Politics and Culture

Congratulations to the former Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky! I hope they have a blessed life together.

That the marriage was such a big deal got me thinking about marriage a bit. Why do people celebrate marriages? They don't celebrate going steady. I think people do for a couple of reasons. One is the permanent exclusivity of their love and the the other is the justification for the former: the expectation that they'll become a semi-independent, dedicated unit that will contribute to our collective future by populating it.

Which got me thinking again about a great book I read called Children on Men by P. D. James. In the book, mankind has lost the capacity to have children. The book, written in the early nineties makes the observation that because of this worldwide malady, people have taken to marrying the same sex (!) or have abandoned marriage altogether. I wonder if people would still celebrate marriage if such a fate were to befall man or even bother with marriage at all.

The Children of Men by P.D. James

The movie, below, is not as thought-provoking.

Children of Men [Blu-ray]

This is a very interesting moral view. It's cruel to kill bulls, but not babies. Also curious, the defense of bull fighting doesn't make the case that animals don't need the level of dignity nor protection that people do: They argued that Catalonia would lose tourism.

Here's to 234 more.

Perhaps we can avoid this truly asinine, pointless behavior.

Violence is pointless, isn't it? Let me check the lefty blogs...no condemnations, although I see some comments on police strategy. Hmm. Maybe not all violence is stupid. Maybe we shouldn't coexist... with capitalists. I'm sure theses people would be as non-judgmental if it were Tea Partiers who burned cars.

I have an idea: Declare that everybody caught rioting would be kicked out of grad school or at least have their financial aid or unemployment reduced.

Or, hold the G20 in Texas next time.

People who know about this stuff say that the biggest weakness in left-leaning economics is that leftists fail to factor for adjustments to economic incentives. Or, they think that raising taxes ten per cent will yield the same percentage of revenue, taxing payrolls won't affect employment, and people will just work out of habit or patriotic duty.

Here

There is no greater time than now to build the YCL - with so many young people turning their backs old dogmas and ideology and fervently searching for answers to the problems we face. The door is wide open for a mass, broad and strong YCL - if we are willing to open it. So I charge everyone here at the Convention, to open the door, step through, and join me and others in building the future of the Party through building and growing the Young Communist League.

From the Communist Party convention.

Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974. I wonder what would happen if non-occupied Cyprus sent rockets into the occupied side. What if a peace flotilla tried to get on that side?