Who's Who

[via Daily Dish]

My country descends

"In Jesus' name, boogity boogity boogity amen!"

This was the prayer before the NASCAR Nationwide Series race this evening:



Yep, that's why Jesus died for you, Southern style.

Who is Bin Laden?

Years ago I came across a pile of 'ancient' Reader's Digests and found an anecdote from 1944 or 1945, which told of British mother whose young son was puzzled when she referred to an object on the beach as a "shell." He knew nothing of seashells; the only shells he knew were the exploding kind.

That came to mind when I read this post by Jamelle Bouie at the American Prospect blog. The 5th-most-common Yahoo search on Osama Bin Laden this week is the basic question, "Who is Osama Bin Laden?" Mostly, this came from teenagers, the oldest of whom were only 7 or 8 when 9/11 occured. Observes Bouie,

Given the extent to which bin Laden had mostly drifted from our national conversation (especially in light of the Great Recession), it's not a huge surprise to learn that a non-trivial number of teenagers are baffled by his significance. Still, it's sobering; not because it reveals anything profound about our educational system or the attacks on 9/11, but because it points to an absolute truth: for each generation, America is a very different place, and the America we lost on 9/11 -- the America that didn't profile citizens, torture people, or monitor their phone calls -- isn't even a distance memory for the children and teenagers of today's America.

Zuckerberg's brave new world

Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care what you think, so long as you keep giving him your private information. Everyone knows that, but it's still interesting to hear him say so himself.

Talking in San Francisco over the weekend at the Crunchie Awards, which recognise technological achievements, the 25 year-old web entrepreneur said: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

He went on to say that privacy was no longer a ‘social norm’ and had just evolved over time.

I suppose my opinion doesn't count, since I'm way over 40 and out of touch with the hip new privacy-scorning generation. They don't think like me. Although, truth be told, some of them might come around to my way of thinking after learning of their ways. There have always been things you can do and say among close friends that you can't get away with in public and it's an almost unfathomable leap of utopianism to imagine that will change in one generation. Strangers are happy to rush to judgment based on scanty information; always did, always will.

Those pesky social norms exists for reasons; oftentimes bad reasons, but reasons nonetheless. Zuckerberg doesn't realize that. He sees privacy as just some random fad that some previous generation latched onto for no apparent reason, and that the present generation will discard with no regrets. Since privacy also happens to be a nuisance and impediment to his business model, I'm sure he feels no great incentive to inquire further. He just wants privacy concerns and the squares who value them to fade away into that long good night - or better yet, blink out immediately.

But there are good reasons for valuing privacy. Most of us don't live in tiny little communities where we've known everyone we meet for all of our lives. Instead, we often need to appeal to strangers, strangers who don't know our good qualities and might not spend the time to look past our faults. Hiding your shortcomings and missteps becomes a valuable strategy and failing to do so can really mess with your social life and job prospects. That's where Zuckerberg's analysis* fails: he thinks people will abandon privacy without asking whether or not it is becoming safe for them to do so. The current evidence from employers suggests that it is not. It's the latter norm - the willingness of total strangers to form negative opinions about you, given half a chance - that makes privacy so necessary.

The enlarged world of the internet only exacerbates that problem; you can lose even the chance to put your best foot forward. There are costs to being anonymous, but there are also costs to being too open, and protecting one's privacy - especially retaining the power to determine what you will keep private - is a necessary strategy for balancing those costs. The value of privacy won't change until the cost of being too revealing goes down, where you can expect to encounter generous-minded people who look only for the best in you. And that, I'm afraid, will require a vastly more far-reaching change in human behavior than even Zuckerberg imagines. Brave new world, indeed.


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* To the extent that he's truly analyzed privacy concerns; I might be a tad generous using that word in this context.

Barack X?

Here is why Poe's Law is true. A blogger calls for testing Obama's DNA and one of the commenters is insisting that the President is the secret love child of Malcolm X. Because someone that evil couldn't be the spawn of just anyone, could he?

On the revolutionary(?) power of social networking

Malcolm Gladwell has a thought-provoking article at the New Yorker, entitled "Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted."

The upshot: social networking fosters many weak ties, with weak enthusiasm and commitment. Comparing that to the tightly-organized civil rights movement, he argues against the ability of Twitter networks to create revolutionary change.

Heroes in their own minds

Have you ever seen one of those adolescent males, maybe 20 years old, who loves The Matrix too much? He's the guy who has gotten it into his head that if he just drapes his too-skinny or too-pudgy body in a full-length leather coat ... why, then surely he looks just like Keanu Reeves and can date Carrie-Anne Moss.

That was rather my impression of the GOP's new Pledge to America. Because it reeks of the same self-delusions as this guy:


Look, we all have our Walter Mitty moments, seeing ourselves as the protagonist of some heroic, secret fantasy. Most of us are smart enough to do what Mitty did - keep it secret. When you go public, like our dorky adolescent Neo's, you just look ridiculous.

So, regarding that Pledge. The one that -- betcha didn't see this coming -- promises to cut taxes, raise defense spending, protect Medicare, and balance the budget all at the same time; the one that promises to cut Congress's budget while simultaneously reviewing each and every regulation issued by the Executive Department; the one that shockingly reveals that government spending in nominal dollars has doubled since 1980*; the one which shamelessly claims that the Republicans balanced the budget in the 1990s. The one whose photographs portray an America which is 99.5% white.

That Pledge. The one which clumsily tries to evoke the Declaration of Independence by opening with:

America is an idea – an idea that free people can govern themselves, that government’s powers are derived from the consent of the governed, that each of us is endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America is the belief that any man or woman can – given economic, political, and religious liberty – advance themselves, their families, and the common good.

America is an inspiration to those who yearn to be free and have the ability and the dignity to determine their own destiny.

Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course.

Okay, so the GOP has no one who can write like Thomas Jefferson. Who does anymore? But "institute a new governing agenda and set a different course"? How do you get from the ringing challenge of "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” to the mewling "institute a new governing agenda"?

You get there by indulging your fantasies of 1775, even while recognizing that the comparison is just beyond ridiculous. Even for the people who can write the absurdities above (only a bare sample, I assure you), the Declaration is an embarrassment to them, because they simply are not oppressed the way their ancestors were.

Oh, they feel oppressed, no doubt about it. And they certainly do imagine themselves as modern day Sam Adamses and Paul Reveres, bravely standing up to tyranny. But when they begin to state the causes of their discontent, the truth is so embarrassing that they have to scramble and scratch for some formulation that won’t invite, no, demand ridicule.

The colonists famously rebelled against “taxation without representation.” Our GOP revolts against losing free and fair elections. They dream of themselves as heroic Sons of Liberty, bravely pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor against a tyrannical government; in reality, they whine because they don’t get their way every time. But they can't say that out lod. So they tell this lie instead:

An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many.

Alas, that mouse doesn't roar. Not one member of Congress is self-appointed. Not a single one can maintain his seat against the will of the majority. That's why the Pledge uses the word many: because saying majority would give the game away. The truth is that they not only have the right to institute a new governing agenda, they also have the means to do so. All they have to do is win an election. Last time they lost; this time out they’re likely to win. That’s democracy, not tyranny.

The GOP and the Tea Partiers don't share the grievances of the colonial rebels -- they get to vote for the people who tax them. The Sons of Liberty didn’t have representatives in Parliament; if they didn't like the British government which ruled them, the SoL were SOL. The Tea Partiers are just Sore Losers. Which is why, when they try to dress themselves as heroes, they look like adolescent dorks instead.


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*That works out to 2.5% growth per year, which compares well with the average inflation rate of 3.3% over the same period (calculated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics's CPI Inflation Calcualtor)

Those poor rich

Via Paul Krugman, I became acquainted with this post by J. Bradford DeLong over the travails of being rich in America. A certain professor of law at the University of Chicago and his physician wife probably pul in half a million dollars a year between the two of them, but he presents himself as just a poor working stiff, being taxed to death and barely scraping by. The problem? DeLong probably has it right: our Prof. X is trying to keep up with the megamillionaire Joneses, which puts a strain even on his resources. The Joneses can afford everything and more besides; Prof. X can only afford everything, and then only if he budgets carefully. What's a poor millionaire to do?

It's the basis of our economic problems today. This country spent the last eight years with an economic policy designed solely to gratify X and the Joneses; now that the bubble has burst, guess who expects to be last in line to pay for the damage? Ah, that would be Prof. X and the Joneses.

Really, I don't mind that people are rich. Prof. X and his wife have certainly worked harder than I have and I don't begrudge them their wealth. But at the same time to be such whiners! It's ... well, let's remain civil and just call it unseemly.

Friday photo

North State Street Transit Station, Ann Arbor, Michigan. August 2010.

Creeping socialism continues to destroy America. See it? Right in front of your eyes! The destruction of individualism and God-given capitalism is happening right now and only the most discerning Americans can recognize it!

In his 1887 book, Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy explained the crucial distinction between liberty and the socialist nightmare that he hoped to bring about. It's all about umbrellas:

A heavy rainstorm came up during the day, and I had concluded that the condition of the streets would be such that my hosts would have to give up the idea of going out to dinner, although the dining-hall I had understood to be quite near. I was much surprised when at the dinner hour the ladies appeared prepared to go out, but without either rubbers or umbrellas.

The mystery was explained when we found ourselves on the street, for a continuous waterproof covering had been let down so as to inclose the sidewalk and turn it into a well lighted and perfectly dry corridor, which was filled with a stream of ladies and gentlemen dressed for dinner. At the comers the entire open space was similarly roofed in. Edith Leete, with whom I walked, seemed much interested in learning what appeared to be entirely new to her, that in the stormy weather the streets of the Boston of my day had been impassable, except to persons protected by umbrellas, boots, and heavy clothing. "Were sidewalk coverings not used at all?" she asked. They were used, I explained, but in a scattered and utterly unsystematic way, being private enterprises. She said to me that at the present time all the streets were provided against inclement weather in the manner I saw, the apparatus being rolled out of the way when it was unnecessary. She intimated that it would be considered an extraordinary imbecility to permit the weather to have any effect on the social movements of the people.

Dr. Leete, who was walking ahead, overhearing something of our talk, turned to say that the difference between the age of individualism and that of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in the nineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up three hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.

As we walked on, Edith said, "The private umbrella is father's favorite figure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived for himself and his family. There is a nineteenth century painting at the Art Gallery representing a crowd of people in the rain, each one holding his umbrella over himself and his wife, and giving his neighbors the drippings, which he claims must have been meant by the artist as a satire on his times."

Now UM has replaced its puny little brick bus shelter with this grandiose abomination designed to coddle their students into accepting the nanny state and believing they don't need to take responsibility for keeping themselves dry. Can our final enslavement be far behind?

No swearing allowed!

No swearing allowed! Even if it's not aloud! That's the new rule at Goldman Sachs, which has banned profanity in emails. Apparently, upper management was driven almost to the bring of hiri kiri when the world discovered one of their employees was so depraved as to write to another, "that was one shitty deal." If the world is forgiving enough, perhaps this drastic act of atonement will allow them to show their faces again.

It's not clear whether fines will be levied on people writing profane emails, but the article mentions that swearing on the trading floor can earn a trader a fine as large as $20,000. It just goes to show how well paid those traders are - you can't hope to modify their behavior for less than $1000 (the fine for a first offense).

Seriously. In the middle of the worst economic crisis since Herbert Hoover, Goldman-Sachs has nothing better to worry about?

As for the schmoes in the office, if they do get hit with fines ... they'll want to know what happens with the money:

Book review: The Unlikely Disciple

Kevin Roose is the son of Quakers from Oberlin, Ohio, and was a student at Brown University when he decided to spend a semester at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. While his friends traveled to Europe for study abroad semesters, Roose decided try someplace more exotic still. He would go undercover at "America's Holiest University" and then write a book about it. So far outside his experience was the world of evangelical Protestantism, that his family and friends expressed the sort of fear you would expect if he were departing for Mogadishu.

Roose was well-advised to present himself as a newly-minted Christian, as evangelical culture was every bit as alien as he expected and it’s not easy to fake. Despite numerous faux pas, he managed to deflect suspicion just well enough to evade exposure. His unfamiliarity with the Bible not only threatened to give him away, but it made his Theology and Old Testament Studies classes surprisingly difficult.

Theology and Old Testament Studies had some genuine academic content, but other classes were pure religious, cultural, and political propaganda. His History of Life class was nothing but a recitation of Young Earth Creationism claims, delivered by a Dr. James Dekker who sported a white lab coat and pointedly announced, “I am a real scientist!” (Roose says that Dekker has done some work in neuroscience, but my Web of Science search didn’t turn up any hits for him) Exams include questions such as “True or False: Evolution can be proven using the scientific method.”*

The GNED II course was unvarnished indoctrination into the right wing political opinion. About this, Roose says, “At first, I couldn’t believe Liberty actually had a course that teaches students how to condemn homosexuals and combat feminism. GNED II is the class a liberal secularist would invent if he were trying to satirize a Liberty education. It’s as if Brown offered a course called Godless Hedonism 101: How to Smoke Pot, Cross-dress, and Lose Your Morals. But unlike that course, GNED II actually exists.”

Roose is closer to the mark here than he probably realizes. Many evangelicals do rather believe that secular university professors creates course content by thinking, "What would seduce students away from the Church? Let's teach that!" Just as many conservatives believe that Fox News is no more biased than the "mainstream media," they believe that relentless propaganda is merely a mirror image of secular education. This is, of course,yet another manifestation of the Paranoid Style.

"The Liberty Way" is all about rules**, covering everything a religious conservative worries about: no visitation to opposite sex dorms, no kissing, and no hugging for more than three seconds. Holding hands is okay, but alcohol and R-rated movies are forbidden. No shorts, no jeans with holes, for men no shirts without collars (you have to have a collar, so they can tell your hair isn’t long enough to touch it). Rooms are inspected three times a week and you cannot spend the night off campus without written permission. Reprimands, and even monetary fines, keep the miscreants in check. Roose gets fined for falling asleep during church.

It may sound like prison, but for devout students it's an effective path to true liberty (thus the school's name). It's the Fifth Freedom, the Freedom from Distraction - here in the cocoon, you can concentrate on God instead of sex and parties. That cocoon is so essential to maintaining the "Liberty Way" that some students rather dread the summer break, when they have to leave the cocoon and fend for themselves, with only God to help them. "I'm scare I won't be able to keep this up over the summer," one friend confides to him, afraid he won't be able to maintain his level of religious commitment when he's no longer subject to so much social control.

That inability to succeed with only God's help is a contradiction at the heart of evangelical religion that I've never been able to get over, and one that Liberty demonstrates in spades: faith is maintained almost entirely by social pressure, and very little by the power of God himself. Tell an evangelical minister that you don't need the church because you commune directly with God and his first order of business will be to convince you that your spiritual journey requires a professional navigator and that he's there to plot your course for you.

Nowhere is this more evident than with that intractable problem, masturbation (and its evil ally, pornography). There are counselors on campus to help students fight the temptation, and there are strategies for resisting temptation. Those strategies consist mainly of making sure you're never entirely alone and you might get found out if you misbehave. Turn your bed so that your computer screen faces the door, and leave that door open to all passersby. Some kids even go so far as to sign up with a service called X3Watch, which sends a copy of your browsing history to designated supervisors - their parents, maybe, or more often their pastor. It's not so much self-control as it is a commitment to eternal supervision.

That need for human surveillance strikes me as odd, because you're supposed to believe that God is watching you every minute. Somehow, the certainty of divine observation has almost no force at all compared to even a slight possibility that someone you know will see you misbehaving. The internet has exposed this dirty little secret: upstanding Christians, even many pastors, who would never risk being seen entering a porn shop can't keep their browsers off the porn sites. How deeply can even a pastor believe in an omnipresent God if God's presence has less influence over his behavior than the possibility that his wife or kids could come home at any moment?

As Roose self-reports, the bubble was so enveloping that he became partially assimilated himself. He experienced the contagion of religious ecstasy. He began to enjoy church for the camaraderie, as a gathering of his friends, but kept enough awareness to realize that the camaraderie was the bait and religion the hook. Come for the friendship, absorb the dogma. It's not that he started to believe in fundamentalist religion - but he began to forget how ludicrous it all is.

Roose writes surprisingly well (he was only 19 at the time) and, more importantly, learns genuine affection and respect for most of his dorm mates. In many respects, they’re not much different from other college students – except they may be even more sex-obsessed than kids who occasionally get a little action. Their attitudes toward religion, the Bible, and Jesus don’t offend him, but the relentless homophobia does. He finds himself quietly enraged at the way his dorm mates casually throw out the epithet “faggot.” But he also becomes numb to it, and worries that his outrage may be diminishing (Roose has gay relatives, so it's a particularly salient issue).

He finds some reassurance in his dormmates' reaction to Henry, an older student who is exceptionally homophobic and patriarchal. At one point Henry angrily announces, "If my wife ever cuts her hair, she'll learn about submission to her husband." Eventually, Henry acquires the delusion that the majority of his dormmates, and Roose in particular, are gay, and seems almost on the verge of violence. Roose is unsure what to make of Henry. On the one hand, it's a useful reminder that however unserious his friends might seem when they throw out the word "faggot," Christian homophobia is real, intense, and its effects on real people is no joke. On the other hand, no one likes Henry, because even at Liberty University, being a Christian is not as important as just not being an asshole. Dogma does not entirely override the instinct for human decency.

Roose has two reasons for being hopeful about the graduates of Liberty University. One is that he has met a few students who are open-minded, questioning, and critical of the regimentation they experienced at Liberty. He hopes that exposure to the wide world will undo some of the spell that Liberty has woven around them. Second, to be a legitimate university, Liberty has to hire faculty with Ph.D.'s, and some of these long to be doing the sort of work that a real university, not a brainwashing facility, does. They want to be real professors and in time they might gain some influence in that direction.

In short, Roose has faith in the temptations of conventionality in shaping religion and religious people. I'm not sure he knows enough religious history to appreciate how strong that tendency is, but it's a well-founded hope. As much as religious leaders like to imagine themselves standing up to the world, in the end they can only maintain their position by riding the cultural current. One of Roose's friends, who has given extra study to Jerry Falwell, concludes bitterly that while Falwell had toned down his racism in his latter years, he probably hadn't changed his attitudes - he just knew he couldn't remain respectable saying what he really believed.

But it cuts both ways. Religion will conform to the cultural norms it no longer has any hope of undoing. But his friends may also become more conventional, and less open-minded, as they leave youth and approach middle age. Much depends on what passes for conventionality in 10-15 years; let's hope it's a less fearful and authoritarian style than is conventional among the people who support Liberty University nowadays.



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* Roose provides a sample quiz at his web site. I got a perfect score; how 'bout you?

** Apparently Liberty doesn't want just anyone to know what those rules are - you need a password just to read the Code of Conduct at their website!

Mark Twain speaks!

Mark Twain's autobiography, which he instructed should remain unpublished until 100 years after his death, is coming out this fall! It should be worth the wait.

Why the long delay? Apparently, Twain spoke/wrote rather freely about certain people. Also, he knew some of his views would be unpopular:

"He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there."

If he thought that the US of a hundred years later would agree with him, he badly miscalculated. If he thought we would need to hear this just as much now as in his day, he was remarkably prescient.


(Via Record and Archives in the News)

Healthy music

At History News Network, Iliana Alanís notes this about the Texas SBOE's new education curriculum:

Not even music was immune to the chopping block. The Board removed hip-hop and Tejano music and replaced them with country music, justifying it as the genre for family values.

I'm guessing they had David Allan Coe in mind.

Selling your soul

I missed this when it hit the news two weeks ago, but some 7500 gamers unwittingly sold their souls to GameStation earlier this month. In an April Fool's joke, but one with a serious point to make, they inserted the following clause into their online contract;

"By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions."

The point, of course, is how many of us click through contracts without really reading them. Bad on us. The roughly 10% who did read it, and selected the opt-out option provided, were rewarded with a £5 voucher and the right to entertain other options on their souls. Perhaps the most amusing part - or, perhaps not - is that the company feels compelled to email all these people and explicitly waive all claims to any souls, just because there are a lot of yahoos who would seriously worry about a thing like that.

Why government has betrayed Us

Here's an interesting survey from the University of Washington. Would you believe that those anti-government Tea Partiers are a bit, um , selective about when they oppose government action and when they approve it?*

Compared to TP opponents, as well as middle-of-the-road respondents, Tea Partiers are much more likely to favor wiretapping, indefinite imprisonment without trial, and racial profiling. Extraordinary police powers? Government good!

On the other hand, they're less likely to agree that "society should do whatever is necessary to ensure equal opportunity in this country," far more likely to agree that "We have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country," and very unlikely to agree that "We don't give everyone an equal chance in this country." Enforce the 14th Amendment? Government bad!

But the strongest disagreement with the rest of the world shows up in their contempt for Barack Obama. He has no virtues. Few of them can even acknowledge that the President is knowledgeable and intelligent - but maybe that's because Fox News didn't let them see Obama single-handedly outclass the collective brainpower of an entire roomful of Republican Congressmen.**

So there's your Tea Party for you. Equality is bad, especially when it results in a black President. You're supposed to spy upon and imprison the people who scare me, not help them vote and work and get access to health care. Stinkin' traitors, letting Them run free in my country. We're gonna load up the RV and go tell that dang Congress how downtrodden we are.


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* Rhetorical question. Of course I'd believe it.

** Give Obama credit for being bright, but let's face it - outwitting an entire roomful of legislators ought not to be possible. If Kobe Bryant goes 1 on 5, even he only wins if the five opponents are punks.

Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein!

Get this: obscure film gets vaulted to international fame by knock-off parodies; distributer sues to stop it. Everyone who thinks that's a dumb move will leave the room now.


A cynic* might note that Constantin Film waited until they had already gained the benefit of thousands of hours of free advertising, but it's still a bad move. Even Star Wars can be forgotten if no one's reminded of it.


[Update: Constantin Film's decision is being mocked. Guess how?]
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* Not me, of course; I'm just pointing out what a cynic might say.

Generation gap

Breaking news out of Michigan State! Teenagers today are no more selfish and lazy than their parents! Old folks are full of shit when they praise their younger selves!

Good plan

A man named Paul Schlesselman has just been sentenced to 10 years in prison for plotting to kill Barack Obama. Here was the plan:

He acknowledged having plotted to kill some 88 people and decapitate 14 African-Americans, before a final act assassinating Obama, who was at the time bidding to become the country's first black president.

Now that's brilliant. Get above the radar before attacking the hard target. Make yourself the most hunted man in America and then try to get close to the President. But I suppose anyone who could feel victimized as a white man, in a majority white society, wouldn't have a track record of success.

Jesus, the Sagebrush Rebel

Jesus wants you to join the Sagebrush Rebellion. It may not sound like something he would normally be concerned about. In fact, that whole "Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s" business would almost lead you to think he didn't care about government policies, while Luke 12:13-14 could easily be misinterpreted to indicate that Jesus doesn't take sides in property disputes. Good thing we have Henry Lamb to set us straight.

To be fair,Lamb doesn't say anything here about Jesus. It's just the venue that forces me to make the connection. What does a states rights view of public lands have to do with holding a "Christian world view?" As nearly as I can tell, the blending of religion and politics has gone so far that anything, anything at all, that can be associated with conservative politics is assumed to be godly, anything in Matthew or Luke notwithstanding. Public lands are an especially attractive target because many federal regulations involve environmental restrictions and we know that environmentalism is nothing but pagan nature-worship, with no other purpose than to destroy Christianity. Damn those Satan-worshiping tree-huggers at the EPA, anyway.

Lamb is under that old, preposterous delusion that the federal government cannot own land and that all the public lands were stolen from the states:

It is reasonable to conclude that when a state is carved out of a territory, it becomes a state subject to the powers and limitations of all the other states within the jurisdiction of the Constitution, and no longer subject to the federal authority suffered by the people when the land area was a territory.

*snip*

How can it be legal for the federal government to own land in a state that it did not purchase with the consent of the state legislature? How can it be legal for the federal government to exercise sovereignty over land within a sovereign state? Why were the eleven Western states and Alaska treated differently upon admission to the Union than were the other 26 states that joined the Union? when all states were supposed to be admitted on an "equal footing"?

There is only one logical conclusion: the federal government should not own the land it now claims within any state unless it is purchased with the approval of the state legislature for the purposes set forth in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17.

Lamb is terribly confused here. He's referencing the section of the Constitution that governs the acquisition of DC, which was understood to be land that was already owned or to be acquired by existing states. It has nothing to do with the public lands that the government owned on its own behalf, in places where no state yet existed. Those would be addressed in Article IV, Section 3, which states clearly enough:

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state.

I'm always amazed that some Westerners seem to think that the eastern states were given all the land within their borders as soon as they entered the union. That's not how it worked. The land belonged to the United States and, frankly, was almost the only asset the federal government had for many years. They didn't give it away for nothing; they sold it, or used it for debts they didn't have real money to pay for (many veterans of the Revolutionary War were paid this way). Until sold, the land belonged to the federal government and could be governed by the same.

Typically, the land wouldn't go to the states anyway.* Most of it passed directly into private hands, at which time the land and its owners became subject to (in chronological order, as political development proceeded): the federal government, then the territorial government, and finally the state government.

And I do get a tad indignant - for my ancestors' sake, not my own - that in Indiana much of the land was originally purchased by speculators and the eventual settlers had to purchase it at market value, whatever that turned out to be. The Western states benefited from the various Homestead Acts, which allowed a settler to live on the land for awhile and then purchase at quite nominal prices. In the great westward rush after the Civil War, the government was all but giving the land away to anyone who could make a living on it.**

That, of course, is the rub - Western land is damned hard to make a living on. Despite being the cheapest land ever seen, in over 70 years most of it never sold. The Jeffersonian dream of filling the land with small farmsteads foundered on the drought-prone plains and deserts and only the land with reliable access to water had much value. The people in the Western states had more than enough time to acquire the public lands - they just didn't do it, and for good reasons.

Remember, though, this isn't just about land ownership. Straw-grasping legal analysis, bad history, disdain for nature, and knee-jerk hostility to the government is all part of having a Christian world view. Don't leave the asylum without it.

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* A notable exception: the Yosemite Valley was given to California on condition that it become a public park; it didn't take California long to realize that it was nicer to give it back to the Feds, who would pay the bills while the state continued to reap the benefits.

** And giving it away to railroads, too, who were expected to sell it to private holders; either way, it didn't go to the state governments.