Obit. (belated)

William F. Buckley Jr. died today at the age of 82.

Buckley was one of those rare charismatic figures of the right and was in many ways the conservative movement's own Hugh Hefner- charming, intelligent, and highly influential in his own perverse way. He was the founder and publisher of the The National Review, a magazine that is to conservatives what Bitch magazine is to lesbians. He was an opinion maker, in fact a movement maker, influencing conservative greats and smalls alike.

Of all the weird conservative creatures of the last century, Buckley would rank among the creepiest. He was, by his own admission, an avid harpsichord player. For those of you who are not classical musicians, it must be understood that unless you are Flemish, Austrian, or 400 years old, playing the harpsichord is simply not a natural state for mankind. And while Buckley appeared at times to come close to qualifying for this last category, he did fall short by some 200-300 years. Besides this particular deviation, Buckley had a strange an affected nature. His manner of speaking seemed a mix of Boston Brahman and Virginia genteel, but in actuality, he was born in New York City, and raised largely in France and England. And while being raised in Europe could be used as an excuse for almost any depravity, the dude was beyond a doubt weird. Like pedophile weird? Well he was certainly not a pedophile (unlike so many others of his movement), but if you were to want to cast one in a movie, you would be hard pressed to do better than Buckley.

But what about the movement he spawned? Amongst my friends, conservatism tends to have a bad reputation. But most of my friends have never seriously looked into it. Conservatism, like any ideology, is extremely compelling once you "get it." What makes conservatism different from other appealing ideologies is its appalling simplicity. It has therefore earned a reputation for being the ideology of the stupid. If socialism, environmentalism, existentialism could be considered ideologies of the bright, conservatism is the ideology of the dim. In keeping with the conservative style, I will make my case for this point with just one letter: W.

But in its simplicity there is hidden great wisdom. The conservative viewpoint, like the economical viewpoint, is essentially paradoxical. It more or less proposes the opposite solution to any problem that one has from the solution most logically applied. It is best described by the Mephistophelean trait that "Desires to do only evil, yet does only good." This is in contrast to the Liberal approach to things which seeks to do good but really only makes things worse.

On the conservative side, a striking example of backwards logic is the idea of tax-cuts. It seems ridiculous to non-conservatives that you could get the government more money by cutting taxes. And yet the productivity of the tax-cut companies is increased when they have more money on hand. They can invest more, grow more freely, and make more money when they have more money. Then when they do pay taxes, they have more money to be taxed and therefore the government gets more money. Simple and elegant. That the government would somehow do better with the money than the companies would is ludicrous since the government has no motivation to be efficient or practical with money that they did not earn but simply appropriated. So the argument that the less money the government has, the more they need to cut taxes is absolutely logical in a round about way.

The non conservative point of view is that you take more so you can do more. You raise taxes so you can spend more money. This is the smart person fallacy, which assumes that someone, somewhere (the government no less!) is smart enough to know what the best use of the money is. To know what is best would be to be able to assimilate, weigh, balance, and compute based on absolutely every byte of information- past, present, and future. Including how one's own computations affect the outcome of the process. There are people who think they are that smart (Paul Krugman, maybe?), and there are people that think that there are other people (somewhere) who are that smart. There are people who think scientists, economists, and computers might be that smart. But they aren't. They can't be, and they never will be. The quantity of information present at any moment is infinite. In fact, to know it all, one would have to be literally omniscient. And this is where the conservative economic position dovetails nicely with the conservative religious position. By leaving the system alone to its own inherent omniscience, one is effectively trusting a superhuman force to take care of the details. It is not many steps further that one runs squarely into that intellectual pariah- the G-word. Most modern thinkers prefer "Nature," "The Market," or "The laws of supply and demand" to the G-word, but they're all basically talking about the same thing.

And so it is not so difficult to see how religious fervor can be tapped- and is essentially required -to adopt the conservative position. The other alternative is what many Christians would call "The Triumph of the Will" or "The Triumph of the Ego." These are pejorative terms used to describe those who think they are smarter than God. And they are used with the same mix of contempt and pity with which intellectuals hold religious thought in general Funny.


Take those very intellectuals who espouse Marxism, communitarianism, egalitarianism and the like. They are by and large dissatisfied individuals who hold conservatism with its ridiculous simplicity in extreme contempt. Smart people hate dumb people. That's obvious. But is it natural? Most of these smart people don't get into their ideologically-based bashing until they get to college, i.e. when the escape the clutches of mediocracy that tyrannized their childhood days. Smart people generally feel themselves to be misunderstood, underappreciated, and generally resented by their intellectual inferiors. More often than not, these intellectual inferiors are not just their young classmates, but almost always the majority of their teachers. The schools these people teach in are biased towards the stupid- or at least against the smart. Intelligent people seemed to be fascinated with science and its primary tenet - averages. Schools and the modern American way are designed to turnout statistically average people. If you are below average, you are prodded, coerced, or medicated to do better. But if you're exceptionally bright, you are required to do less than you are capable of- a highly frustrating state of affairs. So the frustration is usually (mis-) applied against the dumb people themselves. But it is the system that discourages intelligence that is the problem, not the dumb people themselves (in fact, it is more likely the mediocre that are hated by the truly brilliant. The brilliant and the dumblings are actually in the same boat- being pushed in directions they don't want to go it. It may in fact be the mediocre people with their disdain for the dumber that feel themselves smart enough to decide what's best for everybody- the true mediocre liberals).

But whose idea was it that we were all supposed to come out the same? Well the 1960s and 1970s political agendas were led by smart people, pushing progressive agendas that were aimed at equality. But that very progress is what shoots the intelligentsia in the foot and causes them to be frustrated and resentful overachievers in a "fair system."

The dumb solution would be to skip education altogether. If you want to be a fireman, why do yo need to learn calculus? If you want to be an astronaut, why learn Medieval poetry? And so on. With this system, in which we stop funding schools entirely, people would be fulfilled as they learned what exited them at the level to which they desired to achieve. Should everybody desire to be a mid-level manager? Not really. But you wouldn't guess that from the academic agenda. Mid-level everything seems to be the most important thing in modern education- that no one feel left out or, worse, too special.

From a conservative perspective, people would be smarter if you stopped educating them. Sounds crazy, but it makes sense. Intelligent people will often spend their whole live trying to develop a communal system in which their exceptional gifts will be accepted. The lucky will get this in college (and then lose it forever after graduation), but for the truly brilliant, such systems will always prove fruitless. Fighting stupid people is an unending task, as there will always be more of them. But the fighting for justice, through regulation, control, and scientifically "proven" ideas is a circular path, reinforcing the conditions that created the problem in the first place.

We raw foodists are familiar with this concept. The more we try to scientifically target what nutritional supplementation we need, what we need to fix, the worse the problem gets. The more w leave it alone (fast, cleanse), the quickest the natural order of things returns. It is the endless fiddling of the restless mind that created the turmoil.

Perhaps William H. Buckley was just smart enough to understand this. There comes a time in the development of genius when one simply stops trying and just has fun with the genius one has. Buckley left behind a system in which idiots could flourish, knowing that there will always be idiots on this planet, and it would be better for everyone if they were usefully occupied. Conservatism provides just that occupation.

Say Yes to Dr. No!

So it may finally be time.

It may well be that with Hillary's presidential hopes fading, the Republican Unification team is having to turn to Plan B.

There's no one who can unite the Red States in hatred the way Hillary Clinton can. But if anyone comes close, it would have to be The New York Times.

What the Republicans actually hate is not he New York Times, but the The New York Times Editorial Page. The Times is a huge (some would say monolithic) newspaper, of which about 2 pages are devoted to editorials. It is these 2 little pages that Republicans love to rail against. But even the steady minded right-wingers get confused sometimes and think that the editorial page and the rest of the newspaper are the same thing. They're not.

In fact, there is a pretty convincing firewall between the newsroom and the editorial page. The two departments are not in contact with each other it all. This is, of course, necessary to ensure objectivity in reporting, and freedom of expression/opinion in editorializing.

Cross-contamination would wash away any kind of journalistic standard of integrity, and with it, the fabric of our democracy. That's not entirely an overstatement. Go read the papers in Venezuela, Russia, and China from the journalists who are not in prison, and you'll see an extreme example. A less extreme example would be what passes as news on cable television in this country.

But still, for most newspapers, the Times included, the firewall would appear to be absolute (read the elaboration by Richard Stevenson of the Times on this page). And this week, some high-level reporting emerged from the newsroom describing a discrepancy between John McCain's highly touted moral positions and a set of questionable actions and associations in his past. Particular attention is being drawn to one attractive, younger lobbyist, whose recurring presence at McCain events aroused concerns in his staff that if nothing romantic were going on between then, it at least did not appear that way.

The response against the article has been intense and overwhelming, and much of it has focused, errantly, on the Times's alleged Liberal Bias. So again to mention the firewall- that the 'Liberal' part comes from the opiners and not from the reporters who were the ones in charge of uncovering this story.

But for war waging purposes, everyone is fair game, and a full fledged attack, successful or not, against a perceived enemy (guilty or not) looks like the best way to bring the far right on board with John McCain - and also to give cover to those who vehemently opposed him (like Limabugh & Co.) to turn coat and back McCain as a victim of the Liberal Media Establishment.

Also if the claims against him turn out to be true, at least he'll have irrational anger on his side.

Whatever the purpose, the Republicans and the Times seem set up to go to war (read that sentence again for the second entendre). If the Times loses (and it can't because it will always be reporting even about how it lost), it'll be overtime and a last minute scramble for the Right Wing radio crazies to discredit anything they choose to. But if McCain loses, as his Brokeback Buddy David Brooks even admitted, his career is over. By outright denying any impropriety, McCain will have straight-talked his way into a corner from which he can not emerge. He will be finished.

And now here comes the silver lining (for those of you who might have thought a cloud was developing above).

There are only two Republican candidates left in the race besides McCain- Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul.

It may well be that Mike Huckabee will become President as an Act of God. A McCain implosion at this point would certainly look like the work of the Almighty from Huck's point of view. And for those of you waiting for the end of days in 2012, Mike would almost certainly deliver.

While George W. Bush has done great things for Secularism in recent years (the way Hillary has done great things for Conservatism), the focused power of intention behind modern American Christianity really should not be underestimated. If government is the reflection of the will of the people, then it remains to be seen if George Bush has delivered enough of a blow to faith based politics that the people don't still desire to have God's Left Tenant as their president.

But if we don't, the Republicans offer an even more unlikely candidate than Mike Huckabee. A man even more humble, more honest, and more clear about what he stands for politically. A man who knows the power of getting out of the way to make things happen rather than sticking his nose in and mucking things up. A man whose polices leave room for the higher purpose served by Mike Huckabee as well as the one served by Neil de Grasse Tyson. A man who looks like he wouldn't know how to turn on a computer but who has nonetheless raised tens of millions of dollars over the internet without doing anything at all. A Texas Republican who is backed by Liberals in California and Massachusetts. A guy who can get endorsed by Pat Robertson and still be adored by Left-Wingers around the country (talk about crossing partisan divides!). A guy I back 100% even though he's a medical doctor. And let's face it, he's the only guy who makes any kind of sense about anything- and actually, about everything.

Ron Paul for President 2008. Enough Already. When it comes to government, less is more.

Lifted from the Washington Post

I know these guys have their own readership, and they don't exactly need the exposure, but I'm happy to share the wealth a bit and let them have a piece of my more exclusive, boutique market.

(NB- George Will is probably my favorite political columnist anywhere, but I could read that quote from Harold Meyerson over and over again forever and never stop laughing.)


"She is 60. She left Yale Law School at age 25. Evidently she considers everything she has done since school, from her years at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm to her good fortune with cattle futures, as presidentially relevant experience.

The president who came to office with the most glittering array of experiences had served 10 years in the House of Representatives, then became minister to Russia, then served 10 years in the Senate, then four years as secretary of state (during a war that enlarged the nation by 33 percent), then was minister to Britain. Then, in 1856, James Buchanan was elected president and in just one term secured a strong claim to being ranked as America's worst president. Abraham Lincoln, the inexperienced former one-term congressman, had an easy act to follow."

-George Will


"General Motors followed in the footsteps of Henry Ford, who by 1913 had concluded that he needed to pay his workers enough that they could afford to buy a new Ford. Wal-Mart, by contrast, pays its workers so little that they are compelled to shop at Wal-Mart."

- Harold Meyerson

Open Letter to the Economist Magazine

Why does the Economist not devote more coverage to the impressive candidacy of Ron Paul?

Of all of the candidates running for office, Paul reflects most completely the views and attitudes of this newspaper. Does the Economist not have the courage to see its own convictions implemented as law? Or does it stand to profit more when its views are not represented in public life, giving it a chance to lambaste those in power in the manner of a highfalutin Fox News?

Every third party or “second tier” candidate is given a speck of attention at the outset of the campaign, but at the end of every interview, every reporter smugly asks the question, “Do you actually think you’ll win?”

The answer to this inevitable question is simply- “Well that depends on you- The Economist (or NPR, or the New York Times).” Will these media continue to simply throw the obligatory bone to the “lower tier” candidates to convince themselves they’re being balanced? Or will they devote serious column inches to serious ideas and compelling messages?

There exists (whatever the media itself may believe) both an upwards and a downwards spiral regarding media coverage: The more coverage a candidate gets, the more viability they appear to have as a candidate. The more viability they appear to have, the more money they raise. The more money they raise, the more coverage they get, etc.

The same is true on the losing side- witness the excellently credentialed Joe Biden and Chris Dodd from the Democratic side. Limited coverage implied limited viability. Limited viability resulted in fewer contributions. Fewer contributions resulted in less coverage. By the time they drop out, the media laughingly shake their heads at how silly such an endeavor was in the first place while wholly disowning the role their neglect played in the candidates’ failures.

Is it not time for the media, and one of its great leaders, The Economist, to admit that it plays a part in shaping candidates’ prospects? Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton began the presidential race only steps away from the finish line. How is that possible considering there were nearly two dozen candidates running? Endless coverage is the answer of course- of financial contributions, of watery eyes, of youthful substance abuse, etc.

What baffles me is why this kind of neglect has befallen Ron Paul who has finished ahead of both Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson in several races, placed (at least) second in two, and continues to raise unprecedented amounts of money over the internet. I am especially baffled since I can not imagine a candidate more in line with the positions weekly espoused by the Economist.

All I can think of is that the newspaper is squeamishly afraid of being made to look as silly as they portray Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel to be, or that they are somehow pleased to usher flawed, pandering, special-interest candidates into office in order to maintain reader interest. Or perhaps it is some sort of phony humility, believing that they are impartial arbiters with no direct bearing on the outcomes of elections.

None of these possibilities seems very likely (except perhaps the first), so I would ask that the newspaper indulge my curiosity with some real answers. And while you’re at it, give a serious nod, and not just a wink, to the candidate with the best platform in the race.

Sincerely,

[D-Blog]
New York City