Article

2008-02-12 Home Front: Culture Wars

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Seafarious 2008-02-12 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 Moisés Naím is editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine

I suppose this guy's solution is keep everyone but he and his in a starving "lower class" that uses less and dies sooner.

Posted by Throger Thains8048 2008-02-12 00:46|| 2008-02-12 00:46|| Front Page Top

#2 Yea, that's the impression I got, too.

Posted by Spike Uniter 2008-02-12 04:04|| 2008-02-12 04:04|| Front Page Top

#3 Just a few of the meat savings found this week at the FORT BELVOIR commissary:

BACON CENTER CUT OSCAR MAYER 12.00 OZ EDLP

BACON LOW SALT OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ EDLP

BACON SLCD BAR S 16.00 OZ 26%

BACON SLCD OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ EDLP

BACON SLCD THCK OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ EDLP

BACON THCK SLCD BAR S 16.00 OZ 26%

FRANK BEEF BN LNGTH OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ 27%

FRANK BEEF EZ OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ 27%

FRANK BEEF XXL DELI STYL OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ 27%

FRANK CHEESE OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ 27%

FRANK NAT BEEF OSCAR MAYER 12.00 OZ 27%

FRANK XXL HOT N SPICY HOT DOG OSCAR MAYER 16.00 OZ 27%

HMR BEEF SHREDDED BBQ SAUCE LLOYDS 18.00 OZ 13%

HMR BEEF TACO TUB CHI CHIS 18.00 OZ 13%

Posted by Besoeker 2008-02-12 04:50|| 2008-02-12 04:50|| Front Page Top

#4 Statistics about diet and meat consumption have notoriously been manipulated in recent years.

The best example I can think of happened back in the 1990's when "nutritionists" were touting how the Japanese diet in the immediate post WWII era was predominantly rice and veggies (More than 80% of caloric intake) and this made for the longevity of the Japanese. And that now that Japan had adopted a "nontraditional" (read: Western and therefore evil) diet with a lot more meat and fish, their longevity was suffering.

Except that the researchers didn't do their homework back further in time, a la AGW advocates. As recently as 1900, the Japanese diet was more than 75% meat and fish and scant veggies and rice. And the longevity was not appreciably different from the all veggie-and-rice era.

There are just some people in the world who have it in for flesh consumption, and they'll do anything to curtail or stop it. Although I suspect the author of the article wants it to diminish for other, not himself.

Standard of living in the West will necessarily take a hit as other countries compete for resources to make their own lives better. We'd best all get used to it. I think the world is a safer place in a world of comfortable bourgoisie than it is with a bunch of starving peasants, so we get something in return for our slight loss of lifestyle.

The real fear of elites, from Europe's ruling class to Middle Eastern sheiks to Ted Kennedy to guys like this, is that a growing and burgeoning middle class will be the fertile soil from which new economic elite will spring, displacing the old ones. What else can explain their love of "progressive" taxation, or hyperregulation of business both of which hold back each new crop of entrepreneurs?

Posted by no mo uro 2008-02-12 07:06|| 2008-02-12 07:06|| Front Page Top

#5 I see this more as a case for free trade. Agriculture is heavily subsidized/regulated in most countries. Drop those and watch prices fall. (This means you too, EUros)

Posted by Spot">Spot 2008-02-12 08:25|| 2008-02-12 08:25|| Front Page Top

#6 The nobles class always fears the rise of the peasants and serfs.

If the peasants and serfs become better off it's historically likely they will refuse to submit and pay taxes to the nobles, and may actually rise up and throw off the nobles as unnecessary to their lives and perhaps even a detriment they can do without.

It's one reason why Europe dislikes America so often, so much, and resents us "dirty colonials". We're not ruled by kings, have no (real) noble class that can make our decisions for us, and seem bound and determined to make decisions for ourselves rather than have them properly made by our "betters".

According to some people, half this country is run by dirty, uneducated, red-necked, sod-busting, gun-toting, hicks who haven't got the intelligence, having been raised in the backwoods someplace and been marrying ourselves off between brothers & sisters, to know that folks on the coasts and especially in Europe are better able to make our decisions for us than we are ourselves.

It almost seems, sometimes, that this kind of prejudice and malice is genetic, a product of the actual inbreeding that took place between the noble families of Europe.

Posted by FOTSGreg">FOTSGreg 2008-02-12 11:27|| 2008-02-12 11:27|| Front Page Top

#7 As "global warming" hysteria morphed into "climate change" hysteria that is now morphing into record low temperatures in International Falls, Moisés Naím expects us to do the same thing that the "global warming" advocates expected us to do: panic, or at least care. The problem with all of these so-called experts is that they are little more than tabloid journalists -- depending on the pessimists to stroke their egos and approve their government grants to study things can barely be influenced if at all. Neither climate nor the size of the global middle class is likely to change abruptly because there are significant moderating forces present.

"In January, 10,000 people took to the streets in Jakarta to protest skyrocketing soybean prices."
That doesn't sound like the growing middle class to me. That sounds like the impoverished pushed to desperation.

Posted by Darrell 2008-02-12 16:55|| 2008-02-12 16:55|| Front Page Top

23:54 JosephMendiola
23:49 trailing wife
23:43 Rambler in California
23:40 Rambler in California
23:27 trailing wife
23:25 Glenmore
23:22 Mizzou Mafia
23:18 Old Patriot
23:16 Rex Mundi
23:07 trailing wife
23:07 Rex Mundi
23:05 trailing wife
23:03 Rex Mundi
22:59 trailing wife
22:54 GK
22:53 Liberalredneck01
22:52 Frank G
22:40 Old Patriot
22:31 Old Patriot
22:30 trailing wife
22:29 Frank G
22:26 Frank G
22:21 Frank G
22:21 trailing wife