Re: Survival
IIRC, they actually dropped a missile into Alaska somewhere (?). I've heard that existing technology could hit the West Coast (though whether the warhead would be robust enough to survive the trip and still function properly is up to debate...) right now.Originally Posted by Sean Love
Links one way or another, anyone?
Posting Appeasement? Yo, this is an internet bulletin board, not the League of Nations.
Obviously you're a liberal spammer.
Oooooooh! Oooooooooooooh! You bully!
marc lamb pontificating on rudeness?
bah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!
TK
How true, where 'Preparation H' is concerned!
How true, where 'Preparation H' is concerned!
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
"If Brian Rush had his way..."
And now for our feature presentation:
GROUNDHOG DAY
Starring Titus Sabinus Parthicus!
No, political parties are about gaining and holding power. I was talking about ideology. It's like the relation between a building contractor and physics. Obviously, construction must conform to the laws of physics but that doesn't mean the contractor must be conversant with these laws.
Does this apply to the right to bear arms? Suppose the government decides to collect all personal weapons (as it is doing in Iraq) as part of Homeland Security. Would this meet with your approval?
Agreed. This is the main reason for my long-term optimism as a right-winger (I won't use the word "conservative" in this context). Leftism is not just generic change; it is change toward some system deriving its ideas from those of the men sitting on the left side of the French Assembly. In this school of thought, derived from the writings of Rousseau, all problems are caused by private property, modern civilization is a corruption, and the antithesis to modern civilization is by definition a utopia.
Communism is the "pure" form of Rousseauism, which seeks to eliminate private property altogether. However, there are many moderate Rousseauists--Rousseau himself, for instance--who accept private property as something that will have to be endured, but who seek to move the world closer to the utopian "state of nature." Note that the "anarchists" and "environmentalists" who can be found demonstrating in the streets these days also hold a "pure" Rousseauist view, even if their emphasis is on the corruption of modern civilization rather than on private property. As you say, they are backward looking.
I think the reason that the Left adopted the civil rights struggle as its own was largely an accident of history. The CPUSA found it harder than they expected (practically impossible, actually) to recruit white workingmen to its cause, so they turned to blacks as an alternative source of recruits. At one point, they advocated carving a separate black nation out of the South. While most leftists weren't CPUSA members, the Party's views did trickle down to many left-wing academics, especially during the Common Front era of the Thirties.The (Western) left made a big error in theory. And this is largely why the left is so irrelevant today IMO. Leftists generalized intra-national class struggle into international class struggle. By doing so they identified Western nations (capitalists) as oppressors of undeveloped nations (proletariat). Then they combined it with racism: White European and American capitalists exploiting Black/Brown/Yellow Proletarians. In this way American racism became just another manifestation of class warfare.
But the historical record argues against this interpretation, especially in the United States. Strongly pro-capitalist courts ruled repeatedly against segregation in the late 19th and early 20th century. Labor was often very racist. So were the Progressives and many of the New Dealers. Class struggle is a social moment phenomenon. The civil rights struggle occurred in the High.
Since you mentioned Postmodernism: I believe Postmodernism to be more or less a phony movement. Essentially it is a "rear guard action" on behalf of Modernism. Modernism was the Rousseauist answer, in art and culture, to the Rationalist movement associated with the Lockian/Voltairean Enlightenment. Whereas Rationalism wanted to determine logically which social and cultural forms were needed, Modernism derided everything in the past as passe at best and evil at worst, and did away with all precedents. It is interesting to note that many Modernists are as shocking today as they were when they first emerged: take for instance, Abstract Expressionist art. Or, for that matter, Ibsen's play A Doll's House, in which the heroine leaves her kind and loving husband and their children.The two movements, racial and economic justice, were separate phenomena. By conflating the two (and later civil rights movements for women and homosexuals as well), leftists destroyed the applicability of their theoretical model. Marxism shifted from its materialist roots as a (flawed) theory of political economy to cultural critique. This is reflected in such things as postmodernism and the nihilistic viewpoint of many in the anti-globalization movement. But the strongest expression of the bankruptcy of leftist ideas is the failure for the left to strongly condemn Osama bin Laden, a religiously orthodox capitalist(!) who hates feminism and fought against socialism. And as a result of this shift, they have much less to say of relevance today.
Modernism petered out in the 1970's, probably due to the increasing evidence that its application to real life was (a)passe and (b) a disaster. Postmodernism emerged to prevent Modernists from having to take the heat for the world they'd created: instead of attacking tradition head-on, or alternatively making peace with it, Postmodernism muddied the waters by denying that tradition existed at all. This is why it is particularly appropriate that W.J. Clinton is called the "Postmodern" president: in the current political climate, he couldn't be a Modernist candidate like George McGovern (come to think of it, neither could McGovern in 1972), but he could hold onto power with lies and obfuscation.
Which makes a perfect segue into bin Laden: having convinced themselves--in order to justify their Modernist roots--that "all ideas are equal"--Postmodernists could not bring themselves to criticize someone who was thoroughly, and viciously, anti-modern. With the Left in the grip of Postmodernism, it was left to the Right (i.e., the disciples of the Lockean Enlightenment) to vigorously oppose him.
I don't agree about Austrian economists. Granted that Hayek would be somewhat out of place today at a rock concert, his work is still relevant.Leftists still have a few interesting and insightful things to say. But so do Austrian economists. But when you consider either of their views as a whole they come across as conservative cranks.
Whereas Burke was a conservative making a solid intellectual stand against the liberalism to which the intellectuals of his time subscribed, Hayek was a liberal making a solid intellectual stand against the socialism to which the intellectuals of his time subscribed. (And, of course, Eric Blair aka George Orwell was a socialist making a solid intellectual stand against the communism to which many intellectuals of his time subscribed).
Libertarian (miscalled conservative) economists in general (not just from Austria) have had some pretty radical ideas. Hayek's view that socialism leads to serfdom is one; the Laffer curve is another.
(Yes, I know that Laffer was advocating policies fairly similar to those of Harding and Coolidge. Unlike the conservatives of the Twenties, however, he did not put special emphasis on balancing the budget. This was the fundamental error of the GOP in that era: in the past, balancing the budget, which after all was pretty tiny by modern standards, was accomplished by adjustment of tariff rates. However, by the late Twenties, tariffs were no longer sufficient to balance the federal budget, so Hoover, trying to solve the problem of the Crash of '29 by balancing the budget, rose both tariffs and income taxes. Since income taxes hit American businesses far more directly, the economy went spinning downward into depression. Had Hoover refrained from hiking taxes, things would have been far different).
It does apply to the RKBA--which should be expanded so as to enable private citizens to deal with local terrorist threats, instead of waiting for Homeland Security to cart off the corpses.Does this apply to the right to bear arms? Suppose the government decides to collect all personal weapons (as it is doing in Iraq) as part of Homeland Security. Would this meet with your approval?
"The survival of a free America" was what I just posted on the "Consensus" thread as something we could all potentially agree upon. So, yeah, I get it. :wink:These words bear repeating.
Our national survival trumps everything else.
Got that, Lefties? :wink:
Mike:
See, this is why I distrust these single-polarity models of political thought.Communists are obviously "left". In Russia, the conservative nationalists who want to go back to the days of past Russian glory are Communists.
First off, the term "left" originated in an early French Republic, where it referred to radical democrats. There have been times when it meant Communist. There have been other times when it meant democratic capitalists. If the term is to have any meaning at all, then it means those who advocate egalitarian change from the status quo, and that could mean any number of things, but one thing it has to mean is a desire to change things.
Communists are obvious left -- in a capitalist country. In the Soviet Union, where socialism was the status quo, Communists were not leftists.
As I stated above, "left" refers to the variant strains of political thought that derive from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. If you think that the entire past should be repealed, and that property and civilization are the roots of evil (even if you don't want to abolish them per se), you are a leftist. If you want to ensure liberty by the guarding of already established rights, you are a rightist. (Or for that matter if you want to create tyranny by guarding established rights. Right-wing thought, unlike left-wing thought, has many sources of inspiration).
Another point: Communists were indeed leftists in the USSR, because they sought to abolish private property (and did so). The reason the system stagnated was simply that Communism doesn't work. Instead of utopia, the USSR got incessant shortages due to the price controls on goods.
Keep in mind that when the Soviet system fell, it didn't move left to Trotskyism. It moved right to liberal republicanism.
The timing is wrong for taxes to have caused the depression. Taxes were slightly lowered in 1929 (a one-time rebate was issued), not raised. They remained at 1928 levels for the next two years. The government was still collecting surpluses until 1931 and the deficit was only 12% in that year. By 1931 the depression was already in progress with 16% unemployment. Taxes were raised the next year.
The two positions you describe are neither polar opposites nor all-inclusive. Groups such as the Fascists in Italy were firmly in favor of property (as they conceived it) and civilization, but were not too interested in 'guarding established rights'. They don't really fit into either of your groupings. Perhaps this is intentional?
Regardless, the best definition I've seen for the Right/Left dichotomy is similar to Brian's.
The Right believes that we have already found the best possible mode of organizing society, and that paradigmatic changes threaten to push us into lesser states (of course, minor changes are seen as refinement rather than a threat...)
The Left believes that we have yet to identify the best possible mode or possibly that there is no best possible mode, but that a series of paradigmatic changes are necessary and appropriate to lead us to increasingly better modes of societal organization.
Historically, the Left has tended to make the mistake of implementing systems which are unworkable or otherwise doomed from the outset, and in the process screwing things up for people for whatever time they take to correct.
Conversely, the Right, tending to viscerally resist any paradigmatic changes as threats, misses out on or at least delays opportunities to effect real improvements in the condition of peoples' lives -- leaving at least some wallowing in misery beyond the point when they might otherwise have escaped.
This is not to say that either of the two viewpoints holds or has ever held a monopoloy on The Truth, of course...
Nevertheless, the point still holds that the emphasis on balanced budgets is what distinguishes Laffer economics from Coolidge economics.The timing is wrong for taxes to have caused the depression. Taxes were slightly lowered in 1929 (a one-time rebate was issued), not raised. They remained at 1928 levels for the next two years. The government was still collecting surpluses until 1931 and the deficit was only 12% in that year. By 1931 the depression was already in progress with 16% unemployment. Taxes were raised the next year.
'It does apply to the RKBA--which should be expanded so as to enable private citizens to deal with local terrorist threats, instead of waiting for Homeland Security to cart off the corpses.Does this apply to the right to bear arms? Suppose the government decides to collect all personal weapons (as it is doing in Iraq) as part of Homeland Security. Would this meet with your approval?
Since terrorrists are, by definition, hidden in the general population, how would you decide who is a beneficial gunowner and who has guns for offensive use? I'm sure terrorists would prefer having unfettered ownership rights.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
So your argument is that Keynes was right, but the money should have gone to the rich. Interesting.Nevertheless, the point still holds that the emphasis on balanced budgets is what distinguishes Laffer economics from Coolidge economics.The timing is wrong for taxes to have caused the depression. Taxes were slightly lowered in 1929 (a one-time rebate was issued), not raised. They remained at 1928 levels for the next two years. The government was still collecting surpluses until 1931 and the deficit was only 12% in that year. By 1931 the depression was already in progress with 16% unemployment. Taxes were raised the next year.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
No, but that's an interesting point. FWIW, I have the unusual view that there is a huge gulf between fascism and Naziism. Fascism I would consider simply to be a particularly oppressive form of technocracy; in other words, "whatever works works, and if you don't like it we'll arrest or kill you." Naziism I believe to be a utopian philosophy (albeit tinged with paganism--but then so is much of the radical socialism today): the reason Germans didn't live in a perfect society was because the Jews hadn't been exterminated, and because a racially based caste socialism hadn't been established worldwide.
Not today's Right. Most right-wingers today believe that society has been fundamentally changed in recent years (how recent depends on whom you're talking to), and they seek to make a society far different from what we have today. They do intend to do this using rights set down in laws still on the books--but then, so did the French Revolutionaries. (Contrary to common belief, the French commoners had a legal say in the formation of laws; the only thing was, that no king had called them in for advice in hundreds of years).Regardless, the best definition I've seen for the Right/Left dichotomy is similar to Brian's.
The Right believes that we have already found the best possible mode of organizing society, and that paradigmatic changes threaten to push us into lesser states (of course, minor changes are seen as refinement rather than a threat...)
I realize that this may seem reactionary rather than conservative--but what we seek is not the establishment of a society indistinguishable from that of that of the late nineteenth century, but rather a modern-day society in which the most important rights of that era still are respected. Many of the "old-fashioned" rights are more relevant now than they were then: for instance, the 2nd Amendment today is not only a means of combatting a hypothetical dictatorship in the future (although it still is that); it is also a means of protecting one's family from terrorists or criminals. Similarly, many liberals and leftists deride any reduction of government regulation as "anti-progressive"; yet in many fields, such as nuclear power and medicine, it is precisely that regulation that has prevented progress.
Once again, this doesn't apply to all Leftists. The street marchers against "globalization" who wear Che T-shirts clearly believe they have identified the best possible mode.The Left believes that we have yet to identify the best possible mode or possibly that there is no best possible mode, but that a series of paradigmatic changes are necessary and appropriate to lead us to increasingly better modes of societal organization.
As I said before, the Right today wants desperately to change the paradigm of American society. The Left does, too--but its changes would be to other systems existing elsewhere in the world today (and generating far smaller GDP's), whereas the Right wants to change things in a far more radical direction: toward liberal capitalism.Historically, the Left has tended to make the mistake of implementing systems which are unworkable or otherwise doomed from the outset, and in the process screwing things up for people for whatever time they take to correct.
Conversely, the Right, tending to viscerally resist any paradigmatic changes as threats, misses out on or at least delays opportunities to effect real improvements in the condition of peoples' lives -- leaving at least some wallowing in misery beyond the point when they might otherwise have escaped.
This is not to say that either of the two viewpoints holds or has ever held a monopoly on The Truth, of course...
I doubt it. A terrorist wants to achieve his goals as much as the next guy. Trying something in a crowded place (terrorist location of choice) is going to be much harder to pull off if any number of your intended victims are packing. Are you under the impression that a 'disposable' weapon is ever going to be difficult to get? Do you have any idea how much the supply of cocaine has gone up over the past 20 years of the ever-intensifying War on Drugs?
Unless, of course, you are talking about terrorists using explosives, in which case limiting weapons access won't make a whit of difference to their plans.
No, because unlike Keynes, Laffer and I don't think balanced budgets are inimical to economic health. We just don't think they're necessary.So your argument is that Keynes was right, but the money should have gone to the rich. Interesting.Nevertheless, the point still holds that the emphasis on balanced budgets is what distinguishes Laffer economics from Coolidge economics.The timing is wrong for taxes to have caused the depression. Taxes were slightly lowered in 1929 (a one-time rebate was issued), not raised. They remained at 1928 levels for the next two years. The government was still collecting surpluses until 1931 and the deficit was only 12% in that year. By 1931 the depression was already in progress with 16% unemployment. Taxes were raised the next year.
Well, then, you're "sure" wrong. Terrorists would prefer gun control, since they won't obey gun laws anyway. That's why they like hijacking airplanes: no guns.'It does apply to the RKBA--which should be expanded so as to enable private citizens to deal with local terrorist threats, instead of waiting for Homeland Security to cart off the corpses.Does this apply to the right to bear arms? Suppose the government decides to collect all personal weapons (as it is doing in Iraq) as part of Homeland Security. Would this meet with your approval?
Since terrorrists are, by definition, hidden in the general population, how would you decide who is a beneficial gunowner and who has guns for offensive use? I'm sure terrorists would prefer having unfettered ownership rights.
Re: Survival
There was a link on the Drudgereport a couple of months ago to that effect. The link led to an English-language version of an official South Korean new outlet. In the article a Korean politician was quoted as saying in front of the South Korean national legislature that he had learned from a Japanese diplomat that a North Korean missle had been found having crashed in the wilds of Alaska. The Japanese gentleman had learned this in discussions with American authorities during bilateral US-Japanese security talks. Or something like that.IIRC, they actually dropped a missile into Alaska somewhere (?). I've heard that existing technology could hit the West Coast (though whether the warhead would be robust enough to survive the trip and still function properly is up to debate...) right now.
Links one way or another, anyone?
I searched for other sources to this story but could not find any and I have heard nothing about it since. It seemed a bit sketchy to me, but nonetheless worrisome.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
I disagree. I think postmodernism is dematerialized Marxism. Marx analyzed the human condition wrt the material facts of life, which were pretty grim in his day. Political economy is that branch of study that deals with material life and for Marx it was paramount. He analyzed the political economy in terms of modes of production, and class interactions, with class defined by a simple division of labor, owners of the means of production (capitalists) and everyone else (proletariat).
Today the bulk of economic activity takes place in the developed countries. The bulk of the economic activity in these countries has nothing to do with material production. Marxism, developed with such an emphasis on material production, isn't going to be particularly suitable for application to advanced economies. Postmodernists, I believe, try to do Marxism with immaterial culture in place of material production. The philosophical origin of Marxist thought was alienation and I think they might start there. I'm guessing since I don't really fathom those guys at all.
I'm not surprised. IMO Austrian economies suffers from the same problem as Marxism. Neither considers growth explicitly. Yet growth was precisely the central question for the early economists and still the question of most practical interest today.I don't agree about Austrian economists.
Another problem I have with Austrianism is the assertion that malinvestment cannot arise from market forces. That smells of efficient markets hypothesis, which is a load of hooey IMO.
Regarding Postmodernism: alienation sounds more Modernist than Postmodernist. Once again, I refer you to The Doll's House, if only because I have a morbid fascination with (a)all things from my ancestral land, and (b)literarily impeccable works which I nevertheless find repugnant. The important thing is that the play does not make a rational case for continuing the heroine's marriage; rather, the central point to the play is its disconnect from traditional ways of thinking about things. A Rationalist (culturally Lockean) play would have shown a women beaten by a vicious husband, and made a case for divorce under those circumstances. In this play, however, her marriage is well-nigh perfect--yet she still walks out on her husband and her children. Ibsen, in essence, is saying, "There's no rational reason to dissolve a good family. But I support dissolving it anyway."
Now, if the play were Postmodernist, it would have thrown in a bunch of nonsense. It would have had her leaving the marriage, and then shown her living with her husband as if nothing had ever happened, and would have substituted her kids for her husband, and maybe thrown in Shakespeare and a few Vikings. I refer you to the Postmodern play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Unlike Ibsen's play, it is not literarily impeccable; actually, it sucks, even if it is a favorite of "artsy" types. It makes no sense whatsoever, and that's the point: where it leads the reader to expect a Modernist theme portraying the minor characters of Hamlet as quasi-proletarians, instead it throws in a number of nonsense scenes and mixes the characters of the story up with the actors playing them. To my mind, whereas TDH was saying, "I'm Modernist. Fuck you"--a direct statement, even if unsupported by logic--R&GAD in Postmodern style, tries to obscure the subject by babbling until the reader finally says, "The hell with it."
The fact is, we live in a largely Modernist world. In their hearts, people know this isn't sufficient. Postmodernism performs for the cultural elite the service of irritating people until they give up on opposing Modernism.
