Holy religious conservatives, Batman!

You know George Bush is in serious trouble when lifetime Republican stalwarts are beginning to turn their back on him. Joseph Farah is a genuine independent. Ilana Mercer and I are outspoken libertarians. We didn't vote for Bush in 2000 or his father before him. But Tom Ambrose, the Commentary Editor at WorldNetDaily, has always been a strong Republican. That makes these words all the more incredible:

Let's be real: There is no longer any substantial difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The GOP now even actively supports pro-homosexual and pro-abortion politicians. Enough is enough!

Religious conservatives comprise some 30 to 40 percent of the Republican Party. Rather than supporting spineless, highly compromised GOP phonies, why not work for something worthwhile such as the Constitution Party's political platform?

For me, the bottom line is this: I do not want to stand before God one day and tell Him I enabled evil to continue unchecked because I was afraid to do the right thing and, consequently, caved in to what was expedient. No matter what happens, God is still sovereign, but at least I can say I stood against the evil now engulfing the United States. Will you be able to say that?

Much respect, Tom, much respect. I have a feeling that the Libertarian and Constitution Party's vote totals are going to surprise everyone this fall. This assumes, of course, that there IS going to be an election.

Bitten in the buttocks

People often ask me why I am a libertarian, not a conservative, and why I prefer the Libertarian Party, despite the one significant flaw in its platform, over the Constitution Party. The answer is simple. Government is a two-edged sword, and attempting to use it for good purpose always backfires in the end. Only the Libertarian Party has the proper distrust and distaste for the dangerous and often deadly institution.

Conservatives are rightly alarmed about homogamy, or "gay marriage". But as they are stupidly wont to do, they have again turned to a government solution, which is ironic as it is only government involvement in marriage - often regarding things that conservatives laud as supporting marriage - that has allowed this situation to come about. I don't actually mind the concept of a Defense of Marriage Amendment, I simply consider it useless; since the courts freely ignore most of the other amendments there is no reason to believe they wouldn't simply contort the language to ignore this proposed amendment too.

Now, James Dobson is without question a wise man when it comes to children and relationships, but he is a short-sighted and clueless observer of government. For, as he states in support of the rapidly dissolving Amendment:

Dobson says another "phony excuse" is that marriage is a state issue. "Every legislator must surely know, however, that it would create chaos to have 50 different definitions of marriage in the United States," Dobson wrote in his letter.

Experienced observers of American politics will recognize this as the same argument that is used to justify every expansion of central state power. It has been used to justify every intrusion on State sovereignty. Indeed, it has been used to force most of the cultural policies that Dobson rightly deplores down American throats.

I like and respect James Dobson. But as a wiser man than Dobson once said: "those who live by the sword will die by the sword. If conservatives wish to preserve marriage, they will have to take a libertarian approach and remove government entirely from the sanctioning, licensing and recognizing of the institution.

I'm with N.W.A.

A Denver police officer likely mistook a soda can for a weapon before shooting and killing a 63-year-old man in his bed, Police Chief Gerry Whitman said Monday.... The shooting comes weeks after the city and police announced reforms to the department's use-of-force policy in the wake of controversy surrounding police shootings.

I'm sure they'll announce some more reforms soon. Here's a suggestion: how about not shooting anyone in freaking bed!

I trust the general public with guns a lot more than I trust the police with guns. An armed citizenry is more effective against crime and furthermore, there has never, in the history of firearms, been a police state without an armed police.

No sell-out

I spoke with the Elliott Wave people about how I could add some more economic content to this blog, and they were kind enough to allow me access to their affiliate content. As those of you who actually read the economic columns know, I think Elliott Waves are a potentially useful method of understanding the patterns of the markets, and perhaps even history as well.

Just to make things clear, I have no relationship with Elliott Wave International, I do not have any financial interest in the products they are selling nor am I interested in accepting blog ads at this point in time. However, I think you'll find that they do have an intriguing take on the financial and currency markets at what is proving to be an all-too-interesting moment in history.

Read if it interests you. Ignore it if you don't. And, as always, caveat emptor.

Mailvox: I'm so jealous

Dreadpiratesnuggles shows off his math:

That's 290 years... Ok, my bad, closer to 300 years vs. 800... So I was off by a measly 500 years! Relatively speaking, what's the difference?

Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that there's an executive at CNBC barking at his secretary: "Get this guy on the phone! We need to give him a show now!"

Mailvox: when the moniker fits

Puzzled wonders:

It must be that you don't understand our electoral system. Unless Petrouka gets -more- electoral votes than either Kerry or Bush, he will not be elected. Drawing votes away from Bush only add's to Kerry's margin.

I find it incomprehensible that anyone would think that Kerry would be a better pro-life vote, when powerful figures in his party are calling pro-lifers terrorists, and Christians a greater threat than Al-Qaeda.

Who said Kerry would be a better pro-life vote? It's quite clear that Bush=Kerry when it comes to abortion. Neither of them will end it, neither of them will return the issue to the states, neither of them will restrict it. Even if one takes the unprincipled pragmatic approach, it makes absolutely no difference if you vote for Bush or Kerry with regards to this particular issue. Bush has a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican-nominated Supreme Court... if he has not acted, then he will not act.

Oh, sure, Bush affects to feel bad about abortion... wait a minute, so does Kerry. Okay, Kerry will allow money to go directly to fund foreign abortions, while Bush will require it to go through the United Nations first. There IS a difference!

Even a pro-abortion Libertarian would be a better pro-life vote than George Bush, as he would be willing to return the issue to the States, where it belongs.

Mailvox: Is America safer?

Bill responds:

1) We've stopped one of the major terrorist sponsoring states in the region, and rounded up several leaders of terrorist organizations.

2) We've killed thousands of militant islamo-wackos, a small start, but a start. If we'd pulled out as soon as the Iraqi government had toppled Iraq would definitely be another Ashcanistan.

3) We now have a major military base in the mid-east that ain't in Saudi.

4) We've removed the principal sponsor of Palestinian terrorists. Saddam was a powerful symbol for them, and provided money and training as well.

5) Just the reforms that have happened to date are putting serious pressure on Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. If things continue to improve the pressure on them builds.

1) No, we haven't. Iraq was number five, at most, behind Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Egypt. Iraq wasn't funding anyone except the Palestinian Authority. Of course, so was he United States.

2) Afghanistan turned into Afghanistan after a decade of Soviet occupation. What makes you think Iraq won't regardless of how long we stay there? It is estimated that 10 percent of the global Muslim population is sympathetic to the jihad. Since the Soviet butchery in Afghanistan and Chechnya hasn't exactly proved dissuasive to this point, I don't think a few thousand more can be considered as amounting to much.

3) As you note, we already had plenty of bases in the Middle East. Why did we need to leave our bases in Saudi Arabia? Why will the new Iraqi government, or the next Iraqi government, prove to be any more cooperative regarding our bases there? How are the new bases indicative of more protection than the old ones?

4) Total nonsense. We are personally guaranteeing the safety of the most powerful symbol of the Palestinian terrorists. We are also helping pay his salary.

5) This has nothing to do with America being safer now than five years ago.

I note that none of these addresses my point that none of our actions in Iraq has made America one iota safer from terrorist attack than before. Simply refusing to provide visas to terrorist-sponsoring countries would have accomplished more. This is neither a defensive war against the global jihad nor preparation for it, instead, the administration has weakened the national resolve for any such future conflict.

But then, I don't expect anything but incompetence and unintended consequences from the Federal government anyhow, so I'm not exactly surprised. Tolstoy addresses this rather nicely in his section on administrators. More on that later.

Another whitewash

That noted liberal Democrat, Paul Craig Roberts of the Creators Syndicate, is apparently less than impressed by the Senate's ability to report on the administration's misdeeds:

The only open question is whether President Bush was an active participant in the disinformation or was deceived like the American public. If he knowingly participated in the deception, he must be impeached. If he was deceived by his own appointees, why hasn't he fired them? Bush's reelection would signify that the American people lack the competence or character for self-rule.

The report from the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence proves once again that government lacks the moral integrity to conduct an investigation. The senators did not bring responsibility to any individuals for a gratuitous invasion that has generated hatred of, and insecurity for, Americans for decades to come. Instead, the senators' report held accountable that which cannot be held accountable: "the process."

We were told that 9/11 was due to the failures of flawed procedures. So, too, was the incorrect intelligence on Iraq, according to the Senate Select Committee. In neither case are any individuals to be held responsible. Nothing, it seems, bears any significance except for the increasingly fictional economic statistics and the bureaucratic machinery. Ideologies aside, Washington appears to be evolving into something more weirdly Soviet by the week.

As to those who are still convinced that the Iraqi occupation is making Americans safer, I have a simple question: how? If I had millions of dollars in Saudi money, a cadre of fanatical followers and connections into Russia via Chechnya and China via Ningxia Hu, the fate of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist regime, for good or for ill, would have absolutely no effect whatsoever on my ability to send a few young men to flight school or to plant a black market explosive device in a shipping container bound for Boston Harbor.

Think, people. Think.

Lenin, inflation and the destruction of capitalism

John Maynard Keynes on Lenin and inflation:

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity (or fairness) of the existing distribution of wealth.

As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

Bill Fleckenstein, the market analyst and hedge fund owner who continues to hammer away at the disaster that Alan Greenspan and the politicians of both parties are creating for us, quoted this in the context of the inflation that the CPI charade no longer hides. He also adds that he is concerned about the likelihood of a medium-term market crash:

My gut feeling -- though there is no way for me to quantify it -- is that probability of a crash at some point in the next six months to a year is far higher now than in 1987. One subjective reason is that I just don't think it's possible for all the thousands of hedge funds and hundreds of thousands or millions of people who think they're talented enough to outwit the stock market -- and who believe they can play this game of speculating in an overvalued, dangerous stock market -- to get out whole....

Personally, as I often note, I am short stocks (mostly tech stocks), own gold and silver (as well as gold and silver mining stocks) and foreign currencies.

I haven't gone short yet - I'm waiting until the next mini-bounce plays out, but that otherwise describes my essential positions as well. This is NOT the time to be long stocks, as it does not look as if the Fed can extend the Wave 2 countertrend any longer. I learned my lesson from last time - don't fight the Fed, but instead wait until they throw in the towel. The Fed can't defeat the market, but it can delay the inevitable for a while.

Why Bush is a poor pro-life vote

Many conservatives have tried to overlook President Bush’s liberal tendencies in hopes that at the least G. W. Bush will appoint a pro-lifer to the Supreme Court, and in so doing, help overturn Roe v. Wade. Their hope is not only without evidence, it is plainly contrary to evidence. In his prime-time television debates with Gore, George Bush flatly denied that he had a pro-life litmus test for Court appointees.... His record as Governor of Texas shows that he does indeed appoint pro-abortion judges, so we should not be surprised if President Bush were to appoint pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court.

Frequently displayed as evidence of President Bush’s pro-life views is his signing of legislation when he was Texas’ Governor that forbade underage girls from getting abortions without parental consent. The pro-life community roared their approval: a 13-year-old girl can’t get an aspirin without parental consent, why should she be allowed to undergo a surgical or chemical abortion without parental consent?! That’s sound pro-life legislation, right? George Bush must be pro-life, huh? Wrong! Did you realize that this piece of legislation was nullified by a Texas Supreme Court decision that ruled 6-3 that an unexceptional 17-year-old could get an abortion without telling her parents? The New York Times reported, "It was, after all, appointees of Gov. George W. Bush who took the lead on the issue…" You see, it was G.W. Bush who appointed or approved of four of the court’s nine justices and has been a political patron for a fifth, Harriet O’Neill, who wrote the majority opinion in the parental notification case. If this is what President Bush means by "strict constructionists," then any hope that he will appoint a pro-lifer to the Federal bench is baseless.

This abundantly-footnoted article, written by the founder of a pro-life physicians group, should suffice to explode the last principled reason to vote for the Republican candidate. (Anyone who believes a Democrat won't leap at the chance to use the war on method as an excuse to continue strengthening central state power is ignorant of both US military history and dialectic.) Bush has already shown that he is unwilling to face down the Democrats despite having a majority in both House and Senate; if elected to a second term he will surely cave to the minority, as is his wont, and give us more Supreme Court judges in the mode of David Souter.

I assert that both Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party are demonstrably better than Bush on abortion, despite the Libertarian Party platform's pro-choice policy. (Badnarik, by the way, is openly pro-life on the grounds that the unborn child has a same right to life as any other individual.) Returning the question of abortion to the states, as the Libertarians demand, would end 1000x the abortions that the Partial-Birth Abortion ban has, and as the PBA ban is all that the Republican President, House, Senate and Supreme Court have been willing to do in four years of power, it is safe to assume that this is all that they will do.

If you're not voting for Bush because you believe in him, but simply because "he can win", then you might as well stop paying attention to the campaign and go cheer for the Yankees this summer. This is not principle, it is simply bandwagon-hopping. And, as I have previously demonstrated, political pragmatism is nothing more than long-term self-immolation.

Things I wish I'd thought of first

Mark Steyn helpfully points out that Palestinian official Saeb Erekat is of course, "democratically elected", being presently in the ninth year of a five-year term. And in like manner, if Yasser Arafat was elected President of the Palestinian Authority in 1996, shouldn't there have been another election by now?

Or is this just the sort of complicated subject that we can't expect the mainstream media to address? After all, it does have more pressing matters of interest to cover, such as the soda preferences of the Democratic presidential candidates.

Mailvox: the gorilla can read Nietzsche...

RB writes:

America is dead. If it is, what a lively corpse it is! The old bad old Abraham is asserted again- The good Framers and the clear and understandable language of the Constituion is asserted again- Instead of rehashing all of this, let;s just remind you of one small thing, to set the assertions you made into the ground-as in six feet under!

Thomas Jefferson, who is held up by you and yours as the American philosopher of small republics and limited goernemt, went and did what he, Jefferson, called an illegal act, and destroyed the Constituion-his words, not mine. What was that act? Why the Louisiana Purchase! First off, the national government had no powers to purchase the land, and Jefferson himself pointed that out! Yet he defended the action saying that if left to the States, the opportunity to expand the nation, which was necessary, according to him, would have slipped away! Oh yes, you'll want a source-see Jefferson's letter to Beveridge, in late 1803. It's in the collections of Jefferson's papers, which you can read at any library- To continue-Who got the money from the purchase? Why Napoleon Bonaparte, who used the money to finance his military conquest of Europe! and you and the rest have accused Clinton of selling out to China, of Bush's deals with the bin Laden family(see Moore's film) or Reagan's arms for hostages etc etc ad nauseum. Again, What was the effect of the Purchase? to increase the size of the nation by double, and that Purchase area was Federal terriroty, not States, not in 1803! So the national government had increased its own land size to be larger than the combuned States!

What does this prove, except that the founding fathers knew whereof they spoke with regards to the temptations of State power? The fact that Jefferson was tempted and gave into corruption says nothing about the fact that today's government is neither small nor limited as it was conceived to be. And every act of illicit government expansion is defended as being necessary. The public is not generally known to welcome dictatorship, after all, unless they have been sufficiently alarmed by the presumed alternatives.

And here's the next problem. the French thinker Montesque, argued that the bigger a nation becomes the more the power is centralized and the more tyrannical it becomes--gee, what if he was right? Then Jefferson went from the small republic limiited government man to the Hamiltonian tyrant in one fell swoop- According to Lew Rockwell, when I pointed this out, Jefferson was a good political thinker but a bad President-so what else is new? And Jefferons was one of the Framers, one of the Founders, indeed, he was at least the assistant head coash after Washington, he was the main architect, with Madison of the Founding documents-If he can go wrong, then it is all up! and was all up then- But what if he was right, and what if the Framers, ressurected today, would nod approvingly at what has happened? I am quite sure that Hamilton would!

So am I. So is L. Neil Smith, the libertarian, which is why his sci-fi villains are called "Hamiltonians". But the rest would almost certainly not. The fact that it is difficult to keep a Republic is why Franklin famously said: "if you can keep it." Any sober analysis will suffice to demonstrate that we have not.

Among Libertarians and libertarians, I have found, after all of the rhe rhetoric about the Constituion and Declaration has died down, they will admit that they prefer the Articles of Confederation, that the Articles have the provisions for that "voluntary association" which the Constituion doesn't. that the Articles say that States are sovereign, which the Constituion doesn't and that the many word and phrases, such as "absoltelu" in the Articles "elastic clause" do not appear in the Contituion-which gives the new independnent executive, judiciary and Vongress great latitutes for expansion of powers. recall that there was no independent executive in the Articles! So, in your column, you have again, failed American histroy, American Constitional law, and American politics. and America isn't anywhere near dead-you sound like the Carter administration people when they campaigned against Reagan!

Sure, many libertarians would prefer the Articles to the Constitution. But they would also prefer Constitutional government to what we have now. The Constitution certainly allows some latitude, but nowhere near so much as is being claimed by the three branches of the federal government. RB may have failed to understand the difference between America the nation-state and America the concept, he has clearly failed to disprove my assertions, as well, one is forced to assume, fifth-grade spelling, but at least he has succeeded in proving that one can read American history without being burdened by the heavy weight of understanding it.

Mailvox: it's different now

DVH writes:

America is very different now than it was in the days of the founding fathers; such has to be taken into account when thinking about what is ideal government in the US today. In the old days you had lots of small independent farmers; nowadays you have huge numbers of people all working for corporations owned by a few people. Need I list all the technological changes since the days of the founding fathers?

I think Count Tolstoy already addressed this argument: "- mentioning "our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "our days" and that human characteristics change with the times -"

Apparently DVH doesn't see that most of the significant changes have nothing to do with technological change. What technology was involved in the creation of the corporation and granting it legal personhood? What technological imperative required a shift from Congressionally-issued metal money to privately-issued paper notes? The founding fathers understood that while the world will change, human nature doesn't. Their vision was conceived to limit the depredations of the latter, and is every bit as relevant today as it was 230 years ago.

A one-time mistake

Ridge's department last week asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place. Justice was specifically asked to review a recent letter to Ridge from DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the newly created U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Soaries noted that, while a primary election in New York on September 11, 2001, was quickly suspended by that state's Board of Elections after the attacks that morning, "the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election." Soaries, a Bush appointee who two years ago was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Congress, wants Ridge to seek emergency legislation from Congress empowering his agency to make such a call.

There haven't been any major terrorist attacks in the USA since 9/11. That cynical voice inside my head says that providing this "statutory authority" to the federal government will all but assure that we'll have one soon after it is provided.

Culture and hope

Adam Gopnik writes in Paris to the Moon

The performance of Les Trois Petits Cochons, for instance, uses, with slight variations, many of the devices, not to mention the music of the Disney version of the story from the thirties. There are French touches, though. The catastrophe, or climax, comes when the wolf pretends to be a minor official comes to read the water meter. The pigs have to let him into the one remaining house; the French little pigs have to open the door to administration, even when it has an immense jaw and sixty white paper-mache teeth.

This is why there will never be a European Waco or Ruby Ridge. Perhaps in Switzerland, or New Europe, where decades of totalitarian rule have hardened the population's attitudes about government. But certainly not in France.

America is rather different. We have no long tradition of obedience. We are born rebellious, with the unruly expectation that individual liberty is our natural birthright. We must be educated, confused, fooled and propagandized non-stop in order to even become manageable. Rage Against the Machine is a good example of this significant cultural difference; despite being left-wing pop icons, ideologically pledged to the expansion of central government power, they once notably preached: "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me," and, just in case one happened to somehow escape the message, repeated it 26 times before punctuating it with one last exclamatory "motherfucker!"

This is not exactly the ideal open-the-door-to-the-government-wolf spirit.

America the idea may be dead, for now. But the recalcitrant individuality that gave her birth still lives, and we can hope that as long as this stubborn fire still burns in American hearts, we may find her again.

Mogambo on debt

Imagine my surprise when I find it is Bill Buckler calling me! And he tells me that my wife says that I would love it, just love it, if he would call me up and finish talking about the increase in debt. I look at the doctor. I think about what he said. I look at the phone. And then I say to Bill, "Sure! I'd love to hear about it!" And so he goes on to say, "Since the beginning of 1998, total US borrowings have climbed from about 255% of US GDP to 302%!"

302% of GDP! My puny little brain is kicked into action, as I think to myself "This is a new record!" Amazingly, I think I know why he ended the sentence with an exclamation point! And look! I'm doing it, too!

And since there must be some reason why those exclamation points are suddenly everywhere, I will remark that this is higher than the 260% of GDP recorded at the height of the market in 1929, and we all know how well THAT turned out!

It's probably worth pointing out that cumulative US mortgage debt is now $9.618 trillion, which represents 99.298 percent of cumulative US personal income, at $9.686 trillion. I don't know if the banks can manage to push this number up beyond 100 percent, but considering that the government is deeply underwater itself, it's pretty clear that the nation is essentially bankrupt.

"But we owe it to ourselves!" some might protest. Except that we don't. We owe it to China, Japan, and the private bank that is the Federal Reserve. The question is this: who is worse off when the debt gets can no longer be sustained by continued borrowing or quiet inflation, the foreign investors, the bank or the indebted public?

It's hard to disagree with Buckler's conclusion:

As I am too busy wailing and cramming boxes of ammunition into a backpack to continue right now, I will leave it to the clever Mr. Buckley to come up with a simile to beautifully sum it all up. Rising to the challenge, he writes, "There is no 'solution' to this dilemma, just as there is no 'solution' for a man who finds himself in a barrel on the lip of Niagara Falls."

Enjoy the silence....

M3 inflation

Percent change at seasonally adjusted annual rates
03 Months from Feb 2004 TO May 2004: 11.3
06 Months from Nov 2003 TO May 2004: 08.2
12 Months from May 2003 TO May 2004: 05.4

Considering that the stock market is basically flat for the year with this sort of monetary stimulus, the picture is not a pretty one.

UPDATE - had two copy and paste errors in the original post. We apologize to anyone alarmed at the thought that perhaps Mr. Stross's transdimensional mathematics had seized control of this blog. M3's pace continues to further increase, by the way, according to the latest reports:

M-3 was up a whopping 31.7 billion for the latest reporting week on a seasonally adjusted basis. It is now up 61.2 billion over the past 3 weeks, and $204 billion over the past ten weeks, rising at an annualized clip of 11.7 percent.

Hijacking comment threads

Look, I don't mind if a thread is hijacked by what turns out to be a more interesting conversation for those involved. But please do not intrude on other threads because you think something unrelated is particularly exciting or important - barring a stock market collapse or another 9/11, in either of those cases, please interrupt away. There's enough nonsense and spam floating around via email; we don't need to add to it here, at least not unfiltered.

Had the latest offender, (who shall go unnamed since it was done in innocence), bothered to email me first, I could have told him that he was getting worked up about an old Internet hoax. This was quite obvious in the early versions as they cited bills that did not exist.

Mailvox: seeing no evil

Bill writes of the so-called "smart" missiles:

Yeah, what we should have done was say "Hey Saddam, we have a few hundred special ops folks hiding in Baghdad and other major cities, hide-and-seek starts.... Now!"

It seems to escape Bill that this is an admission on his part that a) the government does lie; and b) uses the mainstream media to disseminate its propaganda. The point is not that the government should have endangered its troops by telling the truth about how it was bombing Baghdad - of course they shouldn't have, although I don't see why any explanation was required in the first place - but that the US government is perfectly willing to lie and use the media to propagate its lies when it sees fit to do so.

This logically should logically lead Bill to the next two questions: (1) What else are they lying about? (2) What is their justification for doing so?

Finally, I find it hard to believe that anyone would believe that Saddam didn't know perfectly well that our special ops were crawling all over Iraq both the first and second time around, smart missiles or no smart missiles. The frightening thing about special ops is that the target knows they're out there, he just doesn't know where, or how to find them.

Review: The Atrocity Archives

The Atrocity Archives
Charles Stross
Golden Gryphon Press

Rating: 8 of 10

There are those books where the cleverness of the author is irksome, where one cannot escape the vague impression that the reader is expected to stop and applaud the literary gymnastics at the end of every chapter. In The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross does not engage in pyrotechnic wordsmithery, but his cleverness is unmistakable.

Stross, (we dearly hope), has conjured up The Laundry from the bowels of his imagination, an esoteric department devoted to cleaning up those nasty messes that result when dimensions collide. The occultic Laundry is one part NSA, one part MI5 and two parts bureaucratic nightmare, as even the most awe-inspiring eldritch horrors are somehow reduced to matters of paperwork and departmental infighting. It is as if 007 was fired for sexual harassment and replaced by 013, a Dilbert in uneasy possession of Lord Voldemort's powers. The complex synthesis is a most unlikely one, and yet Stross pulls it off with effortless expertise.

A longtime technology columnist for Computer Shopper, Stross presents a world in which modern science and mathematical theory have been used to harness occult power from... elsewhere. The Cold War, it seems, was even more grim and cold than anyone imagined, as the arms race involved far more than the comparatively prosaic threat of nuclear weapons. An insignificant pawn for a minor player in the Great Game, Bob Howard has recently traded the boredom of a desk job for what he hopes will prove a more exciting position in the field. But in this environment, one can never tell when things squamous and rugose will unexpectedly liven up a tedious day at the office with a moment of sheer horror.

Story: 4 of 5. Surely one of the strangest thrillers ever written, the fantastic and science fiction elements only add to the tension. Yes, there are girls that must be rescued and worlds that must be saved, but the unique nature of the threats involved, both wordly and otherwordly, keep the pages ever-turning. There are actually several stories contained within one meta-story, as a related novella, The Concrete Jungle, follows the Archives proper.

Style: 4 of 5. The text is gripping and entertaining throughout, as the juxtaposition of everyman's office life with the omnipresent possibility of sudden and horrible death is quite amusing. Stross uses his jargon judiciously, piling it on for maximum effect at times, but never allowing it to slow the story down. Like Umberto Eco and Dan Brown, he manages the neat trick of making the reader feel smarter for having immersed himself in his book.

Characters: 3 of 5. Stross's Howard - an homage to a genre legend - is an amusing protagonist. He is not at all the cliched reluctant hero, but his self-deprecating nature makes his occasional self-doubt all the more real. Stross, for all that he is manifestly an vision writer, still manages to draw his characters with precision and more than a little wry humor.

Creativity: 4.5 of 5. Yes, this is a synthetic creation. His influences - Lovecraft, Stephenson, Fleming, Adams - are obvious, and yet the wizard's melting pot prduces something new, different and even stylish in a technocratic manner. Stross is perhaps the best "new" writer the science fiction genre has produced since Neal Stephenson; he is certainly the most interesting.

Text Sample:

The fact of the matter is that most traditional magic doesn't work. In fact, it would all be irrelevant, were it not for the Turing theorem - named after Alan Turing, who you'll have heard of if you know anything about computers.

That kind of magic works. Unfortunately....

The theorem is a hack on discrete number theory that simultaneously disproves the Church-Turing hypothesis (wave if you understand that) and worse, permits NP-complete problems to be converted into P-complete ones. This has several consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms - translation: all your bank account are belong to us - and ending with the ability to computationally generate a Dho-Nha geometry curve in real time.

This latter item is just slightly less dangerous than allowing nerds with laptops to wave a magic wand and turn them into hydrogen bombs at will. Because, you see, everything you know about the way this universe works is correct - except for the little problem that this isn't the only universe we have to worry about. Information can leak between one universe and another. And in a vanishingly small number of the other universes there are things that listen, and talk back - see Al-Hazred, Nietszche, Lovecraft, Poe, etcetera. The many-angled ones, as they say, live at the bottom of the Mandlebrot mathematics, except when a suitable incantation in the platonic realm of mathematics - computerised or otherwise - draws them forth.

(And you thought running that fractal screensaver was good for your computer?)

Book reviews

Nate has a little Pan-Galactic book club aborning at his site, which made me wonder if it might be interesting to put together a community book review collection over at voxday.net. I have a distinct review form in mind, and I'm thinking that if Digital Cowboy and I designed the forms for automated entry, the reasonably well-read collection of people here would be able to put together a fairly solid selection of book reviews that might be of use to people in short order.

Is anyone amenable to the suggestion? Let me know if you:
a) like the idea and would like to contribute reviews;
b) like the idea and would like to read reviews;
c) think it's a dumb idea as one can find plenty of reviews at Amazon.

Basically, I like to see reviews hitting the four distinct aspects of a novel: Story, Style, Characters and Creativity. For example, I would rate Tanith Lee very high on style, somewhat high on creativity, and much lower on story and characters, whereas Rowlins would tend to score much higher on characters and story than on style.

The election is moot?

We spend a lot of time discussing the merits of third party voting here, but as I've now run across a fourth distinct source that believes that the election will be canceled in between now and November, I thought that I'd at least bring one of the more interestingly paranoid theories to your attention. Is any of this real? I couldn't possibly say. The only thing of which I am sure is that there are real unanswered questions about the events of 9/11, that there a number of what appear to be logical holes in the official story, and that history suggests that there is more of a power struggle going on beneath the surface than the average person following the national media would be likely to understand.

As a tangential example, I happen to know from a direct source that the story about smart missiles hitting Baghdad was false. The missiles weren't that smart, instead, there were spotters who had infiltrated into Baghdad who were using lasers to guide the missiles into their targets. A minor inaccuracy, sure, but a blatant misrepresentation of the facts by the government nonetheless. As to the assertion that Israel tested out some of its tactical - if tactical is the word for something that can strike from 600 miles away - nukes in Iraq, I can't say except that the radiation reported does seem far too high for it to be nothing but expended rounds of depleted uranium.

Conspiracy theory is the most accurate theory of history, the problem with using it to understand what is happening is that one seldom has any idea of which conspiracy is real and likely to be successful until it is all over. Lenin's takeover of Russia was a conspiracy after all; how many attempts to take over the USA have been made, attempts of which we have never heard? Given Roman history, it stands to reason that more than one individual would very much like to take control of the most powerful military and wealthiest economy in the world.

AJ: Do you think the globalists are going to have the will to carry out another massive attack here in the U.S. to try to get control back over the population and get their agenda back on track? Or do you think they've calculated, computed as you said, that that will blow up in their face because so many people now know who the real terrorists are?

DGP: That's a two-prong question, Alex. I think it deserves a studied answer. The only thing I can say is I'm not sure how it will turn out. But it is very dangerous.

AJ: From watching the globalists, I think they had a plan, they are still following a plan but I think they are shook-up. I think, from the evidence, in fact I know from the evidence, that a lot of things they planned haven't gone according to schedule and so they don't know what to do right now.

DGP: This is correct. I think it's personified in the persona of the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. They almost got him in Baghdad when they fired the salvo, one night, of weaponry and they scared Paul Wolfowitz off. He's ready to resign or get the hell out.

AJ: You think that was U.S. forces doing that?

DGP: I believe it. It was very well planned again and ..

AJ: Yeah, only U.S. forces would know that he would be there. Yeah.

DGP: That is correct. And the precision of those weapons that came into the hotel. There were eleven rounds in all and I can speak from authenticity that they scared the hell out of Paul Wolfowitz.

I have to admit, I did wonder about that mysterious attempted hit on Wolfowitz, as the modus operandi was very distinct from the usual suicide vehicle, RPG ambush or gang of gunmen. It may a priori be a frightening thing to think that there may be elements in the military now in the midst of planning a coupe-de-etat, but then, it's not necessarily the case that they are the bad guys either. Perhaps, if they are serious about their oaths to the Constitution, we might even see a return to Constitutional government. In these profoundly interesting times, the only thing of which we can be certain is that we do not have it now.

Could this simply be Y2K-style fearmongering writ large? Definitely. But as with Y2K, we'll find out soon enough.

It's a Massachusetts thing, you wouldn't understand

From the Borowitz Report:

EDWARDS ASKS KERRY TO STOP GRABBING HIS ASS

Public Displays of Affection ‘Distracting,’ Says Kerry’s No. 2

After a mere two days on the campaign trail, the first signs of tension between John Kerry and running mate John Edwards emerged today as Sen. Edwards requested, firmly and unequivocally, that Mr. Kerry stop grabbing his ass. “I think Sen. Kerry has made it very clear in our joint appearances that he is happy to have me on the ticket,” Mr. Edwards told reporters. “He really doesn’t have to prove it by repeatedly grabbing my ass.”

At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania today, Mr. Edwards was in the middle of a speech when he emitted a high-pitched yelp, apparently in response to yet another unexpected display of affection from Sen. Kerry. “Jesus, John,” a visibly annoyed Mr. Edwards said to Mr. Kerry, who merely stood behind him smiling mischievously.

In a sign that Mr. Kerry’s unwanted embraces may be taking their toll on the newly-minted vice-presidential candidate, Mr. Edwards departed from his prepared remarks, telling hs audience, “There are two Americas – one that gets to grab ass, and one that gets its ass grabbed.”

Intriguingly, a source confirmed that Mr. Kerry’s penchant for ass-grabbing was the principal reason Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Missouri) did not make the Democratic ticket: “The whole idea of it grossed Dick out.”

Elsewhere, indicted former Enron CEO Ken Lay today announced that he would seek amnesty by applying for a position as an Iraqi insurgent.

And in Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft told all Americans to be on the lookout for a terror suspect disguised as an obese man wearing glasses and a baseball cap, accompanied by a documentary film crew.

If they have the Comunards play the convention, we'll know it's a serious relationship.

Hoops and hubris

I remember shooting some hoops with my neighbor back in eighth grade. He was a junior, and a star shooting guard on one of the best basketball teams in the state. One afternoon in his driveway, he rapidly fired five shots from distance, in each case hitting nothing but net. He looked at me and said: "Damn, I'm good!"

I was feeling that after turning in next week's column today. It's not everyone who can draw a direct analogy between the Dalai Lama and the state of the nation. Ten points for anyone who can correctly ascertain the fundamental point of the column from that hint.

A big fat slow pitch floating over home plate

"I've been covering Washington and politics for 30 years [said one wire-service photographer]. I can say I've never seen this much touching between two men, publicly." Indeed, editors determined to preserve the appearance of a little presidential dignity and campaign decorum on "the trail" are frustrated in their search for photographs suitable for a respectable mainstream newspaper. The photographers, keen competitors for the most startling shot of the day, naturally love it.

Karl Rove was a fool not to take my advice to pin John Kerry's ears to the wall over homogamy a few months ago. Now that the sweet-lovin' hugbuddies are getting so very personal in public, he'd have to be a complete idiot should he fail to take that ball, run with it up the field and spike the hootenanny out of that sucker under the goalposts.

I hope someone has the foresight to play "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" at their next joint press event, should they decide to get a little less frisky.

You get what you deserve

Candie believes she can get what she wants:

I think it's time you jump into the time machine and return to 2004. I don't think that just because I'm a woman I have to choose between a nice job or a nice husband. I'm not going to just lay down and play the 'I'm a woman so I'm going to be submissive and silent' game. If I want a college education and a doctorate, I'll get it. If I want a husband and a family, I'll get that too. But I'm not going to sacrifice one or the other just because I don't have the same equipment you do.

Candie's comment immediately brought to mind War and Peace, in which Tolstoy mocked those who believe that basic human realities change over time: "- mentioning "our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "our days" and that human characteristics change with the times -"

There's a huge gap between "submissive and silent" and "tyrannical bitch that never shuts up and brooks no disagreement"; what is frightening about these so-called "strong" women who are so emotionally fragile that they can neither bear nor defend themselves against criticism is that they can't see it. They are so terrified of being viewed as outdated by those they've chosen as their peers - the Sisterhood - that they don't even dare look at the situation with their eyes open and judge the facts for themselves.

It sounds to me as if Candie will likely not only get what she wants, she'll get even more. A degree, a career, a husband, a divorce. Perhaps it she'll marry a man who will one day realize that he doesn't want to be married to a woman who is a bad wife and a worse mother, more likely, she'll grow bored and discontent with the spineless jellyfish that is the sort of man these women tend to marry.

If you want to have it all, you'll likely end up with far less than you could have had.

Why there is hope

Here's why I believe that there's no reason to despair when America is again presented with a choice between Tweedle-corporatist and Tweedle-socialist this November. Consider the following facts:

1. John Kerry feels the need to lie about when life begins.
2. John Kerry feels the need to disguise his arch-liberal voting record.
3. John Kerry feels the need to pose for pictures killing birds with guns.
4. George Bush is unwilling to openly support the assault weapons ban.
5. George Bush is afraid to openly declare his support for LOST.

There is still some chance that the American vision can be reborn without a journey into chaos as long as those most dedicated to destroying it feel the need to conceal their true intentions. Sure, the masses are stupid and easily fooled, and the chances are very high that things will have to fall apart under the weight of the central State before the vision can be renewed. But there is hope.

Mailvox: strong, scary women

Dian flexes her muscles and writes:

Actually the friends in my circle are all highly intelligent college graduates and/or self-made women (read: VPs, Tech Writers in Silicon Valley, Managers, etc.). This happens to scare the bejesus out of most men.

As a result, my circle of friends have married men who are either weaker in intelligence, education, or accomplishments than the males whom Vox proposes that most women marry "up" to. That is not to say we do not adore our husbands, who are construction workers, drivers, and techs.

Now, first, there's absolutely nothing wrong in marrying "down". But for a "highly intelligent college graduate" to say that female intelligence can "scare the bejesus out of most men" is absolutely risible. First, such females' peers aren't the least bit intimidated, as they've been using such females for at least four solid years before graduating from college, and another two to three years before grad school is done. That cures most of the intelligent males of any desire to waste any more time on what is surely the most conflict-prone, high maintenance group of people on the planet.

It's entirely possible that smart women scare less intelligent men - I wouldn't know - but it's interesting to see how even smart, successful women attempt to evade responsibility for their failures. "It's not that I'm an unpleasant bitch that no one wants to be around, it's just that I'm so smart and strong and pretty that everyone is afraid. And in the place of the Dark Lord, there will be a Dark Queen! All shall love me and despair!"

I have news for Dian and everyone else prone to swallowing the Myth of the Strong Woman. Most men don't fear women. Not at all. While some men may be appear to be afraid of their wives or girlfriends, their actual fear is that if they behave the "wrong" way, their wives won't have sex with them. Those are two entirely different concepts. Fear of the strong woman" is nothing more than projection that reveals the inherent fear that the physically weaker sex naturally has of the stronger.

Now, Camille Paglia would argue that all men have an instinctive psycho-sexual fear of the cthonic Dionysian Great Mother, thus accounting for the rival Apollonian neuroses of homosexuality and the Church, but this is far outside the scope of Dian's assertion as it applies to all women, not merely the educated, intelligent and financially successful.

The Terrible Twosome take Broadway

I just thought that the following exchange from the Gargler's blog deserved a re-airing:

NATE: Acceptable Man Behavior...

3) If your daddy, or grand-daddy dies, you get to cry.
4) Crying at any other time for any other reason is unacceptable....

BANE: I'll cry any damn time I want to. I am very sensitive. I will probably cry while I am whipping your invincible ass. I cry where appropriate in movies. And then I blow my nose in the hair of the girl in front of me, and cry while I whip her boyfriend's un-understanding ass. Your post makes me sniffle a little. God gave yuh tear ducts for more than clearing gunsmoke from your bloodshot eyes. Dammit.

NATE: Great. This is what I have to look forward to. When the shit hits the fan.. No doubt I'll end up stuck in a foxhole with Bane... I'll be cold... tired... and sittin' there listenin' to him cry. ***NOTE TO SELF*** Add suicide pill to Bug-out-bag.

Ah, yes, if Shakespeare had only been a crotchety, paranoid Southron, he would have dreamed of writing dialogue like this.

Unfaithful women

Everyone knows men who refuse to grow up. Most of them have the good sense to avoid marriage and children like the plague, knowing full well that they are unsuited for it. But this Newsweek article appears to demonstrate that some women, too, are developmentally challenged, and what is pehaps worse, are capable of becoming wives and mothers without either state propelling them beyond a child's self-centered and superficial grasp of the world and how it operates.

In retrospect, Nadine understands what pushed her mother to be unfaithful. Beautiful and intelligent, her mother was stifled by her life's low horizons, and her father, a stand-up guy, was probably a little bit boring. The new man promised travel, wealth and adventure; her father was the kind of guy who'd say, "Why go around the world? You'll get plane-sick."

I find the notion that boredom is an understandable reason to be unfaithful to be somewhat strange, especially in light of the fact that women tend to marry "up" in terms of intelligence. Who do you think is more likely to be bored with the other? Furthermore, I know far more married couples wherein it is the woman, with her nesting instinct, who refuses to contemplate gallivanting around the world, and yet I've never heard any of these men consider it a reasonable rationalization for unfaithfulness.

Strangest of all is the idea that "Sex in the City" should have any influence on one's behavior. If a man began acting like James Bond because he was a fan of the films, one would think he was insane. Morality aside, any woman whose behavior and life philosophy is seriously affected by a television show should probably be committed to a mental institution on grounds of terminal shallowness.

The absurdity of fantasy

From Slashdot:

Q: Is LoTR really based on Christian Mythology?
A: Yes. Tolkien wanted to demonstrate that even the mentally and physically challenged were capable of success and that therefore we should love everyone, regardless of their defects.

Q: So who represents the mentally and physically challenged?
A: Well obviously the hobbits are the physically challenged ones here, but the central mentally challenged figure is Gandalf, responsible for the most horrible attack plan in literature.

Q: What's so horrible about a poorly armed team of two hobbits infiltrating Mordor?
A: Well, basically it ignores the fundamental strengths of the forces of light. Anyone who's played C&C or Warcraft knows that if you have an advantage in air units, you have to use it. Remember that elves can ride eagles, and that elven archers are incredibly potent - early on, Gimli [I think he means Legolas] dismounts a Nazgul with a single shot! With about a thousand eagles (given elven archers on each one), the forces of good would have matched up pretty well in the air against Mordor's air units: all nine of them. While the leader of the Nazgul cannot be killed by any living man, this does not prevent a team of twenty eagles from tearing him to little shreds, especially if Gandalf rode along for help. So basically an air battle would have been brief unmitigated slaughter of the Nazgul as about a thousand eagle-mounted elves blew them out of the sky in a hail of arrows.

Q: But I thought that there was some other book that said that the eagles wouldn't help?
A: We're not talking about some other stupid book here, we're talking about the Lord of the Rings. And in this book, the eagles most definitely help out, first by flying Gandalf off the tower and secondly by pitching into the Final Battle in full force, attacking ground units (stupid!) at great risk to themselves. So obviously they would have been content to take part in a brief airborne slaughter of the Nazgul.

Q: Ok so you defeat all Mordor's air units... then what?
A: Well with air superiority, you command the skies. Which means that you can fly right over Mount Doom and drop anything you want right in there... like a ring. Mordor only had nine airborne units, and with them out of the way Mordor has absolutely no way to prevent anyone from flying anywhere.

I love fantasy literature and I read it voraciously, but this sort of thing does amuse me to no end. Rare indeed is the author who can think through all the alternative possibilities, although ofttimes the illogic is truly ridiculous. So, we have a divine right of kings sans any religious divinity, the bizarre concept of Balance that is more reflective of an author's political moderation than any known historical religion and a plethora of poorly-reconstituted quasi-European principalities. And, as the Slashdot poster demonstrates, even the great ones slip up from time to time.

Of course, this flaw could have been easily addressed by showing an Eagle getting blown out of the sky by Sauron once it crossed into Mordor, but that's neither here nor there.

My favorite gay columnist

As you may know, I can't stand Andrew Sullivan. But while he doesn't know jack about anything outside matters homosexual and political intrigue, I do like Michelangelo Signorile's fearless approach to writing. Sen. Barbara Mikulski is the first to be outed in the approach to the Defense of Marriage Amendment showdown; it will be interesting to see how many others are booted out of the closet.

As the July 12 date nears for a vote on the federal marriage amendment, an outing panic has gripped Washington's political and media circles. Some gay activists have vowed to expose those closeted members of Congress who are supporting the amendment, as well as the closeted gay staffers of any member backing it. And it's not only right-wing Republicans who should be on notice. After initially indicating that she would vote against the constitutional amendment that would make gays and lesbians into second-class citizens, Sen. Barbara Mikulski's opposition to the amendment appears to have gone into the closet: Now that a vote is near, the Maryland Democrat—who is up for reelection in November—is suddenly not returning reporters' phone calls seeking her intentions on the vote, nor is she issuing any statements on the matter.

Mikulski's position on same-sex marriage isn't the only thing in her closet: The sexual orientation of the forever-unmarried 67-year-old has been an open secret for many years. But Mikulski has apparently always worried about what her working-class Democratic base in Maryland might think of her sexual orientation, making her irrationally petrified of ever discussing it (except to make heterosexual allusions)

Occam's Razor

The lineup of primetime speakers at the Republican Convention predictably reflects its New York location by giving prominent spots to the hosts, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki. But those enjoying the coveted spotlight also pay tribute to New York's former Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Joining the hosts will be other mavericks and dissidents who represent a minority in Ronald Reagan's GOP. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona's Senator John McCain, and California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will all be at the primetime podium. The only announced speaker who actually agrees with President Bush on major issues is Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georigia.

The decision to showcase rogue elephants as representatives of the modern Republican party is not the mark of a self-confident party establishment. If the lineup is intended to make an overwhelmingly conservative party attractive to swing voters, it does so by pretending to be something it's not. The Republican party seems to habitually internalize the criticisms of its opponents. When the only Reagan Republican to enjoy a prominent supporting role at the party's convention is a Democrat, the GOP has a serious identity problem. The Kerry-Edwards ticket is liberal. The Boston convention will not be featuring Louisiana senator John Breaux in an attempt to pretend otherwise.

Or perhaps they're not so roguish after all. Perhaps the party is electing to present itself as it truly is, the faction of strong interventionist government with a corporatist, nationalist edge. I do not agree with those who constantly find innocence in incompetence and apparent stupidity. Perhaps I've spent too much time around Italians, who are molto furbo in using one's assumption of their incompetence in order to get away with doing exactly as they please.

False assumptions

A former public school teacher writes:

Picture "advanced placement" 4th, 7th, or even 8th graders who do not know their addition tables, or the names (much less the sounds) of the vowels.

I not so long ago looked into some federal funds for pre-school reading programs under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. I was initially optimistic, as I had had excellent recent success getting three and four-year-olds reading fluidly (as high as the upper middle school level, in terms of proficiency). On inspection of the grant offer materials, I found I did not qualify - for the simple reason that the government "absolutely" did not encourage the teaching of actual reading to pre-schoolers. Recognition of the letters of the alphabet was the maximum acceptable.

If you are considering sending your kids to government schools (or have some there already), be advised that the above account accurately describes such schools. The only variance pertains to the "chatted, argued, screamed..." passage. That state of affairs, you see, exists only in those classrooms whose misguided adult patrons attempt to actually be teachers. Administrators take care of such infidels in short order - by making it crystal clear to these poor souls' pupils that they (the administrators) do not support them (the poor souls). By now, most classroom managers are compliant in their expected roles as social directors, abdicating these roles just long enough to cover the pretentious, perfunctory pablum required on today's standardized tests. Such classrooms are uniformly harmonious most of the time.

You do not have to accept that there is an organized conspiracy to keep our kids ignorant to get the picture. As long as you realize that things are exactly as they would be if there were such a conspiracy, that will suffice.

There are a number of assumptions that a parent foolish enough to put his child into the government schools must make in order to do so:

1) I turned out okay, therefore my child will be fine. This is based on the assumption that nothing in the school system has changed significantly in the quarter-century since you were in first grade. This is false.

2) The purpose of a school is to teach reading, writing and math. This, too, is false. Not only do the actions of most educational institutions belie this assumption, but often their charters, slogans and policies state outright that this is not the case.

3) My child's teachers care about my child's education. Of course they pretend to care, but does one really expect a teacher to publicly proclaim his true indifference? The average teacher doesn't care any more about how much the children in his class learn than the average office worker cares about his job. I don't know about you, but based on my office experience, that's a pretty high level of apathy. The testimony of this teacher and other former teachers like John Gatto certainly appears to support this line of reasoning.

A confession

While I must state that I have never experienced anything like the incident to which I alluded earlier. I am not without some experience of the martial homoerotism that is the sport of Rugby. After my 100 meter career ended with a series of blown hamstrings, I played a season of wingback for one of the top collegiate teams in the country.

I never really figured out all the rules, since as a wing, my only responsibility was to a) tackle the other wing if he had the ball, and b) run to touch and try to avoid the other wing if I had the ball. Simple enough.

However, I achieved some measure of distinction in my brief career as a rugger by being kicked out of my first game. I was quite shocked, having been led to believe that all was fair in love, war and rugby. What happened was that our fullback punted the ball high and deep, giving me about a forty-yard run at the Penn State winger, so I was at full-speed when I hit him shoulder-to-chest just as the ball arrived. I was about 75 percent sure I'd killed him and the crowd was going wild as our scrum had managed to come up with the ball, so I did a few repetitions of the shovel-of-dirt-over the shoulder thing, followed by firing off a few rounds in the air from a pair of imaginary six-shooters. And yes, I was prancing.

The crowd went completely berserk - we were playing at home - and the referee promptly threw me out of the game for excessive celebration. It was probably just as well, as I'm pretty sure the Nittany Lions were gunning for me after that. And on the plus side, it did cement my place on the team, which had been pretty iffy up to that point.

Mailvox: mind your sources

Waterboy proves to be a sucker for NFL propaganda:

Were the France-England numbers worldwide? The quote for the Super Bowl number indicates they were for the US only; do you have the worldwide estimate? Besides ex-pats and military, there is a growing following in Europe.

From the NFL: "Super Bowl XXXVII TV audience: Last year's game was the most watched program ever with 138.9 million viewers. The 10 most-watched programs in TV history are all Super Bowls." The NFL-Europe estimate for World Bowl XII: "World Bowl XII will reach an estimated worldwide television audience of 200 million in more than 150 [countries]."

France-England was also one of the bigger marquee games. What were the numbers for the final?

First, to correct a few misconceptions. The France-England game only featured one marquee team in TV terms, as contrary to what I would have imagined, England, Germany and Portugal were the the biggest TV draws in Euro 2004. The source for the 118 million watching the England-Portugal game was Initiative, a Nielsen-type company which tracks 52 markets. This is probably NOT a worldwide number, as UEFA has 50 members and Latvia was mentioned as one of the markets tracked. The numbers for the final are not yet available, but based on the quarterfinal numbers, Initiative predicted it would hit 150 million.

The NFL numbers are downright laughable, as I doubt that even two million people watched the World Bowl. You'll note that the NFL says the broadcast "would reach" 200 million, which is more than the global viewers it claims for the Super Bowl. Even this latter number is questionable, as Nielson reports the following:

In 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders for their first Super Bowl victory averaging a 40.7 rating with 88.6 million viewers in the U.S. Worldwide the game averaged more than 97 million viewers in 22 countries.

That's eight million more viewers with the addition of 21 countries, presumably the biggest and most important additional audiences since Nielsen is bothering to track them. That's 380,000 viewers per additional country. And we're supposed to believe that the other 178 countries in which the game is being televised, which aren't important enough to be tracked, are averaging the minimum of 236,000 viewers necessary to bring the total to the claimed 139 million?

In direct country-by-country comparison, it's easy to see that Euro 2004 games - not including the final - commanded much larger percentage of viewers in the countries involved. Furthermore, neutral viewership tended to run about half of those in the two countries involved. This is significant since the EU - which, keep in mind, is smaller than UEFA, has 380 million people to the USA's 293.

Euro 2004
Britain: ENGLAND v PORTUGAL 24.7M/59.8M = 41.3 percent
Holland: HOLLAND v LATVIA 7.6M/15.9M = 47.8 percent
USA: NEW ENGLAND vs CAROLINA 89.6M/293M = 30.6 percent

This shows that not only the quarterfinals, but even group stage games involving minor countries were of serious interest. In 2004, viewership was up 14 percent overall, compared to the increase of 1.3 percent from the 2000 to 2004 Super Bowls. In both 2000 and 2004, neutral viewership was somewhat more than half that of the two nations involved, but still extraordinarily high.

Euro 2000 final (France v Italy)
France 21.4M/ 59.3M = 36.1 percent
Italy 21.3M / 57.7M = 36.9 percent
Germany 18.4M / 83.2M = 22.1 percent

So, one can safely conclude that EU-wide, (which does not count large extra-EU UEFA countries such as Russia and the Ukraine), the average Euro game has viewership comparable to the Super Bowl even if one leaves out the larger-than-average viewership contributed by the two nations involved. As for the big games like the semis and final, there is simply no comparison. Taking the tournament as a whole, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that the Super Bowl and the NFL playoffs are relatively small fish by comparison.

A pox on both houses

118 million people tuned in to the first-round France-England match, which was decided in the final minutes. That figure trounces the 89 million-person American audience for the Super Bowl last year, which was the biggest television event of 2003; and the 90 million for the Super Bowl this year, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research.

Not only is the Euro 2004 tournament bigger than the Super Bowl, but nearly every game of the 31 involved blows it away in the ratings. In Holland, for example, the semifinal match with Portugal scored a 50 share - half of all televisions in the country were tuned to the game. Unlike American sports, there's no need to schedule around things, instead, everything else is scheduled around it.

Now, there are no bigger fans of the NFL than me. I'm such an old school purist that I'm still irritated about the 16-game schedule since it messed up all the old records. (Although, I admit, it's hard to deny that a longer season = more football, which is an obviously good thing.) But to be honest, the disdain that some football fans show for the Beautiful Game strikes me as a weird combination of ignorance and insecurity.

To a connoisseur of both sports, the two are perfectly complimentary. The latter half of the league seasons and the international tournaments are in the NFL offseason, and whereas the NFL is the ultimate game of pre-plotted cerebral strategy, soccer is the pinnacle of impromptu creativity. I simply laugh when I hear Philistines of either continent dismissing the other continent's favorite sport; such poorly founded contempt reveals nothing but the ironic snobbery of the ill-informed parochial. For every American sneering about low scores and Nancy boys, there is a European scoffing at martial homoeroticism and interminable breaks in the action.

A pox, I say, a pox on both houses.

Ding dong, the witch is dead

I can't say I'm terribly surprised to hear that it's Edwards. Why? Because John Kerry likes a mate with money. Heck, if Theresa goes bust in the upcoming bear market, we may well see John ditch her in favor of a Massachusetts Matrimonial with John-Boy.

The best news is that this should finish off any real threat of the Lizard Queen running for President. If Bush wins, Edwards will become the presumptive Democratic nominee. And if Kerry wins, well, Hillary's potential presidency is deader than a twice-staked vampire.

Finishing off Hillary, hmmmm, that alone might be reason to vote for Kerry... oh, relax, will you? I'm kidding!

The Original Cyberpunk strikes back

The OC writes:

This morning's P_Press carried another editorial decrying the small-mindedness of those who refuse to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Since I have the fullest confidence that they will ignore my rebuttal, I'm copying you on it.

Dear Sirs/Ms,

I already know that I hate okra, therefore I feel no need to go to a restaurant and spend $8 on some new okra dish just to see if it tastes different this time. Likewise, having seen Michael Moore's earlier films, I have every reason to expect that "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be just another revolting load of dishonest leftist agitprop.

The genius of film is that it is a highly emotive medium with a very fast information decay rate. A skilled filmmaker can use emotion, energy, and rapid non-sequitur cuts to leap over yawning chasms in logic and sense that would, if presented in print, cause the reader to stop short, sit up, and say, "What the hell is this idiot trying to say?"

Moore has already demonstrated that he is a highly skilled filmmaker, on the order of Leni Reifenstahl. But surely, by now, Moore and his distributors have recouped the cost of producing and distributing this film. If Moore is genuinely interested in promoting public discussion of the charges he makes in it, then let him donate the broadcast rights to PBS so that we can all see it for free and make up our own minds.

Until he does so, though, I feel no need to spend $8 from my entertainment budget to watch Michael "Barnum" Moore's latest carnival geek act.

Fedora Fix

One of the biggest headaches with Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core 2 is the cretinous way it handles PCMCIA wireless cards. I managed to get this machine working somehow, but never quite got the other one going despite numerous attempts... until finally the thing died thanks to Dell's quality motherboards.

So, I can't test this fix out, at least not until I get my next machine, but based on the responses on the Fedora forum it appears to finally have done the trick.

Open /etc/init.d/pcmcia
Change the line

# chkconfig: 2345 24 96

to

# chkconfig: 2345 09 96

Yes, it’s in a comment, but it seems it has meaning to the chkconfig command (chkconfig --level 2345 pcmcia reset)

What the fix appears to do is to load PCMCIA before the network instead of after it, as Fedora stupidly insists on doing by default. Obviously, the network cannot work if the drivers for the hardware upon which it rests is not yet loaded. This would seem to indicate that no one on the development team has a laptop with wireless PCMCIA, or Fedora would never have shipped the first time with this problem, let alone the second. Well, that's the hazard of using an Open Source OS; the good news is that now that the problem has finally been identified, it will be addressed in the next OS release.

Spiderflaws

Factual error: When Spider-man is fighting with Doc Ock and Doc Ock throws Spider-man through the overhead pedestrian bridge, Doc Ock throws Spider-man in the direction of travel of the train, and when passing through the bridge, Spider-man doesn't touch anything. When Spider-man comes out the other side, he is 'behind' Doc Ock (in terms of the direction of train travel). This implies that Spider-man has slowed down in the air - fair enough due to wind resistance - and so is traveling slower. However, Spider-man then hits Doc Ock, which implies he is now traveling faster. A physical impossibility (since the horizontal speed doesn't increase and decrease when thrown, only the vertical speed).

I have to confess, I'm one of those people who gets extremely annoyed when there are obvious plot holes. As one SF writer once said, any story that depends on someone being completely stupid shouldn't even be considered a story. This doesn't apply to the new Spiderman movie, necessarily, but this particular error makes me wonder if minor physics errors are one of the reasons that CGI action scenes often look noticeably wrong, even to those of us who couldn't work out the proper physics with a gun to our head.

Seeing Enemy at the Gates with a Force Recon sniper was a riot. He was physically squirming in his chair with the effort to keep his mouth shut during the movie. Afterwards, we went out for pizza and the girls did their best to ignore us while he went on a 30-minute rampage of the film's collection of absurdities. Good humor.

Mailvox: il problema cola vittoria greca

Vittorio writes:

Purtroppo, il popolo ha sempre giudicato dalle apparenze; lo fece anche Adamo quando mangiò la mela. D'altronde, qualcuno, credo Rivarol, disse che una dittatura si afferma non per merito proprio ma per gli errori della democrazia. A proposito, visto Portogallo-Grecia? Indubbiamente i Portoghesi hanno commessogravi errori, ma i Greci, che catenaccio!

Certainly the essay of Quintus Tullius suggests that people have always been prone to judge by appearances, although this may have briefly been less of a factor in the days when politics were no longer local but prior to television. And regardless of what a dictatorship affirms about democracy, there can be little question that, based on historical precedent, it is what inevitably follows. This will be true of the American Republic as well, the only question is when and in what form.

And of course, I did see the game. Portugal blundered by their determination to probe and search for nonexistent cracks in the Greek defense instead of trying to break through it by main force. Typical of most midfield-driven teams, they wasted chance after chance by holding the ball too long and allowing the defense to get set.

Greece's victory is a great Cinderella story - Mississippi State had better odds to win the NCAA basketball tournament prior to the start of the season - but Rehhagel's revival of il catenaccio may not be a great development for the game. I much prefer the wide-open attacking play of Arsenal and Real Madrid; it would certainly be more entertaining to see teams imitating the Czech Republic instead of the Greeks in the coming years.

Then again, Trappatoni's use of the Blue Chain backfired badly on Italy and the Greeks were as disciplined in attack as they were in defense, so perhaps we won't see an unwanted return to the tactics of the past.

There is no law

I've never paid much attention to the oft-cited "it's the law" argument. As the Gargler pointed out recently, that point is only raised when it's deemed in the interest of the politicians and bureaucrats to do something that people don't want them to do or when they wish to compel unthinking obedience. Jaywalking is almost never prosecuted, although "it's the law", and businesses freely do business on Sundays in many states in open and accepted defiance the blue laws still on the books.

As the Constitution is now a dead letter in the eyes of the government and the law no longer stands as written but is superceded by judge-declared case law - otherwise known as the Rule of Man that the Rule of Law was supposed to supplant - it's clear that there is no law. Although few realize it yet, we now live in a Maughamite environment of "do what thou wilt with due regard for the policeman around the corner" and should expect the concomitant results in the near term.

People tend to forget that no one relies so heavily on "it's the law" as a corrupt political leadership:

China's state-controlled media have not reported Jiang's detention, which began June 1. In response to questions submitted by The Washington Post, the government said in a brief statement: "Jiang Yanyong, as a soldier, recently violated the relevant discipline of the military. Based on relevant regulations, the military has been helping and educating him." Though Chinese police routinely jail dissidents, the decision to detain Jiang appears to have been made by the Central Military Commission, the nation's supreme military body, with the consent of the party's most senior leaders, including President Hu Jintao and his influential predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to a source familiar with the decision-making process.

Jiang Yanyong, a 72-year old doctor and "soldier" clearly broke the law in alerting the world to the Chinese cover-up of SARS. Is it right or just for him to be locked away and re-educated? After all, "it's the law."

Rating the titular heads of faction

I've selected what I consider to be the ten most important issues in this election for the leader of the Executive Branch, and given both President Bush and Senator Kerry a rating on each using a scale of 1 to 10. The lowest possible score is therefore a 10, the highest is a 100. I would not consider supporting any candidate scoring lower than 66 on this test.

(1) Respect for the Constitution
As the President takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, this would seem to be a pretty basic requirement. Unfortunately, both Bush and Kerry have demonstrated precisely zero regard for either their oath or the document itself. Even Bob Dole, the tax collector for the welfare state, at least pretended to care about the 10th Amendment.

01 - (01): Bush
01 - (01): Kerry

(2) Defending gun rights
Kerry, for all that he has been going through the usual political rigamarole of having his picture taken while killing birds, has reliably voted against gun rights. Bush, on the other hand, has stated his willingess to accept the renewal of the "assault weapons" ban, but has not otherwise pushed for gun control.

05 - (06): Bush
02 - (03): Kerry

(3) National Sovereignty
All the Constitutional rights in the world won't do Americans any good if the Constitution is superceded by international treaties and organizations. Both Kerry and Bush support LOST, both are fans of the United Nations and numerous other supranational organizations. Bush is marginally less enthusiastic about giving up sovereignty than Kerry, and was willing to drop his amnesty proposal once the level of opposition became clear.

03 - (09): Bush
01 - (03): Kerry

(4) Supreme Court Appointments
This is the big one for Bush defenders, but considering that five of the seven Republican appointees are liberal judicial activists, it's by no means a slam dunk. I don't think we can assume Bush, who has governed to the Left of every Republican president since Nixon, will show any better judgment than his predecessors. 2/7 = 28.57 percent.

03 - (12): Bush
01 - (04): Kerry

(5) Taxation
Bush has shown no inclination to respond to the petition put forth by We the People, as he is Constitutionally mandated to do. Nor has he investigated the very credible charges laid against the IRS, when even the US District Attorney "denies that the Internal Revenue Service is an agency of the United States government." However, his three tax cuts did amount to 2 percent of the national income, so some credit is due. Kerry has been a reliable vote for higher taxes.

04 - (16): Bush
01 - (05): Kerry

(6) Big Government Growth
Contrary to what one would think, growth in government spending has increased fastest under Republican presidents, the two exceptions being LBJ and Ronald Reagan. George Bush has the worst record of any Republican president, while one cannot assume that John Kerry would necessarily be any worse than Bill Clinton. Just as it takes a Nixon to go to China, it takes a Republican president to unleash the full force of the fire hoses of Federal spending. I expect the rate of growth of government spending would actually slow somewhat under Kerry - Bush has set a difficult pace to match.

01 - (17): Bush
03 - (08): Kerry

(7) Commander-in-Chief

Neither Bush nor Kerry has shown any resolve to meet what every historian with his eyes open knows is the third great wave of Islamic expansion. Neither will even admit that this is happening, for that matter. Nevertheless, George Bush has struck one serious blow to the global jihad (Afghanistan) and one minor blow (Iraq), while Kerry can't even bear to give a straight answer about what has already been done, much less what he would do himself. Bush has surrounded himself with poor strategic advisors and appears to have little notion of history or military strategy, but at least he appears to take the responsibility seriously.

04 - (21): Bush
01 - (09): Kerry

(8) Character
George Bush is by no means the flip-flopper or divorce-prone gigolo that John Kerry is, and he even warned conservatives with his assertion of his "compassionate" perversion of the philosophy. Still, his constant dissembling on the so-called War on Terror and the nature of the threat to the United States and the West is manifestly untruthful. Furthermore, he has not gone public with any of the Clinton administration's lies about TWA 800 or OK City. As with most Democrats, Kerry's entire campaign is built on deceit and on the few occasions that Kerry has allowed his personality to shine through, it is a rather ugly one indeed. That being said, one doubts he is an utter fraud like Clinton.

05 - (26): Bush
03 - (12): Kerry

(9) Party Coattails
Who cares? More Republicans to help Bush spend more money faster? More Democrats to help further destroy the social fabric? It's irrelevant, as Ron Paul, Dr. No, is about the only member of Congress who even pays attention to the law and Constitution anymore.

01 - (27): Bush
01 - (13): Kerry

(10) The Economy
Both men are economically illiterate individuals who surround themselves with Keynesian advisors. Whoever wins will watch helplessly as the Federal Reserve drives the nation off a financial cliff during the next Presidential term.

01 - (28): Bush
01 - (14): Kerry

In summary, I conclude that Bush is twice as good as Kerry and not half as good as he'd have to be in order to win my support. It's only a zero-sum game if you're so short-sighted that you only pay attention to the next election. If you don't believe the political environment can change, well, tell it to the Whigs.

Wasted votes

BLS offers advice:

MikeM, if you live in a state where the election may actually be contested, please reconsider your decision. If a few hundred more Palm Beach County voters had gone for Gore, he'd be President now.... You, MikeM, may actually be able to make a difference. And even Vox has conceded that Bush is better than Kerry. So don't waste a vote that can make a difference, only waste one that can't, like Vox's.

It's time to erase this false concept of a wasted vote. If a wasted vote is a vote for a candidate who has no chance of winning, then this doesn't simply apply to third party candidates. Dole, Dukakis and Mondale were all miserable candidates who had absolutely no chance of winning, and yet strangely one never heard the concept of a wasted vote brought up then. In truth, the concept is nothing more than a propaganda device used to keep people locked into the bifactional one-party system. If the Libertarians double their vote total from 2000, it will soon be demonstrated that the votes weren't wasted as the shock waves carry over into the major party.

I haven't "conceded" that Bush is better than Kerry. That usage carries implications of approval, which I have not granted. I have assumed that Bush is marginally better than Kerry, although I have absolute proof of Bush's executive branch shortcomings whereas I have only my suspicions and assumptions about the likely evils of John Kerry. In any event, the differences are marginal as neither man supports constitutional government and so neither deserves any electoral support from those who value human rights, individual freedom and the US Constitution.

As usual, the pro-Bush defenders fail to understand that anti-Bush conservatives, libertarians and constitutionists truly don't want Bush to win. I don't want Bush to have another term, I don't want John Kerry to have a first one, and I'm not going to be held responsible for either of them doing so. If the rest of America is foolish enough to vote one of them into power, so be it, I can't prevent that. But at least I can know that the slow and systematic destruction of America was done over my protest and without my consent.

If you voted for Bush in 2000, then you are responsible for the gutting of the 1st Amendment in McCain-Feingold. You are responsible for the new Medicare entitlement. You are responsible for the Patriot Act, the sacrifice of US sovereignty in the Law of the Sea Treaty, as well as the revival of big government. Protesting that Al Gore might have been worse doesn't remove any of that responsibility from you. You gave all that to us. Thanks ever so much.

The president had four years to win my vote. He did nothing but confirm the correctness of my decision to refuse to vote for him the first time around.

Restoring the Republic

Paul Jacob has written a fantastic article in which he recommends more democracy as a potential cure for the poisoned republicanism that we now have:

I wish that we lived in a republic as imagined by the best of our founders. But Ben Franklin's great aphorism was a warning as well as a statement. And it is apparent that Americans have not heeded the warning. We have not kept our republic. Not that keeping a republic is easy. Franklin's co-conspirator, Thomas Jefferson, explained: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

...Three democratic reforms provide the first steps to returning our government to its Constitutional, republican roots:

1. Term limits at local, state, and federal levels, for all elected executives and representatives.

2. The right to initiative and referendum by citizens in every state and locality, for Constitutional as well as statutory enactment and repeal.

3. Require a vote of the people for tax increases and borrowing money.

The latter is a particularly good idea and works very well in Switzerland, where the people recently voted down an expensive expansion of the St. Gotthard tunnel that the government had overwhelmingly approved. They have also consistently, (and wisely) voted down member ship in the European Union despite the furious efforts of their politicians. Theory is fine and all, but it is no substitute for hard data and the facts demonstrate that the "mob rule" of referendums in both the USA and abroad works far better than leaving fiscal matters in the hands of a corrupt cabal of long-term office holders.

It should be interesting to see how the American Left, despite its eternal championing of "democracy", will contort itself into pretzels explaining why it won't support this proposed empowering of the will of the People, if Jacob's idea proves to have traction.

Mailvox: a false slam on libertarians

tz wrote:

To the point that when nuremburg.org was fined over 100 million dollars for drawing an X through a dead abortionist, the LP saw not threat to free speech, no problem with web censorship, no problem with thought crime, nor any problem with excessive fines.

and

I note no one has challenged me on their tacit acceptance of the nuremburg.org decision though it was a greater threat to liberty than their contemporary alarmist press releases about bills to curb kiddie porn that would likely not pass or die in committee. If some LP official can explain to me why they were swallowing this particular camel while straining at gnats (And I did write and ask at the time) I would reconsider my position.

I hadn't bothered earlier since it was such an absurd point, but since you bring it up again, I will certainly challenge you on the Libertarian Party's "tacit acceptance" of the Nuremberg Files case. There was never any acceptance, tacit or otherwise, and you have presented absolutely no evidence to suggest there was. First, several leading libertarians wrote critically of the Oregon court decision, both Julian Sanchez, a regular Reason magazine contributor, and Eugene Volokh, the UCLA professor of law and lead blogger at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Second, you'll note that the alarmist press releases refer to legislative matters. Political parties pay far more attention to prospective bills than they do to court cases, since they can influence the former but have no ability to influence the latter. There are a plethora of important court cases, even at the Supreme Court level, on which the Libertarian Party has failed to issue a press release, many of which were far more well-known than Planned Parenthood's civil suit, which in any case was not even directly relevant to the principle of government censorship of free speech. Are you seriously going to attempt to argue that the LP tacitly accepts the verdicts in all of these other court cases too? And has the Libertarian Party ever issued a press release on a civil damages suit?

Since you have presented no grounds for indicating that the Libertarian Party favored, supported or otherwise accepted the Oregon decision or its subsequent upholding on appeal, I suggest that you either find some evidence or reconsider your position.

Mailvox: Constitution or Libertarian

WC seeks information on the two third parties:

I've followed your columns and blogs for roughly the past 6 months; I've enjoyed them and learned so very much. I've recently made the decision to "abandon" the Republican Party and go 3rd party. One question, though, as I've seen you mention the CP and Mr. Peroutka, but mention your support by Badnarik and the Libertarian Party. Now Peroutka is on record against both of them, while Badnarik is both pro-abortion and in favor of any kind of "marriage" (I'm going from the candidate interviews on the Fox Newswebsite). Can you elaborate on the differences between the two candidates/parties and why you're going with Badnarik over Peroutka?

Sure, but first let me correct your statement about Michael Badnarik. He is pro-life and believes that it is properly a state issue, as one should keep in mind is the case with most murder laws. As for marriage, I do not believe that marriage is properly a concern of the Federal or even state government, and I don't believe that a Defense of Marriage Amendment will serve any purpose, seeing how the First and Second Amendments are ignored with regularity. The institution of marriage survived centuries without assistance from the government; it is only in the last 150 years, since governments began tracking it and granting "licenses" that marriage has been in decline.

While I support both third parties in preference to the Democrats and Republicans, the main reason I am a Libertarian instead of a Constitutionalist is that I prefer the Libertarian's first principle approach as opposed to the deified document approach of the Constitution Party. I believe that in the long run, a party dedicated to first principles is more likely to succeed and be able to change appropriately to meet the challenges created by new issues.

Secondly, the Libertarian Party is much more strongly opposed to the exercise and reach of government power, as demonstrated by the Constitution Party's support for the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs, like the War on Poverty and the War on Terror, is more an effective vehicle for the expansion of central state power than it is a useful weapon against that for which it purports to exist. Since I believe that it is absolutely vital to keep central state power in check - if I had a single issue, that would be it - the Libertarian Party is clearly the appropriate party for me.