History Rendered to Limerick

Apropos of nothing:

I am the Fool on the Hill,
I face the wrong way by my Will,
And though you may chide,
With wisdom so snide,
Soon you'll Envy my Folly, and Hill.

Whiny Anarchist Deplores Voting...

He may be generally right as to why one man's vote might not make a difference (as if I'd be expected to believe that, among 100 million voters, mine would be the deciding factor), but he seems to be missing the point of he exercise. I tell him so in the comments section.

More Glowering Neocon Chickenhawkery...Booga Booga!

In additions to the points copied and pasted by Instapundit, I found the following in Amir Taheri's article in Commentary:

Between 1991 and 2003, the countrys farm sector experienced unprecedented decline, in the end leaving almost the entire nation dependent on rations distributed by the United Nations under Oil-for-Food. In the past two years, by contrast, Iraqi agriculture has undergone an equally unprecedented revival. Iraq now exports foodstuffs to neighboring countries, something that has not happened since the 1950s. Much of the upturn is due to smallholders who, shaking off the collectivist system imposed by the Baathists, have retaken control of land that was confiscated decades ago by the state.

Yet another blow to the corpse of planned economies. Latin America should take notice (they won't).

As Senator Hagel puts it, You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy.

I would tend to agree. But is Iraq such a place? In point of fact, before the 1958 pro-Soviet military coup detat that established a leftist dictatorship, Iraq did have its modest but nevertheless significant share of democratic history, culture, and tradition. The country came into being through a popular referendum held in 1921. A constitutional monarchy modeled on the United Kingdom, it had a bicameral parliament, several political parties (including the Baath and the Communists), and periodic elections that led to changes of policy and government. At the time, Iraq also enjoyed the freest press in the Arab world, plus the widest space for debate and dissent in the Muslim Middle East.

Butbutbut...they're not supposed to be able to do democracy in them thar benighted foreign places! It's nothing more than a Western logophallotechnocentric tyranny!

But what about all those deaths? 23,000 and counting. What about the way the insurgency keeps killing people, no matter how many times they're declared defeated?

These democratic achievements are especially impressive when set side by side with the declared aims of the enemies of the new Iraq, who have put up a determined fight against it. Since the countrys liberation, the jihadists and residual Baathists have killed an estimated 23,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, in scores of random attacks and suicide operations. Indirectly, they have caused the death of thousands more, by sabotaging water and electricity services and by provoking sectarian revenge attacks.

But they have failed to translate their talent for mayhem and murder into political success. Their campaign has not succeeded in appreciably slowing down, let alone stopping, the countrys democratization. Indeed, at each step along the way, the jihadists and Baathists have seen their self-declared objectives thwarted.

He goes into detail, describing all the objectives the terrorist have tried to achieve, and how they haven't achieved a one of them. Read the whole thing, as they say.

Plus, he gives us the most detailed account of the future of Iraq that I've heard from anybody, including any of our political leaders:

The current mandate of the U.S.-led coalition runs out at the end of this year, and it is unlikely that Washington and its allies will want to maintain their military presence at current levels. In the past few months, more than half of the 103 bases used by the coalition have been transferred to the new Iraqi army. The best guess is that the number of U.S. and coalition troops could be cut from 140,000 to 25,000 or 30,000 by the end of 2007.

One might wonder why, if the military mission has been so successful, the U.S. still needs to maintain a military presence in Iraq for at least another two years. There are three reasons for this.

One is keeping the Iranians and Turks honest. Two is guaruntee-ing that what we build won't fall apart. Three is making sure the Iraqi Army and police continue to perform to high standards. The question is, will we have the will to do it? The political inertia makes it difficult, even for a small force to remain. The "who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake" trope will rise gurgling from the grave. The forest will be ignored for the trees. Everything Taheri describes will be risked so that the Left can indulge its Woodstock fantasies:

The stakes, in short, could not be higher. This is all the more reason to celebrate, to build on, and to consolidate what has already been accomplished. Instead of railing against the Bush administration, Americas elites would do better, and incidentally display greater self-respect, to direct their wrath where it properly belongs: at those violent and unrestrained enemies of democracy in Iraq who are, in truth, the enemies of democracy in America as well, and of everything America has ever stood for.

So if, reading all of this, you're desperate for an ad hominem to squirt at me like an octopus' cloud, let me put the straw together (and THAT'S what you call mixing your metaphors): I, civilian out of harm's way, hereby support and desire our professional soldiery to continue their dangerous task. I desire that those who have died not be used as a cudgel to defeat the living. I earnestly pray that they may be allowed to achieve the victory towards which they have so honorably labored. You may now feel free to call me Chickenhawk, Wingnut, 101st Fighting Keyboarder, White Feather, Yellow-Belly, what have you.

But I promise this: if they come home defeated, it's not me that they'll be angry at.

I Am So Smart! S-M-R-T!

Glenn Reynolds quotes Gary Becker on the problem of "capitalism" in South America:

In essence, crony capitalism often creates private monopolies that hurt consumers compared to their welfare under competition. The excesses of cronyism have provided ammunition to parties of the left that are openly hostile to capitalism and neo-liberal policies. Yet when these parties come to power they usually do not reduce the importance of political influence but shift power to groups that support them. A distinguishing characteristic of Chile since the reforms of the early 1980's is the growth in competitive capitalism at the expense of crony capitalism. This shift more than anything else explains the economic rise of Chile during the past 25 years that has made Chile the most economically successful of all Latin American nations.

"Crony capitalism" is more or less what I had in mind writing about Mexicoil and cash crops yesterday. It amounts to a gentle kind of fascism, and runs counter to what every free-market-loving liberal and libertarian desires.

Yesterday I was lecturing my Modern History class about the Great Depression, and how the worst thing you can do when the stock market is tanking is panic. He who keep his head while everyone else loses theirs is likely to come out on top. Unfortunately, Latin America has been in one state of politico-economic panic or another for the last 200 years.

But wait, there's more! Donald Sensing has more of the costs leading to a declining birth rate. I'm less convinced that his assertions are as powerful as economic ones. There are plenty of us who don't really care what the feminists and eco-freaks think about our young'uns. But in the cultural centers on the coasts, the image of mass overpopulation and the toil and drudgery of Motherhood surely influences behavior.

We run from the wrong fears, and into the wrong solutions.


UPDATE: Mark Steyn has more, especially as relating to Hugo Chavez. You know, Mister President-for-Life.

America is Not the Problem

Paul Driessen hits the usual points in talking about how screwed up Mexico is, and in doing so, he posts a factoid that should be shouted from the heavens:

Low-skill wages today are less than 15 percent of what Mexican workers can earn in the US, and half of its 106 million people still live in poverty.

Fifteen Percent. Fifteen Percent. The same lousy, ten-hour, fruit-pickin' job that pays 4 dollars an hour in California pays 60 cents in Baja. And we are lost as to how this may be. We look at the poverty to our border and don't even wonder about it, because it's always been there. Since the Conquistadors showed up, Mexico has been a land of horrifying, endemic, turn-J.P.-Morgan-into-a-Communist poverty.

But the Communistas can't seem to improve the place. And neither can the capitalists, it seems. Mexico is trying both at the same time, and neither is working. The oil industry is owned by the Mexican Government, who sells it to the developed world, and especially the United States, and uses the profits to...pay more government workers? Improve oil production? Meanwhile, whole areas of Mexico are without electricity.

And if all that were privatised overnight? If the government oil industry became Mexicoil, Inc? The same would occur. Cash-crops cannot save economies that don't empower people to make use of it. When there is nothing that will allow people to transferr the assets they have into liquid, they may not advance except by the benefice of the government, which depends upon either political connections or revolt.

Property Rights. Rule of Law. Universal Suffrage and Education. It's all we've ever needed.

How the Nanny State Destroys the Urge to Procreate

Glenn Reynolds sums it up justly:

Today's middle-class kids are always under the adult eye. It's not clear that the kids are better off for all this supervision -- and they're certainly fatter, perhaps because they get around less outside -- but the burden on parents is much, much higher. And it's exacted in a million tiny yet irritating other ways. Some are worthwhile -- car seats, for example, are probably a net gain in safety -- but even there the cost is high: I heard a radio host in Knoxville making fun of SUVs and minivans: When he was a kid, he boasted, his parents took their five children cross-country in an Impala sedan. Nowadays, you'd never make it without being cited for neglect. And you can't get five kids in a sedan if they all have to have car seats, which these days they seem to require until they're 18.

When I was a kid, I was frequently left alone at home from the age of nine forward, and no harm ever came to me. Or I ran all over the neighborhood, which is to say the street we lived on, without ever destroying the universe. Permission had to be asked, but was easily granted, to go around the corner to the library, or down the road a mile or two past the elementary school to the shopping center to buy sodas or squirt guns. And we did this often; my younger brother, younger sister, and myself, and we never violated these norms, because we if one of us did, one of us would tell, and that meant Getting In Trouble. Y'see, my parents managed to discipline us without the state finding out about it, so we learned that limits existed. Call me crazy, but I think such discipline a lot more handy for surviving unemployment (which I had to do), dropping out of college (my brother), or debt (all three of us).

Responsibility without authority is pointlessness. If we hold parents accountable for everything that happens to their kids, but restrain them from punishing misbehavior, then the message we send is "Don't have kids." And that isn't the message we want to be sending, if we want our nation to have a future (Yes, I said "nation". GASP! I'm JUST LIKE HITLER!)

"Oh, It's All Right. We Commissioned a Group Portrait..."*

I'm one of those people with a wonderful capacity to stay far, far away from A-List cultural trends. I still haven't seen Titanic (Not all of it, anyway). I still can't name any of the winners of Survivor. I've never contemplated opening a Harry Potter book. But I think I may have to break that tradition.

I may just have to read The Da Vinci Code.

I'm not making this decision hoping to be impressed. Quite frankly, if Dan Brown has penned a novel half as good as Foucault's Pendulum (by Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose), which covers much the same material, albeit with an emphasis on the Knights Templar, I'll eat my favorite hat. But if I can happily ignore Leo's Opus and the Dysentery Game and The Adventures of Wizard-Boy, it's because, whatever their merits, they have but pop-importance; ephemerality is guarunteed to strike at least two of them dead before the century is half-over.

The New Gnosticism, on the other hand, cannot be so dismissed. Whatever truth The Da Vinci Code may or may not have, it cannot be denied impact. People (mostly women, in my notice, but that's the target audience, isn't it?) have been raving about it and recommending it for years. It's now a big Hollywood movie, replete with publicity junkets and protests and defenses and threatened boycotts and rebuttal books and the slapping and the hurting and the partridge in a pear tree. It behooves me to take a gander.

So off I go to the branch library (you didn't really think I'd PAY for it, did you?)
.




*History of the World, Part 1 reference.

The Consequences of Inaction

I find the reactions to the President's speech last night most instructive. It now appears that nothing short of "DEPORT THEM. ALL OF THEM." will satisfy the Republican "base". This I fail to understand. Mass deportation of the millions of illegals is not feasible in any sense of the word: in terms of the manpower and infrastructure, in terms of political will, in terms of likely humanitarian consequences.

We should all deplore the lassitude and inertia that has brought us to the present circumstance. But inaction, like action, has consequences. We must accept these consequences before we can effectively chart a new course.

I found the principles of the President's position both reasonable and just (indeed, it all sounds remarkably similar to what I myself proposed). The question remains of how these principles translate to action. You may call a "guest-worker/earned citizenship" program whatever you like, but absent strict enforcement of the existing border, it will become precisely the amnesty that the President says it is not. This is unacceptable, and it is the fear of this which, I suspect, drives the hostility of conservatives.

Because we have one of three options. The first is to set forth a plan that will simplify immigration and secure the border, and then follow through on it. The second is to annex Mexico. The third is to do nothing and hope it all will go away.

Option three is the worst, and conspicuously, the one we are likely to engage in. But a third-party candidate who was solidly behind the first, this man I might give serious consideration too.

When in Washington, Do as The Romans Do...

The frightening idea of this post on the SanAntonio Express-News (HT: Austin Bay) is NOT that a good man with experience overhauling intel agencies could possibly be denied his post because of partisan politics. That's a great big So-What-Else-Is-New. No, the scary bit is the following line (italics my own):

But the same sloppy thinking, mindless stereotypes and casual acceptance of second-class citizenship that once marked American race relations all now reign unchallenged whenever the military class appears to be getting a little uppity. Fact is, there is a gap — already miles-wide and growing every day — between the American people and their highly professional military.

Let us admit that I am paranoid. Let us admit that I often look for evidence for my Pet Theory that America is Ancient Rome with computers. But surely it can't be just me who blanches when faced with the possibility of open hostility between the "military class" (a very unpleasant term) and the political leadership.

And oh, sure, for the nonce the mystique of the serving professional, the guardian of the Constitution who is its servant, not its master continues to have a powerful hold on the military, as does the fact that service is honored in modern culture, not military glory. But if this "gap" continues to grow, if the military begins to believe itself superior to the civilian leadership not just in ability, but morally, too, then this bodes not well for the civilian leadership. And that bodes not well for us. Just because I do not wish to see America become the next France doesn't mean I care to see it become the next Brazil, either.

The Many Futures of Fuel

Peak Oil has been greatly on my mind of late. I suspect, as many commentators have predicted, that when oil begins to be used up, we will throw a great many stop-gap fuels, aimed at stretching supply, into the mix. I also think we're going to have to make a serious move towards nuclear energy to replace coal, and some efforts to make buildings more energy efficient. For some details, please consult this transcript (.pdf) of a 2005 Energy Conference led by the chap who's going to become my Congressman as of next month (Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD).

At this point, what we need to be doing is experimenting as much as is possible with alternatives, on as wide a basis as possible. Thus, some of the speakers at this conferences, whatever the validity of the plans they personally favor, have entirely the wrong overall viewpoint. Absent a major scientific breakthrough on the order of cold-fusion, there is no "magic bullet." We are going to have to apply a variety of fuel sources, each appropriate to a need. Popular Mechanics uses the idiom of a family owning "an electric or plug-in hybrid for short trips, an E85/electric hybrid sedan, SUV or minivan to squire the whole team, and a diesel pickup fueled by B30 or B50 to haul most anything else."

In other words, now is precisely the time to avoid calls for planning and rationing and "leadership" as Mr. John Howe makes in the transcript (he also is of the opinion that men who have fathered one child ought to undergo immediate vasectomies. But Buckley, Jr. is the "crypto-fascist." Heigh-ho). Such would be a disaster, because "leadership" usually means that one course of action will be followed.

In times of crisis, it is always tempting to give in to the temptation of authority. Often, if the crisis is of short duration and limited in scope, the temptation is justified. But a move from fossil fuels to X is not a crisis, it's an economic transition. It's wheels and shifts are not plannable by any single mind, nor are they effectively managed by politicians, consultants, or bureaucrats. Each of these has a different goal and is paid in a different coin than someone who merely wants to make a machine that works.

In short, we need more than one solution, and more than one group contributing: politicians will need to underline the problems and free up the regulatory entanglements, scientists will need to apply the brainpower, and capitalists will need to supply the capital and prepare the markets. I am not such a fool as to predict how my grandson will commute, nor how he will cook his food, nor how he will heat his home. But I know that he will be better off if he has options.


UPDATE: In the same Popular Mechanics article, a Mr. David E. Cole of the Center for Auto Research, predicted that:

"If gasoline prices get too high and we look to other fuels--like hydrogen--you can expect that oil-producing nations will reduce our fuel costs. They want to continue to pump oil out, pump dollars in, and they could see the hydrogen economy as a threat."

I have doubts as to the extent to which this will be possible, if it's true that the Mid-East is operating at or near 100% capacity. But today's USA Today declares that Oil has dropped below $74 a barrel as gasoline demand has remained flat and refinery output slightly increased. So who knows?

Why I Will Never Vote for John McCain, Part...

Now, if George Bush said this:

I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt.

...you can bet that the TV Stations would be broadcasting it from sea to shining sea, 24 hours a day, joyfully burbling about the President's incipient fascism. But John McCain, the "Maverick", well the press just loves him, even as he speaks out against the he plus ultra of American political culture, the very foundation of our Republic, the Goose that Lays the damn Golden Eggs. I mean, I know it would be the first time a Maverick killed a Goose, but really...

I can't believe I voted for this stormtrooper in the 2000 primaries. Fortunately, I don't think he has a shot of winning the GOP nomination.

Hell is Repetition...

...for how else could rehearsing a stage production over and over and over again, from Saturday to Wednesday, be call Hell Week?

I have a few essay's brewing, and eventually I'll get that dagnabbed music list finished. But for the nonce, I am indisposed.

Here, go read Mark Steyn. Mayhaps we can start a betting pool as to the final date for the rise of the European Caliphate.