I wish!

I mean, have you seen this guy?! Love his real accent and that nude scene in the show... wow...

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Another Warrior Passes

William F. Buckley, Jr. died today. I grew up listening to Buckley and even during my liberal phase earlier in life I loved to hear him. The man was brilliant, urbane, eloquent... three traits that seem to be missing in today's Conservative landscape. Buckley met liberal "intellectuals" head on, out in the open in public debate, showing that to be conservative does not mean you are uneducated, unthinking, and backward but that we did have a strong offering in the great marketplace of ideas. Compare how Buckley responded in this debate with Gore Vidal and ask yourself who is more erudite, the more heartfelt, the more realistic of the two:





Ah, Bill... I'm sorry that you're gone, but even more sorry that there seems to be no one at present able to begin to fill your shoes.

Movie Sunday

OK, being on-call sucks on the whole. I have to stick around the house, I can't spend time Mr. Beau, I am forced to actually do some housework since there is little else to do. However, in an act of rebellion against that last bit I decided to spend time watching movies (ok, so I am folding clothes at the same time). One of the movies I decided to watch is For The Bible Tells Me So. Below are two of the trailers for the film (thanks YouTube):





I have to say, to the most ardent of literalists this film will not change your mind about your interpretation of the Bible (and I found a few logical fallacies when they tried to confront literalism), but my hope is that this film will in some small part help change how religious families view their child if he or she comes out to them. Given that gay youths are 3-to-7 times more likely to commit suicide as their straight counterparts any little bit helps. I was particularly proud of that old Missouri congressman Richard Gephardt and his wife when talking about their lesbian daughter. After being told by Chrissy that she was gay Mr. Gephardt, in the best portrayal of family values in the film, said that his first worries about all this was for his daughter, for her safety and fear for her (not him and his wife) of the discrimination that he knew was out there. Now the movie is NOT anti-Christian or anti-religion, but it does show some scenes that are disturbing (like the well know clip of Jimmy Swaggart saying that if any man looked at him "that way" he would kill him and just tell God that the man died), but these five family all have at their core a strong vein of religious belief and faith and they did have struggles. One daughter, after not speaking with her mother for several months after coming out, committed suicide. I can't think of anything more difficult for a mother or father to take. My own parents have had a difficult journey over the years and at various times in the film I could see their faces and even hear their words coming from the mouthes of others. But like most of the parents in the film they concluded that there will just have to be some things that will be resolved between God and me, and as for the rest I am their son and nothing will ever change that. If only others could be that fortunate.

Poor Michelle Obama

For the first time in her life she has felt proud of the United States? What a sad, sad person.

Reading List - 2008

Here is my current reading list for the rest of 2008. A bit late, should have had this up in January since I've finished a few already, but I guess better late than never. I'm leaving off the job-required readings and the course material for my MBA classes since those will be on an "as needed" basis and I can't really plan for what they will be. As with most lists, this will morph over time but at least I have a plan. Finished books will be noted by (x) so this creates a bit of a socialized responsibility as everyone reading this can note my progress (or lack thereof).

Fiction
Clarke, Childhood's End (X)
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Dick, The Man In The high Castle (X)
Dick, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (X)
Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Phillips, Gods Behaving Badly(X)
Stephenson, Snow Crash
Tolkien, The Hobbit


Social Science and Current Events
Bawer, While Europe Slept(X)
Frum, Comback: Conservatism That Can Win Again(X)
Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative
Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death (X)
Smick, The World Is Curved
Steyn, American Alone
Sullivan, Same Sex Marriage: Pro and Con(X)

Science and Mathematics
Hester et al, 21st Century Astronomy (X)
Shilov, Elementary Real and Complex Analysis
Shilov, Elementary Functional Analysis

Philosophy and Religion
The Book of The Acts of the Apostles (with Commentary)
Blackburn, Truth, A Guide (X)
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane
Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning (X)
Montaigne, Complete Essays

Outer orbit

Just to throw out a question... how in California does one change "friend orbits"? For some reason I feel like, after knowing people for years, that I remain on the fringe of what could be called "friend orbits". It seems like no matter what I do I cannot move from "slightly better than an acquaintance, rarely thought of" to "actual friend"? To be honest I am at a loss as to what to do. Any suggestions?

Truth From A Cartoon

My friend Andrew sent me this clip today. It really does ask an interesting question... how do you offer a tax rebate to people who don't pay taxes? Good start, but it doesn't go far enough so I will do it one better... why don't those who pay the majority of the taxes get a part of the rebate? Here I am, not poor but not uber-rich either, the perfect mugging victim, er, tax payer in the eyes of government (single, renter, no children, 6-figure income) and yet my current economic situation precludes me from participating in something that I am paying for! I mean, I have about 47% of my income withheld for some type of tax (and let's not go into consumption taxes, I am talking just withholdings). Personally, I think the rebate is a joke and one of the worse panderings of the political season, but what really sticks in my craw is that those of us paying in get absolutely no benefit. Zip. Zero rebate. The rebates are phased out for higher-paid people, starting at an adjusted gross income of $75,000 for a single person or $150,000 for a couple. There are no rebates for people with no children who make more than $87,000 each or $174,000 per couple. So lets go back to the cartoon... given that the noun rebate literally means to give back part of a payment, how do you give a rebate to someone who made no payment?

Ideology v Politics

Well, "Super Tuesday" has come and gone and the race for both the Republican and the Democrat parties has narrows to two people each (and that is a stretch for the Republican side where McCain holds a daunting delegate lead over Huckabee). I haven't said much about the election thus far mainly because of my disappointment in the available candidates. In a matter of public confession, I am 0/2 in my choices on the Republican side. I was initially leaning towards Giuliani who proved that when it comes to political tactics he is no Bill Clinton, then decided to mildly support Romney who after being sandbagged by the McCain-Huckabee team bowed out. Am I cursed? If so, I should throw my support to Obama just so he will lose (it is sad that my instincts tell me to fear the least experienced, the challenged, the least thoughtful of the bunch but I do... tells you about my faith in the American electorate).

But that isn't the purpose for the post. The main purpose came from an online article I read about a few days ago regarding McCain. It said that many Republicans consider him to be "a liberal and not a Republican." I thought to my self "Surely this is not right." I read it again and yep, that is what they said. Did you spot the problem? If not I'll tell you. Liberalism, like conservatism, is an ideology. Republican, like Democrat, is a political party. It is entirely possible to be liberal AND a Republican just as it is possible to be a conservative and a Democrat. Being a conservative or a liberal applies to how one views the world while being Republican or Democrat defines political policies. A more accurate assessment in the article would have been that Republicans consider McCain a "liberal and not a conservative" or even "more like a Democrat than a Republican". One statement defining his ideology and the other his politics.

Given this then, just what IS a conservative? It kinda depends on who you ask. There are economic conservatives, social conservatives, foreign policy conservatives. In the marketplace of ideas there is a vast, rich offering of conservative ideas to choose from. But if this is so, what is the issue with McCain? Is he conservative or is he not? To help examine this I turned an old "friend", one of the fathers of modern conservative intellectual thought, Russell Kirk. In his monumental The Conservative Mind, Krik provides six key canons of conservative thought which I will summarize as the following:

Belief in a transcendent order, or natural law governing both the individual as well as society

Belief in human plurality and natural diversity and a resistance to arbitrary systems of leveling and false equality

Ultimate equality is in the judgment of God and should exist before our courts, but again creating an artificial equality of condition means equality in servitude and boredom

Freedom and property are closely linked. Economic leveling is not the same as economic progress

Distrust of people who would remake society strictly on some abstract design. Custom and tradition can be a useful guide.

Change does not equal reform. "Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculation, and a statesman's chief virtual... is prudence."

This, according to Kirk, is the kerygma of conservatism. Conservatism isn't policy on school choice, abortion, tax reduction, illegal immigration and a host of other policies that form planks in a political party's platform. Conservatism is a world view. It's a true belief in diversity, that people are different, have different goals, dreams, talents and should be allowed to pursue them with the understanding that the outcomes will be different for different people. It's an idea that change for the sake of change is not the same as progress. It's a very firm belief in the law of unintended consequences. of understanding that while sometimes you have to take certain leaps it is wise to look before you jump. It's acknowledging that while not everything that happened has been good, not all of it has been bad and that the past can guide us to a better future if we are wise enough to examine it. Can you be a Republican and not hold some of these beliefs? Sure, but on the flip side it is possible to be a Democrat and believe them too. So is John McCain a conservative? Taking this view he possibly is. Is he a Republican? Well, that requires another post.