The Anger of Compassion

Protein: Controlled Substance

Hamad relates an incident in which he visits Bahrain and buys some protein powder, because it's so much less expensive there than in Saudi Arabia. Apparently supplements are not only cheaper in Bahrain but it is also illegal to bring them back with you into Saudi Arabia.

I've seen this before, and not in Saudi Arabia, either. Last September I was working with some Norwegian colleagues, two of whom were bodybuilders. Within an hour of their arrival, they asked me where they could find a GNC. It wasn't just that they wanted supplements during their stay in El Paso: they wanted to bring quality protein supplements back with them to Norway. The stuff is expensive over there, it seems, but it's legal to bring in a certain amount for personal use. These guys didn't care about any kind of fancy stuff or flavor of the month supplement. Nope, just high-quality protein powders, bars, and pills. I understand that in many European countries it's illegal to purchase DHEA without a prescription.

Not that we don't have the same kind of thing here. Not only are steroids controlled substances, but androstenedione and other prohormones are actually banned. DHEA may be next. And there are supplements such as Methyl 1-P and Superdrol which the FDA has decided to treat as steroids. They're to be banned, too (some dealers no longer carry them). And remember ephedra?

I don't use any sort of ephedra product and I never have, but for a while there, I couldn't have even if I'd wanted to: it was illegal. I sympathize with Hamad, and of course I'm glad that I can purchase any sort of protein powder or amino acid tablets I care to spend my money on. And I've never crossed the river into Juarez and smuggled back any Dianabol or anything like that. I have to wonder how many guys do, though. Or just get a shot of Sustanon before returning to the US.

I guess that, like Hamad, I'm a pissed off bodybuilder, too.

The Middle East: New Lines on the Map

Saudi Jeans points to this redrawn map of the Middle East. Worth a look, and a few thoughts.

"Free Baluchistan." Does have a nice ring to it.

More on the stem cell veto

The Ayn Rand Institute issued another press release, also quoting Dr. Brook, and again, I agree with his arguments but not his conclusion:

"It is only because science today is so dominantly funded by the government that restrictions on federal funding can wreak the devastation they have--severely hindering a promising area of potentially life-saving medical research.
"If science were left free, as it should be, funded solely by private sources, a scientist would not have to plead the merits of his work before a majority of politicians, however ignorant or prejudiced by religious or other dogmas they might be.

Dr. Brook goes on to say that "The government should get out of the business of funding science. But so long as it is involved, it must scrupulously respect the separation of church and state. Its funding decisions must be made on rationally demonstrable, not faith-based, grounds. Bush's veto clearly violates this principle." (emphasis in the original)

Yes, indeed, the government should get out of the business of funding science, as Dr. Brook says. It should also get out of the business of carrying on business which is unconstitutional -- that is, illegal. Again, I agree that President Bush's motives are not to be admired. It's also true that his timing, politically, is pretty poor. But such funding is illegal on the face of it, so even though we're funding other illegal activities and programs, how is it immoral to veto funding on this one? Not to mention that this veto represents at least one break, however minor, on uncontrolled government spending. Arguing otherwise is to go with the "we're spending ourselves sober" type of Republican argument.

Land of 'Unique Chronic Communism'

That's A.A. Gill's phrase, from his TimesOnline article, "The land that time forgot:"

It is a tragic place. But just at the point in the story where you should be sobbing, you can berely restrain the sniggers....The capital, Tirana, is a rare place, blessed with both fascist and communist architecture. The competing totalitarian buildings strut cheek by cheek down the potholed roads, like an authoritarian tango in marble and concrete.

"Make It So!"

So just which SF/fantasy character am I?

"An accomplished diplomat who can virtually do no wrong, you sometimes know it is best to rely on the council of others while holding the reins."

I do like the bit about being able to do no wrong.

(Hat tip: Stonehead)

ARI's Brook Gets It Wrong on Dubya's Veto

I disagree with this press release from the Ayn Rand Institute:

Bush Vetoes Medical Progress
Thursday, July 20, 2006
By: Yaron Brook
IRVINE, CA--"President Bush’s veto of a bill to remove restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research is immoral," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
"It is revealing that Bush has used his first veto to oppose potentially life-saving research in the name of the dogma that microscopic embryos are sacred. Clearly, Bush and other ‘compassionate conservatives’ are not concerned with the well-being of humans, but with sacrificing them to clumps of cells in the name of religion. Such opposition is rooted in the perverse worship of human suffering.

“Anyone who truly cares about human life must condemn this religious assault on medical progress.”

Now, I have no doubt that President Bush probably does see his veto as a "religious assault on medical progress."

Further, I agree with everything Dr. Brook writes in his second paragraph.

But vetoing this stem cell research bill is not at all immoral. All that is involved here is -- as indicated in the "immoral" statement, above -- the question of federal funding for such research. Is funding such research constitutional?

No.

Is President Bush charged with upholding the Constitution of the United States?

Yes.

I believe Dr. Brook has correctly surmised President Bush's motives on this whole matter: like many other Bible-thumpers, Bush no doubt objects to scientists or doctors "playing God." Such creatures objected to the use of anesthesia in an earlier era. And there have been any number of previous bills deserving of a presidential veto, and, had he possessed any principles, President Bush would have vetoed them. Of course, he didn't.

None of this matters. What does matter is that the funding of scientific or medical research is not authorized by the Constitution of the United States and so federal monies should not be spent on such research. At all.

The fact that George W. Bush is an unprincipled follower of a particular form of witch doctory is also irrelevant. Like Dr. Brook, I do not respect the president's motivations. He did the right thing for entirely the wrong reasons. But, with this veto, he did the right thing.

Not on any diet

They eat bugs in Japan. They eat snails in France. Puppies in China.

But it takes American ingenuity to come up with the 1000-calorie Krispy Kreme Burger, a bacon cheeseburger sandwiched into a sliced Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Just imagine what these folks could do with a hot dog...

(Hat tip: commenter angela at 2 Blowhards)

Democracy vs. Liberty

Peter Schwartz on democracy vs. liberty:

Yes, we have the ability to vote, but that is not the yardstick by which freedom is measured. After all, even dictatorships hold official elections. It is only the existence of liberty that justifies, and gives meaning to, the ballot box. In a genuinely free country, voting pertains only to the means of safeguarding individual rights. There can be no moral "right" to vote to destroy rights.
Unfortunately, like President Bush, most Americans use the antithetical concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" interchangeably. Sometimes our government upholds the primacy of individual rights and regards one's life, liberty and property as inviolable. More often, however, it negates rights by upholding the primacy of the majority's wishes--from confiscating an individual's property because the majority wants it for "public use," to preventing a terminally ill individual from ending his painful life because a majority finds suicide unacceptable.

Too true, especially his assertion that freedom and democracy are antithetical. H.L. Mencken put it wickedly well in 1926:

I have spoken hitherto of the possibility that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself—its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson come instantly to mind: Jackson and Cleveland are in the background, waiting to be recalled. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against liberty, the very cornerstone of its political metaphysic. It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world. Try to imagine monarchy jailing subjects for maintaining the divine right of Kings! Or Christianity damning a believer for arguing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God! This last, perhaps, has been done: anything is possible in that direction. But under democracy the remotest and most fantastic possibility is a common-place of every day. All the axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the rest of us—but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a government, not of men, but of laws - but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state - but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.

Then there is the matter of Schwartz' "most Americans" statement, which is also all too true. I'd like to think that more Americans are becoming aware of just how "democracy-corrupted" our country has become, but I'm not optimistic about this. For example, during a Congressional campaign in 1994 I was told by a very proud mother that her homeschooled daughter had corrected one of the candidates. The United States of America, the miscreant was informed, is not a democracy, but a republic. I fear she is wrong: what with the direct election of Senators, the imposition of a federal income tax, long-time abuse of the interstate commerce clause and more, we have not kept the Republic created by the Constitution, but have degenerated into a trough-feeding collection of near-serfs segregated by interest groups fighting over perceived turf, ie, a democracy. And, as Schwartz points out, our own (Yale-and-Harvard-educated) president advocated democracy in Iraq and in the Palestinian "Authority," and democracy is exactly what we got.

Fascist Tool, Liberal Fool

I've been accused, by someone who knew me quite well in the Seventies, of being a tool for The Man, of being unoriginal and of having no "humanity" based on my -- wait for it -- admiration for Ayn Rand, and of being a conventional Republican.

Feh. He's an idiot.

I defend myself with reference to my results on Chuck Anesi's Fascism test, on which I scored 2.4, thus proving myself clearly to be a liberal airhead.

Heh.

(Hat tip: Dean Esmay)

More Arab Condemnation of Hezbollah

From another Arab Times editorial by Ahmed Al-Jarallah:

Recently Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier and bombed Israeli settlements with locally manufactured missiles. Soon Hezbollah followed suit, kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. Both these organizations claimed they had kidnapped Israeli soldiers to exchange them for Arab prisoners who are being held in Israeli jails. The fact that Hamas and Hezbollah gave the same reason for kidnapping Israeli soldiers gives us a glimpse their agenda, which is similar to the one followed by Syria and Iran in their conflict with the United States.

What strikes me about this is his use of the word "kidnapped," which, while totally appropriate, comes to me as a bit of a surprise: I'd have expected something along the lines of "captured in battle." But that's not what happened, and kidnapping is exactly what occurred, and exactly the right word to use.

While the people of Palestine and Lebanon are paying the price of this bloody conflict, the main players, who caused this conflict, are living in peace and asking for more oil from Arab countries to support the facade of resisting Israel. With the Palestinian Authority close to collapse and the Lebanese government beginning to give up responsibility for what is happening in its territory, Saudi Arabia has been forced to come out of its diplomatic routine and indirectly hold Hezbollah responsible for what is happening Lebanon.

I like his conclusion, too: "Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of “these irregular phenomena” is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community."

The Corner's Kathryn Jean Lopeza also points to a story by Eli Lake in the New York Sun which begins with this quote:

One of Saudi Arabia's leading Wahhabi sheiks, Abdullah bin Jabreen has issued a strongly worded religious edict, or fatwa, declaring it unlawful to support, join or pray for Hezbollah, the Shiite militias lobbing missiles into northern Israel.

Excellent. Progress is progress.

Brad Pitt: Loaves and Fishes and All

Hank Stuever applies a bit of the smack in his aptly-titled Washington Post piece, "Brad Pitt, Forcing Us To Volunteer:"

Brad Pitt! What does he want from us? Save Africa, save New Orleans, save the planet -- but we're not like you, Brad, not as able, so show us. (Show us, but keep in mind our budget.)
Soon he and Angelina Jolie won't even live on Earth, they'll just dangle above it, in a nursery-equipped Gulfstream IV, sort of the way Brandon Routh's Superman prefers to just float, in the stratosphere, listening acutely, compassionately, for trouble down there, and when he hears it, zoom , down he goes. We were always told that this is what the citizens of the future would do: They would have no fixed address. They would go where needed, constantly, selflessly.

And just what got Stuever so riled?

He showed up in New Orleans last week with some starchitects, talking about green apartment buildings that take river water and run it through turbines for cheap, clean power -- he went on, but honestly we've already forgotten. It turns out that while he was in Africa all that time, inseminating Angelina and divorcing Jennifer Aniston and not appearing in any movies, there was a hurricane in New Orleans and -- nobody knows this, but Brad says there is still unrepaired damage and woe, and something must be done, something like a two-part interview on the "Today" show. (The second part aired yesterday morning.)

Stuever delivers pretty respectable slaps to Ann Curry and Matt Lauer as well (along with a conventionally gratuitous charge that Ayn Rand was a cynic), and this is very nicely done:

Soon Brad or Angie will begin showing up and just laying on hands. He'll spit in the dirt and make clay and rub it on the eyes of the blind. People will clamor just to touch the frayed hem of his cargo pants. As if they already don't.

Arab Times: Blame It on Hezbollah, Not Israel

All I can say is: Wow. This editorial by Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of Kuwait's Arab Times, damn near took my breath away:

The fate of the Lebanese is in the hands of a handful of reckless adventurers, who have prevented Arabs from making well-judged decisions. These adventurers have forced Saudi Arabia to issue a statement holding them responsible for the current episode of confrontation with Israel. Saudi Arabia’s stance on this issue has made Arab leaders fight each other during the Arab Summit. Arab leaders should be frank in admitting the sufferings of the people of Lebanon. For over 58 years Arabs have been trying to fight Israel. During this period they took a decision according to international resolutions to ensure there was no war. However, recently some organizations like the Hezbollah and Hamas Movement have been trying to violate these resolutions by calling for war.

This is the reason why Lebanon and Palestine have turned into battlegrounds for certain foreign countries at the expense of their own people. Unfortunately Iran and Syria are fighting the international community, especially the United States, in Lebanon and Palestine. Nobody is benefiting from this conflict, except Tehran and Damascus, which are using this issue to solve their problems with the international community without any care for the blood that is being shed in Lebanon and Palestine. The ultimate sufferers in the ongoing crisis are Lebanon and Palestine, which are back to square one.

Doesn't break my heart to see Hezbollah and Hamas lose the credibility they once enjoyed in that part of the globe. But to see public (or printed) condemnation of these creeps from an Arab souce within the Arab world is a surprise -- and a refreshing one.

Even after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, far too many comments were of the "Yes, of course terrorism is wrong, but you must understand...poverty, Israel, imperialism, yadda yadda yadda" variety, which was nothing short of disgusting. Is this an indication of a real shift? I hope it's not due simply to Arab anti-Persian racism, or Shia-bashing from a Sunni source.

It's about time.

Anyway, I salute Al-Jarallah's editorial and the courage it took for him to put his name to it. He should be made an honorary Dane.

(Hat tip: Perry de Havilland at Samizdata)

"This transition stage is Socialism. Now, when real Communism gets here..."

Douglas Kern has a column up at TCS Daily, in which he nicely describes the Three Deadly Republican Spending Rationalizations:

1) "This program will be expensive, wasteful, and corrosive to the virtues that make a free society function, but it's popular, and we need it in order to keep the Republican majority."

2) "This program will be expensive, wasteful, and corrosive to the virtues that make a free society function, but it's necessary in the name of national security."

3) "This program will be expensive and wasteful, but it will actually improve the virtues that make a free society function, because it uses the power and affluence of a large central government to subsidize independence, self-discipline, decentralization, and the rejection of the welfare state mentality."

Well done, I think, and he discusses them nicely, tying them to his title: "The GOP: Drinking Itself Sober."

I only have a problem with this one little statement: "This, Father, is the Republicans' dilemma. The modern Republican lives in a Washington he hates -- it's too rich, too powerful, too centralized, too self-important." I'd agree, of course, that Washington is all of that. It would be tough to convince me that today's Republicans hate it.

No More Mike Hammer

He wrote I, the Jury in nine days. Its protagonist, Mike Hammer, vows to exact vengeance on whoever murdered his war buddy, former cop Jack Williams -- no matter who the murderer is. He vows to beat his cop friend, Pat Chambers, to the murderer and to put a bullet in that killer's gut, just as was done to Jack Williams. He does just that. Published in 1947, the book shocked readers and critics alike:

The roar of the .45 shook the room. Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. A thin trickle of blood welled out.

I stood up in front of her and shoved the gun into my pocket. I turned and looked at the rubber plant behind me. There on the table was the gun, with the safety catch off and the silencer still attached. Those loving arms would have reached it nicely. A face that was waiting to be kissed was really waiting to be splattered with blood when she blew my head off. My blood. When I heard her fall I turned around. Her eyes had pain in them now, the pain preceding death. Pain and unbelief.

"How c-could you?" she gasped.

I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.

"It was easy," I said.

Mickey Spillane died of cancer this morning in South Carolina. He was 88.

Michael Hurd on Peace in the Middle East

Michael J. Hurd, PhD on "Why Peace So Eludes the Middle East:

So here's why we never see peace in the Middle East: because appeasement doesn't work. The occasional outbursts of self-defense by Israel do something, for a time; but in the end we're back to the same old pretense that avowedly terrorist groups like Hezbollah are really no different in stature from, say, Israel and the United States--two nations whose governments actually do quite a lot to protect the individual rights of real human beings. Hezbollah, on the other hand, is nothing more than a very dangerous gang of thugs who delight in blowing up anyone who disagrees with their primitive religious beliefs and customs.

In short: you do not achieve peace by pretending that the openly violent really want peace. They don't. The only solution is to give them what they want, not once or twice every couple of years--but totally and consistently, until they either surrender or, better yet, disappear from the planet altogether.

Why we love capitalism, Reason # 369

As Charles Hill quotes a description of a new DaimlerChrysler product:

Its features include an AM/FM radio, CD/DVD player, embedded Sirius satellite radio with real-time traffic info, [a] 20GB HD, a USB jack, line-in jack, two audio outputs, Bluetooth hands-free calling and a 6.5-inch touchscreen with voice control.
The 20GB HD itself hold[s] all of the navigation software, which precludes the need for a dedicated DVD drive like most nav systems use. It also stores about a 1GB of system software (think operating system) and what's called a Gracenote lookup engine. Since you'll be able to rip CDs into the car's hard drive right on the spot, the Gracenote software is what will generate the artist, title and track information from a database of over 4 million CDs. Aside from ripping CDs directly, there's also a USB on the lower left side of the head unit that allows music and pictures to be transferred from a USB flash drive. There's room for around 1,600 songs to be uploaded depending on their file size.

More Charles:

And which Mercedes-Benz will be getting this package first?

You are wrong, gullwing breath. This system will be offered in the middle-market Chrysler Sebring, perhaps as early as this fall.

Wow.

The Arabian Blogosphere

This blog entry here deals with women drivers.

No, no jokes: the writer, Ahmed, is talking about women driving, ie, being allowed to drive, in Saudi Arabia, and is suggesting that one thing the Kingdom needs is...another King Faisal.

Ahmed also takes a look at a problem he sees in Riyadh, Jeddah, and elsewhere in the kingdom: older, historic buildings or sections of town being allowed to deteriorate. Or, as happens here in the West, being paved over to make way for parking lots. There's a uniquely Saudi twist to it, though:

Maybe it is too late. The Wahhabis who view historical buildings and sites as promoting idolatry have prevented us from saving some priceless treasures for many years, and they still active on that. Unfortunately, no one is brave enough to face the religious establishment in the county.

One thing I was unaware of: Saudi blogging began, apparently, in English.

You may also take a look at one of the world's oldest (and most expensive) cities, as described by local bloggers, at Good Morning Jeddah. Start with "Things about Jeddah you may not know."

The bloggers there seem to be of the opinion that Jeddah is a beautiful city. They're right, although I lived in North Jeddah, and never got to see much of the ancient parts of the city.

Anyway, there you go: links to three Saudi blogs -- good ones all -- in one day! You can find even more at Saudi Blogs. Multicultural is my middle name.

Reps and Ramadhan

Judges can show up 45 minutes late. The contest you're in is interrupted by prayer call. You adhere to a strict training diet, but your efforts are seriously compromised by Ramadhan. Must be Saudi...

Diet, working out, contest prep, protein and the bullshit factor, the problems with Saudis and food: if this sounds like your kind of reading, you should check out Hamad Mohawis's blog, The Perfect Body: Facts, Myths, and a Can of Tuna. Does he have a pet peeve or two? You tell me:

But you know who I can’t stand? Extremely overweight, and mostly obese people who think they’re only “chubby” that come to me and say “why do you torture yourself like this? Why don’t you enjoy food like us normal people?” well you know what, fatty? F*** you. I enjoy food more than anyone I know. I eat the food I love once a week. I enjoy it. Most people ABUSE food and eat junk and crap everyday and say that they “enjoy” food. Let’s face it people. Everyone is getting fatter because they do not want to lift a f***ing finger and they can’t say no to food. It’s not because we have more soft drinks, candy, fast food, etc. WE HAVE MORE BECAUSE THERE’S A LOT MORE DEMAND!!! F***ing fat asses drive all the way to Mcdonald’s, order junk that’s costs 30 riyals, then they say “allah yil3an McDonalds, it made me fat”. No, your stupidity made you fat. Your negligence made you fat. And your lack of self control made you fat.

Well...yeah.

Hamad wrote a short book, too, which you can see here. Attitude included.

Priorities and the Power of the Purse

This year, Cost of Government Day fell on July 12. Cost of Government Day is, according to Grover Norquist, "[the] date in the calendar year when the average American worker has earned enough money to pay off his or her share of the burdens of spending and regulations at all levels of government. This year, Cost of Government Day is one day above 2005 levels and nearly twelve days higher than in 2000."

One could also, were one inclined to take Gus Van Horn's recommendation, investigate this view, in which a Boston University professor argues (in a paper for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) that the U.S. government is already bankrupt:

"The U.S. government is, indeed, bankrupt," he writes, "insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds."

While the U.S. budget deficit, currently forecast to be 2.3 percent of the gross domestic product this year, is smaller than that of most European states, Kotlikoff argues the much debated number is not a particularly useful measure of U.S. economic health.

"The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.

The number that has Kotlikoff's attention is the U.S.'s long-term "fiscal gap" – the difference between all future government spending and all future receipts. Not only is the number immense, it will grow wider as the Baby Boom generation leaves the work world – and the burden of paying taxes on earned income – and stakes its claim on government health care and pensions. According to one study, the total fiscal gap could be $65.9 trillion.

"There are 77 million baby boomers now ranging from age 41 to age 59," Kotlikoff writes. "All are hoping to collect tens of thousands of dollars in pension and healthcare benefits from the next generation. These claimants aren't going away. In three years, the oldest boomers will be eligible for early Social Security benefits. In six years, the boomer vanguard will start collecting Medicare. Our nation has done nothing to prepare for this onslaught of obligation. Instead, it has continued to focus on a completely meaningless fiscal metric – 'the' federal deficit – censored and studiously ignored long-term fiscal analyses that are scientifically coherent, and dramatically expanded the benefit levels being explicitly or implicitly promised to the baby boomers."

As if that weren't enough, remember what else your Congress is spending money on: establishing and securing the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, for one thing. Pretty proud of that one, aren't we? And, of course, the House of Representatives recently voted, 317 to 93, to protect you from Internet poker.

Remind me again why we want Republicans controlling the House, the Senate, the courts, and the executive branch?

More blasts from the past

While I'm on the subject of discoveries, here are two more, courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily:

A print of the only known photograph of Mozart's widow.

A poem by Shelley, discovered after nearly 200 years.

Dieting: Will Power or the Will to Power?

"There's nothing like the discovery of an unknown work by a great thinker to set the intellectual community atwitter and cause academics to dart about like those things one sees when looking at a drop of water under a microscope."

So saith Woody Allen, and how right he is, as he discusses Friedrich Nietzsche's Diet Book.

Lawyers for Independence

(The original was published in The Free Radical # 52 (June-July 2002) and on the old SoloHQ.com spot on July 8, 2002)

Two lawyers - future Presidents both - were early advocates of American independence. John Adams was building a successful law practice in Boston and was also the younger cousin and political protege of radical agitator Samuel Adams, a Puritan who hoped to see Massachusetts become an American Sparta. Thomas Jefferson, scion of the Virginia plantation gentry, was absolutely radical in many of his beliefs and was influenced by European political thinkers, including John Locke. The two would be bound by radical events all their lives.

Like William Pitt and Edmund Burke in Parliament, the John Adams of the 1760s would have been described as a moderate Whig: while not an outright advocate of independence from George III's England, he clearly sided with his fellow colonists in the many tax and sovereignty disputes with the mother country. One of those disputes, ironically -- the Stamp Act controversy -- could have ruined him: patriots in Massachusetts were refusing to buy stamped paper, and the Royal Governor refused to accept or recognize legal documents without the required stamps. And John Adams was, after all, a lawyer. Still, his position favored his fellow colonists.

Although he defended the British soldiers involved in the March 1770 Boston Massacre (he won acquittal for the commander and most of the troops involved; two were convicted of manslaughter), Adams was clearly on the patriot side by then. He wrote approvingly of the Boston Tea Party, in which Americans disguised as Indians boarded British ships and dumped the tea into Boston Harbor rather than pay a hated tax. By August 1774 he was making his first trip outside of the Massachusetts colony: colonial legislators had elected to send him to the (illegal) Continental Congress. He wasn't yet forty years old. He had already decided on a course of independence for America.

On this trip Adams was awed by New York, a city far grander than his own Boston, and by Philadelphia, the second-largest city in the English-speaking world. For the first time in his life, he laid eyes on a Roman Catholic church. But he didn't see Thomas Jefferson: the Virginian had written A Summary View of the Rights of British America to honor the occasion of the first Congress, but he wasn't selected to attend it: members of Virginia's House of Burgesses felt that his views were too radical.

But events were moving too fast for the House of Burgesses -- or, for that matter, Congress or Parliament -- to control. By the spring of 1775 the first battles of the American Revolution had been fought and a second Continental Congress had been called. John Adams served on some ninety committees in this Congress, and chaired twenty-five of them. And in these committees, the radical agenda was strongly represented. Congress decided that a Continental Army should be created, and Adams nominated George Washington - a colonel in the Virginia militia and a member of the Virginia delegation to Congress - to be its commander in chief. The nomination was seconded and Adams' nominee was easily elected.

(George Washington, then, would have been one of the last American leaders to have served in the executive and legislative branches of the government at the same time -- to the extent that the Continental Congress, its Army, and the colonial legislatures were the American government.)

This Congress had also posted Adams to a small committee charged with drafting a statement of revolutionary intent. Adams served on this committee with Thomas Jefferson, by now a member of Congress himself. A list of colonial grievances against King George III was drafted in committee, and Jefferson went to work on writing the document itself.

On July 1, 1776, Adams was the last speaker to address the Congress. He spoke for hours, arguing that Congress should declare, on behalf of the thirteen American colonies, independence from Great Britain. The vote was taken and the resolution favoring independence passed the next day. Adams wrote to his wife that Americans in the future would celebrate July 2 as the day of their country's independence.

John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, and Charles Thomson, its secretary, signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 - the only members of Congress to do so. The document was published that day. Congress officially declared independence on July 8 and on August 2 most of the remaining members of Congress signed as well.

Jefferson was dissatisfied with his Declaration, as was Adams. Adams, a Puritan and a lawyer, simply didn't agree that all men were created equal. Jefferson felt that Congress had rewritten so much of his Declaration that it was ruined; to the end of his long life he would force visitors to read his original drafts, in which he fixed the slave trade and even slavery itself on George III.

Independence having been declared, neither man served out the rest of the war in the Continental Congress. Adams was sent on diplomatic missions to Holland and France, and remained in Europe for several years. Jefferson had wanted to leave the Congress in the summer of 1776, without writing the Declaration of Independence, because back in Virginia the House of Burgesses was writing a new constitution for the state - but that body ordered him to remain in Philadelphia and finish the job.

Jefferson did leave the Congress and served in the Virginia legislature, repeatedly trying and failing to be elected as speaker. He left the legislature in June 1779 when he was elected governor. He was a weak governor, although in his defense the war was still going on and by that time much of it was being fought in the South, particularly in Virginia. He was still the republican radical, however: when Congress authorized the Army's quartermasters to confiscate private goods in order to provision its troops, Jefferson fought that authority and sought to limit it where he could.

Adams fared better in Europe. Sent to Holland in the summer of 1780, he achieved a number of important aims for the American cause: diplomatic recognition from The Hague, Dutch declaration of war against Britain (now the Royal Navy would have to worry about American, French, and Dutch ships of the line), and a loan of five million guilders from a Dutch syndicate. In the fall of 1782 he was sent to Paris, along with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, to negotiate peace terms with the British.

Both Adams and Jefferson endured difficult presidencies. In Adams' case, most of his cabinet consisted of appointees left over from George Washington's administration. Many of them felt more loyalty to Alexander Hamilton and other out-of-office "High Federalists" than they did to President Adams. One appointment of his own, however, stands as possibly his greatest presidential achievement: the appointment of the articulate and strongly pro-property John Marshall as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. But continued British and French involvement on the North American continent caused many Americans to desire war again, some with Britain, some with France. A Congress with a Federalist majority passed the various and tyrannical Alien and Sedition Acts, which, sadly, met no veto from President Adams. Adams himself was even seen as urging war with France, and many powerful members of his own Federalist party favored such a war.

The prospect of raising and maintaining a 50,000-man Army brought Adams' latent classical republicanism out of its dormancy, and he instead sent an emissary to France and avoided war. This angered the pro-war Federalists, who maneuvered against him in his bid for re-election, and he was defeated by the vice-president: Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson, far more of a radical republican than Adams had ever been, could have been expected to introduce no innovations at all during his presidency. But it was Jefferson who, with no Constitutional authority at all, agreed to double the size of the United States by paying France fifteen million dollars for the Louisiana Territory. He was denounced for this by his own southern Republican allies in Congress -- but he insisted that he had acted under the treaty-making authority of the presidency, and the purchase was ratified by the Senate. Jefferson's second term in office was marred by the treason trial of his vice-president, Aaron Burr, and by more war fever such as Adams had had to endure. When he left office in 1809, he was glad to return to Virginia.

By then, Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush, who'd known both Adams and Jefferson in the Continental Congress, had been trying to effect a rapprochement between the two former friends for about two years. He succeeded: Adams and Jefferson exchanged letters and began a correspondence which lasted for years - Adams, the strong Federalist who yet insisted on civilian control of the military and avoided war when powerful interests in his own party demanded it; Jefferson, the strict republican who nevertheless, when he had the chance, stretched the Constitution (and the new country's borders) to its limits as far as he could. Their letters touched on each man's respective writings, their careers, and on contemporary affairs. Both agreed that posterity would forever judge them by what they'd done in 1776. In February 1825 Adams wrote to Jefferson, "I wish your health may continue to the last much better than mine....The little strength of mind and the considerable strength of body I once possessed appear to be all gone, but while I breathe I shall be your friend."

John Adams died peacefully on July 4, 1826 - the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Declaration of Independence. His last words were, "Thomas Jefferson still survives."

A few hours later, Thomas Jefferson was gone.

UPDATE: Peri Sword notes, over at SoloPassion, that Adams actually died first. This is a bit difficult to determine, but apparently Jefferson went into a coma around midnight (from which he never recovered), and Adams died earlier the next day. Thanks, Peri.

Mockery, Offense, and "Hadji Girl"

"Cheer up, Brian," says Eric Idle -- as they are both being crucified. "It's not that bad." Idle then goes on to sing Britain's alternate national anthem.

Now that's offensive.

I agree with George Carlin, though: nothing -- no subject, no treatment -- is off-limits in comedy. Nothing. You find it offensive? Fine.

And?

Richard Pryor was offensive. He was also funny as hell. Lenny Bruce, especially in his later years, never quite managed to pull that off. Bill Hicks was somewhere in between.

Carlin also hit the artery in dealing with offensive language, twice in fact: once in 1972 with his seven words" bit, and again -- even funnier, in my view -- with Offensive Language" in 1990 (Peter Cresswell, take note!).

I've written a bit of it myself, what I call humor. Plan to do more. But offensive? You know, all humor is offensive. There's always a target. If no one is offended, the target wasn't hit.

I mocked stereotypes of old ladies as well as the federal bureaucracy in this old thing, the American public school establishment in this one, contemporary "serious" music and its practitioners and critics here, and I had animal rights activists praise the Atkins diet for its similarity to cannibalism. But that wasn't enough: I'm the one who put reading glasses on Allah.

Goodness. I do hope someone got offended. Why else would I bother?

So in the same spirit in which I posted a "No Burka on Free Speech" over to the right, I present three items for your consideration.

The first is courtesy of Jesse Walker at Hit&Run, and is a true suppressed classic: Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs (1943). This one needs to be seen to be believed. Does it feature affectionate and respectful treatment of blues and jazz (ie, "black" music)? It sure does. Are the racial stereotypes meant as hostile or demeaning? Nope. Are they demeaning anyway?

Yes, they are. So are the anti-Catholic bits in Milton and, if memory serves, in Shakespeare.

Watch "All This and Rabbit Stew" with similar thoughts in mind. All told, really, I think it's no worse than Richard Pryor or Will Smith (or every rapper) making fun of white people. Or, for that matter, black politicians in America making fun of white people.

Finally, courtesy of fellow Texan Gus Van Horn, the infamous "Hadji Girl" video. "Infamous" because Corporal Joshua Belile actuall stood to be in some trouble over this one (he's been exonerated). For which I say: Corporal Belile, you are profoundly my brother Marine, in a way in which the outgoing Commandant of the Marine Corps, Michael Hagee, is not. Corporal Belile: I've got your back.

And I agree with Gus: when you get to the end of this video, you'll laugh out loud.

So mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau..and:

Durka Durka
Muhammad Jihad...

You bet.

Oh, and hell yes, Allah wears reading glasses. He has an office and a desk, too. You really think I'd lie about any of that? Why, that would be...offensive.

(Originally posted at SoloPassion)

Marketing 101: Sex Sells

Rosser Reeves argued that every successful advertisement must offer a Unique Selling Proposition. M&M's melt in your mouth, not in your hands. Clairol: does she or doesn't she?

Keeping that in mind, this has got to be the greatest television commercial ever. Ever.

(Note to the guys: Lynx is marketed in the US as Axe. Same stuff, I believe. Now find a beach.)

(Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg at The Corner)

Food and Fuel

If you've enjoyed reading the wealth of what was until recently known as Gastronomic Meditations, then you'll be delighted to know that The Gilded Fork is, at long last, in business to bring more pleasure to your life.

I can attest that they actually take orders. So it's not just a mouth-watering, lust-engendering read. Yep, and they ship foodstuffs, said shipments actually reaching west Texas. The customer service is non pareil.

As for the quality: I've used five of the items already (since Thursday). Your mileage may vary, of course -- but you'll enjoy.

Of course, you'll only enjoy if you order.