Mencken on Nietzsche

I'm in the middle of reading H.L. Mencken's biography of Nietzsche, and I found this passage, on pages 56-58, to be rather humorous:

Nietzsche never married, but he was by no means a misogynist. ...During all his wanderings he was much petted by the belles of pump room and hotel parlor, not only because he was a mysterious and romantic looking fellow, but also because his philosophy was thought to be blasphemous and indecent, particularly by those who knew nothing about it. But the fair admirers he singled out were either securely married or hopelessly antique. "For me to marry," he soliloquized in 1887, "would probably be sheer assininity."

There are sentimental critics who hold that Nietzsche's utter lack of geniality was due to his lack of a wife. A good woman - alike beautiful and sensible - would have rescued him, they say, from his gloomy fancies. He would have expanded and mellowed in the sunshine of her smiles, and children would have civilized him. The defect in this theory lies in the fact that philosophers do not seem to flourish amid scenes of connubial joy. High thinking, it would appear, presupposes boarding house fare and hall bed-rooms. Spinoza, munching his solitary herring up his desolate backstairs, makes a picture that pains us, perhaps, but it must be admitted that it satisfies our sense of eternal fitness. A married Spinoza, with two sons at college, another managing the family lens business, a daughter busy with her trousseau and a wife growing querulous and fat - the vision, alas, is preposterous, outrageous and impossible! We must think of philosophers as beings alone but not lonesome. A married Schopenhauer or Kant or Nietzsche would be unthinkable.

...Nietzsche himself sought to show, in more than one place, that a man whose whole existence was colored by one woman would inevitably acquire some trace of her feminine outlook, and so lose his own sure vision. The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy. [emphasis added]

Now, maybe I keyed in to this passage because it struck a little too close to home - not that I'm any kind of great philosopher, mind you - but the question is this: Is this truly an accurate assessment? Have all the greatest philosophers (and perhaps even artists--Beethoven, for example) been bachelors?

Bush attempts to suppress stories; Doug Bandow taking money from Abramoff

Howard Kurtz writes in yesterday's Washington Post that Bush has been attempting (without success in a few notable recent instances) to suppress stories about CIA prisons and wiretapping.

In the same article, he reports that Doug Bandow accepted payments of as much as $2,000 a story for pieces favorable to lobbyist Jack Abramoff's clients. He has resigned from the Cato Institute in the wake of the story, exposed by Business Week, issuing a statement that "I am fully responsible and I won't play victim ... Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize."

Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation is unapologetic about accepting similar payments; Jonathan Adler of the National Review reports that he was offered similar payments when he worked at a think tank but declined them. It's more evidence that think tank output tends to be generated by starting with paid-for conclusions and generating arguments and selecting evidence to support them--similar to Feith's selection of intelligence information to support the invasion of Iraq. Think tanks supported by particular interests simply aren't a good way of getting objective information.

More examples in Kurtz's piece.

Jeb Bush thinks evolution shouldn't be taught

As quoted in the Miami Herald:

The Watchdog Report asked a follow-up question: Does the governor believe in Darwin's theory of evolution?

Bush said: ``Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''

There's no word on whether this opinion is backed by the Mystical Warrior Chang.

It is surprising that he says he believes in it.

Bush's Imperial Presidency

Another nice sum-up from Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

South Korea to allow indictment via text messaging

It's a nice money-saving idea, but since it's something you have to specifically sign up for, how many takers are they likely to get? Perhaps they anticipate having those who think they are likely to be indicted will sign up in order to get some advance "get out of town, now!" notice? But then again, wouldn't the subscriber list be a potential list of targets for investigation?

J.D. Hayworth to keep donations from Indian tribes

Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth (in his sixth term, if you can believe it) has come out near the top of legislators who have received campaign contributions from "Indian tribes and others connected with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff."

I actually agree with Hayworth that he should feel under no obligation to return donations from the tribes, and I agree with many of the stances he has taken supporting them, especially with regard to the case of Cobell v. Norton. This is a case that has been going on since 1996 (with underlying issues going back to the 19th century), when Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana filed a federal lawsuit to get a proper accounting of what the Department of Interior (DOI) has been doing with funds collected from leases of land held in trust for American Indians. In the course of the lawsuit, it has been found that the DOI intentionally destroyed records (and allowed others to be destroyed by the elements) and covered it up, did not maintain records with proper security (which led to DOI websites being removed from the Internet as a result of an injunction).

On the other hand, Hayworth has held multiple fundraisers in sports stadium skyboxes owned by Abramoff, the value of which he failed to report to the Federal Election Commission, for which he refunded money to two tribes and filed amended FEC reports. If specific evidence of other failings along these lines--or of actual bribe-taking--is found, Hayworth should be nailed to the wall. The fact that he has had extensive involvement with Abramoff is itself reason to scrutinize his dealings carefully, as it's a sign that he is either a poor judge of character or doesn't care about who he associates with (it could be either, since he isn't the sharpest blade in the drawer and is one of the biggest blowhards in Congress).

When Hayworth first ran for Congress, he signed up for a dialup account at Primenet, the Arizona ISP where I worked at the time. His campaign manager said that if he won the election, he would be sure to remain a Primenet customer for quite some time. Shortly after his election, the account was cancelled.

"A half-century secularist reign of terror"

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was quoted in the Washington Post about the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision:

“This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries–if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.”

Apparently Mr. Land believes that 1965-2005 in the United States was something like Robby Berry's "Life in Our Anti-Christian America."

Timothy Sandefur rebuts Land's nutty comment at The Panda's Thumb.

UPDATE (February 6, 2007): An updated link for Robby Berry's "Life in Our Anti-Christian America."

The "sexy bin Laden"

Wafah Dufour, formerly known as Wafah bin Laden, is Osama bin Laden's niece (daughter of Yeslam bin Ladin, half-brother of Osama, and Carmen bin Ladin, author of Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia) is featured in the December GQ. She wants to be a pop star in the U.S. She hasn't lived in Saudi Arabia since she was 10. She is a fan of The Cure, Seal, and The Beatles, and plays guitar.

It seems to me that in her position, it could be dangerous to become an American pop star, since there seems to be no shortage of Muslim fundamentalists who reject the principle of free speech even while living in countries that endorse it.

USA PATRIOT Act extended to January 31, 2006

The Senate has voted to extend the expiring provisions by a month (five months less than a Senate proposal on Wednesday; the House reduced it to one month). The Bush administration was arguing against a six-month extension as being too short, so this seems to be a good sign.

"War on Christmas" exposed by New Yorker; O'Reilly annoyed

Hendrik Hertzberg writes of the bogus "War on Christmas" being pushed by Fox News in The New Yorker:

The War on Christmas is a little like Santa Claus, in that it (a) comes to us from the sky, beamed down by the satellites of cable news, and (b) does not, in the boringly empirical sense, exist.

He goes on to note that

Today’s Christmas Pentagon is the Fox News Channel, which during a recent five-day period carried no fewer than fifty-eight different segments about the ongoing struggle, some of them labelled “Christmas under attack.”

and discusses John Gibson's book and Bill O'Reilly's role as "Patton." Near the end, he notes:

In this war, no weapons of Christmas destruction have been found—just a few caches of linguistic oversensitivity and commercial caution. Christmas remains robust: even Gibson says in his book that in America Christmas celebrators (ninety-six per cent) outnumber Christians (eighty-four per cent). But the “Happy Holidays” contagion has probably spread too far to be wiped out.

O'Reilly's response on December 20:

O'REILLY: Time now for "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day." New Yorker magazine joins our hall of shame. We are recommending readers and sponsors avoid the publication. The reason: that magazine allows writer Hendrik Hertzberg to print dishonest propaganda fed to him by left-wing smear sites. As I previously stated, any publication or news operation that does that will be listed on BillOReilly.com as
not worthy of your attention or advertising dollars. The spin and the propaganda stop here. The New Yorker magazine should be ashamed and is absolutely ridiculous. And one note to Mr. Hertzberg: You might want to rethink your practice of character assassination, sir. Just looking out for you.

And Fox's John Gibson, author of The War on Christmas, got into a shouting match with Rob Boston of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, with Gibson threatening to sue Boston for pointing out O'Reilly's falsehood about green and red clothing being prohibited by Plano, Texas schools. As it turns out, there were some prohibitions about party items and gifts in Plano schools which included such things as paper plate color, which led to a lawsuit; that ban was revoked and the guidelines made more sensible--e.g., students could give each other religious-themed gifts, but teachers (who are acting in an official capacity and represent the state) cannot give religious-themed gifts to students.

O'Reilly has retracted his comment about a ban on red and green clothing.