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Monthly Archives: September 2018
The first fair and deliberate exchange in world history
From The Wealth of Nations:
“Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that….But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.”
On the other hand, it could be the resurrection of an economy recovering from the grip of a socialist experiment, Venezuela say, in about a year or two from now.
Cartoon via Powerline – The Week in Pictures
Music and the Struggle for the Soul of the West
One of the most interesting and insightful articles I have ever come across. Odd title perhaps – O Magnum Mysterium – but this tells you what you need to know.
From the time of the troubadours and the trouveres of the Crusades, the advances in Western thought have not only been mirrored in our music, but occasioned by it, from Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin des Prez and Pierre de la Rue, to Obrecht and Ockegham, to Palestrina to Johann Sebastian Bach. A popular song such as “L’homme armé” could become the subject of numerous medieval masses, not because of its secular origin (although that certainly helped, as the worshippers would respond to its familiarity), but because its implicit polyphonic structure could be successfully and inventively exploited by composers across Europe, leading to ever more complex and inventive ways of using the material.
Yes, masses. Because the development of European polyphony was, like religious dogma itself, inspired by Aristotelian ideas of free inquiry and the teleological impulses of both Judaism and Christianity. Music, like faith, has to be headed somewhere. Our lives may be temporally constricted, but freedom of inquiry is not.
And the writer is someone to contend with, a true scholar:
Michael Walsh was for sixteen years the music critic and foreign correspondent for Time, for which he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. His works include the non-fiction best-seller The Devil’s Pleasure Palace (2017); this article is an extract from its sequel, The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West, which was published by Encounter Books in May.
Geoff Sessions and the Deep State
Paul Mirengoff, a deep state #NeverTrumper, discusses the American Attorney General in a post with a quite revealing title: In Praise of Geoff Sessions. Here are the two sides from the comments to the post, with my own view expressed by the first.
I think Trump was expecting Sessions to clear out the swamp at the DOJ. Instead he seem unwilling to do and is letting leftist/D-oriented careerist carry on. I think Trump is surprised that Sessions, an early supporter of his, has turned out to be so timid/meek in dealing with he swamp. I think those of us who are not lawyers are also less willing to give those who are the benefit of the doubt when they are in positions of public trust. Since Sessions won’t deal with the swamp in any meaningful way, Trump should fire his ass and all the top officials in the DOJ and any swamp-inclined US Attorneys. Of course, the GOP senator types (mostly more lawyers) are hinting at temper tantrums if he does so. F*ck them too. Trump only has two (maybe 6 years) left to get things done. He needs to get moving. If this means he loses more votes. So be it, Let the GOPe self-identify and deal with the electoral fallout. The US is running out of time.
This is the benefit of the doubt perspective:
I’m in the camp that thinks Sessions is doing the President’s most important work: draining the swamp.
The media gets so excited when Trump tweets something that appears to indicate displeasure with the Attorney General.
But I think there are basically two kinds of Trump-haters that matter here.
The first is the rank-and-file believer who maintains a position of influence in the democratic party or the so-called mainstream media. These persons are thoroughly convinced that Trump is just dumb. These people have bought in, completely, to the idea that Trump doesn’t even factor into his own success. They have embraced the totally irrational narrative that the bigotry of tens of millions of hateful morons elevated this incompetent boob to the single most powerful post on the planet.
The second type of Trump-hater runs the first like assets in a foreign theater. These are people who fear the President. Not because he is seen as an idiot undeserving of the awesome powers of the presidency, but because they recognize that he doesn’t have anything invested in the status quo which keeps them in business. They know that his promises to drain the swamp are manifestly different than those made by Nancy Pelosi, circa 2005, because Pelosi’s rhetoric merely disguised her own role in leveraging accumulated institutional power against the interests of the People, at the expense of the People.
The “establishment” ruling class has no effective means of controlling Trump because he played no part in the willful sacrifice of American citizens’ interests for his own gain over the course of the last 40 -50 years, which means he has no compelling reason to keep their secrets or allow them to continue their exploitation of We The People.
Donald Trump represents a very real threat to their methodically conceived permanent power structures.
The first type of Trump-hater is too blinded by their conviction that Trump is stupid to realize what kind of danger he poses to the second group’s near-hegemonic grip on power.
So, it is literally inconceivable to these witless ideological foot-soldiers that Trump could be trying to accomplish something specific through his tweets that seemingly put him in conflict with his Attorney General. To them, it makes sense that Trump is just lashing out at this honorable man for being an honorable man — which to them means staying on the sidelines and refusing to protect the President.
However, that second type of Trump-hater are certainly well aware that Sessions is actively building cases against their top tier operatives — and they are using the media’s naive perception of and intense focus on Trump’s tweets to buy time by feeding into the false notion that these tweets are a sign of desperation. Meanwhile, Sessions is quietly securing testimony and evidence of widespread corruption throughout the federal government.
I think Sessions will end up being a hero in all this. I think the star witnesses will be Bill Priestap, Lisa Page, Sally Yates, Bruce Ohr, and Lanny Davis.
I also think Rosenstein, Stzrok, McCabe, and Simpson will be paraded around in very public perp-walks.
Maybe I’m wrong though. Maybe Sessions really is so afraid and/or incompetent that he’s just sitting around waiting to see how this all shakes out, hoping to remain unsullied by Mueller’s illegal probe…
What i see, however, leaves me reasonably sure that Sessions and Trump are working closely together. The Twitter rantings targeting the AG look suspiciously like theater to me. Bait for CNN and WaPo to sink their teeth into and keep them preoccupied while the real strategy plays out beyond the medias myopic obsession with their hallucinations of “collusion.”
The first breed of Trump-hater is being played by both sides. The second is in full blown panic, losing sleep over what Sessions knows and when he’s coming for them…
Personally no one on the DS side seems to be losing sleep to me, and this is all ridiculously distracting. And it is this of itself that could turn the House and even the Senate in November. I trust the President’s judgement on what he can and cannot do, but if he had a free hand, there is little doubt that Sessions would be out the door within minutes.
Workers need a pay rise and are therefore determined never to get one
Two kinds of contrary stories, but only contrary if you are not part of the cargo cult mentality of the left. Then we can have higher real incomes and at the very same time throw over the cheapest energy sources available to us. First we have this: ‘Australia needs a pay rise’: Change the Rules volunteers reach out to thousands in door knock campaign.
Union members are volunteering to conduct thousands of conversations with Australians about the desperate need for pay rises during a national door knock in September.
Over two weekends, door knocks and market stalls will be held in more than 40 locations, covering Queensland, NSW, the ACT, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.
Volunteers will be hearing people’s concerns about the lack of fair pay rises under the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government, and talking about the union movement’s plan to change the rules so people can get fair pay rises that keep pace with the cost of living.
And then there’s this: $15b European trade deal doomed if Australia dodges Paris pledge.
The Coalition’s internal climate war risks damaging the economy after Europe declared it would reject a $15 billion trade deal with Australia unless the Morrison government keeps its pledge to cut pollution under the Paris accord….
Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the government had no emissions reduction plan and would fail to meet its Paris goal.
“The Prime Minister might think he can get away with [failing to cut emissions] domestically, but it is clear it will not be accepted by our international trading partners, who rightly have an expectation the Australian government will act to deliver on our international obligations,” he said.
I used to think they said all those things just because there are people stupid enough to take all this on board without seeing the problem. Now I think they are just this stupid themselves. But at least The Coalition are redeeming themselves. Now they have to get the rest of the country to see the point, or at least 51%. Not really such a big ask and there’s still plenty of time to do it.
Law of Markets 