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January 31, 2006
Welcome Back My Friends to the Show that Never Ends
Ladies and gentlemen: the Democratic Party. The thing about the Democrats is, they eat their own.
I AM
I AM shocked, stunned even, to find that some people are offended that AOL is using the words I AM to market their product, AIM. (hat tip: Classical Values)
In fact, I AM as stunned by this as I AM by Muslims offended by an ice cream cone lid that had a stylized swirl on it. Or at Muslims who rioted after (false) reports of American military guards at Guantanamo defacing a Koran. In fact, I AM convinced that it is time for me to start being deliberately offensive to anyone who is so easily offended. I AM hoping people will get a bit of a grip. In the interest of gratuitous offense, I AM posting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of Mohammed, courtesy of di2.nu.
So there.
I should note that some Muslim countries are trying to get the UN to ban "attacks on religious beliefs". Presumably, any such ban would include these and this and this? Somehow, I doubt it.
Yearning for the Mud
Gerard Van der Leun has a must-read essay on why some people simply can't get their head around anything that might be good for America.
Pressure on Iran
I have to admit that I'm shocked that the Administration has gotten Russia and China to agree to refer Iran to the Security Council over the Iranian nuclear weapons program, or more formally, over Iranian violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is, as Mark notes, a stunning feat of diplomacy. As Mark also notes, the odds of the President getting any credit for it are zero. In fact, that may overstate the odds, as doubtless some of the critics will bash the administration for being too multilateral (as they do about Korea). I suspect that the critics feel this balances their criticism of the administration for not being multilateral enough in other cases.
Nonetheless, it's a good step forwards towards resolving the crisis, although in the end I do not expect diplomacy to effectively end Iran's nuclear weapons program.
January 30, 2006
Future Carriers
Brian Dunn of The Dignified Rant has doubts about our next generation carriers, an extensive redesign of the current Nimitz class called CVN-21 (Nuclear-powered Attack Carrier for the 21st century). His major concern is that, in an networked warfare environment at sea, big platforms are very vulnerable, and their loss potentially devastating.
I do not think that there will be another generation of aircraft carrier past CVN-21 that will bear any resemblance to our current concept of carriers. The reason for this is simple: UAVs combined with excellent anti-air warfare equipment and sensors on modern ships.
Why, after all, do we need aircraft in our military? The main reasons are logistics (rapid delivery of small amounts of critical material or personnel), reconnaissance, support of ground forces, preserving our ability to carry out those tasks, and preventing the enemy from carrying out those tasks. But UAVs will soon be taking over — indeed, are currently in the process of taking over — a large part of the reconnaissance and ground support tasks, and that will grow in the future. If UAVs are capable of being adapted to fighter roles (protecting our other aviation assets and eliminating enemy aircraft), the only necessarily manned aircraft will be cargo planes, and perhaps specialty sensor platforms that for some reason need an on-board crew. A small number of manned aircraft in each category (for missions unforeseen by the software developers of the UAVs) will suffice to cover gaps, while most missions are carried out by unmanned aircraft. Combined with increasingly effective air defense systems — particularly at sea — it becomes possible that carrier-based manned aviation will become unneccessary.
In that event, the follow-on carriers to CVN-21 (sometime around 30 years from now, the way ships last these days) will likely be more like cruisers in size, with the ability to carry perhaps 50 or 60 UAVs of various types (mostly sensor platforms and attack craft). These ships can be smaller because UAVs will be smaller than manned aircraft, and (because they have fewer systems) need less maintenance, and there will be no aircrews and smaller maintenance crews required. Thus more vehicles and their support staff and equipment can fit in a smaller volume, which will reduce the size of the ships that carry them. These will, in particular as a component of a networked fleet, still be very, very capable ships, likely as capable as the CVN-21s they will replace in most or all ways, despite being dramatically smaller and cheaper. In some ways, they would be much more capable. (For example, it would make sense to equip such a ship with VLS, which current carriers do not have, along the lines of how the Soviet carriers were to be armed.)
In the meantime, the larger the carrier is, the more efficient it is (thus, the more aircraft it can carry). This comes from a simple cause: increasing the size of the ship does not increase the size of the engineering spaces, crew or many other factors by a similar amount, meaning that above a certain size, virtually all size increases translate directly into increased mission equipment. In the case of carriers, that means more aircraft. And as Brian notes, doubling the number of aircraft is worth a 50% bigger and more expensive target, because it means that there is less chance that the enemy will be able to target the carrier in the first place.
Some Realignment Necessary
There is a deep flaw in US politics at present. It goes beyond the near-universal substitution of vicious ad hominem attacks for studied policy debate. It goes beyond the corruption that taints both parties, from vote buying via special interest money to vote buying via earmarks (pork). It goes beyond the unwillingness to offer ideas from the Democrats, who would rather snipe at the Republicans than have responsibility themselves; and beyond the unwillingness of Republicans in the House, apparently, to even allow the Democrats in on the process of drafting laws. It goes to the very heart of what it is to be American: the policy-making cores of the two parties fundamentally disagree on what America is.
Let me explain what I mean by "policy-making cores". Let's say that you or I, people of modest means and without the ability to marshall millions of dollars of special interest money, dedicate all of our time and effort to getting the party of our choice elected, and are successful. Now, let's say that we decide to write a letter, or make a phone call, or visit the office of our representatives, the ones we worked so hard and spent so much to elect. Would that contact make a policy difference, ever? If you answered "no", you are on to something: even if our representative himself has much influence on making policy (perhaps especially if he does), our opinion will have the exact weight of a tally mark in a column that, if it favors our representative's interests, would be disclosed of evidence of how much support our representative's policy has among his constituents. That's it.
Who does have influence? It's a small club, consisting of the leadership of the party in the House, some key committee chairmen from the House, key Senators (particularly those who head an important committee, or who represent a large state, or who have some particular gift of eloquence or fundraising or outreach to a critical consituency), key unelected party leaders (like Howard Dean and Ken Mehlman) and lobbyists representing large voter blocs and with vast sums at their disposal (the term "lobbyist" includes here activist organizations for each party, which at least represent votes and fundraising influence; this is why Kos gets the time of day from Democrats: he has the eyes and influences the votes and actions of hundreds of thousands of activist Democrats). And this club is possible, but difficult, to get into; in practical terms it won't happen unless that is your overriding goal and you are willing to sell your soul and children to do it.
The policy making cores of the two major parties are so far apart right now that civil dialogue seems impossible to find. Worse yet, the way in which the cores differ feeds the vitriol, because the Democrat core believes the Republicans are evil and the Republican core believes the Democrats are traitors or "useful idiots". And since they cannot have any discussion, and since ordinary people cannot have any influence, the reality is that our cohesion as a nation is deeply threatened. This despite the clear fact that, exluding the parties' policy making cores and the activists, most ordinary Americans believe more or less the same things: that America should aggressively defend itself from foreign threats, but only when we have to and then overwhelmingly and competently; that the government should have some role in providing a social safety net, but should not simply transfer wealth from one group to another without condition; that education is important, and our government has a role to play in making sure that a quality education is available to everyone; that legal immigration is good, and illegal immigration is bad; that jobs are important, and the economy is important, and that the government has some role in ensuring that the economy stays good and we all have jobs, but not at the price of taking over private companies; that abortion is wrong, but should be legal at least early in pregnancy or if the mother's life is endangered. We may disagree about how those ends should be achieved, but there is pretty broad agreement on those principles. Now, which party represents them in their policy-making cores?
The Republicans by and large mirror the public consensus on defense and welfare. The Democrats by and large mirror the public consensus on education and jobs. Neither represents the consensus opinions on anything else, really. Indeed, it is not surprising that almost 2 in 5 of the voters (me included) associates itself with neither of the major parties. I would suspect much, much larger numbers of the 45% of eligible voters that do not vote would similarly not associate with either party. Here's the thing: we've seen all this before.
In the late 1840s, the Whigs began to fall apart. The major issue over which there was internal dissent was slavery, but a bevy of other issues were pulling the party in different directions, including a number of minor parties that were forming as groups split away from the Whigs, including what would eventually become the Republican Party. The Compromise of 1850 so battered the Whigs that their candidate for President in 1852 did not even win his home state! Then in 1854, the crisis came: the Kansas-Nebraska act so inflamed northern, anti-slavery Whigs that they left the party en masse, mostly to the infant Republican Party, and some to the Know-Nothings or other truly radical parties. The Whigs rapidly declined, and by the end of the Civil War were effectively not a force in American politics.
With our current situation, the environment is slightly different. There are several groups that are essentially permanent minorities within both the Democratic and Republican parties. These include the strong foreign policy/socially liberal groups best exemplified by Lieberman and McCain in their respective parties, the libertarian caucus primarily in the Republican Party, the DLC (more or less Truman Democrats) in the Democratic Party, conservative Democrats like Zell Miller, and groups like the Log Cabin Republicans. In policy terms, which drives electoral success to a large degree, the Democrats are in the hands of radical progressives, and the Republicans in the hands of an odd coalition of business-over-everything groups (whence the lobbying problem, to a large extent) and foreign policy hawks with a sprinkling of social conservatives (who have less policy influence outside a small number of issues, but bring a lot of votes). The Republicans can probably sustain themselves on their internal structure, but the Democrats cannot: either the Democrats must move to the center — isolating the radical activists, the abortion-is-everything zealots, and the transnational progressives — or they will be unable to present realistic candidates for offices that are not, via districting or overall state proclivities, essentially sinecures.
If the Democrats fall apart, it would most likely be because of people like Lieberman, Zell Miller, and possibly even Hilary Clinton uniting with people like McCain, Olympia Snowe and Jim Jeffords. There is actually ample ground for a party there, in policy terms, that would resonate with large numbers of voters who currently feel left out, or forced to vote for someone they profoundly dislike to avoid electing someone they despise. Without such a high-profile effort, though, similar to what recently happened in Israel with Sharon and Peres forming a new party, the Democrats may be doomed to a slide into irrelevance, ceding a virtually one-party state (for a while) to the Republicans.
January 29, 2006
A Bit of a Stretch
Glenn Reynolds notes:
WRITING IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, Hossein Derakshan blames Bush for the rise of Ahmadinejad. Seems like a bit of a stretch, to me.
A bit of a stretch is right! But that's not even the problem with the article: Derakshan fundamentally does not understand democracy. In order to demonstrate, I'm going to take a bunch of quotes without context. (For the original context, see the original article or the extended entry, where I quote Derakshan's entire article against the day when it falls off the Times' web site.)
Iran's electoral process "ignores the basic requirements of democracy," Mr. Bush declared, and these elections would be "sadly consistent" with the country's "oppressive record."
An American administration that had called on other Middle Eastern populaces to vote in flawed elections greeted the Iranian electoral process with nothing but open disdain.
Can anyone now doubt that Iranian elections, however flawed, really do matter?
It's true that Iranian elections are not quite democratic, because the unelected Guardian Council reserves the right to bar candidates. But the real problem here is that boycotting semi-democratic elections ultimately will not make such a system more democratic.
[P]romoting apathy in a semi-democratic system can only strengthen the radical anti-democracy forces.
Contrast the "don't vote" message that President Bush sent to Iranians to the one delivered to Iraqis through a major media campaign and other costly means: "Your destiny is in your own hands. Disappoint the anti-democracy radicals and go out and vote."
If the United States is serious about promoting democratic change in Iran, it needs to try the same approach that brought Iraqis to the polls despite mortal danger. Mr. Bush and his supporters should encourage the people of Iran to participate in the next election.
Derakshan seems to think that elections — any elections under any circumstances — define democracy: they do not. Democracy is about institutions of governing that respond to popular will. Elections are one way of determining the will of the people, but if those elections are rigged, as in Iran's case where the candidate pool is limited by the existing governing bodies, the ability of the people to voice their will in that manner is circumscribed, and thus the results are likely not to be an accurate reflection of popular will. That's not democracy: it's just voting.
In other words, Derakshan seems to think that Iran's democracy is flawed because its voting system is flawed. In reality, Iran's voting system is flawed because Iran is not a democracy. Crucial distinction, that.
OK, from here down is the entire NY Times article:
THE day before Iran's ninth presidential elections last June, President Bush sent a discouraging message to potential voters. Iran's electoral process "ignores the basic requirements of democracy," Mr. Bush declared, and these elections would be "sadly consistent" with the country's "oppressive record." For Iranians, there was no mistaking the American president's point: he was tacitly sanctioning the call that some Iranian exiles and activists had issued for an election boycott, based on exactly this logic.
An American administration that had called on other Middle Eastern populaces to vote in flawed elections greeted the Iranian electoral process with nothing but open disdain. It is worth revisiting this odd judgment call at a time when Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections has raised even more questions about Washington's confused strategy of democracy promotion.
In Iran last June, the call for a boycott resonated with frustrated and apathetic voters. Many, if not most, moderates and reform advocates stayed home from the polls. And we all know what followed: the philosophy-loving moderate, Mohammad Khatami, was replaced as president by a radical militant, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — a former military commander who presides over one of the most extreme governments post-revolutionary Iran has yet had.
That's right: with what appeared to be the endorsement of President Bush and dozens of American-backed satellite television channels that broadcast in Farsi, the disillusioned young people of Iran effectively took one of the world's most closely watched nuclear programs out of the hands of a reformer and placed it into the hands of a hard-line reactionary.
Can anyone now doubt that Iranian elections, however flawed, really do matter? When Mr. Khatami came to power, his declared goals were to establish the rule of law, demand equal rights for all citizens and reconcile Iran with the world. He may not have succeeded in all of those endeavors, but Mr. Ahmadinejad has entered government with manifestly opposite priorities.
The new president's allies in Parliament recently concluded that nearly 80 percent of the books published under President Khatami violated revolutionary values and should be placed under restrictions. Films that promote feminism, secularism and liberalism are to be banned. And while President Khatami built his international reputation on his call for a "dialogue among civilizations," President Ahmadinejad has reached out to racists and anti-Semites instead.
It's true that Iranian elections are not quite democratic, because the unelected Guardian Council reserves the right to bar candidates. But the real problem here is that boycotting semi-democratic elections ultimately will not make such a system more democratic.
The rise of Mr. Ahmadinejad, and the threat he poses to the stability of a volatile region, demonstrates that promoting apathy in a semi-democratic system can only strengthen the radical anti-democracy forces. And it raises a question as to whether that is what hawks in Washington actually wanted.
Contrast the "don't vote" message that President Bush sent to Iranians to the one delivered to Iraqis through a major media campaign and other costly means: "Your destiny is in your own hands. Disappoint the anti-democracy radicals and go out and vote."
If the United States is serious about promoting democratic change in Iran, it needs to try the same approach that brought Iraqis to the polls despite mortal danger. Mr. Bush and his supporters should encourage the people of Iran to participate in the next election. And they should urge Iranians to vote for someone who will make their country more open and democratic, rather than more threatening, as Iran under President Ahmadinejad has become.
Hossein Derakhshan writes the Farsi-English blog "Editor: Myself."
Posted by jeff at 9:07 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBackJanuary 28, 2006
It's in the Koran
Sing along with the jihadis, because It's in the Koran. (hat tip: LGF)
Here's the lyrics:
In our days of glory
now centuries past
The kingdom of Islam
stood mighty and vast
Then we failed our faith
and watched your power grow
But soon our greatness will return
And this is how we know
Because it's in the Koran
It's writen in the Koran
A world united under Allah
Is the future of man
How could it not be so
when most opposing us panic
and surrender once a few of them have bled
We're happy to torture
We're eager to rape
We savor your last screams on videotape
We massacre children
We ransack a shrine
And all our acts are sanctified
By Suras 2 through 9
Because it's in the Koran
It's written in the Koran
that we should fight and slay the infidels
however we can
We'll blow ourselves to bits
if that gives us an advantage
Or we'll slit your throats
while youre asleep in bed
Those heathens who scold us
are wasting their breath
over the millions we've butchered
and starved
We're men who would let girls
be trampled to death
Rather than see them in public
unscarved
So don't look for mercy
when you're at our feet
The justice we'll give you
is harsh and complete
We danced in delight
when your Twin Towers fell
And you'll weep with your slaughtered
as you burn with them in Hell
Because it's in the Koran,
it's written in the Koran
Your fate was settled long before
this latest battle began
We've found our holy purpose
and we'll never abandon it
as long as there's a sinner to behead
In other words we won't rest
tlil everyone in the West
is a slave, a Muslim or dead
The Task of the Living
Nemo and Brian have both noted the terrible anniversaries this week brings: the losses of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. For anyone who believes, as I do, that we must go into space, as a species, in order to survive, in order to thrive, these are terrible dates to remember, indeed. But there are other dates of equal terror: April 23, the loss of Vladimir Komarov when his parachute failed to open on re-entry; June 30, the loss of three cosmonauts on board Soyuz 11, when a stuck valve suffocated them; and there may be others shrouded in the old Soviet programs' secrecy. These dates are terrible because they are the dates when brave men and women were lost in the exploration of space.
Their reasons for going were a complex mix of national pride, a sense of duty, a sense of adventure, a desire to advance mankind and countless other reasons. But above all, they died to advance an idea: that we need not live in a demon-haunted world; that our powers of reason are sufficient to overcome any obstacle; that man can be better tomorrow than today. These ideas, all of them, are undergoing the sternest challenge that they have faced since their spectacular rise during the Enlightenment, and possibly their sternest challenge since the barbarians, with the help of the indolent and pampered Romans themselves, overran Rome and brought a thousand years of darkness to the world. This challenge is being brought by the jihadis, and by the indolent and pampered in our own society. Their shared idea is that nothing is real and meaningful in this world; they differ only in thinking this is because only their god and his invariant commandments are real and meaningful, or that it is because nothing is meaningful at all except their own selfish lives. As Wretchard notes, a great many of us are embracing the coming darkness.
But it is the task of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead, and so it is to my mind the most fitting memorial to those who sacrificed for knowledge and meaning and light, to commit to the advancement of those great principles, and to stand against ignorance and debasement and darkness. That is the way to make their sacrifice meaningful.
Remembering Challenger
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."
I think it's safe to say that Challenger is my generation's "where were you when ___?" moment. I was a freshman in college when Challenger went up. We heard the news on a break from class. At first, some were convinced it was a cruel joke. We were quite simply shocked to learn different.
Our instructor didn't bother with the second half of class. Students gathered in the Union watching the replays on the big screen as they played it over and over. I think I must have sat there for over an hour watching.
I didn't bother with the rest of classes that day - I'm not even sure if they were held or not. I went home, and just sat transfixed - stunned.
My main fear that day was that we would stop moving forward with manned space travel. Twenty years later, I almost think my fears have come partially true. NASA seems locked into an aging shuttle fleet, leaving it to private efforts like SpaceShipOne to pick up the effort.
I can only hope that the next twenty years bring more for space travel than the last. The Challenger crew certainly deserve it.
Posted by Nemo at 10:38 AM | TrackBackIn Memoriam
They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived.
Thirty-nine years ago yesterday, the crew of Apollo I, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, died during a training exercise.
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."
Twenty years ago today, the crew of Challenger, Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe, died shortly after liftoff.
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.
Three years ago on Wednesday, the crew of Columbia, Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark, died during reentry.
In an age when space flight has come to seem almost routine, it is easy to overlook the dangers of travel by rocket, and the difficulties of navigating the fierce outer atmosphere of the Earth. These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life. Because of their courage and daring and idealism, we will miss them all the more.
The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.
Lastly, now is a good time to read Bill Whittle's COURAGE, even if you've read it before.
Posted by Brian at 1:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBackJanuary 27, 2006
Ah Ha!
We are closing our old bank accounts, and cleaning up the last few things that draw from them. The last one was DirecTV. Now, we like our satellite TV service: the signal is fantastic, and since we put up the dual-LNB antenna has not once rain faded that I've noticed (better aligned than the last one, because we paid a professional to do it); the programming is quite good, and we get the services we want for a price we can pay, along with about another 200 channels that we don't care about; the DVR allows us to record two shows while watching one we've already recorded, and it's TiVo rather than some less-functional knock-off. But their customer service is execrable. That's not fair: their customer service personnel are fine, when you can reach them.
Well, after half an hour of digging through voice menus, and not being able to find an option to let me do what I want or to talk to a person, I finally figured out how to get a person. In the hopes of saving someone else the trouble, here's how to do it: lie.
When you dial DirecTV's customer service number, any option you pick will ask you to enter the service phone number. Enter a nonsense number (you need 10 digits; I entered the correct area code and switch, and a random last 4 digits). The service will ask if you are sure that's your phone number. Assure it that you are, and its inability to find your account is certainly the computer's own fault. It will then ask you for your account number. Be sure to tell it you have no clue what your account number is. At this point, the computer will metaphorically throw up its hands in frustration and transfer you to an actual person, who in my case resolved the actual issue I had within 5 minutes.
If the alternative was anything but Comcast, I'd likely switch providers if I ever have to call them again: it's easier.
January 26, 2006
What if Everything you Know is Wrong?
What if Iraq did have WMDs, and they were smuggled into Syria just before the war? If this is true, we may soon know that in fact all the intelligence agencies were right and conventional wisdom is wrong. Not to mention the utter collapse of the whole "Bush lied, people died" meme, or what is left of it.
I Exist; All Else is Consequence
There have been some interesting discussions on what natural rights are, and why they are, in the blogosphere recently. First, to summarize:
Max Borders postulates that rights have meaning only because we give them meaning; all rights are socially constructed. Borders likens rights to money, without understanding the difference between fiat currency and money. (But then, he doesn't appear to understand anything about civil vs. natural rights, either.)
Jon Henke is impressed by this argument, and talks about rights in a manner implying civil rights, but he is apparently thinking about natural rights. This confusion leads Henke to conclude that rights are essentially polite social fictions.
Dale Franks has a much clearer understanding of rights, and lays out why natural rights exist, in a clear and straightforward manner.
Meanwhile, Francis Porretto recently tracked rights and Christianity together through the two Great Commandments. UPDATE: And a follow-up to this post on social construction of rights.
I have a couple of observations to make, on "good" vs. "bad" religions (yes, I'll judge), "good" vs. "bad" social orders, and the cultures that arise from them. All because of the simple observation that I exist, and so do other people. This is going to be long, so the rest is below the fold.
The fact that I exist has certain consequences, including these: I want to keep on existing, and via having children to extend the meaning of my existence beyond my own lifetime; I want to be prosperous, happy and able to better myself, and to provide more for my children than myself; I don't want to be forced to do things, because that would likely prevent me from being prosperous and happy. Because I want these things, badly, I would be willing to go to great lengths to ensure that I get them.
Other people also exist, and want the same things, and are also willing to go to great lengths to ensure that they get them (though not to great lengths, necessarily, to ensure that I get them).
Anyway, the nature of our existence as rational beings possessed of free will leads to the three most important natural rights, so called because they arise as a consequence of man's existence and nature: life (keep living, have children, etc), liberty (not be forced to do things), and ability to pursue happiness (prosperity would be part of what makes me happy, certainly: starving, for example, sucks). The ability to pursue happiness has a requisite though: property. If I am dependent for my living on someone else's whim, I am not free to pursue happiness, because they could use their hold over my continued existence to compel me to do things for their happiness. So having property — enough property to grow food to support my family, at a minimum — is a requisite for pursuit of happiness, and that is why the original formulation was "life, liberty and property". Visually, thus:
Immediately we find the first place that cultures often go wrong. A culture which denies natural rights to its citizens is inherently violating human nature at its most primal. Thomas Jefferson very succinctly defined the purpose of government and its relationship to natural rights:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The legitimacy of a government derives not from elections or other means of representation nor from structural concerns. The legitimacy of government derives entirely from whether or not that government protects the rights of its people, against each other and against outsiders and against the government itself. For if the government does not protect those rights, for what reason does government exist? For the provision of justice is not a sufficient answer, though it is a common one, because justice demands the protection of natural rights, and the abrogation of those rights is thus inherently unjust.
A democracy can be illegitimate (in fact, a pure democracy will inevitably become so, while an impure democracy apparently will inevitably become so at a slower rate), and a tyranny can be legitimate. The key to legitimacy is not the organization of government, but its ability and willingness to protect the rights of its people.
I should mention, here, that this is essentially a moral judgement. The whole set of concepts of rights and justice and liberty are inherently moral judgements. If you believe, for example, that it is just fine to, say, kill people on a whim, then you will not be very persuaded by any of this. In that case, the only end to our disagreement will be for one of us to change our mind for internal reasons, or for one of us to die.
Back to rights. Each person's natural rights are self-contained; in fact, it is a necessary part of the definition of a natural right, what distinguishes a right from a mere desire. That is to say, if I assert a right, but exercising that claimed right requires an infringement of your rights, than my claim is false: what I want to do is not a right at all.
I can live without denying others their own right to live, can act without coercion (to do or not do, as the case may be) without denying others their own equivalent rights, and can own property — and thus work to guarantee my happiness — without denying others their right to own (different) property and similarly to work for their own happiness. While I can assert my rights without violating another's equivalent rights, there is also the possibility that I might not want another to enjoy their natural rights. For example, I might want to take another's property for my increased happiness, or coerce another to do something to make me happy even though it has negative consequences for them. In that case, since you would do virtually anything to secure your rights, you would perhaps decide to use armed force, if necessary, to prevent me from infringing your rights. From this it follows that self-defense is a natural right, as well. Similarly, other natural rights arise from the consequences of exercising and defending the basic natural rights, including the right to control one's own body (which arises from the life and property rights) or the right to engage in an occupation (which arises from the property and liberty rights).
Some rights, such as self-defense, arise as first-order consequences of the basic rights, but others arise as second- or third- or higher-order consequences. For example, the right to self defense implies a second-order right: the right to have a means with which to defend myself. Visually, our social structure becomes:
From these rights, and the nature of man, two basic rules emerge for interacting with others. These two rules are called "natural laws" because they describe the proper exercise of natural rights, and they are these:
- Do what you agree to do. (This is the basis of contract law.)
- Do not encroach on others' rights. (This is the basis of tort law and much criminal law.)
Natural laws mediate the interactions of men in the same way that economic laws mediate the interactions of an economy. Visually, thus:
This is the second place that cultures frequently go wrong. If the interactions between people, or in particular between the government and the people, are not governed by natural laws, the result is inevitably a degradation in the observance of natural rights. In other words, failing to govern interpersonal interactions via natural law leads inevitably to tyranny.
In England, a justice system developed that was, as far as I know, unique in the world. The characteristics of that justice system that are important to this discussion are these:
- All justice is based on natural law; and any violation of natural laws is thus an injustice.
- Natural law is higher than statute law (law made by governments), and thus acts of government must be nullified if they conflict with natural laws.
- It is the duty of judges to discover and apply natural law.
This system is called a common law system, and the American justice system is based on it. However, it is important to note that there aren't really any places which are purely based on common law: governments, seeking greater power as is in their nature, tend to override common law wherever and whenever it is to their convenience to do so. Those countries which still have vestiges of common law (the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland, for example) are those in which people are most free and, for reasons beyond the scope of this post, generally most prosperous as well.
Those people, including our Founding Fathers, who thought deeply about Liberty and governance during the Enlightenment came up with a novel understanding of the purpose of government, which is spelled out in our Declaration of Independence: government exists to protect natural rights by enforcing natural laws. Visually, thus:
The different types of law each exist to enforce natural law. But there is a problem with this: what exists to stop the government from becoming all-powerful, once the government has come into existence? The first answer is respect for natural law, including the right of people to self-defense. After you stop laughing at the concept of government respecting anything but its own power and privilege, we'll get to the other things that keep the government from being all-powerful. Ready?
OK, a government instituted by free people who are not idiots will take into account human nature, which is where we all started. It is a fact of nature — a fact below even the level of human existence — that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. (If you don't believe me, go study entropy.) But it is a fact of human nature that we all want the free lunch anyway. And since government by its nature must have the power of taxation, government disposes of other people's money. So if you are in the right place in government, you dispose of other people's money. And there's what looks a lot like a free lunch, at least to the degree that you don't consider the long-term effects. Here are the long-term effects:
The government becomes a tyranny: it exerts control over the individuals subject to it, while extorting or stealing ever higher levels of taxes.
So to prevent that, a government designed to foster freedom requires safeguards. The right to keep and bear arms, for example, is a consequence of the natural right to self-defense. But it is also a necessary check on the power of government: an armed population can prevent the government from abrogating its rights, by force of arms if necessary. Other rights, which our Constitution also prohibits the government (theoretically) from interfering with also arise from this need to keep government within bounds: freedom of expression, habeus corpus and warrants, freedom of worship and from compulsion to worship, and so on. These are civil rights, and are only ours to enjoy until government decides to take them away. In addition, the very structure of government defined by the original Constitution was designed to keep the government from excessive taxation (no direct taxes except proportional to headcount) and excessive accumulation of personal power (checks and balances). Thank you the progressive movement for stripping away those protections! We have actually done this final wrong thing that government can do, and if we do not reverse it, we will eventually and inevitably slide into increasing tyranny. Already, we live in a less free society than our parents lived in.
The government can, of course, grant additional civil rights beyond these, and frequently does. Sadly, the government even more often uses the rhetoric of rights to mask the fundamental violation of rights. For example, claiming a right to free health care denies the more fundamental property rights of both doctors, compelled to practice in ways that they may disagree with, and of taxpayers, who must hand over ever more taxes to fund such programs.
Hmmm, I ended up going a bit off topic, so let me get back onto it. You might have noticed that I mentioned religion earlier, and didn't come back to it. Well, here we are.
Religion comes into this because we started with the fact of human existence. But prior to human existence comes the creation of humans: whence did we arise? And that is certainly a religious question. The Declaration of Independence merely notes that natural rights derive from the endowment of the Creator, but does not make any speculation as to the nature of the Creator, for what should be obvious reasons. But I think that it's possible to derive some idea of the possible divinities from examination of natural law, coupled with the observation that a just god would not create life to torment and destroy. (No one would call, say, Cthulu a just god, for example.)
Divine law governs how man may achieve salvation (Christian tint courtesy of Aquinas, but the principle is broader than that), and is not discoverable by reason (the way natural law is) or reading (the way statute law is) or experimentation (the way eternal laws, such as gravitation or thermodynamics, are), but only through faith. But here's the kicker: any divine law which abrogates natural law automatically goes against human nature, because natural law is just the set of rules that describe human nature. So if a divine code of law goes against natural law, that divine code, and by extension the religion that embodies it, is inherently bad: by denying human nature, it is unfit for human consumption.
This is in fact the basis of my break with Christianity, or as I now recognize it, the Judaical basis of Christianity: what kind of god says "Don't touch that one thing" to a curious being who is curious because that's how the god created the being and then eternally damn the being for touching? As far as I can tell, the Levitical covenant is still in effect, and thus at its core (though not in broad practice) Judaism has a serious problem with human nature. Islam, too, has this problem. The covenants of Islam deny natural law to a breathtaking extent.
Now to be fair, most Jews and most Muslims seem fairly decent sorts. Except, of course, for the very hard line fundamentalist Jews and Muslims, who take the covenants quite seriously. (Similarly, many hard line fundamentalist Protestants, who adhere to the Levitical covenant in spite of the two Great Commandments, are nearly unrecognizable as human in their relations with those who don't share their beliefs.)
But Christianity has at its heart the possibility of something better: the two Great Commandments, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (38) This is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And most Christians, really, follow that covenant rather than the earlier and harsher one. The implications of those two commandments, when fully thought through (and I recommend you read Porretto's religious writings) are actually quite beautiful. And note how closely those commandments adhere to natural law: those are the divine laws of a god that understands the beings of his creation.
Wicca and similar religions, too, have divine laws that are congruent with natural law. The Wiccan Rede ("Do what thou wilt, an harm none" being my favorite formulation) corresponds directly to the principle of not abrogating another's rights, while exercising one's own rights. The Three-Fold Law (that which you do comes back to you three-fold) expresses the consequences of not keeping your agreements.
I'm sure that there are other religions, too, whose core law matches well with natural law. And there are other religions equally dangerous (I suspect scientology falls in this category, from what little I know of it). If you want to know why the jihadis are so dangerous, you just need to look at what their covenant is, and how seriously they take it. Hopefully, as with the Catholic Church since its rethinking of itself after the Reformation, they are amenable to reform.
Contra Henke, natural rights and the associated natural laws are quite real. There are consequences to ignoring them, and those consequences go far, far beyond living and dying. They go to your very soul. So in the immortal words of Bill and Ted, "be excellent to each other."
Posted by jeff at 4:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBackAnd the Dessert Cart Rolls On
This is the best SNL skit I've seen since the 2000 elections. Swallow liquids first.
From The Political Teen via Q and O.
OK, embedding is harder than I thought. How do I get the controls for the video to show up?
UPDATE: In the meantime, you can get it directly from here. (Don't just click the link: download it.)
January 25, 2006
How to Hire a Good System Administrator
I am asked, periodically, how to hire good systems administrators, DBAs and integration people. Since it seems to be a topic of somewhat general interest at least among IT managers, I decided to address it here. But since most of my readers seem to come here for the political posts, I'll put it in the extended section.
Q: What are the qualities to look for in a good admin?
A: You want to get someone who is intelligent, capable of both intuition and logic, lazy, egotistical but not subject to easy shame, and a little bit compulsive (a lot persistent).
The kinds of systems installed in an enterprise are very, very complex. It takes someone with a fair degree of intelligence to be able to remember the interconnections and interactions of the various systems, as well as the components on each one, and know where to start looking when problems surface. For the same reason, you need someone capable of intuition (no one will ever completely understand the behavior of sufficiently complex installations), so that he'll know where to start looking, and with a very structured, logical mind, so that he'll know what to investigate and what to discard.
You want someone lazy, because lazy people hate to do work. Well, you've got the computers to do the work, so why should administrators have to do things? Things break, or are just not quite polished enough. A lazy system administrator will sometimes take weaks fixing things so that they don't break again, ever, or polishing the edges on something to save himself 5 minutes of work in a day. These kinds of improvements add up, in both system stability and reduced workload. That means that you can expand your environment without expanding your work force.
You want someone egotistical, because an egotistical person does not want to admit they cannot solve a problem. So they will work quite hard to solve a problem. And again, these are very complex systems, so someone without the ego investment will often fail to solve the really odd problems, the ones that you can work around at a cost, but whose causes are not apparent. However, you can't get someone so egotistical that they cannot admit to anything that would shame them: that type covers up their mistakes, and complete openness is required in order to track down unintended side effects. (Managers can help this along by not shooting the messenger, even when he's there to tell you that he just unintentionally took down your entire production environment.)
The reason that you want someone who is a bit compulsive, and quite persistent, is that some problems hover just below the level of "must fix now", so they don't get fixed. This is, again, often the case with difficult problems of uncertain provenance that have a (painful, but workable) workaround. A good admin will use his spare time to track down and fix these problems, because they bug him, and he can't leave them alone.
Q: How can I gauge an admin's true experience level, given how misleading resumes often are?
A: I've found that the best way to do this is to offer him the root password on a really big, really fast, really new system. If he's all eager to try it out, he's not very experienced. (If he starts asking about detailed OS levels, configuration and such, that's a clue.) A mid-level admin will just accept the password and ask what the machine is used for. A very experienced admin will groan, at least inwardly, and try to figure out how to avoid having the root password: he's been here before, and it's a jading experience after a while.
Q: What are good questions or tests?
A: Well, assuming that you are not particularly proficient yourself, find someone who is. Those kinds of questions vary by system, and it's hard to generalize. There are a few things you can do even if you don't understand the systems very well yourself:
Break the system (a test system, that is) in a known way. (For UNIX machines, setting application startup files to mode 000, or an invalid owner, is a good way to do this. Or fill up the filesystem on a box with a large file, open the file in an editor, then delete the file from the filesystem and leave the editor running. See if the candidate can figure out why the filesystem is full even though there aren't any files in it.) Let the admin fix it. It doesn't necessarily matter if he does; what you are looking for is whether he goes for the right ideas or not. The cleverer the break, the better the test, and the more likely the admin will be way off at first as he looks for the simple things. (If you see hoofprints, it's a good troubleshooting technique to look for horses before you look for zebras.)
Explain that each of your 45 boxes has a separate root password, that these are cryptic and random and changed monthly, and that this is done for security reasons. If he does not vociferously question your sanity, he either does not understand security or he is not assertive enough to stand up for himself when he knows he's right. Or, alternately, he figures he can get around that behind your back. In any case, if he doesn't protest, don't hire him.
Another good one is to posit a situation where a critical security patch has been made available by the vendor, and his manager is insisting it be installed immediately. What process does he use? If he starts with the production systems, or doesn't consider outage windows, he may not have ever worked in a true enterprise shop: the value of the data being compromised and the application run-time being threatened almost always outweighs the risk of an unpatched system over the short term, so expect protests that "now" is not advisable as a good time to install things, unless "now" is already in an outage window and the patch has already been tested.
Oh, and ask what kind of puzzles he liked to do when he was a kid (or likes now). Every good admin I know did puzzles as a kid: word finds, crosswords, cryptoquotes, logic puzzles — something.
Q: What did you mean before about resumes being misleading?
A: System administration is an apprenticed art. There are no formal methods to administration that are worth the time to learn, because problems are too complex, diverse and non-repetitive (well, the meaningful problems don't repeat, anyway) to reduce to a set of rules. As with auto mechanics, it's a process of accumulation of techniques and insights that leads to good results. The quality of an admin depends more on how he was mentored, or whether he was capable of self-mentoring (some are), than on how many machines of what kinds in what circumstances he has worked on. That kind of stuff doesn't show up on a resume. The best admin I ever hired had something like 6 months of formal experience, and boxes he played with at home. (He was a security guard before I hired him.) The worst admin I ever hired had 15 years' experience on UNIX systems. Don't trust resumes.
Reduction to an Absurdity
Planet Moron has reduced the term "living document" to its absurdly pathetic core, writing about the NSA surveillance controversy:
Although these actions may appear to be illegal, the President claims that Congress gave him tacit approval when it passed the “Authorization for Use of Military Force” legislation shortly after 9/11. Sure, it doesn’t explicitly authorize his actions, but the President tends to take a more activist, expansive view of the text, believing the legislation to be more of a “living document” in which his authority resides within a penumbra or if not that, then almost certainly an emanation. Surely the wise men who put finger to keyboard one-fifth of a score ago didn’t mean for us to take the words literally, frozen in place for all time.
Posted by jeff at 8:01 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Don't be Evil ... Much
Google's motto is "Don't be Evil". In order to gain access to markets in China, Google has accepted the need to censor it's Chinese offerings, at the behest of the Chinese Communist government, to filter out dangerous ideas like freedom, democracy and human rights. (hat tip: Winds of Change) In other words, Google, founded by Leftists out to Change the World™, is acting like all companies do: it is accommodating its ideals to the market to increase its profitability. But, I think that means that they need a new motto. Here are my suggestions; feel free to leave yours in the comments.
Don't be Evil ... Much
Don't be mumble mumble
mumble mumble EVIL
Don't be Less Profitable
Don't be Evil. Patronizing, Censorious and Anti-Democratic is Fine.
Is Going Against Our Ideals to Aid a Tyrannical Government by Censoring Access to Freedom and Democracy Really Evil, Anyway?
UPDATE: Ouch.
January 24, 2006
Target Rich Environment
When I hear about large groups of people shouting "Death to America!", my first thought is, "Targets!" I mean really, how can, say, Israel even resist dropping cluster bombs on Hamas funerals, for example? Yeah, it's kind of a war crime, but there's a certain element of satisfaction in hearing people chant your death, and responding, "You first."
January 23, 2006
How Appropriate
The concession speech in Canada's election will be given in French.
Interesting Google Game
Just out of curiosity, after seeing a comment to an old Kevin Drum post, I went and googled the terms:
bush impeach
clinton impeach
Bush got 2.86 million results. Clinton, who was actually impeached got 1.11 million results. Odd, that.
Mullahs Across Texas
I would do my part to ensure that they were scared to death. (Commenting on Dean Esmay's blog because I can't comment at Dean Esmay's blog. Read here for context.)
January 22, 2006
This Would Not Happen at a Home Birth
Via Q and O, we have the story of a woman who went to the hospital to have a baby, and ended up with both arms and legs amputated. Now, that's bad enough, but understandable: she had complications after delivery, and apparently developed a strep infection (which can in some cases lead to a disease that literally rots flesh away).
No, the tragedy, the absolute I-cannot-understand-this-balls-on-effrontery of the situation is that the hospital will not tell the woman what happened because it might violate other patients' privacy! Think about that for a second. They refuse even to say something like, "another patient in the same area had strep and it spread to you via (method) and that caused..." No, not even that. Just: oh, well, we aren't going to tell you how you ended up a multiple amputee.
I don't much believe in punitive lawsuits, because their abuse is a drag on our social fabric as well as our economy. But this is the kind of case that makes me reluctant to outlaw punitive lawsuits and stratospheric damage awards, because this behavior is so arrogant that you know that the hospital will do this again. Are they covering up bad sanitation practices? Employee misconduct? A careless mistake? Or do they just think that they are gods, and unanswerable to the little peons who they deign to allow to enter their doors?
If you can't tell, I'm really annoyed whenever I see people act this way. It is unforgivable, inexcusable and disgusting.
January 21, 2006
Well, Coming Anarchy is Keeping me Entertained Tonight
Swallow all liquids before watching this.
Gods and Monsters
Never has one of my category names been better exemplified (though I didn't necessarily mean "human monsters") than at Coming Anarchy. And yet this post is in another category entirely. Go figure.
"Omar then closed his eyes and began to rock slowly back and forth."
The best article on bin Laden's recent "truce" speech I've yet seen is at the Onion.
Have You Checked The Children
Sony has remade the 70s suspense/thriller When a Stranger Calls. I remember the original scaring the hell out of me when I was young (and doing the occasional babysitting job). This one has been updated: cell phones, caller ID, callbacks, etc. This one seems to try to build on the original, though: it goes a lot further showing the sitter trying to escape from the caller.
I don't see too many of these types of movies. The Sixth Sense may have been the last one, actually. I have my doubts this remake will hold up very well, but I have to admit that childhood memories sent a chill down my spine thinking about it.
Posted by Nemo at 2:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBackJanuary 20, 2006
If Only the MSM Would Help So Much
Congratulations due to "Rusty Shackelford" of the Jawa Report for his part in helping to get a wannabe terrorist convicted.
And note to the Democrats: my mind is now made up on the library provision beyond a doubt, so flogging that issue just makes it that much less likely that you'll win my vote.
January 19, 2006
Bin Laden's "Truce"
Jawa Report has both an excellent transcript of the latest bin Laden message and some good commentary on it, in particular comparing the positions of the American Left with the statements of bin Laden, who is basically repeating many of the Left's talking points, to their discredit.
The one thing that I want to see, but haven't, is the word bin Laden used, in Arabic, that is translated as "truce". If it was hudna, as I suspect, then you should be aware that this is a common mistranslation in both Western and in terrorist apologist media. The Arabic word hudna means not a "truce" in the Western sense, but a pause in fighting while they rebuild their forces to resume the fight later. The absence of conditions to the "truce" could be because al Jazeera didn't broadcast the whole tape, or it could be because bin Laden is actually announcing hudna. However, I think it is irrelevant, because I don't believe bin Laden is in operational command of al Qaeda — at least not in Iraq — and that therefore the fighting will not ramp down regardless.
Carefree
Dave Schuler has a list of things he doesn't care about, and why. I agree with every word except for the bit about health care costs. (The problem isn't the insurance companies, but that insurance is not paid for by the insured, by and large. My health insurance is relatively cheap, but that's because I have to completely pay for it myself, so I get what I need and no more. If that were the case by and large, we would likely have a rational and affordable health care system.)
January 18, 2006
No, It's Not Just You
"Issues with men" might be understating things a bit.
Free Markets Work; Who Would Have Guessed?
Offshoring low-skill (call center) and medium-skill (Java web app coding) work to India, China and other low-labor cost countries has been going on for some time. Long enough that the labor pool there is drying up, leading to a shortage of workers, leading to rapidly rising wages. Hey, guess what: markets work.
(hat tip: Karl Gallagher)
January 17, 2006
A Spring In His Step
I just laughed out loud when I read this. From Trek Today:
Stewart Has 'Never Felt Happier' Since Returning to UK
Patrick Stewart is having the best time of his life since leaving Hollywood and returning to his native Britain.
Stewart told a reporter at The Huddersfield Daily Examiner that he has "never felt happier" since moving back to the UK, saying, "I missed the career that I'd been building here...I missed the shorthand and the detail of being here, of picking up references, of feeling the fabric of English life around me, in all its subtlety and complexity - and infuriating aspects."
"Don't get me wrong, what happened in the States was absolutely fantastic," Stewart quickly added. "I wouldn't change any of that." But the newly named Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield said that he has been thrilled to return to British theatre and is happy with his new ITV series Eleventh Hour. "If I had fantasised about how I'd like to be spending my time on my return, this past year would have been it," declared Stewart, refusing to discuss his private life but conceding that his romantic relationship with a 25-year-old woman has enhanced it greatly. He said that his earlier heart problems have improved and he works with a personal trainer three times a week to stay in shape.(emphasis mine)
I think a 25-year old woman would enhance the life of most 60+ year men, don't you? :)
Posted by Nemo at 9:03 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBackThe Origin of "Size Doesn't Matter"
It must have been South Korean. (hat tip: Mark in Mexico)
January 16, 2006
Ummm...
They could, you know, establish their own school instead.
Priests and Kings
I was somewhat disheartened reading Kevin Drum's thoughts on Iran. Not because of Kevin himself: it's sad that he sees this only as a political issue (though not to the extent of the hyperpartisan Duncan Black), but at least he's trying to look at what a serious Democratic policy position might be. No, it's his commenters, who tend to the Chimpy McBushitlerhalliburton end of the Left that worry me. Oddly enough, of the very few commenters who seriously attempted to offer a position, the most eloquent and sustained was "Jimm", whose position is basically that we take care of Iran by disarming all nuclear states of all their weapons, and in the process eliminate nuclear power, too. Then everyone in the world would certainly agree that any country that starts developing nuclear weapons should be invaded. Well, it's not a realistic position, but at least it's coherent and arguable. More typical is this:
I prefer (c) - impeachment. That would make me feel a lot safer.
Maybe so, until the Iranians develop and use nuclear weapons, which would lead to at least one, and possibly two, genocides. But this is not really about the consequences of not dealing with Iran, or whether Iran would or would not develop and would or would not use nuclear weapons. Instead, it is about whether or not we can indeed have a reasonable, civil political debate about policy in the United States.
Signs are not good. Since the late 1960s, something with only two precedents in US history has been happening: the two parties are coming to embody militant fealty to a set of interrelated (often loosely) positions, and seeing the other party as the enemy, rather than an opponent. Those two precedents: the run up to the Civil War, and the early 1930s. In both cases, radical change was in store for America, and it appears we may be heading in that direction now. After all, there is not a possible reconciliation between "gay marriage is a moral obligation of society" and "gay marriage leads to polygamy, pedophilia and incest"; or between "the United States has done horrible things, and has no right to push its beliefs on anyone else" and "if we don't fight now, we face nuclear war in a few years". (Abortion, ironically, would likely settle itself quickly to being legal in some circumstances almost everywhere if it were to be made subject to political forces; it's not an unsolvable issue, except that Roe v. Wade makes solving it impossible for now.) Without a reconciliation between these extremes, can there be meaningful dialogue? Do the two parties even believe in the same vision of what the United States is, let alone what the United States should do? Apparently, no.
But why is this the case? I believe that the reason the two parties have crystallized so far apart on so many issues is that, since the late 1960s, each has attracted a different sort of power-seeker. Unlike in the early 1800s, when both parties were essentially parties of libertarians seeking wealth and freedom, or the late 1800s, when both parties were essentially parties of progressives seeking social justice, or the 1950s and early 1960s when both parties were essentially parties of benign statists seeking a fair and prosperous society, today the parties are split in their moral foundations, and thus in their political reasoning. It has been summed up as "liberals feel and conservatives think", but I believe it's deeper than that. Certainly, Al Gore and Kevin Drum and Lance Mannion are capable of thinking clearly, and George Bush and Francis Porretto and Bill Whittle have emotional depth. So where does the distinction lie?
Man will only truly be free when the last Priest is strangled with the entrails of the last King. — Diderot
Historically, libertarians and democrats are loathe to rule. At best, you can get them to govern, but those whose deepest political instinct is that the individual or the society at large knows best tend to shy away even from governance. What rule, or even governance, offers is power and control, and the people attracted to rule or governance are those who are attracted to power and control. (It is for this reason that any government not fundamentally limited in practice will eventually become tyrannical. If you don't believe me, try to sell liquor at retail or to grow marijuana. The US in only "free" in relative terms.) Those who are