The Clash Referendum:Of course, we don't really believe in democracy for the wogs, so this won't happen. But it is a great idea from the POV of finding a way to back out with face saved.
... why don't we let the Iraqis democratically vote us out of Iraq? Let's announce that we will abide by the will of the Iraqi people as expressed in a national referendum on, say, June 30. The ballot will have just one question on it:
Should we stay or should we go?
If the Iraqis vote 'go,' then we go (within, say, 60 days). In leaving, we give the Arab world an impressive object lesson in how the United States of America believes in democracy and the rule of law. We leave with our honor intact.
If they vote 'stay,' well, then we're stuck there, but at least we've shown the world we're wanted.
Greg Cochran came up with the idea.
A New Iraq Exit Strategy
This is brilliant:
The March for Women's Lives
... er yeah, whatever. As if some folks are against women living, or having lives. Anyway, since I went, I figure I might as well put down a few thoughts, even though late.
I went to the march. Living in Baltimore this was not particularly hard. Going to a march like this is much like voting: it impresses people who believe in the civics-class version democracy. I figure to earn a certain street cred with socialists, since I was at the '92 march too. And I wanted to make sure there was at least one libertarian there, flying the flag of liberty (Gadsden), to show that self-ownership is not merely a socialist idea. They got it from us, the liberals, way back before they stole the label and corrupted it to mean "milquetoast socialist".
The march was a lot better organized and funded than the antiwar marches of last year. There were a few fringe lefty groups that I noticed, but not that many. Whoever it was putting it on shelled out massive bucks. All down the mall, on both sides, were these rented big-screens -- really big, like 30 feet by 20 or so -- with the 18 wheelers used to haul them in. Perhaps 8 or 10 of them. Those can't be cheap -- renting a crummy little 1280x1024 beamer for a weekend business conference is $10k. How much are massive TVs? Hard to know - $100k/day? More? That's a million right there.
There were a huge quantity of printed signs being handed out for free at the metro. And then more signs on the mall. Thousands -- would have been enough if 1M people showed. Again, even at a dollar a sign this was fairly serious money.
Anyway, we got to the mall and I unfurled the mighty Gads. Very quickly I met a libertarian, but he turned out to be a tinfoil hat type. Gah. Well, I got the thing after the peace march last year, because I wanted to meet and talk to the libertarians, not socialists. Later on I met two interesing normal libertarians - one worked at Cato. So, it worked.
I walked around, not really listening to the dumb speeches; some of the speakers had a libertarian tone, though, and that was good. Most were socialists, pity. I got in a good circuit of the crowd, though, from several hundred feet from the stage (it would have been very hard to get any closer in the throng), to the very back of the crowd, which went back almost to the Hill.
I ran into a lesbian couple from my climbing gym. That was cool. Wonder how many other folks I know who were there but I didn't run into?
After this, some more boredom while the blatherers blathered, then we got to marching. The prolife people were out in fairly good numbers, and there was the standard silly crowd stuff on both sides. Chanting: "Prolife/it's a lie/you don't care if women die"; the smarter prolife using megaphones to subvert the chant by rhyming in "you believe in genocide" at the end.
I was walking on the far left edge of the river of women, so both sides could see my flag. One guy seemed to recognize it and started yelling at me, so I tried to go talk to him, but the cops (who were numerous) along that particular stretch of road were not letting marchers close to the protestors, and pulled me back.
Later on there was a black prolife group with explicit signage relating planned parenthood to nazis and the KKK. Charming.
The crowd was huge; very impressive. And that's the point. I got some good pictures of things, but no shot of me. Oh well, I'm sure shots exist out there. Garth at America's Outback was here in the core the day before the march, and got a shot of me and the flag.
I went to the march. Living in Baltimore this was not particularly hard. Going to a march like this is much like voting: it impresses people who believe in the civics-class version democracy. I figure to earn a certain street cred with socialists, since I was at the '92 march too. And I wanted to make sure there was at least one libertarian there, flying the flag of liberty (Gadsden), to show that self-ownership is not merely a socialist idea. They got it from us, the liberals, way back before they stole the label and corrupted it to mean "milquetoast socialist".
The march was a lot better organized and funded than the antiwar marches of last year. There were a few fringe lefty groups that I noticed, but not that many. Whoever it was putting it on shelled out massive bucks. All down the mall, on both sides, were these rented big-screens -- really big, like 30 feet by 20 or so -- with the 18 wheelers used to haul them in. Perhaps 8 or 10 of them. Those can't be cheap -- renting a crummy little 1280x1024 beamer for a weekend business conference is $10k. How much are massive TVs? Hard to know - $100k/day? More? That's a million right there.
There were a huge quantity of printed signs being handed out for free at the metro. And then more signs on the mall. Thousands -- would have been enough if 1M people showed. Again, even at a dollar a sign this was fairly serious money.
Anyway, we got to the mall and I unfurled the mighty Gads. Very quickly I met a libertarian, but he turned out to be a tinfoil hat type. Gah. Well, I got the thing after the peace march last year, because I wanted to meet and talk to the libertarians, not socialists. Later on I met two interesing normal libertarians - one worked at Cato. So, it worked.
I walked around, not really listening to the dumb speeches; some of the speakers had a libertarian tone, though, and that was good. Most were socialists, pity. I got in a good circuit of the crowd, though, from several hundred feet from the stage (it would have been very hard to get any closer in the throng), to the very back of the crowd, which went back almost to the Hill.
I ran into a lesbian couple from my climbing gym. That was cool. Wonder how many other folks I know who were there but I didn't run into?
After this, some more boredom while the blatherers blathered, then we got to marching. The prolife people were out in fairly good numbers, and there was the standard silly crowd stuff on both sides. Chanting: "Prolife/it's a lie/you don't care if women die"; the smarter prolife using megaphones to subvert the chant by rhyming in "you believe in genocide" at the end.
I was walking on the far left edge of the river of women, so both sides could see my flag. One guy seemed to recognize it and started yelling at me, so I tried to go talk to him, but the cops (who were numerous) along that particular stretch of road were not letting marchers close to the protestors, and pulled me back.
Later on there was a black prolife group with explicit signage relating planned parenthood to nazis and the KKK. Charming.
The crowd was huge; very impressive. And that's the point. I got some good pictures of things, but no shot of me. Oh well, I'm sure shots exist out there. Garth at America's Outback was here in the core the day before the march, and got a shot of me and the flag.
Sexed Politics
Fred Reed can be brilliant; read this, be pleasingly amused, and ponder:
Women and men want very different things and therefore very different worlds. Men want sex, freedom, and adventure; women want security, pleasantness, and someone to care about (or for) them. Both like power. Men use it to conquer their neighbors whether in business or war, women to impose security and pleasantness.Billy Beck has made much the same point (anyway I think it was him... my hazy memory is not enough for google): women are evolved to have different minds than men. This informs a different politics, which is not favorable for liberty in a democratic context.
Military Power is not Constructive
I sent Jim Henley a comment on his recent piece on What to Do About North Korea, and he was kind enough to mention me. But I did not have in mind only, or even primarily, military power. Rather, what will be needed when the state in North Korea implodes is "soft" power - money, know-how, organization. Yes, some ability to break heads will probably be useful. But that's just a small part of what "nation building" entails.
This is what I said:
Of course I agree with your prescription - pull out, ignore them, and be nice. However, I disagree somewhat with your analysis of what "we" might do if somehow we did come to conquer Korea.
We'd turn 'em over to the South Koreans. Yes, the North is a basket case and all that. But we have people right there, on the ground, who speak Korean, who look Korean, who are Korean - and who are, basically, on our side. Capitalism, democracy, etc. And they are, by world standards, rich enough to help significantly. The model here should be East Germany if it is anything.
The contrast to the situation in Iraq is worth mentioning in this context. Part of the reason we're losing there is that we have no Arabic nations that are friendly enough to help us. We only have some bought states, and hirelings are not friends.
Of course, I am not sanguine on the ability of any outsiders to conquer North Korea militarily. Rather, Kim Jong Il, who has near-zero legitimacy, will eventually lose his hold on the tiger. Then he will be overthrown, and change will come.
This is what I said:
Of course I agree with your prescription - pull out, ignore them, and be nice. However, I disagree somewhat with your analysis of what "we" might do if somehow we did come to conquer Korea.
We'd turn 'em over to the South Koreans. Yes, the North is a basket case and all that. But we have people right there, on the ground, who speak Korean, who look Korean, who are Korean - and who are, basically, on our side. Capitalism, democracy, etc. And they are, by world standards, rich enough to help significantly. The model here should be East Germany if it is anything.
The contrast to the situation in Iraq is worth mentioning in this context. Part of the reason we're losing there is that we have no Arabic nations that are friendly enough to help us. We only have some bought states, and hirelings are not friends.
Of course, I am not sanguine on the ability of any outsiders to conquer North Korea militarily. Rather, Kim Jong Il, who has near-zero legitimacy, will eventually lose his hold on the tiger. Then he will be overthrown, and change will come.
It's Not Nam, But It'll Do
Something for the chickenhawks to read: It's Not Nam, But It'll Do by the War Nerd, Gary Brecher. He cracks me up.
Libertarian Purity Test
Since the meme is going 'round again, I thought I'd report my thoughts on the Libertarian Purity Test.
First off, my scores. If I take the test without reading the questions closely, I score 160. No sweat.
If I take the test skeptically, reading every question tightly and only agreeing when there is no possible way I can see to answer the question "No", then I score 61. An example of this is the word "abolish". To me "abolition" has the connation of a legislative act that applies universally. As an anarchist, though, I am willing to let other people have what I regard as politically-incorrect institutions. So consider q63: "Should the state be abolished?" Under the reading of "should" where "I should" or "we should" do something, I do not want to abolish all states; to do so would mean at minimum (a) war with every state in the world, (b) an army to make that war, and (c) contradiction, as you cannot supply such an army without taxation, conscription, and generally an iron-fisted state.
If the question read, "do you hope that the state peacefully fades away", then I would answer "Yes".
Generally, a lot of the questions have one or more of the following problems:
Libertarian thought has little to say about how third parties interact. It says what the individual should do - not coerce others. It doesn't say what to do when you find someone else coercing someone. Yes, it's admirable to help; some libertarians think it is necessary, but not all. It is not morally required. So it has nothing to say about what we should, or should not, do for people not in our state.
Furthermore, the very notion of coercion fades away gradually as you get to very small states. Consider a most-nearly-anarchic USA where counties were the states (i.e., they have the power to initiate coercion, and a monopoly), and the states and Federal government existed only as fully voluntary bodies which the counties could opt in or opt out of freely. In this scenario, an individual would have a choice of many counties to live in without changing his job. Practically speaking, this would be near anarchy, since the counties would be able to compete to be nice places to live in. Although technically they would be states, the degree to which their laws would be "coercion" would be far less than currently is the case, because "love it or leave it" would begin to have real force.
Of course, the right to secede ought to hold universally, right down to individuals and their property - that's what anarchy is. If the state can take your house, you are not free. Still, competition between counties, and small-scale democracy in them, would make the typical predations of large states (taxation, inflation, regulation) very rare in such a system.
As a measure of what I believe libertarianism is about, the test is quite lacking. I can do better than that easily. Hmm.
First off, my scores. If I take the test without reading the questions closely, I score 160. No sweat.
If I take the test skeptically, reading every question tightly and only agreeing when there is no possible way I can see to answer the question "No", then I score 61. An example of this is the word "abolish". To me "abolition" has the connation of a legislative act that applies universally. As an anarchist, though, I am willing to let other people have what I regard as politically-incorrect institutions. So consider q63: "Should the state be abolished?" Under the reading of "should" where "I should" or "we should" do something, I do not want to abolish all states; to do so would mean at minimum (a) war with every state in the world, (b) an army to make that war, and (c) contradiction, as you cannot supply such an army without taxation, conscription, and generally an iron-fisted state.
If the question read, "do you hope that the state peacefully fades away", then I would answer "Yes".
Generally, a lot of the questions have one or more of the following problems:
- they lack context: I want free immigration into the USA after abolishing Federal taxation, not before. The order matters.
- they use "we" incautiously: I do think "we" (meaning: the USA federal government) spends too much on anti-poverty. The correct level is zero. But "we" (the society of people that live in the USA), spend about the right amount. I certainly don't think that "we" should, could, or would abolish welfare under the latter reading.
- they use "government" to mean "the state": in anarchist thought the protection agencies, judging agencies, etc will "govern" the people. Criminals will be hunted, caught, and brought to justice. This is "government".
- they don't take account of the decentralist aspect of libertarian thought
Libertarian thought has little to say about how third parties interact. It says what the individual should do - not coerce others. It doesn't say what to do when you find someone else coercing someone. Yes, it's admirable to help; some libertarians think it is necessary, but not all. It is not morally required. So it has nothing to say about what we should, or should not, do for people not in our state.
Furthermore, the very notion of coercion fades away gradually as you get to very small states. Consider a most-nearly-anarchic USA where counties were the states (i.e., they have the power to initiate coercion, and a monopoly), and the states and Federal government existed only as fully voluntary bodies which the counties could opt in or opt out of freely. In this scenario, an individual would have a choice of many counties to live in without changing his job. Practically speaking, this would be near anarchy, since the counties would be able to compete to be nice places to live in. Although technically they would be states, the degree to which their laws would be "coercion" would be far less than currently is the case, because "love it or leave it" would begin to have real force.
Of course, the right to secede ought to hold universally, right down to individuals and their property - that's what anarchy is. If the state can take your house, you are not free. Still, competition between counties, and small-scale democracy in them, would make the typical predations of large states (taxation, inflation, regulation) very rare in such a system.
As a measure of what I believe libertarianism is about, the test is quite lacking. I can do better than that easily. Hmm.
La Griffe du Lion
Of my daily reads, two rise above: Sailer and Henley (see right). From Sailer's site, I got to the fascinating yet damningly crimethinkish La Griffe du Lion. Here's stuff to make a liberal scream:
The fundamental law of sociologyI've been meaning to post a review of la Griffe site since I discovered it (and had to read everything - sadly, he (or she) doesn't post very often). But now Sailer has saved me the work and put up this overview on vdare.
If, as he begins this essay, the reader finds himself unacquainted with the fundamental law of sociology, he should not be reproached, for the law is first about to be articulated. It is a difficult task that we undertake, though in fact it is undemanding and straightforward. It is difficult because those who will welcome our results eagerly are among the most perfidious of our species, while those who reject them will do so out of antipathy not discernment. Sandwiched between the devil and the fuzzy-minded are the learned and sagacious readers of La Griffe du Lion, to whom we address our remarks.
The fundamental law of sociology is a summary of hundreds of observations. It asserts that:On large-scale tests of reasoning ability, the observed mean difference between non-Hispanic whites and African Americans is 1.1 + 0.2 standard deviation.The observation is so unerringly reproducible, it justly earns the appellation, law.
Frank Rich: Mel Gibson Forgives Us for His Sins
Found in the NYT:
Mr. Gibson's movie had almost as large an opening week as 'The Lord of the Rings.' The star has won his battle. He's hotter than ever in Hollywood, a town whose first commandment is that you never argue with a hit. ('If Hitler did a movie with these numbers, we'd give him his next deal,' one Jewish mogul told me in a phone conversation this week.)Rich sure does feel bad about that movie.
Chernobyl
Via Billy Beck, a fascinating tour of the Chernobyl "dead zone".
People had to leave everything, from photos of their grandparents to cars. Their clothes, cash and passports has been changed by state authorities. This is incredible, people lived, had homes, country houses, garages, motorcyles, cars, money, friends and relatives, people had their life, each in own niche and then in a matter of hours this world fall in pieces and everything goes to dogs and after few hours trip with some army vehicle one stands under some shower, washing away radiation and then step in a new life, naked with no home, no friends, no money, no past and with very doubtful future.Lots of photos.
Still Pinned Down
On Jan 2, I criticized Mark Steyn for predicting the Iraqi resistance would collapse since Saddam was captured. Well, it's six weeks later, plus. It appears he's wrong... but we must wait a bit longer for definative proof. Reevaluation in two weeks, I promise.
Meanwhile, the War Nerd sends nyaa-nyaas to similarly wrong correspondents:
There's another new War Nerd too, yeah buddy! Haiti.
Meanwhile, the War Nerd sends nyaa-nyaas to similarly wrong correspondents:
So what does it say that they’ve been doing these ambushes every single day for months, most of the time hitting us hard, killing GIs, without killing Iraqi civilians or getting caught? Simple—it means everybody, and I repeat: EVERYBODY in town is with them. Not just passively, but actively helping them. The Iraqis are our enemies. The people we’re there to liberate hate our guts.I don't completely agree with Brecher - I don't think the hate is quite as universal as he makes out. But enough of them hate us, and the rest are cowed into silence or complicity. We won't be there in a few years. Whoever wins the struggle for the Ring, will be.
There's another new War Nerd too, yeah buddy! Haiti.
Abraham Lincoln Brigade
From wikipedia:
But the business of the USA - the government - is as follows: "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". It is not to "establish our rule over others", "ensure international Tranquility", "provide for the UN's defence", or "promote the welfare of foreigners". These goals may be good goals, or maybe not. Either way, they aren't what our government is empowered to do.
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was a loose organization of American volunteers supporting or fighting for the anti-fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War.The Lincolns are the canonical example of what I am talking about when I say it is perfectly fine for people that want to try to save the world to do so. Voluntarily, using their own lives or money.
... the brigade was made up of volunteers from all walks of American life, and from all socio-economic classes. It was the first racially integrated American fighting force, and the first to have an African-American officer, Oliver Law, led white soldiers.
American volunteers began organizing and arriving in Spain in 1936. ... By early 1937, its numbers had swelled from an initial 96 volunteers to around 450 members.
The International Brigade was used by the Loyalist army for several battles in Spain. ...
The Brigade was a cause celebre in the United States, however. Liberal and socialist groups organized fund-raising activities and supply drives to keep the Brigade afloat. News of the Brigade's high casualty rate and bravery in battle made them romantic figures to an America concerned about the rise of Fascism around the world.
But the business of the USA - the government - is as follows: "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". It is not to "establish our rule over others", "ensure international Tranquility", "provide for the UN's defence", or "promote the welfare of foreigners". These goals may be good goals, or maybe not. Either way, they aren't what our government is empowered to do.
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