| Friday,
June 12, 2009 The June column has been posted at
Chaos Manor Reviews.
I am neither a great fan nor an enemy of Rush
Limbaugh, but I agree with him more often than not. My major criticism is
his delivery, which is loud and insistent. I prefer a less strident
atmosphere and what Possony used to call rational discussion. Clearly
Limbaugh's method works --he has an enormously larger audience than I do,
and many more dedicated fans and subscribers (although I don't mean to
slight those who support this place. Thanks to all who subscribe and renew.)
He had two items today that I thought worth reflection. The first was
purely pragmatic regarding health care reform: before we deliver another 15%
of the GDP to Obama's management team, would it not be better to wait a bit
to see how well his present policies work? It's not clear that the
management team understands the economy, but they have certainly been given
more power over it than any American government has ever had. Obama says
that if we don't do his health care reform soon, we never will. I question
that. If what the Obama team is doing works, Obama will surely not lose
popularity, and there will be far more support for the notion of turning
this knotty problems over to a team that has successfully managed economic
recovery. What's the great hurry?
His second question was, given the great success of what he calls "our
team" in 1980, and then again in 1994, how did we get into this situation in
which the Republicans are at a low below anything since Watergate? Is
conservatism dead? But of course it is not: the Republican Party, after
Gingrich's departure, was anything but conservative. The fact is that about
twice as many people describe themselves as conservative as call themselves
liberal, even though there are far more Democrats than Republicans.
The failure, Limbaugh said, was ours: we didn't teach the conservative
principles well enough. We did not persuade -- particularly we did not
persuade the Republican leadership that the principles are true. There may
be a need for compromises in some places and some cases. Government is after
all the art of the possible. But that does not mean that one adopts
disastrous policies simply to gain temporary popularity.
I have said it before: movements (I fail to come up with a better word;
"philosophies" is pretentious, and ideologies is precisely the wrong word to
describe the conservative movements) have the purpose of teaching. Parties
have the purpose of capturing control of government; of winning elections.
Party leadership is often subject to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Successful political managers are hired to win, not to be true to
philosophical principles. There have been exceptions; I was one of
them as were some of Reagan's closer advisors like Lyn Nofziger. I can
attest to the temptation to compromise principles to preserve a track
record; fortunately I didn't make political management a career (wasn't even
tempted, actually).
Given the overwhelming pervasiveness of liberalism in the public schools,
colleges, universities, and the media, getting across the basic principles
of conservatism -- I'd say getting across the basic principles of a
realistic appreciation of the way the world works -- is difficult; more
difficult than some of us understood it would be. I've been going back
through some of A Step Farther Out, and I see that a lot. It seemed to me
obvious that cheap energy plus freedom would soon result in a technology
boom that would carry us to space, where both energy and material resources
are abundant.
Twenty years after that, Charles Sheffield and I wrote Higher Education,
which has a different view of the future, but is still optimistic.
Possony used to say "You either believe in rational discussion or you
don't." I have to remind myself of that frequently.
===============
I got this email today:
Hi, I was doing some research on computer worms when
I stumbled upon your site. While browsing, I noticed that on
http://jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view302.html
you link to http://www.caida.org/analysis/security/witty/, which does not
appear to exist anymore.While I was searching I came across this really
great page the Witty Worm:
http://www.datarecoverylabs.com/spread-of-witty-worm.html
I thought it was very interesting and I think it
would make a great replacement for your broken link if you wanted to add
it to the page.
Thanks, Lisa Baker
Actually, I find that if you go to the original link, it
directs you to the one recommended, but I didn't note that and for some
reason opened View
302. It was from March, 2003, and mostly commented on news from Gaza,
and the failures in Iraq, and why "they" hate us. Not bad. It's
interesting to see what we all thought in the early days of the Iraq war --
which I opposed. I sure wish I'd been more persuasive back in those days. Ah
well.
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