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At the risk of trivializing a real tragedy, it looks like God has taken to enforcing term limits. This opens the question of whether the Democrats will be able to substitute someone like they did when Mel Carnahan died. I'm sure they'll try, considering how crucial every Senate seat is this year. And if they do, that will raise the question of whether Republican polemics against the candidate-swapping Democrats will be vitriolic, or simply enraged.
VVV It's kind of unsettling to sarcastically suggest a Marxist uprising of the proletariat, and then have a couple of your classmates agree in all seriousness.
An interesting wrinkle in the North Korean nukes story. VVV Gun control advocates like to take advantage of the fact that the Second Ammendment states a rationale for establishing the right to bear arms. In contrast to the First Amendment -- which simply asserts freedom of the press, etc. -- the Second explains why it exists. Bearing arms is not a right that exists in some absolute or a priori sense, it's a right that has been instituted to serve a particular purpose -- the maintenance of a "well-regulated militia." The implication is that the right to bear arms is a means to a certain end -- and thus when that end is not being served, the means does not apply. Asserting a right to bear arms in situations that do not support a well-regulated militia is like chewing all the time, because it's important to chew when you have food in your mouth. So gun control advocates have focussed on the idea of a "militia," claiming that the practices that would be limited by the gun control measure in question are not part of maintaining a militia. Gun rights advocates, having seen this argument for years, have a ready answer. They broaden the definition of "militia" to include pretty much anyone. An armed citizenry constitutes a (potential) militia that could resist tyranny, just like the minutemen and others did. But it seems like it would make more sense to focus on "well-regulated." Gun regulation appears to be right there in the Constitution. And it's not just that Congress is permitted to regulate, but rather that regulation is part of the premise on which the right to bear arms rests. Of course, what constitutes "well-regulated" is nebulous (as is much of the Constitution -- how cruel is "cruel and unusual punishment"?), and the argument could be made that any particular measure goes too far. But it would at least move the debate away from the idea of infringing upon sacred rights, and into the balancing of two opposed but constitutional interests -- the interest in regulation and the interest in resisting tyranny -- much like the courts currently have to balance the "free exercise" and "establishment" clauses of the First Amendment.
I'm a bit skeptical about this find, which has been trumpeted as The Real Thing all over the media. James, Joseph, and Jesus were fairly common names in first-century Judea. And the possibility of a 2000-year-old forgery can't be ruled out. This is an example of antiquarian archaeology -- collecting neat artifacts, rather than systematically examining the remains of a site that can give a fuller picture of how ancient people lived.
VVV More and more its seems like all the world's major problems could be solved by using less oil. There's the obvious ones of avoiding global warming and oil spill pollution, of course, plus the environmental damage caused by drilling. It would be a blow to giant corporations because many alternative energy sources and conservation strategies are more decentralized than oil production. It would eliminate the incentives for the US to pursue corrupt foreign policy in the name of oil. And that would in turn deprive left-wingers of a knee-jerk criticism of the government, perhaps causing them to have, if not an open mind, at least more insightful rhetoric. And Tom Friedman points out it would also create peace in the Middle East.
My initial reaction to this was a fairly libertarian one. If American cultural products are becoming prevalent in another country, it means that people there must want them. Because corporations are driven by profit, they won't sell their stuff in places there's no market for it. If people object to American culture, they should turn off Saturday Night Live and turn on Kids in the Hall. Saying that governments should be able to set limits on cultural importation sounds like a combination of cultural paternalism (we know what's best for you) and the use of the state to force the preferences and values of one group on a population whose purchasing record demonstrates that it likes American culture. However, it's not quite that simple. People can only make economic choices between the options that are actually available to them. And what options are available is shaped by the preferences of those around you. I'm a big fan of certain Australian music, but I'll never find Yothu Yindi on the racks at Best Buy, because there aren't enough other Americans interested in buying to to make offering that choice worthwhile. Which leaves me two options, if I want to make sure I can get Aussie music and I can't travel -- either convince enough other people to ask for it at Best Buy (and purchase it when they get it in stock) to create a viable market, or legislate that music stores must carry certain options. There's a tension between the different elements of choice -- freedom at the level of the individual transaction versus giving people viable alternatives. But this begs the question of which alternatives ought to be made available. Nobody would think that the US ought to legislate the availability of Australian or Canadian culture. There's an assumption that citizens of a country ought to have access to "their own" culture, in addition to whatever imports happen to be commerically viable. But despite centuries of nationalistic rhetoric, people's culture -- the things that have real meaning for them -- is not primarily determined by nationality. Culturally speaking, people in Vancouver often have more in common with people from Seattle than with people from Edmonton or Toronto. But because it's the state that's being looked to to enforce cultural integrity, it's state-based cultural divisions that will be enforced. The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, has no power vis a vis the High Plains or Great Lakes. | |||||||||
