The Neocons and the Nazis

Why is this easier to see than the same conundrum on the international stage? When a nation starts a war to effect a "regime change," it is engaging in murder on a massive scale. The morality, if anything, can only be worse than killing one's neighbor to prevent an alleged crime-to-be.

Am I afraid of people who mean the U.S. harm? Sure I am. Am I happy about living in a state of fear? Of course not. Do I therefore support blasting at every scary looking person in the world who gives Americans the evil eye? No. That policy is not only immoral, it will achieve the exact opposite of greater security for our children. Either reason on its own is enough for any sane person to reject such a course of action.

Though of course one could overcome libertarian objections by a few simple steps.

1)Privatize the 82nd Airborne.
2)Find an Iraqi property owner to invite the 82nd Airborne onto his land. Or find some unowned (government owned) land in Iraq and homestead it with the 82nd Airborne.
3)Wait for the government of Iraq to "initiate the illegitimate use of force".
4)Blow 'em away.

All perfectly legal in libertarian terms.

BTW, in Afghanistan we were invited in by (one of) the government(s) of the country -- the Northern Alliance. Maybe someone in Northern Alliance territory even invited us in in his private capacity.

The Revolution Will Be All Business, by John T Kennedy -- anti-state.com

I don't know why most of our "target demographic" don't see the obvious truth of your remarks. I've always said that rich, technologically equipped individuals are very hard to push around. Since liberty is merely people making their own choices and money plus electronics gives everyone greatly enhanced powers of choice, liberty is achieved outside of politics (which is the only way it can realistically be achieved).

Those with power are not going to give it up because someone convinces them that it is the right thing to do. Indeed, most significant historical changes were not planned.

See below:

http://technoptimist.blogspot.com/2002_06_16_technoptimist_archive.html#77995115

Thanks to New Zealand's Peter Gutmann for the pointer:

Why identity is useless as a predictor of future behavior.

"When a highway patrolman is sent to his duty, he has to be given the authority to cite traffic violators. This cannot be done explicitly for each violator because at the time that the patrolman is sent to his duty, the traffic violator does not exist, and the identity of the future violators is not known, so that it is impossible to construct individual access rights for the violators at that time. The point is that the patrolman's authority has to do with the behaviour of motorists, not their identity.

- Naftaly Minsky, "An Operation-Control Scheme for Authorisation in Computer Systems", International Journal of Computer and Information Sciences, Vol.2, No.2, June 1978, p.157.

Notice the case of the Palistinian suicide bombers. As soon as they blow themselves up, Israel IDs them, reports the name of the town they are from, and invades it. This doesn't prevent the bombing because the bombers have no characteristics that distinguish them from non-bombers in the same area.

Trads vs. NeoTrads -- The Differences

Most of today's traditionalists are, in fact, neotraditionalists. They differ in significant ways from the trads of past ages. Here are some of the differences:

Age of marriage - Trads <18, Neotrads >25


[More coming. I'm slow.]

Note to those trying to control events:

The replacement of feudal principalities and city-states by the nation state was not planned. It happened because of the introduction of gunpowder.

The Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution were not planned. They happened because of the printing press.

The mass migrations of the last 30 years were not planned. They happened because of the invention of jet-powered civil aviation.

The recent end of censorship was not planned. It happened because of the reduction in the cost of communications.

PROSECUTION FOR POSTING A STORY ON THE WEB

The same thing happened exactly a year ago in Chappaqua, NY:

"WHITE PLAINS, June 4 — Two male high school students in Chappaqua have been charged with harassment for posting a Web site that listed the names, phone numbers and alleged sexual exploits of dozens of their female classmates, law enforcement officials said today.

The two students were arrested on May 30 after Chappaqua school district officials learned of the Web site and notified the New Castle Police Department. Police officials said they would not release the names of the two students because it was department policy in cases involving youths."

*********

But the DA declined to prosecute for the absence of the "communication" element of harassment.

"Pirro said there was no crime because none of the girls were sent any of the Web pages, and the password meant the males kept the information among themselves."

*********

I'm not sure that the password restriction is relevent particularly since someone outside the group must have seen the pages and reported
them.

Ah for the good old days of Common Law when the tort of infliction of emotional distress required demonstration of physical damage or illness on the part of the victim.

Should Corporations Have Rights?

Great post from Eugene Volokh which raises so many tangential thoughts.

1. Rights of aliens. In the current war, we hear many people say, "aliens have no rights in the US". Which means I suppose that it's open season on them. If they have no rights, then any citizen is free to shoot them down at any time. Rough for the international tourist trade. If the speaker then admits that they have some rights, we are just arguing over how extensive those might be.

2. Non-corporate business forms. A few years ago in SF an apartment building subject to rent control with protected tenants and 24 apartments was bought by 24 buyers as tenants in common. The buyers occupied all 24 apartments and kicked the tenants out. The effect of rent control on property law.

In the case of corporations, lefties have long said that a limited liability corporation is a special creation of the state and thus should be under its control. But modern financial cryptography "using bearer settlement, anonymous voting, secret sharing, and so forth, [allows us to] create limited-liability business entities in software" (Robert Hettinga) and thus dodge this particular form of state control.

Strange but true:

Most Arab residents of the US are not Muslims.

Most Muslim residents of the US are not Arabs.

Have you ever been conscious of a tendancy to avoid certain words because "such things are simply not said these days"? Are you worried that you might have become accidently Politically Correct? There's hope.

Here's how to avoid the dangers of self-censorship in the modern era. Memorize the following list of highly controversial words and work them into your blog or conversation whenever appropriate. (Use an (old) dictionary to look up any that you don't understand.)

he & his (When used to speak of collective persons -- the male includes the female)
little lady
m'am
sodomy
sodomite
lascivious carriage
commie
bastard (When speaking of Madonna's first child, etc.)
leftie
pinko
fornication
traitor
lewd cohabitation
shacking up
nuke 'em
God (with a capital D and an o in the middle)

[Bookmark this post. I'll be adding more as they occur to me.]

Dog Bites Lesbian
In considering the dismissal of murder charges against Marjorie Knoller in the dog-bite death of Diane Whipple you have to keep in mind the concept of Depraved Indifference.

As some of us learned in law school, Common Law murder was, "The unlawful killing of a human being with malice." Malice was defined as, "Intent to kill, intent to do grievious bodily harm, intent to commit an inherently dangerous felony (the Felony Murder rule), or depraved indifference to human life."

The latter concept was usually illustrated by some miscreant shooting into the carriages of a passing train. The actor did not intend to kill but showed what the law chose to call "depraved indifference to human life."

So the question in this case is whether or not -- as a matter of law (since the judge took the final decision away from the jury)-- posession and control of a dangerous dog rises to the level of "shooting into a crowd." Even though fatal dog attacks are rare. And fatal dog attacks involving white supremicist prison gangs, bestiality, dogs named Bane and Hera, and Pacific Heights are even rarer.

DOG BITES BOX OFFICE

Astonishing box-office analysts, the mostly live-action theatrical version of Scooby-Doo took in an estimated $56.4 million to become the biggest attraction at the nation's movie theaters over the weekend, earning more than twice the amount of the No. 2 film, The Bourne Identity, starring Matt Damon, which bagged $27.5 million. Windtalkers, starring Nicolas Cage, was in third place with a disappointing $14.5 million. (The MGM film reportedly cost more than $100 million to produce.) All three films debuted on Friday. The Sum of All Fears, which had held the top spot over the previous two weekends, slipped to fourth place with $13.5 million, to bring its 17-day total to $84.5 million. The success of Scooby-Doo -- it was the biggest June opening in history -- was particularly surprising given the generally poor reviews the film received on Friday and the high failure rate of similar projects that have attempted to convert classic saturday-morning cartoons into live-action features. In reporting on the film's achievement, today's (Monday) Wall Street Journal commented: "Rival studio executives have been snickering for months about the box office prospects for the Warner Bros. movie Scooby-Doo, saying that a film with a B-level cast and based on a cornball 1970s cartoon character stood no chance in a summer of big-budget blockbusters. They aren't laughing now."

Proof (if proof were needed) that representative democracy is an inadequate system of social organization and should (quickly) be replaced with something else.