Shot in the Dark

The Baby Bust

P.J. O’Rourke – the greatest writer of my generation, even though he’s a generation older than me – writes on the dolorous effect of the Baby Boomers on not just American society, but the idea of America.

O’Rourke laments the death of far-sweeping goals – going to the moon, building the biggest dam or the tallest building, being the biggest and the baddest:

But if America is still rich and strong, why should it matter that we’re no longer interested in doing anything spectacular? Maybe critics of an America whose grasp exceeds its reach are victims of atavistic machismo. Maybe we have Freudian issues. Professional help might be in order. No Americans are scheduled to go to Mars, but plenty are scheduled to go to therapy. Perhaps the realities of 2012 demand a change in attitude.

Except the change has already happened, the result of our shift from an exterior to an interior existence. America once valued the high-skilled. Now we value the high-minded. We used to admire bold ideas. Now we admire benign idealism. This doesn’t make us good, it makes us wrong. The bold can be achieved. Of the ideal, there is none in this life.

And why does it matter?

America’s retreat from visible, tangible manifestations of superiority doesn’t hurt just our pride, our economy, and our place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s also a bad advertising campaign. America has one great product to sell, individual liberty. It’s attractive, useful, healthy, and the fate of the world depends upon it.

We are the most important and maybe the only country that fully embodies the sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility of each and every person. “American” is not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a culture; it’s a fact of human freedom. Our country was not created and is not governed by a ruling class or even by majority rule. America is individuals exercising their right to do what they think is best with due respect (to the extent human nature allows) for the right of all other Americans to do likewise. This is not an ideology or a system. This is a blessing.

You should read the whole  thing.  And vote accordingly.

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12 responses to “The Baby Bust”

  1. Dave Johnson Avatar
    Dave Johnson

    Thanks for the link.

  2. Sanity Avatar
    Sanity

    “America’s retreat from visible, tangible manifestations of superiority doesn’t hurt just our pride, our economy, and our place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s also a bad advertising campaign. ”

    Stem cell research is nixed. There was only one Republican primary candidate (Huntsman) who acknowledged climate change is a real phenomenon.

    In fact, recent evidence points to a larger Republican problem: it has become a party that, at the grass roots, celebrates ignorance. You can’t develop “manifestations of superiority” when ignorance drives science policy debate in the nation.

    Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/21/why-akin-matters/?xid=newsletter-daily#ixzz24IxPxk9a

    “Why do so many Republicans have so much trouble with evolution? Climate change? The non-difference between forcible and statutory rape?”

  3. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Why do so many cling to Keynesian economics as an article of faith in spite of reality?

  4. Seflores Avatar
    Seflores

    And Sanity cites Time Magazine/Joe Klein – I suppose it’s a step up from “Raw Story”. You know there may be something to this idea that “Sanity” is a Mitch Berg ‘joint’ – a sockpuppet rolled by Mitch to give us wingnuts a punching bag. But I have spent enough time with Lefties in the ‘current’ 6th district to know there are plenty of people like Sanity who are so full of balloon juice they are liable to pop when they brush against a sharp blade of grass.
    Interesting how Lefty gets to pick which scientific issues are important and which aren’t. Which sources are trustworthy and which aren’t.
    Climate Change? It’s certainly been warm and dry lately. Here. But in Europe, Asia and Australia they are dealing with cool and wet weather. Last year we had a deluge of tornado’s – our climate change types said hunker down for 2012 – it’s going to be a lot worse. Hasn’t happened. Even if it is getting warmer – hasn’t that been the case since a glacier carved out the river valley many of us live in? And, also CO2 levels have been declining with the faltering global economy – yet the climate is still changing – go figure.
    Speaking about the economy, what about the dismal science? How to explain this?
    http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/08/a-big-version-of-the-biggest-chart-in-american-politics/
    I know – let’s get Joe Klein to rag on a few snake handling creationists to explain away the disaster that is the Obama economy. You can always find a few reasonable Republicans (most of them dead or near dead) to agree with what ever the Dem’s are selling today to give your point bi-partisan feeling. Pffft.

  5. Adrian Avatar
    Adrian

    Seflores, when I pose the following question to those on the left and other climate-change chicken littles (the fact that it has morphed from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” speaks volumes) It is typically met with a rehash of the initial chanting points as if somehow repeating it verbatim will convince skeptics, a dull blank stare followed by a feeble attempt to change the subject or a shrill “RACIST, BIGOT!!!”

    The question: Can you cite any time in history when climate has been a constant?

  6. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    “Sanity”,

    So many red herrings and strawmen. So little time.

    Stem cell research is nixed

    You very misleadingly – or disingenuously – state this as a sign of ignorance, when it is in fact a matter of ethics. Pro-life people of both parties oppose use of *fetal* stem cells.

    . There was only one Republican primary candidate (Huntsman) who acknowledged climate change is a real phenomenon.

    Wrong again. Huntsman believed it was man-made. Other candidates know it *happens*, but that’s a different thing.

    In fact, recent evidence points to a larger Republican problem: it has become a party that, at the grass roots, celebrates ignorance.

    There is no “evidence” and there is no “problem”. “Republicans celebrate teh ignorance” is a Democrat chanting point designed to reinforce one of the left’s most pernicious pathologies – the need to make Dems feel smarter. That smug, unearned sense of superiority oozes from Democrats at all levels – including in sickly, thick wads through this comment section.

    It’s just not true.

    You can’t develop “manifestations of superiority” when ignorance drives science policy debate in the nation.

    Which is less a “fact” than it is a lefty wives’ tale, again.

    “Why do so many Republicans have so much trouble with evolution?

    Of little actual relevance to society.

    Climate change?

    Because the lefty conventional wisdom is scientifically flawed and politically driven.

    The non-difference between forcible and statutory rape?”

    Another chanting point.

    Santiy, you believe much that just is not so, outside the chanting-point section of the fever swamp.

  7. jimf Avatar
    jimf

    “The fact that is has morphed from global warming to climate change speaks volumes.” And morphed from there to “severe weather events.” That mostly haven’t happened.

  8. Terry Avatar
    Terry

    Night Writer, Whatever brand of economics Lefties are proposing these days, it isn’t the Classical or the keynesian variety. It’s redistributionist.
    Four the last four years Herr Doktor-Professor Krugman has been saying we need more economic stimulus and that deficits didn’t matter. Until it came time to bash Ryan: http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/commentary/their-views/krugman-unserious-man.html
    No one is more ignorant about science than a typical democrat, They seem to think it is a truth generating machine. It is not.
    Every pro-choice person out there believes that a pregnant women develops two brains, two central nervous systems, and two cardiovascular systems. This is not a scientific belief.

  9. bubbasan Avatar
    bubbasan

    OK, help me out here; I would have thought that in rejecting fetal stem cell research funding, conservatives were on the side of freedom by sparing those who believed it to be immoral from the duty of funding it. And is government’s primary job in a free society to enforce dogma on global warming, the science of origins, and such? Again, I’d think that the opposite is true. In a free society, people have the right to be wrong, even if they are so wrong as to suggest that prosperity comes from government control of the economy and levers of science, like InSanity.

  10. Terry Avatar
    Terry

    Even funnier than the Joe Klein piece is the comments to the Joe Klein piece.
    “Personal freedom is taking a back seat to free-market capitalism. ”
    This was submitted by a commenter with the moniker “Old Professor”, who, apparently, is so old that he forgot that “free” is the adjectival form of “freedom”.
    War is peace, love is hate, and freedom is slavery. There is nothing new under the sun.

  11. simkeith Avatar
    simkeith

    Mitch, you did not include a link to PJ’s original piece. Please correct this. Thanks
    Keith

  12. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    Stem cell research is nixed

    First, you need to preface that statement with “fetal.” The difference is crucial, because…

    Second, it’s been nixed with good reason, even if you don’t believe in the pro-life cause. There hasn’t been a single successful therapy with fetal stem cells. All the successful therapies have been based on adult stem cells. It seems that monkeying with fetal cells that can change quickly into anything makes them turn into anything, and generally that anything is eventually cancer.

    Thirdly, if it’s so great and such a game changer why haven’t private companies tried to exploit it? Those evil, greedy pharma companies aren’t bound by Federal policy and would surely be beating down the doors of any fetal cell scientist if they really believed that fetal cells have any medium term payoff.

    Yeah, I know “science” isn’t your thing.

    There was only one Republican primary candidate (Huntsman) who acknowledged climate change is a real phenomenon.

    Again, you’re missing a key word here: anthropogenic. Nearly everyone agrees that global warming is occurring, although the degree to which it is occurring is certainly up for discussion (NASA has some “thermometer adjustments” that I’m frankly pretty dubious about, for example).

    But the actual cause of said warming is a subject of much more vigorous debate. However, it’s safe to say that present models of global warming are abject failures in predicting climate change since they can’t successfully predict the past several decades. It seems that extremely complex, global systems like climate are difficult to model correctly (not a big shock to anyone who does computer modeling and knows the difficulties of modeling chaotic systems, but “climate scientists” are better at PR than computer modeling [their code would a sin to any serious modeler]).

    You can’t develop “manifestations of superiority” when ignorance drives science policy debate in the nation.

    That’s a rather humorous assertion. I thought skepticism towards authority was the mantra of the Left? Certainly, skepticism towards theories without sufficient experimental validation is a key feature of science, and it seems that the Left is the side that’s set to believe computer models over the actual climate despite evidence that the modeling is faulty. Talk about a faith-based perspective!

    Sorry, InSanity, you’ll have to do better than this if you want to come off as anything more than a TPM parrot.

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