Obama: Just Another Politician

McClatchy:  "From the beginning, Barack Obama's special appeal was his vow to remain an idealistic outsider, courageous and optimistic, and never to shift his positions for political expediency, or become captive of the Inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia, or kiss up to special interests and big money donors.  In recent weeks, though, Obama has done all those things."  Be sure to read the whole thing.

ALSO:  Howard Kurtz:  "Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban.  Oh, I'm sorry. He didn't change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement.  That, at least, is what his campaign is saying. The same campaign that tried to spin his flip-flop in rejecting public financing as embracing the spirit of reform, if not the actual position he had once promised to embrace.  Is this becoming a pattern? Wouldn't it be better for Obama to say he had thought more about such-and-such an issue and simply changed his mind? Is that verboten in American politics? Is it better to engage in linguistic pretzel-twisting in an effort to prove that you didn't change your mind?"

The Right to Keep & Bear Arms

I generally agree with Professor Schaff's treatment of Kennedy v. Louisiana.  It is a decision ungrounded in the text of the Constitution, precedent, or other legal or legislative traditions and practices.  This is not to say that I am in favor of the death penalty for child rapists or anyone else.  For all sorts of reasons, I think the death penalty is more trouble than it's worth. 

I turn to D.C. v. Heller, in which the Court affirms for the first time that the Constitution protects the rights of law-abiding citizens to possess firearms.  I should say that I have possessed and fired both a hand gun and a shotgun, but so far I have never nailed anything more sentient than a trashcan.    But I am more interested in black ink than in black powder.  I think the Court (5 to 4) was obviously right, but I think the decision allows for a lot more gun control that most places have now and I think a case can be made for such control. 

Here, from ePublius! (my work and Jon's) is the text of the Second Amendment to the Constitution:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The question in the case is this:

does the 2nd Amendment protect the right of the people (meaning individual citizens) to keep and bear arms, or

does the 2nd Amendment protect only the right of the state governments to arm their citizens and create state militias? 

Or at least it seems obvious to me that this is question.  Justice Stevens, writing his dissent, denies that this is the question, and his denial, I think, greatly reduces the force of his argument. 

The 2nd Amendment contains a prefatory clause, apparently explaining the purpose of the amendment.   Such a clause is unique to the Constitution, though not to other documents of the era.  But as Antonin Scalia ably demonstrates, the prefatory clause clearly does not control the operative clause.  Suppose Professor Schaff is present at the reading of his uncle Ferdinand's will.  The will contains this clause:

My nephew Jon, being handsome, always right in his opinions, and a snappy dresser, I leave him my entire estate of 1787 million dollars. 

The prefatory clause explains why Uncle Ferdinand decided to give Jon the cash.  But it has no effect on the fact that Jon gets the cash.  The disappointed relations might hire me to refute all three of Uncle Ferdinand's opinions about Jon, and I suspect I could earn that money.  But it wouldn't help.  "I leave him my entire estate," means "I leave him my entire estate." 

Likewise, the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," means what it says, regardless of why the Founders said it.  And there is no reasonable doubt about what it says.  The "right of the people" clearly means the right of those individuals who make up the body politic: the citizens who collectively are "we the people."  To say otherwise would undermine a very precious right only a few inches south of the 2nd Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nor is it uncertain what the right to keep and bear arms means.  It means the right to keep and bear arms.  Here "bear" at least admits of more than one meaning.  It means to carry arms in defense of the community or in defense of oneself.  By contrast, "keep" has only one meaning: to possess. 

The first ten amendments to the Constitution were added because the original document had no bill of rights.  With the sole exception of the 10th Amendment, the Constitutional Bill of Rights is devoted to rights of individuals.  To deny that the 2nd Amendment does not protect the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms would mean that nothing in the Bill of Rights, or anything else in the Constitution for that matter, need mean what it says. 

I think the Court's ruling is pretty narrow here, as it should be.  As the Constitution stands, neither the District of Columbia, nor any other government in these United States can prohibit law abiding citizens from possessing firearms.  The right to bear is a little more problematic, but I think it can be interpreted in a way that allows all reasonable restrictions.  The 4th Amendment does not prohibit general searches at airports.  Likewise a much more thorough licensing and registration regime for all firearms would be consistent with the second amendment, just as the 1st Amendment does not prevent government from requiring radio stations to be licensed.

If we really believe in constitutional rights, we ought to be concerned with how they apply to the various circumstances that arise.  It is bad faith to spend one's time trying to smudge out the original text. 

Science and Magic

As we have covered this ground before, I have only a brief response to Prof. Blanchard's musings on science and magic.  Prof. Blanchard defines science thusly: "Science is the pursuit of the underlying truths about the world, all of them, out of a simple desire to know."  True enough.  In this sense theology and philosophy are sciences or are parts of science.  But for at least 250 years this is not what most people mean by science, as most people are not Aristotelian in their outlook.  When most people say "science" what they mean is the attempt by man to use his mind to master the natural world, including himself, and manipulate it to his own ends.  It is not just about "understanding," it is about use. 

The divide between philosophy and the natural sciences is deep.  In general, the modern scientist, qua scientist, does not believe that we can say anything authoritative about that which is not measurable and quantifiable.   Thus the complaint, for example, that political science is not a "real science," try as it might to ape the natural sciences.  There is the derision of the humanities as "soft." 

Prof. Blanchard and others are admirably attempting to bridge this gap.  But it does not change the fact that when a modern scientist says America has a "scientific soul," he does not mean we are a nation of Aristotles.  In short, he does not mean by "science" what Prof. Blanchard means. 

Document Dump

Lots of little stories to mention. 

The Bush Administration has struck a deal with North Korea.  The North Koreans agree to stop their nuclear program in exchange for the removal of certain sanctions.  This result comes from a series of talks with the North Koreans and various other nations.  You might recall that in 2004 John Kerry beat on George Bush for not unilaterally negotiating with North Korea, while Bush insisted that six-party talks were the way to go.  The damn unilateralist cowboy.  Time will tell whether the North Koreans live up to their side of the bargain.

Barack Obama once again "clarifies" his position on an important subject.  He used to think that the DC gun ban was constitutional, but after yesterday's Supreme Court ruling saying otherwise he is now "straddling" the issue.  Obama's long support for gun control is hard to deny. 

Last week I cataloged Obama's obfuscations on various issues.  I forgot one. Obama attacked Hillary Clinton for voting in favor of listing Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.  In keeping with his pattern on controversial matters, Obama didn't vote on this bill. Still, Obama now says listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group was the right thing to do.  The earlier truth is now inoperative.

Obama is also now supporting the FISA bill he previously opposed. 

The other day I took Obama to task for suggesting the greater regulation of energy futures speculation will solve the problem of high gas prices.  This story has some economists saying that if Obama and some in Congress get their way and new regulations pass, we will go back to $2 a gallon gas.  I wish it was so, although I doubt it.  As I said the other day, if speculators are investing contrary to what the market should dictate, they will eventually lose their shirts and the market price will prevail.  But I am prepared to be wrong, and if such legislation passes, I hope I am.  I believe John McCain also is in favor of greater regulation of energy futures, but I do not know if he supports the particular bill discussed in the news story.

More Court News

The Supreme Court has overturned Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns in a limited ruling.  While concluding that there is an individual right to own a gun, thus the outright ban is a violation of the 2nd Amendment, the majority intimates that a wide range of regulations are still permissible. 

Tocqueville on Rape

From Democracy in America:

The legislators of the United States, who have mitigated almost all the penalties of criminal law, still make rape a capital offense, and no crime is visited with more inexorable severity by public opinion. This may be accounted for; as the Americans can conceive nothing more precious than a woman's honor and nothing which ought so much to be respected as her independence, they hold that no punishment is too severe for the man who deprives her of them against her will. In France, where the same offense is visited with far milder penalties, it is frequently difficult to get a verdict from a jury against the prisoner. Is this a consequence of contempt of decency or contempt of women? I cannot but believe that it is a contempt of both.

The Supreme Court Rules

The Supreme Court yesterday, in reaching a decision that to put to death someone who viciously rapes an eight-year-old violates the Eighth Amendment, makes a decision so heinous even Barack Obama cannot support it.  Read the details of the rape here, but only if you have a strong stomach. 

I have many times on this site voiced my opposition to the death penalty.  But my view is prudential, not categorical.  In a world confused about the value of human life, I'd prefer that we err for the time being on the side of life even with the worst criminals.  Even if I was categorically opposed to capital punishment I would not be so arrogant or ignorant to suppose that the Constitution prohibits that which it clearly allows.  In short, I would not read my own values into the Constitution.

For a legal analysis of the case, see Scott Johnson, Ed Whelan, Matt Franck, and the editors of National Review. 

Obama's rejection of this decision would be more edifying if this is not exactly the type of decision one can expect from Obama's "living Constitution" judges.  Says Jonah Goldberg:

To his credit — or to the credit of his realpolitik advisers — Obama came out against yesterday's decision. But, that doesn't change the fact that he would appoint judges who would vote the same away and has voted  against judges who voted the right way. 

The 'living Constitution" is one of the hallmarks of the Progressive philosophy.  Let me quote from Sidney Pearson's introduction to Herbert Croly's Progressive Democracy. 

For Croly, the Constitution was a "living Constitution," which is to say that it was not bound by the principles of the Founders.  It could evolve into some other than what the Founders would have intended.  Croly described this as a "strength," but the implications were clear; a "living Constitution" could be interpreted and reinterpreted to the point where the original principles were lost altogether....The virtual elimination of the Constitution as a source of permanent principles was necessary because Croly well understood that as a practical matter there was not likely to be a new Constitutional Convention to draft a new document. (emphasis mine)

Croly, Woodrow Wilson, and other Progressives wished to replace the Constitution with the more enlightened view of their age (the Progressives were not the first nor last to believe that intellectual evolution had peaked with themselves).  This turns the judicial branch from an institution which uses its judgment to an institution that asserts its will.  Thus Obama and others like him don't really have a legal argument against the Court; they merely have a policy disagreement.  And that is what the "living Constitution" does. It turns the Supreme Court into just another policy making body.  So the opinion of five judges overrules the people of Louisiana (to say nothing of the jury), an overruling based on a whim. 

We are now in a legal position where our imperial masters on the Supreme Court believe that a man who perverts his role as a caretaker by raping his young step-daughter has so much dignity that the Constitution forbids the public from executing him.  But, the unborn have so little dignity that the Constitution demands that the public allow women to kill their unborn child for any reason at any point in pregnancy. 

Science, Technology, & Magic

Professor Schaff has another well-written and thought-provoking post on the perils of scientific culture. I agree with a lot of what he says, in this and in another related post.  I am not quite so hostile to laptops in schools as he is, but I have to concede that evidence is mostly with him on this one.  There is no good evidence I have heard of that suggests that providing students with computers improves their education.  Quite the contrary, it seems to lead to less homework and less reading.  The reason is probably very simple: the internet, for all its genuine wealth, offers a lot more distractions.  But while this is a very good argument against pushing computers in schools, it is also true that all of our students will be surfing the web soon enough.  We might ought to give thought to what to do about that. 

Professor Schaff gives us A Clockwork Orange as a warning of the dangers inherent in a scientific conception of man.  I read the book when I was about thirteen, and have only recently seen the movie. I still remember the stunning words "I was cured alright," at the very end, when Alex has had anti-violence, anti-sex conditioning removed. 

There is, of course, the danger that technology will allow managers to transform workers into mere cogs in an industrial machine.  I suspect that this danger will become more serious as biotechnology advances.  We aren't that far away from happy worker pills. But I think that Professor Schaff is guilty of one confusion.

This past weekend in Minnesota I was paging through a book at Barnes and Noble that was worried about the potential loss of America's "scientific soul."... I seriously doubt American ever had a "scientific soul," and if it did it is a good thing to remove.  When we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine, a thing to be manipulated for good and for ill.  Man, of course, is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine.

Science is not the same thing as technology.  The latter means a kind of know-how, understanding the underlying principles of some field just well enough to achieve some desired product or outcome. A consultant, hired by a factory manager, may indeed view the workers as mere cogs in the machine. What he is paid for is increasing output while lowering costs.  But even here the dangers are easily overstated.  Free human beings are much more efficient than slaves have ever been, and a technological shrewd consultant will realize this. 

Science is the pursuit of the underlying truths about the world, all of them, out of a simple desire to know.  If it is true that man "is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine," and I think that this is true, then the scientist will want to know that.  A machine is a mere reflection of the purposes of it's designer and users.  Living organisms, by contrast, have their own agenda and respond to our attempts at manipulation in more or less unpredictable ways.  I think that modern science is rediscovering the soul, after a long period of inattention.  But then I think the soul is what Aristotle thought it was: the actuality of a body, with the potential for life. 

So I cannot agree with Jon that "when we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine."  One of the best popular science writers, Johnathan Weiner, wrote a book called Time, Love, and Memory. This book is about the search for the genetic foundations of three of the most important biological powers among a wide range of species, including our own.  The title alone suggest the poetry in this search.  What it shows, I think, is not that mechanical forces determine life and thought; rather, life manipulates mechanical forces.  In so far as Jon and I agree, human beings are what we think they are: more than machines.  Honest science is illuminating this rather than obscuring it. 

Professor Schaff also offers Sherlock Holmes as an example of the dangers of science. 

In a Sherlock Holmes story I listened to during my recent road trip, Holmes laments while in a posh London neighborhood that while his friend Watson can appreciate the beautiful architecture of the homes, Holmes himself can only see places where crimes might take place.  His dedication to his science has made him immune to beauty.  What a pity if that is how we start to see humanity and nature, unable to appreciate their beauty, only able to see a machine.   

But Holmes is presented by A.C. Doyle as very dysfunctional person, however brilliant and fascinating to Watson. One interest alone motivates him: solving crimes. When he doesn't have a case to chew on, he is so painfully bored that he spends his time in an opium stupor.  Holmes is an artist at best.  He is interested in science only for its devices.  Charles Darwin, by contrast, was never bored. Nor, if you read his Voyage of the Beagle, can you imagine for a moment that science leaves one immune to beauty. 

Some of those who fear science (and I do not accuse Jon of this) do so because they sense that it threatens magic.  They are right.  All magic implies that the real world can be manipulated merely by manipulating the human imagination.  Make a doll that looks like Todd Epp, put a pin in the forehead, and Epp will say something irrational.  Wait, how could one tell?   Science attempts to correct the imagination until it can seize on and be nurtured by the nature of things. 

The best presentation of a world with effective magic in it is of course J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels.  I am a big fan.  In those novels, the world of science and technology (the real one) coexists with a world of magic.  But what does the latter look like?  It's Victorian in its architecture and clothing.  Everything in it except its magic is borrowed from the world of muggles (non-magical people), but with a significant time lag.  The magical world of Harry Potter is retarded. I don't think that Rowling  intended this lesson, but she teaches it.  It's fun to play with magic in movies and novels.  Outside that venue, it stunts one's growth.   

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in 1962.  The somewhat cryptic title refers to a certain view of man.  The word "orange" refers to the Malay word "orang," which means man.  Thus the main character of the novel, Alex, is a clockwork man.  If you have seen the film or read the novel (and I confess to only seeing the film) you know that criminal Alex is made "good" by the scientific application of certain visual stimuli that condition his mind to revolt at the idea of committing violence.  The clear implication of the end of the film is that this technique can be used to make men good, but can also be used to make men bad. 

This is one of the implications of the Atlantic Monthly article "Is Google Making Us Stupid," to which I referred yesterday.  The author, Guy Billout, discusses the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, who in the late 19th Century timed the activities of various workmen in an attempt to find inefficiencies in their behavior.  Obviously the more efficient they could become in the use of their time the more money was to be made by industry.  Taylor wrote a book, The Principles of Scientific Management, aiming to turn the management of men into a science.  In this way, the worker became almost literally a clockwork man.  When man becomes a mere machine, it is easy to see him as something to be manipulated and conditioned, just as we might manipulate our car engine or computer.

This past weekend in Minnesota I was paging through a book at Barnes and Noble that was worried about the potential loss of America's "scientific soul."  This was another in a long series of "evolution good, intelligent design bad" books, perhaps matched only by the "intelligent design good, evolution bad" books (for the record, I am an "evolution controversy" agnostic).  I seriously doubt American ever had a "scientific soul," and if it did it is a good thing to remove.  When we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine, a thing to be manipulated for good and for ill.  Man, of course, is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine. 

In a Sherlock Holmes story I listened to during my recent road trip, Holmes laments while in a posh London neighborhood that while his friend Watson can appreciate the beautiful architecture of the homes, Holmes himself can only see places where crimes might take place.  His dedication to his science has made him immune to beauty.  What a pity if that is how we start to see humanity and nature, unable to appreciate their beauty, only able to see a machine.   

Argus Leader: Wrong on Laptops

The Argus Leader is right on one thing: the spat over the funding of the governor's laptop initiative has distracted from the merits of the program itself.  The Argus Leader is dead wrong on another thing: laptops do not have educational value. 

Giving high school students access to laptop computers can be rewarding, especially for those who wouldn't otherwise have much access to computers. We all joke about how much more tech savvy our kids are, and there is much truth in that. But it also means that those children who don't have that level of familiarity with our digital world risk falling far behind.

Except we have research on this, and laptop programs do little to bridge the "digital divide."  Further, if the worry is that some students don't have computer knowledge, there is an easy way to combat that ignorance: have them take a computer class.  Like cavemen, the Argus is awed by the shiny object of the laptop. 

I wrote about this issue at length yesterday, so there is no reason to repeat myself.  Laptop programs for schools have no significant influence on the attainment of knowledge, and as such they are a waste of public dollars. 

Combatting The Inflation Monster

I have argued on this site that the most important economic problem we face is inflation.  I have suggested that the Federal Reserve should be raising interest rates, not lowering them, and that the government should be encouraging both public and private savings.  Here is Robert Samuelson today.

Forget the housing collapse, the "credit crunch" and -- in isolation -- higher oil prices. The real economic menace may be resurgent inflation, which is the broad rise of most prices.(snip)

One antidote to rising raw material prices is for the Fed to reverse its easy money policies. Combating inflation is rarely popular or easy, because it involves slowing the economy -- even inducing a recession -- to relieve pressures on prices and wages. Unemployment rises. There are usually plausible reasons for waiting. Surely there are now. Housing remains in disarray. More loan defaults could increase bank losses. No matter what the Fed does, there are dangers. Perhaps inflation will spontaneously subside (as some Fed officials hope) because the economy is already weak.

But similar arguments for delay were made in the 1960s with disastrous results. The resulting inflationary psychology made inflation harder to extinguish. The initial unwillingness to take a modest slowdown or recession led to deeper subsequent recessions. There are now signs that we are at a similar juncture.

As is becoming increasingly the case, I find myself in almost total agreement with Mr. Samuelson. 

Obama's Bad Economic Ideas

The Wall Street Journal, not surprisingly, takes aim at two widely publicized proposals from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.  The first deals with Obama's plan to lower the price of oil by going after energy speculators.  So writes the Journal:

But there's no inherent reason to "bet" that commodities will go up rather than down. Bet wrong – place all your chips on red, say – and you lose. If a company purchases the future right to buy oil at $140 a barrel and it instead sells for $130, the option is worthless. Besides, somebody has to take the other side of any futures contract: Some are trying to predict where the price will go in the future, while the other side is attempting to sell its future price risk. But no one knows how things will end up. (snip)

One omnipresent talking point is that the so-called "Enron loophole" must be closed. A provision inserted in legislation in 2000 exempted certain oil contract exchanges where transactions were made via computer and telephone, rather than on a trading floor, from regulations that govern other exchange-traded commodities. But Congress ended that practice as part of its most recent farm bill, and there's no evidence that "over the counter" trading has caused the increase in oil prices. The political enthusiasm seems to arise solely from the word "Enron."

Those who wish to blame energy speculation for the rise in oil prices live in a world of fantasy where it must be the bogeyman raising oil prices, not economic forces.  But even if the they are correct in their assessment, by definition these speculators will get their comeuppance.  If they are indeed buying energy futures at higher rates than the market dictates, at some point the market will correct this, as with the "dot com" bubble burst of 1999-2000. One should point out that Barack Obama has no principled opposition to high gas prices, he just wishes the price would have gone up a little more gradually. 

More serious is Obama's plan to "save Social Security," which is really just masking a plan to raise taxes.  Obama plans to apply Social Security taxes on households (not individuals) making over $250,000. Donald Luskin writes about this in today's Journal:

One liberal columnist actually noted with glee the fact that this would take us back to top tax rates not seen since the 1970s.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Obama's new tax would siphon off 0.4% of gross domestic product annually. Combined with Mr. Obama's other tax-hike initiatives, "the total tax on labor would be close to 60 percent. In high-tax states like California and New York, the top rate would be even higher."

Would it help Social Security's financing problems? Mr. Obama has no idea. One of his senior economic advisers admitted to me that no one on the campaign has run any detailed models or performed any rigorous analysis. When one proposes an enormous tax increase, shouldn't there at least be a spreadsheet somewhere? (snip)

Throughout the history of the Social Security program, there has always been a connection between what you contribute in taxes and what you get back in benefits. If Mr. Obama uncaps the wages subject to tax, but doesn't uncap benefits, then he has severed the link between them. Social Security would stand revealed not as a work-related contributory retirement system, but simply as a tax-funded welfare and income-redistribution program.

Read the whole thing for the details.  What Obama's plan does is dramatically raise taxes on the most productive, increases labor costs, reneges on the promise of FDR that Social Security would be a pension plan not a welfare program, all the while doing little to nothing to address to Social Security problem.  Furthermore, Obama decries the Bush tax cuts, which cut rates for everyone.  Would he like to repeal those, further increasing taxes?  He also is for raising taxes on capital gains to 28%, nearly doubling the tax rate on investment.  With a compliant Congress, we are sure to see a significant increase in our tax burden in a coming Obama administration. 

Gov. Rounds Continues Foolish Support For Laptops

Two stories today on the continued support for the "Classroom Connections" program, i.e., Gov. Rounds' effort to put a laptop in the hands of every high school student in our state.  Here is Terry Woster's story and here is Chet Brokaw's.  The Rounds administration defended their program and its funding in front of the Joint Appropriations Committee yesterday.  According to the Woster story, outgoing Education Secretary Rick Melmer foresees 100% participation by our public high schools.  Brokaw reports this from budget director Jason Dilges:

He said state officials will return to the Legislature next year to seek money for a fourth year of the laptop program, and they will try to do a better job explaining how important it is.

"Technology, we all agree, is the wave of the future," Dilges said. "We can't afford not to go forward with this."

The idea that "technology is the wave of the future so we have to have laptops" is, frankly, lame.  The last problem our students have is that they are insufficiently adept at computer technology.  All the wizbang technology in the world serves no purpose if our students cannot read, cannot carry on a sustained thought, and cannot do math.  Laptops are of little to no use for any of these skills. 

It just so happens that my column today in the American News is on this subject, focusing on Mark Bauerlein's Dumbest Generation book.  If I may quote myself (and I may):

Graphic-heavy software and Web sites do little to raise the vocabulary of young people. The complexity of the written word and the plot intricacy of novels, even pulp novels, build vocabulary while encouraging contemplation and complexity of thinking.

But computers, video games and television, Bauerlein writes, condition the mind “against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unaided by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else.”

It is no accident that the National Association of Manufacturers lists low reading and writing skills as the No. 2 deficiency of employees.

Read the whole thing.  Also, read the Atlantic Monthly piece "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" to which Prof. Blanchard referred recently.  The piece is a little longer, so if you are the typical internet user you might struggle to get through it.  Leonard Pitts has some thoughts on that article here.  The author of the piece, Guy Bilout, writes:

[University College London researchers] found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

(snip)
“We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Believe me, students will figure out technology.  And those that need technology for their profession will be trained in it. But the ubiquitous use of technology in the classroom will make our students less literate, less thoughtful, and less human.  I urge the Rounds administration to rethink this initiative, and if they refuse to do so, I urge the legislature to cut all funding. 

 

George Carlin, RIP

If you have twenty-one odds and ends sitting on a shelf, and twenty fall off, what've you got left: an odd or an end?  That is one of my favorite jokes.  I know it comes from George Carlin, and I'm pretty sure it was in his HBO special, back in the late seventies.  I watched that show sitting on a pillow on the floor of an apartment just off of Arkansas State University.  I started laughing the minute Carlin walked on stage.  I haven't ever really stopped. 

Carlin was a comic poet of enormous talent.  It is fair to say, in this obituary, that he fell short of the first order.  When American popular culture went hippie, so did he; and it would be a long time until he turned his biting humor against popular culture.  I suspect that nothing made drugs easier to try, at least for middle class youths like myself, than someone who made them funny.  He made them very funny. I still remember this one, sort of.   

Want to have an experience?  Don't eat for three days.  Smoke three joints.  Then GO TO THE SUPERMARKEEET! 

He illustrated that last line by pretending to push a cart while plucking items off shelves as fast as his arms would work. And there is this:

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

That said, Carlin did maintain moral authority on  language and concepts. 

Consider the words flammable, inflammable, and nonflammable.  Two words ought to be able to handle this concept.  After, the thing either flams or it doesn't. 

No one ever knows for sure what a deserted area looks like. 

In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first. 

Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

And he was equally good at getting at the conceits behind ordinary sentiments.

If you love someone, set them free.  If they come back, set them on fire.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?  

One out of every three Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of two of your best friends. If they are OK, then it must be you.

But he was best at making ordinary life look surprising.

I have six locks on my door, all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three of them.

Ever notice when you blow in a dog’s face he gets mad at you, but when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window?

If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

Honesty may be the best policy, but then by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy. 

Goodbye George. 

Zimbabwe

It is not hard to understand Robert Mugabe.  He spent decades struggling for power and decades holding onto it.  Now he does not want to let it go.  Besides, he is eighty four.  After retirement comes what?  So whatever we might feel about fact that gangs of Mugabe supporters have been murdering members of the opposition with impunity, it shouldn't be wonder or surprise. 

It's a little harder to understand why he has always received so much outside support, and why it took so long for the rest of the world to wake up to the kind of man he is.  For that, I recommend V.S. Naipaul's superb novel, A Bend in the River.  Mugabe was supposed to be a hero.  But no one outside Zimbabwe believes that anymore, let alone outside of Africa. 

It's not clear what to say about Africa's other leaders.  South African President Thabo Mbeki is trying to engineer some sort of power-sharing compromise between Mugabe and his opposition.  That is not a stupid or morally bankrupt idea.  It worked in Kenya.  But of course it means rewarding Mugabe for his gangsterism.  Nelson Mandela's silence is more depressing.  But Mandela, for all this greatness, has always had a blind spot for whoever supported his side in the South African struggle.  He has never been willing to breathe a word against Fidel Castro.

The leader of the opposition and the man who would certainly succeed Mugabe in an honest election, Morgan Tsvangirai, has pulled out of next Sunday's runoff election.  This is probably a shrewd and decent thing to do.  Mugabe is determined to steal it and has made it clear that he won't surrender power in any event.  Tsvangirai's capitulation may reduce the level of violence, or at at least he will not be a party to it.  He may have some hope of waiting Mugabe out. 

Some years ago a colleague of mine from Nigeria defended Africa's "big man" political culture.  He thought it a better fit with Africa's traditions, and more likely to work than Western democracy.  Well, the results are in.  It turned Africa's breadbasket into an economic basket case.  Democracy is not a cultural choice.  It is the only means whereby a government can be forced to serve the interests of its people.  Making government work means making democracy work.  The nations should do whatever they can to help Zimbabwe emerge from its long nightmare. 

Your Government At Work

First, the ugly.  Our immigration people, who ok'd Mohamed Atta for flight lessons after he had flown an airplane into the World Trade Center and who regularly lose track of those who violate immigration law, are hot on the trail of De Smet priest, Fr. Cathal Gallagher. 

Born in Donegal, Ireland, Gallagher served 22 years in Japan before moving to Rochester, Minn., on a religious visa in 1996 to work with alcohol addiction. It was there that he met the Most Rev. Robert Carlson, then the bishop of the Sioux Falls diocese, who invited him to lead churches in eastern South Dakota.

"I thought I was going to go back to Japan ... but then I fell in love with De Smet," he said. "It's a very simple way of life, a place where people are important. I never expected to find that in the United States."

Gallagher applied for permanent residency in 2001 and was told in 2003 that his green card was on the way.

But in February 2006, a lawyer handling his application told him it was denied. Gallagher thinks it's because his work visa expired while he waited for an answer.

A technical violation of the law brings the weight of the federal government down on a man who made a good faith effort to follow that law and is clearly no threat to the public.  Meanwhile, scores of illegals who are actually dangerous pour over the border and wander the streets with the immigration service in complete ignorance. 

The good.  Apparently, FEMA is doing an excellent job responding to Midwestern floods. 

Up and down the Big Muddy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being commended for responding quickly and surely.

"The lessons we learned from Katrina we've taken very seriously," said Glenn Cannon, FEMA assistant administrator for disaster operations. He added: "We've changed the way we do business. We don't wait to react."

After Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, FEMA came into New Orleans late and unprepared, and soon became a symbol of government bungling. President Bush's compliment to FEMA Director Michael D. Brown—"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!"—became a big joke.

Now, storms and flooding in the upper Midwest have left 24 people dead, driven tens of thousands from their homes and caused billions in damage.

After the rain started falling in early June, FEMA arrived with 13 million sandbags to pile onto the levees, 200 generators, and 30 trucks to haul off debris. Across the upper Midwest, the agency has delivered nearly 3.6 million liters of water and 192,000 ready-to-eat meals. About 650 inspectors are working in Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin alone.

Here is an all too rare story of a bureaucracy learning from its mistakes and actually serving the people better.  George Bush, who took heaps of scorn over the Katrina debacle, will surely wait in vain for any praise over the recent success of FEMA. 

 

Zombies In Plain English

This short video provides some excellent details on how you can survive the coming zombie hordes.  One note of caution: contra this video, some think that it is not safe to go into the water.  There is growing consensus that zombies have some swimming skills.  Even if they can't swim, they can walk on the floor of the body of water, possibly reaching islands. 

Obama's Flip Flop on Funding

Like my colleague, I have no love of public funding for campaigns.  I think it makes it too easy for government to control parties and candidates.  So I am not exactly sorry if Obama has driven the nail into the coffin of the public financing system.  Likewise, I do not think that Obama acted differently than any other viable candidate would have in the same situation.  Were the circumstances reversed, John McCain would certainly be offering the same lame excuses as Obama is now offering, or if not, he would think of others, equally as lame.  I would like to think that SDP would not, in that case, be making incoherent arguments in defense of McCain, but that is no solemn pledge on my part. 

But it's not out of line for us to point out that Obama is breaking a solemn pledge (see SDP's Jason Heppler), and that he is acting against the principles his party claims to stand for.  I am therefore puzzled at the reaction of our esteemed Keloland colleague, Scott Ehrisman.  Scott seems to think that public financing is like holy water in a vampire movie: it makes all evil scream in pain and withdraw.  I think that's utter nonsense, but one did believe it, wouldn't one be furious with Obama? 

The New York Times is deeply disappointed.

The excitement underpinning Senator Barack Obama’s campaign rests considerably on his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has come up short of that standard with his decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election.

Mr. Obama is the first presidential candidate to rebuff the public system’s restrictions for the general election since they were enacted after the Watergate scandal. In doing so, he pronounced the public system “broken” and turned away from his earlier strong suggestion — greatly applauded at the time — that he would pursue an agreement with the Republican candidate to preserve the publicly subsidized restraints this fall [my emphasis]. 

Barack Obama has done unprecedented damage to the public system.  The Washington Post agrees with the NYTs, and what is more interesting, the Post points out that Obama agrees. 

BARACK OBAMA isn't abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it's in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn't about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he'd get if he stuck to his promise -- and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Mr. Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing. Really, it hurts him more than it hurts Fred Wertheimer.

Pardon the sarcasm. But given Mr. Obama's earlier pledge to "aggressively pursue" an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take. "It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Mr. Obama said in a video message to supporters.

Now I think it is nonsense for the Times to talk about "departing from self-interested politics."  Politics is always a tapestry woven out of a vast number of self-interests.  The trick is to weave them into coherent positions on the public good.  In a regime with freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, you can't shut out those "greedy lobbyist boot lickers" that Scott despises.  They will find some way to use their numbers and purses to influence politics.  Besides, they shouldn't be shut out.  The unions, the Sierra Club, the ACLU, have every right to want to use their clout to advance their interests in Washington.  So do the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and the NRA.  Obama will need their support after the election.  It's a good idea to get it now. 

What this incident shows is not that Obama is a bad man or bad candidate.  It shows that he is a candidate.  This is how they behave, like it or not.  I am not shocked or offended by this.  But someone who believes that Barack Obama represents a new kind of candidate, a departure from the politics of the past, might find this a convenient time to come back to planet earth.

The Grey Lady Discovers Progress . . . Just a Little Late

Jennifer Rubin:  "The New York Times has made a startling discovery: things are much improved in Iraq."

Fast Times at Gloucester High

Michele Catalano:  "At an age when most teens are making plans for college and careers, 17 teenagers from Gloucester had a very different plan for their lives; they wanted to become mothers. Not after college, not even after high school, but now, while they were still teenagers. Soon, the girls were appearing in the school nurse's office for pregnancy tests. Instead of scared young girls frightened at the prospect of a positive test, the nurse was faced with teens who were high fiving each other at the news they were expecting."

America's Over-Regulated Roads

The current Atlantic Monthly magazine announces itself as the first "ideas issue."  That is usually a sign that you can expect anything but ideas.  But it more than lives up to that conception.  Consider what is in it:

An article arguing that the destruction of large housing projects in major cities has only succeeded in flushing criminal behavior into surrounding suburbs.  I hadn't heard about that, and I am guessing that neither have you.  But it is a fascinating and disturbing read. 

It has an article entitled "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?"  Professor Schaff will like this one.  I have to say that it backs up his concerns about the internet and education. 

It has an article arguing that Donald Rumsfeld, for all his faults, has accomplished a major restructuring  of the American military that makes it much more fit for the future strategic environment. 

All three are important articles, and I expect that the first will cited for many years to come as a turning point in thinking about social policy. 

But I was most impressed with "Distracting Miss Daisy," by John Staddon.  Staddon claims that drivers and their cars are much safer in Britain than in the United States, and that this is largely because American roads are much more heavily regulated than British roads. 

Consider the stop sign. It seems innocuous enough; we do need to stop from time to time. But think about how the signs are actually set up and used. For one thing, there’s the placement of the signs—off to the side of the road, often amid trees, parked cars, and other road signs; rarely right in front of the driver, where he or she should be looking.

Then there’s the sheer number of them. They sit at almost every intersection in most American neighborhoods. In some, every intersection seems to have a four-way stop. Stop signs are costly to drivers and bad for the environment: stop/start driving uses more gas, and vehicles pollute most when starting up from rest. More to the point, however, the overabundance of stop signs teaches drivers to be less observant of cross traffic and to exercise less judgment when driving—instead, they look for signs and drive according to what the signs tell them to do.

And then there is my favorite: speed limits.

Speed limits in the U.S. are perhaps a more severe safety hazard than stop signs. In many places, they change too frequently—sometimes every few hundred yards—once again training drivers to look for signs, not at the road. What’s more, many speed limits in the U.S. are set in arbitrary and irrational ways. An eight-lane interstate can have a limit of 50 to 70 mph or more. What makes the difference? A necessarily imperfect guess at probable traffic conditions. The road may sometimes be busy—so the limit is set low. But sometimes the road is not busy, and the safe speed is then much higher than the limit.

A particularly vexing aspect of the U.S. policy is that speed limits seem to be enforced more when speeding is safe. As a colleague once pointed out, “An empty highway on a sunny day? You’re dead meat!” A more systematic effort to train drivers to ignore road conditions can hardly be imagined. By training drivers to drive according to the signs rather than their judgment in great conditions, the American system also subtly encourages them to rely on the signs rather than judgment in poor conditions, when merely following the signs would be dangerous.

Sometimes regulation is good.  It's a good thing that buildings in California have to be constructed to withstand earthquakes.  But maybe too many regulations can be a bad thing.  Safety on the roads depends only a little on the physical characteristics of the roads and the cars.  It depends almost entirely on driver judgment and attention.  Maybe the Brits are right about this one.