View 574 June 8 - 14, 2009 (original) (raw)
This week:
Monday
Tuesday
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Sunday
Friday, June 12, 2009
The June column has been posted atChaos 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.
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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.
