Sleepless in Midland

Quote of the Week -- we're a nation of civic ignoramuses

We have a right to vote but also an obligation to know what the government is authorized to do. Henry Racette hints that we are run by civic ignoramuses who vote. And the quote of the week comes from his article at Ricochet.com titled We the People Are Failing Our Government.

He makes an analogy of an aircraft manufacturer granting hiring authority to people with no aeronautical knowledge. So it goes with our elections where the voters have no knowledge of how the government works or what it's limitations are.

Mr. Racette gives us our quote of the week:

We are failing to provide a competent civics education to our children, and have been for generations. We have a population ignorant of the most basic aspects of government but which we nonetheless exhort to vote, as if merely standing in the booth were the totality of civic duty. A large proportion of the electorate has the legal right to vote but lacks the moral standing to do so because it knows nothing about the thing for which it has a sacred duty of stewardship.

We can not blame the children for the failures of their teachers, who themselves know next to nothing about the nature of our government. I don’t know what it will take to trigger a rebirth of pride and interest in our nation’s history and in the framework on which it was built and the ideas behind it. But if we reach the point where we’re analyzing the wreckage following the crash, it will be too late.

Good point. As mobs deface statues and try to erase important historic events, we really do need more voters who actually know what the heck they're doing.

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3:03 PM 1/21/2020

Quote of the week -- Neil Gorsuch on a living constitution

The idea of a living constitution seems to accompany the adherence to progressive ideology. But a living constitution basically says whatever a judge thinks it should say, not what the constitution actually says. The quote of the week comes from Justice Neil Gorsuch: Why Originalism Is the Best Approach to the Constitution. To wit:

I suspect the real complaint of living constitutionalists isn’t with old laws generally so much as it is with the particular terms of this old law. The Constitution is short—only about 7,500 words, including all its amendments. It doesn’t dictate much about the burning social and political questions they care about. Instead, it leaves the resolution of those matters to elections and votes and the amendment process. And it seems this is the real problem for the critics. For when it comes to the social and political questions of the day they care most about, many living constitutionalists would prefer to have philosopher-king judges swoop down from their marble palace to ordain answers rather than allow the people and their representatives to discuss, debate, and resolve them. You could even say the real complaint here is with our democracy.

Well said, Justice Gorsuch. (Bold added for emphasis.)

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2:20 PM 9/8/2019

Happy Bill of Rights Day -- 12-15-2018

The bill of rights makes our Constitution unique in that it guarantees certain rights in residents that few other countries have.

A holiday celebration website has a Bill of Rights Day page:

The Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution of the United States on December 15, 1791. On the 150th anniversary of this event in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed December 15 as Bill of Rights Day. He wanted to make Americans aware of their rights and to remind them of their duties as citizens of the United States. On this day in 1991, Americans recognized the 200th anniversary of these important amendments that have proved so essential to the American political tradition.

Happy Bill of Rights Day!

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1:38 PM 12/14/2018

Victor Davis Hanson's Ten Paradoxes Of Our Age, in a nut shell

Dr. Hanson is one of the great wise men of our era, and his writings are always worth reading. A recent one appears at hoover.org. Ten Paradoxes Of Our Age. Here's a shorthand version of it:

1. The prosperity of consumer capitalism does not necessarily lead to constitutional government.

2. Once a nuclear power doesn’t mean always a nuclear power.

3. The European Union has realized that its efforts to transform a successful common market and effective free trade and travel zone into a continental pan-European national state are in crisis.

4. The more non-Westerners abandon their homelands and flee to the West—especially en masse and illegally—the more these immigrants ironically seek to replicate in their new country the very cultural conditions they forsook.

5. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Germany’s neighbors feared its power, expansionism, and unification schemes, as well as its tendency to become petulant in its victimhood.

6. The Middle East is not the center of the geostrategic universe. ...The real crisis is not the tension between Israel and the Arab nations, but rather it is Israel and its Arab neighbors’ fears of an ascendant Persian Shiite Islam.

7. The great immediate dangers to Western Civilization are not hunger, global warming, inequality, or religious fundamentalism, but obesity, consumer culture, utopian pacifism, multiculturalism, declining demography, the secular religion of political correctness that threatens the right to free speech, an inability to protect national borders and to create a common culture rooted in the values of the West, and an absence of belief in spiritual transcendence and reverence for past customs and traditions.

8. The great dangers to modern constitutional government and a free press come not from silly and easily identifiable right-wing racists and bumbling fascists, but rather, as George Orwell saw, from glib social utopians.

9. The goal of government in a Western constitutional state should be conceived of in terms of economic growth, such as by achieving an annual GDP rate of 3 percent or greater, an unemployment rate of 4 percent or lower, and a rising middle-class per capita income—not an increase in state subsidies, state bureaucracies, and state regulations.

10. Crudity in popular politics, as now witnessed in Europe and the United States, is never to be welcomed. But if transient coarseness is sometimes the price of dissolving calcified and destructive norms, and is constitutional, then it is an acceptable antidote to suave institutionalized mediocrity.

Good points, all of them. Number 4 really hits home: "immigrants ironically seek to replicate in their new country the very cultural conditions they forsook." Yep. Those of in high immigrant states are seeing that particular phenomenon.

We'll all miss Charles Krauthammer and his brilliance. And while this post by no means is an attempt to compare them, Dr. Hanson will help fill the void left by Krauthammer.

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10:27 AM 6/12/2018

Lake Superior State University banished tons of words in 2018

Until recently there was a cable TV company advertising itself as having tons of movies on demand. Tons? I wondered if I was the only one bothered by the use of a weight to measure a quantity of digitized movies. It just doesn't compute.

So it's nice to see that Lake Superior State University has finally -- in 2018 --  banished the word "tons" as a reference to an exaggerated quantity. It's about time! Hooray!

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9:16 AM 5/23/2018

Scientists discover that passive voice is, uh, more passive

This article shows up at the economist.com: Language How to change emotions with a word. Anyway, here's an excerpt that helps explain their effort:

Dr Idan, a psycholinguist, knew from previous work that the use of an adjective instead of a noun in a sentence (“Jewish” rather than “Jew”, for example) can shape both judgment and behaviour. Likewise, Dr Reifen-Tagar, a social psychologist, knew from her own earlier research that successful diplomacy often hinges on managing anger in negotiating parties. Putting their heads together, they suspected that employing nouns (“I am in favour of the removal of settlers”), rather than verbs (“I am in favour of removing settlers”), to convey support for policy positions would have a calming effect. The one is more like a statement of an abstract belief. The other is more like a prescription of a course of action and is thus, they hypothesised, more likely to arouse emotions.

They chose to use the words "noun" and "adjective" in their report, but they are actually using what we learned in school as active and passive voice. In any event, their results seem intuitive, but it's a helpful message to use words that don't inflame.

Here in the U.S., any attempt to discuss certain subjects is a minefield of political correctness. Maybe the passive voice might help in those arenas, too.

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3:28 PM 5/16/2018

So many things for which to be thankful

Thanksgiving is a day in which we should be thankful for the lives we live, the friends we keep, and the family who loves us. Let's also remember that our founding fathers bequeathed us a free country, and for that, we should be extremely grateful, respectful, and determined to keep it free.

Let's not forget random acts of kindness. But wait a minute. Those acts of kindness aren't random, they are intentional. To set us straight, Bob Brody has this in the Wall Street Journal: Random Acts of Kindness? Hardly. Subhead: The usual phrase has it wrong. Niceness can only be intentional.

There he provides an explanation and some examples of intentional acts of kindness, such as this one:

Why do we call acts of kindness random when they are so clearly intentional? Are acts of kindness any more random than acts of cruelty? The answer is no.

It’s 6:30 in the morning and raining hard. A woman caught in the downpour without an umbrella ducks inside a coffee shop. “I have to get to the hospital,” she says to a stranger. She’s a nurse due for a 7 o’clock shift. “See those people over here?” the stranger asks, nodding to a mother, father and two children. “They just pulled up in a car. You could ask for a ride.”

The nurse is skeptical, but the stranger is encouraging. When she finally goes over to ask for a lift, the family instantly agrees, and out the door they go. As they pull away, the nurse waves goodbye to the stranger, smiling.

Though rare, such flashes of empathy and altruism—of going above and beyond ourselves, setting aside, if only momentarily, our personal wants and needs—do occur. In Hebrew, this kind of good deed is called a mitzvah, literally meaning “commandment,” as in thou shalt be kind. Those who perform mitzvahs are in Yiddish called mensches, defined as people of integrity and honor.

Well said. May we all endeavor to be kind to one another and be thankful for the opportunity.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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1:15 PM 11/22/2017

Donated blood -- what the phlebotomist said

I gave blood today, and in the departure briefing, the phlebotomist cautioned against certain activities: heavy lifting, exertion, and things like that.

While listing all the bad things she remarked that if I consumed alcohol it would go straight to my head. Wait a minute. That's a bad thing? Who says there's no benefit to giving blood?

So anyway, I've got that going for me.

Update. False alarm. Apparently there's a window of opportunity for that alcohol-straight-to-the-head result, and I waited too late. Don't make the same mistake. Seize the day before it seizes you.

Milton Friedman was right then, right now

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., introduced the a bill called the VA Accountability Act which would allow the Department of Veterans Administration to fire employees without a right of appeal. Seems like good thing for veterans given that no one at the VA has been held accountable for their mistreatment of the people they're obligated to serve.

But no. President Obama threatened to veto the bill. Obama has gone from community organizer to union representative, protecting jobs of of the least competent bureaucrats.

In any event, this is a good point to recall some of Milton Friedman's memorable quotes, some of which are dutifully repeated in 22 Quotes to Celebrate Milton Friedman Day. Here are a few from the list applicable to the VA situation, to wit:

1. “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

3. “Governments never learn. Only people learn.”

4. “Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

5. “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

12. “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”

13. “The lack of balance in governmental activity reflects primarily the failure to separate sharply the question what activities it is appropriate for government to finance from the question what activities it is appropriate for government to administer—a distinction that is important in other areas of government activity as well.”

Those are just a few. Read all 22 for a reminder on just how brilliant Milton Friedman was when he presented in simple language principles that seem obvious after they're stated.

Texas' rank on a Kiplinger list of best states for retirees - We're number 42!

It's Kiplinger's list of How Every State Ranks for Retirement 2015. (Via Newmark's Door.)

Here's the list, but go to the link to see more detail.

1 Delaware
2 Florida
3 West Virginia
4 Pennsylvania
5 South Dakota
6 Arizona
7 Hawaii
8 Iowa
9 Kansas
10 Wyoming
11 Arkansas
12 New Hampshire
13 Mississippi
14 Alabama
15 Ohio
16 Connecticut
17 Oklahoma
18 Nevada
19 Kentucky
20 Vermont
21 Michigan
22 Maine
23 South Carolina
24 Idaho
25 Missouri
26 Alaska
27 Louisiana
28 North Dakota
29 Virginia
30 Wisconsin
31 Rhode Island
32 Washington
33 Colorado
34 Georgia
35 Tennessee
36 New Jersey
37 Indiana
38 Massachusetts
39 Maryland
40 Montana
41 Illinois
42 Texas
43 Utah
44 Oregon
45 Nebraska
46 North Carolina
47 Minnesota
48 New York
49 New Mexico
50 California
51 District of Columbia
Rankings are based on seven factors: taxes on retirees; share of residents 65+; average income for 65+ households; poverty rate for residents 65+; cost of living for all residents; home values for residents 65+; and crime rates.

It's not surprising to see Florida near the top. All those old folks knew something. It's also not surprising to see California and New York near the bottom, although it might be a positive for New York retirees that New York City’s narcotics cops are being told to stop arresting suspects over the age of 40.

Texas' selling point appears to be the lack of a state income tax. But be forewarned before moving here. There's a state sales tax of 6.25% which when added to the local sales taxes drives it up to 8.25% in most municipalities. That can really add up on big ticket items. On a national basis that's why I favor the flat tax over a nationwide sales tax. Imagine the sticker shock when faced with a total sales tax of about 1/3. Ouch!

As for the retirees themselves, they're probably not especially appreciated wherever they are. They keep the local newspapers, cable TV companies, and any cafeteria with an early bird special alive. But no one else wants them. Even Mother Nature, with all those cancers that afflict reproductive systems of both men and women, seems to be saying "Get out there, reproduce, then get the Hell out of the way!"

Dems say water boarding was a fate worse than death -- too bad ISIS didn't offer that choice to their now headless victims

It's starting to look like most Americans are OK with the CIA's interrogation techniques under certain circumstances. But that red line of when to do it hasn't yet been adequately defined. And maybe it shouldn't. We know it when we see it.

Jonah Goldberg has an excellent piece at Nationalreview.com titled The Torture Taboo. Excerpt:

One of the great problems with the word “torture” is that it tolerates no ambiguity. It is a taboo word, like racism or incest. Once you call something torture, the conversation is supposed to end. It’s a line no one may cross. As a result, if you think the enhanced interrogation techniques are necessary, or simply justified, you have to call them something else. Similarly, many sincere opponents of these techniques think that if they can simply call them “torture,” their work is done.

But our vocabulary is limited to "torture" or "not torture." Not so with killing. More from Goldberg:

It’s odd: Even though killing is a graver moral act, there’s more flexibility to it. ... [W]e have the moral vocabulary to talk about kinds of killing — from euthanasia and abortion to capital punishment, involuntary manslaughter and, of course, murder — but we don’t have a similar lexicon when it comes to kinds of torture.

He's not just saying we need more words. He's saying we need to acknowledge that different levels of treatment might be appropriate, depending on the circumstance. All in all, it's a good article. Check it out.

The difference between capitalism and socialism

The difference between capitalism and socialism

This is a great quote, but I can't find the source. (Instapundit maybe?) Paraphrased:

In capitalism those who are good at what they do rise to the top.

In socialism those who are good at gaming the system and sucking up to people in power rise to the top.

How true. Unfortunately, there are far too many people who would do well in that latter environment.

Even more undeniable truths

It's not a waste of time if you are learn something useful. So while surfing the net is often a time killer, there are some needles in the haystack, and by "needles" I mean gems of wisdom.

Search engine results for "undeniable truths" gives us a mixed bag. But a list at a site called funnyjunk.com couldn't be all bad. Here's a sampling:

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday Night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.

23. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.

25. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand what they said.

Check out the full list. Here's one they left out: Be kind to your readers --  HTML is for written words, JPG is for photos.