Culture: November 2008 Archives
Project Liberty: What Is the Tytler Cycle? Where Is the United States In This Cycle?
An 18th-century historian identified 9 phases through which societies cycle: Bondage, Spiritual Faith, Courage, Liberty, Abundance, Selfishness, Complacency, Apathy, Dependence, and back to Bondage. Where is the US?
Beware the church of climate alarm - Miranda Devine - Opinion - smh.com.au
"But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy - whether in the parliamentary offices of the world's largest trading bloc or in the living rooms of Blacktown.
"As the global financial crisis takes hold, perhaps people are starting to wonder whether the so-called precautionary principle, which would have us accept enormous new taxes in the guise of an emissions trading scheme and curtail economic growth, is justified, based on what we actually know about climate.
"One of Australia's leading enviro-sceptics, the geologist and University of Adelaide professor Ian Plimer, 62, says he has noticed audiences becoming more receptive to his message that climate change has always occurred and there is nothing we can do to stop it." (Via Alarming News.)
Bounded Rationality: Weekend at Gilcrease Museum
Ansel Adams photography exhibit -- 138 of his most famous prints -- runs through January 4, 2009.
Jonah Goldberg On Kathleen Parker s "G-O-D" Shame - Right Wing News
Commenter Bill Dalasio, a non-religious libertarian conservative, says the threat to his liberty isn't coming from "oogedy-boogedy" social conservatives: "Put bluntly, I can't help but feel I'm being sold a bill of goods here. Progressives, with the full consent of moderates,...chip away consistently and unabashedly at my freedom. All the while, telling me how scared I should be of the religious conservative bogeyman hiding under the bed." He cites smoking restrictions, speech codes, gun laws, the fairness doctrine, and mandatory recycling as examples.
Via the Cranky Conservative, who adds, "The essence of modern liberalism is a quest to perfect society. It really should come as no surprise, therefore, that it is the left that seeks to use government to achieve that end. More often than not, social conservatives are merely fighting against greater government intrusion."
RedState: How To Tell The "Culture Wars" Are Not Over
We can tell, because the Left was actively fighting for cultural hegemony in this election. In fact, the Left has been the aggressor all along:
"The point is this: we have political conflict over social and cultural issues because we have two sides that disagree on a broad range of issues, and neither is willing to change its position. If these issues were actually unimportant or indefensible, the side that was losing elections on them would throw in the towel and adapt its positions, as for example happened with the end of the political battles over segregation and Prohibition. And if cultural liberals disdained conflict, they would never start battles on these issues - yet they do so all the time. Indeed, abortion wasn't an issue in national politics until Roe v. Wade; the NRA wasn't a force in politics until liberal politicians pushed increasingly intrusive gun-control measures."
President Map - Election Results 2008 - The New York Times
More cool maps! An interactive map showing county-by-county results from 1992 to the present. You can even compare this year to a previous year. The only areas that got redder since 2004: Cajun Country, the Redneck Riviera, and a belt from western Pennsylvania, through W. Va., Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and into eastern Oklahoma -- the migration path of the Ulster Scots (including my mother's side of the family).
