Current Events

Imperialism or Federalism: The Occupation of South Korea

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A recent op-ed in Foreign Policy highlights South Korea’s very successful rent-seeking campaign in regard to US military services:

When it comes to taking charge of coalition forces here on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea has been a little gun shy. South Korea and the United States this week are celebrating the 60-year anniversary of an alliance forged after the Korean War; there were two parades, a big dinner, video retrospectives, and a lot of talk of katchi kapshida (“we stand together”). But after decades of confidence-building joint exercises and billions of dollars in military assistance, it’s time for the South Koreans to step up and assume what’s called “operational control” of all forces stationed here if war should break out. The problem is, the South Koreans aren’t quite ready.

This brings out two interrelated but distinct trains of thought in my mind. First, it destroys the arguments, found on the hard Left, about a brutal US imperialism in the region. Seoul has made a US military presence on its soil a top priority for sixty years now. This has been the case during the autocratic period and it is now the case for the democratic one as well. A state cannot have a brutal presence in another state’s territory if the latter state continues to make the former’s presence a top priority.

Second, this is not to say that the US is not imperialistic. Here is how Merriam-Webster online defines imperialism: “the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.” With this useful definition in mind, South Korea’s rent-seeking necessarily brings up anti-imperial arguments from the center and the Right; namely, that South Korea is taking US taxpayers for a ride (the Cato Institute has done some especially good work on this topic).

So here are the relevant circumstances: the US military is currently on the Korean peninsula, and it is fairly entrenched, and the South Koreans overwhelmingly want it there, and US citizens don’t seem to mind all that much the presence of their military along the 38th parallel. So what exactly is the problem? Why is Foreign Policy, a traditionally interventionist publication, highlighting South Korea’s rent-seeking now? The answer, I think you all know, is government gridlock. Notice first how gridlock is not necessarily a bad thing. It forces Americans to reassess their priorities and to make tough compromises.

Libertarians have long called for Washington to withdraw its troops from South Korea (and correctly so). Among their grievances are the aforementioned rent-seeking tactics of the South Koreans, the unnecessary expenses that accompany such arrangements, and the fact that a US military presence causes unnecessary problems with China and North Korea.

Given the costs and the unnecessary dangers associated with occupation, I am in full agreement with libertarians. However, given the four circumstances mentioned above, I think there is a better way to go about pursuing a more just situation: federate with each other. By federate I do not mean that Seoul should send two senators and X number of representatives. That would be extraordinarily unfair. However, if the 17 provinces in South Korea each sent two senators and X number of representatives, justice would be achieved.

The objections to such an idea are numerous. They include political, cultural and economic angles, and none of them ever hold up to scrutiny. But what exactly is wrong with the status quo? What’s wrong with a complete military withdrawal? My answer to the first question is simply that the status quo is unfair. The South Koreans are ripping the Americans off. My answer to the second question is a bit more complicated.

A complete withdrawal implies that South Korea is not paying its fair share. Indeed, that it is not paying its share at all. A complete withdrawal also implies that foreign occupation creates unnecessary dangers, and it is indeed difficult to imagine a nuclear-armed North Korea without the presence of the US military along the 38th parallel (would Beijing or Tokyo stand for that? Would there be two Koreas? Korea today, without the war, would look like Vietnam).

A withdrawal also implies that the US no longer cares about the South Korean people. Only the hard, fringe Korean Left wants the US out. It’s not the threat of China or North Korea I’m concerned about (only demagogues are concerned about that), but rather the lost opportunity to enhance liberty and equality under the law in both the US and South Korea.

A federation would go a long way toward tackling these problems. South Korean provinces would suddenly find themselves paying their fair share. Two armies would become one (that means soldiers from the province of Jeollanam would be fighting in Afghanistan and not just patrolling the 38th parallel). The propaganda about American imperialism coming from the socialist paradise of North Korea would be rendered obsolete. A new peace – based on consent and equality – would begin to arise. My inspiration for these thoughts comes from a segment of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (pgs 681-682; bottom of 779-794 in the Bantam paperback edition), musings from Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (223-236 in the definitive, paperback edition) and Mises’s fascinating argument in Liberalism (105-154 of the paperback edition from FEE; here is a pdf of the book from mises.org). I’d even go so far as to claim that it is a more libertarian position than the calls to withdraw from the region. At any rate, it would certainly address the problem of rent-seeking that the US now finds itself facing (which in turn proves that the libertarians were correct all along).

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , ,
  1. How to use sex like a Russian spy
  2. East German socialists created their own 10 Commandments
  3. Chinese tourists warned by Beijing not to urinate in public (put on your anthropologist cap)
  4. Ralph Raico on Wilhelm von Humboldt, Germany’s most infamous classical liberal
  5. The persistent appetite for orthodoxy; one of the best indictments of collectivism I’ve read in a while

An Exemplar of Governance: The United States and Chinese Citizens

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics , ,

I’ve briefly pointed out the penchant of Chinese citizens to look to the US as a role model for governance before. As Dr Foldvary has argued, it’s about governance, not government. Foreign Policy‘s Passport blog takes a look at how the recent government shutdown in Washington is viewed by citizens of the Chinese state:

[…] both China’s state-run and private-but-state-supervised mainstream media outlets have thus far reacted with restraint. Meanwhile, users of the country’s bustling, often candid, often profane social web have found a silver lining in the political paralysis that would surprise many Americans […] In Chinese social media, meanwhile, the government shutdown became an opportunity to criticize the Chinese government […]

Some veiled their critiques. Xu Jilin, a professor of history at East China Normal University in Shanghai, wrote, “The government has shut down, but the country is not in disorder — now that’s what you call a good country where people can live without worry.”

The gridlock itself, decried by most commentators in the U.S., struck many Chinese as a sign of lawfulness. As one user remarked, “A government that can shut down, no matter how big the impact on everyone’s lives, is a good thing. It shows that power can be checked, and the government can’t spend money however it wants.” […] Others took more direct aim at their own government. As one user noted, “Comrades, no need to worry that the same thing will happen in our country!  In any event, delegates in our National People’s Congress [China’s […] legislature] cannot cast dissenting votes, haha.” Another wrote, “I wish China’s government would shut down and let corrupt officials have a taste of it.”

I think these admittedly anecdotal reactions are simply a testament of the age-old, distinctly human problem of confusing society with state. The Chinese people themselves don’t have beef with the US or its people. The American people themselves don’t have beef with Beijing or its people. However, both governments are engaged in a power struggle, and as a result, people suffer. Perhaps the most heartening development can be found in this statement:

The growing connections between China and the United States mean that no issue is strictly domestic for either country.

While some no doubt view the growing interdependence of the two societies with unease, I cannot help but see a future of peace, prosperity and harmony. This does not mean I see an absence of conflict, but only that such conflict will be handled according to rules and procedures that have been laid down in the past and that can be altered so long as it is done so in a manner conducive to yet another round of rule-following and procedures.

Statists applaud death of unarmed mother amidst faked Gov’t shutdown

L. A. Repucci Current Events, History, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , ,

Bedlam in Goliath.

Commentary by:  L.A. Repucci

Shots were fired in the Capitol today after a lone female fled a checkpoint in her car.  A child was in the woman’s vehicle, now presumably orphaned by law enforcement fatally shooting her dead outside of the black sedan, used to ram a newly-erected ‘Barrycade’ in Washington, DC.

House Majority Leader John Boehner praised the courage of the Fed’s security for gunning down the unarmed woman with an infant on the threshold of the halls of congress.  Shoot-to-kill seems to be increasingly the only tactical response for law enforcement, from the unarmed Tsarnaev brothers now to a weaponless, unstable mother, clearly outside of the vehicle she was driving.

Could ‘shoot-to-kill’ be a federal-level directive aimed at preventing the voice of dissent from surfacing in the media?

Police have yet to confirm rumors that the suspect is Miriam Carey a 34-year-old Stamford (CT) Dental Hygienist with ‘mental health’ issues.  It would seem the political landscape is saturated with partisan rhetoric to the point that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost in the Capitol faster than ever before.

Ultimate Party Hacker.

The partisan theater that is the current government shutdown has apparently struck a chord with a public increasingly suspicious of government, rather than one party or the other.  The abuse of power and authoritarian statism may have finally hit a pitch pushing the electorate from the customary partisan vitriol to a new, holistic hatred and mistrust of not just a particular government, but of governance in general.

This blog isn’t intended to assign blame to the ham-fisted-yet-impotent GOP or to the openly manipulative Democrat party — there are the usual pundits and party hacks more than willing to play the left-right game on this (and every other issue), and point the finger across the aisle.  In fact, it’s probable that the usual partisan coverage of one national crisis after another likely whipped the woman into the frenzy that resulted in her behavior and subsequent public death-by-firing squad.  Looking at the current national political climate of deepening partisan divides, it would seem this sort of thing is indeed inevitable.

From a libertarian perspective, it is evident that whether the woman is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist or a red-blooded conservative, the simple truth is that it is the false dichotomy of the two party system within the larger construct of a Goliath Government* that is fueling the schism among the current American political zeitgeist.  Libertarian ideals have found more support within the GOP than the Democrat party, but with the political landscape quickly evolving with left-leaning progressives increasingly autocratic and hawkish, and the right continuing to be the party of ‘smaller’ behemothic, socially-oppressive government, libertarian-influenced politicians may need to re-evaluate their alignment with the GOP and assert their own space on the political spectrum.

*The Mars Volta do not endorse this blog, the US Government, or governments anywhere, so far as I know.

By distancing themselves from the GOP, this current crisis could be the moment at which the principles of limited government and personal liberty fix in the minds of the electorate as the sole territory of the libertarian philosophy.  Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul…the nation awaits your voices.  Use this opportunity to point out the stark failure of the current junta to fix problems with the force of statism.  Point out the fact that a ‘government shutdown’ seems to consist of closing parks and monuments that require little if any state management to simply exist as they do, and furloughing non-essential personnel easily replaceable with simple automation and elimination of redundancy.  Draw attention to the fact that of the 700,000-or-so suspended government functionaries are eligible and filing for unemployment benefits, drawing income from the same stolen tax revenues which are used to ‘pay’ them usually — and paying them not to work may be preferable than paying them to do their jobs, if the goal is shrinking the size of the state.  Be sure to reference the 1.2-or-so million bureaucrats that continue to serve the public by stealing their wealth and threatening their lives and safety with the full force of a statist totalitarian regime and a monopoly on violent oppression.

Government employees carrying firearms aren’t furloughed, nor are the three-letter agencies that spy on the public unconstitutionally and ‘appropriate’ our money as taxes.  The IRS isn’t really furloughed, despite reports to the contrary — they are needed (including their 16,000 gun-toting new recruits — yes, IRS agents carry firearms) to run Obamacare as ‘navigators’, who are paid on commission per signup to the new compulsory, unconstitutional insurance law.

In conclusion, if the Authoritarian government continues to fan the partisan flames with more political theater, they can expect a multitude of Miriam Careys to continue to go postal and throw themselves against the bulwark of the evil machine that has wrested liberty away from a free people.  You called down the thunder, politicians — now you will reap what you’ve sown for decades.  US foreign policy has been breeding terrorists for decades, and now it’s domestic policy will begin to do the same.  Maybe it’s time to rethink the ‘shoot-to-kill’ mentality…

Pax Humana,

–L.A. Repucci

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Franklin D Roosevelt’s America: A Progressive’s View

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , , ,

Matt Yglesias is shocked that Americans think the 1940-1949 was one of the best decades of last century. His description of the presidencies of FDR and Harry Truman is the best concise version I’ve ever read:

Some salient facts about the 1940s: There was a big war. One participant in that war had an active policy of targeting enemy civilian population centers for wholesale destruction as a battlefield tactic. Initially they did this with large-scale bombing raids designed to set as many houses ablaze as possible. Eventually they developed nuclear weapons in order to massacre enemy civilians in a more pilot-intensive way. The country in question was allied with a vicious dictator whose political strategies included mass rape, large-scale civilian deportations, and the occasional deliberate engineering of famine conditions. And those were the good guys! We’re all very happy they won!

Indeed. Let us never forget that the “victory” of the US over Germany in World War 2 was a savage one. Let us not forget that if the tables had been turned, and Germany and Japan had somehow been able to conquer the United States, Washington would have been found to be guilty of horrific atrocities both at home and abroad.

The German people have largely been implicated in the crimes of the German state. The logic behind this goes as following: yes, some Germans may have been forced to do things for their state that they would not have otherwise done, but for the  most part, most Germans were happy to oblige Berlin and commit crimes in the name of the state. I tend to subscribe to this view. In fact, it is this view that makes me a libertarian. Americans today seem far too comfortable committing crimes in the name of their government. They point to Roosevelt’s administration as proof of America’s wholesomeness.

They are far too comfortable committing crimes in the name of their government that they would never, ever commit by themselves. How many of you would be comfortable bombing Syria? What if Washington bombed Syria under the auspices of humanitarianism? Of an undefined national interest?

A Glimpse into Ottoman Syria

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History, Links , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One must not lose sight of the fact that, historically speaking, and contrary to prevalent belief, the Alawites wanted no part of the “Unitary Syria” that emerged out of Franco-British bickering in the Levant of the interwar period. Indeed, when the French inherited the Ottoman Vilayets (governorates) of Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, and Alexandretta in 1918, they opted to turn them into six autonomous entities reflecting previous Ottoman administrative realities. Ergo, in 1920, those entities became the State of Greater Lebanon (which in 1926 gave birth to the Republic of Lebanon), the State of Damascus, the State of Aleppo, the State of the Druze Mountain, the State of the Alawite Mountain (corresponding roughly to what the Alawites are reconstituting today), and the Sanjak of Alexandretta (ceded to Turkey in 1938 to become the Province of Hatay.)

But when Arab nationalists began pressuring the British on the question of “Arab unity,” urging them to make good on pledges made to the Sharif of Mecca during the Great War, the Alawites demured. In fact, Bashar al-Assad’s own grandfather, Ali Sulayman al-Assad, was among leading Alawite notables who, until 1944, continued to lobby French Mandatory authorities to resist British and Arab designs aimed at stitching together the States of Aleppo, Damascus, Druze, and Alawite Mountains into a new republic to be christened Syria.

From this long-winded (but useful) article by Franck Salameh in the National Interest. What would be interesting to research is how long it took the Ottomans to figure out how to best govern such a diverse set of peoples. God forbid anybody let them govern themselves. Also interesting to note is the “Arab unity” canard that ultimately created the state of Syria. From what I recall, Arab nationalism was largely pushed by a hodgepodge of urban liberals with connections to British and French businesses and rural aristocrats hailing from the Gulf and promised land and power by the British for turning on the Turks.

What a mess. The liberals, by the way, are long gone. They were swept away by the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s. The Islamists are largely a reaction to the military dictatorships. Islamism as we know it today only came into being in the late 1950s, when the leaders of the Middle East were all puppets that had been installed by the last vestiges of European colonialism. Arab nationalism was still strong in the late 1950s, so the Islamists lost out in popularity to the military dictatorships (which operated under the guise of “Arab socialism”). Twenty years of Arab socialism – guided by Generals and Colonels – paved the way for the Islamists and their internationalist rhetoric to become the voice of the Arab street.

I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing Syria dissolve back into six independent states. If the international community could get them to bind their economies together in a free trade zone of sorts, the region would heal quickly and set an important precedent: political decentralization and economic integration work well no matter where they’re applied.

Update: the Economist has more on the ethnic angle in Syria’s civil war.

All’s Quiet in the West

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links

Hello all,

Is it just me or is there not a whole lot of major events going on right now?

I mean, the economy still sucks and cronyism is rampant, but it just seems like everything is cool, calm and collected (to borrow a phrase from a Ghanaian friend of mine) at the moment. At least in the West.

Update: there is a “looming government shutdown” in the works? Yawn. I’ve seen and heard this trick-and-pony show before.

Ludwig von Mises’s birthday was yesterday. He would be 132 years old.

Is Syria about to see a horrific bout of ethnic cleansing?

Bad News Bruins (Pac-12 football in ya mouth)

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links ,

Southern Cal fired its head football coach after losing to Arizona State yesterday. I was looking forward to the Trojan’s big game against national powerhouse UCLA in November. This is awful news for everybody in Los Angeles.

I’m surprised Washington beat Arizona as hard as they did. Either U Dub is better than I thought, or Arizona is a little overrated.

I’m no fan of Cal, but “ouch.” That’s what they get for losing to a BIG 10 team last week (making us all look bad in the process).

The Pac-12 has five teams in the Top 25, and four of ’em are in the Top 15. ASU (ranked #22) can play with anybody in the nation. Why isn’t Oregon State back in the rankings? They’ve finally got their QB situation figured out, so if they can win some big games in conference play we might see them crawl back into the national picture. The Pac-12 is the best conference in the nation. Oregon, Stanford and UCLA could all beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia any day of the week. Washington and ASU would smoke A&M and South Carolina, and our bottom-feeders are better than their bottom-feeders.

I am still pissed off that the Pac-12 admitted Utah and Colorado into the conference. These guys suck. It would’ve been better to pull in BYU and UNLV. In terms of talent, the latter are about as good as the former, but the latter have way more monetary potential to the conference: BYU with its Mormon fan base and UNLV with its location. Whatever.

Eleven Myths about Obamacare.

Government is responsible for soaring inequality.

Around the Web: PoliSci edition

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links, Politics

Libertarianism is often associated with the discipline of economics, but here at the consortium we try to bring a variety of libertarian-ish views to the table. Here are a few political science blogs that I frequent:

  1. Crooked Timber. This blog is largely considered to be the standard-bearer for political science blogs. Recommended.
  2. Pileus blog. This is the polisci blog with the hardest libertarian slant, although I still haven’t found any anarchocapitalists lurking about.
  3. Mischiefs of Faction. This is a new blog and I really like what I’ve read so far.
  4. Duck of Minerva. International relations blog. IR is not explicitly associated with political science, of course, but in traditional undergraduate programs it often falls under the polisci rubric.
  5. The Monkey Cage. “Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.” – H.L. Mencken.
  6. The Reality-Based Community. A humble blog composed of mostly political scientists, but it has some economists and lawyers on board as well.

Political science, of course, is one of the many disciplines that is fairly hostile to libertarianism, although most political scientists I’ve studied under have still been liberals. This is in contradiction to other scholarly disciplines like anthropology and sociology – as well as all of the humanities disciplines – which still embrace classical and post-Marxist arguments in their undergraduate programs.

There are a ton of blogs around the web that are manned by consortiums of political scientists, but these six can be counted on to be fairly balanced and well thought-out most of the time. I learn from them every time I visit.

Cruz Barn Burner: Strawman or Paper Tiger?

L. A. Repucci Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Commentary

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) burned the barn to the ground with his 21 hour ‘fauxlibuster’ this week on the Senate floor.  Supporters of Cruz’ increasingly libertarian voice relish his statesmanship and clarity, and conversely, no doubt detractors and skeptics dismissed much of the material content addressed due to Cruz’ rhetorical devices, not limited channeling statist icon Darth Vader while lampooning Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

The usual political hay has already been spun by the  pundits, including Limbaugh and Coulter, providing color commentary and cold shots alike.  Senator Cruz’ profile is quickly rising, and he is being touted as a quill for the young libertarian porcupine within the halls of congress — alongside the likes of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.  Indeed, Cruz is more than likely positioning himself for a cabinet post in potential Paul campaign 2016, bidding the GOP base against New Jersey’s increasingly progressive Chris Christie.

It is assumed Hillary Clinton will be the ochlocratic candidate.

Rafael Cruz (Ted’s father) makes impassioned appeals to the ideals of Americana-brand liberty for large crowds of supporters, evoking support from the base of the GOP with the family’s brand; scathing indictments of our Republic’s current state, drawing parallels to Bautistas’ fascist, then Castro’s communist Cuba and the horror of living under a totalitarian regime two times over.  Rafael Cruz escaped Castro and fled to the liberty and free markets in Canada, then here in the US, finding success through a technology connection to the petroleum industry — a familiar Horatio Alger-esque tale — Millitary Fascism to Communism and to Corporate Fascism in less than a generation..

…and then there is  Mrs.Heidi Nelson-Cruz, the senator’s wife.  Ted and Heidi met in the Bush White House, while she was working for Condi Rice.  A Claremont-McKenna and Harvard Business grad, Heidi Nelson-Cruz currently works for Goldman-Sachs as a Vice President.

Texas seems to have a GOP senator with strong ties to petroleum, the Bush White House and good ol’ Goldman-Sachs through his wife.  These observations, coupled with the current political landscape may provide insight the origin and intent of the Senator from Texas’ dazzling libertarian all-nighter.

Cruz may need to spend another 21 hours in an attempt to burn down his own straw man — free markets or corporatism?  If his wife works for the self-same Goldman-Sachs that profited from the TARP bailout rammed through the halls of Congress at the tail end of the Bush regime and spilling into the Obama regime; the Goldman-Sachs that boasts both parties’ presidents and cabinets in their pockets going back to (at least) the Clinton administration, would that not be a conflict of interest?  Cruz made open comment about the excellent health insurance provided Heidi’s Vice-Presidency with Goldman-Sachs.  The banking cartel’s involvement in  and subsequent manipulation of the political sphere is a common link between both ends of the popular political spectrum, and to assume that a politician’s libertarian common sense would be immune to the pressures and normalcy bias of the human condition would be naive.

Ted Cruz talks a good game.  He offers the concepts and economic pedigree libertarians have been waiting to hear from a GOP Senator other than Ron Paul, and presents these concepts in a clear and relatable way.  His voting record as a Senator approaches perfection.  Unfortunately, many of the Tea Party Rockstars* who held great promise for the cause of liberty have proven to be paper tigers.  However liberated Ted Cruz’ economic policy could be, the rigor of skepticism cannot be abandoned by liberty-minded citizens just yet.

As Patrick Henry, liberty lover and skeptic of government, famously remarked of the Constitutional Convention, I smell a rat…and hope on the bones of Lysander Spooner for our Republic’s sake, that I am wrong about the Senator from Texas.

*Rockstar Brand Tea flavored energy beverage is not endorsed by publisher or any so-called Tea Party Rockstars.

Qui Bono,

L.A. Repucci

A Warm Welcome

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , ,

Hello all,

Please welcome Louis Repucci to the blogging consortium.

Chef, YMCA Camp Director and Philosopher Louis Anthony Repucci is a firebrand advocate for the cause of individual liberty, ecumenical egalitarian ideals and a voluntary society. Steeped in the classically liberal tradition of enlightenment ideals, L.A. Repucci pulls no punches in the struggle for economic and social freedoms. Originally from Southern California, Repucci is a student and active member of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) on the Cabrillo College campus in Aptos, California. A true renaissance man, Mr. Repucci boasts an eclectic background including radio broadcasting, internationally-acclaimed culinary luminaries, and leadership development through his work with the YMCA. Anticipate unapologetic commentary and blistering indictments of everyday statism and petty tyranny via scathing wit, euclidean reductive logic and lampoonery. A fire in the dark, L.A. Repucci is perfectly comfortable adopting wildly unpopular positions in the name of liberty, and challenging the foundations of opposing perspectives. Expect to have your paradigm challenged by every word.

I myself am an alumni of Cabrillo, so it’s nice to have a fellow Seahawk on board. Please bear with us as we get all the aesthetic kinks figured out, and join me in welcoming Louis on board.

A close encounter with a black hole of church/state derp

muricaderp Current Events, Politics, Religion

Some collisions of civic and religious forms of asshattery are just that powerful. Many approach the fray, but few who enter it ever leave. The stupid, it sucks. Literally. It’s a black hole. Abandon all brain ye who enter here.

Amazingly, this stuff is almost mainstream. Speakers who spout this kind of garbage at official events under the auspices of the Republican Party, one of the two major US political parties, are not banned from future events on grounds of moral turpitude, mental defect, or general embarrassment. They’re hardly even marginalized, except in rare cases of exceedingly clumsy language, as Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin can attest. The real sin for which the GOP’s kingmakers tried to bully Akin into falling on his sword wasn’t misogyny, but undue candor. Basically, dude fucked up the talking points pretty severely. It takes a special person to make Claire McCaskill, mediocrity of Blue Dog mediocrities, look like a beacon of principle. Todd Akin, authority on women who probably wanted it because they didn’t psychosomatically shut off their wombs while being raped, had what it took for Claire McCaskill to point at his train wreck of a platform and shut that whole thing down.

I totally heard a bird of Akin’s feather squawk at the nation on “Christian” radio this afternoon. He was a bit subtler than Akin, after a fashion. Akin was foolish enough to accuse women, a majority electoral demographic with above-average turnout rates, of being a bunch of tarts who enjoy the illegitimate kind of rape. Today’s speaker, whom I’ll introduce in due time, had the good sense to go after illegal immigrants, a constituency that by definition is disenfranchised. A cohort of foreigners working in a country under dodgy circumstances after having evaded normal immigration channels rarely has its host country’s sympathy. It’s the kind of demographic that a savvy asshat scapegoats if he doesn’t want to get beaten in his next electoral campaign by a charisma-challenged triangulator.

But what I heard on the radio today wasn’t just any screed against illegal immigration; it was a screed against illegal immigration in the name of Holy Scripture. Pretty brazen stuff.

Usually, when I get vulgar ideas in my head, I try not to justify them with scriptural references. If I muse about Tijuana’s de minimis regulatory approach to massage parlors and its huge potential client base, it isn’t because I learned about any of that from the Book of Leviticus. (Leviticus is merely an exhaustive list of licentious suggestions framed as prohibitions). Rather, it’s because I am, in Disraeli’s parlance, ape and angel, or, as Robin Thicke would have it, an animal.

In other words, a TJ massage parlor isn’t religion, but business. Similarly, immigration policy isn’t religion, but civics, although business interests certainly like to infest the debate, the better to concern-troll it. Business, civics, religion: these are nonoverlapping magisteria.

Not on the Bott Radio Network, they aren’t. I tuned in while I was on the road between Fresno and Merced this afternoon, just in time to hear some dude with a thoroughly neutral accent and affect calmly but sanctimoniously intone about illegal immigration and the Bible. Hoo boy.

I had no idea who this guy was, but I was transfixed. The biblethumping was exquisite. Defenders of illegal immigration, he told us (I paraphrase), often cite scriptural references to being a friend to the foreigner. What they don’t realize is that that there are three Hebrew words for foreigner, two of them referring to foreigners who have permission, and this scriptural reference in Leviticus refers to foreigners with permission, not those without permission. This was why Moses made a special effort to lead the Israelites around a kingdom that was blocking their way to the Promised Land, so that they wouldn’t illegally stray into its territory. (Forgive us our trespasses? Eh, never mind. And maybe the detour had something to do with not getting massacred? Again, never mind.) Furthermore, calls for amnesty ignore the Apostle Peter’s exhortation to submit to civil authority, which includes immigration authorities. Besides, if we provide amnesty to all illegal immigrants, how is that fair to the illegal immigrants who are waiting in line to be legalized under the current process? (Huh? He actually said something like that.) Now, people can have different opinions about illegal immigration (passive-aggressive-smarmy much?), but they shouldn’t use the Bible to defend the amnesty bill currently before the Congress. It just isn’t in there. It isn’t biblical.

It wasn’t until the end of this ridiculous authoritarian pastiche that I heard who was behind it: “I’m Kris Kobach, and this has been Kobach’s Commentaries.” The crazy had just gone into overdrive. I’d heard of Kobach before, usually in reference to his being an extremist Republican kook, and here he was carrying on about illegal immigration and the unfairness of amnesty on an aggressively “Christian” “family” radio station in the name of the Word of God.

Notice that he concern-trolled illegal immigrants who had allegedly found their way into some regularization process (despite having entered and worked in the United States illegally) and were waiting their turn in line, because WAAAAHHHH FAIRNESS. I was baffled by whom exactly he was trying to describe, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the story was some kind of hard-right nativist myth.

To be clear, Kris Kobach does not give a damn about the welfare of illegal immigrants for the duration of their presence in the United States. He is a professional immigration policy troll who has worked in multiple states to litigate against policies benefiting illegal immigrants and to draft legislation to hound them out by any means necessary. He has also been involved in Voter ID campaigns, again on grounds of “fairness,” the fairness including vile arguments that if one can’t buy Sudafed without a government ID, one shouldn’t be able to vote without one. The obvious purpose of Voter ID laws is to disenfranchise the poor, i.e., mainly blacks, because they vote heavily Democratic.

Kobach has the evil, classic right-wing conception of fairness as a zero-sum commodity that is cheapened if someone else somewhere got more of it than you got or got it more promptly. By his reasoning, if all the prisoners are released in a mass pardon, this is unfair to the old lifers, and the lifers should be seething with resentment that the younguns got more time off than they did. If the 3:45 train is delayed by mechanical problems and its passengers are transferred to the 4:45 train, they should all be angry and resentful that they had to spend an extra hour in the depot because TEH FAIRNESS. If the layabouts who showed up in the vineyard an hour before sundown are paid the same amount for their work as the diligent squares who showed up at daybreak, the squares should be resentful–hey, that’s not what Jesus said, now, is it? Yeah, we’re Christians, so let’s ignore that buzzkill, what’s-his-name….

Basically, if there’s any kind of dysfunctional or cruel policy that finally gets fixed, but only after one has spent years trying to navigate the former, broken system, one should be angry at anyone who didn’t have to put up with just as much grief for just as long. If you were waiting in a checkout line at Safeway for half an hour only to see people in a nearby line get through in ten minutes because the backup cashier finally arrived, maybe you should go deck the backup cashier and hurl eggs and canned goods at his customers, you know, just as a matter of equity. That would even things out for you and everyone else who got in line before the backup cashier arrived, right? It might be a good idea to brandish a can in front of the lead cashier, too, in case she calls all available associates to checkout and lets some lucky bastard get through in five minutes.

That, folks, is hardline Republican policy in a nutshell: everyone will be reduced to the most degraded level of existence that I, resentful shit, have ever had to endure. Kris Kobach has words of encouragement for the whole barrel full of crabs.

Oh, and he’s the sitting Kansas Secretary of State. What’s the matter with Kansas, indeed. Once the spiritual home and nerve center of grange socialism, and now this. It’s a long way down.

By the way, I have very serious, visceral objections to current immigration policy in the United States. It’s a systemically corrupt clusterfuck, one that keeps many immigrants perennially in limbo, under constant threat of detention, deportation and separation from their families, and allows unethical employers (especially farmers) to run their recruitment and personnel operations as criminal cartel rackets. It badly needs to be reformed. The problem is that people like Kris Kobach will happily trash civil society in the process if they’re given free rein.

Good God, y’all.

Why Would Somali Militants Attack A Kenyan Shopping Mall?

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , ,

I was going to write up a small essay on this topic, but economist Joe Salerno beat me to it. I’ll just reproduce it here:

The U.S. government and the establishment media are in a quandary.   How are they to explain  the heinous attack on a Kenyan shopping mall by Al Shabab a militant Somali group with links to al-Qaida which  left 59 innocent civilians dead and another 175 injured, with the victims ranging in age from  2 to 79 years old?  After all, since the horrific events of  September 11, 1991, U.S politicians of all stripes have repeatedly hammered home the message that  ”fundamentalist” Islamists  hate us and want to kill us simply because we are free and prosperous.  But Kenya is neither.  According to the  Index of Freedom in the  World that attempts to measure economic, civil, and political liberties, Kenya ranks 91 out of the 123 countries included in the index.   As for prosperity, based on the CIA World Factbook 2012, Kenya’s per capita GDP was estimated to be $1,700 per year which ranks 192 out of 225 countries.

Could it be that Al Shabab was telling the truth about the reason for its murderous assault yesterday when it tweeted: “For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now its time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land.”  After all 4,000 Kenyans troops invaded and have been occupying part of Somalia since 2011.  But then this raises the uncomfortable possibility  that terrorist attacks by militant Muslim groups on the U.S and its interests throughout the world were not motivated by envy and hatred of our freedoms and high standard of living.  Maybe, just maybe, Ron Paul was right and they were provoked by incessant U.S. meddling in the Middle East since World War 2  through numerous wars and economic embargoes including on  food and medicine and  the billions of dollars sent to payoff and prop up tyrannical and oppressive regimes that do U.S bidding, e.g., the Mubarak dictatorship in  Egypt.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , ,

I don’t know if I can echo Andrew’s prodigious output, but here’s my own reading list for the weekend:

  1. Modesto Junior College, bureaucracy and censorship: Haughty arrogance edition. Ken White explains Weber’s ‘iron cage’
  2. Liberty after Lehman Brothers: What have we learned? Peter Boettke muses about the infamous bailouts
  3. Who were the anti-Federalists, and why do they still matter? Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute explains
  4. The Christian Exodus. Another disaster in the Middle East

PS I just got in to Santa Cruz. Wish me luck!

Несколько слов про Сирию

Evgenii Grigorev Current Events , , , ,

Не знаю как у вас там, а у нас, у большинства населения, вполне четая позиция по этому вопросу. Лично я считаю, что не надо вообще туда к ним лезть, в их закрытый мусульманский мир. Пусть живут по своим законам и сами решают свои проблемы.

Далеко за примерами ходить не надо. Достаточно вспомнить военные вмешательства во Вьетнам, в Ирак, в Чечню, в Афганистан. Попытки железной рукой пресечь конфликт вылились в многолетнюю затяжную войну с бандформированиями, в партизанское движение, в террористические акты по всему миру. Возникает вопрос: надо ли оно нам дальше? Я конечно понимаю Обаму, для которого Сирия – это как болячка на демократическом теле, которую постоянно расковыривают, и которая не дает покоя. И, казалось бы, если влезть туда “всем миром”, можно террористическую заразу подавить. Ха-ха-ха. На словах все получается гораздо радужнее, чем в реальности.

“Война это плохо. Поэтому мы вторгнемся в Сирию, как великие демократы и покажем им всем огнем и мечом, что убивать друг друга – это грех”. Окей. Если такая позиция кого-то устраивает – пусть так оно и будет. Только после того как очередные террористы взорвут очередные торговые центры – не надо плакать. Сами виноваты.

В России, повторюсь, позиция по Сирийскому конфликту весьма четкая, так как мы до сих пор пытаемся решить собственные конфликты с Чечней. И каждый год мы теряем солдат, которые подрываются на очередных минах, расстреливаются в засадах, погибают где-то в горных лесах, преследуя очередной бородатый отряд партизан-горцев.

У нас в России весьма двойственное отношение к нашему президенту. Его вроде как и любят и не любят одновременно. Однако его письмо в New York Times с разъяснением позиции России по поводу Сирии вызвало у нас в стране волну одобрения. Применять силу нужно лишь для самообороны, для отстаивания независимости СВОЕГО государства, и для охраны его границ. А вторгаться в другие страны и насаждать там свои порядки – это неправильно. Каждый живет как умеет.

Предвижу некоторое количество комментариев на тему того, как русские вторглись в Осетию в августе 2008 года и принудили Грузию к миру в коротком вооруженном конфликте. Так вот, там была слегка другая ситуация. Прочитайте статьи на Википедии об этом конфликте, прежде чем набрасываться меня с обвинениями в двойных стандартах.