Things You Won't Hear from the British Authorities

Things You Won't Hear from the British Authorities

From a speech by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, on the city's plan to deal with the threatened spread of flash-mob riots:

Sense and nonsense cannot exist in the same place, in the same city, in the same world, and is not going to happen here in Philadelphia.

The whole speech is well worth the read, as an antidote to the usual predictable helpless hand-wringing over "youth" and "root causes" of their disaffection. The cost of spouting and accepting nonsense in public discourse is higher than we sometimes acknowledge. The Mayor is prepared to lock up not only out-of-control kids but their feckless parents, because he's tired of hearing why the parents can't cope. His call to intellectual arms brings to mind Voltaire's warning: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Republicans

The Republicans:

I missed the debate last night, having just finished a thirteen-hour ride through the searing heat of August; but it sounds like it was interesting. This morning people are talking about lines of vulnerability for Rep. Bachmann and Mr. Romney.

Rep. Bachmann

Rep. Bachmann's problem is analogous to John F. Kennedy's problem when he ran as the first serious Catholic candidate, except that it's more serious. Let's watch the video, and I'll explain what I mean.

Bachmann gave a great answer, both in substance and in terms of how she managed the tone of her response. Any doctrine that you choose to guide your life must be interpreted. As we have often discussed here, submission is a very important part of marriage -- not for wives, but at times for each of the partners. It entails a deep respect and willful service, of choosing to put your own interests aside and serve the interests of the other for a time.

I prefer the medieval framing of this concept to the Biblical or Islamic ones: the medieval framing is informed by ideas of fealty, which better reflect that this is a two-way relationship of willful service and support. The medieval ethic of service between man and woman also better shows that it is sometimes the man and sometimes the woman who needs service or support!

Rep. Bachmann conveys that this issue is really about respect, and then offers some examples of things that she and her husband have been able to achieve together using this principle. Anyone who is not impressed by those accomplishments isn't taking the time to think through and appreciate the amount of work and sacrifice entailed.

Nevertheless, she's got a serious problem here. The question is really one that will dog Romney as well, which boils down to: 'You have some unusual religious beliefs. How can we vote for someone who believes differently than we do?'

The reason Bachmann's problem is worse than Kennedy's was is that she explicitly said that this religious principle of submission had guided her in public life. The Kennedy response -- that private religious principles would be kept out of public life -- is therefore not available to her.

What she has to convince people to believe is that her private religious principles will redound to the benefit of the nation. That's going to be a harder sell to people who do not share those principles.

For Americans, this principle of willful submission is one of the hardest to accept. I think it would be hard to name a principle that ran more directly counter to the current of our popular culture. Very few will take the time to do the soul searching necessary to find the great wisdom embedded in it.

Mr. Romney

Romney's problem is clear even if you take the kindest possible reading of his remarks that "Corporations are people, my friend." Even granting every argument made by his defender, there remain two critical points that Romney obviously does not get.

1) This extremely weak recovery has actually been very good for corporations: corporate profits are at an all time high. It is the small business sector, normally organized as single-proprietorships or partnerships, that has not recovered. Pay for corporate employees is flat these last few decades, adjusted for inflation, which means that all that profitability is not helping the employee any more than it is helping the small business. It is helping those who collect dividends. So, you are telling me that some people are doing very well in this economy, which I already knew: people like Mitt Romney are doing very well.

Romney's political problem is that he is seen as a symbol of northeastern corporatism, that wing of the Republican party that cannot be trusted by the common man. He has done nothing to help himself with voters who are not already corporate executives with this remark.

2) Telling me that 'corporations are people' is no different than telling me that 'governments are people.' Well, yes, indeed in some sense they are: but it makes no difference if my complaint is that the government is profiting unfairly by using its power to extract wealth from what has become a subject population.

That is the substance of the Left's critique against corporations -- and indeed it is also the non-Left, TEA Party populist critique against both corporations and government. The populist complaint is that the rich and powerful use their alliance with government to do so by having unreasonable barriers to entry raised for small businesses.

Both the Left and the TEA Party agree on this problem: what they disagree about is the solution. The Left believes in increased regulation by government, which is odd since "increased regulation" is exactly the mechanism that raises the aforementioned unfair barriers; the TEA Party believes in slashing regulation, so that I can easily and cheaply go out and start a business if I want.

We can debate which approach is the right one, or if there may be occasions for each approach. The problem, though, enjoys broad agreement across the ideological spectrum. It is only among a very narrow band of voters that the pro-corporate argument will fly.

Real Issues

As Allah notes, apparently there was time to ask about submission in marriage, but not about entitlement reform. I would like to see the Republicans -- and any Democratic challengers to President Obama -- speak to this issue more than any other. Entitlements and government pensions are the big rocks we need to figure out how to move.

They're Coming for Us out of Perseus

They're Coming for Us out of Perseus

Although this year's Perseid meteor shower won't peak until Saturday night, the best viewing may well be just before tomorrow at dawn, since the waxing moon will wash out the show somewhat by this weekend. Perseus rises near midnight this time of year. It lies right along the Milky Way in the northeast sky, near the distinctive "W" shape of Cassiopeia, to the left of the Great Square of Pegasus. Perseus is between Cassiopeia and the brilliant star Capella in the constellation Auriga. The constellation contains the variable star Algol, considered the Medusa head that Perseus holds, which is not a single star but a triple-star system that waxes and wanes every three days depending on whether one of the system's dimmer or brighter stars is in front eclipsing the others.

The Perseid cloud stretches along the 130-year orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle and consists of a stream of particles ejected each time the comet approaches the sun. The August meteor shower, which results from the Earth's annual passage through the relatively static stream, has been observed for about 2000 years. Most of the meteors we see this week will have been ejected about a thousand years ago, but there is a new filament that was ejected only in 1862, which generates a higher volume of visible falling stars than the older portion of the stream.

A multicolored, long Perseid striking the sky just to the left of Milky Way in 2009

For years I've wanted to try a trick I read about: you set out a large flat pan the first time it rains after a meteor shower, then carefully let the pan dry out. Supposedly the remaining dust will react to a magnet, because it contains traces of iron from meteor dust in the upper atmosphere. I've never made it work. It would be hard to try this year, as we're beginning to wonder if it will ever rain again.

That reminds me of a quotation of Mark Twain that my husband cited to me yesterday: During a thunderstorm, someone asked whether he thought the rain would stop. "It always has before," he replied.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin:

It looks like the voters narrowly endorsed the death of public sector unions. This has been one of the nation's early attempts at wrestling entrenched government interests, and so far it's proving out.

This is important, because fixing America means fixing both the famous entitlements (Medicare and Medicaid) but also, and especially, slimming public sector pensions. The Wisconsin decision shows that voters can resist a public relations campaign and long-running protests, even if it was a close-run thing. This is a good sign for the future of our country, and somewhat of a surprising one. It is this approach we'll have to build on, in every state and at the Federal level, in order to be sure that the government does not devour the People.

Not Getting Mad

The Non-Agitated:

A headline that Rep. Bachmann surely wants to see often during the early days of her run at winning the Republican Nomination is, "Why Michele Bachmann is no Sarah Palin."

This is part two in that series from the Washington Post. Today's lesson: when the media does something really unfair, just ignore them. The American people already know they're a bunch of rascals. What they need to know is that you're not the kind of person who can get worked up by a bunch of rascals.

Flashmobs

Walking the Edge:

London's mobs seem to be using social media to organize themselves. There's no reason this can't be done very efficiently, as an asymmetric way of overcoming even the most robust police presence. After all, even a rich community with a very high normal police density can be the sudden locus of a flashmob of a few hundred gangsters, who can easily overwhelm the few policemen who would constitute a 'very high normal police density.' As with a terrorist attack, there is really no defense here except to harden the general society, so that there is a ready made 'anti-flashmob' of ordinary citizens who can pin down the gangsters long enough for a response to arrive. That response can be police, military, or what Major General Rick Lynch used to call 'concerned local citizens' with equal effect. What is important is that we have lost the 'find' phase of the old military rule to 'find, fix, and finish.' We need to be prepared to 'fix' them wherever they should happen to 'find' themselves. Finishing, assuming the fixing can be done, isn't that hard a nut to crack.

In America this phenomenon has a dangerous racial tendency, and in both directions. For all that commentators spoke of America being 'post-racial' just a few short years ago, the truth is that America has not become 'post-racial' at all. What America has become is antiracist. American culture is currently devoted to the proposition that racism will not be the rule in our society.

America has not forgotten its racial divisions, though. As the Buddhist proverb says, "To say you have forgiven but not forgotten is to say that you have not forgiven." What we have put in place is a set of protocols and social controls designed to suppress anything like racist expression. This is formalized and legal at the margins -- anti-discrimination suits are not unheard of -- but it is a system of social control as much as it is a system of political control. We, the People, have decided we do not want to be racists. At the same time, we remember what it was like to be racists: indeed, it is precisely because we remember what it was like to have a racist society that we have become so devoted to doing it otherwise.

This antiracism marks a real change from the bad old days, but it is far from a "postracial society." There is grave danger of having the old fault lines brought back into focus. The very young people who are engaging in this violence are the ones among us with the least memory of what the 'bad old days' were like -- they are least likely to believe in the change, because they did not live to see it.

That's the way it goes, as the opening lines of Quentin Tarantino's True Romance say, but sometimes it goes the other way too. We may be watching the tide break at the high water mark. This was as good as it got, perhaps: and now we shall roll back to the sea.

If not, it will only be because we dug in, and clawed the rest of the way.

President Dunning-Kruger?

PRESIDENT DUNNING-KRUGER

One of the more entertaining of Obama's campaign promises was his oft-repeated vow to "Restore Science to Its Rightful Place":

How is his administration doing so far? It has failed to strengthen protections for endangered species, appointed officials with long records of suppressing politically inconvenient science, ignored new evidence-based recommendations for breast-cancer screening, failed to remove all restrictions from embryonic stem-cell science and ignored decades of research in a politically motivated effort to prevent nuclear waste from being stored at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Dude... why so harsh? I can't think of a single public servant who has done more to increase public awareness of the Dunning-Kruger Effect:

ERROL MORRIS: Knowing what you don’t know? Is this supposedly the hallmark of an intelligent person?

DAVID DUNNING: That’s absolutely right. It’s knowing that there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. [4] Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don’t know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don’t know that we don’t know.” He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”

Give Barack his due: when it comes to increasing public awareness of the value of scientific inquiry, he walks the walk. Thank God the Smart Folks are back in charge:

"I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers," [Obama] reportedly told an aide in 2008. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director."

And unlike the ignorant and arrogant BusHitler administration, they're humble, too.

Instrumental

Instrumental:

Ya'll are cheating yourselves if you don't watch the last few minutes of the last one, at least.

Rass 17%

Rasmussen: 17% Say the US Gov't Has Consent of Governed

That's the top line finding, in any case.

Daniel W. Drezner asks if he's missing anything:

The first line line of defense has been breached, but the second line of defense looks increasingly robust. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll in the wake of the debt deal show the same thing -- everyone in Washington is unpopular, but Congress is really unpopular and GOP members of Congress are ridiculously unpopular. At a minimum, S&P needs to calculate how the current members of Congress will react to rising anti-incumbent sentiment. If they did that analysis and concluded that nothing would be done, I'd understand their thinking more. I didn't see anything like that kind of political analysis in their statement, however.

In the end, I suspect Moody's and Fitch won't follow S&P's move, so this could be a giant nothingburger. Still, if these guys are going to be doing political risk analysis, it might help to actually have some political scientists on the payroll. Based on their statement, S&P is simply extrapolating from the op-ed page, and that's a lousy way to make a political forecast.

Am I missing anything?

Well, yes, you are: national public opinion polls cut very nicely against the President, whoever he is; but Congressmen are elected by district, and Senators by state. A Senator can be 0% popular outside his state and still win re-election; and a Representative can be 0% popular outside his district and still do so.

Opinon poll after opinion poll has shown, and for decades, that people hate Congress but roughly speaking support their own representatives. That being so, the findings on Congress aren't especially relevant to our diagnosis.

Retrospection:

As my time at the undisclosed location comes to a close -- I'll go so far as to name it the Tampa region -- I'd like to take a moment to speak to what I'll remember about the place.

Here a couple of Mr. Wolf's bikes.



The "small" one in the foreground -- it's a 1200 cc Harley -- is one I spent about a month riding. It's a good little bike, though you can't go a day without stopping by a gas station. The bigger one with the red rims and the whitewall tires is his bagger.



Here is my current bike, which I have named "Lady Luck." There are good and sufficient reasons for this which I won't go into as at this time.



Lady Luck outside a hole in the wall on the Gulf of Mexico which I highly recommend to those of you who normally carry knives about your daily business. The guitarist on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday is the most talented I've ever seen in person. He not only seems to know every song written between 1940 and the present day, he can improvise with them -- and lead his three-or-four piece band along while he does it. The fourth piece is a harmonica, wielded sometimes by an old hippie who drops in when he feels like it.



Not every bike survived the approach.



A shrine to the owner, Master Sergeant John Susor, whose service was in WWII. The place is full of tributes to him, especially news clippings with headlines like: "Bar owner says he was acting in self-defense when he took up his pickaxe" or "Bar owner arrested for gambling" or "Notorious bar owner running for mayor." He passed on in 2008, and I'm sorry I didn't have the honor of meeting him in person.



One of two cats and two Pit Bulls who live at this bar. The elder Pit Bull is quite old, and mostly sleeps on the couch nearest the band. She is quite content to have a man -- a man fearless of dogs, at least -- sit on the couch and spend an hour petting her.

The rules posted on the bar advise complainers, "The animals live here, and you don't." Fair warning!



Ah, "folk art."



More folk art. The table is as off-level as any I've ever played on, and we could only find one pool stick in the place with cork on its tip. Good game, all the same.

If any of you find yourselves with business at SOCOM or CENTCOM, and share my own impulses, you could do worse for yourselves.

Truck Driver

The Story of a Truck Driver:

The personal part of this story is tragic, but the basic facts of truck-driving are universal.

His truck is governed to 68 miles an hour, because the company he leases it from believes it keeps him and the public and the equipment safer.

The truck he passed was probably running under 65 mph to conserve fuel. You see, the best these trucks do for fuel economy is about 8 miles per gallon. With fuel at almost $4 per gallon -- well, you do the math. And, yes, that driver pays for his own fuel.

He needs to be 1,014 miles from where he loaded in two days. And he can't fudge his federally mandated driver log, because he no longer does it on paper; he is logged electronically.

He can drive 11 hours in a 14-hour period; then he must take a 10-hour break. And considering that the shipper where he loaded held him up for five hours because it is understaffed, he now needs to run without stopping for lunch and dinner breaks.

If he misses his delivery appointment, he will be rescheduled for the next day, because the receiver has booked its docks solid (and has cut staff to a minimum). That means the driver sits, losing 500-plus miles for the week.

Which means his profit will be cut, and he will take less money home to his family. Most of these guys are gone 10 days, and home for a day and a half, and take home an average of $500 a week if everything goes well.

"If."

Mead

The Invisible Hand is Writing:

Walter Russell Mead has been producing a lot of interesting stuff lately. I think I almost wholly agree with this piece, which may be biasing me in judging its quality; but I think it is rightly put.

Doc Russia used to quote Kipling's "The Gods of the Copybook Headings." Yes, I remember thinking: that's right. The old rules, the simple rules, the ones so many thought they left behind with childood -- thought they had become too sophisticated to believe -- are the real rules of the world.

Hostage-Taking

Hostage-Taking

In the recent blanket coverage of the debt crisis, the ongoing story about Congress's failure to extend funding for the Federal Aviation Administration got a bit lost. The limited coverage concentrated on the ping-pong aspect of legislative gamesmanship. Something rang a bell, though, when I read that the House had passed a bill with a short-term extension of funding, which the Senate refused either to vote on or to propose an alternative to, instead demanding that the House try again with something more palatable to the Senate. Hey, that sounds a lot like what happened with the debt ceiling. In my line of work, we call that negotiating against yourself.

Not only does Harry Reid demand that the House negotiate against itself, but he accuses it of taking hostages. I think what he's talking about is the usual process of offering legislative compromises: we'll give you something you want rather desperately, but we intend to exact a price. Senate Democratic leaders are demanding what's come to be called lately a "clean" bill, which is one that extends FAA funding without including two irritating conditions: (1) cuts to subsidies for rural airports and (2) a re-instatement of the decades-long traditional rule for unionizing an FAA facility (recently overturned by regulatory fiat) requiring a majority vote of all workers instead of merely a majority of those voting.

For Senate Democrats, the inclusion of these obnoxious requirements is the equivalent of taking hostages. The tactic strikes me, however, as a pretty ordinary one for both sides of the aisle. The argument can be made that all legislation should address a single issue, to be voted up or down in a "clean" fashion. Indeed, this is the theory behind the often-proposed but never-approved line-item veto. I don't see it going anywhere, though. When the shoe is on the other foot, the attitude most often is that compromise is how the business of government is supposed to get done. I'm not sure it helps to characterize every compromise as taking one issue hostage for the purpose of getting concessions on another.

As things stand, the House approved continued funding for the FAA, which the Senate refused to take up. The Senate has not produced its own proposal, just as it refused until the very last minute to produce its own proposal to the hated House bill on the debt ceiling. Neither chamber is technically in recess this week, but that's only a gambit to prevent recess appointments, because legislators actually have all gone home. FAA workers are left hanging, but is it really because the Republican House has taken them hostage? Or is it because Senate Democrats can't bring themselves to adjust to the new reality that they can't pass legislation without real compromise?

The New Civil Discourse

The New Civil Discourse

"If the budget is balanced, the terrorists will have won."

I need that on a T-shirt.

8 Things Never

"8 Things You Should Never Say to Your Husband"

This is one of those pointless humanizing pieces that news agencies run more for entertainment than for serious reasons. Still, since we often talk about the relations between men and women -- or man and wife -- let's look at it.

They get off to a very bad start here: "One of the best parts about marriage is being so comfortable with your hubby that you can say just about anything to him. But if you don’t watch your mouth, sometimes the ugly truth comes out..."

So, these concepts are supposed to be truths that you shouldn't say to your husband. Ugly truths. About him.

1. "You're just like your father."

I don't know -- this one doesn't seem bad to me. I'd take it as a compliment, in large part because I know I'm not very much like my father (though we look alike); he's a better man than I am in many respects. Though he has his flaws, as all men do, overall I think of him as a shining example of what a good man is like: a volunteer firefighter, a loyal husband and father, a former staff sergeant and drill instructor in the US Army.

2. "When are you going to find a new job?"

Job-related questions are very touchy for any man in modern American society, because they get at the core role that society expects him to fulfill. Unhappily, questions about his job are going to be received by most American men as questions about his whole worth as a human being.

That's improper -- it is also philosophically out of order, as his essential nature is not related to his employment but to his ability to exercise virtue in a vigorous and rational way. Employment can be a way of doing that, or it can simply be a private struggle to provide yourself and your family with the means to exercise virtue in other spheres: as a thinker, or a writer, or a mountain-climber, a horseman, or -- for those with the calling -- a man of God.

Fixing that problem will make it much easier to talk about the employment issues. Once he is in order in his soul, the question of how he makes his living will be of far less importance. As it should be! What a waste of our lives, to focus as much as we do on what Elise likes to call the 'circular' business of just earning enough to get by.

3. "My mother warned me you'd do this!"

I would find this one intriguing. I would like to know what my wife's mother warned her about -- she was a very interesting lady, and I liked her a lot.

4. "Just leave it -- I'll do it myself!"

Since we're talking about the 'ugly truth,' the concept is going to be 'You're incapable of doing a good job here.' This need not be unpleasant to hear: I am always glad to discover that my wife would rather reorganize the pantry without my assistance. However, this certainly could be said in a hateful way, and anything that sounds like "Go away you incompetent idiot" will probably be received as the insult that it was intended to be.

5. "You always..." or "You never..."

Yes, this is wisely avoided in all circumstances, and for all audiences.

6. "Do you really think those pants are flattering?"

The likely answer: "How should I know?" Most men wear pants that conform to the kind of pants they were taught to wear at work or in the military. The question of whether they are "flattering" never enters either consideration: the question is whether they are the proper kind of pants for that environment. If I don't look good in them, it's very likely because I don't look all that good. We can't be blaming the pants for that.

7. "Ugh, are we hanging out with him again?"

I see the point, although in general married couples find it nearly impossible to remain actively engaged with single friends.

8. "Please watch the kids. But don't take them here, or do this, or forget that..."

There is a rule that will serve as a useful guideline for women dealing with men: "You can tell me what to do, or how to do it. Pick one."

There are exceptions, of course, but in general it's best to learn to let go and give your husband some autonomy in how he executes the tasks set for him. Or, if there is something you really need him to do in a particular way (say, you want the house painted, but it's important that it be painted green and not just any color he likes) you should probably find a way to convince him to do the task short of telling him to do it. "If you paint the house, then I'll..." is the kind of strategy that avoids telling him to do it, which means that (if he agrees to do it) you can give him very specific guidance on how you want it done without irritating him.

That, at least, is my advice; you may find that your own experience is otherwise. Feel free to say so in the comments!

Italian Sports

Italy: Home of the Coolest Sports

This seems like it would be fun.

What strikes me about a lot of these sports is that they've been reinvigorated recently -- this one in 1995. That's interesting.

We're Here to Help

We're Here to Help

In "The Compassion Trap," James Delong at The American Enterprise notes the dilemma we create when we obey a compulsion to help without a commitment to bear the cost without grudging. In the Florida version of the lawsuit against Obamacare, for instance, the government justified the individual mandate on the ground that the government had previously decided to make emergency medical treatment mandatory; it followed, therefore, that irresponsible citizens must not be permitted to take a free ride.

The Florida judge countered that perhaps the problem was with the mandate for free emergency care. I think the problem is instead with the double-thinking that permits us to congratulate ourselves for our compassionate extension of free emergency medical care, while at the same time resenting the recipients' failure to make adequate pre-arrangements to pay us back.

So, because we are not willing to let people suffer consequences, we, acting through the government, must control increasingly large dimensions of everyone’s behavior for the sake of our own amour-propre. . . . When anyone tries to call a halt, the trump card is played—the children! We might let you die in the gutter, but how can we possibly let your children do so?

A Pollster Who Gets It Right

A Pollster Gets It Right:

A left, or "center-left," pollster actually listens to what people are saying. It's fairly amazing to realize that they still can hear it, the ones who decide to listen.

[I]n smaller, more probing focus groups, voters show they are fairly cynical about Democratic politicians’ stands. They tune out the politicians’ fine speeches and plans and express sentiments like these: “It’s just words.” “There’s just such a control of government by the wealthy that whatever happens, it’s not working for all the people; it’s working for a few of the people.” “We don’t have a representative government anymore.”

This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism....

GOVERNMENT operates by the wrong values and rules, for the wrong people and purposes, the Americans I’ve surveyed believe. Government rushes to help the irresponsible and does little for the responsible. Wall Street lobbyists govern, not Main Street voters. Vexingly, this promotes both national and middle-class decline yet cannot be moved by conventional democratic politics. Lost jobs, soaring spending and crippling debt make America ever weaker, unable to meet its basic obligations to educate and protect its citizens. Yet politicians take care of themselves and party interests, while government grows remote and unresponsive, leaving people feeling powerless.

Not quite powerless. We can break it. That is what lies behind the Tea Party's "intransigence" on the debt ceiling: the firm conviction that it is better to destroy this system than to save it.

Read on:

Our research shows that the growth of self-identified conservatives began in the fall of 2008 with the Wall Street bailout, well before Mr. Obama embarked on his recovery and spending program. The public watched the elite and leaders of both parties rush to the rescue. The government saved irresponsible executives who bankrupted their own companies, hurt many people and threatened the welfare of the country. When Mr. Obama championed the bailout of the auto companies and allowed senior executives at bailed-out companies to take bonuses, voters concluded that he was part of the operating elite consensus. If you owned a small business that was in trouble or a home or pension that lost much of its value, you were on your own. As people across the country told me, the average citizen doesn’t “get money for free.” Their conclusion: Government works for the irresponsible, not the responsible.

Everything they witness affirms the public’s developing view of how government really works. They see a nexus of money and power, greased by special interest lobbyists and large campaign donations, that makes these outcomes irresistible.

The list of recommendations for Democrats is refreshing; but it is important that Democrats recognize that the alternative is the end of the system. The public is done with it. Wall Street and Washington are alike, says Ms. Megan McArdle, in being mostly interested in 'what keeps the checks flowing' -- but that option is closed save in the shortest term. The system will reform fundamentally or, if that is too hard, it will burn. The end of the world is not too high a price to break an unjust system, for 'the end of the world,' on these terms, already has happened more than once.

For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know;
He saw the first oar break or bend,
He saw heaven fall and the world end,
O God, how long ago.

For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell today
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

If it comes to that, I shall abide it. For the moment, the establishment appears to have given itself one last chance. As they love their lives and fortunes -- I will not speak of their sacred honor -- they had better take care in how they spend it.

The Jacksonian Party has a more hopeful take on the whole business.

Baby Guards

Baby Guards

I'm thinking it would be a bad idea to make a threatening move toward this distant baby relative of mine -- a first cousin twice removed. I haven't seen my cousin (his grandmother) for many decades, but we keep in touch through Christmas cards and photos, recognizing in each other the true dog-madness.

Madness in Command

"Depression in Command"

An article in the Wall Street Journal challenges a fundamental idea that we use in choosing leadership, assigning security clearances, and indeed even in determining responsibility in the legal sense of the term. Maybe what we need in a leader is madness...

When not irritably manic in his temperament, Churchill experienced recurrent severe depressive episodes, during many of which he was suicidal. Even into his later years, he would complain about his "black dog" and avoided ledges and railway platforms, for fear of an impulsive jump. "All it takes is an instant," he said.

Abraham Lincoln famously had many depressive episodes, once even needing a suicide watch, and was treated for melancholy by physicians. Mental illness has touched even saintly icons like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., both of whom made suicide attempts in adolescence and had at least three severe depressive episodes in adulthood.

Aristotle was the first to point out the link between madness and genius, including not just poets and artists but also political leaders. I would argue that the Inverse Law of Sanity also applies to more ordinary endeavors. In business, for instance, the sanest of CEOs may be just right during prosperous times, allowing the past to predict the future. But during a period of change, a different kind of leader—quirky, odd, even mentally ill—is more likely to see business opportunities that others cannot imagine.

There's a lot of sense to the concept. However, we routinely engage in psychological screening of job candidates, especially for military or leadership positions. The only jobs we don't psychologically screen for are elected officials, many of whom do seem to experience some of the less productive forms of madness -- an intense focus on their own importance, for example. If the theory is right, these tests could be stripping out the very people best suited to military leadership in a genuine crisis. And why should we not believe that? Many generals, like Sherman or Grant, found a success in war that eluded their peacetime efforts: Sherman was a repeated failure, and Grant an alcoholic whose brilliance in maneuvering an army at war was not equaled when he became the leader of the bureaucracy during peacetime.

Maybe we should consider this a reason to vote for someone: that he, or she, is sensitive enough to reality to be depressed now and then!