The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Not To Go Blaming The Victims, But ‘Ezra Klein Urban Planning’ Is A Wash

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Have we pilloried Ezra Klein enough for his über-knob assertion that “it’s impossible to understand the US Constitution because it’s over 100 years old”? No. The notion that ‘wisdom is timeless’ is like Levis 501 blue jeans, only older.
Old like an obelisk whose wisdom you ignore at your peril.
the_phallus_of_malice

“High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” the stone slab reads. “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan’s northeastern shore.

Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.

The markers don’t all indicate where it’s safe to build. Some simply stand — or stood, until they were washed away by the tsunami — as daily reminders of the risk. “If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis,” reads one. In the bustle of modern life, many forgot.

One must re-emphasize: the purpose of this post is not to kick the Japanese when they are down. Population growth will assess risk and go where it wills. If anything, we should redouble support.
Too, technology is variable. So ideas must expand to include new possibilities, e.g. space travel, that could not be undertaken previously. Got that.
However, that has nothing to do with human nature, and by that I mean the capacity for corruption. As the debt tsunami rolls in, James Madison reveals the foolishness of the Kleins:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known, and less fixed? 

Given this wisdom, what we need are candidates who are dedicated to de-scoping the federal behemoth, spending less than the government collects in taxes, and politically moving us back above the tsunami markers.
Common sense is the new radicalism.

Update: linked at SI VIS PACEM.

Category: Japan, Progressivism

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