The correction of an injustice or an inequity is not always a response to majoritarian opinion: far from it. Indeed, the point of such measures is often precisely to protect minorities, or to ensure that they enjoy equal liberties and opportunities to the majority.

If gay marriage is a just cause, then it is just whether or not most voters think it so. True statesmanship does not wait upon referendal permission. A government enacts civilising measures because they are the right thing to do, not because they are mentioned frequently in focus groups.

More to the point, the case for gay marriage is essentially conservative. I am grateful to Ian Ker’s magisterial new biography of G K Chesterton for the following observation by its subject: “All conservatism goes upon the assumption that if you leave a thing alone, you’ll leave a thing as it is. But you do not. If you leave a thing to itself, you are leaving it to wild and violent changes.” The example cited by GKC was the Vale of the White Horse in Berkshire, symbol of ancient England, and constantly in need of repainting.

Satellite View of the Uffington White Horse, UK (Source: Wikimedia)

Chesterton was scarcely a moderniser. But his point applies well to the institution of marriage. In an age of impatience, lives based on tactics not strategy, and instant gratification, matrimony is in dire need of renewal and restoration. Last week, Cardinal O’Brien argued that procreation was the essence of marriage. I beg to differ, and to suggest that the ideal at the core of this dilapidated institution is lifelong commitment and, crucially, a public vow by two people to forge such a shared life.

The entire idea of conservatism is not to prevent change. That is stupid and impossible (see King Canute). Conservatism seeks to preserve the best in culture, society and nature from chaotic change. That brand of conservatism that sees broad social threats from the breakdown of marriage and families in general as well as the threat of social and economic disaster from global warming is what is leading the leaders of the right all over the world to embrace not just gay marriage but also environmental preservation and alternative energy and greenhouse emissions control.

Note that these are all things that the American right doesn’t even believe are problems. Even where they grudgingly acknowledge them they conflate rational solutions (e.g. embracing all forms of family bonding as legitimate as a way of encouraging strong families in general) as either part of the problem or as socialist statist evils that are worse than the underlying problem.

There is almost nothing conservative about American “conservatism.”

He lived at Gap View Farm, in Charles Town, West Virginia, and was the Honorary Chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation. During World War II, Buckles was taken prisoner by the Japanese as a civilian.

Frank Buckles, Age 18 in 1917 Source: Wikipedia

In the lead in from this song on the album (accessable on the band’s MySpace page link above), is someone reading from one of my favorite Lincoln speeches, the Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Which, I suppose could be used as a rallying cry by both political parties at this juncture. OR could be seen as an caution against the kind of divisive and rancorous politics being practiced today. It’s also a pretty pithy rationale for a thorough going review of the defense budget. Which, if one is genuinely interested in deficit reduction (as opposed to just posturing about it) is the number one, non-entitlement program you are going to want to look at.

Dolph Lundgren (yes, him!) has a masters in chemical engineering and was a Fullbright scholar at MIT.

Brian May, original member and lead guitar for Queen, was an astrophysics student in London before joining the band. His latest project is a collection of found stereoscopic images of late-19th Century England.

Dr. Dre is a huge astronomy buff and is working on an instrumental concept album to be titled, “The Planets.”

I’m pretty bummed that some sort of server upgrade ate most of the 2005 – 2007 posts of this blog. There were a couple of nice posts about how weird I find it that although you can get from Clinton to The Loop in two and-a-half hours, most people in Clinton would never think of making the journey on their own.

Which is a pity. Because that’s an easy day trip and we’re talking one of the great cities of the planet that is closer than Cedar Falls, Ames or Des Moines.

All of this is apropos of nothing save that I love the tumblr blog, Fuck Yeah! Chicago.

Looking North On Wabash & Lake

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Gelinas makes a good point. But this is hardly a comprehensive solution either to pricing externalities or to controlling oil demand. Note first this free-market pricing of risk will only work if the U.S. government holds oil companies’ (in this case BP) feet to the fire for the full cost of damage and cleanup. Which will require that a reasonable number of pro-business politicians ignore the special pleading of BP and do the right thing. Because, in the case of the Deepwater Horizon spill, those costs are likely to run well into the tens of billions of dollars; enough to wipe out the better part of a couple of years’ worth of BP profits.

But U.S.-based production accounts only for a smidgen of world oil production. Oil is a fungible asset. BP sells its oil from the wellhead to refiners who get crude from all over the world, refine it, then sell it back to BP’s chains of gas stations. The oil from a BP pump doesn’t necessarily come from a BP well somewhere. I might come from a Petrobras or a Yukos well.

Those who think that free-market approaches to pricing in externalities and risk would be well-advised to do a little research on the success of the residents of the Niger Delta region in getting adequate settlement for the environmental degradation of their region by various oil companies. Hint: not much. Or of the efforts of environmental activists in Russia. Hint: they end up dead.

The problem for Tourre—and for Wall Street more broadly—is that they’re so intent on proving that what they did was legal that they can’t see that what they did was wrong. These are men (and they usually are men) of the market, and they played by the market’s rules. And the market’s rules are these: you make as much money as you can without actually going to jail. This is a world in which people are applauded for “blowing up the customer”—that is to say, offloading a crap product on a dim investor.

Once upon a time, the financial services industry existed to perform an essential social good: they provided capitol that businesses large and small required to run their operations, expand and to build stuff. They charged interest on that capitol to hedge against non-payment and to provide income to the banks. And to the extent that those businesses paid back that capitol (almost always), the owners and investors of the financial services businesses thrived. Long before the invention of deriviatives and hedge funds, working for a large investment bank was a ticket to if not filthy lucre, at least to a very well-off life.

At some point this all changed. And the point of the exercise became to make money for the sake of making money. How much money wasn’t even the point. As many wealthy individuals have said over the years, after the first few million the money doesn’t matter any more, its just a way of keeping score.

If anything has been rather well proved by the last few years it is the lie that the financial services industry should not be excessively regulated because it is the essential engine of economic growth.

The financial services industry worked just fine at “being the engine of economic growth,” for the nation in the sixty-six years between the enactment of the Glass-Stegall Act in 1933 and its repeal in 1999. Any argument that returning to such a strict regulatory regime would somehow strangle the American ecnomy is, quire frankly, bullshit.

President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue issued a statement Sunday night saying the bill “ignores the will of the American people” and isn’t real health care reform.

It’s good to see that even the really reactionary top leadership of the CoC realizes that this is a done deal and continuing obstruction and hysterical gibbering is getting to be pretty self-destructive.