As one of the first, if not the first, people to say Let It Burn, IÂ’m clearly thrilled with the growing chorus of voices joining the movement.

Like any movement, there are true believers and Let It Burn In Name Only (LIBINO) types. Since itÂ’s never too early to purge a movement of its impure elements, let us lay out some key principles of Let It Burn.

1- America isnÂ’t a conservative country anymore and hasnÂ’t been for a while. Yes, you can point to lots of surveys that show people identify themselves as conservatives and they even say government should be doing fewer things.

The fact is, a conservative country doesn’t “accidentally” elect Barack Obama twice. It doesn't continue to send Democrats to the Senate who voted for ObamaCare and force the GOP to run as the saviors of Medicare.

People want the ever expanding welfare state, they simply don’t want to have to pay for it. They are happy to pretend they can “ask the rich to pay a little more” (it won't work) or to pile on debt for some generation to be born later to pay for it. What they are very clear about in their votes is...”don’t you dare touch my “free” stuff”.

One foundation of conservatism is to see the world as it is, imperfections and all, and not the way we wish it to be. Unless we can admit the reality of the country we are living in, Let It Burn makes no sense.

If you think we're just one or two tactical moves and a great candidate away from political victory, you're not in the Let It Burn camp.

2- Gabe and several commenters yesterday wondered, why isn’t Bob Corker’s “tax cuts now, entitlements later” idea consistent with Let It Burn?

The answer is simple: ItÂ’s a deliberate action is based on doing several things- raising taxes and then magically reforming entitlements.

Even if the GOP managed to "win" this standoff with Obama by generating more revenue through tax reform than hiking tax rates, who cares? We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.

“Let It Burn” is about inaction. There’s no point in trying do anything that avoids going over the fiscal cliff/sequestration. Remember, the deal that got us to this point was agreed to by House Republicans, Senate Democrats and signed by Obama. That’s as bi-partisan as it gets. I’ve heard from squishy low information voters, Obama and the media that “bi-partisan problem solving” is the Holy Grail of politics. Well, here it is.

Will it lead to massive disruptions? Yes. ThatÂ’s the point. The current system is rigged against conservative. We should play no part in its perpetuation. If you canÂ’t win the game, concede and start new one. ThatÂ’s the heart of Let It Burn.

This isn't some petty "I lost so I'm taking my ball and going home" tirade. This is what people want. It's simply not sustainable. If we can't stop them, we don't have to continue to enable them either.

Bill Kristol has a column attacking the Wall Street Journal for opposing any tax hikes. John Podhoretz challenges any conservative to argue with it. Well, I just did.

What Podhoretz should have done is challenge any Republican to argue against KritolÂ’s analysis. That canÂ’t be done in a serious way.

We need to start disassociating conservatism from the GOP. WeÂ’ve tried it for 30 years. It hasnÂ’t worked.

We’ve tried to save the country from the folly of expanding liberalism and the country said, “we don’t want to be saved”. Let It Burn just means letting them have what they want and rebuilding later.

After 2010 I had some hope that we might be able to turn this massive welfare state around. The full implementation of ObamaCare means that isnÂ’t going to happen. At least not absent a total collapse of our fiscal house of cards.
Let It Burn isnÂ’t an option, itÂ’s an eventuality. The questions are will we be complicit in it any longer and do we want to delay it? I say no. Let the liberals own it. Very few things are made better by delaying the day of inevitable reckoning.

The sooner it burns, the sooner we can try and rebuild.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:57 AM | Comments (633)
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• Obama Warmly Greets America Hating Singer
  
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• Bankruptcy, Not Forgiveness, In Student Loan Debts
  
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:01 AM | Comments (181)
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Happy Monday.

Speaker Boehner and President Obama met over the weekend to discuss the fiscal cliff. No progress reported.

Drew wrote up Sen. Corker's idea that the GOP give in on tax hikes for those making more than $250,000. While I totally disagree with Corker, I'm surprised at the opprobrium he's getting over this. After all, his proposal, as summed up by Drew, sounds a lot like what conservatives have been saying:

Step 1: Unconditional surrender to Obama and the Democrats

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Massive entitlement reform that neither Obama nor any Democrat wants.

Only the particulars of the third step appear to be different. Conservatives have it something like, "Step 3: American voters realize that Obama and the Democrats' plan was terrible and vote in Republicans conservatives to do massive entitlement and tax reform that neither Obama nor any Democrat wants."

China's largest auto parts manufacturer just bought the bankrupt, taxpayer-funded A123 green battery maker.

The F.C.C. calls on the F.A.A. to allow passengers to use electronics during take-off and landing.

Something's up in Pakistan; quite a few Al Qaeda leaders have dropped dead in the past week and a half.

Yet another Romney candidacy postmortem, if you're still into that sort of thing.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:47 AM | Comments (213)
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The Hidden Link Between Medieval Land Parceling and Modern American Psychology

Did land division rules drive culture?

The flight from Boston to Chicago isn't the most scenic, but if you're lucky enough to snag a window seat - no mean feat these days - study the patchwork landscape with a discerning eye. About 40 minutes into the flight, you'll notice something a bit peculiar (at least for North America): Instead of the usual tableau of square or rectangular farmsteads, you'll see ribbons of agronomy.

These ribbon layouts are a ghost of geography: a relic from when France parceled land in Canada back in the 1600s. What's most intriguing to me, though, is how ribbon farms - or rather the lack thereof in much of the United States - shaped attitudes toward modern transportation, and continue to shape our psychology as a nation today.

Because with ribbon farms, the expectation is that transportation is king.

So when the U.S. started with square farms, the process and the results were the exact opposite from ribbon farms: We plotted the farms first and then pondered the logistics. It's therefore no surprise that Americans feel transportation should come to us instead of the other way around. We pick a place to live and then figure out how to get where we need to go. If no way exists, we build it: roads, arterials, highways, interstates . and so on.
We pick a place to live and then figure out how to get where we need to go. If no way exists, we build it.. It's the American way.

And it's this quirk of geography - the shape of a typical American farm - that I believe influenced the development of the entire nation.

...The fact that the farm, not the transportation, came first is important. It was a geographic case of the tail wagging the dog.

Well I'm not so sure the specific differences in land parceling were quite as psychologically significant as the author claims or that the Canadian/French way is clearly superior.

The French ribbon-farm layout may optimize for ease of transportation but assumes an existing road system and minimizes any choice in how to layout a farm. But the American system let people choose the locations to farm in and then roads were built based on demand and farm location.

So I would argue the latter system was optimized for the greatest local personal choice and maximum agricultural output over central planning and easier transportation. And these differences in choice and priorities behind the systems do reflect different cultural values and traditions that are still visible today e.g. Anglo-Saxon capitalism versus Dirigisme.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:10 PM | Comments (662)
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This is so stupid, only a Republican could think of it.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Sunday that he’s “beginning to believe” that falling in line with President Obama’s call to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, then shifting the focus to reforming entitlements “is the best route for us to take” on the “fiscal cliff.”

“There is a growing group of folks that are looking at this and realizing that we don’t have a lot of cards on the tax issue before year end,” Corker said on “Fox News Sunday.” He continued: “A lot of people are putting forth a theory, and I actually think it has merit, where you go ahead give the president the two percent increase that he is talking about — the rate increase on the top two percent — and all of a sudden the shift goes back to entitlements.”

Let me sum up:

Step 1: Unconditional surrender to Obama and the Democrats

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Massive entitlement reform that neither Obama nor any Democrat wants.

Why it's so obvious!

How exactly does giving in to Obama strengthen Republican's hand in getting entitlement reform?

The biggest problem Republicans in Congress have (other than being jackasses who couldn't negotiate their way out of a wet paper bag) is they are acting as if Obama really wants a deal and to get the deficit and debt under control. Hint: he DOESN"T.

What leverage will the GOP have after the fiscal cliff is off the table? The "debt ceiling"? You mean the thing that the GOP caved on two years ago and the only thing they got out of it was....the fiscal cliff we're not dying to avoid?

Yeah, they'll totally get it right this time. Just one more surrender and then Victory!

Let. It. Burn.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:09 PM | Comments (272)
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I hadn't heard of Sir Patrick, but after seeing a couple of his videos, I'm going to have to see more. He's saucy, and provocative, and prodding, and fast. A wry sense of humor. Imagine John McLaughlin doing astronomy instead of politics.

From the Brisbane Times:

Tributes have been paid to the "irreplaceable" British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore who has died aged 89.

The eccentric broadcaster passed away peacefully on Sunday at his home in Selsey, West Sussex, after being struck down by an infection.

His friend, Queen guitarist Brian May, said the world had "lost a priceless treasure that can never be replaced".

Sir Patrick inspired successive generations of stargazers with his television series The Sky At Night and wrote more than 60 books on astronomy.
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He celebrated the 55th anniversary of the BBC program in April, with it becoming the longest running television series with the same presenter.

Sir Patrick only missed one episode since it began in 1957, when he suffered a severe bout of food poisoning in 2004 which nearly killed him.

The last program was broadcast on December 3.

More from Sky & Telescope, the BBC and BoingBoing, including the videos embedded below. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 12:37 PM | Comments (149)
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We live in seriously screwed up times.

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Saturday reiterated his movement’s refusal to “give up one inch of the land of Palestine.”

Mashaal, who arrived in the Gaza Strip for the first time ever on Friday, said: “Palestine from the river to the sea, from the north to the south, is our land and we will never give up one inch or any part of it.”

...

“Palestine was, still is and will always be Arab and Islamic,” Mashaal said. “Palestine belongs to us and to no one else. We can never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Palestine belongs to us, and not to the Zionists.”

MashaalÂ’s fiery statements stood in sharp contrast to a recent interview he gave to CNNÂ’s Christiane Amanpour, where he said that Hamas accepted a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 lines.

Ah yes. The old "one thing in English, another in Arabic" gambit.

Why the hell the Isrelis didn't blow this bastard to hell, er Allah, I don't quite know.

Surely the leadership of Hamas' rivals and recently admitted observer state to the UN, Fatah would never countenance such talk.

A delegation from Hamas's rival Palestinian group, Fatah – to which Mr Barghouti belongs - was also introduced, raising prospects of a reconciliation of the two factions, which have been estranged since Hamas took over Gaza by force in 2007.

Ah well then.

Of course some enterprising idiots know the real problem...those damn Jews are unwilling to be slaughtered in order to bring about peace.

In the calm of the cease-fire, Iron Dome has emerged in IsraelÂ’s reckoning as a symbol of all that is right with the Jewish state. But it has also become an emblem of the unmet challenges that sit at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For a nation that longs for normalcy and acceptance, one question being debated here is whether Iron Dome will motivate IsraelÂ’s leaders to pursue peace with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world or insulate them from having to do so.

How exactly does one negotiate with monsters like Mashaal? I suppose he'd be willing to negotiate the means by which Jews are killed and Israel is destroyed but beyond that, it seems unlikely an agreement of any sort is on the menu.

Since Israel is run by human beings and not walking scum like the Palestinians, a genocidal war against the Palestinians isn't an option. And so the long slog goes on.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:31 AM | Comments (63)
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Last week I read a Jay Nordinger column which was mostly about the need to recapture the institutions of thought (especially education), but he also mentioned this:

A reader of ours is a teacher and a conservative, and he suspects that the teacher in the next room is a conservative too. But he doesn’t quite know how to find out without revealing his own conservatism — and that revelation could be bad, professionally.

He wrote me to ask, “Maybe I could tap on the wall? Is there some secret code for ‘I believe that Western civilization is, on the whole, a good thing’?”

I thought that might make an interesting topic for discussion. Some of you may be lucky enough to live in largely conservative areas or work in largely conservative fields.

Conservatives who live in liberal areas, or move in liberal circles, on the other hand, tend to either be pretty quiet about politics or, if trying to suss someone else out, employ shibboleths to see if the other party is a member of the tribe.

I don't have a go-to shibboleth for this purpose. I suppose that something noncomittal and sneaky, like "Are you a fan of David Mamet?," might work. Hey, you might just mean his movies and plays. Alternatively, you might mean his recent political conversion to conservatism. A member of the tribe might pick up on that last bit and say something like, "I've become a bigger fan lately."

Bringing this around to Vince Vaughn: I'm watching the commentary for Couples Retreat. I just bought it, because we were talking about it, and I saw it for sale used. Ten bucks.

I know this is silly, but it's Sunday, and we were just talking about this.

Early in the movie there's a scene where Vaughn's character is in bed reading Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Looks like a Penguin Classics edition. In the commentary, he says, "I'm reading the Thomas Paine paperback Common Sense book, which of course was the book that Thomas Paine wrote which helped inspire the first American Revolution."

First? The first American Revolution? Was there a second?

So three possibilities:

1. He misspoke and meant something like "Thomas Paine vigorously agitated for two revolutions. The American Revolution was the first, and the second was the French Revolution." Thomas Paine was over in Paris agitating for that one, too.

2. He means the Civil War was not just an insurrection but a revolution against federal power.

3. He's suggesting there's a second American Revolution to come.

I suppose he might also mean the Reagan Revolution, but I don't know about that one. For that matter, he might have meant FDR's undeclared revolution.

I don't know, just thought it was something. I don't think it's a pure mistake, like a completely dumb mistake, because I assume he chose that book for his character to read. I assume he's familiar enough with the topic to know there's not a generally-acknowledged Second American Revolution.

So: A shibboleth or simple error?

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (237)
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Interesting. Well, for a Sunday.

If we are, in fact, ditching the map for flashier gear, will we be better off? Maybe not. A study conducted in Tokyo found that pedestrians exploring a city with the help of a GPS device took longer to get places, made more errors, stopped more frequently and walked farther than those relying on paper maps. And in England, map sales dropped by 25 percent for at least one major printer between 2005 and 2011. Correlation doesn’t prove causation—but it’s interesting to note that the number of wilderness rescues increased by more than 50 percent over the same time period. This could be partly because paper maps offer those who use them a grasp of geography and an understanding of their environment that most electronic devices don’t. In 2008, the president of the British Cartographic Society, Mary Spence, warned that travelers—especially drivers—reliant on electronic navigation gadgets were focusing mainly on reaching a destination without understanding quite how they got there...

“Trying to see and understand the big picture on your phone or laptop usually isn’t possible,” said Harrison...

Using real printed maps also demands—and can help users develop—critical thinking skills.

Well, there's an easy enough fix: Make sure you still have paper maps (or buy them if you no longer have them) and plot most of your trips via map. Use GPS for back-up or for when you go someplace on the fly.

But I think there is a general problem with some things being too automated and thus too easy. It's not that things need to be hard. It's that people lose the ability to do it the hard way should that become necessary.

Posted by: Ace at 04:33 PM | Comments (343)
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We have to reconsider the culture of mobility.

Via the Evil Blogger Lady, @MsEBL

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 AM | Comments (45)
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