We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has claimed the Iraq campaign “is costing like Vietnam”. I’ll leave it up to the reader to compare budget requests for Iraq with the costs of Vietnam. Particularly of interest is the table showing the actual incremental costs: the amount spent on Vietnam over and above the normal defense budget.
Keep in mind a few facts as you think about it. There is a bit of a difference in the value of a dollar between then and now. In 1965 you could still buy a comic book with a silver dime (debased coins had just been released that year). Vietnam lasted a decade and peaked at a half million troops. There were single day’s (certainly single weeks) in which the American death toll exceeded the losses in Iraq to date.
The conditions in Iraq are very different from Vietnam. For it to become “a Vietnam” would require:
- a major portion of the Iraqi population deciding on civil war to overthrow or prevent a new government.
- the Syrian regular Army operating across the border in support of the civil war.
- the growth of jungle in Western Iraq and surrounding areas. (Cover for the enemy, denial of ground for armoured operations)
- Russia (or France or China) pouring billions in modern arms and advisors into Syria and threatening nuclear strikes on American cities if the US crosses the border.
- the DOD dropping doctrines of integrated operations and use of overwhelming force.
- micromanagment of US strategic and tactical operations for purely political reasons.
This all seems very unlikely.
Here in the US, we have recently been diverted by the spectacle of a state Supreme Court judge defying the orders of a federal court in order to violate the Constitution. The state judge refused to move a gigantic copy of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, where its prominent placement and enormous size at least arguably amounted to “the [state] establishment of religion” in violation of the US Constitution. Now, this is just the sort of topic that seems to exert an irresistible compulsion on people to wander off into the tall grass of irrelevance, so I will leave aside the legalistic arguments about whether the placement of the Ten Commandments actually violated the First Amendment to the US Consitution as applied to the states via the doctrine of incorporation (and I beg the commenters to do likewise).
While there are subcultures in the US that could undoubtedly recite all ten, I daresay most US citizens could not, although they are widely held in a kind of iconic way to represent the root of law and morality. Indeed, the claim that they are an historical source of US law was made in the campaign to keep them in the courthouse. Christopher Hitchens takes a look at what the Commandments actually say, and concludes that they don’t have much to do with morality or modern law at all.
The first four of the commandments have little to do with either law or morality, and the first three suggest a terrific insecurity on the part of the person supposedly issuing them. I am the lord thy god and thou shalt have no other … no graven images … no taking of my name in vain: surely these could have been compressed into a more general injunction to show respect. The ensuing order to set aside a holy day is scarcely a moral or ethical one . . . .
There has never yet been any society, Confucian or Buddhist or Islamic, where the legal codes did not frown upon murder and theft. These offenses were certainly crimes in the Pharaonic Egypt from which the children of Israel had, if the story is to be believed, just escaped. So the middle-ranking commandments, of which the chief one has long been confusingly rendered “thou shalt not kill,” leave us none the wiser as to whether the almighty considers warfare to be murder, or taxation and confiscation to be theft.
In much the same way, few if any courts in any recorded society have approved the idea of perjury, so the idea that witnesses should tell the truth can scarcely have required a divine spark in order to take root. To how many of its original audience, I mean to say, can this have come with the force of revelation? Then it’s a swift wrap-up with a condemnation of adultery (from which humans actually can refrain) and a prohibition upon covetousness (from which they cannot). To insist that people not annex their neighbor’s cattle or wife “or anything that is his” might be reasonable, even if it does place the wife in the same category as the cattle, and presumably to that extent diminishes the offense of adultery. But to demand “don’t even think about it” is absurd and totalitarian . . . .
It just goes to show that it never hurts to periodically reexamine first principles. With a little luck, I can probably get through the week without violating more than six (and no, it is none of your business which six).
From James Taranto’s ur-blog Best of the Web comes this tidbit (scroll down to the bottom):
AdAge magazine reports on a big stride in racial progress:
A huge, black man raises his arms to gloat obnoxiously over a foosball goal, and this vile underarm stench overpowers everyone in the room.
It’s a Right Guard commercial, and it’s wonderful.
Actually, the BBDO, New York, ad itself–starring Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Warren Sapp–is pretty ordinary, a sort of generic argument for deodorant with a brand name attached. What’s wonderful is that the big stinker isn’t white.
AdAge’s Bob Garfield lists other recent ads that depict black characters as the butt of jokes and observer: “We’ll know when we’ve achieved some sort of racial equilibrium in this country when black people can appear ridiculous in the pop culture right alongside white people. The very fact that this phenomenon has been growing for two years, and nobody has even flinched, speaks volumes.”
Absolutely correct on all fronts. For years (and years) it has been a convention of US TV commercials that white men, and only white men, are portrayed as foolish boobs, and women, or men “of color”, are wise, clever, etc. I happen to believe that TV commercials can be high pop art and a wonderful oracle to consult if you want to know what the current zeitgeist is all about.
I applaud the new willingness of the ad industry to poke fun at black men as a good sign that race is becoming a non-factor to many Americans, and I plan to keep an eye out for more examples of the same.
Let me go on record (to the extent someone posting under a pseudonym can go on the record) as someone who believes that President Bush’s domestic agenda has been very nearly a complete disaster, with the sole exception of his tax cut bill. Perhaps the only glimmer of hope for the future is that there seem to be some regulatory relief things happening “under the radar” within some of the major administrative agencies.
On the legislative front, he has not vetoed a single bill, and has signed bills that dramatically increase domestic spending and increase national government involvement in all manner of things. He has refused to confront the Senate on its unconstitutional refusal to vote on his federal judge appointees. Essentially, the Bush White House has adopted a policy of giving the liberal/statist Democrats nearly everything they want in an attempt to neutralize their issues and appeal to their voters. As a political ploy, I think this will prove to be of dubious effectiveness at best (repeat after me: “American elections are won by mobilizing your base, not chasing the uninformed and apathetic “moderate/undecided” voters”). As a source of policy, it is disastrous.
Even his tax cut had the effect of increasing the complexity of the tax code, stank of social engineering via tax policy, and in no way partook of genuine tax reform.
While I disagree with the Bush-haters on their assessment of his intellectual capacity and management skills (the former is adequate, certainly by the standards of politicos, and the latter are quite sophisticated), and on their assessment of the war, I see little reason to support the Bush administration on nearly any domestic issue. I voted for the man, and I would rate this aspect of his administration as a major disappointment.
It is Labor Day here in the US, and the inimitable Mark Steyn, as usual, hits the nail on the head in a delightful column extolling the virtues of capitalism and the purblind idiocy of the hard left:
The transformation of Labour Day, from a celebration of workers’ solidarity to a cook-out, is the perfect precis of the history of Anglo-American capitalism.
The new received wisdom — forcefully articulated by, among others, Maude Barlow’s Council of Canadians at the laugh-a-minute 2002 Johannesburg “Earth Summit” — is that the masses themselves are the problem. To the irritation of their self-appointed spokespersons, the oppressed masses refuse to stay oppressed. If they were still down in the basement chained to the great turbines, all would be well. But, instead, they insist on moving out of their tenements, getting homes with non-communal bathrooms, giving up the trolley car, putting a deposit down on a Honda Civic and driving to the mall. When it was just medieval dukes swanking about with that kind of high-end consumerist lifestyle, things were fine: That was “sustainable” prosperity.
There’s no such thing as “sustainable” development. Human progress and individual liberty have advanced on the backs of one unsustainable development after another: When we needed trees for heating and transportation, we chopped ’em down. Then we discovered oil, and the trees grew back. When the oil runs out, we won’t notice because our SUVs will be powered by something else. Bet on human ingenuity every time. We’re not animals, and it’s a cult as deranged as the screwiest fringe religion to insist we are. Earth’s most valuable resource is us.
The whole article is a wonderfully wicked skewering of modern-day tribunes of the oppressed. I will confirm from personal experience Mark’s observation that speaking with a trade unionist is a disorienting experience. Bare, unvarnished Marxism/Leninism is still on display, with much talk about oppression of workers and the evils of capitalism. Mind you, the average union worker is more likely to be oppressed by the credit card debt he ran up buying a new boat and widescreen TV than by his boss, but nevermind…
Oh no I couldn’t possibly. No, no, no, no. No, never. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand? I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, I shouldn’t. Not me. Not now. I said n………oh, well if you insist:
Hillary Clinton, the darling of the Democratic Party, is under growing pressure to make a late bid for the White House in 2004 from supporters who believe that only she can defeat George W Bush.
There will be no shortage of Americans willing and eager to step up and testify about the depths of loathing this woman incites in ‘fly-over country’. I am sure they would be right. But it would be foolhardy to ignore all those legions of baby-boomers with retirement on their minds. You don’t have to be liked to win elections (see either of Messrs.T.Blair or J.Chirac for details).
Jane Galt has a thought-provoking post on the structural instability of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are a veritable festival of interest groups: unions, teachers, minorities, feminists, gay groups, environmentalists, etc. Each of these groups has a litmus test without which they will not ratify a candidate: unfettered support for abortion, against vouchers, against ANWAR drilling, whatever. A lot of groups means a lot of litmus tests, because with the possible exception of the teachers, no one group is powerful enough to swing an election by themselves.
. . . .
But the larger problem is that those interest groups are increasingly coming into conflict. African-americans want vouchers, but the more powerful teacher’s union says no. Latinos trend strongly pro-life, but don’t let NARAL catch them at it. Environmentalists want stricter standards that cost union members jobs. The more interest groups under the tent, the looser the grip the party has on any one group. And as social security and medicare turn into the sucking chest wound of the budget, the money for the programs that Democratic politicians have traditionally used to cement those interest groups to them is disappearing.
One can only hope. While I have little use for Republicans, I can at least sympathize with the tattered remains of their fiscal conservative wing, and they do occasionally put up a proposal, like tax cuts, that I can actively support. I honestly cannot remember the last major Democratic proposal that I supported – the Democrats are truly, through and through, the party of state expansion. In their eyes, there is no protruding nail that cannot, and should not, be battered down with hammer of the State. Even their lone “civil liberties” plank – the right to abortion – is shot through with inconsistency and has morphed into a demand for state funding, support, protection, and promotion of abortion. I would shed no tears for the collapse of the Democratic “coalition,” or for the less likely collapse of the Republicans.
I hope it is time for one of the periodic great realignments in American politics. Certainly, the collapse of one of the two major political power centers is a necessary precondition for such a realignment. The current polarities reflected in the two dominant parties are hopelessly blurred iterations of the class struggles of the ’30s, for crying out loud. A realignment might serve to create parties that will debate the one true issue of politics – the scope and power of the State. Currently, this issue is simply out of phase with the structure and ingrained habits and positions of the parties, as a result of which both consistently plump for a larger and more intrusive State. For chrissake, even tax cuts are sold with a pitch that the economic growth they will trigger will in turn result in increased government revenues.
Without an historic realignment of the political parties that channel and mold preference into politics into policy, the growth of the State in the US will continue unabated.
According to the new FBI statistics, violent crime in the US just keeps falling. It’s down 50% in the last decade.
“Right to carry” laws also became very common in the last decade. There couldn’t possibly be a connection could there?
Have you had a bad day? Got a problem? Is your life a mess? Are you sick? Lame? Poor? Lonely? Unemployed? Or are you just fed up, listless and overwhelmed with feelings of exhaustion and hopelessness?
Well, you can always vent your frustrations by blaming your troubles on George W. Bush. Why not? Everyone else does. For everything. From perished pensioners in Paris to stubbed toes in Sarajevo to nosebleeds in Nairobi there is not a misfortune or a twist of cruel fate anywhere on the face of this planet that cannot be laid squarely at the varnished door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
And this is all because that current occupant of the most important office in that august building went and ‘tore up the Kyoto Treaty’; the modern equivalent of snapping a ju-ju stick. Thus has Mr.Bush incurred the wrath of the angry spirits.
Of course, George Bush did not ‘tear up’ the Kyoto Treaty at all (which is a shame because it deserves to be torn up). But that doesn’t matter. We’re not dealing in truth here, we’re delving the murky, opaque depths of mythology and superstition. George Bush is for the modern left/green axis what the devil was for medieval peasants.
Perhaps Mr.Bush (or his advisers at any rate) is aware of this and decided to take advantage of the situation. After all, if you’ve been cast as the devil, you may as well go ahead and live up to the role:
The Bush administration plans to open a huge loophole in America’s air pollution laws, allowing an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity.
Critics of draft regulations due to be unveiled by the US environmental protection agency next week say they amount to a death knell for the Clean Air Act, the centrepiece of US regulation.
The rules could represent the biggest defeat for American environmentalists since the Bush administration abandoned the Kyoto Treaty on global warming two years ago. But the energy industry welcomed them, saying they were essential for maintaining coal-fired power stations.
Now a word of caution here: the link is to the Guardian so the story may not be true at all. It may just be the product of their febrile imaginations (Next week: “Bush adds fresh babies to Whitehouse menu”). However, I certainly hope it is true and not just because it would mean good news for US industry and prosperity but also because it drives home the old lesson that being hated has its definite advantages. At a stroke, George Bush will have lifted a millstone from the neck of his country without doing the slightest harm to either his reputation or chances of re-election.
The devil may not have all the best tunes. He just has the freedom to whistle them.
One of the premier rent-seekers in the US, Jesse Jackson, appears to be off his game. Jesse has long run what amounts to a protection racket, in which he threatens to invoke the anti-discrimination laws and boycotts against any company that doesn’t pony up to one of his phony charities.
To take one gruesome example from the book: In 1981, Mr. Jackson struck up a “covenant” with Coca-Cola in which the company not only agreed to change overseas policies but, more to the point, provided profitable distributorships to black businessmen–including Mr. Jackson’s half-brother, Noah Robinson, later convicted of racketeering, drug trafficking and murder-by-hire.
However, Jesse has made a number of gaffes and missteps in recent years that may have undercut his little empire.
His shot at the membership policies of the Augusta National Golf Club had flown straight into a water hazard. His complaints about the jokes in the movie “Barbershop” were dismissed as raving. And it wasn’t so long ago that he was outed for his close and fruitful relations with a female staff member of his Citizenship Educational Fund, a scandal that occasioned a trip into the political wilderness that lasted most of a weekend. Finally, Kenneth Timmerman’s “Shakedown,” published last year, detailed his lucrative intimidation habits, with Mr. Jackson threatening charges of racism unless corporations adjusted their policies and gave “willingly” to various causes.
The sooner Jesse disappears from the public stage, the better off we will all be. Let’s hope that day is coming soon.
Mr Schwarzenegger has been avoiding stating his proposed policies, to reduce California’s debt mountain, in his play for the California state governorship role, and he’s had a public row with Warren Buffet, his economics adviser, on property taxes. But even if just for Friday entertainment value, check out these latest quotes:
“I feel the people of California have been punished enough. From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet they’re taxed.”
Zing!
“I teach my children not to spend more money than they have. That’s what I will teach Sacramento.”
Bosh!
Combine those sound-bites with some he delivered a few days ago:
“I am more comfortable with an Adam Smith philosophy than with Keynesian theory.”
Splat!
“I still believe in lower taxes — and the power of the free market.”
Yowzer!
Ok, until someone can actually nail him down on his policies, we must reserve judgement on the larger-than-life mega-star, especially as he keeps neatly side-stepping the really difficult questions on taxation with a “we can never say never” line. But if you retain even the slightest Churchillian belief that democracy is the least bad of all of the systems of government, things are becoming increasingly interesting in the Golden State.
And Mr Arnold “Arnie” Rimmer, of the future mining space ship Red Dwarf, is certainly getting plenty of newspaper headlines to cut out and keep, to impress all of his friends with!
Having just recovered from the shock of hearing about David Carr’s illegal tomato seeds, I’ve stumbled this morning across an even madder tax scam, this time originating from among our American friends in Seattle, in Washington State.
Apparently, and I’m still struggling to believe it, there’s a proposal to put a 10-cent coffee tax on every cup of espresso sold in the City of Seattle, to raise money for pre-school child care.
That’s Tax-tastic!
So what’s the alleged tax linkage between espresso coffee and pre-school child care? Linkage? Heck, we don’t need linkage. Here’s what John Burbank said, the man behind the proposed tax:
“I go into these places every day. One of the good things about Seattle is we love our coffee and we love our kids. So let’s make that connection.”
Has anyone reminded Mr Burbank that this is the land of the Boston Tea Party? I think someone should.
And while we’re waiting for the tax to go through, is Frasier available? I think I need a consultation to prevent early-onset total madness. The screens, please nurse. Quickly!
While I’m there in the recovery room, kids, you better watch out. One day, in the US, it’s a coffee tax. The next day, in the UK, it’s a Tetley Tea tax! Maybe those fine people in Boston won’t be the last ones to revolt over caffeine-based refreshments?
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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