Friday, May 30, 2003
Conservatives Thinking About Their Hostile Environment
Instapundit links to Willy Stern's public confession that he is, indeed, a conservative. As I mentioned yesterday, such admissions can lead to apprehension about what the degree of reaction from liberal acquaintances might be. Stern's got a much worse story than anything I can recall (besides little stuff like, you know, not getting into graduate school). He's on a blind date, and she's just made a derogatory comment about Republicans:
At that moment in the Japanese restaurant, I faced a dilemma that I have faced literally hundreds of times, before and since, in my 42 years on this fair planet: Divulge the truth—or let the comment slide by. Usually, I play along—simply because it's the path of least resistance and least awkwardness. On a blind date, though, I thought open disclosure was the more honorable route.
"Actually, Suzi," I explained as gently as possible, "I'm one of those asshole Republicans."
She dropped her chopsticks and stared at me as if I had just announced that I was a convicted child rapist.
Then she smiled, as she finally grasped the situation. "Oh, you're kidding, right?"
"No, I really am a Republican."
"What? Nobody told me."
I tried to blunt the blow. "I'm actually not terribly interested in politics." This is, in fact, true.
No matter.
"Well, look," she said as she pulled her purse out from under her seat. "I'm sorry but I can't deal with this. Please don't think me rude, but I really think it would be best if I just left."
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:01 PM EST
Justness in Iraq (Still)
Well, I'm going to begin taking my own "blog credit" for these long comments on Mark Shea's site, at least until Mark starts paying me for the work (I'd accept links and traffic as compensation). Mark just wrote, at the tail end of an argument that came around to general consensus that Hussein's human rights abuses made his toppling "just" (the argument being over whether it was, and whether it matters if it was, the President's motivation):
I take it, then, that you repudiate Rush Limbaugh's ridicule of the Clintonian habit of turning the military into "Meals on Wheels" and regard it as our duty, henceforth, to send troops into any part of the world where "the children" are being oppressed and we can feasibly defeat the regime in power? Should we start with Somalia? We can take 'em.
To which, I replied:
I'd have to hear the entirety of Rush's argument, but if his contention is that the U.S. should never use its military power principally to end nightmarish reigns, then yes, I disagree.
I'll give you another "yes": I think we ought to be doing more to oppose other regimes — in all the myriad ways it is possible to do so, including limited military efforts where feasible. Of course, it isn't as simple a matter as dispersing our troops into the world to overthrow the thugs, for three reasons:
1) The global diplomatic stage is such that even the obviously evil regime of Saddam Hussein required some bucking of the internationalistas and now requires a precedent proving that we are not after an "empire."
2) The circumstances required for Just War are such that multiple conditions must be met, including the exhaustion of non-military means. Nothing was going to remove Hussein but war, and he had made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of changing his ways.
3) Even the United States can only do so much, and such endeavors include a significant degree of clean-up.Ultimately, the point with Iraq was that it lay at a juncture of multiple justifications — human rights, terrorism, WMDs, oil (i.e., the global economy), Iraq's undermining of international norms (i.e., scoffing at signed agreements), and its positioning both geographically and with respect to pressuring other regimes and thereby facilitating progress without the need for further, more bloody, war. (I'm sure I've missed some.)
I think you pursued this line of thought before the war, Mark, and I think I replied that it didn't apply back then. You said something like: terrorism would require attacking Saudi Arabia; WMDs, North Korea; human rights, Somalia. All of these nations must be dealt with, but they are all unique and all lack aspects of the situation with Iraq, including a reasonable immediacy.
The bottom line is that, as a matter of moral justification, I don't, frankly, need much more than the human rights issue to be convinced of moral "justness." If the other Just War requirements (particularly chances of success and exhaustion of other possibilities) click into place along with practical (and essential) considerations, such as sufficient resources and support to follow through, then I say, "Let's roll."
Note: reading back, I see that I should clarify that, by "reasonable immediacy," I meant to suggest that the U.S.'s having a reasonable sense of immediacy was a factor in Iraq, not to imply that some of the other nations don't also have that factor.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:51 PM EST
This Can't Be Healthy
Right Wing News quotes Paul Begala:
Which is worse: lying about a girlfriend or lying about a war? There aren't 169 people dead over Monica Lewinsky. The president must never, never lie - even about who he's sleeping with - but certainly about sending men to die.
Ignoring the change in position indicated by that "even about who he's sleeping with," I've noticed something almost pathological coming from many Democrats lately: EVERYTHING comes back to Bill Clinton's impeachment. From Bill Bennett to the search for WMDs to local tragedies. During my trip to the Post Office, today, I heard a bit of a local talk-radio duo (whom I generally try to avoid), filling in for the usual afternoon guy, discussing a report that the lawyers for the families of victims of the Station nightclub fire are seeking to sue any companies that had anything to do with the club (e.g., by supplying beer). When asked about the morality (as opposed to legality) of such a thing, the liberal woman host replied that the Ken Starr investigation had been wrong.
Although I like to think that I'd act differently, now, I have to admit that, a few years ago, I may very well have been similarly inclined in a reverse scenario. But ultimately, it's a shallow way of thinking, involving irrelevant quips and incessant stoking of emotional fires that are best left to burn out.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:07 PM EST
I Don't Agree with This
Taking this Guardian report at face value (which is a lot to do, considering the source), I feel compelled to express my dislike for the strategy of supporting ought-to-be enemies as a component of using them to battle more immediately dangerous enemies.
Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.
The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.
The US is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500m (£300m) in aid. The police and intelligence services - which the state department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique" received $79m of this sum.
Mr Karimov was President Bush's guest in Washington in March last year. They signed a "declaration" which gave Uzbekistan security guarantees and promised to strengthen "the material and technical base of [their] law enforcement agencies".
On the other hand, I do think that a strategy of "reform through engagement" — beyond addressing the icky realities of international relations — is a worthwhile one to pursue... if we actually pursue it. In the meantime, perhaps it is enough to suggest that a nation can only do what it can do and that others (those who make such decisions, hopefully) are in a better position to judge what is the best approach to take in individual areas.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:56 PM EST
The Celebs Don't Get It
I'm worried about the First Amendment. I can't pick up a newspaper without reading that someone has been vilified for expressing his or her opinion -- the actor Tim Robbins, Natalie Maines, of the Dixie Chicks, and Rhode Island's poet laureate, Tom Chandler -- to name a few.
So wrote Amory Weld, citizen of the town over from me, to the Providence Journal. I would note, to Amory, that none of the listed notables have been prevented from stating their opinions. I would explain, to Amory, that the "vilifiers" have every right to respond to those who "vilify" people, nations, and actions that they support. I would do these things if I thought Amory would be open to listening.
As Joel Engle explains, even those stars who lose jobs don't get it: they make those fortunes because the public likes them, and the public is under no obligation to maintain that disposition. For example, the first time I saw Danny Glover among green and yellow illustrations to promote MCI, that company was associated, in the vague realm of general impressions, with a disagreeable reaction in my mind. In a field of business competition in which a particular customer's general impressions are all-important, a company cannot afford to underwrite the free political speech of its spokespeople.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 05:23 PM EST
Something Else That's Getting Boring
Anne Morse describes an anti-Catholic exhibit supported by the good folks at Princeton University in open violation of a policy that they would strictly apply to "art" that explicitly (probably implicitly) offended any other group, from Muslims to homosexuals. I think we've got to look for a new tack to take. These people don't care that their hypocrisy is obvious. They feel immune to consequences. Therefore, continuing to point out the instances is of little avail.
I think the emphasis of those who try to do something about such offenses must switch from broadly targeted incredulity at what the elites are doing to a more-specific incredulity that fellow Catholics — fellow Christians and even fellow religious — put up with it. The intelligensia and the institutions that follow them are little more than opportunistic infections, with almost as little sense and self-awareness... until they are pricked and prodded by the antibody or the scalpel.
What is needed is for Catholics to reaffirm their faith, to cease accepting the B.S. of relativism, and to realize that what little they gain by way of individual psychological comfort is vastly outweighed by the damage being done to them, their families, and their society.
But how does one make them see this?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:29 AM EST
The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week
The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "from At First You See It," by A. Valentine Smith.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:57 AM EST
Thursday, May 29, 2003
Incidentally, Regarding Iraq
I just wanted to point out this column by Kathleen Parker:
The bad news is that we may never find them, according to military and intelligence people I've talked to. Does that mean WMD were never there? No. Does it mean we were wrong? No. Was the threat of WMD a ruse to justify an otherwise unjustifiable attack on another country? Anyone who seriously asks this question won't take "no" for an answer.
I'm having to remind myself of that last point.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:52 PM EST
Well, I've gone and done it again.
I have more fruitful activities to which I could devote my time than treading and retreading the ground of the Just War in Iraq argument. I just find it so very difficult not to jump into such argument's as the following on Mark Shea's blog:
When scripture says... and
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:05 PM EST
Well, at Least the Weatherpeople Were Wrong About Rain
It's been another disappointing day of trying to figure out how to cover the printing costs of this year's Redwood Review. The book really will be full of great material, but I'm just running out of steam with the sales thing. I'm no good at it. None. To the extent that I'm able to sell ads in the book, it's most likely because the publication and the given-for-free idea behind it is worthwhile.
It's beginning to look probable that, either this coming week or the next, I'll have to push myself to do something that I dread: hit the pavement. I really don't want to do that. Years ago, I took a job doing in-person cold-calls — just to see — and it was miserable. I had such drive, but drive will only carry you so far. I guess the bottom line is that I don't want to start feeling like it's a job, selling a product. (Not the least because it doesn't pay me a dime.)
If you've ever even considered responding to any of my various pleas for support, give some consideration to this one. The beginner ads (2 x 2.175in.) are $65. $20 or more gets you a listing on a Sponsor page. $50 or more gets you a listing and an autographed copy.
Information can be found, and contributions made, here.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 04:59 PM EST
A Speck of Red in a Blue State
And so it has gone since I made the transition from blue, through purple, to red:
I just got off the phone with a wonderful woman from my writers' group who is being extremely helpful and encouraging in the quest for funds for the Redwood Review. Toward the end of the conversation, she asked how the fundraising was going, and I confided that I'd been coming across articles all over the place in which local donation-based groups complained of a lack of money. She responded:
"It seems as if everybody is hurting for money — except George Bush and his cohorts."
How to respond? It isn't (any longer) in my nature to just chuckle at such comments and move on. I'd decided, when I was shocked to realize that more people believe in God than I'd thought when I was an atheist, that not addressing such casual allusions goes a long way toward enabling people to believe in homogeneity of opinion.
What I said was that people at that level of wealth — from Hollywood to the New York Times to Washington — weren't likely hurting for money regardless of their politics. What I should have said was, "Tell me about it. If he hadn't let his tax cuts get delayed, postponed, and strung out over a decade, the economy would have rebounded by now."
I think I surprised her by doing anything but agreeing. And now, as always, I'll have that mild discomfort that comes with wondering whether people are going to treat me differently having discovered that I'm "one of those"... you know... Hipublicans.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:44 PM EST
The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:37 AM EST
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Capturing Campus Life with Humor
Erin O'Connor notes a new hero on the American campus who is using humor to expose his environment as the censorious bastion of liberal "political vacuity" (Erin's phrase) that it is: University of North Carolina at Wilmington professor Mike Adams. The following isn't the best part of his letter to the Board of Trustees in response to a complaint filed by the father of a female student who was offended by a bumper sticker on his door reading, "So you're a feminist... Isn't that cute." However, this "experiment" pretty well captures the essence of the campus atmosphere:
Remembering that the university has a provision specifically prohibiting faculty from using "University funds, services, supplies, vehicles, or other property to support or oppose the candidacy of any person for elective public office..." I decided to initiate my experiment.
First, I placed a "Clinton/Gore '96" sticker prominently on my office door to see if anyone would take offense. After two years without any complaints, I decided to replace the sticker with one that said "George W. Bush for President." Within a few weeks I heard reports from two faculty members and one staff member saying that someone was preparing to file a complaint about the Bush sticker.
Since the faculty handbook specifies "appropriate disciplinary action, including discharge from employment" as one possible consequence of violating the aforementioned rule, I decided it was time to let the faculty in on my little experiment. I did this by sending an e-mail to everyone in the building which began as follows: "You have all been involved in an experiment in tolerance which, unfortunately, some of you have failed..."
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:48 PM EST
The Internet in Iraq
Of course, at the center of the topic of the Internet in Iraq is Salam Pax, and any other news relates to him to some degree, often as an indication of who he must have been pre-war. Consider this, from an article about the Iraqi youths who have never before known a Saddam-less nation:
The Saddam generation was shut off even more when international sanctions were imposed after the Gulf War. The Internet arrived in Iraq two years ago. Access was tightly controlled, and Saddam's officials blocked news and cultural sites.
This raises the question of how Salam was able not only to access the Internet, but to traverse it so freely. It also brings to my mind (anyway) the chilling comparison to another Iraqi who had free rein on the Internet:
A family friend says the day Uday discovered the Internet was "a black day for Iraqis," because he used it to learn of torture methods from other ages and lands that he decided to try. He would lock victims in coffins for days at a time, says the source, or put them in pillories. According to a family friend, he also liked to have offenders beaten on one side. Then he would order medical tests and have the thrashings continue until the kidney on that side had conclusively failed.
Uday's favorite punishment was the medieval falaqa, a rod with clamps that go around the ankles so that the offender, feet in the air, can be hit on the bare soles with a stick. A top official in radio and TV says he received so many beatings for trivial mistakes like being late for meetings or making grammatical errors on his broadcasts that Uday ordered him to carry a falaqa in his car. Uday also had an iron maiden that he used to torture Iraqi athletes whose performance disappointed him.
(both articles via Right Wing News)
ADDENDUM:
Right at the top of Salam's latest post, I found this:Internet prices are getting steeper, now we pay 8 dollars for an hour. capitalisim! pah.
Spoken like a true aristocrat!
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:33 PM EST
The Danger of Artistry in Reporting
Jonah Goldberg comments, today, on a lengthy New York Times article on which I considered posting a few days ago. If I weren't so busy and if it weren't so typical, I probably would have mentioned something about the piece.
Given that Jonah makes essentially the points that I would have included in any commentary (although he's more humorous about it), I just wanted to point out one additional tidbit that I haven't seen anywhere. David Frum mentioned the print-version's cover picture, which I haven't seen. However, the online photos offer much the same story — basically, that conservatives have no emotion and wear essentially identical facial expressions. However, the following picture took things a bit further:
Note how the young lady's head is positioned in front of a design element of the building behind her in such a way as to evoke the impression of a nun. I'm sure the folks at the Times took a moment to chuckle about that one — not the least because the young lady in question is the girlfriend of one of the "Hipublican" ringleaders in the story. Sneering at conservatives and Christians with one click of the camera.
Conservatives — young or otherwise — should make a mental note to follow two rules when being photographed for an old-media outlet: 1) don't relax your smile even for a second when that camera is on you, and 2) take a look what's behind you.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:31 PM EST
Here's One Way to Increase Tourism...
... but only that financed by international terrorists. Jamestown, the town that takes up the entirety of the island next to mine, may officially reject the Patriot Act.
Ramesh Ponnuru has a great column addressing the common myths about that act in the current print edition of National Review (unfortunately, it is not online). Certainly, nobody interviewed for the local newspaper to which my link leads had any interest in addressing specific points. In fact, the history teacher quoted toward the end of the article brought to mind the danger of such comments from people who seem to have some sort of authority or expertise but really have none... or very little.
At any rate, if the city council passes the measure, I'm sure terrorists looking to circumvent the Patriot Act will appreciate the beacon of freedom so strategically placed between Boston and New York — and with such fantastic scenery. While not related except superficially, the report reminded me that the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing were caught in my Jersey shore hangout: Wildwood.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 05:52 PM EST
How to Compete
I've always been a bit incredulous — and jealous — of those creative types who claim to dream their material. How simple, I pine. Wake up and the thing is right there... done for you. I'm sure that unfairly cuts out a good helping of wakeful talent, but that's the impression that I get, and it's one that Lileks does very little to dispel in today's fantastic Bleat:
Right before I woke up I dreamed I had an assignment: write a bad feature story in the style of the New York Times. When I woke I had the last sentence still in my head; I stumbled next door to the studio, woke up the Mac, and typed this sentence:
Over in the field, a hound was hunched over excreting a "striver," the local's term for the hard, elegantly tapered stools for which the wild dogs are renowned.
He dreams in perfectly crafted wordplay! Me, if I told people about the things I dream, I think I might frighten off a few readers, and some might return with giant butterfly nets.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:45 PM EST
I Always Wondered Where My Mandibula Was
If you grew up in the 80s, don't click this link, unless you've some time to spare. There, you'll find streaming video of dozens of 80s commercials, from Masters of the Universe to Big League Chew to Transformers to California Raisins to New Kids on the Block dolls to Bonkers to the Encyclopedia Britannica commercial from which I took the title to this post.
I think I've mentioned this before, but one 80s video that I'd love to find is a cartoon that HBO ran between movies when it had a block of time. The premise of the short movie was that the videogame Space Invaders came to life and all of the pinball machine characters emerged to stop them. I don't even know what it was called.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:10 AM EST
The Redwood Review Poem of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:45 AM EST
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Is the World on Vacation?
Folks, I'm truly sorry, but I've visited all of my usual sources and then some and have found nothing that I feel compelled to post — mostly because I've seen nothing to which I feel I could add nor anything important that isn't being noted in places more heavily trafficked than my little blog.
But the search gave me a thought: any of my published books would provide you with plenty of material for these lulls in Dust in the Light posts.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:44 PM EST
Songs You Should Know 05/27/03
The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Starlight Ship" by You. The first time I heard this song, I was driving home past the beaches in Newport, RI, on a very hot and humid summer day. Well, with the cold dampness that has characterized my region for the past week, I needed a reminder.
"Starlight Ship" You, Alternative Rock
Stream (HiFi)Download
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:12 PM EST
Monday, May 26, 2003
There Must Be a Word for This
I know there's got to be a word for the quality of being susceptible, in mood, to the weather. Last week was a great week, by the standards of my life. After a number of days of rain and cloudiness and coldness, with very little by way of relief predicted, however, my mood has deteriorated into a lack of motivation, and I've been finding it difficult to get riled about stuff.
Anyway, that's my excuse for light blogging. Tomorrow's a teaching day — since my school doesn't get out until relatively late in the season — but there will be posts at some point... promise.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:24 PM EST
Just Thinking 05/26/03
My Just Thinking column for this week is "The Year of the Ring," about finding the time to read — in this case, The Lord of the Rings — and allowing a book to interweave itself with our lives.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:18 PM EST
Time Flies By
Lane Core's Blog from the Core is a year old today. So much of the blog world is populated with blog-only pages that it's refreshing when a blog is just a component of a larger site — in this case, The View from the Core — with room to explore such less-fleeting content as poetry, pictures, columns, and links.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 04:00 PM EST
Sunday, May 25, 2003
Go On 'n' Get a Smile
I meant to blog this the other day, but was sidetracked for the very reasons that I meant to blog it. Victor Lams has put together a blog musical scene that's sure to make you smile. I've already written what I'm somewhat presumptuously calling "Scene 2: The #1 Hit" (which is what sidetracked me) and will record and film it in the near future (i.e., within a month or so).
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:48 PM EST
Saturday, May 24, 2003
The Left Congeals with Terrorism
Instapundit links to an interesting article by Jonathan Rauch. The whole piece is worth reading, but this paragraph quoting James F. Moore, of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, stands out:
"As the United States government becomes more belligerent in using its power in the world, many people are longing for a 'second superpower' that can keep the U.S. in check," writes James F. Moore, of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, in an article that he posted online. The newly energized Left is just such a force, he argues. True, "the second superpower is not currently able to match the first. On the other hand, the situation may be more promising than we realize. Most important is that the establishment of international institutions and international rule of law has created a venue in which the second superpower can join with sympathetic nations to successfully confront the United States."
Back in March, I noted a Washington Post article that is relevant to this passage for two reasons. The first is that it reports that the activists had begun organizing immediately after September 11, before any U.S. response had been suggested. The second is that activist organizations were planning (in March of this year) to employ terroristic tactics to disrupt the U.S. war in Iraq.
While, up to now, instinctive dislike of the United States and devotion to the religion of multiculturalism aligned the Western left loosely with Islamic radicals, the common cause between the two groups seems to be congealing. Not only is the common cause bringing about a confluence of purpose, the organization of this "second superpower" mirrors that of al Qaeda. It isn't a nation or collection of nations, but a loose association of like-minded groups working alongside sympathetic regimes.
Whether fortunately or unfortunately, the left also has a delusion akin to visions of the "Arab street" rising up with the help of Allah and overthrowing the infidels. Consider this from public radio host Christopher Lydon:
Into the confusion I throw out the perhaps insanely cheerful thought that this could be the war to end war. Meaning that the neo-con adventurers have decisively lost the world's vote on the war and will lose the peace, no matter how long or brutal the battle of Baghdad. More particularly: that the sole superpower has met its adversary for the future in the stubborn, unintimidated, and close to universal peace movement that has found its medium on the Web.
When I first spotted this, I noted that Lydon was only able to believe this because he had insulated himself within a liberal niche of the Internet. As I wrote, "The story of the Internet has been one of putting the lie to such wishful-thinking, everybody-I-know-voted-for-Gore delusion as the 'close to universal peace movement.'" When Lydon wondered "how many divisions has the Internet," he didn't mean distinct parts; he meant "divisions" in a military sense, as if the whole realm belonged to his ideology.
Apart from this miscalculation, Lydon was offering more justification for the suggestion that the left intends to align militarily (or terroristically) with the Islamists and their allies. However, the perspective of a couple months later shows that neither the Iraqi military's nor the cyber-leftists' divisions were able to significantly hinder the United States and its allies. In large part, this is because they both — as well as the broader terrorist network — overestimate their popular support.
Like Islamic radicalism, "neoleftism," as Rauch calls it, cannot win. But it is going to be damned dangerous until it is thoroughly defeated.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:25 AM EST
Friday, May 23, 2003
Ideology Creep
It occurred to me that folks might wander their way to this blog as a result of the aforementioned attention gained by the Redwood Review. In the event that such is the case, I thought it prudent to note that the ideology evident in this blog in no way influences the content of the review, nor do I make any money directly from the publication of the review.
(Straddling the creative and political worlds, as I do, it oughtn't be surprising that among my biggest fears is that those opposed to my politics will include others with whom I associate creatively in their reaction to me. Such is human nature, I suppose.)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 04:04 PM EST
A Little Attention for the Redwood Review
Sheila Lennon was kind enough to link to the Redwood Review pages. The post is specifically mentioned on the Providence Journal's homepage, too. It's already helping us to raise money for the next edition. Thanks, Sheila!
Incidentally, I've created a store page specifically for the 2003 edition, including a list of the pieces in the book.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:02 PM EST
Salam Pax's Career on the Upswing
Sheila Lennon has more on Salam Pax, including a link to his new site. It's actually the site of a budding online Iraqi news service, but his is most of the native content. I'm leaning toward the suggestion that he was a ruling-class insider without specific "duties" to the Hussein regime. He doesn't shy from mentioning, for example, the lists of Saddam's victims going up in every town, but there's always that familiar resonance of blame-America-ism.
The site hosting his pictures doesn't help. Now that the war is over and better days are on their way, some in Iraq are beginning to sound a lot like Western naysayers have for quite some time on certain issues — complaining of depleted uranium used in 1991 and intellectuals' having to sell their libraries because of the sanctions. Consider this picture:
Of course, the U.S. can't be expected to pay the entire citizenry of Iraq as well as it pays its own soldiers. It's also true that protecting the oil industry's infrastructure will expedite the nation's return to self-sufficiency.
Some stories in press around the world make it seem almost as if the war never happened. If that point of view continues to dominate sources of information, it could be merely a matter of months until the world beyond Iraq's borders barely remembers Saddam Hussein himself.
Thus does the United States become the sole actor in the world — to blame for not solving every global problem instantaneously and criticized for beginning the attempt.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:53 PM EST
Silencing the Opposition
I'll expect Senator Daschle's hand-wringing about this any time now:
Anyone who writes critically about [Howard] Dean can expect his copy to be chewed up by this army of zealous Dean Internet scribes. When I wrote a piece recently that contained a few paragraphs about Dean, a member of the Dean2004 blog team filed an almost 2,000-word entry slicing my article up into sections with labels such as "true," "false," "inadvertently true," and "foolish." Not content with this, the Dean blogosphere recently established a rapid-reaction team called the Dean Defense Forces (DDF)—an e-mail list of hard-core Dean supporters who swiftly push back with e-mails, letters to the editor, blog entries, and phone calls against anyone spreading anti-Dean sentiments. "When he gets attacked, we'll respond," pledges the DDF's organizer, Matthew Singer, a 20-year-old college student in Montana who once blogged about Dean on his own site, Left in the West.
I guess it's not so bad, as long as they don't criticize any Hollywoodites or refuse to buy the Dixie Chicks' album, but this lidless eye effort must be something new. Not too long ago, that intolerant, closed-minded megalomaniac from Vermont boasted of ignoring the ideas of half of our nation:
Dean isn't surprised by the Trent Lott scandal. The Republican Party is fundamentally hostile to blacks and Hispanics, he says, riddled as it is with ''institutional racism.'' It's also full of liars. ''I find the Republican Party pretty bankrupt intellectually,'' Dean says, adding that he doesn't read anything written by conservatives. Nothing? ''No.'' Are there any conservatives who are intellectually honest? ''I don't think so. I can't think of any.'' He sounds cheery as he says this.
I tried to fisk a Dean speech a while back. Couldn't do it... not a word out of the guy's mouth made honest sense. (If Dean is elected, will I still be able to write such things without fearing for my life?)
(via Instapundit)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:11 PM EST
This Is Peculiar
Take a look at this quotation from a story about the Yale bombing:
FBI agents investigating the explosion of what they believe was a pipe bomb at Yale University's law school were showing students a sketch of a man they want to identify.
The sketch is of a man in his 20s or 30s with a round face and glasses, a law student said Thursday on the condition of anonymity. The student refused to say what race the man in the sketch appeared to be.
Well, I suppose we can assume right off the bat that it isn't a white guy. But isn't it odd that the student withheld that part of the description? Didn't somebody once dream of a day when skin color would not be considered any differently than eye color? Well, it ain't here yet.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:49 PM EST
Reason to Relax About Genetic Engineering
Charles Murtaugh (who never got around to rebutting my response to his comments about abortion, by the way) gives reason not to stay up at night worrying about the horrors of genetic engineering of humans:
When the trait is complex, and the genetics are complex, their interaction may well never be unraveled. Nor is this problem confined to human genetics. Consider a recent Nature Neuroscience paper on mouse behavior, by Darlene Francis and colleagues. They were studying two inbred strains of lab mice that exhibit consistent and specific differences in particular behaviors, such as performance in a maze navigation test. The conventional approach, consistent with the genetic determinism prevalent in the human genetics debate, would be to interbreed the strains, and use genetic mapping to fish out and isolate the genes responsible for the apparently heritable differences.
Francis et al. took a very different approach, actually transferring embryos of one strain to the womb of the other and asking which influence predominated, that of the genetic mother's DNA or the birth mother's environment. Remarkably, they found that the differences in adult behavior correlated not with their genes but with the womb in which they underwent fetal development.
Murtaugh sees the problem with the exaggerated claims and fears being their repressive force on genetic engineering policies now. For my part, I'm glad that the horrible stuff is in the far, far distant future, if it is in the future at all, but I still intend to scrutinize each policy when I come across it on its own merits... and with an eye toward what horrors it might expedite.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:45 PM EST
Always on the Lookout for Money and Power
Leave it to a U.S. Senator to propose this:
Lawmakers, antispam activists, and even a self-professed spammer are mulling several methods for canning spam, from imposing a small charge for sending e-mail to an international spam treaty.
Congress should impose a small charge for each piece of e-mail sent, one senator told the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee at a hearing Wednesday.
"I think it's worth looking at some very, very small charge for every e-mail sent, so small that it would not be onerous for an individual or business that has regular (e-mail) use, but it would be a deterrent for those who are sending millions and even billions of these e-mails," said Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota).
I think what bothers me most is the impression that many politicians are ever vigilant for any issue that will allow them to stick their fingers into new areas. Oh, is spam an annoyance? Well, then, I guess I'll have to open that email door and see what I can do. Some seek the revenue; some seek merely power. Witness the exaggeration of Chucky Schumer (D-New York) when he proposed an international treaty:
"What was a simple annoyance last year has become a major concern this year and could cripple one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century next year if nothing is done," said Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who proposed an international spam treaty.
Cripple one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century! Is he kidding? The annoyance of spam is nothing compared to the annoyance that government will be once it's involved. For one thing, I'm not keen on the idea of paying extra for my email services — even paying extra for goods and services with prices raised to cover new costs to businesses — just on the dubious hope that I'll no longer have to click "Delete" a dozen or so times a day.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:34 PM EST
The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:48 AM EST
Thursday, May 22, 2003
A Study in News Bias
The ways in which even supposedly objective news reports can spin the news doesn't get any more obvious than this.
Exhibit A, "Atkins Diet May Be No Better Than Just Cutting Fat" (Reuters):
Shunning starchy foods in favor of meat and fat helps obese people shed some weight faster than a standard low-fat diet, but over time there may not be a big difference, researchers said on Wednesday.
Two studies appeared to confirm some of what the late Dr. Robert Atkins preached for decades until his death last month: that carbohydrates, a major energy source, cause weight gain.
In one six-month study, obese volunteers on the low-carbohydrate, high-fat and high-protein Atkins diet lost 13 pounds versus four pounds for obese people on a low-fat diet.
In a second year-long study, obese people on the Atkins diet lost nearly 10 pounds more after six months than volunteers on a conventional diet. But by the end of the year, the differences between the two groups were not significant, suggesting the Atkins diet is no better at helping fat people shed pounds than traditional weight-loss regimens.
Exhibit B, "Atkins Diet Bolstered by Two New Studies" (AP):
A month after Dr. Robert C. Atkins' death, his much-ridiculed diet has received its most powerful scientific support yet: Two studies in one of medicine's most distinguished journals show it really does help people lose weight faster without raising their cholesterol.
The research, in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, found that people on the high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet lose twice as much weight over six months as those on the standard low-fat diet recommended by most major health organizations.
However, one of the studies found that the Atkins dieters regain much of the weight by the end of one year.
Now, I'm not going to say which view I take — I would be a biased commentator, given that I'm on a loose version of the Atkins diet, myself — but the AP is the only one that relays usable amounts of the actual numbers (while Reuters apparently used its numbers quota to call Americans fat):
The 132 men and women in the VA study started out weighing an average of 286 pounds. After six months, those on the Atkins diet had lost an average of 12.8 pounds, those on the low-fat diet 4.2.
The other study involved 63 participants who weighed an average of 217 pounds at the start. After six months, the Atkins group lost 15.4 pounds, the group on the standard diet 7.
But at the end of a year, the Atkins dieters had regained about a third of the weight. Their net loss averaged 9.7 pounds. The low-fat dieters had regained about one-fifth of the weight, for a net loss of 5.5 pounds.
Unfortunately, although it is mentioned that 40% dropped out of each study, no data is given for the dropout rate for each group (low-fat v. Atkins), except that they were about equivalent, or the last known weight of the quitters. That could make a huge difference if, say, many of the dropouts from the low-fat regimen quit because they were gaining all of their weight back and couldn't keep with it while Atkins dieters, who were almost down to 200 lbs at six months, quit when they had lost enough weight that they didn't want to keep with the stringent restrictions. It's also important to note that, in the less-Atkins-friendly study, a 40% dropout rate leaves the study with about 17 people on each diet.
(thanks to the folks at Fark for finding both articles)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:15 PM EST
Would Somebody Take Away This Guy's Shovel?
Chiraq is planning to throw around his country's weight in the only forum in which his country has weight: international schmooze fests:
President Chirac is preparing to embarrass President Bush at the forthcoming G8 summit in France by laying out an agenda heavy on environmental, development and economic issues and light on the fight against terrorism. ...
He made clear yesterday that, despite the debacle over Iraq, he is clinging to his vision of a global balance of powers, with France as an alternative to America.
That's a balance of powers? Hey, I know that he's gotta do what he thinks is best for his country, but he's insane if he thinks that this is it. I heard tonight on Fox News that Chiraq is popular for the first time in his political career. A popular megalomaniac can be a dangerous thing.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:40 PM EST
St. Anselm, Millman, and Derbyshire
John Derbyshire threw off my entire schedule by starting a discussion of St. Anselm's "Proof of God's Existence." He forced me to send the following note when he posted what was apparently an email from blogger Noah Millman:
Sorry to say it, Noah, but I think you missed Anselm's point through an inadvertent sleight of hand of your own.
I don't know much about Anselm or his specific claims (i.e., context) for this proof, but it seems to me a bit of a rhetorical trap, yes, but more of an application of a definition: "God is the greatest thing that it is possible to conceive as being real." Your objections fall into the trap by failing to address the definition.
Proof and disproof are both impossible to prove in the realm of the inconceivable. You slide off the mark when you write, "to qualify as the greatest thing that I can conceive, the thing must actually exist." Not true. To qualify as the greatest thing that you can conceive, you must be able to conceive of its actually existing... not as an intellectual argument ("sure, I could have a six-fingered hand"), but as a felt surety ("I have a five-fingered hand"). It makes no sense for you to discuss that of which you cannot conceive. Take your Marshmallow Man: I'll go out on a limb and assume that you don't truly believe it's possible that such a thing is real. However, if you do and were to defend the position, you'd have to expand your conception of it — bigger, invisible, everywhere at once. Pretty soon, your Marshmallow Man begins to look a lot like God.
The recourse to your consciousness, far from superfluous, is the heart of the matter. A typical atheist argument against God is that our lives do not place us in a state of perpetual bliss. But we have knowledge of our lives as they are, so the atheists aren't disproving God; rather their statement is akin to: "He is not what He is not." Of course. To be sure, many faithful believe that God offers such a reality in Heaven, but this is additional to the yes/no question of His existence. (If there is such a Heaven, then those people conceived of God correctly; if there is not, then they did not.)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:38 PM EST
The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:32 AM EST
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Edifying Religious History Posts
Mark Shea ("Lane Core Demonstrates the Truth of the Old Adage") and Lane Core do the good work of debunking some anti-Catholic Protestant mythology (made topical by an atheist, as it happens). What was it I was saying about history being a lot less reliable than we like to assume?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:17 PM EST
Monk Saves the Day
How come this isn't national news?
A Texas monk is being hailed as a hero Wednesday after saving a female police officer's life during a struggle for control of her gun, according to a Local 6 News report.
There's even video!
(via Mark Shea)
ADDENDUM:
Boy, am I proud of myself for resisting the urge to compare this incident with a certain international dispute involving the use of force to disarm a dangerous man...No Comments (click to link)
Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:06 PM EST
Covering Up the Diversity Scam
Dillon, thinking that his fellow law-school students should see the data, on May 6 wrote a cover note and distributed copies of the material by putting them in envelopes and stuffing 500-some student mailboxes. Very few of his fellow law students, however, got their mail. Shortly after Dillon distributed his packet, someone went through the mailboxes, seized the envelopes, and made off with them.
The data about which Peter Wood writes is from the University of Indiana Law School's "diversity" program. Two shocking highlights: apparently, race is a sufficiently important attribute to justify equating LSAT scores in the 30th percentile among blacks with scores in the 80th percentile for whites; race is also sufficient justification to move an applicant ahead approximately 330 spaces in the line.
"Affirmative action" is just one of those issues that seems built almost entirely upon a foundation of ideological lies.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:02 PM EST
The Redwood Review Poem of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:48 AM EST
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Simply Amazing in the Middle East
I don't have much to offer about this by way of insight, but I wanted to post it because it is simply amazing:
Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated Tuesday after a five-day Israeli invasion damaged farms and buildings, but in a rare twist, their wrath was directed at Palestinian militants for inviting the attack by firing rockets from their property.
Two hours after Israeli troops left, about 600 angry residents of the town of 35,000 took to the streets in a spontaneous protest, complaining that the militants had caused Israel to destroy 15 houses and uproot thousands of olive, citrus and date palm trees. It was a rare outburst; most Palestinian demonstrations are aimed at Israel.
The protesters blocked a main road with trash cans, rocks and burning tires in a show of outrage against the militants. Most of the rockets are launched at towns inside Israel by members of the militant Islamic movement, Hamas.
"They (the militants) claim they are heroes," said Mohammed Zaaneen, 30, a farmer, as he carried rocks into the street. "They brought us only destruction and made us homeless. They used our farms, our houses and our children ... to hide."
I know those who disagree with me on the broader issue will disagree about this, but such wonderful surprises were a predictable outcome of our action in Iraq. That war, with or without WMDs, saved countless lives for years to come. How could that not be just?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:41 PM EST
Booing the Bums Off the Stage
Jonah Goldberg doesn't think that this should have happened:
New York Times reporter Chris Hedges was booed off the stage Saturday at Rockford College's graduation because he gave an antiwar speech.
Two days later, graduates and family members, envisioning a "go out and make your mark" send-off, are still reeling. ...
Hedges began his abbreviated 18-minute speech comparing United States' policy in Iraq to piranhas and a tyranny over the weak. His microphone was unplugged within three minutes.
Here's my email to Jonah:
Putting aside that the Hedges incident was hardly "we," considering that the odds of such numbers of vociferously vocal college graduation goers being conservative are pretty low, it wasn't merely a scheduled speech. A campus group that calls David Horowitz midyear specifically based on his politics calls him to speak about political issues, and those who don't want to go don't have to. A graduation is an entirely different matter; it's a celebration for those graduating and ought not to be taken as an opportunity for a speaker to spit on a significant portion of the audience for ideological reasons — whether those spit upon are conservative or liberal.
Moreover, a speech given on campus over the course of the year leaves opportunity for debate as well as the extension of invitations to countering voices. This was a graduation; there would never be such opportunities. My view is that it'll take dramatic expressions of disapproval to hinder the misplaced ambitions of those who would misappropriate a graduation platform. That "we" abide by a higher definition of fairness is the very reason that such idiots (see also Donohue) feel free to go as far as they do, and there ought to be limits.
Before I'd sent this, Jonah had apparently received a surprising degree of response, and clarified, offering this nugget of indication why folks "in the biz" often seem as if they see themselves as opposing sides in a game rather than supporters of mutually exclusive views of how the society ought to be ordered:
But he was invited to speak and therefor he should be allowed to do that. Maybe I've spoken to enough leftwing audiences where people have tried to shout me down that I'm particularly thin-skinned about this sort of thing.
(Jonah later posted some emails of varying views.)
ADDENDUM:
Here's the audio of the entire speech. I'm the only one awake in a tiny house, so I couldn't turn it up loudly enough to hear much of what was going on in the background, but I'm definitely going to give it a listen tomorrow. There wasn't so much as a word in it to acknowledge what the event was meant to celebrate or whose day it was.The first time Hedges was cut off, President Pribbenow made an announcement about listening to other views, and a female shouted out something about letting Hedges ruin their graduation. Later, when asked to wrap it up, Hedges protested, "I'm not finished yet." When it was over, somebody who sounded as if he was on the stage spoke angrily about how Dr. So-and-So would "never have allowed this." Meanwhile, in the audience, two different male voices expressed related opinions with different implications: "Go back to France!" and "You owe us an apology!"
By the way, it was "pariahs," not "piranhas."
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:35 PM EST
An Easy Dream to Interpret
Last night, I dreamt one of the most straightforwardly significant dreams that I've had in a while. I was a used-car salesman, and the central anxiety of the plot was that my supervisor, a female libertarian blogger in the dream (my vaguely libertarian boss a few years ago, in life), simply did not think that I was a very good writer.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:34 PM EST
The State of the Timshel
I've discovered, lately, that I'm not as much of a workaholic as I've thought. It's not work with which I'm obsessed, but progress. When the progress made doesn't reflect the work done, something's got to give, so I'm making plans and wanted to keep you apprised. In short, I'm hoping to finagle some life into my life.
Short Term
Over the next month or so, the only real difference will be that I'm going to begin front-loading my day with the tasks that I have to get done. Up to now, I've been trying to get my Internet reading and blogging done during my daughter's morning nap and my lunch. Henceforth, I will continue to read and post periodically during short breaks from working, but the bulk of posting (and certainly the lengthy, thoroughly considered, and time-consuming entries) will begin appearing later in the day.Long Term
During the summer, while my wife is on that unbelievable teacher's vacation, I'm going to throw most of my effort behind getting some things done around the Web site, such as reorganization, some Flash pages, and more artist links, so that I can take my "online presence" for granted for a bit by the time fall rolls around. I'm also planning to use this time to really make a push for progress in my non-day-job endeavors. If I can find a way to derive some kind of income from them, wonderful. If not, then come fall, I'll likely look for a full-time job, or more part-time work.I feel like I'm heading into a period during which my decisions are going to have huge repercussions. And I'd be lying if I claimed not to be deathly afraid that I'm going to be forced to decide to give up on many pursuits that I desperately feel compelled to do. I'm taking a risk in asking my wife not to work in order to relieve me of babysitting duties, and we're likely going to go from scraping by to having to choose which bills to pay for two months. I don't know, however, what will or will not happen over the next quarter year, so I'm trying not to concern myself about it too much. Of course, any assistance that you can offer — from financial support (e.g., by buying books) to advice to encouragement — would be extremely helpful.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:26 PM EST
Songs You Should Know 05/20/03
"Keychain" Dan Lipton, Pop/Rock
Stream (HiFi)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:04 PM EST
Monday, May 19, 2003
Filing the Internecine Debates of the Other Side
This essay by Steven Den Beste is worth bookmarking for reference during future debates with atheists. In it, Den Beste — an atheist himself — makes the case for why his atheism is ultimately a matter of faith.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:53 PM EST
Where Are the Weapons? Well, Duh.
Washington Post writer Barton Gellman gives evidence of his flare for the dramatic in the opening paragraphs of his article "Odyssey of Frustration: In Search for Weapons, Army Team Finds Vacuum Cleaners":
For once the team found a building intact.
The low stucco structure, one of several walled off from the street, was the 17th target of the war for Army Lt. Col. Charles Allison and the special weapons hunters under his command. Heavy crossbars sealed the doors. That, at least, was encouraging. There would not have been much left to lock if looters got here first.
U.S. intelligence called this place "Possible SSO Facility Al Hayat," after the Special Security Organization of President Saddam Hussein. It ranked No. 26 on a U.S. Central Command priority search list. Allison's team pulled up in six Humvees, not long before noon on May 1, to scout for biological and chemical arms.
"Go get the breach kit," ordered Army Maj. Kenneth Deal, second in command. A soldier returned with bolt cutters, a crowbar and a sledgehammer. Deal carried a digital camera. Army Sgt. 1st Class Will T. Smith Jr. and Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Shawn Anderson wielded chemical sensors that looked like oversized power drills.
Smashing padlocks and deadbolts, the men checked for booby traps as they felt their way by flashlight from room to room. They reached a murky stone passage, smelling of mold. Cement covered its windows. Steel doors, a dull orange, lined the hall.
Interrogation cells? Munitions vaults?
One last bolt snapped. The door creaked open and Deal stepped through. There, in the innermost chamber, he found a cache of vacuum cleaners.
At first, this opening brought to mind a scene from the old inspection days of UNSCOM during which the Iraqis toyed with inspectors by filling an empty building with men claiming to be marriage registrars. However, reading down a bit (try: almost to the end) I discovered that the team about Gellman is writing didn't expect there to be much in that building:
Allison pulled Velasquez aside. Deal took his commander's place at the computer. He began to read about "Possible SSO Facility Al Hayat" -- where, the next day, he would encounter the vacuum cleaners. He frowned.
"Is it a WMD facility?" Allison asked. "No, sir, the description is not WMD at all," Deal said. "Likely abandoned after [1998]. May be used by high ranking officials. Yadda yadda yadda. This is going to be a waste of time."
Folks, this is how a storyline is imposed, unavoidably influenced by the writer's bias. In contrast, here are the points that I (perhaps subjectively) find objectively most important:
Collectively, the conversations portrayed a hunt without the means, so far, to flush its quarry. Team 3 was sent to some facilities without being briefed on inventories already known from years of U.N. inspections. At other sites, the team could not work effectively for lack of Arabic language skills. In a repository for disabled nuclear equipment, Allison and his inspectors had to labor side by side with looters too numerous to evict. More often, the looters had come and gone. Twice, the team found signs of machinery disassembled and expertly removed. ...
Some of the damage appeared to be calculated, hinting at another explanation for the frustrated weapons hunt. Outside an alternative energy lab, Deal said he found computers and paper file boxes arranged in a stack and burned. "Looters are stealing computers," he said. "Why would they burn them?"
In a biology lab, the team found broken glassware and supplies but only bare mounts where work tables and ventilation hoods had been. "There's an obvious difference between looting and professional removal," Deal said.
I suppose loose screws and angle brackets with which equipment was once secured are not as entertaining as a weapons team finding a stockpile of Dirt Devils. And what do we turn to the major newspapers for unless for entertainment. However, enough of these little misapplications of emphasis are liable to persuade people to conclusions that simply aren't justified.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:49 PM EST
Stopping the Tide of Guns
I don't concern myself much with the debate over guns. Frankly, I see merit to all sides (where they are reasonable enough to impart merit to their reasoning), and they are at such an equilibrium that I don't feel my somewhat disinterested voice is necessary. However, I couldn't help but point out that non-automatic weapons could be used just as easily in this scenario, which Mark Shea put forward last week as a hypothetical to justify taking automatic and semiautomatic weapons from all non-soldiers:
I am, instead, a realist with a moderate capacity to envisage a team of, oh... let's say, 19 Wahoobi Bronze age thugs, armed with fully automatic AK-47s and with full battle armor on. These thugs open fire on cars at the south end of the I-5 Lake Union bridge here in Seattle during morning rush hour. Instant traffic jam (as if there wasn't one already). They then slaughter some of the drivers in the northbound lanes and create a traffic jam making it impossible for cops to get to them except by helicopter. Five marksmen are positioned to do what they did so effectively in Afghanistan to the Soviets: blow any helicopters out of the sky. Meanwhile the remaining 15 thugs run down I-5 between parked cars, killing everybody in each car at their leisure. Hundreds and hundreds are killed. One heroic NRA member was packing heat and bravely killed a couple of the bastards. However, he was gunned down by the other thirteen. Eventually some jets are scrambled from McChord AFB in Tacoma and the SOBs are killed (along with a few more drivers as collateral damage). The freeways are blocked for a day or so as they haul away cars and bodies. Seattle's economy tanks as people decide they don't want jobs that involve taking them over the Lake Union Bridge more often than need be.
Two related arguments that I made somewhere on Mark's site were that guns were not as difficult to make as weapons of mass destruction and that, if they were still made for soldiers, anybody with the terrorists' resources and will to do harm would surely find them. As it happens, the Saudi National Guard has just proven me right on the latter point. We can also expect that certain military personnel of much more civilized countries would have a price at which setting up an illicit trade would seem profitable and that other countries are even less inclined to hinder the flow of guns to terrorists than the Saudis are (at least in public view).
Coincidentally, I also came across this, from a reader email posted in the Corner:
Longarms are the weapons most useful for hunting, for home defense, and for militia service if--as it is no longer impossible to contemplate--a terrorist organization manages to create an emergency on a scale such that the militia would need to be raised. They are not useful for crime as a rule, though when they are used for crime their deadly nature does take a toll on serving policemen. As a rational matter, though, the VPC's position desires the banning or tight regulation of the least criminally-useful class of firearm: that is to say, it is a very far reaching proposal indeed.
Mark's scenario may not rise to the level of requiring the raising of a militia, but I'm sure that lone "heroic NRA member" wouldn't have minded some help.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:25 PM EST
Monday Apologies
Sorry for the dearth of posts today. I've been very busy, and was in a... well... less-than-garrulous-and-chipper mood for most of it.
I do have some posts that I intend to get up before I head to bed, however.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:46 PM EST
Just Thinking 05/19/03
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:20 PM EST
Sunday, May 18, 2003
Famous People Born on May 18
The following are a handful of famous people born on this day (in no particular order):
Pope John Paul II
Perry Como
Big Joe Turner
Frank Capra
Bertrand Russell
Chow Yun-Fat
George Strait
Reggie Jacksonand...
Me!
To celebrate my birthday, why not go ahead and buy yourself a gift?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:18 PM EST
Saturday, May 17, 2003
We Are the Cusp
Lane Core points out Donald Luskin's view of the advantages of getting information from blogs. The reasons themselves are certainly worth reading and passing along among bloggers and blog readers, but here's the part that struck me:
The president of the Frank Russell Company, who introduced me, didn't know what a "blog" is -- and neither did anyone else at my table, which included one of the most senior faculty member of Stanford University (where the meeting was held), the manager of the world's largest corporate pension fund, and the manager of one of America's largest foundation endowments. When I asked for a show of hands among the 100 or so executives present for anyone who knew what a "blog" is, less than a dozen were raised.
My friends, if blogging is the next killer app of the Internet -- or more important, if it is a fundamental change-the-world innovation in media and journalism, then we have our work cut out for us, and we have our opportunity. We are like the cobblers who have discovered the land where no one wears shoes -- yet.
Personally, I don't think we have to do much work. As long as we keep blogging and keep cultivating a blog etiquette (including such good-manners practices as citing sources), I think blogs will spread based purely on the merits of the medium. Blogs are just now beginning to be cited within print publications (and their online versions), having moved through the novelty-subject-of-the-news-story phase and into the news-and-opinion-source phase.
The beauty of being here, now, is that the migration is just beginning to catch on, and those who've managed to stake out a bit of ground in the wilds of the blog frontier will be those to whom newcomers look while establishing their own estates.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:59 AM EST
Friday, May 16, 2003
Speaking of Drugging Ourselves into Accepting Our Lives
Shiela Lennon points to a Salon article describing the extent of mood-altering drug use in New York. That's not "recreational" drugs, but "therapeutic."
I had a period during which driving 180 miles a day to and from work in a gray cubicle gave me what could probably fit in some newfangled "disorder" category or other. Without actually seeing me, a local doctor put me immediately on Paxil, even though the drug takes weeks to begin working. I was off it before the bottle was done, because I am adamantly against medicating myself into accepting my life.
I got some therapy, with a surprising emphasis on spirituality, and started going to church. All these designer drugs are just covers. It is simply wrong — dangerous and inhuman — to decide what human nature ought to be based on our necessarily limited view of reality and manipulate ourselves to fit some vision of utopia.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:01 PM EST
Dangerous Points of View: It's Natural
Something about this article worries me like a low rumble off toward the horizon:
Although sex offenders who prey on children are demonized by society, psychiatrists who treat them say up to 3% of Canadians are sexually drawn to children.
However, most of these pedophiles do not act on their sexual fantasies. Those who do mostly engage in exhibitionism, masturbation or gentle fondling of the child.
So, despite society's unjust demonization of them, pedophiles are more common than might be expected, and hey, most of them don't do anything about it... or anything that bad.
"Fortunately, the individuals who have pedophilia ... that are likely to act out and seriously harm a child are very rare," said John Bradford, clinical director of forensic psychiatry and the sexual behaviours clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. ...
"In fact, in statistical terms, if you look at children that are killed, a parent is more likely to kill a child than a pedophile is going to kill a child," said Dr. Bradford, who has assessed such notorious sexual offenders as Paul Bernardo.
Apart from jaw-droppingly contrived statistics with terribly offensive implications, the danger that I see in this is that social trends seem to follow stages. Something that begins as reviled moves into the phase of "understanding," usually with an explanation for the behavior that diminishes the force of social and psychological blocks to that behavior. ("I'm convinced there's a biological component to it," Dr. Bradford said.) This shift in perspective — from "acting on this impulse would make me bad" to "I was not strong enough to resist my natural inclination to act on this impulse" — increases the frequency (individually and socially) of the behavior. In time, the necessity for that unbearable demand for "strength" comes into question.
Especially if, you know, it's only "gentle fondling."
To be fair, the article doesn't whitewash the horrors of what might be termed "pedophilia gone bad." However, it does end with the explanation that drugs — even though pedophiles are not, cannot be, made to take them when out of direct government oversight — are an effective treatment. Thus are powerful social/cultural solutions to problems that are problems discarded for the friendlier, more "understanding" pill, all while culpability for action moves further from the individual.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:46 PM EST
The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:51 AM EST
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Objectivism: My Opinion Is Objective Truth
I've stopped reading The Light of Reason because Arthur Silber's appeals to "objective and rational" thought came to strike me as mere habillements that conveniently fit the figure of his beliefs. Today, Instapundit led me to a post in which Silber blames the archetypal white Christian conservative Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum for this:
Shakia and four female friends, ages 15 to 17 [!!!], had taken a PATH train to Newark from Greenwich Village, where they had been hanging out late Saturday night, Glenn said.
At around 3:30 a.m., two men drove up in a white station wagon and made sexual overtures, cops said.
"The men became angry when the girls weren't receptive," Glenn said.
The enraged men set upon the group, and Shakia was fatally stabbed during the melee, cops said.
Given her name and my knowledge of the city in question, as well as the fact that the news report doesn't offer any description of the assailants, I'd say it would be relatively safe to suggest that the men were black. It's obvious that they weren't social conservatives. So what's the connection?
Well, whether or not it was the truth, whether or not it was the statement within a longer altercation that set off the men, as part of not being "receptive," the girls claimed to be lesbians, and therefore, Silber feels he's justified in declaring:
All of us, but particularly people in public life, have an obligation to speak and act responsibly when dealing with others. When someone like Santorum voices his views about homosexuality, it contributes, to whatever degree, to a cultural atmosphere which regards gays and lesbians as being of less worth than heterosexuals. I don't care how others might try to parse and justify his words, and those offered by others with similar views. The fact of the matter is that such statements diminish the value and worth of gay people, and this inevitable result simply cannot be avoided.
And, to whatever small or large degree, such irresponsible and uninformed statements can lead, however indirectly, to tragedies like this one. These hoodlums might have acted in this way even without all the negative messages about gays and lesbians carried constantly in our culture. But then again, they might not have. We'll never know -- and if we are going to err in any direction, why not err in the direction of consideration, and sensitivity, and simple decency and humanity?
In the comments section, Silber tries to explain why this statement isn't just his own mirror image of the view that he so despises in Santorum. Basically (to quote): "The issues are much more complex than that." Here's my (first) comment:
Your assertions notwithstanding, I think you should consider that Scott Harris's statement works in reverse. You've essentially agreed with Santorum that the individual does not live in a social and moral bubble and has responsibilities to the culture. The differences are only in which direction you'd like that culture to go and how you'd prefer that the culture assert itself against the influence.
He, ostensibly, would like to persuade people in individual states to enact laws through the legislature to limit what he sees as socially corrosive sexual norms. You, ostensibly, would like to persuade people to ignore, shout down, and damage the careers of those who vocalize what you see as socially corrosive moral norms.
As a matter of speech leading to violence, his phrasing would require a much less direct route than yours. Purely as a matter of intellectual consistency, he's on much stronger ground than you are.
Commenter Scott Harris had put his finger on my view of Silber's remarks, only in the exact opposite direction:
I'm not sure how Santorum, like Bennett, can be defended by a standard to which he does not adhere. Santorum is a collectivist who believes the conduct of one individual (by what other standard that conduct may be defensible or not) threatens the order of society.
One might say that the responsibility is the killer's alone --- but Santorum et alia never believe any such thing.
The point that this misses is that "conduct" is not "speech," and not only because it isn't Constitutionally protected categorically. I'm not going to go into all of the various indications and manifestations of this difference — ranging from "actions speaking louder than words" and "names will never hurt me" to "the power of the pen" — but it all comes down to a unique dynamic whereby "speech" is a powerful social tool that doesn't directly harm anybody. Perhaps it might be rightly said that, because speech only suggests action, it is important to protect it so society might discuss conduct and assess its consequences before it occurs.
Suffice to say, however, that Arthur Silber, just as he so gleefully declared about Bill Bennett, is a hypocrite. Obviously, one can be a "First Amendment absolutist" and criticize the speech of others in no uncertain terms. However, it crosses the line to declare, in an accusatory tone, that others should watch their tongues because their "speech" can be inflammatory. In Santorum's case, it isn't even a matter of criticizing how he said it, but what he said.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:48 PM EST
Salam Pax: A Mystery for Our Times
The question of Salam Pax's identity is turning out to be quite the interactive mystery. Instapundit's got a bunch of interesting links, the first of which is David Warren's explanation of why he believes Salam to be a Ba'athist.
So far, opinions about his identity seem to range from all-out Iraqi intelligence operative to simply a privileged child of the Ba'athist ruling class doing his best to use the Internet to manipulate the situation in his country according to his own best interests. Neither option follows the general blogosphere impression of the "Iraqi man on the street," merely another average Joe expressing his opinion without any agenda but his own opinion.
An interesting side issue, in the midst of the debate, is the significance of Salam's Western pal Diana Moon. On Junk Yard Blog, she claims that she was responsible for the disappearing information on his blog, which she claims to have deleted to "protect Salam's identity." So where does she fit in to the controversy?
What was that Harrison Ford movie in which the drug-lord's conciliari wooed an American woman for the purposes of inadvertent spying and espionage?
