| Friday,
December 26, 2008 It is cold in Los Angeles.
I will probably run this again Monday, but if you are looking for
something to read,
Just in case you haven't seen it: The American
Conservative -- Where Have All the Neocons Gone?
Hmmmmm, think that maybe you're not as alone as
you'd feared on this topic? (I'm happy to say...)
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/12/00006//
Doug Hayden
There are often insightful articles in The American Conservative, but for
me there's too much glee when liberals and neocons make disastrous errors.
Russell Kirk taught us that we ought to approach defects in our nations as
we would the wounds of a father. The neocons were useful allies during the
Cold War, but the term "neo-conservative" always was a contradiction in
terms. American Conservatives have some common interests with neocons, but
we should not forget theit Trotskyite origins. It's a bit odd: some of the
former Communists, like Whitaker Chambers, came to their senses and became
actual conservatives; but they were almost all actual Communists, members of
CPUSA and under Party Discipline. Most of the neo-cons were Trotskyites or
came from Trotskyite families (many being too young to have any notion of
what things were like back in the Glory Days of the Trotskyites) and when
they left their affiliations they didn't give up the notion that the world
could be remade by dedicated revolutionaries and social engineering; that if
they got control of the government they could do something wonderful. Give
me the sword of state and I will make a more beautiful world.
Real conservatives understand that control of government isn't the key to
making a wonderful world. At best we can get rid of some obstacles and give
people opportunities to improve their lives. One would think that a study of
history would show that, but apparently a lot of smart people continue to
believe that they can remake not just their city, or county, or state, or
nation, but the whole world, and all they need is control of the army and
the tax collectors. Actually they don't think that way: they think about the
wonderful things they can do, and forget that to do them they need tax
collectors, and to support the tax collectors they need police, and behind
the police stands the Army, prison, and the hangman. (Of course we don't
have hangmen any more. We're more humane now. Progress.)
Government can protect some people from bad guys. It doesn't always do
that and never does it perfectly, but it can, sometimes, do that. It
can, sometimes, as Adam Smith notes, undertake projects that have great
benefit to all with little benefit to any one person -- he had in mind roads
and canals and fire departments, not the over-all direction of the economy.
Alas, it doesn't take a lot of bad thinking to expand that list, and
everyone does. After all, if we can put a man on the moon, surely we can
give every child a world class university prep education, can't we? Not just
in the United States, but everywhere. And guess what: all the university
professors, both tenured and wannabe, agree completely, and rub their hands
in anticipation -- since of course they won't be paid by those who will
benefit from universal university education, but by the taxpayers who won't
be asked what they think about having everyone go to university and get a
degree if they want to become a manager at Jack In The Box. The largest joke
is that even the taxpayers can't pony up enough, and everyone who goes to
these overpaid institutions will get to pony up a grand a month for the rest
of their lives; this in exchange for the pretended education they get in
order to get the credentials that prove they are educated and worthy of
having a job. Of course that credential can lead to one of the coveted
positions among the governing class.
Now if we just had some means for certification of expertise that didn't
require credentials, things might change. I don't look for that to happen
soon. The purpose of government is to pay government workers and their
allies; which means the real purpose of government is to collect the money
to pay government workers and their allies. Just as the purpose of the
school system is to pay members of the teachers unions.
I started this as a way to distinguish myself from The American
Conservative magazine; I didn't intend it to be an essay in gloom. I'll
cheer up sometime. Alas, the analysis of foreign policy under the
neoClintons has a scary logic that I haven't yet untangled, which means they
may be correct. And that really is scary: Wilsonian policies during a
Depression with China and India growing and growing.
Despair is a sin.
And Happy New Year.
==================
A warning:
(From another conference)
XP Antivirus 2008/2009, the nastiest piece of
spyware I've seen in a long time. I'm starting to get several infections
of it a week at work -- and these include computers with up-to-date
antivirus where people don't have admin rights.
If you hit an infected web page, it will warn you of
having thousands of viruses and insist you download the software to scan
for it. The software "scans" and tells you that you need to buy their
cleaner. They then have your credit card number and you still have the
virus. The New York Times estimated that they make about $5 million a year
through these tactics.
I've seen these warnings on thin clients (which are
so locked down no virus could be on them), and they wouldn't go away until
you restarted. I've seen it turn off automatic updates and hide from
antivirus software. I've seen it put icons on your desktop even if you
don't actually download the software (click on them and you will). It puts
rootkits on your computer.
Nasty stuff. The best cleaner is Malwarebytes from
http://malwarebytes.org. So
far, that's always cleaned it up.
The obvious advice: If you hit a web site that warns you that you have
viruses, don't download anything from there. Get out of there and scan your
system with something you have reason to trust. I don't know anything about
Malwarebytes.org
Note that if you try to get of the scam it will scream at you that you're
about to ruin your computer. The safest way to get out of there is ctl-alt-delete
and use taskmaster to close down the browser. Or pull the Ethernet plug. Or
use the big red switch and turn off the machine; as Ed Hume says, viruses
need electricity...
Several SFWA members seem to have been infected from the LOCUS web site.
Be careful out there!
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