DaveTown

From good Fr. Tucker comes the Random Playlist of the Week idea.

The idea is to put your iPod (or the non-Apple media player of your choice) on shuffle and list the first 10 songs that come up. Don’t cheat just because you’re embarrassed your Osmond Brothers song came up, or anything lame like that.

Then again, who’s gonna know?

Here’s mine:

1. Wanna B Ur Lovr – Weird Al Yankovic
2. Mao Reminisces – Camper Van Beethoven
3. Gloria – Van Morrison
4. All Blues – Miles Davis
5. Livin’ in the USA – Steve Miller
6. Cracker Soul – Cracker
7. She’s Crafty – Beastie Boys
8. Oliver Cromwell – Monty Python
9. Tomorrow – Me First & the Gimme Gimmes
10. I Am The Owl – Dead Kennedys

Many of us have joked at one time or another that “If only the world would listen to me, we’d all be so much better off”.

Of all the people who lived in the 20th Century, Milton Friedman was one of the few who could make such a claim in all seriousness. His death at age 94 is a blow to mankind; that his works and wisdom are so often ignored by policymakers and voters is a bigger one.

Others will write about his passing with more eloquence than I can muster. The NY Times obituary is, as usual, brilliantly done. There is also a beautiful tribute by Ralph Kinney Bennett that shows the character of the great man by giving an account of a casual tennis game played 20 or so years ago.

But one thing struck me as I read the obituary in the Times. There was a time in this country where Milton Friedman was considered, not as a genius, but as a crank. Not unlike those who deny NASA ever actually landed on the moon, or a holocaust denier. Why? Simply because he spoke boldly about the inevitable problems involved with Keynesian economics and ever-growing government regulation of free markets.

Then, when stagflation hit in the early 70’s, and everything Friedman had predicted came true, all of the sudden he wins the Nobel Prize for economics. Suddenly he was a visionary genius, where a few years before he was out of touch with the obvious and unquestioned consensus of economists everywhere.

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but this rings ever so familiar to me, as I listen to scientists and politicians talk about the “unquestioned consensus” of the “scientific community” when it comes to the topic of climate change and its effects. Right thinking is rewarded with grants and appearances on Crossfire, wrong thinking is punished by loss of funding, ostracism and ridicule.

I don’t know enough about climatology to speak with any precision on the topic, but I know more than enough about politics and human nature to know when I’m being lied to. People who make their career out of solving crises will find a crisis if none presents itself. If you read and listen closely to what is being said and written in the popular media, you’ll find that the only consensus about global warming is that there has been some increase in average temperature, and that carbon dioxide emissions have risen drastically in the 20th century due to the industrialization of society. There is no consensus on whether the warming is primarily man-made, and whether it is significant to our long-term well being.

Yet, we’re being told the sky is falling, and it’s all our fault because we’d rather drive a car than take the bus. I see where this is going, and so do you.

The problem is two-fold. Either the whole thing is a big politically-motivated scam – merely an excuse to screw the common good and go nuts with the new taxes and regulations – or, it’s really a problem, and no one is going to be willing to take drastic action because we’re so clearly being manipulated and patronized by scientists and politicians that we’re not going to trust their word on the matter.

Pick your poison. Either way, when you hear that loud buzzing sound begin one of these days, just know it’s merely good Dr. Friedman, spinning in his grave.

Welcome to Cognitive Dissonance Today.

Cognitive Dissonance Today: Flippin’ off the wall like Lucy Ball since 2002.

And now, Cognitive Dissonance Today:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) New Zealand’s high school students will be able to use “text-speak” — the mobile phone text message language beloved of teenagers — in national exams this year, officials said.

Text-speak, a second language for thousands of teens, uses abbreviated words and phrases such as “txt” for “text”, “lol” for “laughing out loud” or “lots of love,” and “CU” for “see you.”

I don’t even know where to begin with how wrong that is. This is a huge step backward for the English Language. We might just as well go back to chiseling pictographs on stone. Except you can’t charge $.10 per message for such things. And that, I suppose, is the point.

This has been Cognitive Dissonance Today.

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance Today was made possible by a grant from Nokia, Blackberry, Motorola, Samsung, LG, Verizon Wireless, Nextel, Alltel, US Cellular. Cingular, ATT, T-Mobile, Merriam-Webster, and the Children’s Television Workshop.

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.

- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What’s the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy.”

– Mortimer Adler

Horse Escapes – Owner Closes Barn Door

This would have been a great idea . . . six months ago.

I think this violates the better late than never rule.

So, the Republican party got what it so richly deserved, a trip to the electoral woodshed. They deserved it because they’d become arrogant, corrupt, and out-of-touch with their base. They have abandoned the concepts of fiscal responsibility and limited government that were their only reason for existence. They insulted their Evangelical and Catholic support by dangling pro-life legislation in front of them like a carrot in front of a mule, then jerking the carrot away when the mule was no longer of any use. They made huge errors of judgement in the war on terror, and frittered away the support of the post September 11 world. They deserved what they got yesterday.

What do we get in return? Democrats in charge of Congress. Democrats. A party that ran on a completely negative platform (we hate Bush), and that hasn’t had an original thought on governance since the New Deal. A party that believes you don’t pay enough in taxes, and that you’re not smart enough or moral enough to decide what to do with the money you earn for a living. A party that panders to any person’s view of morality, no matter how skewed and corrupt, simply for the goal of attaining more power. A party that thinks John Kerry and Al Gore were good choices for president, and that Nancy Pelosi would make a fine Speaker of the House.

Talk about a pyrrhic victory for the United States.

Nooooooobody.

A Man For All Seasons

There aren’t really many “must see” movies. We all have our favorites, of course, and we’ve all said “oh, you have to see this movie”. But really, no, you don’t have to, in most cases. You could, and you’d be glad you did more often than not. But there just aren’t really many movies you must see.

This one, you must.

I mean, what could be more relevant to our day than a movie about a man who values his beliefs and conscience more than his very life? Add the fact that it’s beautifully filmed piece of cinema, and brilliantly acted, and you have yourself a classic.

Sir Thomas More (St. Thomas More, for the Catlicks among us) was the Lord Chancellor of England back in the days of Henry VIII (you know, the crazy one that killed all those wives). Being the Lord Chancellor of England in those days was roughly analogous to being Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and John Roberts all wrapped up into one. Our saint had the ear and the trust of King Henry, and he was smarter. But he also had the courage of his convictions, and this was his downfall.

Long story short, Henry wanted to divorce his wife Catherine and marry another woman. He had to have the Church’s permission, and couldn’t get the Pope to grant him the annulment needed to make his move. So Henry decided that he would be the head of the Church, and told the Pope, essentially, to go to hell.

Now, I know all my good Protestant readers are thinking at this point “Hey, good for him!” First of all, shame on you. Second of all, hold your horses, it gets worse.

Henry then proceeded to pass a law saying that anyone who wouldn’t swear an oath agreeing with the idea of his supremacy over the Church would be guilty of treason.

St. Thomas wouldn’t sign. He wouldn’t speak out against the King, out of loyalty and patriotism, but neither would he put his name to an oath that he didn’t believe in it. Henry had him thrown in the Tower of London for a year, made him endure a show trial, then executed him despite the fact Thomas was more loyal to him than any thousand that signed the Oath of Supremacy.

It’s a great movie. Paul Scofield is absolutely brilliant as Sir Thomas. The late Robert Shaw perfectly balances the combination of political acumen and utter madness of Henry. A very young-looking John Hurt is great as the weasly Richard Rich. The trial scene is priceless, as is the farewell scene between Sir Thomas and his family in the Tower. There’s also a great speech about the primacy of law in a civilized society that should be memorized by schoolchildren along with the preamble to the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

Could we even have a man like St. Thomas in our society? If we did, isn’t it likely he’d suffer the same fate?

I don’t mean he’d get his head chopped off – he’d be more likely to suffer a 21st century style martyrdom. The kind where the popular media flays one alive and leaves one to twist slowly in the wind of public opinion.

More to the point, if we had a St. Thomas in our midst, what are the chances he’d even want to be involved in politics? In Thomas’s day, it was honorable to serve the king, even if the King was a stark raving looney. Not that there weren’t power-hungry opportunists back then, of course (Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, for instance, in the context of AMFAS). These days, I don’t know if the word “honor” has been applied to anyone in the executive branch in a couple of generations. I can’t think of anyone in my day, right off the bat. Can you?

I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said having the desire to be President automatically disqualifies one for the job. It’s a shame too, because if there’s anything we need today, it’s a whole passel of Thomas Mores to help us out of the mess we’ve voted ourselves into.

“Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.”

– Clare Booth Luce