It's a Conservative not a Republican Problem

A lot of conservatives have been blaming the feckless Republican Congress for the loss last November, writes Charles R. Kesler.  For them the election defeat was “a rejection of a party that had strayed too far from the conservative path.” 

Not so fast, says Kesler.  If only it were true that all Republicans needed to do was to swing in line with conservative ideas and reap a gratifying majority!  On the contrary, conservative ideas since the end of the Cold War have been a mish-mash.

Upward floated the balloons of civil society conservatism... "third wave" conservatism (technology to the rescue), and national greatness conservatism (McCain was an early enthusiast)... Libertarianism, emboldened by socialism’s pell-mell retreat, enjoyed its moment, too, though less than one might have expected.

Meanwhile the twenty-year Reagan boom has allowed the government to offer tax cuts and spending increases at the same time.  There is no automatic conservative majority today.  And President Bush’s ad-hoc adventure in Iraq does not exactly inspire confidence in the heartland.

It’s time for conservatives to admit the need to rethink and clarify their own precepts. To be sure, there are verities to which the wise and good may always repair, and conservatism is distinguished by its reverence for them. But these must be relearned in every generation, restated in the idiom of life, and applied to new circumstances. The challenge is as exhilarating as it is serious. Far from being a cause for despair, conservatism’s perplexities may contribute to making this the most illuminating political season in 30 years.

Let us call the era just past the Reagan Era.  It was a glorious summer and glorious things were done for America and for the world.  Now it’s time to retreat to winter quarters, to think and to plan.

Don’t worry.  The problems are still going to be there 5 years, 10 years from now.  That’s because our liberal friends only know how to spend and elect, privilege and subsidize.  Every now and again they run out of money.  That’s when the American people call for conservatives to come in and sort things out.

Here Comes The Eco-industrial Complex

You have to feel for the climate change enthusiasts. If George W. Bush can spend $100 billion a year on his war, why shouldn’t they have some cash to subsidize vital carbon reduction programs, like building wind farms and carbon-neutral switchgrass processing plants?

And if Bush can do it with taxpayers’ money, why not the venture socialists?

Yes, Virginia. There are venture capitalists and there are venture socialists. And you know the difference.

Right now the venture socialists—ok, environmentalists—are busily co-opting Big Business into an eco-industrial complex, according to Stephen Milloy. Here’s how it works.

Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, it has been increasingly difficult for the Left to advance its social agenda through the public political process. This has certainly been true on environmental issues, in general, and global warming, in particular.

So the lefties have learned to use other methods to advance their agenda. One method is by pressure campaigns against big corporations. And it works. Now that General Electric Co. has teamed up with environmental activists to “champion global-warming regulation” it has found it much easier to do its PCB cleanup in the Hudson River.

Just this week the so-called U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) announced its presence and called for "the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions." USCAP members include: Alcoa, BP America , Caterpillar Inc., Duke Energy, DuPont, Environmental Defense, FPL Group, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, PG&E Corp., PNM Resources, World Resources Institute.

As usual, the capitalists are selling us out. They don’t care. Business is business. After all, they won’t be spending their money.

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.