Sword Saints

We're all extremists now

Sweet. According to a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security (PDF here), my rejection of ever-growing federal authority in favor of state and local authority, and my opposition to abortion, qualify me to be a right-wing extremist. Just what I've always wanted!

From the report (page 2):

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

Really. And it's funny that the report conveniently hit the wires before tomorrow's Tax Day Tea Party extravaganza. And here I thought dissent was only stifled under the Bush Administration. Silly me.

Overheard

Standing at the ATM I heard the following conversation.

First man: "You can't buy anything anymore that isn't made in China."

Second man: "Yeah, but Obama's going to fix that."

First man: "How's he gonna fix that?"

Second man: "First he's going to save the auto industry and move jobs back to the U.S. Good jobs, high-paying jobs."

I left, shaking my head. Hopeful? Not so much. It's the auto industry. I don't see how robbing successful industries to prop up unsuccessful industries is going to fix things. But, hey, what do I know?

Baseline

Margo sent me a link to an op-ed in the LA Times, The Big Three's real union problem. In a nutshell: Ford, GM, and Chrysler are failing because the UAW did not unionize the US manufacturing facilities for Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Subaru. Come again? So in order to make the Big Three more competitive we have to raise the overall cost of doing business for their competitors?

Then there's the new study out of UC Berkeley regarding brain differences between poor and rich kids. So all we need to do is redistribute the wealth of the rich to the poor, and those brain differences will disappear! Right? Right?!?

Unfortunately, when it comes to solving the problems (real and imagined) of inequality, the dominant mode of thinking in this country comes straight out of Kurt Vonnegut's story "Harrison Bergeron": hinder, encumber, restrain, do everything possible to rein in the successful and the exceptional, and thus make everybody equal by making everybody equally miserable. At last! Equality!

The sad reality is that it's a whole lot easier to make men into beasts than it is to make men into something, oh, I don't know, different, more noble, set apart, better than beasts.

Virtues

I've been mulling over the idea of virtue, and how our leaders (corporate, economic, political, or whatever) could benefit themselves and the rest of society with a liberal application of prudence and justice and fortitude and temperance. And then I found this, written by Saint Augustine in the fourth century:

As to virtue leading us to a happy life, I hold virtue to be nothing else than perfect love of God. For the fourfold division of virtue I regard as taken from four forms of love. For these four virtues (would that all felt their influence in their minds as they have their names in their mouths!), I should have no hesitation in defining them: that temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it. The object of this love is not anything, but only God, the chief good, the highest wisdom, the perfect harmony. So we may express the definition thus: that temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God; fortitude is love bearing everything readily for the sake of God; justice is love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man; prudence is love making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what might hinder it.

In jettisoning the virtues from the public square, we have doomed ourselves to be led and guided by those without virtue. Our policies will not be wise or just or moderate or courageous. And we'll keep finding ourselves in crisis after crisis after crisis, be it economic or political or military.

Wednesday haiku

Financial meltdown?
"But deliver us from good
intentions. Amen."

Here to help?

I've been reading the Summer 2008 issue of Wilson Quarterly ("Saving The World") and Matthew Connellly's essay "Controlling Passions" was particularly striking (the full text is only available to subscribers right now). An excerpt (emphasis mine):

Humanitarian challenges rightly create a sense of urgency. The problems begin when those who set out to save the human race refuse to be accountable to any humans in particular. Acting in the name of an abstract "humanity," population controllers found it easier to think of the world as a laboratory populated by potential "acceptors," and to believe they could manipulate millions in pursuit of a global goal. Rather than accept that the causes of poverty are many and complex, including the bad choices some people insist on making, they preferred to focus on neat technical fixes.

Something to consider for those human observers of the Zeroth Law, not to mention every one of our politicians and political candidates.

Wednesday haiku

Look! Apocalypse!
Oh, wait, we've been saying that
for two thousand years.

Colonial Marines threaten Iran

From the AP story Iran test-fires missiles in Persian Gulf:

Gen. Hossein Salami, the air force commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, said the exercise would "demonstrate our resolve and might against enemies who in recent weeks have threatened Iran with harsh language," the TV report said.

From the movie Aliens:

Gorman: Apone! Look... we can't have any firing in there. I, uh... I want you to collect magazines from everybody.

Hudson: Is he &^@#$*% crazy?

Frost: What the #@%% are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?

Wednesday haiku

Governed by consent,
but what if I give consent
to no candidate?

Bravely protecting kangaroos from the terrorist threat

Sure, the headline reads like a bit of local humor: Dawsonville Kangaroo Farm Makes Terrorist Target List. But the story seems serious enough:

DAWSONVILLE -- Residents of the northeast Georgia town of Dawsonville are befuddled by news that an 87-acre kangaroo farm is listed among sites nationwide that are considered a prime target for terrorists.

The town is best known as the home of NASCAR driver Bill Elliott -- or "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville."

So the report released Tuesday by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security caught the town by surprise. The inspector general found that the National Asset Database includes "unusual or out-of-place" sites whose presence tainted the credibility of the list.

The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. A kangaroo farm. A terrorist target. Our tax dollars at work. Do you feel safer yet? Given our proximity to that farm, I know I do.

technorati tags:Georgia, Homeland Security, Kangaroo

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