Dan's absolutely right about progressivism, which among other things led us to the situation that we had for much of the twentieth century in which the role of the government involved providing services for citizens in need. The nature of the social contract was altered by such initiatives as Social Security, income taxes, and the Federal Reserve system: government became a way to coordinate resources so as to roughly equalize social...

I haven't posted much, in part because I've been at APSA. But I also have trouble bringing myself to write anything more about Katrina. We lived in New York on September 11th, 2001; for all the horror of that day, the slow unfolding of the disaster in New Orleans, the gross incompetence of our government and our elected officials, and the bestial situation people faced in the refugee pens (what else are we supposed to call the Superdome,...

If you want to read a followup dispatch from New Orleans by Dr. Greg Henderson, I've found one and posted in on my blog. It's a holiday weekend, so I don't know how many people will be reading or searching. However, "Greg Henderson pathologist" has become a very popular search term for those finding my space in blogtopia. Filed as: Greg Henderson

This is the first year I've actually enjoyed APSA. The quality of the international-relations panels I attended was higher than I'm used to. The conference organizers did a great job of making sure that related panels were close together. I didn't have to do a lot of hopping between distant hotels.We had the usual SNAFUs. A number of panels with similar target audiences ran at the same time, making for hard choices about what to attend. The...

This is a message I received in email from a third party. It was written in New Orleans by Dr. Greg Henderson, a pathologist who recently moved from Wilmington:Aug. 31, 2005I am writing this note on Tuesday at 2 PM. I wanted to update all of you as to the situation here. I don't know how much information you are getting but I am certain it is more than we are getting. Be advised that almost everything I am telling you is from direct observation...

From Leviathan:From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another. And from hence it comes to pass that where an invader hath no more to fear...

Today's New York Times reports the results of a current Pew Forum poll:The poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time. But of those, 18 percent said that evolution was "guided by a supreme being," and 26 percent said that evolution occurred...

News from the deep south just gets worse and worse. The good news is that the Federal Government is mobilizing its resources, with some possible caveats, along with other groups and organizations throughout the nation. On that note, let us take a moment to praise the advantages of economies of scale and remember why the balance of political power has, for good reason, tipped towards the federal government (and away from the states) over the...

Sally Jenkins, sports columnist for the Washington Post, weighs in with a rather silly opinion piece about "intelligent design" as it might relate to athletics. "Athletes do things that seem transcendental," she opines; "Ever get the feeling that they are in touch with something that we aren't? What is that thing? Could it be their random, mutant talent, or could it be evidence of, gulp, intelligent design?" Her piece reproduces some of the...

I'm back... at least until my DSL service cuts out again. Or I leave for APSA. Whichever comes first.I've been able to get online long enough to read, among other things, Timothy Garton Ashs' essay, "Stagger on, weary Titan" (via Anne-Marie Slaughter).In the American case, it's a result of the unexpectedly protracted, bloody and costly Iraq war, in which a small group of foreign insurgents defies the mightiest military the world has seen;...

George W. Bush is a graduate of the Harvard Business School (MBA, 1975). I wonder if they taught him about sunk costs? Sunk costs are unrecoverable past expenditures. These should not normally be taken into account when determining whether to continue a project or abandon it, because they cannot be recovered either way. It is a common instinct to count them, however.There's certainly good evidence to believe that Bush does not understand the...