New Iowa Blog

Welcome aboard, Iowa Ramblings.

A Small Win on Property Rights

While the Supreme Court's recent Kelo decision has rightly angered people across the political spectrum, the taking of private property by local governments to give to developers is just one way that the government takes property from people. Another way is through environmental laws that prevent you from doing anything with your property.

The U.S. House today passed a bill that would significantly overhaul the Endangered Species Act. Primary changes include requiring that landowners be compensated if they lose the ability to use their land.

If protecting endangered species is a worthwhile goal, and a majority of society appears to think so, then society--through the government--should compensate property owners for the loss of use of the property in question.

Actual Tax Analysis

Unlike my rather flippant discussion of the Register's suggestion that we eliminate the corporate tax, the Roth CPA Tax Update actually discussed what such a proposal should mean.

P.S. Joe also points out that the just one day after calling for the repeal of the corporate income tax, the Register went straight back to the more familiar ground of demanding cradle-to-grave socialized medicine. Hell, apparently, only experienced a mild frost; it did not freeze over.

So Close

Hey, we're getting close to 25,000 hits since I put the tracker up. So, it isn't Instapundit numbers. I'm still pretty excited. To everyone who stops by for a visit from time to time, thanks.

Al-Zarqawi Guest Blogging at Iowa Hawk

Iowahawk has received another guest commentary from everyone's favorite terrorist/columnist, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

Go read the whole thing, but here's a little slice just so you can get the taste of what he has to say.

What's crackalackin', y'all? I know it's been long-time-no-post, but I gotta tell you it's a little hard to keep up with the blogging when you're getting a daily enema from infidel Tomahawks

.

The Zarkman, as he likes to call himself, is getting a little edgy, what with the losses his guys took in Tel Afar over the last week or so. The fact that he lost another of his number twos. Being the number two guy in the Iraqi chapter of Al Qaeda is a career limiting move, in a most terminal way.

We're Number 50

Joe notes that Iowa ranks dead last in a list of "hot" states for entrepreneurs.

Boo.

I wonder if the Register's stance on cutting tax rates applies at the state level as well.

Kris and the Rainforest of Dreams

Kris rewrites Mr. Mann's famous speech from Field of Dreams.

I'm particularly fond of "They'll arive at the ticket booth of your 20-story foil-enclosed caterpillar as innocent as children, longing for the past."

Read the whole thing.

Hog Haven Back in Business

The title to this post pretty much says it. After an extended absense, David Hogberg is back in the blogging business. Cool.

Knock Me Over With a Feather

I'm going to give you a few quotes from something I read today. Your job is to guess where I saw each of them.

Here's the first one.

Contrary to what you might think, it isn't the wage levels of American workers that make U.S. manufacturers uncompetitive in the world.

It's the nation's corporate income tax, among other things.

How about this one?

Structural costs other than labor play a role in making American products more expensive on the world market, including employee benefits, litigation, pollution abatement and energy, according to the analysis. But the biggest single disadvantage comes from corporate tax rates.

Just for fun, here's a third.

In reality, corporations don't pay taxes. Only people do. The taxes paid by corporations are passed on to individuals in the form of higher prices for products, lower wages for workers or smaller dividends for shareholders. Much of the revenue lost by repealing the corporate income tax would theoretically be recouped in the taxes on higher incomes of workers and shareholders.

So, where did I read those? The Weekly Standard? National Review? The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal?

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.

It was the editorial page of the Des Moines Register.

Yes, the Register.

This is the most intelligent stuff I think I've ever seen the Register print when it comes to economics, and I find it just stunning that they actually put this to press. I'm particularly stunned with the third exerp above.

This makes two times in the last week or so that I've had a (generally) positive take on something printed in the opinion section of the Register. Does anyone know if they are handing out parkas in hell?

More on the North Koreans

Steven Den Beste makes an appearance in the comments for this Pejman Yousefzadeh post. As usual, he's chased down several threads of the seemingly bizarre North Korean behavior to weave a coherrant theory of what's actually going on.

The reality of this situation for the last four years has been that the Chinese could force the NKs to accede to pretty much any deal at any time, but have been unwilling to do so. The focus of American diplomacy for the last four years has been to convince the Chinese to do just that. The actual diplomatic triumph of the Bush administration was to convince the governments of South Korea and Japan to go along with that.....The other thing that just changed was the Japanese election. Koizumi's party massively increased its majority in the lower house. Koizumi has made no secret that he wants to increase military spending and to reverse the constitutional "pacifism" provision. The idea of a remilitarized Japan willing to project military power outside of Japanese territory gives everyone else in the region the willies, and it would be a lot easier for Koizumi to pull that off if Japan were seen by Japanese voters as seriously imperiled by an nearby insane regime (i.e. NK). Worse, if NK actually develops nukes and sets one off, SK would unquestionably do the same. So would Taiwan. And there's a damned good chance that it could convince Japanese voters that Japan needed to become a nuclear power, too, even despite the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or even because of it, because of the unacceptable chance that Japan might become the target of an NK nuke. If a remilitarized Japan terrifies everyone in that region, the idea of a remilitarized Japan with nuclear weapons gives them the hives....So I think that what has happened is that the leadership in China has finally decided that there's no hope of wringing concessions from the US regarding Taiwan, and has realized that if the NK situation isn't resolved soon that things will actually get a whole lot worse for China. For the moment China remains the only nuclear power in the region, and they'd just as soon keep it that way. Thus they finally decided to force NK to deal.

So, then, China may have forced North Korea to make a deal. But why would North Korea turn around and go back on that deal within 24 hours? Again, Den Beste:

After the US and Japan stopped shipping in petroleum, that left China as NK's sole source of supply of energy, via a pipeline which, apparently, China has shut down several times in order to bring pressure to bear on Pyong-Yang....NK's leaders desperately want a significant energy generation facility of some kind which they themselves control, so that others can't shut it off at a moment's notice. It can't be based on fossil fuels because NK has no native source of supply for the fuel and can't afford to buy it at world market prices. So it's got to be a nuclear power plant, and the reason they're asking for a light-water-reactor is that those kinds of reactors are not well suited for production of weapon's-grade fissionables, and thus would -- they hope -- be acceptable to their enemies.

There's more there and you should read the whole thing.

Iowa Technology Quadrangle

Dick Doak uses his column in the Register today to tout an idea called the Iowa Technology Quadrangle. The idea is that you use Iowa and Iowa state as magnets for high-technology businesses.

This is not wholly without merit. Doak, of course, turns to one of the Register's standard shiboleths about funding the schools at the end of the column. And, he's rather short on details about how giving the universities more money would help accomplish the goal of drawing business here. But, all in all, as Doak columns go, this one is short on left-wing rhetoric.

My personal idea would be that you create a couple of different enterprise zones which focus on the specialty of each university. I'd have an I-35 corridor that revolves around genetic modification of agricultural products, vet medicine and engineering. Then, I'd have a US.Rt. 218/I-380 corridor that is based upon medicine, drug development, and bio-mechanical engineering. Within those corridors, we'd streamline necessary certification processes, lessen beaurocracy, and lower business tax rates.

This goes somewhat against my typical position that taxes and red tape should be reduced across the board in Iowa. True. But, I look at this as something of a compromise position. I'd like to see the state's economy modernize and I don't want my idea of perfection to become the enemy of that good. Some sort of idea like the Quadrangle, or some form of developmental corridors might have the ability to encourage some entrepenuership here in Iowa utilizing tools we already have.

It isn't the whole thing, and it's better than any of the developmental proposals we've got now (buying the short-term loyalty of out-of-state businesses, essentially bribing our manufacturers to stay with cash outlays, cutting taxes on everyone under the age of 30, etc.).

One item in Doak's column that I'd like to know about is when he mentions that we'd need to change the state's intellectual property laws as they relate to the universities. To what is that a reference?

From the "We'd Stop Threatening to Stab You if You'd Give us Guns to Shoot You With" Department

In the morning, my wife likes to listen to NPR. Today, she bounds into the room and says to me, "North Korea is going to give up their nuclear weapons program." I responded with a drowsy, "Huh, so what? They're lying."

So, I really love this AP story in the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier. Check out this graph from the article.

North Korea said Tuesday it would not dismantle its nuclear weapons program until the United States first provides an atomic energy reactor, casting doubt on its commitment to a breakthrough agreement reached at international arms talks.

That takes balls. I mean, I know it's all a ruse to end the talks without personally ending the talks. But even at that, it's a truly chutzpah-rich way to do so.

And, really, I love the line from the AP that this move is "casting doubt" on North Korea's "commitment" to the agreement. Ha ha ha. As if there was any doubt left to be cast about. When it comes to the gargoyles that run North Korea, only the AP could possibly still have some credulousness.

Quite the Fringe Benefit

What would you call a job where you could give yourself, upon your own initiative, a raise? And not just any raise; not some two-and-a-half percent cost-of-living adjustment. No, I'm talking a hefty thirteen percent take-it-to-the-bank raise.

Here in Des Moines, we call that job "City Council Member."

The raise means that the city council goes from making $19,465 for a part-time job to making $22,000 for the same part-time job. But wait, it gets better. This raise was voted into existence even though the city is facing a $5.3 million budget shortfall next year. There's more. The city council also gets free--FREE--healthcare coverage for themselves and their families. The taxpayers of Des Moines are picking that up cost to the tune of an average $12,000 per council member. Then, they get $50 per week in expense money ($2,600 a year) and also $32 per month to defray cell phone costs. Total compensation package will work out to, on average, about $37,000. Did I mention it's a part-time job?

Props to council members Mike Kiernan and Christine Hensley for voting against this.

Kiernan said he'd be a hypocrite to give himself a raise after he voted earlier this year against raises for some other city employees.

Hensley said the raise is wrong, particularly since health insurance costs have jumped roughly 80 percent since the last salary increase.

I Hate Traffic Controls

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate red lights with the white-hot-passion of a thousand burning suns. As God as my witness, I spend forty-two hours a day sitting at red lights--mostly waiting for the left turn arrow at this one intersection just west of my office.

Anyway, 29's got a link up to the most nefarious traffic control system: the intersection camera. (Insert booing and hissing here.) It seems that accidents are up in Davenport where the system was installed, the number of accidents went up, mostly on the back of a 220% increase in rear-enders.

But, far be it for the city to admit that the cameras are to blame when people slam on their brakes to avoid a ticket. No, the cameras are responsible only for the accidents that didn't happen. Oh yeah, and responsible for $234,000 in revenue for the city. Afterall, they aren't really responsible if your insurance premiums go up because of all the rear-end accidents in town.

Reflections on The Game

Tributes continue to roll in from around the bloggosphere celebrating the Cyclones' glorious, although somewhat unexpected victory.
From Iowahawk:

Well, there went the entire football season. Ughhh. Congrats to the Cultivatin' Clodhoppers for a convincing victory, and for giving me a reason to turn off the TV in disgust and retreat to the garage.

From Law and Disorder:

Game Results: Bah, look it up yourself!!

From Hawkeye Republican:

TOP TEN ISU JOKES: I am still extremely bitter about losing the game. As a result, I feel a compelling need to mock Iowa State--let alone considering that it is funny enough that we would lose by a fluke to such an irredeemable team.

Oh, and about #7, maybe you should count the party-goers in the parking lots who came up from Iowa City without tickets.

From One of Us:

Yes, the Hawks lost to the Clowns. My Saturday was horrific. But, we'll pick ourselves up and move on. There is a long season ahead and I'm no fairweather fan.

From The Patron Saint of Mediocrity:

[message deleted – should a saint say such things?]

From Yin Blog:

Well, that was a pretty bad weekend for the Big-10 conference, wasn't it? The top three ranked teams all lost: ND def Mich, 20-3; Texas def. OSU, 25-22; and of course, ISU def. Iowa, 23-3 (a debacle that my baby son, who's not allowed to watch TV yet, got to sneak peek at when I was waiting for the takeout order at Oyama). Hey, at least Michigan and Ohio State lost to ranked teams -- and in OSU's case, one ranked higher. What's Iowa's excuse?*

From Tigerhawk:

There is not too much to say about the Big Ten's woeful showing over the weekend, as it's (formerly) top ten ranked football teams all failed to deliver victories. Iowa was the biggest disappointment, losing 23-3 to arch rival Iowa State. Drew Tate was knocked out of the game early and the Hawkeyes never mounted much of a challenge. Perhaps Iowa State will turn out to be a very good team this year and this loss will not look so bad in a couple of months, but I doubt it. Last week, in my preview, I picked Iowa in a "laugher" (providing concrete evidence that anybody placing any kind of wager based on my picks is a damn fool.)

From Stranger in a Strange Land:

Let me start by offering what congratulations I am capable of to Iowa State and its fans. At the very least Iowa State's fans took advantage of the litany of Iowa mistakes. The Cyclone teams of the 1990s, even when given five extra chances, still would have found a way to blow the game. That said, with Iowa State able to dodge both Texas and Oklahoma this year and with the North Division in the shambles that it is, Iowa State has a pretty good chance to win eight or nine games, make the Big XII title game and get promptly trounced by Texas (or OU depending on what happens in the Red River Shootout)….

From my co-blogger Jeff

Fine. Good game. Whatever. Wake me when you’re ready to play USC.

Attempts to reach my co-blogger Chad were unsuccessful. Apparently his cell phone is out of order.

My condolences to all of you. I probably would have felt the same if the results were reversed.

But they’re not.

Downtown Update: Part 2

Hubbell Realty announced yesterday that it is planning on building a series of brownstone-style townhomes on a block just north of Grand Ave. between 2nd Ave. and 3rd St. in downtown Des Moines. For any locals, this across the street from the Civic Center Court Apartments.

The best part is that Hubbell does not plan on asking the city for any incentives to make this $13 million development happen (though they are still getting $750K in tax credits from the state, so it isn't perfect).

Currently, the space where these brownstones will go is a parking lot. I always thought that it would make a good location for some type of grocery or discount store. Then again, that may be because I was living about a block away at the time and found driving down to the Hy-Vee on SE 14th to be a real pain. I'm willing to admit that this idea is probably better.

News from Around the World

Is it possible that there is a bit of a free-market trend in the electorates of the world? Take a look at three situations (that I'll cover in order from most believable to most stunning).

Election 1

Japan just re-elected Prime Minster Junichiro Koizumi on the back of his single-minded promise to privatize Japan's postal service/bank. The bank portion of this behemoth controls some $3 trillion (yes, with a 't') of the retirement savings of Japan's citizens. Japan's markets lept over 1.5% on the news of Koizumi's win.

Election 2

In Germany a woman who has been referred to as Margaret Thatcher Lite heads a party that maintains a slim lead in polls leading up to Sunday's elections. Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats might still lose, but it's interesting that their ahead considering an almost universal consensus that she has all the charisma of a wet noodle. But, she does have ideas for bringing around Germany's lagging economy.

Election 3

It's still a couple of years away, but the two leading contenders for France's Presidency in 2007, are both touting tax cutting, the value of hard work, and a reduction in governmental red tape that stifles economic growth. The Economist points out that:

Since politicians returned from their summer break, the pair have been competing to upstage one another. In a speech last week, Mr de Villepin unveiled a new phase of reforms, including the promise of income-tax cuts in 2007. Mr Sarkozy replied with two separate speeches this week, launching his own raft of proposals, and declaring that “nothing, and nobody, will stop me going all the way”. At the party's summer school, in front of the television cameras, Mr de Villepin kept Mr Sarkozy waiting in a beachside café while he jogged along the sand and dived into the ocean. Until recently, it seemed the popular Mr Sarkozy had no credible rival on the right. No longer. One poll this week put Mr de Villepin's popularity as a potential 2007 presidential candidate at 57%, second only to Mr Sarkozy, at 63%.

While there is not real movement afoot, that I'm aware of, in France that's pushing for free-market reforms, the fact that the leaders of each of the parliament's main parties are talking about it indicates that perhaps France is on the verge of at least opening up its labor market.

Perhaps this is all indicative of nothing. As the famous saying goes, all politics is local. It's entirely possible that it's just a series of coincidences that pushing for free-market reform seems to be working in several different places. But, whether its just coincidence or somehow related, it's still a good thing.

Joe Confirms What You Always Suspected...

...State legislators often don't really understand what they are doing.

Blogkeeping

I've updated the bejabbers out of the links sidebar. Some new blogs. Some updated links. A handfull of removals. If anyone finds any that aren't working, let me know.

Chrenkoff: Signing Off

Well, this is sort of a bummer. A guy who was doing yeoman's work in highlighting that not all the news out of Iraq was as bad as the media would have you believe has made his last post.

Take care, Chrenkoff. They'll always be a spot for you in the blogosphere.

If You Can't Beat Them, Sue Them

A Washington, D.C.-based worker's rights group has filed a suit against Wal-Mart for the labor practices of companies that Wal-Mart buys goods from its stores from.

Well, not really. That's not quite right.

Actually, they sued Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart requires that its suppliers not use sweatshop labor. And, if the supplier doesn't adhere to Wal-Marts standards (which are generally more stringent than local laws in those countries require), then Wal-Mart won't do business with that company.

Wal-Mart's intent in having such agreements was to get worker's rights groups in the U.S. off their back. Stung by criticism that Wal-Mart was supporting child labor (in countries where such is allowed), Wal-Mart created a set of standards that it's suppliers would have to meet. Then, Wal-Mart includes those standards--most likely incorporating them by reference in an appendix--to the purchase agreements it gets with foreign suppliers. Good for Wal-Mart, right?

Wrong.

Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, a workers' rights group in Washington, D.C. has filed a suit on behalf of employees of various Wal-Mart suppliers throughout the world. Alleging that Wal-Mart has not been enforcing its standards (apparently by not terminating its relationship with companies that fall short), the group states that Wal-Mart owes these employees. The theory that they are relying upon is that the employees of these foreign companies are what is known as a "third-party beneficiary" of the contract between Wal-Mart and its suppliers and therefore have the right to enforce it.

Now, I almost guarantee that this claim is hogwash.

First off, I am willing to bet that the contract with the various suppliers comes right out and says that there are no third-party beneficiaries intended and that no other party shall be granted the right to sue under the contract.

Second, and more importantly, I am willing to bet that the contract does not say, "We here at Wal-Mart have the authority to step in and clean up your employment practices if you fail to do so." No, what it almost certainly says is something like, "If you don't live up to these standards, Wal-Mart has the right to terminate this agreement with no penalty and will owe nothing further to you."

That second point is very important because the lawsuit apparently alleges that Wal-Mart is not following the contract and that's why these people have a right to sue. Well, even if Wal-Mart is not following the contract, what these employees would get is not better working conditions. If Wal-Mart did what it said it would do, these people wouldn't get better working conditions; what they would get is fired when Wal-Mart quit buying their actual employers goods.

Notice that this rights group is not alleging any violation of the law. Nor are they alleging that Wal-Mart is actually running any sweatshops. What they are alleging is a tenuous contracts argument that has two big holes in it. I'll be surprised if there is a third-party beneficiary claim. And, even if you find a judge who will give you that one, Wal-Mart almost certainly doesn't have the right to step in and actually create a better working environment for these individuals.

So, what is driving this. Well, the organization that brought the suit has a web page that has a picture of the Wal-Mart logo behind bars with the word "GUILTY" plastered over the top of it. Hmmm...that strikes me as something that you do when you are more concerned with generating headlines than in generating new law.

This is a ploy intended to 1) get some press and donations for the organization pushing the suit, 2) generate some bad press for Wal-Mart, hoping that Wal-Mart will 3) pay them to go away.

Update: I just reread the linked article. The first time through, I missed the actual key paragraph.

The other class of Plaintiffs will be employees of California businesses which have been harmed by Wal-Mart's unfair labor practices, including Wal-Mart's false representations regarding compliance with its code of conduct, and which as a result have lost business and/or a competitive financial advantage. Within this class are also trade unions members who were forced to make wage and benefit concessions to allow their employers to try to compete with Wal-Mart. This class of plaintiffs will bring their claim under California's Unfair Business Practices Act, Section 17200.

So, that's the actual goal of the suit.

Downtown Housing Update

Driving around downtown Des Moines the other evening I saw flying from the Mulberry Building advertising the new residential lofts going into the building.

The webpage has floorplans, four small pictures purporting to be images of what the finished interiors will look like, and some pricing information. From the floorplans, it appears that while there is not underground parking, there is a nice storage unit, community room, and workout room in the basement.

Not bad.

New Template

Well, as you can see, I've installed a new format to the blog. I've been playing around with the fonts, so if anyone has any comments on the readability of the page, let me know.

I haven't gotten around to checking all of the links to make sure that they are still up to date. That'll have to be step two in this process.

I'd work on it more tonight, but I've received my third reminder that I have to do some Thank You cards from the wedding before turning in this evening. So far, we've knocked out about 3/4ths to 4/5ths of them. Not too shabby considering that we are only six weeks out from the wedding.

Four Years Later

Mark Steyn reviews the War on Terror four years in:

Four years ago, I thought the "war on terror" was a viable concept. To those on the right who scoffed that you can't declare war on a technique, I pointed out that Britain's Royal Navy fought wars against slavery and piracy and were largely successful. Of course, since then we've had the shabby habit of presidents declaring a "war on drugs" and a "war on poverty" and, with hindsight, that corruption of language has allowed Americans to slip the war on terror into the same category -- not a war in the sense that a war on Fiji or Belgium is a war, but just one of those vaguely ineffectual aspirational things that don't really impinge on you that much except for the odd pointless gesture -- like the shoe-removing ritual before you board a flight at Poughkeepsie. The "war on terror" label has outlived whatever usefulness it had.

What he doesn't really answer, though, is what would be a better name than War on Terror. Some have suggested that it should be the War on Islamists, or similar somesuch. However, I think that probably suffers from similar problems to War on Terror. It's too vague. Where is "Islamists" on a map? What is the strategic goal? What cities do you want to take? Where is the supply line that must be broken?

That's why I do believe that the President probably does have the best long term view of the situation. You've got to have nations in the middle east which are not calcified thugocracies bent on exporting their misery and violence. The best way to achieve that is by having viable democracies. That doesn't mean perfect democracies; it means that they have functioning governments that are essentially based upon elected representation.

The question is whether we have the attention span to see it through.

Update: Homercles is thinking along the same lines as me.

Big football game today

Today's game between Iowa and Iowa State is one that football fans in this state look forward to all year. I'm not going to make any snarky comments this year because I'm expecting a hard-fought game and good effort from both teams. So in that spirit, let me say good luck to both teams, and may they both be ranked in the top twenty next week.

Sunday is the fourth anniversary of 9/11

If al-Qaeda has the ability, you know they would love to celebrate the day with more fireworks. About a month ago, this warning came out about a possible attack using gasoline tank trucks against major cities. With our economy suffering under the burden of $3.00+ gas and $70 oil, an attack on energy production or distribution facilities has to be tempting.

All our resources must appear to them to be stretched to the breaking point. Since they watch CNN, they “know” all our National Guard troops are either in New Orleans or in Iraq, and FEMA is apparently in disarray. With DHS chief Chertoff having to personally get involved in the Michael Brown mess at FEMA, can the Homeland Security department handle current terror threats?

One explanation that FEMA people gave for not sending resources into New Orleans sooner was that they were holding back to make sure they would go where most needed. Was this because of disagreements with local authorities, basic sound military practice, or were they concerned about another possible threat elsewhere?

The terrorists have two objectives: to kill people and to damage our economy. In their ideal plan, they would drop a federal reserve bank onto a football stadium during the Superbowl. They are inventive and adaptive, even recruiting home-grown citizens in American prisons, and while we haven’t been hit with a successful attack in four years, that may be due to dumb luck as much as anything.

I have a lot of confidence in the FBI and the other agencies; clearly they are doing something right. It was partly luck that that customs agent squelched the millennium bomb plot, but it was also good training and proper motivation. Those agents not directly involved in the Katrina cleanup need to stay focused on the outside threats.

And let’s all keep our fingers crossed and our eyes open the next few days. It strikes me that we are in a particularly dangerous time period.

Do the Coaches Make Too Much?

The Register is asking if the football coaches at Iowa and Iowa State make too much money. In the abstract, it's easy to say that Kirk Ferentz and Dan MacCarney are quite overpaid when you discover that they are two of the three highest paid individuals on the state payroll. (Number 2 is Iowa men's basketball coach Steve Alford.)

But we don't live in a land called "Abstract." We live here in the real world. And in that real world, you'll discover that Ferentz is right in the middle of the scale for Big 10 coaches and MacCarney is near the bottom (number 10 of 12) in the Big 12. If you look at their records over the past three or four years, it's hard to argue that, comparatively speaking, Iowa is getting a pretty good bank for the buck.

Sheepdogs

My first pet was Rags, a big sheepdog with a profuse coat of fluffy white and grey hair that covered his eyes. Up until tonight, if you had said the word "sheepdog" to me, that's the image that I would have come up with.

But no more. Bill Whittle's got an essay up that has redefined the word for me. In it, he lays out that there are different "tribes" of people. This tribe has nothing to do with your race, creed, ethnicity, or gender. No, it has to do with your outlook on the world. There are Pink people and there are Grey people. Pinks believe in the power of emotion and empathy and working things out. Greys believe in finding the logical response. Whittle points out that on first blush, you might be tempted to associate Pinks with Democrats and Greys with Republicans, but that doing so would be incorrect. Just like it's not gender or religion or race, it also isn't about politics. It's about how you view your place in the world. And, to describe the groups, he uses the analogy of sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf." Or, as a sign in one California law enforcement agency put it, "We intimidate those who intimidate others."

He sums up these categories by saying:

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath--a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

The guys who post here are lucky enough to know a guy who qualifies as real sheepdog. I'd love to tell everyone all about him. But, he would absolutely die of embarrassment if we mentioned his name. So, we won't do that (and any of our friends who know who I'm talking about, I'd ask that you refrain from doing so either). But, he's a man of the absolute highest quality who is out there, probably even as I write this, doing what sheepdogs do--chasing down leads, sniffing out danger, and protecting all of us from the wolves that are out there.

So now, when I hear about sheepdogs, I'll no longer think of Rags. No. Instead, I'll think of my buddy protecting us.

And, to my friend, if you read this: Don't kick my ass. I mean "sheepdog" in the most endearing and heartfelt way.

What Jeff's Currently Reading

Got back from a Labor Day weekend trip to the eastern shore of Maryland where my brother-in-law lives. I'd never been to that part of Maryland before and what surprised the heck out of me was the amount of farming that was going on. Cornfields abounded.

But that's not what I'm really posting about.

Instead, I'm going to take a moment to discuss what I was reading on the airplane: How the Scots Invented the Modern World.

Now, I believe that just about ethnic group in the world makes the same type of claim that the author, Athur Herman, makes in this work. And you can't help but infer from the tone of the writing that the author is maybe just a little bit biased in favor of the Scots. But, that being said, you can't help but be impressed by the number of important intellectuals who come out of Scotland over the course of three or four generations in the 18th and 19th centuries. While David Hume, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin may be the most famous, important doctors, industrialists, inventors, and architects all make appearances.

Moreover, some of the background history presented ties in nicely with the descriptions of the Scotch-Irish described in one of my all-time favorite essay, on the Jacksonian Tradition, by Walter Meade. In the course of Herman's book, you get a real sense of the cultural traditions that spawned the Scotish enlightenment and also formed the back-bone of the Scotch-Irish mindset in the U.S.

Yeah, this isn't eveyone's cup of tea, but if you enjoy history, particularly discussions on the history of philosophical thought, then this book might be right up your alley.