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Tuesday,
August 10, 2004
Siggraph is on down at the LA Convention Center, and I'm not there. I spent
the morning cleaning up in my office, and in about ten minutes I am going to
go write fiction. Alex and David know more about graphics than I do, and
they can go see all the cool stuff and write a report for BYTE. Me, I am
enjoying a clean desk and a reasonably orderly office. Now true, the Great
Hall has junk in boxes all over it and that's another two days work; but at
least the office is orderly. All except for the Mac corner, which needs
having everything taken off.
My routine involves getting a lot of boxes, and piling
everything, including contents of book shelves, into those boxes. Eventually
I have made some clean flat surfaces. I keep that up until it's all clean.
Then I dust and use lemon oil. Then I begin unpacking the boxes: Deal with
it if it needs action, or throw it away; or put it where it belongs. There
is a"residual" box for stuff I don't know what to do with. When I am through
most of the boxes I take the residual boxes and go through those. Eventually
there will be one or more boxes of residuals that I really don't have much
use for. I should throw them out, but what usually happens is they go back
to a back room to age, and one day I come across that box and wonder why I
kept any of that junk, and then it can go. It's also clear
that I can make a lot more space by replacing my 21" glass bottles with 19"
flat screens. That will nearly double the accessible book shelf space (there
are a lot of shelves I can get at only by moving a monitor stand; a flat
screen will eliminate those stands). Now to look into what flat screen
monitors are available at what price. I haven't look at monitors in years:
My Hitachi, ViewSonic, and NEC bottles have been reliable for a long time.
What I need has to be very readable, and good enough for most games
including on-line games like Star Wars Galaxies and Dark Age of Camelot. I
probably need 19" to have enough screen real estate for the way I operate.
=============== I suspect we are at the critical phase of
Iraqi operations now: we will see if a few hundred casualties can drive the
Americans out. Kerry's notion of getting allies and client states to come in
and take over for us is a pipe dream. Who'd want the job? We have poured
billions into that sandy waste, and oil prices are at a record high. So much
for the neo-Jacobin strategy. I see from Samuel Francis that
Midge Decter, AKA Mrs. Norman Podhoretz and Mother-in-law of Elliot Abrams,
is now President of the Philadelphia Society. I was once a member of that,
back in my academic days, my sponsor being Russell Kirk; I went to a few of
the meetings, but when I left academia money was tight, and trips to
academic conferences couldn't be justified. In those days the Philadelphia
Society was largely Burkean Conservatives like the followers of Kirk.
Possony went to a couple of meetings and pronounced them too philosophical
and a waste of time after James Burnham ceased to attend. The organization
tried hard to build both philosophical and pragmatic bridges between
Conservatives who believe government a positive good but, in Franklin's
words, "like fire a dangerous friend and a fearful enemy," and Libertarians
and followers of Hayek who consider government at best a necessary evil.
Frank Meyer of National Review had his "Fusionist" position, and
worked mightily to keep all the elements of the conservative coalition
pulling in more or less the same direction. He and Burnham were greatly
missed when they left us. But in those days the
"neo-conservatives" generally didn't go to Philadelphia Society meetings.
They weren't there in the sixties when I was still in academia. After I
dropped out apparently and stopped paying much attention, the
neoconservatives did begin attendence. Russell Kirk was my friend as well as
my mentor and we kept in touch (he was godfather to one of my sons) and I
learned of some very bitter tensions between the neocons and Russell Kirk,
with Midge Decter at one point accusing Kirk of anti-Semitism, which has
long been the all-purpose charge thrown at anyone who disagrees. It was
nonsense, of course. Whatever Russell Kirk was or wasn't, a less prejudiced
man never lived. But then at one point the charge was leveled at Possony, to
the astonishment of Mrs. Possony. Regina was from a Berlin Jewish family of
leftist persuasion who fled Hitler to the tender mercies of Stalin, who, of
course, promptly threw them into a labor camp as potential spies. She later
received some help from Albert Einstein, who sent her some soap and
stockings, with his return address prominent on the package: the Stalinists
were understandably concerned about making an enemy of so prominent a man,
and she got her care packages. The story of Regina's escape through Siberia
and China and her meeting and marriage with Possony (a fugitive from the
Austrian Anschluss) would make a good novel, but the notion of either
Possony as anti-Semitic is bizarre. According to Samuel
Francis, Ms. Decter said in her presidential speech that she is not now and
never has been a neo-conservative, which is astonishing, and, she says,
"neither is my husband, my son, my three daughters, and those of my ten
grandchildren who are old enough to have political views," which is
overwhelming. As Samuel Francis says, Miss Decter really ought to read her
husband's speeches sometime. But with the ascension of Mrs.
Podhoretz to the presidency, the Philadelphia Society, whatever it is, has
certainly ceased to be the organization reflecting the views of the Burkean
philosophers or the Old Right like Possony and Whittaker Chambers.
National Review had the egregious Frum read most of the Old
Right and Burkeans out of the conservative movement a year ago; National
Review has been
backpedaling ever since, but without much effect, and certainly hasn't
regained the original NR stature. All this leaves those of us
who believe in the old constitutional order: defend the borders, leave most
matters including welfare and social benefits to the states; keep
immigration down to levels that allow the Melting Pot to do its work; get
the Feds out of our lives and particularly out of education; and a foreign
policy of being friends of liberty everywhere, but the guardians only of our
own; and fund X projects and other research in a strategy of technology --
it leaves us without much in the way of spokespeople. Ah well.
Tuesday TOP
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