Month: April 2004
Hardly a Man is Now Alive Who Remembers …
Happy Patriots’ Day.
The opening volleys of the American Revolution were fired by redcoats on Lexington Green, early on the morning of April 19, 1775.
These seven Americans were killed or mortally wounded:
Jonas Parker
Jonathon Harrington
Caleb Harrington
John Brown
Samuel Hudley
Robert Munroe
Isaac Muzzy
Asahel Porter
Jonathan Harrington crawled home, shot through the chest, and died on his front doorsteps.
Blood is the price of freedom. Never forget.
God bless America.
Buggy-Whip Makers Seek Ban on Automobiles
Just about. Here’s a striking example of industry incumbents trying to block technical and business advances that threaten local advertising monopolies. Apparently it is not in the public interest for the public to have too many choices.
WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) – U.S. radio broadcasters have asked federal regulators to bar rival satellite radio services from offering content tailored to local markets, according to a petition obtained on Friday.
[. . .]
The broadcasters’ group demanded that the Federal Communications Commission, which licenses satellite services, explicitly ban their rivals from using any technology to offer content in one area that is different from another location.
Congress should pass a law allowing open trading of radio frequencies. Then let’s “explicitly ban” the FCC, which is the regulatory life-support machine for a huge political ecosystem of parasites and rent-seekers.
(via Drudge)
The Myth of the Racist Republicans
This superb article by Gerald Alexander (from the reliably good Claremont Review of Books) provides good information to dispel the myth that the Republican Party was able to become the majority party in the South by becoming “racist.” I never bought that, and this article provides excellent, fact-based details. It is written in a careful, analytical, empirical style similar to that of Michael Barone.
The clincher paragraph:
In sum, the GOP’s Southern electorate was not rural, nativist, less educated, afraid of change, or concentrated in the most stagnant parts of the Deep South. It was disproportionately suburban, middle-class, educated, younger, non-native-Southern, and concentrated in the growth-points that were, so to speak, the least “Southern” parts of the South. This is a very strange way to reincarnate George Wallace’s movement.
The bottom line is this: One more historical “fact” which “everyone” “knows” is “true,” that the GOP is a party which inherited the mantle of Jim Crow, and should be ashamed of itself, is no more than another lie in the hegemonic mountain of lies which is modern liberalism.
(I’d put in a hat tip, if I could remember where I saw this … .)
Oliver Stone, Idiot
Instapundit links to an excellent interview with the great artiste. Here’s a representative sample:
[interviewer]: Did you ask him about his relationship with Juanita in Miami?
[Stone]: God, I don’t remember. There were so many women.
[interviewer]: Juanita is his sister.
[Stone]: Juanita’s his sister? … He seemed to be a very straight-shooter, very kind of shy with women.
[interviewer]: I’ve called him the movie star dictator. Did you get that sense about him?
[Stone]: Totally. I think it would be a mistake to see him as a Ceausescu. I would compare him more to Reagan and Clinton. … They were both tall and had great shoulders, and so does Fidel.
[interviewer]: For the second film, you received permission to see the dissidents [Stone]valdo Paya, Vladimiro Roca, and Elizardo Sanchez. They spoke critically of the government. Obviously, that couldn’t have happened unless permission for them to see you was granted, right? What do you make of Castro allowing that to happen?
[Stone]: I don’t think he was happy with it. I don’t think he wants to be in the same film with Paya. In his mind they are faux dissidents.
[interviewer]: He actually calls them faux dissidents? He called them the so-called dissidents?
[Stone]: Yeah, so-called, right. I was in Soviet Russia for a script in 1983, and I interviewed 20 dissidents in 12 cities. I really got an idea of dissidents that was much rougher than here. These people in Cuba were nothing compared to what I saw in Russia.
[interviewer]: Did you ever think to bring up why he doesn’t hold a presidential election?
[Stone]: I did. He said something to the effect, “We have elections.”
If you’re naive it’s easy to conclude that leftist cultural icons like Stone have some special insight. After all, they seem so confident in their views, and so many people in the press treat them deferentially. But it can take nothing more than a few pointed questions to make clear that a famous maker of politically themed movies is an ignorant fool. What’s remarkable is how seldom journalists ask such questions. But once in a while someone does, and once in a while the interviewee lets his guard down and the celebrity balloon deflates. (I give Stone credit for risking a hostile interview. Famous leftists like Barbra Streisand, who issues proclamations on her web site but otherwise shirks open debate, deserve even less respect.)