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Gabriel Schoenfeld and Norman Podhoretz wrote excellent posts today in Contentions, Commentary’s blog.
Schoenfeld;
… supporting a war that is going badly, in which American forces are getting continually hammered, is emotionally, morally, and intellectually arduous. To those of us who do not want to see American soldiers die and die needlessly, it may be time, then, to tip our hats to those in public life—soldiers, politicians, and intellectuals—who are not only being steadfast but are finding a way forward.
Podhoretz;
… In spite of what the polls supposedly tell us, I strongly suspect that the Democrats may already have blown the 2008 election. Unlike the late Senator Aiken of Vermont, who proposed that we declare victory and get out of Vietnam, the Democrats want us to declare defeat and get out of Iraq. This, they imagine, is what the American people were demanding in the congressional election of 2006.
But it seems far more likely that the message of that election was not “Get out,†but rather “Win, or get out.†In any case, the position the Democrats are now taking can only have the effect of revivifying and reinforcing the sense of them as weak on national security. And this was the very factor that led to the ignominious defeat of their presidential candidate, George McGovern, in 1972, when they also misread the public temper by paying too much attention to the left wing of their party. …
Lots of reaction to France’s vote.
John Fund’s first.
… It is difficult for Americans to appreciate just how removed from the French people the nation’s bureaucratic elite is. Its arrogance is mind-boggling. One of Mr. Chirac’s ministers privately compared the public’s repudiation of the EU Constitution in 2005 to a temper tantrum. Listen to former president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the prime architect of the now-rejected 448-article European Constitution, when he was asked to respond to complaints that voters would have trouble understanding the dense document: “The text is easily read and quite well phrased, which I can say all the more easily since I wrote it myself.” …… With the victory last year of Angela Merkel, the pro-U.S. leader of Germany, and the impending changeover in power in Britain from pro-American Tony Blair to equally pro-American Labor leader Gordon Brown, there is also at least a chance that Europe will begin to address its problems straight on and avoid needless scapegoating of the U.S. With Mr. Sarkozy’s victory, France’s government looks like it will finally have some energetic adult supervision.
Next Mark Steyn.
… In my recent book, whose title escapes me, I cite one of those small anecdotes that seems almost too perfect a distillation of Continental politics. It was a news item from 2005: A fellow in Marseilles was charged with fraud because he lived with the dead body of his mother for five years in order to continue receiving her pension of 700 euros a month.
She was 94 when she croaked, so she’d presumably been enjoying the old government check for a good three decades or so, but her son figured he might as well keep the money rolling in until her second century and, with her corpse tucked away under a pile of rubbish in the living room, the female telephone voice he put on for the benefit of the social services office was apparently convincing enough. As the Reuters headline put it: “Frenchman Lived With Dead Mother To Keep Pension.”
Think of France as that flat in Marseilles, and its economy as the dead mother, and the country’s many state benefits as monsieur’s deceased mom’s benefits. To the outside observer, the French give the impression they can live with the stench of death as long as the government benefits keep coming. If that’s the case, the new president will have the shortest of honeymoons.
Adam Smith.org is pleased.
Jewish World Review reprinted an article from a paper in Belgium. It’s not well written but has interesting background info on Sarkozy
Volokh with insight on Hayek’s spontaneous order.
A spontaneous order generated by market forces may be as beneficial to humanity as you like; it may have greatly extended life and produced wealth so staggering that, only a few generations ago, it was unimaginable. Still, it is not perfect. The poor are still with us. Not every social problem has been solved. In the end, though, the really galling thing about the spontaneous order that free markets produce is not its imperfection but its spontaneity: the fact that it is a creation not our own. It transcends the conscious direction of human will and is therefore an affront to human pride.
One of the proprietors of Division of Labour has to listen to a commencement speaker claiming lengthened life spans are a product of the government. Of course he has a comment.
May Month’s selection is on the Soviet state’s murder of the Aral Sea. Ever notice that the worst environmental disasters have been created by government? All of Russia, of course, and here at home look at the sites involved in the production of nuclear weapons.
… The moral of this story is that for lack of property rights & trade, a huge ecosystem (and the health of millions of people) was sacrificed. Let us all keep this in mind when latter day pundits claim that property rights and trade are enemies of the environment.
Carpe Diem mentions a WSJ piece on how governments might ruin our talented and productive drug manufacturers.
Cafe Hayek on job creation.
… William’s example of the ban on self-serve gasoline reminds me of a story. An economist is visiting China and is given a economic tour of the country. At one point, he’s shown a dam under construction and the economist asks why all the workers are using shovels instead of more powerful equipment. It creates jobs, the Chinese guide says proudly. The economist responds: why don’t you have them use spoons? …
Another wind farm is proposed. This time off the Delaware coast.
The Economist writes on gestures, rather than speech, as possible origins of language. We already knew drivers can communicate without speaking!
