Surprising Things I Have Seen or Heard

About forty pelicans sit around in the Santa Cruz harbor. Those are birds that migrate south for the winter. Normally, there are only four or five pelicans in the harbor in January. They are welfare types who manage to make a living without fishing. Those forty are more than a month early according to my observational memory. It’s true that at 3 pm, it’s warmer on the beach than it is in the middle of August. That’s because there is neither wind nor fog right now. If these warm days are an effect of global warming, why don’t advocates name them in the “Benefits” column of their ledger? It make me wonder if they are in bad faith. (Just kidding!)

I take my two year-old grand-daughter to the beach often. She is a pretty, vivacious child with dark hair and skin coloration also on the dark side. I know most grand-parents describe their grand-everything in glowing terms but, in this case, I have the photographic documents to prove it. Besides, she has no more genes in common with me than with a zebra (a long story). So, I don’t have much reason to brag stupidly. This child is sociable. She wanders on the beach making friends with other children. She does it pretty well for someone so young. She is not pushy, she smiles a lot, and she shares her toys readily. Well, I would swear little gangs of little blondes snub my golden-skinned grand-daughter with great regularity. Only blondes do this. I don’t know why. I am still thinking. You have to admit there is something about blondes and that it starts early.

Speaking of the same harbor beach. This country is on the ropes economically. Yet the coffee-shop right on the beach has not altered its short winter hours. People come to the beach after work at 4, 5, even 6, to take in the warm air and to watch the great sunsets. Many are hungry, could use a cup of coffee and a scone or two. They find the doors closed. The coffee shop, a pleasant enough small establishment, apparently has a management that is not flexible enough to grab obvious opportunities. I am puzzled. Staying open a couple extra hours and posting this fact on the door does not seem expensive. The shop normally has only one attendant. Is it that difficult to find someone competent to work two hours? In the meantime, the large bar-restaurant next door is thriving; it always thrives; it thrived before and during the worst of the recession. I am not puzzled, I am perplexed.

Similarly, I am still waiting for someone to knock at my door and to offer to clean my windows. I estimate someone like that could easily take $100 from me in less than five hours. He could leave his phone number with me for further work. There are dozens of old geezers in my area who should be similarly well-disposed judging from their filthy windows. The one-time investment in tools for such work would be around $30, I think. I guess we are not as poor as we think.

I keep saying that news anchors are mostly dingbats. I mean American news anchors. Recently, I have been watching (re-watching) TV5, the French language channel. I don’t know who or what produces its news program but I am pretty sure it’s a direct reflection of French national television. Two nights ago night, the French-speaking news anchor was introducing the son of the Rosenberg, the couple convicted of espionage and executed in 1953. The anchorman explained with a straight face that the Rosenberg had been executed by the Americans “because they were communists.” There was no correction in the next news cycle.

The implications of such ignorance are staggering. The fact is that there were tens of thousands of American communists in the forties and fifties. Either the FBI’s ability to catch them was appallingly low, or there must have been thousands of executions of “communists.” On such lack of judgment, on such cocksure but ignorant naivety is built knee-jerk, petty anti-Americanism among the European quasi-intelligentsia.

In fact, I have a good idea about the collective psychological mechanism that perpetrates this kind of inanity. I will develop it if someone asks me.

In the meantime, I am looking for a good French translation of “dingbat.” It’s tough going. French is not as rich as English in that department.

PS  Every country has a quasi-intelligentsia. It’s made up of people who attended college long enough to develop the illusion that they know something. Many underdeveloped countries have thousands of those, with no jobs. They are a major factor of political instability. Often, they turn to cruel extremism as with the Shining Path terrorists in Peru.  Pot Pol, the man who invented self-genocide in Cambodia was a joint production of the Third World and of the Sorbonne. The French quasi-intelligentsia does seem especially presumptuous and malevolent both. I dare not continue on the damage caused by a pseudo college education. I have too much to say. I wouldn’t know how to stop.

My radio show is Sundays 11 am to 1 pm on KSCO radio Santa Cruz, 1080 AM (It’s AM.)  It’s called “Facts Matter,” of course. It’s also available on the internet but only in real time.

State of the Union Address Summarized by Dr J.

“Here are some good additional reasons why I will try to seize more of your money and even more of your grand-children’s money. “

“One is to achieve clean energy by…. “

Note: I don’t know why we need cleaner energy urgently. I think there is no reason.

“…Sputnik….”

Note: Yawn!

“This country ….compete…. “

Note: Countries don’t really compete with one another economically. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner and New York Times Leftist firebrand, agree with me on this. This is a misleading statement that many other politicians have made, not an Obama original.

“I will veto any legislation with earmarks.”

Good for him. If he does, that will be the only achievement of his administration as far as I am concerned. I wish him well. It will take guts.

I dozed off for most of the speech. The man is out of his depth, I keep telling you. I agree with Rush Limbaugh’s intuition today: The president did not want to be there at all.

Palin Born Outside US Birth Certificate Demonstrates

Here you go! I did it again. No other comments.

Reminders in advance of Pres. Obama’s  State of the Union Address:

“Investment” refers to money, or other resources, expanded in reasonable expectation of a positive return. So, if I buy a shovel to replace my soup-spoon to dig dirt and my productivity goes from $6/hr to $8/hr, as a result, I have made an investment.

The word has come to be used elastically. Education in general is a fairly good investment, good studies show. Yet, spending $80,000 to earn a BS in Psychology from a mediocre college is such a bad investment that I don’t think it should be called an “investment” at all. That’s because anyone in his right mind and with a little info could predict it’s not going to return more than any one of a large number of alternative uses to which the money could be put.

Blowing cocaine up one’s nose is not an investment by any measure.

So, when you listen to the president talk about (national) investments tomorrow ask yourself if he is talking shovel, Psychology degree, or cocaine.

The president is probably going to continue promoting “civility: because he feels he is on a roll.

Here are some examples of what’s not civility:

If someone is developing before you an argument that is illogical, or contrary to fact, or based on imaginary pseudo-facts, and you tell him, ” You could phrase the argument differently,” you are not acting civil. Instead, you are demonstrating stupidity or cowardice.

Clear discourse requires vigorous expression. The polite word for “wrong” is “wrong.”

The Liberal Mind: A Thumbnail Psychological Portrait

I am lucky to have the opportunity of frequent face-to-face interactions with liberals. (Not that I could avoid them easily if I wanted to given where I live.) I am also ahead of most of you in understanding the liberal mind, if I say so myself. That’s because I was raised in the country whose high-level intellectuals practically invented political bad faith.

First, let me classify my subjects. There are three kinds of liberals: hereditary liberals, union liberals, and liberals-by-choice. I focus on the latter class because they provide the purest examples. The other two kinds are roughly similar but they may differ in detail and they may be susceptible to sudden accesses of rationality.

Liberals frequently demonstrate confusion about causal processes. I am saying “causal.” Their casual thinking is just fine as a result of regular practice.

The glaciers are melting because of massive human generation

of industrial and automobile CO2.

But the temperature of Greenland was higher in 1100 than it is

today and its Norse inhabitants had no automobiles and their

industry was three guys pounding on an iron bar heated on

a bed of charcoal.

So, what’s your point?

They rely on non-fact facts.

The US armed forces killed millions in Iraq.

Polar bears are disappearing.

Even when they are generally well informed, they display strategic ignorance. That’s true of people who say they read the New York Times five times a week and who actually read most of it twice a week. (My definition of a well-informed liberal.)

There is a frequent, well-established positive relationship

between permanently lowered taxes and increased

government revenue. (The less of their income people pay

to the government, the more the government ends

up collecting.)

Well, I wouldn’t know about this.

That’s what Democratic Pres. Kennedy seemed to have

believed because he implemented big tax-cuts.

Well, I would not know about this.

Fairly often, liberals make statements that prove at once a lack of respect for facts and mental confusion:

Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction.

(I wonder why Bush would not have lied instead about something unlikely to show that what he said was not true to fact.)

Of course, people who make false inferences, whose facts are often demonstrated to not be facts at all, whose ignorance is exhibited frequently, will normally develop an aversion to debate. All but one. or two of the liberals I know hate debating. They are experts in changing the subject after one curt sentence that’s supposed to annihilate contradiction and that never does. In face-to-face interaction, many will actually turn their head away in a physical attempt to escape debate.

The above are main psychological traits and their logical consequence. They are not to be confused with value preferences. Value preferences are difficult to overcome because their origins are usually not clear. They may even be rooted in brain chemistry.

Here is a liberal value preference that is difficult to combat:

They prefer justice to freedom.

I refer to their idea of justice which often boils down to equality of outcomes, regardless of inputs such as effort, talent and courage. If you think about it, it could be worse: Some people prefer even tyranny to freedom, irrespective of justice: Tens of thousands of Russians cried when the mass murderer Stalin died. I don’t exclude the possibility that, in this country, people who prefer tyranny to freedom think of themselves as liberals. There is no other political home for them in America. I am explicitly not saying that liberals in general prefer tyranny to freedom.

Here is a consequence of this particular liberal value preference of “justice” over freedom: A liberal who would know how to think straight, who relied on real facts, and who did not cultivate ignorance could still be an adversary. At least, he would be an adversary with whom it’s possible to negotiate and compromise. We are a long way from such a situation, I think.

What do you think?

Palin Shot Two of the Tucson Victims With Own Gun

 

 

 

 

 

This is a reality check. Ask yourself why you would even open a posting with such a stupid headline.

Bad Faith Caught Red-Handed: Military Suicides on CNN

Caught on CNN, Tuesday while exercising at the gym:

A serious discussion of the problem of increasing suicides of young soldiers in the Army. Appropriately somber mien of the anchorwoman. Of course, this is yet another attempt by the liberal media to undermine our resolve in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Having failed in every other ways, liberals want to make inescapable that idea that what we are asking our military to do in war is so atrocious that many would rather kill themselves. The Army’s honest attempt to investigate and to improve the situation is shamelessly exploited by he same liberal media. The Army talking heads are allowing this to happen because many at the highest levels of the military have become politically correct (I was going to say chickified) or too afraid of what they think is public opinion.

As always, I pay attention to what the story does not cover.

1 Is the rate of suicide for soldiers higher than it is for similarly situated civilians?

2 Is the rate of suicides among marines higher, lower than, or more or less equal to the Army rate of suicide?

If the answer to Question # 1 is “No,” we don’t have a problem related to military life. In that case, no one should use suicides, even semi-consciously, to decide upon the desirability of our military presence in Afghanistan, or in Iraq.

If the answer to Question 2 is that the suicide rate among Marines is lower than or equal to that of Army personnel, then, a combat stress explanation is probably not valid. The reason for this is that Marines are considerably more likely than soldiers to be exposed to combat and for longer periods. Hence if the combat explanation were correct, Marines’ suicide rate should be higher than soldiers’. I say, “probably not valid” because such numbers still keep open the possibility that soldiers commit suicide because of combat exposure while Marines commit suicide for other reasons. This is unlikely but possible and worthy of finer research which could be done if anyone were interested.

So, a powerful and rich news organization such as CNN omits presenting relevant data that are easy to find, at least, for CNN. I know anchorwomen and anchormen are mostly dingbats. I don’t expect them to think this logically and this deeply! However, I want to believe that someone in the editorial room has had some experience with simple logic. If there is no one of that description then, CNN richly deserves its rolling demise. If there is, he or she is a thoroughly vile, dishonest person. Surprise!

Watch the liberal media and catch them in flagrante of bad faith by omission. It’s fun and it’s good exercise for the brain.

Guns and Truth

I first posted this on September 30th 2009. It’s topical again in the wake of the Tucson massacre by a madman. I apologize for the defective  format. I don’t know how to fix it and I am too lazy to learn. Please, share this posting if you can.

On my last radio show, I made the subject of gun control come up. I did it because I had heard one of my colleagues, a liberal talk-show host on the same station make a statement that sounded bogus to me. (The station is KSCO A.M. In Santa Cruz; it’s available on-line. My show is called “Facts Matter.” It’s every Sunday 11a.m. – 1p.m.)

The statement that caught my attention was this:

For every time a gun is used in legitimate self-defense, a gun is used nineteen times for illegitimate or illegal purposes.

The figure was just too pat. It was calculated to be remembered by regular folks who are assumed by the Left to have no head for numbers. It sounded like pure propaganda. I thought it might also be trivially true, correct but without any meaning.

I called the liberal host during his show and challenged him to produce a source. He could not. We had eleven email exchanges. The other guy says he gave me the references. I say he did not.

If you insist on you shoring up your argument with figures – a good thing- you had better be prepared to explain where they come from. I think the Left is forever quoting imaginary numbers and numbers they misinterpret. Some just cheat and make up facts. Others are just conveniently loose with numbers, making mistakes always in the same direction.

Gun control is a favorite issue on the Left because it can’t stomach the bare fact that courts have affirmed over and over that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own and to carry guns.

The Left makes a simple argument: The abundance of guns in the US makes its population much less safe than it would be if there were fewer guns around.

Here are some relevant facts:

The US has more homicides than every western European country, two and half times more than France, for example Yet, it has four times fewer homicides than Russia and three times fewer than Mexico. In fact, this country is pretty much average for homicides. Thus, South Africans are ten times more likely to die by homicide than are Americans. Notably, Americans are four times more at risk than the Swiss. This is notable since Switzerland almost certainly has more guns – long guns- in private hands than any other country because its army is primarily a militia.(All figures above from NationMaster.com 9/29/09).

In 2008, there were about 11 homicide per 200,000 people (computed from FBI’ s Uniform Crime Statistics). Two thirds involve firearms of some sort. That would include long weapons such as rifles and shotguns. Thus, if restrictive laws were passed, as desired by gun control advocates, effective enough to cut by half the murders by firearms, they would save the lives of 4 people out of each 200,000 Americans. (2/3 of 11 is about 8 – generously. Half of eight is 4. – Figures from FBI) This calculation assumes that, in the absence of a firearm, all murderers would simply give up and not seek an alternative means of homicide. The assumption is obviously untenable but we don’t know by how much. So, I will keep it in order to avoid biasing my reasoning against gun control.

The paragraph above ignores completely the possibility that guns in private hands may deter homicide. Hence, stricter gun control laws might increase the number of homicides on one side as they would reduce it on the other side. The two effects would be contradictory in their results but they are not logically inconsistent with each other. So, simplistic predictions based on basic arithmetic seem inappropriate.

Let’s put the issue of death by firearms in general in perspective. First, accidental death by firearms. It’s the nightmare of every parent and a frequent topic of liberal talk-shows, I think because it’s an emotionally brutal issue.

In 2004, accidental death by firearms were 80 times less frequent than death by automobile accident (Statistical Abstract of the US. Table 1130). Death by drowning was 4 times more frequent than accidental death by firearms. (Same source.) The figures are similar for latter years.

In spite of the fact that automobiles and water threaten the lives of Americans to a greater extent than do accidental discharges of firearms, no one is proposing to limit pleasure driving. or swimming, or boating. No one at all is proposing restrictions although those activities are not constitutionally protected like the right to bear arms.

Now, let’s give the problem of other deaths by firearms its proper dimensions. There are two main kinds, homicide and suicide.

Homicide deaths, about 2/3 by firearms, were 6,2 per 100,000 in 2006 (Other years data don’t differ appreciably.) To put it another way, a person dying in 2006 had only one chance in 130 of dying from assault at all, one chance in 170 of being killed by another person using a firearm.

For 2006, about 11 people per 100,000 people died from suicide. Half used a gun of some sort. About one person of 65 who died in that year committed suicide. (All figures in the two preceding paragraph from the Center for Disease Control FastStat.)

To put things in perspective again, deaths by alcohol, excluding accidents, was just as common as death by homicide, in 2006. (Both were very rare.) Being killed by a firearm wielded by another person was slightly less  likely than death by misuse of alcohol.

No one is talking about prohibiting alcohol, which is also not constitutionally protected. (Thank God!)

Defenders of the Second Amendment point out that the right to bear arms is to protect me from bad people, and eventually, from government illegal use of force against me and against my neighbors.

Liberals laugh about the latter. “You can’t fight an army with a handgun, they say.”

Two things about this. First, don’t assume the armed forces, or the whole of the armed forces would be on the side of a tyrannical government.

Second, I know for a fact that the first thing dictators do everywhere is to confiscate privately-held weapons. The second thing they do is to create parallel armies because they can’t count on regular forces to repress citizens. See, Hitler and his SS, and Ahmad the Camel and his Revolutionary Guards.

Digression: I am not, not advocating sedition. President Obama is the constitutionally elected president of this country. However, some of his followers are clearly fascists who might throw him under the bus when they realize that he is not fulfilling their program.

What about the issue of self-defense against bandits and serial murderers? Even if it were just an illusion, I would fight for my right to do so. It’s a matter of dignity. It turns out it’s not an illusion. The evidence on this is More guns, Less Crime, published in 2000, by John Lott, a law school professor who really looked at the data with a thoroughness gun control advocates rarely ever demonstrate. Lott used up-to date statistical techniques seldom found in gun control advocates’ work.

(There is a long empirical article published in 2003 critiquing More Guns… pro-gun conclusions by Ayres and Donohue. It’s linked to Wikipedia entry on More Guns, Less Crime. I have not read that negative treatment.)

How about guns and suicides?

Again, about half of the firearms deaths are suicide. I will agree right away that my carrying a gun does not deter my neighbor from doing away with himself.

Gun control advocates make the argument that that suicide may be easier with a gun. Half the suicide deaths are by firearms (Miller and Hemenway, New England Journal of Medicine; September 2008 – ) Advocates of regulating guns say that if guns were less common, there would be fewer successful suicides. It’s true that a gunshot is quicker, requires less preparation, and is less likely to be reversible than attempted suicide by most other means. The arguments is plausible. This does not make it true. A lot of things that are plausible are not true. The sun does not dive into the Ocean west of Santa Cruz every night though I see it do it with my own eyes.

You can gage roughly the factual correctness of this arguments by making comparisons between countries because we know that different countries practice very different forms of gun control, or no gun control.

Countries with more arms regulation, or tighter regulations, than the US should have less suicide, by and large, if the argument is correct. The fit does not have to be perfect but there has to be a pattern: More gun control= fewer suicides.

The World Health Organization, a specialized UN agency with a good reputation, gives cross-national suicide figures for 2008 on its website. According to WHO numbers, the US has a higher suicide rate than all the sunny countries on the list, except two: Cuba and Sri Lanka (the latter has 2.5 times the US rate).

The US has a lower suicide rate than all of the following countries: Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Finland.

I focus on those because I am reasonably sure, without having researched the issue, that those countries all have stricter gun laws than does the US.

South Korea and Japan, where I am certain guns are scarce, have suicide rates respectively 65% higher and twice higher than the US.

Gun control advocates will claim that I am cherry-picking in this case, choosing the cases that support my argument. Two answers: First, If you pick enough cherries, it ‘s not picking; it’s using the evidence. Second, if the pattern were reversed with exactly the same countries, you can be sure the enemies of the Second Amendment would claim victory.

The usual rational-sounding arguments for gutting the Second Amendment are not supported, except at the cost of ignoring masses of important facts. All those facts are readily available on the Internet, from reliable sources.

It’s hard not to suspect bad faith.

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Filed under Socio-Political Essays

Tagged as accidental deaths, Brady Law, crime deterrence, firearms, gun control, gun homicides, gun suicides, homicide rates, Revolutionary Guards, Second Amendment, SS, suicide rates

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Sixtieth Anniversary of the People’s Republic; Obama’s String of Victories. →

Civility and Partisanship: New Resolutions Toward Pres. Obama

On Wednesday, or on Thursday, I forget, President Obama gave a long speech about the Tucson massacre. I don’t know everything he said because my mind wandered. My mind wanders more and more when the president speaks. He is on the air too often. Every additional time confirms that he has little to say, that what little he has to say could be said in about one tenth of the time. The president is a good actor though. He has good voice delivery, no question about it. Having broken most of his promises, being widely reviled for those he kept (Obamacare, first of all), the president increasingly takes refuge in what he does well. He has a good voice. He reads a prepared text well. He would make a decent White House spokesperson.

I told you on this blog as early as the campaign that Barack Obama is a mediocre man. Even his achievements (Obamacare, again) are not his but those of his allies in Congress. I told you so. I am surprised so many conservatives persist in taking him seriously. He is a second-rate university professor. Mind you, I never said the president was stupid or below average in intellect. I think he discharges his duties as president almost as well as I would or rather, not much worse than I would. Of course, unlike Mr Obama, I don’t’ want the job, never wanted it, never thought I could do it.

Although my mind was wandering during the president’s healing speech, I noticed two points he made. He spoke in favor of civility of discourse and he denounced “partisanship” although I mild terms. Here is what I have decided to do in these respects. First, I will continue to be civil. Mostly, I think this means not using foul language in connection with people I oppose, such as the president himself. I seldom do anyway. It’s a good intellectual discipline to try and describe with exact words what it is they do and say that really pisses you off.

Secondly, I will avoid partisanship. I will do so as soon as liberals abandon their irrational and destructive programs. Right now, I am referring to their willingness to sacrifice the life chances of our descendants by contracting unconscionable amounts of public debt and by doing it for reasons tied to unreason, stubbornness, and the unwillingness to consider cause and effect. Above all, I will avoid partisanship just as soon as attempts to abandon or by-pass the Constitution cease or become so weak as to not be a cause for concern.

Mr President, liberal politicians, and liberal voters: Proposing all-around chastity right after you raped us brutally is not going to persuade us.

And, as I have said before ( “Tucson Giffors Massacre Not a Tragedy” ), I had nothing to do with the senseless Tucson mass murder. Neither did Sarah Palins. The massive, raging obsession of liberal commentators with the irrelevant ex-Governor on this occasion caused me to pay attention again. Liberal commentators can’t all be mad. They must sense a political danger in this woman I don’t really see.

And I want to end this calm and mostly civil column by specifying again that I don’t wish any of the liberal leaders any harm. Nancy Pelosi, I hope soon will be able to enjoy her grandchildren un-impeded by the tasks of revolution. Perhaps, she will disclose what pills she has been taking. Harry Reid will soon return to his small town in Nevada. He will easily land a job selling cars, new cars, GM cars to be precise. He has what it takes. Why, I have him on video asserting multiple times that he federal income tax is voluntary! Vice-President Bidden can remain himself. He is doing no harm and he is fun.

I hope Barack Obama will soon get a suitable job where he will be comfortable, one that he will do well. I am thinking of President of the Greater Chicago Chamber of Commerce.

Tucson Giffords Massacre Not a Tragedy (with new 2013 comments.)

My response to libertarian Brandon Christensen on “Unconditional surrender” will come later. Right now, I have to address the liberal media orgy prompted by the shooting in Tucson. Enemies first, friends later.

I pride myself on my equanimity. I am seldom “appalled” by anything. Right now I am almost sickened by the tsunami of liberal verbiage though. I am not going to dial down my anger, on the contrary.

First things first, a reminder: Poverty, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, sexual orientation prejudice, and inequality did not cause Jared Laughner to commit mass murder. Even a poor education can hardly be blamed. The man is a high-school drop-out like thousands of others who don’t shoot anyone ever. Lack of educational opportunity hardly played a role either: Although he failed to graduate from high-school, Laughner was accepted in community college (exactly like me, I must ad). Neither is Obamacare going to help stave off this kind of horror in the future. Laughner might have benefited from psychiatric care but neither he nor his parents sought it. Hence, he was not “denied care.” Tough luck!

The Left is hysterically blaming Sarah Palin and conservative media for creating a climate conducive to the kind of violence illustrated in Tucson. This is absurd at least for two reasons. First, if a climate of hostility toward politicians could cause acts of violence, President Bush would have been assassinated one hundred times at least. Nothing since the Obama inauguration has come close to the level and volume of hatred spewed at Pres. G. W. Bush for five or six years running. Or is one to believe that only right-wing hatred is effective? Second, it stands to reason that conservative incitement, if it were conducive to action, should have made another victim than Rep. Giffords, or rather, hundreds of more attractive targets would have been more logical. Rep. Giffords is a moderate Democrat, one who has notably made statements in support of gun control among others, in addition to statements in support of Obamacare, of course. She was never a very visible member of Congress. She was not a leader in the Obamacare swindle. Attempting to kill her in particular made no sense in any conceivable mental world (of course). If I were a right-wing extremist bent on assassinating an elected member of the Democratic Party, I could come up with a list of at least one hundred who should take precedence over Rep. Giffords. I hasten to add that I am not and I will not. My side will prevail with persuasion, by shedding light on the other side’s lies, and through constitutional means.

If the targeted victim had been a conservative Republican, I would express the same disbelief about any causality running from political opinions expressed in any media to the criminal acts of a mad person.

The purpose of the current liberal media raging attack and of several politicians’ fascist proposals is not to save lives in the future. It’s to censor and eventually to shut off the rational, factual, well-worded arguments conservatives are making against government’s massive invasion of civil society and against the abandonment of constitutional principles in our country. Don’t be fooled. Liberals hate reason. Also, be attentive: Liberals are so excited by the destructive potential of this event they will soon begin proffering outright lies and some will get caught.

The Tucson massacre is not a tragedy as I have pointed out on Facebook. A tragedy has meaning; that’s why we remember it. That’s why it’s an important kind of literature. The Tucson massacre is not a tragedy. It has no meaning although it’s understandable that victims’ relatives should attempt to scratch meaning out of the meaninglessness of a devastating event.

The only valid public debate this horrifying crime should trigger ought to be about the incarceration of the mentally ill. In this society, we are slow to put away people who may be dangerous. There are good historical reasons for this bias that are worth discussing. They will not be discussed because doing so would contribute nothing to the salvage of the sinking liberal ship.

Unconditional Peace: A Continuing Debate. (Part Four)

Note: I am exploiting Brandon Christensen to whom this response is addressed. I am using him as a proxy to have a debate with the many libertarians who I suspect, want to disarm the Republic The piece to which this is a response is on his blog at: http://thecrackshotcrackpot.blogspot.com/2011/01/libertarian-isolationism-rebuttal.html

Please, spread this series of exchanges around.

Dear Brandon: Your shameless flatteries area good start, for sure. Nevertheless, I need to bring a correction to the introduction of your rebuttal: I am not a really old guy. It’s still common for women to check me out when I walk on Pacific Avenue. Why, it happened less than three years ago!

Now, the rules of engagement I respect unilaterally:

Good ideas must defer to facts;

Many conventional ideas have no connection to facts (e.g. “catching a cold” has nothing to do with cold weather.)

Nevertheless, some perceptions are so self-evidently correct that the burden of proof belongs to those who would question them. (e.g. bullets in the heart will kill some people.);

Causal reasoning must respect the rules of logic enunciated by the Greeks before 500 BC;

I don’t assert anything I don’t believe just to sound right. Sometimes, I speculate. I try to tell the reader/listener when I am doing so.

If my viewpoint is defensible on its own merits, I don’t ever need to tell untruths to support it, not even little white lies. Same goes for everyone’s viewpoint

Avoid smirking. (That’s the hardest rule for me to follow, of course.)

I will not follow your narrative point by point because some of them are not supported or do not deserve a discussion, according to me, of course. Some other points I have no big quarrel with.

First a confession for once and forever so we don’t have to waste time on it ever again:

I am fully aware that there is a seeming incongruity in both supporting libertarian ideas and being a hawk to any degree. There is no doubt that most wars enlarge the domain of the state, of the government, at the expense of civil society. Many such enlargements prove to be irreversible. Thus, wars usually reduce the freedom of those who win them.

First, you build a straw-man, hang a sing with my name around its neck and then you burn it. Of course, I agree that very few Muslims want to wage violent jihad and that the number of those willing to take the risk to do so is even smaller. I have never said or written anything else. I have commented at length about the silence of Muslims in general, of Muslim religious authorities, and of American Muslim organizations, with regard to atrocities committed in the name of Islam. I include atrocities committed against Muslims ( most of them). I include 9/11 but also the routine, grotesque sexual mutilation of little girls in Muslim countries (not an Islamic requirement I know, but practiced on a wide scale with the complicity of clerics.)

I am concerned about the handful of violent jihadists willing to engage in Islamist terrorism for two reasons. First, 19 of them can deliberately murder 3,000 innocent people and depress the largest economy in the world, and change our society for the worse in a lasting way. And, it would take fewer than 10 to blow up a dirty bomb on a major sports event. Second, the successes of the few often trigger imitation, sometimes on a large scale.

On the subject of Muslims in France, you just ought to defer to me, I think. I read French newspaper six days a week; I watch French television every day; I am in touch with intelligent French people in France and in North Africa; I go to France fairly often, and I know the language.

The working-class periphery of Paris is seething with resentment, as you say. This is exactly what you would expect in a society where 10% general unemployment has, for thirty years, been the norm, (20% for younger people), and a 1.5% growth rate in the economy is a cause for celebration. Expressions of this resentment are numerous, fairly violent and also ecumenic in who participates. They have never taken an Islamist form. So, France is in the line fire of violent Islamists in spite of its Muslim situation being the reverse of apartheid. In fact, it could be because of this. (The main firing is many kidnappings of French citizens, specifically.)

You are minimizing a great deal the bellicosity of Muslim Scriptures as if they were just a couple of zits on a beautiful face. The Koran and the Hadiths contain numerous warlike, inciting statements (and not only such, it’s true) against infidels, including permission to put them to death and to enslave them. Want to bet? I defy you to show me anything of the kind in the Gospels or any other part of the New Testament. It’s easy to find calls to jihad in latter and mostly forgotten Christian writings. The Crusades did happen, after all. And that’s part of my point: I understand Islamist aggression because those who have it on their mind are much like my ancestors (and yours) a thousand years ago. It’s a familiar ugly face, not difficult to recognize.

Connection between the role of the state and the role of Islam in a list of Muslim countries: I get your point. The answer is “no direct link” except in Saudi Arabia and formerly in Taliban Afghanistan. The sad truth is that today, the world, including us, seems to have a choice between murderous violent jihadists and modernizing fascist regimes in Muslim countries. That’s a subject worth discussing. Libertarians don’t. Myself, I chose the fascists because they are not as willing to die to kill us. Also fascist systems sometimes become more representative.

In general, I think you are in denial on two broad fronts. Either denial is enough to make your militarily isolationist position untenable, in my humble opinion:

You contend that we provoked violent jihadist attacks because of our military presence in the holy lands of Islam. Ignoring the fact that none of those places, save perhaps Saudi Arabia, are holy, have ever been holy except by Al Qaida pronouncement, you would have to defend the following propositions:

When violent jihadists murder Argentinean Jews in Buenos Aires, it’s because Americans have a military presence in Muslim holy lands;

When violent jihadists murder Iraqi Christians in Iraq, Egyptian Christians in Egypt, and Pakistani Christians in Pakistan, it’s because of American military presence in Muslim holy lands.

When violent jihadists murder other Muslims in Algeria, Iraq, Pakistan, it’s because of American military presence in Muslim holy lands.

Your argument about “minorities” is special pleading and it does not stand the barest scrutiny: Kurds are much more numerous than Sunnis in Iraq; the victims of violent Islamists in Algeria were specifically not ethnic minorities. The slaughtered “minorities” of Pakistan have one thing I common: The are not Sunni Muslims. Could be a coincidence. Do you really think so?

Second front: You seem to say that war is futile as a solution to the problem of aggression by others, in general and in particular. If you are not saying or implying this, I stand corrected and then, nothing of what follows applies to what you wrote.

In general, historically war does not solve anything except: British despotism, Barbary Pirates’ exactions, slavery, Fascism, Nazism. and Communism (the later, to a large extent, was solved through the mere the mere threat of war). Yes, I stole most of this from a bumper-sticker.

Even if you were right that fighting violent jihadism militarily were ineffective, I would insist that we do. It’s a matter of dignity and it’s a condition of future safety. You can be sure other evil-doers and potential evil-doers are watching to see what happens when you kill Americans. I want them to think it’s risky, at least.

In the particular: You cast a disdainful look at Iraqi democracy, a pure product of President Bush’s war of choice, and a child of the US and allies’s military invasion. I think you need to do this lest nation-building appears not to be a silly endeavor. Here is what I see:

Iraq has a properly elected government. It results from Iraqi citizens voting in larger percentages than Americans usually do. Sometimes, they do this under threat of death. This democratic government is sure enough of itself to affirm that its protector and genitor, the US armed forces must leave. That is, it’s exactly like any other self-assured sovereign entity. There has been no coup, no attempted coup and the rule of law prevails there better than in most less-developed countries. (Obviously, terrorist actions against that government have nothing to do with my claim that it is applying the rule of law.) With all this, Iraq is not Switzerland. As far as corruption is concerned, it’s more like New Orleans or Illinois. In terms of representativity, it’s probably significantly better than either. All in all, it compares favorably with this Republic in 1785.

This success in nation-building should not surprise you because it conforms to what always happens when the US wins a war. It happened with Italy, with Germany, with Japan, and by the way, with France to an extent. It half happened with South Korea where we did not really win. It did not happen with Vietnam where we lost. Your sage doubts about whether or not the “Sunni factions” will continue to support democracy in Iraq does not cost you much. And the Republican Party might split into two or three factions, and the rational wing of the Democratic Party might join en masse the Republican Party. And, as the French say so colorfully, “If my aunt had balls, we would call her ‘Uncle’.” You can always hypothesize new catastrophes. It’s a Santa Cruz specialty: If the world does not come to and end in 2012, it will probably come in 2014. (And, here I am, smirking; I could not resist; I am ashamed!)

Your faith in the efficacy of clandestine operations, like your faith in high-tech weapons, leaves me non-plussed. Is it possible that we could do everything we need to do without boots on the ground and that our governments (plural) have decided perversely to ignore alternative means?

Contrary to your musings in your introduction, you could change my mind or, at least, create a line crack in my conviction, but it would have to be done with logical assertions based on good facts. I think you have not done so. Too many of your facts are putative and too many of your reasonings are tortuous and too gratuitous (though not necessarily illogical). Show me good, direct stuff enough and I will eventually turn around. I will do it publicly. As I said as an opening statement, my position lacks consistency. It’s uncomfortable. The cohabitation of facts and ideology often is.

In the final analysis, whether we persuade each other may not matter much. Others are reading this exchange. Some may be induced to think about those issues, or to think differently. You and I are doing the fine stitching of democracy.

Again, the rebuttal of an earlier piece to which this is my reply is on:  http://thecrackshotcrackpot.blogspot.com/2011/01/libertarian-isolationism-rebuttal.html

AND NOW, HERE IS BRANDON’S REBUTTAL TO THE ABOVE: Hey Dr.! I’ve got my rebuttal here: http://thecrackshotcrackpot.blogspot.com/2011/01/libertarian-isolationism-debate.html