Month: October 2007

Not making this up. Next up: Hitler’s fingernail clippings?

Absolute power corrupts, doesn’t it? Frank Fukuyama analyzes the roots of America’s foreign policy disarray:

The fundamental problem remains the lopsided distribution of power in the international system. Any country in the same position as the US, even a democracy, would be tempted to exercise its hegemonic power with less and less restraint. America’s founding fathers were motivated by a similar belief that unchecked power, even when democratically legitimated, could be dangerous, which is why they created a constitutional system of internally separated powers to limit the executive.

Such a system does not exist on a global scale today, which may explain how America got into such trouble. A smoother international distribution of power, even in a global system that is less than fully democratic, would pose fewer temptations to abandon the prudent exercise of power.

I do think that one of the deeper differences between the traditional right and the neocons is that traditional conservatives are quite happy to see other great powers exert influence in various parts of the world; and are not adamant that the United States must control everything and police everywhere. That, in itself, reflects the more profound philosophical divide within conservatism: between those who value power over everything, and those that, in the end, are happy to let go and co-exist with other entities. Just as the neocons cannot tolerate foreign powers exercising influence in the world independently of the United States, so they are intolerant of divided power at home. Traditional conservatives are proud of the way the Founders divided and defused power in the Constitution and quite content to allow other great powers – Europe, Russia, China, for example – exercise influence in various parts of the globe. And the massive over-reach, domestically and abroad, of the Bush-Cheney protectorate has done a great deal to revive the tradition Fukuyama understands well.

"I think Ben Affleck may have more promise as a director than as an actor. He’s just going to need to find himself a story that makes some sense on some level," – Matt Yglesias.

Selwyn Duke looks at the blank slate left’s faith-based science:

What is the truth about racial differences?  For one thing, is it logical and rational to claim that, except for appearance and a few diseases and conditions of the body, every group is the same in every way?

This is the left’s implication, and it’s absurd.  It seems especially odd when you consider that most of these inquisitors are secularists who subscribe to the theory of evolution. Yet, despite their belief that different groups "evolved" in completely different parts of the world, operating in different environments and subject to different stresses, they would have us believe that all groups are identical in terms of the multitude of man’s talents and in every single measure of mental capacity. Why, miracle of miracles, all these two-legged cosmic accidents, the product of a billions-of-years journey from the primordial soup to primacy among creatures, whose evolution was influenced by perhaps millions of factors, wound up being precisely the same.  It’s really the best argument for God I’ve ever heard, as such a statistical impossibility could only exist if it was ordained by the one with whom all things are possible.

Feel the fakeness:

The scene was picture perfect and the theme just right. An impromptu stop at a roadside eatery crammed full of everyday folks would help dispel the oft-levelled charge that the former First Lady is a professional politician who does not relate easily to ordinary people. Miss Esterday’s plight was just what Mrs Clinton was highlighting on her "Middle Class Express" bus as it sped from town to town past fields of corn and soybeans. Such a spontaneous interaction was the stuff of campaigning among Iowa caucus-goers, who are proud of their brand of face-to-face retail politics.

Except that virtually every detail of the casual visit had been carefully orchestrated. A team of burly Secret Service men, clad in suits and shades, had driven ahead to carry out a recce. All but two of the customers were Clinton loyalists, including union leaders flown in from New York and Washington, who had been at her previous rally and were travelling on her bus.

Mrs Clinton chatted with the supporters, some of whom grinned a little sheepishly at the blatant staging, as the photographers snapped away. Reporters, kept on a separate bus throughout the day, seemed so stunned to be suddenly beside her that the only questions asked were about what she had ordered.

Now imagine what it will be like if she’s president.

Josh thinks it’s where the Romney-Giuliani duke-out will be decided.

Obsessed with each other, it seems. And jealous:

[A]lthough they met only a few times and did not hit it off, the two men were obsessed with each other. It was an obsession that shaped their best known works such as Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and James’s The Turn of the Screw.

"The more I did the research, the more I became sure about it," she says, sitting in her seventh-floor office overlooking Edinburgh’s George Square. "There are clear parallels. Wilde goes out of his way to review James’s novels, to keep tabs on him and to say he’s not the future of American literature. James feels the same anxiety towards Wilde: he’s keen to keep tabs on him, but doesn’t respect what he’s doing."

Ottawa, Canada, 11.30 am.

Some wise words of caution:

I’ve supported some form of single-payer solution for decades out of a simple desire to reduce the costs of claims administration but I haven’t cared for the form that most proposals take. I don’t think that universal coverage does enough to control costs to be affordable and, indeed, without some form of fiat pricing would quickly be overwhelmed by increasing costs. That gives weight to the concern that many critics of both single-payer and universal coverage have that either system is just a stalking horse for some sort of fiat system. I’m reminded of something one of my old economics professors said – that we don’t know how to create abundance but we have a pretty good idea of how to create scarcity and it’s through fiat pricing.

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare…

"Aubade" by Philip Larkin, continued here.