Listen my children and you will hear: the charge of the light brigade

The New Neo Posted on by

A couple of weeks ago I had some fun with poetic voices of the past, and in the comments section “Beverly” alerted me to the fact that a recording exists of Alfred Lord Tennyson reading his poem “Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Tennyson seems a figure from the long-distant past, born at the beginning of the nineteenth century in 1809. He was Poet Laureate of England from Wordsworth’s death in 1850 until his own demise in 1892, the longest tenure in that post ever, spanning the bulk of Victoria’s reign. He lived long enough to still be around when Edison developed the phonograph and wax cylinders in the 1880’s, in time for Tennyson to record his famous 1854 poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which commemorated a doomed, error-laden but valiant battle of the Crimean War.

You can listen to the 1890 recording at this link, and follow along with the words as well. Tennyson sounds like he’s “come ‘thro the Jaws of Death” himself, doesn’t he?

And then there’s the following, another astounding Edison wax recording which is fairly self-explanatory, but is explained further here:

It’s a revolutionary thought: teach about conservatism

The New Neo Posted on by

What a novel idea: to teach a course in conservative thought, at the college level.

In the Ivy League, at Brown.

Astounding:

Conservatives believe they won at least a tiny beachhead in a sea of academic liberalism. With help from the Leadership Institute, similar courses are now offered at American University and the University of Virginia.

And does this sound familiar:?

To George, who also heads Brown’s Republican Club, this most liberal of Ivy League schools can be an intellectually lonely place for conservatives. There are members of the Republican Club who don’t tell fellow students of their affiliation, he said, because their peers think “you can’t be an intelligent and compassionate person’’ if you’re a conservative.

I wonder how many changers these courses will help create.

Truth, lies, and videotape

The New Neo Posted on by

Peggy Noonan puts her finger on why Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie have been able to make recent speeches on fiscal responsibility that were so compelling:

Everyone knew they meant it. Everyone knew they’d been living it.

She quotes this absolute gem from Christie, as he tells the tale of addressing a convention of firefighters after he’d proposed curtailing some of their benefits and rolling back a 9% pay increase:

As Mr. Chrisie recounted it: “You can imagine how that was received by 7,500 firefighters. As I walked into the room and was introduced. I was booed lustily. I made my way up to the stage, they booed some more. . . . So I said, ‘Come on, you can do better than that,’ and they did!”

He crumpled up his prepared remarks and threw them on the floor. He told them, “Here’s the deal: I understand you’re angry, and I understand you’re frustrated, and I understand you feel deceived and betrayed.” And, he said, they were right: “For 20 years, governors have come into this room and lied to you, promised you benefits that they had no way of paying for, making promises they knew they couldn’t keep, and just hoping that they wouldn’t be the man or women left holding the bag. I understand why you feel angry and betrayed and deceived by those people. Here’s what I don’t understand. Why are you booing the first guy who came in here and told you the truth?”

He told them there was no political advantage in being truthful: “The way we used to think about politics and, unfortunately, the way I fear they’re thinking about politics still in Washington” involves “the old playbook [which] says, “lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election.”

That last sentence—“lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election,” is a nice summary of Obama’s fiscal strategy. Charles Krauthammer gives a good description of it here:

…[F]or all its gimmicks, this budget leaves the country at decade’s end saddled with publicly held debt triple what Obama inherited.

A more cynical budget is hard to imagine. This one ignores the looming debt crisis, shifts all responsibility for serious budget-cutting to the Republicans – for which Democrats are ready with a two-year, full-artillery demagogic assault – and sets Obama up perfectly for reelection in 2012.

Let’s hope not.

Popper quotes

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought you might like to read some quotes from philosopher of science Karl Popper:

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence “democracy”, and the other “tyranny”.

We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.

Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle ”” the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous ”” from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. For these troubles are the by-products of what is perhaps the greatest of all moral and spiritual revolutions of history, a movement which began three centuries ago. It is the longing of uncounted unknown men to free themselves and their minds from the tutelage of authority and prejudice. It is their attempt to build up an open society which rejects the absolute authority to preserve, to develop, and to establish traditions, old or new, that measure up to their standards of freedom, of humaneness, and of rational criticism. It is their unwillingness to sit back and leave the entire responsibility for ruling the world to human or superhuman authority,and their readiness to share the burden of responsibility for avoidable suffering, and to work for its avoidance. This revolution has created powers of appalling destructiveness; but they may yet be conquered.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. ”” In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. Poland fought for freedom as no other country did. The Czech nation was prepared to fight for its freedom in 1938; it was not lack of courage that sealed its fate. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 ”” the work of young people with nothing to lose but their chains ”” triumphed and then ended in failure. … Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things ”” and above all on ourselves.

Watson and Jeopardy: computer vs. people

The New Neo Posted on by

I watched “Jeopardy” last night to see what all the fuss was about Watson, the computer who’s been coolly cleaning the clocks of previous mega-winners Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

I don’t like Watson. Seems to me that, although his skills (and those of his programmers) are formidable, they are exactly what you’d expect and not so very interesting, and based mostly on his speed. The most exciting thing about him is his ability to respond to human speech with humanoid speech, to decipher some of the meanderings and indirections and come up with an answer based on the voluminous information stored within his huge files.

More interesting to me is what Watson lacks: emotion, humor, and what we might call nuance. Although I’ve read a bit about artificial intelligence, I don’t see how computers can ever come to have wit or creativity or the ability to understand a joke or make a quip. Jennings and Rutter showed Watson up by clowning around at his expense at the very end of the show (fortunately, Watson’s feelings didn’t seem too badly hurt):

PJ Tatler

The New Neo Posted on by

I keep meaning to call your attention to a new feature at PJ, the Tatler. It’s a forum for a group of journalists, bloggers, and other writers to sound off on whatever happens to catch their interest at any particular moment.

I’m a member, and every now and then I post something like this. If you want to see the list of people participating, go to the link and look at the right sidebar. But just to whet your appetite, among them are Richard Fernandez, Michael Ledeen, Governor Rick Perry, and Michael Totten.

Chris Christie: big things

The New Neo Posted on by

I happened to catch about fifteen minutes of NJ Governor Christie’s address to the American Enterprise Institute this afternoon. I haven’t seen any articles reporting on it yet, just advance notice such as this, saying that the title of his speech is “It’s Time to Do the Big Things.”

Christie himself is a very big thing. I say that not only because—well, let’s face it, there’s no other way to say it—the guy is fat, especially for a politician (a fact I happen to find refreshing and part of his rough charm), but also because he is a potentially big force in the Republican Party and in the country as a whole.

Listening to his speech, which was about solving fiscal problems, I could not help but wish that he would run in 2012. Maybe it would be premature, but hardly as premature as the candidacy of our current president. Christie says that New Jersey needs him and he will not run, and I believe him, so it’s probably moot. But I have seen no politician since Paul Tsongas who has the same desirable qualities of straight but articulate talk and common sense coupled with sincerity and humor.

Lara Logan, the press, and the Egyptian street

The New Neo Posted on by

The “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” of CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan by a crowd in Egypt is a horrific story that raises a host of questions, and has ramifications beyond the immediate threat to Logan and our heartfelt wishes for her swift recovery.

There is the entire question of what so many Western journalists—both women and men—are doing in a volatile crowd like that (which always threatens to become a mob), and how best to protect them. Women run special risks and are especially vulnerable. Is the reportage these journalists do under those circumstances worth it? What do we really learn from a few interviews with a selected group of people on the street, usually the most Westernized and fluent in English? Is it more misleading than not?

Reports say Logan was separated from her crew, but what was the make-up of her crew? Was it just tech people, or did it include bodyguards, and were there an adequate number of the latter and were they trained properly? After the beatings some journalists received at the hands of this crowd a while back, were any extra precautions taken?

Journalists who go into war zones and/or potentially explosive situations such as that in Egypt assume a certain amount of inevitable risk. But are they really aware of the extent of that risk? Or do some of them (not necessarily Logan; I’m asking a general question here) think themselves invincible, and believe their own naive words about the harmlessness and goodwill of everyone in the crowd? And if they do, and they act on it, whose fault and whose responsibility is that?

Who were the elements in this crowd that attacked Logan, and what did they represent?

Who were the women who were part of the group that rescued her, and how did they accomplish that task?

What was going on in the mind of formerly-respected leftist journalist Nir Rosen, who mocked Logan and minimized the vicious attack? And how many more are there like him, in the press and elsewhere?

What does the incident say about the forces shaping the new Egypt? What does the Egyptian street think about the place of women in that society, and will there be new restrictions on their lives once democracy is instituted—if it ever is instituted? And what about the Arab world in general, and the place of women there?

Why did CBS first try to suppress the story of the assault on Logan, only coming out with it after it realized it couldn’t be kept quiet because other media outlets were aware of it? The network says the motivation for the initial secrecy was to protect Logan’s privacy. But could it be that they were also trying to shape Western perceptions of the Egyptian street, and to keep them as positive as possible? And if so, why?

The NY Post article reports that “CBS sources” added to the official CBS statement the fact that the thugs who brutalized Logan were yelling “Jew, Jew!” as they went about their grim work. If that is true, why was it left out of the press release on the subject? That fact has nothing to do with Logan’s privacy and everything to do with the story itself, who the attacking elements are, and what they might believe.

[NOTE: Nir Rosen’s resignation from his position at NYU’s Center on Law and Security was accepted today, and Jim Geraghty writes “there was something profoundly disturbing in Rosen’s complete inability to sympathize with the awful ordeal of Ms. Logan and the fact that when others recoiled at his comments, he kept digging in deeper.” Profoundly disturbing, indeed. I plan to write a longer piece on the subject of Rosen soon.]

Pawlenty on Egypt

The New Neo Posted on by

Tim Pawlenty gives advice on how he would have handled the Egyptian crisis.

I like what he has to say, and it highlights some of what was missing in Obama’s reaction:

…[F]irst of all, get your own team on the same page. That’s lesson number one in a crisis: communicate clearly. Number two: we have to articulate, when we have that kind of an uncertain crisis unfolding, what our principles are,” the former governor said. “One, we don’t want a radical Islamic result. Two, we favor democracy. And President Mubarak and Suleiman or anyone else who may be purporting to be leading the nation needs to embrace those principles.”

Funny how simple it seems when Pawlenty says it. And funny how hard it’s been for Obama to either say it or do it—especially the “we don’t want a radical Islamic result” part.

[ADDENDUM: Historian Niall Ferguson vents.

Andrew Sullivan, Obama’s budget, and feeling duped

The New Neo Posted on by

This could be the beginning of wisdom for Andrew Sullivan. Or, depending what you think of Sullivan, the return to wisdom. Or just a temporary return to wisdom.

Sullivan’s disillusion with Obama seems to have been generated by the President’s latest whopper, which is that his proposed budget features steep cuts in spending, although he ignores the enormous elephant of entitlements that’s filling the nation’s fiscal room and threatening to destroy it. As Obama-deceptions go, it’s really not so great or so unusual, but for some reason it pushed a button for Sullivan. And quite a large button at that:

But the core challenge of this time is not the cost of discretionary spending. Obama knows this; everyone knows this. The crisis is the cost of future entitlements and defense, about which Obama proposes nothing. Yes, there’s some blather. But Obama will not risk in any way any vulnerability on taxes to his right or entitlement spending to his left. He convened a deficit commission in order to throw it in the trash. If I were Alan Simpson or Erskine Bowles, I’d feel duped. And they were duped. All of us who took Obama’s pitch as fiscally responsible were duped.

And Obama just punted on his promise to cut Medicare payments to doctors, as pledged under Obamacare as a core part of the case that health insurance reform would cut the deficit. So congrats, Megan. We can chalk that up as a cynical diversion (even though Obama pledges to find savings elsewhere in the Medicare budget to make up for this lie – a promise we now have no reason to trust or believe).

We now have no reason to trust or believe? Where were you, Andrew, when Obama showed how profoundly untrustworthy he was way back in June of 2008, when he boldly and apologetically broke his solemn pledge on campaign financing? That was the tipoff as to his character, and it occurred long before the election.

But I say better late than never. And Sullivan doesn’t mince words; this guy feels personally betrayed:

…[By ignoring the deficit, Obama] has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road.

And towards the end:

To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools.

Much too narrow, IMHO—Obama thinks we’re all fools. In fact, he thinks everyone in the world besides him is a fool. As for me, I don’t think those under 30 who worked to get Obama elected are necessarily fools; they are merely young, and they were his natural target, vulnerable to his arguments and his charms. What’s Sullivan’s excuse?

This post by Lexington Green at Chicago Boyz describes exactly what I believe may be happening, and why Obama has done this. I have never thought Obama to be stupid; on the contrary, he is smart and he is bold. However, in the end it will all come down to how smart the American people are, and how closely they have been paying attention.

This is the possible scenario:

Obama is not “failing to lead” as some people are claiming. That is all wrong.

All suggestions to that effect are all wrong. Obama knows exactly what he is doing.

Obama is setting up a confrontation and he plans to win.

Obama is betting that he can force the GOP to make their proposed cuts, which he can blame them for, which he can truthfully say he does not support. Then he can attack the Republicans for making the cuts. He will appeal to the people who are suffering from the cuts, and strip away GOP support. They will be angry and mobilized.

Obama then plans to force the GOP into a funding crisis just as Clinton did. Obama plans to destroy the GOP reform wave of 2011 just as Clinton destroyed the GOP reform effort in 1995.

As for the Republicans, it seems that for now they’re not biting. According to Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP will vote in temporary funding measures through the use of continuing resolutions rather than shut down the government a la 1995.

Let the games begin!