Blog Jones

So I came across a collection of quotes (supposedly) from Albert Einstein today. They were mostly the same sorts of quotes you always see from him (although they left out my personal favorite, “Never memorize what you can look up.”).

No, what interested me was the notice at the bottom of the list: “Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)”

Exactly what did Kevin Harris do that entitles him to a copyright of this collection? Copyright entitles an author/musician/artist to protection from another copying his work; Mr. Harris–whomever he is–did nothing but copy the sayings of Albert Einstein; there was not a single one of Mr. Harris’s original thoughts in this list.

At least, there shouldn’t have been; if he did include his own thoughts, he masqueraded them as the thoughts of Albert Einstein–a far more serious crime than a mere abused copyright.

Catallarchy links to a quote by Benjamin Frankling on arguing:

I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as “certainly”, “undoubtedly”, etc. I adopted instead of them “I conceive”, “I apprehend”, or “I imagine” a thing to be so or so; or “so it appears to me at present”.

When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

– Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

It seems like good advice. I’ve noticed in some of my previous posts a tendency to word things too strongly, as in “this is the best ___ ever” or “anyone with good critical thinking skills would see that ___” or whatever. (This sort of writing is likely a by-product of my tendency to blog late at night, as I am doing now.)

Fundamentally, Franklin’s technique admits the possibility of being wrong, which I find is critical to good thinking. If you say that a thing is true and that you’ll accept no argument against it, you run the risk of being proven wrong and being unable to correct yourself later without losing face.

You ought to be very careful what you set in stone.

The other thing Franklin is advocating is respect for the opponents position. I’m glad to see that this has been the general spirit here on this site. To my knowledge, no thread has yet been reduced to a name-calling flame-war, which is unusual for a site that discusses religion, politics, and other controversial issues.

This respect goes hand-in-hand with the previous point: A respect for your opponent’s position is born out of the possibility that you might be wrong, and that he might be right.

On the other hand, even if your position is correct, if you say the opponent is stupid or immoral for holding an opposing opinion, his mind immediately closes to your argument and switches to a defensive posture. Your wisdom will fall on deaf ears.

You don’t win minds by insulting and attacking them, but by reasoning with them.

I hate Doonesbury in general, but especially today’s strip:

George W. Bush did not start this war. This guy…

and this guy…

did. The latter by refusing U.N. weapons inspectors access to parts of his country (which we naturally interpreted as an attempt to hide a WMD program). The former by orchestrating an attack on civilians in our country on 9/11.

Try to get your facts right, and don’t let your blind hatred of Bush make you say stupid things again.

Edit: Shrunk picture for formatting in IE/Firefox. It actually looked right on the Wordpress Default theme in , because Opera resized the image proportionally, instead of squishing it. IE was even worse, bumping my sidebar to the bottom of the page! Ick.

Catallarchy, one of my favorite sources of libertarian and economic commentary, has linked to an essay by George Orwell, entitled “Politics and the English Language.” As you might expect from Orwell, he calls out against the misuse and confusion of the English language.

I highly recommend reading it, especially if you plan to write anything political at all, even so much as a letter to the editor. Two of the gems in the treasure chest:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

(In addition to this article, I also highly recommend Orwell’s masterwork, 1984. I read it for myself only recently, and I found it to be both clever and insightful. I especially loved the phrase “the place where there is no darkness.” There’s a copy available for free online.)

Go read the whole thing.

A long, long time ago, back when Blog Jones was still on Blogger, I wrote a post about a group called Critical Mass. On the last Friday of every month, this group clogs the streets of major US cities with thousands and thousands of bicycles. See the Wikipedia entry to see what I mean.

Well, yesterday I received an email from a guy whom I quoted in my first post on the topic. Here’s what I quoted from him in my first entry:

“We rode in the street and used the streets as a place to be, and socialize, and celebrate rather than just a place to pass through on your way to someplace,” says Joel Pomerantz, one of the original San Francisco riders

Now I’ll quote his email, with appropriate commentary, of course:

I only today stumbled upon your interesting commentary, which echoes comments I have heard many times before. If you are being up front and truthful that it is the delay to drivers which troubles you about Critical Mass, then there is one slight logic glitch you might want to think about.

It’s rare that any car driver “caught” by Critical Mass is delayed more than a few minutes–putting the delay well within the range that any reasonable driver expects from “regular” car traffic jams when driving in a city at rush hour.

So, apparently, it’s OK to inconvenience thousands of drivers, as long as it’s only for a little while.

If on the other hand your objections about the ride are something else (hinted at by the disdain oozing from your phrase “the car is obviously a faster, more efficient way”) then maybe you should write a commentary directly on that point. I would love to see your reasoned evidence that speed and efficiency are what make the world a better place. Many people think so for various reasons, but judging by the surge in the bicycle’s popularity for transportation, it seems that in some circumstances many people would rather have two hours a month where calm prevails in public spaces usually overwhelmed by motor traffic.

What you don’t see is the distinct lack of calm on the faces of the drivers you’re inconveniencing.

The roads–at least the parts of the road where cars drive on–are not for socialization. They are for getting from once place to another as quickly as possible. You should stay out of the way of the delivery men who are trying to do an honest day’s work, the ambulances which trying to get the sick and the dying to the hospital, the policemen, who are trying to prevent crimes, and the regular folks, who just want to get home and relax after a difficult week’s work.

Yes, speed and efficiency make the world a better place. Absolutely. If you doubt that, look at the places in the world where efficiency is apparently irrelevant, like the vast majority of Latin America and Africa: The people there are dirt poor. By consequence, they are hungry, sick, and without the things we in the first world would consider necessities, like regular electricity and indoor plumbing. On the other hand, look at the countries in the first world: The peoples of America and Japan prize efficiency, and so they are healthy, wealthy, and full.

Further, when your transit times are lower, you can spend more time doing the things you love to do. If I’m held up in traffic for a half-hour because a swarm of cyclists won’t get out of my way, that’s half an hour I can’t spend with my family, on my computer, or doing any of the things I enjoy. It seems profoundly selfish to me that these cyclists are enjoying themselves at the expense of thousands of others enjoying themselves.

As I said in my previous post, socialize all you want. Celebrate bike riding. But have the civility to stay out of the way of people with more important things to do.

That didn’t take long. The city of Freeport (a most ironic name) has seized the opportunity offered to them by the supreme court to steal three properties from a couple of seafood restaurants to make room for a $8 million dollar private marina.

The rich guy wins. The poor guy gets screwed. Big surprise.

I wonder how many people are going to die as a result of this decision. Once all the legal options are gone to protect your property from theives, what choice do you have but to take up arms and defend it with violence?

Update: I may have been mistaken: The loser wasn’t poor:

Gore said Western Seafood’s 30,000-square-foot processing facility, which sits on the 300-by-60-foot tract, would be forced to close if the land were seized.

That facility earns about $40 million annually, and Western Seafood has been in business in Freeport since 1946, he said.

Neil Boortz says what I said in my last post, only better.

Another fundamental right died in the courts yesterday. You no longer have the right to keep your private property.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow local governments to seize citizens’ land to build… shopping malls.

Of course, they’ve been able to force citizens to sell steal citizens’ land to build things like highways for decades. But now they have been given the OK to steal land for private development.

If a county councilman decides that the county really needs a Wal-Mart in your neighborhood, he can bulldoze your house to make room for it. Oh he’ll pay you something for it–whatever he thinks it’s worth.

How can they possibly justify this from the Constitution? The Fifth Ammendment states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Previously, public use has referred to government use like highways and water lines; now the definition has expanded to include private development, like hotels and shopping malls, if they’ll bring jobs and commerce to the area.

And what’s commerce? Well, as we learned a few weeks ago, interstate commerce means anything the government wants it to mean. When “marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana” can be called interstate commerce, then commerce, as a word, is utterly meaningless and pliable, adaptable to the schemes of any tiny tyrant.

I need to move out of the country before that becomes illegal.

Update: You know the worst part of this decision? Justice John Paul Stevens, the fool who wrote for the majority, said that local officials “know best” how to run your land. That’s right. You’re too stupid to know how to run your land the right way; you’ve got to let the government take it and give it to a company that’s obviously smarter than you are.

This is one of the tennets of a prominent political party. Can you guess which one?

We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses…. [This party] as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the…materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: common utility precedes individual utility.

No cheating!

(Via Dean’s World)

Netpilot over at The Boileryard has a great overview of the historical arguments over separation of church & state. Here’s the short version:

Although the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Bill of Rights, a letter from Thomas Jefferson commenting on the Bill makes it clear that the first ammendment was intended to build a “wall of separation between church and state.”

Netpilot: “the question we should be debating is not if the ‘wall of separation’ to which Jefferson referred was intended to be built by the first amendment, but rather how high and thick should the wall be built.”

Unfortunately, this was a point of contention even in the days of the founding fathers. On the one side you had people like Samuel Adams, who believed that “that religious toleration should be extended to all Christians, with the exception of Catholics and Papists.” On the other side, you had people like Jefferson and Madison, who opposed the appointment of chaplains for the House and Senate.

It’s not like some judge just decided to start this debate in the 1970’s. The debate over separation of church and state has been going on for centuries.

Here ends my summary and starts my commentary: I think that it’s OK for politicians to discuss their own religious beliefs, as Bush does frequently. I also think that the ACLU needs to relax a little bit: Having a nativity scene on public land won’t hurt anybody.

On the other hand, the government needs to be careful to avoid even the appearance of supporting any particular religion. That’s why I think the ten commandments monument needed to come down. Can you imagine being a Muslim on trial, walking into the courtroom, and seeing the religious iconography of Christianity and Judaism on the wall? Would you feel like you were getting a fair trial?

Can you imagine the outcry if a public school teacher led her class every morning in a prayer to Krishna?

Can you imagine being told that you couldn’t teach your child your “non-mainstream” religion? Oh, wait….

Unfortunately, separation of church and state has been taken to the point of extremes in some cases. Students in public schools ought to be able to pray over their meals, for example. (I’ve been told they can’t; can any public school kids fill me in?) But at its heart, separation of church and state is wise and sensible public policy.

One frustration I have with BJU and with my local church is their attitude of constant paranoia about…, well pretty much everything outside of the church. For a great example of this, check out an old book called Saturday Morning Mind Control, which postulates the virtually all kids programing at the time had some sort of occult origin. Besides the entertainment industry, the primary focus of their paranoia is the government.

Normally, that’s a good place for paranoia. I’m a minarchist, so distrust and dislike of the government is second nature to me. But the typical fundamentalist position is not mere distrust, it’s fear.

Preachers are always insisting that the government is trying to take away the freedom of religion, based on the fact that the courts have been enforcing separation of church and state. You should have heard the unadulterated praise for Roy Moore and his “bold defense” of the ten commandments memorial. And don’t even get them started on prayer in public schools. I even heard one preacher invoke Godwin’s Law by accusing the gay and the feminist lobbies of planning to round up Christians in boxcars and ship them off to concentration camps.

You see why that might be frustrating?

But now I’ve heard a story that doesn’t bode well for religious freedom, but that I doubt I’ll ever about hear from the pulpit: Some idiot judge has forbidden a man and his ex-wife from teaching their child their religious beliefs.

Why won’t I hear about this in the pulpit? Because the parents are Wiccans.

This outrageous decision was a part of the couple’s divorce decree, but neither the father nor the mother–both of whom are Wiccans–asked for it. They are both forbidden to expose their child to “non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.” The judge did not define the term.

What was the judge’s justification for making such a ruling? Apparently the boy attends a Catholic school. The judge received a report from the Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which contained the following quote:

There is a discrepancy between Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones’ lifestyle and the belief system adhered to by the parochial school. . . . Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon (the boy) as he ages.

After reading this, the judge apparently decided that he had the right to decide what religion the boy should or should not be taught.

Fortunately, “Getting the judge’s religious restriction lifted should be a slam-dunk,” according to an Indiana University law professor. “That’s blatantly unconstitutional. Obviously, the judge can order them not to expose the child to drugs or other inappropriate conduct, but it sounds like this order was confusing or could be misconstrued.”

But the fact that a judge is so uneducated about the limits of his power that he’d pass such a measure does not bode well. There’s got to be some way to get him out of power; if not, I rest assured that the man will never rise above the position of a divorce court judge, because no legislator will ever be foolish enough to try to advance him to a higher court.

I hope.

(Via Dean’s World)

By now I’m sure you’re aware of the story: Newsweek magazine reports that U.S. officials at Guantanamo Bay were flushing copies of the Koran down the toilet as a form of “torture.” Some Muslims take to the streets in violent protest, resulting in the 16 deaths and more than 100 injuries.

Then Newsweek issues an apology–oops, sorry, that wasn’t true.

Eek… I’m glad I don’t work at Newsweek right now.

Obviously, the blogosphere and the other media are ripping into Newsweek for their irresponsible reporting, and rightly so. But I think the better response is the one offered by Ralph Bristol, a local radio host whose “Daily Dispatch” shows up in my mail box on a daily basis:

Newsweek Magazine was irresponsible and its editors have now apologized, but let’s face it. These rioters are nuts. They are extremist maniacal fanatics and it’s crazy to try to appease them. The Arab League needs to stand down its protest against Newsweek and train its sights on the maniacs within its ranks. Until these people learn to address their grievances in a fashion a little more suited to the human species, they are not going to make any progress in an otherwise fairly civilized world.

There is a lesson to be learned by Newsweek, other media, and people in general, but it’s not the one that is blanketing the media today. The lesson is this. It takes very little to irritate a mad dog. That doesn’t mean that you go out of your way to be nice to it. It means that you avoid it if possible and be ready to kill it if necessary.

Newsweek is right to apologize for lousy reporting, but let’s not lose sight of the real problem here. Sloppy reporting is cause for concern and criticism. It is not cause for death and destruction.

The reason we are in a war with Muslim terrorists is because there is a faction in the Muslim world whose automatic reaction to any form of offense is murder and mayhem. They are the real problem. Newsweek is but a minor nuisance.

People oftentimes complain about how BJU was so slow to change its interracial dating policies. (I tend to agree with them; banning interracial dating is stupid and illogical.)

But, Georgia is worse off: They only just now got around to repealing the Jim Crow laws.

Oops….

Will Franklin at WILLisms has a great post up that puts Congress’ spending rate in perspective.

Washington will spend $22,039 per household in 2005….

Social Security/Medicare: $7,245.

Defense: $4,451.

Low-income programs: $3,559.

Interest on the federal debt: $1,582.

Federal employee retirement benefits: $838.

Education: $627.

Health research/regulation: $614.

Veterans’ benefits: $606.

Highways/mass transit: $388.

Justice administration: $361.

Unemployment benefits: $338.

International affairs: $284.

Natural resources/environment: $275.

Agriculture: $271.

The remaining $598 is allocated to all other federal programs, including social services, space exploration, air transportation, and community development.

Keep in mind that that’s federal taxes only. I don’t have any idea how much each state spends per household in addition to this amount. And even that would leave out local taxes and fees.

Living here is expensive.

Franklin has several other interesting statistics that are worth taking a glance at. The good news is that, by some miracle, federal tax revenues have been increasing faster than Congress’ spending rates this year so far.

I wonder if there’s anything short of a violent second American revolution that can get Congress to actually *cut* spending.

(Via the Carnival of the Capitalists at Gongol.com)

Kevin Drum links to a column by “Conservative economist Bruce Bartlett” with the following quote:

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, I thought it was possible to restrain the growth of government by cutting taxes. This would “starve the beast,” as Ronald Reagan used to say, and force government to live on its allowance. And after Republicans got control of Congress in 1994, I thought the means had finally come to make a frontal assault on the welfare state.

I have been sadly disappointed….Deficits are no longer a barrier to greater government spending. And with the baby-boom generation aging, spending is set to explode in coming years even if no new government programs are enacted.

As a result, he’s come out in favor of a “Value-Added Tax,” wherein a product is taxed at every stage of production. To quote Bartlett, “It is costly to put into effect, and it hits the poor and the elderly hardest because they spend a higher percentage of their income.”

So, let’s see… Our politicians won’t manage our money properly, and so the answer is… give them more money?

Right.

On the other hand, how do we get them to stop wasting our money? Virtually all of our elected officials–Republican and Democrat–are more interested in spending our money than in conserving it. You can replace them at the elections, but the new politicians are as bad–or worse–than the old ones.

You know, I think that a better system might be to have an independent body responsible for taxation, and another body responsible for spending. Following that change, pass an ammendment requiring a balanced budget every year. Now you can “starve the beast.”

Ideally, of course, Congress would listen to reason and just stop spending so much of my money. Here’s where Bush is being so incredibly stupid; I’ll spell it out in simple, one- and two- syllable words: You can’t take in less money and then spend more money without losing money.

It just won’t work. The positive effect on the economy of lower tax rates helps a little bit, but then when you push $1.2 trillion drug bills through Congress, you absorb that effect and then need to raise taxes again.

In a slogan: Cutting taxes is good; cutting spending is better.

And, you know, Mr. President, you haven’t used your veto power once. Ever. In your five years of being in office. The only time I’ve ever heard you threaten to use your veto power is to stop any bill that would help fix the $1.2 trillion dollar mess you helped make.

Shame on you.

Mark Sanford for President.

It’s time to move somewhere else.

Pretty soon, if you’re tossing a paper napkin on the ground, making an illegal U-turn or even letting Fido relieve himself on the streets of Bellwood, be forewarned: Somebody could be watching.

In the hopes of eliminating crime, village officials say they’ll have all the public ways in the 3.5-square mile town under camera surveillance within two years.

Though other cities like Chicago have set up cameras in high-crime neighborhoods, Bellwood will be the first town in Illinois, and possibly the first in the country, to have every public thoroughfare, sidewalk and alley under the watchful digitized eye of the Bellwood Police Department.

Civil libertarians question Bellwood’s approach and wonder how much surveillance is too much.

“Where is the conversation about what kind of society we want and whether we think it’s appropriate to do this?” asked Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the Illinois ACLU.

Bellwood’s mayor said he welcomed the suggestion that his town might be considered something akin to a Big Brother-land.

“I wish we could create that image. I would love that,” Mayor Frank Pasquale said with a chuckle.

Mayor Pasquale needs to read more. Idiot. Almost as bad as the British ad agency behind this monstrosity.

(Via CrimProf Blog via InstaPundit)

A little pet peeve: Can we quit using the suffix -gate to refer to every little political spat we have? Rathergate, now Easongate… It used to be clever, now it’s cliché.

Yes, Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin and the entire cast of Little Green Footballs: I’m talking to you.

Of course, now I can hear all the keyboards a’clickin’ telling me that “Eason-gate” isn’t just a little political spat. It’s a big deal! The chief news executive at CNN slandered our entire military by claiming we deliberately targeted journalists during combat in Iraq!

Long term, is that important? Are the slanderous words of one newsman going to be more than just an obscure footnote in the history books? I don’t think so. Like virtually every other political scandal, I predict that this one will be fought over for a couple of months and forgotten.

I mean, it says a lot about CNN, but nothing we didn’t already know.

See, this is why I could never be a politician. I couldn’t fight the day to day battles over Eason Jordan and Social Security and all that. I’d get sick of it. I like big-picture politics and debates over policy, but not the down-in-the-mud fighting, saying the same things again, and again, and again, and again….

Anyway.

Even if “Eason-gate” were to become a big historical deal, leading to, say, the collapse of the big cable news networks, don’t you think we could come up with a better moniker? Our children will be very disappointed in us when they find out that we weren’t original enough to come up with a good name.

How about… The Davos Scandal, after the city in which he made the remarks. Dull, boring, but informative and unique. After all, what else happens in Davos?

Or the “Eason Jordan Slanders Our Military” scandal?

Our just the Jordan scandal?

OK, I’m not feeling creative. That’s probably because I’m up late typing instead of sleeping. But… uh… don’t use -gate. Any more. It should be Banished from the Queen’s English.

Her name is Dr. Rice or Dr. Condoleeza Rice or Secretary Rice.

Please do not refer to her as “Condi” in public discourse and press conferences. Show some respect.

Thanks.

(Program Note: I actually composed this post several days ago, but I wrote it late at night and wanted to take the time to edit it.)

The Boileryard has been something something of a one-issue blog lately. It’s founder, Boileryard Clarke, has been beating the drum for an anti-interventionist foreign policy; specifically, he’s become an opponent of the war in Iraq, and against any similar preemptive attacks. A recent post analyzes the President’s inaugural address. Allow me to quote a representative sample:

When he said; “At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical - and then there came a day of fire.

We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat…” what he is telling us is that he visualizes the War On Terror to be the equivalent to the Cold War, and that we will need another 50-year effort to overcome this threat just as we overcame the Communist one. A permanent state of emergency in the government that allows power to form around the Executive and takes power away from the Legislative.

Just as we watched happen from 1946 to 1991. Congress, once the only body that was allowed to declare War, now exists in a position where War no longer exists. If we don’t call it “War” - that is, declare it emphatically and commit the resources of the whole nation to the effort - the President can use a simple up-and-down roll call to bolster the legality of using American force for as long as he can get away with it. Congress’ ability to actually declare war was lost sometime around Viet Nam. We can thank the Democrats for it.

As you can tell from his final sentence above, Clarke is not some liberal Michael Moore worshipper. He isn’t among those who mindlessly repeat the arguments of the far left. His posts lately have carried the title “The Betrayal of the American Right.”

And his point definitely has merit. I agree that the President’s stated position, as follows, is troubling:

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. [My Emphasis]

It’s hard to oppose this position. No decent human being wants to stand beside tyrants or appear to be against freedom.

But I do have to oppose it, primarily on the grounds of feasibility. According to a link I found on Google News, the war in Iraq has cost approximately $130 billion dollars. That’s for one country with little more than a pushover defense force.

We cannot afford to free every nation on earth. We cannot afford to take out Rice’s Outposts of Tyranny. And frankly it’s not our job to free every nation on earth. It’s not our job to sacrifice billions of dollars and thousands of lives for every little third-world dictatorship.

Of course tyranny is wrong; ruling without the consent of the people is wrong. But if the oppressed people are not willing to stand up and fight for their own freedom, as we did, then they’ve granted their consent, have they not?

We can offer aid; we can send guns and supplies to freedom-loving revolutionaries in Cuba, Belarus, and Zimbabwe, to name some of the “Outposts.” But we ought not be in the business of undeclared wars against an unknown number of opponents.

We ought to be in the business of self-defense. If a foreign nation is supporting terrorism against the United States, and especially if that nation has threatened us with WMD’s, then by all means, go to war! Stop terrorism at its source! But mere oppression of native populations cannot be sufficient cause for us to step in, however heartless that may sound.

Netpilot, in the next post, quotes John Quincy Adams; I reproduce the quote in full below, my emphasis:

“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been unfurled, there will America’s heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own….She well knows that, by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the color and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlets upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.”

My mom sent me a link to Thomas Sowell’s column from last week entitled I beg to disagree, which emphasizes the importance of logical, factual disagreement vs. mindless tribalism. It’s quite good. Go read it.

I promise I’ll post something of my own at some point when I don’t have homework to do or a résumé to prepare.