• Smug cities (e.g., Austin, New York, and San Francisco — “We’re so cool.”)
• SUVs (“We’re more important than you; get out of our way.”)
• Tailgaters (usually SUVs)
• Tailgaters with their brights on
• Canned music
• Contemporary jazz — canned or live — in a restaurant
• The demise of dress codes in most expensive restaurants
• Squealing babies and noisy children in any restaurant that doesn’t have drive-through service
• Baggy clothing, skimpy clothing, and piercings
• Conversational filler: like, you know
• Driving while talking on a cell phone
• Talking on a cell phone in the presence of a captive audience (e.g., in a waiting room, airport lounge, or airplane)
• Playing a car stereo so loudly that it can be heard in the next car, if not a block away
• Failing to say “thank you” when someone holds a door open for you
• TVs that are always on
• Most of what’s on TV
• Most of what’s on radio
• Most of what’s in movies
• Most of what’s called music
• Most of the 20th century and all of the 21st century thus far
Month: April 2004
The Good Old Days
I remember the good old days.
The United States had just won a popular war when I entered Kindergarten. The war was concluded when a Democrat president decided to use weapons of mass destruction that killed about 200,000 enemy civilians. (Historical revisionists take note: The alternative was an invasion that would have cost at least as many American lives and resulted in many more civilian casualties.)
My father bought a 1938 Ford V8 in 1940. He kept it until 1951. He didn’t buy his first new car until 1956. He and my mother never owned two cars.
My father sometimes brought home live chickens, which he dispatched at the chopping block. I was allowed to watch this spectacle because it was a part of daily life called “putting food on the table.” I wasn’t scarred for life by the experience.
Nor were my values twisted by daily exposure to sex and violence on TV. I listened to Jack Benny, the Great Gildersleeve, Our Miss Brooks, the Lone Ranger, and Superman on the radio.
I went to three different red-brick schoolhouses as I progressed from Kindergarten through the fifth grade. Each schoolhouse was by then at least 60 years old. I was nevertheless well educated in the three Rs because my teachers didn’t have to put up with rude, unruly, and inattentive students.
Every schoolroom had framed pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln high on the wall. (The ceilings were high in those red-brick schoolhouses so that their triple-hung windows could be opened in hot weather. The only air conditioned buildings in our small city were the movie theaters.)
Washington’s Birthday was a legal holiday. So was Lincoln’s.
There was one black student in my school when I was in the fourth grade. He was my best friend. It was no big deal.
When I was six or seven years old I traveled by bus to the village where my grandmother lived, a trip of 90 miles. I traveled alone. My mother put me on the bus and my grandmother met me at the other end.
My grandmother raised ten children without the benefit of welfare, social workers, au pairs, nannies, and cleaning services. She didn’t have indoor plumbing or a telephone until she was 70. That was when she also got an electric stove to replace her wood stove. Her children built the bathroom and installed the stove for her.
My grandmother lived to the age of 96. In her later years I persuaded her to give me the photographs of her and my grandfather that had hung high on her living room wall for so many years. That was all she could afford to give me. It was more than enough. It was priceless.
So were the good old days.
Polls, Party Preferences, and Polarization
The Pew Research Center’s web site includes a page entitled The 2004 Political Landscape: Evenly Divided and Increasingly Polarized. The first graph on that page shows party identification in the U.S. between 1937 and 2003. The graph also (unintentionally) shows why polls are so unreliable:
1. The incumbent president’s popularity strongly affects what people tell pollsters about party affiliation. There has been a consistent swing toward the opposite party as the popularity of incumbent presidents has waned or plummeted. This phenomenon can be seen toward the end of every presidency from Truman’s through Clinton’s, and most notably toward the end of Nixon’s disgraced presidency.
2. The core of each party’s constituency has changed drastically during the past seven decades. Remember when New England was reliably Republican and the “Solid South” was a bastion of the Democrat Party? Remember when there was more than a handful of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress? The realignment of party affiliations wasn’t sudden. It began in 1948, when many Southerners found it possible not to vote for a Democrat. It continued in 1952, when popular Ike ran as a Republican. It accelerated in 1960, when the Democrats nominated Catholic JFK, much to the consternation of many Southerners. It got another boost in 1968, when Democrats got on the wrong side of the culture war. And it continued well into the 1980s, thanks largely to Carter’s ineptness and the left’s continuing dominance within the Democrat Party. Polling results about party preferences were largely meaningless during the 40 years from 1948 to 1988 because personal as well as regional party alignments were in almost constant flux during that period.
Pollsters — and pundits — are nevertheless fond of drawing sweeping inferences from flawed statistics. An inference that has played prominently since the close presidential election of 2000 is that the nation has become “polarized.” That is, many States have become reliably “Red” (Republican) and “Blue” (Democrat), instead of vacillating from one election to the next. In this case, the pollsters and pundits are right, but they would have been just as right in the 1940s and 1950s, when Republicans reliably held New England and Democrats solidly held the South. So why is “polarization” now such a big issue?
It’s a big issue because the Democrat Party no longer enjoys the large (but illusory) plurality that it enjoyed from New Deal days until the 1980s. “Polarization” is bad only if it means that your favorite party is no longer the dominant party.
The underlying fear, of course, is that today’s “polarization” may become tomorrow’s Republican dominance. As another graph on the Pew page indicates, Democrats tend to be older than Republicans. That is, Democrats are dying at a faster rate than Republicans.
Justice Is Dead, Even in Texas
From FoxNews.com:
Texas woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in heads of her three children — two of whom died — acquitted of all charges.
Rating Books, Movies, and Presidents
I have found that I rate books, movies, and music as follows:
• I have (or would gladly) read, see, or hear it more than once. (***)
• Once was enough, but I enjoyed it most of the time. (**)
• I made it to the end. (*)
• I tried but gave up on it. (0)
One person’s *** book or movie won’t be another person’s *** book or movie. By the same token, I’ve given up on many a book and movie that critics and friends have raved about. Among my *** books are Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, John Fowles’s The Magus, and Stephen King’s The Stand. Some of my *** movies are “The Philadelphia Story,” “Gunga Din,” and “My Man Godfrey.” Books and movies that I’ve given the goose egg include James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, anything I’ve tried by Martha Grimes and Elizabeth George, and such film “classics” as “Z” and “Last Year at Marienbad.”
Although I’ve read a lot of books and seen a lot of movies that rate ** and *, my preferences in music tend to be binary. Almost anything written between 1700 and 1900 gets *** (the tedious compositions of Wagner, Mahler, and Bruckner being the most notable exceptions). I give a big fat 0 to almost anything written after 1900 by a so-called serious composer: the likes of Berg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Poulenc, Britten, Hovannes, Glass, and their more recent offshoots. For music written after 1900, I turn to Gershwin, Lehar, Friml, Kern, bluegrass, jazz (written before 1940), and rock of the 1960s to early 1980s.
Now that I’ve lived through, and remember, 11 complete presidencies — from Truman’s through Clinton’s — here’s how I’d rate them on my book/movie/music scale:
Truman **
Eisenhower ***
Kennedy *
Johnson 0
Nixon 0
Ford *
Carter 0
Reagan ***
Bush I *
Clinton 0
You can try this at home.
Never Relent: A Tale of Libertarian Dissent
I’m a heretic from libertarian orthodoxy on two major issues: immigration (which I’d tighten considerably) and pre-emptive war (which I favor). I’m also willing to give law-enforcement agencies the benefit of the doubt when it comes to snooping in search of terrorist conspiracies.
I’m still a staunch libertarian on most other issues, but when it comes to terrorists, I say keep them out (or as many as we can), kill as many as possible before they get here, and if they get here, catch them before they kill us. I don’t want my murder to be avenged by justice or retribution, I want to fully enjoy my golden years in the sunshine. I want the same for my wife, my children, my grandchildren, and all my progeny.
When my wife and I turned on our TV set that morning of 9/11/01, the first plane had just struck the World Trade Center. A few minutes later we saw the second plane strike. In that instant a horrible accident became an obvious act of terror. Then, in the awful silence that had fallen over Arlington, Virginia, we could hear the “whump” as the third plane hit the Pentagon.
Our thoughts for the next several hours were with our daughter, whom we knew was at work in the adjacent World Financial Center when the planes struck. Was her office struck by debris? Did she flee her building only to be struck by or trapped in debris? Was she smothered in the huge cloud of dust? Because telephone communications were badly disrupted, we didn’t learn for several hours that she had made it home safely.
Thousands of grandparents, parents, husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, lovers, and good friends — the survivors of the 3,000 who died that day in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and western Pennsylvania — did not share our good fortune. Never forgive, never forget, never relent.
A Colloquy on War and Terrorism
Able. Is it right to go to war against a country that has not attacked us?
Baker. No.
Able. What about Nazi Germany?
Baker. Well, Nazi Germany was in league with Imperial Japan, which had attacked us.
Able. So it’s all right to go to war with our enemy’s friend?
Baker. Well, only if the enemy has already attacked us.
Able. Hadn’t we already been attacked by al Qaeda, not once but several times, before we went to war against Saddam Hussein?
Baker. But Saddam wasn’t a friend of al Qaeda.
Able. You don’t believe that Saddam condoned the giving of support to al Qaeda by members of his regime, even if he wasn’t directly involved?
Baker. Well suppose Saddam’s regime had nothing to do with al Qaeda, after all there are many who question the Saddam-al Qaeda link. That leaves Saddam as a potential enemy, but he didn’t pose an imminent threat to us.
Able. Did Hitler pose an imminent threat to us in December 1941?
Baker. No, but Saddam was no Hitler, that is, he lacked the wherewithal to attack us any time soon, if ever.
Able. It doesn’t matter to you that he was an oppressive dictator and a known enemy of the U.S., and that — at a minimum — his presence emboldened other regimes in the Middle East to support terrorism?
Baker. We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq until it became clear that Saddam posed a direct and imminent threat to the U.S.
Able. In other words, we shouldn’t spray a nest of hornets if only one of them has stung us? We should wait until more have stung us?
Baker. But our pre-emptive war caused much innocent blood to be shed.
Able. How much more innocent blood will be shed if we don’t go after terrorism at its roots?’
Baker. But what if our pre-emptive strategy inflames hatred of the U.S. and creates even more terrorists?
Able. What if our pre-emptive strategy also deters would-be terrorists by creating fear of, if not respect for, the U.S.? (Look at what’s happened in Libya, for instance.) What if our pre-emptive strategy makes it harder for would-be terrorists to act on their hatred? There is — and was — already an ample supply of America-haters in the Middle East (and elsewhere). Nothing we do, or don’t do, is likely to reduce their numbers significantly. They hate America not out of poverty or ignorance (though many of them are poor and ignorant), but because most humans have a need to hate something. The U.S., with all its power and wealth, is an easy target for hatred. Does hatred justify terror?
Baker. Of course not, but surely there must be a better way than pre-emptive war.
Able. Shall we all join hands at the United Nations and denounce terrorism? Well, that’s already been tried, and a lot of good it’s done. Tell me what you would do. Go on, tell me, I’m waiting…
Baker. We need to detect and prevent actual terrorist operations through improved intelligence.
Able. I agree. But I don’t see that as an alternative to pre-emptive action overseas. We need both better intelligence and pre-emptive action, especially because there are many things intelligence cannot do. It cannot keep out terrorists who are already in the country. It cannot keep out terrorists who can easily cross our mostly open borders with Canada and Mexico. It cannot keep out terrorists who come into the country on seemingly legitimate business and then vanish from sight. It cannot prevent any of these terrorists from making weapons of terror from materials that can be bought or stolen. We can reduce such risks by making it easier for law-enforcement agencies to detect terrorist plans and conspiracies, as we have through the Patriot Act.
Baker. I’m glad you mentioned the Patriot Act…
Able. Me, too. You’re aghast at some of the leeway it gives law-enforcement agencies, though we always run the risk that they will abuse their already considerable power. But you’re also aghast at the doctrine of pre-emption. I guess that your anti-terror strategy is to hunt down terrorists after they have struck.
Baker. That’s not fair.
Able. It’s a logical consequence of your position. You either fight terror or you let it happen to you.
9/11 and Pearl Harbor
It has been about two and a half years since September 11, 2001. Two and a half years after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor — that is, by mid-1944 — the U.S. and its allies had rallied decisively against the Axis: Allied forces had successfully landed in Normandy and U.S forces in the Pacific were leap-frogging toward the Japanese homeland.
But World War II was far from over in two and a half years. It took another year of bloody fighting in Europe — and more than a year in the Pacific — to defeat the Axis. Yet the Germans and Japanese waged conventional war: Their units were identifiable. They could be found, attacked, and destroyed, without ambiguity.
Why, then, would anyone expect that we should be near victory over al Qaeda and its allies after a mere two and a half years? The enemy is within our borders, and within the borders of other Western nations. The enemy is hard to identify and, therefore, hard to attack and destroy. Unlike World War II and previous wars, we cannot measure the march toward victory by the rate of advance toward an enemy’s capital.
We have done much to disrupt the enemy’s plans, communications, and financing through our successes in Afghanistan and Iraq — and through other successes that cannot be publicized without telling the enemy what we know and how we know it. Despite all the press about bloody acts of “resistance” in Iraq and bloody acts of terror elsewhere, we are winning.
Victory in the war on terror will not come in another year or two, but it will surely come if we persist — and only if we persist. Our persistence will be tested by more bloody acts, inside and outside our borders. Those acts will test our resolve to “provide for the common defence.”
Will we fight the enemy or try to appease him? I am not confident of the answer. The United States of 2004 lacks the moral fiber of the United States of 1941.
Politics and Prosperity 