Archives for July 2007

What do they have in common?

Well, it seems to me that if enough people could believe that their plastic water bottles are causing global warming, then there’s easily enough to believe that Christopher Jones caused those two news helicopters to collide, crash, and kill four people. Not only that, but they’ll even buy first degree, i.e., premeditation.

Apparently, prosecutors are going to try everything they can to charge and convict the man of murder. If you read that article, you’ll see that there’s a really good debate over the whole issue. No legal stone goes unturned, and it turns out that while nothing exactly like it has ever happened, there is appellate-affirmed precedent for convicting people of murder who didn’t murder anyone, so that’s good, right? But it’s interesting, and it really highlights the value of brilliant legal minds. Hell, there was a time when people far less socially evolved than ourselves could never have made sense of charging, convicting, and electrocuting people for murdering other people when they haven’t, in fact, murdered other people. Simpletons! They just didn’t have enough brilliant legal minds and prosecutorial fervor. Thankfully, we’ve evolved past the point of plain facts to where the meat is: nuance.

I’ve got two freedom updates from Radley, the first here. Twenty-five year jail sentence
for Mark O’Hara for possessing 58 Vicodin tablets for which he had a
legal prescription. Prosecutors admit he wasn’t selling them, but the
law provides for a de facto charge of trafficking based solely
on quantity. The law said they could get him, so they did. I’m sure it
looks great on their resumes. Let freedom ring.

Next up, 140 years of jail for four people wrongly convicted,
two of them now dead. Small price to pay, since in in keeping them in
jail, the State was better able to maintain the integrity of a mob
investigation it had going that I’m sure reaped just tons of the one-two punch tough-on-crime and we-protected-you political clout, not to mention ladder climbing and opportunities for appointment to high posts for some of the investigators and prosecutors involved. Upholding freedom for all is a trough job, but thankfully not thankless, anymore.

Indeed, it must have been important, since the FBI
commended and paid bonuses to the guys who did it — and later, for
keeping it hidden — clearly, so as not to tarnish the FBI’s good name as defenders
of freedom. It’s a thin Blue line, you know. It’s also nice to get a
little honesty from the Bureau, eh? In spite of being able to cover up their gig for 35 years, they unexpectedly don’t even deny the men were
innocent and went to jail anyway. But, see, the law says that they
don’t have to give up information that would prevent an injustice, such
as a false imprisonment and 40 wasted years of a life. I guess they
ought to know, since they’re the Justice Department in this here free country. Billy weighs in on this one, too.

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When I lived in Japan from 1984 – 1989, I never once locked my house (blue roof in the center) on the beach in Hayama, about 50 miles south of Tokyo on Sagami Bay. Sometimes I was gone, at sea, for two and three months at a time. Never locked my car, and I probably could have just left the keys inside.

I used to say that you could leave a pile of cash in the middle of a busy train station, come back and hour later, and retrieve it.

I wasn’t exaggerating.

You know why it is, don’t you? They think too much of themselves to take what they haven’t earned.

Back when China used to export grain in order to demonstrate the economic viability of communism — all while their people starved to death (20 million is a low estimate) — they were heralded by the "intellectual elite" as the Truly Enlightened.

Now they’re producing and supplying inexpensive goods to the entire world, feeding their people, and ushering in economic freedoms and low taxation that’s making it — in practical terms — an economic model to the world. Now, millions of their people each year are attaining middle-class lifestyles and several hundred thousand millionaires roam freely seeking new and greater entrepreneurial opportunities.

Now they produce real economic growth in the double digits every year, as compared to the West’s pitiful 2-3%.

Now, at long last, our intellectuals finally hate China. Read it. That way, when you start hating China yourself for the good it began to undertake to do a couple of decades ago, and continues and increases to this day, you’ll know where the idea came from.

Heretofore, my support of China has been measured. They did a lot of evil for a long time and you don’t just forget about something like that overnight. But when they begin to do good and continue, and even increase, it’s to be acknowledged. I’m aware of no other path to redemption. So if the things highlighted in that article continue in the way they are, which they will, a day will come when rational people of moral fortitude might have to look around and assess which of the various world’s regimes constitute the worst evil.

I hate to consider it, but I see a future where Americans and Europeans sneer at China — not for the evil it perpetuated recently, but for its virtues today. Watch for it, because its coming to a neighborhood, union meeting, TV, and an election near you.

First up, I’m out of pocket at the moment. Overnight with family here in Vista, CA, and later today San Diego for a couple of days. We’re supposed to have a nice room with a view to the Bay, so if that works out I’ll post a photo.

What can you say about YouTube? What can you say when the most interesting, indeed captivating thing you saw or heard all day yesterday was a self-recorded video of some "nobody" sitting in his bedroom and coming awake to something he’s never had an interest in his entire life? Then note it’s been viewed 3,500 times in a few days.

Is he worth listening to? Well, you decide, but I say that things like this give me confidence in the human species. It’s not that he knows what he’s talking about — he probably doesn’t on any issue in the political spectrum you can name. But he does know that he’s never, ever in his life seen or heard an honest, sincere politician with the integrity to act always for his stated values without equivocation. He’s seeing it for the first time.

(rockwell)