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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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Saturday, July 07, 2007
Sherline Parts That I Don't Need I upgraded several parts on my Sherline vertical mill recently, and the old parts are now available. Even if you don't have a Sherline vertical mill, I know that some of my readers might find a use for these parts. The first is the Z-axis column. This is the older design; the newer design works much better when lifting the weight of the headstock and electric motor, but this does still work. If you need to build some sort of odd little gadget for positioning something to .001" accuracy, you could use this. The bed is brass. The handwheel that is on it is a little too worn to easily read the numbers from 30 back to 0, but I have some more handwheels that are still very readable available as well. (I replaced these with the larger, zero-resettable handwheels that Sherline now sells as an extra-cost option.)  Click to enlarge Click to enlarge Click to enlargeIf I could get $60 for the Z-axis column (which includes Priority Mail shipping in the U.S.) I would be reasonably happy. The handwheels I figure are worth about $7 a piece (shipped first class mail in the U.S.). If you want them all, I would be happy to take $65 to ship them all. Thomas Szasz I've always wondered how Thomas Szasz, who had been trained as a psychiatrist, could hold to his outlandish claims that psychoses such as schizophrenia do not exist. Would not the exposure to psychotic patients during training have shown Szasz the error of his ideology? It turns out that Szasz may not have had much exposure to psychotics. In a 1997 interview, he describes how he consciously selected a psychiatric residency “that did not include work with involuntary patients.” The chairman of the Psychiatry Department told him, “Tom, you have only one year left of your residency. I don’t think it’s right that you should finish without any experience with psychotic patients. I think you should do your third year at the Cook County Hospital.” So Szasz quit, and went elsewhere to avoid getting any experience with psychotic patients. Szasz was drafted into the Navy after completing his training, and his experiences there almost certainly reinforced his already well developed belief that mental illness did not exist. “The servicemen didn’t want to be in the Navy and played the role of mental patient. I didn’t want to be in the Navy and played the role of military psychiatrist: My job was to discharge the men from the Service as ‘neuropsychiatric casualties’.” Szasz had gone out of his way to avoid seeing psychotic patients, and then took a job that he describes as certifying that sane people pretending to insane were actually insane. There's something worse than being ignorant--and that's going out of your way to stay ignorant. Labels: deinstitutionalization Michael Foucault Torrey and Miller's The Invisible Plague, as you might expect, has some unkind words for R.D. Laing (who argued that insanity was simply a sane response to an insane capitalist world), Thomas Szasz (who denies that schizophrenia is anything but "inappropriate use of metaphors" by the patient), and Michael Foucault. If you have read a scholarly journal article or book published in the last thirty years, and found yourself wondering, "Am I stupid? Or is this incomprehensible gibberish?" then the odds are good that you have read something either written by Michael Foucault, or by someone who has read too much of Foucault. Foucault's Madness and Civilization published in English 1965, made the claim that insanity isn't an illness, but an alternative lifestyle, and that mental hospitals were created as a mechanism for oppressing people who were living in that alternative lifestyle. You won't be terribly surprised to hear that Foucault died of AIDS in 1984. From Torrey and Miller, pp. 302-3: According to his biographers, Foucault was emotionally unstable, made multiple suicide attempts, and, in the view of one friend, "all his life.... verged on madness." Labels: deinstitutionalization "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" Do you remember reading this in junior high or high school? I think it may have been assigned reading. It is a powerful, highly evocative, pretty scary short story about a young boy's descent into catatonic schizophrenia. I'm reading E. Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller's The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001), at the moment. The book presents a lot of what at first glance seems pretty persuasive statistical evidence that there was a quite dramatic rise in psychosis in England & Wales, Ireland, Canada's Atlantic provinces, and the United States from the 17th through the 20th centuries. There is pretty reliable statistical information from mental hospital admissions and government censuses from the start of the 19th century, and Torrey and Fuller make use of detailed records of doctors and hospitals from the beginning of the seventeenth century to corroborate other data from the 17th and 18th centuries that isn't quite as comprehensive. What makes this so interesting is that Torrey is a big proponent of the biochemical/genetic origin of schizophrenia. All that I have read leads me to agree. Yet he admits that this dramatic rise in the rates raises interesting questions. I've previously mentioned that some studies show a strong correlation between growing up in an urban area, and developing schizophrenia. The Invisible Plague mentions a variety of studies that show the same, and psychiatrists were noticing the strong correlations between urbanization and psychosis as early as the 1920s. If urbanization explains the rise in psychosis over the last few centuries, then it would suggest that genetics could only be one factor--perhaps a predisposing factor. There would have to be some other specifically urban factor that actuates mental illness. Anyway, back to "Silent Snow, Secret Snow." The author of that haunting story was Conrad Aiken. The Invisible Plague, p. 294 explains why Aiken was interested in the subject of insanity. His father, a successful surgeon, killed his wife and then himself because of a delusional belief that his wife was going to have him committed to an insane asylum. Aiken, then age eleven, found their bodies. His younger sister became insane in her early twenties and spent much of her life hospitalized. Aiken himself had periods of depression and made at least one serious suicide attempt. He lived his life fearing that he, too, would become insane and in 1932 wrote "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," which he acknowledged was "a projection of my own inclination to insanity."UPDATE: Torrey and Miller's book has a discussion at 298-299 that does a nice job of summarizing the evidence for a dramatic increase in mental illness in the United States over a century. They point to the 1880 census of insane persons, and something called the Epidemilogic Catchment Area study "carried out from 1980 to 1985 in New Haven, Baltimore, Durham, St. Louis, and Los Angeles." The ECA study found that 2.2 per cent of adults were diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The 1880 census of the insane attempted to identify all mentally ill people--not just those in mental hospitals and workhouses (where a lot of the less dangerous mentally ill were kept in many states). The methodologies aren't quite equivalent, as Torrey and Miller point out. The 1980s study included some individuals who would not have been counted as insane in 1880 (bipolar disorder II, depression with hypomania), and the 1880 study counted some individuals as insane who would not have been included in the ECA study (e.g., epilepsy with insanity).Yet the 1880 census of the insane found 0.18 per cent of the total population was insane. Presumably after adjusting for the diagnostic category differences, Torrey and Miller assert that the ECA data shows almost a ninefold increase in insanity. They also point to the data on those receiving SSI or SSDI payments for "mental disorders other than mental retardation." In 1997, that was 2.5 million people--or 0.94 per cent of the population--more than five times the results of the 1880 census of the insane. It is true that there are people collecting SSI and SSDI who are not insane or even disabled (I've known a few over the years), but I would expect that this is probably roughly balanced by the number of Americans who are so severely mentally ill that they aren't collecting SSI or SSDI. Labels: deinstitutionalization Friday, July 06, 2007
Another Failure of Deinstitutionalization And a tragedy. From July 6, 2007 WLKY channel 32: LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Police are calling the causes of death for two people found dead together in an apartment at the 1000 block of Muhammad Ali Boulevard a double homicide.And one of the reasons that I generally support efforts to identify those who are mentally ill, and either hospitalize them, or make the existing gun control mechanisms work. We don't know how Leon got a gun. Maybe the existing background check systems wouldn't have helped. It doesn't seem like it could have made this situation any worse. Labels: deinstitutionalization It Sounds Like Bad Adult Channel Programming Lesbian gangs raping straight girls in public school restrooms. Here's a news report from a Memphis, Tennessee TV station. Labels: homosexuality Thursday, July 05, 2007
Great Erma Bombeck Quote I found this over at Right-Mind, and it really captures part of what has historically separated the United States from much of the rest of the world: There are other countries where the tradition is also focused on friend and family--but there are way more for whom the traditional Soviet Union's May Day Parade is the model. Is There Anyway to Get A Message Through To Senator Craig? I just received a letter from Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) explaining why the amnesty bill failed--and he clearly still doesn't get it: Although S. 1639 was by no means a perfect bill, it was a vast improvement over previous reform measures. The American people demanded that certain provisions be included, and they were. These demands included triggers requiring successful installation of border security measures before other programs come into effect, English language requirements, employee verification systems, and provisions that would force illegal immigrants to leave the country and submit an application before achieving permanent legal residency. In addition, the bill would have required that currently undocumented individuals seeking temporary legal status maintain employment, pass a background check, pay fines and their back taxes, and forego any Social Security benefits tied to payments they made into the system while working illegally. Americans were, and still are, adamantly in support of these policies, as am I.1. Why should they trust the federal government to enforce a new set of "ambitious programs" when they aren't making any serious effort to enforce the existing immigration laws? 2. It wasn't lack of trust; it was a vehement objection to giving "temporary legal status" to anyone who broke the law to come here. I am perplexed why Senator Craig is pretending that the popular opposition to amnesty was actually a popular mistrust of the government to enforce the provisions. The opposition to this bill wasn't fear that the government wouldn't properly administer the amnesty; it was fear that the government would do what the bill provided. Senator Craig is listening too much to the ACLU and corporate interests on this. He needs a conservative challenger in the Republican primary next year. Labels: immigration Musicians in Touch With Reality I suspect that there are many others, but it is still encouraging to see this report from the wire service AFP: Rock group Arctic Monkeys have become the latest music industry stars to question whether the performers taking part in Live Earth on Saturday are suitable climate change activists. I think every citizen should make an effort to be part of the process of making public policy, but there's nothing that makes a musician anymore expert or knowledgeable than say, the guy who pumps gas, fills your order at Burger King, or blogs. There are exceptional cases of musicians who actually have substantially expertise; Brian May was actually most of the way through a Ph.D. in astrophysics when he decided that being fabulously rich and famous as a member of the band Queen was more important. (Hard choice, that.) Labels: global warming Fireworks Over Horseshoe Bend One of the great surprises is how great the fireworks displays are over even really tiny little towns here in Idaho. Many years ago, when we still lived in the cesspool that is Sonoma County, we went on a vacation across the West, and camped near Twin Falls, Idaho on July 4th. Twin Falls is a fair-sized city by Idaho standards; it would be a small town in most of America. And what a spectacular fireworks display they had! Horseshoe Bend has fewer people than some individual apartment buildings in New York City--and yet somehow, the Chamber of Commerce arranged a fireworks display comparable to the one that Santa Monica used to put on every year, when I was young. (I contributed a small amount to the effort.) The first pictures I took didn't come out so well, because I was trying to take them in auto everything mode, with the inevitable motion of my hand--and these are the better results!  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Eventually, I remembered that instead of hoping to get the shutter to fire in the middle of a display, I should set time exposures, and put the camera on the table. (It is rather cool to be looking down on the fireworks.)  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge UPDATE: One reader asked about the streaks in some of these pictures--on some, those are actually reflections off the glass table top! Wednesday, July 04, 2007
I'm Hoping Someone With Lexis Access Will Take Pity On Me I'm trying to find out what cases cited the precedent Lake v. Cameron (D.C.Cir. 1966), which found that there was a right to a least restrictive alternative to commitment. So far, using the search engine at www.findlaw.com, I can only find two Supreme Court decisions that cite this, In re Gault (1967) and Donaldson v. O'Connor (1975). I can't find any U.S. Court of Appeals decision that cite it. This is surprising to me, since I was under the impression that Lake was a major decision. The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law recently removed Lake from its "landmark cases" list. The Lake case involved a woman suffering from senility who would, depending on whose accounts you believe, go out for a walk in D.C., get confused, lost, and be out for days on end, or was a bag lady, with everything she owned in a big bag. She was committed in 1962 because St. Elizabeth's, the public mental hospital, was the only locked facility available to help her. She had no family that was in a position to provide the level of supervision required for her safety. Judge Bazelon, who kept finding Constitutional rights hiding in a place where the sun doesn't shine, found that she had a right to the least restrictive treatment alternative to commitment. (The federal law governing this gave the courts the authority to commit, "or order any other alternative course of treatment which the court believes will be in the best interests of the person or of the public." Clearly, the court had the authority to find other courses of treatment, but not an obligation.) In practice, after her case went back down to the district court to be reheard, the courts investigated and found that there was no less restrictive alternative available to Ms. Lake in D.C. She didn't have the money for a supervised private nursing facility, and the only public facilities, other than the public mental hospital, didn't have the level of supervision required to protect her. She died at St. Elizabeth's in 1971, "having received no visitors in her last year." (Brooks, Law, Psychiatry and the Mental Health Systems, 732. UPDATE: Thanks, got it! Labels: deinstitutionalization Crosshair Repair I had a little surprise the other night trying to find Saturn with my 5" refractor. I looked through the finderscope--and there were no crosshairs. There was a single line across the field of view--and after a bit more investigation, I found a squiggly line near the top of the field of view that looked like what was left of the vertical crosshair. This surprised me. I've read of World War II crosshair manufacturing where they literally stretched a strand of spider web. But many years ago, my father and I modified a World War II era tank range finder telescope. It had a series of horizontal lines across the field of view. When we disassembled the optics, these lines were scratched onto a glass reticle. All we had to do was scratch a vertical line across the horizontal lines, and voila! Crosshairs! The next step was to drill a small hole in the tube next to the glass reticle; I could hold a small flashlight (the kind that used "grain of wheat" bulbs) against the hole, and get an illuminated reticle--very useful for finding objects against a very dark sky. If even a World War II era scope had a glass reticle, it seemed implausible that even the cheapest Chinese-made finderscopes used fine threads for crosshairs, instead of reticles. So I took the eyepiece apart, and indeed, there were two very fine pieces of thread or whatever (for all I knew, spider web strands) that formed the crosshairs. They were sufficiently fragile that sometime after disassembly, the remaining crosshair also snapped. I wasn't thrilled with my used finderscope options, and I also didn't want to wait several days for a replacement to arrive, so I drilled four holes in the eyepiece assembly .495" from the end, where the crosshairs had been located. (The advantages of having a vertical mill and edge finder!) Then I ran the finest thread in my wife's sewing kit through the holes, and used a single drop of epoxy to prevent the threads from working loose. I put it all back together again, and it works! Because I didn't have a good way to clamp this eyepiece assembly (it was too fragile to clamp hard, and being round, tried to rotate), two of the holes are across a chord, not the diameter of the tube. Still, all that matters is if the crosshairs align with the aim point of the telescope--not if they are perfectly centered. The thread I used is obviously much coarser than the original crosshairs--one might even say grotesquely so. On the other hand, because this finderscope didn't have illuminated crosshairs, against a dark sky the fine crosshairs just disappeared. These coarser crosshairs won't have that problem. Labels: telescopes News From Iraq That The Mainstream Media Don't Want You To Hear My wife thinks the reason that Paris Hilton's antics get so much attention is that the alternative is to cover the situation in Iraq. The more we see of Paris Hilton, she reasons, is probably an indication that there is progress in Iraq. Here's some news from Iraq that the mainstream media are studiously ignoring, because it is a reminder of who will be in charge of Iraq if we withdraw. Michael Yon documents a barbarous crime by al-Qaeda. An entire village--right down to their livestock--massacred, with children beheaded. The mainstream media dare not cover this, because it would remind Americans of the monsters that we are fighting, and why we need to defeat this evil. If there is anything that defines the left, it is their tolerance for mass murder and torture. They made excuses for it in the Soviet Union, in Red China, and in Cambodia. They clearly prefer a society dominated by al-Qaeda to having U.S. forces in Iraq. Labels: terrorism Tuesday, July 03, 2007
I Want To Laugh... But I dare not. Over at a blog called Gun Toting Liberal, where they were discussing the former British jihadist who says that Islamofascism isn't driven by foreign policy, one reader posted this chilling comment: You are right that many people just don’t get it about terrorists. The receptionist at my work once said she was sure that if we could just sit down with the terrorists and bake some chocolate chip cookies together we could work it out. I was stunned beyond believe at her statement. The whole breakroom at work went dead silent and she didnt even notice peoples reactions. But this is a common thought of many. And the really scary part is that they vote.There are a lot of people so clueless that I wonder how they buy bread at the market without assistance. Labels: terrorism Prayer Time in Public School There's a public school that provides 15 minutes during class time for students to pray. Where's the ACLU? Oh yes, it's for Muslims, so the rules are different: Carver Elementary in Oak Park added Arabic to its curriculum in September when it suddenly absorbed more than 100 students from a defunct charter school that had served mostly Somali Muslims.I don't mind accommodating the religious beliefs of students--but I object to giving different treatment to some religions, and I especially object to treating Islam as legally superior to Christianity. You can make a strong case based on Founding Era statutes that the First Amendment's establishment clause was consistent with giving preference to Christianity (although not any particular denomination) over other religions and over non-belief. (This doesn't mean that we are required to do so today, but that there is nothing contrary to the Constitution in giving such preference.) But to give special preference for Islam is crazy. Labels: establishment of religion, freedom of religion Gay Activist Michael Glatze Talks About Homosexuality Michael Glatze has a long history of being a gay activist. Like this news release from the Kennedy School of Government: Michael Glatze, co-founder of Young Gay America, spoke of how different the experience of being gay has become for the younger generation.And this Time magazine article: Because he routinely sees young gays on MTV or even at school, a 14-year-old may now feel comfortable telling friends that he likes other boys, but that doesn't mean he is ready to enfold himself in a gay identity. "Today so many kids who are gay, they don't like Cher. They aren't part of the whole subculture," says Michael Glatze, 30, editor in chief of YGA Magazine. "They feel like they belong in their faith, in their families."But I don't think he's going to be getting much press attention now, because of this article: Homosexuality came easy to me, because I was already weak.This isn't the first such example. I blogged a few months back about how the publisher of Venus magazine, aimed at black homosexuals, had accepted Jesus Christ, and walked away from homosexuality. Labels: homosexuality Monday, July 02, 2007
Scooter Libby Sentence Commuted by Bush This is a little bizarre to me. If, as some argue, Libby's memory was notoriously bad, and he didn't really perjure himself, then he should have been pardoned--not had his prison sentence commuted, but the $250,000 fine left in place. If Bush felt (correctly) tht Libby was pursued purely for political reasons, since the special prosecutor figured out pretty early that Valerie Plame's identity leak was not a crime, then again, a pardon makes the most sense. Still, to hear Democrats whining about a light sentence for perjury by a White House official is pretty funny. Okay, this wasn't about sex. Since Libby didn't leak Plame's identity, it wasn't about anything! Small World One of the local political controversies going on in Boise County right now is concerning approval of a residential treatment school named Alamar Ranch. What is a residential treatment school? For kids with serious psychological or emotional problems that aren't responding well to treatment within the community (sometimes because the community itself is part of the problem, sometimes because the family interactions complicate matters), these schools provide a controlled, structured environment, therapy, medical treatment (for those problems that are amenable to psychotropic drugs), and continuing a child's education. I didn't even know about such facilities until my daughter ended up in a heap of trouble--and this seemed like the last resort. I was quite concerned that she wasn't going to make it to 18. So on the recommendation of a specialist, we sent her to a place called New Haven Residential Treatment Center in Spanish Fork, Utah. This was easily the hardest, most painful action that I have ever had to take. I have nothing but good things to say about what happened to my daughter there. She was there for 6 1/2 months. We visited every six weeks for intensive family therapy sessions and to visit her. As I said, I was sure she wasn't going to make it to 18. Unlike a lot of kids struggling with similar situations, she came home, completed high school, went off to college, met a wonderful young man, got married, and is now working on her Master's in Social Work. The last words of Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son have never meant more: But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'New Haven was expensive. The cost was $9000 a month, back some years ago. Eventually, my insurance company picked up about 30% of it (although I didn't know it at the time). I was getting ready to move my portfolio from conservative growth stock mutual funds into municipal bonds so that I would have the income to pay for New Haven, when a good friend who was temporarily a multimillionaire (wonders of the dot-com madness) stepped in and practically begged to take care of the bill. (That's when you find out who your real friends are.) In retrospect, I would have been better off paying for it myself, because the stock market collapsed a few months later, and those bonds would have gone up dramatically while I watched my stock mutual funds sink. But who knew? Most parents in a similar situation aren't so lucky, either because the cost is prohibitive, or because their child is legally an adult--and simply refuses to accept treatment. Alamar Ranch's request for planning approval created what seemed like a firestorm of upset residents. Some of the concerns were about the strain that it would put on fire services and roads--which seems a bit odd, since schools of this type aren't normally high population density. I began to see some comments in the local newspaper (the Idaho World) that suggested that a lot of the upset crowd was concerned that serious violent criminals were going to be staying at Alamar Ranch--even though Alamar Ranch made it clear that no one with a serious criminal history would be allowed. As far as I am concerned, New Haven Residential Treatment Center saved my daughter's life, so I wrote a letter to the Idaho World explaining that I was not taking a stand about whether Alamar was a good situation from a planning standpoint or not, and I knew nothing about Alamar Ranch and its program, but that schools like New Haven (and Alamar Ranch seemed to be a school like that) were a very good thing indeed. After I sent the letter to the Idaho World, I decided to send a copy to Alamar Ranch as well--and I received a reply from the Executive Director of Alamar Ranch. Her name was very familiar--and eventually we figured out why she recognized my name as well. She worked at New Haven--and she was my daughter's primary therapist. Her plan for Alamar is something like New Haven, but aimed at boys. Not surprisingly, I am now looking for ways to help Alamar get whatever governmental approvals are required, because I now know what sort of person the executive director is. Labels: Idaho politics Why They Hate Us The left is very big on blaming foreign interventionism for why Islamofascism has been at war with the U.S. for several decades. (Unfortunately, we have only been at war with Islamofascism since 9/11.) First, a long explanation of my position--then the interesting news item. I have some sympathy for the point of view that says that U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other countries have often been counterproductive to democracy, capitalism, and human rights. Libertarian critics of U.S. foreign policy claim that our intervention in Central American countries in the early twentieth century was driven by commercial interests. Major General Smedley Butler's War is a Racket makes this claim concerning Nicaragua and Haiti--both places where Butler played a major role in the operations. (There's nothing quite as gauche as Butler walking into the Haitian Congress in 1915 and telling them to go home; he was now in charge.) However: when I have dug through newspapers of the period, for example, the 1909 intervention at Bluefields, Nicaragua, I often find that the evidence as to intent is complex. Yes, there were often commercial interests that had a clear reason to encourage those interventions. The U.S., for example, ran Nicaragua's customs service for a couple of decades until the tariffs paid off the debts that Nicaragua owed to certain U.S. banking interests. But there were often legitimate reasons for U.S. intervention as well, such as protection of U.S. citizens in the midst of chaotic civil wars. Sometimes, we stepped in because the locals were behaving in a manner that was offensive to any proper notion of civil rights--for example, when the President of Haiti was literally ripped limb from limb in the streets of Port-au-Prince. And sad to say, in many of these countries, it wasn't that we were intervening on the side of bad guys at the expense of the good guys. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, and Cuba are all examples of places where the differing factions were arguing over who got to exploit and brutalize the peasants. Cold War realpolitik took a bad situation in many parts of the world, and made it worst. Lyndon Johnson's famous remark, "He may be a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch" captures this rather well. We often chose one thug over another thug because the other thug had allied himself with Moscow. Aggravating this was that local thugs played Moscow vs. Washington for their benefit as well--and usually to the detriment of the peasants who just wanted to be left alone. Sometimes, we picked local thugs who used horrifying methods to accomplish what were certainly noble objectives. The Shah of Iran was trying to bring most of his country out of the fourteenth century--but much of the population of Iran had no interest in leaving the fourteenth century, because then women would be able to go to school, vote, and otherwise enjoy the benefits of what we in the West imagine are universal human rights. Savak, the Shah's secret police, was quite prepared to use torture to deal with the dissenters who liked the fourteenth century. The results, after the overthrow of the Shah, were to put a crowd in charge that was arguably more brutal than the Shah's government--and was our enemies on top of that. All of this ugly history is part of why the left continues to blame 9/11 on U.S. foreign policy. Now, if the 9/11 hijackers had been Nicaraguans, or Salvadorans, Guatemalans, or Mexicans, or Canadians--all countries where the U.S. has a long and often sordid history of intervention--I would find the argument offensive but at least there would be some merit to it. But most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia--a country where the U.S. has never intervened. So what are the motivations for Islamofascist attacks on the West? I've made the point before that ferocious Islamofascist hostility to the United States dates back many decades--far enough that to blame U.S. foreign policy for it makes absolutely no sense. But that's just my opinion. The British newspaper the Daily Mail carried an article today by someone who speaks with considerable expert authority on why they hate us: When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. Labels: terrorism Sunday, July 01, 2007
Wonders of the Internet It really does make all sorts of global commerce work that would have been just too expensive to do before. I've mentioned before a multivolume travelogue by Leander A. Bigger, Around the World: An Illustrated Trip for Education and Pleasure (New York: Lyceum Travel Bureau, 1916). This was an eight volume set--of which I was missing volume seven. I acquired this almost complete set when a great-aunt of a friend of my sister died, and we were given first pick at the estate before it was put up for sale. I was in junior high at the time, and I saw this as an opportunity to acquire some interesting antique books. (That was one of your interests in junior high, wasn't it? Maybe it was coming from a family of librarians.) Anyway, I found all sorts of odd books in the collection: a book on palmistry published in the 1890s by one of the big publishers, and The Learned Elders of the Protocols of Zion published by something that called itself the "Christian Nationalist Crusade of Los Angeles" in the 1920s. (Keep in mind the old saw about any academic department that has to put the word "Science" in its name, such as "Political Science," isn't a science.) I've long wondered where Bigger traveled and wrote about in the seventh volume--and my wife, who has a serious book addiction problem, suggested that I use Barnes & Noble's used book search engine. To my surprise and delight, I found volume seven in good condition for sale by itself--and I paid $23.50, including shipping. It is only slightly worse condition than the rest of the set--if you saw them on the shelf, you would assume that they have been brothers since birth. Thirty years ago, I could probably have found volume seven--but it would have required a lot of phone calls to used book dealers in a lot of different places--and I suspect that I would not have been able to get it so cheaply. The Cato Institute Can Do Better Than This They have an event planned: Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOPThere are so many things wrong here. Using the term "Holy-Roller" to describe the social conservative wing of the Republican Party is unnecessarily insulting and inaccurate--like calling the Cato Institute's members the "libertine" wing of the Republican Party, instead of libertarian. Honest people can disagree about appropriate policy with being insulting. "A messianic foreign policy": Sorry, but the decision to invade Afghanistan was hardly messianic. While one might argue that Iraq has turned into a real mess, it was a pragmatic decision to fix the problem of the Arab Middle East by infecting democracy into one of the countries that was perceived by almost everyone (including most Democrats) as a serious potential threat to the United States. "a fiscally irresponsible, ever-expanding federal government": there are people that you can blame for this in the Republican Party, but the "Holy-Rollers" aren't the ones who have been pushing this--and I'm not sure that you can put the blame for this on the "neo-cons." A lot of this is traditional pork barrel politics--a problem no matter whether Democrats or Republicans hold office. "a theocratic view of church and state" "a Republican Party that has accepted all those unconservative ideas": This is just nonsense. The social conservatives are trying to get America back to a relationship between government and religion that was present from the Founding until the 1950s. Mr. Gold may not want that, but claiming that it is "a theocratic view" shows a real misunderstanding of the role of religion in American history. To claim that this is an "unconservative idea" means what? In the sense of "reluctance to change a way of doing things"? No, it is very conservative. Argue that it is bad policy if you want, but it isn't "unconservative." I'm disappointed that the Cato Institute would stoop to this level. Reasons to Carry a Gun With You Besides Self-Defense My wife was driving up state highway 55 the other evening, just at dusk, and she saw a deer at the side of the road, badly injured. There was another car already pulled over, and she stopped to see what assistance she could provide. The other driver had pulled over for the same reason. Even if it had not been a wild animal, it was beyond hope. One leg was shattered, and she could the bones flopping about in the skin. The animal was obviously in great pain, and had lost bladder control. So my wife starts to head to her car to get her pistol, to put it out of its misery--and (this being Idaho) then she noticed that the other driver had already gotten his gun and was about to take care of this poor creature. |
