The Lost Art of War

Via the indispensable Libertas, an absolute must-read. Some of the best lines:

"During World War II, Hollywood stars like James Stewart and directors like Frank Capra enlisted in the military to combat dictators as willingly as Sean Penn and Michael Moore now tootle down to Venezuela and Cuba to embrace them."

"the movie business merely provides the most glamorous example of a greater change throughout our creative and intellectual communities: a decades-long drift toward an idiot radicalism."

"Though European intellectuals and their left-wing American acolytes are loath to admit it, the U.S. had already provided an excellent new rationale for that emotion. Our Founding redefined nationhood along social-contract lines that Europeans can still only theorize about. Our love of nation at its best was ethical, not ethnic. Our patriotism was loyalty not to race, or even to tradition, but to ideals of individual liberty and republican self-governance."

"The English Patient is such a visually beautiful film that the mind has to overcome the eye in order to comprehend its moral emptiness."

Anyway, I liked it, please check it out.

Reactionary

Ambivablog has a very interesting post up (as always!), which somehow reminds me of the David Warren piece Kathy Shaidle linked this morning. The line of the day comes from one of my favorites, Evelyn Waugh, as quoted in the Warren article:

"'I refuse to vote for those [persons],' the late Evelyn Waugh is said to have once said, of the British version of the Conservative Party. 'They never set the clock back a single minute.' "

How Not to be Interesting

I don't trust these Michael Lewis/Malcolm Gladwell/Thomas Friedman types, what with their multiple orgasm interviews with the latest Genius Who Sees In A Whole New Light That Will Change EVERYTHING, but something did jump out to me in this piece, if only briefly. I was hoping that the broker would pack up and join the Marines or the priesthood or something, not just transition to a slightly less money-grubbing version of his old job. Anyway, the line that drew me in:

"One day, someone may look back and ask: At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, how did so many take up financial careers on Wall Street that were of such little social value?"

Now what kind of writer poses such a fascinating and important question, only to drop it instantly and not even attempt to address it? Well, at least we learned the groundbreaking truth that you can't predict the stock market!

Let the bastard go

If you don't make even the slightest effort to house-break your puppy, is it right to punish him when he pees on your bed? I say no. As Cesar Millan could tell you, when dealing with animals and other primitive retards, it is your responsibility to strictly outline what is acceptable and what is not.

I think fairness requires Canada to adopt a similar standard in the case of the evil bastard who murdered his daughter. As hinted here, no effort was made before the murder by Canadian society or laws to impose Western values on the man. Just the opposite, in fact - he and his 'diverse' traditions were welcomed with open arms, invited to thrive in multicultural bliss. How can we punish him for simply doing what we've been encouraging him to do since he got here - that is to say, holding on to his traditional Muslim (i.e. wife-beating, honor-killing) values?

Some of you will respond that this, this very case, is our opportunity to assert ourselves, to make an example of him. Applesauce. This is just one extreme case, a murder. The message we'll be sending is 'be careful, don't hit them too hard.' The number of burqas and hijabs will only rise, since I remain convinced that their real purpose is to hide the bruises. Though I may be too charitable: the honor killings would likely continue, but now the unassimilated among us will know better than to call the cops afterwards (or to stage the scene as a hate-crime, complete with hastily-scrawled Bible verses, if they do).

No, if I were the judge, I would rule something like this: "The defendant is not guilty, he was simply exercising the religious freedom promised him by his adopted country. If Canada does not wish for its citizens to practice Islamic traditions, it must make such a statement firmly and clearly; otherwise, punishing an honor-killing would be as unjust as punishing a Christian for being literate (well, bad example there, but you see what I mean). Until Canada adopts serious measures to protect its liberal values on a society-wide level (I would suggest a ban on the hijab, for starters), killers like this goat-humper cannot in good faith be held responsible for their actions. He did nothing but live the Canadian dream."

And that's all you need to know about why I'm never gonna be a judge.

Junebug

First off, my belated wishes for a very happy Thanksgiving! Besides everything and everyone I'm always thankful for, I just wanted to give a special shout out to AMC's Thanksgiving Day Hitchcock marathon - add Shadow of a Doubt and Rear Window to the Cowboys game, and I was able to stay almost sane cooped up in a hotel room last week.

I'm very behind on the news and my reading, but looks like the wonderful folks on the ol' blogroll have everything taken care of.

What prompts my return is that I watched Junebug for the second time last night, loved it even more, and wanted to spread the word. Besides being a wonderful movie, it's another example of a deeply conservative movie going right over liberal critics' heads. Yet, unlike Apatow's movies, the morality isn't couched in vulgarity, it's right out in the open, and still some reviewers just don't get it.

Exhibit A. The heart of the movie is Amy Adams' hyper-vivacious Ashley, who the critic says "talks because to be silent would be to confront her life's emptiness." B.S. The refined British visitor is clearly the empty one - Ashley is full of life, love, and God. But the critic, unsurprisingly identifying with Embeth Davidtz' sophisticated Madeleine, just doesn't get it. A key moment occurs when Ashley goes into labor and the entire family stays by her side at the hospital. The entire family, that is, except for Madeleine - she goes off instead to work on a business deal. The filmmakers are anything but subtle about this; some touching scenes at the hospital show us the importance of family, while some ridiculous scenes with her client illustrate the absurdity of Madeleine's career. Yet what does the Boston Globe critic write about this almost too obvious parallel? "At a certain critical juncture, George's family turns against this outsider artiste for reasons we're supposed to share, but such is Davidtz's deep-dish joy in her role that you're likely to stay on her side." Reasons we're supposed to share - you know, weird reasons, like love and family over business. Sheesh.

Anyway, ranting aside, the movie is definitely worth a look. And yes, Amy Adams is everything radiant and wonderful and just plain good.

here's the trailer:



and here's the opening song, light and fun:

Yup

Slowly catching up on my blog reading after a long week.

"Those who are modern and liberal don't want to express old-fashioned moral disapproval, so they won't say drinking or eating too much is self-indulgent and gluttonous. Pleasure-seeking is quite all right these days. And they want to be able to think of themselves as good people, so they can't just say they hate the way you look if you're fat. They have to believe they're actually concerned for your well-being."

Ain't that the truth.

Very much worth a read

Especially the Hall excerpts towards the end. The comparison between Hall and Harris tells you everything you need to know.

See also here. I'm with Dalrymple and the Dutchman, no question.

He's guilty... of saving the world?

Hewitt and Medved were both complaining a great deal about the OJ coverage yesterday, lamenting that the media were in full frenzy mode over the arrest at a time when they should be focusing on truly important things, like the latest huge developments between Israel, Syria, and Iran, not to mention the war in Iraq.

I think they might be wrong on this. What they forget is that the media is not our friend, it's our enemy! It's an ultra-liberal, anti-Israel, anti-Bush fifth column. So wouldn't you much rather it focus on OJ than on anything serious? I know I much prefer to hear news of a leaked OJ audiotape than a leaked Israeli plan of attack! Every moment they spend squeezing the Juice is one less moment spent on uncovering the misunderstood, loving side of Hamas!

By the way, the OJ murder trial was my first foray into the bizarre and thoroughly disheartening world of racial politics. There was only one black kid at my school (that's Montreal for you - a now obsolete joke was that our black population doubled with every Expos home game). The day of the verdict, our teacher gave us permission to leave class and hear the decision, so we're all huddled around a TV in the gym, and they make the announcement, and we're all absolutely stunned. I remember distinctly wandering outside, feeling almost shell-shocked, everyone around me just gaping in disbelief - except for the black kid. He was literally running around the playground, pumping his fist, yelling with joy, and taunting all the visibly upset kids! What a world.

Culture Matters

This is priceless. It's all gold, but I think my favorite part is the cruel, cruel insult: "an African Margaret Thatcher." Wow, and I thought the comparisons of Bush to Hitler were harsh! But seriously, folks, does anyone doubt that if Africans were even remotely capable of producing a leader like Margaret Thatcher, their biggest problem today would likely be the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray conversion debate? And Angelina would be off adopting Canadians or something.

Anyway, Bono's outburst reminded me of this great Ambivablog post. One of the Easterly quotations that lept out at me:

"The ideology of Development is not only about having experts design your free market for you; it is about having the experts design a comprehensive, technical plan to solve all the problems of the poor. These experts see poverty as a purely technological problem, to be solved by engineering and the natural sciences, ignoring messy social sciences such as economics, politics, and sociology."

Sociology. It's not just about markets, not just about institutions - it's about people.

Which brings me to this fascinating new book:

"As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society, Dr. Clark considered, the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them. He has documented that several aspects of what might now be called middle-class values changed significantly from the days of hunter gatherer societies to 1800. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped.

Another significant change in behavior, Dr. Clark argues, was an increase in people’s preference for saving over instant consumption, which he sees reflected in the steady decline in interest rates from 1200 to 1800.

'Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent and leisure loving,' Dr. Clark writes."

Thrift? Hard work? What!? Where was the UN? Where was Bono? Where was Sachs???

Oh, yeah:

"Many commentators point to a failure of political and social institutions as the reason that poor countries remain poor. But the proposed medicine of institutional reform 'has failed repeatedly to cure the patient,' Dr. Clark writes. He likens the 'cult centers' of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to prescientific physicians who prescribed bloodletting for ailments they did not understand."

Modern historians, meanwhile, are appalled to learn that individuals might actually matter:

"Historians used to accept changes in people’s behavior as an explanation for economic events, like Max Weber’s thesis linking the rise of capitalism with Protestantism. But most have now swung to the economists’ view that all people are alike and will respond in the same way to the same incentives. Hence they seek to explain events like the Industrial Revolution in terms of changes in institutions, not people."

Institutions, not people. Charity, not culture. Transfers instead of transformations. No wonder Africa is doomed.

(by the way, these modern historians don't understand how people succeed because they refuse to even acknowledge success - they look at the West and see not an Industrial Revolution, but centuries of racism, patriarchy, hegemony, imperialism, and war-mongering. As for Africa, it has to them no identity except as a victim of all of the above.)

(oh, and one more thing: there's a very good chance I'll end up teaching in Africa at some point. Before you roll your eyes, that's different! Actually living with a community, and teaching its children, is different than throwing money at it. You know, that whole fish story. And no, I don't think it will actually matter, but nothing really does, and sometimes you just have to keep pushing those boulders up those mountains)

In conclusion, when it comes to the troubles with Africa today, just keep in mind this simple slogan: It's not the economy, stupid!