DaveTown

Finally, another member of the 1% Club. In case you don’t recall (and why would you, frankly?), membership in the 1% Club is awarded to that very small minority of people in this world who, unlike the rest of us, aren’t full of bovine excrement when they speak and/or write.

Our newest member is CLS, of the blog Classically Liberal, who has brought some sense to the mass confusion regarding the latest government created crisis (which of course, can only be solved by, you guessed it, the government).

Here’s a snippet, but please, do go read the whole thing:

Good God, didn’t this man [Henry Paulson] take a basic Econ 101 course sometime in his life or is he intentionally ignoring market fundamentals for other reasons? First, lets get rid of the absurd idea that this crisis is one of “market failure”. Markets are doing precisely what they are supposed to do — when a good is overpriced markets correct that price and bring it down.

I haven’t done this in a while, but it is time to enroll another member in the DaveTown 1% Club.

As I’m sure you remember, the 1% Club is made up of that very exclusive group of pubic figures who are, categorically and unequivocally, not full of bovine excrement.

If you keep up with current events, you know as well as I do that it is becoming a more exclusive club every day.

Today’s honoree is a man I’d never heard of before I read his recent article in Wired concerning privacy.  Here’s a snippet:

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It’s intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

Do go read the whole thing, and welcome, Mr. Bruce Schneier, because you are the newest member of the DaveTown 1% Club.

Judge Andrew Napolitano is the newest member of the 1% club, that exclusive group of individuals who set themselves apart from the 99% of us who don’t know what we’re talking about. Read this interview with Judge Napolitano in Reason magazine’s online edition, then consider buying his book.

Reason: The Born-Again Individualist

After you’ve read that, and if you’re up for a dose of metaphysical heartburn, here’s an interesting project: find your copy of the Constitution of the United States of America (you do have a copy, don’t you?) and read it start to finish. Then, go to the website for The Congressional Record or Thomas.gov and read up on the following:

• any or all of the bills currently before Congress.
• recent decisions of the Supreme Court
• executive orders of the Bush or Clinton administrations.

When finished, compare what you’ve read in the Constitution to what you’ve seen of your government in action.

If you really want to get depressed, go to law school and take a course or two in constitutional law. The bits on the commerce clause alone will send you running for a 40 oz. bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

On second thought, don’t do that. It’s expensive. And hard. And not a great deal of fun.

But do the other parts of my little project. It will be an invaluable education in civics, government, and cynicism.

But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(tip of the cyber-hat to Old Oligarch for the link to the Reason interview)

You know how sometimes you meet a person you’ve admired from afar, and they turn out to be disappointing?

This was categorically NOT the case with Mark Shea.

When I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the Catholic Church in the late 90’s, trying to decide if it was in fact the Church I’d been looking for my whole life, one of the most helpful and entertaining reads was Mark’s By What Authority. It was exactly what I needed to know, at exactly the right time in my life. Great book.

So I owe Mark a lot. I’ve also read and enjoyed his blog, Catholic and Enjoying It, which is just as entertaining and informative as his books. And so when I heard he was coming to Norman this weekend to give a series of talks, I decided to venture out of my cave and go hear him, and, hopefully, meet him.

Well I got to do both, even sitting at the same dinner table after his Friday evening talk. He is absolutely one of the funniest, most engaging, most genuinely likeable people I’ve ever met.

And his talks were brilliant. And so, Mark Shea joins Fr. Mitch Pacwa as only the second-ever inductee into the DaveTown 1% Club.

Oh, and let me add a plug for OU Catholics. This is the great group of kids at the University of Oklahoma who were responsible for getting Mark to make the long trek from Seattle. I enjoyed meeting them immensely.

The 1% Club

About 99% of the people I’ve ever heard speak in public, or on TV, on any subject of substance, are, unfortunately, idjits. That’s just a sad fact of life. Tonight was different.

Tonight I went to hear Fr. Mitch Pacwa speak at my parish, and he is now the first member of the “DaveTown 1% Club”.

Father gave an outstanding talk on the philosophical roots of the divisions in our society and within our church. He is knowledgeable, witty, relevant and orthodox. He has a book coming out later this year titled “Some Heard Thunder, Some Heard God” which expands the themes of the talk he gave tonight. I’ll be buying it at first opportunity.

If you’d like to nominate someone to be a member of the “DaveTown 1% Club”, send an email to the staff here at DaveTown (well, ok, send an email to me) and we (which is to say, I), will give it serious consideration.