From the synopsis for the forthcoming film, “The Socialist,” to be released in November 2010:

Every age seeks visionaries to leave, in the wake of their genius, a changed world—but rarely are they found without a few strikeout also-rans getting a crack first. In 2008, millions of Americans thought they had found the real thing.

Over the subsequent two years the nation moved inexorably—though rarely without battle—toward European-style socialism. Through the warring perspectives of a few powerful, deluded men and women who claim to know what’s best for you resulted a national drama rife with both bureaucracy creation and wealth destruction.

The Socialist moved from the halls of academia to the offices of ACORN to a pew in Chicago, and eventually all the way to the oval office, all the while spurred on by the heady early days of a culture-changing phenomenon in the making. In the midst of the chaos and mounting disasters, average American citizens began to object, eventually adding up to more than the sum of their parts in what has become a multifront, 21st century clash of worldviews.

This film has not yet been rated, but the story received a solid B+ from the White House. Catch the beginning of the end in theaters November 2010, with the ultimate conclusion to be seen worldwide in November of 2012.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the social and political elite of the British North American colonies and, after they gained their independence, the United States of America was overwhelmingly WASPish — consisting of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. In the twentieth century, the composition of the elite changed enormously. This fact was brought home to me again this morning by a feature in USA Today about the current U.S. Supreme Court justices. They include six Catholics and three Jews. I daresay that a hundred years ago, a court with this religious composition would have been quite unthinkable for most Americans.

Oh, yes, Chief Justice John Roberts would seem to be the only Anglo-Saxon on the court–I’m not sure whether this designation correctly describes his ethnicity.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, argues in the October 3 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education that “sustainability” is surpassing “diversity” as a leading cause célèbre of activism in the academy. The trend can be seen both at the administrative level and in the student body. As evidence of the former, he says that the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education has about 150 colleges and universities in its ranks, whereas the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education has about 800 member institutions in the United States.

I found the article full of interesting passages. Here’s one:

Diversity is a story of a once-fresh ideology that swept through higher education in a spirit of triumph but that quickly seems to be losing its status as the sexiest ideology on campus. Diversiphiles would like to keep the adrenaline flowing, but it is hard. Freshmen now arrive on campus already having sucked on multicultural milkshakes from kindergarten to senior prom. Diversity for them is just the same ol’ same ol’.

Also, Wood makes intriguing claims about how “diversity” and “sustainability” differ from the movements that birthed them, such as in this nugget:

Diversity is second-wave affirmative action; sustainability is second-wave environmentalism. Like all second-wave movements, each embodies a complicated awareness of its predecessor, by turns appropriating and repudiating the earlier movement.

Wood argues that despite possessing several things in common, “diversity” and “sustainability” are fundamentally at odds with each other:

Diversity calls for a fractionated America but leaves intact a vision of personal success and amenity. Sustainability is, not far beneath the surface, a doctrine of privation, offering only the psychological comforts of asceticism.

“Sustainability” is certainly one of the battle cries heard in the “new holy wars” (as Robert Nelson calls them in his book of the same name). Several years ago, Wilfred Beckerman offered a withering critique of that fuzzy concept in A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth. And before that, Peter Thiel and David Sacks, before founding PayPal, exposed the excesses and contradictions carried out in the name of “multiculturalism” at Stanford in The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance on Campus. However, I’m not sure that anyone before Peter Wood had noted the quiet battle between those two competing causes.

Agree with him or not, Wood offers food for thought that is at least as tempting as those “multicultural milkshakes” he claims the young ‘uns have been overfed.

Dr. Emily Skarbek, Director of the Independent Institute’s Government Cost Calculator was interviewed on the nationally syndicated, web, radio blog, “Taking Back America”.  During the interview, Dr. Skarbek uses MyGovCost.org to explain the specific effects of rampant government spending for any individual in America. Dr. Skarbek illustrates how an individual can find out what their own personal costs imposed by government are, and what they could have earned instead.  Taking action starts at MyGovCost.org

Download the interview here

Economic progress manifests itself in a continuous stream of new goods and services generated by, to use Joseph Schumpeter’s term, creative destruction.  We tend to focus on the new stuff we have — the microwave ovens, the cellphones, the flat screen televisions — as a sign of progress, barely noticing the things they have replaced.  Auto repair shops have replaced blacksmiths; telephones have replaced the telegraph (itself a great innovation in its day); digitally-downloaded recorded music is displacing CDs, which themselves displaced vinyl records.

I polled students in several of my classes, and every single one had a cell phone, while in most classes nobody had a land line.  Twenty years ago, that poll would have gone the opposite way.  No students had cell phones two decades ago.

To drive home the pace of economic progress to my students I used examples from a pair of popular songs from a few decades ago.  Jimmy Buffet’s still-popular song, Margaritaville, from 1977, contains the lyric, “I blew out my flip-flop, stepped on a pop top.”  I asked my students if they knew what a pop top was.  Many did (and many did not), but only one claimed to have ever seen one.  Here’s a song that is still popular, but some of the lyrics don’t make sense to today’s generation because progress has rendered them obsolete.

In Paul Simon’s 1973 hit song, “Kodachrome,” he sings, “Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.”  I asked my students what Kodachrome was, and none of them knew.  Some had a guess that it had something to do with film, but none was actually sure.  (Kodachrome, for you youngsters, was a type of film manufactured by Kodak from 1935 to 2009.)  Here’s another song lyric rendered obsolete by progress.

If you’ve read this far, I have a broader agenda here than just relating these anecdotes.  I’m hoping that readers will supply me with more lyrics from popular songs that progress has rendered obsolete.  I’ve offered a few examples.  Now it’s your turn!

Why would another federal “stimulus” package fail to promote long-term economic growth? How violent was the American West? What hidden strengths do the Taliban have in common with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War? What are we to make of last week’s police protest in Ecuador?

Learn the answers to these questions by reading the October 5th issue of The Lighthouse, the weekly newsletter of the Independent Institute. Sign up for free updates here. Below are links to individual items in the latest Lighthouse.

1. The Economic Case against Obama’s New ‘Stimulus’ Proposal
2. The Culture of Violence in the American West
3. U.S. Gains in Afghanistan Mask Taliban’s Hidden Strengths
4. Ecuador Police Protest Government Mismanagement and Arrogance

Dr. Emily Skarbek, Director of the Government Cost Calculator was interviewed on the nationally syndicated radio program, “The Jason Lewis Show” (Premiere Radio Networks). In the program, Dr. Skarbek uses MyGovCost.org to explain the specific effects of rampant government spending on the personal situation for any individual in America.

[audio:2010_09_29_skarbek_lewis.mp3]
Download audio file (18 minutes)

With sadness, I report the death of an old and cherished friend, Joe Sobran.  Joe wrote and edited for National Review until he and William F. Buckley, Jr., had a falling out; he had a long-running engagement with CBS Radio as a commentator; and he wrote a syndicated newspaper column.

For most of his life, Joe was one of those rare conservatives who actually had and lived by sincere conservative values, rather than merely mouthing the usual banal conservative views and readily throwing principles overboard whenever an opportunity to influence or wield state power presented itself. Late in life, he embraced philosophical anarchism, having given up all hope that the state would ever do anything decent.

I met Joe about twenty years ago, and I was privileged to spend considerable time with him over the years. A gentle, learned, witty, and courageous man, Joe was one of the most beautiful writers I have encountered among commentators on public affairs. I keep a collection of quotations that express important ideas in an especially pithy, penetrating, arresting, or graceful way. Joe’s declarations are well represented in my collection. In virtually every column of his that I read, at least once I would stop, reread a sentence or a paragraph, and mutter to myself, “How I would love to be able to write such prose!”

When a man dies, it is common for friends and admirers to say that he will be missed, but in truth, except by a handful of close friends and relatives, he really will not be missed. In Joe’s case, however, I believe that many people really will miss him. I certainly will. He wrote in a unique voice, in sentences crafted with simplicity, grace, and precision, expressing ideas that all of us might profitably ponder.

Joe was a devout Catholic. Let us hope that in this regard, too, he charted a course to a safe harbor, and that he now resides in a better place.

October 1 is the beginning of the federal government’s 2011 fiscal year.  Congress has not passed a budget, and it appears likely that one won’t be passed until January.  The government that wants to take over and run your health care (and other aspects of your life) can’t even pass its own budget.

One remarkable thing about this is, nobody’s remarking on it.  I saw nothing in my newspaper about it.  When I Googled “fiscal year 2011 budget” Google told me there were more than 19 million results.  While I didn’t look through all of them, I didn’t see anything very critical.  CNN ran this story which mentioned that a budget hadn’t been passed (well into the article), and also noted that this has been common over the last several decades.  Here is a blog post that just says Congress has passed a continuing resolution to fund federal programs until a budget is passed.  There probably are some critical comments among those 19 million hits, but for the most part this is something most people haven’t even noticed.

The fact that Congress hasn’t passed a budget for the fiscal year didn’t make the news because, in fact, it’s not news.  It happens almost every year.

My thoughts still go back to my initial comment.  If they can’t even take care of their own responsibilities, why should Americans think it would be a good idea for the federal government to take over more of what are now their responsibilities.  If the government can’t even run their own affairs, I certainly don’t want them meddling in mine.