Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Interesting quote from this op-ed concerning North Korea.
For years, Kim Jong Il was rated (by using various rankings of national problems and achievement) the worst ruler on the planet. But this year, Kim Jong Il came in third place, behind Zimbabwe (Robert Mugabe) and Sudan (Omar al Bashir). Things haven’t gotten any better in North Korea, they’ve just gotten much worse in Zimbabwe and Sudan.
Some of the best read bloggers have been outraged by this news item. The headline reads…
“Fire kills child, 3, and parents as police prevent neighbours from trying to rescue them”
If anything is going to produce outrage, it would be an account of how young and innocent lives were lost when they could have been saved. And all through a pig-headed application of the rules, to boot.
But my buddy knirirr has pointed out one or two things that have been missed.
Firstly, the report says that the neighbours were “beaten back by flames” which suggests to me that the fire was so intense that they would not have been able to get in and save anyone anyway. If this was a fire at night and there were no alarms installed then it could well have been burning for some time before anyone noticed.
Secondly, if the police really did quote H&S then they might not necessarily have meant it in the bureaucratic jobsworth sense that the Samizdata article seems to imply. I wonder if they meant “it’s too late, you can’t save them, you’ll only get killed if you try” but stated that the rules said so out of some misplaced belief that people will be impressed by being told that It’s The Law and are more likely to obey. We cannot know, but if so it clearly failed to make an impression in this case.
I find it very difficult to believe that five British police officers would stand by and let young children burn if they thought there was a chance for unequipped and untrained hands to help. Oh, there might be one or two here or there who would not care to make an attempt if it might mean their job. But five??? It seems likely that at least one, and probably more, of the officers were a parent themselves. For some reason, I don’t think sociopaths alone choose the police as a career.
It seems to me that there are a fair number of areas where Great Britain might improve. It also seems fair to me when someone points them out. But I don’t think this news article is fair.
(Hat tip to Glenn.)
At some point we are likely to go back to looking at the world as we did a few generations back – the virtues of the 1950’s or the renunciatory sense of duty of the nineteenth century. If the Romantics & the French Revolution saw a response in the stiff upper lip, perhaps the disasters of today will bring back that same resolute look – perhaps instead of Sean Penn we will admire laconic heroes like Gary Cooper and self-deprecating ones like Jimmy Stewart. And if we do, perhaps we will value Benjamin Franklin’s advice and have little longing for Franklin Raines’ raincoat – value more what’s in our chests than covers our backs.
Perhaps the current economic crisis will force a re-examination of the assumptions Shannon describes so well. Each semester I ask my students to briefly discuss a variety of passages from early writers. One of my favorites is Benjamin Franklin’s argument against debt, that it tempts man to lie, that it undermines his freedom. Indeed, as he says, it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. I like it because it counters D. H. Lawrence’s attack in an understated way. Franklin’s is not a romantic sense of self but a belief that protecting our essence, who we are, is important. His sense that the practical, the worldly & mundane, is an important factor seems much more interesting than the sex & melodrama of Lawrence’s dark passions.
The left wing of the Democratic Party is in power now and it looks like they will pass their budget and their agenda for the next year or two or four. There’s every reason to think it will be a disaster for the country. It’s not looking so great so far and the disaster may arrive ahead of schedule. I’d say there’s a nontrivial chance the country will be irreparably harmed by our American mid-life crisis. It’s going to suck, big time. All Republicans can do is be the party that says, this is a bad idea and we should return to what we really believe in. We should wear the label the Party of No as a badge of honor. No to higher taxes. No to soaking the rich. No to nationalizing health care. No to abadoning Israel (just wait — that’s coming). There will be a lot to say no to. No to tyranny. This whole country is founded on a No.
Obama’s ideas are a mushy rehash of tired ideas from the 1930’s and 1960’s packaged for an era of twitter users. We don’t have to hope they will fail. They can do that all on their own. Conservatives as they are called in this country remain attached to ideas that date back to our founding, ideas of limited government, virtuous citizenship and the worthiness of commerce. We don’t have to wait for anybody because they already got here some 200 years ago. We should say No to the revolution Obama wants to lead. We can certainly hope that enough people wake up soon enough that the country is not ruined first. But our job is not to find more sellable ideas. There’s nothing wrong with the ideas.