AnalPhilosopher

To be a first-year student at the Harvard Law School in the late 1950s (as I was) was to spend a year trying to master unfamiliar materials—namely, common law judicial opinions—with little guidance or feedback. It was the heyday of the Socratic method of legal education. This meant that the casebooks consisted of—cases, with only a little explanatory material. The first-year courses other than criminal law and civil procedure were in common law fields—property, contracts, torts, and agency. The teachers disparaged hornbooks, treatises, articles, and other secondary materials; and most of the students, docile me included, dutifully refused to consult any of these materials. Adept at not tipping their hand, and abetted in this by the students' avoidance of secondary materials and the absence of commercial study aids, the teachers orchestrated debates among students who personified the various fallacies to which lay thinking about the law is prone.

These first-year law teachers were intimidating people. They were not sadistic, but they didn't try to put the students at their ease or wait for a student to volunteer in order to call on him (or her, but there weren't many hers). There were no exams until the end of the entire year, so you couldn't tell how well you were doing. This was a big spur to working hard, as was the knowledge that on the basis of the examination results alone you would be ranked from 1 to 500 and that your rank might have a big effect on your future career. The emphasis of the courses, mirrored by the exams, was not on stuffing students full of rules or case names but on drilling them in fitting factual situations into plausible legal categories, much as medical students learn to fit a set of symptoms into a disease category, and in manipulating the categories in the interest of the client: so the training had both a diagnostic and a treatment aspect. The lesson was the manipulability of the legal categories. Lay people think that the law is something written down in a book. Lawyers learn, in their very first year of law school, that the law is an inference from often ambiguous and even conflicting cases. They learn to be skilled casuists.

(Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 291-2 [footnote omitted])

4-30-86 . . . There was a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union recently, at the town of Chernobyl. Details are sketchy, but apparently there’s a cloud of radiation floating over Europe, and some of it is expected to reach the west coast of the United States in a few days. Radiation scares me, because I don’t understand its nature or how it affects sentient beings. All I know is that it causes cancer and birth defects. If this accident doesn’t raise the consciousness of the American people about the perils of nuclear power plants, I don’t know what will. A healthy, rational debate about the pros and cons of nuclear power would be to the benefit of us all. I’ll have more to say about the Chernobyl tragedy as the story unfolds. From what I’ve heard, many Russians have been killed or contaminated by the fallout.

The Democrat Party is the party of cosmopolitans, pacifists, utilitarians, and America-haters. Is it any wonder that it can't speak coherently about American power and American interests? Until it does, it will remain impotent. See here for Peter Beinart's essay.

See here.

Albert Pujols of the St Louis Cardinals is on pace to hit 94.5 home runs and drive in 216 runs. The man is a monster.

To the Editor:

In "Lethal Cruelty" (editorial, April 26), you maintain that "the death penalty is in all cases unconstitutional" and that the law of the land should recognize that the Eighth Amendment bars capital punishment.

I do not read any mention of the death penalty in this amendment. The actual text prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments." In some cases, death is a just punishment.

Throughout all of human history, the death penalty has been considered a grave but by no means excessive form of punishment, as long as it is reserved for the most extreme forms of crime.

I agree that lethal injections, if it can be proved that they result in excruciating pain before death, would qualify as torture and should therefore be barred by the Eighth Amendment.

Michel van der Hoek
Anoka, Minn., April 26, 2006

Here.

Decalogue, n. A series of commandments, ten in number—just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice. Following is the revised edition of the Decalogue, calculated for this meridian.

Thou shalt no God but me adore:
'Twere too expensive to have more.

No images nor idols make
For Robert Ingersoll to break.

Take not God's name in vain; select
A time when it will have effect.

Work not on Sabbath days at all,
But go to see the teams play ball.

Honor thy parents. That creates
For life insurance lower rates.

Kill not, abet not those who kill;
Thou shalt not pay thy butcher's bill.

Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless
Thine own thy neighbor doth caress.

Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete
Successfully in business. Cheat.

Bear not false witness—that is low—
But "hear 'tis rumored so and so."

Covet thou naught that thou hast not
By hook or crook, or somehow, got.

G.J.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Rod Dreher, a member of the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News, is now a blogger at Belief Net. His blog is entitled "Crunchy Con," after his recent book Crunchy Cons. The "crunchy" in the title refers (I gather) to the crunching sound one makes while eating a granola bar. These are conservatives who care about such things as the environment. Query: Whoever thought conservatives didn't, or couldn't, care about the environment? Why do people feel a need to modify "conservative," as in "compassionate conservative" and "crunchy con"? Isn't this to imply that conservatives, as such, lack compassion or are indifferent to the environment? But surely that's not the case.

Here.

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert laments, "If George W. Bush could have been removed from office for being a bad president, he would have been sent back to his ranch a long time ago."

Voters in the United States had the opportunity to "remove" President Bush from office in the 2004 election. A majority of voters, in a ballot which was beyond reasonable dispute, did not do so, but in fact re-elected him.

Mark A. Kellner
Rockville, Md., April 27, 2006

Primate, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

4-29-86 . . . Odds and ends: (1) Alvin Goldman told me after the [Epistemology] seminar this afternoon that he appreciated the many examples that I came up with during the course. I appreciated the compliment. (2) Roger Clemens, a rookie pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, set a major-league record today by striking out twenty Seattle Mariners in a single, nine-inning game. The previous record, held by several pitchers (including Tom Seaver) was nineteen. Can you believe it? Twenty of the twenty-seven outs in the game came by way of strikeout. This Clemens kid is something else. [The record is still 20. Clemens repeated the feat in 1996, while Kerry Wood of the Chicago Cubs struck out 20 batters in 1998. Clemens finished the 2005 season with the Houston Astros and is expected to pitch again this year, perhaps for my adopted Texas Rangers, but more likely for Houston, since it’s closer to his home.]

Ludwig Wittgenstein died 55 years ago today, at the age of 61.

Here.

[T]his issue of egoism versus altruism must not be confused with the question of universal moral principles versus no moral principles, nor should egoism as a principle be confused either with determination of conduct by prudence alone or—worse still—with merely doing what one likes on all occasions. As a fact, a convinced and consistent egoist could be a completely moral man, respecting others as he asks that they respect him. It would be required of him only that he acknowledge exactly the same manner of egoistic conduct as right also for everybody else. And so far as I know, no egoist in ethical theory has ever failed to make that admission.

(Clarence Irving Lewis, Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics, ed. John Lange [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969], 142-3)

Respirator, n. An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its passage to the lungs.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

To the Editor:

Re "The Nuclear Option": This is a predictable proposal considering the world's shrinking fossil fuel reserves and our ceaseless, exponentially increasing demands for fuel.

Although William Sweet assures us that Chernobyl's faulty technology is not found in United States nuclear plants, he doesn't mention the entire environmental argument against trying to harness nuclear energy for our grids: The radioactive waste that is developed as a byproduct is extremely toxic and can outlive any known storage method.

If it falls into the wrong hands, it can be a very dangerous substance.

Throughout history, there have been innumerable mistakes, terrorists, miscalculations of politicians and unforeseen happenstance.

Mr. Sweet is proposing that we become dependent on an energy system that produces very dangerous substances that exist indefinitely and that cannot be perfectly stored, protected or disposed of.

Brian Begley
Menlo Park, Calif., April 26, 2006

I've been playing around with Google Video. See here and here—but only if you have a tissue handy.

See here.

Here.

Here are some of my favorite bloggers (in no particular order):

Dr John J. Ray (Dissecting Leftism)
Steve Rugg (JusTalkin)
Peg Kaplan (what if?)
Jeff Percifield (Beautiful Atrocities)
Ally Eskin (Who Moved My Truth?)
Dr Bill Keezer (Bill's Comments)
Dr Bill Vallicella (Maverick Philosopher)
Michelle Malkin (Michelle Malkin)
Donald L. Luskin (The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid)
Norm Weatherby (Quantum Thought)
Kim du Toit (The Other Side)
Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit)

If you think I'm missing a good blogger, let me know.

4-28-86 At noon today there was a “guitar wars” contest on the university [of Arizona] mall. I happened across it, so I stopped to watch. To my delight, there were both rock and roll [i.e., electric] and classical guitarists. Each participant got a couple of minutes to perform (mostly solos, but an occasional song), and some of them were good. One man in particular, an unassuming looking student wearing shorts and sunglasses, got up on the stage and belted out a startling rendition of Van Halen’s “Eruption,” one of the most difficult solos that I’ve ever heard. [The song appears on the band’s first album, Van Halen (1978). Here is the studio version.] I was amazed. There was something anomalous about a fraternity boy (or so he appeared) playing such a killer guitar. He ended up getting second place. On the whole, it was an enjoyable hour. I talked to Sam Truett and Ken Burke as we watched.

Later, Julianna Wilson came by as I was reading under the palm trees. I saw an orange object go zipping past me on the grass, so I turned and saw a smiling Julianna. She had brought her golf balls and was in a playful mood. We spent the next fifteen minutes or so engaged in “lawn bowling.” Julianna put one of the balls on the grass several feet away, and we attempted to roll our respective balls as close to it as possible. The closest ball “won” the match. Passersby must have wondered what in the world was going on. Here were two bare-footed people playing a child’s game at the university. But I didn’t care. If Julianna wanted to play lawn bowling, then so did I. I can’t get over how delightful and witty she is.

Paul Krugman* will not like this one bit. Can't you just see him gnashing his teeth?

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Here.

Feminism is an ideology in the bad sense of the term. Instead of seeing the world as it is, it sees it as it wishes it were. See here for a debunking of several feminist dogmas.

One of my readers sent a link to this. It's hilarious.

Here.

One of my readers, John Hadley, sent a link to this op-ed column by Peter Singer. Thanks, John.

To the Editor:

Re your April 26 editorial:

I agree that President Bush is ducking the real issue concerning America's addiction to gasoline. But the most obvious solution is not more regulation in the form of increasing fuel-efficiency standards for ordinary cars, as you propose. On the contrary, it is simply to let gas prices find their own level.

As gas prices rise, car users will automatically turn to more economical models and cut out needless trips. Furthermore, alternative forms of energy will become increasingly competitive in simple dollar-and-cent terms.

And of course, this elegantly simple solution is fully in accord with Mr. Bush's much-trumpeted free-market stance.

Charles Simmonds
Heringsdorf, Germany
April 26, 2006

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Allegiance, n.

This thing Allegiance, as I suppose,
Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose,
Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed
To smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed.
G.J.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Did you know that the new White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, is a philosophy major? He earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Davidson College in North Carolina. He went on to study philosophy and economics at The University of Chicago. See here. I can't wait to see how he interacts with the White House press corps. Here is a snippet of what's to come:

David Gregory: Tony, what is the president's policy on guest-worker permits?

Tony Snow: What do you mean by "guest-worker permits"?

David Gregory: Come on, Tony, you know what I mean.

Tony Snow: I don't. Really. The expression is ambiguous. If it means A, then X is the president's policy. If it means B, then Y is the president's policy. If it means C, then Z is the president's policy. I can't answer your question until you clarify it.

Helen Thomas: Tony, is the president going to be as stubborn on the topic of immigration as he is on the war in Iraq?

Tony Snow: That's a complex question, Helen. If I say "No," I imply that he's been stubborn on the war in Iraq, which is false. If I say "Yes," I admit forthrightly that he's going to be stubborn on the topic of immigration, which is false. I refuse to answer until you ask a simple question.

Norah O'Donnell: Tony, you're insufferable.

Tony Snow: That's an ad hominem attack, Norah. Do you have a question?

Let 'em have it, Tony! By the way, Tony's appointment should give the lie to the idea that a bachelor's degree in philosophy is worthless.

What's the difference between "bad" and "badly"? The former qualifies a state; the latter modifies an action. Thus, it would be correct to say "I feel bad" but incorrect to say "I feel badly." Suppose I mowed the yard hurriedly, in order to make it to the game. It would be correct to say "I mowed the yard badly" but incorrect to say "I mowed the yard bad." Other uses of "bad" include "I need a drink bad" (need is a state or condition, not an action) and "I want it bad" (wanting is a state, not an action).

It can be appropriate to say "I feel badly." Suppose I'm blindfolded and feeling for some object, perhaps as part of a game. If I'm unable to find it, I might say "I feel badly," meaning that I perform the action of feeling (groping) badly.

I might add that I disagree here with Bryan Garner, who recommends the following:

If you can meet these criteria, then the people who put on the Symphony Style Show need you badly.

It should be "bad," not "badly." Why? Because needing, like wanting, is a state, not an action. I should know better than to disagree with Bryan, but in this case I have to. I'm too much of a logician not to.

Here.

If you disagree with Molly Ivins, you're a "nutjob." How does that differ from defining "sane" as "agrees with Molly Ivins"? Can you say "persuasive definition"?

We need to update Chicken Little's cry of "The sky is falling!" I propose "The globe is warming!"

I stopped being shocked by Paul Krugman* long ago. See here. As I've said on many occasions in this blog, he is the most intellectually dishonest person I've ever known. That he is well-regarded in leftist quarters shows how impoverished leftist thought has become.

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Pain, n. 1. The range of unpleasant bodily sensations produced by illness or by harmful physical contact, etc. 2. The body's way of informing its inhabitant that it's time to reprioritize.

Here.

Although most of Chomsky's political writings concern U.S. foreign policy, they are anchored in an economic theory, Marxian in character, that denies that capitalism is a viable economic system. It can be kept afloat, he believes, only by exploiting, deceiving, and intimidating workers; dominating and exploiting backward countries; suppressing all experiments with alternative economic systems, such as socialism; and harming families and children. Chomsky predicted that the rise of free-market economics in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet system would impoverish Eastern Europe, Australia, Canada, and numerous other countries; would cause the wealthy countries of the West, including the United States, to become more like the Third World; and, in short, would lead to a worsening of economic conditions around the globe. He claimed that central planning, protectionist trade policies, and other state interventions in the economy were critical to the survival of capitalism, pointing to statist policies in Japan and Germany that he regarded as crucial to those countries' economic success. He attributes our hostility to Castro's regime to the regime's economic and humanitarian successes. Our "terrorist war" against Cuba was "launched by John F. Kennedy. It had nothing to do with communism. There weren't any Russians around. It had to do with things like the fact that these people were devoting resources to the wrong sectors of the population. They were improving health standards. They were concerned with children, with malnutrition. Therefore we launched a huge terrorist war."

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 88-9 [footnotes omitted])

The editors of The New York Times, in their infinite wisdom, conclude that capital punishment violates the United States Constitution. See here. In this, they disagree with the framers of the Constitution, who wrote that "No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." I go with the framers. You?

To the Editor:

I compliment the Food and Drug Administration for its truthful report indicating that [there] are "no sound scientific studies" supporting the medical use of marijuana.

I am an addiction specialist and practicing physician who has studied marijuana for three decades and who co-directed two conferences on marijuana, including a 1998 international conference at New York University.

At this conference, 51 papers presented failed to show that marijuana had any practical therapeutic value. This included use in anorexic H.I.V. patients, who continued to lose weight despite using marijuana.

Recent research shows that marijuana has detrimental effects on the brain, lungs, heart and fertility. The THC (the main ingredient in marijuana) content in marijuana used today is twice as strong as 30 years ago.

The false impression that there is a medical need for marijuana confuses and misleads a poorly informed compassionate public in believing that the medical profession is withholding helpful medication from the sick.

Nicholas A. Pace, M.D.
New York, April 21, 2006
The writer is a clinical associate professor of medicine, New York University Medical Center.

Here.

I intend to link to this site on Animal Ethics, but I thought readers of AnalPhilosopher might find it interesting as well.

Americans tolerate many obnoxious things, but not disruptions to their day-to-day activities. Many people have built their lives on the automobile. They commute to and from work (often many miles); they transport their children to and from school and various recreational activities; they shop; they vacation; they take leisurely drives through the countryside. When gasoline was comparatively cheap, they bought humongous vehicles, some of which look like tanks. I’m dwarfed by Expeditions, Tahoes, Excursions, and Hummers as I go about my business in my Grand Am. I feel as though everyone has grown except me.

Now that the price of gasoline is rising, people are experiencing the costs of their foolish decisions. They wish they lived closer to work. They wish they didn’t own such large, fuel-inefficient vehicles. They wish their children weren’t involved in so many extracurricular activities. Instead of making changes in their lives to accommodate the increased expense, they lash out at politicians and oil companies. Everyone loves a free market except when it impinges on his or her “lifestyle.” One would think that the Declaration of Independence includes the phrase “life, liberty, and driving.”

My advice to those of you who have built your life on the automobile is to deconstruct and rebuild your life. There is no reason you should live more than 10 miles from your place of employment. If you do, you’re a fool. There is no reason to be chauffeuring your children. I didn’t have a chauffeur when I was a child, and I lived five miles from town. If I wanted to play Little League, I had to walk or ride my bike. Sometimes I got a ride, but not always. Not having a chauffeur made me self-sufficient, independent, and responsible. If you want to vacation in your car, save your money. It’s going to cost you. Stop using your car as a means of entertainment. Downsize. Drive a Civic instead of an Expedition.

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. What part of that do the gasoline whiners not understand? Americans have had cheap gasoline for far too long. By “cheap,” I mean that they have not paid the full cost of it, either in terms of its effect on our foreign policy or in terms of its effect on the environment. It’s time they reconsidered and reordered their lives.

Eucharist, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi.

A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

To this.

In the Lectures, as throughout his writings, Rawls's prodigious philosophical labors brought to light, in some cases unwittingly, stresses and strains, fissures and flaws, and ironic twists and turns in the liberal spirit. In the process, Rawls exposed conflicting qualities to which the liberal spirit gives rise. On the one hand, an appreciation that the moral foundations of liberalism are bound up with a faith in human dignity that is not entailed or guaranteed by reason may encourage a certain humility, of the sort demonstrated in the virtue of toleration, in the energetic interest in the variety of ways of being human, and in a certain skepticism about comprehensive claims about moral and political life. On the other hand, the conviction that the founding truths of liberalism are implicit in common sense and that judgments about political institutions and public policy are derivable by the healthy operation of human reason may promote a certain hubris. It is this hubris that one sometimes sees among those who are satisfied that those who disagree with them on moral and political matters suffer from wicked or twisted minds and deserve to be segregated into separate intellectual communities.

(Peter Berkowitz, "The Ambiguities of Rawls's Influence," Perspectives on Politics 4 [March 2006]: 121-7, at 125-6)

Here is Brendan Miniter's column about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Life, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.

"Life's not worth living, and that's the truth,"
Carelessly caroled the golden youth.
In manhood still he maintained that view
And held it more strongly the older he grew.
When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,
"Go fetch me a surgeon at once!" cried he.
Han Soper.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

If this isn't the best album ever made, then I'm a monkey's uncle.

To the Editor:

Hope for change in the Bush policies on Iraq is probably doomed, as David Gergen suggests. Added to the reasons he gives is a less visible one: Vice President Dick Cheney's team, the most powerful and secretive group of hard-liners in our history.

Mr. Cheney and those around him believe in military force rather than diplomacy, acting alone rather than with other countries, and in the right of the president to ignore international laws and treaties.

They are determined to keep the president on his present course no matter what the cost in lives and treasure to this country or to the people of Iraq.

Sayre Sheldon
Natick, Mass., April 23, 2006
The writer is president emerita of Women's Action for New Directions, a national peace organization.

Here.

My Internet friend Darby Shaw did another bike rally in the Pacific Northwest. See here for his account. I must say, it was a treat to read it. I like writing about bicycling and reading about bicycling almost as much as I like bicycling. I hope one day to ride in the Pacific Northwest, in the shadow of snow-capped peaks. I have fond memories of my weeklong bike tours of New Mexico and Colorado in 1993, 1994, and 1995 (difficult though they were). Thanks, Darby! Please send me accounts of your future bike rallies so I can share them with my readers. The more details, the better.

Addendum: I was unable to link specifically to Darby's bicycle post. Please scroll to the post entitled "The Daffodil Classic Redux," dated 24 April. By the way, one reason I post stories about bicycling is to encourage others to get out and ride. Bicycling is a great sport, one that can be engaged in at any life stage. It's good for the heart, good for the lungs, good for the soul, and good for the environment. Be forewarned! You might fall in love with it.

Addendum 2: While scrolling through Darby's blog, I found this post, which contains a link to a video of an awful bicycle crash—at 101 miles per hour! Don't watch it if you're fainthearted.

Addendum 3: I figured out how to link to specific posts on Darby's blog. The link to his account of the bike rally has been changed.

Here.

Spaniard Alejandro Valverde won yesterday's prestigious one-day classic Liège-Bastogne-Liège, in Belgium. He averaged 25.60 miles per hour for the 162.8-mile course. As in Flèche Wallonne a few days earlier, nobody could stay with him on the final climb. See here for the story.

Meanwhile, in the United States, American Floyd Landis continued his impressive early-season racing by winning the week-long Tour de Georgia by four seconds over fellow American Tom Danielson, who won the race in 2005 with the assistance of Lance Armstrong. See here for the story. Don't be surprised to see Landis and Valverde contending for the Tour de France title in July. Of course, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso will also be in the mix, as will Alexandre Vinokourov, who seems to have planned his season around the Tour. With Armstrong retired, this year's Tour is up for grabs. It's going to be fun to watch.

Radical political reform, like radical judicial reform, will be more or less appealing depending on one's confidence in human intelligence and wisdom. In the Utopian Vision, solutions to social problems are readily available. Speaking in 1967 about the conditions that breed violence, Lyndon Johnson said, "All of us know what those conditions are: ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs." If we already know the solutions, all we have to do is choose to implement them, and that requires only sincerity and dedication. By the same logic, anyone opposing the solutions must be motivated by blindness, dishonesty, and callousness. Those with the Tragic Vision say instead that solutions to social problems are elusive. The inherent conflicts of interest among people leave us with few options, all of them imperfect. Opponents of radical reform are showing a wise distrust of human hubris.

(Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature [New York: Viking, 2002], 292 [endnote omitted])

Here is Tom Graffagnino's latest poem.

Here is John Fund's latest column about the Yale Taliban.

Here.

Palmistry, n. The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's classification) of obtaining money by false pretences. It consists in "reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe." The imposture consists in not reading it aloud.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Does it seem to anyone else that the Left has lost its purpose? The Left is obsessed with inequalities of wealth and power. It wishes either to socialize the means of production or to regulate the economy so as to improve the lot of the (comparatively) disadvantaged. It views the social world in terms of economic classes. It is anti-capital and pro-worker, at least in theory (for most radicals live comfortable middle-class lives, with all the capitalist amenities).

Events have left the Left behind. People these days are worried about terrorism, religious fundamentalism, environmental catastrophe, cultural decadence, pandemics, and nuclear annihilation, not the distribution of wealth and power. The main threat to poor people in this country is obesity, not deprivation. Poor people have met the enemy, and it is them. The poorest person in the United States is significantly better off than the wealthiest person in other parts of the world.

In a way, it’s sad to see leftists so discombobulated (and overtaken) by events. They are nostalgic for the days when unionization promised to undermine capitalism and when people were going without necessities—when movement toward the socialist utopia seemed real, if sluggish. Dare I suggest that leftism as we know it is dead? It’s time to move on, revolutionaries. There are new enemies to be fought. Capitalists, as it turns out, are on your side.

Here.

Michelle Malkin has a new Internet venture. It's called Hot Air. I only now discovered the site, so I haven't looked it over. I do know that if Michelle is involved with it, it will be of high quality.

Addendum: Michelle describes Hot Air as "the world's first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast network." Excellent.

To the Editor:

Re "Outrage at Funeral Protests Pushes Lawmakers to Act" (news article, April 17):

The behavior by the Westboro Baptist Church members intruding upon the grief of Cpl. David A. Bass's loved ones at his funeral is unconscionable.

Freedom of speech should not be curbed lightly. But the right of a soldier's family to bury him or her without being subjected to religious zealots rejoicing in the soldier's death—at a time and place where the family's grief may be most palpable—far outweighs the rights of the hatemongers.

If a bill prohibiting this behavior steps on the toes of those who believe in free speech at all costs, so be it. The cost of relinquishing some freedoms on rare occasions is not too high a price to pay for providing grieving families with a measure of peace.

Whatever happened to the basic tenet of most religions as kindness toward others?

In the name of religion, some people abandon all sense of decency and compassion when delivering their message.

Sandra Polsky
Newark, April 18, 2006

Here is Richard Posner's blog post about income inequality.

Even in today's United States freedom of speech is not absolute. People can still be punished for disseminating obscenity, for revealing military or trade secrets, for defamation, for inciting riots, for copyright and trademark infringement, for plagiarism, for threats, for perjury, for false advertising and other misrepresentations, for certain types of verbal abuse, for exchanging information in the hope of facilitating price fixing, for talking back to prison guards, for revealing confidences of various sorts, for certain forms of picketing and aggressive solicitation, for indecorous behavior in courthouses, for publicly criticizing one's employer on matters not deemed to be of public concern, for irresponsible or offensive broadcasting, even for using loudspeakers.

(Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999], 277-8)

What is democracy? See here and here.

Here is David Gergen's op-ed column about the Bush administration.

To the Editor:

By focusing upon an imaginary future conflict with Iran, Paul Kane misses the best argument in favor of national conscription: it would bring our present-day misadventure in Iraq to a hasty conclusion.

Most of my students are vehemently opposed to American involvement in the Iraq war, but very few of them have engaged in organized protest against it. If they knew that they could be drafted, however, they'd take to the streets. So would millions of other young people, along with their parents and grandparents.

Our elected officials would sit up and take notice, ending the war in Iraq before their own daughters and sons faced the terrifying prospect of fighting and dying there. Fear has a way of concentrating the mind.

Jonathan Zimmerman
New York, April 20, 2006
The writer is a professor of education and history at New York University.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Zimmerman, to his discredit, is willing to gamble with his students' lives. He thinks a draft will end the war, thus saving the lives of those currently deployed in Iraq. Isn't it just as likely to step up the war effort, or even lead policymakers to start new wars? In that case, many young people will be needlessly killed. Perhaps Zimmerman should enlist in the military, as a test of his sincerity.

Here.

Lunarian, n. An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits. The Lunarians have been described by Lucian, Locke and other observers, but without much agreement. For example, Bragellos avers their anatomical identity with Man, but Professor Newcomb says they are more like the hill tribes of Vermont.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Here.

Meriwether Lewis is not a happy camper. See here.

I just saw an offensive television advertisement during the Texas Rangers/Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball game. It said, "Ford: The most awarded truck out there." The word should be "feted" or "celebrated," or perhaps "rewarded," but not "awarded." As it stands, the ad means that Ford is awarded as a prize more often than any other truck. Clearly, that's not what's intended. Who writes such idiotic ad copy?

I did my third bike rally of the year and 374th overall this morning in Granbury, Texas. Not only is this the most beautiful rally of all, in terms of scenery; the weather was perfect. Okay, it was windy, but who’s complaining? Granbury is 49.5 miles from my house in Fort Worth. I had to rise at 5:30 to make it to the starting line at 8:00. I’ve done so many rallies that I know exactly how many minutes I need to get ready in the morning: 50. I drive at or just above the speed limit, so what time I have to get up depends on when the rally starts and how far away it is. One rally—Muenster—starts at 11:00. The earliest start is at the Hotter ’n Hell Hundred in Wichita Falls: 7:00. I have to rise at 4:00 and drive 121 miles like a maniac in order to arrive on time. I hate it, but it must be done.

My goal for the day was to do the long course (63 miles) and have fun. I saw only two of my friends (Phil Kevil and Randy Kirby) among the several hundred who showed up. Years ago, I saw dozens of members of my bike club at the rallies. Over the years, the number has dwindled. Some people have kept riding, undoubtedly, but go out on their own rather than attend rallies. I understand this decision. I rode many thousands of miles by myself (much of it in the Sonoran desert) before going to my first rally in September 1989. I enjoy both experiences. If money were an object, I’d go out on my own, since each rally costs $20 to $30. I probably spent $675 on rally fees a year ago. That doesn’t include gasoline for the long drives or Taco Bell burritos on the way home.

Today’s ride went well. The countryside near Granbury is truly beautiful. There are canyons, mesas, forests, rivers, plains, and jaw-dropping country roads. Most of the road surfaces were smooth, which makes for easier riding. I saw dairy cows, beef cattle, horses, dogs, hawks, and many other animals along the way. Everything is green and lush at this time of year. It was great to see the sun rise. By the time I finished, it was directly overhead. I saw ranch houses, cottages, trailers, and just about every other form of human abode, including dilapidated barns and sheds. I love rustic buildings and enclosures. They remind me of my childhood in Michigan. Doing the rally today was like going back in time.

Statistically, my ride wasn’t half bad. I rode alone the entire way, completing the 63.26-mile course in 3:54:15 (that’s riding time). My average speed was 16.20 miles per hour. Remember: My goal is to get a little stronger with each ride. I’ve gone farther and faster each time I’ve ridden this year. I rode 16.48 miles the first hour (headwind), 14.30 the second (headwind and hills), 17.28 the third (tailwind), and averaged 16.81 miles per hour for the final 54:15. I hammered for the final three miles. I must have averaged 25 miles per hour. My top speed for the day was 32.3 miles per hour. My maximum heart rate was 156. I reached it early in the rally and again late. The best song of the day (among many good ones) was “Serious Music,” by Daryl Hall & John Oates, from Along the Red Ledge (1978).

I carried my Casio camera in my jersey pocket. Here is one of the ranch entrances I passed as I was climbing a hill through a forest (click to enlarge):

Here is a typical view from the course (note the mesa in the distance and the cattle in the foreground):

Here are some longhorns:

Here is a longhorn and her calf:

Thank goodness for fences!

Addendum: There's a story in today's (Sunday's) Dallas Morning News about a windmill farm near Granbury. See here for images of the windmills.

Perseverance, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

"Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all,
Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
"Remember the fable of tortoise and hare—
The one at the goal while the other is—where?"
Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease
Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace,
The goal and the rival forgotten alike,
And the long fatigue of the needless hike.
His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew
Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew,
He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place,
A winner of all that is good in a race.
Sukker Uffro.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

[A]rguing, and indeed concluding in general, would be utterly pointless, because utterly ineffectual, if it did not serve to alter or modify our physical behavior.

(Clarence Irving Lewis, Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics, ed. John Lange [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969], 123)

Here.

To the Editor:

The arrest of Dr. Wenyi Wang after she "disrupted" the joint appearance of President Bush and China's president, Hu Jintao, calls into question Mr. Bush's commitment to the idea of freedom he so frequently espouses.

The Communist government of China has killed millions of people during its tyrannical reign. For any American president to share the stage with the head of this murderous regime is a betrayal of our nation's ideals.

It is unconscionable for President Bush to sanction the arrest of someone who has the courage to call attention to the plight of the Chinese people. If the leader of the free world is embarrassed for the Chinese dictator, it is not the principles of our founders that animate him, but their antithesis.

The Chinese government's dictatorial control over China's citizens should be held in the same regard as that over the people of Darfur, Rwanda, Iraq and North Korea.

Amesh Adalja
Butler, Pa., April 21, 2006

Feminism is a lie wrapped in a mistake. Two mistakes, actually. Its first mistake is thinking that men have it all. Its second mistake is thinking that women, too, can have it all. But men never had it all. They had half of it. Women also had half of it—the other half. The two halves make a whole. Feminism lied to women and made a whole generation of women unhappy. Young women of today won't make the same mistake. They know that nobody, including men, has ever had it all. They know that nobody, including men, will ever have it all. Life is full of compromises, opportunity costs, and tragic choices. All any of us can do is choose a bundle of goods—one that suits our personality, interests, inclinations, and tastes. There is no reason to think that men and women, who are wired differently, will choose the same bundle. Women are nurturers. Men are providers. This will affect the choices they make. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. If feminism sneers at certain of women's choices, such as the choice to be a homemaker, so much the worse for feminism. See here for Kara Hopkins's insightful essay.

The Davis Mountains are the most extensive mountains in Texas. Here is the website of Davis Mountains State Park.

Journalism professor Jay Rosen has a blog post about outgoing presidential press secretary Scott McClellan. What Rosen and his colleagues don't understand is the hostility of the White House press corps toward the Bush administration—a hostility that existed from day one. Why should the Bush administration do anything to help the press corps undermine its policies? That's suicidal. If the press corps were impartial, as it ought to be, things would have been different. Perhaps the media will learn from this: If you're partial, you get no cooperation. Do your job as a journalist and you get cooperation.

Here is an interesting column about science and religion.

Here.

The moonbats at Democratic Underground don't like Katherine Harris. Many of them blame her for President Bush's election in 2000. I thought it was elephants who had long memories.

Charles Krauthammer puts the cowardly generals in their place.

Donald Luskin is still reading Paul Krugman*—and still giving him hell. Keep up the good work, Don.

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did," The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Disobey, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command.

His right to govern me is clear as day,
My duty manifest to disobey;
And if that fit observance e'er I shun
May I and duty be alike undone.
Israfel Brown.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

To the Editor:

President Bush is shaking things up at his White House, with promises of positive changes in his administration.

So, after watching Mr. Bush for the last five years wrapping himself in a cocoon of yes-men and yes-women, why don't I feel better?

Of course, the reason is that Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the people whose utter incompetence, duplicity and lack of touch with reality have placed us in this mess we're in, still remain at their posts.

On Election Day 2008, it will be up to us citizens to make some key staff changes of our own.

Doug Belfiore
Trumbull, Conn., April 20, 2006

Here.

I read in today's Dallas Morning News that Lance Armstrong plans to run this year's New York City Marathon (on 5 November). It'll be interesting to see how fast he goes. Although he's a great athlete, it typically takes years of training to reach world-class status in the marathon, and Lance is already 34 years old. (He'll be 35 by the time of the New York City Marathon.) I think he can run a 2:45 marathon, and maybe even 2:35, if he trains properly and avoids injury. My best (of the 11 marathons I've run) is 3:07:14.30, which was good enough for a medal. The world record (held by Paul Tergat) is 2:04:55.

Resort to force is never justified, in [Chomsky’s] view, because no nation has completely clean hands. But it may be excused when it is by a nation or group that is neither the United States nor allied with it. Chomsky is an anarcho-pacifist. His embrace of that creed—which he treats as self-evidently correct and so doesn’t attempt to defend—illustrates the academic public intellectual’s common mistake of confusing political with personal ethics. A private citizen of the United States can go through life without killing anybody or governing anybody; it does not follow that a large nation can get through its life without governing and without causing people to be killed.

(Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline [Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001], 88 [footnote omitted])

Why do people say "a little bit," instead of just "a bit"? Could there be a lot of bit or a great deal of bit? See here, for example. What does "A Little Bit of Soul" say that "A Bit of Soul" doesn't? If it says no more, why the extra word? Am I weird for wanting to strip language down to its essentials? Maybe I get this from being a philosopher. We're taught to shave off unnecessary theoretical or explanatory entities. It's called Ockham's Razor. Another name is the principle of parsimony. Wait! Why are there two names for the same thing? Arrghhh!

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Addendum: I lectured today on feminist ethics, with particular attention to the work of Carol Gilligan. I couldn't help but think, as I read Noonan's column, that only a woman could have written it. Her criticisms of President Bush sound like criticisms of . . . masculinity. President Bush is a man's man, which explains why so many leftists hate him. He thinks like a man, acts like a man, and has the feelings, attitudes, and desires of a man. I sometimes think that men and women inhabit different moral universes. This doesn't mean that the male way of thinking is better than the female way of thinking. They're just different. I, for one, find President Bush's manliness refreshing after eight years of Clintonian effeminacy.

Incompatibility, n. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination. Incompatibility may, however, consist of a meek-eyed matron living just around the corner. It has even been known to wear a moustache.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Paul Kane makes a case for a draft.

To the Editor:

I was surprised to read the April 13 letters about David Brooks's take on the fiasco at Duke. Not one of them mentions family—that's where values, morals and ethics are taught. But we've raised at least two generations so far with no such guideposts.

The outer-focused hippies became the me-focused yuppies with two careers and self-importance. When kids came along, they were mere accouterments. No one sat down to dinner as a family anymore. No one was home to set and enforce rules. No one said "no" anymore.

The kids were left to their own devices—scary concept for a kid at any age, but particularly in the formative years, to think that he is alone, unsupervised and unloved. What else to do but to act out?

Add to the mix psychotropic drugs to keep the kids "well behaved" in school and out of their parents' hair at home—a recipe for disaster that is coming home to roost in countless forms of abusive behavior, aggression and violence.

Stephany Yablow
North Hollywood, Calif.
April 13, 2006

Here.

[T]he old quarrel between liberalism and religion goes back to the beginning, to the emergence of the liberal tradition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in response to the European wars of religion. In the name of the rights of individuals, the founders of the liberal tradition elaborated constraints on religion's political authority and politics' religious authority. As the liberal idea took hold, individuals demanded more and more autonomy from the state—and from religion. Yet whereas the state and its lawmaking apparatus grew, in part to secure the conditions of freedom, the demands of autonomy increasingly reduced faith's domain. After much progress in freedom over several centuries, a question remains: Is it reasonable for a liberal to be religious? Can one reasonably claim to put freedom first while also embracing on faith teachings about where we come from, what we are, and how we ought to live? Such doubts have a distinguished pedigree in the liberal tradition, and they have impelled many contemporary liberals to regard religion with intense suspicion, if not outright hostility.

(Peter Berkowitz, "The Ambiguities of Rawls's Influence," Perspectives on Politics 4 [March 2006]: 121-7, at 125)

Here.