What the Heck was I Thinking!?

The left wants things done not one way or another, but only their way.
At one point the press, on behalf of those liberals, chastises Republicans, especially President Bush, for not being willing to work with the community of nations. At the next instance, he’s criticized for too much of that and not enough unilateralism. Rich Lowry has the latest episode in the “Prove to us how much you value our opinions - try to please us.” The Corner on National Review Online:

…the principle here looks an awful lot like whatever the Bush administration does is wrong.

That’s a sure sign of the “prove to me you love me” game.

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Dr. Sanity’s Carnival of the Insanities for this week links to a post by Jane Galt at Asymmetrical Information. Her comments are on the post by Daniel C. Dennet at THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006 . His post was about the evaporation of religion. He compares religion to one of those other noxious habits - smoking.

Recall that only fifty years ago smoking was a high status activity and it was considered rude to ask somebody to stop smoking in one’s presence. Today we’ve learned that we shouldn’t make the mistake of trying to prohibit smoking altogether, and so we still have plenty of cigarettes and smokers, but we have certainly contained the noxious aspects within quite acceptable boundaries. Smoking is no longer cool, and the day will come when religion is, first, a take-it-or-leave-it choice, and later: no longer cool–except in its socially valuable forms, where it will be one type of allegiance among many.

You don’t really believe all that hocus pocus mumbo jumbo about God and things. You just say that to sound cool and impress your equally vacuous friends.
The saving grace (oops!) in his argument - popular culture and the spread of information through all the new media from print to electronic to cell phones. They all make it so that…

…it is no longer feasible for guardians of religious traditions
to protect their young from exposure to the kinds of facts
(and, yes, of course, misinformation and junk of every genre)
that gently, irresistibly undermine the mindsets requisite
for religious fanaticism and intolerance. The religious fervor
of today is a last, desperate attempt by our generation to
block the eyes and ears of the coming generations, and it
isn’t working.

Because we all know that you religious kooks are all just fanatics and intolerant. You’re not calm and laid back like us scientific zealots er, believers, er students yeah, students!
Mr. Dennett then confidently predicts that,

Cults
will rise and fall, as they do today and have done for millennia,
but only those that can metamorphose into socially benign
organizations will be able to flourish.  Many religions
have already made the transition, quietly de-emphasizing
the irrational elements in their heritages, abandoning the
xenophobic and sexist prohibitions of their quite recent
past, and turning their attention from doctrinal purity to
moral effectiveness.

If you aren’t a socially benign organization, you’re just one of those old cranky religious cults. Change or die! Evolution will win out!

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Gateway Pundit has a post, Chocolate City Tops Iraq in 2006 Violent Death Rates! that should be alarming for everyone, not just those in the “war zone.”

If you figure just civilian death in Iraq in 2006 you get a violent death rate of 53 per 100,000.

New Orleans had a much higher death rate in 2006 than in Iraq!

This is at least the third such situation from which we must withdraw - posted here and here - The violent ones are winning this war! We’ve lost more territory! What will we do?
to quote the Gateway Pundit:

It might be time for a Big Easy Study Group.

Ugh!

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Captains Quarters blog has a post ( Hello, Grisham — So Long, Hemingway? - washingtonpost.com ) about the aggressive approach to limited shelf space that the Fairfax County, VA, library system is taking.

Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works have been eliminated from the Fairfax County collection after a new computer software program showed that no one had checked them out in at least 24 months.

(Full disclosure here: I performed this type of duty in the Spokane, WA, library system several decades ago.)
As the amount of material in print grows, libraries - always at the bottom end of the budget largess process - have to do something.
Now for my modest proposal:

1. Keep one or two sturdy copies of at least every book in American literature, as well as the classics. This copy would be kept at an off-site location (warehouse) within each library system. Use the interlibrary loan system to retrieve that book as requested by any branch. and;
2. Support projects like Project Gutenberg, or make arrangements with eBooks that allow for the downloading of audio books for use by library patrons. Maryland public libraries have such an arrangement for a limited set of audio titles.

Would this be free? No, it will cost. The whole point of libraries was to make literature available to those who couldn’t afford to buy all the important books. The idea could be funded through public-private partnerships and taxes.
Perhaps one of today’s philanthropists would want to follow in Andrew Carnegie’s footsteps.

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