Karl Gallagher

A brief index to my major posts:

War
I'm an advocate of taking the offensive in the Global War On Terror, the official name for our war against the Islamofascists. I've done a Venn Diagram showing how different current conflicts relate to the war as a whole, and a state diagram showing the different strategies available to us and their possible outcomes. I think there's a limited amount of time to win before a catastrophe is inevitable.

Politics
I've looked at better ways to categorize views than the "left-right" axis, why our political system forces everyone into two parties, and how we could modify the system to better express everyone's views. I also discuss how our political divide comes from different visions of how families should be organized and why the "War on Drugs" is the real threat to our freedoms.

My Beliefs
Things I believe in, and the books which most influenced me. I want to lay out the assumptions behind my beliefs clearly. If one of those principles is disproved I'll have to rethink my stands.

If you're looking for a particular issue, here's a few I've got opinions on:
Abu Ghraib, Gay Marriage/Polygamy, Global Warming and who to believe about it, Torture, War on Drugs (more here), Iran, putting the Army on a war footing, Trinity River Vision, civil war, political quizzes, mistakes made in Iraq.

Jonah Goldberg explains why writing his book made him more of a libertarian:

What I generally (though not absolutely) oppose are efforts to build the state while invoking the language of community as if the two are the same thing. The state isn't the community and the community isn't the state. And what I passionately and absolutely oppose in almost every instance (freeing slaves, smashing Jim Crow, are good exceptions to this rule) are efforts to destroy traditional community with inorganic state-imposed customs all the while claiming to be on the side of community.

. . .

The fundamental insight of libertarianism is that the government is the government. It cannot be your mommy, your daddy, your big brother, your nanny, your friend, your buddy, your god, your salvation, your church or your conscience. It is the government. A big bureaucracy charged with certain responsibilities, some of which it is qualified to carry out, many of which it is not.

My main thought on the Democratic nomination race so far is "What were they thinking?"

If you look back at the last century's worth of Presidents, there seem to be two resume items voters look for: executive experience (state governor or vice president) or significant war service. Even the ones who don't have that have some equivalent executive experience (Hoover fed Europe after WWI, Taft was governor of the occupied Philippines). Having that isn't a guarantee of winning, since the other party usually also nominates someone with a good resume, but the winners have one or both of those items.

The Dems had someone who met that requirement--Bill Richardson--and could've talked some war vets into running (Webb, Kerrey, Clark). Instead they've settled on two senators who've never been in uniform. I suspect either one will be rejected by the middle section of the electorate for not meeting the prerequisites.

Which is a shame. Elections are how we settle things in a democracy. Each one is a chance to take an issue and get the opinion of the American people as a whole, looking at pros and cons. If the vote is on "Is X qualified to handle the presidency?" then there's another four years until we can try to settle an issue. One side of the issue will have lost the election but claim that "The American people still favor our position on ABC. The election doesn't affect that--we only lost because Dukakis/Dole/Kerry/TBD was a lousy candidate." We've got plenty of that already.

It's election time again here. The primary is March 4th so early voting starts on Monday.

First choice is whether to vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries. The only reason to vote for Dems would be for the presidential race. Not many Democrats win in Tarrant County. Neither Clinton nor Obama are calling to me--I'm expecting to vote for McCain in November--and I don't feel like meddling in a primary when I won't vote for the winner.

So, it's the Republicans for me. For president I can vote for McCain to keep running the score up against Huckabee or for Thompson to show I care about the war and the First Amendment. That one may not get decided until I'm standing in front of the voting booth. Senator is easy: Cornyn is sane, Kilgore isn't.

Court of Criminal Appeals: given the data I prefer Francis.

Board of Education: Pass. I don't care which creationist is better than the other, I'll be voting for the Democrat.

State Rep: I'll be voting for Annunziato. Not because I'm impressed with Dr. Tom, I'm not. He's not bringing anything special to the job and his complaints against Geren are weak--ambiguous votes being inflated into crimes. As for calling him a liberal . . . no. Not even in Tarrant County. Okay, I'll accept he's one of the more liberal members of the local Republican Party, but that's hard over on the conservative end of the spectrum. What I'm doing is voting against Geren for all the reasons Geren says I should vote for him. He's a smart, hard-working, brings-home-the-bacon legislator. I don't want legislators bringing home bacon. That's not part of the job description. So better to have an unknown than someone who's good at doing stuff I don't want him to.

For the other judicial races I don’t have much to go by so I'm going to accept the bar association ratings and vote for the high scorers. Electing judges could work well if they took stands on issues, but that conflicts with the impartial role they have to have on the job. I think I'd rather they were appointed the way Federal ones are.

Sheriff: Incumbent Dee Anderson appears to be doing a good job and dealt with some major problems early in his tenure. The challenger is fonder of aggressive searches than I like--his town collects blood samples from anyone who refuses a breathalyzer--and is being cheered on by the unions. I'll vote for Anderson.

Looks like Kinky Friedman is running for Gov again, and I may vote for him again. By the looks of this shirt I'd better:

"the Kinkster lets us know it is time to get serious!"

"Vote for me or I'll put my cigar out in your eye" pretty serious. I thought torture was just going to be an issue in Federal elections . . .

Okay, the armadillo shirt tempts me.

***
Andrew Ferguson sums up why I liked Fred Thompson and why his campaign failed. Possibly an early start and better management skills might've helped him build the organization needed to win . . . but if the guy would rather watch TV by himself than schmooze big-money donors he's not going to win in the current system. As one introvert to another it makes me like him more but I'm glad I didn't toss any money at the campaign.

The article finishes up with a great description of why I hate modern Presidential campaigns. We seem to be filtering the pool to only get the ones too ambitious to be trusted with the power of the office. Very depressing for small-government types like me. No one's going to go through all that to reduce the power of the job.

***
I'm hoping for a tie in the Super Tuesday primaries. Seems the best bet for having my primary vote mean something.

Two years ago I was hoping my state rep, Charlie Geren, would lose his primary against the challenger, Chris Hatley. No luck. So I was glad to see someone else trying to challenge Geren this year.

Until I started looking at the challenger.

Tom Annunziato has been sending a steady stream of fliers to my mailbox. But there's not much content to them. It's mostly been biography, and while I admire him for serving a hitch in the Air Force it doesn't translate directly to why I should vote for him. The issue statements don't have much either, they're boilerplate that every Republican in the state would sign on to. And there's nothing about why I shouldn't vote for Geren.

It made me start wondering why the guy is running if he's not trying to win. One possibility is that he's running to be the Representative from Optometry. Given the level of government regulation they have to put up with I can't blame the profession for wanting their own man in Austin. But that's no reason for me to vote for him--and given that those kinds of regulations wind up protecting the providers from competition more than they protect patients I'm rather they stuck to lobbying instead of buying a seat.

The other theory out there is that Annunziato is a pawn in Speaker Craddick's strategy to keep his job. That fits the data pretty well. Dr. Tom was asked to run to knock off this annoying back-bencher and is being carried by the establishment.

The establishment, according to another site, being political consultants Ryan Erwin and Cory Kennedy. Those guys I feel sorry for. They've got to build a campaign with no platform, no dramatic biography, and a "play nice" constraint that keeps them from going negative. They must have been really desperate for material to call the candidate's 18 year old daughter to ask her to say something nice about her dad ("I love my dad very much and I know that he would do only wonderful things as State Representative" - latest flier). I admire their work ethic. But it's not going to make me vote for a candidate whose campaign theme song is Carla Ulbrich's "I Have Nothing To Say".

EDIT: Chris Hatley speaks up for Tom Annunziato in comments and answers a lot of my concerns.

With the current chaos in the presidential race I might actually get to cast a real vote in the Texas primary. So let's look at where the current candidates stand philosophically. Here's my take on where they stand on domestic economic and social freedom, using the Libertarian Party's axes:

NOTE: Two-third of the readers are probably objecting to some or all of the placements here. I'm doing this subjectively, and everyone always thinks the candidates they like are closer to the middle than the ones on the other side. Even people who agree on where the candidates stand on every issue would get different graphs because of how they weight the different issues against each other. In particular there's a bias in this graph because I put zero weight on abortion rights to keep Paul and Huckabee from being mixed in with the other Republicans. The point here is to compare the relative positions of the candidates. Please feel free to post your own version of the graph and link to it in comments.

On this view I'm closest to Ron Paul. Not a big surprise given that my first presidential vote went to him.

But that graph ignores how the candidates stand on Iraq and the war against Islamofascism generally. So let's add a third axis to the graph, ranging from Hawk (put out all the effort needed to win) to Dove (bring the troops home today). This graph shows their positions on that axis vertically and against the top left-bottom right diagonal of the first graph horizontally (so pure liberals and conservatives would be in the middle).



That gives a good idea of how I feel about the candidates. Paul has some good stands but is hopeless on the most important issue. Thompson is a solid hawk and enough of a federalist to make me comfortable with him domestically. Giuliani and McCain I have qualms about but I'd vote for them in the general election without hesitation. Romney I have doubts about. Clinton I'd take over Huckabee. The rest . . . no.

The Anglosphere Challenge is a very powerful work. It looks at English-speaking societies as a single culture, not just united by a language, but also by a set of traditions for organizing a society. Individualism, common-law, property rights, resistance to central authority, and spontaneous formation of social networks are all common traits. Bennett looks at where this culture will take us, and how we came to be that way.

It might be disconcerting to lead off a book with much historical material by looking at the future, but it's a good way to stress why we should care about Anglospheric culture. Bennett discusses the current wave of technological growth, the upcoming revolutions in bio- and nanotech, and the possibility of the Singularity. He lays out how the capabilities needed to develop this technology are best found in the Anglosphere. This drives home why we need to care about the history that he's about to lay out. This section can be read in the sample chapter on the web.

From that it moves on to defining the characteristics of the Anglosphere, looking at their historical backgrounds, and reviewing the history of how the Anglosphere spread from England to Australia. The boundaries are naturally fuzzy. Canada has a large population who prefer speaking French and using civil law (the USA has a very small one). India has retained some Anglosphere practices from its colonial period but is too different to be considered part of a common civilization. Other former British colonies are also on the edge.

In discussing the inner cultural currents Bennett draws on the Nine Nations of North America and expands on it, showing how the different nations descended from different Old Country stocks, and how they've changed over time. He also discusses some traditions that have been fading away such as the reluctance to support a standing army.

One observation that struck me was that federalist systems work best when they have less than a dozen subordinate bodies. As the number of lower level groups grow they have a harder time cooperating to resist intrusions on their authority and power shifts to the central government. The United States seems to be a clear case of that. As more and more states were added the Federal government grew beyond the limits that the Founders intended.

A Thought Experiment
I wonder if we'd be able to reverse that by merging the fifty states into ten. That would give the new states enough clout that they'd be able to push back on Federal powergrabs, instead of rolling over and hoping for a piece of the pie. The new states can form logically from our existing ones. There's a number of ways to arrange them, but here's one possibility:



The four largest (CA, TX, NY, and FL) are too big to drop into one of the new groupings--they'd overwhem the rest of their cluster. Without them the others can be grouped by following the lines of the 9NNA and red-blue state maps. The Foundry would be the swing state for Presidential elections, assuming the new states kept all their Senators. The current balances in Congressional power would hold (a Constitutional amendment would be needed to make this happen, of course).

One of the ways this could decentralize government power is the military. The ten states would each have enough resources to support a few brigades of their own. The US Army could be reduced to a coordination service while state forces are deployed to fight wars and meet other needs. That would revive an old, old tradition--raising forces specifically for a war.

Go back a century or more and the standing army was only able to handle border skirmishes. For real campaigns the King or President had call for volunteers, or for states or counties to send their own regiments. The movie Elizabeth had an illustration of that--an English offensive failed because the bishops discouraged men from volunteering. Relying on the states to supply troops would be another mechanism for testing popular support for a war.

It might also reduce friction over the war. Let's look at how waging the Iraq War might have worked in the Ten States system. Once congress approved it the states would offer troops--every state except Ecotopia and New England. Once the occupation turned ugly California, New York, and Foundry would pull their troops. That leaves the burden of fighting on those who support it.

Since it's mostly of interest to the media fans on my flist, I put my take on the writers' strike on my other journal. Short version: I support it, in a Leninesque "the worse, the better" sort of way.

This is a thought experiment I've been kicking around for a few years without it becoming a real essay or part of a fictional setting. It's still half-baked but it's an interesting blue-sky idea, so I'm just going to turn it loose and see if anyone else can do something with it.

---

Let's have a situation where we can start from scratch. Say a post-apocalyptic USA, with new societies trying to rebuild in the rubble. One little city-state is run by a Baron, who got his job in the traditional fashion of imposing order on anarchy. Now he's converted the place to a constitutional monarchy.

The Baron needs tax payments to run his government, but he has a clever scheme to maximize his revenue while minimizing the pain and work in obtaining it. All tax payments are voluntary. That's right, you don't have to pay, and if you do pay you decide how much. Lots of outfits run that way but the baron can do better than announcing "gold circle donors"--he can give real power as a reward to the biggest payers. Your tax payment determines your status for the next year.

The ten biggest taxpayers for the year will be "councilors". They're entitled to regular private meetings with the Baron, attend weekly sessions together to advise him, and have the power to propose new laws. Some councilors are representatives of an organization (for ex., the farmers can all chip in to have "Farmer's League" seat).

The next hundred or so taxpayers are "senators". They can debate and amend proposed laws, and a majority must approve a law for it to go to the Assembly.

Anyone making a substantial contribution--say about 5% of the median annual wage--is an Assemblyman. The Assembly votes on laws, but can only accept or reject them. Approval by the Assembly makes a proposal the law of the land. The government budget must also be approved. This could be a secret ballot. Note that this payment is smaller than 99% of Americans' federal income tax payments today, so the Assembly could be the vast majority of the adult population.

The lowest level of taxpayer is the "pennyman". Any contribution gets this status. Various legal privileges are only available to taxpayers.

Nonpayers are legal residents but can't file court complaints, enforce contracts, etc. without a pennyman acting on their behalf. Anyone receiving welfare or equivalent from the Barony is forced into this status.

For all the levels of taxpayers they're ranked within their group by how much they've paid. So meetings of the council, senate, and assembly always have everyone lined up to go in from highest payment to lowest, and they get to speak in debate, make proposals, and cast votes in that order too.

---

Twain fans may notice some inspiration from The Curious Republic of Gondour.

The premise of this government is that people are hierarchy climbers, and if you set up a system where they can pay to get to the next level they will. I suspect if this system was tried the government would be getting more money than it really needed.

So would it work?

The first concern is how much power the rich can grab. A Rockefeller will always have more clout than the average citizen. This trick is to make sure they don't dominate it. This system has two checks on the rich. One, they have pay out a large chunk of their money to have one of the top seats. The wealthy can easily bankrupt each other if they keep bidding high for the council seats. Two, the assembly provides a broad-based check on any scheme the council comes up with.

The second is whether this would produce a sufficient and stable revenue flow. It would be prone to bidding wars when someone wants to join the council and low payments when people are content to keep their current positions. This is probably very sensitive to the exact mechanisms. Having a "secret ballot" where payments aren't revealed until after it's too late to pay more for that year would get very different behavior from a system where someone can pay more to move up the ladder any time during the year. More revenue could probably be gained by creating an intermediate status between the pennyman and assemblyman. But the managers of baronial public works projects would always be biting their nails on tax day.

Would it produce good results? I think so. There's two ways for popular opinion to shoot down a bad idea--a no vote in the assembly and withholding of taxes. If suddenly the barony doesn't have the revenue to support a project it's dead. On the flip side anyone can propose a law if he can raise the cash from his own savings or getting donations. He doesn't have to get a permanent seat, he can just sit on the council for one year, propose his law, and go back to his regular life. So there's viable positive and negative feedback mechanisms built in.

Is it fair? No. But that's okay with me. Even in the fairest systems there's a lot of inequality. What happens is that the imbalances get hidden under the façade of equality, until the system cracks. This system brings out the inequalities to where everyone can see them, and makes sure the people getting extra power can't do it for free. So while it's less fair in theory it might actually be more fair in practice.

My biggest concern--and this I'd appreciate help on from my readers--is what do I call it? The best I've come up with so far is "taxpayer-rule" but tracking down the greek for "taxpayer" has been a pain. I think it might be "phorologoumenos". "Phorologoumenocracy" doesn't have that great a ring to it. Anybody have a suggestion?

Kinky Friedman has some proposals for how to improve Texas politics. Apparently he's coming out with a book to discuss them in more detail, but most of these are ideas I've seen before so I'll take a crack at them just from his short version.

"Redistricting reform. I propose using the Iowa model of a nonpartisan redistricting commission."
Oh, hell yes. Redistricting is a huge problem. Right now incumbents are picking their voters instead of the other way around. I can think of more elegant ways to do it (let any legislator make a proposal, select the one with the smallest total boundary length) but I'm not fussy.

"Initiative and referendum. Real political reforms occur when citizens are able to place their own initiatives on the ballot."
This has its own problems, but it's a useful way to by-pass the incumbents on things both parties agree on. I support this.

"Same-day voter registration. This will make it possible for people to register and vote on Election Day."
"Mandatory voting. Every citizen is required to show up at the polls and have his or her name checked off; if you don’t show up, you’re fined something nominal, like twenty bucks. "
We have a consensus in this country that it's too much to ask someone to sacrifice two years--and possibly all--of his life for the privilege of voting. But I don't think asking them to register a few weeks in advance is too much. Likewise I don't think the voters we have now are too well informed on the issues and need to be diluted with the ignorant. If people need more motivation to go vote, let's give them something worth voting for.

"Fair ballot access. I had to collect more than 45,000 signatures in two months, and they all had to be notarized. [Make it easy for new candidates to get on the ballot]"
"Publicly funded campaigns. Publicly financed campaigns would eliminate the influence of special interests and would level the playing field for all candidates. "
These two contradict each other. If you implemented them together you'd have a lot of candidates just wanting to support themselves and a few buddies as they fool around for the campaign season. Whatever you pay for you get more of, so if we fund candidates they'll come out of the woodwork unless we have tight requirements to weed out the jokers. I'm all for easy access to the ballot. To go with that we should have easy fundraising, with no restrictions on donations except making each one public.

"Fair and open debates. A nonpartisan entity should be created to develop fair and clear criteria for the inclusion of all qualified candidates. And there should be many debates—the more, the merrier."
No matter how many times you stand the candidates on a stage together you're just going to get soundbites and conflicting assertions. If you want a useful debate, do it online, as text, with threads where the candidates can reply to each piece of an argument separately and link to supporting evidence. That'll get us some interesting results.

"Lobbying reform. Stop the revolving door between state service and lobbying. Place a ban on any Texas elected official or Texas state employee becoming a lobbyist in Texas within two years of leaving or retiring from his state position."
Sounds like treating a symptom to me. If we have a huge budget people will pound on the doors to get a slice of it. If we make the budget smaller they'll find more profitable things to do.

My Book To Help America.

hat tip to Rand Simberg.

Mark Steyn discusses Gibson's term for our present situation.

I am unhappy about how accurate that term seems to be.

We've already seen anthropogenic global warming believers endorsing the sale of indulgences, in the form of carbon offsets. They've also been eager to punish heretics. Now someone is proselytizing for it by reworking Pascal's Wager. I wonder which old Christian doctrine they'll be taking over next.

Christopher Hitchens writes on the death of Lt. Mark Daily in Iraq, and his role in encouraging Daily to enlist.

Another politics quiz. This one asks your opinions on a bunch of issues then tells you which candidate is closest.

But their answer code won't work in LJ. Nice picture of Fred Thompson as my "choice."

Note that that's a tie with Rudy Guiliani, broken randomly.

I'm not surprised to see Rudy and Fred at the top. I'd put McCain with them. The quiz probably marked him down for my don't-give-a-damn answers on campaign finance reform and immigration. It's not a bad quiz, my only objection would be that it doesn't give a way to weight some issues as more important than others.

That's a big part of how I rate candidates:

(Yes, I actually do this.)

Or rather that's what I do for state/local and peacetime elections. For federal offices I have a different function now:


So McCain, Guiliani, and Thompson are ones who can get my vote. Romney and Clinton I'm keeping an eye on. Edwards and Obama I'll be voting against. Doesn't look like there's anyone else who'll be worth considering by the time the primaries get to Texas. Assuming the candidates haven't been completely settled by then anyway so there's something for me to vote on.

That's a picture from the Move America Forward rally in Dallas I'm the guy near the center, holding a sign. It says "WE MUST WIN IN IRAQ" and got a good response from people. That "MUST" sums up my attitude and explains why I'm not taking seriously most of the noise over General Petraeus's report.

Most of the people saying "We're losing and the price is too high!" opposed invading Iraq in the first place. The ones delighted with reports of success consider Iraq just one part of an integrated global war. None of the facts Petraeus delivered are doing a damn thing to resolve that disagreement.

The argument in the USA is over assumptions. Islamofascist terrorism is a growing menace that wants to replace democracy with sharia law worldwide, or it's symptom of other issues that will randomly cause damage if not intensified by our actions. Our strategy for dealing with it should be to change the repressive order of the Arab nations, or isolate ourselves to minimize the provocations we make*.

Pick one set of assumptions and you get a policy for Iraq. I think the technological run-up to the Singularity provides such powerful weapons that the "Death to America" crowds can't be ignored and must be dealt with before they stumble on a way to shatter our nation. Given the alternatives--isolation, empire, genocide, and liberation--I favor liberating Arabs so they can have better things to do with their lives than launching suicide attacks on children**. Given those assumptions, some place has to be first and Iraq is a logical choice. I've never expected it to be quick, easy, cheap, or clean. We've tried different strategies. If Petraeus's doesn't work we can try another, or bring more resources to bear***. But avoiding the other options, and avoiding defeat, is worth a lot of American blood and treasure.

For someone with the opposite assumptions liberating Iraq could be a good thing if it can be done effortlessly, or for some a bad thing because it would enrage otherwise placid Arabs into becoming terrorists. Either way the invasion was a bad idea and no amount of hopeful signs now would change their mind.

That's the important dispute. Until we settle it the other arguments are just noise.



* Yes, there's a bunch of other strategies suggested, from a laser-beam focus on killing Osama as the end of our problems to the "nuke them now and get it over with" spasm. I'm concentrating on the most seriously advocated ones.

** True Jeffersonian democracy for Iraq would be nice, but what's needed is to provide useful choices for young men and eliminate the repression-driven anger that regimes deflect outwards. Something like 1950s South Korea, 1980s Mexico, or modern Turkey would be a success.

*** Keeping more troops in Iraq would require increasing the size of the Army, yes. I've been advocating that since 2002 and don't think a draft would be necessary or even helpful.

Saturday evening I went to the Move America Forward rally in Dallas. I made a sign saying "WE MUST WIN IN IRAQ" to carry. I actually got there early--all the bad traffic was on the Fort Worth side of the metroplex for once. The crowd was heavy on military families, usually with kids running about.

The caravan arrived on time. The roadies started setting up the stage while the leaders circulated. Deborah Johns and Debbie Lee came by and shook my hand. I have to say a gold star mom thanking me for being there really got to me.

The rally was on Flag Pole Hill, which is exactly what you'd expect from the name. We went up to the top and gathered in a courtyard around the flagpole. Jeff Bolton, a local talk radio guy, gave the opening talk and introduction. Diana Nagy sang the Star Spangled Banner and "Where Freedom Flies." Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson was the first speaker from the tour, focusing on the progress being made and the need to lobby Congress to support the war.



Here's a shot of the stage area while Buzz was talking. He's just to the left of the speaker in the center. Just to the right of the flagpole you can see Deborah Johns, Debbie Lee, and Diana Nagy in the middle. Jeff Bolton, the local talk radio guy is 2nd from the left. Just to the right of the foreground flag is one of the two cops who were present for the event. Not shown are the supporters (about 50-100 people, including a dozen kids) and counter protestors (6-9 Ron Paulites).

Deborah Johns is the mother of a Marine about to head back for his fourth tour in Iraq. She spoke about how proud she is of him, how much the troops have accomplished there, and the need to hold Congress accountable for their decisions.

Debbie Lee began by asking any other gold star family members to come forward. Two fathers did, one of whom had been standing right next to me. The first one (I'm ashamed to say I didn't catch his name) spoke to us about his pride in his son and what he'd done, and that not supporting the mission is also not supporting the troops. The second didn't want to address the crowd--he's the father of Braden Long, killed in Baghdad last month--so Debbie talked to him and then told us. After that she asked for a show of hands from blue star families (big cheers from the Marine t-shirted contingent) and veterans (I raised mine, even if I was a REMF).

Marc Alan Lee was Debbie's son. He died in Ramadi, covering medics as they evacuated another member of his team. She told us the story of that day. She also read to us a letter Marc had written the July 4th before he died, with his thoughts on how far back the mess in Iraq went and the good and bad in the USA. A philosophical young man. I was reminded of the poets lost in WWI and how we never really know how much we're losing with each death.

We closed with another song. After it broke up I offered my condolences to Braden's father (while feeling very useless inside). The MAF crew had a banner for us to sign to be delivered to the troops--that attracted a tight-packed crowd. And there was the obligatory table to t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. for us to buy. I picked up a shirt and a magnet, the same "Support Victory" design you see in my icon. I've ordered some more of the magnets.

I'm glad I went.

Looks to be an activist day for us this Saturday. First the whole family is going to a nurse-in at an Applebee's to protest their treatment of nursing mothers. I'm not a big fan of passing lots of laws to control rude behavior--it backfires too easily and gives jerks more tools for abusing people. But a completely informal way of telling stupid businessmen "You are pissing off the people who supply your profits, so shape up" I'm totally in favor of.

After that I'm heading to Dallas to cheer on the:


The Dallas rally is at Flag Pole Hill starting at 7:15pm and going for an hour. Here's the official description:

7:15 PM Dallas, TX
Pro-Troop Rally & Press Conference
Flag Pole Hill
Buckner & NW Highway
Bring letters, cards, notes of support & appreciation for our wounded warriors to this event, we will collect them and bring them to our recovering troops at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. at the conclusion of the national caravan.

The caravan is driving cross-country to lobby Congress to not surrender in Iraq. I think showing up to demonstrate my commitment is more of an impact than I can make on this blog.

Freeman Dyson on knowledge, ignorance, change, predictions, and duty:

The humanist ethic begins with the belief that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and now we are in charge. Humans have the right and the duty to reconstruct nature so that humans and biosphere can both survive and prosper. For humanists, the highest value is harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, disease and hunger, all the conditions that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. The humanist ethic accepts an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a small price to pay, if world-wide industrial development can alleviate the miseries of the poorer half of humanity. The humanist ethic accepts our responsibility to guide the evolution of the planet.

Oh, he also talks about global warming.