A Geek I am not. At least, I'm not supposed to be a Geek.

But last night I took Newsweek's How Geeky Are You? test (via Dr. Helen Smith), and I find the results deeply disturbing.

According to the test, here's how I scored:

61 to 102: Seriously Nerdy

0 to 29: Stuck in the Last Century - 57%

30 to 60: Heading to Geekdom -- 38%

61 and up: Seriously Nerdy -- 5%

Impossible and unfair! But when I clicked on my score below and "hit 'submit' to compare yourself to others" it compared me to the 26589 responses they've received so far.

I had thought my Geekdom (or lack thereof) was well settled, because nearly three years ago I took this Geek test and reported the results, which didn't show I was all that geeky or all that nerdy, but rather well balanced!

Here; I'll report the results again, for all the world to see.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

(Link courtesy of Common Sense and Wonder.)

At the time, I said the word "Geek" was bothersome:

I don't like the word "Geek" -- as it is often confused with "Greek." This causes all kinds of confusion, especially with the young and impressionable...

I hope blogging doesn't do this to people.

While I'm on the subject of books, Jeff from Beautiful Atrocities reminded me in the comments of something that he, Sean Kinsell and I had posted about before -- that San Francisco's City Lights doesn't sell books by fascists.

Hmmmm....

I don't know why it took me so long to think of this, but I have one question:

What about Ezra Pound?

(Pound is not new topic on this blog, but this is purely a fascist-free-speech question.)

While Ezra Pound has to be considered a quintessential fascist by definition (the man avoided trial for treason by commitment to a mental hospital), apparently City Lights makes an exception to it's "We don't carry books by fascists" rule if the fascists are leaders of a particular literary tradition. I'm not sure quite how this exception to the City Lights Rule works, so I was forced to look for guidance in the various pontifications of City Lights' founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

In an interview with Jeff Troiano, Ferlinghetti condemns fascism as a threat to free speech:

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

While the fascism Ferlinghetti opposes the most appears to be Bush fascism ("American corporate monoculture" is presided over by Bush's "bandits" and "international criminals"), he proudly mentions his long association with Pound's leading publisher:

How do you envision the future of publishing? E-books?

The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates. The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all "bottom line" editors; everything depends on the money. New Directions, who's been my publisher since they published my book A Coney Island of the Mind> in 1958, is a rare exception. They were the first to report on and publish poets like Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams, Tennessee Williams—a huge list of important American, as well as European, writers. New Directions is still going strong, and they're still not a part of any corporate conglomerate.

Over the Fourth of July weekend in 2003, Ferlinghetti attended the Ezra Pound Conference (held in honor of Pound in his native Idaho) where he read gave a poetry reading:

Taking advantage of the Idahoan connections, the 20th International Ezra Pound Conference takes place in Sun Valley over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Scholars and students from 10 different countries will attend the meeting to discuss Pound's life and work. Two eminent and accomplished American poets, Robert Creeley and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, will join them.

Four conference events are open to the public. Both Creeley and Ferlinghetti will give public readings of their work. On July 2, Creeley reads in the Continental Room in the Sun Valley Inn at 8:15 p.m. Ferlinghetti reads also in the Continental Inn on July 3 at 8:15 p.m.

But they have to tone it down. Please! Image. Context.

Which means that Pound's fascism has to be seen in, um, context:

Despite his Fascist leanings during World War II, he helped define and promote a modernist sensibility in poetry.

And that's what's important. Elaborating on Pound's modernist sensibility at City Lights' website, Ferlinghetti describes Pound as part of an important movement:

The attack had indeed begun much earlier, with Whitman's "barbaric yawp," and was carried forward by the American lingo of poets like W.C. Williams, Ezra Pound, and e.e. cummings, further aided and abetted after World War II by poets of the Black Mountain School--Robert Creeley, Charles Olson--who were in tune with what the New York abstract expressionists--de Kooning and Kline and Motherwell and Pollock--were doing in their spontaneous gestural action painting.

Today, raw thought as poetry is everywhere, at every festival, every open mike, every poetry slam, from rap to hip-hop and back--black and white and Latino poets and the latest youth movement poets, from the Nuyorican Cafe to Wednesdays at La Peña in Berkeley, and on Youth Radio on FM stations late at night.

In the autumn of our civilization, the poets of the world are speaking up and speaking their mind.

This is a bit much.

Then there's Ferlinghetti's own poem -- "Baseball Canto," -- described as being "as much about Pound and his influence as it is about the epic nature and forces embedded in the game of baseball." It begins:

Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,

reading Ezra Pound

and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the

Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto

and demolish the barbarian invaders

I am working on a documentary poem now called "Americus." It's modeled on Ezra Pound's "Cantos."

And if you don't like it, GO POUND SAND!

UPDATE: I see that last month, Common Sense and Wonder noted City Lights' Ezra Pound connection. (What took me so long?)

In what the magazine says is a historical first, major bookstore chains are refusing to sell a particular issue of Free Inquiry magazine -- not because it is violent, pornographic or advocates illegal conduct, but simply because they do not like its editorial content. (The magazine dared to reprint the Danish Muhammad cartoons -- only the subject of one of the biggest news stories to come along in the past couple of years.)

Roger L. Simon, Charles Johnson, and Ed Driscoll have more on this step backwards.

I completely agree with Glenn Reynolds' characterization:

Advancing toward fascism, one cowardly institution at a time.

The Buffalo News has more on the story, including a report that Barnes & Noble "expressed some concerns" and that Free Inquiry isn't available there either:

This week, a Canada-based distributor of Free Inquiry informed editors that Borders would not sell the latest issue in its stores.

Beth Bingham, a company spokeswoman, confirmed that Wednesday.

"We feel strongly for the safety and security of our employees and customers," Bingham said.

She said the company operates more than 475 Borders and 650 Waldenbooks stores in the United States, though not all regularly carry the magazine.

The Borders stores usually stock as many as 1,000 copies of Free Inquiry, and the chain typically is the magazine's largest newsstand retailer, said Tom Flynn, editor.

Barnes & Noble, the magazine's second-largest retailer, also expressed some concerns about the April-May issue, printed March 16, Flynn said. A distributor told Flynn more than a week ago that the chain was reviewing the magazine, but the issue so far has not been refused, he said.

The magazine hadn't become available as of Wednesday at the Barnes & Noble stores on Transit Road and Niagara Falls Boulevard stores in Amherst, which usually carry Free Inquiry. Company officials could not be reached to comment.

Flynn said he was disappointed by what he described as "exaggerated concerns" that were not in the best interests of readers.

More:

He noted that publication of the cartoons in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Austin American-Statesman had not provoked any violent response in the United States.

"This is the first time any retailer has declined to carry one of our issues because of content," he said.

Bingham said she did not know whether Borders stores in Philadelphia and Austin had refused to sell those newspapers on the day the cartoons ran.

I think everyone in the blogosphere who cares about these things should go order a copy here.

UPDATE (03/31/06): Samizata's Dale Amon urges that we BOYCOTT BORDERS:

I recommend anyone who decides to quit Borders not simply stop going. You should make one last appearance and tell them why you will not be back. If you prefer a carrot approach, tell them what they could do to win the return of you and others like you.

(My local Barnes & Noble is across the street from my local Borders, which makes it effortless to boycott the latter.)

UPDATE: I just sent the following letter to Borders' Public Relations Manager Beth Bingham (who is quoted above):

Ms. Beth Bingham
Public Relations Manager
Borders Group, Inc.

1-734-477-4457
bbingham@bordersgroupinc.com

Dear Ms. Bingham:

As a longtime Borders customer, I am appalled by your company's decision to ban the sale of Free Inquiry because of the magazine's content. As you know, your stores carried the magazine routinely, but have specifically refused the latest issue because it includes the Danish Muhammad cartoons -- perfectly legal material the subject of which goes to the very heart of free speech and our democratic traditions.

As a reason for banning the magazine, you stated that "we feel strongly for the safety and security of our employees and customers." That statement makes it perfectly clear that you are allowing threats (or perceived threats) of violence to dictate content. Under the logic which you have proffered, any group -- whether a racist group, an anti-gay group, or a radical environmental or animal rights group -- ought to now feel encouraged to issue violent threats in order to have literature it does not like pulled from the shelves. How does such a result in any way promote "safety"?

If there was a genuine threat of violence, why didn't Borders simply contact the police or FBI before complying with the demands? I think Borders' conduct does a disservice to its customers as well as the cause of free speech.

If a leading bookstore cannot appreciate the value of free speech, perhaps it can appreciate the value of customer goodwill. You have lost mine.

Unless I am assured that Borders' policy has been changed I will buy my books elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Eric Scheie

http://www.classicalvalues.com/

I'm beginning to understand why the MSM is disinclined to show things like Mexican flags on flagpoles or signs claiming that the Southwest belongs to Mexico.

In a previous post I questioned the advisability of creating millions of new felons. Earlier today I googled the phrase "12 million new felons," and found only one article using the term, in the Indiana Daily Student:

The United States could potentially have 12 million new felons or 12 million new citizens, depending on two sets of immigration reform legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Congress, the nation and the IU community are currently taking up the debate whether to follow Monday's Senate Judiciary Committee proposal, which would create a guest worker program and presents a path toward citizenship for many illegal immigrants already in the country. On the other hand is the option to go along with the more hard-line lead of a bill the House passed last December, which strengthens border security and would make illegal immigration a felony offense.

"Everyone can agree that our immigration policy is broken," said John Nieto-Phillips, associate professor of history and Latino studies. "There are more people who want to work than there are visas."

Before I get into the political considerations, let me elaborate on why I oppose the Sensenbrenner bill. I know it's tough to speculate about precisely how these things might play out, but what would be the consequences of having twelve million new felons (plus their non-alien supporters)? For starters, even though they're here and many of them have been here for years, they would never be allowed to vote, serve in the military, or immigrate to the United States. The felony classification would mean a readjustment of police priorities, because felonies are treated as high-priority matters. Suddenly, illegal alien status would become a more urgent matter than any misdemeanor.

The felon status might also change the nature of personal interactions between citizens and non-citizens. If the latter got into a car accident with the former, would the dynamics of accident reporting be changed? (Saying "Officer, that man is a felon!" carries more clout than saying that he ran the red light, as police officers are not allowed to ignore felonies.)

Then there's the "fleeing felon rule," which traditionally allowed officers (and often bystanders) to use lethal force to stop a fleeing felon. Since 1985, lethal force has not been allowed, so I don't think people would be authorized to shoot aliens for running away. But felony status would increase the number of what police call "felony stops."

I could play devil's advocate with this (and I know a good case can be made for the bill) but my concern is that the creation of 12 million new felons (with God-knows how many accomplices) is not something to be taken lightly.

Does anyone know well this might play with the voters? I haven't seen the polls. But after thinking it over, I am inclined to think that the draconian Sensenbrenner bill will help the Republicans -- provided it does not actually pass.

I'll try to explain.

Some have asked whether the felon bill is "threatening to undercut a decade-long effort by President Bush and his party to court Hispanic voters, just as both parties are gearing up for the 2006 elections." There's the obvious argument that it will galvanize the Republican base, but on the other hand passage of it might give the Democrats something to run against. ("The Republicans are going to imprison your entire family!")

What happens in November depends on a lot of things. As things stand, even if the hardline Sensenbrenner felony bill doesn't prevail, as long as the immigration issue stays alive, I think the Republicans will be seen as the party that at least tried to do something (and thus, would be more likely to do something in the future).

Recent polls show that the supposedly embattled Arnold Schwarzenegger is suddenly doing pretty well. Although Arnold is not a hard-liner on immigration by Republican standards, immigration is now a major issue, and his past remark that the border should be closed may have resonated in his favor. Today's LA Times says that the recent protests "reshape the governor's race":

A poll released today by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that illegal immigration has emerged as the top concern among Republicans in the state and the second most important among all of those surveyed. With the exception of education, the subjects that all three candidates have embraced have fallen behind.

The governor has not entirely ignored illegal immigration. He offered support for the civilian Minuteman border-patrol group last year and said California should "close the border," a comment he quickly rescinded.

On Tuesday, he outlined his views on immigration in an opinion piece in The Times. He endorsed a guest-worker program to help California businesses and argued against "criminalizing immigrants for coming here," though he also said that making citizens out of all illegal immigrants in the United States would be "anarchy."

The fact that the "choice" is seen as being between citizenship and felony status is almost as absurd as asking people to choose between sodomy laws and gay marriage. It only shows how hugely polarizing the issue is. And while a majority of Americans might not want to imprison 12 million people who have crossed the border illegally, that does not mean they want their conduct rewarded. Americans were hugely pissed off to begin with, and now that they've seen the angry demonstrations by people with no right to be here, they're in no mood for rewarding illegal behavior.

The Sensenbrenner bill allows the Republicans to play good cop/bad cop. Come November, they can take all the credit for taking a hard line on immigration, and if it fails, they won't have to face the tough questions about tearing families apart and putting people in jail.

At the risk of sounding like the cynical Machiavellian I sometimes am, I think the Republicans will be helped by the Sensenbrenner bill -- as long as it never becomes law.

By far the best way would be to get the Democrats to kill it, or at least be seen as killing it.

Hillary Clinton was off to a good start when she denounced the Sensenbrenner as being likely to lead to a "police state." And she did even better with last week's criminalize Jesus remark. But since the Mexican flags and the Reconquista stuff, she's been much too silent. Tim Graham says the "police state" remark is now being downplayed. What's the matter? Can't she be annointed as the Sensenbrenner bill killer?

And what's up with Karl Rove? Can't he do a better job of making sure that Indymedia and Moveon.org wave the "Reconquista" signs and Mexican flags? Why is Moveon.org so damned silent about the immigration issue? (Well, at least Indymedia hasn't been sleeping on the job, but I'm disappointed in Moveon.org.) How about Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore? Where are they now that the undocumented need them?

If the Democrats are to be seen as killing the bill, the Republicans will have to work harder.

Right now it's looking as though the Senate Republicans are going to kill the Sensenbrenner bill by burying it in a lack of consensus.

(I guess that's a form of cood cop/bad cop.)

UPDATE: Via Glenn Reynolds, Mickey Kaus begins by noting Paul Krugman's observation ("high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration") and thinks the ball should be in the Democrats' camp:

Krugman is clearly way off the PC/Dem/elite legalization reservation here. Republican Tony Blankley noticed. But will the Left? ... P.S.: The effect of immigrants in driving down the wages of unskilled African-American men is not just an economic question. It's a profound social question. Only by offering a decent living through legitimate work will we have a chance of integrating the large segment--maybe almost half--of the black male populations that's currently spinning off into a separate, destructive, "left behind" culture (even as black women are joining the regular labor force in record numbers). Where's the Congressional Black Caucus?

I'm not expecting answers.

AND MORE: Also via Glenn Reynolds, McQ at QandO thinks border control should come first. Yes, and it should have come first long ago. It's the one thing on which there's overwhelming popular (as opposed to political) consensus.

UPDATE (03/31/06): Sean Kinsell (while "of two minds" on how far to go with enforcement) also sees a backlash as a likely result of the recent demonstrations:

If the purpose of the demonstrations over the last few weeks was to win over Middle America, I'm thinking there were some serious miscalculations. Waving the Mexican flag or painting your face in its colors is a poor way to indicate your loyalty to the US. And thronging the streets of LA in the hundreds of thousands is...I mean, only the Blue City liberals who recall 60s-era demonstrations fondly as opportunities for The People to Speak Truth to Power are likely to be moved to sympathize, and they're already on the side of illegal aliens, anyway.

A typical argument often advanced in favor of the so-called "Reconquista" plan is that the annexation of the southwestern United States was unjust:

The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) was fought primarily to enable the United States to expand at the expense of Mexico. Texas became the focal point of hostilities between an expansionist United States and a recently independent Mexico. Increasingly dominated by white immigrants from the United States, Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836. This short-lived Texas republic sought U.S. protection against Mexico and possible interference from the British or other European powers.

At the urging of President James K. Polk, Congress approved the annexation of Texas on March 1, 1845. Polk also sent representatives to Mexico to negotiate the purchase of what are today New Mexico and California, but the Mexicans refused and both sides sent troops to the Texas-Mexico border. U.S. forces, led by future President Zachary Taylor, provoked an incident with the Mexican army, and Polk quickly obtained a declaration of war from Congress on May 13, 1846. In August 1847, after 15 months of fighting, the Mexican Government accepted a temporary armistice and began to negotiate a permanent peace settlement with Polk's personal representative, Chief Clerk of the Department of State Nicholas P. Trist. After the Mexican delegation rejected U.S. proposals for a settlement, the armistice was terminated on September 7. The war was won decisively by the United States, culminating with the capture of Mexico City about 1 week later.

The problem is, a few details are being left out. The State Department's paltry history of Texas implies that the whole thing was a quick land-grab and the Texas Republic a short-lived fraud.

Here's another account:

Texas remained an independent republic for almost a decade. Although Texas formally asked to become part of the United States, the American government hesitated. Mexico had made it clear that annexing Texas to the Union would be equivalent to the declaration of war. But on December 29, 1845, President John Tyler signed the bill to admit Texas to the Union as the last act of his administration. Mexico broke relations with the United States.

James K. Polk, who had strongly advocated annexation of Texas and expansionism in general, followed Tyler as President. Polk sent John Slidell, Minister of Mexico, to negotiate, offering to cancel a series of debts if Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the border between the two countries. Slidell also tried to buy the territories of New Mexico and California.

In turn, Mexico asked the United States to reconsider annexing Texas if it admitted Slidell to negotiations. The United States refused, Mexico declined to talk with Slidell, and Polk ordered troops to the disputed border.

General Zachary Taylor with 4,000 men arrived near Corpus Christi along the Rio Grande in late January 1846. The Mexicans regarded it as an invasion of their territory and threatened to attack if the United States did not remove its troops.

The American troops stayed along the mouth of the Rio Grande, waiting for Mexico to begin hostilities to initiate the war. In April 1846, during a small encounter between American and Mexican troops, several American soldiers were killed. President Polk convened Congress and announced: "American blood has been shed on American soil." The United States officially declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1846.

The war lasted two years with the Mexican Army suffering huge losses. General Zachary Taylor's forces moved south from Texas to capture Monterrey. On February 22, 1847, Taylor's troops marched from Monterrey to Buena Vista and defeated Santa Anna's men, who outnumbered the American force three to one.

The State Department clearly conveys the image of a huge power invading and crushing helpless defenders. Yet the Americans were fighting in a foreign country and outnumbered three to one. Isn't that worth a mention? Isn't it worth a mention that the war began when Mexican General Mariano Arista's troops crossed the Rio Grande into Texas and ambushed a U.S. Patrol? That the first major battle of the War of 1848 took place in Palo Alto, Texas, eight miles north of the Rio Grande?

It seems to me that if the admission of Texas to the United States was legitimate, then the United States was at least obliged to defend it.

Does the State Department feel the same way? Well, how does the State Department feel?

While it's tough to determine the feelings of a bureaucracy, reading the rest of the history they give, the tone seems to be one of remorse:

Although ordered by Polk to return to Washington, Trist remained in Mexico and carried out unauthorized talks with Mexican representatives in late 1847. These meetings formed the basis for the final peace treaty, also negotiated by Trist. Although Polk refused to acknowledge or compensate Trist, he grudgingly accepted the agreement and submitted it to the Senate for ratification. The February 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (named for a town outside Mexico City) signaled Mexico's surrender and finalized the purchase of New Mexico and California for $15 million.

This conflict had several long-term results: First, it largely completed the continental republic; other than the Gadsden Purchase in 1854, the borders of what would become the lower 48 states were set in 1848. Second, the war spawned a legacy of antagonism between the United States and Mexico that exists even today. Third, through the protests of Henry David Thoreau (of Walden Pond fame) and others, the conflict with Mexico sparked one of the early anti-war movements in the United States. It also helped revive contentious debates over the expansion of slavery into the American West.

Since end of the U.S.-Mexican War, historians have been divided in their interpretations. Some have held the United States cupable. Others blame Mexico. Studies of the literature reveal the majority of writers have taken a balanced view, holding neither country entirely blameless. Despite the fact that there is no hard evidence to support their views, those who blame the U.S. claim that the war was a "shameless land-grab" brought on by the intrigues of President James K. Polk or that it was part of some sinister plot on the part of the so-called "Slavocracy" to extend slavery. These unfounded arguments are nothing new. They are the same ones used by nineteenth century Whig politicians in their attempts to discredit President Polk. The truth is more simple: The war was fought to defend the right of a free people, namely the citizens of the Republic of Texas, to determine their own destiny, that is to join the American union of states. This was a right that the government of Mexico sought to deny them.

Opposition to the war has often been exaggerated. Only a few outspoken Whig politicians, such as John Quincy Adams, were against it. At the time of the war another oft-cited critic, the writer Henry David Thoreau, was virtually unknown outside his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. Most Americans enthusiastically supported the war. Approximately 75,000 men eagerly enlisted in volunteer regiments raised by the various states. Thousands more enlisted in the regular U.S. Army. There was no need for a draft. In some places, so many men flocked to recruiting stations that large numbers had to be turned away. Thousands of newly-arrived Irish and German immigrants also heeded the call to arms. (Emphasis in original.)

For nearly ten years, Texas was an independent country with disputed borders. Its national sovereignty was given diplomatic recognition by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Yucatán. (Interestingly, there was much unrest in Mexico and Yucatán was another breakaway state which resented the dictatorial methods of General Santa Anna, and which actually declared itself neutral during the War of 1848.)

The history of the admission of Texas is complicated and still disputed, but here's the Wikipedia account:

On February 28, 1845, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that would authorize the United States to annex the Republic of Texas and on March 1 U.S. President John Tyler signed the bill. The legislation set the date for annexation for December 29 of the same year. On October 13 of the same year, a majority of voters in the Republic approved a proposed constitution that was later accepted by the US Congress, making Texas a U.S. state on the same day annexation took effect (therefore bypassing a territorial phase). One of the primary motivations for annexation was that the Texas government had incurred huge debts which the United States agreed to assume upon annexation. In 1852, in return for this assumption of debt, a large portion of Texas-claimed territory, now parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Wyoming, was ceded to the Federal government.

Anyone know who writes history for the State Department?

Is it our official history and are we bound by it?

I mean, I know that government web sites can't be expected to be as democratic as Wikipedia, but shouldn't Texas have the right to weigh in?

The tension between democracy and freedom is an unsettling topic, especially when the issue is economic freedom.

For over a week now, there have been huge, often violent demonstrations in France by people who believe so fervently in the "right" to employment that they cannot countenance a right of an employer to fire them. Harvard professors Pepper D. Culpepper and Peter A. Hall opine thusly in the IHT:

. . . [T]he terms "left" and "right" have lost much of their political meaning in the nation that invented them. Instead of seeing more open markets as avenues toward jobs, many of the young view them as instruments of oppression.

The result is political disarray that is likely to continue until French leaders can assemble a new vision of social justice for a market society.

The youth of France do not want a new neo-liberal contract. They want a new social contract that distributes the burdens of a market economy equitably across the populace.

Until political parties deliver that kind of compromise, the underlying political crisis will not go away.

The Chicago Sun Times sums it up:

Students and labor unions say the labor law will erode France's cherished workplace protections. Set to take effect next month, it would let companies fire employees under 26 without reason in the first two years on the job. Under current French law, it is very difficult to fire anyone.

But let's contrast the French demonstrations with the American "pro-immigration" demonstrations. While half a million pouring from places like area schools into the streets of Los Angeles is hardly comparable in size, scope, or length of time with the mess in France, there is a certain eerie similarity in that the demonstrators' mindset in both countries stems from a similarly warped sense of entitlement. I believe this arises from the continental view of rights as entitlements as opposed to the American view of rights as freedom.

In France, there's a belief that there's an entitlement to a job at someone else's expense, while in the United States, the idea is that Americans have some sort of responsibility to foreign nationals who have no right to be here.

I know that libertarians are stereotyped as favoring open borders, and to the extent they do, then I guess I'm not living up to the libertarian stereotype. (May whoever is tasked with libertarian thought policing please forgive me or forgive me not!)

But with all respect to those who favor open borders, I don't think that's really on the same page of history as the argument being made by the demonstrators. They don't seek the merely to come back and forth in order to work along the lines of freedom or free trade; they want -- they demand -- the perks and privileges of United States citizenship. They want education, housing, medical care -- all paid for at taxpayer's expense. Their extreme wing actually believes that the borders of the United States are illegitimate (i.e. that the United States has no right to exist).

A sample of their professionally-prepared signs:

That's hardly advocacy of freedom. But even if we put this extremist "Reconquista" wing aside, I seriously doubt that the L.A. demonstrators have given any more thought to the idea of American freedom than the demonstrators in Paris. If they have thought about it, they've rejected it.

Freedom is seen by the demonstrators in terms of rights which are not rights at all, but entitlements at someone else's expense. The idea that the mere act of crossing a border into another country would convey entitlements of any sort is almost laughable, but considering the Marxist nature of many of the organizers, I guess it isn't surprising. What is surprising is to see so many people in apparent agreement -- and the Marxist (and overtly racist) aspects of the demonstrations so under-reported. As PR for their "cause," it's almost as if they're asking the American public to round them up and ship them back. (Are they forgetting that the latter is something the United States still has the right to do?)

They're acting as if they have a right to be here, and a right to all sorts of things to which they don't have a right. (And to which Americans don't even have a right.)

As someone who believes that rights are based on individual freedom, I believe that there is a human right to own property and to have your own money. I believe that this right necessarily includes the right to spend your money on anything you want, and to hire and fire whomever you want without restriction. Hiring a person to perform work no more creates a responsibility to take care of that person than does buying the goods he might have made whether here or if he lived in some other country. This is why I agree philosophically with abolishing the restrictions on employers in France, and disagree philosophically with the proposed draconian restrictions on employers in the United States. The fact that these people should never have been allowed to enter the United States (and that they are subject to deportation) is a separate issue from the economic freedom of employers.

It is not, however, a separate issue to those who believe in regulating private economic transactions "for the common good." Why does it become anyone else's business if a guy I hire to paint my house is behind on child support payments or doesn't have some other kind of correct "papers" -- any more than it would be if I bought a painting he had painted on canvas? My only duty is to pay the agreed-on price. Socialists who believe private consensual economic transactions should be called "exploitation" and regulated operate under the communitarian principle that there is no such thing as private conduct. That we're all interrelated and that what I do affects everyone. (Logically, of course, this means that there is as much right to regulate my pocket as there is to regulate my penis, but I'm supposed to be talking about immigration here....)

Much as I disagree with the communitarian view of rights (and ever-expanded notions of communal obligations), the latter view seems to be winning. The fundamental error is the redefinition of obligations as "rights." Crossing a border into another country does not convey any rights or perks of citizenship whatsoever to the border crossers. Nor does it create an obligation or burden on the part of any employer anywhere.

To maintain otherwise degrades American freedom and makes a mockery of democracy.

But hey, let's look on the bright side.

At least we're not living in France!

LINGERING QUESTION: Is opposition to socialism becoming synonymous with advocating anarchy? (Sometimes it seems that way....)

UPDATE: In a thoughtful post, Dr. Helen asks "Does Rioting Create Jobs?" She concludes that

rioting for cradle to grave job security is not the answer to the job crisis in France.

And giving "rights" to non-citizens here illegally isn't going to help the people who live in this country legitimately.

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!

-- Proverbs 6:6

Well that's all fine and good. In the face of a recent invasion of ants in my kitchen, I've been considering them a lot. And I'm trying to be wise (at least, wise to the ways of the ants). I've studied -- and restudied -- their penchant for empire building.

But I guess I forgot to ask why they hate me . . .

As I try to make clear, I am a staunch opponent of culture wars as well as all forms of identity politics.

So naturally, as soon I learned about the so-called Rebel-Yankee Test via a friend's email, I considered it my patriotic duty to take it.

The results did not please me:

36% Dixie. You are definitely a Yankee.

How?

Must be my love for the Second Amendment. And dogs. And all things rebellious.

It's a fun test, and I think the whole matter calls for some kitsch.

(After much agonizing, I decided not to supply any links to the above organizations, lest I be accused of harboring copperhead sentiments . . .)

MORE: Recovered memory! I don't know how it managed to slip my mind, but I forgot my dad's military service at Camp Pickett, Virginia (which probably accounts for part of my 36%). We rented a place in rural North Carolina. (Considering that my dad "retard" from the service in 1964, and these trips were of a couple of weeks duration, this took place over 40 years ago. Am I supposed to remember everything?)

Islamic clerics in Afghanistan are none too happy about the release (thanks to international pressure, including President Bush) of that poor guy who faced the death penalty for being a Christian. They're doing what they do best -- stirring up the mob and demanding his death (and the death of all Christians):

On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to protest the court decision Sunday to dismiss the case. Several Muslim clerics threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.

"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."

Trying to prevent people from being killed for their religious beliefs is not an "assault against Islam." It's defense against Islam, or to be precise against a certain strand of Islam that regrettably cannot be dismissed as just some unimportant lunatic fringe.

Might the same thing be going on in Muslim countries?

Via Glenn Reynolds, Zeyad reflects on a recent incident of religious butchery in Iraq:

Islamic clerics (of all denominations) never fail to disgust me. Thanks to their efforts, we are becoming quite fluent in 7th century medieval vocabulary. How many Iraqis will listen to such sermons then go out on a rampage to slaughter their Nawasib neighbours, or their Rafidha friends?

I don't know how many Iraqis would actually go out and lynch someone, but the act doesn't require a huge number of people. A very small mob -- call them the "fringe" if you will -- can, by just a few lynchings, intimidate the vast majority of normal people who only want to be left alone to live their lives in peace. Given time, many of the ordinary people will chime in at least verbally, in the hope that they might be able to avoid being dragged through the streets and butchered themselves.

According to Eugene Volokh, even members of the accused Afghan Christian's own family expressed agreement with the murderous fringe:

What's worth remembering about the case, though, is that "even moderate Muslim clerics, as well as members of Rahman's own family, have said that death is the only fair and logical punishment for him." If that's "moderat[ion]" as Muslims go, that's mighty troubling.

I don't mean to compare Islamic mob psychology to American mob psychology, but I have noticed that it's human nature to want to be left alone. Especially by activists. (Far be it from me to call them lunatic fringe. That might be interpreted as persecution.)

When I was a kid I noticed that bullies were experts at playing victim, and they were the first to cry foul if a victim got the better of them. Of course, victims usually didn't get the better of bullies. Often they ended up joining them. It's always tough for people to sit in judgment when they simply want to be left alone.

A brief word on "transhumanism." Earlier Justin reminded me that this subject is hotly debated, and as it really isn't "my" issue, I'll leave the details to him. I've already expressed skepticism about things like life extension, because (as I tried to explain in my mega post about Andrew Keen) I was left embittered by seeing my life-extension-advocating loved ones die. Little good it did them.

But would I oppose such technologies? God forbid. Anything that might add years to the lifespan of man, or which might improve his mental or physical capacities, I am one hundred percent for.

Who wouldn't be? Well, for starters, Luddites. Control freaks. Communitarians. People who want to retard human progress or even roll back the clock. People like Leon Kass and Andrew Keen (and, of course, their less "civilized" friends like John Zerzan and Ted Kaczynski.)

Keen accuses Glenn Reynolds of being a transhumanist (a word he claims is so "devoid of meaning" as to be Orwellian), yet he simultaneously declares the philosophy "extremist" (a word he does not define but doubtless thinks has more meaning than "transhumanist"). Expressions of sympathy with the idea of "singularity" are seen as a form of mental illness by people in Keen's circles, who liken it to religious belief in the Rapture. (Wishful thinking, perhaps?)

Is one man's transhumanism another man's extremism? For now, I'll leave the definability of "transhumanism" and extremism to others. (But I do think it's worth noting that extremism typically involves the use of violence to achieve one's ends -- something I have not seen the "transhumanists" doing yet....)

I think there are two debates going on.

One is whether this technology will be available in the future, and the other is whether it should be stopped. Debating the former strikes me as a little silly, because of the nature of technology. Either a given technological advance is possible or it is not. If it is not possible, why worry about it other than in a purely theoretical sense? To dismiss an idea as crazy because "it will never happen" doesn't really go anywhere. Opposing life extension because it will never happen makes as much sense as opposing, say, cold fusion because it will never happen. No sane person would waste his time fighting something which he really didn't believe would happen.

Therefore, the fact that the enemies of these technological advances devote so much time to attacking them must mean that they believe they are possible, and want to stop them.

In my view, opposition to technology is backward, because technology is what man is all about. Ever since Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers invented tools and weapons, man has been improving upon what he started with, and himself. Ultimately, even if man ends up creating a newer, superior form of life, that will be part of this continuum. While I don't see it happening in my lifetime, I would never do anything to thwart it, because I think that long term, man is as doomed as the dinosaur as long as remains permanently stuck on this planet. There are too many things that can go wrong, and the odds are increasing that sooner or later they will. If not a massive nuclear holocaust reducing us to another Stone Age (or temporary Dark Age if man is lucky), then sooner or later another catastrophic asteroid impact (or shower) triggering massive extinction (including man). Given enough time, a catastrophic end for earth-limited mankind strikes me as inevitable.

Once, however, man becomes self-perpetuating and is able to live independently in other places, then all bets on his extinction are off. Limiting ourselves to this planet is a poor strategy for man's continued survival. That's why I strongly disagree with the people who think retarding progress will "save" mankind. I think if these fools had their way, precisely the opposite would occur.

If that makes me a "transhumanist" or a "singularitarian," fine. In light of my gloomy outlook, I think I'm rather a poor one.

But, to reiterate -- the fact that I experienced problems and failures, and watched so many people die, that makes me less inclined to place roadblocks in the way of others. I cannot think of anything more small-minded than opposing human progress because of embittering life experiences, and I think those who would do that ought to be a bit ashamed of themselves.

(I'll leave it to Justin to shame them properly, because I'm supposed to be the nice guy around here....)

PARADOXICAL FUTURE UPDATE: It turns out that Andrew Keen is enough of a futurist to predict the future of human wisdom:

....I will guarantee that no blogger will ever provide lasting wisdom to later generations. That’s a promise. And a warning.

What assumptions are being made by Keen? If a man with wisdom becomes a blogger, does that make his wisdom disappear? Or would the fact that he started a blog mean that by definition he could not have been a wise man?

In logic, of course, Keen's statement -- no blogger will ever provide lasting wisdom -- cannot possibly be true. Because if we assume it is true, then a blogger (Keen) will have provided lasting wisdom.

Sigh.

I guess some things aren't meant to be taken seriously.

Is that it?

Am I misconstruing Keen's attempt at humor?

UPDATE: Thanks to Pajamas Media for the link!

Via Roger L. Simon, good news for those suffering from insomnia -- they get to suffer more! That's right, the more sleep you lose, the longer you live:

the refrain that Americans are sleep deprived originates largely from people funded by the drug industry or with financial interests in sleep research clinics.

"They think that scaring people about sleep increases their income," Kripke told LiveScience.

Thanks to the marketing of less addictive drugs directly to consumers, sleeping pills have become a hot commodity, especially in the past five years. People worldwide spent $2 billion on the most popular sleeping pill, Ambien (zolpidem), in 2004, according to the BioMarket, a biotech research company.

A six-year study Kripke headed up of more than a million adults ages 30 to 102 showed that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep. The risk from taking sleeping pills 30 times or more a month was not much less than the risk of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, he says.

Those who took sleeping pills nightly had a greater risk of death than those who took them occasionally, but the latter risk was still 10 to 15 percent higher than it was among people who never took sleeping pills. Sleeping pills appear unsafe in any amount, Kripke writes in his online book, "The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills."

"There is really no evidence that the average 8-hour sleeper functions better than the average 6- or 7-hour sleeper," Kripke says, on the basis of his ongoing psychiatric practice with patients along with research, including the large study of a million adults (called the Cancer Prevention Study II).

And he suspects that people who sleep less than average make more money and are more successful.

The Cancer Prevention Study II even showed that people with serious insomnia or who only get 3.5 hours of sleep per night, live longer than people who get more than 7.5 hours.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported a study showing that black cigarette smokers developed cancer at a higher rate than whites. Yet the actual numbers were only of interest as statistics, because they weren't that dramatic. Nevertheless, the study was widely written up (this one in the Philadelphia Inquirer was typical). Most of the stories scrubbed the actual numbers, and while I can't prove my suspicions, I suspect that there's a policy decision involved (i.e. they don't want people knowing the actual statistical risks from smoking). Here's the New England Journal of Medicine:

Among participants who smoked no more than 30 cigarettes per day, African Americans and Native Hawaiians had significantly greater risks of lung cancer than did the other groups. Among those who smoked no more than 10 and those who smoked 11 to 20 cigarettes per day, relative risks ranged from 0.21 to 0.39 (P<0.001) among Japanese Americans and Latinos and from 0.45 to 0.57 (P<0.001) among whites, as compared with African Americans. However, at levels exceeding 30 cigarettes per day, these differences were not significant.

(Shhhhhh! We wouldn't want the kids know that the chance of getting lung cancer average out to slightly more than one in a thousand. If they thought that 99.8% of smokers don't get cancer, they might wonder what the crackdown on smoking in "public places" was all about. And we just can't have that!) Had it not been for the racial differences which made the story newsworthy, I doubt the total numbers would have appeared in very many places.

I may be old-fashioned, but I don't think that either corporate profits or public policy should influence statistical compilations or news reporting, and I'm always distrustful of statistics.

If I've learned one thing, it's that that if you rely on them, they'll change!

It's always nice to remember that individuals are not statistics.

The statisticians didn't tell me when I was going to be born, so what business have they telling me when I'm going to die?

(Sheesh. You'd almost think the world was being run by fatalists trying to run the world according to some neo-Calvinistic theories of predestination.)

In computers as well as life, some of the most minor and nitpicky annoyances can be a real hassle to fix. And if, like me, you sometimes have an irresistible tendency to get to the bottom of a problem, you can end up spending way too much time on something utterly inconsequential.

So it was with my computer's new hard drive and new (Windows XP) OS. Probably because I have an old motherboard, the new OS installation sees this computer as being non-ACPI compliant, and the only way I might be able to fix that would be to reinstall again, which isn't worth it considering the trouble I went through installing it the first time around. Besides, the only real consequence of the ACPI issue is that when I shut the computer down all the way, I have to shut down Windows and then turn off the computer switch on the case. Not a big deal, really -- except I found myself annoyed by a very odd detail -- the display of the phrase, "It is now safe to turn off your computer."

I don't mind being saddled with the annoyance of having to push the button, but something about the presence of the mini-lecture added to the process each time made me want to engage in vandalism. I thought it would be an easy thing to find the phrase and change it.

Think again. After way too much research into a very unfamiliar area, I learned that it's not text, but a sort of image known as a "resource." And that is located inside a vital part of the operating system called the kernel. This takes the form of a file called ntoskrnl.exe and it isn't designed to be trifled with. You mess it up, and your computer will be rendered unbootable.

However, in the process of learning about this, I discovered a cottage industry devoted to "kernel hacking." The ntoskrnl.exe file is the location of the Windows XP bootscreen image, and there are several ways to edit this image and replace it with a variety of alternative images.

And the alternatives abound. (There are hundreds, if not thousands, and if you don't like them you can make your own. However, if you insist on making your own image the old-fashioned way, you need to follow detailed instructions using a hexadecimal editor like this.)

For some, the trouble seems to be well worth it.

The truly paranoid, for example, might want to imagine (or make their friends imagine) that they're under surveillance by the FBI. And the Masons:

(There's also one for the CIA, of course....)

Dragons are available for fantasy fans and those who are teenagers at heart. I especially liked these two:

And if you like to keep your friends and coworkers guessing (or have the kind of taste people never get tired of), here are two wonderful American trademarks -- both located in the wrong place at the wrong time:

(Why do I keep having product placement issues?)

There are different ways to install the bootscreens (the changeable ones are called "bootskins") -- the easiest being to use software which does it all for you more or less automatically (and can be downloaded here).

But none of that satisfied my irrational craving to change Microsoft's stultifying safety reminder. (Something no one in his right mind would be interested in doing -- which means I probably ought to be more concerned with my mental health.)

Sigh.

For the truly dedicated few, there are still plenty of sites dedicated to old-fashioned manual kernel hacking, and at one of them in Germany, I was able to download prehacked German kernels. I found a wonderful piece of freeware called Resource Hacker™, which is described as:

...a utility to view, modify, add, rename and delete resources in Win32 executables and resource files. Incorporates an internal resource compiler and decompiler. Works on Win9x, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP.

So now when I shut down Windows, instead of getting the safety lecture in English, I see this:

"Sie können den Computer jetzt ausschalten."

That's better!

To explain why would absurdly complicate the simply absurd.

"Had enough?"

That, claims Newt Gingrich in Time, is the slogan Democrats should be using to run against Republican incumbents this Fall:

if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought Republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way Washington is run, told Time that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: "Had enough?"

...hardly anybody in the GOP camp seems anxious to address the historic event that transpired this month out on the high plains and now threatens to roll eastward, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is, of course, abortion. For the party of the elephant, the new South Dakota law - which prohibits the procedure for every woman in the state, unless she is dying - is truly the elephant in the room.

It puts Republican politicians, especially those seeking the 2008 presidential nomination, squarely on the spot. If they side with conservatives - who tend to vote heavily in the primaries, and who generally hope that the South Dakota law will be a weapon to overturn Roe v. Wade - they risk alienating the independent voters who often swing November elections. The swing people generally desire that the right to legal abortion, as codified by Roe, be sustained.

That explains why not a single Republican with White House aspirations has declared that the South Dakota law - passed by a Republican legislature, and signed on March 6 by a Republican governor - should be the model for an ultimate ban on abortions nationwide. None bring up the law at all; they have to be asked first.

Even ardent foes of abortion acknowledge that the issue is dicey. In the words of Jeffrey Bell, a veteran Washington activist who has worked with religious conservatives, "This is a real curveball that people weren't expecting. I'd understand if strategists might not want their [GOP] clients to say, 'Yeah, South Dakota, bring it on!' They don't know whether the public has moved that far."

Jack Pitney, a former national Republican official and Capitol Hill staffer who closely tracks GOP politics, said the other day: "This [abortion law] is a delicate situation for the Republicans. It makes a lot of them nervous. It's one thing to just talk about banning abortion - and they do that all the time, because it's a great way to fire up the base and raise money. But it's another thing to actually ban abortion nationwide.

"Because that would raise all kinds of uncomfortable questions that could hurt the party politically - such as, if this is truly a crime, whom do you jail? Very few Republican candidates want to answer that question."

[Jeffrey] Bell, the Washington activist, says the current conservative discomfiture needs to be put in perspective.

"Look at the progress we've made since 1992," he said. "Back then, we had the 'year of the woman,' when all these pro-choice Democrats got elected to the Senate, and Bill Clinton got elected president, and there was talk of passing a national law modeled on Roe. The pro-life people in the Republican party were absolutely pathetic.

"Today? Republicans have all three branches, and Democrats are so worried [about appealing to cultural conservatives] that they recruit Bob Casey Jr., a pro-lifer, to run for the Senate in Pennsylvania. The Democrats and the pro-choice people are on the defensive in ways they've never been before."

Perhaps. But law professor and conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds contends that the new abortion debate "will actually be bad for the Republicans. When the topic is defense, the Democrats lose. When it's sex, the Republicans lose."

Back to Time:

Voters have plenty to take out on Republican candidates this year—ethics scandals, the g.o.p.'s failure to curb spending, the government's inept response to Hurricane Katrina, a confusing new prescription-drug program for seniors and, more than anything else, an unpopular President who is fighting an unpopular war. Iraq could make a vulnerability of the Republicans' greatest asset, the security issue.

Where does all this leave the people who voted for Bush because of the war?

War?

What war? The word is so misused that it has become vague. While I like to talk about ending the "Culture War," the activists on both sides always seem to be winning against ordinary people who don't like politicizing the personal. It's tough to fight a war in Iraq and a war on terror when people are told they must take "sides" in, well, sex wars.

I'm wondering whether the voting public has developed general battle fatigue.

If so, the party that wins this Fall might be the one that shuts up the loudest.

On the front page of today's Philadelphia Inquirer is a touching story along the lines of "local boy makes good in his struggle against oppression":

Dweik, who wears his moustache short and sports a white beard, is highly educated. He earned a bachelor's degree in geography in Jordan and a master's in education from Bethlehem University. Studying on a U.S.-backed scholarship, he earned a master's in urban planning at State University of New York in Binghamton.

From 1985 to 1988, once again on a U.S. grant, he earned a master's and a doctorate in urban planning at Penn. His doctoral dissertation analyzed the reasons Palestinians commuted from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to work in Israel.

In a recent interview, he recalled his days in West Philadelphia fondly. Afternoons spent at the Van Pelt Library, reveling in its "millions of books." Forays to buy doughnuts, to which he says he became almost addicted. Communal prayer five times a day with fellow Muslim students in a room on the Penn campus.

Dweik said he was accepted at other universities, including one in the Southwest, but he chose Penn for the city's rich history and because being on the East Coast gave him the feeling of being physically closer to his home in the Middle East.

"I said Philadelphia is the best. It was the first capital of the United States. So let me go there," he recalled.

Moving to a different apartment about once a year, he had roommates from Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey. He can't recall the exact location of the apartments, but "something about Walnut Street" sticks in his mind.

He returned to Hebron imbued with democratic values, including a deep respect for freedom of speech. Amid growing Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Dweik began speaking out, "talking about the Palestinian problem as a political problem and calling for the emancipation of our people" at public forums, which got him arrested by Israeli authorities, he said.

"When I went to the court, I said, 'Can I defend myself in English?' They said no. So I spoke Arabic, and it was translated, and some of them knew Arabic very well. I said, 'Guys, I was in the United States, saying whatever I like, nobody stopped me there.' "

Oh dear. Now comes the hard part.

I didn't want to be in a hurry to spoil such a nice human interest story, so I left out a detail or two.

The local boy, Abdel Aziz Dweik is with Hamas. In fact, he's their newly elected speaker.

But -- but -- he lived in Philadelphia, right? And isn't he smiling on the front page of the Inquirer? Doesn't that mean he's really a moderate, and basically a nice man who will sooner or later realize that we're all humans and we're all in this together, and that there will be peace and understanding?

Not according to Jonathan Fighel, of Israel's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism:

For now, Hamas will try to present itself as pragmatic on the one hand, while it keeps shooting on the other hand, said Jonathan Fighel, a senior researcher at Israel's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

"This double policy is very much suitable [for them]," said Fighel. They do not abandon their original objective and they are still engaged in jihad (holy war) while at the same time they have to be pragmatic and "talk to the devil" (Israel) so the people don't go hungry and hospitals have supplies like oxygen," he said.

Ismail Haniye was nominated to be the Palestinian prime minister and Aziz Dweik was elected parliamentary speaker over the weekend.

Dweik said the policy of the new Hamas-dominated government would be based on negotiating while at the same time preserving the "right to resist" (carry out terror attacks against Israel).

Dweik is being presented as a moderate, but what makes him a moderate when he still stands for the destruction of the State of Israel? Fighel asked.

Which is my objection to the article. Not one Israeli spokesman is quoted. The Hamas speaker has instead been given carte blanche to present the Israelis as occupiers, as people who "forced the detainees to strip to their underwear," as practitioners of "targeted killings," and as slaveholders. Dweik is softened as much as possible:

A gregarious, soft-spoken man with an easy manner, Dweik can be politically unyielding.

He firmly states that all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, even those accused of engineering suicide bombings, are "freedom seekers" who deserve to be released because "Israel has no right to keep us under the slavery of occupation."

Is that all?

(I'm wondering.)

In a comment the other day, Justin complained that I was "too nice" to an anonymous anti-gay commenter who thought homosexuals should be imprisoned.

Being nice is one of my shortcomings, and it may eventually be my undoing. As a matter of fact, it may have already been my undoing (as I failed big time in a business venture based on naively altruistic assumptions about success). So, undone as I am by niceness, I'm now going to undo myself again by being nice to Andrew Keen -- a man who many people would not consider nice. He's not threatening to kill or imprison homosexuals. In fact, he's mainly getting attention right now because of a couple of articles in the Weekly Standard and on CBS News -- one attacking the new Internet utopia and the other attacking Glenn Reynolds' An Army of Davids in similar fashion.

Calling An Army of Davids a "utopian manifesto," Keen claims that Glenn Reynolds has been seduced:

In many ways, Reynolds has been seduced by the ideal of amateurism.

seduced by, well, me. But he's not even my type.

But attacking utopias is what Keen is all about. That's because he sees himself as a victim of utopia.

....I came willingly to the Bay Area, the set for Vertigo, as a doctoral student in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. There, I fell under the spell of the political anthropologist Ken Jowitt whose glitteringly original reading of modern history contrasted with the facile utopianism of the typical political “scientist”.

After Berkeley, I shifted coasts and taught modern history and politics, Jowitt-style, at Tufts, Northeastern and the University of Massachusetts. Another coast, another great seduction. Alongside my academic teaching, I developed a parallel career as a popular cultural critic. And it was as a journalist that, in the early Nineties, I “discovered” the Internet, the greatest seduction since the dream of world communism. Rushing back to the Bay Area, now known as Silicon Valley, I founded a website called Audiocafe.com and, securing investment from Intel and SAP, built it into an early paragon of the online revolution. I became an uncle Reuben of the Internet upheaval, a true believer in the historical inevitability of online community, commerce and content.

Then, in April 2000, I woke up. Audiocafe crashed, Silicon Valley crashed, Wall Street crashed. The narrative had the hallmarks of classic Hitchcock, as cruel and inevitable as the plot of Vertigo. Real life interfered with the dream, the blond turned into the brunette and the lights came back on. Amerika.

I sympathize with Keen. No really, I do. That's because I too was a failure. I started a nightclub called Thunder Bay in Berkeley, California. By all appearances, it was a huge success. We held rave parties with thousands of people, we had gay nights, lesbian square dancing nights, biker nights, punk rock nights. Two bars with four bartender stations, laser light shows, an incredibly cool interior, on a good night we'd have over a thousand people. (One rave drew as many as 5,000.) San Francisco columnist Herb Caen -- a giant in journalism who IMHO has to be called the world's first blogger -- gave us two favorable mentions in his column. (No easy thing, trust me). We won a Bay Guardian Best of the Bay award in 1993 ("Best Place to Go Dancing in Black"). Among other things, we were one of the birthplaces of the Goth movement in the San Francisco Bay Area (the House of Usher started at Thunder Bay).

Blah blah blah. It's all in the increasingly distant past.

The bottom line (as I've said before) was that despite the huge crowds, we couldn't pay the rent. 7500 square feet is a lot of space, and it wasn't cheap then, and isn't cheap now. The kids didn't drink enough.

As Keen and I both realize, utopia alone does not pay the rent. While the patrons screamed that the "community" should be preserved (by the government, if necessary!), Thunder Bay crashed. And I crashed too. The doors closed in March of 1994, and if they hadn't been, the taxing authorities would have padlocked them.

I don't know if my failure was on as large a level as Keen's, but I do know what it is like to experience failure. I was stuck owing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it took years to get over it.

I think I've learned from my mistakes, and one of the things I learned is that nice guys shouldn't run nightclubs. To run a nightclub you have to be a little bit of an ass. I don't like being an ass, so I am unlikely to venture back into that type of business. But you never know.

What I absolutely will not do is behave like a Prophet of Doom, and project my experiences onto other people who had nothing to do with my failures. I am not here to warn anyone about utopias. I am deeply suspicious about utopian thinking, and much as I'd love to see them happen, I am skeptical about things like life extension, and I've said so.

But the last thing I would do is to try to begrudge the success of others. Even less would I want to thwart them. Yet thwarting others' attempts at success (what he calls utopian "seduction" is Andrew Keen's goal:

now there is a new great seduction in Silicon Valley. Today, the trinitarianism of digital community, commerce and content goes under the name of “Web 2.0”. The new democratizing technologies are blogs, wikis, social networking sites and podcasts. But I’ve changed. I am now an outsider on the inside, revealing the great seduction and warning of its grave cultural consequences.

Of course, by relating the above story of my business failure, I am running afoul of something Keen condemned last weekend (in Berkeley of all places), when he derisively asked,

"What is the value of sharing your experiences?"

What is the value of Keen sharing his?

He certainly has no problem doing precisely that:

In addition to being an aspiring Terry Gross, I am also a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and impresario. I founded Audiocafe.com in 1996 and built it into a cacophonous, generously funded digital media business. In 2000, I was the Executive Producer of MB5: The Festival for New Media Visionaries, the legendary show that captured the most lucid prophesies and worst hubris of the Nineties Internet mania. Since 2000, I’ve played executive roles at a number of high profile, venture backed technology companies including Pulse 3D, Santa Cruz Networks, Jazziz Digital and Pure Depth, where I currently direct the company’s global strategic sales.

Perhaps I am taking this character too seriously, perhaps not. But I can relate to his failure, and I understand his bitterness. (I try not to be bitter, but it has a way of creeping up on me sometimes, and I try to combat it with humor when I can.)

And while I'm trying not to be too judgmental, I have to say that in Keen's case, bitterness it is. My impression of the man is that he's extremely bitter, and he sees of himself as an unheralded, unrecognized leader of a utopia that never came to pass. Right now, I think he resents the blogosphere like hell. And he bitterly resents advocates of the future ("cybernetic totalists") for essentially stealing his show. In addition to writing for the Weekly Standard, he's holding a series of conferences in San Francisco devoted to attacking both "citizen journalists" as well as "cybernetic totalists." Here was last night's show:

Schmootopia 3: The War Against Expertise

Is there something intrinsically untrustworthy about big media and honest about "citizen journalists", bloggers and podcasters? If not, then why are so many American technophiles infatuated with the ideal of the amateur?

on Thursday, March 23 2005 at 6:30pm

Schmootopia 4: Transcendence and the Mind

The extreme fringe of today's technology utopians shares much in common with the Evangelical Christians: the belief that a rapture is imminent, and that a select few shall be chosen, and catapulted forward to enjoy the future.

But such wild fantasies are shared by more than just a fringe, and the consequences of the technologists' hazy and hopeful belief systems pose problems for us all. Jaron Lanier described how the "cybernetic totalists", anticipating a fusion of biology and technology, consistently devalue subjectivity and real human experience. Nicholas Carr, in his essay "The Amorality of Web 2.0", describes how transcendence has become a tick box item for new internet projects.

Our fourth panel examines the gnostic, religious and eschatological dimensions of techno utopianism.

on Thursday, April 20 2005 at 6:30pm

I mean, look at this alarmingly amateurish pose:

Pollyanna Schmollyanna!

(As for the name of the above San Francisco tribunals -- "Schmootopia" -- I think it may derive from "Utopia Schmootopia" which seems to have been uttered by a professor in 1998.)

Pollyannaism aside, I'm about as much of an expert on utopia bashers as I am on utopias, so I don't know what explains the thinking of Lanier, although I can see from his background that he's no slouch. Might it be that extreme form of hippie NeoLuddism which fears the loss of the soul? I can't get too excited about that either; I lost too many souls to AIDS, and nearly lost my own in the process. (I understand Keen's bitterness and even despair, but I have to say that I prefer the Pollyanna approach.)

As to Nicholas Carr, like Keen he drips with loathing for "amateurism":

The Internet is changing the economics of creative work - or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture - and it's doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices. Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it's created by amateurs rather than professionals, it's free. And free trumps quality all the time. So what happens to those poor saps who write encyclopedias for a living? They wither and die. The same thing happens when blogs and other free on-line content go up against old-fashioned newspapers and magazines. Of course the mainstream media sees the blogosphere as a competitor. It is a competitor. And, given the economics of the competition, it may well turn out to be a superior competitor. The layoffs we've recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.

As I've thought about the watery philosophy and the powerful technology that dovetail so neatly in Web 2.0, I've become fearful that we're building a machine that will, to great and general applause, destroy culture. Keen gets close to the heart of the matter: "If you democratize media, then you end up democratizing talent. The unintended consequence of all this democratization, to misquote Web 2.0 apologist Thomas Friedman, is cultural 'flattening.'" In the end we're left with nothing more than "the flat noise of opinion - Socrates's nightmare."

I don't mind it when people have their own opinions, but when they drag in the ancients, I'm always made to feel as if I should pay attention, and that's really annoying, so I have to confess that this guy is challenging my ability to be nice. Anyway, I don't have all day to write this blog post, so I'm deferring to Dennis on Socrates. Dennis is, after all, a classical scholar -- something I suspect Keen is not.

Good job, Dennis!

(And may the gods forgive me for being such a classical amateur!)

With the gods' permission, I should probably add that I like Socrates, and common sense suggests that the image of him as a classical voice against the blogosphere is preposterous. How could Socrates, stonecutter and self-proclaimed gadfly who hassled pompous Athenian aristocrats in the marketplace, be against blogging? How could man who said, "Those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable" be against "amateurism"?

What bothers me is not so much that Keen is invoking Socrates against the blogosphere. It's that he's doing it with the help of CBS and the Weekly Standard. Whether this is a form of high-level trolling or an astute attack combining elements of the communitarian left and the communitarian right remains to be see. Considering some of the other stuff Keen says (more on that later), it could be argued that calling him a "troll" is almost too kind.

Again, maybe I'm being too nice.

Ed Driscoll understands Keen's point, but likens his message to putting the genie back in the bottle:

....you can't put the genie back in the bottle: the mass media began to splinter in the 1970s with the birth of cable TV and the first dial-up computer bulletin board systems. It's only going to continue, and accelerate.

Sadly, that means less and less shared culture. But would you like to go back to the alternative? Three TV network