It is interesting to watch how the various factions of our culture interact on the matter of governmental budgets.  It is though a budget is an end in itself. It is though a budget is the final product of government.  Many apply a puritanical spin on budget and debt concepts. This country produces Cotton Mather characters every generation.

What is important about a budget item is what it does out in the field. OK, elected officials pushed the funding for a particular program or acquisition.  It seems to me that what is of interest is the result of the funding, not the protracted battle for funding.  The headline should be the funded project and the politicians can take their credit in the Congressional Quarterly.

The contrived acrimony over budgets is a battle over abstraction.  People make wild claims as to the market or social imperatives and morality of various magnitudes of spending. Spastic gesticulations and flying spittle get air time on the tube.  But perhaps we should go to the actual object of the budget item and have a look? Who knows what we’ll find?

What the republicans bring to the proceedings is a plan for nothing less than social reconstruction. They plan to wrest control over government so they can kill it.  The Teahadist wing and their antebellum jive appeals to a subset of the electorate more at ease with the Luddite ideals of the John Birch Society than to the social ideals of the 20th century. 

I can’t believe that history will look favorably on the conservatives and their irretrievably antisocial doctrines. People who have benefitted in more ways than they understand from the massive civil infrastructure of the USA now want to stop contributing  to it.

It’s too bad there isn’t a  libertarian confederate homeland for them to go to.  They could spend their days privatizing themselves silly while sitting there in the shade, counting their Krugerrands and sipping Mint Julips. Wait a minute, that sounds pretty relaxing …

It is interesting that China’s new J20 stealth aircraft has been revealed before deployment. US stealth aircraft were long a source of UFO reports before they were officially acknowledged.  The Chinese J20 aircraft, called a “fighter” by some, bears a striking resemblance to the US F22 Raptor, though larger and perhaps capable of a fighter-bomber role.

China's J20 Aircraft

While some discount the real maturity of Chinese stealth technology, it is clear that they are on track for parity with the US in this regard.  Stealth technology has as much to do with the shape and angle of surfaces and edges as it does radar absoptive coatings. The Chinese already know what it takes. They just have to come up with flight control systems and manufacturing processes to build the aircraft.

Stealth aircraft and nuclear powered aircraft carriers are a potent combination for the projection of power. Will the sun rise on a Chinese nuclear carrier group patrolling the Atlantic by 2020?  Where will their authoritarian marketplace take them, and us?

I keep getting emails from conservative friends and acquaintances who are obsessed by what they call political correctness. In these emails, some kind of sarcastic parody is made regarding an alleged trend to ban the use of the phrase “Merry Christmas”.  Neoconservatives latch onto this like barnacles on the bottom of a tramp steamer. Inside their pointy heads they imagine that a cabal of liberals are scheming to take their guns and their religion from them.

If other liberals are like me (an admitted dissident), then not only do we not want to deprive them of  their damned firearms and bibles, but we want to put as many miles between us as possible. At least out of shooting range.

Christmas has a secular component and practice that even a bitter, crusty, non-religious liberal like myself can feel comfortable with. But as far as possible insensitivity to Jews and Muslims, well the decendents of Abraham will have to work that out amongst themselves.

In my limited sphere I don’t know of a single liberal who is trying to replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays”. Only conservatives carp about this.  It’s a red herring promulgated by that famous yapping vaudevillian cur himself, Rush whatshisname, in the name of ratings.

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I’m moved to comment on what makes some people liberal.  A recent article in Slate was written by a conservative, Daniel Sarewitz, who seems to be genuinely perplexed at the apparent trend of scientists, or at least academics, to be liberal. It is though he is talking about a smallpox epidemic.  While I have no idea as to the C/L ratio of scientists and academics, I can say that from my perch on a small and obscure branch of the tree of science, liberals like myself are rather scarce.

Indeed, most of the industrial chemists I am in contact with are libertarians or evangelical conservatives or plain vanilla orthodox conservatives. So, from my limited data set,  Sarewitz’s complaint appears specious.

He probably refers to the life and eco-sciences, earth science, astronomy, big-time-physics, etc. I suspect that the balance is different in these fields.

But why would scientists trend towards a liberal viewpoint?  I have some ideas. First, the scientific approach to the world relies heavily on study and measurement.  Scientists tend to study analytically or, to use another term, critically. Critical study of the physical world requires a willing suspension of belief.  A scientist must keep a loose grip on beliefs because experimental results frequently force one to re-examine fundamental assumptions.  Fame and glory in science goes to those who tip over the apple cart of concepts with contrary results.  All scientists are excited at the prospect of looking at something in a new way.

I would offer that one attribute of a liberal person is the ability and willingness to reexamine ones fundamental assumptions. A corollary to this is that liberals are eager to acquire a new perspective on things in general. It is simply an artifact of curiosity.

Conservatives whom I know also appreciate study and measurement. But I think there is more of a trend towards devotional study rather than critical study. It’s about a greater knowledge of doctrine or greater fidelity with a catechism of policies.

Religionists upset with the notion of the separation of church and state often assert their right to be heard and to express their religiosity in public spaces.  Some liberals might take this as a simple matter of freedom of speech. And if that is all the religionists want, that would be fine. But if you look closely, they don’t want simple speech, they want to hold services in public spaces. They want to bring the civil sphere into alignment with their doctrine.

Religious services are about the veneration of the sacred. But “sacred” means that which is beyond question or understanding.  In a real sense, holding something sacred is to set apart a concept or doctrine from critical analysis. Religionists are not interested in a public critical analysis of their precepts. They are only interested in broader devotional covereage.

A liberal person is compelled to do critical analysis.  The very notion of sacredness is antithetical to one who seeks analytical truth. The policy that some concepts are beyond analysis is simply a form of thought control and is more suited to the Iron Age than the present.

For a good many people, college is a time and a place for intellectual experimentation and openness.  The university is an institution where critical analysis of the great world systems takes place.  The active examination of our world is the realm of the progressive.  Progressives push the boundaries of knowledge irrespective of where it might lead. Sometimes our analyses reflect well on our human or national institutions and sometimes it does not. But knowledge hidden is knowledge abused. That universities are loaded with liberals is a natural outcome of the shared intellectual adventure students are taking.

Merry Christmas from your liberal friend,

Th’ Gaussling