Porphyrogenitus

Fear Factor

2010-10-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

Speaking of this, wasn't that part of their political strategy? To not let a crisis go to waste because during it they could herd people into accepting things people otherwise wouldn't go for?

Projection is rife with this Administration.

Consistency

2010-08-17T19:03:00.001-07:00

Always remember that the governing class is completely consistent. They consistently have two standards.

The Over and Under: The Mosque will be completed before the new WTC/Freedom Tower/"One World" Tower/whatever they end up calling it in the end. The Orthodox Church won't be rebuilt.

2010-07-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

Not necessarily because of the specific issue, but I'm really keen on polls with this breakdown:

But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it.

We need a constant stream of polls showing "N% of the general electorate has this view, X% of the political class believes the opposite."

Not because the majority is always right, but because it's absolutely critical to repeatedly demonstrate on a range of issues how detached the governing class is from the people they govern, how alienated they are from the society they rule.

Which is also why, alas, such breakdowns are unlikely to get widespread mention in the Official Press.

On this one I actually agree with the majority of the country, but "to fence, or not to fence" is not actually the point here. I'm sure there are issues where I'll disagree with the majority of the electorate, and agree with the governing class (though prolly not many issues). But still I think that, even here I think the majority is wrong, putting in everyone's face the fact that the disconnect between the governed and the governing class has become so vast is an absolute precondition to addressing a lot of the problems we have. I don't think the majority is always right, but I do think it will be...informative...for the majority to learn so decisively how often their leaders think they're wrong. Then we can all decide through democratic vote which group is really the most fsk'd up.

Lustration to follow! épuration légale!

Blogchair Psychoanalysis

2010-07-29T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'm not getting a soft-spot for the current Administration, far from it, most of my opinions of it I don't post here, but I still hold it in a minimum of high regard.

That said, some criticisms are just mindless. People on the Right such as myself and, I presume, the fine people at American Thinker, properly despise it when the Left subjects conservatives (either politicians or as a whole) to distant armchair psychoanalysis. So why are they engaging in it?

It doesn't seem to be along the lines of what I admit is one of my favorite strategeries, that of hoisting them on their own petard, subjecting them (the President in this case, the Left in general) to the same standards they subject everyone else to to demonstrate how fail and inconsistent the standards are. No, that piece seems perfectly earnest on its own terms. Right down to concluding "adult children of alcoholics... keep them out of the White House"

Well, a good Liberal, Left, Progressive, whatever writer could - and should - use my aforementioned favorite tactic in response to that: Does the author really mean Ronald Reagan should have been kept from the White House? Reagan was also an adult child of an alcoholic, and, unlike Obama, experienced it up close.

Criticisms of these sort, blogchair psychoanalytics, are insipid and self-defeating regardless of who engages in them. They do nothing to advance the debate, and a lot to poison it. I mean, c'mon, who is fooling who here? Nobody is fooling anyone but themselves. People who think Obama or Reagan should have never been President don't do so because they're the product of alcoholic households or any other psychoanalytic reason, and nobody who does think either were or are fine Presidents are going to be convinced otherwise by bogus arguments of this sort. The psychoanalitic deligitimization comes after already deciding they don't like their policies. It's never "you know, I really like what this guy's trying to accomplish and support his policies, but he's probably got this deep-seated mental disorder I attribute to him. He might be unfit for office by reason of crazy."

You know what would be a fun experiment? Find 1000 people who approve of the President, have them read that article, and see how many changed their minds and now think he's unfit for the office. Would there be one such person?

Men at Work

2010-07-20T16:12:00.000-07:00

A snapshot of something that's not usually so overt and generally doesn't work as conciously:

What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

This is the underlaying mentality, almost never expressed at all, much less so starkly.

Compare with:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

Quite candid, really.

Oh, and: Eric Alterman was on JournoList, and I think its predecessor, and no doubt will be on whatever succeeds it. Remember that next time you're tempted to take his claims of how stories in the Official Press are or are not formulated seriously. Though there is always this.

Quotes I Stumbled Across

2010-07-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

Written by "elf" in a comment at CNAS:

My contempt is so deep I've moved past rage into calm.

Which closed with:

Don't take it personally. It's not you. It's all of you.

Holding the Gun and Pulling the Trigger

2010-07-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

A response to this worthy post at Classical Values:

1) It is quite often helpful knowing the origin of an action, motivated by the ideas behind it, in order to combat it. Especially when the action often comes in the form of spreading concepts it advocated.

2) Holding X Cultural Marxist (either originator or successor) accountable in debate is not the same as jailing them or even outlawing them or even their ideas. It's part of responding to speech with speech.

3) I'm pretty sure you know both of the above, but your recent post on the subject could be clearer, implying as it does clearing their names. If for example Marx's ideas when put into practice tend to lead to what they have always led to, one can and should point out that there seems to be something wrong with Marxism (to put it mildly), not *just* with their practitioners. Otherwise it tends towards lending credence to the oft-asserted claim that "it wasn't really Marxism" or "that's not what Marx intended" - sure it may not be, but if the story always ends the same way, maybe the author is subject to a critique?

4) If people say "I advocate that X, Y, and Z be done to tear down this capitalist society we dislike," and then they teach people to do X, Y, an Z, and who then teach others, &tc. &tc, that's not just creating an idea, that's putting it into action. Especially if the ideas themselves revolve around marching through cultural institutions in this way. The hands of people like Marcuse aren't clean. To continue the analogy you initiated, if they're holding the gun and pulling the trigger, then it's not the same as sitting in a institute somewhere and imagining how one might bring down a society, then others stumble across your texts through no fault of your own and put the ideas into practice while you're at saying "no, no, I was only describing how one could do it, I wasn't telling you to do it" or at least maintaining a discrete neutrality. The members of the Frankfurt School may all be dead today, but they were the first not only to come up with their ideas, but to put them into practice, since that practice consists precisely in spreading certain attitudes and belief-sets.

5) Thus the best analogy might be akin to "Patient Zero" of AIDS, who kept deliberately spreading it after he was told what it was. Even then it's perhaps an inapt analogy, because at first he spread it unaware of what he was doing. These people knew from the start.

Israel's Strategic Failure

2010-06-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

My cold-blooded and deranged response to Walter Russell Meade's post on the subject.

The real strategic failure is that Israel continues to start measures and then backpedal in a way that produces all the negative consequences of action without any of the achievable goals being produced:
Going into Lebanon and then later Gaza in force to root out the problems at their source, and then stopping and withdrawing in the face of the usual international reaction. Their international reputation would have hardly been worse if they had finished the job. Anyone who supported the initial policy in each case has to be disapointed by the ultimate lack of fortitude to follow through with it (which was predictable to me as both these campaigns started, though I hoped I was wrong), and anyone who opposed Israel in these cases is quietly thanking their good fortune.

Yet as I said, the each unfolded predictably, every time, exactly as I have foreseen, because at bottom even - especially - the Israelis want to not only do the right thing, but what is actually worse be *seen* and *perceived* as doing the right thing. So when they go to cut the knot, they saw half way through and when the International Community's Greek Chorus shouts them down, they stop and back off, letting it regrow and metastasize, letting it feel it has the momentum, feel a sense of victory, and that the Winds of Change are on their side.

This inevitably leaves them with the worst of both worlds. Surely WRM knows Napoleon's saying that if you set out to take Vienna, TAKE VIENNA.

Probably the best strategic move Israel could do now is rename itself "North Korea" (while not adopting that nation's political ideology). Then they could do whatever they want, sink any ship, threaten and kill anyone they needed to, and the ever-so caring International Community wouldn't care one whit - except to urge "Caution" and "don't over-react" and "nobody should escalate the situation."

Anyhow, it's really all over now; as my mother said the other day about this, it's like a dying person connected to a respirator. Everyone knows what is to come, but no one knows when.

Or, in one of my favorite quotes, tragic in this context, "The non-inevitability of events we nevertheless know are bound to come."

It is non-inevitable: Something could change, in us, the broad us, the so-called civilized world. But do you think it will? In time? Since it hasn't yet, despite many wuss-slaps to the face by reality, when and under what circumstances do you think it will? Again: In time. In this case, in time for the Israelis, who one would think have sacrificed enough and been sacrificed enough to other's self-regard.

T.S. Eliot: "Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

These days it most, more than half, of the forces for evil in this world would be readily checked if it wasn't for these two sorts of people. But we let them hold the reins.

After Virtue Revisited Ia

2010-06-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

I'll have more to write on the updated version of "After Virtue," but until then there is this Spengler post independently supporting the idea that the enlightenment project of justifying morality has failed, at least with respect to Kant and his philosophical heirs. (D. Layman doesn't refer to other branches of this heritage in that particular post; MacIntyre does, and as I said I'll get back to him later).

Politics and the Arabic Language

2010-05-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Musing a bit further on this article, particularly this section:

Next, our counterterror adviser evokes the perverse logic behind the administration’s recent decision to censor words offensive to Muslims (which I closely explored in this PJM article):
Nor do we describe our enemy as “jihadists” or “Islamists” because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.
Inasmuch as he is correct in the first clause of that sentence — “jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community” — he greatly errs in the latter clause, by projecting his own notions of what constitutes “holy,” “legitimate,” and “innocent” onto Islam. In Islam, such terms are often antithetical to the Judeo-Christian/Western understanding. Indeed, the institution of jihad, according to every authoritative Muslim book on Islamic jurisprudence, is nothing less than offensive warfare to spread Sharia law, a cause seen as both “legitimate” and “holy” in Islam. As for “innocence,” by simply being a non-Muslim infidel, one is already guilty in Islam. Brennan understands the definition of jihad; he just has no clue of its application. So he is left fumbling about with a square peg that simply refuses to pass through a round hole.

Until the recent "troubles" it wasn't just Islamic jurisprudence that properly understood what the term Jihad meant; it was universally understood throughout not just Islam but all cultures that had contact with Islam to mean warfare, specifically directed at non-Muslims or those declared heretics and thus deemed to be un-Islamic.

In recent times Muslim spokesmen working in conjunction with the usual suspects of PoMo intellectuals/pseudo-scholars and progressives have attempted to re-define the term. But one needs only to pick up any book from the previous era that even tangentially touches on the subject to see the term used in its proper historic meaning. As a student of ByzantinoRoman history I know this full well. Thus Ibrahim is actually wrong when he says, almost reflecting the thinking of Edward Said, that his "dual Middle-East/Western background gives me the advantage to understand both the Islamicate and American mindsets equally." Previous generations of Westerners also understood the term Jihad properly. The ethnocentric projection Ibrahim rightly condemns is actually a post-modern and multiculturalist phenomenon, and thus a rather recent innovation. This might seem like a minor quibble, but it's critical to our understanding of the problems we face.

It would be more proper to say that the word "Crusade" has transformed from its original meaning than it is to say "Jihad" has. After all, we have such things as "crusades for peace" and "The Billy Graham Crusade," neither of which involve mobilizing armies to recover¹ lands from Islam by military means. Jihad has never ceased to mean what it means, however, up through the mobilization of Arabs to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets and down through the present, though we are asked to believe otherwise. But we are told we cannot use the word "Crusade" because it is inflamatory, while also being instructed to re-conceive our understanding of calls for Jihad. This is a form of mental manipulation inflicted upon us not by our enemies, but by ourselves - or at any rate one wing of our own civilization.

And of course many young people, knowing little, having come of age in this era of degenerate pseudo-scholarship, educated by the instructors they have been educated, sincerely believe Jihad does not mean what it means. This is one means of intellectually disarming us, and leading people into accepting the received wisdom of progressivism on the sources and causes of this conflict, rather than connecting it to history. It helps open them to the conclusions of a Said or a Fisk or even their slightly-less-radical imitators: That we are to blame.

Redfining terms by those with an ideological axe to grind is almost invariably aimed at controling the thinking of others.

¹Yes, recover: Crusades, aweful as many Crusaders behaved, were launched as counter-attacks. To call any but the 4th aggressive is akin to calling D-Day agressive. But, in this degenerate age, that history, however bad it was even told "straight," has been corrupted for ideological ends.

A Plague of Toads

2010-05-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

WRM has a decent post on postwar/postimperial Britain's international situation and what to do about it. The first part is essentially a factual narrative and analysis, the second part a recommended policy for Britain.

Arguably it's a policy worth attempting. I'm not sure it will be attempted, in part because the new British government is built on foundation that does not share some of WRM's premises. If it was attempted, there is of course no guarantee it would be effective, but life, and policies, are not about guarantees.

There are three other policies that could be followed. One: The LibDem dream policy of integrating Britain into the Franco-German project, with Britain signing on to the "ever greater union" as envisioned by the Franco-Germans. Britain would stop becoming an "obstacle" and would have apparent/illusory influence. This influence would only be superficial, however, as it would consist of getting along by going along and not making waves.

The second option would be "splendid isolation," withdrawal from the EU itself. This does not have to be as catastrophic as one might think. WRM's article mentions Norway and the fact that Norway is not a member of the EU. But Norway has trading agreements with the EU, and other ties, and gets on fine.

The third option, the least likely option (and thus naturally my preferred option) is revitalization of the Commonwealth as an economic and political/international force: The commonwealth as a free trade area which also attempts to coordinate a common foreign policy wherever policy. Frankly I wish that this had been the course followed in the wake of WWII: Instead of America insisting upon effectively neutering the British Commonwealth, encouraging its transformation into a free trade zone and joining it, along with the Philippines and Japan. What I think of as the best is almost always the least likely/possible, but such is life. Plus, if America were to join the Commonwealth, arguably Britain's international influence would not be increased: It would instead just be the reverse side of the same coin that has integrating itself with Franco-German EU policy on the obverse. Only a Commonwealth Free Trade Zone that has Britain as its first-among-equals would potentially increase British influence in world affairs, and as long as India keeps growing as fast as it is, Britain's premere status would necessarily be temporary.

Odds of a revitalized Commonwealth, with or without the U.S. joining, lay somewhere between slim and none. Which leaves Britain with the other three options: WRM's, Harmonized Borgism, or Splendid Isolation. For better or worse, if one wants Britain to have more influence in international affairs (which is what WRM concentrates), neither the HBism nor SIism will achieve that. WRM's outline is the only policy within the realm of the possible that could produce this.

Of course, there are other goods than international influence. Britain might decide the best thing to do would be to avoid getting entangled in such as much as possible and working on its own domestic problems. In which case Splendid Isolation would be the best policy: Being drawn into ever closer union within the EU naturally would involve participating in whatever disputes it has, both within the EU and with the broader world. Britain would not be entirely isolated if it left the EU anyhow: It would still be a member of NATO, for example, and in any case should wake from the Europe-wide revere that war is over and one need not have the capacity to truly defend one's own interests: It should shift its spending priorities to insure it will have the capacity to deter, and if necessary defeat, Argentina again, should that prove necessary.

Depictions of Mohammed

2010-05-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

While I see no good reason to deliberately insult people's beliefs simply for the sake of insulting them, there are pre-eminent reasons to stand up for our own belief, and to take a stand against threats of violence, against attempted intimidation, even by a minority within a community. Indeed, that is all the more reason to not be silent: We cannot let a violent minority of any faith or community determine the terms of debate, and effectively hijack it and become its de facto spokesmen.

It is simply not true that depictions of Mohammed have not been allowed in Islam, as the above pictures demonstrate.

If we do nothing, and if moderate, reasonable Moslems do nothing, then our mental image of Mohammed must become this:

As it already is for many people.

In any case, here is my Mohammed for the day:

After Virtue Revisited I

2010-05-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

Long-time readers of whatever passes for my Blog at any given time know that in addition to Hayek I have a high regard for Alasdair MacIntyre's work. I picked up the 2007 edition of After Virtue. MacIntyre is most noteworthy for his description of the incommensurable demands of conflicting moral stances in modern times, arising out of the enlightenment-era reformulation of philosophy that, he says, discarded Aristotelian thinking and de-emphasized the virtues.

He has a compelling analysis and a good account for a foundation of virtuous ethics. However there are problems with aspects of what he says caused the strident, interminable and conceptually incommensurable nature of modern ethical dialogue.

There is teleological thinking in Mill, Kant, and Hobbes. Even Nietzsche has a Telos beyond "the will to power" for those who know where to look. Kant develops his own account of the virtues and their sources. However there might be in these philosophers a disconnection from the Aristotelian conception of the source and nature of both telos and virtue.

MacIntyre might be incorrect as to the exact nature of what is missing, what got lost, in what he describes as the fragments that became modernism. If so we could see him falling into some of the same pitfalls he deplores.

This does seem to be the case, and it is evident early in the current edition. On pp. xiv-xv he moves seamlessly from decrying "the dominant liberal view, [that] government is to be neutral towards rival conceptions of the human good, and yet in fact what liberalism promotes is a kind of institutional order that is inimical to the construction and sustaining of the types of communal relationship required for the best kind of human life" on the one hand to, in the very next paragraph, decrying the use of the state for coercive purposes, just as any classical liberal might.

This simply won't wash, it cannot be both ways, and this attitude reflects not so much an escape from the modern condition of confusion and contradictory aspirations on his part, but membership in it. State power is coercive power, and if it is used as the means through which an institutional order is constructed and sustained in the manner he advocates in the first instance, it will be coercive. Imposed conceptions of the good by the sovereign authority are likely not the droids he is looking for anyhow. These include state religions, Marxism itself, and even modern Liberalism itself. In most such cases we can see the development of a crisis of confidence in imposed conceptions of the good, resulting in a hollowing out. There are still many State Religions in European countries, but relatively few people sustain any belief in them. Putatively Marxist countries such as China and Vietnam don't hold any sincere belief in that conception of the good, either. There are some few places where the elites in charge of the imposed conception of the good maintain at least confidence in enforcing it, if not in the belief system itself (it can be hard to tell), but these are not places I think Alasdair MacIntyre would want to live: They are places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea*, and Burma.

What might be missing are alternate authorities and intermediary institutions that even the (liberal/modern) State defers to within their own sphere, and which people respect enough to give weight to their common account of the virtues. These were once predominantly religious authorities and institutions, and in those communities where such are still vital and living, traditional Aristotelian virtues arguably remain strongest (though with of course the breaches and problems. Few of these claim, as outsiders might commonly accuse, of being without vice).

at the start of the preface on page xvii MacIntyre writes that After Virtue came out of "a growing dissatisfaction with the conception of 'moral philosophy' as an independent and isolable area of enquiry." This is probably a true observation, however one of the flaws in how MacIntyre goes about his accounting of the virtues and his attempted revitalization of Aristotilianism is he retains his debt to Marx and Marxism. However, Marx was a bad economist (among other things), getting much wrong. Marx is economics for sociologists (I should know, having taken a Sociology course taught by Joel Rogers) and for philosophers. Marxist economics is very deficient.

This is where one must turn instead to Hayek. There are some who call themselves "Rawlsekians," combining Hayek and Rawls. However, I don't think this is satisfying, in part because I do not think Rawls' effort is ultimately convincing (except to the choir). "Hayintyrian" does not roll off the tongue or even the page very well, but in their accounts of the origins of and basis of an ethos, Hayek and MacIntyre mesh well together and each improves on the other's deficiencies. Hayek, following the lessons of Mises, has a much better understanding of economics than Marx, and because of that is able to develop concepts of spontaneous and extended order:

The Extended order "is a framework of institutions – economic, legal, and moral – into which we fit ourselves by obeying certain rules of conduct that we never made, and which we have never understood in the sense of which we understand how the things that we manufacture function" This "order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional & largely moral practices..."

MacIntyre may not properly understand that due to its nature and purpose, the modern State is ill-suited to serve as the vehicle for advancing a common conception of the good. However his insight, which is not his alone, that the liberal state dissolves and at times actively suppresses institutions and competing authorities that promote common conceptions of the good, is a worthy one. The liberal modern order, if it is not to destroy itself as MacIntyre implies, must exist within a moral framework that is not itself liberal, to paraphrase the thoughts of another.

*Which arguably does not impose the Marxist conception of the good, but whatever degenerate conception the Kims have developed.

I Win Ben Stein!

2010-05-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

I had a e-mail exchange with Win Ben Stein this weekend after watching him on the "Cost of Freedom" block saying he felt Socialism was inevitable in America. Obviously he wasn't cheering it, he just felt it was inevitable. Well I went to the trouble of looking up his e-mail and having a polite go at him: Yes, I can do polite.

I made a bit of fun of the usual way people start off such e-mails, about saying how they love someone's work and really admire them right before they launch into a vicious attack. Then I launched into my attack not on Mr. Stein but the assertion he made and its underlying premise.

I didn't figure I'd hear back from him: Heck I wasn't even sure I had his correct e-mail. But to my pleasant surprise he did write back, saying it was a great e-mail, before having a brief go at me. Well we went back and forth a bit over the weekend. I'll spare everyone the details except to say he was polite and brief and I rambled. I haven't heard from him since my last reply.

So I'm going to say I Win Ben Stein! I'll conclude that I convinced him with my brilliant arguments, while somewhere he's out there no doubt thinking I'm an ignoramus. So then we're both winners!

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

2010-05-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

Gordon Brown is accepting the inevitable in Britain. I wonder if I'll feel the same sympathy for BHO or Pelosi or Reid as I feel for Gordon Brown, when their time comes. I doubt it, because I'm too close to the mater while, howeverso much I admire and identify with Great Britain and wish it all the best and think neither GB nor Labour are good for it, really his situation is more tragic than anything else: A part of something, partly responsible, not apart from it, but none the less held nearly exclusively responsible for things everyone knew when he moved into No. 10 were almost bound to happen.
The real blame goes to Blair, but not for the reasons people dislike Blair, and neither is Blair entirely to blame for he two was and is part of a movement. But one he was more responsible for creating and leading than Brown is.

When Brown moved into the PM seat, pretty much everyone knew at the time that the sunlit days were over and the ship had entered stormy seas, and it would be very difficult for him to pilot Labour to another electoral success, given the difficulties that it was *already* *apparent* Britain was to face.

The fact that he's an unlovable man seems to have been at least as critical in the *dislike* people have for him as any responsibility he may have had as Chancellor (a job that, before the storm clouds appeared on the horizon just as he moved into the job he had always wanted, well until then all the opinion-leaders had praised him for how well he did. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi).

He didn't create the policies, though he surely supported and helped craft them. One man, even one Party, being held to account does not imply a solution if the institutions which are primarily responsible simply carry forward without being held accountable.

As that last link shows, these problems aren't just British in nature. We have them as well. Voting different politicians into office while these are not held accountable solves nothing.

Confidence is High

2010-05-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

From Walter Russel Mead's Blog:

Wretched as Washington is, Brussels is almost infinitely worse.

Well, that's inspiring, no?

This in a post where he's hoping the markets respond favorably to the EU's bailout of Greece and don't swing against the PIIGS.

It's a fairly vain hope once one recognizes how wretched "Brussels" is, but it may just work. Then, later, when the house of cards comes crashing down at some future date, we can all blame bankers again. Huzzah!

There's also this, for all those who think government is the only way we have to make the world a better place¹:

Ten years ago, the European Union with great fanfare unveiled the “Lisbon Agenda”, a ten-year action plan to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.

How'd that go?

It flopped. Europe is less of a factor today than it was ten years ago in the high-tech world.

Well, lets do emulate Europe, as so many want to do: It's working out so well for them, after all.

From his previous post on the subject:

The point of the protesters is that the rich should pay the costs of the economic crisis not the ‘blameless’ ordinary people whose only sin is to have voted for generations of demagogic politicians who promised to give them the moon and pay for it with other people’s money.

Nothing like that could ever happen here, at least...

¹As commenter "Roland" put it in a response to my post of the below at WindsofChange.

The Governments Have Learned from their Mistakes

2010-05-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

It's too easy to satirize the mocking of naive innocents such as Jonah Goldberg, to engage in the fun but unedifying art of tu quoque aimed at the well-meaning gentlemen who note market failure and imply the panacea: Good for what ails you! Got market failure? Government will cure it. Government failure? More government will cure it. Personal problems? Government is here to help you with all your needs.

We live in an era where some fringe cranks focus in an inchoate way on government failure, or the pitfalls of government solutions for perceived market failure.

Sophisticated people focus more on how we acting together in a socially-responsible way can fix the problems that irresponsible private actors have inflicted upon all of us. The enlightened main currents of opinion recognize that it is certainly annoying to clean up after these messes created by private individuals and institutions, but if we don't accept the burden, the costs to us all will be higher.

The trouble is, as sagacious as people like Kevin Drum are when compared to simple-minded people like Jonah Goldberg, these guardians of the main currents of enlightened opinion fail to think beyond stage one: Why is it that bankers won't learn from their mistakes? What incentive structures have been put in place or, as importantly, what has been demolished, so as to discourage them from learning from their mistakes?

Demolished might be too strong a word. Decayed, dissolved, deteriorated might all be better descriptions, as in a building not well maintained, as with much of our public infrastructure (oh, but shovel-ready will fix this as well!)

Here is the question they dislike most, as it reflects a shocking lack of faith in our ability to solve public problems through collective action: Have the institutions they favor demonstrated a better capacity for learning from their mistakes than the ones they mock? If not, why not?

Are California or Michigan or New York &tc doing better learning from their mistakes than Goldman Sachs is? Are they really? We mock the idea that bankers are, but is it a fair mockery? Or the gaunt, chilling laugh of those who are practically undead themselves?

Have the PIIGS learned from their mistakes? Really now, have they? Is there at least as much at stake here as there is in even the biggest "too big to fail" bank or corporation?

Those who think the problem was embedded in a previous Administration or one side of the aisle need to free their minds as well. The reassuring myth that it is all caused by having the wrong sort of people in government, and now we've got the right sort of master-minds involved; those who believe in government and have faith in its capacity to solve all problems, is one they may want to reconsider, and take a more historical view. If they can open their mind to untainted history.

A few points to keep in mind as they open their minds: Firstly, a group that swept into power asserting that they were going to make break with the failed policies of the past often use as one of their cudgels against those who object to their policies the fact that their policies are no different from that of the previous Administration's. This double-think has an old and dishonorable history, dating back at least to the Administration they most admire: FDR's, which has gone down in progressive history as a sharp contrast from the supposedly do-nothing lassez faire Hoover Administration, when the truth was "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started," as Rex Tugwell admitted.

Why is this ancient history important? Isn't it true that only cranks and nutters, usually on TV or Radio or at some obscure Think Tank, rave on about comparisons between Hoover and FDR? True, but ideological finger-pointing and sneering over this obscures rather than illuminates: It closes the mind you want open to engage in any reconsideration.

Exactly as it is meant to.

In this way, we lose track of the original task: Unravelling the big ball of string that has come down to us, in order to see where it leads us in answering our question: Why our are institutions, private as well as public, apparently no longer capable of learning from experience?

(Btw, how's fixing education working out for you? How has throwing money at the problem worked out for you? Do you retain faith in the same government that has complete and sole responsible for one District's public education system, the District of Columbia's, to solve the problem's of our country's education system? Where does DC rank in per-pupil spending? Has it become the shining jewel which the rest of the country should emulate?. Over the last, pick a time period, lets say 35 years, has government learned from its mistakes when it comes to the provision of education? And yet the wise are confident it will do the best of all possible jobs when it comes to, say, health care...or student loans...or home mortgages...or the auto industry).

Our enlightened, when they speak of society's problems and the need for "society" to address them, they always mean by the later government. <--- Non-sequitur inserted to keep in mind when considering all of this.Is their confident mocking laughter really warranted? From who's knee have the Banker's learned from since 1933 (or before)? Who shields them from the consequences of their own decisions? Who is shielding the rest of us from the consequences of ours? This confidence that we out here, private individuals and institutions, make mistakes, make blunders, but they are wise and will ever nudge us in the Correct Direction, save us from folly, and never lead us all into folly or, like lemmings, off a cliff (such as a cliff of unsustainable unfunded future mandates): Is it justified?

I assume the proper response is: If only we fallible members of the public would ever select the "correct" people to hold public trust, and never the "Right", all would be well: But again, it is our blundering that makes a mess out of their efforts on our behalf. We should not mock this confidence they have in their own ability, good intentions, and their sense that it is only the saboteurs and wreckers that constitute their political opposition who cause failures in government. But we should question this confidence as we untangle the ball of string that they have handed us in the form of opinion-leading Lippmanesque journalism and Schlessingeresque Court Historianism.

We might find that the tu quoque isn't a tu quoque at all, and that indeed it is their mindset that is the source of much of what they decry: That in the evolution of things, the problem is they have created a government that creates problems, then appoints itself to fix them, rinse and repeat ad infinatum, and that after sufficient iterations of this there is an utter displacement of responsibility. Who or what for example is really entirely to blame for the financial crisis? Both and all sides have some merit in the narratives they construct in order to point fingers at their despised boogiemen and hated political opponents. When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible, and this is the political economy we have created, and will deserve until we fix it "as a society."

If you know the solution, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. But if you think you know the solution with the confident mockery that some have, but the solution you have is a sham-solution, one that merely iterates the cycle again rather than breaking and reversing it, then you are not a better man at all, but the worst, however full of passionate intensity you may be.

Prominent Governor Gives Aid and Comfort to "Sedition"

2010-05-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

On March 2nd 1930 a prominent Governor of a major U.S. State gave the following speech. Be sure to check out the highlighted portions:

I have been asked to talk about the respective powers of the National and State Governments to rule and regulate, where one begins and the other ends. By some curious twist of the public mind, under the terms "Home Rule" or "States’ Rights," this problem has been considered by many to apply, primarily, to the prohibition issue.

As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere.

The proper relations between the government of the United States and the governments of the separate States thereof depend entirely, in their legal aspects, on what powers have been voluntarily ceded to the central government by the States themselves. What these powers of government are is contained in our Federal Constitution, either by direct language, by judicial interpretation thereof during many years, or by implication so plain as to have been recognized by the people generally.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the more marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written. Drawn up at a time when the population of this country was practically confined to a fringe along our Atlantic coast, combining into one nation for the first time scattered and feeble States, newly released from the autocratic control of the English Government, its preparation involved innumerable compromises between the different Commonwealths. Fortunately for the stability of our Nation, it was already apparent that the vastness of the territory presented geographical and climatic differences which gave to the States wide differences in the nature of their industry, their agriculture and their commerce. Already the New England States had turned toward shipping and manufacturing, while the South was devoting itself almost exclusively to the easier agriculture which a milder climate permitted. Thus, it was clear to the framers of our Constitution that the greatest possible liberty of self-government must be given to each State, and that any national administration attempting to make all laws for the whole Nation, such as was wholly practical in Great Britain, would inevitably result at some future time in a dissolution of the Union itself.

The preservation of this "Home Rule" by the States is not a cry of jealous Commonwealths seeking their own aggrandizement at the expense of sister States. It is a fundamental necessity if we are to remain a truly united country. The whole success of our democracy has not been that it is a democracy wherein the will of a bare majority of the total inhabitants is imposed upon the minority, but that it has been a democracy where through a division of government into units called States the rights and interests of the minority have been respected and have always been given a voice in the control of our affairs. This is the principle on which the little State of Rhode Island is given just as large a voice in our national Senate as the great State of New York.

The moment a mere numerical superiority by either States or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and, for their own selfish purposes or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights - that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.

For this reason a proper understanding of the fundamental powers of the States is very necessary and important. There are, I am sorry to say, danger signals flying. A lack of study and knowledge of the matter of sovereign power of the people through State government has led us to drift insensibly toward that dangerous disregard of minority needs which marks the beginning of autocracy. Let us not forget that there can be an autocracy of special classes or commercial interests which is utterly incompatible with a real democracy whose boasted motto is, "of the people, by the people and for the people." Already the more thinly populated agricultural districts of the West are bitterly complaining that rich and powerful industrial interests of the East have shaped the course of government to selfish advantage.

The doctrine of regulation and legislation by "master minds," in whose judgment and will all the people may gladly and quietly acquiesce, has been too glaringly apparent at Washington during these last ten years. [For "master minds" read also "brain trust", "best and brightest", genius "Czars" - Porphy] Were it possible to find "master minds" so unselfish, so willing to decide unhesitatingly against their own personal interests or private prejudices, men almost god-like in their ability to hold the scales of Justice with an even hand, such a government might be to the interest of the country, but there are none such on our political horizon, and we cannot expect a complete reversal of all the teachings of history.

Now, to bring about government by oligarchy masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our National Government. The individual sovereignty of our States must first be destroyed, except in mere minor matters of legislation. We are safe from the danger of any such departure from the principles on which this country was founded just so long as the individual home rule of the States is scrupulously preserved and fought for whenever it seems in danger.

Thus it will be seen that this "Home Rule" is a most important thing, a most vital thing, if we are to continue along the course on which we have so far progressed with such unprecedented success.

Let us see, then, what are the rights of the different States, as distinguished from the rights of the National Government. The Constitution says that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people," and Article IX, which precedes this, reads: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Now, what are the powers delegated to the United States by the Constitution? First of all, the National Government is entrusted with the duty of protecting any or all States from the danger of invasion or conquest by foreign powers by sea or land, and in return the States surrender the right to engage in any private wars of their own. This involves, of course, the creation of the army and navy and the right to enroll citizens of any State in time of need. Next is given the treaty-making power and the sole right of all intercourse with foreign States, the issuing of money and its protection from counterfeiting. The regulation of weights and measures so as to be uniform, the entire control and regulation of commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, the protection of patents and copyrights, the erection of minor Federal tribunals throughout the country, and the establishment of post offices are specifically enumerated. The power to collect taxes, duties and imposts, to pay the debts for the common defense and general welfare of the country is also given to the United States Congress, as the law-making body of the Nation.

It is interesting to note that under the power to create post offices the Constitution specifically provides for the building of post roads as a Federal enterprise, thus early recognizing that good roads were of benefit to intercommunications between the several States, and that districts too poor to afford to construct them at their own expense were entitled to some measure of Federal assistance. It is on this same principle that New York and other States are aiding rural counties, or constructing entirely at State expense improved thoroughfares suited to modern traffic. The Constitution also contains guarantees of religious freedom, of equality before the law of all possible acts of injustice to the individual citizens; and Congress is empowered to pass laws enforcing these guarantees of the Constitution, which is declared to be the supreme law of the land.

On such a small foundation have we erected the whole enormous fabric of Federal Government which costs us now $3,500,000,000 every year, and if we do not halt this steady process of building commissions and regulatory bodies and special legislation like huge inverted pyramids over every one of the simple Constitutional provisions, we shall soon be spending many billions of dollars more.

A few additional powers have been granted to the Federal Government by subsequent amendments. Slavery has been prohibited. All citizens, including women, have been given the franchise; the right to levy taxes on income, as well as the famous Eighteenth Amendment regarding intoxicating liquors, practically complete these later changes.

So much for what may be called the "legal side of national versus State sovereignty." But what are the underlying principles on which this Government is founded? There is, first and foremost, the new thought that every citizen is entitled to live his own life in his own way so long as his conduct does not injure any of his fellowmen. This was to be a new "Land of Promise" where a man could worship God in the way he saw fit, where he could rise by industry, thrift and intelligence to the highest places in the Commonwealth, where he could be secure from tyranny and injustice - a free agent, the maker or the destroyer of his own destiny.

But the minute a man or any collection of men sought to achieve power or wealth by crowding others off the path of progress, by using their strength, individually or collectively, to force the weak to the wall - that moment the whole power of Government, backed, as is every edict of the Government, by the entire army and navy of the United States, was pledged to make progress through tyranny or oppression impossible.

On this sure foundation of the protection of the weak against the strong; stone by stone, our entire edifice of Government has been erected. As the individual is protected from possible oppression by his neighbors, so the smallest political unit, the town, is, in theory at least, allowed to manage its own affairs, secure from undue interference by the larger unit of the county which, in turn, is protected from mischievous meddling by the State.

This is what we call the doctrine of "Home Rule," and the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution is to carry this great principle into the relations between the National Government and the Governments of the States.

Let us remember that from the very beginning differences in climate, soil, conditions, habits and modes of living in States separated by thousands of miles rendered it necessary to give the fullest individual latitude to the individual States. Let us further remember that the mining States of the Rockies, the fertile savannas of the South, the prairies of the West, and the rocky soil of the New England States created many problems and introduced many factors in each locality, which have no existence in others. It must be obvious that almost every new or old problem of government must be solved, if it is to be solved to the satisfaction of the people of the whole country, by each State in its own way.

There are many glaring examples where exclusive Federal control is manifestly against the scheme and intent of our Constitution.

It is, to me, unfortunate that under a clause in our Constitution, itself primarily intended for an entirely different purpose, our Federal Courts have been made a refuge by those who seek to evade the mandates of the State Judiciary. [Commerce Clause, anyone? - Porphy]

I think if we understand what I have tried to make clear tonight as to the fundamental principles on which our Government is built, and what the underlying idea of the relations between individuals and States and States and the National Government should be, we can all of us reason for ourselves what should be the proper course in regard to Federal legislation on any questions of the day.

(Emphasis added).

That Governor was, of course, the Governor of New York, a man who certainly knew a Blueprint for Action when he saw one: FDR.

(Per text in his Public Papers and Addresses, 1938, I, 569---also New York Times March 3, 1930)

Malign Neglect

2010-04-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

One of the under-appreciated achievements of the Bush Administration was forging stronger ties with India. One of the under-criticized aspects of the Obama Administration has been its indifference to India, despite it's growing importance.

Modeling

2010-04-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

A really good comment by "Shane" that I'm posting here to retain:

According to the about page, this group holds mathematical modeling in high esteem. A central idea being that the mind itself, individually and, by extension, groups of minds, can be mathematically described and modeled.

I would be interested to hear how one claims to correlate the results of a model to the workings of the mind. It sounds to me more like the result of industrious researchers mixed with computing power which is sufficient for the task of repeatedly tweaking a complex model until the product resembles an observed reality. Afterward, chosen variables can be modified singularly or in groups, such that some brilliant claim or conclusion can be drawn from the model.

With this confidence in the ability of science to model the mind, true believers must disdain the claim that economic modeling for management purposes is a useless endeavor. After all, the economic model is a layer above the internal mind modeling claims made here. From this starting point, one could never expect a fair analysis of the Austrian theory.

So much could be said on this; what shall I choose.

First, I recognize that Mises made some claims which, particularly when analyzed outside the purely academic context, are a reach. However, the minutia which are used by a purist to discover and articulate baseline ideas with words, which can only be symbols of ideas at best, are not where I find value in the school of thought. I am more interested in the practical and applicable knowledge that is the fruit and product of the analysis, which happens to be solid because the originators were willing to rigorously test their assertions, seeking ways to describe and model the theory.

Yes, I said model. The idea of choosing a narrow, purpose oriented term like "happiness" is designed to create and sustain resources for an intellectual model. It is to select a fairly useful term, while stripping away the baggage that distorts its purpose in the model; which is akin to isolating a variable mathematically.

Additionally, the claim that the Austrians make, which must be hard to swallow here, is that a mathematical model is useless in the field of economic prediction for the purpose of successfully managing an economy. The problems with this concept of modeling are really quite simple.

A model will not incorporate all variables. If a model incorporated all variables and each had values, it would become a copy of reality. If it is a copy of future events, then it is unbounded by time. In addition, there is the question of whether the model "knows" the future, or is describing a potential reality. If only a potential reality, then the information is useless unless the information about actions can be disseminated, but this dissemnination process would then have to be incorporated into the model, which would then be distorted. If anyone disagreed, the modeled decisions would have to be applied by force... Where does this lead and where does it end?

All variables are not known.

If all variables were known, which they cannot be, their present and subsequent values in the model cannot be known, because the values are subject to human action; i.e. individual choice at a point in time based on concurrent conditions (which are unknown variables having unknown values).

Models produce averages, which are then conceived to be the answer for each actor, which is irrational. The model itself doesn't actually claim that all actors will enjoy the average results, and yet the results are rendered, communicated and applied as averages.

Even if a model were able to incorporate all known variables, apart from an active system on the ground which can actually control a variable that the model incorporates, moving the variable would be a fruitless exercise, other than for curiosity sake.

Models are owned by men, who pursue their own "happiness". They will have an agenda. If the model has any use for wielding influence, it will be applied through a system. The goal will be to use a system to enrich the players in the process, which then reduces the model to a tool of manipulation and theft.

Therefore, we find that modeling in economics, as a method of managing an economy, is futile. However, modeling the effects of a controlled variable at play in the system, is quite attainable. The Austrian theory of the business cycle is described in part by this sort of modeling.

The Austrian theory clearly describes the mathematical effects of currency manipulation. These effects lead to a boom bust cycle, which we have observed repeatedly. The ability to control the variables of money quantity and the distribution of new money, enables economists to "model" the effects. In the economists' arrogance or disdain for the producers, they see themselves as managers of a system, when in fact they are simply pillagers who have successfully created a pillaging system with the aid of central banking and coercive government intervention.

Therefore, the presuppositions in the Austrian School provide a foundation for communicating that models cannot be created to successfully manage an economy. A model that is used to describe productivity in a genuinely free market without government intervention, would be useless. The outcomes would reduce to things like the industriousness and ingenuity of the actors.

A "brilliant" model is only attainable and useful when there is the ability to control the system by way of unavoidable force applied to the producers. When that case is exists, we find that the power to act in this way is always used oppressively.

Our monetary system is Keynesian and Keynes wrote about the destructive effect of inflation at least as early as 1919.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some… Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

The Economic Consequences of the Peace, John Maynard Keynes, 1919

The point is missed when the Austrian effort to articulate presuppositions is attacked on the grounds that they are presuppositions.

Evidently the claim being made here, by implication, is the presupposition that the actual economy can be modeled. But that has never happened. Listen to Greenspan explain how the "housing boom" was neither predicted by the models nor anticipated by him or his staff. Either the model was useless, even with the control of currency and positive law, or the system was used to pillage, or both.

The role of an economist should be to observe and describe the economy, not attempt manage it. The Austrians understand this role and acknowledge that certain things cannot be known at all, and that other things cannot be known or controlled, unless accompanied by violation of the rights of the individual.

Mises and other Austrian economists sought a way to put into words why, in actual reality, a successful controlling model has never been created and cannot be created. Quibbling over presuppositions, which happen to be supported by experience and evidence, as a basis for discrediting the Austrian Theory is weak thinking indeed.

Of course I also liked this part of another comment:

Anyway, "Austrian economics" includes Hayek, who holds up very well indeed by today's standards of argument in epistemology and methodology.

B.O. and the Lowest Politically Feasible Support

2009-12-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

First thing is that last night's speech continued to emphasize that we are in a new era. That all of time is divided between "A.O.", and "B.O." - We're in the First Year After Obama, and all that came Before Obama stunk. He emphasized this more than anything else in a speech that was supposedly about why we should continue the fight in Afghanistan.

Obama's "decision" on Afghanistan and last night's speech was oddly spiritless only if you think it's odd for a Progressive to lack passion when speaking on the subject of our country's foreign enemies (Homework Assignment: Contrast with the passion he displays when talking about his domestic political opponents, or when giving a speech to SEIU on shared goals and battles).

I have a feeling, no proof because there wouldn't be any, but that the number of troops being sent is based not on military need, but simply on what is politically feasible. People are saying it's three-quarters of what General McChrystal recommended, but really it's only half of what he requested, and three-quarters of what was considered the minimal number needed.

My guess is that 30,000 happened to be the bottom number that would prevent resignations among the military leadership. Personally, I think they should resign anyhow on the correct grounds that they are not being given what they feel they need, and the Commander in Chief should replace them with someone who thinks they can do the job with this number.

Likely this is what would happen if no reinforcements were sent, or if Obama sent 20,000, which was what General McChrystal said would be so low as to make no difference. Thus the 30,000 figure was chosen as a false "middle ground", not for reasons of military effectiveness, but a political balancing act by someone who said Afghanistan was the war of necessity when it was politically expedient to do so, but whose heart really isn't in this fight, because Afghanistan isn't the "enemy camp" to them.

His passion, like that of all Progressives, is reserved only for the fight against domestic political opponents. Thus he sprinkled

Big Blue Pill

2009-12-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

I go on vacation and come back to find that a man who started by giving Ten Red Pills to wake us from the Matrix that is the modern Western bureaucratic State has, in the pentultimate post before his conclusion reassured us that under his utopian future government, we won't be slain and our organs harvested for profit, we'll instead all be virtualized into pods as our marginal utility runs out and we're replaced by our Rob't masters.

Gee, that's a relief! If it weren't for the dignity of it, I'd just as soon pass. I hope we can go out like Sol Roth too, if we prefer.

The last generation of humanity will find "dignity" in a MMORPG until either our Rob't Masters decide to save some money and turn out the lights by running a dignified "mass-casualty event" for us to perform final heroic sacrifices in, or, more humanely, just wait till the last of us dies of old age.

Obviously there's no real - as opposed to virtual - human reproduction within the pods, and absolutely no incentive for whatever is outside of the pods to create such an opportunity, because we're in the pods as a result of having no social utility to our rulers outside the pods. Therefore, the last people to go into the pods will be the last people.

One might argue that whoever owns these new nations will neither need to go into the pods or, most importantly, allow themselves to be pushed into the pods. The stockholders will continue to govern their state, the customers consisting of pod-people, and their staff consisting of Our Rob't Masters.

However, if Our Rob't Masters are sufficiently advanced so that we are of no real use to them, as Moldbug concludes, they will certainly have greater facility for managing investments, and will use that to capture control of the State. A possible counter-argument is that human stockowners would have created such expert programs to assist them in managing their investments, and the Rob'ts could not deny them access to, and thus the benefits of, these expert programs. It's thus possible that the owners could escape this "benign" fate for a time, till the Rob'ts outlasted and outcompeted them which, if they're so sufficiently advanced, they will eventually do.

Anyhow, let us turn to an argument Moldbug uses, and which is one of the reasons why, my sympathies and general preference for Libertarian-ish policies notwithstanding, I am not a Libertarian,even of the Moldbug sort (that is to say, I di agree with him that there will be a State, and where it acts, it should be strong). It is embedded in this:

And we are just getting started. The ex-subject can then be dissected for his organs. Do you know what organs are worth? This is profit!

If we claim to derive the responsibility of government from mere financial prudence, we must explain why the business strategy of culling unwanted subjects for their organs is not viable. Most would not find this profitable strategy consistent with responsibility. Yet, since a sovereign is sovereign, no higher sovereign can exist to outlaw or preclude it. The design must solve this problem on its own.

The simplest, broadest, and most essential prevention against this degenerate result is the observation that the royal government is a government of law, and a government of law does not commit mass murder.

He's made similar arguments before. Another was along the lines that, sure, Leopold behaved badly with the distant Congolese colony, but no European ruler behaved like that towards their own domestic populations.

Which treats things as binary, when they are not analog; there is a range of misgovernment or oppressive government. It neglects the incontrovertable fact that it was during the height of the government system he has praise for that America was peopled. At the time the vast majority of those who came to America voluntarily came from Europe. They didn't leave places like Italy, Prussia, Greece, Poland, Ireland or Russia for here because they thought they were too well-governed and well-treated well by their owner/rulers.

Most schools of Libertarians, and their sympathizers (such as Moldbug) have a Modeling Fallacy not too different from that of Global Warm-mongers. Which is to say they assume all governments (except ours) and rulers (except ours) operate on a rational basis (they aren't insane), and use the same rational calculus that they would in deciding how to behave. They then assert that there would be no rational reason for rulers to do X, Y, or Z.

Which is fine and good, except that, as a matter of historical record, they have done X, Y, or Z. So epicycles are created: Oh, they did those things because we exist and threw a monkey-wrench into the works; if only we adopted a policy of isolation and left them to their own devices, they would revert to their natural rationality and things would work out perfectly. Oh, they were already infected with fill-in-the-blank (democratic calculi, religion, or whatever), and once we remove that tumor, a miracle will happen, and X, Y and Z will not occur.

We know that even the Great and Autocratic Emperor of the Romans, Basil II Makedonion, who perhaps came closest to Moldbug's ideal in a ruler having absolute power and absolute responsibility, had to deal with politics. Had to deal, indeed, with his own officials not quite enforcing the Imperial will as he would have hoped. Quite possibly machine intelligience will render the machinations of whatever administrative apparatus Moldbug's new State creates moot, making them absolutely faithful to the Ruler's will, rather than tempted by Pournelle's Iron Law, something that happens in all corporations of significant size and certainly would happen here.

Aristotle observed that man is a political animal, but Moldbug is smarter than that moron and knows that politics can be eliminated.

Similarly, in reality Monarchs and rulers of all types have behaved in ways that the ruled found quite sufficiently oppressive, even though stopping short of harvesting them for their organs. There is no reason to believe that a government that ruled with all the power of a Chinese Emperor and His Glorious Mandarinate wouldn't so treat us, all Confucian injunctions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Theory of how they Ought to behave, if they were to behave as a Libertarian would rationally want them to behave, is controverted by all actual experience with how such rulers and governments, even the best of them, do behave. Pliny, for example, after a fire at Nicomedia, wrote to Emperor Trajan advising the Emperor encourage the establishment of a volunteer fire brigade, but the Emperor denied the request on the grounds that it would become a political party (brotherhood). But we're supposed to put all our trust in the ~~Global Warming Computer Model~~ Libertarian Rational Government Actor Model, and little in historical experience, which is that our ancestors fled such places when they could get away from them, and thus even if some might live well enough treated as such governments might treat us, the descendants of those who fled might not be best suited to life under a revived version of it. Odd that someone who has learned so much from his reading of history would have such a massive blindspot, in my opinion, but perhaps this is due to the fact that he abhores Progressive/Whig historiography so much he is willing to give its antithesis too much faith.

This on top of the fact that, Oh Happy Day, if everything works as well as Moldbug desires, the endpoint of humanity is virtualization into a pod! Moldbug's comeback may - I don't want to put words into his mouth - be that this is the likely endpoint of "The Singularity" even under our current misgovernment (if it's not Idiocracy), it will just take longer.

But I suppose I'll pass on his reassuring offer, and take my chances with some other endpoint. I do want to close in some other way, though; I owe Moldbug that much. This is a rather severe critique of his proposal, but I have read his writings with great interest because he has much to offer and his thoughts are well worth the time and consideration you give them.

Shootings at Ft. Hood

2009-11-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

I'm here working at Casey Library on post, and we're on lock down as there was a shooting rampage (that's what people are calling it) at the SRP site at the former Sports USA down the street from us.

Apparently 7 are dead and 15 injured. They're still trying to catch all the perpetrators.

Pray for the victims and their families, please.

Story here.

Update: One thing about being on lockdown is I probably know less than people can get from the news. Lots of sirens throughout the day, but we're told to stay inside. More here, including increasing casualty numbers as information gets updated.

On Asymmetric Warfare: Byzantine Grand Strategy in the 11th and 21st Centuries

2009-11-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

This follows my first and second posts in this series, as well as other related posts.

As is obvious by my web-name, it's no state secret that I'm into the Eastern Roman (aka "Byzantine") Empire. Back when I was a Freshman in Uni I read Edward Luttwak's excellent Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, a work I highly recommend. Well he has completed the obvious sequel, a book on the Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire.

In Foreign Policy he has an article recommending the essential features of this strategy to the United States. I would argue that we already follow most of them, including a pernicious corruption of them that the Byzantines themselves engaged in during the 11th Century.

I. Avoid war by every possible means, in all possible circumstances, but always act as if war might start at any time. Train intensively and be ready for battle at all times -- but do not be eager to fight. The highest purpose of combat readiness is to reduce the probability of having to fight.

America has, critics to the contrary notwithstanding, typically followed this, including in the latest war, where, as many have noted, they "were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them", and even in the "rush to war" against Iraq that took a decade.

II. Gather intelligence on the enemy and his mentality, and monitor his actions continuously. Efforts to do so by all possible means might not be very productive, but they are seldom wasted.

I shall elide over this a bit for the time being, because it is clearly one area where one might say we fall short of the highest standards. However, I will note that we do better than are given credit for, including in the current conflict where we must be right all the time in our counterterrorism efforts to foil attacks against us, while one intelligence failure on this front can lead to catastrophic results and the pointy finger of blame being directed at poor intelligence, flawed analysis of intelligence we did have, failure to recognize the value of intelligence or what it meant, and the like. But the Byzantines also had such failures: Just ask Nicephoros I or Manuel Komnenos. Nothing human is perfect.

III. Campaign vigorously, both offensively and defensively, but avoid battles, especially large-scale battles, except in very favorable circumstances. Don't think like the Romans, who viewed persuasion as just an adjunct to force. Instead, employ force in the smallest possible doses to help persuade the persuadable and harm those not yet amenable to persuasion.

Again I would say that by and large and for the most part, the invidious Powell Doctrine to the contrary notwithstanding, we do this. Sometimes to excess: Witness the initial attempt at a small footprint in Afghanistan. Arguably that was a good strategy, however, depending upon what ones goals in Afghanistan are. If they are simply to defeat our foes and keep them on the run, than this, in conjunction with the use of native forces as allies and proxies, is enough. If our goal is to build a strong democratic state there, then it is insufficient.

IV. Replace the battle of attrition and occupation of countries with maneuver warfare -- lightning strikes and offensive raids to disrupt enemies, followed by rapid withdrawals. The object is not to destroy your enemies, because they can become tomorrow's allies. A multiplicity of enemies can be less of a threat than just one, so long as they can be persuaded to attack one another.

Iraq is the one recent counter-example to this that people may point to. Afghanistan is becoming a counter-example in part because of the limitations of lightning-strike warfare. This is not to say that such strikes are always a failure, but they are not a panacea either. Note that in Iraq itself, pre-surge, this was the operational method that was preferred: Minimize American presence in the cities and neighborhoods, and conduct strikes from basecamps instead. The Surge meant occupying more areas to produce security.

V. Strive to end wars successfully by recruiting allies to change the balance of power. Diplomacy is even more important during war than peace. Reject, as the Byzantines did, the foolish aphorism that when the guns speak, diplomats fall silent. The most useful allies are those nearest to the enemy, for they know how best to fight his forces.

This is done more quite often. The same people who will on the one hand criticize American "militarism" will often on the other hand condemn our "proxy-wars". I'll note that in Afghanistan we recruited local forces from the outset, and neighboring countries. I'll also note that in my tour in Iraq, I got the chance to work for a couple weeks with a SF Team that was responsible for training the ISOFOR. During that time, Iraqi recruits were subjected to a psychological screening conducted by military psychologists from friendly Arab country bordering Iraq (I'll leave it to the reader to guess which one): So even there, more allies were recruited to help than is generally known.

VI. Subversion is the cheapest path to victory. So cheap, in fact, as compared with the costs and risks of battle, that it must always be attempted, even with the most seemingly irreconcilable enemies. Remember: Even religious fanatics can be bribed, as the Byzantines were some of the first to discover, because zealots can be quite creative in inventing religious justifications for betraying their own cause ("since the ultimate victory of Islam is inevitable anyway …").

This is done more often than we're given credit for, and indeed when critics of American foreign policy note it, it is to condemn any efforts to subvert or suborn enemies from within. I will note that we largely won the Cold War in Eastern Europe, however, in no small part through the use of such tactics, and that to the extent to which there was a period when Saddam was "friendly" with America, it was during a spell when we were employing this strategem against both Iran and Iraq and the Soviets.

VII. When diplomacy and subversion are not enough and fighting is unavoidable, use methods and tactics that exploit enemy weaknesses, avoid consuming combat forces, and patiently whittle down the enemy's strength. This might require much time. But there is no urgency because as soon as one enemy is no more, another will surely take his place. All is constantly changing as rulers and nations rise and fall. Only the empire is eternal -- if, that is, it does not exhaust itself.

Here also we have invested quite a bit of effort and creativity into just that over the last three or four decades.

But I want to turn the rest of my post on this to what could be called the Dark Side of Byzantine Strategy, an internal conflict that burst into the open in the 11th Century to the ultimate detriment of the Eastern Roman Empire, and again at the dawn of the 13th. Proxy forces can be waged against external enemies, but those engaged in internal political squabbles may consciously or unconsciously tempted tengage in warfare by proxy against their opponents, to humiliate, weaken, and discredit them in the struggle for political dominance.

After the death of Basil II Makedonion, the already existing tensions between Byzantium's "Civil" and its "military" elites flared up, worstening throughout the next five decades. The American counterparts of this are the Blue State "Georgetownist" Transnational Progressives and the Red State "Arlingtonist" nationalists. In Byzantium this conflict included the elimination of opponents from positions of influence even if (ultimately, especially if) they were competent, diverting funding (for example, Constantine IX Monomachus' demobilization of the forces of the Dukate of Armenia, at the time when Turkish raids were starting), sabotaging military campaigns (the most obvious being the withdrawal of half the army at Manzikurt, leaving Romanus III Diogenes to be defeated), and ultimately paying Turkish proxy forces to fight against each other in civil wars during the 1070s, even as the Turks conquered Anatolia.

One hundred years later, the son of a deposed Emperor recruited Crusaders to help place his father (or him) back on the throne, resulting instead in the conquest of the capital by said Crusaders and untold destruction.

Are we at that stage yet? Clearly not. Our current situation resembles the 1040s more than the 1070s, much less 1200s. But all the elements are in place, including a ruling class that is tougher with domestic opponents than with foreign enemies, always ready to advocate extending understanding and diplomatic, tactful treatment of foreign enemies while having nothing but the harshest, hatefully vituperative and merciless treatment of their domestic opponents. They have already rhetorically at minimum on numerous occasions used foreign enemies as proxies, and their mentors marched under the banner of more than one foreign foe, openly rooting for their victory, believing it would help discredit their domestic political opponents and advance their own cause.

These are facts: Pointing them out is only an act of intellectual honesty. It is simply chronicling current history accurately. None the less, it is extremely controversial to take note of this reality, except in the most indirect or praising way (that is, you can note it without controversy if you share their perspective). It is also not unfair to say that the outcome of what passes for their sage wisdom on the waging of war, and their fundamental transformation of traditional International Law and the Laws of War hinder their own nation's efforts and make it easier for their country's enemies (see previous posts in this series). This is what makes "asymmetric warfare" possible at all. It is this kind of "warfare by proxy" that results in dictators getting their job through the New York Times, and even now regularly speak power to truth in their efforts to advantage undemocratic enemies of their country abroad at the expense of integrity. Once you've read about international law untainted by their manipulations, or what the drafters of the real Geneva Conventions had to say:

"(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil [sic] the following conditions:[
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

you then realize that these people have turned reality on its head. It is no exaggeration to say that they now offer far more protection to what are, under true international law, unlawful combatants who in a sane era were not extended the protections given uniformed combatants, than anyone ever extended to lawful, uniformed combatants. It should surprise no one that deciples of 'Franz Fanon' (sic) would behave in such a fashion, and that they would be drawn to concepts aimed at persuading people that fighting insurgencies is futile (which flies in the face of actual historical experience in defeating insurgencies). One is to be portrayed as a wild-eyed extremist for noting in a non-laudatory way what they say in their own words, which itself represents 1) the enforced detachment from reality that we are nudged into and 2) one aspect of the very internal conflict under discussion here, where war methods are waged with ruthlessness against internal dissent. (Language is an important expression of mentality: a "War Room" is what one has to combat domestic enemies; a "Situation Room" is what is now used to address overseas crises).

They are not to be seen as extremist for behaving this way: You to be treated as an extremist nut engaging in un-American activities, even as a terrorist for opposing them at home and for highlighting such behavior in an unflattering way. The degeneration of our governing class is all the more evident in the fact that they are sincerely delusional, thinking of themselves as outsider underdogs "speaking truth to power" when they are the ones in power, and are everywhere speaking power to truth in their efforts to destroy all opposition root and branch, and the fact that even ostensibly sensible people like Steven M. Teles thinks that this is not only a legitimate attitude towards those who disagree with them at home, but "necessary": The idea of a "loyal opposition", legitimate institutions other than ones they control, has become so foreign to not only the core of this group, but its sympathizers, that they believe they have "no choice but to use the... tools at its disposal to destroy its opponents root and branch". Since they "agree with Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun", it should not be a surprise that they are not above using proxy forces in an attempt to discredit and destroy their domestic political opponents in this way.

I could invoke far more examples to drive this point home, but those in the "reality-based community" that dismiss empirical reality would pooh-pooh it regardless. Suffice to say that the attitude of domestic warfare that our governing class displays, when combined with the incontrovertible fact that they are as grounded in reality as O'Brien, forms a dire combination that bodes ill for the future.

Bonus for Extra Credit: Compare and contrast a typical example of the sage military advice offered up by these people with Luttwak's and other real experts, as well as those with actual experience, and remembering that the British defeated an insurgency in Malaysia even while the "typical example's" conception was taking root. Which passes for conventional wisdom, and who does it serve that this is maintained as conventional wisdom, all empirical evidence to the contrary notwithstanding?

Pointed fact to keep in mind when addressing the Extra-Credit Question: FDR's America would have had no problem employing the means necessary to defeat opponents we now are expected to take for granted cannot be beaten militarily.

Note also that another real expert on matters military connects this outlook to a real ideology, whose aims you can judge for yourself.

Response to Potential Objection: Yes, in spring they sent more troops to Afghanistan, and they haven't followed through on their previous rhetoric about Iraq, behaving, now that they are in office, in a more responsible way. But note that they do not embrace this outlook as a means of discrediting themselves, it's only for the utility of destroying their domestic political opponents. So, when a process like this is underway, we should naturally expect their own behavior to differ from what their rhetoric was when they were assailing their opponents. At minimum temporizing and an obvious tension about what decision to make, as they struggle with the internal conflict of their ideology pulling them one way while their instinct for political survival tugs them the other way.

Nothing illustrates this better than Obama's recent speech. I believe he is sincere when he said ""I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way. I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary, and if it is necessary, we will back you up to the hilt."

I'm positive he sincerely perceives himself that way, just as he sincerely holds a contrary idea in his head (cognitive dissonance is not alien to these people). However, it is simply not part of his mental process that he already made such a decision (last spring, in sending additional troops), and he is now Hamlet over whether to back to the hilt or not, because of the tension between the siren song of their base, which is where their heart lays, where their own beliefs rest.

So we are served a public rationalization over why there is a delay in decision and why the forces necessary for victory ought to be denied which no rational people could possibly believe is sincere. We're to believe that a circle of Chicago Pols with close ties to the likes of ACORN and George Soros and benefit from shenannegans of all kinds are shocked, shocked! by political corruption in Afghanistan. Roman, please! If you sincerely believe that, as opposed to pretending to believe it because you're a sycophantic courtier speaking power to truth like the rest of the coterie surrounding this faction, I have only one question for you: Do you have your own cup to drool into, or do you have to share one?

Another objection of course is, aren't I just on the other side? In the great sense, no. I am chronicling this and hoping people will be aware of it. I certainly have sympathy for one side in this conflict, and as is obvious by what I concentrated on describing, hold the other in at best a minimum of high regard. But I am certainly not asking or hoping for you to become active in fighting against them and for Team B, aka "The Outer Party". That simply fuels the conflict. Additionally, voting, and other conventional political activism is a laughable way of thwarting this, as the locus of their power, is insulated from democratic politics as we normally understand it. Being in office helps the velocity by which they "affect change", marginally, but being out of office does not cripple them, as they are never truly out of power. The tides still flow.

I have no program, and won't offer up the usual "ten point plan for restoring the Republic" of items that range from the futile to the banal that others do and which are always so anticlimactically inconsequential or fantastically outside the realm of the possible (even as they illustrate the point I am making here, in that 70% of the voting public would support them, or something like them, but there aint no way they'll ever get close to be placed on the agenda) as to be depressing.

The last thing I should advocate is "taking sides" in this conflict and fighting it, as tempting as that is. Hopefully someone out there does have some idea of how to resolve this non-catastrophically, and I chronicle and describe it in no small part in the hope that someone shall put their mind to it.

The Open Secret

2009-10-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

Following on yesterday's post on the subject and via the usual suspect we have this:

The Telegraph reported that “Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.” But it was manner in which the plan was sugar-coated which rankled the most. It was, if the leaks are to be believed, an ideological conspiracy sold as a plan to bolster the economy. It’s almost as if the Left set out to paint itself in the very same colors the BNP wanted it to don. . . . What the Left and Fascism share is a belief in the transformative power of the state. Both regard government as the “high ground” of society and not, as some Americans still believe, simply a necessary evil.

If this was a secret, it was an open one, the same way the similar demographic transformation and Multicultism in America is: In public, Progressives deny what everyone knows is true, and what they openly say among themselves in their own publications, conferences, academic settings, and the like.

The problem is that many "mainstream" people are willing not to believe the denial of this transformamtive effort, but to pretend to believe the denial. Again, that just leaves the issue to the fringes. This sort of thing should be automatically discrediting, prima facie evidence that our governing elites are unworthy to rule or indeed of any respect whatsoever and that they should be Lustrated immediately.

There is no other cure for this disease. A fitting epitaph:

Thus ended the last attempt by a mainstream British political party to raise the subject

But it won't happen. Therefore, fringe politics grows in response to what should be a fringe movement (Progressivism) but is the governing ideology of our time.

Not Can't. Won't

2009-10-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

A decent post here, but I must quibble with some things.

First, if you're British, I can't give you better advice than what Peter Hitchens regularly gives: Don't vote BNP. Ever.

If you're looking for a solution to these problems, look elsewhere. If none exists, create one. Anyhow UKIP is much preferred over anything akin to the BNP. (I'm sure Shannon Love feels the same way about the BNP).

Via Instapundit comes a disturbing report that one-fifth of the British electorate would consider voting for the British Nationalist Party (BNP), which is considered by almost everyone left or right to be a genuine fascist party.

How did Britain come to this state?

Simple, the current liberal order has proven itself ineffective in addressing many of the major problems that Britain faces, in a narrative both historical and current that all the "stupid" people know is rubbish, but which the educated, intelligent people either believe or people pretend to believe and insist we all must as well.

That is because discussion of many of these problems are ruled out of bounds of civil discussion, except in the most anodyne and Progressive ways. But, more importantly, a response to a section later in the post is required:

If the mainstream parties cannot address the real concerns of many Britons, and if they cannot at least pretend to respect and value lower-income white Britons, then Britain may be only one ugly incident away from a political seismic shift.

Not "cannot" but will not. They could address these things, but they have become so wedded to certain ideas, they do not want to. For the Progressive Left, these are not "problems", except to the extent that people resist their effects, and the mainstream conservatives have largely been coopted for their own reasons, suffering from, at best, learned helplessness in the face of them, because seriously working to fix these problems and undo their effects gets you castigated as a fascist hatemonger.

So then it should not be surprising to anyone that real problems that the political mainstream will not address are left to the real fascist racist hatemongers. They remain real issues, and people who want them fixed are left with no real recourse.

Let us not kid ourselves that this is a meta-Political Problem that only Britain or Europe faces. In America as well, matters which receive upwards of 70% of public support when polled are routinely declared "outside of the political mainstream", off the table of civic debate. The problems are real and remain, however. Eventually some person or party will come around vowing to address them, as things worsten.

A mainstream political party could. It is not a matter of they can't. They simply will not, for reasons of their own. This then makes it inevitable that solutions will be extremist ones. No one should want that, but they are making it increasingly likely.

This then is the real corruption of our political class, our elites, what Glenn Reynolds has called "the worst political class in [American] history". Petty graft in the form of earmarks pale by comparison.

Enforced Belief II: Blasphemy Laws

2009-10-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't really be surprising that our Progressives have endorsed international blasphemy laws. After all, what are "Speech Codes" if not the Progressive version of such laws?

Which makes this as good a time as any to post Part II of "Enforced Belief".

The non-Theistic State Religion claims to be based on reason and rationality, but when you examine its precepts together (rather than separately), and in depth, the seams start to show and how irrational and arbitrary it is appears along with how its premises are invoked not only irrationally, but selectively to gain ideological advantage and discredit opposition become apparent. See also the concept of "Liberating Tolerance"/"Liberating Toleration"

Note first I am not saying that the precepts of the Enforced Belief are all bad, just as the State Religions of European nations, being Christian, were not all bad. What is bad is the enforcement of any belief, and the manipulation of the precepts - be they good or bad - in order to gain and keep power and to compel others to submit.

Lets (briefly, I hope) examine two of the fundamental precepts of today's Enforced Belief: Tolerance on the one hand, and not giving offense on the other. Note that both of these are good qualities, when used with sound judgment. Note also that they are contradictory, and these contradictions can be manipulated when someone is empowered to enforce them. Note also that another of this Faith's teachings is Non-Judgmentalism: Don't be judgmental. This is taught, to negate sound judgment in the individual conscience. But this does not eliminate judgment, it simply displaces it to the scions of this faith (who replace our individual judgment with their own, and thus are able to enforce it). Etiquette of decency is dissolved (as a byproduct you get the coarsening of the culture, a rise in vulgarity and other things people formerly simply wouldn't say or do in polite company, out of understood courtesy).

Surely you've heard of hate crimes legislation, hate speech codes on campuses, and the like. I am not for hateful speech, but one must also examine the enforcement and effects of these, and how they are employed with respect to the twin precepts we are examining, toleration/offensive: What we are asked to be tolerant of, and what people are encouraged to take offense to. A lot of what traditional people would find offensive, we are expected to tolerate, and a lot of what was normal and expected in our civilization, people are encouraged to take offense to, and thus drive from the public square: Take your common-sense example from the other mail, and your question regarding if we should tolerate X, Y, and Z, why can't people tolerate God? This is your answer: Selective enforcement, rooted in what is in reality a religious war (being waged not by traditional Americans/Westerners, but against them, by their domestic ideological opponents).

Lets examine a neighboring country that is slightly ahead of us (though we are aspiring to catch up under the current Administration) in the enforcement mechanism regarding "hate speech" and the like, Canada, quoting from here:

Anyway, my New York Times bestseller (and Canadian hate crime) America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It is released in paperback across the Dominion’s bookstores this week, and, if a mere excerpt in Maclean’s was enough to generate two “human rights” prosecutions, the softcover edition should be good for a full-blown show trial followed by a last cigarette and firing squad – although, this being Canada, there’ll be no last cigarette. . .

I’m using “up to your neck” metaphorically, but a lot of chaps are more literal. Naeem Muhammad Khan, the unemployed Torontonian whose website urges that the “apostasy” of Maclean’s contributor Tarek Fatah and other Muslim moderates be punished by death, says of one of his targets: “Behead her!!! And make a nice video and post it on YouTube.” There is no point wishing Mr Khan would fly away and not sing by our house all day. He’s here to stay, and anyone who advocated, say, his deportation would find himself assailed by moderate reasonable Canadians horrified at such a betrayal of our multicultural values.

Now the author of that was brought before a "Human Rights Tribunal" for hate speech, incitement to hate, and the like, because he *quoted* *accurately* people such as Naeem Muhammed Khan. The reason being that it created a hostile environment for Muslims in Canada, might incite hatred and violence, and the like. But was or will Naeem Muhammed Khan be charged for his? No, that we are expected to extend tolerance and understanding to, and indeed ask ourselves why he hates, with the implication that something within us is the cause, and we must change/adapt in order to sooth the feelings and make them feel welcomed. This is a sort of double-think.

It is also on display here:

Miss Mogahed, appointed to the [US] President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice".

The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.

The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.

Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir's national women's officer, Nazreen Nawaz.

During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".

Btw, remember that phrase next time you hear someone claim "they don't hate us for our freedom, that's absurd, they hate us for our policies". They hate us for free speech, the freedom to be athiestic or Wiccan or whatever, the freedom of homosexuals and women, &tc &tc. Anyone who says "they don't hate us for our freedom" is a Multiculturalist, which means not knowing anything about other cultures, simply projecting their own ideology upon them. Such people need to read their Qtub. But they won't: Progressive Multiculturalism is ignorance masquerading as understanding and knowledge.

They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".
Now, Sharia is what women in Afghanistan lived under during the rule of the Taliban. Sharia is what women in Saudi Arabia live under. Sharia is what gives Saudi husbands of American women the right (according to Sharia) to kidnap children and bring them back to be raised in Arabia. Sharia is what leads to enforced marriages, where women get no choice of spouse. Sharia is the foundation of the law in Iran that leads to the stoning of homosexuals.

This is another way in which our State-Enforced Religion is irrational. Because, in the course of pursuing their age-old fanatical religious war against their historical hatreds (traditional West, and Christian expression that is not in accordance with theirs), they are in effect making common cause with forces that are destructive of the very beliefs they claim to hold most dear. Gay Dutch filmmakers are thus murdered by fanatics without even a mention at the Oscars (when they give their tribute to fallen film-industry personalities, and to free expression) while the likes of George Clooney hold forth on how bravely people like him are speaking truth to power, to the celebration of all in the room, when really they are just beating tropes that were tired 30 years ago, and haven't had an original transgressive idea in at least that long. They betray their own supposed ideals - ideals I actually joined the Army for, and went to Iraq (and would have gone to Afghanistan) to help extend to women and the oppressed, not just our own people: I took up arms on behalf of and alongside moderate Muslims, while they end up making common cause with the fanatics (but, then, the kind of people for whom Rev. Jerimiah Wright is a non-controversial figure, well...). THIS is why I despise them. THIS is why I hold them in utter contempt. They are a shameful disgrace. Please do look deeply into their own beliefs, and how in their philosophy it all boils down to "power dynamics".

They do not speak truth to power: They speak power to truth. And that is why they are simultaneously able to pretend to be an oppressed resistance, and be in control of how the rules are written and, more importantly, enforced. For if they were truly the underdog they honestly believe themselves to be, the boot would be on the other neck, instead of them enforcing their beliefs upon others and deciding what to protect as tolerable, and what to declare a shunnablly offensive offense.

Enema of the State: The Galbraith Plan to Destroy Opposition in Action

2009-10-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

We've seen, recently, attacks on Limbaugh by the Left, which is par for the course. But also a war on news entities that are not sufficiently servile, coupled with warning to the others. We've seen a war on the Chamber of Commerce which consists in part of an effort to dismantle it, because they oppose the Administration on some issues (I.E. Cap and Trade) after supporting it on other measures (I.E. the "Stimulus"), and an attempt by the government to gag a private entity, intimidating it and others from using their free speech.

When insurance companies came out against Congressional Health Care proposals, Congress initiated a fishing expedition against them. Meanwhile, entities like ACORN are not investigated.

What is going on here was revealed in Steven M. Teles' review of "The Predator State" by James Galbraith in the March/April 2009 issue of "The American Interest". You may or may not decide to read the book itself, but even the sympathetic review is illustrative. I wasn't blogging in the Spring when this was published, so the below is adapted from an e-mail I wrote on it. I think it's even more self-evident now that the tactics recommended by Galbraith and endorsed by Teles are the ones being employed by the government now.

Before proceeding, I must note the method of Progressives on display here: Projection. It consists of three main steps. First, describe a tactic and declare its use completely outrageous and despicable. Second, claim that the opponents of Progressivism have been engaging in that tactic. Thirdly, use that claim to rationalize their own use of said tactic on a massive scale.

One of the premises of Galbraith's is that conservatives attempted to demolish Progressive opposition. The accuracy of this assertion can be seen in the fact that entities like ACORN were hounded out of existence by the Bush Administration's Justice Department, and how the Republican Congress was completely successful in pursuing a "de-fund the Left" agenda. Right.

On to the review, which I believe illuminates the overarching vision of the current Administration:

"The shift of power to allocate capital from the financial industry to government is, for Galbraith, far from unfortunate. Galbraith sees higher taxes and more debt as serving political objectives as well as economic ones. He wants to dry up the political power of the financial industry that courses through both parties because he is intensely skeptical of the capacity of financial markets to allocate capital in a way that meets the long-term needs of society. The real economic issue, Galbraith argues, is where the 'true seat of economic power' lies. The new liberal regime will be one that empowers 'scientists, engineers, some economists and public intellectuals -- who attempt to represent the common and future interest', and deposes 'banks, companies, lobbyists, and the economists they employ -- that represent only the tribal and current interest.'"

By empowering "some economists", I think we can take it as a given Galbraith does not mean members of the Mises Institute or Cato. He doesn't mean we will turn to Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams for sage advice. He means empowering members of his father's school of thought.

"...The planner rather trhan the entrepreneur will hold the position of honor in the new liberal American regime of political economy. Our system of education will be called upon to disseminate the findings of the professions, and, one suspects, to enshrine the new hierarchy of honor."

One where those who depend upon tax revenues for their existence (NGOs that receive grants from government, and the like) will be elevated, while those who pay taxes or engage in commerce will be looked down upon by the honored the way any entrenched Mandarinate or Feudal Nobility does in Ancien Regime states.

Opposition from these lessers is not tolerable in the fa>ce of their honored betters:

"...As Galbraith states bluntly, a key objective of the new liberal regime will be to use political means to produce market outcomes that strengthen its allies and weaken its enemies."

I'm not sure that "political means" so employed produce "market outcomes", but such a phrasing is simply evidence of the Orwellian manipulation of language we are being subjected to. See also "choice and competition" used as a mantra by those who want a government operated health care system.

"This may seem a breathtaking admission, but only to those who haven't been paying much attention to American politics for, say, the past two centuries."

Progressives can only speak for themselves and their own methods, but it is nice to see someone being candid about how they see government power: As a tool with which to destroy their domestic political opponents. Even more candidly:

"...The new regime [Obama's] may adopt many of the measures Galbraith recommends not because it shares his vision, but because crisis [don't want to let one go to waste] will force it to do so. Faced with a full-bore attempt by the deposed regime to reassert itself by obstructing the Administration's agenda, the new regime may find that it has no choice but to use the economic tools at its disposal to destroy its opponents root and branch."

"Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque, il se defend"

The use of the phrase "no choice" of course is a deceit meant to keep people from thinking too much about just what is being argued for here: In effect, a one-party state, where nothing like a "loyal opposition" is tolerated. Instead, anything that dissents from the Progressive line and seeks to use the options available to it in a liberal democratic structure is to be crushed. By any means necessary.

Conservative resistance is an attack on Universalism, and must be destroyed root and branch - dissent is no longer patriotic, disagreement and efforts to resist policies one disagrees with is the project of wreckers, horders, and Kulaks, who must be ground to dust.

"[W]hen they had the Power in their hands, those Graces were strangers in their gates!" indeed...

Update: See here for a mild noting of this effort.

Social Future

2009-10-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

Susan's Husband had a fair comment to the High Society post.

What about reproduction? Clearly it is not the duty of every member of society to reproduce, but if no one does, the society collapses, well before everyone dies (who takes care of a population where everyone is over age X for X > 50 or so)?

Do individuals have any obligation to act in a way that supports the continued existence of their society past their own death?

I agree that ultimately, the powers of a society (or the State that governs it) must be judged by how this supports the individuals it comprises (i.e., the "good" of a society is a sum over the "good" of the members) but -- how does one count future members? Are we obligated to them in anyway? Is there a future discount?

That's the Steynian argument and I'm very sympathetic to it. The flip side of course is the Progressive argument against "overpopulation", especially having children in the "resource-depleting, polluting West".

So in a sense ESR is still right, people use "society" as a means to project their own preferences.

I think our civilization is worth upholding, it's valuable to me and IMO a bunch of other people in it, precisely to the degree that it values the individual, by comparison to alternative cultures.

But the argument can be made on such grounds.

I do have to say I disagree with ESR with respect to the particular instance in which he made his point: IMO people should pay for the crimes they commit, even if the victim says that they would prefer it just be dropped. Because other identifiable individuals may then also be victimized, if the perpetrator is not sanctioned, and because there are a variety of examples of where a victim can be coerced/pressured into saying that (the beaten spouse being the most obvious example).

I do think we owe something to the future - and to the past - and one of the things we're not doing well is safeguarding that. Ironically one of the consequences of "social democracy" thinking, that is assertions based in "shouldn't society do X" is that it produces this effect. It's one of the perverse aspects of such thinking.

Steyn pointed it out when he said (and I forget the exact quote, so I'm paraphrasing) that there is nothing that makes people more selfish than egalitarian social democracy - which is the system that those who talk about "society this" and "don't you want a society where that" obviously aim for and prefer.

Note also that the "carrot-and-stick" approach to reproduction, favored by those who think in terms of "society", tends to produce perverse results: At best one gets the mostly failed "pronatalist" policies of European countries, producing or at any rate not reversing, declining birth rates, and at worst China, where sex-selection abortion and even infanticide becomes widespread.

There are good arguments and bad arguments for things; In my opinion, arguments based in "shouldn't society do X" are generally bad ones. This does not mean that every argument & policy that would have a wide or social impact is a bad one. ESR, for example, is not unconcerned with the survival of the civilization he lives in and its improvement. It's just that arguments that tend to be rooted in treating the abstraction of "Society" as a concrete individual entity/actor tend to be bad ones. In part because of the effects ESR identifies, and in part because it is a way of disguising the real actor, and the real acted-upon. Again, quite often those who invoke society really mean government, and are advocating state power. They don't mean the little platoons of social intermediary institutions operating in non-coercive ways, though my opinion is that these are generally the best way to address any problems that such people identify, when they are talking about real problems to begin with (which is not always the case).

P.S. here's the Styen quote I was thinking of:

It’s better to pay more in taxes and to share the burdens as a community. It’s kinder, gentler, more compassionate, more equitable. Unfortunately, as recent European election results demonstrate, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than socially equitable communitarianism: Once a fellow’s enjoying the fruits of government health care and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the broader societal interest; he’s got his, and if it’s going to bankrupt the state a generation hence, well, as long as they can keep the checks coming till he’s dead, it’s fine by him. “Social democracy” is, in that sense, explicitly anti-social.

Somewhere along the way these countries redefined the relationship between government and citizen into something closer to pusher and junkie. And once you’ve done that, it’s very hard to persuade the junkie to cut back his habit.

"Societal" thinking tends to lead to Statist thinking and indeed rather inhuman thinking, as people become treated as cogs within the entity of "society" - as means, not ends in themselves. Several entire lengthy blog posts can and probably will be written around that theme, when I stop being lazy.

He Said It

2009-10-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

Related to this, former Senator Bob Kerry (D), writes:

No serious leader in Kabul is asking us to leave. Instead we are being asked to withdraw by American leaders who begin their analysis with the presumption that victory is not possible. They seem to want to ensure defeat by leaving at the very moment when our military leader on the ground has laid out a coherent and compelling strategy for victory.

They seem to want that fairly often, no? Which raises the obvious question of whether there is substance behind the semblance. In my opinion, the answer to that is equally obvious, though it is not always conscious.

High Society

2009-10-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

ESR has some good thoughts on the subject of "Society":

no matter how hard you hunt for “society”, all you’ll ever find is individuals practicing ventriloquism – invoking the spook to justify what they want to do or think they have to do.

This is why there are no ethical claims in which the term “society” appears as a meaningful referent. You’ll find, if you try inventing some, that they fall into two categories: (a) disguised claims about the rights and duties of each and every individual in the society, or (b) vague and ominous nonsense.

This notion, that “society” actually exists as a sort of huge fictive person with rights, needs, and wants that are separate from and supersede those of individuals, is — and I’m choosing my words carefully here — evil and dangerous. It’s a way for power-seekers and parasites to cow others into submission, arrogating for themselves privileges nobody would grant them if they admitted wanting to meddle in order to gratify merely their own desires.

We’ve learned, painfully, over the last 400 years, that raisons d’etat is too dangerous and sweeping a pretext to let stand — that whenever you treat the authority of “government” as a solvent that trumps individual rights and claims, you are no more than a breath away from odious and grinding tyranny. The fictive personhood of “society” needs to be shot through the head for precisely the same reason.

Whenever a Progressive talks about "society" as in "shouldn't our society do X" or "don't you want to live in a society where Y is done?" it is always clarifying to replace "Society" with "State" or "the State".

This is not done because then Progressives end up sounding like what they are, something out of the 1930s. But they invariably mean "the State should do X" when they speak of Society in such a way.

Decline and Hypertrophy

2009-10-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn said recently

"Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?"

Then there's this article by Charles Krauthammer (yes, I'm way behind the "current" normally expected of blogs, but who cares?)

"Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States--controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture--has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome. . .

..."Domestic policy, of course, is not designed to curb our power abroad. But what it lacks in intent, it makes up in effect. Decline will be an unintended, but powerful, side effect of the New Liberalism's ambition of moving America from its traditional dynamic individualism to the more equitable but static model of European social democracy."

I quibble with the first sentence of that 2nd paragraph: It is designed consciously to shift resources from the legitimate functions of government to the illegitimate ones. It's no accident that in an era of runaway, unaccountable spending, the only department that was told to look for every possible "savings" (cut) was defense, and that the only area of spending deliberately excluded from any "stimulus" money was defense, and that after years of saying our soldiers weren't being given the equipment they needed, when money could have been spent to "help" GM and Chrysler buy buying more vehicles for them, that did not happen.

A dream of the Left has been to ratchet up social spending to the point where spending on the legitimate functions of government would necessarily be starved for funds and decline.

This affects the ability to project power. Growth provides the sinews of dominance--the ability to maintain a large military establishment capable of projecting power to all corners of the earth. The Europeans, rich and developed, have almost no such capacity. They made the choice long ago to devote their resources to a vast welfare state. Their expenditures on defense are minimal, as are their consequent military capacities. They rely on the U.S. Navy for open seas and on the U.S. Air Force for airlift. It's the U.S. Marines who go ashore, not just in battle, but for such global social services as tsunami relief. The United States can do all of this because we spend infinitely more on defense--more than the next nine countries combined.

Formerly it was just the Continental Europeans that relied upon the kindness of strangers for their protection. A calculus that might be adaptive if your protectors is the rather generous and benign Anglosphere. Now it will be the entirety of Western Civilization that relies upon the kindness of strangers. Even if these strangers were to have our best interests at heart, a true (as opposed to faux/superficial) multiculturalist would know that their priorities are different from ones we might assert ourselves; liberty is not high on the list of any of them with the possible exception of Anglosphere-influenced India.

I note here that the Obama Administration, for all the plaudits they get for "diplomatic outreach", is engaging in malign neglect of the close relationship the "unilateralist, cowboy" Bush Administration built up with India.

Those are the conditions today. But they are not static or permanent. They require constant renewal. The express agenda of the New Liberalism is a vast expansion of social services--massive intervention and expenditures in energy, health care, and education--that will necessarily, as in Europe, take away from defense spending.

This shift in resources is not hypothetical. It has already begun. At a time when hundreds of billions of dollars are being lavished on stimulus and other appropriations in an endless array of domestic programs, the defense budget is practically frozen. Almost every other department is expanding, and the Defense Department is singled out for making "hard choices"--forced to look everywhere for cuts, to abandon highly advanced weapons systems, to choose between readiness and research, between today's urgencies and tomorrow's looming threats.
See above.

The effect on the dollar is already being felt and could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse and/or hyperinflation. Having control of the world's reserve currency is an irreplaceable national asset. Yet with every new and growing estimate of the explosion of the national debt, there are more voices calling for replacement of the dollar as the world currency--not just adversaries like Russia and China, Iran and Venezuela, which one would expect, but just last month the head of the World Bank.

Again, to to the extent to which these cretins are even aware of the value of having one's own currency serve as the international reserve currency, I don't think they mind the U.S. losing it. It doesn't fit with their transnationalist vision.

But, of course, if one's foreign policy is to reject the very notion of international primacy in the first place, a domestic agenda that takes away the resources to maintain such primacy is perfectly complementary. Indeed, the two are synergistic. Renunciation of primacy abroad provides the added resources for more social goods at home. To put it in the language of the 1990s, the expanded domestic agenda is fed by a peace dividend--except that in the absence of peace, it is a retreat dividend.

And there's the rub. For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.

So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?

Canada, I guess: Their National Anthem says so, after all. Oh, wait...no, it says "We stand on guard for thee" - meaning people should stand on guard for their nation. Again, inverted under Tranzi progressivism.

Because, while globalization has produced in some the illusion that human nature has changed, it has not. The international arena remains a Hobbesian state of nature in which countries naturally strive for power. If we voluntarily renounce much of ours, others will not follow suit. They will fill the vacuum. Inevitably, an inversion of power relations will occur.

Note how at odds this view is from the alternative view. The alternative view asserts, in effect, that we are the only protagonist, the only "Player Character" in the world: That others are simply NPCs who respond to our stimuli. That any bad acts on their part are in effect caused by our actions, and if we change our policies, they will change theirs and become benign. This is clearly the vision of the current Administration, and of those who awarded it the Nobel Prize. They clearly believe that if we voluntarily transform, others *will* follow suit, because we generate all the antagonism, which otherwise would simply fade away if only we give out the right cookies.

"We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration, who was appointed in March. "Kids, countries -- they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."

Other countries are basically small children aping the "adult", the Actor. They are simply re-actors, without minds and policies of their own. In this way, those who claim to be most respectful of other peoples are actually giving them the least credit as independent actors with wills, desires, and goals of their own, and the vision to pursue them the way we can.

No Peace Without Peacekeepers

2009-10-14T08:24:00.001-07:00

Once or twice a year Thomas Friedman writes something worthy of the reputation he has. Let us celebrate this rare event by quoting extensively from the piece in question:

“Let me begin by thanking the Nobel committee for awarding me this prize, the highest award to which any statesman can aspire. As I said on the day it was announced, ‘I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.’ Therefore, upon reflection, I cannot accept this award on my behalf at all.

“But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, to liberate Europe from the grip of Nazi fascism. I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers and sailors who fought on the high seas and forlorn islands in the Pacific to free East Asia from Japanese tyranny in the Second World War.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American airmen who in June 1948 broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin with an airlift of food and fuel so that West Berliners could continue to live free. I will accept this award on behalf of the tens of thousands of American soldiers who protected Europe from Communist dictatorship throughout the 50 years of the cold war.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who stand guard today at outposts in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan to give that country, and particularly its women and girls, a chance to live a decent life free from the Taliban’s religious totalitarianism.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American men and women who are still on patrol today in Iraq, helping to protect Baghdad’s fledgling government as it tries to organize the rarest of things in that country and that region — another free and fair election.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the thousands of American soldiers who today help protect a free and Democratic South Korea from an unfree and Communist North Korea.

“I will accept this award on behalf of all the American men and women soldiers who have gone on repeated humanitarian rescue missions after earthquakes and floods from the mountains of Pakistan to the coasts of Indonesia. I will accept this award on behalf of American soldiers who serve in the peacekeeping force in the Sinai desert that has kept relations between Egypt and Israel stable ever since the Camp David treaty was signed.

“I will accept this award on behalf of all the American airmen and sailors today who keep the sea lanes open and free in the Pacific and Atlantic so world trade can flow unhindered between nations.

“Finally, I will accept this award on behalf of my grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived at Normandy six weeks after D-Day, and on behalf of my great-uncle, Charlie Payne, who was among those soldiers who liberated part of the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald.

“Members of the Nobel committee, I accept this award on behalf of all these American men and women soldiers, past and present, because I know — and I want you to know — that there is no peace without peacekeepers...

“So for all these reasons — and so you understand that I will never hesitate to call on American soldiers where necessary to take the field against the enemies of peace, tolerance and liberty — I accept this peace prize on behalf of the men and women of the U.S. military: the world’s most important peacekeepers.”

Legislative Decline Reaches Hypertrophy

2009-10-13T12:28:00.000-07:00

Not only do they no longer read the Bills they pass, but they have gone so far now as to vote a bill out of committee that hasn't even been written yet:

The bill offers a basic framework for eventual legislation, the closest glimpse yet into what reform might look like.

The fact is, the legislative language, that is the actual Bill, was unavailable at the time of passage, because it hadn't been written:

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who is considered a pivotal figure in efforts to win Senate approval of health-care legislation, cited the importance of keeping the price tag stable, even though final legislative language on the bill is not yet written.

They'd be Insane Not To

2009-10-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

There's sound and fury about a move away from the dollar as the international reserve currency and unit of exchange for pricing commodities.

Here in America, note of this is often accompanied with an undertone of shock, appalled at the idea that other countries are scheming against the dollar and plotting to replace it. Even those Americans who recognize that our current policies are devaluing the dollar and run a nontrivial risk of leading to hyperinflation seem to have this attitude.

But really, can one blame anyone in the world for seeking a refuge in the face of this building storm?

No. Instead, one should be advising Americans to get out of dollar-denominated assets as much as they can, and invest in things that will retain their value in the face of a devalued dollar.

This is unfortunate, and sad, and the U.S. Government is insane to risk losing one of America's most important assets, an asset they clearly under-appreciate and take for granted, the status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. But if we cannot convince them to change their policies, which are self-destructive, we cannot blame others for seeking to shield themselves from the consequences of these deranged policies, and indeed would be wise to do so ourselves.

Factoid

2009-10-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

CNN has time to Fact-Check a SNL skit on Obama, but not enough time or interest to fact-check Obama himself:

Even in his painstakingly prepared speech to Congress, Obama got some material facts wrong.

He said an Illinois man died because his insurance company found an undisclosed case of gallstones in his past, canceled his insurance and delayed a stem-cell transplant for his cancer. The man did lose his insurance, but got it back retroactively and had treatment that his family says extended his life for nearly four years.

Obama had claimed he died as a result of losing his insurance.

Columbus Day

2009-10-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

Glenn Reynolds quotes something approvingly of Columbus: That his expedition was part of a revitalization of Western civilization.

This is supposed to be a retort to the Anti-Columbards. But of course this is the real reason why they hate Columbus. They aren't really opposed to genocidal conquest, which they claim Columbus initiated. One look at some of their historic heroes and those whose ideas they sympathize with demonstrates that.

One look at the blind eye they will turn to such things outside of the West also illustrates that.

Enforced Belief Part I

2009-10-12T06:22:00.000-07:00

A friend sent the following in reply to something I sent her, via e-mail:

Well that was sobering... Thoughtful in a sarcastic "life is so unfair" sort of way, but I have questioned often the defeatist attitude people have towards seperation of church and state. Honestly, the issue with that was based on Monarchy, not religion, and today there just isn't a strong national religion thing going on in the USA, so I don't get why we can't let students be christian, muslim, etc. and be ok with it? If they can be gay or pregnant and we are supportive (financially even) then how is saying "god" going to undermine our national foundations? I don't get it.

Defeatist attitude: As far as the country goes, things are going to get a worse before people will do anything to make it better again. A lot worse. I hope to help, well be by your side through it; prepare for the worst and hope for the best. We need to think about the future in that sense, create as much stability and security as we can. One thread: The country's already bankrupt, and they are spending more, and lost in a fantasy-land. Another thread has to do with the meat of your paragraph: Enforced belief.

The problem with replying is that if I'm brief, it will sound nutty, but going in depth will make it long, and you might not have time to read long things.

For 150 years, what you said had been accepted as common sense, and had been the practice. Why did things change, so that such expressions in the public square became increasingly restricted?

A lot of the original colonists came to America because there was a State Religion in England and they felt they could not practice their own faith freely. The Puritans that came here had their own issues along those lines once they arrived, but in any case it was recognized by those who drafted the 1st Amendment that people had a fundamental liberty of thought, and so beliefs should not be enforced by the Federal Government (later extended, via the 14th Amendment, to government at all levels).

In their experience, government-enforced belief came in the form of a State Theistic Religion. So they enshrined within the Constitution the Establishment Clause, as part of the Amendment intended to guarantee that liberty of thought and expression would be respected (note today that "freedom of expression" is commonly described to be one of the things protected by the First Amendment; there is some double-think here, because it extends only to certain kinds of expression). This was to prove a profound mistake.

No sooner had the Constitution been ratified than the first non-theistic State Religion was created, in Revolutionary France, complete with its own calendar, holidays, ideology, and a non-theistic inquisition in the form of revolutionary terror aimed at enforcing this belief on those deemed unsuitably enthusiastic about it, including inevitably supporters who weren't seen as fanatical enough (thus the end of Robespierre, hoisted on his own petard).

Enforced belief is nothing if not as jealous of rivals as Hera, so during the French Revolution Christianity was driven from the public square. That revolution foundered as a result of the bloodbath it produced, but its legacy lived on, and it would not be the last non-theistic (as opposed to atheistic, though some are) State Religion. What was Fascism and NAZIsm if not enforced beliefs? Or Communism in the Soviet Union and Maoist China (and even now, potential rival religions are kept to state-tamed/approved versions, or driven underground).

Today America has a set of enforced beliefs, increasingly fanatical and intolerant of rival views (ironic from a belief set that ostensibly teaches tolerance, but in reality is only tolerant of differences it itself claims are superficial - race, sex, sexual orientation). Its roots, the roots of Progressivism, are tied to a branch of Christianity, and indeed it's origins are from New England's Puritan Roots (thus it's popularity on Harvard). Ethnic Studies Departments and the like are nothing if not Faith-Based Initiatives, valued not for their scholarly worth but as ideological proving grounds. Similarly, ethnic organizations (on campii and outside of it) serve not merely as social organizations, but as enforcers working in collusion with administrative power to punish those who stray into heresy.

Coincident with the Warren Court decisions on "Separation of Church and State", a balderization of the First Amendment that gets us what we have now, this belief-set dropped its explicitly Religious ties and "secularized" (though it is still widespread among many mainline Protestant churches - such as the ones I went to - the "Liberation Theology" branch of Catholicism, Trinity United/Black Nationalist theology &ct). This was not a conscious move, but a subconscious one, to give Progressives a tool to which to hound their still-Theistic rivals and initiate what amounts to a wave of (relatively mild, but still powerful) persecution, and also introduce the sort of religious indoctrination the 1st Amendment was intended to prohibit into schools, universities, workplaces, &tc. Any time you receive "diversity counseling" or are taught multiculturalism (I have nothing against other cultures - as a historian, how could I? But in reality, "Multiculturalism" ends up meaning not having to know anything about other cultures, simply projecting Progressive beliefs upon them and describing them all as communal, consensus-based, peace-loving, &tc &tc. Scratch the surface of 95% of Multiculturalists, and they know next to *nothing* beyond the superficial about any actual civilization).

As a non-Theistic State Religion enforced by the Extended Civil Service (the bureaucracy, whether under putatively Republican or Democratic elected office-holders, the education establishment, NGOs, Responsible Press, &tc), it is intolerant of rivals, and accepts only "tamed" versions of theistic faiths. This is one reason why the information-systems are full of invective against "the Religious Right" and their supposed influence, but you hear very little against the Religious Left and its wide influence, except (naturally) from opponents on the Right, who naturally react to the war being waged against them (thus being portrayed all the more demonically in the "Responsible Press" and State institutions of learning/instruction/indoctrination: Thus is born the Consistent Standard of Progressivism, having two standards for the same behavior, I.E. protest movements, one for itself and its mascots, and another for its opponents/anyone else), and their abhorrence of "culture war", which really boils down to "Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque, il se defend." Like any other fanatical faith, they detest resistance and respond viciously (thus why they are soft on foreign enemies - wanting to extend understanding and not engage in inflammatory rhetoric - but harsh on domestic opponents).

Very worth watching, 8 min of your life, a *must* see.

The Origins of Political Correctness, Pt. 1 of 3, worth watching all 3 if you have time.

The Ideological War Within the West & Transnational Progressivism; long, but good.

What a Prize

2009-10-12T06:10:00.000-07:00

What more can be said about this farce of an age, this self-parodying epoch we live in, that has not already been said? Other than from the 2006 Time Being of the Year to the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winne...er, recipient, congratulations.

On Asymmetric Warfare: Sedition?

2009-10-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

The connection between my first post on Asymmetric Warfare and this one on Progressives being "tough with domestic enemies, and soft with foreign ones" should be as obvious as it is outrageous. Therefore, it's worth starting with this:

[A]s I listen to the increasingly vitriolic and even seditious rhetoric coming from the political right, I can't help thinking that we need a threatening external enemy

Especially after the previous eight years, one might think the unsupported assertion of "sedition" on the political right is a simple case of projection, but it's not quite.

For Progressives, political opposition to Progressive policies, politicians, and extraconstitutional transformamtion of America is tantamount to treason. But it is not conservatives who are trying to restrict military options or that the war is lost.

No, that bill will not come close to passing through Congress. Progressives have become more subtle since Tom Hayden called for many Vietnams, protesters openly carried the enemy flag and chanted that the NLF is going to win, and cut off military support to our allies.

An exchange here is illustrative, however, of both now and then:

Unknown Speaker 1: "Just a few months ago, I spoke to someone who was carrying the NFL flag. I see that you're carrying an American flag, aren't you? How do you feel about those who are displaying the flag of the Vietcong?"

Unknown Speaker 2: "Well, this is my flag. That may be their flag, but this is my flag and I love it; so I carry it, and I wave it. I'm not gonna burn it, spit on it, it's mine. Somebody try to take it away from me, and I’d fight them to take it away from me."

To Gregory Rodriguez, "Unknown Speaker 2" is vitriolic and seditious, not the person who carried the NFL flag, because "Unknown Speaker 2" will fight back. ("Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque, il se defend.")

How does that relate to overseas enemies of the United States, and the understanding and even sympathy Progressives extend to them? Even when they are theocratic reactionaries of the sort Progressives would viscerally abhor and detest if they were "Christianists"?

There is the direct, and the indirect. Lets explore the indirect first, how information supportive of our efforts is expunged from the record of The Narrative. On my 2nd blog, I had an extensive post on what was found in Iraq. Since that is gone, I'm able to use Andrew Sullivan and the Kay Report as a case study.

Do follow the links, if you have (understandably) forgotten about this. Under circumstances where the application of telling power to truth does not apply, what was in the Kay Report would critically inform everyone's understanding of the Iraq War. Instead, it is largely forgotten, and the belief that nothing of import was found in Iraq with respect to WMD is widespread. Along these lines also, the previous Joe Wilson is viewed as a Whistle Blower, when in fact he was found, in the Senate investigation, to be a serial liar (see also here and here).

Sullivan quotes from the links above are, given later turns of events, too apt to pass up:

The war was legally based on the premise that Saddam had clearly violated U.N. resolutions, was in open breach of such resolutions and was continuing to conceal his programs with the intent of restarting them in earnest once sanctions were lifted. Having read the report carefully, I'd say that the administration is vindicated in every single respect of that argument. . .

But what we now see may not impress those who are looking for any way to discredit this administration and this war. But it shows to my mind the real danger that Saddam posed - and would still pose today, if one president and one prime minister hadn't had the fortitude to face him down. We live in a dangerous but still safer world because of it. Now is the time for the administration to stop the internal quibbling, the silence and passivity, and go back on the offensive. Show the dangers that the opposition was happy for us to tolerate; show the threat - real and potential - that this war averted; and defend the record with pride and vigor.

What a difference an age makes: Sullivan subsequently turned on Bush, not just over spending and opposition to Gay marriage, but on the Iraq war itself, and not just it's conduct, but in toto, and soon found himself once again featured on MSNBC and celebrated in fashionable venues.

This demonstrates the power of The Machine over The Narrative, and how it can contribute to "Asymmetric Warfare" through manipulation of information. It takes a person of particular courage and intellectual integrity to resist it, when they run in its social circles. The Kay Report, and similar finds, are forgotten today, having been dropped down the memory hole.

By changing people's perception of reality, both in what is deleted from The Narrative and what is inserted into it that just aint so by the "Reality-Based Community" enables small-time thugs to compete with superpowers not just on an equal footing, but on one where all involved think they can emerge victorious.

We'll explore the more direct ways this dynamic plays out in the next post On Asymmetric Warfare.

By Their Own Model, Stimulus Doing Harm

2009-10-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

"The stimulus apologists are ignoring the original prediction based on a model. By that prediction, the stimulus is doing harm"

It was obvious in advance of the passage of the "Stimulus", even in advance of the Inauguration, that the Stimulus would not live up to the predictions they were making in arguing for it, and that they would end up dropping those arguments entirely and instead say it was successful anyhow because things would have been even worse without it.

Why should I say it was obvious? Because this happens every time, with virtually every Progressive policy since the Great Society, if not before. They almost always fail if judged on the bases of the original arguments of what benefits they would produce, so those are dropped down the memory hole and "things would be worse without it" is substituted as the new rationale.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, with one caviat:

"I suppose I should be relieved. Claiming success is far less destructive than another irresponsible "stimulus." I'm grateful for small favors."

Their argument that it was a success is destructive down the road, because it always leads to more stimulus packages, which historically have always been successful only in political terms, by allowing politicians to claim credit for the upside of the business cycle while putting all the blame on private actors for downturns in the same cycle, but such packages are not successful in economic terms.

Update: Graphs! We have graphs!

Exchange With Mencius

2009-10-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

Mencius responds to post and some e-mail exchanges, very lucidly. Some reactions:

No, I haven't enabled comments, and for reasons only known to myself I haven't even provided an e-mail to contact me with, which is rather boorish and inhospitable. I might rectify at least one of these soon. [Indeed I just did, so it's possible to comment on this if one wants].

"Porphyrogenitus" means "Born in the Purple [room]", but I'm sure Mencius knows that and is just having a little fun with me. :p

"Therefore, this problem must be solved politically - ie, through the usual old-fashioned means."

Well, then we haven't eliminated politics after all, which was one of your goals. We may have minimized it, but it can never be eliminated, because of human nature.

"Unfortunately, while Europe existed, the joint-stock sovereign does not."

We have had joint-stock corporations ruling/governing nations though. The attractiveness of Moldbug's outline will depend in part on how well or badly you think they governed the lands they held, and leads to:

"But had it been perfectly stable, it would still exist. So why not shoot for perfectly stable?"

True; also true of Cameralism, but you combine it with your technological system, and I include that in the "NeoFeudal" structure as well. So it would be as stable.

I personally don't think anything human-made can be perfect. It's always worth striving for the perfect and achieving excellence along the way, but belief in the perfectibility of human institutions has been a pitfall of Progressivism and utopians generally, one no reactionary should fall into.

That said, your system might endure longer than the current system. It does have more stability built in. Hopefully that does not mean it will also achieve stasis, but there is enough competition among states for clients/residents that this would only be a problem if they cartelized somehow, something that's difficult if there is enough of these polities.

"The latter question can be answered easily: no. We know that the answer is no because we know that a crazy person can buy a publicly listed company, today, and intentionally run it into the ground in some deranged manner. And how often does this happen? Never."

Nobody ever intentionally runs something very expensive that they own into the ground. This does happen unintentionally all the time. Leopold's Congo is always a possibility. Helotism is always a possibility. Faddish-but-ineffective management theories are always a possibility. Humans are not always rational, even rich ones, and the unintentional effect of their actions can be counterproductive, contrary to what they expected and hoped for.

Historically, in my observations, corporations have been best run while under the dominance of their original owner(s): U.S. Steel, The House of Morgan, Microsoft, and it's not a surprise Apple brought Steve Jobs back. But management tends to deteriorate or ossify over time. See IBM, K-Mart, &tc, which decline or go out of business and are replaced by more vigorous competitors A question might arise whether Moldbug's polities become so stable they are too stable, and cannot be supplanted. (It's possible that they can be "not as stable as Moldbug expects" and "too stable, even if they stagnate", but these are really separate points; we don't know what might happen, because it hasn't happened yet, so both sides of the coin should be considered).

"But any system containing an election can be no better than its electors."

This is the real crux of the matter. Almost any sort of government can work well if properly run (and under certain definitions of "work well" - work well for whom?), but the mechanism for selecting proper people, letting the cream rise to the top instead of the scum, is the fundamental problem of good government.

I do applaud Mencius for trying to devise a structure that is more likely to result in responsible, accountable rule than what we have today.

What Was Your First Clue?

2009-10-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

This is an observation? A insight? That Obama is "tough with his domestic enemies, soft with foreign ones"? Obama is a Progressive. Of course he acts this way.

Foreign foes are merely enemies of the United States. Domestic political opponents oppose Obama, and Progressivism, and thus are seen the a real, ideological, menace to be eliminated. Foreign enemies therefore just don't raise the same visceral, emotional reaction from Progressives that domestic political opponents do. The later arouse primate rage. Foreign enemies of the United States aren't to be "demonized" or talked about with "inflammatory rhetoric" that "alienates people", but domestic ones are because they are seen as the ones who caused foreign enemies to hate us in the first place. One unspoken premise of Progressivism is that if it wasn't for their domestic opponents, we wouldn't have foreign enemies. Therefore, the domestic enemy must be dealt with severely, but the foreign enemy must be extended understanding, on at least some level, at least with respect to their (foreign) sympathizers/support base.

This has been true of Progressives for decades. It is also true that right now many Americans, being treated as domestic enemies by the Progressive Administration, have been responding in kind. But that side of the political spectrum was aroused to fight the overseas enemy in a way that Progressives never really were.

I'm not suggesting that Progressives don't know what their priorities are. They certainly do. Those priorities are very telling...however, we're not supposed to observe that: To do so is to be a "hater", a domestic enemy of Progressivism, which will be dealt with harshly and without the kind of mercy that Progressives reserve for foreign enemies of the country.

Good Government Can't Happen

2009-09-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

A Commission created to study tax options for California, whose tax structure has weakened the State's economy and revenues even before the recession hit, recommends bold changes that might actually improve things.

Of course, it will never happen, because bad policy is preferred.

Critics also argue that the plan has not been well studied.

Wasn't that what the commission did? Has the proposal been studied better than, oh, I don't know, Federal Health Care bills that won't even have been completely written till the day they are voted into law, and never read by 90% of the "legislators" voting on them? You be the judge.

"The reception will be somewhere between cool and arctic," said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. "At a time of economic distress, the legislators are going to be very reluctant to embrace big changes in the tax code."

Notice how this is the time to make other radical changes to everything in the country, but not fix the tax code. Tax increases, sure: There's never a better opportunity than now.

Note that this argument would also be used in prosperous times "if it ain't broke" (which it is) "why meddle with it?" and that is also seen as the time to raise taxes ("the rich can afford to pay more, they're doing well in this prosperous economy" is the argument used then).

A generation and a half ago a poor Austrian moved to a prosperous State, and one day he rose to be the prosperous Governor of a poor State, and they're sti, apparently, clueless as to why that happened.

Unlimited Government

2009-09-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

What to make of the health care workers in New York protesting mandatory vaccinations, on condition of employment?

I think fears of the vaccine are almost certainly groundless, though a very small percentage of people do have negative reactions to a vaccine. The protest seems hysteric, especially since the same people may not object to administering it to their patients.

However, as is typical today, the issue here is one of liberty as opposed to the unlimited state. If the health care workers are employed by the State of New York, the State has the right to make the vaccination mandatory. If they aren't, there must be some provision in the State Constitution permitting this in case of a health emergency (which I'm not sure the Swine Flu rises to. Note: I'm not going to let them control the language, therefore I shall not call it "H1N1").

More significant, however, is the individual health insurance mandate being considered in Congress, which apparently has bipartisan support. As usual since the 1930s, this will be justified under the Commerce Clause, the redefinition of which created an unlimited government.

The rejoinder might be a practical one, that health insurance is so important, people should be required to have it, as they are with automobile insurance. Auto insurance is handled at the State level, however, and more importantly these are two different things.

Under the New Deal Redefinition of the Constitution, there were ostensibly to be two different sets of rights. Economic rights, where they ruled you had none, and personal rights, which you might still have if the Court so ruled, especially if you belonged to the right sort of group.

However as the proposed individual mandate to buy health insurance shows, the distinction between economic and personal rights was always false. If they can force you to buy health insurance, they can force you to buy anything. There is no Constitutional, principled barrier. They may refrain from compelling you to buy this or that out of practical or political/popularity considerations, as holds in any omnipotent government, but their power is demonstrated to be unconstrained.

The fact is we live under an unlimited government, and have since the New Deal. The fiction of limited government has been maintained as a guise, because there would be popular outcry and resistance if this were to be stated openly and honestly. This fiction is most maintained by Progressives, who become champions of constitutional government when out of office, but then view their power as unlimited when they are in office. Ironically these are often the same people who mutter about the unprincipled nature of Straussians.

Politicians "In the Pockets of Wall St"

2009-09-28T16:07:00.000-07:00

Turns out it's Democrats, if anyone, in particular one Charles Schumer (D - Wall St.).

Remember that next time they hector their opponents as being bought by Wall St.

Not that it matters: We live in a world where Progressives constantly project their methods onto their opponents.

Update, 29 SEPT 09: Rush Limbaugh used the same term to describe the latter, calling it projection! I must be part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy! It's the only explanation, after all. It couldn't be because, for example, the phenomenon exists. No possibility of that whatsoever...

The Left and Laffer

2009-09-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

When it suits them, Progressives recognize that taxation changes people's behavior, by raising the cost of activities, causing people to engage in them less.

When it doesn't suit them, they scoff at the concept, the idea of "dynamic scoring", and dismiss Laffer as an ideologue.

Pointless Aside since it is referenced: McArdle is correct on the subject of Health Care, because if, for example, a whole bunch of savings could be made in Medicare costs, as Obama claims, then it should be done now (if not already), rather than being held hostage to his (non-existent) health care plan.

True, the Laffer Curve can be exaggerated, but the TNR article is objectively false on the facts. Revenues increased throughout the Reagan Administration (it was additional spending that grew the deficit), and after the 2001 tax cuts, tax revenues grew "unexpectedly".

Vibrant Dissent

2009-09-26T08:52:00.000-07:00

I suppose this was the kind of thing Pelosi was talking about. No? I'm shocked, shocked! She possibly has these more in mind.

Unfair shot? Well, until proven wrong, there is enough evidence that the shoe fits, so I don't acquit.

Public Opinion Always Matters

2009-09-24T21:43:00.000-07:00

Tonight I pick on someone I find very interesting, and many of whose conclusions about "The System" I share (and spouted off on in my original blogs, in similar vein but not exact concord, and, at the time, almost the opposite of his views on the subject of achieving a government accountable to the people/based upon consent of the governed), Mencius Moldbug, in this post actually demonstrates, perhaps without noticing, that one of the things he desires, separation of information and state is an unachievable goal.

"As Hume first observed, all governments are in a sense democratic. They require consent from at least their armed security forces. Public opinion always matters."

This is why I've never for once believed that Moldbug's ideal of separation of information and state will come to pass, or, if it does, remain stable.

No government, no matter how authoritarian, can be indifferent to public opinion. Perhaps less sensitive to it than democracy (though ours does an excellent job of that. See Steven Den Beste's proposed Constitutional Amendments. Probably 70% of the public would support them as policy, but there is no chance whatsoever of what they envision appearing on the political agenda in any form, much less Constitutional Amendments submitted for ratification).

Particularly, the governments he envisions, wanting to maximize revenues, have an incentive to "advertise" at minimum, to convince the subjects that currently live there to stay, and convince prosperous ones to come (one can see advert sections along these lines in The Economist frequently).

Under his vision, possibly correct, there is no way to enforce a separation of state and information, and no incentive for the state to be completely indifferent to public opinion and not work to shape it. It may very well not resemble what we get now in its particulars, but there will be state propaganda.

My personal opinion is that, while Moldbug, as he has said of writers he admiers, can be very insightful in his diagnoses, but his solutions are quackery. Not that I think I have better. I still carry a lantern through the streets looking for one, and trying to think of one myself.

(Last season's "Kings" comes to mind, btw. Control over the press, and who got to promulgate the message in the various struggles for power, was one of the significant plot threads).

Lieber on Insurgents

2009-09-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

here, a primary source, as an addendum to my earlier post on Asymmetric Warfare.

See especially pp.17-22, and in particular p.22.

Argument By Analogy

2009-09-22T15:51:00.000-07:00

From here we have an apt quote:

I believed some of them would never accept the idea that a black person might rule over them, indeed that a black person might rule just as effectively as any white.

Have any of the 3 or 5 people reading this seen the BBC Documentary referenced in that article? I have not, but I'm curious what it's like.

On Asymmetric Warfare: The Sources of Insurgent Power

2009-09-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

First, I apologize to Clauswitz in advance, because not only am I not him, but I can't hope to emulate him. Also, little of what follows is original thinking, though it is entirely at odds with conventional wisdom on the subject.

If war is diplomacy by other means, asymmetric warfare is politics by other means. We're told that the Western Alliance is in danger of losing in Afghanistan, an alliance that represents the most advanced states of the world, consisting of three quarters of a billion people and over half of global GDP, fighting in a country of 25 million people. While reliable data is hard to come by, I believe that at least a plurality of that country's population would prefer to see the Alliance's foe, the Taliban/insurgents defeated, rather than see them return to power.

Why is this absurdity, the possibility of the alliance's defeat, not only considered possible, but actually likely? If we assume that the leaders of the Taliban are rational actors, why have they always held the belief in their ultimate victory?

Let me first assert that, as it is commonly understood, "Asymmetric Warfare" is a fallacy. If you have two forces, and the one whose power appears insignificant compared to that of its opponent, and yet is considered the likely victor, then you are only seeing a fraction of its real power. Like an iceberg, you see only the tip, but the rest is invisible under the veil of the sea.

Only when this Camouflage is drained away, and the whole is visible, can you see why the apparently weaker party not only has a chance of defeating the materially stronger, but is considered the likely winner among those who shape conventional wisdom even in the homelands of its opponents (in this case, the Western Alliance). The ostensible power of the Western Alliance's military forces is obvious, because it is primarily materiel and direct. The power of the insurgents are primarily political/propagandistic and indirect, consisting largely of the ability to manipulate mindsets, rather than battlefield outcomes.

To examine how this works I'll make another unoriginal observation, but one at odds with conventional wisdom. The drafters of Geneva Conventions a century ago and those who described international law during that same time were decent men (they were all men) who wanted to make an inherently inhumane activity, warfare, more humane, less brutal and bloody. The fact that the century of warfare that followed was the bloodiest in human history is not their fault. They were indeed intelligent men, no less intelligent than the men and women responsible for interpreting the Geneva Conventions and "international law" today. The gentlemen of a century ago knew that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Therefore, in order to de-incentivize certain forms of warfare, they did not extend the protections of international law given to lawful combatants to insurgents, terrorists, and the like. The Geneva Conventions did not cover those who did not themselves follow them. In that era, it was accepted as a given that it was necessary to give such persons less protection, to deter people from engaging in activities that would make conflict less clear, and thus more destructive and more prolonged. Thus the Geneva Conventions, for example, declared that such combatants could be shot when captured.

It's not controversial, but simply factual, to observe that today insurgents are extended more rights than lawful, uniformed enemy soldiers would be, and that the argument is whether or not to extend them even more. Most of the Alliance's members send small forces to Afghanistan and compel them to operate under such restrictive rules of engagement that they are militarily useless, and indeed would be hostile to fortune if deployed in a combat zone, so they are kept out of harms way. Even those members whose forces are used in combat (primarily Anglosphere nations and the Netherland) operate under rules so increasingly constrained as to nearly, but not quite, tie their hands with an ever-tightening cobra. The enemy's propaganda complaints of collateral damage are listened to, and thus they are encouraged to use that as one of their main weapons in the conflict to thwart the Alliance.

We are told we need to accept these constraints, less we lose the "hearts and minds" of the local population. But the enemy quite clearly does not have to operate this way. The intimidation tactics and outright brutality which insurgents use to cow the population is also one of their weapons. Why? Because the "hearts and minds" strategy concentrates mainly on the hearts of those sympathetic to the enemy, their collaborators, and not on the minds of those who oppose them or are otherwise innocent, simply wanting a better life than the Taliban offers, but afraid they'll be left to die or otherwise suffer when we pack up and abandon the area, after concluding that our efforts are futile or even counter-productivly "alienating people". This mindset involves listening primarily to the complaints of those sympathetic to the insurgents, rather than those who would be our natural allies. Again, mercy to the guilty becoming cruelty to the innocent.

Highly constrained rules of engagement that limit the effectiveness of the Alliances armed forces also serve to to prove the point of those who shape conventional wisdom, who always assert that military force is not effective. This is not to say we should be bloody-minded and be indiscriminate. Indeed, the Armed Forces of the West are the most discriminate forces in human history. But warfare is warfare. A deranged mind might conclude therefore that these rules exist to prove the point of those shaping conventional wisdom, who are also the ones prodding for ever more restraint, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The conventional wisdom suggests that an insurgency cannot be militarily defeated, and yet the historical facts belie this. Insurgencies have been defeated militarily: The Philippines, the Malay Insurgency, among others. Even Vietnam: It's no longer even controversial, outside of direct discussions of insurgent warfare in the arena of conventional wisdom, to acknowledge that, after Tet, the Viet Cong ceased to be a viable force, and that the North conquered the south in a classic armored offensive of tank columns and regular troops, rather than any sort of indigenous insurgency in the South. But the converse view is still prevalent in the conventional wisdom on the subject of guerrilla warfare, not because of its historical accuracy, but because of its political utility in present-day policy controversies in the West.

Defeating insurgents requires a combination of strictness, firm rules on the enemy and their sympatizers, not just our own forces, and employment of local troops under western officers, something done in a coy way during the Anbar Awakening (when we paid local militias, thus gaining some influence) as a means of discipline. "Advisor" programs, where Western soldiers mentor local counterparts, are another way of reproducing this in a coy way.

Why it is in the interest of the Western Alliance to enact policies that have the practice not only of tying the hands of their own armed forces, making them less effective, but in practice making warfare less humane on the whole by incentivizing a pattern of warfare by its opponents based on practices that the original drafters of the Geneva Conventions and international law did their best to deincentivize, because of its bloody results, becomes a key question. But a controversial one indeed.

This has to do with conflicts internal to the West itself, as one faction uses its own ability to manipulate procedural outcomes and guide conventional wisdom in order to defeat their domestic political opponents. This has the side-effect of providing the primary power of the insurgents themselves, which is, as mentioned above, primarily political and indirect.

It shouldn't surprise anyone, therefore, when the spokesmen of al Qaeda include in their list of grievances complaints that have a certain sort of resonance and appeal, creating a sort of symbiosis where the insurgent's power is parasitical.

How this works in practice would be inflammatory if put baldly, and require quite a bit of supporting argument, which I will go into in subsequent posts.

You Say You'll Change the Constitution

2009-09-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

This is great, in a way. I could think of some, too (repeal the XVII Amendment, for example, and modify the birthright citizenship clause in such a way that people vacationing here or otherwise temporarily here couldn't automatically qualify their children as citizens, perhaps).

But really now: If written Constitutions were followed, Steven Den Beste's amendments wouldn't be necessary in the first place, and wouldn't keep things from falling off the rails again.

Perhaps that's one of the points he's illustrating. Probably 70% of the voting public would agree with 70% (or more) of SDB's proposed Amendments, and yet there is no chance whatsoever that any of them would come close to being put on the agenda for ratification, much less actually become part of the Constitution. What does this tell you? We've drifted rather far from following the Constitution, and those who were up in arms over (supposed/arguable) particular violations of it during the previous Administration are, in general, happy and supportive of our drift away from Constitutional government, and indeed are busy evolving the "living" (which means in practice: dead/undead) Constitution away from the written one.

In practice the U.S. operates under an unwritten Constitution in ~~many~~ respects, and only superficially cleaves to the written one. It's "boob bait for the bubbas", and will remain so as long as Progressives maintain institutional pre-eminence, which they have, regardless of the Party in the White House, since 1933. An illustration of this was when our "legislators" this summer had to sit in folding chairs in the basement of the Capital and learn about "their Bill" from staffers, since legislation is written by the permanent bureaucracy and their allies in the extended civil service (ECS for short, which consists not only of government agencies but also NGOs outside of government, University policy institutes, &tc), and not generally even read by the elected representatives whose only job is to, well, draft, consider, debate, and vote on legislation.

Legislation passed through Congress and signed into law is typically (deliberately) vague, the vagaries given definition by mechanisms of "Administrative Law", and regulations drafted by career civil servants. These are sometimes (when noticed) struggled against by appointees under non-Progressive Administrations, resulting in a firestorm in the Responsible Press^® (which is itself part of the ECS). These vagueness of legislation is deliberate because the legislators know what will happen, how the blanks will be filled in, but don't want to be accountable for the result. They can then tell their voters it was impersonal bureaucrats and they'll "look into it" (constituent service), and the beat goes on: The ECS wins coming and going, largely responsible for drafting bills and then filling in the details after passage.

Note: I'm against the death penalty generally, but I would agree with SDB's "Amendment" on it, because, simply reading the plain text of the Constitution, it is Constitutionally permissible. Not every policy one disagrees with is necessarily unconstitutional, nor should they be, and I oppose redefinitions-of-terms-reinterpretation of the Constitution.

It means what it means, and has a mechanism for alteration, which is the one SDB proposes be used to return it to it's original meaning. However, I simply don't think that enacting new Amendments in accordance with the written Constitution to return it to it's original meaning would be an obstacle to those who operate our Unwritten Constitution, since its plain meaning hasn't proven to be an obstacle to them before.

Indefensible: The Broad Picture

2009-09-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Regarding this swerve in policy, critics may miss the mark. The alternative being swapped in may or may not be better.

The real troubling aspect of this is one that seems to prevail on a lot of the current Administration's policy changes. For all their talk before the election, there seems to be less consultation with allies before anything is done, rather than more. But this should surprise no one.

The U.S. seems to be returning to the position Bernard Lewis once observed as being “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”

Given that, the people of Iran will have to free themselves, for no one else will help them.

Before anyone says "well, it was always the case that they would have to free themselves", let us remember that in the long history of such things, no one has done so without significant outside support and encouragement.

Not even the fall of the Eastern Bloc is a counter-example, nor that of Lebanon. Lebanon indeed is illustrative: Their brief dawn of Democracy occurred when there was significant outside pressure on the Syrians (and their proxies). When the support faded, so to did Lebanon's false dawn.

Outside support does not have to be bombs. But it does have to be something more than a handful of half-hearted statements wrung out largely to avoid criticism at home of indifference.

The best bet to end any menace posed by Iran has always been replacement of the current Iranian regime by one more typical of the Persian people. The heavy lifting was always going to have to be done by them, but they need buttresses supporting them from the outside for their efforts to succeed.

In Office, But Not in Power

2009-09-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

A good article about conservative government:

The Tory story rarely varies. Whenever the centre-right wins an election, the centre-left allows that its opponents have the office, but denies they have the mandate. They can govern for a term, yes, but only by consensus, not according to their own lights. They may steer the bus to a mutually agreed destination. Driving it along a route of their choice is out of the question.

Majority isn't the issue. The centre-left reminds the centre-right of its inherent lack of mandate as soon as the votes are counted, whether the centre-right's win is a squeak or a landslide. This is especially true in Canada. The amazing thing isn't that the centre-left

makes this declaration -- why shouldn't it? -- but that the centre-right often believes it, or acts as if it did. Majority or minority, Tories tend to govern apologetically, as if they were caretaker governments, probationary constables, relief politicians holding the fort until the real politicians catch their breath and return for the next spell of legitimate centre-left governance.

Some centre-right leaders in the United Kingdom and the United States haven't been as vulnerable to the syndrome of pussyfoot-conservatism as Canada's centre-right leaders. But even the least wobbly, Margaret Thatcher, say, and Ronald Reagan, weren't entirely impervious to it. With all their self-confidence and charisma, Thatcher and Reagan never radiated that cocksure, hubristic aura of self-righteous intellectual and moral conceit that's the hallmark of centre-left leaders from Pierre Elliott Trudeau to Barack Obama.

Simply put, the centre-left feels entitled to govern; the centre-right doesn't. It was instructive, and scary, to watch America's President open a new chapter of regulatory statism in his Wall Street ululation this week. Obama was cooking, laying down the law with entitlement oozing from every pore, in a dazzling, born-to-govern performance.

That one part on center-right leaders in the UK and U.S. may have been true in the 80s, but if one looks at Eisenhower, Nixon, and both Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger, when it comes to domestic policy, how much did they really change? The only real difference was velocity, not direction. Enough for Progressives to hate them, but not enough that Progressives have to re-institute programs "undone" when they get back in office themselves. Even on the regulation front, SarbOx was during the Bush Presidency, and for all the talk of "Deregulation" being the problem, everything they propose is new additional regulations, not re-introduction of regulations repealed under Bush.

It's amazing that, while they flog Bush in public through one tongue, with their other they will say that this or that policy they are pursuing was drawn up & initiated during the Bush Administration (some change, eh?), so what's the problem? This is because the real government, the one that drafts the bills (such as the Stimulus or Congressional version of Health Reform) are the permanent bureaucracy in combination with Pro-Government Activist allies in the Extended Civil Service, ones that call themselves "NGOs" but have more influence over public policy than elected representatives (search phrase "Improper political influence over government decision-making" in the story; note that what makes that story newsworthy is it's considered abnormal and...improper).

Sometimes I worry that everyone else is perfectly normal, and it's actually me who's insane. But then I read the paper and I can relax again.

Note that this situation, of conservative governments being "in office, but not in power", is exactly what Progressives want conservatives to be - see the latest screed by Sam Tanenhaus, discussed here; a kept opposition, impotent and existing only as a foil on the one hand and on the other to cement and ratify whatever the prior Progressive government enacted as "our tradition to conserve":

conservatives, if they wished to maintain that designation (at least in the eyes of liberals), were obliged to endorse all manner of liberal reforms once they were established as part of the new status quo. Thus, self-styled conservatives who attacked the New Deal were not acting like conservatives because they were in effect attacking the established order—and, of course, “real” conservatives would never do that. So it was that conservatives who wished to reverse liberal victories became radicals or extremists. Conservatives, moreover, could have no program of their own or, at any rate, any program that had any reasonable chance of succeeding, because any successful appeal to the wider public would turn them into populists and, through that process, into extremists and radicals. Not surprisingly, they viewed a popular conservatism as a contradiction in terms. Conservatives, in short, could only win power and influence by betraying their principles, and could only maintain those principles by accepting their subordinate status. Thus, in the eyes of the liberal historians, conservatism could never prosper in America because, if it did, it could no longer be called conservatism.

Margaret Thatcher called this the Ratchet Effect.

This problem of conservatism has been observed for a long time:

It may be inferred again that the present movement. . .will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always, when about to enter a protest, very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when [this] shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

So Cass Sunstein can hope that one day animals will be able to bring suit in civil court.

Now, of course I don't agree with Dabney on the particular subject he was addressing in that passage. Indeed, I have elided over it, and replaced his words with generic terms. This, I suppose, insures that I am not a conservative. Which may be the case (I am a Hayekian, and have in the past called myself a "Hayekian conservative", which is strictly speaking an oxymoron in Hayek's own view).

But the malady Dabney was talking about in meta-terms is certainly a real phenomenon.

The next non-Progressive government ought to be both in office and in power, not simply a caretaker government that gets screamed down for the most trifling tinkering at the edges of the Progressive edifice. It should not simply be a superficial front/foil for the Permanent Party of Government, with policies continuing to be made by the bureaucracy and the opposition-in-office simply ratifying as the new status quo whatever this Administration enacts.

Fact-Checking

2009-09-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

The non-existant. Yet they say the Republicans are the ones with no plan.

More Fact-Checking here.

Then there is here vs AP.

"Fact-Check.org's" effort on the subject was at best a half-hearted "effort", which is one reason it and similar sites are worthless, except for the partisans of the side Annenberg prefers.

The Vision of the Enlightened and the Bureaucratic State

2009-09-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

from here

As such critics pointed out, the self-incurred guardians of the Enlightenment took themselves to be the sole judges of enlightenment, the determiners of the true and of the good.
We see incontrovertibly that men who are not themselves in the position to know what is good for them and to strive for it are even less able to owe their well-being to the virtue of a guardian who is without a judge and who will never allow them to achieve maturity. [20]
Herr Jacobi’s words are an epitaph to private freedom that should be inscribed over every door to every parliament in the world; for this self-incurred guardianship has not gone away, but, on the contrary, has grown stronger by the year, as a matter of political freedom; and if you are looking for the roots of that freedom and that seemingly indefatigable confidence of bureaucrats and social reformers by which they presume to meddle in every aspect of your life, you will find it here in self-incurred yet immature guardianship — which has as its ostensible aim your welfare and that of all your fellows.
In all governments there may be odious tyranny, monopolies, exactions, and abominable abuses of nearly all kinds; but the idea of a bureaucracy is not fulfilled till we add the pedantic element of a pretense to direct life, to know what is best for us, to measure out our labor, to superintend our studies, to prescribe our opinions, to make itself answerable for us, to put us to bed, tuck us up, put on our nightcap, and administer our gruel. This element does not seem possible without a persuasion on the part of the governing power that it is in possession of the secret of life, that it has a true knowledge of the all-embracing political science, which should direct the conduct of all men, or at least of all citizens. Hence any government that avowedly sets before its eyes the summum bonum of humanity, defines it, and directs all its efforts to this end, tends to become a bureaucracy. [21]

Returned to Blogging

2009-09-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

I got out of the Army in February and have been working part-time at the Post Library since, while readying myself to go back to Uni (btw, anyone want to buy a house in Killeen, TX?) I had effectively stopped blogging in the meantime, but overcome by the urge to comment on current events, and in an effort to cut down on the amount of lengthy mails I was subjecting my friends to, I decided to start posting again, and see if it took.

It seems it has, as I had originally intended to post something maybe once a week, but find myself posting more regularly. So I'm back to blogging.

My ancient, nearly unreadable archives are here. My "Classic Archives" were at www.porphyrogenitus.net, on a professionally-designed (by Sekimori) page, but I let that go a year ago, and for better or worse they are gone. There was some stuff I wish I had salvaged there, amid a bunch of dross, which is one reason why I'm back to a "free" site, at blogspot. Barring the geocitiesization of blogger, these archives won't go away.

Hopefully I'll have some insights, however small, that may be of interest to the occasional reader, should there be any.

Beware of Political Violence!

2009-09-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

Pelosi is concerned:

"I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because i saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco, this king of rhetoric. ... It created a climate in which violence took place. ... I wish we would all curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements and understand that some of the ears that it is falling on are not a balanced as the person making the statements may assume."

"You have to take responsibility for any incitement that may cause."

Maybe she's talking about Progressive revolutionary rhetoric in the Bay area during the '70s and the Black Panther's murder of Betty van Patter, among others?

Or perhaps she's talking about people referring to those who disagree with them as engaging in Un-American Activities and implying they are NAZIs, leading to black men being beaten and people getting their fingers bitten off. No doubt Pelosi feels deep responsibility for this.

Or is it another example of the Law of Progressive Consistency in action?

Too Bad Those Racists Are Destroying Civil Discourse, Those Hateful Haters

2009-09-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

One rather remarkable part of the late controversy is that, during segments on news programs or stories in the newspapers of the Responsible Press^® on the Joe Wilson or 9/12 protests or other opposition to Administration policies, they will switch in one breath from lamenting the decline in civil discourse to hurling around the "racist" epithet.

Not only do they themselves not notice the cognitive disconnect between, on the one hand, calling for better behavior in public debate on the one hand and calling people racists on the other hand, but the rest of us don't overtly make the connection, and call them out on it.

I surmise that this is because Progressive Consistency has been mostly internalized. It is accepted as a given that they will consistently have one standard for themselves and their mascots, and another for their targets and opponents (and anyone else).

The Law of Progressive Consistency, which I first outlined in a mail to Glenn Reynolds states that in any matter of public debate, Progressives (and the Responsible Press^®) will consistency apply two standards, one for themselves and their mascots, and another for their targets, opponents, and innocent bystanders. It is improper to see this as hypocrisy, because these standards are rigidly maintained over time and across the board on all issues.

This Law is key to maintaining The Narrative.

See also treatment of the ACORN story, &tc &tc ad infinitum ad nauseum. It is also why Official Journalism does not have a "Liberal Bias" in the way people think. As part of The Movement, it cannot, by definition, be to the left of itself.

The Real ACORN Scandal: The Responsible Press

2009-09-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

As another video is released showing ACORN to be what it is, a question of how deep the corruption goes might arise.

As bad as it is for any institution claiming to work on behalf of the needy to be revealed as corrupt, and as bad as it is that this institution was long, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, given public funds with apparently little accountability or even desire for it, there is something worse that has been revealed.

As with the nature of ACORN, this exposure does not come as a surprise to many. But that in itself is appalling. What do I speak of?

It used to be that journalists would run with a good story without fear or favor. Even if they were "scooped" on it. It wasn't long ago that every aspiring member of the Responsible Press^® wanted to be the next Woodward & Bernstein, or air a grainy video expose' on 60 Minutes. It is not cuts at newspapers or network news desks that caused this to die. For here is a story given to them on a platter, a juicy story of sex, corruption, and politics. All they had to do was follow it further.

But they show no interest in it whatsoever. There is no member of the Responsible Press^® who is interested in the story. Not one. After five days, apparently many know little about it, when their job relies upon them being informed.

The era of Upton Sinclair & "Yellow Journalism" would be better than this. This is what professional journalism has produced, a Responsible Press^® that is not "biased", but completely blind in one eye, and that therefore fails catastrophically in its function as a reliable source of information.

ACORN at least is fulfilling it's intended purpose. The same cannot be said of the press corps.

They thus become enablers of corruption, in government and out, rather than watchdogs serving the public, the mantle they claim for themselves.

Racial Unity in Obama's America

2009-09-15T12:40:00.000-07:00

The Post-Racial Era is truly underway as this shows.

The Police Captain is backtracking as to whether the attack in the last story was racially motivated. But as Newsweek reports, even your (white) baby is racist.

Probably the White student was thinking 'Boy' as an unspoken word in the air, inciting the attack. Thus the attackers were incited, and ~~thought~~ speech that incites violence is criminal.

Perhaps the White student who was punched back twice as hard by the victims of his insensitivity can still be prosecuted for his ~~Thought~~ Hate Crime. Then the healing can commence, and Americans might one day stop being a nation of cowards on race.

Glee (Review)

2009-09-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

So I watched last week's episode of this show. But before I get to that, are any of you familiar with shows on the Disney Channel? Shows like "That's So Raven" or "Hannah Montana"? I think the Jonas Brothers or some such also have a show there.

There is one commonality to all those shows, at least the parts that I've seen. Even granted that they are children's shows, these shows are bad (and not in the good way). It's hard to tell if the actors are really so horrible as their acting might imply, or if it is just because they are saddled with wretched script writing and even worse directing. These shows usually have an up-beat, positive message, but are embarrassing bad.

What does this have to do with "Glee"? The actors on Glee are handsome (except for furniture-characters) and the girls are pretty. Even the "uncool" protagonist is "Hollywood Homely" - a dark-haired girl to contrast with the blond Heaters, who possibly think she needs to lose 5 pounds and she weighs maybe 115. "Glee" also seems to have a positive moral in each episode, but is the anti-Disney. Here is what I guess happened: Writers and a director, embittered by being rejected by Disney Channel, got together and said to Ryan Murphy "lets put on a show". The result is Glee, the UnDisney.

Which isn't to say it doesn't have a positive message embedded in each episode, an "I learned something today" moral. The one I saw featured the Uncool Protagonist joining a Club run by the Heathers, the "Just Say No" Club or something. The purpose of the scene was so that the Protagonist could deliver the episode's Aesop: She issued a soliloquy to the effect that studies showed that, due to the emotional instability and poor judgement of students educated at public (government) schools, it was unrealistic to expect them to not become crackheads, and that therefore only reasonable thing to do is to give them clean crackpipes and sterile needles, and then she stormed out. Or something like that. I admit I was a bit confused. Anyhow the Jock-Singer who is to be her soulmate had the look worn by "Smell-the-Fart" Actors showing he was thinking about this Aesop. Possibly in a future episode, after he drops his Heather, he and the uncool chick will share a rock together or something.

Well, I doubt it, because usually the Uncool Protagonists in shows like this don't engage in such activities. But they do convince their Glee Club Advisor (or whatnot) to cut out Disco, on the grounds that Disco Sucks, and instead sing something that would appeal to Kanye West, because, of course, he's a genius role model, resulting in a song-and-dance number so horrible, it would embarass the Disney Channel. So the show's meta-message is it's cool to be uncool as long as you're uncool in the way that unfashionable Heathers find objectionable, but you don't want to be uncool in an unfashionable way, you better follow the herd of independent minds and embrace modern muzak.

"Be uncool in fashionable ways, but not in unfashionable ways" isn't nuh of a message, so it's never put forward explicitly. Only by implication, like on most such shows.

Anyhow, "Message" shows, like Disco, usually suck, both in Disney and Anti-Disney varieties. Unless they're cartoons. In which case the message (don't play with dynamite, don't drop anvils from large heights, don't declare war on Bugs Bunny, respect Cartman's authoritah, and whatnot) are sometimes embedded in a well-written, well-directed format.

Robert Conquest's Three Laws of Politics

2009-09-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

Robert Conquest's three laws of politics:

1) Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

2) Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3) The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

To the third can be added Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

09/11/09: Moral Clarity and Cultural Fog

2009-09-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

This is a day where the appropriate thing to do is make a rousing post, a post reminding us of our spirit, our determination. This day is for fulsome, Whittlesque posts about the indomitable, stalwart nature of the average American, regardless of their race, creed, sex, or ethnicity, be they native-born, like Todd Beamer, or be they immigrants like Rick Rescorla. That the heroes of of that day embodied this - personified it, exemplified it, displayed all of the best of what it means to be an American and how we can and should keep the flame, ever resolute.

What is left to be said?

Some time ago, on my other blog, now vanished in the sands of time, I had a 9-11 retrospective post that, to the best of my own poor ability, encapsuled the above.

In these times a prospective might be in order. It may be optimistic: The era of large-scale Islamic terror is coming to an end. It may be pessimistic: This is not because Bush defeated terror, or because Obama will have shown the world a better face, causing our foes to lay down their bombs.

If anything, it is for the same reason that Billy Ayers, Laura Whitehorn, Mark Rudd, and LeRoi Jones (AKA Amiri Baraka) layed down their pipebombs. Not because they were defeated. Not because they changed their mind, asking for forgiveness and redemption. Only because other avenues for advancing the same goals had opened up to them.

The "Long March Through the Institutions" is a path well-trod. Already extremist voices of this ilk are welcomed on college campii, in media as the legitimate voice of their world, and the fallacy of redressing grievances, "understanding" and "outreach", the same methods that are practiced with all mascots (but never targets), that of empowerment. A word that, yes, means what it means.

It is the true moderate voices in Islam, secularizing, liberal-minded, who have been neglected. Throughout the West "authentic" is presumed to be the bearded Saudi-trained Madrassa head, or the polemical intellectual. The Nedas of the world they would prefer to ignore, and will seek to forget. That is obvious. These are the fruits of multiculturalism. The inevitable fruits of the last "Long March Through the Institutions," come to apotheosis at last.

So what is to be said? I could repost the images that we all thought would be seared into our minds. I could, perhaps, quote Andrew Sullivan saying that things had changed forever, something I did not believe at the time, though I was then an admirer of his writing. To do that would only highlight how...untransformed...things are. "Moral clarity" has been lost in the cultural fog.

But what was an inattentive drift over the last eight years has become a purposeful stride.

I Feel Utter Contempt

2009-09-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

This reminds me of this, from "Ethics in America", which I watched in the '80s. Be sure to at least see the money quote, though you're not doing it justice if you miss the exchange that went before (which is in the longer excerpt).

Fact Check

2009-09-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

For thee, but not for we:

It is telling that so many people who claim to be speaking on the side of Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Journalism have consistently focused their outrage-o-meters at individual townhall attendees, political broadcast entertainers, and the lesser lights of a lame (if resurgent-by-default) opposition party, while letting walk nearly fact-check-free the non-irrelevant occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If calling out lies and misrepresentations about a significant policy proposal is such pressing journalistic business—and it should be!—you'd think the watchdogs might start with the guy doing the proposing.

As with all their other standards, The Movement, which includes the responsible press, is very consistent. They have one for themselves and their mascots, and another for their opponents and targets.

So it is not outside of their norms that they "fact check" one side to niggling detail, and elide over - indeed rationalize and put the best face upon - the other. It's only natural to favor one's own side, giving it the benefit of the doubt, while searching for fault (even where there might be none, putting the worst of all interpretations upon it) in what one's opponents say.

Tom Friedman: "Slavery is Freedom. Freedom is Slavery"

2009-09-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

While quotting Joe Romm (scroll) as some sort of impartial observer, Tom Friedman calls for a One-Party State while claiming to desire the opposite:

Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.”

So an opposition party that dissagrees with and opposes makes for a "one-party democracy". Oddly, hundreds of years of Anglosphere parliamentary tradition might suggest otherwise, but who are they to disagree with the enlightened majesty of Tom Friedman? Burke, Palmerston, Gladstone, morons!

Hillary once said "we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration", but since the election the entire Progressive movement has been modifying that to mean "as long as it's a Republican Administration". Disagreeing with, debating, a Progressive one is being "divisisive". As Obama himself keeps reminding us, the time for talk - for debate - is over. So who is really advocating a one-party state here?

No one should be surprised that Friedman is in favor of the Permanent Party of Government. What he wants is a two-party one-party state, where politics will be separated from public policy, and no one will get in the way of implementing the vision.

Note the disingenuity Friedman must display in the column, sending reams of information down the memory hole, in order to construct his straw man thesis. One that will be lapped up and repeated by progressives everywhere.

Friedman of course thinks he is clever here. He relies upon cleverness masquerading as insight. One day he woke up and decided it would make a clever column to claim America is a one-party state because the opposition party opposes, and only by going along with the Permanent Party of Government, and ceasing to resist it in any way, can it escape this opprobrium. Then he designed a column around the clever double-phrase (Friedman loves such), introducing only what supported the turn-of-phrase and eliding over anything that might contradict it. With public intellectuals like these, who needs simpletons?

We live in an Orwellian kultursmog. Perhaps Friedman thinks that if we adopt Chinese methods of dealing with political opposition, then we will escape the trap of being a "one party democracy".

See also here:

Rarely, however, has he been quite so clear about the directness of the connections he sees between his preferred set of substantive outcomes; his contempt for American democratic processes that have, despite all, managed to hang in there for, I don't know, a few times the length of time between the Cultural Revolution and today; and his schoolgirl crush on autocratic elites because they are able to impose from above.

Let me just say for the record that this is a monstrous column. When faced with American public defection from elite-preferred outcomes on certain policy issues that involve many difficult tradeoffs of the kind that democracies, with much jostling and argument, are supposed to work out among many different groups, Friedman extols the example of ... China's political system, because it's both enlightened and autocratic? Who among us knew?

and here:

Thomas Friedman, golden boy of the NYT op-ed page, is writing love-letters to dictatorships because they have the foresight to invest in electric batteries and waterless toilets or something.

This is the argument for an "economic dictatorship" pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It's the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.

and one more:

The next time anyone tries to tell you that Thomas L. Friedman is a serious thinker, or a tribune for global democracy, or even a good columnist, or basically someone who isn't worth sending on the next slow boat to Shanghai, please refer him to this despicable column

Just to be even more dumfounding, Friedman wonders in the column why Republicans aren't gung ho for unrestricted immigration, because they're supposed to be in the pockets of big business and all.

Friedman seems to want desperately to confirm that Moldbug is right about Progressivism:

The whole point of electing Democrats is to allow the permanent government to do its thing. When you vote for a Democrat, you are saying: I am tired of politics. I am loyal to the permanent government and trust in its prudent guidance

My Simple Plan to Fix Everything Forever

2009-09-09T06:28:00.000-07:00

Obama will weigh in with his tonight, so, despite the fact that I don't plan for this to be an activist blog, it's only fair that I put forward my own plan, if only for comparative purposes. What is being compared? General outlook and political philosophy. Note that, in this, Obama and the Progressive movement he is part of isn't so different from their Republican opponents. Because most of the latter would not follow a plan like this either.

But first: Some in the press, when they are made to talk about "liberal media bias", say that doesn't exist, that if there is a bias, it is a bias to "do something". No guesses needed as to who they think the doer should be (it isn't the independent platoons of civil society). It's the government, and, more specifically, the Federal Government.

A vision shared by Progressives everywhere. One rebuttal to this is Frederick Douglass' (not my plan, mind):

I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!

When it comes to health care, or banking, or education, aspects of this certainly apply: Quite frequently it was the previous round of "reforms" that led to the "need" for yet another (health insurance/coverage being just one prime example; see also "Campaign Finance Reform"), in the usual pattern wherein our wise rulers create a problem, and then appoint themselves to fix it, a pattern which has gone on for a century and more now, leading by gradual stages to a situation where "accountability" now means a people accountable to its government, rather than the other way around.

But I am, by nature, a moderate person, ever open to compromise and consensus. So here is my Simple Plan to Fix Everything Forever.

Congress, and the Federal Government more generally, has one region in the country that it constitutionally administers, that it is constitutionally responsible. That is the District of Columbia.

If these Solons really can fix anything, they should be able to demonstrate that they can do it in the District of Columbia.

If they can fix Health Care, and provide it to all with a full range of options, that insures everyone, providing quality private and public insurance to all citizens while also controlling cost but not limiting quality of care, as they claim they will, then let them demonstrate they can do it in DC first. Given that the "reforms" they plan to enact are not intended to be fully implemented till after the next Presidential election (my, what a coincidence. I'm sure it has nothing to do with electoral considerations. Obama said he wouldn't do anything based on mere politics, after all), there is certainly time for a demonstration project.

If they can fix Primary and Secondary Education, let them prove it in DC first. Noting that DC's public schools are not underfunded. They have among the highest per student spending in the nation. But if they can fix it with money alone, let them fix it with money alone in DC first. If they can fix it by some other method or combination of methods, let them prove it in DC first.

And so on down the list of "public policy" proposals. Let them demonstrate that they succeed in DC, before imposing upon everyone.

If your reaction is "well, the residents of the District of Columbia don't deserve to be experimented on in such a fashion", that applies to all of us, not just the decent people of DC.

And, if they cannot do for the District of Columbia, then we shall follow Frederick Douglass' proposal.

History in Amber

2009-09-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Many people often wonder how so many of the great and the good could have been so blind as to swoon for dictators during the 20s and 30s.

Well, related to this post in Italy today, one can watch the fashionable, enlightened, intelligent, Progressive people fete a national socialist (Chavez is a socialist. Chavez is a nationalist. Therefore, Chavez is a national socialist, like so many other strongmen who were celebrated by Progressives in their time for going on a century now). History repeating itself as farce, like deja vu all over again, because they neither forget nor learn from the past.

Of course, all these people are in favor of freedom of expression, but so long as it's those they don't identify with who are being cracked down upon, they are happy to cheer and rationalize a repression.

Of course, not to be outdone, Michael Moore has a new propaganda flick, too, which, with past experience as our guide, we can say with confidence will bear as much resemblance to reality as Stone's. But these poor cottage filmmakers are up against a mighty machine of right-wing dominance.

Resistance is Futile

2009-09-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

So, Van Jones resigned and concerned citizens are rightly taking credit, while others plot their revenge.

Two questions:

1) Will the person the Administration appoints be substantively different from Mr. Jones?

2) What do you think the narrative of this will be in 30 days, if not less?

I think the answers are obvious, given that the well-informed segment of the population, which depends upon the Responsible Press^™ for information, is and will remain clueless about what was really going on here. This is because the problem is much larger than what you imagine it to be.

Two things will happen. First, a narrative will be constructed - is already be constructed - by the Responsible Press^™ that Mr. Jones was a victim of a vicious, unprincipled right-wing hit. The well-informed will accept it uncritically and tame in-house Conservatives, like David Brooks, will "concede" there is "something to that." They will consider this an "ugly episode" that distracted from serious public policy conversations.

Second, when the Administration, either through it's next "Green Jobs Czar" or not, advances the identical policies that they would have if Jones were still in the seat, if anyone resists, the cry will be "See? You won't compromise! You're hard-liners. We got rid of Jones for you, and still you reject any bipartisan effort in enacting these vital policies!"

Van Jones was at least a known quantity. It might have been easier to thwart the substance of the policies they want if he had stayed on. Getting rid of him is surely an accomplishment, of sorts. But really in the great scheme of things, it is small beer. If this is the height of triumph for opponents of Progressivism, they're in a sorry state indeed.

Update, 09/09/09: NYT writing the narrative

The Right to Not Participate

2009-09-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

Peter Hitchens writes:

But who should we vote for? Oh, honestly, why do people bleat so? Why do people insist on having someone to vote 'for'? If there is nobody standing who is 'for' you, why on earth should you vote 'for' them? Voting isn't a sacrament or a magical moment. It's a choice. And if there is no choice, why accept this insult by cooperating in the pretence. The right not to vote is just as valuable as the right to vote, as anyone who has lived in a dictatorship can tell you.

(Emphasis added).

The Smart Side

2009-09-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

Progressive Congresswoman Diane Watson puts Castro back in the news (not really - this unhappened in the eyes of the responsible press. Only irresponsible ideologues find things like this noteworthy):

And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro…

I wonder if this display of ignorance will be ripped on by Bill Maher, John Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, FactChecked by the organs of FactCheckery, or otherwise analyzed, or if it's just "boys will be boys", "aw, don't take it so seriously", or, even better, the reaction will be "you are a McCarthyite for highlighting it". After all, they're starting to look into Un-American Activities as we speak, so one can never be too careful about resurgent McCarthyism, can we?

Shall we set aside the bogus history and ask why it is that most people have less of an emotionally hostile reaction to dictators of the left than they do of those on the right? Why it's acceptable within fashionable, enlightened society to admire Castro, but not Pinochet?

Abnormal is the person who sees them in the same light. I'm abnormal, because my reaction to murderous dictators is the same, regardless of whether they are of the right or the left. But most fashionable people have a far more hostile reaction to, say, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge than they do to the Castro brothers, though one pair is a present problem and the others...not.

Most of what educated people "know" about Cuban health care, for example, is a Potemkin deciet, which they fall for just as useful idiots of the 30s did for the original (more here and here and here). Progressives are like the Bourbons of old: They forget nothing, and learn nothing from history, but flatter themselves endlessly about how much more intelligent and better informed they are than those who disagree with them. (Correction: I was overly generous, as Rep. Watson herself demonstrates, many of them know nothing of history, they believe a tissue of falsehoods).
Why is it that the great and the good want to believe the misinformation of certain dictators, but will readily be hostile to others?

This is a very important question. So important, I'll address it in a future post, or posts.

De Administrando

2009-09-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

In correspondence to someone last week I wrote to the effect that, in taking prescriptive action, you can't just enact a policy and say "well, I applied the Rawlsian Standard", and then just walking away (or administer it) and be satisfied.

Usually we think that if someone does something and then just walks away it is irresponsible. But when it comes to policies, ones that are administrated are more often worse, and are much are harder to get rid of. This is because they have a built-in constituency: Those within government who administer it, and those (technically) outside government, in NGOs &tc, that swarm like pilot fish around any government activity, advocating more, and getting both private donations and budget line-items based on their "advocacy" of it.

Programs whose only constituencies are their intended beneficiaries are very easy to get rid of, even if they are successful. Perhaps especially if they are a success, if only because they threaten to upset the apple cart and cause it to crash down upon people's rice bowls.

Perhaps this is why most of the policies enacted over the last 80 years have been "administered", rather than just involving cutting people a check, and the vast majority of the ones enacted over the last 40 are, even though they usually degenerate into boondoggles even if they do not start out that way. Thus most proposals will remain subtextually titled "The Social Worker Full Employment Act of 2008" or "Educrat Job Security Bill of 2011".

Government is not a charity, but tends to crowd out and/or corrupt ones that are (beguiling them away from directly assisting those in need to increasingly "advocating", that is, petitioning for government programs). They transform over time from being intermediary institutions of true civil society to "NGOs" - "Non" added to remind us, lest we forget, that they are not government agencies themselves, they're simply pro-government activists, "advocacy" groups seeking expanded government. Often their members think of themselves as outsiders struggling against The Man, but they're really advocating an increase in his sway.

See also "Community Organizing" and similar activities, along with anything that seeks "funding" or involves grant proposals.

Iconodules for Iconoclasm

2009-09-01T08:35:00.001-07:00

The world is full of Iconodules posing as Iconoclasts.
This phrasing it is uncharitable because they sincerely perceive themselves to be iconoclastic, making it more of a mass intellectual tragedy than any kind of wicked subterfuge.

If one is going to go after sacred cows, one should really go after sacred cows. Most of the people in today who get credit for "going after sacred cows" are just going after unfashionable ones. At least ones that are unfashionable in the circles they want to appeal to. Many of them practice the respected art of speaking power to truth.

Likewise, most people who get credit for "thinking for themselves" in today's world are simply being praised for parroting fashionable tropes or for "questioning" the same norms the fashionable have been flogging for the last fourty or fifty years.

I can't claim to be an original thinker, but I do strive to think, and synthesize what I find to be valuable.