1. A book recommended.
2. Of argument and abortion.
3. Of Mr Obama and the Sudan.
4. Kool.
5. Other weapons.
6. What post-modern President means … or Mr Orwell comes home.
7. One high risk lifestyle leads to another.
8. Einstein and Samuel and King Saul.
9. Exactly!!
10. Philosophy and the spiritual life.
11. Does she not get that the left does this all the time too?
12. Broooadwaaay.
13. Arrgh, SOX take 2.
15. A blogger makes a prediction … and we can hope.
16. Iran opposition also criticizes Mr Obama.
17. I’ve been memed.
18. Who needs oversight when they’re “smart”.
19. This piece starts with an interesting question, if the Iran protestors want silence … why are so many of their signs in English?

• It appears the “experts” think SOX (which as they say SUX) wasn’t bad enough a handicap for the US economy. For now we’re going to get SOX 2! (Will that SUX more?) That’s what a struggling economy needs, more paperwork, more restrictions. Who is feeding people in the beltway all those stupid pills? Why? Is there something in the water in DC? Who can imagine the way to jumpstart and get an economy into high gear is to increase the paperwork and regulatory load? That after we find corporations can reach a size which is “too big to fail” that either elected government officials are going to be able to keep that in check or that “too big to fail” should be enshrined in statute … without discussion over “too big to fail” is right, if there are alternatives, or if it is even a good idea.
• When unemployment is rising, do we hear calls to lower the minimum wage? Does it occur to anyone that a high minimum wage makes it hard to justify keeping a marginal employee. That it’s easier for a company in a pinch to keep an employee if it can do so by cutting his salary … not his job? Does it occur to anyone that there are indeed people who would rather work for a bit less than not work at all? Does it occur to anyone that requiring and encouraging employer supplied health care is just another way of raising that minimum wage and making that marginal worker unemployable. That unskilled laborer in the US who requires $7+ an hour + benefits worth another $1+ per hour means he can’t compete at all on a global market with a Asian worker who will work for $3 to $8 in a 12 hour day … which means his job has gone or is quickly going to go overseas.
• When Mr Obama says, “I welcome discussion and open debate on this” … does anyone still believe that is honestly intended? Or has everyone now realized that is just one of his many tactics used to stifle debate. After all the last, what three(!?), times he’s said that immediately afterwards legislation is rammed through Congress for “emergency” reasons and signed immediately without pause. The left used to complain that Mr Bush was always lying. I doubted that, in that I though that it was clear that Mr Bush believed to be true the things he said. However, it must be said that when it comes to being dishonest, Mr Obama outpaces Mr Bush by a wide margin.
• Our family saw Up recently. I think the theme that I perceived, that it is not the sharing of grand adventure and the big things in life that matter and mean the most to us, but the ordinary and prosaic. I think that is right. I’m also disappointed that someone snuck a “Disney” dysfunctional dad into the story. Why is it in the Disney world that parents, and almost always the dads are missing, evil, or dysfunctional? And … on another cinematic note, Land of the Lost is already at the dollar theater (actually $3 now) and in the same week that Wolverine and Star Trek get there. So finally I might get to see the second two in the next week or so at long last.

1. Obama. Standing for evil in the name of expediency? (more here) And … his plans may need to be scrapped anyhow.
2. From the center/left on the Letterman/Palin kerfuffle.
3. The BRIC countries.
4. Considering Lewis and the Abolition of Man.
5. About that Ernest fellow.
6. Some unsolicited suggestions for cycling teams seeking sponsorship.
7. White House kremlinology.
8. Not on board.
9. Americorp notes.
10. Death and dying. Here too.
11. For me this recalled Mr Moorcock’s Cure for Cancer.
12. Talking shop on asymmetric warfare.
13. Private vs public insurance … and a point often missed.
14. The comfort of myth … although why nobody connects that myth with the myths that the Islamic middle east powers hold which Obama repeated in his Cairo speech … is a mystery.
15. Too bad the obvious alternative to “too big to fail” is not on the table, i.e., if you get that big … you get broken up.
16. Of protest and information.
17. Two Saints who made just a little impact on the course of history.
18. Russia and population demographics.
19. A good question.

It occurs to me that Iran may have committed a horrible strategic error. I’ve not seen this suggested anywhere, but bear with me a moment.

• During the Iraq kerfuffle Iran has established munitions pipelines and connections between Shia in Iraq and Iran.
• There are signs that civil uprising and large scale violence in Iran is on the horizon.
• The West (and Israel) would welcome regime change in Iran, yet the West cannot be directly involved for there is little public trust or like in Iran for the West (especially the US).
• However the US now has ties in places has close relations with Iraqi Shia … and through them likely the Iranian Shia as well.
• Those ties could be used to funnel support to the nascent Iranian insurgency in Iran through the Iraq pipelines.

Thus the Iranian involvement in Iraq by the current regime may be weak point that can be now used to attack that same said regime.

What a tangled web.

1. Not a charter 77, but “they” do want this recognized … so much for “they want our silence”.
2. Here and there, back then.
3. Theology of the Iranian kerfuffle.
4. Rock your tunes … on the bike.
5. Math factory?
6. The left’s blind spot.
7. Heh.
8. An old bug.
9. Media bias? Say it ain’t so.
10. Krugman’s advice.
11. Ok, right. Re-read this realizing that “private insurance” is what you pay for not some magical “other” agency.
12. Justice, China style.
13. Christian fantasy noted.
14. Mining the globe for talent.
15. Pro-choice roots.
16. Verse.
17. To keep in mind when Mr Obama talks religion.
18. What Mr Obama means when he says he wants healthy debate, i.e., he’s lying. Others take up that tack too.

So, summer reading lists? I’ve got the Delsol (The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century) and Beneton (Equality by Default)to pick through and I thought I’d work on finding some post-fall Eastern European literature that evaluates “what happened” and “what did it mean” questions. I’m also listening to “Snoop” as recommended by one of the blogs on my RSS list. Theology? John Behr’s three books on the early church, The Way to Nicaea and The Nicene Faith 2 Volume Set.  And … for pure escape, Steven Erikson (Toll the Hounds) and of course Dan Simmons (Drood: A Novel).

Any more suggestions (although it looks like my July is “booked”)? Any suggestions for the post-fall dissidents list?

How about y’all? What are you reading this summer?

1. Rust and wheat and the unanticipated disaster.
2. The self sufficient.
3. Film.
4. 10 myths and the bike.
5. Some (milder?) images and Iran.
6. A mid-East rebuttal to Mr Obama’s speech?
7. One man’s statement on Iran.
8. Is this the best key to use to drive education policy? I’d offer, uhm, not.
9. Some good econ links.
10. On IVF.
11. CBO on the Kennedy healthcare plan, not so good.
12. Name and spots.
13. Evangelicals notice (lifelong) celibacy.
14. Considering late term abortions.
15. In Graphic form, TV transition and the tobacco industry.
16. Heh.
17. Sex and theology the discussion continues.

Some 32 years ago, a little typewritten paper was published which took 20 years for the consequences of that document to unfold. The US stood silent then. We stood silent 20 years earlier when tanks rolled into Hungary. It looks like some would ask us still to remain silent, yet again.

Clint Eastwood directed White Hunter, Black Heart some years back. In it there is a scene in which Eastwood’s character enters into a fight against a man who was, if memory serves really deserved it. Eastwood’s character (John Wilson modeled after John Huston and his filming of the African Queen) is soundly beaten. His companion wonders afterward if he thought he had any chance of winning. The reply was no … but some things one has to make a stand against. To disregard the consequences.

In Iran today people are wondering what to make of the Iranian election. Was it a modern miracle of non-automated clerical assiduous labor. Was it voter fraud or not?

Lots of people have been following this far more closely than I. Lots of people are more expert than I at the Iranian cultural and political situation.

What I would entreat is that we don’t do the “pragmatic” thing, or the politically expedient thing. We (the US and the world that is not-Iran for that matter) should stand up for what is right. Too often we have stood silent in the face of horror and evil.

Lest this be misunderstood. I’m not advocating war. I’m not saying we should have gone to war then. But there is a vast difference between standing in silence (tacit approval) and war.

Let us not be silent. If a some Iraqis publish their chapter 9, let it be heard in Arabic, in Kurdish, in English, and indeed in all the languages of the modern world.

1. Of Theodicy and politics.
2. Only insofar as we let him get away with it.
3. This thing called Iran.
4. Some more remarks here.
5. Social evolution and religion.
6. A patristics dictionary recommended.
7. Next line of really bad ideas, the pay czar … debated by Becker & Posner.
8. The next scandal?
9. Nuclear energy (more here).
10. Want rust?
11. I’m going to check this out.
12. The consequences of denying slavery exists in the modern world.
13. The (un)importance of sex.
14. A homily for the Saints (day).
15. Watching the car industry.
16. Of bees.

Well, slowly but surely I’m catching up on my viewing of Joss Whedon’s latest enterprise, Dollhouse [note: I’ve two episodes left to catch up on]. Underlying the Dollhouse plot-line is the of course the ethical (and pragmatic) questions underlying the actual running of an enterprise as suggested. Dolls, are people, who (we are led to believe) knowledgeably contract for a 5 year term during which their minds and memory (self) is (mostly) erased and reprogrammed during the term of tenure for whatever purposes the house might desire.  For the following assume contract is not forced and the terms of the contract are made clear. That is the contractee (doll) enters into the contract with full knowledge of what it entails and voluntarily submits.

So, the question on offer is whether or not a dollhouse contract might be ethical (moral). My take looking across the ideological divide is that a strict contract libertarian cannot argue against it. For a contract libertarian no voluntary contract can be dismissed on ethical grounds. My guess is that the progressive/liberal would argue against it incompletely. That their argument would be on class/power grounds and that this is an abuse of the same … but that the progressive would leave substantial numbers of people undefended, i.e., that recruiting dolls from those suffering irrevocable brain injuries that left the person amenable to the programming process would be eliglble (salvageable as doll) for permanent doll status. Finally, it is my opinion that the conservative view would be that this is immoral under any circumstances for a number of reasons, in human rights terms (which I don’t find persuasive, but can serve here as shorthand) is that we don’t posses the right to give up our autonomy in that way.

However, making assumptions like that is fraught with danger. One cannot and should not ascribe motives an arguments for the others side, they are likely to be wrong. Recently in two discussions on the abortion debate I witnessed, the pro-choice speaker assumed motives of the pro-life side, making the categorical claim that any and all pro-life positions assume a patriarchal viewpoint and wish to oppress women. Now there may in fact be pro-life people who advocate patriarchy and oppression of women, but I’m not one and I’ve never even met one in conversation. So here we have what might be a typical view of the pro-choice left of the conservative pro-life movement which is mostly fictional. It ascribes motives and arguments to the other which, although easy to argue against, are not actually held by any but a tiny minority.

So, with that in mind, I’ll only offer my argument of why the doll process and contract is immoral, and oddly enough, it is lies at the heart of my opposition to abortion. As a defense against the totalitarian excesses of the last century it is essential that we hold to an ontological axiomatic assertion of the dignity of man. The doll process, in that it moves a person to “thing” violates that principle and is therefore immoral.

So what are my gentle reader’s takes on doll ethics? If the dollhouse process is contractually aboveboard and kept that contract is kept faithfully … is it moral?

1. Right wing … why right? Just to demonize the right I guess.
2. Why is the left denying affirmative action regarding Ms Sotomayor? (As opposed to pointing to it as a shining example)
3. Drifting left.
4. Betrayal.
5. Politics in the land of the cossacks.
6. A happy blogger.
7. Mr Biden then and … now?
8. Endoxes.
9. Open your mind.
10. A problem for the Treas Sec.
11. Of Constantine the Ethnomartyr.
12. Hope.
13. And zombies.
14. 7 notes.
15. A choir.
16. This meme is resurfacing again … why now?

Mr Obama and those in his coterie want to press for a major shift in our healthcare system to one which far more strictly controlled by the government. I think Mr Obama’s interest in healthcare in this manner is likely a charitable impulse for the 10% at the bottom combined alas with a disregard for the state of the middle 85% which will likely be substantially harmed by this shift and the realization that those at the very top (of which he is one) will be unaffected. The question for future elections will be how well will the Democratic party be able to re-write history and shift blame for the disaster that this will become. For if they fail that project then their predicted demographic demise of the GOP will not occur, but that a decade from now the two-party system which naturally arises in the American project will not include one which coins itself the “Democratic party”.

In the interest of completeness, is should be pointed out that the AMA hawking for market control of healthcare is a somewhat disingenuous plea. The AMA strictly controls their medical school graduating population into the various specializations in a centralized manner attempting to predict and fix the markets and quantities of various specialty (and generalist) numbers. Their plea for market forces is more in the nature of a complaint that power which had been theirs might be lost.

Today it was noted (by a liberal blogger no less) that approximately 10% of medical expenses go the mostly loudly demonized portion of the industry, i.e., the pharmaceutical companies. Given the effects of the advances that internal medicine has been able to achieve in the last few decades if that the result of 10% of our expenditure … there should be no grounds for complaints. Those touting “gains” in efficiencies of the proposed system fail to recognized the following (or at least have failed to counter them in anything I’ve read):

• To get a drastic gain in efficiency has to mean that today there are drastic inefficiencies. To this matter, a question should be asked. In your visits in hospitals and doctors offices do you see Doctors the nursing staff just doing busy work? Or are they at at task dealing with patients? In my experiences with medical staff, one sees busy doctors and the industry standard “waiting room” time is on account of emergency and other over-booking and under estimates of the time it takes to deal with individual patients. The point is, if doctors and nurses and other practitioners don’t have idle time and are actually working close to capacity … where’s this big gain in medical capacity going to come from?
• It is claimed that government involvement will streamline and make the paper work and billing matters more efficient and more streamlined. Why just stating this doesn’t cause those touting this notion’s head to explode with the cognitive dissonance is beyond me. Government. Increased efficiency. Aren’t those antithetical concepts? There is no project, no task, no aspect of life in the past 2000 years that government bureaucracy has added efficiency and smoothed out the wrinkles. Less paperwork and lower costs with more government involvement. Riiiight. Name just one time in the past where that transpired.
• If improvements in medical costs and quality of care are to be actually realized, it’s going to be when more and more of your medical interactions are in the form of something more like a internet subscription service, i.e., far fewer doctors managing a largely automated network. It’s going to take real innovation and paradigm shifts in how medicine is done. So let me ask, will entrenching our medical culture and industrial complex into a large government beaurocracy will make things more or less amenable to large changes? Less likely seems the realistic answer. If you think the answer is “more likely” … again I’ve failed to even see this issue addressed anywhere … so what is the argument to that.
• Finally, the insistence that increased administrative efficiency and methodology is where the solution to the so-called healthcare problem is to be found is harmful in that it causes thousands if not millions of people to be looking for the solutions in the wrong place.

Here are three fatal flaws with every “unified government run” healthcare proposal such as the ones that the Democrats are pushing.

1. Praising Keynes … but a different book perhaps and a look at inflation and our debt.
2. Exams noted.
3. In which it is noted we are all crazy.
4. DIY 3-d.
5. Stating the obvious.
6. Rearranging those deck chairs (on the Titanic).
7. Recursion and art.
8. Do what I say and not what I do is commonly seen, less known is the do what I say and not what I say.
9. Although perhaps its not as uncommon as I thought.
10. No. It’s not a right. If rights are at all intelligible (and that is doubtful) then you have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … healthcare, a good education and so on … not on the list.
11. Teaching Edwards.
12. Praising modesty.
13. Oops.
14. Heh.
15. Discussing disgust and morals in two parts.
16. Elegance.
17. Considering Sodom.
18. Anti-Semitism. Three statements from … a liberal Jew, a conservative Jew, and a theological study noted.

1. Rewarding the wrong bunch.
2. Viewing polarization and Congress.
3. Of Che and Burke.
4. Math is beautiful … and if you can’t take the class, this book (The Book of Numbers) might do in a pinch.
5. Of tolerance.
6. I think this is misleading and is being used dishonestly. A number of banks were forced against their will to take TARP money. They weren’t in distress and didn’t need or want it. Now they’ve paid it back. To not recall that in noting this is dishonest.
7. Stories conservatives tell their children to scare them before bedtime.
8. In other news, Mr Biden remains clueless, which I gather is his primary function.
9. The MSM just noticed?
10. Star Trek and Mr Obama.
11. Watching Pakistan.
12. Evangelism as abuse?
13. Morton’s fork.
14. Core strength training.
15. A stumbling block for recovery.
16. A translation project?
17. Alas, the next kerfuffle … and this is probably not unrelated. People need thicker skins.
18. Ikon and corner.
19. A YA book recommended.

Separation of church and state is as a necessary element for a free society is a fundamental block in the foundational grounding assumptions on which our country is based. Americans assume that this is necessary and that it leads to a much better and happier society. But … is it even true?

Supporters of this claim point to Eastern European post Reformation wars which were nominally religiously based, i.e., the Protestant/Protestant and Protestant/Catholic struggles. There certainly was a strong religious element to element to many of these conflicts although in many cases religious differences lay parallel to other important political, cultural, and economic fault lines and therefore religion was not the sole cause of many if not all of these struggles. However, the Eastern Roman history lies as a counter-example. Over one thousand years of unbroken church/state intermingling to which one cannot attest clearly that the lack of church state separation was harmful, in fact it may have been the reverse.

An important factor however distinguishes those governments in which church/state mingling “worked” and those in which it didn’t. In the ones which “work” the religion practiced in the state was almost completely uniform, that is one single religious tradition was unquestionably dominant to the point in which it did not need to suppress or put pressure on the others. This an important distinction.

So, consider the case in which one religious tradition exists within a state. In this case when that religion is not separated but can work closely with each other this can be beneficial for both. Religious traditions can stabilize the state and build trust in its institutional organs. On the other side, the state can recognize and validate in the state arena religious sacramental activity. One might suggest that if “pursuit of happiness” were the goal that indeed people would naturally be happiest in a state which is supported and supporting of their religious tradition.

Yet, we dwell in Babylon. There is not one religious tradition in American or perhaps in any country of the world. So the question might be posed, is there any way to reap the benefits of non-separation and at the same time the protections that we hold dear that are derived from separation? Here is one suggestion. By allowing the smallest parts of government, the village, the precinct or the rural whistle-stop to incorporate and use religion and soften the church/state boundary, we retain the global protections of separation but may at the personal level reap some of the advantages of non-separation.

The logic of this is as follows.

• People in aggregate are happier when church and state are not separated.
• However, this only holds when church in question is of a tradition which is the same or very similar to a great majority of the population.
• This is not possible at a national level in any modern state.
• However, it is possible at a much finer level.
• So … perhaps it should be allowed in places which do present a uniform church tradition within a community.

Objections? Comments?