Flight from Trantor

"...[T]ime cannot wither nor custom stale Al Gore’s infinite monotony."

Roger Kimball.  It is almost poetry.

"Many readers will remember the scene in Dr. No when we first see Sean Connery: “Bond,” he says, flipping open the lighter and applying the flame to the cigarette. “James Bond.” In the background the Bond leitmotif swells forth, letting us know exactly what manner of creature we are dealing with. Al Gore should boast such a signature song, too. I recommend the tune from the Twilight Zone: irritating, repetitive, creepy — everything Al Gore’s theme song should be. It should play every time he appears to speak on television or before the public and should waft out of computer speakers whenever you click on a url associated with his name."

Now who do we trust?

The Climategate scandal puts all of Western civilization at peril.  J.R. Dunn wrote on the American Thinker blog

There is always a deeper level to the damage caused by fraud. It strains social relationships, generates cynicism, and debases standing institutions. What has suffered the most damage from AGW is faith in the scientific method, the basic set of procedures -- it could be called an algorithm -- governing scientific investigation. These procedures embody simplicity itself: you examine a phenomenon. You gather data. You construct a hypothesis to explain that phenomenon. [...]

The technology developed from scientific research has created a world that would be unrecognizable to our forebears of even a century ago. Technology has transformed diet, health, communications, and transportation. It has doubled lifespans in advanced countries. Prior to the modern epoch, few ever caught a glimpse of the world past their own farming fields. India, China, and Africa were wild myths, the Pacific and Antarctica utterly unknown, the planets and stars merely pretty lights in the sky. Technology opened the world -- not just for everyday men and women, but for invalids, the disabled, and the subnormal, who once lived lives of almost incomprehensible deprivation. Technology was a crucial factor in the dissolution of ancient empires and the humbling of aristocracies.

I cannot help but think of the fable of the Boy who cried Wolf.  I am close to the point where if a scientist tells me the sky is blue, I feel I have to look for myself.  That is pretty simple.  How do you handle a situation where there is something so complicated that it is beyond the ken of non-scientists, maybe even beyond scientists outside the specialty involved?  Let's hope it never requires a quick reaction.  It is going to be tough to look at initial claims of scientific knowledge with more confidence than you would give a diet-pill huckster.

Traditions

In times past certain traditions were enough to define enough of a common bond between  most of us as Americans to render unthinkable that the republic could fly apart at the seams.  Not so much today.  The biggest detractor of America, the idea and the reality, is its President.  He is surrounded by a coterie of like minded souls with the same objective:  Take the US down a peg or two so we can be like everyone else - intellectually incurious, morally lethargic, materially overindulged.  A steady assault on the facts and meaning behind Thanksgiving and Christmas, not to mention patriots and Christians, has taken a toll.  Our defenses to the allure of the "servile temptation" are weakened.

Yet I will be thankful this season that for the first time in decades there are more people reexamining the underlying principles of the Founding and taking a sober look at the history and enduring promise of America.  If the Republic still fails, there should be more than enough people left to know where and how to continue on.

Now we should really start to worry

The Fort Hood shooting laid bare some ugly truths about the sorry state of Western Civilization and the extent to which the disease and fraud of multiculturalism has infected the defenders of Civilization, the United States Armed Forces.

Mark Steyn observes:

Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this last week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a “tragedy” but a national scandal, already fading from view.

I trusted that the Army was free of this rot. I was wrong, and now I am worried.

[UPDATE] I would like to think that Andy McCarthy is wrong, but I cannot:

The post-9/11 era was supposed to be about knocking down walls that obstructed effective counterterrorism. But behold the new wall, more insidious than its suicidal Nineties forerunner: the arbitrary barrier separating terrorism from “protected” incitement — the cagey, generalized, non-specific jihadist rhetoric that is the Islamist cleric’s stock-in-trade. Aside from not being required by law, this new wall will usually mean you can't go after the worst actors (the Islamic authorities and the terrorists they inspire) until after an attack has happened and Americans have been killed.

In other words, be prepared for more Fort Hoods. We’re not in September 10 America. We’ve managed to land in a much more dangerous place.

"What cowards we are"

Eric Holder?  Nope. Not talking about us.  Talking about the President, the Media, and the Army.

Ralph Peters in the Post:

Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.

[...]

Get ready for the apologias. We’ve already heard from the terrorist’s family that "he’s a good American." In their world, maybe he is.

But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?

A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently? An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit. A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station. A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife. A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she’s becoming too Westernized.

Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we’re assured that "Islam’s a religion of peace."

I guarantee you that the Obama administration’s non-response to the Ft. Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead.

He is right.  And if we allow this to pass, he may as well have been talking about us, too.

Unemployment and Health

Via Instapundit I came across this link to Robert Reich's blog, wherein Reich gently chides the Obama administration for misplaced priorities vis-a-vis ObamaCare and Unemployment, now at 10.2%. 

The remarks got me to thinking, "isn't employment conducive to better health?".  Indeed, a quick search on Bing for "employed people healthier than unemployed" turned up a number of links that seem to bear this out. 

So I am  tempted to advise the Dems to "kill two birds with one stone":  Improve the health of the republic by improving the economy.  The problem of course is that their policies don't "kill" unemployment.  Anything they are likely to try will "kill" employment.  And on the Health care front... well you get the point.

The President Who Couldn't Care Less

A mass shooting on a US Army base perpetrated by a self-described devout muslim.  Yeah, OK, I'll get to that in a minute, but first let me give a shout out.....

This kind of stuff is shocking only to those who have not been paying attention.  I guarantee you that any number of lefty-liberal acquaintances are shrugging their shoulders with a "who cares, a few less baby killers" attitude.  I know this sounds hyperbolic, but I know a lot of people like this.  They are real.

I do not know whether Obama is this callous (it would not surprise me) but if anything this should be a reminder of how tightly wrapped the lefties are in their cultural cocoon.  And how annoyed this president is when anything or anyone threatens to interfere with his agenda.

Wasting away

The statist assault on health care, energy and free speech obscures signs of the building malaise in less obvious quarters of the economy.  In a thoughtful article about the high-tech sector, Michael Malone writes

The high technology revolution that has transformed modern America (and the world) has been driven by three factors.  Innovations in applied science – the bottom slice of bread; large companies – the top slice; and – the meat in the middle – new company creation. [...] Right now . . .and as far as I can see in the future . . .it is that middle that is missing.  All of the prosperity I see returning to Silicon Valley is, in fact, something of an illusion. [...]

The crucial center of the tech world – new and fast-moving companies – the meat in the technology sandwich – is gone.  Under the press of an economic slowdown, government regulations that have handcuffed entrepreneurs and venture capitalists – and perhaps most of all, an Administration that increasingly seems actively hostile to entrepreneurship and small business – high tech is hollowing out.  [...]

Over the last couple months, I’ve seen some spectacular new start-up companies, some with finished products on the market.  All of them are starving from lack of capital –and their business plans, which would have attracted tens of millions of dollars two years ago, earning only shrugs and apologies from straitened venture capitalists and banks.  My guess is that several hundred new start-ups in Silicon Valley have already been lost, with no sign anywhere on the horizon.

And it looks like a fair number of bright new would-be stars in the tech sector are agreeing with their feet in a reverse brain-drain.

[T]he generational difference between older Indians who have made it in the Valley and the younger group in the room was striking. The present reality is this. Large numbers of the Valley’s top young guns (and some older bulls, as well) are seeing opportunities in other countries and are returning home. It isn’t just the Indians. Ask any VC who does business in China, and they’ll tell you about the tens of thousands who have already returned to cities like Shanghai and Beijing. The VC’s are following the talent. [...]

Only 7% of Chinese students, 9% of European students, and 25% of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74% of Chinese students and 86% of Indian students believe that the best days for their home country’s economy lie ahead. National Science Foundation studies have shown that the “5 year stay rates” for Chinese and Indians science and engineering PhD’s have historically been around 92 % and 85% respectively (NSF tracks these 5 years at a time, and the vast majority stay permanently). So something has clearly changed.

This is probably what we could expect to happen as global economic and educational disparities level out with a developing world.  But rather than an organic and leisurely pace of change, our political class seems hell bent on shoving our economy over a cliff.  Their recklessness will have consequences.

Libertarian surge?

Everyone loves to talk about the recent poll showing that only 20% of respondents identify as "Liberal", and how the percentage of self-identified Conservatives is at an all time high.  My take is that with Liberalism exposed in the manner of the current Congress and Administration as statist progressivism, a lot of folks who might have thought themselves "liberal", or at least a Democrat are saying, "If this is what it means to be a liberal, that ain't me."  It may in fact be that a significant chunk of people in the middle, the Independents, actually hold the Market in higher esteem than their political affiliation and past voting might indicate.  It is a question that probably did not give much cause for reflection for many people if only because it was taken for granted at a deep level.  Now that the Market is under direct and openly hostile attack, people are forced to take a closer look at where they stand.

It also seems that may people are going to greater lengths to differentiate between economic and social positions, which no doubt accounts for the relatively high level of "libertarians" identified by Gallup.

I guess we will find out in the next couple of elections.

Obama channelling Nixon?

I was tempted to write this last week when the Fox News Wars started.  I thought it was too cute. 

But it looks like even CNN has picked up on the meme now; Anderson Cooper to boot.

Not only is Obama not getting anywhere with his petulant swipes at virtually the sole dissenting media voice (in this country anyway), but it actually seems to be hurting him.  Small wonder that.