01 Nov 2008
Gates Expands U.S. Right to Defend Against Plots

Warning! Large scale essay ahead! Maybe I'll subtitle it:

WMD's and the End of Ideology

I've been trying my damnedest to keep the "free market" from taking the rap for the latest banking crisis - we have free markets like the Sahara has fresh water.

So I've been following stuff a bit more closely this year, and in the course of my reading I ran across this thread over on Masson's Blog. His take is that Alan Greenspan's failure as Fed Chariman necessarily obviates Objectivism because Greenspan once wrote a chapter in an Ayn Rand Book and indeed considered himself an Objectivist. Then he talks about his conclusion that both Objectivism and libertarianism are unworkable because of large concentrations of wealth!

Well, my first inclination was to jump into the conversation full tilt + not in a trolling way, but just to try to spread some light about how that just ain't so.

But then I thought better of it, and here we are. I have a bit of a confession to make. I'm coming to the conclusion that they may be unworkable as well. And I'd love to be proven wrong.

I've been a libertarian and an anarchist since I was in the Air Force. I went through a serious Objectivist phase, as did Mr. Masson, as did many of my generation. I've watched my youngest daughter go through Rand to Ron Paul, and slowly towards the realization that government is the problem, and that it's form is largely immaterial.

But in breaking with a longstanding policy, I've decided to vote this year - for Obama. Kinda absurd for an anarchist, eh?

Maybe - but weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological or nuclear - hereinafter referred to by the shorthand name "nukes") may have completely changed the game.

How would an anarchist society possibly defend itself against the threat of terrorists with nukes?

I've read alot of critiques of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism - none of them hold much water for me. The economic ones are just specious bull, and the moral ones are gibberish, misunderstanding the ideal of libertarianism entirely. But nobody seems to address nukes in any meaningful way, short of some Pollyannaish vision that nukes will be pointless when we attain a stateless society.

The assumption underlying this is that no one wants to destroy the planet and kill themselves. Libertarians, myself included, have been a bit glib about nukes. But the rise of religious terrorism should give us pause - we assume that people always act in their own self interest, and we're right. But what happens when that self interest is self destructive, and is armed with a ten megaton warhead?

There are religious fanatics in this world who would push the button in an instant if they thought it would hasten the return of whatever imaginary friend they suspect is coming back.

It hasn't helped that I've been reading a couple of excellent essays on the topic of nuclear weapons in general: Weapons and Hope, by Freeman Dyson, and Prisoner's Dilemma, by William Poundstone. The folks at the Mises Institute could certainly use a quick read of the latter to brush up on their game theory. And Robert Gates needs to read both of them. Now. Before he opens his mouth on the subject again. And before we shift our national policy.

In a truly stateless society, what could prevent a person or group of people from building nukes and using them to impose their will - from becoming a government? Or worse, from simply destroying the planet for the sake of watching the fireworks.

Libertarians not only assume that everybody acts in their own self interest, they assume that self interest is driven by reason - and by a shared worldview in which Life = Good and Death = Bad.

The last few years in the Middle East, and the rise of the Religious Right in America, should be enough to put those notions to rest once and for all. There are some people out there who are really and sincerely crazy, and some of them are more than willing to die to prove it. And take as many of the rest of us as they can with them when they go.

So there you have it: any of my fellow left-libertarians care to rebut? Take all the space you need (but links are disabled in comments, unfortunately) or just email me and I'll post any cogent rebuttals with links enabled.

Which leads me back to why I'm voting this year.

The thought that somebody who sincerely and wholeheartedly believes that the end is nigh and God is coming back might have their finger on a nuclear trigger is enough to make me abandon my anarchist principles and do whatever I can to try and prevent that. I do not want to die in a fusion fireball to satisfy some moonbat's prophecy.

And in the course of the last two months, I've become convinced that Sarah Palin is such a person.

Hence my reluctant vote for Obama.

And if she does assume office, I sincerely hope I'm wrong about her. Or Gods help us all.

The defense secretary offered a broad interpretation of the the nation’s powers of self-defense in a post-Sept. 11 world.

(link) [New York Times]

Update: Anchorage Daily News.

11:38 /Politics | 6 comments | permanent link

Studs Terkel, Listener to Americans, Dies at 96

His show was always lively, as were his books. In many ways, he was the American chronicler of the 20th century. RIP.

Mr. Terkel was a Pulitzer prize-winning author whose searching interviews with ordinary Americans helped establish oral history as an important historical genre.

(link) [New York Times]

09:26 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Scottish link

I was wondering when somebody would notice this: the Caucasus is the Indo-European homeland, and heartland. And the folks who are still there are just the w=ones that stayed at home during the migration age. The only thing the Ossetians are missing is that, of course, they are related to the Georgians (and the Russians) as well as the Scots, the Franks and the English.

Heathenry does a lot of toponymy, the study of place names, to ascertain the extent and nature of various god-cults in the Viking Age and before. So it's no surprise to me that there are placenames all over Western Europe that can be traced back to the Caucasus.

Hundreds of years ago, Ossetians roamed all over Western Europe, from the Caucasus to Scotland. As Tim Whewell reveals, the folk memories of these wanderings have lingered down the centuries, so that it can be hard to tell where myth ends and history begins.

(link) [BBC News]

09:22 /Asatru | 2 comments | permanent link

Fight over Boone Co. turbines headed to court

This is going on right here, in Boone County, Indiana in 2008. Maybe I should subtitle this "How Zoning Boards and Cranky Neighbors Control Your Gas Bill" - even without the neighbors look at the hassle these poor folks went through, and the permits they were required to buy, just to put up a wind turbine.

This is why I can't put up a wind turbine: even if I could afford the machine and the building costs, I couldn't afford the lawyers, licenses, fees and permits required to build it on my property.

Whatever we once had in this country resembling a free market has been truly "skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape".

Lebanon - A lawsuit between two Lebanon neighbors is being watched carefully by people in the wind turbine industry. The outcome could effect future commercial and residential development of wind turbines in Boone County and central Indiana.

(link) [WTHR]

Dickens quote from David Copperfield

09:03 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link