Bret Stephens compares Haiti and Chile, corruption and transparency. How often we forget that corruption and a state economy kills. And in times like these, we see that the rebar metric measures lives saved.
Americas
A Short Rant……
“In the wake of the latest failed terrorist incident, the TSA announced a new round of security procedures designed to greatly inconvenience millions of air passengers without doing anything to increase their security…”
Here’s an idea. Let’s start using basic counterintelligence principles to screen prospective travelers to the United States and bar those young, unmarried, Muslim men having affiliations with radical mosques, madrassas, imams, extremist Islamist political groups or a history of mental illness and erratic behavior from receiving visas to enter the United States. This clown should never have been able to get a visa. His own father, a senior government official of a foreign nation, was trying to red-flag him as a potential al Qaida terrorist for us(!).
Would such a policy catch every prospective terrorist? No. Nothing will.
The Medium, The Message, & President Micheletti
Our need for understanding has not disappeared if our appetite for the press has. PJTV may be a new medium; its message: “Honduran President Micheletti on Hugo Chavez, Cocaine & American Media” may be new as well. Accessible, quickly put up, quickly listened to: this is the old way on steroids. But the argument Micheletti makes is simply an old way – to “respect the laws of my country” – that speaks of restraint and proportion. Laws are not uniformly good, of course, but we’ve seen the patterns before and we recognize the threats Micheletti describes. Leaders who want to abrogate laws limiting their own powers are seldom in the right.
Texas is at least well represented by Cornyn. Texans, for all the talk by others of our cowboy ignorance, are aware of our southern border. Note Cornyn’s conclusion, which is gratitude for a medium that even covers Micheletti, even tries to find out what happened. The interview with a representative from our State Department is not designed to make us feel grown ups are in charge, but rather the kind of boozy judgements in a frat on Saturday night – I don’t know much about the details, but I sure know about my position.
Perhaps if Texas could develop its own foreign policy, it might be more sensible – imagine our spot on the map at the end of this report.
Why Gratitude Is Appropriate
Humility and gratitude ground us. These, of course, are feelings unfamiliar to revolutionaries – those who would destroy the institutions of the past, who see in them nothing of value, in their heroes nothing to be esteemed, in their rituals and duties nothing to be respected. Listening to Obama drone on tonight, my husband and I found ourselves wandering around the house, too jumpy to sit.
But gratitude grounds – and is often an appropriate feeling, even as we renovate. I’ve seldom liked my doctors. And, sure, I figure they do more tests than they need. But I’m grateful, nonetheless. They do those tests because they can, because they may be sued, because they are paid, but most often because they want to know what’s wrong, what’s working. The whole world rides on the rails our procedures, machines, drugs, knowledge lay for them. Newt Gingrich speaks of potential cures for Alzheimer’s. As more of us have aged, we see such a cure would save incredible heart break but also incredible costs. And it would increase productivity from those with a life time of experience and thought. But Gingrich speaks with that zest, that optimism that characterizes the self-reliant, the libertarian right. And it isn’t that we can’t see huge changes in a short time as disease after disease has lost some of its power.
Without gratitude, we don’t have the context for a buoyant “I can.” In Obama’s mouth the sentiment seems thin. In the mouth of a doer, it resonates. Instead of standing with a leader’s pride in his country – its past and its people – he speaks of leveling and of the choices of others that are better. Sure, medicine, indeed about everything in our society, could stand improvement. And comparison with others is useful, sensible. But if we don’t acknowledge what is good than how are we going to pare away what is bad? Destroying both the institutions of the church and of the state didn’t lead to all that idyllic a life under Napoleon.
We Are Number One!
The headline reads “US demand for handguns driving world gun trade.”
More than half of all of the legally imported handguns in the world, and about 43% of the total imported shotguns, are sent to the United States. While international trade in weapons has boomed in the past decade, it is largely fueled by sales in handguns.
Self defense, baby! And I’m a part of it!
Just trying to do what I can to make the world a better place, and expand the global marketplace.
(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)