If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another,
it is a brave man,--
it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face
and tell him he is a devil.
James A. Garfield
Image of the Day
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| Courtesy of lp.org |
I have found this image curiously enough not on the Libertarian Party website but in a number of blogs including Carpe Diem. I also saw a version without the LP URL. I would tweak a few things. For instance, it was Clinton whom got involved in nation building (re: Bosnia), and Bush specifically attacked Clinton/Gore on nation building. When you consider that American involvement in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam occurred on the watch of Democratic administrations, Clinton and Obama have aggressively used missiles or drone attacks, the Old Right was non-interventionist, and prominent paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan regularly rants against American empire-building; when prominent conservatives like William F. Buckley considered the war on drugs lost; the Patriot Act were extended by a Democratic Senate and President.... I also think the portrayal of conservatives unduly borrows from Bush's policies (e.g., faith-based) or confuses the GOP with conservatives; remember, conservatives balked at Bush's Medicare expansion
I suspect 'morality' refers to abortion and marriage, but remember that alcohol prohibition was supported by progressives of the era. On the former issues, it has more to do with maintaining or restoring traditional state regulation, minimizing social policy experimentation, and opposing backdoor social policies through judicial activism. I reject the idea that conservatives favor special privileges to businesses; conservatives have actually been quite vocal about streamlining the tax code with lower, flatter rates.
There are a few obvious items missing here, e.g., tax philosophy; individualism vs. communitarianism; regulation of political speech; monetary policy; federalism vs national policies; law-and-order/rule of law, mandatory individual (retirement) programs or (healthcare) policies; immigration; trade; internationalized policies (e.g., climate change), etc,; I don't see fiscal responsibility represented under the bullet points, and I reject the idea that conservatives are socially intolerant: they often reflect more traditional social values (for example, you can be for equal protection for minorities while rejecting preferential policies). But I do think this is a good tool for showing issues areas of agreement and disagreement with a number of people on the left and on the right.
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| Courtesy libertarian/reddit |
After yesterday's rant on the stealth, pushing-on-a-string attempts to centralize a dummied-down national curricula dominated by progressive criteria, like multicultural awareness. I stumbled across this gem during an Internet search:
Two autumns ago, in my son Jake’s junior year of high school, he took an AP English course. Surely I’d read the same books he was reading, since the high-school reading list was carved in stone sometime in the early 1950s. So I asked him: What are you reading in AP English?
“The Great Gatsby,” he said.
“Do you … like it?” I asked delicately, thrilled to be having what was almost a conversation with my teenage son.
“I don’t really like the actor who plays Gatsby,” he said. “He’s got these weird bumps on his face that keep distracting me.”.... [Actor?]
Just the same, I was glad when, for his senior year, Jake proposed taking an English course at the local community college. Come September, he and a buddy drove to the college every Monday night and sat for three hours in English 101 — where they never once read a book. They watched movies instead.
Jake got an A- in the course.SCOTUS Screws Up Again: MD v King, 5-4: Thumbs DOWN!
This is an eclectic ruling where liberal Breyer and conservative Scalia split from their usual coalitions. The basic issue involves the involuntary collection of DNA, normally done as standard operating procedure for convicted felons, and extending it to people whom have been merely arrested, not convicted of a crime. In my judgment, this is presumptive, a clearly unreasonable search/fishing expedition and violation of individual rights; an arrest can be an abuse of discretion or reflect a poor judgment of the circumstances, and you could permanently enter some government database which is vulnerable to unauthorized access and/or disclosure.
Eating Your Own Dog Food
I was looking for corroborating evidence for a Williamson reviewer citing 40% of Philadelphia teachers putting their own kids in private school when I came across this 2004 story excerpt:
Nationwide, public school teachers are almost twice as likely as other parents to choose private schools for their own children, the study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found. More than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools.
In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools.
In Philadelphia, 44 percent of the teachers put their children in private schools; in Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 38 percent. The same trends showed up in the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 34 percent of public school teachers chose private schools for their children; 33 percent in New York City and New Jersey suburbs; and 29 percent in Milwaukee and New Orleans.That tells me far more about what teachers really think about their colleagues' performance than all those bogus glowing peer-reviewed/principal evaluations....
Illinois' Credit Rating Cut as Pension Funding Crisis Continues
Fitch downgraded Illinois' credit rating to A- after the regular session of the Illinois legislature closed last week without a viable pension fix. Currently temporary tax increases are helping to bridge the gap, and those tax hikes are not helpful in recruiting new residents and businesses. Somehow they are going to have to find a way of capping pension costs while getting the rest of their bloated budget under control. Not so easy, Dems, is it, when you control the legislature and governor's mansion and don't have bogeymen Republicans to scapegoat?
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups Redux
Simon and Garfunkel,"The Sound of Silence".What can you say about one of the greatest songs ever written and recorded? If I compiled a Top 5 Iconic Hits of the 1960's, this would be near the top of that list. Simon once wrote something to the effect that he sometimes was embarrassed by his early material, that some of it was hubris. I too am a perfectionist, my worst critic and editor; I'll sometime go to the previous day's post and tweak wording. I find I'm still changing; this blog will be 5 years old next month, and I shake my head now at how I was less skeptical of neo-cons than I am now--or how naive I was to have actually voted for Democrats during my salad years.
One of the reasons the song is so iconic was Tom Wilson's brilliant fusion of percussion and electric guitar with the original folk/acoustic performance, which merged two important genres in 1960's music. The original version was the folk version of the song Simon wrote in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. But the album barely scratched the pop charts. It was Wilson's re-mix, released a year later, that climbed up all the way to #1, the first of 3 for the duo. P.S. Go back to the original version, and it's just as memorable: the vocal harmonies really stand out.
