Farewell Sidwell

Growing up is hard to do, and I worry about the Obama children. In addition to normal problems, they must make the adjustment from private to public life, and more particularly from their comfortable Chicago school to toney Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D. C., a private establishment for the care and education of young men and women. My specific concern is that coming from Chicago, the young Obama ladies may not have learned, as their current classmates certainly have, that they should not hang out with the wrong sort of people.

In this case, the wrong sort would be those children at Sidwell who benefit from D.C.'s school voucher program. This has been an amazingly successful program that for more than six years has subsidized the poor and impoverished of Washington so that their children might get an education comparable to that usually reserved for Washington elites.

These voucherized children are not in any sense bad; it's just that they are so temporary. Mr. Obama's compatriot from Illinois, Senator Dick Durbin, recently sponsored legislation to effectively close down D.C.'s school voucher program this year. As a result, all of these children will soon be sent back through the metal detectors of the public schools.

A sense of stability is what a young child needs these days, and to lose friends in their first year in Washington could be quite traumatic for the Obama children. I therefore hope that their parents have given them the appropriate instructions about the right and wrong sort of people, as defined, of course, by their kindly old Uncle Durbin.

via email.

The Constant Gardener*

Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, said last November, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Truer words were never spoken, although the cynicism behind the words was palpable. That is because his point was that a crisis can be used to enact radical politicial reforms, even if those reforms would have little or nothing to do with either the causes of the crisis or the resolution thereof. This is crisis in the generic sense, as simply that which can be used to hype the necessity of a pre-existing agenda. "Please note," says the empresario, "there is nothing up my sleeve. Now, pick a crisis, any crisis. Don't show it to me. And ... voila! It's time for change."

But a crisis does not have to be used cynically. A crisis can be used in it's best sense: as a time when deep issues that are normally overlooked reveal themselves. Historical examples abound. The bombing of Pearl Harbor focused the American people on the dangers of isolationism, and galvanized a nation to a necessary war. Nearer to home, the horrors of 9/11 awoke the nation to its false sense of security, and to the necessity of taking affirmative action abroad. And the devastating economic effects of 9/11 enabled President Bush to highlight the long running Republican argument that taxes were a burden on the economy, and to therefore enact the most significant tax cuts since the 1980's.

But my real point is about something that has been too long overlooked. It is not remembered that Ronald Reagan came into office with three major problems to fix: world-wide Soviet aggression, third-world style inflation brought on by high-taxation and loose monetary policies, and economic stagnation and loss of liberty engendered by the growing bloat of government bureaucracy. Reagan, however, had an almost mystical ability to choose the fights he could win. And early on in his administration he recognized that reining in the entrenched regulatory bureaucracy of Washington was not a winnable war.

He feinted here and there with new rules restricting the bureaucracies, downsizing, and various reforms, but by and large he only paid lip-service to true regulatory reform. Ultimately he left the Washington bureaucracy problem for another day, another administration, another political moment. And the Department of Education, among others, still stands to this day, larger and more intrusive than ever.

But let's take a moment to praise Reagan, not bury him. Two out of three ain't bad, and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude. It is to the current generation's shame that Reagan left a task worth doing, and Republicans have instead taken the easy road of riding the political benefits of an end to the Cold War and seemingly unstoppable economic growth.

It's wake up time. The economic crisis we are now in presents a golden political moment for those of us who care about our country.

To be continued ...

*Kudos to John Le Carre for the inspiration of the phrase.

via email.

A Brief Chat

It's early. I sip my coffee sitting on the old flowered divan and gaze out at the perimeter. All is quiet. "No thanks to you," I mutter at my black dog, mostly Labrador. Frederick (pronounced Froderick) flicks his eyes towards me, wrinkling his brow, but otherwise remains comfortably curled on the khaki throw-rug.

"You know," I begin easily, " It probably wouldn't cost that much to bribe some lowly bureaucrat at the city Dog Registry. They can't be paid that much, and I am sure they have families to provide for. After all, Dog Registry bureaucrats can't grow on trees; they must reproduce and multiply somehow, and the traditional family, expensive as it may be, is the most likely template."

I realize I may be losing Frederick (pronounced Froderick) with my interesting, but digressive, extemporaneous disquisition. I catch him suddenly with the intensity of my gaze. "A $25.00 bribe. Maybe $30.00, but I don't think much more. And certain official government certified Dog Registry papers could be changed, from 'Inside Dog' to 'Outside Dog.'"

With an unexpressed "urp?" Frederick's large head lifts abruptly to look at the thermometer hanging outside the window. It is the old-fashioned mercury type, rusted by the years. 10 degrees, Fahrenheit, it silently attests.

Ah, I have his attention.

Posted by: Longfellow via email.

Republicans: Back to the Future?

Boy, that didn't take long. Republican leadership, newly installed and hopeful of turning around the devastation wrought by the leadership of the last eight years, took about one month to take a giant step backward. The Politico tells us today: "In a little-noticed interview Saturday night, [Republican RNC Chairman Michael] Steele dismissed Limbaugh as an 'entertainer' whose show is 'incendiary' and 'ugly.' " What is Mr. Steele thinking about? Did he watch the CPAC speech by Limbaugh? Has he listened to his show? What about Rush Limbaugh is "incendiary" and "ugly?" His remarks on Saturday and every other time I have listened to him are upbeat, optimistic, insightful, and honest. He does pointedly criticize the Liberals and liberal culture, frequently with humor and irony, but most often with devastating analysis. He definitely frustrates Democrats, especially when they try to marginalize him, but I hardly think that constitutes him as "incendiary" much less "ugly," at least not in any society that pretends to a devotion to free speech. Unfortunately, I am afraid this misstep by Mr. Steele shows that he will be played by Democrats and the Liberal Media just like his predecessors. And that is because he, like them, just can't follow what the Liberals are trying to do. When he is asked about Rush Limbaugh, they are not trying to engage in a political debate about the Republican party and the ideas it represents. They are trying to trivialize and marginalize any voices which oppose them. So, they state that Rush is a wacky neanderthal right winger, and Mr. Steele thinks that he's got to distance the Party from being labeled extreme and disses Rush Limbaugh. But the correct answer is very simple: Rush Limbaugh is not the leader of the Republican party, and does not pretend to be. He is a powerful voice for conservatism, and he speaks for many, many people, and as such, Mr. Steele respects and welcomes his help in the national debates, and also in the Republican Party discussions of the issues. If the media has any specific problems with things Rush says, then Mr. Steele should direct them to voice their concerns with Rush. But as for the Republican Party, it is glad to have him. Period. That's it. That's the response. Why would the Republican Party throw a powerful media voice like Rush under the bus? Rush does not claim to be the head of the Republican Party. That is Mr. Steele's job, and if he is to be more effective than the leadership preceding him he is going to have to man-up and meet these media goons with a forthright defense of the Party. And that includes a refusal to allow the media to dictate who is and is not an "acceptable" member of the Party. via email.

Evolution: Is This Progress?

God of the Gaps? Good grief, no. I was merely pointing out that such concepts as "randomness" and "probability" are concepts that implicate events that are not causally determinate in any a priori sense. Sort of like friction in physics. Will heavier objects fall at the same rate as lighter ones? Yes, but only when certain ... um ... un-earthly conditions are present, such as a vacuum. Introduce pressurized air into the occasion, and lighter objects tend to fall slower than heavier objects. How much slower? Well, that in turn depends on many other factors, all of which need to be discovered through observation and measurement, and hopefully, can be reduced to some formula of predictability that, at base, is arbitrary, even if true. In reality, the mathematical precision of the laws of gravity gives way to the actual behavior of real objects in real life, and "friction" is a convenient scientific catch-all encompassing these all but infinite exceptions to the rule.

To put my original point another way, secular evolutionists appear to embrace non-causal or quasi-causal conceptions ("random" and "probability") they deem important, but will not admit other kinds of non-causal conceptions. And with rare exceptions, they do so without explaining why these other conceptions are refused a place at science's table. They simply declare, "Ad hominem." And when questioned further, they loudly reply, "Ad hominem!"

God is not in the gaps; oh no, not at all. The gaps are merely the limits of human understanding, and God is in the gaps, the non-gaps, and most importantly, in the humans who refuse to rest in ignorance and despair. At base, secular evolutionists seek comfort rather than truth, because if there is a God, then the world is most certainly a larger place than is contained within their philosophy. And in this, they are more like religious dogmatists than they are like free people created in the very image of God.

Posted by: Whitman via email.

Evolution: Is This Progress?

So, Whit, are you espousing some sort of God of the Gaps idea? I've often thought this was a particularly demeaning approach to including God in the scientific discussion. After all, part of scientific progress has been the gradual closing down of more and more places where God might be located, each time making Him appear like some Grapes of Wrath immigrant, uprooted again, tiredly loading His heavenly goods on a broken down truck, searching for some plot of earth that will sustain His own.

via email.

Evolution: Is This Progress?

Well, not if you are a secular evolutionist, aka an atheist, aka the mythological media creature known as a "scientist." A scientist in this sense somehow transcends the human, and lives in grand conceptual constructions where the merely human has no place. Unfortunately, the whole notion of "progress" is precisely human in content and import, and has no place in any theory of a true scientist – unless of course "progress" is defined as having one's theory published and peer-reviewed and extolled and admired by other scientists. Then the secular evolutionist's theory becomes more than true; it becomes Truth, a large edifice anchored in the granite rock of unexpressed metaphysics.

Except for the approbation of their peers, the secular evolutionists are particularly obsessed with keeping science free of anything remotely human. By and large they do so by erecting around their little garden massive walls of "randomness" and stout gates of "probability." Evolution's processes ultimately must be random, or measurable only in a probabilistic way. Anything less, and evolution might become teleological, and heaven forbid, might even point us towards some sort of theocratic presence. But what are "randomness" and "probability?" Well, whatever they are, I do not think they can be defined without reference to the important Enlightenment (and scientific) concept of determinate causality. They are, in essence, conceptual placeholders for things that happen for which we find no necessary causative precursor. Random events are effects that do not have causes, and probable events are effects whose precise causes are
unknown or indeterminate.

But on this view, randomness and probability are themselves outside of determinate causality, or at least NOT OF determinate causality. How then do such concepts differ from objective teleological concepts, artistic categories such as mystery and beauty, and in deed, theological concepts like divine intervention? But even if they differ from them (and I most assuredly think they do), why on earth do secular scientists think they necessarily exclude teleology, aesthetics, and theology?

Because that's how secular scientists define them in the first place. Or to put it another way, that's how secular scientists want them to function. Careful, Doctor, your metaphysical presence is showing.

Posted by: Whitman via email.

A Rude Awakening

It's early. Sipping my first cup of coffee, I look south-west out my 2nd floor window, and freeze. The short grass of the rolling hills of the pasture, framed by the tall trees hiding the far Pacific, seems normal except …

It's the bovines. They are crouched down in the grass, staring at me. Just the chance flick of a tail, the close-lipped motion of a single cud being chewed, else I would never have noticed. They mass for attack.

Trembling ever so slightly, I look down at Frederick, my dog, mostly Labrador, and give him the bad news. "Okay, here's the plan: you go out the front door, and meet the first wave. That will give me time to run out the back door and get help."

Frederick seems decidedly dubious. Just my luck: the one time I need a man, and all I have is a dog.

Posted by: Longfellow via email

Citizen Nanites

If you haven't heard yet, President Obama is not like other politicians in Washington. Unlike past administrations, he wants it to be clear that he will be meticulously monitoring government spending to eliminate waste, fraud, incompetence and personal or political agendas. On February 14, the Washington Times tells us: "As he prepared to sign the massive economic recovery spending bill President Obama ... [told the American people that] ... 'ultimately, this is your money, and you deserve to know where it's going and how it's spent,' [and promised] to help with the most ambitious spending scrutiny project the government has ever undertaken." And then again, as reported by FoxBusiness News on February 20, Mr. Obama warned the Mayors of America:"We have asked for the unprecedented trust of the American people to deal boldly with the greatest economic crisis we have seen in decades -- and the privilege of investing unprecedented amounts of their hard-earned money to address this crisis. With that comes an unprecedented obligation to do so wisely, free from politics and personal agendas. On this I will not compromise or tolerate any shortcut ... " But the problem, of course, is just how spending of this magnitude - let's repeat it again as it cannot be said enough, the stimulus is close to $1 trillion - just how spending of this magnitude can possibly be monitored to achieve such pristine and pure results as are desired by Mr. Obama. Not to mention the fact that neither Mr. Obama nor the Congress have enunciated any objectives precise enough to give direction to any such oversight. They have talked of spending "stimulus" that will be "stimulating" on "shovel-ready" projects, that will "save" the economy and those who are "most harmed" by the failure of capitalism, but these obviously fall far short of the precision needed. In actuality, the most concrete objective our governing class enunciated in all of their deliberations was that the spending needed to be "large." History apparently teaches us that FDR, our sainted 32nd President, committed the grievous error of not spending enough, and so the current crop of FDR wannabees began with a number in mind, $800 billion, and then proceeded to insert spending projects until that number was met or exceeded. To Washington, any spending will "stimulate" and it is only important that it be sufficiently LARGE enough to "jolt" the economy back into gear. Unfortunately, LARGE is not any more precise for oversight purposes than "stimulus," "stimulating" or "shovel-ready." Now it is the bane of the existence of the largest corporations in the world (who deal in billions and not hundreds of billions, much less trillions) to control such gargantuan spending as they do each year. It is actually a marvel of the capitalistic system that such large entities have developed ways to track and manage their spending in any meaningful way, but no victory against corporate bloat ever ends the war. Each month, each year, each decade produces re-newed bloat, inefficiencies, fraud, and sloth in the body corporate, and the company that forgets this is the company that ultimately will fail. But don't worry, President Obama has a plan to leverage the information age we live in to effectively monitor all this federal spending as no one has been able to do before him: he is introducing what I can only call citizen nanites into the blood-stream of the economy, to oversee and report to him the effectiveness of all this stimulus spending, right down to the smallest dollar spewed out of the body politic. That same Washington Times article noted above stated: "As he prepared to sign the massive economic recovery spending bill President Obama called Saturday for citizens to become watchdogs on where the $787 billion goes ... [and] ... called on 'every American' to use recovery.gov — a Web site that will be up and running once the money begins to be spent — to track where the money is being spent and to 'weigh in with comments and questions.' " What a concept. Thousands and thousands of citizen nanites, watching government spending at every level and reporting back in real time to President Obama, his staff and Congress, for immediate action as appropriate to save the stimulus package from waste, fraud and abuse. This grand vision provokes a thought-experiment. To be continued ... via email

Blood is Thicker Than Water

I note an interesting new phrase in the news. It came to my attention in the strange case of the refusal of the British government to allow one Geert Wilders to enter the country. Apparently, Mr. Wilders wanted to show a short documentary of his to select members of the House of Lords who had communicated their interest to him. A private showing of a privately produced documentary to willing British citizens was apparently too much for the Home Secretary, who was afraid of .... what? Insurrection? Out-breaks of murder and mayhem? Revolution? Well, maybe, but not likely. After all, these were members of the House of Lords, who have long since buried their warlike passions in a lethal combination of serial marriages between cousins, brandy, cigars and somnolence induced by general public indifference to them and their affairs. No, the Home Secretary was concerned about - and here is the new phrase - a "threat to public policy." Eh? I can see what a threat to public peace might be, or a threat to public order. These invoke images of real life people in a state of turmoil or chaos. But a threat to public policy? Here, I can only see a thin pale faced man with thick glasses and a pocket protector huffing and puffing as he attempts to rip a volume of drainage regulations in half. And behind him, the Home Secretary leading a fully armored SWAT team of British irregulars, racing to the rescue of home and hearth. Without going into the details of Mr. Wilders offense, which are, quite frankly, irrelevant to the whole affair, let's assume that his documentary was inflammatory. Isn't the description of this problem as a "threat to public policy" a rather blood-less way of putting it? And, in fact, a little googling informs me that the phrase originates in that most blood-less of nation-states, the European Union, wherein each member state is allowed the right to protect itself against "threats to public policy." I can see the zealots massing together now, under the imposing acronym PPCRPP: People for the Protection of Committee Reports and Position Papers. This wonkish approach to the world actually points us to the real reason for this unusual show of determination by the Home Secretary. Mr. Wilders and his film were opposed by British Muslims, and whatever you want to say about Muslims, they are not blood-less. And when the resolute force of real human passion meets the thin, watery drool of modern western culture, the result can only be unseemly capitulation. via email