"...By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it.  Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the Left-Wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second.  The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security.

In the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth.  It cannot be said too often- at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough- that collectivism is not inherently democratic*, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of."

Quoted by Christopher Hitchens, in Why Orwell Matters (2002, p82).

In response to Paul Greenburg's article, "In Defense of Orwell," on TH 3/02/07.

*It is interesting to note that Hayek would have taken exception with Orwell's conclusion and for much the same reason that Orwell derided political language.  Hayek spent much of his energy battling against the drive for democracy for its own sake.  Orwell seems yet willing to identify democracy as simply majority rule (notice he says "tyrannical minority") without pausing over the very real possiblity that majorities, no  matter how empowered, could prove every bit as tyrannical as minorities.

Shelby Steele has a new book out.  It is titled, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.  Steele's previous efforts, The Content of Our Character and A Dream Deferred  offered genuine insight into America's most difficult issue.  In a sense, both works suffered under a tedious burden:  the author, a non-expert in public policy, had to blend personal insight into facts without sacrificing credibility.  That he mostly succeeded illuminates not only his intelligence and honesty, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the extent to which the issue of race has been obscured by academic and phenotypic specialisms.  

My first impression of  The Content of Our Character was incredulity.  Not since Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman, had the work of a generalist (or at least one directed at a subject matter outside of the author's primary specialty) had greater impact.  Steele's latest contribution takes a decidedly different path.  Steele is, by profession, an expert on literature.  White Guilt departs from his previous efforts in attempting to stand more upon literary than expository merit.  This exposes strengths and weaknesses in Steele's world view.  One unfamiliar with Steele's other work might suppose these weaknesses to be newly exposed.  The truth is that the most glaring problems though more evident in this book were evident earlier.  The primary example of which is Steele's view of the role of Constitutional Law and the Supreme Court in both creating and perpetuating America's racial malaise.  But the exposure of this weakness is a small price to pay for Steele's deep and shockingly clear insights into the psychological origins of the same.

History, properly understood, may solve one of the most enduring conundrums of human existence, that of useless knowledge.  Modern man has stumbled into an anti-Smithian universe.  The invisible hand, which Smith viewed as a source of wealth, is today increasingly less relied upon.  The "man" whose hand urges society in this or that direction is no longer blind- in the noble sense of unassuming- but more like a creature with perfect vision whose limbs defy every command, wreaking havoc but powerless to stop himself.  Convinced of the usefulness of all knowledge, government has yet to find a problem it cannot solve. 

It is power, and more specifically the official government's monopoly over means of physical coercion, that makes the entire universe of ideas compatible with the invisible hand, in the former sense, useless.  Yet history, once divorced from any historicist precept, that history obeys certain laws or deeper human impulses, illuminates a paradox: the importance of knowledge may be inversely proportional to its usefulness.

Historiographies that overstate's man's capacity to construct a reality reflective of an ideal justify increasingly ineffective yet wholly unjudgeable attempts to micromanage people's lives.  It is up to historians to open men and women's eyes to the truly staggering dimensions of human ignorance, to which no amount of power, whether divine or democratically channeled, is equal.

History may, in other words, illuminate the essential hubris of constructivist thinking, whatever its intended results.  In this sense then the US Constitution is no less a failure of constructivist rationale then the Wilson's League or the UN Charter.  This despite- and perhaps moreso because- that the latter was meant to limit power. 

Socrates's failure was not that he was ignorant but that he was not an historian, in whom ignorance is a virtue.

Upon revisiting my post "Hurricane Whitey," I find myself offending me.  There are two reasons that I am offended, one reasonable, one not.  The first is that I seem to be minimizing the suffering caused by Katrina- that is, I am politicizing suffering.  The second is that I seem to be mocking slavery.  Putting a "negro spiritual" in the mouth of Hillary Clinton and the media is borderline distasteful.  I do believe that slavery was evil and that mocking the suffering caused by it is wrong.  So I didn't intend to mock suffering.  And for this inference I apologize, to myself.  But, as a marginally intelligent reader, I should be able to distinguish satire from intentional disregard, so I hold myself responsible.  As for politicizing Katrina: it is utterly distasteful to use a natural disaster as a political weapon.  I should be offended.  We all should.

I think GWB should read Adam Smith.  Bush's spate of pandering to race-baiters and hate-mongers probably originates from a genuine place.  I firmly believe that Bush is a very nice man who is genuinely appalled by human cruelty and suffering.  However, his compassion has led him astray. 

There is a vast difference between conspiracy and incompetence.  Bush's administration seriously bungled the Katrina recovery, but so did every level of government.  Bush has accepted "full responsibility" for the failures of the Feds.  I admire him for it.  But the consequence of over-playing the compassion card is that it creates an unrealistic expectation.  A disaster the size and scope of Katrina (or Whitey, see below) cannot be effectively managed.  That is what a disaster is: an unmanageable contingency.

I think Bush's acceptance is emblemmatic of how Americans have lost a sense of proportion.  Guilt should be proportional to responsibility.  If I drive drunk and hurt an innocent person, I bear full and total responsibility.  If my second-cousin does the same, I should feel compassion for the victim but not guilt or shame (assuming I couldn't have stopped the event).  

The current moral climate in America is eerily reminiscent of 1984, the novel.  Americans need to rediscover the courage to call things as they are.  True compassion must be built on a base of reason and proportion.  Bush can't spend enough money, or go to the Big Easy enough times, to convince his detractors that he isn't a racist. 

 In the Party's first move for '08, Hillary Clinton has coerced the National Weather Service into renaming Katrina, Whitey.  Agitated by queries (from an emaciated freelance journalist) about Bush's unprecedented faith in a black woman, Hillary pointed to the failures of the Bush Administration in New Orleans a year ago.  Tears running down her cheeks, Ms. Clinton advocated a new program of "Affirmative Disaster Action."

"The repercussions of Whitey will remain in the souls of black folk for the next 100 years," Clinton remonstrated.  "The President dissed the South.  The Bush Plantation is back in business.  Jefferson Davis's Court ignored the warning signs- Massa Roberts brought out the whip, etc., etc.,"

Ms. Clinton demonstrated her amazing alacrity with grievance vernacular as she strung about thirty references to white oppression together.    Clinton, herself the very rich wife of a probable rapist, registered nothing but the deepest, most sincere concern as she ended the conference by leading members of the media in a Negro Spiritual:

"Whitey tryin' to kill us....amen."

1600 ppl  "still finding bodies"  "the worst natural disaster in American history"  "like other people who couldn't get out of New Orleans"

Brian Williams claimed that he used to believe that all people- he used the example of his own children vis-a-vis two black children in NO- were equal.  Katrina convinced him that he was mistaken. 

So Katrina, which he calls the "worst natural disaster in American history," may be reduced to race.  Mr. Williams is at great pains to point out his own alacrity at arriving at the scene.  He knew how serious Katrina would be.  He arrived- not to be first on the scene, not to get ratings or justify his salary and fame- but as an angel intent on delivering the poor masses from their misery.  While average citizens were falling around him from dehydration, Williams's network delivered much needed supplies....to him.  His inference:  If we could do it why couldn't they?

 

Black and white racists are equally ignorant of history: white racism is as much a chimera as black inferiority- and equally caustic. The idea of black inferiority rests upon a misinterpretation of the causes of human advancement. It insults the intellect to suppose that the differences between a bushman and a brooklynite are accidental; yet they are.

It just so happened that a rather trivial group of northern barbarians absorbed the good traits, and eschewed the bad, of their Roman conquerors. Over many centuries, these barbarians stumbled across the notion that society derived benefits from freedom. Principal among these freedoms was that of commerce, of contract and property. A few centuries later, a singular man risked his life and liberty to defend an abstract idea, the rule of law. Justice Coke's nemesis, a blowhard aptly named Bacon, threatened to reverse the advance of liberty by subjecting it to the whim of inherited privilege. Francis's court employed itself in flattery, not law. The king responded to Coke- and emboldened Bacon- with a hostile admonition:

"Let the judges be lions, but let them be lions beneath the throne."

Coke prevailed, in time, at least among a subset of the Crown's populace. These were colonists. Were it not for the fortitude of a former British officer and a little orphan from the Bahamas, the colonies may well have been part of Francis Bacon's inheritence. But Washington and his former aide-de-campe, Alexander Hamilton, twice prevailed: once in the Revolutionary War and again in Philadelphia.

Chance never fails to frown, eventually. A ball, not from the British, but from a former hero turned scoundrel, Aaron Burr, extinguished one half of Washington's genius. Hamilton recognized a fatal flaw in the American version of Coke's rule: he lived and died an abolitionist. He knew what many of his fortunate posterity have forgotten: the color of a man's skin is trivial.

Hamilton was not a genius because he was white- Burr and Jefferson were likewise embellished, and both were beasts. Hamilton intimately understood the struggle of man against his past. Abandoned by his parents- his father,willingly, his mother, by disease- Hamilton transcended a birth that would leave most men wallowing in poverty, pity and tears.

The role of chance in our fortunes cannot be exaggerated. We are not free because we are moral, but moral to the extent that we are free. The bottom line is that Americans today benefit from an adulterated gift given to their English ancestors, freedom.

I am an avid supporter of Israel, but I'm not sure why.

I supported Israel before the current war (pick one) and rationalized that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East so it deserves and requires our help. True. But democracy is not a compelling reason, because democracies can easily slide into tyranny (Hitler was elected). Perhaps I support Israel because it makes foreign policy sense,i.e., it is in America's best interest. Not sufficient, either. It is probably not in our best interest to defend a small, locally rogue nation when doing so alienates our sources of oil. My support is certainly not religious- I know as little about judaism as I do about the Masons. Maybe it is the Holocaust. Certainly Israel is one manifest attempt to remedy that singular horror- I find it conceivable that the Holocaust wouldn't have happened had the Jews had a homeland. As "transients" Jews were easy scapegoats for zealots. If nothing else (and there is much else) Israel has proven that the Jews are warriors. But I think there is a better explanation.

As a lover of western civilization and admirer of limited democracy, I have always felt threatened by Islamist nations. Call it what you will. I remember when our hostages were finally released from Iran. I recall watching radicals behave like animals in the streets of Tehran. I remember, as a child, watching an Arab woman beheaded in public for adultery (on tv). I think as a proud Westerner, I have a deep-seated aversion to systems of thought that compel human beings to behave viciously and without reflection.

I support Israel because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I think.

What bothers me most about the work of the adcouncil is that they produce commercials for many government agencies, including the justice department.  This gives the government's imprimatur to all adcouncil hysteria.

The EDF, for which the adcouncil produces ads, makes the following very strange claim on their website. 

We are guided by scientific evaluation of environmental problems, and the solutions we advocate will be based on science, even when it leads in unfamiliar directions.

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/aboutus.cfm?linkID=8

In this ad, a well-groomed white man in his forties is standing on railroad tracks. Nature buzzes around him as he laments

“Global warming. Some say irreversible consequences are thirty years away. Thirty years. That won’t affect me.”

Then he steps lightly from the tracks, not a care in the world, revealing an adorable child, golden locks spilling over horrified features. She is frozen in the trains path!

http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=325

The next gem is many times worse.

"Tick. Tick. Tick. Massive heat waves. (Forlorn child. Very sad.) Tick. Tick. Severe droughts. Tick Tick.  Devastating Hurricanes. (Forlorn Children. Very Sad. Psychedelic visual affects.  Emotions reaching hurricane speeds.) Our future is up to you. (More cute children. Then an older sister screaming.) TICK! TICK! Go to ridiculouswebsite.com while there’s still time."

And then there is the radio ad.  This is an exact transcript:

"Melting polar ice was a dirty look. Shrinking glaciers, a nudge. Then dying coral reefs pushed us, hard. Rising ocean temperatures and extreme weather, an uppercut. Then record-breaking heat waves hit us, right where it hurts. Has it occurred to anyone that maybe the earth is trying to get our attention."

Apparently, "unfamiliar directions" includes animism.  The EDF seems to believe that nature is human-like or, more exactly, a pugilist who doesn't want to hurt us but, darnit, we just won't listen.  And what does "right where it hurts" mean.  In my day, when I was the same age of the children to whom this ad is directed, it had a very specific meaning.  It meant my gonads.  Mother Nature fights dirty!

This is not science.  But the adcouncil- comprised of a bunch of ad eggheads- made the ad to, they claim, "take a powerful, emotional approach to reach Americans with the message that global warming is an urgent problem that requires their immediate action." 

So the scientists are not really responsible for the horrific, shocking insinuation that conservative American fathers don't mind throwing their children in front of an oncoming train or the horror-flick heart racing pace of devastation conveyed in "tick."  That's the adcouncil's job.  The PSAs are just a showcase for creative talent, after all.  And what about the responsibility of our elected officials?  Again, none.  The government agencies who use adcouncil are not responsible for their other work.  All they need to know is whether ads work (or seem to).

So the adcouncil is a private nonprofit ad agency that does work for the government- to which they invariably fix their seal- and for radical leftist organizations whose method is to cast anyone who doesn't swallow their "science" as homicidal or to terrify children using children.  We better stop adcouncil before its too late!

After reading yet another article today on how hellbent Walmart is on destroying small-town America, I have had enough.  I want to declare my passionate love for all things Walmart.  I love everything about these stores- size, efficiency, prices, and yes, even the sometimes grumpy people who don the red vests.  Most of all, I love the prices.  

My love affair with Walmart began a few years ago when my wife and I had our first daughter.  My wife, being overwhelmed with caretaking- our daughter had colic and didn't sleep through the night- often delegated shopping duties to her husband.  After the third or fourth time going to our local grocer to acquire diapers, I stumbled into a Walmart and "saw the light!"  I could save a shitload (intended) of precious cash by simply driving a few extra miles and cleaning out my trunk (occasionally).

I am sick and damn tired of people not appreciating Walmart for everything it does for strapped American families.  If Walmart were a government program, it would be declared an unprecedented triumph.  Only because it has shareholders is the company vilified in the press and at town meetings nationwide. 

I, for one, have had enough. 

Thank You Walmart.  You have saved me a minor fortune over the past few years- and on staples, not luxuries.  You guys rule!

As a right-wing libertarian, I rarely find myself between the posts. I have virtually nothing in common with liberals and almost no variance from conservatives. The exceptions to the latter rule, though few and far between, invariably cause me consternation. One such issue is Gay marriage. I am not opposed to gays getting "married." In fact, I think that gay marriage may actually strengthen America.

Most conservatives whom I know deplore political correctness. They are appalled at the notion that liberal professors and polites pose as mind readers. Liberals base their superiority on notions such as racism, class-consciousness and gender-identity (the latter only being negative if used by a conservative). Regardless of which, many conservatives are perfectly at home inside the gay mind. If you want to get an inkling of how it might feel when told that your lifestyle is a "choice," recall when your teacher/professor/shaman convicted you of wanting to lynch the black students on your campus. Supporting-or at least not opposing- gay marriage will strengthen America by demonstrating consistency and maturity in conservative thought.