Keith Burgess-Jackson

Gasoline

This morning, at a Shell station in Flower Mound, Texas, I paid $2.459 per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline. What're y'all payin' in your neck o' the woods?

Moon Martin, "Rolene" (1979)

Escape from Domination (1979). Honey, crack that whip; you make me bite my lip.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Trading Women’s Rights for Political Power” (Op-Ed, Nov. 12):

Regardless of what is right or wrong about abortion rights, it may be unfair for Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling to say that Democrats surrendering taxpayer-financed abortions in order to pass a game-changing health care bill are doing so for political power. For there can be wisdom, pragmatism and sensitivity in such a maneuver.

One trauma at a time is really quite enough to ask of the American people now. While I voted for our president and support a public health care option (and even more of what critics call “socialist”), there is just no promise in getting folks fearing an abandonment of some American Way also to abandon simultaneously their sense of what many feel, rightly or wrongly, is (state-financed) murder.

A retreat from James Madison is even harder when coupled with what for many is declension from eons of Judaism, Islam and Christianity (not mention [sic] the ancient Hippocratic oath).

And while the vulnerability of women pregnant and poor cannot be overemphasized, when Ms. Michelman and Ms. Kissling chide the president for announcing no federal financing for abortions “as if this happened to be a good and moral thing,” they have surely not established the contrary.

Democrats for the health care overhaul without financing abortions are in any event in touch with the majority of American voters, and this is not a bad way to serve the public through politics.

Thomas H. McFadden
Santa Barbara, Calif., Nov. 12, 2009

K. G. Armstrong on Retaliation

[T]o strike back and to strike first are two very different things, morally speaking, irrespective of the results they may produce or be intended to produce.

(K. G. Armstrong, "The Retributivist Hits Back," Mind, n.s., 70 [October 1961]: 471-90, at 489)

Dilbert

Here.

"So Resentful of New York, So Prone to Violence"

I leave you this fine evening with a column by Charles Krauthammer.

"Progressive Paternalism"

Here is a fascinating blog post by Peter Wehner, who is always interesting. At some point during his popularity free fall, Barack Obama is going to play the race card. He is going to say, or at least imply, that his support is plummeting because Americans are racist. His sycophants in the media, such as Keith Olbermann, Eugene Robinson, and Frank Rich, will trumpet this charge, hoping thereby to (1) intimidate Obama's critics and (2) intensify white guilt, the latter of which was instrumental in getting Obama elected. The charge of racism will fail, however, for the simple reason that Obama has already been elected. Did Americans become racist between November 2008 and now? That's absurd. Either they were racist all along, which makes it hard to explain Obama's election, or they're not racist at all. Americans will resent having the race card played against them and will throw the Marxist bum out on his rather large ears, just as they did Jimmy Carter in 1980. Obama will go down in history as a fraud, someone who pretended to be something he was not. His name will become synonymous with "charlatanry."

Politics

Get used to saying "President Palin." It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? My advice to Palin is to ignore progressives, just as Barack Obama ignored conservatives. She's not going to get their votes, and, despite the antipathy they have for her, they each have only one vote. Conservatives already love Palin, so she should focus almost exclusively on moderates, who put Obama in office in 2008 and can put Palin in office in 2012. As for content, Palin should discuss primarily economic issues. (It's the economy, stupid!) She needs to explain, the way Ronald Reagan did, that free markets are the path to prosperity and governmental regulation the path to destitution. Palin is much more articulate than either George W. Bush or John McCain. She's smart, articulate, witty, and feisty. I don't know how anyone can look at her or listen to her and not want her in the White House, leading this great country. Her campaign slogan should be "Putting America first—again."

Addendum: Here is the latest case of Palin Derangement Syndrome. Remember what I said several months ago: The degree to which Sarah Palin is attacked by progressives is the degree to which she is feared. I hope the attacks continue, for that means her electoral strength is increasing.

Now Playing

Academia

Nobody would bat an eye if you praised Mao Zedong on a college campus—which tells you everything you need to know about academia.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

It's Friday the 13th. Are you taking any precautions?

Renford Bambrough (1926-1999) on Argumentation

However conclusive a mode of reasoning may be, and however accurately we may use it, it always remains possible that we shall fail to convince a man who disagrees with us. There may come a point in a moral dispute when it is wiser to agree to differ than to persist with fruitless efforts to convince an opponent. But this by itself is no more a reason for doubting the truth of our premises and the validity of our arguments than the teacher's failure to convince a pupil of the validity of a proof of Pythagoras's theorem is a reason for doubting the validity of the proof and the truth of the theorem. It is notorious that even an expert physicist may fail to convince a member of the Flat Earth Society that the earth is not flat, but we nevertheless know that the earth is not flat. Lewis Carroll's tortoise ingeniously resisted the best efforts of Achilles to convince him of the validity of a simple deductive argument, but of course the argument is valid.

(Renford Bambrough, "A Proof of the Objectivity of Morals," The American Journal of Jurisprudence 14 [1969]: 37-53, at 45 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: This passage is riddled with confusions. First, it's often not clear whether a given proposition is true, or even whether it has a truth value. If I think that one of your premises is false, then your argument gets no grip on me. You may think your premises are true, but that does me no good. The burden of persuasion is on the arguer, whose job is to use premises that are already accepted by the interlocutor. If you use a premise that is not accepted, you fail. Second, there's a difference between structure (form) and content (substance). I may agree that your argument is valid, in the sense of truth-preserving, but deny that there is any truth to be preserved. This is not to say that reasonable people always agree about validity or invalidity, for they don't. You may think your argument valid while I think it's invalid. Why is this my fault? Why is it not your fault? You're the one making the argument. If you want to persuade me, you must use not only an argument the validity of which I accept, but premises the truth of which I accept. Argumentation, unlike reasoning, is interpersonal. Bambrough makes it seem as though the burden of rejection is on the interlocutor. No. The burden of persuasion is on the arguer. Third, why does Bambrough use the Flat Earth Society as his example? This rigs the game in his favor. Suppose I try to persuade the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) that a given act of torture (call it X) is wrong. I argue as follows: (1) Torture is intrinsically and absolutely wrong (i.e., wrong in itself and with no exceptions); (2) X is a case of torture; therefore, (3) X is wrong. Bentham would accept the validity of my argument but reject the first premise. By Bambrough's logic, I, the arguer, should simply say that I know that torture is intrinsically and absolutely wrong, and therefore that I know that X is wrong. But that begs the question against Bentham, who rejects my major premise. My failure to convince Bentham of the wrongness of X is my failure, not his.

Football

Big game tomorrow in my neck of the woods. Fourth-ranked Texas Christian University hosts 14th-ranked Utah. I predict a blowout: TCU 55, Utah 7. The Horned Frogs are tough as nails and determined not to lose their high ranking.

Immigration

I don't watch Lou Dobbs, though I know who he is and some of the things he stands for. This editorial opinion by the New York Times is a classic case of projection. The editorial board loves to describe opponents of illegal immigration as "nativists" and "restrictionists." (By this logic, a woman who resists rape is a restrictionist, for she wants to decide for herself who gets in.) Everything the board says about Dobbs applies to itself, which is pretty funny, when you think about it.

Addendum: Dobbs has left CNN. Look for him to join Fox News, which recently hired John Stossel. It will give progressives another reason (as if they need one) to hate Fox News. By the way, it was great to see the New York Times say that MSNBC is as ideological as Fox. It's more ideological, actually, but let that go.

Curro Ergo Sum

The best measure of overall fitness, to me, is resting heart rate. The average person has a resting heart rate of 72 or so. I began recording my resting heart rate 24 years ago today. I record it every other Wednesday, in similar conditions: while sitting quietly at my desk, first thing in the morning, before coffee. My average resting heart rate in the past 24 years (608 readings) is 51.06. It was 47 nine days ago, when last I checked it. The lowest I've ever recorded is 42 (three times). The lowest I've ever heard of is 27: Swiss cyclist Mauro Gianetti, before the start of the 1997 Tour de France. (Riders are given physical exams before the Tour starts.)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Trading Women’s Rights for Political Power,” by Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling (Op-Ed, Nov. 12):

It’s probably true that the Democrats in Congress are trading off “pro-choice” support to advance health insurance legislation. But we should distinguish between a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy and the government’s obligation to help finance that choice.

If abortion rights do indeed derive from a more general right to privacy, the government has no more business paying for an abortion than prohibiting it.

Gary Abramson
Goshen, N.Y., Nov. 12, 2009

To the Editor:

While I agree with Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling that the decision by the Democratic Party to sacrifice women’s reproductive rights in the name of enacting health care reform was wrong, I am equally dismayed by the shocking facts of abortion.

Roughly half of all pregnancies in the United States today are unplanned, and of those, about 40 percent are aborted. In 2001, the most recent year for which reliable statistics exist, that amounted to 3.1 million unplanned pregnancies and 1.3 million abortions, representing 20 percent of all pregnancies.

Until those numbers are reduced to something more palatable to mainstream Americans like me, we will remain far less incensed about threats to reproductive rights than the authors imply. I humbly suggest that pro-choice groups put more effort into passing legislation designed to reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancies, thereby reducing the number of abortions. Otherwise, I believe (and fear) that they will find themselves on the losing end of this battle.

Josh Miner
La Crosse, Wis., Nov. 12, 2009

Note from KBJ: The second letter writer is troubled by the number of abortions being performed. Imagine someone being troubled not by slavery, but by the number of slaves. Imagine someone being troubled not by rape, but by the number of rapes.

Golden Earring, "Are You Receiving Me" (1973)

Moontan (1973).

Dilbert

Here.

Haiku

How hard can it be
To compose a good haiku?
All you have to do

"Inveterate Busybodies and Nannyists"

Mike Rosen flat-out nails it.