1043 reasons to be leary of government

The U.K.'s Daily Mail, via Hotair, offers this insight into the consequence of our romanticism of power.

Now there are 1000 laws that will let the state into your home

It has never made any sense to me why people think that power is something to authorized lightly, except that they haven't thought about it enough and are convinced that it can do and can be trusted to do more than it can.

But here are 1043 reasons to be leary of the nanny-state, invasions of home and privacy, and otherwise seriously skeptical of government power.

When all is said and done with this political period, given the incomparable level of freedom, voice and participation that citizens of liberal democracies have in their government, there is only one person or group that we need blame for this period of regressive and repressive encroachment on liberty:

Ourselves.

My g-g-generation

This is either a sign of the Apocalypse or a sure witness to progress.


Bitches Aint Shit A Capella - Watch more free videos

I do smell brimstone. But that could be the Mexican I ate earlier.

Either way, bitches betta recognize. Berkeley style.

Fat kid on a roller coaster

I'm a tender-hearted teacher. So this shouldn't be funny. I know, I'm going to Hell. But this shit's funnier than shit.


http://view.break.com/285075 - Watch more free videos

There's nothing that can quite make your weekend than to realize, "Thank God I'm not that big cryin' fat kid on the roller coaster."

All brawn, no brains

It is the fact that most people watch and engage in democratic grudge matches along these lines that has us so fucked up, and so stupid while we're at it, all the fucking time.


http://view.break.com/514445 - Watch more free videos

But you gotta admit. Mike Awesome's got style.

If political folks didn't pretend to take themselves so seriously while they behaved like this, I would take them with a more grave repose.

As it is, when you act like goons, you get treated like goons.

Because something more thoughtful just seems so boring by comparison.

In the meantime, it's fun having front row seats to the overmuscled freak show that is moderal liberal democratic politics.

Bad day

Sometimes, you just gotta let off a little steam.



May I suggest yoga.

Reppin for the homies

Hotair alerts me to this remarkably well-behaved gentleman from my hometown of Wichita, Kansas.

"Via Bill Amos, a symphonie du bleep for lazy Friday afternoon. Interesting case here, actually. The charge was battery stemming from the defendant having spit in the eye of a sheriff’s deputy. The sentence: 13 years in prison, three more than the prosecutor had asked for. Why so long? Because he’s HIV-positive, which makes that loogie a potentially (albeit unlikely) deadly weapon."



This is behavior I see on almost a daily basis at the school where I work. It is refreshingly shocking when I watch someone else withstand it. Cutting through the ego defenses of kids who do this to get to a place of greater responsibility is extremely difficult work. But if we don't do it early, this and worse is the consequence later.

A nice reminder of why I do the work I do, abuse and all.

Nothing in life is anything that I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge as such

The insanity of it all is so aggravating, you can only laugh.



Because shooting yourself in the head only works once.

The fate of al Queda and international terrorism

The Economist features an excellent report on the present fate and ultimate future of al Qaeda and the successes and failures of American and international efforts to challenge its global jihadist aims.

Winning or losing?

"Al-Qaeda has built on decades of Middle Eastern terrorism. Palestinian groups internationalised their violence in the 1970s; Hizbullah used suicide-bombers against the Americans in Lebanon back in 1983; Palestinian suicide-bombers sought to inflict maximum civilian casualties in Israel from 1994; and Algerians who hijacked a French airliner the same year tried to fly it into the Eiffel Tower but were foiled.

In those days, though, attacking Western targets was part of a local nationalist or sectarian fight. Al-Qaeda’s dark genius was to weave these strands together with the tools of globalisation to create a networked movement with a single worldwide cause: jihad against America. Conventional terrorist groups, such as the Basque ETA movement or even Lebanon’s Hizbullah, often keep their violence in bounds to avoid alienating their political supporters. But global jihadists, without a domestic constituency, seek to maximise civilian casualties for spectacular effect. Counting the victims is tricky. Attacks on Western civilians have dropped, but the routine use of suicide-bombings has raised the slaughter, mostly of Muslims, to appalling levels (see chart 1).

Al-Qaeda’s ideology was forged by one big victory and two decades of failures. Disparate Arab fighters who helped Afghan ones evict Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 were initially elated, but became dejected by the ensuing civil war and the failure of violent campaigns in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere. Many extremists decided to end the bloodletting. But a cadre of wandering jihadists gathered in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and decided to redirect their ire from the 'near' enemy to the 'far' one...

Al-Qaeda’s ideology was forged by one big victory and two decades of failures. Disparate Arab fighters who helped Afghan ones evict Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 were initially elated, but became dejected by the ensuing civil war and the failure of violent campaigns in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere. Many extremists decided to end the bloodletting. But a cadre of wandering jihadists gathered in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and decided to redirect their ire from the 'near' enemy to the 'far' one...

Seen in this light, one of the objectives of the September 11th attacks was to provoke the Americans into invading Muslim lands. But if al-Qaeda intended to trap America in Afghanistan, its plan went badly awry, at least initially. The Taliban fell quickly in 2001 and al-Qaeda’s followers were forced into hiding.

A hubristic America, however, then walked into a trap of its own making by invading Iraq in 2003. It got rid of a dangerous dictator but gave the jihadists a popular cause against American occupiers in the Muslim heartland. For a while the jihadists thought they could carve out a base in Iraq from which to destabilise the region. That danger may now have been averted. Helped by al-Qaeda’s excesses, a bloodied America seems to be fighting its way out of the worst of the troubles it created for itself.

So terrorism experts are now debating whether al-Qaeda is starting to burn itself out. 'On balance, we are doing pretty well,' Michael Hayden, the director of America’s Central Intelligence Agency, told the Washington Post in May. 'Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally—and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’—as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam.'

Many thought he was being overly optimistic. Had General Hayden himself not given warning two months earlier that the restoration of an al-Qaeda haven in Pakistan’s tribal belt constituted a 'clear and present danger' to the West?

A related argument has been provoked by 'Leaderless Jihad', a book by Marc Sageman, a counter-terrorism consultant. He argues that al-Qaeda’s core leadership has been 'neutralised operationally'. The bigger danger now comes from loose groups of Muslims in the West who radicalise each other and carry out autonomous, self-financed attacks.

This thesis has come in for strong criticism, particularly from Professor Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University. He notes that al-Qaeda’s imminent death has often been heralded in the past, only to be contradicted by the sound of new explosions. Many plots in Europe have direct connections back to Pakistan, he notes.

Part of the problem lies in al-Qaeda’s diffuse nature. Its core members may number only hundreds, but it has connections of all kinds to militant groups with thousands or even tens of thousands of fighters. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation, a militant network and a subculture of rebellion all at the same time.

To explain the movement, many experts draw parallels with globalisation. Some describe it as a venture-capital firm that invests in promising terrorist projects. Others speak of it as a global 'brand' maintained by its leaders through their propaganda, with its growing number of 'franchises' carrying out attacks.

The rise of al-Qaeda’s stateless terrorism does not mean that the old state-sponsored variety has disappeared. Libya, which once supported the IRA and other violent causes, may now be co-operating with the West, but Iran, among others, supports both Palestinian militants and Lebanon’s Hizbullah movement. Should Iran redirect Hizbullah towards a global terrorist campaign against the West—for instance, if the country’s nuclear sites were bombed—the effect might be more devastating than any of al-Qaeda’s works.

For the moment, though, the most immediate global threat comes from the ungoverned, undergoverned and ungovernable areas of the Muslim world. These include the Afghan-Pakistani border, the parts of Iraq still in turmoil, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and swathes of Yemen, Somalia, the western Sahara desert and the chain of islands between Indonesia and the Philippines (see map)...

This special report will attempt to answer the impossible question posed in 2003 in a leaked memo from Donald Rumsfeld, then America’s defence secretary: 'Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?'"

An interview with Economist defense and security correspondent, Anton LaGuardia, is a very interesting discussion worth your time if you are interested in this question.



If I have learned anything this summer, it is that there is no dearth of valuable expertise and insight on serious questions like international terrorism. That speaks well of what is possible when we have a robust enough marketplace of ideas to support such expertise and thought. The fact of that broad, robust, liberal democratic marketplace of ideas is the West's most important strength and weapon in this battle.

May we use it wisely.

Annie

For all kinds of special reasons, this is my favorite musical in the world. Partly, because the person who really taught me something about this piece of movie magic was also the person who taught me to love musical theater, again, after a long stint as a dreary drama snob. Partly, because she taught me the final number on a 22 hour road trip from Wichita to D.C., to keep us both awake.



Youtube really doesn't do Annie justice. You gotta rent it. Or be a cheeseball like me and buy it. Aileen Quinn, Albert Finney, and Carol Burnett are incomparable. You won't regret it.

Last scene.



Thanks, Annie. Thanks, Brandi.

Till tomorrow.

Bert and Ernie in the Hizz-ou!

Goddamn, I love the internet.

If only school was this fun

This is why history and wine do not mix.

Jesus. Everyone knows that the humanities only mix with beer.

Classic

Hotair:

Iraqis love Obama, think his withdrawal plan is stupid

True dat. Ich bin ein Iraqi. Or, something.

Wow

Yeah, uh. Senator McCain may want to look into some new handlers. You know, people with, uh, manners.



That's Brook Buchanan, McCain's national press secretary, and Nicole Wallace, former White House communications director, there. Yeah, apparently, these ladies' line of work is "communications." Check out the mad skillz.

"OK, you do seem really agitated." Perhaps that's because you're such an incurable bitch, Nicole. Apparently you aren't used to being told no, ladies. Welcome to the real world.

Washington is a testy place, right now, apparently. Not sure the whole, "Bitchy as I wanna be" approach is working for Brook and Nicole, there. Perhaps the McCain staffers are testing out leverage as a means of dealing with the media. If so, looks like a flop. And some really remarkably bad press to be coming from press people.

Do your thing, girls. As long as you keep jobs, that is.

Exactly

Hopefully, the New Yorker has learned their lesson with all that smarty-pants satire.



Thank goodness that sad moment in American political history is now history. Now I can get back to real news. And the kind of jokes that don't make my noggin' throb.



Ah, excrement. The food of the comedy gods.

So long, New Yorker. It's the one thing you didn't count on, weisenheimer.

We'll always have excrement.

The smartest thing I've read all week

Olivia Judson reminds me why I love the university.

Let's Get Rid of Darwinism

"Charles Darwin was a giant. He did not merely write 'On the Origin of Species' — one of the most important books ever written by anyone — in which he describes how evolution by natural selection works, and what some of its consequences and implications are. He also wrote — and this list is not exhaustive— a treatise on the formation of coral reefs that is still thought to be correct; a definitive monograph on barnacles, both extinct and extant; a book about how earthworms make soil; a now-classic text on carnivorous plants (the ones, like Venus fly-traps, that ensnare and digest insects); a book about the strange ways that orchids get themselves fertilized; and an account of the five years he spent aboard the ship HMS Beagle, which has become a classic of travel writing.

As if that wasn’t enough, he proposed sexual selection — the idea that decorations and ornaments, like peacocks’ tails, evolve because females in many species prefer to mate with the most beautiful males. Sexual selection has since become a major field of research in its own right.

In short, Darwin did more in one lifetime than most of us could hope to accomplish in two. But his giantism has had an odd and problematic consequence. It’s a tendency for everyone to refer back to him. 'Why Darwin was wrong about X'; 'Was Darwin wrong about Y?'; 'What Darwin didn’t know about Z' — these are common headlines in newspapers and magazines, in both the biological and the general literature. Then there are the words: Darwinism (sometimes used with the prefix 'neo'), Darwinist (ditto), Darwinian...

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually asking whether he was right about this or that, implies that the discovery of something he didn’t think of or know about somehow undermines or threatens the whole enterprise of evolutionary biology today...

Darwin was an amazing man, and the principal founder of evolutionary biology. But his was the first major statement on the subject, not the last. Calling evolutionary biology 'Darwinism,' and evolution by natural selection 'Darwinian' evolution, is like calling aeronautical engineering 'Wrightism,' and fixed-wing aircraft 'Wrightian' planes, after those pioneers of fixed-wing flight, the Wright brothers. The best tribute we could give Darwin is to call him the founder — and leave it at that. Plenty of people in history have had an -ism named after them. Only a handful can claim truly to have given birth to an entire field of modern science."

You gotta read the whole article. Brilliant stuff. Makes me miss university life. Except for the all of the pressures she cites. And all the people, there, as much as anywhere else, so completely convinced that they've got it all figured out.

What I like about universities is not having it all figured out. I genuinely like the journey as much as the destination. And I like best people who like to go on that journey with me. People who don't like to engage the important debates, or can't ever seem to learn anything from them, tend to be either arrogant or boring, or both.

I like people with a passion for life and for people and for thinking about them both, and who challenge me to think about them both more and better, as a consequence. Brandi was the last person I knew who had that kind of passion about people and life that I spent a good amount of time with. I miss having that kind of love and passion for people around in my life.

That was more nostalgia for grad school and my time with Brandi than a reflection on Darwin or Olivia Judson's brilliant column, here, I realize. I just miss a time in my life when it was more fun to think about life because my best friend was there every step of the way. I suppose that's why I don't date, anymore. I finally came to terms with that fact that I will never be happy until I find that kind of connection again.

Deeply thoughtful insight turns me into a sap, anymore, these days. I guess that's my way of saying I think I have kind of a crush on Olivia Judson.

And some memories of some good times.

Dude, could this world get any more fucked up?

I thought Montgomery Blair Sibley, the kilt-wearing lawyer who represented Larry Sinclair, the gay former drug dealer who accused Barack Obama of murder, was bizarre.





This fuckin' takes the cake

"Sanaa, Yemen: US lawyer David Remes, who
represents 16 Yemeni prisoners heldat Guantánamo Bay,
takes his trousers offduring a press conference.
He was demonstrating the mistreatment suffered by his clients."

It's a big fuckin' circus, out there, and I am
getting plenty of popcorn and a front-row seat.

I wouldn't miss this for the world.

Cynthia McKinney made me wet myself

I laughed a deep, hearty laugh of contentment and bewilderment at the sheer insanity of it all when I read this story.

Cynthia McKinney to be 2008's Ralph Nader

"Beloved former congress-lady Cynthia McKinney is the Green Party’s presidential candidate! She’s in it to win! The Greens had a convention on Saturday, apparently, and McKinney was the big winner. Her running mate is 'Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist and activist.' Well, all right.

McKinney represented Georgia in the House for six terms, and then she slapped around a cop or something, and said Bush did 9/11, and the Jews ran her out of office, and she impeached Bush, in her mind. Experts say she will end up with about 47% of votes intended for McCain, because their names are pretty much the same."

This is why I love multiparty democracy. For the sheer entertainment value.

Bobb Barr (a candidacy I'm hoping does some real good for the country, actually). Ralph Nader. Cynthia McKinney. Chuck Baldwin from the Constitutional Party.

This election is going to be a blast.

I have an old political buddy from college coming up next week. And we are going to drink some quality, bargain beer, lament how fuckin' whiny and stupid the country has gotten, and laugh our asses off at what a fucked up election this is turning out to be.

I'm not sure this election could get any dumber, at this point.

But it's going to be fun testing the limits of retarded possibility.

Misery

I have decided, after long reflection, that some people just prefer miserable lives. They don't prefer them because they actually want them. They prefer them because they cannot even consider the fact that, perhaps, they have some responsibility in their own misery.

Being self-centered and defensive has consequences, as it turns out, and the consequences are more tragic than they might otherwise appear. And some peoples' self-imposed tragedies are not just sad, they are downright pathetic.

The fate of Turkey and liberal values

Is there any better example of the foolishness and dishonesty of secular democracy without a commitment to liberal values, a commitment to liberty, than the on-going developments in Turkey?

Turkey charges 86 for 'coup plot'

"On Monday prosecutor Mr Engin filed charges at an Istanbul court against 86 people, 48 of whom are already in custody.

'The indictment covers crimes such as forming an armed terror group...and attempting to overthrow the government by force,' Mr Engin said.

A court must decide within two weeks whether to open the case against the 86 suspects.

They are accused of plotting to create chaos in Turkey, provoking secularist anger and a military coup that would topple the government.

The indictment referred to the killing of a judge in a 2006 armed attack on a court, and the bombing of a secularist newspaper.

There have been several coups by the Turkish military, which sees itself as the ultimate guardian of the country's secular values.

Some secularists believe the AK Party, many of whose members are former Islamists, is intent on installing Islamism in Turkey. They say the AKP's moves to overturn a ban on the Islamic headscarf at universities is evidence of this."

Future of the Ruling AK Party

"Turkey's recent top court decision that rejected a parliament constitutional amendment, which would have allowed female students to attend universities with headscarves, has provoked thousands of Turkish women, AKP supporters, and human rights activists worldwide.

It has also triggered an intense debate over the future of both: The ruling AKP — facing a constitutional court closure case in a few months— and Turkey's unique secularism seen by many critics as anti-democratic and anti-liberal.

The ruling Justice and Development party, AKP, rejected the decision as unconstitutional, breaching individual freedoms, and politically motivated. The court's decision poses a real threat to the majority party that is awaiting another constitutional court case seeking to outlaw the party and its 71 leaders—including the president Abdullah Gul and charismatic Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan— on grounds they are working to undermine the country's entrenched secularism."


Free speech on trial in Turkey

"Like one of his own characters, trapped between liberal yearnings and the reality of an unforgiving state, Turkey's most celebrated novelist, Orhan Pamuk, is slated to appear in court Friday to face charges of 'insulting Turkish identity.'

The high-profile free speech trial pits the aims of European-driven reform in Turkey - which began EU membership talks last October - against a fiercely nationalistic tradition that permits little challenge. Mr. Pamuk's trial is one of more than 65 other free speech cases now under way in Turkey, which are being closely watched by European observers, as a test of the recent reforms.

'This is a tug of war in Turkey now, between those who favor democratic and EU values, [against] those who are afraid of such change - the hard-core nationalists who are willing to do anything to stop that trend,' says Haluk Sahin, a journalism professor at Bilgi University and columnist for Radikal newspaper, who is also facing trial in February under the same statute...

Pamuk is charged over remarks made to a Swiss newspaper last February, that '30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.'

Pamuk did not use the word 'genocide,' which is officially rejected here in favor of an 'internecine fighting' formulation to explain the Armenian deaths 90 years ago. Western historians, however, often consider the events in Anatolia during the last years of the Ottoman Empire to be the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey has also long had difficulty accepting that Kurds have a separate ethnic identity, with their own language and customs, beyond a designation as 'Mountain Turks.' Battle against separatist Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s left an estimated 30,000 Kurds dead.

Even discussing such issues has been taboo in Turkey, though freedom of speech protection is required to join the EU club. Extremists rallied against Pamuk; a provincial governor ordered his books burned.

'Various newspapers launched hate campaigns against me, with some right-wing (but not necessarily Islamist) columnists going as far as to say that I should be 'silenced' for good,' Pamuk writes in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine. 'What am I to make of a country that insists that the Turks, unlike their Western neighbors, are a compassionate people, incapable of genocide, while nationalist political groups are pelting me with death threats?' he asks...

Pamuk faces three years in prison if convicted, though often such cases end in payment of fines.

Still, the number of cases is mounting, bringing opprobrium from the US and Europe - which has expressed 'serious concern' and tasked an envoy with following the trial - as well as from human rights organizations.

'The trial of Orhan Pamuk will show the world which direction Turkish justice is heading,' Holly Cartner, the Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement."

Turkish High Court Overturns Headscarf Rule
[notice how the left-wing, secular New York Times refers to the right to wear Muslim headscarves as a rule rather than as a freedom]

"ISTANBUL — Turkey’s highest court dealt a stinging slap to the governing party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, ruling that a legal change allowing women attending universities to wear head scarves was unconstitutional.

Turkish women wearing head scarves walked through the streets of Istanbul. Turkey's top court ruled today that Islamic head scarves violate secularism and cannot be allowed at universities.

The Constitutional Court said in a brief statement that the change, proposed by Mr. Erdogan’s party and passed by Parliament in February, violated principles of secularism set in Turkey’s Constitution.

The ruling sets the stage for a showdown between Turkey’s secular elite — its military, judiciary and secular political party — and Mr. Erdogan, an observant Muslim with an Islamist past.

The court is one of Turkey’s most important secular institutions, and liberals see the ruling as largely political. It bodes ominously for Mr. Erdogan: The same court is considering a case that would ban him and 70 members of his party from politics. A decision is expected in the summer.

Turkey’s political system has been controlled for generations by a powerful secular elite that has stepped in with coups and judicial decisions against elected governments. Mr. Erdogan and his party, Justice and Development, or AKP, have come the closest of any political party in Turkey’s history to breaking its hold on power.

In the head-scarf case, the elite establishment contended that allowing veiled women onto campuses threatened Turkish secularism, one of the founding principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular revolution in the 1920s. Head scarves were banned from campuses in the 1990s.

Kemal Anadol, a deputy chairman of the secular opposition Republican People’s Party, called the verdict a triumph of justice and said it showed that secularism and democracy were 'constitutional principles that can’t be separated from one another.'

Mr. Erdogan calls the case a matter of individual rights, contending that all Turks should be able to attend universities no matter what they wear or believe.

But the way his party proposed it — abruptly, with little public discussion — angered the secular old guard and disappointed liberals, who support the changes, but want them to be accompanied by changes that strengthen other rights, like free speech. Some said AKP seemed to be pursuing only those changes that would please its constituency, and not the broader range that was needed to join the European Union.

'AKP is lost in the spell of their own power,' said Mithat Sancar, a law professor in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. 'When they want to listen to liberals, they do, but when they don’t, they comfortably ignore them.'

Despite Mr. Erdogan’s broad popularity — his party won 47 percent of the vote in an election last July — the threat of a ban is serious. The authorities have closed more than 20 parties in the past, and Thursday’s ruling seemed as if it could be a sign of things to come.

The head-scarf amendment is considered to be the single most important irritant that set off the case to ban Mr. Erdogan and 70 other AKP members, and it is central to the prosecution’s argument that he and his allies are trying to dismantle secularism in Turkey, an accusation they strongly dispute."

Secular military coups. Banning religious parties. Censoring speech about Armenian genocide. Prohibiting religious headscarves.

How on earth could such leftism ever be characterized as liberal, in any honest sense?

The answer is that it cannot. And Turkey, today, reflects the sham of left-wing power grabs as liberal in any substantive sense.

Liberal means liberty. Power is the opposite of liberty. When people claim power on behalf of freedom without presumption against its use they do not bring a honest commitment to liberal values. They are rationalizing power for the causes they favor. Hence the most important aphorism in the political world by a more genuine liberal, John Dalberg-Acton:

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power is not freedom. Freedom is not power. They are opposites, even when power is used legitimately. Which is why we need a presumption against its use if we are to maintain any honest notion of liberal democracy.

Laziness, comfort, and a bit of wisdom

Given my slothful nature this summer, I looked for quotations on the corrupting nature of comfort and laziness. I spent a good hour in idle reflection on the brief witicisms of dead men. It didn't cure my indolence. But it gave me plenty excuse to put off actual work.

"I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction"

"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power."

"In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love."

"This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual."

"Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise,
I say ignore the bastard."

John Steinbeck (American Novelist and Writer, Nobel Prize for Literature for 1962, 1902-1968)


"The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish."

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

"Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society."

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."

"Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it."

"Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it."

Pope John Paul II (264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, 1920-2005)


"It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?"

"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

"Coersion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him."

"I know in my heart that man is good.
That what is right will always eventually triumph.
And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

Ronald Reagan (40th President of the United States, 1911-2004)


As always, Twain steals the show.

"I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility."

"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals."

"It is curious--curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare."

"The insincerity of man--all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet--his fame is eternal--needs no genius, no talent--mere honesty--Luther, Christ, etc."

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."

"A man will do anything, no matter what it is, to secure his spiritual comfort; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for its object."

Mark Twain (American humorist and writer, 1835-1910)


I wish I could say that idleness produces wisdom. It probably does, but it also adds weight and a healthy skepticism of all things done in a hurry. But, mostly, it keeps me honest about my true ambitions. Never hurts to be too honest.

Stubborn certainty and more stubborn facts

It's so funny to me that those pressuring Iran to give up the bomb, right now, cannot even conceive that their approach might be the exact problem that has created the stalemate.

Jitters Over Iran

But here's the trick when it comes to a false sense of "certainty." Facts are more stubborn than our insecurities about the world. They are more stubborn than our need for certainty that we do not have. And the fact of the failure of this approach for handling the nuclear standoff with Iran will persist completely independent of our stubborn attachment to failed policy.

Facts of human nature don't give two shits what your opinion is of them. And the fact that backing Iran into a corner makes them more aggressive will persist until the Administration, the United Nations, and the Israeli leadership face up to their failure. Which may be a long time coming, at this point.

The fact that existentially threatening Israel has not resolved Ahmadinejad's hateful and irrational conflicts with her neighbor has clearly not occurred to the Iranian President either. But I take the irrational leadership of Iran as a given and work on the party who has a shot at being a bit more wise about their policies.

Perhaps none of these parties are capable of reasonable consideration of policy options, including considering options that leave them with lots of egg on their faces but has a better shot at getting the job done.

Facts don't give two shits how stubbornly you are attached to any particular way of doing things. And neither do I.

And a false sense of certainty does not replace more genuine understanding of the situation in front of you in a hundred years.

Some people can only learn such lessons the hard way, I am learning.

So be it.

But, this time, be a grown-up and take responsibility for your fuck up.

Or leave leadership to people who can.

The antidote to cynicism

Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields understands, even if Ron Wood does not.



As does Peter Gabriel, in this gorgeous and melodic cover.



How sad that anyone would settle for less.

Lifestyles of the rich and cynical

I've always said that the saddest consequence of cynicism, in life, is that, generally, it means that you miss out on real love in your life.

Ron Wood, 61, Runs Off With 18-Year-Old Cocktail Waitress

If there is any more proof needed of what a fool this guy is, I don't know what it would be.

I watched a video of Nora Jones and Keith Richards singing a duo of Love Hurts, recently. And all I kept thinking was how Nora Jones so completely outclassed her wealthier, more famous Stones compatriot.



I love the Rolling Stones, is the truth. I love rocking out and the dark and exciting themes in songs like Paint It Black, Sympathy with the Devil, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, Shattered, Get Off of My Cloud, Heart of Stone, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Jumpin' Jack Flash, and the poignant and wildly ironic - given the tragic and foolish lives of most of the members of the Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want.



I would feel more sorry for this guys, is the truth, if they didn't consistently make messes out of their lives and the lives of those around them, and taking very little responsibility in the process.

But the commercial success of the Rolling Stones has always stuck out in my head as one of the better bits of evidence for those making the cynical argument for their lives and for life, generally, that nice guys finish last, to the victor goes the spoils, and every other cynical notion that people, especially young people of my generation and younger generations, have about the world.

But then you see a story like this one and you remember that, as always, the fantasy never lives up to the reality.

Cynisism is a foolish way to live one's life on any count, is the truth.

But cynicism about matters of love is one of its most tragic forms, I think. People who live their lives carrying such cynicism around in their hearts, whether flitting about from parter to partner or secretly harboring cynicism in committed relationships, make what I regard as one of the most serious mistakes that any person can make in a lifetime.

Because such cynicism cheats you from real love. And if you have never experienced it, you really have no clue what it is that you are missing out on. And there is no other thing in life that nurtures the heart and soul in quite the same way.

It is so sad to me that there are people in this world some of whom may never know what real love feels like. Not from their parents. Not from their family. Not from their friends. Not even from their lovers or spouses.

I can't imagine living a life so empty and tragic.

Ron Wood can (the rest of the band, too, save for more grounded members like Stones drummer, Charlie Watts). And I can't imagine a better argument for what a sad and bankrupt life it is to live like that. To live without real love. For others or for yourself. No matter how much money or fame or whatever cynical compensation for what really matters in life might be rationalized.



I'll take something real any day of the week. And none of that bullshit makes up for a hollow life without real love.

Does anyone believe in free speech anymore?

Looks like it's not just Democrats who have a problem with free speech.



They could have been much harsher with her, you know. Just remember what happened to Ahmad Bhatebe, Carol Kreck, and count yourself lucky. You wanna inhale excrement? Then pay the fuckin' ticket and do what your told.

You gotta love that logic. Take that, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We're America, bitch. We do what we want.

"I know their sacrifice was not for nothing. It was not in vain."

Hotair alerts me to this BBC report that the bodies of two U.S. servicemen, who came up missing during an ambush immediately after the surge began, have been found.

"Spc Alex Jimenez and Pte Byron Fouty had been listed as missing since they were seized in an ambush in May 2007 in an area south of Baghdad.

The body of a third soldier, Pte Joseph Anzack Jr, was found in the Euphrates river a short time after the attack.

The Islamic State of Iraq, a group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, had released a video saying it killed all three men...

Pte Fouty's stepfather, Gordon Dibler, said the military told him the remains of both soldiers were found in the village of Jurf as Sakhr, south of Baghdad, Associated Press news agency reported.

Spc Jimenez's father, Ramon, told AP that the news had 'shattered all hope' the family had to 'see Alex walk home on his own'.

'Byron went to Iraq to help people who couldn't help themselves,' said Mr Dibler. 'I know their sacrifice was not for nothing. It was not in vain.'"

Rest in peace, boys. We honor your sacrafice.

Change we can believe in?

Hotair has the story about House and Senate Democrats trying to regulate speech by legislators' in forums like Youtube and blogs.

Thadeus McCotter (R-MI), to his credit, decided to answer with a video.



Is limiting free speech really change Democrats can believe in?

Maybe Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein need to embrace change we can all believe in and honestly debate and discuss with colleagues with whom they don't always see eye to eye.

Isn't that the whole point?

As the great Linda Richman might say:

"The branches of Congress are a deliber-a-tive chamba' fa the expression of often strawng disawgreement about impo-tant matta's of public paw-licy. Discuss amongst ya'selves."

What courage looks like

Ahmad Batebi, the 21-year-old student who was imprisoned and tortured by the Iranian government because this picture was featured on the cover of the Economist, has escaped to America.

Silent no more

For every thug, the world over, from America to North Korea to Zimbabwe to Iran, in every nation from every corner of the globe, who has rationalized their cowardice in the name of power, Ahmad Batebi is a living example and challenge to you of what courage really looks like.

Ahmad Batebi, now 30, was a student photographer attending a rare and brave student protest of the Iranian government in 1999 in Tehran. Amidst the protests and subsequent government crackdowns, Ahmad held up a bloody shirt presumably belonging to another student protestor who had been attacked, he claimed, by Basij paramilitary forces.

As a consequence of the international notoriety he experienced from that Economist cover photo, Batebi was sentenced to death by the Iranian government.

I want every thug who thinks that their machinations for power and brutality are novel or clever or otherwise respectable to take notice of the subsequent move by the Iranian government in response to the negative international publicity.

The government commuted his sentence for "creating street unrest" to 15 years.

Isn't that clever? You see, they weren't quite as tough or harsh as they might have been. They could have been so much tougher or harsher, you see. But, instead, they showed mercy on young Ahmad. And they only sentenced him to 15 years in prison for holding up that T-shirt.

As the Economist reports:

"During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could torture him more. They held his head in a drain full of sewage until he inhaled it. He recalls yearning for a swift death to end the pain. He was played recordings of what he was told was his mother being tortured. His captors wanted him to betray his fellow students, to implicate them in various crimes and to say on television that the blood on that T-shirt was only red paint. He says he refused.

He was sentenced to death for 'creating street unrest'. But after a global outcry, the sentence was commuted to 15 years in jail. He speculates that his high profile made it hard to kill him without attracting negative publicity. For two years, he was kept in solitary confinement, in a cell that was little more than a toilet hole with a wooden board on top. He was tortured constantly. Only when he was allowed to mingle with other prisoners again did he begin to overcome his despair.

He suffered a partial stroke that left the right side of his body without feeling. He needed medical attention. The regime did not want to be blamed for him dying behind bars, he says, so he was allowed out for treatment. Three months ago, on the day of the Persian new year, he escaped into Iraq. On June 24th he arrived in America."



I want every thug in America and across the globe to take stock of the ugly rationalization used by this government. Because it is the excuse used the world over to rationalize every power-hungry, vindictive, brutal, ugly impulse that has ever been callously indulged the world over, since the beginning of humanity. It is the source of humanity's ugliest rationalizations of its most ruthless, barbarous, vengeful inclinations since the beginning of its long recorded and unrecorded history. It is humanity's cruelest, most heartless, most sadistic and inhumane rationalization since its inception.

And those who rationalize such brutality, cruelty, and power-hunger in liberal societies are no better, in the largest picture, than these blood-thirsty mullahs, no matter what excuse they may offer.

Courage is not the impulse to impose such cruelty. Courage is the capacity to withstand such treatment, to come away alive undiscouraged, and perhaps emotionally stronger, for the experience, and for stronger values and ideas to prevail over their weaker, more cowardly, and more brutal brethren.

It does not take courage to inflict such treatment on people. It does not take courage to repress. It takes courage to stand up to such repression. And Ahmad Batebi's long, brutal journey is a testament to that kind of courage.

People have rationalized such ugliness since the beginning of humanity. It is the answer to the long-standing question of how humanity could have spent so much of its history in illiberal, undemocratic, and brutal and repressive conditions.

Because such illiberality, brutality, and repression was rationalized by societies, democratic and undemocratic, to cover for their cowardly, power-hungry, vindictive, and brutal ways. It is the same impulses that have rationalized every uncivilized, barbarous, cruel, mean-spirited, and cowardly policy that has ever made its presence on Earth. It is the same rationalization used by the Nazis. It is the same rationalization used by the Soviets. It is the same rationalization used by the Saddam Hussein. It is the same rationalization used by the Communists in Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and China.

It is the same rationalization that has been used since the beginning of human history for force as a governing philosophy, for repression and brutality as the only means of containing those same impulses rationalized to govern them.

I want to say that again and be very clear.

The exact impulses that are rationalized to contain such brutality are the ones being used to rationalize force as a governing philosophy for such containment. Force, so the excuse goes, is the only impulse that can control such brutality. There is truth to the idea that force must be used to confront brutality when no other options exist. But its unending abuse is why liberal societies need a committed presumption against such ugliness when it comes to the use of force, the least necessary force or aggression possible. Because that fact of life is also, now and forever, the source of the corruption to which power tempts into perpetuity.

And it is that temptation that America and the liberal democratic world is giving into, during this political moment.

Courage is what it looks like for people like Ahmad Batebi to challenge such rationalizations and corruption from power, openly and despite punishments or rewards, not because of them. Cowardice is what it looks like to engage in such rationalizations and fail to take responsibility for them and our behavior in accordance with those rationalizations.

If Americans need someone to look to as an example of what courage looks like, it is not found, in its strongest form, at this moment, in any our candidates for President or in almost any of our elected leaders.

Courage is found in this one very brave Iranian young man who stood up for freedom when others were cowered by power.

For Ahmad and the thousands of brave young protesters like him, thank you for your courage. It is a light amidst the dark canvass of power and repression the world over. Thank you for being that light.

Montesquieu in action

"Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?

To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits."

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1952, Book XI, Of the Laws Which Establish Political Liberty, with Regard to the Constitution

You think ideas don't make the world go round? Keep watching this Karl Rove testimony drama. It's Montesquieu and separation of powers in action.

Here's Karl Rove addressing the subpoena when it was issued.



Here's Debbie Wasserman Shultz threatening action from Congress.



And here's Catherine Crier, talking as a surrogate for John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, about arresting Karl Rove and trying him before Congress if he refuses to testify to the House.



But here's the funny part. Karl's right. This is resolved either by the consent of both parties, or it goes to the court.

Catherine Crier is right that Congress is a check on executive power. But Karl Rove is also right that the executive branch is a check on Congress, as well. Meaning, they both serve as checks on each others' power. Tie goes to the court, likely the Supreme Court, who will probably render a final decision on this question.

It's so funny watching so many people talk about the rule of law with so much certainty but with so little understanding of the rule of law, on this question, isn't it? Makes you wonder about the folks making such calls. If you haven't already had much reason to wonder, already.

The rule of law, like any idea, is subject to the whims and vagaries of politics and the obsession with power that it often entails. The Nuremberg Laws, in Germany, that compelled Jews to turn themselves into the state to be murdered, and Fugitive Slave Laws, in the United States, which required that Americans betray their consciences and turn in runaway slaves, are excellent examples of the rule of law being used to serve the purposes of those obsessed with power at the expense of conscience and morality. It has been used for such purposes since the beginning of humanity. That is why Montesquieu developed the idea of separation of powers, to check this tendency (not to eliminate it, which is impossible). In fact, it has repeatedly been used and abused in exactly this way during this political period, by both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

But the ideas of people like the Baron de Montesquieu, embodied in the U.S. Constitution, ultimately govern this question.

And thank goodness for that. Without such ideas, we would all be subject to the vagaries of power that despotic governments that Montesquieu was critiquing were wont to engage in. We are subject to those vagaries, now, in liberal societies, as well.

But it is our liberal values and the ideas they give birth to, not the rule of law, that ultimately correct for such vagaries.

If you doubt that, keep watching. There's still a lot of life to be lived.

Involuntary volunteerism

Jonah Goldberg echoes my concerns about compulsory voluntarism (is it possible for an idea to be more internally contradictory?) and intrusive and expensive welfare states and their impact on genuine and voluntary contributions of money and service.

Forced servitude in America

"It's funny that, when the right seeks to use the government to impose its values, the left screams about brainwashing and propaganda. When the left tries it, the right thunders about social engineering. But when left and right agree -- as seems to be the case on national service -- who's left to complain? As ever, the slipperiest slopes are greased with the snake oil of 'bipartisanship.'

After all, Obama's hardly alone. Sen. John McCain is a passionate supporter of Washington-led (and paid-for) 'volunteerism,' as is President Bush. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and John Edwards both campaigned for the presidency on compulsory national service.

Perhaps thanks to the JFK cult, which sees the refrain 'Ask not what your country can do for you ...' as an all-purpose writ for social meddling, even the idealistic hipster crowd is on board. Devotees of Rolling Stone and MTV, who normally preen like cats in a pool of sunshine over their alleged libertarianism when the issue is sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, see nothing wrong, and everything right, with involuntary servitude -- as long as we just call it 'voluntary.'

Volunteerism is good. But why does every good thing need to be orchestrated by government? Most people think that churchgoing is a good thing. Does that mean the government should fund churches? That's what they do in Europe and -- surprise! -- most pews sit empty.

Americans are vastly more generous with their time and their money than Europeans. According to social demographer Arthur C. Brooks, in 1995 (the last year international comparative data on giving was available), Americans gave 3 1/2 times as much money to charities and causes as the French, seven times more than the Germans and 14 times more than the Italians.

In 1998, Americans also volunteered 21% more than the Swiss and 32% more than Germans -- two countries with compulsory national service. And yet we're continually told we should emulate them so that America too can have a "culture of service."

But we already have a healthier culture of service without -- as Obama would do -- doubling the size of the Peace Corps or pushing another 250,000 into AmeriCorps.

Indeed, there's ample evidence that countries with intrusive and expensive welfare states stifle their citizens' spirit of charity and volunteerism precisely because people conclude that every problem should be solved by government. Merely paying your taxes substitutes for charity, and cleaning up roadside litter for two years absolves you from doing anything more.

Time magazine's Richard Stengel speaks for many who insist that American government must consecrate everything. 'The reason private volunteerism is so high is precisely that confidence in our public institutions is so low,' he wrote last year in praise of universal national service. 'People see volunteering not as a form of public service but as an antidote for it.'

Really? I would have thought that the world's most charitable and voluntaristic nation -- one with a tradition of service that predates the decline of confidence in public institutions by generations -- might see volunteering as a good in and of itself.

This is the real problem with national service mania: It seeks to fix what ain't broke. No, national service isn't slavery. But it contributes to a slave mentality, at odds with American tradition. It assumes that work not done for the government isn't really for the 'common good.'

'The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,' Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously observed. 'The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.'

Moynihan was right, of course. But politics can change a culture for the worse too. Indoctrinating an entire generation with the idea that public service is something you do at the government's behest would not only steamroll the culture, it would help fewer people in the process."

He's right, of course. And from the Sentator's quotation, I never thought I'd find myself squarely to the right of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but I have to say that, generally, the conservative truth he cites is true and the liberal truth, at best, offers a short term answer when people are not being their brothers' keeper as well as is needed.

The idea that people and culture should be largely responsible for such matters is one that challenges many old-school liberals and conservatives, I am well aware. But it is a sign of a stronger culture and a stronger commitment to public and private good, not a sign of the apocalypse, left or right.

It'd be nice if American political leaders, as much as the American people, would step up in their commitment to that stronger vision of America and the world.

Until then, it's hardly worthy of us to pretend like our current efforts are really doing the job.

The food crisis and the law of unintended consquences

The New Republic, for the first time in a very long time, has a column worth citing, by Suzie Khimm.

How to feed the hungriest

"One real solution, as others have discussed, is agricultural development: getting seed, fertilizer, and machinery to farmers, and getting roads built so that these countries can feed themselves. This week, the World Bank announced that it would nearly doubled the money lent to such efforts in Africa, and Bank president Robert Zoellick has asked the G8 leaders convening next week to make similar pledges.

Unfortunately, it will be more difficult to muster the political will to look beyond short-term handouts and boost long-term rural development in starving nations. In this country, there’s the absurd boondoggle of the American food aid system, which demands that food be sourced in the U.S. and shipped on American vessels--a concession to powerful U.S. agribusiness and maritime interests. If food aid were sourced locally and regionally instead, it would create a big market incentive for agricultural development, ultimately alleviating the problem, or at least substantially diminishing its severity.

More broadly speaking, we also need to overcome the lingering paternalism that still colors our ideas about how to help the world’s hungriest--an attitude that assumes that the way to feed the wide-eyed children on television is by paying for their dinner tomorrow. There’s no doubt that emergency food aid is vitally necessary in the midst of the current crisis, and initiatives like the World Food Program have made aid efforts more sustainable. But the impact of America’s altruism would be many times greater if it were also directed to support less glamorous, screen-ready causes--such as, say, fertilizer.

The catch is that programs like international agricultural development are usually funded by governments, rather than private donors, and Americans continue to prefer voluntary private giving over mandatory public contributions. But the appeal to reconsider our conception of charity has to start somewhere. Give a man a fish, anyone?"

Khimm writes earlier in the article:

"For sure, the rural poor aren’t immune to the fluctuations of the international market: the upsurge in prices is destabilizing their countries’ economies, hampering government assistance programs, and hobbling international food aid efforts. (America’s food donations have been halved due to rising costs.)"

That is undoubtedly true, of course. But does it occur to anyone that, given the American and most peoples' penchant for voluntary private giving rather than mandatory public contributions, perhaps drops in food donations have also been due, as with the economic downturn) to a more repressive economic enviroment (moderately more trade protectionism, increased domestic regulation, a substantially increased Federal deficit and spending, increased and more public prosecutions of business owners and executives, the more frequent and pronounced use of public pressure to influence business activity and public policy, etc.)? Probably not, since everyone is going hog-wild with an approach that has produced so many poor results. What's one more, dumbasses must ask themselves?

Khimm is right about the bigger picture of international aid efforts (and similar reasoning warrants a transition to voluntary commitments in domestic welfare efforts, as well, in America and elsewhere). In fact, what she is articulating about powerful domestic industries using government power to further their own interests in such efforts is exactly one of the more serious concerns that Milton Friedman had of government-led market intervetion efforts. And it is pretty clear to me that the same self-centered manipulations is true of politicians, activists, and of all political actors (and all people, really) of all ideological and other stripes, until the consequences of such activity makes clear the failure of such manipulation.

As one Israeli diplomat described the origins of the nation of Israel, sometimes governments do all the wrong things before they hit upon the right thing. The same could be said of people, generally, really.

And the food crisis is but one more example in the long line of how even the most worthy causes are subject to the law that governs all humanity: the law of unintended consquences.

Maybe we should step back from the brink and reevaluate. If we want to do any good, that is.

"We need to finish the job"

This is exactly how I feel. And I am more and more ambivalent to who does it the more I have to watch this mindless election spectacle.



American politicians, in their mad and random grabs for power, have a way of producing apathy and cynicism, I must say.

And these folks serve as a valuable antidote to all that bullshit.

It's nice to have something worth believing in this Presidential election.

It's Fox News, bitch

I've never understood why so many liberals took Fox News so seriously as a threat to American democracy. It's like taking American Idol or the New Kids on the Block seriously as a threat to democracy. Ratings matter most to those who could give a shit about their credibility. Fox News, like professional wrestling, has more important things to think about than how popular they are.

And the Daily Show's John Oliver makes the powerful argument for why Fox News has defied the elites to demonstrate that popularity and journalistic integrity make for a big can of political whoopass.



Hot damn. Feel the integrity.



How does Fox News do it? Because they're just better than you. And tougher. And show a lot more cleavage.

At some point, someone's going to have to give Fox their props and carve out another spot on Mount Rushmore for Roger Ailes.

For now, Fox has an audience of millions. And, if you laught at that, elitist, just ask Britney Spears how much a million is. She'll show you how counting and popularity compensate for being a laughing stock.

It's Fox News, bitch.



It's her perogative.

Stepping back for the big picture

I have to say that I very much admire the efforts of General David Petraeus in his capacity as Commander of the Multinational Forces in Iraq. He is one of the more thoughtful people to have at that command and one of the best prepared, intellectually, to handle that job.



There is a part of me that envies his willingness and capacity to focus on the smaller picture of achieving success, in the form of sustainable Iraqi-led security amidst the violence that plagues that situation, before stepping back for the big picture.

I am a consonant big picture thinker. It is my biggest strength, I think. It is also a tendency that has got me in much trouble, often.

I am not someone who easily walks away from a situation and says, "It's not my problem," or "It's not my job." It's just not in me. In no job or responsibility I have had in a very long time have I ever been able to shirk an ultimate sense of responsibility. I have watched many friends and colleagues do it. I have had many bosses who do it. The vast majority, by far, in both categories. I have watched many politicians, journalists, academics, activists and various public servants and observers do it. Probably the vast majority in that category, as well, in the bigger picture.

But I've just never been able or willing to think that way. I take responsibility for all of the most serious responsibilities that we and I face very, very seriously. I just don't think I'm seriously capable of anything else in my life, at this point.

Maybe that's a mistake. It's definitely unconventional, I know. But I do think we'd be better off if more people reasoned and thought like this rather than less.

In the last 3-6 years of my life, for the first time in my life, I've started to pull back, some, in my heart. At least, I've been more unsure of this commitment than at any point in my life.

The world has just gotten meaner in that time. We've rationalized our worst instincts. And, worst of all, some have had the audacity to call it "progressive."

But progress can't happen when we rationalize our worst instincts.

Progress is only what happens when we embrace our best instincts, and take responsibility for our worst instincts.

Everything else is bullshit and a lie. And it doesn't matter how many times we tell a lie. It never becomes true with repetition.

Hitler had to learn that lesson the hard way. Stalin did as well. Every most power-obsessed leader and follower in the world has had to learn that difficult and destructive lesson the hard way.

Castro believes he has escaped that lie. As does Kim Jong Il. As does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As does Hu Jintao. As does Robert Mugabe. As does Myanmar's military leader Senior General Than Shwe. As does Sudanese President Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir. As does Ismail Haniyeh. As does Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. As does every dictator, terrorist, and thug who has ever walked the earth.

None of them have. None of them will.

Progress is not something we can thugishly impose on one another. Progress, as David Petraeus' career illustrates, is something that can only occur patiently, honestly, and with more decency and good will, over time.

Many have tried to define progress as the retreat of those who they engage in political warfare with and their ability to win ground for their causes, by hard or soft means, as Joseph Nye might put what he says now of soft power, in my correspondence with him, as not a more liberal commitment to the use of power - a commitment more consistent with our liberal and democratic values - but merely a social scientific term for less aggressive forms of manipulation and power.

But this is not only a dishonest view of progress and policy, a view that could fit the objectives of groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Nazis, and the Communists, as much as genuinely liberal and democratic progressive forces. It is a foolish notion of power and politics, which assumes that retreats signal final losses that they do not, in fact, signify.

Progress happens despite such setbacks, always, to anyone doing an honest reading of liberal democratic history. And no effort to rationalize such setbacks as actual progress have either made them so or convinced the vast majorities of liberal democratic peoples that they are, in fact, so, over the long term.

If you doubt that, I suggest you spend a small portion of your time studying Nazi or Soviet history, both of which were premised upon ideologies of progress, both of which convinced many people that such a premise was true, and both of which failed to stand the test of time that a more honest accounting would provide, over time.

Sometimes I wish I could just focus on the small picture, so that I could avoid the trouble that challenging sacrosanct notions of the big picture often creates for me. It would make my life easier, perhaps.

But it wouldn't be honest. And what I have to offer is too important to pull back from it, now, I think.

But it would nice. To just be a normal person who takes what life gives me, more, rather than someone wanting so much more from life.

This must have been how Hobbes felt. He was just trying to develop an idea of governance that would transcend the chaos created by power-hungry partisans that plagued his time. That is my same concern.

Though, knowing how few people actually know who Thomas Hobbes or Baron de Montesquieu or John Locke or even John Stuart Mill is, it is tempting to want to abandon it all and pursue something a little more lucrative and popular and less challenging and controversial.

But without challenge and controversy, and all of the serious disincentives to this work, there never can be real progress.

Everything else is a lie, at worst, and a half-truth, at best.

I want something better. For my kids and future generations. And for me.

And that is worth stepping back for.

Joseph Merrick, and what strength and courage looks like

If you have not seen The Elephant Man, before, I highly recommend it. It's David Lynch's and John Hurt's strongest film, I think.

I'm watching it, right now. It's the first movie I remember really making me sob as a kid. It's a very beautiful film.

"I am not an animal! I am a human being! I...am...a man!"

I cry harder, today, than I did then. It's a good sign for my humanity, I think.

Jospeh Merrick, referred to as John, in the movie and by others, because of a mistake in the book by Sir Frederick Treves, is what true strength, courage and dignity look like. I can't imagine living through the numerous cruelties and indignities he experienced and maintaining his gentleness of spirit.

It's more strength than I have ever known, that is for sure.

Too often humanity confuses cruelty, aggression, and power with strength. At times aggression and power are needed. But their abuse and use when they cause unnecessary hurt and tragedy is cruelty. Their rationalization, as Lord Acton wisely observed, has been the bane of human civilization. And the cruelty that is the fact of their abuse is one quality of the human condition that needs no excuse. As someone who has known and been responsible for cruelty, as much as aggression and power, I can say that with confidence.

Joseph Merrick reminds us what genuine strength and dignity really look like.



As John Hurt says in the special features, "Well, I would say that if you can manage to get to the end of The Elephant Man without being moved, I don't think that you'd be someone I'd want to know."

I'd want to know you. But I'm not sure I could respect anyone who took that attitude.

John Merrick took his life. It is an unfortunate tragedy for me. I wish I could say that I would have more strength in the face of the challenges he faced. I hope I would. But the strength it took him to face a life of such unparalleled cruelty and infringements on his dignity is ultimately unknowable to me.

Joseph Merrick's autobiography ends with this poem by Isaac Watts.

Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul,
The mind's the standard of the man.

I am blessed for having known something of him.