Thoughts on Mumbai

Of all the holidays we in the U.S. celebrate, can any of them compare to Thanksgiving for pure hedonism? The historical significance of the occasion notwithstanding, for most people, Thanksgiving is a great excuse to have a long weekend, eat and drink to extreme excess, and then hit the malls for the frenzied start of the Christmas shopping season.

This year, Thanksgiving was no different, except for a jarring reminder from the other side of the world that life is not necessarily as comfortable and safe as the holidays usually make us feel. While a few hundred million Americans blissfully overate and then retired to their sofas to watch some mediocre football, a handful of armed militants -- all of them likely Muslims from Pakistan -- went on a killing spree in Mumbai and murdered almost 200 civilians before police finally killed or captured them.

While disturbing, the sad truth is that events such as this one aren't totally unsurprising. But that's all the more reason to reflect at some length on the Mumbai killings; they were not the first, and they will not be the last. And I see no reason why the next bloodbath can't take place in New York, or Omaha, or Richmond.

Probably the most obvious, visceral question to ask when an atrocity like this happens is: Why? Why would 10 young men infiltrate a foreign city and proceed to murder scores of innocent people they never met before? For that matter, why did two dozen young men hijack airplanes and crash them into skyscrapers? The latter is the question shocked Americans asked after 9/11, and except for the specific numbers, locations and means of assault, it's the same question many more people are asking now.

Unfortunately, the answer isn't obvious, at least to me. If it was pure homicidal mania, I could understand, to the extent that insanity can be understood at all. But I'm fairly certain these young Pakistani guys who shot tourists for being American, or Jewish, or just shot people for the sake of shooting them weren't insane in the clinical sense. Neither were the 9/11 hijackers. The stock answer that I think most Americans would give, then, boils down to "They just hate us." No doubt they do, but it takes more than pure hate to motivate a normal human being to commit mass murder.

So the conclusion I have to draw is that there was some sort of point to this carnage, that these terrorists were trying to accomplish something beyond the bloodshed they wrought. What that might be, I don't profess to know. Inflame tensions between India and Pakistan -- both technically American allies -- to force the U.S. to come down on Pakistan and wreck the ongoing campaign against the Taliban in that country? Force India to consider negotiating the status of the predominantly Muslim state of Kashmir? Something entirely different? I don't know.

The "why" matters, but it's elusive. Equally important though is the more pragmatic question: How do we respond to such barbarism? I won't claim to know that either, but I do know how not to react. To figure this out, all I had to do was read The New York Times' editorial on the killings, which demonstrated just how dangerous the road to political correctness can be. The Times does not ask why the Mumbai attackers did what they did, but rather, The Times asks why the Indian government allowed them to do it:

"How can their government have ignored the warning signs? A 2007 report to Parliament warned that the country’s shores were poorly protected — and some or all of the attackers arrived by boat. Why weren’t the police and the army better prepared to respond?"

Implicit in these questions is the attitude that, like hurricanes and earthquakes, terrorist attacks just happen. And because they happen, governments -- including the Indian government -- have a responsibility to respond to them as effectively as possible. The culpability of the terrorists for their actions is completely absent, as if they're just as mindless as Hurricane Katrina.

Do we really live in such a debased age that a major newspaper like The New York Times can't muster some genuine horror, and anger, that armed savages took advantage of a free, open society to commit murder? To put it bluntly, where's the outrage?

Mumbai symbolizes much that modern liberalism claims to value: multiculturalism, freedom of religion, democracy, commerce, tolerance, and on a basic level, the freedom to come and go as one pleases. All of this was exploited and attacked by a small group of people who prefer an unfree, intolerant, bigoted society, but liberal bastions like The Times can't bring themselves to acknowledge this clash, because doing so comes dangerously close to passing judgment on a culture. So in the name of cultural sensitivity, fanatical Islamism must be treated as a sort of natural disaster, with no blame to assign, except for the negligent governments that don't get out of the path of the storm.

Seven years ago, when the 9/11 attacks finally woke Americans up to the fact that Al Qaeda had been at war with their country for years, the outrage wasn't lacking. Almost to a man, the country was shocked and justly furious that someone could commit that sort of wanton violence. Have we really changed so much since then? When only 170 people are killed instead of 3,000, do we take it in stride, especially when it happened in a different hemisphere?

The issue of how to respond to this and future attacks is indeed complicated, with no clear course of action in sight. But the immediate, gut-level reaction is, or ought to be, very simple. Reality dictates that cities in India, America and elsewhere develop strategies for responding to terror, but the fact that they have to should never stop appalling us.

Government 4.0

File this one under "aimless musings."

Having recently read an op-ed by David Brooks extolling the academic credentials of President-Elect Obama's metastasizing administration got me to thinking of something a good (and fellow-libertarian) friend of mine observed not too long ago about the Republican Party with George Bush at the helm. In essence, he noted that one of the most troubling aspects of Bush-style Republicanism is a certain repudiation of all things intellectual, in favor of governance by determination alone. I don't recall the exact circumstances, but didn't Bush famously sneer at a reporter as an "egghead" when he worked some passable French into a question he posed at a presidential press conference a while back?

Even if apocryphal, the image makes for good symbolism. The hallmark of Bush's tenure has been the attitude that government policy, especially foreign policy, ought to be forceful, direct and unwavering. Decisive action is a virtue, whereas long-winded theorizing and analysis, replete with all those annoying "What if" questions, is a hindrance to getting things done.

So not surprisingly, the largely liberal intellectual establishment is cheering Barack Obama for all the smart, academically polished people with whom he is populating his cabinet and administration. As Brooks notes with approval, virtually all of his supporting cast hails from hallowed Ivy League universities, with even an Oxford grad thrown in for good measure. As Brooks says, "This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs."

So why can't my inner geek get excited, after eight years of get-er-done governance?

It's not because I doubt that Obama, his advisers and his future cabinet members are intelligent people (how intelligent is a different story). Much as I believe that degrees from Yale, Harvard and their ilk can be overrated and overblown, I still harbor ample respect for a collection of people who could hack it at institutions where my application would have been used for scratch paper by admissions officers.

So I guess my unease has more to do with the limits of intelligence itself, and the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Because these days especially, with the economy in a worsening recession, there are calls from all sides for the new administration to "do something" to make it all better. As I noted in an earlier post, liberal columnist Bob Herbert wants a "tough" and "very, very smart" plan to save the Detroit Big Three automakers. Twit though he is, at least Herbert has the humility not to try to write that plan himself. Instead, he wants the smart kids to do it. And therein lies my worry.

I believe there are essentially two ways to view what's happening in our present economy. There is the enlightened liberal position that government must take certain actions to bring us out of this recession; and there is the competing position, that try though it might, the government can't save the day, and that we as a country are best off simply weathering the storm. The first view is predicated on the notion that if you get enough "very, very smart" people together in a room and tell them to solve a problem, they'll drink a lot of caffeine, stay up very late, and eventually find the solution. The second position is rooted in a much more pragmatic world-view, in which bad things sometimes happen and there's nothing anyone can do to change that.

Consider the implications of the "we can fix it" position: If it's possible for a government of very smart, very earnest people to design and implement policies that can end a recession, doesn't that imply that bad economic times can actually be warded off before they arrive? More simply, if it's possible to fix something that's broken, shouldn't it logically follow that the damage can be averted in the first place? If so, that would imply that, in theory, recessions are all avoidable.

I'm sorry, but I'm just too much of an empiricist to buy this Utopian vision. If life has taught me nothing else, it's that bad things sometimes happen. And just because there are comprehensible causes of those bad things, this does not mean we can head them off at the pass. After this recession, a lot of economists will no doubt study the factors that gave birth to it and get the postmortem right; however, this does not in any way imply that anybody can solve the problem in the present tense.

But do Barack Obama and his advisers know this? After all, we are talking about a group of people who are accustomed to succeeding at mental challenges, and the mindset that engenders does not lend itself to intellectual humility. Years spent integrating Taylor series and receiving high marks on term papers at the most prestigious universities in the world can go a long way toward convincing an intelligent person that there's nothing he doesn't know or can't figure out. And with the pro-Obama press clamoring for his administration to get to work "fixing" the economy, we are already hearing assurances that they have all the answers.

Such confidence frightens me. Consider: In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took office and appointed "whiz kid" technocrats to combat the Great Depression. His administration was nothing if not energetic and well-intentioned, but six years later, the country was still mired in depression. Can Obama's Ivy Leaguers succeed where they failed? Or will they approach today's crisis with the humility that comes from recognizing their limitations as imperfect human beings?

Or more abstractly, have they considered the possibility that this is not a test, and there are no right answers?

Champions of Failure

I tried to have a pleasant, relaxing Saturday. I really, really tried. All was going well, up until about two minutes ago, when I read this op-ed in today's New York Times by Bob Herbert. And that's when my heretofore enjoyable day went completely off the rails. Just knowing that perhaps the most influential newspaper in the country employs someone as intellectually threadbare and vapid as Bob Herbert to write a twice-weekly opinion column fills me with despair.

To get right to it: In case you live under a rock, America's automakers, which have been on the decline for years due to high costs and a reputation for making bad cars, are now seriously flirting with actual bankruptcy. Particularly GM, which announced just recently that it is losing money at the rate of about $2 billion a month. At this pace, the company projects that it could be out of cash and in bankruptcy court by early in 2009. So naturally, GM is doing what every troubled business enterprise does these days: Demand a federal bailout. In GM's case, such a bailout would come in the form of a $25 billion (for starters) loan from the government.

It now appears that Democrats lack the support to pass such a loan, until the new Congress convenes in January, so at least for the time being, this latest transfer of losses from the private sector to the taxpayers is on hold. And much to the chagrin of Bob Herbert, who, as usual, knows just how our economy ought to be structured. Sniffs Herbert:

"If G.M., which is on life support, or Ford or Chrysler were to go bankrupt, the reverberations would kill the jobs of entire armies of American workers. It would undermine the standard of living of hundreds of thousands of families and shutter the entrances of untold numbers of small and intermediate businesses."

To stave off this potential economic nightmare, Herbert would have the federal government step in to instruct GM, which has been in the business of selling automobiles for exactly 100 years, on how to build cars people actually want. The Treasury would open its bottomless pockets yet again to lend GM however many billions it needs, but with conditions. In Herbert's own words: "That means dragging the industry (kicking and screaming, no doubt) into the 21st century by insisting on ironclad commitments to design and develop vehicles that make sense economically and that serve the nation’s long-term energy security requirements." (Italics mine.)

Is the man serious? In a single sentence, he proposes that the government force a for-profit company to operate profitably, AND serve the "nation's long-term energy security requirements." Does he really believe that GM's management hasn't been trying to make money all this time, and that a government-appointed technocrat will succeed where a once-mighty industrial giant has failed? Earth to Bob Herbert: If a group of people who've spent their entire careers trying to make money building and selling cars can no longer do it, the federal government is not going to lead them back to profitability.

And how about that "serve the nation" business? Is Mr. Herbert aware that the political system in which government coerces nominally private companies into "serving the nation" by building what the government decrees is called "fascism"?

So, allow me to offer a competing analysis (a very short one, I promise) of GM's woes: GM is a massive company with too many brands, too many dealerships, too many employees and prohibitively costly labor agreements. GM workers earn, between wages, pension and health care benefits, upwards of $70 an hour, whereas nonunionized workers at Japanese car plants located in the U.S. make considerably less (though by no means poorhouse wages). In recent years, GM, like the other two Detroit car makers, has depended heavily on SUV and truck sales to stay afloat, and demand for those highly profitable vehicles is evaporating.

In other words, GM's problems are structural, long-term problems that cannot be fixed by anything short of a major overhaul. And this is exactly what bankruptcy is designed to promote. Bankruptcy would allow GM to renegotiate the impossibly high wages it pays employees, sell off production facilities and entire brands to eliminate dead weight, and begin the painful process of scaling itself back down to a manageable-sized company that can compete with foreign rivals. Bankruptcy does NOT mean that all of a sudden, poof, no more GM, as Bob Herbert implies with all his doomsday scenarios. In recent years, US Airways, United Airlines and Delta all declared bankruptcy; surely he's noticed that those companies still exist today, right?

And really, what alternative to bankruptcy can Herbert offer? Well, here it is, in his own words: "The government should craft a rescue plan that is both tough and very, very smart." So let me see if I have this straight, Bob: Your plan is for someone else to come up with a good plan?

Good plan.

A Bear Market for Liberty?

As I was reminded by a random commenter on a recent blog post, there is no shortage of people in this country with irrational and absurd notions as to how our society and its economy "ought" to be structured. And as a rule of thumb, I try not to pay them much heed. One of the greatest things about this great country of ours is that everybody has the constitutional right to say whatever they please, without fear of legal retribution. But the unspoken corollary to that freedom is that no one is obligated to listen, thank God.

However, when influential people with irrational and absurd notions of how our economy "ought" to be structured have certain powerful congressmen nodding in agreement, I tend to sit up and take note. And such is the case right now. Lost in all the sound and fury over the looming election and the plunging economy is a proposal -- currently winning some powerful converts on Capitol Hill -- that would fundamentally alter the way most Americans save and invest for their retirement years.

Economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research has lately been promoting a plan to scrap the current system of allowing workers to shelter a portion of their income from taxes by investing it in a 401(k) or company-sponsored pension plan, and replace it with a government-run system in which all workers must participate by contributing at least 5 percent of their paycheck. In return, they'd receive an annual tax credit of $600, and a "guaranteed" return on their retirement savings of 3 percent, adjusted for inflation. Are we having fun yet?

The rationale for this not-so-subtle abrogation of personal freedom and choice is multifaceted, and deserving of at least a little consideration. First and foremost, such a plan would end the "subsidy" that 401(k) and pension plan contributions receive by virtue of their tax-exempt status. Ms. Ghilarducci -- who apparently cannot sleep at night knowing that somewhere, someone is not paying taxes on some of their income -- claims that this tax exemption costs the federal government $80 billion in lost revenue each year. (Just for context, this figure represents about 2.5 percent of the current federal budget.)

But more important than the added tax revenue, the Ghilarducci plan would "guarantee" an after-inflation return of 3 percent on workers' accounts, to guard against plummets in the stock market, such as the current one that's got so many workers nervous about their pensions and 401(k)'s these days. In a comment that deserves serious consideration for "Most Fatuous Statement of the Century," Ghilarducci notes that, "These last three weeks people are learning their 401(k) plans can go down." Who knew!

So, rather than allowing workers to choose whether and to what degree to participate in a company-sponsored retirement plan, and in the case of 401(k)'s, to choose what type and risk-level of assets to invest in, Teresa Ghilarducci would like to make that choice for you. Or rather, she'd like to abolish choice and turn your retirement fate over to the Social Security Administration. To make good on that guaranteed 3 percent return her plan promises, the government would invest workers' money in the only asset that can plausibly guarantee any level of return: government bonds!

So what sets this particular know-it-all economist apart from all the other self-proclaimed geniuses who would like to be running our lives? Well, in this case, a federal audience. George Miller of California and Jim McDermott of Washington, both Democrats in the House of Representatives, invited Ms. Ghilarducci to pitch her plan to their respective committees, and apparently they both like what they heard. McDermott's press secretary said the idea "Certainly is intriguing." No legislation is pending, but with both houses of Congress and the presidency all but certain to be in Democratic hands this January, there's really no need to rush.

And just think of it! Hundreds of millions of workers becoming more dependent on the federal government for their basic quality of life! Trillions of dollars currently locked up in pensions and 401(k)'s that will suddenly become available to finance the trillion-dollar annual deficits the government is expected to run starting next year! What isn't there for a big-government liberal to love?

To be sure, the last couple of months have served as a wake-up call to anyone who thought that investing in the stock market is a can't-miss proposition. Unfortunately, this is leading quite a few people to the very worst conclusion; namely, that the unavoidable risk that comes with any aspect of human existence serves as a justification to banish risk by government fiat, and that personal responsibility is trumped by promises of security.

"What people want from their pensions is guaranteed income for life,"Ghilarducci says. Actually, there is no end to what people probably want. As my favorite high school teacher taught me long ago, economics is the study of allocating finite resources among infinite desires. Unfortunately, modern liberalism has degenerated into the business of denying the former by pandering to the latter.



Post script: I employed a 401(k) calculator to determine whether a 25-year-old worker with zero savings and an income of $50,000 per year would be better off with a guaranteed return of 3 percent above inflation or the average stock market return of 7 percent above inflation, aided by the standard 50 percent match that most companies offer on employees' first 6 percent of income. The score after 35 years: $859,086.47 for the 401(k) and $286,927.89 for Ms. Ghilarducci.

Airbrushing a Crisis

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
~Eric Blair, aka George Orwell

I don't believe I'm going out on a limb in saying that there are at present a number of troubling and unsettling currents permeating the media and the national consciousness in general. Read any newspaper, watch any news program, or talk to anybody even remotely abreast of current events, and you're likely to encounter a competing host of negative sentiments: unease, or perhaps outright fear, over the state of our teetering economy and still-falling stock markets; apprehension about the upcoming presidential election and what the outcome will mean for all of us; and in general, a certain dread as to what the immediate and distant future will bring to a country that already believes itself to be on the wrong track. And marching in lockstep with the advancing malaise comes a growing interest in blame: blame for our present woes, and the parties who deserve it.

Liberal politicians and influential opinion-shapers didn't have to look very far for the villain responsible for failing banks and plunging 401(k) portfolios. Free-market capitalism has been caught red-handed, they announce;all those misguided theories about deregulated markets and laissez-faire economics have delivered us unto the brink of disaster and now deserve the intellectual equivalent of euthanasia. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post makes the case for the prosecution with as much self-assured rectitude as the most zealous Marxist: "What exactly do economic conservatives believe now that their god is dead? What's become of the glories of privatized Social Security? Of the merits of 401(k)s vs. defined-benefit pensions?"

His prose might border on the florid, but Meyerson is representative of the entire political Left, which has already delivered a guilty verdict in the case against capitalism. Wealthy Wall Street hucksters, the popular narrative runs, spent years trafficking in shoddy mortgage-backed investments they either didn't understood, or understood to be junk, eager only to cash in before the bottom fell out. And now, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down a tidy 6,000 points or so since last year, the bottom has well and truly fallen out. The agreed-upon catalyst in this version of the story -- the recent collapse of the housing market -- was all that was required to bring the whole shaky edifice down.

It all makes for compelling op-ed pieces, and it almost certainly guarantees that the liberal intelligentsia's political champion will ascend to the presidency this fall, but something is missing. Lost in all the recriminations over who's to blame and the ominous rumbles about nationalizing banks is a question that isn't being asked. Why exactly did the housing market, which had been red-hot for so many years, start to crater recently? And why were there so many of these so-called "toxic" mortgage-backed securities for Wall Street vandals to dabble in? The answer calls the popular narrative vilifying capitalism into question, and might spread the blame around a bit more evenly.

In 1999, long before anyone had heard of "collateralized debt obligations" or "asset-backed securities" or any of the other wreckage that litters today's financial landscape, The New York Times printed a brief article that today sounds stunning, and even chilling, in its prediction of things to come. It's short, it's comprehensible, and I implore anyone interested in understanding today's crisis to read it.

The upshot: that government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deliberately steered billions of dollars in mortgage financing to risky borrowers, with potentially ruinous implications: "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's." And one Peter Wallison, of the unabashedly free-market American Enterprise Institute, anticipated the consequences with remarkably acuity: ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us ... If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' Nine years later, Fannie and Freddie failed, the government had to bail them out, and taxpayers are left with the bill.

I offer this quick trip back in time not as a categorical refutation of the charges that unchecked, capitalist greed is at the root of all our troubles, but simply as a reason to stop and think. Anyone who tries to sell you a quick and easy explanation of an economic recession or a financial crisis, with well-defined villains and heroes, is offering a false bill of goods. Times such as these call for honest historical inquiry into the roots of the problem, not political witch trials seeking scapegoats. A decade ago, at least a few prescient observers saw the seeds of today's crisis taking root, and they discerned the unmistakable influence of government at work in the sewing. Consider this the next time you hear some demagogue of the Left try to take ownership of the past while doling out damnation in the present.

Turn On, Tune In, Bail Out

I started this blog principally because I figured it would allow me to pontificate on a wide range of subjects, unfettered by any sort of self-avowed focus or specialty. But now I'm worried that it's rapidly devolving into a simple vehicle for defaming Thomas Friedman of The New York Times opinion page. I swear, when I started out, I had a broader, more diverse mission in mind. But the man leaves me little choice.

Writing in today's Times, Friedman does an absolutely brilliant job of distilling all the myth, posturing and outright stupidity swirling around the ongoing financial crisis into one compact, easy-to-read trope on the need for a massive government bailout of Wall Street. By all means, read his argument in its entirety. But here's all you really need to hear:

"I’ve been frightened for my country only a few times in my life: In 1962, when, even as a boy of 9, I followed the tension of the Cuban missile crisis; in 1963, with the assassination of J.F.K.; on Sept. 11, 2001; and on Monday, when the House Republicans brought down the bipartisan rescue package.

"But this moment is the scariest of all for me because the previous three were all driven by real or potential attacks on the U.S. system by outsiders. This time, we are doing it to ourselves. This time, it’s our own failure to regulate our own financial system and to legislate the proper remedy that is doing us in."

In recent weeks, I've heard much foolishness and scare-mongering spouted about the current credit freeze-up and the concomitant panic on Wall Street, but for sheer idiocy, Mr. Friedman takes the cake. In what appears to be utter seriousness, he announces that the Cuban missile crisis, the JFK assassination and September 11 all pale in comparison to the recent convulsions in the financial sector. Just as a quick history refresher, he is talking about, respectively, the closest we ever came to full-scale war with a nuclear super-power, the public murder of the leader of the free world, and an unprecedented terrorist attack that killed 3,000 people and changed our way of life.

In case you were seeking anecdotal evidence of this country's staggering intellectual decline, look no further. That a man who could say something so patently stupid is paid to write a weekly column for the most prestigious newspaper in the country speaks volumes. But I wasn't looking for proof of what I already know, that Thomas Friedman is a boob. I read his column regularly, out of a certain morbid fascination, so he can no longer surprise me. I highlight his piece only because it provides such an excellent example of everything wrong with the popular analysis of the "crisis" on Wall Street, and with the solution to that crisis being championed by a political elite that claims to know what's best for the economy.

For the sake of context, here's the condensed version of how we supposedly came to the brink of this financial Waterloo, and the remedy we're told we must enact: Over the past several years, various banks and other financial institutions invested huge amounts of money in new-fangled assets consisting of many home mortgages "bundled" together. They turned out to be a risky investment, but because the government failed to regulate the buying and selling of these assets, an investment bubble was permitted to grow, and when the housing market started going south a couple years ago, the bubble burst. So now we must allow the government to spend $700 billion buying up those risky investments so banks will regain the confidence to start lending again. If we fail to do this, we risk a complete halt to lending, which will send the economy into a deep recession.

But some people aren't convinced of the veracity of this narrative, as evidenced by the House of Representatives' vote against the bailout this past Monday, which evoked shrieks from Thomas Friedman's ilk, accusing the House Republicans that voted against the bill of betraying the country in its time of great need (but not the House Democrats who voted against, curiously). Dissenting Republicans said, in effect, that they simply cannot spend this massive sum of public money on a bailout for a financial industry that did so much to bring on its own destruction, and that government has no authority to influence the economy on this scale. Two days later, I'm still waiting to hear a cogent, rational refutation of this argument.

Instead, all I hear is grand-standing and more fear-mongering from backers of the bailout, who scream ever louder that failing to act will bring about a second Great Depression. For evidence, they point to Monday's collapse in the stock market, which immediately followed the no-vote in the House. How's that for specious reasoning? "We promised markets that we'd fix this mess for them, and then we didn't fix it, and the markets dropped! That's why we have to fix the mess!"

This is the best example yet of what economists call "moral hazard," the notion that if you provide individuals or companies with the incentive to behave badly, they will do so. By announcing that the government can and will fix this huge mess, banks and other firms can shunt all responsibility onto the government. Rather than absorb losses, declare bankruptcy or sell out to solvent institutions, they can simply wait around for the government to cure their financial problems. With a blank check in the offing, none of them will resume normal lending until that check clears, and so the self-fulfilling prophecy of a crisis comes to fruition.

Such counter-productive incentives have motivated every stage of this ongoing situation, from the creation of two government-backed entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- designed to encourage loans to many people who shouldn't have qualified for them -- to the absurdly low interest rates the Federal Reserve fostered after the last recession to encourage more lending than was healthy, to previous government bailouts of individual firms, which sent the message that if you incur big losses, the feds will take the hit for you. To make a long story short: If you encourage individuals and companies to borrow and lend more money than they have, you will eventually provoke a lending crisis.

But as Thomas Friedman makes abundantly clear, the past doesn't matter. Don't ask how we got to this situation in the first place; don't ask whether a really big bailout will succeed where smaller ones simply made the situation worse; and don't question the assumption that the present problem is always the worst problem ever. Simply yell your nostrums louder, and keep scaring people with doomsday predictions until you get your way.

As every high school civics student knows, it's illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But there are no such restrictions on doing it from the editorial pages of an august newspaper.

When Green Means "Stop"

In case my humble little blog happens to be inaugurating your return to the Internet after a very long coma, I have a heads-up for you: There's a presidential election in less than six weeks. For everyone else, this is probably not news, considering the permanent news cycle the modern media operates on to feed Americans' insatiable appetite for political punditry. And if you've so much as glanced at a newspaper, a political talk show or any of the three billion Web sites where jerks like me profess to have something important to say, you already can sense that this election promises to be close, hard-fought and nasty. True believers on the left have turned the Obama campaign into a cult following while his detractors hate him enough to rally around former beauty pageant runner-up Sarah Palin, the anti-Obama if ever there was one, as our country takes another step down the dark path of complete political polarization.

But is all the divisiveness really justified? Are the two candidates so night-and-day, so black-and-white that battle lines must be drawn all across our fractured union? Because at least on one issue, Obama and McCain share a great deal of common ground: the trifling little flap over global warming.

While they differ on certain details, Obama and McCain both favor implementation of a cap-and-trade system to gradually reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases to levels consistent with what scientists claim are necessary to ward off the specter of global warming. (In a cap-and-trade regimen, the "right" to emit greenhouse gases is effectively rationed, and over time, the rations become smaller, requiring increasing cuts in emissions.) So whoever wins in November, it's a safe bet that there's going to be a radical overhaul of how our energy sector supplies the electricity that does so much to distinguish our society from the Stone Age.

Which ought to cause everyone a fair amount of concern, because it's already apparent how difficult this green remedy will be to implement, for the very simple reason that clean energy does not grow on trees, so the more of it we are required to produce, the greater the challenge will become. In an excellent piece of reporting today, The New York Times runs down the major reasons why coal, the dirtiest fuel for power plants and the biggest single cause of CO2 emissions in this country, is so central to our present economy, and why so few viable alternatives to coal are available. Nuclear plants? No emissions, but expensive and time-consuming to build. Oil? Too expensive to compete with coal, not especially green. Natural gas? Much cleaner, but in short supply.

So one might be forgiven for celebrating a little bit at the news that lots of utility companies and venture capitalists are rushing to build power plants that turn free, abundant sunshine into clean electricity. In the very next article on this page, The Times reports the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has received applications to build enough solar power plants to replace 70 (!) coal-burning plants across the country, particularly in southern California. If you're looking for a solution to the climate crisis that environmentalists have been scaring us with for years, this looks like a pretty good one: a renewable energy source with no emissions and builders lining up to get cracking. Huzzah!

But wait. I don't know if The Times deliberately places these stories side by side for the sake of irony, but there's a sickening amount of it. Because the real story of these solar saviors is the tremendous opposition to them being mounted by local environmentalist groups who fear that, among other ecological calamities, the Mojave ground squirrel and the desert tortoise might be displaced by all the mirrors and photo-voltaic cells.

Let that sink in for a moment. Amid the deafening clamor for solutions to what is being billed as a crisis that could do incalculable damage to the entire globe, a crisis that has sufficiently galvanized public opinion that both presidential candidates call for sweeping solutions, a tiny little cadre of the environmentalist movement is saying, "Not on my jojoba farm, and not if the Mojave ground squirrel and I have anything to say about it." In response to state regulators and utilities who are desperate to find energy sources to meet California's stringent renewable energy quotas, these squirrel activists want to keep "big solar" out, presumably so they can continue communing with the Earth Spirit in their unspoiled desert Eden.

Their solution? Build little solar panels somewhere else, on someone else's roof, through government subsidies paid for by someone else. (The Times notes, in excellent "just the facts, ma'am" style, that it will take a century for small, inefficient rooftop solar panels to provide enough electricity to meet the state's renewable quota coming up in 2010.) It's almost comical, except that this little farce in the desert serves as an excellent harbinger of just how acrimonious cap-and-trade might turn out, in no small part because certain elements of the green movement are completely intolerant of any human activity that sullies any small corner of the world's ecosystem. These high priests of the biosphere have effectively decreed that energy must be clean and have zero impact on all the species and habitats they hold dear. Any proposal that falls short of this lofty standard is rejected on the grounds of sacrilege.

And lest I start to sound like a villain in a "Captain Planet" episode, I ought to mention that I have no particular beef with the Mojave ground squirrels, and that I'd rather they go on about their squirrelish affairs in peace. But I see no reason why they can't, considering that companies that lease acres in the desert for erecting solar panels have to purchase three times as much acreage for conservation purposes. I ask only that certain environmentalists get serious about this looming climate crisis they dread so much, and recognize that the solution they've championed is going to be costly for everyone. Physics only offers us a limited array of solutions to combat global warming, and they all come with a price tag. Even the Mojave ground squirrel needs to pitch in.

Safety First! (And Last, and Always)

I realize that it's become almost a cliche to bemoan the machinations of safety nazis, those crusading do-gooders who wish to see every action, substance or thought deemed unhealthy or dangerous banned by government fiat. Serious social commentators and stand-up comedians alike have been seizing on nanny-state rules like mandatory bike helmets and the hysteria over second-hand smoke for years, and it's become a tired routine. Meanwhile, the protect-yourself-from-yourself movement advances apace. The freedom to smoke a cigarette in a bar is rapidly disappearing, and in places like New York City, mentally sound, responsible adults can no longer choose whether to eat food cooked with trans fats, because the city has thoughtfully made the choice for them by banning trans fats in all restaurants.

That being said, a new call to further suppress individual freedom in the name of safety has recently come to my attention, quite by chance. It is neither a genuinely new nor different idea; sadly, it's only too representative of the creeping mindset that people must be coerced into doing what's best for them. I highlight it only because it provides such an astonishingly frank glimpse into a philosophical quagmire afflicting modern society, and its logical consequences.

In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Kent Sepkowitz illustrates why medical professionals should not be permitted to make transportation policy. If you're the impatient type, allow me to summarize his argument: Thousands of people die in automobile accidents every year, and many of those accidents are the result of speeding, and since motorists continue to speed in spite of preventive measures like speeding tickets, new cars should be physically prevented from exceeding 75 miles per hour by the installation of speed-governing technology.

Of course, one could write for pages about possible flaws in the soundness and validity of this argument. One could, for instance, point out that in Germany, the rate of vehicle fatalities on the notorious autobahn (much of which has no speed limit), as measured in deaths per billion kilometers driven, is substantially lower than on other German roads with slower traffic speeds. Or one could note that in 2007, Utah and Vermont recorded the exact same number of deaths per 100 million miles driven (1.11), despite the fact that Utah's highway speed limit is 75 mph, whereas Vermonters are limited to 65 mph. Or one could simply pose a hypothetical question: Which is more dangerous, driving 60 mph on a quiet residential street where the posted limit is 25, or driving 80 mph on a deserted interstate highway?

These are all reasonable technical objections, but they all miss the point, because none reveals the philosophical problem with Sepkowitz's proposal. To argue about the empirical evidence is to concede that government mandates are an acceptable substitute for individual responsibility. Driving a motor vehicle, whether limited by a speed governor or not, will always be a potentially dangerous activity, and there is no end to the ways in which an irresponsible person can kill himself and others while doing it. To argue that individual human beings cannot be trusted to sufficiently value their own lives, and therefore must be physically restrained from endangering themselves, exhibits condescension bordering on outright contempt for humanity's capacity to make free and rational choices.

Some people will inevitably make the wrong choices; drive for an hour on any major highway and I guarantee you'll see someone driving like a maniac, imperiling his own life and the lives of those around him. But there are only two ways to interpret this observation. You can conclude that human beings are fallible creatures who sometimes do very stupid things, accept that this is part of the human condition, and strive to avoid those poor choices in your own life. Or you can draw the Kent Sepkowitz conclusion: that because some human beings will make poor choices and do stupid things, choice must be revoked by law.

Of course, adopting the latter conclusion carries certain logical requirements. If, for instance, overly fast cars must be taken away from drivers who cannot be trusted to drive them safely, then a whole range of dangerous actions should also succumb to the same standard. Off the top of my head, I can think of quite a few obvious hazards we must not permit people to run: smoking (any where at any time), drinking (too much potential for excessive consumption), contact sports and mountain biking (too many broken bones if not enjoyed safely), motorcycles (too little utilitarian value to balance the physical risks), sky-diving and bungee-jumping (for obvious reasons). It's a long and disparate list of perils, united only by the common trait that, if conducted recklessly, they can all lead to death.

Where does it end? Honestly, I have no idea. But when you adopt the tautological position that the objective of life is first and foremost to preserve and extend life, this is the road you find yourself going down. Presumably at no more than 75 mph.

A Bridge Too Far

As if the presidential campaign hasn't dragged on long enough already, polarizing a divided country and exhausting anyone who cares about more important stuff (like, for instance, the start of the NFL regular season tonight), Sarah Palin's nomination for vice president has flung yet more fuel on the mindless partisan fire. And yet, her sudden elevation to national prominence serves a useful purpose by illustrating something that I'm sure neither party intended or appreciates: In the campaign for the modern presidency, "experience" does not necessarily qualify anyone for the presidency.

Obama supporters, weary after months of defending a presidential candidate with a scant few years in office as a do-nothing senator, are visibly relieved to be able to point fingers at Alaska's new governor and former beauty pageant runner-up and clamor "Well what about her?" If that's the best they've got -- that their opponent's running mate is about as politically green as their presidential candidate -- then the Obama camp is pushing on a string. Nobody who hasn't already made up his or her mind to vote for Obama is going to buy this ridiculous lowest-common-denominator tack.

But rather than wade into the comically vicious argument over whether Barack Obama's experience as a "community organizer" outweighs Sarah Palin's experience as the mayor of a town of fewer than 10,000 residents, I'll simply cut to the chase. No amount of experience can ever prepare any human being to be President of the United States in the year 2009, because the government that president will preside over has grown well beyond the bounds of its founders' intent, or the ability of any one person to direct. No one takes the oath of office and hits the ground running on the first day. At best, they're quick learners who can keep mistakes to a minimum and remember their fallible human nature.

However, you will not hear such prosaic realism from either campaign. Modern politics is plagued by the cherished belief that, in theory, government is almost Jovian in its ability to solve societal problems and make people happy. Almost no one, Republican or Democrat, has the humility to acknowledge that this isn't so. So modern politics is reduced to a maddening, endless squabble over what type and how much government will deliver us to the promised land of civil bliss. George Bush believes that with the proper mix of shock-and-awe firepower and "nation-building," hotbeds of radical Islam can be converted into solid-citizen democracies that love America. Hillary Clinton believes that if she just stays up late enough crunching the numbers, she can keep everyone in America healthy and insured. More ambiguously, Barack Obama seems to believe that he can ordain a new American economy powered by not-yet-existent-but-soon clean energy sources.

Whatever the particular issue, those in power tend to make the same fatal mistake: They wrongly assume that, with just a little more power, they really can cut this or that Gordian knot, and in the process, cement their legacy in the pantheon of great leaders. So they all try to tell average voters they have the "experience" to wield the awesome power the federal government already possesses. And consider the far-reaching extent of that power. The American president has the greatest say in disposing of trillions of tax dollars each year. The American president can enact spending and regulatory policies that throw sand in the gears of the global economy. The American president can launch wars that cost thousands of lives, with or without justification.

So exactly what sort of experience prepares you for the closest any one human can come to playing God? No other role even comes within an order of magnitude of the influence the president exerts. Even prominent senators such as McCain and Biden, who've strode the corridors of power in Washington for decades, are utter pikers compared to whoever occupies the Oval Office. The leap from any previous position to president cannot be measured, in years of "experience" or any other metric. To ascend to the presidency is to go off the charts.

But don't tell that to the professional wonks trying to shape this election, for whom this is largely a pissing contest over who's got more bullet points on his presidential resume. They start with the assumption that government really can cure all our ills, and thus conclude there must be a "right man (or woman)" for the job, and then work backward from that conclusion to arrive, conveniently, at their party's ticket. It is not exactly forbidden to suggest that government is not the answer, but only because you need not forbid an idea that no one holds.

Trig-Induced

Let me just say from the outset that this post is almost certainly futile and pointless. But I feel compelled to write it anyway.

Tonight, I watched Alaska governor Sarah Palin accept the Republican nomination for vice president. I watched because, like everyone else, I don't really know much about her, except that, unlike most presidential elections, her presence on the ticket might really decide the outcome. Even if the office of vice presidency isn't any more significant than a warm pitcher of spit, it'll be monumental if she ends up playing king-maker.

But about two minutes into her speech, my interest in her was eclipsed by an arresting image on screen, when she introduced her infant son, Trig, who was born with Down Syndrome. I am generally no more moved by other people's babies than the next young man is, but this particular one really made me sit up and take note, for two reasons. First, asleep in his father's arms, he looked as innocent and peaceful as any other sleeping baby. And second, only about one in five unborn children diagnosed with Down Syndrome is permitted to come into existence in this age of genetic diagnosis. The other 80 percent are aborted.

I am by no means a pro-life crusader. I have been fairly ambivalent about abortion for most of my adult life, and I try at all costs to avoid the running argument over its moral validity, largely because the vitriol that any objection to abortion-on-demand arouses in self-described feminists has often cowed me into silence. I simply don't want to bring that sort of wrath down on my head for daring to inject a "Well, maybe..." into a discussion, because there is no room for maybes.

Notable female figures on the political left are almost unanimous in their scorn for Sarah Palin, and it's no secret why. NOW Chairwoman Kim Gandy is quite representative in her dismissal: "Gov. Palin may be the second woman vice-presidential candidate on a major party ticket, but she is not the right woman. Sadly, she is a woman who opposes women's rights, just like John McCain." You simply have to realize that "women's rights" is equivalent to legal abortion.

But seeing that baby, blessedly oblivious to the incredible hoopla surrounding him, I couldn't help thinking, "Why the hell shouldn't he exist?"

It's a question that deserves an answer. The pro-choice arguments usually deal with the health of the mother, or the severe physical, emotional and financial burdens that child birth indisputably place on the mother. But when four-fifths of unborn babies who exhibit a fairly moderate disability are deemed unworthy of continued existence, another factor is clearly at work. Are people with Down Syndrome so irredeemably defective or undesirable that society is better off without them? And if so, what other defects should disqualify a baby from being born? Is this not, as George Will suggested in a 2005 Washington Post column, "eugenics by abortion"?

I pose these questions not to suggest that abortion ought to be outlawed, but simply to express a long-frustrated desire: That we as a society might be able to debate the issue without being shouted down by the zero-sum zealots, on either side, who label any questioning of their position as the foulest heresy. After seeing Trig Palin and realizing how atypical his existence is, I'd simply like to have a more thoughtful, open debate. One in which both sides come with the attitude that perhaps they don't necessarily own the moral high ground and won't hurl invective at each other for disagreeing. Wouldn't our country be better off for it?

Back to the Future?

Mark Twain famously remarked that "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Pithy and insightful, to be sure, but after reading an op-ed in today's New York Times, I suddenly think he's wrong. History really does seem to repeat itself.

After a much-ballyhooed junket of western journalists to the new Soviet Union in 1921, American reporter Lincoln Steffens famously remarked, "I've seen the future, and it works." The trip was a highly choreographed tour of the new country, designed to show left-leaning journalists the technologically advanced and prosperous USSR. The staggering bloodshed that characterized the country at that time -- the mass arrests, the secret police interrogation stations, the summary executions of tens of thousands of innocent people -- were conveniently hidden from Steffens and his credulous colleagues, who obligingly returned home and gushed about what they'd seen. (And from what I understand, Steffens filed the story that contains the now-famous phrase before the tour even arrived in the Soviet Union, which is utterly fitting.)

Decades later, we know better: 1921 was merely part of the unfolding drama that culminated in the 30s with the mass-starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants and the sprawl of the gulags. Steffens was certainly half-right: 1921 was a watershed year, pointing to a future that did in fact come to pass. But it was a dark future, ruled by totalitarian decree, where human life counted for little.

So you would think that, in 2008, when a massive, communist country puts on a dazzling display of state pageantry for all the world to see, western journalists wouldn't make the same exact mistake they made in 1921. But you would be wrong.

For behold Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and his slavish adoration for the fanfare of the Beijing Olympics: "China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work."

Frankly, I'd be more impressed if the Chinese could put on a meaningful democratic election, or refrain from censoring the Internet, or pull their troops out of Tibet. Not Mr. Friedman though; he was just so taken with all those amazing dancers and drummers and bullet trains, he simply couldn't be bothered about niggling details like human rights abuses.

Just look at the alleged Chinese virtues he chooses to praise: Planning. National investment. Concentrated state power. The same warm and fuzzy virtues that every monster since Lenin and Hitler has worshiped at the altar of human sacrifice. But weren't those fireworks just gorgeous!

Behold the power of ideology to trump rational thought or factual analysis. With seven years and $43 billion, the Chinese managed to create an amazing spectacle and Friedman goes all weak at the knees with sycophantic adulation. But in the same breath, he laments the time and resources America has devoted to preventing a repetition of the 9/11 attacks. Thanks to all that "concentrated state power," China has a whole lot of shiny new public infrastructure for its wealthiest cities, while rickety old America is falling apart.

Well, let's see. Just this past spring, a powerful earthquake struck rural, western China and killed about 70,000 people, largely because of poor-quality construction. Hurricane Katrina, by contrast, left about 1,800 dead. Three years later, the latter is still cited as proof of the woeful neglect of American infrastructure, while an exponentially more devastating catastrophe merited about a week of obligatory news coverage. But for twits like Thomas Friedman, the happy afterglow of the Olympics is what counts.

Why? What is it about the highly choreographed spectacle of thousands of anonymous dancers and drummers and other performers putting on a glittery party that so delights the Thomas Friedmans of the world? Is it the prospect of the faceless masses, each dressed exactly alike, marching in lock-step for the glorification of their country? Do they look at soldiers goose-stepping as they present the Olympic flag and see something good there?

I can't decide if the closing sentence of this op-ed is consciously echoing Lincoln Steffens 85 years later, or if it's just a sick coincidence: "I never want to tell my girls — and I’m sure Obama feels the same about his — that they have to go to China to see the future." Friedman frets that we'd better start teaching our children Mandarin. I would posit that we need to start teaching our children history.

Acura, Common Sense Refute Gas Crisis

These days, griping over high gas prices is ubiquitous, and that griping leads to ever more hand-wringing, which in turn translates into a mountain of punditry regarding various "solutions" to this "crisis." SUV owners wail into every available microphone about $4 gas, Green Peace screams for Exxon executives' blood, and a never-ending procession of self-appointed experts bombards the Internet and opinion pages with their pet solutions for easing Americans' "pain at the pump." Frankly, I'm finding it all a little bit tiresome, so yesterday I conducted an experiment that might just render all the complaining and crack-pot schemes moot. It was a very low-tech experiment. I slowed down a little.

For my low-tech experiment, I selected a stretch of US-50 West from Cambridge, Maryland (where my ailing grandfather lives) to Alexandria, Virginia, where I live. My primary piece of equipment for this experiment was the odometer on my 2006 Acura RSX, which the EPA claims will get 31 mpg in "normal" highway driving. In a previous test on this same route, I divided my miles driven by the exact quantity of gas I burned and obtained mileage of 36.5 without really making any effort to save gas. So this time, I made an effort, and got some interesting results.

Over 93 miles, I used 2.34 gallons of regular unleaded, which works out to 39.75 mpg. After hitting the "equals" button on my calculator, my first thought was, "And why is there a gas crisis in this country?"

I should note here that my car possesses no technological wizardry to enhance fuel efficiency. It's powered by a 2.0 liter, inline-four engine, mated to a five-speed automatic transmission. No hybrid engine, no regenerative braking. It's just a smallish car (2,800 pounds), with a smallish, efficient engine.

And all I did to wring the extra miles from each gallon was to drive a bit slower, and crack my windows instead of run the air conditioner. When the speed limit was 55, I drove 55. When the speed limit increased to 65 on the western shore of Maryland, I drove 60. When I got stuck in horrendous traffic thanks to the hordes of families returning from Ocean City and other beaches, I let the engine idle in neutral. Approaching red lights, I coasted. Taking off from green lights, I went easy on the go pedal and kept my engine revs low. Not exactly the sort of stuff that will win me a Nobel prize for physics.

So, cruising at a leisurely pace in the right-hand lane, I saw near-hybrid mileage with some pretty stodgy technology. I can only imagine what a small car with a more frugal engine and a more advanced transmission (or a manual) could do, especially without the traffic jams; I bet a Mini Cooper, a Yaris or an entry-level Civic would probably have cracked 45 mpg, and maybe even threatened 50.

But tooling along in the slow lane, watching 5,000-pound SUVs zoom by at 75 mph, I realized that cars like mine and drivers like me are in the minority. All whining and recriminations aside, the average American drives a big, heavy car with a big, inefficient engine, and drives it very inefficiently, which goes a long way toward explaining why we as a country consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil every day. So now more than ever, I'm sick to death of hearing about this "fuel crisis" and the need for radical new technology and heavy-handed government mandates to "rescue" us from expensive oil. We don't need salvation; we just need a little high school physics and an end to the piggish "bigger is better and I'm entitled to what's better" mindset that's shaped the auto market for the last 20 years.

I'm about the last person in the world who'd advocate for energy rationing, or restrictions on the cars consumers buy, or any of the other command-and-control solutions that green warriors secretly venerate, because as with so many alleged "crises," I know the solution will be worse. But I'll be the first to tell an aggrieved motorist who's complaining how expensive it is to tow his 30-foot boat with his V-8 pickup that in economics, as in physics, you reap what you sow.

"Brother, you asked for it."

I'm no foreign policy expert, and I wouldn't even call myself especially informed when it comes to the state of the outside world. So I'm really in no position to offer any keen or prescient views on the situation in Iraq. But I think it's safe to say that things must have gotten better there lately, because suddenly the defining issue in the 2008 presidential campaign -- what arguably proved the difference in the Democratic primary, since there really were no other substantive differences between the two candidates -- has suddenly taken a back seat to that perennial hobgoblin of presidential elections, the economy. Stories about the sectarian carnage on the streets of Baghdad (or lack thereof) are relegated to the inside pages, read only by the most die-hard wonks, while every nightly network newscast features oppressive segments cataloging the high price of pretty much everything everybody wants to buy, and most of all, gasoline.

Every night, average Joe Sixpick earnestly, drearily informs the cameras that it's getting harder and harder to fill up, that the family vacation to the beach is on hold now, and that he's just about fed up with it. Sound familiar?

High gas prices are the story de jour, and increasingly, the loudest talking point in the upcoming election. John McCain knows it; witness his recent TV ads blaming Barack Obama for record-high gas prices. (I believe the phrase "energy crisis" is in there somewhere.) And Barack Obama knows it; he lost little time firing back at McCain, blaming him for failing to increase government fuel economy standards during his 30 years in the Senate.

Allow me, if I may, to summarize the gas-price drama, as I understand it: Gas used to be real cheap and that was great, but now all of a sudden, it's real expensive, and that's bad, because lots of people are driving trucks and SUVs that get bad mileage and so it's suddenly real important to buy cars that get good mileage. Right?

So now, everybody wants good mileage. Every car company does everything it can to play up its models' great fuel economy (even when it's not so great); Priuses are selling faster than Toyota can build them; and gas-guzzling SUVs are rusting on dealers' lots for want of buyers. And then there's the furor, just getting started in earnest, about ethanol, and how best to make it, and how high the government's CAFE standards should rise, and how fast.

But wait a minute. Lost in all the debate is a question I never hear asked: Why did it make sense, back in the Good Old Days of Cheap Gas, for everybody to drive 5,000-pound trucks and SUVs? Were gas stations giving the stuff away back then? Were oil wells gushing crude oil like 10,000 Old Faithfuls? Put more directly: Did it make sense up until recently to waste a finite natural resource for no good reason?

A quick trip back to the Good Old Days of Cheap Gas yields some interesting observations. "Cheap" is a subjective term, but I doubt anyone would disagree that back in 2003, when a gallon of regular unleaded cost $1.59 on average (per the Department of Energy), I doubt anyone would disagree that that was indeed cheap. So what cars were people buying back in that halcyon era, when George Bush was actually popular and the Iraq War looked so fresh and promising? Edmonds lists the top-ten best-sellers for '03, with the Ford F-150 pickup truck leading the way, followed by the Chevy Silverado and the Dodge Ram pickups. The lowly, gas-sipping Honda Civic, by comparison, ranks eighth, barely registering a third of F-150 sales.

Now, a quick trip over to www.fueleconomy.gov, which reports that an '03 F-150, in V-6 trim (versus the less efficient V-8) clocks 15 MPG. The 2003 Civic, equipped with an automatic, variable-ratio transmission (that is to say, not the most efficient model available) averages 32 MPG.

Now imagine yourself a prospective car buyer in 2003, facing $1.59 gas and a choice between 15 MPG and 32 MPG. And suppose you expect to drive 12,000 miles a year for the next five years, and you assume, stupidly, that the price of gas will never change, i.e., you'll continue living in the blissful era of cheap gas forever. Setting aside the obvious price differential between the truck and the car, and any insurance premium differences (ceteris paribus, if you like Latin), then you'd do your math and expect to pay $1,272 per year to fuel your F-150, and $596.25 if you opt for the Civic, for a difference of $675.75, in 2003-era dollars.

To make a long story short, unless you were a contractor who hauled around two-by-fours all day for his living, or lived at the end of a long, dirt road, buying the most popular vehicle in America was a really stupid decision. That's $675.75 you were giving away, EVERY YEAR. Just for the purposes of illustration, an annual savings of $675.75, beginning in 2003 and invested in the S&P 500 stock market (which averaged about 7.4 percent returns per year during this period), works out to a grand total, in 2008 dollars, of $4,203 by the end of 2008, assuming the stock market simply did nothing for the rest of this year. (Disclaimer: These calculations actually performed on the back of an envelop.)

So, in 2003, operating under a set of extremely conservative and unlikely assumptions, your former self would have foregone quite a tidy little sum of present-day dollars. Of course, more realistic assumptions -- namely, that gas prices might very well go up -- would only have widened the gap. And yet, 845,586 F-150s flew off the lot that year, along with a host of other big, gas-guzzling trucks. And five years later, most of them are still probably in service (even given Ford's notoriously lousy build quality). So the next time I see Joe Sixpack being interviewed at his local gas station in front of his pickup, I wish the local news correspondent would ask, "So five years ago, what made you do something so patently stupid even before gas doubled?" I'm curious to hear the answer.

You Know What They Say About Cake...

Remember about 18 months ago when a very prominent cartoon caused an enormous uproar, which ultimately revealed more about the subject matter of the cartoon than its actual creator? Some obscure Danish cartoonist dared to depict Mohamed with a bomb on his head instead of a turban, and the Muslim world exploded, literally and figuratively. Death threats were issued, embassies were bombed, retractions were demanded. And anyone with half a brain and a shred of decency inwardly went "Well, that says an awful lot."

And this week, the phenomenon repeated itself, though without any death threats or bombings (yet). But the indignation pyrotechnics were spectacular, and very, very revealing. The New Yorker magazine, a noted bastion of reaction and bigotry, had the temerity to run a cover featuring Barrack Obama and wife Michelle in the guise of, respectively, a Muslim fundamentalist and a guerrilla warfare radical, both of them anti-American to the core. The second it hit the Internet, you could practically hear Obama Nation's collective inhalation, the gasping prelude to the torrent of moral outrage about to be loosed.

Of course, this was meant purely as satire, to lampoon the allegedly paranoid fear of the Obamas among right-wingers. Thus, The New Yorker printed a patently absurd image designed to ridicule the idea that Obama's presidential aspirations are somehow sinister and terrifying. I believe this is an example of a relatively new tack in politics called "sarcasm."

But a whole bunch of indignant liberals aren't laughing. Why not? Because all those rubes out there in Middle America might not GET IT. They might think he really IS a Muslim (heck, some of them already think just that). How dare The New Yorker publish a cartoon that could give people the wrong idea about their beloved, unassailable, manna-from-Heaven candidate? Free speech is all well and good, but in such an important election, are we really going to trust their television-addled brains to interpret the joke correctly?

Think I'm being melodramatic? Just read this analysis of why The New Yorker cover is actually really, really bad. Most revealing quote: "[V]isually-based racial, religious and character-based framing does carry cognitive weight across a spectrum of higher- and lower-level reasoning, and, more than anything, it gains strength and veracity through repetition." All those lower-reasoning voters out there might just take it the wrong way!

At play here is a very obvious hypocrisy. Either this cartoon has no basis in reality whatsoever, it's completely absurd and therefore laughable, or it isn't. If it is a pure inversion of the truth, why all the angst about the damage it might do? When in the same breath the liberal, blogging community announces that the Obamas bear absolutely no resemblance to this caricature (which was the artist's point all along) BUT this cartoon shouldn't have been printed because it could give people the wrong idea, the liberal blogging community doth protest too much.

A Relic From '06

A couple years ago, in a very rare fit of (unwarranted) confidence in my abilities as a writer, I submitted something for a DC political humor Web site's open submission contest. I promptly did not win.

I believe the assignment was to write George Bush's post-presidency cover letter, when he'd hypothetically be applying for a new job and describing his accomplishments as president. I recently discovered my submission in a folder I rarely open, and lest it sit on my hard drive forever gathering electronic dust, here it is. (In light of recent events in the '08 presidential campaign, it sounds a bit dated now. My apologies.)

Dear Sir (or possibly Madam - but hopefully Sir):

Eight years and two narrowly unsuccessful impeachment trials ago, I made a promise when I took office: that I would govern as a uniter, not a divider. And today, I can say with confidence that that promise has been fulfilled. American women are united by the renewed trust in their own bushes which I’ve inspired; Europe is firmly united against American intransigence (which I assume is French for “intrepid leadership”). Heck, I even reunited Dick Cheney with his beloved Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break DVD, which Lynn hid from him back in ‘02. All this while pursuing Al Quaeda on every continent (including their Antarctic stronghold) and winning a solid 60 percent of the preemptive wars I’ve launched. Last time I checked, that was a passing grade at both Harvard and Yale.

But don’t let my shrewd foreign policy overshadow my impressive domestic accomplishments. The prescription drug plan I engineered gives America’s seniors access to a health system at least as complicated as Finland’s, and possibly as good as Nicaragua’s. Meanwhile, the No Child Left Behind Act aims to ensure a bright future for our children by requiring a highly qualified teacher and a fully functional mechanical bull in every classroom in the nation by the year 2014. Critics say these bold initiatives are nothing but unfunded mandates that will bankrupt the country. I say: That’s Hillary’s problem now. Have fun crunching those budget numbers, Madam President.

And finally, allow me to remind you that, as far as surviving ex-presidents go, I’m probably your best bet. Bill’s doing his philanthropy work (or is it philandering work? He told me which one it was, but I can never keep ‘em straight); Jimmy’s busy with the peanut harvest; Gerry’s a good guy, but a little too brainy; and between you and me, dad can’t keep awake for more than about forty-five minutes at a stretch. Also, I’ve been hearing rumors lately that Ronny’s dead. But that’s probably just our liberally biased media talking.


Sincerely,

Pres. George Walker Bush

Decline of the West, as Measured in Skyscrapers

Since today is a fairly slow day, I was able to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: Scanning the "news" headlines on MSN.com after signing out of Hotmail. Call it a slightly sick fascination, but there's just something irresistible about the junk content I see routinely splashed on this and other quasi-news sites, because I get the feeling that more and more people get their information, and worse, their opinions from such outlets. Sometimes it's pure fluff, and thus, non-threatening; the other day, I saw a headline that asked "Can You Rent a Beehive?" Stupid, to be sure, but also pretty innocuous.

But then, there's the stupid stuff with the potential to poison innocent minds. Today I found just such a whopper. In this very, very ominous survey of America's continuing fall from greatness, we're told various countries that you've probably never even heard of before are zooming past the U.S. on the world's economic totem pole. Among my favorite indicators cited as proof of our national decline:

1) In the most recent Forbes survey of billionaires, Russia (Russia!) ran the U.S. a close second, with 87 citizens with net worths of 10 figures.

Well, let's see. Eighty-seven Russian tycoons with ties to the state-dominated oil industry have cashed in on record oil prices and become billionaires. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization reports 1.6 million HIV cases in Russia (an increase of 150 percent since 2001), a national per-capita income approximately one-fourth that of the U.S., and an average life expectancy roughly 10 years shorter. But what does any of that matter, so long as a tiny plutocracy enjoys virtually all of the country's alleged prosperity? (For now, anyway. Most of that wealth is the result of oil revenues, and Russia's aging oil fields are in major decline.)

2) Toyota is threatening to displace GM as the largest auto manufacturer in the world, thanks to its vehicles' superior gas mileage.

There's no denying that Toyota is a well-run company, and GM has been a basket case lately. But as the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, both are struggling in the North American market these days, and that largely spells the difference between profit and loss. Patriotic "Buy American!" sentiment to the contrary, Toyota is having the same problems as GM; namely, trying to switch from making big, inefficient SUVs to small cars. For years, SUVs were huge money-makers for GM, and foreign competitors like Toyota did their best to get in on the action. Now the Toyota plants that build its trucks and SUVs are largely idle, and the company is scrambling to ramp up production of the thrifty fuel-sippers that people actually want to buy. (Go into a Toyota dealership to buy a Prius and they'll be happy to put you on the three-month waiting list for one.)

3) London is competing with New York City to be the world's financial capital.

Gee, talk about lightning from a clear blue sky! Back-water, podunk London, the city that once administered a quarter of the world's surface and dominated global commerce for centuries is suddenly a financial powerhouse? Get out of here! Worrying that the City is becoming as important as New York in the banking and financing arena is like worrying that Pepsi sells almost as much cola as Coke: the planet is big enough for the both of them.

4) The world's tallest building is in Taiwan.

What!?

The common thread that seems to string all these stupid assertions together is an obsession with superlatives. "Oh no, they almost have more billionaires than we do! Their banks might become bigger than ours! Their tallest skyscraper is taller than our tallest skyscraper!" The rational response to each is: Who cares? None of these things measures the quality of life here versus abroad, and none even constitutes a significant economic indicator. If this is how the "average American" decides how he feels about his country, it's no wonder opinion polls consistently report that people think we're in trouble, even when they consistently say they feel good about their own economic situation.

A Letter to Thomas Frank (from the archives)

This morning, I happened to read the following op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and it struck close enough to home that I couldn't help but send the author the following reply:


FIGHTING WORDS
By THOMAS FRANK

The Tragic Irony of Beltway Libertarianism
May 21, 2008; Page A17

Consider the poor Washington libertarian. Everywhere else in America his type is an exotic species, a coffee-shop heretic who quotes from "Atlas Shrugged" and steers every conversation toward Ron Paul or gold. Take him or leave him, he doesn't care. He is his own master.

Not so the Beltway variety. Here, in the very home of the taxing, regulating leviathan, the libertarian is such a commonplace and unremarkable bird that no one gives him a second glance. Here he is a factotum of the establishment, a tiny voice in a vast choir assembled by business and its tax-exempt front groups to sing the virtues of the entrepreneur.

And therein lies his dilemma. Almost by definition, our young libertarian's job is to celebrate the profit motive from the offices of a not-for-profit organization. He is subsidized, in other words, to hymn the unsubsidized way of life. Rugged individualism may be his creed, but a rugged individual he ain't.

This is more than just an abstract problem, as I discovered last week at a panel discussion hosted by America's Future Foundation, one of the lesser libertarian nonprofits in the city. The questions that night were whether nonprofit work constituted a "real job" and if moving to the private sector was "selling out" – ideas well known to any liberal do-gooder.

The audience of young professionals learned about the need to find a job that you loved. It heard the inevitable complaint that "there are plenty of people who are choosing for-profit over nonprofit" when their heart tells them to do the opposite. A panelist asked the audience to imagine a foundation worker saying to his boss, "I love what I do, but in the end I've got a wife and three kids, and we live in McLean, and the mortgage is through the roof, and my commute sucks, or whatever, I need a little bit more cash," only to have his employer turn him down.

These plaints sounded so familiar that I felt like suggesting that everyone there hop out and grab a copy of Daniel Brook's fine but distinctly unlibertarian 2007 book "The Trap." By skewing society's rewards so lopsidedly to the top in the country's richest cities, Mr. Brook writes, the tax-reducing, market-minded economic policies of the last few decades have priced all sorts of high-minded occupations to the bottom of the middle class: teaching, the arts, and, of course, nonprofit work.

Many of the people Mr. Brook talks to in such cities haven't given up on these pursuits because they're "sellouts"; they've given up because they want proper health care or decent housing or good schools for their kids.

In traditional sellout theory there is always some grand cause or principle that is being exchanged for immediate gain – artistic independence, for example, or the fate of the panda, trembling piteously before the onrushing bulldozers of modernity.

But what is it that libertarians are selling when they accept the fat paychecks of corporate America? The noble principle of self interest? The utopia of the market itself? Will the workings of supply and demand really seize up if some young Ayn Randette chooses to forsake, say, the Cato Institute and instead help ExxonMobil pile up the pelf?

Fortunately, there were a few plainspoken men of the market present at the gathering to set things straight. Capitalists were the world's real heroes, they reminded us, delivering value to the public and seeing that value quantified precisely by the numbers on the balance sheet. That was reality. the idea that "there's something special about nonprofits," scoffed one forthright fellow – "well, that's crap. Nonprofits are an artifice of the law, and what's special about them is not that they do different things or that they are organized in a special way, it's that they don't pay taxes."

Personally, I would take this hard line one step further: Selling out is not a threat to the market order; selling out is how the market gets its way. Just look at the city in which all these remarks were made. Private-sector Washington is one of the wealthiest places in America. Public-service Washington lags considerably behind. The chance of ditching the one for the other is what accounts for everything from the power of K Street to the infamous "revolving door," by which a public servant takes a cushy corporate job after engineering some extravagant government favor for the corporation in question – or its clients.

The libertarian nonprofits that line the city's streets often serve merely to rationalize this operation after the fact, giving a pious shine to the policies that are made in this unholy manner.

To their credit, the nonprofit libertarians I watched the other night did not ask for sympathy. Their own doctrine won't permit it. Having spent years urging lawmakers to wreck the social order that once made occupations like theirs tenable, they will cling stubbornly to their free-market idol all the way down.

Mr Frank,

As a young libertarian working in Washington (albeit at a for-profit publishing company) who just read your Wall Street Journal column of May 21, I feel the need to proffer an alternative to your conclusion that libertarians toiling away in nonprofit advocacy organizations to defend capitalism are mindlessly working against their own self-interest because they are prisoners of their flawed ideology. Correct me if I've misconstrued your position, but I believe your closing paragraph is quite unambiguous:

"To their credit, the nonprofit libertarians I watched the other night did not ask for sympathy. Their own doctrine won't permit it. Having spent years urging lawmakers to wreck the social order that once made occupations like theirs tenable, they will cling stubbornly to their free-market idol all the way down."

Instead of concluding that these poor saps are too blind to even know what's good for them, I would posit that they're principled people who care more about promoting their beliefs than they do about pulling down big salaries. Furthermore, I would suggest that they are responsible adults who chose their line of work despite knowing that they'll never get rich in the nonprofit sector, and that like responsible adults, they accept the consequences of their own choices in life. They do not demand that they and their "high-minded" (to use your own phrase) peers somehow "deserve" more money than their employers are willing to pay them.

So the next time you grace the opinion page of the Journal with your leftist cant, please at least try to formulate some sort of philosophical argument, or attempt to refute one of the core arguments of your opponents, rather than simply writing them off as hapless stooges who don't even have the sense to seek out the best paycheck. Not everyone is as obsessed with wealth as you seem to be.

And if somewhere in the political machinations of our nation's capital - where lawmakers are busy handing out millions in subsidies to wealthy farmers, billions for a senseless war in the Middle East, and trillions in future entitlement obligations like Social Security - you can detect the sinister influence of free-market libertarianism, I implore you to seek psychiatric help.

Respectfully,
Jim Patterson, 25, Alexandria, Va

On first looking into Kos' blog (from the archive)

On my daily stop at NFL.com today, I was reminded of something very sad: the start of the regular NFL season is still an interminable four and a half months away. In the meantime, I'm left with nothing better than politics, an utterly inadequate substitute. But play the hand you're dealt, I've always said.

So, Barack Obama. Last week he said something kind of dumb. I'm sure everyone's already heard it, so I won't quote him. You know the soundbite I mean, the one where he told wealthy San Francisco liberals what they already know: that blue-collar, "heartland" Americans are a bunch of podunk rubes who love guns, hate immigrants, go to church instead of college and don't even have the sense to vote in their own economic self-interest. If you have the misfortune to be exposed to as much news, punditry and water-cooler bull sessions as I am, you've already heard the big outcry, both from the Hillary Camp and John McCain Land. Suddenly Obama, heretofore the healer of all our woes, the uniter of all our differences, sounds a tad condescending, even "elitist."

Elitism from a Harvard-educated lawyer worth millions of dollars? No! I for one refuse to believe it.

So I'm bored with this story, except for one seldom-mentioned aspect. I hear Obama supporters defending his remarks, explaining that they were "poorly phrased" but "fundamentally true," and I can't help but chuckle. Because I know that somewhere, deep down in their psyche (or maybe not so deeply buried), they're going, "What's the big deal? He's right! They ARE just a bunch of podunk rubes." Most of them won't admit to it on TV or in print, but I decided to look elsewhere for confirmation. And I found it, in the Daily Kos.

Sure, I had to search a bit. This was my first trip to Kos (surprise!), and frankly, I was unprepared for the all-out internecine party warfare being fought out there in the blogosphere. I don't know how many people are posting on that site, but judging by the frequent updates and the never-ending string of verbal sniping at Hillary Clinton (sorry, couldn't resist), I quickly figured out that this is ground zero for the Hillary/Obama battle. Mentions of "bittergate" weren't hard to find, but practically every one emphasized what a non-story this is, and ended by exulting that Obama's remarks haven't hurt him in the Pennsylvania polls. More than a few bloggers seemed to be hyperventilating over how unworthy of mention this story is, because it's just the latest futile attempt by the Hillary campaign to find a chink in the Obama armor.

But finally I found what I was looking for. A blogger named "Asinus Asinum Fricat," who appears to be some sort of European correspondent for Kos, summed up the "bitter" fracas thusly:

I suppose I am an elitist since I care about our planet, as does the Senator from Illinois. ... Ignore the clamoring repukes [sic], elect Obama and get on with it. We are all elitists and proud to be!"

So now I get it. It's GOOD to be an elitist, as long as you're part of the MORAL elite. Remarks like this one, coupled with Kos' oft-repeated declaration that the "bitter" story is "nonsense" and mud-slinging, dovetail pretty neatly with what I assumed from the beginning.

But what I really learned from my first foray into the world of Kos is that this country is a dreadful mess. The present recession is worse than anyone realizes, nobody has any money, because it's all going to "the top," nobody's got health insurance (except one or two Kos bloggers) and if Democratic Congressman Edward Markey is to be believed, the planet is going to be "cooked" because of global warming by the year 2025. (I didn't realize Markey had a degree in climatology; guess I didn't read his Web biography carefully enough.)

Bottom line: This place sucks, and I had no idea. I was under the general impression that we live in the most prosperous, democratic country in the world, at the most prosperous and democratic moment in that country's history. But now that I think about it, maybe I should be bitter too!

God I can't wait until football starts. This country will be so much better off come September. Once they get old enough, I propose a Peyton/Eli Manning presidential ticket to bridge the AFC/NFC divide and bring in a lot of those bitter blue-collar midwesterners. The Manning brothers are good ol' boys from Louisiana, and unlike Hillary, they don't have to fake a heartland accent.

I'd Be for it, if I Wasn't Against it (from the archives)

Reading a blog entry in the Wall Street Journal today reminded me just how much I loathe Sex and the City. Because wsj.com remains a subscription-based site in this era of free news, I can't link to the blog, so I'll just steal a little copyrighted material:

"The HBO series Sex and the City ended in 2004. But now with the upcoming release of the “Sex and the City” movie, the show is coming under scrutiny for its influence on the shopping, partying and dating habits of young women.

Starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, the series chronicled the loves and lives of four very fashionable friends in New York. Were Juggle [the name of the blog in question] writers fans? In the immortal words of Mr. Big: “Abso- $#@&* - lutely!” But BusinessWeek columnist Lindsey Gerdes writes recently that the characters’ preoccupation with men is bad for young career women who still look to Carrie Bradshaw as a role model. She also points out that in newer shows like Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, the basis for women’s career success is unrealistic, “predicated on the ability to navigate an exciting web of power struggles and sexually charged innuendos. All in stilettos!”

But really, how much influence do such shows actually have on young women? Ask Julia Allison, a 27-year-old relationship columnist and Sex and the City fan profiled last weekend by the New York Times. The article says that her devotion to the show was in part why she moved to New York City after college. She also keeps up with habits of Carrie Bradshaw, dancing at celebrity-rich clubs, throwing parties and collecting trendy shoes. The problem is that the lifestyle portrayed in the show is difficult to afford; for example, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side — where Carrie lived as a single professional on the show - - is $2,448 per month. (Indeed, Ms. Allison says even with a six-figure income, she lives in a tiny studio.)"

Now, when I loathe something, I want to know why. And from the very few episodes (or snippets of episodes) I've actually seen, I've never been able to rationally explain my deep-seated detestation of this show. It just seemed that whenever it intruded upon my otherwise calm and tranquil mind, waves of hot, blinding rage would well up from deep within me, until I had to scream and leave the room. But why? The answer always eluded me, but this blog post, and especially the comments that fans of the show posted in reply, have finally shed some light on the source of my aversion.

But first, a disclaimer: I have heard it said many times by female fans that SATC appeals to women because it connects with women, that it depicts situations and relationships that "every woman can relate to." I have no idea whether this is true, and clearly, I'm not equipped to judge such statements. So I will avoid that nebulously impenetrable aspect of the show entirely. I can only say that the idea of a television show geared to a female audience doesn't bother me as a concept, and that I'm quite sure it's something else about SATC that makes my blood boil.

Again, based on my very limited exposure (never voluntary), my impression has always been that a certain materialism permeates SATC characters' lives. They all live in a chic part of Manhattan (the Upper East Side...?), they all dress fabulously and spend heavily on clothes, and shopping appears to be a fairly routine pastime. And yet, I can't recall seeing any of them doing much work to support such a lifestyle. From what I've gathered, Sarah Jessica Parker's character lives in a pricey, spacious one-bedroom, in a city with the highest rents in the country, and manages to do so by writing a weekly column that takes up about five minutes of her weekly routine. A mite implausible, but I'll set that aside.

What I didn't appreciate, until I read some comments on this blog entry, was just how important this lavish lifestyle is to many fans, particularly younger ones. Witness this Boston University student's gushing:

"Are people in college still obsessed with “Sex and the City”? ABSOLUTELY. Almost all of my friends watch the show, and many of them have the entire series on DVD. Granted, I go to school at Boston University, where many girls are Carrie-obsessed, driven, type A’s planning to move to New York, but I would venture to say that the show influences many college students’ decisions to live a very glamorous lifestyle and move to NYC after college. That’s where I’ll be headed!"

A TV sitcom influencing college students' decisions about where to live after college? Fascinating! But read on:

"Many of my friends who are graduating this year are going to New York and have no intention of giving up that lifestyle. Most would probably rather live in a shoe box and have no furniture than stop buying clothes, shoes, cocktails, and Hamptons summer shares. All of them plan on going out every weekend to chic night clubs, and will probably go out for drinks after work many nights a week.

So, do I feel pressure to live this lifestyle? No, but who wouldn’t want to? When “Sex and the City” came out, it let all of my friends have a small glimpse of the most glamorous lifestyle they’d ever seen. There is no pressure to buy tons of shoes and $12 cocktails–everyone just WANTS to!"

Of the 197 comments posted on this blog, many were in the same vein. Others, from older women who are fans of the show, express considerable surprise at how many young women, who were literally girls when SATC first aired, have become such huge fans. But the more I think about this, the less surprised I am, because there are striking parallels between SATC and college life. From what I can (or choose) to recall of my college experience, those four years are a time of epic sloth for many people. While there are plenty of aspiring engineers and doctors and yes, even some diligent, studious liberal arts types, college is a period of astonishing leisure. It's really the only period of one's life when it's acceptable, even popular, to stay up to all hours, drink like a fish, and generally while away mountains of free time. There's no nine-to-five job to be late for, no house to keep up, no kids to take care of. All in all, it's got to be the most self-indulgent, laziest period of many people's lives.

And suddenly along comes this hit TV show that shows, what? Young, attractive people wasting time and having fun! They shop on Fifth Ave, they meet for coffee, they gossip, they dish, they pick up men at bars. It's really not so very different from what's undoubtedly going on right now at a thousand college campuses. But the clothes, the digs, the food, the drinks on SATC? Way nicer. So, same great lifestyle, better stuff.

Aside from the material excess, the aspect of SATC I found most striking was, quite honestly, the sex. More specifically, that it takes on sex as one of its core subject matters. And not just in the way that so many sitcoms dance around it, substituting innuendo for detail and leaving much to the viewer's imagination. For a sitcom to depict sex with jokes that trail off suggestively or scenes in which the lights fade out, followed by canned laugh tracks or titillated "oohs!" from the nonexistent audience is standard. For a sitcom to actually show sex, and write dialog that goes into the gory details of sex, is fairly unprecedented (and obviously, a cable network like HBO can take a lot more liberties than Fox or NBC).

And as far as it goes, I find such earthiness refreshing. We live in a fairly prudish country; for anyone who doubts it, just consider the media's obsession with pop stars like Britney Spears behaving naughtily. So to see a show that deals with something so real, so everyday (and oftentimes, so funny) in a very unsqueamish way can be a breath of fresh air. After all, real people have sex and talk about it, so why can't TV resemble reality?

But SATC goes well beyond realist depictions of sex. Aside from shoe shopping, the women on the show seem to positively live for sex, and for sex with whoever strikes their fancy that particular week. And I object, not on grounds of decency or anything like that, but on the grounds that such a normal, everyday human affair has been elevated to a sort of sport, to be pursued for pure self-gratification. That some people undoubtedly do approach sex this way is not my point; my point is that it's not an approach that ought to be glorified, because ultimately, it's empty and vain.

I believe that last clause is a pretty good summation of SATC, at least to the extent that it can be understood by a man such as myself. The lifestyles portrayed evince a certain egotistic impulse to gratify whatever physical desire happens to rule at any given moment. At bottom, all I can see is material excess and selfish indulgence, conveniently untethered from the constraints of economic or social reality. That such qualities are the stuff of many a human fantasy is old news. But to see them dressed up and passed off as "witty" or "smart" entertainment strikes me as oppressively, almost viciously insipid.

God I can't wait for the movie.