George Will:

Bush, in an address central to America's political liturgy, has now spoken of character as something that is, to a very limited but very important extent, constructed. Public policy participates in the building of it. This is a doctrine of architectonic government -- government concerned with shaping the structure of the citizenry's soul. . . . His agenda's aim is to continue, in the language of his inaugural address, ``preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society.''

That is the crux of modern conservatism -- government taking strong measures to foster in the citizenry the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for increased individual independence.

Thomas Sowell:

What are these "demonstrations" demonstrating -- other than adolescent self-indulgence and contempt for the rights of other people to go about their lives without finding their streets clogged with hooligans and the air filled with obscenities? . . . We are seeing the ugly face of intolerance under the idealistic pretense of protest. We need to recognize it for what it is, even if the media refuse to do so. Above all, we need to see it as a warning of where our society is headed. Whether at home or abroad, if political conflicts are reduced to contests between the wimps and the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

Paul Johnson:

My grandfather used to say, `Learn to like art, music and literature deeply and passionately. They will be your friends when things are bad.' It is true: at this time of year, when days are short and dark, and one hardly dares to open the newspapers, I turn, not vainly either, to the great creators of the past for distraction, solace and help.

He goes on to discuss Parmigianino (new to me), Dickens and Schubert.

Mark Steyn:

If you want a good example of excessive deference to the established order, look no further than Iraq. I'm often asked about the scale of the insurgency and doesn't this prove we armchair warriors vastly underestimated things, etc. I usually reply that, if you rummage through the archives, you'll find that I wanted the liberation of Iraq to occur before the end of August 2002. The bulk of the military were already in place, sitting in the Kuwaiti desert twiddling their thumbs. But Bush was prevailed upon to go ''the extra mile'' at the United Nations mainly for the sake of Tony Blair, and thanks to the machinations of Chirac, Schroeder and Co., the extra mile wound up being the scenic route through six months of diplomatic gridlock while Washington gamely auditioned any casus belli that might win the favor of the president of Guinea's witch doctor.

. . . The result is not only an insurgency far more virulent than it would have been had Washington followed my advice rather than Tony's and gone in in August 2002, but also a broader range of enemies that learned a lot about how ''world'' -- i.e., European -- opinion could be played off against Washington.

I don't believe Bush would make that mistake again.

Theodore Dalrymple:

"Have you ever been to a trial before?" she said.

"Yes, many times."

"Can you tell me, will they be nasty to me?"

At this point, I felt a deep pang of sorrow: for her question was a child's question. For all the precocity forced upon her, for all the street credibility she had no doubt assumed for the sake of survival in the brutal urban environment in which she found herself, for all the pseudo-independence thrust upon her by her feckless mother and Social Services, she was still a child, not an adult.

. . . This murder, exceptional in some characteristics as it undoubtedly was, took place in a social universe that liberals have wrought, and whose realities they are too guilty or cowardly to acknowledge. It is a universe that has no place for children or childhood in it. Believing that man is the product of his environment, they have nevertheless set about creating an environment from which it is truly difficult to escape, by closing off all the avenues and bolt-holes as far as possible. They have destroyed the family and any notion of progress or improvement. They have made a world in which the only freedom is self-indulgence, a world from which—most terrible of all—prison can sometimes be a liberation.

(Via Occam's Razor Toothbrush.)

Leo McKinstry in the Sunday Telegraph:

To European intellectuals, the term "American democracy" is probably an oxymoron. Though such sophisticated cynicism is contradicted by events in Iraq, where - just like in France 60 years ago - US soldiers have been sacrificing their lives to liberate a people from tyranny, anti-Americanism is now written into the European psyche, the last acceptable prejudice in a culture that makes a fetish of racial equality. Indeed, as I walked through the cemetery, my sense of gratitude at Bill's service was accompanied by deep, almost visceral, anger at my fellow Europeans for their constant sneering at America and their gloating over the body count in Iraq, despite all that the USA has done to free Europe in the past from totalitarian dictatorships, whether they be Nazi or communist.

I'm glad to see Joel Mowbray pick up on the study that Caroline Glick discussed:

Although Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has now disavowed peace talks with new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, it is a sure bet that the "international community" will pressure Israel by raising the specter of surging Palestinian population figures that will soon leave Jews outnumbered between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

But a new demographic study released this week could change all that.

An eight-person team has found that the actual number of residents in Gaza and the West Bank is nearly one and a half million fewer than the published population of 3.8 million—and they derived much of that number from Palestinian figures.

David Brooks on Bush's Second Inaugural:

With that speech, President Bush's foreign policy doctrine transcended the war on terror. He laid down a standard against which everything he and his successors do will be judged.

When he goes to China, he will not be able to ignore the political prisoners there, because he called them the future leaders of their free nation. When he meets with dictators around the world, as in this flawed world he must, he will not be able to have warm relations with them, because he said no relations with tyrants can be successful.

His words will be thrown back at him and at future presidents.

. . . Because of that speech, it will be harder for the U.S. government to do what we did to Latin Americans for so many decades - support strongmen to rule over them because they happened to be our strongmen. It will be harder to frustrate the dreams of a captive people, the way in the early 1990's we tried to frustrate the independence dreams of Ukraine.

It will be harder for future diplomats to sit on couches flattering dictators, the way we used to flatter Hafez al-Assad of Syria decade after decade.

. . . The speech does not mean that Bush will always live up to his standard. But the bias in American foreign policy will shift away from stability and toward reform. It will be harder to cozy up to Arab dictators because they can supposedly help us in the war on terror.

. . . Bush's inaugural ideals will also be real in the way they motivate our troops in Iraq. Military Times magazine asked its readers if they think the war in Iraq is worth it. Over 60 percent - and two-thirds of Iraq combat vets - said it was.

. . . Americans are, as George Santayana observed, "idealists working on matter." On Thursday in Washington, the ideal and the material were on ample display.

Jonah Goldberg:

Kids going to college this fall were born the year I graduated from high school. Which means that I was going to bars three years before they were born. It also means that they have no real memory of the Soviet Union's existence. It means the scar on my left thumb from the old "Defender" video game is older than they are. It means the first president they were conscious of was Bill Clinton. They don't remember apartheid. They don't remember when Jesse Jackson wasn't a joke. Or when China took Marxism even remotely seriously. Star Wars was an old movie by the time they saw it and they can't remember when Pat Buchanan was a loyal Republican. Big Brother refers to a TV show first and a book by some dead guy second. Most of them have never used a typewriter, never been in a world where the broadcast-news anchors weren't hemorrhaging viewers to cable, never really did school work without the aid of the Internet, and never knew a time when people didn't have cell phones.

. . . This is a very old theme of mine — that technological changes pose a constant threat to the conservative project even as conservatives shouldn't be ideologically anti-technology. Cars, the birth control pill, the Internet, and television have all done more to dissolve the iron chains of community and tradition than most of the acidic ideas of dangerous philosophers.

What can conservatives do about this? Well, a lot and nothing. We cannot and should not adopt some sort of anti-change platform. . . . After all, William F. Buckley has spent his entire life yelling stop so he could change things, not so that he could freeze them. What we can do is what we've always done. Recognize and point out that change and progress are not synonymous, that materialistic advances are often merely a changing of the garb of humanity and not a change of humanity itself and, of course, that anyone who thinks Old School is superior to Animal House needs his head flushed.

Robert Spencer:

It is reasonable for any state to base its foreign policy on its overall goals and interests. In fact, I recommend that the United States do the same thing. In regard to the global jihad, this would involve a serious re-evaluation of the American posture around the globe.

. . . A State Department that really had America's interests at heart would immediately terminate all aid to Egypt, Indonesia, the Palestinians, Jordan, Somalia, Algeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Kosovo, Albania -- and even Iraq and Afghanistan, and any other state -- until each demonstrably ends all support -- material, educational, religious -- for jihad warfare, and grants full equality of rights to any non-Muslim citizens.

It should also reconfigure our global alliances on the same basis. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the rest should be put on notice that continued friendly relations with the United States absolutely depend on an immediate and comprehensive renunciation of the jihad, including a reformation of their schools to end the teaching of jihad warfare.

. . . To be a friend of the United States, each must renounce entirely any intention to make good on the Islamic goals and responsibilities enunciated by the Pakistani Islamic leader Syed Abul Ala Maududi, who declared that non-Muslims have "absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God's earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines." If they do, "the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life."

His comments were in full accord with Islamic theology and history, as well as with the Koran as it has been read and understood by Muslims for centuries. This is the goal of the jihadists today; it should be the fundamental defining point of U.S. alliances with Muslim states. . . .

But does anyone in the State Department have the will to advocate these and other measures? Or is it only regimes like the bloody mullahocracy in Tehran that are allowed to speak openly about their principles and goals, and take all the necessary measures for their own defense?

(Via LGF.)

According to a recent study (pdf), summarized by NCPA:

• For every 10 percent decline in pharmaceutical prices, R&D investment will fall by 5.8 percent.
• With lower investment breeding fewer breakthrough drugs, it is estimated that a 10 percent decline in drug prices would result in 40.1 million life-years lost.
• Assuming a year of life is worth $100,000, a 10 percent reduction in drug prices would cost $4 trillion over the long-run.

Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills in City Journal:

A bundle of enriched-uranium fuel-rods that could fit into a two-bedroom apartment in Hell's Kitchen would power the city for a year: furnaces, espresso machines, subways, streetlights, stock tickers, Times Square, everything—even our cars and taxis, if we could conveniently plug them into the grid. True, you don't want to stack fuel rods in midtown Manhattan; you don't in fact want to stack them casually on top of one another anywhere. But in suitable reactors, situated, say, 50 miles from the city on a few hundred acres of suitably fortified and well-guarded real estate, two rooms' worth of fuel could electrify it all. . . .

New York City consumes so much energy that you'd need, at a minimum, to cover two cities with solar cells to power a single city (see "How Cities Green the Planet," Winter 2000). No conceivable mix of solar and wind could come close to supplying the trillions of additional kilowatt-hours of power we'll soon need.

Nuclear power could do it—easily. In all key technical respects, it is the antithesis of solar power. A quad's worth of solar-powered wood is a huge forest—beautiful to behold, but bulky and heavy. Pound for pound, coal stores about twice as much heat. Oil beats coal by about twice as much again. And an ounce of enriched-uranium fuel equals about 4 tons of coal, or 15 barrels of oil. That's why minuscule quantities contained in relatively tiny reactors can power a metropolis. . . .

How worried should we really be in 2005 that accidents or attacks might release and disperse a nuclear power plant's radioactive fuel? Not very. Our civilian nuclear industry has dramatically improved its procedures and safety-related hardware since 1979. Several thousand reactor-years of statistics since Three Mile Island clearly show that these power plants are extraordinarily reliable in normal operation.

And uranium's combination of power and super-density makes the fuel less of a terror risk, not more, at least from an engineering standpoint. It's easy to "overbuild" the protective walls and containment systems of nuclear facilities, since—like the pyramids—the payload they're built to shield is so small. Protecting skyscrapers is hard; no builder can afford to erect a hundred times more wall than usable space. Guaranteeing the integrity of a jumbo jet's fuel tanks is impossible; the tanks have to fly. Shielding a nuclear plant's tiny payload is easy—just erect more steel, pour more concrete, and build tougher perimeters.

In fact, it's a safety challenge that we have already met. Today's plants split atoms behind super-thick layers of steel and concrete; future plants would boast thicker protection still. All the numbers, and the strong consensus in the technical community, reinforce the projections made two decades ago: it is extremely unlikely that there will ever be a serious release of nuclear materials from a U.S. reactor.

Fascinating and, to me, persuasive piece.

When I read this piece by Tony Blankley I found it persuasive, and therefore infuriating:

This week in the New Yorker magazine Seymour Hersh wrote the following words: "The administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran ... Much of the focus is on accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical and missile sites ... [The] American commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had dealt with Iranian counterparts ... The American task force ... has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations ... The task force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices."

. . . I was shocked when I read Mr. Hersh's article. . . . Mr. Hersh is revealing to all the world, including the Iranian government, that our commandos are currently behind enemy lines in Iran on a dangerous and vital military assignment.

But Michael Ledeen has eased my mind and blood pressure:

I have usually ignored Hersh's articles and books over the years, because there were so many errors in them that I could never figure out what, if anything, was true. Better to ignore him altogether than get sucked into a morass of confusion. And of course, Hersh has long specialized in stories that are severely damaging to the American mission. He almost never seems to think we have real enemies, he invariably takes the side of anti-American critics, and it never seems to occur to him that there are people in the government who are desperately trying to do the right thing. . . .

I entirely agree with Tony Blankley that any journalist who reveals details of our quest for that information should be relegated to the lowest levels of Hell, whether the real thing or the legalistic equivalent. . . . But I don't think we need worry too much about Hersh's revealing the darkest secrets of American intelligence, because he doesn't have them. He can't even write a logically consistent paragraph.

If Caroline Glick's analysis is right, a crucial element of the Israeli-Palestinian debate should change:

[I]t could be said in retrospect that the greatest single victory the PLO has scored in its 46-year-old war with Israel was the publication of a single report in 1997. That report . . . projects that the Arab population west of the Jordan River will by 2015 outnumber the Jewish population. . . .

Largely in reaction to these statistics, which were bandied about by everyone from politicians to diplomats to defense officials, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided a year ago to adopt the left wing Labor Party's campaign platform and withdraw the IDF from Gaza and the northern West Bank and forcibly remove the Jews living in those areas from their homes. . . . Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: "Above all hovers the cloud of demographics. [. . .]"

But what if the numbers are wrong? What if the doomsday scenarios Israelis hear on a daily basis, arguing that Israel is about to be overrun by the Arab womb, are all based on fraudulent data - part of an ingenious Palestinian plan to psychologically manipulate Israel into capitulating?

This week a team of American and Israeli researchers presented a study of the Palestinian population statistics at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation in Washington. . . . All of the team's comparative analyses led to the conclusion that the Palestinian population forecasts upon which Israel is basing its current policy of withdrawal and uprooting of Israeli communities in the territories are faulty in the extreme. . . .

The study, which has been accepted by prominent American demographers Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt and Murray Feshbach, shows that contrary to common wisdom, the Jewish majority west of the Jordan River has remained stable since 1967. In 1967 Jews made up 64.1 percent of the overall population and in 2004 they made up 59.5 percent. Inside Israel proper, including Jerusalem, Jews make up 80 percent of the population.

While reading the report, the inescapable sense is that something has gone very wrong within Israeli society. The numbers are so clear. The data have always been readily available. And yet, like bats attracted to the darkness of a cave, Israelis preferred the manipulative lies of the PA to the truth.

Don't click here.

(Via Judi at Dave Barry's blog.)

Larry Elder on Social Security reform:

No matter what the president proposes, expect Democrats to object. For example, the White House recently floated the notion of indexing Social Security benefits to inflation, rather than wages. (By indexing to inflation, the expected so-called guaranteed benefit decreases, but the worker would more than make it up through expected greater returns with money put into a personal account.)

Foul, cried House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. " . . . Recent press reports suggest that your administration favors a privatization plan that includes 'price indexing,'" said Pelosi, "which would reduce Social Security's progressive benefits by up to 46 percent for future retirees. These benefit cuts are the equivalent of asking today's seniors to live at a 1940s standard of living."

Are these the same guys who tell us that workers keep falling further and further behind consumer prices?

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said that many Americans are being "squeezed" as wage gains fail to keep pace with a rising cost of living. Then-vice-presidential candidate John Edwards said last year, "It made the front page of the paper today, but it's not news to many Americans that wages are not keeping up with inflation." But if inflation outpaces wages, as Sens. Edwards and Kerry argued -- why not index the benefits to the higher number, inflation? Historically, wages outpace inflation, and Democrats -- despite their whining about the "Bush economy" -- know this.

It's gonna be a long four years.

And indeed I endeavoured mightily to put her out of my mind and not to love her at all except that she offered several provocations to my doing so, such as giving me a book of her favourite poems she had copied out in her own hand, and nicknaming me Tom because she said I reminded her of a cat of that name she had once owned, which was most pleasingly familiar; and once, presenting me with a lock of her hair which I kept in a little box by my bed. So that very soon thereafter she was in my head a thousand times each day.

And for the first time in a long time I was happy. For love is mostly optimism.

Jim Geraghty considers "whether many of the mainstream media's problems stem from having too many outlets competing for the same readers/viewers."

Michelle Malkin on some significant misreporting:

If you watched the evening news a week ago, you may recall the sensational story of a distraught Marine who died in a murderous shootout with police. Anti-war writers and Latino activists have turned the cop-killer, Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, into a martyr. Don't believe the hype.

. . . [C]ontrary to the impression left by initial media reports, Raya had never seen combat. And he was not headed back to Iraq. He had been transferred to a new unit scheduled for deployment to Okinawa. . . . Raya was high on cocaine at the time of the ambush, according to police reports. He was reportedly affiliated with the prison gang Nuestra Familia. Investigators found photos of Raya wearing gang colors and a shopping list in his bedroom safe that included body armor, assault rifles and ammunition.

From The Diplomad. Here's the first:

There's some magic "Third Way." Even one of our best allies in the world, Tony Blair, believes in this. This is a shame, because we like Blair. It was much worse when Bill Clinton was president because he believed in it, too (well, to the extent that Clinton believed in anything.) He and Blair held hands, sang Kumbaya, and preached "Third Way" to others. There's no third way that works. Communism is an obvious failure; prosperity is directly proportional to free markets. More capitalism equals more prosperity. (Note: Please remember this "Wrong Idea" as in a subsequent post we review some new UN UNsanity.)

BBC News:

Failing to make your bed in the morning may actually help keep you healthy, scientists believe.

Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies.

A Kingston University study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed.

Ralph Peters:

How will Indonesians interpret the disaster that has befallen Aceh?

Earthquakes, plagues and famines can either drag a population backward into superstition — or thrust it forward into a new spirit of inventiveness and creativity. . . . Given Aceh's fundamentalist tradition, the response from local mullahs (whose authority is threatened) is apt to be the age-old claim that Allah punished Aceh because it had already become too liberal.

. . . On Java or Sulawesi, the lesson is that Aceh's oppressive religion didn't protect it; on the contrary, Allah struck those who were most prideful about their faith. The earthquake and tsunami may have drowned Saudi-funded extremism as surely as it did the Sumatran countryside.

. . . Any assistance we can give Jakarta in making the national government appear effective in its relief efforts is money and sweat well-spent. Aceh may be where humane Islam can turn the tide against extremist hatred.

Paul Johnson walks a fine line:

The true theological or philosophical point to be made about the Indian Ocean wave — if, indeed, there is one — is that it is a timely reminder of the fragility of our existence in this world, the ease with which life on a sunny holiday beach can be snuffed out in a few torrential seconds, and the awesome power which nature still wields, and will always wield, in a world where science and engineering make such boastful strides in subduing her. And any reminder of the ultimate and total powerlessness of human beings, made always necessary by our arrogance and boasting, must be an act of God, and a very sensible and benevolent one too.

Jonathan Rauch on Social Security reform:

[N]either creating private Social Security accounts nor ratcheting down the growth of future benefits would be an economic milestone. Conservatives need to frame Social Security reform as a dollars-and-cents issue, but that is not really why they are excited. What they really hope to change is not the American economy but the American psyche.

. . . Tanner argues that people who own assets behave differently and see their place in society in a different light. Private accounts, he says, would encourage a culture of saving and personal responsibility; they would discourage political class warfare; they may, he argues, improve work habits, and even reduce crime and other social pathologies. Create private Social Security accounts, and millions of low-income Americans will be stockholders and bondholders. Republican political activists look at the way portfolio investors vote—and salivate at the prospect of millions more of them.

Mark Steyn on the Harry-in-Nazi-dress commotion:

It's a good rule of thumb that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy. Thus, whatever feelings of unease I might have had about Prince Hitler were swept away the moment the rent-a-quote humbugs started lining up to denounce him.

I say to Harry: you go, girlfriend, you Reichstone Cowboy you.

. . . [W]orrying about a minor Royal schoolboy's alleged Nazi bent seems something of an indulgence at a time when the neo-Nazis get as many votes in Saxony's elections as Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party; when from Marseilles to Paris, Jews are being attacked and their homes, schools, kosher butchers, synagogues and cemeteries burnt and desecrated in a low-level intifada that's been going on so long the political establishment now accepts it as a normal feature of French life; and when the Berlin police advise Jews not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith. It's not just Nazi insignia you don't see in Germany these days; Nazi wise, the uniforms are the least of it.

An interview with Andrew Breitbart, coauthor of Hollywood, Interrupted:

NRO: Is it possible to raise normal kids in Hollywood?

Breitbart: The verdict is still out. I sure hope so. However, I've given up trying to stop the environmental indoctrination. It's simply everywhere out here.

The first day of kindergarten for my son started with an admonition about bringing lunch to school with anything that can be thrown away as trash.

On the second day he was told that we shouldn't eat Chilean sea bass. Guess what we had for dinner that night?

What drives me the craziest is watching "regular" parents go to great lengths to get their kids in the same school or extracurricular class with the kids of celebrities. I've wracked my brain and I can't see the benefit of being in the same "Gymboree" as Ethan Hawke. I'm less worried about the kids than I am the adults. Seriously.

Robert Samuelson:

It makes no sense to separate Social Security from Medicare. . . . [I]t is the total cost of these programs that matters for the budget, taxpayers and the economy. By itself, Social Security is almost irrelevant. Indeed, the big increases in future spending occur in health care. The actuaries of Social Security and Medicare project that Medicare's costs will exceed Social Security's in 2024 -- and then the gap only widens. . . . From 2004 to 2030, the combined spending on Social Security and Medicare is expected to rise from 7 percent of national income (gross domestic product) to 13 percent. Two-thirds of the increase occurs in Medicare.

Bruce Bartlett:

It is not clear what is driving the urgency of Social Security reform. It is desirable, to be sure, but nothing will happen to anyone's benefits for some time to come if nothing is done. By contrast, the Medicare system is on the verge of collapse, according to a new government report. . . . Yet instead of reforming Medicare, which is hemorrhaging money, we are talking only about Social Security, which is in sterling financial shape by comparison.

Indeed, not only are we not talking about reining in Medicare's exploding costs, we are preparing to make them much worse.

Walter Willams explores some health-care misconceptions:

The fact of business is, pharmaceutical spending actually lowers total health-care spending. It often replaces expensive and invasive surgical procedures and the time spent in the hospital. For example, in a yearlong disease-management program, Humana Hospitals studied 1,100 congestive heart failure patients. While pharmaceutical costs increased by 60 percent, the medications reduced hospital costs by 78 percent -- a net savings of $9 million.

The construction and importance of the Erie Canal:

Almost certainly it is no exaggeration to say that the United States wouldn't be what it is today had it not been for the Erie Canal; it was the Interstate Highway System of the 19th century, and its impact was comparable if not even greater.

What's remarkable, in hindsight, is that the idea of the canal stirred so much opposition and was so long in coming to fruition.

(Via Newmark's Door.)

This week's News of the Weird has some items I'd post if my mom didn't read me.

Thomas Sowell:

Disagreements are inevitable whenever there are human beings but we seem to be in an era when the art of disagreeing is vanishing. That is a huge loss because out of disagreements have often come deeper understandings than either side had before confronting each other's arguments. . . .

Even wacko ideas have led to progress, when dealt with critically, in terms of logic and evidence. Astrology led to astronomy. The medieval notion of turning lead into gold -- alchemy -- led to chemistry, from which have come everything from a wide range of industrial products and consumer goods to more productive agriculture and life-saving drugs.

Where an argument starts is far less important than where it finishes because the logic and evidence in between is crucial.

Robert J. Samuelson:

The United States is the world's leading economic power—but perhaps no longer the world's economic leader. There's a difference. No one doubts the singular wealth or position of the American economy. . . . But leadership is the ability to set and achieve goals, either by imposing your will or by getting others to follow. Time was when the United States could do this easily. . . . Times have changed.

. . . There's a lesson and a warning here. The lesson is that global markets do not always operate well by themselves. They require some broad political framework to provide stability, quell uncertainty and cope with crises. For a half century, the United States provided the framework. The warning is this: as much as American leadership has often been resent-ed, it might be regretted if it's no longer there. The globalized economy is a work in progress, and if it disintegrates into a melee of unsupervised markets and contentious nations, people may recall nostalgically the days when they nosily complained about Washington's overbearing leadership.

Mark Steyn:

At the Senate confirmation hearings for the new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, Democrats seem to have decided that the very concept of an "enemy" is dubious, cheerfully cranking up their sanctimonious preening for CNN and berating Judge Gonzales for declining to extend the Geneva Conventions to captured terrorists. . . . It's depressing that after three years the Democrats seem incapable of any kind of characterization of the enemy that approximates to reality. But it's not surprising. In the landscape of modern progressive pieties, there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated.

Amity Shlaes argues against lifting the Social Security earnings ceiling:

Relatively few Americans earn more than $90,000 a year - about 7 per cent of the workforce.

Still, cutting such a deal would be crazy. For while the marginal tax increase involved sounds minor, it would affect not only households but also engines of small growth such as the "S corporation", a common format for many small companies. Senator Robert Bennett of Utah, an avid cap defender, . . . believes much of its very strong growth was connected with the low marginal income tax rate of 28 per cent set in 1986 by Congress and President Reagan. "Everyone assumes this is about taxing Michael Jordan or Warren Buffett," he tells me. "But really it is a massive hidden tax on small business." Massive is the accurate word. Lifting the cap represents a 12.4 per cent increase in the marginal tax rate overall (employer side plus employee side). This dwarfs the scale of Mr Bush's top income tax rate reductions, commonly derided as "massive".

. . . The best plan for Republicans therefore is to privatise as much as they can get away with. It would be fine to accept increases in the retirement age and to peg the base pension formula to inflation - which more or less takes care of the worry that, as things stand, Social Security is projected to go into deficit around the middle of the century. But Congress must not allow an increase in the share of income subject to pension tax.

Natan Sharansky:

Oslo failed because it was based on the premise that a strong dictator would make a strong peace. What Oslo's architects did not understand was that dictators need external enemies to justify the repression necessary to keep their societies under control. In contrast, democratic leaders, dependent on popular support, have a powerful incentive to deliver peace and prosperity to their citizens. In order to avoid the mistakes of the past, the focus this time must be less on summits and envoys and more on helping the Palestinians build a free society.

If Abu Mazen is a willing partner in this effort, his government should receive legitimacy, financial aid, territory and support for statehood. But if he is unwilling to do so, all support for his regime should be withheld.

Peggy Noonan on the decline of the MSM:

[T]he MSM will not disappear. But it will evolve. Some media organs--Newsweek, Time, the New York Times--will likely use the changing environment as license to be what they are: liberal, only more so. Interestingly they have begun to use Fox News Channel as their rationale. We used to be unbiased but then Fox came along with its conservative propaganda so now just to be fair and compete we're going liberal.

I don't see why anyone should mind this. A world where National Review is defined as conservative and Newsweek defined as liberal would be a better world, for it would be a more truthful one. Everyone gets labeled, tagged and defined, no one hides an agenda, the audience gets to listen, consider, weigh and allow for biases. A journalistic world where people declare where they stand is a better one.

Networks, on the other hand, may try harder to play it down the middle, and that would be wise. The days when they could sell a one-party point of view is over. No one is buying now because no one is forced to buy. But everyone will buy the networks when they sell what they're really good at, which is covering real news as it happens. Tsunamis, speeches, trials--events. Real and actual news. They are really good at that. And there is a market for it. And that market isn't over.

Donald Luskin:

Right now the Social Security program collects more in taxes — both FICA taxes from current workers and income taxes on benefits from current retirees — than it pays out in benefits to retirees. . . . The surplus will keep getting bigger and bigger through 2008, when it will reach $108 billion. Each year, that's more and more money that the federal government won't have to raise from the world capital markets. . . . But in 2009, just 5 years from now, the surplus will start to shrink. In 2009 it will fall to $103.7 billion, and in that year the federal government will have to go to the capital markets to raise $4.3 billion that it didn't have to raise the year before. That's not a lot of money in the grand governmental scheme of things. But it's an important turning point for Social Security — it's the year the crisis begins.

John Derbyshire:

I'll confess I am a Sosec reform skeptic, on the grounds that:

(a) It will make my life even more complicated, at an age when I'd be looking to simplify it. More of my life, of the national life, will be in the hands of lawyers and accountants, for a net loss of self-reliance. . . .

(b) Govt will end up being involved MORE in my affairs, not less. The current system is simple, straightforward, and needs about 8 bureaucrats to run it. With the political necessities of privatized Sosec (i.e. you can't let people invest any fool way they please), there will be govt bureaucrats crawling all over the mutual-fund business -- yeah, yeah, but even more than there already are. It will end with some crisis and a complete govt takeover of the securities markets -- "To protect your investments..."

. . . Sure, sure, I know all the counter-arguments -- I've been hearing them (and making them!) all my life. I'm starting to think, though, that we are being marched off towards a newer, more oppressive, more liberty-denying kind of socialism; and the banners we are marching under read: PRIVATIZATION! LIBERATION! PERSONAL CHOICE!.....

George Will:

The argument about Social Security reform has highly technical facets, but it also has this easily comprehended dimension: The age cohort that is least receptive to reform that enlarges individual choice is the elderly—a cohort composed of people who, all their lives, when they wanted coffee they ordered a cup of ... coffee. The cohort most receptive to reform, those ages 18 to 29, is composed of people who, when they want coffee, take a deep breath and order something like this: a venti decaf nonfat extra-hot no foam with whip [whipped cream] three-pump vanilla [three shots of vanilla syrup] latte.

(Via A Constrained Vision.)

*There seems to be some debate whether it's "that children are our future" or "the children are our future." I have no opinion. The line's idiotic either way.

At Reason, an instructive interview with Bruce Caldwell, author of an "intellectual biography" of economist Friedrich Hayek. (A somewhat critical review of Caldwell's book is here.)

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

In light of the bombing at the Gaza crossing Thursday, this column by Charles Krauthammer, published before the Palestinian elections, is worth revisiting:

On Sept. 13, 1993, I was on the White House lawn watching the signing of the Oslo accords. I also watched the intellectual collapse of the entire Middle East intelligentsia — journalists, politicians, ``experts'' — as they swooned at the famous handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin and refused, that day and for years to come, to recognize what was obvious: that Arafat was embarking not on peace but on the next stage of his perpetual war against Israel, this one to be launched far more advantageously from a base of Palestinian territory that Israel had just suicidally granted him.

Why was this so obvious? Because Arafat said so — that very night (in an Arabic broadcast to his own people on Jordanian television) and many times afterward. The Middle East experts refused to believe it. They did not want to hear it. Then came the intifada. Thousands of dead later, they now believe it. The more honest ones among them even admit they were wrong.

Now Arafat is dead, Mahmoud Abbas is poised to succeed him, and the world is swooning again. Abbas, we are told, is the great hope, the moderate, the opponent of violence, the man who has said the intifada was counterproductive.

The peacemaker cometh. Once again, euphoria is in the air. Once again, no one wants to listen to what is being said.

Jeff Jacoby shared Krauthammer's pessimism:

Again and again, Abbas has expressed his solidarity with violent extremists. . . . Abbas's "foreign minister," Nabil Sha'ath, declared that between the Palestinian Authority and the other groups, "there are no differences over the objectives."

And what are those objectives? About that, Abbas has been explicit. In recent weeks he has promised to shelter terrorists from Israeli arrest and vowed that there will be no PA crackdown on Palestinian terrorism. He hews unswervingly to Yasser Arafat's hardline positions — an Israeli retreat to the 1949 armistice lines, Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, the elimination of every Jewish settlement, the dismantling of Israel's security fence, and no limit on the "right of return" — code for the abolition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Abbas is no moderate. His election is not a step toward peace. What was true in Afghanistan and Iraq is true in the Palestinian Authority as well: Without regime change, freedom and democracy are impossible. . . . President Bush got it right in 2002: The Palestinians need "new leaders . . . not compromised by terror." They still do.

I find myself agreeing more and more strongly with Caroline Glick's opposition to an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank:

The only issue that interests the Israeli media today is the threat manifested by a tiny number of Israeli opponents to Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan . . . , who may use violence against soldiers sent to throw them out of their homes and communities in Gaza and the northern West Bank. . . . On the radio and television, there has been saturation coverage of the prospect that thousands of soldiers may refuse to participate in the expulsion of Jews from their homes, while the strategic implications of the program have been systematically ignored by everyone. . . . Old-guard military establishment types like Labor parliamentarian and (res.) Brig.-Gen. Ephraim Sneh are openly calling for a civil war.

. . . If Israelis can be brought to believe that the dangers that Sharon's plans manifest relate only to the pesky, overwhelmingly religious Israelis who live in the areas he wishes to empty of Jews, rather than to the country as a whole, then there can be little doubt that there will be bloody confrontations (provoked mainly by the Left) between Jew and Jew. On the other hand, if Israelis are willing to recognize that the dangers inherent in his plans relate to the entire state, then not only would such internecine violence be consummately avoidable, the people of Israel would also be able to craft policies that would ensure the wellbeing and security of Israeli society as a whole for decades to come.

Update: I should've included this from Glick's piece:

In his recent jaunt through Syria and Lebanon, PLO chairman and soon to be "elected" PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas vowed that there will be no peace until millions of foreign Arabs (referred to as"Palestinian refugees"), who have been forced to live in UN internment camps (referred to as "refugee camps") for the past 56 years, are allowed to move to Israel. US President George W. Bush announced last April that the US would not support a Palestinian demand to have these people enter into Israel as part of a peace deal. So Israelis can assume relatively safely that in the initial period of statehood, these Arabs in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere will instead move to the Palestinian state.

. . . Given Abbas's statements in recent days and weeks in praise of terrorism and in condemnation of "the Zionist enemy," as well as his deep involvement in Palestinian corruption and terror financing, it strains credulity to believe that he will oversee a process of reform over PA budgets and militias. Rather, it is safe to assume that, under his leadership, Palestinian society will continue to be characterized by destitution and rage.

If this situation is further exacerbated by the entry of millions of destitute Arab immigrants into the rump Palestinian state, what does Israel think will happen? Since Abbas, and the rest of the PA leadership, not to mention Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have all proclaimed consistently that their demand is for these Arabs to move to Israel, can there be any doubt that they will point to their economic desolation and blame it on Israel's "obstinate refusal" to allow these hostile foreigners to live inside its borders? And what does Israel''s leadership think that Europe's response to this demand will be, given the European view, passively supported by the US, that the current terror war is Israel's fault?

Larry Elder gives several examples. I especially like this one:

Samuel L. Jackson is a respected black actor who appeared in more American films than anyone during the 1990s. In April 2000, he appeared on the cover of Architectural Digest, along with Clark Gable, Natalie Wood, William H. Macy, Hedy Lamarr, Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Doris Day and Claire Danes. Surely the Jackson family celebrated the actor's appearance on the cover, and the glowing inside piece on their lovely home. Wrong. Because Jackson shared the cover with other celebrities, his wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, wrote to the magazine and accused it of racism:

"It is with sincere regret that I write to tell you how disappointing it is to see my husband, Samuel L. Jackson, featured in the lower left-hand corner on the cover of your April 2000 issue," wrote Mrs. Jackson. "It seems a very odd and racist placement. In the magazine racks of most establishments you don't see him at all; perhaps that was the point. I hardly think anyone is really more interested in all of the dead people you chose to prominently display . . . ."

John Lott responds to the recent report critical of his work (I posted briefly on the report and reactions to it here and here):

While the panel dealt with a broad range of gun control issues, only one issue has received attention on different blogs: right-to-carry laws. . . . It is hard to look through the NAS panel's tables on right-to-carry laws and not find overwhelming evidence that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime. . . . Overall, the panel's own evidence from the latest data up through 2000 shows significant benefits and no costs from these laws.

In the Times of London. Some interesting bits:

Two developments persuaded Crichton to abandon his Californian liberal world view. One was in 2002 having a gun held to his head by burglars, who tied up Taylor, his daughter, then aged 13. "They told me not to move and I figured it was best not to argue," he says. It convinced him we must be tougher on bad guys, be they cat burglars or Saddam Hussein.

His second awakening was seeing that scientists had become so cowed by environmental activists and the media that they dared not proclaim what their research showed: that, so far, it appears global warming is hardly happening.

. . . "I have done a lot of reading, and the economics seem clear: you are better off waiting to see if it does become a real problem and then catching up. It may never happen.

"California passed a law 20 years ago decreeing a proportion of cars would have to be electric powered. My town, the People's Republic of Santa Monica, built these electrical facilities on the sides of the road — and there they sit, unused, just tripping people up so they can sue the city." He pauses. "If it does turn out we need to do something, we could probably do it in 10 years, certainly less than a century. False preparation is always a disaster — in anticipation of entering he first world war the United States bought 20,000 horses, for cavalry charges. Then they had to work out what to do with all these damn horses because there was something called tanks."

From an NCPA summary of a piece by Kenneth Todd of the Cato Institute:

[U]sing more roundabouts and more all-way stops will cut down on lost time, taxpayer expense and accidents. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA):

• Roundabouts are far safer than traffic signals, cause less delay, and have more vehicle capacity; where used they have reduced serious-injury and fatal accidents by 60 to 90 percent.

• All-stop intersections have the best safety record, with half as many accidents as those controlled by two-way stops or signals; serious accidents are extremely rare.

• Yield signs have a safety record as good as the stop sign, cause less delay and allow a 50 percent higher rate of traffic flow.

John Derbyshire responds to critics of his posts on intelligent design:

Some readers have chid me for referring to ID as "flapdoodle." This was, they say, ill-mannered of me. Heaven forbid I should be thought ill-mannered! Me! I therefore beg you to strike out the word "flapdoodle" and replace it with one of the following, according to taste: balderdash, baloney, blather, bunkum, bushwa, claptrap, gobbledygook, hocus-pocus, hogwash, hokum, hooey, humbug, mumbo-jumbo, piffle, rigmarole, tripe, twaddle.

Rich Lowry on Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who died saving fellow Marines in Fallujah November 15:

Peralta's sacrifice should be a legend in the making. But somehow heroism doesn't get the same traction in our media environment as being a victim or villain, categories that encompass the truly famous Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England respectively. . . . Scandalously, the "heroism" of Spc. Thomas Wilson — the national guardsman who asked a tough question of Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld that had been planted with him by a reporter — has been more celebrated in the press than that of Peralta.

Kaemmerer recounts how later on the night of Nov. 15, a friend approached him and said: "You're still here; don't forget that. Tell your kids, your grandkids, what Sgt. Peralta did for you and the other Marines today." Don't forget. Good advice for all of us.

Oliver North's piece on Peralta is also worth reading.

Evidently Malcolm Gladwell's piece "The Talent Myth" is famous. It was new to me, though (always late), and I enjoyed it. Two excerpts:

Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group was praised for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer. Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable: forty per cent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward. They weren't naturally deceptive people, and they weren't any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate "talent." They begin to define themselves by that description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened they have difficulty with the consequences.

* * * * *

"When we would hire them, it wouldn't just be for a week," one former Enron manager recalls, of the brilliant young men and women from McKinsey who wandered the hallways at the company's headquarters. "It would be for two to four months. They were always around." They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.

(Via, indirectly, Marginal Revolution.)

At The American Enterprise Online. It's all worth reading, but here are some excerpts:

The two most controversial pieces I've written were in the Washington Post in 1981, called "Blacker Than Thou" and "Blacker Than Thou II." Oh, the fury. An entire page of the Post was devoted to letters attacking me. Patricia Roberts Harris said something like, "People like Sowell and Williams are middle class. They don't know what it is to be poor." So I proceeded to point out that not only was Patricia Roberts Harris not poor, but that I never saw Patricia Roberts Harris at Howard University when we were there at the same time because she was in a sorority that would not admit dark-skinned girls.

* * * * *

There's something Eric Hoffer said: "Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature." There always has to be a crisis--some terrible reason why their superior wisdom and virtue must be imposed on the unthinking masses. It doesn't matter what the crisis is. A hundred years ago it was eugenics. At the time of the first Earth Day a generation ago, the big scare was global cooling, a big ice age. They go from one to the other. It meets their psychological needs and gives them a reason for exercising their power. Many intellectuals' preoccupation with the poor is very much the same thing. The thing that gives it all away is that after they say, "We must have this program because the poor can't afford medicine, or can't afford housing," they will splutter if you say, "OK, let's have a means test so it really goes to the poor." If they were really concerned primarily about the poor, they would agree to it. But they are bitterly opposed to that, because the poor are a lever to reach other, political, goals.

* * * * *

The tragedy is that the Left has never understood the importance of incentives in general or power in particular. That power is the only thing that deters power. . . . I remember a highly educated man in San Francisco who didn't think police really had any effect on crime, that he would be just as safe without them. He never felt the need for police to defend him--no one bothered him! That's a vision that pervades a large section of the intelligentsia.

(Via A Constrained Vision.)

David John of the Heritage Foundation:

There are only three ways to avoid the impending Social Security crisis: (1) raise taxes and borrow massive amounts of money, or make massive cuts in other federal programs; (2) reduce benefits promised to younger workers; or (3) make payroll taxes work harder and bring greater returns by allowing workers to invest all (or a part) of them through PRAs. While the first two options would make Social Security returns even lower than they are today, PRAs would not only address the impending insolvency of the system, but also improve retirement incomes and help to close the gap between what the current system has prom­ised and what it will be able to pay. It would also allow workers of all income levels to build a nest egg for the future. Simply put, PRAs can give workers a much more secure retirement income than the current Social Security system.

Now that a few people have linked to it, I'd like to flesh out my post on defanging Michael Moore.

I once asked someone who'd just seen the movie Grosse Pointe Blank whether he'd enjoyed it. He said no, because he'd seen Fargo a few days earlier. (Both movies involve hired criminals and murder.) In other words, though Fargo is in no sense a refutation of Grosse Pointe Blank, after seeing the former he couldn't take the latter seriously.

That's the kind of effect I have in mind. A fair-minded, substantive movie could inoculate viewers against Moore's distortions, or at least help viewers perceive them. Even without debunking Moore's specific scenes and narration, it could give a side of the argument that Moore chooses not to show. (Moore tends not to admit that there is another side.)

If this piece is correct and drug companies are among Moore's next targets, I'd expect him to make these three claims at some point in his film. I've followed each with a rebuttal:

• Moore: Drug companies charge outrageous prices, so we need price controls like those in Europe. Rebuttal: Prices may seem high, but developing a drug is expensive, few drugs reach the market, and drug companies have to recoup where they can. If drug companies are forced to lower prices, their profits will fall, and research to create new drugs will decrease. (See here and here.)
• Moore: The FDA is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical companies, as shown by drugs that received FDA approval but were discovered to be harmful. Rebuttal: Some approved drugs have caused harm, but the FDA approval process is in fact extremely long and often causes harm by keeping drugs from people who need them. (See here and here.)
• Moore: People are dying in poor countries because of drug companies' greed. Rebuttal: People in other countries are dying who could be helped by existing medicines, but drug companies donate a great deal of medicine, sometimes billions of dollars' worth per year, to poor countries. (See here.)

You may find my responses unpersuasive, but they aren't corrupt or unreasonable, and they'd be a revelation to many who've never heard them. Put them in a compelling, honest movie, especially one available when Moore's comes out, and Moore might be seen as he is: not a courageous and witty documentarian, but a vehement partisan using his populist art for political ends.

And I think that's it for my discussion of Michael Moore. I really can't stand the guy.

(Updated 2:52 AM)

Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you've just made love
and feel you'd rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you're brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you'd most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.

Stephen Dunn, "A Secret Life"

(Updated 1/12 7:51 PM)

An article by Benedict Carey in today's New York Times:

[F]or more than 10 years, he ruthlessly kept his two identities apart: one lived in a Westchester hamlet and worked in a New York office, and the other operated mainly in clubs, airport bars and brothels. One warmly greeted clients and waved to neighbors, sometimes only hours after the other had stumbled back from a "work" meeting with prostitutes or cocaine dealers.

In the end, it was a harmless computer pop-up advertisement for security software, claiming that his online life was being "continually monitored," that sent this New York real estate developer into a panic and to a therapist. . . .

"Contrary to what many people assume," Dr. Kwawer said, "quite often a secret life can bring a more lively, more intimate, more energized part of themselves out of the dark."

I read about them here. In more happy news, Windows Update seems to be down at the moment.

Mark Steyn:

[L]ast week the Guardian forced itself to consider the awkward fact that many young black males are "homophobic". . . . Don't blame Jamaican men, though.

After all, who made them homophobic? The "vilification of Jamaican homophobia", says Decca Aitkenhead, is just an attempt to distract from the real culprit: "It's a failure to recognise 400 years of Jamaican history, starting with the sodomy of male slaves by their white owners as a means of humiliation. [. . .] Jamaicans weren't the architects of their ideas about homosexuality; we were."

. . . How heartening to know that, at a time when so many quaint old British traditions are being abolished - foxhunting, free speech, national sovereignty - the traditional British Leftist colonial guilt complex is alive and well. Even with hardly any colonies.

David Brooks has suggestions for Bush:

This is the moment for the White House to seize the Reagan Rule - you can get a lot done in Washington as long as you don't get credit. The president should follow Senator Chuck Grassley's advice and let Congress take the lead in drafting a bill. That would go a long way to depolarizing the issue.

Next, it would be useful to broaden the frame of discussion. All the talk so far revolves around Option 2 from the president's 2001 commission. Why limit ourselves? There are dozens of creative reform ideas out there.

There's much more.

Thomas Sowell:

Now that President Bush has twice gotten himself to the White House, the question is whether he wants to try for Mount Rushmore. One of the luxuries of a second term is an opportunity to think about the long run, not simply for one's own "legacy," but for the future of the nation as a whole. . . .

Too often Republicans have been willing to make backroom compromises with the Democrats, instead of going to the public, as Ronald Reagan did. With the Democrats becoming ever more obstructionist, it is long past time for Republicans to try Plan B.

The Diplomad on an article in the New York Times:

[W]hat comes across is how often even effective relief aid is wasted in the sense that once the initial crisis passes, lives of misery return to being lives of misery. . . .

Perhaps in the long run, it was a shame that America's extraordinarily generous Marshall Plan was so successful. It set a model we have tried to replicate throughout the world. The crisis facing Europe immediately after WWII was genuinely one of money; Europe needed cash to buy tools, clear the rubble and rebuild. In many other parts of the world, that's not the problem.

NCPA:

An ordinary toad successfully provided more accurate responses to Medicare policy questions than Medicare customer service representatives (CSRs), according to a new study by L.R. Huntoon, a practicing neurologist and editor-in-chief of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

• A 2004 Government Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office) study reveals that 96 percent of the time CSRs gave the wrong answer to physicians questioning the appropriate way to bill Medicare.

• In comparison, Huntoon asked a toad a series of rephrased GAO Medicare policy questions; by jumping right for "yes" and left for "no," the toad crushed the competition, answering correctly 50 percent of the time.

Some infuriating details in this report "regarding violence in the town of Al-Kut" last year:

Many of the problems that we faced at our compound were directly related to the Governorate Coordinator's decisions. The GC, Marc Etherington, hampered and denied implementation of several defensive measures which would have greatly enhanced our defensive posture. One specific example was the treatment of our southern flank (the river). No less than three security entities (Triple Canopy, KBR and Global Security) recommended the implementation of T-walls along the length of the southern flank. The GC specifically denied that implementation as it would have obstructed the view of the river from the office building. ... The GC compromised our security for aesthetic view. He said on numerous occasions that there was no threat from the river.

During the assault, we took numerous RPG rounds from across the river. Additionally, we took heavy machine gun fire from that direction as well.

("T-wall": "Perimeter defense (e.g. of observation posts); prefabricated, T-shaped, cement wall sections (T-blocks) are set up side to side to build a defense wall.")

Theodore Dalrymple:

Personally, I have never been an enthusiastic proponent of unrestricted patient autonomy: like all such principles, it has its limitations, at least for sensible people who are aware of the messiness of the real world.

But it is interesting to speculate as to why, in the case of alosetron, what is normally and officially now regarded as a keystone of medical ethics should have been so precipitately jettisoned.

Mark Steyn:

Muslim leaders divide the world into the Dar al-Islam and everybody else. Yet the deaths of 100,000 members of the club in Banda Aceh alone isn't enough to catch the eye of the big shots in the Arab world. The Arab world's principal contribution these past two weeks has been the usual paranoia: "Was it caused by American, Israeli and Indian nuclear testing?" wondered Mahmoud Bakri in the Egyptian weekly Al Usbu. "The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate humanity."

Colin Powell was foolish to suggest that, in its response to this crisis, the Muslim world would come to appreciate the true nature of the US. Fat chance. "It's OK that aid from the US is here," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, spokesman for the Islamic Defender Front. "But if they open bars, sell alcohol or open prostitution centres, then we will fight them." Almascaty also warned the Australian charity Youth Off the Streets that its plan to open homes for 35,000 Indonesian orphans was all very well, but on no account was it to try converting Muslim children. Jeez, man, would it kill you once in a while just to send a box of chocolates and a card saying "Thank you, you infidel sons of whores and pigs", and leave it at that?

Heather Mac Donald:

To succeed in the war on terror, interrogators must be allowed to use carefully controlled stress techniques against unlawful combatants. Stress works, say interrogators. The techniques that the military has used to date come nowhere near torture; the advocates can only be posturing in calling them such. These self-professed guardians of humanitarianism need to come back to earth. Our terrorist enemies have declared themselves enemies of the civilized order. In fighting them, we must hold ourselves to our own high moral standards--without succumbing to the utopian illusion that we can prevail while immaculately observing every precept of the Sermon on the Mount.

Jonah Goldberg:

As for the Geneva Convention and al Qaeda, you'd have to be higher than a moonbat to treat them as signatories to it. Everything they do is a violation of the convention. It may be fun to mug for the cameras and criticize Gonzales for saying that the Geneva Convention is "outdated" when it comes to al Qaeda. But unless you think Khaleed Sheikh Mohammed deserves an allowance in Swiss francs that he can spend at the local canteen, you have to concede Gonzales is right.

Andrew C. McCarthy:

[T]he critics should do us all a favor: If you're going to talk the talk of righteous indignation, be ready to walk the walk. Be ready to tell Americans exactly what protections you want to give to the terrorists. Be ready to tell Americans that you would prohibit coercive interrogation even if it were the only way of saving a hundred thousand of them.

If you're not ready to do that — because you full well understand that your position is not one even you can defend when the questions get hard — then don't waste our time. Get out of the way of serious people like Judge Gonzales. People who don't pretend to be perfect, who don't claim to have all the answers, and who are not so smug that they think they can afford to take life-and-death options off the table — even as they pray they will never have to use them.

Rich Lowry:

In the Gonzales fight, Democrats make, once again, their lack of seriousness in the war on terror plain. The Bush administration should relish waging the battle for its nominee.

And a roundup of opinions by Editor & Publisher:

An E&P survey of editorials during the past few days in 19 leading newspapers finds strong doubts about Gonzales' fitness to be U.S. attorney general. Eight newspapers in that group have called on the U.S. Senate to reject his nomination. Seven others expressed serious reservations, and four others endorse him strongly.

George Will:

One hundred years ago a minor Swiss civil servant, having traveled home in a streetcar from his job in the Bern patent office, wondered: What would the city's clock tower look like if observed from a streetcar racing away from the tower at the speed of light? The clock, he decided, would appear stopped because light could not catch up to the streetcar, but his own watch would tick normally.

``A storm broke loose in my mind,'' Albert Einstein later remembered. He produced five papers in 1905 and for physicists, the world has never been the same. For lay people, it has never felt the same.

Thomas Sowell:

In recent years, the liberal media have at least added some token conservatives, but our colleges and universities are content with whole departments consisting solely of people ranging from the left to the far left. In academia, "diversity" in practice too often means simply white leftists, black leftists, female leftists and Hispanic leftists.

Rich Lowry, 1/4/05:

According to Social Security expert David John of the Heritage Foundation, one-fifth of white males die between the ages of 50 and 70. But one-third of black males die between those ages. If you die before you reach the age of 62, you have no chance of collecting benefits, and if you die shortly thereafter, you will not recoup the payroll taxes you paid into the system.

John ran the numbers for persons roughly age 20 to 25 living in the ZIP code for liberal New York Rep. Charlie Rangel's district office. The average rate of return from Social Security for these young people will be negative 8 percent. If young blacks were being fleeced in this way by, say, "predatory lenders," the likes of Rangel would scream racism and demand change.

The conclusion of a 2002 piece by Deroy Murdock comes to mind:

Herman Cain . . . is a prominent black business executive and one of Social Security modernization's most persuasive and entertaining advocates. Cain says that at age 56, he already has paid $161,000 into Social Security. In the next 10 years, he expects to add another $74,000 to the system.

"If that's going to be a transfer from me to white people," Herman Cain wonders, "can't I at least give it to white people I like?"

David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, 12/6/04:

The federal government's gross debt as of September 2004 was about $7.4 trillion, or about $25,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. But that number excludes such items as the gap between promised and funded Social Security and Medicare benefits, veterans' health care, and a range of other unfunded commitments and contingencies that the federal government has pledged to support. If these items are factored in, the current dollar burden for every American rises to about $145,000 per person, or about $350,000 per full-time worker. . . .

[T]he fiscal policies in place today -- absent substantive entitlement reform or unprecedented changes in tax and/or spending policies -- will result in large, escalating, and persistent deficits that are economically unsustainable over the long term. Without reform, known demographic trends, rising health care costs, and projected growth in federal spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will result in massive fiscal pressures that, if not effectively addressed, could cripple the economy, threaten our national security, and adversely affect the quality of life of Americans in the future.

(Via The Federalist Patriot.)

On skiing:

Ski experts recommend that you start by taking a group lesson because otherwise they would have to get real jobs. To start the lesson your instructor, who is always a smiling 19-year-old named "Chip," will take you to the top of the mountain and explain basic ski safety procedures until he feels that the cold has killed enough of your brain cells that you will cheerfully follow whatever lunatic command he gives you. Then he'll ski a short distance down the mountain, just to the point where it gets very steep, and swoosh to a graceful stop, making it look absurdly easy. It IS absurdly easy for Chip, because underneath his outfit he's wearing an antigravity device. All the expert skiers wear them. You don't actually believe that "ski jumpers" can leap off those ridiculously high ramps and just float to the ground unassisted without breaking into walnut-sized pieces, do you? Like Tinkerbell or something? Don't be a cretin.

David Frum:

As Ms Short complained in The Independent on January 1: "At a time when the world faces terrible challenges, of poverty, disorder and environmental degradation, there is a real danger that the US government is consistently undermining the only legitimate system of international co-operation that we have." In a world that contains - among others - the EU, Nato, the World Trade Organisation, and literally hundreds of regional and global governmental and non-governmental associations, it seems bizarre to describe the UN as the sole legitimate international actor.

But of course the UN is the only one of these actors consistently to come into conflict with the United States. It is this bias of the UN system - and not any of the UN's meagre list of achievements - that causes so many on the global Left to regard it as legitimate in a way that they do not regard, say, international treaties for the protection of patents.

Interesting piece by Tunku Varadarajan on the tsunami's aftermath:

In communitarian societies, one might argue, the victim is felt to be not so much the individual as the community that sustains individuals and gives them their identity.

Such communities, often dependent on the impersonal caprices of nature, are too busy surviving as a group; and deaths are ultimately seen as the group's loss. . . .

Many coastal people also tend to have a cosmology in which the individual is a part of nature. Here Hindu beliefs (and perhaps also aspects of Buddhist thought) may help survivors to regard the deaths of their loved ones--once the first tremors of lamentation have passed--as an elevation into the great anonymity of nature. Death is, in effect, a release from the prison of individuality--its dissolution, in fact.

Does this mean that a fisherman from Madras suffers less than Americans? Certainly not. But it may help him cope with grief--even unimaginable grief--in ways that are beyond most of us.

Mark Steyn:

What happens on Election Day is that the Democrats lose and then decide it was because of ''unusually long lines'' in ''minority neighborhoods.'' What ''minority neighborhoods'' means is electoral districts run by Democrats. In Ohio in 2004 as in Florida in 2000, the ''problems'' all occur in counties where the Dems run the system. Sometimes, as in King County in Washington, they get lucky and find sufficient votes from the ''disenfranchised'' accidentally filed in the icebox at Democratic headquarters. But in Ohio, Bush managed to win not just beyond the margin of error but beyond the margin of lawyer. If there'd been anything to sue and resue and re-resue over, you can bet those 5,000 shysters the Kerry campaign flew in would be doing it. Instead, Boxer and Conyers & Co. are using a kind of parliamentary privilege to taint Bush's victory without even the flimsiest pretext.

Peggy Noonan:

The Bush administration has stood for cutting taxes, allowing high spending, and being tough in the world. The Democrats stand for raising taxes, high spending, and being weak in the world. Should the Democrats become more like Republicans? Yes, they should. Then, in the next big contest, they can agree on the big points with the Republicans and win on three other things. First, on small points, as Mr. Clinton did with such key issues as The Campaign for the Right Child-Carrying Seatbelts. Second, on campaign expertise. Third, on the personality and character of the candidate.

On all of these points they can be truly competitive. If they choose to get serious.

Michael Rubin:

Anonymous American and British diplomats increasingly suggest that elections cannot be held in the deteriorating security situation, but it is the worsening atmosphere that is driving the Iraqi desire to vote. . . . Insurgents and terrorists may kill Iraqis lining up to vote. They may assassinate winning candidates. But only through voting, can Iraqis choose their own government, one that will have the moral authority to undertake remedies forbidden by professional diplomats and intelligence operatives who have had trouble letting go of the old order.

According an NCPA report based on a piece in the Wall Street Journal and data from the Heritage Foundation:

In the 2005 Index, out of the 155 countries scored, America ranks as the 12th freest economy in the world. . . . The reason why America has fallen in the rankings is two-fold: other countries are freeing their markets at a faster pace and the United States is burdening its economy with increasingly higher government expenditures and barriers to trade and investment:

• Expansion of expensive government entitlement programs has increased the fiscal burden; ranking countries from the lowest per capita fiscal burden to highest, America ranks 103rd.

• In terms of corporate taxation (ranked from lowest to highest), the United States ranks 112th and its top individual tax rate ranks slightly better at 82nd.

• Free trade is being hampered by aggressive use of anti-dumping claims and costly regulation such as Sarbanes-Oxley are restricting corporate risk taking.

April:

But the big entertainment news comes at the end of the two-hour season finale of the mega-hit reality show The Apprentice, when Donald Trump, in the most-anticipated event of the year -- and quite possibly all of human history -- fires that one guy, whatshisname, and keeps that other guy. You remember. It was HUGE.

The weakness of FahrenHYPE 9/11 and other answers to Michael Moore is that they arrive too late to be very effective. By the time they appear he's been on all the talk shows and millions have seen his movie.

If I were a filmmaker who wanted to counter Moore's next polemic, reportedly on the drug industry, I'd start work on a movie now so that it could be finished and released before Moore's. It needn't be a point-by-point refutation; we all know Moore's general themes. And it shouldn't be a whitewash; the subject is complex, so treat it as such. That way when Moore's film reaches theaters a valid, thoughtful response will be at hand, even if only via Netflix and Blockbuster.

If I trusted the filmmakers' integrity and skill, I'd be willing to donate a small amount to the production costs of such a movie, in exchange for a DVD when it's done. I suspect others would too.

The Diplomad:

This Embassy has been running 24/7 since the December 26 earthquake and tsunami. Along with my colleagues, I've spent the past several days dealing non-stop with various aspects of the relief effort in this tsunami-affected country. That work, unfortunately, has brought ever-increasing contact with the growing UN presence in this capital; in fact, we've found that to avoid running into the UN, we must go out to where the quake and tsunami actually hit.

I'm delighted to see British journalist Melanie Phillips noticed and praised by a couple of influential American blogs. Her "Diary" has been in my blogroll from my first day in the 'sphere (That's right, Power Line. Who's the news-breaker now?), and I can recommend it wholeheartedly. Phillips writes fiercely, persuasively and with (to this tyro) unsettling frequency and length.

I tentatively disagree with her, however, on a large issue: Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank. Phillips makes a powerful argument in support, for example here, in a post she titles "The case for unilateral disengagement." Phillips cites approvingly another pro-withdrawal writer, Bret Stephens:

[W]hat counts isn't withdrawal. It is the manner of withdrawal. A withdrawal from Gaza would be disastrous if Israel were to give the Palestinians the chance to strut. Assuming lessons have been learned, Sharon won't. . . . Withdrawal would mean Palestinians could no longer wage the terrorist war against Israeli civilians at which they're so expert.

Phillips adds,

In other words, withdrawal makes military sense. And surely once this is understood in Gaza, it must be applied to the West Bank too.

But I find myself leaning toward the contrary view, stated by Caroline Glick:

Like Hizbullah in Lebanon, the terrorists in Gaza will be viewed by the entire global jihad network as having defeated Israel. The price Israel paid for its precipitous withdrawal from Lebanon was the Palestinian terror war. What should Israel expect after its withdrawal from Gaza enables Hamas, Fatah and Hizbullah terror cells to operate openly five kilometers from the power station in Ashkelon?

Though I'm very willing to change my mind, at the moment I find Glick's analysis more convincing. The example of Lebanon, which Phillips also addresses (as does Stephens), leads me to believe that a pullout would be unwise.

I'll keep reading Phillips, and perhaps I'll come around to her view. Regardless, to have two such honorable, knowledgeable and eloquent commentators to learn from is a pleasure. It probably goes without stating that my hope above all is that the course Israel decides to pursue turns out to be the right one.

BitTorrent and its impact:

One example of how the world has already changed: Gary Lerhaupt, a graduate student in computer science at Stanford, became fascinated with Outfoxed, the documentary critical of Fox News, and thought more people should see it. So he convinced the film's producer to let him put a chunk of it on his Web site for free, as a 500-Mbyte torrent. Within two months, nearly 1,500 people downloaded it. That's almost 750 gigs of traffic, a heck of a wallop. But to get the ball rolling, Lerhaupt's site needed to serve up only 5 gigs. After that, the peers took over and hosted it themselves. His bill for that bandwidth? $4. There are drinks at Starbucks that cost more. "It's amazing - I'm a movie distributor," he says. "If I had my own content, I'd be a TV station."

Update: I finally remembered where I found the link to this piece: Marginal Revolution.

MEMRI gathers Arab and Muslim explanations for the Asian tsunami.

MEMRI:

A new historical series airing on Iran's Sahar TV, recorded and translated by MEMRI's TV Monitor Project, depicts the early Christian era from an Islamic perspective. The seventh episode, which aired on December 30, 2004, shows the crucifixion of some of Jesus' followers by the Romans. In a scene reminiscent of the crucifixion of Jesus, the series shows Jews who are passing by the crucifixion site stopping to abuse the crucified Christian preacher Adonya, by gleefully and maliciously throwing stones at him as he is nailed to the cross. A Roman soldier tries to stop them, but the Jews bribe him and continue to abuse Adonya. . . .

Jew 4: "I think I know them. Wait, wait. Soldier, who are they?"

Roman Soldier: "Adonya the preacher and some Christians."

Jew: "Really? Who is Adonya?"

Roman Soldier: "He is the one in the middle."

Jew: "Him? Come, we have found Adonya the preacher. Stone him. The accursed!"

The Jews throw stones at the crucified Adonya

. . . Adonya (to the Jews): "Oh the deceived... I don't see in you any remnant of the wisdom Moses passed on to his believers. He said that your soul is your worst enemy, and you have no one to blame but yourself. Be humble..."

Jews: "Stone him!"

Roman Soldier: "Adonya has already been punished for his actions. You have no right to punish him."

Jew: "Take this [handing the Roman soldier a bribe]. What do you think now? Come. Come with me. Stand here and pretend you see nothing."

The Jews stone Adonya again

Adonya: "Woe unto thee, the deceived..."

You can view a clip from the program here.

An interview with Natan Sharansky:

MEQ: Pundits and European governments criticized President Bush for the crudeness of his "Axis of Evil" reference.[5] How important is rhetoric?

Sharansky: Elections are worthwhile, but casting votes in and of itself is not enough. Democracy can only start when the new leadership selected in these elections embraces reform. A lot depends on our policy. If we embrace a leadership that embraces reform, or if we refuse to give any legitimacy or support to a leadership that refuses to bring democracy and reform, then there is a serious chance for success.

Last month I posted on a report linked by Stuart Benjamin that found "no credible evidence that 'right-to-carry' laws, which allow qualified adults to carry concealed handguns, either decrease or increase violent crime." Now Jim Lindgren and Dave Kopel, also at The Volokh Conspiracy, have weighed in, albeit briefly. Lindgren finds the report generally "sober, impressive, and fair," and directs readers to posts by Tim Lambert. I hadn't read Lambert before today; he appears a dedicated opponent of John Lott, whose research the report criticizes. Kopel doesn't address the report's quality, but states that "the social presumption should clearly be against new anti-gun laws, and in favor of repeal of many such existing laws." He also links to his piece at Tech Central Station today examining "how often 911 calls result in the interruption of a crime."

Theodore Dalrymple:

There is a sadness in all of this. Listening to young people talk about the wonderful night they have just had, I have been struck by how the proof of a good time seems almost always to be a complete amnesia for it. There can be no higher accolade for a night than that no trace of it remains in the brain of the person who lived through it. ''Getting wasted'', and then behaving antisocially before passing out altogether, is the pinnacle of their social life.

Like the patients who often ask me for drugs to prevent them from thinking, or Zen Buddhists who want to achieve a state of no mind, young Britons find the world so horrible that blotting it out altogether is their only happiness. It does not seem ever to occur to them that they are helping by their drunkenness to make the world around them just a little bit more horrible.

In a letter to the Editor in the June-July issue of Poetry magazine, Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate, objected to Garrison Keillor's anthology Good Poems:

For those who might have missed it (as both of POETRY's esteemed gentleman reviewers, Dana Gioia and August Kleinzahler, did), let me point out that in Keillor's entire book, all two hundred and ninety-four poems of it, I could find only three Black poets—all of them dead, no less, and the one woman actually a blues singer. Now, I may be missing someone—poems can be blessedly color-blind—but by any standard, this is an abysmal percentage. (Nor is there a Hispanic or Asian-American or Native American presence to speak of.) In his foreword, Keillor claims to have merely collected poems America—real America, good America!—wants to read; one can only conclude that his America never reads work by living African-American poets. . . . I'm forced to this disheartening conclusion, since it is unlikely that ignorance led to oversight; after all, I've been a repeat guest on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio show, and year after year my birthday is announced on The Writer's Almanac, occasionally accompanied by one of my poems. . . . In their reviews neither Gioia nor Kleinzahler touches upon this crucial flaw, probably because it simply doesn't impinge upon their lives. . . . I find the air pretty thin; that scarcely veiled "reserved for whites" sign sure can take the breath away. . . .

I know that I'm considered more of a "non-militant" writer. As I get older, however, my patience wears thinner. . . . I resent the complacent, single-minded arrogance of myopic "men of letters," whose curious brand of good will perpetuates racist selectivity. . . . I resent the presumption that their majority in numbers absolves them from paying attention to fair representation, leaving it up to those who have been "marginalized" to take note, tally the figures, and mount the protest. . . . Well, my mama didn't raise a bean counter. I have better things to do—like trying to sit down and write a good poem, for example.

(Any typos mine.)

Some thoughts:

    How do white "men of letters" constitute a "majority in numbers" among poets and poetry critics? There are as many women as men in the field, and as Dove notes, many of each aren't white. (Poets and math: an unreliable combination.*)

    Are all Asian-Americans, whatever their respective nations of descent, united in the quest to be published? Would inclusion of a few Chinese-American poets placate Japanese-American poets, Korean-American poets, etc.?

    Is it possible that Keillor doesn't particularly admire Dove's poetry but invited her onto his radio show for the sake of "fair representation"? (I have no reason to think that's what happened, but it would explain why she didn't make it into the book.) If so, was he wrong to feature her on his program, and should he have included her work in his anthology regardless?

I'd love to learn Dove's answers to those questions and others, but they aren't the main reason her letter interested me. The fact is that I sometimes post poems here, and I think that by Dove's system of grading I'm doing worse so far (about twenty-five days in) than Keillor did. So let me state the following for the record:

I don't take race or sex into account when posting. I don't reject poets because of race or sex, and I don't choose them because of race or sex. All that matters to me is how much I like what I read. That may mean that every poem I post will have been written by a white man ("white" as Dove evidently defines it, i.e., anything but African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American or Native American). It definitely means that when I post something it's because I think highly of it, not because I'm trying to satisfy a statistical requirement. I doubt I'll post anything of Dove's, because what I've read of her work didn't move me. But if I do post something she's written, she'll know, if she ever hears about it, that I did so in genuine admiration, and not out of condescension, guilt, pity, or the wish to appease.

*I majored in English. As for math, I passed Beginning Calculus and stopped there. With relief.

It isn't that the poet becomes anonymous during the moment of creation; it's that the act of creation estranges him from his own experience, formalizes, and therefore in some way falsifies, what was inchoate and potentially overwhelming.

Christian Wiman, "Fugitive Pieces," in Poetry, May 2001

I've never read Wolfe, but Steve Sailer's review of I Am Charlotte Simmons makes him seem worth trying:

I like to think that, in discussing human differences frankly, Wolfe violates many of the same taboos that I do. For example, I frequently defend sensible athletes like Larry Bird, Paul Hornung, Dusty Baker or the late Reggie White from politically-correct sportswriters who want to lynch them for telling the truth about the link between racial differences in physique and sport success. And in his latest book, Wolfe parodies the tired spin on an ESPN talk show where:

"... four poorly postured middle-aged white sportswriters sat slouched in little, low-backed, smack-red fiberglass swivel chairs panel-discussing the 'sensitive' matter of the way black players dominated basketball. 'Look,' the well-known columnist Maury Feldtree was saying, his chin resting on a pasha's cushion of jowls, `just think about it for a second. Race, ethnicity, all that—that's just a symptom of something else. There's been whole cycles of different minorities using sports as a way out of the ghetto.'"

But Wolfe makes clear the obvious reason: Even the best white players, such as the 6'-10" 250 pound JoJo, generally are inferior in musculature to the best black players—such as the freshman power forward Vernon Congers, with "his mighty pecs, delts, traps, and lats," who is threatening to take his job.

There's much more.

Mark Steyn:

But Paris in August, like London ''over Christmas,'' is in itself a symbol of flight -- flight from work. In 1999, the average ''working'' German worked 1,536 hours a year, the average American 1,976. In the United States, 49 percent of the population is in employment, in France 39 percent. From my strictly anecdotal observation of German acquaintances, the ideal career track seems to be to finish school around 34 and take early retirement at 42. By 2050, the pimply young lad in lederhosen serving you at the charming beer garden will be singlehandedly supporting entire old folks' homes. If tax rates were to be hiked commensurate to the decline in tax base and increase in welfare obligations, there would be no incentive at all to enter the (official) job market. Better to stay at school till 38 and retire at 39. That's why America's richer, and why, though the Europeans preen about their kinder, gentler society, customers of Amazon.com have pledged more money to disaster relief in the Indian Ocean than the French government.

(Via Betsy's Page.)

David Brooks:

[O]ver the past 50 years, we've been having a big debate over two rival economic systems. Conservatives have tended to favor the American model, with smaller government and lower taxes, but less social support. Liberals have supported programs that lead to the European model, with bigger government, more generous support and less inequality.

I wonder if that debate is about to change. In the next few decades both models are going to confront a big test: aging populations. The U.S. model is going to be challenged by this problem, but the European model is flat-out unsustainable. . . .

The question is: Will we leave our children a system as flexible, dynamic and productive as the one that was, fortunately, left to us? Or, by doing nothing, will we succumb to the same ineluctable pressures that now afflict Europe, and find that we are immobilized at the exact moment China and India are passing us by?

March:

In domestic news, U.S. gasoline prices reach record levels when, in what economists describe as a freak coincidence, two drivers attempt to refuel their Humvees on the same day.

On the legal front, a federal jury convicts Martha Stewart on four counts of needing to be taken down a peg. In what many legal experts call an unduly harsh punishment, a federal judge sentences Stewart to be the topic of 17 consecutive weeks of Jay Leno jokes.

Cliff May, 1/4/05:

The new fences will be chain-link and six feet tall, topped with small spikes to "deter" those who might consider scaling them. Well, we'll see what the International Court of Justice in The Hague has to say about this!

Oh, wait a minute, sorry. These fences are not being erected along the West Bank to protect Israeli communities from Hamas terrorists, these fences are being erected between the District of Columbia and Prince Georges County in Maryland, and they are meant to stop "criminals" from crossing from the city into the suburbs. The route the fences will block has been used as a "corridor for drug dealing."

And, off course, drug dealers are committing crimes. Whereas suicide bombers are ...how shall I put this ...expressing their anger and outrage over grievances? The front page Washington Post story is here.

"I'm the happiest man in the world":

Al-Sayeri said he has married first cousins and women from about 30 tribes all over the kingdom. "As a leader of a tribe, I can't marry just anybody," he said.

He said three of his four current wives have been with him 18 to 40 years. The fourth seems to be the one who usually gets replaced.

"It's the one for renewal," said al-Sayeri, sipping cardamom-flavored coffee after a dinner of spicy lamb and rice. "I like to change my fourth wife every year."

(Via Betsy's Page.)

Mark Steyn:

But Miss Short has usefully clarified what it means when the world says "America" isn't "giving" enough "aid." It means the government isn't giving enough money to Jan Egeland's U.N. office. That's the only "giving" that counts. That Pfizer has given $35 million, which is more than most G7 governments have chipped in, doesn't mean anything. That Amazon.com's customers donated more than $6 million in 48 hours doesn't count. The ships and troops send by America are of no consequence. What Jan Egeland means when he talks of "stinginess" is you're not ponying up enough taxpayer bucks to his departmental budget. That's the only measure of global compassion that matters, and he doesn't want to have his time wasted with a lot of chit-chat about any of this other stuff: It's my way or the highway, he says -- if, indeed, such a thing is said in Norwegian.

John J. Miller:

Before the invasion of Iraq, Paris didn't just express reservations - it tried to sabotage American goals in every feasible venue, from the chambers of the Security Council to the committee rooms of NATO. Since then, it has issued a raft of demands, including the hasty transfer of sovereignty to an ad hoc Iraqi government, as well as a date certain by which the United States will remove its troops, no matter the circumstances.

Mr. Chirac's diplomats even spent October lobbying unsuccessfully for Iraqi insurgent groups - the ones now killing American troops and Iraqi civilians - to be represented at the international summit in Egypt in November. It is difficult to see how French interests are furthered in any way by this behavior, unless France is understood to believe that its own aims are advanced whenever American ones are thwarted.

(Via Betsy's Page.)

Captain Bill Jacobsen was killed Dec. 21 in the deadly suicide bombing in Mosul:

A Mormon who bowed his head before every meal during dinners in the mess tent, the one where he was fatally wounded, Captain Jacobsen spoke constantly about his wife and children, whose pictures were plastered along the wall of the tiny room where he slept. Asked once where he had grown up, he said he was not sure. He grew up in a military family, moving often. His real home was his family, his faith and the Army.

Even very young soldiers can be hard-bitten. Many talk of "hajjis," the derogatory name for Iraqis. But Captain Jacobsen would have none of that. "I believe we are all God's children," he would say. "Just born in different places."

(Via Rich Lowry.)

Glenn Reynolds:

Bloggers from the affected region set up the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog to share information, locate survivors, and advise people on how to help. Others jumped in, doing what they could and directing others to places where they could find their own ways to contribute. This has made a big difference, reports the Los Angeles Times, turning relief lead-times of weeks into mere hours. What's more, people are taking things into their own hands, with, to name just one example, two blog-centric charities partnering with Federal Express to send a planeload of relief supplies, and with Federal Express even providing free pickup and delivery for the supplies from individual donors. That's a distributed response.

We've come to think of disaster relief as the work of governments and big international organizations, which -- notwithstanding often staggering inefficiencies -- formerly seemed like the only way to go. But this decentralized, self-organizing response may point the way to a less centralized approach in the future. I think that media organizations, NGOs, and governments who learn how to take advantage of this phenomenon will do better in the coming decades than those that don't. A lot better.

Jay Nordlinger addresses "Che Chic":

As I was made aware last month, there are many people in this country whose parents or other loved ones were executed under Guevara's eyes. There are people whose parents were killed personally by Guevara. Imagine being one of them, and seeing those shirts and such, all around you. Imagine, further, being in the Cuban gulag, and knowing that thousands — millions? — in free countries were sporting Che's image on their chests.

Michael Fumento urges action against disease in the tsunami's wake:

It sounds trite, but every day truly counts. There is a tipping point with pestilence. Once a critical mass of illness is reached, the numbers explode. Yet the organization jostling to take the lead in providing relief, the U.N., has in previous crises proved itself to be a snail with arthritic knees. . . . The U.S., other governments, and private relief organizations must be willing to push Kofi Annan aside and deal directly with governments in the disaster areas. We can play politics later; the time to save lives is now.

And two pieces from National Review's first year—by William F. Buckley Jr. and James Burnham—give a sense of the battle conservatives faced in the mid-1950s. All recommended.

(Part three is here.)

At the end of the previous installment I wrote that in this one I'd "discuss a piece of music every English-speaker in America (and Britain? Australia? I'm not sure) over the age of five knows by heart." Now I think it was a stupid idea. Still, I promised, so I'm including my "discussion," indenting it and enclosing it in brackets. Skip to the end, would be my advice.

[Is "Happy Birthday to You" a good song? I've sung it hundreds or thousands of times, and I have no idea. Imagine trying, sincerely and seriously, to judge it:

Spoken, the phrase "Happy birthday to you" places the pitch of "to" lower than or at the same level as that of "-day." (There are trivial exceptions.) In the song "Happy Birthday to You," however, each of the three times the phrase is sung the pitch of "to" is higher than that of "-day." Was this decision the right one in artistic terms? Should the melody have followed the shape of the spoken phrase? If no, why not? If yes, should it have done so all three times, or twice, or once? If fewer than three times, which time(s)?

These questions are absurd, aren't they? The answers don't matter. "Happy Birthday to You" is the birthday song. No critical argument will change that fact.

Now imagine (this'll take a lot of imagining) a kid who complains loudly when people sing it at his friends' birthday parties: "Stop, stop. This song is terrible. The melody's contrived, the lyrics are repetitive and archaic. Isn't it time we had a better, fresher song for our birthdays?"

Here's what would happen: his friends' parties would continue to feature "Happy Birthday to You," and he wouldn't be invited to them.

I'm not comparing "Happy Birthday to You" to Haydn, critics to kids at a birthday party, or myself to a five-year-old.]

I'm asserting this: that Haydn's greatness* is not questioned by influential classical-music critics, only analyzed and described; that a critic who did question it, no matter how thoughtfully and knowledgeably, would be marginalized; and that such a situation is objectionable, and even harmful to the vitality of classical music.

There's a way in which this arrangement makes sense. Haydn is central to classical music. To state "I love and understand classical music, but I dislike Haydn" might seem comparable to declaring "I love and understand fine cuisine, but I dislike Northern Italian dishes"—a sweeping opinion that calls into doubt one's judgment on the entire subject.

I understand that reaction, and I don't accept it.** One can dislike Haydn without denying his centrality. An artist's worth must remain open to intelligent dispute no matter how long he's been revered. Vigorous disagreement among experts, including on the deepest matters, helps keep art living. A critical consensus that seals itself against dissent is likely to produce an art whose greatest works are past and whose audience steadily diminishes. An art, that is, like classical music today.

In my next installment I'll wrap this up. The final exam will be held Tuesday, March 3.***

*I may as well stick with him.

**As to art, not cooking. I know even less about cooking than I do about classical music.

***For those of you who don't know, that's a joke.

Poet Naseer Flayir Hasan:

[W]e finally comprehended how little we had in common with these "peace activists" who constantly decried American crimes, and hated to listen to us talk about the terrible long nightmare that ended with the collapse of the regime.  We came to understand how these "humanitarians" experienced a sort of pleasure when terrorists or former remnants of the regime created destruction in Iraq—just so they could feel that they were right, and the Americans wrong!   

Worse, we realized it was hopeless to make them grasp our feelings.  We believed—and still believe--that America's removal of the regime opened a new way for democracy.  At the same time, we have no illusions that the U.S. came to Iraq on a white horse to save our people.  We understand this war is all about national interests, and that America's interests are mainly about defeating terrorism.  At this moment, though, U.S. interests are doing more to bring about democracy and freedom in Iraq than, say, the policies of France and Russia—countries which also care little for the Iraqi people and, worse, did their best to save Saddam from destruction until the last moment. . . .

This was very disappointing for someone like me, who thought for decades that the Left was generally the progressive power in the world. . . . And so I have become disillusioned, at least with the Leftists I met in Iraq.  So noble in their rhetoric, they looked to the stars, yet ignored what was happening around them, caring only about what was inside their minds.  So glorious in their ideals, their thoughts were inflexible and their deeds unnecessary, even harmful.  In the end, they proved to me how dogma and fanaticism had transform peace activists into—lifeless peace "statues."

George Will imagines a Presidential address:

"I believe abortion is wrong, but also that states should have, as they did until Roe, the power to set abortion policy. If states come to conclusions different than mine, so be it. But remember: Were Roe overturned, that would not make abortion illegal; it would merely re-empower states to regulate the practice. And restoring the legal conditions of 1973 would not restore the social context of 1973.["]

Niall Ferguson draws a troubling historical comparison:

Born in 1919 in the wake of Germany's humiliating defeat in the First World War, the Weimar Republic suffered hyperinflation, an illusory boom, a slump and then, starting in 1930, a slide into authoritarian rule, culminating in 1933 with Hitler's appointment as chancellor. Total life: slightly less than 14 years.

Born in 1991 in the wake of the Soviet Union's humiliating defeat in the Cold War, today's Russian Federation has suffered a slump, hyperinflation and is currently enjoying a boom on the back of high oil prices. Its slide into authoritarian rule has been gradual since Putin came to power in 1999. Is it going to culminate - 14 years on - in a full-scale dictatorship in 2005? That is beginning to look more and more likely.

And Mark Steyn examines gay marriage, polygamy, and their implications:

Last year, I was strolling down the boulevard de Maisonneuve in Montreal and saw across the street a Muslim woman, covered from head to toe in black, struggling home with her groceries past a "condom boutique" whose front window was advertising massive discounts on a, er, item of useful gay-sex paraphernalia. I wish I'd had a digital camera: there, in a single image, were the internal contradictions of the multicultural society. It seems highly improbable to me that gay hedonism and creeping sharia can co-exist for long. As yesterday's dispirited poll results implied, the modern multicultural state is really a nullity, a vacuum. The question is what's likely to fill it.

Thomas Sowell:

Many restrictive land use laws in effect turn a chance that someone paid for into a guarantee that they did not pay for, such as a guarantee that a given community would retain its existing character.

. . . Such laws help preserve the existing character of the community, at the expense of farmers and others who would gladly sell their land to builders if they had a chance to do so. Because they can't, their value of their land is reduced drastically.

Read it all.

A melancholy day for Dave Barry fans:

There comes a time in the life of every writer when he asks himself -- as Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Hemingway all surely asked themselves -- if he has any booger jokes left in him.

For me, that time has come.

. . . So for the next year, I won't be writing regular columns, though I hope to weigh in from time to time if something really important happens, such as a cow exploding in a boat toilet.

At some point in the next year, I hope to figure out whether I want to resume the column. Right now, I truly don't know.

The whole piece is worth reading.

My attachments are all local, purely local. I have no passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious engendering of poetry and books) to groves and valleys. The rooms where I was born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a bookcase which has followed me about (like a faithful dog, only exceeding him in knowledge), wherever I have moved, old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where I have sunned myself, my old school—these are my mistresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy you. I should pity you, did I not know that the mind will make friends of anything. Your sun and moon and skies and hills and lakes affect me no more, or scarcely come to me in more venerable characters, than as a gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where I might live with handsome visible objects. I consider the clouds above me but as a roof, beautifully painted but unable to satisfy the mind; and at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a connoisseur, unable to afford him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the beauties of Nature, as they have been confinedly called; so ever fresh, and green, and warm are all the inventions of men and assemblies of men in this great city.

From Charles Lamb's letter to William Wordsworth, 1/30/1801

(Another excerpt from this letter is here.)

As usual, Glenn Reynolds has so many worthwhile posts on his main page that I won't bother linking any. Just go there if you haven't gone lately.

Craig Newmark points to a great, simple primer on making a home PC secure.

Charles Johnson notes a likely bit of impending MSM hypocrisy.

Orin Kerr of The Volokh Conspiracy points to a Wired piece exploring the world of the top-level bootleggers of CDs, DVDs and video games.

Jan Egeland, that is, he of "stingy" fame. Go read Diplomad's post and seethe.

(Via Jim Lindgren.)

To Stephen Sondheim's concern with detail, not, alas, to his (artistic and commercial) success:

[N]o one was harder on Sondheim than Sondheim. Weighing some of his work in West Side Story, for example, he disparaged the internal rhymes for "I Feel Pretty" ("It's alarming how charming I feel") as too mannered for the uneducated Maria. And he was especially critical of "America":

"I had this wonderful quatrain that went,

I like to be in America,
OK by me in America.
Everything free in America,
For a small fee in America.

"The 'For a small fee' was my little zinger—except that the 'for' is accented and 'small fee' is impossible to say that fast, so it went 'For a smafee in America.' Nobody knew what it meant!"

If you're interested in songwriting, Sondheim or both, read it all.

Thomas Sowell:

Maybe Vioxx or Celebrex is too dangerous, all things considered. Maybe not. The problem is that all things are not considered. . . .

Many so-called "thinking people" do remarkably little thinking. . . . This is not to say that there is no consistency in their behavior. There is great consistency but it is consistency with a particular vision of the world rather than consistency with proclaimed principles of safety, equality, or morality.

That vision casts them in the role of wiser and nobler people -- defenders of the downtrodden, protectors of the environment, advocates of peace and opponents of war. There is always some crusade that requires their superior wisdom and virtue to be imposed on others.

Read it all (part one, part two).

George Will:

What of her future? Today she says, ``I don't think much about tomorrow.'' Complete absorption in the present is both a cause and a consequence of living a precarious and disorganized life, but so far her post-welfare story illustrates two truisms: People respond to strong social cues, as she did when she got on the bus, and later when she got off welfare. Second, poor people are more resilient -- and more resistant to fundamental behavior modification -- than their various would-be improvers suppose.

Read it all.

Thomas Sowell:

Marriage laws have evolved through centuries of experience with couples of opposite sexes -- and the children that result from such unions. Society asserts its stake in the decisions made by restricting the couples' options.

Society has no such stake in the outcome of a union between two people of the same sex. Transferring all those laws to same-sex couples would make no more sense than transferring the rules of baseball to football. . . .

What the activists are seeking is official social approval of their lifestyle. But this is the antithesis of equal rights.

Read it all.

Bruce Bartlett:

It's easy to be generous with foreign aid when another country is essentially providing your defense for free.

He has the numbers. Read it all.

Radley Balko supplies positive data that didn't get a lot of attention over the past year, such as the drop in juvenile violent crime in the U.S., the rise in our life expectancy, and the increasing wealth, health and freedom worldwide. Read it all.

(Via Instapundit.)

Victor Davis Hanson:

Quit idolizing Europe. It was a far larger arms merchant to Saddam than was the United States; it supplied most of Dr. Khan's nuclear laboratory; it financed much of the Oil-for-Food scandal; and it helped to create and tolerate the Balkans genocide. It has never freed any country or intervened to remove fascism and leave behind democracy — silly American notions that are to be caricatured except when it is a matter of saving Europeans.

There's much more. Read it all.

From BBC News:

The UNHCR is to close several camps for Iraqi refugees in Iran because more than half of the 202,000 exiles have returned home.

The UN's refugee body said 42,000 out of 50,000 Iraqis at the centres had left since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Six out of the UN's 22 camps in south Iran are empty and another two are due to close by the end of the month.

Not that the journey is without peril:

[T]here have been several reports of people dying crossing the minefields on the border, according to the agency.

(Via A Constrained Vision.)

Happy 2005.

Insightful piece by Kay S. Hymowitz:

What is clear from listening to men like Tyrell is that indifference toward marriage grows out of the same psychological soil as the inability to earn a decent living. Men do not get married because they have a steady job; they get married because they are the kind of person who can get and keep a steady job. . . . One of the most striking things about talking to poor inner-city men is their sense of drift; life is something that happens to them. I asked several men where they would like to see themselves in ten years; all of them gave me a puzzled, I-never-really-thought-about-it look.

Read it all.

A good line in John Derbyshire's December Diary, from an entry on math in Mesopotamia:

Four thousand years, to get from Hammurabi to Saddam Hussein! Why did they bother?

Read it all.