Our age is a mosaic. Its small bits are easily missed as we are taught to focus on the big chunks. This column presents some overlooked details that deserve attention.
 
1. Russia has voted to elect her appointed President. This is penned in the hope that the reader will have recovered from the tension of the wait for the results. Be grateful. Imagine the tension of choosing between viable candidates and not the approval of the heir of a bequeathed crown facing carefully selected nobodies!
 
2. A letter from east-central Europe proposes that the right to vote of welfare recipients should be suspended for the duration of their dependency. Indeed, parties advocating re-distribution seem to disburse so as to bind and to gain clients. “Vote for the dole” is not an openly used slogan but it fits the practice. So the newest (Hungarian) “scandalette” is no surprise. Gypsy leaders had traded their controlled votes for Socialist hand-outs.
 
3. Subventions and support payments, are supposed to help the recipient to regain his foothold. The danger: economic dependence created by politics is seldom temporary. Subventions are an easily achieved gain. They motivate not to recapture self-sufficiency but to secure the permanence of increasing support. Since the subventioned carry political weight, those with the power to tax develop an incentive to give money to get votes.
 
4. Fittingly, a “Green” has launched the idea that families, even their babies, be allowed to cast a ballot. Be prepared that the idea will surface where you live. (Prior to the achievement of universal suffrage, we did have weighted votes. However, the basis for weighting was not fertility but education and achievement.)
 
5. Here a further aspect of the ill-effects of well-meaning measures. Citizen benefits and regulations enforced with lax liberality favoring illegal aliens has influential advocates. The effect is that the laws maintaining the general security and the sovereignty of the country are undermined. Somebody needs to be reminded why states and their public order have been instituted. The safety of its citizens under the law is the primary duty and purpose of government.
 
6. Budapest needs more policemen. No wonder. The trainees of the police academy do not wish to serve in the capital. Crime is rampant there.
 
7. Whatever traits that might get Obama nominated and eventually elected will make it difficult for him to govern well.
 
8. There is an effective unofficial apology for Obama. He does not mean what he says in order to generate the hot air upon which he soars like an eagle.
 
9. Visiting Beijing Ms Rice asked for China’s help to deal with Iran and North Korea. If there would be no USA, China (but also Russia) would be fighting with the methods they are known for Tehran’s and Pyongyang’s nuclear projects. Hoping to weaken America, Peking leans back. It is a dangerous game. Yet America’s global rivals strengthen and, worse, embolden rogue states. The dangerous game’s risks is its success through supportive inaction. The upshot: a more perilous world than the one with the US in the lead.
 
10. P.S. On March 4th Russia and China did it. In the IAEA’s executive organ they blocked a Western resolution regarding Iran. Supported by “developing countries” and the “uncommitted nations” it was decided that a resolution is unnecessary. Concern expressed regarding insufficient data on enrichment could have undermined “mutual confidence.” Furthermore, it might have limited Iran’s cooperation (what cooperation?) with the UN.
 
11. Oh, you might find yourself here in agreement with Tehran. It has declared that the UN’s sanctions that it condemns are worthless.
 
12. Self delusion. It is a false assumption that groups with good values are made to engage in violence when they react to what they (mistakenly) see as provocations. If it would be so, then giving up the means of self-defence would be a show of good will that pacifies the (easily?) outraged. Yet even Saint Francis has only preached to birds – doves and sparrows. Handling the dragons he left to Saint George.
 
13. Unemployment is said to cause the restlessness of ‘youths’ with “migration background.” They are unemployed because often they are unemployable. This is so due to their lack of skills. Effective schooling presupposes language proficiency and also adjustment to the local way of life. Teaching is resisted as it amounts to forced assimilation and cultural imperialism. The family-supported sabotage of schooling results in the condition that causes, and subsequently excuses, violence.
 
14. March, 3. A small item from the back pages. From France, an armed ambush of policemen trapped by gunmen is reported. Soon this will be repeated and marketed as ‘guerilla action’ against the prevailing order of exploitative oppression. The chances are that analogous news will appear close to your home.
 
15. Affirmative Action’s (USA) avowed purpose was to institutionalize diversity. In faculties, AA furthered diversity mainly if it pertained to inherited traits. (Do not dare to call it racism). Diversity achieved by encouraging originality was suppressed. There was a time when a professor could be an interesting person. Today the prerequisite of appointments is ancestry, bad habits and pious conformity.
 
16 The cult of the maverick spreads. Accordingly, some work diligently to be granted non-conformist status defined by those who have already achieved membership. Soon those non-conforming to the obligatory non-conformism will be the outsiders. Question: how will these “deviants” be allowed to fare?
 
17 In doing my taxes I discover that I am unqualified for the task. Disorders are regularly cited to excuse crimes and misdemeanors. Can I claim tax-free status on account of a phobia induced by chronic “form-allergy” and by being “numerically challenged”?
 
18. Some pundits say that “Europe Moves Closer to America.” If this is true then America is in big trouble. Is it not bad enough that she is moving away from herself?
 
19. The campaign-related arguments of the Democrats have more mobilizing substance than assumed. They make McCain’s “conservative” skeptics rally behind him. If this keeps up, the Dems might be proven right: all men will become brothers.
 
20. The talk about Bush’ “place in history.” The matter will be decided by the reputation earned by his opponents once these get power. Regardless of his current rating, GWB’s standing is likely to soar once we are forced to make the comparison.
 
21. For the EU’s subjects. Increasingly the Union’s handlers use it as an instrument to override majorities. Take the organization’s basic law that will not be put to a popular vote. When people find that a national law contradicts common sense they want to move against it. At that stage they are told that the regulation violating the rules of logic is (fortunately) supported by EU law.
 
22. In the economic realm, EU ordinances limit competitive members – and pressure non-member states. Restraining the feared mobility of capital is another misdirected policy. The result is that the costs of competition rise and that the EU is not in the interest of people but of governments and the regulators.
 
23. Minority issues, including those in Europe, keep baffling even the relatively well-read. The mention here of the plight of the Hungarian minority in central Europe made a letter-writer to speak up. He lacks sympathy as the Magyars took the land they inhabit by “aggression.” Sounds convincing. Until you are told that the “Settlement” happened more than 1100 years ago. That the territory was sparsely inhabited and politically unorganized might also matter. Most people who have their states had, at some point in the past, taken their land from its original inhabitants. Are we all aggressors who should return everything to the Neanderthals?
 
24. In the past all nations have wronged their neighbors. To deduct a right to punish them today means that we all have to be “spanked.” Do we wish to avoid the errors of the past and injustice defined by our own proclaimed standards? In this case all communities and their individual members must be guaranteed their rights without deductions for dubious “de-merits” and brownie-points for “good deeds.” Personal likes and dislikes are a shaky basis for denying basic collective rights.
 
25. Autonomists (not to mention separatists) are disturbing people. They raise unknown issues regarding nations few care to hear about. Furthermore, their projects upset the prevailing order. Instinctively one is inclined to put order before justice. In time we discover that we wind up having neither.