Dan Savage is my hero

This this little gem is priceless.

Dildos in Texas

"The state Attorney General in Texas, Mr. Greg Abbott, is appealing the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s pre-Valentine’s Day decision to toss out his state’s ban on sex toys, vibrators, and dildos. Allowing Texans to own dildos, the state believes, will lead to Texans fucking members of their immediate families—and then marrying all their relatives too. Only a ban on dildos, it seems, stands between Texas and total incestuous, bigamous anarchy."

Dildos and sex toys and sodomy, oh my!

When are we ever going to grow up?

When we face up to the fact that sinning is less scary than those persistently trying to save us from it.

Noone is tired of this shit, yet?

Clinton aide compares Obama to Starr

Is this the best that the most mature democracy in the world can expect from itself?

Why

Some days, after the hundredth time of being treated like shit by some punk, I don't know why I do this work.

Then I have an hour like this one, where a kid is serious about getting his life straight, and I remember why.

Why dictatorship by any stripe is still despotism

In Cuba, Ignorance in Amber

George is right. It is amazing how long people will go before admitting they are wrong. And how much misery they will cause along the way.

This is why freedom matters no matter what your government says

Cyber-rebels in Cuba Defy State's Limits

Freedom really isn't that complicated. We're just too cowardly to take it seriously. And we're so cowardly, that we look at someone like Fidel Castro and say, "Well at least we're not as cowardly as him."

What a pathetic standard for governance.

Liberty and liberal democracy deserve better.

We all do.

Fear and loathing in the Democratic Party

Fareed Zakaria writes an excellent critique of both major Democratic party nominees and their messages on trade in today's Washington Post/Newsweek PostGlobal forum.

The Democrats Dangerous Rhetoric

It is so refreshing to see prominent liberals calling out the leading liberal American politicians on their illiberal policies and rhetoric.

And Fareed makes exactly the argument on this issue that liberals need to get clear about. Protectionist trade stances are not about helping the disadvantaged. They are about self-interest. Short-term and counterproductive self-interest, to be sure. But there is nothing philanthropic about protectionism.

Free trade is important not just because it is good for America, though it most assuredly is. It is important because it is good for everyone, even when there are some marginal ways in which Americans have to deal with the downsides, as well, that come with competition and trade opportunities in other countries.

Americans famously want everything they face to go their way. They are not unique in this regard. Neither are they to be encouraged or pandered to. And much of American policy, like much of the policy of many countries, has very little to do with what is good for everyone, no matter how much they may protest that such is the case, and much to do with a mistaken perceived notion of what is good for America.

Many foreign policy positions as well as trade positions are about foolish and shortsighted self-centered views on world events and America's stake in them. If you doubt that, just watch American policy vis a vis Iran. How long it takes us to be honest about our failures and mistakes is another question. But the bottom line is that a mistake is a mistake because it doesn't actually yield you the result you want.

Is it really any coincidence that this era of "force" is also an era of self-centered American policy?

Short answer: Nope.

As with virtually all political philosophies that have romanticized force as a governing philosophy, self-centered motivations are typically covered by altruistic rhetoric. But the reality lies right beneath the surface, if we will only look.

Liberty is the value of the confident and those more concerned with the long run than with the immediate gratification that denying it might offer. That is why liberal democracies are, by any objective standard, stronger cultures and nations than the illiberal and undemocratic among us.

But a commitment to liberty means learning to stop giving into the most persistent and nepharious temptation the world has ever known: the temptation of power.

And that is a temptation that liberals and conservatives and all of us are subject to, independent of any merits we might otherwise have.

Me too. I only hope it is not a temptation I am want to give into for long in my own life. Though I really do not covet power. It's forgiveable, whatever the case. Because without it being so, without forgiveness as the more fundamental virtue that people like Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther King, Mohatma Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, and other great people have tried to center in our imaginations, humanity really would be doomed. Because there would be none among us who could pass a test of virtue or integrity. It would all be illusion.

And what kind of world would we live in where honesty is an illusion and power is its replacement. A pretty bleak and cynical world.

And that is the alternative to a world where liberty is taken seriously.

And that is why, as Fareed argues, that those who seek to sell it off to the highest democratic bidder and give into the efforts to force our hands on such questions need to seek higher ground.

Fear is the tool of despotism, as Montesquieu wisely observed so many years ago.

It is not a means of leading free peoples. And it is most certainly not the way to lead the illiberal peoples of the world into freedom. And that, and not the satisfaction of parochial pressure groups, is the challenge before the American and all heads of state in the 21st century.

And that is the larger leadership question facing all of the candidates for the American presidency and every aspirant for leadership in this era of globalization.

In money terms

I'm reading Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor, right now, which is brilliant, by the way, and I think I've decided what my goal in life should be.

I want my value to be considerably higher than my selling price.

I want noone to ever wonder, and frequently doubt, as a matter of principle, if I have something of value to offer the world. I want to make it clear as day that I have something to offer and I'm a person of quality.

I've not been that all my life, sadly. I don't want to go overboard and spend my life trying to prove just how much better a man I am today than the asshole I've too frequently been in my life.

I want people to know that taking stock in me and what I have to offer is a solid investment every time.

That kind of valuation is earned, not asserted and nor speculated into existence. Value is created. And I have an all-too-short lifetime to create some of my own to contribute in this vast and amazing world we live in.

I've got to read Friedrich Hayek, after this. And Peter Drucker. And Baron de Montesquieu. And Voltaire. And John Locke. And Aristotle. And Adam Smith. And Kenneth Arrow. And John Rawls. And Amartya Sen. And Karl Popper. And Milton Friedman. And John Dewey. And Ludwig von Mises. And Alexis de Toqueville. And Lord Acton. And more John Stuart Mill. And perhaps some Joe Nye and Francis Fukuyama. And I need to finally read Francis Fukuyama's The End of History. And lots of history. Really good history. David Fromkin and Stephen Ambrose and Gordon Wood and James McPherson and David McCullough and John Keegan and the best histories of liberal democracy I can get my hands on.

I want my life to be one of value much more than reward. And perhaps some rewards follow that life, as well. But more importantly, perhaps that life is its own reward.

I'm aiming to find out.

I think like a maniac

Sometimes I wonder if I make any goddamn sense at all.

OK. Back to work.

Vent

I am tired of people pretending like cynical and poor reasoning is really just a better reflection of a reality that those who engage in it have rarely been very thoughtful about and mostly are just bitter and angry about. I have no clue why people would want to live their lives in such ways. But I really do not understand why people would want to pretend with me and with the world that it reflects greater wisdom than it actually does.

I'm tired of it. Especially amongst teachers. It poisons the well that we all have to drink from. It pollutes the air that we all have to share. And, at some level, people just have to get over it.

A cynical outlook will never lead anywhere good. Because it doesn't forecast anywhere good. It always forecasts ugliness. And then wonders why it gets it.

That is why we crave leaders with more hopeful and decent outlooks. Because we need help learning to be better, not wallowing in how we are worse.

Why any person - especially teachers - would behave in such ways and wonder why students do not follow their leads is beyond me. My experience is that cynicism correlates negatively with responsibility. And why anyone would behave in such ways and wonder why people don't follow makes no sense to me.

I cannot name a time that I have taken such a person seriously. Almost always, the person who cared about me, who had something to offer, who was decent to others, and especially if they had proven, substantial, clear-minded wisdom to offer, those were the people I followed.

I am tired of the cynical and self-righteous getting more than their due during this period. It drives me up a fuckin' wall to watch it all and call it good.

It'd be nice to have a world that I could count on telling kids and adults alike, "You can make a lot of yourself in this world. If you fall down and screw up, you'll be ok and we'll all be rooting for you. And we really believe that everyone can do that if they take seriously their own potential. Now go make something of yourself."

And people who have or do make something of themselves generally offer that message, more. It's the shitheads who can't take responsibility for their own fuck-ups in life who screw it up for everyone, including and especially their own children and children, generally.

And, too often, today, that is all of us. It's a sad spectactle. Surely we have more to offer.

I'll be doing my part. You do your part, and maybe we can make it a reality, more, a day at a time.

The future of liberalism

The Liberal, a very thoughtful liberal publication out of Great Britain, has an excellent review by Simon Kovar of Julia Margo's Beyond Liberalism: Is the Future of Liberalism Progressive? in its current edition.

Beyond Liberty

It's an excellent discussion. And for everyone who is romanticizing the New Deal and postmodernist contributions to the academy, it is a nice corrective for what it means to be liberal.

As Kovar argues:

"Paddy Ashdown posed the question starkly: are those seeking coalition interested in pluralism or merely control? The initial Liberal Democrat response to Tony Blair’s talk of a ‘Third Way’ was to argue that one already exists: it is called liberalism. For Margo, however, liberalism must “find a place in the progressive project”. Moreover, liberals must drop their traditional suspicion of the state as a social-engineer, and Margo even suggests (somewhat revealingly) that the state has much to learn from the techniques of behavioural manipulation exercised by private sector advertisers and publicists. The notion that the latest scientific research has eliminated any need to be suspicious of administrators and bureaucrats is hardly a new idea on the Left, and it is one from which Liberals should instinctively recoil for sound historical and philosophical reasons.

One traditional liberal idea praised by Margo is universal asset policy. Stuart White’s chapter, examining liberal ideas of co-ownership, profit-sharing, employee share ownership and industrial democracy (including even syndicalism), makes it clear that such concepts are not only “traditional” in the classical liberal sense – with roots in 18th Century, pre-capitalist approaches linking property ownership to personal liberty – but were revived under Jo Grimond’s leadership expressly as an alternative to bureaucratic socialist conceptions of the welfare state. Paddy Ashdown envisaged a situation in which workers would employ capital (rather than the other way round), and hire their own management. Yet such thinking faded from the Liberal Democrats under Charles Kennedy’s leadership, and in 2005 the party pledged to abolish Labour’s Child Trust Fund. This trend is indeed to be regretted, and credibly so, from the vantage point of an unqualified liberalism, now as before an alternative to social-democratic progressivism. Both Steve Webb and David Laws use the language of the “enabling state”, an idea quite different from Margo’s interventionist state. Margo writes: “By glossing over the way individuals develop personal autonomy or agency, traditional liberalism has failed to grasp why socialisation is crucial, and hence why the role of the state in this area is so important”. Freeden’s argument deals with the first and second clauses of this sentence; and the third simply does not follow.

We also encounter the proposition that, given trends in public opinion, the present climate offers a “progressive liberal moment” . Unfortunately, as William Wallace points out in his contribution, recent trends in fact offer little succour to liberals. They suggest rather the move towards a strong state, populist politicians, and a passive electorate. To take just one example among many quoted by various contributors to this volume, 45% of Londoners say they would consider voting either for the BNP or for UKIP. That these trends do not appear to shake Margo’s analysis is perhaps not surprising, since they support her commitment to what she describes as “the interventionist left” – by which “intervention” denotes a desire for greater state activity – and the ‘interventionist’ or ‘progressive’ left has often flirted with the politics and populism of the hard and extreme right. Both Nick Clegg and William Wallace warn against the perils of populism, a sound liberal concern, and again we are reminded of the nebulous quality of progressivism, a political tendency that takes many different shades, but seldom liberal ones.

Today’s Liberal Democrats require above all a coherent liberal philosophical definition, and a narrative in continuity with the party’s rich and radical history. One positive aspect of this volume is that the strands of liberal thought are evident in the contributions of politicians as diverse as David Laws and Steve Webb: the nourishment of individuality, a critique of political and economic privilege and monopoly, and the fostering of liberal-democratic citizenship. Each of these strands has a social dimension, beginning with a commitment to education (a striking absentee from any collection claiming to strike new ground). Implicit in the subtitle is a question about whether the future of liberalism may be termed ‘social democratic’, or whether, at the very least, liberalism ought to concede the mantle of forward-thinking to social democracy. Is the future of liberalism progressive? No, it’s liberal."

It is nice to see liberals who take that term seriously and not as some kind of propaganda cover for more power-seeking motivations.

I have not lived through a period, before, where I have been more disgusted with the blurring of those distinctions for political advantage and the hubris of those who seem to argue that the essence of liberal values and a liberal education is that institutions be built where everyone gets free access rather than taking the free development of conscience, thought, expression, and experience more seriously.

The cynical manipulations for power in the more government-friendly form are clearer to me, today, than they were eight years ago, when my identification as liberal was more unqualified.

The truth was that I just got tired of being bullied. And I started to understand why conservatives would be tired of the same. And the whole experience allowed me to appreciate the liberal values and liberal education that I had too often taken for granted up until recently.

The silver lining in this political period is that once your freedom has been threatened more openly, it becomes all the more clear what you had that you were taking for granted when you so easily gave it up for a political cause. That and most of the social democratic concerns I think there are better liberal answers for and I have a clearer idea of what those answers would be. Most social democratic institutions would be better managed as liberal institutions, I think. And our best experiences bear that out more than contradict it, I believe.

This is a moment of enormous hubris for social democratic proponents, I think, seemingly willing to sacrafice as many peoples' lives to their utopian visions as they feel that they must in the name of an ideology with very few very good new ideas to offer for governance or for liberal institutions. And, in absence of better ideas, they demand power, instead, to compensate for their few good answers for serious problems we face.

There are many problems in markets. But they are problems that are best resolved by liberal means, within the market, rather than by social democratic means, hoping that government has more answers than it really does. And, in the meantime, focussing on such problems overlooks the enormous good and opportunities that markets have created for the world by the beginning of the 21st century.

Many of the problems of 21st century liberal democratic life have been created because the markets have done so well, not so poorly. We are a society of enormous abundance and choices and the various ills that come with such freedom and bounty without enough grounding in the values that make them possible.

Stronger liberal educations that we choose rather than the passive ones that many people too often accept could provide more of that grounding. But, even then, either we will take responsibility for such educations and embrace what they have to offer or we will not. And many, likely, will not, if history is any guide. Though we should always hope and work for better and work to prove history wrong when it is not our best effort.

Fundamentally, the future of liberalism is strong because liberalism is strong. Liberal values are stronger than other sorts. And they have borne out that strength so consistently for generations that should give pause to any contrary political moment or strategy.

Hubris is eternal. But it doesn't last long or take us very far. So finally we must find something more real. And liberalism, in the form that takes its root, liberty, more seriously is the substance that we are seeking. Or at least it is the indespensable starting point.

Steroids and professional sports

I've been spending a lot of time, lately, given the troubles for Roger Clemens, to get my head around what I think about this whole steroids scandal in baseball and professional sports.

Intuitively and for all kinds of good reasons, I think Congress and the justice system has been long overboard in their criminal investigations of steroids use by baseball players. Not because it is not illegal, obviously, since it most assuredly is. But because I am not clear, at all, that it should be illegal and I am quite opposed to the idea of roughing up Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, metaphorically, for that purpose. It's classic burn the village to save it mentality and it is a sad reflection on America, its lost sense of real purpose, and the willingness of some to do anything to justify their power and their roles in government and in life.

Andrew Sullivan shares my general outlook in his recent piece on the matter.

"Many of you objected to my pooh-poohing of Congressional investigations into steroid use. You pointed to articles like this one about the unseemly and alarming death rate of pro-wrestlers, caused, almost certainly, by rampant steroid abuse:

USA TODAY's examination of medical documents, autopsies and police reports, along with interviews with family members and news accounts, shows that at least 65 wrestlers died in that time, 25 from heart attacks or other coronary problems — an extraordinarily high rate for people that young, medical officials say. Many had enlarged hearts.

That's awful, but why should it be any business of the government? These are grown men, aware of the risks, and taking them, and dying young. It's their choice, their lives, their bodies. Leave them alone."

That is exactly my outlook. And attempting to ruin the lives of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens to prove some kind of point about this matter or even about the rule of law seems the mentality of those whose outlooks on law and on steroids and any decisions that adults make with their bodies to take both the law and the opinions about how to use the law far too seriously relative to the freedom of every person, professional athletes included, to self-determine their own lives.

If the sports involved, whether they be baseball or wrestling or track or cycling or whatever want to take action that creates some kind of mild deterrent for steroids use that prioritizes the ability of both athletes and fans to watch athletes demonstrate excellence in the sport over some self-righteous notion of how athletes bulk up for such excellence, I don't necessarily have a problem with that. I do think an effort that talked with athletes and said, "Look, our most serious problem is not what you do to your own bodies. Our most serious problem is 1) the distorting impact that steroids have on a clean sport and 2) the influence you have on young people to take the same route, one that is fraught with real dangers to their health," I do think such an effort would be much more effective, long term, than the current piling on, which has both seriously distorted that conversation and brought us news stories of renewed abuse of steriods by some young people, and one that has more respect for the sports heroes involved and more decency and honest handling of this question.

Do I really want to see Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens not to be able to play the game just so I can have a clean game? No. An emphatic no. And all efforts in that direction seem to me to be a serious distortion of sports enthusiasm that loses track of what really counts and matters in the game, namely the ability of the athletes to demonstrate their developed excellence and for us to enjoy watching them do so.

Would I have liked to watch baseball rail down Babe Ruth for his violations of prohibitions against alcohol in his day? Obviously not. For that matter, do I think it was appropriate to ban the Chicago Black Sox from baseball forever for their violations? Definitely not.

The whole exercise simultaneously takes the games too seriously and takes watching excellent sports figures and offering them an opportunity to demonstrate excellence not nearly seriously enough.

And, sadly, the Congressional investigation into steroids in baseball has very little to do with steroids, per se, but with a failed drug war that its proponents cannot accept is failed because it means coming to terms with limitations around law and power, generally, that they are not prepared to come to terms with. And if Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have to go down to ward off the gripping fear that many Congresspeople, politicians, prosecutors, judges, journalists, scholars, and others have that without law having effective control over behavior in liberal democratic (and illiberal and undemocratic) societies, the world will go to hell in a handbasket, then so be it, they reason.

Sadly, very, very sadly, it is all much tragedy for no good reason. Because the limits of the effectiveness of law and power to control human behavior exist whether we want to come to terms with those limitations or not.

And in the meantime, some good men and some excellent athletes, are treated like characters in a national politics and morality play for our amusement. Their tragedy becomes our tabloid cover story, amusing our foolish and impossible notion that we can rid ourselves of more problems by the rule of law than is, in fact, possible.

And if Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Marion Jones and anyone else has to go down to prove that we are serious and proving something that we will never, ever be able to prove no matter how much we try, then so be it, we reason. It is worth making a point that will never, ever be made in any final, ultimate way, no matter how many times we try to make it - because the rule of law never compelled conscience and never will, no matter how much we may try and have tried over the course of the history of humanity to make it do so - because the last thing that its proponents would ever want to admit, no matter how much it might be true, is that they were wrong, that all of this tragedy was for naught, and that they might share some responsibility in that sad fact of life.

Ironic, isn't it? The very people most insistent on teaching Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens responsibility for their behavior are the ones most resistant for taking responsibility, themselves, for their own behavior during the same time.

And that is the sad, cruel fact of teaching responsibility by force. The people most likely to advocate it are those least likely to practice responsibility more honestly or whole-heartedly. And since the beginning of human history they have been responsible for the greatest share of humanity's tragedy and needless death and destruction all in the name of avoiding responsibility on this matter.

If Roger Clemens was my friend, I would tell him to hang in there. And that history will be much kinder to him than his Congressional investigators, and not so kind to those investigators, though it will be kind to them, as well, because we really don't have much choice if we are too look back at our foolish past as better people rather than the cruel and ignorant and foolish lot that we are today and in perpetuity.

Why do I know this?

Because history does not generally move in a more cruel and repressive direction, no matter how many ways this current political era tries to cover for its honest trajectory.

We, generally, become more decent people. And this era will not be different. And more decency will not be remembered as more prison terms or threats thereof to the likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. More decent people will look back at this obviously failed war on drugs, and the war on steroids as a function of that other, larger failed war, and wonder why it took so long for its stubborn advocates and those too power obsessed to think of anything other than to prop it up, to give up the jig.

And the clear answer at this point is: they wanted the power. And the idea that people would determine their own lives, especially in directions they found foolish or they disagreed with or they felt insulted the honor of the game or whatever millionth reason that people just can't seem to get straight that another person's life and conscience and choices are not their own, was so anathema to that desire to control others that they could not possibly imagine what naive innocents would ever create a society where each man and woman would, ultimately, be responsible for themselves.

The truth is that for all of our talk about freedom of conscience and freedom of thought and free will as the basis for morality and life, noone really believes all that fairy tale talk. Cold, hard power. That is what makes us run, we reason. At least in our more cowardly moments.

This political period is one such moment. And I guarantee you that we will not look back on it with pride. Except for those few for whom pride, meaning a stubborn attachment to the obviously wrong, is the only way they know how to live, for fear of taking their own conscience more seriously.

Cowardice and power capture the imaginations, for a moment, many, many times throughout history. It is always and forever only for a moment. Reason wills out because we cannot live without it for long. And we look like damned fools trying. And we will write histories of the future to capture what damned fools we are in the present.

I am tired of watching men and women live through misery so that we do not have to admit that we are damned fools, which is a fact of life whether we want to admit that fact or not. I am tired of watching Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds and Marion Jones being used for our national morality play that is so out-of-whack with any realistic notion of people and their attitude toward their liberty that could ever be taken seriously. I am tired of the pretending by the enormously huge pretenders that their efforts to rid the world of the scourge of steroids and illegal drugs has actually done any good. I am tired of the bullshit and the lying and the pretending and the stubborn failure to admit when the jig is up.

It is not Roger Clemens who needs to acknowledge that the jig is up, right now. It is Congress. And the proponents of this ugly, repressive period in democratic politics.

Force is not freedom. They are obviously mutually exclusive, in fact (though, the purpose of my work around principles of least possible necessary aggression is meant to account for the role of force in a free society, assuming that a free society is still the kind of society we want to live in; I, for one, will settle for nothing less).

But the idea that any group of people would ever be able to sell to the world that force is freedom has got to give Mark Twain a good chuckle and have George Orwell wondering why he wrote those books for, in the first place, if we were never going to use their lessons.

For me, it just makes me enormously sad that people like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemems and Marion Jones get used for our amusement to teach our children lessons that our own examples, for the most part, would not bear up scrutiny for.

Humanity is an enormously cruel and foolish lot. And it is the only lot we have, sadly.

Perhaps we can get it turned around.

Thank you, George

A Life Athwart History

It will be easy for liberals and others less inspired by the life of Bill Buckley to try to dismiss his legacy. But it will not be honest. The honest fact is that people like Bill Buckley and Milton Friedman dramatically changed the discussion about government in the 1950's and 1960's and uniquely, at the time, challenged a Keynesian economic model that has since fallen into disrepute.

The legacy of Bill Buckley and Milton Friedman and other fellowtravelers is one long refuation of any self-righteous notion that any liberal or anyone else in America "knew what was right all along."

They didn't. Noone does. And some people have ideas so powerful and so generally looking in the right direction that they deserve a moment on our part to pause and reflect on the humility of the contributions that each of us has to offer to the world and why none of us should take our opinions so seriously as to think them unchallengeable, despite our vainest attempts to make them indestructable.

Freedom is a mightily indestructable idea, I must say. But the freedom that matters most is that which allows and makes us responsible for engaging a neverending debate about the role of everything in life, government among those things.

There is no end to that debate. And there is no ruling consensus in favor of forcing our way about things that will bring it to some artifical close.

It just goes on.

And thank goodness that Bill Buckley was there to add a verse.

Life is full of irony

Ironically, it is Larry Kudlow's obituary that touched me most.

I hope the National Review will forgive me for reposting it in toto:

"Wednesday, February 27, 2008

I Am Blessed to Have Known Him [Larry Kudlow]

When Rich Lowry called me a while ago to report the passing of Bill Buckley, I had to work hard to catch my breath and swallow this news. He was a great man. I am privileged and honored to have shared a part of his wonderful life over the past fifteen years.

I am very sad right now, and so is my wife Judy. She became a great friend of Bill’s and Pat’s, often sitting down with Bill at the piano at dinners in Stamford, or at our place in Redding. They talked a lot about art and classical music. When I phoned Judy this morning with the news she too was brokenhearted.

In the early to mid-1990s when I was on staff at NR — during the worst period in my personal life — Bill and Pat were like surrogate parents. Later on things got better for me and I grew even closer to them. It was wonderful.

At Pat’s memorial service in New York I cried with Bill as we embraced each other. So I am crying again right now at Bill’s passing.

He encouraged me to become a Catholic. He encouraged me to stay sober. He encouraged me to keep writing columns. He encouraged me stick with my new career in broadcasting. Sometimes he would call, out of the blue, and tell me I was making good progress and that he was proud.

Can you imagine? I’m the one who was proud — proud to be his friend and that he would take a moment of his time to call.

There are so many things I could say about our conversations and discussions and debates — about politics and the economy and so forth. But all of that will come later for me.

Right now my biggest thought — apart from the sadness — is how blessed I am to have been a small part of his remarkable life. His influence on me was enormous.

My deep condolence to Christopher and Priscilla and the rest of the family. I prayed earlier that the Lord Jesus Christ would take good care of Bill and Pat, who are now back together."

I think that's the most genuine thing I've ever read Larry write. I still can't believe he's gone. I'll be looking for Buckley titles the next time I'm out.

Sutherland's maxims

Maxim #1: Don't exceed your limit.

Maxim #2: If someone tells you not to exceed your limit, the tendency of most people is to see whether the've got a point or not.

Maxim #3: If you exceed your limit, and life goes to shit as a consequence, it's better to admit you're a fuckup, pick yourself up, and learn the lesson than it is to pretend that you don't know how to apply the brakes. Your bullshit will catch up with you sooner or later. Put on the brakes sooner rather than later.

Maxim #4: Threatening or in fact making someone's life a living hell for exceeding a limit generally just makes matters worse. It's makes cowards of the rule-breakers and cowards out of all us to admit that we may, in fact, be part of the problem.

Maxim #5: The only solution to this eternal paradox is that the lesson just had to be learned. It cannot be learned by anyone else. And it can't be learned by force. It just has to be learned. It is learned best by giving people and ourselves the space to fuck it up freely, to pick up, and to move on. Absent that, people often end up fucking it up for much longer than necessary, and sometimes to their grave. Somehow, despite our tendency to keep fucking up into perpetuity, we inch forward, with a little help from our failures and the lessons learned.

Maxim #6: If you're still not convinced, just keep fucking it up. You'll figure it out sooner or later. Repeat as necessary.

Maxim #7: If I turn out to be wrong, you are forewarned that I am full of shit, in which case Sutherland's single maxim becomes: Sutherland is full of shit. Which is most definitely true, completely independent, of the rest said here. So it's probably the safest bet for the gambling man.

If I'm wrong, there really is no hope for people. Either that, or this generation has miraculously figured out how to force goodness upon the world in a way that every past generation has failed. Somehow I think that's a enormous load of bullshit, pardon my French.

If I'm wrong, I'll find out soon enough. And if I'm right, you will too. One of us will keep fucking it up. And we'll figure out who's who sooner or later.

Some of life's best lessons are from our fuckups rather than from our successes. But when everyone's too busy trying to defend their honor, it's get kind of hazy trying to figure out which is which. Successes always get magnified. And the failures are probably mine. God knows I'm responsible for a huge number of them. And I've no honor left to defend. So either that makes me a wise man or an ass. And if you haven't seen my photo, I don't look terribly wise these days.

That's what I'm talking about

Finally, some goddamn substantive debate.

McCain, Obama tilt over al-Queda in Iraq

That's what I've been waiting for, motherfuckers.

"'I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called `al-Qaida in Iraq,'' McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas, drawing laughter at Obama's expense. He said Obama's statement was 'pretty remarkable,'

Obama quickly answered back while campaigning in Ohio. 'I do know that al-Qaida is in Iraq and that's why I have said we should continue to strike al-Qaida targets,' he told a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus.

'But I have some news for John McCain,' Obama added. 'There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. ... They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001.'"

Ah, the smell of honest debate. It's like hickory smoke on Kansas plain. Makes the mouth water.

And the debate goes on:

"Obama said he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq 'so we actually start going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan like we should have been doing in the first place.'

While he praised McCain as a war hero and saluted his service to the country, Obama said the Arizona Republican was 'tied to the politics of the past. We are about policies of the future.'

Noting that McCain likes to tell audiences that he'd follow Osama bin Laden to the 'gates of hell' to catch him, Obama taunted: 'All he (McCain) has done is to follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq.'

McCain said he had not watched Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate but was told of Obama's response when asked if as president he would reserve the right to send U.S. troops back into Iraq to quell an insurrection or civil war.

Obama did not say whether he'd send troops but responded: 'As commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad.'

On Wednesday, Obama expanded slightly that he 'would always reserve the right to go in and strike al-Qaida if they were in Iraq' without detailing what kind of strike that might be — air, ground or both.

Throughout the primary season, McCain has repeatedly attacked Obama and Clinton for saying they would withdraw troops from Iraq.

'And my friends, if we left, they (al-Qaida) wouldn't be establishing a base,' McCain said Wednesday. 'They'd be taking a country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to al-Qaida.'

He said that withdrawing troops would be 'waving the white flag.'"

And if you needed any clearer indication that Hillary Clinton, if she only had the n'oyve, would not add much to this discussion, here's a reminder:

"In the debate, Clinton did not answer the question about re-invasion of Iraq on grounds it contained 'lots of different hypothetical assessments.'"

Does Hillary Clinton every know what she fuckin' thinks about anything in this war? Or is she always merely a dupe and an agnostic?

Do you really want such a person to be your President?

If you do, you fuckin' deserve her.

I have to say that if Obama keeps talking the way he does and he can't begin to acknowledge the need to support the Iraqis until they give the clear signal that they do not need our help anymore or else give a stronger argument for why we should leave than I have heard to date, I will be voting for John McCain, at this point, in the election.

Obama better start putting that big thinking cap of his on and either convince me that staying is wrong - which he is far from doing, at this point - or figuring out how to break it to Democrats that he's going to stay until the Iraqis say they are ready for us to leave or I will be making my most confident vote for a Republican Presidential candidate in my lifetime.

Put that Havard education to use, Barack. You too, John.

The country is fuckin' counting on you.

Andrew Sullivan on Bill Buckley

Andrew Sullivan has an excellent obituary for William F. Buckley that I think does a nice job of summing up some of the best of Bill Buckley's contributions to conservativism and to the world.

"I cannot pretend to have been much influenced by William F. Buckley Jr. Nonetheless, even for those of us who were not in America the 1960s and 1970s, when his most remarkable work was done, he still existed as an emblem of a thinking, rational, non-doctrinaire conservatism. He helped many understand more deeply that left-liberalism is a profoundly unsatisfying account of human nature and human history. He helped remind us that communism was as evil as socialism was mistaken. By legitimizing the concept of a conservative intellectual, he helped deepen and broaden conservative thought.

He lived long enough to see this precious inheritance grotesquely squandered by the conservative establishment he helped build. Like many of us, he came to see the administration of George W. Bush as in some ways the deepest, darkest betrayal of conservative values, and the hideous hateful movement that sustained it unthinkingly as part of the problem rather than the solution. But he was surely not surprised. A skeptical, thinking conservative knows that in time, great, abiding ideas can ossify into ideology and ideology can become propaganda and propaganda can degenerate into toxic factionalism. It is part of human nature and human history. There is no reason why conservatism as a political movement should be immune from its own critique of all such movements. He was polite about this, of course - much politer than many of us. But he had enough intellectual integrity not to disguise it either.

What did he know? That there will never be heaven on earth; that there will never be an end to poverty or bigotry or discontent. That there is more wisdom in tradition than we might first believe, and freedom is indispensable for tradition to shift and adapt and move responsively to changing human needs and wants. That ideology is always and everywhere a lie. That government is best when small and adept and aware of its own limits. That a society that seeks to extirpate transcendent religious truths is as doomed as one that regiments itself according to divine will.

These truths were once unspeakable heresies. That they have survived at all in mass democracy is a small miracle. But Buckley knew that all that conservatism needs to survive is the freedom to think and a willingness to rethink and an eagerness to debate. These virtues he exemplified. May we all try to recapture them in his vast, choppy wake."

And he adds this video of an old Buckley, Chomsky debate, discussion which is really just fascinating only being introduced to both of these men well into their old age.



Though I do admire Dr. Chomsky's brilliance in this discussion, I must say that I find Noam Chomsky clever by half, much of the time, and quite wrong on many issues of international outlook, especially in his assessments of imperialism and terrorism, much too sympathetic to the claims of left wing oppressors and would-be oppressors and much too unsympathetic to the aims of democratic peoples and governemnts.

I am much more sympathetic to Bill Buckley's argument in this discussion that democratic governments, and the American government, in particular, have made a imperfect but well-intentioned and forgivable efforts to use their power for good purpose (even when Americans legislate who may have puppies, I must add, though I certainly do not approve of them doing so). But it is brilliant to watch these two engage in this level of engaged, thoughtful discussion.

If Presidential campaigns operated like this, the world would be a much better place.

Goodbye, Bill

Conservative author Buckley dies at 82

It's ironic.

In college, I mocked Bill Buckley as the supreme stereotype of picksniffian conservativism, a right-wing that looked down its nose at the rest of the uncivilized world.

It was not until long after that I recognized that, for all of my disagreements with him, William F. Buckley was one of the strongest minds of his time.

There are many Bill Buckley columns I enjoyed. One of the columns that finally secured my confidence in him was his piece giving his reluctant approval to Lawrence v. Texas, ruling sodomy laws unconstitutional. There are many issues of federalism and original intent, and other reasons, I'm sure, that a conservative could make to object to that ruling, some of which might find some sympathetic audience with me.

But, Bill recognized, as did I, that the fundamental issue of the liberty of what people do in their own private life was, when all is said and done, their own business.

And that is when I knew that Bill Buckley had a conservativism that I could respect.

Goodbye, Bill. You will be missed.

I will pick up books with your name on them, I'm sure, and remember when I could look forward to reading some new thought on any number of important issues that you had to offer.

Godspeed.

Have these people not heard of fundraising?

This is what always strikes me about political activists. Their total lack of imagination.

Pet sterilization becomes law in L.A.

It is completely clear to me, now, how nutty ideas like eugenics and forced sterilization became so popular at the beginning of the 20th century.

Because if you can find a cause, you can find an voter base which will impose on someone, whether they fuckin' like it or not.

My question is, where do all the little kitties and puppies come from if none of them are allowed to keep their genitals in tact? Oh, I mean, except those for exclusive breeding. I guess it's good that at least all the rich boy and girls get to know the joy of having a litter of puppies or kittens. Cause the poor kids get to give up their health insurance money if they don't spay or neuter or can't afford the same.

We're assholes because we care. We take away all your money to show you we love you. And the animals who no longer have sex organs.

Is there no fuckin' end to this madness?

And can someone explain to me how Bob Barker, the one fuckin' dog of daytime television who apparently most needed his wee-wee detached, found time away from hounding the The Price is Right models to spearhead this legislation.

I'm pretty sure, at this rate, my children will grow up and read John Stuart Mill and Mark Twain, if they read them at all, since I'm pretty sure they are becoming less relevant to a society that takes liberty so lightly, and say, "Daddy, what do they mean by freedom?"

OK. I'm a little over the top. But I'm getting sick of this shit. Is there not a goddamn thing that a person can do on this earth that is not regulated, anymore?

What a fuckin' joke the free world is these days.

It can only get better, I hope.

Michael Kinsley made me piss my pants

Holy shit.

McCain and the Times: The Real Questions

From that column:

"I have come under some criticism for my criticism of the New York Times for its criticism of Sen. John McCain. Many readers of last week's New York Times article about McCain, including me, read that article as suggesting that Sen. McCain may have had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago. The Times, however, has made clear that its story was not about an affair with a lobbyist. Its story was about the possibility that eight years ago, aides to McCain had held meetings with McCain to warn him about the appearance that he might be having an affair with the lobbyist.

This is obviously a much more important question. To be absolutely clear: the Times itself was not suggesting that there had been an affair, or even that there had been the appearance of an affair. The Times was reporting that there was a time eight years ago when some people felt there might be the appearance of an affair, although others, apparently including Sen. McCain himself, apparently felt that there was no such appearance.

Similarly, I am not accusing the New York Times of screwing up again by publishing an insufficiently sourced article then defending itself with a preposterous assertion that it wasn't trying to imply what it obviously was trying to imply. I am merely reporting that some people worry that other people might be concerned that the New York Times has created the appearance of screwing up once again.

What I wrote was that some people had expressed concern that the Times article might have created the appearance of charging that McCain had had an affair. My critics have charged that I was charging the Times with charging McCain with having had an affair. Such a charge would be unfair to the New York Times, since the Times article, if you read it carefully (very carefully), does not make any charge against McCain except that people in a meeting eight years ago had suggested that other people eight years ago might reach a conclusion -- about which the Times expressed no view whatsoever -- that McCain was having an affair.

I have no evidence to suggest that the New York Times suggested with no evidence that Sen. McCain was having an affair. I was merely pointing out that by running an article that goes on at great length about some meeting eight years ago, and that seems to have no point except to imply that Sen. McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist, the newspaper may have created for some people (not me, of course) an appearance of suggesting that Sen. McCain had enjoyed an affair with a lobbyist.

Rejecting all opportunities to fudge, McCain's campaign has called the story "phony" and the candidate himself has said bluntly that he did not have any such affair. But that is not the question. The question is whether he has created the possibility of an appearance of having such an affair. After all, McCain knows how to make things clear when he wants to."

The whole thing is this goddamn funny.

Washington politics is so dirty, people forget how much filth they swim in.

Oh, and, by the way, these are the people whose judgment you are supposed to trust.

And if you don't, watch them force you.

Why Hillary Clinton would be a poor President

What bothers me most about Hillary Clinton is that she can't even consider that she might be wrong.

And neither she nor anyone who reasons in such a way should ever have that much power.

Andrew Sullivan mocks, well, the whining of the Clinton divas. And gives us this little tidbit to boot.

Education in America

The major problem with politicians and education in America and everywhere is that political leaders never seem to accept that great teaching and great schools never have and never will depend on their wisdom, or the lack thereof.

Democrats' K-12 views differ, subtly

McCain emphasizes school choice, accountability, but lacks specifics

The argument on this matter is simple, as far as I am concerned, at this point. If you are interested in what I think are the best arguments on improving schools, I highly recommend Terry Moe's and John Chubb's Politics, Markets, and America's Schools - Rick Cochran does a nice review of the essential arguments of the book - and Milton Friedman's writings on the matter. Paul Peterson, of Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance and Christopher Jencks, of Harvard's Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy, are two liberal scholars who first persuaded me of the benefits of school choice for children and families in poverty. But Terry Moe and John Chubb and Milton Friedman make the best arguments for school choice and education markets, I believe.

There is no single dynamic enterprise in America, other than law enforcement and military defense, which are natural and necessary monopolies of force as a function of governance, which has its core operations and outcomes controlled by the Federal government and is successful. Any other enterprise would consider such a proposal laughable and ludicrous. In America, it is law.

The most successful form of education in the United States and, quite likely, the world, is American higher education. And as Friedman wisely observes, what makes universities and higher education so successful in the United States is their freedom, their independence, and the healthier versions of competition in its ranks which run on and provide much of the fodder for a marketplace of ideas in America and in the world.

American public education, especially special education rather an as exception, is, as Moe and Chubb argue, one long string of unintended consequences from well-meaning people who can never seem to get straight that it is the fact that government protects us, all of us, including children, from our failures and the failures of the multiply-governed bureaucracies in public education that account for its larger failures of American children.

American public education is power and good intentions overwhelming better ideas and better choices in its most poignant form.

If we really care about children and not leaving them behind and not just about our pious notions of how to do that codified into law, this No Child Left Behind Act needs to be repealed, not improved.

The future of education reform efforts is, as Milton Friedman believed up until his death and was the legacy he cherished most, in giving parents, students, teachers, administrators, and others the freedom to choose which schools they will attend, how they will organize those schools, and, more importantly and fundamentally, whether education matters to them and whether they are willing to take it seriously to improve their and all of our lives.

The fact that many people are skeptical of school choice and markets as the best means to improve education for all students, given that many of the people most in need of stronger educations are those experiencing the most problems in the market, is understandable. It is also quite independent of the plain fact and much evidence that school choice and educational markets - in the form of universal voucher systems, private school scholarships, means-tested voucher programs, failing schools, failing students voucher programs, special needs voucher programs, pre-kindergarten voucher programs, town tuitioning programs, tax-credit scholarship programs, personal tax credits and deductions, charter schools, public school choice, and magnet schools - offer stronger opportunities for children to have better quality educations.

The most fundamental choice at stake is whether children and parents will take seriously education and intelligence as a smarter and more effective means of succeeding in the larger marketplace and in their own lives and contributing to the lives of others or whether they will fail to do so.

School choice makes it more likely that kids and parents will choose to take education and the intelligent learning it offers more seriously in their lives.

And that is something that the Federal Government, state governments, nor local school districts - nor schools, administrators, teachers, or parents, for that matter - could ever mandate if they wanted to.

Schools, as Friedman observed, are the most basic institution for anyone to make choices about and within. And taking education and intelligent thought seriously is the most basic commitment that a person can make in their lives. It is best facilitated, as any liberal education is best facilitated, by making choices within the marketplace of ideas and about its role in our lives.

If we take liberal values seriously, which are the foundation of a quality liberal education, we must take the liberty that is the core of those liberal values seriously, as well.

And no Federal mandate could ever replace that.

History of Evil

In case you missed this in school, kids.

This is why I don't trust chattering class liberals

Remember the War on Drugs?

This is how desperate they have gotten.

"The good news is that Mexico and the United States finally recognize that they are on the same side in this battle. It is a vast improvement over Washington’s perennial finger-wagging. Mexico’s resolve to take on drug trafficking, rather than dismissing it as an unsolvable problem, is also welcome. But it is only a start."

The New York Times editorial page is arguing for an emboldened drug war.

You know that people are kind of fucked in the head with power obsession when they make this kind of argument when the writing is so clearly on the wall.

I will paste this editorial in my scrapbook for when this ugly, bullshit drug war is finally behind us and to remind my children why conscience and independent judgment should always trump ideology, party politics, or other forms of groupthink.

I knew there was a reason I didn't read the New York Times anymore.

Courage

We are so cowardly. The whole lot of us. Our one saving grace is that cowardice maintains all the bullshit and the ugliness that we want so badly to escape.

The sad, cynical facts of modern life

The saddest part of my job and just life, generally, I think, is not just having to listen to all the self-fulfilling cynicism that animates too much of life. It is watching people deal with the ugly consequences of that cynicism.

Today, I read one such story.

The Bride of Wildenstein

In a world that is as cynical about love and the role we take for granted that it plays in our lives as it is about liberty and a similar and comparable value it offers us, this story is one of the saddest miniature tragedies of the consequences of that sad, deluded cynicism.

I've never understood why people were so cynical about love. And then wondered why they didn't find the kind of love they wanted in their lives. I've also never understood the cynicism that people have about freedom and then wonder why their aspirations and their willingness to do the work to live their dreams fell through.

It's all so clearly self-fulfilling prophecy to someone who has experienced a lot of love and achieved a lot of the things I have cared about in life and still aspires for more of both.

Most people are both sad and foolish on this count and so many counts, I think, where it matters. Most people want love, but don't really take it seriously enough to offer it and thus receive it. So they start to rationalize more cynical motives for marriage. Like money. Or power. Or sex and beauty. Whatever stupid, foolish flavor of cynicism appeals to them.

It is the most difficult part of teaching the kids I teach.

It is not the kids, though they are quite the handful. It's not the pay, which of course we always wish was more.

It's the cynicism. It's everyone betting against what they know they should be betting for, no matter how clever you may feel each time that you might be right.

Children, no matter how shitty they are, need people to love them and be in their corner. Love, no matter how much we want to give up hope on it, needs people to nurture it and take it more seriously than our cowardice to face ourselves and how we sabotage it. And freedom is the only context in which we will ever be able to take responsibility for the fact that the reason that love does not always work out and the reason why our children don't always turn out the way we want them to turn out is, generally, our own fault, no matter how many which ways we want to spin it. And the most hopeful fact of our existence is our ability to face up to that fact, to take responsibility, and to build a life on something more real and honest.

Cynicism is our cover for why we never took our most serious responsibilities in life seriously. It is our cowardice to face ourselves and our own failures, especially our failure to own up and do what we need to do to turn things around.

And the face of Jocelyn Wildenstein is what it looks like to live that cynicism and cowardice without reconsideration.

She, like the rest of humanity that daily affirms her cynicism, deserves our compassion.

Because how tragically and needlessly people suffer when they just can't find the courage to love and live a life they love, for real, and settle for cynicism and cowardice instead.

"Aggressive and desperate"

Which nominee is the Economist describing? You make the call.

Barack Obama Rolls On

"Mr Obama has confirmed his status as the front-runner whereas Mrs Clinton, to have any chance, must somehow engineer sizeable victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4th. They once looked very favourable to her and she still leads in opinion polls. But Mr Obama’s big win in Wisconsin bodes well for him in nearby Ohio, which shares a big white working class. Texas’s unusual hybrid primary-and-caucus vote makes it hard to win a big delegate advantage even with a hefty win among voters. And Mr Obama, carrying the aura of a winner, has narrowed Mrs Clinton's lead in both states and has two weeks to focus his campaign on them.

Mrs Clinton has two strategies left to her. One is to sharpen her attacks on her rival. Before Wisconsin her campaign staff had pushed a story that Mr Obama used speech lines lifted from Deval Patrick, his friend and the governor of Massachusetts. Mr Obama and Mr Patrick shrugged this off, voters were unbothered. Instead Mrs Clinton is likely to stress her theme of greater experience, while ramping up her economic populism. She did both in a speech after polls closed on Tuesday. She said she would lead “without on-the-job training”. She also argued, more substantively, about his health-care proposal. Hers would require every American to have insurance. His would lack such a mandate, which, she said, would leave 15m people uninsured. Expect this number to crop up repeatedly in the next few weeks.

The other path for Mrs Clinton is the inside politics of getting the delegate count more favourable to her. She and her husband are leaning hard on Democratic bigwigs and politicians known as superdelegates, who may vote for anyone they wish at the nominating convention. Having closer connections with the party leaders, they hope superdelegates might help her pull out a win even if she loses to Mr Obama in “pledged” delegates chosen by the primaries.

And she continues her fight to seat the delegations from Michigan and Florida. Both states had their delegates stripped for holding contests earlier than Democratic rules allowed. And all campaigns agreed not to run there. But Mrs Clinton’s name alone remained on the Michigan ballot, meaning she won it by a big margin. And as no one campaigned in Florida she won handily, mainly on the strength of her greater name recognition.

The risk for Mrs Clinton is that she gets stuck with a reputation for being willing to do anything to get the nomination, even if that were to mean stealing away Mr Obama’s electoral victory. With the fight against Mr McCain looming, she runs the risk of looking both aggressive and desperate, hardly the person the Democrats would want taking on the Republicans’ genial and confident war hero."

Will Americans ever learn?

I am becoming increasingly clear that the contemporary efforts to leverage for political change will be studied as a pervasive failure of power in the coming generations.

The case of U.S. sanctions to leverage for democratic change in Cuba is perhaps one of the best examples of that failure.

Our Failed, Punitive Policy

Many strong proposals in this article. The final passage is a nice collection of these proposals:

"Dialogue on these security issues could yield direct results and also build contacts and confidence that might put the next U.S. administration in a position to more effectively advance other pressing interests. These include political, labor and human rights in Cuba, settlement of U.S. claims there, and, eventually, negotiation of trade and regulatory regimes that will put American business interests in Cuba back on an equal footing with foreign competitors.

U.S. restrictions on travel to the island have failed to tangibly weaken the Cuban government, even as they have contributed to the increased isolation of the Cuban people. Contact between our societies ought to be encouraged. At a minimum, the next president should permit the kind of people-to-people exchanges -- involving artists, musicians, academics, students, religious groups and others -- that President Ronald Reagan embraced with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Programs of this kind flourished with Cuba until 2003, allowing Cubans from all walks of life to exchange ideas and information with American counterparts.

The Bush administration's 2004 sanctions targeting visits and remittances by Cuban Americans should also be reversed. The contacts and the financial help are important lifelines to Cubans, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet.

The next U.S. administration should also consider talks on loosening the restrictions that keep U.S. and Cuban diplomats confined, for the most part, to the capitals in which they are posted. An agreement in this area would allow our diplomats to gain the insights and influence in Cuba that current policy denies them.

America's next president should harbor no illusions that modest policy adjustments will lead directly to the political and economic outcomes we seek in Cuba. But they would serve American interests and, if pragmatism eventually prevails in Cuba, help advance the interests of the Cuban people as well."

I don't know if I share the author's priorities of stopping drug runners and illegal immigration, both which seem like kind of petty priorities in the big scheme of things, and perhaps counterproductive to the larger purposes of helping to facilitate democracy, freedom, and prosperity for Americans and Cubans rather than narrower concerns about drugs and stopping illegals from crossing the American border.

But the benefits of lifting the embargo on Cuba and dialogue generated around a whole host of common concerns seem undeniable to me. Robert Kagan suggests using the embargo as leverage for democratic reform in the same Washington Post, apparently oblivious to the fact that what Cubans resent most about America, and hence our limited influence inside of Cuba as much as with its government, is its tendency to want to tell Cubans how to run their own affairs. American imperialism and all of that. Very much like the problem we're having in Iraq.

Americans will never learn.

Or will they?

The future of forced progress

Georgia school district separates the boys from the girls

One parent in this video really hits the nail on the head.

"We have no choice. We have to send our children to school. It's this way or no way."

If parents want to send their kids to schools that do this out of their own free will (though I would seriously suggest that you consult your children), I would not take the kind of issue with it that I take with this proposal.

The issue I take with it is not only that it condescends parents who disagree (and I happen to be someone who thinks it is a bad idea on its merits, completely independent of whether parents are forced to do it or not, even as I understand the reasons that lead parents, teachers, administrators, and others to consider this route). The issue I have with this proposal is that it offers people no other option. And this case illustrates the problem with this foolish trend of "forced progress" more than most, because it also happens to be a foolish and regressive policy, completely independent of whether it is forced on people or not, I think.

I know. There's a lot in such an idea for parents to think about. Our teachers kicked it around last year while we were trying to figure out what to do to improve scores and improve schools. I didn't. I thought it was foolish. I had thoroughly come to terms with the fact that boys and girls have to learn to relate with one another, and as equals, in this generation as they have needed to do in every generation. And I had no illusions that a proposal like this one actually removes that need or that issue that they will face at some point in their lives, regardless. It delays it. And that is what parents want. But I think it's a better idea to teach kids to be responsible for themselves and for their choices in a world where temptations to not be responsible for our choices abound, have always abounded, will always abound for the course of humanity.

If parents and kids decide that they want children to go to schools that segregate the sexes, I say good luck and so be it and hopefully your choice turns out to be a better choice than mine and I will have something to learn from it.

But forcing an entire district to do what I very much doubt that such a move will do for growing up and academic learning that these parents want such schooling to do for their children is assinine and arrogant in the extreme.

Those dissenting parents are right on this matter, completely independent of the merits of this decision. They deserve a right to choose what happens with the lives of children who are not the primary responsibility of the state. Those children are the primary responsibility of their parents and themselves. The school district responsibility comes after those responsibilities and the rights of those parents and students to govern and determine their own lives.

Had this decision been made by a school district 40 years ago, there would be no doubt how progressives at the time would have argued this position. It is only now that baby-boomer progressives have absorbed the fears and anxieties of their parents' generation and responsibilities for raising children that they or we would even consider such a move a "step forward."

It is amazing how propaganda and our own bullshit color our view of the world, isn't it?

If you want to send your kids to segregated schools, I say so be it. I think it's a bad choice. I think it's sexist, even as I understand the concerns. I hope I'm wrong and I hope you're right and I have something to learn from your better choice.

But there is no reason that you or anyone else should be able to force me or other parents to make what I regard as an understandable but foolish choice with you just because you are so cock-sure that you are right.

That is exactly what is wrong with this political era. And what I love about it is that it pops the bubble of self-righteous liberals (like myself, back in the day) who have always been sure that they have all the right answers about everything, that is why they have been so confident that they could force their way to progress and the world would look back in unfettered celebration of their efforts (except for their critics, of course, especially those evil conservatives, who wouldn't know what progress looked like if it was forced down their throats or not).

What I always find ironic about this kind of proposal for schools is that those who make it clearly did not really study the ideas around liberty, in school and in their history classes, that are abundant in the history of Enlightenment thinkers who are the basis for every modern, liberal democratic thought and institution that we take for granted today. Even the fact that these school district leaders would be elected to the positions they hold is predicated on a commitment to liberty and democracy that was not even possible before people like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron von Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wolstonecraft and later and significantly, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, John Dewey, Jane Addams, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Betty Friedan, and many, many other fine thinkers set and kept us on a course for such a liberal democratic world. The ideas of "liberal" and "democratic" were not even serious options before these and earlier thinkers seriously considered the course of human civilization in deeper ways than the more repressive governments of their times.

George Orwell would have a good ol' time with this era. Too bad he's not here to enjoy it with us. Mark Twain would laugh his head off at what goddamn fools we still are.

And we are stuck dealing with the consequences of all our foolishness.

I think Mr. Twain had a point.

The state of intelligence and the world

Susan Jacoby and Howard Gardner write two fascinating columns on the state of intelligence and literacy in contemporary culture, in today's Washington Post, which illustrate the conundrums and the opportunities for education in America, liberal democracies, and the contemporary world.

Susan Jacoby - The Dumbing of America

Howard Gardner - The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading

Both are smart and interesting reads on the state of intelligence in the world and contemporary democracies. Jacoby is rightly concerned with the perenial question, with its contemporary manifestations, of the celebration of ignorance and anti-intellectualism in contemporary society. Gardiner argues, also correctly, I believe, that most modern technologies signal greater opportunities for reading and thinking rather than fewer and that conventional intelligence - an interesting focus for Gardner, given that the bulk of his work is dedicated to a more diversified view of intelligence; if you have not read Gardner's Frames of Mind about his conception of multiple intelligences (eight that Garner has identified, at this point) I highly recommend it - has a long future in store for it.

Fundamentally, I think this discussion is important as a long-standing, timeless, and enduring discussion of how of the importance of wise and intelligent thought and how to open up that circle as broadly, as usefully, and with as much intellectual honesty and integrity as possible.

I think what we are witnessing with the digital age is an opening up of society to help us see, better, the world, more, as it is, and the opportunities as well as the immediate limits in cultivating a commitment and understanding of the importance of conventional intelligence.

H.L. Mencken recognized the problems with perpetually too few people in the world taking intelligent thought seriously. But his older and distant mentor, Mark Twain recognized the greater importance of including more of those people, as much as possible, in the mix of wisdom and intelligent reflection.

There are always too few people who take serious thought seriously enough. It has been an important fact of human existence since the recognition of this unique capacity for survival and thriving for the human species long before there were universities, newspapers, and an internet to contemplate such facts of existence.

And it is for that reason - and the tendency of the uneducated and educated, alike, to undermine the capacity for intelligent engagement and reflection with their rationalization of our base instincts for aggression to somehow compensate for both our ignorance, our lack of thought, and our insecurities in the face of a world that necessitates such thought by virtue of the problems it offers us to solve - that it has been so important to, unendingly and in as many different directions as possible, expand the opportunities for reason, science, creativity, information-gathering, expermimentation, thoughtful reflection, and the long, long list of various forms of intellectual activity to reach as many people as possible, to inform their lives and to bridge the existences, values, and understandings of those who take thinking more seriously and those who do not.

It's an effort that will never end. But it's an effort that reaps value for each successive generation that engages in its labors. It builds and nurtures our humanity and our capacity for mutual learning, growth, and development in a world where still too many people die, suffer, are repressed, imprisoned and restrained, all in the name of aggression attempting, fruitlessly, to compensate for our ignorance.

And every opportunity for us to recognize the edges of intelligent thought, and the liberal values, ideas, technologies and opportunities that nurture and expand that terrain, are valuable for our individual and general welfare.

As most intelligent people know, intelligence, especially its deepest, wisest, most profound versions and permutations, matters. Enormously. The question that individuals and all of humanity has always faced is how seriously we are going to take serious thought and how seriously are we going to engage all of those around us in that enterprise.

And the truth is that though Jacoby is right that the opportunities for modern peoples to revel in the pride that often accompanies stupidity and ignorance are growing and so many signs about the willingness of individuals in contempoary societies to take intelligent thought seriously look somewhat discouraging, in many areas of culture, the fact, I think, is that the horizon looks very bright for intelligent thought and those who take it seriously, and for those who don't take it seriously, and for the opportunities and likely outcomes of much greater proportions of people taking education, intelligence, creativity and thoughtful reflection seriously, even as people take plenty advantage with modern technology and society to avoid what many regard as boring and labor intensive efforts.

Because the truth, eventually, is hard to escape. Intelligence does matter. Learning facilitates opportunities in life. And occassions to develop thought benefit everyone, especially those not quite sold on its value.

And every chance to expand those circumstances - whether through books, movies, music, the internet, business and financial dealings, discussion, debate, creative outlets of all kinds, and every which way that intelligent thought can be cultivated - ups the likelihood and yield of the harvest of better consequences that intelligent thought sows.

Things are looking good even as fear of an uncertain world endlessly plagues the minds of the more and less thoughtful among humanity. That fear will never leave us completely as long as the risk of failure of our efforts and thought are always with us. But it dissipates the greater faith we put in our capacity to discuss, debate, think through and solve our problems despite and as the only real alternative to that fear and its byproducts.

Things look good for intelligent thought because they have always looked good for intelligent thought. Because it is the only real opportunity for anything to look good for the longer term of our lives.

It is our fear and its correlates that always betray us. All of us. Me too.

Ideas and the thinking that renders them have always been the light that shines our way through the darkness. And it is that light that uniquely advances human civilization in the face of a world that is now and forever beyond our total grasp. No matter how smart or not we are or think we are.

Michael Gerson is a pimp (I hope I don't get fired for saying that)

I have to say that while I have thoroughly enjoyed many of Michael Gerson's columns, I was not enamoured of his idea of "Heroic Conservativism" and have been a little skeptical of his thinking since his recent book publication.

But Michael Gerson knocks one out of the park, today, with his column on Hillary Clinton.

Hillary's Unappealing Path

An extended series of gems from that column:

"Hillary Clinton's attempt to define a narrative of her own has been hobbled because her campaign is defined by the rejection of rhetoric. Obama's eloquence and idealism are dismissed as "abstract" and a "fairy tale" in contrast to Clinton's experience and policy substance. It is difficult for a campaign to inspire while using "inspiration" as an epithet.

This theory has other drawbacks. As a lawyer, first lady and senator, Clinton has had little actual experience running anything -- except for a White House health-care policy process that was a spectacle of arrogance and ineffectiveness. And on a purely political level, this argument for experience comes at an odd time, when Americans are generally disillusioned with both Democrats and Republicans in Washington.

The challenge for Clinton is that her other options -- the other narratives for her campaign -- are equally flawed:

First, there is Hillary the Fighter. In recent interviews, Clinton has come out swinging with negative attacks -- what she once referred to as "the fun part" of politics. Obama has "questions to answer about his dealings with . . . a big nuclear power company" as well as with "Mr. Rezko." But it is hard to imagine American voters thinking: "If only the Clintons were a little more ruthless, I'd finally support them." It is this very trait -- after a series of racially charged attacks -- that many Americans, including many liberals, found more repulsive than "fun."

Second, there is Hillary the Comeback Kid. One campaign official commented, "We're taking a long-term approach to the campaign and look at it as a delegate game. This is not like the playoffs, where if you don't win you don't advance." No -- my mistake -- that was not a Clinton official, it was Rudy Giuliani's campaign manager speaking last year. Giuliani tried -- as Clinton is trying -- to disprove an iron rule of politics: When you lose a lot, you eventually look like a loser.

Third, there is Hillary the Tested. "I've been examined one side up and the other side down," argues Clinton, while Obama has not. Well, it is true that the Clintons have been endlessly vetted -- but mainly because their shared career has been an endless string of scandals. Stuart Taylor of the National Journal recently took a depressing stroll back through the derelict funfair of the Clinton years: the deceptions about Gennifer and Monica, the Travelgate firings, the prosperous trade in cattle futures, the questionable transactions of Castle Grande, the strange case of the misplaced billing records. In the midst of these colorful controversies, Taylor observes, Clinton has developed "a bad reputation for truthfulness and veracity."

It is not enough to be vetted. The goal is to be vetted and found clean.

Though it is increasingly unlikely, Clinton may still have a path to the nomination -- and what a path it is. She merely has to puncture the balloon of Democratic idealism; sully the character of a good man; feed racial tensions within her party; then eke out a win with the support of unelected superdelegates, thwarting the hopes of millions of new voters who would see an inspiring young man defeated by backroom arm-twisting and arcane party rules.

Unlikely -- but it would be a fitting contribution to the Clinton legacy of monumental selfishness."

Wow. How fuckin' more dead on can one evangelical get?

Michael and I have many disagreements. He is a conservatives who is, ironically, more enamoured of big government than I am. And while I respect his pro-life and anti-gay marriage social conservativism, I'm a big believer in letting people run their own lives and make their own choices as the best path to people learning to do good in the world.

But one thing that Michael and I have in common that I think helps explain both of our aversions to Ms. Clinton is that for all of my disagreements with Michael, he is a really decent guy. He's a nice guy. A good guy. Charles Krauthammer is smart as all shit. But as his "see only evil" column on Barack Obama demonstrates today, Charles is a serious prick, much of the time. And what Michael and I both don't like in Hillary Clinton - along with our policy differences with her - is that Hillary Clinton is kind of a prick, too, of a quasi-feminine variety. She is a vindictive and nasty bitch. And God knows why anyone would think that such people are safe people with which to invest power.

And Michael Gerson is a serious pimp for calling out Hillary Clinton on her bullshit.

As an aside, is it wrong to say that Chelsea Clinton looks about 100 times better now that she has been publicly compared to a prostitute?

OK, now I know I'm getting fired.

Honesty and politics

Andrew Sullivan gets to the heart, for me, of what is so disgusting about the current political era.

Obama, Clinton, and the war

What disgusts me in how the politics of this war have played out is the dishonesty. How so many in Washington who supported this war without enough thought to its consequences, who cheerlead policies that are clearly failing, and who stick by their policy of pressure, force, and aggression as some kind of engine for democratic progress, how all of these people cannot give it up, will make tragedy of as many peoples' lives as necessary to maintain it, all because of an intellectually and otherwise dishonest resistance to admit when they are wrong.

It is wrong to use power and to explicitly advocate the use of power as a smokescreen for one's mistakes and failures. It is wrong to make tragedy of the lives of others because you cannot face up to those failures. It is human to ignore the evidence contrary to your sacred notions as a means of avoiding your mistakes of judgment and failures of policy. But it wrong to do so when it means ruining, ending, or otherwise seriously fucking with the lives of others because you are too stubborn to face the greatest pride of people in politics: that they might be wrong, about anything.

And every excuse that I have ever heard on this one is one long self-fulfilling prophecy of why pressure made me do it and pressure is the wave of the future and pressure is the force for democratic change and pressure is why I am not responsible for my votes or my policies or whatever the political case may be.

Force is power. Force is freedom. Force is honesty. Force is progress.

Force is everything but me having to admit that I'm wrong. Because that may reduce my power, my ability to use force. And without me having the capacity to force change, where would this world be?

Put this political period on fast forward for 70 years and you might understand the depth of the deception that was Soviet Communism. Put it on fast forward for almost 40, 50, 60 years and you might understand the depths of the deception of Saddam Hussein's Baathism, Fidel Castro's Cuban Communism, the North Korean Communism of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong Il, or Mao Tse Tung's and subsequent generations of Chinese Communism.

It's dishonest is what it is. Intellectually and otherwise. It is the essence of what people like George Orwell, Lord Acton and the like warned us about power. And there is no opportunity for us to shed its ugly legacy until enough people call it out for what it is.

As someone who doesn't covet power, I seriously underestimated what people will do to have and keep it.

I only hope that I haven't underestimated the ability of more honest folks to see through it.

Madeleine Albright is on a roll

Toward a true dialouge

"First, it is a mistake to conceive of this region or the world as divided between people who do no wrong and those who do no right; between moderates and extremists, secular and religious, evil and good.

A simplistic and triumphal mind-set cannot guide us through a complicated reality. Blame for past mistakes and current disputes must be widely shared; and answers will not be found unless the interests of all are taken into account.

Second, America's enemy is not Islam, nor any subset of Islam. Nor is it Islamic terrorism, for terrorism is by its nature un-Islamic. In the fight against Al Qaeda, Americans of every faith and faithful Muslims of every description are on the same side.

Third, neither America nor any other country can be considered above the law. Every nation is obliged to respect human rights, observe global conventions, and abide by UN Security Council resolutions. Power unhinged from law lacks legitimacy and will inevitably be opposed.

Finally, America must pursue peace in a determined and even-handed way. No U.S. president will waver in supporting the survival and security of Israel. Every U.S. president should respect the dignity and legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Together, we must strive for agreements that enable all who desire peace to live as neighbors. For that to happen, we must not only talk of the need for security and justice; we must move toward a common definition of what those terms mean.

As an observer of world affairs, I readily acknowledge that the United States must think more deeply than it has in the past about why its intentions have been misunderstood.

True dialogue is incompatible with ignorance, hypocrisy, and condescension, nor can it be based on the premise that one people or civilization is superior to another. America has a responsibility to learn more and lecture less."

I can't say that I will ever have much faith or confidence in a law that treats Roger Clemens the way he is being treated today. But I'm fairly convinced, at this point, that many of those who make or enforce or interpret the law could care less if they earn that kind of confidence from people like me or not. They certainly behave as if they could care less. Which will always breed contempt for the law from otherwise decent people.

And that will be a problem for them, for America, and for the liberal democratic and not-so-liberal-and-democratic world, at large, until we face it honestly.

Until then, some very nice wisdom from Madeleine Albright.

History's million dollar question

Howler, Whoops, and Miracles: Which Party is More Strange?

Great line.

"Democrats, who consider equality the value before which the virtuous genuflect, worry that their nomination might be settled by "superdelegates," who are more equal than others. These are august people (officeholders, party officials, former luminaries) who, although no one voted to give them the job, get to vote at the nominating convention because liberals believe that if they fine-tune the world's rules with this or that wrinkle, everything will come out just right."

So true, so true.

"Many Republicans," he continues, "think that, come what may, things will come out the way Providence intends. Daniel Webster said 'miracles do not cluster,' but Webster did not anticipate Mike Huckabee, whose campaign manager is, evidently, God. Two months ago, Huckabee said he rose in Iowa because of divine intervention (the power that propelled him there was not 'human' but the one that fed the multitudes with two fish and five loaves). On Saturday, as he was winning the caucuses in Kansas, where many Republicans think Darwin should go back to Missouri where he came from, Huckabee said that the arithmetic is daunting (he must win almost all the remaining delegates to stop McCain) but he shall persevere:

'I know people say that the math doesn't work out. Folks, I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those, too.'

Although some of his supporters defend him against the accusation of sincerity, it is not unfair to assume that Huckabee, who has made his piety integral to his politics, means what he says. There is appealing clarity, but also a whiff of lunacy or charlatanry, in the theory that the Author of the Universe is writing his campaign story. 'The world,' wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'is charged with the grandeur of God." The world, perhaps, but the Republican delegate scramble?'"

It's an equal-opportunity mocking. And well deserved.

At some point, people acting this dumb have to ask themselves why they take themselves so seriously.

Then, again, that's history's million dollar question, now isn't it?

Love and liberty (and their alternatives)

Gaza notes forbidden Valentine's Day

I love this passage:

"Al-Wakid, a policeman who's stayed off the job since the Hamas takeover, said he began buying flowers for Valentine's Day four years ago, when he was engaged. Since then, his wife has come to expect the gesture, he said.

Across the street at the Rose Flower Shop, two young women, one dressed in a black Islamic robe and head scarf, bought a bouquet of roses, a rare sight in Gaza. The shop had managed to bring in 500 roses from Israel, using Gaza medical patients treated in the Jewish state as "mules," and had about 50 roses left.

Salesman Mohammed Sussi, 30, said he hadn't received any complaints about his business. "They didn't tell us anything, whether from the government or anyone else, that it is 'haram'," he said.

But at a third flower shop, a TV crew earned angry glares from salespeople, and shoppers adamantly refused to be interviewed on camera. Asked why the reluctance, one salesman said his customers didn't want to be filmed doing something "haram."

Even in the most repressive regimes, people break the law for a good cause. Always have. Always will.

"Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan said Valentine's Day might go against Gaza's traditions, but Hamas is not trying to replace civil with Islamic law. 'We are by nature a religious people and hate and reject all strange things," he said. "(But) we don't kill adulterers or gays or cut off the hands of thieves.'"

What a relief. I guess everyone congratulates themselves for why someone else is a bigger dick than they are.

But it's nice to know that some celebrations still bring out the best in us.

Love and liberty. We perpetually take them both for granted. And, yet, it is within both of them that we learn the lessons we need to learn to live better lives together.

Doubt that? Consider moving somewhere like Gaza where neither of them are taken as seriously as their alternatives.