This morning I read the entire majority opinion from the Supreme Court striking down the D.C. gun ban. Then I walked over to the Malvern Police station and asked for a few minutes with my town’s Chief of Police.
Category: Politics
A victory for civil rights
I’ve just read the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Heller handgun-ban case, issued this morning. It’s a somewhat better result than I was expecting.
Oderint, dum metuant
In Nablus, a young man is kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists — who then set him free on learning he is an American because they don’t want to end up like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi so recently did. I am irresistibly reminded of a piece of cynical wisdom from the mouth of the mad Roman emperor Caligula,… Continue reading Oderint, dum metuant
Testosterone makes people stupid
Yes, testosterone makes people stupid. No, I’m not talking about the men who secrete and metabolize it, I’m talking about the nervous old women of both sexes who pronounce upon it as though it were some sort of demonic drug.
Dan Simmons’s message from the future
I very seldom post just to forward my readers to someone else’s writing, but SF author Dan Simmons has earned it with this potent warning. Read the whole thing. Because it is indeed our future, unless we wake up.
Islam Is At War With Us
I’ve been warning since 2002 that the West really is in a war to defend civilization against Islamic barbarians, and had better face up to that fact before the consequences of whitewashing Islam as a “religion of peace” get worse. Comes now Fjordman, a blogger from Norway who tells us that Moslem immigrants to Sweden… Continue reading Islam Is At War With Us
The Rape Exception
Logicians know that when you deduce a contradiction, your premises are broken. When human beings express a contradiction, it usually means their true beliefs are not their stated or conscious ones; they’re rationalizing a position which they may not be fully aware of.
If Hollywood Were Really Brave
The Oscar night of 2006 brought us the unedifying spectacle of George Clooney (whom I must say I truly admire when he shuts his yap and acts) celebrating Hollywood’s bravery for being willing to make movies like Brokeback Mountain and Good Night and Good Luck. Conservative commentators have already pointed out how hollow and laughable… Continue reading If Hollywood Were Really Brave
Rethinking Imperialism
One of the effects of the Soviet meme war I’ve been writing about recently is that to most educated Westerners it is absolutely taboo to think that Western imperialism might have been a good thing. Since the end of World War II, even conservatives have generally conceded this point, as a way not to look… Continue reading Rethinking Imperialism
Media Analysts Sound Pessimistic as Iraq Civil War Fails to Materialize
WASHINGTON — Media analysts sounded an increasingly gloomy note today following news that a full-scale outbreak of civil war in Iraq had been averted. “The prospects for regime change in Washington seem increasingly remote,” said one senior White House reporter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
How Sweet the Uses of Conspiracy
Glenn Reynolds writes: When other groups decide that the way to get favorable press is to use violence, those who have wimped out now will have no one to blame but themselves. As a reader emailed me a while back, what use is a free press if it doesn’t believe in free speech? People talk… Continue reading How Sweet the Uses of Conspiracy
The Meme War Continues
Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship. Sound like a crazy premise? Wait. It gets better. Vladimir Bukovsky, a leading dissident of the Soviet era whom was invited to testify at the Russian government’s inquiry into whether the Soviet Communist Party had been a criminal institution. got to see more of the KGB’s secret reports… Continue reading The Meme War Continues
Telecoms regulation considered harmful
Doc Searls asked me to put the argument for total telecoms deregulation into a nutshell, then blog it so he could point at it. Here it is.
Game Theory and Vote Fraud
Any democracy should aspire to a perfect, fraud-free voting system. But today’s loudest complainers on this issue — mainly Democrats complaining about Republican election victories — should be careful what they wish for, because they might get it. To see why, let’s apply a little game theory to the problem. Ask yourself under what circumstances… Continue reading Game Theory and Vote Fraud
Outsourcing breeds more jobs
CNNMoney reports: Demand for technology workers in the United States continues to grow in spite of American companies shifting more technology work overseas, according to a new study. Sigh. Is there, like, some cosmic law that reporters have to be poisonously ignorant about economics? Of course outsourcing stimulates domestic demand. Increases in efficiency and better… Continue reading Outsourcing breeds more jobs
Against Suicidalism from Down Under
Keith Windschuttle gets it. In The Adversary Culture he identifies the same suicidalist pathology that Mark Brittingham and Jeff Goldstein and I have been writing about recently. Windschuttle, an Australian historian, identifies historians and cultural-studies types on the academic left as vectors of the disease. I wonder if he’s read Koch on Willi Munzenberg or… Continue reading Against Suicidalism from Down Under
Ephemeralization against the bureaucracy
Segway inventor Dean Kamen unveils his next act, and it’s a doozy. He’s invented two devices to address the power and clean-water problems in the Third World — essentially, a rugged still and a generator that burns cow dung. But the real challenge to conventional thinking is Kamen’s (rightly) contemptuous dismissal of conventional development economics,… Continue reading Ephemeralization against the bureaucracy
Wal-Mart and the morning after
Politics is nasty enough when it’s about real issues, because it always reduces to somebody holding a gun on somebody else. But somehow I find it hardest to take when it’s about faux issues, all the machinery of coercion enlisted to no purpose other than for fools to posture at each other.
Gramscian damage
Americans have never really understood ideological warfare. Our gut-level assumption is that everybody in the world really wants the same comfortable material success we have. We use “extremist” as a negative epithet. Even the few fanatics and revolutionary idealists we have, whatever their political flavor, expect everybody else to behave like a bourgeois. We don’t… Continue reading Gramscian damage
Un-ending the Internet
Recently, The Nation ran an article, The End of the Internet, that viewed with alarm some efforts by telephone companies to hack their governing regulations so they can price-discriminate. Their plans include tiered pricing so a consumer’s monthly rate could be tied to the amount of bandwidth actually used. They also want to be able… Continue reading Un-ending the Internet