In the grand tradition of Martin Amis, Ron Rosenbaum decides that aligning oneself with people who still can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the millions killed by Communism maybe isn’t such a hot idea. (Link from No Treason.)
Oct 102002
Oct 102002
Arthur Silber, an Objectivist who runs an excellent blog and has been kind enough to recommend me into the bargain, and whom I’m about to pay back with my usual graciousness, complains that “our foreign policy still lacks overall, long-term principles.” And he tells us what these principles ought to be, viz., that the U.S. ought to consider only its own interests; and that the U.S., being the freest country in the world, has the moral right to invade any country that systematically oppresses its own citizens, which definitely includes Iraq.
Fine. I agree with Arthur. I daresay most of Arthur’s readers agree with Arthur. I think most sentient people this side of Noam Chomsky agree with Arthur, as Arthur himself acknowledges when in the same post he points out the declining respectability of the “self-determination” argument. Almost everyone agrees on these principles because it is safe to do so, since they provide no practical guidance whatever. Arthur is flogging a horse that, if it isn’t quite dead, is at least very ill. On the critical question of whether we should actually invade Iraq, Arthur concludes, resoundingly, that he has no idea:
I don’t spend a great deal of time analyzing whether we ought to invade Iraq or Iran, as opposed to helping those people and groups passionately committed to replacing those countries’ current regimes, or as opposed to some other kind of military action, either overt or covert. Let me be clear: certainly I want a ruler like Saddam Hussein gone — and yesterday, if possible. And I view him as a very serious danger to us, and to the entire civilized world. But I view the question as to exactly in what manner to achieve this end to be one of military tactics and strategy — and I am certain there is a wealth of information, which is undoubtedly highly classified, that is critically relevant to answering this question. Thus, I simply don’t have the required information to reach an informed conclusion. This certainly doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in the answer; of course I am. I only mean that, in the context of knowledge available to me, I simply don’t have sufficient information to reach a conclusion that I myself would find satisfactory.
I respectfully submit that we have a good deal of information already. We know that Saddam pays off people who kill Americans. We know that he has colluded to have Americans murdered. We know that he murders his own people by the hundreds of thousands. We know that he is pursuing nuclear weapons. What theoretically classified information would allow Arthur to reach a conclusion on Iraq? And what — subject to the facts, of course — would that conclusion be?
Objectivists are often loath to discuss foreign policy because foreign policy is largely a matter of strategy and tactics, which are so grubby and, well, unphilosophical. This is fine for Objectivism — a philosophy need not be a foreign policy. It is not fine for Objectivists. For the next several years the most serious issue facing this country will be how to deal with Islamo-fascism, and what is in “the self-interest of the United States” will involve messy, ineluctable questions of strategy and tactics, not just lofty philosophic generalities. Arthur asks why we should invade Iraq, as opposed to North Korea or China. In the realm of philosophy that is impossible to answer: none of these regimes is “better” or “worse” than the others in any intelligible sense. But in the realm of politics it is easy to answer: the Middle East is making the most trouble for us these days, Iraq is in the middle of it, eliminating Saddam will destabilize the other dictators down there, and none of this will happen by itself. These are all unphilosophical arguments, but that’s foreign policy.
To be fair, Arthur acknowledges that his foreign policy views are a work in progress and has promised to write further on the subject, and I look forward to his sorting some of these matters out.
Oct 092002
Carl McCall has been looking especially dour lately. You almost have to feel sorry for a Democrat who makes “education” (cf. The Children™) the chief theme of his campaign and then can’t convince the New York City teacher’s union to endorse him. Then you read to the bottom of the story and see this:
Meanwhile, McCall backed restoring thousands of city apartments to rent control. He said he would reverse a 1997 law signed by Pataki that removes controls if the monthly rent hits $2,000 and the tenant earns at least $150,000.
No rent deregulation, in New York, is so mild that it escapes the wrath of some friend of the working man. The direct beneficiaries, whose rent is controlled, and the indirect beneficiaries, who own, always gang up on the victims, who rent, or who can’t afford to move here at all because the housing market is so absurd. The constituency for rent control here is so firmly entrenched that it doesn’t bother with arguments any more. (Full disclosure: I own my apartment. Nice try.)
This kindles fond memories of State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno’s oh-so-radical proposal, a few years ago, that rent-controlled apartment go back on the market when their current residents died. The one semi-serious argument in favor of rent control was the “widows and orphans” problem — all those poor people thrown into the street, eating out of garbage cans, the minute rent controls were lifted. Well, you’d think Bruno’s proposal would dispose of that, right? Wrong. It was soundly defeated, and we haven’t heard a word about rent deregulation in New York City since.
Oct 082002
What would I be if I were a product?
god of the machine is a hearing aid that makes amusing belching noises, uses the Amazon API and checks your spelling.
That’s actually pretty close. (Link from Spleenville via Cut on the Bias.)
Oct 082002
I oppose mild gun laws, because they don’t work and cultivating disrespect for the law by passing ineffective laws is a bad idea; and I oppose harsh gun laws, because they do work, and disarming the citizenry is a worse idea. That said, I suspect the shootings in Maryland are exactly the sort of crime that Draconian gun laws would discourage. Susanna Cornett plausibly speculates — Susanna is always plausible — that the Maryland perp is employed, reasonably functional, without a criminal record, and an ardent gun hobbyist. (Also white, male and in his 30s or 40s, which is less relevant for our purposes.) If owning guns were essentially illegal, wouldn’t shooting sprees of this type by otherwise law-abiding people be among the first things to go?
The Brady Campaign, oddly, says it will “refuse to capitalize” on the shootings in Maryland, when to do so would be far less dishonest than usual.
Oct 082002
Torch flickers unseen,
a firefly in afternoon,
except noisier.
(Update: Will Warren kipples at Torricelli’s expense.)
Oct 082002
Many poets write about writing poetry; Allan at Rough Days links to a long list. This makes sense, because poets spend a lot of time writing poems. But few poets write about reading poetry, which is odd, because poets (one hopes) spend even more time reading poems. The best poem I know about reading poetry is by J.V. Cunningham. It says that the poem lives only in the mind of the intelligent reader, not on the page, and that to reconstruct the poem, to enter so far into the thoughts of someone else, is itself a creative act.
Poets survive in fame.
But how can substance trade
The body for a name
Wherewith no soul’s arrayed?
No form inspires the clay
Now breathless of what was,
Save the imputed sway
Of some Pythagoras,
Some man so deftly mad
His metamorphosed shade,
Leaving the flesh it had,
Breathes on the words they made.
Oct 082002
The demise of the indispensable Arts & Letters Daily is very sad, but I take some comfort from its fission into Philosophy & Literature, Arts Journal and SciTech Daily, even if it does crowd my links some.
Oct 052002
The baseball page has been revamped, especially the search function. I always wanted to be able to make custom searches of a historical baseball database, but I never could. So I wrote it myself, and now I can, and so can you.
Oct 052002
Google’s new page-ranking algorithm may have hurt better blogs than mine, but who cares? I’m now the #1 Haspel, ahead of my mother and sister, who write (about food) for actual money, some camera service in the Netherlands, and the summer-suit purveyors who own the eponymous domain.
In a related story, I’m on page 14 of the Aarons, behind Hank Aaron, Aaron Copland, Aaron Burr, Aaron Carter, Aaron’s Tracheostomy Page, and the notice that Aaron’s Tracheostomy Page has moved.