Under A Green Moon-Ira Stoll At The New York Sun: ‘Comma in the New Yorker Opens Up Quite a Vista Of Liberal Parochialism’

February 27, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Stoll:

‘There was a wonderful article by an editor at the magazine, Mary Norris, about commas. Wonderful, that is, until this passage, “That was during the Reagan Administration, when many of us suspected that Reagan had some form of dementia, but no one could do anything about it. The country was running on automatic.”

Such politicization can make for bad stewardship of the arts, certainly.

Perhaps New Yorker features are increasingly flogged to maintain readership in a competitive marketplace, or are being put to use for other purposes, like reaffirming political ideology and identities to signal the right beliefs and in-group/out-group loyalties. Many of the liberal pieties can be found on display at the New Yorker.

Unsolicited advice for The New Yorker: Build a wall around your political stable, don’t bet too much on current trends and politicians, and keep other spaces free for the genuinely ‘avant-garde,’ the strange and beautiful, and biting satire when it shows-up.

As previously posted:

Adam Kirsch was not so impressed with the 2009 inauguration ceremony:

‘In our democratic age, however, poets have always had scruples about exalting leaders in verse. Since the French Revolution, there have been great public poems in English, but almost no great official poems. For modern lyric poets, whose first obligation is to the truth of their own experience, it has only been possible to write well on public themes when the public intersects, or interferes, with that experience–when history usurps privacy.’

A reader sends a link to a SF Gate review of poet Jorie Graham’s ‘Sea Change:‘

‘In “Sea Change,” Graham becomes Prospero, casting spells by spelling out her thoughts to merge with ours, and with the voices of the elements. The result is a mingling of perceptions rather than a broadcasting of opinions. Instead of analysis, the poems encourage emotional involvement with the drastic changes overwhelming us, overwhelm- ing the planet.’

and:

‘Strengths and weaknesses, flows and ebbs, yet every poem in “Sea Change” bears memorable lines, with almost haunting (if we truly have but 10 years to “fix” global warming) images of flora and fauna under siege. Jorie Graham has composed a swan song for Earth.’

Oh boy.

What are these poems being asked to do?

Repost-Heather McDonald At The WSJ: ‘ The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity’

***Who do you trust for discussions of the arts and culture, and would you just rather publications be up front about their ideological bents and loyalties?

Repost-‘From The Detroit News: ‘How The Treasury, GM Stock Deal Got Done’

February 24, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full post here.

‘Geithner has long wanted to exit GM soon, wanting to get out of the business of owning a large stake in an automaker. Some GM officials worried that after Geithner leaves in January, reaching a deal could have taken months, but Treasury officials disagreed.

Before the November election, the Obama administration had showed no interest in disposing of its 26.5 percent stake in GM — or 500 million shares — it had acquired in 2009 as part of GM’s bankruptcy restructuring.’

Over six years ago, when GM stock was selling at $2 a share and the debt-holders had been wiped out, this blog put up the video below. Here’s a brief 2:00 min explanation by Bill Ackman of Pershing Square on why the GM bailout was likely a bad idea:

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Certain people benefitted more than they would have otherwise, of course, like the UAW and it’s fair to say the Obama administration which needed the votes in Ohio to get reelected, but others, including investors who risked their own money, and the taxpayers, most of whom didn’t have a say beyond their votes, lost money. Obama, as politicians are wont to do, pretty clearly waited until after the election to quietly make the sale.

ZeroHedge has more here, and has been following the process for awhile.

My guess is Obama will try and maneuver away from the coming tax and regulatory fallout upon ordinary taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers from Dodd-Frank and Obamacare as it all begins to rain down.

The money has to come from somewhere, and it’s coming from you and me, through inflation, higher taxes, higher prices with costs passed down to the consumer, for starters.

My non-economist two cents.

Addition: David Harsanyi at Reason has more. Non-union employees pensions got raided and taxpayers foot the bill, so that Obama and the UAW can maintain power.

Tuesday Poem: ‘A Pact’ By Ezra Pound

February 23, 2015 / chr1 / 2 Comments

A Pact

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman –
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root –
Let there be commerce between us.

–Ezra Pound

From The Liberal Bastions-James Baldwin, Often

February 22, 2015August 3, 2020 / chr1 / 2 Comments

Quote found here:

‘By the time Baldwin published “Another country” and the essay collection “Nobody Knows My Name,” both in 1962, he had become America’s leading black literary star. Both books were commercially successful, but reviews were mixed. In 1962, “The New Yorker” published Baldwin’s essay “The Fire Next Time,” which detailed his evangelical upbringing and his views on Christianity as a form of slavery forced on and then embraced by blacks. When Baldwin became the official voice of black America, however, he immediately compromised his voice as a writer, sacrificing his gifts in order to gain acceptance from the Black Power movement. In the 1970s, Baldwin was adrift not only politically but aesthetically. Nevertheless, up until his death, in 1987, at the age of 63, Baldwin continued to harbor the hope that he would be embraced as an important literary figure by his own race.’

And just to suggest no definitive answers to such problems, but rather which kinds of questions might be worth asking:

At minute 9:20 of Thomas Sowell discussing his book: ‘Intellectuals and Race…‘

…Baldwin is quoted:

“People in Harlem know they are there because white people do not think they are good enough to live anywhere else…[In a new housing project they] naturally…began smashing windows, defacing walls {and] urinating in the elevators…“

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But what if in the crusade of black folks to appeal to white folks’ better natures, one fell prey to the vanity of this idea?:

‘The central premise of liberal intellectuals for decades…[was] that the racial problem was essentially…inside the minds of white people…“

Well, Baldwin was pretty successful at reaching inside the minds of many, to his credit, using his natural gifts to make a moral plea for such ends.

Sowell asks why certain cultures have pursued ideas and abstractions to tremendous advantage, developing habits of success in the sciences, politics, law, trade and technology in the process?

America, certainly, has been one such success story, despite and partly because of its original sin…and such successes have happened before in England instead of Ireland, the Greeks and Romans instead of Northern Europe, as Sowell notes.

Why not join ’em, copying what works, or at least trying hard to beat them at their own game once given the chance? This seems to be a logical consequence of Sowell’s reasoning. This, as opposed becoming locked in resentment, justified in anger, dependent upon the ‘oppressor’, often following an ideology in search of a cause; victim-hood in search of facts and evidence.

Schools and programs can do a lot, expanding experience and making people larger than they otherwise would be, but they are often an inefficient way to do it, really offering less than can a stable home in a growing economy, and running into problems of unions, twisted incentives, bureaucracies, corruption and waste.

Notice the emotional appeal:

With "Every Kid in a Park" every 4th grader can explore America's great outdoors! SJ #FindYourPark pic.twitter.com/pzIRYIj7AT

— Sally Jewell (@SecretaryJewell) February 20, 2015

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I suspect that under an activist moon, many liberals must feel the tidal pull of solidarity against the ‘oppressor;’ left seeking their own moral lights in a rather dense fog.

There must be someone to blame!

This can also be very funny; creating incentives for well-educated, often very square people to overlook, quite conveniently at times, their own habits of success, wealth-building and hard-work.

This can also be very sad, making successful folks follow incentives that will eventually undercut their own habits of success, wealth-building and hard-work through awful political incentives, potentially dragging us all into poorer, darker, place with little room to reflect.

Preach what you practice. Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

***From a reader, parks are better than the kind of neighborhood ‘The Message’ comes from:

Duly noted:

‘People pissin’ on the stairs you know they just don’t care’:

Also On This Site: From Fora Via YouTube: ‘Thomas Sowell and a Conflict of Visions’…Two Sunday Quotations By Albert Jay Nock in ‘Anarchist’s Progress’…

Repost-Vidal/Buckley Debate, 1968

Megan McArdle At Bloomberg: ‘A Few More Arguments Against Obamacare’

February 18, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full piece here.

A thoughtful piece:

‘This is not a tedious rehash of my reasons for opposing Obamacare, though two years in, perhaps such a rehash is due. If it is, I will provide it in a different post. This is just a post on why I don’t think that the argument for Obamacare can rest very securely on the argument that we are simply cleaning up some ugly negative externalities, in much the same way that we do with noise ordinance and anti-pollution laws. That is not what we are doing, and if it were, we wouldn’t be doing it’

You don’t have to be libertarian to find some of Richard Epstein’s suggestions…reasonable:

‘As I have noted before, there is only one type of reform that can make progress in meeting the three goals of a sensible health care system: cost reduction, quality improvements, and public access. That reform requires massive deregulation of the many market impediments that are already in place. Lower the costs, drop the excessive mandates, and thin out administrative costs, and people will flock back to the system voluntarily.’

Repost-William F. Buckley And Kenneth Minogue Discuss Ideology

February 17, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

——————–

I’m well aware that any schlub can post a Youtube video on a WordPress site, but it’s still timely.

The discussion hinges on the idea of whether or not you and I are already free, and whether or not we somehow need liberating from something. The world and society are full of injustices, and discontents, and inequalities. Sure, we needed liberating from King George III for various reasons during our revolution, but not in the radical, ideological, rationalist sense (addition: a reader points out John Locke’s right of revolution…duly noted).

Black folks in America certainly needed liberating, held under the laws and subject to extreme injustice. But how?

In Marxist ideology, this liberating hinges on a form of revolutionary praxis, according to Minogue. It operates as a closed system of ‘first principles’ which goes deep and purports to function as a science and claims to undercut the sciences, philosophy, capitalism and theology in order to liberate. This is why it lives on, and on, and on. Despite its failures it remains ultimately untestable, neither proved nor disproved, not being a form of knowledge we’ll know ever lines up with reality, or that can be falsifiable, a la Karl Popper.

In the video, liberation theology is briefly discussed as well, described by Buckley as a kind of ‘baptised Marxism.’ In it, we see a charged movement against the injustices of slavery moving towards ideas of liberation (think Rev. Wright’s church). I’ll put up a quote from a few posts ago by Cornel West.:

‘Being a leftist is a calling, not a career; it’s a vocation not a profession. It means you are concerned about structural violence, you are concerned about exploitation at the work place, you are concerned about institutionalized contempt against gay brothers and lesbian sisters, hatred against peoples of color, and the subordination of women.’

Few things are sadder to me than relatively well-off, unknowing, white liberals, maybe even of the classical variety, finding sudden solidarity under the current progressive mainstream discussion, softly under the influence of the New Left alliance of the 60’s.

There are many hypocrisies visible in this approach, logical inconsistencies and costs to all of our economic and political freedoms.

Needless to say, it’s frustrating.

Also As Sent In: Martin Luther King’s intellectual development came mainly through theology and seminary, social gospel (addressing social injustices), but also depended on various other sources, including Gandhi’s non-violent resistance (not acquiescence) to displace the force of the laws used against blacks for centuries. He welcomed a broad definition of rights enacted into law to include black folks, and a vast involvement of Federal authority…that libertarians have trouble with philosophically:

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Related On This Site: Sunday Quotation: Edmund Burke On The French Revolution

Milton Friedman Via Youtube: ‘Responsibility To The Poor’……Robert George And Cornel West At Bloggingheads: “The Scandal Of The Cross”…Race And Free Speech-From Volokh: ‘Philadelphia Mayor Suggests Magazine Article on Race Relations Isn’t Protected by the First Amendment’

One way out of multiculturalism and cultural relativism:

Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’

They’ve got to keep up with the times:A Few Thoughts On NPR And Current Liberal Establishment Thinking Under Obama

Ken Burns makes a good documentary, but he’s also arguing he absolutely needs your tax dollars in service of what he assumes to be a shared definition of the “common good” as he pursues that art. The market just can’t support it otherwise. Repost-From ReasonTV Via Youtube: ‘Ken Burns on PBS Funding, Being a “Yellow-Dog Democrat,” & Missing Walter Cronkite’…From NPR: Grants To The NEA To Stimulate The Economy?…We’re already mixing art and politics, so…

An Act Of ‘Commercial Violence?’-They’re Still Trying To Kill Lars Vilks

February 14, 2015February 14, 2015 / chr1 / 2 Comments

Via USA Today

Via the BBC:

‘The debate, which took place in a cafe, was described on a personal website of Lars Vilks as a talk on whether any limits should be placed on artistic expression or freedom of speech.’

Some eager attendees contributed bullets and a few words in Arabic, before heading out for some fresh air:

‘Eyewitness Dennis Myhoff-Brink: “We heard…20 or 30 shots…and a person yelling something in Arabic…”

Gunmen have killed one person and injured three police officers at a free speech debate in Copenhagen attended by a controversial Swedish cartoonist, officials say…

The French ambassador was also present at the seminar….

Reports say up to 40 shots were fired and a manhunt has been launched…’

Vilks is no stranger to needing security detail.

Nothing says your cause is just, your efforts noble, your suffering righteous, like trying to kill cartoonists in cafes, and murdering others in the process.

Addition: And here you go, an attack on a synagogue in Copenhagen as well:

Shots fired at Copenhagen synagogue, Danish police say: http://t.co/uyRs6UxFzQ #cphshooting

— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) February 15, 2015

More here:

Barely a Month After Charlie Hebdo, Twin Terror Attacks Hit Denmark http://t.co/Cet3UJsy8d via @csdickey

— Chris Navin (@chris_navin) February 15, 2015

From the magic vault:

Mark Steyn discussed complaints brought against Macleans, Canada’s largest publication, by the President of the Canadian Islamic Congress (who sent three representatives) to TVOntario. They were upset at the pieces Steyn had published there. The complaints went through the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for alleged “Islamophobia” and “promoting hate:”

Notice the unholy alliance between Muslim grievance and Left/activist identity politics and the unsettling incentives it creates.

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It takes a special kind of ideological commitment to call the Ft. Hood shooting an example of ‘workplace violence.’

A Few More Thoughts On The Marathon Bombing: Free Speech Is Key

Tariq Ramadan speaks both multicultural-ese and the language of Muslim Brotherhood, and ironically it’s the 68er and socialist who stands for neither religious belief nor multiculturalism confronts him

Repost-From Beautiful Horizons: ‘Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ramadan at the 92nd Street Y’

When you add it all up, it’s a lot From Kenanmalik.com: ‘Introduction: How Salman Rushdie Changed My Life’… Via YouTube: ‘Christopher Hitchens Vs. Ahmed Younis On CNN (2005)’… ‘Mohammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Headbutted‘During Lecture’……From The OC Jewish Experience: ‘UC Irvine Muslim Student Union Suspended’…From Volokh: ‘”South Park” Creators Warned (Threatened) Over Mohammed’… More From Spiegel Online After The Westergaard Attacks Via A & L Daily: ‘The West Is Choked By Fear’

Boots On The Ground Against ISIS, Or No?

February 14, 2015 / chr1 / 4 Comments

Matthew Continetti-‘Don’t Authorize Obama’s War:’

Perhaps we’re getting to that six-year point when the politics of the nation start becoming all about the next election and the changing-of-the-guard.

Continetti:

‘Far better for us all if the Congress refused the president precisely because he is unserious and untrustworthy with the security of the United States and the world, and spent the remaining two years of his presidency making the case publicly and robustly for the roll back of ISIS and the removal of Assad, an end to the Iranian nuclear program, a military buildup, and a renewal of the alliance system and of American support for Western principles of liberal democracy’

I suspect if the President wanted to fight ISIS the way a new AUMF implies might be necessary, he’d already be doing so. Rather, I think he wants to cement the idea the U.S. troops will be very limited on the ground and thus, his legacy. Hence, Continetti’s piece.

So, is a lower probability, higher-risk strategy of withdrawing most American military influence from the region while simultaneously working alongside strategic non-allies working (mostly Iran…the Moscow, Tehran, Damascus alliance…and by proxy Hezbollah and old Revolutionary Guard types)?

Do we have closer relations with our allies as a result? Have we set up incentives that would lead to the ‘international community’ the President so often invokes while using American military leverage to gain it?

As posted:

Here’s a quote from Anne-Marie Slaughter, on liberal internationalism (addition: which is probably a few ticks center-ward of further Leftward progressive, semi-radical peace and democracy advocates)

‘The central liberal internationalist premise is the value of a rules-based international order that restrains powerful states and thereby reassures their enemies and allies alike and allows weaker states to have sufficient voice in the system that they will not choose to exit’

Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘Syria’s Regime Not Worth Preserving’…A Few More Syria Links-’Unmitigated Clusterf**k?’…

From Reuters: ‘Analysis: Syrian Kurds Sense Freedom, Power Struggle Awaits’

Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest: ‘What Did The Arab Spring Really Change?’…Liberal Internationalism is hobbling us, and the safety of even the liberal internationalist doctrine if America doesn’t lead…Via Youtube-Uncommon Knowledge With Fouad Ajami And Charles Hill

Two Monday Links On Syria And Iran

Two Quick Friday Links-Real Estate Money And Regulation

February 12, 2015 / chr1 / 3 Comments

From The Cuture Of Capitalism: ‘Bribery At The Buildings Dept.-Again

Regulatory capture so serious it’s rife with corruption:

‘The corruption is, along with the regulation, a contributing factor in New York City’s sky-high housing costs. Mayor de Blasio seems to want to deal with those costs by subsidizing or forcing developers to build “affordable” housing, but an alternative approach would be to eliminate the bureaucracy that makes the housing so expensive to construct.’

Related On This Site: Big cities, especially New York, tend to over-regulate business, you can hope for efficient corruption: Richard Epstein At Defining Ideas: ‘City Planners Run Amok’…Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas: ‘California’s Kafkaesque Rent Control Laws’…Josh Barro At Business Insider: ‘Dear New Yorkers: Here’s Why Your Rent Is So Ridiculously High’

Megan McArdle at Bloomberg: ‘Up, Literally:’

In D.C, they stop many condo developers before they can start:

‘What is a pop-up, you ask? Well, in a city where lots are small and expensive, the idea is that you take a 100-year-old row house, rip off the roof and put another level on the house. Usually, this is followed by the developer dividing the place into condos, because putting on a pop-up costs well over $100,000, and developers are the folks with the ready cash to do it. Having done so, they want to make as much money as possible, so they split the house into two units that will each fetch more than a single large place.’

Repost-Megan McArdle At The Daily Beast: ‘America’s New Mandarins’…Megan McArdle At Bloomberg: ‘Piketty’s Tax Hikes Won’t Help The Middle-Class’

Repost-Will Wilkinson At Forbes: ‘The Social Animal by David Brooks: A Scornful Review’

February 11, 2015February 11, 2015 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full post here.

Wilkinson found the book lacking:

“The story of Harold and Erica does not really illustrate a new, coherent, science-based theory of human nature. It is a bowl hammered from Brooks’ philosophic predilections into which a jumbled stew of scientific anecdotes is poured.”

and:

“Brooks’ characters are constantly saying and thinking the sort of thing Brooks says and thinks in his opinion columns. They’re constantly made to express what are quite clearly elements of the author’s conception of human nature, sociality, and political life. But this stuff often has little or nothing to do with the “revolutionary” discoveries Brooks says he’s attempting to pull together into a coherent conception of human nature, sociality, and political life”

and:

“I suspect Brooks really does thinks thumos is an essential part of the best big-picture theory of human nature and the good society. But that’s an idea he took from the science-wary Allan Bloom and Harvey Mansfield, not Robert Trivers or David Buss or Geoffrey Miller.”

As before, perhaps it’s worth pointing out that the way in which Brooks goes about analyzing and understanding culture, our relationships to one another, our interior lives etc….is ostensibly through the lens of his understanding of the social sciences. Perhaps he adds nothing new to the debate?

Charlie Rose has a full interview with Brooks and his new book.

A debate with Milton Friedman, a long time ago, and perhaps not so long ago: