born live love die

Culture 11 is a venture designed to be a right-wing, conservative, religion friendly Slate.

On its surface, the softly launched beta test version of Culture11 hewed closely to the original vision, down to its Slateish design. Poking around the site was a bit like wandering into the Christian rock section of a record store: the bands were recognizably bands, with electric guitars and vaguely countercultural clothing, but there was something … different about them, the musicians just a little too healthy looking to be real rock stars. But there were also more interesting things happening. For a site that took as its starting point a retreat from the political arena, Culture11 actually had a lot to say about the election, and it was generally more eclectic and off-message than what other political publications had on offer as November approached. This had a lot to do with the fact that Culture11’s editorial brain trust was made up of people who had little concern for—or at least needed a breather from—the self-immolating Hindenburg of movement conservatism.

Read the whole thing.

I think that adding twentysomthings is like adding resistance in parallel.  I think you get a tensomething.

In an article about the economic woes of people who graduated college in the last few years, I spotted this gem:

Last week I talked to a 26-year-old named Candice who lives in North Carolina. She’d written to say that she can’t pay for therapy for her depression anymore because she has no job and absolutely no money. (“I have some spare change that I keep in a change purse in my dresser,” she writes.) In August, Candice graduated from James Madison University with a master’s degree in English. She is the first person in her immediate family to go to college. She wants to get a Ph.D. in literature and women’s studies, to study the works of Margaret Atwood.

A 26 year old woman with a MA in English, is depressed and can’t pay for more therapy and wants to get a PhD in women’s studies and study the works of Margaret Atwood.  The only thing missing from that line is, “walks into a bar and says that she” and “I’m trying to delay my suicide.”

During the Bush years and since Obama was elected, the Republicans have talked long and hard about small businesses.  This is a practical point for them.  They say that small businesses make a lot of jobs.  They know that a lot of people are employed by small businesses.  They want the political contributions of small business owners.  But what they haven’t been saying is that small businesses are also the first to let people go.  Larger businesses must operate on longer business cycles and they hire and fire workers based on long term goals.

Our economy needs more big business jobs, not small business jobs.  Third world countries with almost no industry are good examples of economies with lots of small business jobs.  They are politically and economically unstable.

Health care reform, long stymied by the health care insurance industry, would make small businesses able to compete better with large businesses.  Why aren’t the Republicans lining up to support that?  Because they get a ton of money from health care insurance companies.

Some weenie wrote an op-ed for WaPo: Where Are the Leaders?

On that point, at least, he’s right. We do need strong leadership. The world is in chaos. There are riots from Greece to China. Iceland has collapsed, and Mexico teeters on the edge. Pakistan is broke, melting down and awash in nukes. Yes, the stock market soared with Geithner’s toxic asset plan, but didn’t he and Obama dismiss Wall Street’s response when the first version of the bank bailout landed with a thud last month? Don’t we hate Wall Street? Obama and Geithner subsidize hedge funds on Monday and come back with heavy regulations on Thursday. What gives?

Gradually it becomes clear. This is not just a global economic crisis. It’s a global leadership crisis. Obama is still finding his footing, Gordon Brown is on his way out, Hugo Chávez is nuts and Wall Street management is larcenous. Isn’t there someone somewhere with decent values, a firm hand on the tiller and at least one big new idea? Where have all the leaders gone?

Tim Geithner, love him or hate him, is only one illustration of the problem.

Leadership is about the accomplishment of group objectives.  Democracy is about the biggest group.  We have had plenty of strong leaders in the past 20 years.  The problem is that they were all about the accomplishment of their own personal objectives.  The foremost of those was to get re-elected.

Thinking that we need another strongman is an illustration of the problem of people who expect consumer goods coming out of their wazoo and no responsibility.

Remember the expression “socialize risk, privatize reward”?  The “socialists” have been saying that for a long time, saying it about the crew running Wall Street.  Here’s the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund:

Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.

Does the line I highlighted sound familiar?

Read the whole thing.

ADHD is in the news again. I have never understood the benefit of giving kids diagnosed with ADHD drugs like Ritalin, which is like speed, but some doctors and parents are okay with it. But a new study has been done and the researchers who did the work are split on the results. One researcher says that long term use of drugs doesn’t help and stunts growth. Another researcher has a different take on the whole stunted growth thing.

Jensen said, “We were struck by the remarkable improvement in symptoms and functioning across all treatment groups.” And rather than saying the growth of children on medication was stunted, the release said children who were not on medication “grew somewhat larger.”

“Grow somewhat larger”?  Are you auditioning for a job as a comedy writer?  Keep your day job, The Daily Show won’t be calling.

The war on science, that is.

Caitlin Flanagan, someone I don’t know, is hopping mad.  And I agree with her.

THE first time I encountered the word “kleptomaniac,” I asked my mother what it meant.

She said, “That’s what they call it when a rich person steals something.”

And now, thanks to Sara Jane Olson and her return to the spacious house and gracious life she’s made for herself in St. Paul, we know what it’s called when a rich, white woman gets convicted of trying to kill cops and robbing a bank: “idealism.”

We should review, very briefly: Sara Jane Olson, née Kathleen Soliah, was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the ’70s militant group most notorious for both kidnapping the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst and espousing a philosophy at one with the age: “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.”

I get the feeling that there are facist insects preying upon the life of the people, and most of them work on Wall Street.

What has Ms. Flanagan in a lather is the fact that Olsen will get to back to Minnesota to serve her parole time.

In the courtroom, Ms. Olson was a real prize, changing her plea so many times that the frustrated judge asked her, “Were you lying to me then, or are you lying to me now?” Eventually she was convicted and sent to prison, but not before making it abundantly clear that while she admits guilt to a variety of charges, she does not feel remorse for her actions: she chalks them up to idealism and to the fact that — O, sweet bird of youth — she believed herself to have been “saving lives.”

Some of these former radicals have an extreme ability to detach from reality.

The irreducible starting point of the S.L.A.’s agenda was the belief that the justice system treated blacks differently from whites. By offering herself up to serve her parole in the state, she will do her part to ensure that there are not two standards of justice, one for the white women who have Tudor-style houses and shadowed lawns to return to in a distant state — let us call such women the “fascist insect” — and the other for African-American women — let us call them “the people” — who enter the system with very little and leave it with even less.

It looks like Ms. Olsen is now one of the insects.

Emily Yoffe wrote about narcissism.  It’s in the news because of the financial crisis.  It should be in the news everyday.

Band of Brothers is on the History Channel.  I have the DVDs in my bookshelf, but I can’t seem to not watch it when it airs.  I channel cruise, hit that channel, and stay.

The 502nd is on the line at Bastogne, no winter clothes, little food.   The commanding general had a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.  Capt. Winters had five white beans and a cup of broth.

I’ve been a foot soldier, not an officer.  I guess my heart is still with them.

I had reason to revisit this link.  This is the nut of the issue.

What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use “social issues” as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.