A Few Good Reads

Two of my hobbies conflict this evening: home brewing and blogging! Yes! I finally got a big enough block of time free last Saturday to give home brewing my first stab. As a scientist, I'll have to say that it is with great confusion and trepidation that I read the recipe. Either the requirements for sterilization called for by the recipe are much more lax than I'm in the habit of thinking or this batch has already been infected with bacteria and ruined. Or both. Let's say I saw ample opportunity for unwanted microbes to come in and compete with the good guys -- the brewer's yeast. I'm hoping to be wrong, but I'm not expecting much out of my first batch. I've got lots of new knowledge about brewing and questions for the other members of my home brewing club out of the experience, though. If it's spoiled, I'll call it a "bitter lesson." If it's any good, I can call it "Irish Stout #1."

Since I'm not sure how long this step will take, and my usual post on China may require some extra reading, I'll post the following roundup of interesting news I encountered today.

The Upcoming Self-Emancipation of Black America

The chains of racism are nearly gone. The chains of self-destruction will be next.

Today, via RealClear Politics, I learned of an interesting development on the Harrisburg, PA, city council that has not gone unnoticed by Republicans on the national level: A black city councilman has switched to the Republican party and did so with the support of his colleagues. Harrisburg has an all-black city council.

"There's been a huge ripple" in the Democratic Party as a result of his switch, [Otto] Banks told me [Josh White, the state GOP's communications director --ed]. The reaction has been particularly favorable within his community. "More and more people of color are starting to take a second look at the Republican Party."

Mr. Banks, who now calls himself a "progressive Republican," voted for John Kerry in 2004, but after the campaign "took some time off and really started to do some soul-searching. I realized that many of the ownership and economic opportunity issues I stood behind were actually part of the president's program."

He is, for example, for school choice programs. He likes the idea of workers investing some payroll contributions and building a nest egg they can own and leave to their families.

Most troubling, he said, is how Democrats have treated their party's most loyal constituency. "The Democrats have definitely taken their African-American base for granted," he said. "We have lost our influence in the Democratic Party and by losing that, we have lost our ability to influence policies in our community."

This sounds remarkably like something I said in an earlier post.

With blacks becoming more prosperous, the welfare state agenda of the Democrats not only has less to offer, but the taxes required to support it will drive off some black support. Also, as racism continues dying as a major social force in this country, the debatable perception that Democrats are the only friends of the black man is going to do that party less good if it survives at all. Might blacks soon stop bloc voting and acquire actual power -- the power of unpredictability -- at the polls? As the Asian example above shows, that is possible.

To quote William Raspberry in an interesting, related article (via TIA Daily), "Maybe we haven't laid racism to rest, but we have reached the point where what we do matters more than what is done to us. That's great, good news. Would somebody write a book about it?" This is great news.

And for those who might be curious about the Thomas Sowell book cited by Raspberry -- a book that is clearly going to do a lot of good among the black intelligentsia -- I direct you to this old post.

Why Islam is Disrespected

Here's a bloody good read by Jeff Jacoby (via RealClear Politics). I need do no more to recommend it than to quote from it.

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers -- ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" -- was any reader surprised?

The Muslim riots should have been met by outrage and condemnation. From every part of the civilized world should have come denunciations of those who would react to the supposed destruction of a book with brutal threats and the slaughter of 17 innocent people. But the chorus of condemnation was directed not at the killers and the fanatics who incited them, but at Newsweek.

Not that Newsweek is blameless, but going after the whipping boy that the MSM has transmogrified into should not blind us to where the blame really lies.

Some Non-Trivial Historical Trivia

(And a neat web-based resource!)

Take a gander at the lower right hand side of this page (No hat tips to people who leave nasty comments on my blog.) under the heading "Tripoli." The whole thing (the treaty ending our war with the Barbary Pirates) is an interesting read, especially at the end (You will need to flip a page. Click "Next Image."), where its author, none other than John Adams, says the following, in Article 11:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion [my emphasis]; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

"Musselman?" "Mahometan?" I'm tempted to change my usage for once!

The Bottomless Well

At Capitalism Magazine is a must-read for those who have noticed the recent increase in calls (including from the right, who should know better) for a return to the failed energy policies of the Carter era.

Anyway, why on earth would we want to curb energy consumption? Energy abounds, and the leverage is incredible. It's a tiny proportion of the economy, yet without it, we'd grind to a halt.

Or consider the supply side. How many Americans know that the U.S. is the world's largest energy producer? We rank number 11 in oil reserves, sixth in natural gas and first in coal. In 1979, we were told that the U.S. had only 30 billion barrels of natural gas left in the ground and that we'd run out by the 1990s. Instead, over the past 25 years, we have pumped out 67 billion barrels, and strong reserves remain.

The oil is there. The obstacles to putting it to use are strictly political: restrictions on drilling, on building refineries (the number has dropped by more than half since 1980), and on making the distribution system more efficient. Remove the barriers, and prices will fall.

In addition to having more reserves than it seems, we are less dependent on Arab oil than one might think. One thing I'd add on the subject of oil: We can shift to oil shale once the wells run dry -- if they ever do. (Oil may not be a "fossil fuel" after all. Note, however, that this is a controversial theory, just like global warming.)

-- CAV

PS: See the interesting comment by Adrian Hester on the Treaty of Tripoli.

Updates

5-20-05: Added PS and fixed a typo.