Month: December 2006

[Clive]

Here’s a question for Alex and Danny. Anti-Americanism is at a painfully high level in Britain. How much will it decline once George W. Bush leaves office? Obviously, there’ll be some sort of falling-off (touch wood). But has permanent damage been done to the transatlantic friendship? My sense is that Washington has been so ham-fisted in its treatment of Downing Street that we’ve reached a genuine watershed. (For heavens sake, even sending us a new ambassador appeared to be too much of an effort for a while.)

I don’t expect much from the Democrats either. Am I being overly gloomy?  There’s the alternative view – conveyed in that Art Buchwald anecdote – that America inevitably suffers the consequences of being top dog, and can’t do much about it. I definitely wouldn’t want to minimize the amount of hostility simmering away in Britain before Iraq and Afghanistan. In the days immediately after the Twin Towers fell I lost count of the number of people I met  who shrugged their shoulders and said something along the lines of "Of course it was terrible what happened, but what about Palestine, Kyoto, etc, etc?" That’s why I became such a keen reader of blogs like this one. It was one of the few places there seemed to be any sane conversation.

[Daniel]

This is what I had to say when Nazi apologist David Irving was jailed in Austria for denying the truth about the Holocaust:

It is difficult, even for me now, born in safety, free to bring up my sons as Jews, sitting at a desk typing my article in civilised Britain, it is difficult not to feel anger, rage at Irving. It is difficult not to wish him behind bars.

And I do feel rage. But I do not wish him behind bars, not for giving his opinion, not for delivering a lecture, however warped and horrible his opinion is. I still believe in the power of truth. And my belief in truth is what separates me from Irving.

And it is how I feel on his release. It should not be a criminal offence to deny the Holocaust.

Read the whole of my argument, here.

 

[Clive]

Remembering the great influenza epidemic of 1918:

Camp Devens, 35 miles northwest of Boston, was seriously overcrowded… The flu struck there with a suddenness and virulence that had never been seen before."These men start with what appears to be an ordinary attack of LaGrippe or Influenza, and when brought to the Hosp. they very rapidly develop the most vicious type of Pneumonia that has ever been seen," wrote Roy Grist, a doctor at the Camp Devens hospital."Two hours after admission they have the Mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the Cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the coloured man from the white….It is only a matter of hours then until death comes….We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day….We have lost an outrageous number of Nurses and Drs."

Scientific knowledge of the causes was sketchy. It wasn’t the government’s finest hour:

Surgeon General Rupert Blue, head of the U.S. Public Health Service, was aware that an outbreak of flu was possible. But in July 1918, he denied a request for $10,000 to be dedicated to pneumonia research, and he made no other preparations. Blue’s first public warning came in mid-September and included such tips as"Avoid tight clothes, tight shoes, tight gloves — seek to make nature your ally not your prisoner" and"Help by choosing and chewing your food well."

[Via Real Clear Politics]

[Clive]

While it was fun to hear Benny Hill again, maybe a little more conventional music is in order. It’s actually well past midnight here in the UK, and I’m in the mood for something laid-back. The perfect moment to savour Cape Verde’s Cesaria Evora. "Sodade" ("Nostalgia") was the opening track on her 1990s breakthrough disc, "Miss Perfumado". Enjoy.

[Clive]

Another recommendation in the series. It’s the turn of Reihan Salam, journalist and co-proprietor of The American Scene, a site that surely needs no introduction in this neighbourhood:

First published in 1992, Walter Kirn’s "She Needed Me" should by all rights be very dated.  It’s a gentle polemic (if that makes any sense) on America’s culture wars and a not-quite romance between a born-again Christian and a young unmarried woman heavy with child. They meet – where else? – at an abortion clinic, where the young man and his comrades are barricading the door. The young woman, at first glance as beautiful and tragic and neurotic as any boilerplate heroine, turns out to be a doughty survivor, more impressive in her own way than her swain.  Weighty themes are addressed: religiously-inspired terror, the dissolution of the family, self-reliance.  And I can’t say I endorse everything about the book: its conclusion suggests that the author feels rather differently about abortion than I do.  (At the risk of giving too much away, you get the sense that abortion is the hardheaded, pragmatic, right choice.)  All the same, the essential
decency and humaneness of this book, and its deeply flawed and in many ways quite stupid protagonist, shines through.

[Clive]

"My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast. It is Burke brought up to date…" The Dartmouth heavyweight indulges in some intellectual fisticuffs, as James Panero looks on.

Seoul, South Korea, noon.

[Clive]

Before anyone starts complaining that the music is getting too esoteric around here, let’s all sing along to the immortal hit that was the Christmas Number One all of thirty-five years ago. Like David Cameron, I knew the words by heart.

She said she’d like to bathe in milk
He said, "All right, sweetheart."
And when he finished work one night
He loaded up the cart
He said, "D’you want it pasteurised,
‘Cos pasteurised is best?"
She said "Ernie, I’ll be happy
If it comes up to me chest."

Oh dear, I still laugh at that one. Do his programmes still run on American TV? I haven’t seen one in ages. In Britain, when I was a teenager, his show only aired about four times a year. It was like war-time rationing. You had to wait and wait, and when it finally came on, you’d start glancing anxiously at your watch, afraid the fun would end too soon.

[Alex]

All this huffing and puffing about the 2008 presidential race is all very well and good. But it’s noteworthy, I think, that almost all the punditry and speculation focuses on whose candidacy is viable; there is almost no discussion of who might actually make the president, or at least seems best qualified to wrestle with the job. In a better-ordered world it might be the other way round, even if the media facination with viability and the primaries is endlessly diverting for those involved.

In other words, we have here a distinct divide between those who judge a candidate via what one might, to borrow from college football, call a "power ranking" and those who adopt the "resume approach" in deciding who is the best equipped to be Number 1. Pundits prefer the "power ranking"; voters might be advised to consider the "resume".

Sunday Morning Quarterback (who you really should be reading if you have any interest in college football) explains the difference here:

POWER RANKING: The apparently preferred method, which asks simply, "Who’s better?" or "Who would beat who on a neutral field?" or something like that. No measurables, just a human brain sorting information as it sees fit – a kind of almost metaphysical effort to determine the "essence" of a team in its current incarnation. If you’re a voter and haven’t given much thought to your overriding method, this is almost definitely what you’re doing…

THE RESUME: A method that attempts to rank based strictly on the measurable: if each team had a resume for this season and this season only, and its name at the top was blacked out, how would the voter rank those resumes? Takes into account only games played to date this season – these are folks who always complain about polls that come out and distort reality before October. SMQ’s preferred method all year, and seemingly the default method for most end-of-season rankings.

Translate this into, say, the Republican nomination and look where this leaves Rudy Giuliani. He’s nowhere in the "power rankings" because few people think he can really win. But if you were to judge the candidates on their "resume" I’d want to know your explanation for not ranking him at the top of the list.

This is true even if you factor out 9/11. Being President of the United States of America is quite a tough assignment. Executive experience would be an advantage. But it also needs you to set a tone, construct a framework for public affairs and debate etc etc. You have to boss the public square. That also takes vision and leadership.

Is there a better training ground for the Presidency than being Mayor of New York City? It’s hard to think of one.

The Mayor of New York must grapple – nay, fight! – a bewilderingly complex and byzantine bureaucracy plagued by turf wars, vested interests and a bloody-minded  determination to thwart change or reform. Hmmm, isn’t there a similar, but even larger and more powerful Hydra in Washington?

And it’s not as though this training takes place in a media backwater either. The scrutiny the NYC Mayor receives might  – just might –  be useful training for the Oval Office.

So perhaps Giuliani’s biggest challenge is to confound the "power ranking" expectations by dismantling the preconceptions that condemn his candidacy to also-ran status before it has even started.

ps: I haven”t checked the odds, but I suspect the best Presidential betting "value" right now may be to make a modest investment on neither John McCain nor Hillary Clinton being their party’s respective nominees.

[Alex]

It’s amazing what people will tolerate. Even so I was surprised by the number of prominent bloggers who failed to see anything especially egregious about the now infamous Kelo vs New London case. You’ll recall that this involved the eviction of long-standing tenants from their non-blighted neighbourhood so the town could hand their property over to a private development for Pfizer. The Supreme Court ruled this fine by them even though – to layman’s eyes admittedly – the case seemed to permit the expropriation of any property anywhere.

Well, the court will have a chance to partially redeem itself next month when they consider Didden vs Port Chester. Remarkably this case may be even more egregious than Kelo.

Bart Didden owns property in Port Chester, a small town in Westchester County, NY. He wanted to build a CVS on the site since it was part of the village’s "redevelopment" zone. Port Chester said no, you can’t do that since Port Chester’s chosen developer wanted to put a Walgreens on Didden’s land.

G&S, the developers in question, had a novel solution to the problem: they approached Didden and said that everyone could be friends and he could have his beloved CVS if – but only if – he handed over $800,000 to G&S. Alternatively – and to be fair they did give him a choice – he could simply sign away 50% of the value of the CVS development.

The kicker, of course, was that if Didden declined to pony up G&S would have his land condemned and seized by the town under eminent domaine. Would you believe that the day after Didden declined  G&S’s offer he found that his land had indeed been condemned and taken away from him. Fancy that!

The good men and women at the Institute of Justice have more on the case here.

Phil Reisman, a columnist for the Journal News is also doing yeoman work on the side of the good guys:

"…the village, in its zeal to expand its tax base for the public’s supposed benefit, unleashed a ruthless fury of intimidation, harassment and other tactics that would make the Godfather blush. The worst part is how the court system has worked hand-in-glove with this unholy partnership to take from many to give to a few rich guys.

I’ve talked about this Faustian deal in other columns. I’ve written about people, mostly rent-paying merchants, getting frightened and ripped off, and then settling for whatever pennies they could get before picking up and moving on. What public benefit, one might ask, can possibly come from destroying a citizen’s faith that government draws its authority from "We the people"?"