Hanzismatter

I have been very concerned for a long time about the shocking misuse of Chinese characters on the bodies of college students. I am not alone in my concern. The good people at Hanzimatter stand with me.

Disagreement Day

Michael Medved has a feature periodically called “Disagreement Day” in which listeners call in to disagree with anything that Michael has ever said. I admire Michael Medved greatly. I think he has real courage and a first rate intellect and it is a joy to listen to him demolish ignorant liberal arguments. There is one area in which I disagree with him and that is his stand on immigration. Michael Medved thinks that it is a “pipe dream and a fantasy” to think it is possible to round up illegal aliens and deport them. His argument is that since the United States has upwards of 10 million illegals here, there is no way, logistically, to make deportation happen. In this case, I think Michael suffers from a lack of imagination. Here is what I would like to ask him if I could get through on Disagreement Day.

“In August 2001, if someone had called you to say that the US should invade Afghanistan and Iraq to safeguard America from terrorism, I suspect you would have said that such invasions would be a ‘pipe dream and a fantasy,’ yet, we all know how that unfolded. How can you now condemn the idea of deportation of illegals in similar fashion?” I am really interested to know what he would say.

If America had the political will, we could deport every illegal Such deportations would not be an onerous task. Once the word got out that America was serious about deporting illegals, then I think you would see a rush to the exits. Only the hardcore and the criminals would have to be rooted out. Concurrent with deportations, we should adopt additional measures.

1) America should insist on English only in all communications from government because publishing communication to citizens in multiple languages violates the “equal protection” clause in the Constitution. Since every citizen cannot read these other languages that the government is using to communicate, then citizens cannot be sure that government is providing advantages not available to all. It is a basic fairness issue.

The upshot of such a policy would be that all schools would teach only in English, and all who come to the US would have to learn English to get along. A common language among people insures a common culture. And a common culture is necessary for a healthy, enduring country.

2) Enforce the border. Use troops. Again, the message would go out which would make this a self enforcing policy.

3) Penalize companies that hire illegals.

4) Develop a guest worker program.

5) Change citizenship rules so that only those children born of citizen parents would be declared citizens.

America must control the border to prevent terrorism and to prevent a breakup similar to what is happening in Canada. Michael Medved should get on board.

My Project Lauralight Pitch

Laura Ingraham did not like it. Oh well.

A Marine Corporal in battle in Falluja. It is raining. The Corporal looks at his watch, it is 4pm and the “7” has been circled in grease pen. Another Marine, holding a radio yells over, “No air support because of the rain, set up a defense until relief can fly in tomorrow morning.” The Corporal looks at his watch and says “Like hell!”, and runs out of the room into the adjoining courtyard, firing his weapon. He picks up a discarded RPG, kneels behind a tree, fiddles with the weapon, fires it across the courtyard, and then dives in to kill the enemy. The platoon is evacuated by truck. Later, a lieutenant tells the corporal that he is a hero. The corporal says “no way Sir, I have a flight out of Bagdhad at 7, and I promised I would meet my wife during her ovulation window. No way can I miss my flight.” Near the airport, his convoy is bombed, his flight is attacked with a missile, he argues with a French journalist and has a harrowing ride with a Turkish cabbie in Munich before he reunites with his wife. The return to combat is just as eventful.

Sea Story

During OCS in the middle of winter, I was team leader during a team movement exercise. You remember the drill: “Rifleman, prepare to rush, rush!” It was mid afternoon, and very cold, and we had been running drills for a couple of hours in below freezing weather. Right at the end of the drill, with the finish line practically in sight, I yelled “Assistant automatic rifleman, prepare to rush, rush.” I looked over, and did not see any movement. So I yelled it again, thinking that he had not heard me. This time, he looked back at me, and said, “I’m too cold to move.”

At this time, the Sergeant Instructor came up behind my Assistant Automatic Rifleman, and told him to get up and move. “If you don’t move, I am calling the corpsman up.”

AAR yelled, “No Corpsman, I don’t want the silver bullet!” The silver bullet was slang for the rectal thermometer that Corpsmen use to take core temperatures to determine the extent of a Marine’s cold injury. The indignity of the procedure had been the topic of endless barracks discussions.

The Sergeant Instructor told him to shut his mouth, then turned to me, and told me to get my fireteam moving. As we continued our team movement away from our fallen AAR, we could hear him still yelling about the Corpsman: “I don’t want the silver bullet, don’t give me the silver bullet, I don’t need…AAAAAAAAARGH!” Turns out, they gave him the silver bullet.

Shut up and read the scores

I can’t decide if sports writing would be dream job or if it would suck, mightily. It would be great to get a press pass to watch every game of the season AND get paid for it. Editors apparently give you a lot of latitude to write pretty much what ever you want in any style you want. If you have talent, that must be really liberating. On the downside, the necessity to go into the locker-room before and after games to compile the statements of someone who probably does not give much thought to what it is that they do and who do not have much of a vocabulary, and do that 160+ times a year, must be a real grind. I suppose sportswriting is like anything else, really cool looking from the outside, pretty routine on the inside.

What I do know about sportswriting is that it does not take any brains, insight or courage to do it. In fact, I would argue that brains, insight and courage would hamper your career. Sportswriters are the worst examples of “herd journalists.” They go in a pack to the same locations, talk to the same people about the same subjects, then socialize with each other, afterward. It is only natural that people who do the same thing in the presence of the same people all the time will tend to think alike. Everyone wants to be in the in crowd, so if all the cool kids are sympathetic to homosexuality, then everyone in the herd will be as well. What results elite sports media organizations in America, is a fealty to political correctness that would make a Harvard liberal arts professor weep with admiration.

The herd style of journalism is no where more in evidence than in the stories about Kenny Rogers, the outstanding left handed pitcher for the Texas Rangers. The story is actually pretty mundane. Rogers is having a really good year, but had a poor outing and was pulled by the manager. In frustration, he punched a wall in the dugout with his right (non-pitching) hand. As a consequence of this self-inflicted injury, Rogers missed one of his scheduled starts. Later, during a practice session on the field in Arlington TX, a cameraman for one of the local TV stations said something to Rogers about the injury and the pitcher’s inability to make a start. Here is where it gets a little murky. What exactly was said, and what words had been exchanged before between the two men, no one is saying. Regardless, Rogers walked over to the cameraman, knocked the video camera out of the man’s hand and off his shoulder. Once the cameraman retrieved the camera, Rogers tried to do it again until Rogers was led away by teammates. All this was caught on tape, but that was the extent of the confrontation. As a consequence, Baseball suspended Rogers for 20 games and fined him $50,000, although that penalty was reduced to 13 games. The cameraman was not hurt except for the indeterminate physical infirmity that develops whenever one is assaulted by a millionaire.

It is not that unusual for athletes to confront sportswriters. There is natural tension between the two groups. And there is no excuse for physical confrontations. Gentlemen should discuss their differences, peacefully. That I will grant you. But sportswriters, who ostensibly use their minds and their personal points of view to write stories, uniformly condemn Rogers actions without giving any of the context to his actions. It would seem that some writer might be a little curious about the backstory here. Is there personal animus between Rogers and that cameraman or the cameraman’s station? Had the cameraman blurted out an obscenity? What had happened immediately prior to the event caught on tape? I think these questions would be of interest but instead of asking questions, sportswriters have instead lined up to denounce Rogers and demand harsher punishments. 20 days is not enough! $50,000 is not enough money! How much is enough? I don’t know, just more more more!

Allow me to supply the context since the sportswriters won’t. Todd Bertuzzi, a hockey player for the Vancouver Canucks, 13 games before the end of the hockey season in 2003, rabbit punched an opposing player so hard that the other player blacked out, and hit his head so hard on the ice that he now has brain damage. Bertuzzi was suspended for the final 13 days, missed the next season as did every other player in hockey because of the lockout, and now will be returning to play. He received 13 days for violently ending the career and damaging the health of another player. Alex Rodriguez routinely cheats and plays dirty as the third baseman for the New York Yankees. His latest misfeasance occurred last week in a game against the Twins. There are actually some varying points of view on these two players, because sportswriters have looked for nuance and ways to understand. Why can’t they give the same consideration to Rogers?

I will tell you why. Because Rogers had the temerity to lay hands on a member of the media. Reporters love stories about themselves and they are incapable of offering context or objectivity when the story includes one of their own. The entire industry has lined up against the malefactor and beat the drum on this story. Hockey player almost kills an opponent? “Let’s try to understand.” Baseball player shoves a pushy reporter? “KICK HIM OUT OF BASEBALL!”

Whenever you have a herd, you also have similar points of view. Witness the series of reports on ESPN in the last couple of months. ESPN reported on Andrew Goldstein, the former goalie for the Dartmouth who is, according to ESPN “is the most accomplished male, team-sport athlete in North America to be openly gay during his playing career.” If you will forgive me for using this metaphor, that is quite a mouthful to describe Andrew. Later on ESPN, we learned about a college hockey player who introduced his mother and her girl friend at the Senior’s Parent’s night. In an on air editorial by Stuart Smith, he lectured anyone who question the style of tennis’ Williams sister. His clear implication was that anyone who does not share his worshipful fascination with those two tennis players is racist. Hold on while I stifle a yawn…

All this claptrap is pretty surprising given the demographic of sports media consumer and the format of the show in which these pieces ran. The dominant political category into which “young men interested in sports” falls would probably be called “dinosaur reactionary.” Their political views are pretty much pro-military, pro-violence as a solution to problems, and anti-gay. You doubt it? I have lived around this demographic my whole life. I was an athlete in high school, I was in a fraternity in college and I have been in the Marine Corps my adult life. I know how and what these young, aggressive sports loving men think. And I can assure you, they do not offer a lot of “understanding and acceptance” to homosexuals they pay to watch on the sports field, or much worse, have to shower with. But don’t take my word for it, listen to sports radio call in shows. The virulence of anti-gay comments is as shocking as it is pervasive.

Further, Sportscenter, the show in which these pieces run, is a highlights show. People like me tune in to see who won and to see any great or unusual plays that have transpired. The last thing I want to see someone’s political agenda masquerading as sports story. But it is almost as if these reporters can’t help themselves. They must disgorge their inner moral superiority on the bumpkins and rubes who make up their audience. The reason why is a harder question than the reason why the herd jumps on someone who assaults one of their own. I think the persuasive liberalism inherent in the stories I cited above goes back to the milieu in which these reports are trained. Although they are sports reporters, all of them have degrees in journalism. The degrees are awarded after sitting in classes taught by the biggest leftists in academia. These students are indoctrinated with liberal ideals, never challenged on these beliefs, and these inflict them on us, the unsuspecting public. Plea to ESPN, shut up and read the scores!

Spell Pepysian

When I was watching the Spelling Bee, this word came up for poor Alexis Ducote. The word is pronouced: "peeps-ian" and it means "in the style of the diary written by Samuel Pepys."

Now, Alexis probably knows nothing about Samuel Pepys. If Alexis knows anything about him, perhaps he read that Samual Pepys was a noted official in Elizabethan England, and kept a detailed diary. Master Ducote might even have stumbled across the diary which is published as a weblog. But who among us has HEARD the name pronounced? Until recently, I pronounced Samuel's family name in my head as Pep-is. I have known of him since I was 12 and was given a copy of the Book of Lists. One of the lists was something to the effect of Bad Behavior Throughout History and in that list was a passage from Pepys' diary about his fondness for fondling his maid's breasts every morning. I knew nothing else about Pepys except that he had an unusual name that I mispronounced, that he kept a diary, and like to take liberties with his maid. But I guess I was ahead of poor Alexis, even though this spelling bee finalist is growing up only a scant 60 miles from where I had first read about lusty Mr Pepys and his pepysian diary.

Sunday Gospel Reading

I recently got into a discussion with a Chaplain about Jesus’ injunction for us to sell all and follow Him. The Chaplain told me that passage is Jesus telling us not to be overly fond of material goods, but that there really is nothing wrong with acquiring possessions.
I asked the Chaplain if Jesus misspoke. Did He actually mean to say keep some of these commandments, and keep most of your stuff, except some of the junk you don’t want anyway but which the poor would be really happy to have? At that point, the Chaplain began talking about context, and translations and blah blah blah. And I tuned out. I find that argument unpersuasive to the point of being offensive because the speaker essentially says “I know better than what the Bible and Jesus said.”
The Chaplain’s point of view was understandable when I heard him going on at length, declaiming on the relative benefits of the Eddie Bauer Expedition that he has, and the Cadillac Escalade that he wants.
But I digress. Let’s read today’s passage. Mark 17-30.

And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.

And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth.

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

And the disciples were astonished at his words.

But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

nd they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?

And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.

Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.

And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.

Gregg Easterbrook, football columnist for theNFL, contributor to Beliefnet.com and columnist for Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal (I am pretty impressed with him.) wrote an article arguing that a compromise for those who want to post the Ten Commandments and those who are adamantly opposed to such a thing can be found in this passage. When the rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to have eternal life, Jesus reels off six of the Ten Commandments. Missing from Jesus’ Big Six are the ones dealing specifically with religious practices. The ones Jesus names are prohibitions that everyone can agree on. This observation is the basis for the Easterbrook Compromise. If Christians would argue to post the Big Six, secularists would have a hard time arguing against the sentiments contained in that list. Everyone would be happy.

This is also a point where Jesus preemptively posits against Paul’s doctrine of salvation by grace. The young man asks “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus could have said “You don’t need to do anything, just believe in me.” That is what Paul would have had Jesus say. Instead, Jesus says “Do this, don’t do that, go thy way, sell your possessions, give to the poor, take up my Cross, follow me.” Seems pretty clear that Jesus’ vision of Christianity is activist. To argue otherwise, like the Materialist Chaplain, is to substitute your own fallen point of view for Jesus’ directions.

Finally, we hear Jesus advocating that we leave not only our possessions behind, but also our families, for His sake. Here, He is kind to Peter and approaches the subject obliquely but there are other times in the Gospels where Jesus is much more explicit, at one point calling us in Luke 14:26 to If any [man] come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

That seems pretty clear to me and not contradictory in the least. Jesus calls us to hate this life but live it, hate our family but honor and keep them. Anything less, and we fail. We cannot be His disciples. We are sinners, and worthless in the eyes of God.

This is where grace comes in. Jesus calls us to do things and think things that we, the miserable fallen failures that we are, cannot possibly accomplish. Yet, Jesus wants us to love Him and believe in Him, and He will forgive us and make our hearts white like snow. Is this contradictory? No because with God, all things are possible. What makes it seem contradictory to us is our puny intellects and lack of divine insight. The nature of Christianity is imponderable and must only be accepted as faith.

Every day, I wake up, look at the Cross over my bed which is engraved with the words from Amazing Grace, and ponder the promise contained in the words “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” I am wretched because I fail Him everyday and desperately need His forgiveness.

Marine Corps Cultural Training is Worse than Useless

The Marine Corps has decided to provide cultural training to all Marines to develop a baseline of knowledge about cultures and nations in which the Marine Corps will be called to fight. In a vacuum, cultural training sounds like a good idea. Who could be against it? Learn about the foreigners, and through understanding, link up with the good guys and defeat the bad guys. Col Bearor, the Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Training and Education Command, makes the case to the UPI "If we go in early we preclude having al-Qaida get their foot in the door, by helping the (indigenous people) understand what they need, and not stepping on their toes."

I will get to the vacuity of this argument that cultural understanding will forestall conflict in a moment. I would first like to focus on the cost of this. The Marines want to train a cadre of 40,000 Marines with these cultural skills. The training vision includes college level anthropology course and language training: "I would liken it to the first four to six courses a cultural anthropologist would get (in undergraduate studies)," Bearor said. "They'll get that initial plug of training sitting in a school seat. Follow-on courses will be done through distance learning." These students would also receive 160 hours of language training. The vision is a full semester of college for 4500 Marines a year to improve cultural awareness. Do the math; assuming 8 semesters equals a college education, we are going to pay for 560 BS's in Anthropology with a concentration in Foreign Language per year without any real justification that by doing so, we will make the Marine Corps a more formidable fighting organization.

How will the Marines know what languages and cultures we should train to? Here is where this idea goes from infuriating to hilarious. The Marine Corps Intelligence Activity will look 10 years into the future and assign a percentage to the likihood the US will be involved in conflicts in various places. I have made the point earlier that these "way aheads" are pointless and beyond worthless. Yet here we go, trying to justify this huge waste of resources and vast bureaucracy that is Marine Corps strategic intelligence and by extension, Defense Intelligence. Do a thought experiment. In 1995, what would the prediction have been about Marine Corps conflicts in the next 10 years? Where would we have focused our training dollars? My guess? Some place on the littoral, and someplace we had just been. Somalia, Eritrea, Haiti, some one bold may have dusted off the reports which talked of the looming expansionistic threat of Japan, maybe the West Bank or Gaza. Would we have spent money on Pashtu, Farsi, Urdu or anything else they speak in Afghanistan? Would we have taught about the threat of nihilistic Islamacists? The answer is of course, no. So why do we think that the pie -in-the-sky'ers at MCIA would NOW come up with anything relevant? Anyone can draw a straight line from now into the distant future and say "That is where we will be." However, if there is one thing I know (and I admittedly don't know much) it is this: the future is never a straight line from the now. To assume otherwise is folly.
Here is an analogous situation, for while, the National Football League would endeavor to highlight what they considered their best teams on Monday Night Football. As we know, the schedule was set the year before, so the poobahs in the NFL and at ABC would put their big brains to a little bit of predictive analysis. The predicted "best" teams would get three games on Monday night, the next tier would get 2 games, the third tier would get 1 game and the worst teams would be left out of the rarified Monday night air. The tastefully named Gregg Easterbrook analyzed the value of these predictions and concluded that for three years running, if you wanted to know who was going to be in the Super Bowl, pick from the group of teams that was not going to be televised on Monday night. In other words, pick AGAINST the predictions. Now, if people with a financial stake in picking macro-results for sports teams correctly using reams of relevent and accurate statistical data would inevitably get their predictions wrong, why should we have any faith in the geopolitical predictions of intelligence officers made with data that is little better than guesses? The answer? We should not.

How much will this new emphasis on cultural learning cost the taxpayer? Let's conservatively estimate $2400 a semester per student, or $19000 for each BS. Now multiply that times 560. We are looking at $10 million a year! How much force protection can we buy for this $10 million? What other training will suffer because of the time wasted on this? How many Marines will die because some vital lifesaving training was slighted to assauge the vanity of the General who dreamed this up. THAT is the real cost of this GOBI (General Officer Bright Idea)

However, if we are convinced that cultural sensitivity training is the way to go in the Marine Corps to increase our effectiveness, then I have a proposal. Every place I have ever been with a Marine unit, every time I have trained with other nation’s armed services, I have noticed a phenomenon. In every case, there is a Marine, or a Navy Corpsman or a group of Marines who develop an almost immediate rapport with the locals. Whether because of innate cultural sensitivity, or because they already speak the language or the just want to go native, every unit I have ever been in has an organic “cadre” who is just good at the cross-cultural stuff. Instead of training every NCO to be “mini-FAO’s (Foreign Area Officers) we should instead challenge our small unit leaders to recognize their natural FAO’s imbedded in their units. These Marines should be offered the specialized, additional anthropological and language training that is likely to “take” and to actually be of some value to the unit and the Marine Corps. However, I think that even anthropologists would question the wisdom of spending the limited resources turning every Marine NCO into anthropology major. These anthropologist might even see the potential for studying why leaders feel compelled to force everyone they lead to study obscure subjects in which the leader is interested. But I digress. There is value in studying culture, but such an opportunity should be offered in a fashion much more targeted than in the bloated, expensive, scattershot way that is contemplated by the Marine bureaucracy.

I find it interesting that Col Bearor rightly observes that “we [the Marine Corps] forgot some of the lessons hard learned over history...” then prescribes the wrong cure. Instead of going back to what worked in World War II and Korea, he decides that cultural awareness is what Marines need more of. I would submit that what we have actually forgotten is the fact that the victor in combat by definition has the dominant culture to which the vanquished must adapt. The Marines on Okinawa did not endeavor to use minimum force to keep the Japanese at bay while they restored electric power, instead, we incinerated those losers in their fighting holes. We obliterated their cities, we forced their emperor to renounce his theology and we forced Japan to accept parliamentary democracy. We strutted around like we owned the place, because we did, and as a consequence, the Japanese people accepted our culture.

Instead of cultural training, I would submit that the Marine Corps should pursue another concept. One of the current buzzwords at the Pentagon is “_______ dominance.” The Air Force pursues “air dominance.” The Army looks for “battlespace dominance.” The Navy has something called “The Center for Information Dominance.” Therefore, to stay with the theme, I propose that the Marine Corps should strive for “Cultural dominance!” The thing is, American already has cultural dominance in the world. Marines, just by pushing their Oakley sunglasses on top of their heads, with their Colt M16s slung across their back while typing emails on Windows based computers connected to the internet about the bootlegged copy of Triple X State of the Union they just watched, are advancing that culture. The rest of the hungers for the culture we take for granted, and would gladly throw off whatever backwards cultural trappings with which they are saddled to operate in our culture as easily as these young Marines do. Think I am wrong? The dominant restaurants in Japan are MacDonalds and MOS Burger, a McDonalds knock off, down to the appearance of the restaurants, and the shape of the logo. There are more Starbucks Shops in Taipei than in Chicago. Korean pop music sounds, except for the language, indistinguishable from anything produced in the States. Kids from Shanghai to the Sunni Triangle are dressing and gesticulating like Allen Iverson. And virtually everyone with any gumption anywhere in the world longs to come to America.

Col Bearor’s boss, LtGen Mattis had a saying for the Iraqis, “No better friend, no worse enemy” than the US Marines. We do ourselves a disservice if we think that we would be better off learning about the enemy cultures and doing what we can to adapt to them so as not to offend them. That is not being a friend, that is patronizing. On the contrary, we are safer as a Corps, a country and the world when we use maximum violence to destroy those who think their ideology makes them superior and justifies their killing and enslaving us then living proudly as Americans where ever we are, comfortably enjoying the fruits of the culture to which others aspire, and worshipping our God where we want, without shame.

SWING TIME!

Long time readers of this blog know of my fondness for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. On Sunday night, I watched a great one, Swing Time. The story is that Fred, a dancer, was going to get married to a girl in his hometown, but her father objected because Fred did not have a job. So he claimed to have a job in NY and headed there. Though a series of misadventures, he meets and teams up with Ginger and eventually asks her to marry him. There were a lot of dance numbers. The best is when Fred pretends to be a novice dancer who is "taught" to dance by Ginger so she will not get fired from her job as a dance instructor. That one really is magic.

Two notes on this showing on TCM. At one point, a character asks Fred what his chest size is for a coat. Fred says: "36 inches." 36 inches? They sell that size coat in the boy's section. He must have been 5'5"!

Second, Peter Bogdonavich, notorious bloviating director of mediocre movies, opined that although every FA/GR dance number in every movie is honey, only Swing Time is a watchable movie. Huh? Has he not seen Night and Day? That is a wonderful movie, full of joy and humor. Swing Time was fun, but Fred's number in blackface was a little out of the 2005 cultural norms. Bog should shut his ample pie hole.

Sunday's Gospel Lesson

In Bible study, we are inching through the book of John, and we have reached chapter 9:1-38. This is the story where Jesus restores the sight of the man born blind who is then brought into the temple and questioned about Jesus. During the questioning, the blind man utters the words which became part of the hymn, Amazing Grace “Was blind but now, I see!”

There are two lessons in this story relevant to this time in my life. The first is in verse 3, in response to the question about why it is that the beggar had been blind his whole life:

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

While we are suffering, we tend to think that we are being punished, or that God has abandoned us. We cannot see the bigger picture because we are staring at our own navel in despair. But Jesus is making it clear here that suffering has a purpose and that purpose is to show that by ending the suffering, God’s is working in the world. Does it mean that things will be great after suffering? Does Jesus mean that we will get our reward on earth for suffering on earth? The answer is no. The blind beggar was given his sight, only to be cast out of the Temple. That man had been born blind, and suffered his whole life for a 10 minute meeting with Jesus. Jesus makes it clear that the only reward we can be sure of is the one we will receive in heaven. We can also be sure that suffering has a purpose, a purpose which we may not understand until we are with God in Heaven and it is made clear to us. We have faith that suffering is for a reason.

The second lesson is that belief in Jesus does not require language study, or historical deconstruction, or grounding in hermeneutics, or even any knowledge of the Old Testament. All you need to know is that Jesus walked the earth, did miracles that no man could do, and asked us to believe in Him and have everlasting life. The formally blind man believed, the thief on the cross believed, I believe. I pray that you believe too.

Freakonomics!

I sent this comment to the writers of the new book Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner.

Gentlemen, I bought and read your book. I have a couple of comments.

1. Regarding sumo, how insightful is your thesis that vested wrestlers throw matches to their 7-7 opponents in a quid pro quo? When I lived in Japan from 96-2001, I noticed that those conducting the tournaments tried to match 7-7 wrestlers on the final Sunday of matches, specifially to avoid the type of collusion you mentioned. Further, as I recall, "smart money" gamblers ALWAYS bet on the 7-7 wrestler if he did happen to be matched agaist one who already had his kachikoshi. Such a bet is the closest you can come to a "lead pipe cinch" without actually being privvy to the comspiracy. Japenese gamblers may not have the benefit of regression analysis, but they have a lifetime of empirical knowledge which results in the same conclusion.



2. Why be reticient about advocating abortion and voluntary sterilization as a crime fighting tools or as a tools for ameliorating many of sociey's ills? I wonder because it seems that later in your book in the parenting section and in the naming section, you bolster the idea that social pathologies are genetically inherited. I think that the half of the American population that generally supports abortion would be gratified to know there is another reason to support its legalization, and it would undercut the idea that many on the pro-life side hold that abortion is an absolute evil. Properly presented, I think you and polititians who embrace your ideas would find a large, receptive audience for them.

Just as Japanese gamblers lacked regression analysis but made the same conclusion you did about 7-7 wrestlers, I think that the American people have noticed that criminal pathologies come out of one socio-economic group, but have been conditioned NOT to give voice to those thoughts. Ironically, your book shows how this conditioning was done in the case of the Klu Klux Klan yet how we still harbor and act on our prejudices if we thing we can get away with them, as you noted in your discussion of the Weakest Link. If academics and writers like yourself are willing to point out statistically that society would be better off with a smaller population of the pathology-producing groups, it will provide society will the cover to talk comfortably about solutions that will actually work to reduce crime and illiteracy such as lifetime incarceration for career criminals, economic incentives for voluntary sterilization and free birth control and abortion.

If you are looking for a unifying theme for this book, I would suggest that you look no further than genetics is desiny.

Thank you for a thoughtful and interesting book.

War in Asia is Close

North Korea shut down their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon to harvest the uranium necessary to make nuclear bombs. They are doing all this more or less in the open to signal their intent to test a bomb.

The North Koreans are desperately hoping to get American into bilateral discussions. This latest gambit, in their eyes, makes one on one discussions more likely because the other participants in the Five Party talks will withdraw from the table, leaving only the US and NK to negotiate. China would very much like to pull away, but stays in for fear that leaving the table while Japan remains with the US will make it seem to the rest of Asia that Japan is comparatively stronger. China cannot afford to lose face. Russia stays in to make mischief when they can. So, North Korea will find that the threat of a nuclear test is insufficient to induce a pullout of the participants, so they will feel forced to go the next step, and actually detonate one if they can.

The big drawback for the North Koreans to detonating the bomb is that is opens up the range of acceptable responses by the US to include a pre-emptive nuclear strike. In fact, for the US NOT to respond means that the US would be susceptible to blackmail by the North Koreans, and later by Iran. The US would probably immediately retaliate with a nuclear strike on Pyongyang, possibly from a submarine from inside the Bohai Gulf so that China could not even conceivably claim that the US missile was actually fired at the Middle Kingdom and thereby not risk a response. War in Asia is very close.

Regardless of the US response, a nuclear test by North Korea will cause the US stock market to tank immediately, although such a detonation will not immediately effect the fundamentals of the American economy. The Asian economy will face a serious challenge which will effect the American economy soon after. Sell you stocks and buy precious metals. I have.

War in Asia is Close

North Korea shut down their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon to harvest the uranium necessary to make nuclear bombs. They are doing all this more or less in the open to signal their intent to test a bomb.

The North Koreans are desperately hoping to get American into bilateral discussions. This latest gambit, in their eyes, makes one on one discussions more likely because the other participants in the Five Party talks will withdraw from the table, leaving only the US and NK to negotiate. China would very much like to pull away, but stays in for fear that leaving the table while Japan remains with the US will make it seem to the rest of Asia that Japan is comparatively stronger. China cannot afford to lose face. Russia stays in to make mischief when they can. So, North Korea will find that the threat of a nuclear test is insufficient to induce a pullout of the participants, so they will feel forced to go the next step, and actually detonate one if they can.

The big drawback for the North Koreans to detonating the bomb is that is opens up the range of acceptable responses by the US to include a pre-emptive nuclear strike. In fact, for the US NOT to respond means that the US would be susceptible to blackmail by the North Koreans, and later by Iran. The US would probably immediately retaliate with a nuclear strike on Pyongyang, possibly from a submarine from inside the Bohai Gulf so that China could not even conceivably claim that the US missile was actually fired at the Middle Kingdom and thereby not risk a response. War in Asia is very close.

Regardless of the US response, a nuclear test by North Korea will cause the US stock market to tank immediately, although such a detonation will not immediately effect the fundamentals of the American economy. The Asian economy will face a serious challenge which will effect the American economy soon after. Sell you stocks and buy precious metals. I have.

Senate Democrats Are Hostile to Faith

I listened to Dick Durbin, the dumbbell senator from Illinois piously (literally) claim he is a person of faith which makes it absurd to assert that the filibuster of appeals court judges has anything to do with their religious convictions. The filibuster instead is about how these judges interpret the law. Is there any evidence that these people of faith will throw over legislative intent and the text of the law and the constitution to impose some kind of theocracy? No of course not. On the other hand, there is evidence that many of these judges take their faith seriously, and attempt to live their lives according to Christian tenets. Oh, the horror! These people of faith are the types of people that the Democrats have chosen to filibuster. Is that a coincidence? Yes, of course, squeal the Dems.

My problem with the Dick Durbins of world is that when it suits them, they will take they will see a pattern as proof. Take for instance the idea about lack of blacks in law schools. While there is no proof that anyone in the admissions departments of these schools is racist in any way, the fact that there are proportionately fewer blacks in law school than in the population at large MEANS there is institutional racism in law schools that must be remedied. Yet dumbbell Durbin is flummoxed by the corollary that because Democrats filibuster judges of faith then there is some institutional Democrat hostility to judges of faith.

If you assert that results of actions imply some kind of moral deficiency that must be remedied in one context (law school admissions) then you cannot object when others do it you and your actions. The real question is whether the voters find the assertion of Democratic hostility to faith to be credible. I can tell you, having attended 6 different churches in the last 6 months, people of faith firmly people that democrats ARE hostile to faith, and would never consider voting democrat because of this hostility.

End the Filibuster or the Dems will end it for you in 3 years

There is something Republicans should remember when they contemplate whether to change the rules on filibusters in order to get a vote on the people the President has nominated to the Federal appeals courts. If the Republicans were in the minority and were filibustering a Democrat president’s nominees, the Democrats would of course change the rules! They will not hesitate, and they would laugh at the cowardice that te Republicans displayed in not doing it first.

“Oh wait Ken, all the Democrats are going on and on about the sacred virtue of the filibuster, how the majority must respect the rights of the minority, surely they are not so hypocritical that they would ignore their words and their current stance when it would be more politically expedient to do something else!” To which I reply: “HA!”

Democrats are shameless, and dedicated to preserving abortion rights. Anything they have to do to defeat Republicans and keep compliant judges on the bench is within bounds of acceptable behavior. Nothing you can say, no amount of scorn you can heap on their lame justification for their scurrilous behavior matters because they feel that abortion must be kept legal for children across the US.

End the filibuster, put conservatives on the bench now, or the Democrats will put their judges on the bench in 08 when Hillary is president.

China and Mexican Immigration

A friend of mine made an excellent point. I was going on, as I do, about how I am sensing that many observers see that China's miracle is phony. My friend had sent me a long STRATFOR article China's Economy: Crash or Slow Decline? By Rodger Baker. in which Mr Baker avers that China is about to or is in the midst of a major econimic correction. Here is what I wrote:

A lot of folks are beating this drum, regarding the fraud that is the China miracle, and the likelihood of a crash. A crash is coming, with many reports saying it is underway now. I think we will look back 10 years from now at the wreckage of China, just as we did with the wreckage of the Warsaw Pact countries and say, why didn't we see it coming?

He came back with this observation.

If this happens, what will WalMart have to sell?

To which I responded:

Stuff made in Mexico. A big reason for the illegal immigration from Mexico is the fact that China has undercut them, amazingly, so there is absolutely no opportunity in Mexico except to come North and try to find work in the service industy. The collapse of China will result in more security along the southern border.

You never hear this from even the more thoughtful analysts of the Chinese situation. Here is a long post about the current Chinese shenanigans from Publius which is linked from Instapundit. What everyone seems to miss is that the current trends in illegal immigration from Mexico are DIRECTLY related to the criminal enterprise that is China Inc.

The analogy is similar to what happens when sweatshops run by the Mob open in a neighborhood. Soon, legitimate businesses either must match the the price of goods put out by the illegal businesses and therefor engage in illegal business practices themselves OR the legitimate businesses go broke, and the formerly, gainfully employed workers are forced into illegal activity to make a living.

When China came on the scene and began producing goods made by slave labor, the costs of these goods were below even what cheap Mexican factories could produce or even could conceivably compete with. Hence, huge orders from WalMart and other discounting retailers went to Chinese companies which had the twin deleterious effects of propping up the Chinese communists, and killing the possibility that Mexican producers could meet the needs of WalMart.

Imagine a world in which Mexico and China compete on a level, legal playing field, each leveraging their natural advantages to produce low priced goods for the American consumer. Mexican industry, producing low priced goods with cheap transportation costs, would boom, and there would be real incentive for Mexicans currently running for the border to stay home and work for decent wages. China would face a major restructuring and violent economic upheaval, but would eventually retool to produce competitive goods and sustainable (and realistic) growth rates.

"Never Again" means we must act NOW!

Koreans will condemn us for not doing more to end the suffering that they daily face, to which we remain indifferent. I am struck by the moral authority which Holocaust survivors possess, even 60 years after the end of the War. But the truth is, during WWII, these same survivors were ridiculed and ignored. And we who were strong vowed never to let such a thing, such an atrocity happen again. However, such things are happening again right now. And like our forefathers who ignored the proof presented to them of the perfidy of the Nazi's, we ignore the perfidy of the Communists in Asia.

The South Korean government does everything it can to stifle those who would call attention to the atrocities being committed in North Korea for fear of "inciting" the North Korean regime. Taiwan and the United States does what it can to downplay reports of oppression in China to avoid antagonizing China. What is the justification for this inaction? Are we afraid that North Korea will attack South Korea if we focus on the North Korean treatment of those who dissent? Are we afraid that China will cut off exports of consumer goods if we relentlessly focus on their treatment of Christians within their borders?

The answer to these questions is "Yes." Our leadership is once again paralyzed by fear of provoking tyrants who are perceived as strong when the reality is that these tyrants are perilously weak. We have a vision of China as the colossus against whom we are powerless to exert our will, when in reality they are the most banal example of bully. They are big and blustering, but in reality are weak and cowardly and are desperately afraid that America will call their bluff. North Korea is even more contemptible...that filthy regime is the puny sidekick of the larger bully, who can get away with anything so long as he stays close to the larger punk.

It is time to honor the lessons we learned of our forefathers, to serve the weak being oppressed while we dither, and stand up to the Chinese and the North Koreans. These countries are on their knees, holding spears pointed at their chests, praying that we do not stomp up to them and kick those spears straight through their hearts. We have it in our power to call the bluff of these cowardly, murderous regimes and live up to the promises we have made to oppressed people through out history. "Never again" means we must act now.

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All Hail the Mighty Nationals

Opening night is tonight. Tickets are ridiculously expensive and sold out for as long as the mind can imagine. How long will it be before people wake up from their euphoric dreams and say "Wait a second, these are the Expos!"???

China Teetering

Water shortages, riots over pollution and the Three Gorges Dam, a diplomatic blow-up with the Japanese and Chinese thugs thrashing the Japanese embassy in Beijing over middle school history textbooks...China is in disarray.

I could rehash all these events in nauseating detail but to what end? The weight of all these stories points to one conclusion, China is imploding. There is nothing in the line up of today's stories about the tottering state of the Chinese economy, or the large problem of Islamic radicalism in the West or the Chinese Communists stupid brinksmanship regarding Taiwan.

We are going to look back on this time, that we are in the midst of right now, and say "The collapse of China was so clearly going to happen, why didn't we see it?" Half-wit Kremlinologists said the same thing after the Berlin Wall fell. Right now, "Sinologists" are saying that China is a threat, China is powerful, China is America's superpower rival but I think that anyone with a sense of history and a scintilla of imagination knows that the end for China is near. America should be doing everything we can to hasten the liberation of 1 billion + souls in China.