The Reason for the Season - Your Christmas quote only seems, initially, a non sequiter:

Even if dogs, sexual humiliation, or sleep deprivation don't rise to one's particular uninformed definition of torture, I assume we can all agree that being dropped on barbed wire or having a lit Marlboro jammed in your ear does.

From Thomas Nephew.

It's the Most - Wonderful Time - of the Year! - It's become a Christmas tradition, if one likely to end this year: Nate Bruinooge reviews the latest Lord of the Rings extended-edition DVD. Future Christmases will have that much less magic to them.

A Libertarian Reads the Gospels - Tonight in true Annual Christian fashion I attended with La Familia Offering our church's Christmas pageant, "A Clvsterfvck for Christ." Truth is, it wasn't nearly that bad, though my poet and storyteller friend who had charge of the children's segment of the show seemed to think so - you might too if you had to somehow usher a dozen costumed grade- and preschoolers on and offstage in synchrony with the readings. I'm proud to report that Offering Boy played a crucial leadership role here: as the only shepherd who made it to rehearsal and the only child whose eye my friend could catch, it was he who managed to lead the youthful throng away from the manger not too long after the actual exit cue.

Now being a libertarian, and thus fundamentally an awful, awful human being, I found myself consumed with thoughts of the sheer volume of practicality that even the spiritual side of Christmas requires, the scheduling, the planning, the e-mails and phone calls and trips to the printer and party store (for there are the snacks downstairs after the service to present). And then I couldn't stop myself wondering, Hey! What happened to the gold, frankincense and myrrh anyway? The Magi didn't snatch it back, presumably. And it was a pretty good haul, if, as we shall see, one with a twist to it. Gold is gold, and the gum resins, frankincense and myrrh, had value too.

So what did they do with it? I think they had to spend it in short order: the Magi and their Gifts only appear in Matthew (Chapter 2), which is also the only Gospel to recount the atrocity of Herod. It's the one where Joseph and the brood flee immediately to Egypt and stay there until Herod dies. I figure the gold paid their passage and some of their living. It was one well-timed gift - a little hard currency, as it were, to slip free of the murderous tyranny of the state. Maybe you really can find anything in the Bible if you're looking for it.

Interestingly, there is no stable or manger in Matthew. The wise men find Jesus in a "house," presumably Joseph and Mary's own. The tax, enrollment and journey to Bethlehem appears only in Luke (2):

1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. 2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

What struck me in tonight's mood is the matter-of-factness of it. Luke does not wail, neither does he gnash, about the family being in the stable. " . . . there was no room for them at the inn," he tells us, and that's it. The maudlin interpretation comes later. The Bethlehem of Luke's gospel must have been a madhouse. By decree, people were pouring in from the four corners of the Levant (to be "taxed" or "enrolled," the libertarian can't help noting, and then thinking how much easier that must make it to find all the under-twos you want to kill). Of course the inns were full. We have no idea what sorts of extremis many of the other guests might have been in. Nor does the text support the "Christmas pageant drama" of Mary, Joseph and the Burro dragging themselves into town the very night of her labor. "While they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered." The strong suggestion is that this enrollment business took quite awhile. The Mary who showed up looking for a room may not have looked ready to pop. Did the innkeeper even see her, or did her husband take care of the room registration? Did Joseph press the matter of his wife's pregnancy, or did he find it prudent to be discreet about it? How many pregnant women, infirm elders and sick people made up the lodgers who got there ahead of Our Protagonists? We can't say. We can only say that the matter seems not to trouble Luke much, and Luke is a writer willing enough to express outrage and disgust. (See the Pharisee parts.)

The real purpose of the manger story is foreshadowing, as I've noted in previous Christmas items. A manger is where a flock eats. The Last Supper, source of the Communion ritual, completes that circle.

And, back to Matthew, the frankincense and myrrh? Used, the Columbia Encyclopedia informs us, in embalming, a fact far less obscure to the gospels' original audience than to us. And stuck right there at the beginning of the story. In the midst of life we are in death, not that there's a better deal on offer.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.

Quote of the Week comes from Will Wilkinson:

People in North Korea are eating each other because other people sincerely believed Marx's theory that the human essence varies with the socio-economic context in which it is embedded.

It may not be a surprise that Will Wilkinson is neck and neck with Catallarchy for this year's Best Libertarian(s) in a Libertarian Role award.

Meantime, our coinage of the week comes from Eve Tushnet, even with points off for the ungrammatical hyphen (should just be "reindeer commando").

And speaking of this year's Unqualified Successes, am I nuts that the leading candidate for Least Dispensible Weblog is No Award? Or is this simply the year when the blogosphere fragmented that much?

Welcome Back to my Nightmare - The official word is that the Mosul attack was a suicide bombing, not a shelling after all. Meanwhile, the blog of a military chaplain reporting from the base says there was mortar fire, after the attack, walking in on the base hospital in an attempt to maximize casualties. The chaplain also warns that "Frankly, it's kind of a blur," before adding thirteen paragraphs of detailed description. If the two accounts fit together, what we have is suicide murder coordinated with an immediate artillery attack, precisely targeted with the aid of on-base intelligence. (The chaplain clearly describes the progressively greater accuracy of each shot.) If the two accounts fit together.

Take Me Out to the @#*&%# Ball Game - Sport and stadium blogging, by me, on The Agitator.

Life Imitates Ray Davies - Other blogs will give you the "French Teenagers Beat Up Santa Claus" story. Some of them will even draw the parallel with the classic Kinks song, "Father Christmas." But only Unqualified Offerings will run the lyrics to "Father Christmas" through Google Translator, to give you a sense of the French Santa's own perspective, and only Unqualified Offerings, realizing you probably don't speak much French yourself (if you're a patriotic American), will run the French version back through Google Translator to translate it back into regular talk. Here it is:

Christmas De Père (Davies Ray)

Christmas of father, gives us a certain amount of money
do not disturb with these idiot of the toys
we will thus beat you to the top if you do not give the surplus
to him which we want your bread,
we do not make constrained elasticity
all the toys with the rich little boys

What can I add to that but - Happy Holidays, everyone!

The Only Economics Report You Need - I'm thinking it's a pretty good Christmas for retailers. I say this because my Borders e-mail newsletters haven't included a general "Take XX% Off" coupon in two weeks. That suggests that Borders is pretty happy with the traffic they're already getting and see no need to spend gross margin to drive more. Joyeux Noel, mes sembables!

Welcome to my Nightmare - It's too soon to tell if today's Mosul attack (highclearing/highclearing) was a lucky shot for the insurgents or the start of a baleful new trend. If they go back to missing almost everything they throw, then this was a blind squirrel finding a very bloody nut. If they start landing indrect fire on concentrations of troops reliably, it will mean something else entirely. Like, that some number of the Iraqi troops we're training are acting as forward observers for attacks on "their own" bases. I think this is the most likely explanation for the accuracy of the Mosul shelling. But I'm not sure yet.

Taking One (E-Mail) for the Team - Josh Kaderlan adds and addendum to the honor roll:

The Giants did in fact finance the construction of the park itself entirely with private funds, but they managed to work out a deal whereby they lease the land it sits on from the city (at a fair market value), which allows the team to avoid paying property taxes. So while it's better than the giveaways most cities work out with sports teams, it's still not fully private.

Duly noted, though if it's land the city owned rather than stole via eminent domain, that's a mitigating factor.

Most valuable sports franchise in the United States? The Washington Redskins. What's a big reason it's so valuable? The stadium the team owns. Why does the team own the stadium? The team bought it fair and square. Dear professional sports owners: Do. The Math. God knows governments won't (highclearing/highclearing).

UPDATE: Doh! Fixed spelling of Josh's name! Because you know he won't.

Never Mind Why. WHO Hates Us? - Fascinating article by former CIA case officer, now forensic psychiatrist, Marc Sageman on the demographics of those Muslim terrorists who have attacked American targets. Lots to say about this one, but it's getting late, so, later. (Via the blog unaccountably known as "Tacitus".)

Things that Eventually Occur to One, the Continuing Series - So the Big Idea was, "We'll transform Iraq into a modern democracy, kickstarting the engine of political reform in the muslim world, just like we did with Germany and Japan." The criticism I've read, including my own, has been attacking the history behind Part A - a lot of stuff about how Iraq is not at all like Germany and Japan at the end of WWII.

Part B is the idea that a democratic Iraq would inspire a wave of liberalization in which the oppressed peoples of the Ummah throw off their corrupt rulers and replace them with the consensual (and pro-Israel) governments of our daydreams. This is not what happened even in the case of Germany and Japan, though, right? MacArthur handed down the Japanese constitution in 1947. Thereafter Japan was as democratic as any country that keeps electing the same ruling party over and over can be. And the wave of democratization in East Asia that Japan's example inspired was . . . nonexistent, I'd say. North Korea? Communist still. China? Went communist, now what we might call Fascism with a (Somewhat) Human Face. Taiwan? Only democratized in the last decade or so. Philippines? Took forty years. The countries of Indochina? Not there. In fact, some among them - Singapore and Malaysia particularly - have propounded a consciously counter-democratic "Asian system" ideology. The shining beacon of Democratic Japan touched off bupkus in the way of liberal yearnings.

West Germany became democratic in the mid-1950s. Italy was "democratic" after 1945. (Local adaptations included big bags of CIA money for the Christian Democratic Party.) The Iron Curtain complicates evaluation. For 50 years, the countries that had been reliably democratic pre-war were democratic postwar, and the countries that had been some flavor of autocracy remained some flavor of autocracy. There were pro-democracy revolts in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and eventually Poland, but I can think of no reason to think they were inspired by the examples of Italy and Germany rather than France, Denmark and the United States. Looking West, we see countries whose systems of government through the first half of the twentieth century closely resembled Germany and - moreso - Italy: Spain and Portugal. Did the transformations of Germany and Italy stir a tide of democratic reform in Falangist Iberia? Not so you'd notice.

So even if Iraq makes it past the famous "One Man, One Vote, One Time" threshold, history offers no encouragement that its example will be contagious.

Pay More Attention to the Jolly Fat Man Behind the Curtain - I think the Santa Myth may have some uses for parents too. Parenting offers great rewards, but a huge proportion goes unrewarded. (I always warn prospective parents that the first six weeks - until the child learns to smile - are fitfully-relieved hell. You've become custodian of a Need Machine whose gratitude battery is still charging.) Santa makes parents' lives simultaneously simpler and more astringent. Simpler: you have someone to lay off any Christmas disappointment on for the first seven to nine years. Kid didn't get everything he or she wanted? That Santa. What can you do?

But the other side of that is more demanding: most kids, particularly very young kids, love the bounty they wake up to Christmas morning. You don't have to settle everything they've ever wanted on them to make them very happy. Believe me, I know.

And you, the parent, get no credit for it. The bearded elf gets it all.

And that's very valuable to you. It means that the joy available to you is simply your own knowledge of your children's pleasure. You have to love the act itself, not the glory of the act. You must content yourself with your child's happiness instead of your child's gratitude. It looks from here like that's going to be the case with much of one's parenting career anyway, so it's good to get in some practice early. And I'm no expert, but there may even be something Christian about that.

Pay Some Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain - David at De Gustibus wonders, " Is Santa Claus a tool for the skeptic or the believer?" and comes down, I think, on the side of the former. I think that's right. It may be one of the things behind Eve's hostility to the concept of Santa Claus. First, it's competition for her own preferred (sorry, Eve!) Fictional Benefactor; Second, it's training in eventually throwing off belief in Fictional Benefactors. Me, I may be Godless, but I'm not a member in the League of the Militant Godless (as I suspect David is). Mrs. Offering is bringing up the kids to believe in God, with equivocal success so far, and that doesn't bother me a bit. Dammit, when I was a boy we had to work at atheism and agnosticism. We walked uphill in the snow - both ways! - to doubt the cogito! Nobody handed us disbelief on an hors d'oeuvre tray like these lazy brats you see nowadays, with their video games and their piercings!

But I lost the thread there. Thing is, as a parent, and still learning how to do this thing, I think two things are crucial: childhood enchantment, and childhood dis-enchantment. I think both the belief in Santa and seeing through that belief are valuable. It's why the one thing I do agree with Eve on (regarding Santa!) is that parents shouldn't work to prolong a child's belief in Saint Nick beyond its natural life. The question on of the bloggers she cites was wrestling with - how do we tell Junior we lied about that stuff - isn't an issue for me: we don't. When Junior comes to us to tell us he's figured it out, we admit it. And then we can have a good discussion about why parents pretend there's a Santa and how proud we are that Junior figured out the trick and the ethics of blurting the news to Junior's younger sibling etc. But I think it's wrong to drag it out.

This has keener salience for me now than it did two years ago when Eve brought it up because Offering Boy is in Third Grade. He's starting to hear things from classmates and has broached the issue. My tack has been to reflect it back on him. "Why do they think that? Why do you think they're right or wrong?" My challenge is not to turn it into a test, actually. I gave up Santa in third grade, and I'm really rooting for him to do so too. It's Time, my inner dad voice says. Don't be a dumbbell! screams one of my less worthy personality facets. I got it by now! Why can't you?

So one of the things Santa is doing for me as a parent is slapping me in the face with the reminder that - news flash - every kid develops at his or her own rate. My son and his mother and I are in the middle of a time lapse lesson in evidence, internal consistency and the limits of the will to believe. We were each rather put out when the Post Office, in its idea of a nice gesture, sent a "reply from Santa" to the letter he and his sister sent. "He IS real!" my son exclaimed delightedly, on the basis of a pathetic form letter with some handscrawling at top and bottom. (Yes, this is another Not Abandoning Libertarianism item. Who'da thunkit?)

While I was typing this he wandered in looking for his chapstick, it being dry lip season. But he wasn't wearing his glasses. Damn.

A Few Bad Nashville Apples - I felt a little abashed after I called bullshit on country singer Chely Wright last week on little more than a hunch. But reader Timothy Hodler tips me to a proof of a systematic campaign of deception in the promotion of the song. Doesn't speak directly to the song's provenance, nor does the Tennessean really press the question of What did Chely Wright know and when did she know it. But I'll say two things: 1. Getting fired from the fan club of a singer with no record contract has to constitute "hitting rock bottom." (The guy works on Wall Street too. Move your money into an index fund.) 2. By the time this is over, I bet it will turn out the chick Wright says flipped her off didn't even have chemical weapons. 3. Shut up! I said two things, just like I said I would. I simply happen to also be saying a third thing. That's a bonus!

Wait, what was it? Oh yeah. This story really fits with the recent discovery that most FCC complaints come from the members of a single organization.

Things Best Done in the Dark - Cropp and Williams hashed out a deal last night, apparently. Programming notes and quick sportsblogging at The Agitator.

Mail of Fame - Stadium deal mail, in response to my request for honor roll nominations. Greg Pearson:

Someone in an on-line forum I read said that Wayne Huzienga built the Marlin's stadium with his own money. Of course, the poster was a pro-stadium conservative, so he may be conveniently omitting a sweetheart land deal or something. I could look it up myself, but I don't have a blog, so I don't have to.

Crap, does this mean I have to look it up? Because I'm hoping to make an early bedtime. Five minutes with Google comes back ANSWER UNCLEAR - TRY AGAIN LATER. Greg continues:

If you can swallow the offense to your libertarian principles, you might also consider adding Green Bay to your honor roll. True, the city owns the stadium. But they also own the team. While cities owning businesses is very anti-libertarian, it does mean that their stadium is not a taxpayer give-away, since the financial benefits of the stadium go back to the city rather than to some third-party owner.

Yes, and it roots the team in that locale, which removes it as a weapon to shake down other cities, which is why the sports leagues are so dead set against replicating the Green Bay model. (The NFL forbids it for any other team, and other leagues may also.)

Michael Lee writes that:

Bill Davidson of the Detroit Pistons built the Palace of Auburn Hills (one of the most financially successful arenas in all of sports) on his own (and his investors') dime. Or dimes

And a great cage match facility too! But seriously, folks, amplifying Michael's point, Your Talking Dog writes

Two of the biggest value hoops teams-- the Lakers and the Knicks-- both own their arenas (via the vast media empires that in turn own them; Bertelsman IIRC for the Lakers and Cablevision for the Knicks). Owning your hall tends to make your team MORE valuable; but hey-- its about the short run, right?

Amazingly, while New York confronts its OWN largesse to a billionaire operation now (and that billionaire FROM NEW JERSEY, no less), Mayor Billionaireberg is painting the Dolans (who are villains, except for THIS) as villains, for "selfishly" trying to protect their turf (and the West Side of Manhattan... and nearly a billion dollars for a city that can't afford this...) by sponsoring the oopposition to the Jets Stadium (an arrangement so perverse, parking will be in New Jersey and transit by ferry... not even TAILGATING!) Part of the shtick to sell this bullshit is that it will enhance the Olympic bid; it will, of course, KILL the Olympic bid (the Olympic poo-bahs want the stadium near the Olympic village-- preferably WALKING DISTANCE-- and not across a river and the world's most congested midtown streets.) But-- Woody Johnson's a friend of Mike, so... you know...

Interestingly, Republicans have been the big whores about this sort of thing here, be it Rudy's taxpayer giveaways to the Yankees and Mets, or this... by contrast, the despised Democrat Dinkins cut a GREAT DEAL for the City on the tennis center: the City spent NOTHING! And yet, naturally, Giuliani vilified him for it

Scott Lemieux mentions another candidate:

I don't know enough about the details of the deal to know if he qualifies fully--he may have gotten some land cheap--but the new baseball stadium in San Fanscisco was built with almost entirely private money, so I think Peter McGowan deserves a slot on your list somewhere.

He's got one. Go Peter McGowan!

The Constant Variety of Sport Subventions - Linda Cropp has scheduled the stadium issue on tomorrow's City Council agenda. I suspect that the deal will go through, as most of these do. At bottom, you're asking Democrats to vote against a big public works project, and to eschew new taxes. It's not unheard of, but is nevertheless rarely observed in the wild. Off Wing Opinion has a cogent summation of the pragmatic reasons it's too bad:

. . . it's probably important to note that the real reasons for opposing the stadium are the negative effects of the gross reciepts tax (driving small to medium sized businesses out of the city), as well as the fiscal risk that public financing poses to the District budget in future years (if there's a shortfall in the funding mechanism, the balance has to come out of the general budget).

Top links (filched from Eric): the Sunday Post's account of last Tuesday's meltdown; the Post's latest report on the Cropp-Williams negotiations. For the record, I'm against such projects on principle. I'd be less against this deal if the only taxes were the ones on the ticket sales. Don't want to pay that one? Don't go to the game. The gross receipts tax is not just unjust - taking money by force from one set of businesses to give to another set - it's bad political economy. All other things being equal, it will tend to drive businesses out of DC into Maryland and Virginia, which is the last thing DC needs. Considering that one of the justifications offered for the stadium is that it will spur development, it seems counterproductive to finance it with a provision that will depress development.

But I suspect Steve Czaban and Max Sawicky will, in their different ways, prove to be winners here. Mark my words: costs will exceed $700 million and the City will have to raid the general fund to make good on the overruns.