French Candidate Holds Rally in London

Imagine, if you can, the next Republican candidate for the presidency campaigning in Toronto.

That is about what French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy just did. He held a campaign rally in Billingsgate fish market in London, England.

Why on earth would he do that? Well, how about 300,000 French people living and working in London?

Anyway, the French expats loved it. According to Anthony Browne

Police struggled to control the crowd of hundreds of French citizens living in Britain as they attempted to see the dynamic Interior Minister, who is favourite to succeed President Chirac.

That was not all.  Read this:

Addressing 2,000 cheering expatriates at the old Billingsgate fish market, Mr Sarkozy spelt out his vision of a modern France no longer trapped in the past. The audience of students and business people shouted “Sarko!”, waved the Tricolour, and sang La Marseillaise as video screens declared: “Together, everything is possible.” They then broke out into Happy Birthday — in English — in tribute to the centre-right candidate’s 52nd birthday on Sunday.

Yes, the French in London are not the French we love to hate.  We took a look at them a while back on Road to the Middle Class. Nice chaps.

The Party of Resentment

As you may know by now, Hillary Clinton “really resents” that Bush’s War may not be over by January 2009, the month of her inaugural.

Columnist and neo-con son John Podhoretz duly took note.

It’s rare to hear questions about difficult policies discussed in terms of personal resentments, but perhaps this is one of the areas where Hillary Clinton will blaze a new presidential trail.

He should be careful.  Hillary Clinton may not be the smartest woman in the world, but she has certainly used her womanhood to good effect in her political career, most notably when Senate candidate Rick Lazio made the fatal mistake of invading her “personal space” during a campaign debate.

Everyone understands that Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election in 2008 because she will bring millions of non-voting single women to the polls.

And what do you suppose is something that single women really connect with?  You got it.  Resentment.  That Hillary.  She is some smart woman.

And it is not just the non-voting single woman that is into resentment.  In a review of the monstrous Duke Rape case, Thomas Sowell chides his fellow African Americans.

The larger tragedy is what this case revealed about the degeneration of our times and the hollowness of so many people in "responsible" positions in the media, in academia, and among those blacks so consumed by racial resentments and thirst for revenge that they are prepared to lash out at individuals who have done nothing to them and are guilty of no crime against anybody.

Yes. Resentment.  “Anger felt as a result of a real or imagined wrong done.”  Our liberal friends have a more sophisticated word.  “Passive-aggressive.” That’s what they call it.

Now we are getting somewhere.  Isn’t it really the case that the entire Democratic Party is the party of resentment?  Isn’t the primary emotion of your average bump-on-a-log American nothing more than resentment? 

Here’s how it works. Don’t ever ask your average bump-on-a-log Democrat to take responsibility for anything.  They got their rights, after all.  But don’t, whatever you do, ever forget to send that check every month.  Otherwise they might resent it.  But they certainly won’t forget to vote for a Democrat.

Here’s another word definition.  Democratic politician.  One who knows how to stir up resentment among the voters.

The Lessons of the Michigan Civil Rights Victory

In Michigan last November the voters spoke loudly on the question of race, affirmative action, and “diversity.”  They voted against it.  Ward Connerly gives us a chance to review the state of the fight against race preferences. There are ten points that need to be made, he argues:

1. Just because the Supreme Court votes against “diversity” it doesn’t mean that the fight is over.
2. Self government means that we must listen to “the collective wisdom of the people.”  And they voted against the “exhortations of nearly every component of the Michigan establishment — social, civic, political, and business.”
3. The race industry is now reduced to persuading white women to support affirmative action.  It has now failed in Michigan, California, and Washington State.
4. Americans now believe that affirmative action equals race preferences.
5. Even “larger-than-life” figures like Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, and Barack Obama can’t persuade Americans to support race preferences.
6. The term “ minority” has ceased to have anything to do with numbers.  It just means “social and economic disadvantage.”
7. However nobly it began, “affirmative action is viewed as an entitlement for ‘women and minorities,’ not only to ‘level the playing field’ but to achieve the amorphous objective of ‘diversity.’”
8. The race preference advocates are amazingly disciplined.  It amounts to a “national ‘diversity’ industry.”
9. Republicans who run away from race are despicable.
10. The victory in Michigan is big.

Connerly now proposes that it is time to deliver the coup de grace on affirmative action.  He proposed a “Super Tuesday for Equality” election in November 2008 with a civil rights initiative in several states at once.

PHP Arrays and XML-RPC

Are you frustrated by the XML-RPC technology?  Having trouble figuring how to get a hold of items after they have been transmitted over XML?  So was I.  Now I think I have figured it out.

Blog Ping

Let’s look first of all at a weblog update call using XMLRPC implementation by Keith Devens. You are going to send a ping to weblogs.com.

First, you start with an array:

$params = array(XMLRPC_prepare("my Blog"),XMLRPC_prepare("http://myblog.com/"));

Then you send it off.

$method = "weblogUpdates.ping";

$result = XMLRPC_request( "rpc.weblogs.com", "/RPC2", $method, $params );

When you pack it into the XML file it looks like this.

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<methodCall>

    <methodName>examples.getStateName</methodName>

    <params>

      <param>

        <value>

          <string>My Blog</string>

        </value>

      </param>

      <param>

        <value>

          <string>http://myblog.com</string>

        </value>

      </param>

    </params>

</methodCall>

When you get it back from XML into PHP you will want to look at it in a PHP array. Suppose you get the parameters like this:

$xmlrpc_request = XMLRPC_parse($HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA);
$params = XMLRPC_getParams($xmlrpc_request);

Now you want to know how to get your three parameters. You do it like this:

$blogName = $params[0];

$blogURL = $params[1]

It’s that simple.

Blog Post

OK. Now let’s look at doing a blog post using the metaWebLog API. Now we have to put together a struct. What then?

A struct looks like this in PHP.

$struct = array (

’title’ => ’Blog Title’,

’description’ => ’Blog Post Content’);

When it gets to XML it looks something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<methodCall>

  <methodName>metaWeblog.newPost</methodName>

  <params>

    <param>

      <value>

        <string>id</string>

      </value>

    </param>

    <param>

      <value>

        <string>user</string>

      </value>

    </param>

    <param>

      <value>

        <string>pass</string>

      </value>

    </param>

    <param>

      <value>

        <struct>

          <member>

            <name>description</name>

            <value>

              <string>Blog Post Content</string>

            </value>

          </member>

          <member>

            <name>title</name>

            <value>

              <string>Blog Title</string>

            </value>

          </member>

        </struct>

      </value>

    </param>

  </params>

</methodCall>

You then get it out of the XML file like this:

$xmlrpc_request = XMLRPC_parse($HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA);

$struct = XMLRPC_getParams($xmlrpc_request);

How to get the values? Like this:

$title = $struct[’title’];

$content = $struct[’description’];

And that’s it.

The Rule of the Idiots

Suppose that you applied for health insurance and the insurance company said that they wouldn’t insure you because of some pre-existing condition. What should you do?

1. Call your congressman to write a law forcing all insurance companies to insure you.
2. Find an insurance company that will insure you anyway.

As Arnold Kling writes, the two choices represent the market approach to life or the philosopher king approach. Plato vs. Milton Friedman.

One solution, that might be traced to the expression "philosopher-king" associated with Plato, is to hand the reins of government to the best and the brightest. Since the late 19th-century, the Progressive Movement in American politics has championed this approach. The Progressive vision, which [Progressive Brad] DeLong embraces, is to channel brains and technical know-how through government in order to improve people’s lives.

The other approach is the Milton Friedman way. It is the wayof limiting the power that other people have over us, with constitutions andmarkets.

Friedman’s insight is that a market limits the power thatothers have over us; conversely, limiting the power that others have over usallows us to have markets.

Progressive DeLong has a saying, according to Kling: “Why oh Why Are We Ruled by These Idiots?” It’s a good point. But what is the best way to avoid such misery? Find bright, intelligent, wise people to rule over us, or limit the power of any person to rule over us?

That, of course is the great Question of our time and of every time.

A "Civ-Con" Is Born

It must be a measure of the breadth and depth of the American conservative movement that it has such a complex taxonomy.  There are, as John Fonte writes:

economic conservatives, social conservatives, national-defense conservatives, neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, and even “crunchy” conservatives or “crunchy cons.”

But is that really enough? There is no better time to think through and revise the organization of the fighting forces than after electoral defeat.  And Fonte wants to try a new label.  

If I had to choose from the labels above, national-defense conservative would come the closest. But it doesn’t quite fit. So let me try a new label. I am a civic conservative, a “civ-con.”

Yes but what is a  “civ-con?”

At the level of highest principle civic conservatism emphasizes the Unum in E Pluribus Unum and puts American national cohesion over any group interest.

In other words it puts the national identity of the United States as the primary group identification.  And that means a certain approach to politics.

In terms of contemporary policy, civic conservatism emphasizes the following principles: the equality of American citizenship; the learning of America’s history and values, properly understood; the imperative of assimilating immigrants patriotically into the American way of life (what we proudly used to call Americanization); and the indivisibility of American sovereignty.

Who could argue with that?  Well, plenty of people.  Our liberal friends, for example. 

Liberals believe that the “traditionally marginalized” deserve special privileges; they subsume American history and values beneath a post-nationalist narrative about a one-world government; they don’t believe in an American way of life, and they don’t believe in American sovereignty.

Ordinary Americans do believe all these things.  A conservative movement that presented a soaring civic-conservatism to Americans could earn and could deserve their political support.

Why Tolerance Is Not Enough For Gays

Ordinary people may wonder at the energy with which gays advocate for “gay marriage” and “gay adoption.” Surely, isn’t tolerance enough?

Philosopher Roger Scruton provides the answer.  The problem with tolerance is that is still regards the heterosexual as normal and the homosexual as abnormal.

[T]his attitude does not satisfy the activists. For to tolerate is to disapprove. It is only when conduct offends you that you need to exercise your toleration, and the activists want people to treat homosexuality as normal.

For homosexuality to consider itself normal, it must acquire the same trappings as heterosexuality: partner benefits, marriage, adoption, inheritance. But God is not mocked, as they say.

The propaganda that has tried to rewrite heterosexuality as an “orientation” is really an attempt to persuade us to overlook the real truth about sexual union, which is that it is, in its normal form, the way in which one generation gives way to the next.

You can say that sexuality is just an “orientation” as much as you like, and you can bully people into agreeing with you.  But alas, it doesn’t make it so.