Society

Heckling the Families of Dead Soldiers, for Extra Credit

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Orson Scott Card writes about a truly disgusting and infuriating phenomenon.

the airplane I was flying in held, in its cargo space, the body of a young man who had died in the service of America — in my service. His family was waiting to meet the airplane and say good-bye to their beloved son and brother. … The family was actually from another city, one with a much larger airport than this one. But they had opted to drive the extra miles to receive the coffin here … so they could avoid the demonstrators who had lately been showing up. … “Hippie college students,” … “They egged the hearse.” On that occasion, the brother of the dead soldier was so hurt and angry at these strangers who dared to defile his brother’s memory and worsen his family’s suffering that “he clocked one of them.” So the brother was arrested for assault and could not be with his family for the rest of the services in honor of one of America’s fallen. The demonstrators suffered no penalty. In fact, they received extra credit from a college professor because they had “taken part in a demonstration.”

Does anyone know if this is true? Does anyone know the name and place of employment of the “college professor” in question? Has anyone protested this conduct?

Please put any reliable information you may have about this in the comments.

UPDATE: I have seen nothing else about this. Nor apparently has anyone else. I am starting to think it is an urban legend, despite having some surface plausibility. If it were true the blogosphere would be all over it. Still, I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has facts affirming this tale.

The Cattiness of Women

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The Lehrer Report did a puff piece on Pelosi (Mark Shields’ glowing praise might suggest they’d gone over the top). But if issues like the Jane Harmen chairmanship weren’t mentioned, they did make me look twice at an A&L link to the “Queen Bee” syndrome.


This is probably of little interest to the Chicagoboyz, so clearly boyz, but it does indicate a problem – both with women’s attitudes toward the women they employ and those employed toward their bosses. On the other hand, I feel quite lucky in my department chair, partially, I suspect, because we are both women of a certain age – when we speak, we understand each other, in more thorough ways than I (and I suspect she as well) do with much younger people or with men. Our allusions are not lost on one another, for instance. This is complicated territory and most of the time it is a good idea to assume something other than sexism is going on, but it is interesting, nonetheless.

Questioning Assumptions: Taxes and Expropriation of Financial Assets

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Your analysis is good. But what happens if the assumptions on which you base your analysis change? Carl from Chicago explains how the analyses on which much conventional tax- and retirement-planning advice is based can fall apart if lawmakers change the rules of the game. Carl points out that the rules have been changed before and probably will be again. The conventional advice no longer looks so wise.

Review of “Annihilation from Within”

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Annihilation from Within is Fred Charles Iklé‘s attempt to draw attention toward, and thereby inspire management of, the true geopolitical risks of the 21st century risks ultimately deriving from a great decoupling of science from the cultural constraints of politics and religion, a quarter of a millennium ago risks portended by, but utterly eclipsing, the events of 9/11/2001 risks almost entirely unrecognized by our current risk-management institutions, foremost among them the nation-state.

AfW is eminently worth reading and relatively likely to do some actual good in the world. But you haven’t grazed in here to read a blanket endorsement, and I’d be no blogger if I didn’t contend (with all-but-nonexistent credibility) with some portion of Iklé’s thesis; so for a thoroughgoingly unqualified critique, complete with annoyingly personal speculation and fuzzy intuition-laden commentary, read on!

(~2,700 words; approximate reading time 7-14 minutes, not counting lots of links.)

Read more

Anarchy Boomtime

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In Newsweek, Silvia Spring marvels that the Iraqi economy appears to be booming even while the country remains mired in violence.

People are often surprised that economies can thrive without a high degree of politically enforced social order, but history tends to show that too much government is more likely to cause economic stagnation than too little. Most 3rd-world business people face the worst of both worlds. The government does a very poor job of providing physical security and a fair judiciary (important to enforce contracts), yet it imposes strangling taxes, jealously guards its prerogatives to decide who can and cannot engage in any particular economic activity, and individual government agents usually extort vast sums. As a result, the descent of a country into mild anarchy usually improves the situation. The actual security situation may not be that much worse, but all the parasitic government activity disappears. The situation turns into a net gain. It is quite common to read reports from 3rd-world countries during a civil war that shops and other businesses seem more full and busy than they did in time of “peace.”

The legendary economy of Hong Kong from 1945 to 1999 arose in large part due to the laissez-faire approach that the British government blundered into as a result of geopolitical concerns. The British needed to keep Hong Kong as a full colony to protect it, but that meant they could not allow a full fledged local democracy with the moral authority to impose a welfare and regulatory state. So they ended up with just a bare-bones government appointed by Britain that never tried to lay its hand too strongly on the people of Hong Kong.

Business people in Iraq find themselves in something of the same environment. The occupation government did not wish to get involved in potentially contentious economic policy, and the same lack of experience and consensus that keeps the newly elected Iraqi government from wiping out the insurgency also prevents it from implementing destructive economic policies. Left to their own devices and with huge pent up demand the Iraqi people are driving their economy strongly forward.

Discuss this post at the Chicago Boyz Forum.