| A strange loop.
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| A strange loop.
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The Great American Melting PotAubrey Turner posts on the growing number of immigrants, primarily hispanic, who do not end up learning English. He is worried, both because this limits their success, and because it tends to factionalize us. I would like to note two things: 1) the people who most promote the multiculturalist idiocy are the same who benefit from it (and I don't mean the immigrants themselves, but the victimization advocates), and 2) there is cause for more hope than Aubrey lets on.
The cause for hope is simply this: our nation has always been this way. The initial generation of immigrants speak only their native language. Their children are bilingual, and in the third generation only English is spoken. I share Aubrey's concerns that we are, as a nation, slowing this process, and that doing so tends to marginalize the new immigrants. I do have faith, though, in the ability of immigrants to realize that speaking English is in their own interest, all carping by those who wish to have the immigrants as a captive audience aside.
Deporting ImmigrantsThe Supreme Court yesterday upheld a controversial 1996 law:
The government can imprison immigrants it is seeking to deport without first giving them a chance to show that they present neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, a divided Supreme Court ruled today.The 5-to-4 decision upheld the mandatory-detention provisions of a 1996 immigration law as applied to a substantial category of aliens who are lawful permanent residents of the United States and who have been convicted of any of a number of drug crimes and other "aggravated" offenses.
On the other hand, the Constitution does not require that a law be sensible or morally upstanding; only that it be passed by the methods given in the Constitution, and accord with powers granted the government by the Constitution. Since it is generally held that these powers include the right to control who can and cannot legally remain in the country, providing that they are not citizens, and since the law was passed in the normal manner, the Supreme Court's decision was a good one. Now that the Supreme Court has so decided, it would be a good idea to get this law amended, rather than letting such an unreasonable law stay on the books.
By the way, a citizen "owns" living in America, while a non-citizen is essentially here as a guest of the government (as Cato points out, so there is a due process argument to be made for citizens that would not apply to non-citizens.
Post-ModernismVinod has interesting comments on post-modernism here and here. Also see Sgt. Stryker's post here and here.
Prospects of a Political Axis ShiftRobin Goodfellow a an interesting article about the prospects for a political axis shift in US domestic politics, where the issues being discussed totally change, and the political parties reform into a new pair (possibly with the same names but with vastly different agendas). (Thanks to Instapundit for the link.) I think that there is a good chance that Robin is correct. After all, there are a lot of issues out there that do not break cleanly along party lines (the war on terrorism being only one) and there are a lot of people who don't feel connected to the major parties. When they become convinced they have an alternative, those voters change things. Witness Jesse Ventura's race for governorship, for instance. Robin's suggestion of where the parties might reform is certainly plausible.
What is lacking, I think, is a charismatic leader. If someone like Colin Powell or Zell Miller were to come out and say, hey, we need a third option, and here's what it should be, then I think we could see a rapid formation of a new meaningful political party. It can't be about that charismatic leader though - that's the fate that Perot suffered, because people wanted him to be something he couldn't, so the Reform Party eventually and inevitably self-destructed. Even then, though, I'm not entirely convinced that such a part could survive for long.
I think that the breaking points in future American politics will be Federal vs. State control, which includes the debates about government size, taxes, protection of individual liberties and so forth; the war against terrorism and rogue states developing nuclear weapons; and immigration. I think that if a group of well-known political figures were to form a party with the stated principles of transferring most governmental and tax authority back to the States, vigorously prosecuting the war on terrorism while otherwise pulling back from overseas commitments, and allowing much easier immigration, such a party could easily pull about 1/3 of the Democrats and a similar proportion of Republicans into its fold. A large number of independents might also fold in, and at that point, there would be the possibility of real change. It's certainly possible, too, that the opposing parties would reform into a single party pushing massive Federal control and nanny-state welfare provisions combined with very restricted immigration and even greater intrusions on individual liberties in the name of "security." Such a part would likely, as the moderates got pushed out of it, become isolationist as well.
Certainly, it will be interesting.
Spluttering IndignationI can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm going to fisk a teacher. OK, I can believe it. This article was posted online, but then deleted from the page. Poor Ms. Flynn doesn't seem to understand that on the Internet, you can't take back what you say. Because the article is no longer online where it was originally posted, I am going to quote the entire article, even the parts I don't say anything about directly.
FLINT JOURNAL COLUMN
GENESEE COUNTYTHE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Sunday, April 13, 2003
By Kelly Flynn
JOURNAL COLUMNISTThe public school system takes a lot of bashing at the hands of the media and politicians. Some of it's justified. Most of it's not. And having taught there for almost 20 years, I'm certainly aware of its strengths and weaknesses.
But when it comes to a well-rounded education that prepares students for the world of work and for functioning in a global society, the public school system can't be beat.
They take everyone.
Blind, deaf, learning disabled, mentally impaired or non-English speaking,
public schools take them all and provide the services they need.
And in my experience, that's exactly what some parents don't like about the public school system.
And for that matter, the government schools should be tax advantaged only to the point of provision of infrastructure. The per-child costs should be given to the parents of the children (in voucher form, if you want to ensure that the parents don't use the money on new cars every year or two). They can then be given back to the public school (which would by law have to provide an education for exactly the amount given to the parents, and would use that money for teacher salaries, textbooks, classroom materials and administrators' salaries), or used to defer private tuition, or used for homeschooling supplies and educational trips. Yes, yes, I know that this would vastly reduce the number of government-employed teachers, and make it necessary for teachers to actually be able to, say, teach in order to hold down a job (otherwise, parents won't allow their students (and the associated money) anywhere near those teachers).
Still, I believe that parents should have choices when it comes to educating their children.
Charter schools and parochial schools are great options.The educational choice that confounds me, though, is home schooling.
Why would parents choose to isolate their children from a rich and varied learning environment?
Why would parents choose to pull their children out of the real world and shelter them from the very society that they will ultimately have to live and work in?
It's perplexing.
In extenuating circumstances home schooling is the only viable alternative, such as in the case of a long-term illness. I'm not talking about those situations.
But many times in my career I observed parents choosing to home school to keep their child away from a certain "element" in the public school system that they deemed to be unsavory, to isolate their kids in what seemed to me to be an unhealthy way.
School is more than just academics,
and parents do kids a disservice when they try to protect their kids from the real world.
Wouldn't it be more logical to teach them to function effectively in it?
To me, the most compelling reason for sending a child to a public school is because the public school environment reflects the real world: competition, teamwork, cooperation and simply interacting with a wide variety of people are part of the experience, as they are in society.
The social setting in a school is ripe with learning experiences.
People from all walks of life go to public schools: rich, poor, smart, dumb, bullies, sissies, all cultures and ethnicities. And guess what? When kids grow up they are going to have to work with people from all walks of life: rich, poor, smart, dumb, bullies, sissies, and all cultures and ethnicities.
Even with the help of home schooling organizations, home-schooled children are often shortchanged.
The worst public school has more to offer in the way of resources than most parents can offer at home, such as science labs, technology, foreign language, theater, large and varied curriculums, textbooks, a variety of multi-media lesson support, clubs and sports.
Science doesn't come from a lab. While we will provide the equipment and facilities necessary to basic experimentation in science (more, in fact, than I was provided in government schools), the more important part of science education is learning the method, and knowing when to trust scientific claims and when not to do so. This doesn't require a lab, and in fact the lab can detract from it, by putting results from experiments with known answers before (and in most cases in place of) understanding.
OK, we don't have a Dukayne projector. We do have multiple computers (one just for the kids), videos and DVDs, and will get what we need when we need it. I am hard-pressed to think of any technology that the public schools can provide that we cannot.
I speak German, though I am woefully out of practice. My wife speaks Spanish somewhat, though she is out of practice there too. There is a smattering of Irish and Welsh between us. We are going to teach the boys Latin, and we will learn along with them. We will likely also teach them other languages, particularly Spanish, which is in wide usage in this area.
A friend's daughter was in several plays at the local children's playhouse. We'll probably do the same, if the kids are interested. All of the sets, stages, costumes, scripts and so forth are available. No government sponsorship required.
I cannot begin to go into the curriculum resources available to homeschoolers. There are hundreds of curricula, on dozens of major and many more minor subject areas. We probably have a half-dozen curricula in our house right now, and we use the bits and pieces of them that work to help us teach our boys. Admittedly, we don't have the tendency of government school teachers to stick rigidly to a curriculum regardless of its ability to convey meaning to our kids, but I think we'll be OK on that score, too.
I refuse to use textbooks which ignore the important basics while striving to offend no one and manipulate the truth in order to make political points. Since this covers most textbooks, we prefer to rely on encyclopedias, real books, and source materials. The bedtime story for my two older boys for the last couple of weeks has been Jim Lovell's Lost Moon, about the Apollo 13 mission. We have libraries around us, and our own book collection, and we are constantly buying books as well. I somehow don't think the kids will suffer for lack of textbooks.
It is true that we don't offer a wide range of "multi-media lesson support," as we prefer to rely on actual teaching rather than gimmicks. But then again, I suppose it matters how you define "multi-media lesson support." While any given lesson may not have a movie, followed by computer games, followed by reading from a textbook, followed by discussion, followed by drawing a picture of how solving for a variable makes the kids feel about the necessity of defining a numeric problem space in such a way that it makes sense to talk about "solving for a variable," the lessons are repeated over and over again in different media. Not only is Lost Moon their current bedtime story, but the kids have toys of rockets and astronauts, and they have seen both movies and documentaries covering the space program, and we have a variety of other space books around, and I'm seriously considering building an Apollo command module from plans I found online.
My oldest son is playing baseball this year. For a while he was going to chess club as well, but he kind of lost interest in that. Maybe later. In any case, there are a variety of clubs and sports available to us; probably in the end not much different than what's available to government school students - certainly not much different than what was available to me when I was in school.
The teaching staff in a public school can be colorful, too.
A variety of teaching and evaluation styles forces a student to grow as a learner.
Teachers are even trained to teach to multiple intelligences.
How many parents can say the same?
Although I have a teaching certificate,
I know that I couldn't come close to giving my children the education they could get in a public school.
I couldn't possibly offer the depth and breadth of education that I know my colleagues offer every day.
Sure, I could go to the home-schooling store and buy a book on say, history, and I could read the chapters and assign the accompanying assignments. I could check the answers using the answer key. We could even take a trip to Greenfield Village. But could I offer the same depth of understanding as someone who chose to teach history because of a passion for it, someone who is an expert in the field?
Of course not. I would be a weak substitute, and I know it.
Parents who home-school their children have their reasons, of course. But the effects of what these students are missing remain to be seen.
All in all, a public education is the best deal around. It's a great training ground for the real world and, even better, it's free.
***Kelly Flynn, a former area teacher, lives in Fenton Township. You can contact her at flynnkelly@earthlink.net.
The Souls of Black FolkThe Wall Street Journal has a great piece by Shelby Steele. Go, read. It's really good.
Prerequisites for a Stable and Free StateDavid Plotz has a good article on MSNBC (originally from Slate, with a hat tip to Porphyrogenitus for the link) about the prerequisites for a stable, free state in Iraq. I like a lot of what he said, but would like to take issue with a few of his contentions, and point out some things he didn't mention.
Mr. Plotz's sixth (of seven) pre- or co-requisites is to "[l]et the United Nations organize the political process." The intent is to show that the new government is not a puppet of the US. This is an odd way to show that. Given the UN's corruption, ineptness and beholdenness to autocrats, they are unlikely to be able to rebuild Iraq as a free nation in any sense - even as far as guaranteeing free elections. Worse, many Iraqis deeply distrust the UN, because the UN wanted Saddam to remain in power. I don't think that any real legitimacy in Iraq will flow from the UN, and history suggests that such a course would be ruinous.
Wouldn't it be better, overall, if we were to organize elections at the local level, using Iraqi poll workers, getting ballots printed in Iraqi print shops and the like, with the US just providing the organization and advice as to how to do it? The US would probably have to conduct a census first, and set up a system for voter registration. Since all of the workers doing the job would be Iraqi, the US would have no hand in choosing who would run as candidates or who would be elected; we would just provide the organization and resources (and security) to allow it to happen. We should provide bodyguards, by the way, to all of the candidates, with no option for the candidate to refuse. This would not only prevent the assassinations of pro-Western figures in the South, it would also make the radical Islamist candidates accept US military bodyguards, removing an argument they could use to make the pro-Western candidates look like puppets.
Once the local elections were held, and the local governments set up, we could move onto regional governance. The local governments would decide which of their powers were delegated upwards to the regional governments. We would probably require a few powers to be delegated up in whole or in part, but for the most part each region would decide for themselves how much power they want to remain local, and how much they want to centralize. There would be significant time requirements to set up the electoral bodies and organize the elections. This would provide the delay recommended by Mr. Plotz's first point. In addition, this would provide time for the polity to settle out, while allowing people to taste freedom slowly, rather than drinking it from a firehose. After the regional elections were held, the national government could be set up, on a similar process. In other words, the regional governments (I believe the Iraqis call them provinces) would send the delegates who would make up the constitutional convention for the national government, in the same way that local governments would send the delegates for the regional constitutional conventions.
Again, at the national level we would have certain requirements that we would compel into the Constitution (certain freedoms necessary to the maintenance of the society, some kind of federalism, separation of powers, as well as prohibitions on weapons of mass destruction - we would probably also force a 10-year or so ban on modifying the Constitution to remove those parts we required to be there). For the most part, though, at each level, it would be the Iraqis determining not only who will govern, but to what extent and in which ways they can govern. By putting a time limit into the national Constitution which would require some period to pass before necessary limitations and freedoms could be removed, we would both show that we are committed to keeping the Iraqis free, and that we don't intend to indefinitely force them into our model of governance. The time limit would allow Iraq, for example, to get rid of freedom of speech later and replace it with a more limited form (banning criticism of Mohammed, for example, by Constitutional amendment would almost certainly occur in an Islamic nation). While we may not like these choices, we are showing that we do not intend to prevent the Iraqis from making them, and we tell them when that time will come.
Mr. Plotz left out a couple of preconditions, too, that I think need to be addressed. A free market, with transparency at all levels, is a pre-requisite for democracy to succeed. Without this, the ability of individuals to act in their own best interest is at best strongly curtailed. And since it is the freedom we are hoping to establish in Iraq, we will first have to set up a banking system and financial markets (not necessarily elaborate ones) and these institutions will need to be trusted.
Freedom of travel between regions and into and out of the country are prerequisites. That way, if the South wants to impose Sharia law, they can (at least to an extent, as moderated by freedoms granted in the putative national Constitution). But they cannot prevent you from leaving the area, and so not being subject to those laws. Since you could retain your residence there, and vote absentee (I assume we'd set this up as part of the election system), those laws would not necessarily be permanent. That's life in a free country, guys.
Restriction of the vote will be necessary, but not in the way that is traditional in Islamic countries that allow any kind of voting. That is to say, we won't disqualify women, homosexuals and such from voting. We would disqualify high-ranking Baathists, torturers and the like. We would disqualify violent criminals, clearly. We would likely want to find a way to bar clerics associated with Iran. In other words, we'd seek out and prevent from voting (at least until Iraq completely controls its own destiny ten years or so down the line) those people who would work hardest to overthrow the free society and replace it with a tyranny.
Some way will have to be found of giving the Iraqis more to lose by handing control to an autocrat than they stand to gain by having a free society. One way to handle this would be to create a state oil revenue sharing program, similar to what happens in Alaska, with modifications to take local conditions into account. Anyone who was registered to vote would gain a share in the oil wealth of the nation, and the profits would be doled out periodically (quarterly is preferable to annually, since people see the money as more of a steady income) based on the shares one holds. It would be necessary to prevent the sale or transfer of those shares for some time, so that people would not take a quick, raw deal (as happened in the former USSR) rather than an uncertain future profit. They need a history of getting money from the share to realistically evaluate offers made to them to sell the shares. In addition to the economic benefit so provided, such a program would have the benefit of making it important to the Iraqi people to keep governments in charge which wouldn't expropriate the oil "for the nation" or "for the people."
Finally, I believe that it will be necessary to provide regulatory and enforcement authority to government agencies (including police, property registration, etc) before the indigenous executive agencies are formed. There's a lot to say for habit, and if we set up procedures while those agencies are reporting to American or British governors, those procedures will likely carry over once the Iraqis themselves run the executive branch of government. This would go a long way towards ensuring against the immediate erosion of the "small liberties" which are so vital to people feeling free.
Sometimes, the Parents are the ProblemTammy McQuoid points to this article by Tim Grobaty, which states in part:
Jenkins is working on a project researching the effects of the '33 quake on schools in the Long Beach Unified School District. If you're one of those who attended class 'neath the eucalyptus in Rec Park, or on the athletic field at Poly, or in the tent-like bungalows at Jefferson or at any of the other al fresco post-quake campuses in town, you can contact Jenkins via e-mail at pjen kins@lbusd.k12.ca.us . OUR NERVOUS, NURTURING SIDE: According to this alarming missive from the American Red Cross, "Now, more than ever before, youth are relying on the adults in their lives for reassurance and guidance.'This is bad news for our kids, who have been raised thus far with an incredibly jumpy father. A UPS truck rumbles down our block and we're apt to scream "EARTHQUAKE!' and snatch our kids and hurl them through the living room picture window for their own safety. About the most reassuring thing we've ever uttered to our children is "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!'
This is why we're totally against home-schooling. We rely on schools not only to teach our kids about guns and sex, but also about the horrors of war, terrorism and other traumatic events. Because, after you strip away our almost transparent veneer of bravado, we're pretty much always packed and ready to bolt.
Civil ReconstructionPhil Carter of Intel Dump asks, Does the Army need more military police? He gives a reasoned analysis.
So many of the missions the Army has today are to do things that MPs are good at: nation-building, peacekeeping, anti-terrorism/force protection, and other police-style missions. In the Balkans, we've succeeded by hammering square infantry units into round MP holes for a long time, with significant training and institutional costs. I've thought for some time that the right answer would be to create larger, rapidly-deployable MP units that could be used for these kinds of missions. Current practice is to give peacekeeping missions to a large combat unit (e.g. an infantry brigade) with 1-3 MP companies attached in support. The MPs just get used for specialized missions, like riot control, while the infantry do the bulk of the MP-style missions like running checkpoints, patrols, etc. It might make more sense to invert this relationship, and build more MP brigades capable of managing peacekeeping missions with an infantry company as a quick-response force.Furthermore, moving units from the reserves to the active force isn't that simple either. It costs money to do so, and it would require an adjustment in the military's end strength (or cutting of personnel from other areas). Privatizing law enforcement on military bases sounds good, but it would have a real impact on MP training. The reason MPs are so good is because they practice their peacekeeping skills every day they're doing law enforcement. Granted, there's a big difference between patrolling Fort Hood and patrolling Baghdad. But there's a lot of similarity too, especially in the abilities to work within restrictive rules of engagement and employ forceful interpersonal communication skills. So it's not clear this is the answer either.
So, when it comes time to stop the fighting, it is generally the US that is called on. This call is begun with admonitions that the US isn't doing enough to secure world peace, and ended with accusations of imperialism and "trying to be the world's policeman." The exact point of criticism on the imperialism scale is inversely proportional to how interested the US is in actually expending blood and treasure to secure an area. The more we want to be involved, the more imperialistic we are, and the less we want to be involved, the more isolationist and arrogant we are. Either way, we are to be called stupid, jingoistic and unilateralist.
When fighting is ended, the UN wants to be in charge of the aftermath (none of the blame if it went badly, all of the credit if it went well), in order to bring in aid and reconstruct a working society. The UN is generally good at providing aid, though it is massively inefficient. However, it is manifestly incompetent at constituting an efficient, responsive, representative and tolerant government (witness Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan (too early to call - and the US might step back in more), Cambodia, Rwanda, Haiti). The record, as the list of countries just given demonstrates, is uniformly pathetic. At best, the UN is no help. At worst (and usually), it actively prevents such a government forming. Here's an interesting bit about Cambodia, just as an example. (If blogspot's archives are broken, it's the article from April 25 titled DEMOLISHING THE OLD CANARD OF " MORAL EQUIVALENCE ".)
So given that the UN model depends at its base on US power, and given that the points where the UN takes over almost always result in a breakdown (are there counterexamples that don't involve the US?), and given that the UN is going to continue to actively oppose the US attempt to lift the Middle East out of its self-imposed medievalism, the question needs to be, "How will the US rebuild failed states when it intervenes?" To answer that question requires a broader answer than Phil Carter gave, and turns his assumption a little on its head.
First, it is a given, I think, that the US military will be the primary instrument creating the conditions for recreating the state, whether that be toppling a tyrannical government, or imposing order on anarchy. In the wake of that military intervention, however, we have a few viable options. Phil Carter's argument, to create company-sized units of MPs specifically for the purpose, using civilian contractors or some other means to take over current non-combat MP duties, is one of those options. I think that there is a better answer.
In the aftermath of war, in most of the situations I've ever studied, there are several situations overlayed on each other simultaneously. First, there is active combat going on in some places, frequently against small bands of guerillas. Second, there is civil anarchy in most areas that are not in the immediate zone of control of the armed forces. Third, some areas have a spontaneous arising of civil leadership, and relatively quick return to peaceful conditions, even without outside assistance. Fourth, there is massive infrastructure damage. Fifth, food, water and medical care are in short supply. Sixth, the range of reactions to the situation spans the range from joy through relief to unease to outright animosity. Seventh, there are criminals, agents of other nations, agents of the deposed faction(s) and agents of formerly-repressed factions all trying to grab as much power as they can as quickly as they can.
The military is good at the combat aspects of this. For the non-combat aspects, there are combat engineers and civil affairs and military police units, as well as the special forces, which are good at much of rest, but they are in short supply and have combat-support missions in most cases. There are generally not any units skilled in building civil governments at any levels other than the very local. I believe, given these factors and how much we will (at least for the next generation) be having to rebuild failed states, that we should create a specialist organization specifically for that purpose.
While this organization could be placed in the State Department or as a stand-alone agency, I contend that its best place to be is as part of the Defense Department, as a branch of service co-equal with the Army, Navy or Air Force. This would allow the combat commander direct control over and call on the organization, so that they would be integrated into the combat plan; would allow separate but integrated equipment acquisition, training and doctrine; and would place the organization in a position to operate as a matter of course in warzones (which would be very handy, and which the State Department for example couldn't provide). As a side benefit, it would also avoid the problems caused by career civil-service protections, particularly of ossification of ideas. Finally, it would make it easier to beef up security patrols, when needed, with soldiers or Marines, than if the organization were not part of the Defense Department.
Such an organization would need engineers of all kinds to rebuild infrastructure; security forces to impose and maintain order; huge amounts of translators to facilitate communications; administrators to quickly set up a functioning government; lawyers and courts to establish and maintain the rule of law; constitutional scholars and historians to advise the newly-liberated on how to set up an Enlightenment-based state within their local customs and traditions; doctors and nurses and medics to establish health care; and a host of other skills. Basically, what we would be creating would be the nucleus of a functioning state, which can be put rapidly in place just behind the front lines - when an area is secure but not necessarily completely in our control.
If we were to do this, I believe that the amount, severity and duration of anarchy in the wake of our military operations would be minimized. In addition, factional fighting not directed at our military would also be reduced. Because of these, the prospects for a successful state rapidly arising in the wake of our military action would be dramatically improved, and the reception we get from the local population would also be improved.
This kind of organization would have been invaluable in Kosovo, Panama and Iraq, and will be invaluable in the future. I think it's a better solution than the narrower one of increasing the amount and role of MPs, though obviously it incorporates that idea within it.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention funding. We pay $2.4billion or so to the UN every year, and billions more to other agencies that would be undertaking activities made redundant by having a US agency for civil reconstruction. The net cost would be small, really.
The Dangers of Media ConsolidationTim Blair has a great post about media consolidation. Since Tim's on blogspot, and their archives are frelled, I've copied the whole thing below.
TED TURNER, the vice chairman of AOL Time Warner CNN Sports Illustrated People Entertainment Weekly Fortune Money In Style Real Simple Time For Kids Sports Illustrated For Kids Teen People People en Español Fortune Small Business Business 2.0 Southern Living Progressive Farmer Southern Accents Sunset Cooking Light Coastal Living For the Love of Cross Stitch For the Love of Quilting Parenting Baby Talk Health In Style U.K. In Style Australia In Style Germany Time Asia Time Canada Time Atlantic Time Latin America Time South Pacific Wallpaper* Who Weekly Popular Science Outdoor Life Field & Stream Golf Magazine Yachting Motor Boating Salt Water Sportsman Ski Skiing Freeze This Old House TransWorld Stance TransWorld Surf TransWorld Skateboarding TransWorld Snowboarding TransWorld Motocross TransWorld Surf BMX Ride BMX Skiing Trade News TransWorld Skateboarding Business TransWorld Snowboarding Business TransWorld Surf Business BMX Business News Amateur Gardening Amateur Photographer Angler's Mail Cage & Aviary Birds Chat Country Life Cycling Weekly Horse & Hound NME Now Shooting Times & Country Magazine Woman Woman's Own Woman's Weekly Woman's Feelgood Series Woman's Own Lifestyle Series Woman's Weekly Home Series TV & Satellite Week TVTimes What's On TV Mizz Mizz Specials Webuser Caravan Magazine The Guitar Magazine VolksWorld World Soccer Beautiful Homes Bird Keeper Cars & Car Conversions Chat Passion Series Classic Boat Country Homes & Interiors Creating Beautiful Homes Cycle Sport Decanter Essentials Eventing Family Circle Golf Monthly Hi-Fi News Homes & Gardens Horse Ideal Home Land Rover World Livingetc Loaded Marie Claire MBR-Mountain Bike Rider MiniWorld Model Collector Motor Caravan Motor Boat & Yachting Motor Boats Monthly Muzik 19 Now Style Series 4x4 Park Home & Holiday Caravan Practical Boat Owner Practical Parenting Prediction Racecar Engineering The Railway Magazine Rugby World Ships Monthly Soaplife Sporting Gun Stamp Magazine The Field The Golf Uncut What Digital Camera Woman & Home Yachting Monthly Yachting World Aeroplane Monthly Superbike Women & Golf Shoot Monthly Hair Wedding & Home Women's Weekly Fiction Special International Boat Industry Farm Holiday Guides Jets Time Life Inc. Oxmoor House Lesiure Arts Sunset Books Media Networks, Inc. First Moments Targeted Media Inc. Time Inc, Custom Publishing Synapse Time Distribution Services Time Inc. Home Entertainment Time Customer Service Warner Publishing Services This Old House Ventures, Inc. TimePix Essence Communications Partners European Magazines Limited Avantages S.A. CompuServe ICQ MapQuest Moviefone Netscape AOL Music Little, Brown and Company Adult Trade Books Warner Books Little, Brown and Company Children's Publishing Bulfinch Press Warner Faith Time Warner AudioBooks Time Warner Books UK HBO Cinemax Comedy Central HBO Asia HBO Brasil HBO Czech HBO Hungary HBO India HBO Korea HBO Ole HBO Poland HBO Romania A&E Mundo E! Latin America SET Latin America WBTV Latin America Latin America History Channel New Line Cinema Fine Line Features Bay News 9, Tampa, FL Central Florida News 13, Orlando, FL News 8 Austin, TX NY1 News, New York, NY R/News, New York, NY News 14, Carolina Time Warner Telecom, Inc. inDemand Kansas City Cable Partners Texas Cable Partners TBS Superstation Turner Network Television Cartoon Network Turner Classic Movies Turner South Boomerang TCM Europe Cartoon Network Europe TNT Latin America Cartoon Network Latin America TCM & Cartoon Newtwork Asia Pacific CNN International CNNfn CNN en Español CNNRadio CNN Newsource CNNMoney.com CNN Student News CNNSI.com Cartoon Network Japan Court TV CETV Castle Rock Entertainment Telepictures Productions Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Consumer Products Warner Bros. International Theatre Looney Tunes Hanna-Barbera DC Comics MAD Magazine The Atlantic Recording Corporation Elektra Entertainment Group Inc. Warner Bros. Records Inc. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Alternative Distribution Alliance Giant Merchandising Rhino Entertainment WMG Soundtracks Ivy Hill Corporation, claims that too few people own too many media organisations.
"It's not healthy," Turner added.
Blue Angels...Bomb...Seattle???You just have to read it to believe it. I linked to the Natalie Solent article because it links to some other interesting ones. If her archives don't work (she's on blogspot, why should they?), the article is titled Want a little anger before you go to sleep tonight? and is from April 24.
The Fruits of SocialismThis article does a good job of taking apart the "International Bill of Rights" propounded by a bunch of Berkeley academics and lawyers. This "Bill of Rights" is, basically, an attempt to impose socialism worldwide. I wish I could say it was a joke. This, in a nutshell, is the ideology that we must defeat if the Enlightenment values are to be preserved in the West.
His Majesty's RequestHis Majesty demands death threats. See:
I DEMAND death threats!!!
Rarr! I am the Rumsfeld Strangler, and I am going to strangle you! RARR!
Mental ImageWhat you have to do, see, is get the image in your head of this cute, blonde little two-year old watching a T-Rex ravage its prey and saying "Big giant rarr eat num-num."
I bet, though, with just a little work, I could get him to yell "Big giant rarr" whenever Rumsfeld comes on TV.
After all, isn't that what kids are for?
The Griffin DictionarySo here is the current list of words that Griffin (age 2 1/2) uses for things:
beep beep - a bird
big giant rarr - a dinosaur, rather than Don Rumsfeld
blue Stee - Blue's Clues, with Steve - NOT Joe
blue wo wo - Thomas the Tank Engine
chop - a potato or corn chip
deet dah - here I am; there it is
doey - Uncle Brian
doochee - Lachlan (younger brother)
doochee hide - I can't find whatever it is you're asking about
eat num num - any food
joo - juice
me - I want that
meow - a cat
mmmmmm, beep beep - a ride on the shoulders, while making car sounds
mmmm beep beep - a Magic Schoolbus video
mm beep beep - any vehicle
mod - generic parent; usually the father, though
moe - I would like more to drink, or eat, please. Context is everything, so don't get it wrong, 'kay?
moo - a cow
nee - I would like something to drink, or eat, please. Context is everything, so don't get it wrong, 'kay?
neek - a snake, or anything long and thin and flexible
ni' ni' - I want to go to bet
no - snow (also, no man, no ball, etc)
oh ee - OK
ree - broccoli
sheesh - sit with me
shop - a ship
shop moon - any mechanical thing that flies (apparently, all aircraft fly to the moon in Griffin's world)
show - a shoe
show me - I will show you
sky - the sun
star moon - any celestial body, except the sun or moon
tee - any dark drink ; tea, soda, etc.
up high - I want either a drink, or chocolate or berries or something else stored in the freezer
whee - spin me around
whee high - swing me from side to side as high as you can, except not too high because that can be scarey
woof - a dog
wo wo - a train
Reverse History ProjectI've been thinking for some time about what I see as a great problem in the way that history is taught in the US - and as far as I can tell, worldwide. That problem is that history is not taught either as relevant to the present and future, or as actually interesting. For example, I don't know anyone who was publicly-schooled, including myself, who had a history education that reached past WWII. In my case, everything after the progressive movement in the 1890s-1910s was just rushed through, so that we'd get done with WWII by the end of the year. Most history I've ever been taught, and much of that that I've read on my own, tends to be pretty dry, telling the facts without telling the human stories behind them.
Here's how I think about history. There are questions I want answers to, such as (to pick a current event) why is the Israeli-Palestinian problem so intractable, or why are all of the Arab nations dictatorships. These questions have answers that are in the near past. Actually, the answers to both of the questions I posed goes back to the colonial occupation of the Middle East, and how it fell apart. Each of these questions actually breaks down into several questions, once you have about a three-paragraph summary of the answer to the first question. This continues back through history, with the questions of import to us today stretching back into the mists of time. In every case, that answer has to do with people, and their motivations for their actions, and how they reacted to the world around them.
So, what I've been thinking about doing, is creating a list of important questions that need to be answered, and answering them. The answers would each be at most a few pages long, and at most would cover only a few years of events (at least in the near past) that explain the answer to the question. The focus of the answer would be on the events that occurred, and who was involved, and why they acted the way they did. Each of these answers would then be followed by a list of questions that arise from that answer. Some of these questions would lead to events immediately preceding (in time) the answer just given, while others would reach further back. Multiple questions might lead back to the same answer (a lot, for example, leads back to WWII either directly or indirectly).
The idea, then is to have short bursts of history, focused not only on the events but on the people and why they did what they did, which lead to multiple other short bursts of history.
Note that this would have to be somewhat dispassionate, as inevitably political viewpoints would be caught up in this otherwise, to the detriment of the actual events. This is not for spinning, but for understanding. Also, the focus would be to keep things simple, so that a child could understand, but to neither hide things to "protect" children nor to dumb things down.
So now, my questions for you:
Thanks for your input.
Think You've Seen the Worst of the Clintons?Not yet you haven't, but you will. Excerpt:
Brill, who defended the Clintons throughout the Monica Lewinsky impeachment scandal, said that efforts to mislead him began after the former first lady got word he was writing his 9/11 book. She actually sought him out at the Ground Zero ceremony commemorating the first anniversary of the attacks. "I hear you want to talk to me about your book," he recalls her saying.
Regulations and Space FlightTransterrestrial Musings linked to this MSNBC article, which talks a bit about the regulatory hurdles to space flight. Here is an interesting paragraph, bearing on the costs of certification I discussed below (in the comments).
Another savvy decision by Rutan: He won’t put SpaceShipOne through the FAA certification necessary for commercial aircraft to carry passengers. That process, which can take years, has cost firms like Boeing and Airbus up to 10 times the price of development.
Honor and DishonorThe Weekly Standard has an article on winners and losers in the war, and where honor is granted. It has this interesting paragraph (actually the whole article is interesting):
The funhouse of the postmodern academics was built around the two closely related themes of postmodernism and multiculturalism. Together they displaced the idea of truth and its cousin, empirical evidence, with the notion of "narrativity." All the world was simply words. There was no reality, just a series of competing stories all of which were mere social constructs and none of which was more correct than any other. In political terms, the campus postmodernists identified with the pre-modern rebels against modernity in the Arab world. But with the war in Iraq, those on campuses who, like Al Jazeera, believed "Baghdad Bob's" account of events discovered that lo and behold there is such a thing as an empirically grounded reality.
Libertarian with a Small 'L'Down below the "More..." link below is a Libertarian Party press release, which demonstrates a major reason that I cannot be a member of that party, despite my generally-libertarian political and philosophical leanings. In summary, the release is an example of the Libertarian Party belief that foreign intervention is always wrong. Certainly, they would make the exception that if we were to be attacked, the nation that attacked us could be fought overseas. However, they tend to not draw any connections between September 11 and anything else (including Afghanistan - I don't have the letter but it was somewhat like the one below in tone).
What bunk! I certainly can see a principled position which states that if the US were to withdraw to the status of minor power, we'd be in far fewer wars. This is likely true. It's even possible that, with the European addiction to social spending and the Chinese tendency to only care about power in a regional sense, rather than in a global sense, we would not be in many wars if we didn't aggressively defend our interests overseas. The problem is that this approach takes account of neither the lethality of modern weapons (one attack with nuclear weapons on an American city is unacceptable) nor of the presence of non-state actors in foreign affairs. In other words, the Libertarian Party is stuck in the 1780s. And what a shame, because libertarianism is a direct child of the Enlightenment. If only we could harness the desire for minimalist government and individual natural rights, there would be a great value in the Libertarian Party. As it is, the party is a bunch of crackpots with a few useful people involved. Here is a quote from the press release:
As the war winds down it's clear what its legacy will include: the
death of thousands of innocent people; more embittered, anti-American
Arabs in search of revenge; another frustrating foray into nation-
building; massive economic costs for the American people; and a
framework for expanded, global war.Is that really worth celebrating?
Given all of this, yeah, it's really worth celebrating.
===============================
OP-ED FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100
Washington DC 20037
World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org
===============================
For release: April 16, 2003
===============================
For additional information:
George Getz, Communications Director
Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222
E-Mail: GeorgeGetz@hq.LP.org
===============================
What have we really won in Iraq?
By Geoffrey Neale
Iraqis have been freed from the clutches of a ruthless dictator, and
that certainly is worth celebrating.
But what else has been gained from the speedy victory over Saddam
Hussein's regime?
Thus far the main justification for the invasion -- to protect the
United States from weapons of mass destruction -- remains unfulfilled,
since no such weapons have been found.
A secondary goal of the invasion -- to bring genuine democracy to Iraq
-- appears to be a long shot at best, according to most foreign policy
analysts.
Over 100 coalition soldiers were killed, wounded or taken captive.
An uncounted, and perhaps uncountable, number of innocent Iraqi men,
women, and children were killed or maimed, and a nation of 23 million
people lies in smoldering ruins as looters pick through the rubble.
The graphic TV images of the U.S. bombing campaign broadcast on Arab
networks may yet spawn "a thousand bin Ladens," warn terrorism experts,
while no evidence suggests that the region is now more favorably
inclined toward the United States.
U.S. taxpayers will soon fork over $80 billion for a "down payment" on
the war, and the ensuing occupation and reconstruction could cost
hundreds of billions of dollars.
An expanded war -- perhaps targeting Syria or Iran -- remains a
distinct possibility.
So even as President Bush prepares to declare victory over Iraq, it
seems fair to ask: What, specifically, has the United States won?
Only one tangible benefit springs to mind: the satisfaction of knowing
that millions of repressed people can now breathe the fresh air of
freedom.
But most Americans tacitly agree that toppling a dictator is an
insufficient reason to invade another nation. Otherwise, they would be
demanding that the U.S. government overthrow equally dictatorial
regimes in Burma, North Korea, Cuba, China, Libya, Sudan, and Saudi
Arabia.
Another potential benefit -- achieving democracy -- is considered at
least five years away by most foreign policy experts, who point out
that the Middle East has no tradition of democracy and no active
democratic movements.
James Dobbins, a U.S. diplomat who helped oversee nation-building
efforts in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, says, "It
isn't like the first day of Genesis, where the secretary of defense
passes his hand over Iraq and says, 'Let there be democracy.' "
In the short term, any leader who appears to be handpicked by the
United States, as President Hamid Karzai was in Afghanistan, will be
seen as illegitimate.
Even if genuinely free elections were to occur soon, Americans might
not like the results. Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy
studies at the Cato Institute, points out that Shi'a Muslims, who
comprise over 60 percent of the Iraqi population, could elect a leader
with close ties to Iran's religious mullahs.
A second possibility, Preble notes, is that Kurds could choose leaders
demanding full-fledged independence from Iraq.
A third, chilling possibility is that the newly liberated Iraqis could
end up electing another Saddam Hussein. That scenario could unfold if
several candidates were to split the votes of Shiites and Kurds,
allowing the Sunni Muslim minority to unite behind a former Baath Party
official.
As the war draws to a close, it appears that the U.S. government has
invaded a sovereign nation to confiscate weapons that may not exist and
create a Western-style democracy that may never exist.
But it gets worse: This "victory" could end up making the entire world
a more dangerous place, thanks to Bush's shocking proclamation that a
U.S. president has a right to launch a pre-emptive strike against any
nation that he deems a potential threat.
"If" a foreign leader has weapons of mass destruction, the argument
goes, he "might" give them to terrorists. Therefore the United States
has the right to launch an offensive attack, destroy that regime and
kill thousands of innocent people in the process.
But why should such a "right" extend only to the United States? Nearly
every nation faces a threat, real or contrived, at some point.
Imagine what would happen if other nations adopted Bush's kill-first,
ask-questions-later policy.
Might nuclear-armed India launch a pre-emptive strike against its
bitter rival Pakistan, or vice versa? What if belligerent North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il, or an Iranian government that is reportedly close
to acquiring nuclear weapons, suddenly sense a threat to their national
security?
Unfortunately, the argument isn't just theoretical. On Monday,
Australian Prime Minister John Howard sparked outrage throughout
Southeast Asia when he asserted the right to launch pre-emptive anti-
terror strikes against other nations in the region.
Malaysian leaders immediately denounced Howard, and said such an attack
would be considered an act of war.
Nonetheless, the precedent has been set. The doctrine of pre-emptive
strike may soon pose a greater threat to world peace than Saddam
Hussein ever did.
As the war winds down it's clear what its legacy will include: the
death of thousands of innocent people; more embittered, anti-American
Arabs in search of revenge; another frustrating foray into nation-
building; massive economic costs for the American people; and a
framework for expanded, global war.
Is that really worth celebrating?
About the author: Geoffrey Neale is national chair of the Washington,
DC-based Libertarian Party.
Race PreferencesThis post includes a great letter from a professor to his students, explaining why it is that he will be deducting points from high-scoring white students, and giving them to lower-scoring black students.
FreedomThe cornerstone of being free is being able to maintain that freedom against all threats. Sadly, the greatest threat to any free people is their own government. Governments, after all, have the ultimate tool of forcible coercion: the police and army. There is a way to prevent the government from taking away your freedoms, though, and Bill Whittle nails it. If I could convince every American to read one thing, it would be this: Freedom.
Where Did All the Fascists GoJim Bennet examines what happened to the fascist movement after WWII.
European fascism was like a large river, flowing and carrying along millions of willing and enthusiastic adherents across the European continent. The question now is, where did this river disappear to in 1945? These people and their underlying sentiments were the culmination of generations of political evolution. It defies reason to believe that they simply changed their minds, all of them.
Above all, fascists everywhere enshrined the role of the state as the focus of national life and the source of meaning and value. This separates fascism from other movements of political violence and racial caste conflict (like the Klan, for example) and unites it with the superficially liberal but state-exhalting European nationalist movements of the 19th century of which fascist movements are ultimately mutated descendents. This value also unites fascism with the purposive and directive state of European bureaucrats today.
See here for more on posts in this category.
Light in the DarknessA while ago, I wrote the first of what was intended to be a series of posts, discussing in some detail the intellectual and political foundations of the West, which came out of the Enlightenment, and the enemies of the West as an idea (as opposed to being enemies of specific Western nations). It was really badly written (which is why there's no link here), and I didn't write any of the followon posts, because the war intervened and I was too caught up in current events. I went back and looked at the original post, and realized that rather than making the argument myself, I should let those more eloquent than myself make it.
As a consequence, I have created this category, Light in the Darkness, to track articles on the web, and discussions of paper sources as well, that address these fundamental themes:
The original concept of rights was they accrued to a sovereign power, chosen by God, and disseminated downwards to the aristocrats (and bishops) in exchange for service to the king (or pope). There was no concept of individual people having rights. The Enlightenment introduced the concept of natural rights; that is, that rights are given by God to the people individually, and through an act of will on the part of the people, certain of those rights would be vested upwards into governments, for the betterment of all. (Just read the American Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution for a summary of what this means.) Later collectivist movements, particularly fascism and communism, spoke instead of civil rights; that is, rights granted by the already-sovereign to the individuals, as an act of beneficence or convenience.
Prior to the Enlightenment, the concept of Citizenship was basically non-existent, because citizens can only exist where individual sovereignty exists. As far as I can tell, the only place where this concept existed in any widespread form prior to the Enlightenment was in the Roman Republic, whence actually comes the word "citizen." Instead, individuals were subjects of a particular sovereign. Political power was limited to a select group of aristocrats, and the individuals were effectively coerced into service of the elite. The Enlightenment reintroduced the Roman concept of citizenship, wherein each person meeting certain criteria (generally chosen so as to ensure that those people would have a natural inclination to act for the good of society at large) held political power of their own, and only by convincing a large number of citizens to support him could a person wield official power over others, and this power would continue only so long as the officer was supported by the citizens, who held the ultimate power to remove an officer.
In an anarchy, it is inevitable that a few people will, generally through sheer brutality, gain the power to control others. As these people fight amongst themselves for power, more and more authority becomes invested in fewer and fewer people. Eventually, a national autocracy of some sort arises, generally to the detriment of the individuals who are not aristocrats to that autocrat, which is to say, it is a detriment to almost everyone. Paradoxically, the more individual rights are granted, the closer to the edge of anarchy (and thus to the risk of tyranny) the society comes. A slight instability can cause a free people to descend into anarchy. The Enlightenment's cure for this has proven to be the only enduring way yet found to keep free people free: limit the power of the government to act, so that it can only act in very limited ways and in very limited circumstances, primarily so as to avoid civil strife and protect against foreign control. This ensures that the instabilities that would topple free and peaceful societies into anarchy are controlled, while not giving the government the ability to take away the natural rights of the citizens. Becaues the powers of the government are strictly defined in a written document, the government cannot simply accrue power to itself. It must instead convince the citizens to yield power to it.
In contrast, every other form of government either magnifies instabilities (pure democracy) or results in some form of elitest control. Monarchy, aristocracy, and so forth are just political labels for an elite few, who deem themselves to have the right to decide everything for everyone else, because, well, they're just better than you and I are. As Robert Heinlein put it:
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
With all of the focus of the Enlightenment on individuals, prior forms of elitism became very much marginalized in the West. This left the elites scrambling around for a way to have influence above their due, and they found it in ideologies like fascism and communism. World War II destroyed fascism as a reputable label, and the Cold War destroyed communism similarly. This search continues, though, into the present, as witness the arguments made by Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, which basically came down to, "I know what's good for you, and you don't." For that matter, witness France's behavior on anything these days. The current drive to transfer control to the elites goes by many names with one face: transnational progressivism, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and so on. These are all, in the end, ways to devalue the individual and even whole cultures and nations, and chain them in the service of a self-selected elite.
A democracy, in its pure form, is governance by vote and poll. Thomas Jefferson and others have referred to democracy as "the tyranny of the masses." Democracy sounds great on its face, but it has two problems. First, it is unstable, and descends rapidly into anarchy if sufficient stress is applied to the society; "mob rule" is just democracy in the process of descent into anarchy. Second, it actually minimizes the power of the voter, since any opinion not capable of getting a majority is not protected. The more democratic a society, therefore, the more that elections become horse races, and minorities are persecuted rather than protected. In contrast, a republic limits who can vote, generally in ways designed to ensure that the voter's natural self-interested choices coincide with what is necessary to keep society functioning and healthy over the long term, without governmental interference in individual matters. This effectively aggregates the vote, maximizing the chances of one vote changing the power structure, and thus protecting minority viewpoints.
This tendency is magnified if those powers given to the government by the people are in fact spread in layers, so that one layer of government controls street maintenance, while another controls the militia and police for local stability, while still another controls the armed forces for protection from foreign aggressors. When all power congregates in one level of government, the stakes become so high that votes are traded in the legislature so that everyone gets their pet projects through. Over time, this tends to lead to a corruption, in that power accumulates, money accumulates and the common voter is less able to influence the officer. If I go to the city council meeting, there are only a few dozen people there, and I am heard. If I go to the state legislature, there are thousands of people clamoring from a hearing, and I am dimly heard, if at all. If I go to the Congress, I am part of the background din of millions of petitioners, and am not going to get heard at all.
These, then, are the issues that this category will address, through the writings of others.
Space Ship OneIt has long been obvious, to many people, that the government cannot establish the kind of low-cost access to space that will be necessary for mass exploitation of space. The reason for this is that all of the incentives for the government and its contractors are to make getting to space, and operating there, as expensive, difficult and time-consuming as possible, so as to preserve their jobs (in the government/NASA) or profits (in the space contracting businesses). The necessary goal, for mass exploitation to be possible, is to have flying into space be not much more rare, expensive or dangerous than flying from city to city.
This vision is still some ways off, but it has gotten perhaps a bit closer to reality. Scaled Composites, the company headed by Burt Rutan, and whose Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world without refueling, has developed Space Ship One. Developed entirely with private funding, this craft is designed for sub-orbital flights, but above the customary 50 mile boundary. In other words, making a trip on this spacecraft would make you officially an astronaut. This also makes the craft a contender for the $10 million X Prize, offered to the first team which gets the same 3-person vehicle to 100km altitude twice safely within two weeks.
Like Pioneer's Pathfinder, Space Ship One is attempting to solve the hardest problem, that of getting out of most of the Earth's atmosphere, by using the atmosphere, rather than fighting it. In a traditional rocket, 90% or so of its launch weight is oxidizer, and most of the rest is fuel. As the rocket's throw weight - that is, the payload weight to a given place - grows, the amount of fuel and oxidizer needed also grows, and along with that the weight of the rocket's structure grows. This means that a small increase in throw weight requires a large increase in rocket size. The Pathfinder lessens this problem by using both jets and rockets. The jets power to Pathfinder to altitude, at which point it meets up with a tanker, takes on oxidizer, then points its nose skywards and lights the rockets. This design means that for all practical purposes, Pathfinder is really a specialized aircraft. Space Ship One also uses jets to get out of the lower atmosphere, but in this case the jets are mounted on a carrier aircraft called White Knight. The spacecraft carries its fuel/oxidizer with it, but doesn't have to have the structure to fight through the lower atmosphere, so it is very small and light.
There are a number of interesting design features, including a hybrid rocket motor that burns tire rubber (HTPB) and laughing gas (NO2); tilting wingtips that "shuttlecock" the craft, for a low-speed reentry which makes reentry heating much less problematic; the development not of prototypes, but of working test articles; and the choice of viewport designs. The vehicle is designed for very low-cost operations, on the order of a Soyuz flight. With the ability to carry (externally) boosters to put microsats into orbit, the vehicle could have a built-in market ready to go (a lot of news organizations, for instance, would love to have additional capacity cheaply on call for satellite phones; and the military could probably use such a capability as well). I don't know how well this design will scale - can you use a larger version to orbit? - but I do know that if anyone can make this concept work, it's Rutan.
Since there is not any apparent attempt to actually use this spacecraft to start a space launch business, my guess is that Rutan intends to sell them to those organizations who could make use of them. In other words, he'll sell them like aircraft, albeit expensive and specialized aircraft.
More coverage here and here (read the comments).
UPDATE (4/21): More detail, for those who care about design, here
UPDATE (8/2): FlugRevue has some summary information of interest. And here is some (old) information on Proteus. You can clearly see the heritage of White Knight in the picture.
And here are the test updates.
Great Article on EuropeThis article, written by a French formerly-radical leftist, discusses in great detail the contemporary failings of Europe. Here's a taste to whet your appetite:
"By the evening of September 11, a majority of our citizens, despite their obvious sympathy for the victims, were telling themselves that the Americans had it coming. Make no mistake: the same argument would have been made if the terrorists had destroyed the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame."
"Europe gave birth to monsters. No doubt. But by the same token, it created the ideas that enable us to analyze and to destroy those monsters."
"Obsessive attention to past abominations has blinded us to the horrors of the present. Repentance is not a policy, and the continent of Europe cannot model its relationship to the past on that of Germany. Neither the status of victim nor that of executioner is hereditary. The duty to remember implies nothing about the purity or guilt of descendants."
"How can we command respect if we do not respect ourselves, if we constantly depict ourselves, in literature and the media, in the darkest colors?"
"When a crisis erupts, we do our utmost to delay. We temper our indignation with cynicism and treat the aggressor and his victim as equals, as though, in light of our own disenchantments, nothing made any difference."
"It is hard to tell what is most hateful in present-day anti-Americanism; the stupidity and bitterness it manifests or the willing servitude that it presupposes toward a superiority it denounces-in order not to change it."
"The "USAers" may experience moments of great solidarity or bursts of patriotism, but they are not made to rule the world like Romans because the "message" of America is self-fulfillment and love of life."
"We Europeans can challenge the dominance of the English language and the finance capitalism of Wall Street (with its extraordinary compassion for the rich), we can easily denounce the ambiguities of the melting pot and the ravages of communitarianism, and we can reject a world made in the image of American society. But then we have to offer in its place something more than mockery and reproof. We must really construct better models of social justice, economic efficiency, and ethnic coexistence. We are far from doing so. We lag far behind the Americans, out of breath. We still imitate their mistakes after they have devised remedies. Some Europeans place their hope in a theory of reverse genesis. America, the offspring of the Old World that has surpassed its progenitor, would witness the birth of a new Europe that would then put the United States in its place. For now, since geopolitics is the contemporary form of fortune telling, this is nothing but wishful thinking. The bitter truth is that Europe lags behind our transatlantic cousin in almost every area. But our possibilities are enormous if we enact a genuine intellectual revolution. Europe is today's largest contemporary political and cultural laboratory; something unprecedented is happening there without its inhabitants' even being aware of it. Europe has to recover its civilizing capacities and its pride, not in blood and battle, but primarily in spiritual conquests. Europe holds its own cards. Either it will build a counterforce endowed with credible political and military tools or it will be vassalized, willingly. In the latter case, an aging and declining Old World will reduce itself to being a luxurious vacation resort, coveted by predators, and always prepared to abdicate its freedom for a little more calm and a little more comfort."
I cannot agree with everything he says, but Bruckner has a lot of great insights into both Europe and America. Read the whole thing. (many thanks to Michael Totten for the link)
Weasel - Not What you ThinkThis is, if true, remarkable. (hat tip: Tim Blair) The fact that we would be willing to attempt it, that so many nations and NGOs would be willing to help, and that we would be successful, all are somewhat surprising. In a good way.
Nauru has been in the news a lot lately.
Tolerance, to a PointFrom the comments to this post:
Every American, other than Native Americans and African-Americans, either is, or is descended from, someone who packed up and left his motherland because he'd had all the shit he could stand. This makes us one of the least tolerant peoples on Earth. Most of the time, this is a good thing. When a problem arises, we don't say "inshallah", we demand that the problem be fixed. Intolerance of inefficency and injustice has made America one of the freest and most prosperous nations on Earth.We are taught, as children, to be tolerant of other peoples, but our tolerance is not infinite. At its limit, that tolerance is not like butter scraped over too much bread. It is more like a cable stretched too tight. When it finally snaps, the poor bastard who broke it, and anyone else in the way, will get hurt.
Weclome all Unite States lardy demins!You won't believe it until you read it. (link from A Small Victory) Not found there, but should be:
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb
Operator: We get signal
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us
Cats: You are on the way to destruction
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time
Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every 'zig'
Captain: You know what you doing
Captain: Move 'zig'
Captain: For great justice
Baseball NoteConnor's team, the Orioles, lost to the Phillies tonight, 14-8. It was closer than it sounds. The Phillies got 5 runs in the top of the 5th, and since you can only get 5 runs in an inning, the Orioles wouldn't have been able to catch up. It was 9-8 going into the 5th. Connor got a single, and was stranded at 3rd, in the second inning.
The Cubbies, meanwhile, beat the Reds, bringing their record to 10-6, in first place.
Death to ClippyAubrey Turner points to a really funny collection of images.
UPDATE: Turned off comments, because this was basically an entry point for spam posts, for some reason.
Advantage, MeIn the wake of the successful war in Iraq, Israelis are rereading Basil Liddell Hart. (hat tip, Winds of Change)
Advantage, me.
How we Win So EasilyA lot of people are trying to figure out how America wins its wars so easily. The most trivial reasons are technological, and they are also the most widely discussed. Consider this, though, does anyone doubt that the US military, fighting with the type of equipment Iraq was using, would not have beaten the Iraqi military, fighting with the kind of equipment we were using? Some people talk about logistics, which is of course vital. FedEx has done as much for US warfighting in the last two decades as has General Dynamics. Many, many people talk about the quality and dedication of our forces, and a few point out that this arises from their being all-volunteer. Many people also point out the quality and responsibility of our long-service NCOs. All of these are important, and together certainly would give us an advantage over most armies. There are more subtle reasons, though, which are more important as well.
Glenn Reynolds yesterday wrote a column discussing the warfighting advantages we get by having an open and free society. Victor Davis Hanson discusses a number of features of our military, and brushes up against what I believe to be a very important point:
More importantly still, the old idea of separate branches of the military is itself becoming obsolete. It is not just that there are Army, Marine, and Navy pilots or that Seals and Air Force controllers fight on land. Rather there is such instantaneous integration between land, air, and sea forces that it is hard to sort out who is doing what when enemy tanks explode out of nowhere, GPS-guided bombs go into the windows of Baathists, and special — forces hit teams take out generals before they can order counterassaults.
First, it was this Act that changed the status of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from arbitrator among the services to the President's primary military advisor, with operational responsibility for all branches of service. (The service chiefs retained organizational, training and equipment responsibilities.) The Act also streamlined the chain of command, with the individual services not in the chain of command at all for operational issues. Instead, the Commanders-in-Chief (CINCs) of the various joint commands were given total operational authority over all force assets assigned to them. In other words, one officer(General Franks in CENTCOM, which is responsible for the Middle East and Africa) in any given region has control over all of the combatant forces, regardless of which service they are attached to.
This has had the effect of eliminating the distinction between the services in combat. No more do we have the kind of interservice arguments that doomed the attempted 1980 rescue mission of the hostages in Iran. Instead, forces are assigned as needed to do what they do best, in pursuit of a single overall operational plan. Decisions about funding various services, and what programs proceed and which get cut, and so forth, still involve a great deal of political infighting in the Pentagon. They do not involve political infighting in the field.
This focus on joint operations has taken a long time to mature. Initial problems began to be worked out in the late 1980s, and the invasion of Panama, while successful, demonstrated some notable issues. By the Desert Storm campaign, many of these issues had been worked through, and the result was an amazing well-coordinated campaign which overthrew the Iraqi Army with minimal coalition casualties. After Desert Storm, resistance within the military to the joint operations concepts largely disappeared, though not entirely.
Our technological advantages, troop quality advantages and so forth are critical factors that allow us to win wars. I believe, though, that the critical factor that allows us to win at low cost is the ability of our forces to work as a single entity, rather than a collection of different priorities, towards a single commander's intent. This ability comes directly from the Goldwater-Nichols Act.
Fisking Bill ClintonThanks to this pointer from Oki, I found an article about Bill Clinton's latest blather. Herewith my first Fisking:
NEW YORK (AFP) - Former US President Bill Clinton blasted US foreign policy adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries.
"Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board.
"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."
The Democratic former president, who preceded George W. Bush at the White House,
said that sooner or later the United States had to find a way to cooperate with the world at large.
"We can't run," Clinton pointed out. "If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal."
He said he believed Washington overreacted to German and French opposition to US plans for military action against Iraq and suggested that the current administration had trouble juggling foreign and domestic issues.
The Clinton administration held its focus squarely on domestic issues, because that was what would pay off in political terms for them. There was no coherent focus on foreign policy, which is a large part of the reason we're in the mess we're in now. President Bush is pushing a domestic agenda, but mainly by making proposals and then letting Congress flesh them out or gut them. The President's focus is on making sure that we don't die tomorrow, or next week. That is the right thing to do.
"Since September 11, it looks like we can't hold two guns at the same time," Clinton said. "If you fight terrorism, you can't make America a better place to be."
Clinton said that
