public park just outside Fredericksburg, weren't pleased. They tried to break up the ceremony, claiming it might be offensive to nearby swimmers or other people using the park. Pyle was able to finish the baptism, but then he was asked to leave.
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Pyle said he chose to hold an outdoor baptism, still common in parts of the South, because his Cornerstone Baptist Church in Stafford lacks an indoor baptismal pool. He said few people seemed to notice the small congregation during the 30-minute ceremony May 23.
But park officials said religious groups seeking to perform a service in the park still need to apply for a permit or else gather under a shelter or inside.
"We don't want to tread on anybody's First Amendment or constitutional rights," said Brian Robinson, director of the Fredericksburg-Stafford Park Authority. "What we try to discourage is anything not formally permitted that just sort of occurs spontaneously."
It is very clear (or at least should be) that if the law prohibited only actions taken for religious reasons, or if the law was written for the purpose of prohibiting the exercise of religion, this is unconstitutional. A law that prohibited killing animals as part of a religious ritual would be a clear violation; a law that prohibited cruelty to animals, and defined cruelty in a way that applied only to religious sacrifices, or seemed to have been written for that purpose, would be unconstitutional.
What happens if you prohibit some action that impairs both religious and non-religious actions, and the law was not aimed at, nor had any disproportionate impact on religious actions? I can see that there might be an argument for allowing the park to require all group activities involving more than say, ten people, to get a permit. This would apply to a big multi-family picnic, a baptism, or any other large group activity. John Whitehead, director of The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville, Virginia-based civil liberties organization, said that's a clear violation of the church members' constitutional rights.
The fact that the park officials seem to treat religious groups differently, and because of concern about it offending others, is a clear violation of the freedom of religious exercise clause--no question about it. It is also a reminder of the pretty fierce paranoia about religion that the ACLU has managed to create in public employees over the last few years--the belief that almost anything of a religious character in a public setting is suspect.
"Could a church have a picnic in the park and sing hymns? Of course they could," he said. "Parks have been forums since time immemorial to do these types of things."
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia also said in a statement: "If the park rules allow people to wade and swim in the river, then they must allow baptisms in the river."
This brings back memories. About 1977 or 1978 or so, I drove up to Santa Cruz to meet Susan Tatsui, a gal with whom I had gone to high school. (We had worked on a project for U.S. History class about the Japanese-American internment.) I was still looking for the right woman, and Susan was definitely on my list of those worth considering. (But not, apparently, vice versa.)
While looking for her place in the redwoods, I became aware of a large crowd gathered in the creek below the road. Someone was getting baptized. I wasn't a Christian, although I had certainly been exposed to Christian doctrine as I was growing up. I can't say that I really understood the significance of baptism at this point--but I will confess that I was quite touched by the words that I heard, and the peace that I saw from those participating. It was definitely one of those little items that softened my heart towards accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior--and a reminder that Christians should never let themselves be hushed up in public places.
Shameless Praying By A Government Official: Will The ACLU Approve?
Over at Lead and Gold, we read about an event that must have happened in an alternate universe: From C-Span's 1994 interview with Stephen Ambrose:
LAMB: The New York Daily News threw out its lead articles and printed in their place the Lord's prayer?
AMBROSE: Yes.
LAMB: Would that happen today?
AMBROSE: You'd have to have a D-Day to find out, and we're never going to have a D-Day again. It was a unique moment in world history. A couple of scenes from those homefronts that are very dear to me, one in Canada. The French-speaking delegate, the leader of the French, got up and asked permission on this day to sing the "Marseillaise," and it was granted. For the first time in the French Parliament the "Marseillaise" was sung, followed by "God Save the King."
Franklin Roosevelt put together a prayer that morning. They got it to all the radio networks who broadcast it through the day, very slowly so people could write it down. Remember, in those days we had afternoon editions of the newspapers, and the afternoon newspapers printed that prayer. At 10:30 Eastern War Time, Roosevelt went on the radio and led this nation in prayer, and from what I can tell from my interviews -- and I remember this myself. I can remember being on my knees with my mother when this prayer was read by Roosevelt on the radio, and we all joined in. It was the most wonderful moment of national unity.
LAMB: And you remember.
AMBROSE: I remember doing the prayer. I remember being on my knees with my brothers and my mother, and we had the radio on. I remember it was CBS.
Proposal For A Coin Honoring Reagan
From reader Rod Yamamoto: It is now time to honor Ronald Reagan by putting him on a new regular circulation one dollar coin.
Absolutely. Ronald Reagan's legacy was that his unwavering determination to win the Cold War--by bankrupting the Soviet Union (before it bankrupted us)--eventually brought an end to a totalitarian system built on lies.
Obverse: Ronald Reagan bust.
Reverse: Berlin Wall being smashed by man with sledge hammer; large v-shaped broken open area in wall with American Bald Eagle flying overhead; inscribed words, "Tear Down This Wall!"
When Reagan was first elected in 1980, I thought of him as a dangerous warmonger, likely to bring us to the brink of global thermonuclear holocaust. I've learned a lot since then, much of it from studying history, and I now see that he had a lot in common with our current president: a willingness to take risks because the alternatives are so much worse, and a belief that a free society is worth fighting to keep, and to expand.
UPDATE: Make sure you read this tribute from a Pole: Throughout the 1980s, during the Polish Spring of "Solidarity", and then through the dark winter of the martial law, and the slow decomposition of the system, Ronald Reagan was our undisputed leader in the free republic of our hearts. He was our beacon of hope, someone who understood our condition and spoke about it in our language. The Western sophisticates sneered when he spoke about the "Evil Empire"; we knew it was evil and that it was an empire - we lived in it. They laughed at him when he said that communism is being consigned to the ash heap of history - how ignorant, how simplistic, how unrealistic - we, on the other hand, took heart because we knew that for him it wasn't just an empty rhetoric; he meant exactly what he said and had every intention of seeing it through. In the end, he had the last laugh.
I can't escape thinking that for the United States and the free world it's 1980 again. A bitter enemy, who despises everything that we stand for and cherish, who wants to destroy our civilisation and build their own totalitarian utopia, is on the march, emboldened by years of compromises and appeasement. Will the people turn to a Democrat, who occasionally talks tough but whose heart isn't really in it, or will they choose a Republican, a "war-monger" and a laughing stock to the sophisticated and nuanced crowd, but for the rest of us someone who sees things clearly and is resolved to take the enemy on and consign him, too, to the ash-heap of history?
I know that I will be accused of being too simplistic; I know that there are always hundreds of differences between then and now one can point to, and hundreds of excuses not to do the right thing. But in the end it comes to a simple choice: do you just talk about freedom and democracy, or do you actually do something about it?
For their own sake, and for the sake of everyone else, I hope and pray that the American people will make the right choice in November.
As for Ronald Reagan, thank you. Not just for that candle that you kept lit in the window of the White House to show that you were with us, but more importantly for everything that you did to ensure that the candle wouldn't have to be lit forever.
Daycare
I've long been discouraged by the shift from parents (usually mothers) raising their kids to day care providers. Let me emphasize before you get defensive:
1. Some families have no choice. They are struggling to pay for the necessities of life, neither parent has a high paying job, or one of the parents (usually the father, but not always) has flaked out. Note: a new BMW is not a necessity of life; nor are annual vacations in Europe.
2. There are daycare providers who genuinely mean well. From what I have seen, most daycare providers mean well. From what I have also seen, however, many daycare providers are doing it because they are not well enough educated to get a higher paying job. There's something warped and culturally destructive about college-educated parents having high school dropouts raise their kids, especially in the first five years, when there should be so much cognitive development happening in a child's brain. Obviously, some daycare providers are doing it because they have their own kids at home, and figure adding another child won't do any harm.
3. Even the best daycare situations are going to generally be inferior to a parent. I like to say that my kids had the ideal daycare: a 1:2 ratio of "daycare provider" to "children"; the same daycare provider, all the way from birth to 16; a daycare provider who taught them to read; who taught them right from wrong; a daycare provider who looked after the interests of the children like they were her own--because they were her own. I don't know where you could find a better daycare situation than that.
Here's a new site that I have added to my blogroll devoted to providing resources and links to counterbalance the enormous media propaganda campaign in favor of daycare--instead of parentcare. A useful quote: A day care worker watching her 225th child take her first step can't get too excited.
And it's true. We had a neighbor that did daycare--and the father of one of the children she watched told her to not inform Mom when the baby started to walk. He wanted Mom to think she was seeing it first. By age two, the baby would only call the daycare provider "Mom," and would hit his biological mother when she arrived in her shiny new BMW from her very important job in San Francisco. Can you see why the daycare provider stopped doing this line of work?
