Mark Steyn writes that the world should be thankful for America:

…Americans aren’t novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany’s constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy’s only to the 1940s, and Belgium’s goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it’s not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s or Spain’s constitution, it’s older than all of them put together.

Americans think of Europe as Goethe and Mozart and 12th century castles and 6th century churches, but the Continent’s governing mechanisms are no more ancient than the Partridge Family. Aside from the Anglophone democracies, most of the nation-states in the West have been conspicuous failures at sustaining peaceful political evolution from one generation to the next, which is why they’re so susceptible to the siren song of Big Ideas

Mark Steyn writes that the world should be thankful for America:

…Americans aren’t novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany’s constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy’s only to the 1940s, and Belgium’s goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it’s not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s or Spain’s constitution, it’s older than all of them put together.

Americans think of Europe as Goethe and Mozart and 12th century castles and 6th century churches, but the Continent’s governing mechanisms are no more ancient than the Partridge Family. Aside from the Anglophone democracies, most of the nation-states in the West have been conspicuous failures at sustaining peaceful political evolution from one generation to the next, which is why they’re so susceptible to the siren song of Big Ideas

Mark Steyn writes that the world should be thankful for America:

…Americans aren’t novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany’s constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy’s only to the 1940s, and Belgium’s goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it’s not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s or Spain’s constitution, it’s older than all of them put together.

Americans think of Europe as Goethe and Mozart and 12th century castles and 6th century churches, but the Continent’s governing mechanisms are no more ancient than the Partridge Family. Aside from the Anglophone democracies, most of the nation-states in the West have been conspicuous failures at sustaining peaceful political evolution from one generation to the next, which is why they’re so susceptible to the siren song of Big Ideas

Look at the support that Thompson is getting from some very notable lawyers (and law professors). He definitely seems to be the candidate of the Volokh Conspiracy, with the support of at least three of the conspirators (Eugene himself, Jonathan Adler, and Orrin Kerr). Interesting, considering the libertarian bent of the site.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’ve never been to Thompson’s web site before. I was just looking over his policy positions. A lot of it is motherhood (the devil’s always in the details) but I find very little there with which I disagree. I have to say that I particularly liked this one: “I am committed to…dissolution of the IRS as we know it.”

I was hoping that he would outright advocate eliminating the Department of Education as well, but that might be seen as too extreme a position in a general election campaign.

No space policy, though, or even a general science and technology policy, other than energy. Wonder if he’d like some suggestions?

Look at the support that Thompson is getting from some very notable lawyers (and law professors). He definitely seems to be the candidate of the Volokh Conspiracy, with the support of at least three of the conspirators (Eugene himself, Jonathan Adler, and Orrin Kerr). Interesting, considering the libertarian bent of the site.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’ve never been to Thompson’s web site before. I was just looking over his policy positions. A lot of it is motherhood (the devil’s always in the details) but I find very little there with which I disagree. I have to say that I particularly liked this one: “I am committed to…dissolution of the IRS as we know it.”

I was hoping that he would outright advocate eliminating the Department of Education as well, but that might be seen as too extreme a position in a general election campaign.

No space policy, though, or even a general science and technology policy, other than energy. Wonder if he’d like some suggestions?

Look at the support that Thompson is getting from some very notable lawyers (and law professors). He definitely seems to be the candidate of the Volokh Conspiracy, with the support of at least three of the conspirators (Eugene himself, Jonathan Adler, and Orrin Kerr). Interesting, considering the libertarian bent of the site.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’ve never been to Thompson’s web site before. I was just looking over his policy positions. A lot of it is motherhood (the devil’s always in the details) but I find very little there with which I disagree. I have to say that I particularly liked this one: “I am committed to…dissolution of the IRS as we know it.”

I was hoping that he would outright advocate eliminating the Department of Education as well, but that might be seen as too extreme a position in a general election campaign.

No space policy, though, or even a general science and technology policy, other than energy. Wonder if he’d like some suggestions?

Walter Russell Meade, on the Jews and the WASPs.

Larry Kudlow apparently interviewed Fred Thompson today for his CNBC show. I didn’t see it, but he has provided what he thinks is a summary of the results.

If it is an accurate assessment of his positions, there is absolutely nothing on which I disagree with him related there. Which is pretty amazing to me, because that’s unusual, if not a first, for a major party politician with me.

I think that Megan McArdle (and Tyler Cowen) has a good explanation for one of the reasons that space policy, and NASA is such a mess. It has too much money:

In an altogether excellent piece on medical innovation, Tyler Cowen notes:

The NIH works as well as it does because the money is mostly protected from Congress. It is not a success which can easily be replicated. The more money is at stake, the more Congress wants to influence allocation. We should guard this feature of the system jealously and try to learn from it. If we can.

This is a seriously, seriously underrated factor in public policy analysis, and I include the libertarian variety. The fact that you can do something awesome with $15 million does not mean that you could do something super-awesome with $150 million. It may simply not be possible to broaden what you are doing very much before countervailing forces–such as congressional interference (Exhibit A: the goddamn Acela)–kick in.

This is a fundamental problem of bureaucracies, and one that won’t be fixed with regard to space until private activities are much larger than government ones. Or actual space accomplishments become politically important. They certainly aren’t currently, and haven’t been since the sixties.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of Megan, she’s spending some time in Hanoi, and has a lot of interesting posts about Vietnam. Check out this one, on the state of the economy and human productivity:

The sight of people carrying goods in traditional ways, selling produce off the backs of bicycles, looks terribly romantic. I walked past two tourists today who were agreeably chatting about how beautiful and sustainable it all is. But it’s hard to find anything romantic about human beings using themselves as mules.

As one commenter notes, wealth doesn’t just happen on its own (or rather, it does if not prevented by poor governance), and unfortunately, collectivist economic theories tend to destroy, rather than create it.

This is depressing.