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Mensa sends the following: Hello, American Mensa has a technical inconstancy with their bylaws and need your help. We are collecting proxies for this vote at the Annual Business Meeting in July 2004. Your proxy will be used for this matter and this manner only. Either call 1-877-MYPROXY (1-877-697-7690) or use your computer and go to: http://proxy.us.mensa.org – you’ll need your membership number and password issued at the last dues renewal for this process.

Intelligence, it seems, is not to be considered synonymous with mastery of grammar. One would be disappointed if one’s wife was inconstant, even if she were only technical or inconsistent about it. Also, being singular, American Mensa would conventionally be expected to use the third person singular conjugation of the verb “to need”, which is to say he/she/it needs.

There are many reasons why the intellectual elite should not be permitted to run society as in The Republic. This isn’t one of them, but it does strike me as amusing. Thank goodness I’m only “claiming” to be a member of Mensa, so I can safely ignore this nonsense. In any case, a small, but vital component of my philosophy is to ignore any sentence that contains the words “proxy” or “bylaw”.

UPDATE: PM corrects MY grammar: Yep, you’ve got it. The subjunctive…the forgotten tense. I actually smiled when I read your posting in question and thought it wouldhave warmed the very soul of Reinhold Niebuhr (perhaps my very favorite American theologian – but then I’m an agnostic gnostic so I probably shouldn’t be trusted) – a man long obsessed with the overarching irony of American history and religion.

There were so many levels of irony in that post of yours that I very nearly had a transcendent spiritual experience myself! But then, seeing as I’m a self-proclaimed agnostic gnostic, I probably would have discounted said experience (had it actually occurred) as the unknowable forced heresy of unseen and malicious powers, chalked the whole experience up to the effects of day-old asparagus, and written a secretive and rambling discourse on the TRUE meaning of the 4-3 defensive set. Anyway, other than an occasional ‘the’ or ‘it’ (and on rarer occasions,’his’) I seldom agree with a word you say. But you keep me reading…I’ll give you that. I never miss a column!

Now, you see, THAT’S an ideal critique! I don’t know about the true meaning of the 4-3, but I did nearly burst something laughing this week when one of the Sports Illustrated writers retroactively defended, on the grounds of a shoddy Buffalo offense, Buddy Ryan’s punching of Kevin Gilbride. Anyhow, the sentence should have been written: “One would be disappointed if one’s wife were to be inconstant….” Guilty as charged – in pleading for clemency, however, I suggest that such an offense is minor in comparison with a) not knowing the difference between inconsistent and inconstant; and b) improperly conjugating “to need”. Clearly this blog need an editor.

Mr. Rockwell writes an excellent explanation of the State and its inherent characteristics, using the new anti-spam law to demonstrate the foundational principles. The entire article, entitled Why the State is Different is at the Mises Institute.



“Lesson One in the uniqueness of the state: the state has one tool, and one tool only, at its disposal: force. Now, imagine if a private enterprise tried that same approach. Let’s say that Acme Anti-Spam puts out a product that would tag spammers, loot their bank accounts, and hold them in captivity for a period of time, and shoot spammers dead should they attempt to evade or escape. What’s more, the company doesn’t propose to test this approach on the market and seek subscribers, but rather force every last email user to subscribe. How will Acme Anti-Spam make money at its operation? It won’t. It will fund its activities by taking money from your bank account whether you like it or not. They say that they can do this simply because they can, and if you try to stop it, you too will be fined, imprisoned, or shot. The company further claims that it is serving society.Such a company would be immediately decried as heartless, antisocial, and essentially deranged. At the very least it would be considered uncreative and dangerous, if not outright criminal. Its very existence would be a scandal, and the people who dreamed up such a company and tried to manage it would be seen as psychopaths or just evil. Everyone would see through the motivation: they are using a real problem that exists in society as a means to get money without our permission, and to exercise authority that should belong to no one.

Lesson Two presents itself: the state is the only institution in society that can impose itself on all of society without asking the permission of anyone in particular. You can’t opt out. A seemingly peculiar aspect of the anti-spam law is that the government exempts itself from having to adhere to its own law. Politicians routinely buy up email addresses from commercial companies and send out unsolicited email. They defend this practice on grounds that they are not pushing a commercial service and that doing so is cheaper than sending regular mail, and hence saves taxpayer money. It is not spam, they say, but constituent service. We all laugh at the political class for its hypocrisy in this, and yet the exemption draws attention to:

Lesson Three: the state is exempt from the laws it claims to enforce, and manages this exemption by redefining its criminality as public service. What is considered theft in the private sector is “taxation” when done by the state. What is kidnapping in the private sector is “selective service” in the public sector. What is counterfeiting when done it he private sector is “monetary policy” when done by the public sector. What is mass murder in the private sector is “foreign policy” in the public sector. This tendency to break laws and redefine that infraction is a universal feature of the state. When cops zoom by we don’t think of them as speeding but merely being on the chase. Killing innocents is dismissed as inevitable civilian casualties. So it should hardly surprise us that the state rarely or even never catches itself in the webs it weaves. Of course it exempts itself from its anti-spam law. The state is above the law.”

50,000 visits since this blog began on October 8th. Not exactly Instapundit territory, but it’s been quite a success in my opinion. Thanks to all the regulars stopping by, and I hope you’ll all continue to do so in 2004. I’ve very much enjoyed the experience, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Have a happy and joyful new year.

Joel Mowbray writes: Technically, the former head of the Central Command in the Middle East didn’t say “Jews.” He instead used a term that has become a new favorite for anti-Semites: “neoconservatives.” As the name implies, “neoconservative” was originally meant to denote someone who is a newcomer to the right. In the 90’s, many people self-identified themselves as “neocons,” but today that term has become synonymous with “Jews.”

Joel Mowbray has done some yeoman’s work on Saudi Arabia in the last year, but he’s seriously smoking crack if he thinks that neoconservative is synonymous with Jew. A neoconservative is someone who pretends to be a conservative, but supports a Wilsonian foreign policy. Alternatively, a big government conservative. In either case, a left-moderate in conservative clothes.

There may be many Jewish neoconservatives these days, as their formerly beloved Marxists and left-liberals have turned on them with a vengeance over Israel. Unfortunately, they haven’t abandoned many of their anti-conservative positions. If they had, there would be no need for the adjective “neo” now, would there. I am opposed to neoconservatives. I also defend the Jewish people and Israel at every opportunity. Am I, too, an anti-semite? The fraudulent manufacture of verbal offense via code word is much better left to the anti-intellectual vocabulary perverters of the Left.

Zinni hasn’t tarnished his reputation. Mowbray, sadly, has.

In fact, by Monday that page [at NFL.com] opened with, “The football gods must have something against the Vikings.”

Clearly, it’s time for Ragnar to execute the blood eagle on representatives from the Dallas Cowboys, the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Falcons and now the Arizona Cardinals. Why do I have the feeling that there’s a lot of Redskins’ fans who’d like to nominate Steve Spurrier?

JX writes: Yeah, Vox. Slice and dice those morally self-righteous liberals. Sometimes it’s like picturing a primetime fight between Lennox Lewis and Rosie O’Donnell. I have an important question:How do you deal with those people around you who accuse you of being ‘better’ than they for your choices? I’ve come across that lately, some people I used to hang with back in my secular days referred to me as Mr. X in the street instead of my first name in order to diss me, and their sly assaults on my character are making me madder than I should be. How would you go about attacking this?

Well, first, I don’t get a lot of this, if any. I’ve made some impressively bad choices in my day, so the notion of portraying myself as some sort of behavioral exemplary would strike a lot of those who know me well as being more than a little humorous. Your problem is that you are still too concerned with what the world thinks of you. Who cares? And what is important to keep in mind is that even as they are mocking you, they are watching your behavior. It’s good that they have noticed a difference – a very minor, but totally uncharacteristic change in the White Buffalo’s behavior was integral to my reassessment of Christianity – so you should not be angered by their taunts, you should be pleased. If you are greeted as Mr. X, then smile, give them a little mock bow, greet them with a friendly “Mr. Y” and let it slide. Don’t attack it, ever. Eventually, one of them will probably approach you quietly and want to talk in depth about the changes in your life.

What is this, an advice column today? Where’s the hate?

JB commiserates about the Vikes and asks: Question…did you learn those foreign languages at an early age? I have recently tried to learn a bit of Italian. Although I can speak and understand some basics, I can’t imagine the amount of work it would take to get fluent at reading the language. If you learned to read either of these languages as an adult, were there any particular strategies you used to help you in your quest?

No, I did not. I had five years of German in junior high and high school with an excellent German teacher. I studiedJapanese in college and learned Italian as an adult while living in Europe. My Italian is usually described as “bellissimo… per un americano”, which is to say that it’s functionally conversational as long as the other person doesn’t speak troppo veloce or use a lot of idioms. I still remember trying to figure out how the heck a wolf had come into the picture during a conversation about school when my friend saw my confusion, laughed, and explained that “in the mouth of the wolf” is an idiom used to say that you’re facing a difficult situation. One responds by saying “hit the wolf”, if I recall correctly. Of course, Italians are so shocked that you speak any Italian that they tend to give you far too much credit. My German used to be quite good, but it’s been so long since I’ve used it that it’s a real struggle. More often than not, it tends to come out Italian. The Japanese is totally shot.

I find that reading a language is much easier than speaking it. The tough part about reading Italian is the placement of pronouns, as they tend to scatter si and ci around pretty haphazardly – the fact that both words are part of the reflexive verb structure as well as serving as a pronoun and at least one other unrelated word doesn’t make it any easier – and the use of the gender-specific “the” as a pronoun is also confusing. La what? Which la? Le? Who? Speaking also doesn’t help as much with reading as you’d hope. I was reading “Il visconte dimezzato” and fortunately, references to starvation, putrifecation and corpses hadn’t tended to come up in my everyday conversation with people, so I was forced to resort to the dictionary distressingly often.

I would recommend starting with a book like 501 Italian Verbs, published by Barron’s, which has the seven simple tenses and seven complex tenses for the most common verbs. Verbs are the key to any language, as once you have that, its usually relatively easy to figure out the subject and the object. Make up a flash card system or use something like WinFlash on your computer. Don’t go on from the present indicative until you know 85 percent of them down cold, then start mixing in the imperfect, future and present perfect conjugations. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of irregulars, but having the basics down really helps. Just do 15 minutes every day, and you’ll make progress.

I find it tremendously amusing when someone complains that I have embarrassed them by utilizing the cruel device of quoting them at length in public. It is particularly ironic when they are clearly unaware that I respond every week to critical email, while at the same time asserting detailed knowledge of me, my philosophy and my membership, or lack thereof, in various organizations.

I do not post private correspondence. When you send me an insult-filled diatribe about a column I have published somewhere, we are not corresponding. I freely admit that I rather enjoy vivisecting nonsensical lunacies for the benefit of my readers, but such missives are wholly unsolicited nevertheless.

I have zero sympathy for those who believe they should be able to freely rail at public figures without consequence. Perhaps most columnists suffer such blather in Olympian silence; I do not. I stand by what I write, and I expect everyone else to do likewise. Polite and reasonable criticism will always receive polite and respectful treatment, both in this blog and via email. Baseless assertions and petty insults will be mercilessly mocked. The choice, dear hate mailer, is always yours.

I have said it before. I will say it again. Don’t bring it if you can’t take it.

California’s parks department, staggered by the state’s budget problems and trying to avoid closing dozens of parks, announced Tuesday it will raise entrance and camping fees to their highest levels in history. Some fees will more than double at California’s 277 state parks, which range from redwood forests to “Baywatch” beaches, desert ghost towns to mountain ranges, and battlefields to Lake Tahoe shoreline sites. Getting into Hearst Castle, for example, will jump from $12 to $25.

I warned about this. When you vote for a pragmatic Republican, you not only get tax increases, you usually get tax increases that are worse than anything the Democrats can put together. This is the first step – Arnold will soon go back on his pledge not to raise taxes, because “the situation is worse than he realized it was before he took office.” Isn’t it always.

The spending half of the equation won’t be significantly addressed because that’s harder. So, Schwarzenegger will be saluted in the press for his “courage” and California Republicans will finally begin to realize that they screwed themselves badly in electing a pragmatic man without any commitment to small government principles.

In truth, he’s already violated his pledge. Fees are taxes, they’re just slightly more optional.

Seriously, the header on an email from one SP is “Howard Dean Lives Compassionately and is Conservative”, who goes on to write: How sad that your religious convictions preach exclusion rather than inclusion. Jesus was anything but exclusive is thoughts and deeds. Jesus did not use invective as you do, he loved rather than hated. Where are you sitting to judge others who differ in opinion on issues of separation of church and state. Do you support those who call themselves Christians but practice exclusion and spew invective.

Looks like Gov. Dean has nailed down the LSD vote. Yes, I fully support those who practice exclusion and “spew invective”. I think a few quotes from the man whose words are clearly unknown to SP will suffice by way of response:

“None shall come to the Father but by me.” (Sounds pretty exclusionary to me.)

“The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be a wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (For those who don’t know, Jesus is the Son of Man. More exclusion, and at his command.)

“Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. Hypocrites!”

“It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” (Samaritans being equated with little dogs.)

“O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?”

“Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?”

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like white-washed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”

The only significant flaw that I can see with my invective is that it falls far short of the slashing example set by Jesus Christ. There was more from SP, but it didn’t merit response, being wholly delusional. His argument boils down to the notion that since Howard Dean wants to take your money away from you and give it to other people, he is being loving like Jesus.

Never mind that Jesus also said: “But if he refuses to even hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.”