Category Archives: Political Commentary

Philosophy, Political Commentary

“A Deadly Race Between Politics And Technology”

31 Comments

Peter Thiel has some thoughts on the future of freedom, and its apparent incompatibility with democracy.

Because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics. But the final frontier still has a barrier to entry: Rocket technologies have seen only modest advances since the 1960s, so that outer space still remains almost impossibly far away. We must redouble the efforts to commercialize space, but we also must be realistic about the time horizons involved. The libertarian future of classic science fiction, à la Heinlein, will not happen before the second half of the 21st century.

I think he’s a little too pessimistic, but certainly we can’t count on it happening any sooner. But I don’t think that the existing governments will tolerate sea steading, if it appears to become significant.

[Via Brian Doherty, who has links to other voices in the debate]

[Update late morning]

Jonah Goldberg has some related thoughts, in the process of demolishing idiotic “progressive” arguments against the tea parties and “rightwing extremists”:

5. The populist anger out there is the real face of America’s homegrown fascism.

Sigh. While I think Rick Perry’s secession talk is idiotic and unfortunate (even accounting for Texas’ unique history), I am at a loss as to how any of this stuff smacks of fascism. Even Perry is talking in the context of the federal government doing too much, taking away too much liberty, getting too involved in local communities and interfering too much with the individual.

How do I say this so people will understand? Fascism isn’t a libertarian doctrine! It just isn’t, never will be and it can’t be cast as one. Anarchism, secessionism, extreme localism or rampant individualism may be bad, evil, wrong, stupid, selfish and all sorts of other things (though not by my lights). But they have nothing to do with a totalitarian vision of the state where individuals and institutions alike must march in step and take orders from the government.

If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.

Well, actually, subscribing to that ideology is just another form of being grotesquely ignorant. You can expand the state, or you can expand individual liberty, but you cannot do both.

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

(Right)Winging It At The DHS

4 Comments

Jonah Goldberg, on the hypocrisy and misplaced paranoia of the left (and the MSM, but I repeat myself) in seeing “rightwing extremists” behind every tree, while ignoring the real threats:

When Hollywood filmed the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears, it changed the real villains from jihadi terrorists to a bunch of European CEOs who were secret Nazis. Because “everybody knows” that’s where the real threat lies.

Sen. John Kerry belonged to an organization of vets that considered assassinating American politicians. (Kerry denied participating in those meetings.) Barack Obama was friends with, and a colleague of, a terrorist whose organization plotted to murder soldiers and their wives at a social at Fort Dix. A young Hillary Clinton sympathized with the Black Panthers, a paramilitary gang of racist murders and cop killers.

Bring that up and you’re a paranoid nutcase out of Dr. Strangelove.

But if you’re terrified of a bunch of citizens who throw tea in the water and demand lower taxes and less government spending, well, that’s just a sign of political seriousness.

Also, as John Miller points out, these people have gotten way too much mileage out of Tim McVeigh. And if his goal was to increase the power of the political “right,” it had exactly the opposite effect, blunting the Republican momentum from the 1994 elections.

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Nurturism’s Last Stand?

11 Comments

John Derbyshire has some thoughts about the latest attempt to defy human nature and biological determinism:

…remember that the human sciences differ from the physical sciences in an important way. We have been acquainted with galaxies, quarks, genes, superconductors, neurons, and tectonic plates for only a few decades. We have been observing each other — our fellow human beings — with very keen interest for several dozen millennia, since homo sap first showed up and formed social groups. We should therefore expect far fewer surprises in the human sciences than in the physical sciences. The reasonable expectation is, that the human sciences mostly just validate and quantify what we always kinda knew. Striking, dazzlingly counter-inutitive results show up a lot in the physical sciences. In the human sciences they ought to be rare. When such results are announced, they should be approached with even more than the scientifically-normal amount of skepticism.

Both social conservatives and the left have a huge ideological investment in the tabula rasa theory of humans. Social conservatives because it is necessary for them to believe that homosexuals are made, not born, and leftists because they always seek to remold man in the image of their utopia, to fit him in their procrustean bed of equality and “fairness.”

Political Commentary

A Rant About Libertarian Morons

5 Comments

Reason TV editor Nick Gillespie goes verbally medieval on the (supposedly) libertarian idiots who voted for Barack Obama:

Question to the folks, including some of the libertarian persuasion (you fools!), who were bullish on Obama back when the alternative was John McCain, the Terri Schiavo of presidential candidates: When are you going to admit that Barry O stinks on ice? That for all his high-flying and studiously empty rhetoric he’s got the biggest presidential vision deficit since George H.W. Bush puked on a Japanese prime minister (finally, revenge for that long run of Little League World Series losses in the ’70s!). If you’re the president of the United States and you’re talking about goddamn traffic jams and you’re proposing high-speed rail as anything other than an unapologetic boondoggle that will a) never get built and b) never get built to the gee-whiz specs it’s supposed and c) be ridden by fewer people than commuted by zeppelin last year, you’ve got real problems, bub. And by extension, so do we all.

There’s more.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

More Idiocy In Austin

20 Comments

Two years after the worst school massacre in history, some students and faculty are walking out of class to demand to the Texas legislature that they remain helpless victims. And we have the usual stupidity from a law professor who, despite sensible comments from Eugene Volokh, gets the last moronic and historically ignorant word. From the conclusion:

Paul Finkelman, an Albany Law School professor and former UT history and law professor, said that from a constitutional standpoint, the Texas Legislature has the right to allow concealed carry on campus, but he questioned the logic of state legislators.

“I think no one ever accused the Texas Legislature of being smart,” Finkelman said. “It seems to be an inordinately stupid plan because it means any lunatic can come on campus with a gun.”

Yes, and of course, that couldn’t possibly happen unless the legislature makes it legal for permit holders to come on campus. I mean, we saw how effective Virginia Tech’s gun-free zone was. Apparently, the lunatic just hadn’t gotten the memo.

He said he was surprised that anyone in Texas would consider wanting to have guns on state campuses, particularly UT.

“Given the history of UT when someone climbed up a tower and started shooting people, … what are these people thinking?” Finkelman said.

Perhaps they’re thinking that it was a good thing that there were armed students on campus that day, who got their guns from their cars and lockers, and saved many lives by keeping the shooter pinned back in the tower until the police arrived.

He said the Supreme Court rulings have basically said they are free to regulate fire arms.

“The sociological evidence is clear that if guns are handy, people will use them,” Finkelman said. “Having such a rule is an encouragement of death and mayhem at the University of Texas. There is no other way to describe it.”

Yes, if guns are handy, and people are being shot at, they will use them. Guns don’t stop people from shooting people, people with guns do. In fact, if you really want to encourage death and mayhem at a university, put up a sign that effectively says: “hundreds of densely packed unarmed victims inside.” It worked a real treat in Blacksburg two years ago.