Fluxblog proves that reading snarky rundowns of any Awards Show (especially one done by MTV) has long been far more entertaining than watching them.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
A Brief Note to Right-Wingers Who've Been De-Linking Instapundit:
Morons.
Glenn Reynolds is a Libertarian, okay? That means he's not a Republican. That means he's less inclined to regard the ACLU as Knights in Satan's Service, kay?
What's the point, anyway? "We'll punish him for saying things we disagree with!" It's not like the guy's historically unwilling to let other people have their say, to UPDATE with contrary information. Nobody thought of taking that route?
I mean, let's say that the ACLU really is the nasty organization it's detractors say it is. What better way to get that message across than to have a genuine argument on the subject with one of the biggest blogs on the net? Instead, you look like doctrinaire buffoons. Nice going.
Glenn Reynolds is a Libertarian, okay? That means he's not a Republican. That means he's less inclined to regard the ACLU as Knights in Satan's Service, kay?
What's the point, anyway? "We'll punish him for saying things we disagree with!" It's not like the guy's historically unwilling to let other people have their say, to UPDATE with contrary information. Nobody thought of taking that route?
I mean, let's say that the ACLU really is the nasty organization it's detractors say it is. What better way to get that message across than to have a genuine argument on the subject with one of the biggest blogs on the net? Instead, you look like doctrinaire buffoons. Nice going.
It Takes Courage to be Cowardly (A Zombie Post from 2005)
[I really need to check the drafts more often. I had no idea this was here.]
Today's piece at the Belmont club reminded me of Monty Python.
Specifically, the following passage that Wretchard exerpts from Paul Berman's book Terror and Liberalism:
...made me think of this bit of silliness posted on the Official Monty Python Web Site (www.pythonline.com). More specifically, it made me think of this passage:
True courage, goes the argument, lies in submission. This is not a new idea, being found, in various forms, in both Christianity and Islam. And to a degree, it has merit. It would indeed be a better world if we all could practice acceptance without feeling shame. To a certain extent, we already do. Submission to some form established authority is sine qua non of a lawful society.
But submission hasn't seemed to have been applied to war. Why not? Why don't weaker states simply accept the rule of stronger ones? Give them what they want? Why doesn't it work?
Today's piece at the Belmont club reminded me of Monty Python.
Specifically, the following passage that Wretchard exerpts from Paul Berman's book Terror and Liberalism:
Blum and his supporters regarded Hitler and the Nazis with horror ... But mostly they remembered the First World War ... They grew thoughtful, therefore. They did not wish to reduce Germany in all its Teutonic complexity to black-and-white terms of good and evil. ... And, having analyzed the German scene in that manner, the anti-war Socialists concluded that Hitler and the Nazis, in railing against the great powers and the Treaty of Versailles, did make some legitimate arguments ... Why not look for ways to conciliate the outraged German people and, in that way, to conciliate the Nazis? ...
The anti-war Socialists of France did not think they were being cowardly or unprincipled in making those arguments. On the contrary, they ... regarded themselves as exceptionally brave and honest. They felt that courage and radicalism allowed them to peer beneath the surface of events and identify the deeper factors at work in international relations-the truest danger facing France.
...made me think of this bit of silliness posted on the Official Monty Python Web Site (www.pythonline.com). More specifically, it made me think of this passage:
And why ? For one reason only, that cowardice is badly thought of. Now I would put it another way. I would say it is badly underrated. Dr. Johnson asserted that 'Mutual Cowardice keeps us in peace'. I believe it could, that this fundamentally realistic behaviour could be a great force for social cohesion. And I suggest that the reason why there is so much more internecine behaviour within the human species than within any other species of animals is because cowardice has got itself a bad name.
Man is a social animal. So let us look at the behaviour of other social animals. Take the wolf - he lives in a pack. Like man he is a hunter. Now, whenever a conflict breaks out between two members of a pack, either wolf can bring it to an immediate halt by making a ritual act of submission, by offering the side of his neck, his most vulnerable part, to his opponent. This immediately stops his opponent's aggressive behaviour. What a sensible system ! No feeling of shame for the submittor. Just peace.
True courage, goes the argument, lies in submission. This is not a new idea, being found, in various forms, in both Christianity and Islam. And to a degree, it has merit. It would indeed be a better world if we all could practice acceptance without feeling shame. To a certain extent, we already do. Submission to some form established authority is sine qua non of a lawful society.
But submission hasn't seemed to have been applied to war. Why not? Why don't weaker states simply accept the rule of stronger ones? Give them what they want? Why doesn't it work?
Monday, August 29, 2005
On the Subject of Spin, and music mags in general...
I'd kinda like it if this really was all that it purports to be. Somehow, I know it's not.
I'd still like one of those "Boy Howdy" shirts, though...
I'd still like one of those "Boy Howdy" shirts, though...
A Case of the Meh's Attacked Me.
Or at any rate, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Sooooo....
What's new, what's interesting? Nothing and nothing. For all that one sometimes hears about living in interesting times, I find most of these proceedings damn dull. I can't even watch TV anymore. 500 channels, and it's all the same self-referential, too-hip post-modern gruel. Utter noise.
But the great thing about free will and living in a society with a fairly broad sphere to exercise it is that I can absent myself from all of this. I can tell the cable company to get stuffed, and use the TV for watching movies (last night I grabbed a copy of Shaun of the Dead, which I can thoroughly enjoy without being familiar with any of George Romero's films, because it's not just a cheap parody). I can read Bass Guitar magazine instead of Spin, and spend my evenings learning to play "Immigrant Song" instead of wondering whether I would ever buy a Kanye West album. And that's if I feel like being lazy. A few carpentry books and I can make my own instrument, stick a police whistle in my mouth, and annoy the neighbors all night. With a modicum of creativity I can make my own mini-culture, and nobody on earth can compell me otherwise. Tell me that's not something worth preserving.
Now, onto the Issues of the Day. I haven't had more than minor interest in the Cindy Sheehan and Barnum and Bailey business, at least not enough to get emotionally charged on the subject. She's mad about her dead kid, whoopty-crap. She's not a criminal and she's well within her rights to picket Bush's house until the Second Coming to make known her views.
The only thing that made me roll her eyes was that the media hacks never bothered to tell us much about the young man for whom Camp Casey was named. Didja know he was awarded the Bronze Star posthumously for volunteering for the mission that led to his death? Didja know this was his second tour in-country, for which he re-enlisted, after Baghdad had fallen? Didja know that he had his own opinion on the war that took his life?
For this and other startlers, read Mark Steyn's piece on the subject, which is as merciless as ever. Most noteworthy is the fact that the President did meet with the Sheehan family, a year ago, when Casey died. Gee, the kid dies a year ago, the mom starts having a fit now. One has to wonder.
In Other News, the Iraqi Constitution. I have no idea whether this one will stick or be another piece of legalese wallpapering the palaces of a failed state. And neither does anybody else. Having read Belmont Club's take, I could go either way. But even if the referendum fails and Iraq splits three ways, I can see value coming out of it. For one thing, neither Kurdistan nor Sunni Mesopotamia are likely to become the regional trouble-makers or terror swamps that Saddam's Iraq was, and the Sunni Triangle, cut off from the oil fields and possibly from Baghdad, is at best going to be a mini-Syria and at worst a Syrian protectorate.
But let's say that Allah's Hell does indeed break loose, as Wretchard almost suggests, and the whole order of the Middle East as it's been since WW1 shatters like a champagne flute. Jolly good, says I. This is a region of the world that desperately needs to take a long hard look at itself. They've tried reactionary theocracy (Iran, Saudi Arabia), they've tried Stalin-lite Tyranny (Iraq, Syria), they've tried banditry (Palestine) and bureacratic scleroticism (Egypt). They've been repaid with poverty, butchery, and a political culture reminiscent of the Montagues and Capulets. If anyone wants to discuss the morality of chickens coming home to roost, that's a perfect place to start.
Besides, continuing chaos may wake up the rest of the world to the fact that we can't wish bloodthirsty exremism away with grave concerns and Roadmaps for Peace. I've been saying for a long time that fighting terror doesn't end with Afghanistan or Iraq. It doesn't even, truth be told, end with the Middle East. It begins to end on the day that the most left-wing Nader-voting Euro-pacifist says "You know what? I'm not gonna offer myself or anybody in my homeland as a sacrifice for your hatred, my jihad-spouting friend. I'm not gonna explain away your motives. Bush may be a retard with a gun, but you, sir, are a fucking demon, the enemy of everything decent, and I'm not gonna rest until your ass is in a deep, dark place."
This, of course, will take years, if not decades. So welcome to the new Cold War. I hope that my grandkids will enjoy its end as much as I enjoyed seeing the Berlin Wall come down.
Sooooo....
What's new, what's interesting? Nothing and nothing. For all that one sometimes hears about living in interesting times, I find most of these proceedings damn dull. I can't even watch TV anymore. 500 channels, and it's all the same self-referential, too-hip post-modern gruel. Utter noise.
But the great thing about free will and living in a society with a fairly broad sphere to exercise it is that I can absent myself from all of this. I can tell the cable company to get stuffed, and use the TV for watching movies (last night I grabbed a copy of Shaun of the Dead, which I can thoroughly enjoy without being familiar with any of George Romero's films, because it's not just a cheap parody). I can read Bass Guitar magazine instead of Spin, and spend my evenings learning to play "Immigrant Song" instead of wondering whether I would ever buy a Kanye West album. And that's if I feel like being lazy. A few carpentry books and I can make my own instrument, stick a police whistle in my mouth, and annoy the neighbors all night. With a modicum of creativity I can make my own mini-culture, and nobody on earth can compell me otherwise. Tell me that's not something worth preserving.
Now, onto the Issues of the Day. I haven't had more than minor interest in the Cindy Sheehan and Barnum and Bailey business, at least not enough to get emotionally charged on the subject. She's mad about her dead kid, whoopty-crap. She's not a criminal and she's well within her rights to picket Bush's house until the Second Coming to make known her views.
The only thing that made me roll her eyes was that the media hacks never bothered to tell us much about the young man for whom Camp Casey was named. Didja know he was awarded the Bronze Star posthumously for volunteering for the mission that led to his death? Didja know this was his second tour in-country, for which he re-enlisted, after Baghdad had fallen? Didja know that he had his own opinion on the war that took his life?
For this and other startlers, read Mark Steyn's piece on the subject, which is as merciless as ever. Most noteworthy is the fact that the President did meet with the Sheehan family, a year ago, when Casey died. Gee, the kid dies a year ago, the mom starts having a fit now. One has to wonder.
In Other News, the Iraqi Constitution. I have no idea whether this one will stick or be another piece of legalese wallpapering the palaces of a failed state. And neither does anybody else. Having read Belmont Club's take, I could go either way. But even if the referendum fails and Iraq splits three ways, I can see value coming out of it. For one thing, neither Kurdistan nor Sunni Mesopotamia are likely to become the regional trouble-makers or terror swamps that Saddam's Iraq was, and the Sunni Triangle, cut off from the oil fields and possibly from Baghdad, is at best going to be a mini-Syria and at worst a Syrian protectorate.
But let's say that Allah's Hell does indeed break loose, as Wretchard almost suggests, and the whole order of the Middle East as it's been since WW1 shatters like a champagne flute. Jolly good, says I. This is a region of the world that desperately needs to take a long hard look at itself. They've tried reactionary theocracy (Iran, Saudi Arabia), they've tried Stalin-lite Tyranny (Iraq, Syria), they've tried banditry (Palestine) and bureacratic scleroticism (Egypt). They've been repaid with poverty, butchery, and a political culture reminiscent of the Montagues and Capulets. If anyone wants to discuss the morality of chickens coming home to roost, that's a perfect place to start.
Besides, continuing chaos may wake up the rest of the world to the fact that we can't wish bloodthirsty exremism away with grave concerns and Roadmaps for Peace. I've been saying for a long time that fighting terror doesn't end with Afghanistan or Iraq. It doesn't even, truth be told, end with the Middle East. It begins to end on the day that the most left-wing Nader-voting Euro-pacifist says "You know what? I'm not gonna offer myself or anybody in my homeland as a sacrifice for your hatred, my jihad-spouting friend. I'm not gonna explain away your motives. Bush may be a retard with a gun, but you, sir, are a fucking demon, the enemy of everything decent, and I'm not gonna rest until your ass is in a deep, dark place."
This, of course, will take years, if not decades. So welcome to the new Cold War. I hope that my grandkids will enjoy its end as much as I enjoyed seeing the Berlin Wall come down.
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