Omnivore's Dilemma

I picked up Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivores Dilemma” in the Minneapolis airport last week. I passed it on the Mrs Vache Folle because I knew she was between books and would like it, so I haven’t been able to finish it yet. I only got halfway through it and loved it, and Mrs VF gives it a rave review.

The book is a fascinating in depth look at our food supply. Pollan starts with the industrial food chain and follows corn from the field to the hoof or foot or what have you to the consumer. The biggest lesson I learned was that when we eat corn, we are pretty much eating petroleum. It takes a lot of oil to make corn. In fact, it costs more to grow corn than farmers can get when they sell it. Even the federal subsidy doesn’t cover it, so farmers strive to get more yield and drive the prices down even further. They lose money on every bushel but make up for it in volume. Federal policy in corn is to promote cheap food. The obesity epidemic is one outcome.

Another lesson I learned was that cattle in feedlots get very sick because they aren’t designed to gorge on corn all day. The corn makes them ill, so they have to have massive doses of antibiotics. They wallow around in their own shit much of the time, and the shit becomes a pollutant rather than a fertilizer. E coli abounds in the feedlot environment, and the cattle’s rumen is unable to deal with it because of changes in the pH arising from the corn diet.

The second part of the book deals with the organic industry and sustainable farming. It turns out that the “organic” label is no guarantee that the food is not the product of an enormous factory farm. Also, the terms “free range” or “cage free” don’t necessarily entail green pastures and wide open spaces. Even Whole Foods buys from the bigger farms, and I’m looking for products that are raised in a sustainable manner, even if the farmer uses some chemicals. It’s the structure and organization of farming that I’m most interested in, not the fact that the food meets certain rather loosy goosy federal standards so as to get the “organic” label. Anyway, I didn’t finish that part yet so I’ll probably learn some more lessons.

The last part concerns foraging.

I heartily recommend this book and aim to finish it.

The Mall is Scarier than Ever

Al Qaeda is lurking in the mall according to a source with low credibility. I reckon that’s one more reason for me to stay home on Black Friday.

Then again, Christmas shopping is punishment enough in itself and is terrifying. I freak out at the mall during the holidays. There’s just too much noise, too much light and too many people for my comfort. I am thankful that we have pretty much given up exchanging gifts at Christmas.

One year I worked at a department store in Seattle over the holidays. I nearly lost my mind. The first day, I refolded sweaters after shoppers looked at them. I must have done it a thousand times, and the next day I could hardly move my sweater folding muscle system and had to be transferred upstairs to fancy foods. I sold fruitcakes and bottles of olive oil with herbs in them and fancy cookies and such like. These made great last minute thoughtless gifts if you couldn’t make it to the Bath and Body Works store or Yankee Candle. Anyway, it was hard to keep up a Christmas spirit while serving so many customers, some of whom were pretty rude.

I might have welcomed a terrorist attack if it would have silenced the annoying brass ensemble that kept playing the same three or four carols incessantly. Or if it would have stopped people from buying that stupid hot dog cooker as gifts. Who has the counter space for a device that just cooks hot dogs? And nobody is ever going to use that yogurt maker.

My hometown of Dalton, Georgia closed its mall on September 11, 2001 figuring that after the WTC attack the Dalton mall would be next on the terrorists' list of targets. Now that this incredible and unsubstantiated threat is out there, will Daltonians have the courage to shop?

Random Opinions and Observations About Stuff

I don’t like the expression “comparing apples and oranges” because I reckon that, to a close approximation, they are pretty much the same thing. Now, if I compared apples and pulsars, that would be nuts.

My candidate for highway superintendent lost by 400 votes, so I need not have wasted the time voting on Tuesday. I voted for the only legitimate reason I recognize: spite. I voted a straight Democrat ticket just because I am so pissed off at the GOP. It’s not that I admire Democrats. I reckon they are spineless, worthless varmints, but I aim to vote for them until I get the bile out of my system over the way the GOP has acted the last decade or so. If you continue to identify yourself as a Republican, then I am not going to vote for you unless you explicitly repudiate your party’s evil agenda. Of course, if the Democrats keep going the way they are going, I am liable to give up voting altogether.

On Bill Maher a couple of weeks ago, one of the guests said that Senator Clinton was “Cheney in a pantsuit”. Cheney wears pantsuits when he wears a suit, so I reckon Cheney is Cheney in a pantsuit.

I have been stopping at McDonalds almost every day on the way to work so I can get a sausage and egg biscuit and a hash brown. This is not helping me lose weight, and I know that this goes against my values when it comes to eating industrial food. I just can’t stop eating those damned sandwiches.

I am astonished that my conspecifics who have stay at home wives don’t have their supper ready when they get home. And they have to help with the housecleaning which has not been done at all during the day. What do their wives do all day, for crying out loud? Do they really have to spend every waking moment entertaining the children? If I stayed at home all day, I’d do all the housework and cooking and errands.

When I was a kid, I imagined that I would one day be a person of consequence. Luckily, a combination of sloth and weak character prevented this from happening. The only way I could have been someone important is if my father had been consequential. He was not. Thanks, Dad. I still resent him for not being rich and setting me up with an inheritance.

I really hate my job sometimes, but where else can I find a position that pays what this one does and expects me to do so little? I should just count my blessings. I could be working somewhere where I would be accountable.

I would be mortified if Pat Robertson endorsed me for anything.

How do they get chicken nuggets into dinosaur shapes? Do they make a chicken slurry and squirt it into molds?

Chuck Schumer Sucks

Chuck Schumer is dead to me. His vote on Mukasey was the last straw. He's not my Senator. I renounce him.

Aficanisms

I got into a conversation the other day with an African American acquaintance in which she remarked that some preference of hers was the product of her “culture” and that it related back to her African ancestors. I have always been skeptical about such claims about Africanisms ever since I encountered my first pan-Africanist friend in high school. Of course, it’s not just pan-Africanists that look for Africanisms. It used to be a highly respected activity of anthropologists who specialized in the West Indies and urban anthropologists who found the ghettos a rich source of supposed Africanisms.

The idea is that African Americans today are vessels of and driven by African cultural strains that have persisted for centuries despite the upheavals of slavery, industrialization, and urbanization. Some claim that African matrilineal kinship systems persist into the present day African American community. That’s why there are so many father-free households in the African American community, it is said.

I concede that Africans who were imported as slaves to the New World brought with them rich cultural traditions, but I would like to credit them with the ability to adapt and adjust to their circumstances just like all humans do. Household structure is governed predominately by present circumstances and strategies suited to the world in which the members of the household live. If the strategy results in something that resembles some African cultural phenomenon, it is probably a coincidence rather than a “survival”.

I can sympathize with an interest in and pride in one’s heritage. But that does not entail adopting preferences that were suited to the ancestors if these are inconsistent with one’s aims in the present. Some have said that we of Scots-Irish descent are inherently belligerent and boastful, but I doubt this, and I certainly don’t feel obliged to act the cracker in order to fulfill my Scots-Irish destiny. If our forebears were scrappers back in the day, they had reason to be. They weren’t genetically or culturally predisposed to scrappiness, and their descendants aren’t simply vessels of “culture”. Rather, we adapt to our circumstances. “Culture” is made up of tools that we employ, and we are free to pick and choose and engage in the practice of bricolage. We make culture even as culture makes us.

African Americans are as gifted as any people when it comes to invention and re-imagining. Their preferences and values are not determined by what their ancestors did or believed, and I don’t reckon that there is any need to justify them on the basis that these are holdovers from Africa.

My Carpool Companion Can be a Dumbass

My carpool companion repeated some nonsense his Naval officer brother told him to the effect that the biggest beef of military personnel about Iraq is that the media doesn't report all the good news from there, such as schools reopening and bombs that don't explode. This is some dumbassery that I don't even bother to respond. If everything is supposed to happen, then it isn't news. If I go to the market and come home, nobody cares, but if I get mugged in the parking lot there's a story. Schools are supposed to reopen. Bombs are supposed to be disarmed without casualties. Of course, Mr Navy guy wants the war to go on forever. It's good for his career. I've never met the guy, but I can tell he's a wanker.

Then my carpool companion announced that he was leaning toward supporting Fred Thompson because Thompson was for "smaller government". How does he know this? Thompson said so in a campaign speech that my companion caught on AOL.

After all this time exposed to my wisdom, this is how my carpool companion thinks.

No Assholes or Douchebags, Please

I’m reading a business book entitled “The No Asshole Rule”, the premise of which is that assholery costs businesses big time and that if companies calculated the costs that assholes represented they would reform them or show them the door. I’ve had the misfortune to work with and for many assholes in my career (they are everywhere), and the book makes perfect sense to me.

I once worked for a company in which the CEO regarded being an asshole as a critical part of good management. If the people under you were happy, then you weren’t doing your job. Fear was the great motivator in his view, and there were none in the organization to gainsay him since he surrounded himself mainly with sycophants. I didn’t last long because I couldn’t stand the Great Business Genius and his fawning aides. I could see that his style resulted in high turnover and lower productivity and an increase in theft. He could not. The company ended up in Chapter 11, thanks in large part to the Genius.

The book defines asshole a little narrowly for my tastes and limits it to overt hostility. I reckon that passive-aggressive managers are just as difficult and costly as regular assholes, although they might more properly be labeled douchebags. Perhaps a sequel “The No Douchebag Rule” would be in order. I am talking about bosses who won’t outright call you an idiot to your face but who, by their actions, let it be known that that is exactly what they think. You know the ones who undermine everything you do and micromanage you to death. The ones who call up someone else right in front of you to check whether your suggestion or statement is on target. The ones who are unnecessarily secretive and withhold information that you need to do your job.

The douchebags are worse than assholes in many ways because they can fall back on plausible deniability.

In Christ There is No Straight or Gay

Last Sunday, our pastor preached on Paul’s writing that in Christ there is no slave or free, Greek or Jew, male or female. We are all one in Christ. There is no need to add to the Gospel, he preached. It’s not Jesus Christ AND some other requirement. It’s just Jesus, and we must focus on Him who unites us and set aside the things that divide us. It’s not Jesus Christ AND no praying to saints, as one anti-Catholic acquaintance of the pastor had it. I reckon that it’s not Jesus Christ AND adult baptism only or Jesus Christ AND predestination or any such formulation.

I was pleasantly surprised when the pastor extended the reasoning of the sermon and the passage to homosexuality and related how the church had dealt with this divisive issue in the past. It’s not Jesus Christ AND you must hate the gays. I wasn’t sure that we would ever get to the point where the pastor could broach such a subject. There are a lot of staunch conservatives in the congregation, and I had assumed that this kind of preaching would be too politically dangerous for the pastor. It may turn out that I’m right. For all I know, we’re looking ahead to a shit storm (I’ve been out of town all week and wouldn’t have heard anything). I hope not. I hope that the pastor has the consistory in his camp and that would be dividers will fail.

Gustatory Priapism

When I was fading in and out of consciousness the other day on the sofa with the TV on, I chanced on some food porn that has given me a kind of gustatory priapism. This Georgian woman was making biscuits and gravy and chicken fried steak. She baked the biscuits in a cast iron pan, so they came out really uniformly scrumptious looking. She took some cubed round steak, seasoned it with what she called “house seasoning”, dunked the pieces in buttermilk and flour, and fried them in some grease. I didn’t hear what kind of grease she was using, but pretty much all grease is good. Then she took a couple of tablespoons of the grease, added a couple of tablespoons of flour, and then added some sweet milk (what we southrons call whole milk) to make white gravy, the food of the gods. She poured some of this on a couple of broken biscuits and a couple of pieces of steak and started eating it right in front of me (and any other viewer).

Since then, I have not been able to get that meal out of my mind, and I aim to make me some chicken fried steak this Saturday. If I don’t, I think I will go mad.

I’m pretty sure that between me and Mrs Vache Folle, who is an able cook, we will be able to handle the steak. We will also be able to make some pretty good biscuits. Mrs Vache Folle gets lazy sometimes and just makes drop biscuits, but we’re going to roll them out and cut them into proper biscuits this time, as God is my witness.

My big fear is that we will not get the gravy right. I have never mastered gravy making. I was never meant to cook and was kept out of the kitchen as a young’un. Males did not belong in the kitchen. Mrs VF has failed to master gravy making despite instruction from my mother, whose gravy is as good as anyone’s in the whole southland except for the Goddess of Gravy. My mother did send me a bunch of gravy mix one time that produced an acceptable and palatable gravy-like substance, but I can’t find that up here in the heart of Yankee country.

My problem is that I have tasted the best gravy in the world, made by my sainted Aunt Jewell (the aforementioned deity) on a wood stove. I have been looking for that gravy everywhere ever since, and all gravy falls short of the glory of Aunt Jewell’s ambrosia. I’m not saying that there are not some gravies that are edible. My mother’s gravy is wonderful, about 80% as good as her sister-in-law’s. Cracker Barrel serves up a pretty good gravy, about 50% of the quality of the good stuff I am craving. There was a place in Blue Ridge that had some excellent gravy, as good as 70%. Shipway’s Truck Stop in Flintstone, Maryland had remarkable gravy, almost as good as Mom’s.

We should perhaps practice the gravy making art and work on our technique, experiment with greases, until we come up with something worthy of my heritage.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union

While I was laid up, I devoured Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union”. It’s a murder mystery with a hard-boiled, alcoholic detective, Meyer Landsman. Only it’s set in an alternate reality where things didn’t work out exactly the same since the 1930s. Israel never got off the ground, and the US set up a refuge for Jews in and around Sitka. Landsman works for the District of Sitka PD, and he works his way through the closed world of the Hasidim (at least a fictional group of Hasidim that resembles the Cosa Nostra more than religious sect) and the subculture of chess aficionados.

I was taken in by the story and was conscious of the writing (but not in a bad way) as Chabon uses a lot of surprising but effective metaphors. Anyway, there’s a messiah and a red heifer involved, and Landsman’s partner is his half Tlingit cousin.

God and Al Qaeda Burning California?

I suppose it was inevitable that God would get the blame (or credit) for the fires in California. It’s because Californians allow gay people to live. And God must be pissed because Sodom and Gomorrah were surgical strikes compared to this. If I were a gay obsessed loon, I’d probably attribute every bad thing to the existence of gays. Why wait for major disasters? September swoon of the Mets? The gays. That paper cut you got at the office on Monday morning? The gays.

Or the Islamofascists started the fires as some bedwetters speculate. If I were a terrorist group, I’d take credit for the fires even if we didn’t have anything to do with them. Heck, I’d take credit for the Santa Ana winds! I’d take credit for every disaster and even every inconvenience and annoyance. You know that traffic jam on 287 last Friday? That was us, infidel swine! You know how the honeybees are dying off? We did it! No honey for you, unbeliever!

Then again, maybe God used Al Qaeda to start the fires like some say He did on 9/11.

Fight KIller Monkeys with Killier Monkeys

I am beset by bronchitis and missed two days of work. To cheer me up, Mrs Vache Folle brought home a news story about the monkeys who killed a politician in Delhi. No, it wasn’t the horrible and humiliating death that cheered me up or that the victim was a politician. It was the bit about some of the ideas that have been floated about how to deal with the homicidal monkey problem. My favorite? Train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to attack the miscreants!

It’s brilliant! Surely, there could be no possible downside to inciting simian gang warfare to control the murderous monkeys. If the langurs start making trouble for humans, they could just bring in some chimpanzees from Africa to take care of them. This would expand the range of chimpanzees and remedy the langur problem, if this even happens and who’s to say? It’s a classic win-win, if you ask me.

Some will poo-poo my potential solution because it involves importing an invasive species. I’ve always thought that the “problem” of invasive species was overblown. If you have cane toads running amok, get yourself some cane toad eating animal. If that presents a problem, there’s always some predator that will step up to solve it for you if you look hard enough. It will all balance out in the end as long as you stay committed to importing species without regard to the impact on indigenous fauna. It’s called globalization, and just as the free movement of goods and people can never be bad, so the movement of species is always a positive, even if there is some short term catastrophe or extinctions or whatever. Let’s face it, if your indigenous species can’t cut the mustard, they are just going to have to make room for some less delicate fauna to take over their niches.

I reckon Siberian tigers and upstate New York were made for each other.

My Mischief Proof Religion

One of Richard Dawkins’ big beefs with religion, as he writes in the “God Delusion”, is that it is responsible for so much mischief and destruction. I reckon, however, that my particular religious beliefs are utterly harmless and unobjectionable on that account. Love God and love your neighbor. What mischief could come of that? Some might argue that such a belief might lead me to neglect my own comfort and well being for others. Those people don’t know me very well.

Whom Would God Vote for in East Fishkill?

During one of the prayers at church yesterday, the emergency back up pastor (assisting a guest pastor from a pulpit exchange) included a prayer for guidance in pulling the levers in the upcoming local elections. He wanted us to know how to vote in a way that would further God’s plan in East Fishkill.

As far as I can tell, none of the candidates for any of the offices is running on a platform of ushering in the Kingdom of God in East Fishkill. I reckon God is going to be indifferent to whether any of us votes for this parasite, that parasite or the other parasite to become the next Receiver of Taxes or Superintendent of Highways or what have you. He probably would prefer that we didn’t vote at all, that we didn’t require a government in East Fishkill at all, that none of us participated in or had to acquiesce in the administration of coercion. None of the candidates is running on a platform of dismantling the government.

Besides, it has already been laid down from the beginning of time which candidates will prevail and what they will do in office. Presumably, this is in furtherance of God’s plan, much in the same manner as plagues of locusts or flu epidemics further it.

Saving Baseball

Via b psycho I read this gem of a post by Tom DiLorenzo:

"re: Abolish the Home Run

Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo at October 19, 2007 02:36 PM

And abolish dunking in basketball as well. Make it a 3 point penalty for dunking, and change it back to a game of skill, coordination and athelticism instead of a competetiton (sic) among giants, striding down the court like Jolly Green Giants hellbent on destroying the backboard with their next "dunk."

Perhaps a new league would be required. "

Forget about it, Tom. There’s never going to be a league tailored to your level of ability in either basketball or baseball. Oh wait, I forgot about tee league, and there is donkey basketball. Why are there scare quotes around "dunk"?

Tom was adding his two cents to this much more elegant argument about salvaging baseball. The author cited by Lew Rockwell suggests that the out of the parker be an out. We played that way when I was a kid but only because we usually had only one ball, usually made mostly of duct tape, and hitting it over the fence meant that it might be lost. In most games, there wasn’t even a fence, just acres of pasture, so all our home runs were “inside the park” in a manner of speaking.

I don’t know that the home run has killed baseball. Baseball was doing fine for decades after Ruth began swatting them out of the park in the dozens. Cricket has its sixes (out of bounds on the fly) and fours (out of bounds on a roll), and nobody reckons that these are bad for cricket. They’re harder to hit, I suppose, but nobody reckons that a strong batsman capable of whacking the ball out of the pitch is a bad thing. It’s exciting.

Home runs are exciting, too. There is an enormous fan base of baseball dilettantes who have no appreciation for the subtleties of the game. They want home runs and strike outs to break up what seems to them the monotony of other aspects of the game. The aficionado views the monotonous as exciting because of his superior competence and enjoyment of the nuances, but he owes the success of the leagues to the dilettantes and should humor them if he knows what is good for him and his sport. Some dilettantes will grow into aficionados. Most will not. It’s the same in the other sports. They are in a sense “dumbed down” for the masses, but the elite fans need them to subsidize the games. The elite fans ought to patronize amateur leagues if they are looking for more old-fashioned play.

That said, I have some suggestions for improving baseball as well. Let the players carry their bats with them as they run the bases and use them to their advantage. When a batsman hits a homer, he gets to keep batting until he ends up on base again or is put out. A batsman should have the option on putting a ball into play whether to run or not. The pitch won’t count as a strike, and as long as the batsman stays in the box, he cannot be put out. Or if he returns to the box before the catcher has the ball, he is not out. Fielders should be able to put players out by hitting them with the ball while they are off base. The runners may use their bats to defend against this. Pitchers should be able to bounce the ball over the plate if they are capable of this feat.

These changes would make the game both more exciting and more interesting. Everybody wins.

Can We Afford to Take a Chance on Another Male President?

Eugene Robinson in WaPo discusses whether gender is an advantage for Senator Clinton. He points out that she is way ahead among women in polls and surmises that gender must have something to do with it.

Perhaps he is right. All our presidents have been male, and they have all sucked. What did we expect when we elected another male last time? We should have expected more suckitude. I don’t think we should take a chance on another male (other than long shots Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich), so Clinton’s got my support. Too bad she’s white, though. The white presidents haven’t got a very good track record. Then again, they were all male, so we won’t know whether to attribute their crappiness to their whiteness or their maleness until we have tried a woman. If Senator Clinton doesn’t work out, we’ll know that whiteness was the problem, and we can go with a non-white next time.

My Enemies

There is a dangerous enemy out there. They hate our freedom. They rejoice in any catastrophe that befalls us and credit God’s wrath. They have a plan to conquer us and subject us to a theocratic tyranny. They want to turn back the clock on the rights and opportunities of women. They are known by many names: the religious right, values voters, Christianists. It is really hard to love them. They are batshit insane and can’t be reasoned with.

They think that Jesus is coming back any minute now to unleash destruction on nonbelievers and make a hell on earth. Seriously, that’s what they think about Jesus. The whole Prince of Peace thing, the sermon on the mount, that wasn’t their Jesus. Their Jesus is a hater.

They support policies that they think will hasten the day when the Jews in Israel all get killed (except for 144,000 of them). It’s nothing personal. They love Jews, really. They just reckon that a bunch of dead Jews is the precursor to the second coming. With friends like them, Israel doesn’t need enemies. They are way more likely to bring about the destruction of Israel than all the Muslims in the world.

Meanwhile, while we’re stuck here on earth awaiting damnation, they aim to establish the most legalistic and totalitarian regime that they can. They don’t believe that Jesus died for their sins and that their sins are forgiven. Their Jesus is judgmental and holds every little sin against them, even sins that they just thought about committing. Every one of them is one masturbation session away from hellfire.

How do we fight such an enemy? I pray for them. I rebuke them for slandering God. I rejoice that they are a minority, and I hope that they stay that way. I don’t think that we’ll ever be free of them, but they can with effort be managed. It’s like living with a cancer that can’t be cured but which can be kept under control.

I'm Probably a Goat

Iceberg has been reading Dante and was inspired to share some views about how God will judge us:

“In other words, God is so fair with us, that not only will he not judge us by what he expected from us, but rather according to the very same standards of justice that we ourselves judged to be correct. This is not to say that if one chooses to disobey God that there are no damaging consequences, only that God won't hold one guilty for acting according to the maxims that he or she believed to be universally true.”

I’m screwed. I believe that I must love God with all my faculties and love my neighbor as myself. Yet, aside from taxpaying and some charitable giving, I feed no hungry, clothe no naked, and visit no imprisoned. I live pretty much just like anyone else, just like folks who don’t believe in those principles. An objective observer would be hard pressed to tell what my basic moral principles are based on my actions. I go to work, I come home, I putter in the garden, I work out at the gym, I sing in the choir, I play with my dogs, I read. I don’t do any harm, but I don’t do any real good either. I am a hypocrite.

Although I am feeling guilty about this, I doubt that I will do anything to change. Guilt has never served that function for me. Perhaps I should adjust my values to fit my actions. Mrs Vache Folle reckons that Homer Simpson is a good role model for me to emulate. He has never regretted anything he has ever done (or not done).

Chris Rock Says Selective Breeding Explains Black Athleticism

I caught part of Chris Rock’s most recent HBO special. He was edgy. He made me uncomfortable by opining that black folks are exceptional in sports because their ancestors were bred by slaveholders for physical prowess. Isn’t that the same thing that got Jimmy the Greek canned? Then again, Chris Rock was in the middle of a stand up comedy routine, and Jimmy the Greek was serious.

Political correctness aside, though, is there any truth to this assertion at all? It sounds plausible on some level. Even if slaveholders did not actively engage in selective breeding, a slave who was not a superior physical specimen might have been less likely to survive the brutal ordeal of slavery, and this might have the same result as selective breeding. I suppose that it would be possible to research the issue if you weren’t run out of town on a rail when you submitted your research proposal.

What if black people are, in fact, physically superior in ways that lead to athletic prowess to white people on average? That wouldn’t tell us anything about the abilities of any particular black individual. It might partly explain the high proportion of black people in professional sports. It wouldn’t be insulting to black people to remark on it, would it? If I said something like “black people are darker skinned on average than white people” or “people of recent African ancestry are more susceptible to hypertension on average than people of European ancestry”, nobody would raise an eyebrow. But saying anything about athletic ability is taboo. Go figure. I would be interested to know why that is the case. I suppose the suggestion that anything positive came out of slavery would be offensive.

A Conspiracy Theory I Can Sign On To

I don’t know if the “Kennebunkport Warning” was a hoax or not, but the story of the loose nukes “accidentally” loaded onto bomber suggests that there is some truth in it. Did someone order the bomber to be armed? Was there a secret mission to launch the missiles that was aborted? Nothing else makes sense.

Firstly, the missiles were attached to the aircraft, not loaded as cargo. Secondly, their nuclear warheads were still attached to them. I can’t conceive of a command and control screw up that could possibly account for this event unless the Air Force is extremely lax with its inventory of nukes. Somebody must have ordered this.

This warrants a major inquiry by Congress and more investigative reporting. Somebody at the highest level is out of control.

I Identify Four Douches

I watched Bill Maher’s most recent show last night (HBO on Demand is great) and learned that, as I had always suspected but hadn’t observed enough to decide, Tucker Carlson is a douche. He is the archetypal idiot brother-in-law who thinks he is smarter than he really is. He should go back to the bow tie and maybe wear glasses to make himself look intelligent, because he sure as hell doesn’t sound intelligent.

The morning radio show I listen to played a clip of Al Sharpton talking about how Imus’s new employers must meet with the black journalists’ association and get their approval of his contract. It’s official. Sharpton is also a douche. I never paid him enough heed before to make a determination, but he sure sounded like a first class douche on the radio.

Another douche, Mickey Kaus, is rumored in the progressive blogosphere to fellate goats, but this has nothing to do with his designation. If they are his own goats or if the owner of the goats has given permission, then I don’t have anything to complain about on that basis. He’s still a douche, though.

Donald Rumsfeld was independently wealthy before he became Minister of War. He didn’t need the job. That means he did it just to be a douche. He had always wanted to screw up the military, and this was his last chance.

Not So Strongly Opposed to Hate Crime Laws

A point was made by someone on Bill Maher’s show a few weeks back about why federal hate crime legislation might be necessary. I have in principle been against the concept of hate crimes because it seemed to me to smack of thought crime, but this point has made me reconsider. I’m still ambivalent but more open to the concept.

The most compelling justification, for me, for federal hate crime legislation is that in some jurisdictions hate crimes will never be prosecuted. In a locality where feelings against homosexuals are strongly negative, a homosexual victim may not get protection or justice. Perhaps the police will decline to investigate an attack on a homosexual or an atheist or a Muslim or a trans-gendered person or any locally disfavored victim. Perhaps the prosecutor will decline to bring the case to a grand jury or to draw up a charging document. Perhaps the prosecutor will undercharge or half-heartedly prosecute the case. Perhaps, no jury in the locality would convict anyone for offenses against the locally despised victim. In such cases, offenders might reasonably consider that their victims are fair game.

A similar situation existed for decades in the South where black folks would sometimes be lynched. The police wouldn’t look into it, the DA wouldn’t prosecute, and no jury would have convicted the lynch mob. The federal government had no jurisdiction, and Congress consistently failed to pass legislation to provide for federal intervention in lynching cases.

I do not know whether there is a disparity in how justice is applied locally depending on the characteristics of the victim, but I would not be surprised to learn that it is a serious problem in some places.

If Imus Had Been on Fox, He'd Have Gotten a Bonus

How come, my carpool companion, asked me, John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly weren’t driven off the air like Don Imus for their racist statements? After all, he mused, Imus was just joking around on his comedic radio show, while Gibson and O’Reilly made their statements while pretending to be serious journalists or pundits. Why weren’t these “Imus Moments” for the guys at Faux Noise?

Why, indeed, carpool companion? Could it be that Gibson and O’Reilly’s slurs weren’t as bad as Imus’? O’Reilly claimed to be complimenting black people when he remarked that he was surprised that black restaurant patrons didn’t say things like “More ice tea, MFer!” Basically, O’Reilly was saying that he expected black folks to be crude and offensive. Worse, he was implying that black folks are stupid. Anybody who calls his food server an MFer is going to have spit or worse in his tea. Everybody knows that.

Gibson was saying that black kids who shoot up their school are usually cold blooded killers who will go on to shoot others, unlike white kids who are mentally disturbed and end up killing themselves after their spree. He might have made the point he claimed he was making by noting that black kids are not known for their propensity to be school shooters, that the profile of the school shooter is a white kid. Surely that would have been somewhat less offensive than gratuitously trashing black people while discussing a shooting that had been committed by a white kid.

These statements were far worse than Imus’. The most significant reason that these did not become Imus Moments is that these men spew on Faux Noise, and their audience is as racist as they are. Their viewers approve of those kinds of statements, and the network isn’t concerned with being characterized as racist. Faux Noise doesn’t care. In fact, being a racist “news” outlet is important to its success with the demographic it is going for.

Disease Ridden NASCAR Fans

Congressional staffers are afraid of NASCAR fans and their cooties and have been advised to get a range of vaccinations before attending races. Are NASCAR events really considered hazardous to people’s health?

John Gibson to Black Shooters: "Don't Forget to KIll Yourselves."

Atrios posts on Fox Noise talking head John Gibson’s comments about a recent high school shooting rampage:

“I know there's a few of you who want to call me racist. But when you do, remind -- let me remind you, African-Americans are dying in major cities because people won't face this problem."

The “problem” Gibson is referring to? It’s that African-American shooters don’t have the decency to kill themselves after a rampage. If only they could be taught appropriate rampage etiquette. Maybe Gibson could write a pamphlet and distribute it to African-American children.

More God Delusion

In “The God Delusion”, I’m up to the part where Dawkins argues that the Bible, particularly the OT, isn’t really used by anyone as an absolute basis for his morality. He points out that folks cherry pick which parts to accept as moral instructions and which to ignore and that they do this on the basis of some extra-Scriptural moral reasoning.

I’m grateful that nobody follows the letter of the OT. There’d be a lot of stoning.

I suspect that some folks actually come up with a moral position and then find some support for it in the OT. Someone who found homosexuality disgusting could find plenty of references to use against it. So could someone who was against wearing blended fabrics.

Dawkins points out that many of the leading Bible characters weren’t exactly good role models and that they aren’t much of a guide as to how to live. Take Abraham, for example. He marries his half sister. On two occasions he sort of lies and says she is his sister, not his wife, so that she ends up in the harems of other men. Then he sleeps with her servant and gets a child by her, and he abandons both the servant and the child in the wilderness. On top of that, he was ready to murder his other son, Isaac, before God let on that He was only pulling Abraham’s chain about sacrificing his son.

Take Lot, Abraham’s nephew. When the Sodomites come to his house looking to bugger the angels who were visiting him, he offers his virgin daughters to them. (A similar story is related later about a Levite and his concubine, except that the concubine dies from the gang rape to which she was subjected.) Later, Lot gets so drunk that he doesn’t realize that he is copulating with his own daughters and impregnating them.

I find the OT all but useless as a source of spiritual guidance. I like the Psalms and Proverbs, but the rest of it does nothing for me. The God that is depicted in the OT is nothing like the God of grace that gave us Jesus.

Also, as the firstborn son in my family, I don’t much like the recurring theme where younger sons end up with the birthright and inheritance in place of the rightful heir. That’s just wrong.

Let me close with a part of Genesis that was somehow left out: “God said unto Adam, ‘I shall make thee a helpmeet perfect in every way and eager to satisfy thine every need and to anticipate thine every desire.’ Adam spake unto the Lord,'How much is that going to cost me?’ 'An arm and a leg,’ replied God. And Adam asked,' what can I get for a rib?’”

Miscellany

Mrs Vache Folle told me that she watched a CNN newsreader report that the off duty cop who killed that family in Wisconsin killed himself by three shots to the head. Really? Three self-inflicted shots to the head?

Despite the recent string of scandals, I still reckon that not more than 50% of religious right are perverts. The perverted half is giving the non-perverted half a bad name. The non-perverted half quit sex years ago except for procreative purposes.

I put a yard sign in front of my house for the first time ever. I am supporting Dave Lapine, about whom I know nothing except that he is not the incumbent, for town Highway Superintendent. My neighbor, who gave me the sign, has been battling to get the Highway Department to do something about the godawful drainage situation on our road. Every winter, a glacier forms on the road in front of my house because the water has nowhere else to go. It’s only a matter of time before some passing vehicle ends up on my lawn.

Ten Commandments

I. Worship no other god than the Lord: Make no covenant with the inhabitants of other lands to which you go, do not intermarry with them, and destroy their places of worship.
II. Do not cast idols.
III. Observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days in the month of Abib.
IV. Sacrifice firstborn male animals to Yahweh. The firstborn of a donkey may be redeemed; redeem firstborn sons.
V. Do no work or even kindle a fire on the seventh day. Anyone who does so will be put to death. VI. Observe the Feast of First Fruits and the Feast of Ingathering: All males are therefore to appear before the Lord three times each year.
VII.Do not mix sacrificial blood with leavened bread.
VIII. Do not let the fat of offerings remain until the morning.
IX. Bring the choicest first fruits of the harvest to the Temple of the Lord.
X. Do not cook a kid in its mother's milk.

From Wikipedia

This is the version that I would like to see in public buildings.

More God Delusion

I am still reading “The God Delusion” and have gotten to the part where Dawkins discusses whether gods are required for humans to have morality. He argues that humans have evolved moral intuitions as social reciprocators and that it is unnecessary to invoke gods. I agree, especially when I observe that religious folks are just as apt or more apt to kill or rob me as or than atheists.

I have had religious people try to justify their faith on the basis that without their deity there would be nothing to stop them from being murderers. Scary, isn’t it? I suspect that most folks reckon that, while they themselves would still be good even if their god turned out not to exist, other people need the fear of divine retribution to keep them in line. Perhaps it is true that some antisocial bastards are kept under control mainly out of such a fear, but that is hardly an argument for the proposition that the deity that they fear actually exists. It’s an argument for using religion as a mechanism for social control, not an argument for the truth of religious propositions.

Some folks have argued that it would not be fair if their god did not exist so as to punish folks who get away with stuff in this life. They can’t stand it that some sinner might not get his eternal comeuppance. Then again, what if their god exists but doesn’t mete out boons and torments to their liking? Would that be fair? I don’t reckon that there is any requirement for the universe to be “fair”, so I don’t see this a valid argument for the existence of gods.

If I read my mythology right, most gods have never been in the business of rewarding good and punishing evil. This seems to be a relatively recent addition to the divine job description.

Prophets are not Prognosticators

I have been thinking a lot about prophecy lately and what it might mean to prophesy. A lot of folks, including the writers of some Gospels, reckon that it involves foretelling future events. Nostradamus was a prophet in this sense. I don’t believe this, however. I reckon that a prophet is a truth teller, a soothsayer. A prophet tells inconvenient truths relevant to the moment that the prophecy is given. Accordingly, the author of Revelations was talking about the situation in which he or she was living at the time, and Daniel was writing about his times and the circumstances of his people.

I reckon this is so because it would be otherwise difficult to know which prophets to include as truthful and which to identify as false. If Daniel were writing about things that would not happen for hundreds or even thousands of years, how would anyone judge whether his prophecy was correct? It would be best to confine oneself to predictions about the far distant future so that you could never be gainsaid until long after you were dead. Also, you could make your predictions pretty ambiguous and use a lot of metaphors so that nobody could ever be sure that your predictions didn’t come true. How could a prophet be accountable if his utterances related to the distant future? What good would he be to his fellows?

I reckon that the prophets would make a lot more sense if we read them as writing about the world in which they lived instead of prognosticating.

The God Delusion

I spent most of my Columbus Day holiday reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", and I hope to finish it in the next couple of days. I have a couple of initial observations and criticisms, but overall I am finding the book thought provoking and, as hard as this is for a "religious" person to admit, dead on in so many ways.

Dawkins makes an excellent point when he argues that religious beliefs should be subject to discussion just like any other irrational beliefs and that they ought not to be privileged or out of bounds solely on the basis of their having a relatively wide distribution. Why, if I posit a supernatural premise, are my ideas beyond debate when the same ideas, without such a premise, are open to discussion? Why does adding a deity to the mix make my propositions any more legitimate than they would be without the deity? If I state that I hate homosexuals because I'm hateful and intolerant, I am a homophobic wanker, but if I state that I hate homosexuals because my invisible friend, the sky god, told me to, I will get a pass in many quarters. If I object to some aspect of the school curriculum because I think it is counterproductive, nobody gives a crap, but if I object to it because it goes against the edicts of my invisible friend, I will likely get a full hearing and free legal services. This makes no sense at all.

Dawkins also does a good job of taking on a number of the arguments for the existence of gods. My favorite is his treatment of the ontological argument. You know the one where if you can conceive a perfect being that being must exist or else it wouldn't be perfect. The same argument could be made that a creator is excellent to the extent that its work of creation is especially difficult. Therefore, a creator that labors under a disability would be more excellent than one who created with ease. What could be more disabling than nonexistence? Therefore, the creator must not exist.

Dawkins is especially hard on what he calls "agnostics", but I think he overlooks the category of agnostic into which I fit. I accept that it would be my burden to prove my irrational beliefs, not the burden of others to disprove them, if I had any interest in offering proofs. I also accept that my irrational beliefs are not suceptible to proof. They are entirely a matter of faith. I do not altogether accept Dawkins' normative assumption that reason is the sole arbiter of the validity of beliefs. It seems to be an unexamined metaphysical assumption of the author that the scientific method is the only legitimate means to arrive at belief about anything.

I am up to the point where Dawkins discusses his memetic theory of religion, and I reckon that he has a pretty good point when he speculates that the predisposition to religiosity is a by-product of the degree of gullibility with which we are endowed by natural selection.

I am not the least bit offended by Dawkins' perspective and even his animosity to religion as a force for evil. I actually share his views in this regard. There are few sources of such mischief as religion, and there is perhaps no better tool for authoritarians to use to bend populations to their will. I differ from Dawkins in that I harbor an irrational belief system, that the teachings of Jesus are right and that God's grace is infinite, which I freely confess. I did not choose to believe these things. Belief is involuntary.

Happy Samhain

H&R address the War on Halloween. It turns out it’s not just fundamentalist Christians who oppose Halloween festivities, particularly in public schools.

I recollect that as schoolchildren, Halloween was an occasion for craft and art projects in which we got to include occult themes. I always liked to draw either a witch flying across a full moon on a broomstick or a jack o’ lantern. It never once occurred to me that there might really be witches or grown people who believed in them or that Halloween had any religious significance whatsoever. Accordingly, for me it had no such significance. It meant I got to dress up as a hobo or a vampire or a devil (one of my favorite costumes ever) and mooch candy off of our neighbors.

It still doesn’t signify anything as far as I am concerned. I don’t decorate my house, and we never get any trick or treaters now that we live in the boonies. I have not been to an adult Halloween party in eons. The main meaning for me is that I have to be extra careful driving home on October 31 so I don’t run down any neighbor kids.

As far as I am concerned, if you love Halloween, by all means go all out and enjoy it. If you hate Halloween, don’t observe it. I wouldn’t make anyone show insincere enthusiasm for the holiday, and I definitely wouldn’t prevent anyone from observing it any peaceful manner that they please. May the politically correct nannies and fun hating fundamentalists alike be confounded.

When does something count as “religious” for the purposes of the free exercise and establishment clauses? If a single person regards macaroni as a sacred item, can public schools be enjoined from having pupils glue macaroni to construction paper?

Sex Roles not Strictly Voluntary

PorlyDyke at Shakesville reckons that we’re all at least a little bit sexist, racist, etc. We can’t help it because we are raised in a memescape filled with racist, sexist, younameitist ideas and their enactment in society. It’s best to acknowledge that you are infected with such memes and deal with them honestly if you want to overcome them. Or even if you just want to be honest with yourself about the way you feel and what kinds of notions you have embraced.

I got to thinking about the sexist attitudes I was raised with. Most of these were not explicit messages about the roles of women; rather, they were more in the way of inferences drawn from the roles that the women I knew actually played. Making sense of observations led me to assume that men and women had different roles and that these were proper. Later, when I was explicitly told that this was the case, it did not occur to me to question it. It was not until college that I encountered anyone who problematized gender roles. I was not too invested in the roles that I grew up with and was pretty open to new ideas, although I did not really give much thought to the unconscious prejudices that I harbored.

When I left the shelter of school, I came to realize that many of us have our roles thrust upon us. They are not entirely of our own choosing, if they can be said to be of our choosing at all. Often, it is the path of least resistance to adopt culturally favored roles rather than to buck the trend and do as we please.

Moreover, the role structure of society informs the ambitions that we pursue. Most of my female high school classmates aimed to be wives and mothers foremost. Most of us were from working class backgrounds, so the world of work was not necessarily something that we looked to for fulfillment. Those women who had careers in mind looked to be teachers or nurses or librarians. If a single female lawyer or doctor or scientist came out of my class, I don’t know about it. There was one TV journalist, Debbie Norville, but she was exceptional.

Many of my female classmates were as intelligent and as capable as anyone and might have taken on any challenge if they had felt for a moment that these were remotely open to them. We males were led to believe that we could achieve anything that we set our minds to, (a dangerous lie that makes me feel disappointed that I never amounted to anything), and this was in complete contrast to the messages, explicit and implicit, that my female peers received.

Neocons Suck

Ever wonder how neocons, who are atheists and nihilists, can so easily make common cause with religious fundamentalists? The neocons believe in nothing except their own quest for power and their fitness to rule by virtue of their superior intellect. They know that religion is a powerful tool for them to use to manipulate a constituency into furthering neocon aims. They don’t much care what the religion dictates. It doesn’t matter as long as you can get the religious folks whipped up into a frenzy. This is easy to do because fundamentalists are irrational in so many ways and predisposed to being led.

The neocons reckon that the fundamentalists who do their bidding are a bunch of yahoos, and I’m pretty sure they laugh at them at their neocon cocktail parties. Especially funny is how supposed followers of the Prince of Peace can be turned into ardent war supporters. Who’d have thought it could be so easily done?

Perpetual war serves no purpose other than to empower the neocons and rouse the rabble to nationalistic jingoism. It stifles critical inquiry and makes it plausible in some quarters to characterize dissent as treason. It also makes the masses fearful. Fear breeds stupidity which breeds votes for neocons.

We owe it to future generations to record the machinations of the neocons and why they had to die.

Defining Fascism

JL Wilson takes a whack at defining fascism. One of the most thought provoking descriptions of fascism was written by Umberto Eco.

Eco’s introduction: “In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

Eco’s 14 features:

“The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.

Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.”

Eco hit the mark when he remarked that the features of fascism cannot be systematized. They are for the most part not predicated on a set of consistent core principles; rather, they appear to me to derive from some of the baser emotions.

One consistent thread in the features is the devaluation of the individual and the elevation of the collective to central prominence. The individual, unless he is the leader who embodies the collective will, is of no consequence except to the extent that he serves the state and advances the collective struggle. The individual’s sole source of meaning is his identity with the collective. Diversity is not tolerated. “Disagreement is treason.” Thinking is for pussies. The pre-modern, irrational way of understanding the world through revealed truth is preferred over modern critical perspectives.

What fascists might do with post-modernism sends shivers up my spine. The rejection of modernism can be given the imprimatur of intellectual legitimacy if framed in post-modern terms.

It Turns Out Slavery Wasn't Such a Big Deal After All

Michael the Honeyeater at Townhall points out that slavery wasn’t so bad. He gives us six reasons:

“SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.” In other words, everybody was doing it. Of course, other nations weren’t making noises about being the land of the free where all men are created equal and such like. The Founders were either hypocrites or utterly devoid of self awareness.

“SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.” Sure, if you count just from 1776, it lasted just under ninety years. Tell that to the millions of enslaved folks who lived during those ninety years. I’m sure they were consoled by the idea that their descendants might not have to be slaves. (The Medveds were probably getting ravaged by Cossacks back in slavery days or were not much better than slaves themselves if they were serfs.) How does this make slavery less heinous? It may be used as an argument against reparations being paid by the innocent.

“THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.” In other words, it could have been worse. The slaves could have been killed. Whine, whine, whine. Seriously, I almost choked when I read Michael’s statement that slave traders were averse to their cargo’s suffering, thanks to the profit motive. Imagine if slave trading had been carried on by a non-profit or government. None of them would have made it.

“IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.” Damn those slaves for holding us back! If anything, the slaves owe the slave states an apology for dragging down the economy. Seriously, what makes Michael think that businessmen in the North didn’t benefit from Southern slavery? The impact of slavery on commerce did not stop at the Mason Dixon line.

“WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.” We weren’t the very last country to abolish slavery. Britain did it peaceably. The US had to have a bloody war and destroy its Constitutional structure.

“THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.” They wouldn’t have been born at all. Any change in history would mean that the particular pairings of eggs and sperm and the matings of particular individuals would not have occurred. I suppose Michael thinks that African Americans should be thankful that their ancestors were enslaved.

Mets Fans Are Sad; Yankees Fans are Hopeful

There is no consolation for Mets fans. They have been beneficiaries of an epic collapse. What's worse, when the Yankees were in the doldrums at the beginning of the season, Mets fans were crowing like nobody's business. Now, not so much.

Mets fans and Yankees fans hate the other team. New Yorkers are not permitted to like both teams. You must choose between them. You are even allowed to dislike fans of the other team.

Mets fans think Yankees fans are elitist snobs, and Yankees fans think Mets fans are low class slobs. I don't have an opinion about fans of these teams, except for the god forsaken lot known as the Bleacher Creatures at Yankee Stadium. They are not human.

The only thing a Yankees fan hates worse than a Mets fan is a Red Sox fan. I perversely root for the Red Sox.

Signs

On Friday, there was a magnificent double rainbow in the northern sky when I left the gym. Then there was another one in the eastern sky on my way home. When I got home, there were two Great Blue Herons in my pond. I'm sure that these are signs of something, but I don't know how to interpret them.

Outrage!

I am really tired of outrage-mongers and the business of manufacturing outrage. It comes from both left and right, although the right has made it an art form in the last few years. Criticize a military man? Outrageous! Say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas? Outrageous! Call some women nappy headed hos? Outrageous! The Iranian president questions the Holocaust? Outrageous!

For crying out loud, none of these things is outrageous. They might be offensive to some people here and there, but there’s no telling when somebody might take offense. But outrageous they ain’t.

In case people need something to get worked up about but don’t know when to be outraged, I’m going to list some things that really are outrages but which aren’t treated as such in the media:

That upwards of a million civilians have been killed in Iraq thanks to an immoral and illegal war waged by a neocon death cult.

That thousands of deluded American service members, who mostly signed up to defend their country, have been killed or maimed for no good reason.

That the neocon death cult is even now contemplating launching a pre-emptive war on Iran and that Congress isn’t doing anything about it.

That thousands of Americans languish in prison because of unjust drug laws and that police all over America invade homes and kill American subjects to enforce those laws.

That the Bush regime has repeatedly violated the Constitution and usurped power while Congress does nothing to stop it.

That the federal government has loaded the next generation with a burden of odious debt to pay for its adventures.

That human beings are detained and tortured by the regime.

That Christianist warmongers continually blaspheme against Jesus by calling for murder in His name.

Not Obliged to Condemn Anyone

When is it appropriate to demand that someone condemn somebody else for his remarks or something he has written? I reckon that you should have some connection to the person to be condemned. For example, would anyone properly ask Barack Obama to condemn Bill O for Bill O’s most recent racist gaffe? I wouldn’t even expect a right winger to condemn Bill O unless he was somehow associated with him in some way other than agreeing with him most of the time. Rupert Murdoch or Roger Ailes could be asked to condemn Bill O, and that would make some sense.

Why on earth would Democrats suppose that they are obliged to condemn MoveOn for their General Betrayus schtick? They are much too quick to jump on the condemnation bandwagon, if you ask me. I told off my Congresscritter in an e-mail for voting to censure MoveOn. He’s dead to me now.

I don’t feel obliged to condemn anyone for what they say or write. If I do so, it’s for its own sake, not because I need to distance myself from people. If Pat Robertson says something blasphemous, as he does every day, I don’t have to apologize for it as a Christian. I’m not connected to all white people just because I am mostly white, so don’t look to me to condemn every white guy who says something idiotic. And I’m not responsible for other men or for the people in any other category that I might belong to. Bleu cheese dressing lovers of the world share the bond of the mold, but we aren’t responsible for every utterance of one another.

Not condemning something does not imply endorsement. Also, you can disagree with someone without condemning them. Of course, some folks, like that Catholic League guy, are just begging to be condemned.

Jersey Boys, the Future of Broadway

My company went on an outing to Broadway and caught “Jersey Boys”, a musical biography of the Four Seasons. It was very entertaining and reminded me of those biographical movies that were made by the score back in the 40s. The performers were spot on and sounded just like the band. It was a good choice for the company because even the old guys enjoyed it. Did you know that Joe Pesci was a friend of the guys in the band?

I thought the structure of the play would make a good template for pumping out Broadway musicals about famous bands and singers. The Beach Boys, Elvis, Bruce Springsteen would all make good subjects. Sir Elton John’s life story in music would be great. I’d stand in line for a show with the music of Queen.

Shows like “Mama Mia” built around Abba songs and “Movin’ Out” built around Billy Joel songs looked as if they had hit on a winning template, but I reckon that the idiotic story just gets in the way of the music. Also, the fit between the story and the songs is tenuous at best. This is not a problem with the band bio template. I look forward to a string of band bio boffo Broadway productions.

Rudy Giuliani: Pussy-whipped or Scared Witless of Judy?

What is Rudy Giuliani trying to say by taking cell phone calls from his wife du jour in the middle of speeches he is giving? Surely it’s not “I am a douchebag”, because the whole world has surely gotten that message loud and clear by now. Perhaps “I despise the people I am addressing” is more on the mark, because it’s pretty freaking rude to chat on the cell phone with the old lady while the audience twiddles its thumbs awkwardly. I’d have thought everyone knew that Rudy despised them by now. He hates all living things.

Maybe he is trying to establish that he is now pussy-whipped beyond redemption and that his skirt chasing days are behind him. That’ll satisfy the religious right….not. It’s not enough to be a faithful monogamist; you have to wear the pants in the family, too. Rudy does not get the family values thing at all if this is what he’s trying to communicate.

Maybe he’s trying to soften up his image and appeal to the ladies.

Maybe his wife is crazy and he’s afraid of her. Hell, she’s calling him in the middle of speeches for no damn reason! Didn’t she kill puppies for a living or something like that? Better take her call, Rudy.

Random Opinions and Observations About Stuff

I don’t think language should be regulated by the state. Let languages grow and evolve and compete without central planning. What’s more, I don’t think the state has any business regulating “profanity”. I bet most of us cuss just about every day, so why should broadcasters and publishers eschew cussing? Sometimes a good cuss word is wanted to get your point across. Forget regulating “hate speech”, too. Everybody needs to give or receive some scathing verbal abuse now and then.

I’m going to go out on a limb and take the courageous position that the Holocaust was a bad thing. The Nazis killed and tortured millions of Jews, no doubt about it. That was the Nazis. In Europe. Sixty years ago. The Palestinians had nothing to do with it. Most of the Palestinians weren’t even alive then. So, the Holocaust provides no justification whatsoever for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

To my friends who still adhere to the GOP, I want to say that I forgive you. Didn’t Jesus Himself eat with Republicans and sinners? May God have mercy on you. And on me.

That Fox Noise douchebag Bill O was apparently pleasantly surprised that black people know how to behave in a restaurant, and he had the cluelessness to say so and think that he was being complimentary. Hey, Bill O, I went to an Irish neighborhood and was amazed that less than half of the people I encountered were drunk or engaged in a fist fight! And in Little Italy, there weren’t nearly as many organ grinders and mobsters as I had expected. What’s up with that?

I hate whiny country ballads sung by men. Country music is best when it’s subversive, when it celebrates working class issues or rebellion. Nobody wants to hear you whine about how much you love your wife and children or how much you miss your girlfriend. Lately, women singers seem to do the best work, and a lot of it has feminist undertones. It’s subversive. A lot of what I hear on the country stations is just crappy pop with some resonator guitar riffs thrown in to give it a country flavor. I think a lot of reggae would make good country songs in the right hands. The other day, I heard a recording of Johnny Cash singing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, and it was fantastic.

I don’t have an appreciation for Hip Hop. Rap makes no sense to me unless the artist is busting a rhyme extemporaneously, in which case it is impressive. But if he gets to write his poem out ahead of time, I’m not so impressed. I admire the subversive, rebellious aspects of Hip Hop/Rap (are they the same thing?) but don’t care for the silly love songs. Rap that contains social commentary is better than Rap that is just party music. Of course, that’s also true of Calypso and Reggae.

There is almost nothing funnier than a suburban white teenager decked out in big pants with a spanking new baseball cap worn askew and some bling. Funnier yet is a grown man so regaled.

What’s with the really long pants that women are wearing? Don’t the hems get all bedraggled?

A Land Without the Gay

It turns out that there are no gay people in Iran. The Iranian president said so, so it must be true. Presidents don’t lie. It’s the religious right’s paradise realized on earth. Iran is a model of what the religious right would like to see America become.

What’s Iran’s secret, I wonder? Is it that the genetic influences that predispose people to homosexuality are absent or extremely rare in Persians? Is it that environmental factors that trigger expression of the genes are absent? Is it that Persian gays get cured of the gay?

Could it be that being openly gay gets you killed?

In any event, given that God tends to smite nations who tolerate the gay and to bless nations that execute gays, America had better step back from its saber rattling about Iran. Otherwise, if Pat Robertson is a true prophet, America will get its ass handed to it by Iran. The God of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson will see to that, let me tell you. Maybe that’s why Afghanistan has been such a debacle. The Taliban hates the gay; therefore, God is on the Taliban’s side.

Why is the religious right so gung ho about making war on Muslims, especially the religious ones where there is no separation between mosque and state? It’s got to be jealousy.

My Solution to the Palestine Problem

Israel, as it is currently organized, is manifestly unjust. In effect, it consists of the territory of Israel with a parliamentary democracy dominated by Jews and the occupied territories, the inhabitants of which have no representation in the parliament. This is akin to South Africa and its system of reservations or homelands for blacks, a fiction which facilitated the disenfranchisement of many blacks. If Israel and the occupied territories were organized without regard to ethnicity or creed, then there would be no legal distinction between the areas or between Muslim and Jew. Everyone, regardless of creed or kinship, would have a single vote.

This situation, where one man or woman has one vote, would not be acceptable to some Israelis because they fear that the parliament would become dominated by Muslims, in which case Israel would no longer be a “Jewish state”. They fear reprisals for the decades of repression of the Palestinians. They fear that property taken from Palestinians might be returned to them. The desire for a Jewish state is not “racist” in the sense that Jews do not constitute a race as we commonly think of that term, but it is pretty much the same sort of thing. It prefers one ethnic category over all others and affords unequal protection of the laws on the basis of ethnicity. I don’t say religion, because there does not appear to be any requirement that Israeli Jews be observant.

These fears are not irrational, and it would not be surprising for a Muslim dominated parliament to oppress the Jewish minority. Jews and Christians and others have historically had considerable disabilities as subjects of Muslim states. Accordingly, it is necessary in a united ethnicity and creed blind Palestine to have a mechanism to guarantee freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religion to all subjects of the state. The constitution of such a state must provide for limited government and guaranteed civil rights in order to minimize the influence of religious leaders and demagogues.

But such a constitution is not self-enforcing, as we Americans have learned to our everlasting sorrow; therefore, there must be an institution above parliamentary politics and majoritarianism with the power to enforce these guarantees. I propose a hereditary Christian monarch charged with preserving civil and religious liberty and with the defense of the nation. Let the nation be styled the Kingdom of Jerusalem and let it be ruled by an heir to the former kingdom of that name. I nominate the Duke of York.

What Scott Adams Said

Scott Adams sums up in snark how I feel about the Iranian president’s appearances in NYC. My conspecifics at work hate the guy, mainly because their government has told them to.

My Predictions for the Future

Humans are probably going to reach a point, perhaps pretty soon, where we hit the ceiling of just how much we can understand about the universe. We’re just so smart and no smarter, and there is no reason to believe that we have an unlimited capacity for understanding the mysteries of being. Perhaps our machines will be smarter than us and can understand for us, or perhaps some emergent property of mass communications will be a collective mind that understands much more profoundly than any one of its constituent parts. Probably not. We are going to have to do some serious evolving if we’re going to make it off world.

I reckon that our best bet for seeding the universe will be von Neumann probes, self-replicating machines that carry instructions for terra-forming planets and making humans from scratch from genetic information. These will go into space and find suitable planets to transform, and when the transformation is far enough along they will plant humans on them. Having human colonists travel in person will be too arduous and costly unless some Star Trek faster than light trick is found. Also, it might take centuries to get the planets up to snuff.

I predict that, while we will never exceed say 90% of light speed for objects to travel, we will one day figure out a way to transmit information faster than light. If we can convert ourselves into information we will be able to travel faster than light.

I predict that in the next few centuries humans will colonize the inner solar system, living mostly in self contained space stations. There will be trillions of us; therefore, we will have lots of Einsteins and Newtons. On the other hand, we will have billions of Kagans being wrong about everything all the time. Perhaps we can establish a planet for the Kagans to inhabit and screw up without troubling the rest of us.

Eventually, the Earth will be abandoned almost entirely and turned into a park.

Chickenhawks

I think it’s fair to ask war supporters why they aren’t in the military or why they don’t start a regiment of volunteers to fight in the Iraq. Chickenhawks and keyboard commandos should explain themselves. They love the war so much, why don’t they go fight in it? It is, in large measure, their support for the war that lets the regime keep it going, and some dupes in the National Guard have to get shot at because they won’t enlist. If all the College Republicans signed up, several battalions might be able to rotate out of the war zone.

Of course, if College Republicans are anything like they were when I was in college, they are mostly pussies and nutjobs.

I also want politicians who sat out Vietnam even though they supported it to explain how they did this in good conscience? Because they got deferments, some other poor slobs got drafted and had to fight in a war they might not even have supported.

States Don't Have Rights or Moral Obligations

I have a problem with JL Wilson’s recent essay in the Partial Observer. James writes in one place: ”A country has the right to keep out those whose beliefs are hostile to its laws.” In another place he poses the rhetorical question: “Would the United States have a moral obligation to welcome in such nut-jobs?”

I am conflicted about the larger point that James makes in the essay that a state ought to exclude would be immigrants that do not meet a particular ideological litmus test, and I don’t aim to address the argument here. But I am uneasy about how he has framed the issue in terms of states’ having “rights” and “moral obligations”.

Should a state, which is an abstraction, be said to have rights? Certainly, international law is sometimes framed in such terms such as a “right to self defense”, and Israel claims that it has a “right to exist”. But from an anti-state perspective, I reckon that it is counterrevolutionary to reify states in this manner.

States don’t have rights; they are organizing and legitimizing principles for the exercise of power by and on behalf of individuals acting under color of law. State actors do what they can get away with in view of the powers of other state actors and domestic political constraints. Certainly the United States government has the ability in principle to exclude any immigrants that Congress, in the exercise of its plenary power in this matter, pleases to exclude. There is no need to invoke “rights”. The argument should be focused on whether the exercise of such power is or is not a good idea and what the ramifications of such an exercise of power might be.

I am especially interested in considering how the exclusion of immigrants on ideological grounds will be abused. Will anti-state immigrants be admitted, or will statism be a requirement for admission?

Once you have accepted the legitimacy of the United States government to act in the area of immigration, your arguments about how it acts don’t need to rely on a claim of “rights”. All you have to do is explain how the proposed program will be helpful. It may have a chance of enactment if you can also show that it will inure to the benefit of the individuals in power, that it will appeal to the electorate, and that it can’t be used effectively against the people in power by their rivals.

I have the same sort of criticism of talking about states’ having “moral obligations”. States are ideas, and ideas don’t have morals. People have moral obligations. You might argue that individuals acting in the name of the state have moral obligations, e.g. an official ought not to take bribes or neglect his duty. You might even argue that your Congressman has a moral obligation to act to protect American culture from subversive immigrants. If you reckon that this is a legitimate function of Congress, then there is no need to attribute morals to the state.

It is important to problematize the state and to avoid reifying it. If you are a minarchist or proponent of limited government, it is a challenge to distinguish those areas that you regard as legitimate exercises of authority from the areas that you deem beyond the scope of government. The line is ultimately going to be arbitrary and predicated on underlying normative assumptions and subjective preferences. You have to decide what ends are so important to you that you would condone the use of coercion to accomplish them. You don’t need to claim that states have rights or moral obligations to make your case. You just have to explain why the proposed state action is really important, that coercion is the only means to accomplish the important result, and that your solution will not make things worse.

Wizard Genetics

I’m on the 5th Harry Potter novel, and Mrs VF is waiting for numbers 6 and 7 to arrive. We rented the first four movies and found that they were a pretty good compression of the books. I’m not sure that they would make as much sense if you hadn’t read the books.

I have a theory about how a child of Muggles might turn out to be a Wizard or how a child of magic folks might end up a Squib. You are a Wizard if you have two instances of a recessive gene w. The w gene might pass through many generations of Muggles without being expressed because you need a pair of them to make a Wizard. The dominant Muggle gene M at the same locus trumps the w when combined with it. A Muggle could have MM or Mw, whereas a Wizard must have ww.

There is a second gene that governs the ability to do magic. Let’s call it A. It is tied to the w gene such that you have to be a Wizard in order for A to be expressed. You might have another variant of the gene, lets call it a, that confers no magical ability. A Wizard with two a’s would be a Squib. A Wizard with one A would be an ordinary specimen, whereas a Wizard with two A’s would be more powerful. A Muggle with A’s would not have any magical ability.

To summarize:

ww/AA= heap powerful wizard
ww/Aa= regular Wizard
ww/AA= Squib
wM/??= Muggle
MM/??= Muggle

Career Advice to my Past Self

If I could go back in time and give advice to my teenage self about career choices, I could save him a whole lot of grief.

1.Get treatment for your anxiety disorder right away. That way you won’t blame your constant worrying on your jobs. They might not suck as much as you are led to believe by your condition.

2.Try to do something you are really interested in. Even if you do this, though, there will be aspects of your dream job that will really suck. Your co-workers might be wankers. Your boss will almost certainly be a douchebag. No matter what field you go into, this will be the case, so there’s no use changing careers because of such factors. The assholes are everywhere. The best you can hope for is that your working conditions will not be so bad that you will envy the dead.

3.I recommend some kind of biology. You like puzzles and science and nature, and you don’t really like other people, so biology would be a good fit.

4.DO NOT BECOME A LAWYER.

5. You are not particularly ambitious, it turns out, so don’t worry about making a difference in the world. You never will. Just try to be happy and have a balanced life. Work isn’t everything.

6. You cannot sell anything, so don’t even try.

7. You are really lazy, so don’t go for a job that calls for too many long hours.

The First Bridge Murder

Mrs Vache Folle read me excerpts from this piece about contract bridge in the New Yorker. The really weird bit:

“’[A] notice appeared in the Los Angeles Times announcing that a Chicago woman was suing her husband for divorce on the inexcusable grounds that he trumped her ace., Four years later, in Kansas City, another aggrieved bridge-playing wife, Myrtle Bennett, shot her husband to death shortly after he failed in his attempt to make a contract of four spades. At her trial, Myrtle was represented by James A. Reed, a former Kansas City mayor and United States senator. Remarkably, she was acquitted, and is said to have collected on her husband’s thirty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. After reconstructing the final deal, the bridge expert Ely Culbertson concluded that Mr. Bennett could have made the fateful four-spade contract after all.”

It turns out that this is quite true and, to a bridge aficianado, the homicide would be considered justifiable.

Now Mrs VF, with whom I am already on shaky ground, seems emboldened to make death threats over the slightest infractions.

Ten of the Crappiest Jobs I Have Had

Scraping cow manure off a concrete corral floor outside the veterinary testing barn of a large dairy farm. A lot of the cows were under the weather, and it showed in their poop.

Holding cows by tongs in their nostrils while another cowboy tagged their ears.

Picking okra in searing heat. The okra leaves would rub against you and sting like a nettle.

Spraying some kind of cleanser on popcorn ceilings.

Assembling truck parts by hand on an assembly line.

Cleaning out apartments in a slum after tenants moved out.

Folding and refolding sweaters about a million times a day at a department store during the Christmas shopping season.

Manning the French fry station at McDonalds.

Running the chains at junior varsity football games.

Cutting stair treads from scrap carpet in a sweatshop when I was 13 years old.

Squeamishness

I have been thinking about my squeamishness when it comes to killing animals. I grew up on a farm and killed many a chicken, although even then I hated doing it. Somehow, however, in the process of getting educated, I was given an extra dose of civilizing. I no longer shared my people’s interest in raising livestock, killing it and eating it. I did not care to hunt, and blood sports began to disgust me. I found the idea of fighting ridiculous. I had become thoroughly domesticated and feminized to a much greater degree than even some of my closest kin.

In fact, I am actually troubled about eating meat, and I have endeavored to avoid factory farmed products and to pay extra for cruelty free meat and eggs and dairy and such. These products taste better, for one thing, and I can assuage my guilt by telling myself that the critter had a good life right up until the moment it was slaughtered. Maybe they make the animal think that it is going to the movies or something and kill it before it knows that it has actually entered an abattoir. That would be nice.

On the other hand, I sometimes feel ridiculous about my squeamishness. I like meat a lot. I would like to keep rabbits and eat rabbit meat, one of my favorite foods, but I can’t imagine that I’d be able to kill and dress a helpless bunny. I’d like to eat some of the deer and turkeys that pass by the house, but I can’t see myself shooting and butchering them. I can’t even clean a fish, for crying out loud! In the post-apocalyptic dystopia to come, I am going to have to get over this. I am an Eloi.

Living With Voles

At first I thought the voles were kind of cute. A couple would get into the trash can where we keep our birdseed and get stuck, and I would scoop them out in the morning and release them outside the front door. Mrs Vache Folle is anti-rodent, however, except for grey squirrels and chipmunks, and freaked out about having vermin in our house. She really started going nuts about the voles when they started coming into the kitchen and getting into the drawers and cabinets. They would poop on our silverware and gnaw on wooden spoons and anything made of cork. They noshed on dog food and left their scat everywhere.

They even got into the chest of drawers where we kept our mittens and scarves and such like and chewed some of these to shreds and pooped on everything else. We tried plugging up their suspected route of ingress but failed to stop them. We went to the feed store to get traps, but the merchant told us that voles won’t go in traps or eat poison. Our exterminator came by and told us that the only thing we could do would be to put down those traps with glue on them in the basement and cubby. We couldn’t put them inside because the dogs might get stuck on them. We balked at this because of our squeamish and tenderhearted natures. Sure, the voles are annoying, but we don’t want to torture them to death on glue pads.

Then the voles got into our cars and started chewing the floor mats and crapping in the glove box. I began to rethink the glue traps. We had Steve the contractor plug up the likely vole pathways into the house, and this morning there were no vole turds to be seen in any of the usual places. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that they have been blocked. Now we’ve got to figure out how they are getting into our cars and figure out how to stop them.

Mrs VF reckons the voles are getting revenge for our cleaning out the shed where they had been nesting. I don’t like to attribute such motives to dumb animals, but our problem did seem to start after the shed cleaning. Mrs VF talked about getting a cat, but I reckon that (a) Jesse the Carpathian would eat it and (b) that would just be substituting a larger animal that craps in the house for smaller animals that crap in the house.

In other wildlife news, I am please to report that the great blue heron has not yet eaten all our fish. Two comets have survived along with a school of shiners that I thought had been wiped out last year. The heron comes by every day, so it may be just a matter of time before the last two comets buy the farm.

Suing God

Chambers vs. God was filed in a Nebraska court. The complaint seeks an injunction against God prohibiting threats and calamities.

Clinton's Health Plan

Senator Clinton’s health plan has been unveiled. In a nutshell:

“Americans can keep their existing coverage or access the same menu of quality private insurance options that their Members of Congress receive through a new Health Choices Menu, established without any new bureaucracy as part of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP). In addition to the broad array of private options that Americans can choose from, they will be offered the choice of a public plan option similar to Medicare.”

There’s something to be said for the notion of building on an existing program instead of starting a new bureaucracy. I would like to see this extended to other areas of the federal government. For example, various entitlement payments such as Social Security and VA benefits might be administered by a single agency. Management of federal lands could be handled by the Bureau of Land Management instead of the congeries of agencies that do it now.

On the other hand, the plan raises a lot of questions. If you manage a health insurance provider, will you want to be part of the group of companies on the approved list? Would it be worth it to submit to the rules in order to do so? What will employers who already provide coverage do now that they won’t have these benefits as leverage over their employees? Won’t health care become even more expensive once more people have access to it?

I reckon that it will become necessary to control costs by regulating lifestyles and prohibiting unhealthy behaviors. Then again, this will mean folks will live longer so that Social Security will be even more strained. The retirement age will eventually be 100 when 100 becomes the new 65.

Stalking Horse Alan Keyes

I heard that Alan Keyes has joined the fray and is running for the GOP nomination. Evidently, Keyes didn’t think the current crop of candidates was sufficiently bellicose or sufficiently devoted to curtailing liberty. My theory is that Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney are paying Alan to run in order to get the “values voters” out of their hair (or scalps in the case of Rudy and John). Huckabee and Keyes can fight over every last Christianist vote, while the front runners position themselves early on as the “not crazy” candidates.

Children Are Worth It....to Some

Deepthought responded partially to my post about why being childfree is not free riding. He writes:

“Anyway - so you pay property taxes... so what? First of all, parents pay those exact same taxes - and, since they tend to have larger homes and focus on 'good' school districts that drive up values, they tend to pay more. So much for them being 'moochers'.

Also, you do, indeed, benefit from those taxes in the form of a literate (supposedly) well-educated population. This allows you to enjoy lower crime rates, higher economic activity overall, etc. Also, one of the main functions of subsidized schools is that educated children turn into higher-earning taxpayers that will go on to, yes, subsidize your life in the form of everything from social security to roads.”

He does not address my contention that parents receive value from their children in the form of the various satisfactions of parenthood that equal or exceed the costs that they bear in their estimation. Meanwhile, I am forced to subsidize their enjoyment of these satisfactions while receiving very little, if any, such enjoyment. If that is not “mooching”, I don’t know what is.

The arguments about how I benefit indirectly from an educated society imply that I would favor leaving children in abject ignorance, something I have never advocated. I do not doubt for a moment that parents, especially those with the larger homes in the tonier districts that Deepthought mentions, would manage to arrange for the education of their children if there were no public schools. They would provide tutors, school them themselves at home, or send them to private schools. As for the children of the less fortunate, the extent to which I benefit from their schooling is questionable, but I, and I imagine most others, would cheerfully and voluntarily support educational opportunities for those poorer children who might stand to benefit. I am not against education; I am against its coercive administration and financing. I am against welfare for folks who can easily afford to educate their own children.

Moreover, the principal beneficiaries of education are the parents (otherwise, why would so many of them finance expensive college educations?) and the children themselves (they enjoy greater opportunities and a better standard of living). That I might derive some slight and debatable benefit from parents and children pursuing their own happiness provides no basis for extracting rents from me. I keep a lovely garden for my own satisfaction that anyone might see and enjoy from the road. Moreover, I have improved my home a great deal and increased its value, and this has inured to the indirect benefit of my neighbors. Am I entitled to extract from them by force the value of these indirect and unintended benefits?

Indeed, much of my conspecifics’ consumption can be said to provide indirect benefit to me. I owe my livelihood to a vigorous economy ultimately driven by consumption, and the benefits of commerce to me are legion. Yet, I am rarely called upon to subsidize the consumption of my neighbors except in the case of consumers of the joys offered by children. Parents get all their investment in children back and then some. Otherwise, nobody would reproduce.