Author: Mark Noonan

A Lesson from Ferguson: Our Criminal Justice is Broken

Mark Noonan17 Comments

This is just astounding:

Ferguson is a city located in northern St. Louis County with 21,203 residents living in 8,192 households. The majority (67%) of residents are African-American…22% of residents live below the poverty level.

…Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of $2,635,400. In 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court disposed of 24,532 warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

Was Brown stopped just so the police could write a revenue-generating ticket?  That is something we need to determine as the investigation goes on – regardless of how the shooting is ruled or what happens to the police officer.

It has been growing on me for years now that we are massively over-law’d in the United States. There are too many laws, too many fines – and the police and prosecutors have too much discretion in deciding whom will enter the meat grinder of our criminal justice system.  Of course, as long as you have money, you’re going to be ok – OJ Simpson, after all, got away with double murder because he had the scratch to hire an all-star defense team. But for some poor body in the inner city who gets pulled over for a traffic violation or gets picked up for minor drug possession?  Forget it: he’s screwed…and once the criminal justice system gets hold of him, it won’t let him go.  Remember, if you don’t appear in court (and maybe you don’t because you have a job you can’t get out of – or have children you can’t find a sitter for and the judge won’t let you bring them into court), you get a warrant for your arrest…and if arrested, you’ll get more fines on top of the original fine.  And if you can’t pay, then you just get in more trouble.

Things like this really make me wonder – do murders go unsolved because there’s no revenue upside for the city?  Are high crime areas ill policed because the cops are out writing tickets? Last time I got a ticket (figured that STOP meant Short Tap On Pedal) the officer was about 20 minutes writing me up.  Twenty minutes he wasn’t out patrolling the streets. He writes 10 tickets per shift and how much time does that leave for the actual job of the police?  Additionally – when we hear someone has a criminal record, does that mean he’s a murderer, or just someone who got busted for pot?

We really need to rethink this – most importantly, the fact that the revenues from fines goes to the municipality which issued the ticket. There’s just too much incentive for cash-strapped cities and counties to see fines as a means to revenue rather than a tool for law enforcement. Maybe make fewer fines and more community service, instead?  I don’t know, but we need to think about this – and I think we might have a situation where the poor, especially the urban poor, are caught in a bind.

I Think it is Time We Go to War

Mark Noonan17 Comments

The brutal murder of James Foley puts things in very stark relief. This is ISIS and it explains the sort of people who have gone to war with us – they are not just cruel, but glory in their cruelty. There is no act of barbarism they will not commit, and then brag about committing it. These are not people amenable to reason; not people we can negotiate with; not people we can share the world with.  They are enemies of the human race, plain and simple – and the sooner they are dispatched into the hereafter the better it will be for everyone.

If we can’t fight people who do this sort of thing – and this is after they have massacred thousands of foreigners and engaged in all manner of savagery – then we can’t fight anyone. Fight these ISIS barbarians. Kill them. Let them know that there is no safety for them against an aroused United States of America. Bomb them when we can get them in our bomb sites; send in troops when we’ve got a fair prospect of killing a lot of them. Arm anyone we reasonably think will go about the process of killing them for whatever reason they think best. No Geneva Convention. No Gitmo. No trials in the United States.  Just fight them and kill them until they are destroyed.

Sure, it won’t solve the whole problem. It won’t create peace and justice in the Middle East – but wiping out ISIS will do the world a favor, not least the Muslim world…and doing so will provide a useful lesson to those who seek the death of Americans: you can go just one step too far, and then all bets are off and there’s no bag limit.

Ferguson: Everything Has Gone Wrong

Mark Noonan31 Comments

We have to leave aside, for now, any exact judgement on the precise events – there are lots of stories circulating about who did what to whom, but until it is all sorted out during the investigation(s), none of us can say who is at fault.  What we can say, however, is that unarmed men – as a rule – shouldn’t be shot and killed by the police. We can also say that when people get outraged over a police shooting, looting stores is NEVER a proper response. We can also say that when the police, in response to the looting, come into a neighborhood dressed up like an occupying army, it won’t do much to improve community relations.

The mess in Ferguson is explicable to me only in the context of the overall decline of our civilization which is revealing itself both in our increasingly anti-social behavior (the looting, eg) and the incapacity of our governments (local, State and federal) to properly govern. The behavior of the police in a civilized nation should be that which makes it enormously unlikely that an unarmed man – even if engaged in criminal activity – will be shot by the police. The behavior of the citizens shouldn’t be – no matter what the provocation – to turn to criminal activity as an allegedly political statement against injustice. That we frequently get un-armed men (and often completely innocent people, into the bargain) shot by the police and that we also frequently get looting and other anti-social behavior from the citizenry should be setting off alarm bells.  But here’s the real problem – it doesn’t.  People seem to accept that the cops will do wrong and that people, in response, will go on and do wrong, as well. Lawyers will then sue and settle everything up for a money payment and the national narrative will move on to the Next Thing. We can’t go on like this, good people – our civilization is dying and it will die completely unless we start to get a grip on this.

There are myriad causes which can be asserted for the decline of our civilization – but fundamental to it is the decline of Judeo-Christian theology in the public square. As the public square has been taken up by various secular fads, Judeo-Christian theology has been increasingly marginalized.  But here’s the kicker: it was precisely the Judeo-Christian theology which made for a civilization in which laws would be obeyed, manners would be observed and public decency upheld. There never was a time when there was a moral policeman on every block making certain that everyone kept up to scratch, but our ideals were based on Judeo-Christian theology and so most everyone, most of the time, kept their end up. Replace that with consumerism, money-grubbing, hucksterism (political and religious), narcissism and all the other nonsense we’ve fed on, and this is what you get…police forces which don’t know how to police (but which can, indeed, kill) and citizens who so lack a sense of justice that they can’t even have a political demonstration without looting a store.

We are not, at this point, all gone.  We do have many people who still know how to act – who can govern or hold political demonstrations without devolving into looters of one sort or another. On the other hand, there are these looters in Ferguson – who are doing no differently, in effect, than the Occupy movement…or the anarchists who periodically protest outside globalist-elite gatherings. But the fact must be faced that a very large portion – and perhaps a majority – simply does not know how to act, whether they are acting in government or acting in the capacity of citizens. What difference between a pack of looters at a Wal Mart and a police force which seizes property on the flimsiest of pretexts? At bottom, both involve people stealing – the one under the cover of law, the other under the cover of political protest. We’re not, as I said, all gone – but we’re going.

Unless and until we accept that we can’t survive as a people who condone immoral behavior, we’re doomed. I’m not demanding that each and every one of you attend Mass or go to a synagogue this week, but if you want to live in a free and civilized nation, then you’d better act as if you do go every week. None of us are innocent; all of us fail – but the ideal still has to be held up and at least some attempt must be made to adhere to it. The fact that you are living in the West and have this ability to live pretty much as you please is based upon  the Judeo-Christian ideal that each human being is uniquely valuable and has the sovereign power to make his or her own choices.  That ideal doesn’t really exist anywhere else. It was built up, painfully, over many centuries as people came to a fuller understanding of God and man’s relationship to God. It actually peaked between the 12th and 15th centuries…its been rather downhill since then; for the ideal, I mean. Starting in the 16th century, people started questioning that whole notion of free will and a personal God. There has been pushback since the first questioning of the ideal (which is why we’re not completely gone, yet; part of the pushback, by the by, was the Declaration of Independence), but the general trend has all been towards fatalism, the supremacy of the group, the hopelessness of life, the pursuit of purely worldly pleasure and the rest of the claptrap we’ve been laboring under…and which makes for the situation we see in microcosm in Ferguson: police who can’t police and citizens who can’t act like citizens…because both are confused and don’t know what they are supposed to be doing. Think of how many news stories you’ve seen in just the past year which demonstrate that people don’t know how to act – and government doesn’t know how to govern. Most of these don’t involve people heading out to do a malevolent act – most of them are merely the result of people behaving stupidly because they honestly don’t know there’s a sensible alternative.

In the long run, I don’t know how all this will come out. I’m pretty confident that at least a veneer of civilization will remain until I’m safely in my grave. But I think it would be rather a good thing if our civilization was around 100 years from now – and 500 years from now, too.  But it won’t be around 100 years from now unless people make a conscious decision to rebuild it and maintain it. If you can’t at least – even if grumblingly – accept free will (and thus personal responsibility) and the need for public decency (sorry, guy with underwear hanging out), then we’ll never get anywhere. What price are you willing to pay for civilization?  That is what it comes down to – and if you won’t pay it, then you won’t have it.

 

 

Some Random Thoughts

Mark Noonan42 Comments

Is public education even remotely worth it? 200 years ago, prior to widespread, public education, 90%+ of the people didn’t know the finer points of theology, philosophy and science; pretty much the same today. Where’s the net benefit in getting kids to go through 12 years of school? As one jokester put it, if you spent 12 years learning something, shouldn’t you be Batman, or something?

If Ebola is hard to catch, why the rubber suits?  Read today that some people in West Africa are dumping the dead in the streets for fear of being quarantined if the authorities find out someone died in the house. The fear is real as the governments there are probably doing it wrong – but dumping the body rather than prepping it for a funeral might actually cut the spread of the disease.

Meanwhile, we all sleep soundly at night as we learn the government which can’t make a website is bringing Ebola patients into the United States.

The only answer to Putin – if we wish to answer him, at all – is to re-fight the Crimean War.  That war is condemned in history as a just a horrible mistake which was terribly mismanaged by all concerned, but the truth is that the war needed to be fought in the 1850’s in order to curb Russian ambitions in the south of Europe. If Russia’s ambitions need to be curbed, again – taking Sevastopol would do the trick. That is, once again, if we wish to do anything – there is an argument to be made that its ok for Russia to run that area of the world.

It astounds me that anyone believes the pictures or statistics coming out of Gaza. Hamas is a criminal mob which has shown no willingness to tell the truth in the past – whence comes this global acceptance of Hamas-provided casualty lists? To be sure, given the nature of things, it is highly likely that some non-combatants have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s counter-attack – but what number and of what kind is entirely unknowable, and may not be known for a very long time to come.  One thing certain: anyone who is repeating Hamas claims on numbers or re-broadcasting alleged pictures of Gazan dead is either a willing tool of Hamas, or a fool.

People were shocked to find that a Hamas spokesman was repeating the blood libel against the Jews. Why?  By what evidence did anyone ever think that Hamas was something other than an anti-Semitic organization?

Interspersed among his 183 rounds of golf, Obama has endlessly claimed he will not rest until this, that or the other vital task is completed. I realize that most political speeches these days are canned – just the mere stringing together or words which come out sounding like the politician is saying something: but can we at least get a speech-writing program which isn’t quite so repetitious, and mendacious?

Did you know that our Congresscritters are allowed to charter jets on the taxpayer’s dime to go on political junkets? If you didn’t, I’ll bet you’re not surprised at all to find this out – if it were announced that our leaders were provided taxpayer-funded champagne baths, we’d all just take it in with a “yeah, so” attitude. Our Ruling Class is (a) ever more corrupt and (b) ever more likely to just hold us in contempt.  A little revolution, now and then…

Apparently, “sorcellerie” is French for “sorcery” – and you can get beheaded in Saudi Arabia for it.

This, it seems, is not a joke:

Despite the loss of high-profile talent like Ezra Klein, who took others with him to Vox Media…

Senator Walsh of Montana may drop out of the race because of a plagiarism scandal – naturally, Talking Points Memo tweets the following:

Sen. Walsh (R-MT) cancels public events, fueling speculation he may drop out of Senate race after plagiarism scandal

Walsh is a Democrat.

UPDATE: ISIS has massacred 1,500 people since about yesterday. Obama, of course, will do nothing – not even, it seems, arm the Kurds who are the most decent of all the Muslim peoples in that area. The world will do nothing. Ok. Fine and dandy. People are to be massacred in great, big, bloody batches – this is the new normal. But I don’t want to hear anyone bleating about Israel’s actions in Gaza.  Even if everything Hamas says is true, then what Israel has done pales in comparison to what ISIS is doing. If you aren’t out there at the anti-ISIS demonstration and demanding the US impose a cease-fire in ISIS, then you are a hypocrite and I don’t want to hear a peep out of you.

 

The Left Believes Immorality is Moral

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Interesting bit over at Ace of Spades:

…The left does indeed engage in moral relativism– selectively.

For the enemies of America or Israel, or for the enemy of civilized, orderly society (say, the common street-murderer), the left does indeed engage in this analysis of moral relativism.

But what about for America itself, or Israel, or the family murdered by a “desperate” and poor lifelong criminal?

Does the left ever engage in the same moral relativistic thinking and say, of America, Israel, or a community outraged by murder, “Well, these people were scared. They felt as if they had no choice. Their anger can be excused and understood, and justified to some extent, because of the grievances they felt they had against their enemies.”

No– they do not. This moral relativism, the excusing and justifying of evil acts, is a one-way street only, only serving to apologize for people who kill Americans (or Westerners; the Israelis in this case are taken to be White Westerners)…

This has a lot of truth in it, but I don’t think it goes far enough.  For us on the right, we like to have a mindset that people are reasonably decent and want what is best – and to a certain extent, this mindset is true but for the left “what is best” is immoral. Until we understand that what the left wants is flat wrong in the sense of being immoral, we won’t really be able to get atop them and prevent their actions.

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Europe Funds al-Qaeda

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Via ransom for kidnap victims:

BAMAKO, Mali — The cash filled three suitcases: 5 million euros.

The German official charged with delivering this cargo arrived here aboard a nearly empty military plane and was whisked away to a secret meeting with the president of Mali, who had offered Europe a face-saving solution to a vexing problem.

Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali.

The suitcases were loaded onto pickup trucks and driven hundreds of miles north into the Sahara, where the bearded fighters, who would soon become an official arm of Al Qaeda, counted the money on a blanket thrown on the sand. The 2003 episode was a learning experience for both sides. Eleven years later, the handoff in Bamako has become a well-rehearsed ritual, one of dozens of such transactions repeated all over the world…

$66 million was paid to the terrorists just in 2013 and the going rate for an European has soared from $200,000 in 2003 to $10 million in 2013. Its good business.  Criminal gangs appear to do the actual job – the kidnappings – while third party cut-outs arrange the ransom, everyone getting a cut, of course (and I’ll bet government officials in some of these Third World back waters also get a pay off to ensure the local constabulary stays out of the way).

As for why its Europeans – Europe has money; Europe is closer, Europeans are nitwit enough to travel to Muslim lands under the impression – carefully fostered by the European Ruling Class – that Muslim societies are just swell and, of course, it is highly unlikely that an European Special Forces soldier will provide a bullet for the kidnapper instead of the ransom money.  This is partially because European military forces are laughably small these days but mostly because no one in Europe has the will to fight.  As this is just on the 100th anniversary of the First World War, I think it worthwhile to note that the war – and WWII – seems to have killed the European strain which had any spirit, at all.

It is disgraceful and it is also unstoppable, as long as the terrorists don’t get too greedy.  It’ll only stop if the terrorists get better sources of funding, or have enough for the needs for some considerable period of time. There is zero chance that a forceful action by Europe – or even just a flat refusal to pay – will happen.  To be sure, the flat refusal would result in the deaths of those who are currently captive – and likely one or two more sets as the terrorists test resolve – but once you stop paying, eventually the kidnappers stop kidnapping.  But the craven Ruling Class of Europe won’t do that – they won’t fight because they’ve got no guts, and they won’t stop paying because they don’t want to risk popular outrage as You Tube videos of European kidnap victims getting beheaded become common.

Absent Divine intervention, Europe is doomed – unless there is a reconversion of that continent to Christianity in sufficient numbers to control things, Europe will just continue to flabbily go down to destruction.  A people which is bribing the barbarians to peace – as the Romans started to do in the 3rd century – is a people that is doomed.

The Police Problem

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Over at National Review Online, A J Delgado points out that it is time that conservatives stop reflexively defending the police when they make errors:

…it’s time for conservatives’ unconditional love affair with the police to end.

Let’s get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: Yes, many police officers do heroic works and, yes, many are upstanding individuals who serve the community bravely and capably.

But respecting good police work means being willing to speak out against civil-liberties-breaking thugs who shrug their shoulders after brutalizing citizens.

On Thursday in Staten Island, an asthmatic 43-year-old father of six, Eric Garner, died after a group of policemen descended on him, placing him in a chokehold while attempting to arrest him for allegedly selling cigarettes. A bystander managed to capture video in which Garner clearly cries out, “I can’t breathe!” Even after releasing the chokehold (chokeholds, incidentally, are prohibited by NYPD protocol), the same officer then proceeds to shove and hold Garner’s face against the ground, applying his body weight and pressure on Garner, ignoring Garner’s pleas that he cannot breathe. Worse yet, new video shows at least eight officers standing around Garner’s lifeless, unconscious body.

Who can defend this?…

No one can, of course.  On the other side of it, Jack Dunphy – the nom de post of a police officer – points out, correctly (though involving a different case), that the police are often put in a very difficult position by the forces of the left: if they do something, they can be blamed and if they fail to do something, they could just as well be blamed. Pointing out that videos of alleged police misconduct are often either edited for dramatic (and political) impact or simply incomplete, Dunphy shows that the police do have a hard time of it in our modern, lawyer-ridden, political correct era.

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Secession is the Answer Update

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Well, it’ll be on the ballot in California in 2016:

A proposal backed by venture capitalist Tim Draper to divide California into six states has received enough signatures to make the November 2016 ballot, according to the nonprofit Six Californias…

I expect it to be crushed at the polls – the last polling on it showed 59% of Californians opposed.  But, you got to start somewhere; in a democratic republic, nothing happens right away and, very often, the first time something is tested on the ballot, it goes down in flames. It takes education and political activity to bring something to majority support – and this is something that needs majority support.  In fact, this is the single most American political proposal in more than 100 years.  After all, the Founders were secessionists.

Draper’s proposal will fail – and part of the failure can be traced to the way he’s drawn the borders of the Six Californias. The purpose of secession in California is to free the people of California from the oppression of those who currently run California – San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Sacramento area. That should be one State, rather than being broken up into three…and the one State shouldn’t be rewarded with the Lake Tahoe area, especially as Tahoe has nothing in common with the Pacific Coast area it’s shackled to in Draper’s plan. No, no, no: liberal nitwits in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento have made California into a mess where a lot of people would like to get out – and no one other than the nitwit liberals of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento should be stuck with said nitwits. Draper’s “Jefferson” should be called “Northern California” and it should include the Tahoe area. Central California (though Central California could be called either East California or West Nevada) and South California are fine – so, with those modifications, you actually get Four Californias, not Six…and that would have a better chance of winning votes.  Of course, the other part of possible failure is that the poorer areas of the State (in my division, Northern California and Central California) might be scared off from secession because they would technically lose some benefits of taxes in the rich areas…but even here, a good public education campaign can show that what they’d lose in State spending they’d more than gain in economic growth by not being tied to the anti-growth liberals in West California (ie, SF, LA and Sacramento).

Getting back to the basics of it all, the primary purpose of secession is to provide political organisms which are united by a general set of common interests and thus are protected against rapacious or indifferent outsiders. That is, ultimately, what American government is all about.  The British government was rapacious and indifferent – and so we cut ourselves loose from it and made a government which wasn’t.  Or, more accurately, 13 governments which weren’t and which ceded enough of their power to a central government to protect us against foreign encroachment. To be sure, the theory can be carried too far – as it was in the Civil War when the South had all the protections it needed in its local relations, but decided to pull out altogether because they worried that at some theoretic point in the future, someone from the North might want to intefere directly in Southern life. But because someone once took it too far doesn’t mean the essential principal is wrong.

Not only does California need to be broken up, but so does New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nevada and probably several other States where population and economic changes over the past century have caused various parts of the States to develope organically into entities which have little or nothing in common with other parts of the State.  Take, for instance, Nevada – back when Statehood was secured, mining was pretty much it for the State; it is what Nevada did.  But now over time changes have come over it – mining is still huge but only in the northern part of the State, while the south (ie, Las Vegas) is nothing but gaming and tourism.  These days, Neavda politicians in the south of the State greedily eye mining profits in the northern part of the State and propose to tax such profits to pay for things in the southern part of the State (and, of course, dependent upon gaming and tourism – ie, bribed by gaming and tourism industry lobbyists – southern Nevada pols never seek to tax heavily their own gaming and tourism)…but what matter is it to, say, a person living in Winnemucca what the class size is in Las Vegas?  Why should a mine which pays enough taxes for the locals in Winnemucca (and provides good jobs for people in Winnemucca) pay for the schooling of kids in Las Vegas?  The State should be broken up – so that Tourist/Gaming Nevada will have to take care of it’s own while Mining Nevada will take care of it’s own, with neither being able to do anything to the other.

Now, to be sure, such a break up of the States would result in more Senators – which is not necessarily a good thing.  But it would also be a bit more fair – and I think we’d also have to increase the size of the House from 435 members to right around 651 in order to ensure good representation of the people. But the resultant government – at the State and federal levels – will be more responsive to the needs and desires of the people, and less able to be controlled by the fat cats of a few large, urban areas. Ultimately, I think it would strengthen the union if there were more parts to it – and that is why I praise this effort in California and hope that it will grow and spread over the next few decades.

 

 

 

 

Odds and Ends Open Thread

Mark Noonan35 Comments

As far as the situation in Gaza goes – every drop of blood spilled is the responsibility of Hamas.  They are the people pledged to the destruction of Israel; they are the people who make the rockets to be fired pretty much at random into Israeli territory. Until Hamas gives up that sort of nonsense, the war is their fault – as are all the deaths, on both sides. As an aside, I don’t trust Hamas’ word, at all – so stories and pictures of alleged Palestinian deaths mean precisely zero to me.  Unless and until a completely neutral third party (and the UN and the MSM are not neutral, third parties) verifies such deaths, I put them in the realm of “possible” rather than actual – understanding, of course, that if there have been civilian deaths in Gaza it is (a) Hamas’ responsibility in general and (b) often deliberately and purposefully Hamas’ responsibility as they put their military forces right behind women and children – because they are cowardly terrorists and know no other way to fight.

A bit of a global warming hoax update:

If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years.

Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.

At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.

Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.

“If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.

“The average for this time of year is 12C, so Brisbane was about 9C below average, it is pretty impressive really, to have the coldest morning in 103 years is a big record.”

Impressive, indeed – I’m sure that Al Gore and the rest of the science-denying anthropogenic global warming fanatics will soon get on their private jets to fly around the world telling us to cut our carbon emissions.

For the zillionth time, Attorney General Holder proves that he is a racist:

Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday he and President Obama have been targets of “a racial animus” by some of the administration’s political opponents.

No, Eric, we don’t like you and your boss because you are a pair of corrupt, stupid, arrogant jerks.  Really has nothing to do with your skin color, at all; that you think it is the result of white racism proves you are a racist – figuring that white people have a built-in racial animus is a racist belief.

“Smidgen” apparently means “so much that it slops over“:

The two items in question are ones which we’ve already discussed here. One – perhaps the most damning in recent months – was the shocking (meaning, not shocking) revelation that Lerner had previously told her co-workers that, “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails” and wanted to know if instant messaging texts were recorded.

The second was the oh-so-understandable “misunderstanding” about whether or not she had printed out any of her e-mails. And let’s face it… who can be sure what was meant when somebody asks you if you printed something? Did they mean “print” the documents, or print print the documents? It’s all terribly confusing.

Lerner, et al know they are completely secure as long as Obama is President – but they’ve got to be worried that a GOP just might manage to get into office in 2016 – and the statue of limitations will not have expired come January 20th, 2017. Now, to be sure, our RINO half will be wanting us to MoveOn…but there’s still that chance that the next President might decide to review all this…and if he does, then a very large number of highly placed bureaucrats and elected Democrats will be going to jail.

Well, heck – it looks like we do leave people behind.

When McCain says the borders aren’t secure, you know you’ve got a problem.  Remember, I’m the amnesty supporter here…but we’ve really got to deport a very large number of people in order to just make it clear that you can’t just waltz in here without so much as a “by your leave”.

If you’ve heard the stories about Gaza not having bomb shelters, then think again: Gaza does have bomb shelters – for the bombs.  The people?  F ’em; the more that die, the better it is for pro-Palestinian propaganda.

Did you know the GOP might win the governorship of Hawaii?  Hope and Change might work out for us, after all.

Reid continues his career as an acute national embarrassment.

Media bias – its a feature, not a bug.

If the economy is in good shape, why as U.S. power usage flat lined since 2006?  As an aside, there are 20 million more people in the United States than there were in 2006.

Intellectual Idiocy

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Matt McCaffrey over at MisesEconomicBlog makes note of a common trait among our intellectuals:

…“For [a revolutionary] atmosphere to develop it is necessary that there be groups to whose interest it is to work up and organize resentment, to nurse it, to voice it and to lead it.” Enter the intellectuals.

The intellectuals are a paradoxical product of the market economy, because “unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” Like Hayek, Schumpeter described intellectuals broadly as “people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word.” More narrowly, “one of the touches that distinguish them from other people who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs.” That is, intellectuals do not participate in the market (at least not in the areas they write about), and do not generally rely on satisfying consumers to earn a living. Add to this their naturally critical attitude—which Schumpeter argues is the product of the essential rationality of the market economy—and it is easy to see why intellectuals would be hostile to the market.

In other words, intellectuals are often out of place in entrepreneurial societies. The growth of the intellectual class is not a response to consumer demand, but to the expansion of higher education. Passing through the higher education system does not necessarily confer valuable skills, but it often does convince graduates that work in the market is beneath them…

That is all very true, but I’d add something else to it: our intellectuals are, for the very largest part, amazingly un-intellectual. For people who pride themselves on an alleged ability to think, they don’t think about much – and this is mostly because they don’t know very much. Marx wrote a book about what the laboring class wants when he had never done a lick of laboring work in his life. Lenin wrote a book about the development of capitalism in Russia when he had never entered the marketplace, at all.  What on earth could such men think they were writing about?  It’d be like me trying to write an in depth, philosophical work about surgery. I might have some interesting comments to make on the subject, but to take me for an expert in it, no matter how much I claim to have thought about it, would be absurd. Unless you get out there and see how its done, you’ll never really know.

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