Category: Uncategorized

The empirical nonexistence of the myth called “progress” is becoming more and more apparent, even to the mainstream media:

Progress, liberalism and enlightenment — these are the watchwords of those, like Hitchens, who believe that in a modern world, religion has nothing to offer us. Don’t we discover cures for diseases every day? Doesn’t technology continually extend our powers and offer the promise of mastering nature? Who needs an outmoded, left-over medieval superstition?

Eagleton punctures the complacency of these questions when he turns the tables and applies the label of “superstition” to the idea of progress. It is a superstition — an idol or “a belief not logically related to a course of events” (American Heritage Dictionary) — because it is blind to what is now done in its name: “The language of enlightenment has been hijacked in the name of corporate greed, the police state, a politically compromised science, and a permanent war economy,” all in the service, Eagleton contends, of an empty suburbanism that produces ever more things without any care as to whether or not the things produced have true value.

Eagleton is on the right track, but he is logically incorrect to say that the idea of progress is a myth because it is blind to what is done in its name. It is a myth because it cannot reasonably be shown to exist in any material manner. Name a substantive, non-technological metric which supports your belief in progress that does not consist solely of the possession of more knowledge – which is all but inevitable over time – and I can probably demonstrate that any perceived progress is an illusion. In many cases, in fact, it’s not hard to show that any change toward the popularly assumed “objective” has been retrograde.

On a side note, the comments are worth reading if one happens to require more evidence of the typical New York Times-reading atheist’s ignorance of religion, history, logic, and Christopher Hitchens’s debating debacles. Dark Ages! War! Galileo! And Dickie D’s got a science degree!

I actually agree with aspects of his broad diagnosis of the Wall Street problem:

Wall Street is not going to play as dominant a role in the economy as regulations reduce “some of the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking that had become so common,” President Barack Obama says. The changes in the role of Wall Street and the huge profits that came from that risk-taking could mean other adjustments as well, Obama said in an interview in this week’s New York Times Magazine.

“That means that more talent, more resources will be going to other sectors of the economy,” he said. “I actually think that’s healthy. We don’t want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader. We want some of them to go into engineering, and we want some of them to be going into computer design…. I think it’s important to understand that some of that wealth was illusory in the first place,” he said.”

Where Obama goes awry is that his plan is to attack the symptoms and not the disease. So long as the paper money system exists, the easiest and fastest way to obtain more of it is to play paper games. And some of the policies he is contemplating are certifiably insane, such as his plan to attack tax havens and overseas profits. As the British are learning, all that does is cause your best entrepreneurs to leave the country entirely. Preventing companies from writing off domestic expenses for overseas profits isn’t going to reduce the incentive for U.S. companies to base part of their operations in other countries, it’s going to increase their incentive to move ALL of their operations elsewhere.

It’s also amusing how the US media inevitably mentions places like the Cayman Islands in articles like these, when the real problem is that in comparison with US corporate rates, about half the world, including many European countries, look like tax havens.

I find this sort of thing to be rather funny. It appears that Vox Popoli is rated the #7 Christian Libertarian blog while failing to rank among the top 100 libertarian blogs and websites.

The fact that an Obama suppporter and $700 billion banking bailout cheerleader such as Megan McCardle is on the Top 100 list while neither Ilana Mercer nor I are tends to illustrate the intrinsic problem with this sort of thing. While the Mises Institute is entirely appropriate, when did the conservative Heritage Foundation become libertarian? Given the peculiar definition of libertarian apparently in use there, I’m only surprised that Bill Maher isn’t topping the list.

Europe Closes Early

Years ago, I worked for an American technology company that derived about half its revenue from European customers. It used to amuse me how halfway through every August, the executives would start to panic because their sales were falling short of the projections which invariably failed to account for this month-long, continent-wide break. The executives would breathe a sigh of relief when business activity returned to normal in September, and they would completely forget anything had ever happened by December when they calculated the sales projections for the following year. Eventually, the second week of August would roll around, and the whole process would begin again. But when Europe closes, it’s usually just for the month of August.

For dinner:

8x Ritz crackers
8x slices of Parmesan Reggiano
1x Champion Nutrition protein shake, chocolate
1x bottle of Italian merlot

And you probably think I’m kidding….

The problem isn’t the marketing, gentlemen:

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language.

This is such classic left-wing thinking. They genuinely believe the majority of people will cheerfully engage in Holocaust 2.0 so long as “kill the Jews” is properly marketed as “an innovative solution to the very serious problem of global overpopulation.” The sad thing is that they believe it because so many of them are capable of falling for it themselves.

So much for the multiculturalist theory of inevitable, unstoppable, one-way migration:

Consider Ireland’s capital, which earned the nickname Dublinski after roughly 180,000 Poles, Czechs and other Eastern Europeans went there in search of work after the European Union expanded in 2004. Now, a stunning rise in the unemployment rate, currently 10.4 percent, is making even the most recent arrivals rethink their plans.

“Since 2000, there has been a resurgence of intra-European migration,” said Rainer Muenz, a migration scholar who is head of research and development at Erste Bank in Vienna. “To a certain extent, that’s clearly unwinding now.”

Between April 2008 and the end of this month, as many as 50,000 workers are likely to have returned home from Ireland, mostly to Eastern Europe, according to Alan Barrett of the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin.

Of course, it would be deeply racist for anyone to believe that Mexicans should follow suit and return to Mexico. Poles, Czechs and Romanians may be many things, but it is undeniable that one thing they are not is Mexicans. And since, as has often been asserted by the pro-immigration set, some Mexicans are good for the economy and the nation, it is obvious that more Mexicans would be even better. And therefore, it logically follows that the optimal situation rests upon the maximum number of Mexicans migrating to the United States as soon as possible.

I, for one, am convinced and I will not be satisfied until every last Mexican is happily ensconced within the borders of the United States and the entire nation of Mexico is an empty, windswept land inhabited solely by vultures and gila monsters. Una nación azteca! Sí, se puede!

While many are starting to believe that the worst is past, I wouldn’t put any stock in all the prognostications of recovery later in the year. I recently met a European executive and we spent some time talking economics over several espressos. He told me that steel shipments have come to an almost complete halt around the world. In Germany, for example, the export market has collapsed so completely that not only have orders dropped to 10 percent of previous levels, but their inventories haven’t changed much since January.

And this is subsequent to the previous reports of huge declines: “In the European Union, there were production drops of 31.6 percent in Germany, 35.7 percent in France, 35.7 percent in Spain and 39.9 percent in Italy. Brazilian steel production decreased by 39 percent last month from February 2008 totals, and both Russia and Ukraine saw steel output fall by 32.1 percent and 33.6 percent respectively.”

Since steel is a leading economic indicator, this bodes very, very poorly indeed for the world economy.

I can’t imagine how issuing legal dictates to doctors ordering them to kill people could possibly go awry:

Physicians in Montana could be facing “kill-on-demand” orders from patients who want to commit suicide if a district court judge’s opinion pending before the state Supreme Court is affirmed. The case has attracted nominal attention nationwide, but lawyers with the Christian Legal Service have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the pending case because of what it would mean to doctors within the state, as well as the precedent it would set. The concern is over the attack on doctors’ ethics and religious beliefs – as well as the Hippocratic oath – that may be violated by a demand that they prescribe deadly chemicals or in some other way assist in a person’s death.

Enough with the preludes already! Really, government can be such an infuriating tease at times. I’m sure everyone is wondering when Obama and the courts are going to stop faffing around with unborn children and the useless elderly and get on with the important business of the American Endlösung.

It’s hard to imagine anyone, on either side, lamenting David Souter’s retirement. And it’s telling how few Republicans are even bothering trying to pretend that McCain’s appointment would have been conservative; I will be personally disappointed if Obama doesn’t name a black lesbian Muslim to the Supreme Court. From Kenya.