Over on Autonomist, my friend Rocco DiPippo — to whom I am tremendously indebted for non-blog-related reasons — writes:
…politically speaking it was idiotic for Republicans to showboat over the Foley matter. And incredibly, after the Foley revelations, Republican pundits lined up to publish a self-flagellating stream of articles saying how it might be “good” to lose the Congress, since that would teach Republicans how to be Republicans again.
Well that might be a reasonable strategy in peacetime, but it is madness during war, especially when you are willing to risk having people with a demonstrable, 40-year- long track record of appeasement coupled with an aversion to things military, attain power. So, in essence, though the Republicans rightly stressed that America’s first order of business is successfully waging war against a particularly virulent, widespread enemy, some of those same Republicans were willing to jeopardize this country’s safety by handing power over to a group of people who, in their adolescent haze, do not think we are actually involved in a war. These so-called conservatives and so-called Republicans are plain stupid, or utterly hypocritical. …
Now, there’s a good chance that the War on Islamist Terror will be lost, a million Iraqis will die and endless investigations aimed at impeaching Bush and Cheney will soon commence. Aren’t you glad you stayed home instead of voting?
Although my motivation had nothing whatsoever to do with the Foley matter — to which I paid almost no attention — I am not timid in the least to admit that, not only did I not stay home, I voted for Sheldon Whitehouse. If that makes me a “so called” whatever, so be it.
Here’s my bottom line: As soon as the national GOP began acting under the rationale of “what are they going to do, vote for Democrats?” — which they’ve been doing for longer than most of us would like to admit — the party became a detriment to the war on terror and, perhaps even more importantly, to everything that makes this country worth defending against terrorists. They became a detriment even to those social causes that they sought to leverage (e.g., same-sex marriage and abortion), and they became a detriment to the economic causes that are supposed to be the sine qua non of Republicanism.
If conservatives intended to assert themselves on this broad, self-defining slate of issues, it had to be with this election. These are, all of them, long-term issues, and the rapid slip among the “right” party required equally rapid correction: proving the possibility of defeat to the Republicans and the reality of responsibility to the Democrats. Doing so was neither stupid nor hypocritical, but considered and consistent. As to whether it will prove correct and effective, we can only pray.
Jonah Goldberg writes about the importance of tradition:
Traditional rules of conduct emerge over time through a process of trial and error. To pick an extreme example, the Shakers banned sex and – surprise! – America is not overrun with Shakers today. Successful societies learn from their mistakes in time to make adjustments. Those adjustments become best practices that in turn become customs, and eventually, those customs become traditions. Those traditions are passed along from generation to generation, usually without us knowing all the reasons why they became traditions in the first place.
Obviously, some of these traditions are outdated and silly. Others are vital. Even leftists and libertarians who display ritualized contempt for tradition understand that we do some things today because we’ve learned from the mistakes of our forefathers. If everything is open to revision, then slavery is still a viable option. Fundamentally, this isn’t a point about political conservatism so much as civilization itself. Cultures have roots – a point we’re learning the hard way in Iraq, where there is no liberal democratic tradition and we are trying to create one from scratch.
Goldberg continues by using Madonna–“a pioneer of slattern chic”–and showing how her apparent post-motherhood epiphany towards a more traditional morality does little good for the generation who grew up taking her message of “slattern chic” to heart.
Goldberg isn’t blaming Madonna personally for the decline and fall of Western Civilization. However, he is pointing out that she is but one of many who were pushed to the front of the cultural vanguard and–like it or not–served as an example of what it meant to be cool. Perhaps she wasn’t the first, but Madonna’s example provided the template for a generation of young female pop singers–Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera come to mind–who defined becoming “independent” as becoming slutty. Predictably, both Spears and Aguilera have toned it down as they’ve matured. They and we have learned–again–that hedonism doesn’t equal happiness: it’s just too bad that no one ever seems to listen the first time.
But I suppose that ignoring the moralizing of the older and wiser is human nature. Every generation goes through their “Rebel Without a Cause” phase, but most grow out of it–having kids and assuming adult responsibilities has a way of doing that. What doesn’t seem to change is that there are always those who will take advantage of the innate rebelliousness of youth in an attempt to push cultural change. They are locked in a cycle of change for it’s own sake–more libertine anarchy than liberal progressivism it often seems–whether it’s ultimately better for society or not.
Conservatives don’t believe that change is bad, but we do believe that it should be undertaken gradually. Most importantly, conservatives believe that if the results of “change” aren’t looking so hot, the solution isn’t to press for further change in the vain hope that we’ll somehow get it right this time, really, we promise. Instead, the smartest option is to go back to what worked before. Sometimes Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa really do know what they’re talking about, after all.
Friday, the 16th, a fair warm day towards; this morning we determined to conclude of the military orders, which we had begun to consider of before but were interrupted by the savages, as we mentioned formerly. And whilst we were busied hereabout, we were interrupted again, for there presented himself a savage, which caused an alarm. He very boldly came all alone and along the houses straight to the rendezvous, where we intercepted him, not suffering him to go in, as undoubtedly he would, out of his boldness. He saluted us in England [English], and bade us welcome, for he had learned some broken English among the Englishmen that came to fish at Monchiggon [Monhegan Island], and knew by name the most of the captains, commanders, and masters that usually came. He was a man free in speech, so far as he could express his mind, and of a seemly carriage. We questioned him of many things; he was the fist savage we could meet withal. He said he was not of these parts, but of Morattiggon [Monhegan Island or Pemaquid, Maine], and one of the sagamores or lords thereof, and had been eight months in these parts, it lying hence a day’s sail with a great wind, and five days by land. He discoursed of the whole country, and of every province, and of their sagamores, and their number of men, and strength. The wind being to rise a little, we cast a horseman’s coat about him, for he was stark naked, only a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span long, or little more; he had a bow and two arrows, the one headed, and the other unheaded. He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all; he asked some beer, but we gave him strong water and biscuit, and butter, and cheese, and pudding, and a piece of mallard, all which he liked well, and had been acquainted with such amongst the English.
from Mourt’s Relations by Edward Winslow
The rest, as they say, is history.
Heck, it’s late on getaway-day, so why not a bit of fluff before you hit the stuff…ing. In a rather un-PC titled article, “Patriots vs. Redskins“, Kevin Hassett of the new American.com On-line Magazine writes about how the Patriots are the NFL’s business model franchise. Hasset explains why economic theory supports that “the [NFL] draft is the only place to build a winning team” and that “economics would predict that teams would uniformly put an enormous effort into perfecting their drafts, and avoid sinking excessive dollars into costly free agents.” So who does this the best?
In fact, this model predicts very well the behavior of one team, the New England Patriots. Their head coach, Bill Belichick, who received his undergraduate degree in economics from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, has been an artist at squeezing value-added out of his draft picks, and has won three of the last five Super Bowls.
This economic brilliance was on display in September, when Belichick traded disgruntled receiver Deion Branch to the Seattle Seahawks for a first-round draft pick. The Seahawks gave Branch a $39 million contract, guaranteeing that they would achieve little value-added at that position. So Belichick burdened the salary cap of a rival with a fat obligation, and took home a valuable draft pick for his own team.
Belichick keeps winning because so many others in the league behave so strangely. Two economists, Cade Massey of Yale and Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, studied years of draft history and found that teams make systematic errors that reflect a serious economic illiteracy. Coaches and general managers place too high a value on the top few picks, and too low a value on picks a bit further down.
Just some food for thought for you as you half-nap, half-watch an uncompetitive football game, with a ball of stuffing and turkey floating in your stomach amidst a sea of gravy, and your mind encased in a post-feast, triptofan induced fog.
Next up: why baseball is proof that trickle-down economics works.
(Just kidding)
It’s no big surprise that the R.I. Senate Democrats–33 out of the 38 State Senators–unaminously re-elected Joseph Montalbano (D-N. Providence) to be Senate President and M. Teresa Paiva-Weed (D-Newport) as Senate Majority Leader. This despite the fact that Montalbano may currently be the target of an FBI invesigation. (Something, by the way, that both Bill Rappleye of NBC10 and the ProJo’s Katherine Gregg brought up at the Dems celebration). From Gregg’s story:
In June, the citizens group Operation Clean Government filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission about Montalbano’s failure to mention on his annual financial disclosure statement the income his law firm had been getting since at least 2003 from the Town of West Warwick. Last month, the commission itself lodged a complaint against Montalbano for failing to disclose additional income derived in 2002.
Both stemmed from the disclosure by The Providence Journal on the day the Senate was poised to vote on placing the doomed West Warwick casino proposal on the ballot that Montalbano’s North Providence law firm had been paid $86,329 including expenses by the town since 2003 for legal work that included clearing the titles on two parcels of land near the proposed Harrah’s-Narragansett Indian casino.
By late last month, the FBI was involved.
The FBI subpoenaed records regarding his title work in West Warwick, a town councilwoman confirmed that she had been questioned by the FBI about how Montalbano came to be hired by the town, and Montalbano acknowledged the FBI “questioned several senators, members of my staff and they questioned me.”
Montalbano said he welcomed the investigation because he had nothing to hide and had been assured he was “not a target.”
Asked yesterday if he had taken any steps in advance of last night’s Senate Democratic caucus to assuage any concerns his colleagues might have about his predicament, Montalbano said he saw no need: “To a person in the Senate, no one has questioned my determination that I will protect my integrity to the bitter end.”
To be fair, there are no charges against Montalbano. But note the careful wording of his last statement: “no one has questioned my determination that I will protect my integrity…” I’m sure he’s determined to protect his integrity, but not questioning his determination to protect his integrity isn’t the same as not questioning his actual integrity. (Sure, I may be parsing a bit too closely, but Sen. Montalbano is a lawyer and has experience in the art of wordsmithing).
Yet, then again, even if they had such questions, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Montalbano’s re-election reveals questionable judgement on the part of the Democrat caucus who have decided that someone who is currently under a cloud of ethics charges is worthy of leading them. So much for the negative repercussions of the appearance of impropriety. Why didn’t they elevate Sen. Paiva-Weed instead? She’s proven to be an effective leader and there are no clouds threatening rain upon her parade. Instead, I’m left to believe that fear of political repercussions–or maybe just habit–has put Montalbano back on top.
Remember how the Democrats told us that a vote for Chafee would be a vote for Bush, because Chafee–though he may disagree with the President on almost everything–would ultimately help keep the President’s “corrupt” party in power? The same applies on the state level here in Rhode Island, folks. Your local legislator may be a good person–just like Senator Chafee–but the votes and support of these average, “good guy” Democrats serve to prop up the same political problem children with whom everyday Rhode Islanders are supposedly so disgusted.
Natalists rejoice! A few weeks ago, I linked to an item describing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call for an Iranian baby-boom. Yesterday, in a column about the proliferation of Iranian prostitution, the Asia Times columnist called “Spengler” provided some insight into Ahmadinejad’s probable motivation — an Iranian birthrate slowdown on a scale more commonly associated with European population trends (h/t Instapundit)…
As the most urbane people of Western Asia, the Persians grasped the hopelessness of circumstances quicker than their Arab neighbors. That is why they have ceased to bear children. Iran’s population today is concentrated at military age; by mid-century, today’s soldiers will be pensioners, and there will be no one to replace them.There is a difference, of course. Euro depopulation is generally attributed to people being too complacent about their welfare-state existence. Spengler suggest Iran’s problem is rooted in too much despair…
That is why it is folly to approach Iran as a prospective negotiating partner, and meaningless to offer the clerical government security guarantees, for the threat to its security arises from within. Once a people has determined to extinguish itself, nothing will prevent it from doing so. There is no doubt as to the demographic data, which come from the demographers of the United Nations.
It is not just poverty, for poor women bear children everywhere. In the case of Iran, deracination and cultural despair impel millions of individual women to eschew motherhood.If the data quoted by Spengler is accurate, Iran is now in full or partial retreat on two grand-strategic fronts. 1) As Spengler discusses in detail, Iran is showing signs of the internal malaise common to totalitarian states and 2) the Iranian economy has likely passed its high-water mark. Unless there is a sudden and steep decline in the price of oil, alternatives to conventional oil are going to become economically viable on a permanent basis. Either scenario, lower prices or more alternatives, means less cash for the Iranian government, meaning more despair and more internal stress. (Totalitarian states are not good at facilitating diversified economies).
The important points here relate to the work of the Iraq Study Group. Does it make sense to offer an enemy state “security guarantees” at the time when the internal structure of its society is crumbling? If the forces that hold Iran together are openly starting to break down, then isn’t this the ideal time to put a policy of containment — a real policy of containment, i.e. pressure aimed at changing the nature of an enemy regime, not the lumpencontainment of Bill Clinton or Colin Powell, which is nothing more than holding the line and hoping for the best — into place? [Open full post]
It ought to raise suspicions about their cause when marriage advocates seek to advance it through divorce:
[Karen L. Loewy, staff attorney for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders] said Rhode Island recognizes marriages validly entered in other jurisdictions, unless there’s a strong public policy reason not to, and she said there’s no such reason in this case. She said it’s the common practice of comity, in which one state recognizes the laws of another.
The sticky area with same-sex marriage — which one is apt to find with any issue that involves the assertion of a wholly new definition of legal terms — is that the “strong public policy reason not to” derives from the fact that, in Rhode Island, marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman. Note the Rhode Island General law respecting marriage licenses:
15-2-1 License required – Proof of divorce. – (a) Persons intending to be joined together in marriage in this state must first obtain a license from the clerk of the town or city in which:
(1) The female party to the proposed marriage resides; or in the city or town in which
(2) The male party resides, if the female party is a nonresident of this state; or in the city or town in which
(3) The proposed marriage is to be performed, if both parties are nonresidents of this state.
If Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr. decides to grant the divorce, he will have — despite all of the language throughout Rhode Island law proving marriage to be an opposite-sex affair — acknowledged that a marriage can indeed exist when the spouses are of the same sex. Combine such a decision with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that Rhode Island need not be seen as forbidding same-sex marriages for the purposes of Massachusetts law, and same-sex marriage will have been successfully imported to Rhode Island purely via judicial maneuvering.
[Open full post]I found this line, from Ethan Wingfield, particularly interesting:
Brown is one of the most relaxed institutions there is. Students can drop out of a course on the last day of the semester and get the class erased from their records.
Perhaps the key would have been to pitch a grade-inflation angle to keeping the evangelical group on campus.
[Open full post]Yesterday, I read in the ProJo about how Brown University had rather suspiciously banned an on-campus student evangelical group.
Leaders of the group say they were given different reasons for the action. At first, they were told it was because their local sponsor, Trinity Presbyterian Church, had withdrawn its support, which it hadn’t. Then they were told that it was because the group’s former leader had been two months late in September 2005 when he submitted the group’s application to be recognized as a campus organization. But the third reason is one that group leaders say is most baffling: the Rev. Allen Callahan, Protestant chaplain, asserted they were “possessed of a leadership culture of contempt and dishonesty that has rendered all collegial relations with my office impossible.”
Student leaders said they still don’t know what he meant, and wrote a0 long letter to the chaplain’s office seeking elaboration. There’s been no response.
“We were disappointed that the university administration should treat us so lightly that they wouldn’t even acknowledge our letter,” said the fellowship’s president, Ethan Wingfield, a senior philosophy major. “We felt disrespected.”
The F.I.R.E. organization has taken up the students’ cause, but the group has yet to get a concrete explanation as to why it has been barred. Arlene Violette also had one of the students on her show yesterday (I didn’t catch his name, but it may have been Wingfield) and he did state that the local chapter of the ACLU was helping the students.
Now I’ve discovered (via Instapundit and Judith Weiss) that Brown also cancelled a talk by Nonie Darwish last week. Darwish is an Egyptian who has gotten publicity for her willingness to talk (and she’s written a book) about the radical Muslim culture in which she grew up. According to Adam Brodsky of the NY Post:
MUSLIMS are often accused of not speaking out sufficiently against terrorism. Nonie Darwish knows one reason why: Their fellow Muslims won’t let them.
Darwish, who comes from Egypt and was born and raised a Muslim, was set to tell students at Brown University about the twisted hatred and radicalism she grew to despise in her own culture. A campus Jewish group, Hillel, had contacted her to speak there Thursday.
But the event was just called off.
Muslim students had complained that Darwish was “too controversial.” They insisted she be denied a platform at Brown, and after contentious debate Hillel agreed.
Weird: No one had said boo about such Brown events as a patently anti-Israel “Palestinian Solidarity Week.” But Hillel said her “offensive” statements about Islam “alarmed” the Muslim Student Association, and Hillel didn’t want to upset its “beautiful relationship” with the Muslim community. Plus, Brown’s women’s center backed out of co-sponsoring the event, even though it shares Darwish’s concerns about the treatment of women. Reportedly, part of the problem was that Darwish had no plans to condemn Israel for shooting Arab women used by terrorists as human shields, or for insufficiently protecting Israeli Arab wives from their husbands.
In plugging their ears to Darwish, Brown’s Muslim students proved her very point: Muslims who attempt constructive self-criticism are quickly and soundly squelched – by other Muslims.
Is there a pattern here? Brown did an admirable job of justified self-flagellation in their investigation into the role that the University played in slavery (though some dispute portions of it). Perhaps they should start a new investigation into why there is a pattern of silencing those whose views–on the face of it–seem to run counter to the on campus conventional wisdom.
[Open full post]“DON”T LOOK AT THE TV!”
Exclaiming that sentence–directed to my unsuspecting daughters–is a regular occurence in my household on any given Saturday or Sunday afternoon when Dad (me) is watching “the game.” Especially now that the weather is getting colder and there’s less to do outside. On the weekend, when they are taking a break from playing, the kids may wander into the living room to see what Dad’s up to. Occasionally, they’ll take a seat, ask me questions about the game and cheer when the Pats score a Home Run (they’re still learning the details of which team plays what…). Eventually, on comes the commercial break. I’ll let Steven Spielberg do the ‘splainin’ from there:
Steven Spielberg urged TV networks to be mindful of what they show on the air because of the effect it might have on children, and said programs like “CSI” and “Heroes” were too gruesome.
“Today we are needing to be as responsible as we can possibly be, not just thinking of our own children but our friends’ and neighbors’ children,” Spielberg told an audience Monday at the International Emmys board of directors meeting here.
Spielberg decried on-air promotions for television shows like “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” that showed “blood and people being dissected.” He also said that when his favorite TV show of the new season, NBC’s “Heroes,” showed someone cut in half in the 9 p.m. hour, he sent his younger children out of the room.
“I’m a parent who is very concerned,” he said.
Spielberg is correct to be concerned about the times that gruesome shows are aired. Yet, my big problem is when I’m on the couch on Sunday at 2:25 in the afternoon watching the Pats, with a little girl on each side of me, and the latest CSI commercial comes on, complete with a shootout and at least one, “well-used” cadaver laying on the table. (By the way, I don’t care what they say, the volume of a commercial is louder than the show).
I completely understand that TV networks are attracted to sports programming because they provide an opportunity to promote their cheaper and higher revenue generating fare to a particularly attractive audience demographic (18-34 year old males). No problem. Just remember that the content of the commercials for TV shows need to be appropriate for the time in which they air. I suppose if you’re showing a slasher flick at 2 PM on a Sunday, it’s OK to expect that the audience for that wouldn’t be offended or scared by the image of a bloody cadavar. But not when a kid is watching a game! (This goes for advertisements for “male enhancement” products, too, by the way!)
Have my kids been irrevocably harmed? No, but I haven’t caught one episode of CSI (any version) since it came on the air.
