All Politics is Local...

Upon hearing that Bill Clinton offered to arbitrate the Hollywood writers strike:

Doesn't he have anything better to do?

After learning that The Office has stopped production:

Go Bill, go!

Terry Teachout on Atlas Shrugged

Even Whittaker Chambers finally judged Atlas Shrugged to be harmless enough, comparing it to a patent medicine: “Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything.” That seems to me about right — but not quite. Not only did my 16-year-old self quaff Dr. Rand’s Miracle Elixir without any lasting ill effects, but he actually grew up to be a healthy, sensible adult who knows that you don’t have to sell all the lighthouses to have a proper respect for the virtues of free minds and free markets. And therein lies the paradoxical virtue of philosophical extremism: Sometimes it can help you figure out what you really think. As the libertarian blogger Megan McArdle recently observed, “Models and thought experiments are designed to illuminate principles, not mirror the real world. We already have something that looks and works exactly like the actual world: that is, the world. However, if you want to learn much about that world beyond ‘Water is wet’ and ‘Fire burns,’ you need to simplify in order to see deep truths more clearly.”

Imagining a Class Instructing Nigerian Scammers

"Okay class, today we're going to dispense with esoteric theory and discuss in practical terms what it takes to be a successful 4-1-9 scammer.

First off, you need a subject headline and it needs to grab the attention of the Western - typically American - recipient.

You must know that Westerners are obsessed with business and are extremely time-conscious. Thus, over ten years of scamming experience has shown that the header:

AN URGENT BUSINESS PROPOSAL.
...is most effective. All capitals allows it to stand out from other emails. The word "urgent" is a way to get across to the recipient that we are not going to waste their time! This is what they value most of all over there. Westerners have a saying: "Time is money"! Can you imagine that? Money here is scarce and time is plentiful so it's an odd locution. But to them the word urgent takes on great meaning.

The next phrase, "business proposal", is to Westerners what "marriage proposal" is to your unmarried aunt in Narobi. It really gets their attention.

In the body of the email you'll want to start out with a very official looking address in order to let the reader know how serious this offer is. You might try:

GLOBAL SECURITY AND FINANCE COMPANY.
PLOT 1004, ACCRA GHANA,
WEST AFRICA

The word "security" is important because most recipients will be very skeptical of your proposal and Westerners like security.

You'll want a salutation not too friendly nor too distant. "HELLO" works. Tell them you got their email through a private search. "Private" implies exclusive and Westerners like exclusive resorts and private clubs.

In the second paragraph you'll want to explain how a government contractor desposited the sum of US$ 30MILLION. Spell the amount out in parens for them: (THIRTY MILLION US. DOLLARS). This will reinforce the amount of money at stake. Mention how the government contractor died a few years ago and none of his next of kin have come forward to claim the money -- Hey, hey, stop laughing back there! I know it's hard to believe but this stuff works..."

"Wine Experts" an Oxymoron

This:

He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

...reminded me of the famous, never-to-be-forgotten Bobber Beer Test.

Hmmmm....

With the exception of the concern over health care, National Review could be talking about me in their cover story about the conservative base being the problem because we're out of step with the American people.

I've long said "look at the statistics!" with respect to economic circumstances and tend to think of global warming as the biggest hoax since The War of the Worlds. (I just wanted to use that analogy - I actually think it's likely true. But climate, like the weather, changes and even if it is caused by man there's no way we'll reduce emissions let alone China! You talk about your pipe dreams, that's the pipe-iest!)

But NR says that conservative base needs a wake-up call:

The deepest cause of the party’s malaise is not the inadequacies of the presidential field. It is that the party’s base is out of step with the public. On issue after issue, polls find independents lining up with Democrats.

Take the economy. Republicans are much happier with their economic circumstances than Democrats: 81 percent of the former, and only 54 percent of the latter, express satisfaction. Independents are exactly where the Democrats are. At their recent economic debate, however, most of the Republican candidates essentially advised dissatisfied Americans to look up some economic statistics to see how well things are going. The ones who acknowledged public gloom proffered protectionism as a remedy.

Or take global warming. The public thinks it is real and worrisome, but is not ready to embrace liberal policies that would drastically reduce economic growth. Republicans would have an opening here, if so many of them had not persuaded themselves that global warming is a hoax.

If the public debate is confined to a choice between people who brush off public concerns and those who offer bad solutions, the latter group will win. Conservatives, right now, are not offering better solutions. And because the Republican base is not demanding those solutions, the competitive dynamic of the primary is not producing them. For most of the year, the Republican presidential debates have featured barely a word about health care, the public’s most pressing domestic concern. The leading GOP candidates have belatedly put out plans (except for Thompson, who still hasn’t) — to the seeming indifference of rank-and-file conservative voters.

Instead, the competition is taking Republicans farther and farther away from a connection with the public. Giuliani has broken with the base of the party, but only in ways that will not help with the larger electorate...Romney and Thompson, meanwhile, are fighting over who is the most conventional, paint-by-numbers conservative circa 1987. Creative domestic policy is off the table.
_______
We don’t have to support “universal coverage” on health care. But we ought to talk more about health care than about the budget; and when we talk about health care, we should explain how Republican policies will help people keep and control their own health care. We don’t have to abandon attempts to reform the tax code and to drop the top tax rate. But we should put much more effort into providing tax relief for middle-class parents. We don’t have to open the borders. But we should make it clear that our immigration policy isn’t based on anger. We don’t have to give up on the idea that sometimes the U.S. must fight wars, even going it alone; but we need to persuade people that we see unilateral military action as a last resort — that we’re not spoiling for a fight.

One unintended consequence of the Iraq War was that it took all the oxygen off the table (there's my Yogi Berra-ism for the week) for other projects. With the war (rightfully) dominating everything, there was no way Bush could seriously address the one thing that is the problem of exploding health care costs, which negatively impact every sector of the economy since employers help pay for them. It not only slows economic growth but increases the already soaring-cost of education since teachers need health care plans too. And I haven't mentioned soon-to-be-bankrupt Medicare. It's almost a sin that Bush effectively ignored this issue for eight years.

We have to use market strategies to lower the cost of health care, which would surely involve (in part) people paying for routine doctors visits that they currently get "free" or at a small cost. Because if anything is supplied for free demand increases infinitely.

New Video Meliora Policy: Pay-per-Post to Begin Next Week   

Beginning Monday November 12, posts will cost $1 per read. I will continue to post here as usual, so just send your address and I'll mail the $1. You are on your honor concerning the reading part.

Thank you,
the Mgt. *grin*

Today's Movie Recommendation

...is the 1962 film The Leopard starring Burt Lancaster. Since it was free (I rented it) there is no cost other than your time. While I don't like it nearly as much as The Lives of Others, there were a few moments of mesmerizing dialogue that I'd like to have written down. (It was based on a novel.) Film connoisseurs will want to see this movie. The set is lush; the interiors and photography magnificent. It's a bit slow at 3-hours; I think it needed a bit more editing and would be a better 2 hour 15 min movie. But again it's far better than 9.57 out of 10 crappy movies that Hollywood inflicts on us these days.

Kudos to Darwin Catholic & Pertinacious Papist

Always impressive to see someone doing some heavy lifting: fine debate between DC & PP concerning the old and new lectionary. Both parties make excellent points and shed light rather than heat. In a perfect world that's what the blogosphere would be like.

Elsewhere: the bloom is off the Rick Warren rose.

Socialism's March

One can see how seductive the welfare state is by looking at a micro case: "welfare", in this case, is the bloated bureaucracy serving our local school district. 1,601 are on the payroll, meaning any levy vote or school board vote is going to enjoy 1,601 votes right off the top, assuming they vote their self-interest.

This is pretty much how national elections go too. As more and more people benefit from government giveaways, more and more will vote to keep or extend those giveaways. Which is why even Ronald Reagan couldn't cut spending.

In the last election, the decision whether to build another high school ended up with: 8,229 FOR to 7,165 AGAINST. But if you take out the employees voting for their employer, you have 6628 FOR to 7,165 against. They basically won the election for themselves since a third high school means more jobs for teachers and, more importantly, administrators.

And this time around, for the local school board, the teachers union-endorsed candidates won. Not surprising. It had all the drama of a Soviet election.

For all the sturm und drang over the federal government, at least there is the constant white-hot spotlight of the press. At the local level, the press doesn't have the money and the populace is mostly somnolent, which allows government - including schools - to get away with an awful lot. Which also explains why the New Orleans debacle turned out as tragic as it was.

The Christian novelist nowadays is like a man who has found a treasure hidden in the attic of an old house, but he is writing for people who have moved out to the suburbs and who are bloody sick of the old house and everything in it. - Walker Percy, quoted on the "First Things" blog

CNN has been touting its program "God's Warriors," hosted by Christiane Amanpour, and I see that the network is re-airing the three-part series this week. The program is skillfully done, and precisely for this reason it illustrates the deep bias that passes for "news" and "news analysis" in our time. Bias is most effective when it is not obvious but rather built into the assumptions of a program. Here's what I mean. Imagine if CNN were to do a ten-part special on "Atheism's Warriors." The theme of the broadcast is the tens of millions of people killed by atheist regimes in our lifetime. The program begins with Christiane Amanpour noting how ironic and absurd it is that atheist pundits and ACLU lawyers wail about the crimes of religious regimes, crimes often stretching back five hundred or a thousand years, while these same gurus seem unmoved by the much more bloody legacy of atheist regimes of the twentieth century. Then follows a grisy account of the mass murders of Mao in China, Stalin in Russia, the Nazi regime in Germany, Pol Pot in Indochina, and so on. The special concludes with a focus on Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-Il, atheist dictators still alive and still killing people in the name of the atheist paradise. Haven't seen that one on CNN? Neither have I. It's because the mainstream media have blinders on and cannot see the world in this way. - Dinesh D'Souza on his AOL blog

“Liberals sell the welfare state one brick at a time, deflecting inquiries about the size and cost of the palace they’re building,” writes William Voegeli.. .Committed conservatives, meanwhile, find themselves at a disadvantage: They advocate smaller government for everybody — when Americans generally (including most Republicans) want smaller government for everybody but themselves. - Jonah Goldberg of NRO

Charismatic Catholicism has always made me a tad nervous. It isn't the speaking-in-tongues thing or even the Pentecostal-style abuses of the liturgy. It's more the certainty with which many -- though I'm sure not all -- charismatics ascribe their actions to the will of the Third Person of the Trinity and the casual manner in which they address Him. As in, "I could really feel the Holy Spirit moving me that day" or "I could sense the Holy Spirit coming through Deacon Dan during his homily this morning." (Are you sure? Perhaps you got an extra hour of sleep. Maybe Deacon Dan stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.) You've heard of "Buddy Jesus"; this Trinitarian familiarity seems like "Buddy Holy Spirit." But as any charismatic will tell you, the Church does not prescribe a one-size-fits-all spirituality. - Rich of "Ten Reasons"; opinions in "Spanning..." do not necessarily reflect my own

Mr Curley over at Bethune Catholic has started an occasional series of posts on fatherhood; today's is very good. Here's the excerpt that struck me: "I am sure some of us are quick to praise. My Dad was. I knew when he was proud of me - and so did everyone around. If he met someone he knew while we were grocery shopping, (yes, my Dad did the grocery shopping - I think it had to do with loving his wife a lot) he made a point to tell that person how proud he was of me or whichever of his children were with him. We always knew Dad would notice our goodness." I tell them at lot at home that I'm proud of them, but I'd never thought of doing it in public - letting them see me telling other people that I'm proud of them. Might have to do that, too. - Bill of "Summa Minutiae"; if we to some extent derive our image of God from our fathers then it's no wonder Mr. Curley & Mr. White are such strong Christians

The music at the reception was 1) Koto music played by one of the brides 2) Tuvan throat singing by her husband and 3) An old-time fiddler who played 19th century traditional celebration songs. -- atypical wedding music from Alicia of "Fructus Ventris", whose daughter recently married

I think seduction is always more convincing than argument. It’s about illuminating and unveiling something good and desirable instead of wielding carefully crafted arguments about the correctness of a course of action. - quote via Maureen of "Aliens in this World"

I was actually going to be on an "Ignatian spirituality" kick but when I settled in to read The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the introduction basically said "these exercises must be done with a skilled spiritual director, and if you do it on your own you'll get crappy results" (my words). Uhhh...glad I spent that $9.50. Could we maybe get a "There's No Point in Buying This" warning label on future copies? :) - Jennifer of "Et Tu?"

But if it's true that everyone you meet is fighting a great battle, per both Philo of Alexandra and C.S. Lewis's Weight of Glory, then perhaps they go about heroism vewy vewy qwietly, like Elmer Fudd in Wabbit Season, or The Incredibles when they're trying to blend in with other suburbanites. What looks like failure might not be. Me, I thought immediately of a possible contrast between Keen's quote and Mother Teresa saying that we are called to be faithful rather than to be successful --hence the old and never-really-discredited charge that "Christianity is a religion for losers."...In the realm of cinema, The English Patient is the inverse of Casablanca: The older film quietly exalts heroism while the younger, inferior film quietly debunks it....Turning again to a musical cue, as is my wont, I like to suppose that there's a reason that the saints go marching in. They do not shamble. They do not sneak. They do not sashay, crawl, clomp, duck walk, sidle, sprint, strut, shuffle, somersault, or slither. They've been through the boot camp of life on Earth, and they've fought the good fight. They answer to the King of Kings. It's going to show in how they present themselves. - "The Paragraph Farmer" via Julie of "Happy Catholic"

Puritanical Quotations

George Santayana's The Last Puritan has the sort of piquant observations that I just never see in today's novelists (not that I'm an expert on today's novelists). Here are a few selections from just the first few pages:

It was a mystery to the town how Mr. Nathaniel Alden spent his time when it was not Sunday morning. Novels he had been heard to condemn as lacerating to the feelings, and he could never bring himself to go to a theatre, even to one disguised under the decent name of the Boston Museum: that is, he declared, would be to expose the most sacred part of one's being to artificial emotion.
____
The music was classical and soothing, the service High Church Unitarian, with nothing in it either to discourage a believer or to annoy an unbeliever.
____
To think the death of a sufferer a blessing might be comforting after the event, but was shocking before.
____
Talk, Mr. Alden had discovered, was chiefly gossip, and gossip encouraged a morbid interest in matters that didn't concern one. Funerals he found the most satisfactory of social occasions, because there you expressed your human attachments without unnecessary chatter...Fortunately on Sundays the sanctity of the place seemed to extend throughout the sunken area within the railings, and under the squat granite columns; if acquaintances met there they would decently ignore each other, or at most pass with a mute bow. The blessed silence of the Sabbath saved one, at least there, from the plague of social jabbering.
____
Unless all his fortune was to be dissipated, tenants must occasionally be evicted and mortgages foreclosed. How horrible that in fulfilling as he must the evident duties of his station, he should never be at ease in his conscience! A scar of horror, if not of guilt, lay consciously on his breast, like the scarlet letter.
____
He felt a canine interest to run down the side alleys, and explore the unsavoury recesses hidden there behind corners. This was hardly a moment when he could indulge so irrational a craving. Yet dogs loved those smells probably very much as respectable people loved hob-nobbing and criticising.
____
He didn't go out for exercise. The need of exercise, he said, was a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much, and had nothing to think about.

A Love Song for Garry Wills

...in our local newspaper:

He is dependably liberal on most issues, even radical, in the Latin sense of the word, for someone who gets at the "root" of a subject, digging through the layers of error.

One would think that by now Wills would say (ala Flannery O'Connor concerning the Eucharist as symbol) that if the Catholic Church is so consistently wrong, then what the hell good is She?

Me, I prefer this radical song about Wills.

Update: Ham o' Bone astutely noticed that there's never a Dispatch praise & worship session for a conservative, so he knew Wills would have to be a liberal:

I see you read the "hit" piece on the Catholic Church in the Dogpatch. It's funny: as I read, not being fully aware of Wills's place in the religio-political universe, it came to this mind that he must be a freaking liberal LONG BEFORE the disclosure near the end of the piece. (My antennae go up the moment any Catholic is praised in the mainstream print medium: he absolutely, positively, must-be, wouldn't-ever-otherwise-be-anything-but a CINO-badge-wearing, modern-culture-swallowing leftist.)

If an orthodox Catholic ever got a puff piece in the Dispatch I'd faint dead-away.

Interesting...

From this Slate link:

The tabloids are modern versions of the Art of Dying manuals of the Middle Ages, which instructed people on how to die properly. In the medieval world, death was not something to be feared or hidden but rather, a public event, a crucial stage of life that needed to be anticipated and mastered. When death arrives at a celebrity bedside today, the tabs defy modern squeamishness and take you there to chronicle--and judge--the end. A good death, the Enquirer concluded, was had by Jimmy Stewart.

My Heroes Have Always Been Rugged Individualists

...and I used to be blessedly at peace with that until I 'got' the fact that that's not the Catholic, and therefore Christian, way. I used to consider, for example, that what one produces was purely a societal issue and not a God one. I saw modern society as a construct I did not completely buy into and thus wasn't beholden to. But there is someone who includes even as he transcends society and who does deserve my buy-in: God. And God does not want rugged individualists, I’ve been pained to learn. If I were Al Gore I'd demand a recount.

I think my appreciation for cowboy poetry was about that - about dreaming the dream of living in nature, shorn of every responsibility except for self and immediate family. My heroes had always been rugged individualists be they Christian or foe: Edward Abbey, May Sarton, Robert Ringer, Emerson, Thoreau, Sol Gordon, Norman Vincent Peale, golfer Mac O’Grady, cowboys, indians, marathoners, George Sheehan, Andy Rooney. I think Billy Graham and singer/evangelist Pat Boone influenced me to a much greater extent during the '70s than any saint or pope. I recall reading a wee bit of John XXIII's Journal of a Soul but I was so ignorant of saints that I now feel a bit forlorn that I sentimentally chose as a confirmation name the name of my grandfather. It was still about heritage in 8th grade; appears I didn't have a favorite saint and though I've recently read about St. William I think it's fair to say we're not on a first-name basis. I like to think St. Anthony's favors in the immediate post-Confirmation years would've made a difference if I'd been confirmed later, but then again I'd always considered his favors of a universal nature and not personal: he had to help me, since he was the finder of lost things and I was prone to losing things.

I figured that God makes many different kinds of people and a certain percentage are going to be individualists by the luck o' the draw. But it's really hard to read the gospel and believe that, isn't it? It doesn't seem there aren't too many Thoreaus in that drama. Was it the absence of serious catechesis in my formation that lead me to find these influences outside the Church (i.e. nature abhors a vacuum), or was it my own predilection for individualism and growing up in America, the epicenter of rugged individualism, that led me to those seers? Perhaps it’s a both/and?

Don't Read This Post if You Haven't Seen 3:10 to Yuma

* spoiler alert ahead! *

In an earlier version of a film about the sinking of the Titanic, the ending came with the hope and consolation of God, in the form of the band playing "Nearer, My God" and a priest leading the doomed passengers in prayers. In James Cameron's incarnation, the hope of human love has eclipsed God, in the form of imagining the two main charactes reuniting some day (though that is in line with the hope of resurrection). Similarly, in the movie "The Perfect Storm", God is not invoked by the doomed fishermen but human love is, and predictably not between a husband and wife but between a boyfriend and girlfriend.

The latest incarnation of the trend is 3:10 to Yuma, which I'll put in "invisible ink" for web viewers (just scroll your cursor over it to read). For those who read via a feed, please skip this: In the original 3:10 to Yuma, the protagonist lives. In the latest 3:10 to Yuma, the protagonist dies. It's as if filmmakers these days see happy endings as "cheesey", as something only Christians would believe. And indeed one agnostic we know refuses to believe the Christian faith simply because of the ending. Heaven is seen as simply wishful thinking.