SWAC Girl has a question for us anti-war protestors:
"We're ready, we're steady, we're resolved."
--President George W. Bush
"Stay strong for freedom."
--Senator George Allen
Wonder what part of these quotes anti-war protesters don't get?
I'll admit it: I don't get any part of it. To me, the statements are completely empty. They don't say anything at all. It's not that they're wrong (though they may be - it's possible, indeed, that the President is "ready" for something); it's that they're meaningless.
Maybe she was just trying to be funny? In which case, those statements are the political equivalent of a Family Circus comic.
But do I detect a kernel of reflection in the self-proclaimed neoconservative messiah?
I keep wondering if I'm turning into one of those crazy people who can't see guilt when it's staring at them in the face - you know, like Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon when talking about Mumia.
It's not much, but I'm glad that somebody I once respected is capable of an iota of introspection every now and then. I'm willing to give props where they're due.
And extra bonus points if you can take it one step further, honey... do we agree that it sucks when somebody can lose their freedom due to trumped up charges that put the burden on the accused, heard by a less than impartial court? Or is it only when they're white and rich and "Republican" and, well, gosh darn it, you just feel they're not guilty? Isn't that, like, oh my God, so unfair?
Over at the Separation of Powers Blog, Sam is filled with "sputtering rage" for disillusioned conservatives who disapprove of the big government, anti-liberty Republican Party:
Sitting out this election has been characterized (by me) as tantamount to taking your ball and bat and not playing because the other players would let you pitch. This is a bit of a mischaracterization however. It is more like taking your bat and beating yourself over the head to show your disappointment at not being able to pitch.
Bad metaphor. It's not a case of the other players simply not letting you pitch. It's a case of getting benched for the entire season. Should you support a team that does that to you? Nobody's saying you should go sit on the other team's bench, but stop wasting your time and energy on people who have no use for you other than a benchwarmer.
Rove's strategy has always been to count on the base. But as long as the base can be counted on, Republican politicians will take it for granted. True... if you sit out the election, you may get a big gov't, wartime Democrat instead of a big gov't, wartime Republican in power. But you'll save the party from becoming something you don't want it to be. Without that, it's meaningless to be a Republican.
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Yes, I'm still interested in addressing it (as I did here and here). Not any particular conspiracies, but the concept of conspiracy within this great democratic republic of ours. My goal is not to convince you of any particular conspiracy, but to get you to accept that (A) conspiracies are possible, and (B) they are more public, commonplace, and mundane than you think.
In light of those goals, here are two articles to consider:
- Wally Conger talks about conspiracy in the context of Murray Rothbard's Wall Street and the Bankers. When we address issues of government and elite interests, we make things far too sexy and complex:
Is this a - gasp! - conspiracy book? You could say so. But as Justin Raimondo writes in his afterword to the book: "...it would be inaccurate to call the Rothbardian world view a ‘conspiracy theory.' To say that the House of Morgan was engaged in a ‘conspiracy' to drag the U.S. into World War I, when indeed it openly used every stratagem, every lever both economic and political, to push us into ‘the war to end all wars,' seems woefully inadequate. This was not some secret cabal meeting in a soundproof corporate boardroom, but a ‘conspiracy' of ideas openly and vociferously expressed. ... Here there is no single agency, no omnipotent central committee that issues directives, but a multiplicity of interest groups and factions whose goals are generally congruent."
- James Leroy Wilson addresses several important conspiracies from the standpoint of feasibility:
before someone says, "It's impossible!" think of this: if just one person in ten thousand is capable of committing atrocities and keeping secrets, that's a potential network of 30,000 in the USA alone. If Gladio could be kept secret in tiny Belgium for so long, surely even more elaborate conspiracies could exist in the United States.
Wilson has another good article about conspiracies here.
UPDATE: I've been told that my post comes off as condescending. Sorry if it does, in fact. I think it's pretty obvious from the posts I've written on "conspiratorial theory" that I'm still working out my thoughts, and blogs give me an opportunity to "think out loud". Resistance and pressure to make a point is expected and appreciated. My thesis is not this post itself - and usually isn't any post in and of itself - but rather an ongoing conversation with myself and my readers, if they care to participate.
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Via the Cornucopia Institute, New York Times columnist Michael Pollan addresses the recent outbreak of E. Coli in the nation's spinach supply (CDC background on the situation here) - surprisingly warning against further regulation:
We can also expect to hear calls for more regulation and inspection of the produce industry. Already, watchdogs like the Center for Science in the Public Interest have proposed that the government impose the sort of regulatory regime it imposes on the meat industry - something along the lines of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system (Haccp, pronounced HASS-ip) developed in response to the E. coli contamination of beef. At the moment, vegetable growers and packers are virtually unregulated. "Farmers can do pretty much as they please," Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, said recently, "as long as they don't make anyone sick."
This sounds like an alarming lapse in governmental oversight until you realize there has never before been much reason to worry about food safety on farms. But these days, the way we farm and the way we process our food, both of which have been industrialized and centralized over the last few decades, are endangering our health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that our food supply now sickens 76 million Americans every year, putting more than 300,000 of them in the hospital, and killing 5,000. The lethal strain of E. coli known as 0157:H7, responsible for this latest outbreak of food poisoning, was unknown before 1982; it is believed to have evolved in the gut of feedlot cattle. These are animals that stand around in their manure all day long, eating a diet of grain that happens to turn a cow's rumen into an ideal habitat for E. coli 0157:H7. (The bug can't survive long in cattle living on grass.) Industrial animal agriculture produces more than a billion tons of manure every year, manure that, besides being full of nasty microbes like E. coli 0157:H7 (not to mention high concentrations of the pharmaceuticals animals must receive so they can tolerate the feedlot lifestyle), often ends up in places it shouldn't be, rather than in pastures, where it would not only be harmless but also actually do some good. To think of animal manure as pollution rather than fertility is a relatively new (and industrial) idea.
The solution, Pollan argues, is not forced irradiation of produce but decentralizing the food supply and leaning more on local farmers. This not only discourages unhealthy industrial practices but localizes hazards, preventing them from spreading throughout the country before they are caught. Technology is great, but applying it to inherently inefficient, wasteful, and dangerous systems isn't necessarily the way to solve the problem.
The entire article is a well-deserved swipe against agribusiness regulatory capture. The dangers we accept from a centralized, industrial food supply are not the result of the free market but of government regulations that benefit large ventures over small, local producers - regardless of what capitalist fluffers like Robert Murphy think (see a great deconstruction of his argument against preferring local produce here, and the larger implications of such apparent corporatist whoring here). The system is totalitarian and fascist, but now it's making even making us sick. Diseconomies of scale, anyone?
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First it was self-righteous anger, then bigotry, then outright paranoia. How do you top that?
Now Right Thinking Girl has a messiah complex:
...I've created my own religion. It is so new that it doesn't have a name yet but basically it is a mix of Objectivism, patriotism, Christianity, and anti-Islam. I'm not a priest; I havenospecial knowledge abouthow to get you closer to God. I can tell you what has worked for me and maybe it will work for you too. Mostly that includes yoga and making some art.
But the point is, my religion is political. All religions must be political now, and mine is the first to be openly anti-Islam. It was created to push back against Islamists, and to help followers discover within themselves the desire to survive, both literally and culturally.
I've been sitting at the computer for an hour, trying to think of something insightful to say, but I got nothing.
Discomfort and Democracy
The other day at the protest we did a lot of chanting, including one that I favored over certain others: "This is what democracy looks like!" In light of my disgust with statist, institutionalized politics, I found this visceral affirmation of popular power gratifying. I see democracy as more than a recognizable structure of government, characterized by representatives and elections, but rather something to which rulers are subject, something they should regard with more than hokey reverance. In a system where a small elite exercise a sickeningly large share of day-to-day power in the world, democracy shouldn't be comfortable, neat, and safe to cordon off. It should be damn frightening to the establishment (the paramilitary presence indicates it is).
An essay I read at Against the War on Terror accurately frames my view: democracy has been turned into something safely moderated by politicians, institutions, and media. Too often our individual interests become aggregated by people for conveniently understood, rather than substantive, purposes - an apology for the status quo rather than a challenge to it:
This electoral democracy offers citizens the opportunity to vote various leaders in and out of office, but what it does not include is the capacity for individuals to maintain practical control over these structures and the outcomes they produce. A democracy that focuses almost exclusively on electoral politics has created a network of experts and strategists, who work to massage and shape the exercise of political voice. The recipient has no sense of what poll projections or horse race strategies amount to, but does develop the sneaking suspicion that politics has little to distinguish it from buying a car or choosing between retirement plans.
That general understanding of our political condition drove me to make the trek into the city, alone, and spend a few hours with strangers.
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Note: I went back and cleaned up some of the verbiage and formatting on this post, and added reflections from the next day. The "At the protest" section is me on my XV6700 typing in observations on the fly. Since rain was threatening I kept the blogging to a minimum.
Please digg this story!
At the protest
- (3:05 PM) Welp, here I am... For a red state this is a bit better turnout than I expected. Police presence isn't too bad right here, but I saw a big group of stormtroopers gathered across the street, mounted and ready to deploy. It's actually kind of fun; these old hippies keep messing up the cheers, but they're the only one's really uping the ante around here. I'll take some photos now!
- (3:44 PM) Ok, it's a bit later and the size of the protest has almost doubled. we're getting a lot of honking (from cars driving by) in support. There's also a contingent here in support of Old Dirty Bastard for president. Who will break the news to them? Well, it's starting to rain so ima put my phone away.
- (4:28 PM) Here comes the prez... we're gonna give him hell. (Turns out he didn't show up till 5 PM and left around 6 PM)
- (6:32 PM) Well, it's over... good turnout, and we caught Bush coming and going. abt 200 ppl attending. the paramilitary police were disgusting. eating sushi now :-)
Photos
- Here's a link to my Flickr photos tagged "protest". Also, a video clip. I'll post some interesting ones anyway.
- From this picture it's pretty obvious that the cops were choosing sides, and it wasn't with the antiwar majority but the 5-person pro-Bush clique
- As you can see, the cops and paramilitary detail clearly considered peaceful demonstrators the major threat.
- Here's one look at the crowd, but it was hard to capture the whole thing.
Other impressions
It was a pretty good turnout for the capital of a red state, although we do have an art school here. Like some wierd cross between a Phish lot and a hipster convention. I didn't come with a sign, which sucked because I had to hold this little one that just said "Time for a Change".
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Via LewRockwell.com, Butler Shaffer points a profound problem with modern American statism and social contract theory:
Those who argue against secession must, in doing so, negate the entire notion of "contract" upon which the theory of the modern state rests. But if the state becomes, by our fictional "contract," our "agent," upon what philosophic or legal principle is the "principal" to be denied the authority to discharge the "agent?" The Declaration of Independence has logical consistency on this point.
Further evidence that the Civil War was the end of the American ideal of government of, by, and for the people. No matter who's side you supported, the experiment was over: a republic of sovereign individuals was replaced by a domestic and, eventually, international empire. Given that, it's clear that enforcing the interests of the people in the "social contract" would naturally lead to rebellion, as Jefferson indicated (found via the Mises Blog):
"I like a little rebellion now and then," Jefferson wrote Mrs. Adams, "...the spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all."
Indeed, the South's cause may have been plagued by some very evil notions. Even so, it is still better to resist centralized authority. There is really no principled difference between overthrowing an oppressive regime based in the plantation owner's house and one based in the White House. The challenge itself, regardless of the particular motivating agenda, serves as a valuable check on the ruling class.
Over at the Center for Stateless Society, Jenny takes a close look at the dark side of Grameen Bank, for whose microlending efforts earned its founder a Nobel Peace Prize. But apparently the Bank is not engaged in private lending to help third world enterpeneurs. The bank raises capital by way of loans from governments and quasi-governmental organizations like the UN and the IMF. Jenny elaborates on some of the creepier elements of the bank:
The high repayment rates by the debtors are achieved through methods which could be called coercive. The borrowers are grouped into cells of five. Future loans, which are much higher than the first one, are only granted if each member of the cell has repaid his or her first loan. This creates an incentive for each member of the cell to make sure everyone pays back their loans -- how they do this is up to them. The repayment rates for second-time borrowers are much lower even though employees of the Grameen Bank monitor all borrowers door-to-door on a weekly basis.
In addition to these unusual methods, the borrowers have to chant the "Sixteen Decisions" during parades, which express the worldview of the Grameen Bank. Decision 16 reads as follows: "We shall take part in all social activities collectively." Other Decisions emphasize the attempt of the Grameen Bank to emancipate Bangladeshi women from the traditionally patriarchal structures. This seeming emancipation and financial independence come at the price, though, of dependency on the Grameen Bank, which turns out to be less of a bank and more of a cult.
Why miss a chance at social engineering when helping people pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Read more here.
UPDATE: B.K. Marcus weighs in on the hoax as well.
Via the Virginia Anti-War Network:
As many of you are likely already aware, President Bush will be coming to Richmond this week to help fund raise for Senator George Allen in his bid to hold his current Senate seat in the upcoming elections. The Republican Party of Virginia's Web site indicates that the fund raiser will consist of a reception ($500) and photo op ($5000) with Bush and Allen at the Science Museum of Virginia on Thursday, October 19th. Participants are required to arrive by 3:30 p.m., with the photo op at 4 p.m. and the reception at 4:30 p.m.
Bush's visit to our town (and in such a public venue) represents a rare opportunity to express our dissatisfaction with him, his war-mongering policies and those who support him. The Richmond contingent of the Virginia Anti-War Network (VAWN), therefore, is planning a protest to coincide with this fund-raising event. Details are given below. Interest is strong. Please plan to come out to show your opposition to this disgraceful administration and all that it represents.
The Science Museum of Virginia is at 2500 W. Broad St. Parking may be available at the adjacent DMV building. I'll probably try to park somewhere further away from the action. Let me know if you'll be there!
Hat tip to Richmond IndyMedia.
Radley Balko gives me a heads up on a Congresswoman from my old congressional district (the 1st) who has astounded me in her abject ignorance:
Representative Jo Ann Davis, a Virginia Republican who heads a House intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.'s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information, was similarly dumbfounded when I asked her if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.
"Do I?" she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. "You know, I should." She took a stab at it: "It's a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it's the Sunnis who're more radical than the Shia."
I love that: "Do I?" Jeez, if you're going to break up fights in the countries you occupy, shouldn't you know what the hell they're about?
At least I can pat myself on the back for fighting her election back in 2000 by working on the campaign of the Libertarian candidate, Sharon Wood - including lobbying for her to actually be included in the first congressional district debate hosted by my school. I actually had to go in front of some committee and explain why they should allow all the candidates in the race to participate (I think this asshole had a lot to do with it).
Glory, glory, hallelujah... her truth is marching on, evildoers!
Conservatives are the only moral people left in America and the Left's ideology must be defeated. There has always been division in America because we are one of the only countries in the world who has unrestricted freedom to not only speak out against others but also ourselves - which is basically all the liberals have: the fight against America. Their ideology aligns perfectly with that of our stated enemies, a fact that for too long many have ignored. I refuse to ignore it any longer.
The fact that we are divided speaks not to the wrongness of America or the war on terror or whatever agenda point the left enjoys putting forward, but to the utter rightness of them. Let Liberals kill themselves off in terror raids and abortion on demand. When it's all overwith, Conservatives will endure. In this fight against people who wish to destroy us - whether AQ or our own liberals - we are undoubtedly in the right.
Oh, you bet she's compelling... like a 10 car pileup on the Interstate.
Luckily, I think people are starting to understand that listening to neocons like her requires ever increasing doses of kool-aid. I mean, indicting liberals as on the same side as terrorists because they support universal health care? Obviously, conservatism has lost all meaning as a political philosophy and is now concerned soley with talking one another into a frenzy. To say nothing of the bloggers.
It kind of trivializes terrorism to finger everybody who disagrees with you as a murderer, but hey - get those page hits anyway you can, honey. You're utterly right, and America is utterly right. So it should be easy to ignore the snickering.
Tim Lee describes a realization he had about libertarianism and the need to evangelize for business:
...In college, I dated a left-of-center girl who liked to shop at the local grocery co-op rather than a commercial grocery store. It was a topic of frequent argument. I'd point out the relative efficiencies of commercial grocery store organization, she'd stress fuzzier, more community-focused advantages: the sense of community, the superior treatment of workers, the closer connection between customers, employees, and management, etc.
I still shop at a commercial grocery store. But I also think my criticism of the co-op was a little bit off base. In the first place, there's no reason that libertarianism, as such, should quarrel with co-op shoppers. It's a peaceful, voluntary form of social organization, and anyone who doesn't appreciate it is free to take their business elsewhere. And I think it's a mistake for libertarians to deny that many people find the market and firm forms of organization alienating. If they want to structure their lives so that more aspects of it are organized like a big tribe or family, we ought to say more power to them.
I had a similar realization when reading Charles Murray's What It Means to be a Libertarian back in college. Although Murray focused more on community moral and legal standards of subsidarity, it seemed obvious to me that reducing the role of the State would necessarily entail greater cooperativism and community action. As long as such ventures aren't forced on anyone, they are perfectly compatible with libertarianism, being precisely the kinds of innovations we should expect a free people to devise. We should embrace the desire to realize one's values in the free market, with at least the same passion as Randroids laud corporate capitalism.
As a mutualist, my inclination is not to stop at encouraging their cooperative spirit. But even for mainstream libertarians, I hardly think it hurts us to address the reasons the corporate, consumption-oriented economy is so alienating. Could it be, in fact, that Galt's Gulch doesn't exist in real life, and most big business both influences and benefits greatly from government largesse? We won't lose any principled support by attacking corporate welfare, regulatory privileges, and other statist perks - indeed, such talk rounds out our advocacy for markets by showing that we apply small government thinking equally.
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According to the Economist, one family in Sweden controls 40% of the value of companies on the Swedish stock exchange. Think managerialist liberalism is about equality and democracy?
The family quickly points to one factor that helps hold their enterprise together: "No one owns it, which means that we cannot consume it though we can certainly destroy it," says Jacob Wallenberg, chairman of Investor. Most of the family's wealth is tied up in the Wallenberg foundations, which have combined assets of some SKr45 billion ($6.2 billion). These non-profit organisations provide grants of about SKr1 billion a year to science, research and the arts in Sweden. The foundations control 46% of votes at Investor and hold 22% of its capital, as well as owning big chunks of SAS, the main Scandinavian airline, Stora Enso, a huge paper company, and SKF, a maker of bearings.
Apparently, the way to preserve the good ol' fashioned family business is to transform your family into an oligarchic bureaucracy that exerts top down control over the nation's social and cultural institutions. What an enlightened, egalitarian, democratic society Sweden is!
Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.
