John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

Here’s an excerpt from a WSJ piece on “The War on Terror” that I found bewildering:

Individually, some of this may be arguable. In toto, it’s a death sentence for an effective war on terror. It makes what’s left of the war—telephone wiretaps or monitoring money transfers—vulnerable to a steady stream of congressional and legal objection. That lets the Obama administration evade political responsibility by letting others wind down the war on terror.

The message of Scotland’s release and the Holder decision is that the will born in the wake of 9/11 is waning. The war on terror is being downgraded to not much more than tough talk.¹

And here are some edits I’d suggest for this section of the piece:

Individually, some of this may be arguable. In toto, it’s a death sentence for an unconstitutional war on terror. It makes what’s left of the war -— illegal wiretapping or illegitimately monitoring money transfers -— vulnerable to a well-deserved, steady stream of congressional and legal objection. That lets the Obama administration evade political responsibility by letting others wind down the war on terror.

The message of Scotland’s release and the Holder decision is that the paranoia born in the wake of 9/11 is waning. The war on terror is being finally recognized for the absurdity it has always been.

1. Daniel Henninger : The Wall Street Journal : The War on Terror Is Over↩

The contemporary Western cult of tolerance has claimed a new victim: Michael Savage has been banned from entering Britain after being placed on the ‘hate list’.

I think Savage is a dolt, but I cannot tolerate restricting his freedoms simply because of his views. I find Europe’s increasingly pervasive disregard for freedom of speech repulsive. We Europeans invented the notion of freedom of speech. Must we also be the ones to destroy one of humanity’s greatest achievements?

Perhaps most disturbing of all is the small importance given to the obvious dangers implicit in a government designed ‘hate list’:

Lawyers say it would be difficult for Mr Weiner to bring an action for defamation given that the list was issued with the authority of the British government.

The impossibility of overcoming the government’s dicta is precisely the reason why the government must be denied the authority to create these sorts of lists unconditionally. Hate speech laws in Europe are the equivalent of the Patriot Act in America: a blatant violation of the foundational principles of constitutional democracy inspired only by cowardice and myopia.

In the end, my entire view of the movement to curtail hate speech is summarized in Ben Franklin’s famous words:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Specifically, the FTC takes issue with the close relationship between the boards of the two companies. Both boards share two directors, which, according to U.S. legislation, is a big no-no. Despite it being a technical violation, however, it often happens that directors do sit on multiple boards, and the FTC rarely steps in, in most cases. So what’s the difference? Basically, the severity of the offense seems to be measured in success. Since Google and Apple’s team-ups pose a threat to the ability of other companies to compete, their director-sharing raises red flags at the FTC.¹

What a stupid policy move. Really, whose bright idea was, “let’s go after the only two companies in America that make useful products.”

1. The Apple Blog: FTC May Force End to Google-Apple Love Affair↩

Since I posted a little while ago about the recent PLoS One article on chimpanzee prostitution, I thought that I should show that I am no speciesist by reminding us all that human prostitution is alive in just those forms we see among the chimpanzees. These two articles I read today should serve as case studies in the inability of humans to love sanely.

• Keeping Up with Being Kept
• A Foreign Affair: On the Great Ukrainian Bride Hunt

According to Pew, only 28% of voters now call themselves Republicans. It seems sad to me that the enormous incompetence of the Republican Party over the past eight years seems to be leaving us temporarily with a one party system. While it seems clear that the Republicans deserve their fate, I worry about the absence of well-defined, opposed powers in the political process. I particularly worry because the further polarization of the remaining members can only make the Republicans even less relevant politically. A party that responds to the loss of so many members by moving further to an extreme can contain only the dregs of its former membership.

The government bailout of the auto industry just keeps getting worse: we’ve got the government rewriting car warranties now.

It was freedom from want, not freedom to want -— a world away from the idea that the patriotic thing to do in tough times is go shopping.¹

Kamp’s essay is very good, though there are implicit assumptions about the continuity of intentions and consequences that I find troubling.

1. Vanity Fair : David Kamp : Rethinking the American Dream↩

It’s sad how easy it can be to catalog American democracy’s faults. As a case study, consider that the Oklahoma state government was just recently working to prevent Richard Dawkins from speaking at the University of Oklahoma because his

public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking and are views that are not shared and are not representative of the thinking of a majority of the citizens of Oklahoma.¹

It is disheartening how quickly the ideal of diversity, which was traditionally a liberal dream, has become a tool that can be exploited by religious conservatives. This is the danger of introducing inane ideals without definite meanings: they are readily transformed into political shibboleths entirely lacking any intellectual content. The notion of diversity has no place in science; no more than it has any place in mathematics, where all propositions are either true or false.

Perhaps more interesting is that the Catholic Church, the greatest of antidemocratic structures, is holding a conference to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of “The Origin of Species,” to which they have not invited any Creationist groups. Thankfully, diversity has never appealed to the Church, whose goal has always been unification under the one true belief. (That I do not think the belief is true in no way prevents my admiration for the Church’s earnest singlemindedness.)

1. Oklahoma Bill House Resolution 1015↩

Here’s democracy at its worst: astronomy is being revised according to the popular vote in Illinois.

It’s particularly fascinating to see that the goal for this change is to increase the number of scientific accomplishments contributed by the people of Illinois.

Cause to be grateful: Washington is now the second state to allow its citizens the right to suicide.

I think we are finally moving away from the moral prohibition of suicide that Christianity forced upon humanity as a countermeasure after having given humans every reason to wish to die.