A quote which caught my fancy

Back when his personal blog Pejmanesque was active, Pejman Yousefzadeh (an Iranian Jewish name) used to post a "quote of the day". His personal blog got to be too much, and he replaced it with a group blog , where he sometimes posts "quotes that catch my fancy". Here's one from Thomas Sowell which caught my fancy today:

The recent death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should make us recall what he said when he was awarded the Nobel Prize: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."

Dog Blogging - Creatures of Habit

Yesterday, I took all 5 dogs out for walks. It was striking how engrained their habits are even after recent walking schedule disruptions due to hot weather. Sparky and Dottie took Lucky to all their favorite spots.

We visited our neighbor Emma, a remarkable black woman in her 80s who raised her siblings with her father from the time her mother died (she was very young - six, I think). She used to come to visit Sparky after her late husband's dog, Missy, died. She is still very fond of Sparky, whom she calls "Bear". But she likes the other dogs, too. She recently said that she would like to adopt Maggie (whose name is the same as Emma's recently deceased sister). Maggie looks a lot like Missy did (except for color - Missy was almost white). But Maggie, or Warrior Queen Omega, would be way too spirited for Emma to handle.

The dog next door to Emma, littl PeeWee the Chihuahua, is still in love with Maggie from when she was in heat, even though Maggie has been spayed for more than a year. PeeWee is historically hostile to other dogs, but approaches Maggie with a longing look. She is much, much bigger than he is. Maggie is also usually hostile to strange dogs (especially females), but she still likes PeeWee. They once were hard to move apart when we took Maggie for a walk (though a fence divided them). Lucky scared PeeWee off yesterday after a short nose-sniff between the star-crossed lovers.

Sparky, who is a giant compared to PeeWee, accomnodates PeeWee's Napoleon complex by allowing PeeWee to chase him away from his territory, after Sparky leaves a liquid greeting.

PeeWee is making friends with Troy the Giant Dog, who walked without the other dogs yesterday. Both our little dog Lucky and Troy the Giant Dog were on the street before we adopted them. But Troy (maybe because of his sized) played with other dogs (though he was leery of people). Lucky may have had to defend himself from other dogs in his vagabond days. Troy is also forming a friendship with the Rat Terrier who lives by the canal. The Rat Terrier enjoys exchanging displays of aggression with Lucky, though I don't think they would actually fight if the fence between them were removed.

I am grateful that (on Sister Berrett's recommendation) I tried a Gentle Leader head harness for Troy and Maggie. Walking a dog with this harness helps clarify for dogs who is the Pack Leader. It comes with DVD instructions. Troy and Maggie pulled me into the (dry) canal last summer when they were on leashes attached to choke chains. It is now easy to walk Troy and Maggie, and Troy has become a Mama's Boy at home, too. He follows me or David everywhere, lies on his back trying to look like a cute little dog (doesn't work, though he's kind of cute in a big dog sort of way), wants love all the time and he has been better with the cats (except when he's with Lucky). Lucky gets along with the cats except when showing off for the other dogs. We need to get him a head harness, too. He can probably learn to show off for me and David instead of for the other dogs.

Dog habits, like people habits, are hard to change. But there are simple ways to help dogs change. People - not so simple.

California Politics - Changes possible in the future?

For years, California politics has been almost totally dominated by Democrats. This domination leads to "arrogance of office" and other unfortunate signs of decay. On August 19, I happened to be listening to the Ray Appleton program (which I usually don't catch) when our State Assembly Representative, Nicole Parra, a Democrat, started decribing how she had been kicked out of her office and across the street by the Democratic leadership for supporting water allocations to valley farmers. Of course, she had also irritated them earlier by supporting her previous Republican opponent, Danny Gilmore, as her replacement.

Later in the day, another Democratic lawmaker caused a kerfuffle by endorsing a Republican for the (non-partisan) mayoral election in Fresno.

Update: The Democratic leadership also cancelled consideration of all legislation sponsored by Parra which was beneficial to the Central Valley. How responsible, compassionate and unemotional of them. They reportedly also tried to force the Republicans to accept their budget by refusing to consider budget cuts by program. This allowed them to portray the Republicans as evil for forcing cuts in popular budget items like public safety. As Lawrence Miller said in "Barbarians to Bureaucrats", across-the-board budget cuts (he was talking primarily about corporations) are a sign of laziness and cowardice among leaders.

Oh, and a prominent Democratic California lawmaker also screamed at her entire staff one Friday not to return to work the following Monday. Let someone in private business try that and see what happens.

Growing up in the Age of MTV

Yesterday, I heard part of this discussion between Dennis Prager and a physician/author worried about the psychological and other effects of casual sex on young people. She believes that it adversely affects their ability to form a lasting commitment to a partner and a family due to changes in brain chemistry. Thankfully, the young people she described were quite different from the ones we watched at the Stake dance Saturday.

One of the points Dennis made was how quickly the educational system was destroying Judeo-Christian values in America. It takes a strong counter-balance to the popular culture and the educational system for young people to hang onto those values. He described his favorite moral question to students: whether they would save a drowning human or their drowning beloved pet. A 16 year-old caller described a class discussion in which her classmates casually accepted Nazi-like ideas concerning killing the infirm (expressed by another student) as just another point of view. Tolerance of various points of view has become a higher good in many people's minds than basic agreement on principles such as as not murdering imperfect people.

Worthwhile listening, even if you don't agree with everything you hear.

Related: Feminine modesty: Between Bare and Burqa. Many young women have no idea of the effect that skimpy clothing has on male observers. On the other hand, completely obscuring your femininity with clothing can be dehumanizing.

Update: Dennis' latest written argument in favor of Judeo-Christian values. I usually find Dennis more interesting on the radio that on a page, as I think he often outlines only the barest skeleton of his principles when he writes. When he discusses the same principles on the radio, it's easier to see how they apply in people's lives. I would be interested in other's reactions to this piece.

Introduction to Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager, the talk-show host and lecturer, is an original. He has helped me clarify my thinking a lot over the years.

When he was young, some in his family thought he was retarded because he would sit for hours twirling the tail of the family's pet dog while staring at a lake. He decided in high school that, in his case, youth would not be "wasted on the young". He skipped high school classes, getting into a lot of trouble. Instead of going to class, he visited all the interesting adult in New York City whom he could manage to visit. He also taught himself to conduct symphony orchestras, learned foreign languages and read serious political journals. He almost flunked out of high school, but got good grades in Community College. He took a graduate degree in the Soviet system of government at Columbia, where he says that his faith in God was confirmed by observing the irrationality of some of the positions of the non-religious professors there.

He has visited more countries than any 20 people I know. He is Jewish, and after the first airline highjackings (before highjackers started steering planes into buildings) he started an outreach called the "Center for Ethical Monotheism", promoting an ethical basis of understanding between Christians, Jews and Muslims (I might not have the name quite right).

I listened to him when I lived in Southern California. In addition to his regular broadcast, he did a show on Sunday night called "Religion on the Line" where clergy from different faiths discussed theological and other issues. It was fascinating, sometimes emotional, and the clergy got along with each other very well. There has been nothing like it since.

When I first started listening to Dennis, he called himself a "passionate moderate" - someone interested in balancing important principles which were inherently in conflict. As our political system moved further to the left, he started to identify himself as a "conservative" or as a "classical liberal" - terms he thought of as practically synonymous at that point in history. He continues to identify with conservatives and classical liberals today. He made a difficult (for him) change in party affiliation from Democratic to Republican several ago.

Dennis decided a few years ago that he needed to take his show national, and KABC in Los Angeles cut him lose. He still talks about a wide range of issues, both personal ("micro") and cultural or political ("macro"). If I'm not interested by a particular topic, I just wait for the next one.

Today, in his first hour he presented persuasive encouragement for people to balance trivial entertainment time with time spent in "elevating" pursuits - reading good books, listening to elevating music, studying scripture or other wisdom literature, etc. He reminded us that this used to be something that people regularly thought about. Times have changed. Now most of us are totally oriented toward entertainment in our free time.

Dennis is more tolerant of "expressing our lower natures" in harmless ways than are some religious people. But he still talked about feeling the need to take a bath after watching a particular MTV program.

His second hour was an interview with the (mostly) conservative columnists George Will , who defined the difference between liberals and conservatives in a simple way. Will related a memory about Daniel Patrick Moynihan. They don't make Democratic senators like him anymore. Prager and Will discussed audio books, the great advantages for Democrats in this year's election, and two very important reasons why conservatives should vote for McCain even if they don't like him much.

Audio of his programs is available here or (commercial free) at Pragertopia here. In the Central Valley, we can listen to him on KTIP 1450 AM from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. - his third hour is not broadcast.