Why do Libertarians dominate Blogdom?

Easy. Because not all media are created equal.

As G. K. Chesterton says in Heretics:

The truth is, that it is quite an error to suppose that absence of definite convictions gives the mind freedom and agility. A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has all his weapons about him. he can apply his test in an instant. The man engaged in conflict with a man like Mr. Bernard Shaw may fancy he has ten faces; similarly a man engaged against a brilliant duelist may fancy that the sword of his foe has turned to ten swords in his hand. But this is not really because the man is playing with ten swords, it is because he is aiming very straight with one. Moreover, a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.

So we've got prepared answers to lots of stuff and can therefore handle the posting loads imposed by Blogging. In a column of a number of years ago on the Libertarian Party, George Will thought it unusual that the LP had a plank on the Moon Treaty (surprise, surprise, they were against it).

Then there's the fact that we are People of the book. Blogging is a writing exercise and in order to be a good writer you have to read a lot.

Nelson's battle plan is revealed on scrap of paper

Vanessa Thorpe, Arts and Media Correspondent
Sunday May 26, 2002
The Observer

It may look like a random doodle, but a rough drawing found almost by chance on the back of a scrap of yellowing paper has proved to be our closest contact yet with the mind of Britain's greatest naval hero.

When Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the French at Trafalgar in 1805, he changed the course of history. Today, following an extraordinary research coup for the historian Colin White, Nelson's lost battle plan is to go on display for the first time in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

News of the discovery of the only hand-drawn tactical map of Trafalgar broke this weekend and has excited historians all over Britain.

Here's the real article from the Journal For Maritime Research:

Nelson’s 1805 Battle Plan

and, thanks to the power of deep linking, here's the plan itself.

Here is a detail.

WHY DON'T MORE FATHERS WANT THEIR DAUGHTERS TO BE LESBIANS?

Compared to that, lesbian sex seems much less repulsive, much less of an indignity ... pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases .. less likely to transmit STDs ...In terms of raw physical risk, you've got to prefer the girl.
...
Finally, I'll stress again that this question is in part facetious: I'm pretty sure fathers don't actually devoutly wish for their daughters to be lesbians, and I'm asking this mostly because it's amusing and a bit absurdist to wonder why it isn't this way. But it does have a serious component: Given fathers' notorious sexual protectiveness of their daughters, why don't we see more of the attitude I describe?

I guess that a Freudian could suggest a good motive.

Or a sociobiologist could point out that even though homosexuals can reproduce, a daughter's hetrosexuality maximises the chance that a father's genetic heritage will be passed on to grandchildren. Hetrosexual couples have a higher birthrate than homosexual couples and the female in a hetrosexual couple produces 100% of the couple's natural children. The odds of being the mother are lower if there are two women.

But seriously folks. The main reason is that a majority of (American) people don't think homosexuality is morally right 55% to 38% in the latest Gallup Poll. And I bet that a fair chunk of those 38% who are too chicken to use the term "morally wrong" don't think that homosexuality is a good idea.

Man out of jail after 4 1/2 years on civil contempt

BEAUMONT -- Odis Briggs hugged his attorneys after a Beaumont federal magistrate ordered his release Thursday on $50,000 bond from Liberty County Jail, where he had been held for four years and eight months for contempt of court.

"It's a joy to be released," said Briggs, 63, after making bail. "I'm going first to the altar and pray and then visit my wife's grave."

State District Judge Zeke Zbranek had refused to release Briggs to visit his ailing wife or attend her funeral after she died March 29, 1999.

Zbranek said Briggs "held the keys" to his freedom -- and state appellate courts agreed -- if he would turn over financial records to show what happened to the $120,000 he admits swindling from 18 black families in Chambers County.

Advice to those imprisoned for civil contempt:

They aren't supposed to keep you if you establish that you can't be coerced. So prove it.

Write daily letters to the judge holding you in prison expressing in the strongest possible language that you will never in a million years do what he says.

Include lengthy discussions of whatever personal, political, or religious philosophy motivates you to establish the depth of your convictions. On every letter note how many days you've been imprisoned and how many letters and petitions you've sent.

Attach copies of every one of those letters to Habeus Corpus petitions mailed daily to various state and federal courts around the country.

You've got nothing better to do, have you?

From a Slate piece on the abortion wanted poster decision:

"At issue were a series of Wild West "wanted" posters (a tiny replica can be seen here) and a Web site called the Nuremburg Files. Created in 1995 by anti-abortion activists, the posters featured images of abortion providers, their names and addresses, plus a "reward" of $500 for each doctor who was "persuaded" to stop performing abortions."

So I expect to see Osama wheel on in to federal court to sue George for making a threat against him "wanted dead or alive".

More and Yet More on Drivers Licenses for Illegal Aliens

A list of articles from northern New Jersey's Record newspaper about aliens, the DMV, and drivers licenses.

Almost no mention of the fact that aliens can drive anywhere in the US using drivers licenses issued by their home countries.

No mention of the fact that drivers licenses were not intended to be a general social control measure but just a safe driving measure.

I've read lots of genuine right wing nuts who used to be opposed to drivers licenses on religious or constitutional grounds complaining about drivers licenses for illegal ailiens. Inconsistant?

If animals are granted rights by humans, will humans have the same rights?

That is, if:

Animals should primarily be given the legal right to demonstrate their natural behavior (dependent on their natural disposition) even if they are found to be harmful and their movements have to be restricted.

Then aren't humans equally entitled to "demonstrate our natural behavior" including things like taking over the world, building nuclear power plants, and launching space vehicles? Not to mention killing and eating animals.

Got 11 Minutes -- Experience the Essence of Totalitarianism

Do you wonder what totalitarianism is actually like? You could certainly read Red Azalea by Anchee Min about growing up in Red China during the '50s and '60s. Or you could listen to the remarkable interview with her on NPRs Weekend Edition Saturday for 11 May 2002.

Warning -- Contains reenactment of a sex scene with dialog written by Mao Tse-tung.

Nominally an interview about the author's new novel Wild Ginger, it explores her life and past writings (ostracism because her parents were teachers, Red Guard member to overcome her social problems by becoming more socialist than anyone, Peasant to improve her purity, Actress portaying Madame Mao because she looked appropriate and they weren't making any other movies or plays, despised fellow traveller when Mao died and Madame Mao was arrested, refugee to America, citizen, patriot, and author).

And you think you've had a rough life!

VANDERBILT AGGRESSIVELY RECRUITING JEWS

I'm not praising, I'm not blaming, I'm just reporting the facts. But as to one item I can't help myself -- "'It dredges up stereotypes and issues we really don't want on the table,' said Jessica Keimowitz, director of college counseling at the New Jewish High School of Greater Boston." Really, Jessica? Is it really true that we don't like this particular stereotype? Tell that to our mothers . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Adam Bonin points out that the Wall Street Journal also wrote about this on April 29.

The WSJ article is accompanied by an interesting table ranking SAT scores by religious denomination. The fascinating factoid is that Jews are not at the top of the list. That honor belongs to Unitarians. Missing from the list are atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists. I wonder how those denominations would have done?

Fear of Speaking One's Mind

Great exchange among Eugene, Matt Welch, Eve Kayden, and others on fear of saying unpopular things.

Eve is right that one should focus on the topic of controversial remarks not on a controversial manner of speaking.

I agree with Matt who can't imagine why anyone would worry about saying something. I hang out with neo-traditionalists in NYC who actually say that they worry about such things. As both a neo-trad and a libertarian, I'm unlikely to worry about such things (libertarians never do).

SF author Robert Heinlein's leading character Jubal Harshaw from Stranger in a Strange Land said that he was twice as hard to push around since he was both a physician and a lawyer. That would certainly work. I'm in one of those catagories and certainly have the mouth. I note that the articulate are harder to shut up because others fear a tounge lashing.

Those of us lucky enought to reside in the US have a lot less than most (any?) to worry about in the realm of expression. Even ignoring the 1st, we have an advanced private economy where it is easy for anyone (no matter how deviate) to find a job.

The modern communications environment aids the deviate. While it's true that as primates we crave acceptance by members of our troop, we're not stuck with the small troop we're born into. Even if we don't move to the Big City to find others who share our own twisted vision, we can easily find them on the Nets and communicate with them. Thus social ostracism is much less powerful a control measure than it used to be.

Then since the 60's happened, the opposition can hardly argue that anything you say is violating sacred norms. Anyone who tries to make that argument can be dismissed with a chuckle.

"When I was born, smoking was a virtue and sodomy a vice." Since paganism, sodomy, bastardy, body piercing, and a whole list of behaviors, beliefs, and statuses which were once verbotten are now protected by law, anything goes.

I can easily list [next project] more than 50 things which would once have got one in serious trouble but are now perfectly OK.

Anyone attacked for their deviate behavior (calling for racist tax cuts, for example) can just say "Mine is merely an alternative life style. I understand they're even starting to teach it in the schools.

Car-impound law faces challenge: State court to review action when driver's license is suspended

Relates the sad tale of Washingtonians (the State of) who have their vehicles siezed when they are found to be driving without a valid license.

In the course of the story we find this bit of math:

Of the 178 fatality accidents the state patrol responded to last year, 15 involved suspended drivers. An estimated 340,000 of Washington's 4.2 million motorists are driving with suspended or revoked licenses.

As is usually the case in such matters, no one has done the math to see if these numbers establish that unlicensed drivers are significantly more dangerous than licensed ones:

_15__________340,000
178________4,200,000

8.43%_______8.10%

The power of spreadsheets. So it looks like unlicensed drivers are about 4% more likely to be involved in fatal accidents than licensed ones.

Stop Digital Piracy the DVD Way

In which Jack Valenti argues:

Simply put, theft is theft, whether one pilfers a videocassette from a Blockbuster store, or distributes bootleg software or "knock-off" Pentium chips, or downloads a movie from the Web without any compensation to its creators.

Save that there is a big difference between a legislative grant of privilege like copyright and a common law crime like theft. As some of us learned in Law1 "Theft is the taking and asportation of the personal property of another with intent to permanently deprive him of same."

Assume that I buy a copy of Lee Greenwood's CD American Patriot, take it to my home, burn a copy on my personal computer, and leave both disks in my computer's two drives. I (may) have committed an offense against the Copyright Act. But is it theft?

1. Taking -- No taking. The original CD and the copy have not undergone any change in posession. I posessed them before the crime and I posess them now.

2. Asportation -- No asportation. The original CD and the copy have not been moved anywhere. They are in the exact same location they were before I committed the copyright offense.

3. Personal property -- The only personal property in the room at the time of the offense -- the computer, the CD, and the CD-R -- is mine.

4. Intent to deprive -- No one has been deprived of anything that they previously posessed so I must have lacked intent to deprive.

Hence no crime of theft.

Theft is malum in se. Wrong in itself.

Copyright violation is classic malum prohibitum. Wrong because prohibited. No moral turpitude attaches.

What's the difference? Well you won't be sent to hell for a malum prohibitum crime. It's not wrong, just illegal.

So those 55 million felons who used Napster don't have to worry about the fires of eternal damnation.

Latest Harry Potter Novel Delayed

LONDON (AP) - Fans eagerly awaiting what happens next to Harry Potter (news - web sites) probably will have to wait until next year.

The fifth installment in the wildly successful series of novels about the teen-age wizard and his friends had been expected to fly into stores this summer, but a spokeswoman for J.K. Rowling said Thursday that the author is unlikely to finish writing before the end of the year.
...
The first, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," published in the United States as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," came out in 1997. The next three followed at the rate of one a year.

So here we have an example of massive cash infusions secured by copyright protection reducing creativity. As history's putatively highest paid author, J.K. Rowling takes more than two years to crank out a novel. As a humble "dole mom" she was a much faster writer. The Supreme Court please note.

Copyright can hurt.

Two articles appearing on the front page of two major national newspapers on Monday 06 May 2002.

U.S. Says It Will Not Support International Criminal Court

In which the New York Times tells us that President Bush has decided to cancel Clinton's signature on the Internetional Criminal Court treaty.

It has been preceeded by and will be followed by much weeping and wailing about US isolationism and so forth.

In the course of this blather, we are told over and over again that individual Americans don't have to worry about being hauled before the ICC for crimes like, say, racist writings.

Meanwhile, a Somali living in Sweden is declared a terrorist financier by the US and the UN and finds his money and his life frozen. It can't happen here, can it?

Crackdown on Terrorism Financing Ties Hands of Businessman in Sweden

Eugene Volokh on the present value of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension

I also argue that the prospective portion of the Act, which lengthens protection for works that will be created in the future, is unconstitutional, though less clearly so. My contention here is that the extra 20 years tacked on to the tail end of a work's life won't give anyone any meaningful extra incentive to create; the discounted value of that protection is so small as to be meaningless. But I realize that that's a tougher argument to make.

The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act tacked 20 years onto a copyright which already lasted 50 years after the creator's death. So Volokh's argument is that the present value of this future income stream is too tiny to justify copyright (which must be justified because it restricts 1st Amendment rights).

So what difference in income does this extra 20 years make? Assume that the average creator creates his work at (the average age of) 40 and dies at (the average age of) 80. He used to get 40+50 years of protection (40 living and 50 dead). Thanks to Sonny he now gets 40+70=110 years of protection.

Note that I had to use 5 decimal places otherwise the difference at 10% discount was less than one cent.

Also be sure to note that the percent increases in income thanks to Sonny are spread out over 20 years (after the creator has been dead for 50) and are less than 1% for most discount rates.

An economist would also note that the value of income received after death would be further discounted for most people given that they can't spend it.

Eugene Volokh solicits proposed constitutional amendments.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT: Here's a completely unrealistic but possibly amusing thought experiment -- imagine that you had the superpower to add one amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Let's call you Amendmentman or Non-Article-V-Woman.) What would it be?

Sky's the limit, no? But remember: All you're doing is adding the amendment; then you're walking away. The amendment will be interpreted and enforced (or ignored) through the normal political process. An amendment saying, for instance, that "All politicians shall be honest and focused on the best interests of the nation" will therefore mean nothing, because it will be entirely unenforceable.

The amendment will also be repealable through the normal process...

So, you want us to design a "Magic Bullet" constitutional amendment.


Actually designing such an animal would take more time than the normal
Blog cycle.


It would have to be really tricky with some kind of stinger buried in it
which would both discourage repeal and weaken the Party of Government.


Ayn Rand had one of her characters drafting an economic derugulation
amendment at the end of Atlas Shrugged. Something like "Congress shall
make no law restricting freedom of enterprise..."


The Liberty Amendment has long been popular in "anti-government"
circles.


Ron Paul introduces it every session. It outlaws the federal income tax
and tries to enforce the 9th and 10th Amendments by restricting
government activities to those specified in the Constitution.


http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.J.RES.45:


In "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" Heinlein proposed a bi-cameral
legislature with one house solely charged with repealing laws.


In "Utopia, Ltd" Gilbert and Sullivan decided that the perfect form of
government was "dictatorship moderated by dynamite". Rule was by an
absolute dictator moderated by the existence of two "Public Exploders"
who's job it was to blow him up if he got out of line. They in turn
were restrained by the fact that if one blew up the dictator, he had to
become the dictator in turn.


My mother thinks that repeal of the 19th Amendment would do the trick.
That would actually help but the legislatures would probably restore
female suffrage before its absence had time to work.


I would say that in order to do any good, the Amendment would have to
be:


1) Simple and limited (to discourage judges from misinterpretation).


2) Of widespread impact to maximize the damage and make repeal harder.


Taxes would seem to fit the bill. A broad tax measure would give plenty
of people the incentive to take advanntage of the amendment and sabotage
repeal.


Off the top of my head and working at Blog speed, I would think that a
repeal of tax withholding (Milton Friedman's unfortunate gift to the
Internal Revenue Code) would do the most good.


If all withholding (federal and state; income and FICA) for tax purposes
was banned, then the populace would be forced to write big checks once a
year to their rulers (many of which would bounce). This might serve to
educate them on the size of government and its personal impact on their
lives. Tax administration would also become much harder.


DCF

Francis Fukuyama's Wall Street Journal The Fall of the Libertarians basically argues that libertarianism overextended itself and is collapsing because of its lack of a foreign policy (during the war) and its support for cloning.

Fukuyama's piece is not as good as Eugene Volokh's comment in his Blog: FALLING?

Volokh's argument makes good political sense as far as it goes:

The error comes in linking this to some Grand Decline of Libertarianism as a Political Force. To begin with, let's remember that pure libertarianism, or even the 99.44% pure libertarianism of the Cato variety, has never been a dominant political force; the purer it has been, the more it has been on the fringe. To the extent that libertarianism has worked itself into American political culture, it has been as what I call "presumptive libertarianism" -- a presumption that people should be free to choose, and free to keep and use their property, but one that can be rebutted when there are strong enough arguments to the contrary, e.g., national defense, protecting children, and so on. (In fact, that's what I call myself: A presumptive libertarian.)

This approach is obviously much messier than pure libertarianism -- but it's also (1) the only approach that, in my view, is likely to work, and (2) the only approach that is likely to be accepted, even in part, by the public. And presumptive libertarianism has not been weakened at all, either by Sept. 11 or by the cloning debates.

So the only movement that has "fallen" -- pure libertarianism -- had never risen in the first place. And the movement that has risen, presumptive libertarianism, still seems to be as strong as before.

That is a sensible political argument but it doesn't address the effect of the war on the much more significant non-political versions of libertarianism.

That is, both Fukuyama and Volokh focus on politics but neglect what might be variously called the techno-futurist, death-of-the nation-state, crypto anarchist, or historical dialectic branch of libertarianism. The branch in which I place myself.

Since we have never asked for permission in any case (it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission) the views of the public are not a genuine concern of ours. And in spite of what Volokh says, we have been "up". The Dot-Com Boom was an occaision of much overblown techno-futurist rhetoric. And even before the war, the Dot-Com Bust was the occaision of much overblown business-as-usual rhetoric.

So it would be a good topic for discussion. Riding high in '99, the dot-com bust and the war have been a double blow (at least in a rhetorical sense) to this tiny portion of a tiny anit-political movement.

Give me a little time and I'll finally crank out my treatise on the effect of 2001 on the technoptimist movement. Don't hold your breath.

Time to order another round. Canadian researchers establish that drinkers earn more than teetotalers. Drink and Grow Rich. (The title is derived from the self help best seller of the 1950's Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Since Eugene Volokh has seen fit to post Kipling's The Sons of Martha. I decided to retaliate with The Islanders in honor of the war...



THE ISLANDERS

1902

Rudyard Kipling



NO DOUBT but ye are the People—your throne is above the King's.
Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things:
Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear—
Bringing the word well smoothen—such as a King should hear.

Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas,
Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease;
Till ye said of Strife, "What is it?" of the Sword, "It is far from our ken":
Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed men.
Ye stopped your ears to the warning—ye would neither look nor heed—
Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts above their need.

Because of your witless learning and your beasts of warren and chase,
Ye grudged your sons to their service and your fields for their camping-place.
Ye forced them to glean in the highways the straw for the bricks they brought;
Ye forced them follow in byways the craft that ye never taught.
Ye hindered and hampered and crippled; ye thrust out of sight and away
Those that would serve you for honour and those that served you for pay.

Then were the judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed,
At the hands of a little people, few but apt in the field.
Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land's long-suffering star),
When your strong men cheered in their millions while your striplings went to the war.
Sons of the sheltered city—unmade, unhandled, unmeet—
Ye pushed them raw to the battle as ye picked them raw from the street.

And what did ye look they should compass? Warcraft learned in a breath,
Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death?
So? And ye train your horses and the dogs ye feed and prize?
How are the beasts more worthy than the souls, your sacrifice?

But ye said, "Their valour shall show them"; but ye said, "The end is close."
And ye sent them comfits and pictures to help them harry your foes:
And ye vaunted your fathomless power, and ye flaunted your iron pride,
Ere—ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot and ride!

Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls
With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals.
Given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie,
Ye saw that the land lay fenceless, and ye let the months go by

Waiting some easy wonder, hoping some saving sign
Idle—openly idle—in the lee of the forespent Line.
Idle—except for your boasting—and what is your boasting worth
If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth?
Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on cycle set,
Life so long untroubled, that ye who inherit forget

It was not made with the mountains, it is not one with the deep.
Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep.
Men, not children, servants, or kinsfolk called from afar,
But each man born in the Island broke to the matter of war.

Soberly and by custom taken and trained for the same,
Each man born in the Island entered at youth to the game—
As it were almost cricket, not to be mastered in haste,
But after trial and labour, by temperance, living chaste.
As it were almost cricket—as it were even your play,
Weighed and pondered and worshipped, and practised day and day.

So ye shall bide sure-guarded when the restless lightnings wake
In the womb of the blotting war-cloud, and the pallid nations quake.
So, at the haggard trumpets, instant your soul shall leap
Forthright, accoutred, accepting—alert from the wells of sleep.
So at the threat ye shall summon—so at the need ye shall send
Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end;
Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise,
Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice.

But ye say, "It will mar our comfort." Ye say, "It will minish our trade."
Do ye wait for the spattered shrapnel ere ye learn how a gun is laid?
For the low, red glare to southward when the raided coast-towns burn?
(Light ye shall have on that lesson, but little time to learn.)
Will ye pitch some white pavilion, and lustily even the odds,
With nets and hoops and mallets, with rackets and bats and rods?
Will the rabbit war with your foemen—the red deer horn them for hire?
Your kept cock—pheasant keep you?-he is master of many a shire.
Arid, aloof, incurious, unthinking, unthanking, gelt,
Will ye loose your schools to flout them till their brow-beat columns melt?
Will ye pray them or preach them, or print them, or ballot them back from your shore?
Will your workmen issue a mandate to bid them strike no more?
Will ye rise and dethrone your rulers? (Because ye were idle both?
Pride by Insolence chastened? Indolence purged by Sloth?)

No doubt but ye are the People; who shall make you afraid?
Also your gods are many; no doubt but your gods shall aid.
Idols of greasy altars built for the body's ease;
Proud little brazen Baals and talking fetishes;
Teraphs of sept and party and wise wood-pavement gods—
These shall come down to the battle and snatch you from under the rods?
From the gusty, flickering gun-roll with viewless salvoes rent,
And the pitted hail of the bullets that tell not whence they were sent.
When ye are ringed as with iron, when ye are scourged as with whips,
When the meat is yet in your belly, and the boast is yet on your lips;
When ye go forth at morning and the noon beholds you broke,
Ere ye lie down at even, your remnant, under the yoke?

No doubt but ye are the People—absolute, strong, and wise;
Whatever your heart has desired ye have not withheld from your eyes.
On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the saving lies !

WHY NOT REGULATE GUNS LIKE CARS? in the Volokh Brothers blog is another good piece on gun control vs car control. One of my particular interests.

In the past, I have liked to point out that those who use the Gun Control=Car Control argument also misunderstand the actual nature of Car Control.

Here is something I've written on that subject:

"We license drivers and register cars, why can't guns be registered and gun owners licensed?"

While I do not support regulating guns like driving (or indeed driving like driving), most gun control advocates ignore the fact that vehicle regulation is not as broad as they seem to think.

The following statements are true:

It is legal to own a car without a driver's license or vehicle registration.

It is legal to drive an unregistered car without a driver's license (on private property, for example).

No permission is required to purchase a car and felons, the mentally ill, children, aliens, those who have renounced American citizenship and those guilty of misdemeanor domestic violence offenses can buy cars and most of the above can drive cars on public streets and roads.

You are not required to report the purchase of a car to anyone.

It is legal to drive a car on public streets and roads in the US with a license from any jurisdiction on earth.

It is legal to drive a car on public streets and roads in the US that is registered in other states or nations.

It is legal to drive a car on public streets and roads in the US that is owned by and registered to any person or legal entity.

Legal entities can own and register cars and permit anyone they like to drive them.

Note that if we regulated guns like driving, the above would mean that anyone could buy and use a gun on your own property without licensing, registration or reporting.

DCF

The Volokh Brothers

EDUCATION SPENDING: Friday over lunch the question of education spending came up again; and I was reminded of an interesting statistical question -- what is the ratio, adjusted for inflation, of per-pupil spending in, say, 1959-60, compared to 1999-2000?

Whenever I ask this, someone nearly always says "Oh, spending back then was much greater than it is now" (again, adjusting for inflation). Well, if you go to the 2001 Digest of Education Statistics, table 167, you see the answer: Per pupil spending, in 2000-01 dollars, was $2235 in 1959-60, and $7591 in 1999-2000. Spending has risen by a factor of 3.3 in the last 40 years.


In the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, one can always assume that government spending on anything has increased per capita (and for all I know per stirpes), adjusted for inflation, and adjusted for anything you can think of (plus 10%).

Yet people rarely mention this obvious fact.

It is particularly amusing to mention this when people are wailing about massive service cuts and you discover that spending next year will be higher than spending this year ad infinitum.

As for education reform:

The Graves of Academe

"AFTER SOBER and judicious consideration, and weighing one thing against another in the interests of reasonable compromise, H. L. Mencken concluded that a startling and dramatic improvement in American education required only that we hang all the professors and burn down the schools. His uncharacteristically moderate proposal was not adopted. Those who actually knew more about education than Mencken did could see that his plan was nothing more than cosmetic and would in fact provide only an outward appearance of improvement. Those who knew less, on the other hand, had somewhat more elaborate plans of their own, and they just happened to be in charge of the schools."
--Richard Mitchell (The Underground Grammarian).

Afghan Deaths Stir Debate on Canada's Role (washingtonpost.com)

Thanks to the friendly fire deaths of 4 Canadians in Afghanistan, we now know the answer to a question most of us never thought of asking:

"How many Canadians died in Vietnam?"

The answer - 78

Canadian troops fought alongside American and other allied forces in the 1950-53 Korean War and suffered 516 deaths. Seventy-eight Canadians died fighting under the U.S. military in Vietnam. The country's forces have since taken part in numerous peacekeeping operations and occasional combat operations, such as the 1999 Kosovo war, in which they ustained no deaths.

The Volokh Brothers

Friday, April 19, 2002

[Eugene Volokh, 12:46 AM]
CONSERVATIVES UNDERMINING MARRIAGE? Jonathan Rauch, whom I admire greatly, argues that conservative opposition to gay marriage is undermining marriage, rather than strengthening it. I'm not an expert on marriage and social norms, so I can't be sure, but I think he's quite likely correct:

Those who worry about the example gays would ing should be much more worried about the example gays are already setting by not marrying. . . . At a time when marriage needs all the support and participation it can get, homosexuals are pleading to move beyond cohabitation. We want the licenses, the vows, the rings, the honeymoons, the anniversaries, the benefits, and, yes, the responsibilities and the routines. And who is telling us to just shack up instead? Self-styled friends of matrimony. Someday conservatives will look back and wonder why they [destroyed?] marriage in an effort to keep homosexuals out.

It seems to me that Trads are not encouraging lewd cohabitation by homosexuals but rather a choice of either celibacy or going Straight (the Anne Heche option).

I've never observed a Trad advocating lewd cohabitation. I've observed them doing it but not advocating it.

Identification & Citizenship Believe it or Nots

by Duncan Frissell

Last September's attack on the United States vastly increased debate on identification, citizenship, and immigration. For your education and amusement, here are some truly strange facts about these topics.

Unless otherwise mentioned, these statements apply to US law.

1) It is legal (in Common Law countries) to call yourself any name you want, spell that name any way you want, and pronounce that name any way you want as long as you have no intent to defraud.

2) World War II was won by US Army Generals and Navy Admirals who commanded armies, air forces, and fleets and possessed and used all manner of weapons up to and including nuclear bombs -- all without ever having proved their identities to the US government.

3) The United States Supreme Court has consistently ruled that it is legal for Americans to communicate and congregate anonymously and to refuse to identify themselves to government officials (in most circumstances).

4) It is legal to operate a motor vehicle in the US without a license from any government agency (in some circumstances).

5) It is legal to operate a motor vehicle in the US without a license from any US state (in all circumstances -- unless your driving privileges have been specifically suspended).

6) It is legal to issue your own employment ID since one generally has a right in the US to form a business and employ oneself and others.

7) It is legal to issue your own student ID since one has an even broader right in the US to form a school and enroll any students you care to.

8) One is not required to apply for a Social Security Number.

9) One can obtain a US passport with no more than the affidavit of relative, a hospital bill, a baptismal certificate, or an entry in a family bible.

10) Since January 1988, you have been required to enter your Social Security number on a US passport application but the State Department can't refuse to issue you a passport if you don't do so. The IRS can fine you $500 ($50/year for a 10-year passport) for your refusal, but they have never done do.

11) Central European local governments (Communes or Villages) keep so-called Family Books which list all local families and track their births, marriages, and deaths over many years even if they leave the local community.

12) In most European countries, residents are required to register their addresses with the police or local government when they move into a community.

13) You can renounce your US citizenship but if you are native born the US government can't make you stateless by revoking it. If you are naturalized, your citizenship can only be revoked for fraud in the application.

14) In the 1950s, the Supreme Court ruled (in essence) that revocation of citizenship would violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment (though executing you would not).

15) Non-citizens are not only permitted to serve in the US armed forces, they are required to register for conscription and serve if drafted.

16) Four million US citizens do not reside in the US.

17) More than 500 million people attempt to enter the US annually (1.3 million a day). Of that number, some 700,000 are refused entry by the INS.

18) The machine-readable lines on your passport (at the bottom of the page that has your picture on it) include space for a National ID number.

19) In the US, you have the right to determine your residence (unless you are incarcerated). Residence is usually defined as the same as the legal concept "domicile". Domicile is established by a person having actual physical presence in a place combined with intent to make it his home.

20) The IRS publishes a quarterly list in the Federal Register of Americans who have renounced their citizenship. Since the end of 1996 (when the listing began) 3656 Americans have renounced their citizenship.

21) It is not a crime to be an illegal alien in the US. It is a civil matter. It is a crime to use fraudulent documents to gain entry. It is a minor offense to evade inspection when crossing the border. But if you overstay your visa, it is not a crime. You can, of course, be arrested and deported but the mere status of being illegally present in the US does not constitute a crime.

-----------
Notes
1-There are no laws, in Common Law jurisdictions, that define what names are legal or illegal and it is common to use pen names and nicknames and aliases.
2-Most US local governments didn't issue birth certificates until after 1900. Most general officers in WWII were born before birth certificates were issued and the military did not use them for enlistment.
3-NAACP v. ALABAMA, 357 U.S. 449 (1958) - Organization can't be forced to disclose membership lists.
BATES v. LITTLE ROCK, 361 U.S. 516 (1960) - Ditto
McINTYRE v. OHIO ELECTIONS COMM'N, 514 U.S. 334 (1995) - Pamphleteer can distribute pamphlets anonymously.
BROWN v. TEXAS, 443 U.S. 47 (1979) - Police cannot question a person about his identity without reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.
4-On private land, for example.
5-One can operate a motor vehicle on the public streets and roads of the US with a license from any nation. A state can withdraw your right to drive within it but has to do so explicitly.
6-This should be obvious.
7-This should be even more obvious.
8-Read the Paperwork Reduction Act Notice on the SS-5 Form - http://www.ssa.gov/online/ss-5.
9-Read "Present Proof of US Citizenship" - Here: http://travel.state.gov/passport_obtain.html.
15-This should be general knowledge. Sad if it isn't.
16-At least that many. Should be general knowledge.
17- http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/msrsep01/INSP.HTM.
19-See, for example: http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/resident.htm.
20-Read my extensive website on the topic at: http://www.frissell.com/taxpat/taxpats.html.
21-I found a pretty good piece of evidence that the mere status of being unlawfully present in the US does not constitute a crime. First offense visa overstays, for example. Perhaps you are familiar with the great work of the Transaction Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse. Well their TracINS site has a listing of the federal criminal charges brought by the INS in 1998 and before. If you go down the list, you note the absence of a pure status offense for illegal immigration. http://trac.syr.edu/tracins/findings/98/criminal/district/us/uslaw98.html. See also my later post giving examples of categories of illegal aliens who entered the country legally. Needless to say, illegal immigrants can be arrested and deported but, as far as I can determine, are not usually guilty of a pure crime.

20 Questions to Ask National ID Supporters

Here are some questions to ask supporters of a modern "enhanced"
ID system for the United States.

1. Under your system, can one's ID fail online verification for any reasons other than authentication failure (ID is not in the database or biometrics don't match) or expiration? Can a valid ID be cancelled or any reason (beyond expiration)?

2. Does your ID system have protections to prevent legislators and bureaucrats from adding other conditions to ID use? For example blocking ID authentication for failure to pay fines, failure to pay taxes, criminal arrest or conviction, etc.? The drivers licence system currently allows suspension for many such acts or omissions.

3. Will your ID system supply risk assessment services in addition to ID verification services. That is, will it provide a "credit score", "fraud score" or "criminal risk score" in addition to ID. What information beyond ID validity will the system supply to users.

4. If your system supplies risk assessment services, will it accept foreign government criminal, civil, or administrative records and apply them to the IDs of US citizens? If so, how can these records be challenged, how do you assure that the alleged acts would be crimes or civil wrongs if committed in the US (e.g. hate speech), and how do you deal with differing due process standards in different nations?

5. Should government subsidize wealthy financial corporations by supplying them with free or low-cost ID authentication and risk assessment services?

6. How can people challenge the accuracy of these assessments?

7. Will one's ID be the sole ID accepted for any goods or services? If so, which goods or services?

8. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that anonymity and refusal to identify oneself to the police are constitutionally protected actions. Do you favor a constitutional amendment to reverse these court decisions?

9. Four million US citizens are not residents of the US. Since they cannot be denied entry to the US and do not require visas to enter the US, what ID are they supposed to use in the US? They currently use a US passport, a foreign drivers license, and domestic or foreign credit cards.

10. Do you favor the end to the visa waiver program which allows citizens of many OECD countries to enter the US without visas? If so, what ID are they supposed to use in the US? They currently use a foreign passport, a foreign drivers license, and domestic or foreign credit cards.

11. Do you favor the abrogation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other treaties which allow citizens of other North American countries and some Caribbean countries to enter the US without passports or visas? If so, what ID are they supposed to use in the US? They currently use a foreign passport, a foreign drivers license, and domestic or foreign credit cards.

12. Have you warned the American people that once these passport and/or visa waiver programs are cancelled, foreign countries are likely to require passports and visas to enter their countries making international travel (including Canadian, Mexican, and Caribbean vacations) much more difficult to prepare for?

13. Passport design is not under US control but under the control of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Do you favor the replacement of the current passport with an "enhanced" identity document? How are poor counties supposed to afford the infrastructure necessary to support high-tech online-verifiable ID documents?

14. If your ID system is based on the state ID system, will any non-residents of the individual states be able to receive the new state IDs?

15. Do you favor cleaning up the existing ID system? Will you require all Americans to reverify their identity to receive the "enhanced" ID? If so, what documents or other proof of ID will they have to present? For example, will entries in a family bible be acceptable as proof of identity?

16. What provision have you made for persons who present themselves for identification but who have no (or inadequate) identification documents and whose biometric identifiers are not yet in the system? [The current system allows the testimony of others to establish identity for such purposes as passport issuance].

17. Do you favor requiring address registration (the requirement that all residents to register their address with police or local government) as part of your new ID system?

18. Will the homeless be able to obtain ID without a fixed address?

19. What do you envision happening to the millions of US residents who fail to qualify for the new IDs (or whose IDS are cancelled) or who refuse to apply for them for religious or political reasons?

20. Does your system envision any controls on false IDs intentionally issued by foreign (or US) governments for intelligence or witness protection purposes?

What's Our National Identity?

Oracle's Larry Ellison and Harvard's Allen Dershowitz have been all over the media recently pitching a National ID Card. One poll indicates 70% public support for the notion.

Most critics of a National Identity Card mention Hitler, police stops, and personal privacy to argue against the proposal. Those are good reasons to oppose a National ID Card, but they miss the idea's worst features.

Proponents of a National ID Card have a responsibility to tell us exactly what the system will do to day-to-day life in America. They are unlikely to do so because most thoughtful Americans would be alarmed at the prospect.

A National ID card is *not* really about identity. It is about authorization.

A modern National ID System will:

* Require Americans to obtain federal government authorization to travel, work, rent or buy housing, obtain medical care, use financial services, and make many purchases.

* This federal authorization could be denied for many reasons including database errors, a suspicious transaction profile, being a deadbeat parent, failure to pay taxes or fines, and any other social control
measures Congress wishes to hang on the system.

* The system will almost certainly create an outlaw class - as large as 10 to 20% of the population - cut off from "normal" life in America. This class will include political refuseniks as well as those whose behavior has caused the system's software to deny their transactions. This outlaw class will sustain the underground economy for the use of future terrorists (and ordinary criminals).

These effects are easy to predict because they've already happened on a lesser scale.

Previous National ID proposals covered such activities as travel, work authorization, national health care, and licensing of drivers. All of these proposed systems were meant to deny access to air travel, work, medical care, and driving to those who were not authorized for these activities. The events of September 11th mean that many more transactions will require a National ID. It is likely that the ID will be required for the purchase of alcohol, tobacco, Rx drugs, firearms, ammunition, knives, fertilizer, flying lessons, or any other goods or services the government considers dangerous. Additionally, in order to track the movement of potential terrorists, the New Improved National ID Card will have to control all transportation including car rentals and
purchases, accommodations and financial services. A large chunk of our lives.

When you present your National ID to complete a transaction, you will actually be asking the Federal Government for its permission. It converts most significant transactions that you make from private ones
to public ones. It creates a government license for all jobs, all travel, all medical care, and many purchases. This is a profoundly troubling departure from American traditions.

Beyond federal licensing there are all the reasons that the system will reject your proposed transaction. A National ID System can't control terrorists or illegals unless it uses software based on credit card fraud detection software to block suspicious transaction and then deny the use of the ID Card and notify the appropriate authorities.

To understand how this will work, you have to understand how modern credit card software works. A credit card authorization system performs a large number of checks to decide whether or not to authorize a
proposed transaction. First, it checks to see if the card is in the system, has not been reported stolen, and has adequate credit for the transaction. But then it goes further. It checks the customer's transaction history, it checks the exact nature of recent transactions and of the proposed transaction to see how they fit the customer's profile and the profile of fraudulent transactions that it has stored in its system. It then produces a "score" which it uses to determine whether or not to authorize the transaction. This is real "profiling".

But even if you are you, the ID card is valid, and your transactions aren't suspicious; your right to travel, work, and buy will still likely be blocked by social control measures added by Congress or the administrative bureaucracy. We know that this will happen because that is exactly what *has* happened with drivers licenses. A drivers license once meant that your state considered you a safe driver. Today, you can be denied a license for failing to pay child support, failure to pay traffic and other fines (including library fines), being a non-resident alien, and for hundreds of other "offenses".

State legislatures could not resist the temptation to leverage the drivers license system to control their populations. Their actions were based on the idea that "driving is a privilege not a right." The future abuse of the National ID Card will be based on the idea that "living is a privilege not a right."

When your National ID Card is denied (for whatever reason), you will find yourself in a very uncomfortable situation. But you will not be alone. In America today, some 20% of the population does not use credit cards or bank accounts because they are unwilling or unable to perform the financial management tasks necessary to maintain such accounts.  Similarly, the National ID card will produce a population of political or life-style refuseniks who will or cannot use it. Such populations do not disappear. They continue to survive as best they can and support a robust underground economy with its well-known negative effects on tax collection, obedience to law, and social cohesion.

As convenient as a National ID card seems for law enforcement, it is an unamerican notion. It comes from a political system explicitly rejected by those men who founded this country. The English language has a word
for a system in which the central government of a country must authorize in advance all of its citizen's activities. That word is totalitarian.

----
Duncan Frissell's Social Security card reads "For Social Security and tax purposes--not for identification."

washingtonpost.com: 19 Terrorists Obtained Social Security Cards

"All 19 terrorist hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks had Social Security numbers, and 13 obtained them legally, government officials say."

When you set up a system that's designed to cover everyone, you should not be surprised that everyone is covered.

SS numbers have been issued to visa holders for quite a while. Students and workers are issued them upon arrival. Only tourists make it in without them. If they impose a National ID card on us, then the terrorists will have one too. That's the whole point.

DCF

Back in 1998, the foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman attacked Techno-Libertarians for their lack of a sufficiently bellicose foreign policy.

April 18, 1998, Saturday Section: Editorial Desk

Techno-Nothings

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I don't think I like Silicon Valley.

That's all right, Silicon Valley doesn't like you either.

Here's why: I'm as impressed as anyone with the technologies that Silicon Valley is producing and the way they are changing how we must think about economic power and how nations interact. But what is so striking about Silicon Valley is that it has become so enamored of its innovative and profit-making prowess that it has completely lost sight of the overall context within which this is taking place.

It has not "lost sight of the ... context" so much as it sees the context all too well and has rejected it utterly.

There is a disturbing complacency here toward Washington, government and even the nation. There is no geography in Silicon Valley, or geopolitics. There are only stock options and electrons.

I wouldn't call it "complacency" so much as "rejection." Techno-libertarians (the true targets of this piece) are quite aggressive in rejecting Washington.

When I asked an all-too-typical tech-exec here when was the last time he talked about Iraq or Russia or foreign wars, he answered: "Not more than once a year. We don't even care about Washington. Money is extracted from Silicon Valley and then wasted by Washington. I want to talk about people who create wealth and jobs. I don't want to talk about unhealthy and unproductive people. If I don't care enough about the wealth-destroyers in my own country, why would I care about the wealth- destroyers in another country?"

Sounds like a perfectly straight-forward political position to me. Libertarians have always been anti-war and anti "entangling alliances.", even back during WWII. Leftists used to be anti-war as well but some of them have strayed from that position. Someone has to keep it up.

What's wrong with this picture is that all the technologies Silicon Valley is designing to carry digital voices, videos and data farther and faster around the world, all the trade and financial integration it is promoting through its innovations, and all the wealth it is generating, is happening in a world stabilized by a benign superpower called the United States of America, with its capital in Washington D.C.

Armed neutrality is a perfectly acceptable foreign policy. Super power and nation state politics have murdered 170 million human beings in this century alone (http://www.laissezfaire.org/pl7366.html). Until an alternative racked up that quantity of dead, we'd be well ahead of the game. Some people just don't like super powers -- however benign.

The hidden hand of the global market would never work without the hidden fist. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps (with the help, incidentally, of global institutions like the U.N. and the International Monetary Fund). And those fighting forces and institutions are paid for by all the tax dollars that Washington is "wasting" every year.

The *UN* and the *IMF* give me a break. There is little evidence that if those two disappeared anyone would notice save those who would miss a paycheck.

As for the U.S. armed forces, there is no doubt that it is very convenient to have well-trained and equipped troops available from time to time but that says nothing about the organizational form that produces such forces. The U.S. military is impressive but it is also inefficient and expensive. A few years ago, the Economist (in one of its "Survey's of Defence" proposed an international regiment to suppress insurgency. Such an institution could be public or corporate. A mercenary regiment independent of national bureaucracies could produce a very effective force that could suppress "commerce raiding" without the high costs and risks involved government armed forces. A private "82nd Airborne", equipped with off-the-shelf technology, which would focus on the bottom line both in terms of money and men, could give everyone the protection they need without the high cost and high death rate associated with government armed forces. An armed civilian population in any country that would trust its subjects with arms would make any attack even more costly.

Because of the intense competition here among companies, and the continuous flood of new products, there is a saying in Silicon Valley that "loyalty is just one mouse-click away." But you can take that too far. Execs here say things like: "We are not an American company. We are I.B.M. U.S., I.B.M. Canada, I.B.M. Australia, I.B.M. China." Oh yeah? Well, the next time you get in trouble in China, then call Li Peng for help. And the next time Congress closes another military base in Asia -- and you don't care because you don't care about Washington -- call Microsoft's navy to secure the sea lanes of Asia. And the next time the freshmen Republicans want to close more U.S. embassies, call America Online when you lose your passport.

The techno-libertarians of Silicon Valley don't believe in passports. They are working to eliminate such inefficiencies. If government or private piracy picks up again on the "sea lanes to Asia", a simple restoration of licensed privateers could end that problem. Maybe Russia's Northern Fleet could find something more useful to do as privateers than they are now sitting around drinking, contemplating suicide, and juggling Russia's largest cache of nukes. Note that US Naval vessels can't sail these days without civilian electronics techs (contractors) to maintain and operate the intelligence and weapons systems. Privatizing the rest of the system is not as big a step as most people think.

Mercenaries and privateers have a long history and can be easily put back to work. Note too that in spite of their reputation, mercenaries and privateers have (by any measure) killed fewer civilians and overthrown fewer governments than have military forces consisting of government employees.

Harry Saal, a successful Silicon Valley engineer, venture capitalist and community activist -- an exception to the norm -- remarked to me: "If you ask people here what their affiliation is, they will name their company. Many live and work on a company campus. The leaders of these companies don't have any real understanding of how a society operates and how education and social services get provided for. People here are not involved in Washington policy because they think the future will be set by technology and market forces alone and eventually there will be a new world order based on electrons and information."

The denizens of the Valley are well aware of how "education and social services" *fail* to "get provided for". They have to try and hire the illiterate output. Arguing the domestic policy success of government is even rougher than arguing its foreign policy success.

They're exactly half right. I've had a running debate with a neo-Reaganite foreign-policy writer, Robert Kagan, from the Carnegie Endowment, about the impact of economic integration and technology on geopolitics. He says I overestimate its stabilizing effects; I say he underestimates it. We finally agreed that unless you look at both geotechnology and geopolitics you can't explain (or sustain) this relatively stable moment in world history. But Silicon Valley's tech-heads have become so obsessed with bandwidth they've forgotten balance of power. They've forgotten that without America on duty there will be no America Online. "The people in Silicon Valley think it's a virtue not to think about history because everything for them is about the future," argued Mr. Kagan. "But their ignorance of history leads them to ignore that this explosion of commerce and trade rests on a secure international system, which rests on those who have the power and the desire to see that system preserved."

This is a fascinating historical debate but it can't have much to say about future security policy. We know that periods dominated by markets (the mid-19th century for example) have fewer wars while periods dominated by governments (most of the 20th century) have more wars. The record of nation states in managing conflict is not one designed to make us confident of future peace. Alternative methods of social organization have at least as great a chance at keeping the murder rate in the 21st Century a bit lower than the murder rate during this past Century of Blood.

DCF

"God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery. These days, adhocracies have the heaviest artillery."

Ron Paul has introduced the "September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001" which would authorize the President to issues Letters of Marque and Reprisal to legalize private attacks on Bin Laden and others.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.3076

A series of thrillers by fighter jock turned lawyer cover these issues in a fictional context.

Balance of Power
by James W. Huston

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380731592

The Price of Power
by James W. Huston

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380731606

In the first two novels, a heroic Speaker of the House fights a weak pacifist President by issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution to the carrier "Constitution" to fight pirates in the sea lanes of SE Asia.

Flash Point
by James W. Huston

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380732823

In the third novel, a JAG officer on a carrier off Israel asks Congress to declare war on an Islamic fundamentalist who has revived the Cult of the Assassins to attack Israel and the US. Thomas Aquinas and Just War Theory play a big role together with other parts of Article 1, Section 8.


Fallout
by James W. Huston

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0688172024

In his fourth novel, a private Top Gun flying school is targeted by terrorists who hope to learn combat flying to pull off "the worst terrorist attack in US history". Published June 2001.

I also wrote a bit on such topics in my response to Thomas Friedman's attacks on Silicon Valley for not having a defense and foreign policy. I'll send this piece in a separate e-mail.

DCF

----
"Western Civilization didn't invent tyranny, slavery, racism, or the
oppression of women. What it did do is eliminate those evils (to the
extent they have been eliminated). The rest of the world should be damn
grateful and if they're not we should return them to the ancient tyrannies
from which we so recently rescued them. Would serve them right."

Don't Try Henry Kissinger

Chris Hitchens' The Trial of Henry Kissinger is getting a certain amount of play. Based on a two-parter in Harpers (which has no web site to speak of) it suggests that Kissenger be tried for war crimes. See a Salon piece at The Trial of Henry the K.

The arguments in favor of such war crimes trials are the same as verdict the judge delivers at the end of Mel Brooks' film The Producers, "I find the defendants incredibly guilty." No doubt most "war criminals" are incredibly guilty. But guilt is not reason enough to employ a particular legal regime. If it were, then medievil Trial by Torture (of the guiltly) would be as good as any other system.

The problem wiith such trials is that

Zero Tolerance for Duck Sauce

MADNESS IN MORRIS COUNTY

New Jersey throws the book at an innocent schoolboy.

BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, August 27, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

Nine-year-old boy pleads guilty to constructing a "bomb" of soy and duck sauce.

Jason's parents didn't want to put their son through a trial, and they couldn't afford to spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer. Jason's father, Gene Anagnos, says a prosecutor told him the penalty would be more severe if Jason were convicted in a trial than if he pleaded guilty. So in late April he did, and was sentenced to a year's probation and 10 hours of community service.

Never plead in a case like this. If you can't afford a lawyer, do it yourself. Don't give your child a criminal record. And while you're at it, yank him out of governement schools. Very dangerous.

You can use ridicule as easily as a lawyer (even easier). "Making a pun is not a crime." "This is an unconsionable waste of tax dollars." "I gather the District Attorney attended public schools and thus is incapable of reading the languange of the statute."

DCF

I'm grateful to Michael Hardt, co-author with Antonio Negri, of the social satire "Empire" for reminding me of a *very* inconvenient fact that the foes of Media Monopoly hope we'll forget.

On the WBUR (Boston) program "The Connection" after talking about the initial promise of radio as a liberating medium he said:

"The way radio and television have developed have been ways in which democratic voices have been excluded systematically and have been controlled by the forces of capital -- the ones who own these media."

See: http://www.theconnection.org/archive/2001/07/0723a.shtml

Listen: http://realserver.bu.edu:8080/ramgen/w/b/wbur/connection/audio/2001/07/con_0723a.rm (quote appears just after 16:00).

What he hopes the rest of the world will forget and Americans will never know is that from the dawn of broadcasting until the last few years almost all of the Earth's radio and television were owned and operated by the various national governments.

Read the history of the pirate radio ship Radio Caroline if you want to see the lengths to which governments went to secure their monopoly:

Radio Caroline History

With all of the different channels into our brains (many of which didn't exist 25 years ago), it is hard to argue that electronic media is less competitive than it was when most of it was controlled by governments.

DCF
----
When I was growing up, three white guys in NYC determined everything 90% of Americans saw on TV. Most towns had no more than two newspapers. Radio was exclusively Top 40 format. Yet, today, with 6 broadcast networks, 1000 newspapers available online, netcasting costing $39.95/month, and hundreds of millions of webpages extant, those commentators who themselves favor monopoly *government* complain that a Media Monopoly exists. There are more media outlets than ever.

From a front page article in the WSJ 30 July 2001:

The major oil companies would love to put the ready cash into developing elephantine oil fields, but few of those remain. With about 90% of the world's oil supply controlled by government-owned entities, publicly traded companies are finding it hard to expand their energy reserves.

Governments control 90% of the earth's oil but all we hear about is the evil oil companies.

DCF

At 12:54 PM 7/17/01 -0700, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Duncan,

Though I didn't see what preceded your disquisition on what libertarianism is and isn't was very well thought out and cogent. Having said that, I think your below-the-by-line comments ("Mods vs. Trads") was gratuitous and fell well short of the mark.

Lawrence Auster is a traditionalist writer that attends a monthly chat fest in NYC with Lois and me. The quotes in the piece are his. He was arguing that libertarians have no moral philosophy and I was just pointing out that they weren't expected to, qua libertarians (apart from the non-aggression axiom).

I thought your prior demonstration that there is no generally accepted definition of traditional values that your sparring partner could safely rely on was unarguable. Then, in one paragraph, you proceed to make unsupported (and unsupportable without definitions) distinctions between "Mods" and "Trads."

There's actually quite a bit of evidence that the broad categories differ in "levels of personal satisfaction". John Stossel in "Happiness" got into that quite a bit. Here's a summary written by someone:
http://www.epicurus.net/stossel.html

Just as one example, I really doubt that fundamentalist Muslims (one flavor of "Trad") are happier, healthier or wealthier than there more westernized counterparts in countries like Lebanon or the US.

Stossel's general point is that people in Western Democracies are happier than people in 3rd World dictatorships but that within Western Democracies Trads are the happiest.

The terms Mods and Trads are my terms of art. Traditionalist is an obvious term so I needed an opposite and used "Moderns" shortened to Mods. This let me get away from political terms like liberal/progressive/conservative etc. which have lost meaning through overuse.

You can broadly separate Mods and Trads by things like church attendance, sexual mores, attitude towards reason, and attitude towards Western Civilization, as well as by self identification. The categories aren't sharp in the middle but at the edges they are pretty clear.

BTW, libertarians are probably psychologically closer to Trads than to Mods because of their strong beliefs (Mods eschew Belief) and their optimism.

One way we can know that Mods are more depressed than Trads is via self-reporting. If you read the fiction produced and read by Mods you find it to be very depressive. Filled with failed love affairs, suicide, existential angst, fin-de-sicle, etc. Think of the classic New Yorker short story. Their non-fiction is also quite depressed. Likewise their songs and movies. On the other hand, Trads produce, read, sing and watch books, music and movies that are much happier, optimistic, and un depressed.

Note that I am speaking in terms of statistical averages and not individuals.

Let me unpack my .sig line:

Mods vs. Trads. Mods are much less likely than Trads to form lasting family relationships,

Can one doubt that promiscuity, divorce, and abandonment are a bigger part of the lives of Mods than Trads? Consider that most homosexuals are Mods and they skew the numbers in and of themselves (as do the Condits, Clintons, and Kennedys).

they kill themselves and others much more frequently,

Certainly suicide seems popular among Mods. Lovers of Sylvia Plath, etc. Most murderers in America are progressives in their voting patterns (90% Democrat voters) and life styles.

they suffer more from drug and substance abuse,

Obviously. Party hearty.

they are more prone to disease,

Because of their life styles they are more likely to live alone and those who live alone suffer more medical problems if only because there's no one to keep an eye on their health. Drink, drugs, and sex are related to increased risk of health problems. Likewise the average lower family incomes and irregular habits, diet, etc.

they even have a higher accident rate,

Because their habits are less regular and they are more likely to be wandering around in circumstances that carry an increased risk of accident. Recall Ted Kennedy's speech at the 1988 DemonCat National Convention. His rap consisted of a series of indictments of George H. W. Bush punctuated by "Where was George?". Republican operative immediately churned out t-shirts reading "Sober, At home, In bed with his wife." Those who practice such habits have a lower accident rate than those who find themselves drunk, out at night in a car with une fille de joi.

they have lower family incomes,

Sloth is a problem here. Also steadiness. Level and quality of education.

their MMPIs are much more jagged,

By definition Mods deviate psychologically and so their MMPIs do too. Here it's not a matter of politics but mental status. One can be a radical and still have a flat MMPI but Mods have a host of adjustment problems that score them poorly. Obviously, a careful study would be required to establish this.

their life expectancy is shorter,

Because of all of the above.

and they score lower on tests designed to show levels of personal happiness or satisfaction. Sounds like a maladaption to me.

Happiness is psychologically related to a sense of personal effectiveness and control. You'd be unhappy too if you felt that life and the world were doomed empty shells and everyone was completely dependent on government action for their survival.

DCF
----
To avoid being poor in today's America, you need do only three simple things. 1) Get a high school diploma, 2) Get married, 3) Get a job. (Any diploma, any marriage, any job.) Only 0.2% of persons who have accomplished all three are poor today. No excuses.

At 11:10 AM 7/25/01 -0400, James B. Kalb 69 wrote:
Left out the most obvious point, that antidiscrimination laws make the proposal to separate marriage and state and turn marriage into a matter of private definition and communal expectation and custom unworkable. Any time anyone recognizes traditional marriage as something special he'll have to do the same for homosexual couplings or violate the law. Libertarians naturally oppose such laws but it's not an issue they make much of or apparently feel strongly about.

We're always getting beaten up for opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 et. seq.

I think libertarians do emphasize it. At least I do.

I always point out two things:

1) It's not illegal to discriminate against the protected groups in the protected interactions but such discrimination merely gives rise to civil liability.

2) If such discrimination is wrong and should give rise to civil liability, why not similarly punish those who discriminate against protected groups in the selection of friends or marriage partners?

DCF
----
"I favor discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color sex, age, alienage, previous condition of servitude, recent interstate travel, handicap, sexual or affectional preference, marital status, Vietnam-era veteran status (or lack thereof), occupation, economic status, and anything else I can think of."

We'd better hope that strong cypto, cheap telecoms and free markets can provide the organizing basis for a workable society because it is clear that coercion as an organizing principle ain't what it used to be.

My Favorite Webcam

Zermatt (Visibility may vary).

Antiglobalization Activists Are Shifting Focus to Multinational Corporations

Sayeth the WSJ.

"We're going after the root of the problem," Mr. Brune said. "Corporate campaigns are the next frontier -- and definitely it's companies like CitiGroup , Boise Cascade and Exxon that will be seeing this for sure."

Note to demonstrators: Pick corporations headquartered in non Right-to-Carry states only. Armed employees are hard to blockade. See Right to Carry States for a colorful map showing the states to avoid.

As for the speaker's three targets, C seems safe since it is headquartered in (officially) disarmed NYC. Watch it with the other two, however. BCC is headquartered in heavily armed Boise, Idaho and XOM is headquartered in equally heavily armed Irving, Texas.

Maybe they should concentrate on rioting against the Federal Government headquartered as it is in (officially) disarmed Washington, D.C.

DCF
----
"Nuke 'em till they glow then shoot 'em in the dark."
--Courtesy of the National Committee for the Preservation of Antique Right-Wing Slogans.

Weblogs

I've been exploring the world of weblogs and here is a summary.

A weblog is a "me-zine" publication which allows anyone to easily publish whatever they want to the Web on a casual or formal basis.

Here's an example:

http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/

This is where Dan Gilmour explains what a weblog is:

http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/2001/02/20/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/GillmorWeblogExplainer.htm

Weblogs are a unique form, native to the Net. They combine hyperlinks to other material and personal observations. I've been doing a Weblog since October, 1999.

My approach is to post a variety of items -- news and commentary -- on this Web site as they come across my field of vision. These items are typically much shorter than my column in the paper, but they usually include some perspective. I update the page at least once a day, usually more. Weekdays, anyhow -- and when I have time on the weekend.

Here are a four more weblogs:

http://slate.msn.com\/mezinecentral/01-04-10/mezinecentral.asp

A few years ago, one would have had to roll one's own HTML to post a weblog or have a web host that allowed one to install and run a CGI/Perl script like NewsPro http://www.amphibianweb.com/newspro/.

Derek and I did this not so long ago.  See http://www.thelawwire.com/ and http://frissell.com/.

These days, anyone can easily produce their own weblog without lifting a finger.  You will be unsurprised to learn the miracle is accomplished by software.

The term weblog is sometimes shortened (as if it were not already short enough) to blog and the site Blogger.com http://www.blogger.com/ will let you instantly start your own weblog.  It can be hosted on their server or yours.  See mine at http://technoptimist.blogspot.com/. For now it duplicates my http://frissell.com/ postings (and my personal mailing list) but I will probably transition http://frissell.com/ to run my Blogger generated weblog soon.

So get out there and start publishing your own: 

http://www.blogger.com/blog_new.pyra



DCF

----

"The world of these books is thin and unsatisfactory, their imagery is derivative, their characterization automatic and their structure deeply flawed," -- Critic Philip Hensher on "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling which finished just one vote behind Seamus Heaney's translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf" in voting for the Whitbread Prize.

Can Libertarians be Moral Traditionalists?

At 05:23 PM 7/13/01 -0400, Lawrence Auster wrote:
Ok, [name withheld], you're upset, traumatized, amazed, horrified by the electronic Sodom that engulfs our cultural environment and is turning the contemporary world into a vision of hell. And there is nothing in your philosophy that can stand against it.

It depends on what [name withheld's] philosophy is. Libertarianism is not a systematic philosophy. It has no Aesthetics, no Theology, no Philosophy of Science or Philosophy of the Mind and its Ethics is strictly limited. It is a political philosophy advocating a particular political arrangement.

Some libertarians have attempted a complete philosophical system but we call them "Objectivists".

Libertarians may, as individuals, possess philosophical tools that will allow them to deal with Mods in all their glory. For example, Christian libertarians can say, "God will punish them for their sins." Libertarians who hold traditional aesthetic philosophies can attack the aesthetics of Mod culture. Persons such as myself can use sarcasm, derision, and irony against Mods.

You must have been talking to too many libertarians. They can never be counted on to know the full implications of their philosophy.

There is nothing in my libertarianism that prevents me from saying that Madonna's first child is a bastard (the bastardy of her second was cured by her subsequent marriage to its father), or that fornication is a sin, or that same-sex marriage is impossible (because of the nature of marriage), or that priestesses in the Christian Church are impossible because Christian sacerdotal magic is a sex-linked characteristic, or that viewing pornography makes adult sexual love hard to achieve, or that a King can be more moral than a Parliament depending on what specific actions those worthies take in life (just like the rest of us), or that grammatically, the male includes the female. In fact, I do say all these things.

Anyone, libertarian or not, can block Mod culture from entering his home (property rights). He can organize proprietary (gated) communities that minimize it. He can join or emulate fundamentalist Christians or Jews in organizing religious communities and parallel economies that refuse to support Mod culture. He can refuse to send our children to slave schools for indoctrination, he can educate them as we see fit to resist Mod culture. Even libertarian children's rights theory permits parents to control children while in custody it merely allows the children to change custodians. Likely to be a rare occurrence with most parents (certainly much rarer than the 90% hand over of children to slave schools for indoctrination in contemporary society).

The people doing these disgusting things are simply enacting the libertarian philosophy. They are pursuing their own self-defined concept of happiness, and they are not, to use your words and those of John Stuart Mill, infringing on the rights and freedoms of others.

Most Mods are not libertarians in that they believe in various invasive government activities. So they can also be attacked by libertarians qua libertarians for their sins of aggression. And these attacks can even be physical depending on exact circumstances.

You say libertarianism is ok with responsibility. What is the source of such responsibility? Whence does it derive its standards? What is there in libertarianism to say that the behaviors you describe should not be allowed? Libertarianism with responsibility is like Communism with a human face, a synthetic attempt to keep alive a false ideology by means of values imported from outside that ideology.

Since libertarianism is merely a political philosophy and obviously not a totalitarian one, those who hold it will hold other values as well. This is inescapable. I can be a White Supremacist or a Black Supremacist or an Integrationist and a libertarian so one would expect a bit of diversity in values.

Without a generally accepted concept of moral order transcending the individual and his wishes, and without the totality of authoritative institutions and habits embodying and transmitting that moral order to the society as a whole and to each individual in it, the society will have no ability to turn back this tide of sickness and evil.

But must those institutions possess a geographic or population monopoly? Can authority be non-authoritarian? Can we not draw boundaries of geodesic relationship (a virtual private network) rather than lines on a map? Can we not join with like-minded men to build traditional institutions without reference to Mod culture?

You are, as I am, deeply offended by such things as Viagra ads on talk radio and vaginal dryness ads during the evening news. (I stopped listening to talk radio largely because of them, after writing several e-mails to Rush and complaining to WABC.)

They've largely cut out the sex ads on WABC BTW.

Now ask yourself, WHY are you offended? You are offended because such ads violate some inchoate sense of the way things ought to be. But that inchoate sense of the way things ought to be is already a glimpse of an inherent nature in things. A traditional society embodies its shared sense of that inherent nature of things in its laws and customs. But a libertarian society, which says the only limit on a person's freedom is a direct violation of another person's freedom, by definition precludes such laws and customs.

Never customs, one is always allowed to have those. And since in a free society one is free to refuse to deal with people of whom you disapprove (say homosexuals), it is easier to maintain traditional customs than in our current society. As for laws, you can certainly have private law that governs your interactions and punishes transgressions (by monetary damages and disfellowship (just like the early Christian church).

If you support the legal imposition of a monopoly authoritative society, you risk that it will be a tradition and authority that you reject (say, socialism). It would be hard to imagine that you could get a majority to outlaw Mod culture in any case. They would be more likely now to outlaw Trad culture (as indeed they are in some cases).

Granted that the development and "sale" of traditional institutions on the open market is challenging, it is not as challenging as establishing a State monopoly of such institutions would be. Religious fundamentalists have proven that they can "grow" Trad institutions even in a Mod culture. To get your State monopoly, you would have to decide exactly what sort of Trad culture you wanted: Divine Right of Kings vs. Swiss Canton vs. Constitutional Republic, etc.; Slavery? yes or no; Serfdom? yes or no; Suffrage? yes or no (if yes who?); State Religion/Religious Test for Public Office? yes or no (if yes which religion?); Married Women's Property Acts? yes or no; Government Schools? yes or no; and so forth. Lots of questions and hard to achieve all the same answers in a particular geographic area. Even plenty of Trads will disagree with whatever proposals you make. You *can* find people who *will* agree with you if you can gather them from amongst a larger population and if you're not counting on gaining a monopoly. Even God eschewed such a monopoly in this world.

When Lois and I were to be married in the new "with it" Episcopal church and were told that we could write our own ceremony, we just handed the priest the 1662 BCP marriage ceremony ttp://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/occasion/marriage.html and had him do it straight. As Lord Peter Whimsey said, "I 'have not the gift of continence' and I'm not ashamed to admit it."

Speaking up and organizing, are perfectly valid responses to Mod culture and they can as easily be indulged in by libertarians as by anyone else.

DCF

----
Mods vs. Trads. Mods are much less likely than Trads to form lasting family relationships, they kill themselves and others much more frequently, they suffer more from drug and substance abuse, they are more prone to disease, they even have a higher accident rate, they have lower family incomes, their MMPIs are much more jagged, their life expectancy is shorter, and they score lower on tests designed to show levels of personal happiness or satisfaction. Sounds like a maladaption to me.

If Womyn and Victims of Color think that it is tough to make it in an advanced capitalist society, they should have tried doing it the way Dead White European Males had to do it -- building an advanced capitalist society out of ancient tyrannies from the ground up stone by stone.