perfidy

By way of Jay Nordlinger of the National Review, this quote from Michael McFaul, a poli-sci prof at Stanford, writing in the New York Times Review of Books. The book under review was Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History. Here is the beginning of the review:

In visiting Poland last month, President Bush took the time to go to Auschwitz and tour one of the most ghastly assaults to humanity in the history of mankind. After finishing his tour, he remarked: "And this site is also a strong reminder that the civilized world must never forget what took place on this site. May God bless the victims and the families of the victims, and may we always remember."

The next day, Mr. Bush was in St. Petersburg, Russia. While there, he did not make it up to the Solovetsky Islands, the site of the first camp of the gulag. Nor did he call upon the world to "always remember" the millions of people who perished in the Soviet concentration camps well before Auschwitz was constructed and well after Auschwitz was dismantled. The families of the victims of Soviet Communism — much more numerous than the families who lost loved ones in Hitler's camps — received no special blessing from the leader of the free world. Mr. Bush should not be singled out for failing to remember the innocents killed in the gulag. Rarely do visiting dignitaries take time to remember the tragedies of Soviet Communism.

I agree, wholeheartedly. Some of the nations of Eastern Europe are examining the crimes of their communist governments, like Hungary. Russia has not, and shows no sign of even thinking of it. And far too many people give the Communists a free pass on millions of deaths.

From Richard Brookhiser

It is Buckethead's 34th birthday today. He is now solidly in his mid thirties.

Alright. We'll start with this electronic philosophy journal article. I found it to be highly politicized, though politics and economy are strongly related to one another. So let's look at a few statements from the article: 

The thinking seems to be that the profits of business should either be given directly to workers through pay raises or be taken by the government to be given to workers indirectly.

Wow! What a great idea! I'm all for it. Oh wait there's more:

Producing greater profits is thought of as useless and immoral.

Right again! What a great article! Oh, hang on: “

However, if Say's Law is correct, life improves through greater production, not through higher nominal wages. Greater production requires greater capitalization -- money invested in machinery and training -- and the capital for that must come out of profits.

Well, you lost me there. Okay, so to simplify, fuck the poor. Yeah. I've seen this movie. I'll quote myself from at least two lectures last spring, "Profits for the wealthy come with the exploitation of labor." 

Perhaps I shouldn't quote myself. I could go blind. Back to the subject at hand, so to speak (*ahem*), supply side economics, or free market capitalism, benefit ownership and management over labor. This will not change so long as the system is maintained. Tax cuts, especially capital gains, invariably benefit those with the most money. They do not benefit wage-workers (or adjunct profs) who have no investments, no savings, and literally hang by their fingernails in a free market capitalist system. 

Steve will undoubtedly launch a thousand counter-arguments, if history is any guide. I will only deal with ones that I make up, here and now. Counter: tax cuts make a good economy. A good economy means more workers are hired. 

Then exploited. The aforementioned article states that profits have to be reinvested, and not in the workers. To stay afloat, businesses have to maintain a healthy bottom line in the free market system. To do that, they pay their workers as little as possible. If they make lots of money, they keep it, or invest it, then get tax breaks on their investments. 

I previously asked for quantitative analysis on this subject. That was a trick question. Economic issues are difficult if not impossible to quantify. Why? It's a matter of faith. People believe that when they hand over green pieces of paper or shiny metal round things, they receive goods and services in exchange. If a majority of people changed their beliefs, and decided that the green paper is for the wiping of asses and the shiny round things are fun to eat, the whole deal collapses. Faith cannot be quantified. It cannot be quantitatively proven that God exists; it cannot be quantitatively proven that free market capitalism, or any of the economic systems attempted thus far, work. 

Free market capitalism creates a permanent underclass. The individual members of the underclass might ascend, but ultimately, there is always an underclass. Capitalism requires a large number of people to work for wages beneath a level of comfort. I'll anticipate another counter: the poor in America do better than the poor in other countries. They have material possessions. 

Do they? There are still people in this country who are homeless and hungry. There are people who have not been apportioned according to their need. This is not me. I'm discussing people with families below the poverty level, who try as they might, cannot get their heads above water. As to material possessions, can many people actually afford them, or do they go into debt to acquire them, invariably sinking into bankruptcy? Poverty has not been eliminated anywhere in the world. Free market capitalism will not eliminate poverty, nor have centrally planned economies, because they do not produce a sufficient number of consumer goods or provide decent standards of living. Nothing seems to work perfectly. 

Counter: perfection is unattainable. To quote Matt Groening, from School is Hell, "you'll never get anywhere with that defeatist attitude." 

The solution? I've said it before. I don't have the answers. I have ideas.

This article is a good introduction to the supply side/laffer curve arguments. I'll find some more links and post them. These theories are not vague handwaving. Arthur Laffer, and others in the Chicago School of economists (Friedman, Hayek, etc) have studied and published on these matters. And unlike Keynesian economic theory which was proved incorrect by the stagflation of the 70s, it has been an accurate predictor (on the large scale).

Ross is correct to demand means testing - but the reason that drugs are available for cheap in Canada is because patients in the United States paid for them (and the research that developed them) at much higher prices. Canada is getting a free ride. Ross' solution only spreads out the cost - but does not effect the calculations that drug companies will make on which drugs to develop. (A shorter patent period would mean more expensive drugs for a shorter time.) 

But the problem that he brings up: the older generation passing every law needed for a comfortable retirement - which can only screw our generation - is broader than merely prescription drug plans. It applies to Medicare, Social Security, and all the entitlement plans whose costs will spiral out of control once all the greedy self righteous boomers start retiring in large numbers. 

Who among us, under the age of forty, thinks that there will be any social security waiting for us? The Supreme Court has ruled that the government is not obligated to provide us with SS benefits. They can change the rules at any time. But will they change them before the system goes totally belly up? Probably not. 
 

That tax cuts cause the economy to grow is not tired conservative rhetoric. The economy, over the last fifty years, has boomed after every significant tax cut - after WWII, after Kennedy's tax cuts in the early sixties, after Reagan's twenty years later, and after the capital gains reduction in the mid nineties. The economy in the seventies was in the shitter in every respect. Reagan not only reduced the taxes, but swept away the price controls, wage controls, and excessive regulation of business. The economy took off. With the exception of defense spending, Reagan attempted to reduce or at least stabilize government spending - it was the congress that ran the huge deficits. 

The capital gains tax cut directly affected the amount of money available for investment, and for raising capital. One of the reasons that the tech boom happened was the huge influx in venture capital made possible by the capital gains tax cut.

When you think about it, how does the economy grow? It is not through government action. The economy grows when people develop new businesses, new technologies, new methods. They develop these things with the help of investor money. That money is available because people save and earn. When taxes rise, money is pulled out of the economy, and is unavailable for capital development, and is unavailable for the people who would purchase the new products or services. Thus, higher taxes serve as a break on the economy. 

Granted, money that we give to the government can be useful - roads, defense, courts, etc. But it is more useful when it stays in our hands, collectively. One irony of the situation is that when you lower taxes, revenue rises. The Laffer curve has been proven, most recently with the capital gains cut of the nineties, but also generally over the last century. When taxes go down, the economy grows, and even though the gubmint is getting a smaller piece of pie, the pie as a whole is much larger. Capital gains were cut by I think 33%, and over two years revenue from the lower tax rate increased by 50% or so. (I can't remember the exact numbers.) 

While the deficits that were run in the eighties were enormous and frightening, they are gone. That was not an intergenerational burden of any kind - but only because the economy was able to grow. 

Ross points out that drug programs and military budgets are intergenerational warfare - which is the point I made in my first post. Tax cutting is the only way that we can restrain spending. People freak over high deficits much more than over high taxes. (Strange, if you ask me.) If we were to freeze spending, then the government would have a decreasing share of the economy over time. And tax cuts are necessary every so often if for no other reason than inflation - as people creep into higher tax brackets, the taxes are being raised, if stealthily. (Of course, a flat tax would solve that problem.) 

Of course, there are other factors affecting the economy. There are various business cycles. The education of the populace, the world economy, money supply, labor laws, productivity, cultural attitudes to work, the general legal structure for commerce, patent law, etc. But these things remain relatively constant. Other variable factors can have a big impact as well. Oil price spikes can have effects similar to a tax hike - increasing everyone's cost of doing business, but that is out of politician's control. The Justice Department prosecution of Bill Gates was the proximate cause of the recent tech crash. When Bill Gates lost thirty billion dollars, the rest of the economy reacted to the sudden disappearance of all that money. Tax levels and Fed control of the money supply are two of the biggest levers in the economy - and the ones that our elected officials control. When these levers are set in a pro-economy position, things are good, the government is out of the way of our collective business. 

Tax cuts are good for the economy. They are good, because they keep money out of the hands of politicians, and restrain the growth of government. (PJ O'Rourke said that giving money to government was like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager.) They are good, because it is right that people keep the money that they earn, and not deliver half of it over to thumb fingered nozzleheads in DC. Links in a minute.

I love Ohio. From WKYC-TV in Cleveland, comes this heartwarmer.

OHIO TURNPIKE -- A woman who claims she was breast-feeding while driving on the turnpike, has plead not guilty to multiple charges.
The Ohio highway patrol received a call that 29-year old Catherine Donkers, was driving with an infant in her lap.
A trooper tried to pull her over, but she ignored him and then exited the turnpike.
"The stop didn't occur until she exited at the 187th and then became caught up in the toll booth and that's where the officer was able to approach the car and talk to the driver," said Ohio Highway Patrol Officer, Lt. Chris Butts.
The trooper discovered the Michigan woman didn't have a license.
She's been charged with not having an operators' license, obstructing official business, and child endangering.

For those of you who know Ohio, Exit 187 on the Ohio Turnpike is Streetsboro. That's Johnny's neck of the woods.

The Guardian has an interesting editorial today about the non-looting of the National Museum in Baghdad and the willingness of many people in the press and public to a) believe the worst and b)believe the worst of Americans. See it here. It's an odd piece for the Guardian to run. Why? See this:

So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks.

Best line of all: "These days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed. "

Thanks to fark.com for the link. I get my news from Fark!

The reckless tax cuts of Kennedy and Reagan certainly shifted enormous burdens to us, the next generation. No, wait, what they did was allow the economy to grow faster, so that we could afford to pay for all the reckless services instituted by Johnson, Carter and others. What would be a burden for our children would be to create more programs that blow through taxpayer money like something that blows through money really, really fast. Because with rare exceptions, those programs never go away, even if it turns out that they weren't that great an idea in the first place. Like farm subsidies. Lowering taxes is the only way to prevent the government from hoovering up the whole economy. I think a better legacy for our children (because everything must be for the childen) would be to leave them a world where they could have a job and keep more than half the money they earn from it.

Ps, I think Krugman's slogan is a great idea. We should use it.

Having as your target well paid educators seems a little off. Shouldn't we be trying to get compentant educators? In any event, increasing the quality of our educators is a laudable goal. However, education does not cure stupidity. At best, it ameliorates ignorance. Call me elitist, but the vast majority of people not merely in this country but around the world are not geniuses. Half the world is below average (well, below median) intelligence, by definition; and most of the rest are hovering close to the fat part of the bell curve. There is a limited pool of people who can fully benefit from a great education. It should be offered to all, of course, but it isn't going to help everyone. But even an ideal educational system would not stop bad reporting, lying, and stupid people making bad judgements on inaccurate data.

No matter what their intelligence or education levels, every American has the liberty to choose to think what they want. I may think its stupid, but hey, that's what freedom is.

If you are quoting scare quotes, I have no need to be angry with you, Mike - it only increases my distaste for Krugman.

Check it out: Via geekpress, I see that somebody has created a program which will allow computer users to set up ad hoc one-on-one or small encrypted networks. Cool! Apparently it makes the powers that be verrrrry angry, as it could push file sharing "even further underground." Seeing as how all files are not illegally traded music files, and I can think of a million legitimate uses for such a tool, said powers can take a flier at the proverbial rolling donut. I think this is great, handy, and very dangerous. 

Best part: the program is called "Waste". He's a Pynchon fan! 

[moreover] If you haven't read "The Crying of Lot 49," it's time you do. 
 

Thomas Friedman of the NYT (yeah, I know, I know) has an interesting perspective on the tax cuts here. Here's a little textbite:

"That is, when the president says he wants yet another round of reckless 'tax cuts,' which will shift huge burdens to our children, Democrats should simply refer to them as 'service cuts,' because that is the only way these tax cuts will be paid for - by cuts in services. Indeed, the Democrats' bumper sticker in 2004 should be: 'Read my lips,
no new services. Thank you, President Bush.'"

There are scare quotes within that particular quotation. Deal with it.

As to the NYT having a reporter who made things up, and a lot of the made up information was of course inaccurate, I saw some goofball on MSNBC last night complaining that Iraq is full of Buddhists and no one complains, but everybody complains about America being full of Christians.

Yah-huh. See? This is why we should have well-paid educators. America might be full of Christians, but my complaint is that America is full of stupid people, some of whom make things up and report inaccurately in various media formats. Well paid, competent, dedicated educators mean less stupidity, resulting in less making stuff up and inaccurate reporting. It also means less people will believe the made-up inaccuracies.

As to Friedman's editorial, well, it's a matter of opinion.

Despite the unmedicated ravings of one commenter, I think any objective observer would conclude that I did not take advantage of the weekend absence of both my compatriots.

International treaties that have been given the thumbs up by the senate have the force of law - they are not part of the constitution, any more than a regular statute is part of the constitution. A simple senate vote could pull us out of the Geneva convention (not that we should.) There is some debate on how treaties should be interpreted, and that is a matter for the supreme court - but there is no question that a treaty can not invalidate part of the constitution itself. The ICC treaty would violate the fourth, among others. No treaty could remove the right to bear arms. 

International laws of war, with the exception of the Geneva convention, are rather amorphous. And the Geneva convention deals largely with issues of POWs and the like. There are no treaties, just precedents, and arguments.

The general militia is not the first line of defense. The Constitution provides for an Army and a Navy. If some foreign power can fight their way through that, (hard to believe) *then they'd have to deal with the general population, half of whom own guns. Would you want to attempt to occupy a nation where half the people own guns and don't like you? Even in hellholes like Somalia and Afghanistan, gun ownership is not that prevalent. The general militia is the last line of defense, just as it was in colonial times. (Though more often called into action then.) It is the last line of defense against foriegn invasion, and against domestic tyranny. Of course, the first lines of defense are free press, free speech, elections, democratic institutions, the constitutional amendment process, and the general habits of living in a free soceity.

It was only a matter of time:

An agent of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) used threats of RAVE Act prosecutions to intimidate the owners of a Billings, Montana, venue into a canceling a combined benefit for the Montana chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for Sensible Drug Policy last week.
The RAVE Act, now known officially as the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, championed by Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), was ostensibly aimed at so-called raves, the large electronic music concerts often associated with open drug use, but was so broadly written that opponents argued it could be applied against any event or venue where owners or organizers did not take sufficiently repressive steps to prevent drug use. Opposition to the bill stalled it in the Senate last year, but this year Biden stealthily inserted it into the enormously popular Amber Alert Bill, which passed last month and was signed into law by President Bush.

While the Billings event was advertised as a benefit concert for two local groups interested in drug law reform -- not as a drug-taking orgy -- it still attracted the attention of the DEA. On May 30, the day the event was set to take place, a Billings-based DEA agent showed up at the Eagle Lodge, which had booked the concert. Waving a copy of the RAVE Act in one hand, the agent warned that the lodge could face a fine of $250,000 if someone smoked a joint during the benefit, according to Eagle Lodge manager Kelly, who asked that her last name not be used.

What? The RAVE Act? Used as a bludgeon to chill legitimate political speech? Noooooo...

This outrageous abomination will be with us until some promoter with the stones and resources to actually get hit with a RAVE suit takes it all the way to the supremes. When it happens, I hope it's some pre-law hippie with a flair for public spectacle and an ear for media spin. That would be sweet. In other news, Senator Biden remains an a-hole.

Go pick Dad up from the airport. Why couldn't he have flown into National? I don't want to haul my ass out to Dullas in rush hour.

Mike is on Sabattical. Johno on injured reserve. I have the whole website to myself!! Muwhahahahaha! Now the only person I have to contend with is Judson, and his inane comments. I will rule! I will make the most outrageous right wing statements, and no one will resist!

Sorry, did I say that out loud?

Doctors' orders-- no blogging for me until my wrist heals. Crud.

I will leave you for the short term with this: Buckethead, explain how a handgun ban would violate the 2nd Amendment's militia clause (clause? it's the whole thing), especially if such a ban explicitly excluded hunting rifles and shotguns. If I'm gonna defend my home, a nice boom-stick is the way to go. I understand I'm stirring the pot a bit (a bit??) here, but I've been doing some heavy thinking about this recently and I'd like to hear Buckethead's defense of the liberal interpretation of the second amendment.

In-teresting. Joshua Micah Marshall has discovered that the transcript of the Paul Wolfowitz interview linked to below by Buckethead is, well, less than complete. He has isolated at least one exchange that was left out of the Official Compleat Version. Huh. Without resorting to wild-eyed conspiracy-mongering, it does raise the question of whether other portions were left out. Fact check that ass, Joshua! Fact check that ass!

Insta-man notes that the Guardian has taken down from their website the story about Wolfie, and notes elsewhere that they were quoting from a translation from German of Wolfowitz' original English remarks. While not exactly a retraction (unlike the Powell/Straw meeting-that-wasn't), the Guardian no longer is posting the story as news.

Well, looks like I was wrong about what Wolfie said, or at least about the context and intent.

Buckethead-- yes, we do want our politicians to talk policy. However, we also want to have the cake too. As my crony Bridget pointed out, Wolfie has been acting recently like a diplomat speaking to diplomats in private, when he should probably be speaking like a politician.

I seem to have heard of this Harry Potter person. English, is he? Some sort of mystic?

It looks like certain types are always going to quote him out of context to make their own political points. Perhaps he missed an opportunity to shut up, but shouldn't we want our leaders to be discussing matters of policy? I thought that's what they're supposed to do.

Amazon is reporting that it has received over one million orders for the new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book, due out June 21. That's twice the number it received for number four, H.P. and the Goblet of Fire. I personally can't wait for Amazon to ship mine, so I have mine on reserve at the local Borders.

Instapundit links to a post that makes a good point, though Insta makes his own point a bit inelegantly. The full text of Wolfie's speech suggests that he made his "sea of oil" quote in regard to the ineffectiveness of economic sanctions against Iraq. That is, North Korea doesn't have oil, therefore sanctions are possible, but Iraq has lots of oil, which they can always sell to mitigate the effects of sanctions. Nevertheless, I'm thinking Wolfie would have done very well not to have brought it up. To paraphrase Jacques Chirac, he missed a golden opportunity to keep his fat yap buttoned.

Interesting to see where this one is gonna go. I may have jumped on this grenade a bit too soon, but hey, it's pretty early to tell either way.

If you look just at the quote from the Guardian, there is sense there. Before the libervation, we had good reason to believe that Saddam was developing or had developed WMD. Compare the situation to North Korea. North Korea, despite its nastiness, does not either sit on, or threaten neighbors that sit on, a natural resource essential not merely for us, but for the entire free world. Which of two vile dictatorships do you target first? That is not shallow thinking, in my opinion. We seem to have a list of nations that we would like to do something about. It makes sense to prioritize that list based on a combination of immediate threat, geopolitical significance, and ease of operations against them.

Regarding Bush & co., I don't think he's much of a liar, which seems to be a common charge against him. (See what I did there? That was dry-witted understatement-- a clever writing device. I'm trying to use more of those. This digression is another one. Thank you, Mickey Kaus!) Bush has been remarkably consistent and on-message throughout his campaign and Presidency. The closest he comes to lying is handing down unfunded mandates (education, AIDS) for programs he talks up but doesn't really care about (I kind of have a problem with that. It's mealy-mouthed.). My big problem with Bush is that on the whole I don't agree with his outlook, most of his policies, or most of his leadership decisions not related to kicking Taliban ass.

Not coincidentally, I'm going to a meeting of Howard Dean supporters tonight.

I did just make that same point in an email-- that 'bureaucracy' has been taken to mean 'artifice'. I'm going to give this one 24 hours to marinade before I bring out the long, dull knives, but I dunno, man. Something smells here, and I remembered to shower today.

...to jump to conclusions. I would be interested in seeing the complete transcript. The Guardian mentions that recently Wolfowitz was quoted as saying, "for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction." The transcript shows that the actual quote was,

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." (emphasis mine.)

Wolfowitz continues,

"there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two."

Not quite what the Guardian, and others, have tried to make it out to be. I would not be surprised to find that something similar was happening here.

[Moreover] The administration has been very clear about aims, and reasons, throughout this whole thing. The only thing that they obscure is actual plans, which would be foolish and irresponsible to reveal.

You mean, it really was all about the oooooil?

Geez.... Wolfowitz is on a kick...

[moreover] Look. I don't give a damn whether the war was really about oil, Barbie Dolls, or what. A tyrant is gone, yippee-ki-ay. However, I do feel that the folks in charge weren't as forthright as they could have been about all this. This kind of thing is doing us huge damage in the international scene. And while not every nation needs to be our friend, we can't go it completely alone, either. They're about to string Tony Blair up over there, and he's our number one homie! If that's how Bush leaves his friends to be treated...

Via Dave Barry, you CANNOT TELL ME that there are worse drivers than Boston drivers. You CANNOT.

In the comments to Mike's post, Judson accuses me of being a clueless suburbanite. Yes, I now live in an almost crime free neighborhood. And no, I would not choose to move to Mike's neighborhood, or to Anacostia in DC. But I have lived in bad neighborhoods. When I lived in Columbus, there were gun fights in the alley behind my house. A sixteen year old was killed in a drive-by at the stop and rob on the corner half a block from my front door while I lived there. And when I lived there, I had a gun. I would have recommended that everyone in that neighborhood get a gun. But personal experience is not the only justification for having an opinion, or why bother to have a civilization?

Relaxing gun restrictions will not have any effect on how many guns are in the hands of criminals. Criminals, being criminals, do not care about gun laws. Law abiding citizens, being law abiding, do. When you relax the laws, you allow the good people to own guns. In Virginia, no one has ever had a Concealed Carry permit revoked for using their weapon inappropriately. In Florida, out of thousands of permits, I believe two have been revoked - and one was revoked because the permit holder committed a non-violent felony, and had his permit pulled. Law abiding citizens do not shoot people just because they have guns. If they did, we would all be dead, because half the households in this country have guns. 

American society is not one of the most violent in the world - we don't even make the top ten in the industrialized world. (Study by University of Leiden, in the Netherlands.) England, at the top of the list, has a violent crime rate that has skyrocketed over the last decade. Which, coincidentally, is how long they've had a total ban on gun ownership. Then, think of the third world - Sudan, Congo, Sierra Leone, and the like. We are completely non-violent in comparison. (Switzerland has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Everyone there is legally required to own not just a gun, but assault rifles.) 

I do not approve of violence. I think it is a terrible thing, as any sane man would. Of course it is the last resort. But the purpose of putting guns in the hands of citizens is to deter violence from criminals with guns. Arming citizens would do nothing to increase violence - they have no desire to commit crimes. I have two guns, but I am not about to go out shooting someone because of the evil influence of my guns. Only if they came into my home, or threatened my family, would I even consider using them. The Supreme Court has ruled that the police have no requirement to protect people. Mostly, they clean up the mess after a crime has been committed. I don't want to wait for them. While a gun does not offer perfect safety, it certainly increases my chances. And it certainly increases the chances for Mrs. Buckethead. 

It is our responsibility, as citizens, to create a safe society. And if we aren't armed, the gangbangers and thugs aren't going to listen to the sweet voice of reason.

Geek Press points to this excellent Primer on Boston-area English. Excerpts:

• Westa Wihsta: Terra incognita; beyond the bounds of civilization. (For the uninitated, Worcester is about an hour west of Boston, which is about half an hour farther than most Bostonians would dream of driving without packing a lunch and reserving a hotel room).
• Irish Riviera: The South Shore, extending from Nantasket Beach as far south as Sandwich on the uppa Cape, with its cultural center in Scituate.
• Packie: Wheah you buy beah.
• PSDS:What you get when you want to wear earrings. Reuven Brauner submits the following similar examples: We saw BSNDS at the zoo in Franklin Park. We bought it at CS and Roebuck's. Mother always said, "Don't forget to wash behind your ES." The Boos and GS got to Mantle. PS are a juicy fruit. Crying causes TS. This car VS to the left.

Even more than people think, New England is home to about a million localized accents and vocabularies. If you know what you're doing, you can tell someone from Saco apart from someone from Kennebunk, and neither of them sound a THING like a Gloucesterman, much less an aging stylene from Revere. Get me drunk. Ask me to do my Noath Shoah thing. You'll love it! Entertainment! 

Further proof that "homeland" sometimes stretches no farther than a man's eye can see. 
 

Can you imagine what the founding fathers would think of federal taxation now. The taxes they saw as tyrannical were chump change compared to what we get saddled with. If someone lets you know a good work on that subject, pass it on to me. 

I am a law abiding citizen. Married, kid, dog cat, house, the very model of the upstanding citizen. (Now.) I have nothing to fear from the police. Yet every time I see a cop, I get a twinge of fear in the small of my back. Go figure.
 

John Lott, who wrote the book "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press) has studied the linkage between gun ownership, particularly in areas with shall issue concealed carry laws, and reduced crime rates. The more restrictive the gun laws, the higher the violent crime rates. Cities tend to have the most restrictive gun ownership laws, but not all cities. On the bad side, look at DC - which has the most restrictive gun laws in the country, or what has happened to crime rates in England since the complete ban on weapon ownership. "The counter-argument might be that homicides won't disappear if guns are removed, and will still be accessible if they are banned. I say give it a try." It has been tried, and criminals still have guns, and citizens cannot protect themselves. This policy is a failure. If people in your neighborhood were armed, adnd were able to defend themselves, the criminals (who are not completely stupid) would change their behavior. Where gun restrictions are relaxed, this is what happens. 

And that is merely the pragmatic argument. Mike, I'm surprised at you - you would forfeit your right to defend yourself? You would meekly wait for the police to arrest the people who kill or rob you, long after it would do you any good? Guns allow you to defend yourself from the thugs in your neighborhood - even many of them. Despite your formidable infighting skills, only a gun would allow you to face down five or six drug addled violent teenagers. 

[Moreover] You can have my Kimber .45 Semi-Automatic when you pry it from my cold, dead, hand. 
 

I apologize for the over-the-top characterization of your arguments, I have sacked the overzealous aides responsible for the phrasing of my remarks. Nevertheless, I felt that your statement, "The weaknesses of the Soviet bloc economies did not develop until the mid 1970s." was flatly untrue. We have a run and gun type methodology here, as you may have noted in the running battles between Mike and I. Despite the occasional drop of bile, Mike and I will sit down to a comradely beer as soon as we are in the same zip code. Your opinion (and I have enjoyed reading your comments over the last few weeks) is certainly worthy of consideration. It just happened that you were wrong. 

In your lengthy comment, which I posted below, you revise and extend your first remarks. Saying that Soviet economic situation only became exploitable in the late seventies is a different thing. In many respects, your comments make my point - which is that Reagan won the cold war, and another point, which was that the weakness of the Soviet economy existed before the late 70s. I will work around to this in a minute.

But first, some thoughts on your comments. You ask the question, do economies that can't grow fail? They don't fail of themselves, they fail when they come into direct conflict with a more capable economy. While this sounds like rank social Darwinism, we have seen this time and again. A great power which can no longer compete must fail, or become a backwater. 

Your example of Prussia is interesting. Prussia for years remained an economic backwater. In pre-industrial warfare, a small nation could become a power all out of proportion by a high degree of mobilization, and inspired leadership. Frederick the Great was a military genius, and one reason he was successful is that he was willing to commit his troops to decisive battle when most of the powers of the age were locked in a mindset of limited warfare of maneuver. In this sense, Frederick prefigured the genius of Napoleon. But the economic backwardness was a permanent brake on the ambitions of Prussia. Prussian leaders ameliorated this situation somewhat by absorbing more economically vital regions of Germany through military power. But the Junker class resolutely kept the Prussian vaterland in a state of economic backwardness. Prussia was destroyed by the unleashed monster of Revolutionary then Napoleonic France. Would a more economically powerful Prussia been able to resist? Possibly, but the only nation that successfully resisted Napoleon took a rather different path. 

England was a rising power. Though the primary focus of England was on Naval power, the real source of her strength was financial. By copying the financial system of the Netherlands and then improving it, they laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution. But the full economic benefits of the Industrial Revolution did not really take hold until after the Napoleonic wars. In all of its eighteenth century wars (except one - yay, us!), and in the Napoleonic wars, England's powerful economy allowed it to prevail. It provided the navy, it subsidized economically backward but well populated continental allies, and allowed the Royal government to borrow money at rates well below anyone else. 

You mentioned, "Spain, as a world power, could have survived had it not been for the changes in warfare. New defensive methods made waging war against cities long and costly." Who instigated those changes? The Dutch, and later the English. Maurice of Nassau completely reinvented the European army. The British adopted and improved on this. And invented the modern navy. Why did these nations take the lead in the revolution in military affairs? They had societies and economies that were open to change and innovation. The closed economy of the Spanish, kept alive on life support from New World gold and silver, had the plug pulled eventually. 

How did the tiny Netherlands hold off the Hapsburg empire that was half of Europe, for ninety years? Part of the reason was their advances in military technology. But the biggest part was finance. The Spanish broke themselves on Dutch mercantile savvy. No matter what the Spanish destroyed, the Dutch could afford to rebuild, again and again. And eventually, the Spanish ran out of American silver. The result was a Spain impoverished for centuries. 

When you speak of Eastern Europe, you say that the government implemented reforms under cover of détente. But these were not reforms, as you yourself state in the next couple sentences. What it was, was a shift of production goals, using the same totally inefficient system of central planning. There was no change in the apparatus of the communist economies, in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. Same five year plans, same endemic misreporting of economic data, same shortages of staple goods. I would argue that the Blue Jeans revolution was not a desire for actual levis, but rather for the freedom that the levis symbolized. That the governments of the Eastern Bloc attempted to bribe their citizens with material goods - after the political protests of 56 and 68 - tends to support this. (And if the Yugo is the prime example of a communist economy surmounting inherent structural problems, well, damn.) 

The reason that in the west, "High levels of defence expenditure became steadily less burdensome to the US as growth increased in the 1980s," was a result of Reagan's economic policy. That the Soviet economy stagnated was a result of the political ideology of the Communists. It stagnated quicker, because the leadership made the strategic error of trying to use an inadequate tool to achieve too many goals. If they had continued to limit consumer production, the instruments of state terror could have kept the people in line - but the result would have been the same. There is no way that the Soviet economy could have kept up with the west, especially as computer technology became more and more prevalent in the west, instigating the immense productivity boom of the nineties. 

Soviet growth was not exceptional - it was unstable, in that it couldn't continue. But the pressure that Reagan put on the Soviets, both through political, military and economic means, pushed them over the edge. The Soviets were spending over 30% of GNP on defense in the late eighties, in a vain attempt to keep pace with the Americans. We were spending 5%. 

Of your four possibilities for the fall of the USSR, the first two really ignore Soviet history before Brezhnev. The fourth is wrong, I think, and for some of the same reasons. In the last years of Tsarist Russia, the economy was booming. Industrial production, investment, agricultural yields were all growing at high rates. The revolution put an end to all that. Between the revolution, the civil war, the disastrous first years under Lenin's economic plan, then the purges and famines of the thirties - these tragic blunders set the USSR back decades. So, while there is debate about how high Soviet GNP growth rates were in the fifties and sixties - given the constant misinformation that lower level officials fed to their superiors - they were on the steep part of the growth curve. 

China dodged the bullet of communist economic decline, and achieved double digit growth rates when they introduced real market reforms - again, on the steep part of the curve, when gains are easy. If the best that the Soviet Union could do was on par with the growth of the mature industrial economy of the US, that is pathetic. The problems of the Soviet Union went far beyond those of the Tsarist regime. Brezhnev never made any structural changes to the Soviet economy - just changed production goals in the five year plan. And by the time of Gorbachev, it was too late. 

While I believe that the Soviet economy was limited from the start, that is not the sole reason that the Soviet Union fell. The Soviet economy was limited because of the political ideology of the Communist rulers. In the absence of the west, an isolated communist system could have survived indefinitely. North Korea limps on, while its people starve, because the west has no driving need (yet) to directly oppose that lunatic regime. If Brezhnev had made the decision to continue to limit consumer production, and used the instruments of state terror to keep the populace in line, he might have prolonged the demise of the Soviet system. But the decision of the west to fight communism (and the fact that their political/economic system is so much more productive and flexible) is what doomed communism in general. The actions of Reagan and Thatcher in particular led to the actual downfall.There were other times when the west could have exploited significant economic weaknesses in the Soviet Union. The twenties and thirties, right after WWII, up to the mid fifties, at least in Eastern Europe. No one actually did, though. And Kennedy almost got us all killed a couple times in the sixties, when the Soviets were probably at their strongest in relation to the west. But Reagan used the freedom that is essential to both our politics and economics to defeat the Soviets. This is appropriate, and good.

I must not think bad thoughts posted a lengthy commentary to my Reagan post, I reproduce them in their entirety, so that I may respond to it. 

While I can admit that my point is debatable, calling it absurd is unreasonable and insulting. This is long. I feel I need a broad base by which to deal with the critique--that my opinion lacks merit. I am embarrassed that I must prove that my opinions is worthy of consideration. 

First, I am not complaining that there were no structural problems with the Soviet economy until the 1970s. What I am claiming is that they did not become exploitable until the communists attempted to ameliorate their economic structure. 

My point was that the need to use consumerism to placate calls for political reforms exposed limitations of the Soviet economy. Did those limitations always exist? Yes. Were they fatal? This is a highly debatable point.

Do economies that have limited capacity for growth ultimately fail? Gerschenkron would say no: they apply a combination of political pressure and force in order to maintain acceptable levels of production. This is especially true of states that have agrarian economies. Prussia, for instance, achieved substantial worldwide influence starting from a feudal economy. The feudal lords (Junkers) joined the state in a project of Central European conquest; the serfs remained a disenfranchised underclass. The undoing of Prussia was not the economy or the political system, but the ambition of the political class in international affairs. They were not inhibited by the structure of the economy. One reason why was because the Junkers learned to coexist with other economic elements in the emerging German state (the Ruhr coal and steel barons.) (See Arno Mayer, Persistence of the Old Regime.) 

Spain, for a counterpoint, became a world power through the discover of the New World. The precious metals that it received financed military expansion on both land and sea. What Spain did not do was invest in production--the Spanish economy remained fixed in feudal agricultural modes and had little chance of expansion. However, its undoing was not immediate. Spain, as a world power, could have survived had it not been for the changes in warfare. New defensive methods made waging war against cities long and costly. From the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries Spain waged war in highly urban areas: for almost eighty years in the Northern Netherlands, and for thirty years in the German Rhineland. Furthermore, Spain committed itself to maintaining dominance in the Mediterranean (as a defense to the expansion of Islam.) In the Spanish case the circumstances that were encountered led to its demise (a slow death while it could barely keep control of its empire.) New World gold flowed through Spain, barely touched by the Spanish themselves, and passed on to foreign merchants and bankers who produced armaments for the crown. (See Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road.) 

The demise of Spain corresponded to the ascent of the Netherlands (or more properly, the United Provinces.) The Dutch perfected merchant capitalism. They introduced financial innovations and greatly expanded the scope of banking (Amsterdam Bank, Wisselbank.) They introduced the concept of private ownership of public services (a popular cry was that anyone could buy stocks in the Dutch East India Company.) Most economic historians would agree that Amsterdam was the "center of the world" until 1690. The economy had no limitations. Why did it decline? The Netherlands failed to industrialize because the economy had been so well perfected--no one willed such change. There were no financial impediments to industrialization. Even after Britain soared ahead on the innovations of Arkwright, the Dutch made no attempt to emulate British factories. (See The First Modern Economy, van der Vries.) 

Do communist economies ultimately fail? China is a glaring example of how they might not (of course, the jury is still out.) What has impressed some economists and brought chagrin to the doomsayers is that the Chinese government has proven to be very adaptable to Western intrusion, adopting "limited market reforms" where other communist nations have failed. Some fear that China will marry capitalism to authoritarianism (a point which I would dispute, but that is nonetheless allowable.) 

China might be sui generis. How about other communist economies? The collapse of Yugoslavia is almost impossible to explain by reference to economics. There exists a near consensus that national identity played the dominant role in the collapse of Tito''s state. I haven''t the qualifications to debate this point. I would only point out that Yugoslavia succeeded better than other communist states at producing for the world market, overcoming some of its economic shortcomings. 

Eastern European states present the most glaring example of state collapse of the Soviet type. But there appears to be consensus on this issue. Following the 1968 revolutions the hardline communists, after purging their ranks, focused on placating the populace by providing them with consumer goods. It was under the conditions of detente that these governments attempted economic reforms. This worked for a while. However, making consumer goods accessible meant keeping purchasing costs low at the expense of the state. In essence, the state financed consumption. This is a bad sign for any economy: one wants to sell a lot at home to keep production costs low and make back money through exports. The other side of the equation did not work well either: the goods that they produced generally flowed only within the CMEA through exchanges of goods rather than monetary transactions. By the late 1980s the states could not finance consumption or increases production of consumer goods. Consumer issues drove political protests. The trope of the "Blue Jeans" revolution is so pervasive as to be stifling. (See Rothschild, Kaser, Ash ... hell, anyone who is serious about Central and Eastern European studies.) The big exception to this story might be East Germany, which had always been highly endowed with consumer goods (in order to invite comparisons with West Germany; this has probably fueled as much of the current animosity toward Germans as has WWII.) Nationalism (desire to reunite with other Germans) did more to lead to the collapse of Honecker''s government. 

What about the USSR? Was its demise genetic? After a review of the literature, there appear to be four prevailing opinions. First, Brezhnev undertook economic reforms that led to stagnation in the 1980s that brought the downfall because the Soviet system was incapable of making the necessary political reforms (closest to my opinion.) Second, related to the first, that the stagnation became problematic because of how Gorbachev handled it. Third, that the communist regime had only limited potential from the start (closest to your opinion.) The fourth is surprising. I was not aware of it until I reviewed the lit. It basically says that the problems of the USSR were inherited from the previous governments. The collapse of the Soviet Union should, in this context, be seen as the demise of an Asiatic Russian empire that failed in its European ambitions. (This last view is new to me, but it is somewhat attractive.) There are other views that put the collapse more clearly in the politics rather than economics. 

The current guru of economic history, Niall Ferguson, would place the collapse in about the same era as I would:

"From 1950 until around 1974, the Soviet Union enjoyed real GNP growth rates compared to those of the US; indeed in the late 1950s and late 1960s they might even have been higher. But from the mid-1970s Soviet growth lagged behind. High levels of defence expenditure became steadily less burdensome to the US as growth increased in the 1980s. But the Soviet defence burden rose inexorably because the arms race accelerated while the planned economy stagnated. ... The advantage lay with the side capable of paying for armaments without stifling civilian consumption and living standards in the long run." (The Cash Nexus)

Ferguson clearly places consumerism into the mix. The USSR did experience extraordinary growth up until 1970. Brezhnev and other state planner realized that this growth was unstable. Reform of production was becoming critical. However, these reforms could not take place simply through normal economic planning.(G Schroeder) They required greater involvement by workers, either through economic incentives or through political power. The latter was clearly impossible:

"A lesson from ... the Brezhnev years was that tinkering with the command economy would make little fundamental change in economic performance. Some degree of marketization was required. But the more radical the economic reforms that one envisaged, the more likely it seemed that political reform would need to proceed them. The general secretary is not the tsar. If he trods on his colleagues'' toes without reducing his dependence on them, he could be removed from the Politburo." (Lieven)

Walter Laquer points out that poverty was pervasive in the Soviet Union. However, the people who lived in shacks and picked wild berries were not the ones to revolt. The ones who did were those of the "middle class" (professionals), the ones for whom "there was enough bread, and virtually everyone had a television" during the 70s and 80s. 

The Brezhnev years are difficult to come to terms with. He set out reforms that some would credit with setting the stage for Perestroika. Others, while acknowledging this fact, also point to the muddling of the reforms--that they led to stagnation. (S Cohen) 

Consumerism was the only carrot that the communists held out to Soviet citizens. Financing consumption placed greater demands on the economy, further negating the effectiveness of investments in production. The need to engage in production for consumers greatly taxed the Soviet system, displacing pressure from the political arena into the economic. Laquer, however, points to an unwillingness on the part of the political classes to engage political reform rather than on the inability of the communist economy to adapt; the decisions to postpone political reforms intensified economic problems. It is in this context that Reagan''s policies must be seen.

Equality of outcome does not mean that everyone gets the same deal. A cornerstone of Socialist thought is each according to his need. Steve the technical writer has a family to provide for, Mike the adjunct prof, though he would like one very much, does not. Regardless, Mike the adjunct prof, without a family, does not need as much as Steve. 

Granted, Mike the adjunct prof could have chosen a more lucrative career path, but the world would be a better place if people were able to apply their best talents and skills in a way that helps society. It's not the way things are, but it's a goal that can be achieved. Educating people helps society. No one wants a society full of ignorant people. All I ask is a living wage. 
 

I'm opposed to gun ownership in general. Two years ago, my city had the highest homicide rate in the United States, and the vast majority of those homicides were committed with firearms. Last Saturday at 4:30 in the afternoon, there was a shooting right in front of my building. Literally half a foot from the front door of my building. I hear shots fired in my neighborhood at least once a week, sometimes more. I'm getting a little tired of diving onto the floor, and that doesn't help me if the first shot fired is the one that comes through my window. 

The counter-argument might be that homicides won't disappear if guns are removed, and will still be accessible if they are banned. I say give it a try. Everything else hasn't worked. I'm getting tired of living on my floor, and I'm getting tired of turning on the local broadcast news to see that another little girl was shot with an automatic weapon while playing in front of her home. 

Of course, banning firearms would still be a band-aid. People here in the inner city don't have equality of opportunity even. Many of them are stuck without an education and without jobs, certainly decent jobs that they can make enough to live on. Hence they turn to crime and gangs. Even with banned firearms, people will still engage in criminal behavior unless society adjusts and makes an effort to accomodate them with work and education. One of the things I like about my city college is that any number of my students are getting higher education where they might otherwise not, and a chance to make a better way for themselves. The problem is that only the tip of the iceberg even makes it into a city college classroom.

Apologies to Judson. You're okay.

No posts for awhile.

People in my neighborhood are armed. To the teeth. That's why shootings happen so often, including in front of the door to my building. Relaxing gun restrictions will increase the number of armed gangbangers. There are already a lot of them. People are shooting each other every day in this and other cities. 

So the solution is to arm everybody? That's rich. American society is already one of the most violent in the world. This is easily one of the worst neighborhoods on the planet. The goal should be to make society less violent, not more. I'm not convinced, regardless of any studies or books published (frankly, as an academic, I can say from experience that books and studies are often, though not always, full of shit), that arming everyone is the solution. When people have guns, they use them. 

As you allude, I am familiar with violence. I have been both its victim and its perpetrator. When I was two years old someone held a shotgun in my face and might have killed me had I not been rescued. Thus, it is because I am familiar with violence that I dislike it. In my post-adolescent years, I have considered it an absolute last resort. Would I defend myself again if necessary and able? Absolutely. But 4 or 5 attackers is more than most mortals can handle, or 3, and even 2, unless you get off a good suckerpunch on the first one. I don't want to live in a world where I have the option to blow people's heads off if I feel threatened. Quite honestly, I think if someone is really serious about hurting another human being, might as well embrace the atavistic, savage, merciless, vicious beast that the human animal really is beneath the surface. If a person really wants to kill someone else and isn't bad enough to kill someone bare-handed, they're not bad. They're a punk. People who use guns to shoot other people are small men trying to make themselves feel big. 

I never wait for the police, or even bother to call 911 when I hear shots. The police don't do anything. The current situation is that every day I live in this crime infested sewer of a neighborhood, I'm rolling the dice. That's life. I won't arm myself with a gun to make myself feel safe, or big. Quite frankly, I don't think that people are safe even with guns. That just leads to exchanging shots in an attempt to kill the opponent before they kill you. In a lot of cases around here, I think people who fire, instead of anticipating that the othe person has a gun and avoiding them, just try to get off the first shot. There was a guy here who was walking down the street with a friend of his. In passing two other people on the sidewalk, he bumped shoulders with the other guy, who turned and shot the first guy to death. If the first guy had a gun on him, he still would have been shot. If the first guy had a gun and fired after bumping shoulders with the other, he would have been guilty, just that their positions were reversed. But what happened is that someone was shot to death by a total stranger for no reason. If the victims of John Lee Malvo and John Muhammad had been armed, would they have been able to defend themselves? They never saw it coming. I am shocked and saddened by the amount of random violence in this world. More guns means more violence, not less. 

I don't pretend to have the answers. I have ideas. I think that reducing poverty and unemployment will also reduce crime significantly. I also think that putting guns in people's hands gives them the means to kill people that they wouldn't otherwise have. I don't have the power to take your gun. I am not actively doing anything to take your gun. But I think if I ever made you mad enough to do me physical harm, you'd do me the courtesy of a straight fight where the odds are even instead of shooting me. The assholes in my neighborhood probably won't, but I'll just have to take my chances. 

Everybody has to die of something. If I get shot, which is a fairly strong possibility given the large numbers of people who get shot in this city, then, so be it. I'll have to either live in agony, bleeding on the sidewalk, or die with that decision. As you pointed out, I have no family. No one relies on me. The world will not be significantly different without me in it. That's my choice. It's a short life in a hard world, where life turns on a dime, and having a gun won't change that.

Via a whole slew of links I followed comes this 2001 CNN article about the isolation and mistrust of government in the hills of North Carolina.

Historians say that if western North Carolinians have chips on their shoulders, they have a right. "People in that area have been cheated out of everything, starting with the Indians and continuing with the white settlers," said Jane Brown, an instructor in history and anthropology at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.

Read on: it's a good point. Let's also not forget that the region has a long history of armed rebellion against various authorities such as the Regulators of the late 18th century rebelling against the English Crown, and a great many hill folk opposing the Civil War and the Confederacy. It's a region that has long chosen its own path.

Buckethead-- when are you ever on your meds?? Haw!

On visceral distrust of the government: when's the last time you were stopped by the cops and didn't wonder for a minute if you were going to be harassed this time? Happens to me every single time, even though I've only been harassed once. It was a bogus traffic stop for what we used to call "country line dancing" when the cop thought my hippie hair looked suspicious.

[Moreover] The history of tax rebellions in British America and the USA is a long and fascinating one that I need to read more about. Anyone know a good text on this subject? I've read most of the major histories of frontier rebels in the US, but not all tax rebellions were frontier rebellions, and vice versa, and the frontier stuff doesn't cover any of the great revenuer/moonshiner battles of the 19th and 20th centuries.

[Moreover, once over] I love NASCAR racing. Love it. Don't watch it as much as I should, but love it. Did you know stock car racing in the South got its start because the best moonshine smugglers liked to find out who was the fastest driver among them? In a way, tax rebels and rumrunners are indirectly responsible for one of the most popular and lucrative spectator sports of our time. Nifty! History at work! And it's loud, too!

I've always hated that name. It has a whiff of fascism. Lileks has some thoughts on the topic of Rudolph - noting that now he's Eric Robert Rudolph, so he must be guilty. Lot's of other good stuff in there, including the filthiest joke ever broadcast. 

In my more paranoid moments, I share that visceral distrust of government. When I'm on my meds, that feeling makes me conservative - if you distrust the government, you want less of it. One thing that has continually puzzled me about the left is their fascination with government conspiracy theories, side-by-side with an unwavering faith that if we gave the government all the power, things would magically transform into the socialist utopia.

And speaking of distrust of government, that is why the anti-federalists insisted on the inclusion of the second amendment. The federalists didn't demurr, because they distrusted government too, just not quite as much. The armed rebellion of the founding fathers would not have been possible had not large members of the populace had guns. They understood that ownership of guns bred the kind of moral capacity that they wanted in citizens - the self reliant yeoman farmer concept. If you are responsible for your own defense, and that of your family, you are not a dependent of the government. Your are not a subject, you are a free citizen. It breeds independence as a mindset. 

Perhaps in Eric Rudolph, it bred a little too much independence. But there's always going to be wackos. Out of a quarter plus billion people, we have generated a few home grown terrorists over the last couple decades. Out of vastly smaller population, the Palestinians generate several a month. If fundamentalism has something to do with terrorism, we don't really have it here. 

[btw: Mike, do you personally not want to own guns, or do you believe that I should not own a gun?]

Mike, I could let it go at an agree to disagree, but I won't. Consider this thought experiment. Equality of outcome has been magically decreed. One guy, we'll call him Mike, is a hard working teacher at a city college somewhere in the midwest. His income is relatively low, even though he has five advanced degrees in anthropology, history, paleontology, particle physics and basket weaving. He has spent a great deal of effort to gain this knowledge, because all he has ever wanted to do is teach. Another guy, we'll call him Steve, is a technical writer in our nation's capital. Though he has not earned a degree, since he got married and realized he needed a career, has worked very hard to develop one that will provide a decent income for his family. He has no particular attachment to technical writing, though he doesn't mind it. His interests lie outside his career - money has been the primary driver for career. His income is now substantially above the national average.

These two people have made different choices, because, well, they had the freedom to do so. Now the magical income leveler is voted in, and now everyone has the same income, same medical care, same everything. Mike's income jumps dramatically. Steve's is cut in half. 

Is it fair because it balances out? Because one person benefitted and one did not? While Mike did not personally come to suburban northern Virginia, and put a gun to Steve's head to get the extra money, his agent the government did. Mike could have chosen a different career path. A man of his clear ability and intelligence could have devoted himself to a career track that resulted in money. He did not. That is not a reason to steal money from someone who did. Do not take this to mean that I believe their should be no government administered social safety net, for those who run into truly bad times. But freedom means you make your bed, and then you sleep in it.

Mike, I was just illustrating that if class were the dominant pattern in our society, it would overwhelm other arrangements. Voting patterns are one way of seeing what a group of people feel are their interests.

Mike Hendrix at Cold Fury has a great post up about Eric Rudolph, Domestic Terrorist. It's a response to an Andrew Sullivan piece dicussing the role of fundamentalism in fostering terrorism. Hendrix sez: 

"He's right on that as far as it goes, but he's missed something here, I think. He's assuming that most people around here share Rudolph's fundamentalist hatred of abortion, gays, blacks, etc. And while some most certainly do, Sullivan fails to consider the visceral mistrust and even outright hatred these country people feel for the Feds and especially the FBI, ATF, and IRS - institutions that they may not even know the names or acronyms for but can recognize employees of from a mile away. Anybody from those agencies would have a hard time getting the correct time of day if they had to rely on asking the locals to find out. You can double down on the veiled animosity and politely cooperative non-cooperation if the person asking does so with a Yankee accent. And most of those folks think I talk like a Yankee. If you've ever heard me speak, you know quite well that I do not."

On the same subject, the New York Times discussed yesterday how the people in Rudolph's home town helped him hide out for the last few years. Although done in that inimitable "awww, ain't they quaint" style the Times is so good at, the article deals fairly well with this deep-rooted distrust of outsiders. It mentions signs on restaurants, "Pray for Eric Rudolph," and quotes an old timer as saying "I didn't see him bomb nobody. You can't always trust the feds." Another man is quoted as saying, "He was a man who stood for what he believed in," said Bo Newton, a short-order cook in Andrews. "If he came to my door, I would've given him food and never said a word." A reasonable person might well ask, "What the hell? The guy's a terrorist!" 

This is exactly what I was talking about a few weeks ago (archives are probably hosed...again) when I said that "homeland" is not not not an intrinsically American concept, not like the Feds use it anyway. Like I said-- my homeland is Northeastern Ohio, not the USA. That's probably where I would end up if I were in bad trouble and needed help of the duffel bag and automatic rifle kind. In the same way, Eric Rudolph's homeland is Western North Carolina. In many areas, these ties are far tighter and more compelling than merely political or civil bonds. Family, clan, church, neighborhood, all of these take precedence over what the Federal Gubmint so laughably calls our "Homeland," and they would do well to remember that when they move to prosecute Rudolph. So why would North Carolinans harbor a known terrorist? Three reasons:

1. Because he's family. Sometimes blood is what matters most, for better or worse.
2. Because he bombed a gay bar, an abortion clinic, and the Olympics. I'd imagine a lot of people in the hills of NC, even if they aren't gonna go bomb a clinic themselves, can't find much to get worked up about if someone else holds back the tide of moral disorder and one-worldism.
3. Because f*** the damn Feds.

Final note: I'm with Hendrix-- good moonshine is hard to beat. I've had it exactly once, but daaaaamn. I need to find someone who goes to Tennessee on business from time to time. 

Another final note. Historian David Hackett Fisher devotes a few hundred pages to the origins of the culture Eric Rudolph comes from, in his book "Albion's Seed." Although overlong and overambitious, there's a lot to like and a lot to learn from it.

I don't follow. What's the connection between class and voting?