Thursday, June 24, 2004
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Who is Uncle Joe?
I have pasted the following anlysis from a blog called The Volokh Conspiracy, which is generally quite good. They have University of Chicago law school professor Cass Sunstein on this week as a guest blogger. Sunstein has a new book coming out which he is promoting. I have changed his recent post by changing the name of his hero. Guess who he is talking about?
"Uncle Joe's speech wasn't elegant. It was messy, sprawling, unruly, a bit of a pastiche, upbeat, and not at all literary. It was the opposite of Lincoln's tight, poetic, elegiac Gettysburg Address. But because of what it said, it has a strong claim to being the greatest speech of the twentieth century.
"Uncle Joe began by emphasizing that the "supreme objective for the future" -- the objective for all nations -- was captured "in one word: Security." Uncle Joe argued that the term "means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors," but includes as well "economic security, social security, moral security." Uncle Joe insisted that "essential to peace is a decent standard of living for all individual men and women and children in all nations. Freedom from fear is eternally linked with freedom from want."
"Uncle Joe looked back, and not entirely approvingly, to the framing of the Constitution. At its inception, the nation had grown "under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures."
"But over time, these rights had proved inadequate. Unlike the Constitution's framers, "we have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." As Uncle Joe saw it, "necessitous men are not free men," not least because those who are hungry and jobless "are the stuff out of which dictatorships are made." Recalling the New Deal, he cut to the chase: The nation had "accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed."
"Then he listed the relevant rights:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
Having catalogued these eight rights, Uncle Joe said that "we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights." Uncle Joe asked "the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights—for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress to do so."
I have pasted the following anlysis from a blog called The Volokh Conspiracy, which is generally quite good. They have University of Chicago law school professor Cass Sunstein on this week as a guest blogger. Sunstein has a new book coming out which he is promoting. I have changed his recent post by changing the name of his hero. Guess who he is talking about?
"Uncle Joe's speech wasn't elegant. It was messy, sprawling, unruly, a bit of a pastiche, upbeat, and not at all literary. It was the opposite of Lincoln's tight, poetic, elegiac Gettysburg Address. But because of what it said, it has a strong claim to being the greatest speech of the twentieth century.
"Uncle Joe began by emphasizing that the "supreme objective for the future" -- the objective for all nations -- was captured "in one word: Security." Uncle Joe argued that the term "means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors," but includes as well "economic security, social security, moral security." Uncle Joe insisted that "essential to peace is a decent standard of living for all individual men and women and children in all nations. Freedom from fear is eternally linked with freedom from want."
"Uncle Joe looked back, and not entirely approvingly, to the framing of the Constitution. At its inception, the nation had grown "under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures."
"But over time, these rights had proved inadequate. Unlike the Constitution's framers, "we have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." As Uncle Joe saw it, "necessitous men are not free men," not least because those who are hungry and jobless "are the stuff out of which dictatorships are made." Recalling the New Deal, he cut to the chase: The nation had "accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed."
"Then he listed the relevant rights:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
Having catalogued these eight rights, Uncle Joe said that "we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights." Uncle Joe asked "the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights—for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress to do so."
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Bush to screen population for mental illness
Presumably, this is a joke. Let us see. I plan to be first in line for the screening.
Presumably, this is a joke. Let us see. I plan to be first in line for the screening.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Monday, June 07, 2004
Not Even a Hedgehog - The stupidity of Ronald Reagan. By Christopher?Hitchens
Novak is much more generous; but Hitchens, the dirty commie, has a point.
Novak is much more generous; but Hitchens, the dirty commie, has a point.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Sunday, May 16, 2004
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Low Rates, High Expectations
A freebie from Jim Grant. (The subscription for his newsletter goes for $760 per annum.)
A freebie from Jim Grant. (The subscription for his newsletter goes for $760 per annum.)
Saturday, May 15, 2004
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Monday, May 10, 2004
Few friends rush to aid Rumsfeld
Novak with the latest scoop. Problem is there is every chance there will be no second term for Bush, and the Bush team doesn't know what hit them. On second thought, what a world!
Novak with the latest scoop. Problem is there is every chance there will be no second term for Bush, and the Bush team doesn't know what hit them. On second thought, what a world!
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
How to slash your tax bills
Alan Reynolds on slowing down and enjoying leisure--a good which carries a negative tax rate.
Alan Reynolds on slowing down and enjoying leisure--a good which carries a negative tax rate.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
The Quotable Bush
The Rev. Bush last night: "My job as the President is to lead this nation into making the world a better place. And that's exactly what we're doing." Who would have known that when Bush rejected "nation building" during his campaign for the presidency, what he really had in mind was remaking and shaping-up the whole world? -- not exactly one of the powers delegated to the federal executive.
The Rev. Bush last night: "My job as the President is to lead this nation into making the world a better place. And that's exactly what we're doing." Who would have known that when Bush rejected "nation building" during his campaign for the presidency, what he really had in mind was remaking and shaping-up the whole world? -- not exactly one of the powers delegated to the federal executive.
Sunday, April 11, 2004
"State Education: A Help or Hindrance?"
by Auberon Herbert (1880)
-- excerpts:
"At present we have one system of education applied to the whole of
England. The local character of school boards deceives us, and makes us
believe that some variety and freedom of action exist. In reality they have
only the power to apply an established system. They must use the same class
of teachers; they must submit to the same inspectors; the children must be
prepared for the same examination, and pass in the same standards. There
are some slight differences, but they are few and of little value. Now, if
any one wishes to realise the full mischief which this uniformity works,
let him think of what would be the result of a uniform method being
established everywhere -- in religion, art, science, or any trade or
profession. Let him remember that canon of Mr. Herbert Spencer, so pregnant
with meaning, that progress is difference. Therefore, if you desire
progress, you must not make it difficult for men to think and act
differently; you must not dull their senses with routine or stamp their
imagination with the official pattern of some great department. If you
desire progress, you must remove all obstacles that impede for each man the
exercise of his reasoning and imaginative faculties in his own way...
A great department must be by the law of its own condition unfavourable to
new ideas. To make a change it must make a revolution. Our Education
Department, for example, cannot issue an edict which applies to certain
school boards and not to others.... Follow still further the awkward
attempts of a department at improvement. Influenced by long-continued
public pressure, or moved by some new mind that has taken direction of it,
it determines to introduce a change, and it issues in consequence a
wholesale edict to its thousands of subordinates. But the conditions
required for the successful application of a new idea are, that it should
be only tentatively applied; that it should be applied by those persons who
have some mental or moral affinity with it, and who in applying it, work
intelligently and with the grain, not mechanically and against the
grain....
If only one wishes to realise why officialism is what it is, let him
imagine himself at the centre of some great department which directs an
operation in every part of the country. Whoever he was he must become
possessed with the idea of perfect regularity and uniformity. His waking
and sleeping thought would be the desire that each wheel should perform in
its own place exactly the same rotation in the same time. His life would
simply become intolerable to him if any of his thousands of wheels began to
show signs of consciousness, and to make independent movements of their
own.
But suppose that a man of fresh mind and personal energy were to be placed
at the head of our Education Department who perceived the mischievous
effect of uniformity, could not this official tendency be counteracted? It
might for a short space of time, just as some muscles of a strong man can
for some hours defeat the pull of gravitation, but gravitation wins in the
end. Such changes would only be spasmodic; they would not be the natural
outcome of the system, and therefore could not last. Moreover, for those
who understand the value of liberty and of responsibility, it is needless
to point out how utterly false the system must be which makes the nation
depend upon the intelligence of a minister, and not upon the free movement
of the different minds within itself....
From boyhood to manhood the teacher himself is undergoing examinations; for
the rest of his life he is reproducing on others what he himself has gone
through. It is needless to say, that the higher aims of the teacher,
methods of arousing the imagination and developing the reasoning powers,
which only bear fruit slowly and cannot be tested by a yearly examination
of an inspector -- whose fly will be waiting at the school door during the
few hours at the disposal of himself or his subordinate -- new attempts to
connect the meaning of what is being learned with life itself, and to
create an interest in work for work's own sake instead of the inspector's
sake, ... all these things must be laid aside as subordinate to the one
great aim of driving large batches successfully through the standards and
making large hauls of public money...
And now, leaving much unsaid, I must ask what practical steps should be
taken by those workmen who suspect that state education is but a part of
that coercive drill which one half the human race delights to inflict upon
the other half. First of all get rid of compulsion. It has been made the
instrument of endless petty persecutions. It is fatal to the free growth of
an intelligent love of education; ...to a true respect of man for man; for
each man's right to judge what is morally best for himself and for those
entrusted to him. It is an attempt to make one of those shortcuts to
progress which end by making the goal recede from us.
...It is a copy of a continental institution, taken from a nation that,
living under a paternal government, has not yet learned to spell the
letters of the word *liberty*. The example of Germany and its highly
organised state education is not alluring. ... Where you subject people to
strong official restraint, you seem fated to produce on the one side
rigidity of thought and pedantry of feeling, on the other side those
violent schemes against the possessions and the personal rights of the rich
which we call socialism. Careful respect for the rights of others, vigorous
and consistent defence of one's own rights, a deeply rooted love of freedom
in thought, word, and action -- these things are simply impossible wherever
you entrust great powers to a government, and allow it to use them not
simply within a sphere of strictly defined rights, but as a supreme judge
of what the momentary convenience requires.
...It is always difficult to introduce freedom into a system that is
founded on authority and officialism."
Excerpts from "State Education: A Help or Hindrance?" *Fortnightly Review*,
1880; in *The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and other essays*
by Auberon Herbert, Copyright (c) 1978 by Liberty Fund Inc., Indianapolis,
Indiana. ISBN 0-913966-42-8
by Auberon Herbert (1880)
-- excerpts:
"At present we have one system of education applied to the whole of
England. The local character of school boards deceives us, and makes us
believe that some variety and freedom of action exist. In reality they have
only the power to apply an established system. They must use the same class
of teachers; they must submit to the same inspectors; the children must be
prepared for the same examination, and pass in the same standards. There
are some slight differences, but they are few and of little value. Now, if
any one wishes to realise the full mischief which this uniformity works,
let him think of what would be the result of a uniform method being
established everywhere -- in religion, art, science, or any trade or
profession. Let him remember that canon of Mr. Herbert Spencer, so pregnant
with meaning, that progress is difference. Therefore, if you desire
progress, you must not make it difficult for men to think and act
differently; you must not dull their senses with routine or stamp their
imagination with the official pattern of some great department. If you
desire progress, you must remove all obstacles that impede for each man the
exercise of his reasoning and imaginative faculties in his own way...
A great department must be by the law of its own condition unfavourable to
new ideas. To make a change it must make a revolution. Our Education
Department, for example, cannot issue an edict which applies to certain
school boards and not to others.... Follow still further the awkward
attempts of a department at improvement. Influenced by long-continued
public pressure, or moved by some new mind that has taken direction of it,
it determines to introduce a change, and it issues in consequence a
wholesale edict to its thousands of subordinates. But the conditions
required for the successful application of a new idea are, that it should
be only tentatively applied; that it should be applied by those persons who
have some mental or moral affinity with it, and who in applying it, work
intelligently and with the grain, not mechanically and against the
grain....
If only one wishes to realise why officialism is what it is, let him
imagine himself at the centre of some great department which directs an
operation in every part of the country. Whoever he was he must become
possessed with the idea of perfect regularity and uniformity. His waking
and sleeping thought would be the desire that each wheel should perform in
its own place exactly the same rotation in the same time. His life would
simply become intolerable to him if any of his thousands of wheels began to
show signs of consciousness, and to make independent movements of their
own.
But suppose that a man of fresh mind and personal energy were to be placed
at the head of our Education Department who perceived the mischievous
effect of uniformity, could not this official tendency be counteracted? It
might for a short space of time, just as some muscles of a strong man can
for some hours defeat the pull of gravitation, but gravitation wins in the
end. Such changes would only be spasmodic; they would not be the natural
outcome of the system, and therefore could not last. Moreover, for those
who understand the value of liberty and of responsibility, it is needless
to point out how utterly false the system must be which makes the nation
depend upon the intelligence of a minister, and not upon the free movement
of the different minds within itself....
From boyhood to manhood the teacher himself is undergoing examinations; for
the rest of his life he is reproducing on others what he himself has gone
through. It is needless to say, that the higher aims of the teacher,
methods of arousing the imagination and developing the reasoning powers,
which only bear fruit slowly and cannot be tested by a yearly examination
of an inspector -- whose fly will be waiting at the school door during the
few hours at the disposal of himself or his subordinate -- new attempts to
connect the meaning of what is being learned with life itself, and to
create an interest in work for work's own sake instead of the inspector's
sake, ... all these things must be laid aside as subordinate to the one
great aim of driving large batches successfully through the standards and
making large hauls of public money...
And now, leaving much unsaid, I must ask what practical steps should be
taken by those workmen who suspect that state education is but a part of
that coercive drill which one half the human race delights to inflict upon
the other half. First of all get rid of compulsion. It has been made the
instrument of endless petty persecutions. It is fatal to the free growth of
an intelligent love of education; ...to a true respect of man for man; for
each man's right to judge what is morally best for himself and for those
entrusted to him. It is an attempt to make one of those shortcuts to
progress which end by making the goal recede from us.
...It is a copy of a continental institution, taken from a nation that,
living under a paternal government, has not yet learned to spell the
letters of the word *liberty*. The example of Germany and its highly
organised state education is not alluring. ... Where you subject people to
strong official restraint, you seem fated to produce on the one side
rigidity of thought and pedantry of feeling, on the other side those
violent schemes against the possessions and the personal rights of the rich
which we call socialism. Careful respect for the rights of others, vigorous
and consistent defence of one's own rights, a deeply rooted love of freedom
in thought, word, and action -- these things are simply impossible wherever
you entrust great powers to a government, and allow it to use them not
simply within a sphere of strictly defined rights, but as a supreme judge
of what the momentary convenience requires.
...It is always difficult to introduce freedom into a system that is
founded on authority and officialism."
Excerpts from "State Education: A Help or Hindrance?" *Fortnightly Review*,
1880; in *The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and other essays*
by Auberon Herbert, Copyright (c) 1978 by Liberty Fund Inc., Indianapolis,
Indiana. ISBN 0-913966-42-8
D.A. Could Be Disbarred Over Drug Prosecutions
This is certainly novel. I thought undercover cops were trained to lie.
This is certainly novel. I thought undercover cops were trained to lie.
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