Lord Voldemort had nothing on this guy

From The Merchant of Death: Basil Zaharoff, by the great John T. Flynn:

It is this side of the munitions business that brings it into disfavor. For it is not content to corrupt officials as public contractors do, but mixes up in state policy to create disturbance. It flourishes only in a world where hatreds and controversies, dynastic and economic and racial and religious differences between peoples flourish. Hence it has spared no pains to keep these mortal quarrels alive, to alarm peoples and ministers with war scares, to breed suspicion and distrust. First among all the practitioners of this dark art was Zaharoff. There is little doubt that he loved the game. He was the troublemaker feeding upon trouble — the neighborhood provocateur raised to the dubious dignity of free-lance statesman. Beaverbrook was right — "The destinies of nations were his sport; the movement of armies and the affairs of government his special delight. In the wake of war this mysterious figure moved over tortured Europe."

He started as a salesman for a tiny small-arms dealer and built it into a business bigger than the Krupp Werke in Germany - Vickers.

But you can't admire him much.

"I want my Prince Charming!"

My daughter plaintively cried out. [The younger one, Thank God! I think I can assume that it can't be serious.]

My wife answered, "He ain't comin'." [Now where could she have gotten that idea? Certainly not from recent experience!]

Lena replied, "He-e-ey!! You don't say dat!" [Denial: it's not just a river in Egypt.]

If you have any urge to take this seriously, Nathaniel Brandon has at least one chapter in one of his books - Taking Responsibility, probably (actually, I have cause to believe it was The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem)- about the fact that your Knight in Shining Armor isn't going to show up and save you from your life.

I didn't start this post with that last paragraph in mind, it just popped into my mind as I was writing. Then I had to go and look up those links. I really just wanted to tell a funny story.

Now she's explaining to me that "the green grapes have black hair and a tail, too!"

"Sure they do, honey." She's making me sing songs along with the music from her Talk and Learn Alphabet toy as I type this. I guess it does look like the green grapes on it have black hair and a tail.

I'll be darned!

Dobie Gray!

Gimme the Beat, Boys!

Dobie Gray had more affect on my philosophy of life than anybody!

I used to walk barefoot down tarred roads in Oklahoma in July and August to toughen my feet. Internally I was groovin' to "Give Me The Beat, Boys!"

If you don't know that song, get to know it. It is life itself.

I don't own that song. I need to.

Hey! He's got a website!

Oh! Now I really love him! From his website:

Mike Stewart, Dan Williams and Tom Smith of Dan Williams Music, brought Dobie into Creative Workshop Studios to sing the now-famous, "Momma's Got The Magic Of Clorox ll" jingle for Proctor & Gamble's nationwide ad campaign. The Reggae-themed, "Momma" had its first hugely-successful outing in 1986-88. It's second and greatest run was during 2002-2004. Over time, Dobie has chalked up more than thirty TV and Radio commercials, but "Momma is by far, his most renowned - winning a CLIO Award in the Best Commercial category, in 1989.

I just finished watching

Kung Fu, the Complete Third Season.

Kicked ass, just as I remember.

I loved that show from the first moment I saw it.

Well, actually, I think my first reaction was, "Huh? What happened to our show?" We were sitting down to dinner with the TV pulled around so we could all see it from the table. "Our show," really, was no great loss. I don't even remember what it was. We'd just gotten into the habit of eating dinner that way. It was a bummer when all seven of us were home and somebody had to sit in the way of the screen.

I can't believe that was 1972! That must have been the second year we had a color TV. We weren't even in the new house yet!

But that's when the third season was made. There's a lesson in there about formative memories and how they seem more recent to you than other things. And more vivid. You remember where you were when Kennedy was shot, I remember my first viewing of "Kung Fu."

I didn't catch every show the first time around, and it seemed like I always caught the same three shows every time I watched the reruns. I became a more diligent rerun watcher when I snuck my Dad's boat TV into my bedroom while he was home for the winter. (And a much worse student, though it's amazing what you can learn from Johnny Carson - I'll tell you about that someday...it figures into my Seven Deadly Sins score. Ron wasn't responsible for everything that's wrong with me.)

My mother used to warn me not to take that Buddhist crap too seriously. She was worried about me.

In the special features, there is a scene in which the Abbot of the Shao Lin Monastery in China thanks David Carradine for what he's done for Shao Lin Kung Fu and Buddhism. Carradine answers, I think consciously "channeling" Kwai Chang Caine, "I live to serve." The Abbot nodded.

Carradine, his Kung Fu master and the other buddy they brought along on the pilgrimage seemed very deeply moved by their visit there.

There is also a demonstration of what Shao Lin monks are capable of these days, and it's pretty astounding.

Now I gotta get the first two seasons. I'll probably be disappointed with them. Those were the shows that were repeated endlessly on our local ABC affiliate.

Don't tell the wife I'm on the hunt.

Though, I bet she already suspects it.

Does this work?

In case it doesn't show (it doesn't for me on my blog, it's just a white square with a link), it's the TCM route. They didn't have it filed, so I put it in and saved it anonymously.

I see it says "private" when I follow the link, though I can see it there. I may have a cookie that allows me to see it. I don't know.

This is what I train for. The ole 26.2 mile long party/buffet.

Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, formerly of Purple People Eater fame, plays the Tuba for us. Where else can you see that?

There's an article in today's

Daily Wealth called "The Banks Have Stopped Lending."

What can you do without taking out a loan?

Ho ho! I just published a link to a report

a moment ago that I got as a bonus for answering a survey. But I deleted it, because it wasn't an appropriate use of the information under the circumstances. I just needed to put it in a format from which I would be able to download the book.

It's from Dr. Al Sears about nutrition for... Well, let's see what the actual title is, shall we?

"Prevent Vision Loss and Enjoy Crisp Clear Eyesight... Even As You Approach 100!"

Since I'm pretty much blind as a bat. And I entered my 45th year yesterday at 5:12PM, I considered the issue worthy of my attention.

Here's something I read today that I thought was great:

How The Simpsons Can Save America, by Jim Amrhein

Because its fundamental goal is to spread laughs instead of lessons, the show’s writers are free to skewer everyone and everything in America without fear of undermining any overarching agenda. And this they do — gleefully freed from the shackles of political correctness by their two boorish bards, Bart and Homer Simpson. In fact, The Simpsons is such an equal-opportunity heckler of the American condition that it’s really the only thing on the Fox network (or any network) that truly approaches “fair and balanced.”

True, if one looks really hard, the slightest suggestion of a skew to the political left can be detected in The Simpsons. But it’s so light-handed as to be almost irrelevant — and it tends to highlight general issues (chiefly, the environment) more than any particular political party. In fact, recognizable caricatures of politicians from both sides of the aisle get roasted regularly on The Simpsons.

I don't see much of a skew to the left, myself. Jim Amrhein must have more of a skew to the right than I do to see it that way. I see a skew toward the old black flag, and I appreciate it.

I've got something to say

about this piece on Ron Paul, but, I'm afraid it won't be simple, so bear with me.

I don't want to call it a fisking because I have a lot of respect for Mr. Alexander, but it'll be like that.

BTW, Probligo, is

this what you were talking about?

The US Federal Reserve injected $38 billion dollars into the economy via temporary open market operations this Friday. This is the largest number of temporary repurchase agreements (specifically, one business day repos) entered into by the Fed since September 11, 2001.

Yeah, that's what we need. A reinflation of the Housing Bubble.

Instead of a shaking out of all the bad ideas that grew out of the last "reinflation."

I really shouldn't tell anybody this, but,

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	High
Pride:	Medium

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Here we go!

Here's an excellent analysis of what's going wrong in America
Here's an exerpt from Neoconservative Foreign Policy: An Autopsy by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute:

How have we managed to fail so spectacularly to secure our interests in the perfect neoconservative war? The state of affairs it has brought about is so bad, so much worse than anticipated, that it cannot be explained by particular personalities (such as Bush or Rumsfeld) or particular strategic decisions (such as insufficient troop levels). Such a failure can be explained only by fundamental flaws in the policy.

On this count, most of the President’s critics and critics of neoconservatism heartily agree; however, their identification of neoconservatism’s fundamental problems has been abysmal. The criticism is dominated by the formerly discredited “realists,” who argue that the Iraq War demonstrates that “war is not the answer” to our problems—that the United States was too “unilateralist,” “arrogant,” “militaristic”—and that we must revert to more “diplomacy” to deal with today’s threats. Thus, in response to Iran’s ongoing support of terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons, to North Korea’s nuclear tests, to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing financing of Islamic Totalitarianism—they counsel more “diplomacy,” “negotiations,” and “multilateralism.” In other words, we should attempt to appease the aggressors who threaten us with bribes that reward their aggression, and we should allow our foreign policy to be dictated by the anti-Americans at the United Nations. These are the exact same policies that did absolutely nothing to prevent 9/11 or to thwart the many threats we face today.

If these are the lessons we draw from the failure of neoconservatism, we will be no better off without that policy than with it. It is imperative, then, that we gain a genuine understanding of neoconservatism’s failure to protect American interests. Providing this understanding is the purpose of this essay. In our view, the basic reason for neoconservatism’s failure to protect America is that neoconservatism, despite its claims, is fundamentally opposed to America’s true national interest.

.........
I'd quote more, but they're rather protective of their intellectual property rights, and, though I don't think they'd actually sue me, I already breach plenty of their tenets and I don't want them to hold me in any lower regard than they already do.

Oh! I think they might actually approve of wider dissemination of this paragraph:

The Left’s vision of the flourishing socialist Utopia collapsed as socialist experiment after socialist experiment produced the exact opposite results. Enslaving individuals and seizing their production led to destruction wherever and to whatever extent it was implemented, from the Communist socialism of Soviet Russia and Red China, to the National Socialism (Nazism) of Germany, to the disastrous socialist economics of Great Britain. At this point, as pro-capitalist philosopher Ayn Rand has observed, the Left faced a choice: Either renounce socialism and promote capitalism—or maintain allegiance to socialism, knowing full well what type of consequences it must lead to.

And since it, in fact, leads us back to the Stone Age, the New Left has embraced the Stone Age as the ideal for humanity. Just as Ayn Rand said they would in her 1938 novella Anthem.
Meanwhile, the disenfranchised Old Lefties'

“neoconservative” transformation went only so far. Kristol and company’s essential criticism of socialism pertained to its practicality as apolitical program; they came to oppose such socialist fixtures as state economic planning, social engineering of individuals into collectivist drones, and totalitarian government. Crucially, though, they did not renounce socialism’s collectivist moral ideal. They still believed that the individual should be subjugated for the “greater good” of “society” and the state. They just decided that the ideal was best approximated through the American political system rather than by overthrowing it.

...[T]he America [that] neoconservatives embraced was not the individualistic America of the Founding Fathers; it was the collectivist and statist post-New Deal America. This modern American government—which violated individual rights with its social security and welfare programs and its massive regulation of business all in the name of group “rights” and had done so increasingly for decades—was seen by the neoconservatives as a basically good thing that just needed some tweaking in order to achieve the government’s moral purpose: “the national interest” (i.e., the alleged good of the collective at the expense of the individual). The neoconservatives saw in modern, welfare-state America the opportunity to achieve collectivist goals without the obvious and bloody failures of avowedly socialist systems.

Well, I won't rehash the whole article. Go and read it. BTW, I haven't finished it yet, myself. I'll tell you if I still think they're right when I do.

Oh let me toss in this little teaser, "... if a 'long, expensive, and arduous war' were necessary to defeat the enemy that struck on 9/11—and we will argue that it is not—it is profoundly un-American and morally obscene to treat such a war as a positive turn of events because it generates a collective purpose..."

"Indians discovered copper in the Black River in the 1850s!

No time to talk!"

I'm quoting a buddy of mine from high school.

On the other hand, I'm about to do the same thing.

Check this out: DmitryChernikov.com: Skeptical About Skepticism.

Prove anything? I don't know. No time to think about it.

My beloved brother SHOWS why he's my beloved brother

Ron, your football stories kick ass! I'm not kidding!

Write a book, man! I'll edit the thing (I'm afraid you need it, for clarity's sake - but, for God's sake, don't stop writing those! I love your football stories!).

Ron's team was better than ours and didn't get to state. Warren Williams and Larry Banks are huge heroes to me! Larry Banks set the bench press record that I wanted to beat (385#) and didn't come close (though the lazy &*%$er, with the natural physique of Arnold Schwartzenegger [which means "black acre," or "well-manured field," btw, and not that other thing that I used to think it meant], that I mentioned before, should have been able to beat, but didn't either).

And Warren Williams had the natural ability to beat that. The dude was an absolute monster! I forget who John was. Oh, yeah! John Francouer! [Or however you spell that.] He set some records too, didn't he? Dips, I think. Though I might have broken that one myself. But it had already been broken by one of those deformed bleepers who was all arms and chest with no legs. Pretty much like I am now, come to think of it. God! My legs are skinny!

That was quite an aside, wasn't it? Well, to my mind, those people deserve to be mentioned on the internet. They were gods to me. As was my brother: the man who drilled the value of perfect technique into my head by his deeds and his words. Ron, you need to package what you did to have the body you had on your eighteenth birthday and sell it, man! That knowledge is worth huge money! Just tell the literal truth. And I can help you market it. I can't sell anything I don't believe in, but I saw that! Up close and personal!

Aw, C****! I'll have to make the Rendezvous post separately. I'll let this stand for a bit.

But I'm not at all kidding you. Ron, as he was at the end of his highschool sports career, could have made a lucrative living as a model for Greek revival statuary. He was the Olympic ideal.

And if you haven't already gone to those links, start with this one first.

Or maybe not. I finished with it, and maybe it really goes last. He spent the most time on it and it shows. It's epic.

Brag 'em up to your friends. These posts are among the best things I've ever read.

We were supposed to leave on our camping trip

- Voyageur Rendezvous stuff in Deer River, MN that I'll tell you about on the other blog when I get back - today, but it looks like my MAF sensor went to hell. Crap! What's that stand for? Oh, yeah, Mass Air Flow. On my truck.

I can't change that myself, they've got some kind of goofy, impossible-to-deal-with-without-breaking-it plug on the damn thing, so I have to take it to the shop tomorrow. (*^)*(&^)!

My time has been taken up by preparing for that and preparing for the TCM. The runs are getting rather long now, and they kind of wipe me out for the weekend. Just can't work up any enthusiasm for writing, or much of anything else. Whenever my enthusiasm level starts to rise it's time to run again. Good thing I like running.

So, that's my excuse. What's yours?

Benjamin Constant said this in 1819:

It follows from what I have just indicated that we can no longer enjoy the liberty of the ancients, which consisted in an active and constant participation in collective power. Our freedom must consist of peaceful enjoyment and private independence. The share that in antiquity everyone held in national sovereignty was by no means an abstract presumption as it is in our own day. The will of each individual had real influence: the exercise of this will was a vivid and repeated pleasure. Consequently the ancients were ready to make many a sacrifice to preserve their political rights and their share in the administration of the state. Everybody, feeling with pride all that his suffrage was worth, found in this awareness of his personal importance a great compensation.

This compensation no longer exists for us today. Lost in the multitude, the individual can almost never perceive the influence he exercises. Never does his will impress itself upon the whole; nothing confirms in his eyes his own cooperation. The exercise of political rights, therefore, offers us but a part of the pleasures that the ancients found in it, while at the same time the progress of civilization, the commercial tendency of the age, the communication amongst peoples, have infinitely multiplied and varied the means of personal happiness.

It follows that we must be far more attached than the ancients to our individual independence. For the ancients when they sacrificed that independence to their political rights, sacrificed less to obtain more; while in making the same sacrifice! we would give more to obtain less. The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of security in private pleasures; and they call liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.

Yeah, it's them Mises guys again.

Now that there's a little distance between now and the sad event

I can tell you my clearest memory of Don Ho.

Actually, it's not of him per se, as much as it's of his name. Back in the late Seventies, National Lampoon put out a personality test (and you know how I love personality tests) called "Are You a Homo?" in which one of the answers to the question, asked by your Uncle Moe, "Who's your favorite singer?" was "Don Ho, Moe."

The test was morally non-judgmental, so you could feel perfectly comfortable choosing that answer.

Update: Some corroboration. And, I'm sure they've got it archived on their website somewhere. I've already wasted too much of my LifeForce on the subject.

LibertyBob reminds us why

[LibertyBob link] as I like to say, "Nobody should live in the city without a Streetsweeper."

Here's a picture of what I'm talking about (from here):


I suppose, though that I'd rather have the next descendant of that weapon, shown in the following pic on that site.

A society armed with fully automatic, large-capacity-magazine shotguns is a polite society.

Have I quoted this before?

Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. …Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791).

Richman quotes it at the end of a fine exposition of Paine's Common Sense.

There. Now I have links to all of Paine's published works on one page. Oh, come to think of it, The Crisis link is in a comment.

Wait a minute, I'm forgetting a fourth. What is it, LibertyBob? Oh, yeah! The Age of Reason! [I like that USHistory.org.] Which is a lot better explication of Deism than, say, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [scroll down] or Ethan Allen's Reason: The Only Oracle of Man. Of course, I read Paine first and the other two were deadly boring rehashes of the same stuff after that. Paine inserts some fireworks into the discussion at least.

Just so you know

Your Score: Robot

You are 71% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 42% Brutal, and 42% Arrogant.

You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don't bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. You are not like the robots they show in the movies. Movie robots are make-believe, because they always get all personable and likeable after being struck by lightning, or they are cold, cruel killing machines. In all reality, though, you are much more boring than all that. Real robots just sit there, doing their stupid jobs, and doing little else. If you get struck by lightning, you won't develop a winning personality and heart of gold. (Robots don't have hearts, silly, and if they did, they would probably be made of steel, not gold.) You also won't be likely to terrorize humanity by becoming an ultra-violent killing machine sent into the past to kill the mother of a child who will lead a rebellion against machines, because that movie was dumb as hell, and because real robots don't kill--they horribly maim at best, and they don't even do that on purpose. Real robots are boringly kind and all too rarely try to kill people. In all my years, my laptop has only attacked me once, and that was only because my brother threw it at me. In short, your personality defect is that you don't really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit. Or if someone throws a pie at you. Pies sure are delicious.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.

*

*

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

About Saint_Gasoline

I am a self-proclaimed pseudo-intellectual who loves dashes. I enjoy science, philosophy, and fart jokes and water balloons, not necessarily in that order. I spend 95% of my time online, and the other 5% of my time in the bathroom, longing to get back on the computer. If, God forbid, you somehow find me amusing instead of crass and annoying, be sure to check out my blog and my webcomic at SaintGasoline.com.

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

I AM THE CUBE OF SIX!!!

Does that seem like an odd thing to say? Actually, it doesn't quite describe my whole essence. Just my weight. In pounds.

6x6x6=216. Somebody should come up with a measure of length that would make that describe my volume as well. But then, density variations....

Hi. I'm still here.

But enough about me, here:

Although we often hear that the Indians knew nothing of private property, their actual views of property varied across time, place, and tribe. When land and game were plentiful, it is not surprising that people exerted little effort in defining and enforcing property rights. But as those things became more scarce, Indians appreciated the value of assigning property rights in (for example) hunting and fishing.

In other words, the American Indians were human beings who responded to the incentives they faced, not cardboard cutouts to be exploited on behalf of environmentalism or any other political program.

Were American Indians Really Environmentalists? by Thomas E. Woods.

BTW, Economics is about the use of scarce resources. Money is just one of them and you don't see the best economists forgetting that.

My guys are giving you a sword, Prob,

in Tales of Titans and Hobbits, by Juliusz Jablecki:

The Lord of the Rings shows not only the great danger associated with all attempts to defeat evil power by power, but it also teaches that collectives do not really exist, that every one of us is the hero of his own individual story, and that law and order can easily exist without the state. Despite its egoistic message, Atlas Shrugged is full of imperatives to act, to fight, to bring salvation. Rand's characters suffer not only because the state reaches into their wallets, but because the society rejected their rational, "enlightened" vision of what is good and right.

[Really? I missed that point. One of those elisions I mentioned, I suppose.]

Tolkien, on the other hand, disliked such imperatives. He hated the outlook that if something can be done, it has to be done, and once even admitted that the greatest deeds of mind and spirit are born in abnegation. That is most likely the reason his characters do not look for great challenges, nor wish to change the world, and instead live quietly, fulfilling Voltaire's dictum Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

[I won't rely on my beginner's knowledge of French and faux amies this time*: Google says Voltaire's quote means, "Our garden should be cultivated." That could use a little context, I think, though it works here.

*Censeur means critic, not censor.]

And my personal hero, Sheldon Richman,

has this to say:

Comte and Dunoyer, along with Augustin Thierry, whose publication, Le Censeur européen [is there a typo there?], was a hotbed of radical free-market thought, were influenced by the important, but underappreciated, French free-market economist Jean-Baptiste Say, whom Murray Rothbard lauded as brilliantly innovative and the superior of Adam Smith. The seeds of early classical-liberal class theory can be found in the second and subsequent editions of Say’s Treatise on Political Economy (first published in 1803), which reflected his response to Napoleon’s military spending and intervention in the French economy. For Say, government's power to tax the fruits of labor and to distribute largess and jobs is the source of class division and exploitation. As he wrote in another work, "The huge rewards and the advantages which are generally attached to public employment greatly excite ambition and cupidity. They create a violent struggle between those who possess positions and those who want them." Of course someone has to provide the largess.

That someone is you and me...at the point of our "servants'" guns.

Rothbard:

The State indeed performs many important and necessary functions: from provision of law to the supply of police and fire fighters, to building and maintaining the streets, to delivery of the mail. But this in no way demonstrates that only the State can perform such functions, or, indeed, that it performs them even passably well.

The Nature of The State.

Reading Rothbard always makes me feel like I've been trying to reinvent the wheel. The dude has covered everything I've been trying to say. Here he says that much and more:

...Spooner was the last of the great natural rights theorists among anarchists, classical liberals, or moral theorists generally; the doughty old heir of the natural law-natural rights tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was fighting a rearguard battle against the collapse of the idea of a scientific or rational morality, or of the science of justice or of individual right.

Not only had natural law and natural rights given way throughout society to the arbitrary rule of utilitarian calculation or nihilistic whim; but the same degenerative process had occurred among libertarians and anarchists as well. Spooner knew that the foundation for individual rights and liberty was tinsel if all values and ethics were arbitrary and subjective.

Yet, even in his own anarchist movement Spooner was the last of the Old Guard believers in natural rights; his successors in the individualist-anarchist movement, led by Benjamin R. Tucker, all proclaimed arbitrary whim and might-makes-right as the foundation of libertarian moral theory. And yet, Spooner knew that this was no foundation at all; for the State is far mightier than any individual, and if the individual cannot use a theory of justice as his armor against State oppression, then he has no solid base from which to roll back and defeat it.

With his emphasis on cognitive moral principles and natural rights, Spooner must have looked hopelessly old-fashioned to Tucker and the young anarchists of the 1870s and 1880s. And yet now, a century later, it is the latters' once fashionable nihilism and tough amoralism that strike us as being empty and destructive of the very liberty they all tried hard to bring about. We are now beginning to recapture the once-great tradition of an objectively grounded rights of the individual. In philosophy, in economics, in social analysis, we are beginning to see that the tossing aside of moral rights was not the brave new world it once seemed — but rather a long and disastrous detour in political philosophy that is now fortunately drawing to a close.

The next paragraph is even more important. Read it there.

Triskadekaphilia

I washed the truck today. I was on vacation. The radio told me while I was working that the temperature went from 73-76 degrees F. Sunny (or "partly cloudy," who cares?)...

Beckham married Posh Spice...

Probligo ragged on me about Capitalism...

My life is effin' wonderful!

I've been listening to Dennis Miller all week from 10:00 to noon every day on AM 1570 for the last week...

I am psyched about life!

Friday the 13th is Bulls--t!

Here's a hint at how today went:


All right [Morons: note spelling] I'll let you see the parts of that - that I find most important - a little closer:


I just realized I haven't brushed her hair today. Sorry.

My Daughter wants to read The Kalevala.

I picked this version, but there's plenty.

If anyone in the Twin Cities wants to help me learn Finnish using it, that would be wonderful. Or just buddy up to work on it together.

I suppose I could do that with the kids.

Diamonds and Water

I just discovered a guy, Daniel J. McLaughlin, who has some valuable insights:

There are some very good teachers, but teaching in a typical classroom is not generally a route to superstardom. There are relatively limited classroom positions in any geographic area, and usually plenty of competent and capable people willing to fill the spots. They are similar to water in our example. They may be necessary, they may be very good, they may provide a very valuable service, but they are also abundant.

Aspiring athletes get to be superstars because they have some type of rare talent. Top athletes can do things that mere mortals can't. Most have paid a heavy personal cost to get there. Many more try, but don't even come close. Only a tiny fraction actually make it to the big time. The level of ability and dedication it takes to be a superstar is, indeed, very rare. That rarity makes them the diamonds in the realm of professional endeavors. They have millions of adoring fans willing to pay money to see them. The supply is extremely low and the demand is extremely high. They command a high price for the same reason that diamonds are expensive.

All athletes, however, are not diamonds. Some are rubies, some are quartz, some are coal. Those that are not diamonds command less pay and may play at lower levels, farm teams, semi-pro or amateur leagues.

There are also different levels in teaching. While some are not called "teachers", they still need to be included for comparison. Some are called professors, consultants, public speakers, writers, etc. The level of pay for any of them depends on the perceived value of the skill that each individual exhibits in relation to the skills of those that would replace him or her. Thus, a renowned consultant or professor with a significant reputation , who is a popular writer and has taught many thousands of people, may actually make millions of dollars. He or she is just as much a teacher and, though called by a different name, can be thought of as a superstar of teaching, similar to superstar athletes.

I've argued these points before, though not here, I don't think. He puts it very clearly. There are teachers making millions. We just don't call them teachers. And they don't work for the government.

I should tell you that I didn't realize he was the author of this article when I finally got around to reading Economic Lessons from the Amish in my email.

Have I mentioned Father Sirico's speech

“Socialism, Free Enterprise, and the Common Good”, given at Hillsdale College and printed in Imprimus? He's the co-founder and president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

The Acton Institute really kicks my butt in saying everything I want to say.

F'rinstance:

The core of the old socialist hope was a mass prosperity that would free all people from the burden of laboring for others and place them in a position to pursue higher ends, such as art and philosophy, in a conflict-free society. But there was a practical problem: The Marxist prediction of a revolution that would bring about this good society rested on the assumption that the condition of the working classes would grow ever worse under capitalism. But by the early twentieth century it was clear that this assumption was completely wrong. Indeed, the reverse was occurring: As wealth grew through capitalist means, the standard of living of all was improving.

...

Historians now realize that even in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, workers were becoming better off. Prices were falling, incomes rising, health and sanitation improving, diets becoming more varied, and working conditions constantly improving. The new wealth generated by capitalism dramatically lengthened life spans and decreased child mortality rates. The new jobs being created in industry paid more than most people could make in agriculture. Housing conditions improved. The new heroes of society came from the middle class as business owners and industrialists displaced the nobility and gentry in the cultural hierarchy.

Much has been made about the rise of child labor and too little about the fact that, for the first time, there was remunerative work available for people of all ages. As economist W. H. Hutt has shown, work in the factories for young people was far less grueling than it had been on the farm, which is one reason parents favored the factory. As for working hours, it is documented that when factories would reduce hours, the employees would leave to go to work for factories that made it possible for them to work longer hours and earn additional wages. The main effect of legislation that limited working hours for minors was to drive employment to smaller workshops that could more easily evade the law.

In the midst of all this change, many people seemed only to observe an increase in the number of the poor. In a paradoxical way, this too was a sign of social progress, since so many of these unfortunate people might have been dead in past ages. But the deaths of the past were unseen and forgotten, whereas current poverty was omnipresent. Meanwhile, as economic development expanded in the nineteenth century, there was a dramatic growth of a middle class that now had access to consumer goods once available only to kings—not to mention plenty of new goods being created by the engine of capitalism.

I'm not too sure about this Communitarianism article, though. But I'm not going to go all Ayn Rand on 'em before I read it.

WOD: Idiolect

An idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of word selection and grammar, or words, phrases, idioms, or pronunciations that are unique to that individual. Every individual has an idiolect; the grouping of words and phrases is unique, rather than an individual using specific words that nobody else uses.

From Wikipedia.

It's my blog and I'll quote LvMI if I want to.

In Time for Another Revolution, Frank Chodorov said:

But regardless of their argument and regardless of their intent, the Constitutional shackles did in fact, though perhaps inadvertently, protect the people in the enjoyment of their cherished rights.

From this we learn a little heeded lesson in social science, namely, that the real struggle that disturbs the enjoyment of life is not between economic classes but between Society as a whole and the political power which imposes itself on Society. The class-struggle theory is a blind alley. True, people of like economic interests will gang up for the purpose of taking advantage of others. But within these classes there is as much rivalry as there is between the classes.

When, however, you examine the advantage which one class obtains over another you find that the basis of it is political power. It is impossible for one person to exploit another, for one class to exploit another, without the aid of law and the force to back up the law. Examine any monopoly and you will find it resting on the State. So that the economic and social injustices we complain of are not due to economic inequalities, but to the political means that bring about these inequalities.

If peace is to be brought into the social order it is not by accentuating a class struggle, but by restraining the basic cause of it; that is, the political power. To bring about a condition of equal rights, which is a condition of justice, the hands of the politician must be so tied that he cannot extend his activities beyond the simple duty of protecting life and property, his only competence.

"His only competence." No form of redistribution works better than protecting life and property for creating a peaceful, happy society. The authorities don't do that perfectly either, but if they focused on it, they might improve.

And, if all that seems too tame, Chodorov goes on:

For about a century and a half the American citizen enjoyed, in the main, three immunities against the State: in respect to his property; in respect to his person; in respect to his thought and expression. Pressure upon them was constant, for in the pursuit of power the State is relentless, but the dikes of the Constitution held firm and so did the immunities. Only within our time did the State effect a vital breach in the Constitution, and in short order the American, no matter what his classification, was reduced to the status of subject, as he was before 1776. His citizenship shriveled up when the Sixteenth Amendment replaced the Declaration of Independence.

The income tax completely destroys the immunity of property. It flatly declares a prior right of the State to all things produced. What it permits the individual to retain is a concession to expediency, not by any means a right; for the State retains the liberty to set rates and to fix exemptions from year to year, as its convenience dictates. Thus, the sacred right of private property is violated, and the fact that it is done pro forma makes the violation no less real than when it is done arbitrarily by an autocrat. The blanks we so dutifully fill out simply accentuate our degradation to subject status.

Demagoguery loves to emphasize a distinction between human rights and property rights. The distinction is without validity and only serves to arouse envy. The right to own is the mark of a free man. The slave is a slave simply because he is denied that right. And because the free man is secure in the possession and enjoyment of what he produces, and the slave is not, the spur to production is in one and not in the other. Men produce to satisfy their desires and if their gratifications are curbed they cease to produce beyond the point of limitation; on the other hand the only limit to their aspirations is the freedom to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

BTW, I haven't had time to study this, but a guy named Bill Benson claims that the 16th Amendment hasn't really been ratified. The guys with the guns say otherwise, so use your own judgment about what to do about it.

I don't have anything better to say today than

what Captain Ed said, so I'll send you to him. I discovered the post via The Atlasphere.

The quote of Reagan is magnificent and he has a link to the original speech.

I, myself, would just tell you to read the Declaration and the Preamble to the Constitution today.

Aloud to your family.

The slackers are bailing out of the old work-place

Like rats from a sinking ship today. It's supposed to be beautiful out all weekend, and, of course, the Fourth is next week.

But, I'll be hanging out here. Might go to the Lake for the weekend tonight, but the wife was questioning that this morning when I told her it was cool out during my run. About 60: nice for a slow 2-mile jog.

I ran 5 yesterday and 3 Tuesday. Need to run 9 tomorrow or Sunday.

Last Saturday, I was supposed to run 8, but Laurie and Rosie went on a Girl Scout camping trip, so I was left home with Aliina. She woke up with me both days, so Saturday, I just blew it off and we ended up visiting two of the local parks, and Sunday I put her in the jogging stroller and pushed her for about five miles. You don't feel that thing for the first few, but you definitely start to notice the minor up grades after that.

We ended up at a park about 2 miles from the house, and after playing for an hour, I just walked her home.

I'm finally starting to drop some poundage. I took off about 4 lbs this week. Add that to 3 since the beginning of April and I'll be back to the weight I ran the Marathon at in another couple weeks.

Remember, I continued to lose weight during the post-Marathon recovery all the way into November. A sure sign that I hit the Wall hard.

Now that I know what that's like, I have absolutely no fear of it. Big deal! So I had to walk half of the last 10 miles! What of it? I felt tired for a month. Well, I felt tired for the month previous, too, when I wasn't running.

At this end of the training cycle I find that I'm recovering pretty quick. Part of that is because I'm studying magazines and books on how to train and recover; the other part is that the training for the first four weeks isn't as hard as the training for the last four.

Agh! I'm talking about running again. What is this?! An obsession?!

I'm going to hand out about a page of Mark Steyn's

America Alone, starting in the middle of the paragraph beginning on p. 97:

Reviewing the film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Polly Toynbee, the queen of progressivist pieties in Britain, wrote that Aslan "is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging, and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is on one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can."

Sounds very nice. But in practice the lack of belief in divine presence is just as likely to lead to humans avoiding responsibility: if there's nothing other than the here and now, who needs to settle disputes at all? All you have to do is manage to defer them till after you're dead--which is the European electorates' approach to their unaffordable social programs. The meek's prospects of inheriting the earth are considerably diminished in a post-Christian society: chances are they'll just get steamrollered by more motivated types. You don't have to look far to get the cut of my jib.

What? They must use that expression differently in Canada.

And yet even those who understand very clearly the nature of Islam are complacent about Europe's own structural defects. Olivier Roy, one of the most respected Islamic experts in France, nevertheless insists "secularism is the future." Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it's a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumanism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with its surging Muslim populations, will soon be post-European.

Discussions of world events will be shallow if they ignore this book.

I've said that first generation atheists are thoughtful people and wonderful humanitarians who were convinced by philosophy and[/or] experience that what they grew up believing is wrong. But their children are another story. They grow up believing the simple statement "there is no God" and all the rest is "blah, blah, blah." The stories and explanations don't cut very deeply when they're not your own (especially when you don't tell them well - and hard). So I find his line here quite plausible.

The children take the belief and then what? There'd better be a helluvan ethical theory to latch on to. Relativism sure isn't it.

Yet my theory may also apply to any conversion - I've only noticed it in atheists. Come to think of it, I know quite a few apostate Christians for whom this applies as well. Myself included (sometimes), although I think the apostacy in my generation's case is a direct result of farming kids out to central government controlled education.

It's that Dewey bastard's fault.

BTW, my first post on Steyn's book is here.

Update on finishing the book: Steyn believes we should reshoulder Kipling's White Man's Burden, citing the literary arguments of Arthur Conan Doyle in The Tragedy of the Korosko.

Hmm. I hope we don't have to take that pill. I find it hard to swallow. I think I prefer the commentary on Kipling's poem at GMU. Oh! They have more!

As long as I'm hanging out with the Mises people

One of them, Roderick Long, has announced on the Blog a collection of Spoonerisms.

Ho ho! Damn, I'm funny!

No, Shawn Wilbur is scanning issues of Lysander Spooner's Liberty magazine to .pdf and making them available on the web.

I'll have to practice my speed reading on them.

Hans Sennholz has died.

February 3, 1922–June 23, 2007

Thats' a good website to study.

Here's what Mises.org has so far. Apparently they don't can obits ahead of time, but it's a good speech Rockwell gave in Sennholz' honor in 2004.

Update: I forgot that FEE might have something to say about Sennholz dying. He was President there from '92-'97.

Oddly enough, Richard Ebeling's (current President of FEE) obit is a better read than the one at Sennholz.com. Here's the fun part:

Rising to speak at that seminar, Hans was soon hunched over the podium, a finger pointed at the audience, in what I discovered was his characteristic pose. He proceeded to explain the "absurdities" of government intervention, socialism, and inflation. In a thick but easily understood German accent -- that always had a great effect on the crowd -- he preached hell-fire and brimstone about how free markets and limited government were the only paths away from economic and political perdition.

In the evening he sat around with a group of the attendees and told us about his early life. Hans had been born on February 3, 1922, in the Rhineland area. He had been drafted into the German Luftwaffe in World War II and was shot down while serving in North Africa. He ended up in a POW camp outside of Austin, Texas. I asked him what it was like to be a prisoner of war. He replied that those were among the best years of his life. The camp cook had been a chef in a Berlin restaurant before the war, and all the meals were "wonderful." It turned out that he had some relatives who had immigrated to America in the 1920s and who happened to live in the area. They vouched for him so he could enroll at the University of Texas at Austin. He was escorted by a military policeman, who would stand behind him at attention in the classroom.

Then he went back to Germany (Marburg; I've been there!), discovered Mises and became a great economist.

Long lost friends and relatives post a comment here please.

Jonny, Jez, Gerald, Ellie, Cozzie, Tim, Tom, Willy, Pat F., Scott or any other old Superior buddies, or, goddamnit! Randall Sivertson, Carl Fish or any old UMD buddies... I want to f___in' hear from you!

I'm an INTP. That means that I can spend long periods of time focussing on things other than my friends, but it doesn't mean that I don't love them. Indeed, it means that I love them intensely, but have no idea how to express it. Often, I'm able to have fairly intimite relationships with people who can help me learn about whatever subject(s) I'm focussed on.

The people named here are loved intensely by me, personally, whom I have not heard from in too many years.

I suppose it's possible that you don't know who's asking. I'm Al Erkkila, or Alan Erkkila. My wife is Laurie. When she married me her name was Molinaro, but her maiden name was Wovcha. So here's where Google searches of Laurie Molinaro and Laurie Wovcha should end up.

And for all you Nazi bastards, that means that my wife and kids have Jewish blood, and I swear eternal enmity to you.

Update 5/25/2011: Whoa! Wonder how many beers I'd had when I wrote this?

Kid pix

Next door.

Government Too Big AND Taxes Too High

Both are problems. Feel free to publish your own analysis under that title or any variation thereof. Just link me.

Hell, you can rip me off completely on that one, but tell me where I can read it, so I can learn from it.

What I really want to see is a study of the tax burden on various "classes" before the American Revolution and after, in the various states under the Articles of Confederation not ignoring the smart or stupid monetary policies of each, and before the ratification of the Constitution, immediately after and five and ten years after. Once again, not ignoring smart and/or stupid monetary policies. And including government spending levels.

I said somewhere (speak up if you know where) that [oh, I'll quit being coy and go over to Grandpa John's and see what the H it was that I said] Capitalism is God's way. Of course, I mean pure Capitalism, not any sort of Government-assisted business. That ain't Capitalism, that's Fascism. As is hindering some business in favor of others.

I want a government that neither favors nor hinders any particular business.

Hey! Dave Thompson's got Forrest Wilkinson on!

Ringer! What a character!

He slips in two lines I think ya'll'll appreciate in his article "Salting the Record." [In particular, I mean. But no hillbillyisms: that's just me being silly.]

"You may as well have trusted Kofi Annan to hold your wallet for you while you went for a jog."

You'll have to read the article for the context of that one, and it's interesting that the context actually camouflages this one,

"I first heard this term from an attorney who was explaining to me how important it is to document your dealings in great detail. He pointed out that the Clintons are a perfect example of people who have mastered this art. He opined that their conscientious salting of the record is the primary reason why they aren’t salted away in a federal prison somewhere."

Vickie Oddino, who looks like someone I know,

has an article in The Atlasphere comparing The Fountainhead to Amadeus. [If you want to compare apples to apples, The Fountainhead is a movie too.]

I wonder about the fate of the generation of children brought up in a world where the contrast between the superior and the average, the mediocre if you will, is deliberately suppressed. A world with no valedictorians for fear of hurting the feelings of those who did not earn the highest grades. A world where no one keeps score and where all baseball players on all teams receive trophies. A world of social promotion in education to save a student from the embarrassment of being held back.

What does this teach our children about the best and the brightest? Only that it is the presence of the best that makes us feel badly about ourselves. And the only way to feel better is to keep them suppressed.

Excellent! You should read it.

But it pricks at my conscience a bit.

There was a guy in my high school who was stronger than I was. I benched 320, he benched 330. Not only that, he was three inches taller, stunningly good-looking, affable, built like a bodybuilder and lazy as the day is long.

I think, though, that what bothered me most was that all he did was keep just barely ahead of me. "330? Is that enough for you? The school record's 385! Come on!"

At our twenty year reunion, he looked like he could bench 530. Still single and virile.

What's he doing with his life? He didn't say. He didn't say anything important. I don't think he can.

Or, maybe it's classified.

Well, bleep! Somebody brought up exercise.

As to my beating 3-4 miles of running per day, I can't say that I have. I ran seven again Saturday, be darned if I remember whether I ran or not Sunday, did three Monday in 27 minutes, two yesterday and five today. I feel great today, so I'll probably run another slow two tomorrow and we'll see what I'm up to Friday morning. The program calls for seven Saturday. Sounds easy, but we'll see. (It called for six last week, but I look my seven mile route better than what I could come up with for six.)

I've been feeling the need to write all that down before I forget what I'm up to. "You" asked for it.

As to my politics, I've had to give up a couple things in order to be a whole-hearted supporter of Ron Paul. Temperamentally, I'm an open-borders guy. I've liked all the Mexicans I've met, whether they were here legally or illegally, but I see the Constitutionally consistent position in shutting the borders down. Particularly in time of danger.

I was rather astounded at the controversy that has arisen over it. I've been more astonished that it hasn't happened. Nationalizing airline security, and the attendant politicization of the screening process, has been quite a silly step as a replacement for that. (I'd rather like to take a plane on my trips south to see my mother, but I'm boycotting the airlines until they stop this foolishness.)

We've supposedly got 12 million illegals in this country, and, near as I can tell, about 14 of them cause problems. I don't consider the existence of a black market a problem by itself. I consider murder, robbery, rape and destruction of property to be problems, but they only go hand-in-hand with illegal immigration and markets because those laws are silly and having silly laws breeds contempt for all laws, wise or silly.

The other thing I'm willing to give up in order to support Ron Paul is a strong, active military presence outside our borders. As long as we continue to strengthen our intelligence gathering capabilities. We were caught with our pants down on 9-11. We need, to expand on that homely simile, to have the outhouse well-armored and armed, and we need to be able to see who's sneaking up on it.

I've always been perfectly willing to give up a bullying diplomatic stance. Trade should be free, but Free Trade is too often confused with coerced trade. All the trades between the US and other nations is between our individuals and companies and their counterparts in those nations, not between our government and their government.

Of course, if one of our companies wanted to trade with a government, I wouldn't stop them. Unless they wanted to trade a secret weapon to a foreign government. But, then that would be contractual matter with our military. "If you want our protection here, you don't give our enemies equal or better weapons than you provide your protectors." I wish that could go without saying, but you can still read arguments against Free Trade that seem to consider that thought a major trump card against it. To my mind, it's the only thing that comes close to an exception, and, at that, it's only a small part of foreign trade.

Here I thought I was just going to post a couple sentences about each of these items. I went and summarized the major points of my political views. As a believer in medium-short blog posts, I have to cut myself off now.

Hey, I got the bourgeois poetry thing

goin' on over here.

I need help.

I should capitalize that: Bourgeois Poetry Thing - "thing" being Icelandic for "congress." And don't forget that Congress is a pun.

The last scary book I read

was Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, about the Ebola virus.

I just got another one the other day and I'm reading it now. America Alone, by Mark Steyn. This paragraph from page 3 is a good summation of the story so far:

In the fourteenth century, the Black Death wiped out a third of the Continent's population; in the twenty-first, a larger proportion will disappear--in effect, by choice. We are living through a rare moment: the self-extinction of the civilization which, for good or ill, shaped the age we live in. One can cite examples of remote backward tribes who expire upon contact with the modern world, but for the modern world to expire in favor of the backward tribes is a turn of events future anthropologists will ponder, as we do the fall of Rome.

Perhaps I should also cite the passage in which Steyn distinguishes his own doomsaying from that of Al Gore, etc:

For Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich and Co., whatever the problem, the solution is always the same. Whether it's global cooling, global warming, or overpopulation, we need bigger government, more regulation, higher taxes, and a massive transfer of power from the citizen to some unelected self-perpetuating crisis lobby. Not only does this not solve the problem, it is, in fact, a symptom of the real problem: the torpor of the West derives in part from the annexation by government of most of the core functions of adulthood.... When the foreign policy panjandrums talk about our enemies, they distinguish between "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea and "non-state actor" like al Qaeda and Hezbollah. But those distinctions apply on the home front too. Big governments are "rogue state," out of control and lacking the wit and agility to see off the threats to our freedom. Citizens willing to be "non-state actors" are just as important and, as we saw on Flight 93, a decisive part of our defense, nimbler and more efficient than the federal behemoth. The free world's citizenry could use more non-state actors.

So this is a doomsday book with a twist: an apocalyptic scenario that can best be avoided not by more government by by less--by government returning to the citizenry the primal responsibilities it's taken from them in the modern era.

Steyn speaks my language.

On the other hand, I'm afraid he looks, at this early stage of the book, to be pushing for a big American presence abroad.

I'm willing to see if the "Surge" in Iraq works, but by "works" I mean, allows us to leave Iraq in the hands of the Iraqis, with no worse problems than we had with gangsters in Chicago during Prohibition.

Some interesting thoughts on prohibition here, btw.

And, as long as we're by the way, I bought John Stossel's Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity at the same time. It should scare me just as much, but I'm pretty inured to the picture he's painting. Actually, Stossel's main thesis is that we're too afraid of the pictures we get from The Media, so it's the antithesis of a "doomsday book."

Reading the two simultaneously will probably destroy me. If The Media report a nuclear explosion in Minneapolis in the next few days, don't suspect al Qaeda. They're too busy basking in the glorious demographic news from Steyn.

Laugh of the day:

You may choose to spend the rest of your life feeling under-appreciated and under-compensated, just as so many do. That won't get you what you want - but you will have the feeling that you're getting screwed to warm you up at night.

-- Michael Masterson, The Real Reason Your CEO Makes More Than You Do. [You can find it either on the front page there, or in the archives after today.]

This guy's got a helluva good post

on Ron Paul. Here's a taste:

Seriously, in the last Republican debate a large segment was devoted to evolution – they actually debated their views on evolution as if it mattered. When it wasn't that, there was the question of gays in the military, why the terrorists will win if Republicans aren't elected and, of course, abortion. It's so painful to listen to, it makes it obvious why the Republican Party endorses torture – they wouldn't be able to give speeches otherwise.

I'm not sure what Paul has said about most of these things, but as for abortion, he's against it.

Here are my guesses [I'll just go ahead and project my own views, what the hell. That's what everyone else does in favor of their favorite party hack. Maybe I'll do some research on his views of these issues someday:
Evolution? I wasn't there when God created the world, so I don't know how He did it.
Gays in the military? Don't bug people with your sexuality and there won't be a problem. Don't ask, don't tell works for me, Al, and it ought to apply to straights too. [Paul probably takes the issue of sexuality and state the other way, actually, but I don't know.]
Dems and Repubs on the War on Terrorists? Don't let 'em kid ya, it's a horse apiece. Would the Dems even have attacked the Taliban? If they'd followed Clinton's example, they would have. And, given the same, incompetent intelligence President Bush got, they'd have probably attacked Iraq too. The libertarian prescription for governments is kill the guilty (well, depending on the crime...), leave the innocent alone. Dems and Repubs think they're hamstrung by the Constitution, but what we're really hamstrung by is about a 100 years of misinterpretation of the Constitution.

I'm actually very happy with Bush on one score: he's reinvigorated our intelligence gathering ability. Spies are absolutely essential to a free nation.
We covered abortion, that leaves torture: the Constitution covers that.

Mainstream politicians and career bureaucrats have been moving this country in the wrong direction since the dawn of the Progressive Era (and there were some awful mistakes before that, too). I do give Reagan credit for beginning to turn the ship of state back on course, and the Gingrich revolution for continuing the course correction, but we're not there yet.

Here's a funny line:

Granted, our burdensome tax system and heavily regulated economy does not make it easy on wage earners. But, that’s no excuse to steal your neighbor’s bike or run a pyramid scheme.

It's from an Atlasphere article by Allison Taylor about Bill Whittle's Ejectia. You need to have a look at that.

First I've heard of it, but it sounds PD cool.

Off the subject, the younger girl was claiming to be cool today, but her explanation was toddler gibberish, so I can't verify whether she was being cool or not.

I've gotten terribly lazy about Trackbacks.

Are they for your benefit, or mine. Seems like mine mostly, and yours a little, so I have trouble getting worked up over them.

It might be because the HaloScan process I use is such a pain in the rear.

You know, Liberty Dog's over there postin' up a storm

at Canis Libertas.

Apparently, the first Congressman I ever voted for, Dave Obey, is the new sheriff in town.

Atheist!! A-t-h-e-i-s-t!

A as in "not";
the-from theos: God;
-ist as in "believer."

Theist as in "believer in God."

It's not a GDSOB superlative!

AAAaaaggghhh!!!

I get so tired of reading "athiest" all over everywhere.

It should be too obvious for words that decisions

about who is to come into the United States and live among Americans should be made in the United States by Americans. Tom Sowell.

Unfortunately, It does need explaining.

Jeez, dude!

I'm pretty sure the guy who said, "Violence begets more violence, not the other way around" is not one of ours.

You know... I support the Marijuana Policy Project and your First Amendment right* to speak, but... When you combine the two, you make me want to exercise my Ninth Amendment right* to ignore you.

*Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights are to be construed as "granting" rights, either to the people or the states. These documents simply enumerate powers delegated to the Federal Government by the people and describe some of the limitations of the uses of those powers.

Ron Paul on Patriotism

The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George. I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist oppressive state power. The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility, and out of self interest -- for himself, his family, and the future of his country -- to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state.

Resistance need not be violent, but the civil disobedience that might be required involves confrontation with the state and invites possible imprisonment.

Peaceful non-violent revolutions against tyranny have been every bit as successful as those involving military confrontation. Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. achieved great political successes by practicing non-violence, yet they themselves suffered physically at the hands of the state.

But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism.

There's more, and he's quite blunt. You'll enjoy it.

Oh, I gotta put this in here:

Randolph Bourne said that “war is the health of the state.” With war, he argued, the state thrives. Those who believe in the powerful state see war as an opportunity. Those who mistrust the people and the market for solving problems have no trouble promoting a “war psychology” to justify the expansive role of the state.

This includes the role the federal government plays in our personal lives as well as in all our economic transactions. And certainly the neo-conservative belief that we have a moral obligation to spread American values worldwide, through force, justifies the conditions of war in order to rally support at home for the heavy hand of government. It is through this policy, it should surprise no one, that our liberties are undermined, the economy becomes overextended, and our involvement worldwide becomes prohibitive.

Out of fear of being labeled unpatriotic, most citizens become compliant and accept the argument that some loss of liberty is required to fight the war in order to remain safe. This is a bad trade-off in my estimation, especially when done in the name of patriotism.

Loyalty to the state and to autocratic leaders is substituted for true patriotism—that is, a willingness to challenge the state and defend the country, the people, and the culture. The more difficult the times, the stronger the admonition becomes that the leaders be not criticized.

You know how much I love Tuktoyaktuk

It seems all hell has broken out up there. The Ibyuk Pingo is in danger!

I got that link from Taranto today.

I keep forgetting that I planned to

put polished stuff here and unpolished stuff - as well as vignettes from my bourgeois life, including running, family and whatever - over at Bourgeois Philistines.

Oh, well, whatever. If you don't care, I don't.

I believe I'll work for Ron Paul this year.

Here's his take on Immigration Reform. That's from the Ron Paul Library, which has his speeches and press releases - I think, from his whole 30 years as a Republican Congressman for Texas.

RonPaul2008 is his campaign website.

There are videos of him on YouTube, a MySpace site, a Yahoo group and a MeetUp group.

Corey Stern, who calls himself an Independent Libertarian [I think I'll start calling myself a Revolutionary Liberal (c. 2007 - go ahead and use it, but share any income you derive from it with me. We'll let the lawyers hash out the percentage.;)], is quoted extensively in an article describing a MeetUp event Stern organized, and that I didn't get to.

I did get to the MeetUp organizational meeting though. A lot more fun and interesting than I expected. We had Constitution Party guys, Buchanan guys, some Democrat defectors and a bunch of libertarians, small and large L.

I think I understand the lefties' double standard.

I just sent this message to Dave Thompson on AM1500[.com].

I don't like it, or agree with it, but I see what they're up to.

They don't have any standards for themselves, but some of them know that we do have standards for ourselves. They think it's the funnest game in the world to get us to oust our heroes, past and present, by pointing out their peccadillos. Or, since "peccadillos" means "little sins," their "peccas." [You might not want to read that on the air. I've led you astray before.]

For example, they can get us to oust Thomas Jefferson as a hero, but they get to keep him, because they worship peccadillos as those things that bring geniuses down to their own level. Or so they like to think.

Of course, EVEN IF Thomas Jefferson was a sinner, it is no proof of the truth or falsity of his writings. To say so is to commit the ad hominem fallacy, better known these days as a personal attack.

Which is much beloved of Marxists, especially when they use the "follow the money" argument. One counter to that argument, as the Public Choice economists have shown, is to "follow the power."

There are, of course, other counters to Marxist arguments. Von Mises presents the best ones.

I wonder if C. Bradley Thompson

was considering what a strong case he was making for a Democrat in the Whitehouse and a Republican Congress when he wrote The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism.

I just started reading it. I'm sure he didn't miss it.

Don't miss Walter Williams and John Stossel

at Townhall.com today. Williams: Compassion Versus Realityand Stossel's Why Is Profit a Dirty Word?.

One more thing.

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

[That's where you'll find this when they post it.]

Compulsory National Service Is Anti-American
June 4, 2007

Irvine, CA--There has been a resurgence in calls for compulsory universal national service, most recently by former defense secretary Melvin R. Laird, who declared, "Young Americans . . . need to serve their country."

But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "Compulsory national service is anti-American.

"According to the advocates of compulsory service, young people take America's freedom for granted, being more concerned with selfishly pursuing an education and a fulfilling career than serving their country. To remedy that, they propose forcing young people to spend a few years working in the Peace Corps, nursing homes, or soup kitchens. This, supposedly, will make them appreciate freedom. But if the government can order a young person to stop pursuing the career he passionately loves in order to plant trees or clean bed pans, there is no freedom left for him to appreciate.

"America's distinctive virtue is that it was the first nation to declare that each individual is an end in himself, that he possesses an inalienable right to pursue his own happiness, and that the government's only function is to safeguard his freedom. Compulsory national service turns young people into temporary slaves in order to inculcate in their minds the opposite premise: that they have a duty to selflessly serve society. To justify such a policy on the grounds of promoting appreciation for freedom is perverse. To call it patriotic is obscene.

"Compulsory national service is a threat to freedom. It should be condemned for the anti-American policy that it is."

### ### ###

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

I thought this Student of Objectivism had something to say on this issue. He didn't, but he's not short of things to say.

Hey!

Read Marginal Utility Is Not Rocket Science!

There's your economics for today.

You want to learn about running? Check out Training for your Marathon, by - and/or edited by - Jay Hendrickson. It's a 100-some page .doc ebook that the guy ought to be selling for money. His key point is: optimal stress + optimal rest = optimal progress.

The rest of the book is about what "optimal" means.

I love the quote he starts his "philosophy" article with:

"Take a primitive organism, any weak, pitiful organism. Say a freshman. Make it lift or jump or run. Let it rest. What happens? A little miracle. It gets a little better. It gets a little stronger or faster or more enduring. That's all training is. Stress. Recover. Improve. You'd think any damn fool could do it, even...

But you don't. You work too hard and rest too little and get hurt." - Bill Bowerman

[Emphasis Hendrickson's, I believe.]
There's a Runbayou blog as well. Though he hasn't said much since his kid won the 2007 UIL Division 1A Texas High School Tennis Championship in early May. Before that he writes about the Boston Marathon.

I know a guy who ran Boston in 3:45. But I haven't asked him about it. I've only talked to him once. That doesn't hardly constitute a relationship in my book.

You have to run a 3:30 to even qualify to enter Boston, but if you read Hendrickson's description of the race conditions you can see why a good runner (great runner from my viewpoint) would have trouble getting there there on that day.

The subtitle of H's book is "Information for the Obsessed Athlete." Does it seem like I'm getting there?

Oh, that crunchy knee?

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

My new Runner's World magazine has a stretching exercise that seems to have made that go away. Instead of stretching your quads by pulling your heel to your butt, just stand with your hands on your thighs, use one hand to help brace yourself bend your knees and lean forward slightly and raise one heel behind you as high as you think you should. Hold for a second or two, then do the other leg. 10 times/leg.

I also learned a foot stretch a while back that has significantly reduced a budding case of plantar fasciitis: sit down and cross one leg over the other knee, grab your toes with the hand of the same side and pull them back. Don't overstrain, but make sure you feel the stretch. 20-30 seconds each side, three times a day.

I bring these up because the improvements from each have been almost instantaneous.

Now for some sleep.

Kevin Hogan's in a rotten mood this week.

He's talking about the stupidity of boycotting Big Oil in the first article here (in the upper right corner) and, in the article about Will Power, he says

Want to give your kids powerful suggestions to succeed in life?

Never teach your kid get to "get a job."
Teach your kid to PRODUCE.
To CREATE VALUE.
To make people happy.
To decide what they truly want and get them to commit to a Plan and DO IT.

I'll tell you this: I don't really know what it takes for me to succeed, but I know that the most powerful lessons I learned growing up haven't done it for me yet. These things he's saying weren't part of my catechism.

Well, I ran the Manitou 15K in White Bear Lake yesterday.

That's 9.3 Miles, for those of you who don't like metric conversions.
I finished in 1:28:35. One minute 25 seconds better than my goal. 9:31/mile.

Not bad. I mean, it's good for me, but I came in 19th out of 20 in my division - 108th out of 130 finishers (and 7 missing - there was speculation that they stopped at one of the dozens of garage sales that were starting up as we slower people went by).

Oh, here are the results. Let me find mine.... Here:

bib number: 302
age: 43
gender: M
location: Brookly Center, MN
overall place: 102 out of 134
division place: 19 out of 20
gender place: 70 out of 79
time: 1:28:36
pace: 9:31

I suppose you noticed that I was I little off. And, apparently we located 4 out of the seven missing.

Every time I checked my split-time I was pretty much on that 9:31 mark. I was trying to go faster ["...but my legs just wouldn't go any faster!" as J. Beebe would say.] No, I wanted to run between 10 and 8 minute miles, and I did. Now I need to push that closer to 8.

Of course, today I have a crunchy knee, but you take the good with the bad.

I gotta get ready to go here.

What the H does "serrefine" mean?

That's the word that Evan O'Dorney spelled to win the National Spelling Bee.

I had to wash caked on playdirt from the younger girl, so I missed the end of it, but those words are unbelievable. I suppose they have to find words that will knock those kids out, man, but I don't know...

Here I go, looking it up...

serre·fine (sâr-fn, sr-)
n.
A small spring forceps used for approximating the edges of a wound, or for temporarily closing an artery during surgery.

OK, so there's actually a semi-common use for that word.

The girl was knocked out by cyanophycean. Wouldn't you be? When I write my dictionary, fancy words for pond-scum will be specifically excluded.

Cyanophycean is apparently an adjective derived from

Noun 1. Cyanophyceae - photosynthetic bacteria found in fresh and salt water, having chlorophyll a and phycobilins; once thought to be algae: blue-green algae

I wonder how long ago they found out that it was bacteria and not algae. They never give any history in dictionaries.