March 31, 2005
Dear Lord Help Us
From James Taranto's Best of the Web comes the 911 call from a San Clemente soccer mom waiting in a Burger King drive thru who requests police assistance to make her order for a Western Burger right. God help us.
What If Something Didn't Go Wrong?
Via today's RealClearPolitics, I found Dick Morris' piece The Terri Schiavo case is rousing the moderates. To paraphrase the Merrill Lynch phrase, when Dick Morris speaks, I listen.
He particularly impressed me last year whenever he was invited on as a talking head during last year's presidential campaign as the calm, rational voice in a sea of vitriol. By being nobody's friend, he was everybody's friend.
Terri Schiavo's later life, and subsequent death, is excruciatingly sad. My heart goes out for all parties involved. Sad, yes, but tragic, I don't know. Tragedy is when a grievous wrong has occurred. Has that happened? I don't think so. At the least, it is possible that it hasn't.
The grievous wrong in this case would be that Terri was not in a permanent vegitative state and that there was a chance for recovery, partial or otherwise. There are those who wail that we'll never know. Actually, we will know know more shortly because an autopsy will be done on Terri to determine more about the nature of her affliction and whether anything more could have been done.
But my question is not: what if something did go wrong; but rather: what if something didn't go wrong? What if Terri Schiavo was in an irreversible permanent vegitative state, what if the courts ruled with compassion and strictly within the rule of law, what if Michael Schiavo, however mortal or imperfect, was conducting Terri's affairs in what he perceived as her best interests? Nothing I have read has indicated otherwise. More important, perhaps, what if real mistakes were made, borne only from the necessary imperfection of the human condition, but not from malice or arrogance?
Anyone who claims to know God's mercy is, frankly, a charlatan [update 4/1/2005: I have removed the word "charlatan", as it is needlessly inflammatory. I am just as susceptible to the passion of the moment as anyone else. I apologize. To finish the sentence more appropriately: Anyone who claims to know God's mercy is, in my opinion, incapable of such knowledge.] Rush Limbaugh does not know God's grand design for Terri, or Michael, or the Schindlers, or Judge Greer, or any of the other actors involved. Neither does Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Randall Terry, nor any of the others up in arms over what they perceive as a miscarriage of justice. I am most certainly not saying that these types aren't in fact strongly motivated by their faith or the absolute best of intentions. I am simply stating that no one can speak God's will, period. There are conscientious, faith-motivated folks on every side of this debate.
Again, I am extremely moved and saddened by what all the intimate actors are going through. But life is full of just these types of struggles. In one of the ironies for the ages, one should not pray to be spared such a situation, one should pray for it. Or perhaps more appropriately, one should pray to be strong and open to its lessons when such an event visits your family. There is no window to your own soul as the one presented to you in interacting with a loved one who is dying (yes, I speak from experience, and no, it is none of your business).
Dick Morris' position is that it takes a lot to rile the moderates, but when they are riled, watch out. Dick Morris:
One can well understand the passion of the pro-lifers on the issue of abortion. They have a fetus to protect. For them, the commitment to preserving life carries into the womb. We may not agree, but we can certainly respect and empathize with their view.
But with Schiavo, there is no fetus. There is just Terri. And when we put ourselves in her place, more than 80 percent of us think we would want to die. To be told that we must linger in a non-life because of the dictates of a governor wedded to the religious right and a Congress in the grip of ideologically driven leaders seems to the vast majority of us a level of government interference we find too intrusive to tolerate.
Next to a decision that we must live as vegetables, OSHA regulations, IRS bullying and EPA stubbornness pale by comparison. How ironic that, at the precise moment when most of us are prepared to embrace the agenda of the libertarian conservatives, we find the Republican Party, their supposed champions, running screaming in the other direction. [Emphasis mine]
He recognizes that there is an unavoidable collision of politics and extremely personal family matters which, unlike any other touchstone issue, deeply impacts the silent majority.
The government does in fact have to be ever vigilante in defending the civil liberties of those who cannot defend themelves. If we are to be a civil society, Terri Schiavo's civil rights must be protected, by the force of government if necessary. However, if we are to be civil society, we must also know as a (rule of law) society when to butt out. The Terri Schiavo case has posed a Gordian Knot of a test case.
Sean Hannity in particular has been decrying "judicial activism" in the Terri Schiavo case, but he has said not word one about "legislative activism", as if this is not possible. Glenn Reynolds on March 25 stated:
But I do think that process, and the Constitution, matter. Trampling the Constitution in an earnest desire to do good in high-profile cases has been a hallmark of a certain sort of liberalism, and it's the sort of thing that I thought conservatives eschewed. If I were in charge of making the decision, I might well put the tube back and turn Terri Schiavo over to her family. But I'm not, and the Florida courts are, and they seem to have done a conscientious job. Maybe they came to the right decision, and maybe they didn't. But respecting their role in the system, and not rushing to overturn all the rules because we don't like the outcome, seems to me to be part of being a member of civilized society rather than a mob. As I say, I thought conservatives knew this.
Earthly affairs can never be perfect. Never. That is not to say we should not aim for perfection. We should recognize that striking the target of perfection is at best an asymptotic goal, one to be aimed at but never fully achieved. In the world of politics and government, it may very well be that the best way to achieve good is to deny the do-gooders their desire to rule. For if anyone does not realize that their aims and goals will never meet, it is them.
Update: QandO has thoughts on the topic.
Note to Powerline
Dear Powerline crew (re: your post entitled The Global Left's Vision of Blogging :
I see that your trackbacks are still turned off (@#$%& spammers!). I just finished a post yesterday entitled: Blogs and Libertarianism. Link:
Excerpt:
One final thought before I go earn my daily bread. As a small-l libertarian, I am greatly heartened by the rise of the blogospere. Why? Again, let's look back at the architecture. Journalists have readers. Bloggers have ... bloggers! Again, the devil's advocate says: nonsense! Bloggers have blog readers (or lurkers, to dredge up old Usenet terminology). I am quite willing to admit that many blog readers are content to remain just that. But the Welcome Mat to join the ranks is forever and always there to join the blogging ranks. An intermediate rank between blogger and blog reader is blog commenter. Bloggers love good commenters! Bill Whittle credits getting his start as a commenter on Rachel Lucas' and Kim du Toit's sites. Frank Martin got encouragement as a commenter on Stephen Green's site. And Hugh Hewitt I believe has got be credited with encouraging more bloggers to get started than any other blogger with his Vox Blogoli series, where he introduces a discussion thread and vows to post a link to every response he receives.
End Excerpt.
To the point: I am a staunch supporter of the Bush Doctrine. The saplings of liberty are abloom all over. The Bush Doctrine is a "hard power" doctrine. Juxtaposed to this, is their a "soft power" doctrine afoot? As we all know, European and American elites are always whining about the use of soft power to effect geopolitical results. Witness the EU/Iran nuclear issue. Well, in my opinions, the elites need not worry: the soft power afoot, right now, are the blogs.
Blogs are effecting results that no amount of Hilton and Four Seasons diplomacy ever could. For anyone who bounces from Powerline to Instapundit to Belmont Club to Roger Simon knows not only that there are bloggers in Afghanistan, the Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, Khyrgystan, and the like, but that their eyewitness reporting and editorializing are moving geopolitical mountains. Just as one can opine that without the huge military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan there would not be the blossoming of democracy throughout the Middle East and beyond, one can also opine that those successes would not be forthcoming without the primary source bloggers to "unfilter" the MSM delivery of news. Peoples are organizing around these poles of liberty. Is George Bush enjoying an accident of history? Sure, but who cares? Bill Clinton enjoyed the accidental contemporaneousness of the dot com boom.
In a sense, nothing is broken. On the contrary, things are "unbreaking" at lightning speed. I'm just not sure this genie can be put back into the bottle, despite even the most heroic efforts of the European and American elites.
Keep up the good work!!!
Kenneth Greenlee
March 30, 2005
Blogs and Libertarianism
Joe Ganderlman of The Moderate Voice has a link-rich post entitled BLOGGING: Who's Afraid Of The Big, Bad Blogger?. In it he takes to task David Shaw's LA Times piece Do bloggers deserve basic journalistic protections? (in the interest of full disclosure, the blog chain I followed to arrive at David Shaw's piece is: Instapundit, where Glenn cites his own MSNBC article at www.glennreynolds.com, which cites Joe Gandelman's post, where Joe apparently was introduced to the Shaw piece via a Jack Shafer article in Slate).
David Shaw:
Given the explosive growth of the blogosphere, some judge is bound to rule on the question one day soon, and when he does, I hope he says the nation's estimated 8 million bloggers are not entitled to the same constitutional protection as traditional journalists — essentially newspaper, magazine, radio and television reporters and editors.
David Shaw is, of course, wrong. Joe Gandelman and Jack Shafer (and Glenn Reynolds, for that matter), all handily dispatch his argument. I am not here simply to join the chorus, but to add a few obsevations.
First, let's talk about architecture. What is the principle architecture of the MSM? I argue that it's patriarchal. What is the opposite of patriarchy (it's not matriarchy, which I would argue is a bird of the same feather)? I would argue that it's fraternity. To put this dichotomy is psychological terms, the dichotomy might be viewed as a parent-child paradigm versus an adult-adult paradigm. Technological terms? server-client versus peer-to-peer.
I cannot in any meaningful terms access David Shaw directly to rebut what I believe is a flawed argument on his part. I can write about his argument. I can send an email to him. But I cannot drag him to the public square and hash out with him for all to see why I think his argument is invalid.
The bilateral flow of information between him (and by extension the MSM) can be characterized as an elephant-sized vector flowing out to me, and a (highly filtered) mouse-sized vector flowing back to him (and again by extension the MSM). One might say that the MSM amplifiers are the only ones that can be turned up to eleven (hey, if you don't get it, too bad for you).
Juxtapose this with the blogosphere architecture. Here the amplifiers have no volume knobs. I have said as much way back in December 2003 in this post:
A web page has literally no signal degradation. Cnn.com, instapundit.com, and nopundit.com "tune in" with zero degradation anywhere in the world, be it a Manhattan office or a Borneo internet cafe (I'll leave it as a given that I am talking only about the technical aspects of degradation, not the political aspects, where degradation reaches 100% at a filtering device). Here is the kicker that no one gets: the size of the "amplifiers" creating all web page signals are exactly the same size. cnn.com does not have a bigger "amp" than instapundit.com, and instapundit.com does not have a bigger "amp" than nopundit.com. Figuratively and literally, the signal strengths are all absolutely equal. You do not need specialized ham radio equipment to "pull in" nopundit.com. Cnn.com, msnbc.com, time.com, thenation.com, etc., etc., etc., not one of them can "jam" nopundit.com's signal. It is equally easy to "pull in" every last one of the millions, perhaps billions, of web pages out there. All you need is one standardized receiver, the web browser.
Just a minute, you might say, clearly instapundit.com has the biggest amplifier of all. And I say back, not at all. Instapundit.com (and nopundit.com, and slate.com, and themoderatevoice.com, ...) are all performing in a miracle auditorium where one, ten, or a million people can all sit in the front row center seat, and not complain. The volume is the same: conversational level. And the bilateral flow of information is at parity. While some bloggers may have turned off comments and trackbacks (I would argue solely because of spammers), there is nothing that prevents Glenn Reynolds from visiting my site and commenting, if only via email (spam may yet drive me to this solution). We are peers in the peer-to-peer architecture sense: unequal in ability perhaps, but not in access.
One final thought before I go earn my daily bread. As a small-l libertarian, I am greatly heartened by the rise of the blogospere. Why? Again, let's look back at the architecture. Journalists have readers. Bloggers have ... bloggers! Again, the devil's advocate says: nonsense! Bloggers have blog readers (or lurkers, to dredge up old Usenet terminology). I am quite willing to admit that many blog readers are content to remain just that. But the Welcome Mat to join the blogging ranks is forever and always there. An intermediate rank between blogger and blog reader is blog commenter. Bloggers love good commenters! Bill Whittle credits getting his start as a commenter on Rachel Lucas' and Kim du Toit's sites. Frank Martin got encouragement as a commenter on Stephen Green's site. And Hugh Hewitt I believe has got be credited with encouraging more bloggers to get started than any other blogger with his Vox Blogoli series, where he introduces a discussion thread and vows to post a link to every response he receives.
So why does this hearten me as a libertarian? Because I want to be surrounded by empowered individuals. When I read a great post on Powerline, or Just One Minute, or Little Green Footballs, I can righteously walk away saying "Yeah, what he said!". Well that's pretty easy, isn't it? But for me to go from "what he said" to "what I say" requires traversing a huge gulf. People will read what you have to say, and many may not like what you say. To articulate your thoughts in writing takes focus, knowledge, and courage. Passivity (even well-informed passivity) takes no particular talent at all.
Another way of putting this is that the blog is a particularly well-suited tool for the libertarian, and, if not an ill-suited tool, at least not a very useful tool for the liberal. Why? Because the libertarian's wet dream is to live in a world of empowered, expressive adults (those who acknowledge that it is up to each individual to know what's good for themselves, even when it's "obvious" that there are those who don't). The liberal wet dream is to live in a caste society of parents (those who know what's good for everyone else) and children (victims who don't, and can't possibly, know what's good for themselves). Why anyone would want to be a "child" (or a "parent"!) is beyond me.
I guess to wind this back to the beginning, let me answer the question: why would the MSM fear or disparage the blogosphere? I don't really believe the David Shaw-type arguments I 've heard, even though I'm quite willing to acknowledge that the David Shaws of the MSM believe themselves. I believe it is because their collective role as patriarchal caretaker of news for the unwashed masses is being threatened. Well, let's be honest: it's not that this role is being threatened. It's gone.
Update: Trackback to Frank Martin regarding this post and Sissy Willis regarding hers.
Update 5/4/05: Trackback to the very generous Greyhawk @ Mudville Gazette. Greyhawk, I am signing the Pajamas Media agreement papers as we speak. This post, written over a month ago (and before PM was announced), speaks in a way to the mission of Pajamas Media.
March 15, 2005
I Don't Believe It!
Via Best of the Web, through New Sisyphus, to P.J. O'Rourke at the Weekly Standard:
John Kerry finally gave the speech I prophesied he would give -- back on August 12, 2004!
John Kerry on February 28, 2005 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston (quotation taken from O'Rourke's article):
We learned that the mainstream media, over the course of the last year, did a pretty good job of discerning. But there's a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
John Kerry on November 3, 2004 on the steps of the Capitol Building (quotation taken from my August 12, 2004 prophetic speech):
So today John Edwards and I are introducing in the United States Senate the Kerry-Edwards Political Speech Reform Act of 2004. Once this legislation is enacted, the first step of course is to assemble a Blue Ribbon Commission to study blog and its effects on the electoral process. Our wish is to see this Commission made up of the best and the brightest in American media: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Reuters, Associated Press, and of course, the BBC. Their mandate will be two-fold. First, answer the obvious questions: What is blog? How does blog taint actual news? Children and blog: a recipe for disaster? Second of course are the regulatory recommendations: Should there be mandatory blog safety classes? Should the government establish a national blog registration database? Should blog be regulated? Should blog be restricted in election years? These recommendations will then be handed over directly to the Federal Communications Commission so they can enact them without delay. The very safety and well-being of the United States government is at stake. There can be no foot dragging - the American people will not stand for it.
The Online Coalition
Kim du Toit
has pointed me out to an online petition directed at the FEC. I have signed it.
For those not aware, there is a potential for blogs and blogging to be considered "in kind" donations to political candidates and parties directly because the McCain-Feingold finance reform laws still stand.
I hate the term "bipartisan" but if ever there was a bipartisan issue, this is it. The primary signatories at the site are on any other day bitter rivals. Please take a moment to read and sign this petition. Thanks!
Update: Another John McCain link. And another.
Interview with John O'Neill
The American Enterprise: John O'Neill
Hat tip Powerline
March 10, 2005
Dan Rather
The Dan Rather File: 25 Years of Liberal Media Bias -- Media Research Center
March 09, 2005
March 08, 2005
Susan Estrich, the Snarling Bitch
Feminists Get Hysterical by Heather Mac Donald
Oh yeah, there's also this.
March 05, 2005
Air Force Running Proud
Blackfive is perhaps the number one aggregator of stories sent back from folks on the front line. Once again, he delivers: BLACKFIVE: Air Force Pilot Experiences Ground Combat
March 04, 2005
From the When-I-Get-Around-To-It Department
Amazon.com: DVD: Blow-Up (1966)
60's era movie based in swinging London. what's it about? Who cares! It's got the Beck-led Yardbirds playing themselves!
Hat Tip Powerline
March 03, 2005
Fucking Ridiculous
Boortz once again points out more political correctness at Harvard.