perfidy

Awwww yeah! Via Instapundit comes this observation from Rick Klau that Bernard Bailyn has commented about weblogs, in a sense:

"The weblog is a one-man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and 'high-brow' than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the same time, since the weblog is always short, it can be produced much more quickly than a book, and in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public. Above all, the weblog does not have to follow any prescribed pattern. ... All that is required of it is that it shall be topical, polemical, and short." 

Of course, this isn't really about weblogs. Take the same quote - verbatim - and swap out "pamphlets" for "weblogs". The author is Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn, writing about the "literature of revolution" in his Pulitzer prize winning book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. It's on page two.

I haven't read that book in years, or any of his books for that matter. Although reading Bailyn is like downloading smartness directly into your forebrain, grad school got me in the habit of reading later commentaries on his work instead. It's not possible to breeze through Bailyn. 

Everyone should read this book though, then some Hofstadter. Does a body good! 
 

Via "Bootsy," loyal reader #00004, comes this article which advances our competing theories about the looting of the Baghdad Museum. Thesis: it was an inside job, planned for years by an international cartel. According to the article, US Central Command reportedly are still unaware of any organized looting. In other news, Oliver North is a patriot, and Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Some have advanced the theory that the Army looked the other way while short-term strategically valuable allies of necessity (former Ba'ath leaders, etc.) ransacked the Museum. By my sophistic use of the word "some" plus the passive voice, I intend to signal that I can't find any reason either to confirm or disavow this theory, but I thought I'd hoist the petard skywards nonetheless.

As rendered by Something Awful.

Since the beginning of radio, people have been bitching about how much radio sucks. Seriously. After the very first test of his system, Guglielmo Marconi's wife was heard to say, "Ehi, vede se niente è altro su!"* This is why I declined to comment last week on Clear Channel's announcement that they will no longer accept money from independent promoters. After all, anything the Ultimate Evil does has to be bad, right? Even if it seems like a good thing?

This article from the Boston Globe says much of what I would have said, but more clearly and professionally:

"There was a good deal of static in the radio industry last week when industry giant Clear Channel announced that it would not renew contracts with independent record promoters after they expire this summer.
Some called the severing of those longstanding relationships a step toward cleaning up borderline practices in the industry - the so-called ''pay for play'' that translates dollars directly into on-air spins and has become the modern version of payola. And independent promoters (several were contacted and refused to comment) may find themselves working harder for a dwindling amount of record company money.

But radio listeners aren't likely to hear much improvement. In fact, say some industry insiders, the range of music broadcast may become even more narrow as the indie promoters are phased out."

Yup. That's exactly what's going to happen. Now, I'm not about to defend the shady and corrupt world of radio promotions, but they do perform a necessary and potentially honorable service. How would I know? Well, I know the King of Radio Promotions, though he is self-styled and lives in New Jersey (hey... everyone has their drawbacks).

What is this potentially honorable service that indies do?. Essentially, they are hired to call as many radio stations as possible to talk up new records, because record labels don't have the time to do all the work on their own. Indies are hired for their Rolodexes, and how well they know the peopel in them. There is nothing-- nothing-- wrong with that, at the basic level.

The trouble comes when two things happen: 1) The big dogs hire the big dogs. If Sony hires Bill McGathy to work their new rock record, it has a MUCH bigger chance of becoming a hit than if they were to hire a less well-known promoter. But, Bill isn't cheap. Most can't afford him, and big stations won't return calls from the little guys. 2) Fat bags of cash exchange hands. Usually, it's not as blatant as all that, but let's face it. Sometimes when you're working a dog of a record, just a terrible slab of music, you need to thow' in a li'l extra to seal the deal. Everyone does it! You need a band to play your Christmas show? Great! Samplers? Sure! Trip for your Programming Director? Um... lemme check with legal... ok. Again, this skews the focus of the radio promotions game away from good music, to whatever pays.

But, big radio is driven by what people like. The positive side of cutting indies out of the deal is, radio stations will pay more attention to call-out research (they call people, play them 15 seconds of a song, ask what they think) and phone requests. The negative side is also that stations will pay attention to call-outs and requests. Study after study shows that people want to hear what they've already heard. If you are Joe Normal, searching the car radio for driving tunes, you are, unscientifically, 99% more likely to stop on AC/DC than on some Built to Spill b-side that, though it might be the greatest song ever, has never passed Mr. Normals ear-holes before. Furthermore, since radio stations only add a couple songs to their playlists every couple weeks, only the guaranteed hits, which will pull in guaranteed ad revenue, get a listen. There is no room for the new Tsar single when Audioslave's single dropped last week, Kid Rock's and Korn's drop this week, and next week is Creed and Puddle of Mudd.

All in all, this means that corporate-owned radio stations, who dominate the radio market, tend to narrow their playlists to include only the familiar. The new and strange barely has a chance. Without the mean, nasty, eeevil indies to man the phones on behalf of non-guaranteed hits, the new and strange, and even the new and derivative, has NO chance.

*Approximately, "See if anything else is on." I don't speak Italian. I barely speak English.

With some luck, johnnytwocents.com will soon have comments enabled. Oh, goody! The incoherent mewling of the unwashed and unlearned hoi polloi will finally be recorded. History will take note.

In case it wasn't obvious, the foregoing was a joke. Except the parts about comments coming soon, and the hoi polloi being stuff. I go among the hoi polloi from time to time. They eat at McDonalds, stare with their mouths open at shiny things, and they sometimes smell.

[update] Hey! It seems to have worked! Pretend we care: leave a comment! No trolls.

[update the second] It's a free service. You get what you pay for, mmkay?

John Derbyshire of the National Review has some interesting points on the ultimate fate of the artifacts that were looted from the museum in Baghdad. The gist of his argument is that those who stole the Sumerian thingies were in all likelihood museum employees, and will in all likelihhod sell the loot to western collectors, who will eventually die and leave the stuff to a museum in their will. This is a reassuring thought - the artifacts will be dispersed rather than destroyed. It won't be like the burning of the Library, or the Cultural Revolution in China.

Apparently, the French government had to beg the US to allow Chirac to have his 20 minute "business-like" conversation with Bush. Instead of enhancing their world status, France's behavior over the last several months has gotten them ostracized. They are frozen out in Washington and London, and soon, TotalFinaElf will be completely out of Iraq. Frankly, it couldn't happen to a better country.

At least, now that we have eliminated the prior regime, Iraqis now can have different opinions without being shot.

Apparently, some Iraqis are giving U.S. forces the thumbs up in the Middle Eastern cultural context, figuratively speaking. This story from the NYT describes protests against the current U.S. occupation. It also discusses Shi'ite demands for an Islamic fundamentalist government.

Huh. I recall saying many times in the past that the U.S. could open the door to just such a state. It's still unlikely, but nothing is impossible. Moreover, it seems that Iraqi opinion is quite divided on the American campaign and occupation. Some in favor, some against, some just trying to stay alive. Go figure. Some Americans protested the war, some supported it, most probably didn't care since war coverage didn't interrupt March Madness coverage, or their favorite sitcom, or what have you.

Fun Facts About Syria: 

• In a fight between Syria and Aquaman, Aquaman would win since Superman couldn't just sit there and watch Aquaman get his ass kicked.
• Military estimates say that the conquering of Syria would take months... unless, of course, you don't care about all that collateral damage crap. Then it would only take a couple hours and a few beers.
• The Syrians, unlike the Romulans, cannot turn invisible.
• Syria is not in South America. and,
• Once, while everyone was distracted with an anti-Israel rally, a bunch of monkeys staged a bloodless coup. At first, people found it funny seeing the monkeys playing around in the government's capital - that was until the monkeys started ordering mass executions of dissidents. 
   

Okay. Clarification noted.

I'm going to write a looong essay on exactly why I hate Oliver Stone.

Mike, in my post, the only editorial comment I offered was, "The quote from the station manager seems to indicate that public radio has serious problems with traditional American values like free speech." I said this because the quote from the station manager included the words, "We have a policy that eliminates or restricts the expression of personal opinion on issues of controversy." 

I did not say that NPR had no right to fire him. However, for an institution that receives substantial tax support (in addition to contributions from viewers like you) this attitude is problematical. Especially since it is hypocritical, because any number of other programs on NPR are rather, well, outspokenly liberal. 

As for Oliver Stone, I did not comment editorially on HBO's removal of the program from its schedule. I merely stated, quite clearly, that Stone should be thrown out of a window. 

I spoke most precisely. 
 

Buckethead, WELL SAID. Very, very nice. 

Speechifying 

Mike (and Bucket), both NPR and HBO are within their rights to do what they did, no matter how odius either action may be. The airing of an Oliver Stone documentary is not a free speech issue-- Stone is perfectly free to take his insane ravings to the corner of Hollywood and Vine, if he so chooses. HBO, like NPR, made an editorial decision. The First Amendment only comes in to play when someone is being barred from expressing their views in a public forum. NPR, supported as they may be by donations, still don't make the grade. I wish they hadn't fired the guy, but what more do you expect from NPR? Private companies are very different from public spaces, and the First Amendment does not apply in the same way-- just look at ol' Hootie Johnson and his Constitutionally protected right to yammer like a jackass about how the women-folk would ruin his eighteen-hole old folks' home forever. 
 

Of course one of the reasons that we no longer worry about things like faction, and other concerns of the writers of the Federalist papers (and the anti-federalists, and other founding fathers) is that their solutions to these problems rendered them moot. The Federalist Papers (arguably the most insightful discussion of politics, ever) explains why certain things were included in the new constitution, and why others were not - and reveals the depth of thought that went into the creation of our system of government. These short term solutions are the things that operate in the background, things that are so obvious that to mention them seems almost banal. But at the time, they were revolutionary, in every sense of that word. So, in a very real way, they are very long term - they are so embedded in our conception of how governments should work, that we cannot imagine a legitimate government not having them. 

The Constitution, the condensed political wisdom of the founding fathers, banished (for us) an entire array of political problems that had vexed humanity for all of history. We no longer have to worry over these things. Instead, we began to worry over the details that hovered at the fringes. Naturally, some of these were still very important. For example, once you decide that all people, in principle, are created equal, and deserve all the protection of Constitution and Bill of Rights, you are bound to have the arguments that led to the Civil War. But the essential declaration had already been made, and the Civil War, and then the Civil Rights movement merely (heh) brought the reality in line with the principle. If anything, the original Federalists rendered us silly; as we move toward (slowly, staggering drunkenly) that more perfect union, many of the things we argue about seem increasingly, well, trivial. And this is good, because it means that many of the harder issues have already been solved. 
 

BH, I recall a post not too long ago in which you criticized NPR Michigan for firing an on-air employee who supported the war against Iraq and criticized NPR's coverage. You asserted that the dismissal of the pro-war employee constituted a violation of free speech. Now it seems that you're supporting HBO in their decision not to air an Oliver Stone documentary on Castro. Why is this not a violation of Stone's free speech?

If you believe that HBO is a corporation with the legal rights to restrict what it airs, you're right. But if you also argue that NPR is truly, as the name implies, public, then I wish to point out that it's only public in that it is supported with voluntary donations rather than advertising dollars. NPR, similar to HBO, also has the right to decide who works for them. Thus, I'm seeing an inconsistency here.

Free Speech is a thorny issue. The Supreme Court ruled that free speech is not absolute; you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater. There are laws against slander, libel, and terroristic threats. Broadcast corporations decide what they air and what they don't. I submit that NPR was engaging in the same kind of decision as HBO when NPR dismissed their Michigan employee for espousing strong opinions on a highly controversial issue. According to NPR, they have a policy that the on-air folks not do that. NPR chose to dismiss an on-air employee who broke their rules. HBO decided not to air a documentary on Castro for reasons unspecified in your post. I'll respect the decisions of both HBO and NPR as entirely legal, and outside the bounds of free speech protection.

From Baseball Crank (via Volokh) comes this article about "Federalism's Edge." From the article:

. . .when you mention "federalism," many on the Left and Right alike assume that you mean only "States Rights," defined as local autonomy in opposition to federal power. But in recent times, the greater threat to political diversity and responsiveness in self-government has come instead from states overstepping their boundaries to the point that they make policies for the whole Union. That is what I define as Federalism’s Edge: the point at which an exercise of state power (by a state or group of states) infringes on the right to self-government of the citizens of the other states. If a national government is overweening, intrusive and unresponsive when it is housed inside the Beltway, it is no less so -- in fact, even more so -- if it sits in a legislature in Sacramento, a jury room in a small town in Alabama, or a law office in Hartford. After all, at least the average citizen sometimes gets to vote in a contested election for representatives in Washington.

Very interesting, not to mention timely! Thanks, Mr. Crank! 
 

One of my big disadvantages as a writer, and one of the intrinsic perils of blogging, is that I often make lazy assertions. This means that I spend a lot of time getting my ass fact-checked, and you know how long the waits are down at the free ass-fact clinic. 

But, when I do pull my fishbelly-white corpulescense off the chair and go check stuff out, I find out a whole slew of fascinating facts, and as you know, facts can be used to prove anything that's even remotely true! Federalism is silly? How silly! 

I've actually gone back to read the Federalist Papers, in recent weeks. I had power-skimmed them in the past, but only for specific purposes like understanding the mind of Richard Hofstadter (The Master). This return to smarty-pants reading is partly because, now that I have an advanced degree in history, I'm finally getting serious about the study of history. The other part is, I don't know stuff about things, and I need to know junk like that so can ensmarten myself.

So, I'd like to re-address that issue, and retract my assertion of silliness. Sort of. 

First: Mike, although your characterizations of Federalism are accurate as far as they go, they are not the whole picture. To take an example from our recent discussions, it's as if we were talking about Stalinism, and you wanted to only discuss the internal politics of the Kremlin. Relevant, and somewhat complete, but misleading. 

Second: Buckethead, I did say that Federalism as originally conceived has been rendered silly by the passage of time, and that's a poor choice of words that deserves some splaining. What I really should say is that the bugbears of Hamilton and Madison (let's leave John Jay out of it) are no longer scary to us today, and those aspects of Federalism most carefully designed to combat them seem urgent out of all proportion with how we today perceive the same issue. 

Example. Hamilton spends thousands of words thrashing at the dead horse of "faction." By faction he did not mean political parties such as were beginning to form at the time, and which took greater shape in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. He meant a Party in the crazy rest-of-the-world sense, like the Roundheads, or more recently the Nazis, Communists, and Ba'ath Party-- organizations with their own army/security force, an absolutist ideology, and a mandate to wipe out the competition. Faction in that sense is a dead issue in the US today. Other examples exist: the big questions of states' power versus federal power were settled in 1865, with clarification continually going on. Checks and balances work. Tyranny of state over state has not arisen. Tyranny of the federal government over the states is on the rise, and should be combatted, a counter-example of how Federalism remains relevant. 

So, what I should have written was, "I still think a national bank is and was a good idea, but the rest of Federalism's big concerns have been thankfully rendered silly and mostly irrelevant by the passage of time." This is truer and only partly wrong. The wrong part I now disavow: feh! ptui! ptui! 

The spirit of Federalism as conceived by the framers consists in retrospect of two types of propositions: short-run ideas like described above intended to combat the immediate challenges of the 1790s, and long-range plans intended to ensure the nation's survival. The latter of these are always very relevant-- things like providing for the interests of individuals against the state, clarifying the ways in which it is appropriate for the branches of government to use its power, ensuring that civil war is never around the corner (except that once, which I covered yesterday), etc. 

"Federalism" in the parlance of our time is used as a synonym for everything from Republicanism to Libertarianism. That's a big house. It's so big because the tenets of Federalist thought have infused the whole game of indigenous American politics. And mostly, in a thoroughly modern, perhaps armchair, sense, I dig it. 

Insofar as Federalism was intended to minimize friction between the separate states, and keep out of those states' internal affairs, it gets a big yes from me. That's in the Constitution. Insofar as Federalism was intended to uphold the rights of individual citizens (even though Madison and Hamilton were sometimes kind of fuzzy on how that would work, exactly), that's also in the Constitution, and very nifty. Insofar as Federalism was designed to mediate between the disadvantages of a direct democracy and those of an autocratic state, it works, and I'm happy. I'm a big fan of efficient, purpose-built central government counterposed with strong local governments, and treasure the dialogue that continues between these two poles. A lot of the original aims of Federalism may have fallen into irrelevancy and become, yes, silly. But the rest has been transformed by use and remains deeply relevant today, even if not to the letter as originally written. 

In case you are wondering, strict constructionists make me crazy. CRAZY. Hence my animus against the brilliant, acerbic, and dangerously originalist Justice Scalia.

is why I'd like to award that kid with the highest plaudit I can offer: honorary residency in the Great State of Ohio. Come to Ohio, kid! Texas doesn't want ya!

You automatically have gone too far if you post a link to Bonsai Kittens.

We had potato guns when I was a pup, my friends and I built them ourselves from PVC tubing. But I thought everyone knew - especially everyone in Texas, that you never look down the barrel of a loaded gun. Ever. Even if it's only loaded with frogs. Frogs! You don't load potato guns with frogs. It's just not right. Apples, maybe. Pears, sure. Even squash. Frogs, definitely not. Kittens are right out. Especially Bonsai Kittens.

From Dallas/Fort Worth comes this story. Moral: It's all fun and games until the frog causes you to lose both your eyes.

The power of diplomacy

Join the Scorched Earth Party.

Because "ville" is Latin for "Where hicks live."

"Beam me up, Scotty!"

Easter Bunny beaten in savage attack, according to the Smoking Gun. Kinda like that scene from Mallrats...

Can I be the one to do the thowin' out the winda?

Also, hear, hear on your words about that Palestine thingy where they said that stuff about the thing we did with the guy. They got almost as much chutzpah as we do!

"Commandante," Oliver Stone's laudatory documentary of jack-booted thug and focus of Hollywood adoration Fidel Castro has been removed from HBO's May schedule. At the Sundance Film Festival, Oliver Stone was asked, "What did you think of Fidel?" Stone answered, "I thought he was warm and bright. He's a very driven man, a very moral man. He's very concerned about his country. He's selfless in that way." Stone needs to be defenestrated.

Modern Drunkard has posted their semi-final round of Clash Of The Tightest, featuring matches between Sir Richard Burton / Charles Bukowski and Humphrey Bogart / William Faulkner. It's kickass. I strongly recommend you check out all the content on that fine site. Delicious! 
 

In a Washington Post story, we hear that the Palestinian authority has not requested, not asked, not even pleaded; they have demanded that the United States release Abu Abbas, the terrorist reponsible for the Achille Lauro hijacking and the death of American citizen Leon Klinghoffer. They cite the Oslo accords as the basis for their demands, but considering the fact that the entire intifada of the last two plus years is in violation of the Oslo accords, I think they should at the very least shut the hell up.

Things are getting a mite serious around here, and I'm dead-set agin' that! So I bring you this. It's a parody of Gilbert & Sullivan's "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General" with Osama lyrics. Wow! Can you believe it?! I sure can't!

Osama is the model of a modern major Terrorist
Who thinks his cause is holy and would seek to harm, nay, bury us.
His methods are abhorrent, and his scheming quite methodical
In fact, his thinking and his plans have been, well .. . Diabolical.

But in his scheme of hurt and pain, Osama did not calculate
That faith and love of Liberty will conquer all his misspent hate.
The USA and allies will not to this Creep capitulate
For Freedom is the concept upon which this nation's frame is based.

Yes, Freedom is the concept upon which this nation's frame is based
Freedom is the concept upon which nation's Fame is based.
Freedom is the concept upon which this nation's very frame is based.

. . . .
Osama is the model of a modern major Terrorist
Who sought to bring us chaos, and to choke the life from in our midst.
In short, he is deplorable, this "jihad" holy war-able
Will never make the world or Allah think that he's adorable.
Yes, yes. He is deplorable! His "jihad" holy war-able
Will never make the World or Allah think that he's adorable.

Adorable/ Holy War-Able. Don't you just love it??
No?

Oh. . . .

But it doesn't even sound good on paper. Dictatorship of the proletariat? It seems to be all about resentment; resentment of those who have stuff, resentment of those who have better fashion sense, whatever. And while religious religions like Christianity and Islam and Buddhism keep the promised land safely in the afterlife, Marxism and its heretical splinters make promises here on Earth, promises that have been proven false over and over again. If you're going to have a secular religion, I might humbly offer the American dream, and the adoration of the republic that used to be common hereabouts. 

While the American Dream(tm) is not always, everywhere perfectly realized, the reality of American life gets closer to the dream as time goes by, rather than further away. The idea that anyone, red, brown, black, white yellow, plaid or purple-polka-dotted can come here, accept a few basic concepts, and make good is basically a real offer. All you have to do is not try to kill your neighbors because they don't talk like you, work hard, apply some initative and *poof* you've got the American dream - however you define it. If that is a house in the suburbs, 2.4 kids, a dog, a cat and a convertible; great. If it's a compound in the Idaho mountains, just apply concept #1, above, and you're still fine. If the American dream is living a bohemian lifestyle in a city condemning the soceity that makes it possible for you to be a bohemian in the city condemning it, that's fine too. This secular religion gives you the liberty to do that, and the liberty to screw up, but it doesn't kill you, throw your family in a gulag, force your grandma to work on a collectivized farm, and in general erase history, lie, terrorize and poster the entire nation with poorly drawn portraits of the great leader. 
 

Yeah, "1980" should read "1984." If I recall, the thesis of 1980 was a) A Thousand Points of Light something something, and 2) Farrah Fawcett is hott! The thesis of "1984" the book version, on the other hand, is that the control of information is the first step to controlling people. I'd go so far as to call that argument a "thesis" in that it is the macguffin behind the central struggle in the book.

Sorry. I was high on toner yesterday.

Well, I'm still pissed at whoever burned the library of Alexandria.

It's not arrogant if you're right. But seriously, I'm not talking about taking down every comic opera great leader in the world, to bring salvation to mankind, and to generally immanentize the eschaton. Just the worst ones, and the ones who pose the greatest potential threat to me, personally, as a US citizen who works a block from the White House. (Threat and nastiness generally overlap a great deal.) If we can take out the leaders of these unhappy few, and bring some measure of sanity to the benighted populaces thereof, that's a clear win. The likelihood of any successor government being worse than Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, or Assad is, shall we say, slim.

There are over a hundred and seventy nations on our fair planet. Deranged totalitarian leaders have made some neighborhoods rather unlivable. Think of it as slum clearance, followed by a nice fat welfare check for the people of the neighborhood. (That's socialist, yay!) It's a short list: Syria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Burma (yeah, right Myanmar) and France. That's maybe four percent of the world's nations. The rest can stay as they are.

It's not just with the Saudis that their populace resents the US. In general, throughout the world, if the government of a nation is a group of reprehensible thugs, the attitude of the people towards the US is inverse to the friendliness of the US to the government.

"Don't try and frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Marx. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the worker's revolution, or given you clairvoyance enough to predict the end of the Bourgeoisie..."

See, the thing about Marxism, is it sounds so darned good on paper. If I may make an unweildy and inappropriate analogy, expecting a revolution of the proletariat is like expecting frogs to grow wings. I'm going to go out on a limb here are argue that there are fundamentally irreducible aspects of human nature.

• People are greedy and self-interested. Examples to the contrary, such as Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and myself, are notable by their rarity.
• People like to have stuff. Not having stuff means that one bad winter could wipe you and your family out.
• Corollary: many people enjoy power, and taking other people's stuff.

Given these factors, and given that, as Mike ably points out, any state which does not wither away is not a Marxist state, Marxism is impossible. It makes unreasonable assumptions about human nature, logistics, and the weight of social tradition, and by its own internal paradoxes makes its own fulfillment impossible. 

Final note: Marxism is indeed like a religion, not least because it provides a higher cause by which people may commit both petty and hideous crimes with a clear conscious.

Nazis and such 

I don't know crap about the recent history of the middle east, so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the wrasslin' match between youse two. 

On measurement 

Buckethead, One Standard Den Beste is a daily measure! 

On terrorism, WMD's, and other crapola 

Weapons of Mass Destruction, as they undoubtedly exist in Iraq (or hidden in Syria, or whatever), are not of themselves the single justification for the libervasion of Iraq. They are however the political BFG 10K (remember Doom?) that would put egg on the face of naysayers in the international community. That is a secondary goal, but could help in mending fences and rebuilding concensus. This would help the campaign to root out terrorism. Like Mike, I also haven't heard compelling evidence that Iraq was providing systematic support to al Qaeda or other international terrorists. So... is Iraq part of the War on Terror? 

By the way, I understand full well that my position on Iraq requires that I accept some paradoxes of my own. I've been thinking about this for months now and I'm no closer to resolving them. If I may, I would like to make another howlingly bad analogy to describe my sentiments about the US in Iraq, and the War On Terror in general: It's like being in the backseat of a car going 100mph down Storrow Drive (Storrow Motor Speedway) in Boston: Sheer panic punctuated by moments of mortal terror, combined with great exhilaration and a continued sense of wonder that you haven't crashed and burned yet. 

Is Syria next? Well, they are a terrorist-supporting state. QED. Should Syria be next? Hell, I don't know. What do I look like, its biographer? 

Saudi Arabia 

As for Saudi Arabia, I would strongly recommend you both read the cover story in this month's Atlantic Monthly (not online). It describes how the Saudis are doing EXACTLY what the US wants, and paying a hefty fine. That's not to argue that they are angels (quite the contrary), but that by being in the oil business, by being ostentatiously wealthy and western, and by not actually ruling their own country as much as presiding over the oil business alone, they are digging their own graves by alienating ordinary Saudi citizens. The money paid to al Qaeda can best be described as protection money-- $25 million ensures that this year, there will be no assassinations of Saudi royalty by al Qaeda operatives. At the same time, the wealth, ostentation, and Western focus of the royal family rightly earns the enimity of the Saudi on the street, who live under the heel of poverty and harsh clerical oversight in plain sight of their riches. Is it any wonder regular Saudis resent the US's influence when all they can see is our President making good buddies with the same people who keep them miserable? 

Hence, the Saudi royals, who are not generally nice people to begin with, are in an increasingly perilous position. Based on the article, it's pretty much only with our support and our huge oil need that they remain in power. The situation is incredibly convoluted, but it's at least partly of the US's making. 

It's kind of like the Civil War. Slavery was the big issue, along with states' rights (on many tongues, a shibboleth for slavery), as well as lesser and more contested causes such as economic philosophies and cultural differences. These problems needed to be hashed out, and the War Betwixt The States did that. But let's not forget that war over sectional issues, most of them slavery-based, probably would never have come to pass had the seeds of the Civil War not been written into the Constitution as compromises, thereby sweeping the relevant issues under the rug until there was no peacable solution in sight. Perhaps with Saudi Arabia, it's currently 1786, and we can bring these issues into the light of day before resorting to war. Or, perhaps it's 1859. Only time will tell.

This report suggests that the looting of the Baghdad Museum was done by Ba'ath officials. A report on CNN this morning likewise confirmed that regular looters, not equipped with winches, dollies, etc, could never have moved the big pieces that are gone, suggesting it was a pro job.

Death is too good for them. Slow, painful, public, humiliating death is a little closer. The only appropriate punishment would be... ermmm... uhh... how about... got it!!! Forced attendance of every single performance by Celine Dion in Le Vegas! Yeah, that's the ticket!!

Wright College is currently on Spring Break, so I might be rather prolific on the postings this week. 

The Marxist Conundrum 

I'll offer a few points of clarification, as I'm more than happy to answer your questions in this regard. First, the religious imagery is not unintended. Marxism, as part prophecy, is a form of religion. It has a prophet, its own dogma, and its own scripture. Marxism bears a close resemblance to religious philosophy. It is, in many ways, a political and economic religion. Strange, given that according to Marx himself, religion is the opiate of the masses. But he meant Christianity, really.

I'm sure the environmentalists you worked with either were Communists or considered themselves such, depending on how you look at it. But like some faux Communists in power, they deviated from the scripture in a way that negates their self-definition. As Marx argued that nature existed to be dominated by man, and as the environmentalists you worked with either ignored or broke with that belief, their self-definition becomes dodgy. At best, those environmentalists represent a serious schismatic deviation. Did these folks with whom you worked ever discuss the inconsistency between environmentalism and Marxist doctrine? Or did they just carry around the Manifesto without actually reading it? Of course, the Manifesto is not the be-all, end-all. It's the equivalent of the book of Genesis. 

As to those in power, I do not dismiss people from the definition of Communist simply because they were in power and killed people. Trotsky held power for some time, and his ruthless suppression of the Krondstadt Rebellion certainly qualifies as a slaughter. But Trotsky continued to work toward global revolution and advocated the withering away of the state, whereas Stalin said one state is good enough and the state should be increased, not withered away. Lenin is highly debatable, what with NEP and the Cheka and all. 

My point, and I can't emphasize this enough, is that Communism only occurs with a global revolution and the withering away of the state. Anything less is short of the mark. I submit that there is no such thing as a Communist government. State governments are bourgeois institutions, like marriage, nationalism, and currency. There wasn't supposed to be a government because Communists were supposed to get rid of bourgeois institutions, including and especially individual state governments. The Vanguard of the Proletariat was only supposed to tend the ship while simultaneously reducing the role of the state in favor of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Part of the problem with Marxist doctrine and dogma is that the Vanguard of the Proletariat is supposed to seize power from the bourgeoisies and then do their best to get rid of it. That like many, if not all, aspects of Marxist doctrine, run counter to human nature. People in power hold on to power, not give it up, as Marx prophesied. I understand that as a devotee of political science, it might be difficult to accept. But state governments are bourgeois, and irrelevant. Marx prophesied that state governments had to fall. There is no such thing as a Communist state government. It's all about class. 

So it might be splitting hairs as far as you're concerned, but anyone who leads a state government cannot be a true Marxist or Communist. Stalin et al were Totalitarians, not Communists. Stalin looked an awful lot like the Czar, and Mao looked an awful lot like the Emperor. I would even quibble with calling them Socialists. 

As to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, it wasn't intended as a dictatorship in the repressive Totalitarian sense. The idea was that everyone would have a hand in societal decision making, essentially dictating what occurred, instead of just a small handful of wealthy elites. 

Fox News 

No, it's not just because of their slant. When I compare what Fox News says versus other broadcast sources, Fox frequently turns out to be wrong. 

Ba'ath Party 

Sorry, I'm still not convinced. I'm going to do some research and then I'll get back to you. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I want to really investigate this thoroughly with historical methodology and historical secondary sources as opposed to journalism. Thanks for providing the article link. I'll mention here, though, that complaints I hear about liberal media (in the modern American sense of liberal) and the domination of liberal media don't stand up to news sources like that one, Fox News, Scripps Howard, the National Review, etc. Seems to me there's plenty of not liberal media. 

Weapons and Camps 

Like I said, the one in the north of Iraq wasn't in territory that Hussein controlled. The camp south of Baghdad still yields no evidence that it's specifically al Qaeda. Maybe terrorist, but not necessarily al Qaeda. The Gwynne Roberts article does indicate connections, but I'll want more corroboration. Possible chemical weapons stores are not actual chemical weapons stores. At this point, I wouldn't believe it anyway. I'd think that the Americans just planted it like a cop throwing a baggie of crack into a car trunk. I'm very suspicious. It's easy to lie, even in print or on TV. I want to hear it from NPR, CNN, Reuters, and the AP before I accept it.

Mike, I am puzzled. You keep talking about the pure, received faith in Marx as prophesied by his disciple Engels (and very interesting that you should use such religious imagery, btw.) and how basically almost no one over the last hundred plus years has ever gotten it right. Now, I am more than willing to believe that you are correct and every leftist/Marxist over the last century was completely wrong. Most people are idiots. However, your description seems completely different from the way almost every leftist/Marxist/environmentalist/Commie in the world thinks of themselves.

I worked with hardcore environmentalists for years, and I can assure you that they all believed in Marx. They had copies of the Communist manifesto. They spouted communist doctrine, hated capitalism, the works. They laughed at the watermelon joke (green on the outside, red on the inside.) Marx' picture was on walls throughout those murderous states that were founded by faux communists. But it is curious that as soon as someone gets power and begins murdering people, oh wait, he's not a communist. Can we ever know what a communist government is like? We know what democratic, monarchical, republican, totalitarian and oligarchical governments are like, because we have seen them. It seems that your communist prophecy is completely unverifiable, in that it ceases to be communist as soon as it gains power.

Given the statements in the last paragraph of "Speaking of phony leftism," do you believe that it ever will be verified, that an actual communist government will ever exist - by your definition of communism? If not, why does anyone bother being communist, when the only result is either a) frustrated fringe dwelling in affluent societies or b) rampant murder, terror, and poverty if a communist ever gains power anywhere else? Looking at the wreckage of states whose leadership fervently believed (despite disagreeing with you) that they were communists, and were the followers of Marx, and looking at the stagnant economies in nations that have adopted large scale socialist programs (Sweden, France, Germany) where before there was rising prosperity, I have a hard time swallowing the whole left/Marxist/socialist package on a pragmatic basis. Of course, my classical liberal ideals give me other reasons not to like it. But is there anywhere in the world where this has worked? Not that I've ever heard of.

Libervasion.

It's not an invasion, it's a libervasion!

Please excuse me. I now read that Iraqis have looted the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad, destroying or stealing an estimated 170,000 artifacts.

Well, no biggie. It's only the cradle of Western Civilization.

I have a few cents to spend in the current discussions, but I must collect my thoughts. Just a quick note for Buckethead: pursuant to your posts this weekend, you seem to suggest two things: that it takes sacrifice on the part of a country to break the bonds of tyranny; and that the US is currently the force best equipped to decide when that sacrifice should come, and in what measure. Are you then in favor of a vigorously interventionist foreign policy? You do say as much, so yes, I'm stating the obvious, but are you suggesting that the US would be right to act as the arbiter of truth, freedom, and justice for the world? Notwithstanding our position as the oldest representative democracy on the planet (a 'good thing' (tm)), that seems like as policy it would be a leetle ambitous, not to mention arrogant.

[update]Here is another article about the looting of the Iraqi Museum. This makes me want to cry like a baby. Is it because my wife is an archivist and I'm a historian? When artifacts like these disappear, a little bit of humanity's ties to our past disappear as well. Without the past-- a real, living, accurate, sweaty, noble, ignoble past-- we are cut loose from who we are, and where we came from -- we become nothing more than what we can make up out of our experiences and memories. Sometimes that's a lot. Most of the time, it's wrongheaded, futile, and a little pathetic.

What do all tyrants do first? What is the best way to justify power? What was the entire thesis of "1980"? [update: clearly I meant "1984." See tomorrow's posts to learn the thesis of "1980".] It boils down to this: If you control history, you control people. If we lose the mystifying, cryptic, illuminating, quotidian artifacts of the past, no matter how recent, we have nothing to navigate the world by but hearsay and fairy tale. Sometimes that's all even our best histories amount to, but if the things of the past are gone, we don't stand a chance. Our looking-glass gets darker all the time, and every setback in the efforts to beat back the dark just makes me sad, tired, and discouraged. Dammit anyhow.

In this article by David Brooks, I read about the connection between Nazism and Aflaq. 

MICHEL AFLAQ was born in Damascus in 1910, a Greek Orthodox Christian. He won a scholarship to study philosophy at the Sorbonne sometime between 1928 and 1930 (biographies differ), and there he studied Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Mazzini, and a range of German nationalists and proto-Nazis. Aflaq became active in Arab student politics with his countryman Salah Bitar, a Sunni Muslim. Together, they were thrilled by the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, but they also came to admire the organizational structure Lenin had created within the Russian Communist party. The Baath party is not quite like the Communist parties. It bears stronger resemblance to the Nazi party because it is based ultimately on a burning faith in racial superiority. The revolution, in Saddam's terms, is not just a political event, as the Russian or French revolution was a political event; it is a mystical, never-ending process of struggle, ascent, and salvation. 

There was another article, but I can't find the link. The author was Iraqi. This article mentions how Nasser was a hero of Saddam's. 

From the Encyclopedia Brittanica: 

Pan Arabism Nationalist concept of cultural and religious unity among Arab countries that developed after their liberation from Ottoman and European dominance. an important event was the founding in 1943 of the Baath Party, which now has branches in several countries and is the ruling party in Syria and Iraq. Another was the founding of the Arab League in 1945. Pan-Arabism's most charismatic and effective proponent was Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser. Since Nasser's death, Syria's Hafiz al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi have all tried to assume his mantle.

Why would a dictatorship of the proletariat be any better than any other kind of dictatorship. Dictatorship: bad. Freedom:good.

This story, from msnbc, talks of the terror camp in the north, and of its connection to Al Quaida. This story, from AP by way of the St. Petersburg Times, talks of the training camp found by the Marines south of Baghdad. This story, from the Herald, gives some background on the Iraqi regime's connections to terrorist groups, even the fundamentalist ones. There have been several reports of possible chemical weapons stores - none confirmed as yet. However, several commentators, including this one, believe that the military is holding off on confirming reports until they are absolutely sure. One thing to keep in mind is that for the last three weeks, the American and British forces have been focused on ass-whupin', not seeking out every hidden facility in a country the size of California. As we move into the next phases of the operation, we will see more reports as military personnel either discover or are tipped off to the presence of these sites. 

I think you're a leetle too hard on Fox News. The fact that they have a bias different from what you're used to does not mean that they are less accurate. I'd put them on par with other cable news, just with a different slant. 

[wik] The Ministry of Future Perfidy would like to inform you that all the links in this post are decades stale, and have been removed.

Ba'ath Party 

When time permits, please explain precisely how you believe Aflaq, and you can throw Gamel Abdel Nassar in there as well, were influenced by the Nazis. Citations a plus. 

Weapons and Camps 

I have not heard about chemical weapons stores. The only camp I've heard about was in the north of Iraq, in nominally Kurdish/U.S. controlled territory. Please elaborate, and citations are a definite plus. If it's Fox News, I don't believe them. Ever. At all. If they told me the sky was blue on a sunny day without clouds I would think them liars. 

To Hitler 

I obviously made up the Cheney-Rumsfeld thing. They never burned down the Capitol, nor did they invade Canada. That was a) the British b) the Fenians. 

Environmentalism 

Your brief mention of Marx in conjunction with environmentalism reminds me that I've recently been complaining about the inclusion of environmentalism into the leftist political umbrella. That's actually counter to Marxist thought. According to Marx, nature exists to be dominated by man, its resources plundered, and the cause of industrialization under the dictatorship of the proletariat advanced. Environmentalism is actually anti-Marxist. 

But of course, not every leftist is a Marxist. But every leftist should be pro-labor. Environmentalism usually runs counter to the interest of labor. Someone has to be paid to cut down trees. Therefore, if a virgin forest is slated for the chopping block, it will create jobs. If environmental restrictions make it such that a factory cannot be built somewhere, the residents of that area will have fewer jobs. Therefore, I submit that environmentalists are in fact anti-labor. They stand in the war of people having jobs. 

Environmentalists who insist on all preservation all the time, even at the expense of employment, are phony leftists. I'm generally sick of their ilk. Veganism affects no one but the vegan. The animals and animal products they don't eat will be eaten by someone else. If a vegan joins habitat for humanity and builds a house, great. But they can't say they're leftists simply because they won't eat a cheeseburger. That little tangent aside, unwavering environmentalism at the expense of labor isn't left-winged. It's just environmentalism. 

Speaking of phony leftism

And now back to false Communism. There have been Communists, but not Communism. There have been Communists since Engels. Stalin, Mao, and Castro, however, weren't three of them. The crux of the issue is global revolution. Stalin, who proclaimed that socialism in one state was legitimate, started the whole thing. On the other hand, his rival Trotsky kept trying to advance the goal of global revolution, as did Castro's associate Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. But there is no such thing, according to the strict letter of Marxist law (as written by Engels), as socialism in one state a la Stalin. The strict letter of the law is that Communism is achieved only once the national boundaries of countries have been eliminated from the map and there is only one governing body across the globe, that is, the global dictatorship of the proletariat. Revolutions start in countries, they finish in a world. 

Marx's only provision for a government was the interim between the onset of revolution and the final stage of the dialectic. During that interim, the vanguard of the proletariat was to steer matters previously tended to by governments, until the global revolution was complete, the means of production firmly in the hands of workers, and the dictatorship of the proletariat assured. Then, there was to be a withering away of the state. But Stalin, Mao, and Castro, for example, conveniently forgot about the withering of the state. They did not gradually reduce the state, transferring means of production and control to the workers, but rather increased the role of the state. In other words, they did the opposite of what real Communists are supposed to do. How can anyone really be anything if they do the opposite of what members of that thing are supposed to do? For example, if I said I was a vegan and kept eating the flesh of animals and cheese, I would be doing the opposite of what vegans do, and could not therefore legitimately call myself a vegan. 

There have been Communists, but not Communism. Communists in power, like anyone in power, sought to hold on to their power, thus preventing the withering away of the state. Instead, so-called Communists in power ensured, as Rosa Luxembourg predicated, that, "the dictatorship of the proletariat would become a dictatorship over the Proletariat." Thus the prophecy was left unfulfilled, and Communism never happened. After all, Communism was part political and economic philosophy and part prophecy. Since the ultimate aim was never achieved, Communism was never achieved. Communists tried to bring it about, but they either died before they became dangerous (as in John Reed's case), were exiled and later assassinated with an mountaineer's ice pick (as with Trotsky), or were purged at some point, in numbers too great to even comprehend. 

On other matters 

I'll let other stuff go without commentary from me for now.