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I don't know how many major American politicians have died on Independence Day. The most famous examples, of course, are Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who both died on July 4th, within a few hours of each other, half a century after the signing. But whatever the number is, there's now one more. Here are some more thoughts on the man, written in February, in the context of a review of a biography that came out several months ago.
I was never a big fan--while I think that the complaints about the affirmative action campaign ad were overblown, I do agree with John Hood's assessment:
...by mixing a defense of property rights with less-savory references to "Negro agitators," out-of-state provocateurs, and Martin Luther King's subversive friends, Helms and other Southern commentators ended up weakening the very limited-government principles they espoused, with unfortunate and lasting consequences for American liberty. To make a truly persuasive libertarian case against federal regulation of private business decisions, it would have been necessary to marry every criticism of government overreaching with calls for the South's social and moral transformation and clear denunciations of racist business owners. Given that the segregation syndrome was largely the work of decades of intrusive laws and electoral abuses by state and local governments, there was at least a plausible conservative case to be made not just for federal intervention, but also for anti-discrimination laws to dismantle white supremacy and remedy the social and economic consequences of past state coercion.
Yes.
But he was also, by all accounts a kind and personable man, and a tireless fighter for human freedom as well, as the Solzhenitsyn story reveals. As one of those who helped win the Cold War, that part of his legacy shouldn't be overlooked by those who can only blindly (and probably unfairly, given all the caricatures) perceive a racist.
Frank J. has a plan to deal with the asteroids. Sort of.
Here's what we'll do: We'll paint Mars blue. The asteroids will see Mars, think it's us, and hit it instead. It's simple and it will work. So you're asking, "Why not paint Venus? It's the same size and should make a more convincing Earth." That's idiotic. For one thing, it's super-hot there, so how the hell do you plan on painting it? Also, it's further away from the asteroid belt than us, so the asteroids will see the real Earth before seeing the decoy Earth. Painting Venus is a truly idiotic plan. You're disgustingly stupid for even suggesting it. This is why I sometimes think of just giving up blogging because I just can't deal with people as stupid as you are.
...the only feasible backup for the planned 25-gig wind base will be good old gas turbines. These would have to be built even if pumped storage existed, to deal with long-duration calms; and the expense of a triplefold wind, gas and pumped storage solution would be ridiculous. At present, gas turbine installations provide much of the grid's ability to deal with demand changes through the day.
The trouble is, according to Oswald, that human demand variance is predictable and smooth compared to wind output variance. Coping with the sudden ups and downs of wind is going to mean a lot more gas turbines - ones which will be thrashed especially hard as wind output surges up and down, and which will be fired up for less of the time.
By Rand Simberg on July 3, 2008 6:48 AM
Categories:
History
One hundred and forty-five years ago today, was the beginning of the end of the southern cause:
The names of the places associated with the charge are deeply indented on the American conscience. Every summer, "The Angle" and "The High Water Mark" are crowded with visitors who come to commemorate the event and ponder those terrible minutes when American killed American in a desperate contest of wills and ideals. So much carnage in such a small place- it is difficult for us today to realize the horror those young men faced, and how quickly the hopes of the North and South were determined in this famous battle.
Even if they had won Gettysburg, the fall of Vicksburg the next day to Grant probably sealed the fate of the Confederacy. The war might have lasted longer had Lee's Pennsylvania campaign been successful, but it seems unlikely that the south could have held out long enough.
...when one follows the Google search link he does provide, a good number of the results have to do with James Hansen calling for trials of oil executives and others who question the political orthodoxy of global warming...trials whose political nature and predetermined outcome would no doubt have pleased the arguably fascist Roland Freisler.
Not exactly the point that Dr. Day was trying to make, I suspect.
Speaking of fascists, Thomas also offers a preview of August in Denver:
...come on..."Students for a Democratic Society"? As if the hippie nostalgia of Recreate 68 wasn't bad enough, we now have someone reanimating that corpse? I thought it was the right that supposedly clung to the faded glories of a distant golden age.
OK, so I guess it won't be another Summer of Love.
Eric Raymond sees the same disturbing things I do in Senator Obama:
I am absolutely not accusing Barack Obama of being a fascist or of having the goals of a fascist demagogue. I am saying that the psychological dynamic between him and his fans resembles the way fascist leaders and their people relate. The famous tingle that ran up Chris Matthew's leg. the swooning chanting crowds, the speeches full of grand we-can-do-it rhetoric, the vagueness about policy in favor of reinforcing that intoxicating sense of emotional identification...how can anyone fail to notice where this points?
There are hints of grandiosity and arrogance in Obama's behavior now. As the bond between him and his followers become more intense, though, it is quite possible they will not remain mere traces. I'm not panicked yet, because Obama is still a long way off from behaving like a megalomaniacal nut-job. But if the lives of people like Napoleon, Mussolini, or Hitler show us anything it's that the road from Obama's flavor of charismatic leader to tyrant is open, and dangerously seductive to the leader himself.
There is one more historical detail that worries me, in this connection. There is a pattern in the lives of the really dangerous charismatic tyrants that they tend to have originated on the geographical and cultural fringes of the societies they came to dominate, outsiders seeking ultimate insiderhood by remaking the "inside" in their own image. Hitler, the border Austrian who ruled Germany; Napoleon, the Corsican who seized France; and Stalin, the Georgian who tyrannized Sovet Russia. And, could it be...Obama, the half-black kid from Hawaii?
Again, I am not accusing Barack Obama of being a monster. But when I watch videos of his campaign, I see a potential monster in embryo. Most especially do I see that potential monster in the shining faces of his supporters, who may yet seduce Obama into believing that he is as special and godlike as they think he is.
I don't know if the McCain campaign has the savvy or moxie to properly go after Obama, but I think that there will be a lot of 527s who will, once the campaign really starts in the fall.
But I found this interesting (not that I hadn't seen it before):
...many religious believers probably couldn't imagine anything worse than not having their relationship with God. They don't see their relationship with their Creator, by whatever name they call the divine, as something they could be "free" from, and in fact a fairly common definition of Hell is in fact "complete separation from God."
This is one of those intellectual gulfs that separates me from believers. I not only can imagine not having a relationship with God, but I live the dream. Yeah, if I really believed in the fire and brimstone thing, and the imps <VOICE="Professor Frink">and the poking and the burning and the eternal tooooorment...glavin...</VOICE>, then I might decide that sinning wasn't worth it. But if hell be "complete separation from God," something that I've had all of my life, bring it on. All it gets from me is a shrug.
The Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding the Second Amendment right of individuals to own firearms, should finally lay to rest the widespread myth that the defining difference between liberal and conservative justices is that the former support "individual rights" and "civil liberties," while the latter routinely defer to government assertions of authority. The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides.
I think that this is also an excellent example of how confusing and misleading, and useless really, the two labels are.
So Kerry's military experience was better than McCain's because after serving for four months in Vietnam, he returned to the U.S. and falsely accused his fellow servicemen of being war criminals. I think it's time for Wesley Clark to be ushered quietly off the stage.
Well, he was certainly quietly ushered out of Europe.
But it would appear that the man has neither brains nor shame.
I should add that I don't think that what he said on Face the Nation was reprehensible. I didn't hear it as denigrating McCain's service so much as simply pointing out that it didn't necessarily give him the experience needed to be president, which is a reasonable position. It would be even more reasonable if it weren't a straw man, since as far as I know no one, including McCain himself has ever claimed that it did.
But it was a stupid thing to say, considering the experience level of his own candidate.
Obama wants to get us out of Iraq, but he can't even get us out of Vietnam.
I think that what's happening is a result of the Democrats delusions about "swift boating." They think that John Kerry lost because people denigrated his military record, so they're hoping that they can neutralize McCain the same way.
And it might work if there were any parallels to the situation other than that both spent time in Vietnam during the war.
But unfortunately for the donkeys, McCain didn't:
Serve the shortest tour of duty on record by getting three minor injuries, none of which resulted in any hospitalization or time off duty
Tell tall tales about being in Cambodia at Christmas time in 1968, with Nixon as president
Have numerous fellow prisoners come forward and say that his stories were nonsense
Have those same prisoners contribute to a book documenting that what McCain said was nonsense
Come back and testify before Congress, on hearsay evidence from suspect sources, that his fellow servicemen were wanton, vicious war criminals
Keep his service records hidden while pretending that he hadn't
Make his service the prime justification for his candidacy
But other than all that, all of this denigration of his service just might work.
I wonder how much a Bradley effect (people telling pollsters they'll vote for a black man when they don't behave that way in the booth) is going on in the polls? In any event, pre-convention polls don't have much value.
[Late morning update]
If Patrick is right, this would be a good pick--Kasich for Veep.
It's been a hundred and fifty years since Darwin first presented his thesis. Charles Johnson has some thoughts. I may have some as well, later. Or not.
[A minute or so later]
Well, actually, I do now, in light of Lileks' comments this morning, in which he pointed out the simplistic, stilted views of many across the political spectrum. I'll repeat:
Really, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a believe [sic] in lower taxes and strong foreign policy and greater individual freedom re: speech and property automatically translates to a crimpled, reductive, censorious view of pop culture, go right ahead.
Similarly, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a concern about Islamism, and an inability to realize what an evil stupid fascist criminal George Bush is translates to a belief that the world was created by Jehovah six thousand some years ago, complete with dinosaur bones, go right ahead.
Before 911, Charles Johnson was a Democrat, and a jazz musician. Almost seven years ago, he got mugged by reality. That, combined with some scary things that were happening at a mosque near his home in Culver City resulted in a change in emphasis at his web site. Now many of the left wingnuts who read LGF stupidly assume that he's a "right" wingnut. Yet here he is, defending science from places like the Discovery Institute, on a semi-daily basis.
I get the same idiotic treatment, much of the time. I've often had discussions on Usenet whereupon, when I argue that maybe it wasn't necessarily a bad idea to remove Saddam Hussein's boot from the neck of the Iraqi people, and that I don't believe that George Bush personally planted the charges in the Twin Towers, I am told to go back to whatever holler I came from and play with my snakes, and am informed that my belief in a Christian God, and my lack of belief in evolution is just more evidence of my irredeemable stupidity, despite the fact neither religion or science had been on the discussion table.
I then take pleasure in informing them that I am an agnostic and for practical purposes an atheist, and that I am a firm believer in evolutionary theory, it being the best one available to explain the existing body of evidence. Whereupon, I am sometimes called a liar. Really. It's projection, I think.
Same thing often happens here, in fact. I tell people that I'm not a Republican, and have never been, nor am I a conservative, and I'm accused of lying about my true beliefs and political affiliation.
C'est la vie. There's no reasoning with some folks.
In any event, happy birthday to a controversial but powerful (as Dennett says, absolutely corrosive, cutting through centuries of ignorance) scientific theory. Expect me to continue to defend it here, and Charles to defend it there.
[Late evening update]
Well, Iowahawk has the comment du jour:
I'm a dope-smoking atheist writer for a San Francisco lowbrow culture mag; I also enjoy seeing 7th century genocidal terrorist shitbags getting waterboarded. I really don't see the contradiction.
Lileks discusses the grief that he's gotten over the fact that he enjoyed the movie:
Shannen Coffin at the Corner notes that you never know how much hate mail you'll get until you take on a Pixar film. I'd add that the opposite is oddly true as well: I got a lot of very negative email about the review, some of which had to do with "shilling" (as one writer put it) for Disney, but most of which had to do with buying an eco-scary / anti-capitalist agenda because the characters were cute. Apparently I can write for years and demonstrate skepticism towards catastrophic doom-mongering, and it counts for nil. Ah well. Look, I think "JFK" is a pretty good piece of filmmaking. Its ideas are rubbish and its effect pernicious, but I still think it's a compelling work. Doesn't mean I believe a single frame.
Sometimes you separate the ideas from the movie, sometimes you can't, sometimes you shouldn't, and sometimes you don't want to because you approve of the ideas. Asking me to reject Wall-E because its unrealistic premise has contemporary overtones is like asking me to swear off Star Trek because Roddenberry wanted a post-religious collectivist one-world government that eschewed money and property.
He also chides Andrew Sullivan for stereotyping:
Apparently Andrew Sullivan took note of the review, and while I appreciate the patronage, this rankles a bit:
"Well Lileks loved it. Not all conservatives are stupid ideologues."
And not all liberals are stupid anti-consumerists who spaz out when someone praises the Works of Walt! Who'd have thunk it. Really, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a believe in lower taxes and strong foreign policy and greater individual freedom re: speech and property automatically translates to a crimpled, reductive, censorious view of pop culture, go right ahead.
Last night, I watched the end of Ratatouille, and afterward was a history of Pixar. Interesting stuff. It was a great example of the powerful synergy you can get when you successfully meld C. P. Snow's two cultures and combine traditional animators with computer geeks.
As good as they're getting at this stuff, though, I don't think that it's the death of 2-D animation. I suspect that as the 3-D stuff continues to asymptotically approach verisimilitude, there will be rebellious young turks who want to draw cartoons, and so the cycle will begin anew.
In any event, the foofaraw makes me want to see the movie in the theater, something I haven't done with a Pixar movie since Toy Story (though I wanted to with Ratatouille).
Gun control didn't work...Laws allowing concealed weapons proliferated--with no ill effects...The Second Amendment got a second look.
Yes, it was pretty much that simple. Of course, a lot of people (like Juan Williams) will persist in the delusion, in the face of all the counter evidence, that gun control works, and that increasing availability will result in a blood bath. But at least now, they won't be able any more to enact their delusions into laws that affect the rest of us.
...when faced with a disagreeable problem (in this case the lack of jobs) the answer for Obama always seems to get back to the manipulation of the political process to achieve the desired result.
Are Obamalanders uncomfortable with the free-market driven success of talk radio? Then they will "figure out ways to use the political process" to shut it down. In the case of talk radio, how else to explain the threatening Reid-Obama letter to Rush Limbaugh's business partner? How else does one explain the attempt to retrieve the "Fairness Doctrine" from the dustbin of history? These are nothing more or less than the "use of the political process" to subvert someone else's freedom. Period.
Are Obamaland followers hostile to oil? Do they hate SUVs? Do they think you have no right to heat or cool your own home beyond what they consider politically correct? Do they think you should pay $5 -- or $6 or $7 or $8 or more -- for gas at the pump to ensure you conform to the Obamaland world-view? Yes, they do think all of this and their Obamaland answer is inevitable. They will "use the political process" to stop drilling off shore in its tracks. So too with stopping the use of oil shale or ANWR or anything else that even hints at allowing average Americans their basic freedom to drive whatever vehicle wherever they damn well please whenever they damn well please. In Obamaland it is not only perfectly acceptable, it is gospel from the secular bible that they must use the political process to stop refineries from being built, to keep nuclear power plants from being built, to keep coal from being burned. Use the political process to forcibly mandate the temperature inside every single American home. As a matter of fact, why not just go all the way and nationalize the oil companies -- this actually being suggested by Obamaland's New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey.
He also has the full quote from Obama that I'd missed part of the first time around:
"We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership."
This is economic idiocy. Why in the world would energy consumption be expected to correlate with population? Yes, we have much higher per-capita energy usage than much of the world (e.g., Africa). But we also produce much greater wealth per capita than much of the world, and much of that wealth goes to make the world wealthier, in many ways. The notion that we should only use energy in proportion to our population is economic ignorance of the first rank. In other words, it's exactly what I would expect from a Democrat, and particularly Obama. Though to be fair, there are a lot of economically ignorant Republicans as well, including their current standard bearer, by his own admission. But unlike Obama, he at least admits it.
"The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place. That's the only way we're going to win." The Left, as you know, favors democracy, power to the people, and nondiscrimination, except when it doesn't.
By Rand Simberg on July 1, 2008 6:45 AM
Categories:
Business
,
Economics
Has our oil consumption dropped to 2002 levels? We'll see what effect it has on the economy. It has to be hurting tourism.
[Late morning update]
Paul Dietz mentions Bob Zubrin's flex-fuel crusade in comments. It looks like both candidates may be on board with a mandate for this:
The really good news is that both Senators John McCain and Barak Obama have declared their support for the Open Fuel Standard that must be adopted to ensure that each of the roughly 17 million cars we buy in this country every year are Flexible Fuel Vehicles.
People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors -- yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.
Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in "personal stories of political conversion." Doesn't anyone see the connection? Doesn't anyone remember any of this?
says, absolutely corrosive, cutting through centuries of ignorance) scientific theory. Expect me to continue to defend it here, and Charles to defend it there.