| Friday,
November 14, 2008
Republican Principles or Democrats Light?
We are back to ice: there is now serious but not conclusive evidence,
convincing to some, that the only thing preventing a new ice age is CO2; and
we are busily removing CO2. Now admittedly the serious studies anticipate
this happening over a fairly long time period. On the other hand, all the
historical evidence is that ice ages happen fast. England went from
deciduous trees to frost plains to ice in well under a hundred years, and to
kilometers of ice in another hundred. There is similar evidence from lakes
in Belgium. When the ice comes, it comes fast.
Note that climate changes are odd. A few miles south of the ice wall
average temperatures were not all that much colder than they are now. The
ice didn't extinguish life; but it sure made large parts of Europe and North
America uninhabitable. Ice is a fire greater threat than a few degrees of
temperature rise between new and the end of the century. Prudence demands
that we continue to look at the CO2 rise. Prudence also demands that we not
wreck the global economy in order to play carbon restriction games that,
according to even the most optimistic models, will have only a tiny effect
on the average temperature of the Earth in 2090.
Of course no sane person would opt to wreck the economy for such tiny
gains; but then the ecology now Fromates (Friends of Man and the Earth; an
organization I invented to use in stories I wrote in the 1970's; you can
find those stories in Exile -- And Glory! from Baen books. They're
still pretty current.) -- the ecology now advocates get around that through
flat out lies. This is compounded by the gullibility of many of the
Fromates, who take the word of Al Gore and people who actually know better
as if it were Revealed Truth. As to the motives of Gore and such like, I can
only speculate; but they have done well by the Fromate movement. So have
many of the scientists whose grants and/or fame depend on accepting the
Fromate position.
The Democratic Party has become stuck on Fromate. Whether this is due to
the influence Gore or something else isn't important. The Democratic Party
is Fromate Light, and has thus secured the eternal loyalty of the Sierra
Club, country club ecology now do-gooders, and other elements of the Fromate
coalition. It's part of the Democratic Party victory strategy, which is to
build up a voting block group at a time. Some Democrat leaders clearly
believe there is scientific validity to the Fromate position. Others, like
Obama, are harder to figure out. Presumably Obama is smart enough to
understand the real situation, but the evidence is that he has become a True
Believer: why else would he jeopardize his victories in critical coal states
by stating that he would tax coal use out of existence? But the Democrat
position is politically understandable; the Fromate position is worth votes.
What's weird is people like McCain and Schwarzenegger who seem genuinely
smitten by the Fromate positions, and who don't seem to want to pay
attention to the scientific evidence. The evidence, if fairly considered, is
that there is a rise in CO2 levels; doing something about it is
terribly expensive, and if only the nations that are interested and who can
(barely) afford it adopt strenuous CO2 reduction practices, the effect on
CO2 is from very small to trivial. China and India are not going to stop
their economic growth -- indeed can't do that. The CO2 rises will
continue whether we like it or not, and without regard to what crippling
measures we adopt. It may make the governor feel good to lead California
toward the Green, but the truth is that the CO2 sensors in Hawaii will take
little to no notice, and the effect on global warming of turning California
green by shooting all the methane flatulent cows and then turning the state
into an uninhabited park would be very small to trivial. I've met the
governor, and I cannot believe he is not smart enough to understand this.
Perhaps he simply will not listen; it may be that the good will of his wife
and her relatives is dependent on his turning off his critical faculties.
But on purely pragmatic grounds the Republicans have no business going
Fromate. The Democrats already have the Fromate vote sewed up, and always
will: the Fromate position demands Big Government and Government Action, and
those who think Government is the solution and not the problem will always
choose the Democrats. The Republicans can make all the concessions it likes,
but the Sierra Club and the Fromates will always go Democrat.
The Republican Party has fallen victim to Pournelle's Iron Law of
Bureaucracy. The Iron Law states that in every organization there will be
two factions. One will be dedicated to the goals of the organization>
Examples are dedicated class room teachers in teacher unions, the Old Guard
members of the Sierra Club from the days when you could not join the Sierra
Club unless you had been backpacking in the High Sierra, etc.; we all know
such people. The other faction will be dedicated to the organization itself
without any regard to the organization's actual reason for existence.
Examples are teacher's union officials, many administrators, the current
management of the Sierra Club, etc..; we all know those people, too.
Pournelle's Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain
and keep control of the organization.
The horrible part is that in the case of the Republicans, control of the
party has gone to incompetents. They have thrown away the principles of
limited government and the notion that in general government is not the
solution, government is the problem -- and they have gained almost nothing
for doing that. Many of those bureaucrats won't even be able to keep their
jobs, hurrah.
Face it: the Republicans have more than once tried to be Democrats Light:
to go along with the Liberal position that the solution to most problems is
to build a bureaucracy and throw money until the problem is covered over,
with the proviso that Republicans will do it better and more efficiently.
Even were that true, it's a stupid position: the aggregate of bureaucracies
that make up the Democratic Party are almost without exception already
controlled as the Iron Law would suggest, and those people are pretty
thoroughly embedded into the Democratic Party; again we all know groups that
would be much better off if they were less politically fastened to the
Democrats, but whose leadership won't let that happen. The Republicans will
never win those people over.
But do note that playing loyal opposition, Democrat Light, has been
effective for many Country Club Republicans: they were allowed to keep their
positions and influence. That was the situation when Newt Gingrich organized
the Republican takeover of Congress. Unfortunately, without Newt's iron
control -- you may ascribe his motive to dedication to principle or to
simple desire to keep power -- without Newt's iron control the Republican
congress went mad and truly acted as if it were Democrats: it spent money in
ways that even the Democrats wouldn't have (then; not now), including the
old Wilson/Roosevelt interventionism that generally led to war. There was a
time when it was a truism that the Republicans are the party of Depression,
the Democrats are the party of War; after Newt the country club Republicans
managed to become both.
The only way the Republicans can survive will be to become a party of
principle: smaller government, devolution of power to the states,
transparency and local control; the old principle Adams stated, "we believe
that each man is the best judge of his own interest". Trust the Associations
(as Tocqueville described) rather than government, and states more than
federal. Give up "right to life" and adopt the constitutional position that
abortion ought to be left to the states -- as should education and many
other matters. We have plenty of failed experiments in federal control to
show that it's not always a good idea and sometimes federalizing things is
disastrous.
The Republicans ought also to go back to Washington's principles
regarding foreign policy. Not isolationism; but non-intervention unless US
interests are clearly at stake. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of
Tripoli--. Rebuild the Navy, keep the Legions strong; and mind our own
business. That was once stated as "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Not
bad advice.
I haven't the time to enumerate and defend the principles that
Republicans ought to adopt; I am not even certain I am the right person to
do that. But I am very certain that this is necessary. The country club
Republicans used to say that they could take control and implement the
Democrat agenda better than the Democrats. They have now given the nation
real proof that they can't.
===========================
From security expert Rick Hellewell:
Great Spam News
Dr. Pournelle:
A big spam host in CA was taken offline on
Tuesday. One good source for the story is here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/11/12/AR2008111200658.html , since Brian Krebs (the
WP columnist) was one of guys responsible. The 'co-location' (a big web
site hosting firm) looks to be responsible for up to 80% of the world's
spam, along with hosting other offensive sites (child pornography, etc).
As of Tuesday, their connection to the
Internet was cut off.
As a result, the volume of spam being pumped
out by all of those infected computers has gone down by 60% or more. At my
office, we usually get about 800,000 messages a day; we block 92%+ as
spam. Over the last 24 hours, that incoming volume has been reduced to
about 250,000. Others are reporting the same reduction. (More details on
Brian Kreb's blog here:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/
2008/11/the_badness_that_was_mccolo.html
It will be interesting to see how long this
reduction lasts.
Regards, Rick Hellewell
=======================
Well, as an illustration of memory loss: last night the
kitchen sink wouldn't drain. Water backed up into the sink.
We'd had this situation before. I was sure I had cleared it.
My wife pointed out we didn't have a snake: and in fact we hadn't had one in
some years, and I didn't where ours was. Yet I was pretty sure we'd had one,
and I supposed I had used it to clear that drain. Access is pretty simple,
since there's an access plug on an outside wall about knee height just under
the kitchen sink.
So: I went down to the local Ace Hardware and bought a $15
snake. Came home prepared to use it. Got out back and then recalled I hadn't
used a snake last time: I'd stuffed the hose into the access port and turned
it on, pushed it further in, let it run a while, and Lo! the drain was
cleared. It takes two hoses to get to the port from the nearest outlet, and
Lo! there was a hose without a metal end lying back in the area where I'd
need it. So I connected it to the regular hose in place, stuffed it down the
drain to its length, turned on the water, and Voila! Indeed it took
less time to clear the drain than it did to go down and buy the unused snake
(which is not returnable even if not used, for fairly obvious reasons). Now
that I have done it again with the hose I recall using the hose last time;
but I had absolutely no memory of doing that, and indeed had a false memory
-- which I knew at the time was false! -- of using a snake.
I need to think about that a bit. Memory is an odd thing.
When I was in high school I had eidetic memory: I could
recall anything I had every read, page by page if need be. It began to fade
as I left high school, but until last year I still had a lot better memory
than most people. Now there are these gaps, particularly for names of people
and things (I recall the concept, I could build the gadget, but I can't
think of it's name; or I recall the person, I can picture him or her, but
again the name is gone). Of course Niven has had that kind of memory since I
have known him: it took him years to remember which of my kids was which,
and we'd often discuss conferences and meetings we'd been to in which he
knew what had been said but not who said it. Now I'm learning how to live
with Niven's data retrieval system. He seems to have done well with it, so I
assume I can also.
And my sink drains properly again.
=========================
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