i think it's a series of tubes?

"What is the internet, anyway?" queries the ever-eloquent Bryant Gumbel in this circa 1994 clip dredged up by Patrick Madrid. I love that no one can really answer his question, the jury is out on what the @ sign is, the email address is "violence at NBC," and that it all devolves into Bryant making snide comments about a coworker.

I think, Mr. Gumbel, that Sen. Stevens can best answer your question:

The Wisdom of Sowell and Lincoln

I just love Thomas Sowell. His articles are always so clear and concise, filled with citations and common sense. He begins this one, Stimulus or Sedative?, with a quotation from another logical thinker, Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has, if you called the tail a leg? When the audience said "five," Lincoln corrected them, saying that the answer was four. "The fact that you call a tail a leg does not make it a leg."

That same principle applies today, says Sowell. The fact that politicians call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus. The fact that they call something a "jobs bill" does not mean there will be more jobs.

 Sowell continues by arguing that the so-called stimulus bill has had the opposite effect of its name, instilling little to no confidence in the private sector. The result? Money dumped into the economy isn't encouraging the American people to spend. Keep reading here.

Where's Thomas Jefferson Today?

We need Thomas Jefferson to be President again:

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Read more of Jefferson's memoirs here.

Howard Zinn and self-defeating pessimism

I am currently reading the ever-popular high school history text-book, "A People's History of the United States". The author, Howard Zinn, looks at American history through the lens of Marxist class-analysis, or class-warfare, as the case may be. So far, the history book has shown me that people have done, in word and deed, horrible things to each other. This is not a new idea to any Christian familiar with the doctrine of original sin, but perhaps it is shocking to secular humanists convinced by Rousseau and blinded by enlightenment confidence.

As interesting and depressing as Zinn's account can be, I cannot help but think something significant is lacking from Zinn's narrative. It is undoubtedly, doubt. Doubt that his narrative might be incomplete. A professor David Bobb of Hillsdale college hits the mark in his review for Claremont:

Zinn answers his own questions, of course, and he presents the Cold War as a struggle between "empires of influence." His interpretation is consistent with his ideology, in which moral and political differences (he berates Democrats almost as much as Republicans) are subsumed in class differences. In his tidy tale of how the rich hate everyone else, Zinn assumes the mantle of chief spokesman for the oppressed. He writes not so much from historical hindsight as from historical omniscience. A good historian will spur questions and prod his readers to investigate his claims. Zinn does neither, but instead makes students fearful, distrusting, and ultimately despondent about the possibility of patriotism. Instead of emboldening them to do noble things out of admiration for the great people and deeds they have studied, his book only serves to embitter them about America.

Has anyone else read this particular history? I think after reading a book like this, it is easy to adopt an attitude where you focus only on evil. A better attitude is one rejoices in what is good and rejects what is bad.

Six Moments

The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) recently hosted a dinner at which George Weigel, past President of EPPC, spoke on "the issues behind the issues in 2008." Six moments from the 1960s, he proposed, illuminate the underpinnings of the Left's policy and rhetoric today.

1--The assassination of JFK (1963)--Harvey Oswald, a communist upset with Kennedy about Cuba, became ensconced in the Left's collective memory as a reactionary bigot of the Right who brought down Camelot. Liberalism became obsessed with style in politics.

2--Griswald v. Connecticut (1965)--The Supreme Court decision which brought us a penumbra from an emanation, the right to privacy. Griswald was the Pearl Harbor of the judicial culture wars and the raw exercise of judicial power.

3--The Tet Offensive (1968)--The canonical account of Vietnam, to which the Left is biblically committed, is factually incorrect. This can be overlooked because "what really counts is the nobility of my feelings." Intentions trump responsibility.

4--The Kerner Commission (1968)--The civil rights movement, whites and blacks marching towards human equality, guided by the light of God's commitment to such equality, was hijacked by race baiters. The long saga of the politics of victim hood begins, as moralism replaces morals.

5--Publication of "The Secular City" (1965)--Mainline Christianity became secular, making it irrelevant. The cult of the new was established.

6--Earthday (1969)--Modern environmentalism, impervious to data, was born. Environmentalism, a misplaced religious yearning, replaced God; the worship of false gods tends towards bad politics.

Because of this, the Left misunderstands the two transcendent threats of our time, jihadism and the slow descent, via biotechnology, into human indecency.