Baby steps towards a politics of consensus.

I have been somewhat disinterested in politics of late. I suppose I could partly attribute this to disgust with the inadequacy of the government response to Hurricane Katrina. Yet it is difficult to criticize the Bush administration on this topic, or any other topic, without getting sucked into the us-against-them game of politics. This administration in particular, in which politics trumps policy every time, has made the "tar baby" nature of politics all the more evident.

Idealist that I am, I like to believe that a politics of consensus is possible. Here a few half-formed thoughts aimed at staking out the terrain. I am trying to get at some basic tenets that anyone to the left of Grover Norquist and to the right of Karl Marx should be able to agree with.

1) There are some functions necessary to society that only government can perform, or that government can perform better or more efficiently than the private sector.
2) The reverse of (1) is also true: There are some functions necessary to society that are best addressed by the private sector, because it can address them better or more efficiently than government.
2a) For the functions that are best addressed by the private sector, varying degrees of oversight or regulation by the government may be in the public interest.
3) There are some functions necessary to society that can be addressed by both government and the private sector.

Just a start. Any comments or thoughts by the one or two people who occasionally read this blog would be welcome.

Hurricane Katrina

The situation is bad, and for many it is still getting worse.

I saw the director of the Red Cross on the news last night, and she said that what they need is donations of money, money, blood, and more money. Online monetary donations are especially welcome, as that money can then be used immediately to help the victims. Go here to donate.

And here is the word from FEMA on how to help: link.

Iner Souster and the Experimental Instruments He Lives With

In the next universe over, this is my blog. Given lots and lots and lots of free time, I could easily imagine myself making instruments like these. There but for the grace of the Mystic Law go I.

(Via Music Thing, an incredibly cool blog which I should have linked to long ago. Kind of like an all-music-gear version of Boing Boing.)

Oh, what a lucky man he was.

Bob Moog, pioneering synthesizer maker, has died of brain cancer. He was 71. Farewell, Bob, and thanks for enlarging the sonic landscape.

Friday Catblogging - The Return!

In case the stupidity of the protestors in that last post has left your brain hurting, I have the perfect antidote: airborne cats.

"Why do they hate America?"

One of the more idiotic and deceitful refrains bandied about in the conservative blogohemisphere (as well as at the highest levels of government) is that liberals who believe that the United States should not have invaded Iraq in 2003 also now want America to lose and for the terrorists to win. That anybody actually falls for this has always mystified me. Can it be that hard to grasp the distinction between the two positions, and to recognize that the second position does not inevitably follow from the first?

To use a simple analogy, let's say I see some kid preparing to hit a hornets' nest with a stick. I might try to dissuade him by saying "Hey, kid, don't do that! The hornets will sting you!" Even if I agree with him that the hornets are a menace and that the hornets' nest needs to be gotten rid of, I could argue that hitting the nest with a stick is not the best way to achieve this goal, and that other methods might be far more effective and much less dangerous. But let's say that my words fall on deaf ears and the kid goes ahead and hits the nest with a stick and the hornets swarm out and start to sting him. Just because I warned him that this would happen does not mean that I want the hornets to sting him to death. Even if I find it hard to stifle an occasional "I told you so!" as I rush the kid to the hospital, it does not make me "anti-kid" or "pro-hornet." I may even be so bold as to suggest that we might want to rethink the whole hitting-hornets'-nests-with-sticks policy, and that when dealing with other hornets' nests in the future we might want to try other approaches that don't involve hitting the nest with a stick. And if I suggest that next time around we shouldn't completely disregard the advice of entomologists on how best to get rid of hornets, it doesn't mean that I want to offer the hornets therapy or that I'm "soft on hornets."

But where was I? Oh, right. Iraq, and conservatives' misrepresentations of liberals' views.

The other thing that makes me wonder why conservatives would think that liberals who argue that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq are "pro-terrorist" is that I have never read or heard of a verifiable instance of any liberal actually rooting for the terrorists. In fact, I'd never heard of any American of any political persuasion take that position.

Until now.

Reasonable people might disagree on how best to label the protestors described in this news report. Some people might call them "traitors" or "unpatriotic" or something like that. My personal vote goes for "psycho loony nutjobs." But whatever label you would like to pin on these people, they are most definitely not liberals. If the conservatives want to disown them too, that's up to them. But these folks are definitely not from our side of the aisle.

(H.T. Relevant History)

Update: The link to the news report I refered to in the last paragraph is dead, so I've posted the text of the article in the comments.

Alhamedi is back!

The Saudi blogger who goes by the pseudonym Alhamedi and publishes the blog The Religious Policeman has returned with a slew of new posts after a one year absence from the blogosphere! Over the past year I have missed reading his insightful, humanistic and humorous posts which heap healthy doses of scorn and ridicule equally on extremists of all religions, nationalities, and political leanings. Welcome back, Alhamedi!