Month: September 2010

The Limits of Radicalism and Expertise

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Rick cites a remark by Senator Christopher Dodd about the financial regulation bill: “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” My observation is that Dodd’s remark was actually true, and would have been true to a substantial extent even if the bill had been properly read, debated, and analyzed. A more perceptive man than Dodd might have seen this as a reason to avoid making such overwhelming changes all in one fell swoop.

Several years ago, I posted about the failure of the FAA/IBM project for a new air traffic control system. The new system was known as the Advanced Automation System and was intended to be “as radical a departure from well-worn mores and customs as the overflow of the czars,” in the words of a participant. Another participant described the radical ambitiousness of the project as follows:

“You’re living in a modest house and you notice the refrigerator deteriorating. The ice sometimes melts, and the door isn’t flush, and the repairman comes out, it seems, once a month. Then you notice it’s bulky and doesn’t save energy, and you’ve seen those new ones at Sears. The first thing you do is look into some land a couple of states over, combined with several other houses of similar personality. Then you get I M Pei and some of the other great architects and hold a design run-off…”

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The Heart of a Continent: A Narrative of Travels in Manchuria, 
Across the Gobi Desert, through the Himalayas, 
the Pamirs, and Chitral, 
1884-1894 by Captain Francis Younghusband, C.I.E., Indian Staff Corps, 
Gold Medallist, Royal Geographical Society (1896)

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I have been reading Victorian war and travel memoirs lately. Google Books has everything full text for free that is out of copyright. I send these books to my Kindle, which makes it easy to read them.

Younghusband’s book does not have a single bad page in it. Here is one good passage. Younghusband and his small party have brassed their way into the hilltop fort of the chief of the Kanjuti bandits, to express the displeasure of the Queen at the perpetual raiding upon her subjects.

We stood together for a long time round the fire, a curious group—rough, hard, determined-looking Kanjutis, in long loose woollen robes, round cloth caps, long curls hanging down their ears, matchlocks slung over their backs, and swords bound to their sides; the timid, red-faced Kirghiz ; the Tartar-featured Ladakis; the patient, long-suffering Baltis; the sturdy, jovial little Gurkhas; the grave Pathan, and a solitary Englishman, met together here, in the very heart of the Himalayas, in the robbers’ stronghold. It is on thinking over occasions like this that one realizes the extraordinary influence of the European in Asia, and marvel at his power of rolling on one race upon another to serve his purpose. An Asiatic and a European fight, the former is beaten, and he immediately joins the European to subdue some other Asiatic. The Gurkhas and the Pathans had both in former days fought desperately against the British; they were now ready to fight equally desperately for the British against these raiders around us, and their presence had inspired so much confidence in the nervous Kirghiz that these even had summoned up enough courage to enter a place which they had before never thought of without a shudder.

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Mini-Book Review — Ross — The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in the Mossad

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Ross, Michael with Jonathan Kay, The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in the Mossad, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2007. 278 pp.

Recommended by Ishmael Jones, author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Culture, reviewed here on chicagoboyz.

In late 1982, 21 year-old Michael Ross arrived in Israel to escape cold weather. After a three year hitch in the Canadian Army, tackled right out of high school, he was on vacation. Backpackers visiting Europe on a budget often traded their wintertime labour at Israeli kibbutzim for free room and board. Michael was soon headed for one in the Beit Shean valley.

Hailing from Victoria, British Columbia and a mildly Anglican religious background, even being in Israel was a stretch. Far more likely that he’d be kayaking, or mountain-biking, or growing dope up in the Rockies. Short of the North Island of New Zealand, or perhaps Marin County, California, there’s hardly a more heavenly place in the English-speaking world than the Gulf Islands between the city of Vancouver and Vancouver Island. It’s “Lotus-land” to eastern Canadians. A young man just out of an army should have found all the pleasure and excitement he could want in the Pacific Coast lifestyle.

Michael’s background certainly didn’t suggest a future in one of the most respected, yet constantly imperiled, clandestine services in the world — the Mossad. Nor could it predict that he would take a side in one of the nastiest confrontations between the modern industrialized world and its neighbours. Yet for almost two decades “Michael Ross” was to serve in a variety of military and intelligence roles for his adopted home under conditions of unimaginable danger. How he came to do so is both fascinating and rather unsettling.

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What’s Your Merkin?

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Mine looks something like this:
My merkin

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit I already knew what a merkin was. I learned it as a teenager reading John Varley’s “The Barbie Murders.”

Things like this make me glad I’m a provincial who is isolated from the hip, urban fashions. Come to think of it, the rest of you should be glad as well.

Somethings, you just don’t want to see.

[Oh, h/t Instapundit]

Why the Left Manipulates with a Clear Conscience

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Victor Davis Hanson[h/t Instapundit] asks:

In other words, why cannot liberal defenders of Obama simply say, “Government, much more wisely than a selfish private sector, can ensure a vibrant economy. When people are assured of comprehensive government entitlements they use that security as a base for renewed work and investment. Deficits create consumer demands, spread money around to those who need it most, and spur economic prosperity. And when business provides society with over half its profits in income, payroll, and assorted state and local taxes, the resulting redistributive change and spread-the-wealth equality ensure aggregate economic growth”?

Part of the problem is that leftists can’t actually back up the general claim that government makes better economic decisions than the people do acting as individuals. After the collapse of the Great Lakes states, once the industrial heartland of not only America but the free world, they can’t plausibly claim that spreading the same policies to the rest of the country will make everything better. The same is true in regard to the current plight of California and other similar deep blue areas.

However, the real problem is simply that, as elitists, leftists don’t believe they have any obligation to respect the opinions or experiences of any non-elites.

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