It’s not news that Kevin Drum opposes it, but it’s still nice to see attacks on it from the left. Yes, it is a waste of time and money.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Charlie Hebdo
How do we stop another one? Thoughts from Richard Epstein on religious tolerance:
The hard question then is what should be done with those who refuse to accept the universal truce not to use violence against those who dare to utter statements that they regard as blasphemous.
Here again the libertarian theory offers the first step towards a response. By their refusal, they become outlaws. Those who are prepared to use force should be subject to the full range of criminal and civil sanctions. Individuals and the state may use force to resist force, they may work hard to ferret out threats of the use of force before they materialize, and they may root out conspiracies of individuals for particular acts of violence. Similar hostility is the order of the day against the nations and groups that practice the use of unlawful force or harbor those that do. Once again, it is critical to note that the libertarian vision seeks to preserve a large domain for protest and dispute, but it is relentless against those do not play the game in accordance with those rules. Its basic principle is: you disarm, we disarm, but if you fight, we fight harder.
At this point, the practical program should be clear. It is no longer defensible to try to soft-pedal the enormity of the difficulty by announcing some supposed parity between murderers and the people they murder. Supposed social grievances against those who ridicule and deal in satire must fall on deaf ears. Moral equivocation worsens our ability to maintain an ordered liberty. Force must be met with force. France, the United States, and other nations must conduct massive manhunts against those who commit terrorist actions, properly labeled as such. They must go further and deprive these individuals of the sanctuaries from which these attacks can be brought, which means troops on the ground, as well as planes in the air.
No one has a right to not be offended. And yet, with perfect timing, the largest Islamic organization in the world calls for more anti-speech laws.
[Update a few minutes later]
Popehat has some questions for the New York Times regarding its policy on depicting Mohammed.
Fight For Space
The documentary project has a trailer out, and a new Kickstarter to complete and release it. It seems to have evolved considerably (and usefully) from the original project.
Central Command
It looks like its Twitter account has been hacked by Jihadis.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
[Update a few minutes later]
TWitter has suspended the account. But they took over the Youtube channel, too.
The BBC
Which side would it have rooted for in WW II?
Islam’s Tarnished Brand
Thoughts on the problem from Instapundit.
By the way, I’d say that Al-Sisi has already done more to deserve a Peace Prize than Barack Obama had when he got his. Or has done since.
“Charlie,” Free Speech, And Climate Change
Thoughts from Judith Curry:
Anyone defending the satirists at Charlie should have a tough time defending Michael Mann in his legal war against the satirical writings of Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg. It will be interesting to see if Charlie and the defense of satirists changes the dynamics of the Mann vs NRO/CEI/Steyn lawsuits.
For the record, I have never sued, or threatened, let alone committed any acts of violence against people who call me a “denier,” a term I find quite offensive (particularly when they can’t describe exactly what it is I “deny”). I have this crazy idea that the proper response to speech I don’t like is more speech.
[Afternoon update]
“Free speech is so last century. Today’s students want the right to be comfortable.” I like the phrase “Stepford students.”
France
The means by which France could defeat the terrorists are obvious: To compel the majority of French Muslims to turn against the terrorists, the French authorities would have to make them fear the French state more than they fear the terrorists. That is a nasty business involving large numbers of deportations, revocation of French citizenship, and other threats that inevitably would affect many individuals with no direct connection to terrorism. In the short term it would lead to more radicalization. The whole project of integration as an antidote to radicalism would go down the drain. The effort would be costly, but ultimately it would succeed: most French Muslims simply want to stay in France and earn a living.
As I said yesterday, this won’t have a pretty ending. For the first time since the Nazi occupation, French Jews were unable to observe Shabbat in their synagogues today. Because France has imported an ideology as bad as, if not worse than, the Nazis. In the banlieues, it is a new occupation.
[Update a few minutes later]
France rounds up 900 terror suspects.
Well, it’s a start.
[Saturday-morning update]
The (latest) exodus has begun:
Hang on to the West Bank, Israel, you’re going to need the room…They will also be subject to terrorist attacks in Israel, but there they can have a gun and shoot back. I hope they all leave. They can’t do any good there, the French can’t protect them and won’t let them protect themselves, but in their new countries they can be a hard-core element to stiffen resistance. It’s time for triage and France is in the walking-dead category, although they might have a miracle revival. However that France wouldn’t be a nice place for Jews either, if somebody like Le Pen is in charge.
They’ve been leaving for years, but I think this may be (or should have been) the last straw for French Jewry.
[Update in the afternoon]
Claire Berlinski: “I am a Jew, and I am not leaving“:
…if you want to talk about odds, I’ll tell you about odds: In my grandfather’s regiment of 1,250 men, only 250 survived. So don’t tell me about the odds: It just makes you sound like a hysteric with no sense of history or proportion.
And while we’re at it: Let’s remember who won that war.
I am Jewish. I am in France. And I am not leaving–not because of a handful of terrorist swine, and not even if there’s an army of them. This family of Jews will not be driven out of Europe twice. And as far as I’m concerned, the response a Jew should have to this outrage is the one we should have had before–when up against a far more fearsome enemy. We may die, but we’ll die fighting, and you’ll be amazed how many of you we take down with us.
So let me speak personally now to anyone who thinks he’ll get me out of here: We will always have Paris. I will always have Paris. As will all the people who belong here. You, however, will die.
I have much more to say. But there is one more thing that strikes me as more important than all the other things on my mind. There are also many terrified Muslims in France right now. And yes, some of them are my friends–and close ones.
They too are the victims of these savages. They are victims in a double sense: Terrorists are as eager to kill them as they are eager to kill anyone in France. One of the cops they killed happened to be as Muslim, as has widely been reported. And they are victims in the second sense in that they this is only country they have. They will be associated forever with those animals–but they are French citizens. They have no Israel to go to. They have nowhere else to go to. So they will stay here too.
[Bumped]
A Plague Of Dementia
If we don’t figure out how to treat it, that will be the consequence of an aging population.
The Federal Drinking Age
It’s long past time to abolish it. It was an idiotic idea from Elizabeth Dole, during the Reagan administration. It’s a major contributor to college binge drinking (and associated sexual regrets that some people want to redefine as rape).