Wednesday, August 27. 2008
"The big ideological defeat hidden by environmentalism" at Samizdata, who quotes Will Wilkinson: Climate eschatology really is the ultimate in big lie crisis politics. The far-left has failed so comprehensively to make the case for its vision of society and economy that the only thing left to do is to brazenly and repeatedly assert that the world will literally collapse unless we implement this otherwise indefensible vision.
and I think the point is that the clock really is ticking. If we don't "do something" soon, we'll probably see that we don't really need to do anything really dramatic, and then the window for radical social change will be closed. So I expect the volume to get much louder.
Monday, August 25. 2008
The "Root Cause" Scam Norm Geras from Normblog is doing some deep thinking: The root-causers always plead a desire merely to expand our understanding, but they're very selective in what they want to "understand". If causes and explanation are indeed a serious enterprise and not merely a convenient partisan game, then it needs to be recognised that causality is one thing and moral responsibility another, though the two are related.
and: Ever on the lookout for damning causes, the root-causers never go for the most obvious of these. This is the cause, indeed, which shows, by its absence, why most critics of the Iraq war or of anything else don't murder people when they are angry. It is the fanatical, fundamentalist belief system which teaches hatred and justifies these acts of murder. That cause somehow gets a free pass from the hunters-out of causes.
My only disagreement with the article is that it seems to assume that the terrorism apologists are sincere in their positions and postures - which I feel is naive. Thus Norm's great analysis will have no impact on any of the hard Left, reflexively anti-Western readers of the Guardian (in which the piece appears). After all, what is the "root cause" of the anti-Western reflex of the Left? Whatever it is, it isn't ignorance (except in the young). Intellectual integrity - and even integrity - mean nothing if you can convince yourself that your mission is to save the world via Lefto-Fascism - or just to try to promote yourself! You rise above such bourgeois hang-ups. Just like the Jihadists...hmmmm. Read the entire - link above. And read my piece on related subject on Maggies last week.
Thursday, August 21. 2008
Watts says that the Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States report contains more advocacy than science: Skeptics win one. One quote from his piece: This report’s contents and the “cart before the horse” way it was produced is the biggest official “crock” perpetrated on the American public I’ve ever been privy to. On a personal note, there are days when I struggle to keep doing this, at times I think I’ll just shut down the blog, turn off the surfacestations website, and return to a normal and hassle free life. Days like this keep me going.
Tuesday, August 19. 2008
Despite its uselessness, squishy relativism remains a force in some sectors of society. It's dangerous because it makes people feel that they shouldn't evaluate anything. Dr. Bob explains the inherent contradictions. A quote: I find it interesting that most every argument rejecting absolutes contains within its very language and structure, not to mention its premises, a framework of absolute assertions. And our subject does not disappoint: tossing around terms like “wise” and “fools” and “shame” and “credit”, qualitative words without meaning when there is no transcendent standard against which to measure them. What is shame if not the humiliation of rejecting an absolute good? Who is wise, and who a fool, if there is no standard of enduring and unchangeable wisdom by which to categorize one thusly? The lines of their straightedge are random and irregularly spaced — if there are measuring lines at all — yet they carefully measure and mark off “progress”, confident they have measured accurately. There is, of course, the inevitable rejoinder to all such foolishness which asks, “Are you absolutely sure there are no absolutes?” But beyond this childish rebuttal — childish, not in the sense of silliness or immaturity, but rather of unvarnished simplicity — there lies an even more evident and profound incoherence which can be discerned — from which a not-so-evident proposition emerges from the heart of anti-absolutism.
Read the whole thing.
What is college for? I've been writing about that subject recently. Stanley Fish's essay of the above title begins thus: Pick up the mission statement of almost any college or university, and you will find claims and ambitions that will lead you to think that it is the job of an institution of higher learning to cure every ill the world has ever known: not only illiteracy and cultural ignorance, which are at least in the ball-park, but poverty, war, racism, gender bias, bad character, discrimination, intolerance, environmental pollution, rampant capitalism, American imperialism, and the hegemony of Wal-Mart; and of course the list could be much longer.
So much for the humility of scholars. Read the whole thing.
 Two friends of Maggie's Farm, Dennis Keegan and David West, have written this book which has come out today.
An Amazon reviewer says: This book provides an unbiased review of the major issues of the past 10 years. Heavily researched and footnoted, it provides a much different picture of the United States than what the media paints. If you would like data rather than opinion on the state of the U.S., this is the book to read.
The book description reads: Streaming headlines, round-the-clock broadcasts--we live in a world of twenty-four hour news. But lately, most of what we read and hear is either negative, biased, or both. Cutting through the gloomy reports and liberal slant are Dennis Keegan and David West with their brand new book, Reality Check: The Unreported Good News About America. Contrary to what the cynical reporters and politicians say, Keegan and West prove that America is still a shining city on a hill, with a low unemployment rate, high GDP, and enviable democracy. These are not opinions, but facts--based on statistics that the media isn't reporting because of political agendas, industry competition, and limited resources. In Reality Check, Keegan and West cut through the bias and spin to reveal: How our twenty-four hour news culture gives us more inaccurate information, not less
Why the U.S. economy is doing better than we realize
* Why the recent rhetoric and politics of change may do more harm than good In this age of information saturation, the need to question and critically think about what we're reading and hearing is more important than ever. In Reality Check, Keegan and West show us how to be discerning consumers and why the news about America is much better than the media would have you believe.
A timely book. Check it out.
Friday, August 15. 2008
via Surber: (Republican New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Doherty) has called for repealing New Jersey’s ridiculous global warming panic laws. Doherty said: “There are many credible members of the scientific community who have questioned the theory of global warming, and now we have some scientists actually suggesting the earth’s temperatures may be entering a period of dramatic cooling. With this growing level of scientific uncertainty, it makes no sense to enact a new set of economically damaging regulations prompted by the global warming hysteria of recent years.”
Wednesday, August 13. 2008
 As we have been saying for over two years now. This quote via Surber:
The Belfast Telegraph has reported: “Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C — that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years. Of course, nothing in science is certain. Perhaps (though I doubt it) Armagh’s old measurements are wrong or perhaps there are now other factors, such as CO2 emissions, which may change things somewhat. However, temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern.”
Be very afraid. Image via Moravec's cool illustrations.
 David Brooks says that the economic rise of China demonstrates that collectivist societies can prosper.
I think he is wrong. Seems to me that the unleashing of individual enterprise and free markets (combined with free markets for labor, lower business taxes than the US, and globalization) are what have unleashed China's belated industrial revolution. In other words, individualism. But I am no expert on the subject (and neither is Brooks). There is still one Path to Prosperity. Furthermore, I wonder whether this whole subject of Asian collectivism is a myth. Police state-enforced collectivist "harmony" can give the appearance of a collectivist ethos - but only the appearance.
Monday, August 11. 2008
From Chantrill in American Thinker, one of the best short essays of the year: The Politics of the Social Safety Net. One quote: But the real problem is that the expansion of the safety net has led to increase in government power and the rise of the beauracracy. This combined to diminish individual responsibility which diminishes ones productivity and accumulation of wealth. With less wealth, it's easier to be dependent. With more people jumping in the net, taxes go up to maintain benefits, which cuts savings, which increases the demand for the safety net as more people retire destitute from taxation in furtherance of its support. Let's be real - we are never going to see a change in the safety net for too much political power is invested in, and generated by it. Also, its very existence has enabled our population to grow as those who would have otherwise died from disease, exposure or starvation due to lack of wealth have been spared by it (sorry for the cruelty). It's not going away. Any safety net, no matter how modest, who provides it, or what name you give it will mature into a welfare state.
Read the whole thing.
Thursday, August 7. 2008
Well, historic Marburg, Germany, is giving it a try. One quote: The town council took the significant step in June of moving from merely encouraging citizens to install solar panels to making them an obligation. The ordinance, the first of its kind in Germany, will require solar panels not only on new buildings, which fewer people oppose, but also on existing homes that undergo renovations or get new heating systems or roof repairs. To give the regulation teeth, a fine of 1,000 euros, about $1,500, awaits those who do not comply.
Read the whole thing, and consider the possible effectiveness of solar panels in Germany. These folks are insane. Truth be told, it's probably more sensible just to pay the fine, and then throw the rascals out. It sounds like the politics of Seattle (h/t, Junk Science), or like the Massachusetts government medical plan. The world is full of sanctimonious jerks who want to tell other people how to live.
Wednesday, August 6. 2008
What sorts of idiots think that plug-in cars are any less CO2-producing than gas cars? (No, I am not calling Insty an idiot.) Where do they think electricity comes from? Unless you have tons of nuke power, of course. No evil, evil CO2 from nukes. nb: I think this is all a tempest in a teapot anyway, and doesn't matter one bit. In a year or two, we'll all be laughing about the AGW scams and frenzies.
Mark Helprin takes a long look at China, Rich Country, Strong Arms. One quote: China's success in amplifying its power is due in part to what may be called "the gift of the Meiji." That is, the transformation of the Japanese slogan fukoku kyohei—rich country, strong arms—into the Sixteen-Character Policy: "Combine the military and the civil; combine peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military." After humiliation and occupation by the West closely parallel to what also befell China, predominantly agricultural Japan rapidly transformed itself into an industrial state that could successfully wage war with modern arms against Russia, a second-tier European power, and then, not that many decades later, offer a mortal challenge to the world's leading naval power, the United States. It was able to vault with preternatural speed into the first ranks of the leading nations because it understood the relation of economic growth to military potential. Unlike the United States, which, almost unconsciously, governs itself reactively and predominantly for the short term, China has plotted a long course in which with great deliberation it joins growth to military expansion.
Tuesday, August 5. 2008
 Stanley Fish in The NYT. (h/t, Right Wing Prof). One quote:
Last week, I confessed to being a bad traveler. This week, I confess to something much worse. I resist and resent the demands made on me by environmental imperatives. I don’t want to save the planet. I just want to inhabit it as comfortably as possible for as long as I have. Things reached something of a crisis point a few days ago when my wife asked me to read a communique from Greenpeace. (She thought, she told me, that if I read it rather than hearing about it from her, my unhappiness would be directed at the organization.) It said that Kimberly-Clark, the maker of the paper towels, facial tissue and toilet paper we buy, does not use recycled fiber and instead “gets its virgin wood fiber clear-cut from . . . the North American Boreal . . . one of the world’s most important forests.” And that meant, she told me, that we would have to give those items up and go in search of green alternatives. But we had already done that once before when it turned out that the manufacturer of the paper products we used to buy — Procter and Gamble — engaged in research on animals. That’s when we found Kimberly-Clark. So it seems that the pure were not so pure after all, and who’s to say that the next corporation won’t have an ecological skeleton in its closet, too?
At The Corner. Ditto, Jonah.
The Opinion Journal's piece on Solzhenitsyn begins like this: "The hammer banged reveille on the rail outside camp HQ at five o'clock as always. Time to get up. The ragged noise was muffled by ice two fingers thick on the windows and soon died away. Too cold for the warder to go on hammering." Thus did Alexander Solzhenitsyn begin "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," his reveille for the world about totalitarianism. Published in 1962, in the brief post-Stalinist thaw under Khrushchev, the novel about a prisoner in a Soviet prison camp made Solzhenitsyn at first a Russian sensation and later the country's most famous dissident after the Kremlin reverted to brutal form.
And as quoted by Vanderleun, "When all of the rest of the civilized world, as well as the Marxist world, was tossing God into the dustbin of history, Solzhenitsyn realized that only God really matters. He chided the West for embracing materialism and forgetting God, a lesson that is just as true today as thirty years ago." -
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