July 3, 2009
COVENANT, THEN CONSTITUTION:
Americanism—and Its Enemies (David Gelernter, January 2005, Commentary)
That Americanism is a religion is widely agreed. G.K. Chesterton called America “the nation with the soul of a church.” But Americanism is not (contrary to the views of many people who use these terms loosely) a “secular” or a “civil” religion. No mere secular ideology, no mere philosophical belief, could possibly have inspired the intensities of hatred and devotion that Americanism has. Americanism is in fact a Judeo-Christian religion; a millenarian religion; a biblical religion. Unlike England’s “official” religion, embodied in the Anglican church, America’s has been incorporated into all the Judeo-Christian religions in the nation.Does that make it impossible to believe in a secular Americanism? Can you be an agnostic or atheist or Buddhist or Muslim and a believing American too? In each case the answer is yes. But to accomplish that feat is harder than most people realize. The Bible is not merely the fertile soil that brought Americanism forth. It is the energy source that makes it live and thrive; that makes believing Americans willing to prescribe freedom, equality, and democracy even for a place like Afghanistan, once regarded as perhaps the remotest region on the face of the globe. If you undertake to remove Americanism from its native biblical soil, you had better connect it to some other energy source potent enough to keep its principles alive and blooming.
But is it not true that the Declaration of Independence—one of America’s holiest writings—treats religion in a cool, Enlightenment sort of way? It does. But we ought to keep in mind an observation by the historian Ralph Barton Perry. The Declaration, Perry reminds us, was an ex post facto justification of American beliefs. It was addressed to educated elite opinion, especially abroad; it was designed to win arguments, not to capture the essence of Americanism as Americans themselves understood it. That essence emerges in the less guarded pronouncements of the Founding Fathers and many other leading exponents and prophets of Americanism, from Winthrop and Bradford through John Adams and Jefferson through Lincoln and Wilson, Truman, Reagan.
Few believing Americans can show, nowadays, how Americanism’s principles are derived from the Bible. But many are willing to say that these principles are God-given. Freedom comes from God, George W. Bush has said more than once; and if you pressed him, I suspect you would discover that not only does he say it, he believes it. Many Americans all over the country agree with him. The idea of a “secular” Americanism based on the Declaration of Independence is an optical illusion.
Suppose you were to put together a bookful of pronouncements and predictions about America’s destiny, ranging over four centuries. What title would you give it?
Such an anthology did appear in 1971; it was edited by an associate professor of religious studies and subtitled “Religious Interpretations of American Destiny.” The book’s main title was God’s New Israel. From the 17th century through John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Americans kept talking about their country as if it were the biblical Israel and they were the chosen people.
Where did that view of America come from? It came from Puritanism—Puritanism being not a separate type of Christianity but a certain approach to Protestantism. And here is a strange fact about Puritanism. It originated in 16th-century England; it became one of the most powerful forces in religious if not all human history. It consistently elicited bitter hatred—and was directly responsible for (at least) two world-changing developments. It provoked the British Civil War (in which the Puritans and Parliament asserted their rights against the crown and the established church), and the first settlements by British religious dissenters in the new world.
And then it simply disappeared. In the late 1700’s or early 1800’s, Puritanism dropped out of history. Traces survived in Britain and (even more so) in America, in the form of churches once associated with it. But after the 18th century, we barely hear about Puritanism as a live force; before long everyone agrees that it is dead.
What happened to it? In a narrow sense, Puritan congregations sometimes liberalized and became Unitarian; the Transcendentalists, prominent in American literature from roughly 1820 through 1860, are often described as the spiritual successors of the Puritans. But Puritanism was too potent, too vibrant simply to vanish. Where did all that powerful religious passion go?
Puritanism had two main elements: the Calvinist belief in predestination with associated religious doctrines, and what we might call a “political” doctrine. The “political” goal of Puritanism was to reach back to the pure Christianity of the New Testament—and then even farther back. Puritans spoke of themselves as God’s new chosen people, living in God’s new promised land—in short, as God’s new Israel.
I believe that Puritanism did not drop out of history. It transformed itself into Americanism. This new religion was the end-stage of Puritanism: Puritanism realized among God’s self-proclaimed “new” chosen people—or, in Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable phrase, God’s “almost chosen people.”
Many thinkers have noted that Americanism is inspired by or close to or intertwined with Puritanism. One of the most impressive scholars to say so recently is Samuel Huntington, in his formidable book on American identity, Who Are We? But my thesis is that Puritanism did not merely inspire or influence Americanism; it turned into Americanism. Puritanism and Americanism are not just parallel or related developments; they are two stages of a single phenomenon.
It can be a painful experience to read an Andrew Delbanco, Richard Rorty, Peter Beinart, Michael Tomasky, or other folk of the Left as they wrestle with their need to live Americanism without embracing its Puritanical source. But, as George McKenna points out in his great, Puritan Origins of American Patriotism, they are just experiencing what Cotton Mather defined as "adherent grace":
[T]he stark logic of Protestantism seemed to rule out infant baptism: if sacraments do not give grace, then why baptize a newborn baby, who obviously has not undergone a conversion experience? Cotton's reply was that church membership entails a "double state of grace," adherent grace and inherent grace. Adherent, or "federal," grace is the grace that belongs to all the children of believing parents. [...] Infant baptism does not, of course, give saving grace to the baby, but it admits him or her into the community's collective covenant with God. This covenant thus includes both those who have undergone a faith experience and those...who have not.
For the Decent Left, adherent grace allows for what Rorty refers to as their "freeloading atheism" until they grow up. In the meantime, they are covered by the American covenant even though they don't understand it.
NOT THAT ANYONE COULD BEAT HIM, BUT JEB CAN RUN UNOPPOSED:
Palin to Resign as Governor of Alaska (Mitchell L. Blumenthal, 7/03/09, NY Times)
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Friday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, which would allow her to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
Was Mark Sanford cornering the screwball vote?
ONE DOES WISH...:
Der Indianer: Why do 40,000 Germans spend their weekends dressed as Native Americans? (Noemi Lopinto, Alberta Views)
Blackbird’s fame springs from a remarkable cultural phenomenon: some 40,000 German “hobbyists” who spend their weekends trying to live exactly as Indians of the North American plains did over two centuries ago. They recreate tepee encampments, dress in animal skins and furs, and forgo modern tools, using handmade bone knives to cut and prepare food. They address each other by adopted Indian-sounding names such as White Wolf. Many feel an intense spiritual link to Native myths and spirituality, and talk about “feeling” Native on the inside.Their fascination with Native culture is due in large part to Karl May, the best-selling German author of all time. In 1892, May published the first of many books about a fictional Apache warrior named Winnetou and his German blood brother, Old Shatterhand. The two men roamed the North American plains, using their nearly superhuman powers to fight off the land-hungry government and thuggish, violent pioneers. (Fans of the stories included Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler.) In the 1960s the duo was immortalized in five popular films, and hobbyist groups began forming across Europe. There are now more than 400 clubs in Germany alone.
Some Natives do take issue. When he first traveled to Germany, David Redbird Baker, an Ojibwe, thought adults playing cowboys and Indians were cute. But when the hobbyists began staging sacred ceremonies like ghost and sun dances and sweat lodges, Baker was offended.
“They take the social and religious ceremonies and change them beyond recognition,” says Baker, who believes that hobbyists, in claiming the right to improvise on the most sacred rituals, have begun to develop a sense of ownership over Native culture. They’ve held dances where anyone in modern dress is barred from attending—even visiting Natives. They buy sacred items like eagle feathers and add them to their regalia. They’ve even allowed women to dance during their “moon time,” which is, according to Baker, the equivalent of a cardinal sin.
...that all the women who celebrate the "spirituality" of the Indians were aware of how they treated their women during "moon time".
HOW DO YOU SAY OWNERSHIP SOCIETY IN BRITISH?:
The new Conservatism can create a capitalism that works for the poor: State expenditure and redistribution has done little to end dependency. We need a fresh approach that gives assets to all (Phillip Blond, 7/02/09, guardian.co.uk)
David Cameron recognised all of this and spoke at Davos early this year of the need to recapitalise the poor and create a capitalism that works for all. The key political aim of this truly transformative conservatism must be the generation of an asset effect for the decapitalised bottom half of society. Assets must, however, come from somewhere, and since redistribution and expenditure via the state has such a poor record in alleviating dependency, a fresh approach is required. Welfare or public expenditure should move from a spending to an investment model. The aim must be to free the poor from welfare subsidy through the generation of asset independence. The following are some ideas as to how this might be achieved: [...]2 The capitalisation of welfare streams. The only real viable source for welfare capitalisation is housing and child benefit. Councils have used their housing stock to generate cash income for benefit dependency for generations. By constantly raising rents, councils have created housing that the working poor cannot afford. Some sort of redress is required – a capital or asset credit, financed by a council bond, should be applied to those whose long-term benefit has, in effect, subsidised council receipts. This credit should be a tradable asset that, when conjoined with other new ventures such as community shares or social investment, can generate an asset effect for those whose routes out of poverty are presently so curtailed.
Similarly, child benefit should be means-tested, and the savings applied to a government matching programme for child trust funds for the lowest income groups. Studies by the Children's Mutual show that if the government matches the deposits of the poorest families, at age 18 the values of those funds for the poorest will be at the national average – currently £10,000. [...]
5 Create a more dynamic and self-managed universal pension. In order to encourage earlier saving, let people access their pension fund to buy a first house or fund education – let the pension become a multi-applicable vehicle to generate other non-speculative and carefully constrained assets. Initiate a good advice service for general public pensions: this would enable people to eliminate management costs and self-manage their own provision, producing a pension pot on average 75% higher than current returns..
ONLY A SUPER-VILLAIN WOULD STOP A TRAIN (via Glenn Dryfoos):
THE MAN WHO INVENTED LUDLUM:
At the Movies (Michael Wood, 7/09/09, London Review of Books)
North by Northwest? Witty, stylish thriller where a man can almost get killed in the middle of nowhere and later scramble about the face of Mount Rushmore? Film where the notion of real-life probability is not just abandoned but lampooned, Hitchcock’s finest attack on the very notion of cause and motive? ‘Here, you see’, he said to Truffaut, speaking about this movie, ‘the MacGuffin has been boiled down to its purest expression: nothing at all!’ He is saying that the espionage that drives the plot does just that: it drives the plot. We don’t have to know what the spies are after or what’s at stake, even if there is a flicker of a mention of the Cold War in the movie. Do the stolen secrets matter? In the world of actual espionage that would probably be a secret too, but in Hitchcock the answer is a revelation. Of course they matter, even in the entire absence of any content for them. They are the way the film pretends it’s about something.We can think of all this, or of as much of it as we care to, under very good conditions, since a new print of North by Northwest is showing at the BFI, and will doubtless soon appear on DVD – the old DVD is discontinued and can be found only at enterprising or out-of-the-way shops. The film starts in a way that defines its terms with extraordinary elegance, asking us to think about design and daily reality together, as if we could just fade from one to the other and back. Well, we can, can’t we? Saul Bass’s abstract credit sequence – green screen, credits running across multiple diagonal lines – dissolves into Hitchcock’s (briefly, at the start) realistic movie as the lines become the floors of a glass skyscraper full of reflections of cars on a New York street: Madison Avenue, as it happens, in those days the world headquarters of advertising, and crowded with people, including Hitchcock himself narrowly missing a bus. This busy city feeling continues as Cary Grant, playing the ad man Roger Thornhill, appears dictating notes to his secretary. They start to walk uptown, then take a taxi. He gets out at the Plaza, meets some business associates in the Oak Room.
Then everything shifts into an entirely different register, apparently for plot reasons but really because we are beginning to leave all ordinary ideas of plot behind, the pure MacGuffin kicking in. Getting up to send a telegram, Thornhill is mistaken for a man who is being paged, one George Kaplan. Thornhill is promptly kidnapped, and taken off to a palatial pad on Long Island, where after failing to reveal to his interrogators what he is supposed to know, he is filled with bourbon and dumped in a car rolling downhill. Half-asleep and fully drunk he drives the car most of the way off a cliff and back again, narrowly misses hitting several cars coming the other way on a very winding road (distinctly more like somewhere in California than anywhere on Long Island, and even more like a bit of studio superimposed on some footage of the sea), has a bad fit of double vision, and finally brakes hard in order to avoid an elderly cyclist. The police car that has been following him for a while crashes into him, and another vehicle crashes into the police car. Thornhill is taken off to the police station, miraculously unharmed but still very drunk. When he tells the story of his kidnapping, no one believes him, not even (or least of all) his mother, played by the admirable Jessie Royce Landis, almost repeating her role in To Catch a Thief. This is the kind of movie where an arrested man makes his one phone call not to his lawyer but to his mother. He tells her to bring his lawyer.
So far so random, and so mystifying. Hitchcock says that at this point in the shooting of the film even Grant didn’t know what was going on. He was Roger Thornhill.
JUST ANOTHER ONE OF W'S REGIME CHANGES:
Communiste et Rastignac: a review of Le Monde selon K. by Pierre Péan (Christopher Caldwell, 7/09/09, London Review of Books)
It is Kouchner, more than anyone, who has eroded the distinction between philanthropy and combat. As a young gastroenterologist and self-described ‘mercenary of emergency medicine’, he helped launch Médecins sans frontières in the early 1970s. He broadcast the plight of the Vietnamese boat people in the late 1970s, advised Mitterrand in the 1980s, roused public indignation over events in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, and served as interim governor of Kosovo after Nato’s attack on Serbia; more recently he has become the most prominent of several socialists in Sarkozy’s cabinet. Kouchner may not have invented the concept of ‘humanitarian intervention’, but he has been its symbol for decades.Most French people would say this is a good thing. In a country that is cynical about politics and elites of all sorts, Kouchner has been consistently beloved, with approval ratings above 60 per cent. He is both a dashing man of adventure and a political idealist – the closest thing present-day France has to a Malraux. His reputation even survived his support for the invasion of Iraq.
In February, however, the country’s most celebrated investigative journalist published an exposé accusing Kouchner of various intellectual, political and financial misdeeds. Pierre Péan is best known for having revealed that the dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa, of the Central African Republic, had given diamonds worth millions of francs to Giscard d’Estaing, and for uncovering the extent of Mitterrand’s work for the Vichy government as a young man. In Le Monde selon K., Péan considers a number of uncomfortable moments in Kouchner’s career as a consultant. More important, if less controversially, he argues that Kouchner’s transnational humanitarianism has made France’s foreign policy interests subservient to those of the United States – indeed, that humanitarianism as he practises it is just a larval form of neoconservatism. [...]
Kouchner has spent the last three decades trying to translate his humanitarian reputation into political, military and diplomatic influence of a more traditional kind. In 1988, Mitterrand created a post for him as secretary of state for humanitarian affairs. Kouchner’s great achievement at the time was to theorise (with the help of the international lawyer Mario Bettati) the droit d’ingérence – the right to disregard national sovereignty and intervene in countries experiencing humanitarian crises – and to get it codified, in UN Resolution 43/131. There was something sneaky about the way the measure was implemented: it calls for intervention in case of ‘natural disasters and similar emergency situations’. Political turmoil turned out to be similar enough to storms or earthquakes, and in 1990 and 1991 the UN Security Council invoked 43/131 to open a ‘humanitarian corridor’ for Kurds fleeing Iraq.
This changed everything. It rendered national sovereignty conditional....
In a presidency with no shortage of significant achievements, perhaps George W. Bush's least recognized is the way the three Western leaders who opposed him--Chirac, Chretien, and Schroeder--were dispatched by their respective leaders and replaced by American allies.
NEVER TRUST ANYONE WHO AGREES WITH YOU:
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with: Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme (Cass Sunstein, 1st July 2009, New Statesman)
Political extremism is often a product of group polarisation and social segregation is a useful tool for producing polarisation. In fact, a good way to create an extremist group, or a cult of any kind, is to separate members from the rest of society. The separation can occur physically or psychologically, by creating a sense of suspicion about non-members. With such separation, the information and views of those outside the group can be discredited, and hence nothing will disturb the process of polarisation as group members continue to talk. Deliberating enclaves of like-minded people are often a breeding ground for extreme movements. Terrorists are made, not born, and terrorist networks often operate in just this way. As a result, they can move otherwise ordinary people to violent acts. But the point goes well beyond such domains. Group polarisation occurs in our daily lives; it involves our economic decisions, our evaluations of our neighbours, even our decisions about what to eat, what to drink and where to live.So why do like-minded people go to extremes? The most important reason for group polarisation, which is key to extremism in all its forms, involves the exchange of new information. Group polarisation often occurs because people are telling one another what they know, and what they know is skewed in a predictable direction. When they listen to each other, they move.
Suppose that you are in a group of people whose members tend to think that Israel is the real aggressor in the Middle East conflict, that eating beef is unhealthy, or that same-sex unions are a good idea. In such a group, you will hear many arguments to that effect. Because of the initial distribution of views, you will hear relatively fewer opposing views. It is highly likely that you will have heard some, but not all, of the arguments that emerge from the discussion. After you have heard all of what is said, you will probably shift further in the direction of thinking that Israel is the real aggressor, opposing eating beef, and favouring civil unions. And even if you do not shift — even if you are impervious to what others think — most group members will probably be affected.
When groups move, they do so in large part because of the impact of information. People tend to respond to the arguments made by other people — and the pool of arguments, in a group with a predisposition in a particular direction, will inevitably be skewed in the direction of the original predisposition. Certainly this can happen in a group whose members tend to support aggressive government regulation to combat climate change. Group members will hear a number of arguments in favour of aggressive government regulation and fewer arguments the other way. If people are listening, they will have a stronger conviction, in the same direction from which they began, as a result of deliberation. If people are worried about climate change, the arguments they offer will incline them toward greater worry. If people start with the belief that climate change is a hoax and a myth, their discussions will amplify and intensify that belief. And indeed, a form of ‘environmental tribalism’ is an important part of modern political life. Some groups are indifferent to environmental problems that greatly concern and even terrify others. The key reason is the information to which group members are exposed. If you hear that genetically modified food poses serious risks, and if that view is widespread in your community, you might end up frightened. If you hear nothing about the risks associated with genetically modified food, except perhaps that some zealots are frightened, you will probably ridicule their fear. And when groups move in dangerous directions — toward killing and destruction — it is usually because the flow of information supports that movement.
Those who lack confidence and who are unsure what they should think tend to moderate their views. Suppose that you are asked what you think about some question on which you lack information. You are likely to avoid extremes. It is for this reason that cautious people, not knowing what to do, tend to choose some midpoint between the extremes. But if other people seem to share their views, people become more confident that they are correct.
As a result, they will probably move in a more extreme direction. What is especially noteworthy is that this process of increased confidence and increased extremism is often occurring simultaneously for all participants. Suppose that a group of four people is inclined to distrust the intentions of the United States with respect to foreign aid. Seeing their tentative view confirmed by three others, each member is likely to feel vindicated, to hold their view more confidently, and to move in a more extreme direction. At the same time, the very same internal movements are also occurring in other people (from corroboration to more confidence, and from more confidence to more extremism).
But those movements will not be highly visible to each participant. It will simply appear as if others ‘really’ hold their views without hesitation.
ALL THEY EVER WANTED WAS THEIR RIGHTS AS ENGLISHMEN:
Independence, British-Style (ADAM FREEDMAN, 7/03/09, NY Times)
The English Bill of Rights, like the Declaration, emerged at a moment of crisis. In 1689, the exiled James was raising an army to recapture the throne (he ultimately failed). To keep parliamentary opinion firmly against the old king, the Bill of Rights sets forth a long list of grievances against the crown.The Declaration follows the same template and, in many cases, recites the same grievances. The very first complaint listed in the 1689 document, that the king had suspended laws and the execution of laws “without consent of Parliament,” is closely echoed in the Declaration’s opening gripe, that the king had “refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
Likewise, the Declaration’s defense of the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” conveyed nothing more radical than established British law. Much ink has been spilt arguing that those concepts came from the English philosopher John Locke, or perhaps the Scottish enlightenment, or even American Indian tradition. In reality, the drafters were probably inspired by dowdy old common law, which had long before recognized life, liberty and property as an Englishman’s “absolute rights.” Even Jefferson’s reference to “the pursuit of happiness” was founded on British constitutional principles.
And yet, the Declaration of Independence makes no explicit claim to British pedigree, but appeals to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” and “the supreme judge of the world” to support its argument. That turned what otherwise would have been a mere restatement of English law into an invitation to the world to recognize certain “self-evident” truths about equality and freedom.
The world would be a better place today had the King granted them.
RESIDUAL?:
Our Founders the Realists: The Constitution succeeded because its authors had a clear-eyed view of human nature. (Rich Lowry, 7/03/09, National Review)
The Revolution was institutionalized in the Constitution, an inspired exercise in leveraging human failings against one another — “ambition counteracts ambition” — to create a stable structure of liberty.“It may be a reflection on human nature,” Madison wrote in a famous passage in Federalist No. 51, “that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
How did the Founders come to know man as they did? They had broad practical experience that exposed them to humanity in its glory and its folly: as lawyers, military officers, and — especially important — legislators. Some knew hardship. Try, like Alexander Hamilton, making your way as a penniless, orphaned bastard from the West Indies and see if you don’t pick up a few hard-boiled lessons about how the world works.
They read widely, knew the classics, and soaked up history. John Adams studied and wrote a book about the French civil wars of the 16th century, concluding of human affairs: “Reason holds the helm, but passions are the gales.” Madison undertook a yearlong study of the history of republics and confederacies prior to the writing of the Constitution. Believing “experience is the oracle of truth,” he endeavored to learn from this long, unrelieved record of failure.
They didn’t let their view of reality get obscured by abstruse theories or sunny abstractions of the sort that perverted the French Revolution. No philosophes need apply. Instead, a residual Calvinism tinged their worldview. They admired the “country” tradition in England, characterized by a deep distrust of the crown and support for republican reforms to preserve English liberties. In this tradition, the late historian Martin Malia writes, “men were neither rational nor naturally good,” and “human government therefore invariably tended toward corruption and despotism.”
What the Constitution institutionalizes is the Fall.
WE DON'T PAY FOR HEALTH, JUST FOR HEALTH CARE:
Health Care: Costs And Reform (Bruce Bartlett, 07.03.09, Forbes)
Americans widely believe that while the our health system is expensive it is nevertheless the best in the world. However, a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests otherwise.According to the OECD, the U.S. spends 5% of GDP more on health than France, the nation with the second highest level of health spending among the 30 wealthy countries in the organization. The average for all OECD countries is 8.9% of GDP.
We spend $7,290 per person on average versus $2,964 among all OECD countries. Norway, the nation with the second most expensive health system on a per capita basis, spends $4,763. (Currency conversions based on purchasing power parity.)
Of course, Americans know that they pay a lot for health; the rising cost of health insurance for employers is the main reason why wages have been stagnant for years. [...]
Nor has the U.S. bought significantly better health with its vastly higher health spending. Life expectancy at birth is probably the best general measure of a population's health. This statistic has increased by 8.2 years in the U.S. since 1960, but has risen more in most other OECD countries. In Canada, life expectancy has risen 9.4 years and more than 10 years in both Germany and France. Life expectancy rose by almost 15 years in Japan over the same time.
Infant mortality is another good general measure of the quality of a health system. In 2006, 6.7 infants died per 1,000 live births in the U.S.--a sharp decline from 26 deaths in 1960. But the infant mortality rate is lower in every other OECD country except Turkey and Mexico. The average rate for all OECD countries is 4.9 deaths per 1,000 live births.
The U.S. does excel at one thing: the amount of highly expensive medical equipment per capita. In 2007, there were 26 MRI machines per 1 million population here versus an OECD average of less than 10. But our lead in high-tech equipment is shrinking. A few years ago we had far more CT scanners per capita than any other country; now our lead is much less and several countries have more scanners per capita.
As an economist, Mr. Bartlett ought to know that modern health care is just a consumer good, like chips and salsa. Analyzing it as if its effects mattered to the consumer makes little sense.
BECAUSE, YOU ACTUALLY DO HAVE ALL DAY:
As American as…Cricket: Cricket and baseball are twin brothers, separated at birth. (Roger Bate, July 3, 2009, The American)
I cannot remember the first time I heard an American say “cricket is so boring: it lasts for days and still ends in a draw.” Let’s just say it was not this decade or the one before that. I am not going to try and explain cricket—the rules are too complex for a short article. Or to persuade you that cricket is a great game—hundreds of millions of Indians, Pakistanis, South Africans, Zimbabweans, Sri Lankans, Australians, New Zealanders, Bangladeshis, West Indians, Kenyans, Dutch, Welsh, Scots, and English, like me, know it is.It is fair to say if you do not like baseball, then you will not like cricket. But if you do, read on a little longer.
There are many similarities between baseball and cricket. They are duels of batter (batsman) and pitcher (bowler). They showcase highly individualized, skillful players striving for a collective goal. They are slow, staccato games with plenty of pauses for the audience (and indeed players) to consider what could happen next. Both can move from the seemingly pedestrian to vibrant excitement in less than a second.
They are sports with tremendous history and fabulous rivalries. While there is no love lost between Red Sox Nation and Yankees fans, India and Pakistan almost went to war over cricket (and who knows, they still might). Both sports boast legendary players who elevated the game to new heights. Born at roughly the same time as Babe Ruth, Australian great Don Bradman dominated cricket for nearly 20 years. When Bradman told Ruth that a batter did not have to run on contact in cricket the Babe barked “Just too easy!” Yet Babe Ruth eventually became fascinated by cricket.
Good sports can be enjoyed at many levels. The casual observer enjoys soaking up the atmosphere and beer; the serious fans obsess over the minutiae.
Freshman year at Colgate, an Anglophile in our dorm organized a cricket match. We used a sawed off hockey goalie stick, a tennis ball wrapped in tape and the wickets were stacked milk cartons. We dressed in such whites as we had and mixed up vats of gin and whatever. At one point, two professors had to cut across the Quad in mid-game and one was heard to say to the other: "At least we're importing a better brand of ruffian these days."
THERE'S NOTHING MORE PRO-LIFE THAN NOT DRIVING:
Highway fatalities decrease in U.S. (Kristi Jourdan, 7/03/09, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
There's a bright spot among the dark news cast by the nation's economy -- the recession is keeping drivers off the road and setting record lows for the number of highway fatalities nationwide.
So House Republicans do deserve some credit.
READING, WRITING, AND ROMANISM...:
CITY CATHOLIC SCHOOLS TROUNCE REST IN READING AND MATH (YOAV GONEN, 6/29/09, NY Daily News)
The Archdiocese of New York's 132 city elementary schools continue to outperform public schools by leaps and bounds in reading, and to a lesser extent in math, new statistics show.Seventy-eight percent of Catholic-school eighth-graders aced the state reading exam -- 21 percentage points higher than the public-school kids -- and 82 percent passed the math test, 9 percentage points better than their public-school counterparts.
In fourth grade, 85 percent of Catholic-school kids met or surpassed state benchmarks in reading -- 16 percentage points above the public schools -- while 88 percent did so in math, 3 percent higher than the public-school youngsters.
THE NEEDED TRANSPARENCY ISN'T WHO HAS WHICH ONES...:
European Commission Outlines Derivatives Revamp Plan (CAROLYN HENSON and NEIL SHAH, 7/03/09, WSJ)
The European Commission Friday outlined measures it is considering to improve the safety and transparency of Europe's over-the-counter derivatives trade.The measures include broadening the standardization of derivatives products and extending the collection of data on the number of transactions and the size of outstanding positions.
...but what riskk each derivative contains.
YET SCOTLAND HAS AN OBESITY CRISIS:
Survival of the less fit: The mystery of Scotland’s shrinking sheep may have been solved (The Economist, 7/03/09)
Tim Coulson of Imperial College, London, and his colleagues examined the weights of about 2,000 female sheep that lived on the island in the two decades of their study. They combined this information with detailed histories of individual animals. They found that daughters were, on average, lighter than their mothers had been at the same age. Their legs were shorter, too, suggesting that the breed really was shrinking.Why is this happening? The researchers, who published their results in the current issue of Science, suspected that it might have something to do with climate change.
IT'S NOT A MARKET...:
Rogue trader sends oil to year-high on $10m gamble (Susan Thompson and Miles Costello, 7/03/09, Times of London)
PVM Oil Futures, a London-based division of the world’s biggest broker of over-the-counter derivatives, has lost almost $10 million (£6 million) after falling foul of a rogue trader. [...]
The rogue trades are widely believed to have caused global crude oil prices to spike to their highest level in more than eight months – a leap that traders and analysts had struggled to explain.
...it's a three-card monty game.
EXCEPT IT'S THE DARNEDEST THING... (via Glenn Dryfoos):
Capture the Flag (Timothy Egan, 7/01/09, NY Times)
Traveling in California and New York over the last couple of weeks, I noticed something in the summer landscape of these two deeply blue states that is more reminiscent of rural America this time of year – a surfeit of American flags.Among the offerings of street vendors in Harlem and outdoor stalls near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the flag is often fused with the image of President Obama, a burst of color against a bleak wall, sometimes with a Superman motif. In California, I saw Old Glory on bicycles in the Bay Area, on backpacks in Yosemite and at campgrounds under the redwoods.
It’s not unusual to see a flag in liberal provinces, of course. But in the Bush years of sanctioned torture and war built on deceit, many Americans withdrew from overt displays of patriotism. Some said they were ashamed of their country.
While following the length of the Lewis and Clark Trail several years ago, I was struck by the huge number of flags in places like rural Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and Montana. On Indian reservations, the same thing – though often with tribal symbols superimposed. But in the major cities along the trail, St. Louis and Portland among them, I was hard-pressed to find a flag in front of a home.
I wondered whether urban Americans, overwhelmingly Democratic, had something against the flag, or if they felt the country was no longer theirs. Now you can ask the same question of the other side of the political spectrum.
...we Republicans don't actually stop loving our country just because a Democrat gets to govern it once in awhile. We're funny that way. Patriotism is bigger than politics for us.
July 2, 2009
LET'S GO TO THE VIDEOTAPE:
TAKING LIBERTIES: WE ARE BEING WATCHED: Britan has quietly become the most spied-upon nation in Europe. How? Why? And does it matter? Charles Nevin goes to Manchester, London, Berlin and Bucharest to compare, contrast and discuss ... (Charles Nevin, Summer 2009, INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine)
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000 (RIPA), one of a series of laws introduced to combat modern terrorism, sets out the conditions for surveillance by the police and security services. It has also been used by other public bodies for electronic and manual surveillance aimed at exposing lesser threats to society. In Cambridge last year the council used hidden CCTV cameras to check whether punt operators were using unauthorised landing places. In Poole the council followed a family, day and night, who were suspected of lying about their address on a school application form. In all, some three-quarters of Britain’s local authorities have used the act as a weapon in the unceasing fight against dog fouling and putting the rubbish out too early, enjoying a 9% success rate in prosecutions, cautions or fixed penalties.The flavour of Ealing comedy accompanying so many British activities is absent at the other end of the operation, where the Control Order is surveillance made easy by house arrest and electronic tagging without the necessity for a charge or open testing of evidence. In between lie the fruits of the new electronic technology, enticing to the authorities, evil to increasing numbers in Britain, from the robust inheritors of Tom Paine and John Wilkes to such establishment figures as a former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, a former director of public prosecutions, a former director general of MI5, and the current information commissioner of the United Kingdom. The last of these, Richard Thomas, has been loud in warning. His soundbite “sleepwalking into surveillance” has been opposition shorthand since 2004. The former MI5 boss, Dame Stella Rimington, has matched it with talk of “a police state”. The former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, doesn’t deal in soundbites but is no less compelling, as we shall see.
Sleepwalkers should feel free to scan our information (below) on surveillance by numbers. One feature meriting special notice concerns DNA, a seemingly miraculous aid to order brought into disrepute by the mechanics of its operation: the indefinite retention by the police of DNA samples taken not only from convicted criminals, but from 1m people, including perhaps 100,000 children, who have committed no offence and have in many cases only been witnesses to one. Lovers of renowned dystopian visions of state control will appreciate the attendant language. A 2006 report on reforming public services speaks of “transformational government”, “the totality of the relationship with the citizen”, and, best of all, the establishment of “a single source of truth” on each individual. In April 2009 that fantasy came close to reality, when the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, published a white paper proposing a central government database tracking all electronic communications—every e-mail, every phone call, every text. Smith then backed down from a single database, but went ahead with plans to force mobile-phone companies and internet-service providers to keep these records, at a cost to the taxpayer of £2 billion.
I watch a lot of British mysteries and the other night happened to be watching an older one. I kept wondering why they didn't just use the CCTV surveillance to solve the crime, but it was just old enough that they wouldn't have had systematic coverage yet. Made you wonder why we didn't start surveilling earlier.
SELF-COUP:
A 'coup' in Honduras? Nonsense.: Don't believe the myth. The arrest of President Zelaya represents the triumph of the rule of law. (Octavio Sánchez, July 2, 2009 , CS Monitor)
These are the facts: On June 26, President Zelaya issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the "Public Opinion Poll to convene a National Constitutional Assembly." In doing so, Zelaya triggered a constitutional provision that automatically removed him from office.Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. When Zelaya published that decree to initiate an "opinion poll" about the possibility of convening a national assembly, he contravened the unchangeable articles of the Constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term. His actions showed intent.
Our Constitution takes such intent seriously. According to Article 239: "No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform [emphasis added], as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years."
Notice that the article speaks about intent and that it also says "immediately" – as in "instant," as in "no trial required," as in "no impeachment needed."
THE LOSING OF WWII:
Dead end: Mankind’s biggest mistake: a review of The Rise and Fall of Communism. By Archie Brown (The Economist, 7/02/09)
Archie Brown’s new history of communism identifies three big questions, perhaps even the biggest, of the past century. [...]
Communism’s first big advantage was that it played on two human appetites—the noble desire for justice and the baser hunger for vengeance. Mr Brown, emeritus professor of politics at Oxford University, traces communism’s idealistic roots in the struggle against feudal oppression and beastly working conditions. The moral weight of Karl Marx’s criticisms of 19th-century capitalism even won him praise from the high priest of Western liberalism, Karl Popper, a Viennese-born philosopher who emigrated to London. But the intoxicating excitement of revolutionary shortcuts attracted the ruthless and dogmatic, who saw the chance to put into practice Marx’s muddled Utopian notions—and settle some scores on the way. “The more representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in killing, the better,” wrote Lenin in 1922. Even so, many still resist the idea that the founding fathers of communism were murderous maniacs. Revolutions against corrupt and ossified regimes in countries such as Russia and China stoked a steamy enthusiasm that took decades to dissipate.The communist block also had two bits of good fortune. The economic slump of the 1930s discredited democracy and capitalism. Then came Hitler’s disastrous attack on the Soviet Union. The victory over fascism in Europe gave the Soviet Union, an ally of America and Britain, renewed moral weight. Given what had happened in Russia under Stalin in the 1930s, that hardly seemed deserved. As Mr Brown notes, Stalin trusted the Nazi leader more than he trusted his own generals. The Soviet Union killed more top German communists than Hitler’s regime did. Yet in some countries, Czechoslovakia for example, Soviet forces were initially welcomed as liberators, and Stalinist regimes took power with a degree of popular consent. In other countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states, it looked different: one occupation gave way to another.
IN FAIRNESS TO HIS STAFF...:
A Pitch on Health Care To Virginia And Beyond (Michael D. Shear and Jose Antonio Vargas, 7/02/09, Washington Post)
In the stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration's new-media team. Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his staff from videos submitted to the White House Web site or from those responding to a request for "tweets."The president called randomly on three audience members. All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.
...if he doesn't know the questions ahead of time there's no evidence he can answer them coherently.
IF THE POST WAS PIMPING, WHAT DOES THAT MAKE THOSE THEY WERE OFFERING ACCESS TO?:
Post Publisher Cancels Plans for Off-the-Record 'Salons' (Howard Kurtz, 7/02/09, Washington Post)
Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth today canceled plans for a series of policy dinners at her home after learning that marketing fliers offered lobbyists access to Obama administration officials, members of Congress and Post journalists in exchange for payments as high as $250,000. [...]The fliers, circulated by the paper's parent company, offering an "intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth." The fliers, which said participants would be charged $25,000 to sponsor a single salon and $250,000 to underwrite an annual series of 11 sessions, were reported this morning by Politico. [...]
One such flier said: "Bring your organization's CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama Administration and Congressional leaders . . . Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it." That flier said a July 21 session would involve "Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post . . . An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done."
NEVER WASTE AN OPPORTUNITY:
USA Gold Cup Additions (Steven Goff, 7/02/09, Soccer Insider: WP)
Given permission by CONCACAF to supplement its Gold Cup roster, the USA national team has added forwards Jozy Altidore and Conor Casey, midfielders Ricardo Clark, Benny Feilhaber and Sacha Kljestan, defender Jonathan Bornstein and goalkeeper Brad Guzan. However, according to the USSF, not all seven will be present for each Gold Cup match. The schedule for each player will be announced in the days leading to the matches. Of the pool of 30 players, only 18 will be in uniform.
It's good that some new guys are getting a chance in the Gold Cup and that Freddy Adu will get a chance to show what he can do once and for all, but it seems like a golden opportunity to get Guzan some game time, to play Altidore and Brian Ching together--a front line with such size and physicality (for soccer) that few countries can match up with them--to see if Feilhaber can be our main playmaker in an attacking midfielder role, and to see if Bornstein and Marvell Wynne (who I believe still isn't on this squad) can develop into effective wing backs to give our attack some width.
JUST STEALING JOBS FROM DOMINICANS:
Bay to become US citizen on Thursday (Alden Gonzalez, 7/02/09, MLB.com)
Jason Bay can now call himself an American.The Red Sox's left fielder, a native of Canada, will officially become a U.S. citizen on Thursday afternoon in a ceremony at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall, according to The Associated Press.
THE RATIONING IS ALL THAT RECOMMENDS THE PLANS:
Finding What Works in Health Care (William C. Weldon, July 2, 2009, Washington Post)
Congress took an important step for health care when it provided $1.1 billion to fund "comparative effectiveness research" as part of the stimulus legislation this year.This research promises to help America's doctors better target treatments to patients who can benefit from them as well as cut unnecessary health-care spending. [...]
Many patient groups, physicians and developers of treatments fear that comparative effectiveness research will be used to restrict access to a broad range of treatments, some of which may be precisely what particular patients need. As the head of Johnson & Johnson, a global pharmaceutical and device company, I have seen technology assessments make it more difficult for patients to access some lifesaving treatments.
But that doesn't have to be what happens here.
Of course it does. Once you do the comparisons you can't justify most health care on medical grounds.
CHRISTIE LOVE:
Christie Makes Inroads Among NJ Democrats Against Corzine (Congressional Quarterly, 7/01/09)
Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie is leading New Jersey Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine 45 percent to 39 percent with 15 percent undecided, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll conducted June 22-29. [...]Christie’s favorable-to-unfavorable ratio is 34 percent to 25 percent with another 28 percent saying they had not formed an opinion. Fifty-four percent see Corzine unfavorably compared to 31 percent who express a positive view of him. Among Democrats, 48 percent view Corzine favorably and 37 percent view him unfavorably. Only 66 percent support him for re-election while Christie gets 20 percent of Democratic votes.
YOU DON'T DESIGN A UNIVERSAL SYSTEM...:
Obama Quizzed at Health Care Town Hall: On Taxing Benefits, Single Payer System, and Costs (Yunji de Nies and Sunlen Miller, 7/01/09, ABC News)
President Obama got personal with one audience member Debbie Smith, 53, who through tears, described struggling to pay for cancer treatments without insurance, without a job, and living on food stamps. The President hugged Smith, and promised to have his staff look into helping her, within the existing law. On a broader level, the President said her predicament is an example of why the system needs to change.“Debbie, you are Exhibit A, and we appreciate you serving -- sharing our story,” he said.
...around the aberrations.
IT LOOKS LIKE THE OLD POLICY TO FANS TOO:
To Critics, New Policy on Terror Looks Old (CHARLIE SAVAGE, 7/02/09, NY Times)
Civil libertarians recently accused President Obama of acting like former President George W. Bush, citing reports about Mr. Obama’s plans to detain terrorism suspects without trials on domestic soil after he closes the Guantánamo prison.It was only the latest instance in which critics have argued that Mr. Obama has failed to live up to his campaign pledge “to restore our Constitution and the rule of law” and raised a pointed question: Has he, on issues related to fighting terrorism, turned out to be little different from his predecessor? [...]
“President Obama may mouth very different rhetoric,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He may have a more complicated process with members of Congress. But in the end, there is no substantive break from the policies of the Bush administration.”
