“Peace, prosperity, liberty and morals
have an intimate connection.”

- Thomas Jefferson

Camille Paglia Says Democrats Betrayed the Soul of Their Party
Camille Paglia appeared on WABC-AM's 'The Mark Simone Show' yesterday to talk about the Fairness Doctrine, and you may be surprised at what she said. Paglia blasted the Democrats for even mentioning a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, saying "I don't get it . . . the essence of the 1960's, my generation, was about free speech . . . that's what Lenny Bruce was about - it was about the free speech movement, for heaven's sake, at Berkeley! What are my fellow Democrats doing? Not for one second should the government be wandering into survelliance of, monitoring of, the ideological content of talk radio. The Democrats, they've totally betrayed the soul of the party to even mention this."

On this day in 1898 the French novelist Émile Zola was found guilty of libel for writing "J'accuse," in an open letter to the French government. It accused the government and the military court of deliberately mishandling the case of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer who was wrongly accused of giving intelligence information to Germany. People were eager to convict a Jewish man, and Dreyfus was given a life sentence and sent into solitary confinement on Devil's Island. Soon after, the government found conclusive evidence that another man, Ferdinand Esterhazy, was actually guilty of the crime. But to save face, the military and the government produced false evidence to acquit Esterhazy and confirm Dreyfus' guilt.

Émile Zola was a prolific novelist and a well-respected public intellectual. Two days after Esterhazy was acquitted, his 4,000-word letter took up the entire front page of the French newspaper L'Aurore, with its one-word title, "J'accuse!" ("I accuse!"). Zola took apart the case, proved Dreyfus' innocence and Esterhazy's guilt, exposed the government cover-up, and directly accused government and military figures of anti-Semitism and abusing the justice system.

Zola was well-known outside of France, and "J'accuse" brought the Dreyfus case to the attention of the international community. After reading it, most believed that Dreyfus was innocent. Zola was arrested for libel, and his trial got a lot of media coverage. In the courtroom, people screamed and got in brawls, and mobs tried to attack Zola as he left each day. He was convicted on this day in 1898 and ordered to spend a year in jail. He escaped to England, where he lived in exile. But in less than two years, a new court reversed Dreyfus' sentence and dropped the libel charge against Zola. Both men returned to France, and in 1906, Dreyfus was reinstated in the army.

shutting down conciliation court, cutting hours and suspending prosecution of 21 types of cases, including property damage, harassment, probate, and more than 1 million traffic and parking cases a year.

That last step could interrupt a $200 million flow to local governments.

$2 TRILLION?
White House's $2.5 trillion plan draws criticism over lack of details.

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and STEPHEN LABATON, New York Times

WASHINGTON - The White House plan to rescue the nation's financial system, announced Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is far bigger than anyone predicted and envisions a far greater government role in markets and banks than at any time since the 1930s.

Administration officials committed to flood the financial system with as much as $2.5 trillion -- $350 billion of that coming from the bailout fund and the rest from private investors and the Federal Reserve, making use of its ability to print money.
...
But the initial assessment from the markets, lawmakers and economists was brutally negative, in large part because they expected more details.

Basic questions about how the various parts of the program would work -- especially those involving the unsellable mortgages that banks are holding and preventing home foreclosures -- were left for another day. Some Wall Street experts criticized the plan for relying too heavily on the same vague solutions proposed by the Bush administration.

The stock market, propped up for weeks on the expectation that Washington would finally deliver a comprehensive rescue plan, dipped almost as soon as Geithner began speaking in the morning.

It seems to me that the burden of proof ought naturally to be on the stimulus proponents to satisfy the public that their highly theoretical models are basically sound, especially for the parts of the bill that aren't tax cuts or transfer payments. Let's recall that the evidence for this kind of stimulus working in this kind of situation basically rests on a single instance (World War II)--the other two times it was tried (Japan in the 1990s and America in the 1930s) the economy basically rolled along in the doldrums for the rest of the decade.

Proponents say that that's because there wasn't enough stimulus, which is possibly true, but not really satisfying, because first, how do we know this package is enough, and second, that leaves us with a belief in the virtues of stimulus that is essentially non-falsifiable. We might as well move macroeconomic policy to the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.
...
We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.
...
Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work--work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
...
On the eve of our struggle for independence a man who might have been one of the greatest among the Founding Fathers, Dr. Joseph Warren, president of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his fellow Americans, "Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of . . . On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important questions upon which rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves."

Ebert cites a Slate article from December, which cites a book called "Born to Be Good" by psychologist Dacher Keltner, who is studying this emotion, called "elevation." From the Slate article:

Keltner writes that he believes when we experience transcendence, it stimulates our vagus nerve, causing "a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat."

Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology" — what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration."

We come to elevation, Haidt writes, through observing others — their strength of character, virtue, or "moral beauty." Elevation evokes in us "a desire to become a better person, or to lead a better life."

That strikes me as accurate, except for the focus on its sole origin as the actions of others. On occasion, I have experienced elevation with regard to an individuals' actions, typically a selfless act of kindness or sacrifice. But more often, it's been an emotion evoked by a broader idea or concept. And this can come not only words, but also an images or music. Movies, books, recordings, as well have people have caused it for me. As such, I never centered on any person involved. Rather, I've come to interpret it as a instance of revealing an essential truth. The truth of how we're supposed to live our lives. In the video above, for example, "let's not kill our children," said in a beautiful and simple manner.

Getting close to truth is another way of saying getting close to God. So, this feeling of elevation has a religious meaning for me. I assumed this interpretation would be universal, irrefutable. Yet, the Ebert and Slate articles never even mention the possibility. Instead, they cite as examples of those bringing elevation the pop culture trinity of Barack Obama, Michael Jordan, and Oprah Winfrey.