Archives for June 2004

First, the ignorance. In my post on Fahrenheit 9/11, I remarked that the essential difference I see between the left and the right is in an ability (or desire) to grasp the complexity of economic reality, i.e., the way things work. Notice that I did not make any distinction whatsoever between the principles held by the right and the left. That’s because there is none. Observe; here’s a perfectly laid out exchange between a righty and a lefty that clearly illustrates the abject ignorance of business and economics by the one from the left.

The other day a young girl came to the door to solicit my support for her presidential candidate. I asked her why I should vote for this man. She was very nice and earnest, but if you got her off the talking points she was utterly unprepared to argue anything, because she didn’t know what she was talking about. She had bullet points, and she believed that any reasonable person would see the importance of these issues and naturally fall in line. But she could not support any of her assertions. Her final selling point: Kerry would roll back the tax cuts.

Then came the Parable of the Stairs, of course. My tiresome, shopworn, oft-told tale, a piece of unsupportable meaningless anecdotal drivel about how I turned my tax cut into a nice staircase that replaced a crumbling eyesore, hired a few people and injected money far and wide – from the guys who demolished the old stairs, the guys who built the new one, the family firm that sold the stone, the other firm that rented the Bobcats, the entrepreneur who fabricated the railings in his garage, and the guy who did the landscaping. Also the company that sold him the plants. And the light fixtures. It’s called economic activity. What’s more, home improvements added to the value of this pile, which mean that my assessment would increase, bumping up my property taxes. To say nothing of the general beautification of the neighborhood. Next year, if my taxes didn’t shoot up, I had another project planned. Raise my taxes, and it won’t happen – I won’t hire anyone, and they won’t hire anyone, rent anything, buy anything. You see?

“Well, it’s a philosophical difference,” she sniffed. She had pegged me as a form of life last seen clilcking the leash off a dog at Abu Ghraib. “I think the money should have gone straight to those people instead of trickling down.” Those last two words were said with an edge.

“But then I wouldn’t have hired them,” I said. “I wouldn’t have new steps. And they wouldn’t have done anything to get the money.”

“Well, what did you do?” she snapped.

“What do you mean?”

“Why should the government have given you the money in the first place?”

“They didn’t give it to me. They just took less of my money.”

That was the last straw. Now she was angry. And the truth came out:

“Well, why is it your money? I think it should be their money.”

Then she left.

And walked down the stairs. I let her go without charging a toll. It’s the philanthropist in me.

(From lileks.com, down near the bottom)

Perfect, right? Well, not according to John T. Kennedy, who deftly exposes the fraud of the right.

Kim du Toit puts Al Gore in a quite proper perspective.

I believe this would be the first time I’ve linked to one of Kim’s articles, not that I haven’t been reading him fairly regularly for a while now. I’ll probably be doing more of it from now on. He writes an entertaining blog, with a lot of it being about guns (cool). The guy has guns all over the place, which means, your kids would be at least as safe in Kim’s custody as in the custody of your local police station. He’s a conservative, but nobody’s fool, either.

Here’s a bit about Kim, from his blog:

Kim du Toit was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. Kim emigrated to the United States in 1986.

A graduate of St. John’s College, he next began a Philosophy degree, but soon abandoned the idea–attending university didn’t help him towards his goal of becoming educated.

Kim is the living embodiment of contradictions:

a White African-American with a girl’s first name and a French last name;

values the sanctity of marriage, but is married to his third wife;

attended a religious boarding school, but is an atheist;

trained chorister, but played bass guitar in a rock band;

conservative gun nut and hunter, but also an animal-lover whose pets are spoiled rotten;

and finally, a most politically-incorrect story teller who also experienced a brief stint in a South African jail for protesting against apartheid.

Kim, proudly, became a U.S. citizen in 1989. Having fled the liberals in Chicago, Illinois, Kim now lives in north Texas. He still hates Mayor Daley.

I was in the theater on the opening night of Fahrenheit 9/11; only it wasn’t to see that film. And just as I thought I might be safe, after braving the gauntlet of lefties queued up to find out what 9/11 “was really all about,” I walked past a Borders Books just in time to take note of a display showcasing The Liar’s new book, as well as another display with his book and that of his pathetic hanger-on wife side-by-side.

I suppose that as politics goes, it’s the left’s time to take their shot. They’ve failed miserably in every attempt to develop a propaganda machine, apart from the main-stream media, that serves more of an audience for entertainment purposes (e.g., "right-wing talk-radio"). So, perhaps this new film genre that I will term "Leftumentary" (propaganda by any other name) can survive beyond this November’s reconciliation of Bush’s "stolen election" of 2000.

But here’s one rub, of many: I’d no more be caught dead in a true-believer spectacle such as “Rush to Excellence,” “Hannitize America,” or “Savage Uncensored” than I would be sitting through the torture of viewing a pathetic screed of cynical propaganda by the likes of Michael Moore.

There’s one reason and one reason only that I am able to grudgingly tolerate the right while I have no tolerance whatsoever for the left. Quite simply, the “man on the street” from the left has virtually zero understanding of the practical and economic realities of how the world works. And here’s rub number two: until they gain some degree of such understanding, political persuasion on any level is virtually pointless. The man on the street from the right has a far better understanding of the complexity of what goes behind putting bread & butter on the table for seven billion people, starting with some wheat seed, water, grass and livestock. Their problem is that they see “freedom” as a practical tool in this endeavor and not a fundamental principal. Not only that, but they see freedom as an aspect only of economics, and not of all human action; thus, their insipid moralizing with regard to matters of personal choice and preference.

In view of the foregoing, there’s little benefit that could come from referencing Christopher Hitchens’ quite comprehensive review of this film. See, the problem is that we’re dealing with the segment of the population for whom Moore specifically targeted this film—lefties who distrust and/or hate George W. Bush and have a very superficial knowledge of the totality of not only the facts surrounding the events in question, but the regional history going back many decades. …Oh, and the doofuses—who barely merit mention—who believe this whole affair has anything to do with oil.

So, those inclined should consider giving Hitchens’ review a read. And if you think that Hitchens carries water for the right, think again. And this too, from the film review:

Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point.

A prerequisite to having ones’ intelligence insulted is to have knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. This would be why so many lefties just think the film is “great” and “thought provoking.” Ha, ha, ha; they know not what they don’t know. So, as a final illustration of what an intelligence-insulting (to those with the requisite intellect, that is) hack job this film is, consider Hitchens’ comments with respect to the film’s ending:

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (…) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that’s just from Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it’s highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It’s also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

(Link to Hitchens’ film review via Beck)

Since first jumping into the whole internet thing in 1992, I’ve encountered thousands of different people on various political/philosophical mediums of exchange, like Usenet. I’ve lightly corresponded with perhaps a few dozen of those at one time or another. Then there’s the small handful whose historical depth of knowledge and uncompromising commitment to freedom as a general principle–rather than a pragmatic convenience–make one like me sit up and take notice.

That was in about 1994, so it’s been ten years I’ve been reading Billy Beck’s stuff off & on, and dropping him an email every now and then. To give you an idea of this man’s depth, check out his reading list. I can assure you that these books aren’t mere shelf candy.

So, then, it would be no surprise that I’d take the opportunity to actually meet face-to-face. Billy was in San Francisco supervising the implementation of his set and lights design for a musical performance taking place in the downtown San Francisco Marriott. Here he is at work.

I was glad to be able to get up to The City in record time from San Jose–time enough to sit and talk classic rock music in general and guitarists in particular (Billy possesses encyclopedic knowledge in this area). Then he had to get down to the grand ballroom, so I was able to hang there a bit and witness how these productions go together, behind the scenes.

It’s the stuff you’d normally never notice. As Billy says, it’s supposed to be transparent. If the audience takes note of your work, then you’ve probably screwed up somewhere.

It was good to finally meet you, man.

Can you guess?

[He] condemned conscription, saying … that it “rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state…. That assumption isn’t a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.”

Do you know? I think he should have rather said: ‘The Soviets think it’s a great idea;’ but why quibble over that? I guess what bothers me the most is that I just never, ever, hear proclamations of principles that go anywhere near this level anywhere in the vast sea of politics. I’m resigned to the fact that it’s not going to make much of a difference anyway, but it would at least be nice to know that someone out there has at least given them some thought–that, such ideas have occurred to them.

Even as regards the “War on Terror;” I can’t recall the last time I heard a public official address this whole matter in terms of fundamental, bread-&-butter human principles. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then that, in itself, illustrates my dilemma.

Oh, who said it? Here.

Thanks, primarily, to Republicans. And I’m not the only one who sees this.

Oh, well. I, like others, are simply becoming resigned to the fact. I think P. J. O’Rourke gets it just about right. I used to be naive enough to think that talk radio would serve to educate people because I believed, and still do believe that our predicament, vis-à-vis Big Government, is a problem of the general ignorance of the people. But, as average people become better informed, the arguments change (they don’t really, but that’s the perception). The politicians and pundits are clever enough to keep in front of the debate. Now, you have “conservatives” (whatever the hell that means, anymore) on television and radio resorting to the same sort of dishonest half-truth, context-dropping, deception and manipulation as the lefties mastered decades ago. The only thing they haven’t taken up yet, at least that I’ve noticed, is envy politics. Seeing as it’s such a stunningly successful “political strategy” I don’t see how they’ll be able to risk not using it for very long.

I guess this is why Reagan’s death really hit a soft spot for me. In truth, he was not effective in curbing the growth of government either in California or at the federal level. Yet, he always seemingly held that as an ideal. He was a symbol of that ideal, for me anyway, and it feels a little as though now that he’s dead, and I look around — and I read what I read and hear what I hear — that the dream is dead too.

Well, look on the bright side. It’s entirely likely that within the space of only a few more years, no American will need travel to Europe any longer in order to experience the breathtaking mediocrity and dead-endedness that a culture can “build” itself up to in a thousand years or so. And, to think we’ll have done it in just over 200 years. That’s American ingenuity for ya’.

Well, the world cross-country hang-gliding championship for the women’s flex wing class, rigid wing class, and ultra-light sailplane class is on. It’s taking place in Bern, Austria and I can tell you–because I follow hang-gliding competitions all over the world–that this year is quite a bit different.

A little history is in order. Back in the early days of the 70s and 80s, most hang-gliders were launched by foot, from mountain tops. So, most flying was mountain flying. It’s how I learned. In the mountains, weather can be unpredictable, gust fronts can come up in minutes, and the turbulence from higher-level winds passing over the contour of mountain ranges can create some very strange (and scary) conditions, even several thousand feet AGL (above ground level). But, in the last 10 years or so, everyone has discovered aero-tow. It’s so much more convenient. You set up your glider, get towed up and dropped off in a thermal, fly around for a couple of hours, maybe do a small out-and-return X-C, land where you launched, pack it up, and go home. Now, most of the largest competition meets are aero-tow. With 4 to 6 tugs, they can get 300 hang-gliders to 2,000 – 3,000 ft AGL in a two-hour launch window. Also notable is that since they are towing, they are not constrained to mountain flying. Thus, most competitions now take place mostly over flatland, where the texture of the air is far friendlier. But this year’s comp is in the mountains — the Austrian Alps, I should say.

Here’s a photo of an acquaintance of mine, Vince Endter, launching from the site of the Worlds on a practice day prior to the start.

Here’s a first-hand account of day two of the competition. Just so you know, recovering from a tuck in a hang-glider is a big deal. Most tucks result in tumbles (imagine a falling leaf), followed by the break-up of the glider and tossing the laundry (hang-gliding lingo for throwing your reserve parachute).

OK, now that you’ve digested that, get a load of this carnage. Kari Castle, one of the world’s very top women pilots tumbles at 11,000 ft MSL, patiently waits for her glider to break up, then throws her chute so as to avoid having the chute bridle get wound around the glider. That’s presence of mind, I’ll tell you right here.

I met Kari once when I was still a beginner on a flying trip to the Owens Valley. Kari’s a celebrity in Bishop, CA. Glad she’s OK.

Reason Online has put together a few articles on Ronald Reagan since the weekend. One of the more interesting is a fairly substantial interview done in 1975, prior even to his first bid for the nomination against President Gerald Ford. Now, before I get to what I find most interesting about the interview, here’s an excerpt on political philosophy:

Well, government’s only weapons are force and coercion and that’s why we shouldn’t let it get out of hand. And that’s what the founding fathers had in mind with the Constitution, that you don’t let it get out of hand.

That’s right. Ronald Reagan understood that government is fundamentally force and coercion. I wonder if he understood that government is nothing but force and coercion? Here’s another one, on politics.

I have been doing my best to try to revitalize the Republican Party groups that I’ve spoken to, on the basis that the time has come to repudiate those in our midst who would blur the Republican image by saying we should be all things to all people in order to triumph. Lately, we find that of the 26 percent of the people who didn’t vote, more than half of them now say they didn’t vote because they don’t see any difference between the parties. I’ve been urging Republicans to raise a banner and put the things we stand for on that banner and don’t compromise, but don’t try to enlarge the party by being all things to everyone when you can’t keep all the promises. Put up a banner and then count on the fact that if you’ve got the proper things on that banner the people will rally round.

You should read the interview. For one, all of you presumptuous fools out there who believed your big-media personalities that Reagan was not all that bright will find otherwise. In fact, those of you decent enough to be honest with yourselves will certainly come to realize that Ronald Reagan deeply pondered questions of political philosophy back in the 60’s that have yet, 40 years later, to even begin to penetrate your thick skulls.

And for you religious conservatives, who believed Reagan was shallow and intellectually feeble enough to actually hold his ideas based on ancient, unverifiable writings or “feelings” based on an imagined “relationship” with God: go find otherwise. Find the real reason why Ronald Reagan is troubled by something like prostitution, for example.

All in all, it’s a pretty remarkable insight into the intellectual side of Ronald Reagan. He truly and honestly deals with philosophical and political questions from a perspective of moral right and wrong, with just enough of the practical thrown in so that you know he understands the difference between the ideal and reality. It’s not about political power and influence for him. I believe he is wrong about a lot of his positions, but I believe he is honestly and sincerely wrong. I don’t think he’s wrong because he could care less about being right — so long as he has the political will and wherewithal to get what he wants. Quite indisputably, Ronald Reagan genuinely cared about this country and what he thought he could do for it.

Now, finally, what I find most interesting about the interview is the totally opposite pictures painted by the preface to the interview and the interview itself. Reading the preface, you’d assume they were about to interview the most liberal of Democrats you might imagine. This goes to illustrate a couple of things. First, the end result of all public policy is pretty much the same, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are involved. Differences are superficial and for political consumption. What’s driving the whole thing is the world population of mostly complete idiots. Second, nobody, no matter what their political philosophy and will, can change it. Nay, they cannot even make much of a dent in it.

This freight train is on a collision course for hell, and not a goddamned thing is going to stop it until it gets there.

We, and previous generations, have built up a productive capacity that is more than sufficient to feed, clothe, shelter, educate and amuse everyone on the planet. The only barrier to its use for that purpose is that it exists as capital. The only basis for its continuing existence as capital is our continuing acceptance of capitalist and state property rights.

…

Neither ‘socialist’ governments nor ‘communist’ regimes have ever brought society a day nearer socialism or communism. There are many reasons why not, but the basic reason is simple. Production for exchange can’t be gradually reformed into production directly for use.

…

Why not now? We don’t need to wait for capitalism to increase productive capacity to the point where the co-operative commonwealth is possible, because it’s already done so…

From Scotsman Ken MacLeod’s blog. He’s also an accomplished author of sci-fi, which perhaps explains the complete Pollyanna fantasy he lays out in his post, illustrated by the excerpts above.

Just what it is that makes such an apparently smart guy unable to see his own contradictions? Here, in plain view, in a nutshell, he’s arguing that because capitalism has been such a success at raising the world’s productive capacity, while socialism and communism such total failures, that society ought to just abolish the very one fundamental thing that has made it all possible – private property.

Go figure.

(via John Venlet)

…So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride — the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

That was Ronald Reagan, 21 years ago in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, FL. The year was 1983, just over 2 years into his first term. What few people know is that Reagan had been trying to deliver that strong condemnation for some time before, at least since his 1982 speech to Great Britain’s House of Commons.

It’s too bad that he didn’t deliver those words in that speech, for it would have been far more apropos. Alas, I’m sure it’s always been difficult for a President to find advisors who are not hand-wringing political whores. Still, when I read that speech now, through the lens of hindsight and history, I cannot help but marvel at Reagan’s vision and conviction. It’s plain to see that he had no doubt whatsoever about this matter, and he was convinced that the course of action on which he had set America would bring the Evil Empire to its knees. What he didn’t know was just how soon this would happen — that his policies would bankrupt the USSR and result in the collapse of the entire Eastern Block.

For those who do not understand the significance of the fall of communism as a “credible” ideology amongst the world’s “elite,” then refresh your memory here, and think of the 100 million people trampled under the boot of the world’s largest “organized labor movement.”

Ronald Reagan was certainly not without his faults, but because he held uncompromisingly to certain principles, correct principles, the world is a far safer and freer place. For that alone, Reagan’s faults will be forgotten, and his legacy and memory will be honored. That’s the path of the hero.

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

May you rest in peace.