Stop framing conservatives as marginal ignoramuses.

American conservatives have demography and a common self-identification in their favor. That should count for something in a republic.

Speaking of framing, Lakoff's Newspeak tricks don't hide the fact that progressives have an asymmetric relationship with progressives: Progressives envy conservatives and want to persecute the more successful ones through confiscations and legal restrictions. By contrast, what would conservatives want from progressives? Their grievance attitude generally makes them unemployable in the market. Would you hire someone for your company who listed a stint as a "community organizer" on his résumé?

Shrugging Chinese Atlases?

Ayn Rand presents a seriously defective view of the world which nonetheless incorporates an important truth: Productive people will pack up and leave for places which treat them better when their home countries' political systems become too abusive towards them. I doubt a Chinese translation of Atlas Shrugged exists, but China's new rich have independently discovered and validated Rand's insight:

Rich Chinese consider leaving China

While Western businessmen are heading East to make their fortunes, 60 per cent of those with fortunes of more than $10 million (£6 million), had either considered "investment immigration" or already completed the process.

Investment immigration allows rich individuals to effectively buy their residence in another country, in the hope that their money will trickle into the local economy. In the UK, anyone depositing £1 million in a bank account is permitted to stay.

A decade ago, the idea of having such sums to spare would have been beyond the imagination of most Chinese, but this year the number of Chinese boasting disposable assets of more than £1 million is expected to reach 585,000, nearly doubled the total in 2008.

Why do these business people want to leave? They know the political setup in China, and they fear that they could face confiscations some day. I guess these business people haven't bought into the idea from China's Obamas, Thom Hartmanns and Michael Moores that they have to stay put and "give back" what they've earned through their wealth-building efforts.

Taking a reading vacation for the next few weeks.

Mainly reading philosophy, so I won't post much until I assimilate a few dozen books or so.

Some highlights so far:

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus:

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.

I picked a good time, then.

René Descartes, Discourse on the Method:

My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be held, as regards us, absolutely impossible: and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented; for since our will naturally seeks those objects alone which the understanding represents as in some way possible of attainment, it is plain, that if we consider all external goods as equally beyond our power, we shall no more regret the absence of such goods as seem due to our birth, when deprived of them without any fault of ours, than our not possessing the kingdoms of China or Mexico, and thus making, so to speak, a virtue of necessity, we shall no more desire health in disease, or freedom in imprisonment, than we now do bodies incorruptible as diamonds, or the wings of birds to fly with. But I confess there is need of prolonged discipline and frequently repeated meditation to accustom the mind to view all objects in this light; and I believe that in this chiefly consisted the secret of the power of such philosophers as in former times were enabled to rise superior to the influence of fortune, and, amid suffering and poverty, enjoy a happiness which their gods might have envied. For, occupied incessantly with the consideration of the limits prescribed to their power by nature, they became so entirely convinced that nothing was at their disposal except their own thoughts, that this conviction was of itself sufficient to prevent their entertaining any desire of other objects; and over their thoughts they acquired a sway so absolute, that they had some ground on this account for esteeming themselves more rich and more powerful, more free and more happy, than other men who, whatever be the favors heaped on them by nature and fortune, if destitute of this philosophy, can never command the realization of all their desires.

Descartes's Stoicism-derived alternatives - either conquer yourself, or conquer fortune - don't necessarily exclude each other. In practice self-discipline, self-investment and planning for the future often pay off in acquiring many of the goods of fortune.

I might also have a pile of bloggable material about Ayn Rand, unless Rand fatigue sets in first. For example:

And, really, what can one say about Objectivism? It isn’t so much a philosophy as what someone who has never actually encountered philosophy imagines a philosophy might look like: good hard axiomatic absolutes, a bluff attitude of intellectual superiority, lots of simple atomic premises supposedly immune to doubt, immense and inflexible conclusions, and plenty of assertions about what is “rational” or “objective” or “real.” Oh, and of course an imposing brand name ending with an “-ism.” Rand was so eerily ignorant of all the interesting problems of ontology, epistemology, or logic that she believed she could construct an irrefutable system around a collection of simple maxims like “existence is identity” and “consciousness is identification,” all gathered from the damp fenlands between vacuous tautology and catastrophic category error. She was simply unaware that there were any genuine philosophical problems that could not be summarily solved by flatly proclaiming that this is objectivity, this is rational, this is scientific, in the peremptory tones of an Obersturmführer drilling his commandoes.

And yet Rand has managed to grab a demographic in the market for secular life stances where left-liberal humanism has failed to make much headway: Conservative American men. The Nurturant Parent swamp associated with humanism evokes so much disgust in irreligious conservatives that Rand's world view looks pretty good by comparison, despite its flaws and absurdities.