The tragedy of Corey Maye

Corey Maye is a particularly tragic victim of one of this nation's most disturbing domestic trends: the militarization of our police forces.

Please read up on him and this issue at Radley Balko's great blog theagitator.com.

Delusions of failure

Matt Welch over at reason's hit & run has a great post about this insane article from Greg Anrig. Read and enjoy...

A reading list

In my humble opinion, the most important intellectual attribute is the capacity for clear, conceptual, rational thought. That might not be apparent in my the garbled gibberish that dots this blog but I don't proofread or re-draft here... maybe I should.

Still, here is a reading list for those that would like a nice example of what I value:

Eric Hoffer - most people reading this will have never heard his name but a paragraph into The True Believer and you will know just how remarkable this man truly was.

Saint Thomas Aquinas - the Summa Theologica is his premiere work and Catholic or not, this man was and is one of the truly sublime logicians in history.

Sir Francis Bacon - anyone who goes through their life without reading his essays will almost certainly be the worse for it. In terms of his clarity of thought and efficiency of prose, he is stands rivaled only by Mr. Hoffer.

Ayn Rand - apologies for her rejection of biological human nature, interesting if incomplete philosophy, late-life paranoia, cultish tendencies, and irritating literature. Other than that, she was a powerful, creative, witty, and often profound thinker who is far too often overlooked by serious intellectuals in large part because of how off-putting her devoted followers are.

Rudyard Kipling - has ever a man more important, more significant, and more praised than he been so quickly and completely dismissed? I can think of none. Kipling has cruelly and unfairly labeled many distasteful things and his poetry and literature, once a staple of western education, are now virtually black-listed by modern academia. Few men have ever spoken to the truth of human nature as he.

Aristotle - shame on you if you don't read something from him at least once a year. Aristotle may very well have been the most brilliant mind in human history. Organon and the Nichomachean Ethics are his two most relevant works but his wildly inaccurate work in biology and physics are valuable, if not for their accuracy, but for his intellectual process. It is a wonder to see how the mind of a genius works, even when it's wrong.

Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz - one of the few people on this earth of truly transcendent genius. The scope of his work ranges from history and theology to biology, linguistics, and most famously mathematics and probability. 

The clarity and elegance of these great thinkers makes them not only intellectually and philosophically valuable but also accessible and dare say, entertaining.

The Ron Paul effect

This article from last week in the AP concerns itself with the notion that Ron Paul could have an effect on the election in some of the western states. 

"In Nevada, there's absolutely enough to have an effect on the election," said Chuck Muth, a leading conservative activist in a state in which early polls show McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama in a statistical tie.

Of course it's a long way till them general election and the popular support for outside the mainstream candidates often declines as the election approaches so I have my doubts.

A more interesting quote is this one:

"I think that you will see not just Libertarians who always vote for the Libertarian candidate but conservative Republicans saying we've had it, we've had enough and they're going to go ahead and vote Libertarian," Muth said.

Is the republican party finally showing signs of fracture. Is the small-government wing of the party finally fed-up? Again, I have my doubts but let's hope so.

What should a conservative stand for?

I would think that the most important political position of an American conservative should be pro-capitalism.

He should believe in the absolute protection of private property, freedom of association, and commerce and every right so rationally derived.

Liberty should be his banner in the political war, capitalism his aim, and government his nemesis.

He should seek to constrain and restrain the state and never forget that government corrupts and should never be used to further his ends, because when government is unleashed it will devour liberty first.

Oh lament the conservative!

To lament the conservative one first must know what he is and what he must do.

Evelyn Waugh once said:

"[Kipling] was a conservative in the sense that he believed civilization to be something laboriously achieved which was only precariously defended. He wanted to see the defences fully manned and he hated the liberals because he thought them gullible and feeble, believing in the easy perfectibility of man and ready to abandon the work of centuries for sentimental qualms."

There are not many statements that more clearly and concisely illustrate what it means to be a conservative and the troubling nature of a liberal.

Conservativism, in any culture, has respect for said culture and it's traditions; the conservative isn't afraid of change but rather of liberal recklessness because he knows how hard civilization is to achieve and how easily it can be destroyed. A civilization, no matter how great, can quickly descend into chaos and the conservative knows it. He is the defender of civilization and tradition is his weapon.

Liberalism is the catalyst for cultural change both good and bad. The liberal is dynamic, experimental, radical and often intellectual. He challenges tradition and fights for change. Violence and revolution are the means to his ends but a lack of judgement is his curse. The liberal will destroy civilization more often than he improves it, but he can improve it.

Given a rational foundation, those two competing ideologies work in partnership. With liberals driving a society forward and conservatives steering away from danger, a nation can move forward indefinitely. It is only when irrationalism takes root that civilization decays from within and irrationalism is the hobgoblin of liberalism.

Conservatism will always fall back on tradition and thus, as long as a society has a strong rational foundation then civilization is resilient and durable. Protecting a rational foundation is, above all, the supreme duty of the conservatives because when they allow liberals to infect a society with irrationalism then that societies demise is almost certain. Liberals are allowed the luxury of immediate gratification, foolish utopianism, and grand experiments because good or bad, they will flourish and feel no guilt over what was lost but will simply move on. The conservative will follow the liberal's successes but civilization will follows the conservatives failures and protecting the rational philosophy is his greatest challenge and the only one that he cannot afford to fail. When the irrational finally destroy civilization it will do so with mantle of a defender of tradition.

The modern American conservative has failed in that task. The American left has long been infected with a particularly virulent form of irrationalism, one armed ironically and uniquely with a long-term strategy. The American conservative, never arming himself with a true rational defense, was simply no match Gramsci's marxism, Derrida's Deconstruction, or the left's long march to the institutions and his defeat was as inevitable as it was tragic.

The American conservative has been in trouble for many years but has occasionally shown sparks of life with Goldwater, Reagan, and even George W. Bush gave some us hope. He appeared to be a comfortably harmless president in the mold of Taft, Coolidge, or Harding. Someone that could hold down the fort till a better, braver, stronger leader would come to man the defenses more aggressively and more fervently than he. To say that we conservatives were wrong would be the most profound of understatements. George W. Bush is the physical manifestations of the intellectual rot within the minds of the American conservative. We had fallen further and sunk deeper than we ever expected and he showed us just how far: all the way.

I do not know exactly when the American conservative died but I know for certain now that he is dead. I also know that if no one will stand up and take his place to defend the rational and traditional America then this great and brilliant nation will die a meek and violent death.

Kneel before your next president!

I sometimes have a hard time trying to decide who is worse: John McCain or Barack Obama. The basis for my confusion is that my evaluation uses only one piece of criteria: the candidates degree of and affection for authoritarianism. I'm torn between the militarized imperial state of John McCain or the socialist PC nanny-state of Barack Obama.

Let's see, what would I like to go to jail for, refusing to hand over my laptop or a random piece of paper when traveling abroad or for being a racist, sexist, anti-hopist? It's so hard to choose.

For John McCain it's a bit more clear-cut because he is a security authoritarian:

Answering a question about his approach to combatting crime, John McCain suggested that military strategies currently employed by US troops in Iraq could be applied to high crime neighborhoods here in the US. McCain called them tactics "somewhat like we use in the military…You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control."

What matters is that I am safe and everyone is safe from me and so on. He might as well cover the world in bubble wrap. Of course, who cares if I am free... he was born to be a monarch.

Barack Obama on the other hand is more of a modern leftist:

"In Africa, you often see that the difference between a village where everybody eats and a village where people starve is government. One has a functioning government, and the other does not. Which is why it bothers me when I hear people say that government is the enemy. They don't understand its fundamental role."

Great. Governments fundamental role? Governments fundamental role mr. Obama is to do as little as humanly possible in order to ensure the liberty of all and as a result the society will flourish or flounder based on the quality of its people, not it's government.

Barack Obama wants us to apologize for our past crimes:

"I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged."

"I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it’s Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."

Unless he can raise the dead then I'm not exactly sure what he's talking about. I would have no objection to apologizing to slaves so long as I get to own one but seeing as that isn't going to happen then I don't really want that on the next presidential agenda. That is Obama though, pandering to emotions more thoroughly than Clinton ever could have dreamed. For Obama it is about hope, possibilities, dreams and very little about ideas, values, and the nitty-gritty. For this whimsical senator from illinois, governing amounts to little more than a new-age feel good session.

McCain prefers to subsume the individual man to the greater goal of national greatness:

“Sacrifice for a cause greater than self-interest, however, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause. Americans did not fight and win World War II as discrete individuals.”

"A world where our ideals had a realistic chance of becoming a universal creed was our principal object in the last century...In the process, we became inextricably involved in the destiny of other nations. That is not a cause for concern. It is a cause for hope.” 

So there, it is our duty as a nation to re-shape the world in our image and the obligation of every citizen to put this meglomaniacal vision at the forefront of their character. The imperial presidency indeed! I don't personally have any interest in following this pied-piper of national greatness to the inevitable apocalyptic conclusion of his delusions of glory. I saw more of that than I care to with the current president, thank you very much.

So what am I to do? Wish-washy victimhood, thought police, and a resurgent socialism or watching as "national greatness" descends into the Vader presidency? Such a choice is made nearly impossible by the intangible yet palpable fear that whichever choice I make, the long-term legacy will be measured in bodies stacked deep.

A hollywood replacement

Here's a list of people that I would really like more or less of in hollywood:

More of:

Zooey Deschanel singing

James Marsters - he's fun in everything that I have ever seen him in.

Zachary Quinto - one of the best reasons to watch Heroes.

Milla Jovovich kicking butt or producing another album like her first one, both of which are great.

The return of:

the sponge monkeys - personally the most successful commercial that I have ever seen. 100% of the times I have eaten at Quiznos is because of those commercials.

Less of:

John Mayer - Come on? Can this whiny, repulsive, slimy wank get hit by a car already?

The geico cavemen - we get it, enough already.

The gays - as my grandmother likes to refer to them as. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate gay people I just hate homosexuality as pop-social/fashion trend. Homosexuality isn't easy, trendy, or fun and it doesn't endow you with a superhuman talent for fashion. It isn't a political identity, point of pride or shame, or for public consumption. So tone it down folks, you're embarrassing yourselves.

The virtue of shame

For those of you unaware, Sen. Ted Stevens has been indicted. A politician being indicted should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever paid any attention whatsoever to the political environment of any culture, at any time, in any place on the planet. It happens all the time.

What is more interesting is that he didn't immediately resign. Of course, neither did Larry Craig, David Vitter, or rep. William Jefferson just to name a few off the top of my head. Why is it that they didn't resign? For the most part, their guilt has been obvious and embarrassing and yet they still cling desperately and shamelessly to their offices in a Clintonesque ritual of ridiculous explanations, semantic games, and brazen denials.

You could lament that our society has become more forgiving of moral and occasionally criminal lapses. You could also point out that the political process has become criminalized as each party spends countless man hours investigating the other. Of course, you could also add that our politicians have simply grown more cunning and more shameless and in our sound-bite culture they know that we can't stay mad enough, long enough to ensure their removal from office and so they don't even really worry about it. To me though, it is symptomatic of something much more terrifying, a descent into authoritarianism.

When politicians truly believe that they can be held accountable to the people, then they tend to act accordingly which includes resigning rather than being forced from office. Why? Because the people will resent you a lot less if you leave willingly rather than being dragged tooth and nail. You might then be able to make a comeback in another arena or at a later date. We've seen it a million times. However, when a politician has no fear of the wrath of his constituents then his actions are bold, brazen, and shameless. He will lie directly and boldly to the people making little effort to make his lie believable or even plausible. He doesn't have too. The people, knowing that they are powerless, will be complicit in this farce. They will pretend to believe it and he will pretend that they aren't pretending. That is why Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, Robert Mugabe, etc. have elections.

Our politicians have no fear thanks to amoeba-shaped districts which ensure one-party domination and party-machines which prize ideological loyalty so greatly that they will overlook nearly anything else, criminal and immoral conduct included. This fearlessness leads to boldness which leads to corruption. A politician without fear of the people is a tyrant in nature if not in name. Shamelessness from elected officials is not only embarrassing to the people, it is one of the primary characteristics of an authoritarian government.

Shame is a good thing for politicians to have. It means that they still respect and fear the judgement of the people. It means that they still serve the people. When they no longer fear you then your liberty is at risk and when they no longer pretend to fear you then your liberty is already gone.

Extreme home tragedy... but not the one you think.

If you've read the news today then you've almost certainly run across this "tragic" story. Indeed this story is a tragedy but just not the one that everyone thinks it is. This is a tragedy of charity.

Charity is usually thought of as socially beneficial, personally fulfilling, and intrinsically virtuous act. What's better than helping those in need? What isn't usually mentioned or thought of is how cruel, heartbreaking, and brutally pointless giving can be.

It's sad that this family lost their home but it isn't tragic. What is, is what it must feel like for the 1,800 people who put their hearts and souls into giving this family the kind of chance that most of them will never get. The people who built that house weren't all wealthy or successful. They don't have all of america rooting for their success, helping them through their issues, and giving them a chance when they need it most. No one is helping them. That didn't stop those same people from giving their time, labor, and resources to help this family only to watch them gamble it away.

I haven't seen their business plan nor do I know the exact circumstances of it's failure but what I do know is that any business is a risk and we need people to take those risks. We need them to take them with their own labor, their own wealth, their own heart and soul because we know that they won't squander it then. It's no promise of success but it at least ensures that they won't fail for lack of caring. There's nothing wrong with trying and failing but that isn't what they did. They didn't lift themselves up and reach for solid higher ground, instead they stood on our shoulders and so they could live with their heads in the clouds.

How many times have we seen this before? How often have you wondered what would happen if only you could help the destitute? The truth is that most of the time when we give, we don't follow up and we do so in order to feel good about giving without having to endure the cold reality of our  futile and wasted efforts.

Charity isn't a bad thing nor is it intrinsically noble either. It is a selfish act that makes us feel good because it might, just might make a difference in someone's life who really needs it. Even if we know that it probably won't.

The horror of the farm lobby

So let's say you have a problem with illegal immigration, who do you blame?

Big business? Sure, a little bit.

Republicans? Oh  yeah, they definitely get some blame.

Ted Kennedy? Hell yes.

Democrats? Of course.

The mexican government? Well yes, they are partly responsible for using our borders states as a relief valve for social and political pressure.

The immigrants themselves? A little bit I guess. Remember that they are simply responding to economic incentives.

How about the farm lobby? Probably not but you should rest a lot of blame on them. I hold firm to the notion that they are more responsible for the illegal immigration situation than any other group or politician in the country.

One of the things the farm lobby in this, and many countries, has done is to lobby for ridiculous subsidies and it has been wildly successful in doing so. As a result of those subsidies, farm innovation has diminished as the competitive environment has been corrupted by said subsidies. One of the results of this is that farming technology has grown very stale (with most growth coming by way of biotech) leaving very few ways in which to increase yields or lower costs in an environment of growing labor costs. So what they did instead was simply import people who would be willing to work well under market value doing work that should be done by machines. Machines which weren't invented or put into use because the farm lobby was able to use the government to provide them with artificially cheap labor.

This is just another one of the many problems brought about by America's most powerful lobby.

Unintended consequences

I would like to write a running column discussing the unintended consequences of government action, something that I believe is often overlooked when we constantly pine for government to solve our problems. So here is my first entry:

California bill AB 1634 "the healthy pets act" authored by Lloyd Levine is the latest bill to completely overlook those pesky unintended consequences. This bill would require all cats and dogs in california be spayed or neutered unless they are a police dog, service dog, or a breeding dog owned by a licensed breeder AND of an approved breed.

Think about this last part for a second as it is the most important part of the bill. Gone are the neighborhood mutts, in fact gone are all kittens and puppies unless they come from a licensed breeder. So california is attempting to create a monopoly on pet breeding which would naturally drive the cost of pets to insane levels because all of the competition would be wiped out.

Not to mention the fact that many purebred dogs have health problems that mutts do not which would drive the cost of long-term pet care to astronomical heights.

This bill almost seems deliberately written to please specialized dog breeders and resellers.

So to Lloyd Levine and Judie Mancuso I say "nice going geniuses, any more brilliant schemes that I should be looking forward too?"

Batman

So I saw The Dark Knight today.

It was okay. The plot was a little ridiculous. The movie a bit too long. The sound balance a bit off.

All in all I give the movie a solid 7 of 10.

Heath Ledger though, delivered everything promised. Even though his character wasn't quite where he could have been, Ledger's performance was incredible. He was creepy, crazy, brilliant, funny, scary, and never once appealing. He made the Joker a despicable, and incomprehensible lunatic. I'm rooting for that performance to get an oscar nod - it really did deserve it.

On a side note: will people in hollywood please, please, please stop hiring Maggie Gyllenhaal. Her droopy, sagging eyes coupled with her natural lack of charisma, sexiness, or class makes her just unbearable every time I see her in a film. Enjoyable movies such as The Dark Knight or Stranger than Fiction have been marred by her presence in them. I don't know who keeps saying "You know who would be great? That creepy girl from the movie Secretary. Let's hire her for a completely inappropriate role." Please, for the love of all that is good and decent on this earth, stop giving that woman work.

The audacity of hope

I hate Barack Obama.

I really do.

Not because he is for petty regulation, massive government programs, and is willing to use our military to score political points. All of that is true... it's just not why I hate him.

It also has nothing to do with him being black. Don't get me wrong... it annoys me to think that our next presidents name will be Barack Obama but that just isn't why I despise him as much as I do.

The real reason is this: this country has serious problems and it really need legitimate change and a real sense of hope that comes from finding someone who is truly capable of and willing to bring that change. It can't be done alone though... change is the product of a fundamental shift in a societies values. Barack Obama isn't change... he's a symbol of nothing real.

He's a false prophet spouting empty and generic platitudes. He changes his story, his facts, his loyalties to suit the prevailing winds. He has no new ideas and no good ones. There is no ideological, social, or philosophical shift preceding his arrival. He is going to do exactly what he is meant to do... get elected and disappear.

Some people are excited for a variety of reasons but a hope for change isn't one of them unless they admit that the only change they care about is his exotic name and blackness. That's the only thing about him that prevents him from being Michael Dukakis... with less experience.

I hate Mr. Obama because of who he is. A phony. He's phony where we need integrity.  He's empty and bland where we need intellect and courage. He's pizza Wednesday at the school cafeteria - still mediocre but it looks and sounds just good enough to get you excited. He's Kennedy when we need Jefferson.

Barack Obama will likely be our next president and I can assure you of this: in twenty years he will be hailed as a great man for all of the wrong reasons. His record will be raised beyond the facts and beyond reason. He will soar on the wings of his historic time in the white house. He will be the next Kennedy.

In forty years he will still be the next Kennedy... an inexperienced senator, too young and full of fluff to be a good president but who got the job on charm and the utter lack of charisma of his opponent. Unlike Kennedy though, he will live to serve as much as two full terms and we will be able to look back upon his achievements and groan for we won't be able to idealize him anymore.  We will see exactly what he is... an empty shirt.

Of course, he's still probably better than John McCain.

Hail to mankind!

With the release of Pixar's sci-fi fantasy WALL-E comes the latest public flogging of mankind as wasteful, stupid, evil monsters aimed squarely at children. Setting aside the logical fallacy intrinsic to its Malthusian theme, there is the vastly more troubling Bambi redux that is Pixar's ninth film.

Humans in WALL-E are either fat, consumeristic, wasteful boobs or amoral, short-sighted plutocrats. At least we've grown more complex since our days as callous hunters in Bambi.

Bambi convinced generations of children of the ultra-rousseauean idea that primitivism equates to virtue (setting aside the obvious fact that mother nature is a murdering, rape-mongering sociopath) and that animals, in their simplicity, are more sensitive, heroic, and loving than we could ever be.

It's the "all you need is love" philosophy of the world. Complexity be damned!

What WALL-E attempts to do isn't just to take that a step further and condemn humans outright, it also diminishes our greatest achievment... the business and the businessman. This is the theme that I find most troubling and it isn't unique to Disney or Pixar. 

Corporations are often potrayed as greedy, recklessly tyrannical, abusive, malevolent pushers of soul-crushing conformity. While I don't dispute that many corporations have acted immorally, is that unique to them? Are businessmen more prone to evil and destruction than they average person? 

I propose that this line of thinking is not only appallingly wrong but also destructive and evil. Movies like WALL-E teach millions of children that not only are humans bad, but that their most ubiquitous socio-political creation, the corporate world of capitalism, will inevitably lead to a nightmarish end of ecological disaster and meaningless consumption. 

*UPDATE: I was incredibly tired when I wrote this but I'm going to leave it in this mangled form because it amuses me to read it like this. I hope you enjoy it as well.