Around the Web on 8-22-05

Another writing project might make blogging here a little on the sparse side. In other words, there could be a succession of "Around the Web" posts here.

Tierney on Golf

This amusing article is a lighthearted attempt to make sense out of the fact that the vast majority of the players and fans of golf are male. Given that men and women have brains that are generally organized differently, perhaps to adapt them for different roles (i.e., hunting vs. child-rearing), he may be onto something!

Our foursome started at a tee on high ground, looking down a tree-lined swath of grass at the basket nearly 400 feet away. After we flung our discs, as we headed down the fairway, I felt a strange surge of satisfaction. I couldn't figure out why until it occurred to me what we were: a bunch of guys converging on a target and hurling projectiles at it.

Was golf the modern version of Pleistocene hunting on the savanna? The notion had already occurred to devotees of evolutionary psychology, as I discovered from reading Edward O. Wilson and Steve Sailer. They point to surveys and other research showing that people in widely different places and cultures have a common vision of what makes a beautiful landscape - and it looks a lot like the view from golfers' favorite tees.

Heh!

Sheehan Marriage as Metaphor for Democratic Party

Mark Steyn gives us his take on the Sheehan spectacle.

... But how about Casey's father, Pat Sheehan? Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Casey's father Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy's "separation," "Although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalized."

...

Yet in the wreckage of Pat and Cindy Sheehan's marriage there is surely a lesson for the Democratic Party. As Cindy says, they're both Democrats, but she's "more liberal" and "more radicalized." There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalized Dems out there: They're soft-left-ish on health care and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don't believe in dishonoring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic Party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey.

On unwatched Sunday talk shows, you can still stumble across the occasional sane, responsible Dem. But, in the absence of any serious intellectual attempt to confront their long-term decline, all the energy on the left is with the fringe. The Democratic Party is a coalition of Pat Sheehans and Cindy Sheehans, and the noisier the Cindys get the more estranged the Pats are likely to feel.

Sorry about that, but, if Mrs. Sheehan can insist her son's corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don't see why her marriage can't be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic Party.

Very good point.

On the Intellectual Vigor of the Conservative Movement

I'm not going to spend a lot of time critiquing this article , which attempts to gauge the intellectual vigor of the conservative movement. The author most notably mentions Ayn Rand several times, only to show, in the context of his treatment of libertarianism as a strand of conservatism, that he suffers the same malady as the libertarians: Although he is writing about a political movement, he seems not to appreciate the fact that politics is derived from more fundamental branches of philosophy.

Most libertarians are chagrined, of course, to hear that they cannot justify their political views. The best-informed among them, however, know that no comprehensive argument for limited government exists. ... The most intelligent libertarians, in short, know libertarianism remains an ideology.

If he really appreciated this, he would know why the libertarians "cannot justify their political views" and he would appreciate the fact that it is because libertarianism is anything but an "ideology".

Pursuing his treatment of libertarianism further, the article is of interest in that it shows what strange trajectories some conservative thinkers have begun to follow given the lack of intellectual rigor a movement with so many contradictory positions would have to have. Thus, some libertarians, already unaccustomed to thinking in terms of fundamental principles, come up with the following.

The reliance on such heuristics can perhaps be explained in terms of rational economic decision-making -- in that there is not enough time in the day to bother to learn much about politics -- but, more deeply, in terms of evolutionary psychology. The human mind is too primitive to understand the complexities of modern politics. Democratic politics thus present a choice between the ideological rigidity of the elites and the sheer incompetence of the masses. We can escape this predicament only by reducing the role of government in our lives.

This is absurd on its face. What "complexities" are beyond the ability to reason with abstract concepts that we all have? Granted, the minutiae of the bureaucracy of the modern welfare state are beyond the inclination of many to know in detail, but this is not a necessary bit of knowledge in an election so much as a symptom, in most cases, that a government has become a little too large.

I didn't think much of the level of analysis overall, but found some of the factual data here of interest.

The real question in my mind is this: Might the practice of thinking of conservatism as "a" movement be obsolete, if it ever was a good idea?

Transportation Matters in Houston

In today's Houston Chronicle, I learned that some idiot wants Houston to have its own "big dig" in order to bury 14.5 miles of Interstate 45, which is slated for expansion. Aside from flooding concerns, this would make another expansion out of the question. This engineer's anti-growth reply? "More highway lanes is not a cure to the problem. These things run in 20-year cycles. In another 20 years, if not sooner, they'll want to add more lanes, then we're back to where we started." Well, hell. Let's just save ourselves the trouble and leave it the way it is now. At least we'd save the money we're paying to give this guy a salary.

In the meantime, our government-subsidized bus system waits until it costs $5.90 per rider per trip before it considers cutting back on a route.

Cathy Young Makes an Interesting Point

Awhile back, I used a lousy Cathy Young piece on Ayn Rand at 100 to launch into a discussion about the nature of emotions. Today, I thought she made an interesting point in the Boston Globe.

A comment on the left-wing website Daily Kos described Sheehan as ''Terri Schiavo reincarnated." I believe this was meant as a compliment. But actually, the Sheehan circus has a lot in common with the Schiavo circus, none of it good. Both stories represent a triumph -- on different sides of the political divide -- of emotion- and sentiment-driven politics [bold added]. Schiavo's parents could go off on paranoid, crazy, vitriolic rants, and enjoy a certain immunity by virtue of their unthinkable tragedy. The same is true of Sheehan.

CAIR Intimidates ABC

This story has been festering for awhile and came to a head today. Former talk radio show host Michael Graham reports:

On July 25th, the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that I be "punished" for my on-air statements regarding Islam and its tragic connections to terrorism. Three days later, 630 WMAL and ABC Radio suspended me without pay for comments deemed "hate radio" by CAIR.

CAIR immediately announced that my punishment was insufficient and demanded I be fired. ABC Radio and 630 WMAL have now complied. I have now been fired for making the specific comments CAIR deemed "offensive," and for refusing to retract those statements in a management-mandated, on-air apology. ABC Radio further demanded that I agree to perform what they described as "additional outreach efforts" to those people or groups who felt offended.

I refused. And for that refusal, I have been fired.

-- CAV

Updates

8-23-05: Corrected typo. HT: Adrian Hester.