lloydtown 

Back On-Line

Our modem died. I tried to re-boot it several times, with no success. We called Rogers yesterday afternoon, and they came today and replaced the modem. (They didn't exactly come during the times they said, but they came sooner, so I guess I shouldn't complain).

I went in to work Thursday and Friday. The dog has been healing for six weeks, and is starting to act frisky. This could be dangerous, since he could easily re-injure the same leg, or injure the other back leg.

Not Back at Work Yet

It turns out my government work, believe it or not, is non-essential. I went in at my usual time (up at 5:45, swim shortly after 6:00, drop car at home at 7:00, catch bus at 7:15), and found virtually no one in the complex. I caught up on 2 weeks of e-mails, and spoke by phone with my Director (who's on vacation).

I'll await further direction, but I may not go in again until Friday. Then I can truly catch up for next Monday.

We're restricting our computer use to after 8:00 p.m. We also got our 13-year-old to cut the back lawn. Because of a long semi-drought, he hasn't had to do it much this year.

We had our coolest find for a long time in the back yard. A huge wasp's nest in our storage shed. They had built inside and around a blanket, which was piled in a wash basin. I sprayed last night to kill all the adults, and today I slowly removed the whole mess, piece by piece. The outside was beautiful: a checkerboard pattern of dark brown and beige, like some kind of beautiful wood. Deep inside was the actual nest, with eggs and a few wriggling larva. The nest was in 3 layers, and the colour was bit different again--reddish.

I can't find anything quite like it on the web (Google Images); I guess I should have taken pictures. Here's something.

There's supposed to be something closer, but I can't get the image (under "Hornet's nest") to open: entomology.tfrec.wsu.edu/pearent/ images/misc/nest.jpg

But I would note that ours was not hanging upside down; it was spreading up, out and around this scrunched up blanket.

The California Recall

I just have a few points on all this. Perhaps the silliest point being made is that Arnold is a mere celebrity; his campaign cheapens politics, or belittles it, or something. Wait a minute. Isn't show business one of the biggest industries in California? Isn't Arnold hugely successful, not just as a star or a pretty face, but as a producer/business person? (I think Slate has rushed to tell the story of the failre of the Hard Rock Cafe; one failure?) Update August 23: it is Planet Hollywood; here's the link.)

So Arnold is really a leading business person, like the CEO of a steel company or something. And in a democracy, are there credentials required to run for governor? Do our "normal" politicians have some kind of credential that Arnold lacks?

In general, I don't think the recall is a bad thing. As
Mickey Kaus
has said enthusiastically, voters are participating a lot more this time than they did in the general election. And they haven't risen up like a mob; they are more or less soberly concerned about the state budget.

Recalling incumbents, as long as the threshold for the number of signatures to do so is high, may cause less trouble than the proliferation of initiatives to amend the state constitution, which California has also seen. The latter gives the appearance of democracy, while it actually encourages the power of experts who can interpret what the legislature is and is not allowed to do, with all the restrictions on taxing and spending. Lawyers, accountants and lobbyists rule. Still, Californians are so used to this, in a funny way the process ends up being quite transparent.

Having said all this, the political scientist in me says you either want representative government, or you don't. If you do, you had better elect representatives either for a fixed term (the American system) or for the life of a parliament (British/Canadian), and then let them do their jobs. Contrary to what some people think, representative government was developed as a superior alternative to direct democracy, in which deliberation would be more of a factor. (I owe this observation to an old paper by Clifford Orwin). It is not simply an unfortunate substitute from which we are simply waiting for technology to free us--say, by allowing for electronic voting from home on every issue.

Of course, we are used to the idea that the sovereign people should get exactly what they want, all the time. They are polled constantly; as Harvey Mansfield has said, the implication is that so-called leaders should follow the majority view, otherwise why ask?

Tocqueville wrote that in the days of absolute monarchs and tyrants, it was almost unheard of for these individuals to be flattered as intensely as the sovereign people are in a democracy. You are right, as always; you are always right. Is there anything else we can do for you?

The classic argument that elected representatives should act and vote according to their own opinions and consciences, not those of their constituents, was made by Edmund Burke in his speech to the Electors of Bristol on November 3, 1774--just after Burke had been elected MP.

"...[a representative's] opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living....If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide....?

"To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men....But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution....parliament is a deliberative assembly...."

I'm no expert on the history of the relevant California laws, but many people have commented that both recall and "initiatives" go back to the Progressive era, when the attempt was to make the system more democratic and weaken the old machines. The House of Commons that Burke served in would obviously not be seen as very democratic today. Elie Halevy wrote a big study of Britain at the end of the Napoleonic wars (1814), in which he argued that the crazy-quilt electoral system was the most democratic in Europe. Intelligent defenders of such an old system, like Lord Salisbury at the end of the 19th century, argued that the most important thing was not whether the representatives tended to represent a certain class (or gender); but whether they succeeded, once elected, in using their reason and judgment in order to deliberate.

Isn't it true that many of the people who love the "democratic" short-cuts don't actually believe in using reason and judgment in order to deliberate in politics? They might say they simply don't trust the present incumbents, but if they support reforms that, as Burke says, impose mandates directly from the people, the implication is that deliberation has ended.

In Canada it is the Alliance party, and before them the Reform party, who keep advancing the idea of more plebiscites or referenda on specific issues, and possibly even recalls of incumbents. We have a problem that the U.S. does not: a first minister with a majority, like Chretien, is practically all-powerful. Maybe a stronger case for democratic short-cuts can be made here.

I'll end with one more thought. When Arthur Meighen was leader of the federal PC party, he was constantly dogged by the "conscription" issue--which was always short-hand for: should soldiers be conscripted to fight on behalf of Britain, even though a great many Quebeckers will object? In World War I, Tories in general were for conscription. Mackenzie King (not very prominent at the time) was a somewhat unusual anglophone Liberal who opposed it. This fact later helped him become leader, and helped ensure a solid block of Quebec seats, which in turn helped ensure Liberal governments--practically forever, it seems.

In World War II, Meighen once again said "conscription now!" Mackenzie King, the old fox, instead held a referendum on the subject. Eventually some Canadian troops were drafted, but all the toing and froing had taken so long, the war was practically over.

At some point--I can't find it on the web--Meighen (poor, frustrated Meighen) gave a speech in Hamilton in which he called for referenda--in situations where Canadian troops had been requested, and before any troops were actually sent. Now this may be the stupidest idea ever proposed by the leader of a major party in Canada; and Meighen's defenders always describe him as extraordinarily bright.

More on the Blackout

I've enjoyed checking some links on the blackout--especially Megan McArdle from New York (link from
Instapundit.)
A high point for us: some family time, and being able to see the stars (even Mars!). I drove around with our son just before darkness fell. Everything was quite orderly. Traffic was fairly light, and people were treating intersections with lights as four-way stops, or obeying traffic control people, as the case might be.

We didn't do much "visiting with the neighbours," but we certainly saw people doing that. Back home, in the back yard in the pitch dark, our son kept saying: "Isn't it cool?" It was.

A low point, as everyone around here has observed: Mayor Mel Lastman was kind of the anti-Guiliani--senile, scared, hardly making sense.

Back to our son again: he and I got to watch some Fawlty Towers together during my vacation. Our enjoyment of this stuff is something we continue to have in common.

"The Germans" is probably still the best episode I've seen, but there are lots of highlights. In the anniversary episode, Basil is trying to cover up Sybil's disappearance with one lie after another, and one guest more or less figures out what's going on. At one point the guest says: Why would anyone go to the boozer, or play golf, when you can go to one of Basil's do's?

The Power Outage

We lost electricity at just after 4:00 Thursday, and got it back about noon Friday. So far we have not had another blackout, although we've been warned to expect "rolling blackouts" lasting up to 2 hours.

Premier Eves came on TV and said there are about 17,000 kilowatt hours available in Ontario; on a normal Saturday we would use 19,000, so we are not back to normal, and everyone is asked to conserve. [Update August 17: that should have been megawatts. We are still at about 17,500, and the normal load for Monday would be around 25,000]. We have not turned our putzy little window A/C back on. I guess the big test will be Monday morning, when factories start up again, or Monday about 4:00 when people start getting home.

Experts are now confirming that the biggest delay now is with the nuclear generators--which usually produce about 40% of Ontario's electricity. When the cascading blackouts started, some of the "nukes" were shut down in stages, so that they could be brought back up to full capacity relatively quickly. With others, however, this was not possible; for safety, they had to be shut down completely, and it will take days to boot them up again.

What everyone here will be wondering is: is some kind of mismanagement within Ontario a contributing factor to the duration, if not the fact, of the blackout? If the answer is "yes," this will surely affect the provincial election, expected soon.

We really had no big adventure. Thursday afternoon I bought two bags of ice (cash only at a convenience store) and put them in the fridge. Our food seems to be OK--as far as we can tell, the frozen stuff stayed frozen. We went to a big supermarket today, and they are stripping their shelves of frozen and refrigerated food, to be chucked.

Friday morning, with our entire town still apparently dark, I drove to see if Home Depot was open. It was--running off a diesel generator. I bought a battery-operated fan. Later I went back for batteries, but they were sold out of D batteries--still standard in many flashlights. I tried several places, just for those batteries. Nobody had them. The stores that were open tended to be dark, and then were letting in a few people at a time, closely watched, to buy things on a cash only basis. Along the way I bought a radio that will run on batteries at Canadian Tire. A bit of a wait, dark store, etc., and then we realized later that we already had a radio/cassette player that would take C batteries, of which we had plenty. Oh well.

We have a gas stove--not really vented properly, and my wife wants to get rid of it. Of course it has an electric start, but I used a match to light a burner and boil water for tea. We could have cooked more on the stove, but the place was already pretty hot. We cooked chicken shiskabobs on the grill Thursday evening.

Reading the Toronto Star today, what amazes me are the stories about people making heroic sacrifices for gasoline during the blackout. It would require the gifts of Colby Cosh to do justice to this phenomenon. Are all these people surgeons, who not only had to rush to perform surgery, but had to go some distance to do so? Many waited in line for hours to pay rip-off prices. And the real topper: 20 people were admitted to hospital in Toronto for swallowing the gasoline they were siphoning--or trying to siphon.

Were they desperately trying to ensure they could gas up the Jeep and escape from a war zone with their families? Were they on the run from a hired killer? How many people truly had to gas up that day, and couldn't wait even 24 hours for things to get back to normal?

Maybe we should have done the
Darwinian thing with those 20 and let them remove themselves from the gene pool.

My adventures have had to do with home improvement. Friday afternoon, shortly after the power came on, I started on what would have been a big project to replace a ceiling light inside the front door with a fan/light combination. How many of the males out there have been there?

I could have started earlier, but we were all in suspense about what was going to happen. The house was very hot--hotter once I climbed a 10-foot step ladder--and soon my wife and I were both frustrated. My plan was to install a proper bar first, to take the weight of the new contraption, then install the new stuff step by step, including a remote control (something we've never thought of with fans we've installed before; this would have been our 4th, and we inherited one in the house). When I took everything apart, there was already a bar--it looks like it is original with the house (late 50s), and I couldn't figure out how it was attached, or how to remove it. I hesitated about installing new stuff to hang from this old bar--not as strong as the new one would have been--or going up in the crawl space--dusty and hot--to try to get everything brand new. My wife finally said to forget it. Put up the original light, and get it working. This would be the light I attempted to replace with a more attractive one, about a year ago, but it had never worked.

Yesterday's result: light installed but not working. Somehow I've taken out the outdoor lights at the front of the house, along with all power to two small rooms, including the one where this computer is.

Today: success, of a kind, at last. Lights all working. Fan and bar returned.

Since I'm on the subjec of my...er...home improvement skills, I will also mention that I got the eavestroughs (I think Americans say "gutters") working a bit better. They will need complete replacement soon, but at least I unplugged one downspout, and stopped the production of a waterfall right down in front of our front window., and from there, of course, into the basement.

Back to work on Monday. I'll try to blog on some reading before then.

Powered up

Chris Suellentrop says in Slate
that because a First World electrical grid like ours is intolerant of small failures, it makes massive breakdowns more likely.

Is this like the latest theory about forest fires? If you fight every small one, you're asking for a big one?

A few days with no computer; updated

I've been busy preparing for my course. The syllabus is done, along with about 10 pages of quotations from cases, with the names and years of the cases, to give a kind of overview of the course. I'm going to be sure to focus on some 2003 cases, where I guess the theme is: an allegedly conservative court delivers some liberal decisions.

Our 13-year old and I have both tried to install "War Craft III" on our computer, without success. It looks like we need to upgrade our video card.

We will take the computer in to the guy who sold it to us, and ask how much to install this game, but also to clean up the entire hard drive, getting rid of anything we don't need.

We may have no computer until Wednesday or later.

Update August 13: Computer's back. I'm pretty good about backing things up on floppy drives, but there were still some items I didn't think about before the "wipe out the hard drive" project. Like: an item on C.S. Lewis to add to the blog; and old e-mails. (Naturally, wiping the HD clean costs a lot less in shop time than trying to pick and choose what to save).

Maybe a clean start is good.

I went to the U. yesterday, dropped off the syllabus and "overview" document for photocopying, and looked at the classroom where I'll be teaching. I might as well admit that when it comes to the U. of T. St. George campus, I'm the most pathetic kind of lover: I like looking at her so much, it seems I could do so forever. (I think there's a citation to a Platonic dialogue lurking here somewhere, but I wouldn't be able to find it quickly).

I'll be teaching in a classroom in an old wing of
where the windows overlook the original quad of the University:
[img=http://www.employers.careers.utoronto.ca/ campus/stgpic2.jpg]Simcoe Hall[/img] and Convocation Hall straight across, and a little to the right; The undergraduate library to the left. (OOps, I have to learn to link to images).

Enrollment is now 56, and I've been warned to expect 70, which is the capacity of the classroom.

This should be fun.

The Lew Archer novels

More on my reading: the Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald are the only "hard-boiled" detective novels I read regularly. Some years ago I read all the Raymond Chandler I could, including the serialized predecessors of the novels, and then somehow I went off Chandler. It is hard to forgive the fact that one murder in The Big Sleep is simply never explained.

The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon are, as anyone would say, classics of their kind. Much of Hammett's other work, however, is just creepy. The vast majority of crime fiction leaves the impression that the big cities are run by gangs and the corrupt police officers they pay off, but somehow Hammett delivers these messages in a pedantic way that is just boring. This may have been his membership in the Communist Party showing through. There is a collection of short stories by Hammett that is good: "The Continental Op," where you can see both Sam Spade and Brigid O'Shaughnessy (from The Maltese Falcon) taking shape.

All the hard-boiled detectives are somehow weary, and perhaps some ways down the road toward giving up, thinking that good can never triumph over evil, or the fight isn't worth it. Yet they keep on going. In The Thin Man, Nick Charles has married a much younger woman who thinks it would be fun to spend time with gangsters. They socialize (at least at Christmas time) with drunks who are mostly nihilists or radicals of some superficial kind. No one except Nick really seems to think it matters whether the guilty are punished; Nick, despite his worldliness and cynicism, does think it matters. Yet he has almost entirely given up detective work in order to make money. Sam Spade may be an even more interesting character. He plays so many different roles, to so many different people (in a way out-Brigid-ing Brigid) that he is almost forced to explain near the end of the story: "Maybe I'm not as bad as people think I am."

Macdonald keeps all the metaphysics and big themes to a minimum. There are a few hints that you might learn something from novels, maybe even from philosophy. (In real life, Kenneth Millar, who wrote under the name Ross Macdonald, was an English professor). The contrast between beautiful California scenery, and grubby human beings, is always present. Archer does his job because it is his job. He tries to make sure he gets paid--he doesn??????t want to be a sucker--but he often makes it clear he will keep investigating whether he gets paid or not. As with all his colleagues in this genre, he will go without sleep, eat terrible meals if any, and endure a variety of beatings, to get the job done.

Some of the details in Archer novels are odd; some are hilarious. The general idea is that murders that seem unrelated in time or space are actually closely related--maybe committed by the same person, who has now aged dramatically, changed his or her name or identity, and may be unrecognizable even to spouses or old friends from high school. Children who witness a murder, or are asked to help cover it up, are screwed up for the rest of their lives.

In the two Archer novels I recently re-read, there are innocent people who, we eventually find out, could have explained the whole mystery of the book at an early stage, but they don't. The price they pay for not confiding in Archer is often that they get themselves killed.

In the Instant Enemy (1968), young Davy Spanner has begun to realize who his father is. He's enraged, he's been in fairly minor trouble with the law, he's determined to kill the man or something, so he refuses to talk to Archer in Ch. 4. If Davy is right (and he is), his father is a murderer. He ends up dead.

Young Sandy Sebastian, who runs off with Davy, has been brutally raped by Davy's real father. Between the two of them, they could clear up a lot of things--right at the beginning. But instead they kidnap the man, and things go downhill. Archer is hired to find Sandy; she hardly says boo to him.

A lady named Mrs. Krug could have cleared up a lot of things, and maybe even prevented a murder or two, in Ch. 19. When Archer asks her at the end of Ch. 32, "Why didn't you tell me Ruth Marburg was your daughter?" the answer is "You didn't ask me. It makes no difference, anyway."

In The Chill (1963), Dean Ray Bradshaw, a bit of a golden boy at a local college, has lived with his first wife for many years--pretending she is his mother. Young Dolly McGee has begun to figure something out about her mother's murder from many years earlier; she testified against her father, and did a lot to put him in jail for the murder. She feels guilty about being persuaded, as a young child, to give false testimony. She begins to investigate, rather than hire a detective like Archer. She tells her story to a woman who, remarkably, is able to connect Dolly's murder story from California with another murder in Illinois. The other woman (see below) doesn't tell anyone, and Dolly doesn't tell anyone but her. When Dolly finds this other woman dead (Chs. 8 and 9), she kind of cracks up, feels guilty about everything, and naturally, is locked up somewhere, unable to talk to Archer.

Professor Helen Haggerty is the woman Dolly confides in. She hits on Lew in Ch. 6, and says she needs protection. Someone has threatened to kill her. She knows Archer is a detective, but she doesn't tell anything she knows: the Illinois murder, which involved Bradshaw and his "secret" wife, and now the California murder; Dolly's mother was having an affair with Bradshaw. Helen, as frightened as she is, has tried calling the police, but she doesn't tell them the story either. She ends up dead.

In The Underground Man (1971), if Stanley Broadhurst had hired a detective instead of trying to solve an old murder himself, he might not have been killed himself. He is killed after he is seen digging at a site where an old body, is buried.

These books might be intended to convey the message that we should all hire private detectives when we need help. Forget the do-it-yourself approach when investigating murders and other violent crimes. Leave it to Lew.

More favourites of mine:

The Blue Hammer (1976): A murder is committed in Arizona, and then the murderer returns to his small home town in California and lives for 25 years under the name of the man he murdered. Even at the end Archer can't explain why the guy went home. It might have been to visit his daughter--but for obvious reasons of security, he never did visit her.

The Galton Case (1959): Archer solves the murders by noticing a "Canadian" spelling in a note. (Millar was originally from Canada). In one of the neatest arrangements in these novels, one character is directly involved in two murders, widely separated in time and place, and then becomes the victim of a third murder.

(p. 184 of my edition): "His life ran through the case like a dirty piece of cord. He had marked Anthony Galton for the ax and Anthony Galton's murderer for the knife. He had helped a half-sane woman to lose her money, then sold her husband a salf-sane dream of wealth. Which brought him to the ironic day when his half-realities came together in a final reality, and Gordon Sable killed him to preserve a lie." Almost fits on a tombstone.

In The Wycherly Woman, Archer kisses what he thinks is a woman of about 40, not realizing it is actually her daughter, a woman of about 20, in disguise.

My absolute favourite: The Way Some People Die (1951). Macdonald creates a female character a bit like Brigid O'Shaughnessy. The young woman thinks she is smart enough to frame someone else for murder, so she arranges for Archer to be hired. Unfortunately for her, Archer figures it all out:

"You went home to bed and, if I know your type, slept like a baby."
"Did I?"
"Why not? You'd killed two men and kept yourself in the clear. I have an idea that you like killing men. Ordinary people don't throw slugs into a dead man's back for the hell of it. They don't arrange their lives so they have to spend a week-end with a corpse. Did it give you a thrill, cooking your meals in the same room with him?"

Another Archer lesson: children suffer from growing up in broken homes, or homes full of hate. This may be as close as he comes to a "big lesson." The innocence of children is valuable, and should be protected. Many of the stories of murder and hate are the mirror image, or maybe the converse, of the "Victorian family"--a picture of what happens when adults don't maintain more or less happy families, where histories are more or less openly discussed so that they are not allowed to fester and hurt a child.

The Underground Man begins and ends with Archer's relationship with a young boy, and Archer's desire to protect him. In The Drowning Pool (1950), a teen-aged girl of about 16, still a child in some ways, initiates the letter-writing that gets Archer involved, and then commits the "first" murder. She's trying to "fix things," and get the people she thinks are her parents to be more together and loving.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Archer is drawn toward sexy young women, whether or not they are much too young for him, who show signs that their childhood was badly screwed up. He feels some stirring of sexual attraction; rationally he knows they are bad news; decently, and more or less consistently, he wants to help them. (There is some of this in Chandler's The Big Sleep).

More generally, these stories are a distopia of modern life. We see mostly isolated individuals, with little true self-respect (as opposed to empty boastful assertion) or ambition. The love of money moves into many lives to occupy a big empty space. Archer himself is divorced, alone, an ex-cop. He has no apparent friends except people he knows professionally, who have a certain respect for him (and send him clients). (A few happily married people would like to see more of him, as a friend, than they do).

There is no sign that he has any living relatives. At least he has work to which he is truly committed. It is not difficult to see how people could fall off an edge and have no hope at all. California, as has often been said, somehow highlights this drama--people leave families and roots to go there, full of hope for themselves.

Everyone is looking for love--even, probably, Archer. But whom would he marry? What if, to exaggerate almost comically, the only women he meets are mental patients?

In The Moving Target (1949), the murderer is actually an old friend of Archer's. Now that's turning the knife: you're better off having no attachments. Of course, an attractive but screwed up young woman is engaged to this lawyer, and thinks marrying him is the responsible thing to do. Then she falls in love with a younger man, who gets killed. Then her father is killed, and the body is found the same day she gets married--to the murderer.

Other titles I own: The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962), and Sleeping Beauty (1973).

Reading Update

Since my last update, I've read a J.G. Cozzens novel about an Episcopalian priest (Men and Brethren), a Maigret novel by Simenon, and made it most of the way through a kind of guide book to London (U.K.) from 1961. The last is a vicarious pleasure for one who has travelled very little, and possibly never will travel much. "Let's Go New York" was a similar experience--although I've actually been to New York.

I've got some thoughts on the Lew Archer novels which I'll post soon.

First: Today I bought a little book on Sir Robert Peel by Lord Roseberry--one Victorian Prime Minister writing on another. I'm fascinated by these characters, and their knack for summing up what they've learned in a very pithy style.

Roseberry goes back to basics and explains what a Prime Minister actually does in the British system (to a large extent adopted in Canada). "Nothing...is more remarkable than the cohesion of Cabinets, except that strange institution itself....To the inquiring foreigner...nothing can seem more extraordinary, in a country with so much of democracy about it, than the spectacle of a secret council, on the Venetian model, and sworn to absolute silence, conducting the business of a nation which insists on publicity for everything less important....The secrets of the Cabinet are, as a rule, preserved. After the sharpest internal discords the members will present a united, even if a silent and sullen, front....of all anomalous arrangements for executive government in an Anglo-Saxon community, during the present epoch and under the present conditions, the strangest is the government of the British Empire by a secret committee. That it works well, on the whole, is a tribute less to the institution itself than to the capacity of our race to make any conceivable institution succeed."

Lots of wonderful stuff in there. The last bit comes close to the chestnut "we always muddle through somehow." But it really highlights Cabinet solidarity--which in turn raises issues for the "executive" in any liberal democracy.

I'll cut the poli sci stuff short. In the U.S. Cabinet Secretaries are primarily the heads of Departments, fully accountable to Congress--especially for the budgets of those Departments. I believe a fair bit of their time is spent testifying to Congressional committees. They rarely meet as a group with the president; they are not trusted with many secrets, and it is commonly said they are not truly a Cabinet at all. After all, they'll be testifying under oath to Congress again soon.

Yet presidents need a group of people who can be trusted, and who can speak openly based on some expertise. In effect another group of people has gradually been developed to do what the Cabinet might have been intended to do. Most famously, there is a National Security Advisor to shadow the secretaries of both State and Defence; Condeleeza Rice agrees with Rumsfeld more than Powell on many issues; Powell is suspected of representing the "State" perspective.

But I wanted to get to something else from Roseberry. In Canada now we have a Prime Minister who is coming up with significant policies (gay marriage, de-criminalizing pot, campaign finance reform) which he never ran on in an election, and which he apparently has not discussed with his caucus. Yet he expects to pass legislation, with enough caucus support (he will probably squeeze them for 100% support) to pass. Some Liberal MPs are crying to the media [update: especially over gay marriage]: I'll lose my riding! This will only help the Alliance! Why won't he listen? There is an old debate about the legitimacy of this "top down" process. Shouldn't a major policy shift reflect some semblance of democratic debate?

On two occasions Peel did an about-face on the policies his (Tory) party had campaigned on. First it was Catholic Emancipation, Roman Catholic "claims," or the ending of certain "disabilities"--what we would call a lack of civil rights for Catholics. Tories had always been against these claims--it was one of the two or three positions everyone would call "Tory"--and Peel abruptly came out for them. The second time was free trade. The Tories, the party of the "old" landed gentry, favoured "protection" or tariffs, especially for food. Peel gave various hints that he was coming around to the "new" economic thinking on the issue, and then abruptly came out for Free Trade. This time, the party was smashed. Some of Peel's most prominent followers, especially Gladstone, eventually became founders of the Liberal party; Disraeli led the die-hard Tories in rebelling against Peel, and eventually led a new Conservative party which--surprise--supported free trade. The intervening decades were a fascinating time when almost every vote in the House of Commons was truly unpredictable; there were various groupings, as opposed to actual parties; loyalties shifted, with a lot of fairly serious debate about principles; and Palmerston was able to dominate the scene with his intelligence, among other qualities.

How could Peel make major policy decisions his own elected members did not support? When Disraeli himself did something similar years later, he said "First pass the bill and then turn out the Ministry." Roseberry quotes this with satisfaction, if not approval, and I love the ruthlessness of it. Of course, it doesn't necessarily mean a Prime Minister is thinking only of himself or his place in history; he may be putting country before party.

Update: Roseberry is harsher to Peel than I have implied. He says that even if Peel can be excused for the first occasion, the same excuse cannot be used for the second: "Granted that he was right in the first transition, he should not have repeated it: the character of public men cannot stand two such shocks."

On the first issue, the Catholic claims, Roseberry concludes that Peel mistakenly believed that he had to remain in office in order to pass the bill he (suddenly) wanted. In fact, however, he could have helped the bill more out of office. It seems that Peel actually liked being in office, "for the highest motives," more than he would admit.

On the second issue, free trade, Roseberry says: "Our view is that Peel did not exhaust the alternatives before returning to office...In any case we hold that it was Peel's duty to try every conceivable and inconceivable combination to obviate the necessity of his remaining minister, and so lowering the standard of English public life." Then Roseberry softens this conclusion; it is not "possible to judge him hardily." "If he deceived himself, he deceived himself nobly, and he wrought an immortal work." Peel was punished in the short term by losing his party and career; in the longer term he was much beloved by the people.

For Chretien, there is really no opposition to turn things over to; no one expects our leaders to be scrupulous about their honour as long as cabinet solidarity holds. The biggest question is: what is progress? We usually think there has been economic progress, for all or almost all, in Western countries since the Middle Ages; progress in equality of opportunity since the Industrial Revolution; progress in using government to stabilize the economy and provide for "special" needs, since the early 20th century. And social progress? Freedom from the old taboos? Is there a straightforward kind of progress in that area as well?

Let's Hear It for the War

Maybe it's because I'm always drawn to the underdog (too many Walt Disney movies as a kid?), but I'm more impressed in recent days by arguments in favour of U.S. action in Iraq.

It does seem that the overall strategic situation, for the U.S., for the region, and for the West, has improved. Not only has Iraq been eliminated as a threat to any other country, but it seems to have been demonstrated that Iraq was almost unbelievably weak even before the invasion. This is something neither the pro-Bush side nor the anti-Bush side are willing to admit.

The anti-Bush side argued before the invasion that there would be a military quagmire because of the considerable Iraqi military forces, of all kinds. They also believed there were at least significant stores of WMDs, and they predicted that these would be used against Israel, the U.S., or the West. Now there is a tendency for Bush's critics, especially the Democratic presidential candidates, to say there is a terrible threat, but Bush has it wrong--it's somewhere else.

The pro-Bush side, of course, has not given up on finding WMDs and a link between Saddam and 9/11. (Instapundit on both points).
I don't think anyone has explained how it is possible that Saddam was as weak as he now appears to have been. In 1991 he had an air force, which he sent to another country for safekeeping. Where was it this time? (A few planes have been found buried--Instapundit quotes AP).

Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998, and he was certainly trying to take out facilities for making WMDs--but it seems even he is surprised that there is no trace of such things today. (Link from The Corner).

And what about the Republican Guard? Were they killed by surgical air strikes? Are a lot of them hiding among "loyalists"?

In any case, it seems that a one-time powerful Arab country, capable of threatening its neighbours (including Iran and Kuwait), simply doesn't pose any threat any more. And, contrary to some of the anti-Bush people, the dominoes are not falling in an anti-U.S. direction, but in a pro-U.S. direction. Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker that Bashar Assad, "leader" of Syria, gave the U.S. a lot of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war. True, he then decided he had to officially oppose the U.S. effort, but there have been indications that he has sought "back channel" access to U.S. decision makers, so that he can cooperate without antagonizing too many of his supporters. Even more remarkably, Hersh has interviewed Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, the community/charity/terrorist group centered in Lebanon (nominally under Syria's control). Nasrallah says it is now up to the Palestinians to negotiate a deal with Israel. "'Of course, it would bother us that Jerusalem goes to Israel.' I asked, 'But if there was a deal?' 'Let it happen,' he answered. 'I would not say O.K. I would say nothing.'" Link.

Update August 4: events are moving rapidly among the Palestinians. Sunday August 3, Arafat's Fatah stuck to its position that the truce with Israel, begun on June 29, continues (may have to click to "Fatah rejects Al Aqsa threat"), even though Al Aqsa (roughly speaking, the violent wing of Fatah) said on Saturday they will resume attacks; indeed there have been conflicting statements even on this point from Al Aqsa.

The Palestinian Authority has actually arrested 17 alleged terrorists, and negotiations are ongoing as to how to dispose of these individuals and continue the truce.

Meanwhile Hamas, also part of the truce, says they are running out of patience.

Progress in the classic "Middle East" issue--that is, Israel vs. the Palestinians, is always unpredictable. Maybe the two sides have simply come to their own decision that force was no longer working. Still, things have not gotten worse on this front as a result of Bush's actions, and his actions may actually have helped. Any president would regard that as a great accomplishment.

The mullahs in Iran seem to be in at least some trouble--and I think most sane people in the West are rooting for them to fall. (One headline reads: Iran might swap terrorists for help from U.S.). The Saudis are more and more exposed as the bankers of extremism and terrorism--they have been offering public denials of specific links to 9/11. This may be personally embarrassing to President Bush and his family, but the truth seems to be coming out. Reform is in the air--and the President gets at least part of the credit.

Where are the bugbears of yesteryear? No Arab country provided any significant support to the Palestinians in their most recent intifada--which may be one reason why they are now willing to negotiate. I believe the two Arab countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel--Jordan and Egypt--both maintained those relations.

The more or less pro-Western governments in Pakistan and Egypt have not been de-stabilized by recent events. Of course there are still terrorists in the world--perhaps there always will be. Can anyone be sure an attack like 9/11 can be "prevented"? I doubt it. The whole idea of a continued massive reaction to the terrible attacks on 9/11 may be an over-reaction--but politically, it is difficult for responsible people in the U.S. to do less than they are doing.

The Democrats are licking their lips at the prospect that Iraq itself will appear in 2004 to be an expensive fiasco. I don't understand myself why the U.S. won't invite the UN in--still a westernizing force, lots of expertise in peace-keeping as opposed to war-making, less likely to be shot at, or to cause a backlash. I for one hope the U.S. doesn't invite Turkey to get involved in a way that is harmful to the Kurds. Still, it seems a bit lame to say the President shouldn't be carrying on with this expensive difficult fight for freedom--there's another expensive difficult fight he should be carrying on. In a way this is how Republicans started their "Asia first" stuff in the 50s. Truman and the Democrats were obviously doing a superb job in Europe--strategically crucial in many ways. So all the Republicans could say was: what about Asia?

I'll add some links to this post later. Update: Done.