129,864,880.

Now you know.

Lynn Mitchell has just about the best one-post resource in Virginia for filing your Notice of Intent forms for home schoolers.

Gee, ya think?!

Of course, this doesn’t remove some of the questions of McDonald’s lobbying activities in Richmond, but by and large… ’tis the law.  The time for Newport News City Council to fix this problem is during the budget cycle.

Third party (and so-called Tea Party challenger) Jeff Clark’s position on abortion is slightly to the left of Tom Perriello:

Clark, the independent candidate who said he has received flack from some Republican supporters over his decision to enter the race, has expressed his belief that women should have access to an abortion if they become pregnant due to a sexual assault or if there is medical emergency for the mother.

“I don’t think the government should fund abortions even in those cases, but there should be some leeway in a woman’s right to choose,” Clark said. “I also think it should be coupled with counseling for the entire family.”

Some leeway?  Counselling?  How’s about having the guts to say that anyone who advocates killing babies in the womb is automatically disqualified from public office?

Disgusting.  The article is worth reading if the right to life is of any deep concern to you as a voter in VA-05.

Want a quick insight as to how bad the VRS really is? Multiply this experience by however many six-figure public servants you have in Virginia — local and state — and it’s a good picture of what’s to come.

The severance includes 12 months of salary, equating a gross payment of $128,750; and full payment for accrued vacation time, equaling $12,627.60.

…

Terpenny will also receive employee sick-leave divestiture for the next 10 years, starting next month. Payments will begin in the amount of $1,050.66 per month, beginning Sept. 1 and lasting until a final payment of $1,050.86 on Aug. 1, 2020. That adds up to an additional $126,000.

Plus this guy is the new town manager in Floyd, Virginia — an additional $50,000 a year.  But, of course, this gentleman is only playing by the rules of the game.

All at taxpayer expense.

Now wouldn’t it be cool to have a group of American — or even Virginian — politicians and public figures sign something similar?

During the 10th Meeting of Colombian Governors, 30 governors, Mayor Samuel Moreno of Bogota and other top administration officials, singed a public agreement to, among other things, defend the right to life of the country’s unborn children.

The non-binding document recognizes the obligation of the family, society and the government to assist and protect children. It also reiterates the four fundamental principles of the Convention on the Rights of Children: non-discrimination, devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child.

Sure… it’s non-binding.  Sometimes you have to take those first steps before you walk.  Now isn’t a bad time to demand leadership when it comes to protecting human life.  Either stand up or sit down…

Because you know this joke had to be made:

Awesome.

Oh noes! Geithner says unemployment is going to go up in the short term?!?!  Well of course it is:

“When they see a little hope that there may be jobs out there, they start to come back in again. And that can cause the measured unemployment rate to go up — temporarily,” Geithner told “Good Morning America’s” George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview. “But what we expect to see, and I think most forecasters expect this…is an economy that’s gradually healing, gradually strengthening, businesses starting to add people back.”

Of course, this is a quick reminder that unemployment rates don’t effectively translate into those-out-of-work rates.  Unemployment only ticks up because those who are not working are attempting to find jobs again… which gives credence to the real figure of between 16-19%.

Solution?  Certainly not to end the Bush tax cuts… you’re talking about a $3 trillion drain on capital and credit should that occur, one that will stall any recovery.

Hopefully the policy wonks won’t let politics interfere with economic theory — however unsound I may believe Keynesian economics to be, this is precisely how you recover from a crisis of credit such as the one we’ve experienced thus far.

Holidays in Mongolia aren’t much different than any given holiday in Central Virginia.  We all go out, go hunting, have about a quart of arkhi to get drunk stay warm, and find some local varmint to shoot:

The first thing you’ll want to do is get fantastically drunk; Exceptionally so. There are many ways to achieve this, but for those seeking authenticity, a quart of fermented horse milk vodka, arkhi, will do the trick. After this, hunting and pursuing your prey will go much smoother (or if not smoother, perhaps more enjoyable). That’s just where those berries come in handy—acquire a decent sized handful, place them under a box held up with stick tied to a string—just like you saw in those roadrunner cartoons. Should this take too long, mount up and blast the varmint with a rifle, Yosemite Sam style.

Frankly, looking at the pictures, these guys know how to make a meal…

Yet is there a single reason in the world why George Allen should not respond to this?

“We vehemently disagree with your analysis and wonder if serving in the elite, rich, United States Senate has skewed your vision of the world in which we live,” wrote executive director King Salim Khalfani.

“Your opponent then and coming, George Allen, would not have had the gall to write about the ‘myth of white privilege’ even though I am sure he feels that way.”

Huge opportunity to find out what’s really on George Allen’s heart, and maybe have an honest conversation on affirmative action and race in Virginia.

About a month ago, I read with great interest a fantastic little book called The Closing of the Muslim Mind, which goes into great detail about why the Islamic caliphates went from being the foremost intellectual center of the Middle Ages to scientific backwater.

For instance, many people are not aware that Islamic textbooks on science often postfix many of their scientific posits with “God willing” in order to avoid any implication of heresy.  A fascinating concept, especially when you draw contrasts to Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensberg address back in 2006.  While most people remember the speech for the historical depictions of Ottoman conquerers (and the riots that ensued afterwards), the Pope had much to say about the relationship between faith and reason:

“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”  The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”

…

John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning was the logos”. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and word – a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist.

…

From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act “with logos” is contrary to God’s nature.

…

God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, “transcends” knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul – worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason.

…

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

So maybe that was a bit too much to quote all at once.  If you haven’t read the Regensberg address in full and have even a remote interest in the Global War on Terrorism (and can stomach the heavy intellectual lifting), then print this out and read it paragraph by paragraph.  It’s worth your time.

Benedict XVI was reflecting on two key aspects of Christian-Muslim relations: (1) that for Christians, we not only inherit Greek philosophy, but that our faith is rooted in reason and our reason rooted in faith, and (2) that this is a stark contrast to the Muslim belief that faith trumps reason, and a theological discussion that must be developed.

You’d be surprised to learn that it wasn’t always this way.  In fact, during the Middle Ages it was almost precisely the opposite — a Catholic Church locked in mysticism, medieval politics, or outright dying (well before the restoration spearheaded by St. Francis and St. Dominc in the 12th century) contrasted against a Muslim caliphate that embraced reason.

So what changed?  Islam, like Christianity, has its own tectonic rifts, and during the 11th century it would be Islam’s turn to look for purification.  In short, they had their own “reformation” — their own version of Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, and above all the sovereign will of Allah.

By the 12th century, Muslim philosophers in Cordoba would be the last refuge of reason as philosophic inquiry itself would be banned, and the books of the great Muslim thinkers burned.  Why this sudden change in Islam?  Much of it centered around the displacement of reason in favor of faith — faith in the Koran, faith in the um’ma, and the idea that Allah alone governs every microscopic aspect of natural events.

For instance, imagine an arrow aimed at the heart of a man.  Islam would argue that the tension of the bow is entirely the will of Allah, the loosing of the arrow is also the will of Allah.  The travelling along a determined path is the will of Allah.  That the arrow pierces the skin of the target is also the will of Allah.  That it kills the target is also the will of Allah.  That the individual loosing the arrow is not responsible for his actions, but submitted to the will of Allah. That there was no injustice in the act, but for the will of Allah.

Get the problem yet?

There no justice, culpability, or responsibility for any of these actions.  Worse still from the mindset of the philosopher or the Christian West, there is no cause or effect.  Each moment, each variable, was the will of Allah alone.

Now apply this mode of thought to the scientific method.

…and you get your “AHA!” moment as to why President Obama wants to use NASA as an outreach tool to the Muslim world.  In essence, if you’re working with the physics of landing a Martian rover, at some point you’re going to have to challenge — and perhaps recapture — an aspect of your faith.

This is obviously an oversimplification, so before any Muslim readers of Bearing Drift jump on me for it, I undoubtedly realize that reason isn’t exactly extinct in the Muslim world.  Likewise, I also understand the implications of using NASA as a tool for proselytization.  Still, to create missionaries for reason isn’t necessarily a bad idea, especially when put in the context of stoking a long-term (and long haul) process of restoring reason to her rightful place alongside faith.

Discuss.

That, of course, is when it all came crashing down.

First, Golden jumped ship from the GOP primary contest to entertain his own independent bid.  Given the fact that there are a number of independent/Libertarian bids for Congress, I didn’t see too much harm.  Besides, I disagreed with the jump, but when you put in that much time and effort into the Republican Party and not get the support of friends, one could see where an independent shot makes emotional sense.

Then… I saw this.  And you should see this too, because this is not the guy I knew working with the state party:

In case you don’t want to see the entire video, allow me to offer you some highlights:

* Golden does highlight his reason for leaving the VA-02 primary as a lack of loyalty from those he had helped in the past. Tough pill to swallow, and I can understand (though disagree with) that motivation… still, there it is.

* Kenny Golden is personally pro-life, but does not believe human life in the womb deserves the protection of our laws. In fact, if you believe that human life deserves the protection of our laws from womb to tomb, Golden identifies you as one of these “ultra pro-lifers” and claims it’s a religious rather than a reasonable justification to protect human life.

* Golden also believes in creating civil unions for homosexual couples. So the power of the state should not be used to save the lives of babies, but should be used to create civil unions! No word on whether this is a religious motivation or a reasonable one…

* Golden opposes drilling for energy off Virginia’s coastline, and says his reformation on this idea came in the wake of the BP oil spill in Louisiana.

* Golden’s top priority?  Fighting the War on Terrorism. First consistent item I’ve seen so far… draws comparisons between Islam and the COMINTERN.

* Wants a 2% reduction in each of the top 10 departments, and admires Obama’s call for a 5% reduction.

* Vivian Paige wonders how an “independent thinker” like Golden ended up in the GOP? Golden describes his experience, roots in Virginia, business roots, and describes most independents as fringe candidates.  The difference with himself?  He’s not a partisan… and will not hack a partisan line.

I will say this much: Golden has always been an independent thinker, though never an opportunist, which some have come out and charged him as being.

What strikes me as a difference this time is that Golden has opted to moderate himself on a series of key points, or perhaps bought into the idea that sloughing off the social conservative wing of the GOP somehow will merit deeper consideration from others in VA-02 who grow distant from Nye, but cannot stomach the hard core conservative roots of Scott Rigell.

Ouch.

Of course, this has been a running battle in conservative circles since the Goldwater era, and the recent topic of many Washington insiders over the last two weeks.  Quin Hillyer with the American Spectator gave a resounding refutation of the idea that moderating the conservative ethic holds the slightest bit of water.  To wit, Hillyer quote conservative icon Barry Goldwater:

Conservatives are interested in the whole man, while the radical-liberals confine their interest to the material side of his nature. Conservatives believe that man is in part an economic and animal creature, but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires.… The conservative respects the individuality of man, realizing that man’s spiritual and material development is not something that can be directed by outside forces. Every man, for his individual good and the good of his society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he, not a super-state, must make. And these are choices that must involve the whole man [emphasis Goldwater's own], if they are to be the right choices. If life were concerned only with material things, as the Liberal approach indicates, then I suppose the conduct of some men might be justified. The materialistic philosophies of Marx and Engels, which call for the suppression of the individual and glorify the collective, are only acceptable to people who deny the possibility of a more significant explanation for man’s existence….

The Liberals, with their emphasis on collectivism and conformity, and their willingness to use compulsion to achieve their ends, are actually suggesting a course of action which thoughtful men have rejected throughout history. The reason man must be treated as an individual is because he has an individual immortal soul. Thus, his freedom comes from God — as do all of his rights. In the scheme of things, government’s only proper role is in the protection of man’s God-given freedoms and rights. [All emphases again are Goldwater's own.]

The conservative recognizes that the concentration of power in the hands of the few has always been the undoing of those who aspired to the fruits of freedom. Aware of the overbearing evidence of history as to the truth of this postulate, the conservative is fearful of the concentration of power which accompanies central government.

In short, one cannot divorce economic liberty and moral order.  Otherwise, one cannot be properly called a conservative.  Hillyer adds:

[N]ote what Goldwater said about “the whole man.” Note that the concerns are not merely economic or material. Note that both the roots and the fruits of conservatism are spiritual as well. And note that the spiritual and material parts of conservatism are not an “either/or” proposition, but a “both/and.” They are necessarily so. They are not two separate features grafted into a coalition, but naturally part and parcel of each other and mutually dependent on each other as complementary features of a single whole.

…

Whether the cause be continued deepwater drilling or freedom from abusive lawsuits or protection from union thuggery, whether it be battles against regulators run amuck or against Supreme Court justices who put their own values above the law, the duty of the whole man is to rise up from stupor on behalf of liberty. That’s why conservatives these days need to be political activists, whether TEA Partiers or otherwise, and need to use their activity on behalf of both economic liberty and of the moral order which is both its nursery and the greater result of its full flowering. Conservatism is more than mere fusion of economic freedom and the moral order; it is the recognition that both are of the same root, tree and branch, and that they must continually be watered and tended. As Goldwater wrote, “These are the choices that must involve the whole man, if they are to be the right choices.”

Beware the conservative who chooses to confuse license with liberty, just as one should equally beware the conservative who claims tyranny over any part of the human race to be the price of your liberty.

I sincerely hope Kenny Golden re-evaluates his positions on these issues, because I do consider him a friend even if he’s chosen poorly this election cycle.  Until then, there isn’t much that distances Golden from the policies of Glenn Nye and any so-called centrist progressive.

Sure we’re pro-life, and for most faithful Catholics that puts us squarely in the Republican Party, or at the very least aligned with the modern American conservative movement.  But in another sense, when you start asking deeper questions, there’s a strong social justice current within the voting bloc as a whole.  Catholics who are monsters on pro-life issues (good monsters… the kind you’d see in Where the Wild Things Are) become labelled as squeamish moderates — or worse, liberals — when it comes to education, opposition to the death penalty, a preferential option for the poor, or a sensitivity to immigration.  In short, the Catholic voter doesn’t  fit inside any political philosophy, and as a result has been difficult for America’s major political parties to court.

I’ve seen Corey Stewart’s proposal on the Virginia Rule of Law Act, where he argues that Virginia should have an Arizona-style anti-illegal immigrant policy.

So let me get some things straight.  The free market has made the United States of America an economic paradise compared to the rest of the world.  This economic miracle — built on free trade — has persuaded 20 million human beings to risk their lives, limbs, property, and the violation of our laws to come to America and be a part of our prosperity.

The reaction of so-called free market conservatives?  It almost reads out of the Joseph Stalin playbook.  Use the power of the state, round up the offenders, and deport them to their own personal Siberia.

In short, free market economics are fine… until undesireables enter the equation.

Let’s not kid ourselves as to who these 20 million people are.  20 million Canadians, or Irish, or Europeans probably wouldn’t phase our American sensibilities so much.  In fact, we’d probably welcome them with open arms to revive our manufacturing base, do the jobs nativist Americans simply do not do, or to reinvigorate our population replacement rates.

But it’s 20 million Mexicans.
20 million people of a foreign people (i.e. not European).
20 million people who don’t speak English.

…and so, rather than appealing to our logic, we appeal to baser instincts.

We neglect for a moment that 20 million people are within our borders because they want a better life for themselves and their family.  20 million people willing to work hard, build businesses, make money, and be a part of the community.  You know, the things America used to stand for?

Allow me to entertain a different idea.  Conservatives ideally believe in the power of the free market.  Instead of rounding up and deporting every non-English speaking Hispanic, why don’t we encourage work visas?  Extend business opportunities to Central America?  Take those 20 million “illegal” persons (as if such a concept existed) and recognize that 20 million potential Americans who believe in hard work and free enterprise are ready to enlist in the American Experiment?

Back to the Catholic voter for just a moment.  Suppose an illegal immigrant arrived at your door.  In most cases, the instinctive Catholic-influence individual’s first route of action is simple — food, water, warmth, and safety.  The last thing on your mind is calling the cops.

It’s not because one seeks to break any laws, but rather because the dignity of the human person demands we observe higher laws.  After all, an unjust law is no law at all, says the Catholic-educated scholar.

I do not recognize the argument that says 20 million people who desire to better their lot in life and participate in America’s free enterprise system are “illegal” in nature and should be turned away.  In fact, I take it a step further and say that such a policy of deportation is an utter betrayal of our free-market system, and should be deplored, condemned, and attacked by anyone truly calling themselves a conservative.

What is at stake isn’t the Hispanic voter writ large, as if Hispanics were the monolithic voting bloc Republicans have long erred African-Americans to be.  The Catholic voter is watching as well — 65 million strong  and 1/4 of America’s voting public are watching to see if a conservative ideology, which claims to prize individual liberty at all costs, is willing to betray those principles and use the power of the state to crackdown on the free market.

Which begs the question — should we do this, then what is it that conservatives truly prize?  The free market?  Individual liberty?  Or protectionism?

We’re smarter than draconian immigration laws.  Let the solution be something other than that which treats symptoms without addressing cures.  I firmly believe in conservative ethics, and I also believe very firmly in American exceptionalism.  I also believe that it is those values that are attracting 20 million people to our country like a magnet.

Corey Stewart is a good conservative, but he is dead wrong on this issue.  It would be a shame if, barely two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the best hope for freedom chose to turn the guns outward and build one of its own along the southern border of our nation.

Yes, I imagine if a half a dozen or so Congressmen were tried, convicted, and executed, the rest of them would straighten out fast!  It is OUR fault these men and women betraying our country are NOT prosecuted for their obvious crimes against We the People and our Republic.

What “republic” is she talking about?  The People’s Republic of North Korea?!?!  Or perhaps this version of justice?

Just… just click on the link… and be ashamed.

One more reason to vote Wittman tomorrow.  Or six reasons, if you think about it.

(h/t to Problems of Parallax)

Winner: 42%
Candidate #2: 18%
Candidate #3: 13%
Candidate #4 12%
Candidate #5: 9%
Candidate #6: 3%
Candidate #7: 3%

Also, indicate whether you’re willing to support the eventual nominee regardless (my answer: YES).

So now you too can give an honest breakdown of how VA-05 is going to go on Tuesday, regardless of whom you are supporting!

Person who gets the closest gets… well, I’ll buy them a drink. Or we’ll have them on the podcast so they can explain how awesome they are to the rest of the class!

(DISCLAIMER:  I’ve endorsed Feda Morton in the 5th District.  I also endorse pipe tobacco, Yuengling Beer, Glenfiddich scotch, and the Baltimore Orioles.  Also — apologies for the really ugly header, just in case anyone chooses to lose perspective as to who the real opposition is.)

Having just tried a clay pipe at home, I noticed a couple things about it.  Not only is the smoke much cooler, but it burns extremely well.  Thought the bowl itself is small — no larger than the size of one’s thumb — I surprisingly enjoyed the very brief smoke to contrast a good half-hour one would enjoy from a traditional pipe.  What’s more, it burned very cleanly, tasted fantastic, and was surprisingly very clean when I tapped out the old tobacco.

The pipe I’m talking about is nothing more than your $1 colonial era pipe you’d find at any tourist shop, which beats a $120 bulldog briar any day of the week in terms of price.

So like any other self-supporting Virginia farmer, I wanted to see precisely how they were made.  Surprisingly, there’s quite a cottage industry… or there was…

Ironically, clay pipes went out of style during the mid-19th century as pipe smoking in general was associated with the lower working classes and those fine cigars (and eventually cigarettes) were viewed as the tobacco-smoking emblems of refinement.  Eventually, as cigarettes became more plentiful and less messy than chew, that clumsy pipe simply vanished from American culture altogether in lieu of cigarettes.  Pipes became more fashionable for upper and middle class Americans in the mid-20th century, yet that antiquated clay pipe simply never emerged from anything beyond novelty.

Apparently in Europe, clay pipes have suffered the same poor fate, today more art than utility.

Of course, with today’s irony of tobacco culture being pushed indoors and away from public places such as restaurants and bars, the old clay pipe probably won’t see a renaissance anytime soon.  Still, the idea of colonial era Virginians mass producing these durable yet moderately fragile clay pipes for everyday use for nearly two centuries is a fascinating concept.  Though brittle, they offered a superior smoke.  To some degree, it occurs that two centuries of use outweigh the more expensive alternatives of briar or meerschaum pipes you’d find fashionable today.  Moreover, it really seems the transition from clay pipes to briar pipes to cigars etc. was really more a question of fashion rather than superior quality.  In short, there really wasn’t a reason to transition from clay to something else… just an inclination.

There’s always something to be said for the way things used to be.

]]> http://shaunkenney.com/index.php/2010/05/the-art-of-making-clay-pipes/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunKenney/~3/nGeK38mLPa0/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunKenney/~3/nGeK38mLPa0/#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 20:17:18 +0000 Shaun Kenney http://shaunkenney.com/?p=9765

“Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln” – Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1832)

The handicapped are the model citizens of tomorrow. That sounds like the very worst of what many Americans would consider to be a conservative viewpoint.  Cold, meritless, individualistic, and unfeeling — it is the perfect caricature of what many liberals assume to be the very worst of the American right.

It would surprise many to discover that this sentiment comes from across the Atlantic, and is found in a popular anti-capitalist tract entitled The Coming Insurrection.  The work is notable not for its socialism — though many readers would instantly describe it as leftist — but for its piercing and direct condemnation of the welfare state.  Attempts to control and hold in stasis the vast majority of society to make it fit the welfare state in France has utterly failed.  Instead, the book contends, the state has created a series of automatons.

No longer needing to work to provide essentials such as food, people work to provide outlets for production.  So that means a series of iPods, blogs, books, anything to assert the individual as something distinct.  Work is meaningless, no longer a trade but a method of continuing to feed the daily search for meaning.  Workers cope not by being productive, but by being mindlessly mobile, moving effortlessly between jobs and within networks to preserve some sense of self-identity.

So what are the solutions, sayeth the book?  Find friends, form communes, get organized, create spheres where as little “work” can be done as possible, train others to be self-sufficient, and spread the model elsewhere.  In short, refuse to participate in the economic and social order.

Once this is done, the model becomes much more defensive.  The book advises planning for self-defense, disrupting authorities, and eventually advising the following:  ”Take up arms.  Do everything possible to make their use unnecessary.  Against the army, the only victory is political.”  Though the authors refuse to accept the militarization of their movement, they are not apart from resisting violently to achieve their political aims:

There is no such thing as a peaceful insurrection.  Weapons are necessary; it’s a question of doing everything possible to make using them unnecessary.  An insurrection is more about taking up arms and maintaining an “armed presence” than it is about armed struggle.  We need to distinguish clearly between being armed and the use of arms.  Weapons are a constant in revolutionary situations, but their use is infrequent and rarely decisive at key turning points: August 10th 1792, March 18th 1871, October 1917.  When power is in the gutter, it’s enough to walk over it.

The authors do more than just assert.  They explain in terms that would be familiar with any American devotee to the Second Amendment:

Because of the distance that separates us from them, weapons have taken on a kind of double character of fascination and disgust that can be overcome only by handling them.  An authentic pacifism cannot mean refusing weapons, but only refusing to use them.  Pacifism without being able to fire a shot is nothing but the theoretical formulation of impotence.  Such a priori pacifism is a kind of preventative disarmament, a pure police operation.  In reality, the question of pacifism is serious only for those who have the ability to open fire.  In this case, pacifism becomes a sign of power, since it’s only in an extreme position of strength that we are freed from the need to fire.

In other words, an armed society is a polite society, non? For those of you squeamish about the prospects of this on the left, is there anything in this “polite society” that would make you squeamish when it comes from the right?

***

What is remarkable about The Coming Insurrection is that its description of Western Civilization is something you would read straight out of any conservative book-of-the-month club:

Today the West is the GI who dashes into Fallujah on an M1 Abrams tank, listening to heavy metal at top volume.  It’s the tourist lost on the Mongolian plains, mocked by all, who clutches his credit card as his only lifeline.  It’s the CEO who swears by the game Go.  It’s the young girl who looks for happiness in clothes, guys, and moisturizing creams.  It’s the Swiss human rights activist who travels to the four corners of the earth to show solidarity with all the world’s rebels — provided they’ve been defeated.  It’s the Spaniard who could care less about political freedom now that he’s been granted sexual freedom.  It’s the art lover who wants us to be awestruck before the “modern genius” of a century of artists, from surrealism to Viennese actionism, all competing to see who could best spit in the face of civilization.  It’s the cyberneticist who’s found a realistic theory of consciousness in Buddhism and the quantum physicist who’s hoping that dabbling in Hindu metaphysics will inspire new scientific discoveries.

The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem.  Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation — becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition to finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure — as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itslef as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. (emphasis original)

Particularities aside, there is no question that Western civilization has sacrificed itself as an imposition of mere culture, the pop variety or otherwise.  One of my more favorite books on the topic, George Wiegel’s The Cube and the Cathedral exemplifies this point rather well, the distinction being between the secular West and the Christian West respectively.

What’s even more remarkable about The Coming Insurrection isn’t its predisposition towards violence as a final expression of the political, but that so many of it’s descriptions and proscriptions are things you would read right out of the pages of any American countercultural perspective.  Government is invasive, the economy is unstable and perhaps detrimental to its citizens, self-sufficiency and withdrawal is the only remedy, and the final resort to arms is indeed the final answer.  Be ready… but above all be vigilant.

Such appeals aren’t found locally within either anarchist movements, militia movements, or even among “Tea Party” activists or their anti-war cousins on the left of America’s political spectrum.  To find a similar diagnosis about the ills of society echoed in the coffee shops of Paris, the streets of Athens, or the living rooms of America isn’t surprising.  Since the French Revolution, the West has been in the throes of some form of social revolution of one degree or another.  Count the years — 1789, 1815, 1848, 1871, 1914, 1939, 1968, 1989.

The inheritance of the French Revolution’s ideas in the West is violence.  What’s more, violence as a means of political change isn’t a radical idea.  It has been propagated, shared, used, abused, and been the principle means of resistance for thousands of years.  Consequently, the means to put down such violence has been simple: more violence.  Whether it is tribal leaders, Roman emperors, French emperors, dukes and kings, Mongol warlords or Muslim caliphs — violence has been the principle means of self-assertion.

The question is, what makes the American experiment so different?

***

I kept track of the recent brouhaha over Rep. Tom Perriello’s address being published online, which led letter writers and others not to the home of Tom Perriello, but that of his brother.  Apparently someone had the gall to slash the line to a propane tank (location of said tank was never really discovered or explained).  Call me crazy, but for someone to drive up my driveway, head out to my back porch, and cut the line to anything without my family noticing is about damn near impossible.

Perriello handled this just like a pro, and he used words anyone familiar with last year’s House of Delegates races would have understood immediately:

“My number one priority right now is ensuring the safety of my brother’s family, and I am grateful to law enforcement for their excellent work,” Perriello said in a statement. “While it is too early to say anything definitive regarding political motivations behind this act, it’s never too early for political leaders to condemn threats of violence, particularly as threats to other Members of Congress and their children escalate. And so I ask every member of House and Senate leadership to state unequivocally tonight that it is never OK to harm or threaten elected officials and their families with anything more than political retribution.

“Here in America,” (Perriello) added, “we settle our political differences at the ballot box.”

Dead on.  The “ballot box” message was taking direct aim at Catherine Crabill, a former GOP candidate for 99th House of Delegates against Democrat Albert Pollard.  The direct quote she gave was: “We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.”

What did Crabill mean by this?  Well… I’ll let her explain:

Now apart from the explanations, Crabill does make one salient point — independent from the vast experience of the rest of humanity, the American experiment was based on a bloody revolution that set the stage for the first peaceful transference of power in the modern age.  When John Adams and the Federalists handed over the presidency to Thomas Jefferson and his Republicans, there was none of the violence predicted.  Nor was there any of the violence repeated in Europe.  Of course, politics being what it is, an innocent remark (I have no question in my mind that Crabill was *not* endorsing a violent overthrow of the government) was swiftly turned into a flashpoint.

Regardless of the innocence of the remark, a handful of people are choosing to capitalize on it.  Acts of violence in the aftermath of the health care vote — not to mention the sentiments expressed on various social media sites — seemed to percolate from nowhere.  True, the outrage was implicit and should be heard.

But violence?

As a reaction to legislation?

In American politics?  American politics?

***

It’s often forgotten that the true genius of the American experiment and the Founding Fathers was the peaceful transfer of power between dissenting groups of citizens.  What formerly would have been determined between two warring armies would be settled between citizens of equal standing at periodic times prescribed by laws, not men.

It is also equally imperative that this is not the experience of much of the world.  Take for instance Argentina in 2001 following their capital collapse:

This is nothing you wouldn’t imagine being played out in multiple countries across the world. Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Greece, France, Spain, or even Argentina.

Now could you imagine this scene playing out here in America?  Of course not — you’d be ludicrous to suggest it so.  Condemned, even, for suggesting that such violence should be a part of our political discourse.

Yet this violence is a part of much of the political discourse of the world.  Take recent events in South Africa with songs such as “Kill the Boer” and the murder of white-supremacist Eugene Terreblanche.  Look at Krygyzstan where the properly elected government was overthrown in a minority-led coup backed by the Russians.  Look to Georgia, Chechnya, communist China, South Korean or Taiwanese politics, the streets of France, Colombia, separatist regions of Spain, Northern Ireland and the PIRA, the West Bank, Iraq, Iran, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo, repression in Egypt and Algeria.

This is the experience of the vast majority of the world.

***

So why is America so unique and apart from the rest of the world?  Why is the American experience so comparatively — and I would dare say, remarkably — free from violence?  And who benefits from violence’s introduction?

There are three known forces for liberalism on this planet, the direct descendant of centuries of natural law theory and the principles of the Enlightenment merging into one sphere.

For the British, it was drawn slowly, from John of Salisbury’s discourses on natural law and positive law in his Policratus that approached the concept of equity, a balance between the rights of mankind and the power of the state.  This concept of rights granted by God that could never be abrogated by the state swung from the Magna Carta in the 14th century (which guaranteed the rights and privileges of nobles over the king of England) to the works of Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan. Eventually, they culminated into the theories of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, borrowing much but losing many of the earlier Aristotelian and Thomistic qualities traced down through Sydney, Grotius, Bellarmine, and others who kept the flame of liberty lit during the Renaissance and subsequent dark period during Reformation.

The second avenue was spearheaded by the French Revolution, or more accurately, guillotined into existence by the Terror.  By now, a throughly secularized Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette united the American experience to the works and musings of self-declared humanists such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Such visions of “noble savages” free from the bondage of government and strictures, morality and codes of behavior, would only usher in a new Age of Reason where the only gods would be P’s and Q’s.

Finally, there is that one experiment that broke free from both the continental and Anglicanized versions of liberalism, one that a younger Thomas Jefferson identified and readily championed in the Declaration of Independence.  For Americans, the British model of liberty was no liberty at all.  Enslavement was the term used to best describe the narrow field of free range that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 cordoned off.  Americans had tasted liberty, and free from continental theories of secular enlightenment they cobbled together a series of principles informed principally by the classically-trained patrician class ideals melded with a speculative enterprise and pasted to a religious backdrop.  Liberty would be the rule of law, and her opposite would be the rule of benevolent or tyrannical men.

These three forces for liberalism — British, French, and Americanism — all have their own champions.  Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France makes the argument for modern conservativism, namely that liberty is purchased with blood and conserved against the inexorable forces of nature and government.  For the French, her early champions would evolve from the philosophy of Rousseau to the art of Jacques Louis-David and the Napoleonic drama that wrapped Europe in conflict for nearly 20 years.  As for the Americans, an collection of somewhat contradictory yet mythologized Founding Fathers suffices to establish both a national epic and a philosophy of liberty; her literary champions including Paine, Henry, Rush, Jefferson, Wythe, Mason, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, and Monroe.

***

With the collapse of the British and French Empires respectively, the gift of Western civilization has rarely demonstrated itself to be a system of infrastructure, governance, and enlightenment.  Too often, the experience has been one of exploitation, subjugation, and dependency on foreign aid.  Where the British system has endured, it is primarily in regions of the globe that are predominantly English-speaking — Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, India, and so forth.

For continental systems, the results have been far less stable.  It’s understandable given a premise in first things: the British prized stability; the French washed themselves in liberté, égalité, and fraternité. Haiti did not transport itself from despotism to liberty on a feather bed by any stretch.  The 1801 revolution’s gift of liberty made everyone equally poor, equally miserable, and equally brothers in death.  It is no fault of the Haitian people that their experiment with liberty would soon be duplicated in the fearsome “wars of Europe” the American Founders had been so keen to avoid.  Violence would sweep Europe time and time again, from the Napoleonic Wars through the Revolution of 1848, German Reunification, the “War to End All Wars” followed by a second World War, ending in the great struggle of -isms between Western capitalism and Western communism.

Violence, it would seem, was the birth of continental liberty.  Violence would be the French Revolution’s  heritage, the inheritance passed on to her defenders for decades in failure and blood, wedded and bound to her DNA and inseparable from its precepts.  No amount of modification could undo its nature.  No matter how soothing the frog’s words were, the scorpion still held true.

If stability was the British principle, and violent equality was the French gift, what then of the Americans?  Ultimately, all three revolutions ended up consuming her architects.  For the British, the end of the Napoleonic Wars ushered in the second Golden Age of Empire that climaxed in the 1870′s and expired after crushing German nationalism in two bloody and costly wars.  The French architects had a less glorious end — her heroes ultimately were led the the guillotine one by one until Napoleon established order upon the vice of license that had replaced liberty’s promise of virtue.

To the American Founders, their approach was a combination of method and exasperation.  On one hand, the incubators of leadership found in the plantation homes of Virginia, the merchant homes of Pennsylvania, and the law offices of Boston created a class of philosopher-kings unrivaled on the North American continent to this day (despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s pretensions as an ongoing constitutional convention, a well earned criticism).  On the other, the knowledge that the Articles of Confederation — though working for some — presented fundamental weaknesses in the ability of “these states united” to project any form of coherence (much less create favorable conditions in foreign markets for American goods or to respect American sovereignty) was the sole object of frustration for Hamilton, Madison, and Jay.

America’s Founding Fathers were presented with a dual problem, one that grew from the period between 1770 and 1787. British pretensions as protectors of liberty flew in the face of long held privileges the colonists knew were their rights as freeborn Englishmen.  Defending against an encroachment on their liberties — and not their mere whittling away in a sea of threat — was foremost in their minds.  Yet the great fear of democracy — direct participation of the masses —  hung low on the minds of the Founding Fathers, for what then would stop the American Republic from falling into the errors, wars, and dictators of the Roman Republic before her?  Or worse, a return to the mild-yet-aristocratic yoke of the British Empire?

The true solution would not be excavated until well after the Constitution was signed and passed.  It would take the “Revolution of 1800″ — Jefferson’s Republicans besting Adams’ Federalists — to test the durability of the American experiment.  Here, at this moment, was a transfiguration unparalleled in history since Diocletian willingly gave up power and deposed himself to farm cabbages in a garden what became modern day Split, Croatia.  Only this time, Diocletian was being forced to do so by the election of peers…

There was no violence.
There were no riots.
There was no war.
There was only… peace.

What resulted was a nearly unbroken 26 year period of Republican rule that ultimately broke the Federalist Party.  After James Monroe’s skillful rebuilding of the nation in the wake of the War of 1812, Republicans themselves would factionalize into Whigs and Democrats, their names rarely changing (Whigs evolved into Republicans after their dissolution in the 1850s) yet their political opposition — though at times stringent — were ultimately two wings of the same, basic, Jeffersonian-based political philosophy.

But always — always — based on rules laid forth in the Constitution.  Call it an American sense of fair play, a pre-occupation with commerce, or the simple virtues of a moral people.  American government was so small anyhow that “public service” took on an entirely new meaning to the established classes who could afford to serve.

For Britain, security.  For France, equality.  For America, the rule of law.

***

Today, the Jeffersonian “empire of liberty” is beset on every side with the challenges of picking up a mantle it did not want but cannot refuse.  Western civilization, that fiction created by the British to justify their place in the sun, has turned to the United States in crisis after crisis over the past 100 years.  When Britain chose the social welfare state over empire during the Cold War, the inheritance of the Mother Country was turned over to the American daughter.

Yet like all empires, the infections of other values from differing cultures on one’s own society becomes endemic, and in no way preventable.  Sometimes the additions are good, many times the additions are quite traumatic for the host.  History dictates that they inevitably end with a core state at the end that is more cosmopolitan, with a tiny fragment yearning for the days of imperial glory lost.  Britain and France have imparted their values on the world, just as Germany, Japan, China, Russia, Turkey, Arabia, Mongolia, Rome, Carthage, Assyria, Sumeria, and countless others have done.

America stands alone in this history, both in her republicanism and in her commercial dominance.  It is tempting, then, for this young republic (and we are terribly young) to find ways to inoculate itself from the impacts of empire.  As inheritors of the British Empire, our first instincts during the Cold War were to adapt to the British model.  Conservatives became the new calling card in the 1960s as a reaction to the liberalism-turned-progressivism that prospered from FDR to LBJ.

Endowed now with this new calling card, conservatives reaped the whirlwind.  The last quarter of the American Century was undeniably a triumph for conservative ethics.  Literacy rates skyrocketed, the Soviet Union disappeared, a gridlocked Congress ensured continuous rules for free enterprise, American military dominance encapsulated the globe, and American economic power reached her height.

Yet under this surface, progressives still held their calling card.  French ideals never lurked very far underneath, and as the rationale for American dominance (and not just supremacy) of the globe receded, so too did the temptations of the British welfare state.

Equality became a virtue.

Just as the Americans adapted to the inheritance of Britain with conservativism, so too is America adapting to the role of global dominance with by questioning norms.  No longer satisfied with conserving the status quo, issues such as income disparity, living wage laws, the lives of the wealthy and privileged, images of Las Vegas or Miami dance in our heads, a population distanced from production and eased into consumption.  National debt spirals.  Food becomes a bit harder to come by.  Credit disappears, yet the elites seem to prance by.  Social services such as education, Medicare, welfare are cut while honest jobs disappear.  Evictions, wild rumors, a ruling class that ceases to care or cannot wrap their minds around the problem.  A lack of national spirit to resolve, but a growing national spirit to tear down the old and put up the new.

Now booklets entitled The Coming Insurrection begin to float around our schools and bookstores.

In short, we are adapting ourselves to qualities of the French Revolution, in order to meet some of the very same challenges the French Monarchy struggled to deal with after two failed wars.  Our society, it seems, is inoculating itself.  Just as the reaction to empire was British conservativism, the reaction to (for lack of a better phrase) bourgeois excess will inevitably be French styles of social unrest.

In short, violence.

***

So why go through this exercise? It’s important to realize that the American experiment is both of those things: uniquely American, and indeed an experiment.  America is not destined to live forever; she must be preserved, fought for, but above all else she must respect her own virtues.  As Americans, we in turn must respect the institutions that have brought us prosperity and peace for over 200 years.

Violence is politics is incurably common.  Yet in America we’ve managed to avoid all of these things, precisely because we do respect the virtue of law.  Rules are rules, fair play is the nature of business, and once it’s all over we go back to our lives.

I do wonder though, whether the direct attachment of government to so many aspects of our lives makes this problem worse over time.  As government continues to provide services, and as those services are withdrawn, do we not create the very same problems we are witnessing in Greece today?  Or Argentina?  Or Spain?  Or France?

I would argue this:  America is an exceptional nation.  As such, we innately reject violence as a means of political expression unless at the utmost end of practical need.  This is not some immutable law, nor is it even a system of morals — it is an ethical code that must be observed to survive, and once ignored, will not survive.

The question ultimately is whether the American experiment can endure, or is exceptional enough, to meet the challenges of austerity without the visceral rash of violence the French example produces?  One thing is for certain — the more of the French notion of liberty we introduce and include in our American variety, the more certain violence becomes an acceptable answer among an ever-growing minority.

(crossposted to BearingDrift.com)

I watched this last night and was surprised by two things: (1) how objectively fair Anderson Cooper was to this gentleman from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and (2) how… well… how some folks will believe anything to whitewash the Confederacy.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I squarely oppose the idea of Lee-Jackson Day and truly abhor the display of the Confederate Flag for any other reason but the purely historical.

This gentleman from the SCV did not do his cause any favors.  Historical revisionism is a wild thing, and one is constantly reminded how people will deceive themselves to the point where one’s ability to even recognize truth is distorted so much, they can’t recognize it anymore.

Doesn’t mean supporters of Confederate Heritage Month are any less sincere.  Doesn’t even mean they are lying or covering up.  But it does mean that perceptions of reality, when sold as reality, are dangerous concepts indeed.

If you see radical changes here over the next few days, ignore them — I’m playing with some PHP code and need a bit of a test bed for the new layout.  So… if it looks funny here, it’s because I’m goofing off.

Site should go back to normal within five minutes (I promise).

In the meantime, discuss my budget proposal for Fluvanna County, which I presented before the rate was advertised on 17 March.

Short scenario — we’re facing a $0.71 (or more) tax increase over the next three years due to two primary factors: (1) the debt service for the high school, and (2) replenishing the cash reserve.

Other factors include a need to spur economic infrastructure (water and broadband), new cruisers for our deputies, an E-911 system for Fluvanna which is 10 years overdue, a solution for post-secondary education, and budget reform.  By including those short term costs, we stand a better chance at growing the economy and relieving the economic pressures on taxpayers.

No fun solutions here.  But taxpayers deserve to know just what kind of bill we’ve been stuck with, and they most certainly deserve a budget that protects their interests while spurring local growth.  Whether we get there is another question altogether.

Do not watch this if you are squeamish.

Liberia is a nation suffering from a 20-year civil war that stands on the brink of re-emergence at any given time. It is also the 4th poorest country in the world, and one a very direct history with the United States.

If Liberia had oil…

Delegate Ward Armstrong (D-Henry) is entertaining statewide ambitions.  Speaker Bill Howell is… well, just entertaining.

For those not familiar with the antics of Virginia’s House of Commons Delegates, this is wholly appropriate.  Whether or not Ward Armstrong will ever be able to sell himself as something other than a socialist remains to be seen.  For those who remember, Armstrong defeated Frank Hall for the spot of House Democratic leader in 2007 after some bruised feelings and a bit of contention.

Three years into the role, it seems as if Armstrong would like to follow Brian Moran as the next failed Democratic statewide candidate to hail from the House of Delegates.  Bon voyage!

…I mean, I get that pendulums swing and all, but do the House Democrats really think this environment is going to propel any liberal/progressive into statewide office in 2012?  2013?  That’s four years, I know, but that’s an eternity to be counting chickens.

(h/t Mason Conservative)

You gotta hand it to Rep. Tom Perriello — he’s holding firm on no federal funding for abortion in health care. While I certainly don’t believe this is enough (as a Catholic he should be much more pro-active in defending human life), it’s a lot more than most folks expected.

One has to admire certain British MEPs for their candor.  In this instance, I’m pretty certain Farage missed wildly…

So what was the point of this exercise?  Certainly no one would talk to the British Prime Minister or the President of the United States like this… or any other foreign dignitary for that matter.  Which of course could very well be the point for Mr. Farage — hold the EU President in the highest degree of contempt in order to emphasize the weakness of the European Union.

Still… what was the point?  The UK Guardian offers a tiny bit on insight:

Elected an MEP in 1999, he resigned as party leader (while remaining head of the 13-strong Ukip group in the European parliament) in order to try to unseat John Bercow – the Speaker of the Commons – as MP for Buckingham.

As you must have gathered by now there’s a lot going on here. What Nige would call the “three social democratic parties” in Britain – Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats – don’t contest the Speaker’s seat by tradition, though Bercow shows a little Brown-like insecurity by suggesting there should be a non-seat (Westminster Central?) set aside for Speakers.

But Farage knows that a lot of Tory voters are hacked off with politics in general, the Cameroons in particular and Bercow, his Labour wife, and his promotion quite intensely. He has seen an opportunity to make trouble for the Tories and get himself a Commons seat. Go for it, Nige.

…and there you have it.  A little splash of the Tea Party movement on the opposite side of the Atlantic.  It’s not quite the dressing down Daniel Hannan gave Gordon Brown last year, as that was a far superior effort, but just to see the consternation even with the Conservative Party in Britain is indicator enough the ideas of the British and Scottish (and dare I say, American?) Enlightenment are still alive and well in this world.

February 19th, 2009 — the day Rick Santelli kicked off the movement:

This moment really took off when Santelli turned away from the camera and towards the traders (get to 1:00 for the real McCoy).  Give props to the traders on the floor of NASDAQ… if Santelli was the tap, those traders were the barrel.  One year later, an entire movement of dissatisfaction with the status quo has arrived in force.  Not sure what they want, but they sure know what they are against.

Just finished a conference call with the HRCC regarding their FY 2011 budget proposals.  Lots of good news in here, mostly regarding the fact that the Senate version of the bill is structurally close to the House version.  McDonnell’s “secret meetings” did their job, eh?

House Republicans were able to close the $2 billion gap in the budget in part by:

* Suspended one of the SOQs (planning period) saving $185 million
* Putney bill saved $270 million this year
* Net is a $50 million cut to revenue to the VRS, but substantial structural changes were made in biennium, $720 million in cuts
* Did not touch higher ed (already cut by 29% — 2006 funding levels)

The Senate did the car tax much like the House, but were a bit more generous with K-12.

Additional highlights:

* $3 billions in savings by reforming the VRS over the next 10 years; employees benefit in better times with raises (no raises over the last 4 years).
* Did not play with car tax relief.
* No state park closures.
* Specific cuts to educations are replaced with flexibility/block grants.
* No cut to personal care.
* Fewer cuts to PPA’s — taking advantage of leveraging.
* House budget did not ratchet down eligibility for FAMIS (Family Access to Medical Insurance).

House restored 80% of the loss from LCI — which is a sigh of relief for localities.  House leadership also signaled that it was they — not McDonnell — who approached the Governor’s office about coming to terms with the budget.  Governor McDonnell was providing direction and leadership… happens all the time (at least when it’s asked).  Apparently, with the Senate budget coming into such close sync with the House budget, bringing the two budgets together will not be the once-Herculean task it was feared to be about a week ago.  As for a timeline, everyone is looking towards a 13 March adjournment due to the car tax issue being resolved.

Things that conservatives should be looking for:  the budget is balanced without a tax hike or the Kaine fees, there are structural change that will pay dividends down the road, rebuilding the rainy day fund, still some pork spending in the budget still, but the majority of the problems with the Governor’s (Kaine) Budget have been resolved.

As for 2011… we have addressed all those issues in the House budget, and the “cliff effect” for 2012 is largely resolved in the House budget.  With the Senate budget and the Governor’s budget, we’ve smoothed out those problems for FY 2012, with $550 million saved in VRS adjustments/reforms in 2012.

On jobs and the economy — about 10 to 12 bills came through Appropriations, and $50 million was set aside for economic development, which will enable the Governor to reach out to businesses to either relocate or find new ways to expand within the Commonwealth.

(crossposted at BearingDrift.com)

So after the Bearing Drift presented some Technorati numbers, followed by the leftosphere’s howls and Virginia Virtucon’s touche on the matter, I did myself the benefit of actually looking at my Google Analytics numbers…

…and discovered that they were disabled after the recent WordPress upgrade.  Great.

SK.com has come a long way from its heyday in 2005-2006.  Back then, SK.com could boast a readership in the neighborhood of 1,000/day and somewhere north of 10K unique visitors a month.  Not bad for one man show.  Sadly, when you are someone else’s voice, you really can’t be your own.  Readership slid, new methods of measuring readers came into view, and what worked for an Atom feed is not replaced by Feedburner, what worked for server stats was replaced by Google Analytics, and what served for an interested readership was replaced by Twitter.

Heck, I have more people reading my thoughts on Facebook and Twitter than I have reading this blog.  140 characters trumps detailed thought.  Go figure…

Of course, there’s no real way for me to validate any of that information.  My stats were kept server side, and I never liked or trusted SiteMeter (it tended to inflate the traffic numbers, so I discontinued using it), and frankly I was much more concerned with quality content rather than racking up readership.  ”Influence the influentials” was the mantra of the post-macaca blogosphere… and so most of the “Old Guard” as we were labeled then drifted into the application side of Web 2.0, while another subsection got slick and branded themselves as “new media experts” to find jobs after the 2006 elections.

Some were successful, though I doubt many deserved the transition.  A mere handful made the transition well — Jason Kenney, Ben Tribbett, and a small handful of others whom I will gladly not mention because… well, they’re actively employed and probably don’t want the attention.

There are others who sold the sizzle without selling the steak.  One of the great mistakes anyone can afford to make in any business is to mistake mere activity with results — I don’t care if it’s flipping burgers or marshaling armies.

Remarkably, there are a great number of managers, politicians, and leaders comfortable with the image of activity.  It offers the appearance of motion, of vitality, of any number of things you may imagine yourself to be — or want to accomplish.

What’s worse, new methods of social media offer precisely the tools to offer prospective clients, bosses, or others the mirage of success.

Allow me then to introduce you to the world of slacktivism.  Slacktivism offers the chance to show support while doing absolutely nothing to advance the cause — much akin to the “wear a ribbon” movement in the 1990s.  Does “awareness” (whatever that means) go up?  More importantly, does anything get done?  Heck no… but you have 5,000 people following you on Twitter, 100K people signing your petition, 6,000 people on your Facebook fan page, and 2,500 people a day reading your blog!

Isn’t that success?!

Of course it’s not.

So then why do we sell it as success?

Very early on, after serving as campaign manager on Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s 2006 campaign win, I served on a panel for the Virginia Young Republicans on blogging (social media had not truly come into the limelight) and online activism.  One participant raved about blogs.  How blogs were the next frontier, how it was the most important thing one could do for a political campaign, and those who did *not* get on board were on their way out.  In fact, we should drop everything and make blogging our primary focus.

I countered quickly.  Direct mail was more important than blogging.  Phone banking was more important than blogging.  Personal contact was more important than blogging.  A whole litany of traditional media methods that were more important than the internet.  I compared the readership of certain Virginia blogs to the readership of Virginia’s MSM outlets — the influentials were (and are) still MSM reporters.  Even with the advent of dynamic online media vs. static online media (presaging the advent of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube) that “blogging” and online media will only work if it is a component of a whole.

That outraged my fellow panelist.  To this day, he now runs a financially successful online media firm.  To be sure, he has a handful of successes… but they are not metrics based, they are not repeatable, and they are entirely conditional on environment.  Whether this expert has learned the hard lessons of traditional media as king, I have no idea.

So what the hell am I driving at?

Let me give you a tiny bit of insight as to what I would consider a successful social media campaign, otherwise known as the “bra meme” that found women posting the color of their bra on that particular day:

A few things I learned from the Facebook wardrobe malfunction:

- Awareness does not mean action
- It’s possible to have too much awareness and not enough action
- There seems to be a growing backlash against the breast cancer movement

but, I have to say…. the number one thing I learned from the FB meme:

Awareness doesn’t necessarily translate into Activism

The post is worth reading in its entirety.  How does a “social media expert” — which more often than not is a self titled anachronism — plan to keep those hundreds of thousands of slacktivists engaged?  What is the next step?  How does the one time “money bomb” translate into continued giving?  Does the MSM care?  Are they talking about it?  Reaching out to the millions of people they have collected around them by reputation and time?  What other ways are you touching this newfound audience?

Or are these “social media experts” simply forking over the views, visits, friends, tweets, and hits of an action?  Where is the money, new volunteers, returning visitors, conversion rates, new clients, a shift in poll numbers, MSM reaction, the chance to turn slacktivists into activists — or even donors?

Are we replacing activity with results?

Getting back to raw numbers and last week’s comparisons of who-is-the-top-dog-in-Virginia contest… readers and hits, Technorati and SiteMeter; these are all wonderful tools.  But who is driving the conversation?  Who is talking to these outlets?  Of these intangibles of access and resonance, who is linking and commenting?  Is the voice of a particular outlet tabloid or respectable?  Moreover, what is the effect of this particular outlet?  Is the MSM more fooled than aware of your influence?  Are your clients/candidates/superiors fooled?

Or better, do they know because you can show them more than just stats.  You can show metrics impacting the real world.  Which means a large degree of integration with traditional forms of media and the courage to try it.  After all, 70% of all social media campaigns will fail.  That means for ever 10 efforts, only three will find some degree of success, and while the returns are huge if successful… can you capitalize on it when success comes?  I wonder how many efforts actually do, or are even prepared to do so.

These are all questions that self-styled experts and more modest geeks and wonks who simply enjoy the game (and I’d place myself in that category) get to answer.  The ongoing one-upsmanship in the Virginia blogosphere is symptomatic of greater issues, and depending on what certain outlets want to be, get, or do with online media there are always different measurements of success.  Same with the entire “social media expert” industry.  Most success stories have no idea how they got there, and if they explain it — it’s never in terms of activism, just slacktivism.

This isn’t to say the brave new frontier of social media isn’t worth exploring — I’ve routinely argued that 5% of any political campaign budget should be devoted to SocMedia —  but it requires both a strong and fearless commitment to the new medium united with realistic and measurable expectations for success, and a plan to follow through with traditional methods.

What you’re seeing is a sonic boom rippling the water vapor in the atmosphere.  The cool factor on this approximates 10 really darned quick.

Dr. Holsworth over at Virginia Tomorrow calls the new “Cuccinelli Doctrine” a sort of conservative reaction to the federal leviathan.

Not sure if it’s a precedent I would want to hand to revisionists, but the concept is interesting:

In essence, the Cuccinelli Doctrine says this:

It is the job of the Virginia Attorney General to identify and counter instances where the federal government may be unconstitutionally or illegally extending authority over the states.

Dr. Holsworth goes on to describe climate change and national health care as two instances where Attorney General Cuccinelli has stepped forward and challenged federal overreach.

I certainly applaud him for redefining the role of Attorney General — and it keeps with Cuccinelli’s campaign promises to do just that.  That’s why I voted for the guy!

I do wonder though… in different hands, is this a good thing?  How would this have worked during Massive Resistance?  Jim Crow?  Or on the flip side of the coin, the New Deal?  Socialized medicine?  Great Society?

Which means we have four years  – four years before this doctrine conceivably falls into the hands of an Attorney General who does not share Ken’s principles and would ostensibly turn a blind eye in an instance where federal overstretch is apparent, yet by the omission of the AG’s office such an overstretch would be given the benefit of plausibility.

Keep your eyes on this one, folks… it’ll get more interesting in the months to come.

That’s just well done.