Democracy - not always a good idea?
Debbie Schlussel, in FrontPage Magazine, sets out the reasons why democracy may not always be a good idea:

"Democratic" elections in the Mid-East--unless heavily "swayed" by our money and troops, as in Iraq--always result in fundamentalist Islamic theocratic disasters for our country, when a benevolent dictator of our liking would be much preferred. Even in Iraq, Islamic shariah law rules.

She cites Iran, the PA, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Lebanon as examples of democratic elections producing anti-freedom results. And of course this is possible, where there is no tradition of constitutional restraints on the majority, where there is no commitment to reason and individuality, as in the successful countries of Christendom (Thanks, Rodney Stark!).
The Big Pharaoh comes to the same conclusion:

Ladies and gentlemen, for the zillionth time I say: democracy is not just about ballot boxes and ballots and happy faces throwing pieces of paper in a box. Democracy cannot be separated from the values of liberal democracy, from the values that many of you take for granted. Values such as human rights, minorities rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to change religions, equality, women rights, and the seperation of religion and politics.

I'm a bit troubled by all this. It seems to support the idea that benevolent despots like Chung Hee Pak and Lee Kuan Yew and even Chiang Kai-Shek and the present Chinese Red government are better for a developing country than premature democracy. The same idea could apply to Russia, where democracy run amok and the lack of a strongman are often cited as leading to near-anarchy and social collapse. Maybe I just trust people too much. Maybe I just have the wrong idea of how people think when they've been immersed in collectivism for a really long time. I suppose it is possible that a basic level of "political literacy" is necessary before democracy can work. And maybe it doesn't matter if that consciousness is imposed or bubbles up from below. Certainly the population of Britain didn't embrace individuality and reason from the beginning.
But the failures of strongmen - The Shah, Castro, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Saddam, Khomeini - have been too many and too horrendous to put one's reliance on a dictator to successfully shepherd his benighted flock towards enlightenment. So I guess my question is, "OK, so you don't want democracy? What do you want instead? Despotism with a human face? What are the odds that the despot you've chosen will work out the way you think?" I'd rather take my chances with democracy.

Expat lib phonies

Johnathan Pearce on Samizdata tells a story about dealing with an apologetic US businessman:

...he said something that slightly vexed me in that he started to go on and on about how we must be so appalled by this nutcase rightwinger in the White House, how most Americans were insular and dumb, yadda-yadda. It was so obviously an attempt to deflect what anti-American prejudices potentially might have existed by getting in the blow first. He was, then, slightly surprised (by -RS) me when I said over a drink later that I did not like the way that Americans felt the need to abase themselves this way, or denigrate their home country, or its people.

I could just see how this idiot must have acted when he got back home:

I can just imagine that businessman coming back to the US and telling everyone at a cocktail party how he made sure to distance himself from Bush and the average American redneck, because he wanted to get in good with those oh-so-sophisticated Europeans. And I am so glad that a European with some brains put him in his place. Won't make any difference, but it put a smile on my face.

I don't think many conservatives - or libertarian/Objectivists like me - would have acted that way when Clinton was in power. We would have been aware of putting the country in a bad light and would have seen that kvetching reflected badly on us. However intelligent and successful liberals get, they never grow up inside.

The Art of Memory
One of my favorite books shows up in a comment of mine:

Francis Yates, in The Art of Memory discusses the structure of theaters, for instance, Shakespeare's Globe, as aids to memory, so actors could remember their lines by attaching topics to features of the building, which included statues and paintings much like those in a church. This method must have been natural and normal when everyone went to church and watched the pastors doing the same thing as they preached. Or is it possible that the dramatic memory techniques came first?

I've been trying to get the comment to post on Social Affairs Unit post about church architecture. Roger Homan opines that the statuary and stained glass in churches was used as a memory aid:

So medieval religious art attests to such a high level of visual literacy that we have to question whether it was ever achieved by the masses. It is more likely that murals and windows were used as visual aids in preaching and teaching - less likely that they could have been left to speak for themselves.

Makes sense to me. Many priests were nearly illiterate, anyway. But I'm sure they all had a decent education in the meaning of religious symbols.

Gedanken-fetus
Jane Galt's post on the ethics of abortion brought up some interesting issues:

You cannot morally treat children, or fetuses, as if they have the same rights and obligations as human adults; they have fewer freedoms, but more entitlements. Children are not only uniquely vulnerable, but also uniquely innocent; that fetus did not ask to be in your body, and has no means at his disposal to get out and stop bothering you. Trying to reason his fate from principles designed for consenting adults is neither practical nor morally just.

I love a principled argument, although it's not always enough:

Evolution does not take cognizance of how beautifully consistently you have reasoned from first principles when it decides what behaviours will survive.

I can just hear the Objectivists jump up and object, "Ah, but that's only true if your first principles do not reflect the reality of evolution." They do have a point.
Left this comment in response:

A thought experiment might help work out opinions on this issue: what if one day it is possible for a couple to have a child in vitro, where the woman's body is not being used to nurture the child? Should the parents then have any choice as to whether the fetus continues to live or not? If so, until how late in its development? For most people who want abortion to be available, the reason is not "a woman's control of her body". That's a red herring, a straw man, in plain terms, a lie. It's because the baby is inconvenient, it would interfere with a lifestyle as it grows up. A baby grown in a test tube would interfere just the same way. So it would be interesting to hear pro-choicers' opinions on the scope of parental power. The same kind of dilemma presents itself in proxy births. Do the biological parents have the right to force the proxy mother to have an abortion if they suddenly decide, "Hey we want to go to law school - a baby isn't really convenient right now."?

Of course I think I'm right. Most abortions have nothing to do with the fact that the baby is inside a woman's body. So how can you take seriously those people who act as if that's the whole issue? Why don't they have the gumption to say what they really mean, that adults should have the right to kill annoying little brats any time they want to? Oh, OK, that was a little over the top. In fact - AH - isn't it only the fact that the fetus is inside the woman's body, out of sight, that makes it possible to contemplate "getting rid of it" with anything approaching equanimity? When it's outside, pulling on your skirt in the supermarket and whining, you might like to exterminate it, but those darn human feelings get in the way. And I suppose even if it were floating embryonically in a glass, blinking in its primitive cuteness, it would be harder to order its execution.

Asia Times Article (by a Greek!) about Turkey's role in the "negotiations" with Iran about their nuclear obsession.
First a probing attack:

Iran's supply of natural gas to Turkey was inexplicably slashed by 70% last Friday, in one of the coldest months of the year.

Then the implication:

But despite publicly supporting Iran's quest for nuclear energy, Turkish officials have privately spoken of their fears at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

And a warning, consisting of an interesting assertion:

Turkey is the only country in Iran's vicinity on which the US has prepositioned tactical nuclear weapons (an estimated 90) that it could deploy against Iranian facilities.

And the carrot:

According to German news agency DDP, Goss assured his Turkish counterparts that they would have a few hours advance warning of an air strike against Iran. He is also said to have given the green light for the Turkish army to strike PKK camps in Iran on the day of the attack.
...Bilateral trade(US/Turkey - RS) jumped in 2005 to an estimated US$4 billion, up from $1 billion in 2000.

PKK is the Kurd nationalist movement (OK, terrorist, to the Turks) Lots of good stuff. The Israelis are thinking of using Iraqi Kurdistan to launch their air attack on Iran. Seems unnecessarily provocative. Now I'm not saying I believe everything the Asia Times prints. The stimulating but absurd Spengler sees to that. Now take what Spengler says, though, (and what he says the Pope says) and put it together with Rodney Stark, and then maybe you have something! Developing, as they say.

FDR: Totalitarian Predator

My favorite blog, Samizdata, has a thought-provoking post on the French Revolution:

That the Bourbon monarchy was a corrupt institution and that the ordinary folk of France suffered under an oppressive system is not in much doubt, mind. I cannot help but think, however, that the violent overthrow of the monarchy and what followed was, in net terms, a disaster for Europe and sowed the seeds of much eventual trouble.

So I thought I'd throw out a couple of thoughts it provoked in me:

Kerensky, anyone? Weimar? Hoover? Gorbachev? And how did that Ataturk fellow survive? One would have thought a fundy Islamic regime or a communistic one would have overthrown him. Couldn't have anything to do with the ruthless and therefore effective elimination of Greeks and Armenians, could it? And who was that Iranian fellow just after the Shah and before Khomeini? I always thought he looked like Peter Sellers, which was darned suspicious. The totalitarian predators lick their chops when a "tolerant" democratic leader shows up. And, yes, I'm including FDR among the predators.

Another key is the plural leadership, as in Caesar's triumvirate, the Seventies troika in the USSR and the Directory. Historical knowledge, while always incomplete, is valuable in every particular.

Back to Rodney Stark

I promised a dissection of Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason". Here's the first sentence:

When Europeans first began to explore the globe, their greatest surprise was not the existence of the Western Hemisphere, but the extent of their own technological superiority over the rest of the world

As a certain uber-blogmeister would say, "Indeed!" But why? This is the question that needs answering. And others, like "Why did European ships end up going to African ports to take African slaves to the New World? Why not African ships going to LeHavre and London and Lisbon to take European slaves to the New World African colonies in New Ghana and New Zimbabwe?" Full marks to Stark for making his entire book an answer to that question.

Enemy Sues for Peace

"We do not mind offering you a long-term truce with fair conditions that we adhere to," he said.

All the rest is piffle.

This is, indeed, London
This is London has a cranky article about a TV interview with Christopher Lee which includes this somewhat interesting reference to another guest on the referenced program:

The former Coventry City footballer and BBC sports presenter stunned the nation in 1991 by announcing on the show that he was the Son of God.

Wearing a turquoise shell suit, he warned that Britain would be destroyed by floods and earthquakes.

Icke, 53, has not mellowed in the intervening years.

He believes the world is run by 12ft lizards and claims the September 11 attacks and the London bombings are part of a global conspiracy.

Dressed this time in a sober black suit, he told Wogan that Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush are puppets of a sinister network which controls all of our lives.

Next he'll be saying George Bush IS a twelve-foot lizard. Or is it Rove??

If I were a cynic
Niall Ferguson's speculating again, but perhaps not so wildly:

This [wasted diplomatic effort by the EU3] gave the Iranians all the time they needed to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium at Natanz. The dream of nuclear non-proliferation, already interrupted by Israel, Pakistan and India, was definitively shattered. Now Teheran had a nuclear missile pointed at Tel-Aviv. And the new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu had a missile pointed right back at Teheran.

My Vodkapundit comment on the potential nuclear standoff between Iran and Israel:

If I were a cynic I might say the elimination of Iran by Israel and Israel by Iran would solve the two most obstinate problems in the Middle East today. IF I were a cynic.

Boy, I'm glad I'm not a cynic. What a depressing state of mind.

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Pronouncing and denouncing

Samizdata had an interesting thread called "Abolish the Welfare State and restore some Respect":

In the decades before the Welfare State, you depended on the people around you - like landlords, employers, neighbours, etc., above all on your own family - for whatever goodies you managed to get your hands on, and bad behaviour towards these people was punishable, and was punished, with loss of goodies.

And as one gets older, one accumulates pomposity like a coating of moss, so I thought I'd share some:

A society prospers or declines depending on how the majority treats the violent and amoral fraction that always exists. As in the Islamic world and among American blacks, most people are good and honorable, but the violent criminals are too often condoned. US welfare reform in the Nineties had an immediate beneficial effect. Those in the British working class who don't wish to put up with the amoral fraction need support from their government and their culture (I almost said "their betters" naughty me!) instead of the "don't be a troglodyte - anything goes!" mentality that prevails today.

Vodkapundit had a post bloviating about the Chinese discovery of everywhere:

Now the BBC reports a story which, if true, could prove Zheng really did beat Columbus:

A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418.

There's just one little problem. The map is an obvious forgery.

I've been daydreaming about this since the days of the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. I'm not seriously interested:

One problem I had with "1421" was its claim that the shorelines had changed tremendously since because of global warming. I don't think so.
This goes back to the whole controversy about the Piri Reis map - also "copied from ancient charts" - in that case portolans. Fascinating speculation, but, as VS says, irrelevant to actual history. When we discover Atlantis buried under the Antarctic ice, I may re-read Velikovsky.

Happy conundrum

I'm not too worried about Iran, despite thoughts like this from Stephen Green and his ilk:

If a EU crackdown is attempted, Iran will (credibly) threaten to lob a couple nukes at some target of national interest. The EU cannot credibly respond to such a threat- they lack the capacity.

Should that day come, "I told you so" just won't cut it.

Comment on Vodkapundit:

How do you support an intifada with long-range missiles? The point of insurgencies has always been that they have no center of power to retaliate against. The second Iran gets unequivocally tied to any terrorist movement, Rumsfeld sighs with relief. And if they're not so tied, how can they threaten anyone on the terrorists' behalf?

And I updated thusly: "And when Rumsfeld sighs with relief, many people die!" ah, so true.

MLK day
Ah, Martin Luther King Day! The day every year when I meditate on the good things that African-Americans have brought to American civilization and especially the benefits their history and culture have bestowed on me personally.

Links
This post on Captain's Quarters brings Nicholas deB Katzenbach back to mind:

Now Katzenbach wants America to disavow wiretaps altogether and cynically uses King Day to stump for that position. However, the two situations hardly prove analogous. Today we face an enemy that has already killed thousands of Americans in a sneak attack, using our open communications networks to stage and time the attacks for maximum effectiveness. In order to stop the next attack, we need to have the ability to grab data from those phone sets that have connections to al-Qaeda based on evidence and testimony -- and to do it quickly. The calls that get intercepted cross international boundaries, so domestic calls still require (and get) warrants. The numbers come from captured phones and computer equipment directly tied to terrorists. Under those circumstances, the use of warrantless wiretaps makes sense and has prevented attacks on America, according to one Senator who participated in the briefing sessions from the NSA program.

What is going on this weekend? Cronkite levitates creakily from the edge of the grave:

We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States," he said. "Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home."

Right. The hurricane means we should stop fighting terrorists and just forget about 9/11. And no one has put any money into New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Hell, more money has been ripped off down there than we spent in Iraq all last year. How many stupidities can Walter pack into one paragraph? I guess he WAS there but he ain't any more. Now NdeBK has to comment on the wiretapping scenario. Why someone might think there was a plan here. A plan to beat Bush about the head and shoulders with implications of needless wiretapping and bigotry. And someone like me might even remember a link between Nicky K and people like Ramzi Clark, PR genius and defender of a certain oppressed totalitarian baby-murderer. A link they share with me. From right around the same time NickyK was contemplating wiretapping MLK - just to teach J. Edgar Hoover a lesson, of course. Say no more.

Tax Blather
Found this thread on Samizdata about living other places, always a favorite topic of mine. This comment:

I thought Americans don't work abroad much because they remain liable for US taxes as well as the local taxes...?

Posted by Ron at January 16, 2006 01:19 PM

started me off on a somewhat ignorant blather/comment:

I believe that for US expatriates foreign tax paid can be offset against US tax due. I'm not even sure that foreign source income is counted. And I suspect British tax, at least, would be more than applicable US tax, although that may just be latent Anglophobism! Perhaps someone with actual expertise can untangle the situation.

I really shouldn't pontificate about important stuff like taxes when I haven't really got a clue, just some notions from talking with Flea about US taxes for expatriates. But I'm just a risk-taker from the word "go".
I do intend to live in Turkey when I retire, so I suppose I should inquire about the tax I will be paying on my Social Security and Florida State Pension payments, assuming I ever get anything from those sources, after the Great Nuclear Exchange with Turkmenistan in 2012. And the more imminent and likely disaster of the Great Pension and Alimony Robbery of 2006 by Miss Maloney.

Enjoying a somewhat sybaritic weekend, I ran across some thoughts on Noodlefood about decimalization and this memory floated up:

As a nine-year old, back in the Fifties, I was enrolled in a British school after having lived in Florida for years. My first test was addition and subtraction of pounds, shillings and pence. And I loved it! Much more interesting than dollars and cents. The added complications of florins and guineas and half-crowns and farthings just made it all seem more human and connected to centuries of fascinating if somewhat bloody history. Because of the prevalence of computers today, decimal currencies are not needed to make calculations easier. Back to the guinea, halfpenny and crown!

They say as you grow older the past comes back more vividly. I can remember the ledger in which I did the calculations for the headmaster, in his office, to see if I was qualified to go into St. George's in Mill Hill. Can't remember his name, but I sure do remember the cane he always carried, which Haynesworth became uncomfortably familiar with every week or so.

Lost comment
Made this comment somewhere, plunked it into my blogger account, saved the post in draft, now I can't remember which blog I was commenting on. Probably Protein Wisdom, but could have been several. Don't feel like rummaging around in people's archives, which one might call blogattics. So here it is ex vacuo:

So, if we go into Iran, is there really any way to make absolutely sure that the libs, after the conquest, cannot sanely say, “They never really had WMDs! Again! They were only ... joking! That’s it! You idiot rednecks don’t know enough about Persian culture to know that when a Persian says “Nuclear Death to Israel” he really means, “Don’t invade us! We don’t really have nukes. And we HATE AlQaeda!”
”
Nah. They’ll say it anyway. But after all this they will really look silly

(For some reason I'm getting weird question-mark-type thingies instead of quote marks in the blog itself. Changing the encoding doesn't appear to help. Maybe this is a Safari idiosyncrasy. Or am I doing something wrong?)

And in this vein, I noticed that Congressman "Scratchy" Murtha and Walter "If I'm not there You Are Not There" Cronkite are trying to take credit for the progress being made in Iraq by proclaiming that we'll have to withdraw all our troops in the next year. Their implication is that Bush never intended to withdraw, he wanted to stay forever, for the oil, don't you know, and the brave standing-up by stand-up guys like Soros and Dean is making him withdraw his terroristic Imperial stormtroopers. Boy does Rove have an easy target now. Cackle!

Slashdot has an interesting thread: Mathematics Skills More in Demand Than Ever about the future of careers that stress math skills. They link to a Business Week article about the future of math. I especially liked this Slashdot comment:

I've always liked math. And, in the past decade, there has been much evidence pointing toward math being a primary component in a better lifestyle. It didn't fully hit me until I was a freshman in college and my computer science courses started crossing paths with my linear algebra courses.

But even in grade school, there was evidence that those in control of mathematics sat a bit higher on the food chain. For instance, I got into an argument with my dad (an independent concrete pourer) when I was in eighth grade. He wanted to build a base for a grain silo and needed to know how many cubic yards of cement was needed. So he was having a hard time computing this. I told him it was (as we all know) pi*radius^2. After much debate, I gave him a piece of graph paper and a compass and told him to draw it and estimate the number of squares. I don't look down on my dad, he just never had an education like I was privileged to have.

And so I slowly started to realize that mathematics were the underlying principle to everything. Maybe you've seen the motion picture Pi and remember the part where the main character has a revelation that everything can be described by math. In my opinion, he was dead right.

Of course,with my IQ obsession, it struck me that the stress on math skills in hiring was pretty close to using IQ for hiring, a tactic that's become absolutely verboten in recent years. So instead of saying, "I need a guy with at least a 140 IQ", why not say, "Quantitative skills at a high level are essential to job performance." Might work out to the same thing. And it would also show the asininity of this quote from the Business Week article, saying that part of the solution is:

...engaging more girls and ethnic minorities in math...

Right. Anyone who thinks girls and minorities who have the needed quantitative skills have been shut out of the job market because of discrimination just hasn't been listening or thinking for the last fifty years.