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The Fair Marines

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According to my mom (who I had to ask because I was too young to remember), my first State Fair of Texas was also the first for the iconic 54 feet tall Big Tex statue who greets fair goers with his “Howdy, Folks” announcements promoting various events and exhibitions. The exhibition is an extravaganza that lasts 24 days beginning on the last Friday of September every year in Dallas at Fair Park. It is reputed to be the largest and most attended of its kind in the world. With the exception of my out of state college years, military service, and when I broke my leg, I have attended every year since. There are not many changes from year to year, but it is always great fun to eat the junk food, see the exhibits, and watch the various shows, like the sheep dog trials and birds of the world, which have been mainstays for quite awhile. In my younger years, I would partake of the midway rides, mostly at the insistence of friends I went with, but it was never my main goal and, being susceptible to motion sickness, the wilder rides were not much fun for me.
The highlight of the State Fair for me in recent years has been the concert the U.S. Marine Drum & Bugle Corps performs daily during the first two weeks of the exhibition. Their concert begins each day at 4:00 p.m. (1600 hours in military time) and lasts for about 45 minutes. They play some classical pieces, contemporary popular music, show tunes and movie themes, and, of course. various military marches. Amazingly enough, they play all these pieces in an ensemble of drums, two-valve bugles, tenor bugles (euphoniums), contrabass bugles (tubas), and two xylophones (on wheels, though they do not march with them). This year, for example, they played a Mozart concerto, Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life”, Elmer Bernstein’s theme from the John Wayne movie “The Sons of Katie Elder”, “Old Man River” from “Show Boat”, and naturally, Souza’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
These Marines are accomplished musicians – and they are real, sure enough Marines. They audition for the slots that come open, and, if accepted, go to boot camp with other Marine recruits before the are assigned to the Drum & Bugle Corps. That ordeal serves them well. Their precision marching to a lively drum cadence is a pleasure to watch – no heads bobbing up and down – and the musicianship is first class.
The concert they give is also an occasion to present awards to other marines for various accomplishments, and they always have a guest of honor. Before the concert begins, the director inquires if there are any retired or non-active duty Marines in the audience, and request that they stand. This year, he may have made an error in asking if there were any former Marines present. I did not know there was such a thing.
Anyway, if you get a chance, go see the show. If you cannot make this time, I’m sure the Marines will be back for the State Fair next year.
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Nine hundred forty-five years and counting

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This October 14th is the 945th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, decisive for the Norman Conquest of England in the year 1066. It is one of those pivotal events in history whose effects remain with us despite the passage of almost a millennium. That day, the Duke of Normandy, known at the time as William the Bastard because of his illegitimate birth, and his army defeated an Anglo-Saxon force and killed the English King Harold at Senlac Hill in southern England. The Duke then became William the Conqueror, and set in motion events that changed the world.

Although in 1066 there was no English language as we know it today, the Anglo-Saxon Old English that was spoken then formed the basis of what has become the lingua franca of the entire world today. It would not have developed as such without the Norman French that the Conqueror and his barons brought with them. For nearly three centuries, England was bi-lingual. The nobility and the gentry spoke Norman French while the lower classes – the conquered – spoke Old English. Gradually the two languages merged, first into Middle English, the language of Chaucer and Langland, and then into the modern language much as we know it. The familiar doublets such as “aid and abet,” “peace and quiet,” and “over and above” are vestiges of the dual languages in Medieval England.

The real property law in Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent, many African nations formerly British colonies, had its genesis in William’s feudal tenures. Shortly after consolidating power, the new King commissioned the Domesday Book, a catalogue of all English land and its owners, so he could efficiently tax his subjects. He distributed land to his barons to remunerate them for military service and ensure their loyalty. This system evolved into the property ownership system we have today.

Prior to the Conquest, England was oriented to Scandinavia, not to continental Europe. Indeed, there were several Danish kings of England, and one of William’s rivals for the English throne, Harald Hardråda from Norway, beat him to England, but was defeated near York by the Anglo-Saxons just three weeks before Hastings. As a result of William’s victory England permanently became oriented to France and the rest of Western Europe. English Kings up until almost the 16th Century also claimed to be the kings of France, and actually controlled large parts of that country. This orientation, together with the sea that served the realm “as a moat defensive to a house against the envy of less happier lands” ultimately enabled England to become a maritime power, and become the center of the global British Empire. That empire, now bygone politically, spread the language, culture, and people of Britain throughout the world.

The present Queen Elizabeth and her children and grandchildren who will presumably sit on the throne some day, can trace their ancestry to William the Conqueror. The family tree detours through Germany and Scotland, and at one point has several branches that split and re-merge, but

the line is unbroken through 30 generations (or 31, depending on which line one follows through the Lancaster-York era in the 15th Century). Prince William, who married this year, conceivably could be King William V in the millennial year of the Conquest, 55 years from today.

For anyone interested, nearly every survey of British history has an account of the Norman Conquest. Peter Rex, 1066: a New History of the Norman Conquest (2009) is a detailed but Readable history recently published. Several ancient copies of the Domesday Book are in the British National Archives in Kew, and reproductions are available. The Bayeux Tapestry, a graphic depiction of the battle and the event leading up to it created shortly after the Conquest, has been reproduced many times. See below

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Jobs the Prophet? No Lamentations

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Today’s (Saturday October 8, 2011) weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal feature an essay by Andy Crouch, editor of Christianity Today who follow-up on an earlier essay in his magazine “The Gospel of Steve Jobs” published last January. Mr. Crouch, writes:

“Steve Jobs was extraordinary in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator, a (demanding and occasionally ruthless) leader. But his most singular quality was his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple’s early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten fruit—and turned it into a sign of promise and progress.

“That bitten apple was just one of Steve Jobs’s many touches of genius, capturing the promise of technology in a single glance. The philosopher Albert Borgmann has observed that technology promises to relieve us of the burden of being merely human, of being finite creatures in a harsh and unyielding world. The biblical story of the Fall pronounced a curse upon human work—”cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” All technology implicitly promises to reverse the curse, easing the burden of creaturely existence.”

Mr. Crouch’s essay can be found at here or in the print edition in the Review section. His Christianity Today essay link is at  this which has a link to YouTube’s video of Jobs’s Stanford University graduation address.

No lamentations.

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Callow rhymes with shallow

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Every now and then, a letter to the editor contains a nugget of insight. One John Ramsey of Lewisville, Texas writes today to the Dallas Morning News “If Steve Jobs had spent his youth protesting against rich people instead of trying to become one, our lives would be all the poorer for it.” Mr. Ramsey understands Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek quite well.
I didn’t spend my youth protesting, but I attended a number of the late ‘60 and early ‘70 protests. My motivation, like most of the other 20 something males I suspect, was not the cause du jour. It was simply that the females who attended were generally, shall we say, less inhibited about certain things than their more conservative sisters. Callow, of course, rhymes with shallow.
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We don’t need another Harvard law professor in Washington

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Coincidentally to Steve Jobs’ death, and appropriately enough, George Will in the Washington Post refutes Massachusetts Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren’s recent attack on individualism and entrepreneurship.
“Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and former Obama administration regulator (for consumer protection), is modern liberalism incarnate. As she seeks the Senate seat Democrats held for 57 years before 2010, when Republican Scott Brown impertinently won it, she clarifies the liberal project and the stakes of contemporary politics.
“The project is to dilute the concept of individualism, thereby refuting respect for the individual’s zone of sovereignty. The regulatory state, liberalism’s instrument, constantly tries to contract that zone — for the individual’s own good, it says.”    Read more of Will’s column here
“‘For your own good’ is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction.”
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We really do need more Jobs

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The type size of today’s Wall Street Journal’s lead headline is not exactly Second Coming, but it is unusually large for that rather low-key – some might call staid – newspaper. It recognizes the celebrity, unusually well deserved, of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. For those who are not living in a cave, Mr. Jobs died yesterday. His death was not unexpected, as he had been suffering from cancer for several years and he resigned as CEO of Apple in August, stating that he could not longer fulfill his duties. He was an innovator and entrepreneur of the stature of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and stands with them as an individual who changed the way we live. So far, I cannot say I participated. The only Apple product I have ever owned was a second-hand Apple II I bought from a friend in 1986, and used mostly to play chess. No reason other than the other products seemed more business oriented, and that’s what I needed when what we called micro-computer first became available. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, I bought the products from those who stood on the shoulders of a giant.
A lawyer I knew in 1977 paid $20,000 for an Olivetti Word Processor (that’s all it did!). My first PC was a Xerox 820 I acquired in 1981for which I paid $2,500 (in 1981 dollars) that had 64KB RAM and used two 90K 5″ floppy drives. I recently paid less than $1,000 for a Dell with 8GB RAM and 500 GB hard drive. For those who might miss the connection, Steve Jobs began the technical innovations that made the personal computer popular and available to the general public which had the effect of bringing the price down as the quality and capacity went up. He would have been remarkable for that alone even without his more recent iPod, iPhone, and iPad successes.
I more or less followed Steve Jobs’ career through my daily reading of the business news, and after refreshing my memory with news stories in several publications today, I realize he was a real live Ayn Rand hero. With Steve Wozniak he started the computer business, whose name was inspired by the Beatles record label, in his garage. He created a product for which there was a nascent market and ultimately was able to take it public and become and overnight multi-millionaire. (Wozniak cashed in early and went on to sponsor rock concerts or some such thing.) When the company’s management was taken over by bureaucrats who fired Jobs, he struck out on his own again. Eleven years later, Apple, with its hat in its hand, brought him back, and became – at least for awhile this year – America’s most valuable company. Apple’s current management, his competitors, the financial community, and the rest of the cognoscenti agree that it was Jobs who did it.
Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011 RIP. We really do need more Jobs.
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The Apotheosis of Nags and Busybodies

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There have been few more egregious restriction on individual liberty foisted upon this nation than the thirteen years of Prohibition that straddled the decade of the 1920s. How did this come about? There have been many historical research papers written on the subject, but for most of us it is usually a story too long to tell.

Not so for documentary film-maker Ken Burns. He has followed up his previous films about the Civil War, World War II, and others with his latest Prohibition. This work is being broadcast on many PBS television stations this week and is now on DVD and Blu-Ray for rent or purchase – three episodes for a total of 5 hours.  I highly recommend this documentary, especially the first, which shows exactly why and how this so called “noble experiment” came about.
It has always interested me how prohibition of alcoholic beverages, as well as the continuing fruitless and futile “war on drugs” cuts across political and ideological lines. Social conservatives are generally been for it, as are left-wing neo-progressives (so long as you don’t include their Chardonnay). And it has always been that way.
Misuse of beverage alcohol has caused individual and social problems for a long time. The propensity to overindulge in strong drink respects no class or sex. Likewise for race and ethnicity. Although some cultures appear to produce more problem drinkers than others, so far as I am aware, no genetic link to alcoholism has been found except perhaps among Amerindians. Historically, alcohol abuse has been considered a moral problem; more recently it has tended to be regarded as a medical condition – a disease. I suspect that it is some of both. As a close friend of my spouse once remarked, you don’t catch alcoholism if you don’t drink.
Nevertheless, collective attempts to control demon rum have been sponsored by churches, women’s organizations (because prior to the legal and cultural emancipation of women, a male breadwinner didn’t win much if he spent it on whiskey), and all manner of social reformers. The political classes resisted liquor control laws and prohibition during America’s first century because the concept of individual liberty dictated that free citizens have a right to fail and/or make fools of themselves, the alcoholic beverage business was important to the nation economy, and taxes on beverage alcohol was a significant source of revenue for the federal government before income taxes were Constitutional. It is interesting to note that protests on beverage alcohol taxes led to the first popular challenge to federal authority during George Washington’s Administration.
In the waning decades of the Nineteenth Century, women temperance advocates such as Carry Nation, evangelical Christians like William Jennings Bryan, increased the vigor of the prohibition movement. Anti-immigrant and anti-Roman Catholic (who had no religious scruples against liquor per se) sentiments joined in. The beer industry grew exponentially and was dominated by immigrants – mainly German – which increased popular prejudice against booze. At the turn of the century, the Progressive Movement took up the cause in the name of social reform and efficiency – the apotheosis of nags and busybodies.
By December 1917, the Protestant revivalists, the anti-immigrant crowd, the need for tax revenue from alcohol excise taxes significantly reduced by the institution of an income tax, the anti-German sentiment fanned by World War I, the Progressive Movement, and the Administration of a Progressive President Woodrow Wilson, were a perfect storm. The 18th Amendment was passed by both Houses of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states within a mere 13 months. The rest, they say, is history.
An interesting aside not mentioned by Ken Burns is that in 1917, the first, and thus far only, governor of Texas was impeached and removed from office. Populist and anti-Prohibitionist Democrat James E. “Farmer Jim” Ferguson was accused of improperly causing the state to deposit public funds in his Temple bank, but what really irked the Progressives was that Farmer Jim was support by and received campaign donations from the breweries in San Antonio, Shiner, and elsewhere in the state. Ferguson got back at them. Ineligible to run for office again, his wife Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson ran and was elected governor twice, in 1924 and 1932, on the slogan “Two Governors for the price of one.” Another slogan seen about that time was “Me for Ma, and I ain’t got a durn thing agin Pa.”
Miriam “Ma” Ferguson

 James E. “Farmer Jim” Ferguson
“You’ve got three friends in this world:
God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, and Jim Ferguson”
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No lean and hungry look

Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist of somewhat left-wing bent, last Friday wrote about New Jersey governor Christ Christie:

Whether or not he lets himself be persuaded to run for president, Chris Christie needs to find some way to lose weight. Like everyone else, elected officials perform best when they are in optimal health. Christie obviously is not.
You could argue that this is none of my business, but I disagree. Christie’s problem with weight ceased being a private matter when he stepped into the public arena — and it’s not something you can fail to notice.

Robinson goes on to discuss the so-called obesity epidemic in the nation and why it is necessary for our leaders to practice healthful habits and present a hale and hardy image. He concludes his column

Politically, I disagree with Christie on almost everything. I’ll have plenty of opportunities to tell him why. Today, I’d just like to offer him a bit of unsolicited, nonpartisan, sincere advice: Eat a salad and take a walk.
 
Robinson’s column is here
 
 
As he does with Governor Christie, I disagree with Mr. Robinson on almost everything. I do agree, however, that a Presidential candidate’s health (as well as that of an incumbent) is a matter of public concern. There is no doubt that obesity, like smoking and many other conditions, are detrimental to health and this is a negative for a President. When the Presidency was less demanding, those like T. Roosevelt, Taft, Cleveland and others could get could get away with being obese. But health isn’t the only issue in that regard. In previous eras, when widespread publishing of celebrity and politician images was difficult and expensive, few people ever saw anything but a head and shoulders photo of a candidate. And in earlier times, when food was scarce and expensive, a hefty girth was a sign of success and competence. No more. As Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Henninger recently put it, we have an American Idol method of selecting a President. This dictates that a candidate be physically attractive, and those of corpulent size are not in today’s America. No one will say this out loud on the campaign trail, but it would be the elephant in every room. Every President since the television era came into full swing, except perhaps accidental President Lyndon Johnson, as possessed at least supporting actor looks (Yes, yes, Nixon was Darth Vader, but he wasn’t Jabba the Hutt) Whether this a good thing is beside the point. We humans rely primarily on our sense of sight for perception. What looks good is presumed good. Evil is ugly; good is beautiful; and elections are really beauty contests. Until this changes, a candidate will have to be attractive to stand a real chance, particularly if the opponent is.
This is not to denigrate Governor Christie in any way. He is on my short list of acceptable candidates. He has some good ideas and is also acceptable to those across the great center, but without some of Mitt Romney’s baggage. My point is, so long as our politics are shallow, we need to consider where the reefs and shoals are and figure how to navigate around them.
 
For a blog entry at the Post critical of Robinson see Jennifer Rubin at here
Or, Julius Caesar:
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
 
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The Lawyers’ Full Employment and Chinese Economic Stimulus Act of 2011

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Two proposed bills (one in the House H.R 2501  and another in the Senate S. 1471) entitled the Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011 would ban prospective employers and employment agencies from discriminating against a job applicant because he is currently unemployed. It provides for enforcement by a private civil actions or and action by the Department of Labor against the alleged offender. Among other things, it would prohibit inquiring about current employment status in an advertisement or job interview. To be completely fair, this bill should be re-titled as the “Lawyers’ Full Employment and Chinese Economic Stimulus Act of 2011” because those would the primary beneficiaries of this idiotic legislation. Employment laws and regulatory rules already make being an employer so onerous that it is more efficient and profitable to send whatever functions you can offshore rather than employ Americans and subject oneself to ridiculous constraints already imposed by all levels of government.
This bill thankfully has no chance of becoming law in the current Congress.  One can easily surmise that it was included as a sop to the President’s extreme left supporters.
One question to immediately comes to mind is why would an employer discriminate against an applicant because they are currently unemployed? Is such discrimination legitimate? The answer to the first question generally answers the second. It often depends upon the job sought. If a person is otherwise qualified on paper for a job in an industry where there is low or virtually no unemployment, that fact they are currently not working, might indicate, or at least give a prospective employer a line of inquiry. Why is he not currently working? Perhaps because he just finished school, or his employer went out of business for one reason or another. On the other hand, maybe he was fired for incompetence or inability to get along with other employees. These are things an employer would want to know, and should be able to ascertain. Also, the fact that a job-seeker is currently working, but currently underemployed, could indicate that the applicant is ambitious and will do what he can for himself while seeking a better job. In short, whether a applicant is currently employed is an indicator, and a reliable one in many cases, as to whether this person would be a desirable employee.
As an employer for most of the past 35 years, I can attest that a good employee is hard to find. Consequently, when I found one, I did done everything possible can to keep him, often at my short term detriment, at least financially. Never having had more than 15 employees, I have not been subject to a lot of the more onerous laws and regulations. That was a conscious consideration. There were enough headaches without having to deal with the laws one becomes subject to when having over 15 employees.
If we want full employment in this nation, we better take John Galt’s advice (given 54 years ago) and tell the government to get the hell out of the way. (Atlas Shrugged, p.1045, 35th Anniversary Edition)
(Note: To avoid the awkwardness invariably resulting from attempts to be politically correct, I used the masculine pronoun to apply to both sexes.  It is a longstanding convention in composition and I mean no bias one way or the other by it.)
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Why you should listen to your wife

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins discovered last Friday that thieves had stolen his rare Mercedes from his home garage.  It was a piece of cake.  Mr. Watkins left the keys in the car and the garage door open.  Making it easy to steal does not diminish the crook’s guilt, but come on! If anyone should know better, it’s the county’s chief prosecutor.  And he has been complaining about budget constraints.  Question: Will his office have a conflict of interest in prosecuting the thieves, assuming they are caught?  Or will it be necessary to hire an expensive special prosecutor?

It is reported that Craig’s wife counseled him against leaving the garage door open.  To no avail, it seems.

Wonder if the thieves knew who he was.