We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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It is good to see views strongly and forthrightly put, but without rancour and rudeness. It seems that blog culture is developing along much more civil, albeit robust, lines than the puerile exchanges that characterize UseNet and e-groups.
Rather than fire off another long winded broadside in this quite interesting inter-blog debate, I shall confine myself to the most direct remarks by famed meta-blogger Tony Adragna from Quasipundit that are germane to the central argument here.
Tony accurately points out that the variously articulated Samizdata positions on gun ownership and that of Brian Linse (and himself) may be irreconcilable, as indeed they are… but Tony also unintentionally shows exactly why that is the case in his characterization of the duel as:
I have to throw in with Brian on the 2nd Amendment v. gun regulation debate.
In fact the debate is nothing of the kind. As I has said again and again, the Second Amendment is irrelevant. It is nothing more than a useful 200 year old honoured bookmark to remind people of certain things and has no intrinsic relevance to the discussion. If you genuinely think that the right to own weapons comes from the US Constitution, or that it can somehow protect that right from infringement, then I would urge you to take a look at a 1929 painting by the Belgian surrealist, René Magritte showing a picture of a pipe. In case you cannot speak French, the worlds within the painting translate as “This is not a pipe”. When you understand what that means in that context, perhaps you will also understand what the US Constitution actually is and is not.
In the sidebar of the Samizdata is a little phase that explains why I keep hammering away at this point. I refuse to be drawn into defining moral theories which must underpin any legal discussion, within a meta-context in which the state, and its essential nature, is a given regardless of objectively derived first principals. I will not fight my battles on the ground chosen by liberty’s enemies. Tony presents himself as a realist faced with libertarian utopianism, but the reality is actually quite different. Rational libertarians do not advocate either chaos or pious hopes. What we advocate is merely more spontaneous ways of deriving order in which guns tend to feature rather prominently as in reality there is no assumption that people will always act in their rational self interest.
Tony correctly sums up both his and Brian’s position with a statist credo of earth shaking clarity and directness (no, I am not being sarcastic, I really mean it):
I acknowledge the evidence that suggests “registration leads to confiscation”, but how relevant is that evidence in light of our 2nd Amendment? Not very!
I shall doubtless be quoting this single bit of text as the simplest and most elegant possible distillation of the ‘Conservative Nicene Creed of Constitutionalist Faith’ imaginable. Evidence suggests the state will take our weapons but fortunately we have the state to protect us from that happening. Tony then consistently applies the same logic to forfeiture laws:
I also have a problem with part of the argument at Samizdata that deals with forfieture laws. Should the government prove “proceeds of criminal activity” prior to siezure? Yes, I agree! But, that badly enacted forfieture laws exist does not refute the argument that our constitution protects us, and grants redress from, government acts under those badly enacted statutes. OK, it’s hard for me to argue “protection” when there is no de facto protection, but is there de facto protection from anything. Not in the real world.
So here we have the contention that the state does indeed take property without due process because unconstitutional laws have been enacted by the state, thus it is fortunate we have the constitution to protect us from the state enacting unconstitutional laws.
I rest my case.
Take a peek at this unusual link: author Claire Berlinski has written an interesting novel called Loose Lips, a roman à clef about CIA training at ‘The Farm’.
Save the hapless Claire from a fate worse than death (teaching)… go read the intro to this interesting book (also linked in the side bar under the Samizdata link farm’s ‘sundry fertilizer’).
The rabid libertarian pack-attack on the hapless ace blogista Brian Linse continues unabated.
But I am addressing the issue, and I have over and over again. I think that the extreme anti-gun “wackos” are as much the problem as the “gun nuts”, and that the Brady Campaign folks are delusional morons. The difference between myself and Perry is that I posess a rational awareness of the fact that the Constitution and the government it guides will protect my liberties. It’s how it works here. Unlike many allegedly free and democratic countries in Europe, individual liberties are protected here.
I reject the link between ‘free’ and ‘democratic’. Britain does not have a written constitution that purports to greatly limit the scope of democratic legislation and is thus profoundly more ‘democratic’ than America… yet the British state restricts liberty in many ways far more than the less democratic USA. Liberty and democracy are only acquaintances, not partners.
But just how are individual liberties protected in the USA? Can I purchase a handgun for my individual protection, put it in my car and drive from New York to Florida without fear of arrest? No. Could my nephew and his 16 year old fiance freely wander the USA without risking arrest for statutory rape or ‘under age’ drinking? No. Can a Dutch tourist go into a café in Miami and smoke a joint as he could in Amsterdam without being arrested? No. Can I walk into a car showroom and pay cash for a car without the government being told of my ‘suspicious’ transaction? No. Even large withdrawals of cash from your own bank account can trigger a call to the IRS and DEA! Can the state make a homeowner responsible for maintaining property he does not even own and make liable for anyone who injures themselves on it? Yes, if a person slips on snow on a sidewalk in front of their house, they can be held liable for the action of a stranger on ‘public’ land. Freedom of religion is protected yet schismatic Morman polygamists face arrest. Not quite so free as you seem to be suggesting.
I am sure you think all these issues are petty but that is because they do not effect you. I am not claiming the USA is like Cambodia or the Soviet Union, but your sense of ‘freedom’ is in many ways an illusion. You live in a highly regulated nation which enforces many of its laws far more rigorously than in the European nations you say (correctly) are only ‘allegedly free’. By all means argue these many and varied US regulations are benign and that I am hypersensitive, but please at least acknowledge that they are there and that a highly regulated society cannot be a society in which the protection of individual liberty is foremost amongst the state’s objectives.
And as I have stated before, if the US Supreme Court would make it clear the the 2nd Amendment is a protected individual liberty, there would be no need for the extreme rhetoric on both the left and the right. Chuck Shumer’s got no chance of taking my guns away, but it’s not because I’m better armed than he is, it’s because the Constitution and the representatives elected by the people won’t let him.
Yet the US Supreme Court has singularly failed to do that. US gun laws are moderate in some regions, yet severe in others. Am I free to arm myself if I live in a high crime area of New York City or Washington D.C. where I am most likely to need a weapon? No, I am not. If I live in New York City or the nation’s capital, Chuck Schumer and his cohorts have already had their way and deprived me of the rights you assure me will be protected by your yellowing piece of paper and stout yeoman democracy.
You dismiss the U.S. Constitution because of forefiture laws? I don’t know how better to explain it than to point out that there is no country on earth that enjoys the same freedoms that we do here in the US. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But it is a given that a hard core Libertarian will never see it that way. I guess I find Perry’s lack of faith inexplicable.
Ah yes, I hear what I call ‘The American Mantra’ again and again in e-mails to me from the USA. Certainly there are many very admirable aspects to the exercise of American liberty, such as free speech, and anyone who reads my remarks regularly can hardly have missed my pro-American tendencies. Yet what makes you think “no country on earth that enjoys the same freedoms that we do here in the US”? This seems to be an often repeated ‘article of faith’ rather than a real critical judgement. How many other countries try to tax ‘their’ citizens even when they do not live or work in that nation? Almost uniquely the USA does just that. It seems to suggest the US government actually owns it’s ‘citizens’ regardless of their location and therefore has a proprietary interest in their wealth regardless of where it is. Appalling.
How do you figure that forfeiture laws are not a huge issue? Certainly lots of your fellow countrymen disagree. The state can seize your property on the mere accusation of a crime, without actually even charging you, and even if you are never convicted, it is you, the owner of the property, who must go cap-in-hand with a lawyer for which you have to pay even if you are successful, to sue for the return of your property. If you don’t think that is a massive indictment of the system of US justice, they perhaps you can explain to me why you think that it is a trivial matter. The US Constitution is supposed to prohibit unreasonable search and seizure, yet under these laws you are effectively deprived of due process. My lack of faith in such a system is far from inexplicable.
The first axiom is, I believe, correct. The right to keep and bear is set forth in the Bill of Rights, and the limits that government can put on individual liberties so innumerated are subject to review by the Supreme Court. Just as we limit speech in certain narrow situations, it is perfectly rational and logical to limit gun ownership. If Perry’s logic were argued through, then it would have to be legal to incite to riot, or to falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, etc. This is how the debate is framed.
In supporting the idea of an armed population, I am stating a rational critical preference: nothing more and nothing less. To thereby deduce my views would lead to supporting the right to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre is to suggest that I support not liberty but rather chaos. However the very reason I support an armed society is the view that this is the best way to avoid chaos and disorder, not to mention tyranny. Whilst I distrust the motives of the US state as much as I distrust the British state, I have tremendous faith in the essential underpinnings of American society (more so in fact that British society to be honest).
To support ownership of arms is to support the ability to make choices. Yet to support the ability to choose is not to uncritically support whatever choices are in fact made. Advocacy of ownership of weapons is not to support them being fired off for the hell of it in a public street (the equivalent of your ‘shouting fire in a crowded theatre’). That is quite another issue again. The essence of libertarianism is not to advocate disorder but rather to advocate the right to choose and the right and obligation to reap the consequences of those choices, be they good or bad. If you yell fire in a crowded theatre or fire off guns in the street, expect severe sanction from the people who suffer as a result (be that in the form of the state or whatever proxy)… yet would you licence voices, as you would guns, for fear they be misused?
Is it a belief that these axioms are false that prevents Perry from directly addressing the illegal gun show purchases I’ve noted? Funny how no post in opposition to mine ever directly addresses these issues. Maintaining that the debate is framed by false axioms is a cop out. Show me why I’m wrong within the framwork of the laws that govern us, not the utopian fantasy of a Libertarian State that doesn’t exist.
Again you miss the point… as I do not regard these laws as legitimate, you cannot expect me (or Walter) to argue with you on the basis of how they can be made to work better. I don’t want them to work at all and neither does your chum the ‘gun nut’ who purchases weapons and then buries them as a hedge against future confiscation. You may not like the implications but he (like me) refuses to show you how you are “wrong within the framework of the laws that govern us” because he (like me) will not accept that framework. By his actions, your friend has decided those laws will not govern him and it is implicitly clear he places liberty above democracy. By doing this, he, and I, simply will not participate in a battle on ground of your choosing. He is indeed voting, just not in the democratic process you think so important. That is the libertarian fact, not fantasy. Pass as many laws as you like, in the final analysis reality is not made by congresses or parliaments or kings or pieces of paper, it is made on the ground by people deciding if they will cooperate with their own oppression…or refusing to cooperate. Your friend the ‘gun nut’ has made his position clear by his actions and so have Walter and I.
Sorry, Perry, but we are a government of laws, not a government of men. Natural Law underlies our Constitution, but it is the document itself that makes practical law out of philosophy. I’d rather continue to rely on the system of government that we have established with the Constitution, as opposed to a free for all where the guy with the highest caliber runs the show. Why? Because it works. And the reality is, that the guy with the highest caliber is always gonna be the government. Bottom line? I understand Perry’s views in the context of the Libertarian argument. I’ve got more than a few Libertarian views myself. But this is the very real United States of America, and there is no way in hell that the 2nd Amendment is ever going to be more important than the rest of the Bill of Rights.
That is a masterpiece of inductive thinking and selective logic. You say you support constitutional government yet it is you who seems to regard it as a smorgasbord to pick and choose from. The two salient parts of the second Amendment are ‘regulating’ (you may not shoot your guns off in the supermarket) and ‘keeping and bearing’ (you may both own and carry guns). No one is suggesting the Second Amendment trumps all the others… rights are rights. Yet keeping and bearing are very much infringed. You also contend that the only alternative to the current official (and widely resisted) system of overarching state control, is for the USA to descend into armed chaos similar to Lebanon circa 1988. Yet US history itself is replete with examples of heavily armed communities that were quite functional prior to the existence of BAFT. Laws can only be legitimate if they are based upon objective morality and objective morality does not spring magically from some scripture, be it the Holy Bible or the secular constitution. Morality is either objectively true or it is not and the best a successful constitution can do is to point that out.
There is also no way in hell that the government is ever going to take my guns away. Look, just as there are people in government who don’t want me to have the right to certain forms of political speech, there are also those who don’t want me to own any guns. But they will not succeed.
US gun laws are reasonable in some regions, yet are worse than some other nations in other regions. Am I free to arm myself if I live in a high crime area of New York City or Washington D.C. where I might actually need a weapon? No, I am not. It seem that if I live in New York City or the Capital, Chuck Schumer has already had his way and deprived me of the rights you assure me will be protected by your yellowing piece of paper and stout yeoman democracy. It would seem not.
And yes, Perry, the reason they will not succeed is the power of the Constitution and the moral authority of the peoples’ government.
You may feel ‘The People’s Government’ has moral authority (I cannot wait to get Natalija’s reaction when she read that phrase) to dispense violence backed regulation of fundamental rights, but if that is the case, why is your chum burying weapons in plastic tubes? ‘The People’s Government’ does not seem to have a whole lot of ‘moral authority’ to him… or to me. And why should it? You have given me no reason other than a vague deontological appeal for faith in the state’s exercise of authority.
The problem I have with the views of excellent blogista Brian Linse are actually the same as the one’s he has with Walter Ulhman‘s post to the Samizdata…
The problem I have with these posts is that they never address the real issues, choosing instead to just characterize the opposition as liberty-hating confiscators who are aware of their authoritarian motives in a conspiracy with evil forces in government.
Yet can Brian seriously read Senator Chuck Schumer‘s endless remarks on the subject and still say there is no foundation to the widely held view of ‘gun nuts’ that powerful factions within the state are indeed ‘liberty-hating confiscators’? How is that not a ‘real issue’? I think it is Brian who is not addressing the issue here, not Walter or Glenn.
Walter would no doubt argue that the existing laws should prevent this kind of activity, but the reality is that they do not work.
I would not normally presume to speak for another like this but I have known Walter extremely well for over 20 years so I will do exactly that: I rather doubt in reality Walter cares a hoot if it works or not (he may say otherwise if he disagrees). Both he and I support the idea of a free armed civil population and reject anything that makes that more difficult. Bad guys are also armed and will always be regardless of any number of idiotic laws. Just look at the rate at which armed crime is increasing in Britain regardless of law after law. If that is not enough, then let me point you at that part of the UK called Northern Ireland and suggest to you that it is demonstrably impossible to disarm a section of society if they refuse to comply. Bad people are already armed in every nation on earth (well, maybe not the Vatican and Sealand)… some of them are muggers, some of them are murderers, some of them are terrorists and some of them wear blue jackets with ATF or FBI or ‘Metropolitan Police’ printed on the back.
A law that doesn’t work is useless, and only serves as fuel for the wackos on the other side (Brady Campaign) to further polarize the debate. Walter describes gun shows as “…simply private commerce between individuals.” Well if Walter offered to sell me his sister for 50 bucks, that too could be called “private commerce between individuals”, but it would still be illegal and immoral.
I do not see your point here. Not that Walter actually has a sister, but if he did, certainly if she was unwilling then it would be immoral to force her into what would amount to slavery as she too is a free individual. Otherwise, I fail to see the problem… prostitution is the combination of sex and free enterprise: which one are you against? More seriously, here comes my profound ambivalence to democracy: I would prefer a bad law that does not work to a bad law that does. A law that doesn’t work can only come about if enough people refuse to accept it, regardless of its sanctification by some elected buffoons with media access who claim to speak for the very people who choose to break that law. I actually make a point of going out of my way to break laws I judge unreasonable restrictions on my liberty. If you choose to speed on an empty road, so do you.
Somehow I don’t think that 30 round magazines and SP-89’s illegally converted to full-auto would be much use against laser guided bunker busters and smart bombs.
I suspect the US Rangers who died in Somalia might have disagreed. You seem to think that some future tyranny in the US would find dealing with armed resistance by sections of US society rather like fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think Somalia and Vietnam and Northern Ireland and Algeria would be better analogies. It is hard to ‘smart bomb’ your own population into submission. Britain also has smart bombs and all the panoply of modern war, yet that meant nothing in Northern Ireland when a section of society refused to be governed.
Representative Democracy and the US Constitution are all the protection we need for our individual liberties.
Ah, that would explain US civil forfeiture laws then eh? Were they not passed by your beloved democratic representatives? So much for your mighty constitution. I find your faith inexplicable.
We currently live with a variety of laws that limit our rights to free speech. If we agree that there are legitimate restrictions on free speech, how can we ignore the same needs for limits on the right to keep and bear arms? How about addressing some of these question instead of endless polarizing rhetorical posts? Preaching to the choir is fun, but not very useful.
You seem to be demanding that Glenn and Walter argue the issue by first accepting your underpinning axioms (i.e. not ‘polarizing’ the debate): firstly it is legitimate to restrict the liberty to arm yourself and we should only be arguing about how much to restrict it. Secondly that the belief that the US system of government and its constitution are such sound and fundamental foils to tyranny that fears to the contrary are irrational.
I don’t know about Glenn but I am damn sure Walter and I will never accept either of those axioms as a basis for discussion. In fact I would say to do so would itself be irrational given the evidence that both views are false and it is you who are not really dealing with the issues by retreating into the comfortable fiction that the system in the USA is fundamentally okay. I beg to differ. American success and prosperity come not from its constitutional system and sure as hell not from it’s ghastly legal system: it comes from the fact a large and productive chunk of the population is imbued with a civil culture of liberty that transcends mere written laws… and my admiration for that aspect of America is boundless. The US Constitution is the actual source of precisely nothing and to argue on constitutional grounds, now that is avoiding the issue. The US Constitution merely enumerates some of the rights that people possess by right, whether those rights are written down or not. It is not a matter of laws, it is a matter of rights… but if you insist on arguing on the basis of a two hundred year old bit of paper, which part of ‘…shall not be infringed’ did you not understand?
It is almost inevitable that a degree of triumphalist intoxication starts to surge into commentary regarding the allegedly all-but-over war in Afghanistan. However in their eagerness to at last drive a stake through the heart of that American vampire-of-the-soul, Vietnam, people are starting to sound rather like the pundits opining on the future after every war since the industrial age started to make each war different than the one before. Television, internet and printing presses are humming with commentators who are making extravagant leaps of inductive thinking… never a good sign.
Victor Davis Hanson over on National Review is a case in point and has written an intemperate article called Glad We Are Not Fighting Us, that takes dramatic historical and sociological liberties with fact and evidence. Although I do agree with many of his points, others that he makes are very odd indeed.
America now enjoys a level of global military and political influence not seen since the Roman Empire in the age of Trajan.
This is a poor comparison. What of the Mongols? Theirs was a vast empire based on sheer military might into which the Roman Empire, even under Trajan, could have neatly fitted into one corner. The shadow it cast over the entire Eurasian world was every bit as profound as the US casts now and far harder to ignore.
He goes on to describe an America that will no doubt appeal to a section of his US readership but it is really nothing more than tub-thumping propaganda rather than sensible appraisal of the undoubted might of the USA.
But in the last two decades America, for better or worse, has evolved beyond the traditional Western paradigm, in reaching the theoretical limits of freedom and unbridled capitalism to create a technologically sophisticated, restlessly energetic, and ever-changing society whose like has never been seen in the history of civilization.
That is not just wrong, it is ridiculous… for one, I would argue that the United States was far more free in many ways, both in terms of general liberty and economically, prior to the First World War. The astonishing US forfeiture laws under which one can have property seized and then not returned even if not eventually convicted of a crime (and in some cases not even charged), make it clear that large chunks of the much hallowed Constitution are in fact a dead letter. Even more grotesquely obvious, one only has to look at the huge share of national wealth appropriated by the various tiers of American government and compare it to 100 years ago to realise the absurdity of claiming the United States is “reaching the theoretical limits of freedom”. Ethnic minorities and women are now freed from onerous restrictions compared to a century ago, yet what they may actually do with that restored liberty and economic power is drastically ‘bridled’ by the intrusive regulatory state as never before in American history.
In areas of US society where liberty is indeed in the ascendant rather than in retreat , it is due to the information technology and communications that are exerting their influence far beyond just America.
I would also contend that the Dutch in the 17th century and British in the first half of the 18th century were every bit as dynamic. And of course their pundits made much the same overarching claims about their cultures as well.
Hanson gets back on more solid ground by pointing out where the true root of America’s real comparative advantages lie by contrasting its freedom of expression with that found in other civilisations. Yet it does not take him long to stray back into questionable historical contentions
But unlike the Soviet infantry and armor doctrine of the 1960s and 1970s, which had changed little from World War II our new tactics are not static. We are just as likely to see armored divisions on the ground in Iraq, storms of cruise missiles in Lebanon, or covert assassination teams in Somalia or the return once again of the Afghani mode depending on the changing nature of our adversaries.
Here Hanson just does not know what he is talking about. Soviet infantry and armour doctrines evolved hugely after World War II and in the 1970’s, US doctrines might as well have been drawn up with the intention of maximising the Soviet advantages in combat mobility. Soviet military theories very accurately assessed US strengths and weaknesses, leading to the Operational Manoeuvre Group (OMG) doctrines. US Army reforms came belatedly in the 1980’s to address the weakness of US operational level doctrine compared to that of the Soviets (i.e. the introduction of ‘Air/Land Battle’ doctrines aimed at reducing the large Soviet advantage in combat mobility).
I cringe somewhat at Hanson using ‘covert assassination teams in Somalia’ as an example of American military superiority. What the last US adventure in Somalia proved was something rather different. As any NRA activist will tell you, never underestimate a pissed off armed civilian population. Sure, high tech and well trained US troops can probably kill a low tech bunch of Somalians at a ratio of 100:1… but at the end of the day, it was the Somali ‘warlords’ who held the field and watched the US retreat, because they, unlike the hideous Taliban in Afghanistan, commanded the genuine support of their population. It would be hard to overstress the importance of understanding the implications of this.
I came away with the impression that September 11 has supercharged rather than short-circuited this multifaceted engine of America. What were bin Laden, the mobs in Pakistan and the West Bank, the nuts in al Qaeda, and their opportunistic supporters in the Middle East drinking? We shall never know, but their attack on a country such as this was pure lunacy. Thank God we do not have to fight anyone like ourselves.
Yes, that is quite true and in fact much of Hanson’s article is spot on. However I do worry that in the wave of understandable euphoria following the destruction of the Taliban and the scattering of Al Qaeda, that an air of unrealistic expectation and ill conceived adventurism may replace the air of unrealistic pessimism so beloved of the dismal and irrational Buellers and Fisks.
The Christmas hacker vandalism that took blogger.com off-line for most of yesterday is all the more appalling when you consider that blogger.com are one of the Internet’s secular saints, when you think what they provide to us, the bloggers, and you, the readers, essentially for free.
I feel another bout of ‘hunt the advertisement’ coming on… remember everyone, if you see a banner advertisement on a blogpage, anyone can click on the ‘get rid of this ad’ link under the banner on anyone else’s site and contribute a measly $12 for 1 year of ad-free blog viewing for everyone. If all 300,000+ people who have blogs on blogger.com or the millions of readers who read those blogs contributed that paltry sum, blogger.com, which is run largely on good-will, would be able to afford more bandwidth and better firewalls and obviously that would be in all our interests.
US Marines were handed an unexpected defeat yesterday and commentators are scrambling to find how this could have been allowed to happen. Reporters interviews dazed survivors at Bagram Airbase, near Kabul. Capt. Hank McHunter, from Dallas, Texas said
I called for support from an AC-130 but it all happened too fast… they got in among us so all our airpower didn’t mean diddly squat. I want my wife, Becky-Sue, to know I’m okay though.
Sgt. Bud Burbacker from Oraldo, Florida added
Our defence was holdin’ okay but then one of them got through and it all went totally down the shitter. Where the hell are them friggin’ Northern Alliance bastards when you need ’em?
A reporter for the Independent attempted to put this question to Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister in Kabul. He replied
Who’s that? Robert Fisk? Shove it, Fisk, I ain’t talking to you, you slimy piece of…
However Deputy Defence Minister with the Interim government, General Abdul Rashid Dostam, promised he would make more information available to the selected members of the Western media later tonight
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your pubic regions, Fisk. If you want to know what the Northern Alliance position is regarding this incident, then send two bottles of good Kentucky Bourbon and that most excellent Lara Logan chick, you know, that reporter who works for GMTV, to my HQ later tonight and I’ll tell her all about it
During a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld was evasive on the exact details but did indicate an enquiry was underway to find out how this could have transpired
Yes, we were quite suprised to hear what has happened… we didn’t even think those bastards knew the rules! It would be fair to say I am pissed as I had ten bucks on our guys to win. Oh well, war is hell and it cannot be refined.
SkyNew showed video of US Marines and British Royal Marines playing American football after a large Christmas lunch at Bagram Airbase. The Royal Marines narrowly won.
[Editor’s note: This would have been posted yesterday but for the intervention of the hacker who disrupted blogger.com… may the fleas of a thousand camels infest his public regions too]
There have been some scorching articles on many worthy blogs this year but over on Transterrestrial Musings, ace blogista Rand Simberg has out done himself with the ultimate take down of the establishment media pundit’s irrational cultural masochist tendency.
Down the hall come blood-curdling screams from an emergency surgical unit. The doctor explains, “We’re low on anaesthetics. We’ve requisitioned supplies, but it’s hard to get anyone to respond. For some reason, there seems to be very little sympathy for these people.”
The cries of agony continue–it is almost unbearable to hear. “Sometimes, the only way to save them is emergency removal of fatally-flawed precepts and paradigms. There’s no time to do it gently.”
Outstanding. This is the perfect article to sum up the genesis of the whole blogging phenomena and it’s non-deferential wrecking-ball ethos. Absolutely stormin’ stuff! Run, do not walk, to Transterrestrial Musings to read the entire sublime article.
As evidenced by the previous post, Samizdata has a new contributor whose name will be familiar to many out there in Blogistan. Christopher Pellerito has long been running the excellent Liberty Blog, and his was the third blog we linked to (after Instapundit and Transterrestrial) when we burst upon the blogging scene. And thus do our ranks grow.
PC meaning Peikoffian Crap.
Okay, I realise it is actually Boxing Day now, but ‘Merry Christmas’ anyway. That’s Christ-mas… as in Christ. Son of God and all that stuff. It does not matter if you believe in Christ or not, because it does not change what Christmas actually is.
Although I am an extremely secular person, I do not hesitate to extend those sentiments to Samizdata‘s Christian readers in spite of the fact religion does not loom large in my life. Yet I think it is important to remember that Christmas is a Christian festival and thus I shall not hedge my Christian greeting with anything like ‘and you have a nice holiday too for those who are Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Satanists…’
Don’t get me wrong, I actually do hope any Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Satanists, Druids, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddists, Jews, Druse, Shinto, Pagans, etc. etc. who read the Samizdata have a really great and entirely secular couple days off… but then as that is all Christmas is to them, I do not feel any special need to be ‘inclusive’ if they are just hitching a perfectly reasonable cultural ride on someone else’s wagon. I often partake of bhangra-and-booze excesses during Diwali but I certainly don’t expect special ‘Diwali greetings’ from my Hindu friends because I am not Hindu. To me Diwali is just an excuse to eat good Indian food. Likewise I would hope that many atheist (or whatever) libertarians would have no problem with the idea of Christians (libertarian or otherwise) regarding Christmas as ‘their’ day. Yet some people do indeed seem to disagree.
Although I have been much influenced by objectivism, I do not actually call myself an objectivist as Karl Popper looms just as large in my philosophical views, probably more so in fact. I have nothing against objectivism per se, which I like to describe as a sub-set of libertarian thought because I know it will annoy certain people. However I do regard the ‘organised’ objectivism of Leonard Peikoff, of the Ayn Rand Institute, as essentially irrational and pathologically intolerant. Peikoff’s historical error riddled article about Christmas did nothing to change my views on the fatal justificationist structural flaw in his brand of dogmatic objectivism (yeah, yeah, send hate e-mail pointing out my ‘errors’ to the usual address). Let Peikoff pick any day he likes to celebrate the adulation of St. Leonard, Intellectual Heir to the Blessed Ayn… but to fail to understand that Christmas without a reference to Christianity is just another Disney theme event, is culturally illiterate and needlessly insulting.
However objectivism without Leonard Peikoff…ah, now that would be something worthy of a festival of its own! For precisely that, go to The Objectivist Center for Peikoff-free objectivism that includes tolerance and ideas that survive contact with reality. Go read what they have to say.
As for me, once I have finished reading the lyrical Sufic work ‘The Rose Garden‘, I shall be re-reading Popper‘s ‘Open Society and it’s Enemies‘.
I have always suspected that most hackers who cause damage were people suffering from a low and probably very accurate self image. They try to prove that they are really cunning and smart by damaging an on-line system but in fact all they prove is something known since time immemorial… it is always easier to destroy something than it is to build it.
So what has the hacker who attacked blogger.com on Christmas done? By changing all the passwords his adolescent psyche craves for us to think he is ‘clever and cunning’ and oh how witty this ‘Robin hood hacker’ is for posting a benign message on Instapundit.
Of course the truth is rather different. Far from demonstrating any of those attributes, the hacker shows us he detests people who actually create things. Thousands of people wanting to post to their newsblogs, diaryblogs or whateverblogs are locked out and have to use the ‘forgot my password’ option on blogger to find out what their password has been changed to. He has said to every person he locked out “you can write an article and help make an on-line community, but why aren’t you paying attention to ME?… I can throw a rock through your window. Aren’t I clever?”
Pathetic actually. He has done the equivalent of breaking into an art gallery at night, not to steal a painting, oh no, that would actually make a certain amount of sense, but merely to scribe a message about how ‘he could have been more evil’ and then shit on the floor so that people next day will come and marvel at his ingenuity at breaking in. Yeah, we are real impressed.
You want us to pay attention to you? Sure. Tell us who you are and you will get your wish big time. We all know how horse-thieves were treated when they were caught.
Whilst still very much an early ‘work in progress’, the Capitalist Chicks< website is starting to take shape and now at least works with MS Internet Explorer 5.0.
I do have one minor quibble though: ladies, do you really need the damn disclaimer on every page? If you think that you actually do, might I suggest you re-word it at follows:
Disclaimer
The term ‘chicks’ is in no way meant to be derogatory towards women. If you insist on taking it that way, let us introduce you to the concept of several property. This is our website, we like the word and that’s all there is to it. If you have a problem with that, you are probably a socialist and thus are likely to find ‘chick’ the very least of many things here that will upset you.
Just a suggestion, ladies.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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