Well, while admiring my own bad self in pixels in Instapundit, I notice a link to a story about hospital time with a child, and as a parent, can’t help but follow it to a brilliant quote:

There is a particular radiant serenity that is immediately apparent in the countenance and bearing of the parents of critically and chronically ill children. After spending time with others who are in the clutches of what is almost universally acknowledged as the most indescribably horrible human experience, I come away feeling that I have been in the presence of God.

And it’s an amazing coincidence, but something happened that made me think just this today…the Littlest Guy had t-ball today (baseball for kids who are too little to play real baseball yet), and when we got to the field, a Challengers game was underway. Challengers are kids playing Little League baseball who are physically or developmentally disabled. It was quite a motley crew in wheelchairs and braces, the characteristic smile of children with Down’s syndrome…a walking embodiment of many parent’s – at least I’ll admit, my – fears.
Their game was running very late, but none of the t-ball parents had it in them to chase them off the field, so the coaches came up with some extra drills for the kids to do in the outfield, and the rest of us parents stood at the fence watching the game.
No one spoke about what we were watching; I don’t know what the other parents felt. I began by looking at the children struggling, and then remembering the relief I felt each time one of my sons was born and was pronounced fit. Then I felt bad for feeling that way, and started watching the parents.
And I know just what Katie Granju meant. There was an ease and a grace and a kind of joy that I saw in those parents which blocked everything else from my attention, and which I’m still carrying around with me and examining.
It amazes me how much I have to learn from people, and how easy it is when I just am willing to open my eyes and look.

Well, wowie…three weeks into this, and I get a link from the man himself, Instapundit. As egoless as you try to be, it’s hard to explain how good that feels…
He apparently got the link from Gail Davis at MyBlog, so thanks to Gail. I paged over to her, and noticed two things: Her ‘catchphrases’ are great – “Liberal and Proud of It”, and “Armed Women=Polite Men”. And she has some great, sensible commentary.
I didn’t find permalinks, so you’ll have to search or scroll, but she has at least three posts which I thought were excellent:

TUCSON POLICE: DAMNED IF THEY DO AND DAMNED IF THEY DON’T Appears that the Tucson Police Department video taped some individuals during an anti-sales tax demonstration. A policy to video tape demonstrations or gatherings that have a potential for violence came as a result of the Fourth Avenue Riot last April which was so incompetently handled by the Tucson Police. I don’t know that there was any reason to think pro-sales tax and anti-sales tax aficionados were going to come to blows. Perhaps the video ensured that they didn’t. I’m not really offended by the police video tapping specific actions during the event as long as those tapes are not retained once the event is over and no further police involvement in the issue is needed. I much prefer a policeman taking a few videos (if they will be discarded) to permanent video cameras installed around public areas.

Taping can serve at least two purposes—to allow the police to assemble intelligence by identifying people participating in or leading demonstrations (bad in the event the demonstrations are just that, good in the event that they turn into riots); and to serve as evidence in the event that police or demonstrators misbehave. Reynold’s post on my SFSU comment calls for SFSU President Corrigan to release his police tapes; showing the whole world what went on would make a differnce, he thinks. And I agree.

THE CONSERVATIONISTS ARE … Ill advised at best. The following quote is a continuation of Josh Marshall’s weblog entry below.

…I also concluded that many of the most visible hawks really are reckless, ignorant about key issues about the Middle East, and — not that infrequently — indifferent to the truth. They have been underhanded and they have used cheap media ploys.

Reckless and underhanded methods are not limited to those pushing the war or promoting their candidate for public office. Conservationists, who often have good intentions and valid concerns, emulate these methods and end up discrediting themselves. Conservationists have been so narrow minded that they inhibit any rational dialogue. And they do this in the name of “the better good.” Apparently they do not believe
1. That their data can counter those who are underhanded and indifferent to the truth;
2. That given good straightforward information, citizens in this country are able to think for themselves;
3. That we actually have a right to make choices and may not agree with all they propose.
The conservation movement needs to get it’s act together, and stop trying to manipulate us in the same way as do those arch conservative republicans.

Yes, environmentalism has moved from being a discipline aimed at rationally evaluating and preserving the environment to a secular religion…and aren’t we seeing enough religious wars these days?
I believe that there is a strong and reasonable case for conserving (note that I do not say preserving) the environment. I think that Den Beste is off-base in his attack today on energy conservation (as I thought Friedman was for his view that conservation would somehow insulate us against Islamicist terrorism). But the environmental community is painting itself into a corner by crying “wolf” so often, and taking positions so extreme and ill-thought-through that they risk pushing the mainstream away.

ALTRUISTIC MEDICINE? Chris Rangel at RangelMD.com says:
: …most physicians are forced into a system where they have to cram in 40 to 50 patients a day (at about 5-10 mins per patient) just to cover the office overhead. They work 12 hour days trying to balance office visits with hospital admissions and emergencies and then have to sit down and fill out paperwork for an additional 2-3 hours after the office is closed. I’m not a bit surprised to see more and more physicians dump Medicare, go to cash only services, and concierge arrangements. Will this create a class divide in the quality of health care? Most assuredly but don’t go off blaming greedy physicians whom you believe are obligated by society to be more altruistic. You want altruistic medicine? There are plenty of places around the world (Canada, China or any communist country, the former Soviet Union) that you can go for socialized medical care. Funny though. I don’t ever seem to recall a flood of people into these countries for the sole purpose of basking in the light of their superior medical systems.
I have a different view of how we got to this point. I think that the medical profession (mainly physicians) became excessively greedy (as a group).

I know a lot of folks whose parents were physicians in the 50’s and 60’s, and a lot of my peers are doctors now. The big difference is that where their parents expected to do well – to lead an upper-middle-class professional lifestyle, the doctors now seem to all expect to get rich.
I’ll tie this back to the increase in inequality which I keep harping on, which leads to the feeling that just making $150 – $200K/year really may not be enough to live as well as many of us think we ought to.
Maybe we should rethink?

I keep wanting to write about sexy, controversial issues which will provoke wildfires of argument and commentary (after all, why else do this?), and keep getting sidetracked into what I know are relatively arcane issues – which I find to be absolutely critical and fascinating – and which I just can’t help but write about.
Chris Bertram (who I have complimented before) has another great discussion, this time on the flaws in libertarianism.
I have always felt that libertarianism was an interesting thought experiment (gedankenexperiment, as my old physics teachers used to say), on a class with Schroedenger’s cat. To be honest, I’ve also thought that Rawlsean liberalism was the mirror image of it, in terms of being the product of a bunch of smart, well intentioned kids sitting around with too much pilsner and pizza and trying to design a society.
In his terrific post, Bertram points out a key flaw in libertarian theory – which is that the absolute property rights created will need at some point to be adjudicated.
It’s a great point, but I don’t think he went quite far enough, so I want to take it and run a little further.
What, exactly, is property?
The “law for dummies” version is that property is something which you control, can dispose of as you see fit, can transfer the ownership of, and can deny the use of to another.
To which I add: Who says?
Well, in the old days, I did. By the force of arms. (i.e. I would either kill you and take your stuff, or threaten to kill you and you would then give me your stuff).
To condense two entire disciplines (sociology and anthropology) into some bullet points, we began to form increasingly complex kinship and then social groups, in no small part because we needed enough people by our side to keep the group over the hill from coming and taking all our stuff.
In these groups, often, the strongest took command, and could basically decide what stuff he wanted, restrained only by the fact that if he took too much stuff, the weaker members would gang up on him and take all his stuff.
Sometime around the beginning of the Enlightenment, the concept that everyone in society was subject to the rule of law…that it was not just the diktat of the strongest…began to gain currency. And as a part of that the concept of “ownership” came to the fore.
This meant that what you owned – your property – was yours independent of the say-so of the king, or the local powers-that-be. It was not “granted” to you by the Queen.
And, I will also argue (in this kind of cartoon fashion), that creation – of marketable, private property – is what led to capitalism, industrialization, and all the material progress that culminates with a college freshman surfing the web for fart jokes.
But in order to do that, we have to have a concept of ‘property’ which is both absolute, in that we have clear mechanisms to determine and enforce ownership, and flexible, in that we have to adapt the definitions of property to current social conditions.
We are living through an adaptation now as intellectual property in the form of movies and music is suddenly readily transferable (and changeable – the ‘remixed’ Star Wars Episode I.II is out on DVD).
So the reality is that property is a socially defined right; there are significant issues in how it is defined, and I will claim that the ‘best’ definitions require a healthy tension between the utility and fairness of individual control and the utility and fairness of a well-functioning society.
In my mind, this alone puts paid to the libertarian absolutism of property relations as the controlling element in social relations. Reality is, as always, surprisingly complex. And people are even more complex than that…

I’m a liberal, and I think this post by Isntapundit (not Instapundit) is just great.

One of the movies we’re watching a lot at our house is ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ (can you tell that we have a teenager, and that my own maturity is probably questionable?). There’s a scene in the movie where our heroes (?) are hitching cross-country and get a ride from a van full of attractive young women (and one unattractive guy) on their way to liberate a bunch of animals.
Stick with me for a moment, there’s actually a point.
The scene in the van is incredibly funny as we watch the explicitly mindless “save the bunnies” discussion (and neato song, as well). Ultimately, we discover an ulterior motive as well as cool latex outfits, and it all makes plot sense. But the satirical take on the thoughtless “hey, Mr. Science Guy, don’t spray that aerosol in my eye” politics was pretty damn funny.
Sadly, that mindless attitude is a lot less funny when you se it on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. Thomas Friedman’s ‘A Failure to Imagine’ is a column that can really only hit the right tone when it is read by attractive actresses playing at being truly inane. Now, I thought ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’ was really good, and some of his NYT columns have been sensible, but this one is just absurd.
I know I’m a little late on this, and it’s not one of the things I’ve talked about writing about, but my reaction has been sitting in the back of my mind and it’s just won’t shut up until I write this.

No, I don’t blame President Bush at all for his failure to imagine evil. I blame him for something much worse: his failure to imagine good.
I blame him for squandering all the positive feeling in America after 9/11, particularly among young Americans who wanted to be drafted for a great project that would strengthen America in some lasting way — a Manhattan project for energy independence. Such a project could have enlisted young people in a national movement for greater conservation and enlisted science and industry in a crash effort to produce enough renewable energy, efficiencies and domestic production to wean us gradually off oil imports.
Such a project would not only have made us safer by making us independent of countries who share none of our values. It would also have made us safer by giving the world a much stronger reason to support our war on terrorism. There is no way we can be successful in this war without partners, and there is no way America will have lasting partners, especially in Europe, unless it is perceived as being the best global citizen it can be. And the best way to start conveying that would be by reducing our energy gluttony and ratifying the Kyoto treaty to reduce global warming.

This is a political position that ought to be staked out in a Kevin Smith film, not in a national journal.
Look, if we buy another car soon, we will probably buy a hybrid. I think that Jerry Brown was prescient in his emphasis on conservation (of energy and water, among other things) as an economically and environmentally smart set of policies.
But I don’t support Kyoto, because I believe the issue there really isn’t restraining fossil fuel consumption or greenhouse gasses, but in ultimately transferring wealth from the First World to the Third.
But to suggest that by ending our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, we would somehow defang Islamicism or reduce our exposure to terrorism is too stupid to even be believed by Missy, Sissy, or Chrissy (in vapid Students Against Animal Cruelty mode, not in kick-ass bad-girl mode).
We need to both defeat terrorism militarily, and having done so, defeat it politically. We need to be completely focused on this, and secondarily on the various other things we need to do (energy and water conservation are high on that list).
There is a well-known political and bureaucratic impulse, in times of crisis, to pull out one’s pet issue and explain why it is that your policy is critical to solving the crisis. Terrorist attack? This flood control program we’ve been touting for ten years is the answer, of course. By hitching your program to the meme of the moment, you hope to gain some political traction.
I do believe that resource misallocation and mismanagement, combined with insane population pressures are going to create more political instability in the Third World. I think that substituting brainpower for fossil fuel is almost always a good thing.
But, as noted by the Zen master quoted below, when you brush your teeth and piss at the same time, you usually do a bad job of both.

No time to blog today, but here’s what I’m working on in the background:

More Gray (SkyBox) Davis;
Finish “Shooting and Mindfulness”;
“Why Being Armed Matters”;
Comments on Winds of Change’s comments on 4th Generation Warfare (which he interprets as information-enahnced warfare, and can also be interpreted as low-intensity, pervasive, urban warfare);
Directions for Effective Liberalism (I almost called this blog “The Effective Liberal”, but in this climate that sounded too much like an oxymoron).

Drop me a note at armedliberal-at-yahoo.com and let me know which I should do first…

CraigSchamp.org covers yet another pay-for-play on the part of our illustrious Governor.
If only there was another candidate running…

CharlesMurtaugh has a great column on his reaction to the New York Time’s great story on the last minutes of the WTC victims.
The story isn’t his tears on reading the article (you’ll cry too); it is his fury at the nonreaction and paralysis that grips both parties in Washington.
He thinks, and I agree, that if they don’t get off their asses there will be a lot of ex-politicians looking for work as lobbyists in the next election cycle.

By now, most people sophisticated enough in the Blogosphere to have found this site will know the base facts about the SFSU flap.

It’s not all that different than the situation on many campuses: on one side, a core population of actively identified Jewish students, and other supporters of Israel’s existence (and, to a greater or lesser extent, defense policies); on the other a population of active Islamicists, as well as those who oppose Israel either in its existence as a Jewish state, or in its defense and foreign policies. But events at SFSU not only effect real people, but provide a good case study for what is going on at the other campuses.
Now, I’m not on the ground in San Francisco, and I’ll defer a little bit to some folks who have first-hand experience of the events there. But there are a few things that are incontrovertible and clear:

The pro-Israel/pro-Jewish side seems to be taking all or a vast majority of the physical damage;
The acknowledged racist comments are all coming from the pro-Palestinian side;
The powers that be are taking a “children, children, you shouldn’t both be fighting” moral equivalence stance. They have turned three students over to the District Attorney’s office for possible prosecution – two pro-Palestinian and one pro-Israel.

I haven’t reviewed the videotapes, and I’m not a police officer. But I’ve read the comments on the SFSU website, and on its face, this can’t help but leave the impression that the appearance of evenhandedness matters more than the truth.

And that’s just wrong.

Look, there are real arguments to make about what to do about the parts of Palestine that weren’t made part of Israel; there are arguments to make about what to do about the Palestinian Arabs who left Israel and who live with their descendants in the well-financed squalor of refugee camps.

And when pro-Palestinian students actively condemn violence and intimidation, instead of seeing them as “the legitimate political tools of the oppressed”, we can have those discussions.

When the windows of pro-Arab student groups are broken, and when libels against all Arabs are an official part of Jewish student’s political oratory, there will be moral equivalence.

I can’t for a minute imagine African-American or Latino students tolerating this kind of racist nonsense for a minute. They wouldn’t be begging the school administration to enforce the laws, the school administration would be calling out the riot squads to protect themselves and the window-breaking libelers, not to protect those libeled.

(This is a thought experiment meant to show how absurd the current situation is, I’m not suggesting that Jewish thugs are the solution.)

But there is an measurable difference between heated political expression and the politics of violence and intimidation. And it is in the nature of politics in our relatively free nation that it must be free from intimidation and violence; the other side – and there is an other side – sees intimidation and violence as everyday political tools. And, frighteningly, they are extending the kind of politics that we see on the ground in Arafat-controlled Palestine and bringing a kind of ‘lite’ version of it here.

The President of SFSU, Robert Corrigan, has convened a task force. As much as I hate to make Star Wars references – you’ll recall that’s what the Chancellor did when he couldn’t take action on the invasion of Naboo. And you’ll remember where that got him.

At the very least, people who are concerned should make sure he knows the whole world is watching, as we used to say.

More later today, including a discussion of why the ‘Days of Rage’ back in the late 60’s/70’s were different than what we are seeing here (hint: they didn’t identify and actively condemn a minority group).

Winds of Change has an index of other bloggers’ comments on this issue.

Well, Instapundit referred me to this – Victor Davis Hanson on Memorial Day in National Review Online, in which he poignantly reflects on his namesake and relative who died in the Battle for Okinawa.
And it turns out that he was raised in Kingsburg, CA, about 62 miles as the crow flies from Ponderosa, CA, on Route 190, where (I’m pretty sure that was the town…I’m looking at a crumpled map and it’s late) we saw the cemetary. And somehow reading his column, I felt an even stronger sense of connection to the old man selling paper poppies who told me about the chili cookoff and suggested we ride past the town cemetary. I’m glad we did, and sorry we missed the cookoff. I make pretty good chili – I’ve won a few cookoffs myself – but I’d bet I could have learned something.