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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 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). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Friday, June 25, 2004
They Do Things Differently Outside California I just blogged this over at my Civilian Gun Self-Defense blog, but it's too good to leave off this one. From the June 25, 2004 Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard: COBURG - Three robbers in a black Cadillac held up an Interstate 5 gas station and threatened to kill the clerk, but she drove them off by blowing out the car's back window with her handgun, police said Thursday.California plates? That explains it--they weren't expecting the victims to shoot back. James Madison, Rifleman We tend to think of James Madison as Father of the Bill of Rights, and a lawyer, but there is another way to think of him: rifleman. From a letter he wrote to a friend named William Bradford, June 19, 1775, in William T. Hutchinson and William M.E. Rachal, ed., The Papers of James Madison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 1:153: The strength of this Colony will lie chiefly in the rifle-men of the Upland Counties, of whom we shall have great numbers. You would be astonished at the perfection this art is brought to. The most inexpert hands rec[k]on it an indifferent shot to miss the bigness of a man's face at the distance of 100 Yards. I am far from being among the best & should not often miss it on a fair trial at that distance. If we come into an engagement, I make no doubt but the officers of the enemy will fall at the distance before they get withing 150 or 200 Yards. Indeed I believe we have men that would very often hit such a mark 250 Yds. Our greatest apprehensions proceed from the scarcity of powder but a little will go a great way with such as use rifles.This claim is consistent with eyewitness accounts, on both sides, from throughout the Revolution, that riflemen were consistently capable of groups of several inches at distances of 100 yards, with some capable of comparable accuracy at distances of 300 yards. Boston Catholics Grieving Over Churches Going Condo This article from Fox News reports on how Boston Catholics are grieving as the Archdiocese sells off churches to pay the bills from the priest sex abuse scandal. I can understand their discomfort; it's a painful reminder that their church's leadership was not even as moral as the average secular person in America. Some immoral acts are going to take place in those churches turned condos--but few will match the immorality of what took place before. I wouldn't compare these churches to brothels. That would be unfair. To the brothels. At least prostitutes in brothels are usually adults, and there by choice. The leadership covered up criminal acts that damaged thousands (at least) of Catholic kids, destroying the morals of many, destroying the faith of others. In some cases, this depraved covering up of evil destroyed lives, by driving young men to suicide, because they did not know how to handle the conflict between what these perverts did, and their claim to be the earthly representatives of Jesus Christ. The Catholic laity needs to clean up their clergy. I know that many are trying to do so, right now, and many others have been driven away by the conflicts that this evil caused. Don't stop until the last excuse-makers have stopped making excuses. There may well be a place for these people as laymen. That anyone could claim to be closer than the laity to Jesus Christ while covering up these sort of crimes just overwhelms me with disgust. Bush Pulls Out Ahead Fox News reports on a survey of 900 registered voters (which is the first of these polls that I have seen mention this limitation). In a two way race, Bush leads Kerry 48-42; in a three way race with Ralph Nader, Bush leads Kerry 47-40. Since the margin of error is +-3%, I think this means that a two race is still too close to call, but a three way race makes Bush the winner. (48-3=45; 42+3=45; 47-3=44; 40+3=43.) Voters clearly think Bush is better able to handle security against terrorists, and Kerry is better able to handle domestic issues. This suggests to me that there is some significant number of Kerry voters who either: 1. Don't think terrorism is very likely. 2. Think it is likely, but it won't kill them. 3. Would rather be employed and dead instead of out of work and live. I'm kidding about #3--but what else would you conclude? The other interesting result is that a majority of Americans believe that there is a connection between al-Qaeda and Hussein--and the 9/11 Commission's apparent disagreement with that just damages the the Commission's credibility, instead of changing the minds of voters. Or at least you might come to that conclusion from reading the report. Rebounding Economy I was just able to buy some federal agency bonds due in May, 2006, with an annualized yield to maturity of a hair over 3%. Considering that federal agency bonds are just slightly less safe than Treasurys, that's pretty spectacular. They are callable bonds, which I tend to shy away from, but because they were selling below par (meaning that their face value is $10,000, but I actually paid $9,946 for them), even if they get called early, I will still get more than a 3% annualized yield. Finally! Some Competition The Hollywood Reporter tells us of something that I didn't think was possible: a film festival that isn't leftist! Just as his "Fahrenheit 9/11" opens nationwide, several filmmakers are readying documentaries aimed at debunking Michael Moore, and a new film festival is being planned that will feature such works as well as other documentaries well to the right of Moore's films.Both of them? You understand my cynicism; I know lots and lots of multimillionaires (more than I count, even though I'm wearing open toed sandals today), and nearly all of them are leftists of the Michael Moore variety (although usually with better manners and more self-control). None of them are conservatives. I'm tempted to rewrite the classic joke about the Easter Bunny and the Honest Lawyer with a Rich Conservative Funder of Political Causes instead. (I have at least met a few honest lawyers, so I know that they do exist.) Hubbard currently is negotiating to show two films critical of Moore.Remember, it doesn't have to be a documentary to be interesting, entertaining, and make money: And the war on terror also is expected to be a dominant theme at the American Film Renaissance.Remember when the bad guys in The Sum of All Fears were transformed from an Muslim crazy into a Russian neo-Nazi? I hate to tell you this, but that PC change made a "ripped from tomorrow's headlines" movie into hokum. The important point: So why have a couple of lawyers from Texas created a film festival? "I've always been interested in the cultural and political messages in film," Jim Hubbard said. "To be frank, whenever there is such a message, it's liberal. For 40 years the left has had a near monopoly, and we're going to counter that."Unfortunately, this will require conservatives with money (all four of you) to risk some capital, and invest in making some movies. Mel Gibson demonstrated that you could make a Christian movie and an enormous amount of money. There are a lot of small movies that could be made for several million dollars, would almost certainly earn that investment back, make some money (maybe lots of money), and provoke some serious thought in the audience. I've mentioned before that Nat Brandt's The Town That Started the Civil War is a good example. Historical costume drama; action sequences with armed college students and professors surrounding the hotel; passionate figures insisting that "The laws of God take precedence over the laws of men"; swirling political intrigue; heart-warming reminders that the battle against racism is something that blacks and whites fight together. Trying To Get Back To Your Roots? I understand why some rappers get in trouble with the law over weapons, or drugs, or beating up their managers. Some of them were criminals before they became stars, and they don't have much reason to change their behavior, since they have turned those criminal personas into real wealth. But why would you feel the need to engage in an economic crime? NEW YORK (AP) - Rapper and actor DMX was arrested on charges that he and another man tried to steal a car in a parking lot at Kennedy Airport, authorities said.DMX can't afford to buy any car he wants? If This Is The Best The Left Can Do... They have near complete control over the news media: all the television networks except Fox; most daily newspapers of any size; most of the wire services. In spite of genuine bad news, and a lot of careful editing to emphasize that bad news, while ignoring good news, consumer confidence is rising: NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. consumer sentiment rose in June, according to a survey on Friday, on improved job prospects and a softening in soaring gasoline prices as the economy gained traction after a long period of weakness.Here's more good news: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. home resales jumped unexpectedly by 2.6 percent to a record high in May as an improving job market fueled home buying while mortgage rates remained relatively low, a trade association said on Friday.Oh yeah, there's some bad news in that report, which I expect Kerry to use as a sign of the failure of the Bush Administration's policies: The median sales price of a pre-owned home also climbed 10.3 percent from the same period a year ago to $183,600.Secretary of the Treasury Snow at least makes the right noises about the deficit: TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Friday that over-sized government deficits were a potential threat to the economy but said the Bush administration was committed to cutting them.I wish it were something that the President could do all by himself. But there is this problem with pork-barreling Congresscritters as well. I wish I had a solution to that. Unfortunately, pork-barreling is a bipartisan problem. Too Much Whitney Houston You are probably aware that the music industry settled a CD price-fixing suit by sending money out to consumers. What you may not be aware is that they also agreed to send out CDs to libraries and schools. What they sent has turned out to be rather comical: SEATTLE (AP) - The Puget Sound Educational Service District, serving 35 school districts, received 1,300 copies of Whitney Houston's soaring rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner," a disc that includes only one other song, "America the Beautiful."Of course, another way of looking at this is to remember the situation some years ago when Canada shipped many tons of cheese to a refugee camp on the Cambodian border--where the local population did not know what cheese was. "Thank you for the soap, but it doesn't wash very well." Even the New York Times Is Now Admitting Bin Laden/Iraqi Connections From this morning's paper: Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.And from part 2: Mr. bin Laden "also requested joint operations against foreign forces" based in Saudi Arabia, where the American presence has been a rallying cry for Islamic militants who oppose American troops in the land of the Muslim pilgrimage sites of Mecca and Medina.Now, this particular document doesn't provide later information, but to suggest that the connection wasn't on-going, in light of the other pieces of evidence that have popped up, is just partisan politics. Thursday, June 24, 2004
This Is Really Quite Astonishing The Saudi government is offering foreigners the right to carry arms for self-defense: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Foreign residents of Saudi Arabia will be allowed to carry guns, the police minister announced after a series of militant bombings, attacks and kidnappings targeting Western workers in the kingdom.This is really an indication of how seriously the Saudis want to keep foreign workers. There are those who think the best thing we can do is have American workers leave, and let the Saudi royal family stew in its own juices. To some extent, they helped to create the al-Qaeda mess by not pursuing bin Laden in exchange for bin Laden leaving Saudi Arabia alone. In addition, the cynical use of the Wahabbi form of Islam by the Saudi government to keep their masses hating the West--instead of the corrupt Saudi royal family--has played a major part in creating the problem we are fighting today. As my wife observed, "If we pull out and stop buying their oil, what will the Saudis do with it?" The problem, unfortunately, is that even the U.S. went Green, stopped buying oil from the Saudis, this would not solve the problem. A collapsing economy would guarantee al-Qaeda success in overthrowing the Saudi government, and there are many nations that would be quite willing to buy al-Qaeda/Saudi oil. France, for example, would gladly sell nuclear weapon technology to them, if they got a good enough price on the oil, and a promise that its own Islamic population would be encouraged to be quiet. I really don't want to see the Saudi royal family in power there--but we can't very safely let them get overthrown by al-Qaeda. That would give al-Qaeda something it doesn't have right now: a government; a multibillion dollar a month income stream; and a military. The Saudis have made noises about gradually approaching democracy; let's hope it happens. Another Constitutional Right Has Been Found in Berkeley! The beginning of the story I can't really argue with too much: BERKELEY, Calif. — Residents of this left-leaning city will have a chance to vote in November on whether they think prostitution should be a crime.I agree that it would be better for prostitution to be legal, and subject to regulation (as is the case in many Nevada counties), than to create the mess that is typical in many cities: prostitutes soliciting on the streets, thus creating a really disagreeable situation where customers assume that any woman out at night is looking for customers; prostitutes leaving discarded condoms on the streets; the increased risk of STD transmission by those who aren't bothering with condoms; pimps, the lowest scum of the universe, even below trial lawyers, in my opinion; corrupt vice cops taking bribes in cash and services. But the story concludes with the discovery of a new right: Few, who recently completed six months house arrest on federal charges of conspiring to commit prostitution, said decriminalizing prostitution is a civil rights issue.Well, let's see, in the aftermath of the Lawrence decision, who can seriously argue that it isn't a civil rights issue? What really ticks me off is that rights that are explicitly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights--like the right to keep and bear arms--are regularly ignored or denied by the courts, and by most law professors. Yet suddenly, all sorts of rights that aren't explicit, and for which the evidence is pretty strongly that that they weren't even considered rights in 1789--are suddenly in vogue. Not Just One Chemical Weapon Shell... From FoxNews: In an exclusive interview with FOX News’ Brit Hume, Charles Duelfer (search) — whose ISG is leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction — said terrorists in Iraq are “trying to tap into the Iraqi WMD intellectual capital.” Labels: Iraqi WMDs Amusing Idaho Code Title BURGLARY WITH EXPLOSIVES. Actually, they mean safecracking, and there are good reasons to treat this more seriously than simple burglary. Still, when I first saw the title of the section, my only thought was, "Burglary with explosives? Is that like an extreme sport version?" Not funny, but somewhat interesting is the punishment for rape in Idaho: it can be as little as one year in prison--or life in prison, "in the discretion of the District Judge, who shall pass sentence." I don't know how often rape gets a life sentence here, but it's interesting that this is one of the options. I do know that "Lewd conduct with minor child under sixteen" can get a life sentence, and I have read recent Idaho Supreme Court decisions where someone received life plus fifteen years for two counts. California, this obviously isn't (see California Penal Code 286 and 288, which each range from three to eight years). Moral Decline on the Bench I won't even hint at why this judge was removed from the bench; you'll have to click over if you are open-minded enough (the ACLU will doubtless file suit on behalf of the judge on "freedom of expression" grounds, and then file suit on behalf of the defendant in the murder case). It's repulsive at several levels: a lack of professionalism; a juvenile notion of what's important; general moral decline. My biggest surprise was that this wasn't one of Jerry Brown's appointees to the California courts. If You Have Kids, You Probably Made The Same Mistake I Did On Your 2003 Taxes I just received a notice informing me that I failed to account for the Advance Child Tax Credit on my 1040. Remember that little check you received part-way through 2003, as a way of getting the economy pumped up? Well, that was an advance on the child tax credit--it wasn't a gift. Somehow, TurboTax failed to alert me to the fact that I needed to record that, and I certainly wasn't thinking about it when I did my taxes. The World Changes--And Often Not For The Better Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University has written a couple of columns praising Bill Cosby for his willingness to address the self-destructive behavior of black culture in America: Bill Cosby and I differ in age by one year -- I'm older. We both spent part of our youth, in the 1940s and 1950s, growing up in North Philadelphia's Richard Allen housing project. Being poor then was different from being poor now. My sister and I were rare among Richard Allen's residents. Our parents were separated, but nearly every other kid lived in a two-parent household. Black teen pregnancy was relatively rare and just a tiny fraction of today's. During those days, many residents rarely locked their doors until the last person came home. Hot summer nights saw many people fearlessly sleeping in their yards or on their balconies.Cosby's remarks at the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) are really, really gutsy: Cosby: "With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail. Brown vs. the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. We have to go in there -- forget about telling your child to go into the Peace Corps -- it is right around the corner. They are standing on the corner, and they can't speak English."What no one wants to confront is that the self-discipline problems that Bill Cosby is concerned about in the black community are just more severe forms of the same problems that are now afflicting the entire American society. This Makes The Laci Peterson Murder Case Seem Downright Normal Why has the Scott Peterson trial received so much attention, while this far more disturbing and interesting case been ignored nationally? When Glenn Taylor Helzer told Dawn Godman he wanted her to kill in God's name, she considered it a blessing. Fahrenheit 9/11 Ads Banned Under McCain/Feingold? Apparently the Federal Elections Commission is considering banning advertising for Michael Moore's new pack of lies after July 30th, because it is, as Moore unabashedly admits, an attempt to influence the election. As I observed in my February 1, 2004 Shotgun News article, "Why This Supreme Court Can’t Be Trusted": What was the First Amendment supposed to protect? First and foremost, itsAt least if the FEC is consistent on this, and treats ads for Moore's pack of lies like other forms of political advertising intended to influence the election, there will be some justice, as the left gets hoist by their own petard. But I have this odd feeling, since the Supreme Court has been taken over by a pack of leftists, that they will find some way to exempt advertising for Moore's movie from this ban. Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Stem Cell Research James Lileks again has a crisp and witty column, this time about Kerry's push for federal funding of stem cell research: John Kerry doesn't just talk to foreign leaders; he counsels with Nobel science laureates as well. Kerry wants to lift the ban on federal money for experimenting on human embryos, and 48 of the nation's finest eggheads agree: President Bush's stance on the issue puts "ideology over science."I've done my best to follow the stem cell research controversy, but I confess that I have a lot of other matters requiring my immediate attention, so perhaps I don't fully understand the problem, but as I understand it, Bush has decided that the 48 stem cell lines already in use are all that the federal government will allow to be used. They have already been taken, and rather than throw them away, we might as well use them--but no more. Let me throw an analogy that strikes me about this. During World War II, the Nazis did all sorts of really evil things in the name of "science." A lot of it, especially the "ethnographic" research was garbage science, based on false premises, using nothing that was identifiably scientific method. A lot of it was just an excuse to cause pain and suffering, with no pretense of repeatability: How many blows with a rifle butt does it take to kill someone? But some of the research, such as the experiments dunking people in freezing water, seeing how long it takes to rewarm them, what is the success rate by various methods, was actually pretty respectable science. It was morally reprehensible, because these were prisoners, and the Nazi scientists didn't care in the least whether their "test subjects" lived or died. For a very long time, there has been controversy about whether to use the data or not. Some argue that to do so, considering the method by which this data was gathered, justifies evil. Others argue that if the science was valid, because we have no way to morally repeat such experiments, we should use the data. It was horrible that people were tortured and murdered to perform these experiments--but it would be even more horrible if the suffering of the victims wasn't used by scientists today. I share the "don't use it" crowd's horror. But I agree with the "this data was bought at a horrifying price, it's wrong not to use it" crowd's position. And that's where I stand on the stem cell issue. Larry Niven wrote a number of "organlegger" stories, set in a future where serious criminals are executed by being disassembled for their organs, so that others may live. Of course, with time, the demand for replacement organs causes this penalty to be expanded to more and more crimes, eventually reaching the jaywalkers. Niven was making a mildly humorous point--until I saw some moron Ohio legislator introduce a bill requiring those executed by the state to turn over their organs for transplant. Then I got a little scared. I am concerned that the pursuit of embryonic stem cells might well lead us down the road towards either economic pressures or social pressures to abort children (oops, I mean, "stem cell donor tissue"). That unnerves me a lot. I am reluctant to ban first trimester abortion (at least as long as it enjoys the level of support that it does), but I sure don't want to encourage it. UPDATE: Ann Coulter has a column that isn't quite as funny as usual, but makes some important points about stem cell research: Most peculiar, the passing of America's most pro-life president is supposed to be a clarion call for conservatives to support the disemboweling of human embryos -- in contrast to that heartless brute President Bush always prattling on about the value of human life. Someone persuaded poor, dear Nancy Reagan that research on human embryos might have saved her Ronnie from Alzheimer's. Now the rest of us are supposed to shut up because the wife of America's greatest president (oh, save your breath, girls!) supports stem-cell research. Labels: abortion Germaine Greer At It Again It's always fun to see what the world's most prominent feminist intellectual is up to, as part of her apparent campaign to utterly discredit feminism. From a Down Under newspaper: GERMAINE Greer this week went on BBC television and appealed for help.Now, like nearly all good leftists, Greer has spent much of the last two years arguing that overthrowing Hussein's torturocracy is evil, but it's nice to see that as part of her campaign for feminism, she has decided to support the most fiercely anti-woman wing of Islam. Pay Careful Attention: I Am Going To Agree With a Labor Union Official It appears that Chinese cars will be exported to the U.S. by 2010: DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) - Cars built in China's low-cost labor market could start pouring into the United States in large volumes by the end of this decade, a senior U.S. trade official said on Wednesday.Competition and free markets are a good thing, but I will say, China is hardly an example of a free market. It is certainly freer than it was 30 years ago, but the transformation from socialism to kleptocracy means that the worst of socialism (corrupt government protection of industries and individuals with influence) and the worst of capitalism (greed) without the restraining influence of a representative government to restrain the governmental corruption, or the restraining influence of a competitive and free market to restrain abuse by employers. Property Rights & Government Cass Sunstein, visiting blogger at Volokh Conspiracy, asserts that property exists only because of government, and therefore the libertarian argument against the welfare state is untenable: What Holmes is saying here is that even though property is exchangeable, it doesn't arise from value; it's a creation of law. And that's simply a matter of fact.I would agree that at a certain high level of property, this is true. But property can exist in anarchy--large accumulations become rather difficult, however, as I argued a few weeks back. Some readers have disputed this, suggesting that there are economies of scale in protecting property. If so, one would expect that wealthy people would be among the bigger enemies of Big Government, instead of major political funders of it (think George Soros, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates). I am not an anarchist or even a libertarian (although I have some sympathy for their concerns), but I do recognize that there is some merit to the idea that property, especially in large concentrations, is a result of government enforcing laws. I am also supportive of the concept of the welfare state--although not the form of it that leftists and liberals love so much. The reading list that I inflicted on my students for Constitutional History last fall included this selection from Blackstone's Commentaries , which includes among the rights of Englishmen: The law not only regards life and member, and protects every man in the enjoyment of them, but also furnishes him with every thing necessary for their support. For there is no man so indigent or wretched, but he may demand a supply sufficient for all the necessities of life, from the more opulent part of the community, by means of several statutes enacted for the relief of the poor, of which in their proper places. Not surprisingly, the legal realist critique that Sunstein dislikes was in its ascendancy as social Darwinism replaces the dominant Christian worldview in American society. Libertarian critiques of the welfare state are fundamentally different from conservative critiques. The libertarian argues that it is not the government's job to redistribute income, even for a good purpose (preventing starvation, providing education, making everyone happy). The conservative argues that certain activities of the welfare state are legitimate governmental activities, because they reflect the shared Judeo-Christian values of our society. (Whoops! Make that "reflected"--they only reflect the shared values of the population, not the lawyers and judges who actually run the society now.) The conservative disputes not the principle of the welfare state, but the implementation details. Preventing starvation is laudable; an implementation that ends up buying heroin instead of groceries is not. Preventing ignorance by educating the young is laudable; the public schools in many big cities are engaged in fraud if they have a sign that says "school." Providing a roof over the heads of a family with no money is a laudable goal; giving cockroach-infested hotels $2000 a month to put a family into a single room because the owners contribute heavily to the mayor's election campaign, is fiscally irresponsible, abusive to the "beneficiaries," and corrupt. Helping single mothers avoid prostitution is laudable; creating a system that encourages them to remain dependent creates enormous evil. Student Evaluations Eric Rasmussen has some thoughts about the problems of student evaluation of faculty. Many of his points make perfect sense to me--in particular, the problem of professors who make their students contented, rather than educated. Evaluations from teaching Constitutional History this last fall finally got to me, and I am generally pretty pleased with the results. On a 4 point scale, the average was 3.51. (And this was my first semester teaching!) One evaluation complained about Boise State using too many adjuncts--but as I read the complaint, I realized it wasn't really a complaint about me, but about Boise State being too cheap to use adjuncts. As it happens, I taught Constitutional History because the tenure-track professor who was going to teach it didn't feel completely comfortable doing so. As Clint Eastwood said in Magnum Force, "A man's got to know his limitations." It wasn't that Boise State was too cheap, but that they wanted the most qualified person to teach the class. Another student was concerned that I was rather opinionated. (Really? Me? Can you imagine?) I will tell you that I worked very hard to make sure that I discussed a variety of points of view where particular lectures impinged on current political opinions. With respect to the Lochner decision, I found that some of my students were more prepared to defend the reasoning than I was--contrary to what you might think. I will say that having been on the giving and receiving side of student evaluations, I do think that there is a real danger that a professor who demands a lot out of his students is going to get dinged by some of the students for that. But I demanded a lot out of my students, and it seems to have generated some respect, not revenge. (Of course, I had them turn in the evaluations before I returned their research papers.) There are professors who get dinged pretty badly on student evaluations because they are disorganized, boring, or engage in blatant political activity in the classroom. I've had examples of all of these over the years, and I have never hesitated to express my opinion on student evaluations. I would hope that a professor would, if he heard this enough, spend a little time reconsidering how he is teaching. Still, I think there is some merit to listening a bit more to other faculty, and a bit less to students. The students are there to learn, and learning isn't always fun. Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it involves considerable effort. My wife had one professor who, she suspected, was becoming a little senile. He was not just disorganized, he was forgetful, and sometimes it seemed as though he had completely lost his chain of thought. For the first time ever, there was a professor sitting in on his class. I believe that he retired soon thereafter. That must be one of the hardest things to do--to have to tell a colleague that it's time to get evaluated for mental competence, especially since retirement, from what I have read, often accelerates the process of decline. No Advertisers At The Moment--Time to Beg! I guess my readers aren't buying products from my advertisers, so do your part to accelerate that glorious day that I can do this (and write history books) full-time, and make a PayPal contribution. Reporting News, Or Making News? Iraq the Model also reports this interesting item: About a month ago, I was watching Al-Iraqyia TV. They were hosting a spokesman of the coalition and the secretary of the Muslim Sunni Cleric Council Harith Muthanna Al-Dhari. They were talking about the revolt in Falujah. That guy was an extremely anti-American fanatic cleric and he didn’t even try to hide his feelings. Still he had two valid points in his argument. They discussed the mutilation of the bodies of the four American contractors and the host asked the sheikh the following questions: You Aren't Going To See This On The Evening News From the Iraqi blog Iraq the Model: Here’s a story from David Zadel, a marine in Iraq:Make sure you visit Iraq the Model at least every week. It's good to know that there are Iraqis who appreciate what we are doing there. On Bar Exams See Doug Kern's column at Tech Central Station. He says what I have long suspected, but then again, he's passed the bar: Congratulations, law school graduate! You've taken the first step on your path towards fortune and glory, and that throbbing sensation where your soul used to be won't bother you a bit in the years to come. (Remember: just a spoonful of humor helps the social parasitism go down.) With your J.D. degree in your case-briefing, note-taking hand, you now get to spend the summer cramming for that sixteen-hour, mind-numbing, cramp-inducing ordeal that all lawyers know and fear: the bar exam of your home state!Until a few years back, you didn't need to have graduated from law school to take the bar exam in California. This had to change, because too many paralegals were passing it, based on many years of experience. In each state, the Grand Old Men of Law set the bar exam pass rates based on the influx of lawyers that they deem tolerable in any given year. The net result? Fewer lawyers than what the market would otherwise produce, and thus higher fees and salaries for accredited lawyers. What's the purpose of flunking the bottom 33% of test-takers, as opposed to 25% or 50% or 5%? The answer starts with an "M" and rhymes with "honey."Which reminds me of a scandal some years ago in the Philipines, where the Supreme Court set the passing score each year--and one year, they set the score just low enough for the son of one of the justices to pass. How Al-Sadr Won In Iraq Whoops! How he lost! The Washington Times has an article explaining how what leftists were hoping last month would defeat the U.S. turned around: "I've got to think this was a watershed operation in terms of how to do things as part of a counterinsurgency," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, a West Point graduate and one of two 1st Armored assistant division commanders, in an interview last week as he moved around southern Iraq. "We happened to design a campaign that did very well against this militia."Al-Sadr would have been better off to have not tried to fight. Those several thousand dead militia members are several thousand potential voters. Rev. Moon Crowns Himself; Declares Himself Messiah in Dirksen Senate Office Building I saw this on Fox this morning, and here's the Washington Post coverage of it. Too bizarre for summary. A Lot Can Change From Monday To Tuesday CNN's coverage of the question of whether Bush approved torture or not has some amazing admissions: Meanwhile, a source told CNN that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld never approved a controversial interrogation technique called "water boarding." That source had told CNN the opposite Monday.Huh? "Look, let me make very clear the position of my government and our country," Bush said in the Oval Office.So why did CNN's source suddenly change his/her opinion? Was this "source" actually not knowledgeable about what Rumsfeld had approved? Or was this source trying to damage the Bush Administration, and had to reverse course when the memos were released exposing this source's claims as being wrong? The memos to and from Rumsfeld show that though the water-boarding technique was on a list of requested aggressive tactics, Rumsfeld did not approve it, officials say.Thanks to the Captain's Quarters for the link. UPDATE: What's bizarre is to read the AP description of this information. It sounds like they are reading an entirely different set of documents. More Pre-Bush Coverage of the Bin Laden Hussein Connection From a 1999 CNN report: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.And this 1999 report from the Guardian: Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.If you want to claim that the U.S. government has been making up this stuff since the Clinton Administration, fine. To claim that Bush made all this up to start a work with Iraq is just demonstrably false. Tuesday, June 22, 2004
More Good News From Iraq Part 3 is here, and part 4 is here. I can't summarize either list; there are simply too many pieces of good news that you aren't going to see in your local newspaper. And Why Did You Take This Job, Miss? I've always been a little uncomfortable with this notion that sexual banter and jokes alone constitute sexual harassment. I've worked in places where crude and sexually explicit jokes were a big part of the workplace. I can still remember my disappointment with one company where I worked where some of the employees made a birthday cake that used cupcakes as breasts, and chocolate sprinkles for pubic hair. (But because the employees who made this cake were females, I guess this was okay on Planet Feminist.) Still, I do think that there needs to be something more than just vulgarity to constitute sexual harassment, or many employers will be sued into non-existence in no time, since sexual vulgarity is something of the norm in America today. This lawsuit is a fine example of both the danger of the broad definition of sexual harassment, and of someone that clearly needed to research the job that she was taking: Free-speech groups want the California Supreme Court to overturn an appellate ruling that allowed a writers' assistant for the TV comedy "Friends" to pursue a sexual harassment claim because of bawdy banter between the show's writers.I would love to be the defense attorney who got to cross-examine the plaintiff: Ms. Lyle, have you ever watched Friends before you took the job? What were you expecting the writers to be talking about while writing this show? Quantum mechanics?UPDATE: I just received a pointer to the complaint, which is here, and very coarse and crude. If a true description of the situation: 1. This is definitely not within any sort of legitimate story conference area, since much of this isn't even relevant to the script writing, and some of the accusations involve clear sexual discrimination (not hooking up her computer, for example). 2. I have always had a very dark view of the morality of the people in the entertainment industry. But not this dark. Maybe it's time to resume writing Puritan Guerilla. What Exactly Does This Story Mean? It sounds quite worrisome at first glance: SAN FRANCISCO -- A study says children and pregnant women who drink milk from some California cows could be at risk from a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel.But let's analyze this claim a little. They found it in 31 out of 32 samples. That's not a huge sample size. What was the distribution of brands? Were the samples all whole milk, or were the samples distributed across whole milk, 2%, skim milk? The study itself at the Environmental Working Group website at least gives a bit more information. It turns out that 14 of the samples were below the 1 ppb level, and three of the samples were in the 1.0 to 1.1 ppb range. They code the brands, rather than tell you which brands were highest or lowest--something that could provoke a dramatic market preference for the lowest levels of milk. When you read the fine print, you also find out that California's perchlorate drinking water goal is 6 ppb--quite a bit higher than for milk, and far above the 3.62 ppb that the highest milk sample EWG tested found. I can't quite figure out why milk needs to be so dramatically lower in perchlorates than drinking water. There might be a good reason, but I'm not seeing it in the EWG report. The EWG report repeatedly mentions rocket fuel as the source for environmental perchlorates, which seems a bit strange. They are a common oxidizer--why just mention rocket fuels? This report indicates that they are common in a number of fertilizers, and in match production. Another report indicates that "Perchloric salts (ClO4-) have been used extensively as missile propellants, wet digestions, organic syntheses, electro-polishing of metals, animal feed additives, explosives, pyrotechnics, and herbicides. In addition, it has been found as a contaminant in certain fertilizers or Chilean saltpeter." So why does the EWG report not mention these other sources? Are they trying to come up with a method to get all those nasty defense industries to shut down? Or are they appealing to the fiercely anti-military prejudices of the environmental movement? Post-Americans Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies has a column about Utah Congressman Chris Cannon's re-election campaign, and the struggle over immigration: Cannon is way ahead of his opponent, former state legislator Matt Throckmorton, according to separate polls published Sunday by the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News. This is to be expected, since Cannon is a wealthy incumbent (with a personal fortune of as much as $12 million), he's outspent his challenger 9-to-1, he's avoided any conventional scandal, and his brother is the head of the state Republican party. Although Throckmorton may yet pull off an upset, it's likely that he's too poor — and too decent — to do what's needed to win against an opponent like Cannon.I will confess that my sentiments about illegal immigration have changed substantially over the last twenty years. My principal concern is security; if half a million people illegally cross our border every year, it's pretty darn difficult to see if any of them on our terrorist watch list. We can't make illegal immigration stop, of course, if but if making a serious effort to enforce our laws reduced the illegal immigration flood, we would at least occasionally stop some terrorists from entering the U.S. As things now stand, we don't stand a chance of doing so. This seems to me to be more than a sufficient reason to make a serious effort at shutting off illegal immigration; everything else is strictly frosting on the cake. The frosting, however, should be sweet enough to interest liberals, populists, and leftists, if their primary concern is helping poor Americans. You can't triple the number of unskilled laborers in an economy without reducing wage rates. Senator Kerry talks about raising the minimum wage to $7 per hour. How about removing several million illegal immigrants from the labor pool? An American could be bussing dishes at the restaurant, or cutting your lawn--and with less competition for those jobs, I expect that the current minimum wage might well become irrelevant. Unfortunately, this is the problem: corporate interests like having that big supply of cheap labor, especially labor that is a little reluctant to report workplace safety or labor law violations for fear of la Migra. The Republican Party (at least, parts of it) doesn't want to upset a group that is finally beginning to contribute to Republicans instead of Democrats. So why is the left so intent on assisting businesses in exploiting cheap labor? Because they hope to turn those illegal aliens first into legal aliens (through amnesties, like the last one), and then into citizen-voters. (Of course, San Francisco is trying to skip one of the steps, by allowing illegals and legal non-citizen residents to vote.) Unskilled Americans looking for work? You are out of luck. It would be nice if there were a political party that actually cared about poor Americans, instead of just pretending to care. Why Did Iran Seize The British Boats? It made no sense to me, except as the actions of an overzealous local commander. Michael Ledeen over at National Review argues that it was part of the Elect Kerry strategy of the mullahs: There's a perfectly straightforward explanation for the whole episode: The Brits were laying down a network of sensors to detect the movement of ships toward major Iraqi oil terminals. The Iranians considered that a bit of a threat. So they attacked.This actually makes lots of sense. It's Not About Free Speech, Is It? Thomas Sowell's recent column reports on yet another effort to suppress free speech: With all the noise being made -- from traffic noise to Al Gore's ranting -- you might never suspect that there was a National Day of Silence. What you might also not suspect is that this day is observed in schools and colleges across the country, where students agree to remain silent for a day in order to show support for homosexuals.For all that homosexuals and their apologists insist that they are pursuing freedom, it is pretty clear that they are not supporting freedom for anyone but themselves. I Know That This Won't Go Over Well in the Blogosphere... From FoxNews: WASHINGTON — In the latest effort to curb indecency over the airwaves, the Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved raising the maximum fines for broadcasters and personalities who cross the line.There are a lot of bloggers, both liberal and libertarian, who think it is so cool to see nudity, raunchy behavior, and vulgarity on broadcast television. But guess what? When you see the Senate vote for something 99-1--and consider that there are a lot of Democrats (the party of Hollywood) in the Senate--this tells me that voters are getting the message across to their elected representatives. If it is really important to you to hear Howard Stern pretending to be so cool by behaving like sixth graders did when I was that age, there's always cable TV. If it is really important to you that Janet Jackson do a striptease, there's always cable TV. There comes a certain moment when the little boys need to grow up, and stop trying to show off by using obscene language and crudity as a proof that they are all grown up. You want the broadcast media to have serious discussions about sexuality? Fine. But that wouldn't generate a market among the little boys that haven't quite grown up yet. Serious discussions would include the problems of STDs; of unexpected pregnancies; of difficult choices about abortion or adoption; of manipulation and emotional injury. And then you would have to actually be grown up about sex, instead of just pretending to be. Why Is Lying A Bad Thing? Because it is hard to keep straight who you told which lie to, and when. Clinton's memoirs now directly contradict his sworn testimony. According to the Washington Post! Clinton's own legal battle with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr accounts for one of the book's more peculiar revelations. In his August 1998 grand jury testimony, Clinton said he began an inappropriate sexual relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky in "early 1996." His testimony, as was widely noted at the time, was in conflict with Lewinsky's story: She testified the relationship began on Nov. 15, 1995, in the midst of a government shutdown. Devastating Criticism of Michael Moore's New Film It's by Christopher Hitchens, a leftist with enough honesty to recognize that George Bush is less of a threat to leftist ideals than Osama Bin Laden. The beginning of the review is sharp; the remainder goes into a detailed analysis of Moore's disonesty: One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How Did I Miss This Story? And why didn't this get more attention? A shipment of "yellowcake" shows up in Rotterdam; apparently from Iraq: AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed Friday that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material known as yellowcake (search) that was found in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbor.Isn't that interesting? Monday, June 21, 2004
Amusing Description of Being a "Hessian" You will recall from American history class that the German principality of Hesse supplied many mercenaries for the British, attempting to suppress the American Revolution. Actually, it was more than just Hesse that did this. In reading Don Higginbotham's The War of American Independence, he has an amusing description of how these principalities did their recruiting: To meet their quotas for George III, some of the princes almost literally rounded up every stranger in sight. Youthful Johann Gottfried Seume, a student from Leipzig, was kidnapped while passing through the domain of of the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, "this seller of human souls." His captors destroyed his "academic papers (proof that I had been a student), my only means of identification." Placed in a Hessian regiment, he found a student from Jena, a bankrupt merchant from Vienna, a lace maker from Hanover, a monk from Wuerzburg, and a magistrate from Meninger.... Once aboard British transports, Seume reported, they were "packed like sardines." Since sometimes as many as six men slept in a single bunk, the occupants all lay in the same position. "And when we we thus had sweated and roasted enough on one side, the man on the right end called out, 'Everybody turn!' and so, everybody turned over." New Articles Up On My Website All of these are under the Popular Magazines & Newspaper Articles page. "All For the Want of a Nail," Shotgun News, April 20, 2004, 69. How the Bellesiles lies about the history of guns in America were spread around the world by the Department of State. "Nuisance Lawsuits and Assault Weapons," Shotgun News, May 1, 2004, 22-23. Why the NRA had to kill the nuisance lawsuit ban bill. "The Dangers of 'Reasonable Regulation'," Shotgun News, May 10, 2004, 9. Two cases that illustrate the necessity for, and the hazards of allowing "reasonable regulation" of gun ownership. "Concealed Handgun Laws: A Smorgasbord," Shotgun News, June 1, 2004, 11. News about concealed handgun laws in Washington State, Kansas, and Minnesota. "Innocents Betrayed," Shotgun News, June 10, 2004, 11. A review of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership's new movie, Innocents Betrayed. "How Many Defensive Gun Uses?" Shotgun News, July 1, 2004, 20-21. The problems of measuring civilian defensive gun uses. Why Isn't This Couple on Jerry Springer? And not just because they are gay, but surrogate parenting, violence, a woman with eight kids. From the Lexington, Kentucky Leader-Herald: The two Lexington gay men who made worldwide news by parenting quadruplets and then a fifth child have separated amid allegations of domestic violence that a judge dismissed, according to court records. Labels: homosexuality James Lileks Must Have More Honest Friends Lileks writes well (at least more engagingly than I do), and I think he has more honest Democratic friends: For the last few weeks I’ve had this gnawing belief that bin Laden got lucky by attacking during Bush’s term. Conventional wisdom says the opposite, because Bush fought back. But he’s the enemy now. I ask my Democrat friends what they’d rather see happen – Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They’re all honest: they’d rather see Bush defeated. (They’re quick to insist that they’d want Kerry to get bin Laden ASAP. Although the details are sketchy.)I have acquaintances (I probably wouldn't call them friends) who clearly regard Bush as a greater enemy than bin Laden, and the Patriot Act as a deeper affront to human rights than using plastic shredders to rip living people apart. (Note: there is a bit of criticism of how Bush has done some of these steps that I consider legitimate criticism, as opposed to traitorous rage.) Most of these people didn't feel this way two years ago. What changed? I think, more than anything else, it is that the left no longer worries about terrorist attacks. When they worried about dying in a biological weapon attack, the left (and most Democrats that I know are definitely "the left") were prepared to grudgingly back our government's efforts--or at least avoid unnecessary carping. Now that their memories have become a little clouded by time, and they perceive bin Laden as a distant threat, Bush has become their bigger enemy. I find it interesting that Democratic members of Congress, by and large, are being careful to criticize particular policies and implementation details of what the Bush Administration has done in Iraq. There's no question in my mind that they have made some substantial mistakes along the way. No surprise; we haven't occupied and liberalized (in the broad sense of "liberal") a significant nation in fifty years. The last time we did it, Germany was a bit of a mess for at least a year, and we had the advantage of scaring the Japanese witless with nuclear weapons. In addition, large numbers of the most seriously crazy German and Japanese had committed suicide, or died in suicidal attacks as the war ended. I suppose if we had killed hundreds of thousands of die-hard Baathists in combat during the invasion, we would be having far fewer problems now--and Bush would have been called a butcher by the left. The Democrats that are trying to tar Bush as a liar and crook are generally either those representing hard left constitutencies (Senator Kennedy, for example), or who were running for President--and knew that they really have no other issue likely to inflame Democratic voters. Even the economy, which I suspect John Kerry thought was going to be his ticket to the White House, has turned around. Kerry has to play the Iraq card, because he doesn't have anything else to motivate the hard left of the Democratic Party into writing $1000 checks to his campaign, and $5000 checks to the DNC. (The hard left of the Democratic Party, of course, has lots of money to spend.) You Can't Have It Both Ways I keep getting told that homosexuals are just like everyone else, and that the anonymous promiscuity is just a nasty stereotype. Yet the complaint on this set of arrests is that it targets homosexuals: Accusations of sexual profiling and entrapment arose after a Michigan State Police sting operation at a Holt-area restroom late last week.Look, if this sort of behavior isn't a fundamental part of male homosexuality, why are these arrests being portrayed as an attack on all homosexuals? You can't have it both ways. If this cruising for anonymous sex in rest areas is an atypical behavior that homosexuals do not condone, gay activists shouldn't be complaining about it, anymore than gun rights activists would complain about police making arrests for sales of guns to felons. If arresting guys for this sort of behavior is an attack on homosexuals (not just arresting criminals who happen to be homosexuals), then homosexuals need to stop pretending that they are "just like everyone else." Note that the complaints that led to the sting included being propositioned and assaulted--which really means aggressive homosexuals assuming that a guy using the restroom was a homosexual, and touching them. As much as a lot of people would like to assume that public indecency charges are "victimless crimes," the fact is that there is a whole collection of behaviors connected to public restroom homosexuality that do not qualify as "victimless." The "we're making this up as we go along" right to privacy might be a pretty persuasive argument for having the government leave homosexuals alone--but it sure doesn't fly in a public restroom. Sunday, June 20, 2004
Fight Club (1999) My son rented this, and recommended it. My daughter tells me it is very popular with her age group--almost a manifestos for twentysomethings. When it came out, I had read reviews that indicated that it was very, very violent, and since it didn't seem like a terribly thoughtful or important film, I didn't bother to see it. Having now seen it, I would say that the reviews overhyped its violence. I can't recommend it--and I would rather my son hadn't seen it, at least not for a few more years, because of violence, nihilism, exaggerated and unrealistic sexuality, exposed genitals, muddled moral messages--but I can tell you that the previews for this movie really didn't do it justice. It is actually a much better film than the previews implied. The first twenty minutes of the film are actually quite funny, where we see this twentysomething with a white collar job going to recovery groups: men recovering from testicular cancer; people living with tuberculosis; people dying of cancer. It is a pretty outrageous parody of groups that do provide very important emotional support for people struggling with great sorrows. What makes this funny is that this guy goes to them because he has severe insomnia, and for some reason, going to these groups and letting people cry on his shoulder--without ever admitting that he doesn't have any of their problems--solves his insomnia--or so he thinks. (I won't spoil the movie by telling you who, but there are fewer real characters here than you think.) The core of the idea of the fight club, however, is where the film presents a serious and important idea: where do men get their identity in our society? What makes you a man? In a society where marriages don't last, many men provide only genetic information, a child support check, and an occasional summer visit to the previous wife's kids, what is the male role model? For a great many young men, the adult that has the most influence isn't Dad, but Mom. Now, I don't think that Mom is a bad influence--but I do think that some of the differences between men and women reflect innate sexual differences, not just cultural norms. (My experience has been that many parents who grew up believing the feminist claim that "It's all taught" have changed their minds after raising both a boy and a girl.) What happens when those innate sexual differences that naturally make men (on average) more aggressive and violent than women aren't properly channeled by the correct role models? Fight Club takes place in the secular urban world where materialism is the highest value--where the protagonist regards an Ikea furniture catalog as the adult equivalent of pornography. (The sequence where we look around his apartment/catalog--and they are one--is really quite inspired.) Our protagonist eventually rejects that materialism in a rather spectacular way, and it leads him down the path of confusion, and to the pursuit of violence as an end in itself. With an acquaintance he meets on business trip, he founds what they call "Fight Club"--where they fight bare knuckle just to feel something. If this seems bizarre too you, it shouldn't. An awful lot of what we call "extreme sports" today are, I would suggest, an attempt by depressed people to feel something. For those of you who have never been depressed, it isn't: "I am sad." Depression is: "I don't feel much of anything." The adrenalin rush that comes from risking death--and surviving--or even just getting into a fight--makes you feel alive. My daughter says that that "fight clubs" actually formed after the film came out. My son has been to parties where at least the participants put on boxing gloves--and one kid still ended up with a broken nose, and blood everywhere. Humans--especially teenagers--are so suggestible. If you want to figure out where the depression is coming from, look at the homes from which so many kids come these days. When I was in high school, I don't think that there were more than a couple of kids I knew whose parents were divorced. Now, it's the norm. My wife, as a middle school teacher, saw the chaos that this creates for kids as they are forced to take sides between Mom, Dad, Stepmom, Stepdad, Stepsiblings, Grandparents, Grandstepparents, where they spend Christmas, etc. Is your marriage having problems? You and your spouse will work through the divorce far sooner than your ten year old will. The protagonist in Fight Club describes how his father moved from city to city every six years, starting a new family. He says, "I don't know my father," but really, he means that there simply wasn't enough connection to know him as a father, instead of the guy who sends child support checks. Without a meaning or purpose to life, what is left? There is the pursuit of fleshly pleasures, but all of these pleasures have their price, if you don't exercise considerable self-discipline. The hours spent in the gym (or worse, inducing vomiting), or the health consequences of obesity, are the price of regularly indulging in the pleasures of eating. Promiscuity's price includes lifelong STDs (such as herpes), life-ending STDs such as AIDS, and more often than not, emotional scarring caused by people who insist that they can have sex with no emotional connection. I've seen too many people, both guys and gals, who have insisted that it's purely pleasure--and yet their actions demonstrate that sex causes them to either fall in love with someone that they can't stand, or, as an alternative, start to treat sexual partners extraordinarily callously. The fleshly pleasure enemy in Fight Club is consumerism--the mindless pursuit of high status goods that no one really needs. The price of consumerism is debt--and the need to work to manage that debt. (And before you ask, I bought my Corvette at a fire sale price during the 2002 desperate times; it has effectively no impact on my net worth or debt situation, compared to having a more pedestrian vehicle.) Consumerism--the purchasing of goods that you don't need, or whose pleasure is less than the pain that paying for them causes--is one of the great evils of our time. What happens to a society where there is no deeper meaning to life than the pursuit of pleasure and material gain? Look at the 1990s bubble, and the wealth it created. Much of the wealth was real: real products, real improvements in people's lives. Some of the wealth was illusory: paper gains based on projections of future growth dreamed up by a CEO intent on separating investors from their money. I saw some of this wealth, both real and illusory, destroy people's lives in the 1990s: destroying marriages; corrupting young people; creating megalomaniacs who thought that they because they made several million dollars from working as an engineer, that this meant that they were smart enough to buy any business, and make a fortune--instead of bankruptcy. American history has had a number of periods where we have swung from ideals that were unrealistically high to profound cynicism. The Civil War, in many respects, is among the high points of American idealism. Hundreds of thousands of young men died to defend (variously): "Liberty and Union Forever!" (as my great-great-great-grandfather wrote across the top of a letter); freedom for the slaves; or states' rights. The Gilded Age that followed was awash in obscene wealth and wretched poverty, and a cynicism that seems completely inverse. The 1960s was another age of high ideals, first, the Civil Rights Movement, and then John Kennedy's "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." The antiwar movement's efforts to stop the war in Vietnam, while it fought that burden in Vietnam, was still a movement awash in idealism--and like the Civil War, the idealism of that period was a bit too far separated from the grubby details of what actually happened. It is no surprise that the following decade was the Disco Era--when the highest ideal that many people aimed for was, "I'll respect you in the morning." Rupert Brooke's poem "Peace," written at the outbreak of World War I, shows this profoundly idealistic sentiment--of a sensitive young intellectual looking for a deeper meaning to life than the Edwardian era could provide: Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,This unrealistic view of war, and what it would accomplish, of course, died in the trenches and pointless deaths of a war that really had no overriding moral principle. The cynicism that followed made World War II unavoidable--and here there were overriding moral principles that someone like Rupert Brooke could well have celebrated in verse. As I watched Fight Club, and I was struck by the prescient manner in which we see a cult of death form. It is one committed to destroying consumerist capitalism by bringing down its office buildings with bombs in the basements, and that follows a father figure, because these young men have no real fathers of their own. I thought of both al-Qaeda, and Hitler. The father figure issue is important. My wife points out that enormous numbers of young men grew up in 1920s Germany whose fathers had died in the trenches. Hitler became their father figure in the concrete, and the SA and SS became their father figure in the abstract. Part of the social dynamic of gangs in America today is the absence of fathers; older gang members end up fulfilling, in an ugly and destructive way, that role of the son seeking approval of a father figure. There is a similar problem with child molesters taking advantage of approval seeking boys and girls, which is part of why the risk of molestation is substantially higher in homes without the biological father. Hitler's SS worshipped death and obedience in the same way that the cult in Fight Club does, with the Death's Head as the icon of the SS. Palestinians even say directly, "We worship death" and are proud of it. I suppose that we should not be surprised. Today, post-9/11, I find myself watching a film like Fight Club quite differently than I might have in 1999. There is something worth fighting for--something that is the highest ideal to which a man (or, for that matter, a woman) can aspire: a warrior fighting in a righteous cause. Pat Tillman is the poster boy for this, a man who put honor, courage, and his life above wealth and consumerism, but he has more than a hundred thousand lesser known brothers and sisters in the field today in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting not just to fight, not just to feel alive (as motivates the protagonists of Fight Club), but fighting for the perservation of freedom. (A few members of our armed forces have thrown excrement on this shining ideal--and perhaps because they felt that they needed to take horrifying actions to obtain information to stop even worse crimes--but that doesn't destroy the validity of the ideals for which our forces fight.) There were some very interesting and important ideas trapped inside of a pretty crude and sometimes silly movie. It's unfortunate that someone can't do a better job of addressing these problems: sons need fathers, and there is more to life than the selfish pursuit of pleasure. |
