Solzhenitzyn Can't Take US Hegemony

Although Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a prisoner of the Soviet Union and lived from many years in exile in the United States he has never been a fan of the West. Adrian Blomfield in the Washington Times reports that Solzhenitzyn feels that the US is encircling Russia. WRiting to Moscow News, he wrote

Though it is clear that present-day Russia poses no threat to it whatsoever, NATO is methodically and persistently expanding its military apparatus in the east of Europe and is implementing an encirclement of Russia from the south

The support for revolutions in the Balkans and the Ukraine make it perfectly clear to him.

All this leaves no doubt that they are preparing a complete encirclement of Russia, which will be followed by the deprivation of her sovereignty.

He’s right, of course, but not in the way he thinks. The US is not out to demolish Russia, at least not directly. We just have a civic faith in democratic capitalism. Perfectly harmless, really. We just instinctively work to support democratic capitalism, and try to plant it wherever we find a seedbed that might support it.

But if I were you, Alex old chum, I’d be more concerned about the Chinese. Those chaps are not going to stay south of the border forever, you know.

Music is For Neanderthals

Music has always had a good press. “As Plato said: “Music uses sound to educate the soul in virtue” and most educated persons have since concurred,” according to Terence Kealey.

But scientist beg to differ. Music is the language of pre-speech. It connects with the emotions, not with reason. People who are deficient in reason, like babies, stroke victims, and autistic children are the experts in music.

Leon Miller, of the University of Illinois, described 13 people who were indeed mentally retarded. Typically, their IQs and social skills were so rudimentary that they could not speak or dress themselves. But musically they were gifted, not only playing well but also composing creatively. And, typically, they had perfect pitch.

We use music, or musicality in our voices, to communicate with babies. And they understand us. “'What a good girl!', delivered in French, provokes a happy smile in an English nursery.”

Studies show that 100 percent of mothers sing to their babies.

But here’s the nub. An archeologist, Stephen Mithen, has studied the Neanderthals and decided that they could not speak, but could sing. His book is called The Singing Neanderthals. I know, it sounds like the Trapp Family Singers.

Along came walkin’ talkin’ Homo Sapiens and it was curtains for the Singing Neanderthals.

So when Daniel Barenboim says that “making music and playing it in an orchestra is the best way to understand democracy,” he is probably wrong. Unless democracy is considered a primitive, pre-articulate activity.

Saudi Jihadists Take Down Conservative Blogs

This morning at about 10:00am EDT conservaive blogs across the nation suffered a Denial of Service attack originating out of Saudi Arabia.

You can see reports from Michelle Malkin, Instapundit, and Hugh Hewitt. On Hugh Hewitt they are starting out their return to service with a piece on the silliness of Washington State Senator Maria Cantwell. Here at the Road to the Middle Class we have already dealt with her insult to Washington State. Of course. Maybe she’s right, and just reflecting the stump-toothed conspiracy theorists of North Seattle.

Maybe these eager cyber-jihadis haven’t yet read Jonah Goldberg’s piece on “Globalization for Losers.” He suggests that Radical Islam is Globalization for Losers. And of course, running a close second is the Naomi Klein lefty globalization of losers, a globalization run by the UN and progressive activists.

It’s been one rebellion after another over the last 150 years against the glorious rise of the middle class and its commonwealth of law and prosperity.

What is wrong with these people?

Economy: Roaring or Limping? You Make the Call

With the Department of Commerce expected to announce a 5.0 percent annual growth rate for the first quarter the New York Times was worried this morning. Wrote David Leonardt and Vikas Bajaj

Gas prices are rising, as are mortgage rates. House prices in many once-hot markets have started slipping. The American automobile industry shows no sign of recovery. And the paychecks of most workers have not even kept up with inflation over the last four years.

Yet the national economy continues to speed ahead.

What on earth is going on? Well, it turned out that the Commerce Department reported a mere 4.8 percent annual growth in the first quarter of 2006, 0.2 percent less than the forecast. No doubt the shortfall was President Bush’s fault. You can understand the New York Times’ disappointment. Anyway, the rich are doing well.

Spending by upper-income families appears to be driving much of the economy's growth. The average hourly wage for rank-and-file workers — who make up roughly 80 percent of the work force — has fallen by 5 cents in the last four years, to $16.49, after inflation is taken into account. Yet most well-paid workers have continued to receive raises.

You’d expect Larry Kudlow to look on the bright side, and he does.

Today’s economy may be the greatest story never told. It’s an American boom, spurred by lower tax rates, huge profits, big productivity, plentiful jobs, and an ongoing free-market capitalist resiliency. It’s also a global boom, marked by a spread of free-market capitalism like we’ve never seen before.

So let’s pull out all the stops.

Recent data on production, retail sales, and employment are stronger than expected. The latest durable-goods report shows huge gains in orders for big-ticket items like airplanes, transportation, metals, machinery, and computers — even cars and parts. These orders suggest that the economic boom will continue as far as the eye can see... Just what the doctor ordered.

Will angst about gas prices cost Republicans in the Fall? Who knows? But at least the mess over ethanol shortages should force the government to make some sensible decisions about energy. And maybe we could even dip a drilling bit into the sacred groves of ANWR.

“Let free markets work. This is the new worldwide message of freedom, prosperity, and optimism.” That is also the message from Larry Kudlow. New York Times please copy.

Is Bush Exhausted or Just Resting?

Which is it? Is the Bush Administration finished, exhausted? Or is the wily poker player just sitting back faking out the political opposition?

Talking with Hugh Hewitt, the indefatigable Mark Steyn, (perm), asserts that the Bush Administration won’t do anything about Iran.

I think it does seem to me exhausted. And in a strange way, a lot of the things that he's getting into trouble with over the moment, like the $3 a gas pump, is, I think, a reflection of...it doesn't even have the sort of strength of will to drag its own party with him.

But over at The American Thinker Thomas Lifson reminds us not to forget that President Bush had a reputation at Harvard as “a very avid and skillful poker player.” And in case you forgot, Bush is a Harvard MBA.

He is a trained strategist, an MBA graduate of Harvard Business School, where he learned that the point of having a strategy is to win when it counts, not just to feel good about yourself at every moment of the process.

That’s “strategery” to you and I. Lifson likes to call the strategic-poker-player Bush

persona "The Crawford Kid." It is an identity the President probably would never embrace, because keeping it secret keeps his opponents unwary. But they will never learn. Contempt for the President and their own ego-maintenance demands will not let them recognize reality when they are outsmarted.

The thing to remember is that politicians are not like you and I. They enter politics because they like risk and they like to win. A crisis like Iran or like $3.00 gasoline creates a chance for some action. And maybe a chance to win.

"Make Price Gouging Illegal"

Ever since Maria Cantwell was elected to the United States Senate from the Soviet of Washington she has kept a pretty low profile. And a good thing too, since she got elected spending her own money from Real Networks stock options that, after the NASDAQ tanked, she didn’t have. But that’s OK. Hillary Clinton helped her out.

This year she is running for reelection so she has cudgelled her brain to come up with an issue that will resonate with the voters.

What do you think would go over real good? Price gouging! Yes, that should do it. So Sen. Cantwell is pushing a bill to make price gouging illegal.

Now you’ve worked for a private company, for at least a couple of years, Senator. How would that work?

Never mind. Her price-gouging gimmick is getting her on TV shows like Hardball so that when the the voters complain:

It makes me angry that the prices keep going up for no apparent reason other than the profit of the gas companies.

She can say, with a straight face that, given where the American public is right now

they want something done immediately. And that’s why we need a federal bill to make price gouging illegal.

Well now, Senator. And how would a law against price gouging have any effect immediately? And how exactly would you define price gouging so that it kept honest businessmen, assuming there are any, out of jail?

And what needs to be investigated is whether supply is being artificially manipulated, whether it’s being suppressed or shipped overseas for lower profits, only to have higher profits at home because there’s less supply. And until we have good transparency in these oil markets, we’re not going to be able to give consumers the confidence that prices aren’t being manipulated.

You know, Senator, what with the futures markets and what with spot prices and all, I’d say that the oil business, at least outside of the national oil companies of OPEC, is about as transparent as you can get. But that isn’t really important, does it? Not compared to the importance of getting reelected.

It’s a pity that Senator Cantwell didn’t seem to have time on Hardball to talk about increasing energy supplies. You know, boring things like drilling for oil and building new oil refineries and nuclear plants. Could that be because she has never voted to increase oil supply in her liberal Democratic life? And nuclear: isn’t that like dangerous, and stuff?

Jane Jacobs: Celebrating the City Street

Jane Jacobs was a writer celebrated both by liberals and conservatives. She died April 25 in Toronto, aged 89. In her celebrated Death and Life of Great American Cities she punctured the confident movement of urban renewal that was bulldozing entire urban neighborhoods to cure “urban blight.” Liberals liked her because she bashed the rich. Conservatives liked her because she championed the old and the traditional.

She also belonged to that extraordinary time around 1960 when a clutch of major non-fiction books were published to universal reception: “Death and Life of American Cities,” “Silent Spring,” “The Other America,” “The Feminine Mystique,” “Growing Up Absurd,” “The Affluent Society,” and “Unsafe at Any Speed.”

In the New York Times Douglas Martin speaks of her four recommendations for city environment:

"Death and Life" made four basic recommendations for creating municipal diversity: 1. A street or district must serve several primary functions. 2. Blocks must be short. 3. Buildings must vary in age, condition and use. 4. Population must be dense.

In NRO conservative G. Tracy Mehan claims Jacobs for conservatives.

Flourishing city diversity, of the kind that is catalyzed by the combination of mixed primary uses, frequent streets, mixture of building ages and overheads, and dense concentration of users, does not carry with it the disadvantages of diversity conventionally assumed by planning pseudoscience.

Mehan claims Jacobs as a Burkean. But you could also categorize her as a rebellious libertarian.

"City air still makes free the runaways from company towns, from plantations, from factory-farms, from subsistence farms, from migrant picker routes, from mining villages, from one-class suburbs," wrote Jacobs.

We can hardly say that she succeeded in stopping the elite passion for remaking cities in its own highly educated and highly evolved image. “Urban Renewal” was replaced by “New Urbanism” and now “Smart Growth.” The theme is constant—bulldozing people around to suit the aesthetic preferences of the educated elite.

But there is a curious contradiction in Jacobs’ womanly celebration of the vibrant city. The single-purpose suburb, against which she rails, was created by women. They wanted to get away from the danger and the bustle of the city so they could raise their families in peace and quiet.