The congressional Democrats have made Nancy Pelosi their leader. Whether or not this is conscious strategy, it means they’re going to run to the left. And very likely get slaughtered in 2004. It’s truly odd how self-destructive the American Left has become. They’re like that famous line about the Palestinians, never missing an opportunity to… Continue reading What a responsible American Left would look like
Conspiracy and prospiracy
One of the problems we face in the war against terror is that al-Qaeda is not quite a conspiracy in the traditional sense. It’s something else that is more difficult to characterize and target. (I wrote what follows three years before 9/11.) Political and occult conspiracy theories can make for good propaganda and excellent satire… Continue reading Conspiracy and prospiracy
The Charms and Terrors of Military SF
I took some heat recently for describing some of Jerry Pournelle’s SF as “conservative/militarist power fantasies”. Pournelle uttered a rather sniffy comment about this on his blog; the only substance I could extract from it was that Pournelle thought his lifelong friend Robert Heinlein was caught between a developing libertarian philosophy and his patriotic instincts.… Continue reading The Charms and Terrors of Military SF
My Very First Fisk
Ta-daa! In ritual obeisance to the customs of the blogosphere, I now perform my very first fisking. Of Der Fisk himself, in his 8 Nov 2002 column “Bush fights for another clean shot in his war”. “A clean shot” was The Washington Post’s revolting description of the murder of the al-Qa’ida leaders in Yemen by… Continue reading My Very First Fisk
Libertarianism and the Hard SF Renaissance
(There is an extended and improved version of this essay, A Political History of SF.) When I started reading SF in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the field was in pretty bad shape — not that I understood this at the time. The death of the pulp-zines in the 1950s had pretty much killed… Continue reading Libertarianism and the Hard SF Renaissance
Post-postmodern politics
The Democratic Party fell off a cliff last night. Never mind their shiny new governorships — the `smart’ money pre-election was on them picking up an absolute majority of governor’s seats, and at the Congressional level they took a shellacking nearly as bad as 1994’s. The races Terry McAuliffe targeted as most critical — notably… Continue reading Post-postmodern politics
The Anti-Idiotarian-Manifesto is officially released
It’s out. The Manifesto site is here. The Manifesto has been submitted to PetitionOnline. To show your support, please add one of thw web buttons to your splash page. Blogspot comments
That bad old-time religion
It’s official. The anti-war movement is a Communist front. No, I’m not kidding — go read the story. Investigative reporter David Corn digs into last Saturday’s D.C. antiwar rally and finds it was covertly masterminded by a Communist Party splinter originally founded in support of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. For good later, he… Continue reading That bad old-time religion
The capsaicinization of American food
Consider spicy-hot food — and consider how recent it is as a mainstream phenomenon in the U.S. In 2002 many of us cheerfully chow down on Szechuan and Thai, habaneros and rellenos, nam pla and sambal ulek. Salsa outsells ketchup. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact it wasn’t that way until quite recently,… Continue reading The capsaicinization of American food
Armed children
The Bear of Considerable Brain, writes: “This does not mean every man, woman and child should roam the streets packing heat, much as some of my more rabid hoplophile colleagues in the Blogosphere might enjoy the sight.” N.Z. was probably thinking of me as one of his “rabid hoplophile colleagues.”; I’d be rather disappointed if… Continue reading Armed children
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 5)
Changes are deliberately not marked. Read the whole thing, this is a final pre-publication draft. Most of the changes from version 4 are deletions of excess verbiage. Counting email, this now reflects approximately 200 comments from across the blogosphere. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Since this process has to close sometime, I’m declaring that… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 5)
A request to web artists
I am planning on publishing the Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto soon, via petitiononline.com and possibly other channels. My hope is that enough bloggers will sign it and talk about it to get the position it describes some notice in the more blog-friendly of the mainstream media. Towards this end, I’m seeking volunteers to design a web button… Continue reading A request to web artists
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 4)
Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are marked in red; changes from 2 to 3 are marked in blue; changes from 3 to 4 are marked in purple. Counting email, this now reflects approximately 200 comments from across the blogosphere. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Since this process has to close sometime, I’m… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 4)
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)
Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are marked in red; changes from 2 to 3 are marked in blue. I think the changes largely speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population, and that for appeal to a wider… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 2)
Substantive changes from version 1 are marked in red. I think the changes largely speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population, and that for appeal to a wider audience it is necessary to excoriate the Right a little harder… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 2)
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 1)
WHEREAS, the year since the terrible events of 9/11 has exposed the vacuity and moral confusion of all too many of the thinkers, politicians, and activists operating within conventional political categories; WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive anti-Americanism; by apologizing for terrorist acts; by propounding squalid theories of moral equivalence; and… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 1)
Failsafe
I just sent the following letter to the Boston Globe after reading Elaine Scarry’s excellent piece Failsafe!: Congratulations on having the bravery to publish Elaine Scarry’s “Failsafe”. She is right to point out that distributed threats require distributed countermeasures. She is right to point out that centralized defense of the U.S. massively failed us. She… Continue reading Failsafe
Defeating Hussein Without Government
The aftermath of 9/11 is a hard time to be an anarchist. For many years before the WTC came down I believed that America could be better defended by have no government than by the system we have now, I imagined a nation of heavily armed militias, without the power-projection capabilities of a conventional military… Continue reading Defeating Hussein Without Government
Imperialists by necessity?
Steven den Beste wrote a long, intelligent and insightful essay on who the enemy is. I think he is right to see Afghanistan, Iraq, and the suppression of Al-Qaeda as phases of longer, wider war — a clash of civilizations driven by the failure of Islamic/Arab culture (though I would stress the problem of the… Continue reading Imperialists by necessity?
So, Howell Raines isn’t a complete waste of air
The NYT ran a pro-Linux editorial today. That’s good. They had to slip their “communitarian” spin in there, though, as if Linux hackers are all a bunch of PBS-worshiping Mother Jones readers and natural suckers for the fuzzy-sweater cause of the week. Hah. If they only knew. I’m not going to say my gun-toting red-meat… Continue reading So, Howell Raines isn’t a complete waste of air