Die Like A Man

A post from the new site Helen's Page explores how cancer is like America:

On January 16, my father and I learned that he has terminal cancer. He's eighty-four. Yesterday I discovered that he's known about his soft-tissue pelvic sarcoma for almost two years but did nothing about it. My father is terrified of cancer, so he denied that he had it. He pretended it didn't exist.... My father has lived in a state of blissful denial his entire life. He used to smoke five packs of cigarettes a day, and until he was seventy he drank a quart of scotch a day. His diet consists of steak, salami, potatoes, bread, cheese, mayonnaise, ice cream, and pie....

He told me recently that until he was eighty, he honestly thought he'd live forever. I didn't say, "Really? You thought you'd live in your house here in Los Angeles for trillions and trillions and trillions of years, making your wooden toys, watching Bill O'Reilly... for all eternity?"...

My father's mother died of heart disease and diabetes. She screamed and cried and begged God for more time, over a three-week period. It was very traumatic for my father. My grandmother was seventy-eight and had never once changed her diet after her diagnosis of diabetes. She gorged on cookies, cake, and pie and then screamed for more life. Her death was unfair, she cried.

The other day I was cutting down a tree with my chainsaw, and I took a moment before making the final cut to prepare for death. It's not a difficult process. I said the usual prayer, accepted that in a moment I might be dead, and then felled the tree. Sure enough it didn't fall just as I wanted.  Nevertheless, as I took the alternate escape route, I experienced no fear.  Perhaps this is because my studies in metaphysics have led me to believe that death is a small thing; perhaps it is simply because I am practiced in facing death.  Aristotle held that any human virtue was likely to be the result of good practice.

You know you're going to die. It could be today. The good life ideally includes a good death. Why not practice for the great challenge you know is going to come?

Your Kitty, Like Your Host...

OK, sure. They're cold-blooded killers. But so are we. Farming is nothing but killing once you've planted the seeds. Ants, voles, field mice, crows, invasive species, they're all the enemy of the one particular thing you wanted to grow.

Nature doesn't care, but kitty does. So do we. It's why we have them. The dogs are to ride herd on them because unlike dogs, cats can't be trusted.

Come on down

Ted Cruz applies a market approach to Second Amendment freedoms, in light of Chicago Mayor Emmanuel's attempt to bully banks into refusing to loan to gun manufacturers.  To the banks, he suggests moving to Texas, where they can loan to anyone they like.  To the gun manufacturers, he suggests moving to Texas, where we have lots of banks who would be happy to lend to them.  To the Mayor, he notes that the city recently wasted over $1 million in legal fees in an unsuccessful assault on the Second Amendment.

Regardless, directing your attacks at legitimate gun manufacturers undermines the Second Amendment rights of millions of Texans.  In the future, I would ask that you might keep your efforts to diminish the Bill of Rights north of the Red River.

I'm going to like this guy:  Rick Perry with twice the brains.  I really can't say how tickled I am that he replaced Kay Bailey Hutchison.

My head hurts

Over at Ace, Monty sums up beautifully what's confusing about an extraordinary piece of babble from the CNBC website:

See, here's the problem:  A spending limit isn't a limit unless it actually functions as a bar to further spending.

The CNBC piece struggles hard to reconcile a lot of contradictory ideas.  For example, Obama promised the sequester wouldn't happen, but the article's author notes with some surprise that it turns out absolutely nothing has been done so far to avert it.  That's because of "entrenched politics in Washington."   (We know who those entrenchers are.)   "Many" thought that the recent Republican agreement to delay the effective date of the debt ceiling signaled a willingness by Republicans to "co-operate" with the White House, but now it seems that Republicans think spending cuts are a good idea.   (Who knew?)

Republicans would rather see the spending cuts take a different form, but if the sequester is the only form on offer, they'll live with it.  Democrats would rather avoid the spending cuts altogether, but they kind of like them, because they spare Medicare and Social Security, so they're not motivated to negotiate, unless the Republicans offer to raise taxes on the wealthy.   (Wait.  Didn't Republicans just agree to do that?)  Republicans don't want to raise taxes on the wealthy again, a negotiation position that apparently has taken the Democrats completely by surprise.

So both sides are more or less content to let the sequester take effect, given the alternatives.  But the spending cuts may slow growth, especially since Congress just increased payroll taxes.   (The article can't figure out to which party to attribute that change, so it stays fuzzy.)  And now that Democrats think about it, they don't like the non-defense spending cuts in the sequester.

I've lost the thread of what Democratic negotiators in Congress are trying to achieve.  I know they want to avoid slowing the economy.  They see spending cuts as slowing the economy; they may even see tax hikes as slowing the economy.  They sometimes express an interest in reducing the deficit, which surely requires either cutting spending, raising taxes, or expanding the economy.  Is the idea that you can expand the economy by raising taxes as long as you tax only the rich?  In other words, the higher taxes on the rich will shrink the deficit as long as they don't slow the economy too much?   I understand the notion that it's fair to tax the rich more, without agreeing with it, but I don't understand the notion that it will not slow the economy.  It sure isn't working in Europe, or California.  We can concentrate on not slowing the economy by avoiding either tax hikes or spending cuts, but then we're ballooning the deficit.  Eventually, that will lead either to runaway inflation or to a drying up of the national credit.

No matter how many times we play this shell game, how is there ever any real alternative to living within our means?

I hope that the debt-ceiling deal will lead to a budget from Congress by the agreed deadline.  It's got to be less irrational to try to negotiate spending cuts within the context of a specific budget than to negotiate with people who say, "If I can't spend as much as I'd like on absolutely everything, I'm not going to pay any bills at all."

It's a wonder people don't like lawyers

This kind of story is just sad, I think:

A unanimous panel of [a New York State appellate court] yesterday affirmed the dismissal of a $77 million wrongful termination suit against Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman brought by an ex-associate, Gregory Berry.  Berry worked in the software industry for 15 years before going to the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  After graduating in 2010, he was hired by Kasowitz, but was fired after less than a year. 

According to his suit, Berry took the job because he was told that Kasowitz gave associates a high degree of freedom and responsibility.  However, he said those representations proved false, and he was fired for asking for more responsibility in an email in which he wrote, among other things, that "after working here for several months now it has become clear that I have as much experience and ability as an associate many years my senior, as much skill writing, and a superior legal mind to most I have met."

The way this kind of negotiation is supposed to work is that an associate of unusual ability or background gently reminds the powers-that-be that he is a valuable member of the team who can remain happy only if he is granted the kind of freedom and responsibility he'd been led to expect.   If he doesn't get it, he may have to start listening more carefully to the many offers he is getting from other firms, though he hopes they can remain friends even if he leaves.   It's a pretty delicate conversation to have with people who need to like you at least a little bit if they're going to continue working with you 16 hours a day.  "I have a superior legal mind" is not a charming approach.  Letting that email be published on the Net is almost as bad as a really awful Facebook picture.

And although I'd be the last to disparage the ability of an exceptional lawyer to earn exceptional pay, I have to laugh out loud at the idea of $77 million in damages, or at his unhappiness with $27,000 in severance, especially after he agreed to take it.

Just Random Bad Luck

An article making the rounds considers the case of a Chicago mother whose four children have all been killed in what the article describes as "gun violence." The latest "child" to die was 34 years of age, and had -- the article does not mention this, so you have to scroll to the comments -- a history of some 29 arrests, and gang membership. There is some confusion about whether he was a former or a current member of the Gangster Disciples when he died. The drive-by nature of the shooting suggests gang violence, but no one has been arrested.

The article is similarly circumspect about the other shootings. The first is described as a shooting by "a high-school classmate" "after an argument." The others are just described as having been close together in time.

If only Chicago had some more gun control laws, I guess we are meant to take from the article, this kind of thing would not happen.

Real or fake? Does it matter?

Mark Steyn nails it, as usual:

[T]he secretary of state denied that she’d ever seen the late Ambassador Stevens’s cables about the deteriorating security situation in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office” – and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. . . . 

When a foreign head of state receives the credentials of the senior emissary of the United States, he might carelessly assume that the chap surely has a line of communication back to the government he represents.  For six centuries or so, this has been the minimal requirement for functioning inter-state relations.  But Secretary Clinton has just testified that, in the government of the most powerful nation on earth, there is no reliable means by which a serving ambassador can report to the cabinet minister responsible for foreign policy.  And nobody cares:  What difference does it make? . . . 

Nor was the late Christopher Stevens any old ambassador, but rather Secretary Clinton’s close personal friend “Chris.”  It was all “Chris” this, “Chris” that when Secretary Clinton and President Obama delivered their maudlin eulogies over the flag-draped coffin of their “friend.”  Gosh, you’d think if they were on such intimate terms, “Chris” might have had Hillary’s e-mail address, but apparently not.  He was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends cabling the State Department every hour of the day.

Celebrate Diversity of Religion

Some comments on the Right reacting to this piece are improper.



Says Ed Morrissey: "But to 'thank God for abortion' demonstrates a lack of proper formation in religion … or just a bit of demagoguery intended to put on a fake faith to assume speakership for that contingent of people. If Touré really believes in God, perhaps he should take the time to find out what God says about pretty much the entire arc of behavior that Touré admits in this brief clip[.]" But what the man is saying is that he thanks his god that he was able to kill the child he didn't want so he could have a better life (including the child he eventually did want). There is a long American tradition of religion that advocates for the sacrifice of the unwanted in return for a better life.

How unfair to assume that he was speaking of the Christian God -- or that a claim like this refers to "a fake faith." Something ancient is being worshiped here, though the speaker may not have been taught to recognize his god by its right name.

Revolutions

An interesting article at Cafe Hayek explores the transformational value of human inventions.  What is more revolutionary, indoor plumbing or the Internet?  The commenters muse about living on the cusp on an age in which knowledge is shared worldwide in ways that were unimaginable a few years ago.  Not so far back in my life, I couldn't have guessed what conversations I'd be having daily with people all over the world.

You keep using that word "sacrifice" . . . .

Bookworm Room leaps into the socialized medicine fray again, with a post called "When It Comes to End-of-Life Decisions, the State Does Not Love You."  She's reacting to a revolting piece at Slate arguing that it makes sense to "sacrifice" the life of an infant to save its mother.  Whether or not that trade-off makes sense, The Anchoress points out that it doesn't constitute a "sacrifice."  A sacrifice is one person giving up something valuable for another.  Despite the euphemism employed by medical researchers who "sacrifice" an experimental laboratory animal, the killing of an infant to save the mother is not a sacrifice.  It is a killing that may or may not be justified by harrowing circumstances.  If the infant killed itself to save its mother, that would be a sacrifice.  If the mother died so that her baby could be born, that would be a sacrifice.

This is part and parcel of the confusion I so often complain about, that leads us to describe as "charity" the act of taking someone else's money and putting it to good use.  The confiscation of property may lead to many good things, such as justice, mercy, or efficiency, but it is not charity.  Charity is when one man gives of his own property to help someone else in need.

The Bookworm post is well worth reading in its entirety, not just for this point about euphemisms and the mental confusion they generate, but for its treatment of euthanasia, and the broader problem of who will make the best choices about scarce medical resources.  She describes a time when she believed a beneficent state would make better choices about expensive end-of-life care than money-grubbing family members.  She failed to take into account the inevitable shrinking of prosperity and resources under a socialist system, and the need to compare apples to apples:  the question is not whether a flush socialist state will be more merciful than a cash-strapped family, but whether, in cash-strapped situations, the most mercy will be found in people who know and love the patient, or in bureaucrats who are total strangers.

No system of economics or government eliminates the problem of making hard choices about limited resources.  Some systems create more prosperity than others, but we will always bump up against the wall of what can be done for one problem without robbing resources available to solve another.  The question is:  what system solves the conflicts in a way we can live with?

Tourist maps

I like the "mountains in the other direction!"

H/t Bookworm Room.

Women in combat

I find this account incredibly persuasive even though every fiber of my being wants to argue against it.

A British Son of Liberty

In the comments to a recent post at BLACKFIVE, a gentleman posted a link to a song by a British singer that references the Sons of Liberty. The only name he mentions in the song is Watt Tyler, though, so he's reaching a lot further back than the famous Sons -- 1381, in fact.



Musically it isn't much of a song, but the lyrics are encouraging.

House of Eratosthenes

Some good stuff on House of Eratosthenes this morning.  On Hillary Clinton's strange testimony this week:

We have our Secretary of State . . . reminding us that the whole point is to find out what happened, and therefore “what does it matter” . . . what the h--- happened.  Sheer nonsense.

And on the weird treatment of science in political disputes:

But it bears repeating, science has nothing to do at all with what we “must” do.  Science is all about what is.  One steps outside of the domain of science, usually slamming the door behind him, and forgetting the key, the minute one starts pondering the thing-to-do.  With the climate change deal, a lot of people tend to forget that. 

[I]n classical times “science” was used to describe a process, and in more recent times it is used to describe an orthodoxy of institutionalized beliefs, and a coterie of elites maintaining them. 

. . . 

Time after time, I see lefties “proving” that they deserve to be the one Alpha Dog of the pack — and not taking the trouble to prove much of anything else.  They start babbling pure nonsense.  Like “It’s our job to find out what happened here so it never happens again, and what difference does it make who did this thing we’re trying to prevent from ever happening again, or why they did it.”  Arguing about security procedures and climate science . . . the way Arctic wolves would, if they could talk.

Maybe we have a Constitution after all

A federal appeals court has found that when the Constitution says the President can make recess appointments, that means he actually has to wait until a recess to do it.  He can't just act during what feels like a recess to him, on the ground that the appointment is really important and Republicans aren't being nice to him.

Conan, Master of Arts

A helpful article from McSweeny's medical journal entitled, "FAQ: The 'Snake Fight' Portion of Your Thesis Defense."

Q: Do I have to kill the snake?
A: University guidelines state that you have to “defeat” the snake. There are many ways to accomplish this. Lots of students choose to wrestle the snake. Some construct decoys and elaborate traps to confuse and then ensnare the snake. One student brought a flute and played a song to lull the snake to sleep. Then he threw the snake out a window.

Q: Does everyone fight the same snake?
A: No. You will fight one of the many snakes that are kept on campus by the facilities department.

Q: Are the snakes big?
A: We have lots of different snakes. The quality of your work determines which snake you will fight. The better your thesis is, the smaller the snake will be.

...

Q: So then couldn’t you just fight a snake in lieu of actually writing a thesis?
A: Technically, yes. But in that case the snake would be very big. Very big, indeed.

Oh, so that's what happened.

Guns and budgets

From Instapundit, quoting a friend:

If Republicans want to stop gun control legislation in the US Senate all they have to do is attach a budget to it and Harry Reid will ensure it never comes up for a vote.

Harbingers

Paul A. Rahe addresses a question about whether there is a non-Marxist literature on what occasions revolutions (he misses Hannah Arendt). Are there leading indicators that suggest a revolution may be coming?

One key indicator is that those with access to the levers of power within the ruling order cease to believe in the religion or ideology that legitimizes the regime. Another is that their underlings also gradually abandon the beliefs that render respectable the rule of their masters.

For some reason, he goes on to talk about China.

Mourning at the Morning of the World

There is much to mourn at this hour. We watch the nation fall ever farther from the moral life that formed it, and informed it at its darkest hours.

Since I am quoting Dunsany, though, it is worth remembering that he was an ally of the ancient things. The ancient things renew.

THE RETURN OF SONG

"The swans are singing again," said to one another the gods. And
looking downwards, for my dreams had taken me to some fair and
far Valhalla, I saw below me an iridescent bubble not greatly larger
than a star shine beautifully but faintly, and up and up from it looking
larger and larger came a flock of white, innumerable swans, singing
and singing and singing, till it seemed as though even the gods were
wild ships swimming in music.

"What is it?" I said to one that was humble among the gods.

"Only a world has ended," he said to me, "and the swans are coming
back to the gods returning the gift of song."

"A whole world dead!" I said.

"Dead," said he that was humble among the gods. "The worlds are
not for ever; only song is immortal."

"Look! Look!" he said. "There will be a new one soon."

And I looked and saw the larks, going down from the gods.

"The Assignation"

A very short story by Lord Dunsany, one of the greats of his age.

Fame singing in the highways, and trifling as she sang, with sordid adventurers, passed the poet by.

And still the poet made for her little chaplets of song, to deck her forehead in the courts of Time: and still she wore instead the worthless garlands, that boisterous citizens flung to her in the ways, made out of perishable things.

And after a while whenever these garlands died the poet came to her with his chaplets of song; and still she laughed at him and wore the worthless wreaths, though they always died at evening.

And one day in his bitterness the poet rebuked her, and said to her: "Lovely Fame, even in the highways and the byways you have not foreborne to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men, and I have toiled for you and dreamed of you and you mock me and pass me by."

And Fame turned her back on him and walked away, but in departing she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him as she had not smiled before, and, almost speaking in a whisper, said:

"I will meet you in the graveyard at the back of the Workhouse in a hundred years."

But read on, for "Charon," and the story of the Sphinx and Time.