The Declaration of Dependence

I didn't invent the title phrase, but it fits the issue before America. If Obama wins, then America will have preferred a man who

-advocates 're-distribution', meaning 'theft', of private wealth by the state to its clients,
-has a pleasing baritone and non-threatening manner,
-thwarted the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois,
-opposed funding the military in Iraq unless the Commander-In-Chief declared a date for US retreat,
-is a close, long-term associate of anti-American racists, criminals and terrorists,
-is the preferred candidate of Iran, Hamas and the New York Times

over a man who

-is a hero,
-takes political risks,
-was right about Iraq,
-has deep political experience,
-is anti-socialist.

Not a tough choice, you'd think. But for decades the giant US government has paid the Left to re-construct the country's DNA and spawn a coalition of tenurists, identity groups, social engineers, risk-avoiders, radical secularists and naifs who want to expropriate the wealth earned by better men and women and then control their lives.

The time calls for happy warriors like Sarah Palin. This experience is forging her. She will have been tested as very few in politics.

Uncorrelated.com down

I'm a minor member of this group blog. The site is down thanks to obscure arguments about processor cycles and MovableType scripts. Meanwhile I commend the site of a fellow member on Uncorrelated, Anne Leary. She and I both use Blogger, the free Google service, which by and large just works.

Christian the lion

What a story!

Mark's Republic

I've long assumed that this Presidential election would be a landslide. Obama is so unqualified, so disqualified by background, so left-wing, so unexecutive, so incoherent that my confidence in the US electorate made me confident in a heavy defeat for Obama. That should have been more certain given the VP picks, Fannie Mae, Surge success and so on. But I was wrong. With 2 weeks to go the polls definitely lean Obama. I console myself by imagining a conservative renewal in the next 4 years, but I know that the Left today are more formidable than in 1976. They have no shame and will likely use the DOJ and every other tool to infiltrate Liberal Fascism deeper still into the social DNA of America. As we skip towards that lengthening shadow, let me set down some principles for Mark's Republic to improve the US Constitution:

1. Voting shall be a privilege reserved for adults over 25 who pay tax. Military service also shall qualify a citizen to vote.

2. Taxation shall be the same for every citizen, $10,000 or less per year, and shall only be paid by non-military voters. The only sanction for non-payment shall be omission from the published list of voters. Government shall shrink as necessary to fit this taxation and taxation shall shrink as necessary to fit this government. Unless agreed by taxpayer referenda requiring a super majority to be renewed each year, there shall be no other tax except tax hypothecated for emergencies. Tax from each taxpayer shall be divided equally between each state and the United States.

3. Elected representatives shall serve for the honour of public service, but not for pay, and shall be subject to term limits at the federal level.

4. Preferences on any grounds or none shall be legal in the private sphere, but illegal in the public sphere.

5. There shall be no public health service, but no child or military veteran shall be denied medical assistance for want of funds.

6. Marriage shall be a wholly private institution. There shall be no legal implication other than the overriding social interest to protect children. Spouses or anyone else may use the law of contract to define any material aspects they wish.

If your first reaction is 'how simplistic', think how the Framers would react to what we have now. Imagine the liberating effect on private enterprise, private charity, civic equality and civic pride.

Update: Barbarian Barney Frank provokes this apt quote from Robert Heinlein in The Corner-

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.

In praise of stiff lips

Married to a beautiful New Yorker myself, I've heard Madonna's point of view before:

She says he was “typical of emotionally-stunted British men” and refuses to ever date another Brit. The pal said: “Madonna’s convinced British men are light years behind Americans when it comes to emotional honesty and sophistication.”

And she's right about this retard. I avoid emo-diarrhoea and use reticence to protect real feeling and privacy. Moreover it's bad manners gratuitously to inflict my self on others, unless with wit and bravado. It's not an American/British divide at all, more of an Obama/Palin divide or a child/adult divide about what's at the centre of things. Poor Guy Ritchie. Talk about learning the hard way. If you haven't seen Snatch or Lock,Stock you have 2 delights in front of you.

The Shard of Glass

Here's a link to a little video about the projected Shard of Glass, which will be the tallest building in Europe. If you know where to look you can see my flat.