Tony Snow...

....apparently in as the next press secretary.
Should be interesting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/25/AR2006042501602.html

Brno Cemetery

I walked around the Central Cemetery here in Brno yesterday, and noticed something peculiar -- there are no communists buried in American cemeteries.

I mean, sure, there were (are) communists who happened to be American, and died and were interred in American cemeteries, but they don't get put in the center of the central cemetery with headstones glorifying their service to the proletariat and the state. I found that most of the ones in the little circle of honor celebrated were artists -- opera singers and "writers" -- and the paucity of crosses was jarring. If you had asked me if there would have been crosses, I would have said "of course not," but it still spooked me -- it was empty somehow.

Of course, the rest of the cemetery -- which antedated and survived the rise of the First Republic and the Nazis, as well as the Communists -- is rife with crosses for the proletariat themselves. I reflected on how sad it must be, a communist funeral. It has only a connection to the past, and to the state. It has no interest in the eternal.

Man needs a connection to his past, as well as to the eternal. These are some of the First Things that much smarter people write about. It's not a very liberal thing to say, but freedom works best when we try to look at it as a process, rather than a break.

In this respect, we can start to see how the American Revolution differed from the French and the the Russian. The American Revolution never promised a new man, only a new age for the problems of the same men. The French and the Russians promised new men. Communism wasn't a process -- there were no historical inevitabilities, and the state didn't whither away. It couldn't be a process; it had to be a clean break.

But people burying people don't like clean breaks, even in the Service of The Glorious Proletariat. Part of what makes them human is the relationship and value they give to the generations before and after. That's why, especially between 1948 and 1989, we see "Vzpomínáme" -- "we remember" -- on the headstones in Brno.

We don't want a "new man." We just want the old men to remind us how to do our best, and that we aren't perfect, and we won't become perfect. Why is it that all the "regular" Moravians buried in the Central Cemetery were aware of that?

An example of the...

"soft and creeping totalitarianism that comes with unctuous offers of benefits and avowals of purity of intention, rather than the boot-in-the-face variety of Orwell’s description. It is the insinuation of the government into the nooks and crannies of everyday life, on the pretext that people are incapable of deciding anything for themselves. Everyone is a child for whom the government is in permanent loco parentis (except children, of course, who can consent to sex at age 16 and are to be given the vote at the same age, if Chancellor Brown has his way). "

Theodore Dalrymple on the UK. Enjoy/despair.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_oh_to_be.html

(hat tip: www.eursoc.com)

A Peculiar Dream

I slept extremely well last night with one glaring exception -- I had a dream. Normally I can't remember my dreams, but this one penetrated far enough into the conscious part of my brain that I couldn't help but write about it. 

I was sitting there at the bar with my classmates chit-chatting when I saw Victor Davis Hanson walk in and come and sit down next to me. I have no idea what he was doing here in Brno.  He asked everyone around the table if they knew how important I was, then he discreetly slipped a Schilling from the Austro-Hungarian Empire into my pocket, and left.

Then I woke up.

If anyone could explain this dream to me, I would appreciate it.

Liberty and Smoking

This story from the guys at Eursoc illustrates nicely the common problems of US and EU (and Canadian, for that matter) governments and the creeping influence of government in democratic societies. Tocqueville warned the world of the perils of "democratic despotism" -- rather than dealing with one iron-fisted ruler, societies become strapped down Gulliver-style by hundreds of inconvenient little laws.

The American Declaration of Independence explains that "Mankind are [sic] more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed." While this is hardly a call for revolution -- it could hardly be further from that -- this story perfectly encapsulates the "sufferable Evils" of government. Indeed, democracy is even more disposed to "sufferable Evils" than dictatorship (though somewhat less likely to foster insufferable Evils.)

The fact that there is debate about whether I'm allowed to write 'Mankind' rather than 'Humankind' is just one outcome of this new despotism.

A Few Words about France

Perhaps it is inappropriate to start a central European blog with a comment about France, but this mess certainly qualifiies as a topic worth discussing.

I was talking with a friend of mine about the protests in France, and the lack of job security for French students.  I empathize with the lack of job security, I explained, but I would be less concerned with job security if unemployment was less than 25%.  It seems like students should be protesting for the liberalization of labor law, rather than the status quo, which is clearly unacceptable.  When my friend noted that the issue was job security for those in their first jobs, I pointed out that making it easier to hire people increases employment, and job security assumes one has a job in the first place.  My friend protested that job security is essential; I pointed out that the best form of job security is showing up on time to work, doing a good job, and taking pride in your work. 

Looking at this situation, I'm starting to understand why Reagan fired all those air-traffic controllers.

Well, here we go.

Congratulations. You've found my blog. I'll be posting things here occasionally about central Europe, political philosophy, beer, etc.
As soon as I get the template up and running, I'll have the usual blogroll, and helpful links to things in Brno, Czech Republic, HC Kometa Brno, and the usual. Enjoy