Quick Roundup 487

The Obamicon

Peggy Noonan makes some interesting points Barack Obama should heed about why an image can become shorthand for a Presidency:

In a presidency, a picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something people already think. When Gerald Ford was spoofed for being physically clumsy, it took off. The picture of Ford losing his footing and tumbling as he came down the steps of Air Force One became a symbol. There was a reason, and it wasn't that he was physically clumsy. He was not only coordinated but graceful. He'd been a football star at the University of Michigan and was offered contracts by the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.

But the picture took off because it expressed the growing public view that Ford's policies were bumbling and stumbling. The picture was iconic of a growing political perception.

The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren't playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying "Tough Talks Yield Big Progress" or "Obama Shows Muscle in China," the bowing pictures might be understood this way: "He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation's interests."

But that's not how the pictures were received or will be remembered.

I have to say that that picture is what comes to mind now when I think of Barack Obama, along with the fact that he's acting like a servant to everyone except the public whose servant he actually is.

But did he finally get one right?

Via Glenn Reynolds, I was thrilled to learn that Honduras has prevailed in its fight for freedom:

[L]eftist claims that Honduras could not hold fair elections flew in the face of the facts. First, the candidates were chosen in November 2008 primaries with observers from the OAS, which judged the process to be "transparent and participative." Second, all the presidential candidates--save one from a small party on the extreme left--wanted the elections to go forward. Third, though Mr. Insulza insisted on calling the removal of Mr. Zelaya a "military coup," the military had never taken charge of the government. And finally, the independent electoral tribunal, chosen by congress before Mr. Zelaya was removed, was continuing with the steps required to fulfill its constitutional mandate to conduct the vote. In the aftermath of the elections Mr. Insulza, who insisted that the group would not recognize the results, presides over a discredited OAS.

At least the Obama administration figured out, after four months, that it had blundered. It deserves credit for realizing that elections were the best way forward, and for promising to recognize the outcome despite enormous pressure from Brazil and Venezuela. President Obama came to office intent on a foreign policy of multilateralism. Perhaps this experience will teach him that freedom does indeed have enemies.

Here's hoping that Mary O'Grady isn't being too generous with Barack Obama--which is about as close to praying as you're ever going to see me get!

Looks Like Fudge

ClimateGate evolves by the minute. Glenn Reynolds discusses apparently rigged climate models to go along with the apparently cooked data. The below is a from a longer quote from the CBS News web site:

As the leaked messages, and especially the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, found their way around technical circles, two things happened: first, programmers unaffiliated with East Anglia started taking a close look at the quality of the CRU's code, and second, they began to feel sympathetic for anyone who had to spend three years (including working weekends) trying to make sense of code that appeared to be undocumented and buggy, while representing the core of CRU's climate model.

Sadly, I expect that Reynolds' prognostication about the possible outcome of the Copenhagen conference is a rosy, best-case scenario, even were all of this to be conclusively proven.

Call Me Scrooge

I found this article (via GeekPress) about the psychology behind the decision to buy extended warranties very interesting.

It's been shown experimentally that people--counterintuitively--become more risk averse the better a mood they're in. The reason appears to be that compared to a neutral mood, a good mood makes contemplating a potential loss feel worse. Basically, if you're in a good mood, you have more to lose: Contemplating a financial loss makes you think not only of the loss itself, but also of the loss of the good mood.

Also going into the equation are bad estimates of risk.

I pretty much hew to the following policy: "The only time to insure something is when replacing it would represent a real financial hit that you can’t afford to take."

-- CAV

The Odd Early Morning

Routines serve a purpose similar to abstractions: They allow us to focus on what is important and set aside what is not important. Take the abstraction, cat: When I arrive at the vet with my cat and take her out of the cage, it isn't as if the two of us are observing a cat for the first time in total amazement, dumbstruck by how well-suited she is for hunting small animals or gushing about what a cute ball of fur she is. We get down to to the business of me describing what ails her and him thinking about how to help. (Before we go further, the cat's actually fine.)

The fact that Miss Maple is a cat is crucial at every step of the way in the above vignette, from me even deciding to go to the vet to his considering what she needs. Her ability to hunt mice and melt hearts are still there, but we don't focus on them. In some respects, one could just plug any sick cat into the situation, and the cat would fare quite well.

That's how powerful abstractions are -- and how limited. It would be extremely odd of me to respond to my cat's ill health by taking a different ill cat -- and odder still, a healthy one -- to the vet. And it would be weird to drop off Miss Maple and return with a healthy (but different) cat. And yet, I'd bet dollars to dough nuts (or dough nuts to dollars?) that one could find an academic somewhere who would argue in all seriousness that either of the above hypothetical trips to the vet fulfilled its "essential" purpose. In truth, each would be an amazing comedy of errors because the fact that the cat in question is a particular cat, my cat, is no less important. Why would I even bother taking a sick cat anywhere if it did not have some particular appeal to me?

We could go on about the importance of properly forming the concept "cat," too, but that amount of detail is beside my point, which is simply that the power of abstractions lies precisely in their relationship to reality. (This includes forming them correctly.) There is no way to function without them, but one can't go through life playing games with abstractions and only with abstractions. Abstractions have to be checked against reality all the time for epistemological and ethical reasons because we reason in order to live.

And so it is with routines, which is what got me started here. I'm up earlier than usual for some errands this morning, and I caught myself noticing and enjoying lots of things almost as if I had awakened to find myself in a new and exciting world. This is frequently the case when I have to wake up earlier than usual and not follow my normal routine. I'll notice the sunlight casting shadows through the plants in my window sill. I'll go to a cafe and enjoy the smell of the coffee and pastries. One time, I noticed what a beautiful day it was and brought a camera along.

Most of the kinds of things I typically find myself enjoying when I have to step outside my routine are not essential to the purpose that dragged me out of bed in the first place, and often, I am in too much of a hurry to linger over them for long, but they are values and I always enjoy noticing them. But before I plunge in to this busy morning of random beauty, I want to see what I can learn from the fact that it will be such a morning.

Why does this happen and can I make it happen more often?

Routines are skeletons of time, ways to make sure we do what is important out of habit, rather than having to remember them afresh every time. In my case, I am definitely not a "morning person," and having a routine in the morning allows me further to save mental effort for more important things than making coffee or showering. This works very well for me, but at a price: I don't notice lots of the kinds of things that make life worthwhile. On mornings like this, I have to pay more attention to everything than usual, and one incidental reward is that I notice lots of neat things.

It is in this way that a routine resembles an abstraction, and a life composed only of routines would be as ridiculous and tragic as one spent with one's head in a cloud of floating abstractions. With abstractions, one must keep in mind the concretes. That I think I see how to do fairly well. For example, when I think of "cat," I think of Miss Maple or Jerome or a black-and-white cat I had as a kid. But with a routine, the analogy breaks down. It's not quite so easy to see how to go back and forth between a routine and the kind of attention to details I get on mornings like this.

As my first stab: It's not really possible to "plan to be surprised," but one can make a point to avoid the routine entirely from time to time. Obviously, full-blown vacations achieve this purpose. But taking frequent vacations is hardly a feasible option. Perhaps some sort of "mini-vacation" is the way to go. I'm thinking in terms of putting together a list of minor things I'd like to do or places I'd like to see -- Boston is full of those -- and perhaps promising myself to do one of them each month on a morning, since this is when I seem to get the most enjoyment out of doing strange things. It might even be worthwhile -- although I'm not sure and might have to tinker -- not to give myself a whole lot of time to do whatever I do since heightened attention seems to be what I'm going for.

I'll have to think more on this and I do have to run, but it's an interesting idea if I do say so myself.

Enjoy your day, too!

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 486

Happy Thanksgiving!

In years past, I have usually been on the road to visit relatives on Thanksgiving, but my wife, a medical resident, is on call. So this year, we're in town visiting with another couple we know instead. But I did write today's post yesterday afternoon so I can do some cooking and pick up a car for the day.

In any event, let me take the occasion to thank you for making my blog a part of your rounds on the web.

An Invented People? An Irrelevant Premise.

The NewYork Times notes that quite a few people are up in arms about a new book's contention that there really is no such thing as the Jewish people.

Professor Sand, a scholar of modern France, not Jewish history, candidly states his aim is to undercut the Jews' claims to the land of Israel by demonstrating that they do not constitute "a people," with a shared racial or biological past. The book has been extravagantly denounced and praised, often on the basis of whether or not the reader agrees with his politics.

It's too bad that many Israelis rely on the notion of an ancestral homeland to justify their nation's existence. Professor Sand's charge would be easier for everyone to see as the farce that it is were more Israelis on the same page as Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute:

Only Israel has a moral right to establish a government in that area - on the grounds, not of some ethnic or religious heritage, but of a secular, rational principle. Only a state based on political and economic freedom has moral legitimacy. Contrary to what the Palestinians are seeking, there can be no "right" to establish a dictatorship.

Sand's insult is a peculiar one: It can sting only insofar as one accepts its underlying collectivism as legitimate.

Blog Carnivals

If I recall correctly, Rational Jenn is hosting this week's Objectivist Roundup and Martin Lindeskog is hosting his first "Good Thing in Life" carnival today.

Rapid Repair

My brother, who restores old Volkswagens as a hobby, forwarded me the link to the below YouTube video.

I thought this remark quite apt: "Yikes... tell ya what, I'll take the two minutes and do it with the motor OFF."

ClimateGate

As I always say, "Real scientists don't have pet theories." This sounds like it needs investigating. There's more at the Wall Street Journal, too.

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 5:00 A.M. on November 26, 2009.

Updates

Today: Fixed an incorrect link (HT: Paul Hsieh).

The Dental Chair Confession

I've logged many an hour in the dental chair lately, but the time that stood out the most to me -- thanks to some pretty good drugs -- was a mostly pleasant conversation I was having recently with a hygienist who was cleaning my teeth.

Young and married, and with a couple of young kids, she was around the same stage in life as my wife and I. The conversation was very natural and enjoyable, moving smoothly from my account of the accident that screwed up my otherwise excellent teeth to other things, like what our spouses did for a living. I was impressed by how knowledgeable and enthusiastic about her work she was: She was obviously intelligent and seemed focused on filling her life with rational values. In short, she struck me as someone I could probably be friends with if I knew her better.

And then she started talking about the war. While I was in her chair, getting my recently-traumatized, but healing mouth cleaned. While I couldn't really speak my mind at any length. At a time that I would not rationally want to do so if it turned out that I disagreed with her on the subject and she was heavily invested in it. I've seen otherwise reasonable-seeming people turn into banshees about this topic before, and I didn't want to take any chances. I was mildly alarmed for a second or two.

Fortunately, since my political views look liberal to conservatives and conservative to liberals, I found myself on pretty familiar ground with this issue: I am neither a pacifist nor a fan of the extension of our welfare state into the Middle East that Bush passed off as a "war" in his term. The usual opportunity at intellectual activism this topic represented was instead, under the circumstances, an opportunity to stall and survive with an intact mouth, if I had to.

As it turned out, neither of us pushed too far, and it was to the extent that I am not terribly sure what her views on the war actually are, beyond, "We ought to be done by now." The conversation did not, as I thought it could at first, turn into a monologue on her part about how war is always evil no matter what. I was lucky to be dealing with a fundamentally decent person. I suspect that, probably, she was leftish, saw her opinion as what any decent person would think, and, as such, a fine topic for pleasant, casual conversation.

But the situation I was in was interesting in another respect, and it ties in to a story I remember hearing about some time ago. A guy was meeting a potential employer. He was unctuous with the possible new boss and friendly with his other potential new colleagues -- but rude to the waiter at lunch. He did not get the job because the boss saw how he treated the waiter, a person in a position of relative weakness, as opposed to how he treated everyone else, people in a position of strength who could do something for him. The boss rightly concluded, basically, that this potential employee was not a trader, and that he saw everything in terms of a zero-sum power struggle, and that he might not be someone he could count on when the chips were down.

What does that have to do with my situation and what did I learn here? I was puzzled by the hygienist bringing up the war until I recalled the above story and remembered that she did not take advantage of my situation to "enlighten" me or to extract a professed agreement with her views. I thus saw more evidence that she is probably a good person. I also saw evidence that my expectations about dealing with more leftish people may be skewed by my not having lived in a "Blue State" (and interacted with the natives very much) until now.

Context is everything in evaluating new knowledge. Twenty years ago, my reaction to the hygienist might have been far different, and much more unpleasant for both of us because I probably would have not fully considered the circumstances we were in and how each of us acted. (And I would have learned less from the encounter.) Specifically, at the time, I held in check my initial, "How rude of her to bring up the war out of the blue with a total stranger!" (And later, I remembered other facts about the conversation that were more relevant than they seemed at the time.) I think it's a fair guess on my part that to her mind, she was hardly being rude at all.

But what if I'd had the Anti-War Harpy from Hell instead? I might have had to go along with whatever she said just to protect my own health, but what would such "agreement" have told her? Nothing. But her lecture would have told me to find another dentist post haste. In that situation, I was the "waiter" and she was the job candidate.

Judging people is a very, very difficult and subtle art. To think you've got it down cold is only to fool yourself.

-- CAV

"No State" Tuition for All

Writing for the Boston Globe, conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby makes what passes today as a strong argument against the brain-dead anti-immigration faction of the conservative movement:

A couple from Brazil, seeking a better life for themselves and their 2-month-old daughter, enter the United States unlawfully. They settle in Massachusetts, where 18 years later the girl graduates from a public high school, as assimilated and acculturated an American as her classmates in every respect - except that they are US citizens, and she, by virtue of a decision made when she was a baby, is not. Her classmates can attend the University of Massachusetts, paying $9,704 a year in tuition, the price tag for Massachusetts residents. She can attend only if she pays the out-of-state rate of $22,157; if that's more than she can afford, she's out of luck.

How is that a rational public policy? How is Massachusetts improved by making it impossible for an accomplished high-school graduate, a lifelong resident of the state, to gain a university degree? Who benefits when her education - along with the higher earning potential it would lead to - is cut short? She doesn't. You don't. Massachusetts taxpayers certainly don't. [links dropped, other minor format edits]

Jacoby notes that current Governor Deval Patrick's recent proposal to allow illegal immigrants residing in Massachusetts to pay in-state college tuition is driving conservative voters into the arms of Charlie "If you're illegally here, you're illegally here." Barker. He correctly notes that this xenophobia contradicts the idea that "what matters most about any of us ... is personal character and achievement."

Right he is, but his level of analysis is wrong, and that causes him not to raise the question he should. What, exactly should "improving" Massachusetts entail in the context of the proper function of the government? Put another way, since a proper government protects individual rights, "How is Massachusetts improved by forcing anyone to pay for anything that anybody else needs?"

I agree with Jacoby that our current immigration laws are largely preventing from coming here, "just the sort of newcomers Americans should embrace," but these aren't the only laws in need of reform. As I have argued before, the real problem is not that immigrants are sucking up social services like education, but that the government is providing these services in the first place rather than private enterprise.

As I put it before in a slightly different context, "I doubt anyone would complain if these [kids] were paying customers of American schools." I would also doubt that anyone would complain, if they needed help to attend, about them being recipients of voluntary charity, winners of academic scholarships, or participants in industrial work-study programs.

That fact that Massachusetts is running schools that it should not, and that those schools charge out-of-state tuition for some students to attend is not "making it impossible" for anyone to receive an education, but it is making it impossible for many people to benefit from the fruits of their own labor. It is probably also harming the economy of Massachusetts in myriad other unseen ways. Finally, Massachusetts, in the proper sense of its being a state founded to protect the rights of individuals, is inarguably placed in great peril by the fact that such systematic violations of our rights are happening at all, and all the more so that such violations are business as usual.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 485

Tip of the Iceberg, Indeed

My first reaction to the headline, "Report: ACORN Mismanaged Grant Money," in the Washington Times, was to wonder how the hell anyone can talk about proper management of stolen property.

And then I read the following quote from Texas Republican Lamar Smith: "The Justice Department IG's report may prove to be just the tip of an iceberg-sized fraud."

You don't say!

I'd feel a lot more confident in Smith's being on the case if he opposed federal funding to charities on principle, but, sadly, he does not.

Physician Slavery Update

All I can add to Paul Hsieh's update is the following excerpt from a famous Winston Churchill speech:

[N]ever give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

There are a few scattered rays of hope yet.

Interest: $2,300 per Year per Man, Woman, and Child

And I'm rounding that payment down after dividing by only 300 million people an unrealistically low projection of the cost of servicing the national debt in 2019.

Three Good Ones

I feel the need to end with a triple dose of humor today.

1. Saturday Night Live has apparently been having a field day with Barack Obama lately. Ms. Underestimated posts a video of a skit that she calls, "probably one of their funniest parodies to date." (HT: David Elmore)

2. The moral provided with the hilarious video below is, "NEVER taunt somebody who can do cartwheels."

Actually, it might also be helpful to save your taunts for a time when your odds of success exceed twenty percent. If you like the song, here's the whole thing, although it's actually about American football.

3. From FMyLife: "Today, my friend called me freaking out because of an online pregnancy test. She was scared because she had no idea that she was pregnant, let alone having a fifteen pound baby. The website is a joke. She goes to an Ivy League school, and I couldn't even get into community college." [link added]

-- CAV

Kings of the Barbie

As a transplanted southerner who is learning to appreciate Boston (but still occasionally finds himself missing his grill), I smiled when I saw Eric S. Raymond describe himself as "a Boston-born northerner" who has "eaten barbecue all over the U.S. and the world" en route to commenting on an interesting article from Australia that forthrightly and manfully admits that Americans are kings of the grill. (But I must say that there is zero disgrace in acknowledging a master.)

Even, and this is gonna hurt, the Americans have it all over us when it comes to cooking with fire, iron and tongs. In fact it's arguable the American barbecue, or rather its plethora of regional variations on barbecue, set the gold standard worldwide for applying heat to meat while out of doors. While the popular image of American cooking, at least as practised by average Americans, involves squeezing a plastic sauce packet over something nasty in a chain restaurant, the truth is their barbecue specialists would put ours to shame. Undying, unutterable shame.

As Raymond notes, American food culture has improved drastically over the last generation, and it's refreshing to see someone overseas get past tired stereotypes and say as much. As I have to fly out the door this morning, I'll toss out a short list of barbecue links (Hah! Get it?) and take very brief note of an interesting comment exchange from Armed and Dangerous.

First, the links:

• Wikipedia, which deserves a post of its own on some "Love of Life Friday," has good articles on barbecue as well as its regional variants in the United States. In the latter article, see specifically how the form varies across Texas. My main quibble with Raymond is that I found his "farther south is better" rule of thumb too one-dimensional, although this could just reflect his personal taste.
• Finding an old post here about celebrating (Life on This) Earth Day by firing up the grill, I also was reminded that the practice made headlines briefly as a measurable component of Houston's local air pollution.
• Oh, and to round things out, another post here on the rites of spring discusses chimney starters, my bottle opener and cork puller of choice, and my favorite book on grilling, which I highly recommend.

Now, the smack-down:

JessicaBoxer: Is it really necessary to eat all that meat? ...

Eric S. Raymond: Well, since you ask, no. But most sex isn't 'necessary', either.

Nice comeback, but he could have gone further, and I'm not even talking about the absurd notion that eating meat is unhealthy.

Man is an integrated being of mind and body, and mere physical survival is not the same thing as living a life proper to man. Pleasurable activities like sex -- including some that are risky or dangerous if performed carelessly or to excess -- are necessary to an enjoyable, properly human, life. I recently found someone make this same basic point very succinctly at Objectivism Online about smoking, of all things. (The first two words also very economically yank the discussion into its proper context: i.e., What is philosophy for?)

Pokarrin: ... I'm a smoker, which I know for a fact does not advance any possible purpose I might choose for my life...

Tito: Oh really? ... [I]f you enjoy the occasional cigarette, and don't mind running the risk of a slightly shorter life because of it (Though the risks of occasional 'casual' smoking are overblown by just about everyone) then by all means smoke. If it adds no value to your life, and you just do it because of some irrational chemical craving, then just who are you trying to fool?

You could make exactly the same point about any number of other hobbies or activities. And with that, having survived anaesthesia and surgery last week, I move on towards the next stage of fixing a nearly life-long mouth problem...

Cheers!

-- CAV

PS: Via email, Martin Lindeskog has informed me that he is soliciting links for a new enjoyment-themed blog carnival.

Updates

Today: (1) Corrected some typos and formatting glitches. (2) Linked to Tito's Blog and ARL entry on happiness. (3) Added PS about new blog carnival.

Quick Roundup 484

Israeli Oath-Fakers

Pursuant to a recent post of mine on the so-called "Oath Keepers," who advocate mutiny by the military and the police as a means of "protecting" the Constitution, it is noteworthy that Israel is already suffering from the consequences of a similar direct assault on rule of law:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced concern on Tuesday over a mutiny by pro-settler soldiers that raised fears of more rebellion in the ranks in any future land-for-peace moves with the Palestinians.

The solution to bad laws and foolish policies is to promote better laws and pro-freedom policies, not eroding rule of law.

Paul Hsieh in RCP

I'm late to this party, but still very glad to see that a good, pro-freedom op-ed on the physician slavery debate was linked by RealClear Politics.

Republican Dark Horses

The good news, such as it is, is that there seem to be multiple viable alternatives to Sarah Palin in the GOP. The bad news is that none is terribly exciting, and David Brooks likes John Thune, the first listed.

He doesn't have radical plans to cut the federal leviathan. He just wants to restrain the growth of government to bring deficits down. He doesn't have ambitions to restructure the tax code. He just wants to lift burdens on small business.

Or: He just wants to have his cake and eat it, too.

Sigh.

Happy Birthday, Motown!

According to a blogger at Mental Floss, Motown Records recently turned fifty. The post has several embedded YouTube videos of its author's favorite Motown classics.

Real gentlemen don't scream, "Bitch!"

Nor do they feel the need to self-apply the label, "gentleman."

This magazine piece and this blog post can be thought of as snaggletoothed, inbred descendants at the end of the line of Whitaker Chambers' non-review of Atlas Shrugged at National Review. Even some of the sympathetic commenters at the blog post could see that these weren't really about Rand or the intellectual movement she started.

The high point of the blog posting comes when Barry Ritholtz easily gets backed into a corner by a commenter who hasn't even read Rand. Ritholtz does all he can do: dare him to call his bluff. "You should definitely read Atlas shrugged [sic] and than make up your own mind." Yes. Please do that, Kimble.

It's getting to where anyone who writes such tripe might as well spare himself some effort by appending a "Kick me!" sign to his posterior at the beginning of the day. (HT: Brad Harper)

Objectivist Roundups

Some time while I was under the knife or loopy from painkillers, Rational Jenn hosted last week's Objectivist Roundup. I believe C. August will host this week's edition.

As an interesting aside, this morning I googled "Polian Godboy" and saw that Rational Jenn had hit the 75,000 site vist mark. Congratulations to her!

Submarining is scary.

Hehhh-yep!

To Serve Man

Insert your favorite altruism-as-cannibalism joke here, tie it in to Barack Obama's desire to control the Census Bureau and his newfound concern with public debt, and then fill in your new census long-form questionnaire here. I scored seven.

Memo to Barack Obama: Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" was a satire. This, my short version, is also a satire. I only mean the take home message, "Eat me!" figuratively.

-- CAV

Why They Trust

Stephen Bourque makes some incisive commentary about a recent change in the government's recommendations on the timing and frequency of breast cancer screening. His post deserves a full read, but one paragraph in particular caught my eye:

It has always amazed me how much trust the general public puts in government recommendations of this sort. The group in this case, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, is characterized as an "independent panel of experts in prevention and private care appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services." But what exactly is this group independent of? The implication is that they are independent of individuals and corporations that have a vested interest in the guidelines. However, what the panel is entirely dependent upon for its existence is the federal government, an institution that has absolutely no incentive to meet consumer demands. The panel is independent of responsibility and accountability. [minor format edits]

I suspect that the amazement may be at least partially rhetorical, but it is worth noting where such blind trust originated and considering its full ramifications. The above paragraph reminded me of the following warning from an essay by Alan Greenspan in his better, younger days:

To paraphrase Gresham's Law: bad "protection" drives out good. The attempt to protect the consumer by force undercuts the protection he gets from incentive. First, it undercuts the value of reputation by placing the reputable company on the same basis as the unknown, the newcomer, or the fly-by-nighter. It declares, in effect, that all are equally suspect... Second it grants an automatic (though, in fact, unachievable) guarantee of safety to the products of any company that complies with its arbitrarily set minimum standards. The value of a reputation rested on the fact that it was necessary for the consumers to exercise judgment in the choice of the goods and services they purchased. ... [bold added] ("The Assault on Integrity" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, pp. 119-120)

In other words, over the past few decades, people have become less and less accustomed to acting as their own "consumer watchdogs" even as the government slowly gobbled up larger and larger swaths of the medical and scientific sectors, slowly making the independent advice of scientists to the government less so. Consider this the informational equivalent of the illusory "access" to medical care the Democrats are promising us.

This affects everyone and even confounds the efforts of those of us who are inclined to distrust the government to establish our own opinions on medical matters. For example, at the site Quack Watch is a list of "Twenty-Five Ways to Spot Quacks and Vitamin Pushers." Reading through the list, I noticed that ten of the items on the list (1, 2, 9, 10, 16, 18, 21, 23, 24, and 25) included reliance on the government in some way: e.g., mentioning government nutritional guidelines, alluding to the role of the government in regulating the practice of medicine, or linking to a government web site.

Of course, since the government funds so much research and "educates" so many people about science, the truth is that every single item on the list is affected in some way by government interference in the economy: Both the information under consideration as well as the ability of an average person to evaluate it have often been undermined from the start.

The immediately possible debacle of a government takeover of the medical sector would be a bad enough pit for America to have to have to climb out of, but the truth is that we need only turn around for a moment to see that we are already in another.

-- CAV

Two Hair-Pullers

Via Glenn Reynolds is a Jennifer Rubin piece that asks the question, "[I]f [Barack Obama's] so smart and well-educated, shouldn't he have come up with something better than the stimulus boondoggle?" She gets frustratingly close to the right answer, but ends up whiffing:

[F]inally, as Ronald Reagan said, "The trouble with our liberal friends isn't that they are ignorant; it is that they know so much that isn't so." In other words, they have a set of views at odds with the way the world operates (meekness will endear us to our enemies, terrorists will be impressed with American legal procedures), the American political scene (the public wanted a lurch to the Left), and basic economic realities (you can load mandates and taxes on employers without impacting employment). These views are a great impediment to a successful presidency.

True enough, but Rubin ends on the following note: "[H]e has time. Maybe with experience, he'll wise up." I'm not so sure about this, because Rubin overlooks the fact that among the ideas one holds are the standards for what constitutes "success."

On the one hand, I applaud Rubin for seeing the importance of ideas in shaping the actions of the President, but on the other, I'm still unsatisfied with the level of analysis. What if Barack Obama's fundamental ideas are telling him that what he's doing is the best way to realize "equality" not only among all Americans, but among all people in the world? No pain, no gain -- and we haven't even gotten around to asking whether Obama sees suffering as a good thing, as many Christians do. Maybe he thinks the pain is the gain.

Conservatives who happen by here should not dismiss me for nit-picking. One need only open the digital pages of City Journal to see altruism/collectivism infecting even their own ranks. Luigi Zingales, attempting to argue for small government, seems to think that our government should be in the business of addressing income disparities, of all things!

Though American GDP has doubled in real terms over the last 25 years, median real income has grown by only 17 percent. While the richest 1 percent of the population has almost tripled its real income and the richest 0.01 percent has more than quintupled it, the bottom 10 percent has increased its income by only 12 percent.

So what? If the government didn't meddle with my personal choices and have its hands in my pockets all the time, I'd be thrilled to have any kind of income increase. Bill Gates hasn't picked my pocket or broken my leg if he is a trillionaire instead of a billionaire -- assuming, of course, he earned it rather than having been handed loot by the government.

Zingales goes on to praise "Republican" Theodore Roosevelt for creating the FDA and trust-busting. This he does on the way to counseling that, rather than, "give these poorer citizens entitlements disguised as rights," like the Democrats, the Republicans "should focus on providing" welfare state programs of their own disguised as "opportunities."

What's going on here? Rubin naively assumes that Obama has the same pro-prosperity goals she has, and Zingales seems to think that his goal of small government is compatible with egalitarianism. Why?

Because neither sees morality as having anything to do with life. Rubin's tack is that Obama will eventually see the "impracticality" of his idealism and back off on his destructive agenda. She underestimates the power of Obama's ideas to guide his actions. Zingales, on the other hand, fails to see the power of his own altruism (an apparently "compassionate" conservatism) to turn his enthusiasm for small government on its head and, in the process, transmogrify him into a "Democrat lite."

I strongly suspect that both hold an altruistic moral code and see morality as a matter of duty. On such a score, Ayn Rand made the following profound observation:

In order to make the choices required to achieve his goals, a man needs the constant, automatized awareness of the principle which the anti-concept "duty" has all but obliterated in his mind: the principle of causality--specifically, of Aristotelian final causation (which, in fact, applies only to a conscious being), i.e., the process by which an end determines the means, i.e., the process of choosing a goal and taking the actions necessary to achieve it. ("Causality Versus Duty," in Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 98)

Conversely, a means causally incompatible with an end will fail to lead to that end. Altruism does not inform political choices (i.e., the selection of means) that lead to the protection of individual rights, whose purpose is to enable men to live for their own sake.

Thus, to the extent that one's goal is altruism or egalitarianism, that end (and not individual rights) will guide his actions and his thoughts, meaning it will obliterate his ability to make use of his intelligence for the means of furthering his own life. And further, to the extent that one's goal is freedom, that end will be frustrated by the means of achieving altruistic or collectivist goals.

In the political sphere, this means that one will regard individual freedom (and the economic prosperity that follows from it) only as means to that end (if that), and not as the proper end of government. The result will be that one will fail to see the danger of those more consistent than oneself, and that freedom will fall by the wayside when it frustrates egalitarianism.

This is why Jennifer Rubin underestimates Barack Obama's effective stupidity and Luigi Zingales fails to offer a real alternative to same.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Corrected a typo. (2) Added a word in clarification (HT: Cogito).

Quick Roundup 483

Brothers, you asked for it!

Reader Dismuke emails a link detailing the fact that Venezuela's equivalent of Fox News is now the only media outlet that is reporting the widespread discontent of the supporters of its equivalent of Barack Obama upon experiencing its equivalent of "hope and change" on their own hides.

Extrapolating to how such a scenario would play out here, Dismuke comments rightly that:

[T]he discontent of such people [won't] do us much good. One, such people are discontented even when times are good. Two, they will just complain that "socialism is not being applied here" - (replacing the forbidden S-word with something along the lines of "fairness" or "change") in hopes that Obama himself might be watching and make the corrupt officials destroying his vision accountable. They are too stupid, of course, to know that socialism IS being applied and that that is the source of all their complaints. They will stand by Chavez and they will stand by Obama no matter what - because both are against "The Man."

Such is the nature of the dictator fantasy when a large proportion of the body politic is afflicted.

The government's postal service is also in upheaval. Workers carp that their rights are being trampled upon, saying that "socialism is not being applied here." Unions are being harassed and so they are sending a message to "Comrade Hugo Chávez" ... in case he's watching Globovisión. The union leader interviewed rues that all media has been invited, but only Globovisión came, bitterly singling out a State media that won't air their views.

News flash: If Chavez watches very much of this and doesn't understand the value of letting his idiot supporters blow off steam once in a while, Globovision gets shut down.

Nobody will save Venezuela from Hugo Chavez but the people of Venezuela.

Making a Virtue out of a Consequence

With sporadic food shortages already occurring due to his price controls and high inflation, it should come as no surprise that Hugo "Kip's Ma" Chavez is mobilizing his underlings for a national "battle of the bulge:"

Chavez suggested rice pasta instead of spaghetti made from wheat, and recommended drinking soy milk, saying soy products help fight aging.

Translation: The upcoming food shortages are for your own good.

For anyone who hasn't read Atlas Shrugged yet -- and so doesn't feel deja vu any time he follows the news or know who "Kip's Ma" is:

Emma Chalmers, better known as Kip's Ma, was an old sociologist who had hung about Washington for years, as other women of her age and type hang about barrooms. For some reason which nobody could define, the death of her son in the tunnel catastrophe had given her in Washington an aura of martyrdom, heightened by her recent conversion to Buddhism. "The soy-bean is a much more sturdy, nutritious and economical plant than all the extravagant foods which our wasteful, self-indulgent diet has conditioned us to expect," Kip's Ma had said over the radio; her voice always sounded as if it were falling in drops, not of water, but of mayonnaise. "Soybeans make an excellent substitute for bread, meat, cereals and coffee--and if all of us were compelled to adopt soybeans as our staple diet, it would solve the national food crisis and make it possible to feed more people. The greatest food for the greatest number--that's my slogan. At a time of desperate public need, it's our duty to sacrifice our luxurious tastes and eat our way back to prosperity by adapting ourselves to [this] simple, wholesome foodstuff..." (862)

Depending on my mood, I find such parallels somewhere between amusing and depressing. For comic relief, I can offer only the man-crush of long-time Chavez idol Fidel Castro on Barack Obama.

Then and Now

Scott Johnson of Power Line says just about all that needs saying about the following pair of photographs:

"Ashamed of his country but arrogant about himself--what a disgusting combination."

Who Watches the Watchers? (Part 5,084,631)

In response to several recent major accidents occurring on government-run transit systems, President Obama has reconsidered the idea that only government officials disinterested in personal gain can assure us of our safety and has decided to align the profit motive with passenger safety once and for all. Right?

Wrong again:

The federal government would police safety on subway and light-rail systems after a series of deaths and injuries in accidents, a Department of Transportation official said, citing an Obama administration plan.

He's concerned about my safety just like he's only a tall guy shaking hands with the Japanese Emperor above.

And a Message for Newt (and Sarah)

Just in case anyone doubts my recent reading of the electoral tea leaves, some new poll data from South Carolina backs it up:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham's public support is collapsing in South Carolina -- driven by a wholesale revolt among the GOP electorate and a steady erosion of his support amongst independents.

Jennifer Rubin adds:

This contradicts the favorite narrative of Democrats and their media handmaidens, namely that in order to stay relevant, Republicans must compromise with Obama, move leftward, and adopt policies at odds with conservative principles. It turns out that doing so alienates not only Republican voters but also independents, who themselves are not enamored of Obama's leftist agenda.

All I can add to the above is (1) to include "Newt Gingrich" with "Democrats and their media handmaidens," and (2) to note that Lindsey Graham is also a social conservative.

I guess (again) that this means that the public does not see theocracy as a desirable "alternative" to socialism, either.

An Interesting Startup

Although I have done pretty well adapting to a car-free life in the Northeast, an interesting startup may save me lots of time and money yet. I live across the street from a grocer, but still find that I occasionally have to hop on the T or check out a ZipCar for occasional purchases of household goods.

But then I read about an interesting startup called Alice while flying home from a surgery last week.

Consumer packaged goods like toothpaste, toilet paper, and trash bags are a $1 trillion industry, but less than 1 percent of it is online. After Microsoft purchased our last venture, Jellyfish, my partner Brian Wiegand and I started wondering how we could change that. That’s when we came up with Alice.

Aside from groceries, which it doesn't really make sense for me to order online, I've moved to buying almost everything else online. As soon as my household goods purchase list builds up just a little more, I'm giving Alice a try. If this works as well as it sounds, that's another three-hour chore or two per month I can kiss goodbye.

-- CAV

Soccer

Soccer was just catching on in my part of the country when I was growing up, and as a result, I started playing only at the age of eleven or twelve. This meant that although it was too late for me to become especially good at the game, I did develop an appreciation for it.

I don't follow the game religiously, but I do keep an eye on how the US National team is doing, follow the World Cup every four years, and occasionally will watch an English Premier League game when I find a pub -- like the Richmond Arms in Houston -- that makes a point of showing them live.

So I was pleased to see the national team finish first in the North American/Caribbean qualification tournament for the 2010 World Cup, and hope to see -- dare I say, look forward to seeing -- it fare better than it did in 2006. (Ugh. Looking back into the archives, I see that a draw with Italy was the high point of that one...) I hear that the team has a more challenging schedule of friendlies leading up to the tournament this time, so between that and the team having no other direction to go, I am cautiously optimistic.

In any event, the game brings back fond memories of my youth, as did three videos I found recently, which present the good, the bad, and the ugly of soccer: amazing goals, goalkeeper blunders, and own goals.

I'm posting the video of goalkeeper blunders here because it reminds me of my favorite goal. My brother's team and mine were playing against each other once, and I was playing halfback as usual at the time. His team was controlling play most of the time, to the point that their goalkeeper thought it would be cute to sit down at one end of his goal.

I eventually noticed this and so, the next time I got the ball, I shot on goal from midfield and enjoyed watching their keeper scurry to his feet and miss the ball, which sailed in untouched and stretched the net on the opposite side of the goal. I also enjoyed seeing him standing up and acting like a goalkeeper for the rest of the game. (With that in mind, it should be easy to guess which of the above is my favorite goalkeeper blunder.)

-- CAV

(Non-)Buyer's Remorse

A friend from Houston emailed me a link to an article titled, "Capitalism's Fundamental Flaw," at Forbes. Its author, Sramana Mitra, grew up in pre-liberalization India, and once:

... embraced Ayn Rand as the one who best articulated a philosophy that rang true to my naturally entrepreneurial mind. Capitalism, meritocracy, individualism, self-correcting market economics, innovation, excellence, integrity, fairness, work-ethic, justice--many of the values that I worship are also those that Rand celebrates in her fiction through her unforgettable characters.

Fair enough: Ms. Mitra no longer "embraces" Ayn Rand. At least she admits what many libertarians and a self-proclaimed "Objectivist" here and there will not. I'll give her that much.

But I have an interesting question to ask. Did Mitra ever embrace Rand in the sense of fully grasping her philosophy on the inductive level? Based on her description of that philosophy and her reasons for rejecting it, I think the answer is: No.

In her next paragraph, Mitra complains that the "flaws" she now sees with her "deeper understanding of how capitalism works today" are unlikely to "correct themselves." Already, there are several flags. While it is true that capitalism is self-correcting (more on this shortly), this is an economic description of what happens under capitalism, and is neither fundamental to grasping the nature of capitalism nor even for making a case for it. (It is also worth noting here that there is no capitalist economy in the world today: Mixtures of free market elements and state controls are properly called, "mixed economies.")

Capitalism, as Ayn Rand herself put it, is, "a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights..." Its justification lies in the fact that for man, the rational animal, to survive and prosper, he needs to be able to profit from the use of his own mind and trade with others. The only system that gives him the opportunity to do so is capitalism. All other systems involve the forcible transfer of wealth, and so are ultimately not conducive to man's survival. Implicit in the recognition that one must be free from threats and harm from others is the acknowledgment that nobody else owes one a living.

It is this last fact that Mitra loses sight of as she builds her case for rejecting the philosophy of Ayn Rand and, with it, capitalism. She starts out talking about self-correction in the field of venture capital and even gives a succinct outline of how that market self-corrects: "Investors and limited partners come to realize that funds are not performing, and they pull the plug on them. Non-performing funds die, those that do well survive, new funds crop up..."

Mitra gets the problems with the auto industry partially right, although she should have mentioned the government's role in setting up GM's failure, from putting its muscle behind the labor unions to distorting the automobile market via such measures as fuel efficiency regulations. Nevertheless, she does at least refuse to stand behind the government bailout of GM. Whether GM fully "deserved" to go bankrupt (or would have even gotten to such a brink under actual capitalism) is an interesting question that Mitra leaves unasked.

It is when she discusses banks, however, that a fundamental flaw in Mitra's grasp of Objectivism becomes readily apparent. Mitra complains that the behavior of "looters" and the government's response to same has resulted in, shall we call it, a "cycle of economic violence."

The government has intervened to save many of them, and now, these bailed out banks want to hand out billions in bonuses to their non-performing employees. Capitalism gave way to welfare economics, and now the government has to intervene further to limit these looters from behaving badly by imposing taxes and regulations. A whole messy cycle that brings me to the core "bug" in the system that Rand once sold me on...

Mitra neglects the government's role in setting up the current economic mess, but that is actually not the fundamental point at which she goes wrong. Here is where she goes wrong:

[T]here is another less obvious bug in capitalism that I don't believe regulation can quite handle. It is the fundamental flaw that our celebrated system rewards speculators much more than creators. A relatively junior hedge-fund manager or a bond trader on Wall Street makes a great deal more money in his career than Charles Kao, who invented the basic physics making optical communication a reality. Dr. Kao, now 73, won the Nobel Prize this year, but his net worth would not compare favorably with that of George Soros.

Yet, who added the real value? Soros or Kao?

Mitra answers (b), apparently failing to notice that "(c) both" is an option, which blows my mind coming as it does from a entrepreneur, and one who has studied Ayn Rand to boot.

Implicit in the question of value, as Mitra may recall, is the question of a value-er. Kao identified facts of reality in physics, but these facts were and would remain value-less to large numbers of people were they left undiscovered, unpublicized, and unapplied. True, Kao discovered some things, many beyond the abilities or determination of most people to grasp.

But how would any inventor or scientist offer anything of value to the general public? He'd have to build a prototype, manufacture a product, and sell it. For all of these steps, the inventor has to convince others that his idea has enough merit that the man on the street will eventually be receptive enough to pay for it out of his own pocket. This is no trivial proposition! (I'm sure Orville and Wilbur Wright endured plenty of ridicule for tinkering around with airplanes in their time...)

All of the steps from discovering a theory to implementing it in marketable ways require information about things such as business, intellectual property law, and markets that few scientists are likely to have, and sums of money, which few scientists will have had time away from their studies to earn. The errors in his political thinking aside (and assuming, arguendo, that Soros's fortune comes only from sources actually possible under laissez-faire), individuals like George Soros are rare indeed: They combine financial resources with business knowledge (or the ability to locate needed business knowledge) and make it available where it might not otherwise be.

Nobody owes anyone else a living. That includes John Galt when he needs a means to market his famous motor and Midas Mulligan when he needs a productive way to invest capital he has sitting around doing nothing.

The fact that Soros is richer than Kao or (to use a better example) a Mulligan is usually richer than a Galt -- under capitalism -- is not a flaw, but a consequence of a virtue of capitalism: Division of labor, which is what allows someone good at finance to work in finance and someone good at theoretical physics to work at theoretical physics. The reason a financier will generally be wealthier than a great physicist is because, generally, a financier is better able to offer more value to more people at any given moment than a physicist. (For example, he can offer the same kind of help to a chemist, a biologist, and a tinkerer in a garage, while the physicist either has a marketable idea or he does not.)

Mitra's former idol, Ayn Rand, was famous for invoking the phrase, "Check your premises." It sounds like Mitra would do well to consider that advice before condemning her apparently unexamined purchase as defective.

-- CAV

Quick Roundup 482

I like to stop by the web site of computer programmer/venture capitalist Paul Graham from time to time because he'll occasionally post essays there. He covers a wide variety of topics, always insightfully.

Conveniently for me, I haven't been making it there as often as I'd like to lately, so this week's mess of traveling afforded me an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: (1) Catch up on his site. (2) Write up a blog post ahead of time during a flight.

So call this installment "The Paul Graham Edition," if you like, ...

... but don't call it "6 Things by Paul Graham!"

I found Graham's take on what he calls a "degenerate case of essay" quite interesting, although I'm not sure that I agree with calling it that, and not all of what he says about "The List of N Things" applies to the "Quick Roundup" feature of my blog.

The greatest weakness of the list of n things is that there's so little room for new thought. The main point of essay writing, when done right, is the new ideas you have while doing it. A real essay, as the name implies, is dynamic: you don't know what you're going to write when you start. It will be about whatever you discover in the course of writing it.

If you do grant the premise that such a list is a degenerate essay for a moment, or at least concede that many teachers treat essays like lists, though, you see that he makes a valuable points about pedagogy for beginning and experienced writers alike.

Determination

In attempting to understand why some startups succeed and others fail, Graham concludes that "the most likely predictor of success is determination" and comes up with an "Anatomy of Determination."

If determination is so important, can we isolate its components? Are some more important than others? Are there some you can cultivate?

His answer is interesting and pertains to why Julius Caesar considered thin men dangerous!

The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups

No! I'm not planning on jumping into that pool any time soon, but this older essay has something worthwhile for anyone with plans for bigger and better things.

Mind or Body?

Graham makes some good points about writing as an exploratory process versus writing as a means of persuasion, but I must emphatically disagree with the endorsement of the mind-body dichotomy implicit in his use of the technospeak term “xor” in the title of his essay and confirmed in this passage.

... I'd rather offend people than pander to them, and if you write about controversial topics you have to choose one or the other.

This is a direct result of the author's acceptance, at one or more levels of the philosophical hierarchy, that reason is not man's means of cognition, or at least a cynical rejection of the premise that most people can be open to reason.

I think that etiquette can be perfectly rational, and that there is a difference between politeness and pandering to irrationality.

Incidentally, the term "xor" reminds me of a gramatical pet peeve: the term "and/or." "Or" already means "and/or" by default.

And Speaking of Pet Peeves...

I'm in the Paul Graham's "amen corner" regarding the Segway:

If they'd had to grow the company gradually, by iterating through several versions they sold to real users, they'd have learned pretty quickly that people looked stupid riding them. Instead they had enough to work in secret. They had focus groups aplenty, I'm sure, but they didn't have the people yelling insults out of cars. So they never realized they were zooming confidently down a blind alley.

Oh, and you can count me in Maddox's amen corner, too.

"Post-Medium" Publishing

What opportunities does the world of publishing hold for writers?

The reason I've been writing about existing forms is that I don't know what new forms will appear. But though I can't predict specific winners, I can offer a recipe for recognizing them. When you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser.

The business, at least in how it has been traditionally run, looks like it's between the rock of bankruptcy and the hard place of government bailouts to me. At least this is something to go on.

-- CAV

This post was composed in advance and scheduled for publication at 5:00 A.M. on November 11, 2009.

Updates

Today: Fixed links.

A New Anti-Concept?

Switching planes at Washington National Airport yesterday, I was surprised to find printed copies of Politico in a waiting area. Until then, I had thought it was strictly a web publication. Needless to say, I took a copy and thumbed through it during takeoff.

Within was an installment of a feature called "Arena Digest" titled, "Should GOP worry about tea parties?" I found the following comment by law professor Sherrilyn Ifill interesting:

Tea party conservatism is a help to the image of the Republican Party as an opposition party in a time of Democratic control of the White House and Congress. That's great for TV appearances. But tea party conservatism is a hazard for Republicans seeking a return to power because the kind of anger, vitriol and take-no-prisoners tactics of tea partyism is not a recipe for electoral success or for governing. A majority of Americans still want leaders who want to, and can, actually govern -- that means talking to people across the aisle, compromise, counting votes and advancing policies that bring positive results in the lives of constituents. Tea partyism is not a set of governing ideas. It's a nonstop protest against whatever is the status quo. Unless tea partyism can lose its fringe sensibilities and have as a central animating principle the idea of governance and not just protest, it will never return Republicans to power. To the contrary, it will continue to function as a barrier to "governance" Republican[s], who are the only hope and future of a party that has lost its way.

"Governance Republicans," eh? I've never heard big government Republicans called that before, but Ifill's comment did remind me that I have seen the term "governance" used by certain big-government conservatives here and there. (See David Brooks for a particularly sickening example.) Furthermore, I recall the usage always being in ways that seemed to mildly suggest that the government ought to be running our lives, while at the same time, not putting it quite so bluntlyl. The dictionary gives an ambiguous pair of definitions, and Wikipedia suggests I could be right to be suspicious of the term.

In any event, Ifill is half-right, half-wrong. She corrrectly identifies the Tea Party Movement as a somewhat blind rebellion in need of intellectual leadership, but speaks as if she is oblivious to the idea that laissez faire could be a viable political philosophy. Indeed, she even seems to equate it with anarchism up to and including imagining the same angry type of spirit that animates the anarchist running amok within that movement.

If I am correct that the term "governance" is (or is being used as) an anti-concept, then it would appear to serve mainly to obliterate the proper concept of a government that solely protects individual rights and replace it with statism. As the Tea Party movement evolves, so are its opponents, who are smearing capitalism even before the tea partiers themselves fully realize that that is their natural goal.

-- CAV

Pelosi's Betrayal

As this leg of my travels draws to a close, I connect to the Internet just long enough to see that Nancy Pelosi scraped together just enough votes to ram an unread, 1900-page physician slavery bill through the House of Representatives during the night on Saturday.

History will not be kind to Pelosi or to Barack Obama. Their unpopular, immoral, impractical, and anti-American effort will fail in its stated goal whether or not it passes. Whether they are quickly forgotten or achieve lasting infamy as traitors depends only on whether it finally becomes law.

But neither the health of the American people, nor our gratitude, nor even perpetual political power suffice to explain the motives of the reptilian Pelosi. Even the last is too clean and innocent to explain her.

Nancy Pelosi is an egalitarian to the core, and the simple fact that some people in America can have good health, when others do not, or even that Americans generally have the best medical care in the world, rankles her, and not because there are some who lack medical care.

She does not simply feel that the good fortune of some people in the world is morally wrong; she hates America for this and intends to cure the problem once and for all, our actual health, our considered judgment, and her continued hold on power be damned. She's holding a dagger and sees a bare back.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Traveling Man

Already having a pair of out-of-state trips scheduled for the week, I suddenly have had to add a third this evening -- between the other two -- due to unforeseen circumstances.

I think I'll be able to post a little bit during that time, but I am not completely sure. If you don't hear from me much (or at all) until next Thursday, that would be why.

I found the above reggae song while looking for this other Dennis Brown classic, but find since I find it more apropos and actually embedding one such (non-)video is my limit, it gets the nod.

Hit "play," open a new tab, and enjoy!

I'll be back soon.

-- CAV

Marrakech Lamb Stew

This is my version of the Moroccan lamb stew I mentioned about a month ago when I wrote about cooking as a hobby and posted a recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala that always turns out really well. LB had fellow "Rearden Metal Chef" SB make that and wrote back that they enjoyed it. (Actually, based on what I've read, I suspect that he's a far better cook than I am.) At the time, LB expressed interest in hearing about this stew some time, so here it is with the following caveat: This is my first time to present a recipe I may still tinker with. (I have a couple of others -- a Greek cinnamon stewed chicken and a chicken curry casserole -- like this on the backburner, too, but neither is as close to being set in stone.) [Update: Slightly revised recipe seems to be fine the first day.]

I would say that the recipe as I present it here is good, but it is not as good as the Chicken Tikka Masala for the following mildly frustrating reason: While it's fine right after I make it, the leftovers are far superior in flavor, to the point that I wonder whether I should incorporate a new step like the following into the recipe. "Mix with rice and refrigerate overnight. Microwave and serve." I'll probably end up doing that or perhaps see whether making it in a crock pot helps. The flavors evidently need to meld or mature. That said, it certainly smells great while I'm cooking it.

So, without further ado, I present my version of this Marrakech Lamb Stew. Aside from my usual rewrite for ease of execution, my changes were to: halve the amount of rice, double the amount of almonds (and stir them in after crushing them), double the amount of beef stock, use only one turnip, and add dates. (This Middle Eastern/Saharan dish already includes fruit, so why not?) It worked well with either a 50/50 mix of lamb and beef or all lamb meat. It would probably be okay with all beef, but since lamb has a distinctive flavor, I think it wouldn't be quite as good.

-- CAV

***

Marrakech Lamb Stew

Preparation Time is 75 minutes.

Ingredients (List: mls)

beef bouillon cubes, 2
salt, 1 tsp
cinnamon, 1/4 tsp
cumin, 1 tsp
coriander, 1 tsp
cloves, 1 tsp
turmeric, 1 tsp
cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp
nutmeg, 1 pinch
allspice, 1 pinch
boneless lamb or beef, 1.5 lb
olive oil, 2 tbsp + 1 tsp
onion, large white
minced garlic, 2 tsp
carrots, 5 medium
stewed tomatoes, 1 can
turnip, 1 medium
potato, 1 medium
chickpeas, cooked, 1 can
prunes, pitted, 1 cup (16-20)
dates, pitted, 1 cup (16-20)
raisins, 1/2 cup (about one small box)
parsley, chopped, 2 tbsp
rice or couscous, 2 1.5 cups
almonds, slivered, 4 tbsp

Directions

1. In parallel with the nest few steps, bring 2 cups water for broth to boil, dissolve beef bouillon cubes, remove from heat and cover.

2. Measure salt and spices (except parsley) and set aside in bowl.

3. In parallel with step 4, prepare the meat: If necessary, thaw and chop meat into bite-sized pieces. Heat 2 tbsp oil in large soup pot, brown meat in batches and set aside and leave in pot.

4. Chop onion and set aside in bowl with garlic.

5. In parallel with step 5, stir onion and garlic into meat drippings and sauté until translucent and tender.

6. In parallel with steps 5 and 7, chop carrots, turnip, and potatoes. Set chopped items aside in bowl (if still sautéing onions) or add to pot (if cooking stew).

7. Return meat to pot. Add carrots, tomatoes, turnips, potato, broth, and spices and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 40 minutes.

8. In parallel with step 8, toast and crush the almonds.

• Heat 1 tsp olive oil in a small skillet.
• Add almonds, and cook over moderate heat while stirring constantly, until golden brown (about 5 minutes).
• Transfer the almonds to a plate and allow them to cool.
• Place cooled almonds in plastic bag. Crush with knife handle or rolling pin.

9. Chop and, if necessary, separate pits from prunes. Set prunes and raisins aside.

10. In parallel with the remainder of step 7, prepare rice or couscous.

11. Stir in chickpeas, dried fruit, and almonds. Cover and cook about 10 minutes more.

12. Stir in parsley.

13. Serve on a bed of couscous or rice.

Notes

1. To carry on the theme, serve with olives and warm pita bread--and for dipping, add some good olive oil, baba ganoush and/or hummus.

Updates

12-14-09: Updated recipe after accidentally skipping a step and finding the taste vastly superior on the first day.

Quick Roundup 481

The Houston Tunnel System

Over at Live Oaks, Brian Phillips discusses one of Houston's hidden jewels, its privately owned and operated downtown tunnel system.

The tunnel is essentially an underground mall with restaurants, retail stores, doctors, and other services available for downtown workers. The system also allows pedestrians to travel from building to building without confronting traffic, rain, or heat. These amenities have become so important to downtown workers that new buildings downtown consider it crucial to connect to the system.

As he correctly points out, the success of the tunnel system demonstrates the falsehood of the common argument that we need the government to coordinate major infrastructure projects.

His post reminds me of a similar favorite triumph of capitalism from Houston's history: Its swift and painless finishing-off of desegregation. The idea that the government has to do everything big in scale or importance is wrong, and is only as viable as it is because the government has a stranglehold on so many areas of our lives. Such an extent and ubiquity of control starves the imaginations of ordinary people (including some advocates of capitalism) through want of positive examples.

Intellectual ammunition takes many forms, and one of them is concrete examples of proper abstract ideas put into practice. Head on over to Live Oaks and stock up!

Objectivist Roundup

And speaking of intellectual ammuntion, there's some more over at Noodle Food.

How Not to Oppose Government Controls

Don Watkins on "Net Neutrality:"

A proper critique of net neutrality would reject ... the notion that the Internet is some collective product of society's that "consumers" have the right to dispose of however they choose. It would recognize that the Internet is, in fact, the product of voluntary associations between millions of individuals and companies, all of whom have the right to use their private property as they see fit. It would recognize that an Internet Service Provider has a right to manage its network according to its own judgment, and that its only power is the power to offer willing customers a service more valuable than its competitors. A proper critique of net neutrality would say that the government has no right to place shackles on the Internet, and that its only legitimate function is to protect Internet freedom.

The example of "opposition" to Net Neutrality Watkins quotes has to be read to be believed.

Perkins on Libertarianism vs. Objectivism

With the unprecedented popularity of Ayn Rand's work and the equally unprecedented effort by libertarians from all over to crawl out of the woodwork to parasitize her, short, sweet examples of the difference are worth keeping in mind. Greg Perkins provides just such an example.

[T]he libertarian framework fails to capture crucial differences. Consider a powerful government that performs all and only its proper functions in the defense of man's rights, and one that happens to have all the same laws and institutions but also has, say, conscription on the books just in case war breaks out. These two governments are all but indistinguishable (and neither is smiled on) in the libertarians' basic classification scheme based on size. But Objectivists see these two as moral opposites because one is committed to the essential task of the defense of man's rights and the other is not. Even though not currently violating any rights, the government with conscription laws clearly rejects the key principle of the field. It has no principled defense against the slippery slope to serfdom we've seen play out in history all too many times.

The libertarian approach is fundamentally anarchic, which means that libertarianism ultimately smiles on you getting attacked, defrauded or killed -- so long as the crimes aren't committed by a government. Libertarians won't admit this in words in part because their anti-principled approach makes it hard for them to see the point. Nevertheless, it is amazingly easy to catch them evading the point once you point it out.

That said, I know from personal experience that not all libertarians are so far gone that they can't be convinced to abandon that anti-freedom movement, but such individuals are rare.

-- CAV

Loser Takes All

The "off-off-year" elections went about as well as one could expect: The American people essentially rejected both of last year's presidential candidates. Glenn Reynolds offers what I think is a pretty good overall integration of how voters probably weighed local concerns and discontent with a far-left Congress and Obama Administration:

All politics is local, they say, and Tuesday's off-off-year elections certainly had their local angles. Jon Corzine has been a terrible governor even by the undemanding standards of terribly governed New Jersey. Creigh Deeds, though he looked good to Democratic Party recruiters not long ago, turned out to be an undistinguished campaigner, more driven by the concerns of Washington Post editorialists than of Virginia voters. And NY-23 Republican nomineee Dede Scozzafava was a bizarre choice, bizarre enough to inspire a seemingly quixotic third-party run by Doug Hoffman.

Reynolds rightly notes later that, "[I]f [Obama] were the political marvel he was thought to be, these races wouldn't have been contests, but walkovers. So one consequence of this Election Day is the end of his special political magic." Reynolds sees Obama's problem as part-agenda and part-competence.

Maybe so, but I find myself both dubious and ambivalent about the latter. First, Obama's agenda, being demonstrably bad for America, will masquerade somewhat as incompetence to the extent that he can enact it. This will both magnify the problem he has with inexperience (that Reynolds notes) and make it too easy to excuse his actual policy failures: I shudder to imagine a future Democrat President reintroducing the Obama agenda and, thanks to this perception of ineptitude, getting away with an assertion like, "Obama was incompetent. Socialism will work this time." Second, to the extent that Obama really is incompetent, I find this mostly a relief since he spends much more time trying to re-shape America than doing his actual job, anyway.

Reynolds' short-term prognosis is that there isn't any longer any steam behind the locomotive of that train Obama keeps trying to herd us all onto: "It'll be politics as usual from now on, and we can thank Obama, at least, for making politics-as-usual seem not so bad after all ..." I hope he's right in the short term, but wrong in the long term. Politics-as-usual hasn't looked so good in a long time, but since "politics-as-usual" means a mixed economy, and mixed economies trend towards dictatorship, America is going to have to reject "politics-as-usual" sooner or later.

Fortunately, NY-23, where Bill Owens became the first Democrat to win in over a century yesterday, offers some hope that Americans are waking up to this idea. Recall that Newt Gingrich lost his argument that the Republicans should run as "Democrats Lite," to Sarah Palin when many Republicans started backing the Conservative Party candidate in that election.

It would appear, though, based on the huge Republican margin in that district reflected in the seven previous elections, that Sarah Palin also lost her (Reaganesque) argument -- that a little bit of theocracy is okay with the American voter -- last night. Doug Hoffman mixes a small government economic outlook -- which should have been a sure winner -- with a very socially-conservative one that I, for one, find completely unacceptable. Eric Scheie expresses similar "misgivings" on Hoffman and adds:

Perhaps the voters had had it with all the national hype, and finally decided they'd rather just vote for a Democrat who said he was a Democrat rather than be dragged against their will into a much-hyped "referendum" on a "bloody Republican civil war" they never asked to fight.

That kind of exhaustion, too, should tell the Republicans something: Just because Americans don't want the government's hands in their wallets doesn't mean they do want to let the government back into their bedrooms. Or, as one blogger memorably put it, "Your rights end where my pockets begin."

I think Scheie is premature to ask whether this was, as his post title put it, a possible "victory for laissez-faire," but that (or at least progress towards it) is what was missing from the ballot. It will be a long time before Americans have that option, but the time for "moral suasion" as our nation's first anti-slavery movement called it, does appear to be ripe for advocates of individual rights. (Ayn Rand called this "intellectual activism.")

Yes, it is good news that this election possibly represents a big loss of momentum for the Democrats, but that last is even better news. In terms of the ballot choices, there was no way for Americans to win politically last night. So we did the next best thing: we stalled for time instead.

-- CAV