The 28th Article

Forgot to mention the excellent Spectator editorial on Clause 28. Boris makes no bones about how silly he finds the debate:

Some people may think it important to demonstrate what they take to be society’s views on the question; some may think it deeply offensive. The salient point is that this is not a fit subject for law. The wish to be vaguely anti-poofter is not a good enough ground for a restriction on free speech; not when Tories are trying to contest another ban, of far greater importance, on a way of life which the public, alas, also finds unacceptable. If the Tories show illiberalism on Section 28, they can expect no mercy on hunting, and nor will they deserve it.

I ask the supporters of Clause 28, whether there is a law forbidding the promotion of bestiality in the classroom? There isn't, as far as I'm aware, and that should show how silly such laws are.

Advocacy journalism?

The news networks of course have a duty to alert the public to potential health risks, but they can go too far. One example seems to have occurred last week when CBS and CNN rose to the bait of a campaign by the Public Citizen advocacy group about the supposed dangers of acetaminophen (Tylenol). CBS reporter Sheryl Attkisson filed the following story on Sept. 20:

Acetaminophen is considered very safe in the proper dosages. But it's now in so many products, hundreds, that tens of thousands of people a year accidently overdose on it, some by taking multiple products like Robitussin for a cough and Tylenol for a headache. Both contain acetaminophen.

Mr. STEVEN COOPER (Wyeth Pharmaceuticals): Each individual product is safe, but the consumer has become confused, and unintentionally they can take multiple products containing acetaminophen and unknowingly find themselves in serious danger with liver toxicity.

ATTKISSON: Now an FDA advisory panel recommends new labels that warn consumers taking more than the recommended dose may cause liver damage, also not to use other products that contain acetaminophen because the dose can add up.

The new labels aren't a done deal. The FDA doesn't always follow the recommendations of its advisors. In fact, it rejected a similar proposal from an FDA advisory panel 25 years ago which said there should be liver warnings on acetaminophen products.

Practicising physician "Sydney Smith" has some excellent commentary on how the coverage has affected her patients over at Medpundit. In particular, she is worried about her patients growing scared of Tylenol:

The publicity over this, regrettably, is already making patients shy about using the drug. I had a couple of people tell me yesterday that they would rather use other over the counter analgesics for their minor arthritis pain, like Aleve and Motrin, because of the news reports about Tylenol’s dangers. Those drugs, unlike Tylenol, can cause bleeding ulcers and kidney damage, even when taken in the correct dose, making them riskier than Tylenol. If Public Citizen is truly concerned about public safety, they should consider the full consequences of their political action.

By pointing out potential health risks without mentioning why the medication is still better than the alternatives, CBS may have done its viewers more of a disservice than a service.

The Tipping Point

My wife, who worked in restaurants for several years, is rather outraged at the EU court decision that tips for waiters can form part of a minimum wage, because, when the customer pays a tip by credit card or cheque, he is paying the restaurant:

This is the most ass-backwards thinking I've seen from the EU yet (published in today's Electronic Telegraph). It's infuriating. When I tip a waiter whether it's cash or part of my credit card payment, I'm tipping the waiter for good service. I'm not tipping the restaurant. I pay the restaurant for the food I ate, I tip the waiter for the service I am given.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's allowing the restaurant owner to steal wages from his employees! What kind of promotion of "human rights" is this? I may be more pro-chefs than waiters but I waited tables too and this is just, well, just stupid.

ARGH!

I completely agree, although, to be fair, the UK courts had found the same way and legally their argument is pretty tight. It's still an abuse of the customer's trust, however. I always used to tip in cash in the UK. Now I remember why.

400,000 people can be wrong

Natalie Solent has an excellent post on some of the disparaging comments made about the Countryside march in the Grauniad. We should also note that Martin Luther King's civil rights march on DC only attracted about 250,000...

Global consequences

Tony Blair has released his dossier on Iraq (also available at the Number 10 site). The PM told Parliament:

'And if people say: why should Britain care? I answer: because there is no way that this man, in this region above all regions, could begin a conflict using such weapons and the consequences not engulf the whole world.'

I think he's probably right on this. A China-like isolationist Fortress Britain might be able to escape some of the consequences, but not all. And I think our role in creating the artificial entity that is Iraq, and then supporting Saddam under the silly "enemy of my enemy is my friend" principle, makes us responsible in some ways for sorting out the problems those actions caused.

Hic!

Study: Alcohol Ads Often Reach Teens, reports The Washington Post. A research branch of Georgetown University, which does not seem to have a web presence, alleges that alcohol advertisers are deliberately targeting teens by including certain magazines in their advertising strategies. The Post refers to the main problem with such a study -- how to define a magazine with a teen audience -- but only does so in a "he said, she said" manner. A little more research into the demographics of the magazines, however, could have revealed that, for instance, 63% of Sports Illustrated readers are aged 25-54. The problem appears to be not so much one of advertisers delibertaely targeting teens, but the anomalous grey area in America's social fabric caused by treating young adults as adults in most areas, but not when it comes to drinking. A 19 year-old is, to all intents and purposes, the same as a 26 year-old when it comes to the ability to spend money on music, sports and clothing, but not when it comes to alcohol. That is why the 18-24 demographic tends to be treated as a single unit by marketers.

Moreover, even if we ignore this problem, the Federal Trade Commission looked at the self-regulating practices of the industry in 1999 and commended some companies that

have [voluntaily] raised the standard for ad placement. Instead of adhering to the 50 percent requirement, these companies require a 60 to 70 percent legal-age audience for print media...

Sports Illustrated, for one, clearly meets that more stringent requirement. And apparently the study also includes Playboy as a teen magazine... This study appears to be raising the bar significantly.

More on the Lethality Survey

The survey, which the author was kind enough to send me in Word format, relies on the discrepancy between the homicide rate and the aggravated assault rate as recorded by the police in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). If the author had used the National Criminal Victimization Survey figures he would see, as depicted here serious violent crime overall remained roughly steady from 1973 to about 1993, after which it plummeted. The author argues that crimes recorded by the police are a better measure of the most serious crimes, but crimes committed within the criminal community (eg between drug dealers) are unlikely to be recorded. The best measure for the author's purposes would be a nationwide measure of persons admitted to hospital with life-threatening wounds, or an FBI/NCVS category of "attempted murder," but neither figure is available. Instead, we are dealing with dueling proxy measures. One indicates an ongoing increase in lethality. The other indicates not much change since 1973. It can therefore safely be said that we do not really know whether or not the murder rate would be much larger if it were not for modern medical techniques.

PP: Final word on lethality: This CDC publication, Nonfatal and Fatal Firearm-Related Injuries -- United States, 1993-1997, provides evidence that non-fatal firearm injuries fell at the same rate as fatal firearm injuries from 1993-1997. This would seem to indicate that medicine was not masking an increase in attempted murder between those years. Any increase in medical effectiveness must therefore have taken place before the recent crime drop. The drop in violent crime appears, therefore, to be real.

Liberty and Livelihood

407,791 voices cry freedom, which represents slightly more than 1 in every 200 Brits. In relative terms, that's equivalent to about 2,000,000 Americans descending on DC. In other words, this was a bloody big demonstration. Andrew Ian Dodge's brief testimony is here, Peter Briffa's look at the contrast between the double-barrels of Rees-Mogg and Alibhai-Brown is here and David Carr's eye-witness account is here.

When I checked the news.bbc.co.uk page last night, there was no mention of it.

PP: Mr British Spin's less than congratulatory comments about the march are here. Having now seen The Sun's coverage the toff quotient does seem pretty high. Still, the scale remains important.

Hotel California

Good Jim Bennett column, The European Roach Motel. As he says, Britain benefits from trade relations with Europe, but what the Constitutional Convention is proposing is utterly ridiculous:

The Anglosphere vision is of a loose set of cooperative institutions among the English-speaking, Common-Law based nations. This vision is compatible with the idea of complementary cooperative ties between the various Anglosphere nations and their regional neighbors. For America, this would include Latin America; for Australia, it would include Asia and the Pacific. For Britain and Ireland, a set of useful cooperative ties loosely affiliated with Europe makes perfect sense. Imposing the roach-motel clause on the European Union guarantees that, rather than being the basis for such ties, will in the long run be something Britain must stay out of.

The points about Europe's desire to raid Britain's prudent pension (social security) provision is well worth remembering.

If I have one quibble, it's that the legal framework is not examined. The newly supreme European Court would hand down judgment after judgment against Britain, with crippling fines, I am sure, for her refusal to co-operate. The European police would be perfectly entitled to freeze British assets in Europe and so on in order to get her to comply with her constitutional obligations. That's why I think it may come to an armed conflict, but it will be Britain that is forced to fire the first shots in order to restore her independence, not the outlandish case of a European invasion of the UK. And the legal niceties will almost certainly be on the European side, even if the demands of justice are not.

Compare and Contrast

The Brady Campaign against handguns has been happy to trumpet the idea that Americans turned away from gun ownership in 2001. Their press release from 8/28 this year says:

According to an April 2002 article in the Christian Science Monitor, the FBI conducted fewer background checks for gun purchases in 2001 than in 2000, and checks for the first two months of 2002 were already 10.5 percent below last year's pace.

Well, now the official figures are out. according to NBC News last night:

"The Justice Department reported today on applications for guns in America, and they're up. The number of Americans who applied for handguns and rifles last year rose 3% to almost 8 million. Of those applications, slightly less than 2% were rejected."

I wonder if the Brady Campaign will retract its claim?

PP: Here's the link to the official Justice Department figures.

Murdering statistics

Canada's NATIONAL POST is the first North American source to pick up on a story from the British Medical Journal that alleges that modern medical techniques are masking a huge increase in the murder rate, by saving people who would otherwise have died and that therefore America is a much more violent place than we think. That may be the case by comparison with the 1930s, but when looking at recent years we can see that the figures confirm that there has been a significant drop in aggravated assault as well as murder. The latest criminal victimization survey shows that the aggravated assault "with injury" rate -- in which all those saved from homicide by medical science would be placed -- has halved from 3.4 per 1,000 persons in 1993 to 1.7 per 1,000 in 2001. Unfortunately, we do not have directly comparable victimization figures for how many people were victims of aggravated assault in the 1930s, so a meaningful comparison with then is impossible. As aggravated assault figures collected by the FBI include those merely threatened with a weapon, any comparison based on those figures -- which I suspect the comparison referred to in the Post article to be -- will be using a measure that is too imprecise. I've asked the researcher for the full study, and will post more if necessary when I've seen it.

Spartan discipline

The insane Greek crackdown on computer games continues. One of the main targets is people playing Age of Empires, which actually has some (not much, I admit) educational value in teaching Greek history...

Received pronunciation

Terrific post from Eugene of The Volokh Conspiracy on the subject of President Bush's pronunciation of "nuclear." It's all snobbery. The folks in the UK who particularly object to the President's "mangling" of the language would get all bent out of shape if anyone dared criticize, say, a genuinely working class Prime Minister from the North of England for using Geordie/Mackem expressions or pronunication. Jest axe them. That'd mayuk 'em "crawfish" awa'. Yerbuggermar.

Over-reaction to child abduction. In the UK...

This MORI poll, The Repercussions Of Soham Murders, shows that 49% of UK parents surveyed (although the sample is small) have actually changed their behavior as a result of the Soham murders, despite the tiny number of children murdered annually (I presume -- believe it or not, I cannot find up-to-date murder statistics for the UK anywhere on line and certainly not broken down by age). My recent STATS essay on child abduction in the US seems even more applicable to the UK.

Alms for Allah?

I used to give money to beggars regularly, on the grounds of Matthew 25,35. I stopped when someone I knew who worked with the homeless and the mentally ill in the UK told me they spent it all on drugs or booze (and the younger they were, the more likely it would be the former than the latter). Now The Homeless Guy confirms this here:

Why do they beg or panhandle? Drugs. It sounds too easy to be true. Sorry, it's all about the Drugs. Even when they are honestly asking for help with food, or their electric bill, or diapers, it's because they've spent all their money on Drugs, (which includes alcohol and cigarettes). At first, giving food may seem like a good alternative to giving money, but that only allows them to save their money for Drugs. Drugs, Drugs, Drugs - I can't say it enough. When you give money to these guys, and girls, you are supporting their life destroying addictions.

Kevin then addresses Christ's injunction. A friend of mine gets round the problem by giving people who ask for money McDonalds vouchers, which seems reasonable.

By the way, you've probably already seen the link on Instapundit, but any question as to The Homeless Guy's bona fides should be dealt with by this post.

Ouch!

There's a line from Thucydides that always makes my eyes water. Listing the evil portents that occurred prior to the Syracusan Expedition, he talks about a man who jumped astride an altar and proceded to castrate himself with a rock. I wonder what he'd have said about this news from Australia: Man Slices Off Four Body Parts. Urgh.

Poor measure

My latest UPI Recent research suggests ... column is up. It looks at some recent criticisms of the federal poverty measure and suggests that income is a poor measure of poverty.

What a mother does

My wife has something she feels she needs to get off her chest:

Over the past few months, several people have asked me what exactly I do all day as a stay-at-home mom. The question has always put me on the defensive and I didn't like that. I realized that people ask that question of stay-at-home moms but would never ask that of a in-home nurse.

Let's compare.

An in-home nurse would arrive at an invalid's home, help them wake up, go to the bathroom, wash their face, brush their teeth and hair, and get dressed. They'd then take them downstairs, make them breakfast, and help them eat it. After putting the breakfast dishes away, they may take the invalid out for light errands, low-key social events, read books to them, or they may simply sit with them while watching tv. Before lunch, an in-home nurse would help the invalid with going to the bathroom and then make and feed them lunch. Afternoons, may give the in-home nurse a break if the invalid takes a rest. Otherwise, it would be a repeat of the morning; errands, social time, or entertaining the invalid. Dinner preparation and feeding of the invalid would be next. Then the in-home nurse would take them upstairs to bath the invalid, get them into pajamas, brush teeth and hair, and help them go to bed. The presuming there is a night nurse or night care is unnecessary, the in-home nurse can go home.

Now, the in-home nurse may also have to give medicine or handle medical equipment which I would not have to do. However, an in-home nurse does NOT have to run heavy errands (groceries, car care, etc.) or clean the house (scrub bathrooms and kitchen floors). An in-home nurse is NOT responsible for organizing all holiday, birthday, family and vacation events/activities (cards, gifts, holiday meal cooking, travel). An in-home nurse does NOT pay the bills, run the family budget, or remember the myriad of tiny details that come with being responsible for a family.

And most importantly, if the in-house nurse belongs to a service, she may get nights and weekends off. She has sick leave and vacation time. I do NOT . I've only had one weekend off in two years and I have NO idea when I will have another time period off. I can NOT get sick because my husband can't take time off from work just because I'm ill. I work AT LEAST 10 to 12 hours days every day of the week except when my husband lets me sleep in to 10am on Saturday mornings.

What's worse is that while people who hire in-home nurses or send their children to daycare can take tax breaks, the family with a stay-at-home mom gets none. Despite the obvious similarities to a job many consider quite important, we stay-at-home moms get little to no recognition from the government (or others). I love and adore my daughter and I'm proud that my husband does not require me to work. I miss the satisfaction of my old career as an advertising copywriter but I believe my job as a mother and homemaker to be more important. It's just a shame that only me and my family feel the same way.

Kris Murray
Iain's Wife

I very much agree with Kris on this. I have on my desk, taped to the side of my computer, a list of 55 separate tasks she completed in one typical day between me leaving for work and arriving home. All are substantial in some way. Society does not give stay-at-home mothers the respect they are due, and in some ways chooses to denigrate them by subsidizing mothers who work (the tax breaks issue). That never used to be the case. Once again, women are shown to be the real victims of the 60s revolution.

Out of Body, Out of Mind?

This is over-wrought. Leading skeptic Michael Shermer claims that this new study is

another blow against those who believe that the mind and spirit are somehow separate from the brain," said psychologist Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptic Society, which seeks to debunk alien abductions and other paranormal claims. "In reality, all experience is derived from the brain."

This is evidence from an experiment on one -- 1, singular, unique -- woman. As such, it proves nothing except that she herself experiences strange things when her brain gets stimulated in certain ways. As a much more extensive survey of survivors of cardiac arrest last year concluded:

We do not know why so few cardiac patients report Near Death Experiences after CPR, although age plays a part. With a purely physiological explanation such as cerebral anoxia for the experience, most patients who have been clinically dead should report one.

(Emphasis added).

NDEs are very difficult to explain. Sydney Smith raises the question of why it's only Heaven that ever gets reported, never Hell. Good point (similar to my mind to the question of why, if God can be represented as a woman in modern Churches, how come the Devil can't?) although a few speculative answers cross my mind. First, self-selection: how likely are you to tell people you've seen that you're going to Hell? Second, the nature of Hell: perhaps Hell is total emptiness, the lack of contact with God. Third, perhaps you don't go straight to Hell. There is all that talk about Judgment Day and separating sheep from goats, after all, in theology (although this has never been a strong point of mine).

In any event, I think Shermer staking a lot on this study is just a little over-the-top.

What the frell?

What Farscape Character are you?

Debt and Taxes

This is worrying. According to economists from the Urband Institute and Brookings Institution (hardly the most conservative organizations in the world), the Alternative Minimum Tax will affect 85% of two children families by 2010. Here's how the NCPA summarize the research:

The alternative minimum tax (AMT) was originally designed to
assure that wealthier Americans with many deductions did not
escape paying taxes of some sort, and as recently as three years
ago fewer than one million Americans were subject to it. But if
nothing is changed, by 2010 about 36 million taxpayers will face
its complex provisions.

o When the Bush cuts become fully effective, 85 percent of
taxpayers with two or more children will be forced off the
regular income tax and onto the AMT system.

o It will largely affect families with incomes of $75,000 to
$500,000.

o Under AMT, many deductions are denied -- including those
for children, the taxpayers themselves, and for state and
local taxes.

o Married couples are 25 to 30 times more likely to be
subjected to it than single people -- which tax experts
call "a nasty marriage penalty."

The study concludes that almost any remedy to the problem will
cost the Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars or require
raising taxes elsewhere to compensate for the losses.

This tax was introduced to deal with a loophole exploited by 155 people. Congressional leaders need to address this issue very soon, or a real anti-tax rebellion will brew very quickly, I suspect. That's likely to be bad news for certain parties.

La Fort Sumtere

I've always said that around 2010 there will be a secession crisis of some sort in the EU. And that I would join the Secession Party and, if necessary, fight to restore my country's independence. It seems now that the Constitutional Conventioneers are anticipating this problem, but not in a good way. They propose that, in order to secede, a "rebel" state would have to

secure the backing of three-quarters of the votes in the EU Council of Ministers, as well as two-thirds of the European Parliament, and ratification by the parliaments of every single country.

So if you're an economic powerhouse like Britain or Germany whose wealth will fuel much of a United Europe's prosperity, you're doomed. Luxembourg can block your secession. Interesting to see the thinking behind this:

["Liberal" "Democrat"] Mr Duff said his proposal was intended to avoid the sort of confusion that led to the American Civil War. "We don't want to end up like the US when the South wanted to leave and the North had to fight to keep them in," he said.

The thinking is that secession is always bad. Take that, West Virginia. And so much for English dreams of an independent Scotland...

EC dreams dashed

The hope of the European Commission that it will somehow become a rival to the US seems increasingly likely to be dashed on the rocaks of realism. As this Wall Street Journal Europe article (may be for WSJ subscribers only) argues despite itself, the Iraq question has shown the poverty of the idea that European foreign policy is both coherent and distinct from America's:

Institutional reform pushed by Brussels also too often looks like a poor substitute for real policy backed by political will. Even Le Monde, a traditional home for proponents of a united Europe, wrote in its editorial after the Bush speech that "the most disturbing aspect [of a show-down with Iraq] is the total absence of strategic thinking in Europe about the menace presented by radical Islam and the dissemination of arms of mass destruction."

Globalization means the U.S. and Europe are more interdependent, to use the phrase thrown about by Britain's Tony Blair. The banal truth may simply be that on important strategic questions, a unified Europe will usually be one with America. The coming enlargement of the EU from 15 to 25 members -- among them close friends of America -- will only reinforce this tendency.

Europe's ABs are repeatedly being shown to live in their castles in the air.

Here we go again

Kieran Healy replies to my comments below on the effect of crime on the incarceration rate. On the first part, there is, as Kieran says, very little difference between us. The initial analogy is flawed, but the revised analogy I suggest is as near as you going to get to anything meaningful when someone asks "Is an African American more likely to go to jail or college?" Like it or not, it's a question that gets asked. The answer I suggest is more helpful in pointing out the problems with the comparison than the pat answers that have been given so far. And it provides a jumping-off point for discussing why it's not a meaningful question.

On my other points about the incarceration rate being driven by the crime rate, Kieran says the following:

Well, yes --- in a just society incarceration would reflect criminality. But there are at least three difficulties. First, we need to decide what's illegal: the things you can be locked up for have a tendency to vary over time and across societies. Second, while you may "happen to think" that U.S. society is "one of the closest to 'justness' that there has ever been", I think there's some room for disagreement on that point --- at least enough to make one think twice about using it as a premise in an argument like this. Third, I question whether it is a "plain fact" that the prison boom was "driven by an increase in violent crime." It's not obvious to me from crime data that this is so.

For example, here's a time series of the homicide rate from 1950 to 1999 [Kieran has a Javascript pop-up. You can see the data via Kieran's site or here]. As you can see, it really takes off in the 1970s. It declines precipitously in the mid-1990s. In between, there is a rise in the late '80s and early '90s, but that peaks below the all-time high in 1981. The trend suggests that the relationship between crime and incarceration is more complex than Iain Murray wants to allow. (If incarceration rates reflect violent crime rates, why did the prison boom not begin in, say, 1974?) Rather than assume that the incarceration rate is a simple reflection of levels of crime, or that it reflects the basic "justness" of U.S. society, I'd suggest it's more profitable to examine the role that other forces, most notably state policy, play in this process.

Taking Kieran's difficulties one at a time, the first is easily answered. We lock people up for such offenses as our elected representatives from time to time think deserving of the sanction of incarceration. The fact that blasphemy is a crime in England and an enforced crime in Islamic countries, but is not in the US, makes no real difference to the fact that breach of the law as written is what drives the various criminal justice rates in each of the countries concerned.

On the second point, I'd like to know what countries Kieran thinks are, or have been, more just. He may have some good candidates, but it would be helpful to know where we both stand in relation to that point.

[More to follow tomorrow on the main point -- time has run away from me tonight].

Miracle cure?

Hmmm. Given that a lot of Brits think the hole in the ozone layer causes global warming*, I wonder if this news (Antarctic Ozone Hole Could Close by 2050) will have them changing their mind on climate change?

I remember one of the most bizarre letters I ever received to answer officially at the Department of Transport was written in all directions on what looked like a local council leave approval sheet, and finished (as far as I could tell) with the memorable injunction: "Ozone -- PUT IT BACK!"

The rich and social responsibility

Clayton Cramer has an interesting post on his experience with rich kids not feeling that they need to graduate high school. It's an important point. I noticed that the sons of the super-rich at my university were the most likely to not give a fig for other people's property. Part of the erosion of societal structure, it seems to me, has been the erosion of the idea of social responsibility among the upper classes. Consequently, the upper classes interact less and less with those who earn less. I think that it one of the reasons for the sharp divide in public opinion between the ABs and the CDEs mentioned below.

Outbreak of common sense in British policing

Big Mac with fries and PC to keep muggers at bay is how the Telegraph headlines a common-sense initiative to get policemen to be a little bit more involved in their community. Over here, one often sees policemen doing their paperwork in 7-11 stores at night. It's an instant deterrent that also makes law-abiding people feel safer. Policemen need to spend less time in station canteens and more in their local MacDonalds, less time doing paperwork in the station and more time in local all-night stores. It's a simple, sensible idea. Why make a joke about it?

Local parental control is the answer

I agree with a lot in Melanie Philips' latest, Saving the family. She is right to say that family disintegration is the single biggest social problem facing the UK today. However, I have to say that I find her idea of using Statute Law to tackle the problem by broadening Section 28 to be slightly wrong-headed. My preferred solution would be to give local educational control to parents. Melanie objects to the role of "libertines" in the Conservative Party. Well, libertines don't, as a rule, have children. Even those who do are a tiny minority. You tend to get a tad more judgmental and less relativistic about things when you have children. So I think local parental control (either by an Education commission appointed by a body answerable to parents or some other scheme) would probably have the effect of imposing the moral strictures that Melanie wants, without needing to involve central government. My thinking on this is at a very early stage, so I'd love to hear comments.

PP: The Telegraph says something similar (I also agree with its points on the Church therein):

Every test of public opinion shows that an overwhelming majority think it no part of a local authority's job to feed children with propaganda about the joys of homosexuality. The Tories' job should be to campaign for giving parents more say in their children's schooling, so that Section 28 will become redundant.

But if it will become redundant, why not repeal it? Or is the Telegraph arguing for legislation for legislation's sake?

PPP: Peter Cuthbertson's take is here, while Andrew Dodges' is here.

Judge not?

Interesting little interactive exercise on the BBC website. You, the Judge gives you the circumstances of five cases and asks you to deliver the appropriate sentence. I got the answers "right" on three of the five cases, but went for more severe sentences than were delivered in two of them. I am amazed at the leniency shown in what was clearly an unambiguous case of stranger rape (as must be 70% of the participants, who went for the same sentence I did) and in the case of an habitual offender who was quite clearly a menace to public order. The American experience has shown that taking seriously severely violent crimes like rape, and also threats to public order, can contribute to a drop in crime.

Hmmm

Anatol Lieven says the USA should treat Britain as An ally, not a lapdog. Well, yes, of course, but his reasoning is odd. If he hadn't predicated his argument on British polling data, I might agree with him more, but as Tim Hames pointed out last week, there's a divergence in opinion between the social classes in the UK that should be taken into account. Nevertheless, Jim Bennett comments as follows:

I seem to recall having seen the UK poll numbers supporting Iraq having moved to a statistical tie within the last day or two. I also seriously doubt whether Middle Britain gives a rat's ass about most of the international law issues he cites.

However, he is right when he says that sentimental invocations will not maintain the US-British alliance indefinitely. There really do need to be structural mechanisms particular to the Anglosphere to maintain a strong alliance. If we could imagine a formal, aboveground UKUSA structure with a consultative council that would have met already on Iraq and come up with a UKUSA position, it would both have been pretty close to what the US wants and needs, and soemthing that would be a visible demonstration of the UK's position as somehting other than a poodle to the US. It should also have produced some quid pro quos on issues like cooperation against the IRA and against Spanish claims on Gibraltar.

Whoops! There's the problem. It's hard for a British government to demand the US take UK interests into account when it doesen't take them into account itself.

Couldn't agree more, especially on the last point. Allies are different from client, vassal or satellite states. A joint structure would do a lot to protect both nations' interests.

I don't know what you mean, but I have an opinion on it

Public strong on opinions – weaker on knowledge is the conclusion of a Cardiff University study on what the public knows and thinks about scientific issues. I suspect the same would be true here in the States. The evidence is most telling when it comes to our old friend climate change:

Climate change. Two-thirds of respondents erroneously thought that the hole in the ozone layer causes climate change and over a half said that the effect of greenhouse gases is to thin the ozone layer. Yet, a majority, answered correctly less technical and more political questions: 53 per cent knew that one of the predicted climate changes for the UK is more rainfall in winter; and 52 per cent knew that the United States is opposed to the Kyoto Protocol. A majority also correctly defined the phrase 'carbon sink'. Sixty per cent said they were dissatisfied with the UK Government's efforts to respond the challenge of climate change, although it's not clear how much people know about the Government's record.

The source of the problem is quite clear. Despite the existence of "intelligent multi-media strategies" that the Cardiff academics recommend, the public still gets its news through the filter of TV and newspapers. The fact that so many get the objectively wrong impression tells us more about the job the media are doing than it does about the public or researchers.

Market-based Freedom Restrictions

Chad Dimpler has some worthwhile comments on Eli's plan for a market-based ID card system. He's a trifle skeptical, dontcha know?

Another good blog

Clayton Cramer is an amateur historian who helped humble the so-called professional Michael Bellesiles. His blog is worth a look, especially if you're interested in RKBA issues.

Clause 4 = Section 28

The turning point in the Labour Party's fortunes came when Tony Blair forced through the abandonment of Clause IV of the Party's constitution, which committed it to workers' control of the means of production. The modern Tory party needs such a defining moment. Michael Gove has identified one: Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which forbids the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools. I agree with him, for these reasons particularly:

Why, when the Conservatives argue that power should be devolved down to local authorities and teachers, do they insist that central Government should continue to retain strict control over the teaching of just one aspect of human biology? What is so important about homosexuality that it, alone, cannot be entrusted to the good sense of local schools to handle? When most voters are, rightly, more concerned about funding, standards, discipline, teacher recruitment and pupil motivation, why are the Tories so anxious to regulate this aspect of school life? Who really looks obsessed with marginal questions here?

Like the National Curriculum, Section 28 is an unwarranted restriction on local responsibility for education. Tie the abolition of the two together, and people will know what the Tory party stands for.

Failed Experiment

Rebecca O'Neill of Civitas has produced Experiments in Living: The Fatherless Family, a comprehensive look at what social science tells us about fatherlessness. As Mary Kenny says,

In this short but densely researched publication, Ms O'Neill enumerates the evidence that, in our hearts, we can recognise as fact: that lone mothers are, on the whole, poorer, have more health problems, and are more liable to depression; that children growing up without fathers are poorer, more likely to have emotional and mental problems, get into more trouble at school, and have more difficulties in relationships.

Young adults not living with their biological fathers are less likely to attain qualifications, and women of divorced parents have consistently lower academic achievements.

Divorce dents children's confidence, and many divorces take place in "low-conflict" marriages, which have a reasonable potential for being salvaged. Divorced fathers are more likely to lose touch with their children, and single mothers interact less well with teenagers.

All this is backed by repeated studies and control groups and it all adds up to prove the thesis that it is better to have two married parents: better for the individual and for society, too. This is not a "value judgment", but a rational conclusion from social studies.

It is clearly irrational for any political party to support policies that encourage the fecklessness of young males in siring children and then failing to raise them. The single biggest thing we can do to reduce the crime rate is to instill discipline into these young men by forcing them to live up to their responsibilities as fathers. And if that means a return to social stigma of one sort or the other then we have to ask ourselves if that is worse than disadvantaging generation after generation of children. I cannot see how we can avoid the obvious answer.

Another Prodigal Returns

He hasn't been away as long as Shiloh, but it's good to have the ever-engaging Brendan O'Neill back again. I admire Brendan's stand against any Western intervention in other nations, even though I don't agree with it, and he doesn't deserve half the opprobrium he gets. Good to have you back, Brendan.

Good news, if...

David Blunkett has announced plans to halve the red tape and form-filling undertaken by police. That is a welcome announcement, assuming that it gets implemented properly. The amount of bureaucracy in British police work is staggering, and it much of it is, of course, completely unproductive:

He said that in one case officers spent more than 40,000 hours filling in an obsolete form for stolen vehicles.

Assuming an 8-hour work day, that's 13.5 work years wasted. No wonder the British crime rate is so high...

Declaration of Right (subject, of course...)

Dave Kopel has some important things to say about what the Declaration of Right 1688 says about the right to bear arms in England and Wales (I've never been too clear about the Declaration's constitutional position vis-a-vis Scotland). I wondered about quibbling with Dave's description of "a civic culture of passivity and helplessness" in the UK, given that householders regularly take on burglars, but are then punished by the law that is supposed to protect them. However, he is right that the "civic culture" has abolished the right to self-defense. The effect is blindingly obvious. Compare the words of one Chicago burglar, interviewed by Wright and Decker:

"I rather for the police to catch me vs a person catching me breaking in their house because the person will kill you. Sometimes the police will tell you 'You lucky we came before they did.'"

This would be characterized in the UK as "taking the law into your own hands." How far have we come from Blackstone's recognition that you must have the right to protect yourself when the duly-established law enforcement procedures fail you. Moreover, there used to be a distinction between law and liberty in the UK, as evinced by the John Adams quote on the left. This is not taking law into your own hands, it is you exercising a liberty. If parliament and the judiciary have seen fit to restrict that liberty, then they have overstepped their bounds.

E-mail problems

I've been having significant e-mail problems recently. If you've sent me something recently and haven't received a response, it's probably because my server isn't delivering anything between the hours of 10pm and 8am EST, or at the weekends at all, so please send it me again safely outside those hours. I think it must belong to a British Trade Union...

I'll believe it when I see it

The Iraqi offer to admit inspectors "without conditions" sees me as skeptical as the Administration. There may not be conditions to admitting inspectors, but they already raise conditions for allowing them actually to inspect. Steven Den Beste thinks that if there aren't many of those, it means he's closer than we thought to getting the bomb. I think it's much more likely that he's just spinning out the skein of his fate for as long as he can. This move could, if he plays it right, get him another two years before the UN approves action. It will take resolve on the part of the alliance to hold the UN to making sure inspections do take place quickly, and also to enact the other requirements the President laid down last week. Blair and Bush have to reiterate the full list so that Kofi Annan and the other foot-draggers don't let people think that Iraq has caved. They've potholed.

Return of a Favorite

A couple of days after I finally remove the recommended star from her link, Shiloh Bucher returns to action at shilohbucher.com. It's good to have this excellent blogger back.

The Sound of Silence

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting blog entry on Lawrence Wright's New Yorker piece on Al Qa'eda. This struck as me as telling. After the failure of Operation Infinite Reach (the "million dollar missiles vs two dollar tent" operation under President Clinton), bin Laden exalted in his survival:

When bin Laden's voice came crackling across the radio transmission - "By the grace of God, I am alive!" - the forces of anti-Americanism had found their champion. Those who had objected the the slaughter of innocents in the embassies in East Africa, many of whom were Muslims, were cowed by the popular response to this man whose defiance of America now seemed blessed by divine favor. The day after the strikes, Zawahiri called a reporter in Karachi, with a message: "Tell the Americans that we aren't afraid of bombardment, threats, and acts of aggression... The war has only just begun; the Americans should now await the answer."

We have heard nothing from OBL (or even Zawahiri, I imagine). Surely "By the grace of God, I am STILL alive" would rally his forces even more. A better example of divine favor in the face of enemy onslaught I cannot imagine. Yet we hear nothing. A clear case, it seems to be, of the dog that does not rant in the night.

Unequal treatment

Kieran Healy makes some comments about Virginia Postrel's commendation of my article about African Americans and college/prison. He says:

This doesn't seem like a helpful way to present the data. The number of young white prisoners in the U.S. is large compared to almost any other prison population in the world. But it's very small compared to the number of white college students in the U.S. Does this mean we should be happy with the incarceration rate? Murray is rightly criticizing a bad analogy, but then exploits the same analogy to make his own point about the large ratio being "very good news".

I'm not sure whether Kieran actually read my article, rather than just Virginia's comments, but the article had three points. First, the JPI's numbers were objectively wrong. Second, the analogy they used was flawed, and that there was a better analogy available which implied something different. And third, in order to make a case that education spending suffering in comparison to corrections spending disproportionately affected African-American men, they ignored the data about the substantial increase in African-American women in college, something that seems to indicate that educational opportunities were made available to that community, and taken up.

As for the general point about incarceration, no, we should not be happy with the incarceration rate, but that rate is a product of other factors. In a just society, and I happen to think the American experiment is one of the closest to "justness" that there has ever been, the incarceration rate reflects the level of criminality in communities. Spending on corrections is therefore reactive. The plain fact is -- and the New York Times got this right -- the increase in incarceration in the 90s was driven by an increase in violent crime. Bill Spelman of the University of Texas at Austin built a model to assess the effect of prison expansion since the 70s on the violent crime rate. His conclusion was that by the late 90s, if we had not expanded our prisons, America would be suffering about 1200 violent crimes per 100,000 population. The actual rate was less than 600. The expansion of prisons was necessary, it seems to me.

At base, we have to think about what drives people to turn to crime rather than self-improvement. This is the central question of criminology, of course. Education is a part of the answer, but public education is but a part of that, and there are other, cultural factors as well. The JPI study was, in my opinion, simplistic, flawed and inexact. In its choice of headlines it also showed poor judgment. It deserved the treatment it got.

Where's Osama?

More rumblings from the Arab world that Bin Laden is as dead as Robert Fisk's reutation in the blogsophere. A UAE newspaper, quoted in The Mirror, quotes an "eye-witness" who says

"On the 24th night of Ramadan (Dec 10) and at a late hour, there were some scary explosions in the place where Osama bin Laden's cave was.

"The cave was completely erased from the ground and became nothing. This was the only cave of the 15 that was destroyed by an enormous 52ft missile and there is no doubt that bin Laden died.''

Now from this evidence, Marc Herold would count Bin Laden as a casualty. I'm not so sure it's the conclusive evidence we're looking for, but it's another pebble on the cairn.

Ye gods!

The British Government, which is, of course, omnipotent and omniscient, has decided it is going to reduce the number of people who want to kill themselves. Jolly good. One of the ways they are going to achieve this laudable aim is by "reducing the availability and lethality of suicidal methods". The evidence they use to support this assertion is:

Some measures to reduce suicides have already been taken, including cutting the number of pills sold in paracetamol packs.

The number of deaths related to the painkiller fell 10% between 1998 and 1999 after the move.

Notice it doesn't say "the number of deaths fell," just "the number of deaths related to the painkiller" fell. In fact, according the the official statistics, the overall number of suicides rose between 1998 and 1999. When it comes to suicide, substitution is easy. If you don't have enough paracetamol to kill yourself, you jump off a cliff or step in front of a speeding truck. The measure might have reduced "accidental" suicides, where someone was just crying for help and didn't really intend to die, but I often wonder how many of those there really are.

Nevertheless, the Government's omnipotence is again demonstrated by its next aim, "improving the reporting of suicidal behaviours in the media." No pesky free press if it's going to send out the wrong message, eh?

Ball dropped again

Despite my criticism of him, I do believe that British Home Secretary David Blunkett has sound instincts on certain issues, such as the introduction of a citizenship test for applicants for UK citizenship. However, all too often, as soon as these ideas get off his desk and onto the agendas of those "entrusted" with drawing up the nuts and bolts of their application, the essential common sense of those ideas gets forgotten. The citizenship test is a case in point, it seems. According to this BBC report (ignore the stuff about Blunkett "proscribing" that immigrants speak English in their homes -- a typical exaggeration), the academic in charge of drawing up the test

... has played down suggestions that the test is a hurdle designed to weed out applicants for citizenship.

He said it would focus more on practical issues about living in the UK.

If a test isn't designed to weed out those who don't know the answers, what is its point? But, really, no questions about UK history and what it means? Instead, it seems they'll be tested on what you can buy at a newsagent's shop. Another opportunity missed, and one that future generations will not thank Mr Blunkett for.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

My latest Tech Central Station article is up. It looks at the role of statistics in the Abortion Wars.

A cautionary tale

Orrin Judd, a man I admire more and more, uses a grudging Independent admission of respect for the President as a launching pad for a catalogue of how the literati have consistently underestimated that estimable man.

Privatizing ID Cards

My friend Eli Lehrer makes a case for a market-based ID card system. It's an interesting idea, certainly.

Sense and Science

Sir Howard Newby, a name that I'd fact-check if he rang me up, is the new President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In his address to his organization's annual conference yesterday, he raised some important issues, striking particularly at the idea of the precautionary principle:

“There is a growing suspicion of the benefits that continue to flow from the growth of scientific knowledge,” Sir Howard said. “The idea is that the growth of scientific knowledge might bring forth monsters. The consequences, I fear, could be where areas of scientific inquiry and technological applications will be denied us. This will lead to benefits being denied, particularly to those groups that need new drugs and so forth.”

Sir Howard, a professor of sociology, said there was a disconcerting gap between the risks that people were prepared to take in their everyday lives and those that they would accept in the public sphere. He will spell out his concerns today in his address to the festival, entitled “The Dream of Reason Brings Forth Monsters”, after a celebrated etching by Goya.

“People are happy to take some remarkable risks in their personal lives — throwing themselves off cliffs on hang-gliders, even driving down the M4 on a Friday afternoon. But in the public domain they demand a total elimination of risk.

“The scientific community struggles to tell the public and politicians that it cannot solve that problem. The demand is whether a particular course of action is risk-free, and the answer must always be no. Nothing is ever certain: risk is attached to everything. What worries me with this increasing anti-intellectualism is that the public is putting unreasonable demands on the scientific community. Science cannot remove human moral fallibility. Science does not possess a magic wand that can be waved to remove the problems of society.”

The point about science's powerlessness in the face of human moral fallibility is important. I wonder if Mary Warnock agrees?

Hoaxer with international reach

I was so busy looking at the numbers in the AP story about the National Crime Survey on Monday that I missed the biggest thing in there. The AP had been hoaxed by a couple of "pretend" experts. Neither Ralph Myers of Stanford nor Bruce Fenmore (nor his "institute") exist. Nevertheless, this didn't stop two British newspapers also quoting them. The Daily Mail had this:

Prison works as violent crime in U.S. hits new low
By George Gordon

VIOLENT crime in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level in more than 30 years.

According to a government survey, there was a nine per cent drop in such offences last year.

That is lower than at any time since surveys began, back in 1973. Experts said that tougher jail terms played a big part in the drop.

'There is overwhelming evidence that people who commit assaults do it as a general course of their affairs,' said Bruce Fenmore, of the Institute of Crime and Punishment in Chicago.

'Putting these people behind bars drops the rate.' Ralph Myers, a criminologist based at Stanford University said: 'It is clear that crime is on the decline in a significant way, and has been for some years.' He argued that a contributing factor was the strong economy of the Nineties, resulting in improved neighbourhoods and less motivation for crime.

But he agreed with Mr Fenmore that 'crime has also been impacted by the implementation of tough sentencing laws at the end of the 1980s'.

The statistics, based on interviews with victims and therefore not including murder, reveal that the violent crime rate has plunged by half since 1993.

etc.

The Independent also quoted the experts, although rather less creatively, here. How unfortunate that the Indy's man in DC is called Buncombe.

Humble pie all round, I think.

Lord Mythbuster

It's debunking day on Europe today, it seems. In the Telegraph, Lord Lamont debunks several myths about Britain's experience with the Exchange Rate Mechanism in the early 90s. His conclusion:

The ERM experience did do Britain some good, but the recovery would not have been so robust had we not been able to escape. It is impossible to believe Britain would have done better subsequently if we had remained within the ERM. The ERM's break-up gave me the opportunity to construct a new monetary framework, which worked better than the European Central Bank's.

Perhaps the most important point about September 16 is that it helped to keep Britain out of the euro. It demonstrated to people that a single monetary policy is unlikely to work well both for Britain and the rest of Europe.

The ERM experience is a massive warning from history for Britain. Quite why so many are willing to ignore it is beyond me.

Blair's Circus Tricks

Writing in The Times, Tim Hames (who has had a welcome return to form recently), sums up the problem for Tony Blair with his conception of his current strategy. As Jim Bennett pointed out a few weeks ago, Blair is performing a circus trick, trying to ride two horses at once. He thinks that war with Iraq will help him become President of Europe, essentially. Well, Tim's taken a look at the raw polling data and finds a problem with this approach:

The last ICM poll revealed that 30 per cent of the electorate thought that Mr Blair should back Mr Bush on Iraq (52 per cent were opposed to the notion). In a separate question, 28 per cent declared themselves willing to adopt the euro in a referendum (59 per cent were against it).

The numbers 30 and 28 may imply that these were essentially the same people — Blair loyalists — and they would be the Prime Minister’s political base for the Iraqi invasion and the euro enterprise. They are not. There is a huge class distinction at work here. The relatively affluent are more sceptical about war with Iraq but less hostile towards the single currency. The comparatively poor face the other way entirely. As a consequence, the proportion of the public (my thanks to Nick Sparrow from ICM for providing the data) who thought both that Mr Blair should back Mr Bush on Iraq and that Britain should embrace the euro was a whopping . . . 7 per cent.

I do not believe that it will be difficult for the Prime Minister to make converts on Iraq. These recruits will, however, come disproportionately from the social groups which are already most sympathetic to his position (the C1/C2s, Ds and Es). The anti-Americanism of the ABs is, the evidence indicates, really deep and even the sight of cheering liberated citizens on the streets of Baghdad adorning US troops with flowers would not help much.

And how can Mr Blair best mobilise those who might rally to him? First, by offering an appeal to a distinctly traditional form of patriotism. Secondly, by emphasising the historic nature of Anglo-American ties. Thirdly, by emphasising that Britain has a global (not just regional) role and world responsibilities.

These are perfectly decent arguments. They are already beginning to have an effect on Middle England’s attitude towards Iraq, even if Middle Islington is not very impressed by them. They are also precisely the arguments that explain why much of the public is resolutely distrustful of the EU and supremely disinclined to vote for membership of the euro.

The distinction between the solid, working/middle class, Euroskeptic, Anglospheric core and the flighty, upper/nouveau class, Europhile, anti-American literati is shown to be real by the polling data. Two nations. Blair has to pick which one he's for. More by the luck than judgment, I think he's making the right choice.

Mythbuster: Captain Euro's enemy?

Dastardly Tory Roger Helmer MEP takes on ten common statements used in defense of the EU and debunks them for The Bruges Group. How dare he!?!

High water mark for the Nanny McState?

Since devolution, members of the Scottish Parliament have chosen to exercise their limited powers wherever they can, handing down bossy, interfering laws aplenty. Has that tide now turned? They have decided not to outlaw smacking of children by their parents, a move which surprised me. I wonder what David Farrer will have to say on the subject.

Drugged

As promised, I thought I’d flesh out some of my more recent thoughts on drugs. Drugs are harmful to society for three basic reasons:

1. The psychopharmacology of some drugs leads some individuals to act in anti-social ways.

2. When an individual becomes sufficiently habituated to drug use, he may not be able to support his habit through his normal income and therefore may turn to crime to support this habit. Note the use of the word habit – this can occur before addiction.

3. The economics of drugs sales can lead to systemic violence such as shoot-outs between suppliers or punishment of subordinates.

I thought I’d look at four different proposed solutions to these problems:

The war on drugs.
Decriminalization
Legalization and
(My preferred solution) A ‘reformation of manners’ that provides a stronger civil society that discourages drug use.

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what the “equilibrium” state of drug use is. Until relatively recently, it was very low. There is no real tradition, Coleridge and de Quincey aside, of drugs being particularly widely used in the Anglosphere. According to the US government, 7.1% of the population aged 12 and over uses illegal drugs (about 16 million people). This compares to 47 percent who drink alcoholic beverages (about 107 million, of whom about 13 million are heavy drinkers) and the 30 percent that smoke (c.69 million). It is obviously still a tiny proportion of the population. Would it be higher if there were no war on drugs? Almost certainly. Given the propaganda that drugs are harmless, ably dealt with by Mark Kleiman below, I imagine that a considerable number of people who are currently inhibited from experimentation by the various legal and social sanction in place would try illicit drugs. The argument that anyone who might like to try pot already has done so strikes me as very odd.

But let us suppose that the equilibrium level of drug use in the US is a conservative 10 percent of the population aged 12 and over – about 22 million. With that assumption we can look at the various benefits and disbenefits the proposed solutions bring:

The war on drugs reduces the psychopharmacological effects on people by restricting the numbers who use drugs by sanctions. It may, however, increase them somewhat by exposing those who do use the drugs to harsher effects. The war on drugs also seeks to reduce the habituation effects by imprisoning those who commit drug-related crimes. The war on drugs’ great problem is that it creates an illegal market, which leads to systemic violence. There is, however, every indication that the systemic violence involved in the illegal drugs industry has shrunk considerably since the early 90s.

Drug legalization, on the other hand, would almost certainly increase the numbers affected by the psychopharmacological effects of drugs. It would probably also increase the numbers of crimes committed to pay for drugs. It would certainly, however, reduce the systemic crimes as the illegal industry would presumably be unable to match the economies of scale as legal industries took over. There would, however, almost certainly be a substitution effect as not all of those employed in the illegal industries would turn to legal activities as well. Moreover, if some drugs remained illegal (does anyone really advocate legalizing PCP?) then some illegal supply industry would remain. Moreover, the legal industry would almost certainly look to maximize its customer base. The number affected by problems 1 and 2 would rise above the equilibrium level as a result.

I should also add here that the experience in the UK with the significant black markets in alcohol and tobacco should show those people that advocate the "legalize and tax the bejeesus out of it" approach that that strategy would do nothing -- or very little -- to shrink the illegal industry.

Drug decriminalization strikes me as the worst of all worlds, raising the numbers affected by problems 1 and 2 while doing nothing about 3, except possibly encouraging an increase as the illegal industry took advantage of the increased customer base. I can easily see crime rates rising to the levels of the early 90s as the industry expanded again. Indeed, this seems to be what happened in Brixton following the decriminalization experiment there. Later falls in the number of street crimes were more likely affected by the general blitz on street crime ordered by Tony Blair, which may prove very hard to sustain. The UK has, of course, chosen this route. I shall be very interested to see how things shape up over the next few years.

Finally, there is the route I prefer, which is a general strengthening of civil society leading to stronger families and stronger communities. This should reduce the equilibrium number of drug users, and so should reduce problems in all 3 categories (except possibly in 3, temporarily, as gangs fight for a smaller pool of customers).

There is some interesting evidence that drug use goes through trends, the three most recent having been heroin injecting, coke/crack and marijuana/blunts. The first two overlapped considerably, but those who use marijuana/blunts are unlikely to use heroin or crack. Two questions spring to my mind: is the current era just another fad which may be replaced by a worse drug, which may well encourage other drug use? And, what effect did the war on drugs have in seeing off the crack trend? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but am always interested in views.

Now there comes the comparison with alcohol. As Orrin Judd has mentioned recently (I can’t quite seem to find the exact source), prohibition was very like gun control, in that it attempted to restrain a very strong cultural component. As the usage figures make clear, however, drugs – even marijuana – are nowhere near as integrated into mainstream culture as alcohol and guns are. In some ways, as Norman Dennis implies in his review of alcohol and drug use in the UK, drug use can even be thought of as an alien invader into our culture. It may be one that we adopt as part of our general culture, but I doubt it. To that extent it may remain a folly of the youth subculture – like Trotskyism – but bans on it will never be comparable to the problems that prohibition brought with it. Banning booze is like trying to ban the word “the.” Banning drugs is like trying to ban the word “ontological.”

All in all, then, I remain highly skeptical that legalization would be any better for society than the war on drugs. I am convinced that decriminalization would be worse. If a stronger civil society emerged, however, then there might be scope for limited marijuana growth and exchange as Professor Kleiman suggests. Until that day, however, people are still going to try to sell what they grow to other people who can’t be bothered or are simply not capable of it. And it is part of the weakness of our civil society that there are so many that simply can’t grow plants.

Ideas for Iraq

This may seem a little premature to some, but Jim Bennett brainstorms a blueprint for rebuilding Iraq.

That speech

Excellent. The President reminded the UN what it is supposed to be here for. The UN has a choice: stop acting as a shield behind which tyrants and dictators can hide, or face irrelevancy. The way he outlined what the UN has already asked for was perfect. His best performance since his address to Congress after 9/11.

McKinney for President!

Kesher Talk reports that Cynthia McKinney, who helpfully informed us that President Bush knew all about 9/11 before the event and whose father, also defeated yesterday, told us that it was the J-E-W-S that engineered here defeat, is considering running for President under the Green label. All you favorite Tranzis in one place! Yippee!

Getting away with it

Closed Circuit TV was supposed to be a deterrent to crime in the UK. Yet a deterrent is useless if the threat behind it is empty. This case study of how a crime was treated by the police shows how undeterred robbers are by CCTV now they have realized that it is simply a paper tiger.

The new Secretary of State

Interesting article about Colin Powell's position in the administration from Toby Harnden in the Telegraph. Toby points out Powell's repeated failures, as well he should, but it seems to me that one point goes unsaid following from this paragraph:

For the first hour of the Camp David summit, it was Vice-President Dick Cheney who mapped out the strategy for removing Saddam with the President and Prime Minister. Note-takers were also present, but only these three spoke.

It seems that Tony Blair is acting as Secretary of State of the USA. I wonder how the Founding Fathers would react to that...

Fringe benefits

The Anglosphere at work in the matter of child abductions. Someone really needs to start cataloguing examples like this and comparing them to intra-EU co-operations.

More thoughts on marijuana

The thoughtful Mark Kleiman, who has impressed me with his thinking on this issue, comes out against legalizing the sale of marijuana:

My view is that the risks are substantially greater than most of my well-educated boomer friends believe. Taking the entire population of people who have used cannabis at least five times, the risk in that group of becoming a heavy daily cannabis user for a period of at least months is something like one in nine. Being a pothead isn’t nearly as bad for you as being a drunk, and it usually doesn’t last as long, but it’s still not a good place to be.

That seems to me a strong enough reason to oppose the legalization of cannabis on any commercial basis; I hate to think what RJR and Miller Brewing (or whoever just bought Miller Brewing) could do if they had cannabis to market the way they now market tobacco and beer. (In my ideal world, there would be no law against growing cannabis, using it, or giving it away, but selling it would remain banned. That wouldn't prevent sales activity entirely, but it would help keep it discreet and prevent advertising.)

Marijuana is very much the grey area of the drugs debate. In many ways, it's a judgement call, where the facts can be used to back up both sides of the argument. I intend to flesh out my thoughts on this issue today if I get the time. Watch this space.

The BBC news page St Paul's tribute to US victims and many of the links from it add to the images so admirably provided by Perry in the link below. I found it especially interesting that Her Majesty the Queen, in her message to Brits in New York, should honour the

"courage and determination" of the armed forces and "others who are striving to bring those responsible for this outrage to justice and to prevent similar atrocities in the future"

before going on to point out

"The dreadful attacks of September 11 may have threatened freedom, innocence and other values we hold dear, but they also inspired grace, charity and courage.

These are the words that you expect from the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, far more indicative of the beliefs of her people than the whinings of the future Primate of All England.

Those are the views of one nation, admirably captured by its Sovereign. Yet there also exists another Britain, one far smaller, but which holds many positions of power. Peter Briffa shows us the thoughts of that other nation, and shows us just how foolish they are.

I think part of the story of the past year is that the ruling political party in the UK has been shown to be divided between these two nations. It is to his credit that Tony Blair has drifted away from the mensheviks in this divide, something I did not expect of him. His mettle will be tested further when the dilemma he faces (Stephen Pollard's insightful take on this issue is here) comes to its high tide, probably in the next few weeks. If he can rise to this occasion, both Britain and America ought to be thankful.

Remembrance

I haven't blogged so far today because I came down with something yesterday morning and had to come home quite ill. It has, however, meant that I was able to spend today with my wife and daughter, which somehow seems appropriate.

A year ago today my wife told me before I left for work about her disturbing dream, that her bridesmaid who worked in the World Financial Center was running for her life with a dust cloud following her. An hour later, I was riding to the Pentagon on the bus, as usual, with a friend of mine who used to be something senior in the Conservative Party but who was visiting us on vacation. As we drove into the Pentagon's grounds I turned to him and remarked how open the Pentagon was to terrorist attack. I commented that a Canary Wharf or Baltic Exchange sized fertilizer bomb could probably do some serious damage. I left him at the Pentagon at 8:45, where he was planning to take a tour.

At the end of the day, my friend had avoided being in the Pentagon at the time of impact by simply being too discouraged by the length of the queue and caught a metro out of the Pentagon station at almost the exact time the plane hit. It took him several hours to let us know he was okay, which we still have not forgiven him for. I was able to contact all my friends in New York to acsertain they were fine, as was the friend Kris had her dream about. But her boyfriend of six months, a man I never met but who had obviously made her very happy, had been on the 100th floor of the North Tower.

One year on, it still feels as if everything happened yesterday. For all the progress we have made -- the destruction of one of the cruelest regimes in the world, the likely death of the prime mover of the atrocities and the crippling of his network, the recognition that other cruel regimes - that no-one will shed a tear for when they are gone - have to go if the cities on their hills are to be able to continue shining -- the work has only really just started. This past year has been mostly a triumph over the evil-doers and the idiotarians, but there are still so many of them about, in positions of power both internally and externally, that the task may seem at times Sisyphean. Yet this post, more than any others, tells me that we are winning throughout the Anglosphere (a concept whose time finally arrived one year ago).

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and make his face to shine upon you, now and forevermore.

Where's Osama

Dead, dead, dead. The new tape provides no evidence that he's alive. Meanwhile, an Al Jazeera reporter thinks he's dead, given his recent research into Al Qa'eda. I can't find a web link to the AP story, but here's what Brit Hume said on Fox yesterday:

"A new report suggests that Usama bin Laden may, in fact, be dead. Yosrri Fouda, a correspondent for the satellite television network al Jazeera, tells the Associated Press he spent two days in June interviewing two top al Qaeda operatives. Fouda says that during the course of their conversation, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be one of the highest ranking al Qaeda members still at large, once referred to bin Laden in the past tense, and that a general sense of disarray leads him to believe that bin Laden could be dead. Al Jazeera announced last week, by the way, it will broadcast the interviews as part of its coverage marking the anniversary of the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

That past tense slip is the best evidence yet.

Starch is good for you

Early days on this one, but it seems that years of nanny-state advice to eat a high-fiber diet was simply wrong. Cold starchy left-overs like potatoes and baked beans are much better than bran or muesli at reducing bowel cancer. I wonder if people who turned to eating bran flakes on government advice can get compensation for the misery they endured?

Draco lives

The civil rights group Statewatch is rapidly becoming a significant ally in the fight against Euro-integration by continually pointing how the EU is eroding civil liberties. The now allege that September 11 was used to push through a host a measures aimed at suppressing dissent, under the guise of guarding against terrorism:

Damage to public property is now a terrorist offence if it is part of a campaign to change the political, economic or social order. The definition would appear to cover such groups as the Greenham Common women's movement or anti-globalist protesters.

This definition was quietly extended on Dec 27 2001, to cover even "passive" support of terrorism, blurring a distinction in English common law between conscious crimes and mere association. The measure was slipped through using a technical procedure that circumvents parliamentary debate.

The EU also pushed through an EU-wide arrest warrant, which was presented as an anti-terrorist measure but covers most ordinary crimes.

"This does away with all the checks and balances of the existing extradition procedure. There is no habeas corpus, no appeal, no rights for the suspect," said Statewatch, a body of independent researchers with Left-leaning political views.

If you think Ashcroft is bad, just read this.

HRT risks

Some eminently sensible comments on HRT and its risks from mathematicianJohn Allen Paulos.

War-war or jaw-jaw?

The Indepundit finishes his excellent Saddam Files series. Combine this with The Scotsman's matter of fact dossier, if I may call it that, and the editor of the Wall Street Journal's summary of how the new thinking on rogue states works, and you have a comprehensive case for action. I hope that Blair and Bush can articulate it in upcoming days.

Culture?

They call it the compensation culture, but there's nothing cultured about this at all. Natalie Solent has the tale of the woman awarded damages because someone's face distressed her.

PP: The media reports on this appear to have been exaggerated. Interesting that they should seem so credible, though.

Blogging 101

Must be on offer soon at UCLA. Mark A. R. Kleiman, whose thinking on the problems surrounding drugs I recomended reading below, has a blog. Like Eugene Volokh, he's a UCLA professor.

Blog makes print

My comments on the abortion/death rate study posted here are quoted in yesterday's Washington Times story, Abortion, death rate linked in study.

The mote in God's eye

Fascinating picture in this BBC astronomy story. The latest speculation as to the nature of "Hoag's object" is that the outer ring is "the shredded remains of the galaxy that passed nearby." The brain-aching vastness of creation is summed up in that simple phrase. I think I've just entered the Total Perspective Vortex. Link spotted at The Group Captain's.

Antmusic's lost its savour

Steven Chapman draws our attention to a sad tale involving Adam Ant, former Prince Charming of the new romantics. Apparently, he was humiliated in a London pub for his dress sense. As the Observer's reporter puts it,

When he came back later that night, he had a gun with him.

Dramatic and terrifying. Except the next paragraph tells us that it was a replica. So he didn't have "a gun with him," he had something that looked like a gun. There can be no intent to kill or maim with a replica, merely frighten or intimidate (perhaps in self-defense, as turned out to be the case here). "When he came back later that night, he smashed a window and ran away" would be a better description of what happened.

Another indication of how deep-set the anti-gun hysteria is in the British leftist worldview.

Everyone's getting in on the act

The National Interest is probably the most readable of America's foreign affairs journals, with some interesting side issues such as the debate between Robin Fox and Frank Fukuyama on human rights. They now have expanded with an on-line supplement, In The National Interest. Great potential here, I think.

Cats and dogs living together

Wonders will never cease. First I convert to Blairism, now Junius finds himself agreeing with sp!ked's Mick Hume. France's backing for American intervention in Iraq cannot be far off.

US crime down again

No surprise to me, but Violent Crime Fell 9% in '01, Victim Survey Shows. I predicted that the NCVS would show another decrease, despite the small increase in crime reported by the FBI earlier in the year. It's the lesser crimes, like simple assault, that are decreasing the most, showing that America is becoming a simply more civilized place. Moreover, I remain sure that part of the reason for the disparity between the two surveys is that more people, feeling more civic-minded, are reporting crimes, so driving up the FBI numbers. I shall have more to say on this when I actually see the report, which I should do soon.

Meanwhile, something struck me about this line in the AP report:

The share of violent crimes involving guns held steady at about 26 percent.

How disingenuous. Most people reading that would think that gun crime has not fallen like the rest of violent crime. Of course, if violent crime has fallen, but the share of it committed with firearms remains the same, then gun crime has also fallen. More detailed figures when I've seen the report.

Stoners please try to read all of this...

Very interesting PBS interview from a few years ago with Mark Kleiman of UCLA on the subject of what we know about marijuana -- the science, the social effects, the enforcement and so on. Kleiman points out the weaknesses in the positions of both "hawks" and "doves" on the issue. His analysis of the real intents behind the campaign for Proposition 215 in California is illuminating, as is his analysis of the gateway drug allegation, but I find it interesting that PBS should highlight this statement above all:

If we legalize marijuana or any other drug, either we will have a private industry whose profits depend on creating and maintaining addicts, or we will have a public beauracracy whose revenues depend on creating and maintaining addicts. Somebody's going to get a revenue stream from selling licit drugs, and whoever gets that revenue stream is going to try and maximize it. What you might call the political economy of drug legalization is a bigger problem than the legalizers seem to grasp.

There's a lot of food for thought in this interview, for people on both sides of the issue.

Timbo: First Blood Part II

Tim Hames pre-empts most of next weeks op/eds by giving us the pro forma version:

“On September 11, with the twin towers reduced to rubble and the side of the Pentagon still smouldering (add a few hundred words of extra semi-poetic text), America had the sympathy of the whole world (gloss over those who cheered or blamed it all on US empathy for Israel). That sentiment held fast during the military campaign in Afghanistan despite the casualties inflicted.

“But this week, with the White House poised to invade Iraq, that solidarity has been squandered. What an appalling testament to the arrogance, ignorance and unilateralism of the bellicose Bush Administration (insert the preferred choice of Wild West metaphor, ramble on the same theme for several hundred more words, send off invoice for fat fee afterwards).”

Tim then puts his case for pre-emption, in pretty strong terms. He considers his opposition brainless, no less. Strong stuff.

Wouldn't be surprised at all...

BBC Launches "Grief 24" to provide round-the-clock grieving news to the people of Britain. This is a satire, I hasten to point out. A real BBC Grief 24 would of course include patronising homilies about the woes of the Palestinians whenever a suicide bomber struck a school bus...

Aren't we forgeting something?

Swedish politician calls for more porn on TV to boost birthrate. Hmmm. Simple application of cause and effect? Yet what Ms. Kirpikli forgets is that this declining birthrate has occured during a period in which the frequency of recreational sex has increased (I believe Bjorn Lomborg has something about this in his investigation of sperm counts). What Ms. Kirpikli really wants is something that will encourage people not to use contraception. Now how do you do that on television?

Freedom of inaction

Steven Chapman, Brendan O'Neill's evil twin, has an excellent analysis of what the reaction to 9/11 from the Tranzis tells us about their view of virtue.

Age and guile beats youth, innocence and a lousy knowledge of history

I very much enjoyed this tale of naval derring-do from Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal. I wonder what Steven Den Beste thinks about it? (Thanks to Chris Bertram for the link).

Bad news for Euroland

It's not been a good few days for Euroland. Besides the simple marginalization of its leaders on the Iraq issue by Blair, Bush and Putin, now the chances of it enticing Britain into its economic parlor look even slimmer. Support among British exporters for adopting the Euro, the one real trump card the "yes" campaign had, has slipped under 50% for the first time. Meanwhile, the Vice-President of the Bundesbank has warned of an impending deficit disaster:

The Bundesbank, as a branch office of the European Central Bank, is not what it was, but when Jurgen Stark, its vice-president, warns that member states are not taking the pact seriously, it would be foolish to ignore him.

For a banker, a warning about "backsliding into the fiscal sloppiness that prevailed during the 1970s" is about as strong as it gets.

Well, if they adopt the politics of the 1970s, they might as well have the economy to go with it...

Principia Scientifica

I have an article slightly different from my usual fare up at Tech Central Station. The Return of Scientism looks at the difference between "is" and "ought" in the scientific context of some recent remarks by Lady Warnock, which I covered here a few weeks back. The main trouble with Warnock's view, I realised, it that it doesn't take any account of the Popperian or Kuhnian views of science.

By the way, if anyone has read Anthony O'Hear's book on the philosophy of science, I'd love to hear what you thought of it.

Unfluence

Xavier Basora has posted his thoughts on why the EU needs Britain. He was kind enough to ask Jim Bennett and me what we thought of it, and I have to say I agree with Jim's comments entirely:

A quick look at [Xavier's] post leads me to say that [his] arguments are pretty much the mainstream arguments made by the American foreign policy establishment and pro-EU British Tories. I call it the "White Man's Burden" theory -- just as Kipling urged the US to annex the Phillipines because he thought the US would elevate the "lesser breeds without the Law", Britian is urged to enter the EU in order to bring various Anglosphere virtues to it.

The problem is that the actual record indicates the opposite usually happens: Britain becomes more bureaucratic and centralized without slowing down or correcting the bad trends within the EU. We are now approaching a period in which the demographic problems of the Continent are about to aggravate all the structural issues within the EU nations. I fear it will get worse before it gets better, as the EUrocrats try more of the same things that got them into trouble in the first place. Better that the UK and Ireland decouple themselves from disasters like the Continental pension and income cross-subsidization systems, than have their economies be bogged down by them. Britain and Ireland would help Europe more by serving as good examples for when they finally decide to restructure themselves. Of course I'd like to preserve free trade between the Continent and the islands, but not at the price of no free trade with Britain's other natural trading partners.

I remain firmly of the position that the Continental countries can do what they like, but Britain should not be part of it. After all, if the EU wants to be less statist, it can do that perfectly well without Britain's involvement. Political will is what's important, and there is little or no political will on the Continent for a less statist EU. Adding a small drop of it will have no effect on the overall direction of the project.

Nothing's changed

Mark Steyn has an excellent piece in The Spectator asking what has really changed since 9/11. His answer is not much. Continental Europe is stuck in its 9/10 mode, while American values remain the same. What's different is essentially that America is more assertive about those values.

The Troika

Further evidence of the emerging US-UK-Russia "codominion" is presented with the news that Tony Blair is meeting with Vladimir Putin to discuss Iraq. It looks like a Security Council resolution is being hammered out between the US, UK and Russia. China won't care, really, leaving only France to simmer in its own incapacity to influence events.

New column up

My latest UPI column, Recent research suggests..., has finally made its way onto the wire. I take a look at some recent news on teen drinking and substance abuse and at the recent revelations that neither gingko biloba nor St John's Wort are any more effective than placebos.

Cracks begin to appear

The pan-Arab resistance to the idea of toppling Saddam by force has begun to crumble. According to the Telegraph, Kuwait breaks ranks on Saddam.

The Kuwaiti foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed Sabah Salem al-Sabah, told The Telegraph: "While Saddam Hussein continues to keep Kuwaiti prisoners of war, and continues to televise threats against Kuwait, we consider the war against Iraq to have never ended."

I imagine a few of the other Gulf States might now begin to say similar things publicly. Combined with likely UN approval, this should win over quite a few of those worried about so-called unilateral action.

Saddam's Atomic Dustbin

A lot of people are linking to this, but it's worth it. The Indepundit has a review of the evidence about Saddam's nuclear program. It looks pretty convincing proof to me that he is near to getting his hands on a nuclear bomb. Who will be safe from the Sword of Islam then?

Class Warfare (in a very real sense)

A misplaced class warrior seems to have ended up writing for The Times about life on board an American aircraft carrier. The Group Captain provides an excellent commentary on his politically-inspired idiocy.

Web of lies

Not sure how to link directly to it, but Brendan O'Neill has very interesting tidbit in his "Curiosities" sidebar:

For all my British readers - you may recall that during the tragic Holly and Jessica abduction and murder case police officers raised the spectre of 'chatroom perverts'. Without a shred of evidence, the police and the media peddled scare stories about the two girls possibly meeting their abductor after making contact with him/her over the internet. The original source of this scare story? Maxine Carr, Holly and Jessica's former classroom assistant, who is currently being held on suspicion of their murder.

I was disappointed to see Oliver Letwin jump on this particular bandwagon. He's normally more thoughtful than that.

Reversion to type

After saying something moderately sensible on the Euro, Anatole Kaletsky has returned to his usual form with a staggeringly stupid article on American hegemony and international law. He manages to praise the delegates that booed Colin Powell in Jo'burg -- the use of the epithet childish does not diminish his obvious approval -- without mentioning that the "American excess" that provoked the booing was criticism of Robert Mugabe's racist and murderous regime. Peter Briffa gets Kaletsky down on the ground and delivers a few well-targeted kicks.

Self-importance

Nice write-up from Virginia Postrel on my latest TCS piece. She calls it "important," which has made me feel as pleased as punch, I have to say...

Case Closed

I've been saying for several years that American cities are safer than London, to general derision unless the audience has actually bothered to look at the facts. Now we get this -- London mayor: I feel safer in New York. Thanks for admitting that, Red Ken. Now that you've admitted that the leftist-inspired policing reforms since the '60s have simply endangered people, while the social changes have led to a climate where people are terrified of appearing in court, can you actually do something about it, please?

Let them eat meat

I can't wait to see what PETA has to say about this.

She's my mother, she's also my best friend

Uuurggghhhh *shudder*. According to the Boston Globe, a company is offering to press the remains of your loved ones into diamonds. Jeremy Bentham suggested that people should become autoicons, so that the statues lining your driveway would be your actual ancestors, not just carvings of them. How much more practical to be able to carry your family around on a necklace...

Brussels Spout

Dan Hannan MEP has just sent out his latest e-mail Euro-briefing, which I think is worth quoting in full:

WILL IT NEVER END?

Paul van Buitenen has finally had enough. On Tuesday, the whistle-blower who brought down the European Commission announced that he was going home to the Netherlands.

Mr van Buitenen came to public notice in 1999 when he exposed a number of fraudulent activities in the European Commission. We are not talking here about poor accounting, but about straightforward corruption: kickbacks in return for contracts, money disappearing into private accounts, friends and families being kept on the payroll at public expense. You may remember, for example, the case of Commissioner Cresson, who was employing her dentist as a consultant with a colossal salary. (Mrs Cresson's dentist was said, for what it's worth, to be doing rather more than filling her teeth.)

Faced with the evidence, the European Commisison's response was not to clean up its act, but to try to silence the whistle-blower. The resulting furore led eventually to the resignation of the entire Commission.

We were then promised immediate reform. Neil Kinnock, despite having been one of the members of the tainted Commission, was put in charge of a clean-up operation. So, three years on, where are we?

As far as Mr van Buitenen is concerned, nothing has changed. The final straw for him was the action taken against a second whistle-blower, the Commission's chief accountant, Marta Andreasen. When she disclosed that the £62 billion EU budget was out of control, she was removed from her post and, she claims, physically harassed.

How much longer must this go on before we realise that there is a structural problem in Brussels? The first serious attempt to tackle fraud came eight years ago with the establishment of an EU Court of Auditors. Every single year since then, the Court has refused to sign off the EU budget, identifying billions of euros being lost or stolen. Its findings are always greeted with an awful lot of huffing and puffing about reform; yet everyone knows that nothing will change, and that the next year's report will be no better.

The whole structure is rotten. Did you know, for example, that an MEP is given more than £8,000 per month as a secretarial allowance, and that there is nothing to prevent him paying that money to his immediate family? Did you know that he also gets nearly £2,000 in tax-free "general expenses", which are never audited, and which he can opt to have paid directly into his current account? Did you know that his trips between Brussels and his constituency are reimbursed at a fixed rate, set considerably higher than the cost of a first-class ticket? In other words, if he actually chooses to travel first class, he will make a tidy profit; but if he has an imaginative travel agent, and is prepared to make use of apex deals, he can easily trouser £1,000 per trip - tax-free, of course, since it counts as expenses, not income.

In each budget since I have been there, I have tried to change the rules so that Euro-MPs are reimbursed at cost, on the production of their ticket. Each time, the amendment has been voted down by a huge majority.

Why is the system so corrupt? Is it because Euro-crats are simply bad people? I don't think so. The problem, rather, lies in the undemocratic nature of the European project. Within Britain, the government is answerable to MPs, who are in turn answerable to their constituents. If it behaves in a profligate or sleazy manner, we can vote it out. But in Brussels, there is no link between taxation, representation and expenditure. The European Commission sprays around public money, but is not responsible for raising it. The one elected element is meant to be the European Parliament. But - be honest now - how many MEPs can you name? I was elected on a turnout of 24 per cent, considerably less than the number of people who voted over the summer in Channel 4's Big Brother. And most MEPs, I am sorry to say, see it as their job to give more power to Brussels, not to ensure that their constituents are getting good value.

The solution, surely, is to place the purse-strings back in the hands of genuinely accountable bodies. We do not have to invent these. They are called national parliaments, and they have been up and running for hundreds of years.

For thirty years now, we have been pouring our cash into the leakiest of buckets. When will we learn?

ISM: You can sign up for Dan's briefing by sending him an e-mail at dhannan[-at-]europarl.eu.int (don't want the address being picked up by spambots). Tell him I sent you.

Ducks in a row

An impressive new blogger under the simple name "Wilde" makes a strong case that the allies have been won over to war. Maybe so, at the governmental level, but the popular level is another matter. Perhaps the governments aren't worried about temporary protest on the streets and op/ed pages and, more importantly for them, on their back benches on the basis that the relief on the faces of the Iraqi peoples will be pretty good for their position. Let's face it, the Kurds and Marsh Arabs will be ecstatic pretty early on in any campaign. That speech to the UN on September 12 is looking more and more important, but will it be the final ultimatum or the delivery of a fait accompli?

Esteemrollered

Yes, I know I've used that headline before. Mark Goldblatt has a great NRO article about problems surrounding the products of the American public education system. He begins by recounting an anecdote where he asked students to tell him who said that religion is the opiate of the masses. On being given the clue that the person was German, one student ventured Martin Luther. The class roared with derision, because everyone knew Martin Luther was black. This illustrates, Goldblatt says,

the two great problems with students now entering college. The first is familiar enough: They don't know what they should know. The second is more subtle yet even more worrisome: They assume they know much more than they actually do know. In this instance, not only did the students fail to identify arguably the most famous quotation of the last two centuries, or to recognize the name of the leader of the Protestant Reformation, but they felt secure enough to laugh at an educated guess far closer to the mark than they realized.

Goldblatt correctly identifies part of the problem as the ludicrous suppression of humility in the effort to raise "self-esteem." In doing so, we have made a virtue of narcissism. And why should the narcissist bother to learn anything? He knows it all already. Frank Furedi showed that this problem is endemic in the UK, too, in this Spectator article from a while back (there was another article focusing particularly on its role in British education, but I can't find it).

Narcissism is one of the biggest problems facing the Anglosphere today. Kids who think they know it all are more likely to turn violent, as Dr Helen Smith's work shows, and are less useful than they could be to society because of their ignorance. Gnothi seauton (know thyself), said the Oracle at Delphi. Why have we forgotten this simple piece of advice?

What a surprise...

What revolution are You?
Made by altern_active
Originally spotted at the Group Captain's, but Chad Dimpler had an interesting result... (actually, there's lots of good stuff at Chad's at the moment -- pay him a visit!).

Stick to what you're good at, Paul

Paul Weller releases anti-war song, reports the BBC, but then goes on to quote him saying that involvement in politics was his "biggest mistake ever" and slips in the fact that the song is just one of many on an album. My first thought on seeing the headline was that Weller, one of the greatest songwriters Britain has produced, was doing a George Michael and attempting to revive a career by being deliberately controversial. Instead, it looks like the Beeb is trying to say, "look here's another supercool dude who opposes war. Right on!"

Poptastic.

Solent power

Natalie Solent responds to Brendan O'Neill on abortion.

Timeo Danaos et dona publicantes

(Did you know the Latin word for "confiscate" is publicare -- to make public? Interesting). Anyway, there is reason to fear Greeks confiscating gifts. Samizdata's Adriana Cronin reports about a quite breathtakingly stupid law banning electronic games in the Hellenic Republic. It's all because they can't be bothered to work out the difference between an electronic gambling game and a game of chess on your palm pilot. Utterly unbelievable.

Indiotarians winning the propaganda war

According to the FT, a majority of Europeans think the US partly to blame for the 9/11 attacks. This shows just how important Blair's offensive is. Given the successful disinformation campaign about the intellectual capabilities of President Bush and his team, only Tony Blair can do this. He is still held in great regard in Europe, even if his lustre is dimming somewhat in the UK, and the usual dismissals that were so effective against Mrs T and John Major will not be as effective against him. I hope Samizdata's Dale Amon is correct that Blair has finally decided which horse to ride. And I wonder to what extent the personal attacks Blair suffered from the Southern Africans in Jo'burg, when they said essentially that he personally was responsible for AIDS, helped him reach this decision...

The Minority's Princess

I was not particularly upset by the death of the Princess of Wales. My father was, but only because they canceled a football match he was looking forward to that afternoon. For years, part of me felt that there must have been something wrong with me for not feeling as mournful as the rest of the country. Another part of me, however, told myself not to be so silly. It seems that the skeptical part of me was right. New research from Cardiff University suggests that I was part of the majority, and quite a large majority at that:

"Most people were deeply shocked but not deeply grieving. When BBC 1 showed a tribute programme in the evening, it was watched by about four million people – just 18 per cent of those watching television. But a massive 14 million people tuned into Coronation Street on the other side. By this stage, three and a half times as many people was more concerned with the goings on at the 'Rovers Return' than in mourning or even watching about Diana."

The book argues that throughout the country there existed a silent majority. Respect for the dead and fear of the intolerance of those in mourning ensured that only positive things were said in public while alternative views retreated into privacy – to gradually re-emerge after September 1997. The book also attacks media coverage for distorting the truth of how people reacted. According to Dr Thomas:

"The media created an image of a country breaking down in hysterical, tearful grief that was widely believed but simply not true, even of most people who joined the queues. The one mourner in tears made for a better story than the ninety-nine that were not, not to mention the hundred that were not there at all - but it also made for a highly inaccurate one as well. There is nothing wrong with the media going for the most dramatic story - and there were certainly some very dramatic scenes. But there is something deeply worrying when the media then misleadingly says, "this is how we all feel, even this is how we must all feel" – which is what they did in September 1997."

The good Doctor is very right there. To use the feelings of a minority to shame the majority is an emotional abuse of rational democracy. The media -- I'm looking particularly in your direction, BBC -- failed the public here. Compare and contrast the massive spontaneous public reaction to the Queen Mother's death (still probably not a majority, but more than in Diana's case, I suspect) and the initial media indifference. The political aspects are plain to see.

Lefties think conservatives are evil...

The Krauthammer thesis has more evidence to support it. Thanks to Peter Cuthbertson for pointing to this Guardian story, where a typical Guardian writer finds that Ann Widdecombe is actually a very sweet lady:

Whatever her politics and bizarre opinions, she struck me as sincere and honest. For years, I'd blithely accepted her as a Tory hate figure, but now I couldn't help feeling that I'd met one or two Labour MPs that I liked less. Her devout Christianity gave her a certain humility that so many public figures lack. She was not a hypocrite and she was not without a sense of humour. In fact, with her hair now dyed blonde and in that little blue top... no, I wouldn't go that far. But on the final day, I did some filming in an old house while Ann was taken elsewhere. The owner of our location explained why Ann wasn't with me. "I wouldn't let that bloody woman through my front door!" he said, through gritted teeth.

"Oh, she's not so bad when you get to know her..." I heard myself say. He looked at me as if I was one of the victims in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's very disappointing to discover that your enemies are human. If Channel 4 ask me to do a sequel with George W Bush, I'm saying no.

Lovely sign-off that. The arrogance and uncharitable nature of the Guardian mentality summed up in two sentences. He's so worried that he may have to stop demonizing someone that he's going to refuse to meet him. Doesn't that say it all...?

Apologia pro factione sua

Stephen Pollard provides the blogosphere with his self-justification for being a member of the Labour Party. I have a lot of sympathy with his position, and remember Stephen's growing dissatisfaction with the intolerant wing of the Conservative Party in the late '80s (Clause 28, in fact, I now view as yet another unnecessary measure that damaged local educative democracy). It is the ideology of Stephen and his fellows that continually convinces me, however angry I may get with him at times here and elsewhere, that Tony Blair is a better leader of the Labour Party for Britain than any of the other choices. I also suspect that the Iraq question will lead to Blair becoming a committed Anglospherist, and that will be his legacy.

I talk loud, and carry a bigger stick

... was Yosemite Sam's response to Theodore Roosevelt's famous summary of his foreign policy. It may prove wiser, strangely enough. As Richard Littlejohn now points out, the quietude of Bush and Blair in presenting their case has led to such idiocies as a (completely unscientific) Sky News poll finding Brits think Dubya is a bigger threat to the world than Saddam. But as the Sun's #1 columnist says:

... the battle for public opinion here in Britain and in the US is far from lost.

The cowards, appeasers and America-haters are winning for now because they’re shouting loudest.

What needs to happen is for Bush and Tony Blair to make their case forcefully, direct to the American and British people.

And when that happens, I have no doubt they will carry the day.

Bush doesn’t have to convince the UN. He will go it alone if he has to. And I am confident Britain will be there alongside the USA. But if Bush and Blair can’t ensure UN support they can at least neutralise their opponents.

Link spotted over at Peter Briffa's hangout.

UPDATE: Our Tone is apparently about to publish a dossier on Iraq. The equivalent about Osama Bin Laden essentially shut up the people who said that there was no real proof that Osama was behind the 9/11 attacks. We'll see if this one is as effective.

Standing up for America in Europe

Roger Helmer MEP was booed in the European Parliament recently for defending America's non-cooperation with the International Criminal Court. He has a pretty good article, The USA - friend or foe?, about it up on his website.

Abortive reasoning

Brendan O'Neill joins the abortion discussion I've been having with Natalie Solent, unashamedly on the side of full abortion rights up to birth. fair enough, but his "the foetus is a part of the woman's body" argument is a little hard to justify medically. Evolutionary theorist David Haig, for example, has discovered that the placenta is not so much

... a maternal organ designed to give sustenance to the foetus, but more ... a foetal organ designed to parasite the maternal blood supply and brook no opposition in the process. He noted that the placenta literally bores its way into the mother's vessels, forcing them to dilate, and then proceeds to produce hormones which raise the mother's blood pressure and blood sugar. The mother responds by raising her insulin levels to combat this invasion. ... In other words, although mother and foetus have a common purpose, they argue fiercely about the details of how much of the mother's resources the foetus may have

Matt Ridley, Genome, p.209

So the mother's body certainly doesn't regard the foetus as part of it, more like a hostile invader (indeed, the instructions needed to create the placenta come from the father's genes -- a chimera created from two mothers cannot build one. Interestingly, the instructions needed to create higher brain functions come from the mother's side). Philosophically and biologically, we cannot treat the foetus like an appendix or spare kidney.

Turning back to religion (Brendan -- nonsense alert), I have to say I think quoting the injunction "Thou shalt not kill" is circular in this context. As is clear from Biblical passages about capital punishment, war, self-defense and manslaughter, the commandment is "Thou shalt not murder." Throughout this discussion, my question has been, essentially, "Is abortion murder? And if early abortion is not, at what point might it become murder?" So merely quoting that commandment doesn't answer my question (or, for that matter, the state of grace argument).

Exodus 21:22 seems pivotal here. It seems pretty clear to me to set a lower value on the life of a foetus, but I recognize the controversy over the various translations. I also find it interesting that mainstream Jewish tradition, as far as I am told, finds nothing wrong with abortion.

Further input to this discussion is, of course, welcome.

Death and the maven

John O'Sullivan has a useful contribution to the debate on Capital Punishment on National Review Online. He quotes me, which is nice. As I mentioned to John, since I wrote my American Outlook piece I have come to believe that capital punishment is justifiable in some circumstances, but for the most part I still oppose it.

Breaking records, not breaking rocks

Hope my American readers had as pleasant a Labor Day as I did. My latest TCS piece, Behind Books, Not Bars, takes a closer look at the assertion that there are more African American males in custody than in college. The more I think about it, the more I resent this deliberate pandering to negative stereotypes. The fact that the NAACP signed up to it shows how morally bankrupt that organization has become.

Posters rather than posts

Not many posts today as I've been rather busy, but if you'd like some great posters, please, please check out Cold Fury: Okay, So I Was Bored Tonight.

Woo-hoo!!!

Sunderland sign strikers Flo and Stewart. Bring on Manchester United...

Soul Train of Thought

Natalie Solent poses some interesting questions in relation to the theological aspects of abortion I mention below. However, as I mentioned to her by e-mail, if we argue that the innocent will experience God's love automatically if they die still innocent, then that's a pretty good argument for abortion, it seems to me. No worries about aborting, or even about infanticide, because the soul is assured of heaven. I seem to remember someone positing that the Islamic version of this argument is why their terrorists don't mind blowing up babies. I'm therefore not sure that we adequately discern God's love by following this course of argument.

Murray swims in dangerous waters

There are two peculiarly American political controversies, both of which are simply too philosophical for sophisticated Europe to bother with. One is gun rights (is there a right to self defense that overrides considerations of publc safety -- or vice versa -- is the way the debate is phrased, which is a pretty deep argument when you actually take the time to listen to it).

The other is, of course, abortion. I'm profoundly ambivalent on the subject. You cannot deny that human life begins at conception, and so (if you are a humanist, especially, like civil libertarian champion Nat Hentoff) the debate must begin over whether that life should have rights. Personally, I think it should, but I am unable to decide when those rights should attach. The common religious justification is that the soul must attach at conception (although this has not always been the case). Yet this argument does not account for multiple births, as the individuals do not split until several days after conception. Is it one soul until the split? Or two souls attached to the single embryo? This is not an easy problem to solve.

Nor is it the case that every fertilised embryo is destined to live unless man chooses otherwise. As this excellent article, Abortion and Brain Waves by Gregg Easterbrook, makes clear, there are a lot more spontaneous miscarriages than we thought:

new science shows that conception usually does not produce a baby. "The majority of cases in which there is a fertilized egg result in the non-realization of a person," says Dr. Machelle Seibel, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Boston University School of Medicine. What exists just after conception is called a zygote. Research now suggests that only about half of all zygotes implant in the uterine wall and become embryos; the others fail to continue dividing and expire. Of those embryos that do trigger pregnancy, only around 65 percent lead to live births, even with the best prenatal care. The rest are lost to natural miscarriage. All told, only about one-third of sperm-egg unions result in babies, even when abortion is not a factor.

Do each of these embryos have a soul too? If so, then (using down and dirty simplistic renditions) heaven is going to be occupied by a lot of souls that have never heard Christ's teachings. That's pretty weird theologically speaking.

So I'm not convinced of the religious, or indeed scientific argument for banning abortion in the first trimester. Yet, as Easterbrook argues pretty convincingly, there is precious little difference between a late-term baby inside the womb and one outside. Interestingy, the medical logic of Roe vs Wade (as opposed to the abominable constitutional logic) seems to recognize this problem. In those medical terms, it was a carefully crafted compromise that I can live with.

Of course, neither side in this debate is happy with the compromise, so we reach a situation excellently summarized by Easterbrook:

... each year since 1995, Congress has enacted legislation to restrict late-term abortion, and each year President Clinton has either vetoed or threatened to veto it. During the sequence of votes and vetoes, each side has gone out of its way to make itself look bad. Pro-life members of Congress have proposed absolute bans that make no provision for protecting the life of the mother, which undermines their claim to revere life. Senator Diane Feinstein of California, in what was surely one of the all-time lows for American liberalism, brought to the Senate floor a bill intended to affirm a woman's right to terminate a healthy, viable late-term fetus. Both sides have opposed a reasonable middle ground. In 1996, for example, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, a liberal Democrat, offered a bill to ban late-term abortions except when necessary to avert "serious adverse health consequences" to the woman. Rather than rally around this compromise, pro-lifers and pro-choicers mutually assailed it.

And, of course, statistics are used in this debate like stolen lightning. The latest round comes from the pro-life side, with a study published in the Southern Medical Journal (warning -- pdf file) that is summarized here. It claims to find that women who undergo abortions are significantly more likely to die, from both violent and non-violent means, in the years following the abortion.

This study suffers from all the problems I've mentioned in the recent cases of airborne pollution, HRT and other examples of scaremongering. The relative risks are below 2, casting doubt on the significance of the findings. The lower ends of the confidence intervals are suspiciously close to 1. Moreover, the researchers, while they controlled for psychiatric history, did not, as far as I can tell control for marital status. The single biggest predictor of a woman suffering violence is her marital status. Similarly, single women place themselves in risky situations that can lead to accidental death or death by infectious disease more than women. If the researchers had found that a married woman who had had an abortion was more likely to die than a married woman or had not, or, more significantly, an unmarried woman who had not, then that would be something worth paying attention to. As it is, this study is not a particularly useful contribution to the debate.

PP: If you want to know why abortion will never be banned outright in the States, read this article.

British media bias

Check out Stephen Pollard's latest blog post on British media bias, which clearly states the exact objection I have to the BBC in particular.

Blood, toil, tears and sweat

Sir John Keegan, who should know, says that if Churchill were alive today, he would strike at Saddam. By contrast, a UVA assistant professor* of philosophy raises moral and political objections to starting war with Iraq, which I'd have more sympathy for if we weren't already at war with Iraq (we have been bombing it weekly for quite some time). Ceasefires don't end wars, they simply pause them.

* Remember, one of the reasons why we are supposed to ignore Bjorn Lomborg is because he was only an assistant professor. The argumentum ex auctoritate is fallacious, but you'd never know that from the coverage of Lomborg. If anyone on the right uses this argument against Talbot Brewer, they deserve equal condemnation.

Euroflop

Anatole Kaltesky, a generally idiotarian commentator who is sometimes insightful when he talks about things he knows about (i.e. economics), declares confidently that the Euro is a dead issue in the UK. His prognosis for Europe will make a few people smile:

... while Britain has been saved from the euro, at least for the time being, by the operation of democracy and the good sense of voters, the rest of Europe is looking less and less fortunate on both counts. Europe is bouncing along the bottom of a deep economic slump and can no longer hope to export its way out of trouble by selling luxury goods to a super-charged American economy. Meanwhile, Germany, which is now perennially Europe’s weakest, as well as its largest, economy, is being sucked into a deflationary whirlpool similar to the one that drowned the postwar economic miracle in Japan.

Kaletsky then goes on to a detailed examination of the state of the German economy and the peculiar bind the Euro has placed it in. I think he's right on this one. Now, now, we mustn't laugh...

Predictions wrong again

Everyone said there would be a baby boom nine months after 9/11. I mentioned in a STATS article that time and time again people had predicted baby booms after events of national import and time and time again, they did not happen. Someone in Northern New Jersey -- an area you'd expect to be one of the most affected -- has looked into the figures. The result? No baby boom there.

Over the Moon

Pardon me while I leap around the room yahooing like a crazed gibbon. The lads beat Leeds at Elland Road last night for the first time since 1961. Now if only we can get another proven striker to join us by Saturday...

Recommended

I've been meaning to mention Jim Miller on Politics for some time now. He has a particularly nice discussion of the ecological fallacy up there at the moment.

The devil is the details

Rand Simberg rails at the Director of ONDCP for disingenuous use of statistics over at Transterrestrial Musings. Rand's complaint is about correlation being misinterpreted as causation:

Note that it doesn't say that marijuana caused the emergency-room visit--just that it was "mentioned as a drug patients used." Had they been asked, even greater numbers might have offered up milk as a "food patients used." Since there's zero reason to equate correlation with causation, Fearless Leader is either being idiotic, or disingenuous when he says:

"Marijuana-related medical emergencies are increasing at an alarming rate, exceeding even those for heroin," White House Drug Czar John Walters said in a prepared statement. "This report helps dispel the pervasive myth that marijuana is harmless.

Rand's contempt would be utterly deserved if the definition of "mention" was as he and some of his correspondents suppose. It isn't though, according to the voluminous SAMSHA report (warning -- huge PDF file), on p.35, to be classified as a drug-related episode, several criteria have to be met, including:

The patient's presenting problem(s) (i.e., the reason for the Emergency Department visit) was induced by or related to drug use, regardless of when the drug use occurred; (and) ...

The patient's reason for using the substances(s) was dependence, suicide attempt or gesture, and/or psychic effects.

In addition to drug overdoses, reportable ED episodes may result from chronic effects of habitual drug use or from unexpected reactions. Unexpected reactions reflect cases where the drug's effect was different than anticipated (e.g., caused hallucinations). DAWN cases do not include accidental ingestion or inhalation of a substance with not intent of abuse, or adverse reactions to prescription or over-the-counter medications taken as prescribed.

A single drug abuse episode may have multiple drug mentions. Up to 4 different substances can be recorded for each ED episode. Therefore, not every reported substance is, by itself, necessarily a cause of the medical emergency. On the other hand, substances that contributed to a drug abuse episode may occasionally go unreported or undetected. Even when only one substance is reported for an episode, an allowance should be made for reportable drugs not mentioned or for other contributory factors.

It goes on:

DAWN does not measure the frequency or prevalence of drug use in the population, but rather the health consequences of drug use that are reflected in visits to hospital EDs.

This a pretty careful study, from what I can make out. Simply going to an ED with an ingrowing toenail and admitting you smoked a spliff or two in college would not classify the visit as either an episode or mention. Someone admitted to hospital after smoking a spliff, snorting coke and then drinking a black velvet (the combination that killed Olivia Channon, if I recall correctly) would be classified as an episode with three mentions (marijuana, coke and alcohol, which is recorded if in combination with a drug, for good reason). If someone smoked a spliff and then someone who had not been taking drugs hit him with a baseball bat, it would not be classified as an episode. If someone took a toke and decided he could fly out of the second story window, it would be.

If Walters had said "Marijuana abuse is increasing at an alarming rate," Rand's objection would be valid. Given the careful design of this study, however, Rand's point about milk and food is not appropriate. This study depends on a clinical assessment that drugs were causally involved in the incident. It looks pretty damning to me.

The Poverty of Poverty theory

Amazing. A hard-left organization in the UK has recognized that poverty is normally a temporary state:

"People move through dependency, and most poverty is temporary. Poverty is generally an experience for part of people's lives, not for all of it.

"Few people under retirement age who have low incomes now have been poor throughout the last five years.

"Relatively few people who are unemployed stay unemployed continuously. Most young people who are currently poor will either obtain work, or settle down with someone else who is not poor."

In other words, the idea of a permanent economic underclass is a myth. Quite right. Janet Daley dismisses some other economic myths, such as the notion that you can define poverty in relative terms, here. But that is not to say that there is no such thing as an underclass. instead, we have a cultural underclass, one that ensures it remains in the lowest socio-economic stratum by making poor decisions the cultural norms. Daley hints at this when she mentions marriage:

Social analysts (again, invariably labelled "Right-wing") have been saying for years that family breakdown is a main cause of modern poverty. It is much more expensive for individuals, and for society, when people try to raise children alone.

So if the Government really wanted to abolish poverty, the most valuable thing that it could do would be to encourage people - by any means in its power - to marry before having children and to stay married once they have had them. Don't hold your breath on this one.

The culture of the underclass in both the UK and US is strongly anti-marriage. It is also pro welfare-dependency, the other aspect that Daley hints at. Policies that promote the social importance of marriage and personal responsibility are needed. Funnily enough, both are, how shall we put it, traditional...

War: The Case For

Leave it to Michael Gove to lay out the principled conservative case for war against Iraq. He answers particularly the conservative argument that state sovereignty must not be breached:

The international order has hitherto depended on the principle that national borders are sacrosanct and, however unattractive a tyrant, military action to remove a regime can be justified only by its breaching another state’s sovereignty. But, as Dr Kissinger has noted, Iraq’s imminent acquisition of weapons of mass destruction challenges that doctrine at root. For not only is Saddam’s programme to acquire such weapons in breach of treaty accords and the international order, it also gives him the potential to threaten global security at will, possessed of the means of inflicting irretrievable damage on other states and peoples. Saddam, and his terrorist allies, would be horrifically empowered. Our capacity to protect our citizens, and interests, would be grotesquely weakened.

The scale, and imminence, of the threat we face requires action of a kind it has become hard to contemplate. We have no alternative but to launch a pre-emptive war against Iraq to prevent Saddam completing his drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Massive military force must be deployed to remove Saddam’s regime. Such an action will inevitably lead to significant casualties, both Western and Iraqi. No reasonable, or moral, human being can regard such a course with equanimity. But reason, and morality, tell us that there is no alternative.

The difference between Iraq and Serbia (in the case of Kosovo) is clear. Serbia had ceased bothering its neighbors, and was struggling to maintain order against what were essentially Islamic terrorists. There was no real emergent threat. Iraq is plainly different.

Moreover, Michael goes on to point out that in removing Saddam, the "West" will be clearing up a mess partly of its own creation:

It also requires a recognition that the traditional diplomacy which placed stability above morality only succeeded in compromising both. The realpolitik which led Republicans, and Tories, in the past to acquiesce in the propping up of regimes in Baghdad, and Riyadh, has not bought us security. It has allowed evil to incubate. And we have been forced to pay, in the innocent blood shed on September 11, for that folly.

Now, however, America is determined to ensure that danger is defeated by liberating those whom its past policies have betrayed. It is an irony, and one perhaps not welcome among the old Left or the old Right, that morality has been restored to international affairs by a conservative American President. Just as it was in the 1940s by a Conservative British Prime Minister. While Europe stands irresolute and divided, while America’s old managerialists cavil, while the Left temporises in the face of tyranny, the White House recognises that Western democracy’s future depends on democracy taking root in Iraq.

Cynics might call it cowboy diplomacy, but putting its faith in freedom is how the West has always won.

The Western powers have left a lot of messes behind them. It is quite simply compounding the error not at least to contemplate clearing them up.

Butterfield at it again

The New York Times is trumpeting a Justice Policy Institute report that says Black males are more likely to go to prison than college. This is a foul canard. You go to college generally between the ages of 18-24, while you can go to jail at any time. Can you say apples and oranges? Moreover, the figures for black male college enrollment look suspiciously low. A quick check of the Census bureau figures show 815,000 black males enrolled in college, not the 603,000 claimed here. That's a hell of a difference.

Anyway, my quick check shows that there are 195,000 black males of college age in prison or jail, as opposed to 469,000 enrolled in college. The JPI looks as if it's being deeply disingenuous here.

Set the People Free

... was Churchill's election slogan in 1951, after the Labour government had refused to remove all the cumbersome regulations of wartime. Bill Deedes says it helped win the election for the Tories, and suggests that it might work again now:

One thing for sure, we are enmeshed by many more regulations than we had in 1951. There are no acute shortages, so we are spared rationing; but our lives have become far more tightly controlled.

The regulations passed with scant parliamentary attention and spun round business, shops, schools, doctors, hospitals, factories, hotels, every mortal form of activity, are formidable, perhaps crippling, and growing.

There is no longer such a thing as an accident in life. Someone is to blame and, if you set about it in the right way, a lawyer or tribunal will collect for you, probably for free.

Like the rationing and controls kept on long after the Second World War, "It's only fair, innit?" No denying, there are political risks here. So best keep the cushion pressed hard down on the face of the enterprising? There is a fork in the road ahead for the Tories. Turn right - and is it all that far right? - and promise to set the people free.

My personal favorite UK political slogan was Mrs T's "Britain Strong and Free," but I think Churchill's is more appropriate to the current times.

RKBA UK

The fightback looks as if it is beginning with sport as the champion in this Spectator article.

Comparative Advantage?

Public school values at a fraction of the price. This story speaks volumes about the state of education in the UK.

Hiding behind the Bill of Rights

Something we should all do now and then, whether it's the 1689 version or the one from a century later. Thanks to Alan K Henderson for pointing to this excellent idea.

The Spanish Front

Xavier Basora's thoughts on WWI and American intervention are up at Buscaraons.

The BBC and the Government: whore and pimp

I can think of no better analogy. The BBC performs for the body that guarantees its funding by enforced taxation. Janet Daley
makes clear exactly how this arrangement works:

It is queasily reminiscent of state broadcasting in a totalitarian society when the BBC schedules a day-long programme called Your NHS to coincide with a Labour Budget that promises vast amounts of money to the National Health Service, and the Prime Minister actually appears on that programme to make clear his commitment to quality health care. As Adam Boulton said, why couldn't they have called it "Health Day" rather than "NHS Day" and examined other ways of funding and structuring health care?

Maybe the corporation is actually colluding to keep Labour in power in an explicitly corrupt way. But probably not. It is just that its personnel share Labour's assumptions and language. They do not regard these shared views on, say, the virtue of high tax and high public spending, as merely correct: they see them as the only rational opinions. And they, apparently, are the masters now.

The BBC is a high class prostitute, certainly. But it is a prostitute just the same.

Quiet Riot?

Chris Bertram has instant analysis of the report into the Bradford riots last year. It seems that the riots were pretty much motivated by religious hatred of non-muslims, and the authors deserve commendation for their bravery in pointing this out. I'd be very interested to see a comparative analysis of the Bradford and Cincinatti riots.

The European Ideal

I have nothing really to add to The Group Captain's remarks on Jack Straw's latest pro-Euro rantings except to say that it seems that the central principle of Eurocracy is Berthold Brecht's "Let us dismiss the people and elect another in their place".

Matthew 7, 3

Eucharist Is Cannibalistic, Says Bishop. Yes, our old friend the Rt Rev Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford (he's been there since '87, a clear case for ecclesiastical term limits), says the eucharist is turning people away from the church. Not wishy-washy relativistic views or failure to address the concerns of individuals rather than groups, no. It's that rotten transubstantiation issue again (although I'm sure Harries would be appalled if Ian Paisley ground a catholic wafer under his foot as an "instrument of idolatry" again). Perhaps His Grace should turn to the Gospel According to St. Matthew once again:

Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Iustum Bellum

Chris Bertram sets out the compelling case from the left that the war in Afghanistan was just in the latest Imprints magazine.

Anglosphere: the view from Oz

Scott Wickstein sends the following useful contribution on the idea from Australia:

Iain Murray has been a leading promoter of the "Anglosphere Concept", and he very kindly asked me to put a few words together describing how the "Anglosphere Concept" looks from an Australian perspective.

To be honest, from here, the "Anglosphere Concept" and the "Network Commonwealth" look to be more an outline of what is already under construction then just a blueprint. Because of it's geographical isolation, Australia has been more thoughtful then it perhaps has been credited for about it's international relations. And Australians, again perhaps due to their remoteness from the world stage are not aware of the impact they have on the world.

The Anglosphere Concept places great emphasis on the strength of civil society. Australia indeed has a strong civil society, which is a remarkable achievement for a nation that was founded as a penal colony. The strength of Australian civil society is not obvious on the surface. It has less participation then in other nations- Australians are reluctant to put themselves forward. However, in times of crisis, Australian civil society shows itself to be exceptionally strong- you can see how strong when a bushfire endangers a town, or the huge volunteer effort that contributed so much to the success of the Olympic games.

Australia's much maligned local government level helps out here as well- Australian municipalities cover suburbs rather then whole cities- There's no such thing as the Greater Adelaide Council, all this work is done by suburban authorities. Only Brisbane has a large municipal organisation.

Australia also benefits from a strong immigration intake, which tends to be of the "best and the brightest". Australia has been criticised lately for its refugee policies, but this overshadows the trend towards a larger intake, and underlines how desirable a place Australia is to live in.

James Bennett makes the point that the "Anglosphere" is a strong leader in the field of science and technology. Australia is not renowned as a leader in raw science, however it has made contributions here. What Australia is really strong at is adapting to new technology, and what you might call "applied" science. Australia has been innovative in uptaking modern communications (anything to make the world seem smaller and distances less vast is popular here.) and even in science, Australia has its innovators, often with help, as I will discuss later.

A point I would like to make about the "Anglosphere" attitude to science, that isn't talked about by James Bennett, is that I feel there is a strong "Anti-Science" emotion prevalent in the Anglosphere that counteracts scientific leadership, that is probably stronger in Britain and Australia, then in North America, though it can also be identified there. Such Luddite thinking (itself an English term from the industrial revolution) is often to be found in the literary-arts intelligentsia, and has a strong political effect in terms of hostility to technology, of old, the anti-nuclear power groups, and is now seen in hostility to genetic technology and nanotechnologies.

The Network Commonwealth concept is already a work under construction as far as Australia is concerned. The very term Commonwealth has great resonance here- Australia's official name is "The Commonwealth of Australia" and of course Australia was a big fan of the British Commonwealth of Nations before that concept collapsed as a useful medium in international affairs.
Trade is a part of the NC- and Australia is working hard to make this a reality. Australia has a free trade agreement of long standing with New Zealand, and is working hard to secure another with the United States. Trade with the UK is still of importance to Australia, and Australian companies still look to London when they first look to expand internationally. In other areas of co-operation, Australia has common food standards organisation with New Zealand, and a lot of trade co-operation is done "behind the scenes" that doesn't get a lot of public recognition, but is important nonetheless.

The concept of sojourner provisions for the Anglosphere is a great one that Australia would benefit greatly from. It's almost a rite of passage for Australians to travel overseas, for a working holiday in the UK or increasingly the US, and indeed elsewhere, and an increasing number of Australians spend part of their careers overseas. This is starting to work both ways, with large numbers of UK 20somethings working and spending time in Australia, and Australian corporates are increasingly looking for international personnel to fill key vacancies. More co-operation is needed with both the US and the UK, for Australia to reap the benefits in international movement.
Scientific collaboration is another area Australia has long been active- mostly in space technology, with the Anglo-Australian telescope program, and Australian authorities have long worked to help NASA in its space expeditions. A more focussed effort here by Australian authorities would work wonders however, keeping Australia up to date in important new technologies such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

This collaboration effort is seen more in security issues. For Australia, the alliance with the United States is not just a common defence treaty- Australia's security agencies work closely with their US and UK counterparts, specialising in South East Asian affairs. Australia is usually to be found in the ranks of any "Coalitions of the Willing", sometimes causing internal debate, but whenever there's trouble to be found, Australia will usually help in sorting it out. In East Timor, Australia started to exercise a leadership role, with the US providing support in logistics and communications.

The call for Civilisation construction leads people who wish to spread the Anglosphere Concept and make it a part of mainstream debate first have a question to ask of ourselves. Do we wish to make it a political concept, to put it "on the Agenda" so to speak, or to work it into the background as an idea, rather in the way that "globalisation" was. Seemingly each nation interested in the Anglosphere will have their own problems and priorities. In England, the Network Commonwealth provides a workable alternative for Eurosceptics to offer to the EU- in America and Australia, such a political use of the concept seems less necessary, as ideally, the Network Commonwealth should be a bipartisan approach.

One of the important social organisations of the old British Commonwealth that is transferable to the Network Commonwealth is the importance of sporting links, especially cricket and rugby. These sports help to develop social and other links between nations and cricket and rugby are especially good because they attune attitudes and spread memes between nations- especially nations that otherwise would have little in common. The role of cricket in India is crucial- no one who knows India can doubt the importance of cricket in Indian national life, and the same applies to rugby in New Zealand. Such sporting issues are not as obvious in Australia or England, but are definitely there in the background. It is a shame that America's sporting endeavours are in fields that are not practiced internationally.

Suman Palit refers to the flourishing of Anglosphere memes in India. These are seeds of the new Network Commonwealth, and it is greatly to everyone's advantage that those seeds are watered and well looked after.

E-mail problem

By the way, my e-mail wasn't working this weekend for DNS reasons, so please feel free to re-send anything that bounced.

Not Invented Here

Steven Den Beste has a pretty good discussion up about Hobart's Funnies, the British variants of US tanks in WWII, and what they tell us about the respective nations.

However, I think Steven overdoes the idea that there was obstructionism in the UK military. Frank Whittle, for instance, who invented the jet engine, joined the RAF as an apprentice aircraft fitter. The initial refusal by the Air Ministry to countenance spending public money on his unproven idea was quite proper in my opinion, but after he had raised private money to build a working model in 1937, the Ministry very quickly gave the idea the attention it deserved, so that we were well on the way to building the first Gloster Meteor in 1940.

Meanwhile, the Americans were obviously guilty of the "not invented here" syndrome. By far the most effective version of the Sherman tank in WWII was the British Sherman VC, or Firefly, with its 17pdr gun rather than the far less effective 75mm cannon. As a result, it was the only tank on the Western Front that could take on the Tiger and Panther. The US military command, however, refused to countenance upgrading the gun. I understand this decision was not popular with US troops who saw the Firefly's effectiveness.