Terrorize This!

Ars Derbica.

Stalin in Africa.

Maggie and Gena Sitting in a Tree . . .

Hard-Leftovers.

Literarium Update.

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Saturday, June 01, 2002

Sowell Patrol.

Gena and Cathy.

Fallen For Freedom.

India and Pakistan.

Gena Gena Gena.

Happy Birthday Ski Nose!

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Thursday, May 30, 2002

South Knox Bubba would have him, had SKB's rather scathing indictment not been intercepted by Carnivore, and Bubba ordered to report to the "Nearest Family and American Values Camp For Anti-Terrrorist Reprogramming."

We don't know how lucky we are. Back in the 1920s the Soviet Union faced a crisis. The new nation had just emerged from two revolutions and a civil war, not to mention a pre-Revolutionary past spiked by so many examples of political terrorism that it was possible to say that terrorism had become the main form of political opposition. If you wanted to make your point, you wrote about it first, and then underlined it by throwing a bomb at the Arch Duke's carriage. The tradition of terrorism persisted, and the new country had to decide how to deal with people who thought that the best way to criticize the government was to overthrow it, and who were willing to use violent means to do so. The new government officials were intimately aware of this capacity having been terrorists themselves - many of them. Throw in the foreign agents trying to do everything in their power to undermine the world's first and greatest experiment in the actualization of the Communist Manifesto, the monarchists, and all the disloyal members of the Communist Party, and you have an idea of the terrible situation the government faced. It is a wonder the Soviet Union survived its first decade, much less the better part of the twentieth century. That it did so is due mainly to the wise stewardship of Joseph Stalin, who realized that defeating terrorism, and ensuring domestic safety and the tranquility of the people called for strong measures.

Civil liberties whiners have demonized Stalin over the years, but in doing so they've wrongfully slurred one of the
great political leaders of the twentieth century. Stalin triumphed over Hitler, and more than that he triumphed over tremendous odds and obstacles to create a strong and formidable state. He did so because he realized that security is more important than liberty, and the survival of a state and a people is best achieved through a simple formula: surveillance and detention. Spy on everyone, cultivate sources, infiltrate meetings, listen, learn, and then move and arrest. You may, indeed you will, break a few eggs, but you will survive, and your people will be safe. The good of the many outweighs the liberties of a few, and as even those wrongfully accused of terrorism and plotting to overthrow the state repeatedly acknowledged: you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Ashcroft and the Bush Administration seem to have caught on to the surveillance bit. Let's hope that detention soon follows. Then we may finally be safe from Osama bin Laden, and can sleep secure in the knowledge that our government is actively ferreting out our enemies, and removing them far from us and our daily lives. We need never worry about another 9/11 and when the agents infiltrate our meetings, our email, our web sites, our conversations, we may be secure in the knowledge that the small sacrifice of our privacy will save the lives of thousands. And when they come for us, we may know that our sacrifice is called for by our country, our families, our values, and all the things we hold dear and that it will ensure their continuance, although we may be snuffed out. For too long Americans have been selfish and spoiled; for too long they have cried for their liberties over the screams of their friends. This era of childish repudiation of the common good led directly to 9/11; for had Americans and the imbecilc courts been less chary of their freedom, the terrorists might have been stopped. It is liberty that led to the FBI screw up, and only the demolition of liberty will ensure that the FBI not screw up again. The fact that agents failed to piece the plot together is directly related to their having insufficient power, just as the insufficiency of this power is directly correlated to the selfishness of the American people and their lack of respect for their fellow citizens and comrades in democracy. Fortunately, Sept. 11 changed all that. Let us therefore give thanks to this day of the historic expansion of FBI powers. We may sleep soundly now knowing that although our number may still be up, it won't be Osama holding the card. Let the era of Stalin begin.

For the second time. Blanket closings of deportation hearings are unconstitutional. How many federal judges will it take for the Bush Administration to understand that? Oh, wait. What am I thinking? I thought this was the United States of America, home of the Bill of Rights, when actually it's the United States of America, home of Home Land Security and safety trumps freedom any day. I shall have to remind myself of that more stringently from now on, since I somehow keep forgetting it.

Sowell Patrol.

Beantown Wrap Up.

Public Art Lunacy.

Random Gena Round-up.

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Wednesday, May 29, 2002

Or rather it would if Internet ads actually made money: Sell internet advertising and distribute the proceeds to the people you link to. Seventy-five percent of a thousand dollars distributed to to seventy-five writers is, well, not a heck of a lot of money. Still it's better than nothing, which is what most bloggers are currently getting. So it's tempting, particularly because I need some money, which means that it really hurts to be the one with the bucket of cold water. Can I say it? Oh, ouch, darn, man I want to be paid, oh bite. The American Times is a bad idea. It's a bad idea because there are two ways to look at links. If you have a web site and link to something on mine, I can either say you're doing me a favor by sending me traffic, or I can say you're co-opting my content for your site. The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but quickly become so the moment money is involved.

The link as favor model is the one current in the blogosphere, and on the net in general, and is so because the Net is currently reader centered. By that I mean that readers are the internet currency. If I post something really great, my reward is the number of people who read it, and if I post a series of really great things, my reward is the people who continue to read my site. The problem is, of course, that I could be Immanuel Kant and posting pure unadulterated works of genius, but it wouldn't matter a whit, if no one knew my site existed. Therefore, when you link to me, you're doing me a favor by sending me a percentage of your readers.

And that's true, but it's also true that you're using my content and my research to build your site. For example, Instapundit links to Andrea Harris and says:

ANDREA HARRIS HAS SOME THOUGHTS ON TEEN SEX and the virtues of unsociability.

That's it. Glenn doesn't add any of his own commentary or ideas. It's just that one sentence, and yet the sentence is intriguing, because, well, who wouldn't want to know both about teen sex and the virtues of unsociability. And you can find out about both of them through just one mouse click. The pay-off for Instapundit is double. Instapundit gets the advantage of the on-site content Andrea's post generated; that is to say he gets the benefit of the sentence he wrote, and of the positive response it will generate in his readers, who will say, "Ah, intriguing," and who knowing that Instapundit has intriguing stuff will doubtless come back tomorrow for more. Yet, there is something else as well. Readers who click on Andrea's post and enjoy it will return to Instapundit, not just because the sentence on his site was intriguing, but because he found an article they enjoyed, and they think that there will probably be a similar article tomorrow. So Instapundit gets the actual benefit of Andrea's content, and not just because he found it. Rather Andrea's content becomes part of Instapundit's site. This has mainly to do with the way web pages are constructed, and the expectations that generates. For instance, if you go over to my biopage, in the contents section, you'll see a category called Essays by Gena. Click on Essays by Gena, and you'll be taken to another contents page, this time listing all the essays I've posted on the web. You might then click on the one I did about Postmodernism, the West, and WWII, and if you enjoyed it, you might come back and click on something else. What you might not have paid much attention to, however, is that you moved through two separate web pages to get to the essay. Both those pages are part of my site as is the essay, but the only thing that connects them is a link. Therefore it is links which hold a site together, and if I link to your content, it de facto becomes part of my site. In other words, a web site is like a magazine: a series of articles stapled together under the auspices of the person who decides they should be there. These articles may all be by the same author or they may be by different authors, but the benefit to the magazine or the site is the quality of the articles themselves. Through the link Instapundit makes Andrea's content part of his site, and his site receives the benefits of the quality of her writing and thoughts. Andrea, in other words, becomes a writer for Instapundit, whose staff presently includes everyone from the National Review to me and Lee Ann.

The response to this is either: Thanks! or Theft! Andrea is probably saying, "Thanks," and that because according to his counter, Instapundit gets an average of almost 15,000 hits a day. If only ten percent of those people click on Andrea's article, that still means 1500 new readers for Andrea. So Instapundit may be using Andrea's content, but he's paying for it by sending her his readers. Now just imagine, however, that the American Times also links to Andrea. The Times sends Andrea traffic, sure, but it also sends her a check. The Times makes explicit, what was implicit before: By linking to Andrea's post, it is adding Andrea's content to it's site and is essentially employing her as a writer. By doing so, it owes her monetary remuneration. Now maybe Andrea wouldn't look at it this way, but you could understand, if she started seeing a fundamental difference between Instapundit and the American Times. Both benefit from her content; both send her readers, but only one pays. Suddenly Instapundit might starting seeming a lot less like Thanks! and a lot more like Theft!

And this would kill the Internet, because the Internet is built around connectivity. The moment people start thinking that people who link to them owe them money is the moment the Internet dies, especially if they try to turn this expectation into law. The Net will die, because people will stop linking to each other. Lee Ann and I can't afford to pay Instapundit to link to his site, just as I would imagine Instapundit couldn't pay Andrea. If payment becomes the reward, then Spinsters, Instapundit, and every other non corporate, and/ or not-for-profit site will exist in isolation, because in the absence of personal wealth or site generated revenue, we couldn't afford to pay for links. At best we would become subsidiary sites of things like the American Times, a group of freelance writers hoping to get noticed and paid. And if we didn't get noticed, we not only wouldn't get paid, we also wouldn't have any readers, or maybe we would have readers, since we would have already built a readership, but the same could not be said for new sites. For who would notice them? Oh, they could write to the American Times, but they could also write to the New York Times, and they would in any case be entirely dependent on the taste of the person in charge. Thus, the inter-connectivity of the Internet would plummet, and a hierarchy would simultaneously be established where what got read would be decided by those who could pay for links.

And how would you find the American Times, if you had never heard of it? Search engines are by no means egalitarian, but they do help you find things, and they help you find it through providing you with links to it, which means that links for pay would kill the search engines as well; which means that you as a reader would have no means of finding sites you had never heard of, including things like the American Times. If links for pay became the model, most of the content of the web would be lost to readers; first because the only way readers could find the content would be through portals like the American Times, which would significantly thin out the content available, and secondly, because readers who didn't know where the portals were would have no way of finding them. Maybe the web wouldn't exactly be dead in this scenario, but its strands would be few and far between, and most of the bugs would fly through. For that reason the American Times is a perniciously bad idea, one bloggers, web designers, and readers should militate against.

Katie from Loco Parentis sent me an excellent response to my Appalachian "sub-culture" post. The email contained some personal content, however, so I won't post it until I get Katie's permission. The other thing I want to post on but can't is women and feminism. Since this is part of another slug fest between me and Lee Ann, I didn't want to write about it until Lee Ann was around to respond. I had hoped that would be today, but no such luck it seems. Oh, well, the teen sex debate - which is quasi related to both of the above - is still alive and well over at Instapundit. You can go over there, and hopefully Lee Ann will return tomorrow and the spankings will resume.

Whose last name incidentally means "deadline" or "time period" in German, thinks terrorists could use HIV as a biological weapon. South Knox Bubba - who still refuses to reveal his identity - says this is balderdash, and explains why.

Says Bush was behind 9/11. The Spiegel says he's nuts, but devotes a very long article to him, and places it third on its web site.

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Monday, May 27, 2002

Reader Alex Whitlock writes:

Most of my letters will probably be in staunch disagreement, so I thought I would take this opportunity to say "AMEN" to your post about sex and maturity. It's not about teens having sex and not having sex, per se, it's about not-yet-responsible people doing things that have serious repercussions that require responsibility they are ill-equipped for.

Praise and the promise of spankings to come. Can't beat that. Well, yes you can. Instapundit has some marvelous responses to his critics, especially this:

Unlike some people, I don't feel that I know best for everyone in this regard. If teenagers weren't infantilized in so many other ways, they'd have a better base of judgment and self-respect, and could make better decisions about when they were ready to have sex...

I think that the extended infantilization of teens -- and even twenty-somethings -- in our culture is pernicious and breeds irresponsibility, and I think that sensational treatments of teen sex make that problem worse, not better.

Checkmate. Down goes the king.

Bashes Bush for human rights violations, and says his Administration has undermined the concept of human rights by arguing that National Security may require the US to make compromises on human rights, and therefore signaling to other countries that as far as human rights are concerned "anything goes." Amnesty cited the situation in Cuba and the indefinite holding of foreigners without charge as two areas of particularly bad conduct.

And people will no doubt say this isn't fair, we're just doing what's necessary. To that I say, you either have principles or you don't,
and if you stand on the pulpit and say no infidelity, and then run after the first pretty woman who walks by, you don't. The point of having international principles of human rights or a national Bill of them is that they apply in all situations, especially in those in which they are in jeopardy. Throw them out the window whenever there's a crisis, and you might as well not have them. The law may say the king can't chop off your head, but it doesn't offer you much protection, if it ceases to apply every time the king wants to stage a beheading.

Just when you thought there were too many of us, there are more of us.

First off  is the enigmatic South Knox Bubba, who refuses to reveal his true identity, although he did manage to trick Knoxville's email cadre of lefties into railing against a nonexistent rodeo.

Then there's Bill Hobbs, who may in fact be a Nashvillian - yes, one of those - and who seems to be staging his own private tax revolt of which this half of Spinsters.com most staunchly disapproves.

And finally there's Katie Allison Granju who had the misfortune of getting spanked before even being introduced, such being the nature of this particular web beast.

And thus you see, you will be assimilated. It is only a matter of time.

Look, ma, email you can actually show your friends. The force must have been with me.

Reader Joe Katzman of Sensei Associates wrote to say:

Gena, your "Star Wars" post was one of the deeper and more resonant pieces I've read in a while.

You think I'm making this up, but I'm not. See, look, proof. This time from James Maliszewski:

Thanks for your Star Wars essay. You pretty well encapsulated all my thoughts and feelings after reading Jonathan Last's piece in the Weekly Standard. I think you hit the nail on the head in more than a few places. Good to know somebody out there in pundit-dom understands Star Wars.

Unfortunately Tapped didn't see it that way - or rather at all.

Thanks for the tip. we'll try to check out your site, though we must warn we've been bombarded by sites lately. best, tapped

Notice there's no link on that last one. Tit for tapped.

The Spiegel has a provocative article on anti-Semitism - I was going to translate it, but it's too long. Although I think the author, Henryk M. Broder, is using anti-Semitism the way the PC people in this country use race and gender - that is to say as an ideological cudgel - I also think he is right about some things, specifically:

An anti-Semite doesn't have anything against Jews; they have something against him, and he must therefore arm himself against them. He is the victim, the Jew is the perpetrator. Anti-Semitism was, according to its own self concept, always a movement of self-defense against the presumption and power craving of the Jews. Had the Jews not resolved to conquer the world, the Nazis wouldn't have had to take up the fight against them, for the benefit of the entire world; if in vain. The anti-Semite, therefore, always has a good conscience. Confronted with the consequences of his atrocities, he is unashamed; he feels himself posthumously proven right by the result, for the Jews, however inferior they may be, have once again proven themselves to be unconquerable.

Ein Antisemit hat nichts gegen die Juden, sie haben etwas gegen ihn, und deswegen muss er sich gegen sie zur Wehr setzen. Er ist das Opfer, der Jude ist der Täter. Der Antisemitismus war, von seinem Selbstverständnis her, immer eine Notwehrbewegung gegen die Anmaßung und die Herrschaftsgelüste der Juden. Hätten sich die Juden nicht vorgenommen, die Welt zu erobern, hätten die Nazis den Kampf gegen sie nicht aufnehmen müssen, zum Wohle der ganzen Welt, wenn auch vergeblich. Deswegen hat der Antisemit auch immer ein gutes Gewissen. Mit den Folgen seiner Untaten konfrontiert, schämt er sich nicht, er fühlt sich durch das Ergebnis nachträglich bestätigt, denn die Juden, wie minderwertig sie sein mögen, haben sich mal wieder als unbesiegbar erwiesen.

And also:

In an interview with the ZDF Möllemann nearly said it (ie. that there aren't any innocent Jews): "I fear, that almost no one has given the anti-Semites - who are in Germany, and who we unfortunately must fight against - more traction than Mr. Sharon and in Germany a certain Mr. Friedman with his intolerant and catty manner." The classic cliche: the Jew as the source of anti-Semitism. Let us say, Möllemann is right and Friedman is intolerant and catty and more than that besides. And? Is that enough to factually protect the insane idea of anti-Semitism? Can a Jew not be intolerant and catty, without all the others being held to account for it?

In einem Interview mit dem ZDF sagte Möllemann bald darauf: "Ich fürchte, dass kaum jemand den Antisemiten, die es in Deutschland leider gibt und die wir bekämpfen müssen, mehr Zulauf verschafft hat als Herr Scharon und in Deutschland ein Herr Friedman mit seiner intoleranten und gehässigen Art." Das klassische Klischee: der Jude als Verursacher des Antisemitismus. Nehmen wir an, Möllemann hätte Recht und Friedman wäre intolerant und gehässig und noch einiges dazu. Und? Reicht das, um die Wahnidee des Antisemitismus faktisch abzusichern? Darf ein Jude nicht intolerant und gehässig sein, ohne dass alle Übrigen dafür abgemahnt werden?

And finally although I think this is a bit hysterical, and ignores the fact that anti-Semitism has become less prevalent or at the very least less overt - no quotas, for instance - in the intervening decades after WWII:

For their part, the Jews - who aren't nearly as clever as they're always accused of being - don't understand anti-Semitism. They think that after Auschwitz the air went out of hate. The opposite is true. An idealistic crime, that isn't brought to fruition, screams for resumption, for every survivor reminds the perpetrators, that they're not only criminals but also failures.

Die Juden ihrerseits, die nicht so klug sind, wie ihnen immer nachgesagt wird, verstehen den Antisemitismus nicht. Sie glauben, nach Auschwitz hätte dem Hass die Luft ausgehen müssen. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Ein idealistisches Verbrechen, das nicht zu Ende gebracht wurde, schreit nach Fortsetzung, denn jeder Überlebende erinnert die Täter daran, dass sie nicht nur Verbrecher, sondern auch Versager sind.

I should admit that I have no idea what's going on with Moelleman. I haven't been following the story. Although I've met too many out and out anti-Semitic supporters of Israel to believe that anti-Semitism is confined to one side of the Israeli/ Palestinian debate, I do think Broder does a pretty good job of unmasking the anti-Semitism on the pro Palestinian side of it. And he certainly gives an excellent definition of what anti-Semitism is and what sort of attitudes lie behind it.

And since I feel guilty for posting part of the article but not the entire thing, and thus leaving you to wonder what exactly Broder said, if I get more than ten emails asking me to translate it, I'll do it.

NRO has an excellent poem on 9/11 by Robert Bove. And yes, George Bush is an alien; the moon is made of cheese, and I'm linking to the National Review Online.

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Sunday, May 26, 2002

But then I read this, and well I had to. People say satire is dead, but it's not.

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Saturday, May 25, 2002

When I was little my mother used to always say, "Don't worry Gena. People just don't understand your sense of humor." It's obviously an ongoing problem. Reader Dave Trowbridge of The Redwood Dragon writes:

Forgive me if I am merely being tone-deaf to facetiousness in the last sentence of your post about the Alterman-Sullivan pissing match.

But "landsleit" is Yiddish, not German, and is the plural of "landsman:"

Ok, I'll admit I don't speak a word of Yiddish, but like Instapundit with French, I have it surrounded, so I figured landsleit was probably Yiddish, and not German. Yet, I thought saying that Alterman had misspelled Landsleute would be cutting, witty, and funny, because part of the pissing match was over whether Alterman had misspelled something, and all of it was about Israel, which for the Andrew Sullivans of the world is inevitably indirectly about Germany. That was the intention in any event. The reality was probably that everyone looked at that post cross eyed and then shrugged. So much for my dream of chucking it all and hitting the road as a stand up comic. Spanked for not being funny. Ouch.

People who meet me usually think I'm quiet and sweet, but actually I'm a fundamentally contentious person and if there's a good fight going on, I want in it. Having the blog all to myself has therefore really sucked eggs, if for no other reason than Lee Ann's not here to get pissed off about the fact I said the word "suck." What's the point of using vulgar language if you can't offend people by it? I'm bored and if you're bored, the best thing you can do is start a feud. Now lots of bloggers have feuds, but they're usually wussy feuds between people who aren't at all geographically connected. This might seem to limit my options, since there are only four Knoxville bloggers, but fortunately all you need for a good feud is one person to feud with.

Now I'm going to be nice and say that I'm certain that in her life outside the cyberspace ether Katie Allison Granju is a nice, interesting person who reads Emerson by a pond on the weekends. On her blog, however, she's an obnoxious little twit who's really cheesed me off and here's why. In a post about teen sex, she says:

The problem with teenagers having sex is that they are notoriously incapable of preventing the potentially negative consequences of sexual behavior. But so are many other sub-cultures within our larger one (trust me on this. In a previous life, I worked as a social worker and did home visits with Appalachian parents who were neglecting or abusing their kids). How come national magazines never run cover stories like this one on the problem of "Irresponsible Idiot Sex!"

Welcome in other words to the everyone-in-my-hometown-is-a-hick-except-me club - located in this case at the corner of Market Square. Yes, the people of East Tennessee are a trailer trash, black toothed, moonshine swilling hoard of ignorant, degenerate Deliverance types who together constitute a "subculture" of child abusing irresponsible morons who are "notoriously incapable of preventing the potentially negative consequences of sexual behavior" and whose very existence proves the absurdity and/or bias of national magazine cover stories about teen sex, since if they weren't biased such magazines would be running stories about "Irresponsible Idiot Sex!:" i.e.. Knoxvillian sex. And you can say that isn't fair, that after all Katie was a social worker and she was just reporting what she saw, sort of like our friend the Olive Garden going Brit. And this would be fine, if Katie had simply said that in her career as a social worker she had come across some irresponsible idiots who abused their children and shouldn't be parents. Instead she defines these parents as Appalachian and uses them as an example of other "irresponsible" sub cultures.

This obviously doesn't include Mrs. Katie Allison Granju herself, of course. After all, Mrs. Granju is a parent... who writes about parenting, who published a book about parenting, who has a blog about parenting, who has a column about parenting, who is an expert about parenting as Instapundit called her. Mrs. Granju is a responsible person. It's just those other East Tennesseans who are the problem - the ones who turn up at the grocery store with her, sit around her in the movie theater, drive down the interstate with her, teach her children for her, ring up her gas for her, and say, "May I help you" to her a thousand times a day. Those are the contemptible hicks, her neighbors. That's the degenerate sub-culture - the people who make her city what it is. And what her city is is the place she's chosen to live in, so irresponsible idiots must have their appeal, otherwise Katie would move.

Now I can't claim to be a parenting expert, but I'd say maturity and wisdom have a lot more to do with being a good parent than being able to make Spanish/ Latin puns. So Katie might take my advice and grow up and have the wisdom to realize that although not everyone in Knoxville has two parents who are professional journalists, writes seriously journalistic 3000 word research articles for Salon, and rides at the all too precious for words Fiesta Farm, this is a good place, and it is a good place because of the goodness of its people. Maybe if she realized that, Mrs. Granju wouldn't be such a nutty parent after all.

Say they aren't afraid of a nuclear war, more than likely for the same reason that a roach isn't afraid of a shoe: it's too dim to realize a shoe can flatten it into a greasy spot on the floor. Musharraf thinks he's being tough, when what he's really doing is taking the dunce cap and putting it on his country's head. And idiot boy in the White House better come up with some sort of foreign policy fast - you know a foreign policy other than that of banging on the table and saying, "You can't do that. I'm concerned about it. It's unacceptable. Hey, I didn't tell you you could..."

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Friday, May 24, 2002

Is probably over - If you have no idea what I'm talking about start with Instapundit and work your way back to the National Review - and I don't really have anything new to add, except:

Back in the good old days, people got married earlier, because they died sooner. If you could count on keeling over at 35, it made sense to start your family at 13 - yes, that's an exaggeration, but not much of one. Biologically, we may be maturing faster, but we're also dying later, and our society is such, that those who would play a prominent role in it, are essentially held in arrested development. There are three reasons for this. First, there is the need for education - lots of it; years of it. Then, there's the fact that during their education people remain dependent upon their parents, and even when they sever the purse strings, they still have a whole slew of surrogate parents - ie teachers - lined up to dictate their lives. And finally there's the knowledge of time. Twenty-five is just starting out, rather than half way ot the grim reaper. All of which is to say 16 year olds today are biologically more mature than yesterday's 16 year olds, but emotionally they're less so. Maturity comes in large part through the expectations that are placed on you. If you are expected to be responsible for your life at 16, you will be. If you are not, you won't be, and you'll do stupid stuff, like have lots of sex. I'm not saying having lots of sex is bad; just that there are bad ways to have it, bad ways which can kill you. Sex like mountain climbing, or fox hunting is a dangerous thing. That doesn't make it bad, but it does mean that if you saddle up for the hunt, when you've never sat on a horse, you are likely to end up on the ground, and if you take off for Mt. Everest with only a tooth brush in your backpack, you are unlikely to come back. Lessons and education would help to improve your riding/ climbing skills, but both riding and climbing also and always require judgment and responsibility. In other words, you shouldn't do dangerous things, if you don't know what the Hell you're doing, and if you lack the responsibility and judgment to do them safely. To the extent teenagers are ignorant of sex, and lack responsibility and judgment, they shouldn't be having it; for the consequences will most likely be bad. Teenagers who are knowledgeable, sensible, and responsible should not necessarily be banned from sex, sex being for them like fox hunting for me - a risk they're capable of assessing, and thus should be free to take.

The German Minister of the Interior, Otto Schily, says Germany could be attacked by right wing extremists, left wing extremists, Islamic extremists, members of Al Quida, and agents of foreign governments. And you thought we had it bad.

Had pretty much killed off "post-colonial" criticism. If so the news of its demise obviously hasn't trickled down to Greg Tate over at the Village Voice. I'll admit that I admire some of Edward W. Said's work - namely his claim that a two state solution to the Israeli/ Palestinian crisis is unworkable. Or rather I should say, I admired the claim back before the situation blew up, and the prospect of a united Jewish/Arab state came to seem about as likely as the United Kingdom of Dogs and Cats. As a literary critic, however, Said sucks, and he sucks for the simple reason that rather than take the text on its own terms, he imposes his ideas upon it, and those ideas rarely boil down to more than "this text is oppressing me." Poor Mr. Tate however just can't say enough about Said and Co's intelligence:

Postcolonial studies—you gotta love it. Supersmart folk of color chanting down white power from within the academy. Supersmart hardly begins to describe the brainpower of the field's star players: Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. Palestinian-born Said can wring Mozart from a piano with one hand while banging out learned considerations of imperialism and Western literature with the other. Spivak, who hails from Bengal, produced a translation of Derrida's Of Grammatology so graceful you imagine she does that kind of thing for fun.

Well, I guess intelligence is a relative concept: your estimation of the intelligence of others being directly proportional to the level of your own.

Says Robert Bove. They think nothing matters and thus make themselves irrelevant. I was going to turn this into another shameless Hoelderlin plug, but instead I'm going to introduce you to Pushkin. There was once a time when poets thought seriously and complexly about the world. Pushkin demonstrates what can happen when they do.

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Thursday, May 23, 2002

On the edge of your seats as to why I think feminism sucks, don't worry. I'm still going to explain why it sucks, and how it opened the door for James Tooley. As a bonus, I'm going to throw in why both Lee Ann and Tooley are incontrovertibly wrong about this. Just remember War and Peace. Patience and Time. In other words, have patience with me; I need time.

Well, Eric Alterman says everything to Andrew Sullivan I sometimes wanted to say to Lee Ann but didn't. Instapundit calls this a pissing match, but if it is, it is something Eric should engage in more often. "Altercation" up to this point has been fitful, lame, and poorly written, which is unfortunate because as this post reveals, Alterman is actually nimble, witty, and not above a punch below the belt. Those are the qualities of a formidable and highly entertaining debater, and thus of a damn good blogger. Welcome, therefore, Eric Alterman. Once you get it going, your blog's going to rock, and in any event a cute, impish-looking guy with glasses is always welcome here, even if he does misspell Landsleute.

Two Australian academics wanted other Australian academics to boycott Israel, so they set up an online petition. Signatories were pretty run of the mill, until the call went out to the afterlife, and every bored dead guy from Joseph Goebbels to Barbarossa started weighing in. Even Osama bin Laden turned up to complain:

May Allah forgive me, but Paradise is a big disappointment. The houris look like Helen Thomas, there's nothing to eat but pork, and there's nothing to drink but beer. It's as hot as hell. It's as hot as .... D'oh!

Something tells me this petition will not be making its way to The Sidney Morning Herald any time soon. The Look Ma I Just Shot Myself in the Foot Almanac might be a different story though. (via Instapundit).

Mark Twain would love this. Using Anne Coulter's method, the Daily Howler proves that the liberal media bias extends to ..... The Washington Times. Ooops.

Feminists may have ideologically opened the door for James Tooley, but they've emotionally opened it for Catherine Millet. I think people may be disgusted enough by feminism's sexual straight jacket to find this book appealing. Millet's is not a lifestyle I would necessarily go for, but that doesn't change the fact I would dearly love to see her book published over here. The reaction of both the conservatives and the feminists would be worth it, and might even reveal something of their affinity.

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Wednesday, May 22, 2002

I feel bad about picking on Lee Ann when she's not around to defend herself. On the other hand, even Hercules probably couldn't defend this:

As for the Patriot Act, no law can prevent crime if it is not properly enforced...Also, just because a law is broken, doesn’t mean it is an ineffective law. The rape laws get broken. Are they a bad idea too?

This would be a perfectly valid point, if the purpose of the Patriot Act were to outlaw terrorism, rather than to enact a series of measures to prevent it.

Leaving that aside, however, the fact that a group of suspicious stowaways managed to slip into the US and then vanish right out from under the FBI's nose shows that all the new powers our law enforcement agencies have aggregated to themselves have obviously not stopped them from dropping the ball. I'm loath to give up my civil liberties period, but giving them up in exchange for nothing seems an altogether bad trade. And if Lee Ann is right and only God or Stalin could prevent all terrorist attacks, then we might ask ourselves what purpose legislation like the Patriot Act serves. Having majored in Russian and studied German, I know something about terrorism, namely that there are two ways of stopping it. You can slam the lid down on the kettle - ie. arrest everybody suspicious, and monitor everyone else closely. This actually works as any 19th century Tsar could tell you. God help you though if you try to take the lid back off - any Tsar could tell you that too, mainly because most of them tried. The most effective and permanent way to stop and prevent terrorism is to remove the kettle from the fire - ie. eliminate the conditions which are fomenting it. Remember the Red Brigades? No? My point exactly. I'm not saying the terrorists aren't responsible or that they're somehow victims and we should feel sorry for them. That would be stupid. To use another example. Hitler is responsible for himself and his actions, and the German people are responsible for having followed him. Yet, this doesn't change the fact that if conditions in Germany had been different, Hitler never would have come to power. This doesn't absolve Hitler or the Germans from responsibility and it doesn't excusetheir actions. Yet, it does show that evil is to an extent situationally dependent, and that therefore one way to prevent evil is to change the situation. It is a lesson we might apply to the Middle East, especially, since George is in Germany banging the kettle drum.

Lee Ann suggested that my Hoelderlin Translation Page might be more popular if I gave some sort of introduction to Hoelderlin and his work. Being lazy, I scouted through all my old web pages to see if I had already written something on Hoelderlin which might do. I found "The Dog and the Revolution: Hölderlin, Rilke, and Post-Colonial Criticism" which might be more appropriately titled "Grad School: How not to Survive It." If you can get past the trauma of my criticism of Edward W. Said, however, the paper does give a pretty good idea of the complexity of Hoelderlin's work and why you might want to read it.

No, I didn't make that up. It's one of the slogans the Berlin anti-Bush demonstrators are using, although the giant pretzel which was supposed to illustrate it fell apart. And people say the Germans have no sense of humor. The German government obviously has a sense of historical irony, however, since Berliners are saying that not since the days of the DDR has their freedom of movement been so restricted. As one put it:

"Really it's the whole Honecker number/ Wirklich, das ist die komplette Honecker-Nummer."

And just to prove that Schroeder really did mean business, German police fired water cannons at peaceful demonstrators, who were sitting before a Cathedral and beating on drums. The police called it:

Ordnungswidrigkeit von elementarer Bedeutung für die Allgemeinheit

I have no idea how to translate that. Basically, it means "we shot you with water canons because you refused to vacate the pleasure garden."

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Tuesday, May 21, 2002

Or rather site design, which you should check out. And you should also read the poem Glenn linked about "The Dean's Box." This is one reason Instapundit is such a cool site, because he always finds out where the cool stuff is.

AWOL Spinsters.

Evil Unveiled.

Read This, Gena.

The “Gena Get a Grip” Round-Up.

Gena and the Feminists.

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Monday, May 20, 2002

According to the Spiegel, 15 suspected terrorists have slipped into the US on board cargo ships and have vanished without a trace. More terrorists attacks are considered "likely." Well, at least we know now that all that terrorism legislation is working. Or was the legislation supposed to stop terrorists? I get confused sometimes given the results.

For the first time more than 50 percent of Americans say they doubt whether Bush can prevent another terrorist attack. This doesn't stop them, however, from believing he's doing a good job. The question is, of course, doing what?

The evidence for why feminism sucks wasn't meant to be Alison Roberts, but her subject James Tooley, who according to the article believes that women are mis-educated into believing they should want careers, when really they should want - surprise, surprise - babies, babies, more babies, and a dust mop. If you don't see something wrong with that, then you are in serious danger of oppressing yourself. Hating housewives has absolutely nothing to do with it. If I have a serious problem with a book which claims that men are "miseducated" into not wanting to be auto mechanics, then it does not follow that I hate auto mechanics or think that some men shouldn't be auto mechanics. Hating auto mechanics is a possible motivation for why I might disagree with such a book, but a far more obvious one would be that I disagree with stuffing one half of the population into a box, nailing down the lid, and stamping "auto mechanic" onto it. Women shouldn't be "educated" to want anything. That kind of educate is the kind that rhymes with indoctrinate. Tooley has an idea of what's good for women, and he wants to make sure that they get the "education" they need to fall hook line and sinker for his position. The thesis of my feminism post - which I'm not going to write tonight, because I've spent the evening designing my mom's final exam and it's 2 am and I'm tired - is that feminists have paved the way for this sort of thing, and they've been stupid, self-serving, blind, and naive for thinking that if you throw the door open, something horrible won't walk through. Academic feminists have been having their fun, but if you listen very closely, you can hear the Piper playing. It's a tune, Lee Ann, you might listen to.

And the American Prospect Online has a great article on John Marshall, and how Rehnquist is dismantling his legacy piece by piece. And someday - namely the one when I get my printer fixed - this is going up on my wall:

Marshall's own words might serve as an assessment of the Rehnquist court's tendency (in cases other than Bush v. Gore) to put "states' rights" above the constitution of the United States: "Powerful and ingenious minds," he wrote in Gibbons v. Ogden "taking, as postulates, that the powers expressly granted to the government of the Union, are to be contracted by construction, into the narrowest possible compass, and that the original powers of the States are retained, if any possible construction will retain them, may, by a course of well digested, but refined and metaphysical reasoning, founded on these premises, explain away the constitution of our country, and leave it, a magnificent structure, indeed, to look at, but totally unfit for use."

Don’t Try This at Home.

For Gena.

This Should be Fun.

Let Freedom Ring!

Spank a Spinster.

Calm Down Gena.

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Sunday, May 19, 2002

Over at A Longview has some interesting thoughts on Star Wars, although he somewhat misreads my original post.

This shall be the subject of my next mega post - coming Monday. If, however, you just can't wait and want a preview of the results of feminism's titanic betrayal of women, click here.

Has finally finished his biography of Dostoevsky. This is a book to go out and buy and an article to surf over to and read.

Over who's George's best friend. Bush is scheduled to visit Berlin. Protesters are scheduled to greet him. The Chancellor is promising to crack down on the protesters: "Whoever mistakes freedom of assembly for hooliganism will be met with the decisive and extremely harsh resistance of the police," said the supposedly liberal Chancellor. That means the police are going to kick the shit out of people who protest. That isn't good enough for the Conservatives who seem to think that Schroeder should prohibit members of his coalition from taking part in the demonstrations - by throwing them in jail no doubt. And all the while I'm thinking that this is a profound demonstration of how the US is different from Europe.Can you imagine what would happen if Bush said what Schroeder did? People would be protesting all right, but they wouldn't be saying that Bush hadn't gone far enough. Sometimes I'm glad I live in America.

Ars Derbica.

Whoo-hoo!!!

Diversity at UNC.

Hawk Girl to the Rescue!

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Saturday, May 18, 2002

Freeze, Monsieur!

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Friday, May 17, 2002

And it was good. And Jonathan B. Last over at the Weekly Standard is an idiot, who unfortunately proves why George Lucas is a genius. Last's argument is essentially that the Empire is good because it's about efficiency, meritocracy, capitalism, and order. Hey, you say, the Empire is us, or at least us as we should be, in the conservative view of things. That a conservative should say this reaches the height of self parody. Instapundit thinks Last will get a lot of flame mails, but what Last really deserves is the Cross of the Legion of I've just insulted myself. Last falls on his face and goes splat, however, because he misunderstands Lucas's genius and thus the movies themselves.

Star Wars is a science fiction story built upon the framework of a fairy tale, and yet it uses both those elements - science fiction and fairy tale - to create myth. This is a cliché about Lucas, but it is also the reason the ferry departs the harbor without Jonathan Last aboard. A myth recasts the problems, anxieties, perceptions, and dangers of a particular time and place into a completely different vocabulary which gains its own autonomy while still remaining recognizable. In other words, there isn't a one to one correlation between the elements of a myth and the reality the myth is talking about. Nor is a myth illustrative like a parable, which is a way of reconstituting a problem so that its solution becomes more recognizable. Myths have meaning and they sometimes have morals, but those meanings and morals are inevitably complex and literary in the sense of being able to support multiple interpretations. What a myth is however is a mirror in which a time can see itself recast.

The original Star Wars is a great movie, but it is the greatest movie about the Cold War. The Empire is not just a metaphor for the Soviet Union; it is a metaphor for how the United States saw the Soviet Union. The Empire is a cold, mechanized, highly organized totalitarian regime where human life and freedom matter far less than order and control. Pitted against the Empire is a band of freedom loving rebels who value democracy in a galaxy where if you want freedom you have to fight for it. This - for the Jonathan Lasts of the world who didn't get it or failed to remember - is us. During the Cold War, Americans-  the ones out fighting communism, at least - saw themselves as independent, roughish, vastly out gunned, but willing to fight and triumph against a monolithic and vastly superior foe. This is what the movie so brilliantly captures, and why it becomes a movie, and then a set of movies about seeing - how we saw them, and how we saw us, and also how we saw history. Star Wars is a battle movie, and we are fighting the Empire/ Soviet Union, only the Empire/ Soviet Union isn't really the Empire/ Soviet Union or rather it is the Empire/ Soviet Union, but it is also at the same time a further recasting of something else. The Empire/ Soviet Union is Nazi Germany. The Allies defeated the Nazis, but the US went on fighting them, but did so by transforming the Soviet Union into the Nazis. Communism and Nazism became the same thing, the Soviet Union a proxy for Germany, the Cold War a proxy for World War II. Thus, the Empire is the Soviet Union, but the soldiers of the Empire are storm troopers.

Lucas transposes all of this onto a fairy tale framework, and this is how he gets his good/ evil dichotomy, because in fairy tales knights and princesses are almost always good. And if knights and princesses aren't always good, the cowboy rogue who saves the girl from the Indians most certainly is. The cowboy in other words becomes the knight becomes the smuggler/pilot, and Lucas takes America's own fairy tale and set of archetypes, that of the West, and transposes them onto a much older pattern, that of feudalism, which he then sets far into the future. The movies are edgier than this, however, because they deal in perceptions. They aren't representations of us and them, but rather of how we see us and them, and thus the reality behind the archetypes, recastings, and perceptions remains open to question. Who are we really? Who are they? And what is the real relation between us and them?

So far there are four Star Wars movies. I say that because even though the "Phantom Menace" is called Star Wars, it really has nothing to do with either the original movies or with the "Attack of the Clones." "The Phantom Menace" isn't a Star Wars movie for the same reason it bombed: It didn't have a mythic structure, and it didn't have a mythic structure, because Lucas didn't understand the Post Cold War world. Who are we after the fall of the Soviet Union? Lucas didn't have a clue, and he made a meaningless movie as a result.

"Who are we" is a resonant question, and it is the question of the new Star Wars. Lucas saw something between the Phantom Menace and the Attack of the Clones and what he saw was the danger and particularity of our time. If the original movies were about seeing, the new movie is about identity and becoming, specifically about who we are and how we become them. The world of the new movie is one where democracy doesn't equal freedom but rather insecurity, bureaucracy and inefficiency. It's a world of gridlock and corruption where nothing seems to get done, and one which the hero, Anakin, abjures. There are no princesses in this picture. Amidala is a queen, which in the language of fairy tales can be good but more often is bad, fairy tales recognizing that princesses don't rule and thus are innocent of the demands and corruptions of power. Worse however Amidala is no longer a queen, but a Senator, a politician. Much is made of this fact, and of the fact that it makes Amidala untrustworthy. Then there are the Jedi, who - Last is right about this - are arrogant and ineffectual. At the end of the movie the Jedi have to be bailed out by the army of the clones. Not only are they arrogant and ineffectual, however, they are also blind. The Jedi for all their supposed powers don't see what's really going on. Thus, the Jedi fight against the rebels using the clones who will become the storm troopers and do so for Palpatine who will become the Emperor. This attack is led by Yoda, supposedly the wisest Jedi of them all, and Yoda does understand that it doesn't arguer well, but not for the reason that it really doesn't arguer well. Yoda thinks the attack was less than a victory because it started the War of the Clones, and he incorrectly perceives the war as the threat to the Republic.

But the war, of course, isn't the threat to the Republic; it is just the mechanism for threatening the Republic. This leads us to the rebels, and it's here that our friend Last really falls off the wagon. He writes:

In "Attack of the Clones," a mysterious figure, Count Dooku, leads a separatist movement of planets that want to secede from the Republic. Dooku promises these confederates smaller government, unlimited free trade, and an "absolute commitment to capitalism." Dooku's motives are suspect--it's not clear whether or not he believes in these causes. However, there's no reason to doubt the motives of the other separatists--they seem genuinely to want to make a fresh start with a government that isn't bloated and
dysfunctional.

This would be funny, only it's not. The rebels our "confederates" - there's a revealing word - militating for "smaller government, unlimited free trade, and an 'absolute commitment to capitalism" are planning to build the Death Star. And there is reason to question Dooku's motives because at the end of the movie he is talking to Palpatine and they are congratulating each other for having successfully started the war. The rebels aren't in it for freedom; they're in it for money and power. Palpatine is in it for power and order. The heroes of the first movies, the rebels, aren't really heroes, or at least they don't start out that way, and the destruction of the republic is led from within. We become them and they become us. The "Attack of the Clones" is about the fall of democracy and the coming of empire. It is a movie about how and why some people would trade freedom for totalitarianism, about why totalitarianism is seductive: Hitler made the trains run on time. It's a movie about outside threats, war, and security, and about how the beginning of the end is signaled not by the war itself but by the compromises people are willing to make in the name of security. To fight against the separatists, the Senate crowns itself an Emperor. And finally it's a movie about blindness, about how oftentimes even those who are supposed to see the farthest fail to see what is in front of their noses, and fight on the wrong side failing to realize that the the real
threat is not them, but us. It isn't the separatists that are the problem, but the Republic, and the Republic will fall not to Dooku, but to Palpatine. It is no accident that the antecedent of this movie is Rome.

Could this really be our time? I find that incredible. Is the image in the mirror really Rome? To me it sounds unreasonable and hysterical. Myths are mirrors, but they are also warnings, and they are warnings because those they represent are those who will most closely embrace them. You can tell if a myth has hit its mark by those who line up behind it. Thus, Reagan talked about the "evil Empire" and Jonathan Last talks about the good one. Last does so partly because he fails to recognize that the two sets of movies are different because they deal with different times. Yet, in writing a hymn in praise of the Empire he proves Lucas right, and proves why perhaps we live in dangerous times.

Gena and the Libertoids.

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Thursday, May 16, 2002

Has a great article on Lichtenberg. If you have no idea who that is, surf over and find out, and if you do know, then be sure to go over, because the article has all sorts of cool information on the man someone once called "the funniest 18th century German philosopher." I'm not quite sure that's really such a recommendation, since given the competition - Kant the laugh riot, for instance - you didn't really have to work all that hard to be the funniest philosopher in 18th century Germany, but still Lichtenberg is funny, and in any event he lived in Goettingen, so he has sentimental value. Think of him as a cultural souvenir.

Reader Alex Whitlock disagrees with my taxpayers as consumers analogy, and writes to say:

Your statement about how taxpayers are consumers that are simply paying for what they are given is flawed. If I go to the supermarket, what I get is directly corrolated with how much I pay. For instance, if I want a case of Coke, I plop down $4 and I get a
Coke. If I don't want a Coke, I don't spend the money and I don't get a Coke. I am, therefore, free to either buy the coke, by something else, or buy nothing at all. With the exception of things like Toll roads and various service fees, I pay for government services whether I use them or not. In fact, in many cases, the less that I need them the more of them I end up paying for. Much of the money goes to others who don't have work (though I have a job), need government aid of one sort or another (which I partake, but not in any corrolation to my contributions), corporations (the one I work for does not receive subsidies), foreign nations (that may or may have a national interest in stake), NASA (which benefits me, but not in any sense of proportion to what I pay compared to the next guy), and so on.

I'm not an economic libertarian and I don't view this as a bad thing. I support a graduated income tax where people who make more pay more. At the same time, the taxpayers-as-logic is faulty. It's redistribution of wealth. It leads to people having reason to vote according to their own best interest against one another (I oppose the privatization of NASA till my dad stops working there, then have at it).Government is coersion. The coersion is necessary and often benign, but it's still coersion.

Although I think Alex makes some good points, I don't quite think I agree, but am going to save the debate for this evening, when hopefully - please Doc, Doc please - typing won't be a matter of fortitude and self-sacrifice, neither of which I particularly excel at.

I hurt my wrist putting up clothes and it hurts to type. I'm going to the doctor in 30 minutes, and hopefully he'll fix it so I can post tonight. This has convinced me, however, to find another job. Dillards pays well, but sacrificing your writing hand and therefore law school for a trip to Germany and a membership in the hunt club is stupid. I'm doing this for the summer not for life, and if I don't get to go fox hunting next year or to Germany this summer, so be it. I'm working so much I never see my horse anyway; which means by this point he's probably ten times fatter than he's ever been, so making him go out and chase after foxes would probably be cruel anyway, especially since he always has to be first, and would either kill himself to keep up or suffer a big wound in pride.

Thank You.

Much Ado About Nothing.

On Ashcroft's incredible lack of imagination. I've been trying to think of something scathing and witty to say about the fact that the Bush Administration had been warned of the possibility of the Sept. 11 attacks and did, well, next to nothing, but Glenn's post accomplishes the task far better than I could ever hope to. If you're coming from Instapundit, hit the back button, and if you're not coming from Instapundit, go there now.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Of StephanKinsella.com and KinsellaLaw.com sent me a virtual book on libertarianism. Since it's a good message, I'm going to post most of it, and then respond above.

I think you are equating libertinism or something with libertarianism. Libertarianism holds that you are entitled to do what you want with your own property *so long as* you don't use it to infringe on others' rights to use their own property. If my use of my property is a use that pollutes your  property, libertarianism would say that use is not permissible. I cannot dump my pollution or trash onto your property, because that is a use of your property--but you are the one who can decide how to use it, not me. So my pollution is a form of trespass. Libertarians have written on this, see e.g. Murray Rothbard, "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Cato Journal, Spring 1982, pp. 55-99 (I wish it was online but I don't think it is).

That is, you seem to think we favor unfettered "liberty" or "freedom". Of course we do not. If I use my body or property to attack someone else--my right to liberty is over, for example I may be punished or even executed, according to libertarian theory. Etc.

The problem with conservatives and other critics of libertarianism, is you say things like this: "libertarianism is flawed because it does not take our social nature into account." Aside from you misstating libertarianism and attacking a straw man, the problem with the preceding type of argument is that it sidesteps a justification for use of force. Libertarians say that it is not justifiable for you to initiate or advocate/endorse the initiation, of force against me or my property. THat is, we say that aggression is unjustified. If you invade the borders of my property when I have not done the same to you, you are committing aggression; and your action is criminal and unjustified.

That is the central claim of libertarianism. So if you oppose libertarianism, you have to basically say that aggression in some cases *is* justified--or you have to find a way to deny that all the things libertarians point to (victimless crime laws like laws banning drugs and prostitution, or tax laws, etc.) are actually aggression. Now you may not care to try to show that government laws are not really aggressive; or that aggression is justified; but criminals are no different. They do not care to justify their force-wielding actions; they act regardless of whether their actions are justified. But to the extent you are civilized, not a criminal, and seek to justify force, the only way to oppose libertarianism is either to argue that (a) aggression *is* justified in some cases; or (b) most laws are not cases of aggression. Thus, for example, you could argue (a) yes, taxes and laws against drugs are aggression by the state, but aggresssion is permissible because ___; or (b) taxes and laws against drugs are NOT aggression, because ___.

I do not deny you can find some arguments like this. But simply saying "libertarians ignore the social context" does not do either.

Ah, the great label crisis. In response to Stephan's letter (see bellow), I first of all want to say that I am NOT a conservative. I don't know why people think that. Actually, in my life outside the blogosphere I don't really go for political labels, but I find it hard to believe that the staff at the National Review is just salivating to hire me on. In fact, Lee Ann, who I think is a pretty traditional conservative, disagrees with almost everything I say, so whatever I am, I am most certainly
not that. Indeed Stephan's letter supports the thesis of my original post which was that libertarianism is an extreme form of liberalism and has nothing to do with conservatism. I say that because up until he mentions taxes, Stephan sounds like a liberal, and indeed may be one, since libertarians like David Boaz claim to be "classical liberals" - think Jefferson, though probably not John Locke as Boaz would have it. The problem with being a "classical liberal," of course, is that both history and Enron show what happens when you let the market be. However, regardless of whether libertarianism is an old, musty, thoroughly discredited, blow the dust off the cover liberalism or the way I described it, it still has absolutely nothing philosophically to do with conservatism, which was my point.

Of course, Stephan's libertarianism - citations from the Cato Institute aside - would be at odds with the positions of libertarians who disagree with environmental regulation, since the moment you say:

Libertarianism holds that you are entitled to do what you want with your own property *so long as* you don't use it to infringe on others' rights to use their own property.

You open the door for all sorts of regulations. If your nuclear power plant makes my house radioactive, then your plant is infringing on my right to use my house. This leaves me two choices. I can either go to the plant manager and say, "Please don't make my house radioactive," and when he refuses consider myself to have been invaded and hit him over the head with an ax, or I can petition the government to stop him from making my house radioactive. Petitioning the government would be the most civil of the two options, but it would also lead to regulations, and agencies to administer them. The moment you allow for regulation is the moment you agree to more than minimal government, which for most libertarians I would think would be the great big green exit to liberalism.

I don't think that libertarians favor unfettered freedom - that would be anarchy - though I can see how I might have given that impression. I too would endorse the position that individuals should be left alone so long as their conduct is not hurting anyone else, which is why I too am opposed to victimless crimes and would support the legalization of things like drugs and prostitution. Yet, I would also say that the freedom to die in the street of starvation is a paltry freedom indeed, as would be the right to an attorney you had no means of hiring. The role of government is two-fold: to keep individuals from trammeling the rights of other individuals AND to make those rights meaningful and enjoyable by all people. Thus, the government should protect people against starvation, and against pollution, and if it grants the people the right to an attorney, it should make sure they can get one. And just as government regulates the conduct of individuals so should it regulate the market to ensure that it is truly competitive and to protect the rights of the people against things like the great California
Energy crisis Enron swindle. If you find yourself nodding to all of this, then you might as well suck it up and call yourself a liberal. If, however, you're a libertarian and you disagree, then I would say that you indeed aren't "taking our social nature into account," and that you need to ask yourself how exactly people are going to enjoy all their freedoms with no means for their enforcement.

Finally, Stephan's aggression argument is interesting but not really cogent. As I said above, I would agree that victimless crimes are aggressive and wrongful incursions on the freedom of the individual, but the same does not hold true for taxes. You can look at the government as a service and at yourself as a consumer of that service. Every time you walk on a sidewalk, stop at a traffic sign, send your kids to school, or call the police, you are using that service, and when you pay your taxes, you're paying for what you acquired and have been using. Not paying your taxes is the same thing as shoplifting; you're walking off with something that was costly to produce and not bearing any of that burden yourself. I think it is fine for people to not pay taxes, so long as they not use any of
the services or exercise any of the rights those taxes enable. In other words, it is possible to disagree with libertarianism without getting into the issue of aggression. Just think of the government as a business.

If you want all the gory details, Rich Hailey's got 'em.

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Tuesday, May 14, 2002

And for the loss of her uncle, I'm not going to post tonight. Please send Lee Ann a card or your condolences through email. Her address is: calhounista@hotmail.com

To remember her favorite uncle. Click on the red link below, and fill out the form. You will need Lee Ann's email which is: calhounista@hotmail.com.

Send an Internet Greeting Card

Enter Card ID Number to
Pickup Your Greeting Card

Uncle Meo, R.I.P.

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Monday, May 13, 2002

Better late than never. I finally got the new translations up. Check out my other site, if you want to see what I was doing this weekend besides eating at the Green Hills Grille and feeling sorry for myself over my job.

This article from Alternet.org says liberals and libertarians have more in common than they'd like to admit. Being what I like to think of as a good old fashioned Enlightenment liberal, I could have told you that. In fact, I'd say that for someone like me, libertarianism represents the great ideological temptation. As a person, I value individual liberty, especially mine, and I resent the presumption of those who claim to know what's good for me, and seek to proscribe my behavior as a result. This means that a feminist lefty who tried to stop me from marrying my professor would be every bit as likely
to piss me off as a social conservative who said I should stay home and bake cookies for the kids now that I had married the professor.

The damnable thing about people, however, is that they exist both as individuals and as groups and they almost never exist in isolation. Libertarianism is a flawed philosophy because it doesn't take that into account. As an individual I can say it's my right to silt up my stream, since it is after all my stream. This ignores the fact however that the silt is going to flow on down past my fence and into my neighbor's part of the stream, which my neighbor depends on for his cattle. In other words, my right to do whatever I want to with my land nullifies my neighbor's right to do what he wants to with his, that or it means he will have to work much harder than he
ordinarily would to do what he wants with his land, since to use the stream he'll have to dredge it - repeatedly. I could say that my neighbor's inconvenience was a small price to pay for individual liberty, but I might not feel that way once my neighbor started spraying with pesticides that drifted over onto my 100% organically grown tomatoes. The result of this would probably be a farmer's feud and this impresses me as a viable model for neighborly discord, and social strife.

It also means, however, that libertarians are misidentified as being on the right. Traditionally, liberals have recognized groups while favoring the individual, and in this sense libertarianism is an extreme form of liberalism, since libertarianism upholds the individual while giving no countenance at all to the group. Conservatism, however, has traditionally favored the group over the individual, and thus has absolutely nothing philosophically in common with libertarianism. The identification of libertarians with the right really has more to do with the fact that liberals and conservatives are having an identity crisis of sorts, in that many people calling themselves liberals are really philosophical conservatives, and many people calling themselves conservatives are actually philosophical liberals. Libertarians
put forth consistent arguments because so far there has not been a philosophical drift away from their core philosophy. The article claims that liberals have something to learn from libertarians. I'd argue that it's knowing what you mean when you say, "I'm a liberal."

According to the latest comprehensive history test, fifty-two percent of American High School students don't know whether or not the US was allied with Germany during WWII. I pride myself on not being a snob, but hey idiots wake up. If you're not going to listen in class, at least see a movie for God's sake. What are you zombies or something? Shrunken-headed morons.

According to this Newsweek article, Mickey Kaus refused to give Newsweek the details of his blog's acquisition by Slate because he had already promised the story to Glenn Reynolds. And they say blogs aren't a threat.

The Pentagon is training bees to sniff out explosives, and claims that they're as good or better at it than dogs. In fact, according to one recent battery of tests, bees can detect explosives with over 99 percent accuracy. According to the Spiegel, however, bees have certain disadvantages. You can't use them at night or during bad weather, and a great big swarm of bees hovering over their luggage would certainly convince many people never to fly again. On the other hand, bees in the airport might be better than bombs on board.

Well, I'm not sure if three people can constitute a "bash," but it was a good time nonetheless. I already knew Glenn was cool, but Rich Hailey is pretty cool himself. You see, Knoxville bloggers may not exactly be an Axis of Weevil, but we know how to party and more importantly we know where the good food is. People used to make fun of Knoxville for having more restaurants per capita than any other city in the country, but this just makes Knoxville like Paris - only without the insistence that everyone speak French.

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Sunday, May 12, 2002

Check Them Out.

Delta Entente.

Hanratty Guilty!

No Free Speech, Please, We’re English.

Fortuyn and The West.

Pim Fortuyn.

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