| Thursday,
October 27, 2005 Well the news is that
Miers has withdrawn -- who can blame her? Now the egregious Frum will crow.
Rush Limbaugh is trying to make the best of this, and doing fairly well; but
the fact remains that the egregious Frum will lord it up, and a number of
electoral shock troops who helped produce the Republican majority in 2004
will quietly go home and say to hell with it.
The choice of Miers was perhaps unfortunate and perhaps not, but she had
this virtue: she was very unlikely to have wanted what the Left can give,
dinner parties in Georgetown, commencement speeches at big universities, and
accolade for "growing" in office. We can hope that the next candidate has
that virtue. It may be unlikely.
I will continue to say it is no bad thing to have members of the US
Supreme Court who did not rise through the judicial route. The American
judiciary is a rarefied atmosphere and encourages the habits of power; a
judge in his courtroom has very great powers, all of the low justice and
much of the middle justice, and becomes used to having that power. Some
enjoy it. Judges who came up through the political process have different
views. Yes, Earl Warren, perhaps the most destructive Chief Justice this
nation has ever had (Taney can vie for the appellation, but we need not
debate that here) was without judicial experience; but so were John Marshal
and Rehnquist.
We will see what happens next. The President may remember who his friends
were. Perhaps.
Both the egregious Frum and the abominable Schumer are crowing. My
favorite scenario is that the President appoints Bork. Alas, Bork is too
old, so it won't happen. But my favorite scenario would be appointment of
someone who will really horrify the Democrats, and then stand behind her.
Unlikely, I know.
The Gang of Fourteen will have its influence.
============
I found this in my private correspondence from a month ago. It was in
answer to a letter asking about neoconservatives and realism in foreign
policy. The "realist" position was probably best exemplified by Hans
Morganthau, and has a long history. Anyway, I answered:
Once the cold war was over, some of us wanted to revert to the
notion of avoiding entangling alliances and not being involved in the
territorial disputes in Europe. This was American realism in foreign policy.
The idiocy -- sheer stupid idiocy -- of our involvement in former
Yugoslavia, a place where we had no conceivable national interest and where
we were unlikely to do any good whatever, should have been the tip-off when
it was supported by the neoconservatives. Then too there was the Israeli
matter: never a criticism of Israel, always the notion that without the USSR
in the pictures we had some great stake in settling the Israel/Palestine
mess. Why?
The neo-cons ceased to be realists in foreign policy in the mid
nineties. Moreover, they continued to agitate for continued US subsidies to
keep Israel socialist. Leave out the notion that it is Israel: keeping them
socialist through subsidies is an ideological matter. Israel would be a lot
better off without all the socialism. Conservatives know that. Neocons do
not seem to. From the collapse of the Soviet Union on the neocon
strategy diverged from traditional conservatism.
Eventually the egregious Frum was permitted to read out of the
Conservative movement all those who did not support the new neocon
Imperialism. I gather National Review has begun to regret that, but not
enough to apologize to Stephen Tonsor for allowing the egregious Frum to
insult him in the pages of NR.
It was easy to see that the neocons were Jacobins after about
1995.
============
A National Technology Goals
Foundation
I have often advocated Grand Prizes for space development. A $10 billion
Prize for the first US company to put 31 Americans on the Moon and keep them
there, continuously, alive and well, for three years and a day would
stimulate all the space development we would need, and build the
technological base for solar power satellites. For that matter, a $5 billion
prize for the first American company to beam a megawatt of power from space
to the continental US for a year would be worth a very great deal, perhaps
as much as our expensive involvement in the Middle East.
But in fact why should prizes be confined to space? If Grand Prizes and
Grand Challenges are a good idea, why confine them to space?
One objection to prizes is that the US constitution isn't set up to allow
them: money has to be authorized and appropriated, and how is that to be
done for accomplishments that haven't happened and can't be scheduled?
When I discussed this with Congressman Rohrabacher he suggested a
National Space Foundation to which the money could be appropriated and which
would award the money when the conditions were fulfilled.
On reflection that is a great idea but it can be carried further than
space. Imagine a National Technology Goals Foundation, with an annual $2.01
billion a year appropriation. The $.01 billion is the entire operating
budget of the Foundation. The Foundation sets prizes and amounts. Once a
Prize is announced, the money is set aside. Interest from the money (if any)
reverts to the Treasury. Prize money not obligated can be added to the total
so that prizes larger than $2 billion can be announced.
One suspects that for something like a Moon Colony, Congress could be
persuaded to replenish the prize fund, but this is for another discussion,
as would be a discussion of studying the economic impact of the Foundation
to see if it's worth the money.
It looks like a good idea from here.
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