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July 03, 2010
Declaration of Independence in modern English
Happy 4th. Updating an older effort of mine here, creating a more modern prose version of the Declaration of Independence. Unlike some other modernizations, it is not satirical, or abridged or dumbed-down for kids. In short, not intentionally funny or bad.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2009
Religionphobic? Take the Quiz
You know who you are, and that you have it. Let’s name this condition with a more clinically pretentious sounding term: fideophobia (via Latin, fides, faith). Fideophobia is the hysterical fear of, or hostility towards, religious faith or those who observe one. I am not talking here about healthy skepticism, or even that Marxian ol’ time anti-religion that’s good enough for Mao. Nor do I mean hostility to specific faiths, which is something rival faith-holders can have for each other. For fideophobes I mean those who, after encountering just about any outward expression of religiosity, have a near-epileptic seizure.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:54 PM | Comments (8)
September 19, 2009
US Health Care Political Debate: The Core (ReDux)
Just narrowing down the feeling that my thoughts from a prior post are indeed confirmed, just by watching the tenor of things in this country. Here I summarize the political conflict more succinctly.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:02 AM | Comments (3)
September 11, 2009
US Healthcare Debate: The Underlying Sensibilities
Despite my happy guilty plea to being a near-fanatic libertarian, I do not have strong feelings about the current US health care debate. Not because I heretically think my principles don't apply, it's just that no matter what happens, the economics of modern health care in the industrialized world will not cause the roof to cave in for at least a few indefinite generations, regardless of the mixed (as in US), market-based (if that ever has existed), or socialized systems that may exist.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:57 AM | Comments (3)
April 12, 2009
Keynes Enabled
Keynesianism is only a few weeks into official respectability here in the superpower, and already there is self-parody. ("The idea's to stimulate the economy. So what if we blow a few billion on the wrong things? ")
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2009
Irish-American Contributions to America:
My annual, if increasingly outdated, not-so-reverent St. Patrick's Day look at my tribe's contributions to America. The part on the Irish (Gaelic) language is for us language nerds only but Irish-American contributions to municipal corruption, public vomiting, and terrorist fundraising are not overlooked.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)
September 19, 2008
Norman Whitfield, RIP
Entirely too brief attention to the loss of someone who belongs up there with Lennon-McCartney; Brian Wilson; Rodgers and Hammerstein; Jagger-Richards as a creator/producer of songs that seemed timeless and classic when they were fresh and new. I Heard It Through the Grapevine; War (what is it good for?); Smilin' Faces; Just My Imagination (Runnin' Away with Me); Ain't Too Proud to Beg; even Car Wash. To name but a few. Sad. Very sad. Hard to beat something like this; I do believe that's the man himself being portrayed behind the studio glass at the start of the video.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:15 AM | Comments (2)
September 10, 2008
September 11, 2001 and me
Abusing my journal privileges, I add below a story I sent off in a rambling hurry to a now-defunct internet news service right after the 9/11/2001 events happened. I add new stuff in { }'s to clarify and clean up some text and background. Some good guesses, some less so. People got mad that I warned against calling the attackers cowards, something I still regard as a no-brainer. But it's easier for me, as I don't assume all courage, or even non-cowardice, is intrinsically admirable.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:38 PM | Comments (4)
July 05, 2008
The Declaration of Independence, modern edition
My belated July 4th present is an idea I have had germinating several years: rendering the US Declaration of Independence, my all-time favorite historic document, into a more modern prose and lingo, to see how it sounds . Despite my normal wise-guyish tendencies, this is not satire or sacrilege (at least not intentionally), but an exercise that might hopefully make the old document more relevant, accessible, and comprehensible. I am somewhat arbitrary; I keep some of the older language -- "men" stays as "men", "creator" as "creator" -- though the "manly firmness" line (minds out of gutter, please) I adapt to "firm steadfast". I take some liberties with editing as well. It is a work-in-progress and it is clear from the changes that the slightly antiquated inflated prose of the original has its timeless unique beauty and appropriateness, and the original language can still hold up well. (But I still have trouble with the structure and meaning of the "denounce our Separation" phrase.) And a little irony is allowed: I do get to use "military contractor" in an ironic but accurate way.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:34 AM | Comments (1)
June 24, 2008
Wanted: A Cure for Envy Deficiency
People work and even pray to acquire virtues. But I need a vice. A certain particular one. Forget "vice", let's use an old-fashioned word - "sin", because it's one of the classic seven deadly ones. Now, I am not short of vices, but one I do lack feels like some kind of vitamin deficiency. So I beg divine favor to give me some of that four letter word which sounds like a two-letter word: envy.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:53 PM | Comments (6)
May 30, 2008
Giving to Good Will
When, how, and why did George Will turn Whig from Tory? A welcome development from my perspective, and it seems several years old, the change, but I wonder how and why. Nice review of a book I need to get, too.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:38 AM | Comments (2)
December 15, 2007
Population Control Propaganda Slipped Casually In
In the middle of a Washington Post story on China now experiencing a population increase, in part due to the erosion of its totalitarian forced one-child policy, this paragraph of population control propaganda slips in without even the decency of legitimate weasel words like "many say" or "officials say" or "is widely held":
For more than three decades, China has imposed tight controls on population growth. By limiting how many people compete for scarce resources, the country has been able to lift millions out of poverty.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:57 PM | Comments (4)
November 03, 2007
Safe from Pakistani worries
This just in on Pakistan: "Musharraf’s leadership is threatened by an increasingly defiant Supreme Court . . . ." Well, glad we don't face any dangers like that here in the USA.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)
August 26, 2007
Corporate Islamofascism and Constituent Verbal Furballs
It is an accurate observation that the non-playful use of the term "Islamofascism" usually indicates that the written work which contains it emanated from some part of Idiotland, or has at least crossed its airspace. On the other side of the spectrum, to me anyway, in this day and age, once I see "corporate" used as a slur or with some kind of ominous overtone, a "here comes a rant from the other coast of Idiotland" reaction kicks in. ( I have yet to come across "corporate Islamofascism" but I am sure there is a rare neocon progressive out there nurturing it under ultraviolet light in a shoebox to use if say Wal-mart were to add Muslim prayer-time breaks for employees, although that would probably end up being "corporate dhimmitude".)
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 05:33 PM | Comments (1)
August 18, 2007
Is "The Only Good Arab is a Dead Arab" A Threat?
Having actually personally met some of the apparent victims in this situation, it pains me to say that I think they are probably wrong. Last year, a Foreign Service officer (and Georgetown Foreign Service School alumnus) emailed and voice-mailed a series of messages to individuals of the Arab-American Institute. These were "the only good Arab a dead Arab"; "they should burn in hell", etc .- type comments, and resulted in criminal charges. But to look over the whole accusation/indictment, and one ought to before judging, one can ask if there is enough here to charge Mr. Bigoted Foulmouth with a crime. After gender and time of day circumstances are considered, it may add up, but it's a close call. Without more, I'd go down on the side of free speech and say dismiss the charges unless more facts come out. (It does, nonetheless, make you wonder about State Department vetting standards.)
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:13 PM | Comments (4)
July 02, 2007
Ayn Rand Had Nothing to Do with it, OK?
I am a "classical liberal", a libertarian, or whatever it is. Brilliant, dumb, or neither, but just for the record: Ayn Rand had nothing to do with it, OK? Sentences like this just keep cropping up, though: "Ayn Rand, the Russian émigré novelist and philosopher who inspired more people toward a combined emotional/intellectual commitment to individual liberty than any other figure in the 20th century" or book titles like this: It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand. No, it didn't. Thank you. And "Objectivism" is stupid too.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 04:34 AM | Comments (9)
June 24, 2007
Grand Conspiracy Theories Are Dumb
{Taking advantage of my journal privileges, apropos of nothing, I run and update an old essay of mine.} Acting alone, and for egotistical and political reasons, Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and a Dallas police officer in November 1963. On September 11, 2001, disciples of Osama bin-Laden, a maverick Islamist theocrat, crashed themselves and hundreds of others into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because they believed America to be their enemy, and Americans to be evil. Rumsfeld, the CIA, the Mossad, Unocal, and so forth, whatever their many sins, did not do it.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:44 PM | Comments (7)
May 04, 2007
Junta Gatherer: Right Bolshevik Degeneracy
To think I once liked this guy, and the publication (National Review). Well, a little. The degeneration of our times. (Warning: America-centric-ish). For Thomas Sowell tells us, and I [block]quote:
When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:11 PM | Comments (3)
March 06, 2007
Best case against socialized medicine: Walter Reed
Just to tick off the idealists, and smug Canadians, nothing convinces me of the dangers of socialized medicine, at least here in the USA, like this recent brouhaha about the horrible conditions of wounded soldiers being treated in the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 06:13 PM | Comments (70)
January 21, 2007
Video of Policymakers' Latest Strategizing on Iraq and WOT
Thought hard about revealing this leaked video as it may contain Top Secret material, Best guess it's current high-level officials and American Enterprise Institute strategists wargaming new "surge" directions and their perceptions of the whole war on terror. Haven't confirmed its authenticity but the level of analysis is certainly reflective of those groups. Can anyone help identify the strategists? I think one is Frederick or Robert Kagan from AEI.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:57 PM | Comments (1)
December 28, 2006
Whatever You Do, Don't Mention the War!
With apologies to Basil Fawlty. But holding your tongue may be commercially wise. I found this company exactly how they expected, by mistyping "gmail.com". Instead I landed on their own "gamil.com". They seem to make interesting products of novel design for ordinary uses. Here's relevant part: they note on this page that their name means "beautiful", but they don't note the language in which it means that (at least in one key dialect). I wonder why? Kind of shows how things are or have been these days.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2006
Wish I'd written this: More on Iraq & Neocons & Liberal Hawks
Paul Campos explains the idiocy of the Iraq intervention very very well. In some sense, I did write it, though less pithily. Anyway, cue blockquote:
[Thus, according to the theory, regional] transformation merely requires sufficiently courageous and steadfast political leaders, who understand that evil will be defeated and a new age of human flourishing will emerge, as long as they maintain the will to lead the world into the golden future they have glimpsed. Anyone who thinks this is an exaggerated description of the Bush administration's view of foreign policy should go back and read the president's second inaugural address. It should be unnecessary to point out that every aspect of this view is, from the standpoint of classic conservative political theory, completely insane.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 07:42 PM | Comments (7)
December 17, 2006
Peace and Prosperity are just too boring
Gene Healy taps into the kind of political power-worship that exists among both righties and lefties, in this interesting evaluation of the evaluation of American presidents.
History may prove kinder to President Bush than the voters were on November 7. That, however, says less about the value of Bush's contributions than it does about the perverse conception of presidential greatness shared by historians who rank the presidents. . . . Such perennial rankings, based on surveys of historians and political scientists, tend to heavily favor imperial presidents. The winners in the game are the nation builders and war leaders. The losers are the presidential bores, the ones who "never did anything" other than preside over peace and prosperity without screwing it up.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:17 PM | Comments (5)
December 01, 2006
Blind, Blinder, Blinders: Tracing US-Iraq Foolishness
A nice essay discussing the bizarre thinking on Iraq and the self-destructive post-invasion actions done by the US Administration can be found at the New York Review of Books, in the course of a review of several books reconstructing the developments. Some stuff:
[Bremer] had had nothing to do with the meager and inadequate planning the Pentagon had done for "the postwar" and indeed had had only a few days' preparation before being flown to Baghdad. He apparently never saw the extensive plans the State Department had drawn up for the postwar period. And as would become evident as the occupation wore on and he became more independent of the Pentagon civilians, he had no particular qualifications to make and implement decisions of such magnitude, decisions that would certainly prolong the American occupation and would ultimately do much to doom it.
Thanks again, via Jim Henley.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)
