Elections: Who Will Do The Distributing?

Democracy, Elections

Every second year, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, America conducts “a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods,” which was how H. L. Mencken described elections. “Government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else,” observed Henry Hazlitt.

In “Does Democracy Promote Peace,” legal scholar and friend James Ostrowski does his bit to demolish democracy:

Democracy is nothing more than the numerous and their manipulators bullying the less numerous. It is an elaborate and deceptive rationalization for the strong in numbers to impose their will on the electorally weak by means of centralized state coercion … Both forms of government feature voting by the people to select officials. The primary difference between them is that while republican voting is done for the purpose of choosing officials to administer the government in the pursuit of its narrowly defined functions, democratic voting is done, not only to select officials but also to determine the functions and goals and powers of the government … The guiding principle of republics is that they exercise narrow powers delegated to them by the people, who themselves, as individuals, possess such powers.

Tomorrow, Americans decide who will do the distributing: Republican social democrats or Democratic social democrats.

The ‘Chickenshit’ Comment

Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel

Stephen M. Walt is no friend of Israel. He and John Mearsheimer have condemned the “Israel lobby’s” influence on U.S. foreign Policy in an eponymous book. In Foreign Policy, this week, Walt, however, condemned the White Houses’ “chickenshit” comment, vis-a-vis Bibi Netanyahu, for assorted reasons, one of which is that “Netanyahu’s decision not to attack Iran wasn’t a show of cowardice (or being a ‘chickenshit’); it was a sensible strategic choice”:

… the idea that Netanyahu is a coward who lacks the guts to pull the trigger against Iran assumes Israel had a genuine military option vis-à-vis Iran in the first place. In fact, Netanyahu’s saber rattling towards Iran has always been a bluff, because Israel lacked the military capacity to conduct a strategically significant strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Sure, the Israeli air force could do some damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but it doesn’t have enough aircraft or the bunker-busting capacity to destroy all of its enrichment capacity. This situation with Iran isn’t remotely like Israel’s 1981 Osirak raid against Iraq, or even its 2007 attack on a reactor site in Syria, which involved bombing a single vulnerable location. An Israeli attack might delay Iran’s far more advanced program by a few months or maybe a year, but it would also encourage Iran’s leaders to start an all-out sprint for an actual bomb. And that is why prominent members of Israel’s national security establishment went public with their own concerns about Netanyahu’s hollow threats. A few Israeli Strangeloves might have believed an attack would draw the United States in to finish the job, but the risks were enormous and both Bush and Obama made it clear this gambit wasn’t going to fly. …

MORE.

Gorgeous-Bird Food

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Healthcare

If you’re a well cared for parrot—or a bird in fine feather, like raw-food eater the gorgeous Carol Alt, 53—this is what you should be fed. OK, I cheated a bit by adding “bad” treats such as corn on the cob, pasta and granola (carbs all). But you get the gist. (Click to enlarge.)

Medley of raw fruits and vegetables:

Assorted berries and raw pumpkin seed:

The Passion of The Parrots

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Human Accomplishment, Journalism, Morality

“We love them for being like us. … But then we find ourselves unprepared for the challenges.” So wrote Chuck Bergman on the plight and paradox of parrots. The article quoted is “No-Fly Zone: Denied Their Natural Habits, Millions of Pet Parrots Lead Bleak, Lonely Lives.” It appeared in All Animals magazine, published by the Humane Society of the United States.

An academic, writer, photographer and conservationist, Chuck’s pieces about parrots are, well, achingly beautiful. (Next, read “The World’s Smartest Birds, Set Free,” at Slate.com.)

Here is hoping that Chuck puts that epistolary passion for parrots to work in the cause of Bob and Carol Dawson’s parrot paradise: “Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary.” I’ve written a short blog post about the sanctuary that Bob and Carol Dawson built. A feature about this haven—where it is well and truly about the birds—would be wonderful.