Clint's Reposts

In response to a post by David on the politic forum:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=79106&messageid=1100310151

that talked about a fiscal black hole and how deep in doo doo we are and comparing government to business, I wrote:

Well, this brings to mind Hilaire Belloc's epigram "Epitaph on the Politician".

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

The problem with trotting out expert's reports is that experts are so very, very, very often wrong - in fact, I would venture to guess they are almost ALWAYS wrong when predicting the future. In the last couple decades we were supposed to enter the ice age, then the warm age, run out of oil, run out of food, destroy ourselves with nukes, etc. etc. etc. The population bomb was supposed to have happened long ago. Jesus' re-appearance is long overdue. Asteroids should have hit hard by now. Earthquakes are about to take out CA. Prediction is a great way to sell a book or movie. I can understand why they let the dude go - he sounds kind of like the guy on the TV ads selling government grants with all the question marks on his suit.

What we find in reality is that things are a lot more resiliant then the latest expert can account for. These guys -- they fade back into the woodwork when their prediction's don't pan out. It's an awful big planet full of mystery and unknowns.

I'm not saying that stress, wars, famine, gnashing of teeth do not exist. Of course they do. But in almost every case, when some supposed expert looks down that long telescope toward the future, the future turns out not predicatable when all is said and done.

The U.S. government is not at all like a business, just like social security is not at all like a real pension plan. As a result, all bets are off concerning what will REALLY happen over the course.

At least, that is my opinion. I could be wrong.

C

In response to the post by David: http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=79106&messageid=1097959175

I responded (David's words in italics):

Clint forgets that I helped organize an effort by the libertarians to stop coercive historic preservation in Houston before I moved to Colorado.

I didn't forget. Those you worked with in Houston were disappointed to hear of your support locally.

He also forgets that the only reason I didn't back his initiative to get rid of the Historic District in Manitou completely was that the ordinance only applied to people who newly moved into the area and those people overwhelmingly supported it. Those who have lived here for years and chosen to opt out are free to stay opted out. No one was forced to buy a building in the historic district and those who chose to knew there would be some limits on what they could do to it without a public hearing, which kept Taco Bell from tearing down a historic building without some community input.

I must be in the mood tonight. The consequence of new arrivals supporting the historic ordinance was to retrofit what is in essence a "planned community" with all of its covenenants, etc. to property owners who had been living here for decades, all making their own decisions about their property. The future destiny of over a 100 years of old growth houses, the unique product of every owner's decisions through time until now is now squarely in the hands of a handful of non-elected citizens. How one can believe that a handful of citizens (most of whom have no background in architecture, planning, etc. - in fact they're just like the homeowners they are commanding) can possibly improve on the variety that each individual owner brings to his or her own property still escapes me.

It's true, I don't know if most libertarians would buy my position. Any governmental limit to a property owner's use of his own property, even if accepted at the time the property was purchased would be considered a violation of their property rights. And sometimes I'm not sure I buy it either when I see how the Historic Preservation Commission actually operates. Needless to say, they're not much better at staying within their constitutional charter than our federal government is. I still wish Clint had proposed a more modest rollback of the district so that at least the residents, who are natural preservationists, wouldn't have to go through hearings before the town busybodies. That would have been a slam dunk, I think.

Historic Districts are like the minor league version of government "taking" - i.e., emminent domain. You've been a voice for the dangers of inappropriate emminent domain laws. To me, the HPC is inappropriate in the same way. If Burger King thinks it can make money in historic downtown Manitou, let them go for it. In fact, the other business owners in Manitou might not now be against the ropes economically if in fact we did bring more mainstream businesses to town. We don't know, and we can't know anymore, because Burger King won't touch us as a result of our anal retentive policies. All businesses have a life cycle and the HPC interferes with the natural course of that cycle in a very negative way.

Now what I'm trying to figure out is why Clint is so anxious that Burger King might have their rights trampled by an approval process for renovating a historic structure, but he thinks "messing in" in Iraq, which has utterly destroyed billions of dollars of private property and killed between 13,000 and 15,000 Iraqi civilians is a good use of government.

Heh heh heh. Always seeing the negative. You can't make an omlet without breaking eggs. Unfortunately, we don't know and can't measure how many lives and property might be saved as a result of this ugly business of war in Iraq. I'm sure Sadam would have loved for us to leave him and the real estate alone.

C

In the Politics forum, someone wrote "Dems have the Blues after seeing so much Red".

forgotten1 responded with "red as in bloodshed"

Sensing s/he didn't get it, I wrote:

Just whose red is it?

It looks like the Netherlands is starting to get it and I suspect they will finally get what the U.S. is up to.

A decendant of Vincent Van Gogh had his throat slashed on a public street, and a note pinned to his body with a knife. His crime? He had made a movie criticizing the treatment of women under Islam.

What was in the note? A warning to an ex-Muslim Dutch lawmaker and to some others. Here is a quick quote:

"I know definitely that you, Oh America, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Netherlands, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go down," it said.


So how did the Dutch lawmakers respond? One said:


"We are not going to tolerate this. We are going to ratchet up the fight against this sort of terrorism," he said. "The increase in radicalization is worse than we had thought."


The whole news report is at:

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041105-111203-2758r.htm

This, dear forgotten1, is what we are fighting against. You will witness more governments joining us across Europe as time moves on, for reasons similar to what happened in Holland.

In fact:

Jozias van Aartsen, parliamentary speaker for the nationalist People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the second-largest party in the government of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, issued a statement that called Mr. van Gogh's slaying tantamount to a declaration of war.
"The jihad has come to the Netherlands and a small group of jihadist terrorists is attacking the principles of our country," he said. "I hope the Netherlands will now move beyond denial and do what is fitting in a democracy — take action.
"These people don't want to change our society, they want to destroy it," he said.


As the latest bumper sticker goes: "Give War a Chance".

I repeat what Jozias said:

"I hope the Netherlands will now move beyond denial and do what is fitting in a democracy — take action. "
"These people don't want to change our society, they want to destroy it," he said."

Given the circumstances, I will continue to believe that we must take action.

C

Tao wrote:

There is a cultural divide in this country and I am afraid that I am on the wrong side of where the voters want to go. To tell you the truth, I am frightened at what the next four years will bring.

Regarding the cultural divide aspect, I'm curious as to what you, and Jobey, Bernie, and some others or similar persuasion think of David Warren's take on this issue (http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/SunSpec/Oct04/index146.shtml):

The manners, mores, and rhetoric of Mr. Kerry resonate with the more liberal and urban America of the edges. (You see these constituencies in a glance at the red/blue distribution on a map of the states; it becomes clearer still when the map is further subdivided into counties.) And this America does not love Kerry. It hates Bush.

These are two Americas, with much still in common, but more and more not in common. Middle America remains frankly and overwhelmingly Christian; "Edge America" has lost its faith. Or rather, since humans cannot live without faith in something, Edge America has transferred its faith to hopes and ideals of worldly comfort. And whereas Middle America continues, in the main, to be self-reliant, and counsel self-reliance, Edge America turns to government to manage the problems of post-modern, urban, secular life.

Middle America believes the moral verities do not change; Edge America believes they evolve, and what was true yesterday can't be true tomorrow. It is allergic to moral certainties; it associates these with stupidity. And yet it has a kind of absolute and uncritical faith in its own moral relativism.

I'm not convinced that the voters want to "go" anywhere as you describe, but I, for one, agree that Christian religion as we've grown to know it in our lifetime is on the way out, to be replaced by something less tribal and perhaps more individually experienced. I also agree that Edge America exists, is generally non-religious, and does in fact turn to government to manage its problems. I think Warren was a bit too harsh on his Edge America analysis, but it is plain as an election map that there are two cultures.

So let me ask you, did you love Kerry or hate Bush? Did you really think Kerry was a viable answer to Bush, or did you just want Bush gone? Where you proactive or reactive?

The Republican mindset, not that they enact this at all well politically, is that each individual should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. The Dems believe in a more socially conscious, let's help each other, aspect. There seems something akin to a generation gap between these two ideals. Such a gap was especially acute this election.

Clint

Someone on the Politics forum who does not live in the U.S. wrote:
May I ask what the general mood is now that the election is over...from an outsider point of view your country seems pretty divided.

Another question - from what we hear the election was mainly fought on issues like Iraq and abortion - is that how it really was? I ask this because in this country the main issues are always health, education, taxes and so on…

The general mood is very positive, kind of like recovering from a drunk hangover and getting your energy back again. I feel a palpable sense of relief among the citizens.

Those whose candidate did not win I'm sure have some sense of sadness, while those whose candidate did win are not as happy as you would think. There is much soul searching for everyone here because the issues are not black and white though some think they are. How can you be very happy when your own citizens are dying in a war?

Yes, the country is divided, but divided in the way a family might be when one sibling is mad at another because they don't agree with each other's point of view. In the end, however, we are still a family, just like any nation's citizens are collectively. Division is not necessarily a bad thing, as division can create a good energy by encouraging discussions about what is important in the world.

The election was mainly fought on the Democratic side over job, health, and economy issues, and against Bushes approach to it. On the Republican side, the issue was terrorist fears, including Iraq's place within that fear, and for Bushes approach to it.

You would think that with only 10 to 15% of Europe supporting Bush, that he could not possibly have won here. But always remember that America marches to the sound of its own drummer, for better or for worse.

One thing I think we citizens have learned most clearly this election cycle is that our press mis-represents Americans to the world. It must have come as a shock to the great majority of the world that we re-elected Bush.

Did it to you?

C