My new blog about bad tech writing

I mean bad writing about technology, not bad technical writing. It’s The Technofatuous Blog, another WordPress effort. In the first post, I explain what I’m after, how I plan to illustrate and chastise the sub-par bloviating.

…especially for one that is quite old.

Classic reader comment at Amazon: “Really an outstanding book, especially for one that is quite old.” I once overheard a moviegoer say, “It was history, but they made it interesting.”

Whose bipartisanship?

What do people who call for "bipartisanship" mean by it? Any of the following?

1) The condition that obtains when members of two political parties characterized by opposing visions of how a society should be governed pretend that they are one political party with one vision of governance.

2) The condition that obtains when the members of one political party fail to surrender fast and hard enough to the demands of the other political party (cf. Obama usage).

3) The condition that obtains when members of two political parties hold opposing views on a question, but agree to "compromise" for the sake of faux amity. For example, let’s say one party wants to destroy what’s left of freedom in the health care industry, while the other party wants to restore freedom in the health care industry or at least not further destroy freedom in the health care industry. "Bipartisan" approach: Only somewhat destroy what’s left of freedom in the health care industry? Destroy it more slowly? Only somewhat liberate the health care industry from market-distorting subsidies and controls? Unshackle some medical workers while imposing new shackles on other medical workers? Leave the status quo intact, for now?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the adjective "bipartisan" as follows: "Of, consisting of, or supported by members of two parties, especially two major political parties: a bipartisan resolution."

Bipartisanship, like any kind of unity or pretense of unity, can only be justified when the end served by it is justified. Politics is not an end in itself. One must look to whether the proper ends of government are being achieved or undercut by any given bipartisan deed. The requirements of bipartisanship cannot tell us what is politically right or even what is politically possible.

Bipartisan collaboration can be fine and dandy if and when it liberates us from unjust political chains and manacles. But if bipartisanship ushers in further loss of our freedom, thereby violating the proper purpose of government, it is not fine, not dandy…however merrily the members of the two teams may clasp hands as they sell us down the river. Many factors can affect our judgment of whether a legislative action will have a net positive or net negative impact on our freedom. In many cases, of course, the impact is unambiguous. If the effect is to further enslave us, the fact that the chains were forged and tightened in a very bipartisan manner will not make them any lighter to bear.

Update

I’m behind.

Loss of our freedom under the impending commiecare plan…

…no big deal?

Socialism never attends a party without an escort of coercive state behavior. It is a historic fact — indeed, an economic fact — that as the state seeks to regulate and control more and more economic activity, they must, of course, control more and more human activity.

Economic activity is human activity, after all. Economics is not somehow divorced from humanity. Economic choices are not made of their own volition, passive-voice, without an actor. People make economic choices — and socialism demands an ever-increasing control over those choices, and therefore the people who make those choices. (Or, more accurately: formerly made those choices.)

Well, it’s all so glaringly obvious. But there are some people who think it’s okay to be locked up in a cage as long as their keepers promise three squares a day. And then there are others who want to be the keepers.

The Misprisioner

Hey, I’ve come up with a name for whoever is most responsible for botching the AMC “adaptation” of the McGoohan classic, “The Prisoner.” Definitions 1 and 4 work for me. And I’m sure we could find uses for 2 and 3.

Evil is as evil does

Over at Robert Ringer’s Voice of Sanity blog, we have another good post on the commiecare assault on our liberties, on how some lefties are vilifying the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, for the crime of preferring freedom to serfdom vis-a-vis the debate over further socializing health care.

…[Greta] becomes very impatient when guests talk nonsensically, lie, or try to spin the facts. And in her recent interview with Russell Mokhiber, founder of “Single Payer Action”—a group right out of Atlas Shrugged—there was a lot of all three going on.

I couldn’t make up my mind who Mokhiber most resembled—Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Eichmann. I guess I’d have to give the nod to Eichmann, because his twisted scowl reminded me more of an executioner than a mere propagandist.

In an excerpt from the 1960 trial posted at YouTube, Eichmann gives the impression of a clerk trying to helpfully clear up some unfortunate misunderstanding. My German doesn’t extend beyond “was ist das,” and the captions don’t really help, but one presumes that, per the title of the video, the questioning has something to do with the Nazis’ Final Solution meeting at Wannsee about how best to exterminate the Jews. Hannah Arendt famously emphasized Eichmann’s incongruously bland demeanor in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Apparently, then, too much can be made of villainous-seeming scowling, although it appears to be spiritually apt enough in Mokhiber’s case. Other partisans of the destruction of our liberty are all sweetness and light and accommodation in the process of ushering in commiecare; they’re booked on the “PBS News Hour.”

No, we’re not “postracial” yet

Geez, don’t you dare criticize the governor of New York, or, for that matter, the president of the United States, because then you’re “racist” (or an Uncle Tom).

“We don’t have the kind of forces in the community that we had before,” [Governor David Paterson] said. “In other words, our black media outlets, save your program and a few others, are the only ways we have access, and even our own reporters from our own community buy the public line, which is, ‘We’re going to get rid of David Paterson.’ ”

“The reality is that the next victim on the list is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than try to reform a health care system” that, he said, constitutes 10 percent of the gross domestic product. It is “only because he’s trying to make change,” Mr. Paterson said.

Yes, that’s right. All Obama has been trying to do is communize health care and turn doctors and patients into serfs of the bureaucrats! That’s a change. It’s changing an already bureaucratically mangled health care system into a much more bureaucratically mangled health care system. Don’t be “racist” and prefer sanity—and respect for the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“Gran Torino”

A very fine movie. I disagree with the claim of some viewers that Clint Eastwood’s character, Walt, is “racist” in any important way merely because he freely bandies about ethnic epithets and stereotypes. Any racial prejudice is superficial and essentially meaningless. Consider, for example, the constant stream of insults between Walt and his barber; they obviously like each other. Nor is there any barrier of racism he has to conquer to become close to his Hmong neighbors. His isolation and defensiveness have different causes. And despite any protestations, he reponds very positively to genuine civility, gratitude and gumption.

The guy’s crusty not because he’s mean-spirited, but because he hates bull, has had to suffer too many fools too long, and carries a burden going back to his experience as a soldier in the Korean War. He doesn’t feel much inclination to be fraudulently diplomatic. Initially, for example, Walt is suspicious and contemptuous of the young (and white) priest (whom he regards as an over-educated know-nothing); but over time the priest earns his respect. Walt wishes he could connect to his sons better, but they and their families are repeatedly shown to be presumptuous, condescending, and offensive.

“Gran Torino” is a wonderful and in fact perfectly wrought movie about a courageous man who does what he has to do to protect people he has come to care about—not only from being subjected to violence but from having to commit violence. Every scene is fresh and vital. Nor is the ending “preprogrammed” or “predictable,” as Ebert claims. The only predictable bit in the whole film is the gift of the Gran Tarino. By that point, we know that only one person could possibly be the recipient. But logical inevitability and “preprogrammed” or formulaic predictability are two different things.