About the blog name: "Gently Hew Stone" is a pun on the author's name. Michelangelo said that while carving his statue of David, he envisioned the finished statue inside the block of raw marble and just chiseled away the pieces that weren't part of it. Writing this blog is like that: I picture myself sitting before a hunk of raw possibilities with this keyboard as my chisel, and my labor of love is to reveal the beautiful ideas inside, to hone it to perfection by peeling away layers of ordinary thought and, ultimately, to bring to light the masterpieces just below the surface of it all.
You can’t have it both ways, media! Either American conservatives have nobody in power representing them effectively, or they not only do have leaders, but leaders who are masterminding an impressive series of unified protests.
First of all, thank you for your long service to your country. Your heroism in war and your career as a leader distinguish you in the hearts of your fellow citizens.
However, none of those things guarantee that anything done in the present will automatically be the right choice. Surely you must be aware that many, if not most, American conservatives have strong reservations about much of your political record, especially some of your most recent legislation and the manner in which you campaigned for president last year.
Your failed presidential campaign resulted in the election of Barack Obama, who in just over half a year has drastically altered the shape and scope of our government, by already spending more than every other president combined, by nominating a host of radicals to positions without real accountability, and by seizing the reigns of such fundamental areas of private life as commerce and health care.
Despite such scary changes, you have continued in “town hall” appearances over the summer to compliment and even cheer this president, just as you often did–to the consternation of your party’s base–during last year’s campaign. That irresponsibly inappropriate friendliness was just one of many, many things so critically wrong with your campaign that it was a foregone conclusion long before November that you would lose. And yet you continued on in this manner, ignoring the chorus of voices urging you to fight, to represent the desperate cries for help you heard along the campaign trail.
In short, your stubborn cluelessness as a presidential candidate enabled Barack Obama to win.
That’s why, Senator McCain, I am asking you to apologize to the American people for running for president.
When I was a kid, I read a lot of Stephen King. One of my favorite sections of his novels was the ten page scene in The Tommyknockers where the dashing, rebellious writer confronts an obnoxious old energy executive with the shocking “truth” about the dangers of nuclear power. I remember reading that for the first time and just tearing through it, amazed at the strength of the facts on the side of King’s hippie hero. Surely, I thought, it must be clear to anyone with a brain that nuclear power is bad.
Of course, I was a kid. I was easily impressed by messages where emotional young rebels strike out at conservative caricatures. Actually, that’s why I don’t read much King anymore: I got tired of the constant bashing of conservatives. Seriously, where would King stories be without insane religious fundamentalists to be the bad guys in almost every book?
Anyway, for some reason I thought of that scene recently, and I wondered how it held up with twenty years of hindsight (The Tommyknockers was published in 1987). I looked it up (I have the original mass market paperback edition, which I think still has the same page numbering as the current editions), and was surprised by how vapid the argument was that I was so impressed by as a teen. Here are the major points King makes in his screed:
“When you examine the cancer-death stats for the areas surrounding every nuclear power facility in the country, you find anomalies, deaths that are way out of line with the norm.” (page 101, repeated on 104)
Poor Ayn Rand. She’s taken her licks lately in the Bloggernacle, getting excoriated at By Common Consent. Some have stepped up to defend her honor, conservative gentlemen they are, but there are still some important points to be made that I don’t think anybody has explained yet.
Rand is criticized for three main things: that her philosophy promotes greed and selfishness, that she was militantly anti-religion, and that her writing is poor. I’ll address each:
1. On the title page of my personal copy of Atlas Shrugged, I copied this famous quote from Book IV, chapter 2 of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations:
Every individual…generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it…he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention….By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more efficiently than when he really intends to promote it.
Meaning, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism may seem selfish and greedy…but it results in a better world for all, a world more just, more prosperous, and more fair than any other system. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to Arts and Letters Daily, I just read this fascinating interviewwith a young African woman named Dambisa Moyo, who’s publishing a scathing new book indicting the liberal elitist “benefactor” mentality that drives the Anglo world’s policy towards Africa. She makes several quick but devastatingly sharp insights about the free market system and our narcissistic nannying of Africa. And the New York Times ran this?
Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.
Care to comment on America’s stimulus package, Ms. Moyo?
It surprises me that so many teachers are liberals. My associations with many dozens of teachers over the years has shown that we’re almost unanimously in agreement on the things that hold back student achievement: apathetic parenting and cultural poison that subverts our efforts. These are both (at least in our current political climate) essentially conservative concerns.
And yet, our most vocal teachers, as well as administrators, unions, and districts, tend to obsess over ideas that are inherently liberal: increasing spending, adding more bureaucrats and programs to the system, and increasing regulation of what individual campuses can do. This, despite the total failure of any of these things to do any good at all for the several decades that they’ve been in vogue.
Anybody else reminded of the caucus race in Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland? Leftist policies tend to bring that to mind for me.
Anyway, I think I realize now why so many education professionals are liberals. It must be an automatic defense mechanism, because being a conservative teacher is enough to drive anyone insane.
It’s easy to keep running around trying all these new programs in our schools and crying for more money, because that strategy can never fail: if results don’t improve, just insist that we haven’t come up with enough programs and money yet. The beautiful thing with this strategy is that it allows us to focus on things we can control: the teaching profession can keep tweaking the details of campus routines endlessly and without benefit, but (much like the thinking behind the stimulus package) at least we’re doing something, right?
Certainly this approach is much easier (and more sanity-friendly) than resigning to the truth that the vast majority of the factors that influence the quality of our work are well beyond our control. Why would any administrator try to improve the conditions of a community that produces lackluster students–a Herculean task, to say the least–when he or she can just get on board with the established program: fiddle around with the procedures for department meetings in your school, assign teachers more paperwork, and lobby for more education spending?
There’s just no natural incentive for teachers to be conservatives, because it will only lead to more frustration.
My students this year are ten times more productive than my students were during my first few years teaching. Did I become a better teacher? Not at all; I do most things exactly the same way. I just got a job in a better part of town.
ANYWHERE, U.S.A.–After yesterday’s terrible accident, the details of which will remain mysteriously vague in this report, observers were surprised to see hundreds of society’s hedonistic deviants spontaneously emerge as local heroes. The scenes of chaos were greatly ameliorated by such visions of mercy as the regional university’s entire Department of Atheism, which immediately organized an ad-hoc counseling center and helped victims get in touch with loved ones, and a group of stoned teenage skateboarders who helped set up a triage and blood donation tent, themselves clamoring to be the first to donate.
Local video game enthusiast Ray Potakis, 24, dropped what he was doing to rush right out and join in the relief efforts. “I was just surfing the Internet for some por…uh, portable water purifiers…for those starving kids in Africa, you know?…when I heard about the tragedy on the radio, and I put some pants on and went to volunteer to help.”
Another of America’s young who suddenly rose to the challenge of greatness when his community needed him was Jordan Jackson, 17, who described his response thusly: “I was chillin’ wit my boys when we saw what was goin’ on out the window. We got in the car, turned up the Tupac, and went straight down there to see what we could do.” Jackson and his friends ended up handing out blankets and water to children, then telling them fairy tales to keep them from going into shock.
A representative of Def Jam Records quickly took credit for the sudden spurt of altruism from Generation Y. “A quarter century of popular hip hop culture has produced millions of lives of carefully disciplined sacrifice, ready to put the needs of family and country first. Read the rest of this entry »
Perhaps I’m so taken with conservative thought not only because it’s the most rational political philosophy, but also because it’s being articulated by some of the most talented sculptors of felicitous prose out there today. The only things I like more than quality products in an area of my inetrest are quality products that combine multiple areas of interest. Mark Steyn, for example, is conservative, a talented writer, and funnier than that satirical farce written by Lewis Carroll’s and Dave Barry’s genetically enhanced clone.
Three things I’ve read in the last couple of days are prime examples of this elementally effective commingling of content and style with which I’m so gleefully taken, like a passive-aggressive, effeminate egomaniac with Twilight.
First, screenwriter Burt Prelutsky’s essays in WorldNetDaily have been a staple of my intellectual intake for years. He keeps within a fairly narrow range of topics, but his anecdotes and quick, witty disarming of liberal bloviating are so refreshing that they function as my morning pick-me-up each midweek morning.
Liberals are in favor of open borders because they feel sorry for those people sneaking across. It doesn’t occur to liberals that American citizens suffer from the influx of millions of impoverished illiterates. They are not concerned with the drain on schools, hospitals, jobs and prisons, because what’s important for liberals is that they feel good about themselves. It’s a unique type of selfishness because it’s disguised as an altruistic concern for others. It’s the same reason they oppose capital punishment. They don’t care about the victims or their loved ones. Any schmuck, after all, can sympathize with innocent people. But it takes a very special kind of individual to hold a candlelight vigil for a monster who had raped and murdered a child. A very special kind, indeed.
Next, the inestimable Mr. Steyn himself, who returns from his sabbatical with essays such as this one, typically full of caustic insights somehow so good-natured that they vivisect current events like a surgical laser but leave a fresh, pine-tree scent afterwards.
Example, on the long-term value implications of last month’s election, namely, that a majority of Americans appear to be enamored of increasingly imitating a European-style socialist state:
Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, “A man who is not a liberal at 20 has no heart, but a man who is not a conservative by 40 has no brain.” It may be apocryphal, but it certainly sounds like something he would say…and it’s true.
Case in point: several years ago, I taught a speech and debate class. Once, to demonstrate skills such as playing devil’s advocate and spontaneously organizing an argument, I told the class that I would debate each of them in turn on any subject they chose. They were free to pick any position they wanted on any topic, and (within the bounds of good taste), I would automatically be assigned the contrary view, which I would defend extemporaneously.
Some kids wanted to argue that cats make better pets than dogs, or that a certain TV show was the best, but the majority of them chose social and political topics, and the vast majority of them chose to stump for liberal positions: raising the minimum wage, reparations for slavery, universal health care, protecting abortion, unlimited immigration, going to war is always bad, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Spring, when the street fight between the two major Democratic contenders was really getting dirty, I had just started this blog and wanted to opine on it. As an outsider looking in on that fiasco, I wanted to point out Clinton’s obvious superiority, but after Obama became the unofficial nominee, I thought it might come off as tacky.
But as the Democrats’ convention winds down, I can’t help but think of it again.
Why in the world would any liberal support Obama over Clinton? What does he have to offer that she doesn’t? She has experience and success in her work; Obama is the poster boy for satire: a figurehead model who spouts vague platitudes and wows the masses with a smarmy charm that poorly covers his lack of depth. His campaign is so vapid that it’s frankly beyond satire. No conservative, trying to invent an exaggerated campaign of shallow nonsense to caricature American politics, could ever have imagined anything as silly as Obama. I’ve seen high school class elections with more substance. He might as well just make his slogan, “Vote for me and all of your wildest dreams will come true.” Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of semesters ago, a poli-sci major in my English 102 class gave me an article from a major Democrat-activist professor at another college, about why the Constitution needs to be interpreted anew in each generation as a “living document.” I try to keep my politics well under cover in school (I can’t stand teachers who preach–I find it baldly unethical), but I guess somehow this fella figured out this article might rile me.
The article’s primary defense of its thesis was simply that the Founders had left no explication of the document and that there was no objective way to arrive at its “true” meaning.
Poppycock! Had this esteemed professor never heard of the Federalist Papers? The Federalist Papers are a collected series of essays that originally appeared in New York newspapers during the period of debate and ratification for the new Constitution. In them, the series’ three authors–Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay–very clearly explain the nature of the Constitution and how it was to implemented.
Their authority is, of course, unimpeachable. Hamilton would become the first Secretary of the Treasury. Jay would become the first Chief Justice of the United States. And Madison, the primary architect of the Constitution itself, would go on the become our 4th president.
(By the way, I also love to refer to the Federalist Papers as an example of America’s depleted tradition of literacy. The intricate, refined prose and thought of these essays were once the fodder of general interest newspaper materials; today, we’re lucky if we see them briefly mentioned in a college class and, even when we do, many of us marvel at how hard they are to read. Alas.)
So, with no further ado, in anticipation of America’s 232nd annual “See ya later, England!” celebration, here are some of our most auspicious Founders’ answers to the pressing issues of the present day:
Is America a multicultural society, or a basically homogeneous Christian nation?
Answered by John Jay: “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs…” -Federalist #2
Should American government be more Democratic (populist) or Republican (representative) in nature?
Answered by James Madison: “A pure Democracy, by which I mean, a Society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischief of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole….A Republic, by which I mean a Government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” -Federalist #10
“In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy consequently will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” -Federalist #14
Can America ensure that its citizens have equal success and comfort?
Answered by James Madison: “Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government [pure democracy], have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions…” -Federalist #10
Does America recognize itself a religiously-founded nation?
Answered by James Madison: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the success of the Constitutional Convention], a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.” -Federalist #37
Should the national government be a vast bureaucracy with nearly infinite departments and programs?
Answered by James Madison: “The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States, will be much smaller, than the number employed under the particular States.” -Federalist #45
So, will the majority of governing be done by the federal authorities or by more localized government?
Answered by James Madison: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negociation [sic], and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and property of the State.” -Federalist #45
Answered by Alexander Hamilton: “The state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.” -Federalist #28
Does that mean that the government should take away less of people’s property and wealth; that people have a right to retain as much of it as possible?
Answered by James Madison: “Government is instituted no less for protection of the property, than of the persons of individuals.” -Federalist #54
Does that also mean that the laws should be fewer and simpler than they are today?
Answered by James Madison: “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” -Federalist #62
No wonder liberal activists ignore the Founding Fathers! Leftist ideology is bluntly refuted by their precisely-delineated logic. This rejection of America’s obvious heritage is no secret: on July 4, 2006, the Los Angeles Times had the temerity to publish a scurrilous essay by Mark Kurlansky that ridiculed our nation’s foundation based on nothing more than the wild, ignorant biases he revealed.
Meanwhile, those of us who still revere and study the Founders know that our nation is a conservative bastion of enlightened policy; in Lincoln’s words, “the last best hope.”
To close on a somewhat tangential note, I’d like to share my love for the fact that Latter-day Saints are duty bound to honor the Constitution. In our April 1935 General Conference, President J. Reuben Clark, Jr. of the First Presidency, said, “That statement of the Lord, ‘I have established the Constitution of this land’ (D&C 101:80), puts the Constitution of the United States in the position in which it would be if it were written in this book of Doctrine and Covenants [a collection of revelations to Church prophets by Jesus Christ] itself. This makes the Constitution the word of the Lord to us.”
On Thursday I got to work with some of the Boy Scouts in my area on their Citizenship in the World merit badge. To prepare for the presentation, I Iooked up some information relevant to current world affairs.
I was intrigued to find a chart from the United Nations about world demographic trends. I trimmed it down to the essentials and presented it to the Scouts, who were likewise fascinated. Consider: in any size population, every male and every female must pair off and have how many children for the population to remain stable? The answer, of course, is 2: the children replace the parents. If the average birth rate is more than 2, the population grows; if it is less than 2, it shrinks. It’s that simple.
According to the numbers, Africa and the Middle East are booming. The U.S. is precarious but steady. Europe is in a death spiral from which it is already mathematically improbable to recover.
One friend of mine responded to this subject by warning of the tendency to prognosticate, and how often it fails. But demography isn’t fortune telling. It’s mere accountancy. If Country X has 1000 children born in the year 2008, then in the year 2018, it will have no more than 1000 ten-year-olds. You see?
And if a country goes for two or three generations with low birth rates, then the burden on each successive generation to repopulate the nation becomes more difficult. If Country X starts with an adult breeding population of a million people and their couples only have one child per couple, the next wave of adults will only consist of 500,000. If that generation then only has one child per couple, on average, the next generation will be a piddling 250,000. And if they then only have one child for, say, every four people (a 0.5 birth rate), that leaves us with a mere 62,500.
Why would that last generation breed so much less? After two generations of small families, with all the wealth, attention, leisure, and complacency that implies, how could they not preserve that indolence into their adult years? Of course, this is exactly what we’re seeing in the Western world today. Let’s call it the Sex and the City Effect.
And the children of that last generation (the fourth total in our example), after three generations of increasingly entrenched self-centeredness, can hardly be expected to pair off and have the 32 children each that it would take to undo all the damage done and return their people to the million-strong that their great-grandparents knew.
For many Asian and Western countries, such as Russia, Japan, and the Czech Republic, such is already their fate, which is why I said before that they are past the point of no return. This is why you see so many news stories, like this one, about toys that replace the companionship of families for lonely adults in Japan.
Of course, this has huge ramifications for foreign relations (nations that are newly strong will smell the blood of those who have grown too weak to recover and will act accordingly), welfare (not only will generation four above have to breed like rabbits, they’ll each be financially responsible for the care of several members of the sick, retired older generations), and immigration (those young people, frankly, will get tired of such abuse and leave for greener pastures…which is also already happening in much of the world).
Here’s my short version of the UN chart:
United Nations – Department of Economic and Social Affairs – Population Division
Trends in total fertility, age patterns of fertility and timing of childbearing
Country or area
Total fertility per woman
(12)
WORLD
2.6
More developed regions
1.6
Less developed regions (excluding least developed countries)
2.6
Least developed countries
5.0
AFRICA
5.0
Eastern Africa
5.6
Middle Africa
6.2
Northern Africa
3.2
Southern Africa
2.9
Western Africa
5.8
ASIA
2.5
Eastern Asia
1.7
China
1.4
China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
1.0
China, Macao Special Administrative Region
0.8
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
2.2
Japan
1.3
Mongolia
2.3
Republic of Korea
1.2
South-Central Asia
3.2
Afghanistan
6.8
India
2.8
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
2.2
Pakistan
4.0
South-Eastern Asia
2.5
Western Asia
3.2
Armenia
1.4
Azerbaijan
1.8
Bahrain
3.1
Cyprus
1.5
Georgia
1.6
Iraq
2.8
Israel
2.9
Jordan
3.7
Kuwait
2.1
Lebanon
1.9
Occupied Palestinian Territory
4.7
Oman
3.6
Qatar
2.8
Saudi Arabia
3.1
Syrian Arab Republic
3.8
Turkey
2.4
United Arab Emirates
4.1
Yemen
6.2
EUROPE
1.4
Eastern Europe
1.3
Czech Republic
1.2
Russian Federation
1.3
Northern Europe
1.7
Ireland
2.0
United Kingdom
1.6
Southern Europe
1.4
Greece
1.3
Italy
1.3
Spain
1.3
Western Europe
1.6
France
1.9
Germany
1.4
Switzerland
1.4
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
2.5
Caribbean
2.6
Central America
2.7
Mexico
3.3
South America
2.5
Brazil
2.1
NORTHERN AMERICA
2.0
Canada
1.5
United States of America
2.0
OCEANIA
2.4
Australia/New Zealand
1.8
Australia
1.8
New Zealand
2.1
This also has a major application on the domestic front: voting. This excellent article explains a truth that the 2004 election made dramamtically apparent: liberals don’t breed. Largely confined to older, coastal, metropolitan areas, America’s liberals consistently do not have many children. On the other hand, America’s heartland conservatives have far more children (bringing the national average up to 2.0). This chart is excerpted from the research:
Such, then, may be the resolution of red state/blue state tension: the blue states will voluntarily extinguish themselves. (Even the mainstream media has picked up on this obvious sign of doom.) But don’t worry, New England hippies: before you go quietly into that night, your elite suburbs will fill up with refugees from the Old World, who are running from the burden of caring for a dozen pensioners each and the conflicts brought on by massive immigration from hostile countries which are filled to the brim with new babies. And if those hordes of “developing world” babies grow up and decide to try out the opportunities of Vermont for themselves, the new dark ages may really begin.
“Liberal” should be a good word. A “liberal education” is a deep, rigorous training in civilization’s best traditions. “Classical liberalism” is the sharply logical brand of libertarian philosophy that produced the Enlightenment and saturated the thinking of our Founding Fathers.
Of course, current political jargon has abused the term until it has devolved into a label for the wildest juvenile strains of leftist trends.
Two months ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet shocked the world with this scathing indictment of America’s self-righteous sheep mentality that had produced the hopelessly stagnant viewpoint that he was now ready to reject; in his own words, he was no longer a “brain dead liberal”: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,why-i-am-no-longer-a-brain-dead-liberal,374064,1.html/full. In short, Mamet describes his intellectual graduation to a position of respecting free trade and individual liberty enough to champion that consistent set of political beliefs that let them safeguard our world.
Mamet’s brilliant essay reminded me of a similar piece I read a few years ago, also by a writer in a bastion of leftist sanctimony (San Francisco this time, rather than New York), who also confesses to having casually assented to the counter-culture’s mass indoctrination without scrutinizing it. The author details in crystalline clarity just how surreally hypocritical the left’s narrow-minded pontificating has become, and how he came to realize it: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL
It’s become fashionable to complain about the “red state / blue state” polarizing of America, but I think it’s healthy. We need tension, and we need opposing views to keep us on our toes; but mostly, in a world where entropy has taken a firm hold and “things fall apart” faster than we ever could have imagined, it’s necessary to separate those who will stand up for what America has always truly been from those who will ignorantly plunge it into irreparable chaos.
I’m not saying that everybody in one party is good or that everybody in another party is bad–far from it!–but there is an ideology out there that is pretty popular and that has spelled doom for every society that has ever flirted with it.
So I’m glad these two smart men woke up. Both essays are worth your time, regardless of which side of the aisle you prefer to sit on. We’re always glad to welcome people over to the side of reason and responsibility. The world needs more classical liberals, or, in other words…conservatives.
1 Here’s a fun experiment: drive around a bad part of your town–you know, where the government-subsidized projects are, as well as the highest crime rates–and count how many of the run-down old houses have satellite dishes on them. As you try to keep track of the spiralling digits, do be polite enough not to smile at memories of all the blowhards who have ever whined about how the “disenfranchised” poor need to be “given their fair share” with which they would wisely enter the middle class.
A few weekends ago, my wife and I did this and our estimate of satellite dishes came to about one out of every three, a number which might need to be adjusted since we saw several neglected dumps that had more than one dish on the roof!
2 On the subject of grossly bloated government bureaucracy, here’s an argument for it: like an inner city high school, it’s a good holding pen. After all, if we didn’t have a needlessly huge government, what would we do with all the people who work for it? Do you really want to see any of these clueless clods in the private sector?
Frankly, they’re doing less harm at the DMV than they would be managing a business or negotiating the waters of retail. I suppose most of them would end up on welfare, creating a need for vast government support…and we’d be right back where we started. : )
3 Reading about the ongoing travesty that is Texas’s assault on parental rights (also known as the polygamist compound raid), I’ve been reminded more than once of the Waco siege. I recently spent an evening folding laundry and watching the excellent documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement, which I hadn’t seen in years.
The parallels were telling. I felt myself getting agitated again that a government agency could so undeniably rip up the Bill of Rights and get away with it. There is a lot of great material about Waco out there, but if you haven’t seen this (it was even nominated for an Oscar), you’ll be amazed by what you learn. Here’s the first few minutes:
4 The new issue of New York’s City Journal is in the process of posting articles on their web site. I can’t say enough just how much I love reading this. Their research, their understanding of the causes and relationships between key issues, and (most especially of all) the clear and vivid writing from each and every one of its authors make it by far the most valuable political periodical in the world. (Even among the dazzling echelon of its gifted wordsmiths, the contributions of Brit doctor Theodore Dalrymple stand out as some of the best prose currently being produced anywhere in Shakespeare’s mother tongue.)
I’ve read it for years and I’m sure browsing its archives for a few hours would produce a better political science education than any university in the country could provide in a few years. http://www.city-journal.org/
5 Two popular Internet jokes are dead-on-target and make their points about political policies and trends far better than any raving diatribe ever could.
First, the revised and updated fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper:
CLASSIC VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, laughs, and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, laughs, and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing “We Shall Overcome.” Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grass- hopper’s sake.
Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share”.
Finally, the EOC drafts the “Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act,” retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of multi-generation welfare recipients. The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
Second, a simple economics lesson, with shades of Ayn Rand at the end:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Poor Ayn Rand. She’s taken her licks lately in the Bloggernacle, getting excoriated at 
