Civil Society

Hatin’ on Palin

by

In George MacDonald Fraser’s picaresque novel Flashman (which is set in 1839-1842), the hero (actually more of an antihero) marries the daughter of a very wealthy Scottish mill owner. This creates problems with Lord Cardigan, the commander of the fashionable regiment in which Flashman is serving–indeed, Cardigan has insisted that Flashman leave the regiment. Here’s Flashman, trying to get the decision reversed:

Just the sight of him, in his morning coat, looking as though he had been inspecting God on parade, took the wind out of me. When he demanded to know, in his coldest way, why I intruded on him, I stuttered out my question: why was he sending me out of the regiment?

“Because of your marriage, Fwashman,” says he. “You must have known very well what the consequences would be. The lady, I have no doubt, is an excellent young woman, but she is–nobody. In these circumstances your resignation is imperative.”

“But she is respectable, my lord,” I said. “I assure you she is from an excellent family; her father–”

“Owns a factory,” he cut in. “Haw-haw. It will not do. My dear sir, did you not think of your position? Of the wegiment? Could I answer, sir, if I were asked: ‘And who is Mr Fwashman’s wife’ ‘Oh, her father is a Gwasgow weaver, don’t you know?'”

Read more

If Major Hasan had been Gay, would he still be in the US Army?

by

Had Major Hasan made as much public about having gay lovers as he did about being an Islamist, would he have been discharged from the US Army before the recent FT Hood shooting?

If the US Army has a “watch list for gays,” then why doesn’t it have one for potential uniformed Islamists, to prevent terrorist attacks or “Sudden Jihadi Syndrome?”

This particular question has been all over conservative web sites and talk radio (The Glenn Beck show for one) this morning.

After all, TIME magazine reports 2/3 of Muslims enlisting in the US Military are resident aliens. A “Uniformed Islamist Watch List” would seem a basic counter-intelligence security precaution.

If the speculation stemming from British newspapers is true, the US Army seems to have known enough to move Major Hasan from Walter Reed hospital to FT Hood to keep him from stalking the Israeli Ambassador.

I would lay in a supply of microwave popcorn to see Senator Joe Lieberman ask Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr. the questions of “What did the Army know, and when did they know it?” and “How does removing possible Islamists in the ranks differ from ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ procedures to remove suspected Gay soldiers?,” in front of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee, under oath.

Gulliver, Meet the Lilliputians

by

California state officials have been busy writing regulations:

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) just passed a new regulation that requires glazed glass in automobiles that is supposed to reduce the need to use air conditioning. The catch is that the same properties that block electromagnetic sunlight radiation also blocks lower frequency electromagnetic radio waves. That means radios, satellite radios, GPS, garage door openers, and cell phones will be severely degraded. Even more surprising is that it requires this glass even for jeeps that have soft covers, plastic windows, and no air conditioning. Furthermore, the rules are so stringent that they effectively make sunroofs black, even though many consumers use the covers.

Also, the California State Energy Commission is promulgating stringent energy-consumption requirements for flat-screen TVs. At a minimum, these will surely increase prices to consumers (if manufacturers could increase energy efficiency without raising prices, they would have already done it, since efficiency is a selling point) and may effectively ban some size-technology combinations. This is being done on the theory that it will reduce overall electricity consumption and help avoid the need to build new power plants.

Read more

Recommended Reading

by

About a month ago, Bill Waddell recommended a book called The Puritan Gift, written by Kenneth and William Hopper. Recommended it in pretty strong terms, in fact:

If you want to understand management – especially manufacturing management – how we got here, what has worked and what doesn’t – and how to get back on the phenomenal track American manufacturing was on before the wheels started to come off a few decades back, you have to read this book.

and

It is not an overstatement to describe The Puritan Gift as an essential book for manufacturing management. You really will have a hole in your understanding of the art and science of manufacturing until you take the time to let the Hopper brothers fill it for you. It will be the best $20 you ever spent.

(Bill’s full post here)

Social and intellectual history combined with practical advice on business management…sounded interesting, so I ordered a copy. I’ve read it pretty quickly and will now go back and read it in more depth, but I agree with Bill that it’s a pretty significant book. I’d encourage other Chicago Boyz and Chicago Girlz and Readerz to pick up a copy so we can discuss.

Read more

He’s Just Not That Into Us

by

Here’s George Orwell, writing in 1940 about England and the English:

When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pintables in the Soho pubs, the old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?

But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillarboxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches in to the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantlepiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.

And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillarboxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side of the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.

George Orwell was a socialist. He wanted to see radical transformation in his society. But in the above passage, he displays real affection for the English people and their culture.

Can anyone imagine Barack Obama writing something parallel to the above about America and the American people? To ask the question is to answer it. Clearly, Obama does not identify with America in the same sort of way that Orwell identified with England.

Why, then, did Obama wish to become our President?

Two analogies come to mind…

Read more