sisu

"The women now went willingly into the field," revisited

"The daily news is like the wind-whipped whitecaps on the ocean, a lot of violent froth on the surface, dangerous to surfers and small craft, but having nothing to do with the larger movement of the sea," we quoted Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna in our post "A lot of violent froth on the surface" last year, where we used the above image of a reproduction of the Mayflower at sea from The History Channel's "Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower.

Editorial Note: This post — first published on August 15, 2007 — on the role of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" in shaping the American character — is timelier than ever today. Cross-posted at Annie Gottlieb's Cloven Not Crested.

"I thought that this passage reflected an early-American lesson that most people in the world did not learn until late in the 20th century," writes TigerHawk of the "tragedy of the commons" experience that taught the Pilgrims -- literally on the ground -- how Adam Smith's "invisible hand" works. We're not sure that "most people" -- yes you, Hillary -- have learned that lesson to this day, but before we get to that, here's the bottom line, from the book TH is currently reading, Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War:

The fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth's debilitating food shortages. For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally -- the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done to increase the annual yield.

"In April, Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. "The women now went willingly into the field," Bradford wrote, "and took their little ones with them to set corn." The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.

"Is it possible that collectivism never caught on here because early American utopians such as the Pilgrims tried it and learned that it did not work?" asks the Hawkman. One can only hope, but certain members of every generation seem immune to the Pilgrims' lesson. Besides, "there is something very American about the utopian movement," as Michael Kavanagh wrote re a Beinecke Library exhibition, "No Place on Earth," which "takes as its subject the American utopian dream, as expressed by the Shakers as well as some twenty other groups across four centuries:

The New World was the land of the frontier, that clean, clear space beyond which one could remake oneself into a better human being. America itself can be seen as the biggest utopian experiment of all -- embodied in the credo of the Land of Opportunity is the promise that it is always possible to reinvent one's relationship to society, work and nature.

Attempts to "reinvent one's relationship to society, work and nature" are fine as long as the reinventors don't deny the economic logic of nature and human nature and try to impose their "vision" of "the greater good" on the rest of us. That's why "progressive" governmental interventions — like the "'universal' health-care dreams in Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other states [see 'Arnold's Health Flop' in today's WSJ] that were unveiled to hosannas but flopped once the fine print and costs were exposed" — are best left to the states, where well-meaning if clueless Utopianators can test their fantasies on a smaller scale. As for Hillary, the Mother of all Utopianators, The Barrister at Maggie's Farm explains:

Socialism advances via invented crises to alarm the people, or to seduce the people, into foregoing the markets for goods and services.

It is a deceptive strategy designed to prey on the worst, most infantile instincts of Americans . . . Hillary goes Shrillary over socialized medicine: Gateway [be sure to click over to watch and listen in horror as the junior Senator from New York doth protest too much that her plans for a national one-payer system have nothing to do with socialism].

I have no doubt that Hillary is a socialist, whether she admits it to herself or not. Anyone who wants the State to take over the medical businesses, which are 16% of our economy, and the oil industry, which is ? % of our economy, has a good start on taking over all of it.

As we said in TigerHawk's comments:

The lesson about human nature learned in the school of hard knocks by the Pilgrims -- "It takes incentives" -- has been lost on Hillary & Company, whose "It takes a village" collectivism would destroy this shining city upon a hill from within.

Is the electorate teachable? Get Prof. Thomas Sowell on the phone.

Update: "Women like to do for their families. So do men," comments Bird Dog at Maggie's in a Monday-morning linkathon.

Soylent Green revisited

"The Tribal Filter on Green News," Insight July 23, 1990. Update: Click here for larger, legible image.

It's been nearly twenty years we've been calling out the warmenists and their media allies, wondering when, already, the truth would finally out. Now it finally has, as Drudge headlines "Climategate: 'Greatest scandal in modern science,'" and mainstream outlets can no longer deny there's something rotten in the state of warmening "science." Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhoffe says the leaked correspondence suggests researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," and now "Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails." In celebration of this day of cleaning out the Augean Stables, herewith we offer republication of one of our earliest blogposts on the subject, "Soylent Green." Note Palinophobe Andrea Mitchell's unabashed confession way back when (1990): "Clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy." Enjoy:

January 3, 2004. Blogging is nothing new.  Before the glory of the internet, we were madly clipping and underlining and annotating the margins of tree-based publications.  Take this snail blog post, "The Tribal Filter on Green News," by Woody West, having "The Last Word" in the July 23, 1990 issue of Insight:

Only lately have the pooh-bahs of the national press felt secure enough to admit publicly that they filter the news through their personal-tribal creed. As a result, of course, they often report as fact that which is both unsettled and disputed.

. . . At a conference on the environment in Washington earlier this year, reported by The Wall Street Journal's David Brooks, Charles Alexander harrumphed:

"As the science editor at Time I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy." There was applause from the pressies in conclave assembled, after which Andrea Mitchell, an NBC correspondent, said that "clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy."

It gets even better:

An environmental reporter at The Boston Globe, Dianne Dumanoski, is quoted as saying, "There is no such thing as objective reporting . . . I've become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true.  That's my subversive mission." Then spake Barbara Pyle, environmental editor of Cable News Network, which shows distressing signs of aping the older networks in cooking the news: "I do have an axe to grind. I want to be the little subversive person in television."

Pardon our French, but, plus ça change . . . Oh, and Andrea, there's a message for you from someone called Alan . . . and David Brooks, You're the man!  Clearly.

Update: "Somewhere, a tree is planted." The Anchoress links, and links and links.

[Thanks to susis for title]

"It compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies"

Sunrise at Camelot-by-the-Sea from Goomp's terrace this morning.

L'heure bleu. Tuesday morning after Labor Day meant the first day of school for us children of the Fifties, a day of trepidation for ourselves, a smartie pants with social-skill issues. We were great at reading, writing and 'rithmetic but borderline pathologically shy. 'Wonder how we'd have taken a presidential "live cable-cast speech on values and education" piped into the classroom back then? We were still wet behind the ears when our radar screen began to pick up blips of the insidious Big Lie behind the Gramscian march through the institutions. As we blogged back on Flag Day of 2005: 

We remember the first inklings of the emasculating Marx-lite mindset beginning to infiltrate our elementary and high school classrooms in the fifties and sixties, when reflexively p.c. teachers -- before anyone really knew what p.c. was -- told us there was no such thing as human nature and keened that we shouldn't have a battle hymn for a national anthem.  We should change it to "America the Beautiful," they told us. While we love the poetry and religious fervor of "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies," with its unspoken recognition of what used to be called "Manifest Destiny," as a national anthem it falls short, missing the point that came crashing into our consciousness on that awful 9/11: Freedom isn't free.

Last gasps of summer. Tiny attends Ellen's plate for a Sunday bookend to our season-opening lobster bake with all the fixin's last May.

The light fantastic caught in the folds of a little linen shirt hung out to dry.

L'heure bleu, last gasps, hung out to dry. And now Tiny, above, sucking out the juices of a lobster carapace. The psychological landscape closes in. Intimations of creeping statism. We jumped into the Medicare maelstrom last week as our 65th approaches, waiting an hour (but we brought Jonah's Liberal Fascism, so no time wasted) to register at the local Social Security office, only to find they had us listed by our maiden name. That meant going back home to fetch the marriage license and then back for more waiting. Their error but our time. Unnerving inklings of things to come with the President's and Congress's medical-insurance meddling? In related frustrations, Goomp had asked us to help him switch from pro-Obamacare AARP to Humana for his Medicare supplemental. We duly researched, called and made an appointment for today, turned our schedule upside down to accommodate, but the rep never showed. Arggghhhhh! Public insurance, private insurance. Where's the competition to keep 'em honest? Rudy Giuliani had the libertarian's answer to an attempted Tom Brokaw gotcha the other day:

BROKAW: "What's been interesting to me is that the Republicans have raised the public option as some kind of Orwellian monster. Half the health care in America is already delivered by the government ... Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, Federal Employees insurance ..."

GIULIANI: "That's part of the problem. Part of the problem is that half of it is already in the hands of one massive monopoly. You make that monopoly greater and you destroy private insurance."

The rest of the problem with the dark cloud of "universal coverage" looming on the horizon is Tocqueville's "network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd":

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Baa!

Update: "The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subued to man, its presence refreshes him," wrote Thoreau. Head on over to Modulator's Friday Ark #260 and be refreshed.

Update II: The News Junkie at Maggie's links.

Old is the new beautiful

Loving it that the oldsters, now known in polite society as the politically correct "seniors," are finding their voice. Never ever dreamed of being old, but now that we are, it's a revelation. We've been tea partying from day one.

 

The young and ignorant, schooled in the stealth Gramscian, anti-Founding-Fathers curriculum, know nothing about nature or nature's God. They're prolly buying POTUS's unspeakable assertion that "We are God's partners in matters of life and death." Everyone in the whole wide world should read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism before saying another thing. Fortunately, us old folks still remember a thing or two about the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. PLUS. As old and decrepit as we may become, the pater familias, 89-year-old Goomp, keeps on keeping on. Proud to be a scion of a grand old Yankee/Finnish family of honest and true Mercans.

Update: Instalanche. Being old is all it's cracked up to be!

Update II: "Goomp 89?" gasps Elisson incredulously in the comments:

Why, that means 89 is the new 59.

That would make us still wet behind the ears.

Update III: Modulator's Friday Ark now boarding.

Twitter: It's not just about Iran and Michael Jackson anymore

 

Michael Jackson's untimely death may have temporarily stolen the spotlight from the crackdown on Iranian protesters in social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, not to mention the cables, and even the major networks, but unlike whiny nanny-staters who keen for handouts, the Iranian freedom fighters picked themselves up and got back in the race. Example: A montage of photographs from the past few weeks of protests in Iran set to the music of MJ's "Beat It." Above, Jacko in his heyday singing PYT (Pretty Young Thing).

"Ask and ye shall receive. Thank you from the bottom of my heart (and pocket book!)," we just direct twittered Michelle Malkin. Unlike the congressional aide we talked to about an hour ago, she's been live twittering the cap-and-trade debate this afternoon and has all the answers. See below for details, but first, re that congressional aid, we spoke earlier with Steven Carlson, energy aide to our Taxachusetts Congressman, Michael E. Capuano. Told him we'd read on Twitter that Cap-and-Trade vote count was 210-210, with 14 undecided. He said he couldn't confirm as his office was not in touch with actual vote. Hmmm. Not following Twitter, then? Couldn't confirm whether Capuano had voted yet or was among the undecided. Double hmmm.

He asked whether we objected to the bill because it didn't go far enough or went too far. Not far enough? Hadn't thought of that but told him we believe 1. Bill is based upon junk science as more and more scientists are coming out to acknowledge the fact and 2. It amounts to the largest tax hike in the nation's history. He duly noted our thoughts and said he would pass them along to his boss. The silent majority, now mobilized at the individual level, becomes the smart mob?

A few tasty tidbits from Michelle Malkin's live tweeting of the final excruciating hours and minutes this afternoon:

YES! Rep. Barton refers to EPA-suppressed Carlin report (my column here if u missed it) …

Barton rocks: Cites Spain's greenjobs boondoggle. Costs 2.2 jobs for every greenjob. "Not a revolutn I want 2 b part of."

Barton closing statement: Facts data inconvenient truths. Waxman closing statement: HOPE! CHANGE! SAVE THE PLANET!

Ed Markey invoking "moral imperative" again. Global warming cult at work.

Sausage history in the making!

This just in re the 14 undecideds, straight from the horse's mouth in a direct tweet from the Divine Miss M herself:

@michellemalkin: Arcuri, Boccieri, Brown (FL), Carney, Dicks, Donnelly, Al Green, Kind, Kirk, Kirkpatrick, Petri, Space, Teague, Tonko

Talk about SOURCES! 'Don't see our guy, Capuano on the list. No doubt he voted early in favor of the highest tax hike in the history of the universe, but his aide didn't want to talk about it.

A little Gingbird told us "just say no" to energy tax increase

Darwin's Starlings on Otmoor, a few miles East of Oxford: "Individuals, but moving in a single entity. And the reason for this behavior? Well, thousands of eyes looking for predators on the roost site. Nothing could escape their gaze, no raptor could surprise this soaring mass of bird flesh … The birds are also maneuvering for position, social position." "Totally awesome must-watch video here. More on how flocks of birds "wheel and swoop in unison," not unlike twitterers and other social network denizens.

"Everyone should call their [sic] congressman this morning and demand a no vote on the unread energy tax increase. The vote is very close," twittered Newt to his 527,564 followers this morning. We'd been meaning to but hadn't gotten around to it. That little Gingbird in our ear did the trick. First we retwittered Mr. Gingrich's message for the benefit of our own exclusive flock of 288 followers, then googled up our Massachusetts 8th District Rep, Michael E. Capuano's DC phone number and gave him — and his energy specialist, Steve Carlson — a call. The woman who answered the phone couldn't have been lovelier. Fat (=well paid) and happy in her job or not too many calls? The Anchoress had a similar experience — "MOST POLITE cong. staff I've ever dealt with" — and is telling her 1182 followers she's "thinking fewer calls coming in." Lori Byrd makes it even easier for her 565 followers with her tweet:

Follow this link, put in ur zip-code, call your Rep, and say "vote no on H.R. 2454", the Cap&Trade leg.

If all of our followers and their followers retweet and make the call, we've got a smart mob self-organizing to pursue a shared goal. Meanwhile, Al Gore twitters his 1,090,925 followers with urgency:

The most important environmental vote of this generation.

Isn't everything he ever thinks, says or does "the most important" in its category? From his website:

According to news reports, the full House of Representatives will vote on the global warming and energy bill on Friday. Make no mistake, this is the most important environmental vote of this generation. If passed this legislation will put us on the road to actually solving the climate crisis, in addition to building a green economy.

Call your Representative: 877-9-REPOWER (877-9-737-6937) and make sure they vote yes.

Mr. Gore is forever saying the debate is over, but the twitterers on this side of the debate have got news for him. As Emily Zanotti twitters:

Watching these Cap & Trade/global warming debates makes one thing very clear: it ain't only the creationists who willingly ignore science.

And as The Anchoress tweets in return:

Boondoggle begets boondoggle. Global Warming a flim-flam begets this flim-flam legislation. Too much power 4 1 party.

And too many words in congressional bills that go unread by power hoarders who vote as they're told, and damn the [unintended?] consequences! Insult to injury from twitterer DarkKnight3565:

Rep. Waxman adds a 300 page amendment to cap-and-trade amendment morning of its signing. Congress now completely broken.

Pass it on.

Update: OneFineJay retweets us with apt comment:

RT @SissyWillis Update: Cap-and-Trade Vote Count: 210-210, 14 Undecided Vote out 210 congressmen in 2010!

We tried calling our rep, Michael Capuano for second time this afta:

@OneFineJay You go, boy!!! Good news?: Got thru easily to my Blue-state MA congressman Capuano this a.m. Now busy signal.

Give 'em hell!

Roger L. Simon to write VDH screenplay?

"The key was that the initial planting of the vineyard involved a delicate balance," wrote Victor Davis Hanson in The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization. "The farmer had to be careful not to opt for either extreme, and instead to be aware that conditions adverse to full production ironically prove hospitable. So the growing practice of viticulture in the early polis —much more so than livestock raising or grain growing — must have reordered Greek values and contributed to the peculiar Greek notion of harmony and moderation … Hard work, not natural bounty was to be lionized."

"Should be required reading for all Pauline-Kael-bubble residents, from President Obama on up or down. Somebody should make a movie of it. Get Roger L. Simon on the phone at once!!! This could be box-office gold," we wrote (only half in jest) in the comments of Victor Davis Hanson's "Obama Versus the Way of the Universe," an eye-opening "farmer's tale" of the military historian's own mugging by reality at age 26, when — in a reversal of the "How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?" narrative — the gentleman farmer realized that trying to make nice to a neighbor willing to take advantage of a young man's naiveté was a loser's game. A few snippets to whet your appetite, and then be sure to read the whole thing:

I wish the President well, but he is butting up against human nature. And that is a fight one cannot win…

Only someone who has not been in the real world, but only marketed rhetoric without consequences (e.g., if Obama had a bad day organizing, or legislating, was he fired?) could believe such things.

In short, Obama reminds me a little of myself — at 26. I had left the farm for 9 years to get a BA in classics, PhD in classical philology, and live in Athens for two years of archaeological study — all on scholarships … I had forgotten much of the culture of the farm where I spent years 1-18.

Then after the requisite degrees I left academia, and returned to farm 180 acres with my brother and cousin — and sadly was quickly disabused of the world of the faculty lounge.

Then follows the coming-of-age drama of internalizing the tragic view of human nature and a word of warning to the starry-eyed Utopianists currently at the wheel of the ship of state:

Obama will come to his senses with his ‘Bush did it’, reset button, moral equivalency, soaring hope and change, with these apologies to Europeans, his Arab world Sermons on the Mount to Al Arabiya, in Turkey, in Cairo, etc., his touchy-feely videos to Iran, his “we are all victims of racism” sops to Ortega, Chavez, and Morales. It is only a matter of when, under what conditions, how high the price we must pay, and whether we lose the farm before he gains wisdom about the tragic universe in which we live.

A sojourn at an elite university, you see, can sometimes become a very dangerous thing indeed.

"This is one of your finest articles to date as it deftly sums up the incredible hubris of 'The One' and illustrates that credible deterrence — not good intentions and empty blather — indeed keeps one's 'neighbors' honest and leads to a tolerable existence," writes Scott in the first of dozens and dozens (128 as of this writing) of insightful comments to VDHs post. We'll quote a couple for you to savor and then urge you — and especially President Obama & Company! — to read 'em all:

Thrasymachus: The question is not will Obama come to his senses (he won’t) but will enough Americans come to their senses, and soon enough, to save our collective patrimony. Jimmy Carter never got it and never will.

Ron Kean: I’ve learned that those who raise their voice usually expect the same from you or see the obsequiousness as a license to continue rude domination.

Allison Aller: From when I first started reading your blog, it was your experience in agriculture that gave you baseline credibility to me. All your classical study was very important icing on the cake (and it sure enabled you to write well!) … but it is the dealing with the world as God made it — in nature and in human nature — that brings wisdom and perspective.

Great dramatic potential. What do you say, Roger L? Maybe self-avowed "no longer brain dead liberal" playwright David Mamet would be interested.

Update: Maggie's links.

Hot air has never been our thing

"If President Obama can launch a White House YouTube site, why can’t the pope?" asks Christian Science Monitor reporter Jimmy Orr rhetorically. And indeed Papa Ratzi's now got his own YouTube site, with more subscribers than the Leader of the Free World at last count. We've subscribed to both to keep tabs on our friends and foes. Obama caught in a classic Hot-Air Moment above in the latest video on his YouTube site.

"When he says 'we will restore science to its rightful place,' he isn't talking about Silicon Valley. He is talking about government grants to university researchers," writes Henry in the comments of Ann Althouse's post on Charles Krauthammer's column re why Obama's Inauguration speech was so tedious. [Full disclosure: From the moment he called us a racist back in December of 2006 in the disingenuously presented afterglow of Oprah's endorsement, we've been constitutionally — both physically and philosophically — unable to listen to the "soaring rhetoric" of the former President Elect. Hot air has never been our thing.]

"Benedict XVI: internet a new way to speak of God" headlines one of the top videos on Papa Ratzi's YouTube website.

Noisome folks on the left and right are shouting at each other over the scientific divide. It's the angry anti-science believers vs the angry anti-religion scientists. Both sides are into demonizing "the other." Yawn. Same old same old. Into that miasma, this voice of reason from commenter itellu3times at Little Green Footballs:

The left has built itself this fantasy that Bush hated and ignored science, based on the fact they did not fund a useless and ethically difficult subset of stem-cell research, and did not believe in global Algore.

Left-wing (pseudo-) scientists worldwide are getting all warm and teary about their upcoming unicorn grants.

Apropos of which, we emailed off a challenge this afternoon to John Brockman, "founder of the nonprofit Edge Foundation, Inc. and editor of Edge, the highly acclaimed website devoted to discussions of cutting edge science by many of the world's brilliant thinkers, the leaders of what he has termed 'the third culture'":

Thank you so very much for your thought-provoking publication, a great stimulator of lively discussion.

Re your forthcoming publication of "brief responses by selected contributors" addressing the question of "whether there is a philosophical incompatibility between religion and science," may I suggest that you consider asking the most brilliant mind out there who argues for their compatibility, Pope Benedict XVI? It seems to me that the loudest among the anti-religion scientist atheists protest too much, lacking the self-awareness to realize that their own fervor against faith is itself a kind of secular faith.

As I wrote a couple of years back, citing Oriana Fallaci's famous "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true," "It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for."

Herewith, a republication of our March 19, 2006 blogpost "It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for,"

Ball? What ball? Tiny on deck in the arc of Tuck's chipboard fabric-cutting board during early-morning ball play.

"I believe that the antagonism between reason and faith will only grow more pervasive and intractable in the coming years," writes Sam Harris, author of the New York Times bestseller, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, at The Huffington Post. According to the blurb at his book's web site, "Mr. Harris is now completing a doctorate in neuroscience, studying the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)." Right up our alley. He came to our attention this morning as the purveyor of an email from Muslim journalist Irshad Manji — blogged here and here — forwarded by our good blogfriend Annie of AmbivaBlog. [Click here to sign petition.] Googling revealed that not only does he blog at Huffington, but we ourselves have had occasion to quote him in one of our favorite Darwin-related posts, "There is a grandeur in this view of life."

Tiny and the superball (just off camera to the right) pose an ongoing challenge to the photographer's hungry eye. For every keeper, there are dozens of shots where she has just exited stage right or left when the shutter finally clicks. Note dark blue jabot, upper left, Tuck's first, brilliantly executed finished segment of the new living room swags and jabots.

While we share Sam Harris's view of science as the key to "our rational description of the universe," we disagreed then — as we do now — with his  dismissal of religion:

To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity — birth, marriage, death, etc. — without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.

Between frenzied moments of batting and pouncing, Tiny retreats to a corner of the room to regroup.

Mr. Harris is understandably troubled that "irreconcilable religious commitments still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict," but it isn't religion per se but human nature itself that's the problem/challenge in our view. As we blogged here — citing anthropologist-turned-psychologist Pascal Boyer's brain-scan studies addressing the question "Why has belief proved so resilient as scientific progress unravels the mysteries of plagues, floods, earthquakes and our understanding of the universe?" — that's just the way we are after the great winnowing process of evolution:

By injecting nuns with radioactive chemicals, by scanning the brains of people with epilepsy and studying naughty children, scientists are now working out why. When the evidence is pieced together, it seems that evolution prepared what society later moulded: a brain to believe.

As well as providing succour for those troubled by the existential dilemma, religion, or at least a primitive spirituality, would have played another important role as human societies developed. By providing contexts for a moral code, religious beliefs encouraged bonding within groups, which in turn bolstered the group's chances of survival, says Boyer.

The early-morning light illuminates a cat's-eye view of the dining room as playing field, where the props of Tuck's sewing project lend interest and mystery.

Bonding within groups — the importance of being noticed — is one of the ur-themes of this blog (check out Neo's latest, "Dueling: defending one's honor" for a great take on the topic). Still, we couldn't agree more with Sam Harris when he writes "While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities":

Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves -- repeatedly and at the highest levels -- about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.

All that jazz. We love the liquid counterpoint of cat's paw and table paw and whiskers and superball and early-morning light as Tiny trips the light fantastic.

Does he realize his argument about ideas that are "patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive" applies equally to Islamist bile and the politically correct pronouncements of our fellow citizens of the left? It's not faith vs. rationality, but intolerance vs. tolerance. Render unto Caesar, as we've blogged before. It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for. The shining city upon a hill shimmers in our mind's eye. As Oriana Fallaci wrote — and we are forever quoting — "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true." We were touched by the poignant naiveté of Sam Harris's unself-aware statement of his own brand of secular faith:

When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths. Only then will the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu be broadly recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world.

There must be something true. Try human nature. As Kerry of The Smoothing Plane asks in the comments re Mr. Harris's desire to "find reliable ways to make human beings more loving," "Make them …? We who?"

Music to my ears

"What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?" asked William Blake rhetorically in our all-time fave poem, "The Tyger," cited in our October 2005 post "What immortal hand or eye?" featuring the late, great Baby Cakes (above) and his sister "with fire burning bright in their eyes as they defended their turf from the intruder."

"Music to my ears," we wanted to write in the comments to Horsefeathers's latest post, cum video, "Nobody asked me but," BUT … we were unable to comment due to some inscrutable technical thing about registering that just didn't work for us, so here are excerpts of his argument, followed by our own frustrated but heartfelt comments:

We are weakened by our own therapeutic approach to the jihad. Were we to destroy the symbols of Islam, they'd be at our feet instead of at our throats.

When sharia law prevails and Bach is banned, somewhere there will remain a hidden version of the single greatest musical piece ever composed, played by the greatest pianist to ever interpret it: Here's a portion of the Goldberg Variations played by Glenn Gould. Proof, if any more were needed, of the superiority of Western culture. Let's hope 2009 is a year when the West wakes up and vows to defend itself.

Citing exerpts from an imail conversation with our sis this evening, here's what we wanted to write in the comments:

We: You or I might choose a different piece or a different composer, but as Tuck says, we know what he means. I would prolly choose Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus" or Schubert's "Ave Maria."

She: Exactly.

We: Tuck might choose Haydn's "Creation" or Handel's "Messiah" or "any of that stuff," says he.

She: An extremely succinct article.

We: Yes. It made me tingle. Similar to the way Obama gave Chris Matthews a thrill up his leg.

It all calls to mind the recent acknowledgement by British atheist Matthew Parris that "In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts," as blogged the other day by our dear friend neo, who quotes Parris in her post "Africa and change: what hath the missionaries wrought?": 

"It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

"I used to avoid this truth by applauding — as you can — the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write …

"But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing."

"Parris goes on to describe the transformation he has observed, the difference between the converted and those still mired in tribal attitudes," writes neo:

He says the former are more open, relaxed, lively, curious, and engaged with the world. Parris rejects the cultural/moral relativism that denies that there is anything inherently better about these sort of attitudes as opposed to the characteristics fostered by traditional tribal beliefs. Instead, he insists on making a distinction, and a judgment.

Read the whole thing, and then "Pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death."

"Obama knows what con men have long known"

Babe keeps cozy and warm on a cool autumn day atop the TV tuner.

"Liberals love to poke fun at Sarah Palin's past history as a runner-up in the Miss Alaska Competition, but it is one of many of the features of Palin's life that I can truly identify with," writes blogfriend Laura Lee of The WIde Awake Café in a must-read autobiographical snippet that we herewith publish in full. Her insight illuminates, like nothing else we have read, why Sarah Palin drives Northeast Corridor Conservatives and their fellow travelers on the left side of the aisle to distraction:

I also was a runner-up in a local Miss Fort Smith competition, and what I learned in the whole pageant deal was how superficial some people are, how to answer both tough and dumb questions and how incredibly back-stabbing some females could be. I learned that beauty contestants were required to put vasoline on their teeth in order to smile. I learned that I swung my arms too much when I walked down the ramp. All sorts of discoveries about myself made me realize I was too much of an introvert to be comfortable out in the center of the stage. The main thing I learned though, was that the dream I had as a little girl was not, in reality, anything at all that I wanted.

The day before the pageant we were interviewed by a local radio station host. The questions were so asinine I found myself very impatient with the questioner. One of her questions was, "If you could speak to anyone you want to, living or dead, who would it be?" I thought a little while about it, and not wanting to insult any of my favorite artists, musicians, writers or relatives, I went for the One that I spoke to every night. I said, "God." Now, I think I would say, "Sarah Palin." Sarah Palin has been able, throughout her life, to take everything she has been through and make something better of it. She has stepped out in the center and taken the tough and dumb questions with grace and patience. She knows her guy, McCain. These two are a great team.

Grace under pressure, the very definition of courage. As we blogged three weeks back, "It's the character, stupid," quoting our own email response to Fox & Friends' viewer question "Which is more important in this election, character or an economic plan?":

While Obama's stealth radical agenda, Alinsky-style thuggish tactics and hysterical followers frighten me, I'm no big fan of McCain's either, what with Soros-seeded McCain-Feingold "finance reform" and McCain's scientifically challenged views on anthropogenic climate change.

Sarah, on the other hand, floats my boat.

McCain is the far lesser of two evils. Neither of the presidential candidates knows the first thing about economics, so all we have LEFT is character, and for a Beltway pol, McCain's got it way over Barack "Whichever-way-the-wind-blows" Obama.

Outside on the terrace, Tiny keeps the side yard safe for democracy.

Speaking of "Which is more important in this election, character or an economic plan," Thomas Sowell, as always, is not afraid to call a con a con in his latest:

People who think that talking points on this or that problem constitute "the real issues" that we should be talking about, instead of Obama’s track record, ignore a very fundamental fact about representative government.

Representative government exists, in the first place, because we the voters cannot possibly have all the information necessary to make rational decisions on all the things that the government does. We cannot rule through polls or referendums. We must trust someone to represent us, especially as President of the United States.

Once we recognize this basic fact of representative government, then the question of how trustworthy a candidate is becomes a more urgent question than any of the so-called “real issues.”

A candidate who spends two decades promoting polarization and then runs as a healer and uniter, rather than a divider, forfeits all trust by that fact alone …

Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is “pragmatic” rather than ideological.

But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools.

Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well.

Pol and media spin about "the real issues" has always stuck in our craw. Thank you, Dr. Sowell, for explicating the real, real issues.