Another depressing piece in the New York Times today on Saudi ‘missionary’ work in Indonesia. The form of Islam traditionally practiced in Indonesia (often syncretic and relatively tolerant) is very different from the Wahhabi cult practiced in ‘Saudi’ Arabia and yet there are signs that this local tradition is being overwhelmed by the weight of Saudi money pushing, as always, the Saudi agenda of fanaticism and cruelty. If wealthy American Christian evangelicals had used their dollars to evangelize their agenda in this way there would be outrage from the Left. Instead, there is, for the most part, indifference.

One small detail about this Saudi-funded ‘education’ says all that you need to know about its values:

“At Al Irysad, the daily newspapers are displayed on a notice board with all photographs of human faces scratched out – an effort to present the news to the male students without the distraction of pictures, a teacher said.”

Human faces “a distraction”? Human faces “scratched out”? If you want to know how terrorists are created that’s a pretty good place to start.

Disgusting.

Edward Rothstein takes on the draft EU ‘constitution’ in today’s New York Times. Diamond Giscard’s tawdry efforts are treated with the contempt they deserve:

“The [Constitution’s language] is not the Jeffersonian language of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” with its allusions to the Enlightenment, nor is it the language of the Bill of Rights, which limits government power. This is the language of interest groups, which enshrined as constitutional rights will end up guaranteeing the ruling bureaucracy its right to daily bread.”

That’s well said. This shabby document is, in reality, an attempt to impose the corporatist view of government on an entire continent. Corporatism is, of course, a variant of fascism.

Now there’s something for Martin Jacques to discuss.

Too late, I think, to link to the story, but there was a piece in the Financial Times earlier this week headlined “Probe raises fears of cosmic Klondyke” that typified absolutely everything that is wrong with some contemporary attitudes to space travel. “Fears” of a cosmic Klondyke? Why fears? The article was in response to the news that the world’s first commercial probe to the moon will take off in a few months. TransOrbital’s initial plans are modest – and a touch loopy. Crash land your ashes on the Moon! Still, it’s a start.

The FT quoted Richard Steiner, a professor and conservation specialist at the University of Alaska, who wants international consultation before any country grants licenses for lunar exploitation. “The moon is owned by everyone,” he says.” A farmer in Zimbabwe should also have a say.” Worried about lunar strip-mining (if not logic) Steiner wants the UN to name the moon a ‘world heritage site.’ What is it about the word ‘world’ that he does not understand?

All this is, of course, nonsense. The moon is not owned by everyone – it is owned by no one. I’ve no idea whether commercial exploitation of the moon is possible, but the best way of ensuring that it will never happen (and that, of course, may be Steiner’s idea) is to put in place some elaborate international regulatory regime. Far better, instead, to recognize the moon for what it is – terra nullius – and declare it open to all comers.

Mankind will then do the rest.

More from the new Europe.

Polish PM Miller:

"Our view is not very different from the view of the United Kingdom on this issue, in particular as far as the role of the nation state is concerned," he said. "We also believe the role of national parliaments must be stressed. We are not for the model of a United States of Europe. We are very sensitive to such values as sovereignty and identity.”

Well said.

More ‘reporting’ from the Brussels mouthpiece laughingly known as the Independent:

“Berlusconi was his usual slick and cocky self.”

Berlusconi is a flawed figure, but for an idea of the grotesque fury that he arouses in the EU’s intellectual establishment this article by Martin Jacques is a good place to start. Smear follows smear, and not only of Berlusconi (notice how Pim Fortuyn is lumped in with the “racist far right”). “Western democracy,” we are told, “is now under greater threat than at any time since the fall of Nazism” (as a former editor of Marxism Today, Jacques has, perhaps not so strangely, overlooked the Soviet challenge), and it is clear that so far as Jacques is concerned a “rampant, market-driven, consumer society” does not really count as a democracy, especially in Italy. The “Berlusconi regime… is a halfway state between democracy and a new form of totalitarianism that we have not witnessed before.”

This is nonsense – but it’s nonsense that serves a purpose. Ironically, Jacques explains what underpins articles such as this (he, of course, is talking about Berlusconi). “Berlusconi has been pursuing a policy of creeping totalitarianism. His own style of political attack graphically illustrates the point…he is constantly seeking to denigrate, undermine and condemn opponents in the most extreme of terms.”

And this, of course, is exactly what Jacques – and the EU establishment – are doing about Berlusconi.

Meanwhile, on a day that America celebrates freedom, here’s a round-up of various initiatives (all from the UK, but even if it’s July 4, there’s no need to be smug – this sort of nonsense is just as prevalent over here) that go in the opposite direction.

Let’s start off with the doctors. The BMA (Britain’s equivalent of the AMA) has long been a preserve of the self-important and the interfering. Now it has just voted in favor of banning alcohol advertising from TV. One Leigh Bisset (described by the Daily Telegraph as a “medical student” – so young but so pompous?) had this to say:

"Alcohol harms, and we want to see the glorification of it on our television screens ended..."

(While we’re on this topic, thanks to the readers who responded to that story by Stephen Pollard with hangover remedies of their own. Vitamin B6 – who knew? The best approach, of course, is two aspirin and a large glass of water before you go to bed, followed by a Fat Coke (Diet won’t do) and two more aspirin when you get up the next morning. Follow, if you can, with bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes and fried bread).

The role of a doctor is always to advise – never to give orders. Anything more is impertinence. If I am ever unfortunate enough to find myself in Bisset’s surgery I shall haul my doubtless disease-ridden and broken body to another more congenial spot.

The BMA then managed to give even more evidence of its profound intellectual confusion by voting against medical marijuana (for MS sufferers), but for some forms of drug legalization.

Meanwhile, not to be outdone as an advocate for the nanny state, Britain’s Chief Medical Officer has called for the prohibition of smoking in public places. The madness, it seems, shows no sign of stopping.

I don’t know anything about the writer Alasdair Gray, but this description (scroll down, it’s part of the post for July 1) by blogger Chris Bertram is, well, sort of intriguing..

“Gray is a unique figure: illustrator, novelist, antiquary.... His 1982 Janine (highly recommended) - about the sexual fantasies of an alcholic security-systems inspector has just been reissued…”

Here’s a good website on Article 23, China’s latest threat to Hong Kong’s freedoms.

Thanks to blogger Joshua Sharf for the heads up.

There’s a tremendous piece by Rosemary Righter in today’s London Times about the Berlusconi brouhaha. Here is the key passage:

“..There is a sickening hypocrisy about the righteous harrumphing in Berlin, where Gerhard Schröder stooped to the stagey ploy of putting calls from Rome on hold, and about the pompous strutting in Strasbourg of the offended “dignity” of the European Parliament. Dignity had gone to the dogs, a whole slavering pack of them, well before Berlusconi bit back.

The occasion was a formal one, the presentation that takes place at the outset of each rotating EU presidency. Berlusconi treated it with appropriate seriousness, delivering an accomplished, thoughtful speech. He, and the country he leads, were entitled to the customary courtesy of an adult debate on its substance.

What did he get? Before he even opened his mouth, a raucous claque of Green and left-wing MEPs waved placards plastered with the best insults they could plagiarise (the favourite, “No Godfather for Europe”, was a lift from Der Spiegel’s oh-so-witty cover story). His speech was greeted by a barrage of invective, all of it ad hominem, much of it infantile, some of it contemptible — the French Communist’s calling the Berlusconi Government “barbaric” or the Belgian MEP’s accusing him of laying Italy waste as did Attila the Hun. Martin Schulz, the deservedly obscure German Socialist now enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, was the last in a discreditable line-up of nincompoops who disgraced democracy by their inability to tell the difference between free speech and the political equivalent of a wrecker’s demolition ball.

The Parliament’s Speaker spinelessly ignored this trashing of protocol, bringing down his gavel only in defence of the last to provoke offence. To demand a formal apology from Berlusconi, after that, reminds me of a gaggle of Nobel peace laureates who once, at Hiroshima, spent three full hours expatiating on the evils of the Bomb without once mentioning that Japan had plunged Asia into war. Parliament owes the Italian Prime Minister an apology of its own. “

Read the whole thing.

Corrupt (check out how they pay themselves), self-important (all those declarations) and futile (what does it actually do?), the European ‘parliament’ has long been a disgrace, but it is revealing to see how often its MEPS use the chamber as the site for demonstration rather than debate. The reason? In the absence of a genuine shared political culture across ‘Europe’ there is nothing to debate. The EU’s ‘democracy’ is theatre and its members are nothing more than actors – over-indulged, overpaid but, alas, not yet over.

Over at the Samizdata blog, there’s a nice tribute to the Declaration of the Independence and a suggestion that it might, well, be a useful precedent.

That being said, I rather like sound of the second verse of Australia’s anthem (also via Samizdata):

When gallant Cook from Albion sail'd,

To trace wide oceans o'er,

True British courage bore him on,

Till he landed on our shore.

Then here he raised Old England's flag,

The standard of the brave;

With all her faults we love her still,

"Britannia rules the waves!"

In joyful strains then let us sing

"Advance Australia fair!"

And now I’m going to have a cup of tea (duty paid).

From the always helpful Dr Brewer’s Guide to English History (64th Edition) (which was given to my Great Uncle Tom in 1907):

Q: How did lord North propose to compromise the American difficulty?

A: By withdrawing all taxes and duties except a nominal one on tea.

Q: How did America show her disapproval?

A: She seized the first ship-load of tea from the old country, which entered Boston, and cast it into the sea. (1773).

Q: How did England resent this outrage?

A: She declared war against America…

Q: How was the war terminated?

Q: Lord North resigned; and Mr Fox formed a Whig ministry, which declared America independent. (1783).

Q: What nations of Europe took part in the American war?

A: France, Spain, and Holland aided the Americans; so England was at war with 4 great nations at the same time.”

OK, OK, but it’s more accurate than The Patriot.

If you prefer to stay indoors with the A.C., here's my syndicated column on why Gray Davis shouldn't be recalled.

It's too hot for the Goldberg family to march in the MacArthur Boulevard Parade, so we're going to deck out Lucy's rig and patritize Cosmo's exterior and find a shady spot to watch the festivities. The MacArthur Blv. Parade is the only time of year or event in Washington where this really feels like Anytown USA. If you live in DC I heartily reccomend checking it out.

From a reader, subject header: "Solar Sailer Rebuttal":

In case you cared...

Carnot law does not say that the temperature must go down...it says that the entropy of the universe must go up. For thermal systems, there is a temperature driven maximum efficiency. For non thermal systems, there is no such limitation, hence fuel cells, which use gibbs free energy to calculate efficiency versus carnot efficiency, have very high efficiency rates. Photons reflected from a solar cell (due to compton scattering) are at a lower energy ... Energy of photons e=hv (where h is planks constant and v is frequency) and E=mc2 (where E is energy, c is speed of light and m is mass, photons have relativistic mass = hv/c2 since momentum p is = mass x speed , thus hv=pc..h and c are constants, so if p goes down (loss of momentum, and momentum is always conserved) v (frequency) must go down, and energy was hv, thus energy went down. Since energy was transfered, the future usefulness of the reflectant photons goes down, and thus entropy of the universe goes up. The photons cannot possibly transfer more momentum than the difference between current momentum (which was reduced by the solar cell) and the momentum due to brownian motion of the interstellar hydrogen (about 3K)with which they must be discharged. The crookes radiometer is consistent, since the mirrored surface encounters much less compton scattering it reflects most photons at a higher energy (thus on that side less momentum is transfered) than the black side which absorbs the high energy photons (visible light) and emmits lower energy photons at near infrared (it will heat up more). Thus the black side is absorbing more energy, and hence transfering more momentum, so the net moment arm pushes forward on the black side.

I've long said that I don't trust Alexa.com web traffic numbers. There are several problems with how they rank sites. One of the main problems is that they only track web users who download their software/toolbar. Hence sites like LewRockwell.com beg their readers to use the Alexa tool bar so they can claim absurdly inflated traffic numbers. I bring this all up because presumably sites which do not play such games will probably be miscounted equally. Hence, I find the fact that NRO is rapidly catching up on Salon.com pretty encouraging, even if these numbers aren't all that reliable.

I'd have to say it's one of my absolute favorite holidays. Unlike most of the secular holidays, it manages to keep a real holiday spirit. We're not doing much this year, but -- weather permitting -- Cosmo will be marching in the local parade which features a doggie March. The rest of the family will chaperone.

It is now 7:40 AM. I need an undercovered story of the week. It can either be something particular newsworthy that the media generally ignored or under-played or it can be something funny or it can be an interpretation of a well-covered story no-one has heard. I need it in forty minutes. If you have a suggestion please send it along. But by 8:40 or I won't need it anymore. So please don't keep sending me them through the course of the day. I'm having a dickens of a time keeping my email box from overloading.

Ramesh, thanks. I feel better now.

I thought it deficient on a number of points. Because pro-lifers were split on Bush's stem-cell policy, it's now possible to defy them costlessly on an issue where they're not split, like the vice-presidential nomination? The pro-life influence on the veep pick seems to me to be higher, not lower, than it was in 1980. Also recall that Bush pointedly declined to pick a platform fight with pro-lifers in 2000, unlike Dole in 1996.

As for affirmative action, I don't see how the Court's decision takes the issue off the table. Opposition to preferences was not doing well in the GOP, sure, which has more to do with Bush and corporate America than it does with the courts. But opposition to preferences is still popular with the public. Saying that there's no political ground to stand on now that the Court has settled the issue is like saying, in 1973, that Roe had settled the abortion issue and nobody would ever be able to run against it; like saying, in 1978, that Bakke had settled racial preferences for all time. The Court's latest decision doesn't even make that claim for itself.

Finally, on issues related to homosexuality there is indeed a large cultural and political shift going on. But to say that these issues are over is premature, as Bill Frist's endorsement of a Federal Marriage Amendment indicates. I've heard that Frist is interested in having a future in the Republican party.

Will Willie be performing his (decidedly pro-war) "Whiskey for My Men, Beer for my Horses" at a Kucinich fundraiser? That might be something to see, just for the expression on the faces of the typical Kucinich voter.

Sobering column by Todd Lindberg. Ramesh? Response?

Two readers on quarks:
Reader #1

Dear Jonah,

It was Murray Gell-Mann, the guy behind most of the early advances in this field (known as Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD) that coined the 'quark' name. The line is actually at the start of Chap 12 (or II.4). The relevant passage is 'Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark./But O, Wreneagle Almighty, wouldn't un be a sky of a lark/To see that old buzzard whooping about for uns shirt in the dark/And he hunting round for uns speckled trousers around by Palmerstown Park?'

Quarks come in three different 'colours' - 'red', 'green' and 'blue', hence chromodynamics as opposed to electrodynamics which describes how things like electrons behave. Quarks also come in six different 'flavours' - up, down, charm, strange, bottom and top. In addition, there's eight different kinds of gluons (tagged by Gell-Mann as the 'Eightfold Way'), which are the particles that 'glue' quarks together to make things like protons, and yes, pentaquarks. It's really rather beautiful the way it all hangs together - unfortunately a deep understanding of the subject requires rather more mathematics than I have (and I have advanced degrees in Physics and Engineering).

Note that quark is also a type of German soft cheese, and colour and flavour above are just tags for certain properties of the particles.

N.B. There's contention over whether quark is pronounced to rhyme with 'park' or 'pork'.

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

The word quark was indeed taken from Finnegans Wake [sic; there is
no apostrophe in the title]. The physicist Murray Gell-Mann was familiar with the book. He took the word to name what he considered at the time to most likely be calculational devices that had no real, physical existence. Only later, through the work of others mainly, was it found that they are indeed elementary particles. The actual line from Finnegans Wake is: "Three quarks for Muster Mark/ Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/ And sure any he has is all beside the mark." Apparently, Joyce meant the word quark to mean the sound of a bird, such as "to caw, to croak." But, with Finnegans Wake, one can never be sure. Interestingly, Gell-Mann, and subsequently other physicists following his lead, pronounce the word as "kwork", rather than "kwark" which would seem to have been Joyce's intent
in the rhyme.

This, in turn, raises a question of its own - and blogger Peter Briffa asks it.

to my piece on the Democrats, no doubt in large part because Rush was kind enough to discuss it. Here's one thoughtful e-mail:

Regarding the policy implications of the Democrats lurching left and possibly handing the GOP a big win next year, I think a lot depends on how the GOP responds, and how much the party gains in congressional elections. Although the GOP got little or nothing out of its 1972 win, the liberals re-made the country in the wake of the 1964 election when the GOP lurched right. While the Goldwater movement ultimately led to Reagan and the modern conservative movement, on most domestic issues we have still been unable to reverse the damage that LBJ & co inflicted from 1965-69. Of course, even after they lost the Presidency four years later, their congressional majorities lingered on to drag Nixon's policies to the left.

On the other hand, don't get too excited about Dean being a left-winger. He generally portrayed himself as a centrist in Vermont, so much so that a "Progressive" candidate got around 10% of the vote against him in 2000--nearly handing the election to a conservative Republican. Don't be surprised to see a nominated Dean emphasize relatively moderate positions like fiscal responsibility and gun rights. He'll be able to do so because he'll have his base nailed down and being a governor means not having much of a paper trail on federal issues--think of how much easier it was for Bush to campaign on moderate issues after he'd solidified his base through the primary battles with McCain. I'd much rather see the Democrats nominate a senator whose positions on federal issues are constrained by voting records.

Found in NYC.

Increases your chances of thinking Carrot Top is funny -- as well as other forms of mental illness.

From a reader:

I seem to recall reading somewhere that "quark" derived from a reference
within Finnegan's Wake to "a quark for Muster Mark".

Is that correct and, if so, what was the meaning of this phrase?

Look, I know Salon gets better traffic than us (how much more I don't know). I know, lots of people like it and they have some very talented people writing and working there etc etc. But even if you think Salon is like much, much better than NRO (that sounds funny even saying it), NRO hasn't accumulated an $82 million deficit. If we had a teensy-weensy fraction of that kind of shmundo, who knows what NRO would do. As it is right now, Kathryn has to pay some writers in chickens. Not only am I proud of how much we've done, I'm doubly proud of how we've done it with so little.

Five quarks make a pentaquark. I know there's a pun in there somewhere but I can't find it.

I hear ya K-Lo. But in my own defense, I was abbreviating the word I really wanted to use.

IF YOU PLAN not to read this summer, "Living History" is just the book. Hillary Clinton's new memoir is more than 100,000 pages long. At least I think it is. There are only 562 page numbers, but you know how those Clintons lie. A mere ream of paper could not contain the padding that has gone into this tome. Hillary--with the help of at least six ghostwriters--nails the goose of a manuscript to the barn floor and force-feeds it with lint.

Here's a letter from Mickey Signorile to the Poynter Institute whining that I wouldn't appear on an NPR show with him. He's right, I wouldn't. I didn't want to do the show in the first place but I agreed to and so I was willing to honor my obligation. Then the producer told me late in the day that Signorile would be on with me. And I said, screw it I'm not doing it. My reason: Signorile is an ass. I'm sure Mickey sincerely thinks I'm afraid of him, but the truth is I simply have better things to do with my time than drive downtown and be civil to someone whose idea of serious commentary is to call me a fat bigot. No biggie, I told the producers, I don't want to book their show so I will gladly be the one to beg-off and they can go with Mickey. They said no, no we have someone else instead. I said fine. I have no idea what they told Mickey, and since I think he's fundamentally dishonest and egocentric I'm sure he heard things in the most self-flattering light possible. Still, next time the opportunity comes up I guess I'll say yes to appearing with him, because if I set a policy of never appearing with asses I would rarely do media and lord only knows how many liberals would refuse to appear with me.

As for Romensko, it's kind of funny. This guy -- who claims to run some sort of authoritative, objective blog on the media -- never sees fit to print my name when I write serious pieces about the media in places like the Wall Street Journal while he'll be all over some storry about a cat stuck in a tree in the Food Giant Shopper). Yet, when one of his leftwing gay friends wants to vent, Romensko offers him a digital shoulder to cry on. I guess Andrew Sullivan is right. Romensko is a partisan hack.

The only real way to end this "never-ending conversation" is by shifting this portfolio from State to the Justice Department, which presumably would take a more aggressive approach to affronts to U.S. law and sovereignty.

July 1st was the 87th anniversary of the start of the battle of the Somme, one of the most tragic – and heroic - days in the history of the British army. It was marked with a ceremony in London yesterday – and some welcome news. The government is making a substantial contribution to a fund to help buy Thiepval wood, one of the starting points for the big push, and a place where many Tommies were to meet their death. There’s a good report on this in the Daily Telegraph. It includes a wonderful photograph - of William Stone, 102, a sailor of the Great War.

Is he in decline, or this just one of his bad patches? The anti-conservative ire, the weary and wearying pose, the conclusory judgments--there's been a lot of all that lately. This week's column is, actually, the second-worst commentary I've seen from any major pundit on the Supreme Court's affirmative action and sodomy cases. (Maureen Dowd, liberal racist and slanderer, wins first prize.) The decisions are "a reassertion of sanity" that outraged only the Republican "party's florid assortment of wing nuts." Everyone in the "vast sensible center of American politics" knows that racial preferences are obligatory. It's a "cultural consensus." A majority of California voters appear to be outside this consensus. Perhaps they're wing nuts?

"There is also a consensus on abortion: tolerable during the first few months of pregnancy but with severe limits after that," Klein writes. This time it's the Court that appears to be outside the consensus, since this isn't anywhere close to the accurate description of its jurisprudence that Klein thinks it is.

He has been capable of better in the past. Maybe next week will be better.

Rate NRO here.

I know I have to wait for Stan to settle the issue, but I do think this story is pretty interesting. It turns out that Gay Pride parades are under increasing pressure to become more family-friendly. Personally, I'm far more troubled by gay adoption than I am by same-sex unions and why the gay marriage issue is more controversial than gay adoption is beyond me. According to the census 32% of same-sex couples have children!

Anyway, I don't trust the celebratory tone of the article nor the statistics from these gay groups. And this article does not a winning argument make. But it does seem to work against the notion that gay marriage is inherently and singularly destructive to notions of normalcy in some important ways. I thought this was pretty interesting:

John Kirkley, 36, an Episcopal priest in San Francisco, says that after he and his partner adopted a son almost five years ago, straight couples, rather than other gay men, became the foundation of their social network.

"We had a lot more in common with straight parents than single gay or lesbian folks in terms of understanding the joys and challenges of parenting, understanding we can't be as flexible with our schedule," he said. "Some gay and lesbian folks of a certain age had lived in an all-adult world for so long they weren't really comfortable relating to children."

I get quite a bit of email like this. I think it's pretty interesting:

Jonah,

I just finished reading the "G-File" and I must commend you on a great article.

As a white, conservative, gay male, I must agree with you on the issue of "marriage." I was brought up in a home with a mother and father and was taught that marriage was between a man and a woman. To this day, I honor and respect that. However, at the same time I do not feel that I should be punished for living with my partner.

According to the 2000 Census there are 11 million people who are unmarried and living together. This includes both heterosexual and homosexual couples. The last time I checked the news, the world did not stop because these people were not married and living together and the institution of marriage has not crumbled like a house of cards.

Marriage like most institutions learns to adapt and change with the times, or else it crumbles.

I, like you, am in favor of a "civil union" of some sort, which will allow me the same rights as a heterosexual couple has. My partner and I had to fill out numerous papers, so that if (God forbid) anything happened to one of us, the other one had a say in what treatment was pursued. However, by the same token, we have to have those papers with us at all times when ever we travel. When you travel in the U.S., with your wife, do you carry your marriage certificate with you? I would assume that you do not, but if something were to happen to you (or vice-versa), they would not look twice when you would request information.

If you were to take a poll of most homosexuals, and ask them if they would want marriage, or the same rights as a heterosexual, most would say that the equal rights would be more important.

It would be the perfect compromise; the conservatives get to keep the institution of "marriage," while the homosexuals get "equal treatment." Moreover, the U.S. Constitution is not amended because a SCOTUS ruling upsets a few people.

Sincerely,

[Name Withheld]

P.S. Most gay people look at heterosexual sex as "icky." Therefore, I guess it is relative. (No implication of incest intended.)

Lots of readers keep saying, "Yeah, Federalism would be great but the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution requires states to recognize each others' marriages." Well, here's the full section:

"Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof."[Emphasis Mine]

It seems to me that this says Congress can decide what sorts of contracts will be recognized. And, if it doesn't, why not amend the constitution on this point? Rather than amend the Constitution to define marriage, why not amend the Constitution to say that each state may define marriage? I mean if we're going to lift up the hood, why not do it in a way that is consistent with federalist principles -- and hence allow different communities to organize themselves as they see fit -- rather than use Washington to dictate morality to all fifty states? I'm just asking the question.

Stan - I'll withhold comment on the FMA until I've read up more. But on the issue of lefty gay theorists changing their position, I'll take your word on that as I have not had time to follow the gay press (except for the New York Times) for a while. That said, just because the queer theorists believe something, that doesn't make them right. After all, they're wrong about so much else and the left is not any more immune to the "careful what you wish for" rule than the right is. Surely there are many more gays who want gay marriage for conventional or bourgeois reasons than because they've signed up for a secret campaign to destroy the institution from the inside out. Applying Occam's razor should show that while pro-marriage gays might be wrong on the merits they probably aren't deliberately wrong. They aren't clamoring for the keys to the institution of marriage out of a clandestine mission to destroy it. And even if that is their "plan" we can still entertain the possibility that their plan might not work.

From Marysville, Ohio:

Jonah,
I think you missed the point of the story of Jebediah Springfield and Shelbyville Manhattan and pretty much ruined a great opening to another column. What you have here is two people united for a cause for two seperate reasons. Eventually the motives had to come out or at least the differences were bound to appear. This is kind of along the lines of the emails you've been bombarded with about suddenly becoming the "enemy" by some for saying the right is losing the culture wars. The reality is that even though you may have traveled the same path and arrived at the same location, you're not quite on the same page. Or at the very least you're on different paragraphs. Maybe you could use the story of Marge refusing to call Michangelo's David pornographic and outraging her fellow crusaders instead.

As far as the "ick" factor goes, stick to your guns (as if I had to tell you to). We don't eat horses, dogs or cats here. As far as I know they pose no health threat (unlike cannibalism which I'm told can pass on a few not so nice things). It's just, well... gross. As fat and juicy as I'm sure my black lab Aubrey is, I have no intention of eating her any time soon no matter how hungry I get. A) she's a dog. B) she's family. Double ick.

"The UK is obliged to implement the directive. Failure to transpose its requirements properly would be a serious breach of our obligations under the EC Treaty and would result in infraction proceedings against the UK and in the likelihood of our facing heavy fines."Ultimately, implementation would be forced upon us."

Repulsive.

Several readers have chastised me for imbuing the "ick" factor with significance and merit. They say that all arguments must be made from principle and have the clarity of rigorous logic etc etc. I reject this.

Yeah, yeah,I agree that all arguments must appeal to reason and employ logic or they're not really arguments, just rants. But quite often, the purely rational argument is not the best argument among non-Vulcans. As Chesterton noted the purely rational man will not marry and the purely rational soldier will not fight. If you think the visceral and emotional have no place in political arguments you must live alone on an island. There may good arguments and logical justifications for saying "ick" (or yuck, blech etc) but that doesn't mean we should simply dismiss plain old revulsion out of hand. As a matter of pure objective analysis, the political agent who ignores the role of passion and revulsion will invariably lose against the one who takes such things into account.

Let's get sex out of it. Cannibalism is disgusting to most of us in the West. And yet, I'm sure you could come up with an entirely rational argument for eating the dead or feeding them to animals, whatever. I'm sure there are rational arguments against that too. But without the ick factor we have to discuss each and every idea as if it had merit and once we do that, we've already lost something. I would rather live in a society that justified its prohibitions on cannibalism or, say, necrophilia out of disgust than out of pure reason.

Okay, this Weekly Standard parody is pretty funny.
For the record NR's cruise (in November) has not been cancelled and I will be on it (as will the Fair Jessica and Lil' Lucy -- but no Comso, alas).

Here's the first email out of the block in response to today's G-File:

You write:

"And, second, Sullivan says with considerable rage that incest is usually abusive to minor children and it's outrageous to compare consensual relations between two adults to an abusive relationship between an adult and his child. That's all fine as far is it goes. But it says nothing about the principle involved."

I agree completely with you. What I don't understand is why it matters to you that Sullivan's argument does not clarify the principle at stake. You have written extensively about the forgivability of inconsistency in argument and the usefulness of hypocrisy in public policy. Why can't Sullivan appeal to these things as well? Why can't he say "Well, okay, the principle is not being consistently applied, but as Jonah Goldberg has argued, that doesn't really matter so much provided we are getting to a place we can all live with?" Now I realize that might, in fact, characterize the argument you make, namely that compromise is necessary and conservatives can't just ignore the existence of homosexuals in American society. But if you expect your earlier arguments about inconsistency to persuade other conservatives, why not expect them to do so here?

My response: There are several answers to this. Let me go through a few. 1) Andrew continually insists that principle and reason are on his side (and he's been dubious of my whole "ode to inconsitency" approach as well), so I am judging him by his standards not my own. 2) I've never said that consistency is a useless concept or that inconsistency is necessarily preferable to consistency. Rather, I've said it depends on the circumstances. 3) Even when I've taken the position that inconsistency can be forgiven, I've also argued that inconsistency is certainly fair game for debate and discussion. It would be nuts of me to promote a position which forced me to applaud people for being inconsistent. I'll stop there.

I have not said for whom I shall vote, but I will tell you for whom I will not vote. I will not vote for any politician who will promote abortion or the culture of death, no matter how appealing the rest of his or her program might be. They are wolves in sheep’s garments, the K.K.K. without the sheets, and sadly enough, they don’t even know it.

The Rev. Richard McBrien, a liberal theologian at the University of Notre Dame, said despite all the kudos O'Malley has won for his response to clergy sex abuse, he is still a conservative priest who would be "uncritically loyal to the Holy See and would not veer one millimeter from its policies and teachings on anything."

Ramesh's piece is excellent.

There have always been two distinct but often mutually reinforcing conservative arguments against big spending. The first is the classically Republican "government should be run like a business" argument. Spending too much, means taxing too much which is bad for economic growth. Deficits are problems for governments just as they are for the local Five and Dime. Live within your means, etc etc.

The second argument is classically conservative. Government spending is like welfare, addictive and degrading. When the government tries to do for people what they should properly do for themselves it is destructive to self-reliance and individual initiative. Deficits are a green-eyeshade concern at best.

Today, it seems that President Bush is defying both principles. By signing on to a huge expansion of Medicare, Bush has agreed not only to a budget-busting expansion of the federal budget, he has also agreed to a major advancement in government control of the private sector. How much this will corrupt individual or business initiative remains debatable, but it's impossible to deny that Bush has at least agreed to the violation of a conservative principle. There may be pragmatic justifications for some of this -- the war on terror should come first, for example.

But I also think what we're really witnessing is a profound and probably permanent change in the principles of conservatism which has been building for decades.Irving Kristol, for example, was considered heretical among conservatives years ago for arguing that a welfare state which protected the neediest and the eldery was not incompatible with conservatism (a position that, ironically enough, Pat Buchanan not only holds now but considers to be the heart of his economic philosophy). According to Kristol, Social Security, for example, is hardly a threat to the values of the elderly who have worked their entire lives.

I always thought "compassionate conservatism" was a mixture of meaningless Madison Avenue marketing and Clintonian triangulation. But it turns out compassionate conservatism is an ideology of conservative activism. This isn't a blanket condemnation since I like some of the things Bush is doing -- or says he wants to do -- a great deal. Indeed, a defense of compassionate conservatism might include the point that it calls not so much for the expansion of government as the re-arrangement of government institutions along the lines of the Homeland Security shake-up. But that defense would be stronger if it included less paper-shuffling and more profound changes -- like privatizing social security, reforming entitlements and re-seizing the initiative on the faith-based initiatives.

I will leave it to the likes of Ponnuru, Adler and Clegg to do the heavy-lifting on Linda Greenhouse's Supreme Court wrap-up. But it strikes me at first glance as having some classic Greenhouse touches, with the usual suggestions of growth and sophistication when the Court takes a liberal turn. I particularly like this graph:

"Justice O'Connor was in the majority this term in all but 2 of the 14 5-to-4 decisions. In five of those, including two that upheld California's three-strikes sentencing law, she cast her vote with her more conservative colleagues. In four others, including the Michigan law school case and a case that preserved a nationwide program that provides money for legal services for the poor, she voted with Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer."

You see when she votes with the trogs on the Right they're "conservative colleagues." But when O'Connor votes with the liberals she joins the ranks of independent-minded scholars and jurists who defy easy labeling. No, these intellects must be named individually.

I hope those plaintive tones were not aimed at me, the man who not only filled the Corner yesterday but who googled himself so much he nearly went blind. I was up at dawn finishing the G-File and then hunting squirrels with Coz (he's back on squirrels again, by the way).

I was quoting from memory, but I'll take this guy's word for it. From a reader:

Jonah,

You incorrectly assumed that because Justice Thomas thinks a prison beating does not violate a certain constitutional provision, he found it "wasn't unconstitutional."

Justice Thomas did not hold that prison beatings were constitutional. He just said they did not violate the Eighth Amendment. Instead, he said a remedy was available under a different amendment:

"Respondents (the guards) concede that if available state remedies were not constitutionally adequate, petitioner would have a claim under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 29 (2002).

If Justice Thomas had said there were no remedy, the New York Times would have been right to call him the "Youngest, Cruelest Justice." But like many people who criticize judges (from the left and the right), the Times just failed to read the opinion carefully.

You fell into the same trap as the Times, just from the other side.

Good column by Diana West

From a reader on (my super frick'n awesome) google ranking:

Jonah,

Without sounding too geekish here (a point sometimes lost in Corner discussions on Star Trek, et al.), there is no way technologically for Google to track your browser's home page, your browser's history list or where you browse apart from their site. There are a few ways to track what site you actually click on to leave their site, but these methods are far from transparent, and they don't appear to use them. Google is what Google is because of its knack for using a variety of things to rank sites in importance in a similar way to how the human mind does. While their exact algorithms for ranking sites are closely guarded secrets (as are all search engine ranking methods), experimentation can reveal some of their methodology.

It has a lot to do with how many sites link to your particular site, and how many other sites link to those sites. This gives them a relative idea of popularity of your site, or how many people who have sites thought your site was important enough to link to. There's much more to it, but you can see how many sites in their index link to your site by doing an advanced search. There's a distinct correlation between number of pages linking to your page and where you are in the ranking compared to other results for the same keywords. That's one of the reasons Google is so good, because it partly relies on the importance other people assign to your site.

OK, I'm a geek. I couldn't even keep from sounding that way for two paragraphs. You're probably not even taking any more applications for "web-geek guy."

Ramesh - I'm not sure I agree. When Thomas says he disagrees with the policy but considers it constitutional I think there's some very useful didacticism at work. Too many Americans believe that if something is bad it must also be unconstitutional. With the occassional exception of free speech issues, the press and the public seem to believe the founders intended the Constitution to prevent all of our various governments from doing anything wrong. This belief is the primary reason the Supreme Court gets away with deciding decisions on grounds other than law. If we all decide cross burning is wrong or affirmative action is right, it must be somewhere in that magic hat of a Bill of Rights. So I like it when Thomas explains that he disagrees with a given policy but is willing to uphold its constitutionality. That's what he did in Hudson v. McMillian when he held that the beating of a Louisiana prison inmate by some guards was probably criminal, but it wasn't unconstitutional. That is great stuff.

Will Saletan e-mails: "I'm playing back the video of the Dems' LCV debate from last week. One of the reporters on the panel asks the candidates about environmental problems that affect 'people of poverty.'

"Brought to you by the people of correctness."

I'd stop posting about telemarketers and google searches for my own name if somebody else would just post something!

From a reader:

Jonah,

I’m not sure how much your reader knows with regards to how Google works and how it uses cookies, but I can tell you this – I have a shareware cookie manager that pretty much blocks all of them and I still get Rube and then you when I do a Google search on “Goldberg”. So you have permission to swell your head up again now.

From a reader:

As a long time fan, I hate to burst your bubble about the Google rating, but I've heard that those things look at your browser history and cookies file. In other words, if I searched for Goldberg, my many hits to NRO would cause your website to get knocked up the list, but if my buddy with a WWE website as his home page did the same search he would get different "rankings".

I'm not sure as to how exactly this works, its a little bit beyond my technical grasp, but I figured I would pass it along.

From a reader:

The idea that "...many Americans just want to make the phone stop ringing with as little effort on their part as possible" is sort of anathema to the whole libertarian ideal. Its like a baby crying for the nanny state to give it food or change its diaper. Adults take responsibility for themselves. In this case that means buying gizmos or implementing changes so that whats out there only gets in here when we want it to. The problem is that "many Americans" have become so accustomed to the State changing their diapers that they can only lie there and cry until someone else (the State) handles the problem. Its a good thing cars were invented before the nanny state was in full effect or "many Americans" would be complaining about having to do all that starting and steering and pedal pushing.

My response I agree with that pretty much entirely. But this should show you how out-of-step the pure libertarians are with mainstream America and how unrealistic their rhetoric usually is. The reason I keep coming at this is that ever since Chris Caldwell's anti-spam piece and my column on it, I've been trying to think of practical strategies for not resorting to government solutions when technological and material advancement creates new versions of old "problems" traditionally "fixed" by government.

From internet porn in libraries to spam to telemarketers, technology is exposing the ossified nature of government bureaucracy. What I'm interested in is whether or not there is a realistic political strategy for keeping Americans from demanding that the government fix these new problems. If that's possible, then government can be shrunk over time as the society outgrows it. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic about the project's chances.

Compare and contrast the pictures of Britney Spears and Katharine Hepburn on Drudge for a pretty simple commentary on the changing times.

From a reader:

Jonah:

Regarding your post:
"After all, we pay for our own "No Trespassers" and "No Solicitations" signs."

Yes, we do. But let's not forget that those signs would not be of much use without local no trespassing and no solicitating ordinances. That is exactly what the "do not call" law is. We must post our telephone number and, in effect, we are posting our own no solicitating sign for telemarketers.

Several readers are asking why I think hanging up isn't a solution. The short answer is twofold. One: Most people hang-up already and the telemarketers still find it worthwhile to call millions for a tiny response rate. In short, we're held hostage to the handful of stupid, gullible or legitimately interested consumers who reward telemarketers for their efforts. Waiting until this demographic learns to hang up means waiting a very, very long time. That leads to the second problem, it's politically impractical to propose a national policy of hanging up on telemarketers. That may be the preferable approach but, again, I'm looking for a politically workable solution.

Just a nice story.

Ramesh - This isn't a really big deal but I don't understand how Sullivan can say the Griswold reference simply sailed over his head. You see when the decision came down, I posted the relevant passage from Thomas' opinion and I included the quotation marks and citation to the Griswold case. And it was that post which Sullivan initially linked to so I have to assume he read it. Anyway, things move fast in the blogosphere maybe he missed it or maybe I'm missing something.

A reader informs me that if you simply type "Goldberg" into
Google , I'm the second thing on the list after a website for Rube Goldberg. This means -- in an entirely meaningless and clearly non-remunerative sense -- I outrank the wrestler and Whoopi.

Update: And now I learn from another readers that I'm the
#1 Jonah. Equally cool, equally worthless!

I've gotten a lot of email on libertarian solutions. Some of them are unserious, to use the most charitable term avaliable. For example, several readers say, "just hang up." Others point to gadgets, dodads and services that screen calls. I have caller-id and I subscribe to the blocker service most people reccomend. Caller-ID is great, but hardly foolproof and the blocker service is a real pain because it sends a lot of legitimate business callers -- like everyone from NRHQ -- into Musak hell until I press a bunch of buttons. Moreover, companies can get around a lot of this stuff and we're still asking consumers to pay for protections rather than ask telemarketers to change their behavior. That's not terrible of course. After all, we pay for our own "No Trespassers" and "No Solicitations" signs. But again, that's an ideological point in an argument when many Americans just want to make the phone stop ringing with as little effort on their part as possible. Several folks have suggested making the telemarketers pay the people they call for their time. While I like the idea, I'm not sure getting 25 cents or even a dollar would make up for getting yanked from dinner every night. Though it probably would deter telemarketing because of the costs. However, I do think it's important to point out that while this is a market-based approach, it's not a strictly libertarian one in that you are still asking the government to force private companies to pay for something they think should be free. Unless, there's some way that I'm unaware of to force these companies to pay the people they call without the threat of government force.

I have to admit I am ideologically torn about the phone registry but pragmatically delighted by it. I would be even more delighted to see a really good libertarian argument on the subject. But I don't want to hear how it's a bad idea. I want to know how the free market would solve this problem without demanding citizens jump through endless hoops. I understand that sometimes -- often -- it would be better for citizens to jump through hoops rather than ask the government to solve their problems. But in terms of practical poilitics it's very difficult to ask them to if the alternative is government provided convenience. So, spare me the "in a perfect world" arguments and give me a practical solution that would have prevented government involvement. Oh, and for the first amendment absolutists out there, I hope you realize this registry is a form of government censorship too.

Click on "Staffer of the Week" over at Hillzoo.com , to read about John Doty Legislative Director to Jerrold Nadler. Here, for example, is his answer to the question, "What was your first political experience:

"I remember marching through the streets of lower Manhattan protesting Ronald Reagan for fueling the nuclear arms race. In fact, the day Reagan was sworn into office everyone in my classroom hid under the desks, because we thought he was going to start a nuclear war (and, just like duct tape will save you from a chemical attack, everyone knows that hiding under desks is really the best way to survive a nuclear attack). Anyway, thank goodness for Gorbachev, since he was the leader most responsible for ending the Cold War."

UPDATE They have a new staffer profile up this morning but you can still find Mr. Doty's profile in the archives. It's definitely worth reading.

There’s an interesting piece on Whistler’s famous portrait of his mother in this weekend’s Financial Times. The painting is wonderful, but it seems that it took a while for some critics to think so. The Daily Telegraph wished that “Mr Whistler would leave off using mud and clay on his palette, and paint cleanly, like a gentleman.” Meanwhile the portrait was used by the US Post Office to celebrate Mother’s Day in 1934. The designer in charge was so upset by the notion of Anna Whistler staring into nothingness that he made a change – he added flowers.

Cliff Claven would approve.

The justice comes in for some harsh words from Maureen Dowd and David Broder today. The arguments and (in MoDo's case) implied arguments don't really rise to a level where refutation is required. But one of Dowd's comments shows her sinking to a new level.

Writes Dowd, "Nino is too blinded by his own bloviation to notice that Americans are not as censorious as he is. They like the complicated national mosaic — that Dick Cheney has a gay daughter, that Jeb Bush has a Latina wife, that Clarence Thomas has a white wife. . . ." Excuse me? Justice Scalia is "censorious" about interracial marriage? Where did that come from?

It turns out that Mr. Rosenzweig is a member of the Council of the American Library Association. Thanks to blogger ‘William McKinley’ for directing me to this piece from the WSJ.

Here are comments on freedom attributed to Rosenzweig in the piece:

“We cannot presume that all countries are capable of the same level of intellectual freedom that we have in the US.”

Why not?

The New York Times this morning has a piece on next month’s high school graduation exams in Italy. 20th Century totalitarianism is amongst the topics to be considered and some are complaining that, relatively speaking, it concentrates too much on Communism. The Times notes “Communism is blamed for the executions of about 100 million people, five times greater than the killings attributed in the exam to Nazism. In the wording of the topic, it takes one sentence to denigrate Fascism. It takes four to vilify Communism.”

Well, although the word ‘executions’ is inaccurate (many of the deaths were caused by famine or harsh treatment in the concentration camps), it probably is fair to say that the tally of direct victims (that total excludes casualties of war and the famine that followed the Russian civil war) of Communism reached around 100 million. Equally, it’s true that the number of those murdered by the Nazis was quite a bit lower (they were ‘only’ free to indulge their capacity for carnage over 12 years, a fraction of the time that Communism had to indulge its own slaughterhouse instincts). 20 million does look too few, however, (it must, for example, exclude those killed in combat), and thus it implicitly fails to recognize the Third Reich’s responsibility for the war in the first place.

As for the number of sentences dedicated to Fascism over Communism, that seems about right. For all its faults and crimes (particularly, of course, in Italy), Fascism was a less virulent phenomenon than Communism or Nazism. That doesn’t excuse it for a moment, but it would explain why less attention should be paid to it in the context of a topic devoted to 20th Century totalitarianism and terror.

But all this is to miss the larger point – trying to decide which out of Nazism and Communism was worse is a pointless exercise. Both philosophies were morally repulsive and a disgrace to humanity, both caused tens of millions of deaths (all too often in circumstances of grotesque cruelty) and both were responsible for the devastation of tens of millions more lives. Understanding them is essential. Trying to judge between them adds nothing.

That said, there has been a marked tendency to understate the evil of Communism (you can see an echo of this in this piece’s reference to the (invaluable) Black Book of Communism as “harshly negative,” adjectives that would be unlikely to be used to describe a book on the crimes of National Socialism), and to the extent that the Italian education authorities are trying to redress this imbalance so much the better.

Judging by the comments of one high school teacher cited in the article, there’s a lot to do. “I teach my students that of course Communism must be seen in a negative light, but the goal of Nazism was to kill people, and the goal of Communism was to unite them.”

That’s far too simplistic – both movements were, in a sense, Utopian, but these were 'Utopias' that were always going to be a constructed on a hecatomb. Both philosophies relied on the elimination of 'undesirables'. The difference was that the Nazis defined these by race and the Communists by class. The similarity, alas, was that millions died.